Venice, the vaporetto massacre in 1914 becomes a book
A hat lying painfully tied to the head of the young Englishwoman who died in the waves. The sleeve of a well-made coat that gets caught on a hook due to the indecision of the lady who proudly wore it. The white hair of a distinguished gentleman, which shows the pride of having done s. The unconscious smile of a German tourist, alone, that no one will be able to recognize. The torment of those who, saved, throws itself back into the water to fish out the submerged becoming, in spite of himself, a hero. The screams of a little girl snatched from restful sleep by frozen water, overwhelming the din of tragedy. a Venetian Spoon River the one they outline, alternating chronicles with interior monologues reconstructed on the basis of testimonies and articles of the time Anna Sandri and Silvia Zanardithe two journalists who wrote the book The appointment (Editions Line, 144 pages, 14 euros), which brings to mind an episode submerged by the brutality of the war and by the passing of time. March 19, 1914 in Bacino San Marco, in the stretch of lagoon from Lido to Giardiniwhere vaporetto number 7 of the city navigation line fon a collision course with a torpedo boat shortly after 5pm on a beautiful sunny day. In just over two months, Italy would have entered war and the coincidence with the days we are living makes the reading of this book even more throbbing and dramatic.
The tombstone
Destiny shuffles the cards – we read in the book – then puts them on the table that has begun: when the game, going back impossible. The threads of the lives interrupted by that incident of which there is no trace on the net, buried ahead of time by others, if possible even more dramatic than the city has experienced in the months to come, the two authors have linked them one by one, starting from call of a tombstone. That of Sarah Mc Lean Drake and her daughter Jane, who had arrived in Venice on a train the day before the disaster and which are buried in the Venetian cemetery of San Michele. A plaque placed by the daughters and sisters of the victims in eternal memory, was a Foscolian reminder for the two authors, who from that inscription, which mentioned a disaster in the lagoon, left, through the archives of local newspapers, in search of stories, testimonies, rumors.
The 14 lives
Pulling the strings of those one by one fourteen lives, intertwined with those of survivors and remaining relatives. Because after the first days of mourning – we still read in the book – of despair and black drapes on the windows, after the 6,000 telegrams that rained down on Venice from all over the world, after the big headlines as far as America and Australia, of the tragedy and of all of us the memory is lost. There were already shots from Sarajevo in the air, our little history could not have found space while it was history that loomed. Today, on the 108th anniversary, the state authors presented the book in Venice at the Toletta bookshop, adding other pieces to the memory. With them were Sarah Fradgley and her sister Joanna Spencer-Nairn, descendants of the two Englishmen and Ann-Charlotte Stam-Rosemberg, with her daughter Agnes, descendants of the beautiful Feiga, the lady with the entangled coat, buried in Ukraine. And therefore, now, even more unattainable.
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March 19, 2022 (change March 19, 2022 | 20:36)
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