Pier Vittorio Tondelli

Pier Vittorio Tondelli (born September 14, 1955 in Correggio , † December 16, 1991 in Reggio nell'Emilia ) was an Italian writer .

Life

Tondelli spent his childhood, which he himself described as ordinary and bourgeois, in Correggio. During his school days ( Liceo Classico ) he wrote his first texts for the youth magazine of the Catholic Church of Correggio. After finishing school in 1974 he worked for a short time for a theater cooperation and for the cultural program of an alternative radio station ( radio libere ). Shortly afterwards he enrolled in the “DAMS” (Discipline delle Arti, della Musica e dello Spettacolo, i.e. art, music and theater studies) at the University of Bologna , where he took courses with Umberto Eco and Gianni Celati , among others . Bologna was the center of the student revolt at this time ; Tondelli later described the years 1975–1979 as anni caldi . The intellectual environment of the DAMS and the social circumstances of the 1970s had a lasting impact on Tondelli. Writing meant to him the most direct possibility of artistic expression, by means of which he made his mostly inward-looking life easier and mental breaks out of social and geographical constraints.

After the publication of his first book, Other Freedoms , and successfully completing his studies in 1980, he devoted himself entirely to literature and journalism. In the following years he traveled a lot, especially to Germany . There he was particularly fascinated by Berlin , the youth and punk movement, the squatted houses in Kreuzberg , the relaxed and easy way of life. He processed these impressions in his novels. After spending several years in Milan , he returned to Correggio in 1991, where he succumbed to AIDS in December of the same year .

Services

Tondelli's collection of short stories Other Freedoms , which can also be viewed as a novel in six stories, is considered to be one of the first works by giovani scrittori . Through the use of numerous intermedia appeals, media reception habits of mass culture and the global communication network are imitated both stylistically and in terms of content. Tondelli adapted the conventions of narrative cinema , such as those of visuality , simultaneity and discontinuity, as well as compositional structures of the music and thus met the aesthetic demands of his readers. The resulting narrative style reflected the new attitude towards life and consumer behavior and, with the help of its highly evocative character, thanks to numerous explicit references, was expressly aimed at a readership who, as a result of a shared media past, deciphered and understood Tondelli's intermedia references. In this way, the book is characterized by a communicativity that expressed and also consolidated a collective identity. Virtually unnoticed in Germany, with Other Freedoms in Italy Tondelli became a cult author who gave expression to the zeitgeist of the 1980s.

Works published in German

The German first editions (1988–1993) appeared with a considerable delay compared to the original editions (1980–1989) and in a different order.

Rimini. Novel. Translated from the Italian by Benjamin Schwarz. Albrecht Knaus Verlag, Munich / Hamburg 1988, ISBN 3-8135-2013-7 . - Paperback edition: Goldmann Verlag, without location information [Munich] 1990, ISBN 3-442-09665-0 .
PAO, PAO - Group picture with man. A Roman story. Translated from the Italian by Christoph Klimke and Castor Seibel. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-499-12489-0 .
Other freedoms. Stories. Translated from the Italian by Christoph Klimke with the assistance of Rüdiger Oetke. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-499-12597-8 .
Separate rooms. Novel. Translated from the Italian by Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-499-12804-7 .

Works published in Italian

Altri libertini
Il diario del soldato Acci
Pao Pao
Rimini
Biglietto agli amici
Camere separate
Un weekend postmoderno. Cronache dagli anni ottanta
L'abbandono. Racconti dagli anni ottanta
Dinner party

literature

Sandra Siegert: From the scandal towards the silence. Paths in Pier Vittorio Tondelli's work (dissertation University Mainz 2002). Meidenbauer, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-89975-037-3 .
Enrico Minardi: Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Ed. Cadmo, Florence 2003, ISBN 88-7923-285-1 .
Klaus Semsch: Literary Passion Play - Pier Vittorio Tondellis Dressing Up Body Discourses , in: Klaus Semsch, Diskrete Helden. Strategies for meeting the world in Romance narrative literature from 1980. Meidenbauer, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-89975-062-4 , pp. 281–333.

Web links

References and comments

↑ The book title refers to the abbreviation PAO = Picchetto Armato Ordinario, a specific form of guard duty in the Italian armed forces.

personal data
SURNAME	Tondelli, Pier Vittorio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Italian writer
DATE OF BIRTH	September 14, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH	Correggio
DATE OF DEATH	December 16, 1991
Place of death	Reggio nell'Emilia

[1] The book title refers to the abbreviation PAO = Picchetto Armato Ordinario, a specific form of guard duty in the Italian armed forces.