Casa Museo Pascoli – Wikipedia

The Casa Museo Giovanni Pascoli It is located in Castelvecchio Pascoli, a hamlet of Barga on average Valle del Serchio. It was the home of the poet Giovanni Pascoli from 1895 to 1912 and still retains the structure and furnishings of the time.

In 1895 Giovanni Pascoli, then professor at the Niccolini high school in Livorno, was in search of a place in the countryside where to settle; He accidentally met Barga’s existence through the friends Giulio Giuliani, teacher in the high school of Pisa, and Carlo Conti, administrator of the San Giorgio dell’Andenia college. Pascoli visited the early month of September and chose to rent an eighteenth -century villa located in Caprona in Castelvecchio and belonging to the Cardosi – Carrara family.

On October 15, 1895 he settled in Caprona with his sister Maria and the dog Gulì; From that moment until his death, who survived in 1912, the poet alternated the stays in Castelvecchio at the periods spent in the cities where the teaching commitments brought him. ^[first] The “Bicocca di Caprona” became the center of one of the most prolific and happy periods of poetic creation and publication of his works in Italian and Latin verses, of the writings of poetics, anthologies and different Dante essays. Pascoli bought the house in 1902; To be able to reach the agreed sum with the owners, he was forced to sell five of the gold medals won at the Certamen Poeticum Hoeufftianum.

After the disappearance of his brother, Maria Pascoli continued to live in solitude the home of Castelvecchio until his death in 1953; In forty -one years he did not make substantial changes to the furnishings and the appearance of the house, refusing to install electric light and running water to maintain their integrity. In the meantime to the house, declared a national monument, ^[2] A new building that housed the childhood Ruggero and Caterina Pascoli has been joined since 1934.

Upon death in 1953 Maria left the municipality of Barga “The house, the chapel, the books, the manuscripts of Giovannino, the prizes obtained by him, the memories of the family and so on in the house is contained, with the house, with the house obligation to provide for maintenance expenses “. The acquisition of the legacy was not immediate: after many controversies, only in September 1955 did the Municipality enter the house and everything that was contained there. Until then the house had remained sealed, with great concern of Pascolian scholars, as it needed urgent maintenance, made necessary not only to the neglect of the last two years, but also to the bad conditions in which he already paid to the death of Mary, for missed maintenance and for war events.

The house, officially reopened on 1 November 1960, ^[3] It still houses the museum complex, while the old kindergarten premises act as the headquarters of the Giovanni Pascoli Foundation.

The house, developed on three floors, thanks to the commitment of her sister Maria has maintained the appearance and structure she had in the years in which Giovanni Pascoli stayed there. The environments still reflect the tastes, friendships, the frequencies of the poet, while the furnishings and the numerous family memories are the manifestation of the personality of Mary and his world collected around the figure of his brother.

The outside [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

The house is immersed in a great landscape of great suggestion, dominated in the distance by the chain of the Apuan Alps. The main entrance overlooks a vast garden delimited by a surrounding wall that reaches the church of San Niccolò, whose bell tower is seen. The rio dell’Orso flows under the belt. The garden, conceived in the area closest to the house as an Italian garden, with geometric flower beds and plants of ornamental trees, is accompanied by an area intended for vegetable garden, vineyard, orchard and lemon tree, thus combining the elegance of the garden and the rusticity of the cultivated area. In the garden there are several trees: rates, wisteria, fruit trees, vines and cypresses. In front of the house a hedge delimited the tomb of the dog Gulì, buried under a stone column.

The first floor [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

On the ground floor the apartment is articulated in the entrance, kitchen, dining room and a small environment once studies of Mary and currently destined to keep the archive.

The archive collects:

• Giovanni Pascoli’s cards (about 36,000 documents), containing all the autographs of the poet’s poetic and literary production, the correspondence with the family and friends and with the most important intellectuals and writers of his time ^[4]
• The cards of his sister Maria (about 24,000 documents), of great importance for the reconstruction of the poet’s critical fortune and biography. Both during the life of John, and after her death, Mary has in fact played a decisive role in the conservation and order of the documentation, of which the importance was well understood and which also constituted the source of the biographical work she undertaken, “Along the life of Giovanni Pascoli”
• About 1600 photographs many of which taken by Pascoli himself ^[5]
• A collection of about 6,000 newspapers, containing articles of pastures or dedicated to him, often with comments and autographed underlines of pastures and, above all, of his sister Maria, who continued the collection throughout his life.

The second floor [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

The second floor, which is accessed by a stone staircase, is divided around a central room, the study of Giovanni Pascoli. Here are the three bedrooms, the Library and the Sall of Maria. ^[6] From these environments you access the Altana, a covered terrace from which you can enjoy a large panorama on Barga and the neighboring areas.

In the study and in the nearby rooms the library of Giovanni Pascoli is preserved, made up of both the Opera Omnia of the poet and from the books he used to document himself on the very different topics he wanted to deal. It includes classical texts, of history, religion, psychology, volumes dedicated to the study of Greek and Latin languages, popular traditions, poetic collections and novels, studies on ornithology and botany, and archeology texts. There are Dante’s volumes, ancient prints, five hundred, dictionaries and encyclopedias, scores with Pascoli poems music by famous authors such as Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Zandonai and others.

The chapel [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

Adjacent to the house is the chapel on whose facade a plaque brings the verses taken from the poetry “The sepulcher”: leave that edera! He has flowery garments. It blooms, faithful, / of October, and the bees / for the last honey come to you. The chapel is a harvest and severe environment where the poet and sister Maria are buried in a marble ark, the work of Leonardo Bistolfi; The Latin diptych composed of Pascoli himself for his sister is engraved on it: Quae Nihil Optasti Nisi Pacem Pacem Pacemis / A cum majestic Candida Fratre Soror (you who do not want anything else if not peace, peace you can enjoy together with the sad brother, Candida sister). The artifacts and frescoes are by the hand of the Barghigiano painter Adolfo Balduini.

The web portal “Giovanni Pascoli in the mirror of his cards” [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

Since January 2013, the cultural heritage preserved at the Casa Museo Giovanni Pascoli has been made usable through the web portal “Giovanni Pascoli in the mirror of his cards” The purpose of the portal is to collect and describe the cultural heritage preserved at home Pascoli (Archive, Library, Museum), overcoming the diversity of nature in the name of the only and unitary vocation by Memoria Pascoli. ^[7]

On the one hand, the portal brings together and makes the entire Pascoliano heritage complex present in Castelvecchio consisting of archive, library and home-museum, provides a complete Pascoli bibliography and a selection of links to the resources present on the web, predisposes thematic paths and multimedia materials . ^[8]

Of particular importance was the intervention on the archive that saw the digitization and computerized inventory of the cards of Giovanni and Maria Pascoli (correspondence, manuscripts, photos, different documents), the preparation of a question and research system via the web , the restoration of the most damaged cards.

• M. Pascoli, along the life of Giovanni Pascoli, Mondadori, Milan, 1961.
• G. Ruggio, Castelvecchio Pascoli. The poet’s house, Maria Pacini Fazzi Editore, Lucca, 1997.
• U. Sereni, Giovanni Pascoli in the Valle del Bello and del Buono, Maria Pacini Fazzi Editore, Lucca, 2005.