Stories on the water’s surface, between the plain and the lagoon
di Federico Moro, Edizioni Helvetia (Spinea) ISBN 88-88075-35-6
(short stories)
The Centrega marsh is a physical place; circumscribed by the canals of Burano, of the “Dolce” and of the “Gaggian di San Lorenzo”; it occupies that portion of the north lagoon towards which those who abandoned the mainland cities of Altino and Oderzo fled, between the 5th and 6th centuries. The Centrega today is an area of marshland where mud and reeds dominate the landscape. Yet it was here that the centres of Costanziaca, Ammiana and Centranica arose, that is to say some of the original nuclei of the new Venice. For this reason, the Centrega does not merely represent a topographical landmark, but holds a special place in the Venetian imagination.
The initial idea is that water possesses a kind of memory capable of speaking to the generations. Nine stories are born in this way, chronologically distributed over fifteen centuries, and told by the two main characters in a small lagoon boat. They are Antonio, a friar from the monastery of San Francesco del Deserto, and Carlo, a fisherman from Burano. They find themselves in the Centrega Marsh during the morto d’acqua (dead water) at low tide, a perfect time for talk.
Stories on the water’s surface is a book about the importance of memory, its capacity to help us understand the present, the existence of fundamental values for the individual and for the community, but also about the coexistence in each of us of two unavoidable but conflicting aspects of the personality:contemplation and, delicately opposed to this,action as a moral imperative for man. A dilemma which in these water lands assumes existential dimensions.
The short story form was chosen to mark the passage of time, emphasising the stations that have distinguished the birth and fortunes of Venice seen as a paradigm of the human adventure.
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The Voice of the Goddess, the adventure of the Ancient Veneti
by Federico Moro, Edizioni Helvetia (Spinea) ISBN 88-88075-22-4
(novel)
The starting-point was a piece of information provided by Livy. The Paduan historian relates in the tenth volume of his History of a raid perpetrated by Greek and Gallic mercenaries against the Veneti. The incident is not confirmed by other sources or archaeological evidence, but nevertheless plays a part in the cultural context which, during the princedom of Ottaviano Augustus, attempted to confirm the theory of the derivation of Rome from Troy after its destruction by the Achei. Amongst the Veneti, this produced the legend of the landing at the mouth of the Brenta, Meduaco at the time, of the fugitive Antenore and of the Enetoi of Paflagonia. This was a myth strong enough to resist for centuries and it recurs in the humanistic Padua of Marsilio Ficino.
In The Voice of the Goddess this body of legends is linked with the historical fact of the presence on the Plain first of the Euganei, and then of the Reti and Veneti, who were united by the cult of a mysterious maternal Goddess: Pora for the Euganei, who becomes Reitia for the Veneti. The principal sanctuary to this divinity was to be found at Ateste on the banks of the river Atesis, now the Adige. The novel delves into this remote past, reconstructing it, where possible, with probityand loyalty. Above all, it attempts to participate in the myth, becoming itself part of the epos, so as to remind us of the fundamental importance not only of conscience, but also of its appreciation. The assumption is that the importance of the History lies in its capacity to conserve and transmit the universal.
The Voice of the Goddess appears to be therefore a novel about intangible values, those that are not open to negotiation or to concessions, such as liberty, justice, necessity for action, fundamental to the identity of an individual (I am, I am worthy, I desire) and of a community. Memory in this case is never nostalgia, but the quest for and conservation and transmission of such values on the basis of two key assumptions: that greater than any obstacle or fear is the courage of the individual and to be strong does not mean not falling, but getting up again. This is what The Voice of the Goddess aims for, while attempting to achieve fluidity of style and respecting the rhythms of an action-packed story.
Worthy of note, finally, regarding the book’s setting, is the appearance of the landscape, recreated from available information of the period, but with the intention of making it indeed a character of the story.
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Women for Auction, Venetian intrigues
by Federico Moro, Supernova Edizioni srl, ISBN 88-88548-03-3
(novel)
A series of mysterious disappearances of young women, the sudden change of fortune of a bankrupt television company, the ambition of a journalist in search of professional success, the bitter disillusionment of someone who has become an outcast without realizing it…………. against a background of dramatic changes, formidable accumulation of wealth, but also of the uncertainties and doubts produced by the achievement of great results. This is the stuff of Women for Auction, Venetian Intrigues, a novel constructed to reflect the events of recent years with the intent to offer a portrait of the most dynamic area of contemporary Italy: the North East.
The book confronts, without rhetoric, the positive and negative aspects of the Italian “Miracle”, following the thread of a poetics centred on the search for Intangible Values, that is to say principles not open to negotiation at the basis of the identity of the individual and of society. Their conservation and transmission is seen to be of vital importance, especially in the light of knowledge interpreted as culture likely to become a style of life. Memory, therefore, not as the place of nostalgia for the hypothetical, but as the chosen seat of the intangible values.
All this occurs, however, inside the plot of an action-packed story, rich in characters and “coups de théậtre”, where the events and the individuals interact according to a plan which leads the reader to the unpredictable ending
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Gold and Silver- Venice “noir”
Latitude as destiny: the Ferialdis are destined to be unable to forget Italy; there’s no escaping one’s responsibilities.
In today’s Venice, point of encounter and conflict between different people and different cultures, Bruna Ferialdi’s return is not a free choice. The reasons determining it lie in the past, although their explanation is to be found in a dramatic present.
A detective/suspense novel/thriller that highlights the eternal ambiguity of human behaviour against the background of the new realities at war with each other, an action-packed novel, in which all facts are rigorously documented: as indeed are those which at first sight seem most irrational. Taken from actual news items and developed in accordance with the sequences determined by the narrative, the events of “Gold and Silver” are presented to the reader with all the immediacy of true stories.
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The Custodian of Secrets, the epic period of the ancient Veneti
Novel, Helvetia Publications (ISBN 88-88075-43-7)
A day like any other at Lagole, a small city in the Veneto high in the valley of the River Plavis ( Piave). Or so it should have been………….. because, on the road that leads to the alpine passes, a massacre occurs. Twenty-two men are murdered and a cart of goods stolen on its way to the Adriatic port of Altinium (Altino).
What was the cart carrying? Why does the spiritual and temporal leader of Lagole, the Great Priest Pedeo, immediately take severe measures? What are the secrets of the Ancient Veneti?
It will be the lot of a young Roman, Lucio Decio Mure, son of the Consul Publio, newly arrived in Lagole, to discover what lies behind the chain of events triggered by the struggle for supremacy in Italy between Etruscans, Samniti, Celts and Umbrians on the one hand and Romans and the Veneti on the other.
But it is no longer time for diplomatic manoeuvres, this is from now on a military struggle and any means to obtain victory becomes acceptable. And betrayal is a part of this war without limits.
A detective thriller with a political background, set at the end of the third century B.C., where narrative invention combines with a rigorous historical basis… also in those parts, as in the reconstruction of the city-archipelago ofAltinium, the progenitress of Venice, where the author’s imagination does its work with the availablearchaeological data. But it is above all a novel dealing with ethical values in which the search for liberty and justice is inextricably linked with courage, cowardice, love and friendship in the context of human action. Action which is necessary always but inevitably ambiguous, because subject to compromise.
The Custodian of Secrets, lastly, represents the perfect sequel to the author’s first novel, also set amongst the Ancient Veneti, The Voice of the Goddess, many of whose characters are to return here. |
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Venice at War, the great battles of the Serenissima
by Federico Moro, Mazzanti Editori (Venice) ISBN 978-88-88114-79-8
To survive, you must be determined to die” (Wei Liao Tzu)
That Venice is a republic founded on war is the thesis of this book, in which the author has attempted to combine the rigour of historical documentation with the fluency of a narrative as capable of arresting the reader’s attention as a novel. The history of the Serenissimahas often assumed epic tones and presented us with characters worthy of fiction. But with one significant difference: hers is a story written in blood. Witness to this are the battlefields, on land and at sea, where the armies and naval fleets of the Republic confronted every type of adversary in the course of the centuries. Sometimes emerging the victors, on other occasions paying for errors and the superiority of the foe with ignominious defeats. Courage and cowardice, audacity and fear, intelligence and stupidity, ambiguity and betrayal, as always in war, have accompanied those fighting under the banner of San Marco, forging the essential characteristics of the Serenissima, and subsequently proving to be decisive in the unfolding of political, social, economic and cultural events.
Venice at War explicitly argues that Venice, city and state, was born fighting and has never hesitated, except at the end, to use force whenever this was considered necessary, opportune, expedient: she used armed resistance against those who tried to subjugate her and built an empire in attack. And without hypocrisy, the book claims her right to do so. Because this is the ecology of the state-form.
An essay with no room for the myth of a gay and licentious Venice, dedicated only to pleasure and desirous of peace, created by a great deal of publicity, a book unafraid to penetrate the most obscure corners of the true story of the Serenissima.
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