Author: Rosanna Turcinovich Giuricin

The past at the door, it may seem like a contradiction, in fact it hides a great truth. We discuss this with Ulderico Bernardi, winner of the Tommaseo Prize at the recent Gathering of Italian Dalmatians in the World, professor at Ca' Foscari in Venice, a profound expert on the events of the Gulf of Venice which today returns to include all the Terre da Mar in a single reality that is eliminating borders. The enlargement of the EU opens up new scenarios, which have already been foreseen and imagined in the past. The Tommaseo award therefore requires reflection in this sense… “There is no more current figure than Niccolò Tommaseo who has often been distorted in his thought or rather, his philological, literary and so on dimension has been put in the foreground, so much so as to forget the Tommaseo of political thought, immersed as he was in a multi-ethnic society”. Was his writing in another language also distorted? “In fact, Iskrice wrote Sparks in his mother tongue precisely to show his respect for the Croatian language. And it is the same author who wrote Del Presente e dell'Avvenire, words that are extremely relevant especially with regards to the dynamics between Italians in these lands”. As a Venetian, how did you experience the relationship with the Eastern Adriatic? “It is a duty to feel this bond deeply. Sometimes I give the example of someone who has lost a leg and continues to perceive it as if it were still there because it is an inseparable part of the body, and that is how the brain, the engine of everything, considers it. And Dalmatia and Venezia Giulia have been part of the Veneto for two thousand years." How did your exploration of these themes begin? “From the university world which allowed me to meet prominent figures. I remember, to give an example for everyone, Grytzko Mascioni, former director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Zagreb and then of the Italian Center of Ragusa with which we held many conferences. And then the collaboration with the Consul of Split Marco Nobili who demonstrated, with all the others, how important the role of the Consulate in Dalmatia is. My affection, therefore, goes to all these cities and people but above all goes to an extraordinary master of thought, who has taught me and continues to teach me a lot, and that is Niccolò Tommaseo”. What is its relevance? “Tommaseo, with his blind eyes, had a very profound gaze into the future. And at least two of the more than four hundred published works, including pamphlets and books, contain essential reflections for understanding the society we are living in. A society in which a more tenacious exploration of the roots of belonging is required to allow the exchange between cultures in a contemporary mobility induced by the processes of globalization. This is why we must understand that the reading of contemporary Dalmatia and Venezia Giulia cannot but pass through the revaluation of historical Dalmatia, as one of the three hundred and thirty European regions between the Atlantic and the Urals.  With its exemplary role for having been fertilized by the relationships of multiple cultures starting from the Roman Empire, passing through the civilization of Venice and then through all the tragic but also exhilarating events that have involved it in recent centuries. Now, Tommaseo himself reminded us in Iskrice-Scintille that human languages ​​are lyres that together play and send to heaven the voice of the peoples longing for the sovereign homeland. Naturally he did this with great lucidity, he knew very well the difficulties in making peoples with different references coexist, he urged various actions, even minimal ones, to keep the multiple civilization alive”. It's possible? “I answer by quoting Elijah: The divine presence is not felt by earthquakes and tremors, but by a light wind. And he wrote in Iskrice that what comes quickly, goes quickly, not the rain with pouring helps the hidden germ but when it comes light and gentle, it penetrates better into the entrails of your great mother”. How do you view the opening of the kindergarten in Zadar in this context? “In those constant and non-triumphalistic actions of the Zadar asylum there is the new spark that rekindles the hidden flame that, although it has been denied, continues to remain in the small communities of Zadar and Split. In continuity, the Ragusan motto of Libertas is revealed, evoking the historical echo of the tenacious spirit of a Dalmatian nation that Tommaseo once again describes with these words: simple and dignified race, peaceful and vehement in its bodily forms it manifests its spirit. Candid and elegant in strength, agile in muscle and austere eyebrow, gentle smile that seems to be the portrait of the saint that the church honors on September 30, another great Dalmatian who is Saint Jerome of the Miserere. On that most learned doctor of the church who for the first time translated the Old and New Testaments into Latin and whom those of you who have been to the Holy Land will certainly have honored in Bethlehem where he wanted to conclude his days. Venice played a large part in this Dalmatian civilization, in its fight against the Turk, which was not a fight against the foreigner but against someone who came from outside”. What was Venice trying to “save”? “Venice fought in the Turks the fatalism of Islam, of abandonment. Because it denied the tenacious and deep-rooted vision of its historical mission, the one it was able to maintain even in the most tragic moment of its dishonorable conclusion, defended among other things only by the Slavs. I often quote a poem by Dall'Ongaro, a fellow citizen of mine, which well underlines this moment: just refer to the title Se xe andai i anei non xe andai i dei. Meaning that you can lose wealth but not the ability to build. In this tenacity and continuity there is obviously above all the firmness of that core of essential values ​​enclosed in the firm and rock-solid Catholicism of Tommaseo, who certainly forgives everyone: those who have done so much harm to his fellow citizens, even those who wanted to break the plaque that commemorated him on his birthplace, even those who dynamited his great monument in Sebenico, even those who did not remember him on the two hundredth anniversary of his birth. But he also asks us not to forget because in forgetting we lose freedom and the nation, because the meaning of the nation is nothing but memory. Woe betide those who forget, because the community cannot live on hate, only love can continue what we are. Without forgetting the dead, without forgetting those present and above all leaving a legacy of glory for those who will come. Especially having had the honor of being born, or of having continuity in action, with those nations that had the destiny of being like a bridge – said Tommaseo -. This is Istria between Italy and Slavia. And such is the entire coast of the Adriatic Sea which, with less than half a million inhabitants, is destined to do great things. If the fearful arrogance of those who govern does not prohibit it." He had seen right… “Alas, he had seen right about the future, even in this fearful arrogance of what he calls contemporary depoliticization, which today rings sinisterly true.