Ferrari Silvio
Membership in the Academy:
- corresponding member – Department of Literature (5/10/2018 – …)
Curriculum Vitae
Silvio Ferrary, Italian Slavist, translator and writer, was born in 1942 in a mixed Italian-Croatian family. He spent his early childhood in Sali on Dugi Otok, and in 1948, with his family, he moved to Camogli near Genoa, where he graduated from elementary school. He studied Italian literature in Genoa, worked as a high school professor of literature and art history, and worked in the municipal administration of Genoa.
Having got to know Croatian and South Slavic cultures well, in the 1980s he decided to act as a mediator in the Italian environment. He was particularly attracted by the figure of Miroslav Krleža, a writer previously barely known and translated into Italian, because of his undogmaticism in historical “conflicts on the left” and his original understanding of literary engagement.
He began his translation of Hrvatski bog Mars, in 1982, continued with the novel Povratak Filipa Latinovicza (1983) and rounded off this introductory presentation with Na rubu pameti (1984). In the following periods he published translations Podravski motivi, plays Gospoda Glembajevi and Michelangelo, and crowned the venture with a rendition Balade Petrice Kerempuha (2007). In the meantime, in addition to Krleža’s texts, he translated Berenikina kosa by Nedjeljko Fabrio, Rustichello and Kratki izlet by Antun Šoljan and Mediteranski brevijar by Predrag Matvejević. In addition to Croatian writers, he has translated a number of books by Serbian and Bosnian writers, such as Danilo Kiš, Mirko Kovač, David Albahari, Abdulah Sidran and Izet Sarajlić. He wrote afterwords and studies about most translated authors and advocated in public for their work.
Witnessing his encounters with Krleža, he began his own writing career, which branched out into a small library of memoirs in which the narrative acquires a certain ethical dimension. He outlined his family saga in the books Što radi Raffaellino de Garbo u Lionu, (1986), Kugina kuća (1998) and Sedam Hrvata s Dugoga otoka (2002), which was fully translated and published in Croatian.
He was elected as a correspondent member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2018.