Genoa, farewell to Pippo Marcenaro: journalist, writer and exhibition curator. He leaves behind an immense collection of books and memorabilia

Genoa – In Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann a strange character appears, Doctor Coppelius, who dumps at the feet of the protagonist, Hoffmann, a lot of glasses, binoculars and eyes, which he proposes for sale, guaranteeing both a phantasmagoric and illusionistic view and a sight beyond the visible (“I have eyes, real eyes, living eyes, eyes of flame, wonderful eyes that reach to the depths of the soul and which in many cases can lend one to those who don't have one”). Doctor Coppelius, witchcraft inventor, was dear to Giuseppe Marcenaro, (Pippo to his friends), who passed away today in Genoa at the age of 81, who in some ways was his modern reincarnation. In over fifty years of activity, Marcenaro has gone through many forms of writing, he has explored like few others, and as a precursor, the relationship between writing and image, he has organized exhibitions as if they were a personal story, he has made flash, before the eyes of readers in his books and spectators in his exhibitions, journeys through time, space, into the folds of buried and sometimes incredible stories, almost never moving from Genoa.

Between books, catalogues, brochures and more, its titles in library databases amount to almost 200, to which must be added the articles, in many cases elzeviri on the rare and bizarre, of a long militancy in the daily press, starting from the beginnings in “Il Lavoro”, to “Il Giorno”, “La Stampa”, “Il Secolo XIX”, “Il Giornale”, “Il Foglio” and others, not to mention the weeklies from “L'Europeo”, “L'Espresso”, “Il Friday” of “Repubblica” to “Alias” of “Manifesto”. Elzeviri often rewritten and collected in some volumes published by Aragno such as Carte inquiete (2005), Admirabili & freaks (2010), Wunderkammer (2013), Daguerréotype (2016).

For fifteen years starting from the early Seventies Marcenaro was a journalist for the newly formed Liguria Region, and for some time he managed to enrich the bulletin of the regional council's activities with a substantial cultural part accompanied by beautiful images. In the same years he resurrected, half a century later, the magazine “pietre”, a libertarian newspaper suppressed under fascism, together with some ancient editors such as Riccardo Bauer and Virgilio Dagnino. The new series (1975-84), along the lines of Pannunzio's “Mondo”, with large photographs, was edited with artisanal passion together with Roberto Callegari, a lifelong friend and then editor in Milan of Bruno Mondadori.

In his youth Marcenaro was among the last visitors to Lucia Rodocanachi in Arenzano, friend, correspondent and “shadow” translator for many well-known writers such as Montale and Vittorini. And to the memory of this singular and occult figure of reader and intellectual Marcenaro has dedicated many writings starting from the edition of the letters addressed to her by Gadda (Letters to a kind lady, Adelphi, 1983) and a documented biography A friend of Montale (1991). To Montale himself he dedicated an original biography in alphabetical entries (1999) and two exhibitions, one on the painter (1991) and one for the centenary (1996), in collaboration with Piero Boragina, with rich documentation and a dialogue between texts by Montale and contemporary painting.

Marcenaro had two great loves in nineteenth-century France: Stendhal and Rimbaud (to whom he dedicated books and exhibitions); two very different authors, but similar in their propensity for wandering, although incomparable between the Napoleonic officer and then diplomat of Louis Philippe and the drift of the minor who revolutionized the verse of modern poetry. But his writing leaned towards essayism, in a cross between Borges, Praz and Sebald (due to the connection between text and photography, theorized in Photography as Literature, 2004); but we should not forget Giovanni Ansaldo, the well-known journalist of the same age as Montale, who Marcenaro happily resurrected, aggregating elzeviri in volumes that illustrate a great and unknown writer.

The lucky one Marcenaro's collaboration with Bruno Mondadori and then Il Saggiatore, starting from 2008, has given life to a series of volumes, centered on a theme word, twisted into intriguing and surprising knots and paths, such as “chambers of wonders” or the living eyes of the aforementioned Coppelius. These are Cemeteries. Stories of regrets and follies (2008), a great success, with multiple editions and translations; Books. Stories of passions, manias and infamies (2010), Testaments. Inheritance of maitresses, vampires and seducers (2012), then resumed and partly rewritten in Dissipations (il Saggiatore), while the series then continued with Scarti e Passaporti (2019).

This inexhaustible traveler on paper in time and space has always lived in Genoa and has dedicated a large series of volumes to his land, highlighting the different eyes, or points of view, of the travelers who have crossed it (Viaggio in Liguria, 1974 , expanded several times over the years) and related painters, in the highly refined volumes on Genoa and the Rivieras published by Franco Maria Ricci.

And then there they are Marcenaro's exhibitions, for over 40 years, from 1973: 1911-1925, Genoa. Culture of a city, an exhibition therefore from Sbarbaro to the first Montale, in the context of letters, newspapers, paintings, images, which inaugurated a new way of holding exhibitions, hybridizing genres. Luciano Anceschi, a great scholar of 20th century aesthetics, upon seeing an exhibition of his (on Stendhal, I think, from 1984) exclaimed: “Marcenaro has invented a new literary genre”. Over the years, very challenging exhibitions have taken place – since 1991 curated with the essentials collaboration with Piero Boragina – managing to exhibit rare transporting masterpieces such as Caravaggio's Narcissus for the exhibition on Valéry, 1994, or the enormous canvas of David with Napoleon on horseback in the Alps, for a new Stendhal, 2000). Above all, the exhibition on the Journey to Italy, on the occasion of the G8 in Genoa in 2004, at Palazzo Ducale. And in the last few years since 2015 we cannot fail to forget Marcenaro's collaboration with Vittorio Laura's delightful piccolos, with over 30 mini-booklets always delicious in the handling of eccentric stories and figures.

Marcenaro was certainly one of the most original writers in Italy of the last half century, a lover like few others of books and papers, which now constitute a rich legacy not to be lost, including his diary always written in pen for decades, with its beautiful handwriting, minute and tidy, testimony to a life full of meetings and readings.