Events

Conversation with… Tiziano Olgiati.

“I think that investing the elements in common with one’s mother tongue, or with the languages you already know, promotes the learning of a foreign language, to have a basis on which to fasten the memory of what you learn.”

Tiziano Olgiati graduated in 2019 in ‘Mathematics’ at the ‘Università degli Studi’ of Milan, then in 2021 also in ‘Linguistics’ at the University of Pavia (Italy).

Today he is 27 years old and teaches ‘Mathematics and Physics’ high school : between 2019 and 2022 he worked as an academic tutor at the University of Pavia for the Courses of ‘General Linguistics’ and ‘Glottology’, within the graduate courses of both ‘Literature’ and ‘Foreign Languages and Cultures’. He is fond of teaching to the point that he enrolled, again at the University of Pavia, in the Master’s degree of ‘Mathematics’ in order to be able to enter the Competition for tenured teachers.

“I often go to work with a smile : teaching students allows me to revisit subjects I love, mathematics precisely, and students really involve themselves, I receive their stories and I recognize myself as part of their lives.” 

‘Which part did memory play in your professional biography ?’

“Since I was a child I collected foreign languages in my head, and the respective dictionaries on my desk : I’m drawn by how each language expresses the same concept in a different way, and by how every language very well succeeds in this aim, according to its own and often unique strategies. Auditory memory helped me in the languages learning process and, as a consequence, in the writing language process, or in that of translating when it comes to an ancient language.”

‘So do you also appreciate ancient languages ?’

“Among the ancient languages, considered as languages no longer spoken, I had the opportunity to study, in addition to Latin, also ancient Greek and classical Armenian : these last two infact, not being subjects of study in high school, I studied in depth, following extracurricular courses. Latin remains perhaps the ancient language I appreciated the most, it is concise : each sentence has the right number of words, not one more nor one less, allows you to get straight to the point, but also to express complex reasoning in perfectly pigeonholed sentences one after the other, as in ancient Cicerone’ masterful speeches…” 

‘Is there a relationship, in your opinion, between auditory memory, and writing as graphic memory?’

“When I was a student in high school, I wanted to get better at translating Seneca : the teacher proposed me a sentence with a particularly difficult construction, then she suggested I repeat it out loud, several times. I realized that repeating a sentence, with awareness of the meaning of each word, allowed me to memorize the grammatical construction : then I also realized I could recognize the same pattern in other different sentences too, and I must say that, as well as objectively improving in translations, since that day I apply the method every time I find myself studying a difficult grammatical element in a new language, and it has always worked.

I think that one of the reasons that hinder learning a language is the attempt to translate word for word what is said in one’s native language, but there is rarely a one-to-one correspondence between sentences, in different languages : instead, it is better to try to understand how those sentences are structured, or perhaps the words themselves in a certain language, and then try to use them, combining them together.” 

‘Using one’s memory, in short, a bit like a laboratory ? Was this how your passion for mathematics was born ?’

“I was always attracted by numbers and by the concepts that arise from them, I wanted to discover more and more. A teacher of mine in the two-year period of high school said : ‘Mathematics is made of bricks. Each concept leads to another that builds on the previous one.’ Well, I like mathematics because develops coherently, and can expand continuously as new theorems are discovered.”

‘Then you discovered that Linguistics exists, even as an university subject…’

“Yes, it is a bit difficult to explain… We all encounter mathematics since elementary school, but the same cannot be said for Linguistics which is an university subject for both the Faculties of ‘Literature’ and ‘Foreign Languages’ : ‘linguistics’ generally means ‘the scientific study of language’, and I have some familiarity with languages. I always like to discover how languages come to express concepts, and then also what are the peculiarities of the cultures that use them. Shortly before my scientific high school exam I discovered that Linguistics existed, as a general science which allows us to abstract the properties of languages and to understand its role in society : I realized that it was exactly what I liked.” 

‘In your opinion a good memory is a defense for children, and why  ?’

“Certainly a good memory allows a child to have better defense mechanisms. Learning from your mistakes allows you to know the consequences of your actions, and to adjust your behaviour accordingly when you find yourself in situations similar to past experiences. Remembering experiences, or events including historical ones, and different situations, allows you to act consciously. Plus, having memory of what you have learned gives you a possibility : the one of having access to one’s own knowledge, to be able to face situations with new solutions, and therefore further learn, and progress.” 

At care of Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – April 4, 2024

In the photo, a detail from : ‘Sony World Photography Awards 2023’, Milan - ‘Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria Martini’.[1]

Our memory is not a storage at all, in fact a working laboratory which selects processes and produces reality, that is what most identifies each of us : and if it isn’t in order, the fantasies that emerge do not help or defend. Difficult is to correct one’s naivety which we struggle to recognize, for example the compulsion for revenge, an issue that is unfortunately still current and recurring, even in today’s Civilization.

The 16th Competition, established by regional law in 2008 in Lombardia (Italy) ‘for the affirmation of the values’ of the Exodus from Istria region[2], kept the students busy for this 2024 edition about ‘How the exiles faced the challenge of rebuilding their existence in Lombardia and in the world’[3] : unsuspected names as the chemist Fulvio Bracco, founder of the Company ‘Bracco Spa’ and Ottavio Missoni in the fashion industry, the songwriter Sergio Endrigo as well as others in their normal  professions, involved a work of investigation and discovery from students ranging in age from thirteen and seventeen years old, and their commendable teachers. Up to the peculiar testimony of a former child girl who in 1949 was six years old and ‘hadn’t had the time to learn to read yet’ : today a delightful eighty one year old lady, Marisa Brugna[4] conducted a short and well-attended speech on her own ‘refugeance’ together with the hundreds of thousands of families which, starting from 1945, left Istria and their own homes but – not to irritate the new occupants who settled there after the Armistice of 1943 – few at a time, as if it were a holiday from which they would come back, and so it was not. Because they had to start from scratch, very far from their homelands, after long and painful stays of luck in the various ‘Refugee Collection Centres’ scattered across Italy, often facing distrust even from Italians themselves.

Who will be your partner and who will be instead your boss ? That was the question in the minds of adults who suddenly became ‘refugees’ in that Exodus : a question immediately collected now by the awarded young people present last February 14, because the experience of one’s naivety is as burning as life’s worst wounds, often it doesn’t even make it to the news, resolved in a hostile ‘face to face’. The defense against naivety appears impervious, even obscure, above all surrounded by uncontainable and overwhelming emotions : listening to yourself talking is a work, and it makes school.

Marina Bilotta Membretti, Cernusco sul Naviglio 19 febbraio 2024

[1] ‘Sony World Photography Awards 2023’ is one of the most prestigious competitions in the world for contemporary photography (Milan, ‘Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria Martini’ July 3 – September 3, 2023). The free contest allows photographers from all the world to find support for their talent : in the four competitions of 2023 edition - Professional, Open, Student, Youth – more than 415.000 images participated from over 200 countries and territories.

[2] Before the Armistice of 1943 Istria was in Italy, but after the Armistice it became territory of the Federal Republic of Marshal Tito, now Croatia and Slovenia.

[3] Activity of ‘Regione Lombardia’, the 16th Edition of the Competition school year 2023-2024 “Le Foibe, la strage di Vergarolla ed il conseguente Esodo giuliano, fiumano e dalmata : come gli esuli hanno affrontato la sfida di ricostruire la propria esistenza in Lombardia e nel mondo”, rewarded on last February 14, into the ‘Sala Consiliare’ of Palazzo Pirelli in Milan, the selected works of the 145 students participating : I.T.E.P. ’Galileo Galilei’ - Laveno Mombello (VA) (novel); Liceo ‘Primo Levi’ - San Donato Milanese (MI) (video); Istituto Comprensivo ‘Alessandro Manzoni’ - Cologno Monzese (MI) (audiobook); Liceo Artistico ‘Giacomo e Pio Manzù’ - Bergamo (three videos awarded); Istituto comprensivo ‘San Paolo d’Argon’ - Cenate Sotto (BG) Scuola Secondaria I Grado ‘Enea Salmeggia’ (booklet : special mention in the competition); Liceo Statale ‘Novello’ - Codogno (LO) Scuola Secondaria II Grado (comic : special mention out of competition).

[4] Marisa Brugna, who today lives at Alghero (Sardinia) where she also has her family, testified her own ‘refugeance’ in the book ‘Memoria negata’ – Edizioni Condaghes Srl (2013) of which she is the author.

‘Perlasca’[1], by and with Alessandro Albertin.

In the photo: the Alps near Barcelonnette (Provence, FR) on the border with Italy.

Endless winter is the sleep of removal, always by threat, of losing love, or freedom, or even one’s life : a thinking which first and foremost censors, as it is in the arrogance of every despotism, terrible without mitigating circumstances.

Alessandro Albertin is author of the work which, with trained fluency and a special ability to arouse curiosity, is bringing to the scene in recent months. The story is not his, it is Someone else’s who was able, as a matter of facts, to question him to this extent, Someone else who was, precariously balanced, in Budapest in the years 1944 – 1945, at the crossroads never erased that the proclamation of the Armistice of 1943 made a difference for Italy : on the one hand the euphoria for the end of the Second World War, on the other the beginning of a severe persecution and extreme civil war by a defeated and utterly enraged Nazism. In short, something that is not taken into sufficient account when faced to victory – and serious responsibility of all rulers in neglecting – and something cruel at the same time, as every coming back of removal really is in life.

Giorgio Perlasca has just come out of his own war experience, volunteer fighter in Spain[2], at Budapest he is talentedly starting a meat business : but an Armistice is an Armistice, enough with the enemies now ! And he finds himself wanted, just like everyone that Gestapo goes to track down one by one in their houses, elderly and children, women and men, Jews first and foremost but not only : the fury of those who are defeated has no equal. An endless winter, no more seasons. Perlasca has family in Italy, to save himself he retrieves a letter of introduction, written and signed by the general Francisco Franco with which he can ask the Spain Embassy for any help, even at Budapest : and it is here that, together with his own salvation, Jorge – no longer Giorgio – Perlasca finds himself facing the injustice of the Case for which many in Budapest are rounded up, killed or deported in the nearby concentration camp of Auschwitz. Jorge remains at the Embassy, and precisely with that safe conduct, whose power he skillfully manages to strengthen and expand, he recovers the lives of thousands of persecuted people - Spanish Jews first and foremost, but not only - thus disobeying the Law of Hungary. When he will come again in Italy, no one will hear anything from him, Perlasca will resume the life he interrupted and invent a job, getting by in that very difficult post-war period which however the short 1960s would even go so far as to forget.

Doesn’t feel like remembering ? Anyone interested in listening to him ? Recognize the privilege of merit in others ? Perhaps.

Knowing you have saved someone is the certainty of a partnership, so real that it does not seek extras – even if one gets it sometimes. So incredible is one’s psychic occurrence indeed, it doesn’t appear and has thousands and thousands of forms, and even in the winter of life.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – February 10, 2024

[1] ‘Perlasca. Il coraggio di dire no’, by and with Alessandro Albertin, directed by Michela Ottolini, produced by ‘Teatro de Gli Incamminati’, Milan. Alessandro Albertin has been received last January 27 at the ‘Quirinale’ by the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, on the occasion of ‘Remembrance Day’ : here he read a piece from ‘Perlasca. Il coraggio di dire no’ and also introduced the testimony by Cesare Rimini, ‘Una carta in più’. Graduated from the ‘Scuola d’Arte Drammatica Paolo Grassi’ of Milan, Alessandro Albertin (Padua, Italy - 1972) already brought to the stage ‘Lo Sbarco in Normandia, i segreti di una vittoria’, ‘Marco Pantani, il campione fuori norma’, ‘Prometeo incatenato’ by Aeschilous for the ‘Greek Theatre’ of Siracusa (2023) : he worked with Virginio Gazzolo, Gianrico Tedeschi, Andrée Ruth Shammah, Gigi Proietti, Ugo Pagliai and others.

[2] Known as the ‘Spanish War’, was the long and terrible civil war which broke out following the military coup (July 17, 1936) that brought the general Francisco Franco to power in March 1939, and installed a fascist dictatorship which remained in government until around 1975.

Detail from the fresco by Luciano Bartoli[1] in the baptistery of the parish church ‘Sant’Ambrogio Ad Fontes’, Segrate-MI.

It is a recent film, ‘C’è ancora domani’[2], first feature and excellent debut as director for the good actress Paola Cortellesi : it focuses on what moves one’s mind and that can never be said ‘resiliency’, a term that is linked to the study of inert materials but not to humans because it doesn’t come into one’s law of thinking. Paola Cortellesi doesn’t make a narration, instead she focuses on something that it is not at all neutral, like the imputability of a beginning, and she does it with courage and with skilful lightness : we are as grateful to her also for this, as we are to the excellent Hitchcock[3], certainly her predecessor.

Attributable here is not only her cruel husband, the collaborationist father-in-law, the inert neighbours, the ancient and useless lover : in the lucid transparency of a text[4] of which the good Cortellesi is author too, the attributable person appears to be also the victim, that is Delia, whose defense consists in a desperate estrangement, just fed on little tricks : an estrangement artfully created by her, and of which only at the end we learn that it did not prevent her to remember when things went well with her husband.

Of the three children, the eldest Marcella is who provokes in the adult woman that graft – trigger of a thinking which really hurts : of being nothing, that is, and not only at home but socially, in her own city that was Rome after the end of the Second World War, in that esplicit disorder that the war had kept silent, with the arrival of new allies to democracy but disliked by the loyalists of the old regime whose economy is based on the exclusion of identites. Then it misleads us, we all that are on this side of the big screen, the receiving of a sealed envelope addressed to Delia, delivered to her almost secretly by the concierge : do we forgive her ?

A deception for all of us, no easy pink story behind that envelope, no naivety in the next settling of accounts that turns the tide, so incredible but very reasonable indeed… In short, Paola Cortellesi focuses the non-naive ability to keep a place for the other, for your similar who may ‘occur’ partner : and beasts, that as we know ‘are other than animals’, don’t care about this.

Attributable is naivety, always painful, as it buries a ‘psychic occurrence’ : but, at the same way, attributable and imputable is one’s memory because it is actually ‘work’.

One’s ascribility, or excitement[5], is just the first step as the indication of a crossroads that is not at all obligatory, just an opportunity that our thinking offers us in the shape of an appointment to be elaborated and worked on.

Compulsion is therefore not all our unconscious, there is still free memory that should not be lost : a matter I will take up again.

Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – December 27, 2023

[1] Luciano Bartoli (Trieste 1912 – Padova 2009) dedicated himself almost exclusively to religious iconography : his first assignment, already in 1935, was to decorate the church of Santa Caterina at lsola d’Istria, which was followed by commissions for other churches in Udine, Padova, Treviso, Trieste, Issogne (Val d’Aosta) as well as the design of numerous windows. (Information taken from: ‘Un’arte per contemplare. Percorso iconografico nella chiesa di ‘Sant’Ambrogio Ad Fontes’, di Isabella Bertario – 2022; ‘Le nuove chiese della diocesi di Milano 1945-1993’, a cura di Cecilia De Carli – ‘Vita e pensiero’ (Milano, 1994). ‘Sant’Ambrogio Ad Fontes’ is one of the 22 celebratory churches of the Second Vatican Council, promoted in the Ambrosian diocese by the then Archbishop Cardinal Montini, now Saint Paulus VI, and was consecrated on April 25, 1966.

[2] ‘C’è ancora domani’ (2023) has been conceived, directed and performed by Paola Cortellesi. Other interpreters : Valerio Mastandrea, Romana Maggiora Vergano, Emanuela Fanelli, Giorgio Colangeli, Vinicio Marchioni, Francesco Centorame. Presented at the 18th edition of the ‘Festa del Cinema’ of Rome, the film received the special prize from the jury and a special mention as the best first film. It has been produced by Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Gangarossa for ‘Wildside’ and ‘Vision Distribution’.

[3] Alfred Hitchcock (1899 – 1980) directed, among the others : ‘Psycho’, ‘The Birds’, ‘Rear Window’, ‘Vertigo’.

[4] Subject and screenplay : Furio Andreotti, Giulia Calenda, Paola Cortellesi.

[5] In ‘Il pensiero di natura. Dalla psicoanalisi al pensiero giuridico’, by Giacomo B. Contri SIC Edizioni (1998), pg. 54, 95.