Giovanni Cecchetti

Contrappunti Counterpoints (Edited and Translated with an Essay by Raymond Petrillo) - Studies in Southern Italian and Italian American Culture Giovanni Cecchetti

The bilingual title of this volume, Contrappunti / Counterpoints, addresses the culturally interrelated dynamic of its substance: the reflections and stories of Giovanni Cecchetti, exquisitely written in his native Italian, but from the psychocultural perspective of contemporary Americana, and with illuminating forays into the Greek and Latin classics. «To have grappled,» asserts Cecchetti, «with different languages and clashing cultures has enriched our lives, our awareness of the depth of humanity which runs through ourselves and others, whatever our nationality. It has also enriched our native tongue, bringing radically new meanings to every word that we utter.» The dynamic between environment(s) and language - so sensitively rendered in Raymond Petrillo's translation - is as essential to the life of this volume as it is to the lives of the many people who grapple with the same existential binomial on a daily basis, at various levels.