Arrigo Fugassa
Ed. Corbaccio
pp. 404
A nice cover does not mean a good book, and vice versa.
The book I just finished reading has a bad cover but it's a good book.
The author, Arrigo Fugassa, was born in Alassio, Liguria, in 1896. However, he lived in Liguria, where in addition to writing for various newspapers, he was a teacher and then headmaster at the teaching institute of Livorno. He died in 1940, due to a road accident, a crazy trolley bus hit him.
Fugassa belonged to a family of sailors, shipowners and sea captains who later went on to trade and its origins influenced his style and the subjects touched that in some way were always linked to the seafaring tradition.
In 1931 he published Nelson's biography. He couldn't have chosen a better subject. Nelson had in fact all the characteristics of the ideal character to exalt the virtues of the patriot (even if English!).
The book is written with a particular style, I would say that it could be said typical of the fascist period, for what I think. The sentences are built in a particular way, and the first few pages gave me some problems (but then you get used to it).
However, like any biography, it is the extraordinary character that struck me most: Nelson!
What do we know about him (we Italians)?
Probably little or nothing.
I imagine that now, some of the most curious readers are looking for a summary of life on wikipedia, others, perhaps, wait instead to read the following lines.
Here they are.
Horatio Nelson was born on 29 September 1758 in Burnham Thorpe, a small village on the east coast of England, he died in 1805 at the Battle of Cape Trafalgar, near the Strait of Gibraltar.
Fugassa tells us how Nelson began his career, I report a part of it to make you understand how the book is written:
"At the age of twelve Orazio Nelson was at sea.
Let us not idealize, however, as the editors of the fictionalized biographies so popular today like; let us not try to perceive in this first step of the future admiral the revealing impetus of the great, irresistible vocation.
Already in all of Nelson's letters, we would search in vain for hymns to the sea and to the life of the sailor; the hints in this regard are extremely sober and rapid, nor do they ever swell with vaniloquent enthusiasm, until finally the letters express the ever more restless desire to do away with the ships and navigations: a desire appropriated, as we shall see, by the ill-omened shadow of a fatal presentiment, destined finally to actually change.
The boy went overboard for a simpler, more modest, less romantic reason and that still does him much honor: to free his father from the burden of keeping him."
Here, then, is the small Nelson who embarks thanks to his uncle Maurice Suckling, as midshipmen, or as a cadet.
Thus began his adventure by sea, at a time of "West Indies".
In the following years he took part in an expedition in the Arctic, took part in the war for American independence and then found himself commander of theAgamemnon, to fight against republican France. It must be remembered that the end of the '700 saw the world shake due to the struggles for independence from the Europe of the United States of America and for the search for a new order, different from that of the great monarchies. In Italy, after France, the Kingdom of Naples was shaken by republican thrills. At the same time the future Emperor, Napoleon, took his first steps. Nelson fought in the Mediterranean, in Corsica, in the Ligurian sea, in the tireless sea of Sardinia. During a bombardment he had been wounded in the eye and lost his sight, but this did not prevent him from going ahead.
From the 1795 the commander in chief of the naval forces in the Mediterranean is Admiral John Jervis. Nelson had a lot to learn and when it came to him he immediately applied what he saw.
Mostly Jervis was an advocate of discipline, order, cleanliness and continuous training. In his care, the fleet reached a level of efficiency never seen before.
The British navy was in those years the most powerful in the world, but the continuous wars and the long periods spent away from families and the salaries still for a hundred and fifty years created discontent and revolts. But not under Nelson, with him there was no insubordination.
He said: "I can boast of having done my duty as well as my colleagues, and of having done so without losing the affection of those who served under my orders"And indeed his men never saw him if not in the front row, where the danger was greatest, to incite and pull to victory.
The author says: "They loved him for this, his men, and for his desire to see, to know, to listen to everything, and of everything, sooner or later, to take into account, with a broad sense of right and right. And his successes are explained or clarified through this affection that made him like a halo on which he aimed in the decisive hours, as on a real force at his disposal. A man less loved, in some of the situations he found himself in, would not have succeeded like him. This was not luck, but will. It was his style of command, one of the elements of his greatness."
I could go on and on by telling you about his exploits in the Mediterranean, in Naples and in Sicily, against Republican France, up to the battle for which, perhaps, he is better known: that of Capo Trafalgar, who consecrated him immortal hero and decreed the end of the French navy.
I do not do it on purpose, because I believe that what I have already said is more than enough to push the curious to read Nelson's biography and thus rediscover an author such as Fugassa.
Alessandro Rugolo
