GOFFREDO PARISE’S PIAVE RIVER

A small distance from from the Relais “Vigne Correr” and deeply set in the woods lining up the river, you’ll find Goffredo Parise house, one of the most important Italian writer of the 20th century who chose this little hamlet in Salgareda and where he lived his last years.
In this house he wrote between the years 1972 and ’82 what is considered his masterpiece “I Sillabary” ( the Spelling books ).

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Ida Bartoli, his mother gave birth to Goffredo Parise in Vicenza in the year 1929. He never knew his father and his childhood was rather difficult; young Goffredo took the surname Parise from Osvaldo Parise, a journalist who married his mother. His earlier writings go back as far as the year 1950 and in 1953 the editorial house Garzanti enrolled him. While several of his works begin to be published, he starts also a collaboration with two important newspapers in Italy, Il Resto del Carlino and Corriere della Sera.. He began his career as writer at a very early age and “Il ragazzo e le Comete”
(The boy and comets) date back to 1951, a touching tale on childhood. “ La grande Vacanza”
(The great Holiday) appears two years after in 1953 where the former theme is taken to absurd limits.
Satirical themes impregnated with deforming ironies on the rural world follow the initial works achieving success with “Il Prete Bello” (The Handsome priest) a novel interpreting mysticism and eroticism in a merry theatrical key . The works that follow are of the same tone and direction:” Il Fidanzamento” (The engagement)in 1956 and “ Amore e fervore” (Love and Fervour) in 1959. “Il Padrone” (The Boss), published in 1965 marks a drastic subject change: it is in fact a satirical view of today’s firms where employees’ submission melts down in front of the boss’ paternalism.
Noteworthy works that follow this period is “Il Crematorio di Vienna” (Vienna’s Crematorium) an analysis of man’s violence upon himself on everyday life. Of the same period is the “ Sillabario No.1” ( Spelling book No.1) in 1972 and “ Sillabario No.2” (Spelling Book No.2) in 1982. In these two works Parise’s cold and enlighting philosophy on world interpretation gradually melts into rediscovering the “ heart rights”.
Also of note are his jouranalistic repartages as “Cara Cina” (Dear China) in 1966, “Due o tre cose sul Vietnam” (Two or three things about Vietnam) in 1967, “Guerre Politiche” (Political Wars) and “New York” in 1977. The documentary on contemporary Japan dates back to 1982.
A posthumous collection of his complete work in two volumes, including some of them unedited, dates to 1989, as Goffredo Parise died in Treviso on 1986.
…. And finally we arrive at Salgareda, his last artistic birthplace, in a house sited “ nel Veneto barbaro di muschi e nebbie” (in Veneto with his pristine musks and fogs) that Parise will consider his true homeland. If Venice had been his new although unknown intellectual birth, Salgareda would be his last one “ quella dove consapevolezza e abbandono si integrano” ( that where awareness and abandonment are one). And in fact it is strange that migrating to that part of the Veneto region, the land of his beloved friend and teacher Comisso, coincide with this latter death in a sign of continuation of Comisso’s work. And this was indeed so since by writing “ I Sillabari “ he essentially tried to appropriate and interpret his teacher’s philosophy and make it his own, in his own way. Written between 1972 and ‘82 at Salgareda, “I Sillabari” are Parise’s masterwork and the arriving point of his writings made of “ resisting fragility”, heedlessly precise, nervously quiet, literally anti literal, born from gracefulness and will, from the world’s disorder.

Taken from “ Till Salgareda”, S. Perrella

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