Who does not remember the irresistible events of the combative Don Camillo and the fierce mayor born from the sentence of Giovannino Guareschi?
It is undoubtedly the most famous "literary" priest in Italy and not only that, since the books that tell the stories of which he is the protagonist, as well as being an evergreen in our country, have been successfully translated all over the world. We are talking about Don Camillo
Don Camillo: the sanguine and combative country priest
The character of Don Camillo it is an idea born from the imagination of the Italian writer and journalist John Guareschi. Don Camillo's antagonist is Joseph Bottazzi, Said Peppone. An equally aggressive Communist mayor.
They play fundamental roles for the country. The priest and the mayor, the main authorities of the village belonging to decidedly opposing political parties. For this reason, skirmishes and stitching are not lacking. But they always end up being resolved in the name of common welfare, perhaps after a good fight. Then when the situation seems to have no way out, the intervention of the third, fundamental supporting actor of this saga, arrives. The great Crucifix, to which our Priest confides his pains and asks for advice. And that in reality it is none other than his conscience. Or rather that of the author.
Around Peppone e Don Camillo, eternal friend-enemies, and under the benevolent and indulgent gaze of Christ, the Piccolo Mondo rotates. A world that identifies itself in an imaginary village in the Lower Po Valley. “A black dot that moves, together with its Pepponi and its Smilzi, up and down along the river for that strip of land that lies between the Po and the Apennines”. As the author describes it and which reflects with a slightly sweetened realism and with a lot of poetry, the provincial and rural reality of those difficult years close to the Second World War.
Mondo Piccolo: Mirror of post-war Italy
Mondo Piccolo is also a simplified but faithful representation of what was Italy in the immediate post-war period, with its political tensions, even violent.
Our country was emerging from a devastating war and had to deal with reconstruction, unemployment, insecurities that exacerbated souls. And with the need to lay the foundations for a new political order by dealing with the opposition of the large mass parties that had divided the electorate in the 1946 elections. Christian Democracy and the two large parties of the left.
"This true fairy tale is meant to be the history of the last twenty years of Italian political life", declared Guareschi in an interview in 1968. The history of the country reflected in the chronicle of the village. It is the version in a minor and smiling tone, of important facts which, reduced here to their essence and relived by men who still hear the voice of their drama and revive their hope in a better world ”.
After all, what is a war if not a dispute over the boundaries of a field raised to the nth degree? It is all a question of proportions and consequences.
The Bassa Padana in the heart
No one could tell these country stories better than a journalist writer like Giovannino Guareschi. He knew this world well and closely, as did the people of the Bassa, a "land where there are people who do not baptize their children and blasphemy not to deny God, but to spite God"
Guareschi was born at the beginning of the last century, in 1908, in Fontanelle di Roccabianca, in the province of Parma. Son of a monarchist teacher and a socialist trader. He was a journalist, writer, humorist and caricaturist.
His was a short but intense life, studded with gratifications, such as the great success of the humor and opinion magazine White founded by him. But also of harsh trials, such as war, deportation and prison for the controversial De Gasperi affair.
But the greatest satisfactions came to Guareschi from the Mondo Piccolo saga. The first volume, Don Camillo, came out in 1948 and immediately turned out to be a best sellers.
