Stefen DellAntonio Monech - Premio minoranze linguistiche storiche in italia
Saturday 29 june 2024
10h

Ladin language in Val di Fassa: following the footsteps of tomorrow

CONVERSATION with

Stefen Dell’Antonio Monech, Historical Language Minorities in Italy Prize
by Sabrina Rasom

Ladin language

Biography

He was born in Moena (Fassa Valley) in 1958 into a family where language and home life were passed from generation to generation continuously and spontaneously, speaking, listening, working and growing up. In Ladino, of course. Speaking Ladino, people worked the land, prepared wood, faced each season with the help of ancient and new beliefs: the former, linked to traditions, fire and the stoup, the latter to post-war rebirths, to the new wind that blew slowly but hinted at silhouettes of evolution, of development, of that strange thing called progress.
Then, italian was the language of the holidaymakers, the city tourists who arrived to give life to the great change, and from them the children learned a second language, which only at school would they later learn and refine.
In that environment where the spring wind blew even at Christmas, Stephen grew up learning to look at and listen to Nature, the one of Man and the one of plants and animals, the one of things presumed or true, the Nature that leads to growing, walking, thinking and living. .
After obtaining his High School Diploma, he enrolled in University, which he soon abandoned to pursue and live his dreams in the mountains. Several times he remembers those years as the Great Days spent learning real Life with its illusions, falls, pain, storms, but also new dreams, endless joys, friendships forever, the deepest, highest and most harmonious meaning of Life.
Then, having put his head and rope more and less in place, he entered the normalcy of existence and began his career path. He was librarian at the Istitut Cultural Ladin “majon di fascegn” and researcher and guide at the Museo Ladin de Fascia. Then cultural referent and guide at the Parks and Territory, Forests and Fauna Service of the Province of Trento; today he works as a nature and cultural guide and as a mid-mountain guide registered with the College of Alpine Guides of the Province of Trento.
He writes lyrics for songs and nursery rhymes, plays, books on art, history and ethnography, teaching tools for Schools, prose and poetry. He also produces educational materials and cultural programs for radio and television. He is one of the founders of the Sedimes Theater Group and was a member of the Ladin literary group Scurlins, with whom he organized numerous editions of Dis de Letradura, an inter-Ladin review dedicated to the languages that sound and resonate among the Dolomites. He has played in the groups Marascogn and Lingue Morte, and now plays in Trio InCorda and OXT OrcheXtra Terrestre in Trento.
His poems are collected in the books Te n’outa demò (2004-2005); Su la NEIF de la Vita (2007); la regoeta dai colores de la bandiera ladina NEVE (2009) – Vèresc/Passi (2011) – Valivanzes (2015); Anter sfenes de chierida lum (2018); Nef codèes e na piva de sèl (2022); Indèna che te rues: paroles lijieres tras nef meisc de speta (2015). His stories are collected in the books Mudazion, Ladin stories; halved identity: silences and grudges, loves and fictions among the Ladins of Fassa; T’es na bela colombina… de Mèscres, de Faceres, de Tempes che cor, Saores e Colores: de tradizion, de speisa, de stories de Fasha.
In 2023 he wrote and edited the art catalog The Seasons of Colors in the Art and Life of Luigi Pederiva, IGI Pitor. In January 2024 he gave to the presses the small volume: Tia Facera: co la pissèr zipièr, depenjer… and la durèr. Other of his writings, portraits and texts have appeared in numerous collective publications by Ladin, German and Italian authors.

Award motivation

The Ostana 2024 Prize for Historic Linguistic Minorities in Italy is therefore awarded to Stefen Dell’Antonio Monech for his genuine and profound commitment to the promotion and dissemination of the Ladino language through literature, music and theater. A multifaceted person who makes daily living an active witness to his identity, linking it to the territory and its care, and translating into literary art and beyond a way of being and living. A man capable of living his ladinity among people, every day, normally, in every context and in every place. An “om da mont” (mountain man) who has made this passion a job. He is currently involved in hiking, trekking and traveling in the mountains where he walks slowly with his guests, creating long pauses dedicated to reflection, research and knowledge.
By walking, he strongly feels the presence of the changes taking place, of Life flowing, of the mystery that still and always envelops the natural and inner landscapes. And so he learns how to learn how to live, how to achieve the Art of Living, which consists of the generation of Joy, Harmony and Peace.
The Prize also recognizes Stefen Dell’Antonio Monech for having conceived and written numerous Mascherèdes, the “domestic” theatrical farces in use at carnival time in the villages of Alba and Penìa (Alta Val di Fassa), giving continuity to the popular tradition that counts the Ladin Carnival of Fassa among the most original and characteristic of the entire Alpine arc.
Stefen Dell’Antonio Monech deserves to tell his story and to be told, so that his life experience will spur future generations to preserve and grow the concept of ladinity, the Ladino idiom and its cultural and natural horizon.

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The Ostana Prize celebrates the international support received

from the UNESCO International Decade of Indigenous Languages, and from two reference institutions in the linguistic field: the ELEN network (European Language Equality Network) and the NPLD network (Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity).

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