Ezio Raimondi: a virtual exhibition dedicated to one of the greatest Italianists of the 20th Century

The virtual exhibition “Ezio Raimondi: la biblioteca infinita" (Ezio Raimondi: the infinite library), curated by Professor Marco Antonio Bazzocchi, doctor Luca Di Nardo and Alberto Di Franco, aims at retracing the milestones of Ezio Raimondi’s path to education and intellectual affirmation through a selection of materials (books, letters, papers of written notes, mimeographs of university courses) stored in the library of the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies – FICLIT of the University of Bologna, which is dedicated to him.

The exhibition makes immediately accessible Ezio Raimondi’s extensive and multifaceted career. This journey is preserved in 60,000 volumes, of which 26,000 have been catalogued. In addition, the collection includes postcards, newspaper clippings, letters, up to the extremely valuable ‘enclosures’— sheets of paper on which Raimondi took notes relating to the books he was studying at the time.

Lucia deceived by Gertrude (section "Un «susurro» eretico: Manzoni senza idillio - I Promessi sposi: le parole e le immagini" [A "Heretical" Whisper: Manzoni Without Idyll - The Betrothed: Words and Images])

Seven display boards-sections exhibit digital reproductions arranged by FICLIT’s Laboratorio Analogico Digitale (AdLab). These display essential materials to understand the journey of this student, scholar, professor, critic and reader who became a reference figure for the humanistic culture. Each section is dedicated either to a fundamental and crucial step of Raimondi’s path, as the one called “Ezio Raimondi: gli anni della formazione universitaria” (Ezio Raimondi: his academic education years), or to a study of proven relevance, such as the one titled “Un «susurro» eretico: Manzoni senza idillio” (A "Heretical" Whisper: Manzoni Without Idyll).

The first part of the exhibition retraces the studies on Codro and Humanism in Bologna, Tasso, up to the Baroque and the 17th Century – all the authors and studies that have framed Raimondi’s method, between philology and critics. In a second group of sections, fundamental studies on Manzoni are presented on one side, while on the other, there are in-depth analyses of 'contemporary' figures, highlighting Raimondi's reflections on the works of Renato Serra, Carlo Emilio Gadda, and Roberto Longhi, under whom he studied. The last section “Anomalie di un lettore” (Anomalies of a reader) is about a selection of Raimondi’s founding books (e.g. writings by Febvre, Curtius and Bachtin), while a reasoned chronology closes the tour.

Adopting a ‘genealogic’ criterion, the exhibition reproduces the origin, development and result of every single study carried out by Ezio Raimondi. In addition, it also accounts for the academic circumstances that brought to his intellectual affirmation, among which the appointment at the Accademia della Crusca, which led to the critical edition of Tasso’s ‘Dialoghi’ (Dialogues).

When possible, the documentary constellation witnessed in the sections of the exhibition also makes use of letters containing testimonies retrieved by the curators. This offers an in-depth and appropriate understanding of the individual study conducted at a particular time.

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