Giani Stuparich, born in Trieste in 1891, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is considered the last great representative of Triestine literature. In his often autobiographical writings, he offers delicate portraits of life and society of his time. This is evident in Guerra del ’15, Trieste nei miei ricordi, Ricordi istriani, and, of course, in Un anno di scuola (A Year of School). Set at the Dante Alighieri high school—where Stuparich first studied and later taught for many years – this charming coming-of-age story has been adapted several times: in 1977 by director Franco Giraldi as a television miniseries for RAI, and in 2022 by the Compagnia Teatro Stabile del Veneto under the direction of Alessandro Marinuzzi. Un anno di scuola tells of the upheaval caused by the arrival of the first girl at a previously all-male school. She is a slightly rebellious girl who claims the right to “smoke, go to cafés, stay out late, treat boys as equals, and argue with them.â€
Trieste, September 2007. Fred (Stella Wendick), a bold and exuberant seventeen-year-old from Sweden, arrives in the city for her final year of high school at a technical institute. The only girl in a class of boys, she immediately draws everyoneâ€...
In the RAI adaptation, the girl climbs a wall without protection, wearing her beloved straw hat adorned with cherries, and “her walk was ostentatiously masculine, body leaning slightly forward… but her eyes shone with solar brightness, and her mouth let flow feelings like soft shadows across the meadows.†Soon, however, she becomes distracted by her new companions, “because she needed to love as much as to rest in the shade after walking long under the sun.â€
At that time, love was taken very seriously, so much so that the story includes two suicide attempts. Pastimes were wholesome: diving and swimming, outings in a sailboat, skating on the frozen Percedol, climbing on the Karst. Un anno di scuola carries the atmosphere of Goethe’s Werther. Stuparich masterfully describes Trieste with its vertical passages and secret gardens, always reaching upward under a constantly changing sky: sudden rain, hail, or unexpected bora winds. For those who wish to read it, a small curiosity: the protagonist, Edda Marty, really existed and later became a renowned pediatrician. The story is set in the year 1909–1910.
