La storia come esperienza umana
Gaetano Cozzi: sei conversazioni, una lezione inedita, la bibliografia
edited by Marco Folin and Andrea Zannini
cover prize 15 euros
Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche-Canova
Treviso 2006
XII-172 pages
17 photographs
ISBN 88-8409-171-3
This collection of pieces introduces the reader to the subjective journey by which Gaetano Cozzi throws light on his long career as a historian, moving freely in time and space to touch on a wide range of scientific and human interests, and adds a number of new insights into the adventure in the metamorphosis of ideas and experiences that took him from the study of law to the study of history.
The material provides telling illustrations of the patient probing, the sudden changes of direction, the doubts and dilemmas that were part of the metamorphosis. In his distinctive voice, the great historian gives a personal, anecdotal account of the meetings and discussions that provided the ferment of ideas underlying his own development.
The writings cast light from inside (albeit on part at a time) on the system of ideas that sustained and guided Cozzi’s historical research, structured around a complex dialectic of conflicts and contradictions between polarities that might appear to irreconcilable. He much preferred people and institutions that do not seek to conceal or to deny or to devitalize such conflicts with opaque half-way compromise but rather to acknowledge their inherent strain and to devise new frameworks and institutions that bring about changes in the behaviour of people, societies and states and refashion the rules that govern relations between them. The polarities he addresses are not confined to historical matters; for Cozzi, the issues that crop up in archival documents are always and inextricably related to life and personal experience: polarities between those who exercise justice and those to whom it is administered, between those who make the laws and those who put them into practice, between the State and the Church, between public ethics and personal interest, between religious and secular approaches, between liberalism and socialism, between libertarian radicalism and the pervasiveness of the State, between ruling power and ruled society, between ‘Venetianness’ and ‘Italianness’, between the lord and the people, between city and country. Even his life as a commuter between Venice and Zero Branco in a way reflects his masterly dialectic approach, his taste and the critical intelligence with which he came to grips with contradictions and sought in them the salt of the earth.
Contents
Presentazione, by Domenico Luciani, VII
Gaetano Cozzi, Lo storico tra diritto e giustizia. Esperienze di ricerca, 1
Conversazioni, by Marco Folin, 13
Zero Branco, 5th January 1997, 21
Venezia, 26th January 1997, 29
Venezia, 3rd March 1997, 43
Venezia, 29th June 1997, 65
Zero Branco, 22nd July 1997, 75
Zero Branco, 3rd August 1997, 91
Immagini, by Francesco and Elisabetta Cozzi, 113
Bibliografia di Gaetano Cozzi, by Andrea Zannini, 129
Index of names and places, 159
