Biography of Piero Chiara

Small stories of the great Lake

March 23, 1913
December 31, 1986
Piero Chiara (Chiara born Pierino) was born in Luino (Varese) on the shores of Lake Maggiore, the day March 23, 1913. In Luino the father Eugenio Clare, originally from Resuttano (Caltanissetta) worked as a customs officer; his mother Virginia Maffei, came from Munich, country on the Piedmont side of Lake Maggiore. Contemporary and friend of Vittorio Sereni, also a future writer and poet, Piero Chiara studies without much care or consistency: he attended several religious colleges and only in 1929 obtained a diploma of complementary license. In fact their cultural education as Piero Chiara will complete autodidact. After spending a period of travel between Italy and France, in 1932, even to satisfy the aspirations of parents, finds employment in the judiciary as an aide of stationery. In 1936 Swiss-German woman bride Scherb, Jula from which also has a son, Marco. The marriage soon ends, however. After the brief call to arms, despite his lack of interest in politics, in 1944 was forced to flee to Switzerland following an arrest order issued by the Special Court. Here lives in some fields where they were interned Piero Chiara refugees Italians. Finished the war, working as a teacher of literature at the Italian school of the Zugerberg. The following year back in Italy.
Piero Chiara begins a period of intense literary fervid inventiveness and creativity, where he writes short stories, worthy of the best of the most celebrated and extravagant Giovannino Guareschi or Italo Calvino. In his work on Lake maggiore is often stage fright to its brief and enlightening stories. Clare tells the simple things in life with a style that is always rich, witty and ironic. Often compared to fellow Giovannino Guareschi, Narrator of the Po Valley, Clare paints the traits of life of upper Lombardy and Swiss cantons: a frontier life, made of smugglers, bandits and fugitives. In his books is important to the description of places but especially the psychological study of the characters, the ability to put out vices and virtues with a wry smile, unprejudiced but never disrespectful. The secret of Clare is in its ability to tell, in the choice of topics also "gory" (gambling, murder, adultery, erotic obsession). In 1970 he collaborated on the screenplay and acted in "Venga a prendere il caffè da noi", a film directed by Alberto Lattuada and starring Ugo Tognazzi, adapted from his own novel "the Division" (1964).
The narrative success knows his peak in 1976 with the masterpiece "La stanza del vescovo" which will become immediately a very successful film directed by Dino Risi and starring Ugo Tognazzi, too, together with Ornella Muti. After holding several political offices in the Italian Liberal Party, Piero Chiara died in Varese on December 31, 1986, shortly after having proofread his latest novel, "night Greetings from Passo della Cisa", which was released in 1987. Since 1989 the municipality of Varese has established and dedicated to him the Premio letterario Piero Chiara. In addition to a highly successful writer, Clare is remembered as one of the most famous scholars of the life and works of the writer and adventurer Giacomo Casanova. Numerous are his writings on Casanova, collected in the book "the real Casanova" (1977); his is the first complete edition of Histoire de ma vie ", the autobiographical work of Casanova based on original manuscript; Finally his is the script of the television edition of the work of Arthur Schnitzler "Casanova" (1980).
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.