Guido Morselli
Encyclopedia
Life
Guido Morselli was born in BolognaBologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
, the second son of a well-to-do family belonging to Bolognese bourgeoisie. Giovanni, his father, was a manager of Carlo Erba, a pharmaceutical firm, while his mother, Olga Vincenzi, was the daughter of one of the most prestigious lawyers in Bologna. The family moved to Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
in 1914. Morselli's childhood was quite serene, but his mother suffered from Spanish flu
Spanish flu
The 1918 flu pandemic was an influenza pandemic, and the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus . It was an unusually severe and deadly pandemic that spread across the world. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin...
in 1922 and had to be committed to hospital for a long time.
The absence of his mother had a strong impact on Guido's personality, also due to his father's frequent travels; when Olga died in 1924 the loss struck the twelve-year-old boy powerfully. The relations between Guido and his father, who was often away from home, deteriorated. Guido developed a restless, unsociable character; he did not like school, though he was quite brilliant and loved reading.
Guido failed his final secondary school exams in 1930 at the Liceo
Liceo classico
Liceo classico is a secondary school type in Italy. The educational curriculum lasts five years, and students are generally about 14 to 19 years of age....
Parini, and barely managed to pass them in the following year. He studied law at the Università Statale di Milano to please his authoritarian father, but he started writing short journalistic essays without even trying to have them published.
After his graduation in 1935 he served in the Italian Army, attending the officer course for the Alpini
Alpini
The Alpini, , are the elite mountain warfare soldiers of the Italian Army. They are currently organized in two operational brigades, which are subordinated to the Alpini Corps Command. The singular is Alpino ....
corps. He then was sent to an infantry regiment in Milan. Subsequently he lived for a long time abroad (1936–37), writing reportages and short stories which remain unpublished. His father strives to push Guido towards a managerial career, and has him hired at Caffaro (a chemical company) as a promoter. This experience only lasted one year, and it worsened the relations between father and son. After the death of his beloved sister Luisa in 1938, Guido managed to obtain life income from his father which enabled him to devote himself to those activities he really loved: reading, researching, and writing. He kept writing short essays, and began a diary
Diary
A diary is a record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. A personal diary may include a person's experiences, and/or thoughts or feelings, including comment on current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone...
, which he continued till his death.
All his novels and essays were postuhumously published after Morselli committed suicide in 1973, due to the rejection of his manuscripts by many publishing houses, which were unable to assess their literary value.
Themes
Morselli is an eclectic author whose oeuvre contains specimens of different genres. While Il comuinsta is a solid realistic novel which analyses the existential crisis of a Communist Party cadre in the 1960s, Past Conditional belongs to the genre of alternate histories, inasmuch as it tells the counterfactual story of how the Austrian Empire won the Great War (by defeating Italy using blitzkriegBlitzkrieg
For other uses of the word, see: Blitzkrieg Blitzkrieg is an anglicized word describing all-motorised force concentration of tanks, infantry, artillery, combat engineers and air power, concentrating overwhelming force at high speed to break through enemy lines, and, once the lines are broken,...
tactics well before their time). Dissipatio HG is a surralistic fantasy novel where humankind disappears leaving its cities behind; only the narrator remains, and he wanders between Italy and Switzerland, contemplating the empty cities; Roma senza papa was clearly written in the wake of the Vatican Council II, as it describes what happens in Rome once that a radical reformist Pope has left it, because he considers the city too corrupt to host a religious and spiritual authority. All his novels have a very strong philosophical side, and his characters often present readers with deep and complex meditations on history, religion, politics, etc. However, Michele Mari
Michele Mari
Michele Mari is an Italian novelist, short story writer, academic critic and poet. The son of a prestigious Milanese industrial designer and artist, Enzo Mari, Michele teaches Italian literature at the Università Statale di Milano; he is considered one of the leading experts of Eighteenth-Century...
has underscored the importance of solitude in Morselli's oeuvre, which somewhat mirrors his real personality.
Literary Award
The "Premio Guido Morselli" was established in 2008 by Professor Silvio RaffoSilvio Raffo
Silvio Raffo is an Italian writer and translator. He's the most prolific translator of English and American women writers from English to Italian. A screen adaptation of his 1996 novel "Voice From The Stone" will be directed by Eric Howell.-Life and career:Silvio Raffo was born in Rome, Italy, Italy...
and Ms Linda Terziroli. The Literary Award takes place annually and is spread over several months, consisting in a series of conferences concerning Morselli's work and the final ceremony. It usually takes place between Varese
Varese
Varese is a town and comune in north-western Lombardy, northern Italy, 55 km north of Milan.It is the capital of the Province of Varese. The hinterland or urban part of the city is called Varesotto.- Geography :...
, where Morselli spent most of his life, and Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
.
Fiction
- Roma senza papa: Cronache romane di fine secolo ventesimo, Milan, 1974;
- Past Conditional: A Retrospective Hypothesis (Contro-passato prossimo: Un'ipotesi retrospettiva, 1975), tr. Hugh Shankland, 1989;
- Divertimento 1889 (Divertimento 1889, 1975), tr. Hugh Shankland, 1986;
- Il comunista, Milan, 1976;
- Dissipatio H.G., Milan, 1977;
- Un dramma borghese, Milan, 1978;
- Incontro col comunista, Milano, 1980.
- Uomini e amori, Milano, 1998.
Essays
- Proust o del sentimento, Milan, 1943;
- Realismo e fantasia, Milan, 1947;
- Fede e critica, Milan, 1977;
- Diario, Ed. V. Fortichiari, Milan, 1988.
Secondary Literature
- Costa, Simona, Guido Morselli, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1981
- Lessona Fasano, Marina, Guido Morselli. Un inspiegabile caso letterario, Liguori, 2003
- Fiorentino, Maria, Guido Morselli tra critica e narrativa, Graus Editore, 2002
- Fortichiari, V., Invito alla lettura di Morselli, MursiaMursiaMursia is a genus of crabs in the family Calappidae, containing the following species:* Mursia africana Galil, 1993* Mursia armata De Haan, 1837* Mursia aspera Alcock, 1899* Mursia aurorae Galil & Ng, 2009...
, Milano 1984 - Aa.Vv. "Ipotesi su Morselli", Autografo, No. 37, 1998.
- Pietrangeli, Fabio, "Guido Morselli: l’impronta umana e i “trascorsi eruditi”", in La Scrittura, No. 4, 1996-1997.
- Coletti, Vittorio, "Guido Morselli", in Otto/Novecento, No. 5, 1978.
- Parmeggiani, Francesca, "Morselli e il tempo", in Annali d’Italianistica, No. 19, 2001.
- Gaudio, Alessandro, "In partibus infidelium. Guido Morselli uomo di fiction e di precisione", Filologia antica e moderna, Year 32, 2007.
- Rinaldi, Rinaldo, "I romanzi a una dimensione di G. Morselli", I tempi del rinnovamento. Atti del convegno internazionale «Rinnovamento del codice narrativo in Italia dal 1945 al 1992», vol. I, Rome-Leuven, Bulzoni – Leuven University Press, 1995, pp. 471–499.
- Mariani, Carlo, "Guido Morselli", in Studi novecenteschi, No. 41, Year 18, 1991.
- Atti del convegno su Guido Morselli: dieci anni dopo 1973-1983, Gavirate, 1984
- Guido Morselli: i percorsi sommersi. Inediti, immagini, documenti, Eds. Elena Borsa and Sara D’Arienzo, Novara, Interlinea, 1998
- Villani, Paola, Il caso Morselli: il registro filosofico-letterario, Napoli, ESI, 1998
- Bruno, Pischedda, "Morselli: una “Dissipatio” molto postmoderna", Filologia antica e moderna, No. 19, 2000, pp. 163–189.
- Rinaldi, Rinaldo, "Mors-Morselli", Transalpina, 2001, pp. 129–142
- Tuccillo, Fulvio, "L’infelicità del vivere e la felicità della scrittura: i saggi di Guido Morselli", Riscontri, 2007, Nos. 2-3, pp. 47–55
- Mattei, Paolo, "Una lettura de Il Comunista", Sincronie, 2003, No. 14, pp. 55–76
- Baldini, Anna, "Le ragioni dell'inattualità. Il comunista di Morselli e La giornata di uno scrutatore di Calvino", Allegoria, No. 50-51, 2005, pp. 191–203
- Mezzina, Domenico, "Dalla chiaroveggenza intellettuale alla "frana morale": Un dramma borghese di Guido Morselli", Critica Letteraria, No. 3, 2008, pp. 493–524
- Terziroli, Linda, "Lettere ritrovate", "Nuova Editrice Magenta", Varese, 2009