Published in 2021 by Maigret & Magritte, After. Choral diary in a pandemic period. Year 2020. The inside and the outside in a hospital in the city of Turin is an important document about the chronological event that has already entered the annals; as is well known, numerous publications have dealt with this issue (from the collective Andra tutto bene. The writers at the time of the quarantine, Garzanti, up to the latest thriller by Petros Markaris, Quarantena, published by La nave di Teseo, 2021 ), but the one in question is characterized by warmth, irony, generosity and originality.
According to an illustrious school of thought, in fact, a historical book is the one through which, de facto, one is able to grasp all the sociological nuances of the (present) moment that said book investigates; this richness can then be studied, commented on, analyzed in a future moment, when precisely the present described will have become past, tradition, encyclopedic datum. And the serious interpreter never doubts about certainties, negationisms aside: if anything, he examines the mosaic in its entirety; in this case, the card you are talking about is particularly important.
First of all, a few words are spent on the important character who gave life to the volume.
The curator of the collection, Emilio Locurcio, was an important Italian artist, a multifaceted figure who lent his vision to art, music, writing; unfortunately, Locurcio himself lost his life due to the virus, and with him his partner. The news obviously aroused considerable sadness, since the couple was an important point of reference in the world of Turin theater and art in general; suffice it to recall that Locurcio was a composer for Lucio Dalla and Ron , as well as an actor, set designer, founder of acting schools and theaters.
In this regard, Locurcio ensured that Maigret & Magritte was bornin 1989, and there he taught theater and writing for more than thirty years, training hundreds of students through theater and creative writing; his particular aim was also the collaboration with difficult realities (disadvantaged neighborhoods, prisons, etc.).
Locurcio is fondly remembered by his family (his daughters Solvejg and Isabella), by his collaborators and by all those who had the pleasure of knowing him; there is a trace of this memory in the volume in question, especially at the opening and closing.
Volume that arises, in fact, as a choral diary; in this regard, we question the present moment and speculate on the proverbial “after”, the moment following the end of the pandemic. The book, in fact, comes from a writing workshop, but the author’s disappearance has led one of his historical collaborators, Stella Sorcinelli , to finish the work.
It is therefore an investigation into the two times that make human lives more troubled: the present and the future. The present is characterized by the health crisis, which involves witnesses and narrators.
The chapters (116) alternate as if in a correspondence, and in fact each section is characterized by a preliminary datum and, subsequently, by the reflection of the single narrating voices: health workers, nurses, psychotherapists, porters, who work in the Regina Margherita Children’s Hospital. The fact that they have been given the opportunity to express themselves is not accidental: for many years, in fact, the hospital departments have collaborated with the Locurcio association, through participation in theatrical or multidisciplinary workshops, aimed at involving the little patients . During the distancing imposed by the quarantine, cultural operations were obviously suspended; despite this, there remains a touching written trace, made up of this diary,
The narrative tone is of high quality and full spectrum, because all the human emotions felt at the beginning of the crisis (of the executive, of the individual associates) are examined: anger, indignation, black irony, passion for work. And again: humanity, intimism, new sensations, unheard of until the moment of forced isolation. The hyperrealism of moments of tension and vivid professionalism, which emerge from the written page, as in the best literature.
