The making of nations and language.
(A homage to Tom Phillips: Great explorer and artistic voyager of forgotten books and words)
Like that Old Bronze Tap, this is a serendipitous project:
The result of error and chance encounter using a Ready-Made.
A book in a bin.
Holding together for dear life. Useless but full of meaning.
Like Art
It knew days of glory and survived a hundred years.
Before finding its way to a public waste bin, and then my book shelf.
Palimpsest of a National Language
A book of the late 19th century, republished well into the 20th.
Just think, this very copy used by wordsmiths and children living the rhetoric of a fascist revolution in the 1920’s, and indeed their parents, and grandparents.
The words jumbled to suit the needs of differing beliefs and values, in a newborn kingdom of many peoples.
The frontispiece catches our eye:
A portrait would have been a popular device in the books of earlier centuries, not here: Mechanisation has replaced the traditional engraving of a great thinker with a tattered copy of a 19th century photo.
“Petrocchi”: He was a reformer and teacher of the new language of the Kingdom of Italy. Many separate kingdoms had come together with unwritten dialects and illiterate masses.
Petrocchi filtered the soup of Italian language: He taught the masses how to pronounce their common words and consolidated it into this popular dictionary.
The intent of this frontispiece is now clear: A bridge with the Italian publishing grandeur of the renaissance, building the unitary language of a new-born Italian Kingdom.
Becoming a platform for Mussolini’s vision of a new nation. Commonly pronounced words of political rhetoric taking shape. The word ‘Fascismo’ isn’t included. The closest entry ‘fascio’ makes reference to the symbol of Roman unity and to an organisation of political nature, but not a political movement per se.
Futurists, like Marinetti and Severini would have studied with this very dictionary as school children. Perhaps lying embedded in their childish subconscious to spring forth in their Futurist Manifesto.
They made an active effort to divorce words from syntax. I’m sure they would have enjoyed word clouds!
“The sense of history cannot be neglected as this is a special moment, many things are going to change into new forms and new contents, but man will be able to pass through these variations bringing with himself what comes from the beginning of civilization.” (Wikipedia)
The following page also has an echo of a significant past, when a printed page would certify that the book’s content had been validated, censored and permitted by the Inquisition. “Any copy not bearing the authors signature is to be considered counterfeit”. Can this really be the author’s signature? He was already deceased.
The broken book’s binding is also a blend of ancient and modern ambitions: Sewn and stitched very much as in the 19th century the quires have survived 100 years.
Future post-war products for the masses, intended to be as cheap as possible would only warrant simple glue, no sewing or thread.
It would by now would have fallen apart.
And as we dig at the layers we note the spine has surprising text and words: Not Italian: “bakterija” and “streptokoke” are recognisable.
“Time je utvrdjen uzrok oboljonja od sarlaha, koji je dotle bio pepoznat. Osim toga dr, Dik je utvrdio I neku vrstu otrova, koji imaju tu osobinu, da uzbrigavani… imunizovan od sarlaha…”
Google suggests this is Bosnian or Serbo-Croat and loosely translates into :
“This determined the cause of the disease from sarlahs, which was hitherto known. In addition, Dr. Dik has also found some kind of poison, which has this property, that flushed ... immunized with sarlah
Dare I call this project a child of Humument? This serendipitous journey has reminded me of the British artist Tom Phillips. Digging new meaning from the printed words of the past.
Like a palimpsest. Digging through layers of bibliographical archeology to discover the makings of nations, binding them and their words together into new forms.
