L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2017 www.italoamericano.org L'Italo-Americano 5 P rofessor Alessandro Carrera, a native of Lodi (Lombardy, Italy), has had at least three separate, but, at the same time, intertwined careers. His early attempts at songwrit- ing have run in parallel to his awarded writing efforts in prose and poetry. Philosophy has always reigned supreme, with German thought holding a special place in his heart. Thirty years of academic teaching in North America have given him an extraordinary free- dom to combine his Italian and German musical and philosophi- cal background with North American influences. It follows that listening to him is a very special treat. If you hurry, maybe you can still catch Professor Carrera, who is giving, on February 9th at the UCLA Department of Italian, a double lecture about Nihilism's impact on the contemporary idea of Europe and about various expres- sions of Italian folk music. Please introduce yourself. Tell us more about your cultur- al background, influences and studies. I was born in Lodi, Italy. I grew up on the outskirts of Milan, where I attended the Liceo Classico. In 1980, I graduated in Philosophy from the University of Milan with a dissertation on the relationship between poetry and music in German Expressionism and in Arnold Schönberg in par- ticular. The year before, during my first trip to the US, I had been to Los Angeles' University of Southern California, where I had had the opportunity to visit the Schönberg Institute (that, since late 90s, relocated to Vienna) and interview the then director, Leonard Stein. At the same time, however, I was interested in popular music and, in the month I had spent in California, I had collected a lot of material that went into my first book, Musica e pubblico giovanile (Music and Young Audiences, 1980), which was published a few months before I discussed my dis- sertation and has been reprinted in an expanded edition in 2014 as a "cult book." I suppose that there is a strong chance that whatever you did when you were 25 becomes cult sooner or later. But that book was indeed the first comprehensive sociological study of how American and British popular music had impacted Italy's post- WWII generations. It is outdated now, but it has opened up a field of research. In 1987, you came to the United States as a Lettore d'ital- iano, a teaching position spon- sored by the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs. How was adjusting to the US lifestyle? In the 1980s, I really wanted to go abroad. I was not satisfied with what I was doing in Italy. With the sponsorship of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, I had two chances: teaching in a high school in Germany or come to the U.S. As a philosophy student, I have always been fond of German culture, but my English was better than my German. I had practiced the first by memorizing Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan songs. I could not do the same thing with Wolf Biermann or other German singer-songwriters. They did not have the same beat. Adjusting to America was quite natural to me, I do not remember any cultural shock. Perhaps it was because I had assimilated so much of American culture when I was in Italy – a country where everybody I know reads American literature, watch- es American films, and listens to American music. You then embarked on a successful literary career, cul- minated with the Montale Prize for Poetry in 1993, the Loria Prize for short fiction in 1998, and the Bertolucci Prize for Literary Criticism in 2006. What made you turn to litera- ture? I never had to turn to literature because I had never abandoned it. I began writing poems when I was eight years old and I pub- lished my first short story when I was eighteen. For many years, I moved freely between poems and songs, but I never published a poetry collection until 1988. America helped me a lot to focus on poetry. In Italy, I knew musicians and philosophers, but I did not really interact with poets. Things changed in the United States, though. America changed the direction of my prose as well. The short stories that I wrote after coming to the US had nothing to do with that very "European" novel, which in part reflected my experi- ence between Italy and Germany between the late 1970s and the early 1980s. In 1998, I received the Loria Prize for a short story that takes place in Texas during the first Gulf War. I had some success with La vita meravigliosa dei laureati in lettere (The Wonderful Life of Italian Majors), a short novel that Palermo-based Sellerio published in 2002. It had seven reprints and it made its appearance in the best- sellers list. The novel is a mild satire of the Italian school system, but I could not have written it in Italy. The inspiration came from listen- ing to Garrison Keillor's "Lake Wobegon" stories every Saturday on the public radio. I asked myself what kind of story would have Keillor written if he had been Italian. The Bertolucci Prize came for I poeti sono impossibili (Poets Are Impossible, 2005), a collec- tion of literary essays many of which were actually short stories in disguise. I used to live in New York City in the 90s. I was in charge of the literary events at the Italian Cultural Institute, so I was meet- ing many poets and writers and I, well, observed them. This book too has become sort of cultish, and it was republished in 2016 in an extended edition. Tell us more about your lec- ture at the UCLA Department of Italian, titled Nihilism and the Mediterranean in Contemporary Italian Philosophy. The theme of my lecture comes from my recent work on the English editions of two Italian philosophers, Massimo Cacciari and Emanuele Severino. They have both asked, repeatedly, what is the philosophical idea of Europe? Is Europe in irreversible decline, or is decline its specific destiny, something that Europe should be able to embrace in order to transform itself, as it has already happened so many times in the past? The issue at stake here is the essence of nihilism as the Mediterranean's ambiguous "gift" to the world. Severino has very straightforward ideas on the mat- ter: nihilism - the belief that things come from nothingness and return into nothingness when their time expires - begins with Plato's refusal of Parmenides clear-cut division between Being and non- Being. From that fateful decision derives technique - the belief that man can create things and then destroy them at his own fancy. Such belief is the source of scien- tific progress and of the worst self-destructive impulses at work in Western civilization. Cacciari has a more nuanced approach. To him, nihilism is, in Nietzsche's parlance, the "unwel- come guest" of Western civiliza- tion, yet a guest that does not go away. On the one hand, nihilism is the "tragic" response to the multiplicity and irreconcilability that Europe is; on the other hand, it is an opportunity for "great poli- tics," as long as politics is not mired in petty squabbles among political factions. It is easy to say that such opportunity is today lost on many fronts. You're also giving a lecture, in the same day and location, about Italian folk music. What is that about? Italy has been a treasure trove for ethnomusicologists, and to a certain extent still is. There are few countries in the world that possess the richness of Italy's styles, harmonic and vocal approaches in terms of folk music. I will exemplify some key moments in the history of Italian folk-revival, which began in the 50s thanks to Alan Lomax, a musicologist from Austin, Texas, and then developed in a way that is comparable only to few other countries in the world. To date, Italian folk music has been constantly reinventing itself as a cultural force that will never be mainstream and at the same will never disappear. In fact, the number of young musicians that engage themselves in the reinven- tion of that genre does not show signs of dwindling down. I will draw my examples from WWI ballads and folk songs from Sardinia and Apulia, in different versions, arrangements, and stun- ning vocal performances. In conclusion, what's your opinion about Los Angeles? Do you have contacts with the local Italian/Italian-American com- munity? Los Angeles is a lost dream to me. When I moved from Houston to Toronto at the end of 1991, I happened to be informed that I might have had the possibility to come to Los Angeles instead. But it was too late; in fact, I was told about it the very same day I showed up at the Italian Cultural Institute in Toronto to begin my assignment, and although I do not regret at all the time I spent in Canada, sometimes the idea has bugged me, namely, what if I had known of the Los Angeles opportunity just a few days in advance? I have been a few times in Los Angeles since. Too few, I must say, and I have contacts only with UCLA and the Italian Cultural Institute. But I am always happy to be here. To read the full interview, see the online version at: http:// www.italoamericano.org/ Professor Alessandro Carrera – a 360° thinker – talks at UCLA LOS ANGELES ITALIAN COMMUNITY Professor Alessandro Carrera, born in Lodi, on the outskirts of Milan has had at least three separate, but, at the same time, intertwined career. Photo Courtesy of A. Carrera VALERIO VIALE

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