by Various Authors
FD's section about word-image relationship opens with this pastiche in which a text by Giacomo Leopardi meets the comic strips of Tex, the character created in 1948 by Gian Luigi Bonelli (scripts) and Aurelio Galleppini (drawings). The protagonists of the most famous and successful series in the history of italian comics - in this case the magician and criminal Blacky Dickard aka Yama - become the actors of a story born in a different universe and with different intentions.
Some technical data; the Dialogue between Malambruno and Farfarello is the comic adaptation, in eight plates, of the text of the same name from Giacomo Leopardi's Small Moral Works (1824-1835). The drawings by Aurelio Galleppini illustrating the Dialogue are taken, in no particular order and with appropriate modifications, from the following issues of the monthly magazine "Tex";
- Il figlio di Mefisto, n. 125, march 1971.
- Il veliero maledetto, n. 128, june 1971.
- Il ritorno di Yama, n. 162, april 1974.
Apart from the suspension points added to the balloons and the onomatopoeia added to the drawings, the text is exactly the same as Leopardi's original. Adaptation, editing and graphic manipulation are by Enrico Maria Davoli. Reproduction and distribution of the eight plates in any form is prohibited.
Below: reproduction of pages 33-35 from "Essays and Dialogues" by Giacomo Leopardi, translated by Charles Edwardes, Trübner & Co., London 1882 (www.archive.org).
