Let's talk about Jonas Marti. The story has two protagonists. On the one hand, there are those who have the past and those who have lived it. On the other hand, we find those who describe its environments, courses and appeals. They are two sides of the same coin, but which few are able to interpret according to a coordinated vision. Even fewer are those who manage to escape the temptation to refer to its meaning as an easy-to-consume product.
Instead, it is precisely thanks to a documented, in-depth and rigorous research exercise, which is easy to say, that the public not only appreciates the value of historical news, but promotes its disseminator as an authoritative interpreter of facts in which they did not participate.
Jonas Marti, with your work you have overturned an easy stereotype: in the city where I live there is nothing interesting. How did your passion for history come about?
«I have a humanistic education, with Latin and Greek studies. This predisposes me to understand that the past is just waiting to be rediscovered, and history, as well as the interactions between peoples, is also made by individuals, each with experiences that inevitably influence our communities. Furthermore, the fact that where we find ourselves living there is ultimately nothing interesting is a misunderstanding that I have changed my mind from by studying the history of our territory. In this work, my journalistic experience in international current affairs was of great help, where I learned that facts, whether contemporary or historical, are to be interpreted as a continuously evolving sequence of events."
How is it possible to talk about history while avoiding notionalism, without boring the public?
«The progression of historical facts develops like a novel. My research starts from small stories, often curious, and from those I begin to tell the facts. In particular, it is in historical everyday life, with its problems and difficulties, that I find characters from the past with whom even today's public can identify, and who at the same time convince us that what happened centuries ago is not so different from what that we live today, even more interesting when we realize that we live in the same territory. For example, already at the beginning of the sixteenth century the mountainous profile of San Salvatore for those besieged in the castle of Lugano was identical to how we see it today. In recalling historical news, I was saying, I am helped by my past as a journalist. In particular, the narrative technique needs "surprise effects" to create pauses and lighten the telling of facts. In short, to script them, as they say in technical language, in addition to linking the historical information in a logical and relevant way, I also have to study where it is necessary to give the audience a break. So, I often ask myself: where to start? How, where, when to create a gap between events and keep the audience's attention? Let's take an example: rather than dwelling on the presentation of a historical event, I prefer to comment on a painting that recalls it, perhaps choosing a fresco preserved in a church. In this way the public is informed about the facts, but in a diversified way, with information that also concerns the architecture, the figurative technique and the artists of a specific period, the clothing of the nobles, the warriors, and the common people. All protagonists of a past to which today we understand we belong."
How much has history influenced the character of the people who live in our canton?
«It is always difficult to identify the “soul” of a territory. Because with the succession of eras, to which extraordinary globalization has been added in recent decades, Ticino has progressively become a melting pot, a combination of different social characteristics. Just think of the sequence of populations that have occupied our lands over the millennia. The Celts started, the Indo-European warriors who occupied Ticino in the pre-Christian era; then the Romans; then the Lombards, the Como, the Milanese, followed by the Swiss. They are all groups that have stratified on the Ticino identity, which is basically Lombard. These arrivals in our territory have favored an extraordinary contamination: cultural, social, even gastronomic, as our menus remind us where pasta and rösti now coexist. Even these simple elements confirm that a characteristic of our territory remains the constant comparison between different cultures, destined to mutually enrich each other. With my work I therefore aim not only to improve knowledge of our past, but also to recall those identity elements that facilitate the interpretation of all those innovations that the future, as has already happened in the past, is destined to bring us. This, once again, testifies that Ticino remains a place of welcome, particularly from a social-cultural perspective, as for example happened in the nineteenth century, with the exiles who arrived in our canton during the Italian Risorgimento".
How can a journalist organize his research with the authority and reliability of a historian? Your volume, “Lugano the beautiful stranger”, lists an important sequence of facts, all well documented, and has been rewarded by the public with over 10.000 copies sold and four editions….
«My job follows the rules of the journalistic profession, as always: I start from the facts, and from a constant verification of the sources. In my library I have many books on the history of our territory, the result of the infinite research carried out in distant times by scholars. I consider myself "a dwarf on the shoulders of giants”, as the French philosopher Bernard of Chartres already presented his work in the twelfth century. I'm not a historian, I'm just a popularizer, but I constantly feed on historians' research and then propose it to the public. My method goes beyond a historical reconstruction that lists dates and places proposed horizontally. On the contrary, I prefer to describe them as a vertical sequence, that is, explaining the reasons that transform the simple news story into an important event from a social, human and therefore historical perspective. In this way I am able to free myself from day-to-day interpretations, from the anxiety of breaking news, and interpret history from a long-term perspective. It is good to remember: whoever judges the era in which he lives inevitably considers it worse than the previous ones. Instead, the progression of social relations is made up of fluctuating, surprising cycles, which today also include technological revolutions such as digitalisation. This is why I believe it is right to remember that, in the history of the world, innovations have occurred continuously since the beginning of the human race. But even today, as in the past, they are part of our lives and I am convinced that even in our globalized age we will always be able to put them at our service."
