Newsletter of the centro
New
Series n. 1 – February 12, 2003
Edited by Dario Manfredi and Rossana Piccioli
Dear Readers,
The
management of the Centro could easily repeat what Alexandro Malaspina wrote once
to his friend Paolo Greppi: "We have emerged from a cave"!
We have struggled through hard and unpleasant times indeed; a lack of means led
to discouragement and this, more than that, dissipated any desire to continue
with the difficult job of maintaining our connections with friends in every part
of the world, and of planning new initiatives.
But all of this is now overcome: we are on the verge of recovering our strength,
and this first newsletter is the proof that we have already returned to work.
Notizie da Mulazzo
The new Administration of the Comune
In 2002 there were local elections in Mulazzo. We now have a new Mayor and a new council. The mayor is Sandro Donati; the deputy mayor is Claudio Novoa. The political will to relaunch our Centro and its cultural activity exists, and was repeatedly expressed during the electoral campaign.
To Prof. Roberto Malaspina, the outgoing Mayor, we extend our humble regards,
thanking him for all that he has done. Without irony.
New posters with tourist information
The Centro, at the request of the Comune administration, has developed the texts of over twenty tourist posters, written in five languages, that illustrate the monuments and antiquities of Mulazzo. Almost all of them deal with the lives and influence of the Malaspina marquises. Twenty more posters will be installed, as soon as possible, in various sectors of the Comune.
World News
Cultural twinning of Bosa (Sardinia) with Lunigiana, in the name of the Malaspinas.
Last September the Centro collaborated with the municipal administration of Bosa (NU) in organizing a Study Day on the historical relationships between Lunigiana and Sardinia, in which Lunigianese students and teachers from the University of Sassari participated. For this occasion a small archival exhibition was also prepared on the Malaspina Expedition. The Comune of Bosa has announced the intention of founding a local Centre for Malaspina Studies, with whose activity the Centro at Mulazzo has already promised full collaboration.
From
Bari, a CD Rom on the navigator Alexandro Malaspina
Professors Raffaele Giura Longo and Franco Porsia, of the University of Bari, have completed a CD Rom on Alexandro Malaspina; the Centro also collaborated in this important initiative, which will be available to the public next spring.
Alexandro Malaspina gaining attention in Chile
Dr. Rafael
Sagredo Baeza, director of the “Diego Barros Arana” Research Centre in Santiago
de Chile, visited the Centro and laid out the general plan for a cultural
collaboration in consideration of the historical importance that the work of
Alexandro Malaspina has in Chile. The details of this collaboration will be
defined in the coming months.
In
Canada, a biography of Alexandro Malaspina is being
published online (in English).
The website of
the Alexandro Malaspina Research Centre
http://web.mala.bc.ca/black/amrc/amrc.htm
is
in the process of publishing (on-line, one chapter every two weeks) the revised
biography of Alexandro Malaspina. Dario Manfredi is the author of this text, Don
S. Kirschner and Teresa J. Kirschner have translated it into English, and
Activities of the Centro di Studi Malaspiniani
The Centro has organized a series of meetings,
continuing into 2003, with the title, “Among Meridians & Parallels. Voyages,
Distant Lands, Diverse Cultures”. The meetings that took place in 2002 were the
followings:
September 8: Presentation of the graduate thesis by Evelina Bellotti:
The Letters of Malaspina during the Voyage on the Astrea (1786-1788)
with the participaiton of María Dolores Higueras Rodríguez,
Technical Director of the Museo Naval in Madrid
October
12: Lecture
by Anna N. Rozzi Mazza,
Superintendant of the
Museo del
Sigillo – La Spezia:
"Shamanic Vessels: South-American
Ceramics of the Pre-Columbian Era"
December 1: Lecture by Rossana Piccioli, Curator of the Ethnological and
Anthropological Collections of the Museo Etnografico - La Spezia:
"Foreigners in our midst: American plants, medicines, poisons in Europe"
In addition, there was a
presentation of Fabio Baroni's book La luna è sul castello a Montechiaro
[The
Moon is on the Castle at Montechiaro], (Conti Ed.), an historical novel
inspired by the slaughter of the Malaspinas of the Verrucola.
In the Auditorum of the Centro there also took place an important forum,
organized by the Comunità Montana, on the theme “Tourism in Lunigiana.”
Publications Received
Among the hundred books and articles received, we make special mention of:
David, Andrew; Fernández-Armesto, Felipe; Novi,
Carlos; Williams, Glyndwr, eds., The Malaspina Expedition 1789-1794. Journal of the Voyage by Alejandro Malaspina. Vol.
I Cadiz to Panama. Introduction by Donald C. Cutter. London - Madrid, The
This is a really important work and one produced with the greatest attention to detail. We congratulate those responsible. We point out a small mistake on p. xcv: the Jesuit Ximénez who collaborated with Malaspina in the preparation of the expedition was not Leonardo (who died in 1786–as one can also read in the same note), but rather Ramón, the preceptor of Fabio Ala Ponzone. If this is the only fault to be found in the book, that means it is really a well-produced work!
