This is the second blog post in a two-part series to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Italian children’s writer Gianni Rodari (1920-1980). You can read part 1 here.

“Tutti gli usi della parola a tutti”: mi sembra un buon motto, dal bel suono democratico. Non perché tutti siano artisti, ma perché nessuno sia schiavo (G. Rodari, Grammatica della fantasia)

“Words are for everybody to use” seems a good motto to me, with a nice democratic sound. Not so that everyone might be a poet or an artist, but so that nobody might be a slave (author's translation)

Learning through playing with words is one of the most important techniques to foster a meaningful cognitive development of children’s linguistic ability, as many educational approaches have already demonstrated internationally. Gianni Rodari’s pioneering merit was to recognize and reinforce this technique through literature almost 50 years ago, when some Italian educators started to reinvent teaching using modern methodologies. “Power to imagination!” seems the right slogan to summarize Grammatica della fantasia. This captivating essay on imagination serves both as a theoretical exposition and as a textbook offering exercises on the art of storytelling ready to implement in classrooms.

Front cover of Grammatica della fantasia. Introduzione all’arte di inventare storie, illustrated by Bruno Munari (Turin, 1973) X.907/13373.

Passionate about the mechanisms of language, which deeply shape the human mind and imagination, Rodari had promoted creative writing ever since his first job as a school teacher. According to Rodari, fantastica or fantasy – i.e. the imaginative skill – is not in conflict with logic. On the contrary, it is the key to creatively mastering the logic of language. The power of fantasy lies in the possibility of breaking linguistic rules in order to invent a language that enables children to feel creative, to explore lateral thinking and, most importantly, to enjoy learning. In the logic of fantasy, then, mistakes are opportunities to enhance the children’s linguistic skills. Rodari’s attempt to theorize fantasy as an important cognitive ability in his Grammatica della fantasia aimed consequently to promote the children’s right to be protagonists of their education for the first time in the history of Italian pedagogy.

During the 1960s, Rodari’s dedication and commitment to children’s education increased exponentially. He took part in many collaborations and children’s workshops all over Italy. In the documentary Gianni Rodari, il profeta della fantasia, teachers and educators recall the pleasure and excitement of taking part in Rodari’s 1972 “fantastic” training workshop in Reggio Emilia. From the 1960s, Rodari worked hand in hand with teachers of the Movimento di Cooperazione Educativa (MCE), a movement inspired by Célestin Freinet’s pédagogie populaire. The pillars of MCE education are cooperative learning and learning by doing, democratic and inclusive techniques based on a fair exchange of knowledge between teachers and students. This idea of reinventing education to reinvent society was the backbone of all Rodari’s intellectual activities.

Many conferences dedicated to Grammatica della fantasia have followed since 1973, proving it to be an inspiring milestone in education, still able to produce meaningful thought and criticism today. The British Library holds some of those proceedings that offer not only an insight into Rodari’s revolutionary approach to writing and education, but also some other of his critical writings.

Front cover of Il cane di Magonza (Rome, 1982; YA.1988.a.5756)

In his acceptance speech for the 1970 Hans Christian Andersen Award, Rodari disclosed his passion for fantasy three years before the publication of Grammatica della fantasia:

Occorre una grande fantasia, una forte immaginazione per essere un vero scienziato, per immaginare cose che non esistono ancora e scoprirle, per immaginare un mondo migliore di quello in cui viviamo e mettersi a lavorare per costruirlo.

A great deal of creativity, a strong imagination is necessary to be a true scientist, to imagine things that don’t yet exist and to discover them, to imagine a better world than that in which we live and to start working towards building it (author's translation).

As a summary of Rodari’s extensive advocacy of children’s creativity, Grammatica della fantasia represents his cutting-edge contribution not only to education, but also to creative writing by utterly reshaping the approach to children’s literature in Italy.

Ramona Ciucani, West European Languages Cataloguing Team

Further reading:

A tutto Rodari: tutti gli usi della parola a tutti, a cura di Maria Carmen Sulis e Agnese Onnis (Cagliari, 2003) YF.2017.a.23460

Il cavaliere che ruppe il calamaio: l’attualità di Gianni Rodari: atti del convegno, Ortona 25-26 novembre 2005, a cura di Francesco Lullo e Tito Vezio Viola (Novara, 2007) YF.2008.a.31837

Carmine De Luca, Gianni Rodari: la gaia scienza della fantasia (Catanzaro, 1991) YA.1993.a.15088.

H.M. Fardoun et al., ‘Applying Gianni Rodari Techniques to Develop Creative Educational Environments’, Journal on data semantics, 2014, pp. 388-397; 5180.185000

Maria Grazia Ferraris, Vado via coi gatti…: la voce multiforme e multi sonante di Gianni Rodari: interventi critici (2004-2018) (Francavilla Marittima, 2019) YF.2019.a.16341.

Le provocazioni della fantasia: Gianni Rodari scrittore e educatore, a cura di Marcello Argilli, Carmine De Luca e Lucio Del Cornò (Rome, 1993) YA.1995.a.6443

Gianni Rodari, The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories, translated by Jack Zipes. To be published in April 2021

Se la fantasia cavalca con la ragione: prolungamenti degli itinerari suggeriti dall’opera di Gianni Rodari: convegno nel decennale della ‘Grammatica della fantasia’…, a cura di Carmine De Luca (Bergamo, 1983) YA.1990.b.3732. if you are able to add the book cover as Image 10, please take this title out from here.

Un secchiello e il mare: Gianni Rodari, i saperi, la nuova scuola a cura di Mario Piatti (Pisa, 2001) X29/5868.

C. Torriani, ‘Il teatro di Gianni Rodari: la fantasia al servizio dell’apprendimento della lingua’, Tuttitalia: the Italian journal of the Association for Language Learning, no. 39, 2010, pp. 11-17; 9076.178300

This is the last post in a series of blogs on the Solidarity movement published to commemorate its 40th anniversary. You can read about the 21 Gdánsk demands here, the poet Jadwiga Piątkowska here, and 'Mały Konspirator', a manual to anti-government activity in 1980s Poland, here. 

The British Library collection of Polish underground ephemeral publications [BL shelf mark Sol. 764] includes a significant number of posters, photographs, cartoons and humorous ephemera created by artists involved in various opposition groups. The ephemeral publications best reflected a rapidly changing reality in 1980s Poland. They were particularly effective in conveying Solidarity ideas, documenting its activities and informing about crucial social and cultural events of the time. Both simple in form and laconic, these visual materials carried powerful and indirect commentaries on the political situation as well as delivering witty, amusing and comforting messages. Most of them were produced anonymously and only some had features that later allowed for identifying their designers.

Lenin with Mohawk punk graffiti (1987) designed by Dariusz Paczkowski, a street art and graffiti artist. It was created to mock the leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917, whose image was widely used in communist propaganda.

Arrest warrant – the society hunts a national enemy (ca. 1982). A mock ‘wanted’ poster for General Wojciech Jaruzelski, responsible for proclaiming martial law in Poland in December 1981, with a description and an offer of a reward for his capture.

I love PZPR (the Polish United Workers’ Party) – an image of a wolf dressed as Red Riding Hood’s grandmother with a police baton; I love the USSR – an image of General Jaruzelski and a red star; I love ZOMO (Motorized Reserves of the Citizens’ Militia) – para-military formations particularly brutal during the period of martial law in 1981-1983.  At the right bottom corner – Solidarity wins!

The next two images are examples of ephemera discouraging Polish citizens from voting in elections and must have been created either in October 1985 for the parliamentary elections, or in June 1988 for the election to the National Councils.

A sticker styled after a telegram: “Stay at home / stop / Gorbachev votes in your place anyway / stop”.

Election List. Candidate no. 1 the Polish United Workers’ Party, Candidate no. 2 the Alliance of Democrats, Candidate no. 3 the United People's Party, Candidate no. 4 the Christian Social Association. *Fill in missing data.”

A poster advertising the University of Poznań Solidarity journal Serwis Informacyjny Komisji Zakładowej NSZZ «Solidarność» przy UAM w Poznaniu. Created in 1981.

New Year’s wishes with the image of Lech Wałęsa, the future first democratically elected president of Poland and 1983 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Created in the 1980s.

The Military Song Festival in Kołobrzeg 88. The festival began in 1969. Part of the official propaganda, it was organised by the Main Political Directorate of the Polish Army and its aim was to instill patriotism and promote the image of a heroic soldier. In 1988 a group of activists from Ruch Wolność i Pokój (Freedom and Peace Movement) planned to disrupt the festival carrying with them 30 posters. Stopped and searched by secret service agents they managed to leave behind this poster which features the logo of A Cappella, a periodical published by Ruch Wolność i Pokój.

A poster by Ruch Wolność i Pokój advertising an International Seminar on Peace taking place in Warsaw on 7-9 May 1987. Ruch Wolność i Pokój was a peaceful anti-government movement and advocated non-violent resistance. Its programme included support for conscientious objectors, protection of the environment, international cooperation, protection of the rights of minorities, abolition of capital punishment, and withdrawal of the Soviet army from Poland. It carried out numerous protests including hunger strikes, occupational strikes, marches, happenings and public burning of draft cards.

 

“A teddy bear is better than a machine gun”. A poster with the logo of A Cappella published by Ruch Wolność i Pokój

Zuzanna Krzemień, Ela Kucharska-Beard and Magda Szkuta, Curators of East European Collections

We’re all too young to remember this joke from ITMA.

Posh lady: ‘There’s nothing my little Jimmy likes better than snuggling up in front of the fire with Enid Blyton.’
Louche voice: ‘Beats reading any day.’

Authors are often conflated with their books, sometimes through ignorance. In the Middle Ages Policraticus/Policratus was often cited as an author rather than the work by John of Salisbury.

Other authors made a point of naming their books after themselves: Orme (the 12th-century Augustinian) called his exegetical work Ormulum. 

Thiss boc iss nemmnedd. orrmulum; / Forr tha orrm itt wrohhte.
[This book is named Ormulum; for that Orme it wrote.]

Similarly, Emmanuele Tesauro named his biblical compendium the Handy Treasury, so that on the title page it came out as Emmanuelis Thesauri Thesaurus Manualis. Manuel and Manual of course aren’t related. But note that crazy chiasmus.

Title-page of Thesauro Manual en el Conde Manuel Thesauro … (Madrid, 1674) 4226.dd.33 

When Dutch mapmaker Jacob Aertsz Colom wanted a title for an atlas to guide the seafarer, he thought back to his Bible reading and recalled Exodus 13:21-22. When Pharoah let the Israelites go they went out:

through the way of the wilderness of the Red sea … And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night: He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people. (King James Bible)

And so Colom called his book De Vyerighe Colom (Amsterdam, 1654; Maps C.8.c.3.), translated into English in 1648 as Upright fyrie colomne … wherein are described and lively portrayed all the coasts of the west, north and east seas.

Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Collections

On 3 October 1990, after over 40 years of division, East and West Germany became a single state. The breaching of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 and the opening of borders between the two states that followed had brought the question of a possible unification to the fore, but many assumed it would be a slow process over several years. However, the replacement of East Germany’s ruling Socialist party by a pro-unification coalition after the country’s first free elections, and the near-collapse of the East German economy, hastened the process, and the two states became one within less than a year.

The British Library’s holdings of material on the question of German reunification go back far further than the early 1990s. On its foundation in 1949 the West German Federal Republic established the Ministerium für gesamtdeutsche Beziehungen (Ministry for all-German Relations; the word ‘gesamtdeutsche’ was later replaced by ‘innendeutsche’ (Intra-German’) to avoid accusations that the Ministry advocated a return to pre-1937 borders). Part of the Ministry’s remit was to manage formal relations with the East German Democratic Republic, since the Federal Republic refused to recognise it as a legitimate state and therefore could not handle relations through the Foreign Office. But the Ministry also published material on the East German state and on the prospects and practicalities of a potential reunification, such as a collection of documents reflecting the Federal republic’s efforts to restore German Unity.

Die Bemühungen der Bundesrepublik um Wiederherstellung der Einheit Deutschlands durch gesamtdeutsche Wahlen: Dokumente und Akten (Bonn, 1952)  S.F.430/12.(2.)

As well as official government publications on the issue, individuals also published thoughts and reflections. We have several works by the politician and writer Wilhelm Wolfgang Schütz, starting with Die Stunde Deutschlands: Möglichkeiten einer Politik der Wiedervereinigung (‘Germany’s Hour: Possibilities for a Policy of Reunification’; Stuttgart, 1955; 8030.aa.28.). One of his later works, Reform der Deutschlandpolitik (Cologne, 1965; X.709/3138.) was translated into English as Rethinking German Policy: New Approaches to Reunification (New York, 1967; X.709/6290). A pamphlet edited by Klaus Otto Skibowski, a close adviser to the first Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, sets out what he sees as the moral case for reunification, but also considers practical issues around the process, not least the financial implications. Interestingly, the map on the cover shows a jigsaw-image of Germany including areas within its pre-1937 borders. The question of what territory would be included in a united Germany was not fully settled until 1970 when West Germany formally recognised the Oder-Neisse Line as the border with Poland, and reiterated in the 1990 reunification treaty.

Cover of Klaus Otto Skibowski (ed.), Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands (Aschaffenburg, 1955) 08073.d.89.

Although most of the literature from the 1950s and 60s in our collections takes the West German line that East Germany is Soviet-occupied territory, there are some exceptions, such as a, Programm der nationalen Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands (Programme for German National Reunification; Stuttgart, 1952; 08074.f.12. The text is available online here), issued by the West German Communist Party, which depicts West Germany as a slave state of American, British and French imperialists, and an expansion of the East German system to the west as the most desirable form of reunification.

In the 1960s, the Federal Republic began to establish more formal and co-operative relations with the states of Eastern Europe, and in 1972 finally formalised relations with the German Democratic Republic. While the question of reunification did not go away, our collections contain fewer publications on the issue from the 1970s and 80s. But following the actual reunification, the number of publications naturally increases, from the formal reunification treaty signed on 31 August 1990 (S.F.583/476) to academic studies and political reflections.

Cover of Günter Grass’s critical take on reunification, Ein Schnäppchen namens DDR (Frankfurt am Main, 1990) YA.1995.a.29449

Not all of these are positive. The Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass was one of the most prominent voices expressing concern and dismay at the way the West German Federal Republic effectively absorbed the former German Democratic Republic. Similar concerns are expressed in satirical form in a collection of sketches and cartoons, Das letzte Ende, from the East German Cabaret Distel (‘Thistle’), and find a poignant echo in the popular film Good Bye Lenin where the main character, having tried to keep the truth about the events of 1989-90 from his ailing mother, a former East German party activist, fakes a broadcast announcing the end of the German Democratic Republic in a way that he himself finds more acceptable and relatable than the reality.

Cover of Das letzte Ende: gibt es ein Leben nach der Wiedervereinigung (Berlin, 1991) YA.1994.b.4972

It is certainly true that after initial euphoria, Germans on both sides of the former divide found it difficult to adapt. Many East Germans lost their jobs as the infrastructure of their former state crumbled and was rebuilt according to capitalist principles, while some westerners resented the large amounts of money pumped into the east to tackle these problems. The concept of the ‘Mauer im Kopf’ (‘wall in the head’) was coined to describe lingering mistrust and misunderstanding among the citizens of the different former republics. Reunification also saw a rise in right-wing nationalist groups which identified and attacked immigrant workers as a scapegoat for their own dissatifactions (the website zweiteroktober90 examines the roots and early manifestations of this violence).

The many books – from Germany, Britain and beyond – in our collection published since 1990 examine these problems and contradictions, and examine the history of reunification and the new Germany since 1990. A search in our online catalogue using the keyword ‘Wiedervereinigung’ or, for more recent material, the  subject heading ‘Unification of Germany (1990)’ is a good way in to exploring the collections.

Despite the challenges and problems around reunification, for most who remember the days of a divided nation it is hard to see it as anything other than a positive step, and a recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that ‘around nine-in-ten Germans living in both the West and East say that German unification was a good thing for Germany’ and that ‘life satisfaction in East Germany has skyrocketed since 1991’. Although today’s 30th anniversary celebrations will be muted due to the Covid pandemic, there is still every reason to celebrate.

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Studies