Mario Rigoni Stern Award, 10th Edition

The 2020 edition of the Mario Rigoni Stern Prize for Multilingual Literature of the Alps goes to the historian Silvia Giorcelli Bersani for her essay "The Empire at Altitude" (Einaudi)

It goes to the turin historian Silvia Giorcelli Bersani, author of "The Empire at Altitude" (Ed. Einaudi) the tenth Mario Rigoni Stern Prize for Multilingual Literature of the Alps, presented last night in the Congress Center of Riva del Garda.
Among the reported are the anthropologist Hannibal Salsa, one of the most important scholars of the Italian mountain, with "The Landscapes of the Alps" (Ed. Donzelli), the Swiss writer Arno Camenisch, with "Last Snow" (translation by Roberta Gado, Keller publisher), and the German scholar Werner Mbotzing with "Die Alpen", published by WBG.

"The Empire at Altitude" reconstructs with great wealth of sources - as the motivation of the jury composed of Ilvo Diamanti, Marco Albino Ferrari, Paola Filippi, Mario Isnenghi and Daniele Jalla - the centuries-old relationship between the Romans and the Alps: military, social and cultural. The happy narrative piglio makes erudition a great and multifaceted tale. The anthropological-cultural approach opens up in other very current dynamics about living in the mountains today and the role of the Alps in Europe." The scholar noted that the Romans did not like the Alps very much, given the hostile climate and nature and their remoteness from Rome, although then they had been able to grasp and enhance – alongside the geo-strategic importance – also the great wealth of raw materials and therefore their role as potential incubators of economic development. At the same time, the "Romanization" of the indigenous inhabitants advanced, in a process of assimilation with the dominant - desired or forced - which ended up being fertile of developments for both parties.

In addition to the literary awards on Thursday evening in the Garda centre, the Guardian of the Ark Osvaldo Dongilli award was also awarded, went to the Treviso cellist Mario Brunello for bringing, with his concerts on Mount Etna, the Dolomites and Mount Fuji in Japan, "music in the mountains and the mountain in music,helping to enrich both of emotions and new values, and bringing a heterogeneous audience but increasingly involved to appreciate - together - the silence of the great unspoiled spaces, the sounds of the forest and the great masterpieces of nature. Brunello, who also performed Bach's Sarabanda with his prized Maggini cello from the early 17th century, said he was convinced that his instrument was happy when he was brought to play in the mountains and in the woods, such as the Paneveggio forest, because it is found in his home environment and among his descendants, the centuries-old trees that so many harmonic crates have provided to violin makers since ancient times.
Opening of the evening, the archivist Ilaria Zacchilli illustrated instead the work of classifying the archive left by Rigoni Stern in his home in Val Giardini, Asiago: several cubic meters of letters – to family members, to publishers, to other writers his contemporaries – agendas on which he recorded even at war the main events of the day, and from which would have sprung some of his masterpieces such as The Sergeant in the Snow , but also youth stories, which testify to how his vocation as a writer manifested itself from the late adolescence, and not only after his return from the war, as was believed until now.
In the coming year, on the occasion of the centenary of the birth, the figure of the Asian writer will be at the center of an intense work of deepening and enhancement, promoted by the City of Asiago and carried out by a National Committee, which will see in addition to the enhancement of the archive, intended to be sold by the family to the Municipality, computerized and made available to researchers in the Civic Library, also the organization of conferences and events of international level.