Giovannino Guareschi
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- Writer
- journalist
- caricaturist
- humorist
- movie director
- Political satire
- war novel
- short story
- Creation of character Don Camillo
- La rabbia
- anti-communist cartoons
Alberto
Giovannino Oliviero Giuseppe Guareschi (Italian: [dʒovanˈniːno ɡwaˈreski]; 1 May 1908 – 22 July 1968) was an Italian journalist, cartoonist, and humorist whose best known creation is the priest Don Camillo.
Life and career
Guareschi was born into a middle-class family in Fontanelle di Roccabianca, in the province of Parma, in 1908.[1] He always joked about the fact that he, a big man, was baptized Giovannino, a name meaning "little John" or "Johnny". In 1926, his family went bankrupt and he could not continue his studies at the University of Parma. After working at various minor jobs, he started to write for a local newspaper, the Gazzetta di Parma.[2] In 1929, he became editor of the satirical magazine Corriere Emiliano, and from 1936 to 1943 was the chief editor of a similar magazine called Bertoldo.[1]
In 1943, Guareschi was drafted into the army, which apparently helped him to avoid trouble with the Italian Fascist authorities.[1] He ended up as an artillery officer. When Italy signed the armistice of Cassibile with the Allies in 1943, he was arrested as an Italian military internee and imprisoned with other Italian soldiers in camps in German-occupied Poland for almost two years, including at Stalag X-B near Sandbostel. He later wrote about this period in Diario Clandestino (My Secret Diary).
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Giovannino_Guareschi_nel_1945_%282%29.jpg/220px-Giovannino_Guareschi_nel_1945_%282%29.jpg)
After the war, Guareschi returned to Italy and in 1945 founded a monarchist weekly satirical magazine, Candido.[1] After Italy became a republic, he supported the Christian Democracy party. He criticized and satirized the Italian Communist Party in his magazine, famously drawing a Communist as a man with an extra nostril, and coining a slogan that became very popular: "Inside the voting booth God can see you, Stalin can't." When the Communists were defeated in the 1948 Italian general election, Guareschi did not put his pen down but also criticized the Christian Democracy party.
In 1950, Candido published a satirical cartoon by Carlo Manzoni poking fun at Luigi Einaudi, the then president of the Republic. The President is at the Quirinal Palace, surrounded by, instead of the presidential guard of honour (the corazzieri), giant bottles of Nebbiolo wine, which Einaudi actually produced on his land in Dogliani. Each bottle was labeled with the institutional logo. The cartoon was judged "in contempt of the President" by a court at the time. Guareschi, as the director of the magazine, was held responsible and sentenced.
In 1954, Guareschi was charged with libel after he published two facsimile wartime letters from resistance leader and former Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi requesting that the Allies of World War II bomb the outskirts of Rome in order to demoralize Nazi German collaborators. The legitimacy of the letters was never established by the court; after a two-month trial, it found in favour of De Gasperi. Guareschi declined to appeal the verdict and spent 409 days in Parma's San Francesco jail, and another six months on probation at his home.[3]
His most famous comic creations are his short stories, begun in the late 1940s, about the rivalry between Don Camillo, a stalwart Italian priest, and the equally hot-headed Peppone, Communist mayor of a Po River Valley village in the "Little World". These stories were dramatized on radio, television and in films, most notably in the series of films featuring Fernandel as Don Camillo.
By 1956, Guareschi's health had deteriorated and he began spending time in Switzerland for treatment. In 1957, he retired as editor of Candido but remained a contributor. He died in Cervia in 1968 of a heart attack at the age of 60.
Selected bibliography
- La scoperta di Milano (1941)
- Il destino si chiama Clotilde (1943)
- Il marito in collegio (1944)
- Favola di natale (1945)
- Diario clandestino, 1943-1945 (1946)
- Italia provvisoria (1947)
- Lo zibaldino (1948)
- Corrierino delle famiglie (1954)
- Vita in famiglia (1968)
Published English translations
- The Little World of Don Camillo (1950)
- Don Camillo and his Flock (in US); Don Camillo and the Prodigal Son (in UK) (1952)
- The House That Nino Built (1953)
- Don Camillo's Dilemma (1954)
- Don Camillo Takes the Devil by the Tail (in US); Don Camillo and the Devil (in UK) (1957)
- My Secret Diary (1958)
- Comrade Don Camillo (1964)
- My Home, Sweet Home (1966)
- A Husband in a Boarding School (1967)
- Duncan & Clotilda: An Extravaganza with a Long Digression (1968)
- Don Camillo Meets the Flower Children (in US); Don Camillo Meets Hell's Angels (in UK) (1969)
- The Family Guareschi: Chronicles of the Past and Present (1970)
Pilot Productions authorised complete English-language edition of Don Camillo stories
The Guareschi family only discovered after 1980 that the original English language publishers made unauthorised cuts in the Don Camillo stories, and only published 132 of the original 347 Italian stories. After an approach from Piers Dudgeon of Pilot Productions, the family authorised him to publish uncut translations into English of all the original 347 stories.[4] The copyright is vested in the family, and the books published so far are as follows:
- No. 1: The Complete Little World of Don Camillo (2013) ISBN 978-1900064071
- No. 2: Don Camillo and His Flock (2015) ISBN 978-1900064187
- No. 3: Don Camillo and Peppone (2016) ISBN 978-1900064262
- No. 4: Comrade Don Camillo (2017) ISBN 978-1900064330
- No. 5: Don Camillo and Company (2018) ISBN 978-1900064408
- No. 6: Don Camillo’s Dilemma (2019) ISBN 978-1900064477
- No. 7: Don Camillo Takes the Devil by the Tail (2020) ISBN 978-1900064514
- No. 8: Don Camillio and Don Chichi (2021) ISBN 978-1900064569
- No. 9: Merry Christmas Don Camillo (2022) ISBN 978-1900064590
- No. 10: Don Camillo of La Bassa (2023) ISBN 978-1900064651
Filmography
- La rabbia, 1963. Co-director with Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Filmography about Don Camillo
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/35/Don_Camillo_Peppone_il_ritorno.jpg/220px-Don_Camillo_Peppone_il_ritorno.jpg)
- Little World of Don Camillo – Don Camillo (1952)
- The Return of Don Camillo – Il ritorno di Don Camillo (1953)
- Don Camillo's Last Round – Don Camillo e l'onorevole Peppone (1955)
- Don Camillo: Monsignor – Don Camillo Monsignore... ma non troppo! (1961)
- Don Camillo in Moscow – Il compagno Don Camillo (1965)
- Don Camillo and the today's youth – Don Camillo e i giovani d'oggi (1970), unfinished project
- Don Camillo and the today's youth – Don Camillo e i giovani d'oggi (1972)
- The World of Don Camillo – Don Camillo (1983), remake by Terence Hill and Colin Blakely
References
- ^ a b c d Roy P. Domenico; Mark Y. Hanley (1 January 2006). Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Politics. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 260. ISBN 978-0-313-32362-1. Retrieved 24 July 2015.
- ^ "Don Camillo". Easy Readers. Retrieved 21 May 2016.
- ^ Perry, 19-20
- ^ Guareschi, Giovanni (2013). The Complete Little World of Don Camillo, Biographical Afterword by Piers Dudgeon, pp. 240-241. Sawdon, North Yorkshire: Pilot Productions. ISBN 978-1900064071.
Bibliography
- Perry, Alan R. (2008). The Don Camillo Stories of Giovanni Guareschi. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Wikiquote-logo.svg/34px-Wikiquote-logo.svg.png)
- Tutto il mondo di Guareschi (Official Site)
- A review of Little World of Don Camillo at Open Letters Monthly
- World of Giovannino Guareschi
- Virtual Travel in the Little World of Guareschi
- v
- t
- e
- 1953 Ernest Hemingway
- 1954 Giovannino Guareschi
- 1955 Hervé Le Boterf
- 1956 Han Suyin
- 1957 Werner Keller
- 1958 Boris Pasternak
- 1959 Heinrich Gerlach
- 1960 Bonaventura Tecchi
- 1961 André Schwarz-Bart
- 1962 Cornelius Ryan
- 1963 Paolo Caccia Dominioni
- 1964 Giulio Bedeschi
- 1965 Luigi Preti
- 1966 Vincenzo Pappalettera
- 1967 Indro Montanelli
- 1968 Isaac Bashevis Singer
- 1969 Peter Colosimo
- 1970 Oriana Fallaci
- 1971 Enzo Biagi
- 1972 Alberto Bevilacqua
- 1973 Roberto Gervaso
- 1974 Giuseppe Berto
- 1975 Susanna Agnelli
- 1976 Carlo Cassola
- 1977 Giorgio Saviane
- 1978 Alex Haley
- 1979 Massimo Grillandi
- 1980 Maurice Denuzière
- 1981 Sergio Zavoli
- 1982 Gary Jennings
- 1983 Renato Barneschi
- 1984 Luciano De Crescenzo
- 1985 Giulio Andreotti
- 1986 Pasquale Festa Campanile
- 1987 Enzo Biagi
- 1988 Cesare Marchi
- 1989 Umberto Eco
- 1990 Vittorio Sgarbi
- 1991 Antonio Spinosa
- 1992 Alberto Bevilacqua
- 1993 Carmen Covito
- 1994 John Grisham
- 1995 Jostein Gaarder
- 1996 Stefano Zecchi
- 1997 Giampaolo Pansa
- 1998 Paco Ignacio Taibo
- 1999 Ken Follett
- 2000 Michael Connelly
- 2001 Andrea Camilleri
- 2002 Federico Audisio
- 2003 Alessandra Appiano
- 2004 Bruno Vespa
- 2005 Gianrico Carofiglio
- 2006 Andrea Vitali
- 2007 Frank Schätzing
- 2008 Valerio Massimo Manfredi
- 2009 Donato Carrisi
- 2010 Elizabeth Strout
- 2011 Mauro Corona
- 2012 Marcello Simoni
- 2013 Anna Premoli
- 2014 Michela Marzano
- 2015 Sara Rattaro
- 2016 Margherita Oggero
- 2017 Matteo Strukul
- 2018 Dolores Redondo
- 2019 Alessia Gazzola