Riccardo Marchi

Riccardo Marchi (1897–1992) is truly a forgotten character in the Italian literary panorama, searching online you can find very little about him. Yet, Riccardo Marchi has been compared by critics to Tozzi, Verga and Capuana, for the realism of the description and for his being a scholar of Livorno folklore and traditions.

Telegraphist in the First World War, he successfully managed his father’s soap factory, carrying on, at the same time, the activity of journalist, writer and political activist. In 1921 he participated in the socialist convention which saw the birth of the communist party.

In addition to verses and numerous novels, many of which are reminiscent and generically autobiographical, he also achieved some success as the author of radio plays and radio fairy tales. He became a member, together with Corrado Alvaro, of an authoritative commission of the E.I.A.R. After World War II he devoted himself to news and film criticism for “IL Telegrafo” and “Il Tirreno”.

At the end of the sixties he retired to private life in Livorno, devoting himself exclusively to writing. He died in 1992.

His best known novels are: “Equestrian Circus”, “The Lost one of Lugh” but, above all, “Via Eugenia, 1900”, where he recalls the life of his family, the soap factory, the figure of Uncle Tide, a gentleman of other times .

“A gentleman! Go and look for him nowadays. Was it Uncle Tide? He certainly was.

The topic necessarily brings me back to the memory of him, of uncle Tide, abbreviation of Aristide, my mother’s brother, an example of galantomism that is not free or cheap, indeed paid dearly.

What was he like physically? A handsome man with a brown face as if carved out of the bark of an old tree. Of gruff appearance; actually good-natured,this revealed by an infrequent smile that, lightening him, animated him along with his gaze, the ruffled bushes of the whiskers and the mustache. “

Marchi had “the stroke of the engraver”, as stated in the preface by the Nuova Fortezza publishing house, and knew how to render the streets of Livorno with liveliness:

“And how was the path of childhood?

More or less like today, more dignified, more Eugenia, by a civic magistrate Eugenio. Then, despite the soap factory and the neighboring foundry at the end of that stretch of road, despite some manure and two or three artisan shops and a modest wineshop, in the sixteen buildings that compose it, including two manor houses, via Eugenia housed with noble dignity employees, artisans and free entrepreneurs like us.

Now it is unkempt, decayed, with peeling walls and flowering with weeds, pockmarked by wars; but in the days of Uncle Tide, how it rattled! Of clothes in the sun, of voices attesting to a warm vitality; even of wealth.

The singing of the street vendors enlivened it from dawn to dusk : the herb shops, the “arsellaio”, the fish and chicken vendor, the umbrella maker, the knife grinder, the coppersmith of Prato, a “cenciaio” and so on. Polyphony which, to tickle the good heart, were joined by the spiel of the accordions. Tide gave them alms for a penny as long as they went elsewhere to annoy people with “The virgin of the angels” or “The woman is mobile”. Maybe they would come back with the new repertoire and the tuned instrument. “

Via Eugenia 1900 is a window on our past, on Livorno just out of the Risorgimento. We are reminded of the hidden corner of the Lupi cemetery with the cracked and wild Garibaldian tombs, and it is natural to associate them — and compare them — with certain descriptions by Marchi:

“Ah, strong, beautiful and ferocious times! I still remember them for the processions, rites of the people who feed on them, like bread. The funeral of the Garibaldians in which I attended held by the hand by my uncle. Great display of flags and red shirts; crowd of severe men in black, like the uncle: all of them with an acacia twig in their buttonhole. “