The event “A. M. Ripellino seen through the eyes of young scholars” was held on the 15th of December 2023 at the Sapienza University of Rome, thanks to the collaboration of the doctoral students of the international program Germanic and Slavic Studies and the coordination of Emilio Mari. It was conceived as an occasion to reflect on the scholar’s legacy and his relevance to the youngest generation of scholars. Adhering to a dialogical approach, the day was divided into two round tables.
The first roundtable, “Legacy and Canon”, featured four speeches. Luca Veronesi presented Ripellino’s essays dedicated to Gavriil Derzhavin, emphasising the anomaly of the scholar’s interest in an author belonging to eighteenth-century Russian literature. Rukya Mandrile analysed the implications of adopting the formal method in Ripellino’s literary domain in response to the guidelines dictated by socialist realism, considering Vladimir Maiakovskii, Evgenii Evtushenko and Václav Havel as examples. In a joint speech, Angela Mondillo and Marta Belia showed the specificities of Ripellino’s contribution to Czech Studies, exemplified through his interest in the Czech poets František Halas and Vladimír Holan.
In the second roundtable, entitled “Poetics and Stylistics”, there were three speeches. Martina Mecco proposed an analysis of Ripellino’s essayistic style, comparing two canonical texts in the reception of Czech literature and culture in Italy, Storia della poesia ceca contemporanea and Praga Magica. Alessandro Pulimanti focused on Praga Magica, emphasising the passages that best describe the Bohemian capital’s dreamlike, almost imaginary character. Finally, Riccardo Mini analysed Ripellino’s translations of Aleksandr Blok’s poems, relating the translation solutions to elements emerging from his essays dedicated to the poet.