Edmondo de Amicis
Cuore

In the first decades of unified Italy, literary production allowed the narrative strand for children to mature and flourish. Alongside great and timeless classics like Collodi's Pinocchio or Salgari's Tigers of Mompracem, two novel-diaries emerged, destined for perpetual inclusion in primary and secondary school anthologies and textbooks: Vamba's Il Giornalino di Gian Burrasca and Cuore by De Amicis. Both works provide a good overview of the Italian bourgeois world post-unification, particularly the youth component, analyzing (albeit in a dichotomous and dialectical manner) the values, ethics, virtues, passions, joys, sorrows, and traumas of that "better youth" not yet tainted by various contemporary poisons. This very dichotomy of childish behaviors presented in the two diaries is quite clear: on one side we have Giovanni Stoppani, the stereotype of a rascal, an "anti-conformist" ahead of his time, a troublemaker and clumsy in causing misfortunes and disasters in an attempt to inject life into a boring and apathetic high-bourgeois existence, while on the other side Enrico Bottini and his classmates best personify the condition of a pious, virtuous, rigorous, and respectful child, deeply devoted to the Fatherland, its ideals, and its Founding Fathers. This recurring theme defines the work Cuore as a kind of "deontological code" of the perfect Italian, the best educational tool for the offspring of a Kingdom still immersed in differences, divisions, and not only economic separations.

The plot of Cuore is a balanced and rational mix of reflections, daily accounts, life lessons, exemplary episodes, stories, fables, narratives, and letters: in late 19th century Turin - more broadly in the surrounding area of the Piedmontese capital - third-grade student Enrico Bottini narrates his life as a neo-Italian child, invited by a (inexplicably) solidaristic and benevolent society to learn the noble virtues of the Italian State and its Founding Fathers. In reality, the protagonist is solely a narrator and not a true primus super partes master of sacred ideals. This role is assigned to a decent bunch of characters "more virtuous" than others (classmates DeRossi and Garrone, teacher Perboni, family, and the mentioned Founding Fathers - Mazzini, Garibaldi, Vittorio Emanuele II, Cavour) contrasted with few examples of negligence and wickedness (students Franti and De Nobis). Throughout the novel, there is the dialectic of good-bad, devout-faithless, respectful-negligent, well-behaved-delinquent, with bearers of "negative" qualities representing a minimal social percentage, an entirely insignificant yet fundamental immaterial ghetto to understand values and rules. And so Turin transforms into a sort of urban-social "locus amenus," where harmony and balance reign, and patriotic virtues are cultivated, where wickedness and illegality are terribly scarce and silently outlawed and hidden in the shadows, the metropolis where true "Italianity" is founded and transmitted without delay and without corruption to the offspring.

And life lessons from the teacher and the most diligent students, almost co-instructors, the letters from the mother, father, and sisters inserted in the diary, and the recurring episodes of kindness and solidarity in the city are not enough: the core of De Amicis's socio-cultural "didactics" are the stories that Enrico includes monthly in his personal volume, almost as an "exemplary" summary of what he has learned. Therefore, the moving adventures of young Marco searching for his mother in Argentina in the renowned Dagli Appennini alle Ande, the audacity and courage of Il Tamburino Sardo and La Piccola Vedetta Lombarda, the son who sacrifices sleep and study to help his father in trouble in Il Piccolo Scrivano Fiorentino, and the young patriot who refuses money offered by those who insulted Italy in Il Piccolo Patriota Padovano stand out. Youngsters from every region of Italy who, with their emblematic faith in the Tricolor, unite, albeit on the pages of a book, a myriad of people divided and separated for centuries.

In this 2011 of ceremonies, parades, commemorations, but also celebrations, revelries, and greetings, the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy was welcomed in all the squares of the beautiful country, presented with long and exhausting expositions of pseudo-historical-moralizing speeches that only made people yawn and bore, particularly a youth far removed from the ideals of the Fatherland (except during the Mundial). It may seem anachronistic, but a quick read-through of a work like Cuore would have avoided the waste of books, brochures, and various papers and spared speakers and teachers from the tedious task of instructing students who are far more interested in participating in the new auditions of Il Grande Fratello.