Leonardo Sciascia

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Leonardo Sciascia ( [leoˈnardo ˈʃaːʃa] ) (born January 8, 1921 in Racalmuto , † November 20, 1989 in Palermo ) was an Italian writer . He became known for his crime novels , which are often set in his Sicilian homeland and deal with the mafia . He was considered one of the most important contemporary representatives of Sicilian literature and often interfered in cultural and political debates. As a politician he sat on the city council of Palermo, in the Camera dei deputati and in theEuropean Parliament .

Life

Leonardo Sciascia was trained at the College of Teachers in Caltanissetta . He was an employee of the grain storage authority in his hometown Racalmuto near Agrigento . From 1949 to 1957 he worked there as a primary school teacher. In 1975 he was elected as an independent candidate on the list of the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) to the City Council of Palermo , he resigned from his post in 1977. In 1978 he was elected to the European Parliament as a member of the Partito Radicale .

Leonardo Sciascia became famous with the novel The Day of the Owl , published in 1961 . The author was soon recognized as the greatest living Sicilian writer and the “conscience of Italian society” who raised his voice in many of the country's cultural and political debates. The book brought the problem of the Mafia beyond the borders of Italy into public awareness and is considered to be the first literary treatment of the Mafia. According to Manfred Hardt , Sciascia developed "a new form of critical realism " in his novels , in which he combined narrative with argumentation and essay within the genre of the crime novel in order to tie in with the tradition of the Enlightenment .

In Sciascia's works, in addition to social structures, political power systems in particular are dealt with and taken up, from fascist to Christian Democratic Italy, from the Italian power relations and social relations of power in general. The judiciary, judges and commissioners are common characters. The question of guilt and innocence, as well as excessive entanglements, occupy a central position in the stories and novels. The analysis of the power relations on the basis of a factual object can finally be found in Die Affäre Moro , published in German in 1989.

Despite his literary engagement against the mafia, in an article in Corriere della Sera (January 10, 1987) he discredited the anti-mafia movement around the prosecutors Antonino Caponnetto , Giovanni Falcone , Paolo Borsellino , Leonardo Guarnotta and Giuseppe Di Lello with the words “Today you only need to lead a lawsuit against the Mafia to make a career ”. He doubted the informative value of the defectors (pentiti) like Tommaso Buscetta , who had brought so many successes to the anti-mafia pool . His polemics and criticism from other newspapers contributed to the abandonment of the strategy of centralized investigations against the Cosa Nostra Palermos and Italy a year later.

He later commented on his article and the strong reactions to it:

“As the first in Italian literature, I did not draw a defensive picture of the Mafia phenomenon, but always with the caveat that it did not end with fighting it with the same means that fascism used to fight it (i.e. a mafia against the other) [...], with this in mind I wrote the articles in the Corriere della Sera . And this sparked a wild polemic, I was even accused of weakening the fight against the Mafia and, so to speak, promoting its existence. "

In 1986 he was awarded the Bagutta Prize for his book Cronachette, published by Sellerio Editore in Palermo . Several of his books have been made into films.

Honors

Works (selection)

  • Opere 1956-1971 1971-1983 1984-1989. Edited by Claude Ambroise. 3 volumes. Milan 1987–1990.
  • Le favole della dittatura. Rome 1950.
  • La Sicilia, il suo cuore. Rome 1952.
  • Pirandello e il pirandellismo. Caltanissetta 1953.
  • Le parrocchie di Regalpetra. Bari 1956/1957
  • Gli zii di Sicilia. Caltanissetta 1958
    • Sicilian Kinship: 4 Tales . Epilogue by Nino Erné. Translation: Caesar Rymarowicz, Nino Erné. Munich: Steinhausen, 1980 ISBN 978-3-8205-0455-2
  • Il giorno della civetta . Turin 1961
    • The day of the owl . Translation of Arianna Giachi. Freiburg: Olten, 1964 ISBN 3-7466-1656-5 .
  • Il consiglio d'Egitto. Turin 1963
    • The Abbé as a forger . Translation and epilogue Arianna Giachi. Freiburg: Olten, 1967 ISBN 3-548-20212-8
    • The Egyptian Council. Translation by Monika Lustig, afterword by Maike Albath . The Other Library, Berlin 2016.
  • Morte dell'Inquisitore. Bari 1964.
  • L'Onorevole. Turin 1965.
  • Festivals in Sicilia. (Photographs by Ferdinando Scianna), Bari 1965.
  • A ciascuno il suo. Turin 1966
    • Tote made to order . Translation of Arianna Giachi. Freiburg: Olten, 1968 ISBN 3-7466-1716-2 .
  • Narratori in Sicilia (with S. Guglielmino), Milan 1967.
  • Recitazione della controversia liparitana dedicata ad AD Turin 1969.
  • La corda pazza. Turin 1970.
  • Atti relativi alla morte di Raymond Roussel. Palermo 1971.
  • Il contesto. Turin 1971
  • Il mare color del vino. Turin 1973
    • The wine-colored sea: stories . Translation by Egon Wiszniewsky. East Berlin: People and World, 1975
  • Todo modo. Turin 1974
    • Todo modo or the game for power . Translation by Hansjörg Hofer. Cologne: Benziger, 1977 ISBN 3-423-11168-2
  • Luciano e le fedi (Prefazione ai Dialoghi di Luciano). Turin 1974.
  • La scomparsa di Majorana. Turin 1975
  • I pugnalatori. Turin 1976
  • Candido, ovvero un sogno fatto in Sicilia. Turin 1977
  • L'affaire Moro. Palermo 1978
  • Nero su nero. Turin 1979
    • Black on black . Carola Diering in Romanian. Darmstadt: Zsolnay, 1988 ISBN 3-423-11328-6
  • Dalla parte degli infedeli. Palermo 1979
  • Il teatro della memoria. Turin 1981
  • Conversazioni in una stanza chiusa. (with Davide Lajolo), Milan 1981.
  • Kermesse. Palermo 1982.
  • La sentenza memorabile. Palermo 1982
  • Cruciverba. Turin 1983.
  • Cronachette . Sellerio Editore, Palermo 1985.
  • Per un ritratto dello scrittore da giovane. Palermo 1985.
  • La strega e il capitano. Milan 1986
  • Porte aperte. Milan 1987
  • Il cavaliere e la morte. Milan 1988
  • Ore di Spagna. Pungitopo, Marina di Patti 1988.
  • Alfabeto pirandelliano. Milan 1989.
  • Una storia semplice . Milan 1989
    • A simple case. In: The Knight and Death / A Simple Case. Vienna / Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-552-04227-X .
  • Fatti diversi di storia letteraria e civile. Palermo 1989.
  • A futura memoria (se la memoria ha un futuro). Milan 1989.
  • Occhio di capra. Adelphi Edizioni, Milano 1990. ISBN 88-459-0768-6 . (Short commentaries on racalmutesic idioms and originals, probably not translatable in the puns)
  • My Sicily (essays). Translation Martina Kempter, Sigrid Vagt. Berlin: Wagenbach, 1995 ISBN 3-8031-1152-8 .

Film adaptations (selection)

script

  • 1962: Marriage in Sicilian ( La smania addosso )
  • 1977: Grand hôtel des palmes
  • 1989: Társasjáték (Hungarian TV)

Literary template

radio play

  • The Mafiosi, WDR 1975
  • Jagd auf Sicilianisch (A ciascuno il suo) , Broadcasting of the GDR 1988, with Martin Seifert
  • The day of the owl (Il giorno della civetta) , WDR 2002, with Dietmar Mues

literature

  • Claude Ambroise: Invito alla lettura di Leonardo Sciascia. Ugo Mursia Editore, Milan 1995.
  • Albrecht Buschmann : Power and its price. Detective narration with Leonardo Sciascia and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Publishing house Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005.
  • Sandro Moraldo (Ed.): Leonardo Sciascia. Approaches to his work. C. Winter Verlag, Heidelberg 2000.
  • Paolo Squillacioti:  Sciascia, Leonardo. In: Raffaele Romanelli (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 91:  Savoia-Semeria. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2018.

Essays in Italian

  • Sebastiano Gesù (ed.): Leonardo Sciascia. Giuseppe Maimone Editore, Catania 1992.
  • Sarah Zappulla Muscarà (ed.): Narratori siciliani del secondo dopoguerra. Giuseppe Maimone Editore, Catania 1990.
  • Sebastiano Gesù (ed.): Cadaveri eccellenti. Giuseppe Maimone Editore, Catania, 1992.
  • V. Fascia, F. Izzo, A. Maori: La memoria di carta: Bibliografia delle opere di Leonardo Sciascia. Edizioni Otto / Novecento, Milan 1998.
  • V. Vecellio (ed.): L'uomo solo: L'Affaire Moro di Leonardo Sciascia. Edizioni La Vita Felice, Milan 2002
  • V. Vecellio: Saremo perduti senza la verità. Edizioni La Vita Felice, Milan 2003.
  • G. Jackson: Nel labirinto di Sciascia. Edizioni La Vita Felice, Milan 2004.
  • L. Palazzolo: Leonardo Sciascia deputato radicale 1979-1983. Kaos edizioni, 2004.
  • L. Pogliaghi (ed.): Giustizia come ossessione: forme della giustizia nella pagina di Leonardo Sciascia. Edizioni La Vita Felice, Milan 2005.
  • M. D'Alessandra, S. Salis (eds.): Nero su giallo: Leonardo Sciascia eretico del genere poliziesco. Edizioni La Vita Felice, Milan 2006.

Web links

Commons : Leonardo Sciascia  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Manfred Hardt : Not only against the Mafia . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of November 23, 1998.
  2. Maike Albath : The godfather and no end . In: Deutschlandfunk from May 24, 2008.
  3. ^ I professionisti dell'antimafia . Transcription on Accade in Italia
  4. ^ Quote I “professionisti dell'antimafia” in the Mafia e P2 section on Leonardo Sciascia Web
  5. Minor Planet Circ. 51980
  6. ^ History of the Library