Don Giovanni in Sicilia
© Ivan Cangelosi, 2016
80X80 cm
Ink on paper
Technique – Handwriting of the while novel “Don Giovanni in Sicilia” of Vitaliano Brancati
About the novel – Don Giovanni in Sicilia is a novel written by Vitaliano Brancati and published for the first time in 1941. The main character is the Sicilian Giovanni Percolla. Giovanni is forty years old and lives in Catania, cut off from the world, with three sisters who look after him and love him. With his friends, he loves spending whole days at the bar fantasizing about loving relationships that he doesn’t dare to realize. Therefore, his “business travels” to Rome, Viareggio or Cortina, are actually occasions to look for women and love adventures. Memories, trivial diversions and erotic dreams mark his time. One day, however, a noblewoman, Ninetta of Marronella, disrupts his life and he ends up marrying her and live in Milan with her.
Thanks to a clever use of irony, the author depicts the two souls of the protagonist: the “southern” tendency to live a quiet life within his habits, and the need to give sense to his life by engaging in work, typical of Milan. Both tendencies live in Giovanni, together with the so-called “gallismo” (male attitude characterized by ostentatious gallantry and show of masculinity), made of small talks and, above all, of glances: “the most important story of Catania is not that of customs, trade, buildings and riots, but the story of glances. The city life is full of events, love, insults… but only in the glances running between men and women. All the rest is poor and boring”.