austraLasia #1724
Globalised Dominic Savio - but worth a read
NEW ROCHELLE: 2nd January 2007 -- Talk about globalisation: Bosco - Teresio, not
John (Italy), Borruso and the Paulines in Nairobi (Africa) and the Salesians in
New Rochelle (USA). Together they give us 'Dominic Savio' in a smallish,
semi-soft paperback, 145 page edition worth around USD 6 (plus postage - I got
out of it for €10, which also gave New Rochelle a Christmas present).
Any review of this Dominic Savio is not a review of the
translated vesrion - Silvano Borruso has done a fine job in contemporary
'universal' English. Instead it must be a comment on the value of Teresio
Bosco's 2002 effort to re-upholster a saint who is one of the Lord's and Don
Bosco's great creations for modern youth, but too often caught up in piety of a
cultural kind, be it books, images or urns.
Of course, if you want 'the' Dominic Savio with all the
trappings of Don Bosco's Oratory saint, and all the elements that require an
entire week of study in Sampran (Thailand, to add to the globalised feel), then
you need to read the original, in a version that was well translated by Fr
Cornell years ago and has now been adjusted to cater for scholarship's
realisations about just which edition to use and how important the footnotes
were. Don Bosco tended to write other lives in his footnotes! You
may download that version in glorious English, faithful to Don Bosco's Italian,
from Bosconet.
But shell out $6, please, by writing to Fr Mike Mendl at New
Rochelle c/o salesianstudies@juno.com for this new version, published in April
2006 in English. It offers what we have been looking for for a long time.
I think Teresio Bosco's introduction is the key: he explains that he was a camp
for kids recently when the lights went out during the evening movie. The
camp director asked TB if he would be prepared to 'tell a story'. On the
moment's inspiration he said yes, I'll tell the story of Dominic, and I'll
stretch it if the power stays off or shorten it if it doesn't! In the
event he went on for half an hour before the lights came back on. What
surprised him was that the boys came back later and wanted the other
half! He had begun with Dominic knocking on Don Bosco's door then leading
him along dark alleyways of Turin to a priest-turned-pastor in desperate need
to return to the fold before he was called to account. The story worked,
obviously.
The story worked, just like The Yellow Umbrella works
(you haven't seen your Strenna video yet? Tut, tut). When we are competing with
YouTube, MP3, MacWorld, we have to be particularly attuned to story and
image. Teresio B tells the story with a good deal of John B in it as
well, but he is not afraid to drop parts that are less likely to excite today
or, for that matter, parts which were John B's imagination. Was Da
mihi animas really on Francis de Sale's lips often, as Don Bosco said it
was, to Dominic? The best we know is that Bishop Camus said that Francis
said it - once. TB has decided to skip that reference, but not the DMA
itself and its impact on young Dominic. And what would you learn about
Dominic's sisters and brothers and others from John B? Precious little - it
wasn't part of his scheme of things. But Teresio B thinks it might be part of
ours, so he gives us a good deal of information about them.
As I say - I think it is worth the money, and the Christmas
present! JBF.
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