The ANNOTICO Report

 Dr. Marlena Ratti is my Hero.In Yemen, a Remote part of the world, in a
Very foreign environment, with her own Money and Efforts she built a
vibrant Italian Cultural  Center. Dr. Ratti  has be an inspiration to
Anyone and Everyone in every City and Town in the United States that does
not have an Italian Cultural Center.

Yemen is at Southwest tip of the Arabian Peninsula, at the south end of the
Red Sea, where it becomes a strategic narrows. Yemen is across those
straits from Ethiopia, once a protectorate of Italy. Did I know San'a was
it's capital? No :(

Yemen Observer
San'a, Yemen
By Theo Padnos
Vol.VIII Issue 13
Apr 3, 2005 -

Let’s talk about the American cultural center in Sana’a. Okay, there is no
such thing....

In any case, the making of an old-fashioned cultural center, such as is
operated in Sana’a by the French and the Germans, is a labor of love.

There’s no money in it, less gospel, and of course no proselytizing.
There’s elbow grease. There’s language teaching, library-purveying, and
exhibit-sponsoring. There are occasional concerts and films. Usually, there
is also some government or embassy backing and many employees.

But in the case of the Italian cultural center, which is located in a
quiet, dead end alleyway in Old Sana’a, there is simply one dedicated major
domo, Marlena Ratti, and her 5,000 volumes of Italian books (novels,
reference works, children’s literature). In addition, depending from this
edifice, there is a dedicated corps of about 60 university students and a
scattering of independent researchers, some of whom come from as far away
as Aden. Dr. Ratti, whose center has been officially operating for about a
year, says she operates the institute privately, at her own expense,
because she feels the need for such a place of learning in Sana’a.

She uses it to explain something of Italy’s contributions to world heritage
and to make her native language more accessible to young students here in
Sana’a. Some six or eight students turn up at the center every afternoon to
peruse books and practice their Italian. The students belong to the
immeasurably large class of Yemenis who’re excited to learn about foreign
cultures and welcome foreigners with open arms.

It seems that some neighbors of the center do not, however, belong to this
class and regard its work with suspicion. Part of the work of the center,
therefore, involves an ongoing effort to overcome those dimly felt, dimly
thought-through notions of fright and wonder that pre-occupy a tiny
minority in the neighborhood.

Dr. Ratti’s passion for her country’s heritage is clearly capable of
transporting her from the first floor lecture hall in Sana’a Al-Qadima. At
a recent lecture on the history of Italian painting, which she delivered in
Italian (but which was simultaneously translated into Arabic for the dozen
or so students in attendance) she reviewed the contributions of the major
Renaissance painters. Cimabue’s frescoes gave way to the Arena Chapel which
gave way to Massacio in Firenze and so on, toward Michelangelo and
Leonardo.

It is Leonardo, with his scientific bent, his futuristic visions, and his
delicious sense of irony, who brings fire into the eyes of Dr. Ratti. Last
week in her lecture, as she passed around a Leonardo book from her
collection, she described his manias with the forceful, emphatic expression
of a fellow traveler and countrywoman. He needed to know the most intimate
details of the human body, said Dr. Ratti, as she seized the air in front
of her with clenched hands; he needed to know how blood flowed, how veins
worked, how muscles rippled, before he set pen to paper. He dissected
corpses, she reminded her students, and studied the medical textbooks,
though many of these were left over from the Middle Ages and were less
sophisticated than the master’s own charcoal drawings. As Dr. Ratti
discoursed, the dozen or so Yemeni students nodded slowly, and then rather
more quickly and fluidly when the translation came through. They are
clearly a dedicated group and clearly dedicated in particular to their
patron, Dr. Ratti.

Two women students of Italian and one guard at the American embassy (who
was by far the most fluent in Italian of any of the lecture attendees and
is also a university student) seemed quite well versed in Renaissance
history. They are doubtless prepared now for a more intricate, higher level
course of study, the books for which, in all shapes and sizes, are on hand
at Dr. Ratti’s center of humanistic studies.

The center, in the Ebhar neighborhood of Sana’a Al-Qadima is open weekday
afternoons from 3 to 7. Interested people may contact Prof. Hermes in the
Italian department at Sana’a University for further information or simply
come by during open hours.

http://www.yobserver.com/news_4786.ph
 
 

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