Experiments, cards, and the machinery of narration

Italo Calvino

by Olga Lenczewska

In the late 1960’s and throughout all of 1970’s, Italo Calvino lived in Paris and belonged to a French group of experimental writers called Oulipo. Influenced by its founders, George Perec and Raymon Queneau, who played an important role in the development of the ever-growing structuralism movement, as well as Roland Barthes, whose seminars he attended, Calvino eagerly participated in the creation of new, combinatory, labyrinth-like and reader-oriented literature.

In a lecture entitled “Cybernetics and Ghosts”, Calvino explicitly expressed his fascination with structuralism and semiotics as well as more specific problems within these fields, such as: the importance of the author, the role of the reader, the construction of a narrative, the multiplicity of interpretative possibilities. This focus on the relation of words to each other as well as the relation of words to their meanings had been first analysed by Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist, who claimed that our use of language is central to our understanding of the worlds and the events in it, emphasising that it is the very relation of concepts to each other that create the meaning of every one of them by means of “differential relations”. The natural consequence of this observation was the fact that one can only understand a given word or concept if one is familiar with all other elements of the same “system”, that is, in the context of other elements which together constitute a system of communication and conceptual understanding: language. Because literature is created primarily by means of language, the meaning one reads into a text depends heavily on these “differential relations” – not only between single words and concepts, but also between more complex elements that constitute a book, such as single stories, chapters, characters, types of narration, and so on.

Let’s look at how Calvino’s literary experiments in his book “Il castello dei destini incrociati” contributed to the creation of a new type of literature which came from the structuralist movement. “Il castello dei destini incrociati” consists of two quite distinct parts: “Il castello dei destini incrociati” and “La taverna dei destini incrociati”. The two parts are composed in a similar way, both telling stories of different protagonists with a use of a deck of Tarot cards, but the settings and the decks are different in each of the halves, and so are the variations in the cards’ order. The action of both parts takes place in an obscure place and features characters who have just met. All of them have suddenly lost their power of speech and thus struggle to tell the others what has happened to them. Once presented with a deck of Tarot cards, one by one they decide to use it as a means of communication which therefore from now on happens by symbols and images, not words. The narrator, himself a participant in the gathering, attempts to understand the stories they tell (or perhaps interpret them, as we are never sure whether his description is right).

The very idea for the book’s composition came from Paolo Fabbri, who in 1968 delivered a lecture that Calvino attended. However, already in one of his previous works, “Il cavaliere inesistente”, Calvino begins to explore the idea of pictorial, non-linguistic story-telling. Some critics have, in fact, compared “Il castello dei destini incrociati”, to a giant card game, in which both the protagonists and the readers participate. In the book’s first part, the physical arrangements of the cards right before the narrative begins is such that the stories of all the protagonists are reflected by a series of cards, either read horizontally or vertically, either forwards or backwards, which sums up to a total of twelve stories. In the second part of the book the cards are not read sequentially, but in a rather random order.

One of the experiments Calvino put to test in his book was that of narrative units and various ways of combining them. In “Il castello dei destini incrociati”, by constructing different stories on the basis of various order of the Tarot cards, Calvino attempted to prove that a narrative is able to be reduced to a finite number of elements or meaning that can be combined in a infinite number of ways, resulting in infinite narrative solutions. Moreover, by providing the Tarot cards decks on the margins of “Il castello dei destini incrociati”, Calvino ensured that his text would be self-referential. The cards are used as a narrative combinational machine, as the meaning of each of them strictly depends of the card that preceded it and that will follow it. The cards, in reality, have no real existence until given meaning by a player or, in this case, a reader of Calvino’s book, and such meaning can differ, depending on the card’s place in the deck and the story. For example, in the first story of the first part of the book, a card called Strength that depicts a man that beats an animal signifies a knight in a forest who was trapped by a brigand, whereas in the fifth chapter the same cards means an African invasion on Catalonia.

In “Il castello dei destini incrociati” the cards, as units of the system of communication and at the same elements of the story, only gain genuine meaning in relation to each other, as every preceding and following card influences each other. Calvino subverts language, challenging the meaning of its elements, showing us through the use of cards that even if the elements of the communicative system remain the same, their reading and interpretation can constantly change if the relations between the elements change, and so all kinds of stories and meanings can be found the our world, too.

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“Tante veritá e bugie”: the mysterious affairs of Zeno Cosini

Italo Svevo

by Olga Lenczewska

Zeno Cosini, the main protagonist of Italo Svevo’s novel La coscienza de Zeno, is perhaps one of the most amusing and complex literary characters in modern Italian literature. Whilst telling his story in the first person in a form of a autobiography, as ordered by his psychoanalytic doctor, he manipulates the facts and lies to the reader – or maybe he is not sure himself what happened in reality and what happened in his head. Zeno is the first literary example of Freud’s psychoanalysis, which Svevo was influenced by – yet after having read the novel, one is not sure if psychoanalytic treatment really works.

Already in the opening chapter, Prefazione, written by the psychoanalytist who treated Zenos, the reader is warned about the unreliability of the following Zeno's account of his life. The doctor refers to Zeno's autobiography as a collection of “tante veritá e bugie”, not providing moreover a means of distinguishing between the truths and the lies: “Se [Zeno] sapesse quante sorprese potrebbero risultargli dal commento delle tante veritá e bugie ch'egli ha qui accumulate!”.

Zeno's way of viewing the world results in his alienation from the reality. Every decision he makes is not entirely “his own” but made in order to please somebody else or to falsely appear as a certain personality. This is strengthened when Zeno often visits the Malfenti family. He feels foreign and maladjusted to it, and therefore does or says things he normally would not do or say. As comments a literary critic Vittorini, “Zeno si presenta come lo straniero (xénos) che viene ammesso nel microcosmo del salotto dei Malfenti (un “paese del tutto sconosciuto”)” [Vittorini 2003: 72]. By achieving partial detachment from the society Zeno hopes to escape the social determinism. Yet he does not escape the social determinism but rather follows its norms without consciously deciding to do so or applying a special meaning to them (as for example in the case of the proposal to Augusta). He mimics the behaviours of the others and repeats the schemes of the society: marriage, commerce, family, and death, which are not simply chapters of a book but a thematic autonomy that represents the norms of the society to which Zeno conforms.

I will focus on portraying the protagonist's undecidedness and maladjustment to the society by analysing the reasons for his decision to marry Augusta Malfenti and the general story told in the chapter La storia del mio matrimonio. At the beginning of La storia del mio matrimonio Zeno confesses that “puó perció essere che l'idea di sposarmi mi sia venuta per la stanchezza di emettere e sentire quell'unica nota”. This is clearly not a common reason for wanting to get married, especially as Zeno decides to do so not because of having found the love of his life, but through analysis of the very concept of being a husband. The social normativity and the things that are regarded as “typical”, such as getting married, begin to dominate his own free will and the ability to make responsible decisions based on his own, individual needs. Zeno chose (or was driven into) proposing to one of the Malfenti daughters. This was perhaps the effect of the close bond he had with Giovanni Malfenti. It can be said that the paternal affect of Malfenti which was reciprocated by Zeno was the cause of him wanting to marry one of Malfenti's daughters. He did not so much choose one of them for her own qualities, as for the perspective of having Malfenti as his father-in-law.

Zeno decides to propose to Ada, a woman he truly admires and perhaps is in love with. Yet when she rejects him, he immediately goes on to propose to Alberta and Augusta almost in one go. This grotesque situation – proposing to three sisters at the same evening – is quite amusing to the reader but at the same time reflects a serious problem of Zeno's: the inability to feel something deeply, to be hurt by the rejection of the beloved one, to stop himself from acting without thinking it through first. The act of proposing loses his meaning, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that gains a different one: that of being an element of the social game, of conforming to the norms. In effect, Zeno becomes Augusta's husband without wanting to or loving her. The choice of Augusta, the least appealing of the Malfenti sisters, is portrayed as random and absolutely unpredicted.

Once married, Zeno comes to realise he loves his wife. What he admires in her is the stability of her life and the order she imposes on things. Augusta truly loves Zeno, too, and brings to his life comfort and order; she consoles and absolves him. She is a mother-figure in the book, not only to their children but also to Zeno himself, and in fact she reminds Zeno of his mother. He finds in her something totally opposite to his own character. Augusta has an opposite view on the truth to Zeno. Whilst for the protagonist the semantic meaning of the words alternates from one situation and social context to another, and the truth is often not what actually happened but what Zeno wishes had happened, Augusta is far away from Zeno's truth relativism: “Da ogni sua parola, da ogni suo atto risultava che in fondo essa credeva la vita eterna. Non che la dicesse tale: si sorprese anzi che una volta io, cui gli errori ripugnavano prima che non avessi amati i suoi, avessi sentito il bisogno di ricordargliene la brevitá. Macché! Essa sapeva che tutti dovevano morire, ma ció non toglieva che ormai ch'eravamo sposati, si sarebbe rimasti insieme, insieme”. Moreover, she lives in the tangible reality and controls the present issues whilst Zeno tends to be absent-minded and the major part of his life is happening inside him, in his reflections and analysis, what is reflected by both the novel's title and the dominance of descriptions of his thoughts over dialogues. As a result of this, Zeno and Augusta have two opposite views of the world. Neither changes the other's view. There is a huge distance between the “A” of the Malfenti daughters and the “Z” of Zeno; it represents a distance from the beginning to the end, from a word to a life. Zeno is detached from the reality and lives in his own world of illusion and projection that is more familiar to him than the reality; he views everything that happens through the lens of his desires and wishes.

When Zeno he decides not to tell Carla, his lover, that he actually loves his wife (she thinks he does not), he tries to justify it by saying that in fact he is not sure whether he loves Augusta or not, and that none of the moments he spends with Carla is appropriate to reveal the truth. Similarly, during his affair with Carla he admits that he has more excuses to innocently visit her than needed, admitting thus that the official reasons are just excuses to make love to her, whereas after having ended the relationship he presents himself as a passive victim of circumstances and Carla's seduction, saying that the love for music was the primary rational motive for the many visits he paid her.

In sum, Svevo's La coscienza de Zeno describes a few episodes from the life of a character who is a literary representation of the first generation of people suffering from an existential condition called “life”. He analyses the reality rather than simply lives it, and, consequently, the life he leads conforms more to his own alternations and projections of the reality than the authentic, “objective” world. Thus he is maladjusted to the society he is supposed to function in and every decision he makes is not truly his own, but a means of conforming to the society's norms. The most prominent example of such an act is, as I tried to show, his decision to propose to and marry Augusta, the least appealing of the Malfenti daughters. Zeno is, moreover, unable to face the consequences of his previous decisions (he, for example, repeatedly cheats on his wife) and lies to himself about the morality of his actions.

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Fate in the works of Giovanni Verga

Giovanni Verga

by Olga Lenczewska

Fate, a notion largely explored and realised in art, philosophy, and literature from ancient times until the present day, can be generally defined as a condition predetermined by a Divine being or nature, invincible necessity, a power which projects one's future. As opposed to the notion of planning which involves an agent organising his own future, fate is supposed to be both independent of one's will, and necessary in its occurrence. In Giovanni Verga's works, however, this notion is substantially challenged and adapted to the society and times he depicts – let us take a close look at that.

Verga, born to a rich Sicilian family during the times of the island's poverty and Italy's social underdevelopment, was inspired by the French naturalism to think of the role of literature as that of portraying the reality as it really was. His particular focus in his mature works such as “I Malavoglia” and “Vita dei campi”, however, was not the “gran mondo” with which the French movement and Alessandro Manzoni dealt, but the “classi inferiori” of the southern Italian villages that, Verga claimed, suffered the most from the difficult economic situation; in the opening story from “Vita dei campi” entitled “Fantasticheria” he clearly presents his ideology: “per poter comprendere siffatta caparbietá, che é per certi aspetti eroica, bisogna farci piccini anche noi, chiudere tutto l'orizzonte fra due zolle, e guardare col microscopo le piccole cause che fanno battere i piccoli cuori”.

Verga’s interpretation of the notion of fate is clearly visible in his portrayal of a boy nicknamed Rosso malpelo, a protagonist of one of the short stories from “Vita dei campi”. The boy was called Rosso malpelo because, according to the villagers, ginger hair was an attribute of malicious people. The reasoning of the peasants may be evidenced by the use of a causal “perché” in the following statement: “aveva i capelli rossi perché era un ragazzo malizioso e cattivo, che prometteva di riescire un fior di birbone”. From a commonsensical point of view the prejudicial assumption of the peasants seem absurd and it is rather them who 'create' the boy's destiny than himself. Moreover, it is not only the boy's hair colour, but also the popular opinion concerning his father, that contributed to Rosso malpelo's bad fame: the boy 'inherited' the bad fame from his father who, also unjustifiably, was negatively perceived by the society which would judge his stubbornness and hard-working manners as arrogance and selfishness. When the father died during work only he was brave to do, the fellow workers judge Rosso malpelo's mourning as a nasty, arrogant, even animalistic behaviour. A number of animalistic comparisons appear also in other parts of the story, for example, when the reader finds out that even the boy's mother believed he was a malicious just because people were saying so, putting the opinion of others over the bond of family: “La vedova di mastro Misciu era disperata di aver per figlio quel malarnese, come dicevano tutti, ed egli era ridotto veramente come quei cani, che a furia di buscarsi dei calce e delle sassate da questo e da quello, finiscono col mettersi la coda fra le gambe e scappare alla prima anima viva che vedono, e diventano affamati, spelati e selvatici come lupi”. Even more tragically, the boy seemed to be aware of his situation in the village and surrounding him injustice, but unable to free himself from it, accepting is and taking for granted instead: “Mio padre era buono, e non faceva male a nessuno, tanto che lo chiamavano Bestia. Invece è là sotto, ed hanno persino trovato i ferri, le scarpe e questi calzoni qui che ho indosso io”. It becomes clear that it were the villagers' prejudicial opinions, not some higher power, that projected and directed Rosso malpelo's fate.

Moreover, the boy felt obliged to work were his father used to, even though he died there and the place was not only extremely dangerous, but constantly reminded Rosso malpelo of the tragedy. Despite his unwillingness to do so, the boy believed he was born into working at his father's trade: “Certamente egli avrebbe preferito di fare il manovale, come Ranocchio, e lavorare cantando sui ponti, in alto, in mezzo all'azzurro del cielo, col sole sulla schiena, - o il carrettiere, come compare Gaspare, che veniva a prendersi la rena della cava, dondolandosi sonnacchioso sulle stanghe, colla pipa in bocca, e andava tutto il giorno per le belle strade di campagna (…). Ma quello era stato il mestiere di suo padre, e in quel mestiere era nato lui”. Also the job itself seemed to be linked to fatal fate. The ultimate tragism of the injudicious opinion shared by the society the boy lived in is represented and particularly stressed at the very last sentence of “Rosso malpelo”, when the boy goes away, convinced that nobody will look for him anyway: “Così si persero persin le ossa di Malpelo, e i ragazzi della cava abbassano la voce quando parlano di lui nel sotterraneo, ché hanno paura di vederselo comparire dinanzi, coi capelli rossi e gli occhiacci grigi”. The public fear of Rosso malpelo remained even after he had left his home and went missing.

In sum, the short story “Rosso malpelo” from “Vita dei campi” presents the fate of the protagonist as being in hands of the society he lives in that shared injudicious prejudices based on his physical appearance and his mourning after the death of his father; a negative social opinion greatly influences his and his family's life. Moreover, despite not willing to work where his father did, the boy believed he was born into continuing his father's trade and did not see any other possibility, thus being unable to free himself from his family's 'heritage'. The notion of fate in “Vita dei campi” is based on, or mainly expressed by, the social beliefs and opinions shared by the locals of the villages the plots are set in. Finally, the notion of fate in Verga's works directs the protagonists' lives from the 'bottom' – by the society, fellow locals – rather than from the 'top' – by some kind of Divine and omnipotent power, even if the protagonists themselves do not realise this and attribute this force to God. This might be due to the fact that for the protagonists do not want to accept they are controlled by their society's values and other people rather than by God, as they would not be able to explain and accept their course of life otherwise. Such definition of fate as coming from the 'bottom' is very different from its original definition from ancient times of the Greek tragedy. Thus it can be questioned that the force that controls Verga's protagonists cannot really be called fate. Obviously it depends how liberally we treat the definition of fate, but in my opinion it cannot be; I would rather call it 'social inescapableness', which transform the notion of 'fate' into a power that does not bear the notion of a Divine being projecting one's life.

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Giuseppe Ungaretti’s war poetry of solitude and solidarity

Giuseppe Ungaretti

by Olga Lenczewska

Ungaretti was born in Alexandria, where his Italian parents moved to find a job at the construction of the Suez Canal. Although they were from Lucca, Tuscany, the poet has not visited this or any other place in his home country until he was an adult. Having completed education at a French school in Egypt, he went on to study at Sorbonne in France. The first collection of Ungaretti’s poems, L’Allegria (The Joy), consists of his works from the period of First World War (1914-1919). Most of the poems from the collection present antitheses, such as happiness-sadness, life-death, nationalism-cosmopolitanism, or solitude-solidarity. In Ungaretti’s view, poetry cannot evolve in a static environment, and to write about the essential human experience is to wander well beyond the habits and boredom of everyday’s life. It is constant energy and movement that create true poetry, and the essence may be captured beyond the words only if they are full of tensions, antitheses, and dilemmas.

When First World War began, Ungaretti decided to be a soldier that he was able to get closer to his country by fighting at the Italian front in Carso. That was when he saw Italy for the first time. Due to distinct lack of one national identity and not feeling particularly attached to any country or tradition, Ungaretti faced an identity crisis and longed for national roots – cultural basis that would grant him a foundation for his literary expression and values. He considered his life and journey as a sort of nomadism, perceiving himself everywhere as straniero and admitting in one of his poems In nessuna / parte / di terra / mi posso / accasare (Girovago). As his poetry always expressed his direct experience and feelings, solitude in his writings manifests itself in this very experience of not having a fixed identity and constant need to search for a home. Solidarity, on the other hand, is linked to the poet’s experience of war as a soldier, where he had to cooperate with other soldiers who were the witnesses of the challenges and extreme situations he faced and who were undergoing similar to him internal changes.

To give a practical example of the dichotomy of solidarity and solitude in Ungaretti’s war poetry, I will briefly analyse one of him poems, Fratelli. This meditative poem draws its inspiration from a meeting between two patrols of soldiers. Even though war is an antithesis of peace, Ungaretti pictures the two patrols as groups of fragile people facing the same drama of fear, tiredness and uncertainty as to what is going to happen tomorrow. Thus, the poem is a description of a situation that unites the war partisans in the same experience and feelings. Their moral frailty is represented by a synecdoche of trembling words (Parola tremante / nella notte) and metaphorically expressed as a young leaf trembling in the shell-convulsed night air (Foglia appena nata). It is this very situation and war context that enable the soldiers realise how little and vulnerable, when facing the universe and the wheel of history, they are. The scarcely born leaf hints also to the fact that many of them are young and inexperienced, which makes the First World War a background of their process of becoming fully grown up. This notion of losing the opportunity to have a normal youth can be found also in Italia, where Ungaretti defines himself as il frutto (...) / maturato in una sera – somebody who, because of the war context, was forced to grow up too quickly.

The title of the poem gives primacy to a single, crucial word fratelli, which means both comrades and brothers. The notion of brotherhood shows how close the soldiers are linked, almost as if they were one body. Solidarity and strength unite the soldiers against their own precariousness and fragility. On the other hand, there is a single solider (uomo) to whom his fragility is presented. We can thus see the tension between a singular intense experience of sinking the existential individuality of a lonely and fragile person which is contrasted by the plural fratelli that symbolizes the solidarity of a brotherhood discovered in the tragedy of war.

As Ungaretti believes it is constant tensions between words and concepts that create true poetry, solitude and solidarity are never separated from each other and every poem that deals with these themes is a philosophical journey through human existence and crucial for life experience. As a poet, Ungaretti wanted to be heard by many of us and to do that he constantly searched for his national and cultural identity and roots that would grant him a foundation for his literary expression and values, for only by doing so could he pass this experience to future generations and stay close to his own feelings and dilemmas. His collection L’Allegria reflects thus what he thought to be true poetry: Ogni vera poesia risolve miracolosamente il contrasto d’essere singolare, unica, e anonima, universale [Ungaretti, Vita d’un uomo].

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Truth, sanity and madness in Pirandello’s “Enrico IV”

Luigi Pirandello

by Olga Lenczewska

“Truth” is a piece of information with conforms to reality as it is. It is meant to be objective and commonly shared by a large group of people. The opposite of truth is fiction, therefore also any form of art that alters reality, or even goes as far as to create new characters and events, could be called the opposite of truth. Yet, since any author is a creator of a new world that functions within his works, theatre itself conveys always its own version of truth – the one that is true within the newly-created world, and presented as such on stage. In order to follow and understand the spectacle, we must engage in this game. In theatre, therefore, illusion often becomes truth. In Pirandello's works, however, the game goes much farther – the notions of truth and illusion within any play not only constantly intertwine, but intertwine to such an extent that the notion of truth gets lost in the way, and one does not know any more what is an illusion and what is not. The concept of truth in Pirandello’s plays can be illustrated by the vagueness of the distinction between sanity and madness in his “Enrico IV”. 

“Enrico IV” presents a story of a talented actor and historian falls off his horse while playing the role of Henry IV in a historical pageant. After he comes to, he believes himself to be Henry. For the next twenty years, his wealthy nephew, Count de Nolli, funds an elaborate hoax in a remote villa, hiring actors to play the roles of Henry's privy councillors in order to simulate the 11th-century court. In the play the notions of sanity and madness are defined within its frame and laws: we are confronted with a comparison between a theatrical world that resembles ours and anther one with in that does not resemble ours. The first one is represented by all of the “persone” except of Enrico; the latter by Enrico and the theatre-in-theatre, created by others who are aware of the game. Therefore the distinction between madness and sanity seems initially to be marked by the awareness of the game (everyone but Enrico) or by lack thereof (Enrico). 

A scene from Enrico IV

During the first two acts the reader may establish truth as that what the others say, and insanity as Enrico's behaviour. The situation, however, complicates itself to an unbearable extent in the last act when the reader and the other characters find out that Enrico has been aware for eight years that he is not really the German Emperor, and that the has been playing the game with the others, or he has been imposing the rules of his game upon the others who were completely unaware of it. Who appears to be mad at this point? Funnily enough, we are still inclined to say: Enrico, despite the fact that now we know it was him who was aware and the others that were not. But somehow the criterion of madness changes, and Enrico seems to have been mad by letting the game continue and acting as an insane person. Was this a mad decision? We are inclined to say it was, but nevertheless the definition of insanity is being substantially altered. Finally, it is altered once more at the very end of the play when Enrico, having unveiled the truth about himself to everyone's bewilderment, has a change to appear as sane, and in fact is considered as such by some characters, for example Belcredi: “BELCREDI: (…) Tu non sei pazzo!”. Enrico, however, immediately denies this, shouting “Non sono pazzo? Eccoti!”, and kills Belcredi. This decision seems to have been made by him in order to prove a point, but we get a feeling that a sane person would never kill somebody just to prove a point. 

Is Enrico really mad for doing so? And, is he still mad, or is he mad again but in a different way now? Clearly the definition of madness as well as the demarcation line between sanity and insanity become extremely vague at this point, and much is left to the reader's interpretation and speculation. But that is precisely what Pirandello wants: to leave the search for the truth to the readers; this is the final part of the game. In my opinion, at the end of the play Enrico himself doubts whether he is mad or not, but his decision to kill Belcredi has consequences, and he has to act as mad again (“Ora sí... per forza... qua insieme, qua insieme... e per sempre!”), which is inevitable in the light of his previous decision. The notion of truth seems relative and its objectivity hidden to us (as well as some characters). 

The notion of truth in Pirandello's plays is presented as relative. “Enrico IV” introduces so many dimensions that it is virtually impossible to answer, on the objective grounds, the question which of the characters are sane and which are mad. The truth, therefore, becomes a strongly relative concept, or, to put it differently, the objective truth is hidden from the audience (and some characters as well), and what remains visible are just certain viewpoints or perspectives of the theatrical reality. Which scenario is the true one or which characters are real and sane is never explicitly sad, and thus the truth is always hidden from the reader. Moreover, it can be questioned whether a fixed truth even exists in the plays – where would it be? I see no space within which it could exist – it cannot be found in the texts, implicitly or explicitly, and there are many plausible interpretations of what has really happened to the characters before the play. But pondering it might turn out to be useless, as the characters did not exist before the play and, after all, they are mere creations of the author.

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How Sciascia challenges the detective novel genre

Leonardo Sciascia

by Olga Lenczewska

The detective novel is a rather popular and “light” genre of literature that usually serves to entertain the reader without imposing on him any particular ideology or making him reflect on his life. This is the case when it comes to Agatha Christie's novels or the stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle, to list two English individuals that are amongst the most popular crime novels authors in the world. The aim of these novels is to portray a crime story is such a way that the reader feels the suspense is growing and cannot stop reading the book until the very last chapter. At the beginning of the book we are always presented with a murder (or multiple murders) as well as with all the protagonists that are involved in the incident in one way or another. The psychological portrait of the characters is usually very detailed and complicated. Among these people there is always a clever detective or policeman (for example, Sherlock Holmes in Doyle's novels and Hercules Poirot or Miss Marple in Christie's books), whose ultimate goal is to solve the crime. Each chapter of a detective novel, moreover, is supposed to reveal a new trace, either through the investigator's private enquiry or an interrogation of the characters, which will eventually lead to discovering the murderer and his motives - the “truth” about the story.

The structure of the detective novel does not allow its author much flexibility and literary innovation. Perhaps that is why it has not been considered an ambitious genre. Despite this fact, one of the Italian novelists of the 20th century, Leonardo Sciascia, a Sicilian whose books belong to the canon of Italian literature, chose the detectve novel as the framework for the vast majority of his writings. Although Sciascia's books largely conform to the genre of the detective novel, there are ideological and structural elements that differ.

Sciascia’s novels, such as “A ciascuno il suo” or “Il giorno della civetta”, start with a murder or murders, continue with an individual trying to discover the truth about a murder case by investigating various traces, and end with the killer’s being revealed and the story explained. The incident is always depicted from a few different perspectives and the reader does not know what exactly has happened. Moreover, the act of the murder splits the plot into two parts – before and after, constituting a crucial turning point in the plot. The element of a puzzle – who killed and why – goes back to the classic detective novel of Doyle and Christie. Through deduction and linking various premises in Sciascia’s books, as much as in those written by Doyle or Christie, it is possible to unveil the real story.

However, not everything in Sciascia's novels conforms to the detective novel genre so easily. Often the murderer turns out not to be a single person but a whole criminal institution – the Sicilian Mafia – with all its legal and political tricks. Because of this fact the motives of the murders are usually political and social, not private. Moreover, Sciascia, unlike other crime authors, is aware that the state is not of much use when it comes to uncovering a murder story: “Lo stato – l'istituzione giudiziaria – non é in grado di conferire efficacia al paziente lavorio di ricostruzione dell'ispettore o del detective” [Ambroise, “Invito alla lettura di Sciascia”]. In Sciascia's crime novels the Mafia is portrayed as an institution that defines the mode of existence in Sicily. Against the standard detective novel, the writer goes beyond a simple plot and brings out the evil history of the island, represented by the silence and the collision between the Mafia’a own business and the welfare of ordinary Sicilian citizens. In such a way Sciascia demythologises and re-invents, or re-formulates, the genre of the detective novel.

To give an example, this social situation of the island is symbolically represented in the main protagonist of “A ciascuno il suo” (1966), professor Paolo Laurana. Laurana is the most frequently featured character of the book as well as a private investigator of the double murder which takes place at the beginning of the book. However, unlike the traditional detectives, he is not sufficiently equipped to perform his task because he is a literature teacher and has no experience with dealing with crime. He is presented by Sciascia negatively: he is an introvert, not very successful in his academic job, sexually repressed, and dominated by his mother. Laurana tries to reconstruct the relationship between Manno and Roscio, the two victims of the murder in “A ciascuno il suo”, by interrogating his friends and other citizens. He is not sure who is and who is not controlled by the Mafia, and therefore whom he can trust. Sciascia depicts this difficult situation “usando un rigoroso rispecchiamento di un paese della Sicilia dove la mafia controlla inesorabilmente uomini e cose” [Abruzzi, “Leonardo Sciascia e la Sicilia”]. In the novel the Mafia is opposed by a single person who is not even an investigator but plays a “game” of being one. Despite his honesty and desire to unveil the truth, Laurana fails to complete his task in the world of corruption and lack of definite ethical values. He does not in time realise the dishonesty of the people involved in the murder and in consequence his naivety leads him to death. The reader quickly realises that in Sicily the collision between the victims and the world of politics is so strong that Laurana is unable to change anything. Sciascia's honest and trustworthy detective is alone, and he is the only point on earth where corruption is rejected: his motive is ethical and abstract, and, therefore, incorruptible. The impotence of the investigator is opposed to the power of the Mafia, which reflects the general social and political situation of the Sicily of the 1960's.

In his hands the genre of the detective novel became a reflection on the political system and the social situation of Sicily. The collective and institutional murderer, the Mafia, is portrayed as an institution that defines the mode of existence on the island. The impotence and naivety of the detective Laurana from “A ciascuno il suo” symbolises the inability of the Italians from Sicily to take control over this collective murderer. Sciascia, therefore, re-formulates the genre of the detective novel by introducing the elements I presented above and, in consequence, bitterly unveiling the real situation in the Sicily of the 1960’s. His crime novels may be therefore said to constitute one big detective story which is based on real facts from the Sicilian life of the author and his neighbours.

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Pre-Sartrean existential literature in Italy: Alberto Moravia’s “Gli indifferenti”

Alberto Moravia

by Olga Lenczewska

When asked about the first existentialist novel of the 20th century, many of us would point to Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Nausea” (1938). Whilst Sartre is world-famous for his literary achievements and novel ideas, very few acknowledge the importance of a book which was written nine years before “Nausea” here in Italy - Alberto Moravia’s literary debiut “Gli indifferenti” (1929).

If we trust that the author is honest with us, at the time of writing the novel Moravia knew nothing of existentialism and after the novel had been published he claimed he merely tried to resolve his own problems without realising they were at the same time the problems of the century.

“Gli indifferenti is a forerunner of the existentialist novel. In it the existentialism is instinctive, spontaneous, unsystematic, it only becomes thought out and elaborated in the subsequent work of the author; but it is not limited to what generally termed the climate, the atmosphere of a work, but underlies the whole novel and lays the foundations for all the essential themes, so as to make it the first narrative work of it in any literature” [Falconi, “Vent'anni di Moravia”].

The Ardengo family presented in the novel comprises Mariagrazia and her children: Carla and Michele. The mother is selfish and narcissistic, and only cares about getting back her lover, Leo. The adolescent sibligns are both deeply dissatisfied with their boring, mediocre lives. However, they are so absent-minded and weak-willed that they turn out to be unable to change it. Carla’s only act against her mother - giving in to the seduction of her mother’s former lover Leo - does not come from her conscious decision, but is a passive act of letting Leo do with her what he wants despite an obvious immoral element aspect to his action. Michele is used to being treated as an immature youngster with no voice, and when he finally decides to affirm his independent voice by attempting to kill Leo, his brave act turns into a farce because he forgets to load the gun before shooting. “[Carla and Michele] are incapable of any positive action and yet they are urged by the torment of a necessity for choice which, nevertheless, cannot find support in any definite moral criterion, where the criterion of sincerity is rejected. (…) All their attempts at choice appear condemned at the outset to the most radical failure, so that no escape seems possible other than death or a passive acceptance” [Scaramucci, “Moravia tra existenzialismo e freudismo”].

Leo, a cynical man whose only needs are the primitive desires of sex and money, is the only protagonist who knows exactly what he wants and always achieves it. His brutal needs are always fulfilled, and whilst doing so he only thinks about himself. Tragically, Leo is the only “successful” character of Moravia’s novel precisely because he is not detached from the reality like the others.

The problems the writer touches upon in his debiut novel concern one’s inability to communicate with the others, to be true to oneself, and to live and make decisions according to a coherent system of moral values. Moravia presents a complete collapse of the relationship between man and reality, and detachment from traditional ethics, which comes from being unable to establish any kind of relationship with the real world which seems obscure or, worse, ceases to exist. The titular “indifferenza” is thus visible in the lack of any meaningful action that would be done truthfully to one's feelings and desires, and the lack of honesty between the characters. The narration is played in between the two narrative dimensions: the dialogues and the internal monologues, the first expressing opinions that the other character want to hear and the society demands, the latter showing the reader what the protagonist really thinks.

“Poveri di spirito (ma ricchi di denaro), i borghesi dipinti da Moravia testimonano dell'impossibilitá della tragedia nel mondo capitalistico. Ma mostrano soprattutto di saper creare una commedia che torna a vantaggio dei loro concreti interessi, proprio perché sembra colpire i loro inesistenti ideali. Tragedia mancata, 'Gli indifferenti' é in realtá una commedia grottesca pienamente riuscita” [Tessari, “Alberto Moravia”]. What is at the root of the characters’ consciousness is the failure to establish a relation with other people and the real world. This is a result of all the other failures they went through: failure to make decisions, to do what one wants to do, or to tell the truth instead of communicating with lies. Eventually Carla and Michele find it impossible to go on living like they do, since it is impossible to either be faithful to oneself and remain totally alienated from reality, or to inauthentically yield to external demands of the society, but unfortunately they are unable to change their situation. At the end of the novel it becomes clear that the characters have failed to shake off their inertia and change anything in their lives, and their failure is existential. This mechanism, aptly presented to us by Moravia, expresses the modern crisis of man and begins the topics explored later in 20th-century existential novel.

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