Block, pencil and India ink on one side, hammer, compass and magnifying glass on the other. Two seemingly distant worlds, that of comics and that of geology, which Fernando Pessoa also placed on opposite sides of the fence. “Science describes things as they are, art as they are felt, as one feels they should be”, so wrote the Portuguese poet at the beginning of the last century.
Yet, as in the most beautiful stories of love and life, sometimes something happens, a meeting, a phone call, a spark and the two worlds end up colliding. And, as we know, two bodies that collide always leave something of themselves in the other. And maybe that's exactly how it went for Giuseppe Palumbo, one of the most important names in Italian comics, who abandoned the Diabolik books for just a moment to devote himself to the story of Robert Mallet, an eclectic Irish engineer, father of seismology, who arrived in Italy in 1858 to study the earthquake that had devastated Lucania in December of the previous year.
"Mallet's Vision", the comic resulting from this fortunate encounter between geology and sequential art – strongly desired by Graziano Ferrari, former Research Director of INGV – was presented last May in Rome, in the Institute's Headquarters, in the presence of Giuseppe Palumbo , the Irish ambassador to Italy, Colm Ó Floinn, and the President of the Lucan Group of Civil Protection, Giuseppe Priore.
We asked Giuseppe Palumbo to tell us some "behind the scenes" of that experience, from the meeting with Graziano Ferrari and Giuseppe Priore, to the creation of the volume, to his future projects.
How did the collaboration with Graziano Ferrari and the Lucan Group of Civil Protection come about?
GP Everything happened through the publisher Lavieri. The Lucan Civil Protection Group has its own comic series in its catalog and the publisher was looking for a suitable author for the story that Graziano Ferrari had proposed. Robert Mallet's story, in his view, required attention, a sign different from other titles and so my name had popped up. To this we add the fact that Graziano and I both live in Bologna and this has definitely favored the processing, the exchange of information and the narrative construction.
Was it the first time you were confronted with the story of geology in comic form?
Yes. But this has never been a problem: I have devoted part of my comics production to the creation of non-fiction-biographical, political, scientific, philosophical works. So geology was my new challenge.
Did you know the story of Robert Mallet?
I confess not. I was aware of the great earthquake of 1857: a beautiful majolica in Via Roma in Matera, a place of infinite youth pools, reminded me of it and had always attracted and intrigued me. But I knew nothing about Mallet…
How did you "enter" into its story to be able to draw it?
I carefully, as much as possible, studied and read the documentary materials that Graziano Ferrari had provided me and which I then discussed extensively with him, trying to draw the threads of a narrative. Graziano had drawn up a lineup of events which in fact form the backbone of the story which I then scripted. It was Graziano who got me into the necessary mood.
You have lived in Bologna for some time but were born in Matera: what is your relationship with your hometown, recently re-discovered on an international level as European Capital of Culture 2019? Has she already starred in any of your works?
Matera, I would say more, Lucania, has always been in my stories. My father Franco, among other things one of the founders of the "La Scaletta" club, a worthy association that has worked since 1959 in function of the cultural qualification of Matera, generated in me the love for this city, for this region so rich. If I think of the work I saw him do by meeting, welcoming and assisting great artists such as Pietro Consagra and José Ortega, side by side with art historians such as Giuseppe Appella, this year's celebrations seem small to me. My Matera, my Lucania, are others.
After the experience with Mallet, would you like to go back to drawing geology?
Why not?! I'll talk to Ferrari about it!
What are your plans for the future?
Ah, too many! Among illustrated books (one of all, "Mondo Nuovo" by Aldous Huxley for Mondadori) and comics ("Diabolik" in primis, but also a new series for Sergio Bonelli publisher, "Il Confine", of which I drew the first issue) , the list would be long. My next comic essay? “Pasolini 1964 - Beyond Matera and the Mediterranean”, published by Lavieri in the Action30 series.