Project report

SET OF ITEMS

The choice criteria for our items were the variety and the reliability of the sources. Therefore, many of them come from researches on the Europeana database or similar cultural heritage repositories. Here is a list of our chosen items:

Picture of G. Ungaretti in Italian infantry uniform during WWI

photograph

Wikimedia

On the outbreak of the First World War Ungaretti supported his country’s intervention on the side of the Entente Powers. He enrolled in the Brescia Brigade of the 19th infantry in December 1915 and saw action in the Northern Italian theatre where he served in the trenches and became appalled by the realities of war. The conflict also made Ungaretti discover his talent as a poet.

The hope of brotherhood between all the people is expressed strongly, together with the desire of searching for a renovated "harmony" with the universe in the famous verses of the poem “Mattina”, a memorable four words piece of literary work: I illuminate (myself) with immensity.

What is exactly this immensity that lights up a body's soul, so strong that breaks through even the misery of war? For a poet, it is the immensity that comes with process of artistic creation: the epiphany that repeats itself, renewing the beauty of just being alive.

Handprint of G. Ungaretti

artifact

Europeana collections

As one of the items that represent Giuseppe Ungaretti we chose his handprint which is not a real work of art, but only a handprint. This object is part of the Dante Bighi’s Collection in Centro Studi Dante Bighi in Copparo. The Collection is a nucleus of ninety works by important contemporary artists donated to the town by the famous graphic designer from Copparo who lived in Milan between the fifties and eighties.

Monument dedicated to Ungaretti in Santa Maria La Longa

artifact

Wikimedia

Among the many soldiers who found rest in Santa Maria la Longa were Gabriele d'Annunzio and Giuseppe Ungaretti who, right here, during his rest in the winter of 1917, composed three poems: "Sleep", "Loneliness" and the famous "Morning". On the occasion of the 88th anniversary of this poem, the municipal administration has inaugurated a monument dedicated to Ungaretti by the Friulian sculptor Franco Maschio. The statue depicts a body that rises and arches. Nearby there are also three karst stones where the three poems by Ungaretti have been engraved.

Pocket watch of austro-hungarian soldier

artifact Europeana collections

As other poems of G. Ungaretti, “Veglia” was written while the poet was on the Carso battlefront during WWI. The content of the poem is strongly influenced by the nature and the landscapes he was used to see there. The choice of this artifact is due to the fact that it allows us to characterize this mountain as an important scenario of the war. It documents the passage of a soldier who, like G. Ungaretti himself, was there for that specific reason.

Biography of G. Siligardi

died fighting in Monte San Michele in 1915, bibliographic resource

Sebina Opac

Europeana collections

As in the aforementioned example, the biography of a soldier who fought and died on the Mount San Michele the very same year in which Ungaretti created “Veglia” is useful to highlight the historical importance of this mountain, its connection with a specific event and the overall influence it had on the analyzed poem.

Picture of Cima Quattro in Monte San Michele

photograph

Museo civico del Risorgimento di Bologna

Since it is a visual mean of communication, it is clear that a photo is the most effective and precise way to represent a place. This photograph, provided by Museo Civico del Risorgimento in Bologna, portrays exactly the “top number four” of the mountain, which is the one on which Ungaretti wrote “Veglia”.

La Voce

newspaper of 1915 which G. Ungaretti contributed to, archival document,

Vieusseux

What is the best representative item of a date if not a newspaper? Through La Voce, G. Ungaretti fully discovers his passion for Italian and French literature and then publishes his first verses. For what concerns the historical background, La Voce agrees with the choice of the Italian government of entering WWI. In fact, its founder G. Prezzolini expresses his nationalist positions in 1911 already: “it is a duty of national discipline to sacrifice the personal views for the public interest”. In 1914, the newspaper acquires a new parallel title - “Magazine of militant idealism” - and chooses interventionism.

The Symbolist manifesto

archival document

BnF Gallica

The first phase of G. Ungaretti’s poetic style, which Veglia is a clear example of, was influenced by his stay in Paris. Before choosing to serve as a soldier in WWI, in fact, the Italian poet got to know many intellectual circles, among which the one of Symbolists. In the Symbolist manifesto it is possible to read the principles of these intellectuals’ use of language - to isolate the single word and capture its sound, to leave space to the sonority silence and condense the overall rhythm in short poems.

Calligrammes

G. Apollinaire, bibliographic resource

Sebina Opac

Europeana collections

The choice of this book comes from the fact that G. Ungaretti was close friends with G. Apollinaire. During the War, they wrote to each other and shared the same experiences, to the point of falling in love with the same woman. Such collection of poems has revolutionized the history of literature and it is possible to see many aspects in common with G. Ungaretti’s philosophy of writing.

The Seer

G. De Chirico, painting

Moma collections

Paris is also the background of the meeting between G. Ungaretti and G. De Chirico. Not only the Italian poet explicitly declared: ”I give thanks to the destiny that allowed me to meet you [J. Paulhan] , leading me to De Chirico’s calm fantasies”, but even sold the painter’s artworks when he just wanted to throw them out.

METADATA STANDARD AND ALIGNMENT

We described each of our items through the most appropriate metadata standards. In fact, the metadata standards used by the content providers are not always enough to fully describe the items. For instance, Europeana uses Europeana Data Model. Because it is based on an international standard such as Dublin Core, it tends to excessively simplify the description of the objects. Here is the link to the document: click here

We then proceeded to the alignment of the different standards:

PEOPLE:

DC: creator; CDWA: Creator description; CCO= Creator display; DACS= name of creator(s); VRA core = vra:agent in or vra:collection; ISBD= Statement of responsibility; ISAD= name of creator(s);

PLACES:

CDWA: 21.2 Repository/Geographic location; CCO= Current Location; ISAD= 3.5.1 Existence and location of the original; VRA core= vra:location , ; CCO=Current Location; DACS= Name and Location of repository;

DATES:

DC date, coverage= CDWA 1.3 Object/work type date, 4.2.1 Earliest date, 4.2.2 Latest date = CCO Earliest date, latest date, = DACS 4.2 Creation Date = ISBD publication = VRA core= ;

CONCEPTS:

DC:Description; = DACS: 5.3 Appraisal etc. =CDWA:18.1 Descriptive Note text; VRA core:

THEORETICAL MODEL – IN NATURAL LANGUAGE

The theoretical model is able to describe all the chosen items. The model has to reply to the following questions:

WHO – people. How to describe people? Which kind of information?
WHERE – places. Which kind of information I have to represent locations with?
WHEN – dates. In which format I need to express the notion of time?
WHAT – subjects/concepts. What is the main content of my object?

The two main ontologies that we chose to use for describing our items and the relations between them, along with what could be useful to deepen our knowledge of each of them are Dublin Core and CIDOC-CRM. The first one allows us to answer the most basic question like “What is the date?”, “What is the description?”, “What is the language?” etc. On the other hand, the second ontology is complementary to DC because provides definitions and a formal structure for describing the implicit and explicit possible relationships in cultural heritage documentation. In fact, the goal was not to describe a single object through terms, but rather to put in evidence the relationships between entities. CIDOC-CRM was more suitable for this purpose because it is used to construct deep, meaningful networks of things, people and concepts participating and meeting in a spatial-temporal frame, while Dublin Core does not allow building such networks of knowledge.

WHO – people

What is the relation between the person and the item?

In order to describe the aforementioned relation we used CIDOC-CRM. The choice fell only on this ontology because it can provide the "semantic glue" needed to mediate between different sources of cultural heritage information, such as that published by museums, libraries and archives. Therefore, considering the question from above, it was easy to choose CIDOC-CRM for describing the relation between the person and the item. It helped us explain in details this relation. On the other side, we decided not to use FOAF because we needed information about the relationship between entities, the connection between the person and the items, not just information about the person.

WHERE – places

How did the location influence the creation of the items?

The choice of the GeoNames Ontology to deal with the notion of place is mainly motivated by the fact it represents a De Facto standard and it is widely used. It is also also enough for our aims because it allows to simply represent a place by means of a name, a country and the latitude and the longitude. Furthermore, we kept using the CIDOC-CRM and some properties it provides to connect places with internal resource described in our model.

In the Schema.org ontology the concept of place takes a business-oriented view, stating that it has phone number and an address, as well as customer reviews, so we discarded it because it was not useful for our purposes.

In DBpedia we can define a place by means of a class but it is too specific with respect to our overall purpose so that we decided to stick on GeoNames Ontology.

WHEN – dates

How did the historical period influence the creation of the items?

In our model, we didn’t concentrate so much on the date because the year we provided gives sufficient granularity of information for representing the idea at hand. Therefore, we used only the xsd:gYear.

WHAT – subject/concepts

Which are the concepts that are embodied by the items? What is the cultural background of the main idea and how has it affected the current time?

For the concept, the starting point was to look at the DC ontology. However, we found out that it could only be useful if we defined a class first. In this case, there is no appropriate class for a concept, although there are properties that are not to be found elsewhere, such as Date and Contributor.

As for SKOS, although it has the class “concept”, which is perfect for our purpose, there are no involvements with the relationship with other items. In fact, we could choose to use a definition for our concept, an example and a note of its history, but everything that was not falling under these categories had to be inside “skos:note”. Therefore, it couldn’t fully serve our scope.

Europeana Data Model was interesting too, since it is meant to be a state-of-the-art data model that enriches the european cultural heritage with interesting and meaningful links. However, it is also true that CIDOC-CRM was more appropriate for our work than EDM, also because EDM needs DC to be complete as an ontology.

CONCEPTUAL MODEL

Our conceptual model answers the previously defined questions, with the ontologies we chose. We worked on three items and for each item we chose a person, a place and a concept to describe. Here is our table: