Adriana Paolini: Writings from the Great War 1914-1919

This paper aims at illustrating ‘Writings from the Great War’, which is a project that I proposed and has been approved by the Foundation of the Historical Museum of Trentino (Italy), to emphasis a significant part of its collection of popular writings preserved at the Archive of Popular Writings (ASP: Archivio della Scrittura Popolare). The Archive collects and preserves manuscripts and texts of popular origin from the 18th to the 20th centuries, which on account of their private nature had no literary ambitions and were not meant for publishing. They were written by people with all kinds of backgrounds, following their own (communication) needs, compelled by their experiences, in family books as well as in diaries or letters.

As the person in charge of cataloguing the entire ASP collection since 2010, I have complied with specific rules as set out by the governmental office responsible for books and libraries in Italy, ICCU, using the online database of the National catalogue of manuscripts, Manusonline (http://manus.iccu.sbn.it//opac_SchedaBiblioteca.php?ID=242).

Specifically, the project being presented, which will be carried out during 2013-14, consists of the creation of a ’catalogue raisonné’ of all manuscripts preserved at the ASP dated between 1914 and 1919, which coincides with the events planned to mark the anniversary of the Great War.

Only a limited number of those manuscripts have been studied so far, or analysed especially in relation to the text type or content, or to the writer, that is, depending on the interests of the individual scholars. Aiming for a more comprehensive approach stemming from my privileged position as a cataloguer, I proposed a catalogue divided into sections dedicated to each type of material: diaries, letters, memoires, family books and so on, featuring samples of each type of writing, be it by a soldier or a refugee.

In my capacity as cataloguer of those materials, I have to describe them both as objects and as bearers of texts, which gives me the advantage of knowing them in depth. In fact, the idea of the project started from the need, and from the desire, to provide an instrument for scholars and teachers but also, and above all, for students, young people and for those who simply nurture an interest in history, not only to allow them to become aware of the important and interesting materials preserved at the ASP, but also to be equipped with the conceptual and cognitive tools to read and understand them.

This is where the answers to ‘natural’ questions such as 'Who wrote?', but also 'where?', 'what?’, 'on which material?', 'for which reasons/to what end?' but also to more complex ones regarding whether (or what) analogies and differences there may be among these manuscripts which may provide the starting point for further studies.

Therefore, each section of the catalogue will be introduced by a methodological introduction about the physical characteristics of the material and about the contents, followed by some suggestions for further research, and will be completed with a bibliography.

The main point of this work is to offer a way of gaining some insight into personal perspectives on particular historical moments. For example, reading and studying the diary of a soldier affords us a deeper understanding of the experience of people involved in fighting, which can be compared with official documents; conversely, if the soldier wrote during the long waits in the trenches or as a prisoner, or about customs and traditions of foreign people, describing also the lands he saw for the first time, we have a very special source of knowledge regarding the life conditions of other peoples. Additionally, by reading and studying his words and his writing, we can investigate his level of literacy and his language. Even more interestingly, in the ASP collection there are manuscripts connected with local history, but also with other parts of Europe, as here we have material of Italian and European origin, some written in German or Russian.

For these reasons, the enhancement of this wealth of materials may widen considerably the scope of research in fields ranging from social history, to political history or philology, as well as offer the opportunity to citizens to become aware of their own family histories or of the history of their city/cities. This is especially important if young people are to be involved in the preservation of historical memory, and even more so if they have contributed to the collection through donations of materials.

What may also be of interest is the way the ASP works. In fact, the ASP is also a research institute of historical and philological studies, like other institutes such as the ALSP, Archivio ligure della scrittura popolare, which is a research centre of the University of Genoa, and the Archivio diaristico nazionale, in Pieve S. Stefano, in Tuscany, whose main area of interest is diaries and memoires.

The special feature of the Archivio della Scrittura Popolare in Trento (Italy) is also the way in which it collects the material, which comes mostly from spontaneous donations or in response to periodic calls on the radio or in newspapers, inviting people to bring to the ASP manuscripts belonging to their families, so that they can be digitalized or preserved in the archive.

‘Writings form the Great War’ has therefore the manifold aims of attracting attention to its collections, of organizing part of its material in a coherent and consistent way , and of bringing to the fore materials that deserve wider scholarly attention.