Ottiero Ottieri

Ottiero Ottieri was a writer and sociologist Italian, born the March 29th 1924 and dead the July 25th 2002.

Biography

Ottiero Ottieri is born in Rome from parents Tuscan, makes its studies with the College Massimo dei Gesuiti. It has an extraordinary sensitivity and very early starts to write, describing the Dolomites as of the fourteen years age, since the terrace of a small inn of Villabassa, in the Trentin. During a certain time, it is devoted to the study of the Greek literature, it translates and publishes, in the editor Capriotti, the Agamemnon of Eschyle, preceded by an introductory test.

In 1945, at only 21 years, it obtains a diploma of letters with a thesis on works amateur of Leon Battista Alberti, follows an advanced course in English literature, while continuing several translations among which a drama élisabéthain of Cyril Tourneur, published in volume Théâtre élisabéthain of Sansoni, and on this same dramatic author, it makes appear a test on Inventaire in the summer 1950, under the title the negative characters of Turner .

Ottieri also starts to collaborate in daily newspapers and other reviews, among which the Fiera letteraria , and in 1947, it obtains the Mercure price for an account insulated It ( the island ) published on the homonymous review, directed by Alba de Céspedes. Dissatisfied of sporadic collaborations to the reviews and the newspapers, disappointed by the Roman literary circle, according to him closed and élitiste, it decides at the first days of February 1948 to leave for Milan, the city of work, social and moral engagement, where it hopes to find new motivations.

In the book the linea Gotica (1963), remembering the feelings that it had tested on its arrival in Milan, it writes: I left the literature, the agitated house of the miens, the neurosis of only sons only, the head pressed on the shelf of the compartment, from the station I go down on black Milan in a black melancholy I am an intellectual of left, I came to be it, as somebody will attend a school in another city… Rome is my being, Milan is my raison d'être.

Ottieri, arrived at Milan, starts to work as an assistant of Guido Lopez, chief of the office of impression of the Mondadori. Because of its innate propensity towards the studies in general, it follows with great enthusiasm of the social studies and psychological. It becomes acquainted with Cesare Musatti, attends assiduously the seat of PSI Milanese, and starts to collaborate in the daily newspaper Avanti!. In 1950, with Lerici, it marries Silvana Mauri, niece of Valentino Bompiani which it had known in its first difficult Milanese months. The following year, it starts to direct the monthly review of scientific popularization the scienza illustrata .

With this employment, he knows a different world, that of the technique correlated with the industry of the first post-war period, difficult human relationship between the Ouvrier and the machine, inherent in the alienating work of the factory. Ottieri finds the Psychanalyse and the Politique, congéniaux instruments with its new feelings, and starts to consider modern psychology, the psychology of deep the, like “an instrument to leave… the unconsciousness. ”

The manuscript of its first book, Memorie dell' incoscienza ( Memories of unconsciousness ), which it starts to write in 1947, after some corrections in 1952, and at the same time proposed with Elio Vittorini, is published in 1954. It is a book on its course of child. He highlights some Fascisme interpreted psychologically, like unconsciousness, and aspect of a political infantilism which, in Italy, was and remains very diffused. He tells the life in a Tuscan country in 1943, before and after the armistice, and he outlines in a very effective way the sentimental reports/ratios undergone according to mechanisms cruel, but unconscious, and especially of a Fascism filled of ignorance and out of any objective reality.

In 1953, to be employed shortly after at Olivetti like selector of the personnel, it is reached of a meningitis, and there remain four months lasting in the private clinic florentine of Doctor Cocchi, the only one at the time able to look after this type of disease. Once cured, Adriano Olivetti (which had, and always, held in high consideration its leaders coming from the intellectual world such Geno Pampaloni, Paolo Volponi, Giovanni Giudici or Franco Fortini), after having paid itself the treatment of Ottieri, proposes to him to resume its work in a better climate than that of Ivrea or Milan, with the seat of the new factory of Pozzuoli.

With all its family, he moves with Pozzuoli and, in this different social context, he writes in 1957 its second book, Tempi stretti ( Of difficult times ), published by Einaudi, where he describes the world of the factory from his point of view, at one period of transformations and difficult fights. In 1959, Donnarumma ale assalto ( Donnarumma with the attack ), its most famous book, is published by Bompiani. Through the protagonist, an unemployed without qualifications, ready with very to have a station in the luminous factory open to the South by an big industry of North, Ottieri collects among the first the dramatic character of contrast between the technological advance and material and the cultural delay of the South of Italy.

Its success as a writer leads it, fearing not to have enough time to write, to refuse the offer of Adriano Olivetti to remain in Pozzuoli as personnel manager of the factory. Gone back to Milan, it is committed by an new agreement of consultant collaborating part-time with It Mondo by articles of topicality and accounts, and continues medium of the Années 1960 with the Années 1970 with the daily newspaper It Giorno .

Italo Calvino, judging interesting and very significant a newspaper written by Ottieri during its engagement in the world of industry, suggests to him publishing of them some extracts in the review with the title Taccuino Industriale , thus devoting it pioneer of the industrial literature , as it is named. In 1963, the whole newspaper is published by Bompiani under the title the linea gotica ( the Gothic Line ) and gains the same year the Prix Bagutta.

The writer, always in the search of new motivations, once exhausted his industrial period, it still seeks out of the literary world, which inspired it forever. He is destined for Rome by Tonino Guerra to write the scenario of the film the Eclipse of Michelangelo Antonioni, to tell the neurosis which corrupts the human existences and reports/ratios. He discovers the cinema, he is filled with enthusiasm some and, of a blow, it is taken by the excitation to be put on its own account and to be measured with this new way, poetic, to tell a history.

The realistic history of the book the impagliatore di sedie ( Empailleur of chairs , 1964) is told like a made scenario of action, gestures, of spoken language, but behind temptation to try out a narrative novel method is hidden by it another, Ottieri explains it in the foreword: External bonds and source

External bonds and source

Deepenings (www.zam.it)

----

Random links: