war Archives - Poeticamentelino

November 8, 2015. The Municipality of Colleferro (Rome) for the eightieth anniversary of the founding of the city, organized the project “STORIES FROM THE REFUGES”, in the historic city refuges. The initiative recalls the facts of when the people took refuge from the bombing along the tunnels, between 1943 and 1944. The documentation work of Renzo Rossi, the actors of the “Theatre Workshop of Colleferro”, with the artistic direction of Claudio Dezi the participation of the vocal group “the Slam” of signs, have formed a touring theatrical action in different “circles” in the galleries. They have presented the costumes, the objects of their age and they have played some testimonies of those who lived in the refuges.

Colleferro and neighboring countries such as Segni, Valmontone, Artena, Montecassino were behind the Gustav Line (the defensive line that was prepared by Hitler on Oct. 4, 1943 and it was destroyed May 18, 1944). The plain of Colleferro, chemical plants of the arms industry (the largest in Italy), the Lepine mountains around (with countries of strategic control as Segni and Carpineto), the way “Casilina” – who arrived in Rome – constituted, all , strategic military sites.

The German lines of fortification.

Colleferro suffered terrible bombing by allied forces from November onwards, as the March – the fortieth – where were destroyed the electrical connections and any useful infrastructure. The people tried to survive the refuges that were built before the birth of the city. The refuges were pozzolana quarries that were used to build the first buildings for the workers of the munitions factory “Bombrini Parodi Delfino.” In the hills within the city they were traced 6km tunnel, with fifteen different entrances. There was a ban on the use lighting. It set up the artificial fog to hide the sites of interest to allied planes.

The refuges were a second Colleferro and life oscillates from hell above, the catacombs below.

The actors have recalled the activities of each day. Solidarity (a donut for a wedding that was prepared thanks to the black market). Firefighters, every day after the bombing, they climbed to extinguish fires, to recover the dead, to shine the unexploded bombs and they were going to control the chemical deposits in the industry, so that it would not explode, because it was operating: the workers were forced under the control of the fascists and the Germans.

The Factory “Bombrini Parodi Delfino”

Young people drinking wine, in the evening, which was bought on the black market. They played and sang along with the Germans, the Russians and Ukrainians prisoners, and no one understood a word. The next morning, all they went up in hell as enemies, to obtain the salt, for drying clothes because of the moisture of the subsoil. They could not light fires for the small air exchange. Inside the refuges there were a chapel, a registry office, an infirmary. Women did not go out for fear of being raped, if not killed (the film “The Women” with Sophia Loren, is an example in this regard).

One frame of the film “La Ciociara”

Fear, darkness, hunger, dirt, infections and the control by the fascist authorities, were the pendulum of days.

I have witnessed the magnificent traveling representation. Everything has been a blow to the stomach to every word. Everything seemed to happen at that time, while the public walked at the descent of the dead.

I feel the same feeling walking in Amsterdam (Netherlands) at the Anne Frank House (the Jewish girl who died in the field of Auschwizt, – the author of the famous and tragic “Diary”): fear and claustrophobia. Half my family is originally from Valmontone. It is the country that borders Colleferro. Valmontone was completely destroyed in 1944, except the Church, the “Doria’s Building”, and two or three houses. Every square meter was bombed. The deaths of these countries are the patrimony of each family. It is no coincidence that there has been a re-enactment. Witnesses died almost everyone. I was little and adults who had more than fifty years, and they said that they were old, they told these events, in the seventies. I peered through the door, because “old” did not want us small we listened. And at parties, after lunch, in the afternoon hours of digestion, telling them the facts of that time, and their eyes they were changing: their was young, but with tears.

We speak of the bombing with extreme superficiality, today. A bomb shakes the body, even at a distance. Well, you have an empty air. The ear stores the noise and any balance is lost. And in the future, for every such timbre, the brain reverts to primordial patterns, causing the beat of the teeth, leaving the adrenaline and the iron in the mouth. The nightmares become brothers every night, if we remain in good health and if we do not go crazy, because insanity is the ultimate gift.

The refugees have no homes today. They do not have water. Every ten minutes a difficulty appears. Lice do company. You may not feel the smell of dirt. The skin and hair age immediately. The teeth are lost. Diseases gnaw the body. The little food is dry and bland, but it leaves the temptation to eat insects.

The refuge away death, but it shortens life. The population, before the horror was surprised: “To us, just us? – Near Rome? From the Duce?”.

I offer a paraphrase of what my grandparents told him (which they did two years of military service in war and they left soon after), my grandmothers and aunts: “War is not the bell tolls. The war is not knocking at door. The war is already within “.

September 9, 2013

Šalvovič Bulat Okudzhava (Moscow, May 9, 1924 – Paris, 12 June 1997) was a Russian poet and songwriter originally from Georgia, a member of the Russian genre called “songwriters”. He composed more than two hundred songs and has been for her award-winning poetry, that it was set to the kind of song book, then it was picked up by other singers such as French Georges Brassens. He was known as a poet and bard (singer) after the fifties and he was considered a danger to his poems and songs: he was famous overseas, and the inability to publish at home. It is said that Brezhnev, had expressed the desire of his death, however, aware of increasing even more the popularity of this poet. Russians, in fact, sang his songs in the streets, in the taverns and bars, especially in the cold of the Russian winter evenings. He was a poet armed with a guitar and equipped with irony. His father, an activist of the Communist Party, the revolutionary of the first hour, will fall victim to one of the many purges: he was executed in the ’30s. His mother, activist too, will drink the frozen water of the Gulag for 19 years. Other nine of his relatives were executed and then everyone found innocent. Bulat, just seventeen, he walks to volunteer to defend the homeland from the Nazi threat and will hurt several times.

And he will open the eyes of the war an ally of pride and greed and he will sing of suffering expressing compassion.

Cowardly WAR – my translation.

Ah, war coward that you did!
Our courts have become silent.
Our kids raised their heads,
and they became great before time.
They were soon as seen on the street
and they departed: soldiers, soldiers …
Bye, guys! guys,
looking for you to come back! (…)
Ah cowardly war you did!
In place of marriage – chipping and smoke.
Our girls have donated
the white suits to the sisters. (…)

The rhythm of the poems have a common root with the songs of the bard: this part of the stomach, drawing on the tradition of songs, slow first and successive peaks later. A style that is characteristic of the Volga Boatmen and chants and stories the exploits of the heroes, and lovers of the disease, and then old age and death. Bulat not offer theorems and explanations: he expresses the horror in the everyday acts of war.

<< Do not believe the war, boy,
do not believe it, the war is sad,
it is very sad boy,
the war is narrow like shoes

Your good horses
we can not do anything,
you’re all in the palm of your hand
all the guns you point to. >>

And Bulat expresses it with a sweet irony that makes us smile moved. The poet confesses during a concert: “When I started, I knew three chords on the guitar, but now, after thirty years of work are improved … I know five!”

How to sing the horror and terrible with gentleness and compassion:

Concert in Paris, 1995. Prizes HERE

SONG OF THE INFANTRY – My translation.

Sorry for the infantry,
though sometimes it is so stupid:
always we start
when the earth explodes the spring.
And unsteadily
on the scale that boggles there is no salvation.
Only white willows
as white sisters who watch you go

Do not believe the time,
when pouring rains persisted.
Do not believe the infantry,
bold when he sings songs.
Do not believe, do not believe,
when the nightingales in the gardens cry.

The life and death
have not yet settled accounts.

Time has taught us:
live like the bivouac, open the door.
Companion man,
it is also seductive your fate:
you are always on the march,
and one thing only removing you from sleep.

Why we start
when the earth explodes the spring?

Bulat was uncomfortable and feared, because he heard from those who did not read and he was sung by those who had the look down, facing the ground, which is that it is the true engine of all rebellion and revolt of the Russian people.

WAR AGAINST A FOREIGN COUNTRY – My translation.

In a war against a foreign country the king departed.
A large bag of biscuits made him the queen,
the old coat with great care she mended,
three packs of cigarettes and also she gave the salt.

And his hands on the chest of the king went to lay
and said, caressing him with beaming eyes:
“Punish them well, otherwise you will be seen as a pacifist
and to take the spoil of good panforti you will not forget “

And the king saw that the army was in the midst of the court:
five soldiers sad five cheerful, and a corporal.
The King said: “We are not afraid printing, nor the storm.
we will return victorious after defeating the enemy base! “

But soon the triumphant exultation of the speeches ended.
In war, the king changed the attitude of the troops:
gay soldiers without delay stewards appointed
and the unhappy soldiers he left them, “Thus it will not hurt!”

Just think ‘: supervened then the days victorious.
Sad none of the soldiers returned from the war.
Corporal of dubious moral married a prisoner,
but they captured a large bag of tasty panforti

Play, orchestras; echoed, songs and laughter!
A fleeting sadness we must not give up.
It made no sense for the sad soldiers remain alive
and then they were not enough for all the gingerbread.

And he could not be imprisoned or killed because of a people expressing compassion for his children, the condition of the martyr would amplify his message that it is still alive and fresh.