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Fernanda Pivano and the awakening of the Italian culture of the postwar period
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Fernanda Pivano has disappeared. The writer, journalist and translator of Genoa was born in 1917 and has conquered an important place within the Italian culture for her love for literature.
Mrs. Pivano is an important protagonist who has given a fundamental contribution to the awakening from the numbness of the fascist regime and to the widening of the Italian cultural landscape.
During two decades the country was mainly centered on herself and imprisoned in an isolation that was destined to end with the end of the regime. The contribution that Fernanda Pivano gave to breaking from of this isolation and to the widening of the horizons of the Italian culture was fundamental.
She was in effect a second Cristoforo Colombo who helped the Italians discover a new, vital, brave new world.
On the same path undertaken by writers such as Cesare Pavese, the writer of Genoa looked to the country beyond the Atlantic ocean that had brought the end of a nightmare and democracy to Europe and was fascinated by the classics of the American literature some of which she translated, offering them to the Italians who, in the postwar period, were eager to know as much as possible on the culture of their liberators. Fernanda Pivano had begun with a thesis on the masterpiece by Melville, Moby Dick, and with great interest and determination started dedicating herself to the translation of other American writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Lee Masters and to all the authors of the "Beat Generation" among which Jack Kerouac, the author of the famous "On the Road".
Mrs. Pivano had also a great passion for music and was a friend of the Italian singer and songwriter Fabrizio DeAndre. She did not neglect the world of the best American musical production, was fascinated by Bob Dylan and translated the texts of some of his songs.
A visit to the house of the writer and to her rich library helps us realize how much she was devoted to her work aiming at fostering understanding among people and it is for this reason that now the world of culture is saddened by the disappearance of this great builder of the friendship between Italy and the United States.
360 degrees Italy: protagonists of the Italian culture
