austra L asia 1154
7 Men from Then: fine lives of the Salesian Brother
SYDNEY: 5th June 2005 -- Aficionados
of the old-fashioned 'Western' may recall the Lee Marvin classic 6
Men from Now (1956). Through some persevering translation
work by
Brother Peter Swain, now resident in Sydney, we have a fine collection
of seven lives of Salesian Brothers, all seven of whom have featured in
the Italian Salesian Bulletin's articles over recent years.
Six of the items were originally
written for the SB by Fr Giancarlo Manieri, the current editor of the
Italian edition. These six are Salesian Brothers who were born in
and
who worked in various parts of Italy. In the case of the seventh,
Brother Peter tracked down the mortuary
letter written in Chinese, and knowing that it would have been
unavailable to any reader outside of that language, found a competent
and willing translator in Australia to do the job.
We have, then, a collection of stories which is
timely, as thought
is being given to mounting a conference of and about the Salesian
Brother within the EAO region in 2006. Six of the stories, then,
are written by a professional magazine journalist, while the seventh
is a careful and extensive laying out of the life of one of our hidden
treasures, given his provenance and
circumstances. This collection of lives in competent translation
is a boon.
The protagonists of
the stories
are Brothers Paul Mochetti, Genzano; Mario Lisi, Loreto; Luigi Posamai,
Rebaudengo; Giuseppe Nidasio, Milan; 'Nino' Silvestro, Zafferana Etnea
(Mt Etna); Angelo Scolari, Turin-Valdocco; Yu Shi Zhu - China.
The last-mentioned is the longest story of the collection given its
different genre.
The seven stories have been placed in a zip file
called Brother.zip and may be quickly
downloaded from www.bosconet.aust.com.
You will find the link
to the file on the home page, right hand side.
VOCABULARY
aficionado: (also spelled afficionado) a devotee of.
track down: detect through effort (English
abounds in phrasal verbs where a preposition becomes, in effect, a verb
particle).
provenance: where someone or something
comes from.
boon: a gift or blessing (not from French bon but from
Icelandic bon!)
protagonist: chief character
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