Vamba
Il Giornalino di Gian Burrasca

Pedagogy is a noble art that, despite a presumed recent origin, has been cultivated by humans for millennia: since time immemorial, adults have sought to study their offspring socio-psycho-anthropologically, analyzing behavior, disposition, affinities, aptitudes, education, and mind. Even during the Roman Empire, an era of despotism, terrible paternalism, stark social distinctions, and rigid rules, an author like Quintilian attempted to provide a rudimentary volume of pedagogy, moreover, proving to be anachronistically "gentle" in proposing a pater - filius relationship and in offering avant-garde education and learning models (not just school-related).

Leaving aside the more contemporary and functional school of nineteenth-twentieth-century and modern pedagogy, anyone who has leafed through the pages of Il Giornalino di Gian Burrasca, the undisputed protagonist of anthology readings during (former) elementary and middle schools, can claim to have glimpsed in the (mis)adventures of Giovanni Stoppani a "post-modern" style "resurgence" against the archaic family hierarchical and pseudo-military model, a sort of youthful reaction against the authoritative father figure, the affluent high-bourgeois family with the head of the family always ready to administer slaps and lashings, as well as a first, significant form of unconscious rebellion, subtle, subconscious, unpremeditated, by the young scamp who rarely embraces petty conservative conventionalism, replacing it with the frivolity (here overly exacerbated) of a boy naturally predisposed to trouble and disasters.

This famous diary is narrated in the first person by Giovannino himself, the youngest member of a high-ranking Florentine family who receives from his mother a "diary" on his ninth birthday, a bound notebook in which to record his memoirs. From that moment, the diary becomes the closest travel companion of little Stoppani, a "locus amenus" of paper where the turbulent existence of a late nineteenth-century "Pierino" is narrated in detail, the only friend providing comfort to post-disaster sadness without the father's aggressive severity.

Though at the beginning Giannino does not know how to fill the blank pages of his diary (showing remarkable illustrator qualities and stealing ideas from his sister Ada's analogous secret volume), as soon as the "misfortunes" (a term the protagonist uses to describe his troubles) begin to take shape, the boy becomes accustomed to regular accounts of his days, anything but peaceful and anonymous. The disasters he provokes come to involve even the marriage of his sister Luisa with Dr. Collalto (attaching a series of fireworks to the groom's tailcoat and setting them off) and of his other sister Virginia with lawyer Maralli (shooting at him in an attempt to extinguish a flame or burying him alive under the chimney rubble that exploded due to the aforementioned fireworks hidden in the hood). Kicks, slaps, punishments, and the beatings inflicted by the father are of no use, penalties that indeed drive him to escape his room (memorably fleeing to the countryside to Aunt Bettina). The only remedy is then boarding school, a solution the family must resort to after the son ruins the Christmas celebrations in Rome with sister Luisa and wears out the patience of brother-in-law Maralli, who ineffectively tried to placate the father-in-law's ire and act as a temporary educator to the child. Taken to the "Pierpaoli" reform school, Gian Burrasca cannot stomach the place's austerity nor the institute managers' brusque ways, Mrs. Gertrude and her husband Mr. Stanislao, and is drawn into a "secret society" that intends to oppose the abuses suffered (particularly the administration of soup made from the rinsing of dirty dishes). In a few weeks, the boy's exuberance mixed with the cunning and ingenuity of older companions manages to overturn the school order, causing escapes and disasters that force the managers to send Giannino back home, who then attempts to rebuild his reputation and repay the damages to the family and brother-in-law Maralli, ultimately failing and falling into a chasm of final punishment and a dark future not specified by the author.

It's nice, after more than ten years from a purely scholastic read, to stumble upon a work perhaps not on par with the highest peaks of our national literature, yet so important for understanding the internal chaos of the child: Gian Burrasca is contrasted with the concept of the child as an "empty vessel" to be filled with exclusively positive and meritorious elements, and instead, a small subject already exposed to emotions, feelings, cognition, and reflections is proposed. Thus, Vamba goes on to erase, albeit with a sort of Collodi-esque narrative, classical pedagogy, archaic behavioralism, and the outdated authoritarian father-submissive son relationship. And looking at the current situation, made of adolescent killers and prematurely lost kids, a Gian Burrasca would even be a gift from the heavens, a blessing to be received with great praise.