"It's alive!! It's alive!!"

I may well be like Dr. Frankenstein right now... At last "Il Guardiano dei Sogni. Le Avventure di Randolph Carter" saw the light! And, they tell me, it looks good, it's in perfect shape and ready to conquer Italian bookstores!

Unfortunately I can not see it for a while, since I'm in Helsinki now and it'll take a few days to make the copies reach me here in the cold waste. But I can wait... And by the time, on March 12 the Italian national Radio1 broadcasted an interview of mine about HPL. And during the night between March 14 and March 15, an American-style radio reading of the whole book will be delivered on Radio3! Several Italian writers and critics will read the book during the night, and of course in my translation... The event will conclude at 6 a.m. of March 15, as a perfect celebration of a quite sad moment. But hey, this is no time for sadness: long life to you, Grandpa Theobald, I hope you enjoy the work I did for you and you may like this editorial effort we Italians did in your.. lasting memory!

Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fthagn!

The New Year has started, and at least it has brought some clarification concerning my immediate future. I'll move to Finland, if all stays this way, on February 21 or 22 - in time for taking the exam in Contemporary History in Turin on the 13th, to re-activate my car just for a few days (14-21), and to let myself have some days to acquaint myself in Helsinki once again before my lectures start on March 16th. Some work is still left, however, before preparing to leave.
2007 has begun in a sunny way, though temperatures are quite low - but the two things are, of course, connected. They tell me in Finland it's being the warmest winter since ages - in Helsinki no snow at all and temperatures always above 0 in daytime. It's preparing for the snowstorms of the end of February... ;-)
2006 ended with the dramatic news of Hussein's execution - it could have been a more pleasant way to end. Overall, last year was quite unstable in my life: many different scenarios, not a single one very fixed and lasting. What do I ask to 2007? Nothing particular or different than usual: after all, the passage from December 31 to January 1 is purely a calendar-fact, and the starting of a new year a convention. Sometimes I'm really tempted to endorse the way of behaving they had in Alice in Wonderland: they celebrated the non-birthday, and I'd really like to do the same with the non-beginning of the new year. Life'd be much more fun.

Cool, I've finished writing the lectures for the course on Interpretative Semiotics I'll teach in Helsinki from March.. Nice news, uh?
What's new? Working-working-working, letting time go by and not hearing too much any siren.
Happy New Year to everybody!

I'm proud to have ended my first "book" proper, the new edition and translation of Randolph Carter cycle for Bompiani Paperbacks.. It'll be out in March 2007 in Italy, also to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of HPL's death. The book will receive a radio reading by the national Italian radio (RAI) just on March 15 night!! What could be most celebrative?
It's been a nice and demanding enterprise.. I realised the translation, the notes, the bibliography and the Dictionary of Lovecraftian oneiric feats (places, characters, creatures, deities, etc.). This book, "Il Guardiano dei Sogni" ("The Guardian of Dreams") will be, to my knowledge, the first edition (and by a major publisher) of Lovecraft's literature (of of Lovecraft's works to be annotated in Italian). I hope this will help make Lovecraft schiolarship re-flourish in Italy too.. Italian literary criticism definitely needs to re-discover mr. Lovecraft.
It was an infinite pleasure to see on bookshops' shelves the Einaudi edition of Prof. Lanati's translation of Emily Dickinson's letters. It's flattering for me to be able to say that Mrs. Lanati has been my own instructor in translation courses and seminars - besides my own opponent for my graduation thesis. Perhaps one day, when Lovecraft will reach Dickinson's fame also in Italy, who knows, my work on him will be evaluated as no less worthy than Lanati's.
Dreaming... Better, in US academic world Lovecraft is studied, by now, to the same extent as Dickinson. In Italy situation is still much more traditional, but no doubt things will change sooner or later.
Now more commitments are at hand. FIFO, they said (first in, first out). I'll end today a new translation, that of "Nyarlathotep", for an Italian mystery magazine. A short editing is also necessary. And then will throw my energies onto the final writing of the Barlow monograph, and the preparation of the lectures on Interpretative Semiotics that I will hold at the University of Helsinki starting from March. I'm increasingly missing Finland, and will certainly feel bad not passing XMas in Santa Claus's homecountry.. as it was last year. From February I'll be back in Hyperborea, trusting a warm Spring is approaching.
Missing R.E.M.'s new releases.. what u doin', guys? Resting still?

My relationship with Finland is certainly important to me. Finland is the homecountry of too many things that have now become permanent parts of my life: the forests, the lakes, the (frozen) sea, the snows, the incredible sunsets and the refreshing dawns. Summer in Finland is the best possible choice I could ever think for a holiday. But above all the people, with their apparent shyness hiding a complex, reflexive and seething inner world - the kindness and honesty of men and women, their restrained smile concealing a deep-rooted sense of hospitality and the pride for their Suomi, the country of a thousand lakes. In Finland I feel at home, because this is much more than "the country of thousand lakes".

At last I've decided.. I shall use English for this blog - shan't tell the deep philosophical and hermeneutic reasons for this choice, but anyway English affords much more potential readers than Italian (for the moment eh eh).
Today is a very depressing day - rainy clouds thicking the sky and quite cold temperature. I'm again in the atmospheric mood to head back to Finland. Only that, for now, since no houses are available from HOAS at the moment and my friend Ramunas - my prospective flatmate - is quite angry. I am not, since anyway there is still so much left to do here in Torino.
My book on Bobby Barlow's "Eyes of the God" is proceeding pretty well. Probably it will take more pages than those allowed, so I will soon be committed to some cutting. What a painful and unpleasant job.. I've always felt like amputating some part of myself. After all, when you write much, putting all your thoughts and reflections in a work of yours, to be forced to cut away parts is an undeserved bloody process. Anyway.. the American publisher wants no more than 220 pages, and I'm already over that - with two key points (as "Cosmicism" and "Time") still left out.. Don't know if Bobby Barlow truly was my alter-ego (Benjamin believes so, but about himself.. what's sure, is that his fiction is truly challenging, his bleak (suicidal?) views on life certainly appealing. Well, don't mind if the book looks too much an insight of myself and less of the writer in question.. It was his literature to originate these reflections, so hail to Mr. Barlow.
Lately the Roman editor of the book of Randolph Carter's adventures called me, saying that Bompiani gave the OKs and the book will be titled "Il Guardiano del Sogno" ("The Guardian of Dreams. The Adventures of R.C."). Great title, well done. The translation of "Kadath" is at a good point, and must say I did not remember such picaresque richness in the saga. Not bad, after all: I'm enjoying Lovecraft's work much - though I know he did not, and can understand why. After all, these adventures must have sound a bit childish to him, even if the backing cosmicism is awesome. In the end, what's wrong in reading or writing for (almost) pure fun?
That's it. Yesterday Juventus won the first match in B series of her entire history. What a fatigue! The opposite team, Vicenza, deserved to tie the score. Anyway, it ended 2-1 for Juve. The only good (and nostalgic) thing of the match was that the old and glorious black-and-white striped shirts reappeared in the even more glorious "Stadio Comunale" (Town Stadium), now re-baptised "Stadio Olimpico" because it hosted the inaugural ceremonies of recent Torino Winter Olympic Games. How many memories, for us juventinos, linked with that stadium..
So far, so good....

Forse la prima cosa che dovrei chiedermi, in questo primo post del mio primo blog, è: perchè l'ho fatto?
Poi, in un ordine variamente sparso:
in che lingua dovrei scriverlo?
che differenza c'è rispetto a tenere un diario? (nb: io non ho mai tenuto diari)
iniziare a scrivere un blog l'11 settembre ha un significato particolare?
cosa farò nei prossimi 10 anni?
cosa farò stasera?
Le domande sono tante... le risposte per ora nessuna. Forse è meglio lasciare che si rispondano DA SOLE. Bello scrivere il SOLE in verde..
Torno a Bobby Barlow, e a vedere come si è visualizzato questo capolavoro di post.