Maturità 2025: all the complete tracks of the first test

You can answer point by point or construct a single speech that includes answers to all the proposed questions.

1. Briefly present the content of the poem and identify recurring figures of style.

2. Identifies, through precise references to the proposed text, the relationship between the life of nature and the life of the poet.

3. What function does the moon assume in Pasolini's poetic reflection?

4. What meaning can be attributed to the song of crickets heard in the stillness of the night?

In this poem, the author observes nature by relating it to his own existence. Referring to the poetic production of Pasolini or other authors or other art forms known to you, elaborate your own personal reflection on the ways in which literature and/or other arts deal with the theme of the passage of time and the relationship with nature.

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PROPOSAL A2

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Il Gattopardo, preface by Giorgio Bassani, Feltrinelli, Milan, 1962, pp. 166-168.

"Angelica's first visit to the Salina family, as a fiancée, had been governed by impeccable direction. The girl's demeanour had been perfect to such an extent that she seemed to have been suggested word for word by Tancredi; but the slow communications of the time made this possibility untenable and they were forced to resort to a hypothesis: that of suggestions prior to the official engagement itself: a risky hypothesis even for those who knew best the foresight of the prince, but not entirely absurd. Angelica arrived at six o'clock in the evening, in white and pink; her soft black tresses shaded by a large straw1 still summery on which artificial bunches of grapes and golden ears of wheat discreetly evoked the vineyards of Gibildolce and the granaries of Settesoli. In the entrance hall, she planted her father there; in the flutter of her ample skirt, she lightly climbed the not inconsiderable steps of the internal staircase and threw herself into the arms of Don Fabrizio: she gave him, on his sideburns, two beautiful kisses that were reciprocated with genuine affection; the Prince lingered perhaps a moment longer than necessary to sniff the gardenia aroma of her adolescent cheeks. After which Angelica blushed, backtracked half a step: "I am so, so happy ..." She approached again and, standing on the tip of her slippers, she sighed in his ear: "Zione!": a very happy gag [...] and which, explicit and secret as it was, sent the Prince's simple heart into raptures and definitively united him with his beautiful daughter. Don Calogero meanwhile climbed the stairs and went on to say how sorry his wife was that he could not be there, but last night she had stumbled in the house and had produced a very painful sprain to her left foot. "Her instep is like an aubergine, Prince." Don Fabrizio, exhilarated by the verbal caress [...] took the pleasure of going himself at once to Madame Sedàra, a proposal that disconcerted Don Calogero, who was forced, in order to reject it, to foist a second ailment on his consort, a migraine this time, which forced the poor woman to stay in the dark.

1. straw: a wide-brimmed hat made of woven straw stalks.

The novel Il Gattopardo by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896 - 1957), published posthumously in 1958, narrates the changes that have taken place in Sicily since Garibaldi's landing on the island and the slow decline of the Bourbon aristocracy, through the vicissitudes of the noble family of the protagonist, Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina.

You can answer point by point or construct a single speech that includes answers to all the proposed questions:

1. Summarise the content of the passage.

2. Identify and analyse the different ways in which Tomasi di Lampedusa presents the three main characters in this scene.

3. Illustrate with precise references to the text the respective attitudes of Angelica and Don Calogero towards the Prince of Salina.

4. At what point in the passage and with what linguistic device does the author make it clear that Don Calogero is lying about his wife's real condition?

On the basis of your analysis, deepen your overall interpretation of the passage, elaborating on your own more general reflections on the contradictory relations between aristocracy and bourgeoisie and the deeper anxieties that arise in times of political change.

- TYPE B - ANALYSIS AND PRODUCTION OF AN ARGUMENTATIVE TEXT

PROPOSAL B1

Text taken from: Piers Brendon, The 1930s. Il decennio che sconvolse il mondo, Carocci editore, Rome, 2005, pp. 216-217.

"In putting the New Deal into practice, the president's first concern was to intervene in the financial heart of the whole matter: to bail out the banks and start pumping money back into the circuit through the national arteries. A special session of Congress was called and a nationwide bank shutdown was proclaimed. For a few days, Americans had to live on paper securities, privately issued coins, foreign notes and coins, telephone tokens, stamps, cigarette coupons, barter and loans. Meanwhile, since nationalisation of the banks was out of the question, emergency legislation was prepared [...]. Federal support was authorised for sound banks, while at the same time government inspectors were authorised to inspect other banks and keep insolvent ones closed (a further measure, signed in June, guaranteed bank deposits). To help restore confidence, Roosevelt called a press conference (the first of some 1,000 he held as president), impressing the journalists so much with his candour and verve that they eventually burst into applause. He also gave the first of his radio addresses to the nation. It was a tour de force, clear, casual, direct and conducted with a mesmerising voice at exactly the right pace. [...] The president concluded his speech with these words: 'Together we cannot fail'. When the banks reopened their doors, deposits exceeded withdrawals. By April, financial anaemia had been averted: more than a billion dollars had left private stocks and returned to bank vaults.'

You can answer point by point or construct a single speech that includes answers to all the proposed questions.

1. Synthesise the content of the proposed passage.

2. Identifies the reasons that led Roosevelt to face the emergency situation and illustrates the difficulties faced by the citizens even if only for a few days.

3. What role did the government inspectors play?

4. How did the US president manage to instil hope in the American people to overcome the economic and social crisis that had brought the nation to its knees?

On the basis of the food for thought offered by the proposed text, your readings, information and knowledge on the subject, and your personal opinions, develop a text centred on the relationship between political leaders and citizens through current mass media (radio, television, newspapers, social media). Develop your arguments organically, elaborating a coherent and cohesive text.

PROPOSAL B2

Text taken from: Riccardo Maccioni, 'Respect' is the Treccani word of the year. And it serves to breathe, in Avvenire, Tuesday 17 December 2024, (https://www.avvenire.it/opinioni/pagine/rispetto-parola-treccani).

"A word that expresses attention, a taste for encounter, esteem. That even when it introduces a verbal attack, it does not raise the tone of the discourse, rather it seems to want to distance itself from what will be said immediately afterwards. The Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani has chosen 'respect' as the word of 2024. A decision that seems like a wish, that carries with it the desire to build, to use the dictionary not to demolish who we have in front of us but to try to understand its richness, its potential. Because if it is true that words can be stones, it is just as right to emphasise how they are capable of becoming the cement needed to build solid and comfortable houses, the glue capable of holding together a relationship at risk of breaking down. "The term respect, a continuation of the Latin respectus," explain Valeria Della Valle and Giuseppe Patota, co-directors of the Treccani Vocabulary, "should be re-evaluated today and used in all its nuances, precisely because the lack of respect is at the root of the violence exercised daily against women, minorities, institutions, nature and the animal world.

And the confirmation comes precisely from the terms that refer to the opposite meaning, all concepts geared to destroying relationships, to demolishing others: indifference (which often hurts more than hatred), disregard, sufficiency, right up to insolence, contempt, contempt. [...]

Respect is something quite different, it has its roots in respicere, which literally means to look again, to look back, that is, it recalls the duty not to give in to the urge for immediate judgement, the child of emotionalism, which does not take into account people's stories, their inner struggles. Instead, it is necessary to train in the beauty of caring, of paying attention, of caring for the lives of others, so that the community can grow in harmony, making those who are part of it savour the taste of belonging to the same human family".

You can answer point by point or construct a single speech that includes answers to all the proposed questions.

1. Summarise the content of the text in its essential thematic strands.

2. By what arguments does the author argue for the importance of 'respect'?

3. The proposed text dwells on words and attitudes that daily deny respect: give the most significant examples.

4. Identify what, in Maccioni's opinion, are the concrete attitudes to oppose disrespect.

On the basis of your knowledge, experience and sensitivity, critically confront yourself with the content of the proposed passage and elaborate a text in which you develop your point of view on the subject matter, giving reasons for your reflections. Organise your paper in such a way that the points of your exposition are organised in a coherent and cohesive text.

PROPOST B3

Taken from: Telmo Pievani, Un quarto d'era (geologica) di celebrità, in Sotto il vulcano, Feltrinelli, Milan, 2022, pp. 30-31.

"Our successors will study the Anthropocene and understand the dead end we have got ourselves into. [...] The sedimentary signatures of human activity in the last decades of the 20th century are so many that even the dumbest geologist of the future will be unable to miss them. [...] How much do all the objects in the world weigh? It sounds like a child's disarming question, but now, thanks to big data, it has become a meaningful scientific curiosity. [...] Imagine everything that mankind has produced and built: all the buildings on Earth, all the roads, trains, planes, ships, cars, trucks, motorbikes, bicycles and every other means of transport, the factories, the machines. Now add the furnishings and fittings, the tools, the mobile phones, the computers, the crockery, the glass, the fixtures, the paper in this magazine. In short, take the material technosphere as a whole, consisting of every human artefact distributed on the earth's surface, and put it on a scale. You will come up with a stratospheric number.

The appropriate unit of measurement for the feat is the teratonnes, or one trillion tonnes. And here is the fateful number: all things human, from skyscrapers to can openers, and excluding waste, in 2020 will have reached the remarkable weight of 1.1 teratonnes, or 1.1 trillion tonnes. This is the size of the immense material flow that underlies the metabolism through which mankind ceaselessly transforms the raw materials found in nature into products and energy.

If we break down the totality of all human artefacts and see what they are made of, we find that concrete and aggregates of gravel and sand lead the way, followed by bricks, then asphalt, metals and finally plastics, glass and wood used in industry. The researchers also calculated trends in anthropogenic mass since 1900. The curve steepens after the end of World War II, precisely, when the 'great acceleration' of reconstruction laid the foundations for the prosperity of the industrialised countries, but at the price of an enormous consumption of land and resources. [...] Using similar techniques, one can also calculate the total mass of living beings on Earth, i.e. the biomass. Well, the total value of the latter is 1.1 teratonnes, one thousand one hundred billion tonnes: exactly the same as the anthropogenic mass! This means that just in 2020, the sum of human objects has equalled all the rest of life put together. And to think that at the beginning of the 20th century, human things were worth 3 per cent of the weight of living beings. [...]

So we humans, who contribute only 0.01 per cent to the global biomass, have filled the world with 1.1 teratonnes of stuff. This is the overwhelming footprint of the Anthropocene. Without a rapid transition of the world's economic system to circular patterns, the anthropogenic mass will continue to double every twenty years, spiralling out of control. In our geological fifteen minutes of fame, we have made our mark."

You can answer point by point or construct a single speech that includes answers to all the proposed questions.

1. Synthesise the passage by highlighting the author's view of the Anthropocene and the human role in this geological period.

2. Illustrate the meaning of the expression 'dead end we have got ourselves into'.

3. What examples does the author give to describe the 'material technosphere' as a whole?

4. What does the author refer to when he uses the expression 'geological quarter-hour of fame'?

Elaborate a text in which, starting from the concept of the 'technosphere', you reflect on the environmental and economic impact of the constant production and consumption of objects, expressing your opinion on this and proposing possible solutions to reduce this impact. Develop your arguments organically and coherently, referring not only to your own experience, but also to your studies and readings.

- TYPE C - CRITICAL REFLECTION OF AN EXPOSITION-ARGOMENTATIVE CHARACTER ON TOPICAL ISSUES

PROPOSAL C1

Text taken from: Paolo Borsellino, I giovani, la mia speranza, in Epoca, 14 October 1992, pp. 125-126.

"I was born in Palermo and worked as a magistrate here. Palermo is a city that little by little, over the years, has ended up almost totally losing its identity, in the sense that the inhabitants of this city, or most of them, have ended up no longer recognising themselves as belonging to a community that has the same needs and values for everyone. [...] I have repeatedly been led to consider what the interests and reasoning of my three children, now all in their early twenties, are compared to what was my way of thinking and looking around me when I was fifteen-sixteen. At that age I lived in absolute indifference to the mafia phenomenon, which was then as serious as it is today. [...] On the other hand, the young people of today (that's why I mentioned my children) are perfectly aware of the very serious problem we live with. And this is the reason why, when I am asked what my attitude is, that is, if there are reasons to hope for the future, I always declare myself an optimist. And I declare myself an optimist in spite of the all in all unsatisfactory judicial outcomes of the great work that has been done. And I declare myself optimistic even though I know that today the mafia is extremely powerful, because I am convinced that one of the greatest strengths of the mafia organisation is consensus. It is the consensus that surrounds these organisations that distinguishes them from any other criminal organisation. If young people today start to grow up and become adults and do not find it natural to give the mafia this consensus and believe that they can live with it, we will certainly not win in two to three years. But I believe that if this attitude of the young people is nurtured and encouraged, it will not be possible for the mafia organisations, when it is these young people who will regulate society, to find that consensus that unfortunately my generation gave and gives to a very great extent. This makes me optimistic.'

Reflect, in the light of your experiences as a student and as a citizen, on the profound significance of this message of Judge Paolo Borsellino (1940-1992) and the value it may have for young people, particularly those of your generation. You can divide your paper into appropriately titled paragraphs and present it with an overall title that succinctly expresses its content.

PROPOSAL C2

Text taken from: Anna Meldolesi and Chiara Lalli, Indignation is the engine of the social world. But is it useful for anything?, in 7-Sette - weekly supplement of the 'Corriere della Sera', 13 December 2024, p. 12.

'Indignation is the engine of the social world. But does it serve any purpose?

New research, published in Science, shows that this emotional reaction often accompanies questionable content and that those who are outraged at an alleged injustice do not waste time clicking on links to investigate and verify. Thus, since the human mind can only express so much angry disgust on a daily basis, we end up wasting it on irrelevant issues and instead ignore the topics that really deserve our irritation."

Starting from the contents of the proposed text, drawing on your own experiences, knowledge and reading, reflect on this relevant feature of social networking. You can articulate your paper in appropriately titled paragraphs and present it with an overall title that succinctly expresses the content.