Lucio Mastronardi - Percorso Letterario

Caricamento immagini...

What is the literary tour?
It is a chance to narrate Mastronardi and his Vigevano.
It is an informative structure which can be useful for who wants to know Vigevano and surroundings in a "guided" way without excluding the possibility of a free approach, without conditionings, to the architectonic and naturalistic beauties.
Lucio Mastronardi has walked along the misty roads of the city, breathing the smell of rubber and glue for shoes, hearing the hard-working noise of machines, the sound of factories siren, the mean or full of hopes dialogues of men and women all busy to make "money".
He has taught to children, reflecting how the school has difficulty to imagine a best and different world from the one surrounding it and, as citizen of Vigevano, son of an immigrant, he has felt and suffered the difficulty of the immigrant to arrive, to find house, job, friendship or understanding in a Vigevano that was not still fully ready to welcome him.
He has sat at the tables of the Square cafés and he has listened to old juke boxes playing songs among the desert colonnades in the winter evenings, and he has seen embraced couples walking together along the arcades, crowds coming out from the Cathedral mass on Sundays morning and sporting cars parading and roaring along the center streets.
All this he has lived, all this he has narrated and all this can be caught walking around Vigevano looking for places atmospheres and tastes told by Lucio. Go to Sculpture Project.

TOWN TOUR

LITERARY TOUR	ARTS & TRADES TOUR
Mastronardi House	Town Library
Town Library	Merula Palace
Exhibition Building, Volta Square	Enterprise Museum
St. Peter Martyr Church	Castle and Footwear Museum
Dante Street and St. Francis Church
Bramante Tower
Officers Club and Covered Passage
Undergroung Passage and Front Door
Ducal Square	INFORMATION POINT
Cathedral & Bishop's Palace	Castle
Roggia Vecchia & Queen Margaret School	office and Merula Palace
Cairoli school & St. George Church	Town Library
People Street	Third age University

MASTRONARDI'S FUND - MERULA PALACE

Lucio Mastronardi was born into a well known family in Vigevano on 28th June, 1930. His father Luciano, a long term local resident originally from Abruzzo, was an ex Director of Didactics, noted anti fascist, book lover and bookshop owner for several years. His mother, Maria Pistoja from Vigevano was on the other hand, a well respected elementary school teacher.
Thus, Lucio was born into an environment of love for books. By character timid and shy, he obtained his diploma and became an elementary school teacher. He soon began to switch between his profession and that of writer. In his works, he writes about facts of life in Vigevano, highlighting with cutting sarcasm the contradictions of his economically burgeoning Vigevano.
His tortured relationship with the city, the working environment and with literary activity bring him to the tragic conclusion of his life on 29th April, 1979.
The "Lucio Mastronardi" archive is a collection of around 2900 documents. Books, magazines, publications, and a library of letters and other materials. It is the "family library" by which Lucio was educated, where you can find the books which he brought or received, together with the texts which his parents collected. There are classic and modern novels, literary criticism, books on the history of art, teaching books, essays on philosophy and devotional texts.
Access to the archive was granted to Vigevano council by his heirs, together with the original furniture. The library has been rebuilt and is now to be found here in Palazzo Merula. We offer a heartfelt thanks to the writer's family.
In order to discover how to gain access to the archive, please contact the Council Historical Archive (Archivio Storico Comunale) Tel. 0381 692903 - email: infoarchivio@comune.vigevano.pv.it or go to the "Lucio Mastronardi" civic library (biblioteca civica), Tel. 0381 70149 - email: mastronardi@comune.vigevano.pv.it
For further information go to www.comune.vigevano.pv.it and www.luciomastronardi.it
MASTRONARDI HOUSE

Here was born Lucio Mastronardi on the 28th June 1930 from Luciano Mastronardi and Maria Pistoia.
In 1955-56 he published four tales on the newspaper " Il corriere di Vigevano"(Vigevano Courier), (republished in 1981 in Four Tales (1955-1956)
In 1956 he met Vittorini and under his guide started to work at Il Calzolaio di Vigevano (The Cobbler of Vigevano,) published first on number one of the magazine Il Menabò (1959)
In 1960 he finished Il maestro di Vigevano (The Teacher of Vigevano,) which was supervised by Italo Calvino and published after revision in 1962.
In 1963 he completed the first version of Il meridionale di Vigevano (The Southtern of Vigevano), (published by Einaudi in 1964.
Under the supervision of Sergio Pautasso he published, at Rizzoli, his fourth and last romance A casa tua ridono, (At your home they laugh), dated 1971.
On December 1978 he was hospitalized at Pavia University Hospital, where was diagnosed a not operable pulmonary neoplasm. He ran away and on the 4th January 1979 he sent his last letter to Rizzoli, in which he announced to have completed the drafting of a new romance, remained, however, until today unpublished.
In the morning of the 24th April 1979 he left home and never came back. He was found by a fisherman in the Ticino river, the following Sunday.
LIBRARY

Easily reachable on foot either from the Station or, if arrived by bus, from Cavour street. In the local history section are kept the documents related to Mastronardi, first editions of the works, newspapers articles, critical essays. The library organizes meetings and evenings dedicated to Vigevano traditions, lectures and studies on the work of Mastronardi.
EXHIBITION BUILDINGVOLTA SQUARE

"Second center" of Vigevano and deeply changed in the last decades, in its whole it reassumes the double face of the fifties Boom: at one side the Exhibition Building, showcase of the industrious Vigevano, the Vigevano of the footwear, of the industry that has made it famous in Italy and in the world; at the other one the “Roofings”, the Vigevano that with difficulties succeeded in absorbing the new citizens arrived to work in the factories. We entered a shed. We walked through a narrow passage, made by the roofing wall at one side, and by a formica and cardboards wall at the other ,as long as the shed. The wall was pierced by aligned doors one after other; they let catch: straw mattress, cots, sleeping children, gas kitchens, stoves, men in bed; in a dense smell of supper, of bodies, of skins, of leather and of glue. Some women were at sewing-machines sewing together. Men and boys glued vamps and soles" (The southerner of Vigevano, XX).
St. PETER MMARTYR CHURCH

St. Peter Martyr Church (XIV cent.) keeps the rests of the Blessed Matteo Carreri, Vigevano patron saint. Mastronardi remembers as also this area was full of teeming activities: "Try to walk across the whole Carrobio! A series of shops, all leather merchants. Have you ever tried to walk along Sardinia Street or Pavia main street or the Hillock? Everywhere small and big factories" (The cobbler of Vigevano, XXIV, p. 312).
DANTE STREETSt. FRANCIS CHURCH

The XIV century church, has had during the centuries different remaking, until in Napoleonic epoch, it was turned into military lodging. The actual appearances is of the XIX century, following the remaking started after the Restoration. It is worth to notice, on the lateral St. Francis Street, the Baroque little chapel in which are visible skulls of monks, memory of the cemetery existed there, called by people "Gisiò di mort." ( dialect for little church of dead) "The morning of the Virgin Mary nativity, Luisa returned from St. Francis Church. The sun was shining as it were Spring time. All along Dante street she sees people with some big necklaces of boots; boys that rubbed themselves under that weight; old people with grey-green covers; tricycles full of stuff. And young people running, everywhere movement, traffic." (The cobbler of Vigevano, XV, p. 279)
TOWER

The Tower, was probably built, in more times, from 1476 up to the conclusion with the Baroque little dome wanted by bishop Caramuel, that closed the base with the colonnade completion of the Square. The final part of the Tower, the octagonal belvedere, the three mouldings of the bell cell and of the second garret, as well as the ornamental battlement of the last one, are surely made by Bramante of whom is assured the presence in Vigevano as ducal architect: "And the tower, the titanic tower above the Sforza Castle, in the Square, honor glory protection boast of the town, the tower is the work of Bramante, there are no doubts here" (The cobbler of Vigevano, I, p. 209). Since that time, as Mastronardi remembers, it scans the time of Vigevano life: "That big bell has scanned the hours, the half hours for two hundred years: and there is someone who hears it for the first time, and someone for the last one. Who knows when they will change that big bell" (The teacher of Vigevano, 21, p. 204).
OFFICERS CLUBCOVERED PASSAGE

The Club is located in three halls of the Castle, under the tower. The staircase, in the Square, that brings to the Castle, is decorated by vases and plants, and covered by a carpet. On the threshold, some soldiers open us the front door, then a door. After three stairs, another door.

We are in the Club lobby" (The southerner of Vigevano, IX, p. 400); “Not to beat the eyes on my shoes and on the mirrors, I look at the ceiling, painted in fresco by the disciples of Leonardo, and where it seems the hand of the master is not extraneous" (The southerner of Vigevano IX, p. 401). The Officer Club introduces us to the visit of the Castle and of the Tower.
UNDERGROUND PASSAGEFRONT DOOR

During the 1347 fortifications amplification, Luchino Visconti had a covered, raised and 167 meters long way built, to connect the fortress dungeon to the “Rocca Vecchia” (the Old Castle). At about half-way of the passage, it rises, imposing, the structure of the "Front door": yet, totally englobed in the urban composition, the Front door becomes so familiar that the Cobbler of Vigevano, "perhaps didn't notice the Big Snakes above the Front door, symbol of Vigevisimus or Viglebanum; perhaps he had never thought that the Staircase of the Square conducted to the Sforza house " (The Cobbler of Vigevano, I, p.211).
DUCAL SQUARE
The Square is Vigevano vital center and, as such, we can find it continually in the work of Mastronardi. Among many passages, this testifies Sunday life and in this way it remembers, above all, the continuity in the difference between the past times and today's life. "The Square is depopulating. It beats the stroke. It is a brothel of cars that leave again. Those that have had to leave the car in the streets and in the circuses next to the Square, where there was no more place, now give vent, going down along People street, crossing it and disappearing beyond the Cathedral, reappearing from People street, to cross it again" (The southerner of Vigevano, VII, p. 384).

HAITI CAFE'
The café is the prince place of Vigevano people afternoons, that here meet and met after work. The different cafés of the Square were frequented by precise social categories: some by workers, others by employees and others else by entrepreneurs. Mastronardi used to sit at Haiti café to chat with friends. This daily gesture is described in many novels passages "Under the arcades women walk with big bags; they go and they come back from the market. At the café tables, workers that have become entrepreneurs show to friends their production" (The southerner of Vigevano, p.356).
CATHEDRALBISHOP PALACE

The Bishop's palace was built starting from the first half of the XVI century. In 1848, at the end of the first phase of the first independence war, here signed the armistice Salasco.
ROGGIA VECCHIA QUEEN MARGARET SCHOOL

The Queen Margaret School was built in 1907. Mastronardi taught there until good part of the 1963.
CAIROLI SCHOOLSt. GEORGE CHURCH

The church, in Romanesque style is prior to the half of the XIV century. Complement of the Visconti castle, it has been raised under the patronage of the Colli family. Mastronardi, tells that many people "got married at St. George, the church of the students, because next to high schools, a little church as big as a thimble, scalcinà (dialect for tumbled-down), without a regular priest." (The cobbler of Vigevano, XXVIII p. 334).
PEOPLE STREET

it has always been the street of Vigevano passers-by and layer of the Square. On this street besides the homonym Church you cannot miss Roncalli Palace. Mastronardi remembers: "Every Sunday morning there are passers by under the arcades, from eleven to one, up and down from one side to the other. Sometimes they go up, into People street, the road of the good King and they arrive until Fair Square, then come back to the Square. Break at midday: they go to hear the last mass in the Cathedral that as it tolls, it ends." (The cobbler of Vigevano, VI, p., 242).