Pfunzl

[David]

Tabouli wrote:

> A comment clearly calculated to spark a raging, mailbox filling 
debate.  (Spadini?  For shame!  Everyone knows these were the famous 
last words of Xbagnikov, as reported in Fgrotlstok's 1892 Manifesto 
on Liberty).  All I know about Pfunzl is that he seems a little short 
on vowels, which may be why people wouldn't listen to him...

I feel you aren't taking me entirely seriously...

Ernesto Spadini was born in Calabria in the 1820s and eventually 
found employment in the censor's office in the Kingdom of Two 
Sicilies' post office.  He moved around among a number of the snall 
Italian states that existed at that time, experiencing a variety of 
nuances of censorship policy.  After the Resorgimento, he eventually 
became dissatisfied with the direction of Italian politics and 
retired to Austria, where he wrote his treatise 'On the Reaction of 
the People to Censorship', now very hard to obtain, and much less 
well known than his 'Dialogue on the Black Menace', which expressed 
his strong anticlericalism.  His romantic early life (with brigands 
in the Calabrian hills) and his obscure and ambiguous relationship 
with Signora Elena Christoffides (an opera singer of Arberresh 
descent) make him a much more interesting figure than Pfunzl, whose 
life was chiefly characterised by attempts to create and promote new 
alphabets in which his name would be less disadvantaged.

I will try to make up a bio for Pfunzl too if you like, including his 
debt to the Chinese philosopher Kaiyu.

David, perhaps less bored now