"Ya se va la blanca nigna, a dar pagnos a labar”: la herencia sefardí en la obra literaria de Guido Bedarida (Proyecto E.S.THE.R.)

The Italian Guido Bedarida, also known by the pseudonym of Eliézer Ben David, was one of the foreground figures of the Jewish “rebirth” that was experienced in Italy at the beginning of the XX century: his work to renew and defend at the same time the Jewishness went through both his political commitment and his faith in culture as the axis of social change. It is due to him the claim of the bagito, the Judeo-Italian speech, natural evolution of the Sephardic speaking and converts who settled in Tuscany as a result of the expulsion of 1492. The use of this speaks in Bedarida’s poems and dramatic works has properly deserved the attention of linguists. My proposal, on the other hand, is close to the critical approaches of Umberto Fortis, a scholar of the Jewish theater scene in Italian. In particular I will focus on aspects related to Sephardic cultural heritage that Bedarida recovers in his literary production, in order to propose a balance on the importance (or not) of Judeo-Spanish identity in Italy at the dawn of the XX century.