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Carlo and Giani Stuparich Book Fund
Bibliographic material from the book collections of the brothers Carlo and Giani Stuparich.
1. Location, history and education
Kept in the General Library's storerooms in the central building of Piazzale Europa at the University of Trieste, the Fund collects most of the volumes that belonged to Carlo and Giani Stuparich and also includes some later material dealing with their artistic production and life. Thanks to the family, it came to the Library in the years following Giani's death (1961). In the inventory lists of the General Library there are records from 4 January 1966 onwards that continue with regularity until 20 February 1968, all with the generic provenance note 'Stuparich'. In the years following the acquisition of the Fund (1976-1993), 23 titles by and about Carlo and Giani Stuparich were added with various provenance notes.
2. Consistency and characteristics
The Fund covers 73 linear metres and consists of 3133 inventories including 268 miscellaneous issues, 200 periodical titles and 94 titles from factual collections. There are 75 inventories referring to old books (i.e. published until 1830), with 2 Cinquecentine and 5 works from the 18th century. The shelfmark is 'FSt.' followed by the indication of the Section (first to tenth) or the abbreviations Misc. (Miscellaneous) and Per. (Periodicals).
3. Contents
Based on the year of publication - which is assumed to be indicative for estimating the period of acquisition of works in the Stuparich Library - the Fund can be divided into 2 blocks, significant in content and comparable in number. The watershed is the year 1918, the end of the First World War, always indicated by Giani in his writings as a decisive "before" and "after" of his life. In the first, pre-war block, there was a total of 1268 titles of which 689 were in Italian, 417 in German, 107 in French, 21 in Greek, 20 in Latin, 6 in Czech, 5 in English and 3 in Spanish. In the second, identified in the years from 1919 to 1961 (year of Giani's death) there are 1820 titles, of which 1703 are in Italian, 42 in German, 41 in French, 14 in Latin, 10 in Czech, 5 in English, 4 in Greek and 1 in Spanish. The bibliographical material thus divided reflects first the formative and enthusiastic years of the two brothers, then, after the war, of Giani alone, the years of teaching, reflection and literary production. In the first part - just to mention a few authors - we find classics of Italian literature (Alighieri, Ariosto, Goldoni, Leopardi, Alfieri, Carducci, Pascoli, D'Annunzio ... ), German (Goethe, Klopstock, Kleist - whose epistolary the Stuparich brothers, under the pseudonym Giancarlo, will edit in 1919 - Hoffmann, Hebbel, Heine, Keller, Herder ...), French (Hugo, Balzac, Baudelaire, Moliere, Zola, Stendhal, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Claudel ...) together with materials of their spiritual formation, the foundation of their future political orientations and reflections on the formation of the national consciousness of peoples (Mazzini, Croce, Gentile, Prezzolini, Timeus, the programmes of the Austrian Social Democratic Party, the publications of the National League, the Czech dictionary, a guide to Prague ... it is recalled, in this regard, that the first edition of Giani's The Czech Nation dates from 1915). In the second block, books and periodicals testify to the consolidation of Giani's self-consciousness as an artist, his wide-ranging interests in a literary world of which he was an active part, and his concern to defend a genuine memory of the spirit with which his generation (his brother Carlo and his friend Scipio Slataper in primis) faced the interventionist choice and recognised its tragic consequences; a memory that had to be defended against the ever-increasing instrumentalisation of the fascist regime. After World War II, one finds books and articles that reflect, beyond literary passion, a constant concern for Trieste and Istria once again divided from Italy, occupied by a foreign administration and seriously threatened in their territorial integrity.
4. Enhancing the collection
The collection, already catalogued on cards in the years following its admission to the Library, has recently been retrieved from the online catalogue within the National Library Service (SBN) of which the University is a member. New registrations have been created for old books, while those for periodicals, miscellanies and factual collections are in progress. The collection is searchable using the filter functions of the advanced catalogue search.
5. Significant examples
Dino Campana's Canti orfici in their first edition (Marradi, Tipografia F. Ravagli, 1914 - Segnatura FSt./10./B/12) cited by Giani Stuparich in Trieste nei miei ricordi (Milano, Garzanti, 1948, p. 179). Numerous autographed copies with indications of ownership, dedications, dates, references. For example, the very copy of "Trieste nei miei ricordi" in the Fund (Signature FSt./10./D/43) bears a conspicuous indication of ownership: "Mio - luglio 1948" (the year of the first edition), with, on the same page, an autograph note by Giani intended to amend his own writing. Interesting are the journal issues with the index underlined in red pencil (by Giani?) in correspondence with his contribution, sometimes extracted and missing in the issue itself.
6. Essential bibliography
Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Vol. 94, Rome, Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 2019
Entry Stuparich, Carlo by Cristina Benussi. Also available online: https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/carlo-stuparich_(Dictionary-Biographical)/
Voice Stuparich, Giani by Cristina Benussi. Also available online:
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giani-stuparich_(Dictionary-Biographical)/
Stuparich, Carlo, Things and Shadows of One. Preface by Giani Stuparich. Introduction to the reprint by Enrico Nistri. Empoli, Ibiskos editrice Risolo, 2006 [with bibliography by and about Carlo Stuparich].
Stuparich, Giani, Trieste in my memories. Milan, Garzanti, 1948
Stuparich, Giani, Il ritorno del padre. Racconti scelti da P. A. Quarantotti Gambini, Turin, Einaudi, 1961
Stuparich, Giani, Un porto tra mille e mille. Scritti politici e civili di Giani Stuparich nel secondo dopoguerra edited by Patrick Karlsen, Trieste, EUT, 2012 [also online http://hdl.handle.net/10077/11142].