The Screenplay of Memory and Heart: Tonino Guerra’s La Pioggia Tiepida. A Journey from Russia to Italy.

The article is dedicated to Tonino Guerra on his death date anniversary. Guerra’s creative work as a screenwriter and as a poet made him famous for the particular poetic representation of old and modern existential themes able to connect worlds apparently distant in time and space. In the novel «La pioggia tiepida» (The tepid rain) this peculiar attitude of Guerra becomes evident in his personal way of writing that makes the novel a confession of the writer’s thoughts about life to the point of breaking up the conventions of narrative fiction. The narration unfolds on two levels, as if the plot followed a double track. Along the first track there is the lyrical description of a journey between Leningrad and Georgia; along the second one the magical tepid Caucasian rain causes a writer’s vision that becomes wider and wider until it identifies with the figure of a Russian General who fought against Napoleon. The visionary story of this General is narrated in the novel with plenty of direct references to Russian history and literature. All along his Georgian journey the writer meets the ghosts of some of the main Russian poets and writers like Pushkin, Lermontov and Mayakovski and the journey through space slowly becomes a journey through time, a quest for a mythical past represented by the ancient mysterious wooden cathedrals where the monk Nikolayev, former general Rosati, lived. By Retracing Guerra’s real and imaginary travels through Russia and Georgia, following the enchanted strength of the tepid rain, this article intends to focus on the lyrical reading of the world that the poet Tonino Guerra showed even in his prose, thus associating his poetic vision of the world to that of poets like Mandelstam and Pasternak.