TITLE:
The Temporal Making of a Great Literary Corpus by a XX-Century Mystic: Statistics of Daily Words and Writing Time
AUTHORS:
Emilio Matricciani
KEYWORDS:
Literary Corpus, Daily Writing Time, Handwriting, Words, Maria Valtorta
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Statistics,
Vol.12 No.2,
March
15,
2022
ABSTRACT: Maria Valtorta (1897-1961, Italian mystic)—bedridden since 1934 because
paralyzed—wrote in Italian 13,193 pages of 122 school notebooks concerning
alleged mystical visions on Jesus’ life, during World War II and few following
years. The contents—about 2.64 million words—are now scattered in different books. She
could write from 2 to 6 hours without pausing, with steady speed, and twice in
the same day. She never made corrections and was very proficient in Italian. We have studied her writing activity
concerning her alleged mystical experience with the main scope of establishing
the time sequence of daily writing. This is possible because she diligently
annotated the date of almost every text. We have reconstructed the time series
of daily words and have converted them into time series of writing time, by
assuming a realistic speed of 20 words per
minute, a reliable average value of fast handwriting speed, applicable
to Maria Valtorta. She wrote for 1340 days, about 3.67 years of equivalent
contiguous writing time, mostly concentrated in the years 1943 to 1948. This
study is a first approach in evaluating the effort done, in terms of writing
time, by a mystic turned out to be a very effective literary author, whose texts are interesting to read per
se, beyond any judgement—not of concern here—on her alleged visions.