The Value of Literature in and After the Seventies: The Case of Italy and Portugal La Valeur de la Littérature pendant et après les années 70: Le cas de l’Italie e du Portugal
ITALIANISTICA ULTRAIECTINA 1 Studi di letteratura e cultura italiana Pubbicati dall’Università di Utrecht Studies on Italian Literature and Culture Published by Utrecht University Studies over Italiaanse literatuur en cultuur Uitgegeven door de Universiteit Utrecht Études de littérature et culture italienne Publiés par l’Université d’Utrecht
Diretta da/ Directed by/ Samengesteld door/ Dirigée par Harald Hendrix
1. Monica Jansen, Paula Jordão, eds., The Value of Literature in and After the Seventies: The Case of Italy and Portugal
Conference proceedings Volume I
Proceedings of the International Conference: The Value of LITERATURE in and after the SEVENTIES: The Case of ITALY and PORTUGAL
Actes de la Conférence Internationale: La valeur de la LITTÉRATURE pendant et après les ANNÉES 70: le cas de L’ITALIE et du PORTUGAL
Utrecht, 11-13 march 2004
Edited by Monica Jansen & Paula Jordão
Monica Jansen & Paula Jordão, eds.: The Value of Literature in and After the Seventies: The Case of Italy and Portugal / La Valeur de la Littérature pendant et après les années 70: Le cas de l'Italie e du Portugal
ISBN-10 : 90-6701-016-2 ISBN-13 : 978-90-6701-016-0
© With the authors Published with assistance of Igitur, Utrecht Publishing & Archiving Services (University Library Utrecht). All proceedings have been electronically published by Igitur, Utrecht Publishing & Archiving Services at: http://congress70.library.uu.nl HTU
UTH
Typesetting Igitur, Utrecht Publishing & Archiving Services (University Library Utrecht)
Printed by Zuidam Uithof
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS VOLUME I MONICA JANSEN & PAULA JORDÃO
I
Introduction
Part 1 The Value of Literature in and After the Seventies: The Case of Portugal La Valeur de la Littérature pendant et après les années 70: Le cas du Portugal 1
EDUARDA DIONÍSIO La Littérature Portugaise: les Années 70 Coupées en Deux CRISTIANA SASSETTI The Distopic Vision of the City: António Lobo Antunes and Rubem Fonseca
40
FERNANDO VENÂNCIO Les Déçus de la Révolution Portugaise dans la Chronique de Journal, 19741980
52
ANABELA DINIS BRANCO DE OLIVEIRA La Révolution: Foisonnement d’Images ou les Différents Pétales d’un Oeillet
64
SIGNE ØROM The Dethronement of Historical and Mythical Figures in Portuguese Novels in the Eighties and Nineties
81
MARIA-BENEDITA BASTO Who is written? The Representation of the Other in Rewriting Experiments during the Portuguese Colonial War and the Mozambican Liberation Struggle
94
RUI TORRES Poetics and Politics of the Portuguese Experimental Poetry
113
PEDRO EIRAS Les Années 70 Ont-elles Existé? - à Propos de Finita de Maria Gabriela Llansol
127
ANA RAQUEL FERNANDES Breaking with Social and Literary Conventions: Judith Teixeira and Maria Teresa Horta
141
ANNA KLOBUCKA Back into the Future: Feminism in Portuguese Women’s Poetry since the 1970s
157
HILARY OWEN “Out” Performing the Mátria in Natália Correia’s A Madona
170
CLAIRE WILLIAMS “Não há coincidências”? Women’s Writing in Portugal in 1974 and 2004
188
ISABEL PIRES DE LIMA Na tua face by Vergílio Ferreira: “… Towards a New Natural Order of Being”
210
Part 2 The Value of Literature in and After the Seventies: The Case of Italy La Valeur de la Littérature pendant et après les années 70: Le cas de l’Italie 242
ROBERT LUMLEY The Historian, the Poet, and the Semiologist: Perspectives on the Post 68 Decade VINCENZO BINETTI Re-mapping Autonomous Spaces and Invisible Communities in Nanni Balestrini's Testimonial Narrative
265
CLODINA GUBBIOTTI Nanni Balestrini’s Gli invisibili: Fictional Spaces for an Epic Monument to the Seventies
286
SILVIA CONTARINI Années 70: une Transition Traumatique
303
RUTH GLYNN Trauma on the Line: Terrorism and Testimony in the anni di piombo
317
SUSANNE KLEINERT Violence Politique et Sentiment d’Irréalité: la Représentation des Années 70 chez Balestrini, Camon et Vassalli
336
ALAIN SARRABAYROUSE De Abitare il vento à L’oro del mondo (et au-delà). L’Évolution de la Condamnation d’une Certaine Forme de Société dans l’Œuvre de Sebastiano Vassalli
357
HANNA SERKOWSKA About One of the Most Disputed Literary Cases of the Seventies: Elsa Morante’s La Storia
372
FLAVIANO PISANELLI Pour une Poétique de la Dissidence. Lecture de Pétrole et de Salò ou les 120 journées de Sodome de Pier Paolo Pasolini
387
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS VOLUME II CLAUDIO MILANESI Le Mouvement Vu de l’Intérieur: Milan de 68 aux Années de Plomb à Travers le Roman d’un Témoin: Andrea Bellini et la Banda del Casoretto
408
ENRICO PALANDRI Time in Literature
423
BART VAN DEN BOSSCHE Voci dal Settantasette: Orality and Historical Experience in Enrico Palandri’s Boccalone and Pier Vittorio Tondelli’s Altri libertini
430
STEFANIA RICCIARDI Enrico Palandri, Boccalone: une Montgolfière vers les Années 80
445
DANIEL MANGANO De Boccalone à Jack Frusciante: Continuum ou Hiatus?
457
CHRISTOPH OLIVER MAYER Pier Vittorio Tondelli à la Recherche d’une Patrie?
477
RENZO ARDICCIONI 1977: les “Indiani Metropolitani” Déterrent la Hache de Guerre Excursion sur les Traces des Avant-Gardes des Années 70 qui Descendirent en Ville à la Recherche de Nouveaux Parcours d’Art, de Littérature, de Communication et de Vie
498
NIEK PAS “The Incarnation of the Spirit of Liberty” La Perception de Provo par la Contreculture Italienne des Années Soixante à Nos Jours
527
ANNA BOTTA The Alì Babà Project (1968-1972): Monumental History and the Silent Resistance of the Ordinary
543
MARINA SPUNTA Gianni Celati’s “Natural” Narration and the Call of the Plains
559
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MONICA JANSEN & CLAUDIA NOCENTINI Alì Babà and Beyond: Celati and Calvino in the Search for “Something More”
574
ELS JONGENEEL Les Villes invisibles d’Italo Calvino: entre Utopie et Dystopie
591
GIAN PAOLO GIUDICETTI L’Idéologie dans Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore (1979) d’Italo Calvino
613
JONATHAN SMITH Synecdoches, Disjunctions: Eco, Pareyson, and Literature after Kant and the Platypus
621
JOSEPH EYNAUD The Italian Detective Novel: The Literary and Cinematic Giallo
638
FRANCO MANAI Loriano Macchiavelli and the Italian Detective Novel of the ’70s
660
INGE LANSLOTS & ANNELIES VAN DEN BOGAERT Benni’s Tristalia
675
LIZ WREN-OWENS The Tools of the Detective: Leonardo Sciascia’s Approach to Literature in the mid to late 1970s
690
CARMELA LETTIERI Quel Rôle pour l’Écrivain (et la Littérature) Face au Souvenir des années de plomb? Tabucchi, Riotta, Guccini et Macchiavelli
703
RANIERO SPEELMAN Primo Levi in the Seventies: “letterato” or “impegnato”?
716
ADALGISA GIORGIO ‘Bad Girls’ in the 1970s and 1990s: Female Desire and Experimentalism in Italian Women’s Writing
729
MIRIAM HALPERN Remembering World War II in 1970s Italian Women’s Writing
746
SABINA GOLA La Forme Autobiographique dans la Littérature Féminine depuis les Années 70
760
MARGHERITA MARRAS Entre Texte et Contexte: pour un Parcours de la Littérature Féminine des Îles Italiennes (Sardaigne et Sicile) des Années 70 à Nos Jours
784
MARIE FRANÇOISE ZANA REGNIEZ Petits Meurtres en Famille Que dit le Meurtre? Comment Dire le Meurtre? Réflexions sur le Meurtre dans la Littérature Féminine
796
Introduction Monica Jansen & Paula Jordão (Utrecht University) The events of 1968 and their repercussions in the seventies are generally characterised as an essential part of a decade of social conflict and evoke contradictory memories in national European imaginaries. This is certainly the case in Italy and Portugal, where the clash between creativity and violence, between utopia and dystopia, has left deep traces in the history, culture and literature of both countries. In Portugal, the premonitions and effects of the April revolution of 1974 are the main landmarks of this period. Simultaneous with the euphoria caused by the fall of the fifty year-old dictatorship, the country became involved in a period of transition to a democratic system in which the adherence to the European Union and the controversial decolonisation process play a crucial role. Meanwhile, Italy was the stage of conflicting militant social movements. On the one hand, we see a continuation of the liberating ideals of the baby boomers of 1968 and on the other hand a hardening of the political struggle that results in the terrorism of the so-called “Leaden Years” (“anni di piombo”). Robert Lumley, author of an important study on the cultures of revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978, poignantly called his volume States of Emergency, referring to new social subjects as well as to the crises the emergencies provoked in the social order. The 1977 student movement in Bologna and the kidnapping of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades in 1978 are good examples of this double-faced revolt. Aware of the importance of such issues the departments of Italian and Portuguese Studies of Utrecht University in March 2004 decided to organise an international conference in order to highlight the tensions between national realities and http://congress70.library.uu.nl
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international ideology in the particular cases of Portugal and Italy. 1 Central to this comparative approach is the question of how to conceive a political and cultural change in an already postmodern condition. How can revolutionary values keep their cogency after the fall of the masternarratives of ideology? Gathered in Utrecht, Lusitanists and Italianists reflected on topics that pointed in two directions: the interaction between cultural artefacts of the seventies and their socio-political (inter)national contexts on the one hand, and the subsequent representations of the seventies in contemporary Portuguese and Italian literature and culture on the other. The papers focus on different agents of cultural change, ranging from writers and intellectuals to philosophers and activists. For the first time they offer a comparative approach to the “political” and the “personal” dimension of cultural memories that, complementing and contradicting each other, intersect different national cultures. These proceedings are also the final result of the NWO Postdoctoral Research Project “Postmodern Writing and Cultural Identity in Italy and Portugal”, carried out by Monica Jansen between 2000 and 2004. The invited speakers, Eduarda Dionísio and Isabel Pires de Lima for the Portuguese perspective and Enrico Palandri and Robert Lumley for the Italian case, were selected for their expertise and personal experience of the seventies. Writer Eduarda Dionísio is known in Portugal as one of the most TPF
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The conference could be organised thanks to the following sponsors (in alphabetical order): Associazione Dante Alighieri Utrecht, Department of Italian Studies (Utrecht University), Instituto Camões, KNAW (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences), NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research), OGC (Research Institute for History and Culture, Utrecht University), OSL (Netherlands Graduate School for Literary Studies), Portuguese Studies Center (Utrecht University), Utrecht University (Board of Directors). Our special thanks go also to Clemens Arts, Annemieke Meijer, Alain Sarrabayrouse and Kristine Steenbergh for their linguistic assistance in English and French.
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influential names of the carnation revolution. Having participated in many political and cultural events in the revolutionary period, Dionísio gives us a fascinating and personal account of that time in her novel Retrato dum amigo enquanto falo. Enrico Palandri is the writer of Boccalone, a novel that has been interpreted, also during this conference, as a significant literary and sociological portrait of the generation that in Italy is considered to have been involved in the settantasette movement. Historian Robert Lumley, one of the founders of Italian Cultural Studies in the British academies, in his work on the seventies in Italy has combined cultural, intellectual and social history. His “cultural eye” combining the perspectives of the Poet, the Historian and the Semiologist, proved to be very constructive for the debate during the conference. Isabel Pires de Lima, a scholar of comparative literature and an expert on the work of the realist writer Eça de Queirós, has studied intensively the Portuguese literary production during and after the Revolution. For this particular occasion Pires de Lima chose to focus on one of Vergílio Ferreira’s novels in particular as an example of ontological complexities and contradictions common to all periods. Besides these personal and theoretical accounts, the proceedings offer a rich variety of perspectives that may be roughly structured around some recurrent topics and keywords: Testimony, Autobiography, Poetry, Women’s writing, Popular culture, History, Violence, Trauma, Desire, Youth, Revolt and Revolution. The organisation of the papers reflects the comparison between the representations of the seventies within the national settings of Portugal and Italy. The proceedings therefore consist of two parts that both are structured thematically, a thread that we will briefly expose below. As a writer who intensely lived and wrote about the period of the carnation revolution in 1974, Eduarda Dionísio is in the III
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privileged position of revisiting the political, social and cultural atmosphere of that time. She begins her account “La littérature Portugaise: les Années 70 Coupées en Deux” by dividing the revolutionary period in three parts (before, during and after the revolution) in order to revisit the cultural, social, and political Portuguese reality of that time. Economical and political immigration, censorship, and an annihilating colonial war are only a few reasons she gives for the appalling situation in which the country found itself in the period previous to the carnation revolution. While stressing the importance of the revolution as a moment of radical political, social, and cultural change for Portugal, Eduarda Dionísio also sees it as a period of bewilderment for intellectuals in general and writers in particular. As she puts it, writers saw themselves going from a position of heroes in which they fought a dictatorial regime, to a position of unknown soldiers in which the learning process to democracy could be (and was) done without their influence. This resulted in a literary vacuum that lasted until the eighties, when a considerable number of prose and poetry books found their way to the public. In a vivid and outspoken account, Eduarda Dionísio’s reflection on the revolutionary period exceeds the years directly before and after the carnation revolution. By including the cultural, social and even political decades that preceded it, she fulfils what she sees as her task of preserving the cultural legacy of one of the most important periods of the Portuguese history. The emphasis on the role of literature as a document of the revolutionary years is clearly visible in most of the papers presented at the conference and collected in this volume. In “The Distopic Vision of the City: António Lobo Antunes and Rubem Fonseca” Cristiana Sassetti shows how both writers described a similar decadency in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro in comparable historical and political periods of Portugal and IV
INTRODUCTION
Brazil. In order to better understand the cultural atmosphere of the years between 1974 and 1980 from a journalistic point of view, we may turn to Fernando Venâncio’s “Les Déçus de la Révolution Portugaise dans la Chronique de Journal, 19741980”. Anabela Oliveira’s “La Révolution: Foisonnement d’Images ou les Différents Pétales d’un Œillet” proposes a dialogue between (Portuguese) literature and (German and Yugoslavian) film, emphasizing their similarities. In a more general approach to the historical meaning of the literary period, Signe Ørom opts for revisiting History and its heroes in “The Dethronement of Historical and Mythical Figures in Portuguese Novels in the Eighties and Nineties”, stressing most particularly the iconoclasm of those years. Finally Maria Benedita Basto goes beyond the Portuguese continental frontiers and addresses the poems written by Mozambican guerrilleros of the FRELIMO as a “deconstruction and reconstruction of ideological representations of identity and alterity” in “Who is written? The Representation of the Other in Rewriting Experiments during the Portuguese Colonial War and the Mozambican Liberation Struggle”. Poetry was without any doubt one of the most important means to express one’s opposition to the dictatorial regime, as Rui Torres shows us in “Poetics and Politics of the Portuguese Experimental Poetry”. Poetry written by women played a significant role during and after the revolution. In “Les Années 70 ont-elles existé? – à propos de Finita de Maria Gabriela Llansol” Pedro Eiras calls our attention to the poetical and highly personal account given by Maria Gabriela Llansol of the revolutionary period. Maria Teresa Horta, well known as one of the “three Marias”, is one of the female poets mentioned by both Ana Raquel Fernandes and Anna Klobucka. In “Breaking with Social and Literary Conventions: Judith Teixeira and Maria Teresa Horta” the former compares both poets in their transgression of the gender and cultural roles in two very V
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important periods of Portuguese history, the dictatorship in 1926 and in the period before the 1974 democratic revolution. Anna Klobucka chooses a gynocritical perspective in order to address aspects of the work of Luiza Neto Jorge, Maria Teresa Horta, Ana Luísa Amaral and Adília Lopes in “Back into the Future: Feminism in Portuguese Women’s Poetry since the 1970s”. Subsequently, Hilary Owen analyses Natália Correias’s matrismo in “‘Out’ Performing the Mátria in Natália Correia’s A Madona”, drawing on Judith Butler’s theories of sexual difference and female reproductivity. To conclude the papers on Portuguese women’s writing Claire Williams focuses on contemporary prose: in “‘Não há coincidências’? Women’s Writing in Portugal in 1974 and 2004” she analyses the early twenty-first century’s “literatura light”. Finally, Isabel Pires de Lima in “Na tua face by Vergílio Ferreira: … Towards a New Natural Order of Being”, opts for a philosophical approach of Vergílio Ferreira’s novel. By addressing the construction of doubles in Ferreira’s narrative, Pires de Lima demonstrates how this novel “undermines the ‘Vergilian’ novel of the nineties and its epistemological project”. A typical ‘Vergilian’ novel combining two very different genres, that of the novel and of the essay, Na tua face, goes beyond the already familiar reflection in Ferreira’s oeuvre on choice, freedom and lack of communication. It proposes a game of doubles, by which the meaning of life appears as particularly complex, for the unlimited possibilities that it presents. As Isabel Pires de Lima says: “In the incredibly complex games of interlocking, telescoping and mirroring that comprise this novel, where everything is doubled, oscillating, indeterminate, undifferentiated, contiguous, non-hierarchical, it seems clear that from the questions about knowing the world or the possibility of ever knowing it that run through Vergílio Ferreira’s novels, he has moved on to a questioning of the world that is inconclusive.” VI
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With “The Historian, the Poet, and the Semiologist: Perspectives on the Post 68 Decade” Robert Lumley introduces a tripartition that could serve to distinguish a pattern in the contributions that analyse the value of literature in and after the seventies in Italy. What connects the three roles represented by Nanni Balestrini, Umberto Eco and Luisa Passerini, is the gradual loss of a belief in a collective project and the loss of faith in a politic rhetoric. Focussing on Balestrini’s L’editore, Eco’s Il nome della rosa and Passerini’s Autoritratto di gruppo, Lumley tries to evaluate the political experience of the seventies through narrative accounts written in the eighties that also give a possible answer to the question of the value of literature. Only Passerini’s autobiographical account is open-ended. Indeed, from other writings by Lumley we know that he considers the feminist revolt to be the most positive outcome of 1968 in terms of “opening a door on a cultural revolution in Italy” (States of Emergency 333). Passerini’s political biography also forms a (short-lived) connection with the Portuguese context in those years, the process of decolonisation in Africa, since she worked with FRELIMO in 1968. Maybe it is noteworthy that the poet Balestrini is discussed through a work of prose. As Lumley argues, Italian literature of the seventies is characterised by nonfiction rather than by the poetry that announced the neo-avantgarde of the Gruppo 63. Generally speaking the papers on Italy do not deal with poetry, contrary to those on Portugal. In terms of impegno, Lumley, interestingly enough, distinguishes between participants and observers of the seventies, defining Passerini and Balestrini “organic intellectuals” and Eco a “traditional intellectual” in Gramsci’s terminology. Together with the different point of views, of history, of poetry, and of semiology, they form a kaleidoscope with shifting optics. With the help of the example of L’editore, Balestrini’s account of Feltrinelli’s death, we could bring together those papers that discuss history’s perception through VII
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literature. One of the histories of the seventies is definitely written by terrorism and violence. This story could start with Balestrini’s Gli invisibili published in 1987, a work that is “emblematic” in its representation of violence and can be studied from different angles. Vincenzo Binetti in “Re-mapping Autonomous Spaces and Invisible Communities in Nanni Balestrini’s Testimonial Narrative”, concentrates on the shifting boundaries of the prison space, studying it as an effort to confront the reader with a “visualisation” of what the ideology of the Italian nation-state was trying instead to relegate to the comforting domain of invisibility. Clodina Gubiotti in “Nanni Balestrini’s Gli invisibili: Fictional Spaces for an Epic Monument to the Seventies” proproses to study Gli invisibili’s peculiar re-working of the narrative dynamics, characterizing the epic genre. She shows that the epic representation of memory takes on polemical connotations if confronted with the title of the novel. This time (in)visibility is not linked with ideology but with memory, a connection that is further elaborated in a comparison with Natalia Ginzburg’s Caro Michele. Balestrini’s case demonstrates how the roles of participant and observer can intertwine creating all sorts of conflicting truths. Gubbiotti shows with the ambivalent readers reactions to Gli invisibili that Balestrini’s retrospective evaluation of his political involvement with the extraparliamentary left did not exactly meet expectations. This ambivalence is Silvia Contarini’s starting point who with “Années 70: une transition traumatique” also offers a critical reflection on the double aim of the conference to study the literary and cultural production of the seventies as well as the previous period. On the basis of Balestrini’s work between 1960 and 1980 she traces a development that she characterises as being traumatic, to the hybrid, less engaged forms of post-neoavant-garde and finally postmodern literature. As a ‘poet’ T
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Contarini, writer of the autobiographical novel Noi veri delinquenti, also tries to make a link between her own personal experience of the seventies and more recent events of violence, like those of Genoa 2001. It is clear that terrorism and violence have had a traumatic impact, so much that according to Contarini it took some twenty years for the first novels to be written about this decade. This is illustrted by the unpublished memoir L’attesa analysed by Ruth Glynn in “Trauma on the Line: Terrorism and Testimony in the anni di piombo”. Glynn concludes that the anni di piombo, because of their afterlife by way of “insidious” trauma, have had the impact of a collective cultural trauma. Susanne Kleinert in “Violence politique et sentiment d’irréalité: la représentation des années ’70 chez Balestrini, Camon et Vassalli” analyses the fictional responses to the trauma of political violence formulated by Balestrini, Camon and Vassalli, that oscillate between existential, psychological and literary detachment. However, Vassalli’s growing detachment does not exclude his condemnation of the represented history, as is shown by Alain Sarrabayrouse in “L’évolution de la condamnation d’une certaine forme de société dans l’œuvre de Sebastiano Vassalli”. History is presented as intrinsically violent and this, of course, is the credo of Morante’s La storia studied by Hanna Serkowska in “About One of the Most Disputed Literary Cases of the Seventies: Elsa Morante’s La Storia”. Contrary to what the novel’s title suggests, Morante pleas for the Poet, instead of the Historian, to speak up for all, art being the only human action and value. Creating a “dissidenting” form of writing Pasolini, too, succeeds in creating an intellectual space outside the ideological and cultural perversion of power, as is demonstrated by Flaviano Pisanelli in “Pour une poétique de la dissidence. Lecture de Pétrole et de Salò ou les 120 journées de Sodome de Pier Paolo Pasolini”.
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The history of violence is countered by the history of antiauthoritarianism that celebrates values such as collectivism and sexual liberty. To express the incongruence of these conflicting ingredients we could borrow the quote from Balestrini and Moroni’s seminal L’orda d’oro as it is reported as an epigraph in Binetti’s paper: “Leaden Years, Separated Bodies, Government Massacres, Subversion, Emergency, or the opposite: The Best Years of our Life, Radical Transformation of Daily Life, Utopia, Need for Communism, Sexual Revolution, Armed Struggle, etc.”. We could refer here also to the historian Paul Ginsborg according to whom the ’77 movement had two faces, a militant and a playful one. Both dimensions are present in Philopat’s La Banda Bellini, mentioned by Silvia Contarini and studied by Claudio Milanesi in “Le mouvement vu de l’intérieur: Milan de 68 aux années de plomb à travers le roman d’un témoin: Andrea Bellini et la Banda del Casoretto”. From Milan’s Casoretto district it is easy to pass to Bologna, the capital of 77 Movement. In this context the Poet becomes again a protagonist with writer Enrico Palandri, himself present at the conference. His contribution on “Time in Literature” at first sight seems far away from any direct historical references, but it could be read as an outcome of the debate on the seventies. Historical Time in the sense of the anni di piombo, according to Palandri in another of his writings, did no justice to his generation, to which also the writer Pier Vittorio Tondelli belongs. Only time in literature can subtract it from the determinism of the past and bring back “the voice that violence and legal processes have token from us” (“la voce che violenza e processi ci hanno tolto”) (Pier. Tondelli e la generazione 9). As Palandri put it at the conference, the value of literature depends directly on the power of words: “We want to see things happen, we want the word to be what helps us to see, not let time consign the strength of this perception to some other epoch, remote and separated from us.” It is on Palandri’s novel X
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Boccalone, published in 1979, that the contributions of Bart Van den Bossche, Stefania Ricciardi and Daniel Mangano focus. Van Den Bossche in “Voci dal Settantasette: Orality and Historical Experience in Enrico Palandri’s Boccalone and Pier Vittorio Tondelli’s Altri libertini” explores the paradox between the fact that Palandri’s Boccalone and Tondelli’s Altri libertini are read as literary and sociological portraits of an entire generation, while the Movimento is evoked in a series of hints and isolated episodes, with hardly any contextualisation or interpretation. Ricciardi in “Enrico Palandri, Boccalone: une montgolfière vers les années 80” proves the hypothesis of a literary escape from the heavy burden of the leaden years by focussing on the intertextual references in Boccalone and by considering it one of the first examples of “autofiction”. Mangano extends Palandri’s example to a rebel of the 90s, Enrico Brizzi, in “De Boccalone à Jack Frusciante: continuum ou hiatus?”. Both Enricos identify with Salinger’s protagonist of Catcher in the Rye but they belong to different periods, Brizzi being a child of the so-called “era of the void” (“ère du vide”, Gilles Lipovetsky). The liberation of gay identity is another result of the 77 Movement. Tondelli is the focus of Christoph Oliver Mayers paper “Pier Vittorio Tondelli à la recherche d’une patrie?”, in which homosexuality is analysed as a provocation against the canon and as a claim for acceptation and thus for canonisation. From literature it is a small leap to semiotics. The story of a movement is also the story of a shared and distinctive language. Lumley in his contribution quotes Eco from “Political Language: the Use and Abuse of Rhetoric” published in 1973, in which the creative use of language is ascribed to poets who make us “see reality with new eyes”. These creative linguistic signs of the cultural revolutions of ’68 and ’77 are studied in Renzo Ardiccioni’s exploit on the “indiani metropolitani” (“1977: les ‘indiani metropolitani’ déterrent la hache de guerre. Excursion sur les traces des avant-gardes des années 70 qui XI
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descendirent en ville à la recherche de nouveaux parcours d’art, de littérature, de communication et de vie”) and in Niek Pas’s contribution “The Incarnation of the Spirit of Liberty” on the perception of the Dutch Provo-Movement by Italian countercultures of the sixties and beyond. Literary projects are another aspect of collective culural movements. Lumley speaks of a failed collective project, and Contarini uses similar terms when analysing the traumatic transition from the seventies to the 90s. This could be symbolised by the Alì Babà project, the failed attempt by a group of Italian intellectuals including Italo Calvino and Gianni Celati to found a new literary review, studied by Anna Botta, Marina Spunta, Monica Jansen & Claudia Nocentini. Botta focuses in “The Alì Babà Project (1968-1972): Monumental History and the Silent Resistance of the Ordinary” on Calvino’s and Celati’s alternative view of micro-history expressed in the programmatic texts intended for Alì Babà. Spunta in “Gianni Celati’s ‘natural’ Narration and the Call of the Plains” concentrates on Celati’s exploit of orality that moves him away from Calvino’s rationalist poetics, in order to recover a commitment to narrating “fictions to believe in”. Jansen & Nocentini in “Alì Babà and Beyond: Celati and Calvino in the Search for “Something More” start from the need felt by Celati and Calvino to revise the notion of the intellectual after May 1968 and try to link the Alí Babá project to other more recent literary journals on the internet such as Zibaldoni e altre meraviglie, that show the same search for “commitments to believe in”. Different literary values divide the ways of Celati and Calvino. This becomes even clearer from the papers that discuss Calvino’s literary utopia in particular. Els Jongeneel in “Les Villes invisibles d’Italo Calvino: entre utopie et dystopie” studies the oscillation between poststructuralist and structuralist models of reality, while Gian Paolo Giudicetti in “L’idéologie dans Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore (1979) d’Italo XII
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Calvino” analyses Calvino’s relation with ideology on different text levels. The question of the value of literature is tackled by Jonathan Smith, who in “Synecdoches, Disjunctions: Eco, Pareyson, and Literature after Kant and the Platypus” centres mainly on Eco’s On Literature, concluding that literature is a synecdochic value that challenges the market ideologies consolidated since the seventies. Umberto Eco has however also been one of the first theorists of popular culture and genre literature, that emancipated in the seventies. This is illustrated by the contributions on the detective novel by Joseph Eynaud (“The Italian Detective Novel: The Literary and Cinematic Giallo”) and Franco Manai (“Loriano Macchiavelli and the Italian Detective Novel of the Seventies”). Not only the detective novel and cinematic giallo give us an X-ray of society, but also a popular genre like satire. Inge Lanslots & Annelies Van den Bogaert in “Benni’s Tristalia” show convincingly how Stefani Benni uses references to popular culture and mass media to create his dystopic image of Italy, maybe with the intention to create new spaces for utopia. That research methods can also be used as a means to uncover inconvenient truths is shown by Liz Wren-Owens in “The Tools of the Detective: Leonardo Sciascia’s Approach to Literature in the mid to late 1970s” focussing on Sciascia’s factual investigations The Disappearance of Majorana and The Moro Affair. This means that impegno is not abandoned after all. Lumley in his paper refers to the concept of the writerintellectual and quotes Jennifer Burns’s formula the “acid test” of commitment, stressing the importance of the “relationship of reciprocity and responsibility” between writer and reader. This dimension is studied by Carmela Lettieri in “Quel rôle pour l’écrivain(et la littérature) face au souvenir des années de plomb? Tabucchi, Riotta, Guccini et Macchiavelli”. We could compare Lettieri’s findings to the engagement that Raniero XIII
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Speelman extracts from Levi’s writings of the seventies in “Primo Levi in the Seventies: ‘letterato’ or ‘impegnato’?”, the two roles completing each other in a resistance to violence in general and revisionism in particular. The winning story, at least in quantity, could be that of women’s writing, more specifically women’s anti-realist writing in the 1970s which produced texts founded in the body and expressing female desire, a desire which has finally come out in 1990s youth narrative, as is suggested by Adalgisa Giorgio in “‘Bad Girls’ in the 1970s and 1990s: Female Desire and Experimentalism in Italian Women’s Writing”. We find here the different dimensions present in the topics treated so far. History is represented in women’s accounts of the Second World War, as is shown in Miriam Halpern’s “Remembering World War II in 1970s Italian Women’s Writing”. Autobiographical fiction is central to Sabina Gola’s “La forme autobiographique dans la littérature féminine depuis les années 70”. The insular female experience of the seventies is discussed by Margherita Marras in “Entre texte et contexte: pour un parcours de la littérature féminine des îles italiennes (Sardaigne et Sicile) des années 70 à nos jours”. Finally, references to popular culture and the crime novel in particular can be found in Marie Françoise Zana Regniez’ account on “Petits meurtres en famille. Que dit le meurtre? Comment dire le meurtre? Réflexions sur le meurtre dans la littérature féminine”. Works Cited
Dionísio, Eduarda. Retrato dum amigo enquanto falo. Lisboa: O Armazém das Letras, 1979. Lumley, Robert. States of Emergency. Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978. London-New York: Verso, 1990. Palandri, Enrico. Pier. Tondelli e la generazione. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2005. XIV
Part 1
The Value of Literature in and After the Seventies: The Case of Portugal
La Valeur de la Littérature pendant et après les années 70: Le cas du Portugal
La Littérature Portugaise: les Années 70 Coupées en Deux Eduarda Dionísio Avant même l’introduction que tout exposé doit avoir, trois notes: 1. Je ne devrais pas être là. Les universités et les conférences ne sont pas mes lieux habituels. Je ne suis pas une spécialiste de la littérature, ni de quoique ce soit. Je n’ai jamais été écrivain – et en ce moment moins que jamais. J’ai écrit des livres, oui. Comme tout le monde devrait au moins à un moment donné vouloir ou pouvoir le faire. En plus j’étais trop “dedans” au début des années 70 et je suis chaque fois plus “dehors”. Il m’arrive de lire un supplément “Livres” d’un journal où je ne reconnais aucun nom. Et ce qui est pire: je n’ai pas trop envie de les connaître. 2. Je tiens à dire que personne ne m’a obligé à être là. Je suis venue. Pour des raisons plus personnelles que littéraires, d’ailleurs. Ce qui m’a décidé: - Le fait qu’il s’agissait de deux pays – et mes relations avec l’Italie sont devenues très fortes – après avoir connu la presque inconnue Lega di cultura di Piadena (née en 67) et le photographe Giuseppe Morandi, le Circolo Gianni Bosio de Rome, etc… - Le fait que les des transformations politiques – très différentes d’ailleurs dans les deux pays – sont à la base des choix des époques et des thèmes de cette Conférence - Le fait plus personnel encore de venir retrouver Joost Smiers qui est venu à Lisbonne nous parler de l’absurdité des “droits d’auteur”…
http://congress70.library.uu.nl/
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Après la décision: quelqu’un que la vie a fait écrivain, un “terroriste” des années 70 – Cesare Battisti, italien précisément, réfugié politique en France depuis plus de 15 ans, avec le quel j’ai été trois fois à Amiens dans une curieuse “opération” littéraire non-littéraire appelée “LEITURA FURIOSA” – a été arrêté en France pendant quelques semaines et attend son extradition en Italie. Cela montre que les années 70 ne sont pas du simple passé et que la littérature n’est tout de même pas si pacifique que ça… 3. Cela dit, j’aurais envie de faire une introduction beaucoup plus longue que le développement. Mais j’ai appris à l’école qu’il ne faut pas le faire. Une petite introduction, donc, en quelques points: 1. Le critère des décennies – impossible d’appliquer à l’histoire littéraire des siècles précédents peut-être parce que le temps alors était plus lent – engendre des erreurs et nous oblige à changer de point de vue quand ont fait des assemblages (d’auteurs, de langages, de courants...). Le critère des “générations” encore plus, surtout quand les groupes littéraires, les programmes, les “écoles” disparaissent - et au Portugal précisément à partir des années 70… 2. Mais ça facilite. Pour commencer, je remarquerai que, dans la production littéraire portugaise du XXe siècle les décennies “paires” sont plus claires (et éventuellement plus riches de nouveautés) que les “impaires” (plus confuses et plus contradictoires). 3. Les années 70 sont une décennie “impaire”. En plus, située entre deux décennies mythiques – les années 60 et les années 80, que d’habitude on met en opposition. Qui a de la “sympathie” pour l’une a du mal à “sympathiser” avec l’autre. 4. La “sympathie” est un critère que je me sens dans le droit d’utiliser ici, car je ne suis ni universitaire ni “scientiste” P
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de la littérature. Les noms d’auteurs, les oublis, la façon dont je parlerai d’eux seront le résultat d’une “sympathie” ou d’une “antipathie”. Mieux vaudrait un exposé de quelqu’un qui n’aurait pas vécu les années 70... 5. Il m’est difficile de parler de cette littérature – en tant que langage artistique – sans l’encadrer dans les changements très visibles que “le monde littéraire” a eus après. Aujourd’hui on saute par-dessus des questions pour moi très pertinentes et qui restent cachées: l’intervention politique de l’art et de l’État dans l’art, le marché de la culture, la correspondance des arts... Et on ne s´occupe pas du rôle que la littérature a acquis dans l’affirmation (surtout en Europe) d’un petit pays sans industrie... Il m’est difficile aussi de regarder les années 70 sans faire intervenir les oublis et les “promotions” que l’absence de ces thèmes dans la pensée et le goût dominant ont rendu possibles... Donc ma fonction sera peut-être ici de parler plutôt de l’oublié que de la matière consensuelle d’exportation facile. 6. Il n’est pas simple pour moi de parler de la littérature des années 70, où se situe ce qu’on appelle parfois “révolution”, sans parler du changement de régime et du rôle des artistes et des intellectuels pendant une année et demie de PREC, comme on désigne cette période – “Procès Révolutionnaire en Cours”. Une “parenthèse”, plus grande que quelques-uns le pensent, et plus petite que d’autres affirment. 7. Tout devient plus difficile encore quand on sait que les mouvements artistiques n’ont pas toujours les dates des mouvements politiques et sociaux auxquels ils correspondent. Ce n’est pas moi qui ai inventé que si la Révolution Française a eu “son” peintre c’est plutôt Goya – espagnol, artiste du roi que David...
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Passons aux années 70
Les “années 70” de la littérature – comme celles des autres arts, de la culture, de la société, de la politique – sont, de façon bien évidente, coupées en deux. Donc elles ont trois époques: 1. L’avant – une littérature avec une censure (1970 - 25 avril 1974) 2. Le pendant – la “coupure” – une littérature en hibernation (25 avril 1974 - 1976) 3. L’après – une littérature «reprise» (1976 - 1980), où l’on pourra peut-être trouver deux “temps”: ce sont les années 1978 et 1979 qui ont été le “laboratoire” de ce qui viendra après – une “lapalissade” peutêtre… La littérature de “l’avant”
Avec des amis, aujourd’hui personnages «publiques» dans d’autres domaines que la littérature (Jorge Silva Melo, Luis Miguel Cintra, Luis Salgado de Matos) – ah! la correspondance des arts, la correspondance des arts et des “non-arts” disparue… – j’ai fondé un journal appelé Crítica 1 (“tous les arts tous les mois”, disait-on sur l’image d’une machine à écrire, mais les arts visuels ont été toujours absents et pour cause – le marché de la peinture commençait à s’installer et à fleurir...) qui a duré juste 9 mois – novembre 1971 jusqu’en septembre 1972. C’était le seul journal culturel qui existait à l’époque. Pourquoi je commence par-là, une toute petite chose qui n’est naturellement pas mentionnée dans les “encyclopédies online” ni dans les thèses de doctorat? TPF
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Crítica. Dir. Jorge Silva Melo, ed. Eduarda Dionísio (n.º 1 - n.º 9). Lisboa, novembre 1971 - juillet 1972. Eduarda Dionísio, “Crítica”et Daniel Pires, “Crítica”, in Pires, Daniel. Dicionário da imprensa periódica literária portuguesa do século XX (1941-1974. Lisbonne: Grifo, Vol. II, 1er tome (AP), 1999. TP
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- Tout d’abord, parce que ce journal a eu des caractéristiques qui montrent ce qu’était l’ambiance culturelle de l’époque et la différence avec celle d’aujourd’hui où une “entreprise” semblable serait impossible. - Il a été difficile de le faire sortir – exigences bureautiques, d’argent et politiques (Jorge Silva Melo avait été arrêté lors d’une manif contre la guerre du Vietnam). Et tous les numéros devaient aller avant l’impression à la censure - Il tirait à 3000 exemplaires, vendu dans de grandes librairies et dans de petits kiosques et pas seulement à Lisbonne... - La “rédaction” et l’“administration”, disons, était chez moi, à côté de la cuisine. La distribution était faite par nousmême. - Les maisons d’édition y faisaient leur publicité, mais pas question d’influencer ce qu’on écrivait dans le journal – ça ne leur passerait même pas par la tête. - Il a eu la collaboration d’écrivains importants (Abelaira, Sophia de Mello Breyner, José Gomes Ferreira, Ruy Belo), et a publié de grandes interviews à ceux qui pour nous étaient les “transformateurs” décisifs. - Il était né de l’envie de parler “clairement” de chaque “objet” - livres, spectacles, concerts, etc. - contre un discours assez vague et “à clé” qui s’installait alors. Nous séparions – au contraire de ce qu’on commençait à imposer – les “règles” et les “libertés” de l’art des “règles” et des “obligations” du discours sur l’art. - Il se faisait contre ce qui était dominant; il avait des ennemis qu’il nommait. À droite et aussi à gauche, d’ailleurs. Par exemple: Nuno Sampayo, Gaspar Simões, Natércia Freire, Natália Correia, Agustina Bessa Luís, et même Vergílio Ferreira... - Il a été à l’origine de chaudes “polémiques” avec quelques intellectuels: Eduardo Prado Coelho, par exemple, 5
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disait que ce journal était une “version technocrate de la nouvelle critique”, du “réformisme formaliste” 2 - Il a terminé, non faute d’argent (les abonnements, les ventes et la publicité le faisaient survivre – et personne n’était payé) mais de temps, de la part de ceux qui voulaient naturellement faire leur théâtre, leur cinéma, leur littérature, leur politique... TP
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Je commence par-là aussi parce que les indications que j’essayerai de donner sur cet “avant” seront, dans mon cas, très déterminées par cette expérience et par ce qu’on a écrit là. C’est de là que je partirai pour décrire un peu ce qui se passait dans cet “avant” des années 70. Pour bien le faire, il faudrait aussi parler des maisons d’édition et des librairies (difficilement on imagine aujourd’hui l’importance de “111” – qui a changé de nom – ou de “Barata” - qui a changé de dimensions et de “philosophie”, etc...). Pendant ces 9 mois – une partie comme une autre de ces 3 ans et demi de “l’avant” – quels livres ont été édités, quels genres, quels auteurs? Je laisserai de côté les essais et les livres de sciences sociales dont les références sont abondantes dans Crítica et qui étaient alors les principales nouveautés. Je sais que je vais tomber dans le piège des “listes” qui disent toujours moins que ce qu’elles ont l’air de dire. 2
Coelho, Eduardo Prado. “A função crítica”. Diário de Lisboa. 23/1/72. Lire aussi: Coelho, Eduardo Prado. “Como se faz crítica – sobre um texto de Eduarda Dionísio”. Diário de Lisboa. 17/3/72. Dionísio, Eduarda. “Sobre a prática significante de Eduardo Prado Coelho”. Diário de Lisboa. 24/3/72. Cruz, Gastão. “Sobre Crítica”, Diário de Lisboa. 24/3/72. Coelho, Eduardo Prado. “A prática insignificante de Eduarda Dionísio”. Diário de Lisboa. 31/3/72. Cruz, Gastão. “Positivismo e metalinguagem”. Diário de Lisboa, 14/4/72. Coelho, Eduardo Prado. “A ressaca - comentário a uma crítica de Helena Domingos”. Crítica, n.º 9, juillet 1972.
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De la poésie, surtout. Une “tradition” de la littérature portugaise, comme on dit. Outubro 3 , Fevereiro 4 - deux éditions collectives organisées par Casimiro de Brito et Gastão Cruz, une suite de l’expérience Poesia 61 5 ; un livre de Gastão Cruz (Teoria da Fala 6 ); les premiers livres des seuls poètes qui ont commencé à publier au début des années 70: Nuno Júdice (A noção de poema 7 ); João Miguel Fernandes Jorge (Sob sobre voz 8 ) – remarquons les titres; des livres de poètes qui publiaient depuis TPF
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Outubro – textos de poesia. Coordination et édition de Casimiro de Brito et Gastão Cruz. Lisboa, 1971. J.A.O.M.[José Alberto Osório Mateus], “Outubro – textos de poesia”. Crítica, n.º 1, novembre 1971. Manuel Gusmão, “Um tempo poético”. Crítica, n.º 2, décembre 1971. TP
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Fevereiro – Textos de poesia. Coordination et édition de Casimiro de Brito et Gastão Cruz. Lisboa, 1972. Gusmão, Manuel. “Um tempo poético-2”. Crítica. n.º 6, avril 1972. TP
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Poesia 61. Édition des auteurs [Faro, 1961] – Brito, Casimiro. “Canto adolescente”; Brandão, Fiama Hasse Pais. “Morfismos”. Jorge, Luiza Neto. “Quarta dimensão”. Cruz, Gastão. “A morte precutiva”. Horta, Maria Teresa. “Tatuagem”. [2ème édition: Porto: Oiro do dia, 1983.]
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Cruz, Gastão. Teoria da fala. Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1972. Mateus, J. A. Osório. “Uma teoria da decomposição” Crítica, n.º 9, juillet 1972. [Gastão Cruz, Transe - antologia 1960-1990. Lisboa: Relógio d’Água, 1992. Cruz, Gastão. Poemas reunidos. Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1999] TP
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Júdice, Nuno. A noção de poema. Dom Quixote, 1972. M.G. [Manuel Gusmão], “A noção de poema” Crítica, nº 6, avril 1972. [Júdice, Nuno. Obra poética: 1972-1985, Lisboa: Quetzal, 1991. Júdice, Nuno. Poesia Reunida: 1967-2000, préface de Teresa Almeida, Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 2000.] TP
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Jorge, João Miguel Fernandes. Sob sobre voz, préface de Ruy Belo, postface de C. M., Lisboa: Moraes, 1971. E.D. [Eduarda Dionísio], “Sob sobre voz”. Crítica, nº 3, janvier 1972. [João Miguel Fernandes Jorge, Poemas escolhidos, Lisboa: Assírio e Alvim, 1982. Jorge, João Miguel Fernandes . Obra poética. 4 vol., Lisboa: Presença, 1987. (“Sob sobre Voz” in Vol. 1). Jorge, João Miguel Fernandes. Obra poética. Vol. 5 et vol 6, Lisboa: Presença, s/d. Jorge, João Miguel Fernandes. Antologia poética: 1971-1994. Lisboa: Presença, 1995.] PT
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les années 40 ou 50 (Carlos de Oliveira, Entre duas memórias 9 ; Eugénio de Andrade, Obscuro domínio 10 ; Sophia de Melo Breyner, Dual) 11 . Une nouveauté: Fernando Assis Pacheco avec Cau Kien - um resumo 12 – à partir de son expérience dans la guerre coloniale – qui se défendait de la censure par les noms propres qui nous situaient au Vietnam (en 1976 il a republié ce livre en donnant les vrais noms aux endroits et donc en changeant le titre 13 ...). Puis une série de petits livres qu’on faisait remarquer, les uns sans appréciation, d’autres sur lesquels on exprimait des réserves, d’autres encore avec une appréciation clairement négative. Le petit “échantillon” dicté par le hasard et aussi par nos choix contient beaucoup de noms qui sont entrés dans l’ “histoire de la littérature portugaise” comme on la diffuse aujourd’hui. Mais il ne s’agissait pas à cette époque de leurs oeuvres les plus importantes, me parait-il. Ou ils les avaient déjà écrites avant ou ils les écriraient après. TPF
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Oliveira, Carlos de. Entre duas memórias. Dom Quixote, 1971. Sousa, João Rui de. “Minuciosa, áspera memória”. Crítica, n.º 3, janvier 1972. [Oliveira, Carlos de. Obras de Carlos de Oliveira. Lisboa: Caminho, 1992. Oliveira, Carlos de. Trabalho poético. Lisboa: Assírio e Alvim, 2003.]
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Andrade, Eugénio de. Obscuro domínio. Inova, 1971. Dionísio, Eduarda. “Uma poesia da excepção”. Crítica, n.º 3, janvier 1972. [Andrade, Eugénio de. Obscuro Domínio. 8ème édition, Porto: Fundação Eugénio de Andrade, 2000.]
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Andresen, Sophia de Mello Breyner. Dual. Lisboa: Caminho, 1972. Cruz, Gastão. “A atenção ao mundo”. Crítica, n.º 9, juillet 1972. [Andresen, Sophia de Mello Breyner. Dual. Édition définitive, Col. Obras de Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, n.º 9, Lisboa: Caminho, 2004.]
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Pacheco, Fernando Assis. Cau Kien: um resumo. Lisboa: edité par l’auteur, 1972. G.C. [Gastão Cruz], “Cau Kien”. Crítica, n.º 8, juin 1972. TP
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Pacheco, Fernando Assis . Catalabanza, quilolo e volta. Coimbra: Centelha, 1976. [Pacheco, Fernando Assis. Musa Irregular. 3ème édition, Porto: Asa, 1997.] TP
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De la narration en prose beaucoup moins. On a “sauvé” Fernanda Botelho (Lourenço é nome de jogral) 14 – une grande écrivain des années 50 qui a été oubliée et qui s’est fait oublier (elle n’a rien publié entre 71 et 87) et Manuel Ferreira (Voz de prisão 15 ) qui apparaissait avec un langage renouvelé, résultat de son contact avec le Cap Vert; on a mis des réserves à des écrivains déjà “célèbres” (Luiz Pacheco, Exercícios de Estilo 16 ; Álvaro Guerra, Memória 17 ; Cardoso Pires, Dinossauro Excelentíssmo 18 – un divertissement qui m’avait un peu déçu); on a critiqué violemment «un monstre» de la littérature d’alors – TPF
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Botelho, Fernanda. Lourenço é nome de jogral. Amadora: Bertrand, 1971. Dionísio, Eduarda. “Viver um jogo”. Crítica. n.º 4, février 1972. [Botelho, Fernanda. Lourenço é nome de jogral. 2ème édition, Lisboa: Contexto, 1991.] TP
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Ferreira, Manuel. Voz de prisão, Porto: Inova, 1971. Dinísio, Eduarda. “ ... “rodeado destas máscaras, destas setas”... “. Crítica, nº 2, décembre 1972. [Ferreira, Manuel. Voz de prisão. 2ème édition, Lisboa: Plátano, 1985.]
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Pacheco, Luiz. Exercícios de estilo. Lisboa: Estampa, 1971. Dionísio, Eduarda. “Um guia do libertino”. Crítica, n.º 1, novembre 1971. [Pacheco, Luiz. Exercícios de estilo. 2ème édition révue et augmentée, Lisboa: Estampa, 1998.]
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Guerra, Álvaro. Memória, Lisboa: Estampa, 1971. Faria, Almeida. “Memória”. Crítica, nº 3, janvier 1972. [Guerra, Álvaro. Memória. Lisboa: Círculo dos Leitores, 1991.]
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Pires, José Cardoso. Dinossauro Excelentíssimo, illustrations de João Abel Manta, Lisboa: Arcádia, 1972. E.D. [Eduarda Dionísio], “Dinossauro excelentíssimo”. Crítica, nº 9, juillet 1972. [Pires, José Cardoso. Dinossauro Excelentíssimo. 7ème édition, Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1999. Pires, José Cardoso. Obras completas de José Cardoso Pires. Vol. 1, Lisboa: Círculo dos Leitores, 2003.] TP
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Fernando Namora (Os clandestinos) 19 et un écrivain plus récent – Palma Ferreira (A Viagem) 20 . Pas la peine de parler du théâtre, qu’on publiait quand même, très souvent parce qu’il ne pouvait pas être joué (la censure avait des règles plus strictes pour les spectacles qui rassemblaient des gens que les livres que l’on lisait chez soi). Ce qui a été publié (d’une façon générale, très “engagé” et plein de bonnes intentions), on le trouvait à peu près détestable et n’avait rien à voir avec ce que l’on essayait de faire sur scène. Ce qui peut encore dire quelque chose sur ces quelques années littéraires c’est qu’il y avait pas mal de rééditions: les premières “œuvres complètes” d´Almada 21 (très curieusement dans une maison d’édition de tendance communiste qui faisait en même temps traduire pour la première fois Breton – L’amour Fou 22 et Nadja 23 ); la 4ème édition de Uma Abelha na Chuva 24 de TPF
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Namora, Fernando. Os clandestinos. Mem Martins: Europa-América, 1972. Gusmão, Manuel. “Esplendores e miséria do ‘marketing’”. Crítica, nº 9, juillet 1972. [Namora, Fernando. Os clandestinos. 8ème édition, MemMartins: Europa-América, 1990.]
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Palma-Ferreira, João. A viagem. Lisboa: Arcádia, 1971. E.D. [Eduarda Dionísio], “A Viagem”. Crítica, n.º 2, décembre 1971.
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Negreiros, José de Almada. Obras completas (6 vol.). Lisboa: Estampa, 1970-72. Sousa, João Rui de. “Almada Negreiros – do inconformismo à inocência”. Crítica, nº 1, novembre 1971 (sur le 4ème volume– Poésie). [Negreiros, Almada. Obras completas (6 vol.). Lisboa: Imprensa NacionalCasa da Moeda, 1985-1993, 1985-1993. TP
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Breton, André. Amor Louco. trad. Luiza Neto Jorge, Lisboa: Estampa, 1971. M.G. [Manuel Gusmão], “Amor louco”. Crítica, n.º1, novembre 1971.
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Breton, André. Nadja, trad. Ernesto Sampaio, Estampa, Lisbonne, 1971. F.M.C.M. [Fernando Cabral Martins], “Nadja”. Crítica, n.º 7, mai 1972. TP
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Oliveira, Carlos de. Uma abelha na Chuva. 4ème édition, Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1971. [1ère édition: 1953]. Dionísio, Eduarda. “Uma abelha na Chuva – quarta edição” . Crítica, n.º 1, novembre 1971. Melo, Jorge Silva. “Uma abelha na chuva de Fernando Lopes”. Crítica, n.º 1, novembre 1971. [Oliveira, Carlos de. Obras de Carlos de Oliveira. Lisboa: Caminho, 1992. 10 TP
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Carlos de Oliveira (lors du film de Fernando Lopes), la 3ème édition de Tanta Gente Mariana 25 de Maria Judite de Carvalho, la 2ème édition de Nós matámos o cão tinhoso 26 , d’un jeune écrivain africain, Honwana, de Aquele grande rio Eufrates 27 de Ruy Belo, de Ângulo Raso 28 de Fernanda Botelho – et ont les a reçues toutes avec enthousiasme. Des auteurs qui ne sont pas tous faciles à imposer et à faire lire aujourd’hui, mais qui à l’époque étaient quand même réédités… Ajoutons des traductions qui apparaissent à cette époque dans les librairies comme des nouveautés: Hölderlin 29 en 2ème édition (trad. Paulo Quintela) et Iluminações. Uma cerveja no P
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Oliveira, Carlos de. Uma Abelha na Chuva, 28ème édition, Lisboa: Assírio & Alvim, 2004.] P
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Carvalho, Maria Judite de. Tanta gente, Marian. 3ème édition, Lisboa: Prelo, 1971. [1ère édition: 1955]. E.D. [Eduarda Dionísio], “Tanta gente, Mariana”. Crítica, nº 3, janvier 1972. [Carvalho, Maria Judite de. Tanta gente, Maria. , 5ème édition revue, Mem-Martins: Europa-América, 1998.] TP
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Honwana, Luis Bernardo. Nós matámos o cão tinhoso! 2ème édition, Porto; Afrontamento, 1972. [1ère édition: Lourenço Marques: Sociedade de Imprensa de Moçambique, 1964] E.D. [Eduarda Dionísio], “Nós matámos o cão tinhoso”. Crítica, n.º 8, juin 1972. [Hanwana, Luis Bernardo. Nós matámos o cão tinhoso, 5ème édition, Porto: Afrontamento, 2000.] TP
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Belo, Ruy. Aquele grande rio Eufrates. 2ème édition, Lisboa: Moraes, 1972. [1 édition: 1961]. Sousa, João Rui de. “Aquele grande rio Eufrates”. Crítica, nº 9, juillet 1972. [Belo, Ruy. Aquele grande rio Eufrates. 5ème édition, intr. José Tolentino Mendonça, Lisboa: Presença, 1996. Belo, Ruy. Todos os poemas I, Todos os poemas II et Todos os poemas III. Lisboa: Assírio & Alvim, 2004.] TP
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Botelho, Fernanda. O ângulo raso. 2ème édition, Amadora: Bertrand, 1971. [1 édition: 1957]. Barahona, Maria Alzira [Maria Alzira Seixo]. “O ângulo raso”. Crítica, n.º1, novembre 1971. [Botelho, Fernanda. O Ângulo Raso. 3ème édition, Lisboa: Contexto, 1986.] TP
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Quintela, Paulo. Hölderlin, Inova, Porto, 1971. [1ère édition: 1947]. Y.K.C [Yvete Kace Centeno], “Hölderlin”. Crítica, nº 4, février 1972. PT
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inferno 30 de Rimbaud (traduction de Cesariny qu’on a très mal reçue à Crítica...) Quand je dis “on”, de qui je parle? D’un ensemble de gens qui sont devenus (pas tous, bien sûr) connus (ou très connus) et décisifs dans leurs domaines ou qui l’étaient déjà: Jorge Silva Melo (cinéma et théâtre), Luis Miguel Cintra, Osório Mateus (théâtre); Mário Vieira de Carvalho (musique); Manuel Gusmão, João Rui de Sousa, Gastão Cruz (poésie); Almeida Faria (roman); Maria Alzira Barahona – plus tard Seixo – et aussi Yvete K. Centeno, Zélia Sampaio, Helena Domingos et moi-même (critique littéraire). L’impression qu’on avait – et que je continue à avoir – c’est d’une certaine pauvreté littéraire de ces années. De la littérature et du discours sur la littérature, même si on y ajoute d’autres livres, sortis avant ou après Crítica ou que l’on n’a pas choisis. Quelques poètes reconnus – surréalistes (ou proches) comme Cesariny, Alexandre O’Neill, Herberto Helder, l’“expérimentaliste” Ana Hatherly, d’autres poètes sur les quels il est plus difficile de coller une “étiquette”, comme Ramos Rosa, Natália Correia, Echevarria, quelques autres qui ont commencé à publier dans les années 60, comme Armando Silva Carvalho, Luiza Neto Jorge, Maria Tereza Horta et Ruy Belo, ont publié des livres (quelques-uns importants) pendant ces années de “l’avant”. Il y a eu aussi des romans ou des contes de prosateurs qui publiaient depuis longtemps, connus et reconnus (José Rodrigues Miguéis, Vergílio Ferreira, Urbano Tavares Rodrigues, Augusto Abelaira, Agustina Bessa-Luís); ceux d’écrivains plus récents et qui changeaient le “ton” dominant du récit (Isabel Barreno, Maria Velho da Costa, Mário-Henrique TPF
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Leiria, Gabriela Llansol – très peu remarquée). Mário Cláudio 31 et moi-même 32 publiaient leurs premiers romans. José Gomes Ferreira – très aimé et admiré et maintenant très oublié – continuait à publier vers et proses. Aussi José Saramago – un journaliste très peu connu comme écrivain et assez méprisé. Exilé, Jorge de Sena a fait paraître du théâtre. Manuel António Pina, un livre absolument remarquable - O país de pernas para o ar 33 (1973) – qui a modifié le panorama de la littérature pour enfants. Deux livres à signaler, tout à fait différents, nés tous deux des “besoins impératifs” de leurs auteurs: A poesia portuguesa hoje 34 (1973) de Gastão Cruz qui traçait un panorama des changements opérés dans la poésie portugaise du XXe siècle, pour lui depuis toujours “l’art le plus moderne” au Portugal. Et un ouvrage collectif de femmes - Novas cartas portuguesas 35 (1972) de Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, Maria Velho da Costa – qui a fait scandale moral-politique. Appréhendé par la censure, les auteurs ont eu un procès au tribunal. C’est après le 25 avril qu’elles ont été jugées et déclarées innocentes. Le livre est ressorti tout de suite après, en liberté. Énorme succès, évidemment. Mais, toutes les grandes ruptures de langage, les grandes nouveautés de la littérature portugaise s’étaient opérées avant – TPF
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Cláudio, Mário. Um verão assim. Porto: Paisagem, 1974. Dionísio, Eduarda. Comente o seguinte texto. Lisboa: Plátano, 1972.
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Pina, Manuel António. O país das pessoas de pernas para o ar. Porto: A Regra do Jogo, 1973 TP
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Cruz, Gastão. A poesia portuguesa hoje. Lisboa: Plátano, 1973. [2ème édition: Lisboa: Relógio d’Água, 1999]. TP
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Barreno, Maria Isabel, Maria Teresa Horta et Maria Velho da Costa, Novas cartas portuguesas. Lisboa: Estúdios Côr, 1972. [8ème édition: Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 2001] TP
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pendant les années 60. Et je crois qu’il s’agit des dernières transformations dignes d’être signalées jusqu’à présent. Cette littérature “nouvelle”, même quand elle ne parle pas de politique, est une sorte d’“annonce” du bouleversement du 25 avril dont la littérature qui vient après la fin du régime s’occupe assez peu. Pour la poésie, dès la première partie des années 60. Poesia 61 36 , poèmes de Casimiro de Brito, Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão, Gastão Cruz, Luiza Neto Jorge et Maria Teresa Horta, se présente comme une alternative aux deux courants encore dominants - le néo-réalisme et le surréalisme – contre le caractère “discursif” de la poésie) et correspond au dernier “groupe d’auteurs” d’une génération qui s’est imposé en tant que groupe. Pour la prose, c’est surtout dans la deuxième partie de la décennie que s’affirment d’autres façons de raconter et d’écrire en prose. L’intrigue n’est plus le centre de la narration ou alors elle est elle-même l’objet d’un travail d’écriture. Le monde, même si au Portugal la dictature de Salazar continuait, avait changé… C’est Almeida Faria qui avait annoncé ce virage dès Rumor branco 37 (1962) et qui l’avait confirmé avec le splendide A paixão 38 (1965) où Faulkner ne pouvait plus être Faulkner parce qu’il s’agissait des grands propriétaires de l’Alentejo et du milieu universitaire de Lisbonne. D’autres auteurs naissaient qui parlaient de la vie avec un autre langage que celui du roman du TPF
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Faria, Almeida. Rumor branco. Lisboa: Portugália, 1962. [3ème édition (avec une préface de Vergílio Ferreira), Lisboa: Difel, 1985]. TP
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XIXe siècle: Isabel Barreno (De noite as árvores são negras, 39 1968 – qui n’a rien publié entre 72 et 82); Maria Velho da Costa (Maina Mendes, 40 1969 – qui n’a rien publié entre 72 et 77); Nuno Bragança (A noite e o riso 41 , 1969 – auteur des dialogues de Verdes anos de Paulo Rocha, 1963, ne l’oublions pas, et qui n’a rien publié entre 69 et 77). Des auteurs de la “génération” des années 50 faisaient sortir leurs livres peut-être les plus intéressants et où ils cherchaient d’autres façons de construire leurs récits: Abelaira, surtout avec Bolor 42 (1968); Cardoso Pires, déjà avec Hóspede de Job 43 (1963) et surtout avec O delfim 44 (1968). Des auteurs de la “génération” des années 40 “refabriquaient” leur façon de dire: Carlos de Oliveira, entrait dans une nouvelle «étape» poétique avec Cantata 45 (1960) et P
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Barreno, Maria Isabel. De noite as árvores são negras. Mem Martins: Europa-América, 1968. [3ème édition (avec une préface de Augusto Abelaira), Lisboa: Rolim, 1987]. TP
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Costa, Maria Velho da. Maina Mendes. Moraes, 1969 [5ème édition (avec une préface de Eduardo Lourenço), Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 2001]. TP
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Bragança, Nuno. A noite e o riso. Lisboa: Moraes, 1969. [Lisboa: Visão/Dom Quixote, 2003. (avec une préface de Manuel Gusmão à la 3ème édition – 1978)] TP
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Abelaira, Augusto. Bolor. Lisboa: Bertrand, 1968. [6ème édition: Barcarena: Presença, 2005]. TP
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Pires, José Cardoso Pires. O hóspede de Job. Arcádia, Lisbonne, 1963. [10ème édition, Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 2001. Lisboa: Círculo dos Leitores, 2003 (Obras Completas de José Cardoso Pires)]. TP
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Pires, José Cardoso Pires. O delfim. Lisboa: Moraes, 1968. [20ème édition, Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 2002. Lisboa: Círculo dos Leitores, 2002 (Obras Completas de José Cardoso Pires)].
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Oliveira, Carlos de. Cantata. Lisboa: Iniciativas Editoriais, 1960. [Oliveira, Carlos de. Obras de Carlos de Oliveira. Lisboa: Caminho, 1992. Oliveira, Carlos de. Trabalho poético. Lisboa: Assírio e Alvim, 2003]. TP
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surtout avec Sobre o lado esquerdo 46 et Micropaisagem 47 (1968) et depuis 1964 réécrivait ses romans – et c’est d’autres livres (secs et beaux) qu’on lira...; en 1969 Mário Dionísio publiait Não há morte nem princípio 48 . N’oublions pas non plus Luuanda 49 de Luandino Vieira (1964), écrivain d’Angola qui écrivait déjà le portugais d’une façon bien différente de celle à laquelle les lecteurs étaient habitués, en ce moment-là prisonnier politique à Tarrafal, qui a eu un prix en 1965 – l’un des deux ou trois prix qui existaient, donc très important. Conséquence: la “Société portugaise des écrivains” - une organisation de “résistance” - a été fermée (pour toujours) par la police, une autre a été créée très difficilement après; les membres du jury ont été quelques jours en prison... À noter: les importants changements de ces auteurs “néoréalistes” ne peuvent pas être confondus avec un changement de leur “vision du monde” – donc, très différents du cas Virgílio Ferreira – mais sont le résultat d’un changement du monde et d’une exigence chaque fois plus grande faite au langage luimême; rien à voir non plus avec l´appropriation de “recettes”, même si les Faulkners (et d’autres) ou le “nouveau roman” français d’une façon où d’une autre sont passés par-là... D’autres américains, et quelques brésiliens n’étaient-ils pas passés par TPF
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Oliveira, Carlos de. Sobre o lado esquerdo. Lisboa: Iniciativas Editoriais, 1968. [Oliveira, Carlos de. Obras de Carlos de Oliveira, Lisboa: Caminho, 1992. Oliveira, Carlos de. Trabalho poético. Lisboa: Assírio e Alvim, 2003]. TP
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Oliveira, Carlos de. Micropaisagem. Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1968. [Oliveira, Carlos de. Obras de Carlos de Oliveira. Lisboa: Caminho, 1992. Oliveira, Carlos de. Trabalho poético. Lisboa: Assírio e Alvim, 2003]. TP
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Dionísio, Mário. Não há morte nem princípio. Mem Martins: EuropaAmérica, [1969]. TP
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Vieira, José Luandino. Luuanda, [s.n.], Luanda, 1964. [9ème édition, Lisboa: Edições 70, 1989]. Le Prix Camões a été attribué à Luandino Vieira en 2006, mais il l’a refusé.
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leurs oeuvres antérieures et de celles d’autres auteurs qui n’ont jamais “changé”? C’est pour cela qu’il m’est difficile de comprendre les discours sur la nouveauté de l’écriture de Saramago dans les années 80, quelqu’un qui a dû, lui, changer sa façon d’être dans le monde pour découvrir une certaine façon d’écrire que d’autres il y a assez longtemps avaient découverte déjà... Une coïncidence à remarquer: en 1968 – les centenaires servent parfois à quelque chose – on découvre Raul Brandão (qu’on a peu lu ou relu), un très intéressant auteur du début du siècle, toujours assez oublié et peu nommé, où (consciemment ou inconsciemment) les racines de ces nouveaux récits “inorganiques” et “elliptiques”, qui travaillaient sur la destruction de la frontière entre poésie et prose, étaient implantées. Quelque chose d’un peu nouveau se passait toutefois dans ces premières années des années 70: l’Afrique et la guerre coloniale commençaient à entrer dans la littérature “nouvelle” et produisaient des changements de langage: Luis Bernardo Honwana, Manuel Ferreira, Fernando Assis Pacheco, que j’ai mentionnés. Si ce sujet apparaît comme une nouveauté absolue dans les années 80, annoncée par Lobo Antunes en 1979, et par Lídia Jorge, et reprise par d’autres, c’est que dans les années 70 il se présentait avec l’“infériorité” de l’“actuel” et du “circonstanciel”, tandis que dans les années 80, il s’est présenté avec la “supériorité” attribuée à la distance et à la mémoire. La mythologie et le commerce “PALOPs” et l’invention de la “Lusophonie” ne sont pas les héritiers des années 70. (Là je suis absolument d’accord avec la position de Tabucchi 50 lors du Salon du Livre à Paris il y a quelques années qui a indigné nombre d’écrivains portugais). Ce qui ne veut pas dire qu’il TPF
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n’existe pas aujourd’hui de très intéressants écrivains africains dans la littérature écrite en portugais. Ces petites choses que je raconte sont peut-être incompréhensibles et seront certainement mal comprises si on n’a pas une idée de ce qu’était le Portugal avant la “révolution” – une situation très différente de celle des pays démocratiques d’Europe et même de sa voisine Espagne, une dictature aussi, mais avec une guerre civile encore toute proche. Au Portugal
• Plus d’un quart de la population ne savait lire ni écrire (mais il y avait plus de journaux et de lecteurs de presse qu’aujourd’hui). • L’enseignement était loin d’être “universel” et l’université était fréquentée par une toute petite élite. • Écrire (surtout de la littérature) était une exception, pas question de “profession” et la plupart des écrivains n’avaient même pas ce désir. • Un certain nombre d’intellectuels et d’artistes s’étaient réfugiés dans d’autres pays d’Europe, et aussi au Brésil. • Le contact avec l’“étranger” était surtout le résultat de l’émigration “économique”: rien qu’en France, en 1973 vivait près d’un million de portugais, qui envoyaient au Portugal leurs économies. • Le Portugal maintenait ses colonies – bien plus grandes et plus riches que le pays – avec une guerre coloniale (surtout en Guinée, Angola, Mozambique) menée contre les mouvements de libération. Un certain nombre de déserteurs. • En 1974, à Lisbonne, la capitale, un tiers de la population n’avait pas d’appartement, on louait des “chambres”; 18 000 familles vivaient dans des bidonvilles. • On appelait “printemps” à ce régime qui, après la mort de Salazar, Marcello Caetano gouvernait. La censure s’appelait maintenant “Exame Prévio” et s’appliquait à la presse mais non pas aux livres (que l’on examinait après la publication et que la 18
EDUARDA DIONÍSIO
police allait prendre chez les éditeurs et les libraires, si on les jugeait “dangereux”). La police politique avait aussi changé de nom (PIDE – Police Internationale et de Défense de l’Etat – avant; DGS – Direction Générale de Sécurité – maintenant) mais pas les méthodes – des “informateurs” partout, par exemple dans les cafés qui étaient des lieux de rencontre. Le Ministre de l’Education Veiga Simão – qui après le 25 avril s’est inscrit au PS – faisait la “démocratisation” de l’enseignement et installait des surveillants spécialisés (appelés “gorilles”) dans les universités où les étudiants se révoltaient... • L’opposition au régime était morcelée, depuis la moitié des années 60: beaucoup de petites organisations plus ou moins clandestines – qui allaient des “républicains” aux maoïstes, en passant par les socialistes, les “catholiques progressistes”, les communistes – qui avaient le plus grand poids - ,les trotskistes, etc... Une tendance “libérale” proche du régime était pour la première fois au parlement. • Une “macrocéphalie” culturelle évidente. La “culture” c’était Lisbonne. Ou tout au moins la culture “visible”. La “culture” était la culture “savante”, l’ensemble des arts reconnus depuis toujours – du premier au septième. Pour l’opposition au régime aussi. • Dans les librairies – qui étaient plus nombreuses qu’aujourd’hui (quelques-unes vendaient des livres interdits et beaucoup de “livres de poche” français que l’on ne trouve presque plus aujourd’hui), on commençait à trouver Marx, Althusser... en portugais. Deux semaines avant le 25 avril les best-sellers indiqués dans l’hebdomadaire Expresso étaient: Estamos no vento de Fernando Namora, Portugal e o futuro du général Spínola (1er Président de la République après le 25 Avril) et Agosto de 1914 de Soljenitzin... • La littérature était un terrain de résistance, même si les écrivains n’étaient pas tous des résistants. L’idée dominante: la chute du régime passerait par ce que l’on lisait et ce que l’on P
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écrivait. Les conflits de l’intelligentsia avec le pouvoir étaient plus visibles que la répression dans les usines et les campagnes dont les intellectuels s’occupaient peu. • Ce “printemps”, aussi ou surtout “culturel”, a permis la naissance de deux très importants groupes de théâtre qui existent encore: Comuna (1972), Cornucópia (1973), sortis des expériences universitaires de la fin des années 60; et de Bonecreiros (1972) qui n’existe plus. Beaucoup de théâtre amateur. On commençait à faire du théâtre hors des salles de spectacles. Et c’est à cette époque qu’un nouveau mode de subventionner le cinéma s’est installé. La première école de cinéma est née en 1972. Qui faisait ces changements? L’État, la Gulbenkian et les cinéastes du “nouveau cinéma”, né avec Verdes anos de Paulo Rocha en 1963. • Chansons “de protestation” en ascendance (Zeca Afonso en personne; d’autres, exilés, comme José Mário Branco et Sérgio Godinho), chansons interdites, la plupart éditées en France; 1er Festival de Jazz; débuts de tout petits groupes de musique rock. La notion de poésie se déplaçait, surtout avec la musique. • La télévision - noir et blanc, deux chaînes, “propriété” de l’Etat - était manœuvrée par le gouvernement. L’endroit où la censure était la plus évidente. On regardait la télé dans les cafés (une habitude qui dure encore, même si tout le monde a la télé chez soi...). Mais on écoutait davantage la radio, qui avait un peu plus de liberté et qui est très liée à l’avènement du 25 avril. P
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Le 25 avril 74 – un peu comme si ça tombait du ciel pour la plupart des gens – un groupe de militaires a renversé très facilement cette situation politique qui semblait à la plupart des gens éternelle et irrémédiable. En quelques heures, plus de police politique, plus de censure, plus de prisonniers politiques. On écoutait et l’on disait et l’on faisait ce qui pendant un demi-siècle avait été impossible. Par exemple, se “rassembler” dans la rue, chanter en public et dans la foule les chansons de la résistance, etc. Et d’autres toutes petites choses: si on était enseignant, on pouvait finalement aller faire ses cours, les hommes sans cravate, les femmes en pantalon…Ou entrer à l’opéra sans la tenue de “gala”… Facile à vivre pour beaucoup (mais pas pour tous), plus difficile à penser. Même si les hiérarchies du 24 avril soudain avaient été en grande partie renversées, la société restait la même... Des détails dont on ne parle pas toujours: après 5 jours de liberté, on publiait encore dans les journaux une pétition signée par 30 “antifascistes” qui demandaient l’abolition de la censure… C’est tout juste avant le 1er mai que la manif a été “autorisée” par le nouveau “pouvoir”… Le 10 juin 74, la transmission par la télé de la grande fête qui remplaçait la “Journée de la Race” a été interrompue lors d’un sketch comique sur un grand de l’Église de peur que l’Église et les catholiques se sentent offensés… Or beaucoup de ceux qui manifestaient un peu partout et occupaient maisons, usines et bureaux ne savaient même pas qu’avant il y avait eu une censure!… Ce n’est pas à ces quelques instants d’enthousiasmante “coupure” et de total virage que j’appellerai “le pendant” mais au moins à un an et demi, jusqu’au 25 novembre 1975 (si l’on veut une date), quand un nouveau “coup militaire” a interrompu le PREC et renvoyé les militaires dans leurs casernes et les “civils” chez eux... Ça a marqué la fin d’une période P
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“fondatrice” de savoirs, de façons de vivre, de désirs – probablement “normaux” et habituels dans d’autres pays (tout simplement voter, par un exemple, avoir un contrat de travail, congés payés, parler dans une assemblée) absolument inconnus par la majorité de la population portugaise jusqu’en 1974... Difficile de parler en deux mots de cette époque du “pendant”. J’essaierai de le faire vite, bien que la compréhension de la littérature (ou de la non-littérature) des années 70 – du “pendant” et de “l’après” – passe forcément par-là et par la difficile situation des intellectuels, surtout de ceux aux quels arrivait ce qu’ils avaient longtemps désiré mais qui devenait une réalité inattendue et incontrôlable. Je vais me servir d’une phrase de João Martins Pereira – d’un livre remarquable écrit en 1983 et jamais réédité, O reino dos falsos avestruzes. Dans un texte sur les intellectuels il écrit: “Ces deux années ont été sans doute pour beaucoup (pour euxmêmes [intellectuels] mais surtout pour quelques millions de travailleurs des villes et de la campagne, de déshérités, d’explorés, d’habitants de bidonvilles, jeunes et vieux, hommes et femmes) les seules années de leurs vies – pour l’instant – où ils ont agit, communiqué, décidé, enfin, intensément vécu”. 51 Ce n’était pas à ce genre de vie “intense” que les artistes et les intellectuels, même les résistants, s’étaient habitués et jamais – je suppose – ils ne l’avaient prévue, ni que la fin de la censure tant désirée aurait lieu en même temps que d’autres transformations qui changeraient aussi les hiérarchies, les sources de prestige, les plaisirs eux-mêmes et les “héros”. Ces transformations se faisaient dans la rue où cultivés et illettrés chantaient les mêmes chansons et criaient les mêmes mots d’ordre… Les transformations se faisaient collectivement dans les campagnes, les usines, les entreprises, les bureaux, les TPF
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Pereira, João Martins. No reino dos falsos avestruzes – um olhar sobre a política. Lisboa: Regra do Jogo, 1983.
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ministères, les écoles – terrains étrangers à presque tous les intellectuels et artistes, peu habitués au “collectif” et beaucoup d’entre eux s’en méfiaient. Ils perdaient pied dans un quotidien nouveau et dans l’Histoire qui se construisait à la vue de tous, et les auteurs principaux de cette construction n’étaient ni livres, ni textes, ni poèmes. Comme si les instruments pour intervenir leur manquaient – bien que beaucoup d’entre eux aient beaucoup parlé et beaucoup écrit dans la presse. Quelques-uns uns ont pris conscience assez tôt que les “autres” – le Pouvoir sur lequel ils faisaient confiance, le Peuple auquel ils croyaient – se passaient bien d’eux. Leur point de vue était plus antifasciste qu’anticapitaliste, et ce sont surtout de nouvelles lois “démocratiques” pour leur propre activité que les artistes et les intellectuels réclamaient, de façon à conquérir plus de “moyens” pour eux et à rendre l’art (celui qui existait) plus “accessible”au peuple. Il n’a presque jamais été question d’invention, de nouveaux langages, ni de nouveaux auteurs. Comme si l’art appartenait pour toujours à ceux qui le font, toujours les mêmes. En opposition à l’ancien régime qui s’était appuyé sur l’ignorance des populations, toute la “culture” qu’il faudrait “donner”, “distribuer” à ceux qui n’en avaient pas était bonne en soi. La littérature, un art “solitaire”, paraissait encore moins “utile”, “efficace” et “urgent” que les autres arts. Une certaine musique (la chanson) et un certain cinéma (le documentaire) ont trouvé une “application” et un rôle immédiats; le théâtre et les arts visuels tout de suite après. Et l’architecture, bien sûr. Quoi faire des mots? Surtout si, pour la première fois, des gens qui jamais n’avaient écrit prenaient leurs plumes pour communiqués, revendications, protestations, programmes, tracs, mots d’ordre – vraies urgences celles-là. Et montraient que sans avoir lu ni écrit savaient penser et arrivaient à “faire”.
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L’écriture n’a pas été un terrain de combat et d’invention. Sans aucune tradition du type “front populaire” en France (rappelons le groupe Octobre de Jacques Prévert) ou de la Guerre d’Espagne, plus habitués à l’opposition qu’à la construction, éloignés de toute culture populaire, beaucoup d’écrivains (surtout ceux qui soutenaient clairement le 25 avril) sont partis pour un temps de leur littérature. Les uns ont rejoint leurs camarades de profession (enseignement surtout, hôpitaux, ministères…), d’autres ont agi en tant que militants de partis (et comme Martins Pereira rappelle “inscrit à un parti” ne se confond pas avec “engagé” 52 ), d’autres se sont enfermés chez eux, d’autres ont eu des postes officiels importants dans l’administration, les médias, l’édition quand les nationalisations sont arrivées. Le pouvoir était maintenant accessible aux intellectuels et aux artistes. On envisageait cette nouvelle bonne relation avec le pouvoir comme une grande conquête. L’idée de la culture “contrepouvoir” a vite disparu. On dirait même qu’elle n’avait jamais existé (et je doute qu’elle revienne). Le congrès des écrivains en 1975, qui a eu comme “héros” le premier Ministre Vasco Gonçalves, est un exemple de ça. Les écrivains et les intellectuels n’étaient évidemment pas un groupe homogène, loin de ça. Il y a même eu quelques débats assez violents dans lesquels les intellectuels, très souvent des écrivains, ont participé: l’absence de liberté d’expression dans les journaux dirigés par des communistes qu’on disait pareille à la censure de la dictature; la conception des campagnes de “dynamisation” - militaires et artistes (surtout du spectacle) chez les gens “non cultivés” des campagnes et des usines, un mélange d’agitprop, de “récupération de la culture populaire” et d’éducation héritière de l’illuminisme; la “révolution culturelle” – existait-elle ou pas ? de quoi il s’agissait ?; les premières TPF
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Ibidem.
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ambassades culturelles de la jeune démocratie à l’étranger, etc… Histoires et phrases: Mars 75. Sartre arrive avec Simone de Beauvoir. Ils visitent des casernes et des universités “en révolution”. Après une séance avec des étudiants à Porto, Sartre déclare qu’il n’avait jamais vu des étudiants aussi muets… 53 Avril 75. Une “spécialiste” (comme la presse disait) française est invitée à faire une conférence à l’École des Hautes Études Militaires. Sujet: “Comment résoudre les contradictions entre les avangardes intellectuelles et les exigences de la culture populaire”. Bernardo Santareno, écrivain, lui demandera quel “chemin suivre pour que les masses nous comprennent”. Réponse : “écoutez les exemples des révolutions russes et chinoises”. 54 Mai 75. Déclarations d’un très grand historien, ministre de l’éducation dans des gouvernements provisoires, Magalhães Godinho: “une année absolument négative”, un choque de cultures parce qu’ “il n’y a pas d’institutions”, personne n’a essayé de “réformer les mentalités”, le niveau de conscience politique n’a pas augmenté; de là le “mépris de la culture”. Dans la même page, une autre historienne plus jeune, Miriam Halpern Pereira, disait: ce n’est pas d’un “abaissement de niveau culturel qu’il s’agit”, c’est d’une transformation très rapide du genre de culture; “la découverte de la part de la population de la possibilité de décider, de déclarer quel va être son avenir a fait une rupture avec la culture qui est surtout littéraire”; les gens ont besoin de se documenter pour leurs interventions; la radio, la télé et la presse se sont transformées en “instruments de la formation d’une culture populaire”- au moment où “la population entière a commencé à penser et à TPF
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Dionísio, Eduarda. Títulos, acções, obrigações – sobre a cultura em Portugal – 1974-1994. Lisboa: Salamandra, 1993. 212-213. TP
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O Século, 1/5/75. 25
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agir” – ce qui est plus important que “l’édition de beaucoup d’œuvres littéraires”. 55 Juillet 75. Correia Jesuíno, Secrétaire d’État de la Communication Sociale: “Il y a une grande contradiction entre la politique culturelle correcte et la politique révolutionnaire: l’Histoire montre que pour consolider une révolution un art non révolutionnaire est nécessaire et qu’un art révolutionnaire a besoin d’une société conservatrice pour se conserver”. 56 Pendant ce “pendant”, beaucoup d’enquêtes et de “bilans” dans la presse sur ce qui avait été fait et ce qu’il fallait encore faire, sur ce que l’on désirait, sur les désillusions, les joies. Les artistes et les écrivains avaient finalement la parole. Trois mois après le 25 avril, quelques réponses d’écrivains à Expresso qui posait une question sur le présent, le passé et l’avenir: Mário Dionísio: “Le 25 avril se fait sentir, je n’ai plus le temps pour la pratique littéraire, il y a beaucoup d’autres choses à faire. [...] Maintes choses changeront parce que le langage luimême changera certainement, après cette joie inestimable de pouvoir finalement donner les vrais noms aux choses, au lieu de tourner autour, avec des allusions vagues, des transpositions peu accessibles, ce permanent et torturant jeu de ‘dépistage’ qui a marqué l’écriture qui en a été victime pendant un demi-siècle d’un horrible fascisme”. 57 Luis Francisco Rebello: “Il est exaltant de créer dans un nouveau climat. Le 25 avril m’a redonné le goût d’écrire pour le théâtre que l’interdiction de ma pièce il y a 10 ans m’avait dérobé.” 58 TPF
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Vida Mundial, 8/5/75. Diário Popular, 5/7/75. Expresso, 13/7/74. Ibidem.
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João Miguel Fernandes Jorge: “Je me demande, pendant qu’à la radio j’entends dire à propos de la Symphonie nº 2 de Honneger “un message de foi et d’espoir”… Nom de dieu! Est-ce quelquechose a changé ou changera un jour? Je l’espère bien...” 59 En décembre 74 les habituels bilans de l’année expriment plutôt une déception sur la “création artistique” en liberté et la littérature en est presque absente. En avril 75, dans les bilans d’un an de “révolution”, c’est surtout de “problèmes” insolubles qu’il s’agit. De toute façon, les chiffres (même s’ils sont menteurs) indiquent une augmentation de la “consommation culturelle” (cinéma surtout), moins dans le domaine de la lecture, mais quand même il y a plus d’éditeurs et de journaux, beaucoup plus d’éditions de sciences sociales et de politique. 60 Chaque fois plus de malaises aussi, de maladresses et une certaine “impuissance” de la part de beaucoup d’intellectuels qui, au fond, de “héros” de la résistance passaient au stade de “soldat inconnu”, un peu nécessaire mais pas reconnu. Les listes des best-sellers que la presse publiait indiquent chaque fois plus de livres de sciences sociales et de politique, au début ceux qui avaient été imprimés avant mais interdits. Chaque fois moins de littérature jusqu’à sa disparition, sauf au début aussi, quelques livres qui avaient été retirés des librairies pendant la dictature. Et les titres comptent beaucoup: on trouve entre les plus vendus Philosophie de l’alcôve et Les 120 jours de Sodome de Sade, Sexus de Miller, Les 11 mil vierges d’Apollinaire. 61 Au milieu de tout cela, un certain nombre d’écrivains, dans leurs nouvelles fonctions et dans leurs nouveaux combats, difficilement trouveraient le temps et la tête pour écrire, et TPF
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Ibidem. Dionísio idem 479-488. Dionísio idem. 501-511. 27
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surtout des raisons. Qui nous lira? Pour quoi faire? N’y a-t-il d’autres choses beaucoup plus importantes? Faire manger ceux qui ont faim, trouver des maisons pour ceux qui n’en ont pas, faire des écoles pour ceux qui n’y sont jamais allés, etc. Mais l’édition littéraire ne se s’est pas évidemment arrêtée. De nouveaux titres apparaissent, même s’ils ne sont pas entre les plus vendus. Les nouveaux livres de littérature ne sont pas très remarqués et les nouveaux livres ne sont pas des livres nouveaux. Quelques années après c’est du silence des écrivains pendant la Révolution que l’on parlera et c’est de ce silence qu’on s’inquiètera. Beaucoup de ceux qui avaient publié les années avant – ou dans les années 60 – n’ont rien édité. Mais d’autres ont continué à éditer, “normalement”, surtout des poètes De la prose a aussi été publiée. Et dans cette petite production quelques titres sentaient un peu “l’air du temps”, même si on était déjà dans une nouvelle “opposition” comme Natália Correia (Poemas a rebate 62 , 1975). Dix ans après 1974, Abelaira trouve que rien de nouveau en littérature n’est apparu: “Les romans ont commencé à pouvoir ne pas être allégoriques, mais ils ne sont pas meilleurs pour ça.” TPF
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Au fond, ce qui enthousiasmait Mário Dionísio en 1974 – “ne plus être obligé à faire de détours”, “appeler les choses par leur vrai nom” 64 devenait au moins pour quelques-uns une difficulté. On s’était habitué à la métaphore poétique obligatoire. Les “demains qui chantent” étaient apparemment devenus un “aujourd’hui”, la “réalité”. Tout au moins dans la célèbre affiche de Vieira da Silva où l’on peut lire: “La poésie est dans la rue”. TPF
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Correia, Natália. Poemas a rebate. Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1975. Diário de Notícias, 19/4/84 et 24/4/84. Cf. note 57.
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Le plus grand effort pour trouver la “littérature du 25 avril” c’est Eduardo Lourenço qui l’a fait en 1984, dans son article publié à Colóquio, “Literatura e Revolução” 65 . Ses points de départ: 1º) “les révolutions sont de grandes consommatrices d’imaginaire actif”; 2º) ce qui ne s’est pas exactement notre cas – “plus qu’une révolution vécue, elle a été une révolution rêvée”; 3º) elle était “plus destinée à être le lieu vide d’une écriture digne de ce nom que la source du rêve”. C’est ainsi qu’il explique sans drames ce “silence” du “pendant”. Et c’est dans ce qu’il appelle “paralysie” de la fiction et dans la littérature qui arrive tout de suite après qu’il va trouver les traces ce cette “révolution rêvée”. À ne pas oublier: de très grands poètes (Sophia de Mello Breyner, José Gomes Ferreira, Jorge de Sena) et d’autres ont écrit, naturellement, des poèmes sur le 25 avril – quelques-uns plutôt sur le jour lui-même que sur le “pendant”. TPF
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“L’après” veut dire ici après le 25 novembre 75, ce coup militaire sur lequel une sorte de “mystère” s’est installé. Il est plus facile de comprendre son “but” que de savoir le “comment”. Sur ce “mystère”, il y a d’ailleurs un très beau filme de Seixas Santos, Gestos e Fragmentos (1982), qui a un sous-titre: ensaio sobre os militares e o poder. C’est plutôt une fiction avec des personnages qui font les rôles d’eux-mêmes: Eduardo Lourenço dont le texte est un essai à lui lu par lui; Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, le militaire le plus charismatique de la révolution finie dont les textes sont des récits à lui; Robert Kramer, le cinéaste américain, qui cherche, imagine et dessine “à haute voix” des associations et des raisons. Et voilà de très beaux
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Lourenço, Eduardo. “Literatura e Revolução”. Colóquio-Letras, n.º 78, mars 1984. PT
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textes littéraires qui ne seront jamais admis dans la “littérature”… Et “l’après” veut aussi dire après la 1ère constitution démocratique (avril 76), le premier président de la République élu (juin 76), le premier gouvernement constitutionnel (septembre 76), c’est à dire après le retour chez eux des travailleurs, les uns plus vite et d’autres moins. Retour à la normale, comme on dit. Une “normale” qu’on vivait d’ailleurs pour la première fois… Et la littérature revient. P
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Plusieurs gauches sont vaincues, de façons différentes. Les postes et les travaux des écrivains changent. Les uns sortent, pas tous pour les mêmes raisons (Saramago, Abelaira, Cardoso Pires, Manuel Ferreira). D’autres entrent: Natália Correia, Vitorino Nemésio, David-Mourão Ferreira qui sera dans les années suivantes Secrétaire d’Etat de la Culture et voudra, par exemple, en finir avec Cornucópia – un des plus importants groupes de théâtre “indépendant”. Des intellectuels, des journalistes, des éditeurs fréquentent à nouveau les tribunaux pour questions de “liberté d’expression”, mais pas tous du même côté comme avant. L’image de la culture change. En même temps, des partis de gauche essaient de fonder des “fronts culturels” de “résistance”. En 1976 et 1977 le panorama de l’édition change aussi. Moins de maisons d’édition. 1977 sera la dernière année où le nombre de titres de littérature est inférieur à celui de sciences sociales et politiques 66 . Deux phénomènes nouveaux: Jorge Amado devient un best-seller par la main de la télévision; avec lui, le livre d’un TPF
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Dionísio idem 481-482.
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écrivain portugais inconnu, mis dans le marché par une grande maison d’édition – O que diz Molero de Dinis Machado 67 . Mais, dans l’ensemble, les auteurs n’ont pas beaucoup changé. Deux seuls poètes importants éditent pour la première fois: Al Berto 68 qui continuera à publier jusqu’à sa mort, en 1997, et un autre, Luis Miguel Nava 69 , qui lui aussi publiera jusqu’à sa mort, en 1995. Ce qui est évident c’est le “retour à la littérature” de la part de quelques-uns de ceux qui l’avaient abandonnée pendant la “révolution” ou même avant. Des poètes surtout, des romanciers aussi. Mais c’est seulement en 1978-1979 que la littérature de “l’avant” fera son plein, avec ceux qui ne l’avaient jamais abandonnée même si invisibles et ceux qui écrivaient à nouveau. Est-ce qu’on va trouver des différences par rapport à ce qu’on écrivait avant? D’autres sujets? Un autre langage? Parlent-ils de ce qu’on venait de vivre? C’est à ces questions que Eduardo Lourenço (qui ne s’occupe que de la prose) essaie de répondre dans “Littérature et Révolution”. Selon lui, pour la grande majorité des romanciers qui écrivaient déjà (et qui étaient les uns pour et les autres contre la “révolution”), cette “révolution” a été un “accident”, c’est-àdire la “révolution” n’a pas changé leur “vision du monde”. Il cite les rares livres qui pendant la Révolution ont parlé de la Révolution; les quelques livres d’auteurs déjà connus (ou très connus) – presque tous écrits après ce “pendant” - où “l’avant” revient comme sujet (traité maintenant dans d’autres conditions) et ceux où la Révolution apparaît comme TPF
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Machado, Dinis, O que diz Molero. Amadora: Bertrand, 1977. [18ème édition, 2001].
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Berto, Al. À procura do vento num jardim d'Agosto. ed. de l’auteur, 1977.
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Nava, Luis Miguel. Películas. Lisboa: Moraes, 1979. (En 1974, Nava avait déjà publié un livre qui est passé presque inaperçu). PT
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appartenant déjà à un passé; ceux où la “révolution” existe en tant que “panique momentanée” (Vergílio Ferreira, Signo sinal 70 ) ou en tant qu’ “image spectrale” (Agustina, Crónica do cruzado Osb. 71 ); et ceux où la Révolution est là, comme une toile de fond. Il remarque aussi que les auteurs des années 40, 50 et 60 ont vécu la Révolution “avec les yeux du passé” ou “trempés dans du passé”. Il cherche alors une “génération littéraire de la Révolution” et j’ai été très surprise (et contente, bien sûr) de m’y trouver dedans (Retrato dum amigo enquanto falo 72 ), pour des raisons qui ne sont pas les mêmes que Lídia Jorge (O dia dos prodígios 73 ) qui, selon lui, inaugure le “nouveau jeu de l’imaginaire portugais” que la Révolution a déclenché en “inventant une autre mémoire de nous-mêmes”. Pour Eduardo Lourenço, une “écriture” de la Révolution est née, même si elle ne parle pas de “Révolution” et qui est au moins le résultat d’une “libération”. À retenir, je crois. Ce moment de “normalisation” de la littérature passe aussi par les rééditions revues – volumes, anthologies et œuvres complètes qui va continuer. C’est dans les années 80 que cette pratique s’institue. On ne peut évidemment pas abandonner ces années 70 (coupées en deux) sans parler de sa dernière année où les deux TPF
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Ferreira, Vergílio. Signo sinal. Amadora: Bertrand, 1979. [2ème édition, 1990]. TP
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Luís, Agustina Bessa. Crónica do cruzado Obs. Lisboa: Guimarães, 1976. [2ème édition, 1990]. TP
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Dionísio, Eduarda. Retrato dum amigo enquanto falo. Lisboa: Armazém das Letras, 1979. [3ème édition, Lisboa: Quimera, 1988]. TP
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premiers livres de António Lobo Antunes 74 – Memória de elefante et Os cus de judas – sur la guerre coloniale qui était devenue presque un tabou ont eu un succès peu habituel qui s’est prolongé jusqu’à maintenant, vu que l’auteur se présente, depuis un certain temps, comme un candidat au Prix Nobel. Ce sont ces deux premiers livres d’un nouvel auteur – qui a commencé à publier plus tard que les auteurs de son âge (comme certains de ceux qui se sont affirmés au début des années 80) qui annoncent quelques mois à l’avance une nouvelle façon d’existence de la littérature au Portugal. Lobo Antunes précède une série d’auteurs qui ont poursuivi régulièrement leur carrière et qui publient plus et vendent plus qu’on avait l’habitude “avant” et “pendant”. À partir de là, la littérature portugaise a une présence sociale tout à fait différente. Elle apparaît comme une série de “phénomènes”, de prix, de cérémonies. Les livres existent quand on annonce qu’ils vont paraître et quand on fait parler leurs auteurs. Les éditeurs en sont les principaux responsables et aussi quelques évènements organisés par l’Etat, surtout à l’étranger. Ce n’est plus la critique qui s’en charge. Ni les lecteurs. En 1980 le nouveau Saramago commence à publier ses “premiers” livres 75 et en 1981 Teolinda Gersão 76 , Luísa Costa Gomes 77 , Hélia Correia 78 et Mário de Carvalho 79 . Je ne sais pas TPF
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Antunes, António Lobo. Memória de elefante. Lisboa: Vega, 1979. [22ème édition, Dom Quixote, Lisbonne, 2004]. Antunes, António Lobo. Os cus de judas. Lisboa: Vega, 1979. [25ème édition, Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 2004]. TP
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Saramago, José. Levantado do chão. Lisboa: Caminho, 1980. [16ème édition, 2002] TP
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Gersão, Teolinda. O silêncio. Amadora: Bertrand, 1981. [4ème édition, Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1995] Deux titres qu’elle a publiés avant n’étaient presque pas connus.
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si une nouvelle littérature est arrivée avec ces mythiques années 80. Une nouvelle fournée, sans doute. Plus de prose qu’avant. Plus de femmes qu’avant. Pas exactement des écrivains professionnels, mais qui voudraient l’être. Une plus grande dépendance d’un marché plus marché qu’il n’était... Est-ce qu’on lit davantage qu’au temps où l’illettrisme était plus fort et où seuls les livres “autorisés” pouvaient circuler? La lecture des statistiques ne nous rend pas très optimistes… Et une autre question, tout au moins pour moi et pour quelques-uns: Est-ce que cet ensemble de voix très individuelles (et dans certains cas bien originales) nous donne les réponses les plus nettes aux inquiétudes que nous avons ou qui posent les plus intrigantes questions aux certitudes avec les quelles nous vivons? Avant de partir vers les années 80 et suivantes, j’ai envie de rappeler quelques textes, pas nécessairement tous les meilleurs de leurs auteurs: “Revolução e Mulheres” (1976) de Maria Velho da Costa, sur les femmes, sans genre défini, publié dans Cravo 80 ; Carta a Otelo 81 de Gastão Cruz, poème publié chez &etc, déjà en 1984, quand Otelo était en prison; O têpluquê 82 (1976), un livre pour enfants de Manuel António Pina. Et de rappeler aussi, bien sûr, Photomaton & Vox 83 de TPF
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Correia, Hélia. O separar das águas. Lisboa: Ulmeiro, 1981. [2ème édition, 1985].
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Carvalho, Mário de. Contos da sétima esfera. Lisboa: Vega, [1981]. [2ème édition, 1990]. TP
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Costa, Maria Velho da. Cravo. Lisboa: Moraes, 1976. [2ème édition Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1994].
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Cruz, Gastão. Carta a Otelo. Lisboa: &etc, 1984.
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Pina, Manuel António. O têpluquê. Porto: A Regra do Jogo, 1976. [O têpluquê e outras histórias, Porto: Afrontamento, 1995]. TP
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Herberto Helder (1979) qui beaucoup plus tard refusa le prestigieux prix Pessoa, Directa 84 de Nuno Bragança (1977) et surtout Finisterra 85 (1978), le dernier livre de Carlos de Oliveira. Un ensemble de textes très variés que nous sommes tous autorisés à oublier… TPF
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En 1980 la droite était au pouvoir. A partir de 80 jusqu’à maintenant on a eu une alternance entre des gouvernements du Parti Social Démocrate (droite) et du Parti Socialiste – avec des coalitions variées – qui sont d’accord sur plusieurs points et qui attribuent le même rôle à l’Etat dans la culture et le même rôle à la culture dans la politique d’Etat. Depuis les années 80 on assiste – bien que très fréquemment les artistes et les écrivains y soient d’importants “acteurs” – à une succession d’“opérations”, pour nous gigantesques, adaptées aux règles du marché, qui façonnent et limitent, à mon avis, le pouvoir de la création, même si les artistes et les écrivains, eux aussi, en sont fiers et en profitent peut-être. En 1983, la XVIIe exposition européenne d’art, science et culture a remis les “découvertes” du XVIe siècle à l’ordre du jour, et avec elles le “patrimoine” et les “musées”, le “tourisme culturel”, etc. Jusqu’à l’Expo 98 le chemin de la “culture” s’est fait en ligne droite, de commémoration en commémoration, en creusant des trous noirs dans notre fragile mémoire. Elle a élu à travers la prolifération des prix, la présence dans quelques programmes de télé et un peu les colloques universitaires, les “génies” reconnus et a créé chez les P
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artistes et écrivains une adaptation (et même une reconnaissance) à ce qu’on leur “donne” “finalement”. Cela a de fortes implications sur la littérature elle-même. Le rôle que la soi-disant découverte de Fernando Pessoa, à partir de cette même année 83 où il a commencé à remplacer Camões – le poète national, qui était devenu difficile pour un pays qui venait de perdre ses colonies – n’a pas facilité la diffusion de tout ce qui n’étaient pas lui (compte tenu des “héritiers” et des “propriétaires”), ni la lecture (même de Pessoa) en tant qu’exercice de vie. À partir de 87, la culture avait pris la forme d’une branche de l’économie et a été acceptée dans cette nouvelle forme. C’est pour cela qu’il m’est difficile de comparer la “valeur” de la littérature d’aujourd’hui à celle des années 70 – celle de l’avant, du pendant ou même de l’après. La fuite vers le “roman historique”, le retour aux “histoires” comme on les avait déjà racontées, une réinstallation dans un langage “baroque”, l’écriture théâtre par des auteurs qui n’y travaillent pas, sont quelques-unes des caractéristiques d’une époque où la curiosité est en panne. Le passé se confond avec l’avenir. Le présent a peu d’importance. L’écrivain n’est plus le même personnage. En 2004 on n’est plus vraiment écrivain si on n’est pas édité par Dom Quixote (ou un autre éditeur de ce genre) et ceux qui sont édités là sont pour cela même de “grands écrivains”, si l’on n’est pas traduit en langue étrangère, si on ne représente pas sa patrie dans des événements diplomatiques ou commerciaux (les deux vont ensemble…) qui se servent de la littérature, si l’on n’est pas commissaire de quelque chose – les 100 livres du siècle ou les 1000 de l’année - si l’on n'est pas choisi pour figurer dans une collection gratuite ou bon marché qu’un grand journal qui se sert de la littérature pour vendre plus d’exemplaires – même si on jette le journal tout de suite et l’on garde le livre sans le lire dans sa mini-bibliothèque. 36
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On ne connaît plus que ce que le pouvoir économique et politique veut que l’on connaisse. Il choisit à notre place. Il est difficile de s’en débarrasser. Et quelques oublis de noms que j’ai certainement commis ont peut-être aussi cette origine. Presque plus de journaux ou de revues de la responsabilité de groupes d’artistes ou d’écrivains. Je crois que ça devient plus grave que dans d’autres pays car le Portugal continue à avoir un grand nombre d’illettrés (au moins 10% en 2001), le niveau de lecture n’a pas trop changé depuis la fin de la dictature et l’on a perdu toute envie d’avoir un peu de son destin entre ses mains. Mais je ne voudrais pas terminer sans parler de quelques “phénomènes” minuscules qui sont peut-être l’espoir de la décennie où nous sommes, qui d’ailleurs est une décennie “paire”… Il y a des littératures hors de “la” littérature: la poésie de quelques chansons (et là encore on pourrait peut-être découvrir aussi une partie de la littérature du “pendant”); une écriture de théâtre nouvelle, un peu collective et un peu publique, faite pour les spectacles et non pas pour être éditée, même si elle l’est. Je pense aux très beaux textes de sur le monde d’aujourd’hui de Jorge Silva Melo (António, um rapaz de Lisboa 86 , O Fim ou tende misericórdia de nós 87 ,) ou de réflexion sur notre expérience récente (Prometeu – rascunhos 88 ). Il y a de la littérature écrite dans des langues qui ne sont pas le portugais de “toujours”, textes d’auteurs africains. Le travail sur la langue existe chaque fois plus fortement et naturellement – ce n’est plus une “manie” des “avangardes”. TPF
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Melo, Jorge Silva. António um rapaz de Lisboa. Lisboa: Cotovia, 1996.
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Melo, Jorge Silva. Prometeu-rascunhos. Lisboa: &etc, 1997. PT
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La poésie continue à présenter des “cas spéciaux”. Je n’en citerai que deux: Manuel Resende 89 (qui vit en Belgique et qui est l’un des éditeurs d’une très belle revue de poésie – DiVersos); Manuel Gusmão 90 , qui a résisté à l’édition pendant vingt ans. Il y a quelques jeunes (et d’autres moins jeunes) qui publient depuis peu de temps, différents de ce que l’on leur demande d’être, qui ne se mettent pas en tête que faire un roman c’est faire la rédaction d’une intrigue ou s’allonger sur un divan freudien: Jacinto Lucas Pires 91 , par exemple, ou Miguel Castro Caldas 92 , ou Filomena Marona Beja 93 , une femme de presque 60 TPF
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Resende, Manuel. Natureza morta com desodorizante. Porto/Lisboa: Gota de água,/Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1983. Resende, Manuel. Em qualquer lugar seguido de O pranto de Bartolomeu de las Casas. Lisboa: &etc, 1997. Resende, Manuel. O mundo clamoroso ainda. Águeda: Angelus Novus, 2004. TP
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Gusmão, Manuel. Dois sóis, a rosa – a arquitectura do mundo. Lisboa: Caminho, 1990. Gusmão, Manuel. Mapas – o assombro a sombra. Lisboa: Caminho, 1996. Gusmão, Manuel. Teatros do Tempo. Lisboa: Caminho, 2001. Gusmão, Manuel. Os dias levantados (libreto). Lisboa: Caminho, 2002. Gusmão, Manuel. Migrações do Fogo. Lisboa: Caminho, 2004. TP
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Pires, Jacinto Lucas. Para averiguar o seu grau de pureza. Lisboa: Cotovia, 1996. Pires, Jacinto Lucas. Universos e frigoríficos (thêatre). Lisboa: Cotovia, 1997. Pires, Jacinto Lucas. Azul turqueza. Lisboa: Cotovia, 1998. Pires, Jacinto Lucas. Arranha-céus (thêatre). Lisboa: Cotovia, 1999. Pires, Jacinto Lucas 2 filmes e algo de algodão. Lisboa: Cotovia, 1999. Pires, Jacinto Lucas. Abre para cá. Lisboa: Cotovia, 2000. Pires, Jacinto Lucas. Livro Usado. Lisboa: Cotovia, 2001. Pires, Jacinto Lucas. Escrever falar (thêatre). Lisboa: Cotovia, 2003. Pires, Jacinto Lucas. Figurantes e outras peças (thêatre). Lisboa: Cotovia, 2005.
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Caldas, Miguel Castro. Queres crescer e depois não cabes na banheira. Porto: Âmbar, 2002. Caldas, Miguel Castro. As sete ilhas de Lisboa. Porto: Âmbar, 2004. Caldas, Miguel Castro. O homem do pé direito e O homem da picareta (théâtre). Lisboa: Artistas Unidos/Cotovia, 2005.
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Beja, Filomena Marona. As cidadãs. Lisboa: Cotovia, 1998. Beja, Filomena Marona. Betânia. Lisboa: Cotovia, 2000. Beja, Filomena Marona. 38 TP
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ans qui vient de faire sortir A Sopa, sur les sans-abris et les immigrés de Lisbonne, cette nouvelle population et cette nouvelle misère qui n’est pas à l’origine de beaucoup d’œuvres littéraires… On pourrait bien sûr trouver beaucoup d’autres exemples. La littérature de ceux qui savent que l’on ne peut pas écrire sans vivre et que la littérature des autres est dans la littérature de chacun.
A sopa. Porto: Âmbar, 2004. Beja, Filomena Marona. A duração dos crepúsculos. Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 2005. 39
The Distopic Vision of the City: António Lobo Antunes and Rubem Fonseca Cristiana Sassetti (University of Pisa) Le città invisibili sono un sogno che nasce dal cuore delle città invivibili. (Italo Calvino, Le città invisibili)
My contribution is a sort of synthesis of my Ph. D. thesis in progress A Window with a View: Lisbon in the Fiction by António Lobo Antunes, combined with the analysis of some aspects of Rubem Fonseca’s work which was the main subject of my thesis for the undergraduate degree. The reason why I decided to put together these two authors, born in different continents, was the fact that both have chosen as their narrative scene their own big cities: Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro, offering of them a very particular perspective. The Portuguese author António Lobo Antunes starts his career publishing two different titles at the same time, both strongly autobiographical: Memória de Elefante and Os Cus de Judas, in 1979, where he portrays a morally and economically decaying Lisbon, victim of a nearly half century long dictatorship that was also responsible for a general insensibility towards Lisbon’s urban decadence, and victim of building speculation. The Brazilian author Rubem Fonseca has also portrayed in his short story collection Feliz Ano Novo, published in 1975, a similar process of degradation that hurts his Rio de Janeiro. Fonseca, however, adds the social phenomenon of the generalized extreme violence, so characteristic of Brazilian 40
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society in this turn of the century. Moreover, both authors, with a very bold and original style, denounce the deliberate hiding of the growing decline of their own countries where the responsibility for all these institutional lies must be searched for in their respective governments (Fonseca’s book nevertheless, will be forbidden by the political censorship in 1976 and will be only republished ten years later). “Lisbon…cidade morta em urnas de azulejos”
António Lobo Antunes, in Memória de Elefante, introduces his dystopic vision of Lisbon, describing a veteran doctor who returns home after 27th months in Angola front and sees the city from a taxi window. The streets and squares are full of widows, retired and blind people. These urban spaces are all alike an urn, in which people lives in a state of stagnation, and where all the symbols of a great past (the statues, the river and the sea) are silent observers of the decadence of the human being, in his impossibility to fight for his ideals of transformation. In this two passages the city (or the country) seems to be left an orphan, concentrating metaphorically, a general mourning: P
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a certificar-se rua a rua, no taxi, de que nada mudara na sua ausência, país a preto e branco de muros caiados e de viúvas de negro, de estátuas de regicidas a levantarem braços carbonários em praças habitadas, em doses equitativas, de reformados e de pombos, uns e outros esquecidos já da alegria de um voo? […] Todas as estátuas apontavam o dedo na direção do mar, convidando à India ou a um suicídio discreto. (33) Um cego que se deslocava adiante de si batia com a bengala no passeio no ruido de castanholas indecisas: cidade morta, pensou o médico, cidade morta em urna de azulejos a esperar sem esperança que não virá mais: 41
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cegos, reformados e viúvas e o Salazar que se Deus quiser não expirou. (120-121)
The psychiatric protagonist also likes, in his free time, to drive his car through the historical centre where he sees the urban decadence and the poverty due to Fascism. The image of mould and humidity infiltrating the façades, is particularly relevant. In fact, in my opinion, this could be seen as a metaphor of the beginning of the sliding down that will drag away Fascist dictatorship. Na Praça da Figueira, […] D. João IV, herói problemático, fitava de órbitas ocas um renque de varandas, escritórios de representações representando o bolor, o tabaco frio e a humidade. Adivinhavam-se autoclismos que não funcionavam atrás de cada parede, inválidos do comércio em cada adolescente hirsuto, menopausas desesperadas nas mulherespolícias. […] Imobilizou o automóvel […] e desceu o vidro para cheirar a água lodosa onde homens e mulheres, enterrados até aos joelhos, enchiam de iscos latas ferrugentas. Os ceifeiros da vazante, disse-se ele, garças que o fascismo criou, aves pernaltas da fome e da miséria. (102-103)
In another example from his book Os Cus de Judas, we find the portrait of a provincial and mean Lisbon. Again, the doctor protagonist takes a taxi at the airport and sees the city from the car window: A minha lembrança grandiosa de uma capital cintilante de agitação e de mistério copiada de John dos Passos, que alimentara fervorosamente durante um ano nos areais de Angola, encolhia-se envergonhada defronte de prédios de suburbia onde um povo de terceirosescriturários ressonava entre salvas de casquinha e ovais de croché.(104-105) 42
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In this third example, instead, the character looks lost in his own hometown. Benfica, the suburb where he spent his childhood, has profoundly changed due to the phenomenon of urbanization and increase of the metropolis. In this way the narrator feels destitute of his anthropological references, as these new huge buildings have altered the social stability and turned the urban space more vulnerable: O médico sentia uma imensa ternura pela Benfica da sua infância transformada em Póvoa de Santo Adrião por via da cupidez dos construtores, a ternura que se dedica a um amigo velho desfigurado por múltiplas cicatrizes e em cujo rosto se procuram em vão os traços cúmplices de outrora. Quando deitarem abaixo o prédio Pires, disse ele pensando no enorme e antigo edifício diante da casa dos pais, por que norte magnético me orientarei, eu que tão poucos pontos de referência conservo já e tanta dificuldade possuo em me fabricar novos? E imaginou-se à deriva na cidade, sem bússola, perdido num labirinto de travessas, porque o Estoril [where the doctor protagonist actually lives] permaneceria para sempre uma ilha estrangeira a que se achava incapaz de se adaptar, longe dos ruídos e dos cheiros da sua floresta natal. ( 157-158, my italic)
The urbanist Kevin Lynch in his classical book The image of the city explains the importance of the building as one of the main element that characterizes the city, and which the observer uses as a sign of identity: “they are frequently used as sign of identity and even structure, and they seem to be increasingly reliable, as an itinerary become more familiar […]. A good image of the environment gives an important sense of emotional security” (quoted by Choay 396). Indeed, a characteristic place that is ‘readable’ offers not only reliability but turns the human experience more intense: “The need of recognizing and structure 43
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what surround us, is so intense and has deep roots in the past, to give this image a wide practical and emotional importance for the man” (395). Lisbon as a spider-web
This vision of the city of Lisbon in the late Seventies, with the loss of all possible references and where it is easy to get lost in those narrow streets that all look the same, is like one of the invisible cities (Le città invisibili) by Italo Calvino, namely Cecilia, where Marco Polo one day was walking “tra angoli di case tutte uguali: mi ero perso” (153) and a shepperd replies him “I luoghi si sono mescolati […] Cecilia è dappertutto; qui una volta doveva esserci il Prato della Salvia Bassa. Le mie capre riconoscono le erbe dallo spartitraffico” (153). 1 It is Calvino again who concludes Marco Polo’s peregrination in the city of Berenice, predicting the unfair and ugly city “che germoglia in segreto nella segreta città giusta” (161). 2 Lisbon as portrayed by Lobo Antunes looks like a spider-web without any path or itinerary and within which one wanders around in vain. The urban scene therefore reflects the character’s internal worries, his fears as if, after his experience in Africa, he is still not used to that anonymity and that outrageous environment. The same negative vision of the city culminates in his book of chronicles, Livro de Crónicas, published almost 20 years after his first two books, in 1998. Here the author, like the genre suggests, offers us realistic pictures that focus his everyday life. In Elogio do Suburbio, for instance, we find again TPF
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“amongst the corners of houses all alike: I got lost”; “Places have melted [...] Cecilia is everywhere: here once upon a time there must be a Medow of Sage Short: my goats recognize the grass of the traffic island” (my translation).
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“that sprouds in secret in the secret fair city”. On Calvino and the city see: “Gli dèi della città”, Una pietra sopra, and Barenghi, Mario, Canova Giovanni e Bruno Falcetto (Ed.) La visione dell’invisibile. TP
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the image of Benfica, which disappears giving way to a profusion of unpersonal buildings: Hoje se vou a Benfica não encontro Benfica. Os pavões calaram-se, nenhuma cegonha na palmeira dos Correios (já não existe a palmeira dos Correios, a quinta dos Lobo Antunes foi vendida) o senhor Silvino, o senhor Florindo e o senhor Jardim morreram, ergueram prédios no lugar de casas […]. Não há pavões nem cegonhas e contudo a acácia dos meus pais, teimosa, resiste. […] A acácia basta-me. Arrasaram as lojas, os pátios, não tocam o Papagaio Loiro no sino, mas a acácia resiste. Resiste. (14-15)
This passage is, perhaps, an implicit “homage” to the Brazilian poet Manuel Bandeira author of the poem Pensão Familiar the sunflowers of which like the acacia in Lobo Antunes father’s garden, symbolize natures capacity to resist the destruction carried out by today’s human being, a process which has worsened from the Seventies on: Jardim da pensãozinha burguesa. Gatos espapaçados ao sol. A tiririca sitia os canteiros chatos. O sol acaba de crestar os gosmilhos que murcharam.” Os girassóis amarelos! resistem. (126)
The faceless city, similar to any globalised city, where it is easy to get lost, seems to show up again in the chronicle Os Meus Domingos, in which a middle class family spends its Sunday afternoons walking around inside a huge Shopping Center, Amoreiras, where all the people dressed in a standard and 45
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vulgar way, in purple and green tracksuits along with several golden necklaces around their necks and: todos os automóveis do parque são Seat Ibiza, todos têm mantas alentejanas nos bancos, todos apresentam um autocolante no vidro que diz Não me siga Que eu Ando Perdido, todos possuem uma rodela Vida Curta no guarda-lamas direito e uma rodela Vida Longa no guarda-lamas esquerdo, de todos os espelhos retrovisores se pendura o mesmo boneco de peluche […] todos trouxeram os sogros e o filho, todos devem habitar em Alterca e todos circulam a tarde inteira no Centro de forma idêntica à nossa. (59)
And this is the place where everybody signs contracts to buy furniture and domestic appliances by instalments, in a surreal atmosphere. In the end, the main character goes back home with a family which is not the original one, and which will change again next Sunday, even if he strongly identifies with one of these “mistaken” families. Here we can find a portrait of a Lisbon which loses its peculiar monumental characteristics, its sentimental cartography, its real face, to reach the paramount of the depersonalisation and disorientation. Where people meet each other, are confused with each other and get lost – not in labyrinth of the city any more – but strangely enough in a Shopping Centre, where the promenade has become the ultimate fashion. Fredric Jameson in the chapter “Postmodernism and the City”, in his famous essay Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, analyses the transformation of the new contemporary architectonic space. The human subjects who access this new space, which Jameson calls hyperspace: “Would not be capable of perceiving it correctly or of harmonizing with it in, so far as they still have to develop and expand their own sensory perceptions and their own bodies in new dimensions which are as yet unimaginable and maybe, in 46
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the final analysis, impossible”(75). This new space should be analyzed and interpreted, then, through what he calls cognitive cartography or Mapping (96) which should be able to offer, once again, a sense of place and the building or rebuilding of an articulated set of elements which may be conserved in memory and around which the individual may design or redesign itineraries offered by precise coordinates, as it happened in past. It is Kevin Lynch again, who tells us that the alienated city is above all a space in which the ordinary man is not capable of drawing a mental map, nor of establishing his own position, nor of picturing the urban totality which he is in. The vision of the fragmented and alienating city described by Lynch and then by Jane Jacobs in the Sixties, in her famous essay Life and Death of the Great American Cities, can also be found in the Rio de Janeiro of the Seventies. Rio de Janeiro.. misturando no mesmo coquetel instinto e asfalto
In the period that spans the Sixties and the Seventies in Brazil, the urban conglomerates, like many others in Latin America, have grown behind measure, creating a slow profound transformation of all spaces and ways of life, with uncontrolled growth and without a single plan for a rational development of the favelas, both the ones near or inside downtown areas and the ones in suburban areas, with the inevitable increase in number of emarginated people, violence and the deterioration of the quality of life. Rubem Fonseca will be the most representative voice of this big changing; in the short-story collection Feliz Ano Novo, in the story Intestino Grosso, which portrays an interview with a journalist and a character identified with the author himself, we can read about his lacerated vision of his town. He writes: Eu nada tenho a ver com Guimarães Rosa, estou escrevendo sobre pessoas empilhadas na cidade enquanto os tecnocratas afiam o arame farpado […]. 47
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Passamos anos e anos preocupados com o que alguns cientistas cretinos ingleses e alemães (Humboldt?) disseram sobre a impossibilidade de se criar uma civilização abaixo do Equador e decidímos arregaçar as mangas […] e costruímos São Paulo, Santo André, São Bernardo e São Caetano, as nossas Manchesteres tropicais com suas sementes mortíferas. (468) Eles queriam que eu escrevesse igual ao Machado de Assis, e eu não queria e não sabia […]. Eles queriam os neguinhos do pastoeiro, os guaranis, os sertões da vida. Eu morava num edifício de apartamentos no centro da cidade e da janela do meu quarto via anúncios coloridos em gás néon e ouvia barulho de motores de automóveis. (470)
The American critic Elisabeth Lowe writes about the urban scene elevated to a privileged observatory by Fonseca: “The city is a central metaphor and dynamic force in Fonseca’s fiction; and into the microcosm of Brazilian city he projects an apocalyptic vision of the human condition, recreating the myth of the Fall.[…] He adopts an aggressive attitude towards the city experience, destructing and then restructuring traditional narrative technique in a manner expressive of the dynamics of the big city. In this urban setting his characters, functioning both as symbols and as anti-heroes, confront each other from the poles of an alienated, technocratic society” (18-19). Feliz Ano Novo portrays, as in his previous works, marginalized underworld of Rio’s Zona Sul, and the problems that emerge are the extreme violence, sexuality in its all possible forms, including the most perverse ones, general schizophrenia and a huge mass of excluded men and women. As Alçada Baptista reflects: “A grande metrópole consumista não consegue funcionar sem un altíssimo grau de desperdício: marginais e lixo vão sendo empurrados para os lados da cidade e, com os ratos, os marginais disputam os sobejos do 48
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consume”(14). The anti-heroes that crowded the pages of this collection are symbol-characters, both of the poorest social class, the “underdogs”, and of the ones from the most privileged class, Rio’s “noble and fine” social environment. One year after the release of Feliz Ano Novo, when the th 4 edition of the book was in print, the book was forbidden, censored, and accused of attempting against morality and decency by the former Minister of Justice Armando Falcão, during General Geisel’s presidency of the Country (1974-1979). Rubem Fonseca would sue the Government in 1977, and only in 1986 will the Brazilian Supreme Court decide in his favor and the publication of the book will be authorized again. Rubem Fonseca presents the Brazilian city of Rio, in the mid Seventies, with the same profile that would be its hallmark in succeeding years, and until the present days. In Malcom Silverman’s words, the author is gifted with a particular style with an “aspereza contínua com que pinta o drama (tragédia?) urbano [...], a acidez satírica que lhe provoca o seu mundo torturado” (262), very different from all other Brazilian writers from that period. Indeed, even if the phenomenon of violence is also present in the works of these other writers, none of them would merit the qualification of “brutalist” that critic Alfredo Bosi has created specially to give a synthetic conceptualization of this thematic and stylistic universe, which find its form and motivation in the explosion of “wild capitalism” in a Third World country. In the agony of all values caused by technology inside a poor society, “misturando no mesmo coquetel instinto e asfalto, objetos plásticos e expressões de uma libido sem saídas para um convívio de afeto e projeto”(18), in other words, in the barbaric crowded streets, in the matter-of-fact brutalized human beings, destroyed by a system they can not decipher and that is eager to devour them. Both authors present a disenchanted and sceptical vision of the contemporary city and society in general, in which it seems impossible to maintain stable emotional relationships, P
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and we could add, we even get the feeling that a background of misogynist behaviour is also present in both books and in their entire literary work, as we can perceive from the attitude and words of their characters. Characters that they choose amongst the low middle class society, of the first generation, who chose “to have” instead of “to be”, with a poor inner life, like the book by Cerami, Un borghese piccolo piccolo, for my Italian colleagues at this congress, for instance, or the same low middle class portrait by surrealist poets Alexandre O’Neill and Mário Cesariny. I would like to underline that this is a work still in progress but I’m also convinced that a real understanding of the essence of the literary motivations present in the work of these two writers will also reflect the understanding of a great deal of the contradictions and the general and so widespread discontent of the contemporary man.
Works Cited
Antunes, António Lobo. Memória de Elefante. Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1990. ---. Os cus de Judas, Lsiboa: Dom Quixote, 1994. ---. Livro de Crónicas, Lisboa: Dom Quixote,1998. Bandeira, Manuel. Estrela da Vida Inteira. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira, 1993. Barenghi, Mario, Canova Giovanni and Bruno Falcetto (Ed.) La visione dell’invisibile: saggi e materiali su Le città invisibili di Italo Calvino. Milano: Mondadori, 2002. Batista, Alçada. Preface. “Contribuição para a análise do ‘espaço’ na obra de Rubem Fonseca”, Feliz Ano Novo. Lisboa: Contexto, 1980. Bosi, Alfredo. O Conto Brasileiro Contemporâneo. São Paulo: Ed. Cultrix, 1978. 50
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Calvino, Italo. “Gli dèi della città”, Una pietra sopra, Torino: Einaudi, 1980. 282-285. Castanho, Arlindo Nicau.“Os cus de Judas di António Lobo Antunes: memoria di una guerra assurda”. Dalle armi ai garofani: studi sulla letteratura della guerra coloniale. Roma: Bulzoni Editore, 1995: 29-49. Choay, F. La città utopie e realtà. Torino: Einaudi, 1998. Fonseca, Rubem. Contos Reunidos. Rio de Janeiro: Companhia das Letras, 1994. Jameson, Fredric. Il Postmoderno, o la logica culturale del tardo capitalismo. Translation by Stefano Velotti. Milano: Garzanti, 1989. Lowe, Elisabeth. The City in Brazilian Literature. Rutherford (NJ): Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982. Margato, Isabel. “Lisboa em outro tempo da escrita”. Veredas 4 (2001): 147-156. Silverman, Malcolm. “A Sátira na Ficção de Rubem Fonseca”. Moderna Ficção Brasileira 2. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Civ. Brasileira/MEC, 1987.
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Les Déçus de la Révolution Portugaise dans la Chronique de Journal, 1974-1980 Fernando Venâncio (Université d’Amsterdam) La révolution du 25 avril 1974 a déclenché dans la société portugaise une mobilisation de fond. Une dynamique nouvelle s’est emparée du pays, faite d’enthousiasme, de générosité, d’inventivité. Cet état de choses, toutefois, n’a pas duré longtemps. Assez vite, les genres révolutionnaires d’organisation se sont vus étouffer par des luttes de partis, acharnés à la conquête du pouvoir politique et au contrôle du sort des vastes et riches colonies africaines. Cet étouffement des énergies initiales est devenu pour beaucoup une source de désillusion. Ce passage de l’euphorie à la déception a été accompagné de près par quelques écrivains et publicistes. Pas sous la forme de la réflexion ou de l’essai (à ma connaissance, personne ne l’a faisait à ce moment là), mais sous d’autres formes, plus légères, mais d’autant plus engagées et poignantes: la fiction, le journal intime, la chronique dans la presse. C’est de faire un tour d’horizon de cette production contemporaine des faits qu’il s’agit ici. La fiction, le journal intime
Deux brèves mots, d’abord, sur la fiction. Quelques romans, parus dans les années suivant à la période révolutionnaire, contiennent un commentaire plus ou moins explicite aux événements. C’est le cas du roman d’Agustina Bessa Luís Crónica do Cruzado Osb., de 1976, où se trouve la thèse, assez curieuse, d’une ‘impuissance’ portugaise pour la révolution, faute d’un sens suffisant de la tragédie chez le portugais. Ce 52
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roman d’Agustina et quelques autres de la même époque, dont l’un d’Eduarda Dionísio (Retrato de um Amigo Enquanto Falo, 1979), ont été étudiés de ce point de vue, celui de la désillusion, par Luís Mourão (99-137). Dans d’autres romans on entend une critique semblable, voilée ou pas. Il faut nommer à ce propos A Floresta em Bremerhaven, d’Olga Gonçalves (1975), Cortes, d’Almeida Faria (1978), Kaos, de Ruben A. (1981), ainsi que Fado Alexandrino, d’António Lobo Antunes (1983). Une étude d’Anabela Dinis Branco de Oliveira porte sur le ‘désenchantement révolutionnaire’, tel qu’il est rendu visible dans plusieurs de ces œuvres (440-452). Le journal intime constitue une deuxième forme d’accompagnement intellectuel de ce processus de déception. Les deux auteurs les plus célèbres dans le domaine, Miguel Torga et Vergílio Ferreira, ont fait largement état de leurs sentiments de désarroi, même de désistement. Dans les deux cas, en plus, il s’agit d’intellectuels injustement accusés, pendant la dictature, par l’opposition communiste, de cohabiter avec trop d’aisance avec le régime. On voit Torga, un mois et demi après la révolution, se plaindre de “cette vie quotidienne nationale” lâchée dans les mains d’“individus primaires” qui “sacrifient le destin de tous à une pirouette de leur destin imaginaire” (58). Quant à Vergílio Ferreira, il écrit après un mois de régime révolutionnaire: “Il serait utile de mettre en ordre quelques jugements sur ce qui se passe. Difficile. Des grèves, des revendications, la menace du chaos. On vit trop pour qu’on puisse avoir des idées sur ce qu’on vit. O, ce véhément appel de démission de tout ceci” (190). D’autres auteurs ont maintenu un journal à la même époque. Il faudra retenir ici le cas de Natália Correia avec Não Percas a Rosa (1978), que recouvre, presque au jour le jour, la période d’avril 1974 jusqu’à décembre 1975.
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Un genre embarrassant
Soit la fiction soit le journal intime, ils constituent, il faut le souligner, des témoignages différés. En effet, même ces journaux intimes n’atteignent le public que quelques années après leur composition (chez Torga ça a mis deux ans, chez Vergílio six). C’est pourquoi, à mon avis, on doit reconnaître un statut tout spécial à la chronique de journal comme témoignage. Je m’explique. Le journal intime (et cela vaut sûrement pour Torga) subit tout naturellement un traitement esthétique, et qui sait d’autocensure, ce qui est tout à fait irréprochable – et même, dans certains cas, de conseiller. Par contre, la chronique de journal, même dans les cas, habituels d’ailleurs, où elle dénonce sa vocation littéraire, elle est produite et publiée dans le tourbillon des événements, donc dans une situation de risque, certes calculé, mais du risque quand même. C’est ce goût du vertige qui fait, chez son auteur et son lecteur, l’attrait de la chronique. Mais c’est aussi, je suppose, l’embarras devant ce vertige, le mal à le gérer, ce qui a toujours maintenu les commentateurs de la culture, soit du côté littéraire soit du côté culturel en général, éloignés de ce genre de textes. Ça se passe un peu partout, je sais. Mais le cas portugais me semble, somme toute, un peu grave. Il n’existe au Portugal aucune étude sur la chronique de journal au 20e siècle (et il faut dire qu’il n’existe même pas une Histoire de notre journalisme au siècle dernier). En plus, aucun recueil de chroniques, thématique ou autre, n’a jamais été fait (sauf, bien sûr, par les auteurs eux-mêmes ou dans des cas tout à fait circonscrits). Tout cela vient de changer un peu, puisqu’une Anthologie, que j’ai préparée (Crónica Jornalística), est parue à Lisbonne contenant cent pièces de cent auteurs du 20e siècle, avec une introduction qui est une toute première vue d’ensemble. Mais, en fait, le plus étonnant, là-dessus, est l’absence d’un examen de la réalité portugaise par le biais de cette audacieuse et risquée chronique de journal. En d’autres mots: P
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dans l’interprétation de notre chose sociale ou culturelle, des milliers de chroniques dans les journaux n’ont servi à rien. Je me propose de faire ici un tout premier exercice. Il s’agit, bien sûr, d’un aspect isolé, et assez isolable, de la chronique de, disons, années 70 deuxième moitié. D’ailleurs je me limiterai ici à trois auteurs. Mais ils sont, tous les trois, aussi, les plus fascinants. Toutefois il faut souligner qu’il s’agit là d’un choix. On pourrait accompagner avec autant de plaisir le parcours de Vasco Pulido Valente, qui deviendra par la suite le chroniqueur le plus en évidence au Portugal, et qui publia dans les années 70 des textes dans Diário de Notícias, Cinéfilo et Expresso, recueillies dans O País das Maravilhas (1979). Aussi les productions de Manuel de Portugal en 1975, dans O Tempo, gardent un vif intérêt. On les retrouve dans le volume Crónicas e Cartas (1976). Enfin, il faut regretter que le magnifique recueil de chroniques Revolucionários e Querubins (1976), de José Martins Garcia, n’ait pas paru auparavant sous la forme d’articles dans la presse. On ne peut pas donc l’admettre dans une étude comme celle-ci. Portela, le provocateur
Environ 1965, dans une situation donc de dictature et de censure, on assiste à un nouvel élan de la chronique aux préoccupations sociales, faisant attention au petit homme dans la rue, mais aussi de la chronique de critique sociale implicite, et même de critique politique plus ou moins déguisée. Le quotidien du soir Diário de Lisboa, un journal de référence, est le centre de ce développement. C’est ici que publient Maria Judite de Carvalho, sous le pseudonyme ‘Emília Bravo’, et Luís de Sttau Monteiro, l’auteur des ‘rédactions’ de Guidinha, la petite Marguerite. Ils sont, tous les deux, à ce moment là, des auteurs très connus. 55
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À Diário de Lisboa aussi, un jeune journaliste, Artur Portela (né 1937), avait fait son début à la fin des années 50, avec une série de chroniques de critique sociale, “Feira das Vaidades”, qui l’avait fait tout d’un coup célèbre. En 1967, il s’est passé à un hebdomadaire de province, Jornal do Fundão, qu’on lisait à Lisbonne, surtout dans les rédactions (et ça peut suffire à la célébrité). Il maintenait là-bas une série, “A Funda”, la fronde, nettement politique et assez maltraitée par la Censure. Un des volumes où, de temps en temps, l’auteur rassemblait ses textes a même été saisi par la police politique. Portela est en fait un historien, il a étudié, entre autres, à Rome les rapports culturels entre le fascisme et le salazarisme. En avril 1974, il est le chroniqueur politique, ainsi que le polémiste, le plus fameux. Il ne fait pas du tout le genre farouche, il est plutôt du type des salons. Il se révèle même un enthousiaste du général Spínola, un spinoliste de gauche, ce qui est, je vous assure, tout à fait fascinant, mais aussi, à la longue, la formule même de l’échec. Sa première “déception” (Portela utilise lui-même ce terme) surgit avant la fin avril. Il comprend, dit-il, l’hésitation du mouvement révolutionnaire à substituer les individus connotés avec le régime déchu et il applaudit l’absence de représailles. Mais, à son avis, une “politique nouvelle” doit être menée par des “hommes nouveaux”. Eh bien, il témoigne des mesures qui vont nettement dans un sens contraire. Bientôt, au mois de mai, il avertira le Parti Socialiste qu’il faudra développer vite des plans d’action transparents. La fureur s’empare de lui après trois semaines de révolution, dû au passage à la télé d’une pièce de théâtre, “Rabeca”, je suppose de Prista Monteiro, un auteur de théâtre de l’absurde. Portela écrit à ce propos: “Pas toutes les bonnes volontés sont des volontés bonnes”. Il considère une “erreur” que de montrer au public, comme premier échantillon d’un contexte culturel nouveau, une pièce qu’il nomme “défigurée” et 56
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“impénétrable”. “La révolution”, dit-il, “ne censure pas l’inefficace. Elle met l’inefficace en évidence”. De nouvelles sources de désillusion surgissent. Il parlera bientôt des “contradictions” du nouvel ordre, comme c’est l’expulsion des plus hauts responsables de la dictature sans jugements vers le Brésil. En fait, il nourrit là-dessus un soupçon: qu’un procès honnête de la dictature aurait fait trembler quelques gens entre-temps installées dans la démocratie. Oui, les anciens dirigeants pourraient être des “mémoires incommodes”. Et, surtout, il déplore la perte de “ce qui a fait la qualité des premières semaines du 25 avril – le débat désinhibé et complet des problèmes, l’informalité et la rapidité des contacts, les décisions de groupe, la largeur de vues, l’audace, la créativité”. En avril 1975, Artur Portela va fonder son propre quotidien, le Jornal Novo. Il s’y montre de plus en plus déçu d’une gauche qui a maintenant les chances, mais pas la fantaisie et l’amour du risque. Il entrera régulièrement en collision avec le pouvoir militaire aux tendances gauchistes qui domine à Lisbonne, et il faut dire que Portela ne cessera jamais de le provoquer. Le climax de cette confrontation surgit en septembre 75, lorsque l’Assemblée de la Marine, dans un communiqué daté 3/9/75, “avertit solennellement le Jornal Novo que la Marine se réserve le droit d’agir révolutionnairement, dans la juste défense de son prestige”. N’en doutons pas: en politique culturelle, la révolution portugaise touche le fond. Portela produira alors une pièce extraordinaire, “À l’abordage”, que j’aimerais vous lire dans la totalité. Je détache un passage: Quelle erreur est celle-ci, politique, de passer, à un quotidien incommode, une attestation de force? […] Combien de temps nous souviendrons-nous tous, tous journalistes, tous écrivains, tous poètes, tous chroniqueurs, tous historiens, avec un sourire terriblement portugais […], ce communiqué qui 57
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déclare la guerre à un journal, ce communiqué qui interdit la caricature, ce communiqué qui confond humour avec offense, ce communiqué qui invoque la révolution pour venir briser en éclats, peut-être, une demie douzaine de bureaux, et jeter, peut-être, par les fenêtres, une demie douzaine de machines à écrire?”[...] Ce journal souhaite que la Marine ne jette pas l’ancre dans la mesquinerie, et dans le ridicule, de ce communiqué, et qu’elle se fasse à la haute mer de la grandeur que cette révolution doit être. (221) Lagoa, la résistante
Environ à la même époque, un autre chroniqueur, Vera Lagoa (1917-1996), ira encore plus loin et elle finira brouillée avec la gauche, où elle avait combattu. Cette journaliste était assez connue, surtout depuis 1965, lorsqu’elle a commencé dans le Diário Popular ses “Bisbilhotices” (Commérages), une série de chroniques sociales dans le sens le plus mondain du mot. En 1975 elle décide de relancer l’hebdomadaire O Diabo, jadis un titre de gauche, qui deviendra un organe d’extrême droite. Vera Lagoa y a souvent sondé les limites de la liberté de presse, ce qui a conduit à pas mal de procès. Le journal a même été temporellement interdit, et Vera Lagoa a dû poursuivre ses chroniques dans O Tempo, lui aussi connoté avec la droite radicale. Le recueil Crónicas do Tempo (1975), qu’elle appelle des “chroniques de résistance” à la domination communiste, a eu, dans la seule année 1975, trois éditions. Il s’agit bien, chez Vera Lagoa, d’une déception tragique, d’un vrai amour abusé. Cela est tout à fait clair dans un texte magnifique, paru en mars 1977, dans O Diabo. Il porte le titre “Vai-te embora, Manuel!” (Va-t-en, Manuel!), étant adressé au poète Manuel Alegre, devenu secrétaire d’état pour la communication sociale et qui venait d’interdire un autre journal de droite. La journaliste rappelle la “belle amitié” qui la relie à Alegre ainsi que leur passé commun d’opposition, jadis à la 58
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dictature de Salazar, récemment à celle du PC. Tout comme Portela, Vera se montre perplexe devant cette sensibilité un peu insensée, chez les dirigeants, à la critique dans la presse. Portela nommait cela “une erreur”, Vera nomme cela “une sottise” (“um disparate”). Elle accuse le secrétaire d’état de démagogie et elle lui demande, au nom de leur amitié, au nom même la démocratie pour laquelle ils ont lutté, qu’il présente sa démission. Qu’il s’en aille (“Vai-te embora”). Alegre est bien resté en place. Un an plus tard, Vera Lagoa sera condamnée en tribunal: elle a utilisé, se référant à Mário Soares et d’autres, le terme “cambada” (ribaudaille). Saraiva, le maudit
Mon troisième auteur est António José Saraiva (1917-1993). Il a été longtemps un militant communiste, mais il a quitté le parti dans les années 60. Ce grand savant, qui était l’un des plus grands historiens de la culture portugaise, aimait la polémique, et il y avait brillé dès les années 50. Saraiva était un esprit foncièrement indépendant, il était même (le terme est à lui) un personnage “inconvénient”. Il se disait d’ailleurs (le témoignage se trouve à Expresso-Revista, du 15-12-1990) le seul communiste portugais qui aimait les communistes italiens… En somme, il tenait à dire ce que tout le monde taisait, et à la fin de sa vie il dénonçait cette sorte d’autocensure collective comme un malheur national. Au moment de la révolution, Saraiva travaillait, dans un demi exile, comme professeur d’université à Amsterdam. Il n’était pas heureux dans ce labeur, et au moment de la révolution il s’est demandé devant ses amis: “Qu’est-ce que je fais ici?”. Six mois plus tard, il rentrait à Lisbonne. L’enthousiasme de Saraiva envers la révolution ne tiendra pas longtemps. Lui aussi, il a le sentiment que cette liberté conditionnée par la gauche n’est pas celle dont on a rêvé. Et, surtout, deux erreurs, énormes, ont été commises par la suite 59
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du 25 avril: l’une, cette façon aberrante dont s’est passé la décolonisation, vue comme plutôt une fuite; l’autre, le manque d’un vraie jugement de l’ancien régime. Ce sont là deux erreurs, deux trahisons, sur lesquelles, à son avis, le 25 avril a été bâti et pour lesquelles il n’y a maintenant ni de solution ni de pardon. Saraiva, je tiens à le souligner, ne fait pas du bluff, il n’étale pas des fantômes personnels. Il s’agit là bien de deux traumas nationaux, deux sujets dont tout le monde se gardait de parler. Sauf l’extrême droite. Sauf ce vaillant Saraiva. Il le payera cher. Pas mal d’amis s’éloigneront et il finira sa vie dans la solitude. Saraiva écrit dans la presse dès sa rentrée au Portugal, surtout dans le quotidien Diário de Notícias. Ses chroniques deviennent de plus en plus embarrassantes, elles commencent à tomber mal. Le comble viendra lorsqu’il publie, en janvier 1979, un texte écrasant: “Le 25 Avril et l’Histoire”, où il dénonce les deux trahisons que je viens d’exposer (la décolonisation et le manque de jugement de l’ancien régime). Quand on lit aujourd’hui ce texte, on ressent, somme toute, quelque compréhension, et même quelque pitié, envers ces esprits bienpensants qui ont tout de suite, dans les journaux, crié au scandale. En effet, l’auteur a produit là le libelle le plus anéantissant qu’on puisse dédier à une révolution populaire, cette révolution qui n’a fait que mettre en évidence un peuple “lâche” et “vil”, un peuple de “souteneurs”. Dans un commentaire à ce texte, juste quelques jours après, Artur Portela écrit: “Saraiva, qui est un historien, sait que cette approche du 25 Avril est honnête mais pas professionnelle, elle est émotionnellement sérieuse mais elle n’est pas scientifiquement efficace”. Il veut dire par là que, dans le détail, la décolonisation et la démocratisation n’ont certainement pas été exemplaires, mais que, à la fin, l’Histoire ne retiendra de l’ensemble que la donnée centrale: la libération du Portugal et celle des colonies. Selon Portela, “cette critique [de Saraiva] est si exaspérée, si véhémente, si exigeante, si angoissée, qu’elle ne peut qu’être une déclaration d’amour au 25 Avril”. Je ne pense 60
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pas que Saraiva, lui-même, fût vraiment charmé de cette récupération de ses points de vue. Il ne faisait pas du lyrisme, mais des accusations. Il va les formuler telles quelles encore à deux reprises. Un objet oublié
Le cas de Manuel Alegre, ce poète devenu secrétaire d’état, n’était qu’un exemple. Dans une étude, d’il y a dix ans, sur les ‘pratiques culturelles’ au Portugal, Eduarda Dionísio, se rapportant à un état de choses valable dès 1975, écrit: “Beaucoup de noms de la culture peuvent maintenant exercer le Pouvoir ou l’influencer. Ils occupent des charges: dans les organisations syndicales et semblables, dans la presse et l’édition, dans l’appareil d’État. […] L’idée de culture comme contre-pouvoir est disparue, diluée dans la mémoire de la ‘résistance’ qui perdure” (453). C’était certainement le cas. Mais il faudra nuancer quelque peu l’image. En effet, il y avait, dans la presse ellemême, et pas tout à fait cachées, des réserves de résistance. Elles ont retenu un instant l’attention, mais on les a oublié. Ces textes, soit comme produits littéraires, soit comme manifestations culturelles, n’ont gardé qu’un poids résiduel. Et ils sont bien des ‘manifestations culturelles’. Des textes de la presse – et je cite de nouveau Eduarda Dionísio ailleurs (Títulos, acções, obrigações 14) – ils peuvent être “plus ‘culture’” que d’autres objets qui portent ce nom. Les chroniques de journal dont je vous ai parlé ne renferment pas les souvenirs les plus reposants. Elles racontent l’histoire d’un pays tâtonnant et un peu perdu. C’est peut-être pour cela qu’on les a écartés de notre mémoire. Elles constituent une histoire désormais secrète. Ce qui est, somme toute, assez dommage. En effet, ces textes nous montrent, nous, les portugais, un peu plus intéressants. Et surtout ils rappellent que tout n’a pas été 61
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commandé dès les centres du pouvoir et que quelques-uns d’entre nous, dans un état de démocratie formelle, ont été des résistants. Ces textes, qui ne contiennent assurément pas l’histoire officielle, serviront peut-être un jour à la corriger. Ouvrages Cités
Ruben, A. Kaos. Lisboa: Casa da Moeda, 1981. Antunes, António Lobo. Fado Alexandrino. Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1983. Correia, Natália. Não Percas a Rosa. Diário e Algo Mais. Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1978. Dionísio, Eduarda. Títulos, acções, obrigações (A cultura em Portugal, 1974-1994). Lisboa: Salamandra, 1993. ---. “As práticas culturais”, Portugal, 20 anos de democracia (coord. António Reis), Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 1994. 443-489. Faria, Almeida. Cortes. Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1978. Ferreira, Vergílio. Conta-Corrente 1. Amadora: Bertrand,1980. Garcia, José Martins. Revolucionários e Querubins Lisboa: Afrodite, 1977. Gonçalves, Olga. A Floresta em Bremerhaven. Lisboa: Seara Nova, 1975. Lagoa, Vera. Crónicas do Tempo. Porto: Livraria Internacional, 1975. ---. A Cambada. Braga: Editorial Intervenção, 1978. Mourão, Luís. Um romance de impoder. A paragem da história na ficção portuguesa contemporânea. Braga/Coimbra: Angelus Novus, 1996. Oliveira, Anabela Dinis Branco de. Romance português e polifonia(s). Vila Real, UTAD, 2003. Portela, Artur. A Funda. 6e volume, Lisboa, Arcádia, 1975. ---. “António José Saraiva e a autocrítica do 25 de Abril”. O Jornal.16-II-1977. 62
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Portugal, Manuel de. Crónicas e Cartas de Manuel de Portugal. Lisboa. Ulisseia, 1976. Saraiva, António José. Filhos de Saturno. Escritos sobre o tempo que passa. Amadora: Bertrand, 1980. Torga, Miguel. Diário-XII. Coimbra, 1977. Valente, Vasco Pulido. O País das Maravilhas. Lisboa: Intervenção, 1979. Venâncio, Fernando. Crónica Jornalística – Século XX. Antologia. Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 2004.
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La Révolution: Foisonnement d’Images ou les Différents Pétales d’un Oeillet Anabela Dinis Branco de Oliveira (Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro) Introduction
La Révolution des Oeillets (Portugal, avril, 1974) devient un mouvement accéléré de voix et d’images. L’image retenue dans notre mémoire symbolique est toujours celle des oeillets rouges qui ornèrent le canon des fusils. Chez António Lobo Antunes (Auto dos Danados 1985), João de Melo (Autópsia de um Mar de Ruínas 1984; Gente Feliz com Lágrimas, 1988), Lídia Jorge (O Dia dos Prodígios 1980; O Cais das Merendas, 1982) et Olga Gonçalves (Ora Esguardae 1982), la révolution, annoncée par les discours prophétiques et par les indices apparemment indéchiffrables, déclenche la symbiose créatrice de l’image littéraire et de l’image cinématographique, la rencontre dialogique avec les films Underground (Kusturica 1995) et Good Bye Lenin! (Wolfgang Becker 2003). La caverne totalitaire
Underground présente Marko qui, dès les premières bombes allemandes sur Belgrade, se lance dans une série de trafics lucratifs. Pour disposer d’armes et d’objets à vendre, il installe dans une cave un groupe de réfugiés qui travaillent pour lui. Après la défaite allemande et l’arrivée des communistes, Marko fait croire à ces travailleurs souterrains que la guerre continue. Good Bye Lenin! présente Alex qui, pour épargner sa mère, socialiste acharnée, récemment sortie d’un coma profond de huit mois et ne pouvant souffrir aucune espèce de préoccupation troublante, décide en juin 1990, de l’enfermer dans une chambre isolée. Lui cachant le véritable contexte de 64
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son évanouissement, changeant le calendrier de la chute du mur (novembre 1989 remplacé par octobre 1990), Alex lui fait croire à la continuation de la RDA et à la victoire de la patrie socialiste étendue à toute l’Allemagne. À travers la mise en question du mythe platonicien de la Caverne et la rencontre dialogique avec Underground et Good Bye Lenin !, la révolution représente la sortie de la caverne, l’explosion annoncée d’une cave à Belgrade et l’écrasement d’un mur à Berlin. Aussitôt sortis de la cave Estado Novo 1 , les anciens prisonniers d’un Portugal nommé Calambata, Rosário, Vilamaninhos ou Redonda refusent la manipulation des informations et des images, écrasent le “orgulhosamente sós” 2 de Salazar et provoquent, dans le texte littéraire et le texte filmique, l’abondance des regards et des interrogations, l’augmentation des documents et des mots, la construction des métaphores et des personnages, le foisonnement de voix simultanées, qu’elles soient solidaires ou adversaires, chargées de certitude ou de doute, de fascination ou d’interrogation. TPF
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La caverne platonicienne devient, dans le texte littéraire et le texte filmique, le symbole de la dictature. Chez Underground elle est la cave où les gens sont enfermés pour fuir aux persécutions de la Gestapo: le médecin de Ivan définit le régime comuniste en Yugoslavie comme une cave, où on vit en retard et isolé de l’Europe. Good Bye Lenin ! enferme Christianne dans une chambre où elle ne voit que la continuation d’un régime. Sous le régime totalitaire (le Estado Novo), vécu au Portugal entre 1926 et 1974, les gens sont aussi enfermées, prisonnières, trompées dans une cave, éprouvant le retard et l’isolement envers l’Europe. TP
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“Orgueilleusement tout seuls”: la phrase du régime salazariste qui représentait le caractère fermé de l’économie, des idéologies et la fierté d’une doctrine contre les idées et les résistances de l’étranger. PT
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Les oeillets révolutionnaires
La Révolution est la sortie des prisonniers de la caverne platonicienne, l’explosion de la cave de Underground, l’écrasement du mur de Berlin, l’unification allemande, la sortie de Christiane de sa chambre de Good Bye Lenin! et la Révolution des Oeillets au Portugal. Les oeillets littéraires portugais sont les témoignages de Marta racontant le matin révolutionnaire du Largo do Carmo et les premières manifestations de liberté de Gente Feliz com Lágrimas (41720). Les oeillets littéraires sont aussi la voix des récits journalistiques, des discours d’actualité, des chroniques et des reportages, la voix des pamphlets des commissions d’habitants, des syndicats et des chanteurs d’intervention qui construisent les questions, les doutes et les regards de Ora Esguardae: [...] o quê?, ali sim, era ainda Abril, as pessoas sorrindo, mesmo ali, iam e vinham ao longo da rua, seiva no emaranhado das pálpebras, estrépito de muitas emoções rolando corpo inteiro. (13)
Les oeillets révolutionnaires de O Dia dos Prodígios deviennent l’image biblique d’une grande nouvelle dont les soldats en sont les messagers les plus applaudis, l’image biblique d’une réssurrection qui explique le retour des absents et les miracles subis par les aveugles, les boiteux et les manchots dans une révolution sans morts (133). En avril 1974, aucun sang ne fut versé, ce fut le retour des éxilés et des émigrés; la fin de la guerre coloniale, de la censure et de l’opression déclencha les foules joyeuses – manifestations, chansons, rêves d’égalité – saisissant le miracle de la liberté. 3 TPF
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“Si quelqu’un a tué quelqu’un dieu les a tous ressuscités, parce qu’ils disent qu’il n’y a eu aucune perte en vies humaines. Et les merveilles dans cette ville sont si nombreuses qu’ils disent. Ils affirment dur comme fer. Qu’il n’y a partout que musique, fleurs et embrassades. Ils disent. Que soudain les 66 PT
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La révolution est annoncée par des discours prophétiques et par des indices apparemment indéchiffrables. La libération de la caverne platonicienne – la fin du régime totalitaire – n’est possible que par le refus progressif du conformisme et de l’ignorance. L’explosion de la cave de Underground n’existe que par la résistance et la volonté de Soni et de Blacky et par les petits refus de Natalija. La chute du mur de Berlin dans Good Bye Lenin! n’est possible que par l’action des manifestants exigeant la liberté de marcher sans frontières en octobre 1989, et que par le dégoût, la stupeur et la révolte de la soeur d’Alex devant le mensonge- la victoire de la RDA – imposé à Christiane. Les habitants de Vilamaninhos dans O Dia dos Prodígios réagissent contre les ombres platoniciennes et exigent la vérité de nouvelles visions et de nouveaux espaces (95). 4 Carminha désire tout le temps l’arrivée d’un étranger inconnu (19). Le cantonnier de la route demande de l’eau fraîche et provoque de forts changements dans l’esprit de Branca, continuellement subjuguée par Pássaro Volante, véritable image du dictateur (41). Le serpent ailé de Jesuína Palha annonce un bruit de “gente rebolvida” (22). La croissance du dragon brodé de Branca (35) et la disparition mystérieuse de la mule de TPF
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absents arrivent. Les aveugles voient sans lunette et sans autre appareil. Les boiteux ont cessé de sautiller, les jambes leur sont revenus à la même hauteur. Même les manchots jouent du violon.” (O Dia dos Prodígios, 138). TP
4
“Vous avez déjà vu un bateau, vous? Moi, jamais. Dit Francisco Volante. Mais c’est comme un lit avec des voiles. Et qu’est-ce qui a déjà vu une voile? Demanda à nouveau le cantonnier. Moi. Dit Manuel Volante. Une voile est un mouchoir plié en deux pointes. Très. Très bien. Dit le cantonnier en levant son maillet. Et la mer qui a déjà vu la mer? La mer, la mer. Dit Eusébio Volante. La mer c’est comme un champ de blé couleur de ciel, bleu.” (La journée des prodiges, 95). PT
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Pássaro Volante (41) et du serpent ailé sèment l’avènement des espoirs de changement et l’ébranlement des certitudes quotidiennes et attendues: Ses trois certitudes ébranlées. Surtout depuis l’été dernier, quand une mule au beau milieu d’un champ de caroubiers lui a échappé des mains, a détalé et n’est toujours pas revenue. Ce fut le signe le plus évident donné par le ciel que tout ce que tu possèdes peut te filer d’ntre les doigts à l’improviste. (108)
Le soba Mussunda, Natália et Romeu de Autópsia de um Mar de Ruínas (32-33) sont les voix des discours prophétiques sur la libération, sur la vengeance contre l’oppresseur et sur l’image d’un soleil blanc mais orgueilleux, créateur d’une vérité et d’une indépendance. Le “furriel enfermeiro” est l’acteur des exigences subversives – refuse la manipulation des informations, exige les vérités d’une guerre cachée, dénonce les tortures envers les habitants de la “sanzala” – et Renato, prophète de la réfléxion, résiste à travers l’écriture. Gonçalves prévoit la “Grande Chose” qui aura lieu dans le pays et devient, dans le texte littéraire, le musicien filmique de Underground qui, devant le char de la liberté et devant les gestes de Soni, annonce sous fond musical accéléré, une catastrophe éminente. L’entrée de Soni dans le char est le geste décisif de l’explosion et de la libération. Le sommeil d’Alex et les premiers pas de Paula 5 déclenchent la curiosité de Christiane et provoquent le contact vers l’extérieur de Good Bye Lenin!. TPF
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Soudain, Alex se laisse endormir. Paula, cherchant les couleurs de la fenêtre, essaie ses premiers pas. Pour l’aider, Christiane sort lentement de son lit, de sa chambre et, au fur et à mesure qu’elle descend les escaliers du batîment, elle prend contact avec une Berlin totalement changée: les meubles, les modes, les pubs, l’agitation capitaliste et la statue de Lénine suspendue. PT
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Gente Feliz com Lágrimas énonce les discours prophétiques de Luís devant l’oppression paternelle, la volonté de Amélia qui part en Afrique parce qu’elle déteste un pays marécageux et obscur (304), les discours de Nuno contre les masques du séminaire et contre la censure qui contrôle ses poèmes, les discours du Professor Quental dans l’opposition secrète au dictateur (174) et les discours d’un certain recteur transformeur de jeunes exilés fuyant la guerre (270-71). Les manipulateurs
La révolution est le refus d’une manipulation intense subie dans la caverne platonicienne. Les prisonniers, dans l’impossibilité de tourner la tête à cause des entraves aux jambes et au cou, ne voient que devant eux, ne voient que des images fausses et des ombres construites. Les hommes qui transportent les objets, les “montreurs de marionnettes” de Monique Dixsaut, sont les démons créateurs d’illusions. Les dirigeants d’un régime totalitaire étant les informateurs exclusifs d’une communauté isolée, ils deviennent métaphores du mensonge et de l’hypocrisie et, à travers la manipulation du temps, ils conditionnent la vision de l’Histoire et la perception des événements. Les textes littéraires et les textes filmiques analysés présentent le défilé des manipulateurs suprêmes. Marko, de Underground, crée, en 1941, à Belgrade, un abri souterrain pour toute une communauté qui fuyait les bombardements allemands et les persécutions de la Gestapo. Il pousse la communauté à fabriquer des armes pour la résistance, pendant vingt ans, leur faisant croire que la Seconde Guerre Mondiale n’est pas encore terminée. À travers un régulier retardement de l’horloge (six heures par jour) il leur prend cinq ans de moins de permanence dans la cave. Avec Natalija, il se transforme, maquillé, en prisonnier torturé par une Gestapo anéantie depuis 69
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longtemps. À travers des supports radiophoniques et cinématographiques, il construit de fausses nouvelles, diffuse les discours d’Hitler, les images d’opérations militaires et d’attaques allemandes et les sirènes d’alarme sous le fond d’une musique de résistance et de gloire: Lili Marlene. La cuisine d’Alex, de Good Bye Lenin !, devient un laboratoire de changements d’emballages pour que sa mère ne s’aperçoive pas de la disparition de certains produits. La famille et les amis de Christiane changent de vêtements et de discours pour lui rendre visite. À l’aide de son collègue, Alex fait des montages vidéo pour garantir à sa mère la continuation d’un régime: il diffuse les discours d’Hoenecker, le quotidien politique et social de la RDA et construit de nouveaux reportages qui puissent justifier certains changements visuels accidentellement aperçus par Christiane, comme celui de la création du Coca-cola dans les laboratoires de la République Démocratique Allemande et celui de la fuite des allemands de la RFA vers la RDA. Métaphores d’un pays nommé Portugal dans Ora Esguardae, Auto dos Danados et Gente Feliz com Lágrimas, nommé Redonda dans O Cais das Merendas, Vilamaninhos dans O Dia dos Prodígios et Calambata dans Autópsia de um Mar de Ruínas, les romans analysés présentent le manipulateur suprême de la cave Estado Novo: Salazar, éparpillé en plusieurs images. Il est le père de Nuno, avare, violent, intolérant, égoïste et castrateur; il fait partie des multiples caricatures du Tio Herculano (478-79), il est le “senhor” de Amélia (225) et il est le Dieu dispersé et irrécupérable, fragment ignoré et ignorant de Nuno de Gente Feliz com Lágrimas (122). Il est Rodrigo, manipulateur, séducteur et fortement dépravé, mort dans le plus fort avilissement dans Auto dos Danados (165). Il est le colonialisme hypocrite constructeur d’une statue d’hommage au peuple d’Angola, devant le Palácio do Governador dans une ville d’apartheid dans Autópsia de um Mar de Ruínas. Il est le 70
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sergent Marinho de O Dia dos Prodígios fabricant de récits où les massacres ont toujours une justification acceptable (118-19). La cave Estado Novo existe dans la solitude oppressive des enfants Nuno, Luís et Amélia de Gente Feliz com Lágrimas. Esperança Teresa, puante, transformée en poussière avant la mort, parlant tout le temps des fils et des guerres, devient la métaphore de la cave de Vilamaninhos de O Dia dos Prodígios. Les “merendas” de O Cais das Merendas représentent la vie dans la cave, les moments de détresse et les situations que tous veulent oublier (16-18). La cave Estado Novo est souvent inséparable d’une autre cave: la guerre coloniale. La guerre devient elle-même une caverne platonicienne à deux images: celle qui est projetée sur le mur et accordée à ceux qui, au Portugal, n’y sont jamais allés et l’image construite par la voix de ceux qui ont été sur le champ de bataille. Pour tous, la guerre deviendra plus tard une image floue et cachée aux références souvent omises et aux vérités partiellement oubliées. La solitude orgueilleuse
Pour l’explosion révolutionnaire, l’oeillet éclot et ouvre ses pétales vers l’extérieur. Le “orgulhosamente sós” est immédiatement écrasé et provoque le foisonnement des voix simultanées. Dans Underground, le “orgulhosamente sós” existe dans l’acceptation heureuse d’une vie cachée et souterraine, l’acceptation d’une normalité collective pendant le double couvre-feu représenté par la protection du char après la sirène d’alarme et pendant le remerciement à Marko qui leur fournit la nourriture et les vêtements. Ils sont convaincus que l’ennemi est l’extérieur et qu’il est à l’extérieur. Christiane, dans Good Bye Lenin!, remercie la gentillesse de ses fils, la protection de sa famille, l’hommage de ses amis 71
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pendant son anniversaire, le plaisir de pouvoir manger ses cornichons de la Spreewald et les galettes Filichen et refuse le Coca-cola et les mensonges de l’ennemi capitaliste. Éblouie par la victoire de la patrie socialiste elle dit tout le temps “quel jour merveilleux, incroyable” et elle finit par mourir dans un pays d’images en lequel elle croyait, oubliant les souffrances du passé. Après la sortie de la chambre, Christiane continue à être manipulée car Alex lui fait croire á une défaite du capitalisme, à une fuite des allemands vers la RDA et au triomphe de la patrie socialiste. La manipulation salazariste construit un pays “bactériologiquement pur, radicalement stérilisé et prophylactiquement immunisé” selon César Príncipe (12). Pour les prisonniers, tout va bien, sans tragédies et sans problèmes. Tous sont “orgulhosamente sós” dans un pays où les enfants sont préparés comme des enfants portugais et pas comme des citoyens du monde 6 et où les nouvelles de l’étranger sont fréquemment coupées. Ce “orgulhosamente sós” parcourt les personnages de Gente Feliz com Lágrimas et O Dia dos Prodígios. Comme Salazar, le père de Nuno, à des convictions parfaitement infranchissables, insulte tous ceux qui ont permis le départ de Amélia et Nuno vers la vocation réligieuse (44); il arrache les plumes aux pigeons pour qu’ils ne quittent plus la maison et arrache les plumes à ses enfants coupant leurs illusions et érigeant un mur énorme entre eux et les autres enfants qui recevaient des cadeaux, qui s’amusaient à la ville et qui allaient tout simplement chez le coiffeur (85), d’ailleurs, un mur comme TPF
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“Parece desejável que as crianças portuguesas sejam cultivadas, não como cidadãs do Mundo, em preparação, mas como crianças portuguesas que mais tarde já não serão crianças, mas continuarão a ser portuguesas” in Direcção dos Serviços de Censura, Instruções sobre Literatura Infantil. Lisboa: Tipografia da Imprensa Nacional de Publicidade, 1950; Rodrigues, p. 72. PT
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celui de Berlin de Good Bye Lenin!. La protection accordée à Mário à propos de la guerre coloniale est, apparemment, un comportement de résistance mais souligne un désir profond du “orgulhosamente sós” (342). Quand elle exige la présence exclusive de Nuno après la révolution et quand elle refuse la connaissance des problèmes de l’Autre, Marta provoque aussi l’intensité de ce “orgulhosamente sós” (342) de Gente Feliz com Lágrimas. O Dia dos Prodígios devient la métaphore d’une cave où tous se trouvent “orgulhosamente sós”. Vilamaninhos est un village qui reste vide le dimanche et où un éternuement provoque l’avalanche des pierres venues de la montagne et le fou rire provoque la chute des toits. Vilamaninhos est un village devenu un oeuf pourri, fané, puant et stérile (21), où Carminha et Carminha Rosa construisent une solitude orgueilleuse cachée dans l’extrême obséssion du ménage. Devant cet extrême préoccupation, Jesuina Palha n’a qu’un seul refus “Fiquem-se por aqui olhando os biquinhos das tetas que a gente se vai.” (27). Le foisonnement d’images
Soudain, après l’explosion de la sortie, l’ouverture vers l’Autre est spontanée, inévitable et obligatoire. L’Autre s’ouvre en ombres, en images et en objets. Dans la parabole de la caverne platonicienne, à partir des objets naît le besoin de contempler le ciel, la lumière des étoiles et de la Lune et, tout de suite, le Soleil, la définition suprême de la connaissance. Jovan, de Underground, né dans la cave de Belgrade, passe presque toute une vie sans aucune lumière naturelle, ses connaissances sont acquises à travers les récits et les images de Marko et à travers les dessins de son père. Après le coma, Christiane ne sort jamais de sa chambre: les connaissances arrivent par les montages télévisés, les mots et les produits apportés par sa famille. 73
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À l’extérieur, Jovan a peur des sons et des petits mouvements, tout l’étonne, tout l’émerveille, son visage est l’expression d’une complète fascination. Il révèle pourtant une totale incapacité d’adaptation à la vie en plein air: il a peur de l’eau et, au moindre mouvement, il prend son fusil pour se défendre, toujours vacillant, exagérément maladroit. Dans Good Bye Lenin!, Christiane est frappée d’un infarctus lorsqu’elle voit son fils attaqué par les policiers à la suite d’une manifestation contre le régime. À la sortie de sa chambre, la nouvelle cave après le coma, elle éprouve le même éblouissement et la même peur de Jovan. Son regard énonce la stupeur et l’incompréhénsion et son corps est aussi vacillant et maladroit devant les nouveaux meubles, les nouvelles voitures, les nouvelles pancartes publicitaires et surtout devant l’hélicoptère qui survole la ville transportant la statue de Lénine. O Cais das Merendas énonce la transition vers la fascination de nouvelles images: pour les nouveaux habitants de l’Alguergue, le retour à Redonda est constamment ajournée: peu à peu, ils se libèrent de tout attachement au vieux village (57) et le “tremoço” des “merendas” est remplacé par les petites galettes au fromage des “parties”. La révolution devient un mouvement accéléré de voix et d’images dans un parcours inévitable vers l’Autre car “l’Autre est ce qui permet de penser... autrement” (Pageaux). L’Autre devient plus accessible – les images, les objets et les hommes ne sont plus au-delà de la caverne. Il faut absolument le connaître et l’image, “langage sur l’Autre” (Pageaux, 136), une fois remise en question, permettra le changement de la pensée. Les images ne sont plus les ombres platoniciennes. Pour Eduardo Lourenço, elles sont devenues le Soleil quotidien. Platon exige la suprême connaissance du Soleil, Eduardo Lourenço fait porter l’accent sur la valeur indiscutable de la communication sociale, de la publicité et du cinéma pour la suprême connaissance de l’actualité: “As imagens – as sombras 74
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do mito de Platão – tornaram-se o nosso pão quotidiano, mas não denunciam um sol ausente, que só contemplaríamos se as criticássemos, se fôssemos capazes de lhes voltarmos as costas. Ao contrário do que pensava Platão, essas imagens são o próprio sol” (37). Après la Révolution, la connaissance de l’Autre est véhiculée, raconté, définie, exigée et assimiliée à travers ces images. Texte filmique et texte littéraire construisent un immense et un intense écran, un immense et un intense discours sur l’Autre, sur un Autre Européen. Jovan regarde l’Autre sur le plateau d’un nouveau film et d’une nouvelle Yougoslavie, Alex et Lara regardent l’Autre dans l’immense écran d’une ville sans frontières, les personnages portugais des années soixante-dix construisent l’immense discours sur l’Autre européen. Pour quelques oeillets, la révolution apporte la violence de la lumière 7 . Les privilèges perdus, les nouvelles situations confuses, inattendues et impossibles à surmonter sont les pétales qu’on leur a arrachés. Voix adversaires chargées de doute, elles exigent le retour à la cave et refusent l’altérité. Chez Good Bye Lenin!, les voisins et collègues de Christiane, obligés de fouiller dans les poubelles pour survivre, se plaignent de l’invasion capitaliste et ont la nostalgie de Lénine. Chez Ora Esguardae, les patrons de Gracinda n’acceptent pas la révolution, accusent les partis et ont un portrait de Salazar, avec dédicace, sur la table de la salle à TPF
FPT
TP
7
“Mettons que l’un d’eux soit détaché, qu’il soit tout à coup obligé à se redresser, à tourner le cou, à marcher et à regarder dans la direction de la lumière. Tous ses gestes lui font mal, et l’éclat l’empêche de regarder les objets dont il ne voyait naguère que les ombres.” Platon, La République, § 516. PT
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manger (55-60) et Rosalina, le guide du Palácio de Mangualde, fait l’éloge d’un palais libre des vacarmes révolutionnaires. Nuno, de Auto dos Danados, est l’image du contrerévolutionnaire, narrateur d’un récit sur tous les moments et tous les mouvements agités de la révolution vus par une famille de l’ancien régime: l’emprisonnement des bourgeois à Caxias, l’ancienne prison des antifascistes, les assauts menés par les démocrates contre les familles riches en fuite vers l’Espagne ou le Brésil et les plaintes bourgeoises contre les travailleurs trop exigeants ou contre les fautes d’ortographe dans les journaux de la révolution. Pour ces voix adversaires, l’Autre devient la cible d’une intense phobie: le communiste, qu’il soit portugais ou étranger. Le communiste est toujours associé à un espace étranger spécifique: on y parle souvent des interventions de Moscou, des ordres issus des ambassades russes, de la présence des chars bolcheviques, des tracteurs moscovites et des listes noires tchèques. Le communiste est l’Autre qui coupe les bourgeois en tranches (254), fouille les montagnes persécutant les seigneurs, fusille les gens contre les murs de l’église, viole, torture et fait de terribles exigences armé de râteaux, couteaux et fusils de chasse, défilant avec des drapeaux rouges où de vieilles dames font des croix avec des faucilles et des marteaux (309). Pour les oeillets qui ornent le canon des fusils, la libération est la fascination totale, l’obtention de multiples conquêtes. Voix de l’éblouissement, chargées de certitudes et de projets, elles ouvrent de multiples pétales vers l’Autre. À travers le voyage, ils font l’évaluation et la réinterprétation de l’étranger. Dans Gente Feliz com Lágrimas, Amélia est éblouie par les odeurs et les couleurs des bateaux (128-29) et par le bleu de Lisbonne (18) et Nuno est fasciné par le globe terrestre du professeur Quental (123) et par les villes européennes de son imagination voyageuse. 76
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L’Autre de O Dia dos Prodígios est l’étranger attendu par Carminha (38-39), la réception accordée au cantonnier par Branca (48) et les souvenirs amoureux de Manuel Gertrudes dans un tour de France bien érotique. Alguergue de O Cais das Merendas est l’éblouissement total envers l’Autre européen. Sebastião est l’incarnation du profond besoin de connaître l’étranger à travers la radio, le cinéma et son dictionnaire Figueirinhas-Porto. Simão Rosendo, ancien émmigré à Marseille, présente une France comme un espace d’apprentissage professionnel et personnel. La disparition de sa bague, symbole de voyage et de séjour est la métaphore d’une rupture avec l’Autre qu’il veut à tout prix éviter (41, 43). Dans O Cais das Merendas, l’image de l’Autre n’est pas commentée, analysée, admirée ou discutée: elle est complètement absorbée. Elle conditionne la structuration temporelle car l’Autre devient le présent dans un mouvement de refus d’un passé. À l’Alguergue, le monde extérieur entre spontanément dans les besoins cognitifs de la communauté: les valeurs de l’Autre arrivent rapides en avion, venues de Paris ou de Londres. Les magazines et les touristes provoquent l’avènement de nouvelles habitudes et de nouveaux gestes chez Simão Rosendo et Zulmirinha, dans l’organisation des fêtes et dans la formation des goûts gastronomiques (20, 23, 26, 34, 58). La soumission totale à l’image de l’Autre conditionne, d’une façon inexorable, le quotidien de la communauté de l’Alguergue. La langue de l’Autre est tout de suite adoptée dans un pays où elle n’est pas nécessaire. Simão Rosendo ajoute constamment à la langue portugaise des morceaux de la langue française (120, 123). La langue anglaise, celle de Miss Laura, remplit les rêves de Sebastião qui adore être “Sebastian, the dog’s keeper” (38) et devient la langue la plus tendre: pour 77
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désigner Valentina, le verbe mentir est remplacé par le verbe to lie. La communauté plonge dans un tourbillon de mots nouveaux qui entrent même dans les images descriptives du suicide de Rosária dans un étrange mélange linguistique (le portugais, l’anglais et l’italien) et gastronomique (183). Les images arrivées de l’extérieur, adoptées inconditionnellement par la communauté, provoquent la profonde passion de Sebastião et la supériorité de Miss Laura devant Santanita Cagaça (130) et provoquent la manie esthétique qui conduira à une nouvelle et irréversible cave: l’amaigrissement forcé et mortelle de Valentina Palas. Conclusion
Dans l’analyse de l’image de l’Autre, texte littéraire et texte filmique transmettent des images essentielles, spécifiques et parallèles car l’Image raconte, signifie et établit des métamorphoses intellectuelles. Les textes analysés traduisent le vol identitaire de trois pays – la Yougoslavie, la RDA et le Portugal – dans un même parcours de genèse, de contact et de réaction devant l’Image. Ils énoncent les images littéraires et les images cinématographiques d’une période chronologique qui entoure les années 70 et s’étend jusqu’aux années 90 8 dans une même phase de transition, de mise en question et de création de nouveaux imaginaires. Ils analysent la caverne totalitaire, ils énoncent un désir continuelle de révolution et, à travers la production accélérée d’images, ils lancent une interrogation constante devant le changement. Dans le parcours inévitable vers l’Autre, les images littéraires et cinématographiques – pétales multiples – TPF
8
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Underground (1940-1990); Good Bye Lenin! (1970-1990); romans portugais (1970-1990) TP
PT
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représentent la création d’un nouvel espace imaginaire – l’œillet – né en avril mais dépourvu de temps, né à Lisbonne mais construit par la dualité esthétique de l’Image européenne.
Ouvrages Cités
Antunes, António Lobo. Auto dos Danados. Lisboa: Publicações Dom Quixote, 1995. Dixsaut, Monique. Platon, République (Livres VI et VII, Paris: Éditions Bordas - Les Oeuvres Philosophiques, 1986. Gonçalves, Olga. Ora Esguardae. Lisboa: Editorial Caminho, 1989. Jorge, Lídia. O Dia dos Prodígios. Lisboa: Publicações EuropaAmérica, 1985. ---. O Cais das Merendas. Lisboa: Publicações Europa-América, 1989. ---. La journée des prodiges, traduction française par Geneviève Leibrich et Nicole Biros. Paris: Éditions Métaillé, 1991. Lourenço, Eduardo. O Esplendor do Caos. Lisboa: Gradiva, 1999. Melo, João de Melo. Autópsia de um Mar de Ruínas. Lisboa: Publicações Dom Quixote, 1992. ---. Gente Feliz com Lágrimas. Lisboa: Publicações Dom Quixote, 1992. Pageaux, Daniel-Henri. “De l’imagerie culturelle à l’imaginaire” Précis de Littérature Comparée. Paris: Éd. PUF, 1989. ---. “Une perspective d’études en littérature comparée: l’imagerie culturelle”, Synthesis VIII, 1981. Platon, La République, traduction de Jacques Cazeaux. Paris: Classiques de Poche, 1995. Príncipe, César. Os Segredos da Censura. Lisboa: Editorial Caminho, 1994. Rodrigues, Graça Almeida Rodrigues. Breve História da 79
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Censura Literária em Portugal. Lisboa: Biblioteca Breve, 1980. Filmographie
Good Bye Lenin ! – Wolfgang Becker (2003), avec Daniel Brühl, Katrina Sass et Maria Simon. Meilleur Film Européen, Festival de Berlin 2003. Underground - Emir Kusturica (1995) avec Miki Manojlovic, Lazar Ristovski, Mirjana Jokovic, Slavko Stimac. Palme d’Or, Cannes 1995.
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The Dethronement of Historical and Mythical Figures in Portuguese Novels in the Eighties and Nineties Signe Ørom (University of Copenhagen/University of Porto) Introduction
Portuguese literature in the period after the Carnation Revolution in 1974 is a field of particular interest. Compared to the fiction of other Western countries, history gets a specific and important role for Portuguese writers in the post-modern period, due to what I would define as a double focus on history. This double focus is determined on the one hand by the fact that postmodern trends reach Portugal from other countries, and, on the other hand by the radical political and social changes that force the Portuguese into rethinking history. The discourse of history in post-modern fiction is, generally, a theme of special attention. Claiming this I refer to postmodernist thinkers such as Linda Hutcheon (Hutcheon 88) and Hans Bertens (Bertens 97), and not to the widespread opinion that postmodernism is neither political, nor conscious about history (cp the idea of the end of history). Theorists as Hans Bertens argue that a “late” post-modernism, taking over from the 80’s, has very much in common with post-colonial literature and post-structuralism. This understanding of post-modernism realizes that “if representations do not represent the world, they must represent something else and in so doing they will inevitably be political…” and “…it matters more than ever who has authored, or who controls, any given representation” (6). Regarding history, the basic understanding is that a plurality of voices/ controllers of representation appears and starts to relate other versions and other truths of history. http://congress70.library.uu.nl/
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This understanding is supported by Hutcheon’s theories on historiographic meta-fiction (88). She argues that postmodernist writers undertake the task to problematize the existing historiography, and to re-interpret and re-write history. She also argues that there is no such thing as one truth; “there are only truths in plural” (65). The revolution of 1974 and the resulting de-colonization was the end of a 500-year-old empire, of 15 years of colonial war, and of a dictatorship that lasted from 1932 to 1974. The whole idea of the greatness of the empire had for centuries provided a basis for a conception of a so-called national identity, and the end of the empire led to a national crisis of identity. As a consequence, national myths and heroes needed to be re-thought and re-formulated. The traditional discourse of history couldn’t bear any longer. The combination of the political changes in the Portuguese society and the reception of post-modern trends lead to the double focus on history mentioned above. Hypothesis: The deconstruction of the mythical discourse in Portuguese fiction
The on-going discussion of the mythical figures of Portuguese history and their significance for the national identity took its start, according to my analysis, shortly before the revolution, but for the period immediately after the revolution there seems to be a literary vacuum. A few novels are published, as for example Lobo Antunes’ Memória de Elefante (Antunes 79) and Os Cus de Judas (Antunes 79) Throughout the eighties Portuguese mythology, national history and national identity become the centres of attention for many Portuguese writers, especially for the novelists. We are almost dealing with an explosion in the number of novels that incorporates these themes. The fundamental issue is to dethrone the central heroes of Portuguese history and mythology. These 82
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heroes are re-interpreted, turned upside down and inserted in new, degrading, ironic contexts. I will demonstrate that a special characteristic for this decade is that the degradation concentrates on making the heroes carnal, mortal human beings, by focusing on what Bakhtin calls the grotesque body (65). In the nineties history and Portuguese historiography continue to be in the focus for a number of Portuguese novelists, but according to my hypothesis, we can observe a transformation of the way in which they represent and contextualize the national heroes. Their treatment of the national heroes is less sarcastic and less ironic than the treatment in the novels of the eighties. This paper will demonstrate that the representation of the national mythological heroes in Portuguese novels changes from the eighties to the nineties. The eighties was a decade of a radical ‘iconoclasm’. The ironic representation of the heroes inverted their status as ideal, mythical heroes and turned them into ‘grotesque bodies’. In the nineties these heroes were interwoven in a context of re-written history and reflections at a meta-fictional level, focusing on showing other versions of historical truth. The beginning
The polemic on the mythical figures of Portuguese history is first and foremost an issue for novelists, but nevertheless the first step in the process of degradation was taken in poetry. In 1967 Manuel Alegre published Abaixo el-rei Sebastião in O Canto e As Armas, a poem that dethrones the most central hero of the Portuguese history, Dom Sebastião. The poem is, on the one hand, a request to the Portuguese people of letting Dom Sebastião die in their conscience. Matai dentro de vós el-rei Sebastião. But on the other hand Manuel Alegre addresses explicitly his readers to be Portuguese poets and writers: “É preciso quebrar na ideia e na canção / A guitarra fantástica e doente / Que alguém trouxe de Alcácar Quibir” (Alegre 51). He prompts to kill the whole idea 83
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of Dom Sebastião being the incarnation of Dom Afonso, the propagator of the Christian faith. He also requests to annihilate the Portuguese ideology, permeated as it is with the idea of the imperial greatness that has determined the national collective self-conscience. This request was later on was taken serious by many Portuguese writers. The eighties
The main figure representing the process of the dethronement in the eighties was, without any doubts, Dom Sebastião. José Saramago re-interprets several historical figures, as for instance in O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis (Saramago 84), where the reader among other figures meets Dom Sebastião, incorporated in a meta-fictive discourse: “...Lá está D. Sebastião no seu niche da fronteira, rapazito mascarado para um carnaval que há-de vir, se não noutro sítio o puseram, mas aqui, então teremos de reexaminar a importância e os caminhos do sebastianismo, com nevoeiro ou sem ele, é patente que o Desejado virá de comboio, sujeito a atrasos” (74-75). By emphasising “reexaminar a importância e os caminhos do sebastianismo” he puts a central question in postmodernism, that is, to rewrite the discourses of history. Os caminhos do sebastianismo refer to the historical development of the Portuguese discourse on history regarding the sebastianism, and a importância do sebastianismo refers to the importance of sebastianism in the contemporary society. In Augustina’s O Mosteiro (Bessa-Luís 80) the reader meets Belché who is writing Dom Sebastião’s biography. Agustina includes in this way both fiction and historiography, and takes part in the discussion of the fiction and the historiography being both verisimilar, using Hutcheon’s term. (Hutcheon 88) Both literature and historiography are possible truths, since truths only exist in a plural form. The approach of the main protagonist of the novel, Belché, is close to a postmodern approach, in the way that his interest is directed towards 84
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the interpretation of the history (historiography), more than towards History itself: “Mais do que a História, Belche amava os seus sussurros e a maneira de os interpreter” (Bessa-Luis 125). The period of Dom Sebastião is weaved together with the period in which the novel takes place, and the two stories only exist by virtue of one another. This is among other things shown in the similarities between the protagonists of the novel and the persons of the biography, for instance between Primo José Bento and Dom Sebastião, and between Josefine and Dona Joana, Dom Sebastião’s mother. This linking between the two periods illustrates on the one hand that the author inevitably refers to her cultural luggage as well as to her contemporary horizon, while writing historical fiction. On the other hand the inter-textual relation between past and present shows to what extent the sebastianism is important in the contemporary time of the novel. Generally speaking, Augustina questions some of Dom Sebastião’s qualities that have been attributed to him in the historiography, but she does so approaching the theme like the writers of the nineties. She is not ironic nor degrading the national heroes to the same extent as other writers from the eighties. In the beginning of the nineties, Dom Sebastião is finally given the deathblow by Almeida Faria in the novel O Conquistador (90), a novel that, according to my analysis marks the end of the eighties approach to historical and mythical figures. The author focuses specially on one of the main qualities of Dom Sebastião, namely his lack of interest in women. According to Bahktin, the world order is denied by inverting the universal truths. In the traditional and widespread image of Dom Sebastião, he represents the sublime, the high, the ideal, in the shape of a hero who fights for the interest of his country. In Faria’s version, he has become a representative of the low, the profane, shown by focusing on his physical, carnal 85
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traits and needs. By showing the similarities and differences between the two characters the degradation is made evident. One the one hand, there are clearly physical similarities between the two, but, on the other hand, Faria’s Sebastião is created with qualities that are diametrically opposite to the qualities of the mythical Dom Sebastião. The traditional historiography claims that he was afraid of women and that he had no interest in carnal lust. Faria creates a person who dedicates his life to satisfying his own and women’s carnal needs. The incarnation of Dom Sebastião has returned with one purpose, not to save Portugal, but to satisfy women: “Insistia Alcides que, sendo eu a reencarnação há séculos aguardada, devia dedicar-me em exclusive àquilo em que o Outro estrondosamente falhara ao manifestar pelo belo sexo uma aversão extraordinária” (Faria 74). The reader follows Sebastião in his adventures of conquering women in the first part of the novel, and in the later part in being used for prostitution by several persons. The incorporation of words with a special sublime meaning in a traditional historiographic context also has a degrading effect on the national hero interpreted in a revisionist context. The title of the novel, The Conqueror, which traditionally has been associated with the Portuguese discovery and with the expansion of the empire, is given a seductive meaning. Something similar is the case with the inverted meanings of “O Desejado”, “Honra Lusitana” and “a patrioca tarefa”, all traditionally related to the expansion of the Christian faith, and in this new context they are concepts degraded to a low, carnal sphere: “Calhou bem, e daí por diante todas as turistas fizeram parte dos meus feitos fictícios, sempre na patriótica tarefa de defender a boa fama da honra lusitana” (Faria 40).
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Historical and mythical figures from the discoveries
Other Portuguese figures that undergo a process of dethronement during the eighties are historical and mythical figures from the period of the discoveries. One of the most central novels dealing with this is As Naus (Antunes 88) by António Lobo Antunes, a novel that has transplanted many Portuguese historical heroes to the period immediately after the revolution in 1974. The historical figures have, in this new context, just returned to Portugal from the previous Portuguese colonies, and the borderlines between the two eras (the period of discoveries, in which the Portuguese gain, and the postrevolution period, in which the Portuguese lose) disappears in the same way as we could observe it in O Mosteiro by Agustina Bessa-Luís. Lobo Antunes uses the heroes of the past to show the absurd conditions in contemporary Portugal, that is, the conditions of the Portuguese returned from the former colonies, and he demonstrates as well his critical attitude towards the existing traditional national discourse of history by introducing historical figures in the post-colonial context. He rethinks history in post-modernist terms by thinking, on the one hand, critically, and, on the other, contextually. The dethronement of the Portuguese national heroes is carried out by means of re-creating the mythical figures with qualities contrary to those they have in the traditional discourse of history. The traditional images of the national heroes are negated by means of inserting them in a ridiculous, absurd and insignificant existence, where basic human needs predominate. This is the case of for instance the character Luís who points directly at Camões. Luís appears as a foolish person, sitting in the harbour guarding his father’s dead body. One of the most common ways of dethronement in As Naus is focusing on what Bahktin designates the grotesque body. The combination of the grotesque body and sublime, spiritual elements is very common in As Naus. One example is 87
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that the protagonist of one of the major works of world literature, Don Quixote, is related to human stools: “Urinei a pensar no relojeiro surdo-mudo, ... , a pensar em Dom Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra que nos gritava por vezes episódios esquisitos de Dulcineias e moinhos e acresentava excitadíssimo,…” (Antunes 24). Illness and death are as well important elements in the theory of the grotesque body. The creation of figures suffering of syphilis, herpes, malaria and scurvy contributes to the dethronement of many characters. Death appears in comic and ironic images several times combined with a terminology that as a contrast refers to the sublime. This is the case of for instance. “glorioso defunto Manoel Maria Barbosa Du Bocage, ...” (50) as well as “senhoria defunto” (52). The act of growing old and the death are both part of the low sphere, but at the same time these elements mean innovation and change, which could lead us to interpret the presence of the death in the novel as an expression of the desire that these figures die in the Portuguese memory, giving space to innovation and change in the Portuguese mentality. The nineties
In the nineties, a national discourse of history continues to be in focus for rather many Portuguese writers, but – as mentioned – it’s possible to observe a change in the way the historical and mythical figures are represented. The essential degradation took place in the eighties, and in the nineties it was time to rethink, rewrite and reinterpret history, with less obvious sarcasm and parody. New light is thrown on History, and other truths are told. Reflecting and commenting on the existing historiography as well as being self-reflective are two main characteristics of this decade. This is valid in the case of Mário Cláudio who relates the discovery of the sea route to India in his work A Peregrinação a 88
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Barnabé das Indias (98). He focuses his truth on an ignored side of the discourse of history: the presence of the Jews on the trip to India. The reader experiences the trip through the eyes of the Jew Barnabé, falsely converted into Christianism. The apparently religious approach is not meant as a promotion of the Judaism, but rather as a way to put into perspective the Portuguese idea of being a Chosen People, and with the intention of questioning the Portuguese self-perception. Barnabé’s comparison between the Portuguese and some central Jewish characters leaves the Portuguese in an ordinary and ironic light. The novel refers in an intertextual way to a certain discourse of history, to a complex of myths that has been determining the Portuguese national identity for a long time, but the novel refers as well to a long literary tradition going back to Camões. The presence of the mostrengo is a clear reference to Camões, but the version of Os Lusíadas “Eu, levantando as mãos ao santo coro / Dos Anjos, que tão longe nos guiuo, / A Deus pedi que removesse os duros / Casos, que Adamastor contou futuros” (141) on how the Portuguese managed to pass the mostrengo because God heard Vasco da Gamas pray, is here negated. Instead Barnabé’s Jewish pray seem to be the motive that calms the mostrengo: “... se deitou o infeliz a recitar, ‘hodou ladonaye ki tob, ki léolam hasdo, yodou ladonái hasdo véniflétav liduné adam’. E de novo mergulhou, e de novo regressou à tona, e havia aquele imenso arruído proporcionado entretanto lugar ao silencio dos vastos templos vazios. Serenava o Atlântico como se sobre ele tivesse baixado a mão do Criador, impondo a ordem onde a desordem reinara...” (Cláudio 172). The novel deconstructs a myth, while creating another. Little by little a myth is constructed centred on Barnabé. In the end he appears as a Messiah-a-like figure: “E acreditavam os mareantes, transposta a reticência primeira que envolve o portador da diversidade, que fora o rapaz abençoado com os dons subsequentes à infusão do Divino Espírito. [... ] E ao 89
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enfaquearem-se numa rixa dois grumetes borrachos, apartou-os Barnabé como quem desvia os juncos do caminho que leva, descreveu uma cruz sobre o golpe das navalhas, e logo estancou a hemorragia, e as feridas cicatrizaram, e não se cansavam os homens de render graças a Deus pelo guia com que os contemplara” (250). The interesting point is that it is a recognizable process in relation to the Portuguese complex of myths. The following example shows how Baranabé is prophesied to expand geographically, as well as we know the Portuguese was prophesied to do it: “..., e não serás tu quem permanece, mas O que me enviou, e perante o Seu trono descansarás da jornada, e às Índias verdadeiras aportaste, pois que sempre se alojaram elas nos ocultos de ti, e de tamanho riqueza te revestes que nenhum reino te ultrapassará, ...” (200-201). The presence of another myth minimizes the importance of Portuguese complex of myths. Obviously the novel also questions and re-interprets the figure of Vasco da Gama. We are dealing with an image differing from the traditional one, but the extremely sarcastic tone, we could observe for instance in As Naus, has disappeared. What does appear is a character with human characteristics, far from the image of the courageous hero. In the course of the novel, Vasco da Gama’s personality is revealed. He represents apparently a strong and eloquent figure in the beginning of the voyage, but the reader already has an image of the old bitter da Gama as well as of the child Vasco who was afraid of jellyfishes. And little by little he appears as a person with human feelings, primarily fear, but also desire, physical as well as material. The fear appears, on the one hand, in inner dialogues and dreams. The reader is confronted with a vulnerable and horrified young man, afraid of failure and of being caught as a coward. He dreams about being ridiculized by the men on the boat: “e é Vossa Senhoria tão cobarde como a 90
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galinha na hora de lhe aplicarem ao pescoço o facalhão” (Cláudio 131). On the other hand, the omnipresent narrator changes the image of a hero into an image of an apprehensive person, who cannot bear his responsibility: “E ajustando o óculo, varria o pobre do comandante a linha do infinito, e intimava o vigia a que se mantivesse alerta, e refugiava-se entre os livros e as cartas, e como um menino chorava, esgadelhandose de susto, esborratando de ranho a escrita das folhas do roteiro da viagem” (38). In the end Vasco’s fear is expressed through Barnabé’s thoughts. He is able to see how insecure Vasco is and how important his brother Paulo da Gama is for the realisation of the voyage. The image of Vasco da Gama created in the novel is far from the traditional one, but we can as well observe an approach to the figure that differs from the representation of the figure in for instance As Naus. The general description of the figure is canalized from extreme degradation and sarcastic treatment of the historical figure, into a desire of telling another truths of history. Conclusion
Concluding, one could state that it is possible to observe a change in the way of treating historical-mythical figures in Portuguese literature, from the radical iconoclasm of the eighties to the reduced sarcasm and further interest in focusing on the variety of truths of the past of the nineties. It is of course necessary to analyse a greater number of novels in order to be able to determine a tendency, but this study is meant as a preliminary study to be extended in a more extensive research. Concluding, one could ask: are the post-modern theories applicable to Portuguese literature after 1974? As to the literature of the eighties, Bahktin’s theory of the grotesque body is very relevant to point out how present and strong the process of degradation was in the Portuguese prose fiction of this 91
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decade. It is as well a substantial aid in understanding that the meaning of dethronement of the heroes is done in order to change Portuguese collective mentality and to leave space for something new to happen in the Portuguese self-understanding. Concerning the theories developed in the post-modern period as in this case Hutcheon’s theory on historiographic meta-fiction, I can conclude that these theories are relevant and promising for a further analysis of the specific Portuguese literary conditions and expressions. Where the prose fiction of the 80es is occupied with dethroning every historical-mythical national hero, the novels of the 90es emphasise increasingly the contextual understanding of history and the critical attitude towards the traditional discourse on history. But it is important to underline that Hutcheon’s theories are written in an American-Canadian context and may therefore not be fulfilling for a study in Portuguese literature. More specific European theorists as Hans Bertens and Douwe Fokkema might help us to determine a particular Portuguese post-modern literature. Especially the theories on how post-modernism since the eighties approaches post-structuralism might be promising as well as theories on post-colonial literature can help us to understand the specific Portuguese case. Works Cited
Alegre, Manuel. O Canto e as Armas. Mem Martins: Editora Europa-América, 1974 (1st edition 1967). Antunes, António Lobo. As Naus. Lisboa: Publicações Dom Quixote, 2000 (1st edition 1988). ---. Memória de Elefante. Lisboa, Editorial Vega, 1979. ---. Os Cus de Judas, Lisboa: Editorial Vega, 1979. Bachtin, Michail, Rabelais och skrattets historie. Translated from Russian by Lars Fyhr. Uddevalla, Anthropos, 1986.
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---. Karneval og latterkultur. Translated from Russian by Jan Hansen. Frederiksberg: DET lille FORLAG, 2001. Introduction by Jørgen Bruhn and Jan Lundquist. Bertens, Hans, “The Debate on Postmodernism”. International Postmodernism Theory and Literary Practice. Amsterdam: John Benjamins publishing Company, 1997. 3-14. Bessa-Luís, Agustina. O Mosteiro. Lisboa: Guimarães Editores, 1980. Camões, Luís de. Os Lusíadas. La Flèche: Brodard et Taubin, 1997. Cláudio, Mário. Peregrinação de Barnabé das Índias. Lisboa: Publicações Dom Quixote, 1998. Faria, Almeida. O Conquistador. Lisboa: Editorial Caminho, 1990. Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism – History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1988. Saramago, José. O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis. Lisboa: Editorial Caminho, 1984.
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Who is written? The Representation of the Other in Rewriting Experiments during the Portuguese Colonial War and the Mozambican Liberation Struggle Maria-Benedita Basto (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris) The title of my article, “Who is written?”, is a wanted dislocation of the question “who is writing?”. This dislocation should allow me to delimit the complex issue concerning what is (too easily designated) colonial encounter. Actually, in this encounter both a problem of writing and a problem concerning the configuration of the Other, or the assigning of the place of the Other, is involved. At the same time, within the dynamics and mechanisms created in this context and in particular within the space-time of the colonial war on which the focus is placed here, it is important to grasp the tension between the narrative fabrications of the State pertaining to the community it governs, in the case of this paper, the nation (even if just a project) or the empirenation, and the narrative constructions produced by its subjects which subvert the established order. My article thus seeks to combine these two issues, writing and alterity, by choosing to study a very specific kind of writing of the nineteen-seventies, the poetic experiments, the lyrics of songs of soldiers during the colonial war in Mozambique as a work of deconstruction and reconstruction of ideological representations of identity and alterity in the constitution of the ties of belonging to a community.
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WHO IS WRITTEN? THE REPRESENTATION OF THE OTHER IN REWRITING EXPERIMENTS DURING THE PORTUGUESE COLONIAL WAR AND THE MOZAMBICAN LIBERATION STRUGGLE
I will take two texts as an example, one is part of the narrative production of soldiers 1 of the Portuguese colonial army and the other one was written by activists of the FRELIMO. In both cases using the concepts of Homi Bhabha (2004) I will discuss the workings of the performative dynamics from below in relation to the pedagogical statements of a state power. In each of the two cases we will be confronted with the irruption of gaps within a social as well as esthetical tissue which one believed to be homogenous and without fissures. Then it will become clear that these gaps, which disrupt and dislocate the grand narratives (Lyotard 1979), are finally nothing else but the result of a work on one’s self and the other. I will start with a poetical experiment conducted by an activist of the FRELIMO within the dynamics of a local editorial context. A brief description of the setting of these poetical productions is necessary for a comprehension of what is at stake here. During the Mozambican struggle for national liberation (1964 2 -1974) a part of its effort was dedicated to TPF
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The term soldier is the only possibility to translate the Portuguese word “militar” which does not signify a rank but just the belonging to an army. Even if they were not written by high-ranking officers, the kind of texts evoked could have been produced by military personnel with various ranks.
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The FRELIMO was founded in Dar-es-Salaam in 1962 drawing from three movements (UDENAMO, União Democrática Nacional de Moçambique, MANU, Mozambique African Nationalist Union, UNAMI, União Nacional de Moçambique) that had been formed in exile by Mozambicans who had found refuge in neighbouring countries such as Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi and were influenced by African nationalist currents as well as the recent independence of former French and British colonies. These Mozambicans were joined by those who had taken another path of exile passing through the Casa dos Estudantes do Império (1944-65) in Lisbon and then France before moving on to some North African countries. Conceived as a mirror of a pluriracial and pluri-continental nation and designed to form the elites of overseas Portugal, the Casa dos Estudantes do Império was created by the Portuguese government. Paradoxically, it provided the breeding ground for the emergence of nationalist movements and a formative experience, in the case PT
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information. Basically two types of publications existed, those published by the central authorities and edited in Dar-es-Saalam, the headquarters of the movement, and those which were elaborated in a local context by grass-roots activists or low-level officers in politico-military preparation camps such as Nachingwea 3 , the most important one, or military bases in Cabo Delgado, Niassa or Tete. In the first case, for example the very important journal Mozambique Revolution was published, in the second case a journal like 25 de Setembro was edited in Nachingwea 4 . These journals featured poems and occasionally stories and life histories. TPF
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of Mozambique, for leaders of the FRELIMO such as Marcelino dos Santos, Sergio Vieira, Jorge Rebelo and Fernando Ganhão. In 1961 the exiled nationalists from the Portuguese colonies formed the CONCP – Conferência das Organizações Nacionalistas das Colónias Portuguesas – in Rabat, Morocco. This organisation was to play an important role in the definition of common models of anti-colonial struggle and political choices of the future nations. The liberation war in Mozambique started in 1964, in Angola in 1961 and in Guinea-Bissau in 1963. 3
The Nachingwea camp, in the south of Tanzania, would become a fundamental part of the symbolic narrative concerning the liberation struggle. It was considered by the leaders of FRELIMO to be the “laboratory” of the new society and of the Mozambican new man.
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For all of this background and an analysis of these local journals see MariaBenedita Basto (part 3, chapter 1). PT
About ten journals are involved of which only two, 25 de Setembro and Os Heróicos appear in relevant bibliographies, in particular Ilidio Rocha’s (2000), the most accomplished work up to the present. The other ones, 3 de Fevereiro, Jornal Semanal de Tunduru, O Camarada, A Luta Continua, Rasgando as Trevas are practically unknown. Certain journals – Rasgando as Trevas and O Camarada are the products of FRELIMO schools in Tanzania, whereas the majority is the result of activities in preparation, hosting or educational camps such as Nachingwea and Tunduru, or military bases such as Cabo Delgado in the case of Os Heróicos, Eastern Niassa for A Luta Continua, or Tete for 3 de Fevereiro. These publications were typewritten and reproduced with stencils or very basic manual printing machines. The pages are yellowish and the paper rough. Issues have an average of six to 96
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At the end of 1971 the FRELIMO drew material from these journals in order to elaborate its anthology Poesia de Combate, one of the first books published by the FRELIMO with the aid of printing machines offered by Finnish students 5 . I became interested in the discursive production of these journals and particularly the poetical experiments that were conducted there during my research on the relation between literature and nation in Mozambique. I wanted to find out if this anthology, which everyone seemed to take for granted, reflected the practices of FRELIMO activists, thus confirming the perfect correspondence between the book and the writings of the soldiers it claimed to represent and who in turn stood for the new (national) Mozambican poetry. My research unveiled a more complex reality, a single line of poetical production had been taken into account, excluding other forms of expression, namely, and this is the case of the poem I have chosen here, those where these activists decided to rewrite the Portuguese 6 imperial library 7 . TPF
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eight pages, but the number of pages can vary between one for many issues of Jornal do Centro and twenty for certain issues of 25 de Setembro. There are no photographies, but sometimes drawings or cartoons namely in 25 de Setembro and Os Heróicos are included. 5
See Basto (362). I obtained this information from an issue of the journal 25 de Setembro found during my research in the archives of the FRELIMO. TP
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For the devices of rewriting see Basto (ibidem). In this study these devices are confronted with the theory of resistance within post-colonial studies in a critical analysis which, drawing from the work of Jacques Rancière and José Craveirinha suggests an alternative conceptualisation for the term “counterdiscourse”.
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Inspired by V.Y. Mudimbe’s term colonial library (1988) and Homi Bhabha’s English book (chap. 6) the term imperial library refers to the sum of orientations for the reading of canonical texts, such as the epic poem The Lusiades by Camões, through which they are transformed into symbols of an imperial ideology. The finality of this ideology is situated at three levels – the historical, the anthropological and the legal – respectively conveying the PT
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One of the canonical texts which was invested by these activists is “O Mostrengo”, written by the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, a poem which forms part of his work Mensagem published in 1931. What interested the poet-guerilleros was the figure of Adamastor recreated by Pessoa from the text Os Lusiadas by Luis Camões (1572) where it appears in the fifth canto. This figure was to become extremely popular in the Portuguese imaginary, particularly in the version of Fernando Pessoa, which places a double emphasis on the nationalist nature of this episode. First of all, through the act of highlighting the character by dedicating a poem to him, secondly by producing a dramatic effect, through the creation of a true theatrical scene which did not exist in Os Lusíadas, involving the Portuguese on the one hand, represented by the commander of the ship and, on the other hand, Adamastor/Mostrengo. Spotlighting the courage of the Portuguese in their obedience towards the principles of patriotic duty, this scene accentuates the powerful and authoritarian character of Adamastor. Adamastor symbolises the victory of maritime Portuguese expansion and legitimates the establishment of its empire and its civilising mission within the ideological framework of the imperial library. Written by Maguni 8 , the chosen poem is entitled precisely “O Gigante Adamastor” (The Giant Adamastor) 9 . This TPF
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value of the Lusitan race, its civilising mission and the legitimacy of empire. Forming part of the historical and ideological context of the Portuguese Estado Novo, the readings associated with the imperial library are part of a contradictory cultural project which simultaneously consists of demarcating one’s self from the other through the use of dichotomies, and of fixing the other within an image of the same which erases its alterity. 8
Maguni figures in Poesia de Combate 2 (1978) with three poems, written between 1970 and 1972 without repeating these experiments and becoming a kind of “non-consecrated official poet-guerrilleiro”. Along with Jose Craveirinha, Maguni would receive, next to Craveirinha, the Nachingwea medal. For the date of publication of Poesia de Combate 2 see Basto ( idem 504).
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text allows me to elaborate my argument which seeks to analyse writings that play on the knowing and ignorance of the other in what has been called the colonial encounter, raising the starting question “Who is written?” in the war context. Maguni’s poem begins with the rewriting of a verse of Fernando Pessoa in a progressive deconstruction of the poem of this author. To put it differently, the whole poem is progressively deconstructed starting from this common point. A common point which marks, or is marked by the question with which the commander of the Portuguese ship is confronted by Adamastor and which is precisely an enquiry that pertains to the identity: “Quem é aquele que?” (Who is the one who?). This situation is depicted in the first strophe: Quem é aquele Cujo nome eu não conheço Quem é aquele Que quer a liberdade? (Maguni, 1967, p. 5)
Who is the one who Of whom I don’t know the name Who is the one Who wants liberty?
However, in the poem of Maguni the person confronted is not placed in a situation of “invasion” as the one described in Os Lusíadas/“O Mostrengo”. In their pursuit of maritime adventure in these texts the Portuguese dared to enter into a space which until then had been considered off limits. Here, to the contrary, the person confronted wants “freedom”. This word, inscribed at the beginning of the poem, completely subverts the imperial reading of the texts, introducing a conflict between two ways of living, colonialism and the right to independence of colonised
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peoples. Those who want freedom find themselves legitimised in their struggle. But the deconstruction of the poem is situated yet at another level. Precisely because one knows the original which is squatted by the Mozambican poem, we understand that the first question must have been uttered by the giant Adamastor. The further unravelling of the poem confronts us with an unexpected version which is expressed in the following strophes: Ouvi um certo dia Falar dele Quando estive no dia Do primeiro combate
I heard on a certain day Speaking of him When I was on the day Of the first battle
Muitos dizem, E eu creio; Que é o Guerrilheiro Suposto “Gigante Adamastor”
Many say, And I believe; That it is the guerillero Supposed to be “Giant Adamastor”
In the first strophe we do not know who speaks, but it cannot be Adamastor. This “someone” who is speaking says that he has heard about that man who is searching for liberty the day of his first battle. In the second strophe, although, a first revelation is made: this man of whom one has heard people speak is the guerillero “supposed” to be Adamastor. One can therefore remark that the Mozambican author did not choose to take the same path as the two Portuguese poems, Os Lusíadas and “O Mostrengo” suggested. Here, he turns around everything, presenting an upside down world, by changing the characters. The guerillero now is Adamastor. But the intertwining of the original and the Mozambican text does not stop here. Let us read the final strophes: Chamado assim, Porque não conhecem Quem faz a Guerra 100
Called like this, Because they don’t know Who wages War
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Dentro de Moçambique
Within Mozambique
Dizem os próprios portugueses, Que desde ao principio Ate hoje em dia; Que são pigmeus
Those same Portuguese say, That from the beginning Until today’s day; They are pygmies.
Eles desconhecem, Que pessoas são; As vezes chamam por “Bandidos”
They do not know, Who these people are; Sometimes they call them “Bandits” Other times, “Giant Adamastor”
Outras, por “Gigante Adamastor”
One can therefore see that in the end the poem interlaces the vision of the self with the vision of the other. The guerilleros are called by the Portuguese in this way, and by doing this the latter are caught up in their own myth. The Portuguese have invented a new giant with which they are once again confronted. Centuries after the first encounter, which opened the gates to the conquest of the lands of Mozambique, the figure who wanted to stop them in their conquest rises now, not from the sea as before, but from this earth itself. If the Portuguese associate them with Adamastor, they also show that they do not know against whom they are fighting the war, “They do not know who these people are”. And this phrase comes to co-answer the initial question. It is placed within the framework which concerns the questioning of identity that moves from the question – who is this? – to an anthropological approach – knowing the other. The Portuguese are not only ignorant about the others they have dominated, but also about themselves. They think they are fighting against a giant, but they call their adversaries “pygmies”, and, in their refusal to see their own weaknesses, they are tricked by their own myths.
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One sees how Maguni plays with the images and returns them. The coloniser has a negative image of blacks that the word pygmy expresses: they are inferior beings. Ironically their small height is opposed to the image of the giant who the poet now places into the mouth of the Portuguese themselves. The myth which helped the Portuguese to affirm their strength also serves here to avow their weakness in facing the Mozambican soldiers. Two types of ignorance interplay in this case, an anthropological and a political. In the first instance the colonised does not exist for the coloniser except as colonised. He does not recognise him beyond this assigned position, beyond the status and the place which he gave him as a coloniser within the colonial system. And because of that this force with which the Portuguese are now confronted can only be something new, something unknown. In the second case of political ignorance the Portuguese do not recognise who is waging war because within a “one and undividable nation” the people that resist can only be considered bad citizens of this nation. They are “bandits”, “terrorists” and not soldiers. They are outlaws who are illegitimate in their combat. The colonial war, which defends the nation against its fragmentation, hence receives its full justification 10 . TPF
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See how one politically plays on the contradictions between knowing/ignoring, i.e., in recognising/non-recognising one’s self in the answers of Silva Cunha, the former Minister of the Colonies and of Defence in an interview by Jorge Ribeiro: “do ponto de vista jurídico eram grupos [refere-se à Frelimo, PAIGC, etc] que estavam subordinados à soberania portuguesa, e portanto a autoridade podia exercer-se (from the legal point of view there were groups [he is referring to the FRELIMO, the PAIGC, etc.] that were subjected to Portuguese sovereignty, and nevertheless authority could be exercised)” (Ribeiro 209-10). The colonial war thus became legally justified because the whole issue was related to “disobedient” Portuguese and the State had the obligation to punish them. And when Jorge Ribeiro confronted him and told him that this might be the legal framework, but that the reality was not like this, because militarily and politically organised forces existed, the ex-minister answered: “Eram forças com apoio exterior, isso era conhecido. Juridicamente não ne pode falar em crimes de guerra. 102 TP
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The second form of not-knowing is a consequence of the first one, of the image that the Portuguese power has constructed: minor people, fixed within a binary conception which associates the colonised with the figure of a savage (beast), the devil, the inferior, the non-human 11 . The activist-journalists of 25 de TPF
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Para haver crimes de guerra era preciso haver uma qualificação internacional de guerra. (They were forces with exterior support, a fact that was known. Legally one could not speak of war crimes. In order to have war crimes it would have been necessary to have an international qualification of war)” (Ribeiro ibidem). The same thing is evoked in Resenha Histórico-Militar das Campanhas de África (1961-1974), published by the General staff of the army: “[...] Portugal não poderia reconhecer a existência de um estado de beligerância como se estivesse travando uma luta com Forças Armadas de um Estado inimigo. (Portugal could not recognise the existence of a state of belligerence as if it would be waging a struggle with the armed forces of an enemy State. – my translation)” (vol.1. 2nd edition, Lisbon, 1998. 248, cited in Vaz, 1997. 9). Nuno Mira Vaz pursues the argument by stating: “Em consonância com este entendimento, a documentação oficial produzida no período referia-se às forças militares e militarizadas portuguesas como as Nossas Tropas (NT), enquanto os sublevados foram designados durante um período de tempo assaz longo, por terroristas ou, de forma mais acintosa, por turras ; quanto aos movimentos de libertação que os enquadravam, nunca foram referidos como tal e só alguns anos após o início das operações militares ganharam direito ao designativo – clássico em contexto de conflito internacional – de Inimigo. (In accordance with this understanding, the official documentation produced in the period refers to the military and militarised Portuguese forces as Our Troops [Nossas Tropas, NT], whereas the insurgents were designated for a quite long period of time as terrorists or, in a more provocative fashion, as turras; as far as the liberation movements which organised them are concerned, they were never referred to as such and only a few years after the beginning of military operations they won the right to the term – classic in the context of international conflict – of Enemy.)” (Vaz idem 10). 11
See as example of this construction of a form of ignorance, as instance of a the staging of a condemned and/or animalised alterity an extract of a discourse of the minister of the army, Mário Silva made in May 1961: “ [...] o exército não transige. Vamos combater selvagens. Vamos combater feras. Feras que não são portugueses porque agem às ordens do comunismo internacional. Vamos enfrentar terroristas que têm de ser combatidos como se TP
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Setembro are extremely lucid about this play of knowledge and ignorance and consider it to be another struggle to engage in. In an article entitled “Bandido” Assikulava shows with fine irony the way how language is used as an ideological device in the fabrication of an identity which allows the Portuguese power to justify the war: “[…] Caros Irmãos, o português até aqui não sabe quem é “Bandido” ou “Terrorista” apesar de serem puramente portuguesas as palavras; portanto cabe a nós Revolucionários ensinar ou mostra-los quem é um “Bandido” ou “Terrorista” (Assikulava p.4). 12 In another text entitled “São Coitados” 13 , signed by Nelson Bamaya, one can see the same kind of dismantling of the construction of an image of the Other, the image of the FRELIMO fighter: TPF
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combatem feras. (The army doesn’t compromise. We will combat savages. We will combat wild beasts. Wild beasts that aren’t Portuguese because they act on behalf of the orders of international communism. We will confront terrorists that need to be fought like one fights wild beasts.)” (Vaz idem 158). One can note the link with communist organisations and states which organise (and legitimise) this combat within the dichotomising space of cold war. Two elements however remind us that the idea of colonial ignorance presented here cannot render the entire complexity of the situation. First of all, the army itself became aware of the fact that, in order to gain the support of the populations, it needed to obtain knowledge about the other, even if this did not necessarily lead to questioning the claim towards supremacy. Secondly, similar to their French and British counterparts, some colonial administrators adopted a “humanist” ethnological position which, while seeking to reach an understanding of “blacks”, was liable to reinforce their confinement within an identity of difference. For an example of such an endeavour see Manuel Dias Belchior’s book Compreendamos os Negros, (Let us understand the Blacks) (1960). 12
“Dear brothers, until now the Portuguese do not know who is the “bandit” or the “terrorist”, those words being purely Portuguese; so it is the task of us revolutionaries to show them who the “bandits” or “terrorists” are. TP
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Coitados dos soldados de Salazar que embarcam sem saber que vêm combater; […] porém, os que têm a sorte de sair prevenidos são avisados que os “pretos” estão armadas só de azagaias (mostrando-lhes filmes do século XVIII). Mas quando chegam e se aproximam alegres das montanhas, a bazooka lhes faz nascer o desespero e surgem agora contradições… (Bamaya 6) 14 TPF
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I would now like to place the emphasis on another writing experiment. Let us switch over to the side of the Portuguese army. It is doubtlessly extremely pertinent to recall the need to study the “writings” of the Portuguese soldiers 15 , in particular the body of texts written to be sung known by the name of Cancioneiro do Niassa, Songbook of Niassa 16 . Jorge Ribeiro TPF
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“How pitiful the soldiers of Salazar are, that embarked without knowing that they are coming to fight; […] nevertheless, those who have the chance to leave warned, are warned that the “blacks” are only armed with spears (they show them movies from the 18th century). But when they arrive and come close to the mountains, the bazooka gives birth to hopelessness and now the contradictions arise…” TP
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I am currently working on the supplement “Coluna em Marcha” (Marching column), published during the colonial war in Mozambique in the state newspaper Notícias (Lourenço Marques). This supplement, in which the soldiers are invited to write poems evoking their patriotic mission, can be considered as the governmental equivalent to the “Songbook of Niassa”. The challenge is to find the fissures or gaps in this project. TP
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In the book of testimonies by Salgueiro Maia, Capitães de Abril – Historias da Guerra do Ultramar e do 25 de Abril, the author also refers to the importance of the Cancioneiro do Niassa and the “Hino do Lunho”, as well as the “Fado de Mueda”. Salgueiro Maia recounts that for having sung the “Hino do Lunho” to an assembly of officers in Guinea in 1972, he was submitted to “an investigation and a disciplinary procedure because, according to the participants, “they had never seen the military institution so insulted” (Salgueiro Mata 50). Salgueiro Maia concluded: “The moral of the story: it was complicated to say the truth!” (ibidem). The “Hino do Lunho” was sung with the music of “Vampires” by Zeca Afonso, and also used the PT
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(1999) has collected a certain number of songs, but the greatest part of these texts can be consulted on the site dedicated to this body. According to Jorge Ribeiro, the songbook appeared between 1969 and 1971 in the artillery corps BART 2889 based in Vila Cabral. However, in the documents available on-line, this corps has another number, BART 2838, and the reference of a specific regiment CART 2326, while the songbook concerns the years between 1968 and 1970. These texts are remarkable not only from a historical point of view but also when considered to be relevant scriptural devices, which, as in the case of the texts of the activists of the FRELIMO mentioned above, take the shape of devices of rewriting. My analysis starts with the fact that the texts of the Cancioneiro do Niassa are mainly written within a very particular format of Portuguese writing, the fado. We will see how the selected text points at the issue of the symbolic dimension of the fado in the construction of a Portuguese identity. It is thus certainly no coincidence that Portuguese verses of this song which received here a new tragic dimension: “On the ground of fear/fall the losers/are heard the cries/in the stiffling night/lie in pits/victims of a belief/and the blood of the herd does not run out (Zeca Afonso 51). In the “Fado de Mueda” one can read in the first strophe: “Mueda land of war/I will sing you this fado/ that I’ve composed recently/Mueda sacred land/of grenade attacks/which drives a guy crazy” (Zeca Afonso 48). In 1999, in Portugal a record on the EMI label entitled “Canções Proibidas/Cancioneiro do Niassa” was published with part of this Songbook. It was sung by different singers and musicians such as, João Pinto Maria, Rui Veloso, Carlos do Carmo, João Afonso, Mário Laginha, Janita Salomé, Tetvocal. In 2000 Margarida Cardoso made a documentary entitled “Natal 71” (Christmas 1971). The title evokes the record which the National Women’s Movement offered to the soldiers in that year. In this film, Margarida Cardoso works both with the record and the cassette “O Cancioneiro do Niassa”. The cassette was recorded in secret in Mozambique and was passed on among soldiers. 106
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soldiers take up the most well known fados in order to dislocate them with words that now speak of a situation which can only be lived in its communitarian as well as subjective dimension. It is also necessary to consider that the songbook was written collectively by several “hands” that indistinctly belonged to different ranks in the military hierarchy, and had different outlooks. It is a phenomenon which arose from a certain spontaneity, producing material that was distributed on clandestine cassettes and even was the subject of a local radio program of the marine corps of Metangula (Niassa), but which could also, at least as far as some of its less subversive texts are concerned, form part of the reception of a high ranking officials visiting the base. In this case one can imagine that the songs were tolerated because of their cathartic function in alleviating the stress of combat. More generally, the diversity of situations associated with the songbook and its repertoire points at the insight that there is no homogenous social tissue when speech circulates. One of the texts/songs is called “Fado dos Turras.” 17 It was written on the lyrics of “Fado Corrido” and, contrary to the vision produced and disseminated by the dominant discourse, the image of the “terrorist” it conveys is quite different. This text is important in another sense as well, due to the fact that it establishes a real play of alterity(ies). Written by a Portuguese, the lyrics are enounced by the voice of the Other. It is the other who speaks and who, through this irruption, deconstructs the possibility of returning to sameness. TPF
Se de mim nada consegues me não sei porque me persegues me
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Name by which the guerilleros of the FRELIMO were called, representing a depreciating diminutive of “terrorist/terrorista”. TP
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constantemente no mato! Sabes bem que sou ladino, smart guy, que tenho andar muito fino walking e me escapo como um rato. Lá porque és branco e pedante and pedant Pretendes ser arrogante Por capricho e altivez! Eu que tenho sido pobre, mas que tenho a alma nobre talvez te lixe de vez! for all! Como ando sempre alerta, tua arma não me acerta, on me, nem me deixa atrapalhado! E assim num breve instante, por mais que andes vigilante, tu serás sempre emboscado! Por isso toma cuidado! E não me venhas com o teu fado dizer que branco é melhor. Eu já muito codilhado estou sempre desconfiado, e irás deste p’ra pior. (Ribeiro 263 and on-line texts)
constantly in the bush! You know well that I am a that I have a very fine way of and I escape like a rat. Just because you are white Pretend being arrogant With caprice and haughtyness Me who has been poor, but who has the noble soul maybe I’ll do you in once and
As I am always alert, your weapon never zeroes in neither bothers me And thus in a brief moment, the more you walk with care, the more you will always be ambushed! Then watch out! And don’t come to me with your fado saying that white is better. I’m already very fucked I’m always distrustful and you’ll be doomed.
We therefore see that the vision/position (understood as the place of which one speaks) of these Portuguese soldiers is not the one of warlords. The “turra” neither is the savage, nor the one who has to be taught. The foundation itself of the civilising mission, which relies on the inequality of intelligences, has no 108
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more reason to exist, given that finally the Africans are not anymore portrayed as a “child-people” which has to be lead from shadows to light. In Jacques Rancière’s terms the idea of progress is here “une fiction pédagogique élevée à une fiction de la société entière” 18 , at the heart of which lies “la représentation de l’inégalité comme retard”19 (197-98). On the contrary, the guerillero is not an inferior being, but possesses knowledge. He is even getting by better than the colonial soldier, being sly, noble and sure of his victory. Meanwhile, the discourse in polyphonic play portrays the Portuguese soldier as pedant, arrogant, and somebody who does not know how to walk 20 (on the African ground which is not his) and feels that he can lose 21 . In this multiple play of voices the text confronts a symbol of Portuguese identity, the fado, the historical writing of a certain destiny, transformed into a prophetic form of enouncing history. One has to get over with the version of history where the white is always the winner, says the voice in this text. He who is written, or better, those who are written, within these writings, TPF
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…a pedagogical fiction raised to a fiction of society as a whole. …the representation of inequality as delay.
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One could draw a parallel here with the multiple allusions made to “walking” by Mia Couto in his novel O Último Voo do Flamingo (2000). Fábio Risi, an Italian chosen by the United Nations to unravel the mystery of the disappeared Blue Helmets throughout the novel is initiated into the art of walking like an African, of knowing how to touch the earth in a light fashion. TP
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On a photography found at the Frelimo archives one can see a sign at the entrance of the Portuguese military camp of Mueda with an inscription saying “Aqui vive-se, luta-se e morre-se” (Here one lives, fights and dies). TP
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It is important to refer to a remark of Nuno Mira Vaz in the above cited book in which he considers that the obligation of many army officials to become acquainted with the documents published by the enemy in order to prepare psychological action ended up, in a strange boomerang movement, providing more intimate knowledge of the reasons for the struggle and thus creating destabilising influences among members of the army (Vaz idem 266). 109
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which are produced by appropriating earlier textual spaces, are soldiers of two armies confronting each other under national banners. As such these texts are witnesses to the fact that the nation contains its own “counter-narratives”. In Homi Bhabha’s words: [c]ounter-narratives of the nation that continually evoke and erase its totalizing boundaries – both actual and conceptual – disturb those ideological manoeuvres through which ‘imagined communities’ are given essentialist identities (213). Conclusion
These poems of the activists of the FRELIMO, who dislocate the Portuguese canonical literature disseminated by the imperial library, show precisely the capacity of the colonised to surprise, to make use of the elements of the dominant power, by rereading them and subverting them in relation to their own interests. The dream of a radically new society has led the FRELIMO to obliterate and evacuate the entire past, not just the colonial one, but also the traditional past, in its national metanarrative. This approach has kept the FRELIMO from grasping the material at hand, these other writings of which “O Gigante Adamstor” is one of the examples. These other writings show and prove that the colonised subjects are neither passive nor determined by an abrogative logic. On the contrary, their approaches are very subtle and complex. The poem which I took as an example also demonstrates the centrality of the issue of the non-knowing of the other in the colonial encounter. What is at stake here is the question of the relationship with the other as subjected to the devices of homogenisation and assimilation, both within the colonial context and within the nationalisation of the liberation movement itself. On the terrain of the Portuguese colonial army, the Portuguese soldier can realise that the cannibalistic vision of the Negro, the one who needs to be taught and saved, is false and 110
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that behind it the struggle for independence takes a completely different sense. And in this respect, the colonial war loses the reason for its existence. One finds here the explanation for the inclusion of a poem of the FRELIMO in the Songbook of Niassa, consultable on-line, which was found on a base and indexed under its title “Poem of an activist”. Both cases support an argument for the abolition of a dualistic logic, a Manichean representation, finally taking into account a time of experience, such as it is conceived by Achille Mbembe in On the Postcolony (2001), a time of heterogeneity, of everyday inventive performativity, opening, as Homi Bhabha (idem, p. 54-55, 212-213) suggests, towards a space of negotiation, a space of construction of sense as space where different narratives intermingle, different narratives in the constitution of the self in the view towards the other.
Works Cited
Assikulava. “Bandido.” 25 de Setembro, 41 (year 3), 4, November, 1967. Bamaya, N. “São Coitados.” 25 de Setembro, 6 (year 1), 6, December, 1966. Basto, M. B. A guerra das escritas. Literatura e nação em Moçambique (The Writing War. Literature and Nation in Mozambique - doctoral dissertation). Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2004. Belchior, M.D. Compreendamos os Negros. Lisboa, 1960. Bhabha, H. The Location of Culture. London/New York: Routledge, 2004. Couto, M. O Último Voo do Flamingo. Lisboa: Caminho, 2000. Fado dos Turras. In Cancioneiro do Niassa (1968-1970), retrieved from . . 111
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FRELIMO. Poesia de Combate. Poemas de militantes da FRELIMO. Caderno 1. Dar-es-Salam: FRELIMO/Departamento de Educação e Cultura, 1971. Lyotard, F. La condition postmoderne. Paris: Minuit, 1979. Maia, S. Capitães de Abril - Histórias da Guerra do Ultramar e do 25 de Abril, Depoimentos. Lisboa: Editorial Notícias, 1995. Mbembe, A. On the Postcolony. Los Angeles/Berkeley/London: University of California Press, 2001. Maguni. “O Gigante Adamastor.” 25 de Setembro, 37 (year 2), 5, August, 1967. Mudimbe, V. Y. The Invention of Africa. Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press & James Currey, 1988. Rancière, J. Le maître ignorant. Cinq leçons sur l’émancipation intellectuelle. Paris: Fayard, 1987. Rancière, J. La parole muette. Paris: Hachette, 1998. Ribeiro, J. Marcas da Guerra Colonial. Porto: Campo das Letras, 1999. Rocha, I. A Imprensa de Moçambique, História e Catálogo (1854-1975). Lisboa: Edições Livros do Brasil, 2000. Vaz, N. M. Opiniões públicas durante a guerra de África. Lisboa: Quetzal Editores/Instituto de Defesa Nacional, 1997.
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Poetics and Politics of the Portuguese Experimental Poetry Rui Torres (Fernando Pessoa University) Introduction
The Portuguese Experimental Poetry movement (henceforward abbreviated as PO.EX) engaged in an activity of translating daily experience into an aesthetic one. Aesthetics, taken not as a general theory of art, but rather as a theory of perception, provided the theoretical framework, and implied at the same time a generalization of aesthetic experience to phenomena of daily life. This transformation, which I will label as an aestheticizing of daily life, is closely related to the social upheaval that resulted in the Portuguese Revolution of 1974. However, I will argue, PO.EX also contests conventional critiques of the self-reflexive and self-representational stance of avant-garde poetries, proposing that a poem which is conscious about itself can also contemplate something else. As a result, one can locate in the poetics of experimental poetry not only theory, and theorization, but praxis as well. As iconoclasts, poets of the sixties and seventies in Portugal have uncovered the correlation of the political dictatorship with academic closure, and in doing so they have linked a project of social rehabilitation (politics) to a development of aesthetics (poetics). The poetics of PO.EX
In truth, the ability of language to ponder itself in metalinguistic function is tied, in this period of Structuralist ascendancy, to the subversion of the order of writing and speech, as well as its underlying logical and psychological structures. Experimentalist poets assumed that they could contribute to the abolition of a dominant ideological structure. For that reason, the study of the poetry of this time locates the http://congress70.library.uu.nl
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value of literature in the creation of possible worlds, and how these may perhaps motivate social awareness. This conception of literature as a sort of regenerating instrument by means of exploring possibilities and virtualities is indebted to critical theory; critical theory is thus important for literary studies precisely because it does not reduce reality to that which exists. Instead, reality is perceived as a field of possibilities, and critical theory evaluates the alternatives to the empirical real. On the other hand, by suggesting that the conception of order and inflexibility normally associated to literary canons is no longer appropriate, the experimental poetics of the sixties and thereafter has created the grounds for the discussion of Structuralist and informational approaches to text in Portugal. Naturally, rejection of classification and taxonomy has effects. On the one hand, academia resists, opposing to the innovation; on the other hand, those who violently reject the canon are easily institutionalized: even though Melo e Castro and Ana Hatherly, two of the most prominent poets and critics of the PO.EX, prevented the movement from being a part of the Museum of Literature, it was not always an easy task. Additionally, besides writing poems about poetry (which we might call self-reflexive, self-referential, or simply metapoems), the literary group sought to create a criticism of its own, hence subverting the function of both poetry and criticism. In its most radical form, this subversion is part of a larger project which involves the change, as well as a substitution, of the academic apparatus. In this perspective, experimental poets exposed the mechanisms and the institutions from which academicism emerged. PO.EX also contests literary history (and historicism), proposing a new reflection about the function of poetry in a remediated new world. Urged by an impulse that comes from Formalism as well as from Dadaism, PO.EX makes a statement about the aestheticizing of the real, introducing in Portugal, to both the academy and the general public, concepts such as 114
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structure, information, and open work, along with those of demystification, and epiphany. The latter refer back to Shklovsky’s deautomatization, Jakobson’s estrangement, or Mukarovsky’s ambiguity, encompassing a redefinition of what was meant by aesthetic perception, and thus comprising a sort of enlightenment. This innovative combination of self-reflexivity and deautomatization has originated a new word, which first appeared in a retrospective of the PO.EX movement in 1980, at the National Gallery of Modern Art, in Lisbon: poeprática. In the catalogue of the exposition one could read: “houve uma poeprática…” 1 . At this point, one should bear in mind that several other exhibits, namely those at the Galeria Quadrum and Centro Cultural de Belém, in Lisbon, and Museu de Serralves, in Oporto, have literally taken PO.EX to the Museum it originally rejected. In reality, the poetics of the movement still raises several controversial issues. Historically speaking, however, one should not forget that the dispute between the Movement and literary criticism of the time has its origins in the inadequacy of the latter to evaluate the former. Poetry in the sixties implicated the use of new media, as explored by poets Melo e Castro, Salette Tavares, or António Aragão, whereas literary theory and criticism did not. Literary criticism faced a methodological dilemma when interpreting Experimental poetry because it was not prepared to interpret novelty, and we need new methods to understand new processes. Comparing an experimental poem with other poems according to an old repertoire of judgments and knowledge necessarily encompasses the inscription of the experimental poem in a hierarchy of values which belongs to the established canon. TPF
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There was once a poepraxis… (all translations are mine). 115
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The politics of PO.EX
It should also be taken into account that, in the case of Portugal of the 60s, the hierarchy of values was framed by a generalized political and social repression of the Estado Novo. In reality, at this time Portugal breathes a very contradictory period, divided between the international openness, and the domestic political repression of a government ruled by António de Oliveira Salazar. This context is crucial in order to understand why poets and critics were so isolated, and it makes it easier for us to realize the ideological ambitions of the group. The sixties translate with enormous precision the erosion of a number of binary oppositions (left/right, center/periphery), and Portugal did not escape these contradictions. If, on the one hand, this decade opened ground for certain intellectual and critical agendas, such as structuralism, to be accepted by academy, on the other hand, it is also in this decade that we witness the evolution of the most brutal colonial wars being fought in Angola (in 1961), Guiné-Bissau (in 1962), and Mozambique (in 1964). Military campaigns multiplied by this time, and in this perspective, for PO.EX poets, attacking the political code was equivalent to confronting the established literary values. As they have insisted: [a] Poesia Experimental Portuguesa atacou e ataca destrutivamente o código fossilizado da leitura sentimentalista e opressiva da língua portuguesa no momento preciso em que o sistema político fascista dele mais se reclama (no início da década de 60) para galvanizar o povo para as guerras do Ultramar. 2 (Melo e Castro and Hatherly 176) TPF
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The Portuguese Experimental Poetry destructively attacked and attacks the fossilized code of the sentimentalist and oppressive reading of Portuguese language in the precise moment that the fascist political system was claiming this reading grid in order to galvanize the Portuguese people for the wars at the overseas territories.
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Subsequently, discussing and reintroducing the avant-garde makes sense because, as Ana Hatherly has shown, what characterizes avant-garde currents is their level of interference with the real (“O espaço crítico” 114-15). Furthermore, hybrids of poetry and criticism can be foreseen in some manifestoes: the same integration of the poetic function in the form of the work of art that instructs these manifestoes seems to appear in the self-reflexive poem. And manifestoes do not need a referent, they do not need to lean on anything else. As Mary Ann Caws has suggested, “its rules are self-contained, included in its own body” (xxv). We are coping with a situation in which what seems to matter is the use of poetry as the instrument that allows the shifting of political paradigms, and that may prove risky. In fact, the poetic realm appears contiguous to the political one because writing is a tool for the subversion of the logical and psychological structures of phalo- and logocentrism, therefore contributing to the overcoming of the dominant ideological structures. In short, the political and the ideological fit in on the project of the PO.EX. It is fair to recognize, however, that the poeprática of these “poetas-teorizadores” 3 (idem, 146) emerges from that same bourgeois society that they criticized, and it originates in the same academy that they tried to deconstruct. Certainly, their rebellion against literature represents an insurrection against naturalization, and normalization of the creative potential of literature, but the proposition that an integration in the canon somehow annihilates inventiveness must be contextualized. PO.EX informs us that literature often reflects the decadence of the dominant classes, which get hold of it, making it inoperative (idem 150). TPF
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In addition, as a result of the disarticulation of the roles traditionally ascribed to poetry and criticism, a confrontation with the representatives of the latter was inevitable, and the hostile reception of the first Caderno de Poesia Experimental (1964) seems to mirror the intellectual atmosphere settled in the Portugal of the sixties. Melo e Castro and Hatherly recognize, just like Padin did, that this perplexity represents the possible reaction to the “pura falta de adequação às matérias em questão…” 4 (idem 169). Besides, Portuguese critics were interested in erstwhile arguments about poetry, precisely those ideas that the group wanted to abandon. These time-honored critics still studied poetry as an inalienable mystery, and based their readings in values that formalism and structuralism had made obsolete. These values were “a verdade, a autenticidade, a inspiração, a pureza do lirismo, o génio e o talento, ou outros conceitos mais ou menos metafísicos, que ele instituía arbitrariamente (impressionisticamente?) em critérios de apreciação literária” 5 (idem 170-71). The context of the poeprática emerges, then, from a larger context of a literary criticism that yields to a backward aesthetic theory, inadequate for the assessment of experimental and innovative poetry. As the poets themselves emphasized, “o nosso exercício teórico foi obrigado a ser muito mais uma pedagogia e uma informação principalmente dirigida aos leitores, uma vez que o problema da comunicação nos era prementemente posto pelo contexto português” 6 (idem 174). TPF
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Truth, authenticity, inspiration, purity, lyricism, genius, and talent, as well as other more or less metaphysical concepts […] which were arbitrarily established as criteria for literary appreciation.
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Our theoretical exercise was forced to become a kind of pedagogy, an information directed at readers, because the problem of communication was required by the Portuguese context.
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Poetics as politics
Moreover, the influence of Formalism and Structuralism in the poetics of PO.EX can be calculated by the quantity of allusions to Shklovsky and others, who have claimed that literariness exists in the quality of making something look strange, as if it were new. For Shklovsky, the normal use of the code automatizes perception, thus contrasting with art, where deautomatization takes place: the aesthetic use of the linguistic code liberates perception. Ostraneniye takes place when a word or a sentence is de-territorialized, de-contextualized from its literal, denotative sense, in order to renew and restore its level of complexity, its aesthetic information. These two distinct forms of perception acknowledged by Shklovsky are basic because, in our daily lives, the presence of the world ends up neutralizing it. This process of automatic perception results in repeated alienation, and for Shklovsky it represents an “algebric method of reasoning” (58). This process of “algebraization, the over-automatization of an object, permits the greatest economy of perceptive effort” (ibidem), and its range is enormous, since it crosses all human experience: “Habitualization devours works, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war” (ibidem). However, automatized perception has its counterpart: there is an aesthetic experience which marks the way we perceive the world and which is entailed by art and poetry. In fact, “[A]rt exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known” (ibidem). Another lesson can be drawn from here: the emergence of critical theory in aesthetics indicates the establishment of an ideological territory that interprets the real as the locus of alienation and trivialization. For Melo e Castro, Hatherly, and Tavares, as much as for Shklovsky or Eichenbaum, poetry offers a revitalization of language that is contrary, as much as contiguous, to a 119
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standardized model which was reminiscent of the standardization enforced by the dictatorship. For Melo e Castro “[o] dizer do poético é o dizer do tudo…. [e o] ver do poético é o ver total” 7 (qtd. in Aguiar and Pestana 138), and the function of poetry is to defend and to resist to this “nada padronizado que tende a suprimir o gesto e o risco da invenção do novo” 8 (Melo e Castro and Hatherly 138). Moreover, poetry exposes its processes in its structure, as well as its devices in its machinery: poetry is “poesia fazendo-se e não poesia feita”9 (idem 176). PO.EX poets have tried to put these theories into practice. The slogan “A poesia está na rua”, 10 written by the painter Vieira da Silva on one of her paintings about April’74, expresses clearly what was happening on the walls and streets of Portugal. Ana Hatherly explains in her article “Voices of Reading”: TPF
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There were moments of real communion of feeling and thought, and this privileged state of unanimity burst out in the open in a most creative way with the participation of artists, poets, musicians, everybody who felt in unison with the Revolution and the liberation of the people. As a slogan of the time stated, “poetry was really in the streets.” Political posters, graffiti, and murals spread all over the country. Revolutionary speeches and songs proliferated. The voices of the Revolution filled the air. (idem 69)
In a similar manner, Salette Tavares has expressed that the democratization of art was an issue of the elites, not the masses, 7
The poetic naming is a naming of a totality, and the poetic seeing is a total seeing.
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Padronized nothing [sic] that tends to suppress the gesture and the risk of innovation and the new.
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because anyone could understand poetry. She cites a story about the making of the graphic poem “Os efes”, which translates with precision this interest for the aestheticizing of human experience. The poem is a 90 cm by 60 cm poster with 3 lowercase f’s (representing perhaps “fado”, “fátima” and “futebol”), without the outlines, and where the form of the letters is revealed by the text filling them. When it was send to a typography for printing, Tavares tells the following story: Deve saber do que me aconteceu com quem os compôs: mandaram-me três em representação de todos os colegas de trabalho para me dizer que nunca tinham feito uma composição tão bonita mas que me queriam perguntar se tinha, ou não, sentido político. – Claro que tem! respondi. E fiquei mais certa de uma coisa de que estou certa: é mais difícil fazer passar a inovação junto de intelectuais do que daqueles que sem fórmulas ensinadas aprendem a frescura. Julga-se que para eles é difícil. Tudo é difícil para todos mas é bom que se habituem a considerar que devem desconfiar do fácil. O difícil intransponível só o é para a estupidez da rotina magnificada em que a cultura hábito é só a incapacidade criativa, neste caso, a surdez e a cegueira. 11 (“Carta”, 18) F
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Perhaps you know what has happened with the people who composed them: they have sent three of them in representation of all the colleagues of work in order to tell me that they had never done such a pretty composition but that they wanted to ask me if it had, or not, a political meaning. - Of course it does! I answered to them. And I was more certain of a thing of which I am sure: it is more difficult to introduce innovation to intellectuals than to people whom, without any fixed formulas, want to learn fresh things. People often think that it is difficult for these people. Everything is difficult for everyone, but it is better that we distrust what is easy. The insurmountable difficult is difficult only for the stupidity of the magnified routine, in which the cultural habit is in fact creative incompetence, in this case, deafness and blindness. TP
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Tavares tells us another anecdote in the catalogue of the exhibit “Brincar”, which took place at Galeria Quadrum, that illustrates the interference of poetry in education and pedagogy: aconteceu mostrar eu episodicamente uma exposição a crianças com cerca de seis anos. Fui várias vezes interrompida pelas duas professoras que as acompanhavam. Achavam tudo difícil para crianças daquela idade. Eu disse: – Isto é uma espiral e uma espiral é… Não me deixaram acabar de dizer, só acabei o gesto. Ora espiral é uma palavra linda, uma criança ainda mais pequenina do que aquelas pode saber o que é uma espiral porque já deve saber o que é um caracol. As crianças percebem muito bem a exposição do Alberto Carneiro. Quem não percebeu mesmo nada foram as professoras, era ri al mente [sic] muito difícil. 12 (“Brincar”, s.p.) F
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Performing the po(e)litical
Another interesting activity that displaced and de-centered the “place” of poetry was a gathering of the Poesia Experimental at Galeria Divulgação, entitled “Visopoemas.” This collective work demonstrated the open conflict that poets waged against academic and literary critics. The poets involved in this exhibit were the same that months before had participated with graphic and visual poems in the “Suplemento” of Jornal do Fundão, another of the poepráticas of the PO.EX: António Aragão, Melo e Castro, Herberto Helder, Barahona da Fonseca, and Salette 12
It happened that I showed episodically an exhibition to children who were around six years old. I was interrupted several times by two teachers who were accompanying them. They were finding everything difficult for children of that age. I said: - This is a spiral and a spiral is … they did not let me finish, I only finished the gesture. Of course, spiral is a lovely word, a younger child than those could easily know what a spiral is because they already know what a snail is. The children understand very well the exhibition of Alberto Carneiro. The ones who did not understand anything were the teachers, it was really very difficult for them. TP
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Tavares, among others. Visopoemas was a staging of new media for poetry: it integrated objects, paintings and outdoors that indicate a transition, in Portugal, from concrete to visual practices of poetry. Just after the inauguration, a happening took place in which poetry and music merged, from autonomous languages to a symbiosis of mutual transformation. The happening had a title which was self-explanatory, “Concerto e Audição Pictórica.” This synaesthesic hybrid of sound and vision develops the manifesto for concrete poetry of the Brazilians, the Pilot Plan for Concrete Poetry, which adapted James Joyce’s Finnegan’s verbovocovisual (text, sound, and image). Décio Pinatari, one of the brazilian concretists, understands this new poetry in an interesting way: “o ôlhouvido ouvê” 13 . Ana Hatherly, whom by this time was not yet part of the group, had a section of musical criticism in the literary supplement of Diário Popular, and she wrote about this Concerto saying that “o concerto destinava-se a causar sensação, e agitar, e conseguiu plenamente os seus objectivos” 14 (idem 98). In a similar way, Salette Tavares has said to have been a “escândalo para muito parvo” 15 (idem 18). Humor is a constant in the “Concerto.” This was probably the first time that John Cage’s toy-pianos were played and seen in Portugal, and several other things have happened which were meant to be a provocation to the public. Titles like “Zzzzzzzzzzzzz…………Rrrrrrrrrrrrr!……..” were common. This one had a footnote attached saying that “a peça não será dada ao público por provocar sono,” 16 and “Sonata ao Lu….ar livre,” mentioned that the piece would not be performed because TPF
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The eyear listensees [free translation].
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The concert was aimed at causing sensation, and agitation, and it fully reached its goal. TP
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A scandal for a lot of fools... This piece will not be performed because it will make the audience sleepy. 123
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there was no ar livre [free air] in Portugal. These are fine examples of the quest for an aestheticizing of the quotidiano by means of a politicization of aesthetics. Salette Tavares, providing, at the same time, the grounds for a critique of criticism, as well as a combination of selfreflexivity and deautomatization, offers in her “Ode à Crítica” another example of this poeprática. This “Ode à Cri… cri… cri… tica… da nossa terra” (as it was also known), which would only be performed if the public would ask for an encore, ironizes and criticizes the academic discourse in a humorous way. Using the repetition of the first syllable of the word “crítica” (cri…cri…cri…), Tavares grasped an onomatopoeia alluding to the language of crickets. And still for Salette Tavares, it is the embodiment of cultural histories that matters: No momento em que transportadores do piano com a sua técnica cuidadosa o inclinavam, rolou lá de dentro um ovo verdadeiro. Parecia uma história surrealista ao vivo. Um neto do proprietário usava o piano para esconder os ovos que roubava na cozinha. 17 (idem 1819) F
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Salette Tavares calls it a live, surrealist story. Conclusion
Experimental poetry assists us in dealing not only with old and new media, but it also questions the form we perceive and construct texts. It is, therefore, subversive: it condemns the literary establishment, its assumptions and definitions of text, author(ity), and reader (the poetics), but it also proposes new 17
Just as people carrying the piano with their careful technique were tilting it, an egg rolled from the inside, a real one! It looked like a live, surrealist story. The grandson of the owner was using the piano to hide the eggs that he was stealing in the kitchen… TP
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communicative regenerating social messages (the politics). In the context of the Portuguese 70s, that situation is even more significant, because a political state of censorship and control suppressed any possibility of literary engagement with innovative practices. As a result, the poetics of the PO.EX group appears intimately related to a political stance, but this political undertaking equally translates a poetics of novelty and originality.
Works Cited
Aguiar, Fernando and Silvestre Pestana, (eds.) Poemografias: Perspectivas da Poesia Visual Portuguesa. Lisboa: Ulmeiro, 1985. Caws, Mary Ann. Manifesto: A Century of Isms. Lincoln: U. of Nebraska P, 2001. Hatherly, Ana. “Semana musical.” Diário Popular, 28 Janeiro 1965. ---. “Estrutura, código, mensagem.” Diário Popular, 25 Maio 1967. ---. “A função poética da mensagem.” Diário Popular, 26 Outubro 1967. ---. O espaço crítico: do Simbolismo à Vanguarda. Lisboa: Caminho, 1979. Melo e Castro, E. M. and Ana Hatherly, eds. PO.EX: Textos teóricos e documentos da poesia experimental portuguesa. Lisboa: Moraes, 1981. Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Robert Con Davis and Ronald Schleifer. New York: Longman, 1989: 54-66. Tavares, Salette. “Os efes”. Antologia da Poesia Concreta em Portugal. Ed. E. M. de Melo e Castro and José-Alberto Marques. Lisboa: Assírio & Alvim, 1973. 122-124. ---. “Brincar.” Catalogue of the exhibit Brincar, at Quadrum Gallery (Lisboa). 125
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---. “Curriculum vitae.” Poemografias. Perspectivas da Poesia Visual Portuguesa. Org. Fernando Aguiar and Silvestre Pestana. Lisboa: Ulmeiro, 1985. 262-268. ---. “Carta de Salette Tavares para Ana Hatherly (9 de Janeiro de 1975).” Poesia gráfica. Salette Tavares. Lisboa: Casa Fernando Pessoa, 1995. 17-19.
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Les Années 70 Ont-elles Existé? - à Propos de Finita de Maria Gabriela Llansol Pedro Eiras (Porto University) Les années 70 ont-elles existé?
En 1987, Maria Gabriela Llansol publie Finita, journal intime dédié aux années 1974-1977. Il y est question de son exil en Belgique avec son mari, qui a fui la guerre coloniale, des années postérieures au 25 avril 1974, des voyages au Portugal révolutionnaire et des retours à Jodoigne. Le journal dit en même temps la vie de l’écrivain, d’un pays, d’un continent. Mais dans ce journal des années 70, le personnage Maria Gabriela Llansol dialogue avec la béguine et poétesse médiévale Hadewijch, avec Copernic, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche et Rilke; d’autre part, le journal débute par la transcription de quelques lignes d’un cahier d’écolier de l’enfant Maria Gabriela Llansol. Si l’époque dont il est question dans ce journal intime des années 70 est le Moyen Âge, la Renaissance ou le XIXème siècle, une question se pose: les années 70 ont-elles existé? Comment comprendre une époque constituée par d’autres époques? Et pourtant, un temps présent qui ne serait pas constitué par une multiplicité d’héritages du passé, cela peut-il exister? Autrement dit, pouvons-nous vivre absolument au présent? O Livro das Comunidades, publié en 1977, dit que le temps n’est pas cumulatif et que le passé n’est pas surmonté par le présent comme dans l’Aufhebung hégélienne: P
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se eu me concentrar num fragmento do tempo não é hoje, nem amanhã mas se eu me concentrar num fragmento do tempo, agora,
http://congress70.library.uu.nl
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esse fragmento revelará todo o tempo. (O Livro das Comunidades 76) 1 TPF
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Le temps est tout entier dans le plus petit fragment. Non pas dans l’unité de mesure humaine, trop humaine, qu’est le jour, mais dans cet instant présent, celui de l’écriture et de la lecture, qui n’a pas d’épaisseur mais qui contient l’éternité. Cette mathématique fractale n’est pas tant une découverte psychologique qu’une recherche ontologique, où le chercheur individuel n’est pas une forme définitive qui pourrait se mettre en dehors de l’être étudié. Cela explique peut-être pourquoi le récit n’a pas de narrateur; il y a plusieurs voix qui racontent et nous ne savons jamais où s’arrête le discours d’un personnage et où commence celui d’un autre. C’est-à-dire que cette constellation non chronologique et non mesurable de voix reste semblable à la paradoxale constellation non chronologique des époques. On ne sait jamais au juste qui parle ou quand il parle. Ces deux formes d’ignorance sont indissociables. C’est l’unité du livre qui est donc remise en cause, puisqu’il n’y a plus un récit provenant d’un sujet qui traverse une période: tout est devenu pluriel. Jacques Derrida rappelle que même le monologue intérieur est toujours précédé d’un dialogue intérieur, qui le divise, l’enrichit, le commande, l’oriente (Derrida 19). 2 En fait, ce n’est pas sur cette multiplicité qu’il faut s’interroger, mais sur la précédence du dialogue par TPF
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si je me concentre dans un fragment du temps / ce n’est pas aujourd’hui, ni demain / mais si je me concentre dans un fragment du temps, / maintenant, / ce fragment révélera tout le temps (je traduis toutes les citations de Maria Gabriela Llansol).
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On parle souvent et trop facilement de monologue intérieur. Un dialogue intérieur le précède et le rend possible. Le divisant et l’enrichissant, il le commande et l’oriente. Mon dialogue intérieur avec Gadamer, avec Gadamer lui-même, avec Gadamer vivant, et vivant encore, si j’ose dire, n’aura pas connu de cesse depuis notre rencontre de Paris.
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rapport au monologue. Dans cette écriture dialogique, pour utiliser le mot de Bakhtine, où chaque parole comprend l’héritage de toutes les autres paroles possibles et le conflit avec elles, le monologue intérieur finit par ne jamais s’énoncer. Dans Finita, Maria Gabriela Llansol le dit très clairement: Escrevo-lhe [a minha mãe] mentalmente, querendo dizer-lhe que tentarei, com a minha vida, tirá-la da sua velhice, e solidão; uma sequência de vidas eternas, procurando a sua eternidade umas nas outras. Escrevo o texto: sempre escrevendo, sempre caminhando e divagando, está alguém para entrar. (Finita 147) 3 TPF
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Dans le monologue intérieur du journal intime, il y a donc cette lettre à la mère; dans la lettre, il y a la question et la réponse de la fille, la vieillesse et le secours; dans le secours, il y a cette promesse, sans verbe principal, donc agrammaticale: “une séquence de vies éternelles, qui cherchent leur éternité les unes dans les autres”; cette expression décrit l’écriture des lettres entre mère et fille mais aussi l’écriture de Finita. Finalement, il y a la phrase en italique, qui est écrite pour la première fois, mais qui ressemble à la citation d’un texte qui n’existait pourtant pas auparavant: “écrivant tout le temps, cheminant et divaguant tout le temps, quelqu’un est sur le point d’entrer”. Comment ne pas songer aux dernières paroles de Walter Benjamin, dans ses “Thèses sur la Philosophie de l’Histoire”: “chaque seconde est la porte étroite par où le Messie peut entrer”? Comment ne pas lire,
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Je lui écris [c’est-à-dire, à ma mère] en pensée, voulant lui dire que j’essaierai, à travers ma vie, de l’arracher à sa vieillesse et à sa solitude; une séquence de vies éternelles, qui cherchent leur éternité les unes dans les autres. / J’écris le texte: écrivant tout le temps, cheminant et divaguant tout le temps, quelqu’un est sur le point d’entrer. PT
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dans l’expression “porte étroite”, une troublante citation des paroles du Christ? Comment ne pas confondre l’étude du fragment de temps chez Llansol et celui de l’instant chez Benjamin, l’éternité partagée chez Finita et la force messianique du présent attendu par le passé dans les “Thèses”? Les questions peuvent se multiplier à l’infini, car toute l’écriture de Maria Gabriela Llansol se divise ainsi en dialogues, citations, écoute du temps et du texte passés. Il n’y a donc pas d’écriture, il n’y a que de la réécriture. Dès le début de Finita, il est question de vieillesse. La page 147 semble donc répondre à la page 12, que voici: “escrevo nestes cadernos para que não se afaste do meu corpo a linha montante que conduz à velhice, tal como a concebo: reflexão imensa, despreendimento obtido dos contrastes, concentração no presente em que todos os tempos imagináveis já estão a desenrolar-se para sempre.” (Finita 12). 4 L’offrande d’une séquence de vies éternelles à sa mère, le sujet de Finita se le promet déjà ici à elle-même. Il s’agit donc de créer sa vieillesse à soi, de se mettre en scène, de créer son original, comme dit Aldo Gargani (1992), de ne pas attendre une définition apportée par le vocabulaire extérieur du temps. Mais cette “ligne montante qui mène à la vieillesse, comme je la conçois”, c’est le fragment du temps présent dont parle O Livro das Comunidades, “où tous les temps imaginables déjà sont en train d’arriver, pour toujours”, ajoute Finita. L’instant du présent qui mène à la vieillesse est donc aussi l’instant de la mort et l’instant de la naissance. Par la réécriture du temps “dans ces cahiers”, la naissance est encore éloignée, elle appartient à l’avenir; c’est-à-dire que les vies de Hadewijch, de Al-Hallaj, de Nietzsche n’ont pas encore été, elles attendent d’être par TPF
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J’écris dans ces cahiers pour que ne s’éloigne pas de mon corps la ligne montante qui mène à la vieillesse, comme je la conçois: réflexion immense, détachement obtenu par les contrastes, concentration dans le présent où tous les temps imaginables déjà se déroulent, pour toujours. TP
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l’écriture. Ces années 1939 et 1943, où l’enfant écrit déjà (faudrait-il dire: écrit encore?) Finita, vont entrer dans cet instant d’écriture qui porte la date du 12 novembre 1974. Les années 70 ne sont donc qu’une porte, il n’y a pas de temps présent, il n’y a que le retour paradoxal de ce qui ne s’est jamais passé. Kierkegaard. Le temps et l’éternité.
Si “quelqu’un est sur le point d’entrer” (Finita 147), le texte n’est jamais clos. On peut le lire en entier, de la première à la dernière page, sans le clore pour autant, puisqu’il est l’ouverture savamment préparée d’une venue. À l’intérieur du texte s’ouvre ainsi une extériorité infinie. Ceux qui doivent entrer sont là, quelques pages après leur annonce; mais s’il n’y a pas de présent, si le temps est l’ouverture à l’éternel, si le monologue n’est que l’infinitude des dialogues, on ne sait jamais combien de personnages parlent. La venue de ceux qui sont “sur le point d’entrer” ne clôt pas la possibilité de la venue. Quand les auteurs arrivent, ils ne remplissent pas simplement un espace ouvert auparavant, ce qu’ils apportent, ce n’est pas la clôture, mais justement l’ouverture à d’autres voix. Kierkegaard, lui, “est sur le point d’entrer”. Le sujet de Finita se plaint, le 23 avril 1975: “ Sinto a ausência de um mestre para as minhas constantes interrogações. / / Alguém terá de vir. / Cristina veio passar alguns dias connosco, e trouxe-me um livro de Kierkegaard” (idem 34). 5 Un maître est attendu et il semble que le sujet de Finita n’a pas encore lu Kierkegaard; mais le sujet semble deviner déjà que ce livre répondra, ou a déjà répondu, à l’attente du maître. Cependant, le 25 avril 1975, soit deux jours plus tard, Finita dit: “ Kierkegaard está por vir TPF
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para mim, e eu para ele, mas o encontro tarda” (idem 35). 6 Le sujet du journal a déjà lu Kierkegaard, mais il dit que cette rencontre, promise voire déjà survenue une ou deux pages auparavant, n’a pas encore eu lieu. La chronologie semble inversée. Or, le livre qui apporte une réponse, c’est Les Miettes Philosophiques, signé Johannes Climacus. L’épigraphe du livre de Kierkegaard dit: “Peut-on faire de l’histoire une certitude éternelle? trouver à un pareil point de départ un intérêt autre qu’historique? fonder sur un savoir historique une félicité éternelle?” (Kierkegaard 35). Finita et Les Miettes Philosophiques partagent donc quelques questions centrales. D’autre part, le livre de Kierkegaard répond à celui de Maria Gabriela Llansol, et il ne faut plus être surpris du fait que les réponses surgissent avant les interrogations. Ou alors en même temps. La contemporanéité essentielle de la vérité, dont parlent Les Miettes Philosophiques, la voilà mise en œuvre chez Finita. Que disent Les Miettes Philosophiques à propos du concept de contemporanéité? En résumé, elles disent que l’on est toujours contemporain de la vérité du dieu lorsqu’il nous appelle, lorsqu’il nous donne la condition. Voilà pourquoi les contemporains du Christ qui n’ont pas cru ne sont pas ses contemporains; voilà aussi pourquoi nous pouvons être les contemporains du Christ aujourd’hui. Écoutons Kierkegaard: TPF
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Si le croyant est celui qui croit et qui connaît le dieu du fait de recevoir du dieu même la condition, il faut que l’homme postérieur reçoive tout pareillement la condition du dieu même, et il ne peut la recevoir de seconde main, car pour ce faire il faudrait que cette seconde main fût encore le dieu [...]. Mais si l’homme postérieur reçoit du dieu même la condition, il est contemporain, le contemporain réel, ce qu’est seul le croyant et ce qu’est tout croyant. (idem 109) TP
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Il faudrait se poser plusieurs questions mais, cette fois encore, il n’est pas certain qu’elles ne se trouvent déjà dans (ou avant?) Les Miettes Philosophiques. Il faudrait se demander, par exemple, si le mot “contemporain” est possible, si le rapport du disciple au dieu est fondé sur l’idée d’éternité, quel rapport existe entre la croyance, responsable d’elle-même, et le don gratuit de la condition par le dieu, entre la responsabilité et l’irresponsabilité (voilà que nous parlons encore une fois de réponses!). Comment comprendre cette thèse dans Les Miettes Philosophiques, livre aux thèses contradictoires, dialogue de voix anonymes qui se posent des questions et se répondent, livre qui n’est même pas signé par Kierkegaard mais par un certain Johannes Climacus? Comment comprendre cette affirmation paradoxale: “le contemporain peut en dépit de sa contemporanéité être le non-contemporain” (idem 107)? En dépit, certes, et à cause de sa contemporanéité immédiate. Il est plus facile de voir un objet si l’on s’en éloigne un peu; cette distance, voilà encore le don divin de la condition. Il faudrait se demander si, lorsque Kierkegaard oppose temps et éternité, ce n’est pas toujours selon un schéma platonique, logocentrique. Que serait la condition sans le temps, que serait le dieu sans ce disciple où Kierkegaard trouve le péché? La vérité même ne peut surgir sans cet espace de différence ouvert par la non-vérité, sous peine de se réduire au silence. Finita, un journal intime, arrive à effacer le présent des années 70 sans toutefois oublier le temps comme différence et parution (ou parousie?) de l’altérité. Même si les années 70 ne sont que le retour d’un Moyen Âge ou d’un XIXème siècle qui n’ont jamais été, les dates du journal de 1974 à 1977 nous rappellent qu’il ne peut y avoir d’écriture que dans les différences de temps. Si l’écriture abandonne le temps et devient éternité, il ne reste rien à lire. Le péché est donc nécessaire pour que l’écriture ne s’évanouisse pas. P
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Il y a deux manières de perdre l’écriture, et elles ont toutes les deux un rapport avec l’idée de temps. D’une part, comme nous l’avons vu, la disparition dans l’éternel; d’autre part, la disparition dans un temps du présent chronologique que l’on voudrait capturer. D’une part, c’est l’écriture impossible puisque sans différence; d’autre part, l’écriture du temps d’une réalité sous-entendue qui normaliserait les différences dans un schéma préétabli. Silvina Rodrigues Lopes dénonce cette illusion du post-modernisme: A vontade de realidade, que pretende separá-la do artifício, conduz à anulação do tempo no instantâneo da comunicação: não o instante como espessura do eterno no tempo, como ruptura da identidade, mas a negação do espaço e do tempo no imediato, na passagem de que não ficam vestígios e que por conseguinte vai condenando à desenfreada repetição do mesmo. (Rodrigues 29) 7 TPF
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Finita se situe entre l’instant et l’éternité. Ce “mi-chemin” n’est pas un vide ou bien, si c’en est un, c’est le vide qui permet le mouvement d’une écriture. Wittgenstein rappelle que dans une machine, si l’on remplit tous les espaces avec des pièces, aucune d’entre elles ne marchera. Les machines fonctionnent grâce aux vides, aux compromis entre les pièces et les vides. Écoutons maintenant “Kierkegaard”, personnage de Finita: “Era, na praça, a hora das bandeiras e dos manifestos, e na sua luz lia-se: – ‘A meu Pai devo tudo. Criança, não paravam de mostrar-me que os pecadores haviam escarrado na face do Cristo. Reparar essa falta 7
La volonté de réalité, qui veut la séparer de l’artifice, mène à l’annulation du temps dans l’instantané de la communication: non pas l’instant comme épaisseur de l’éternel dans le temps, comme rupture de l’identité, mais la négation de l’espace et du temps dans l’immédiat, dans le passage dont il ne reste pas de vestige et qui par conséquent finit par condamner à la furieuse répétition du même.
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será a minha própria vida;’” (idem 42). 8 C’est dans le temps, dans la différence entre enfance et état adulte, entre l’imparfait, le présent et le futur de l’indicatif, que cette voix de Kierkegaard considère la vérité. En fait, le temps et la vérité ne font qu’un, puisque corriger la faute est ici synonyme de vivre. La vérité n’est donc pas de toute éternité, elle apparaît en tant que mouvement dans le temps; mais si l’avenir peut corriger le passé, le temps est rétrograde, le repentir vient avant la faute. Ailleurs, pour résoudre cette aporie qu’ouvrent les livres de Maria Gabriela Llansol, j’ai songé à l’éternel retour selon Nietzsche (qui est, lui aussi, un personnage de Finita). Dans cette étude, je pense, non pas à des retours, mais plutôt à la différence entre l’éternel retour et les retours éternels. Dans O Encontro Inesperado do Diverso, Kierkegaard dit à un hôte: “Façam o que fizerem, digam o que disserem, o paraíso é a nossa face.” (O Encontro Inesperado do Diverso 24). 9 Si le paradis est toujours là, de toute éternité, il faut un certain visage ici et maintenant pour qu’il se découvre. TPF
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Le passé et le reste rendu à l’Histoire.
Cet espace entre l’instant et l’éternité, on pourrait idéalement le nommer Histoire, si l’Histoire était plurielle, instable, hétérogène, incomplète. Il faudrait que le passé soit aussi peu sûr et aussi peu fini que le présent ou l’avenir. On dit qu’il est impossible de faire l’Histoire du présent, d’une part parce que nous sommes trop proches de cet objet d’étude, d’autre part parce que cet objet lui-même n’est pas encore défini. Mais ne sommes-nous pas toujours trop proches du passé? Ne change-t-il 8
C’était, sur la place, l’heure des drapeaux et des manifestes, et on lisait dans sa lumière: – “Je dois tout à mon Père. Enfant, on n’arrêtait pas de me montrer que les pécheurs avaient craché sur le visage du Christ. Réparer cette faute-là, ce sera ma vie même;”
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pas? Le sujet de Finita avoue, en des termes qui rappellent parfois Gilles Deleuze: “não suporto a palavra História e, no entanto, há centros de irradiação, tramas sólidas de geografias espirituais, lugares de recorrência, humanos duradouros e perduráveis; tudo o que entrar aqui será imperceptivelmente belo, ou tornar-se-á belo.” (idem 47). 10 Excepté l’idée de durée de l’homme, toutes les autres expressions ont un rapport avec la géographie ou simplement l’espace, non pas avec le temps. D’autre part, quand il est question de temps dans Finita, il s’agit toujours d’un temps incomplet: “o ciclo do Renascimento não está concluído / ainda há tempo, para voltar ao seu começo, e reescrever-lhe um novo sentido” (23). 11 Ce nouveau sens n’est pas un compte-rendu de l’Histoire, c’est un reste du possible rendu à l’Histoire. Écoutons Finita: “Leio algumas páginas e sinto que o que leio me atinge de maneira tão directa e íntima que está naquele momento sendo escrito, e me constrange a devolver-lhe uma resposta; o quarto fica cheio da leitura e da escrita que decorreu” (100). 12 C’est ce geste, celui de rendre l’histoire à l’histoire, de répondre et d’en répondre, qu’il nous faut examiner. Finita est un journal intime qui accompagne l’écriture d’un autre livre. Après les deux premières pages de Finita (où sont transcrites les lignes de 1939 et 1943), le premier texte de 1974, le 2 novembre, écrit à Louvain, commence ainsi: TPF
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je ne supporte pas le mot Histoire et, pourtant, il y a des centres d’irradiation, des trames solides de géographies spirituelles, des lieux de récurrence, des humains durables et perdurables; tout ce qui entrera ici sera imperceptiblement beau ou deviendra beau. TP
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le cycle de la Renaissance n’est pas conclu / il y a encore le temps de revenir à son début et de lui réécrire un nouveau sens. TP
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Je lis quelques pages et je sens que ce que je lis m’atteint d’une manière si directe et si intime que cela est en train d’être écrit à cet instant et me contraint à lui rendre une réponse; la chambre reste pleine de la lecture et de l’écriture qui ont eu lieu. TP
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“Terminei hoje O Livro das Comunidades. E já outro livro desponta, A Restante Vida, que será o verdadeiro livro da batalha.” (idem 9). 13 Quelques lignes plus loin sont transcrites les dernières lignes de O Livro das Comunidades et les premières lignes de A Restante Vida, 14 c’est-à-dire, les deux premiers livres de la trilogie Geografia de Rebeldes (publiée entre 1977 et 1984). Le début de l’écriture de Finita coïncide donc avec celui de A Restante Vida. Le dernier texte du livre, par ailleurs, est ainsi daté: “Jodoigne, 6 de Agosto de 1977, / em que acabei de escrever A Restante Vida” (idem 192). 15 Dans Finita, on trouve finalement de nombreuses citations de A Restante Vida. Finita n’existe donc qu’en tant que reste de A Restante Vida, qu’elle prépare, prédit, présente sans être ellemême présente. Quand on lit Finita, c’est A Restante Vida qu’on lit. C’est-à-dire que Finita n’existe pas. Mais A Restante Vida existe-t-elle? Cette vie qui reste, qui survit, cette vie survécue est un reste de l’Histoire, c’est ce qui ne peut pas se dire à l’intérieur de la chronologie. D’où un TPF
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J’ai achevé aujourd’hui O Livro das Comunidades. Et déjà un autre livre florit-il, A Restante Vida, qui sera le vrai livre de la bataille. TP
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En fait, les transcriptions sont inexactes. Voici le texte de Finita: “Terminei hoje O Livro das Comunidades. E já outro livro desponta, A Restante Vida, que será o verdadeiro livro da batalha. Não quero hoje escrever nem sobre um, nem sobre o outro. / Só que o primeiro acaba: / Era o fim do texto. / Recomeçou na manhã seguinte o diálogo com o novo ser, diálogo mudo constituído por olhares, carícias, ausências, pensamentos, sorrisos e medo, / e o outro principia: / o novo ser era um monstro; aspergiram-se de perfume.” (Finita 9). La première phrase citée de O Livro das Comunidades devrait être: “Era o fim do texto, mas fim provisório.” (O Livro das Comunidades 87); il manque aussi la date par laquelle se termine O Livro das Comunidades: “Abadia de Maredret, 2 de Novembro de 1974”. Quant à A Restante Vida, sa première partie s’intitule “os meses de batalha” et son premier texte porte la date “No mês de Novembro – ” avant la première phrase citée dans Finita. TP
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Jodoigne, le 6 août 1977, / jour où j’ai fini d’écrire A Restante Vida. 137
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mouvement très singulier: si les années 70 n’ont jamais existé, car elles ne sont que le retour du passé et qu’il n’y a pas de présent, Finita rend quand même à l’Histoire ce reste qui ne lui a jamais appartenu. À l’émergence du passé dans le présent, qui rend le présent impossible, Finita répond à travers l’écriture de A Restante Vida, rendant à l’Histoire un temps nonchronologique où ont lieu toutes les rencontres. Il ne s’agit donc pas d’un retour à l’éternel, mais de la création d’un espace qui invente, là où les siècles ont décidé les victoires et les échecs, une écriture nouvelle où le monologue pluriel du sujet peut se métamorphoser. Écoutons encore deux citations de Finita: Oiço Gregoriano e escrevo em A Restante Vida a batalha. Eu sei que aqueles de que gosto vão perder, já perderam. E, no entanto, ainda não sei o que é perder, o que perderam, no momento em que a batalha se escreve. Há um resto que foi deixado e que, sob a forma do mútuo, se enuncia. (idem 30) 16 TPF
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Quarenta anos, todo um período de opressão que termina por afirmação de poderes, e linguagens pessoais de grupo. Portugal, agora, não é o meio de uma viagem, é uma partida conseguida, a muito custo, para uma viagem errada. Por enquanto estão (estamos) soltos mas ainda não livres. (idem 52) 17 F
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J’écoute du Grégorien et j’écris la bataille dans A Restante Vida. Je sais que ceux que j’aime vont perdre, qu’ils ont déjà perdu. Et pourtant, je ne sais toujours pas ce qu’est perdre, ce qu’ils ont perdu, au moment où la bataille s’écrit. Il y a un reste qui a été laissé et qui, sous la forme du mutuel, s’énonce. TP
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Quarante ans, toute une période d’oppression qui s’achève par affirmation de pouvoirs, et des langages personnels de groupe. Le Portugal, maintenant, n’est pas le milieu d’un voyage, c’est un départ obtenu, à quel prix, pour un faux voyage. Pour l’instant ils sont (nous sommes) délivrés mais pas encore libres. 138 TP
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PEDRO EIRAS (PORTO UNIVERSITY)
Même si Finita est un livre écrit entre 1974 et 1977, même si A Restante Vida décrit les conflits religieux modernes qui mènent à la bataille de Frankënhausen, même si, dans ces deux événements, il y a des “Princes” et des “rebelles”, je ne dirais pas que le récit de la bataille dans A Restante Vida a comme référent le 25 avril 1974 et les années postérieures. Je dirais, pourtant, que toutes les réflexions à propos de ces années de révolution permettent de comprendre Frankënhausen, tout comme Frankënhausen permet de comprendre 1974-1977. Il ne s’agit donc pas d’un problème de référence, mais plutôt d’un travail de lecture de l’Histoire par l’écriture du texte. Relisons les deux citations. La première, de Finita, commence au Moyen Âge du chant grégorien écouté au présent; ensuite, le sujet nous dit qu’il écrit, au présent, la bataille des rebelles; il ajoute qu’il sait, au présent, que les rebelles vont perdre, au futur, et tout de suite après, il dit encore qu’ils ont déjà perdu, au passé composé. Au même instant, la bataille aura lieu et elle a déjà eu lieu, dans le passé et dans l’avenir. Finalement, le sujet décrit un reste qui s’énonce. La deuxième citation décrit aussi un reste, la délivrance, ce qui n’est pas la même chose que la liberté. Les deux citations décrivent donc des échecs et des survies. Le 25 avril n’est pas Frankënhausen, certes, il faut même qu’il y ait un temps de séparation et de différence entre les deux pour qu’il y ait écriture, mais cette écriture est faite d’un reste qui ne cesse de rester en trop de l’Histoire. Si “Todos os tempos se equivalem.” (A Restante Vida 72), 18 comme dit A Restante Vida, c’est le temps propre à l’écriture qui, hors de l’Histoire, peut identifier la continuité entre Frankënhausen et 1974: les échecs politiques par rapport au “don poétique” promis aux communautés. TPF
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Tous les temps s’équivalent. 139
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Ouvrages Cités
Derrida, Jacques. Béliers. Le dialogue ininterrompu: entre deux infinis, le poème. Paris: Galilée, 2003. Benjamin, Walter. “Über den Begriff der Geschichte”. 1940. Éd. ut.: “Teses sobre a Filosofia da História”. Sobre Arte, Técnica, Linguagem e Política. Lisbonne: Relógio d’Água, 1992.157-170. Gargani, Aldo. Il Testo del Tempo. 1992. Éd. ut.: O Texto do Tempo. Lisbonne: Edições 70, 1995. Kierkegaard, Soren. Miettes Philosophiques. 1844. Éd. ut.: Paris: Gallimard, 1994. Llansol, Maria Gabriela. O Livro das Comunidades. Porto: Afrontamento, 1977. ---. A Restante Vida. Porto: Afrontamento, 1982. ---. Finita. Diário 2. Lisbonne: Rolim, 1987. ---. Lisboaleipzig 1. O Encontro Inesperado do Diverso. Lisbonne: Rolim, 1994. Lopes, Silvina Rodrigues. “A literatura como experiência”. 2002. Literatura, Defesa do Atrito. Lisbonne: Vendaval, 2003. 11-58.
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Breaking with Social and Literary Conventions: Judith Teixeira and Maria Teresa Horta 1 TPF
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Ana Raquel Fernandes (University of Lisbon) Un scandale n’est pas un homme ni une oeuvre, mais le bruit des gens scandalisées. (Henry-Marx) 2 TPF
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In order to understand women’s literature in Portugal since the seventies I am going back in time, back to the ’60s and ’70s with Maria Teresa Horta (born in 1937) and even further back to the ’20s with Judith Teixeira (1880-1959). My aim is to focus on the poetry written by these two women poets in Portugal in two important historical periods, firstly, during the troubled years preceding the setting up of dictatorship in 1926 and later in the period before the 1974 democratic revolution. For this task I have selected two collections of poems which I consider highly representative of their poetry: Decadência (Decadence, 1923) by Judith Teixeira and Minha Senhora de Mim (Milady of Me, 1971) by Maria Teresa Horta. By developing a comparative study of these two works, I hope to contribute, even if briefly, to a better understanding of the challenges made to assumptions underlying the politics of representation in Portuguese society at least until the end of dictatorship. Indeed, at a time when most women were confined to the home and very few had the right to vote, the authors of the 1 PT
The author would like to thank Maria Teresa Horta for her kind advice.
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The same epigraph opens the following text by Judith Teixeira: “De Mim. Conferência. Em que se explicam as minhas razões sobre a Vida, sobre a Estética, sobre a Moral”. (About Me. Conference. Where the reasons for my Life, Aesthetic and Moral are explained –all translations are mine). PT
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works I am referring to play a subversive role. The reality in which women lived is clearly understood in a speech made by the dictator Salazar in 1933: “Women’s work outside the family sphere desintegrates home life, separates its different members, and makes them strangers to each other…” 3 And as far as the right to vote is concerned, in 1931 only women with a degree could vote, while for men it would be enough to be able to read and write and “even during the liberal 1960s, little happened to change the course of women’s rights in Portugal.” 4 Through their literary works both Judite Teixeira and Maria Teresa Horta clearly challenge the reality in which Portuguese women lived, breaking with social and literary conventions. TPF
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Censorship and Decadência
Both collections of poems, Decadência (Decadence) and Minha Senhora de Mim (Milady of Me), explore themes of love and passion through images of the female body. Decadência – Poemas (Decadence – Poems) by Judith Teixeira was first published in February 1923. The first edition is lost. However, the second edition – printed on the 28th of December 1923 – contains thirty-five poems written between May 1919 and December 1922. It was Judith’s first work and a success at the time of publication. On 16th of February 1923, the well-known daily newspaper Diário de Lisboa, reviewing the book, makes the following comment: P
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Quoted in Darlene Joy Sadlier, “Radical Form in Novas Cartas Portuguesas,” The Question of How – Women Writers and New Portuguese Literature. New York, Connecticut, London: Greenwood Press, 1989. 2-4.
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Darlene Joy Sadlier explains: “[t]he suffrage movement had won the right to vote in England in 1918 and in America in 1920, but it was not until 1969, one year after Salazar fell ill and Caetano took office, that voting privileges were extended to all women in Portugal.’ (idem 4).
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ANA RAQUEL FERNANDES (UNIVERSITY OF LISBON)
Com desusado luxo, em outros tempos incompatível com as musas, mas com certo bom gosto, acaba a distintíssima poetisa Judith Teixeira de publicar um volume de versos, intitulado Decadência. Neste livro, de um merecimento indiscutível, encontram-se versos de estranho e sensualíssimo perfume. (Diário de Lisboa, 16.2.1923, sem título, 1) 5 TPF
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In poems such as “Flores de Cactus” (“Cactus flowers”), “Liberta” (“Free”), “Os meus cabelos” (“My hair”), “Perfis Decadentes” (“Decadent Profiles”), and “A Minha Colcha Encarnada” (“My Red Bedspread”), among others, the reader finds him/herself in a Baudelarian world. He/She will most probably establish a dialogue with certain poems compiled in Les Fleurs du Mal, in which women, women’s hair, women’s bodies, perfumes, colours, beauty, erotic and sensual love as well as anguished love are common references. 6 Let us take as an example the poem “Perfis Decadentes” (“Decadent Profiles”) by Judith Teixeira in which the elements referred above are present 7 : TPF
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Através dos vitrais ia a luz espreguiçar-se 5
With an uncommon luxury, incompatible with the muses of past times, but with a certain exquisite taste, the very distinguished poet Judith Teixeira has recently published a volume in verse, entitled Decadência. In this book, of undeniable merit, there may be found verses with a strange and yet extremely sensual perfume.
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See as possible examples ‘La Chevelure’, ‘Le Flacon’, ‘La Fontaine de Sang’, ‘La Mort des Amants’, among others in Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal suivies du Spleen de Paris, introduction de Blaise Allan. Lausanne: La Guilde du Livre, 1947. 116-117, 143-144, 235, 253.
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Judith Teixeira, Poemas – Decadência, Castelo de Sombras, NVA, Conferência DE MIM, pesquisa, organização e tábua bibliográfica de Maria Jorge, L.M.G. Lisboa: &etc, 1996. 38-39. TP
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em listas faiscantes, sobre as sedas orientais de cores luxuriantes Sons ritmados dolentes, num sensualismo intenso, vibram misticismos decadentes por entre nuvens de incenso… Longos, esguios, estáticos entre as ondas vermelhas do cetim dois corpos esculpidos em marfim soergueram-se nostálgicos sonâmbulos e enigmáticos… Os seus perfis esfíngicos, e cálidos, estremeceram na ânsia duma beleza pressentida, dolorosamente pálidos! Fitaram-se as bocas sensuais! Os corpos subtilizados, femininos, entre mil cintilações irreais, enlaçaram-se nos braços longos e finos! […] E morderam-se as bocas abrasadas, em contorções de fúria, ensanguentadas! […] Foi um beijo doloroso, a estrebuchar agonias, nevrótico, ansioso, em estranhas epilepsias! […] 144
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Sedas esgarçadas, dispersão de sons, arco-íris de rendas irisando tons… 8 TPF
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In the years preceding the National Revolution on the 28th of May 1926, there was a growing political unrest, which led to an increase of censorship. Notwithstanding the success of Decadência, this work, as well as Sodoma Divinizada (Divinized Sodom, 1923) by Raúl Leal and Canções (Songs, 1921) by António Botto, were a major target for the “Liga de Acção dos Estudantes de Lisboa,” a group whose members were also members of the Catholic Centre and who defended conservative moral standards. According to Teotónio Pereira, its leader, their goal was: P
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Through the stained glass window/ the light came stretching/ in sparkling strips,/ over the oriental silk/ with luxuriant colours./ Sounds in a moaning cadence,/ with an intense sensuality,/ decadent mysticisms vibrate/ through clouds of incense…/ Long, slim, static,/ among red waves of satin,/ two bodies sculptured in ivory/ raise nostalgic,/ sleepwalking and enigmatic…/ Their sphinx-like profiles,/ burning,/ quivered/ yearning towards a foreseen beauty,/ painfully pale!/ Sensual mouths stared!/ Subtle bodies,/ feminine,/ among a thousand scintillations/ unreal,/ enlaced/ in their long and slim arms!/ […]/ And both flaming mouths bit,/ in furious contortions, bloody!/ […]/ It was a painful kiss,/ twisting agonies,/ neurotic, anxious,/ in strange epilepsies!/ […]/ Torn silks,/ scattering of sounds,/ rainbow of embroideries/ making tones iridescent… PT
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de livros imorais [...]. Discretamente, 9 principiámos. (in Aníbal Fernandes, (ed.), 92) TPF
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On the 5th of March 1923, Decadência and the two previously mentioned books were considered immoral and banned by the authorities and later on, at an uncertain date, burnt. 10 When the third and last book of poems by Judith Teixeira is published, entitled Nua - Poemas de Bizâncio (Naked – Poems of Byzantium, 1926) 11 , Marcello Caetano, the founding member and editor of the magazine Ordem Nova, wrote an article entitled “Arte” sem moral nenhuma (“Art” without morals), in which he attacks Judith Teixeira’s poetry. According to Marcello Caetano, other authors were able to write good erotic poetry, among whom António Feijó, Bocage and Gregório Matos. However, the judgement Marcello Caetano put forward was not so much on the literary quality of Judith Teixeira’s poetry as on the writer herself and her lack of morals in describing her “pillow secrets” to the public. In his words, Judith was a shameless woman (“uma desenvergonhada”): P
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Que degradação! [...] O que é pior é que estas manifestações de pouca vergonha nem sequer têm uma forma decente; nem, ao menos, uma certa graça 9
Pedro Teotónio Pereira in an interview to the newspaper A Época, 22.2.1923 [T]o burn in red-hot iron, exposing to sun light, those nauseating cancers which have flourished at the expense of the weakness of some and the incomprehensible tolerance of others. […] To keep an eye on the bookshops and control the decadent artists, the poets of Sodom, the publishers, authors and sellers of immoral books […]. Discreetly, we have already begun. TP
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See A Capital, “Apreensão de livros. Os estudantes de várias faculdades dirigem-se ao Governo Civil a pedirem a apreensão,” 5.3.1923: 2.
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This collection of poems is extremely criticised in the newspaper Revolução Nacional responsible for the propaganda of the dictatorship. See Revolução Nacional, 1, 21.6.1926: 1. TP
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ANA RAQUEL FERNANDES (UNIVERSITY OF LISBON)
como a que António Feijó punha nos seus versos eróticos, de sabor tão puramente clássico, ou o plebeísmo forte e pitoresco moldado em formas duma impecável correcção que se nota na poesia obscena de Bocage, ou na de Gregório Matos. Nada disso. [...] Tudo aquilo é mesquinho, é ordinário e reles. (Marcello Caetano, 156-58) 12 TPF
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Eroticism in Minha Senhora de Mim
Notwithstanding the time gap, and especially the different traditions both poets invoke, the link between Judith Teixeira and Maria Teresa Horta is based on a common feature: subversion. By adopting taboo words, highly explicit descriptions of physical love, dealing with the relationship between women and men, women and other women and women and their image of themselves, their poetic works break with the literary establishment. Indeed, just like it happens with the poems by Judith Teixeira in Decadência, those by Maria Teresa Horta – and I am thinking particularly of a specific collection of poems, entitled Minha Senhora de Mim (Milady of Me, 1971) – are constructed out of a language of the body, exploring physical and erotic love. These topics were acceptable from a male point of view at the time the two literary works were published but were questionable when presented from a female perspective.13 TPF
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What a degradation! […] And the worst is that these shameless manifestations do not even have a decent form; nor do they have the gracefulness that António Feijó managed to give to his erotic verses, so beautifully reminiscent of the classics, or the strong and pitoresque plebeianism molded into shapes with an impressive correction present in the obscene poetry by Bocage or in the poetry by Gregório de Matos. Nothing like it. […] All of it is narrow, low and cheap. TP
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By the time Maria Teresa Horta publishes Minha Senhora de Mim, she had already written: Espelho Inicial (Initial Mirror, 1960), Tatuagem (Tatoo, 1961), Cidadelas Submersas (Submerged Citadels, 1961), Verão Coincidente (Coincident Summer, 1962), Amor Habitado (Lived in Love, 1963) and Jardim de Inverno (Winter Garden, 1966). She also took part in the group 147 TP
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Minha Senhora de Mim, a volume of fifty-nine poems, has much of the flavour present in “cantigas de amigo.” These compositions were typical of Galician-Portuguese poetry in medieval times. They were part of the legacy of trobadour poetry, with the special peculiarity of placing the responsibility of their enunciation upon a woman. Just like in the “paralelísticas” (parallel verses), a particular type of “cantigas,” in which its repetitive structure enriches the meaning, the repetition present in Minha Senhora de Mim also creates an effect of litany and incantation. 14 Take as an example the following poem in the collection 15 : TPF
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Minha Senhora de Mim Comigo me desavim minha senhora de mim sem ser dor ou ser cansaço nem o corpo que disfarço Comigo me desavim minha senhora de mim nunca dizendo comigo o amigo nos meus braços Poetry 61, whose members were: Gastão Cruz, Luísa Neto Jorge, Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão and Casimiro de Brito. 14
Four of the poems in Minha Senhora de Mim by Maria Teresa Horta were sung by Teresa Paula Brito, with music by Nuno Filipe (pseudonym to José Manuel Barros) and recorded in an EP by Moviplay in 1971. The poems are: ‘Existem Pedras’ (‘There are Stones’), ‘Poema sobre a Recusa’ (‘Poem about Refusal’), ‘Meu Acesso Lume’ (‘My Burning Fire’) and ‘Meu Amor’ (My Love’). Moviplay, 1971.
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Maria Teresa Horta, Minha Senhora de Mim. Lisboa: Gótica, 2001. 15.
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Comigo me desavim minha senhora de mim recusando o que é desfeito no interior do meu peito 16 TPF
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Nevertheless, Maria Teresa Horta does not recreate the myth of sorrow; on the contrary, the poet expresses a “refreshingly open feminine assertiveness.” 17 As Ana Marques Gastão writes in the newspaper Diário de Notícias, dated the 13th of November 2001, following the reprint of Teresa Horta’s book (Gótica 2001): TPF
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[A poetisa] elabora um discurso metafórico nu, fazendo reviver o desejo e o sofrimento perante o amado distante até ao ponto em que esse próprio desejo é extravazado na paz de o próprio corpo se deixar absorver por ele […]. (Ana Marques Gastão, 44) 18 TPF
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“Milady of Me”: “With me I fell out/ My lady/of me/ no pain or tiredness/ nor the body which I disguise/ With me I fell out/ my lady/ of me/ never saying with me/ the friend in my arms/ With me I fell out/ my lady/ of me/ refusing what is undone/ inside my bosom” TP
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Helder Macedo, ed. Modern Poetry in Translation 13/14 – Portugal Compton Chamberlain: The Compton Press Limited, 1972. 44. TP
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[The poet] elaborates a naked metaphorical discourse bringing back to life the desire and the pain for the distant lover until it reaches the point in which that same desire overflows and becomes peace achieved by the body allowing to be absorbed by it. TP
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Some examples of what has been said are poems such as “O Meu Desejo” (“My Desire”) or “Antecipação” (“Anticipation”) 19 : TPF
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Antecipação Entreabro as minhas coxas no início dos teus beijos imagino as tuas pernas guiadas pelo desejo oiço baixo o teu gemido calado pelos teus dentes imagino a tua boca rasgada sobre o meu ventre 20 TPF
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Minha Senhora de Mim has its starting point in one of the most significant traditions in Portuguese medieval poetry but eventually breaks away from it. It is a subversive work, one in which a woman challenges limits, reversing the common literary treatment of subject/object current at the time. It is the poet’s free and bold treatment of the body, of physical love, of 19
The last translated by Suzette Macedo and published in 1972 in the literary magazine Modern Poetry in Translation 13/14 – Portugal, compiled by Helder Macedo. Macedo, 44. TP
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“Anticipation”: “Loosening/ my thighs/ when your kisses begin/ I imagine/ your legs/ guided by desire/ I listen to/ your breathing/ clenched behind your teeth/ I imagine/ your mouth/ torn against my womb. TP
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sexuality that is seen by public opinion in the ’70s as an excess. Indeed, both public and official responses to the book are overwhelmingly critical. Shortly after the book is published 21 , Nelson de Matos wrote: TPF
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Trata-se de uma poesia que claramente se joga na utilização de uns quantos processos que, parecendo de desenvoltura, são apenas de facilidade. Bastante limitada ao nível do que diz e das palavras em que pretende dizer-se [...]. Na terceira e última parte deste livro, sem dúvida aquela em que se pressente um esforço de maior violência [...], pretende Teresa Horta como que o regresso a um certo erotismo que, bem de outro modo, se encontrava patente na sua poesia do início dos anos 60. Tal não é no entanto conseguido [...]. Tomou portanto uma grave opção que a sua escrita não pôde deixar de manifestar. [...] Várias idas à televisão, discos, lançamento de livros em elegantes soirées, direcção de uma página literária altamente comprometida – são outros dos aspectos em que essa opção se nos pode tornar legível.. (Nelson de Matos, 226-236) 22 TPF
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The newspaper A Capital announces the publication of the book on Sunday, the 2nd of May 1971. According to the unsigned article, the ceremony took place in Avenida Visconde Valmor, in the Auditório Sassetti, on the 1st May of 1971 (between 12:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m.). The auditorium was full and the publishing of the book was simultaneous with the publishing of the EP by Teresa Paula Brito, who sings four poems by Maria Teresa Horta, with music by Nuno Filipe. David Mourão Ferreira referred to the book that night as “a reflection on eroticism,” Ana Maria Teodósio read some poems present in Minha Senhora de Mim and afterwards José Nuno Martins presented the new EP. At the very end there was a photo exhibition by Luís Esteves. A Capital, “Minha Senhora de Mim,” 2.5.1971: 5. The book was published by Dom Quixote (Cadernos de Poesia, N.º 18).
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The poetry [in Minha Senhora de Mim] plays with obvious procedures that may seem bold but are only easy. Message and words are extremely limited [...]. In the third and last part of the book, where an effort towards more 151 TP
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Eventually, the book was banned on account of its eroticism. However, exactly because of the outcry raised by the publication of Minha Senhora de Mim and its subsequent ban, the book would come to play a decisive role in the development of Portuguese interventionist literature during the last years of dictatorship. Indeed, it laid the ground for Novas Cartas Portuguesas (New Portuguese Letters 1972), which, together with Portugal e o Futuro by the General António de Spínola (Portugal and the Future, February 1974), and due to its international acclaim – it was highly regarded by feminists around the world 23 – played an important role in the downfall of a regime already in its death throes. 24 As Maria Teresa Horta TPF
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violence is felt […], Teresa Horta tries to recover a certain eroticism, one already present in her poetry in the 60s but in a different shape. However, the author does not accomplish this task […]. She has made a very serious choice and her poetry cannot avoid it […]. Other visible examples of that choice are her participation in certain TV programmes, EPs, the publishing of books in fashionable soirées and the responsibility for a highly compromising literary column… 23
The First International Feminist Action adopts as a heading the fight for the rights of the “Three Marias,” the authors of Novas Cartas Portuguesas: Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta and Maria Velho da Costa. In “Feminist Chronicles 1973” one may read: “NOW organized support for the “Three Marias” jailed in Portugal for writing a feminist book. In its first international action, NOW chapters in Houston, New York, Washington, D.C., Eastern Massachusetts and Los Angeles had demonstrations at Portuguese embassies and consulates in their cities. Similar protests were held the same day in France, Belgium, Sweden, Germany and England. The protest actions and petitions were effective in drawing attention to what was considered the first international feminist cause celebre. The Portuguese government suddenly postponed the trial of the Marias in a delaying tactic calculated to relieve public pressure and discourage further demonstrations. (The Three Marias were acquitted in 1974.) (07/03/73)”. . TP
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explains in an interview given to the literary journal Textos e Pretextos: [A ideia das Novas Cartas Portuguesas] [s]urgiu quando o meu livro Minha Senhora de Mim foi proibido pela PIDE, e escandalizou meio mundo, desde os anónimos que me descompunham pelo telefone e me mandavam cartas não assinadas, àqueles que me ameaçavam todos os dias. Foram meses de violência inconcebível, que me deixaram desanimada. Nós as três [Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Velho da Costa e Maria Teresa Horta] já éramos amigas, encontrávamo-nos muitas vezes, almoçávamos juntas uma vez por semana. Num desses almoços, a Maria Velho da Costa levantou a questão: se uma escritora levanta tanta indignação, o que aconteceria se três escritoras escrevessem um livro juntas, a falar de tudo aquilo e muito mais, do que eu tratava nos meus poemas... 25 TPF
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António Oliveira Salazar died on the 27th of July 1970. Since the 27th of September 1968 Portugal lived under the rule of Marcello Caetano. This period became known as “Primavera Marcelista.” The end of censorship and the end of the political police (PIDE) were anxiously expected.
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in “Conversa com Maria Teresa Horta,” text and interview by Ana Raquel Fernandes, Cláudia Coutinho and Sara Ramos Pinto, Textos e Pretextos, 3 (Inverno 2003): 61. [The idea of Novas Cartas Portuguesas] came up when my book Minha Senhora de Mim was prohibited by PIDE [Polícia Internacional de Defesa do Estado/ International Police of Defense of the State], having shocked a lot of people, from unidentified people who called to insult me and sent me unsigned letters to those who threatened me day after day. Those were months of an incredible violence which left me discouraged. The three of us [Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Velho da Costa and Maria Teresa Horta] were already friends, we often met and usually had lunch together once a week. In one of those occasions, Maria Velho da Costa came forth with the question: if one woman writer is able to raise so much resentment, what would happen if three women wrote a book together dealing with the same topics I had dealt with in my poems and even more… TP
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Thus, Maria Teresa Horta’s book not only challenged the models offered by the literary establishment in the ‘70s, but also anticipated the well-known revolutionary work entitled Novas Cartas Portuguesas, which, as I have pointed out, played an important role in the downfall of the regime. Conclusion: “does anyone remember the name…?”
Despite the importance of her work, there is a growing silence around the author Maria Teresa Horta, one similar to the silence surrounding Judith Teixeira’s poetic work. Indeed, as far as the latter is concerned, the question raised by António Manuel Couto Viana in November 1974, “Does anyone remember the name: Judith Teixeira? It won’t be easy…” 26 is still representative of her status today. Notwithstanding, Maria Teresa Horta has been and is still today an important reference to certain contemporary Portuguese writers: Helena Marques, Lídia Jorge, Ana Luísa Amaral, Adília Lopes, Inês Pedrosa, whose work would be worth studying in connection with Horta’s literary output. 27 To conclude, let me add that a full understanding of the reasons why Judith Teixeira and Maria Teresa Horta were silenced, that is, how they undermined a male-dominated canon and tradition, will help us break the silence and make both their lives and work more widely known. This way we will be able to appreciate better the impact they had on Portuguese society and literature and, especially, the impact they still have on literary production in Portugal in our time. TPF
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António Manuel Couto Viana, “Judith Teixeira”, 198. Cf. “Conversa com Maria Teresa Horta,” 59-63.
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Works Cited
Anon. “Apreensão de livros. os estudantes de varias faculdades dirigem-se ao governo civil a pedirem a apreensão.” A Capital, 5.3.1923: 2 [unsigned title]. ---. “Minha Senhora de Mim.” A Capital, 2.5.1971: 5 [unsigned article]. Baudelaire, Charles. Les fleurs du mal suivies du spleen de paris. Introduction de Blaise Allan. Lausanne: La guilde du livre, 1947. Caetano, Marcello. “‘Arte’ sem moral nenhuma”. Ordem nova, 4-5, Junho-Julho 1926: 156-58. Diário deLisboa, 16.2.1923: 1 [without title]. Fernandes, Ana Raquel, Cláudia Coutinho and Sara Ramos Pinto. ‘Conversa com Maria Teresa Horta.’ Textos e Pretextos, 3, Inverno 2003: 59-63. Gastão, Ana Marques. ‘Minha Senhora do Silêncio.’ Diário de Notícias, 13.11.2001: 44. Horta, Maria Teresa. Minha Senhora de Mim. Lisboa: Gótica, 2001. Leal, Raúl. Sodoma divinizada. Aníbal Fernandes (ed). Lisboa: Hiena Editora, 1989. Macedo, Helder. (ed.) Modern poetry in translation 13/14 – Portugal. Compton Chamberlain: The Compton Press Limited, 1972. Matos, Nelson. A leitura e a crítica: ensaios. Lisboa: Editorial Estampa, 1971. Revolução Nacional, 1, 21.6.1926: 1. Sadlier, Darlene Joy. “Radical form in novas cartas portuguesas,” The question of how – women writers and new Portuguese literature. New York, Connecticut, London: Greenwood Press, 1989. 1-23.
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Teixeira, Judith. Poemas: decadência, castelo de sombra, nva. conferência de mim. Lisboa: &etc, 1996. 28 Viana, António Manuel Couto. “Judith Teixeira.” Coração Arquivista. David Mourão Ferreira (pref). Lisboa, S. Paulo: Editorial Verbo, [d.l. 1980]. 198-208. TPF
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Feminist Chronicles 1973. The feminist majority foundation. 14th July, 2006. P
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This edition has been fundamental for the article I have written. Indeed it presents a thorough research and an extremely accurate bibliographic table organised by Maria Jorge, L.M.G. The newspaper articles mentioned on the text are only some of the articles compiled by Maria Jorge in the book mentioned. TP
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Back into the Future: Feminism in Portuguese Women’s Poetry since the 1970s Anna Klobucka (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth) Introduction: Anachronism and Feminist Politics of Location
The history of Portuguese women’s writing in the twentieth century registered its most dramatic moment and, at the same time, its most prominent paradigm shift in the early 1970s, with the publication, suppression and ultimate vindication of Novas Cartas Portuguesas (1972). Critics such as Hilary Owen and Maria Alzira Seixo have written eloquently about the afterlife of Novas Cartas, stressing, among other factors, the sometimes overt, but usually implicit influence the book has exercised in the field of literary production by Portuguese women over the last three decades. It is possible, following Owen, to identify the main aspects of the feminist legacy of Novas Cartas as, on the one hand, pluralization and dialogic diversification of symbolic expression gendered in the feminine, and, on the other, as an articulation of a gynocritical perspective in Portuguese literary and cultural history. In my paper, I will follow these intimately interrelated vectors of analysis in tracing the development of feminist perspectives in Portuguese women’s poetry since the 1970s. First, however, a brief excursion into situational politics of feminist theory might be in order. In her recent forceful recasting of the objectives and frameworks of feminist criticism, Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter, Susan Stanford Friedman questioned continuing validity of the gynocritical project, with its foregrounding of gender as “the first principle of selection in the discussion of writers” (25) and its insistence on tracing a specifically female literary tradition, on the grounds of its lack of political, http://congress70.library.uu.nl/
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historical and conceptual congruence with more complex and comprehensive “locational discourses of identity and subjectivity in which other constituents of identity are equally important, in which interactional analysis of codependent systems of alterity replaces the focus on binary difference, in which relational and situational subjectivities move liminally from site to site, in which the always already heterogeneous belies the fixity of imagined authenticity, in which syncretist interminglings in the contact zone, middle ground, or global ethnoscape mute clear demarcations of difference” (25-26). Feminist critics of Portuguese literature working within the gynocritical paradigm have signaled their sensitivity to these and related challenges; for instance, an awareness of a need for preemptive arguments against potential charges of critical and theoretical backwardness clearly prompts the opening paragraph of Ana Paula Ferreira’s introduction to her recently published anthology of short stories by Portuguese women writers of the 1940s: “Num momento em que uma das categorias fundamentais de identidade, ser mulher ou homem, está sujeita a problematizações teóricas que colocam sob suspeita o seu valor referencial, não é fácil reerguer o bastão realista de antigos projectos feministas alarmados com a exclusão das mulheres de cânones literários estabelecidos” (A Urgência de Contar 13). 1 However, as Ferreira argues in another context, while presumably anachronistic, such projects must nevertheless be undertaken, since in Portuguese literary studies “there is still much need to address one of the most important items on feminist critical agendas of the late seventies and early eighties: the broadly historical and cultural project of recuperating TPF
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At a time when one of the fundamental categories of identity – being a woman or a man – is subject to theoretical questionings that dispute its referential value, it is not easy to reclaim the realist charge of earlier feminist projects, spurred on by the exclusion of women from established literary canons.
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forgotten women writers and read[ing] anew the Portuguese literary canon” (“‘Feminine’ Poetry for Nationalist Consumption” 3). It could be claimed, in effect, that Stanford Friedman’s advocacy of “locational feminism” leads logically, if also paradoxally, to an espousal of a relatively orthodox, seventies-style gynocritical perspective vis-à-vis the Portuguese literary and critical canon: a perspective inevitably enriched by all the benefits of theoretical hindsight it has at its disposal, but at the same time locationally and strategically attuned to the specific challenges and opportunities that arise in its field of operation. Breaking New Ground: Maria Teresa Horta and Luiza Neto Jorge
It is such a strategy of situational theoretical anachronism– moving back into the future–that guides my genealogical reading of feminism in contemporary Portuguese women’s poetry. While I locate its symbolically central point in the early 1970s – with the publication and suppression of Maria Teresa Horta’s collection Minha Senhora de Mim (1971), which circumstantially triggered the writing project of Novas Cartas Portuguesas, and the appearance, in 1973, of Luiza Neto Jorge’s collected volume Os Sítios Sitiados – its point of departure may be sought a decade earlier, in the collective publication Poesia 61, to which Neto Jorge and Horta had contributed together with Fiama Hasse País Brandão and two male poets (Gastão Cruz and Casimiro de Brito). It should be noted – especially since, to my possibly limited knowledge, none of the many critics who have commented, over the decades, on Poesia 61 have thought it relevant to do so – that this self-consciously vanguardist collective of young poets featured an actual majority of female authors. Not only was this phenomenon unprecedented in Portuguese letters, but also, more significantly, it remains unmatched to the present day: the recent turn-of-the-century publishing boomlet produced several collective anthologies of 159
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young poets, along with a number of critical assessments of new national poetic landscapes, which have consistently featured a small minority of female authors (when not being all-male, as has also happened on several occasions). In their contributions to Poesia 61, both Horta and Neto Jorge engaged in the kind of feminist revisionism already announced in their respective poetic debuts (Horta’s Espelho Inicial and Jorge’s Noite Vertebrada, both from 1960) and signalled by the quote from Simone de Beauvoir that served as the epigraph for Espelho Inicial: “Toute ma presence est parole” (Horta I 11). Within the general framework of Poesia 61, with its intertwined emphasis on the materiality of text and the textuality of matter, the two poets’ explorations of the “fourth dimension” of the poetic language – Quarta Dimensão was the title of Neto Jorge’s contribution to Poesia 61 – became symbiotically related to the feminist postulate of “re-vision” (Rich) and rewriting of male-dominated Western cultural tradition. Consistently present in their writing over the following decade – more explicitly so in Horta’s, more obliquely if no less strongly in Neto Jorge’s – this direction gained a broader and more elaborate scope in their publications of the early 1970s. In Minha Senhora de Mim, Horta continued the project of specifically historical engagement she had embarked upon with her 1967 volume Cronista não é Recado; however, where the latter volume’s approach to history was largely thematic, Minha Senhora de Mim was devoted to a complex intertextual exploration of the roots of Portuguese lyric tradition. Although the volume’s impact at the time of its publication was largely attributed to its sexually explicit nature and daring vocabulary, its far more radical, as well as enduring, literary and ideological effect may be sought in its highly inventive revisitation of poetic sources of the national literary canon and its subversive reclaiming of female voices ventriloquised by male authors of the Medieval cancioneiros. And, in addition to the 160
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acknowledged circumstantial link between Minha Senhora de Mim and Novas Cartas Portuguesas, recognition is also due to the historicized intertextual dimension both works share, with their genealogy-building reinscriptions of problematic antecedents of nationally representative femininity, as epitomized by the anonymous menina or senhora of the Medieval song and the passionate, abandoned nun of the Lettres portugaises. A similarly far-reaching and ambitious revisionist project emerged from Neto Jorge’s collected volume, Os Sítios Sitiados, published two years after Minha Senhora de Mim and a year after Novas Cartas. While this collection gathered poems written (and for the most part previously published) in the 1960s, I would argue that it was their macrotextual presentation in Os Sítios Sitiados that fully realized the large-scale design of Neto Jorge’s feminist project. Even dispersed throughout distinct collections, such poem cycles as “As casas” (from Terra Imóvel 1964) or “As revoluções da matéria” (from O Seu a Seu Tempo 1966) were forceful interventions in the poet’s ongoing, finely plotted progress that took the physicality of language as the point of departure toward a revisionary upheaval of conceptual categories imposing orderliness and proper conduct upon the material world, including, in particular, the world of human bodies, male and female, and gendered social topographies of the home and the city. Brought together in Os Sítios Sitiados, they generated an exponentially richer network of textual and symbolic affinities, resulting in a wealth of discursive reflection on gendered construction of cognition and experience that rivals Novas Cartas in its generous scope and internal complexity. Lacking space to provide adequate illustration of this claim, I will merely point to two poem cycles – “As Casas” and “Dezanove Recantos” – that could serve as such. In the former, domestic spaces are made to converge and merge with female bodies to form intricate machinic connections that structure intimate functional alliances between 161
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women’s existential experience and various socially situated aspects of domesticity and community. The latter, a sprawling and often densely cryptic pseudo-epic sequence reinscribes the ten heroic cantos of The Lusiads as the nineteen lyric and autobiograhic “re-cantos” that also preserve and explore, at the same time, both the collective and the mythical scope of Camões’s poem. The evolution of feminist perspectives in both poets’ work over the years proceeded along increasingly divergent trajectories that can be epitomized – reductively, to be sure – by the following illustrative juxtaposition. In 1987, Horta dedicated an entire volume of poems, entitled Rosa sangrenta, to the articulation of a specifically and essentially feminine outlook built upon the symbolic foundation of what Susan Gubar has called “one of the primary and most resonant metaphors provided by the female body” (78): menstrual or, more amply, genital blood. This emphasis stood in direct contrast to Neto Jorge’s reticent perspective on what she referred to (in the late sonnet “Minibiografia”) as “o formato mulher,” a perspective eloquently conveyed in another autobiographic sonnet, the playful yet exquisitely wrought “SO-NETO, Jorge Luiza”: “Tenho o mênstruo escondido num reduto / onde teoricamente chega o mar” (209). 2 In an implicit and anticipated opposition to Horta’s practice of a confidently tautological and (at this point) ahistorical immersion in the allegedly self-evident rhetoric of the body, in Neto Jorge’s self-portrait the poet’s own physical markers of femininity are at once foregrounded and viewed through a distancing, questioning lens that in an epigrammatic formulation evokes and takes apart an entire network of symbolic affinities. TPF
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Genealogical Re-Visions: Ana Luísa Amaral and Adília Lopes
When in 1990 Ana Luísa Amaral chose to entitle her first volume of poems Minha Senhora de Quê, she intentionally and explicitly inscribed herself into the emergent genealogy of Portuguese women’s poetry. She also–implicitly–took sides with respect to the dichotomy of feminist perspectives I have just very sketchily represented. As noted by Maria Irene Ramalho de Sousa Santos, this “commentary on Maria Teresa Horta’s subversion of the male voice of the cantigas de amigo through the modern woman’s daring appropriation of her own body” made clear that what, in the early 1970s, “seemed so simple and yet so bold […] now appear[ed] far more complex and perhaps not quite so bold, after all” (133-34). At the same time, Minha Senhora de Quê and, even more so, Amaral’s following volumes signalled her adherence to the principle firmly conveyed in Neto Jorge’s already cited “Minibiografia”: “Diferente me concebo e só do avesso / O formato mulher se me acomoda” (254). 3 Again according to Ramalho, “[the] motif of reversal, an implicit strategy in Amaral’s first collection” is “made explicit” in her second volume Coisas de partir (1993) and continues to inform much of her subsequent work (134). It would be a mistake, therefore, to read Amaral’s inaugural textual gesture – the rewriting of Minha Senhora de Mim as Minha Senhora de Quê – as indicative exclusively or primarily of an attitude of postfeminist revisionism with respect to unambiguously affirmative gynocentric postulates of an earlier era. Indeed, the increasingly appreciative reception of her writing by critics such as, in addition to Ramalho, Américo António Lindeza Diogo and Osvaldo Manuel Silvestre, which has made her into something of a banner figure for the interrelated processes of feminist TPF
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poetic questioning of literary tradition and theoretical articulation of a feminist perspective in literary criticism, points to the fact that her work has successfully integrated what Julia Kristeva described as the second and third stages of feminism’s ideological evolution. These stages, as articulated in Julia Kristeva’s fundamental 1979 essay “Women’s Time”, are the foregrounding of gender difference and symbolic exploration of femininity followed by deconstructive exposure of the metaphysical nature of gender identities. In her subsequent commentary on “Women’s Time”, Toril Moi postulated their integration as an aporetic double imperative, which she defended as necessary to the continuing viability of feminist cultural politics. In one of the articles he has devoted to Amaral’s poetry, Silvestre chose to frame his feminist analysis by establishing an initial contrast between Amaral and another prominent Portuguese woman poet of the same generation, Adília Lopes (the two being, according to the critic, “as duas maiores revelações da poesia portuguesa na corrente década” of the 1990s). 4 To synthesize the implications of his elaborate argument somewhat crudely, while Amaral’s work offers critics such as himself or Ramalho a propitious and inspiring environment in which to root a feminist contemplation of the complex relationship between gender, poetry and modernity in the Portuguese context, Lopes’s writing, although it teasingly appears to create such an environment, ultimately proves to be a barren ground for feminism. Quite interestingly for the purposes of my argument, Silvestre’s verdict of Lopes’s relative uselessness to feminist politics is a function of his historical positioning of her poetry. While it cannot be denied that she places gender identity and gendered discourse at the forefront of her poetic practice, she does so in a way that is, according to the TPF
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critic, excessively undignified and “cynical” (39) for its historical context, given that feminist Weltanschauung is a project still under construction in contemporary Portugal and thus far more in need of affirmative reinforcement than of deconstructive questioning. One of the reasons I find Silvestre’s argument useful is that it exposes, albeit in adversarial terms, what I consider to be a key feminist strategy at work in Lopes’s poetry and an important contribution to the (re)construction of feminist perspectives in the Portuguese cultural environment: a performative exploration of anachronism as a device aimed at shaking the reader out of ahistorical complacency and reactivating awareness of gender as a factor of continuing crucial importance in the realm of social and cultural hermeneutics. In that sense, pace Silvestre, I do not find Lopes’s feminist perspective, nor her genealogical positioning, to be at all antithetical to Amaral’s; at the same time, I do see the issue of the two poets’ divergent reception as an interesting symptom of contemporary Portuguese culture in its own right (but that is a matter for another discussion). Emblematic of Lopes’s deployment of anachronism is her prominent reclaiming of the presumably outdated label of “poetess”: poetisa, not poeta, is how Lopes generally refers to herself in her lyric as well as in other writings and interviews, and the word figures in the titles of two of her volumes (the 1997 Clube de poetisa morta and the 2001anthology Quem Quer Casar com a Poetisa?). That this is a self-consciously historicist appropriation becomes demonstrated in the ironically titled poem “Patronymica Romanica,” where the poet traces the genealogy of her real name (Maria José da Silva Viana Fidalgo de Oliveira) through a matrilineal sequence that ends with her self-identification as a “freira poetisa barroca” (Obra 339). 5 TPF
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Another gesture of literary self-invention links Lopes to the paradigmatic poetisa of Portuguese literature, Florbela Espanca; however, as demonstrated by the opening poem of the volume Florbela Espanca espanca (1999), with its profane rewriting of one of Florbela’s most famous verses (“Eu quero foder foder / achadamente”), Lopes’s tactics are boldly terrorist rather than quietly celebratory. 6 As I have argued elsewhere (190-204), the poet’s evocation of Florbela reenacts one of literary feminism’s signature operations from an oblique, displaced perspective that emphasizes gaps and absences as it proposes to found a Portuguese women’s poetic tradition on the uncertain grounds of genealogical (dis)continuity and with recourse to what Graça Abranches has termed “outras genealogias, ou tradições de escrita” (2). 7 Lopes’s ingenious use of deceptively simple language and attention-grabbing iconoclasm as an instrument of feminist critique and analysis is perhaps most visibly on display in the poem “Poetisa-fêmea, poeta-macho (cliché em papel couché)” (A mulher-a-dias 39-41), which intertwines first-person discourses of parodic self-definition of male and female poetic subjects. While the female poet at first appears to be as much an object of parody as the male (“Eu estou nua / eu estou viva / eu sou eu // Eu uso gravata / e, olhe, não foi barata”) 8 , the poem gradually segues into a harsher and more politicized mode that broadens to encompass a critique of gendered polarization of power in the social, political and discursive sphere (“Sou um TPF
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poeta-macho / tenho um gabinete / sou uma poetisa-fêmea / escrevo na retrete // Sou um poeta-macho / sou um badalo / sou uma poetisa-fêmea / calo-me // . . . // Senhora doutora, / os seus seios / são feios // O poeta-macho / assina o despacho”). 9 The poem is illustrated with a drawing of a woman seated on a toilet (“retrete”) with a closed cover, which she is using as a writing desk; the drawing echoes visually illustrations elsewhere in the book that can be taken to depict Lopes herself. Through thus inscribing her own poetic persona into her satirical evocation, Lopes signals her solidarity, if not outright identification, with the “poetisa” performatively brought to life in the poem. While that composite creature (with Natália Correia, explicitly mentioned in the last stanza, as her other referential correlative) is not quite spared from the poem’s aggressive drive, she is also recovered and absorbed as a problematic but very much recognizable ancestress, whose travails, establishing a close parallel between gender politics of literary creation and the enactments of political power in the public sphere, are ultimately not quite a thing of the past. The brutal and apparently anachronistic polarizing split between “poeta-macho” and “poetisa-fêmea” is thus deployed by Lopes in such a way as to foreground both its inherent absurdity and its continuing pervasive relevance in the social world at large. In other words, rather that trivialize the discussion of writing and gender – as her intentionally crude terms might seem to suggest – she actually refines and complicates it, opening up the badly needed discursive space in which to interrogate the politics and poetics of gendered authorship. As such, her spectacular, aggressive and willfully anachronistic re-gendering of metapoetic discourse can be said to advance “back into the future,” activating a historically progressive perspective that reinvents the TPF
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I’m a male poet / I have an office // I’m a female poetess / I write on a toilet // I’m a male poet / I’m a ding-dong / I’m a female poetess / I shut up // … // Lady, your breasts are ugly // The male poet signs a decree. PT
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gynocritical feminist agenda of the 1970s for its twenty-first century time and place. Works Cited
Abranches, Graça. “Des-aprendendo para dizer: políticas, escritas e poéticas de mulheres portuguesas do século XX.” Published in German translation as “Verlernen um zu sprechen: Politik und Poetik portugiesische Frauen im 20. Jahrhundert.” Henry Thorau, ed. Portugiesische Literatur. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkampf, 1997. 204-235. Ferreira, Ana Paula. “‘Feminine’ Poetry for Nationalist Consumption, or Making Room for Ladies in a Nation of Poets.” Unpublished paper presented at the Institute of Romance Studies, University of London, 17 April 1998. ---. (ed.) A Urgência de Contar. Contos de Mulheres dos Anos 40. Lisboa: Caminho, 2002. Friedman, Susan Stanford. Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998. Gubar, Susan. “‘The Blank Page’ and the Issues of Female Creativity.” Elizabeth Abel, ed., Writing and Sexual Difference. Chicago: The U. of Chicago P, 1982. Jorge, Luiza Neto. Poesia. 1960-1989. Organização e prefácio Fernando Cabral Martins. Lisboa: Assírio e Alvim, 1993. Klobucka, Anna. “Spanking Florbela: Adília Lopes and a Genealogy of Feminist Parody in Portuguese Poetry.” Portuguese Studies 19 (2003): 190-204. Kristeva, Julia. “Women’s Time.” Trans. Alice Jardine and Harry Blake. Signs 7, 1 (1981): 3-35 [orig. 1979]. Lopes, Adília. A mulher-a-dias. Lisboa: &etc, 2002. ---. Obra. Lisboa: Mariposa Azual, 2000. Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics. London and New York: Routledge, 1989. Owen, Hilary. “‘Um quarto que seja seu’: The Quest for 168
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Camões’s Sister.” Portuguese Studies 11 (1995): 179-91. Rich, Adrienne. “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as ReVision.” On Lies, Secrets, and Silence. Selected Prose 1966-1978. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979. 33-49. Santos, Maria Irene Ramalho de Sousa. “Re-inventing Orpheus: Women and Poetry Today.” Portuguese Studies 14 (1998): 122-137. Seixo, Maria Alzira. “Quatro razões para reler Novas Cartas Portuguesas.” Ciberkiosk 4 (Dezembro 1998). Silvestre, Osvaldo Manuel. “Recordações da casa amarela. A poesia da Ana Luísa Amaral.” Relâmpago 3 (Outubro 1998): 37-57.
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Hilary Owen (University of Manchester) Para incarnar a mátria [Natália Correia] rodeou-se da sabedoria de homens. (Menéres 25). 2 TPF
A Mátria da Língua Portuguesa?
Natália Correia was born in Fajã de Baixo on the Ilha de São Miguel in the Azores archipelago in 1923 and died in Lisbon in 1993. At different points in her colourful and well-documented life, she was a novelist, poet, playwright, journalist, opponent of the Estado Novo, publisher, critic, parliamentary deputy, literary salon hostess the owner and presiding doyenne of the Botequim bar in Lisbon, and presenter of the Portuguese cultural television series “Mátria” which ran during the 1980s. Perhaps more than any other writer of her generation, Correia consciously assumed the public image of the feminine creative spirit, the presiding Matriarch of Portuguese national culture. Indeed, the critic António Quadros defends a fairly standard perception of Correia, when he describes her novel A Madona and her long
1
I would like to acknowledge with gratitude the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Board in funding sabbatical leave in 2004, which enabled me to conduct the research for this project.
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In order to embody the motherland [Natália Correia] surrounded herself with the wisdom of men (all translations are mine)
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poem “Mátria”, in terms of a “busca do arquétipo matrista e matriarcal” (174). 3 Correia herself embraces a theoretical and aesthetic position that she described as “matrismo” and which she explicitly distinguished from “feminismo”. She explains and justifies this distinction as follows in an interview in 1983: TPF
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A mulher deve seguir as próprias tendências culturais, que estão intimamente ligadas ao paradigma da Grande Mãe, que é a grande reserva, a eterna reserva da Natureza, precisamente para os impor ao mundo ou pelo menos para os introduzir no ritmo das sociedades como uma saída indispensável para os graves problemas que temos e que foram criados pelas racionalidades masculinas. É no paradigma da Grande Mãe que vejo a fonte cultural da mulher; por isso lhe chamo matrismo e não feminismo (Sousa 65). 4 TPF
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The Natalist/Maternalist Dilemma
Certainly Correia’s fascination with the paradigm of the Great Mother, particularly the light and dark aspects of the Mother Goddess identified by Jung, confirms her well-documented 3
Search for the maternal, matriarchal archetype. Admittedly Quadros was writing in 1969, referring to Correia’s novel A Madona which was published in 1968, but similar idealizations of Correia’s maternalism continue to be celebrated in many of the contributions to the National Costume Museum’s Correia tribute in 2000, organized by Madalena Braz Teixeira, as well as in the Porto University collection, Natália Correia 10 Anos Depois…produced in 2003.
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Women should follow their own cultural tendencies, which are intimately linked to the paradigm of the Great Mother, the great reserve, the eternal reserve of Nature, precisely so that they can impose them on the world or at least introduce them into the rhythm of society, as the only possible way out of the serious problems we are now confronting, which were created by masculine rationality. I see the paradigm of the Great Mother as women’s cultural wellspring; that is why I call it ‘matrismo’ and not feminism. PT
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affinity with surrealism. 5 The Mother Goddess was a recurrent tropes among surrealist artists and writers including, perhaps most notably for our purposes, André Breton, who recreated the figure of the Egyptian goddess Isis in his Arcane (Carrouges 285). However, the theoretical and aesthetic positioning, which Natália Correia defined as “matrismo” was a complex and ambivalent statement, resisting simple reduction to what Jung himself termed “an invariable nucleus of meaning” (13-14) binding the variants of universalist archetype at the core. Correia’s trademark maternalism actually existed in productive tension with her equally clear anti-natalist positioning and her defence of abortion rights. 6 She also drew on an extensive and varied mythological repertoire, which served as much to destabilize as to delimit a feminine sexual symbolic grounded in the maternal. This paper will discuss Correia’s 1968 sexual “coming of age” novel A Madona, in order to explore the implications of her “matrismo” for her discursive construction of sexuality and its relationship to female artistic creativity. It will argue that since this “matrismo” was articulated through an anti-natalist stance, and relied heavily on a surrealist-influenced narrative aesthetic, it worked rather to question than to reinforce gender and sex typologies, suggesting a shifting dynamic, interaction between the sexes, which does not so readily cohere into the ideality of a socio-symbolic norm. Nor does Correia simply reproduce the bisexual “androgyne” myth, beloved of surrealism but potentially glossing the TPF
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5
See Fernando Pinto do Amaral, 100 Livros Portugueses do Século XX. Correia was later to edit and introduce the controversial anthology O Surrealismo na Poesia Portuguesa in 1973. TP
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See Fernando Rebelo, A discussão do aborto na voz de Natália Correia” in Natália Correia. 10 Anos Depois…, 53-8. Rebelo discusses her 1982 speech to the Portuguese parliament on the subject. Her 1974 study Uma Estátua para Herodes takes a highly polemical Malthusian stance against what she terms the Portuguese natalist cult of “criancismo” (9) and “puerocracia” (69).
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masculine assimilation of female procreativity. 7 In so far as she defends a form of creative “bisexuality” Correia’s work does consciously evoke the effeminate masculinity of a Nietzschean Dionysus, celebrating the sublimation of male procreative energy, in terms of maternal gestation (Battersby 119-123). However, as the foregoing will indicate, by embedding her discussion of sexual mythologies within a socio-historical Bildungs narrative of female restitution and revenge, she places the emphasis rather on reclaiming the disruptive power of Dionysian creativity as a space for sexual self-definition in the artistic processes of women. In this respect, I claim that Correia gestures towards Judith Butler’s examination of the discursive limitations of sexuality and her focus on reiterable, phantasmatic trajectories of sexual identification (99). 8 TPF
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Re-Sexing the Madonna
A Madona was controversially received in 1968 as an iconoclastic statement on women’s emancipation. Many of Correia’s contemporaries also read it as a roman à clef seeking 7
As the feminist philosopher Christine Battersby has pointed out, in her study of gender and genius, the apparent cross-over of masculine and feminine attributes in the Jungian concepts of animus and anima, still maintains a sexual hierarchy in that the “masculinized” feminine, what Jung terms a parody of male logos, serves only to inspire male creativity the better, in a covert re-endorsement of Jung’s “logos spermatikos” or “spermatic word” (7), while masculinity benefits from the emotional aspects of the feminine. Battersby has suggested, therefore, that, “for a male art is displaced sexuality: for a female it is already misplaced sexuality. It is only males who can sublime (alchemists’ language) or sublimate (Freudian language) their sexual drive into art. The School of Spermatic Art has a lineage which is impressively (and depressingly) ancient” (70). TP
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I refer here to Butler’s contention that “‘sexed positions’ are not localities, but rather citational practices instituted within a juridical domain” (108) dependent on the “authority-producing” effect of iteration, rather than grounded in any universal absolute. PT
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clues to the identity of well-known writers and artists in their circle (Sousa et al. 42-4). Set in the 1960s and moving between Bohemian Paris and mythical, rural Portugal, A Madona is narrated in the first person as a Bildungsroman. It adopts a cyclical structure favouring a synchronic superimposition of time frames rather than following a linear, diachronic sequence. The protagonist and narrator, Branca, departs from her family’s ancestral landed estate in Briandos, rural Portugal, where she grew up, in order to explore her adult identity in Paris, inspired by the intellectual and artistic influences of de Beauvoir, Sartre and Artaud. She later also visits London, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Italy. The double temporality of the novel switches between Branca’s past and present life, and between her subconscious fantasies and her contemporary reality. The connecting thread of Branca’s “coming of age” story is the avenging of her father’s humiliation of mother, during her childhood. Her father, a powerful landowner, enjoyed a series of publicly known love affairs, which ultimately caused his death whilst having sex with one of his mistresses. Branca’s mother tried to take public revenge on her husband, by donning a celebratory red dress for his funeral, but was hidden away by her family who declared her mad. Branca, who was a child at the time, was forced to connive at the drugging of her mother. The departure of the young adult Branca for Paris is therefore motivated by revenge on the male world for the mental and emotional destruction of her mother. Branca leaves behind in Briandos a young, macho huntsman named Manuel whom she knows is attracted to her. She subsequently becomes involved with two different men, the neurotic, sadistic and over-intellectual Portuguese Miguel with whom she lives in Paris, and the disembodied and ethereal Danish anti-nuclear campaigner Lars Nielsen nicknamed o Anjo, or “the Angel”, whom she first meets in London. The tension of maintaining relations with both of them comes to a 174
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head when Miguel manipulatively “desexualizes” Branca by exposing o Anjo’s latent homosexuality as the reason for his rejection of sexual relations with Branca. She furiously departs for northern Europe where she explores the boundaries of her own sexuality when she encounters Elsa, a Danish lesbian. Branca finally returns to Briandos during the winter, at the time of the full moon. She embarks on a physically passionate relationship with Manuel whose name also, of course, evokes Emmanuel or Christ, gradually assuming total power over him as she sadistically abuses and degrades him in a ritual of revenge for her father’s maltreatment of her mother. When Miguel comes to Briandos and resumes his relationship with Branca, Manuel descends into despair as he realizes he will never truly possess her, and shoots himself with his own hunting rifle. The scenes from Manuel’s funeral which provide the opening for A Madona are repeated at intervals throughout the narrative, fused with descriptions of Branca’s father’s funeral, rhetorically connecting the two men in a cycle of death and resurrection, the female burial and regeneration of the phallus. The novel ends as Branca returns to Paris with Miguel, the sexual and creative equilibrium of their relationship restored. This cyclical narrative structure of departure, return and female revenge is interwoven with a dense web of mythical reference and fantasy intervention, evoking Branca’s subconscious response to her experiences, and connecting her to a series of figures from classical literature and mythology, particularly mother goddesses, such as the Egyptian Isis and the Babylonian Ereshkigal. The myth and fantasy elements of the narrative are introduced largely through Correia’s deployment of “le hasard objectif” or “objective chance”, the surrealist device, most famously developed by André Breton. Objective chance may be broadly defined as the ability to influence material reality through powerful acts of the imagination or as Michel Carrouges puts it, with reference to Breton, “une téméraire prétention de forcer le merveilleux à se produire au défi des lois 175
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les plus élémentaires du principe de réalité” (248) such that Breton’s surrealist figures are “fantômatique” (249). Jacqueline Chénieux-Gendron’s analysis of women surrealists adds a further dimension to “hasard objectif” which is of relevance to my reading of Correia, in so far as it opens up a consideration of temporality. Chénieux-Gendron refers to “le hasard objectif” operating through a series of “glissements référentiels” which, in narratological terms, shift the emphasis from “histoire” to “discours” (60). These referential slippages also, I would add, have the effect of exposing temporal disjunctures between atemporal mythologies (discours) and linear history (histoire). Thus the novel’s Greco-Roman, Egyptian and Babylonian mythological discourses, spinning on a discursive axis of repetition, reiterate sexual identifications through the ages, the Madonna, Isis, Osiris, Dionysus, Pentheus, according to a cyclical narrative logic which destabilizes and disperses the linear narrative history of Branca’s sexual maturation. The temporal undecidability which results from these constant “glissements” between the novel’s time schemes, has the effect of exposing the temporality of repetition itself as a random, artificial force sedimenting the Judeo-Christian sexual symbolic as law. Women Go Back to Bacchus
The key mythical paradigms for Branca’s appropriation of the phallus are the Greek story of the dilaceration of Pentheus King of Thebes by the bacchantes, famously represented in the Euripidean drama Bacchae, and the Egyptian fertility myths surrounding Isis and Osiris. 9 These overlapping mythical referents produce a complex merging of de-individuated TPF
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See António Quadros. References to mythical sources in A Madona are drawn primarily from James George Frazer, The Golden Bough. On the dilaceration of Pentheus, see 378-9. On the fertility myths based on the scattering of Osiris, see 362-8. TP
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characters, destabilizing the novel’s kin relations and sexual identities. Thus Manuel’s funeral is also Branca’s father’s, Branca herself embodies her mother’s vengeful spirit, she sees her lover Miguel as both son and lover, and the boundaries of her own sexuality and Miguel’s intersect with those of o Anjo and Elsa. If the story of Dionysus and the “bacchantes” underpins Branca’s revenge on her father, the regeneration myths associated with Dionysis and Osiris are the main referent for Branca’s relations with Manuel and Miguel. All of these myth complexes detail the physical destruction and dispersal of the male body, and its eventual restitution to wholeness by a redemptive feminine, the opposing facet to the destructive force. In the story of the Bacchae, Pentheus the king of Thebes embodies the spirit of law and rationalism. He is torn to bits by his own mother, Agave, along with the women of Thebes, the “maenads” or “bacchantes”, who are followers of Bacchus, because he has tried to prevent them from enjoying wild drunken rites in celebration of the Bacchanalian cult and denied the divinity of Bacchus. Having been driven into a frenzied state by Bacchus, the women of Thebes eventually return to their senses and realize what they have done. The dilaceration of Pentheus also echoes the tale of Bacchus’/Dionysus’ own destruction by the Titans in Orphic myth. In this version Hera, the wife of Zeus, is jealous of her husband’s love for the mortal Semele, the mother of Dionysus, so she has the Titans tear the child to pieces, to cook and eat him. However, his heart remains and Rhea the mother of Zeus is able to put him back together and regenerate him. In her revenge against Penthean rationalism, Branca gradually assumes the mythological role of the “maenad”, the servant of Dionysus, as she visualizes her mother as Agave awakening the “ménadas adormecidas” (17) 10 and later exhorting all the woman at the father’s funeral to take their TPF
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Sleeping maenads. 177
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revenge on their faithless “inchados consortes” (56) 11 by tearing them to bits. As she departs for Paris, Branca imagines that she is urged on by the voice of her mother telling her: TPF
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Vai!.. vai!… chegou a hora! Vai unir-te às humilhadas filhas da noite, tuas irmãs! Ao som dos tambores do sangue ide acordar a Grande Mãe! Quebrai o vidro tumular em que o tirano coroado de louro aprisionou a sua augusta ira! Chegou a hora! Libertai a fúria exilada nos cristais do seu sono milenário! Chegou a hora! (17-18). 12 TPF
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Branca later imagines her mother gratefully kissing the mouth of the local prostitute Carriça whose sexual activity had killed Branca’s father, and serving pieces of the father’s body to the “maenads” in the manner of profane communion hosts. The culmination of Branca’s revenge ritual significantly takes place during the winter. She returns to Briandos asking “estará aqui a salvação?” (136) 13 and subsequently watching the local peasants perform the same Bacchic ritual dances that “os lusitanos executavam nas noites de prenilúnio” (sic) (146). 14 Her metaphorical gestation of the creative spirit is associated with suppression of the body in the winter months when “o corpo seca. O espírito desperta da sua sonolência e inteiriça-se como as ideias de um filósofo ou o desprezo do monge pela TPF
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Bloated consorts.
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Go!... go!… your hour has come! Go and join the downtrodden daughters of the night, your sisters! Go and rouse the Great Mother to the beat of the drums! Shatter the glass tomb in which the laurel-crowned tyrant has imprisoned your righteous anger! The hour has come! Unleash your fury exiled in the glass chambers of millennial slumber! Your hour has come! TP
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Will my salvation be here? That the ancient Lusitanians used to perform on nights with a full moon.
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carne. E nasce o génio. A técnica da crueldade” (227).15 As Branca finally drives Manuel to insanity through her finely calculated cruelty and indifference towards to him, he shoots himself with his rifle, the symbol of his own phallic potency which underlines his association with the ancient fertility gods killed, buried and resurrected to restore life to communities and crops. As Branca explains to Miguel, “sentia que se o [Manuel] destruísse me consumava realmente como mulher” (219). 16 As the novel concludes, Miguel and Branca leave behind the mourning rituals for Manuel at Briandos and return to the degenerate urban modernity of Paris to enjoy the spring. Branca has finally reached sexual maturity by silencing the destructive “bacchantes” of her ancient “memória celular” (221) or cellular memory. The mythical referent for Branca’s sacrifice of Manuel is that of the Egyptian fertility god Osiris whose jealous brother/father Set kills him and then tears his body to pieces, scattering the fragments over the entire land of Egypt. 17 Orisis’s wife Isis, who is also his sister, however, lies on top of the dead body of Osiris, in the guise of a hawk flapping its wings, and is thus impregnated with a son Horus. Isis also seeks out and rejoins all the scattered pieces of Osiris’ body. The only missing piece, which Isis cannot find is the phallus, which has been thrown into the river and eaten by fish. Isis thus fashions Osiris a new phallus, which serves to commemorate him as a god of fertility, in future rituals (Frazer 362-5). 18 The Osiris subtext is TPF
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The body dries up. The spirit wakes from its sleep and stiffens like the ideas of a philosopher or a monk scorning the flesh. And genius is born. The technique of cruelty. TP
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I felt that if I killed him (Manuel) I would truly be consummated as a woman. TP
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See António Quadros, 177.
Other versions detail the resurrection of Osiris, pieced together by Isis and her sister, with the help of the embalmer Anubis, and brought to life by Isis 179 TP
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further underlined in A Madona’s closing passages as Branca comments regarding Miguel, “vou procurar os pedaços do meu filho e amante espalhados por toda a face da Terra. Até que os céus chovam leite” (268). 19 Thus Branca, like Isis, refashions the creative phallus for Miguel in an apparent enactment of the redemptive feminine role. At the same time, however, this Egyptian evocation of regeneration refers back to a crossing of the rules of kinship laid down in western culture by the strictures of the incest taboo, since Isis is both wife and sister to Osiris. This licenses, in turn, a blurring of sexual symbolic law as Isis appropriates the phallus and actively impregnates herself, becoming revered as Mother to the Egyptian people through the regeneration of a husband/son. TPF
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The Mother of De/generation
Similarly blurring both kinship and generation by referring to Miguel as her “filho e amante”, Branca explicitly refuses to conceive real, physical children as a continuity of her dead father’s three hundred year-old lineage, originally founded by a High Court Judge. This paternal control of female reproduction through genealogy, is apocalyptically linked to the “máquina do dia do juízo” (155) or Doomsday machine. Preferring instead an “irónico desfecho dos votos formulados há três séculos pelo Desembargador” (154) 20 her ultimate revenge on her Penthean father is her rejection of maternity as she exclaims: TPF
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flapping her wings over him, and subsequently becoming lord of the underworld (Frazer 366-7). 19
I will seek the pieces of my son and lover scattered over the surface of the Earth. Until the skies weep milk. It is noteworthy here that the Maenads, when possessed, could create the miracle of bringing forth milk by scratching the earth with their fingers. See Carlos Parada. TP
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An ironic closure to the wishes expressed three centuries earlier by the Judge TP
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Ter um filho?! - pensava eu – só se for do Espírito Santo. Presumo que os meus germes de mulher me assinalavam uma maternidade mais transcendente e necessária do que aquela que brota dos filhos nascidos da carne como as crias paridas pelas vacas.(147-8). 21 TPF
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Connecting paternal laws of natalism and biological essentialism, with the fatalism of nuclear holocaust, the Doomsday, as the culmination of enlightenment rationalism, Correia dramatically dearticulates her celebration of the Mother Goddess from any grounding in socio-symbolic practices of motherhood or the reproduction of kinship. Thus Correia’s assertion of Branca’s sexual maturation is not ultimately stabilized by the social normativity of reproduction. Nor is it effectively subjected to symbol law by differentiation from homosexuality, as the foregoing will show. If the figure of Branca’s father and her male ancestry represent a deadly hypermasculinity, Miguel and o Anjo are, conversely, deprived of their phallic creativity. Presented as antagonistic, self-alienated mirror images of each other, Miguel and o Anjo are intellectually and physically emasculated respectively. Quadros describes Miguel as: A imagem do intelectual do Ocidente, cuja obraprima é a invenção da bomba atómica, cuja espiritualidade é literata, árida, enciclopédica e autosuficiente, cujos caminhos racionalistas o
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Have a child?! – I thought – only if it is with the Holy Spirit.
I believe that my female seeds predestined me for a more transcendent, vital type of maternity, than the kind that springs from children born of the flesh like the offspring of cattle. 181
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conduziram à angustia (sic) sem sentido, à noção do absurdo, ao niilismo, à auto-destruição… (176). 22 TPF
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Miguel’s strongest affirmation of sexual desire for Branca emerges as a perverse “double negative” in his denunciation and rejection of o Anjo’s latent homosexuality. It is through this unveiling of o Anjo’s homosexuality, that Correia directs Branca to explore the experiential limits of her own sexual desires and identifications. When Branca initiates a relationship with o Anjo, believing that Miguel does not know, she cannot understand why o Anjo does not make love to her. Miguel takes revenge by outing o Anjo in order to humiliate them both. Embroiled in an erotic, physical struggle with o Anjo, Miguel fends off his advances, and rages against “homossexuais contrafeitos! A perigosa argila de que são feitos os guerreiros e os idealistas tiranos” (186). 23 Yet Miguel’s defensive assertion of his own sexuality is no less “counterfeit”. His “masculinity” is a relative, artistic positioning built on the sublimation of desire, rather than any authoritative statement of embodied, social experience. He claims, “só as mulheres nos dão a sensação do inalcançável” (186) 24 a sentiment that he repeats at the end of the novel, stating “quero o meu ciúme vivo […] é o que resta de individualmente criador” (259). 25 TPF
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The image of the Western intellectual, whose greatest masterpiece has been the invention of the atom bomb, whose spirituality is literate, arid, encyclopaedic and self-sufficient, whose decision to follow a rationalist path has driven him to meaningless angst, to the notion of the absurd, to nihilism, to self-destruction. TP
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Fake homosexuals! That dangerous clay of which warriors and idealistic tyrants are made. TP
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Only women give us a sense of the unattainable.
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I want my jealousy to stay alive […] it is the only thing left that is individually creative. TP
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Rather than staying in Paris to act as Miguel’s artistic muse, Branca responds to the fight between the two men by leaving Miguel and going in search of her own sense of the “unattainable”, as she travels first to Italy and then to Scandinavia. Her experiences of sexual harassment in Rome cause her momentarily to consider lesbianism, the joy of “uma só carne pulsando no amor de se saber indivisível no núcleo” (193). 26 Yet, she fears the prospect of real homosexual contact when Elsa, a Danish lesbian, shows a sexual interest in her. On her return to Briandos, Branca resumes the passionate sexual relationship with Manuel. These gestures of distantiation from homosexuality are particularly revealing as regards Correia’s treatment of phantasmatic sexual identification. As Judith Butler remarks, “if the figures of homosexualized abjection must be repudiated for sexed positions to be assumed, then the return of those figures as the sites of homoerotic cathexis will refigure the domain of contested positionalities within the symbolic” (109). For Butler the symbolic law governing sexual “norms” institutes its regime of power by repeated citation of the law working as a kind of “self-fulfilling prophesy”. However, this repeated citation must also, following Butler’s Foucauldian line of argument, produce proliferating forms of resistance such that the repudiation of homosexuality backfires on its own terms. For this reason, I would argue, although the novel concludes with an apparently clear acquisition of heterosexual maturity, which has entailed a process of differentiation from homosexual “alternatives”, the sexual identifications adopted by Branca and Miguel circulate in a purely citational “empty space” which increasingly declares itself to be such. Identifying with the shifting, sexually ambivalent figures of mythology, untethered by the normative social demands of reproduction, and ultimately unpunishable for TPF
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One single flesh beating with the love of knowing itself to be indivisible at its core. TP
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the “suicidal” death of Manuel, Branca and Miguel point towards the fantastic and phantasmatic nature of sexual identification beyond the limits of the law, as a source of subversive and creative inspiration. Risking the “Matrismo” Metaphor
I began my consideration of sexual identification in Correia’s work by citing her often-reiterated definition of “matrismo” as constitutively opposed to “feminismo”. I would like to conclude by revisiting this from a different angle. Correia repeatedly and vehemently repudiated the key moments and manifestos of 1960s radical feminism in the US and UK, in terms uncannily resonant with Branca’s and Miguel’s rejections of homosexuality. No feminist drew greater vituperation from Correia than the American Valerie Solanas, in her article “O Manifesto S.C.U.M.”, that appeared in the arts and literature supplement of A Capital in 1970. Solanas’s notorious SCUM manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Men) had been written in 1967 and published in 1968, the same year as Correia’s A Madona, and also the year in which Solanas shot and wounded Andy Warhol, ultimately precipitating his early death. Interestingly, although Correia condemns Solanas, she also refers to her at one point as a mythological “bacchante”, as if effectively writing her into the text of A Madona. 27 What Correia cannot forgive Solanas is her promotion of a painfully material “dilaceration” process, the literalization of the “feminist metaphor” for creativity. Solanas’s cutting men off, by cutting them up implies for Correia the absolute, and deadly, closure of the symbolic, the impossibility of repetition or reiteration, TPF
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As Teresa Horta points out in her preface to Correia’s Breve História da Mulher Correia’s appalled fascination with Solanas rather betrays “uma espécie de efeito de espelho no qual Natália se veria um pouco reflectida” (15) [a kind of mirror effect in which Natália would have seen some reflection of herself].
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heralding the death of art itself, not just of the male artist. Correia voices her objection as follows: Solanas intui magistralmente a peculiaridade de uma cultura feminina, uma cultura vital em que as ideias se materializam em vez de hierarquizarem no olimpo literário da vida que podia ter sido vivida. Mas a autora do S.C.U.M. Manifesto falha estrondosamente quanto ao conteúdo dessa cultura, quando a exige unilateral e pasmadamente partenogenética, eliminando o objecto apaixonante da subjectividade feminina: o homem, a humanidade que a mulher não é, a carência que excita a imaginação feminina, tal como a mulher que o homem não é, é a privação inquietante que exacerba a imaginação criadora do homem (Breve História da Mulher 161-2). 28 TPF
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Admittedly, as the above suggests, Correia tries to locate a clear heterosexual differentiation at the centre of an artistic process driven by a Lacanian sublimation of desiring lack. Yet this distinction, by its very nature, does not reliably hold in practice. The figures of homosexuality which are implicitly repudiated in this move, return, as Butler suggests, “as the sites of homoerotic cathexis [to] refigure the domain of contested positionalities within the symbolic” (109). Correia effectively goes on to recognize this, as the desire for the other, spills over into the desire to act out, to become the other, in the sexually contested 28
Solanas brilliantly intuits the specificity of a feminine culture, a vital culture in which ideas materialize rather than being structured as a hierarchy on the literary Olympus of a life that could have been lived. But the author of the S.C.U.M Manifesto makes a disastrous mistake regarding the content of that culture when she demands that it be unilateral and foolishly parthenogenic, eliminating the desired object of feminine subjectivity: man, the humanity that woman is not, the lack that inspired the female imagination, just as the woman that man is not, is that disturbing privation that drives the creative imagination of man. TP
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domain of symbolic identification as artists. Thus Correia describes poetry as emerging from “uma cosmovisão feminina havendo o homen quando poeta de proceder como actor” 29 whereas literature per se, “é a aplicação de um conceito mimético que subentende a capacidade que a mulher tem de masculinizar o seu poder criativo” (159). 30 In her attempt to consider these cross-gendered projections of artistic subjectivity as interdependent and of equal value, Correia moves to envision for both “sexes”, and often in spite of herself, a dynamic, performative interaction between sexual and artistic identification that is not inevitably subject to, nor constitutive of, the hierarchical ideality of paternal law. In this respect, I contend that Correia’s engagement with surrealism in A Madona as well as in her better known poetry, enabled her to open up a discussion of sexuality and creativity along the discursive perimeters of symbolic law in a way that was highly productive for her own later writings on gender, as well as for the new generation of women writers, including iconoclastic feminists such as Maria Teresa Horta, whom she influenced and inspired in the 1970s. TPF
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Works Cited
Natália Correia 10 Anos Depois… Org. Secção de Estudos Franceses de D.E.P.E.R. Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto. Porto: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, 2003. Amaral, Fernando Pinto do. 100 Livros Portugueses do Século XX. Uma Selecção de Livros Portugueses /100
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A feminine vision of the world such that the man who seeks to be a poet must proceed in the manner of an actor. TP
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“is the application of a mimetic concept which assumes woman’s capacity to masculinize her creative power.” TP
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Portuguese Books of the 20th Century A Selection of Literary Works. Lisboa: Instituto Camões, 2002. Battersby, Christine. Gender and Genius. Towards a Feminist Aesthetics. London: The Women’s Press, 1989. Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter. On the Discursive Limits of “ Sex”. London: Routledge, 1993. Carrouges, Michel. André Breton et les données fondamentales du surréalisme. Saint-Amand: Gallimard, 1950. Chénieux-Gendron, Jacqueline. “De l’écriture au féminin dans le surrealisme.” La Femme S’Entête. Ed. Georgiana M. M. Colville and Katharine Conley. Paris: Collection Pleine Marge. Lachenal and Ritter, 1998. 53-69. Correia, Natália. A Madona. Lisboa: Presença, n.d. [1968]. ---. Uma Estátua para Herodes. Porto: Arcádia, 1974. ---. org. prefácio e notas. O Surrealismo na Poesia Portuguesa. Lisboa: Frenesi, 2002. ---. Breve História da Mulher e Outros Escritos. Lisboa: Parceria A. M. Pereira, 2003. Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic and Religion. London: Macmillan, 1954. Jung, C. G. Four Archetypes. Mother Rebirth Spirit Trickster. London: Ark, 1992. Menéres, Clara. “O Veludo, o Útero e a Rosa.” Mátria de Natália Correia. Org. Madalena Braz Teixeira. Lisboa: Catálogo do Museu Nacional de Traje, 2000. 25. Parada, Carlos. “Greek Mythology Link”. 2 January 2005. Sousa, Antónia de, et al. Entrevistas a Natália Correia. Lisboa: Parceria A. M. Pereira, 2004. Quadros, António. “Uma peregrinação – Iniciação Matrista. A Madona de Natália Correia: proposta da hermenêutica.” Estruturas Simbólicas do Imaginário na Literatura Portuguesa. Lisboa: Átrio, 1992. 173-9. P
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“Não há coincidências”? Women’s Writing in Portugal in 1974 and 2004 Claire Williams (University of Liverpool) Portugal has undergone huge social, economic and cultural changes since the 1974 Revolution, due to both extensive international interaction and nationally driven development initiatives. On the surface, changes have been both visible and rapid but in other areas repressive deeply traditional ideology lingers on and any “advances” or “progress” are eyed with suspicion. 1 In political, legal and, to some extent social terms, the situation for women has improved enormously. Women have won the vote and equal rights are theirs by law; they are more visible in business, government and positions of power and responsibility, and more women have the opportunity to study at university. 2 Nevertheless, the Portuguese mentality is still inward looking and family-focused after centuries of enforced patriarchy. The formula for social success is now a university degree, as well as the original elements of marriage and children. When their daughter has achieved all this, her parents can sigh with relief that their duty has been done. And yet, just how much have things changed since the Portuguese Revolution of 1974 and the subsequent new Constitution? According to a newspaper article published on International Women’s Day thirty years later, Portuguese TPF
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Two recent studies of how far life and attitudes in Portuguese society have changed since 1974 are Clara Pinto Correia’s E Depois Pronto: Trinta Anos de Democracia, and José Gil’s bestselling Portugal, Hoje: O Medo de Existir.
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See the European Database: Women in Decision-Making.
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women work more and are paid less than their male counterparts and have fewer opportunities to take on management posts (Neves). The recent case of seven women from Aveiro and their so-called accomplices being put on trial for having voluntarily undergone terminations and the government’s avoidance of the issue of the decriminalisation of abortion seems an almost medieval turn of events to be taking place in the twenty-first century. 3 Naturally, Portuguese society and culture has reflected historical development. In the aftermath of the Revolution, when censorship was lifted, freedom of speech declared, and exiled intellectuals returned from abroad, there was an explosion of literary publications. Many works of literature that came out around this time dealt with the events of the recent past, at last free to criticise or bear witness to Salazarist oppression, the colonial wars and mass clandestine emigration. Yet the reading public of the time was limited because education was discouraged, illiteracy rates were high, books were expensive and reading for pleasure or general instruction (other than the classics) was not a common pastime. 4 Women writers like Lídia Jorge, Olga Gonçalves and Teolinda Gersão added their voices to the throng of new expression and provided a new “feminine” perspective on the “formerly unspoken (and unspeakable) past” (Ferreira, Sadlier, Owen). These women authors and others acquired faithful readers and won the respect of literary critics and academics, although never as much as their male counterparts who were TPF
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3
The 1998 referendum on abortion was defeated by 51% to 49%. See the website .
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4
The Portuguese are not avid readers: in 2000 a survey showed that only 45% claimed to buy and read books. See Neto, Joel. “Os livros são para ler”. The article suggests that José Saramago’s Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999 and the opening of FNAC superstores in Portugal have contributed to the rise in book sales. PT
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always privileged in university syllabi, by literary prizes and by critical attention. Some women writers, like Sophia de Mello Breyner or Agustina Bessa Luís and Maria Velho da Costa, have achieved their place in the Portuguese canon through the sheer volume of their work, as well as its quality. Indeed, these writers published before, during and after the Revolution along with other persistent, creative, but less well-known women like Fernanda Botelho, Natália Nunes and Luísa Dacosta. Chick Lit Hits Portugal
In the 1990s and early twenty-first century, a new genre has changed the face of women’s writing in Portugal. It has flourished so quickly and achieved such huge commercial success that it mirrors the boom in poetisas (women poets) in Portugal in the early twentieth century, another era when women were re-evaluating their role in society. 5 The work of the latetwentieth-century women has been named, by its detractors, literatura pop or light, as if it were low in calories or nicotine and thus associating it blatantly with the world of advertising and consumer culture. Successor to the folhetim and romance novel, it is similar in tone to celebrity gossip magazines and close in format to television soap operas. It is written by young women, for young women, about young women in contemporary, urban Portugal. It is also directly related to the success of the genre known as chick lit in the UK and the US, TPF
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Cláudia Pazos Alonso comments on Nuno Catarino Cardoso’s 1917 anthology of 106 Poetisas portuguesas: “é um numero astronómico, sobretudo tendo em conta […] a escassez de mulheres poetas até ao último quartel do século XIX. Mas o que é ainda mais surpreendente é que […] quase todas as poetisas incluídas na antologia teriam de ser, por força, poetisas da actualidade” [this is an astronomical figure, especially taking into account the scarcity of women-poets up until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. But what is even more surprising is that almost all the poetesses included in the anthology had necessarily to be poetesses writing at that time], p. 26.
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which flourished after the publication of Bridget Jones’s Diary, by Helen Fielding in 1996. 6 The commercial popularity yet very traditional formula and subject matter of chick lit has provoked academics working in feminism to question whether or not by focusing on women’s lives, choices and problems it offered a new kind of female empowerment. 7 Like Mills and Boon and Harlequin before it, chick lit’s emphasis on the quest for the perfect heterosexual relationship triggered the question of whether romantic love was a trap for women. It appeared to threaten their potential for selfrealisation and seemed instead to pander to demographics by creating characters in the mould of their ideal reader and playing on issues of self-esteem and self-image. 8 In Britain, iconic women writers like Germaine Greer and Beryl Bainbridge have dismissed chick lit as inconsequential, undemanding “froth” (Ezard), but their comments have been challenged as elitist for implying that young women are too stupid to write books or read them. 9 It is a genre that appeals to multitudes of readers because it is easy to read, often humorous and gently sarcastic, realistic because of the contemporary settings, recognisable situations and allusions to popular culture and society. It tends, TPF
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The Portuguese translation, O Diário de Bridget Jones, was published by Presença two years later, when the film version was made. The translation has sold 38,000 copies and is in its 14th edition (information supplied from Presença via email, 8 March 2004). TP
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There are websites devoted to chick lit in the UK , the US and the Netherlands .
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Rachel Blau DuPlessis comments on the traditional incompatibility of the “love” plot and the “quest” plot in Writing Beyond the Ending. Her contention is that “the romance plot, broadly speaking, is a trope for the sexgender system as a whole” and thus upholds the ruling ideology (5).
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Chick lit author Jenny Colgan fought back, defending the style as “good solid comedy writing” (Bushby). PT
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however, to reinforce traditional myths and fantasies about the relationship between the sexes, particularly the idea that a man is the solution to all a woman’s problems, but also the source of a whole new set. The Portuguese variant of chick lit has caused a commotion not only because of its overwhelming popularity and record sales numbers for women writers but also because of the critical storm that has blown up to debate whether or not it is real literature. Highly respected literary critics with newspaper columns like Eduardo Prado Coelho, Pedro Mexias and João Barrento have commented upon the sociological nature of the phenomenon, Barrento saying that the absence of style in this kind of novel constitutes “a mais radical materialização do grande sonho de um Flaubert, o de escrever um livro sobre coisa nenhuma”. 10 Pedro Mexias assumes the main reason behind the attacks is envy at the ease with which these young women have secured publishing deals and considers the phenomenon of the boom of more importance to sociologists than literary critics (Mexias). The violence of the (male) critical reaction smacks with the misogynist superiority common in the field of literature, like the comments made about women writers by Ramalho Ortigão in 1877. The publishing world has snapped up new women authors and marketed their works aggressively. 11 Rita Ferro, TPF
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[the most radical materialisation of Flaubert’s great dream, that of writing a book about absolutely nothing]. Miguel Real (98) sees this as a trend among the 90s generation of Portuguese writers of “realismo urbano total” [total urban realism]: “escreve por (causa/motivo) nada e para (objectivo) nada […] nenhuma ideia exterior ao texto a leva a escrever, nenhuma mensagem transcendente ao texto a leva a escrever” [they write for (cause/motive) nothing and for (objective) nothing, no idea outside the text leads them to write, no message transcending the text leads them to write]. TP
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11
The novels read as research for this article (and the abbreviations used to refer to them within the text) are: Rita Ferro’s O Nó na Garganta [NG], and Uma Mulher Não Chora [MNC]; Margarida Rebelo Pinto’s Sei Lá [SL], Não 192 TP
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journalist and granddaughter of Fernanda de Castro (one of the original poetisas), has her own series of books and collected “chronicles” with mainstream publishers Dom Quixote. But most of the literatura light, by men as well as women, is published and aggressively marketed by a new company: Oficina do Livro. Their books have plain but fluorescent, brightly-coloured covers, with photographs of the glamorous authors on the back, in contrast to many of the British chick-lit books whose cartoon-like graphics emphasise the comic, playful nature of their style. The Portuguese novels include glowing prefaces from established writers and pretentious epigraphs, which may be drawn from Nietzsche, children’s literature or pop lyrics. The doyenne of literatura light is the journalist Margarida Rebelo Pinto, who has been the direct target of much of the critical bile. She insists that she is a serious novelist who tries out a different idea with each novel, lectures on creative writing and has a web page with tips for aspiring novelists. 12 She has represented her country at international literary festivals and book fairs. She claims not to care about the critics’ sniping, retorting that high sales figures and numbers of readers are sign enough for her that she is providing a service that people enjoy and need. Her attitude is defiant: “Não me preocupo com os críticos. São como os gatos castrados: sabem como se faz mas não conseguem fazer” (Amaral). 13 TPF
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Há Coincidências [NHC], Alma de Pássaro [AP] and Pessoas Como Nós [PCN]; Maria João Lopo de Carvalho’s Virada do Avesso [VA] and Adoptame [AM] and Mafalda Belmonte’s Inevitáve [I]. 12 TP
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[I”m not bothered about the critics. They are like castrated tom-cats: they know how to do it but they can’t actually manage it]. TP
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Patterns and Fashions in Literatura Light
Literatura light follows the pattern of the classic melodramatic romance novel in portraying an instantly recognisable location (Lisboa, although there are excursions to Évora, Porto, Quinta do Lago) and a series of relationship problems for a middleclass, white, educated woman to solve. 14 The heroines are successful professional women (teachers, publishers, journalists), but never managing directors and they are therefore vulnerable to harassment and discrimination. Flouting social disapproval, which still exists among the older generation, they are sexually active before marriage and talk to their friends openly and enthusiastically about their sex lives. Such apparently independent and liberated women could be positive role models for Portuguese readers by illustrating that life need not follow the domestic route laid down decades before by Salazar and the Church. Yet these characters are obsessed with the idea of finding “The One”, Mr. Right, the Prince Charming who will provide them with love, children, money and intellectual stimulation so that they fit neatly into the role society (usually through the voices of their mothers) has proscribed for them. 15 The ending, though, tends to be open or unhappy, leaving the characters on the brink of another endless, fruitless search: “tinha tudo aquilo de que precisava. Ou que os outros precisavam que ela tivesse. […] Joana tinha afinal tudo TPF
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My definition of melodrama follows that of Anja Louis, its fundamental characteristics being “the indulgence of strong emotionalism, extreme states of being, and the desire to express all”. TP
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The majority of the Portuguese “thirtysomething heroines” have at least one child and a failed marriage behind them before the narrative starts. Thus good mothering also becomes an issue upon which they are scrutinised by society. TP
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com que sempre sonhara. […] deveria sentir-se feliz. Mas não sentia”, (NG, 289). 16 The settings are unashamedly middle-class: all the protagonists have cars, credit cards and maids. The maids, secretaries, receptionists, policemen and shop assistants provide background colour but are distinguished from the main characters by their incorrect speech or strong accents, their interior decorating, their clothes and their manners. The bad taste of the lower classes and the nouveaux-riches is described scornfully and gleefully by both characters and narrators: tracksuits, shoes with tassels, extreme mini-skirts, excess cleavage or man-made fabrics. The assumption of what is good taste and what bad is never questioned. This clear-cut class divide is patronising and perpetuates stereotyped images of both the bourgeoisie and the working class. Relationships that cross class barriers are frowned upon and broken up by the heroines wherever possible. Prospective boyfriends/husbands are also judged by what they wear and which perfume they use: TPF
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Não há dúvida que é um homem bonito. E inteligente. E esperto. Bem educado. Tem um fato azul escuro absolutamente irrepreensível, uma gravata discreta e uns botões de punho de óptimo gosto. O anel de brasão é talvez a única coisa que me incomoda um bocadinho,
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[She had everything she needed. Or what other people needed her to have. In fact, Joana had everything she had ever dreamed of. She should have been happy. But she wasn”t]. This stereotypically Portuguese melancholy can be found in the tragic stories by neglected Portuguese women writers from the 1940s collected by Ana Paula Ferreira in A Urgência de Contar. Ferreira explains how, through literature, these women had found a space and a voice to protest about “a exclusão das mulheres do espaço da cidadania, do fórum público” [the exclusion of women from the space of citizenship, from the public forum] (38). TP
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mas pensando bem, não tem qualquer importância. (SL, 181) 17 TPF
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Uma figura engraçada, a do Eduardo. Baixo, meio careca […]. Sempre vestido de Rosa & Teixeira, gravatas clássicas e camisas lisas e discretas, rematando com uns antiquados sapatos de “avô”, daqueles com furinhos e atacadores que só são possíveis de encontrar num avô. Com a particularidade de não usar boxers, o Eduardo é tudo menos um homem sensual. No entanto, a sua constistuição (sic) física forte e robusta marcada por anos de ténis e musculação tornam-no num cinquentão, no mínimo apetecível! (VA, 100) 18 TPF
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The female characters are avid consumers and aware of their status as consumables themselves, who must look and dress the part: Para além dos muitos incómodos que os homens causavam às mulheres, Joana revoltava-se contra o enorme rol de preceitos cumpridos que a sua
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[There’s no doubt that he’s a handsome man. And intelligent. And clever. Polite. He has a dark blue suit that cannot be faulted, a discreet tie and very tasteful cufflinks. The signet ring is perhaps the only thing that worries me slightly, but now I come to think of it, it doesn”t matter at all]. TP
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[Eduardo is a strange character. He is short, half bald. He always wears Rosa & Teixeira [suits], with classic ties and smooth, discreet shirts that match his old-fashioned “grandfather” shoes, those ones with little holes and laces that only a grandfather would wear. With the particular habit of not using boxer shorts, Eduardo is anything but sensual. Nevertheless, his strong and robust physical constitution built up by years of tennis and exercise make him a fifty-year old who is rather tasty, to say the least!] TP
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companhia exigia a uma mulher da cidade: depilação, manicura, cabeleireiro, calista! (NG, 137) 19 TPF
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Como tive algum tempo para me arranjar, resolvi experimentar se ainda sabia brincar às mulheres sexy, e parece-me que o resultado não foi mau. Umas calças pretas justas, botas de salto alto e uma camisola encarnada de gola alta sem mangas com uma boneca estampada à frente, o cabelo lavado e bem escovado, bâton, rimmel e um toque de blush, e pareço outra. (AP, 157) 20 TPF
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A girl’s appearance, accessories and clothes must be classically fashionable and the sheer amount of name-dropping of designers, perfumes, boutiques, bars and nightclubs leads the reader to wonder whether or not the writers have contracts for product placement. The texts can be seen as instruction books for achieving the lifestyle of the characters and the authors themselves: effortlessly beautiful and sophisticated writers who more often than not have another career (journalist, teacher, nurse) and a family too. Portraits of “Typical” Women and “Real” Men
The dating game is seen as a transaction: the women have to evaluate a potential mate’s attractiveness, style, background and 19
[As well as the numerous inconveniences that men caused women, Joana was disgusted by the huge list of rules with which an urban woman had to comply in order to go out with them: hair removal, manicures, visits to the hairdresser, the chiropodist!] TP
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[As I had a bit of time to get ready, I decided to see whether or not I still knew how to play at being sexy and I do believe that the result was not at all bad. Tight black trousers, high-heeled boots and a bright red high-necked sleeveless sweater with a doll printed on the front, freshly washed and wellstyled hair, lipstick, mascara and a touch of blusher, and I look like someone else]. TP
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credit rating before considering a relationship. The myths of love at first sight, electricity in the touch and the affinity of soul mates are staples of the romantic novel, as are the coincidences and “inevitable” encounters. Female characters admit and acknowledge their desire for men, but all too often become passive, paralysed and lose their sense of reason (and, in this case, of language: mixing metaphors) when seduced by the predatory male: “Tinha descoberto nesse dia que não era senhora de si mesma […] podia ser presa dos seus sentidos […] um joguete nas mãos dos seus sentidos” (I, 120). 21 Sex makes them feel fulfilled: “Adormeci logo contente por ter sido Mulher” (VA, 16). 22 Yet, if a female character takes an excessive number of lovers or commits adultery, she risks serious social disapproval: TPF
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À força de ser tão independente e ambiciosa, [Luísa] está cada vez mais masculina. É ela que manda, que põe e dispõe. Ou me engano muito ou é este o tipo de mulher que mais anseia que se lhe atravesse no caminho um homem com pulso e lhe refreie as vontades. (SL, 97) 23 TPF
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[That day she had discovered that she was not responsible for her actions, she could be caught out by her senses, a toy in the hands of her senses]. TP
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[I fell asleep happy at having been a Woman]. Note the capitalised “M” [W] indicating, supposedly, profound emotion and authenticity. TP
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[Because she has to be so independent and ambitious, Luísa is becoming more and more masculine. She gives orders and makes decisions. Either I am mistaken or this is the kind of woman who most longs for a red-blooded man to cross their path and rein her in]. TP
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that sex is not everything and will move on to another man if their current lover is not their ‘soul mate”. Rebelo Pinto uses male as well as female narrators in Não há Coincidências and Alma de Pássaro and succeeds in reinforcing stereotypes about men’s fear of commitment, inability to talk about their feelings, male pride, peer pressure, ambition and promiscuity. In this fictional world, adultery is deemed regrettable but acceptable for a man, but the epitome of betrayal for a woman, following centuries of tradition and the legal support (up to 1974) for a man to beat his wife if he suspects her of extramarital liaisons. The protagonists of these novels take male infidelity for granted and hate the “verdadeiro macho latino” [a true Latin male] yet “no fundo invejávamos por ser tão cabrão e ter uma imagem tão exemplar” (SL, 19). 24 From the “other” woman’s point of view, Raquel (I) initially feels liberated by an affair with her best friend’s husband: TPF
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resolvendo o seu remorso com a justificação de que não estava a pôr em causa nem o casamento dele, nem o seu. Curiosamente, um argumento típicamente masculino: se eu tiver um caso fora do casamento e conseguir controlar esse caso de maneira a que não ponha em causa o meu casamento e ainda por cima o melhore, porque me faz sentir bem-disposta e contente, criando até um ambiente agradável dentro casa, não tem mal nenhum esse caso. (I, 123) 25 TPF
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24
[deep down we envy them for being such bastards and having such a model image]. TP
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[neutralising her remorse with the justification that she was not damaging his marriage, nor her own. Curiously, a typically masculine argument: if I have a affair out of wedlock and can manage to control the affair so that it does not threaten my marriage but actually improves it, because I feel cheerful and happy, even creating a pleasant atmosphere at home, there is nothing at all wrong with that affair]. TP
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The sex scenes are described more in terms of the psychological and emotional events taking place than physical details. But outside the bedroom, other taboo subjects relevant to contemporary society are glossed over or ignored. Male homosexuality is seen as an aberration that provokes such fear and shame that it must be ignored (AP) disguised with excessive promiscuity with women (NHC), “cured” by finding the right woman (NG) or erased by suicide (NG). Admittedly, there are gay characters in Margarida Rebelo Pinto’s novel Pessoas Como Nós including one of the three main female narrators. The most significant male gay character is infantilised by his nickname, Pirolito, and is apparently a misfit within gay society, associated by the narrator with frivolity and illegal pastimes: Costuma dizer que só por acaso é que é gay. Apesar de viver rodeado deles, nunca se encaixou nos rituais da classe; nunca entrou em loucuras coletivas, os seus melhores amigos são heterossexuais e quando chega o Verão não se enfia numa pensão em Ibiza a aviar carne fresca todas as noites, entre pastilhas, shots e linhas de coca. (PCN, 68) 26 TPF
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Even so, the narrator (frustrated in love, naturally) manages a swipe at heterosexual men and women, and ends up describes the “gay best friend” known from US television shows such as Will and Grace or Sex and the City, and Hollywood films like The Next Best Thing and My Best Friend’s Wedding. Pirolito becomes a kind of accessory: confidant, style adviser and reliable companion: 26
[He usually says that he is only gay by chance. Despite being surrounded by them all the time, he has never gone along with the rituals of his class; he never joins in crazy group antics, his best friends are heterosexual and in summer he doesn”t slip off to a hostel in Ibiza to hunt for fresh meat every night and take pills, shots and lines of coke].
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Ninguém percebe que o Pirolito seja mais equilibrado e mais maduro do que a maior parte dos tipos da minha idade. Ninguém percebe que ele tenha sempre tempo para mim e me faça mais companhia do que qualquer outra amiga, sem os dramas inerentes às mulheres de trinta, essas histórias sempre iguais […]. (PCN, 69) 27 TPF
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Lesbians are even less visible in this kind of literature. Rebelo Pinto’s plain, overweight, bitter Maria do Carmo falls in love with her sister-in-law Kika, another “Ugly Duckling” (PCN, 80), and leaves her husband. Her behaviour is explained gradually, as details of her past are revealed: her father was a womaniser who beat her mother into submission and abused her sister. Ironically, Maria do Carmo is one of the few characters whose story ends happily. Lina is another lesbian, a peripheral character who is colourful and eccentric, but nobody’s fool. She is described affectionately (?) as “a chefe do bando das fufas de 1,47m, daquelas baixinhas poderosas que, quando levantam o sobrolho, são capazes de silenciar uma sala repleta de homens” (PCN, 209). 28 These portrayals are extreme and cartoon-like, serving to reinforce stereotypical ideas about homosexuals, confirming preconceived ideas about their appearance, their taste and situating them firmly outside the mainstream – “they” are not “people like us”. Abortion is not an issue, partly because pregnancy occurs as a result of love, in this romantic world, but also TP F
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27
[Nobody understands that Pirolito is more balanced and more mature than most of the blokes my age. Nobody understands that he always has time for me and is better company than any other (female) friend of mine, without any of the dramas inherent in being a woman in her thirties, the same old stories …] TP
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28
[head of the band of 5 foot dykes, one of those women who are short but powerful and can silence a roomful of men just by lifting an eyebrow]. TP
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because the protagonists have access to a gynaecologist, the best family planning advice, and if the worst came to the worst could afford to go abroad for a quick operation. Rita Ferro mentions abortion briefly but with embarrassment: Pisou um insecto na casa de banho e, na manhã seguinte, foi encontrá-lo no mesmo sítio, ainda agonizante, oscilando as antenas./ Esmagou-o com o pé, com o dobro da força de que precisava, e pensou que se estivesse a matar um cavalo os seus escrúpulos aumentariam./ - Será tudo uma questão de tamanho – lembrou-se./ E, na sequência desta pequena descoberta, pensou, estranhamente envergonhada, nessa monstruosa questão do aborto. (NG, 98) 29 TPF
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Literatura light varies in tone from the humorous, cynical pastiche to the catalogue of complaints that cast women in the role of victim. There must be something of the melancholy Portuguese fado in these laments at lost or unattainable love. The texts are self-aware in that the characters often comment that what is happening to them could only happen in a fairy story, book, film or telenovela. The girl doesn”t always get the man, and when she does, he is not enough to make her happy. Nor is self-awareness, fulfilled creativity or the rewards of hard work. The heroine seems doomed to cyclical disappointment, masochism and discontent.
29
[She trod on an insect in the bathroom and, the next morning, found it in the same place, still in agony, waving its antennae./ She crushed it with her foot, with twice as much force as was necessary, and thought that if she had been killing a horse, she would have many more scruples./ “It must all be a question of size,” she thought./ And, following on from this small discovery, she thought, strangely embarrassed, about the monstrous question of abortion]. TP
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Pessoas Como Nós [People Like Us]: Painting Contemporary Portuguese Society
To tell their stories, the writers use copious dialogue, colloquialisms and regionalisms: “escrevem como falam, jogando com vocabulário anglo-saxónico, informação científica, informação histórica, mitologia grega, notícias da Internet, tudo no grande caldeirão vocabular”. 30 Conversations held in nightclubs and restaurants, or on the mobile phone, e-mails, letters and even putative novels written by the characters themselves are all naturalistic representations of colloquial speech that increase the illusion of immediacy and reality, and strengthen the reader’s feeling of complicity with the characters. 31 There are nudges and winks to the reader in a lot of the social criticism made by characters and narrator in a worldweary and often comical way: TPF
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Desinteressei-me da vida cosmopolita desta cidade provinciana onde todos se cruzam e se conhecem. […] Há muito que me cansei de ser portuguesa e de cá 30
[they write as they speak, playing with a range of vocabulary: anglo-saxon, scientific information, historical information, Greek mythology, news from the Internet, all brought together in a big mixing pot]. (Miguel Real, 125). TP
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31
“Il y a, de toute évidence, chez les nouvelles romancières portugaises la recherche d’un ton que est celui de l”immédiateté et de l’identification du lecteur (lectrice). Le modèle de construction de leurs récits est du côté de l”oralité et de la dynamique discursive. Dans cette perspective, les romans se font le lieu de retentissement d’un discours collectif propre à une génération gavée d’images publicitaires et connaissant une certaine liberté sexuelle” [Clearly, among the new Portuguese women novelists one can identify a search for a tone of immediacy and identification with the reader (male or female). The way they construct their tales is by using orality and dynamic discourse. Within this framework, the novels become the repository of a collective discourse that belongs to a generation gorged on images from advertising and who have access to a certain amount of sexual freedom] (Besse). TP
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viver. Queria mais e melhor. Um lugar onde sentisse a vida a pulsar e acontecessem coisas interessantes e diferentes em vez deste marasmo nacional podre e acomodado, onde todos se instalam em esquemas de favores e cunhas, jogos de cama e lobbies mais ou menos ranhosos, mas nem por isso menos eficazes. A sociedade vive fechada dentro de si mesma, como se todos tivessem um umbigo gigante e palas como os burros para olharem sempre e só numa mesma direcção. (SL, 45) 32 TPF
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Também se exasperava com a passividade dos Portugueses, muito embora sabendo que a passividade podia ser sinónimo de bonomia, atitude afinal tão próxima da bondade! Além disso era o seu povo, e ela adorava-o, mesmo que cheirasse mal! (NG, 33) 33 TPF
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Literatura light is not only descriptive of a particular sector of Portuguese society but also prescriptive in the characters” judgements about taste and lifestyle. The female characters are obsessed with their appearance, emotions and sex lives and all too often painted as passive victims: exactly the figures 32
[I’ve lost interest in the cosmopolitan lifestyle of this provincial city where you can’t avoid bumping into people you know. For a long time now I’ve been tired of being Portuguese and living here. I want more, a better life. Somewhere where I could feel life pulsating, where interesting and unexpected things happened instead of this rotten, complacent, national apathy, where everyone is involved in schemes of favours and contacts, sleeping their way to the top and more or less corrupt lobbies, but no less efficient because of it. This society lives closed in on itself, as if everyone had an enormous navel and were blinkered like donkeys in order to look always and only in one direction]. TP
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[She was also exasperated by the passivity of the Portuguese, although she knew very well that passivity can be synonymous with bonhomie, an attitude which is, in the end, so close to kindness. Beyond that, they were her people and she loved them, even if they smelled bad]. TP
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misogynist proverbs and jokes have ridiculed for centuries: “Amanhã serei melhor mãe. Não consigo desempenhar bem tantos papéis. Dá-me vontade de desistir de tudo o resto” (VA, 91). 34 They are written as if in a historical vacuum, focusing on self-gratification and clichéd values and ideas of what constitutes happiness. Although professing to be about real life, they ignore issues of which Portuguese women need to be aware and neglect to show the full range of options available to them. The characters in Rebelo Pinto’s Alma de Pássaro do indeed have their crosses to bear: childlessness, bereavement, drug addiction, suicide (so many problems, in fact, that the reader succumbs to compassion fatigue), all of which are part of subplots, less important than love relationships. Similarly, Maria João Lopo de Carvalho’s Adopta-me tries to deal with a huge range of serious social issues at once: abandoned children, beggars, abuse of immigrant workers, prostitution, drug abuse, frustrating bureaucracy and the incompetence of many professionals. Although her novel confronts the reader with these very real problems through the narrator’s pet causes, the social crises have to vie for space in the text with her passionate affair with a mystery man and the constant quoting of pop lyrics in English that, by implication, encapsulate her states of mind and put them into words better than she can. TPF
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Conclusion: Não Há Coincidências [Nothing in Common]
Such is the state of popular women’s writing in twenty-first century Portugal, a far cry from the key literary work by women in Portuguese: Novas Cartas Portuguesas, published in 1972 by Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta and Maria Velho da Costa (“the three Marias”). Their outspoken demands, in the text, for women’s rights, vivid descriptions of female sexual activity, puncturing of male ideas of virility, criticism of the 34
[I’ll be a better mother tomorrow. I can’t manage to play so many parts at the same time. It makes me want to give up everything else]. TP
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Church and government policy, and the mentioning of taboo subjects (masturbation, rape, abortion, incest, lesbianism) led to their arrest on charges of obscenity. The polyphonic text rewrites the seventeenth century story of Mariana Alcoforado, a Portuguese nun who fell in love with a French soldier. The Marias posed the question “Qual a diferença do tempo de Mariana?” and concluded “very little”, for in the 1970s women were still imprisoned by Church, state and family. 35 If we consider how women’s lives have changed between 1972 and 2004, the answer would appear to be “a lot”. Yet the evidence literatura light provides is not so encouraging. Despite all that the Marias fought for, books by the next generation of women, the Margaridas, reflect a society that is consumerist, familyoriented and submissive to patriarchal society in the form of husbands and bosses – as if nothing had changed. What is worse, the centuries-old perception of women’s writing as trivial and incompetent is upheld because literatura light TPF
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está sociologicamente a revelar a face de uma mulher tão ou mais imbecil que o mais imbecil dos homens urbanos, com o agravante desta imagem ser, não a da camponesa analfabeta do Alentejo ou a da mulher-adias de Angola, mas a da actual imagem da mulher portuguesa de elite, directora de relações públicas, gerente de conta bancária, professora do ensino liceal ou administradora de empresas. 36 TPF
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35
[What is the difference between now and Mariana’s time?]. Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, Maria Velho da Costa, Novas Cartas Portuguesas. TP
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[sociologically, it is revealing the face of a woman who is as stupid or more stupid than the most stupid urban man, the aggravating thing about this image being that we are not talking about an illiterate peasant from the Alentejo, or an Angolan cleaning lady, but the current image of the elite Portuguese woman, a public relations director, an accounts manager, a 206 TP
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In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf asked the question: “what will women actually do when they are free?” The Marias fought for women’s choices, yet the best-selling Portuguese women writers of today create characters who are “decorativas, absorventes” [decorative, absorbent], 37 take their rights for granted, with very traditional aspirations and concerns, whose most important choice is that of an ideal husband. TPF
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Works Cited
Alonso, Cláudia Pazos. Imagens do Eu na poesia de Florbela Espanca. Lisboa: INCM, 1997. Amaral, Domingos. “Vocês sabem lá.” O Independente 18 February 2000: np. Barreno, Maria Isabel, Maria Teresa Horta, Maria Velho da Costa. Novas Cartas Portuguesas. Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1998; 7th ed., orig. publ. 1972. Barrento, João. “A Quatro Mãos.” Suplemento Mil Folhas, Público 9 December 2000: 3. Belmonte, Mafalda. Inevitável. Lisboa: Bertrand, 2001. Besse, Maria Graciete and Nadia Mékouer-Hertzberg (eds). “Figurations du féminin dans la littérature portugaise produite par les femmes: une rhétorique de la différence.” Femme et écriture dans la péninsule ibérique. Tome I. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004. 33-42. P
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secondary school teacher or a business administrator]. Real, Miguel. “O feminino no masculino”. 37
Novas Cartas Portuguesas, p. 154. Cf.: “Em que mudou a situação da mulher? De objecto productor, de filhos e de trabalho dito doméstico, isto é, não remunerado, passou também a objecto consumidor e de consumo” [How has woman’s situation changed? From an object that produces children and so-called domestic (that is, unpaid) labour, she has also become an object that consumes and is consumed]. (idem 218). TP
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Bushby, Helen. “Colgan’s chick lit success.” February 2004. Carvalho, Maria João Lopo de. Virada do Avesso. Lisboa: Oficina do Livro, 2000; 16th ed. 2003. --- Adopta-me. Lisboa: Oficina do Livro, 2004. Correia, Clara Pinto. E Depois Pronto: Trinta Anos de Democracia. Lisboa: Relógio d’Água, 2004. DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. Writing Beyond the Ending. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Ezard, John. “Bainbridge tilts at ‘chick lit’ cult.” February 2004. Ferreira, Ana Paula. “Reengendering History: Women’s Fictions of the Portuguese Revolution.” After the Revolution: Twenty Years of Portuguese Literature, 1974-1994. Ed. Helena Kauffman and Anna Klobucka. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1997. 219-42. --- A Urgência de Contar. Lisboa: Caminho, 2000. Ferro, Rita. O Nó na Garganta. Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1990; 8th ed. 2002. --- Uma Mulher Não Chora. Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1997; 26th ed. 2002. Gil, José. Portugal, Hoje: O Medo de Existir. Lisboa: Relógio d’Água, 2004; 7th repr. 2005. Louis, Anja. “Melodramatic Feminism: The Popular Fiction of Carmen de Burgos.” Constructing Identity in Contemporary Spain. Ed. Jo Labanyi. Oxford: OUP, 2002. 94-112. Mexias, Pedro. “Boa sorte, Margarida.” Diário de Notícias 2 October 2001. February 2004. Neto, Joel. “Os livros são para ler.” Focus 18 August 2001. February 2004. Neves, Céu. “Ganham sempre pior.” Diário de Notícias, 8 March 2004. Ortigão, Ramalho. “A educação das mulheres.” As Farpas. Vol viii. Lisboa: Clássica, 1970. 149-66. P
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Owen, Hilary. Portuguese Women’s Writing 1974-1986: Reincarnations of a Revolution. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2000. Real, Miguel. Geração de 90: Romance e Sociedade no Portugal Contemporâneo. Porto: Campo das Letras, 2001. --- “O feminino no masculino.” Jornal de Letras (22 January 2003): 22. Rebelo Pinto, Margarida. Sei Lá. Lisboa: Oficina do Livro, 1999; 8th ed. 2003. --- Não Há Coincidências. Lisboa: Oficina do Livro, 2000; 29th ed. 2001. --- Alma de Pássaro. Lisboa: Oficina do Livro, 2001; 9th ed. 2003. --- Pessoas Como Nós. Lisboa: Oficina das Letras, 2005; 2nd ed 2005. Sadlier, Darlene, J. The Question of How: Women Writers and New Portuguese Literature. Westport: Greenwood, 1989. Women in Decision-Making, European Database: March 2004. . P
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Na tua face by Vergílio Ferreira: “… Towards a New Natural Order of Being” Isabel Pires de Lima (Porto University) This article uses endnotes instead of footnotes.
Todo o real precisa de outro real para existir. (Vergílio Ferreira 209) TP
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Havia ali uma outra ordem incompreensível a percorrer as linhas de um outro mundo possível e blasfemo e provocatório contra uma ordem ou decisão sem justificação nenhuma. (idem 210) Deve haver uma razão antes das razões que venha a haver e essa razão é que é. Não sei. (idem 78) 1 TP
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An ageing narrator tells us that he practices medicine, draws caricatures, and was once a painter in his spare time; that his name is Daniel, but also Dani; that he is married to Ângela, whom he doesn’t love, but does, and that he would have liked to have married Bárbara, also known as Babi; that he has two children – Luz and Luc – also known as Luzia and Lucrécio. Vergílio Ferreira’s Na tua face (1993) is built upon this tangled web of doubles. Unlike many of his other novels, this one does not involve the telling of a story. There is hardly any action but a minimal narrative nucleus that can be summarized as an encounter made up of the on-and-off relationship between Daniel and Ângela begun many years before, during their university days in Coimbra.
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Their eventual separation is brought about by the ghostly presence of Bárbara, a friend of the couple, who is constantly coming between them due to Daniel’s obsessive evocation of her. Daniel’s life is filled with interrupted relationships, with Ângela, with his children, with the few friends who crossed his path, with Bárbara, of course, with a job that never motivated him and, finally, with painting – postponed time and again. As usual in Vergílio Ferreira’s work, we are dealing with an evocative blend of novel and essay about remembering and philosophical reflection, with a strong lyrical dimension that “põe em cena o exercício de pensar” [foregrounds the exercise of thinking] in the apt words of Silvina Rodrigues Lopes (253). At first it may seem as though there are no significant changes here from the existentialist novels that the author had been developing in the 1980s where the themes of choice, freedom and lack of communication arose from the dysphoria associated with loss of meaning, alongside the theme of lost love and the anticipation of death as the limit of life. Nevertheless, in the novel under consideration the construction based upon doubles linked to the aforementioned paring down of the narrative herald the changes that subsequent novels will tend to amplify, changes that would lead Maria Alzira Seixo to admit that Na tua face is one of the novels written after Para sempre (1983) that marked a clear change in the main epistemological perspective of the author’s work. The game of doubles is visible right from the first page through the setting up of an unavoidable reflection between the enunciating I and the enunciated I. The enunciated I, first in time, becomes the second in relation to the enunciating I and follows it chronologically: the first I becomes a character in the narrative constructed by another I which is its double; in other words, one I turns the I into another I. This produces a space where alterity, or even an ontological shift, can be created. Lacan makes this very clear when he says: “Je pense où je ne 211
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suis pas, donc je suis où je ne pense pas” (277). The very first scene in the novel shows the “décalages” of space and time between enunciating I and enunciated I. The reader notices the discrepancy immediately. It is presented to her/him as ontological opacity: -Bárbara! e ela estacou instantânea, a entender. Depois rodou sobre si para donde ouvira o chamamento. Mas ficou ainda o chamamento. Mas ainda imóvel, não te movas. Ficou ainda imóvel, à procura de uma razão de eu estar ali a chamá-la. E foi esse breve instante que se me gravou para a vida inteira. O destino. Quem foi onde eu não estava? Alguém pois escolhe por nós o que escolhemos para a eternidade? Alguém. (9) 2 TPD
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Daniel/Dani, the doctor/painter, is both the I and the someone. He is a narrator who, through constant ontological duplicity, permits himself all sorts of impossible leaps in time and space. The reader will be disorientated by this apparently careless narrator who, without prior warning, speeds forward in time ten or twenty years, straddles spaces far apart in time and, to top it all, expressing himself with a disenchanted and naturally duplicitous irony. Daniel is engrossed in thoughts of Bárbara when Luc, his son, who has reached the “acne metafísica” [metaphysical acne] stage (141) as he calls it, interrupts him: - Que é que tu querias dizer há dias com isso de que é fácil hoje ser profeta? – pergunta-me ainda Luc. – Que o futuro para ti é perfeitamente previsível? - Luc, meu filho, depois te explico. Tenho agora de ir casar com a tua mãe, compreende. E ele compreendeu. E só daí a muitos anos voltou a pôr-me questões. Entender. Porque é que me vou casar contigo? Deve haver uma razão antes das razões que 212
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venha a haver e essa razão é que é. Não a sei. Ou não sei se a sei, vou ver se encontro alguma que me convenha. Por exemplo, tu podias ir gostando de mim sem saberes e quando deste conta já tudo estava decidido. […] Ou tu podias vir ao de cima do meu amor infeliz por Bárbara e que era muito grande e dava para te contaminar por aproximação. E eu amava-a ainda a ela quando te amava a ti. (78-9) 3 TPD
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Reality – what reality? – is indecipherable to the disoriented reader. Nor can they identify the identity of the enunciating and enunciated I or the someone mentioned above, all of which, in their duplicity, move from one different status and dimension of reality to another. An example of this is the moment when the narrator – in the role of Daniel, Ângela’s husband – relates the first signs of the illness that will eventually take her life. When he is describing the first time she fell down suddenly, without prior warning or apparent reason, a new paragraph starts abruptly and he says: “Mas enquanto não cais de novo e os teus olhos se te não forem apagando, acho que posso ir pensando no meu quadro” (238). 4 In other words the narrator/Daniel is erased and another narrator/painter appears. An identical interruption – this time by the narrating I – occurs at the point when Daniel describes the argument that he had with his wife concerning a name for their son: TPD
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Será Lucrécio se for rapaz – que estupidez, disse eu. Pois se nem utilizámos o método desse teu poeta – e eu tenho de contar o método. Mas não tenho tempo agora. (90) 5 TPD
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The novel will develop, then, by exploring a kind of multilayered fiction constructed between interlocking shifts in time and space and a clever game of permanent alternating between the self and the double. Moreover, the unconventional grammar of certain passages – such as: “Mas já desde criança, como toda 213
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a criança – entender” (72) 6 – seems to be serving that fictional strategy, as if one level of discourse were suddenly abandoned in favour of another, and always, obviously, to the detriment of any diegetic intention, which becomes merely residual. Luís Mourão makes the astute comment that the Vergílian novel tends to use what he calls “uma dobra específica” [a specific fold] that allows the author to make “a passagem do essencialmente diegético para o essencialmente discursivo” [the passage from the essentially diegetic to the essentially discursive] (291). In this novel that fold would be the expression “qualquer coisa assim” [something like that], which actually appears several times in this form or a similar one at moments leading up to the afore-mentioned section where the narrator observes and describes in detail a photograph of his parents and ends with the following phrase: “O ser olhado por um olhar sem olhos para olhar, qualquer coisa assim.” (120) [Being watched by a gaze without eyes to see, something like that.] It is these different aspects that combine to create the ludic structure of the novel – which demands close scrutiny. TPD
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The construction of characters as doubles, doubles of themselves and through similarity or in contrast to each other, gives the novel a dramatic tone that is expressed in the very title of the novel and that is confirmed in the vocative noun that begins and ends the text: “Bárbara!” All the characters are at once themselves and parts of other characters, and their opposites. They are all personae, or rather masks from behind which the actor speaks (per sonare) as in ancient Greek drama. This was the original definition of pessoa (person) before it gained its political-philosophical meaning. Each person is a little or a lot like her/his mask, a mask that brings one closer to others or protects one from others. Therefore the person is always a fiction, is always somewhat forced, or contrived. The persona, imago or effigies is after all the produce of craftsmanship and 214
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also means spectre, ghost or shadow. When a person introduces her/himself, s/he presents a representation: every person is her/his own double. The mask fits the face in such a way that the truth of an individual becomes (con)fused with the appearance, with how they appear to others. Seeming is being, the I is the double. The face is therefore a display, a stage where the drama of the self is played out. This is why Vergílio Ferreira called this novel Na tua face (In/on your face). But at the same time the person/character implicitly carries within it a denial, an emptiness, an absence, a lack, that cannot be apprehended completely and turns it into a not-there, or a there that is outside the visible there. Therefore, as well as incorporating the dimensions mentioned beforehand, the play of doubles will allude to the invisibility and reversibility of people and of the world. Just as Daniel/Dani is not just a doctor/painter, but also an I and a someone, the other characters are also doubles of themselves and each other, reflecting and mirroring each other in a complicated web of optical illusions that make things clear one minute and confuse them the next. The essence of the novel could be said to be an exercise in the multiplication of these games, and could be summarized by paraphrasing them. Ângela and Bárbara, the women in Daniel’s life, are set up in opposition to one another: they are two sides of the same coin, front and back, visible and invisible. He never loved the former, whom he married, or ended up married to, the way he did Bárbara, the latter, an absent and fleeting presence that he pursued throughout his life. Ângela is beautiful in a cold, blonde neutral way, she is a calm, collected “estátua de leite frio” (163) [statue of cold milk]. The narrator describes her as “Sóbria impessoal” (17) [Impersonally sober], so says the narrator of her, in a phrase composed of those two single words. Intelligent and obstinate, perfect in her “destino de perfeição a cumprir” (244) [destiny of perfection to be fulfilled], Daniel often asks himself whether 215
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there is blood in her veins or “sangue branco” (140) [white blood] and even wonders whether she is human, after she declares simply that she feels neither heat nor cold (cf. 49-50). Although she embodies this archetypal female beauty, Ângela will always have a doubled/doubling nature in Daniel’s eyes. From the moment they met, as students in Coimbra, he sees her firstly in association with Bárbara, with whom she shared both a house and a room, and afterwards as a substitute for Bárbara who had gone to England. By then, Ângela was already a presence that “ficava bastante ao lado” (235) [was always on the sidelines] for Daniel. She appears doubled to him, blurred across dimensions: […] e inesperadamente comecei a amar Ângela. Como se ama a essência de alguém em tudo o que a respirou. Amigos parentes. A casa em que viveu. Os objectos do seu uso e que foram também contaminados – mas não era só isso. Era Ângela em pessoa, olho-a pela primeira vez. Era a encarnação de um certo milagre que a transfigurava no que ela era, mas em transfiguração, qualquer coisa assim, bela e incompreensível. Todo o imaginário e iluminação dos homens pelos milénios, como o sol pela vidraça, a vidraça é a mesma mas é outra, trespassavam-na e deixavam-na intacta, eu penso-o agora para então, mas devo estar baralhado. (16) 7 TPD
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All Daniel’s life he must have wondered, as he does in a final summing up, just why he loved Ângela. “Gostava de saber” [I’d like to know], he says at one point, “porque te amo nesta forma estranha de te não ter amado nunca” (139) [why I love you in this strange way of never having loved you at all]. That love will always have a double aspect to it, it will always imply a game of mutual reflection between two gazes that see each other both in appearance and in the not-there mentioned above. After all, is 216
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this not what Daniel or Ângela (the identity of the voice that speaks this part of the narrative is deliberately ambiguous), says in an extremely beautiful formulation of the reversible and enigmatic nature of love: “vê se vês os meus olhos a verem-te” (253) [see if you can see my eyes seeing you]? One day Daniel is looking at a series of x-rays of Ângela and suddenly realizes that he is seeing Ângela “no seu invisível” [in her invisibleness], in the “ser oculto de si” [hidden being of her], in her “essência corpórea de si” [the bodily essence of her]: Ela era dupla na frescura do seu corpo, no branco rosa da face, nos olhos marinhos, e no que era tudo isso em armação por dentro. […] Pela primeira vez eu tinha duas Ângelas e não me era fácil meter uma na outra. Era tão fascinante integrar a de fora na de dentro e tentar achar nesta a individualidade da outra. (97-8) 8 TPD
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In other words, Daniel has a sort of revelation that nature itself is double; there are always two sides even to beauty and this question will become crucial to the book. Beyond what the mask displays is the not-there that she hides but that is just as important in the constitution of the person and her beauty. This is where the reader senses the introduction of an extremely disturbing ontological oscillation, a (con)fusion of clear spatial coordinates and an axiological opacity that leads to a questioning of values, particularly in relation to the concept of beauty, as we shall see. To Daniel, Ângela, in spite of being so cold and perfect, was at least a body whereas Bárbara was only an apparition, who would never have a palpable body; she is another archetype of femininity created from a moment of contemplation. She is both Ângela’s double and her opposite. In the following extract a young Daniel and Bárbara are sitting on a park bench in Coimbra: 217
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Então olhei-a em deslumbramento e terror no intocável do seu ser. Queria ver-lhe os olhos verdadeiros e a boca e a face, mas não estavam lá. Porque eram só uma aparição difusa incontornável como a luz do ar que não se via e era só iluminação. Mas a certa altura não pude mais e disse – volta, sê toda. No corpo palpável, deixa-mo palpar. No rosto, nos seios, deixa. Via-lhe a face mas só no impossível como lha vejo agora. (29) 9 TPD
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All Daniel’s life, on the street, at home, in his memory, Bárbara (in contrast to the day-to-day living presence of Ângela) is a ubiquitous ghost and a frightening corporal manifestation of plenitude, of perfection and, in sum, of eternity. 10 But even though she is able to “coalhar a eternidade no humano” [curdle eternity in human form] (a beautiful metaphor from the novel), Bárbara herself has a double face vulnerable to the corruption of time. 11 Fifty years have left their cruel marks on Bárbara’s face, which Daniel describes in great detail, down to the surprising "falta de um dente no sorriso” (282) [tooth missing from her smile]. 12 However, this game of front and back, of transparencies (X-rays and other kinds), is also played out on Bárbara’s face: TPD
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Reparei que pouco a pouco eu ia passando através de toda a sua face enrugada e divisava através dela como de um vidro sujo a sua face antiga inatingível que estava do lado de lá e não nela, no vidro. […] Levantámo-nos e de súbito eu vi, eu vi o rosto de Bárbara rejuvenescer, a face lisa de esplendor. (284) 13 TPD
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Clearly this double dimension to Bárbara, like that of Ângela, also generates a certain ontological oscillation, a (con)fusion of spatial, and here also temporal, coordinates. In this case, however, Daniel does not seem to be heading towards a revision 218
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of the traditional concept of beauty or a toning down of the beauty/horror opposition, as happened previously. This can be seen in the continuation of the last quotation: Levantámo-nos e de súbito eu vi, eu vi o rosto de Bárbara rejuvenescer, a face lisa de esplendor. E imprevistamente era aí que eu repousava, na tua face, na imagem final do meu desassossego. (284) 14 TPD
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This section appears towards the end of the novel, which might indicate that Daniel is fixated on an image of untouchable, splendorous and unattainable beauty. However, this is not what will happen, or this is not all that will happen. This game of masks and doubles is occasionally interrupted by a sort of carnival of horrors, turning the world upside down and back to front, and leaving the wrong side exposed. The text reveals worlds of deformity or mutilation, set up in opposition to a supposedly “well-formed” world, of wholeness and normality. Daniel’s hysterical cries, for example, calling out to the ghostly Bárbara, help to create an expressionist tone in the novel, which includes further scenes of excess: 1) the wheelchair race in which ‘Serpa the Toad’ takes part and the swimming contest that follows it (42-47) 15 ; 2) the sight of the beggar with the horrendous pelican chin, which suddenly contaminates everyone on the street who then also appear to have “uma bolsa de papeira suspensa do pescoço” (81) [a sagging sack of skin hanging from their necks]; 3) a wild scream that suddenly ‘kicked’ Daniel’s cranium, heralding the appearance of “uma multidão de aleijados” [a crowd of cripples] in a grotesque procession that filled the streets, stretching “para lá do horizonte” (83-4) [beyond the horizon]. Later in the text there is another invasion of the streets by disoriented cripples, bumping TPD
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into each other, described as real “restos sórdidos da humanidade” (232) [sordid remains of humanity]. Further on in the novel, a string of blind people encircle the town, along with drowned bodies, twisted frames, crowds of starving, skeletal figures and “doentes e criminosos e assassinos e vendilhões e corruptos e perjuros e doidos” (249) [the sick and the criminal and murderers and pedlars and swindlers and perjurers and lunatics]; the sudden hallucinatory sight of the street “coalhada de esqueletos” [clotted with skeletons], in a “chocalhada de ossaria” [rattling of bones], impressive in its uniform rhythm (99-102); the deformity that Daniel sees surfacing suddenly in Ângela’s face as she is giving a lecture (145); the times when he thinks about painting a portrait of his son Luc (158-9) whom his gaze starts transforming horrifically until the boy becomes a Christ-like figure, “pregado numa cruz e as carnes cheias de grandes bolsas pendentes, a cabeça suspensa de lado e a boca aberta cheia de um sofrimento horrível” (160) [nailed to a cross and his flesh covered with great sagging bags of skin, his head hanging to one side and his open mouth full of terrible suffering”; the “A Carantonha” [Ugly Mug] photography competition in which his daughter Luzia takes part, whose aim is to push the limits of deformity by putting it side by side with a natural face (208-10); the hideous face of Barbara’s handicapped child, which looked like the snout of a “pequeno suíno em pé” (281) [a small swine on its hind legs].
These dark scenes inevitably recall images from the works of Raul Brandão, one of the authors recognized by Vergílio 220
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Ferreira as one of his literary ancestor. They are pervaded by an emphatically grotesque atmosphere that, rather than hiding it, accentuates the tragic dimension of the human condition. Daniel’s transforming gaze captures this grotesque atmosphere, enabling him to assert a transgressive attitude when confronted by what the human condition has set up as normality and to defend, transgressively and provocatively, the dignifying and sublimation of abnormality or non-normality. This assertion is made in the novel through self-conscious philosophical meditation and parody. Moreover, right at the beginning of the novel, when talking about his taste for caricature, Daniel interweaves the act of transfiguration involved in caricature (and parody too) with his meditations on humans and their masks: Tenho horror ao natural, a não ser quando ele já o não é, suponho. Distorcido maligno estropiado. E então é só copiar. Mas eu gostava mesmo assim de ajudar a Natureza no seu desaforo. Alguns queixavam-se-me do massacre. Eu adorava. Pegar num rosto e devastá-lo de horror e ficar igual ao que estava por fora mas se não via por estar por dentro. Revelar o que se não via e deitar fora o que não deixava ver. Agora penso. Ser a verdade do que se mistificou, às vezes vem-me à ideia. (11) 16 TPD
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Transfiguration enables one to reveal the other side of the truth, of what is real. In fact, in one meditative passage, Daniel concludes that “O grotesco é isso, ver o contrário dele” (108) [That’s what the grotesque is, seeing its opposite], after considering that the crippled exists in relation to the healthy or the mad in relation to the sane. The real does not exist, “Porque todo o real precisa de outro real para existir. […] Mesmo um qualquer objecto tem um outro atrás dele e é por isso que a gente em miúdo gosta sempre de o tocar para o apanhar – tens a vista nas mãos? Costumam ralhar as mães”(208). 17 This brings us back to the question of doubles that is so important in this novel, TPD
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where everything is duplicated. Reality is only perceived partially, from a point of view that shows only one of its sides. But there is always another side to it, submerged, subliminal, and hidden, revealed by the X-rays that Daniel, as a doctor, can consult or exposed by anatomical examination. The photographs Luz takes, and a certain painting evoked in the book, are also capable of capturing that hidden side. Everything in Nature, including human beings, has two sides to it: a front and a back, one side visible, the other invisible. At one point, when pondering on the newspaper cartoons he draws, Daniel wonders: Tenho a verdade deles na minha cara ao espelho, mas havia por baixo dela outra verdade que era a verdade da Terra. A linha que ela traça a direito e vai atirando para os lados e para trás a beleza, o horror, as deformidades, os coxos, os marrecas, os génios, os escaravelhos, os sistemas de pensar, os sistemas morais, os sapos, os hipopótamos, os taralhoucos, os santos, os criminosos, as religiões e as políticas e a pancadaria que ambas vão desenvolvendo para terem a razão que não tem, e o mais e o mais e o mais. (62) 18 TPD
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This acute awareness of the reversibility of what is real and his experience of all kinds of doubling lead Daniel to what is probably the central motive of this novel: the subversion of the opposition between beauty and ugliness and the conclusion that everything in the human that derives from nature is beautiful or at least is beautiful in another order of life. Such an order captures the images resulting from direct perception of the objects and those which leading on from that perception become autonomous ghosts, as happens in art. It certainly happens in the paintings Daniel evokes – one by Picasso, never named but easily identified as Les demoiselles d’Avignon (94 e 108-10) and his own works, his portrait of Ângela deformed (187) or the 222
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picture of a shapeless Luc that he once imagined (158-9) – or in Luz’s photographs that he describes (220 e 258-60). When referring to the experience of looking at one of those photos Daniel witnesses the growing autonomy of the images: Voltei a olhá-la e ela começou a ser quase só fotografia e menos o motivo dela. Luzes e sombras. Um jogo. Uma figuração inocente. Um entretenimento leve do imaginário. Sobretudo, acho que é de pensar, sobretudo porque o seu real era agora absolutamente nada. Viva por si, a fotografia, não tinha suporte, corpo que se imaginasse para a terra, talvez apenas uma poeira aérea de cinza, uma coisa assim. (259) 19 TPD
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At the very beginning of the novel Daniel says he has a “filosofia da fealdade” (20) [a philosophy of ugliness] which he decides to think about and which will distance him from Plotinus’s concept of beauty defended by one of his colleagues, for whom ugliness is not part of the divine order. 20 From this idea he develops an awareness that ugly and beautiful are cultural concepts created by the “trabalho inventivo do homem” (56) [man’s inventiveness]. They are nothing more than that: human constructions that can only be thought of in historical terms and that unnerve man, preventing him from calmly accepting his double, multiple and prolific nature and from unquestioningly respecting the biblical passage used by Ferreira as an epigraph to this novel: “Viditque Deus cuncta quae fecerat et erant valde bona” (7) [And God saw all that he had made, and it was very good] (Genesis I, 31). TPD
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I shall return to this question but not before contrasting it with the philosophy of Lucretius, which pervades this novel explicitly and almost insidiously – doubly. Lucretius is one of Ângela’s favourite authors, translated by her as part of her Classical studies and the subject of her thesis research. She uses his words 223
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to find solutions to all her problems and to understand the world around her, even to the point of naming her son Luc after him. The materialistic epicurism of Lucretius surfaces time and again in Ângela’s defence, upheld by Daniel, of a philosophy that allows man to reach a certain ataraxia and imperturbability, free from passions, gods and fear of death, sine qua non conditions of happiness. In fact, “nada na Natureza é justo ou injusto. […] nada tem significado” (146) [nothing in Nature is fair or unfair. […] nothing has meaning], just as nothing is beautiful nor ugly, positive nor negative. Therefore, whilst Ângela, almost prophetically proclaims in a lecture: “O homem de amanhã será um homem natural, limpo de todas as ilusões e tranquilo” (146) [The man of tomorrow will be a natural man, cleansed of all illusion and tranquil], Daniel proposes the invention of “Uma filosofia que meta tudo no mesmo saco desde o mais alto que se chama a beleza virtude perfeição, até o mais baixo que se chama ordinaríssimo e excrementício” (69) [a philosophy that puts everything in the same bag from the highest, called beauty, virtue and perfection, to the lowest, called vulgar and excremental] (emphasis mine). In other words, this is another way in which the novel approaches a questioning of values, a clear axiological relativization between the beautiful and the ugly, a differentiation inherent in human nature itself that leads Maria Alzira Seixo to associate the author of this novel with an attitude of negativity closer to post-modernism rather than modernism, when she reminds us that “esta experiência da negatividade da criação e da natureza não é feita à maneira, por exemplo, de Kafka ou de Céline, onde negativo implica a preterição do positivo mas por isso mesmo ainda o afirma, antes postula a indiferenciação absoluta das suas categorias” [this experience of the negativity of creation and of nature is not the same as, for example, Kafka or Céline, where negative means an omission of the positive but asserts it in the process; instead it
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demands an absolute lack of differentiation between the categories] (218). I noted above that a toning down of values takes place throughout the novel through systematic philosophical meditation and through parody. An example of this parodic tone appearing in the most forceful manner in a forgery painted by Daniel. It concerns a race described in the Iliad, to which Ângela had alluded when she was working on the funeral games celebrated in ancient times: E imediatamente Aquiles dá o sinal de preparar. Correm Ajax, Ulisses, Antíloco e o Serpa sapo com as suas tamancas e o cu de sola. E põem-se todos em linha, atentos ao sinal de partida. Serpa sapo quer meter-se entre Ajax e Ulisses mas eles dizem tira-te daí, sapo, e empurram-no para fora da glória. […] E assim que deu o sinal, Ajax rompeu numa aceleração endemoinhada, mas Ulisses vinha logo atrás, queimando-lhe a nuca com a respiração. Então Serpa largou também numa multiplicação vertiginosa dos movimentos, atirando o cu a uns metros, indo apanhálo com as mãos e largando-o logo atrás. Ou fazendo pernas dos braços e movendo-se rapidíssimo no ar. E na sua rapidez eu já não distingui o que era o tronco e os braços como no trémulo de certos quadros futuristas. Ajax corria em flecha. Ulisses em cima dele, mas o Serpa não os largava e não se deixava distanciar com o Arquíloco já lá para trás. E foi quando Ulisses se pôs a chorar indecentemente pela Atena e ela veio e rasteirou de um modo infame o Ajax que afocinhou em cheio na bosta de boi. Serpa, muito esperto, aproveitou a confusão que se fez e acelerou ainda mais o ritmo vertiginoso do andamento. Havia ali muita bosta e ele caiu de cu em peso, esparrinhando a bosta para todo o lado, os braços cheios também dela, e a própria Atena também apanhou com uma chapada na parte baixa do peplos e perguntou quem é este tipo imundo? Mas ele 225
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nem olhou, largado à sua fúria desvairada de escaravelho. E quando Ulisses e Ajax ainda estavam em discussão e Atena a dizer-lhes acabem lá com isso, já o Serpa chegava à meta, coberto de esterco bovino. E Aquiles só deu conta quando Serpa ergueu súbito os braços em triunfo e ele apanhou também na cara com a sua dose. Então vergou-se e perguntou quem és? Quem te mandou, homúnculo de braços sujos, meter-te na corrida sagrada onde não tinhas nada que cheirar? - Vim correr. Vim do futuro. (53-4) 21 TPD
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As well as the anachronisms that dissolve the distance between past and present, or rather, between the remote past of Ancient times, the recent past in Coimbra and the present time of the narrator, Daniel’s easily diverted gaze erases the distance between men and gods or, to be more precise, between heroes, gods and homunculi-toads all competing on an equal status; in the mishaps of the race and in the abjection, all the runners become (con)fused with animals – Ajax falls on his snout, Serpa the Toad is described as a scarab and everyone, including Athena, is hit by the ox-dung. This equation of past/present and non-selection frequently appear in post-modern narratives as ways of producing the aforementioned axiological indetermination, or, to use one of Daniel’s formulas quoted above – putting everything into the same bag. To a certain extent Lucretius’s text, which in a subliminal way permeates the novel, is in itself the object of parody, in the sense described by Linda Hutcheon of approximation through an ironic re-contextualization but simultaneous distancing. Ângela’s reverence for Lucretius’s thought is counteracted by a certain careless tone that the narrator uses when he refers to that exclusive and obsessive fixation, clear from the expressions he employs such as “o teu poeta” [your poet]. Thus Lucretius also ends up being a target of de-canonization. 226
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I return now to the question of beauty and ugliness. Daniel was working on an eternally postponed project: a large-scale painting, for which he had already made several studies, drawn outlines, planned designs, but never got further than his anxiety and a bare canvas. The starting point was a smile, to go on a face, but the restless painter wonders, “donde vens?” (239) [where do you come from?], and that question leads him to run through a whole range of smiles, of laughter of all kinds until he reaches the “grito uníssono” [unisonous scream] and, finally, the “horror inaudível” [inaudible horror] of an image that he will never manage to pin down. 22 . It is as though he goes through every possible contortion of the face, in a metamorphosis ranging from the ambiguous smile of the Mona Lisa to the deformed face of Munch’s The Scream – these paintings are inevitably called to mind even without explicit allusions to them. In other words, the reader is led through multiple forms of portraits from the history of painting and consequently to the question of representation in art and to the impossibility to capture all facets of the truth, of reality. The question of representation in art and the avoidance of any mimetic principle has been a central aspect of Vergílio Ferreira’s self-reflexive narrative, also visible in his interest in painting and art theory. Luís Mourão reminds us how Ferreira wrote novels in which the story is told “por manchas, ou seja, segundo um princípio não mimético que libertaria o romance para outras tarefas” [patchily, in other words, according to a non-mimetic principle that frees up the novel to carry out other tasks]. 23 This is why throughout the novel the narrator repeats exercises of the same kind as the wide-ranging process of metamorphosis mentioned above. Another example can be found in the description of Picasso’s Les demoiselles d’Avignon where reality spreads beyond the limits of referenciality, so that the “mulheres-cabras” [goat-women] become “belas numa outra ordem da vida” (95). [beautiful in another order of life]. A similar exercise is rehearsed in the portrait of Ângela disfigured TPD
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after a visit to the dentist which has left her swollen face distended “até ao limite da passagem para uma outra espécie humana inexistente” (187) [to the limit of passage into another inexistent human species]. This example echoes the imagined portrait of Luc, where, according to Luís Mourão there is “um trabalho de alargamento de possíveis dentro de um mesmo plano de significação” [a broadening of possibilities inside one plane of meaning” 24 , in a way that will not lead to any sort of hierarchy. Why beautiful? Why horrible? Daniel’s “tender” portraits of his children are so beautiful, like the one he is now making of Luc, with an excess of aesthetic, brutally grotesque concepts approaching the work of Francis Bacon – a painter who Ferreira found particularly interesting during the writing of this novel, according to his friend Vasco, a well-known Portuguese caricaturist. In fact, concepts drawn from Bacon’s art seem to colour Daniel’s ideas: TPD
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A história da pintura fora quase sempre a da complacência agradabilidade, para nos deitarmos nela e dormir uma sesta. A outra, a outra, cheia de ferocidade como a raiva de um cão. Assassina. Bestial. Há que dar notícia da bestialidade das coisas. Não, não é a caricatura. Porque na caricatura há sempre um limite que trava a hemorragia do horror. Na pintura não, há a lei da vida, é preciso desabafar. (187) 25 TPD
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And, in the case of Luc’s portrait, his future suicide is glimpsed through a process of increasing monstrousness incredibly similar, in the aesthetics of excess undertaken and in the treatment of light, colour and space, to a painting by Bacon. This process is achieved through a muddling of the different stages of the violent struggle of the body against death by suffocation, made explicit in the dynamism and violence of the verbs used (“distendeu-se” [distended], “retorceu-se” [contorted], “estoiravam” [burst], “cerraram-se-lhe” [locked 228
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shut], “estrangula-lhe” [strangling], “arreganha” [grits], “enrolado” [twisted]) and in the animal features described, along with stages of putrefaction, revealing pathological themes (“viscosidade leprosa” [leprous viscosity], “papa de carne com verdete” [fleshy pulp turning green], “carnes cheias de grandes bolsas pendentes” [great sagging bags of skin]) 26 . The artist is a god of creation because he carries out the representation / transfiguration / metamorphosis of reality. He is a “Deus do Génesis e da promoção humana” (137) [God of Genesis and human promotion], Daniel says of himself when he sees the Chiado district full of animals: “E eu estava ao lado, encostado à ombreira da livraria e senti-me secretamente possuído de um poder divino. Estava no início da criação e do homem e hesitava sobre a forma de lhes organizar as feições. Se eu o fizesse do feitio de uma lombriga?” (136) [And I was at one side, leaning in the bookshop doorway and I secretly felt possessed by a divine power. I was at the beginning of creation and of man and was hesitating about how I should organize his features. What if I made him like a worm?]. He hesitates and considers various possibilities: a kangaroo, or a toad, or a scarab, or a snail, or, or, or…, ending up by asking himself: “que homem vou eu criar na extensão infinita dos possíveis?” (137) [what man shall I create when there is an infinite range of possibilities?] Possibilities that exist in contiguity, according to a non-hierarchical horizontal logic of inclusion. Whose is the image pursued by Daniel that leads him from smile to scream in front of the blank canvas? Is it the former unattainable face of Bárbara? Or is it her elderly wrinkled face? Is it the deformed image of Ângela? Or is it the horrible face of Bárbara’s disabled child whom Daniel says he wants to paint, the last time he sees her? And isn’t it this child, once his mother has let go of his hand, who Daniel will face in the final moments of the novel? He loses Bárbara, who has once again regained her “face lisa de esplendor” (284) [the unwrinkled face of splendour], and takes the hand of the crying TPD
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child. Is Bárbara’s splendorous beauty equivalent to the hideous face of the child? In other words, the indelible and fleeting smile that Daniel had projected onto his painting is replaced by the sobs of the child with the grotesque face. In the end, whose is the face referred to in the novel’s title, what is the mask? Daniel, at last the master of a “filosofia da fealdade” [a philosophy of ugliness] had actually set off towards “uma nova ordem natural do ser” (45) [a new natural order of being]. Will Daniel ever complete his painting? Or will he continue in a sort of eternal exercising of a multiple horizontal juxtaposition of scenes, of paintings (real or imagined), that will stretch him to the limit not only of the possibilities of representation but also the possibilities of human nature, or beyond the beauty-ugliness dichotomy that has been exploded in the meantime? The coincidence between the beginning and the end of the romance with Bárbara leaving, to England at the beginning and to the coast at the end, and with Daniel calling out “Bárbara!” on both occasions suggests a circular structure. Such a form is frequent in the contemporary novel, but not, as Maria Alzira Seixo reminds us, “no sentido de uma estrutura circular que se completa em plenitude, ou de uma espiral que se prolonga, mas de um retorno ao início de uma viagem que por isso mesmo não existiu” [in the sense of a circular structure that completes itself, or of a never-ending spiral, but of a return to the beginning of a journey that therefore never happened” (219). And it didn’t happen because there was no definite Meaning behind the journey, but only a multiplicity of contiguous meanings without a visible synthesis. And here one may also be tempted to share Seixo’s view of Ferreira as a writer “na encruzilhada do Modernismo com o Pós-modernismo” [at a crossroads between Modernism and Post-Modernism], fitting within both movements to a certain extent, and on the point of changing the dominant epistemological perspective of his work.
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In the few passages of Conta-Corrente where Vergílio Ferreira talks about the writing of this “ugly” novel, in his own words, he reminds himself that: “O tema a não perder de vista é a verdade de tudo na vida e na natureza, a integrar numa ordem incognoscível a realizar-se no infinito” [The important theme that I must not lose sight of is the truth of everything in life and nature, to insert into an incognoscible order and fulfil in the infinite]. 27 After all, on page 25 the novel, Daniel, who jumps from a present situated in the past of the childhood of his children to a future that the reader doubts whether, because it is being enunciated in the present of enunciation, is in fact the future in relation to this present, or in relation to the present situated in the past, says: TPD
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Tenho uma tela diante de mim no cavalete e vejo o mar. Ângela foi com os miúdos à praia, fiquei só. Levarei a tela até ao fim da vida, jamais a saberei pintar. Levantarei a tela até ao incompreensível e ficarei à porta. Ou só quando fechar os olhos para sempre eu a saberei. […] E saberei então que a beleza existe, mas tão incompreensível como a fealdade na sua verdade natural. (25) 28 TPD
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The “specific fold” of this novel (in Luís Mourão’s term) is, after all, as he notes, “um modo de concluir que não conclui” [a way of concluding that doesn’t conclude]. In the incredibly complex games of interlocking, telescoping and mirroring that comprise this novel, where everything is doubled, oscillating, indeterminate, undifferentiated, contiguous, non-hierarchical, it seems clear that from the questions about knowing the world or the possibility of ever knowing it that run through Vergílio Ferreira’s novels, he has moved on to a questioning of the world that is inconclusive:
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Porque? Disse eu. Sei lá. Toda a resposta é mortal, qualquer coisa assim, não sei. (76) [Why? I said. How should I know. Every reply is mortal, something like that, I don’t know].
Works Cited
Ferreira, Vergílio. Na tua face. Venda Nova: Bertrand, 2nd ed., 1993. ---. Conta Corrente – new series IV. Venda Nova: Bertrand, 1994. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966. Lopes, Silvina Rodrigues. “Prometer, dizer”. Exercícios de aproximação. Lisboa: Vendaval, 2003. Mourão, Luís, “Manchas – uma leitura de Cântico Final e Na Tua Face”. In Memoriam de Vergílio Ferreira (org. by María Joaquina Nobre Júlio). Lisboa: Bertrand, 2003. Seixo. Maria Alzira, “Vergílio Ferreira, Os modernos, os pósmodernos e a questão das dominantes a propósito de Na Tua Face”. Outros Erros. Porto: Edições Asa. 2001. 213-221. P
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Every reality requires another reality in order to exist.]
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There was another incomprehensible order travelling along the lines of another possible, blasphemous and provocative world against an order, a decision without any justification There must be one reason, before the reasons that are to come and that reason is the one. I don’t know what it is (all translations of Ferreira’s text are mine). Ferreira, Vergílio. Na tua face. Venda Nova: Bertrand, 2nd ed., 1993. P
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Bárbara! and she halted instantly, understanding. She then turned around towards the place from where she had heard the call. But the calling remained. But still not moving, don’t move. She continued standing still, searching for a reason why I might be calling her. And it was that brief moment that became engraved in my mind for the rest of my life. Destiny. Who went somewhere where I was not? So, does someone choose for us what
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we choose for eternity? Someone. (emphasis mine). 3
“What did you mean a few days ago when you said it was easy to be a prophet nowadays?” Luc’s questions continued. “That to you the future is perfectly predictable?”
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“Luc, son, I’ll explain later. Now I have to go and marry your mother, do understand.” And he did. Only many years later did he ask me about it again. To understand. Why am I going to marry you? There must be one reason, before the reasons that are to come and that reason is the one. I don’t know what it is. Or I don’t know if I know what it is, I’ll see if I can find one that suits me. For instance, you could have become fond of me without being aware of it and when you realized, everything had already been decided. [...] Or you could overcome my unhappy love for Bárbara, a love deep enough to contaminate you through proximity. And I still loved her when I loved you. 4
But as long as you don’t fall over again and your eyes don’t start fading, I think I can carry on thinking about my painting.
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Lucrécio if it’s a boy - what nonsense, I said. We didn’t even use the method of that poet of yours5 - and I have to explain the method. But I haven’t got time now. Ângela is a classical scholar absorbed in the translation of Latin authors, especially Lucretius, whose thoughts inform her view of the world and even her convictions in matters as unusual as the efficiency of certain methods of contraception. TP
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But already, since childhood, like all children - to understand. Or sentences like “E um ar feroz que também, quando havia cara” (115) [And a fierceness that also, when there was a face] or “Como é que” (123) [How is].
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…and unexpectedly I began to love Ângela. I loved her like one loves the essence of someone in everything that breathed her. Family friends. The house where she lived. The objects that she used and that were also contaminated – but it wasn’t just that. It was Ângela in person, I see at her for the first time. She was the incarnation of a kind of miracle that transfigured her into what she was but in transfiguration, something like that, beautiful and incomprehensible. All of the imagined worlds and illumination of men down the millennia, like the sun through the windowpane, the windowpane is the same but another, passed through her and left her intact, I think it now for then, but I must be confused. (emphasis mine). TP
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She was double in the freshness of her body, in the pink-white of her face, in her marine eyes, and everything that held her together from inside. […] For the first time I had two Ângelas and it wasn’t easy for me to fit one inside the other. It was so fascinating to place the outer one into the inner one and to try and find the individuality of one in the other (emphasis mine). TP
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And so I watched her in awe and terror into the untouchableness of her being. I wanted to see her true eyes and mouth and face, but they weren’t there. Because they were just a vague uncontrollable apparition like the light of the air that couldn’t be seen and was just illumination. But at a certain point I couldn’t stand it any longer and said - come back, be whole. In your palpable body, let me feel it. Your face, your breasts, let me. I could see her face but only in the impossible as I am seeing it now (emphasis mine).
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“Vem do fundo das eras, rarefeita até à essência da sua perfeição que não foi prevista por Deus. É uma perfeição instantânea frágil, não lhe posso tocar. Foi feita pelo ardor violento e vagaroso dos homens desde o sem-fim dos tempos, pelo crime excessivo, pela morte, e agora está ali e só eu a sei e todos a perderam para sempre. […] um dia hão-de perguntar-me como ousaste respirar sobre a sua face? Como ousaste demorar nela o olhar? É a essência do impossível, não a posso perder. Biliões e biliões de esforços para a conseguirem, fui eu o eleito, não posso. Está nela o infinito da beleza e da morte, que é o impossível maior.” (77) [She comes from the depths of the eras, thinned down to the essence of her perfection, unforeseen by God. It is an instantaneous, fragile perfection, I cannot touch it. It was made by the violent, lingering violence of men since the beginning of time, by excessive crime, by death, and now it is here and only I know it and everyone has lost it for good. One day they’ll ask me how did you dare breath on her face? How did you dare let your gaze rest on her? It is the essence of the impossible, I can’t lose it. Billions and billions of attempts to get her, I was the chosen one, I can’t do it. Inside her she holds the infinity of beauty and death, which is the greatest impossibility.] TP
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In Coimbra, Bárbara and Daniel look at the river: “Debruçámo-nos sobre ele do paredão ao largo do parque a vê-lo correr, e o tempo debruçou-se connosco e a eternidade coalhou em nós” (228-9) [We leaned out over the wall that surrounded the park, to watch it flow, and time leaned out with us and eternity curdled in us]. TP
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“A tua face. Vinham-lhe dos olhos, dos cantos da boca até ao queixo, o pescoço, estriadas gravadas fundo, ao longo da testa rugas de uma velhice de TP
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maldição. Cara gretada requeimada de secura aridez. Duas pelangas caídas do queixo até aos nódulos das clavículas. E as mãos ósseas um pouco enegrecidas, pareceu-me, pousadas mortas na mesa. E um certo horrível naquele todo encarquilhado” (282) [Your face. Around your eyes, from the corners of your mouth to your chin, your neck, deeply engraved grooves, across your brow the wrinkles of an accursed old age. Your face cracked, parched with arid dryness. Two dewlaps hanging from from your chin to the nodules of your collar-bone. And your bony, darkened hands, it seemed to me, resting dead on the table. And a something horrible in that whole wrinkled mass]. 13
I realized that little by little I was passing through all of her wrinkled face and could make out through her, as if through a dirty pane of glass, her former unreachable face that was on the other side and not in her, in the glass. [...] We got up and suddenly I saw Bárbara’s face rejuvenate, the smooth face of splendour (emphasis mine). TP
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We got up and suddenly I saw Bárbara’s face rejuvenate, the smooth face of splendour. And unexpectedly it was there that I rested, in your face, in the final image of my restlessness. 15 This first episode serves as an example: “[…] O Serpa sapo era um tronco sem pernas, ou só com dois cotos curtíssimos assente na cadeira de rodas e parecia-me alegre por cima desse tronco. […] E eu fui olhando os outros, corredores sem pernas, ou de pernas moles bamboleantes, ou de pernas com armações metálicas, ou como uma perna só. […] A seguir era uma prova de natação. Um dos concorrentes tinha só uma perna e um braço do outro lado. Um outro tinha só duas pernas. […] Havia ainda um outro, extraordinário, que tinha dois cotos de pernas e braços. […] Passa à nossa frente o dos dois cotos de pernas, cortadas rente aos joelhos, movendo-se sobre eles a passos rápidos e curtos. Passa a um nível baixo o dos dois troços de perna simétricos, não coxeava, tinha a verdade natural de um animal estranho. E só um braço a dar o balanço ao andar. […] Agora era no chão. E eram quatro. Sapo desceu-se ele próprio da cadeira e sentou-se logo na linha da partida. Tinham uma espécie de sola no traseiro para o assentarem e uma espécie de tamancos baixos nas mãos para a andadura. […] Depois não houve tiro mas um apito e imediatamente todos os sapos lançaram os braços o mais possível para a frente e vinham atrás buscar o traseiro para o atirarem o mais possível adiante e irem ultrapassá-lo com os braços outra vez. E de cu no chão, cu no ar, iam avançando. Serpa tinha um balanço terrível. As mãos com as tamancas ficavam-lhe muito atrás quando o cepo do tronco vinha sentar-se cá PT
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mais à frente. Depois as mãos iam o mais possível à frente e vinham buscá-lo atrás com uma rapidez de profissional. […] Havia um jogo rítmico nesse balancear de troncos e braços era como se se revelasse outra ordem da Natureza e houvesse outras leis estéticas, pensei, num mundo fantástico de seres humanos sem pernas.” (43-7). – [Serpa the Toad was a torso without legs, or with only two very short stumps, sat in a wheelchair and he seemed happy to me, above that torso. And I looked round at the others, runners without legs, or with limp bandy legs, or legs with metal frames attached, or with only one leg. Next came the swimming contest. One of the competitors had only one leg and only one arm. Another only had two legs. There was another extraordinary one, who had two stumps instead of legs and one arm. Past us goes the one with two stumpy legs, cut off at the knees, moving along on them with quick, short steps. Lower down, goes the one with two symmetrical stumps, he didn’t limp but moved with the natural truth of a strange animal. And only one arm that swung back and forth as he walked. Now they were on the ground. And there were four of them. Sapo got out of his wheelchair by himself and sat straight down on the starting line. He had a kind of sole under his backside, upon which he could be placed, and a kind of low clogs on his hands to help him forward. There was no pistol fired, but a whistle and straight away all the toads thrust their arms as far forward as they could and they lifted and hurled their bodies as far in front at they could and push their arms ahead again. They advanced: arse on the ground, arse in the air. Serpa was terrible at keeping his balance. His hands, with their clogs, got stuck behind him when the stump of his torso can to rest in front. Then his hands would go as far as possible in front and return to pick up the body with the speed of a professional. There was a rhythm to the swaying of the torsos and arms, as if revealing a new order of Nature, as if there were alternative laws of aesthetics, I thought, in a fantastical world of human beings without legs.] 16
The natural horrifies me, unless it stops being that, I suppose. Distorted malign ruined. And then it is only copying. But still I would really like to help Nature in its impudence. Some complained to me about the massacre. I loved it. To take a face and devastate it with horror and make it the same as it was on the outside but not seeing what was inside it. To reveal what could not be seen and discard what would not let itself be seen. Now I think. To be the truth of what was mystified, sometimes the idea occurs to me (emphasis mine). TP
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touch it to pick it up – do you see with your hands? That’s what mothers usually say to tell them off. Luzia asserts this point decisively: “- Não há real nenhum, muito séria intensa, que estranha esta filha. Quando era miúda, ela dizia tu perguntaste-me uma vez porque é que eu gostava de ver no espelho as imagens da rua, eu olhava a rua e olhava-a depois no espelho e havia uma diferença e eu não sabia porquê” (71-2) [There is no real at all, very serious, intense, how strange my daughter is. When she was little she would say you once asked me why I liked to see the images of the street reflected in the mirror, I looked at the street and then I looked at its reflection in the mirror and there was a difference and I didn’t know why]. 18
I have their truth in my face in the mirror, but underneath it there was another truth that was the truth of the Earth. The line that she draws straight and throws to either side and behind her, the beauty, the horror, the deformities, the lame, the hunchbacks, the geniuses, the scarab, the systems of thought, the moral systems, the toads, the hippopotamuses, the loonies, the saints, the criminals, the religions and the politics and the feuds that both develop in order to be right when they aren’t right, and so on and so on and so on (emphasis mine). TP
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I looked at it again and it started to be almost just a photograph and less the motive for one. Lights and shadows. A game. An innocent figuration. A light entertainment of the imaginary. Above all, I think it needs to be thought about, especially because its reality was now absolutely nothing. It lived for itself, the photograph, had no support, a body that could be imagined on the earth, maybe just ash-dust in the air, something like that. TP
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Indignant, Daniel reacts thus: “você diz que Deus se abstém de ter parte feita com as coisas feias? […] Você atreve-se a dizer que Deus não participa na lesma, no sapo e nas lombrigas? E em cada homem e no que é de cada homem desde o sorriso de uma donzela até a caca que você fez hoje?” (129) [you say God refrains from getting involved with ugly things? […] Dare you say that God had no part in making slugs, toads and worms? Or every man and what he is made of from a maiden’s smile, to the shit you produced today?]. TP
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And immediately Achilles gives the signal to get set. Ajax, Ulysses, Antilochus and Serpa the Toad, with his clogs and a sole under his arse, get ready to run. And they all line up, waiting for the race to be started. Serpa the Toad wants to be between Ajax and Ulysses but they say get out of the way, toad and push him away from glory. […] As as soon as the signal was given, Ajax bolted ahead in a frenzy of acceleration, but Ulysses was right behind him, breathing hotly down his neck. And Serpa the Toad also set off in a 237 TP
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dizzying whirl of motion, throwing his arse forward a few metres, grabbing it and hurling it forward straight away. Or turning his arms into legs and speeding through the air. He was going so fast that I could no longer distinguish his body from his arms as happens in the tremulous outlines of some futuristic paintings. Ajax shot forth like an arrow. Ulysses was on top of him but Serpa wouldn’t leave them alone nor would he let them get ahead with Antilochus already falling behind. And it was when Ulysses started cry indecently to Athena and she came and outrageously tripped up Ajax who fell snout-first into a pile of ox-dung. Cleverly, Serpa took advantage of the confusion and accelerated the rhythm of his movements even more. There was a lot of dung around and he landed full on his arse, splashing dung everywhere, his arms covered in it too and even Athena herself also caught a dollop on the lower part of her peplos and asked who is this disgusting guy? But he didn’t even look, possessed by wild scarab-like fury. And when Ulysses and Ajax were still arguing and Athena telling them to stop that right now, Serpa was already at the finishing line, covered in bovine manure. And Achilles only noticed when Serpa suddenly raised his arms in triumph and he too got his share of dung on his face. He then leaned over and asked who are you? Who sent you, homunculus with dirty arms, to take part in the holy race when you weren’t invited? - I came to run. I came from the future. 22
“[…] – donde vens? E quantas camadas infindáveis atravessaste para chegares até mim? E então pensei na verdade infinita desse sorriso até poder hoje sorrir. Ou rir. Sorriso de serenidade, riso da plenitude, da alegria da vida, da alegria selvagem, riso bestial com roncos de estertor, riso de escárnio, de ódio, vingança, insulto, riso carnívoro, riso infantil, de ingénuo, de taralhouco, riso imbecil, sorriso eclesiástico, riso cínico, riso altaneiro de pimponice, sorriso de timidez, de vexame de que se tenta o contrapeso, riso dos dentes, da garganta, do estômago, riso de um urro, de uma dor horrível, sorriso de piedade, desprezo, tolerância, riso oco sem dentadura, riso caquético em cacarejo, riso gordo de bochechas, riso magro de tísico, riso de ameaça insinuada como navalha, riso casquinado em troça entremeada, riso estúpido, riso inteligente, riso cruento. Riso. Donde vens? Que é que te transformou através das eras para seres hoje o só visível do horror? […] Mas insensivelmente os lábios foram-se separando um pouco. Um dente. Subtil iluminado de pacificação serenidade alegria de ser – se te demorasses um pouco. […] Fixar-te para sempre, riso da minha pacificação. Mas pouco a pouco houve primeiro um estremecimento aos cantos da boca. Pouco a pouco um encrespado na placidez dos lábios repousados um no outro e depois a TP
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boca alargada, vejo-a alargar-se por dentro do meu pavor. E os dentes já visíveis onde o ódio começa, a boca toda aberta, aberta. Rasgada, escancarada até ao limite do seu possível. Os dentes, a língua. E de súbito, entalada na garganta, de súbito um grito horríssono, ouço-o. Tapo os ouvidos, ouço-o. Horror, ódio, desespero. Vem das cavernas do Mundo. Das trevas de todas as noites. Rebenta-me os ouvidos, o crânio. Urro de massacre, a terra trema. Olho a boca selvagem, os dentes carnívoros. A língua. Aguardo que o urro se acabe. E com efeito, subitamente cessou. Mas a imagem imobilizouse no grito enorme que já se não ouve. É o horror inaudível, mas presente assim na imagem fixa. Sem estridor que a estremecesse. Mais plausível no imaginário de o ouvir.” (239-41) [where do you come from? And how many endless layers did you have to go through to get to me? And so I thought of the infinite truth of that smile until I was able to smile today. Or laugh. Smile of serenity, laugh of plenitude, of the joy of life, of savage joy, beastly laugh with growling death-rattles, of scorn, of hate, revenge, insult, carnivorous laugh, childish laugh, of the gullible, of the loony, ecclesiastical laugh, cynical laugh, proud, boasting laugh, timid laugh, laugh with which you try to counteract disgrace, smile with teeth, throat, stomach, a bellow of a laugh, of horrible pain, a pitying smile, contemptuous, tolerant, empty laugh without dentures, cracked cackle of a laugh, fat laugh from the chops, skinny consumptive laugh, threatening smile that slips in like a blade, ironic smirk of mockery, stupid laugh, intelligent laugh, bloody laugh. Laughter. Where do you come from? Who transformed you through the ages to be the only side of horror visible today? […] But without feeling it the lips started to separate from each other. A tooth. The subtle illumination of pacification serenity joy of being. – if you stay for just a while. […] To pin you down forever, laugh of my pacification. But little by little, first there was a twitch at the corners of the mouth, Little by little a crinkling in the placidity of the lips rested one on top of the other and then the broadening of the mouth, I see it widening from inside my fear. And the teeth already visible where the hate begins, the mouth open wide, wide open. Torn, wrenched open to its limit. The teeth, the tongue. And, all of a sudden stuck in the throat, suddenly a horrendous scream, I hear it. I cover my ears, I can hear it. Horror, hate, despair. It comes from the caves of the World. From the darkness of all nights. It bursts my ears, my skull. Scream of massacre, the shaking earth. I look at the savage mouth, the carnivorous teeth. The tongue. I wait for the scream to end. And, in fact, all of a sudden, it stops. But the image has become immobilised in the great scream that can no longer be heard. It is the inaudible scream but present in the fixed image. Without the shrillness that could rattle it. More plausible in the imaginary of hearing it.] 239
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Idem 289. Idem 295.
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The history of painting had been almost always a history of pleasant complacency, that one could curl up in and take a nap. The other, the other, full of ferocity like a dog with rabies. Murderer. Beast. One has to notice the bestiality of things. No, it is not caricature. Because in caricature there is always a limit that staunches the haemorrhage of horror. Not in painting, which follows the law of life, one has to let off steam. TP
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“E pouco a pouco a face de Luc distendeu-se retorceu-se e os dentes e os dentes. E todo o corpo deformou em aleijões, as pernas nuas monstruosas, os olhos empolados, e os dentes, os dentes, havia no rosto um riso assassino e eu pensei vai morder-me, a danação da vida entrou nele e havia no colorido de todo o corpo as cores da carne crua, do verde da carne podre e um ódio carniceiro e uma miséria de tripas adivinhadas na coloração do podre e vomitado. Todas as formas estoiravam de uma tensão bruta interior e agora a boca fechou-se, os olhos cerraram-se, a cabeça rebatida de uma dor violenta. Tem as mãos a apanhar o ventre, as pernas dobradas de miséria e aflição, os músculos flácidos e escorrentes de matéria gorda. O rabo de cavalo estrangula-lhe o pescoço, estende-se pelo chão e agora arreganha a boca e de novo os dentes, ouço-lhe um urro imenso de desespero […] ergue-se sufocado, as duas patas abertas, os pés grossos, as coxas distendidas, poderoso animal, mas a cor sempre, um verde azulado de podridão, os olhos enormes injectados, a luz baça do seu brilho, sentado numa cadeira retorcida, o espaço nu de um quarto talvez, o corpo enrolado sobre si, as mãos de novo apertadas no ventre, o rosto entumescido de bossas […] o corpo agora enrolado numa massa confusa, pernas braços numa viscosidade leprosa. Ou sentado numa latrina dobrado sobre si de esforço, ou com o queixo descido numa grande bolsa de bócio […], ou enforcado de cabeça torta e uma grande língua de for a, ou todo o corpo de novo enroscado numa papa de carne com verdete, ou só a cabeça num prato de metal, a boca aberta com as duas filas de dentes à mostra […] ou o corpo enrolado numa tina de sangue negro, ou só os olhos muito abertos com grandes arcadas a boiarem numa bacia, ou pregado numa cruz e as carnes cheias de grandes bolsas pendentes, a cabeça suspensa de lado e a boca aberta cheia de um sofrimento horrível […]”(15860) [And little by little Luc’s face distended and contorted and his teeth and his teeth. And all of his body deformed, his monstrous naked legs, his swollen eyes, and his teeth, his teeth, there was a murderous smile on his face and I thought he’s going to bite me, the damnation of life entered him and in the colours of his body the colours of raw meat, of green of rotten meat, and a TP
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bloodthirsty hate and a visceral misery suggested in the colour of rot and vomit. All the shapes burst from a brutal inner tension and now his mouth closed, his eyes locked shut, his head pounding with a violent ache. His hands hold his belly, his legs bent in misery and despair, his flaccid muscles and flowing with fatty matter. His pony-tail around his neck strangling him, spreads over the ground and now he grits his teeth, once again the teeth, I can hear the great growl of despair once again […] he rises choking, with both paws open, large feet, distended thighs, powerful animal, but the colour always, a bluish-green of rottenness, huge blood-shot eyes, their glazed brightness, sitting in a contorted chair, the naked space of a room maybe, the body twisted over on itself, his hands clenched over his belly once again, his face swollen with lumps […] his body folded over in a twisted mass, legs arms in a leprous viscosity. Or sitting on a latrine folded over itself, straining, or with his chin sunk into a great big goitre […], or hanged with his head flopping to one side, his great tongue lolling out, or once again the whole body curled over in fleshy pulp turning green, or just the head on a metal plate, mouth open with two rows of teeth showing […] or the body rolled up in a tub of black blood, or just the eyes wide open with great arches floating in a basin, or nailed to a cross and the flesh covered with great sagging bags of skin, his head hanging to one side and his mouth open, racked with horrible suffering […].] 27
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I have a canvas in front of me on the easel and I can see the sea. Ângela has gone to the beach with the kids, I stayed here alone. I’ll take the canvas to the end of my life, I will never know how to paint it. I’ll take the canvas until the incomprehensible and I’ll stay at the door. Or only when I close my eyes for good will I know it. [...] And then I’ll know that beauty exists, but as incomprehensible as ugliness in its natural truth. TP
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Part 2
The Value of Literature in and After the Seventies: The Case of Italy
La Valeur de la Littérature pendant et après les années 70: Le cas de l'Italie
The Historian, the Poet, and the Semiologist: Perspectives on the Post 68 Decade Robert Lumley (University College London) It is May 1968. The barricades go up in the Latin quarter of Paris as students occupy the Sorbonne. Students and workers march in their hundreds of thousands. The biggest general strike in history is called. General De Gaulle, the president of the Republic, flies to a French military garrison in Germany. For two months Paris wins back its reputation as the centre of European revolutions. Our poet is in Paris at the time. Or does he go there in order to find out what is happening? Anyway, he telephones back to Italy to report. He reads out the transcriptions he’s been making of the words, phrases and slogans that cover the walls around the university, in posters, in graffiti. In the Tartaruga gallery in Rome the gallerist Plinio De Martiis has organized a rolling exhibition called Teatro delle mostre (Theatre of Exhibitions): young artists are each given complete control of the space for one day in which they can do whatever they like. That day De Martiis and the artists transcribe the words and phrases read out by the poet in Paris directly onto the walls of the gallery. It is May 1968. She is in Dar es Salaam living in the old quarter on the Morogor Road. She is not yet a historian or does not think of herself as such. When she left Italy, she thought that she would not return. She had graduated. She had sold off her collection of Science Fiction and all her furniture. With her compagno she went in search of adventure and revolution in Africa. In 1968 she is working with FRELIMO –Frente de Libertação de Mozambique – the liberation movement that was 242
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fighting Portuguese imperialism in Africa. A knowledge of languages makes her useful as a translator and interpreter. As for our semiologist, I’m not sure exactly where he is when the May-June events are being played out in Paris. But I picture him at the university in Bologna. The events in France don’t entirely come as a surprise to him. The university in Turin had already been occupied in November-December the previous year, and in January some 36 universities in Italy were under occupation, including his own. He will have spoken with his friend the poet about developments. They had both been active members of the experimental Gruppo 63 and the poet was now editing a new review, Quindici, to which he contributes. Many readers will already have guessed the identity of the semiologist – Umberto Eco. The poet is, of course, Nanni Balestrini. The historian is Luisa Passerini. I have chosen these three figures as I believe that they can offer vantage-points from which to look again at the decade of the 1970s. I say “look again” deliberately as their publications also have a bearing on my own work on the period, notably States of Emergency. Cultures of Revolt in Italy 1968 to 1978. For me this conference has given me a welcome opportunity to revisit and perhaps revise earlier ideas and concerns. Balestini, Passerini, Eco. Why them?
Firstly, they are intellectuals ‘on’ or ‘of’ the left who actively engaged, in their different ways, with the politics of post 1968 Italy – politics, that is, in its widest sense. They are, in this respect, part of the longer story of impegno discussed by Jennifer Burns in her study Fragments of Impegno. Interpretations of Commitment in Contemporary Italian Narrative (2001). Their writings in the 1970s – articles, poems,
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books, pamphlets – deal either directly or indirectly with contemporary events and debates. Secondly, Balestrini, Passerini and Eco have written restrospectively about the experiences of ‘before’ and ‘after’ 1968. They have analysed and interpreted these experiences against the grain of how they were being represented in the mass media in the 1980s, a decade that saw the celebration of values and ideas that were the antithesis of those of the 1970s. Thirdly, the writings of these three figures are significant not just for what they are trying to say but for how they are trying to say it. They adopt interesting strategies in relation to form and genre that traverse and subvert traditional boundaries. The historian borrows devices more often associated with fiction. The semiologist writes novels. The poet turns historian. What I want to do here is to identify some key texts that are simultaneously about the politics of post 1968 Italy and about the process of writing about that politics. In this sense, the texts are also meta-texts. In part, the approach delimits an area for analysis in terms of period and place – namely, the post 1968 decade seen from the 1980s and the Italian context. I hope, however, that the paper will also raise questions that go beyond this framework – questions about memory, literary and other genres, politics. Nanni Balestrini and L’editore
When Nanni Balestrini ‘exhibited’ his I muri della Sorbonna at the Tartaruga gallery in 1968 he was linking the literary avantgarde and the emergent political contestation (Calvesi 1968). The writings were so many ‘found words’. Nothing was invented. There was no individual authorship or creativity. No signatures. No authentication. His work was a copy. As an artistpoet, Balestrini was making a verbal assemblage, putting together what he had found and making it strange by transposing the writing from one context (the walls of Paris) to another (a gallery in Rome). But the action could also be read as political. 244
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He was spreading the word, carrying out propaganda: “POPULARIZE THE STRUGGLES OF THE DIVINE MARQUIS”, “POWER TO THE IMAGINATION”, “IT IS PROHIBITED TO PROHIBIT”, “LEAVE FEAR OF THE REDS TO ANIMALS WITH HORNS”. In fact, the show marks a turning point in Balestrini’s work in this respect. In the early and mid 1960s Balestrini combines texts drawn from every kind of source. His Cronogrammi, for example, consists of words and sentences cut out from newspapers in their original typology and turned in collages (Balestrini 1963). His Tristano (1966) is described in the book’s blurb as “un romanzo senza trama e personaggi, il suo stile è, se così si può dire, il ‘non stile’: il livellamento anonimo del linguaggio derivato da un cumulo di materiali stilistici ‘prefabbricati’: stile dei romanzi rosa, stile dei libri di geografia […]come se spezzoni di molti film fossero stati capriciosamente mischiati” . 1 Balestrini’s method of working is described by fellow poets as Dadaist in the manner of Kurt Schwitters’s collages or non-sense in the manner of Alice in Wonderland. After 1968, however, Balestrini increasingly uses politics and political discourse as the raw material for his work. He also makes greater use of formats that can be seen as more accessible to a wider public, a public constituted in good part by those involved in or close to the social movements of the time. Not that he stops writing poetry. Not that he accepts the distinction between the poetry and the ‘novels’ that he writes. But the novels are the privileged vehicle for the political. They can be grouped into those produced at the time of the events described or shortly afterwards – Vogliamo tutto is TPF
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“a novel without a plot or characters, his style is, if it is possible to say such a thing, a non-style: an anonymous levelling of the language derived from Mills and Boon women’s fiction, geography textbooks […] as if they were segments of film capriciously mixed up.” Translations are by author unless otherwise indicated. PT
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published by Feltrinelli in 1971; La violenza illustrata by Einaudi in 1976; and those written after a greater gap in time: Gli invisibili and L’editore, published by Bompiani in 1987 and 1989 respectively. Balestrini’s linguistic experimentation, however, runs through all the work. In La violenza illustrata, for instance, a press report of a demonstration is broken up: a sentence breaks off in the middle and then runs on a few lines later; words fracture and fragment. Sometimes Balestrini freezes scenes of violence as Andy Warhol does with his silk screen prints of road accidents, suicides and electric chairs. Sometimes he goes in the opposite direction, recreating in language the sensations of confusion, pain, anger and loss of the political demonstrator. Vogliamo tutto is the best known of the romanzi. Set in the Hot Autumn of 1969 when strikes, sabotage and demonstrations paralyzed the Fiat motor company and the city of Turin, when workers shouted the slogan “vogliamo tutto”. The io narrante, the first person narrator, is a Southern factory worker. Much of the text was directly derived by Balestrini from tape-recordings with a militant young worker that he had got to know. The collective voice and the language that mixed political jargon with a popular vernacular would have been instantly recognizable to contemporaries. At the same time, the structure of Vogliamo tutto with its short episodic chapters and paragraphs and its andatura strofica was described by a critic at the time as evoking the chanson de geste, particularly the Chanson de Roland (Spinella 8). Except that that book celebrates the epic feats of the proletarian not those of the knight. The great battle at the end is the battle fought on 3 July 1969 between police and demonstrating workers and students in corso Traiano. The demonstrators are trying to march to the city centre and the police are blocking their path. The ending is inconclusive. Balestrini’s choice of date is not incidental. Industrial action has reached its extreme limits and turned into 246
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open revolt against ‘everything’ – against the factory, against the police, against capitalism. Had he chosen a later date, the scenario would already have been very different. On 12 December 1969 a bomb explosion in Piazza Fontana in Milan was to kill 16 people and create the conditions for the growth of the politics of terror that would dominate the following decade. Much of the debate about terrorism in and through the literature of the 1970s has focused on the murder of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades on 9 May 1978. Marco Belpoliti in Settanta provides a fine analysis and reconstruction of the responses to the murder on the part of a number of writers, from Sciascia and Calvino to Arbasino, Morante and Eco. Balestrini, however, is not mentioned. Yet of all the writers of the period his engagement with the politics of violence and contestation was perhaps the most enduring and intransigent. Balestrini’s own contribution in fiction dealt not with Moro and the climax of Red Brigade action, but with the death of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli and the origins of the armed struggle in Italy. The novel L’editore, in which the title refers to Feltrinelli without naming him, is especially interesting for my purposes because it deals both with the process of reconstructing the events surrounding the mysterious death and attempts that reconstruction. At stake is the truth of what actually happened, the politics of memory, and the impossibility of producing a copy of reality. The blurb (quite possibly written by Balestrini himself) describes the book: Durante un week-end in montagna un giovane regista, un libraio, un professore d’università e un giornalista discutono la possibile trama di un film ambientato nei giorni successivi al ritrovamento di un corpo dilaniato sotto un traliccio alla periferia di Milano, e al suo clamoroso riconoscimento come quello del famoso editore. Diciasette anni prima i quattro amici, tutti impegnati nel movimento, avevano vissuto insieme 247
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quei giorni, di cui rievocano ora le tensioni, le discussioni, gli scontri. 2 TPF
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L’editore is a work of fiction. The week end is imagined. Balestrini deploys devices familiar to us from earlier works – as in Gli invisibili, the text is stripped of punctuation; as in Tristano or La violenza illustrata, chuncks of text are taken wholesale from other sources, including Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano. A meditated choice. Under the Volcano was one of the books published by the editore. Its structure, furthermore, is echoed by Balestrini’s text – the bringing together of the paths/lives of the characters in the events of one day, the circularity and seeming repetition that departs from linear narration, the atmosphere of political intrigue and menace. L’editore, however, is also a roman a clé. The real life equivalents of the characters are scarcely disguised. Balestrini showed the final manuscript to the Feltrinelli family before sending it to Bompiani for publication. Senior Service, the book written by Giangiacomo’s son Carlo Feltrinelli, contains a historical reconstruction of the publisher’s family background and life that authenticates the accuracy of most of the details found in Balestrini’s work. L’editore is a literary work but its readers can quickly relate its discussions and concerns to those of a milieu – the left, especially the extreme left – and of a moment – the revisiting of the post 1968 decade in the light of the twentieth anniversary of ’68. Balestrini also produced two publications that are more explicitly part of that political debate. There is his article in Alfabeta entitled “Anche un processo agli 2
“During a week-end in the mountains, a young film-maker, a bookseller, a university lecturer, and a journalist discuss possible plots for a film set in the days immediately following the discovery of the body at the foot of the electricity pylon on the outskirts of Milan and the dramatic recognition that it was that of the famous publisher (l’editore). Seventeen years earlier the four friends, all of them active in the political movements, had lived through those days of which they now recall the tension, the discussions, the conflicts”.
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intellettuali”(1983) in which he argues that a systematic attempt has been made in Italy to criminalize all forms of opposition associated with the movements from 1968 to 1977. Then, there is the book co-authored with Primo Moroni called L’orda d’oro. 1968-1977 La grande ondata rivoluzionaria e creativa, politica ed esistenziale. Here Balestrini (and Moroni) make clear that the Red Brigades and other armed formations were part of the left and not the invention of the secret services, Italian, American or Soviet. That, of course, does not mean that everyone else in any way associated with them is aiding and abetting their activities. On the contrary, the utmost clarity and honesty are called for in the face of so much falsification in Italian politics. L’editore differs, however, from Balestrini’s earlier novels on at least two counts. Firstly, the salience given to the reflexive mode. This functions at a number of levels. Take the character of the editore. We know him only through the refracted and fragmented pictures of him in the recollections of the friends and in their proposed scenarios for the film about him. Take the trama or plot. Or rather the plots, plural, because there is the mystery as to whether the editore was killed as the result of a plot, there is the plot of the film that the characters are planning, and, lastly, the plot of Balestrini’s book. It is not always clear to the reader where she or he is in relation to these Chinese boxes. It is only when we reach “scene Two” that we realize that “scene One” was a hypothetical scene for the film. The reader has to be continuously alert to the way first person narration is assigned to different characters. Secondly, in L’editore Balestrini focuses on an individual and on the existential rather than collective dimension of choices he faces. There is the editore seen by the press and the established left who is manipulated by dark forces or is playacting according to a script written by Che Guevara. Then there is the editore seen by his friends for whom he may be confused and full of contradictions but for whom he is still a man who somehow pursues his ideas to their logical if tragic conclusion. 249
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The book can be understood as restituting dignity to a person whose choices have been stripped of meaning and rationality. It is not that we get inside the head of the central character – Balestrini is consistent in his disavowal of notions of centred subjectivity and psychology drawn from the 19th century novel. Rather the form of the novel is designed to match the complexity and ultimate unknowability of what we call reality, not excluding the part played by blind chance. There is the ending-ending in which we are given a plausible reconstruction of the death as a possible scene “it might have happened like this”. Then there is the ending-without-an-ending suggested by another character: “forse ci siamo preoccupati troppo di trovare sempre delle spiegazioni e delle verità a tutti i costi e forse abbiamo perso di vista qualcosa di più importante forse invece le cose più importanti sono quelle che non sappiamo e quelle che non sapremo mai”.(155) 3 P
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Luisa Passerini and Autoritratto di gruppo
When Luisa Passerini returned to Italy in March 1969 after her time in Africa working with the liberation movements, she threw herself into left wing politics. Once her book on FRELIMO was out, she stopped working on Africa (Passerini 1970). Every day she went to the gates of Fiat Mirafiori, handed out leaflets and attended meetings. It was her introduction to ’68, except that ’68 proper was already a memory – the student movement had effectively dissolved itself into the general labour mobilization of the Hot Autumn. Between 1969 and the mid 1970s Passerini sees herself above all as political activist, firstly with Gruppo Gramsci, then with the women’s movement. All of this is recounted in her book Autoritratto di gruppo. 3
“perhaps we have worried too much about always finding an explanation and truth at any cost and perhaps we’ve lost sight of something more important perhaps the most important things are the ones that we don’t know and never will know”.
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Autoritratto di gruppo was published by Giunti in 1988, about the same time as Balestrini’s Gli invisibili and L’editore. Like them, it deals with the experience and memory of the movements of the 1970s. It too experiments with forms of narration. But Luisa Passerini thinks of herself as a historian, not as a writer of fiction. By the time she writes Autoritratto di gruppo she has published her Torino operaia e il fascismo (1984), later translated in English as Fascism in Popular Memory (1987). Passerini was closely involved with the History Workshop Collective that had its base among social historians in England but included historians across the rest of Europe (Passerini, Fridenson and Niethammer 1998). In fact, she played an important part in introducing new methodologies into Italy, especially those connected to oral history (Passerini 1978). After Torino operaia e il fascismo she took part in an international research project directed by Ronald Fraser that sought to study and compare the student movements of 1968. This resulted in a book: 1968. A Student Generation in Revolt (1987). But it was a book that left Passerini profoundly dissatisfied. It was too much of an ‘objective’ reconstruction with little to say on subjectivity and the felt experience of the protagonists for all its use of oral testimony. So she decided to continue with the research on her own account. Concurrently, she began to work with feminist historians – the group around the review Memoria. Rivista di storia delle donne in Italy, and with women historians involved with History Workshop Journal, such as Sally Alexander and Barbara Taylor. In 1987 Memoria published a special issue dedicated to “il movimento femminista negli anni ’70” to which Luisa Passerini contributed a piece in the section “i percorsi”, short autobiographical accounts of individual encounters with and involvement with feminism. On the one hand, Passerini’s historical writings have focused on Fascism – a later study that dealt with the figure of Mussolini called Mussolini immaginario (1991) – and on the
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interwar years in Europe – her Europe in Love. Love in Europe (1999). On the other, she has written as a historian on a more recent history of which she herself has been (and is) a protagonist – 1968, the women’s movement. Autoritratto di gruppo falls into this second category. But it is distinct from all her other studies for the way it experiments with writing history. As such, it is work of considerable courage that has exposed her to criticism from the profession of academic historians. Autoritratto is constructed out of three parallel texts. The diary: January, February, March, April, June, October, December, December 25th, December 28th, and back to January, again January and through to December. Here the author speaks in the first person over the period of time in which the book is conceived and finally brought into the world. Meditations on the process of writing combine with reflections on Passerini’s love affair with a man twenty years younger than her, on her fevers and dietary regime, her visits to the psychoanalyst, her dreams. She is at once analysand and analyst. A note at the end of the book tells us that the diary is a free re-working of a diary kept between 1983 and 1987. The second text, in italics, consists of an autobiographical account starting with her birth and family and finishing in the early 1980s. It is a percorso di vita of the kind she contributed to the journal Memoria. In fact, Passerini has reused interviews with her published in different reviews between 1974 and 1987. The third text, which is assigned separate chapters (the even numbers), presents and analyses oral testimonies gathered in the 1980s by herself and others in research on 1968, on feminism, and, lastly, on political violence. It is not hard to see why Autoritratto di gruppo should have been either ignored or dismissed by historians faithful to P
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models of objectivity and linear narration, dominant modes of history writing that Passerini criticizes in an article in New Left Review: [The continuous narrative] that purports to establish and explain sequences of events in terms dominated by political and economic forces, while excluding aspects that matter a great deal to some of us – subjectivity or daily life, and ‘subaltern’ figures, such as women. (Passerini 137)
What Passerini attempts in Autoritratto is radical and destabilizing. She combines genres that are normally kept separate, relinquishes hierarchies of evidence and veracity (written as distinguished from oral sources, for example), and puts her own authority as authorial voice in question. Subjectivity is at the centre of Autoritratto. It is explored both as the world of emotions and the unconscious and as that of rationally conceived political action. Yet the centrality of the subject as coherent actor or agent of history is subverted. Discontinuity and the gap between intended and actual outcomes is examined in 1968 as lived event and memory. But for Passerini, “discontinuity” is a concept and condition of existence that allows the historian to think about recurrence, the return of the repressed, rediscoveries and reappropriations – considerations excluded from a linear conception of time. Hence the cyclical character of her diary in Autoritratto di gruppo. The ‘1968’ that emerges from Autoritratto in not “come eravamo”, how we were then, as in an objective reconstruction. Rather it is how ’68 is understood in the present by protagonists, author included, in the light of everything that has happened subsequently. Passerini uses the simile of the prism: “sul piano culturale il ’68 agisce come prisma: i raggi convergono su di esso e ne escono scomposti in vari colori. Quello che prima non era visibile ora lo diventa e nello stesso tempo nulla è più come prima.” (175) 253
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Nor does Passerini avoid evaluative judgements. Her years in analysis lead her to a discovery of the importance of her relationship to her mother, a relationship overshadowed by the presence of her father as a role-model. This, in turn, or in conjunction with her historical work, makes her critical of the obsession in the political sphere with the father figure – both as example to be followed and as the authority to be negated. Furthermore, Passerini questions the prevalent notion of subjectivity in which it was assumed that one has total control over one’s decisions. The ‘dark side’ of 1968 is something that Passerini confronts and confronts the reader with. But who exactly is that reader? In the first instance, the readers can be generationally defined – those connected, in the widest sense, with the experiences of the 50 or so individuals interviewed about the events of 1968 and its aftermath. But Passerini is also concerned with how memory is transmitted between generations. There is a citation from Raymond Queneau in the frontispiece that is indicative: “When you have a past. Yvonne, you will see what a strange thing it is”. Autoritratto di gruppo begins as an inquiry into a generation that is rebelling against its fathers and mothers. It concludes with Passerini thinking about the process of aging and the transmission of memory. Umberto Eco and the role of the writer
In 1968 Umberto Eco was 36. Older than the other two. Balestrini was 33, and Passerini 27. Unlike Balestrini, who was a founder member of Potere Operaio, or Passerini whose political involvement has already been mentioned, Eco had never joined the Communist Party as a young man and did not now choose to become an activist in an organization or movement. Instead, he is a sympathiser of their cause. He would later describe his position as analogous to that of the protagonist of Italo Calvino’s Il barone rampante, the 18th century aristocrat who decides to spend all his life up a tree without stepping down P
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but who nonetheless takes part in the French Revolution (Eco and Hall 1987). He casts himself in the role of a latter-day philosophe whose task is to criticize and expose corruption, modern forms of superstition, and the abuse of power, resorting when necessary to the weapons of satire and laughter. Eco is almost always on the side of movements before and after 1968 – the very principle of movement, openness and change is at the heart of the cultural project elucidated in Opera aperta (1962). He is distrustful, on the other hand, of established parties, especially in an Italian context in which the Communist Party behaves as a kind of second church. In an essay entitled “Political Language: the Use and Abuse of Rhetoric” published in 1973, Eco sets the agenda for his interventions in politics and public life for the rest of the decade – interventions in which language is a central concern. On the plus side, there is the creative use of language in politics that Eco welcomes. Here figures of rhetoric are used as if for the first time in acts that make us “see reality with new eyes”. “Poets”, he says, “have this important role”. Perhaps not by chance Eco cites the wall writings around the Sorbonne in 1968 as examples of this (Eco 1994). In 1977 he responds with similar enthusiasm to the Dadaist contestation in the streets promoted by students, many from his institute DAMS in the University of Bologna. On negative side, there is the rhetoric designed to confuse and to protect the powerful from accountability. Statements of ministers provide a mountain of examples. But, argues Eco, there is no way of doing without rhetoric. Unless, of course, you abandon persuasion and argument: when a group claims that discussion is useless and a waste of time, it is better in the name of consistency for it to engage directly in revolutionary action […] Better still would be resorting to a cowardly
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demonstration of armed force that tells no lies and acts as a call to revolution. (Eco 1994: 85) 4 TPF
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The fact that Eco was an outside interlocutor of the movements and not someone writing from within them situates him very differently to the others. In Gramscian terms, he is a “traditional intellectual” – academic, advisor to Bompiani publishers, collaborator with RAI – whereas Balestrini and Passerini are “organic intellectuals”. The latter, broadly speaking, address themselves first and foremost, in the 1970s at least, to the movements of which they are a part. Eco, however, faces in several directions and acts as a kind of interpreter or translator between different audiences. One audience is constituted by his students and ex-students (in fact, he notes that Guido Viale had regularly attended one of his seminars on comics before becoming a leader of the student movement in Turin). Another audience is constituted by the readers of his pieces in the weekly magazine L’Espresso and daily press, later collected in his anthologies Dalla periferia dell’impero (1977) and Sette anni di desiderio (1983). Eco is never afraid to debate and discuss what is going on around him. Indeed, he takes it as a stimulus and a challenge. His readings of this reality are a kind of practical or applied semiology, an invitation to participate rather than to sit back and let the RAI or Il corriere della sera do the work. In the 1960s Eco questioned categories such as ‘mass culture’ suggesting that it was misleading to speak in such generic terms and that this type of labelling was the stock-in-trade of apocalyptic intellectuals. In the 1970s he questioned the use of 4
Italian original: “Quando un gruppo ritiene che la discussione si inutile e dilatoria, è meglio che, coerentemente, passi alla azione rivoluzionaria che sostituisce ai lunghi labirinti della persuasione l’azione di una forza popolare che si autogiustifica. O è meglio piuttosto, la turpe evidenza della sopraffazione armata, che non mente a nessuno, e chiama alla ribellione” (105).
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categories that allow politicians to treat all forms of extraparliamentary opposition as if they were all ideologically linked to the politics of the Red Brigades. The mission to analyse and to understand - as opposed to condemning and moralizing on the basis of preconceptions - means that Eco was one of the very few commentators who, during the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, seriously read the Red Brigades comuniqués. The whole crisis was marked by a breakdown in communication causing Eco to be involved in a struggle on two fronts. The danger for him was the return of a kind of Cold War scenario in which the choice was either/or – either for McCarthy or for Stalin. Eco writes in “Gli orfani del sessantotto” (1980), the essay that opens the collection Sette anni di desiderio: mi pare che in questi tempi sia cominciato un po’ dappertutto un forsennato e dostoevskiano esame di coscienza che porta, da un lato, a identificare il Sessantotto col terrorismo, dall’altro, in molti, a dire più o meno scopertamente: “io in quei giorni non c’ero”. (11) 5 TPF
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Among those accused of “associazione sovversiva” and “banda armata” as well as participation in 19 murders, including that of Aldo Moro, was Eco’s friend the poet Nanni Balestrini. In fact Balestrini fled Italy and took refuge in Paris, only to be cleared of all charges several years later. Commentators on Il nome della rosa immediately identified it as a political allegory and Eco accepted that it was one of the levels on which it could be read. The urgency of contemporary events might have lessened by the time the book TP
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“I have the impression that at the moment there’s begun almost everywhere a crazed Dostoyevskian examination of the conscience that leads, on the one hand, to identifying ’68 with terrorism, and, on the other, to saying more or less openly: ‘I was not involved at the time’”. PT
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was published in 1982, but Eco began to write it in the months following the assassination of Moro when the anti-terrorism emergency was at its height. The actions of the Holy Inquisition in the figure of Bernardo Gui for whom any form of association implied guilt led to a disaster (the destruction of the monastery and the dispersal of the community) that simply compounded the crisis provoked by the mysterious murders in the monastery. I do not want to suggest that Eco’s fiction should be read in a political light to the exclusion of other readings – it can also be enjoyed as a detective novel or for its meta-textual devices in which the reader is conscious of her or his role as reader. However, Eco is definitely aiming to be accessible and to normalize procedures originating in the neo avant-garde. His readership is a wider public. A public in Italy that would, in Michael Caesar’s words referring to Eco’s second novel Pendolo di Foucault (1988), have had “no difficulty in recognizing the plotting and paranoia of the 1970s, a decade which for many Italians was stretched between the threat and reality of political violence and a pervasive, not to say invasive, suspicion of conspiracy at all levels of public life”. (1999: 146) But why should Eco have chosen to write fiction in the first place and to become, in the process, a writer of fiction? Concluding Observations
The question leads us back to the theme of the “value of literature”, and to some final questions. What did literature have to offer that could not be obtained by other forms of writing? Why in the 1980s do Eco, Balestrini and Passerini write about the events of the previous decade using either the novel or devices taken from fictional modes of narration? How successful are they in what they are trying to achieve? And what is the ‘literary value’ of their work? The first thing to say is that oppositional politics and the discourse of politics more generally is heavily compromised, devalued, emptied of meaning by the beginning the 1980s. In 258
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the late 1960s and early 1970s, the trend was towards reading saggistica and books about history, politics and society – a trend that was particularly evident in the publishing programme of Feltrinelli publishers. As Adriano Sofri commented nostalgically in an interview in MicroMega in 1988: Far from representing a passing fever, politics was the heart and soul of ’68. That is, political passion, the conviction that there was a link that held together and demonstrated the meaning of what was happening in the four corners of the globe; the feeling that one’s life belonged to a destiny shared with so many others in every part of the world. (quoted in Lumley 1990: 340)
All that collapses with extraordinary speed. Indeed it is the speed of the collapse as much as the enthusiasms of ‘68 that helps define a sense of generation. It is a generation cut off from its political origins. It is a generation that is marked by collective failure and defeat. In their different ways our authors are part of this experience and seek to confront it. Luisa Passerini confronts defeat in Autoritratto di gruppo – the group self-portrait of a generation that has experienced a collective defeat. It does not present itself as fiction in that the texts – diary, interviews and testimonies, reconstructions – can claim to describe ‘reality’. Yet the dreams are also part of that reality – dreams and the recounting of dreams. The diary has been re-worked posthumously and the dates of entries are treated with the freedom of the novelist. Composite characters are invented to hide identities. And why not? Why not indeed. But Passerini comunicates her discomfort towards the end of Autoritratto. She is looking forward, she writes with a touch of irony, to getting back to “cose serie, come saggi metodologici con note a piè di pagina e copiose bibliografie […] sono contenta di tornare al mio mestiere” (224). The problem in Autoritratto results from the author’s 259
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attempt to combine different kinds of writing and evidence that have different claims to veracity. At the same time, there are paragraphs in the penultimate chapter in which the historian is determined to explain, to put some order into the account, and to argue that the centrality of the political and the problem of power need to be reaffirmed if we are not to inhabit a culture full of illusions of well-being. For me Autoritratto assumes a task that is almost too demanding – to be a kind of public selfanalysis of the 1968 generation in which Luisa Passerini is both in front of and behind the camera. It could be called a problematic text in more ways than one, but for that very reason Autoritratto is one of the most interesting as well as unresolved of the works I have discussed. By making herself a subject of her historical narrative Passerini treads where few have dared to follow. The cases of Eco and Balestrini are rather different in that neither is a historian facing problems of evidence. Morover their common participation of the neoavanguardia in the 1960s included a radical critique of the realist novel, the form of fiction most admired by contemporary Marxists in the tradition of Lukacs. For them, the realist model had patently lost any capacity to represent the contemporary world. By the second half of the 1980s the problematic of the experimental writers had entered the mainstream. The ideas of multiple perspectives, fragmentation, split subjectivities, stories and individual itineraries as opposed to History and collective subjects were discussed in university courses and newspapers, if not at dime stores and bus stations. We are in the territory surveyed by Monica Jansen in her Il dibattito sul postmoderno in Italia. Interestingly, as she says, “nel campo letterario […] le posizioni prese nel dibittito sono in gran parte riconducibili a quelle riguardanti la neoavanguardia del Gruppo 63” (Jansen 2002: 19). While the critique of the idea of an avant-garde is a defining feature of what is called post modernity, the linguistic practices, 260
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from quotation to pastiche and other devices of reflexivity, also have their antecedents in the 1960s in Italy. In the 1980s Eco and Balestrini are faced with a new problem – the expropriation of the avant-garde. The strategies that they pursue, however, remain consistent with their earlier trajectories. Eco in his Postille a “Il nome della rosa” of 1983 spells out his approach very clearly: Nobody remembers what happened when in 1965 the Gruppo met for a second time in Palermo to discuss the experimental novel ... I remarked [then] “I believe it will be possible to find elements of revolution and contestation in works that apparently lend themselves to facile consumption, and it will also be possible to realise, on the contrary, that certain works, which seem provocative and enrage the public, do not really contest anything”. (Eco 1986: 16)
In his novels he addresses a public that he could never have reached through his journalism, let alone his more academic work. He can be seen to use literature as another means of writing what he writes in his journalism. It is writing that is rich in plot but not so experimental in its use of language. It is a success in terms of sales but of less interest in terms of literary values. Balestrini, by contrast, continues to frustrate the reader who wants the certainties of clearly defined characters and plot development. He even deprives them of the reassuring presence of full stops and commas. His novels work above all on language, refusing to acknowledge the distinction between prose and poetry. Balestrini also continues to refer without embarrassment or excuses to the political movements of the 1970s. There is an uncompromising readiness to stare defeat in the face. For Balestrini the worst form of hypocrisy and bad faith is shown by those who delude themselves into thinking Giangiacomo Feltrinelli and others who chose the ‘armed 261
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struggle’ were the victim of manipulation by the CIA or neofascists. The greatest danger is that those once active in the movements will not recount their stories themselves. Instead this history will be written by others – in courtrooms, in newspapers, and on television. In the meantime, Balestrini assumes the role of the chronicler-poet. The writers I have chosen are remarkable for their impegno, their continued engagement as public intellectuals. The texts I have focused on testify to the importance of the “relationship of reciprocity and responsibility” between writer and reader that Jennifer Burns calls the “acid test” of commitment (5). This is underlined, especially in the case of Passerini and Balestrini, by the political nature of the subject matter and by the effort that is required of the reader in deciphering the text. So far I have emphasised the impegno on the part of the writer, but what about the reader? The reader was asked to face political subject matter in a context – the 1980s – in which it had become a source of difficulty, embarrassment, shame and even guilt. The effort required is underlined or, better, formalized in the language of the texts – the different registers and genres in Passerini, the disruption of processes of identification in Balestrini. In Eco we can even choose to follow the difficult rather than easy path of interpretation. How we assess the value of literature is an open question, but the value also derives from the effort that we bring to it.
Works Cited
Balestrini, Nanni. Come si agisce. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1963 ---. Tristano. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1964 ---. Vogliamo tutto. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1971. ---. La violenza illustrata. Turin: Einaudi, 1976. ---. “Anche un processo agli intellettuali.” Alfabeta 49 (1983). 262
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---. Gli invisibili. Milan: Bompiani, 1987; English edition: The Unseen. Trans. Liz Heron. London: Verso, 1989. ---. L’editore. Milan: Bompiani, 1989. Balestrini, Nanni, and Primo Moroni. L’orda d’oro, 1968-77. La grande ondata rivoluzionaria e creativa, politica ed esistenziale. Milan: Sugarco, 1988. Belpoliti, Marco. Settanta. Turin: Einaudi, 2001. Burns, Jennifer. Fragments of Impegno. Interpretations of Commitment in Contemporary Italian Narrative. Leeds: Northern Universities Press, 2001. Caesar, Michael. Umberto Eco. Philosophy, Semiotics and the Work of Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Calvesi, Maurizio. Teatro delle mostre. Rome: Lerici Editore, 1968. Eco, Umberto. Opera aperta. Milan: Bompiani, 1962. English edition: The Open Work. Trans. Anna Cancogni, London: Hutchinson, 1989. ---.”Linguaggio politico.” G.L. Beccaria, ed. I linguaggi settoriali in Italia. Milan: Bompiani, 1973. English edition: “Political Language.” Lumley 1994: 75-86. ---. Dalla periferia dell’impero. Milan: Bompiani, 1977. ---. Sette anni di desiderio. Milan: Bompiani, 1983. ---. Postille a “Il nome della rosa”. Milan: Bompiani, 1983a. English edition: “Reflections on ‘the Name of the Rose’.” Trans. William Weaver. Encounter LXIV (1985): 7-19. ---. Apocalypse Postponed. Robert Lumley, ed. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994. Eco, Umberto, and Stuart Hall. “Crisis? What Crisis?”. Writers and Politics. Eds. Bill Bourne, Udi Eichler and David Herman. Northampton: Spokesman/Hobb Press, 1984. Feltrinelli, Carlo. Senior Service. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2001. Fraser, Ronald. 1968. A Student Generation in Revolt. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988. 263
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Jansen, Monica. Il dibattito sul postmoderno in Italia. In bilico tra dialettica e ambiguità. Florence: Cesati, 2002. Lowry, Malcolm. Under the Volcano. London: Jonathan Cape, 1947. Lumley, Robert. States of Emergency. Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968-78. London: Verso, 1990. Italian edition: Dal ’68 agli anni di piombo. Trans. Davide Panzieri. Florence: Giunti, 1998. Passerini, Luisa. Colonialismo portoghese e lotta di liberazione nel Mozambico. Turin: Einaudi, 1970. ---. Storia orale. Vita quotidiana e cultura materiale delle classi subalterne. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1978. ---. Torino operaia e il fascismo. Bari: Laterza, 1984. English edition: Fascism in Popular Memory. Trans. Robert Lumley and Judy Bloomfield. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ---. Autoritratto di gruppo. Florence: Giunti, 1988. English edition: Autobiography of a Generation. Italy 1968. Trans. Lisa Erdberg. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1996. ---. Mussolini immaginario. Bari: Laterza, 1991. ---. Europe in Love. Love in Europe. Imagination and Politics in Britain between the Wars. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1999. ---. “Discontinuity of History and Diaspora of Languages.” New Left Review, January-February (2000): 137-144. Passerini, Luisa, Patrick Fridenson and Lutz Niethammer. “International Reverberations: Remembering Raphael Samuel”. History Workshop Journal 45 (1998): 246-260. Spinella, Mario. Introduction. Vogliamo tutto. By Nanni Balestrini. Milan: Oscar Mondadori, 1988. 5-9.
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“When the house burns one forgets even lunch. Yes, but one eats it later in the ashes.” (F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil)
“Leaden Years, Separated Bodies, Government Massacres, Subversion, Emergency, or the opposite: The Best Years of our Life, Radical Transformation of Daily Life, Utopia, Need for Communism, Sexual Revolution, Armed Struggle, etc.” (N. Balestrini and P. Moroni, L’orda d’oro)
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Vincenzo Binetti (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) Forty thousand accused, fifteen thousand ‘passed’ through prison, six thousand sentenced, almost always without any guarantee of the right to a defense. Behind the numbers, the ‘special prisons’, torture, solitary confinement, the best part of two generations reduced to silence, forced into exile. (Balestrini and Moroni 14) 1 TPF
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∗
A version in Italian of this essay is included in Alain Sarrabayrouse, ed. Images Littéraires de la Société Contemporaine. Actes du colloque “Guerre et violence dans la littérature contemporaine italienne.” Université Stendhal-Grenoble 3, 21-22 novembre 2003. Cahiers d’études italiennes 3 (2005):75-87. TP
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All translations from L’orda d’oro are mine. http://congress70.library.uu.nl/
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How does one tell of all this? – Nanni Balestrini and Primo Moroni ask provocatively in the introduction to L’orda d’oro, a text which is, in my opinion, even today indispensable when attempting to focus on the historical, political and existential events that characterized the decade 1968-1977 in Italy. But it is precisely the will, the desire to give voice and “visibility” to all this that pushes the authors of the volume meticulously to record the problematic events of those years, even though they recognize the “outrageous subjectivism” out of which their project takes shape. A project that becomes even more interesting when one considers how macroscopic the process of repression and concealment has until now seemed – a process carried out by the governmental and mass-media structure through “a gigantic mechanism for falsifying the history of that decade, which found its linguistic synthesis in the distressing definition of ‘leaden years’” (Balestrini and Moroni 2). It is therefore for these reasons also that we must try to locate “fragments and paths” which once again give “visibility”, and which save the creative, revolutionary impulse that characterized the history of the movement of the 1970s from oblivion and mystification. An analogous “testimonial” project is the one that Nanni Balestrini proposes, in the narrative domain, in Gli invisibili, where the author in fact seems to wish to leave the narrative, geographical and existential journey of his protagonist provocatively suspended, in an effort to confront the reader, here at the end of the novel, with a possible, and necessarily problematic, political awakening. And at the same time to place before him/her a “visualization” of what the ideology of the Italian nation-state was trying instead to relegate to the comforting domain of invisibility, obliterating the desires and needs of an explosive and destabilizing collective subjectivity in that place “where all of the present society’s coercion and absurdities condense – namely, prison” (Rossanda VII): 266
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we made holes in all the wire mesh grilles and then we made the torches the torches were made with bits of sheets tied tightly together and then soaked in oil and for this too we agreed a time in the middle of the night we all lit the oil of the torches and we pushed these brands through the holes in the grilles but there was no one there to see this either the torches burned for a long time it must have been a beautiful sight from outside all those torches flickering against the black wall of the prison in the middle of that boundless plain but the only ones who could see the torchlight were those few people driving their cars that sped like tiny darts in the distance on that black ribbon of the motorway several kilometres from the prison or maybe an aeroplane flying above but they fly very high up there in the silent black sky and they see nothing. (Balestrini, The unseen 241-42)
But it is precisely by revisiting those places of violence and coercion, in the company of the first-person narrator, that it becomes possible, at least in the literary domain of the narrated elements, to surpass the boundary wall of prison space and enter into contact with a disturbing and dramatic reality which nevertheless allows for a destabilizing “porousness” (in the Benjaminian sense) between “inside” and “outside”, between public and private space, between official history and individual and “community” stories. The novel therefore comes across as a provocative ideological and narrative project beyond the expectations of an audience of readers who, by contrast, were used to filtering the history of those creative and tumultuous years – the period that is of the student and labor movement struggles, of the rejection of work and conformity, the period of Autonomy, demonstrations, the occupation of universities and factories – through a more comforting and deceptive representation produced by the culture of mass-media. This occurs in the novel 267
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primarily through the use of a documentary device (an interview), and of an oral language that attempts to make this representation more concrete and direct. “Oral language” understood, of course, not as a simple alternative to written language, but as a translation/transcription on paper of a collective discourse which was an integral part of the choral aspect of the emotional, historical, political and cultural complicity of those years. 2 The “narrative laisses” which define the rhythmical unity of the narrative, and the semantic and strategic division of the text according to a “quasi fanatic obsession with the establishing power of numbers” (Gramigna) – the text is composed of 48 chapters divided in turn into paragraphs of between 12 and 15 lines each – “a numerological obsession”, as Balestrini himself describes it, give a formal and stylistic unity to the novel and act as a counterpoint to the intentional lack of punctuation, a lack which obviously indicates a radical avant-garde rejection of syntax and traditional vocabulary. In such a way, Balestrini, while preserving a basic formal rigor, effectively ends up destabilizing the semantic and syntactic structure of language, allowing his “spoken”, almost “magnetofonico” writing, to become an apt and effective instrument for the emotional, political and intellectual involvement of the reader. And the reader, precisely because of particular stylistic expedients – the fluidity and immediacy of spoken language, the conversational tone of the narration, repetitions, the constant use of deictics TPF
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In this regard Italo Rosato, building on Calvino’s “lucid and nostalgically captivating” preface to Il Sentiero dei nidi di ragno, has noticed the substantial difference that separates this generation from that of the Resistance period: “The protagonists of the past decade have witnessed the dispersion of their utopias and – in the worst cases – they are witnessing the dissipation of their individual existences [...]. If only for the desire to break the silence – but of course not only for this – Balestrini’s efforts [...] seem to me of the greatest importance” (116).
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(“this thing here”, “a hit right there”, etc.) – ends up, one hopes, coming to terms more directly with the problematic nature of the events narrated, and with the implicit foreignness of the existential and political experience of the protagonist and of the movement. This Sergio, to whom the novel is dedicated (the person in question is Sergio Bianchi, an “autonomo” from Tradate, in exile in Paris), is moreover a character, who by force of circumstance, becomes a collective subject, in that he is the mouthpiece for the communal needs of the group, though he does not thereby “risk being stereotyped” (De Federicis). He appears instead as a corporeal, intellectual and human presence, who even in his representativeness, and in the immediate recognizability of his status as a narrating subject, representative of the events of the 70s, retains his own peculiar singularity and his own contradictory identity: an identity that Rossana Rossanda, in a review of the book, has suggested is “the fruit of a mine, a well of history and ideas upon which obscurity continues to reign, [and which] Balestrini […] returns to its strength and fragility”. So already in the incipit of the novel we are introduced to this “materiality of the suffering body, naked, beaten, broken, laid out, dead” (De Federicis) through the contextualization of the narrating subject, of this voice that says “I”, but which inevitably implies the communal presence of “us”, within the bounded and alienating space of prison: The cellars are a maze of passageways lit every twenty or thirty yards by dusty fluorescent strip-lights swinging from long ragged electric wires that hang from the ceiling its rough cement fissured by long deep cracks […] the air is damp and from our mouths come little puffs of vapour as we breathe that nauseating air […] the irregular shuffling of the small silent procession merges with the continuous jangling 269
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of the chains the sound echoes whenever the gangways of rotting wood are crossed […] the small procession turns repeatedly to the right and the left to the left and the right until all sense of direction is lost. (Balestrini 1-2)
And it is precisely here on the first page that an interesting “spatial” dynamic begins to take shape, one which will characterize the whole novel, and which permits the protagonist to move according to a narrative path that is not linear or horizontal, but characterized instead by continual flashbacks which rather bolster the temporal verticality of a problematic recovery of the memory of those events. It is in short a nomadic path, and in some senses contradictory and unpredictable, one which however invites the reader to “relearn how to think space” (Augé 37) and to visualize problematically both the institutionalized places of power – necessary instruments through which the nation-state inevitably imposes its need “to discipline and punish”, to use a foucaultian expression – and the deterritorialized, liberating and creative spaces of the street, of the occupied areas and of the revolt, where “energy […] is more disorganized and has fewer horizons of political thrust: it is more unbridled, it wastes away” (Nancy 51). In the continuous dynamic tension between these two moments, the author’s project takes shape, and in fact succeeds in making functional his ideological intentions and his linguistic and formal strategies, through the use of specific analogies, metaphors and flashbacks. And this is precisely how, for example, the representation of the space of the school and the factory 3 emblematically recalls the immediately preceding TPF
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Later on in fact, the author describes the condition of alienation and exploitation within the factory in these terms: “I didn’t have any really clear idea about that factory I saw it from outside as a vast dirty monstrosity that disgorged fumes into the air and stinking liquids into the river that ran alongside it the impression I got on the first morning of work was a grim one 270 TP
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representation of the prison space, both in the description and the position of objects (gates/iron bars/corridors/cement walls) and in the conflictual dynamics of the first-person narrator with the wielders of power (professors/prison guards/bosses): The agreed day arrives and early in the morning before they open the gates we’d put up a big poster to announce the mass meeting and inviting everybody to come along […] the headmaster Mastino gets in first as usual and he starts reading the poster then his face turns ugly and he scowls at us […] then the teachers get there and read it without saying a word just look at us as though we’re crazy a few minutes later out come a bunch of janitors that Mastino has told pull down the posters […] I feel as if I’m watching the boss pacing in front of the factory in those stories I’ve read about the first workers’ struggles the first strikes the same kind of intimidation. (Balestrini 6)
The internal spaces of the jail (as well as those external ones, in a significant parallel relationship, of the institutions and of the factory) therefore become “non-places” inside which are created “neither a single identity, nor a relation, but loneliness and likeness […] they don’t bring about any synthesis, they complete nothing, they authorize only […] the co-existence of individualities – distinct, similar and indifferent to each other” (Augé 95 and 101). And this is why the mobilization in the squares “outside” and the prison revolt “inside” represent […] they showed me where I had to go there and then I already felt like leaving turning my back and away getting out of there and taking off when I saw my section a kind of long narrow corridor without windows there were only big skylights way up high and a terrible stink of solvents […] the workers were all in black overalls except the foreman who had a white overall and who was in his office at the end of the corridor behind the glass screen from where he could keep an eye on the whole section” (161). 271
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emblematic signs of the need to remap space, even if only momentarily, to deterritorialize these non-places in order to be able to imagine a different livability for one’s own body, through the temporary definition of areas of autonomy and creativity that escape the authoritarian impositions of “constituted” power: In town the youth groups have organized a festival in the cathedral square China and I take the train on our own we get earlier than we’ve arranged with the rest of our comrades and there’s already loads of people the police are turned out in force all around there’s graffiti being done on the walls and the ground free space is a right or make society a festival or let’s reclaim life […] we try to link arms and manage to form into a long snake that’s not bad at all we can see the others from our collective they’ve all come they’re in small groups mixed up with the rest the front of the march is heading straight for the cathedral square. (Balestrini 11)
Thus urban warfare temporarily destabilizes and disrupts the immobility of the “rigid” space of the city according to a rhizomatic plan which no longer resembles the planned and sanctioned tourist map – emblematically represented here by the reference to cathedral square – but becomes metaphorical, constitutive of the explosive and creative action (revolution) of the movement. Streets, squares and symbolic locations of the official history of the metropolis are thus transformed into “fleeting” areas, into indefinable zones of unpredictability that allow for a future reterritorialization of urban space, and within which one is able to move nomadically – fluidly and
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dynamically 4 , but above all, festively – precisely because “festivals” represented as Lefebvre suggests, “Dionysiac life [and] differed from everyday life only in the explosion of forces which had been slowly accumulated in and via everyday life itself […] revolutions of the past were festivals.” 5 Yet it is precisely in order to contrast this representation of a festive spatiality that the author, in the subsequent pages, again transfers action and description into the prison in a way that is intentionally provocative and traumatic for the reader. And thus, due to the constant use of flashbacks which clearly allow for a fragmentary continuity of the spatio-temporal linearity of the narrated events, the protagonist’s story returns to the “non-place” 6 of prison, where the authorities’ will to control and coerce expresses itself symbolically and macroscopically in the organization of a rigid, strategically planned structure, within which single individuals are forced to act mechanically and senselessly, following predefined, traced paths: TPF
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I got back to my cell and it was just a few minutes after I got back to my cell when I heard shouts coming from the direction of the rotunda I should explain what the rotunda is the special section of the prison we were in was a small three-storey block ground floor first floor and second floor and each 4
Lefebvre writes in The Production of Space: “Representational space [...] may be directional, situational or relational, because it is essentially qualitative, fluid and dynamic” (42). TP
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According to Marc Augé, “supermodernity naturally finds its complete expression in non-places [...] in non-places there is always a specific place for curiosities that are presented as such.” And, Augé continues, that is why, unlike modernity, “the space of supermodernity is marked instead by this contradiction: it deals only with individuals but ones who are identified, socialized and localized only at the entrance and exit” (Augé 99-101). PT
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floor was split into two wings at the centre of these wings on every floor there were two gates and in between the two gates there was a space that was the rotunda the same rotunda where the stairs were and from there people dispersed into one wing or the other the right wing one side and the left wing on the other side I was in the left wing of the top floor the second floor that is. (Balestrini 26)
Thus, in my view, this continuous and parallel spatial progression between place and political community becomes symptomatic of the author’s ideological intention and of the whole evolution of the narrated event. And it is this progression that is the site of the creative and antagonistic momentum of the movement as it occupies a space for action, a space which by force of circumstances tends to broaden itself and continually redefine its borders. At the same time, and in a move that is diametrically opposed, an inevitable narrowing and “tightening up” of that same space acts as a counterweight to the state’s subsequent repression, but in a certain sense as well, to the intrinsic “disappearance” 7 of the movement and of its desires and vain aspirations. And in fact, the creative and revolutionary drives of the “street” are hampered and contained by the police and by the state’s organs of control precisely because, as Debord reminds TPF
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In this regard, Balestrini writes: “We tried to spend the nights at the houses of comrades who considered themselves less known less exposed or better still staying with friends who weren’t involved at all or staying with friends of friends the demonstrations and festivals in the square were a thing of the past the movement was like a great ghost absent withdrawn sheltering in its ghettoes the stage was now held by the trickle of clandestine armed actions where responsibility was claimed by dozens of signatures of combat organizations in competition the life of the movement was over but for the comrades it wasn’t over it wasn’t as if they could stand on the sidelines saying let’s wait and see because the repression involved everyone there weren’t too many distinctions made” (17).
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us, “efforts of all established powers to increase the means of maintaining order in the streets finally culminates in the suppression of the street” (172); and one sees this in the horrid and starkly “realistic” representation of the death of the student who is run over by the police “super-jeep” (for the record, the person in question is Giannino Zibecchi, killed in Milan on 17 April 1975): very loud screaming shouting I see a lot of comrades running in that direction I can’t see a thing there’s smoke and confusion they all have red eyes crying with the teargas I get down from the shutter and head over there running with others we collide with others coming from the opposite direction anguished faces staring eyes some lower their kerchiefs one’s running his hands through his hair I can’t see what’s happened there’s a group of comrades standing in a semi-circle some are weeping it’s not with the teargas some are sobbing one girl shouts something I don’t understand then further on I see the bloody body on the ground I see the long trail of dark blood and further on I see the reddish mass of brains the wheels of the super-jeep have spattered out of it out of the head spattered out. (Balestrini 15)
In addition to being a documentary report of the history and the collective memory of those years, this real-life event fits into the “fictional” dimension of the story, projecting before the reader’s eye an image that is as recognizable and unforgettable for its absurdity as it is disturbing for its ethical, political implications. But this also serves analogically to anticipate what will happen in the jail with the revolt and the utter violence of its repression. And thus parallel to it, and even in the authorial recognition of
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the impossibility of “recounting” 8 the historical and objective totality of those events, the prisoners’ attempt at resistance and autonomy within the prison unfolds at the pressing rhythm of oral language: TPF
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what happened and what then became known later or at least in part because these stories can’t always be told in full was that very quickly the comrades who’d taken the guards came down with the keys they’d taken from the guards they opened the gate […] at this point I saw people wearing masks arriving in my wing they got to my cell and they unlocked every cell in the left wing they unlocked my cell too and then there was enormous confusion […] and then we all poured out into the corridor […] and from that moment the revolt was under way. (Balestrini 29-30)
The navigability of the prison site is thus redefined and reterritorialized, allowing for the movement and interaction of individuals who – at least in the conscious fleetingness of the event, before its “necessary” and violent repression, that is 9 – TPF
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Balestrini writes: “And now here I’ve lost track of where I left off with this whole story also because there are loads of things I can’t remember that I’ve no clear memory of how they happened and there are also loads of things that can’t be remembered but can only be forgotten it’s not as if I want to tell the whole story of my life nor do I want to tell everything that happened during this time when so many different contradictory things of all kinds happened that put them all together and try to make sense of them seems to me quite impossible but what concerns me right now is just to speak about those things that happened to me but from my point of view of course just because maybe now it’s worthwhile speaking about it” (127).
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The chilling image of suppression within the jail becomes emblematic through the “realistic” representation of a body that once again is tortured, abused and violated: “they were hitting out with truncheons with sticks with iron bars and this comrade who was small they really pulverized him then another scene I watched was a guy they took by the hair after having trampled him to the ground they dragged him up by the hair and stuck him up 276 TP
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are able to behave in ways that are not codified, but spontaneous and liberating. This produces a momentary state of euphoria and festivity, even within a space that is synonymous with alienation and anguish: the atmosphere there was euphoric there was a festive atmosphere I can remember this great euphoria this excitement this festivity and what everyone was saying over and over again and what they were convinced of was that there could never ever be a military intervention by the guards by the carabinieri by the police […] I can remember there was no anxiety whatsoever I can remember there was euphoria and excitement there was this mechanism triggered in everybody’s head to see this situation as holding no danger and making everybody feel they were at a party. (Balestrini 45)
Thus the author’s effective strategy allows the reader to imagine the impossible, to cross the “other” dimension of prison experience, and to come face to face with the reasons for the revolt – perhaps even involuntarily, precisely because “there are spaces in which the individual puts himself to the test as a spectator without being particularly interested in the spectacle itself” (Augé 80). Moreover, this points to a problematic awakening of the forms of resistance and struggle at work within the jail, which even in the implicit recognition of their against the wall and then one of them hit him in the face with an iron bar just like this a blow with the iron bar like this across the face and they smashed his nose and his forehead […] these were the things to be seen while we were there in the dark powerless behind the wire fence” (Balestrini 111). It seems important to me in this regard to underline how the “spectacle” of the massacre here again establishes a dynamic between inside and outside: the reader is in fact located outside, distanced from the event, but nevertheless powerlessly visualizes the scene, as the prisoners are powerless in the face of the “legalized” violence of the police and of the state. 277
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transience 10 , nevertheless bear witness to the political reasons behind protest, and above all make believable the possibility of constantly re-inventing and remapping the non-places of alienation and tyranny in a festive and euphoric way. But once again the strategic pattern of the narrative sequences allows for a permeability between “inside” and “outside”, a continual, parallel dialectical exchange of the public and private spheres. 11 The occupation of the Cantinone by the movement in fact represents, even in terms of narrative structure, a concrete and non-utopian image of the real possibility of “escaping” the bounds of prison space and of reintroducing creative situations of autonomy even in a “public” place. The appropriation of decrepit, semi-abandoned spaces like the Cantinone thus sets in motion not only a process of transformation and of self-governed political, economic and cultural productivity, but also (and more importantly) allows for a stimulating contamination between the movement and various communal urban realities (workers, artists, the unemployed, the aged, children, etc.) 12 precisely because, as Berman suggests, TPF
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What the protagonist states in this regard is symptomatic: “I think and a lot like me think so too that deep down we’ve never had not only have we never had any notion or desire to win but not even any notion that there was anything to be won anywhere and then you know if I really think about it now to me the word winning seems exactly the same as dying” (54). . TP
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It is not in fact by chance that the relationship with China begins right during the occupation of the Cantinone: “The first time I met China was during the Cantinone occupation that’s where I first saw her China had come round there I’m not sure when and she was helping Gelso with the mural that Gelso had decided to do on the biggest wall she had a big brush and she was dipping it in a bucket of white paint but she was dipping it in too much and the paint was spattering all over the place and it was running down on to the floor I saw what a mess it was and I went over to show her how it should be done but also because I thought she was very pretty” (35). TP
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Balestrini in fact writes: “all this time new people were starting to turn up they came in groups the students who knew all about it already and then the first ones to come out of curiosity workers and unemployed people came 278 TP
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“their initiatives showed that obscure and decaying old places could turn out to be – or could be turned into – remarkable public spaces” (321). And so the creative chaos that sets apart the effective energy of the various communities that operate in this space, that is, inside and outside the occupied area, once again cannot be but festive and euphoric: the party was at its height there was such euphoria such great excitement people coming in and out in and out in and out indescribable confusion they all really liked the place we should stay there they said we should stay there whatever it took we’d do terrific things in the Cantinone the music was blaring out loud as can be […] they were all looking at the stage where somebody was singing I love to play pound out my music all day but I don’t earn my wages that way for I play like a mule I’m a wild boy I wanna win I’m kinda rough but believe me I’m cool and I went to be with China right under the stage and I stayed right there holding her close while the music blared out loud as can be. (Balestrini 47)
As stated before, these situations of spontaneous aggregation which take shape in the nomadic transience of autonomous spaces are, by force of circumstance, momentary and “constitutive”, but they nevertheless represent an emblematic signal of the condition of the crisis and the unease of an entire culture, and therefore point to the need for radical change. Not coincidentally, in fact, the alienating dimension that characterizes the conflictual relationship of the narrating subject who’d seen our posters and the leaflets word had got round and people turned up came in and hung about the place taking a good look round we were explaining why we’d occupied what we wanted to do now and people were talking asking questions […] there were children running about the hall and going into the rooms upstairs it was total chaos” (38). 279
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with his space reappears even in his suffocating and backward hometown: The village where I lived was a shit-hole and the people in it were shitty people too I didn’t like this village and I didn’t like these people […] if you don’t know these villages if you don’t live in one of them you can get confused you can easily mistake one village for another they’re all alike in the middle there’s the square which always happens to be the church square and they’ve invariably got the same main street running through the village with a few shops and one or two bars the school and the municipal offices […] and the main street crossing the square going in one direction to the cemetery and in the other to the little railway station that links up all the little villages to one another. (88)
Here it seems precisely as if the same bounds reappear in a particularly terrifying manner, as in the non-place of the prison, by means of a narrative dynamic which nevertheless is part of a larger literary-cultural discourse regarding the problematic relation of city and country. In a certain sense, too, this dynamic serves to broaden the argument developed in this novel into a much more complex dimension that goes far beyond the text and the evolution of the narrative events, but which relates to metatextual and meta-historical concerns of much wider scope as well. In this sense Guglielmi is perhaps correct when he maintains that in the novel, “political desperation becomes existential desperation” (138), even though, in my view, one cannot minimize the historical and political referentiality of the plot. And moreover it does not seem random to me that towards the end of the novel, almost as if to signal the extinction of the creative and explosive parenthesis of the 70s and of the movement, and to underline more forcefully the implicit failure 280
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of the “educative” intention of the prison system, the author wanted to represent the suicide of one of the protagonists of this story, emblematically, not inside but outside prison, by likening the bedroom of the family home, incredibly but significantly, to a prison cell. Thus demonstrating not only a political but also a philosophical and existential awareness of the fact that the condition of solitude and of alienation is not only related to the “monstrosity” of that space (which is in some senses reassuring because bounded), but reappears and is problematically magnified even “elsewhere”: it seemed that Gelso no longer recognized anyone […] he’d asked his parents not to let anyone into his room and he himself never left his room he also had his food brought to his room and within a few days he turned the room into a cell […] and he started fixing it up like a cell with the same things prisoners use […] and then one evening he acted out an escape he tied the sheets together and dropped down from the window they found him in the yard with a sprained ankle […] and a month later one day they found him hanged in his cell which was his bedroom one morning they found him there he’d hanged himself with the sheets tied together that he’d used to act out the escape that he’d always had on his mind and that even now had failed him. (238-39)
The necessary “flight” from these non-places of authoritarian alienation “expressly organized to serve this pseudo-community that follows the isolated individual right into the family cell” (Debord 172), does not end in a predictable romantic sheltering in an “outside” which is non-existent and thereby utopian; it instead finds pragmatic possibilities for concrete realization precisely in the continuous, contingent political activity of the
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movement 13 , which in its nomadic progress through these public spaces of modernity, continually tries to imagine and re-invent possible areas of survival and autonomy, “where people dynamically and spontaneously interact with their surroundings, surroundings where the antithesis between our inner and outer worlds…has been collapsed” (Merrifield 181). I do not think it is therefore possible to speak with regard to this novel, as Spinazzola does, of “a sort of funeral oration, in novelistic form, of the movement for Autonomy […] a wrecked vocation that is once and for all a succumbing to the death instinct”, or as Colombo asserts, “of desolation without return”. For in the end, the revolutionary potential of this process of destabilization of the political and economic structure upon which the authoritarian logic of the nation-state is built and which finds its own emblematic representation precisely in the alienating condition of prison, the factory and the school, this potential speaks to the highly political, iron will “of the importance of writing” (Balestrini 166), as the protagonist himself suggests in a moment of the text which is above all a meta-narrative metaphor for the author’s ideological position. And even if it is Balestrini himself who maintains that at bottom “literature is useless at the immediate level of praxis” (Prendiamoci tutto 16), this does not diminish from the fact that in this novel writing nevertheless becomes the exemplary witness to a collective and personal “history”. And this history (or really story, narrative) is the ideal instrument for a willed TPF
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This is why the movement assumes the lineaments of a large family for the protagonist: “my role is to be someone who’s going to goal now I was thinking about the comrades and this consoled me because I was thinking that now they would all be rallying round busy making efforts on my behalf they wouldn’t leave me to fend for myself and I was proud of the fact that I had all these comrades this big family that was taking responsibility for my situation and my problems that would think of everything […] I felt that I wasn’t on my own I was part of a collective strength and this made me feel very strong” (123). TP
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political participation in a process of “re-writing” the events of those years, and therefore of the implicit need for participation, for the intellectual and emotional contamination of the readership, perhaps because “it is [precisely] in the anonymity of the non-place that one experiences, alone, the commonality of human destinies” (Augé 110). The fundamental issue therefore is to strive, in some way, to make the invisibility of this literary, political and historical experience at least “intuitable”, and perhaps to transform the deathly non-place that the prison becomes after the repression of the revolt – but which is also any street or square after the revolutionary “festivity” of the 70s – into something newly vibrant and alive. In short, an invitation to perform an act of resistance and protest against a “deaf” and “blind” society, illuminating “at least once” before our eyes this highly problematic reality, trying to free us from certain “verbal and mental automation” (Rosato 121), and to listen again to those “voices”, to visualize those bodies and those presences, and thereby to give space to their stories, while the others “fly very high up there in the silent black sky and they see nothing” (Balestrini 241).
Works Cited
Augé, Marc. Nonluoghi. Introduzione a una antropologia della surmodernità. Elèuthera: Milano, 2002. Balestrini, Nanni. Gli invisibili (1st ed. 1987) in La grande rivolta. Milano: Bompiani, 1999. Trans. Liz Heron. The Unseen. London: Verso, 1989. ---. Prendiamoci tutto: conferenza per un romanzo. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1972. Balestrini Nanni and Primo Moroni. L’orda d’oro 1968-1977. La grande ondata rivoluzionaria e creativa, politica ed esistenziale. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1997. P
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Berman, Marshall. All That is Solid Melts into Air. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982. Colombo, Furio. “Voci di dolore sulle rovine del terrorismo.” Tuttolibri (La Stampa) 4 April 1987. De Federicis, Lidia. “Il selvatico sul cemento.” L’Indice dei libri del mese 6 (June 1987): 8. Debord, Guy. Society of Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red Books, 1983. Esposito, Roberto. Le ideologie della neoavanguardia. Napoli: Liguori, 1976. Gemelli, M. and Felice Piemontese, eds. L’invenzione della realtà. Conversazione su letteratura e altro. Napoli: Guida, 1994. Guglielmi, Guido. “Nanni Balestrini. Gli Invisibili.” Il Verri 7 (1988). Gramigna, Giuliano. “Una lingua costruita per dire cose vedute e patite.”Il Corriere della Sera 28 Jan. 1987. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Marcoaldi, Franco. “L’Autonomia è un romanzo. Colloquio con Nanni Balestrini.” L’Espresso 18 Jan. 1987. Merrifield, Andy. Metromarxism. A Marxist Tale of the City. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. Nancy, Jean-Luc. La città lontana. Verona: Ombre corte, 2002. Pampaloni, Geno. “La solida prosa di un eversore.” Il Giornale 21 Feb. 1987. Renello, Gian Paolo. “I labirinti di Balestrini.” Il Verri 3-4 (1993): 171-203. Rossanda, Rossana. “Storia crudele di Sergio l’invisibile.” Il Manifesto 12 feb. 1987. Rosato, Italo. “Nanni Balestrini. Gli Invisibili.” Autografo 13 (1988). Sanguineti, Edoardo. “Come agisce Balestrini.” Il Verri7 (1963). Now in Sanguineti, Edoardo. Ideologia e linguaggio. Milano: Feltrinelli. 84-90. 284
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Spinazzola, Vittorio. “Requiem per gli invisibili.” L’Unità 22 febbraio 1987. Tadiotto, Antonio. “L’orda invisibile di Nanni Balestrini.” Nathalie Roelens and Inge Lanslots, eds. Piccole finzioni con importanza. Valori della narrativa italiana contemporanea. Ravenna: Longo, 1993. 175-181.
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Nanni Balestrini’s Gli invisibili: Fictional Spaces for an Epic Monument to the Seventies Clodina Gubbiotti (University of Edinburgh) So history/ is not the steam shovel it’s said to be/ leaving tunnels, crypts, manholes/ hiding places behind. Some survive it./ History is benevolent too, destroying/ what it can: better of course/ if more were destroyed, but history is short/ on information and long on vendettas./ History scrapes the bottom/ like a dragnet periodically/ hauled in. A few fish escape,/ and at time you meet the ectoplasm/ of a survivor, and he doesn’t seem specially happy./ He’s unaware he’s free, nobody’s told him./ The others, those in the net, think they’re/ more free than he. (Eugenio Montale, “History”, Satura, trans. William Arrowsmith)
Nanni Balestrini’s Gli Invisibili was published in 1987, about a decade after the events that are the object of its narration. Bompiani published the novel after it was rejected by all the other publishers who were intimidated by the violent nature of its content and its political implications. Many factions of the Italian intellectual milieu greeted the novel with cautious and, on occasions, emotional comments symptomatic of the shared and deeply felt necessity to clarify once again personal ideological positions with regard to the events of ’77 and the following ‘leaden years.’ To a certain extent it is arbitrary to isolate one single aspect dominating the whole range of the literary critics’ reactions to Gli Invisibili. Yet, both favourable and unfavourable reviews seem to make their appraisals of the novel’s value on the basis of its ‘extra-literary’ concerns – that is to say its clearcut and lucidly carried out distinction between the “autonomia” generation on the one side and, on the other, the terrorist group 286
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of the Brigate Rosse – Red Brigades. 1 Crucially, it is the author’s refusal to grant a common ideological ground to the two parties that caused most objections to the novel. 2 Indeed, the publication of Gli invisibili seemed to offer the cultural pages of the major Italian newspapers one more opportunity to consider with hindsight one of the most controversial periods of contemporary Italian history. Gli Invisibili was expected to be Balestrini’s acknowledgement of intellectual responsibility and retrospective evaluation of his political involvement with the extraparliamentary left. 3 The most perplexed and uneasy reactions came from those former members of the Gruppo 63 who – on the pages of the journal Quindici – expressed their detachment from the students’ movement in the face of the ’68 events. In an article published in La Repubblica Alfredo Giuliani accounts for the novel’s “almost neutral dramatization of failure TPF
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The nature of the relationship between the social movements and the Red Brigades is one of the most controversial subjects within the politicohistorical debate on the seventies. “Autonomia” was an ideological strain traversing many political experiences within the movement. It was founded upon the worker’s refusal to work systematically carried out by means of sabotage, resistance against the logic of hierarchy in the factory and also by occasional and symbolic violent action. Robert Lumley has pointed out that the idea of proletarian violence was by no means exclusive to those choosing to engage in armed struggle yet “the Red Brigades combined what were disparate elements in the activities of the social movements to produce a systematic terrorist strategy” (280). See also Nanni Balestrini and Primo Moroni, L’orda d’oro 1968-1977, especially pp. 369-393.
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For an eloquent example of such an approach to the novel, see Geno Pampaloni’s review “La solida prosa di un evasore”. See also Rossana Rossanda, “Storia crudele di Sergio l’invisibile’; Vittorio Spinazzola, “Requiem per gli invisibili”, and Lidia De Federicis, “Il selvatico sul cemento”.
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The so-called “7 April” investigation accused him to have taken part in armed activity. The charge of “banda armata” – together with all the other charges – proved later to be false. PT
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[drammaticità quasi neutra del fallimento]” and “grotesque or desperate simplifications [semplificazioni grottesche o disperate]” as a signal of the ambiguous re-thinking on the part of the author: A re-thinking that is mostly unconscious […] and endows the novel with a pregnancy of truth and a compact mode of writing resigned to the facts, without emphasis […]. The novel does not ask why nor how the 1977 rebellion failed. Furthermore, the hero explicitly refers to his group’s “political” opinions on very few occasions – only three or four times and only for a few lines. 4 TPF
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Giuliani’s use of inverted commas to specify the political connotations of the group hints at what he deems to be the major weakness of the novel, that is to say, its ideological poverty and lack of critical awareness. A similar implied statement of the novel’s inadequacy to convey a discernible authorial stance came also from Renato Barilli who envisaged the rigorous identification between the narrating voice and the main character modelled on Sergio Bianchi 5 as a prudential narrative device aiming at sweeping away any contrivable common TPF
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“Ripensamento per buona parte inconscio […] che dà al libro uno spessore di verità e una compattezza di scrittura rassegnata ai fatti, senza enfasi […] Il romanzo non si domanda perchè la ribellione del ’77 è fallita, né racconta come ha fallito. E sono rarissimi, non più di tre o quattro e di poche righe, i momenti nei quali il protagonista riferisce esplicitamente le opinioni “politiche” proprie del suo gruppo.”
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Sergio Bianchi is the ‘real’ name of an activist within “autonomia” coming from a working class background in the Milanese inter-land. After being charged with political crimes, he is sentenced to four years of special prison. As a hero and narrating I he is left unnamed – the reader can infer his name and historical identity by the inscription at the beginning of the novel. Balestrini met him in Paris where he fled in order to avoid judicial persecution.
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ground between the author and the subject matter of the narration. The denial of a common ground between his [Balestrini’s] social and intellectual class on the one side and, on the other, [the novel’s] obscure epic heroes bears several useful implications: in actuality, it acts as a defence, as a verdict of non-guilty on that class and it even allows the author to be evasive: the thoughts, choices and taste of that disinherited humanity do not meet with his or ours. An insurmountable difference separates us from them – only pity or sympathy can fill that gap in. 6 TPF
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Barilli and Giuliani’s critiques are eloquent on the effect of estrangement created by the narrative of Gli invisibili. The author’s ‘voluntarist’ and ‘minimalist’ adhesion to the point of view of the narrating ‘I’ has the effect of obscuring the wider political implications and historical possibilities of which the hero’s personal experience is but a fragment. For instance, while striving to recall the occupation of the school, the hero acknowledges that his memory is failing him and that his account is both partial and confused: And now here I’ve lost track of where I left off with this whole story also because there are loads of things I can’t remember that I have no clear memory of how they happened and there are also loads of things that can’t be remembered but can only be forgotten it’s not as if I want to tell the whole story of my life nor do I TP
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“La negata comunanza tra il suo proprio ceto (sociale, intellettuale) e gli oscuri eroi dell’epopea ha vari risvolti utili: in fondo, costituisce una difesa, un verdetto di non colpevolezza, appunto su quel ceto, e perfino consente al suo estensore di non pronunciarsi fino in fondo: i pensieri, le scelte, i gusti di quel mondo di diseredati non coincidono con i suoi, o con i nostri, restiamo divisi da un distacco invalicabile, se non con le armi della pietà, della commiserazione.” PT
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want to tell everything that happened during this time when so many different contradictory things of all kinds happened that to put them together and try to make sense of them seems to me quite impossible. (127)
Only a few paragraphs later the programme of the movement slips into the narrative as a succession of de-contextualized and scattered verbal fragments from propaganda leaflets (ciclostilati). Political rhetoric is treated as sedimentary verbal material that is exterior to the main character’s subjectivity by means of a collage technique that signals the ideological erosion of the verbal fragments it manipulates: to generalize the offensive means to radicalize disaffection with whichever hierarchy you choose to exercise our destructive creativity against the society of the spectacle to sabotage the machines and goods that sabotage our lives to promote indefinite wildcat general strikes always to have mass meetings in all the separate factories to elect delegates who can be recalled by the base to keep continuous links between all the places of struggle to overlook no useful technical means of free communication to give a direct use value to everything that has an exchange value to occupy permanently the factories and the public buildings to organize selfdefence of the conquered territories and on with the music. (133)
The movement’s programme is re-assembled as an irony producing device and the mordant sharpness of the finale deprives the political language of its meaning. 7 The anonymous hero avows the impossibility of giving an ultimate historical sense to the facts he witnesses and in which he is involved. The aim of his narration “is just to speak TPF
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Cfr Lidia De Federicis, “Il selvatico sul cemento”.
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about those things that happened to me but from my point of view of course just because maybe now it’s worthwhile speaking about it” (127, my italics). His only concern is to keep to his subjective point of view, the only one he recognizes as properly ‘natural’. What the reader may perceive as the hero’s failure to gain ideological insight over his actions fully corresponds, in fact, to the goal that he sets for himself as a narrator – to preserve his subjective experience as it is, to prevent it from being tarnished by other ‘unnatural’ modes of experience. His account is not as a single, progressive one-block story about his life but the raw succession of scattered memories of events, deprived of their causal order, their anti-teleological succession does not allow him to experience a perceivable psychological growth as a character. The time dimension framing the novel’s disjointed and picture scattered-like rendition of the events has a circular pattern as the end – his self-defence in front of the judge in chapter forty-five – goes back to the beginning – the wait for his trial to start in chapter one. The body of the novel itself can thus be envisaged as the character’s attempt to give evidence of his innocence on his own terms. The judge pronounces his verdict of guilty: “there is no culture in this story there are no ideas in these ravings that have neither rhyme nor reason there is only the preaching of ignorance and violence of total refusal of pure negation” (226) and the reader appears to be his only option of appeal. Angelo Guglielmi has justly pointed out that Gli Invisibili draws its strength and its compellingly alienating force from the author’s “impermeability”. By impermeability, Guglielmi means Balestrini’s consistently and rigorously carried out resistance against lending his narrative to an articulate and definitive understanding of the 1977 outbreak. 8 TPF
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The voice of the author as an historical and ideological awareness external to the character’s consciousness is never detectable within the narration. The uncanny feeling of the author’s absence is achieved by the novel’s two major stylistic and formal devices: its graphic presentation and the construction of the hero’s subjectivity. Graphically, the novel presents itself as the transcription of a monologue without punctuation marks. The signs of spoken language are frequent “I swear to you now it’s some time ago I swear to you I was perfectly convinced they were killing everyone” (80, my italics). Presumably, their function is to signal the lack of authorial interpolation. The hero’s subjectivity is constructed as entirely enclosed in the events he is narrating and re-enacting. Within his consciousness, the past keeps the intensity of the present because as a narrative subject, he is constructed by the non-linear succession of fractured events. The memories of his frantic activity within the movement are framed within the context of his incarceration as a political prisoner. The rendering of his experience is activated through the alternations of chapters about his past and his present. In the former, his life is exemplary as an exponent of the movement and in the latter, he is a political prisoner taking part in an insurrection. His recollections are forced to come to the narrative’s fragmented surface by the compelling mechanism of a crystallised narrative pattern. They do not follow the subconscious mechanisms of the Proustian memoire involontaire because they do not arise spontaneously by writers. I say dangerous because they are pregnant of implications that might distort any project of writing into propaganda. [Noi crediamo che sia proprio l’impermeabilità di Balestrini ad una comprensione articolata e complessa dei fatti che racconta e, per contro – la scelta di una lettura sommaria ed elemtentare – ciò che in qualche modo lo salva e gli consente di scrivere con materiali pericolosi (dai quali ogni altro scrittore si tiene lontano) un romanzo di certo pregio. Pericolosi perché densi di implicazioni al punto da storcere ogni progetto di scrittura e deviarlo verso esiti predicatori o propagandistici].” 292
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quotidian acts nor do these events bear upon an artistic consciousness enjoying a transparent and unilinear vantage point collocated in the present. The “impermeable” organization of the narrative’s factual record-like material offers no ground for the author’s ideological mediation of the past as it is lived through and perceived by the hero. As a novelist, Balestrini has been consciously working within the epic genre and also Gli invisibili is patterned on the epic genre. 9 Its being contrived as an orally recounted story gives an allusive reference to the oral form of the early epic. The novel is structured on a rigorously modular pattern and every chapter is divided into strophes. Bakhtin’s observation on the epic representation of time referring to the classical epic can shed some light on Balestrini’s authorial stance not to mediate the ‘time past’ enclosing the hero’s subjectivity within the ‘time present’ of the community of readers. According to Bakhtin, TPF
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“My novels are ‘false novels’ – in fact they are epic poems that are pieced together according to metrical rules and although they are written in the form of prose the number of the strophes is carefully calculated […] My characters are not endowed with the psychological depth and characterization typical of the novel. They are collective characters, like the leader of a battle. They are typical and representative of many other characters […]. The aim is to represent conflicts and struggles also in a ‘heroicomic’ way. [I miei sono finti romanzi, sono poemi epici perché anche se non sono in versi sono tutti costruiti secondo la metrica e il numero di strofe è rigidamente calcolato […] I miei personaggi non hanno la caratterizzazione psicologica tipica della forma romanzesca. Sono dei personaggi collettivi, un po’ come il condottiero di una battaglia. Sono personaggi tipici, rappresentativi, come mille altri […] Lo scopo è quello di rappresentare degli scontri anche in maniera eroicomica.” Nanni Balestrini, my unpublished interview, August 2003. PT
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a genre, are located in the same time and on the same evaluative (hierarchical) plane, but the represented world of the heroes stands on an utterly different and inaccessible time-and-value plane, separated by epic distance. (13-14) TP
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By “epic distance” Bakhtin means the absolute ideological and temporal diversity separating the world in which both listener and author live from the epic world. It determines the contemporary’s impossibility to identify with the values and ideas of a world that is lost forever and that can only live in the sphere of memory as an unquestionably accepted representation of an alien past. This past cannot be probed or enquired on the ground of present, personally lived through experience. “In the world of memory, a phenomenon exists in its own peculiar context, with its own special rules, subject to conditions quite different from those we meet in the world we see with our own eyes, the world of practice and familiar contact.” (18) The function of the epic genre is to preserve the world of memory as it is. Paradoxically, it salvages from the listener’s oblivion long past deeds and events he or she has never witnessed. Balestrini’s working within the narrative possibilities opened up by the epic representation of memory takes on polemical connotations if confronted with his choice for the title of the novel. The hero deprived of name and identity, is the exemplary exponent of “gli invisibili” – the hundreds of members of the movement annihilated by the wave of repression that followed the escalation of terrorism. Mass arrests, guilt-by-association charges and imprisonment frequently without trial, had profound consequences for an entire generation whose sacrifice was forgotten because it was socially and politically unacknowledged. The main character’s subjectivity lives in the realm of exceptional action together with the large multitude of compagni and fellow prisoners of which he is but an exemplary 294
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representative. The fact that as a narrating ‘I’ he is left unnamed, is revealing of the exemplary role he assumes with regard to the movement’s collectivity: as a hero, he exists only as a more or less stereotypical member of it. And so do his friends and compagni as the movement’s young men and women are all named after undergrowth plants, medicinal or cooking herbs or vaguely exotic plants – Aglio, China, Cocco, Gelso, Lauro, Malva, Menta, Valeriana, Ortica, Pepe, to name but a few. 10 Each one of them is the part of an indissoluble continuum of vegetation drawing its strength and identity from their compact opposition against society at large. Indeed, their names suggest an unrelenting dichotomy between Nature and Society. Walt Whitman’s image of a collective popular individual dramatized by the poet’s epic song, Leaves of Grass, the cult-text of the Beat Generation, is also at work in Gli invisibili where it is invested with a biblical dimension. The characters’ political and existential defeat echoes Moses’s meditation on god’s eternity and man’s transitoriness in the Psalms 90, verses 5 and 6: “Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep:/ in the morning they are like grass which groweth up;/ In the evening it is cut down, and withereth”. 11 In Gli invisibili, the prison hampers the epic’s dialogic relationship between memory and oblivion by acting as an insurmountable physical and metaphorical barrier between the hero’s memory and the oblivion of society outside of it. The hero’s subjectivity lives in the realm of memory and exceptional action – as opposed to quotidian, familiar practice – together with a large multitude of friends and compagni. A cursory comparison with Natalia Ginzburg’s Caro Michele – another TPF
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novel on the ‘leaden years’ – might be quite enlightening as for the corollary stemming from the representation of time peculiar to Gli invisibili. Ginzburg’s epistolary novel revolves around Michele’s self-exile in England after his involvement in the extreme left movements. The characters – Michele, his mother Adriana, friends and relatives – are all driven apart by a distance that is both ideological and physical. Nevertheless, Ginzburg’s choice of the epistolary genre acts as a provocation against the perceived impossibility – on the part of the characters – to share a common comprehension of events, ideas and affections. Michele’s partaking in the quotidian act of corresponding with a network of affections and familiar ties seems to frame – although not overcome – his alienation from ‘bourgeois’ lifestyle and ideas. The time unfolding in Caro Michele – the chronological order of the quotidian events recounted by the characters in their dated letters – is the time shared by a community that lives in the daily dimension: as a consequence, Michele’s alienation from the contemporary reader’s Weltanshauung seems to be diluted by token of his belonging to a community of affections made up of daily acts with which the reader can easily identify. Caro Michele’s world, “the world we see with our own eyes, the world of practice and familiar contact” – using Bakhtin’s words – is poignantly absent from Gli invisibili: in the last chapter, after the verdict of guilty has been proclaimed despite his claim of innocence, the main character sticks his head in the water closet in a fit of despair in search of a listener that is forever absent outside of the prison, as if he were taken by the sudden awareness of being irrevocably cut off from social intercourse: I pushed my head down but it wouldn’t fit it wouldn’t go through the hole to come out somewhere else to see out to see where I am where you are when we were a thousand ten thousand a hundred thousand it can’t be 296
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true that there’s no one outside it can’t be true that I feel nothing any more that I no longer hear any voice any sound any breath it can’t be true that outside there is only a vast cemetery where you are can you hear me I can’t hear I can’t hear you I can’t hear anything. (240)
His invisibility with regard to society outside of the prison is powerfully dramatized by the novel’s representation of the spatial dimension. From this point of view, Balestrini’s activity as a painter, since at least the late sixties, seems to have endowed him with a rare sensibility to the narrative use of the visual dimension. The leitmotif running through the novel is the hero’s repetitive movement from down upward and then down again once he fails in his plea for innocence. 12 His narration starts from the dungeons under the tribunal: “The cellars are a maze of passageways lit every twenty or thirty yards by dusty fluorescent strip-lights” (1). He climbs up the stairs leading to the court room and sits on the highest seat waiting for the trial to start: “I sit down on the highest step of all and far beneath me I can see the lawyers with their black gowns thrown carelessly back on their shoulders” (3). Later on in the novel, he is arrested and brought to the police headquarters for interrogation: “we start going up these stairs […] and we keep on climbing the stairs endless stairs and landings” (99). Here judge Lince does not believe his claim for innocence and sends him to the dungeon under the police headquarters, the same dungeons from which the narration starts: “they made me go back the same way I’d come down the narrow stairs but when we got to the ground floor we kept on going further and further down” (114). After TPF
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spending the night in the unwholesome dampness of a dark cell, he finally gets out of the dungeon and sees the daylight again: “It was a lovely day and the weather was mild in the courtyard at the police headquarters” (122) but it is only a fleeting feeling of freedom as he is brought to another prison. The dichotomy ‘up’ and ‘down’ reaches its apex in the scenes of the dramatic repression of the detainees’ revolt. The vertical dimension assumes a vital role in the organization of the revolt as the prison is divided into several floors. The special police’s crushing intervention comes from above and it is preannounced by the helicopters’ noise, “a truly deafening noise a noise coming from high above” (63). The police break in from the roof “There was a long moment of silence after these guys stopped throwing bombs down from the roof until they began climbing down the spiral staircase” (78). Once the revolt has been suppressed, the hero – like all the other prisoners – is forced to lie down with his face against the floor. From his dwarfed perspective, the policemen look like giants: “you could see these huge looming figures moving about for incidentally they were all huge very big and their bulk was exaggerated by those outfits maybe also exaggerated by this psychological situation you found yourself in with these huge great shoes […] kicking everybody” (82). After the verdict of guilty has been proclaimed, the reader can presume that the hero will be either temporarily kept in the dungeon under the tribunal or sent straightaway back to prison. His invisibility, or forced subterranean disappearance, is tragically restated in the conclusive paragraph by the barren blankness of the nocturnal view from the sky of the prison that, although being lit in sign of protest with the detainees’ fiaccolata (torchlight from the prison’s windows), cannot be seen by the airplanes that “fly very high up there in the silent black sky and they see nothing” (242, last line).
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The novel’s finale envisages an apathetic society whose oblivious indifference towards the main character’s personal account of the ‘leaden years’ is assuaged and rendered ‘natural’ by the image of the prison surrounded by the darkness of the night. His narration is looked upon from the insurmountably distant airplane’s remote point of view closing up the novel. The prison’s invisibility, and the hero’s invisibility within it, acts as a provocative confirmation of the judge’s verdict of guilty – his narration is reduced at the margins of collective memory by a more powerful master narrative made up of coercion and oblivion. As a narrator, he is caught within the State’s grandiose display of means of repression and the silence of a society that is forever absent outside of the prison. Yet the image of the prison that is visually censured and swallowed up by the all-pervading darkness of the night, gives rise to an act of consciousness compelling the perceiver to question and reconceptualize both his or her point of view as a spectator and the delegitimization the main character’s story constantly undergoes. It might be argued that Balestrini’s plea for an ‘impartial’ reading of Gli invisibili as a text about the ‘leaden years’ is in fact based on his mythologizing of the hero as an innocent victim who undergoes an unjust condemnation in order not to betray his comrades and confess their actual involvement in the crime with which he is charged. Although not deprived of a certain cogency, such a reading has the drawback of dismissing the change in perspective imperiously brought about by the novel’s finale. What seemed to be an exemplary tale of the ‘leaden years’ reveals itself to be a narration about the mechanisms that block those years’ most controversial aspects out from collective memory – hence, the reader is caught in the dilemma of either making an attempt at rescuing the hero’s narration from oblivion or letting it fall like a distant echo. For the reader to take part in the oblivious indifference of the listless society envisaged by the novel’s finale and disregard the main character’s story as unworthy of further reflection and investigation, is tantamount 299
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to renouncing his or her agency as a producer of meaning and to looking deeper into a narration whose poverty of ideological and historical references demands illumination. Only the act of private reading – the author seems to suggest – can allow the ground for a loosening of the ideological ties and the tight relationship between the State and society that was called for by the emergency brought about by terrorism. The account of the ‘leaden years’ fostered by Gli invisibili is very close in spirit to what, in Foucaultian terms, is defined as a ‘Genealogy’. 13 In Gli invisibili it is precisely the lack of any ideological-historical framework enclosing the pseudo random succession of the events that elicits the reader’s response to work out the wider scenario to which the meaning of the narration is irrevocably, although elusively, anchored. A malicious corroding power, oblivion, is at work within the text of the novel by making reticent allusions to actual historical events and censoring their names and circumstances – the reader is left with only a vague awareness of its workings. For instance, of the many revolts during this period, the one whose events are most closely paralleled in the novel took place at Trani, near Bari, in December 1980 (Heron). The radio set up by the hero and his friends is to be framed within the scenario of the unprecedented democratic flourishing of alternative voices that was allowed by the law on the liberalization of the radio broadcasting, 14 and its silence echoes the censorship the voices TPF
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Foucault’s ‘Genealogy’ is a methodology that puts into question the present and its commonly accepted attitude towards the past by refusing to endorse an historical account with a global meaning – and thus an orthodox intellectual interpretation – the perceiver can easily share and identify with. Historical phenomena are depicted in their irreducible singularity as distinct and casual events that do not point towards a teleological resolution. On this see Michel Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’, and The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. TP
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of the counterculture underwent starting from the early months of 1977. 15 The awareness of this oblivion implies awareness of the necessity of remembering, the imagination becomes more objective and the mind even more questioning. As Jean Starobinski has written, “[I]t is well known that historians have found their vocations while contemplating ruins” (180) in the attempt to master oblivion and ineffectual reminiscence.From this point of view, it is poignant that Robert Lumley’s thorough enquiry into the ideology and history of the movement begins with a quotation of the final paragraph from Balestrini’s Gli invisibili as if his investigation were the natural and ideal continuation of his reading of the novel. TPF
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Works Cited
Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Epic and the Novel.” The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays. Ed. by Michael Holquist. Trans. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. Balestrini, Nanni. Gli invisibili (1st ed. 1987) in La grande rivolta. Milan: Bompiani, 1999. Trans. and Introduction by Liz Heron. The Unseen. London: Verso, 1989. Balestrini, Nanni and Primo Moroni. L’orda d’oro 1968-1977. La grande ondata rivoluzionaria e creativa, politica ed esistenziale. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2003. Balestrini, Nanni. Personal interview. August 2003. Barilli, Renato. “L’epicità ‘minimalista’ di Balestrini.” L’informazione bibliografica 1 (Jan. - March 1987): 17. P
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The story of Radio Alice can serve as an example. Radio Alice was set up by the bolognese ‘collettivo A/traverso’. In March 1977 the police smashed the radio’s technical equipment as an act of censorship. For a more specific point of view on the movement’s exploitation of the means of mass communication see Klemens Gruber, L’avanguardia inaudita. The story of Radio Alice is also the base for Guido Chiesa’s film Lavorare lentamente (2003). TP
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De Federicis, Lidia. “Il selvatico sul cemento.” L’indice (June 1987). Forgacs, David. Italian Culture in the Industrial Era. 1880-1980 Cultural Industries, Politics and the Public. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990. Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” The Foucault Reader. An introduction to Foucault’s Thought. Ed. by Paul Rabinow. London: Penguin, 1991: 76-100. ---. The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London and New York: Tavistock/Routledge, 1970. Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. London: Penguin, 1990. Ginzburg, Natalia. Caro Michele. Turin: Einaudi, 1995. Giuliani, Alfredo. “Fuga dal cantinone.” La Repubblica 12 Feb. 1987. Guglielmi, Angelo. “Quelli di autonomia e la rivolta del ’77.” Paese Sera 18 Feb. 1987. Gruber, Klemens. L’avanguardia inaudita. Comunicazione e strategia nei movimenti degli anni settanta. Milan: Costa & Nolan, 1997. Lumley, Robert. States of Emergency. Cultures of Revolt from 1978 to 1978. London: Verso: 1990. Pampaloni, Geno. “La solida prosa di un evasore.” Il Giornale 21 Feb. 1987. Rossanda, Rossana. “Storia crudele di Sergio l’invisibile.” Il Manifesto 12 Feb. 1987. Spinazzola, Vittorio. “Requiem per gli invisibili.” L’Unità 22 Feb. 1987. Starobinski, Jean. The Invention of Liberty. 1700-1789. Geneva: Skira, 1964.
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Années 70: une Transition Traumatique Silvia Contarini (Université Paris X-Nanterre) Points de vue
L’appel à communications du colloque, intitulé “La valeur de la littérature pendant et après les années 70: le cas de l’Italie et du Portugal”, propose principalement deux perspectives d’analyse: d’une part, la production culturelle et littéraire des années 70, et d’autre part, les traces des années 70 dans la production postérieure. Les années 70 sont donc à la fois l’objet d’une réflexion sur les œuvres et les tendances de l’époque, et le sujet (la matière, le contexte) d’œuvres littéraires actuelles. À cette double perspective, exigeant d’emblée un choix méthodologique, s’ajoute une autre difficulté, à caractère thématique, dans la mesure où le thème du colloque invite à s’arrêter sur les rapports complexes entre littérature et politique, entre culture et idéologie, et plus généralement entre réalité et fiction. L’approche critique, dans mon cas, se complique en raison de l’ambivalence de mon statut. En tant qu’universitaire (ce qui a valu mon invitation au colloque), je suis l’auteur d’études sur la littérature des années 70, situées dans une optique d’histoire de la littérature, avec une attention particulière aux questions de recherche formelle et d’engagement littéraire (Ma thèse de doctorat portait d’ailleurs sur “Le roman ‘nouveau’ en Italie, du Gruppo 63 aux années quatre-vingt-dix”). En tant qu’individu, cependant, j’ai aussi une implication directe dans la matière en question. D’abord, parce que j’ai vécu personnellement ces mouvements politiques que les organisateurs du colloque ont défini comme “la révolte estudiantine de Bologne en 77”. Ensuite, parce que je viens d’écrire un roman, dont le titre provisoire est Album di http://congress70.library.uu.nl
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famiglia, 1 qui traite précisément du traumatisme générationnel provoqué par ces événements dans les années 70. Interprétation, vécu, fiction; lecture critique, mémoire personnelle, écriture. Après une longue hésitation entre ces différents plans, il m’a semblé que le croisement des perspectives, loin d’embrouiller la vision des choses, pouvait produire du sens. Ma contribution sera donc facettée. Elle ne sera pas décousue: les liens entre les morceaux seront faits par les mots de Nanni Balestrini 2 , l’un des protagonistes des années 70, politiques et littéraires. TF
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Si l’on voulait résumer en quelques traits les tendances littéraires qui s’imposent en Italie dans les années 70, on s’apercevrait qu’il s’agit d’une période de transition, une phase de passage aux caractères hybrides, post-néo-avant-garde ou pré-postmoderne, selon les points de vue, à la fois encore marquée par ce qui l’a précédée, mais annonçant ce qui va suivre. Les années 60 s’étaient distinguées par une exigence profonde de changement, par la recherche formelle et l’explosion linguistique. L’action du Gruppo 63, en particulier, avait apporté un souffle nouveau à la littérature italienne. Dans le sillage des avant-gardes, leur travail de révision, de contestation et de réinvention des techniques d’écriture touchant au genre, au style, à la structure, à la composition, avait donné à l’écrivain une très grande liberté formelle. Tout était permis en littérature. Y compris l’illisibilité. 1
Paru aux éditions Fazi, Rome, mars 2005, avec le titre definitif Noi veri delinquenti.
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Je reprendrai une interview que Balestrini m’a accordée en 1993 et qui fait partie des annexes à ma thèse de doctorat, mentionnée ci-dessus. L’interview étant en italien, je propose ici ma traduction française.
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La radicalité de la démarche expérimentale ne plaisait pas à tout le monde. D’aucuns considéraient que la recherche excessive de solutions techniques esquivait l’interrogation essentielle de tout artiste, c’est-à-dire son rapport au monde. Ils reprochaient donc au Gruppo 63 de privilégier une démarche formelle au détriment de l’implication existentielle et surtout au détriment de l’engagement social et politique. Ce qui était sans doute vrai. D’ailleurs, l’accentuation des conflits sociaux, à la fin des années 60, va déplacer le débat du plan littéraire au plan idéologique. On recommencera alors à se demander si une œuvre artistique peut agir sur le réel. La tentation de l’engagement politique devient si forte que le Gruppo 63 va se dissoudre, en 1969, après de vifs contrastes idéologiques. Certains de ses membres donneront naissance à la revue Quindici, davantage attentive au rôle de l’écrivain dans la société, comme l’explique Balestrini, l’un des fondateurs: Cette revue était née de l’exigence de pouvoir élargir le discours à un public plus vaste […] on avait l’intention d’aller voir d’autres moments de la réalité, c’était logique qu’à cette époque on s’intéresse au politique; […] ce qui s’est passé en 68 nous a obligés à mettre en cause le rôle de l’écrivain, de la culture. […] la revue a accueilli de plus en plus d’articles et de textes produits par 68, en somme, on publiait tout ce qui était révolutionnaire. Cela a poussé au second plan la critique littéraire.
Ainsi, à la fin des années 60, la critique littéraire n’est plus une priorité, l’expérimentation s’effiloche, le refus des codes s’atténue jusqu’à disparaître; la lisibilité du texte devient progressivement un élément incontournable. Balestrini souligne la fonction de “communication” du langage: Dans les années 60, le problème était de détruire à travers un certain langage non seulement un autre 305
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langage mais aussi une situation que ce langage représentait; c’était une phase particulière d’écriture où rentrait aussi le concept d’incompréhensibilité. Sans aucun doute, ce fut pour moi un moment positif, mais à partir de 68 le problème central fut en revanche que le langage puisse être utilisé comme communication.
C’est dit: l’œuvre littéraire doit “communiquer”. Désormais, sous la poussée du militantisme politique et de la radicalisation des conflits sociaux, les enjeux littéraires vont perdre de leur spécificité. C’est un premier pas vers la valorisation du récit, qui sera l’un des piliers du postmoderne. Mais c’est aussi, à ce moment, le signe de la méfiance, voire du mépris, à l’égard du roman, un genre considéré comme bourgeois. Combien de romanciers nouveaux s’affirment dans les années 70? Quelquesuns, comme Vassalli, ou Celati, qui avaient débuté leur carrière dans les rangs de la néo-avant-garde avant de prendre leur distance. Les jeunes révolutionnaires préfèrent les essais, documents et témoignages. Ou alors, la littérature dite de genre. Car, depuis les événements de 68-69 et jusqu’en 1977, la scène politique et culturelle voit l’affirmation des “mouvements”, celui des jeunes, surtout, et celui des femmes. On assiste ainsi à l’éclosion d’une littérature ciblée, souvent autoréférentielle, de jeunes pour les jeunes3 , de femmes pour les femmes. 4 Un autre élément important est la forte valorisation des formes de sous-culture, transversales aux genres et aux codes, contestataires de l’art officiel, utilisant des supports et matériaux divers, des tracts aux bandes dessinées, aux revues TF
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rock. Ces phénomènes vont s’accentuer dans la décennie suivante et trouveront dans des écrivains comme Benni ou Tondelli leur meilleure expression artistique. Pour l’instant, c’est le concept de créativité qui s’affirme, véritable mot d’ordre qui remplace celui de création, car la créativité est à la portée de tous et tout peut être créatif. Nul besoin d’être artiste, écrivain, musicien; nul besoin d’être original, ni de savoir manier des techniques artistiques: toute expression, intime ou collective, est culture. Tout est art, rien n’est art, et vice versa. Alors que l’élan novateur qui a défini la modernité du XXe siècle s’essouffle, l’élan libertaire semble immense. Pourtant, vers la fin de la décennie, les illusions révolutionnaires et l’enthousiasme créatif se brisent. C’est l’échec d’une génération et d’une utopie. La morosité (riflusso) s’installe, la répression sévit. Les drogues et la vague mystique orientale vont balayer ce qui reste. Les années 80 seront, d’après Balestrini, les années où tout s’est avvilito (dégradé), sur tous les plans, en littérature, en peinture. L’Italie, qui était politiquement et culturellement un pays riche et vivant, reste à la traîne de l’Europe.
Toutefois, les tendances littéraires ébauchées dans les années 70, laissent des traces importantes. Au-delà du regain d’intérêt pour les aspects thématiques du roman, soulignons l’abandon définitif de la belle langue, du style précieux et des genres reconnus, au profit de registres linguistiques “bas” (langue parlée, dialecte) et de genres considérés comme populaires, par exemple le roman policier. Le concept d’abbassamento, élaboré jadis par la néo-avant-garde, trouvera un nouveau souffle.
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Toutes les conditions sont réunies, à la fin des années 70, pour que le postmoderne se développe aisément en Italie. 5 Les années 80 s’ouvrent d’ailleurs avec la publication du roman emblème du postmoderne, Il nome della rosa. Son auteur, Umberto Eco, avait été le principal théoricien de la néo-avantgarde, avec l’essai Opera aperta, daté de 1963. TF
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Les années 70 s’achèvent aussi avec l’exil de Nanni Balestrini (1979). Gli invisibili, roman qu’il écrit en 1982-83, mais qui sera publié en 1987, est une sorte de témoignage-réflexion sur l’échec, politique et littéraire, de la décennie écoulée. Le parcours de Balestrini, entre les années 1960 et 1980, est exemplaire. Rappelons qu’il débute en littérature avec le recueil Il sasso appeso (1961), suivi de Come si agisce (1963), des poèmes composés avec l’assistance d’un ordinateur. La recherche formelle domine également dans son premier roman, Tristano (1966), un roman d’amour doublé d’un roman politique, dont la composition fragmentaire est le résultat de phrases découpées et organisées selon la technique du collage, et dont le seul but est l’agencement des matériaux verbaux. À cause de sa technique d’écriture presque mécanique, Tristano fut d’ailleurs défini comme “tutto forma”. Balestrini, on l’a dit, décide à la fin des années 60 de privilégier l’action politique. Ce choix est marqué par la publication de Vogliamo tutto, un récit où la recherche formelle s’atténue, tandis que les contenus idéologiques s’accentuent. 6 TF
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Par la voix du protagoniste, un jeune immigré, on relate de façon réaliste les luttes ouvrières dans des usines du nord. Fabio Gambaro remarque qu’avec Vogliamo tutto, Balestrini “ha abbandonato gli aspetti più vistosi delle tecniche avanguardistiche per ritrovare nell’immediatezza linguistica di un parlato proletario lo strumento più adatto ad esprimere il vitalismo sovversivo del giovane immigrato operaio della Fiat protagonista del 308 T
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Le roman devient le miroir d’une réalité sociale sur laquelle l’auteur veut intervenir avec des propos édifiants. Le message, explicite, est un appel aux masses pour la construction d’un monde meilleur. Ainsi, à peine cinq ans après Tristano, Balestrini passe de l’illisibilité à la simplification des éléments formels et linguistiques, afin de permettre aux destinataires potentiels du livre une compréhension facile. C’est pourquoi Vogliamo tutto fut défini comme “tutto contenuto”. L’auteur n’est pas d’accord avec cette interprétation. Vogliamo tutto, d’après lui, n’a pas été pas un accident de parcours: Je trouve cette interprétation un peu superficielle, comme si dans ce que j’avais écrit auparavant il n’y avait pas de contenu […]. Tristano est plein de contenus politiques […]. Il y a une cohérence absolue entre Tristano, Vogliamo tutto et Gli Invisibili. Il y a par exemple le même type d’écriture formelle, des chapitres brefs, des strophes […]. Le personnage protagoniste de Vogliamo tutto et degli Invisibili est un personnage collectif, un type de héros qui ne représente pas luimême mais la collectivité, un peuple, […] mille personnes qui ont fait la même chose, qui ont eu la même expérience et qui ont eu les mêmes réactions […]. Ce sont des destins collectifs […]. En somme, le noyau, ce qui m’intéresse, c’est précisément le fait que le traitement du contenu n’est pas un message que je veux diffuser, je n’ai aucun message, je raconte des histoires.
La déclaration de Balestrini ne semble pas très convaincante. Car ces trois romans, Tristano, Vogliamo tutto et Gli Invisibili, malgré les points en commun, marquent les étapes d’un changement de sa vision du champ littéraire et du champ politique. romanzo”. Il ajoute que depuis ce livre Balestrini a choisi “la strada di quel contenutismo ideologico tanto osteggiato dalla neoavanguardia” (188-89). 309
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Je faisais remarquer à Balestrini que si l’ouvrier protagoniste de Vogliamo tutto représente une multitude, l’étudiant protagoniste des Invisibili possède une personnalité propre, ce qui le rend beaucoup plus touchant. Je soulignais aussi que Gli invisibili dégage plus de force, d’émotion et de profondeur que ses autres textes littéraires, sans doute parce que la recherche littéraire ne devient jamais un exercice formel et que le contenu ne devient jamais un programme idéologique. Il acquiesçait et répondait: C’est parce que, derrière, il y a la défaite, l’échec, et l’échec rend plus que la victoire; c’est le héros vaincu qui est le plus profond.
Comme je l’interrogeais sur le rôle de la composante autobiographique, il ajoutait: Les situations et les personnages des Invisibili je les ai connus, même s’il y a une différence de génération avec le protagoniste. Je dirai ce que vous avez dit tout à l’heure: je crois moi aussi que Gli Invisibili est mon meilleur livre, et que dans le résultat de ce qu’on écrit, il est très important qu’il y ait une opération de transformation en langage d’une grande émotion. Je crois que dans Gli invisibili l’émotion existe. […] j’avais connu les gens, les faits, les choses, et surtout j’avais vécu l’expérience de la fin, de l’échec... et puis, ce livre je l’ai écrit en France quand je ne pouvais pas rentrer en Italie, et en ce sens il y avait certainement une forme de biographie émotionnelle […]. Il faut une passion, dans tout livre important il faut une passion. Mémoires et autofiction
“Dans tout livre important, il faut une passion”: j’aurais aimé clore mon intervention sur cette phrase, mais quelques remarques s’imposent sur la question de l’implication personnelle de l’écrivain et sur la spécificité de la fiction. 310
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On peut écrire sur le vif parce qu’on veut prendre position, dénoncer ou agir sur le réel 7 ; ou alors parce qu’on veut exprimer à chaud une expérience de vie. Les œuvres ainsi conçues ont parfois la force de l’indignation, parfois elles ont le mérite de la fraîcheur, car elles restituent la langue, les comportements et la culture du moment. Mais la distance a aussi ses mérites et sa nécessité, comme le souligne encore Nanni Balestrini: TF
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La littérature vient toujours un peu plus tard, l’écrivain écrit sur des choses qui ne sont absolument pas concomitantes, je crois que tout doit se déposer, même les événements personnels; je peux écrire sur un amour, mais cinq ans plus tard, pas à chaud, sinon j’écrirai des choses très mauvaises. C’est pareil si l’on veut parler d’événements extérieurs, tout doit se déposer, être refroidi par un peu de distance […] il doit y avoir une distance, un passé, l’écrivain raconte, il est un narrateur, un conteur.
Arrêtons-nous donc sur les œuvres qui à posteriori reviennent sur une époque aussi trouble que les années 70. De plus en plus, on assiste ces derniers temps à la publication de témoignages, autobiographies, réflexions, etc. Ce sont des ouvrages écrits souvent par d’anciens terroristes devenus écrivains en l’occurrence, sur un ton de nostalgie, de revendication ou de repentir. Ils racontent des faits de sang, des événements majeurs comme l’enlèvement d’Aldo Moro, ou l’expérience personnelle de l’enfermement en prison. Quelques exemples: Barbara Balzerani, Compagna luna; Laura Braghetti, Nel cerchio della prigione; Alberto Franceschini, Mara, Renato ed Io, storia dei fondatori delle Br; Mario Moretti, Brigate rosse, una storia italiana. T
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Cette production plus documentaire que littéraire est supposée aider les historiens, sociologues, politiques, à mieux comprendre le phénomène des “années de plomb”. Mais j’observe que ce sont les protagonistes tristement célèbres de l’époque qui livrent leur vérité, antinomique à la vérité d’État, selon la même logique oppositionnelle qui, déjà à l’époque, limitait le choix politique au soutien du pouvoir en place ou à la complicité avec les terroristes. En revanche, la fiction prend du retard. Pourquoi? Peutêtre parce que la période est encore trop traumatique; peut-être aussi parce que, justement, elle est depuis trop longtemps confisquée par ceux qui étaient en première ligne et qui demeurent au devant de la scène. La production romanesque reste minimale, mais on entrevoit quelques signes de changement. Au delà du cas emblématique de Nanni Balestrini, du déjà mentionné Enrico Palandri, je pourrais citer, sans prétendre faire un recensement exhaustif, le roman d’Antonio Moresco Gli esordi; quelques livres d’Erri De Luca 8 ; Alla rivoluzione sulla due cavalli, de Marco Ferrari; le très récent Amici e nemici, de Giampaolo Spinato, ainsi que La banda Bellini, de Marco Philopat, un auteur peu connu, présenté dans ce colloque par Claudio Milanesi. Un discours à part mériteraient les auteurs de romans policiers, tels que Loriano Machiavelli, Giuseppe Genna, Marcello Fois et surtout Massimo Carlotto, ou encore l’ancien militant extrémiste Cesare Battisti. 9 S’ils sont plus prolifiques et moins prudents dans leur manière d’aborder la violence sociale et politique, c’est sans doute que le genre s’y prête davantage. Quoi qu’il en soit, pour lire ces quelques fictions romanesques, il a fallu attendre bien plus des cinq ans dont TF
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Je rappellerai surtout Aceto, arcobaleno, où le sujet est abordé de manière mystique et elliptique, et le récent Il contrario di uno.
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On pourrait inclure parmi les auteurs de polars Girolamo De Michelis, pour son récent roman Tre uomini paradossali.
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parlait Balestrini. Il a fallu vingt ans et plus pour que l’émotion, la déception, se déposent et permettent à l’écriture de jaillir. On peut désormais espérer qu’une production de plus en plus abondante verra le jour, car la fiction peut sans doute jouer un rôle dans la compréhension de cette période tourmentée. La fiction peut sans doute redonner à l’époque l’épaisseur et les vérités multiples que le rude conflit politique a aplaties. Le romancier n’est pas tenu au respect des faits. Il peut inventer des mondes, illusoires ou réels. Ses visions lui permettent de sonder des zones d’ombre, de fouiller l’obscurité des choses et des personnes. En se servant de son imagination, il peut reconstituer le réel à sa guise et faire de son récit fictionnel une nouvelle source de vérité. Ainsi, les années 70, en devenant matière de fiction, pourraient dévoiler des aspects que la description historique, l’analyse politique, l’autobiographisme plus ou moins opportuniste, n’ont pas su ou n’ont pas voulu décrypter. Un romancier, même s’il a été militant politique, invente des personnages et raconte des histoires. Il peut négliger les événements les plus retentissants des années de plomb pour privilégier le vécu ordinaire, la vie quotidienne. Il peut donner la parole à ceux qui, à l’époque, ne l’ont pas eue, et qui, aujourd’hui, ne l’ont pas non plus. Marginalisés, impuissants, aphones, à force d’avoir crié sans être entendu. Ces personnages pourraient avoir les voix des jeunes qui étaient là, peu visibles parce que repoussés à l’arrière-plan par l’arrogance du pouvoir, par la répression policière, mais aussi par la violence terroriste. La mémoire ne saurait être usurpée, elle appartient à tous. C’est en racontant des histoires, beaucoup d’histoires différentes, situées dans cette période particulière, que le travail de recomposition et de réparation de la mémoire, individuelle et collective, peut commencer à se faire. On pourra alors se réconcilier avec un passé difficile à assumer, on pourra réhabiliter un passé trop souvent exproprié par des groupes ou des individus qui se sont autodésignés comme porte-parole. 313
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Album di famiglia (Noi veri delinquenti)
Nanni Balestrini disait d’ailleurs: Les années 68-78 sont une décennie pour moi très riche, sur laquelle on pourrait raconter beaucoup d’histoires, plus que celles que j’ai racontées, c’est étrange qu’on en ait écrit si peu, presque aucune; si j’étais Balzac je pourrais écrire de dizaines de romans sur cette période, mais j’écris à peine un livre tous les cinq ans.
Je ne suis pas Balzac non plus, mais je me permets, en guise de conclusion, de dire quelques mots sur mon nouveau roman. Il m’importe ici d’en dévoiler la genèse car ce récit que je pourrais qualifier de “roman vécu”, est né de ce qu’on appelle pudiquement le “faits” de Gênes, les violences lors du G8 en juillet 2001. Plus exactement, il est né des débats sur les ressemblances avec les années 70. En entendant les uns et les autres souligner ou nier les éléments communs, je me suis rendu compte que la remémoration de cette période ne m’était pas agréable. De plus, elle se heurtait au décalage entre mes propres souvenirs et les récits des autres, dans lesquels je ne retrouvais pas mon expérience, ni celle de mes camarades; je ne trouvais ni mon vécu personnel, ni notre vécu collectif. La mémoire, on le sait, est défaillante, voire sélective. Mais parfois, les souvenirs se font pressants et forcent à exhumer le passé. Ainsi, je me suis déterminée à écrire ce roman pour tirer les choses au clair, pour régler mes comptes avec un passé trop présent. Par le biais de la fiction, j’ai voulu fixer ce qui, autrement, faute d’être dit, aurait continué à me hanter. Le noyau du roman est l’année 1977, bien que les événements s’étalent entre 1974 et 1982, la période où l’on passe de l’enthousiasme à la déchéance. Je raconte l’histoire de quelques jeunes, d’abord gaiement lancés dans la contestation, 314
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dans une insouciante transgression des codes et des rôles, y compris sexuels; puis, tout à coup, confrontés à la violence meurtrière; puis, encore, livrés à la drogue meurtrière; enfin, résorbés par le confort bourgeois, voire attirés par le pouvoir et l’argent. En fait, à ma manière, par l’écriture, j’ai voulu donner un rôle aux très nombreux jeunes qui sont restés aux marges de l’histoire officielle des années dites de plomb, qui pour eux étaient aussi, ne l’oublions pas, des années de vie. J’ai également voulu briser la mainmise sur ces années de ceux qui, par leur action répressive ou terroriste, par une parole abusivement collective ou institutionnellement autoritaire, ont empêché ma génération de s’épanouir. Raconter des histoires contribue à écrire l’histoire. Encore faut-il le faire avec force et talent. Si sur cela, il ne m’appartient pas de porter un jugement, je peux en revanche souscrire aux mots de Balestrini: J’avais connu les gens, les faits, les choses […]. Le problème est comment transformer l’émotion en langage.
Ouvrages cités
Balestrini, Nanni. Gli invisibili dans La grande rivolta. Milano: Bompiani, 1999. ---. Interview personnel. 1993. Contarini 1994-95. Balzerani, Barbara. Compagna luna. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1998. Braghetti, Laura. Nel cerchio della prigione, Milano: Sperling & Kupfer, 1995. Contarini, Silvia. Le roman ‘nouveau’ en Italie, du Gruppo 63 aux années quatre-vingt-dix. thèse de doctorat. 2 vol. Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne, UFR d’Italien, doctorat d’études italiennes, 1994-95. Direction: Prof. Jean-Michel Gardair. ---. Noi veri delinquenti. Roma: Fazi, 2005. 315
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De Luca, Erri. Aceto, arcobaleno. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1992. ---. Il contrario di uno. Milano: Feltrinelli, 2003. De Michelis, Girolamo. Tre uomini paradossali. Torino: Einaudi (Stile libero-Noir), 2004. Ferrari, Marco. Alla rivoluzione sulla due cavalli. Palermo: Sellerio, 2005. Franceschini, Alberto. Mara, Renato ed io. Storia dei fondatori delle BR. Milano: CDE, 1988. Gambaro, Fabio. Invito a conoscere la Neoavanguardia. Milano: Mursia, 1993. Jansen, Monica. Il dibattito sul postmoderno in Italia. Firenze: Franco Cesati, 2002. Moresco, Antonio. Gli esordi. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1998. Mario Moretti, Brigate rosse. Una storia italiana (intervista di C. Mosca e R. Rossanda). Milano: Anabasi, 1994. Palandri, Enrico. Boccalone. Milano: Bompiani, 2003 (1er éd. 1979). ---. La via del ritorno. Milano: Bompiani, 1991; puis Milano: Feltrinelli, 2001. Philopat, Marco. La banda Bellini. Milano: ShaKe, 2002. Spinato, Giampaolo. Amici e nemici. Roma: Fazi, 2004.
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Trauma on the Line: Terrorism and Testimony in the anni di piombo Ruth Glynn (University of Bristol) The anni di piombo and Insidious Trauma
Italy’s experience of political violence and terrorism in the 1970s has recently returned to the forefront of both political debate and cultural activity. The twentieth and twenty-fifth anniversaries of the brigate rosse’s 1978 kidnapping and murder of Christian Democrat president, Aldo Moro, have coincided with a new wave of terrorist activity leading to the assassination of Massimo d’Antona in Rome in 1999 and of Marco Biagi in Bologna in 2002. These experiences have compelled Italy to recall and confront the painful episode of recent history known as the anni di piombo, and to pose once and again difficult and uncomfortable questions about the relationship between state institutions, parliamentary and non-parliamentary politics and violence. 1 In the cultural sphere, a similar revisiting of the recent past is signalled by the publication of a wide range of histories, memoirs (especially those written by ex-terrorists), and films treating the anni di piombo. TPF
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I employ the term “anni di piombo” here to refer to the entire period (c. 1969-1983) in which violent action featured prominently in Italian politics, rather than with reference to the narrower timescale of 1976-80 preferred by a number of historians. PT
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The publication of these texts not only signifies a great need to testify to one’s experience of the anni di piombo, or to investigate the motivations behind the violence of the time, or to create a coherent narrative of a complex and fragmented past; it also signals the extent to which that past lives on in the collective unconscious today. The long unacknowledged persistence of the anni di piombo in the collective psyche suggests that Italian culture developed in relation to the political violence and terrorism of the 1970s a defensive amnesia symptomatic of an experience of psychological trauma or wound. Although there has been a great deal of public debate about the events of the anni di piombo, it is only recently that a discourse of trauma has begun to emerge as a dominant, with contemporary discussion abounding with references to the inflicting of a “ferita” or “dolore”. Academic and cultural criticism has been equally shy of such a discourse; to date there has been no significant or sustained attempt to study this episode of Italian history in terms of collective trauma. Exceptions to this rule are the rare insights afforded by Antonio Negri, who intimated in 1998 that “the social and psychological traumas of that decade have still not been healed or distanced” (1998); by Anna Lisa Tota, whose study of commemorative practices relating to the bombing of the Bologna train station in 1980 implicitly acknowledges the traumatic status of the event in the city’s memory (2003); and by Giancarlo Lombardi, who is unique in reading a filmic portrayal of the anni di piombo as a trauma narrative (2000). These rare exceptions signal a potentially critical field of enquiry for the advancement of our understanding of the impact of political violence and terrorism in the 1970s, and call for a re-reading of the anni di piombo as trauma. 2 Such a reading would examine TPF
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Italy therefore seems to have reached the point identified by Joshua Hirsch in the life of a society that has suffered a massive blow; i.e., the period after 318 TP
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the impact of political violence not only on the major protagonists of the time – politicians, terrorists, victims, activists, etc. – but also on Italian society and culture as a whole. It is my contention that an investigation of the manner in which ordinary Italians and Italian institutions experienced violence in the 1970s, responded to that violence, and remember that violence will reveal symptoms consistent with a response of trauma; while Italian culture as a whole will be seen to be trapped in a cycle of numbing and intrusion, of silence and reenactment with respect to the experience of the anni di piombo. This paper is a step towards such a reading of the anni di piombo as trauma. The conceptual framework draws on a range of trauma-related writings from the 1990s but is most heavily indebted to Judith Lewis Herman’s Trauma and Recovery (1992) and Cathy Caruth’s two contributions to this field of study, Unclaimed Experience (1996) and Trauma: Explorations in Memory (1995). These works have been instrumental in effecting a significant departure from the Freudian understanding of trauma as a reaction to events outside the range of normal human experience, thereby redefining the parameters of trauma studies. Herman, for instance, describes traumatic events as extraordinary, “not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life” (33). Thus, although we may still refer to an act of violence as a “traumatic event”, it is the exceptional quality of the impact of the event, rather than the event itself, which constitutes the trauma. While both Herman’s work and complementary studies on narrative explorations of trauma and testimony by Cathy Caruth, Leigh Gilmore, and Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub are primarily focused on the psychological impact of trauma on individual human beings, all acknowledge the potential for the initial encounter with a trauma but before its ultimate assimilation, in which there arises a discourse of trauma (18). 319
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trauma to be collective as well as individual. Indeed, recent advances in trauma theory are mostly due to studies of the impact of the holocaust, of slavery and of violence against women in Western society. In relation to this latter, Gilmore observes that “cultural memory, like individual memory, develops characteristic and defensive amnesia with which those who have experienced trauma must contend” so that “remembering trauma entails contextualizing it within history” (31). Herman reiterates the continuity between individual and collective responses to trauma in the closing pages of her book in a section on political violence and community. She writes that, “in the aftermath of systematic political violence, entire communities can display symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, trapped in alternating cycles of numbing and intrusion, silence and re-enactment. [...] Like traumatised individuals, traumatised countries need to remember, grieve, and atone for their wrongs in order to avoid reliving them” (242). 3 Particular to collective trauma is in the lateral spread of traumatic symptoms beyond those immediately affected by the trauma-inducing event and into the wider population. Recent studies in the US have shown that violent events can traumatise a wider body of people than those directly involved. With specific reference to terrorism, a study of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing found that individuals whose only exposure to the event was through television media coverage actually showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress (Sitterle 20); a similar study of 9/11 revealed clear signs of dysfunctional reactions by Americans and others around the world who were not directly TPF
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When we consider the unresolved status of many acts of political violence carried out in Italy in the anni di piombo, together with the fact that the Special Laws remain in force, that questions of state culpability remain unanswered, and that commemoration is still extremely problematic and divisive, the potential for reliving the past remains. This has been verified on several occasions, and with tragic consequences, in recent years.
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involved (Pyszczynski, Solomon and Greenberg 128-29). Elsewhere, Maria Root’s work on the psychological effects of rape in North America reveals that as a consequence of the knowledge that there is a base rate of sexual violence which frequently goes unpunished, women who have never been directly exposed to violence may nonetheless display symptoms of psychic trauma. Root coined the term “insidious trauma” to describe this second-hand lateral spreading of psychological damage (qtd. in Brown 107). 4 It is this insidious trauma that I wish to investigate here in relation to Italy’s experience of political violence in the anni di piombo and beyond, because it is in this field that we find the strongest evidence of the spread of the impact of events beyond the major protagonists and into the wider population. I will limit my discussion to the testimony offered by a personal diary held at the Archivio diaristico nazionale in Pieve Santo Stefano (AR). 5 The archive’s collection of diaries, memoirs and letters written by non-professional writers constitutes a unique source of information on everyday life in twentieth-century Italy, and on the extent to which those events which occupy media headlines impact on the everyday existence of ordinary people. In the first instance, the collection provides a rough measurement of the resonance of events of political and social TPF
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Unlike the alternative term, “vicarious trauma”, which suggests an empathic, mediated reaction to the pain of others (indeed it is more usually applied to those who suffer from listening to trauma survivors), “insidious trauma” denotes a direct seepage of trauma into a wider body of people than those immediately involved. The distinction is comparable to Agamben’s explication of the difference between the Latin words relating to testimony: the word testes (orig. terstes) suggests the testimony provided by an uninvolved third party witness (contiguous with “vicarious”) whereas superstite suggests that of a direct survivor (17).
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I would like to express my sincere thanks to the staff at the Archivio diaristico nazionale for sharing with me their extensive knowledge of the collection and for their expertise and generosity in guiding me through the archive’s holdings. All quotes are provided are with their permission. PT
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import in a given space and time. But on a deeper and more engaged level, however, the commentary and analysis the texts offer reveal how a variety of individuals may have received, internalised and responded to the major events of their world. Though relatively small, the archive’s collection of approximately 30 texts which directly or indirectly treat the anni di piombo is evenly split between diary and memoir, and predominantly composed of texts written during or about the latter half of the decade. For the most part, the texts which directly treat political violence and terrorism are selfconsciously testimonial in nature, so that their concentration in the phase in which political violence has reached a climax attests to the depth of the wound inflicted by that climate of violence in the anni di piombo. However, it is equally important to note that the collection also testifies to the wilful forgetting that has taken place in the meantime. For instance, in the introduction to her diary on her student days in 1977, Anna Rita Pizzioli eloquently describes how her generation’s hopes and dreams have been repressed in cultural discourse, held up as the example to be avoided, a “momento storico da dimenticare, da cancellare”. She goes on: “La cosa più triste è appartenere ad una generazione che la storia vuole cancellare dalla propria memoria. Io invece, voglio ricordare. Vivere quegli anni è stata un’impresa faticosa, troppo faticosa per pensarci sopra con indifferenza e superficialità” (1). Pizzioli writes her memoir in 1986 precisely to counter-act that motivated forgetting which she identifies in the current culture; while it is not stated in their work, the other writers who have offered their work to the archive may very well have shared this motivation. L’attesa as Trauma Testimony
Though many works in the collection provide evidence of the lateral spread of insidious trauma in the anni di piombo, it is Enrico D’Angelo’s memoir, L’attesa, which most clearly 322
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articulates how acts of terrorism may traumatise people who have no direct encounter with those acts. L’attesa treats the years 1977-1994, which coincide with D’Angelo’s wife’s battle against breast cancer. The opening words of the memoir refer not to the news itself, but to the blow, the psychological wound inflicted, by the news of his wife’s disease: Quei giorni, quelle date, quelle ore sono sempre lì, chiusi nel profondo della mia memoria, e lì rimarranno finché Dio lo vorrà. E mi tornano sempre nei miei sogni densi e agitati, mi spingono a forza tra le sterpaglie d’un sentiero sterrato che sale sale e poi si spezza così di colpo, in due tronconi sospesi nel nulla. (0)
This extremely suggestive narrative opening incorporates several characteristics symptomatic of trauma. The freezing of time; the closure of the events in a separate space in memory; the recurrence of the events in the dreaming of the unconscious; the event itself as a watershed in D’Angelo’s life, which fragments rather than coheres with the rest of his life’s narrative, all point in the direction of a traumatic reaction. Herman explains that such a reaction occurs when action is of no avail. D’Angelo himself clearly sees this as the case – the confirmation of his wife’s illness compels him to recall, even repeat, an earlier trauma, that of his father’s death from cancer. His highly visual recollection of the news of the terminal diagnosis given to his father is described in terms of repetition, of retraumatization; his description of the act of remembering that hopeless situation is presented in terms of a reliving of the moment when the specialist held up the X-ray of the tumour, shrugged his shoulders and told him there was nothing to be done (0). However, as the narrative progresses into the second part of the memoir, the main body of the text, it is revealed that the trauma or wound, with which the narration is concerned, is 323
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not solely – indeed not primarily – located in the personal; rather, the trauma of a loved one’s battle through cancer gives way to a socio-political trauma of terrorism. The text documents the journeys D’Angelo takes between Palermo and Milan, as he accompanies his wife to her regular appointments with her specialist. Although the narrative does deal with fears associated with his wife’s illness and with their meetings and discussions with the specialist, much of the narrative space is given over to the experience of travelling the entire length of Italy at a very difficult time in the history of Italian train travel. The narration of an event that occurs on the first journey the couple take in 1977 sets out the parameters for the trauma narrative. On the return leg, the train is delayed for over half an hour at the Bologna station before passengers are informed that a suspect package had been found on the line in one of the tunnels between Bologna and Florence. The event is simply recorded in the text, without comment, so that the narrative construction replicates the mechanism at work in the narrator’s unconscious. For it is only when next travelling by train that this incident gains traumatic significance by returning to torment him and by effecting a radical shift in the way he experiences train travel: Ora su quel treno in quel giorno afoso di fine agosto, mi sorprendevo con rabbia del radicale mutatmento del mio essere, e pur prendendone coscienza non riuscivo a scomporre nella mia mente immagini di disastri ferroviari, specie all’interno delle gallerie, e in aggiunta a questi si sovrapponevano anche immagini di attentati, da quando quella notte era stato rinvenuto un pacco dal contenuto sospetto. (26)
This passage of text, with its expression of anger and frustration at the belated awakening to the consciousness of the blow suffered, is infused with a sense of the latency which Freud 324
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recognised as being the prime motivator of trauma. Freud viewed trauma as a reaction to a wound inflicted too soon, too unexpectedly, to be fully known; it therefore remains unavailable to consciousness until it imposes itself again, repeatedly, in the nightmares and repetitive actions of the survivor. Cathy Caruth, after Freud, maintains that it is the very unassimilated nature of the wound that returns to haunt the survivor later on, and concludes that “trauma seems to be much more than a pathology, or the simple illness of a wounded psyche: it is always the story of a wound that cries out, that addresses us in the attempt to tell us of a reality or a truth which is otherwise not available” (Unclaimed Experience 4). As Freud, Caruth and others remind us, it is through the unconscious language of repetition – flashbacks, nightmares, emotional flooding and other forms of intrusively repetitive behaviour – that the wound cries out. The subject is in a necessarily passive position in relation to the trauma as the traumatic image or event imposes itself on a subject incapable of active response. As Caruth puts it, “to be traumatised is precisely to be possessed by an image or an event” (Trauma 5). Herman observes that the symptom of “intrusion” is a reflection of the indelible imprint of the traumatic moment in memory and, following Janet, observes that traumatic memories “lack verbal narrative and context; rather they are encoded in the form of vivid sensations and images. [...] Often one particular set of images crystallises the experience, in […] the ‘ultimate horror’” (38). 6 What is of interest in the case of L’attesa is the fact that the intrusive images of violence which have come to haunt D’Angelo’s waking and sleeping moments alike are not images TPF
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of a violence to which he himself has been directly exposed; rather – and this assumption is confirmed later in the text – it is through the recurrent media images of human bodies scattered in the wake of train bombings that a trauma is inflicted. Insidiously traumatised by the general climate of terror in the country, by the frequent targeting of trains by neo-fascist groups, and by his current sense of entrapment on the train (the use of the word “afoso” to capture the stifling quality of the atmosphere gains significance here), such highly visual media images return to haunt him like a recurrent film he is unable to avoid replaying in his head, mindful of the possible consequences which might result. Plotting Trauma
The radical change D’Angelo registers in himself is illustrated by comparison with his former self, described in highly nostalgic, almost Edenic terms. The break with the past self, what Leigh Gilmore refers to as “the self-altering, even selfshattering, experience of violence, injury and harm” is a feature common in the diaries and memoirs of the Archivio diaristico nazionale collection (Gilmore 105). The following description of D’Angelo’s former travels, though no doubt rendered through rose-tinted glasses, is especially notable for its lack of concern with space or time: Sul treno, un tempo, quando amavo viaggiare, riuscivo beatamente a sonnecchiare, mentre un libro o un giornale con cui sempre m’accompagnavo, lentamente scivolavano a terra. Quando al sonno seguivano brevi risvegli, mi beavo del sonno in cui m’ero immerso, grazie ad un attimo di coscienza. [...]. A volte, avevo la sensazione di viaggiare verso l’infinito o verso una meta ignota; e quando mi svegliavo nel cuore della notte a causa di una brusca frenata del treno, non mi preoccupavo piu di tanto, né avevo voglia di sapere quel ch’era accaduto. 326
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Questi un tempo erano i miei stati d’animo, liberi da turbamenti e paure. (26)
This memory of a carefree, almost idyllic, past is constructed in opposition to the present space and time, a time in which the self is in a constant state of hyperarousal, or hyper vigilance, another of the classic symptoms of trauma recognised by Herman. Hyperarousal, she observes, is manifested in a combination of generalised anxiety symptoms and specific fears which reflects the persistent expectation of danger in those who have been exposed to trauma; “such individuals have an elevated baseline of arousal: their bodies are always on the alert for danger” (36). Moreover, because traumatic events confront human beings with the extremities of helplessness and terror, they evoke responses of catastrophe (Herman 33). Such a response or expectation of catastrophe is patently and painfully in evidence in the following quotes from D’Angelo’s memoir, which plot precisely perceived sites of danger. He is unable to forget the emotional freezing or constriction which attends the approach to these sites, powerless to do anything other than count the minutes to the end of the danger zone: “E poi come dimenticare quei momenti di tormento che mi procuravano quelle oscure e interminabili gallerie disseminate tra Firenze e Bologna, dove l’attesa di rivedere un fascio di luce mi costringeva a contare i minuti che ci separavano dall’uscita” (42). The intense concern with plotting one’s own position in relation to danger by pinpointing the specific spatial area and time in which danger is perceived to be concentrated recurs throughout the text, frequently accompanied by allusions to shocking media images. The encounter with these space-time points is always accompanied by fear and traumatic symptoms – repetitive instances of intrusion – which give way to profound relief once the danger is perceived to have passed:
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quelle corse pazze dei treni nella notte che mi bloccavano il sonno, quelle oscure, lunghe e insidiose gallerie da quando la strategia del terrore più minacciosa e pressante s’era presentata alla cronaca italiana, ormai diventata una sorte di calendario illustrato di terrorismo. [...] Guardai l’orologio. La mezzanotte era passata da tempo e mi accorsi che il treno aveva già attraversato le lunghe gallerie per le quali avevo un’avversione non facilmente eliminabile. Sospirai profondamente, liberato da un incubo. (31)
In spatial terms, the series of tunnels between Florence and Bologna might best be understood as what Kevin Lynch labels a “node” – a site of particular importance or cultural value which transcends its geographical positioning. The status of the Bologna-Florence tunnels as node of traumatic hyperarousal lies not only – indeed not primarily – in the discovery of a suspect package on the line in 1977. Rather, and it is noteworthy that it is only later that this is acknowledged – almost, therefore, with a quality of narrative latency – the traumatic significance of the site rests in the bombing of the Italicus train in the Val di Sambro-Castiglion di Pepoli tunnel on August 24th 1974. The traumatic significance of that event is reinforced by its status in the text as an unacknowledged presence between D’Angelo and his wife, a fact that emphasises the ghostly, spectral quality of the event. The narration of the emotional and psychological impact of the event on the couple is constructed upon a series of gaps and silences which underlie their fears; this contrasts sharply with the emotionless, journalistic quality of the narration of the event itself which provides the precise notification of space and time, the intentions of the bombers and the outcome of their actions. P
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“Sarebbe meno pesante il viaggio…” “E meno pesanti… quelle gallerie…” S’interruppe a metà frase. 328
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Rimasi stupito. “Come? Hai paura?” “Non proprio, ma da quando….” Erano l’una e ventitré del 24 agosto del ‘74 e l’Italicus, l’espresso che collegava Roma a Monaco di Baviera stava atterversando le gallerie degli Appennini. La strage, firmata ‘Ordine nero’ sarebbe dovuta avvenire al centro della galleria, amplificando così il disastro. Ma quando il timer della bomba entrò in funzione, il treno in parte era già uscito dal tunnel. La quinta carrozza dov’era stata collocata la valigia con l’esplosivo si trasformò in un inferno. La strage di Stato non ebbe colpevoli. (42-43) Surviving Bologna
The extent of the hyperarousal articulated in the narrative intensifies as the climate of terror persists, and increases with each individual escalation of the violence, most notably with the Moro kidnapping in 1978 and with the bombing of Bologna station in 1980. In relation to this latter, D’Angelo describes how his fellow passengers display a heightened awareness of being potential targets, and manifest what we can recognise to be hyper vigilant symptoms. The apparently random nature of terrorism’s choice of victims has seriously undermined Italians’ assumptions about the safety and security of the world they inhabit; this results in a collapse of the normal strategies habitually employed to maintain security and protect the self from the most frightening aspects of life. Thus the “self-altering, even self-shattering, experience of violence, injury and harm” individuated by Gilmore is replicated on the social level, as normal human relations and interactions are similarly altered, shattered, damaged. This is illustrated by D’Angelo’s description of the suspicion and mutual surveillance apparent in human interaction in public spaces in the wake of the Bologna massacre:
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Sui treni accadevano le cose più grottesche, che esprimevano uno stato d’animo concitato per una situazione di pericolo non prevedibile né evitabile. Con sospetto come fossero potenziali terroristi, si scrutavano le persone che salivano in treno a Roma o a Firenze portando con sé una piccola borsa. Si guardavano con la coda dell’occhio le loro facce, i vestiti che indossavano, i movimenti che facevano, se erano loquaci o taciturni. […] Non mancavano i volontari di turno che nell’intento di sostituirsi alla polizia, pur sempre presente sui treni, andavano scrutando nei vari scompartimenti, se per caso vi si trovasse qualche valigia abbandonata sulla reticella o sotto i sedili. (55)
Kai Erikson’s study of the impact of trauma on community structures reveals that traumatic events tend to act as divisive, “corrosive” forces, opening up whatever fault lines already existed within any given community (189). 7 In the case of the Italian 1970s, in which social division was a major factor in the development of the corrosive force of terrorism, one would imagine that the community-destroying effect could only be reinforced by the trauma of terrorism; D’Angelo’s narrative lends weight to such a proposition. For D’Angelo himself, each new episode of violence heightens his own sense of fear and helplessness as, although it TPF
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Erikson’s definition of collective trauma as “a blow to the basic tissues of social life that damages the bonds attaching people together and impairs the prevailing sense of communality” (187) highlights above all the sociological, rather than the psychological, effects of trauma. However Hirsch, following LaCapra, forwards a very convincing suggestion that “it may be a misconception of the significance of psychoanalytic theory to think of its applying primarily to individual psychology and only secondarily, and by analogy, to a broad social phenomenon. Perhaps trauma is, instead, a broad social phenomenon, exemplified in human psychology and in public discourse alike” (18).
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is periodic, the regularity of his train travel amounts to extended or prolonged exposure to trauma. Herman reminds us that prolonged exposure results in prolonged duration of the traumatic symptoms and that “Long after the danger is past, traumatized people relive the event as though it were continually recurring in the present. The traumatic moment becomes encoded in an abnormal form of memory, which breaks spontaneously into consciousness, both as flashbacks during waking states and as traumatic nightmares during sleep” (37). The latter part of D’Angelo’s memoir, which deals with the 1980s, reveals that to be the case. On seeing the newly rebuilt Bologna train station in 1982, he writes from a position of perceived security, one in which he is hesitantly optimistic about the safety of train travel: In quel mentre il Paese viveva un periodo di apparente tranquilità. Si aveva quasi la sensazione che il terrorismo fosse stato ridotto all’impotenza. […] Ad ogni buon conto ritenevo fosse una nota positiva fra le tante stonate; e per il Paese e per noi pendolari di professione. (61)
However, the vision of the newly built Bologna station propels him back into the past. It is not the new construction of the present time that impresses itself upon his mind; rather he is flooded by very visual memories, no doubt emerging from newspapers and television reports, but which are precise enough to appear as if he had been present: Quando il treno si fermò alla stazione di Bologna, erano ancora accese le luci. Dal giorno del massacro solamente un segno della furia devastatrice era rimasto: l’orologio fermo alle dieci e venticinque e mai più messo in funzione. M’apparve spettrale quella parte di fabbricato ricostruito: sapeva di mausoleo dove sotto stavano racchiusi brandelli di carne, vestiti, valigie, giocattoli, 331
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e malgrado ogni cosa fosse stata rifatta con meticolosa cura quasi un puntiglio a mo’ di rivincita, alitava in quella stazione una morte sospesa, mai cancellabile. (61)
The image of the stopped clock encapsulates the timeless quality of traumatic memory emphasised by Langer: “Trauma stops the chronological clock and fixes the moment permanently in memory and imagination, immune to the vicissitudes of time” (112). The images of scattered remains and personal belongings which persist to haunt the living in fragmented shards of memory compound the ghostly quality of the narration, which is achieved through the use of the word “spettrale” and the figure of death living and breathing still. The manner in which these images force themselves upon D’Angelo’s mind clearly conforms to the “inflexible and invariable” quality of traumatic memory (Janet 662); D’Angelo continues to live in the grip of such images, unwittingly undergoing the ceaseless repetitions and re-enactments of the original event as it presented itself to him in media coverage. Because the traumatic event took place outside the parameters of normal human reality, it has no beginning or end, no before or after. This is borne out by a similar episode two years later that reinforces the enduring nature of insidious trauma. Although he perceives the threat of terrorism to have abated, when booking a ticket for a forthcoming journey, D’Angelo is surprised to find himself asking what time the train would pass through Bologna (68). This incident is best explained by Elizabeth Wheeler’s image of the leaking capsule. She writes that: “Past trauma lives in the psyche as an encapsulated island, quarantined away from the rest of memory. [...] One can never erase the memory of violence: one can only encapsulate it, and the capsule always leaks” (11-12). D’Angelo’s prolonged exposure to insidious trauma throughout the anni di piombo has resulted in a longterm reprogramming of both memory and the ordinary responses 332
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to danger, so that despite the fact that he no longer consciously sees train travel as a risk, his self-defence mechanisms “persist in an unaltered and exaggerated state long after the actual danger is over” (Herman 34). For the unconscious, the danger is not yet over. Light at the End of the Tunnel?
Just as for the individual, so for the collective unconscious; the danger is not yet over. The wound inflicted on Italian society by the violence of the anni di piombo is one that has not yet healed. The continuing hyper vigilant state of a range of collective defence mechanisms – whether political, legal or social – provides ample evidence of persistent scars. On a more positive note, however, the recent emergence of a discourse of trauma would suggest that an important step has been taken towards the overcoming and reintegration of the trauma into a coherent narrative of collective memory. The cues which have facilitated this approach to the trauma are broad and varied, but include the series of anniversaries relating to the entire arc of time between the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing to the Moro case; the new wave of political violence and terrorism culminating in the recent arrest of a number of the “nuove brigate rosse”; and the return to public attention of a number of notable political exiles. Though few 1970s’ texts held at the Archivio diaristico nazionale promote so eloquent a discourse of trauma as does D’Angelo’s L’attesa, all nonetheless provide unprecedented testimony to the breadth and depth of the traumatic reaction to the violence of the long 1970s. The collection itself and the emergent discourse of trauma in discussion of the anni di piombo signal that the moment is now ripe for further investigation into the continuity between individual and collective experiences of political violence, informed by the significant recent advances in the field of trauma studies.
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Works Cited
Agamben, Giorgio. Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. Trans. D. Heller-Roazen. New York: Zone Books, 1999. Brown, Laura S. “Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma.” Caruth, Trauma 100112. Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. ---, ed. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. D’Angelo, Enrico. L’attesa. Unpublished Memoir. Archivio Diaristico Nazionale MP/00. Erikson, Kai. “Notes on Trauma and Community.” Caruth, Trauma 183-199. Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York and London: Routledge, 1992. Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, Vol. 18: Beyond the Pleasure Principle. London: Hogarth, 1955. Gilmore, Leigh. The Limits of Autobiography: Trauma, and Testimony. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell UP, 2001. Herman, Judith Lewis. Trauma and Recovery: From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. London: Pandora, 2001. Hirsch, Joshua. Afterimage: Film, Trauma and the Holocaust. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2004. Janet, Pierre. Psychological Healing, Vol. 1. Trans. E. Paul and C. Paul. New York: Macmillan, 1925. Langer, Lawrence L. Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory. New Haven: Yale UP, 1991.
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Lombardi, Giancarlo. “Unforgiven: Revisiting Political Terrorism in La seconda volta.” Italica 2 (Summer 2000): 199-213. Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. Cambridge, Mass; London: MIT Press, 1960. Negri, Antonio. “Reviewing the Experience of Italy in the 1970s.” Le Monde Diplomatique (September 1998). 28 June 2006. . Pizzioli, Anna Rita. Utopie e realtà: il ’77. Unpublished Diary. Archivio Diaristico Nazionale DP/86. Pyszczynski, Tom. Solomon Sheldon and Jeff Greenberg, In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror. Washington, DC and London: American Psychological Association, 2003. Sitterle, Karen. “Mental Health Services At The Compassion Center: The Oklahoma City Bombing.” NCP Clinical Quarterly 4 (Fall 1995): 20-23. Tota, Anna Lisa. La città ferita: Memoria e comunicazione pubblica della strage di Bologna, 2 agosto 1980. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003.
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Violence Politique et Sentiment d’Irréalité: la Représentation des Années 70 chez Balestrini, Camon et Vassalli Susanne Kleinert (Université de la Sarre (Saarbrücken, Allemagne)) Traumatisme et sentiment d’irréalité
La réalité et l’imaginaire historiques des années soixante-dix furent marqués par la violence politique, de gauche ainsi que de droite, une violence politique qui, surtout en Italie, fit beaucoup de victimes. 1 Ces “années de plomb”, comme Margarete von Trotta les appelle très justement dans le titre de son plus célèbre film (Die bleierne Zeit), attirèrent l’attention de plusieurs artistes et écrivains, en Italie ainsi que dans d’autres pays européens. A la différence des historiens, les artistes, réalisateurs et écrivains en général essaient de saisir, plutôt que les événements historiques eux-mêmes, leur écho subjectif chez les individus. Le caractère traumatisant de la violence peut laisser une impression d’irréalité, comme le démontre la théorie psychologique qui associe les deux termes quand elle traite la mémoire d’événements traumatisants. Freud parle des processus de déréalisation symptomatiques d’une névrose. Les recherches actuelles sur la mémoire soulignent que celle-ci ne fonctionne pas comme un réservoir d’images fidèles, mais qu’elle PF
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D’après Paul Ginsborg, p. 519, les Brigades rouges et d’autres groupes qui leur étaient proches intensifièrent même leurs attentats après l’enlèvement d’Aldo Moro, assassinant 81 personnes dans les années 1978-1980. TP
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http://congress70.library.uu.nl/
SUSANNE KLEINERT (UNIVERSITÉ DE LA SARRE (SAARBRÜCKEN, ALLEMAGNE))
réélabore, reconstitue en continu le champ des souvenirs (Schacter et Waites). Le souvenir d’événements traumatisants, par exemple de situations de violence, met en jeu des phénomènes divers qui peuvent aller de l’amnésie, d’un côté, à la clarté et la fixation obsessionnelle du souvenir, de l’autre – avec, souvent, un sentiment d’irréalité du vécu. L’effort psychique qui consiste à déréaliser la violence est très évident chez les victimes qui cherchent à nier le traumatisme subi pour pouvoir retourner à une vie normale, mais on peut rencontrer cette stratégie psychique aussi chez les coupables. Anna Laura Braghetti, une des ravisseuses d’Aldo Moro, dit avoir éprouvé un sentiment de vide absolu après avoir tué personnellement le politologue Vittorio Bachelet en 1980. De son propre aveu, elle a réprimé longtemps toute forme de sentiment pour tenir ce souvenir à l’écart de la conscience. 2 Quand un écrivain se penche sur des processus de déréalisation, que ce soit par des images ou des descriptions, cela peut signifier qu’il souligne l’effet traumatisant d’une expérience de violence. La littérature, normalement, n’est pas forcément l’expression immédiate d’un traumatisme, mais elle peut être la formulation consciente de quelque chose que l’auteur considère comme traumatisant même s’il ne l’a pas vécu directement. Dans un texte littéraire, la déréalisation peut aussi se fonder sur un choix plutôt esthétique que psychologique, ou bien provenir des deux domaines en même temps. Sa fonction peut donc varier. En comparant les œuvres de plusieurs auteurs italiens, l’on peut se demander dans quel PF
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Voir Anna Laura Braghetti et Paola Tavella, Il prigioniero: “Dopo l’azione provai un senso di vuoto assoluto. Per uccidere qualcuno che non ti ha fatto niente, che non conosci, che non odi, devi mettere da parte l’umana pietà, in un angolo buio e chiuso, e non passare mai più di lì con il pensiero. Devi evitare sentimenti di qualunque tipo, perché sennò, con le altre emozioni, viene a galla l’orrore” (131). TP
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contexte politique ou esthétique et dans quel but les écrivains ont lié des images déréalisantes à leur représentation de la violence politique des années 70. Le thème du sentiment d’irréalité éprouvé vis-à-vis de la violence se prête à une recherche plus concrète parce qu’il se différencie à priori du discours politique et peut donc laisser apparaître les modélisations particulières dont la littérature dispose en se confrontant avec l’expérience historique. C’est donc moins la question de la prise de position politique des auteurs qui nous intéresse ici que la modélisation narrative et littéraire en général. 3 Elsa Morante est probablement l’un des premiers auteurs qui a critiqué toute la société de consommation au nom du concept d’irréalité. Dans Il mondo salvato dai ragazzini (1968), elle propose une variante intéressante du discours marxiste: “L’IRREALTÀ è l’oppio dei popoli” (121). Selon Walter Siti, Pasolini a adopté cette idée de l’irréalité de la société contemporaine. 4 Dans La Storia, Elsa Morante a associé le concept de l’irréalité au traumatisme causé par l’holocauste et la bombe atomique. Dans les textes d’Elsa Morante, la vision déréalisante de l’histoire a une fonction de critique, soit de la séduction qu’exerce la société de consommation soit de la violence historique en général. D’une part, pour elle, le TPF
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Belpoliti trace un tableau très intéressant des réactions d’écrivains importants tels Sciascia, Calvino, Arbasino, Morante, Eco, Fortini vis-à-vis de l’enlèvement d’Aldo Moro et il les réfère à la conception de l’écrivain engagé et éclairé, en soulignant aussi les procédés divers d’Arbasino qui traite plutôt le langage et la mentalité des années 70; voir Marco Belpoliti, Settanta pp. 3-51. En comparaison avec les auteurs traités par Belpoliti, on peut constater qu’un auteur comme Balestrini fut beaucoup plus impliqué dans les événements. TP
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Pasolini dit en 1962 que la Morante emploie le terme “irrealtà” pour désigner la pseudo-culture, voir Walter Siti, pp. 136-137. TP
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sentiment d’irréalité naît là où l’être humain n’est plus capable d’imaginer les dimensions des massacres. D’autre part, la société de l’après-guerre et les individus qui la composent contribuent à créer un sentiment d’irréalité en réprimant le souvenir de la guerre. Nanni Balestrini, Gli invisibili: La violence et la perte de sens
Le concept de l’irrealité de la vie politique italienne se trouve aussi du côté de la Neoavanguardia. Alfredo Giuliani l’a associée à l’immobilité politique causée par la confrontation des deux blocs au pouvoir, la Democrazia cristiana et le PCI. 5 Rappelons brièvement que la Neoavanguardia éclata en 1970 pour cause d’inconciliabilité entre les deux courants qui s’étaient développés à l’intérieur de ce mouvement, et qui concernaient le rapport de la littérature à la politique. Giuliani, par exemple, opta pour une critique de la société à travers la critique du langage, tandis que Nanni Balestrini, autre membre de la néo-avant-garde, s’efforçait de politiser le mouvement et approuvait même la violence comme stratégie d’opposition extra-parlementaire – approbation qui s’annonçait dès ses poèmes “Senza lacrime per le rose” (1969), publiés plus tard dans le volume Poesie pratiche. 1954-1969 (1976). De plus en plus, Balestrini rapprocha son activité littéraire de la politique des groupes d’extrême gauche. Cofondateur de Potere operaio en 1968 et, après la dissolution de ce groupe en 1973, militant d’Autonomia operaia, il abandonna même toute la distance que les intellectuels gardent habituellement vis-à-vis des mouvements politiques. Dans Vogliamo tutto (1971), son texte sur les grèves chez Fiat en 1969, Balestrini ne documente pas simplement les événements TPF
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Voir Giuliani: “L’Italia si agita, cambia e rimane immobile. […] l’immobilità dei Poteri reali comunica un senso di straziante Irrealtà” (54). TP
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politiques, mais il veut changer les règles du discours politique et propage des stratégies subversives. 6 En mettant en cause, en même temps, le monopole syndical sur la représentation des intérêts ouvriers et le monopole étatique sur l’exercice de la violence, Balestrini lutte sur deux fronts. La manœuvre est tout à fait consciente, comme le prouvent ses déclarations en 1971, à l’occasion d’un voyage de conférence sur Vogliamo tutto dans plusieurs villes italiennes – voyage qui fut organisé par Potere operaio. Dans cette conference publiée en 1972, Balestrini commente la fin de Vogliamo tutto: PF
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E qui il protagonista misura finalmente questo terreno, che è l’unico terreno, l’unico sbocco collettivo possibile per la sua lotta [...] l’unico suo sbocco collettivo è quello di chiedere ricchezza sulla base della forza e della contrapposizione, al livello dei rapporti di forza, con il potere. Vale a dire: la violenza. Il passaggio alla pratica diretta di appropriazione collettiva della ricchezza sociale: da “vogliamo tutto” a “prendiamoci tutto”. (32)
Il ne s’agit pas ici d’un simple geste provocateur, car Balestrini annonce, dans le même texte, l’imminence de la guerre civile (5). La violence lui apparaît donc comme une stratégie politique incontournable. Dans La violenza illustrata (1976), il choisit de représenter la violence à travers un montage associant le discours journalistique et les extraits de procès-verbaux d’auditions de témoins. Le matériel linguistique se réfère souvent à des scènes de violence politique, par exemple aux manifestations violentes, aux confrontations entre les habitants d’un quartier pauvre avec la police et à la mort d’une brigadiste tuée par les forces d’ordre. Par le biais du montage, des 6 TP
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Pour une analyse de Vogliamo tutto, voir Tullio Pagano.
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répétitions et des variantes comprises dans ce matériel linguistique, l’attention du lecteur dévie graduellement des faits bruts pour se fixer sur la rhétorique journalistique et sur le contraste qui oppose celle-ci aux voix des étudiants et ouvriers contestataires. 7 Gli invisibili (1987) se réfère à Vogliamo tutto en rappelant, au deuxième chapitre, la tactique appliquée en 1969 pendant les grèves de FIAT, et que Balestrini avait décrite dans Vogliamo tutto (Gli invisibili 15). Les acteurs ne sont plus les mêmes, mais la stratégie du “prendiamoci tutto”, du “prenonsnous tout”, est bien celle que Balestrini avait proclamée en 1971. En omettant de mentionner des dates précises, sauf une petite allusion au mouvement de 1977 (54), Balestrini semble établir une continuité entre les grèves de 1969 chez FIAT et les mouvements postérieurs. Même si Balestrini, né en 1935, n’appartenait pas à la génération du mouvement de 1977, il partageait les mêmes expériences puisqu’il soutenait Autonomia operaia, le groupe qui suivit Potere operaio. 8 Balestrini s’appuya au récit de son informateur Sergio auquel le livre est dédié, un jeune du milieu de l’Autonomia, comme on en peut conclure de ses idées politiques d’autogestion. PF
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Pour une analyse plus précise de Blackout et de La violenza illustrata, des textes liés par un processus similaire de composition, voir William Anselmi, surtout pp. 30-33. TP
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Voir Antonio Tadiotto “L’Orda invisibile di Nanni Balestrini”, p. 175: “Nell’aprile del 1979 Nanni Balestrini fu imputato dalla magistratura italiana di ‘associazione sovversiva’ e ‘banda armata’. L’istruttoria 7 aprile fu una grande operazione di repressione nei confronti delle personalità di rilievo dell’area dell’Autonomia Operaia quali Antonio Negri, Oreste Scalzone, Franco Piperno e molti altri che rappresentavano parte del movimento del ’77”; voir aussi William Anselmi, p. 20: “C’è un filo ben visibile che lega le rivendicazioni delle generazioni del ‘68 con quelle del ’77”. TP
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Le texte raconte l’histoire d’un groupe de jeunes qui ne veulent plus vivre comme leurs parents et qui cherchent à développer des modes de vie autonomes en occupant des espaces publics – comme le lycée – mais aussi des espaces privés, pour les transformer en centres de communication alternative. Certains d’entre eux choisissent la lutte armée, les autres veulent continuer la politique de l’appropriation illégale mais non clandestine, mais eux aussi sont criminalisés de la même manière que les partisans de la guérilla urbaine. Dans la prison, la lutte continue, mais les buts de cette politique deviennent de plus en plus obscurs, la violence interne augmente et les prisonniers sont de plus en plus isolés de l’extérieur. Le monde extérieur les oublie, ils sont devenus invisibles. Par rapport à Vogliamo tutto, la construction narrative de Gli invisibili est beaucoup plus compliquée, parce que l’action n’est pas racontée chronologiquement, mais assemble plusieurs niveaux temporels comme par montage. Il est possible de reconstituer la chronologie des événements, et l’on peut reconnaître une volonté de composition dans le montage des divers fragments. Des cinq premiers aux cinq derniers chapitres, on constate que la fin reprend la scène du tribunal du début, et qu’il y a ainsi ouverture et clôture de plusieurs sujets importants. La violence relie la fin du roman au commencement, mais elle est évaluée différemment selon le contexte. Ainsi, dans la scène du tribunal au premier chapitre, Balestrini met l’accent sur la solidarité entre les accusés et sur leur joie de se revoir, alors que dans la reprise de cette scène au chapitre 45, il souligne au contraire le manque de communication entre détenus et représentants de la justice: le protagoniste n’a pas la chance de pouvoir se défendre, le procureur général ne profère que des clichés dans son plaidoyer. De même, le deuxième chapitre décrit les débuts du mouvement, la révolte dans les lycées, la victoire antiautoritaire des lycéens qui imposent leur assemblée au proviseur, alors que le chapitre 44 raconte la désillusion, et le sentiment des 342
SUSANNE KLEINERT (UNIVERSITÉ DE LA SARRE (SAARBRÜCKEN, ALLEMAGNE))
protagonistes d’avoir participé à une histoire inutile. 9 A la fonction documentaire s’ajoute donc une interprétation de l’histoire racontée, en suivant une perspective de désillusion subjective. Au début du mouvement, donc, la stratégie d’appropriation violente acquiert une valeur libératrice, euphorisante. Transgresser les limites, c’est célébrer une fête, sceller une identité collective. Alors qu’à la fin, même le protagoniste ne voit plus aucun sens dans les actions entreprises. La révolte des prisonniers tourne dans le vide: pour le personnage principal, l’objectif n’est plus de revendiquer des améliorations palpables dans les conditions d’incarcération, au contraire: au fond, tout lui est égal. S’accumulent alors les scènes qui témoignent d’un désir grotesque de rendre la justice soi-même, les détenus se sentant obligés d’exécuter ceux qu’ils considèrent comme des traîtres. La mort, qui, au départ, est infligée par le pouvoir étatique, donc comme injectée de l’extérieur, finit par prendre possession des événements par l’intérieur. Et le protagoniste juge explicitement que les histoires des plus jeunes détenus sont des “storie assurde” (270). Le manque de communication donne quelque chose d’irréel au combat politique du mouvement autonome: dans le cadre fermé de la prison, le mouvement s’épuise en un activisme inepte et finalement en une situation “di impazzimento generale” (275). Mais même à l’extérieur, il se vide de son sens. Ainsi, après s’être longtemps battus pour prendre le contrôle TPF
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Pareillement, les chapitres 3, 4 et 5 fournissent le contexte de violence politique, la mort d’un manifestant tué par la police, la mort d’un carabiniere tué par un ami du protagoniste et un assassinat brutal dans la prison. En écho à cela, les derniers chapitres traitent les actes de violence contre les pentiti, reviennent en partie sur l’histoire de la victime assassinée au chapitre 5, et accentuent surtout le sentiment d’isolation et le manque de communication des détenus avec le monde extérieur. TP
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d’une station de radio, les amis du héros constatent qu’en fait, ils n’ont plus rien à dire, aucun message à faire passer sur les ondes – le projet radio s’avère donc absurde: c’era tutto lì pronto bastava schiacciare un pulsante e parlare ma non avevamo più niente da dire nella sede non ci andava più nessuno ormai ogni giorno capitava un disastro nuovo uno che arrestavano uno che impazziva uno che spariva uno che si suicidava tutti sono spariti non c’era più niente da dire. (258)
Les procédés littéraires appuient la narration, qui, thématiquement, va d’une expérience de libération à la désillusion et la perte de sens. Dans un passage du texte, le narrateur vide une scène de son contenu politique en y apposant, sans motif apparent, la description d’une scène télévisée dans laquelle une autruche est poursuivie par un guépard (29); la situation de violence est naturalisée, la scène joue le rôle d’un signe sans que sa signification soit explicitée clairement. Littéraires, aussi, les répétitions qui rythment certains passages, par exemple: “adesso mi sembrava che non solo tutto era finito per sempre ma anche che tutto era stato anche inutile che era stato veramente tutto inutile tutto quanto tutto quello che tutti quanti avevamo fatto” (247). Le caractère traumatisant de l’expérience du protagoniste-narrateur est soulignée par la qualité obsessionnelle de la description des scènes de violence. 10 Le narrateur exprime un sentiment d’irréalité d’une manière très concise quand il compare le mouvement à un fantasme: TPF
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Ici aussi les répétitions forment un rythme martelant: “e nel momento in cui ha girato la testa un punteruolo un altro colpo di punteruolo gli si è infilato in un occhio proprio un punteruolo gli si è proprio infilato in un occhio un colpo di punteruolo dentro l’occhio e quello urlava veramente in modo incredibile poi è caduto per terra” (35). TP
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le manifestazioni e le feste erano finite da un pezzo il movimento era come un enorme fantasma assente ripiegato su se stesso rintanato nei suoi ghetti la scena adesso era occupata dallo stillicidio di azioni armate clandestine rivendicate da decine di sigle di organizzazioni combattenti che si facevano concorrenza la vita del movimento era finita ma per i compagni non era finita non è che potevano mettersi da parte e dire aspettiamo stiamo a vedere perché per la repressione tutti erano coinvolti non si facevano troppe distinzioni (Gli invisibili 26-27)
Pour décrire le changement d’atmosphère dans l’évolution politique du mouvement, l’auteur se sert aussi de comparaisons littéraires: “come se sentivamo dietro di noi qualcosa di distruttivo di mostruoso che ci inseguiva sempre più da vicino” (211). A un moment, le texte fait directement allusion aux procédés de la mémoire. Le protagoniste ne croit plus à la possibilité de donner un sens aux événements, devenus trop contradictoires; il pense qu’il vaudrait mieux en oublier certains: e ci sono anche un sacco di cose che non si possono ricordare che si possono solo dimenticare non è che qui voglio raccontare tutta la storia della mia vita e neanche voglio raccontare tutto quello che è successo in questo periodo in cui sono successe tante cose diverse di tutti i tipi contraddittorie che metterle tutte insieme cercare di dargli un senso mi sembra proprio impossibile (151) 11 F
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Au thème de la fragmentarité du souvenir fait echo la forme fragmentarisée du plaidoyer du procureur au chap. 45 et, peut-être, la composition entière du texte divisés en fragments discontinus. TP
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Dans le dernier chapitre, le protagoniste raconte l’histoire de son ami Gelso traumatisé par l’expérience de la prison, qui, après avoir été libéré, transforme sa chambre en une cellule, ne reconnaît plus ses amis et finalement se suicide, incapable de trouver un chemin d’évasion mentale (276-77). De même, le protagoniste traverse un processus de perte d’identité dû à son isolation et à la dissolution de la solidarité à l’intérieur du mouvement. Il brise le miroir de sa cellule, donc sa propre image, en jette les fragments dans la cuvette du WC et ensuite met sa propre tête dans le trou noir: c’ho infilato la testa l’ho schiacciata giù ma la testa non entrava non riusciva a passare da quel buco a uscire fuori da un’altra parte a vedere fuori a vedere dove sono dove siete quando eravamo mille diecimila centomila non è possibile che fuori non c’è più nessuno non è possibile che non sento più una voce un rumore un respiro non è possibile che fuori c’è solo un immenso cimitero dove siete mi sentite non sento non vi sento non sento più niente (278)
Les derniers efforts du prisonnier pour se mettre en contact avec le monde extérieur sont voués à l’échec, et symbolisent l’isolation d’une politique d’extrême gauche dans les années du “riflusso”, du “retour à l’ordre”. Au-delà, donc, de la question du débat idéologique – question que le texte n’ignore pas, loin de là – on détecte une ambivalence structurelle qui naît du lien noué entre la violence et deux thèmes différents, quasi antinomiques: d’une part, la libération, et d’autre part, la perte de sens. La mise en perspective à travers l’œil du protagoniste, de même que des moyens de description purement littéraires, permettent d’exprimer un vécu historique qui ne fait pas l’impasse sur les conséquences traumatisantes de la violence. Des trois romans 346
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traités ici, Gli invisibili cherche le plus à se mettre dans la peau d’un jeune qui a participé à la politique de la violence des années 70, mais donne aussi une interprétation de cette expérience historique. Ferdinando Camon, Occidente: La violence et le sentiment d’irréalité come symptôme d’une maladie individuelle et collective
En 1975, Ferdinando Camon 12 publie Occidente, moins pour poursuivre un projet littéraire que pour répondre à un appel citoyen, comme il le dit dans sa préface. Ce texte tente une approche critique du terrorisme de droite. Par le personnage de Franco, chef d’un groupuscule qui se nomme Gruppo d’Ordine, Camon essaie de livrer un diagnostic psychologique de la mentalité qu’il suppose à la source des attentats de la “strategia della tensione”. Il s’appuie sur une riche documentation (tracts, articles de journal, témoignages) 13 et, apparemment, a su rendre convaincante sa construction des références historiques, puisqu’un extrémiste de droite, Franco Freda, s’est identifié avec la figure du protagoniste. 14 PF
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Voir sur l’œuvre de Camon les articles de Paola Barbon et Raffaele Liucci; sur Occidente aussi Alberto Granese, pp. 207-213. TP
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Voir la préface du roman et la documentation des sources du texte (Occidente, 315-316). PT
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Le site internet de Camon publie des extraits d’un “Studio dei documenti teorici elaborati dalla destra eversiva, compiuto dal P. M. inquirente per la strage alla stazione di Bologna”, qui démontre qu’un groupe d’extrême droite utilisa des passages d’Occidente pour formuler une ligne politique. Franco Freda, d’abord condamné pour l’attentat de Piazza Fontana à Milan et acquitté en cassation, demanda un entretien avec Camon publié ensuite dans “I miei personaggi mi scrivono” dans Nord-Est no. 1; les pages web de Camon contiennent quelques extraits de ce dialogue, dans lequel Freda explicite ses idées plutôt inquiétantes sur la “guerre sainte”, voir . TP
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L’action du roman se déroule à Padoue et traite les confrontations violentes entre extrême-droite et extrême-gauche. Le camp gauchiste est représenté par un mouvement nommé Potere rivoluzionario, sous lequel on détecte sans peine le véridique Potere operaio. Lotta continua, le PCI et les Brigades rouges n’apparaissent qu’en marge de ce récit. Quant aux objectifs politiques du Potere rivoluzionario et à ses stratégies (confrontations avec la police, sit-ins, grèves sauvages), ils sont thématisés et décrits, mais toujours avec, en guise de jugement de valeur, le postulat suivant: la violence politique finit par renforcer les tendances réactionnaires dans la société. Pour Camon, la stratégie de la violence est donc, pour ainsi dire, restauratrice et fasciste par essence: “Perché l’attentato e la strage sono i chiodi che impediscono alla storia di scivolare: non sono le leve della rivoluzione, che sbloccano il mondo. Le grandi rivoluzioni sono povere di attentati. Le grandi restaurazioni ne sono piene” (Occidente, 305-306). Il considère d’ailleurs que la violence est un comportement typiquement de droite, et ne s’en cache pas dans sa description des confrontations entre les différents groupuscules: son ironie est palpable dans les passages consacrés à la stratégie du “prendiamoci la cittá”. On voit, agissant derrière le dos d’un tas d’activistes ridicules, se profiler un groupe terroriste de droite qui se sert de la violence comme d’un instrument idéologique et psychologique fondamental, et qui donc apparaît bien plus dangereux que les acteurs du premier plan. Alors que la représentation du révolutionnaire Miro, par exemple, est dominée par l’ironie et le ridicule, dans celle du néo-fasciste Franco, en revanche, Camon se place audelà d’une stratégie de distanciation littéraire pour se lancer dans une véritable tentative d’explication. La fin du roman thématise le désir pathologique du protagoniste d’exporter la mort afin de
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se sentir vivant: il fait glisser une bombe dans le panier d’un enfant dans une école maternelle. 15 Le caractère de ce personnage, dont la conscience est représentée de l’intérieur, est indéniablement névrosé. Tourmenté par ses troubles pathologiques, il consulte un psychanalyste, mais interrompt l’analyse dès la première séance, car il préfère au fond conserver sa maladie et ne souhaite pas vraiment guérir (chap.5). L’acte final de lancer une bombe n’est donc que la conséquence qui résulte d’un mélange d’idéologie raciste et d’une maladie psychique. Sa stratégie pathologique consiste à vouloir exporter, en quelque sorte, la mort qu’il ressent au fond de lui-même, tout en la niant (170, 306). Lorsqu’il arrive à un carrefour où un accident eut lieu, il refuse par exemple d’accepter la réalité de la mort, et considère la situation comme une scène de film. 16 La maladie de Franco est décrite comme une scission entre perception et observation d’une part et jugement d’autre part. Quand il lit la nouvelle de l’attentat au train Italicus et du massacre de Milan, il a le même sentiment d’irréalité et même quand il se convainc finalement de la réalité de l’événement, il n’éprouve pas de sentiments de commisération avec les victimes de la violence.17 En le TPF
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Cet acte “gratuit” suit à une vision pathologique qui transforme l’enfant en un nain qui se masturbe. L’image de l’enfant est donc associée avec l’impureté, “un fango che viene da dentro” (312). TP
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Cette vision déréalisante avec laquelle le protagoniste se protège contre la réalité de la mort, se revêt aussi d’une idéologie raciste quand il voit que les spectateurs directement atteints par l’accident, des italiens du sud, sont dispersés à coup de matraque par la police. Son propre sentiment d’être vivant implique une segrégation des autres qu’il condamne à la mort: “Era come tenere i piedi su una botola. Dentro, son chiusi “gli altri”. Se la tieni chiusa, vivi. Se la lasci aprire, cadi giù, sei morto” (277). TP
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“Dopo quelle parole, tra la parte che giudicava e la parte che guardava si inserì un intervallo ed egli guardava le foto dei morti arrostiti ma non TP
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représentant comme un personnage schizophrénique, Camon prend ses distances vis-à-vis de son protagoniste. En outre, le narrateur hétérodiégétique considère la déréalisation comme un symptome collectif de la violence politique des années 70, quand il commente les nouvelles des enlèvements des Brigades rouges dans la presse: Ma questi interventi apparivano, dai giornali, irreali, fantasiosi, roba da film: esci dal cinema e non è vero nulla. Come mai questa irrealtà di fatti di cronaca su cui non si poteva dubitare? Anzitutto il silenzio della stampa, e poi il silenzio dello Stato, e infine il silenzio dei rapiti. (283)
Le commentaire explique aussi le terrorisme par le pouvoir des mass-media: Noi viviamo in un’epoca in cui il giornale val più di chi lo compra, la notizia vale più delle vittime che racconta: pur di occupare spazio in quel giornale, pur di dare occasione a quella notizia, ci sono in ogni città d’Europa gruppi disposti a uccidere a caso: più è casuale, più il delitto è efficace.(307-308)
Le narrateur se présente ici comme un commentateur (307), on abandonne en effet la perspective du protagoniste Franco. Le sentiment d’irréalité lui paraît condenser un sentiment historique. Il attribue aussi cette perception au groupe d’extrême droite lui-même, parce que ses membres s’aperçoivent que les directives qu’ils reçoivent et les investigations de la police sont si peu claires qu’ils commencent à douter de leurs propres
riusciva a provare nulla: come si guarda per terra un oggetto buttato via, un sacchetto d’immondizie. La storia ha i suoi avanzi” (Occidente 282) 350
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actions: 18 “Gli appartenenti al Gruppo vivevano in un’atmosfera di irrealtà: parlavano, e non capivano il senso delle loro parole; ascoltavano, e non erano sicuri che qualcuno avesse parlato; leggevano, ma le parole era come se cambiassero significato” (303). Cette insécurité par rapport au sens des faits, même des propres actions, s’accompagne d’une mythification de la violence qui unit les jeunes à l’expérience historique de leurs pères (304-305). Par cette vision d’un échange intergénérationnel inconscient lié à la pratique de la violence, Camon tentait peut-être implicitement aussi une critique de l’extrémisme de gauche, qui cependant, en 1975 (date de la publication du roman) n’avait pas encore commis ses attentats les plus spectaculaires. Par la psychanalyse, Camon cherche donc à expliquer la violence avec des critères et des jugements qui n’appartiennent pas au domaine des revendications et idées politiques. Il en résulte une critique de toute stratégie de violence politique. Le roman est aussi un témoignage très intéressant du mode de réaction d’un intellectuel face à des attentats terroristes. Camon a reproché à la littérature italienne de ne pas avoir réagi opportunément aux véritables questions historiques et de ne pas s’être occupée à fond de discours intellectuels tels que la psychanalyse. Celle-ci représente pour Camon un moyen de TPF
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Le narrateur attribue à ses personnages le sentiment que “c’era sempre qualcosa di falso, di storto, di bizzarro, a segnare la pista lungo la quale la polizia partiva per ricostruire i fatti” (303). La description de la pathologie du chef de groupe d’extrême-droite s’élargit jusqu’à atteindre la diagnose d’une maladie historique collective, d’un “mal de siècle”, car selon Camon, les jeunes extrémistes suivent inconsciemment les modèles de leurs pères eux aussi attirés par la violence qui marque le siècle entier: “Pareva che gli uni, smarriti, cercassero di ricongiungersi agli altri, scavalcando ciò che li divideva, la storia: come se gli uni e gli altri avessero scoperto, d’improvviso, il pericolo di morire da soli, e attraverso il rito delle stragi celebrassero una comunione nella morte, che li garantiva dal terrore” (304). TP
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pénétration et d’analyse non seulement psychologique, mais aussi historique: “La storia è un reato e l’analisi è il suo processo. Quindi, l’analisi non è una fuga dalla storia e un rifugio nella psicologia privata. Al contrario, è uno strumento d’indagine storica”. 19 Camon condamne la violence politique pour des raisons éthiques, une éthique qui se fonde sur la valeur de la vie de tout individu et qui refuse tout concept de sacrifice, comme il s’ensuit de son entretien avec Franco Freda. La psychanalyse lui sert comme un instrument d’approfondissement de cette critique éthique et en même temps, la tentative d’expliquer la violence par l’idée d’un lien inconscient entre les générations lui fournit une narration historique originelle. Le récit du narrateur oscille entre le rapprochement psychologique à la perspective du protagoniste et l’emploi de la psychanalyse comme un instrument de distanciation et d’explication. TPF
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Sebastiano Vassalli, Abitare il vento: Le langage littéraire comme moyen de distanciation de la violence
Contrairement aux textes de Balestrini et Camon, le roman Abitare il vento (1980) de Sebastiano Vassalli, membre de la Neoavanguardia au début de sa carrière, 20 ne se consacre ni aux objectifs politiques ni aux stratégies d’action des mouvements politiques des années 70. Le roman décrit le sentiment TPF
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Angela M. Jeannet, “Conversazione con Ferdinando Camon”, p. 62. Sur la même page de cet entretien, Camon parle aussi d’un changement de style auquel l’aurait conduite l’analyse commencée avec Cesare Musatti, président de la Società Psicoanalitica Italiana et terminée chez un professeur de l’université de Padoue. Pour la scène de la séance psychanalytique au chap. 5, Camon dit avoir utilisé une histoire que lui racconta Cesare Musatti, voir p. 315. TP
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Sur la carrière littéraire et l’œuvre de Vassalli voir Zygmunt G. Barański et Daniel Mangano. TP
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existentiel d’un personnage qui a déjà fait quelques années de prison pour avoir adhéré à un groupement d’extrême gauche. Bien que totalement désillusionné, le protagoniste Cris Rigotti finit quand même par participer à un enlèvement orchestré par son ancienne organisation. La distance que le narrateur homodiégétique éprouve vis-à-vis des idéaux politiques de sa génération est rendue par un rabaissement carnavalesque du langage politique. Le protagoniste tient par exemple continuellement des discours d’exhortation politique à son phallus et, selon les occasions, le célèbre comme “grande proletario” ou le condamne comme “piccolo borghese”. Ce rabaissement apparaît aussi dans la représentation des autres personnages: l’enlèvement risque d’échouer à cause de la nymphomanie de Fernanda et le garçon enlevé a des attaques continues de diarrhée. La représentation de la sexualité et de la basse corporalité contribuent à vider l’acte de l’enlèvement de tout sens politique. Le protagoniste détecte, chez l’organisation d’extrême gauche, le même désir de hiérarchie que dans la société entière; il y voit une prétention qu’il ne manque pas de tourner en ridicule. Les personnages, tout comme l’action, sont empreints de ridicule et de grotesque. L’idée de transgression joue un rôle important, mais elle n’est pas porteuse de sens comme chez Balestrini: elle relève d’un discours purement littéraire, d’un humorisme linguistique qui cherche à dissoudre tous les postulats idéologiques dans un rabaissement carnavalesque du discours, au sens bakhtinien du terme. 21 Le niveau de référence politique se voit en quelque sorte déréalisé par le langage du protagoniste, un langage fortement esthétisé, empreint d’une part de vulgarité, mais d’autre part TPF
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Vassalli emploie le même procédé dans Mareblù, c’est-à-dire dans le monologue que le protagoniste-narrateur fait aux portraits de Marx, Lénine, Staline et Mao, pour lui les “géants de l’histoire” qu’il définit comme les ministres de sa petite république, le camping Mareblù où il est gardien. TP
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d’une forme très littérarisée: rimes fréquentes, jeux de mots, ambiguïtés, allusions nombreuses à Quasimodo, éléments métafictionnels pirandelliens. Tout cela donne au discours du narrateur un caractère fortement ludique. Mais il serait trop superficiel de ne voir qu’une simple moquerie dans ce roman. Le langage particulier de Abitare il vento revêt aussi la fonction de distanciation face à une sombre réalité, qui apparaît dans les descriptions oniriques. Des images de cauchemar, qui montrent bien que le protagoniste Cris se sent menacé par les organisations d’extrême gauche, montrent que le vécu a un caractère traumatisant qui n’atteint quasiment pas l’individu en état de veille. Ce caractère traumatisant est aussi distancié par le jeu métafictionnel. Le suicide du protagoniste nous est communiqué ainsi: “Caro autore io mi sono impiccato ma tu règolati come vuoi perché questa faccenda non ti appartiene e non so mica chi sei” (110). En conclusion, il semble permis de dire que Gli invisibili suit de très près le procès de désillusion qu’éprouvèrent les militants d’Autonomia mais en employant aussi des procédés littéraires aptes à souligner le caractère traumatisant de la violence politique, alors que chez Camon, le discours psychanalytique crée une certaine distance entre la voix du narrateur et le thème de la violence. Chez Vassalli, par contre, c’est au langage littéraire même que revient cette fonction de distanciation. Visà-vis du traumatisme dont était porteuse l’histoire réelle dans les années 70, ces auteurs adoptent donc des stratégies narratives diverses, mais qui se retrouvent cependant dans un élément commun: au-delà des positions politiques divergentes, ces trois romans tentent de formuler une conscience du traumatisme: Balestrini, par un sentiment existentiel de non-sens, Camon, par une réflexion de nature psychanalytique, et Vassalli, par une transgression du langage et une description onirique.
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Ouvrages cités Anselmi, William. “Da Vogliamo tutto a L’editore: Balestrini, la quasi-totalità, il ‘blackout’ storico.” Rocco Capozzi et Massimo Ciavolella, eds. Scrittori, tendenze letterarie e conflitto delle poetiche in Italia (1960-1990). Ravenna: Longo, 1993. 17-33. Balestrini, Nanni. Vogliamo tutto. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1971. ---. “Prendiamoci tutto.” Conferenza per un romanzo. Letteratura e lotta di classe. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1972. ---. Poesie pratiche. 1954-1969. Torino: Einaudi, 1976. ---. La violenza illustrata. Torino: Einaudi, 1976. ---. Gli invisibili. Milano: Bompiani, 1987. Barański, Zygmunt G. “Sebastiano Vassalli: Literary Lives.” Zygmunt G. Barański et Lino Pertile, eds. The New Italian Novel. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993. 239257. Barbon, Paola. “‘Italia Nord-Est’. Zu Ferdinando Camon und seinem Werk.” Italienisch 20 (1988): 82-90. Belpoliti, Marco. Settanta. Torino: Einaudi, 2001. Braghetti, Anna Laura et Paola Tavella. Il prigioniero. Milano: Feltrinelli, 2003. Camon, Ferdinando. Ferdinando Camon. “I libri: Occidente.” 14 Sept. 2006 . ---. Occidente. Milano: Garzanti, 1975. Ginsborg, Paul. Storia d’Italia dal dopoguerra a oggi. Società e politica 1943-1988. Torino: Einaudi, 1989. Giuliani, Alfredo. “Qualche riflessione su un decennio di letteratura.” Francesco Lentini, ed. Crisi della ragione e letteratura degli anni settanta. Atti convegno internazionale di studi Palermo 23.-25.10.1980. Palermo: Stass, 1981. 51-65. 355
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Granese, Alberto. La leggenda del Nilo. L’immaginario e il sociale nella narrativa italiana degli anni settanta. Napoli: Fratelli Conte, 1984. Jeannet, Angela M. “Conversazione con Ferdinando Camon.” Italian Quarterly 29 (1988): 59-68. Liucci, Raffaele. “Ferdinando Camon.” Belfagor 4 (2000): 545-560. Mangano, Daniel. “Sebastiano Vassalli. La vita scorre insensata.” Narrativa 8 (1995): 5-18. Morante, Elsa. Il mondo salvato dai ragazzini. Torino: Einaudi, 1971 (1968). Pagano, Tullio. “Le avanguardie entrano in fabbrica: Scrittura e rivoluzione in Vogliamo tutto di Nanni Balestrini.” Giorgio Bárberi Squarotti et Carlo Ossola, eds. Letteratura e Industria II, Il XX secolo. Atti del XV congresso A.I.S.L.L.I., Torino, 15-19 maggio 1994. Firenze: Olschki, 1997. 1025-1037. Schacter, Daniel L. Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind and the Past. New York: Harper Collins, 1996. Siti, Walter. “Elsa Morante in Pier Paolo Pasolini.” Concetta D’Angeli et Giacomo Magrini, eds. Vent’anni dopo ‘La Storia’. Pisa: Giardini, 1995. 131-148. Tadiotto, Antonio. “L’Orda invisibile di Nanni Balestrini.” Nathalie Roelens et Inge Lanslots, eds. Piccole finzioni con importanza. Valori della narrativa italiana contemporanea. Ravenna: Longo, 1993. 175-180. Vassalli, Sebastiano. Abitare il vento. Torino: Einaudi, 1980. ---. Mareblù. Milano: Mondadori, 1982. Waites, Elizabeth A. Memory Quest: Trauma and the Search for Personal History. New York, London: W.W. Norton, 1997.
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De Abitare il vento à L’oro del mondo (et au-delà). L’Évolution de la Condamnation d’une Certaine Forme de Société dans l’Œuvre de Sebastiano Vassalli Alain Sarrabayrouse (Université Paris 10) Nul besoin d’être grand clerc pour entrevoir les décalages et les changements d’orientation dans la partie de l’œuvre de Vassalli qui va de ses succès initiaux du début des années 1980 aux trois romans La chimera (1990), Marco e Mattio (1992) et Il cigno (1993). Mais avant d’entrer dans le vif du sujet, une question se pose, d’emblée: pourquoi s’en tenir à cet espace de la production d’un auteur qui, avant Abitare il vento (1980), avait déjà publié de nombreuses “proses expérimentales” (citons entre autres Tempo di màssacro, 1970, ou L’arrivo della lozione, 1976), et qui, depuis Il cigno, n’a cessé d’écrire et de publier des romans – qu’il suffise pour s’en convaincre de citer 3012, Cuore di pietra, Un infinito numero, Dux, ou encore La notte avvelenata, paru en 2003? La réponse se trouve dans l’énoncé même de l’appel à communications du colloque, puisque nous sommes invités à examiner la relation entre, d’une part, la littérature et la culture des années 1970 et leurs contextes nationaux et internationaux, et, d’autre part, l’héritage littéraire des années 1970. Les quinze années environ qui séparent, sinon la publication, du moins l’écriture de Abitare il vento, de la publication de Il cigno, seront largement suffisants pour tenter d’envisager ces deux thématiques pour ce qui concerne l’œuvre de Sebastiano Vassalli. Non qu’il n’y ait rien à dire, à ce propos également, sur la production plus récente. J’y ferai d’ailleurs allusion à la fin de l’article. Mais il y a là, entre Abitare il vento http://congress70.library.uu.nl
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et Il cigno, un espace temporel bien précis, presque quinze ans, qui permettra de contribuer à alimenter la réflexion. “Compulsion d’écriture”
Sans doute convient-il, tout d’abord, de tenter de définir ce qui, dans une production foisonnante et particulièrement généreuse – même, encore une fois, si on ne s’intéresse qu’à ce qui a été publié entre 1980 et 1993 – relève du fil directeur, du recommencement narratologique ou thématique, bref, de ce qu’on pourrait qualifier de compulsion d’écriture. Je vois à ce propos deux éléments qui demeurent invariables au cours du temps qui vient d’être défini, quels que soient par ailleurs le style (souvent différent d’un texte à l’autre) et la forme narrative adoptée. Le premier concerne la solitude du personnage central. Même s’il est entouré de nombreux comparses, même s’il agit – parfois – dans le cadre d’un groupe, ce personnage central des romans de Vassalli n’en reste pas moins une figure éminemment solitaire. Antonio Cristiano Rigotti, le narrateur-personnage homodiégétique de Abitare il vento, dont on comprend bien qu’il est ou a été sympathisant de brigades armées, se retrouve pris dans un coup de main dont il n’a pas la maîtrise mais qu’il cherche cependant à contrôler, et dont il cherche, en tout cas, à tirer pour lui-même le meilleur profit possible, jusqu’au moment où il abandonnera la partie. Il est seul au milieu d’un groupe aux finalités imprécises, dont il tente plus ou moins adroitement de se défaire, sans y parvenir. Le cas d’Augusto Ricci, gardien de camping dans le roman Mareblù (1982) est absolument comparable: admirateur de ceux qu’il nomme les “grands de l’histoire” – autrement dit Marx, Lénine, Staline et Mao – il reste confiné dans son terrain de camping, et s’invente des gestes héroïques qu’il ne met jamais en œuvre, ou presque, contre ses voisins ou contre les occupants du terrain. Il est seul, même si l’entourage ne manque 358
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pas, avec pour unique assistance ses hantises grotesques et ses haines dérisoires, dont lui non plus, à l’instar du personnage de Abitare il vento, n’arrive pas à se défaire. La notte della cometa (1984) est également, et pourraiton dire par excellence, la biographie romancée d’un personnage solitaire, le poète Dino Campana. Quant au roman L’oro del mondo (1987), même s’il se développe sur plusieurs plans, il n’en reste pas moins le récit (à caractère autobiographique?) d’un jeune homme aux prises avec une histoire familiale des plus lourdes, laquelle rejoint l’histoire italienne de l’entre-deuxguerres; d’une histoire qui le voit se démener, solitaire, contre un père ex-hiérarque resté fasciste dans l’âme, et de surcroît menteur et voleur. Dans La chimera (1990), l’héroïne Antonia est à l’origine une esposta, c’est-à-dire une enfant trouvée recueillie par la Casa di Carità di San Michele, à Novare, puis adoptée par des paysans qui l’emmèneront dans leur village de Zardino: nous abordons ici pour la première fois le roman pleinement historique, puisque l’histoire se déroule au XVIIe siècle; or, là encore, dans son institution de charité comme à Zardino, la jeune Antonia fera preuve d’une grande qualité d’indépendance: en un mot, elle sera un nouvel avatar de personnage solitaire, ou considéré comme tel, dans ses comportements, dans ses choix, au milieu d’une société de religieuses, puis d’une société rurale qui, globalement, ne la comprennent pas. À tel point qu’elle finira condamnée pour sorcellerie par l’Inquisition. Si l’on jette maintenant un coup d’œil à Marco e Mattio (1992), on s’aperçoit aussitôt qu’en dépit du titre un seul personnage est vraiment suivi d’un bout à l’autre de ce roman historique, qui a pour cadre la région de Venise, et plus précisément la fin de la République entre la fin du XVIIIe siècle et le début du XIXe siècle. Cet unique personnage est Mattio Lovat, sabotier au village de Zoldo, qui sera atteint de pellagre et se lancera lui aussi dans une forme de vie absolument unique. 359
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Autre et dernier personnage, Raffaele Palizzolo, figure centrale d’un autre roman historique, Il cigno: chef mafieux, donc figure solitaire, Palizzolo aura une existence et une fin moins terrible que celle des autres personnages dont il a été jusqu’ici question. Et c’est d’ailleurs à ce propos qu’il convient d’aborder le second élément de notre passage en revue des romans de Vassalli dans le cadre de l’époque considérée. Car tous ces personnages sont, certes, enfermés dans un halo d’isolement particulièrement étanche: mais on pourrait objecter qu’il n’y a pas de roman sans personnage qui, d’une manière ou d’une autre, se détache, ne fût-ce qu’un tant soit peu, de la société de papier dans laquelle il fait mine de vivre; et que, sauf à s’attarder sur un héros collectif, comme c’était le cas par exemple dans certains romans de la période dite néo-réaliste, il n’y a rien de particulièrement original à suivre, dans un roman, la destinée d’un personnage isolé. Toute la question est de savoir le type de destinée qui est dévolu et, pourquoi pas? le type de fin, qui attendent ces personnages centraux de l’œuvre de Vassalli. Or, si l’on regarde l’ensemble des textes cités, ou presque, le héros de l’histoire (au sens du récit) est toujours une sorte d’anti-héros, et en tout cas un jouet de l’Histoire (au sens des événements nationaux ou internationaux). Antonio Cristiano Rigotti, dans Abitare il vento, qui signe les charades qu’il envoie à la settimana nigmistica (sic) sous le pseudonyme de Cavaliere Errante, est clairement le jouet d’une histoire fort récente au moment de la sortie du volume, celle de la violence armée et des ses dérives délictueuses: il finira par se pendre. Augusto Ricci, le gardien du camping Mareblù, est victime de ses illusions révolutionnaires désormais en voie de disparition (même au début des années 1980), et de toute une logomachie dont il ne parvient nullement à se défaire (sauf peut-être à la toute fin du roman quand il se met, pour la première fois de sa vie de sexagénaire, à rire). Illusions, logomachie, et même délire, lui font voir le monde 360
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sous l’angle d’une machination constante du capitalisme; tous les autres personnages, sans exception, y compris sa poule, son perroquet, et ses chiens, participent de cette machination, à l’inverse de lui, qui se veut l’inventeur (solitaire et donc méconnu) de l’individualisme révolutionnaire. Augusto Ricci finira sans abri: le camping, et donc sa maison de gardien, brûlent dans un incendie allumé par des gamins, mais lui croit, ou feint de croire, qu’il est l’œuvre de la lutte acharnée que se livrent les capitalistes propriétaires du lieu. Dino Campana, dans La notte della cometa, est évidemment le jouet de l’incompréhension de ses contemporains et de la société littéraire florentine des années 1920 et 1930. Il finit sa vie, on le sait, à l’asile. Sebastiano, le héros de L’oro del mondo, ne meurt pas, mais le texte le fait se débattre, souvent vainement, contre la tyrannie d’un père violent et mythomane, et le texte se termine alors que Sebastiano est entouré de fous, tous plus ou moins taraudés par l’histoire fasciste, et notamment sur l’exposition du cas d’un brave homme qui se prend pour Victor-Emmanuel III. Dans son milieu familial, Sebastiano est évidemment le jouet d’une histoire qui le dépasse et dont il ne peut s’échapper. La destinée solitaire d’Antonia dans La chimera, et ses comportements sensés mais incompréhensibles pour ses contemporains, n’aurait sans doute pas été aussi funeste si la jeune femme n’avait été le jouet, quant à elle, de la guerre feutrée mais impitoyable que se livrent d’une part l’évêque de Novare, Bascapé, et le pape, d’autre part les dominicains et le même Bascapé. L’Histoire religieuse broie Antonia, la conduit au bûcher; de même que le poids de la religion et le passage des armées étrangères sont à l’origine de la déchéance et de la mort de Mattio Lovat dans Marco e Mattio. Reste le cas de Raffaele Palizzolo, dans Il cigno. Le chef mafieux traverse plus ou moins sans encombre une histoire qui va de 1893 (assassinat de Nortarbartolo) à 1904: c’est-à-dire qu’il traverse entre autres, et avec des fortunes diverses, les 361
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gouvernements de la Droite historique incarnée par Francesco Crispi et ceux de la Gauche historique incarnée par Giovanni Giolitti. Le roman, découpé en quinze chapitres, est formé de trois parties qui portent successivement (et symboliquement) les titres d’Enfer, Purgatoire, et Paradis. Le dernier chapitre, baptisé Epilogue, porte la date de 1920, date à laquelle le Cygne, autrement dit Palizzolo, est toujours vivant. Point de rupture?…
Parlant d’une partie de l’œuvre de Sebastiano Vassalli dans un ouvrage assez récent, intitulé La nuova narrativa italiana. Travestimenti e stili di fine secolo, le critique Filippo La Porta a les mots suivants à propos de L’oro del mondo: C’est un livre très dense, où s’interpénètrent avec bonheur divers plans (autobiographique, historique, épique, méta-littéraire, purement romancé): plus encore que sur sa génération, c’est un roman sur les Italiens et sur “l’Italie transformiste des quarante millions d’ex-fascistes qui n’a pas une littérature à elle au contraire de l’Italie petite et noble de la Résistance”. L’indignation et la haine de Vassalli pour l’Italie des quiz, des feuilletons télé, des écoles d’apprentissage, etc. dénature parfois sa voix, lui font perdre sa subtilité […]. D’autres fois, la satire des mœurs se fait plus légère, brillante, avec le charme des pages consacrées au devenir même du roman (les rapports avec son éditeur Einaudi, les occasions culturelles mondaines). Dans ce roman, on perçoit un détachement désormais irréversible, fait plus de lassitude que de rancœur, vis-à-vis des romans précédents et “matraqueurs”, et surtout visà-vis de la néo-avant-garde et des discussions vides et interminables sur le destin du roman, “quand on se réunissait pour discuter sur le ‘degré zéro’ du roman et sur le ‘travail mental’”. (p. 218) [Nous traduisons] 362
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On ne peut certainement pas demander à un travail aussi panoramique que celui de La Porta d’avoir une vision précise, circonstanciée et juste, sur toutes les œuvres qu’il entend présenter et dont il cherche à donner un embryon de critique. C’est pourquoi je ne suis pas sûr que L’oro del mondo marque vraiment, comme le dit le critique, une étape décisive, un “détachement désormais irreversible”. Il est vrai que Vassalli, dans ses débuts, fut mêlé aux sorts de la néo-avant-garde. Il le dit lui-même dans un texte de la fin des années 1980, un recueil de minces autobiographies d’écrivains composé par Felice Piemontese, et intitulé Autodizionario degli scrittori italiani. Mais si Vassalli voit un “détachement irreversible”, il ne le situe pas quant à lui au même endroit que le critique. Voici ce que le romancier écrit de lui-même à la troisième personne: Né à Gênes en 1941, de mère toscane et de père lombard; parmi les choses inutiles et ennuyeuses de sa vie, il y a une maîtrise de lettres. Dans les années soixante et soixante-dix, participe aux ultimes vicissitudes et au naufrage de la prétendue néo-avantgarde, avec quelques écrits expérimentaux (Narcisso, Tempo di màssacro, L’arrivo della lozione) et avec de très minces plaquettes de poésie, plus tard rassemblées dans un livret: Ombre e destini (1983). Abitare il vento, récit publié en 1980, mais écrit dans les années qui précèdent, est le point d’arrivée et en même temps le moment de détachement vis-à-vis des expériences de jeunesse; s’y trouvent racontés les égarements d’un personnage que l’auteur lui-même aurait pu être et qu’il ne fut pas, personnage mû par l’illusion de changer le monde et finissant en marge d’un “mouvement armé” contre quelque chose de mal défini: peut-être le Destin, ou bien l’Etat, ou allez savoir quoi d’autre. (p. 354) [Nous traduisons]
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Les paroles d’un auteur à propos de sa propre œuvre sont toujours, on le sait, à prendre avec beaucoup de circonspection. Cependant, dans le cas qui nous occupe, les paroles de l’auteur concernant “le détachement” vis-à-vis d’une certaine forme d’écriture me paraissent plus justes que celles du critique. Car, si l’on en revient à l’espace temporel que j’ai choisi, de Abitare il vento jusqu’à Il cigno, on s’apercevra, cette fois-ci, non plus de l’existence d’éléments communs – la présence constante d’un personnage isolé de son groupe social ou culturel et qui souvent a une fin tragique ou tragi-comique – mais d’une évolution différenciée (qui ne trouve aucunement un moment de “détachement irreversible” dans L’oro del mondo), vers un certain genre et une certaine forme narratologique. …ou plutôt, évolution?
Les deux premiers romans inscrits dans notre cadre temporel, Abitare il vento et Mareblù sont écrits à la première personne, homodiégétiques; en outre, l’époque du récit correspond plus ou moins à l’époque de la publication de ces deux textes – autrement dit l’Italie des années 1970-1980. Avec La notte della cometa, on passe au genre historicolittéraire: l’écart entre la publication du texte et le temps de l’histoire est environ d’une quarantaine d’années, puisque nous nous situons entre l’avant Première Guerre mondiale et l’entredeux-guerres (Campana meurt en 1932); et si l’intervention du narrateur est fréquente, l’ensemble du texte se situe sur un plan hétérodiégétique. Le roman suivant, L’oro del mondo, s’inscrit, on l’a dit, sur divers plans: celui du narrateur-personnage (homodiégétique), celui de l’histoire de l’enfance de Sebastiano (autodiégétique), celui de l’histoire italienne à l’époque du fascisme (hétérodiégétique). On assiste donc, de manière non linéaire, avec des àcoups, à une évolution de l’écriture qui va de l’implication du 364
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narrateur dans l’histoire présente à un retrait progressif (mais non permanent) du narrateur, évolution liée à la mise en œuvre de récits qui, de plus en plus, s’éloignent du présent de la publication. Or, cet éloignement vis-à-vis du présent de la publication n’est pas une nouveauté lors de la sortie de L’oro del mondo. C’est un processus qui avait déjà été engagé avec La notte della cometa, et qu’on peut d’ailleurs aussi percevoir, dans un texte certes très documenté mais aussi parfois romancé – une sorte d’essai historique sur le futurisme italien, et ses rapports avec la revue Lacerba – qui s’appelle L’alcova elettrica, et qui paraît un an avant L’oro del mondo, c’est-à-dire en 1986. Les romans qui suivront, La chimera, Marco e Mattio, Il cigno, ne feront que cultiver et amplifier, chacun à sa manière, cette tendance engagée avant – et je dis bien avant – L’oro del mondo: ce sont des récits historiques (respectivement XVIIe, XVIIIe et XIXe siècles) globalement hétérodiégétiques, mais avec çà et là des interventions du narrateur, comme pour rappeler le lecteur (les lecteurs) à la réalité de son (de leur) époque. Le dernier chapitre de La chimera (intitulé Il nulla) est à ce titre particulièrement symptomatique de ce type d’écriture, relatif au passé, mais où le narrateur, de temps à autre, manifeste sa présence, réactive en quelque sorte le passé pour lui donner une actualité. Guardo il nulla dalla finestra – peut-on lire dans ce dernier chapitre. Là è Zardino, in un punto imprecisato ma centrale, rispetto al resto che si vede o non si vede: negli immediati paraggi, o sul terreno stesso, di quell’autostrada Voltri-Gravellona che quando sarà collegata con i valichi alpini si chiamerà VoltriSempione. Là ci fu il dosso, e morì Antonia. (p. 301)
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Plus loin, à la toute fin du roman (p. 303), le narrateur se fait plus présent encore pour assener en quelque sorte sa leçon de l’histoire: Tutto finito? Tutto finito, sissignore. O forse no. Forse c’è ancora da rendere conto di un personaggio di questa storia, in nome del quale molte cose si dissero e molte altre si compirono, e che in quel nulla fuori della mia finestra è assente come è assente ovunque, o forse è lui stesso il vuoto, chi può dirlo! È lui l’eco del nostro vano gridare, il vago riflesso d’una nostra immagine che molti, anche tra i viventi di quest’epoca, sentono il bisogno di proiettare là dove tutto è buio, per attenuare la paura che hanno del buio.
Voici un autre exemple de cette manière d’écrire, cette fois tiré de Marco e Mattio (p. 281-282): Il giorno dopo il suo arrivo, martedì 16 novembre, Mattio volle rivedere piazza San Marco e così mentre attraversava la città, si rese conto che Venezia era morta: definitivamente, senza più possibilità di rinascere. [...] Anche se i palazzi della Dominante erano sempre là, fermi al loro posto, e nulla era cambiato di ciò per cui Venezia era stata Venezia: i ponti, le cupole, i campanili, la rete dei canali... Ogni cosa era rimasta dov’era, apparentemente intatta, in attesa di quel futuro che nessuno allora poteva prevedere e che è fatto di negozi di bigiotteria e di pizzerie e di turisti americani in camiciola e calzoncini corti, cotti al sole come bistecche; di giapponesi con le macchine fotografiche a tracolla, che si fotografano davanti al ponte dei sospiri; di gondolieri stonati che cantano a caro prezzo O sole mio per gli sposi di tutto il mondo in viaggio di nozze [...]. Ma Venezia, in quel lontano 1802, era già morta da cinque anni. 366
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Ces instants de pénétration du narrateur dans le présent sont, à mon sens, la marque de ce qu’il reste encore, en 1990 ou en 1993, de la condamnation d’une certaine forme de société qui ruine l’homme dans ce qu’il peut avoir de décalé par rapport à son époque ou au groupe auquel il appartient. Les modalités de la projection sur le présent diffèrent, on le voit, de Abitare il vento jusqu’à Marco e Mattio. Mais c’est bien toujours de l’époque présente qu’il est question, symboliquement. C’est pourquoi il ne me paraît pas juste, encore une fois, de suivre Filippo La Porta quand il parle d’une distance s’établissant à partir de L’oro del mondo avec les romans d’avant-garde. D’abord, parce que cette distance, du point de vue du genre s’est produite, on l’a dit, avant la publication de L’oro del mondo. Ensuite parce que, sous la forme nouvelle du roman historique, c’est bien toujours de la même condamnation d’une certaine organisation de la société, intolérante, intransigeante et intemporelle, donc actuelle, qu’il s’agit. Il y a bien eu une évolution de la condamnation, du moins jusqu’en 1993. Mais la condamnation est restée. De ce point de vue, je ne puis que souscrire globalement – bien que n’étant pas d’accord avec son jugement sur L’oro del mondo – aux propos de Gian Luigi Beccaria, lorsque, dans sa recension de La chimera publiée dans L’indice en mai 1990 (p. 42), il écrit que le roman “historique” de Vassalli est certainement symbolique: en décrivant les superstitions, les atrocités et les corruptions de l’époque de la contre-réforme et de l’Inquisition, Vassalli s’interroge sur le sens, sur le pourquoi des choses d’hier et d’aujourd’hui. Comme jadis dans L’oro del mondo, aujourd’hui dans La chimera il cherche à saisir d’une certaine manière le “caractère national”; il croyait pouvoir le faire en 367
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parlant du fascisme, peut-être dans ce roman y est-il moins bien arrivé; maintenant, il cherche à le faire avec un plongeon dans le XVIIe siècle, où il va rechercher le XXe siècle. Le présent n’est qu’un hurlement de voix superposées et confuses, le passé est immobile, et c’est là seulement que l’écrivain peut faire bouger ce qu’il veut faire bouger, reconstituer le cadre, une réalité; non pas l’Histoire, dit Vassalli, parce que l’histoire est insensée, folle. [Nous traduisons]
La condamnation du présent dans ce qu’il a de plus atroce passe désormais, en 1990, par l’intermédiaire d’une certaine reconstruction du passé. L’outil a évolué, progressivement, au cours de dix années de production intense, mais le matériau est resté le même. D’une certaine manière, on pourrait affirmer qu’avec ses romans, mais aussi avec des documents comme L’alcova elettrica déjà citée, et Sangue e suolo (1985) – chronique à caractère journalistique sur la vie dans les années 1980 de la minorité italophone du Haut-Adige –, l’auteur s’apprêtait, à sa manière, avec ses moyens propres, à reprendre le flambeau du scrittore civile qu’avait tenu, et que tenait encore pour quelques courtes années, Leonardo Sciascia. Il n’en a rien été. Pour quelles raisons? Si l’on s’en tient à la figure de l’écrivain, d’abord, il est clair que la personnalité de Vassalli est davantage tournée vers la dénonciation des travers de la société que vers sa propre mise en scène en tant que protagoniste de l’évolution de ladite société. Vassalli n’est pas, semble-t-il, un promoteur d’idées nouvelles, un réformateur; il apparaît clairement, au travers de ses écrits, qu’il ne croit guère aux réformes, et que sa vision serait plutôt foncièrement pessimiste. Au-delà de cet excursus, toujours sujet à caution, dans la personnalité présumée d’un écrivain par ailleurs fort secret, il convient sans doute de remarquer que l’œuvre – notre pôle 368
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d’intérêt principal – subit, précisément à partir de 1993, un tournant, et celui-là est bien réel. Tentative de changements, puis retour aux perspectives confirmées
J’ai dit tout à l’heure que 1993 était la date de la parution de Il cigno, dont j’ai tracé les lignes les plus visibles. Certes, le mafieux Palizzolo est seul, mais il ne meurt pas. On peut en outre trouver, dans les pages de ce roman, la dénonciation d’un certain type d’affairisme, de la corruption organisée, et de ses conséquences sur la société; mais, si l’on y regarde de près, le point de vue a radicalement changé par rapport aux romans précédents. On ne voit plus la destinée du supplicié, mais celle du bourreau. Et, à partir de là, à partir de ce roman, la figure de l’infime, du malheureux légèrement en dehors de la norme qui se fait broyer par la société, apparaîtra avec beaucoup moins de force dans les textes de l’auteur. Non que la figure du, ou des solitaires, voulant révolutionner le monde, ou voulant simplement vivre différemment, de manière plus ou moins consciente, n’apparaisse plus. Il suffit pour s’en convaincre de lire Archeologia del presente (2001) ou Stella avvelenata (2003). Mais avec Il cigno, d’une part, puis 3012 (1995), d’autre part, une autre figure de personnage central est apparue (à vrai dire, fugacement) dans l’œuvre de Vassalli. Les bons sentiments des héros écrasés par la société, ou par certaines formes de société, ont fait place, du moins à la fin des années 1990, aux mauvais sentiments des bourreaux, donc des vainqueurs. La perspective a changé, l’idée fondamentale est restée la même: le solitaire, l’inoffensif, est toujours perdant. L’agressif, le prophète de la nécessité de la guerre (cf. 3012) ou le chef de guerre (du moins, d’une certaine guerre, cf. Il cigno) s’en tire plutôt bien; en tout cas, l’Histoire lui donne raison. Etrangement, ce changement de perspective, cette façon de dire la même chose en adoptant un point de vue différent, n’a 369
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pas vraiment réussi à l’auteur, si l’on en juge par son retour plutôt récent à des récits centrés sur la victime. Question de style, de moins bonne maîtrise du sujet lorsque le point de vue change? Peut-être. Mais une autre hypothèse pourrait s’adosser au fait que, pour le lectorat, il est sans doute plus facile (plus commode) de s’identifier à des figures de perdants face à une société qui broie les individus; et que, pour l’auteur, prendre le contre-pied des mœurs et des valeurs dominantes est plus simple – et en tout cas plus efficace – à partir de figures destinées à disparaître lamentablement sous le poids des contraintes sociales de leur époque: l’éventuel décalage historique renvoyant (si besoin est, par des interventions judicieuses du narrateur) à l’image du présent.
Ouvrages cités
Beccaria, Gian Luigi. Compte rendu de lecture de La chimera, L’indice (mai 1990): 42. La Porta, Filippo. La nuova narrativa italiana. Travestimenti e stili di fine secolo. Turin: Boringhieri, nouvelle édition revue et augmentée, 1999. Piemontese, Felice. Autodizionario degli scrittori italiani. Milan: Leonardo, 1989. Vassalli, Sebastiano. Tempo di màssacro. Turin: Einaudi, 1970. ---. L’arrivo della lozione. Turin: Einaudi, 1976. ---. Abitare il vento. Turin: Einaudi, 1980. ---. Mareblù. Milan: Mondadori, 1982. ---. La notte della cometa. Turin: Einaudi, 1984. ---. L’alcova elettrica. Turin: Einaudi, 1985. ---. Sangue e suolo. Turin: Einaudi, 1985. ---. L’oro del mondo. Turin: Einaudi, 1987. ---. La chimera. Turin: Einaudi, 1990. ---. Marco e Mattio. Turin: Einaudi, 1992. 370
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---. Il cigno. Turin: Einaudi, 1993. ---. 3012. Turin: Einaudi, 1995. ---. Cuore di pietra. Turin: Einaudi, 1997. ---. Un infinito numero. Turin: Einaudi, 1999. ---. Dux. Turin: Einaudi, 2002. ---. Archeologia del presente. Turin: Einaudi, 2001. ---. Stella avvelenata. Turin: Einaudi, 2003.
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About One of the Most Disputed Literary Cases of the Seventies: Elsa Morante’s La Storia Hanna Serkowska (Warsaw University) un vero poeta sceglierà di scrivere un romanzo, poniamo, sulle guerre di Algeria, o su Pia dei Tolomei, o magari sulla giornata del proprio gatto, il suo romanzo sarà, in ogni caso, assolutamente moderno, e impegnato, e umano, e reale; e offrirà alle generazioni presenti e future – oltre ai suoi significati incommensurabili anche una misura perfetta, e un ritratto intero. (Elsa Morante, Sul romanzo)
The Seventies in Italy is the decade in the history of the Leftand Right-wing terrorism when chaos and violence followed the students’ and workers’ uprising of 68-69. These, were in their turn triggered by the decline of faith in economic growth as well as the prospects of the well-being of the people. On the cultural level, also, some important changes took place: Italy internalised the lessons of the avant-garde and, freeing itself from Benedetto Croce’s dictatorship, started to discuss newly imported literary theories and methodologies (psychoanalysis, cultural anthropology, structuralism). Members of the “Gruppo 63” found their way into universities, publishing houses and literary journals. The complicated political situation of this turbulent time literally muted many writers (years went by before – to borrow an expression of Calvino’s – the tree of literature bore fruit again), and as a consequence the publishing industry underwent a deep reorganisation (capital consolidations, mergers, targeted advertising campaigns, record number of
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copies sold), and had to rely for a while mainly on posthumous novels such as Umberto Saba’s Ernesto, Salvatore Satta’s Il giorno del giudizio or Guido Morselli’s Contropassato prossimo and Roma senza papa. 1 Parenthetically speaking, the epithet “posthumous” perfectly fits to epitomise the decade. Elsa Morante’s La Storia was among the few, non posthumous, bestselling books of the time. Given the background against which the novel appeared, little wonder sociologists of literature rushed to examine what was so particular about this single novel to assure it an overwhelming market success. Even when, following the general trend of the eighties, dozens of this type of novels were written and the critics turned to study the phenomenon, La Storia was either one of the texts not considered or it continued to be valued according to what its first critics once decreed. La Storia has not experienced to date a critical renaissance, and has benefited from the “recovery” of the novel (taking place in Italy during the eighties, as I mentioned) to a much lesser degree and still remains under-read to date. Moreover, let us recall, the critics viewed La Storia on one hand as a cynical cultural operation, programmed and performed entirely within the publishing business, on the other as an old-fashioned elegia popolare: unbearably pathetic and consolatory. It is hard to agree with most part of these statements, yet, in order to shed light on the novel’s extraordinary success, one should not overlook the important factors which, from then on, came to contribute to a book’s success, such as an enhanced interweaving of the creation of an artistic product and its placement on the market (Cadioli, 1981, pp. 153-54), or the various strategies of publishing houses ranging from upgrading the product, through marketing and publicity, to mechanisms TPF
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See Alberto Cadioli (1981 and 1987), and David Forgacs (1993) for a detailed analysis of the situation. PT
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enabling the text to appeal to different groups of readers. The latter, in particular, are of paramount importance to Morante’s novel that sold well over 600.000 copies, and by this very fact challenged the claim, made popular by the Italian Neoavanguardia, that art excludes communication. The writer proved to be able to communicate, and, what’s important, she took her message across to many different readers. Yet it was not a political manifesto, rather a sort of philosophical reflection. 2 La Storia, I dare say, was definitely a successful cultural operation, without any cynical overtones. A legitimate doubt might rise at this point: how does it come about that a writer who cared only about the attention of the happy few, all of a sudden yearned to please the many? Perhaps by answering the question of what the author aimed at communicating, and considering how she intended to do it, bearing in mind that she chose a historical subject matter and turned to what some critics (such as Renato Barilli) thought as “obsolete narrative formulas”, one may come closer to a solution of this enigma. I am therefore going to show that what La Storia had to convey was in fact little or indirectly related to the socio-cultural or the political context in which it was written. Secondly, I will see how the novel was written, pointing out some of its features which allow us perhaps to discuss it as an TPF
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Morante surrendered part of the percentage receipts to which she was entitled, insisting to keep a book of 670 pages at a price of 2.000 lire, less than half the price for a book of this size. In accordance with this decision, Einaudi programmed a targeted “launch” of the book, selecting the month of June, preceding the months of mass summer readings. Once the book went to the bookstores, it was accompanied by advertising slogans: “Un grande romanzo. Una lettura per tutti. Prima edizione assoluta nella collana economica...”; “il nuovo attesissimo romanzo di Elsa Morante”; “670 pagine, 2.000 lire, tiratura iniziale 100.000 copie...” See Cadioli, L’industria del romanzo, pp.148-49.
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early postmodern (or pre-postmodern) text. 3 In La Storia, I would argue, the writer shows a different face from that of an epigone: that of a predecessor of what only after the Name of the Rose, by virtue of the so-called “Eco’s effect”, would be considered postmodern. Umberto Eco, himself one of the most severe detractors of Morante’s novels, in a conversation with Claudio Milanini admitted ironically (and his prophecy seems, ironically, to have come true): “Forse un giorno ci accorgeremo che era un romanzo apparentemente popolare, in realtà molto colto, molto metaletterario, chissà...” 4 The questions at stake invite us to look for the writer’s attitude in respect of the “context”. To show that Morante was consistently and purposely not participating in public life, i.e. to illustrate her attitude of general not-belonging (which would confirm my claim) 5 to the socio-political and cultural reality of her time, I will quote three letters written by our author. It is common knowledge that Morante refused to write articles, grant interviews, make comments on the current events. There are very few exceptions to this rule: some open letters of which very TPF
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The assertion that La Storia has some postmodern characteristics does not make of the Roman writer – too much indebted with the modernist idea of literature and of the artist – a postmodernist author. Most critics and scholars, in fact, consider such a claim as reckless and prefer, like Margherita Ganeri, to date back the postmodern Italian novel to Eco’s Il nome della rosa.
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“Perhaps one day we will realise that La Storia is a very learned and intelligent novel, instead of a popular novel. Who knows?” [transl. HS]
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Morante only worked for a short period of time for the radio, writing film reviews then read in radio broadcasts (“Cronache del cinema”) from February 1950 until November 1951, when she resigned after she refused to write a favourable review of the movie Senza bandiera produced by Elfo Film. On December 1, 1951 our author wrote an article entitled La censura della RAI in which she explained the motifs of her decision and published it in the weekly Il Mondo for which she thereafter worked for a few months as the columnist of “Rosso e Bianco”. PT
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few were published, carefully edited and read in public and/or sent to the daily press in order to make public the issues raised in them. And the issues were, of course, literature and, more generally, art. No direct reference to politics, society or ideology as such. One of the few open letters written and published is addressed to the judges who in 1968 condemned Aldo Braibanti (Lettera aperta ai giudici di Braibanti), a writer, a poet, and a philosopher, to serve nine years of prison for having expressed his ideas while teaching a class. It was published on July 17, 1968 in Paese Sera. The second one, also related to literature, dates back to 1976 and was first read during a conference entitled “Spanish culture now and then”, subsequently sent to two major daily newspapers, Il Corriere della Sera and L’Unità. 6 It was a protest against censorship in Spain by which La Storia had not been left unscathed. The third case I would like to quote, quite different from the two I have just mentioned, is a Lettera alle Brigate Rosse written on March 20, 1978 after Aldo Moro was kidnapped. Opposing the claim of Marco Belpoliti, according to whom the letter shows the writer as an intellectual, actively involved in political and social issues of the time (Belpoliti 36-41), I wish to build my argument of Morante’s dissociation from the context on the fact that the text apparently referring to the most burning political issue of the time was in fact, on the writer’s express intention, left unpublished. Who resorts to violence, kills or otherwise disrespects human beings, disrespects himself and is not different from fascists, roars Morante (indirectly accusing also the members of the Red Brigades); yet, in a gesture of selfalienation and distance towards politics, she never made this roar public. The letter was published posthumous in February 1988, in Paragone. TPF
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These few letters are meaningful evidence that Morante never brought to suggest practical answers, or to point directions to her contemporary. She limited herself to generic and idealistic formulas of human brotherhood and of reciprocal respect. It is on this ground (and La Storia’s well known subject-matter confirms this claim), that I maintain that Morante professed a sort of utopian concept of revolution which in her idiolect – far from suggesting any practical action – had purely ethical connotations. Everything that exceeded the very scope of literature was not worthy of hers, the poet’s attention. Whereas, La Storia appears to me precisely a symptomatic example of Morante’s over all relation with the present and past of the human world. I believe that from the start of her career, the Roman writer strove to free herself from any mandate and to disengage from all contingency, retreating to her fairy-tales chamber (camera delle favole), 7 where she could measure herself not with contingency, but with the whole world in general like real poets do. She used to see something inappropriate in the intellectuals’ or artists’ direct involvement in any specific issue or action of their time, aspiring to create a work of poetry: universal, human, bringing no more than an indirect and generic context to the society and politics and at the same time conveying a vision and an idea of human history as such. I thereby intend to show that hers was a strategy of an intellectual convinced that writers aught to go against the current of their time so that they could have influence and meaning. TPF
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The expression “la camera delle favole” (a fairy-tales chamber) was used by Pier Paolo Pasolini when his friendship with Morante was on the wane, in a conference entitled “E.M.” read in Aci in 1972. By referring to the fairy-tales chamber, Pasolini meant that Morante moved into her world without ever facing up to reality, without ever fighting real political battles. PT
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Let us now take a closer look at Morante’s reflection on history, without at the same time losing sight of how she projected to convey it, based on her 1974 novel, La Storia, which apparently reinstated the outdated novelistic formulas, and, by flirting with the market, attracted masses of unsophisticated readers. Unreal history told by unreliable narrators
The attention of critics was often caught by Morante’s idea that history is unreal (unreal meaning irrational, capable of disintegrating human conscience), resonating the thought of Giambattista Vico for whom history was a discipline unencumbered by Cartesian rationalism. History is unreal and so are its products: war, gas chambers, genocide. It is a scandal lasting for ten thousand years. The question asked several times by Useppe, asked imperfectly like his name, pecché (perché, why) remains unanswered in the book. Every effort to rationalise, to give history a meaning necessarily will be frustrated. And when there are no messages to remember and to convey, when we feel the imperative to accept history without meaning, things are really discouraging and cause anguish. 8 Morante’s refusal to take direct action outside of literature is also reflected in her choice of the narrative figures. In La Storia the task to tell is entrusted to several different instances, heterogeneous, partial, often mutually conflicting. There is an old fashioned omniscient extradiegetic voice, mocked (Günther does not know – but the narrator does – that he will die soon and keeps making plans for his thrilling African adventure; Ida does not know – but the narrator does – that Günther had not come to arrest her, etc.), showing the excessive knowledge of the TPF
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Another boy’s mother will rebuke in Morante’s last novel (Aracoeli, 1982) that there is nothing to be understood. Funny enough, this is exactly what Umberto Eco would come to preach in Il pendolo di Foucault fourteen years later (“non vi era nulla da capire”, 508) making a “weak” statement regarding our claims towards history.
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narrator and the disparity between the latter and the protagonists. There are several minor voices in the text, voices of secondary heroes who often tell one event based on their personal experience, without having knowledge even of the whole of their own life. There is Vilma – the most ingenious of Morante’s ideas concerning the narrator – a weird story teller who, instead of telling the past, tells – like a visionary – the future. Her Cassandra-like voice, warning the inhabitants of the ghetto against the Holocaust, is not heard, not because what she says is not likely to happen, but because she must not be obeyed if the prophecy is to come true. To sum up, there is not one single narrative figure claiming responsibility for the whole story. Viewpoints, dialects, and versions of history are multiplied for a specific purpose: we are lead to observe that just like history is not made by an external entity (Morante disputes the traditional Hegelian idea of history as a unitary ascending trend, thus defying the presence of a transcendental entity in history), here it is not told by one single narrator. None of these voices underwrites it all, guarantees its cohesion or grants it a meaning. A multicoded text
The part of my argument concerning the novel’s early postmodern (or pre-postmodern) character may benefit from observing that La Storia is a multicoded text to the extent that it managed to orchestrate its reception by several different groups of readers. 9 Among them, the mass readers to whom she TPF
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Although Gian Carlo Ferretti pointed out that the novel is open to two different types of reading (“sembra contradditoriamente aperta [...] a due tipi di lettura opposti: uno passivo, tradizionale, patetico-consolatrio, e uno critico, polemico, insomma politico“, 217), the fact escaped the attention of other critics who did not notice the connection between the naïveté of the sentence put on the cover “uno scandalo che dura da diecimila anni” and the double-coding of the text. PT
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whimsically dedicated her book (“Por el analfabeto a quien escribo”), those readers who could be attracted by the sentimental plot, by pathos, and mechanisms of consolation used by Morante, thereby catching the attention of traditional readers of popular fiction. The plot rests on a rather uneventful account of six years of life of a lad named Useppe and his mother Ida, an elementary school teacher, and the emphasis is put on the conflicting relation between macro- and micro-history. The contrast is used to highlight the type of characters cast: the defeated. Those who do not make history, but before they are forgotten and erased from history’s records, have to suffer its consequences. On a very basic level of reading, La Storia is an epopee of the victims, a tearful story about the miserable life and death of a boy who lived without guilt and died without ever coming to know why. Useppe, in fact, managed to win the simple, “semantic” readers’ affection, along with their identification and compassion. To please this numerous category of readers, Morante stipulated with the publishers a very low price of the book, and also supplied a generic critique of political systems. A very different group of readers was the young generation of the Left, the members of Lotta Continua, or the young exrebels, the ’68 ragazzini, some of whom would later be disillusioned by the failure of the ’68 movement and, suppressed by the policy of the Italian governments during the Seventies, get involved in terrorism. Here the question addressed – Morante’s being outside of all contingency – becomes pertinent again. In short, this latter group of young politicised readers recognised that La Storia was the tale of a progressive loss of faith in political action, metaphorically presented as “revolution”, that the novel condemned violence and terror whatever its goals. The word revolution, wrote Morante in Lettera alle Brigate Rosse, had been “raped and betrayed” (“stuprata e tradita”), was no longer capable of keeping its 380
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authentic meaning, that is the meaning of a popular action to the end of creating a more worthy society. Violence had turned out to be self-destructive. Whoever aspired at being revolutionary in La Storia either turned out to make a vain speech using worn out formulas, or to be a drunk or a drug-addict (Giuseppe, Ida’s father; Davide), if not changing sides (Nino) each time taking the flag of convenience. A separate group of readers could have, but has not been to this day, the professional readers, literary critics, who could have noticed and appreciated at least the following: the novel’s multiple codes, the fact that it was carefully programmed to speak to different categories of readers, its intricate combination of intertextual references, subtle irony in respect of both operations. But literary critics had many reasons to feel discouraged by Morante’s public statements. In Pro e contro la bomba atomica she openly despised them as those whose only concern is literature, while a true artist is someone concerned with the whole world. Playing with conventions and structures of genre
Apart from its multicoded structure, another postmodern feature of the novel is its intertextuality. Five years prior to Calvino’s merry depiction of a writer’s impasse (the writer protagonist of Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore, can only rewrite or copy other texts), Morante gives a fine example of an ironic rewriting of the traditional generic modules, playing with the genre conventions of the historical novel and finding literary solutions which would be employed in the decade to come. While writing La Storia Morante was perfectly aware that it is not possible to write ex novo, without making a reference to, let’s say I promessi sposi by Manzoni. Most historical novelists of the Italian twentieth century necessarily regarded Alessandro Manzoni, if not as a model, at least as a constant reference against which to measure oneself, to quote, to challenge, or, 381
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more recently, to mock. E.g. Umberto Eco made his frequent references to Manzoni in Il nome della rosa directly, though ironically. Fewer perhaps wonder how Elsa Morante solved her “anxiety of influence”. By taking a closer look at the position of Morante with respect of Manzoni’s hypotext, we can see that Morante did more than merely re-proposing the traditional set of structural instruments of the old-fashioned historical novel. Her instruments ranged from a manuscript found or discovered, to the omniscient narrator, from reference to sources, to different devices meant to involve the reader. I will briefly comment on only one of the many instances of La Storia’s intertextual play: the ironic use of sources as misguiding and for the same reason challenging the notion of truth on which Manzoni was fixated. Contrarily to Manzoni’s endeavours to unravel the relationship between truth and fiction and to present his fiction as historical truth, Morante claimed that historical texts are not different from other narratives. The writer creates a sense of distrust of history manuals, by separating historical accounts from the story of life and death of individuals. Whenever a reference to history and historical sources is made inside the chapters, directly or indirectly, different “sources” (photographs, official announcements, legal acts, decrees, news and local coverage) do not appear as trustworthy or reliable. They are disenchanted and put on the same footing with common textual representation. A funny example of how imprecise and unworthy of faith some historical sources are, is the episode telling the contents of a bilingual announcement in Pietralata, that states partisans were forbidden to shoot at the German troops on pain of being put before a firing squad. Ten partisans were caught and executed, reports the announcement. However, when the common grave was opened later on, there were eleven, instead of ten corpses in it. The eleventh was of an innocent biker, a passer-by shot by chance. 382
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Morante’s bestseller goes astray the definition of a traditional historical novel given by Umberto Eco in Postille. Historical protagonists reported by common encyclopaedias are not part of La Storia’s plot. The novel reveals the disparity between the official historical records and the marginal figures, simple individuals, who are part of History but do not possess it. The historical events, cast outside the chapters, form a sort of school manual of dates and related atrocities, presented in a chronological order, perhaps the only order possible. A definition better suited for Morante’s book is Vittorio Spinazzola’s term of an anti-historical novel in the sense that La Storia does not aim at charting relationships between the past and the present – whether in terms of opposition or of analogy – nor does it aim at teaching her contemporaries a “historical lesson”. History is not a field in which human action may bring us closer to a goal, preaches the Roman writer, rather it follows its own paths, and is not willing to go where we (or the Sessantottini for that matter) would like it to. It is not a coincidence that Useppe dies exactly in the very same moment in which he wishes to dissent for the first time. All rebellion (“revolution”), as all action, is purposeless and useless. And, it should be stressed again, there is no direct indictment of any specific political situation or ideology. La Storia is not a popular elegy, and the writer is not advancing a view of the poor (vinti) crushed by an external (historical?) evil. The protagonists are not unambiguously good. Good and evil coexist in Morante’s novel like they coexist in the real world: this is why La storia should not be read as a condemnation of war, of any particular war, or as an epopee of its victims. Evil may rise at the heart of innocence: a baby-soldier rapes Ida, a female cat named Rossella eats the canaries, Davide fights against violence all his life but vents his anger and hatred on a German soldier kicking him to death. One cannot but agree with Amos Oz stating that “evil will be revealed here as an apolitical, a-historic force, 383
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which flows perhaps from the very same springs as childlike purity. The Manichean placard dissolves into a subtle and compelling picture of the birth of evil and savagery out of the spirit of innocence.” (Oz 70). Out of the two ways contemplated in La Storia with respect to the “scandal of history”, distance or complicity, Morante chooses distance. So how did Elsa Morante value the literature in the 1970s?
The question of the value of literature to Elsa Morante in the midst of the Seventies appears quite clear and easily settled. She definitely resisted the calling of politics, so disquieting and so pervasive at the time, and so escaped its effects which in many writers resulted in artistic impasse. She continued to write. And she continued to celebrate literature as the supreme human action, as the only means of expression, accessible to an intellectual and an artist, capable of preserving our integrity and entirety. La Storia tells a tale which is a representative sample of the universal human condition, human nature and history. It takes a poet, not a political activist, to speak up for all, speaking for each in particular. Individual answers thereby acquire universal validity. Poets have a magnificent gift, wrote Umberto Saba, a friend of and a model for Elsa Morante: they cry and they laugh for all of us. Poetry alone has a revolutionary charge, a potential to increase the readers’ vitality and to hope for future common awakening, said Morante. Only in this sense literature becomes politics. La Storia shows that the only engagement (to which Morante preferred the term “attention”) is aesthetical and ethical, and yet as such, or precisely as such, it gives consolation to common readers, while sketching a picture of an utopian anarchy to the politicised readers and to all the novel preaches that human history is a scandal (it is “unreal”) because evil and violence (as in the opening scene of rape) may rise at any time at the heart of innocence. Morante’s message being timeless 384
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turns out to be extremely timely. Moreover her search for new means of expression in La Storia makes her a forerunner of postmodern writers. Even though one could barely call Elsa Morante a postmodern writer with her emphasis on the primacy of poetry, yet La Storia definitely paved the way for many Italian (postmodern) historical novels of the eighties and nineties.
Works Cited
Barilli, Renato. Review of La Storia by Elsa Morante. Il Verri 7 (1974): 105-110. Belpoliti, Marco. Settanta. Torino: Einaudi, 2001. Cadioli, Alberto. L’industria del romanzo. L’editoria letteraria in Italia dal 1945 agli anni Ottanta. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1981. ---. La narrativa consumata. Pesaro: Transeuropa, 1987. Ferretti, Gian Carlo. Il mercato delle lettere. Industria culturale e lavoro critico in Italia dagli anni ’50 a oggi. Torino: Einaudi, 1979. Forgacs, David. L’industrializzazione della cultura italiana (1880-1990). Bologna: Il Mulino, 1993. Ganeri, Margherita. “La ripresa del romanzo storico: Consolo, Eco, Morante, Tomasi di Lampedusa.” Allegoria 5 (2002): 88-93. ---. Il romanzo storico in Italia: il dibattico critico dale origini al postmoderno. Lecce: Piero Manni, 1999. Milanini, Claudio. “Un colloquio con Claudio Milanini.” Pubblico 1983. Vittorio Spinazzola ed. Milano: Mondadori, 1983. 38. Morante, Elsa. Opere. Vol. 1 and 2. Milano: Mondadori, 1998. Oz, Amos. “Elsa Morante’s History: A Novel.” The Story Begins. Essays on Literature. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1999. 65-87. 385
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Paccagnini, Ermanno. “La fortuna del romanzo storico.” Rinnovamento del codice narrativo in Italia dal 1945 al 1992. Vol. I. Roma: Bulzoni, 1995. 79-133. Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Conferenze dell’Aci, fasc. XXI. Roma: Edizioni dell’Automobile Club, 1972. Saba, Umberto. “Quello che resta da fare ai poeti (1911).” Prose scelte. Giovanni Giudici,ed. Milano: Mondadori, 1976. 276-281. Spinazzola, Vittorio. Il romanzo antistorico. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1990.
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Introduction
Le roman Pétrole de Pier Paolo Pasolini, publié inachevé et posthume en 1992, a soulevé un débat très animé sur la fonction de l’intellectuel engagé dans une période historique et politique très tourmentée et incertaine comme l’ont été les années soixante-dix en Italie. Pasolini commence à concevoir et à rédiger cet ouvrage en 1972. 1 La publication de Pétrole questionne et dérange non seulement certaines personnalités de la classe politique italienne, mais aussi beaucoup de critiques littéraires qui ne portent qu’un intérêt très relatif sur un écrit inachevé dont il est difficile de cerner la problématique, le genre, la nature et les raisons de sa forme. Dans ce “roman”, les problématiques sociales se mêlent à celles de la politique et de l’économie, de la culture et de la littérature, dans une intrigue désespérément tragique. Quant au plan narratif, Pasolini se sert de la notion du double qui refoule toute idée de synthèse. La matière narrative se présente sous TPF
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Pasolini avait écrit au printemps 1972: “Mes yeux sont tombés par hasard sur le mot ‘Pétrole’ dans un petit article, je crois, de l’Unità et ce n’est que d’avoir pensé au mot ‘Pétrole’ comme titre de livre, qui m’a poussé à concevoir la trame de ce livre. En moins d’une heure, cette trace a été pensée et écrite”, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Pétrole, p. 572. Le roman a été publié en Italie chez Einaudi en 1992; aujourd’hui il est édité dans le volume: Pier Paolo Pasolini, (sous la direction de Walter Siti), Romanzi e racconti 1962-1975. PT
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forme d’un magma s’écoulant sans jamais trouver son état solide: pas de symboles, pas de métaphores, seulement une écriture allégorique qui s’exprime dans, pour et par le corps, les sens et les sensations. A travers cette “écriture dissidente” – sur laquelle nous aurons l’occasion de revenir tout au long de notre réflexion – Pasolini nie toute forme littéraire et, en même temps, dénonce la violence d’un pouvoir politique et culturel qui ne peut se manifester que par une voix ambiguë et qui oppose révolte et restauration, tolérance et contrainte, pour enfin aboutir à l’anéantissement de l’Autre. Dans cette même perspective se situe le film Salò ou les 120 journées de Sodome, présenté en avant-première à Paris le 21 novembre 1975, à quelques semaines de la mort de Pasolini. Il met en scène de manière très cruelle, dans l’acte ou dans la parole, la perversion idéologique et culturelle d’un pouvoir qui a su dissocier “pragmatiquement” les notions de corps et de plaisir, en rabaissant le premier à un pur et simple objet de marchandise et de jouissance. Ce film, le dernier de Pasolini, devait inaugurer la Trilogie de l’abjuration qui aurait dû suivre la Trilogie de la vie constituée par Le Décaméron, Les contes de Canterbury et Les fleurs des mille et une nuits. Si la trilogie de la vie montrait encore l’innocence, l’incorruptibilité et la beauté d’un corps doué de langage, dans Salò Pasolini n’hésite pas, en adaptant librement le texte de Sade, à situer les sarabandes infernales et les pratiques sexuelles délirantes de ses quatre protagonistes dans l’atmosphère maladive et violente de la “République Sociale” de Salò. Celle-ci se manifeste en tant que symbole d’un pouvoir politique et social vide, de la disparition de toute passion et de toute idéologie. Effectivement, après environ trente ans de l’expérience du fascisme, l’Italie vivra les sombres événements des années de plomb, entre enlèvements et massacres de masse, violence verbale et armée et un affaiblissement généralisé de la conscience politique et civile. 388
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La poétique de la dissidence ou de l’illisibilité de la forme
Si la publication posthume de Pétrole et la sortie de Salò ont fait l’objet de tant de critiques, jusqu’à provoquer un fort sentiment de rejet chez un grand nombre de lecteurs et de spectateurs, on le doit principalement à la difficulté de lecture de ces deux œuvres. La conception et la portée idéologique du film aussi bien que du “roman” s’inscrivent dans le domaine d’une poétique que l’on peut définir de la dissidence. En effet, Pasolini place le lecteur et le spectateur face à une “écriture-réécriture”, à un “discours” illisible dans le but de provoquer un court-circuit entre la conscience sociale collective et le sentiment individuel d’appartenir à une communauté. Selon l’auteur des Ecrits corsaires, le pouvoir libéral et pseudo démocratique mis en place dans les soi-disant pays modernes d’Occident a su camoufler la tendance au nivellement de toute culture à une culture bourgeoise moyenne grâce au rêve d’égalité sociale, qui donne l’illusion aux classes subalternes de participer activement à la vie politique commune comme de véritables protagonistes. Au contraire, cette stratégie visant à l’intégration et à la corruption des cultures minoritaires n’a produit que la disparition de la “différence” et, par conséquent, la crise du “verbe” et du langage, comme Julia Kristeva l’explique dans un article consacré à Céline. 2 L’écriture et le code de Pétrole et de Salò, en mettant au clair le caractère illisible d’une réalité refoulée, ne font référence à aucun système d’ordre moral pour représenter la réalité et l’histoire. Pasolini se sert d’un langage et d’une forme qui lancent un défi à l’idée même de limite. En dépassant tout jugement éthique, il réalise une descente aux Enfers de l’époque contemporaine à la recherche d’une vérité qui ne demande TPF
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aucune forme de légitimation morale ni idéologique. Il s’agit d’une vérité qui dégage une lumière aveuglante, comme “celle funèbre, de violence blanche éblouissante, qui vibre autour d’Œdipe jusqu’à l’effacer presque, dans la séquence filmée de l’Oracle. Ou encore celle qui tombe sur Saint Paul, et le prive de la vue pour qu’il se mette enfin à écouter” (Scarpetta 54). La lumière aveuglante, représentant le but de la recherche de la vérité de la part de l’intellectuel dissident, ne peut se manifester que par moments, comme un flash, une lueur instantanée. La poétique de la dissidence, n’ayant ni forme ni code de référence, bouleverse la notion même de représentation. Par conséquent, la réalité ne peut être saisie que dans sa dimension chaotique, dans son processus permanent de transformation dont le signifié ultime continue à échapper au sens commun. Pasolini, à travers la mise en crise du roman – le genre littéraire privilégié par la culture bourgeoise dominante –, met l’accent sur le caractère unique, intime, irréductible et a-social de son expérience littéraire et existentielle. La dernière écriture de Pasolini (c’est le cas, entre autres, du recueil Transhumaniser et organiser et de la “réécriture” inachevée de la Comédie de Dante, intitulée Divine mimesis) a le but de rendre accessible ce qui est inaccessible et inaccessible (donc illisible) ce qui est accessible (lisible). Autrement dit, “l’écriture dissidente” fait du non-dit le seul dit possible, afin d’empêcher le pouvoir de s’emparer complètement de la parole qui risque d’être réduite au silence. Pasolini s’oppose aussi au “cela-va-de-soi” – une célèbre expression déjà utilisée par Roland Barthes – en montrant le caractère le plus évident mais aussi le plus caché de sa société, à savoir, la violence qu’un certain pouvoir tolère pour s’assurer le contrôle intellectuel et la gestion de la communauté. 3 La poétique de la dissidence TPF
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s’exprime donc au niveau littéraire par une “écriture de l’investigation” qui pénètre et tient compte des différentes facettes d’une communauté. “Dissidence” devient ainsi synonyme de “différence”, sur laquelle l’auteur constitue un espace au-delà de toute loi, peut-être une nouvelle éthique de l’individu, qui serait encore capable de lancer un défi à la doxa (opinion courante), à la loi, au naturel “cela-va-de-soi”, grâce à la force du paradoxe. Dans une époque où l’individu a du mal à se reconnaître tant que membre d’une communauté, l’échec identitaire ne tient plus seulement à l’individu mais aussi à la notion de société. L’idée de communauté représente peut-être une notion paradoxale si l’on considère les propos de Vincent Kaufmann qui, se confrontant avec la position de Bataille, soutient que les hommes ne peuvent être unis entre eux que par les notions de déchirure ou de blessure. 4 La littérature de la dissidence doit mener ainsi son investigation sur le double plan de la collectivité (événements historiques, politiques, sociaux, culturels) et de l’individu (sens, sensations, psychologie, sexualité, langage), qui constituent les deux facettes d’une représentation possible. Ces deux niveaux d’investigation donnent lieu à un langage et à une forme “autres”, tout en défiant la notion d’ordre moral sur laquelle les sociétés occidentales modernes se fondent. Une grande partie des intellectuels européens des années soixante et soixante-dix n’était pas prête à la réalisation d’un tel TPF
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paradoxal, ce qui ne tombe pas sous le sens, l’est moins, même si c’est imposé arbitrairement: un tyran qui promulguerait des lois saugrenues serait à tout prendre moins violent qu’une masse qui se contenterait d’énoncer ce qui va de soi: le ‘naturel’ est en somme le dernier outrage”, (Barthes 52). TP
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“Reste alors à savoir si les êtres humains tiennent à être unis ou à se déchirer. L’affirmation de Bataille est délibérément ambiguë. Elle a fait miroiter une inversion de la fin et des moyens: la communauté passant par la déchirure, c’est aussi la déchirure passant par la communauté, c’est la communauté au service de la déchirure, de la destruction de soi comme de l’autre” (Kaufmann 78-79). PT
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projet, à cause d’une nostalgie bourgeoise d’ordre, dont Brodsky relève l’importance: Je dirais que ce qui contribue à l’incapacité des intellectuels occidentaux à appréhender la dissidence, c’est une nostalgie bourgeoise d’ordre. Une peur de la liberté. L’individualisme, même quand il frôle l’excentricité, est la seule forme existante de défense contre l’enregistrement [...] Je dois dire que je ne crois guère aux mouvements de masses, aux mouvements populaires. Je crois aux mouvements individuels. (5253)
D’après Brodsky, c’est l’individu qui fait la communauté, qui peut faire germer une révolution sociale; en revanche, toute communauté n’est pas forcément constituée d’individus ayant conscience de la richesse et de l’importance de leur diversité. Pétrole ou la crise du langage romanesque
A la différence de beaucoup d’autres ouvrages de Pasolini, notamment de ses recueils poétiques, Pétrole a été rapidement traduit dans de nombreux pays. En France, il est publié trois ans après sa parution en Italie. Le traducteur, René de Ceccatty, dans un essai sur l’œuvre de Pasolini, écrit à propos du débat critique qui a eu lieu sur les problématiques et la structure du “roman”: Pétrole, dont la structure éclatée et la thématique sont partout déjà présentes dans l’œuvre théâtrale, cinématographique et même romanesque (surtout dans Théorème et dans Alì dagli occhi azzurri), n’a pas été compris faute de référents. On ne comprenait pas d’où venait ce texte, on ne l’a pas lu en rapport avec le reste de l’œuvre, ni en rapport avec les essais critiques de Pasolini. (19)
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Pasolini, à travers le magma formel et thématique de Pétrole, essaie non seulement de mettre en crise la matrice bourgeoise du “roman” entendu comme genre littéraire, mais surtout de mettre par écrit, par un langage qui ne s’exprime pas uniquement par la parole, le sens intime d’une vie et d’une littérature “dissidentes”. Il veut contrevenir à l’ordre social le plus contraignant qui ne conserve aucun “ailleurs”, aucun “au-delà”, aucun “impossible”, au nom d’une dissidence qui s’attaque à des absences criantes de liberté que la culture occidentale standardisée a appris à refouler au profit d’une sorte de synthèse entre toute différence (Kristeva, “La littérature dissidente”). Le caractère “révolutionnaire” de cette poétique de la dissidence, qui provoque l’illisibilité de la parole, ne se sert pas de la catégorie éthique comme d’une règle policière mais, au contraire, fonde la notion d’éthique sur l’idée d’impossible, de mal, de comique. On ne cache jamais la honte, la faiblesse, les limites qui demeurent dans une société ou au sein d’une communauté. L’énonciation littéraire, donc, ne peut pas répondre à un genre précis, à une forme donnée et expérimentée, car le but de l’auteur est d’“écrire la différence”. Pétrole ne se présente pas sous la forme d’un roman traditionnel, il ne s’agira pas non plus d’une écriture proche du documentaire, mais d’un texte se présentant comme un véritable “essai d’investigation”. Cette écriture de l’investigation, proposant une autre représentation de la réalité à l’aide d’un langage que l’on peut définir in fieri, remet aussi en cause la notion d’auteur. Dans Pétrole il n’y a qu’un écrivain mais, en même temps, le lecteur est confronté à plusieurs écritures différentes. Le lecteur se retrouve à l’intérieur d’une étrange collectivité dont l’auteur est le porte-parole, tandis que la plume reste celle d’un seul écrivain qui met en avant un “je” bizarre, fascinant, parfois monstrueux, dont les projections et l’imaginaire envahissent le corps réel des autres. Ce “je” polyvalent produit un morcellement, une mosaïque imaginaire et réelle qui à la fois donnent une énonciation différente de l’histoire et remettent en question les 393
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certitudes politiques, sociales et culturelles de notre société de consommation. L’écriture débordante, fragmentaire et inachevée de Pétrole ainsi que la réécriture des Cent vingt journées de Sodome de Sade proposée dans le film Salò, ont le but de creuser et d’enquêter sur le paysage humain, culturel, social et politique de la société italienne moderne à travers un langage qui décompose la réalité en fragments, pour en cerner les différents aspects. Pétrole, se présentant en tant qu’œuvrefragment, tourne autour d’un personnage principal qui reflète le narrateur dédoublé : Carlo de Polis et Carlo de Thétis. Ces deux personnages-narrateurs accompagnent le lecteur tout au long d’un voyage initiatique qui traverse le monde du sexe, de la politique italienne, de la corruption du pouvoir et des différentes cultures régionales et marginales en voie de disparition. Ce “roman” poursuit rapidement sa descente au cœur de l’enfer de l’époque contemporaine dans une sorte de “roman totalisant” ayant le but de mener une critique radicale de la société et de la politique nationale et internationale, y compris de ses rapports étroits avec le monde de l’économie et de la finance. Les différentes notes qui sont rassemblées dans Pétrole peuvent être regroupées en sept macro-unités narratives. La première est consacrée aux vicissitudes de l’ENI, un holding fondé en 1953 pour coordonner la politique énergétique italienne, dont Carlo de Polis est l’un des dirigeants. Dans ces notes, la politique et l’économie cohabitent dans le même univers de corruption. Un deuxième groupe de notes, intitulé Les Argonautes, renvoyant de manière explicite aux Argonautes d’Apollonius de Rhodes, introduisent l’idée du voyage vers la lumière de l’Orient. Avec l’image de la Toison d’or, Pasolini fait allusion à la recherche désespérée de l’or de l’époque contemporaine: le pétrole. Ensuite, vient une très longue note, Le terrain vague de la via Casilina, qui aborde la problématique de la sexualité conçue comme moment de rencontre avec l’Autre, à travers les notions 394
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de sacré et d’innocence. Ce moment correspond à la prise de conscience de la part de l’individu de l’Enormité, de l’Ailleurs, qui tracent enfin le chemin conduisant l’homme à une régénération possible. Après, une suite de notes intitulées Le Merde reprend le surnom d’un jeune de la banlieue de Rome qui, avec sa copine Cinzia, est le protagoniste d’un voyage dans les gironi et les bolge d’une moderne Comédie dantesque, présentée par Pasolini comme une longue “vision” quasi onirique se superposant par moments à la réalité. Par ce double cheminement qui se situe entre la vision et la réalité, Pasolini nous conduit dans les rues de la banlieue romaine et nous montre les signes non équivoques de la standardisation infligée à la classe sous-prolétaire par la culture bourgeoise au pouvoir. Ensuite, nous retrouvons un groupe de notes intitulé L’Epochè où, en l’absence de tout jugement, toute sorte de massacres politiques et ethniques ont lieu. Pasolini fait référence au génocide culturel qui provient du nivellement des différentes cultures pour qu’un seul modèle social puisse être imposé à n’importe qui, à n’importe quelle communauté. L’ouvrage se termine avec les deux dernières parties: Les Godoari et La nouvelle banlieue, dans lesquelles l’auteur insiste sur l’anéantissement de l’individu, des traditions et de la diversité jusqu’à atteindre ue dimension existentielle rattachée aux notions de désert et de silence. Dans cette situation de vide, le lecteur entrevoit une possibilité de régénération grâce à un voyage initiatique-mystique, à une sorte de retour historique et existentiel à un temps et à un espace autres, après le déclin du modernisme occidental et de son cycle contraignant de production-consommation. Le but de Pasolini est de donner voix à une inspiration de type mystique et sexuel capable de transfigurer la réalité historique à l’aide des expériences culturelles et de la vie de chaque individu conçu comme membre d’une communauté. On remarque, en particulier, la présence d’une très intense rêverie sexualo-politique qui trouve expression dans des personnages tels que Carmelo ou Salvatore 395
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Dulcimascolo. Ces personnages permettent à l’auteur de revenir sur un certain nombre de descriptions sexuelles qui ont souvent la fonction de rituel sacré. Le lecteur relève l’importante présence d’une sexualité débordante, qui constitue avant tout le moment de prise de conscience du “je” face à “l’autre” et à la communauté. Il s’agit d’une sexualité “cosmique” qui se réalise et qui est vécue en présence de l’univers entier, humain et naturel, à travers la rencontre d’un corps autre représentant l’image du Tout. Le processus part d’un état de corruptibilité inconsciente pour atteindre enfin un état d’incorruptibilité consciente. Dans la longue Note 55, intitulée Le terrain vague de la via Casilina (Il pratone della Casilina), le personnage dédoublé, en l’occurrence Carlo de Thétis, “rencontre” une vingtaine de jeunes garçons prolétaires des faubourgs de Rome. Ce texte propose une situation que nous savons typique chez Pasolini: l’opposition entre le bourreau et sa victime. Pourtant ici, les deux rôles qui entrent en contact, entremêlent leurs identités pour se confondre l’un dans l’autre. Le bourreau perd sa connotation violente puisque la victime représente l’Innocent qui revient découvrir la conscience de soi-même grâce à la rencontre avec l’Enormité. Carlo de Thétis se confronte avec cette dimension extérieure tout en découvrant à nouveau son ubi consistam. A travers chaque rapport sexuel, Carlo accomplit un “sacrifice” dont l’étymologie latine (sacrificium) renvoie à la notion de “faire le sacré”. Cette participation “cosmique” aux actes sexuels, dont on vient d’évoquer la valeur, est évidente ici dans plusieurs passages de la Note 55. 5 TPF
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“L’odeur de l’herbe étourdissait, mais les brindilles dures, en même temps, blessaient Carlo au ventre, au cou. Vu avec l’œil collé au sol, le cosmos était encore plus absolu: une seule étendue plate, divisée au fond par une ligne presque parfaite de la traînée lumineuse du ciel. La lune était derrière lui [...] La chose fut plus longue que tout ce qu’on peut imaginer. Quand enfin, lui aussi silencieux, Claudio jouit et que tous deux, étourdis et débraillés, ils se 396 TP
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La sexualité se situe ainsi dans Pétrole à l’intérieur d’une perspective épisodique marquant un moment de passage, la traversée d’une réalité de plus en plus illisible et difficile à représenter. La beauté et le caractère sacré du corps rendent à l’homme sa dignité et son identité, tout en constituant une forme de langage, le lieu privilégié de l’expression face à un langage commun qui régresse dans le domaine de l’aphasie. Le corps des garçons de la banlieue de Rome, en ne répondant à aucune morale et à aucun système normatif, n’accepte pas de compromis avec la culture dominante. 6 Les jeunes sous-prolétaires appartiennent au front de la dissidence, ils sont les inclassables, ceux qui agissent au-delà d’un langage commun, car leurs gestes constituent une langue dont les signes restent illisibles. Il s’agit de la langue de la matière, des sens, celle qui amène à l’autodétermination, au-delà de toute idée de communauté. Cette même vision du corps et de sa beauté est célébrée dans les trois films de la Trilogie de la vie. Au contraire, dans Salò, les corps des jeunes victimes seront violés et rabaissés à pur objet de commerce, privés de leur côté sacré, torturés et niés par la violence d’un pouvoir aveugle. Toutefois, le pouvoir moderne, politique ou économique, culturel ou social, a besoin d’une communauté à maîtriser et non pas d’individus libres. La lisibilité avant toute chose, pour que tout soit clair et univoque face à un système moral et TPF
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relevèrent, la lune paraissait être beaucoup plus haute dans le ciel: sa lumière paraissait avoir changé, se faisant plus claire, plus pure”, et encore: “En la regardant comme ça [la lune nda], Carlo fut saisi d’un sentiment soudain d’amour, comme si ça lui pleuvait du cosmos, mêlé à l’odeur aiguë et enivrante des herbes sauvages, à la chaleur de la nuit estivale”, in Pétrole (228, 230). TP
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“...Mais il ne s’agissait nullement de Démons appartenant aux Enfers, là où tous finissent. Bref, pauvres Dieux, qui s’en allaient au hasard, laissant flotter derrière eux leur odeur de chiens, rusés et grossiers, sinistres et complices, sortis de leurs simulacres de tuf, ou bien de bois rongé par le soleil et par la pluie, rendant funèbre tout le monde nocturne, et le cosmos” (247). PT
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linguistique qui refoule la différence, en la reléguant dans le domaine de l’illisible et de l’impur. Pasolini, en revendiquant l’importance et la nécessité de jeter un regard différent sur la réalité, déclare aussi l’autonomie formelle et thématique de l’écriture littéraire. Pétrole, d’ailleurs, peut être considéré comme une mise en écriture de la Forme vide. Dans un passage du “roman”, Pasolini écrit: Jusqu’à ce point, le lecteur aura certainement pensé que tout ce qui est écrit dans ce livre – c’est naturel et, d’ailleurs, inévitable – renvoie à la réalité. Ce n’est que lentement, en avançant dans la lecture, et en reparcourant donc le chemin de son auteur, qu’il se rendra compte que, en fait, ce livre ne renvoie à rien d’autre qu’à lui-même. Il renvoie à lui-même fût-ce – pourquoi pas? – à travers la réalité: celle qui est connue – conventionnellement et en commun – du lecteur et de l’auteur. (52)
Quoique Pasolini évoque l’importance du pacte implicite entre auteur et lecteur dans la conception de ce roman, son langage procède toutefois au-delà de la parole à l’aide de “visions” successives qui transforment l’univocité de la parole grâce au caractère multiforme du regard. Pasolini parle à ce propos d’une écriture a brulichio, à savoir, d’une écriture qui ne raconte pas mais qui veut exprimer les innombrables vérités cachées dans l’histoire et dans toute existence individuelle. Pour atteindre ce but, l’écrivain adopte souvent l’allégorie et une écriture chorale proche du rêve, où chaque image devient manifestation de sens. Pétrole, en se présentant sous forme de notes, relève l’impossibilité de définir une fois pour toutes le signifié ultime de la réalité et de sa représentation. La seule voie praticable reste celle du fragment, qui se pose entre le mystère ineffable et le projet d’une écriture essayant de révéler l’essence du réel à travers la force du rêve. 398
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Dans la Note 37, Pasolini revient de manière plus claire sur son idée de “forme”: Eh bien, ces pages imprimées mais illisibles veulent proclamer d’une façon extrême – mais qui se pose comme symbolique, également pour tout le reste du livre – ma décision: qui n’est pas d’écrire une histoire, mais de construire une forme (comme cela apparaîtra mieux par la suite): forme consistant simplement en “quelque chose d’écrit”. Je ne nie pas que certainement la chose la meilleure aurait été d’inventer carrément un alphabet, si possible de caractère idéogrammatique ou hiéroglyphique, et d’imprimer le livre en entier comme ça. Du reste, XXX Michaux (?) l’a fait récemment, dessinant tout son livre, ligne à ligne, dans une invention patiente et infinie de signes non alphabétiques. (172)
Pour Pasolini, créer une forme signifie donc forger un nouveau vocabulaire qui puisse donner un sens inédit au processus de dissolution et de régénération de la réalité. L’œuvre littéraire prétend affirmer – comme d’ailleurs la notion de narration – sa position tout à fait indépendante vis-à-vis de la réalité. L’écriture littéraire devient ainsi un lieu physique, quelque chose qui existe puisqu’il y a un corps graphique qui témoigne de son existence. Il s’agit plus précisément d’un espace où le vide de la forme se transforme en voix capable de faire parler le silence qui abrite le secret indicible d’une Vérité, laquelle est à la fois gardée dans son mystère et révélée dans une sorte de litanie sacrée. Salò: la cruauté du Pouvoir D’après la critique, le tournage de Salò en 1975 marquerait la déception finale de Pasolini face à son époque et la négation de toute possibilité de rédemption. Cette œuvre, qui constitue une réécriture des 120 journées de Sodome du marquis de Sade, met 399
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en scène dantesquement trois cercles – des passions, de la merde et du sang – précédés par un vestibule de l’enfer. Pasolini transpose l’univers sadien à l’époque fasciste, mettant en relation les deux systèmes idéologiques et moraux. Ce film a provoqué, dès sa première sortie, d’innombrables discussions aussi bien en Italie qu’en France. Dans un article, Roland Barthes parle d’un profond malentendu dans la conception de cette œuvre cinématographique. Il remarque la double erreur de Pasolini qui aurait irréalisé de manière maladroite le fascisme en employant à la lettre le roman de Sade, et rendu réel Sade à travers la référence au système fasciste, qui ne ferait pas forcément allusion au Fascisme. 7 Au-delà de ces remarques et de ces suggestions, il faut reconnaître à Pasolini le mérite d’avoir réussi à montrer sans aucune métaphore et sans aucun symbole la vraie nature du pouvoir et ses effets néfastes sur l’individu. Lors d’une interview, le metteur en scène déclare: “J’ai par conséquent pris Salò comme symbole du pouvoir qui transforme des êtres humains en objets, ce pouvoir fasciste de la petite république”. Il est aussi évident que Pasolini en arrive à admettre la fin de l’Histoire, disparue sous la domination des lois morales et économiques qui ont effacé toute volonté et toute valeur de l’individu. TPF
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“Du point de vue politique, Pasolini s’est trompé aussi. Le fascisme est un danger trop grave et trop insidieux, pour qu’on le traite par simple analogie, les maîtres fascistes venant tout simplement prendre la place des libertins [...]. En somme, Pasolini a fait deux fois ce qu’il ne fallait pas faire. Du point de vue de la valeur, son film perd sur les deux tableaux: car tout ce qui irréalise le fascisme est mauvais, et tout ce qui réalise Sade est mauvais. Et pourtant, si tout de même, au plan des affects, il y avait du Sade dans le fascisme (chose banale), et, bien plus, s’il y avait du fascisme dans Sade? Du fascisme ne veut pas dire: le fascisme” (Barthes, “Sur Salò ou les 120 journées de Sodome de Pier Paolo Pasolini)
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Si dans les trois films de la Trilogie, inspirés d’œuvres écrites quelques siècles auparavant, Pasolini avait montré la sexualité comme un moment libératoire et de dérision du pouvoir, dans Salò le corps et la sexualité se réduisent à la simple expression de la jouissance et de l’exploitation au profit du bourreau. L’exercice du sexe n’est admis que par coercition ou en cachette. Le but principal des quatre protagonistes du film – le président de la cour d’appel, le duc, l’évêque et le président, représentants d’un État sans peuple – est de réduire les jeunes victimes à des “objets” en se servant de la manière la plus abjecte de leurs corps et de leur vitalité. Les sévices et les tortures infligées aux garçons et aux filles, la géométrie des décors intérieurs de la villa et les nombreuses citations de Sade, Nietzsche, Klossowski, constituent le cauchemar clos et vide qui se passe dans un lieu qui serait celui de la République Sociale de Salò fondée par Mussolini en 1944. Salò évoque donc un monde en putréfaction où la fascination de la mort et la terreur deviennent l’ultime point de fuite vers la vie. 8 Pourtant cet enfer, cette antichambre de la mort avec les pires exactions n’ont pas raison de la capacité de résistance des victimes. Le soldat Sergio est mitraillé, le poing gauche fermé, dans les bras d’une servante noire; des couples se forment sans se soucier des obligations et du règlement de la villa qui interdit le moindre geste d’amour sous peine de mort immédiate; une fille qui est condamnée à mort par les quatre bourreaux crie avec toutes ses forces une invocation de désespoir à Dieu, même si toute TPF
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Dans une interview à Pasolini, dont Mario Soldati propose quelques passages, le metteur en scène dit: “Il y a une phrase de Sade qui dit qu’il n’est rien de plus profondément anarchique que le pouvoir. Et, à ma connaissance, il n’y a jamais eu en Europe de pouvoir aussi anarchique que celui de la République de Salò: la démesure la plus mesquine faite gouvernement. J’ai par conséquent pris Salò comme symbole du pouvoir qui transforme des êtres humains en objets, ce pouvoir fasciste de la petite république. Mais il s’agit justement d’un symbole; ce pouvoir archaïque rendait plus aisée la représentation” (Soldati 37). PT
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allusion religieuse était interdite. Enfin, presque à la fin du film, la pianiste préfère se suicider plutôt que d’assister aux massacres perpétrés dans une sorte de tuerie finale. Les quatre protagonistes ne peuvent à la fin que supprimer physiquement tous ceux qui n’ont pas voulu ou pu partager leurs envies et leurs plaisirs. Salò aborde aussi la question du rapport entre Sade et l’Eros, qui constitue une thématique centrale du film. En effet, toute nudité, tous les corps des adolescents, pour la plupart fils et filles de partisans ou partisans eux-mêmes, enlevés des villages du nord de l’Italie, ne sollicitent jamais le désir ou la joie du sexe, au contraire, ils renvoient plutôt à certaines images des camps de concentration. Le sexe est toujours imposé, infligé comme une punition. Le schéma sadien, selon lequel la possession correspond à l’asservissement de l’un au plaisir de l’autre, est fidèlement reproduit. Pasolini fait également référence au rapport entre le sexe et le pouvoir. Si chez Sade le sexe se révèle comme rapport de force entre un bourreau et une victime, chez Pasolini ce rapport de force devient la métaphore de l’exploitation du peuple par les dirigeants fascistes. Le sexe devient donc une métaphore du pouvoir. Mais la cible finale du metteur en scène est encore différente. En effet, les exploiteurs et les assassins de la jeunesse, de la vie, de l’innocence et de la beauté du corps et du sexe, ne sont pas seulement les fascistes de 1944, mais aussi la bourgeoisie des années soixante-dix, avec sa culture standardisée et standardisante. L’obéissance et le respect sans conditions aux divers cérémonials mis en place par le fascisme de Salò, renvoient à un fascisme contemporain qui aux yeux de Pasolini est aussi dangereux que le fascisme “historique”, celui qui, dans le respect des principes démocratiques et dans la passivité quasi généralisée des opposants, a su réaliser le génocide des anciennes valeurs culturelles, en imposant un développement qui est surtout une forme de régression. 402
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A partir de l’univers de Sade, Pasolini propose aussi toute une construction du film fondée sur le nombre magique 4. Le film se divise en quatre épisodes, quatre actes, comme une véritable tragédie: le Prologue ou le Vestibule de l’enfer, le Cercle des Passions, le Cercle de la Merde, le Cercle du Sang. Les maîtres sont au nombre de quatre, ainsi que les femmes qui racontent leurs histoires de sexe et de jouissance. La troupe des jeunes filles et des garçons est divisée en groupes de quatre: les victimes, les soldats, les collaborateurs et les domestiques. Cette structure figée fait directement allusion à l’univers sadien abstrait et relève de la transposition faite par Pasolini, d’où les remarques de Roland Barthes. De même, il faut remarquer l’actualisation de l’écriture sadienne, qui repose sur quelques principes d’ordre stylistique, entre autres, la caractérisation de la haute bourgeoisie à travers une accumulation de détails; la reconstitution du cérémonial nazi dans sa nudité, dans sa simplicité militaire et dans son vitalisme glacial; l’accumulation obsessionnelle des épisodes sadiques; la correction ironique de la violence des actes, grâce à l’humour qui déborde dans les détails sinistres et délibérément comiques. Mais cet enfer de l’époque contemporaine qui nie toute différence, toute innocence, qui est tragique jusqu’à l’atroce et mélancolique dans sa pitié sans espoir, montre quand même quelques signes d’ouverture, comme dans la déchirante invocation d’une victime qui crie avant d’être exécutée: “Dieu! Dieu, pourquoi nous as-tu abandonnés?”. Cette prière se lève contre l’élégance et parfois la grâce des récits des dames, déclamés comme des litanies et accompagnés au piano par de douces mélodies romantiques, contre les infamies infligées par les maîtres de la villa, comme on peut le voir dans la longue scène de la coprophagie, et enfin contre les atrocités finales qui montrent, entre autres, un œil arraché à la pointe d’un poignard, des sexes brûlés à la flamme, des mamelons brûlés aux charbons ardents. A cette violence gratuite et maladive s’opposent 403
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l’innocence et la résignation des victimes humiliées à tel point qu’elles ne peuvent qu’invoquer la mort tout au long du film. Moravia, qui était lié à Pasolini par une longue amitié, a écrit que le metteur en scène s’est surtout inspiré idéologiquement et poétiquement de l’Italie qu’il aimait passionnément depuis l’enfance. En pleine polémique avec Calvino, Moravia écrit à propos de Salò: “La tragédie de Pasolini n’est pas celle de l’homme corrompu par l’argent, mais celle du patriote trahi par son pays”. L’idéologie et l’esthétique de Salò se situent entre plaisir et souffrance, amour et haine, géométrie et chaos d’une forme, là où les différentes facettes de la réalité se rencontrent, complémentaires et nécessaires les unes aux autres, comme la vérité au mensonge. Conclusion
Pétrole et Salò représentent sans doute deux aspects différents mais contigus de l’achèvement du parcours existentiel et artistique de Pasolini, qui aboutit paradoxalement sous le signe de l’inachevé. Ces deux dernières étapes de l’œuvre multiforme de l’auteur sont caractérisées par deux mouvements contradictoires: d’un côté, Pasolini s’acharne à nier et à refouler le passé proche et lointain; de l’autre, il se situe au-delà de son écriture et de son époque, les années soixante-dix, pour préparer une autre décennie, une littérature différente, d’autres manières de faire du cinéma. Salò et Pétrole font partie de l’avenir mais sous des formes différentes. Si Pétrole, avec sa narration ouverte sur un temps et un espace illimités, se fonde sur le fragment, l’allégorie, la vision, le dédoublement, la mise en crise des notions de narrateur, de personnage et de lecteur, avec Salò Pasolini enferme le spectateur dans un monde clos et infernal, qui est en même temps historique, littéraire, moral et culturel. A travers ce film, le metteur en scène revient, après la parenthèse de la Trilogie, à un discours public, dans le but de saccager le passé, le langage corrompu, l’esthétique du geste, du corps, 404
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l’idée même de beauté et d’innocence, pour enfin mettre en crise la notion de communauté. 9 Pourtant, en 1975, Pasolini se sentait prêt à faire face au monde moderne; son envie d’action et de représentation ne se fixait pas de limites. Salò n’était pour lui qu’un passage, un épisode. En effet, en1968, lors d’un entretien avec Jon Halliday, Pasolini déclare: TPF
FPT
Je vous dirais même que l’un des films que je pourrais faire, et qui serait mon dernier, après Saint Paul et après un autre que j’intitulerai Caldéron – ceci est encore à l’état d’idée – serait une vie de Socrate […]. Il est difficile de savoir quoi dire. Il me plairait que mon dernier film soit sur Socrate, mais espérons qu’il me vienne encore sans prévenir quelque chose entre Saint Paul et Socrate. Pour faire un film sur Socrate, je devrais avoir rejoint un niveau tel que j’aurai épuisé toutes ces motivations marginales qui me poussent à faire des films, pour arriver ainsi à un cinéma désintéressé, absolument pur […]. J’aimerais arriver à une pureté et à un désintéressement majeurs, j’aimerais parvenir à un rapport plus pur avec le public. Idéalement, pour toutes ces raisons, une vie de Socrate pourrait être mon film ultime: il me plairait qu’il constitue le sommet de mon expérience cinématographique. (130-31)
Pasolini exprime un besoin de “désintéressement” pour qu’il puisse enfin parler et représenter son temps sans aucune contrainte éthique et linguistique. Il avait donc imaginé, dans la réalité, un autre épilogue à sa carrière de cinéaste et d’écrivain. TP
9
“Salò est une expérience de positionnement nouveau du discours public, en cela tourné vers l’avenir, mais aussi une œuvre de saccage du passé, l’équivalent cinématographique exact de “La nuova gioventù” qui est un exercice de biffure systématique du tout premier recueil des Poesie a Casarsa et de La meglio gioventù” (Pasolini dans Hervé Joubert-Laurencin 283). PT
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Son parcours, au contraire, s’achèvera sur la corruption et la maladie du corps et du langage: les deux sources d’inspiration et les deux frontières de l’art et de la littérature modernes et contemporains, de la notion même de “modernité”.
Ouvrages cités
Barthes, Roland. “Sur Salò ou les 120 journées de Sodome de Pier Paolo Pasolini.” Le Monde, 16 juin 1976. Puis dans: Roland Barthes. Oeuvres complètes, Tome III. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1994. 391-392. ---. “Roland Barthes par lui-même.” Tel Quel 76 (été 1978): 3234. Brodsky, Jossif. “Poésie et dissidence (entretien avec Guy Scarpetta).” Tel Quel 76 (été 1978): 50-55. Ceccatty, René de. Sur Pier Paolo Pasolini. Le Faouët: Editions du Scorff, 1998. Joubert-Laurencin, Hervé. Pasolini, portrait du poète en cinéaste. “Cahiers du cinéma”, Paris: Seuil, 1995. Kaufmann, Vincent. “Communauté sans traces.” Denis Hollier, [éd.] Georges Bataille après tout, Paris: Belin, 1995. 6179. Kristeva, Julia. “La littérature dissidente comme réfutation du discours de gauche.” Tel Quel 76 (été 1978): 40-44. ---. “Pouvoir de l’horreur.” Tel Quel 86 (hiver 1980): 50-53. Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Pétrole. Trad. par René de Ceccatty. Paris: Gallimard, 1995. ---. Sous la direction de Walter Siti. Romanzi e racconti 19621975. Collection “I Meridiani”. Milano: Mondadori, 1998. Scarpetta, Guy. Tel Quel 86 (hiver 1980): 54. Soldati, Mario. Trad. par Pierre Léon. Trafic 15 (été 1995). Stack, Oswald (pseud. de Jon Halliday). Su Pasolini. Conversazioni con Jon Halliday. Milano: Guanda, 1992. 406
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Réédition en italien de Oswald Stack. Pasolini on Pasolini. New York: Thames and Hudson et Indiana University Press, 1969.
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Le Mouvement Vu de l’Intérieur: Milan de 68 aux Années de Plomb à Travers le Roman d’un Témoin: Andrea Bellini et la Banda del Casoretto Claudio Milanesi (Université de Provence) Giorgio Galli a écrit qu’un certain réductionnisme historiographique risque de renfermer les années 70 dans les coordonnées de la guerre froide et du conflit entre les deux grandes puissances, en faisant de l’expérience italienne un simple corollaire de ce conflit. On pourrait ajouter que dans les histoires de l’Italie républicaine d’autres réductionnismes, plus centrés sur l’horizon national, se sont manifestés, notamment celui qui voudrait voir les années 70 comme le produit de la crise du projet réformiste des gouvernements de centre gauche, le centrosinistra, ou celui qui y voit les conséquences de la crise sociale des classes moyennes (cf. Flores et De Bernardi 7-10). Un autre danger réductionniste est celui qui est véhiculé par les deux syntagmes que l’on utilise le plus souvent pour évoquer ces années et les événements qui les ont marqués: la strategia della tensione et gli anni di piombo. Deux syntagmes qui ont supplanté les définitions telles que il sessantotto o il settantasette qui présentaient le défaut de clôre dans les limites temporelles de deux années solaires une expérience qui les avait largement dépassées. C’est aussi pour cela qu’il faut saluer avec un certain soulagement la sortie du film de Marco Tullio Giordana La meglio gioventù (Nos meilleurs années, en français,
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http://congress70.library.uu.nl
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avec une traduction qui ne rend absolument pas le même sens que le syntagme italien). 1 Non pas seulement parce qu’il s’agît d’un film passionant sur une génération qui après avoir marqué l’histoire italienne a failli disparaître dans l’aphasie et l’effacement de la mémoire, mais parce qu’il impose une définition qui deviendra vraisemblablement aussi éponyme que les précédentes, mais ayant en plus le mérite de rappeler qu’au delà des dysfonctionnements du système 2 tels que le terrorisme d’état et la lutte armée, ces années 70 furent aussi les années de l’éclosion, de l’expérience et de la pratique d’utopies collectives animées d’espoir et de générosité et d’un besoin tenace de changement et de justice. Frustrés sans doute, mais ayant néanmoins changé la visage de la société italienne. Tout cela pour introduire le roman de Marco Philopat, La Banda Bellini, qui donne un autre aperçu de ces années et des expériences de cette génération d’Italiens nés dans les années 50. Un aperçu différent car, si le noyau central des personnages de La meglio gioventù est issu de la bourgeosie – et revient en faire partie après la parenthèse bohémienne des années d’études –, le narrateur de la Banda Bellini et ses amis sont issus des classes populaires de la banlieue de Milan et traversent en véritables protagonistes des conflits sociaux et des manifestations qui en sont l’expression la période qui va de 1967, l’année qui est marquée par les premières occupations des lycées milanais, à 1977, le moment où les revolvers font leur apparition dans les mains des jeunes manifestants. Et différent aussi car le statut de vérité des deux récits est différent, La F
F
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La sortie du film a suscité une sorte de vague de mémoire collective, qui s’est traduite dans la publication de plusieurs livres sur la période: une opération très utile a été la publication d’une sorte de Who’s Who des mouvements de la décennie: La meglio gioventù; Accadde in Italia 19651976.
2
C’est une expression que j’ai traduit de Nicola Tranfaglia, “Le disfunzioni del sistema”, in Italia moderna. Immagini e storia di un’identità nazionale. 409
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meglio gioventù étant œuvre de fiction, la Banda Bellini étant par contre l’autobiographie fictionnalisé d’un personnage réel, Andrea Bellini, milanais, fils d’un ancien partisan des GAP et d’une couturière, lycéen en 1967, universitaire en 1971 et leader du service d’ordre du quartier du Casoretto jusqu’en 1976. De la Résistance à Soixante-huit
Andrea Bellini hérite de sa famille un certain noyau de valeurs et d’attitudes que nous retrouverons à quelques modifications près dans son caractère. Son père se réclame d’avoir été, pendant la guerre, un membre des GAP, donc un militant antifasciste non encadré par les formations politiques nationales; il transmet à son fils Andrea une idée très particulière de la Résistance: pour lui, elle fut l’occasion d’une affirmation vitaliste de l’individu, une lutte violente et cruelle qui trouvait en elle-même sa propre légitimité. Le vieux Bellini est un personnage haut en couleur, un peu voyou un peu flambeur, le plus souvent sans le sou, qui joint, après sa rupture avec le Parti Communiste Italien (PCI), les syndicats “jaunes” et finit par vivre de délation et de “coups”. Andrea hérite de lui, en les reproduisant dans sa participation aux conflits de 68 et des années 70, son individualisme, son goût pour la fanfaronnade, sa conviction profonde de trouver une légitimation à ses actions dans ses propres élans, sa rupture anarchique avec les partis et notamment vers le PCI mais aussi vers tous les autres groupes qui marquent l’histoire de ces années, un certain penchant pour la violence, et surtout une forte préférence pour l’action, en opposition à la réflexion et au débat intellectuel. De son grand-père, une sorte de socialiste idéaliste d’antan convaincu de la valeur de la culture, de la lecture et des études en tant que moyens d’émancipation de l’individu et de la société, Andrea prend par contre son goût pour la lecture et pour les études, et surtout son adhésion à l’antifascisme comme postulat de toute lutte politique. C’est ainsi que même dans les occasions où son penchant pour l’action, le geste, la force et la 410
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gloire virile émanant de la lutte physique pourraient le faire pencher vers l’extrème droite – et c’est le cas quand il écoute émerveillé les faits et gestes d’un ancien de la X Mas, les forces d’élite de la République fasciste de Salò – ou bien quand il s’éloigne du PCI au nom de l’action contre le gris bureacratisme de ses fonctionnaires – Andrea s’inscrit toujours et sans jamais hésiter dans l’extrème gauche antifasciste. Alessandro Cavalli e Carmen Leccardi (764) ont écrit que le noyau de la culture de contestation des jeunes d’avant 68 était constitué de valeurs telles que le rejet de l’hyprocrisie et du formalisme des rapports sociaux, la critique de l’institution familiale, la révolte contre l’autoritarisme de l’école et d’autres institutions (notamment l’armée et l’église), la recherche d’espaces nouveaux de sociabilité et de relation. On retrouve tous les éléments de cette liste dans l’attitude du jeune narrateur de La Banda Bellini – à cette exception près, que la critique de la famille n’y apparaît presque pas au vu des traits très originaux et de l’origine sociale modeste de ses composantes. On doit par contre ajouter à cette liste la valeur de l’antifascisme, qui reste un élément fondateur des attitudes politiques du jeune lycéen qu’est Andrea Bellini au début du roman. Cet antifascisme prend d’ailleurs un caractère de classe, car les néofascistes du lycée Einstein où Andrea fait son inititiation à la lutte politique sont au même temps les lycéens les plus riches de l’école, ceux là mêmes qui peuvent se permettre ce à quoi les fils d’immigrés et les fils des habitants des quartiers fraîchement admis à fréquenter les études supérieures paraissent ne pas avoir droit dans le climat encore immobile de l’avant 68: les cours particuliers, certes, mais surtout la voiture, les cigarettes “d’importation” et les filles qui vont avec. Ce rejet, cette critique, cette révolte s’expriment en priorité par la logique de la bande. Et la bande ne peut s’affirmer que par la force. C’est ainsi que les valeurs qui peu-à-peu s’imposent dans l’univers du lycée Einstein et du quartier du Casoretto, un univers qui apparaît d’abord fermé et qui s’ouvre 411
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au monde grâce à l’éclosion des mouvements collectifs, sont le succès avec les femmes, la force virile (les jeunes du quartiers pratiquent tous les arts martiaux) et un vitalisme qui s’oppose autant au monde des adultes (le proviseur, les gens du commun) qu’à l’attitude terne et modérée des jeunes adhérants du PCI, qui, comme l’écrit Philopat avec l’ironie qui donne souvent le ton au livre, “arrivent à rendre chiante même une partie de basket” (32; C’est moi qui traduis). Soixante huit apparaît dans ces pages comme un processus où la libération politique s’accompagne à la libération des comportements. C’est cela qui caractèrise le mois de mars 68, quand les occupations des lycées et des universités se propagèrent dans tout le pays, et les années qui suivirent. Le roman suit cette progression parallèle de l’ouverture de la vie politique à des nouvelles exigences de démocratie d’un côté et de la libération sexuelle hors des cadres préétablis du couple et de la famille de l’autre. La vie des adolescents du quartier et du lycée est suivie par la narration sur les deux plans qui se croisent: d’un côté il y a la dimension publique et politique, l’ascension du narrateur vers le rôle de leader de son lycée et de son propre groupe à l’intérieur du mouvement des universitaires de la ville. De l’autre côté on suit aussi sa découverte de la vie sexuelle à travers la progression qui part d’une série de relations superficielles et ephémères, passe par la tempête amoureuse de la libération sexuelle, cette “explosion ormonale collective à l’échelle planétaire” (36) comme il l’écrit à propos du mois de mars 68. Et arrive finalement à la construction difficile et contrastée d’une relation plus profonde, qui ressent toujours du climat extérieur, de cette tension provoquée par la libération des mœurs et le développement des thématiques liées à la libération de la femme et aux changements des rapports de force à l’intérieur du couple.
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68 à Milan
Le noyau dynamique du récit est le besoin de libération individuelle d’un destin de marginalité qui paraît déjà décrétée par les origines socioéconomiques, et le choc avec les contraintes de la vie qui sont, sur le plan social, le privilège économique, et sur le plan politique les formations organisées et solides contre lesquelles se heurte l’aspiration de l’adolescent à une liberté absolue et illimitée. Sur le plan personnel, ce qui limite cette aspiration est par contre la personalité de la femme, avec ses nouvelles exigences, si difficiles à maîtriser de la part des jeunes hommes de l’époque. De ce point de vue, La banda Bellini est un roman de formation, le récit du passage à l’âge adulte à travers les preuves de la vie: du désir “hormonal” d’une liberté absolue à la nécessité de composer avec la réalité. Le caractère propre à ce roman est que cette dialectique est ici résolue la plupart du temps par la force, l’action et l’organisation en bande: les frustrations, la volonté de puissance et d’autonomie, l’envie de rachat du destin de subalternité se résolvent par le choix de la force et de l’organisation du groupe, et ceci dans un service d’ordre organisé de façon militaire ainsi que par sa réussite et ses échecs dans la guerrilla urbaine. Le roman est donc surtout la restitution, du point de vue de l’un de ses protagonistes, de la saison milanaise des luttes qui s’étend de 1968 à 1978; et malgré quelques ellipses et oublis, les dates et les événements majeurs de la période scandent le récit: du massacre de Largo Gemelli (mars 1968) à la mort de l’agent Custrà (mai 1977) en passant par la bombe de Piazza Fontana (12 décembre 1969) et par les célébrations successives de cet événement qui ont regulièrement servi de prétexte pour des nouveaux affrontements entre les manifestants et la police. 3 F
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Pour une histoire de ces événements et leur contexte politique et social, voir Nanni Balestrini et Primo Moroni; Guido Crainz; Marcello Flores et Alberto De Bernardi. 413
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C’est aussi un galerie de personnages de cette époque milanaise: le professeur Rossiglione (Verdiglione), le psychoanaliste qui traîne ses adeptes à Paris à la cour du Maître Jacques Lacan; Luigi Cipriani, “Cip”, un leader historique des groupes de l’époque, devenu ensuite parlementaire et spécialiste du terrorisme d’état; le professeur Mario Spinella, un intellectuel radical proche de l’extrème gauche; le libraire du mouvement Primo Moroni, l’acteur et metteur en scène Dario Fo, le futur Prix Nobel de littérature, et sa femme Franca Rame, dont le narrateur devient pendant un moment garde du corps, et tant d’autres. C’est aussi une sorte de pélerinage dans les lieux de mémoire et un retour sur les instants marquants la vie milanaise: la chaleur du mois d’août, Piazzale Loreto, corso Buenos Aires, et plus à l’extérieur, au delà des limites entre la ville des bourgeois et les quartiers populaires, la blbliothèque de Calvairate, le bar Erika sur le périphérique, le quartier du Casoretto. Les lieux de mémoire sont savamment choisis pour constituer l’album de famille des luttes ainsi que les points de répères du récit: place Sant’Eustorgio, le lieux du massacres des ouvriers manifestant contre le prix élévé des genres alimentaires de première nécéssité en 1898; la plaque qui célèbre l’exécution capitales des partisans en Piazzale Loreto; mais aussi la salle de bal de la Fenice en viale Bligny, où des générations entières de milanais ont dansé, et dont le choix dans cette toponymie veut signifier que le plaisir et les rencontres font partie du bagage de la vie avec une dignité égale à celle émanant des luttes politiques (Philopat 118, 123, 117). Cette insistence sur les lieux de la ville nous amène à un autre caractère de la Banda Bellini: l’horizon strictement milanais de son narrateur; en effet, il est très rare que des événements de niveau national ou international aient une influence sur le récit. C’est vrai que cela arrive parfois et notamment en 1974, quand le narrateur enregistre le poids de la 414
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victoire du referendum pour le divorce, des attentats de Brescia (Piazza della Loggia) et du train Italicus ainsi que du premier kidnapping des Brigades Rouges (rapimento Sossi) sur le climat politique de la ville. A d’autres moments, on assiste aussi à la rencontre du narrateur avec des problématiques encore plus vastes, comme en 1968, quant il rentre en contact pour la première fois avec la culture et les mœurs d’une commune urbaine, celle qui s’est installée dans l’Hotel Commercio de Piazza Fontana, occupé par les beatniks milanais: libération sexuelle, promiscuité, va-et-vient de jeunes artistes, modes vestimentaires, contestation du mode de vie formel, de l’autorité, des hiérarchies préordonnées. Mais la vie et l’horizon du narrateur gardent toutefois un caractère décidément milanais: ceci paraît d’ailleurs le reflet d’une situation qu’a été analysée par les histoirens Marcello Flores et Alberto De Bernardi, pour qui “la mobilisation des jeunes ne réussit jamais à devenir un mouvement national… et resta ancrée à une sorte de policentrisme centrifuge” (196). Cet attachement à la dimension municipale est confirmé ensuite par la réaction gênée et de désintérêt du narrateur à l’endroit de la ville de Paris, où il est obligé de séjourner quelques temps après avoir été la cible d’un attentat en 1975: après quelques semaines – il écrit – “j’en avais marre de Notre-Dâme du Louvre et de la baguette” (Philopat 178). Formes du récit
L’ironie est active dans le roman à deux dégrés différents: il y a ironie du narrateur adulte (qui est representé comme s’il racontait sa propre histoire trente ans après les faits) vers ce qu’il a fait et dit, vers ce que lui et ses amis étaient, pensaient et faisaient dans les années 70, à l’époque de leurs vingt ans. Mais les personnages eux-mêmes ont déjà une certaine dose d’autoironie, ce qui était en fait un trait culturel au sens large d’une partie du mouvement de l’époque, de la lignée qui part des beatniks du milieu des années 60 et arrive aux indiens 415
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métropolitains de 1977. Par exemple, les jeunes activistes des groupes du quartier se moquent regulièrement de leurs amis à chaque fois qu’ils se prennent trop aux sérieux, comme c’est le cas pour cette sorte de fixation sur les stratégies de la guerrilla urbaine qui occupent de façon obsessionnelle les pensées du frère du narrateur. Le langage des personnages est rapporté de façon mimétique. Les tics linguistiques, les modes, le lexique particulier des jeunes de l’époque sont restitués de façon fidèle et constituent l’un des traits majeurs des choix linguistiques du roman. Pour les dialogues, ce choix narratif est utilisé de façon cohérente et porte des fruits du point de vue de la restitution des modes de pensée qui se cachent derrière les façons de parler. Parfois, dans la narration, ce mimétisme du langage risque par contre d’aplatir le récit sur son propre objet, et certaines parties du roman souffrent par cela d’un manque de distance du narrateur face à son objet. C’est le cas par exemple quand le narrateur abuse dans l’utilisation de certaines formes lexicales qui courtcircuitent la compréhension des événements. Un simple exemple: pour exprimer sa difficulté à se rapporter avec les femmes, le narrateur qualifie son état d’esprit de “paranoie che ci faccio su” (109), ce qui rend très bien la façon de s’exprimer de l’époque, mais n’aide en rien la compréhension du véritable état d’esprit du personnage. En général, la narration reste captivante et produit un fort effet d’identification sur le lecteur, car elle passe sans solution de continuité et dans une sorte de flux continu de la vie collective aux sentiments intimes, de la dimension de la microhistoire personnelle à la macrohistoire de la vie politique, des dialogues de couple aux dynamiques propres aux assemblées de quartier ou d’Université jusqu’aux scènes de guerrila urbaine vues de l’intérieur.
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Issues
Le processus de conquête et de libération des jeunes du Casoretto connaît tout comptes faits un certain succès, quoiqu’il s’agit d’un succès éphémère. La Bande réussit au début des années 70 à s’imposer comme le service d’ordre le plus respecté de la ville: succès militaire, succès politique, succès de ses membres avec les femmes, et surtout avec des femmes d’un niveau social supérieur, des étudiantes issues de la bonne bourgeoisie de la ville ou des chargées de cours à l’Université Statale. Andrea Bellini devient un leader, un mythe presque, du mouvement de contestation et dans les toutes premières années de la décennie il arrive au sommet de sa rénommée; mais dès qu’il touche à l’apogée de son parcours, commence la dégringolade et la dégénération du mouvement. Son service d’ordre ne sera plus suffisant à pérenniser le pouvoir acquis dans les années des heurts contre la police. C’est ainsi que la réaction des forces de l’ordre et de la magistrature, les attentats dont Andrea est victime de la part de adversaires politiques d’extrème droite, l’isolement progressif du groupe provoqué par l’interdit décrété par les autres groupes rivaux de l’ultragauche, l’arrivée de nouvelles générations de militants incontrolables, les tentations de la lutte armée clandestine et de la drogue, amènent rapidement à la dissolution du groupe en 1975, et à l’effacement irreversible de son leadership sur le reste du mouvement. Le rêve de conquête et de rachat des jeunes de la banlieue se heurte à la réalité d’une lutte politique qui s’avère bien plus complexe et plus dure de ce que pouvaient s’imaginer les anciens lycéens de quartier. Et face à cette dureté, le groupe éclatera en mille morceaux. Cette sensation d’isolement et d’autaréférentialité qu’avait déjà frappé la Bande – notamment lors d’une occupation du lycée que les autres étudiants n’avaient pas suivie et qui leur avait fait penser d’avoir été tellement autonomes qu’ils avaient été incapables de se faire comprendre “même par les pions” – refait surface: le groupe se retrouve seul, isolé, sans 417
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aucune perspective. En 1975, c’est désormais trop tard: la dérive para militaire de l’organisation ne peut résister à l’appel vers cette lutte armée qui séduit une partie des membres de la Bande, et le climat instauré par le terrorisme et les violences policières a le dessus sur les capacités d’autoorganisation du groupe. Sens et genre
La Banda Belini est-il alors un roman de formation? Traditionnellement, ce genre de roman restitue, avec ses accidents et ses obstacles, le parcours de l’intégration dans la société d’un individu en insistant sur le parallelisme entre ses valeurs et celles de la société dans laquelle il compte s’intégrer. Dans notre cas, il y a bien un parcours de l’adolescence à l’âge adulte, mais on dirait que c’est plutôt le caractère générationnel du récit qui prévaut; La Banda Bellini apparaît en fait comme le roman d’une génération bien précise, celle qui vécut les événements de 68 de l’intérieur. A un premièr niveau d’analyse, il paraît en effet difficile de dire en quoi le parcours de formation et les échecs d’Andrea Bellini et de sa bande seraient représentatifs de l’Italie dans son entier. On aurait envie de dire que l’histoire de la bande du Casoretto ne représente que la génération dont elle est issue, ses espoirs, sa générosité, son engagement, ses craintes, ses amours, ses identifications dans des films et des mythologies, son évolution, qui part du quartier et arrive au niveau de la ville entière, et qu’anime le sentiment de partager le sort d’une collectivité. De ce point de vue, son parcours ne paraît pas constituer une métaphore du pays, comme si en fait cette génération-là était restée une sorte de membre séparé du reste du corps. De plus, le reste du pays apparaît dans le roman, la plupart du temps, comme l’ennemi: que ce soit l’école ou la police, les néofascistes ou le Parti Communiste, le grand quotidien milanais ou les employés qui prennent le car le matin, la bande du Casoretto paraît en guerre contre tout et tous. Ces jeunes des années 70 paraissent lier essentiellement entre eux, et 418
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occasionnellement avec quelques membres de leur famille ou quelques enseignants particulièrement ouverts et charismatiques. Rien de plus. C’est peut-etre là le signe de cette fracture “toujours plus profonde entre les jeunes et la société” (191) qui, selon Marcello Flores et Alberto De Bernardi est à la base du 68 italien. Il arrive parfois aux jeunes activistes, il est vrai, d’entrer en relation avec les collectifs qui gèrent les squats et les occupations d’immeubles, ou avec le syndicat des locataires. Et leur succès militaire dans les heurts contre la police séduit nombre de jeunes enragés en quête de sensations fortes. Mais même la génération de quelques années plus jeune, celle d’où sortiront les cadres et la main d’œuvre du terrorisme diffus, tout en leur étant très proche dans ses mythes et ses aspirations, restera en fin de comptes étrangère à la Bande. C’est Andrea luimême qui dira qu’il considère que ces lycéens de trois ou quatre ans plus jeunes que lui lui semblent des “imbéciles, (car) ils n’ont aucun cadre idéologique” (178). 1968 et les années 70 sont selon Andrea Bellini les années du vitalisme, de l’action en tant qu’opposition de l’intellectualisme, de l’autonomie contre les traditions et les partis organisés, de la violence collective et au même temps de la libération sexuelle. De ce point de vue, son parcours est bien la métaphore de celle de sa génération, car ces rêves, ces illusions de pouvoir changer le monde “avant que ce soit lui qui te change”, en constituent le patrimoine. Ce n’est qu’à ce niveau que ce parcours peut devenir la métaphore du pays dans son entier, parce que l’Italie entière vit en effet, comme les jeunes du Casoretto, les nuages noires du terrorisme d’état et de la lutte armée obscurcir pour toujours le rêve d’un pays différent de celui du pouvoir de la Démocratie Chrétienne et de ses clientèles, des pouvoirs obscurs des services secrets et des clivages sociaux. Ainsi, la métaphore est peut-être connotée de façon excessivement unilatérale: il se peut que cela vienne du fait que l’auteur ait voulu rester fidèle à la réalité de son personnage, il 419
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se peut aussi qu’il s’agisse d’un choix esthétique radical et nihiliste qui correspond à la trajectoire de son personnage. Mais s’il est vrai qu’après les années 70 le système politique est resté bloqué pendant encore deux décennies, plusieurs signes nous disent par contre que dans la réalité la société, les modes de vie, les relations personnelles et aussi le rapport entre le citoyens et les institutions, furent modifiés en profondeur dans la direction d’une progressive démocratisation, et ceci grâce aux mouvements et au climat de ces années. 4 Dans le livre, de tout cela il ne reste rien, à tel point que même la condition de la femme, dont les progrès sont pourtant parfois évoqués dans le récit, ne trouve pas de signes d’une véritable évolution dans les pages d’un roman où c’est plutôt l’amitié entre les hommes qui constitue le noyau de la sociabilité. F
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Par son caractère très sec et synthétique, le dénouement du roman touche les cordes du tragique après avoir longtemps utilisé le mode épique ou l’ironie. Vers la fin, l’accelération de la narration multiplie les ellipses et mime l’accélération de l’histoire, la perte du sens et du contrôle sur les événements euxmêmes, l’éloignement rapide du narrateur de la plénitude de la vie et des sentiments. Vers la fin du roman, dans une seule page défilent les années 77 et 78, alors que dans le cœur du récit trois pages n’avaient pas suffi pour restituer la guerrila urbaine du 12 décembre 1972: ce choix narratif correspond au temps intérieur du narrateur, et veut signifier la chute des sensations et de l’attachement au monde, la perte de la force vitale qui marque au même temps le passage de la jeunesse à l’âge adulte, et le passage de la phase héroïque et conquérante de la première moitié des années 70 à la phase de crise qui débouchera sur les années de plomb. Et la conclusion des mémoires du narrateur 4
Sur ce point, je suis d’accord avec les conclusions de Flores et De Bernardi, pp. 248-250.
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(“un peu de taule – un petit cancer aux testicules – pas d’enfants dont il faut s’occuper” (189)) concentre une vie entière par l’essentiel des événements malheureux – la prison, la maladie, le manque de progéniture - qui l’ont marquée. Fascination de la mort, esthétique de la violence, séduction de l’anéantissement comme seule issue possible et héroïque de la défaite d’un groupe, d’une génération, des espoirs d’une tradition ancrée dans l’histoire italienne depuis les grèves et les manifestations de la fin du XIXe siècle jusqu’aux années 70 en passant par la résistance au fascisme. Vers la fin, le récit se teint d’un anarchisme rebelle qui trouve ses sources dans les épopées cinématographiques de la Bande à Bonnot et du Wild Bunch, la Horde Sauvage, le film du réalisateur américain Sam Peckinpah, de 1969, qui fut une sorte de catéchisme pour le jeune public des révoltés de l’époque. 5 Dans la dernière scène du livre, Andrea imagine dans les détails les plus crus sa propre exécution capitale. Il devient ainsi un étrange mélange de feu follet et de William Holden, de chef d’une bande de quartier et de leader révolutionnaire, converti au nihilisme au fur et à mesure que ses rêves se transforment en cauchemar, un personnage de guerrier urbain voué à l’anéantissment qui est sans précédents dans la tradition italienne. F
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Ouvrages cités
Balestrini, Nanni et Primo Moroni. L’orda d’oro (1968-1977). La grande ondata rivoluzionaria e creativa, politica e esistenziale. Milano: SugarCo, 1988.
5
On trouve la même référence au “western tipo Sam Peckinpah” dans les goûts cinématographiques des membres de Potere Operaio: cf. Aldo Grandi, pp. 137-138. 421
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Cavalli, Alessandro Carmen Leccardi. “Le culture giovanili.” Storia dell’Italia repubblicana, 3**. Torino: Einaudi, 1997. 709-800. Crainz, Guido. Il paese mancato. Dal miracolo economico agli anni Ottanta. Roma: Donzelli, 2003. Flores, Marcello et Alberto De Bernardi. Il Sessantotto. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003. Galli, Giorgio. “Le memorie del dopo guerra fredda.” Vittorio Spinazzola, ed. Tirature ’92. Milano: Baldini & Castoldi, 1992. 30-36. Grandi, Aldo. La generazione degli anni perduti. Storie di Potere Operaio. Torino: Einaudi, 2003. La meglio gioventù; Accadde in Italia 1965-1976. Il Diario del mese (Dec. 2003). Philopat, Marco. La Banda Bellini. Milano: Shake, 2002. Tranfaglia, Nicola. “Le disfunzioni del sistema.” Italia moderna. Immagini e storia di un’identità nazionale, vol. IV: La difficile democrazia. Milano: Electa, 1985. 97-134.
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Time in Literature Enrico Palandri (University College London) I want to use these 20 minutes to raise some questions on our attitude to Time in regards to books. I say books and not Literature, and I hope by the end of my brief talk I will have convinced you of the reason for this preference. The first question is: does time appear in our cultural tradition together with the written word? As you all know, we distinguish History from Pre-historic time precisely along the border marked by the invention of the written word. From that moment onwards we will have things and their linguistic and symbolic representation. I shall give a simple example of this separation: God will appear in the Bible as Ya-ve-he, I am what is, but the word which indicates what is cannot be written as it makes it past. Can we read the word “is” without immediately thinking that “is” in fact “was”, or at least “has been”, and that it can only be a projection from the past in which that “is” has materially been written? We know of words and language pre-dating this moment, where meaning and form separate in such a dramatic way. We have forms of pictorial representation, but no written language can obviously seek into what was before writing. We think the moment I am describing to happen between 4 and 6 thousand years ago in the Mesopotamic plain, when nomadic tribes of the Paleolitic age, who used to orient themselves looking at stars, finally settle, develop a different relationship with animals, build towns, canals, establish their civilization as something apart from Nature. The way the classical world looked at this pre-historic time, as we call it today, is rather different from the way we look http://congress70.library.uu.nl
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at it today. Plato refers to it in Timaeus, writing about Atlantis, as a world before our own but not a primitive world. Indeed a golden age from which we were separated by writing. Also St. John, at the beginning of his gospel, refers to the word which was with God, and then came to earth and became flesh. St. John is referring here to Christ, some 2000 years after the frontier that I am indicating, but he repeats the fundamental transformation of the Neolitic revolution, best embodied by Genesis and the Bible. There was a moment, and instant which is the beginning of time; everything originated there, we have departed from there and the linear follow up of that moment is time. Time, like history, has a beginning, it evolves (the word itself means to unfold like scrolls, that is to say like written books with their linear development), it has an aim, a final moment in front, the arrival of the Messaiah or the end of days, the cooling of the sun. This bigger, cosmic frame, replicates our interpretation of human experience, it has the same pattern: we are born, we go through years and then we die. The scholar Giorgio De Santillana is a solitary modern thinker to have felt a great fascination for the epoch before the word. Unlike our common, rather self content perception of the pre-historic time as a barbaric and undeveloped age, he thought of that original age as an epoch of mysterious greatness. In his opinion, these ancestors of ours must have had some formidable ability in mathematical calculus: we inherit from them the observation of the movement of stars, the Zodiac, and in his opinion also a network of common features which is a substratum of several mythologies of the Historic period. In his book Hamlet’s mill (Il mulino di Amleto) he suggests that there may have been a link between several cultural similarities in worlds that our conception of the prehistoric age as “undeveloped” epoch would not explain. The idea of IndoEuropean language is related to this pre-written epoch. We imagine our language to have developed from a previous substratum of a language no longer existing. 424
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This is not the place where we can examine the validity of De Santillana’s findings. I only want to draw your attention to this border between the paleolitic and the neolitic, the pre-written and the written, a word that exists before our description of it and a word which is completely written of and about. This is the moment in which meaning is produced as an inner entity of expression, and we are newly awakened to this development of meaning by the cyber epoch, where a further step is taken in this direction. We are all very aware of how emails have transformed working places and relationships in exchanges where we only want the gist. Life is so fast with modern communication technologies that we always and only want to get to the point. We live through bullet points, as if existence was a series of tasks to be ticked away as we go through our years, like in a career. Hitchcock’s remark, on film being life with its boring bits left out, has become our motto and when we sit on a train, rather than looking at the landscape around us or to the other passengers, many people take out their mobile phone and inform other, remote people, of their movements, or take out a laptop and get down to work. Our Departments are still resembling medieval Abbeys with our cells next to each other, but the real cell is now the computer, where we think of the world, through which we talk with the world. Only when written in an email a message to a colleague, who may be working in the same room, has properly been passed on. This has not happened without its price being paid by all of us: it has increased the value of meaning, of the alteration between expression and content that I am referring to in the Neolitic revolution. We can only interpret the world through a variety of symbols, words that are in place of things (hammer, chair) and more complicated words, like love or infinity, that are in place of some less easy to define entities. This border, which appears to be so remote in the past, is with us every day. When we finish with our computer and get 425
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out in the open air, look at the sky to check if it’s raining or not, sometimes look at the stars, or when we get our hands next to an open fire to warm them up, or when after a tedious verbal skirmish with our partner we get to touch each other, and kiss and make love, we succeed in overcoming the border of the word and its alterity from the universe, we test the distance between tangible reality and its linguistic representation. When we sleep, when we eat. When we dream and long for something which is not a thing, but a nostalgia, the sense of being removed from our real being, of not being at one with ourselves. We feel as living somewhere else and think with affection of a different landscape, or we miss a person who is not with us, all traces of our archetypal nomadism. To this feeling turns Giacomo Leopardi in one of his most famous poem, “Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell’Asia” (“Night-Song Of A Wandering Shepherd of Asia”), written in 1831. It is another of the extraordinary intuition of our greatest poet to have set the border between these worlds in that place and that moment. In the poem the shepherd asks the moon of the meaning of our life, our loneliness. Are there any reasons for the way we live, endure sorrow and pain? What is our status and condition if we consider the dimension of the Universe? Looking at his herd, the shepherd envies its unawareness of this questions, the erring produced by words, interpretation, science, religion, thought. He seems in tune with Hölderlin’s famous lines against the German people in Hyperion: “Barbaren von alters Her, durch Fleiβ und Religion und Wissenschaft selbst barbarischer geworden”. Barbarian of a previous epoch, who made themselves even more barbaric through work, religion, science. An idea very dear to Hölderlin and Leopardi alike, who saw in the Greek world not the past, but the kernel of human experience. A kernel betrayed by our insisting on development, reasoning, in our going away from truth and reality. Leopardi 426
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looks at his herd and he envies the fact that they are before language and meaning. They simply are. It is interesting to note that this poem is written when time is most forcefully introduced by the Hegelian philosophy in all our thinking of reality. It’s through Romanticism that we look at Histories of literature, of science, of art, of medicine. Anthologies in the 18th century, like in the Classical period, were not trying to elicit “historicity” as the meaning, the real meaning of things. For instance the famous Antologia Palatina is composed of different wreaths which are thematic, not chronological. When Romanticism begins to describe the individual reading as “subjective” interpretation, History begins to separate us from the past. We look at these books today and ask ourselves what did they mean for them, rather than what do they mean for us. The development of this historical view of the past, mainly through philology, has given us reliable texts and a scientific attitude towards the study of our tradition; Arnaldo Momigliano indicates this moment in the late XVIII c., when with the renewed passion for excavations, antiquarians begin to have data to juxtapose to classical literature; but it is worth stopping a moment and wondering whether it is not because of this further historicization of time that we cannot really imagine, like Dante, to have as a guide to the other world a poet born 1300 years before, and to meet all those poets and philosophers we would like to confer with in Limbo. Our time separates generation from generation through a severe objectivity, a material grasp of the meaning of words which dissipates any ambiguity, but possibly also any real proximity. We develop abilities to delve into the past that are so specialized, nowadays, that an expert on Dante may not be able to share much with an expert on Bruno. I will swiftly come to my conclusions, which are of course provisional and indeed almost self destructive. Because 427
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the first victim of my argument has to be the idea of literature. The Latin idea of literature, the first degree of our departure, if we follow Leopardi and Hölderlin in their line of thought. That texts, on their own, belonging to the tradition of a written language or of a specific area of interests, be it history, poetry, science etc., can constitute a separate field, is certainly something not commendable. We are not the guardians of this separateness. If we are, Literature may be indeed what Ted Hughes describes in his God help the wolf after whom the dogs do not bark, when describing the reaction to Sylvia Plaths poetry. He writes: The Colleges lifted their head. It did seem You disturbed something just perfected That they were holding carefully, all of a piece, till the glue had dried. And as if reporting some felony to the police They let you know that you were not John Donne. You no longer care. Did you save their names? But then they let you know, day by day, their contempt for everything you attempted, took pains to inject their bile, as for your health, Into their homeopathic letters, Envelopes full of carefully broken glass To lodge behind your eyes so you would see.
If this is literature, and I certainly know what Hughes is referring to, some special realm which guards sensibility in the form of historic competence, casting snobbishly away the uninitiated, I think none of us would like to be working for it. This is literature as a garment of privilege and Gombrich has already said it more eloquently than me, in his beautiful introduction to his History of Art, which we are not in the trade of providing fodder for this class battle. But we do spend a lot of time on books, looking at the moon and the stars, like Leopardi and Dante, at the frontier of 428
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meaning where words appear and, like the first settled shepherd in a neolitic community, talk to us for the first time. When words which we do not know what exactly do they mean, like love or being, carry in our epoch the welcome and cumbersome weight of ancient presence. This is the miracle we witness and we long for a new event, the repetition of that fainomai, that appearance, when we take a book in our hands. Can it be this time too like when we read Anna Karenina, or the Iliad? Will it take us so deep and far? Somewhere in us we hope this unread book may do it once more, in the secret dialogue we entertain as readers, through the author, with all the real world beyond both of us. With the same, undiminished enthusiasm, we look at texts to abolish space and time, to travel through them, to reach beyond the limitations of our experience and yet to test all we feel and know about this world. We want to see things happen, we want the word to be what helps us to see, not let time consign the strength of this perception to some other epoch, remote and separated from us. We settle, like those tired shepherds, in the neolitic village of words, around a warm fire, with a sense of greatness not to be forgotten. A sense of greatness that we feed with our struggle to continue in our understanding.
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Voci dal Settantasette: Orality and Historical Experience in Enrico Palandri’s Boccalone and Pier Vittorio Tondelli’s Altri libertini Bart Van den Bossche (K.U. Leuven / FWO – Vlaanderen) Enrico Palandri’s novel Boccalone, first published in 1979, and Pier Vittorio Tondelli’s collection of short stories Altri libertini, published in 1980, have both been interpreted as significant literary and sociological portraits of an entire generation. The adventures of their main characters have been considered by many a literary critic as striking portraits of an entire generation – the generation that is considered to be more or less directly concerned by or actively involved in the settantasette movement and its wide range of countercultural practices and political activities. 1 In reality, as has often been stressed, the involvement of this generation in the Movimento, and more in general the way in which its members experience their own role in society, has less to do with some form of ‘positive’ political agenda than with a diffuse attitude of skepticism, disappointment, if not of straightforward refusal of traditional political and ideological action. Their presence on the political and social scene, so it seems, was more a rivolta than a real, strategically planned and ideologically underpinned rivoluzione. Still, even if we take for granted that the generation of the Settantasette rejected what could be regarded as ‘traditional’ forms of political action, and even if we might conclude, from our retrospective viewpoint, that the settantasette generation was, at least unconsciously, and against all odds, already beyond TPF
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See, both for Altri libertini and Boccalone, the comments dedicated to Altri libertini in the edition of Tondelli’s Opere (Tondelli 1120-22).
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BART VAN DEN BOSSCHE (K.U. LEUVEN / FWO – VLAANDEREN)
politics – or beyond certain kinds of political activism – even if we take all this for granted, the fact that Boccalone and Altri libertini have been considered so easily and so widely as portraits of the Settantasette generation, remains something of a paradox. In both books, countercultural and political practices and discourses of the Movimento are represented in specific forms. In Boccalone, the narrator relates the alterne vicende of his relation with Anna, from May 1977 to March 1978; the main setting of the novel is the town of Bologna, right after the events of March 1977. The narrator often alludes to his involvement – or that of his friends 2 – in many episodes of the Settantasette. He seems to have contributed to various collective publications, such as the A/traverso review, 3 and the volume ...fatti nostri..., a collective account on the events of March 1977 published in July of the same year. 4 Several of his friends have been arrested, or are arrested in the course of the novel, their homes are being searched (Palandri 39, 53). He also mentions the preparations of the Bologna Convegno of September 1977. 5 These and other references to concrete events and circumstances of the Settantasette usually remain indirect, incidental or vague. 6 They TPF
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See for instance the involvement of Massimo, Andrea and Marco in various “gloriose imprese rivoluzionarie” (Palandri 25, 73).
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The main character writes a contribution on crime for A/traverso (Palandri 39-40).
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Cfr. Palandri 53, 70. The Convegno di settembre, an initiative of Franco Berardi, was an attempt to coordinate the heterogeneous components of the Movimento. TP
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Cfr. Palandri 70 (first announcement of the Convegno in a newspaper), 81, 86 (preparation of the Convegno), 87 (Enrico’s participation in the conference).
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A striking example is the rally against Catalanotti and the inquiry on the fatti di marzo (Palandri 45-46). During a conversation with his friend 431 TP
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are sometimes even cryptical, 7 or treated with indifference, 8 and are almost never commented on or interpreted in depth. Clearly, what is at stake in Enrico’s account concerns his relationship with Anna and his own feelings of distress, not the dynamics of the Movimento as such, nor his involvement in it. Moreover, it is hard even to define the Settantasette as a real ‘background’ to the novel. If it is a background, it certainly is a diffuse, fragmented one, dissipated within the multi-layered texture of signs, experiences, events and artefacts that constitute the world of the main character and his friends, and through which they articulate their own position within society. The references to the Settantasette are simply, in an almost natural way, part of their culture. For Enrico, the Settantasette experience is part of what he is and does, but he does not seem very eager to incorporate this experience into a clear-cut political agenda, on the contrary. In this respect, the fact that the narrator starts his account in May 1977, when he first meets Anna, without referring in explicit terms to the events of March 1977, can be seen as a higly significant, even provocative, discursive gesture. One is tempted to state that the same holds true, mutatis mutandis, for some of the stories in Altri libertini. La Pia, the female narrator of Mimi e istrioni, recalls, from a retrospective point of view, her involvement in a series of countercultural experiences, but in the end the emphasis in her account Pia is not on the ideological and sociopolitical dimension of these TPF
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Claudio, the narrator alludes to “quei tre mesi terribili” (Palandri 47) without any further comments. 7
See the mentioning of the shooting of a member of Lotta Continua, Walter Rossi, by neo-fascist militants in Rome, on September 30 1977, and subsequently Enrico’s flashback memories of the dead of Antonio Lo Muscio, member of the NAP (Nuclei Armati Proletari), shot by the police in Rome on July 1 1977 (Palandri 89).
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“a roma il giorno successivo c’era non so che diavolo di congresso organizzato dalla fred” (Palandri 25).
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experiences, 9 but on the way they are expected to forge the identities of the protagonists – and especially, I would add, on the extent to which they fail to do so. The narrator of another story, Viaggio, recalls his university years, stretching from 1974 (the summer before his enrollment as a freshman) to 1978. The story contains references to episodes of rivolta and violent clashes in Milan and Bologna, 10 but the narrator, although some of his friends witness from very nearby some of its episodes, perceives the Settantasette turmoil as distant and eventually as incomprehensible. 11 In the short story entitled Altri libertini, Annacarla’s attic, the meeting place of the narrator and his friends, is stuffed with a huge amount of books, photographs, film posters, drinks and oriental scents. The almost homeric catalogue of all the items in the attic suggest a youth culture of the seventies that has more resemblances with a late capitalist warehouse than with straightforward countercultural practices. Therefore, it hardly comes as a surprise that the intellectual and TPF
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9
The passages in Mimi e istrioni dedicated to these countercultural experiences stand out because of the sharp contrasts between the informal and expressive tone of the narrator’s account and the “official discourse” of the Movimento. This carnivalization of the “official” slogans creates sharp parodic and grotesque effects: “Non si vuole però far soltanto spettacolo, anche prender coscienza e dibattere, per cui il Beny produce e tira in cinquanta copie la bibliografia del nostro seminario e noi volantiniamo alla Fiat Trattori e invitiamo all’autocoscienza e al gruppo di studio e alle riprese tuttequante perché i movimenti vanno integrati e non si può soltanto starsela a menare senza prender coscienza” (Tondelli 43-44).
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Tondelli 82-83 (Dilo’s arrest in Milan), 86-87 (the occupation of the Bolognese university). TP
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“A Bologna ci è difficile inserirci nuovamente in quello che si era lasciato e non appena a febbraio si occupa l’università dico a Dilo ‘non me la sento, ho bisogno di stare solo con te e basta, cerca di capire amore” e lui dice ‘ti capisco, ma vieni anche tu che è bello vedrai, stanotte si dorme là e così anche domani e c’è posto per noi, ce lo siamo conquistato, perdio non lo capisci?’ ma io proprio non capisco e finisce che resto chiuso in casa anche a marzo” (Tondelli 86). TP
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ideological aspects of the youth culture of the seventies occupy only a marginal position in the ‘catalogue’. 12 In short, the characters in Boccalone and Altri libertini, even if they are protagonists, combattenti, or privileged eyewitnesses of various cultural and political experiences of the Movimento, never see or represent themselves in the first place as such. Precisely this is what makes texts such as Boccalone or Altri libertini so strikingly different from many so-to-speak ‘official’ narratives on the Settantasette, such as accounts by excombattenti (or to be more precise, by authors who continue to consider themselves as combattenti) 13 or collective accounts of the events (such as ...fatti nostri..., mentioned in Boccalone), who usually combine an (often very) detailed cronaca of the facts with an emphasis on the exceptional character and meaning of the events and on the intense involvement of their protagonists. Both in Boccalone and Altri libertini, the Movimento is evoked in a series of (sometimes very vague) hints and isolated episodes, with hardly any contextualisation or lengthy interpretation. The Settantasette turmoil as such, although it sometimes touches the characters from nearby, seems of secondary importance. Apparently even irrelevant to the main focus of the narrative, whose stress is clearly on personal and private matters. From this point of view, both texts produce even what might seem a kind of ‘counternarrative’ on the Movimento, for they contain, just as the book Enrico conceives at a certain TPF
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12
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“[…] e le fotografie che riempiono tuttaquanta la parte e per la maggior parte autografate come quella di Francesco Guccini, di Peter Gabriel, di Marco Ferreri ritratto per le giornate del cinema italiano il due di settembre del settantatré, Annacarla coi capelli sciolti e le spalle nude, Ferreri con una camicia bordata di pizzo sul davanti e poi ritratti scattati qua e là a convegni e simposi e seminari e convivi, giornate rassegne e dibattiti a cui nessuno in questi anni si è sottratto” (Tondelli 113). TP
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13 PT
E.g. Paccino 1977; Marino 1978.
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stage in the novel, many of the things that have been excluded from accounts such as ...fatti nostri.... 14 Yet at the same time, precisely these texts, with their specific representation (or nonrepresentation) of the Settantasette movement, have been considered as evocations of the experience of an entire generaton. In order to understand this paradox, it is necessary, in my view, to address issues of narrativity and historical experience, or to be more precise, to address the relationship between the narrative economy of Boccalone and Altri libertini and the ways historical experience is organized and produced in these texts. On a general level, it is tempting to ascribe the documentary value attributed to Boccalone and Altri libertini precisely to the fact that the stories they contain hinge mainly or exclusively upon personal and sentimental matters: the choice of the topics, the selection of events and situations, the spatial and temporal articulation of the narrative (specific timeframe, organization of narrative space) are clearly dictated by the will to focus on the subjective experience of reality, and more specifically on emotional and private matters (a love-affair, a process of emotional maturing, and so forth). Precisely this personal focus could be seen as a radical application of the tendency to locate the political precisely in the realm of the personal – il personale è il politico – a tendency that can be considered as one of the constant threats in the Movimento. The narrators exclude explicit political agendas from their accounts and point towards the possibility of scrutinizing the presence of TPF
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14
“Avevo scritto alcune lettere a claudio su un libro che pensavo di fare, che avrebbe parlato di tutte quelle cose che non erano riuscite a entrare in … fatti nostri…, le storie d’amore e le avventure minori che nella vita di tanti avevano fatto andare le cose; c’erano moltissime poesie, racconti, pagine di diari che non c’entravano quasi nulla con la magistratura e che non avevamo inserito per questo motivo, pensavo di farne un altro libro collettivo, l’altra metà di… fatti nostri…, ci pensava lui?” (Palandri 73). TP
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the political at the heart of the personal. What really matters to la Pia and her friends in Mimi e istrioni is not the ideological underpinning of their countercultural experiences, but the very fact of actually going through these experiences, of exploring life by living it 15 – even if, as Sylvia states in her letter to la Pia written at the end of the story, eventually the price of this personalization of the political might be too high, and the free and authentic exploration of subjectivity a mere illusion.16 In Boccalone, the intertwining of the personal and the political plays an important role in Enrico’s narrative, not only at the level of the story events, but also on the level of the narrative act itself. The second part of this essay will be devoted to Enrico’s exploration of the personal/political and to the specific forms of narrativity and historical experience it enhances. The narrator of Boccalone hints at the entanglement of the personal and the political through a political interpretation of a dynamics of desire, as well as by locating mechanisms of power and paranoia at the heart of the personal. On various occasions, Enrico explicitly states the possibility or the necessity of conceiving desire as a pivotal element in a politically relevant dynamics of experience and behavior that may, can, or should be used to counter mechanisms of social control and repression. 17 Enrico’s narrative contains expressions such as TPF
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15
“Sylvia ha la forza di urlare sulla porta che a noi non frega un cazzo dell’ideologia, ma solo delle persone tout-court e che le alleanze si stringono sui vissuti e mica sulle chiacchiere” (Tondelli 45). TP
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“Dice che abbiamo pagato troppo caro il prezzo per la ricerca di una nostra autenticità, che tutto quanto abbiamo fato era giusto e lecito e sacrosanto perché lo si è volouto e questo basta a giustificare ogni azione, ma i tempi son duri e la realtà del quotidiano anche e ci si ritrova sempre a far i conti con qualche superego malamente digerito; che è stata tutta un’illusione, che non siamo mai state tanto libere come ora che conosciamo il peso effettivo dei condizionamenti” (Tondelli 46). TP
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17
See for instance the article he writes for the review A/traverso (Palandri 39). TP
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“soggetti desideranti”; he sees his fellow travellers as “un popolo di incontentabili, rissosi, sfrenati esseri desideranti” (57). More than once, he insists on the interweaving of this kind of politics of desire and specific uses of language. It is not difficult to perceive in these ideas echoes of Deleuze and Guattari’s AntiOedipe, notwithstanding the fact Enrico claims he could not make much out of the book. ero molto allegro, nello stato di traboccamento amoroso in cui mette la primavera. Non è possibile calmarsi, o trattenersi, e il sesso, l’enorme energia del sesso che è capace di non farvi addormentare mai, sfugge alle norme che ci si danno (norme invernali) per affrontare le miserie e le paure della solitudine; tutte le coppie, le troppie, le orge organizzate diventano in primavera poliziotti, e permettono di fingere una concretezza del desiderio là dove invece esiste solo uno schema astratto che divide le parole e le cose in zone per poter affrontare separatamente sesso, intelligenza, amore, cacca, bambino, eccetera: anima e corpo, sinteticamente, o anche “divide et impera! (11-12) Credo che nella vita non esistano limiti, che si possa fare dire pensare e soprattutto desiderare qualsiasi cosa; che i sogni e il sonnambulismo siano il sentiero che porta fuori dallo schema paranoico dei valori giusti e di quelli sbagliati. (61)
In Enrico’s views, the political dimension of desire reverses, in a kind of mirror image, the all-embracing ramification of power structures, governing all aspects of everyday personal life. Apart from the police as such, Enrico’s criticism targets the body control exerted by the doctors’ clinic (the foucauldian term is more than appropriate), the mind control exerted by traditional political and ideological movements, and so forth. But the most striking elements are the allusions to family, family relations, 437
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love relations (coppia or troppia) as the bedrock of social stability. Since those relations transform desire and emotions in institutions, guaranteeing not just physical reproduction as such but most of all reproduction of social structures, Enrico’s ideal soggetto desiderante ought to be constantly vigilant in order not to let the dynamics of desire deteriorate into a socially controlled or controllable web of relations. At this point, the main character’s relations of affection, love, passion, sex, threaten to remain trapped in a web of conflicting discourses on the personal and the political, with on the one hand a discourse on the subversive potentials of desire and on the other hand a discourse critical of social control of the personal. Therefore, Enrico’s increasing paranoia concerns only to a limited extent fear of the authorities. Instead, it has more to do with his own judgments on what is right and wrong in the realm of the personal and the emotional, judgments that cannot but affect the very heart of his autocoscienza and of his relationships with others (with Anna, but also with his friends). Enrico’s paranoid fear of social regulation of sexual and emotional relations appears to be the reason why breaking up with Anna and their last kiss are welcomed with an almost euphoric sense of relief and liberation, interpreted in straightforward political terms: Baci, baci... è bellissimo, sento che parla della libertà e delle cose che ho perduto in questo inverno di merda, sento che ha colpito al cuore lo stato, che sono ucciso da queste parole in tutto il lurido maritume che mi sono costruito, che la famiglia ha ricevuto un colpo mortale, che sono solo, e assieme a lei.(113)
Desire and paranoia are not merely facts or circumstances present within Enrico’s narrative, they also constitute the condition of the narrative act as such, and determine the concrete narrative praxis. In order to illustrate this aspect of the novel, it is important to emphasize that Boccalone contains two 438
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stories: the first story is the most visible, since it has to do with the actual ‘topic’ of the text: the relationship with Anna (stretching from May 1977 to January 1978). This story is interwoven with a second story: that of the writing process itself, a story extending over a period of two months (January-March 1978; see Palandri 7, 137). Throughout the novel, the writing process is constantly foregrounded: the narrator explains the various phases of writing and rewriting, formulates judgments on the aim of his writing, comments on the results, and so forth. Both stories are linked by a number of recurrent remarks and images directly relevant both to the first and the second story, as well as to the overal narrative economy of the text. The most important are the references to the mouth (la bocca) and to the head (la testa), as well as to the connection between both. The mouth is prominently present throughout the novel, especially in the first half. Boccalone, the title of the novel and Enrico’s nickname, immediately draws attention to the centrality of main character’s bocca, which becomes a kind of pars pro toto. The nickname characterizes the bocca in terms of excess. Enrico’s mouth, in fact, as he often states, is too large, not just in a physical sense, but especially in a metaphorical sense: his mouth is so large that it leaks words. He often talks without pause, under the spell of a kind of incontinenza verbale. He is unable to control or to filter what comes out of his mouth, since it is directly attached to his brains and expresses instantly what passes through his head: Sono un chiacchierone, mi è difficile non parlare delle cose che ho in testa; la bocca è attaccata direttamente al cervello e amplifica i pensieri, anzi è tutt’uno col cervello. 18 […] La bocca è larga, e perde in continuazione. (23) PF
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Yet on many occasions Enrico is unable to find the right words, especially in conversations (Palandri 13), and prefers to shut up, if he is able to do so. As the bocca clearly has to do with excess, it comes as no surprise that, in the second chapter of the book, the sensation of a freefloating energy that transcends all categories and distinctions is characterized as a traboccamento: il traboccamento è invece quando le zone in cui vi eravate riconosciuti si svuotano completamente, le categorie svaniscono come l’etere, in cui vi accorgerete parlando di poter affermare le cose e il loro contrario ed anche altro che non c’entra affatto, che tutta ha ugualmente senso, il che vale a dire più o meno che non ne ha nessuno. (11)
In this case, too, it can hardly be a coincidence that Enrico is unwilling or unable to describe this status of traboccamento in language, since it simply exceeds the possibilities of the bocca: Ma... tanto non c’è nulla da fare, quando si trabocca si trabocca, non ha molto senso spiegare il significato, bla bla bla la vita contro l’ideologia, bla bla bla l’individuale contro il collettivo, bla bla e bla; descrivo solo qualche sintomo. (12)
Interestingly, towards the end of the novel, the same term traboccamento is used to characterize spatial movement (spostamento). In this way a similar meaning of producing excess, of exceeding limits, boundaries, categories, may be assigned also to the frequent spatial movements of the characters: their travels abroad (Anna and Enrico’s trip to Spain, Gigi’s trip to Asia, and so forth), as well as their restless moving back and forth between Bologna and various cities of northern and central Italy; in particular the recurrent metaphor of the “popolo alto di camminatori” clearly functions as an image of 440
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spatial excess, produced by characters restlessly moving around, exploring spaces and crossing borders. As is already evident in the description of the stato di traboccamento amoroso, the mouth is also linked to passion and desire (whose crucial role in the economy of Enrico’s narrative has already been pointed out). When Anna and Enrico first kiss, Enrico is fascinated by Anna’s bella bocca grande (33); in the encounter of these two bocche grandi, Enrico seems to be able to overcome his inhibitions, and the need to search for the right words seems to disappear: “i suoi baci […] conoscono presto tutti gli angoli della mia bocca, non ho più segreti in bocca” (37). Yet, as their relationship grows steadier and becomes socially visible, the link between bocca and testa slowly dissolves. Enrico is often struck with aphasia; he seems to be unable to manifest and thereby contain his thoughts, and his head goes its own way (“la testa parte per gli affari suoi”, 111). The traboccamento – the dynamics of desire playfully engulfing and destabilizing social categories – turns into its opposite: the bocca is mute, and the testa, sealed of from the mouth, is affected by paranoia, which could also be characterized as a kind of traboccamento interiore, an uncontrollable proliferation of thoughts and emotions. The unsteady relationship between bocca and testa enhance a tension between traboccamento and paranoia that does not only jeopardize Enrico’s love-story with Anna, but also determines his narrative discourse: the instability of Enrico’s bocca is confirmed and increased in the process of writing and rewriting the story of his relationship with Anna. Although the structure and organization of the narrative seems conveniently arranged (Enrico’s narrative respects the chronological order of events and focuses right from the start on what seems to be his main topic – his relationship with Anna), it gradually becomes clear that the narrative voice is profoundly unstable and unreliable, since it is under the spell of at times drastical changes in the way words and thought connect. 441
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On the one hand, Enrico deliberately conceives the writing process as a traboccamento: a process of acting out and writing down without restraints as many things as possible (“scrivere tutto senza vergogna”, p. 43; “svuotare il sacco”, p. 49) – all this in obedience to his agenda of free-floating desire. But this basic option for a narrative act invested by a dynamics of traboccamento also means that his position as a narrator is bound to shift constantly between the various interpretations and impressions of past and present. Enrico is obliged to confess that he is unable to define his own position and identity: ora che non ho un letto, che ogni pasto è un problema, che ogni spostamento mi sconvolge, sento le trasformazioni correre sotto la pelle; non sono più lo stesso di una volta, cambio continuamente faccia, non so più chi sono. (50)
As a consequence, Enrico the narrator, speaking in the hic et nunc, accuses himself of constantly changing opinion on matters, of being incapable to choose sides. In queste pagine cambio continuamente idea, parlo male del fidanzamento, e poi ci casco come un cretino, allora non so più da che parte sto. comunque le idee sono cambiate allora, quando un pensiero in testa non c’è più e dopo un certo numero di pagine si scopre che ce n’è un altro, è perché i pensieri nella testa cambiano; così racconta che succede la fase cinque, poi vai a sapere com’è! (19) 19 TPF
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The result is a narrative that reproduces the confusion in the testa, 20 a narrative that tries to put order in the chaos, but more TPF
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See also Palandri 26, 78 (“a me pare che abbiano ragione tutti”).
20
“Forse non si capisce bene, io cerco di spiegarmi chiaramente, ma è la testa che è fatta così, non riesco a metterla in ordine” (Palandri 95). TP
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often than not simply adds another level of chaos to what seems to be a tale senza capo né coda. 21 As Enrico’s bocca is really crucial to his experience of subjectivity, his nickname – boccalone – is more than justified. Throughout the novel, the mouth becomes the battlefield of contrasting and conflicting ways of exploring and constituting subjectivity – with the traboccamento and the paranoia as two guiding categories. The bocca is at the heart of an experience of subjectivity as constantly shifting, producing in one way or another some kind of excess (too much too soon or too little too late). And the bocca also determines the relationship between narrative economy and historical experience. In fact, Enrico’s narrative can be characterized as fundamentally oral – even if he actually writes it down –, not just in the sense that many of its linguistic and stylistic features are usually associated with spoken language, but in the sense that the overall modus comunicandi of Enrico’s narrative is profoundly oral: the words he utters enhance a particularly close relationship with a concrete individual voice, presenting his narrative act as a cultural practice inextricably tied to a specific experience of time and space: the traboccamento as historical experience cannot represent and thematize itself in a distant, panoramic, stable narrative; it can only act itself out in the performative dynamics of orality. TPF
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21
“Voglio mettere molte cose vecchie, qua e là, cose che ho scritto e dimenticato di aver scritto, ci sono tutti i passaggi fino ad adesso; per me il “romanzo” è una cosa sola: cercare di ricostruire la trama, o le trame delle cose che scrivo, almeno per quel che riguarda questi ultimi mesi, perché oggi mi sembra tutta spezzata la storia, senza né capo né coda” (Palandri 40-41). TP
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Works Cited
Marino, Mario. Non sparate sul pianista. Pavia: Libro libero, 1978. Paccino, Dario. Diario di un provocatore. Roma: Libri del No, 1977. Palandri, Enrico. Boccalone, Milano: Bompiani (“I grandi tascabili”), 1997. (First edition: Bologna: L’erba voglio, 1979). Tondelli, Pier Vittorio. Altri libertini, in Opere. Romanzi, teatro, racconti. Ed. Fulvio Panzeri. Milano: Bompiani, 2000. 3144. (First ed. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1980).
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Enrico Palandri, Boccalone: une Montgolfière vers les Années 80 Stefania Ricciardi (Université Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux III) Una diligenza per la luna parte questa sera dal mio letto legata a una mongolfiera passerà le stelle, le nuvole e il cielo (Enrico Palandri, Boccalone)
Tel est le début d’une chanson inventée par le jeune EnricoBoccalone, le personnage éponyme du roman de Palandri paru en 1979. Source inspiratrice, une gravure, “Diligenza per la luna (Diligence pour la lune), Naples 1836”, trouvée à Venise dans la maison de ses parents et emportée dans le petit appartement bolonais qu’il partage avec ses amis. Mais l’image de la montgolfière est bien familière à cet étudiant au DAMS 1 de Bologne, car le cours d’histoire du théâtre auquel il assiste s’intitule “La montgolfière est une marionnette qui vole au ciel”. Au mois de mai, le professeur Giuliano Scabia, ses étudiants et son scénariste Antonio Umili réalisent des montgolfières et sortent les lancer dans les rues. 2 En voici un témoignage: F
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1
Discipline delle Arti, della Musica e dello Spettacolo (Disciplines des Arts, de la Musique et du Spectacle), premier cours de maîtrise en ce domaine créé à l’Université de Bologne en 1970. 2
Cf. Marco Belpoliti, Settanta, tout particulièrement le dernier chapitre “Carnevale a Bologna”. http://congress70.library.uu.nl/
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ENRICO PALANDRI, BOCCALONE: UNE MONTGOLFIÈRE VERS LES ANNÉES 80
costruivamo delle mongolfiere con giuliano, e poi le facevamo volare alte, cantando delle canzoni; un pomeriggio venivo da una di queste strane cose, […] ero molto allegro, nello stato di traboccamento amoroso in cui mette la primavera. (Boccalone, 11)
Du point du vue formel, l’anarchie ortho-syntaxique caractérisant l’ouvrage est annoncée par l’emploi d’une minuscule désignant un nom propre de personne qui, à son tour, montre un rapport paritaire, voire confidentiel, entre professeur et étudiant, fort révélateur de l’ambiance universitaire bolonaise de l’époque. Il est donc évident que ce roman puise dans la réalité dès les premières pages. De plus, ces quelques lignes représentent un véritable segment de l’axe narratif le long duquel se déroule ce journal intime juvénile, parcouru par des tranches de vie réelle mais aussi par l’univers émotionnel du protagoniste. Ce dernier narre à la première personne, participe enthousiaste à la vie universitaire, est habitué à la musique, et ses états d’âme se succèdent au rythme des saisons et des mois – la flèche décochée par le printemps –Cupidon parcourt le texte du “bel maggio odoroso” à “adesso è gennaio, va molto peggio” en passant par l’“ottimo luglio” (7 et 71) – livrant à chaque chapitre une sorte de bulletin émotionnel. Mais surtout, cet extrait nous apprend que ce jeune étudiant est amoureux. Au fil des pages, ce sentiment prend de plus en plus d’ampleur devenant le centre gravitationnel du roman et de la vie du protagoniste qui sera totalement bouleversée. D’ailleurs, ce “débordement amoureux” s’inscrit dans un processus d’incontinence plus vaste qui, entre autres, vaut au jeune Enrico le surnom de “Boccalone” en raison de sa large bouche incapable d’endiguer le flot de ses paroles. Des mots qui surviennent spontanés avec un automatisme le conduisant à assimiler le flux de ses pensées et de son écriture à son propre 446
STEFANIA RICCIARDI (UNIVERSITÉ MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE BORDEAUX III)
flux physiologique, comme le montrent les pages finales où, à propos de son roman, il avoue: non l’ho scritto per nessuno, neppure per me, come la pipì, l’ho fatto senza pensarci, ho lasciato andare le dita che hanno fatto esercizio di velocità (i pensieri sono sempre più numerosi delle parole) (140)
ce qui révèle, de la part d’un personnage qu’aucun récit n’arrive à désaltérer, la soif de raconter des histoires, mais aussi de les lire – “leggere mi fa impazzire” (116) – et de les écouter – “i suoi racconti [di Rosa] sono la cosa più avvincente che mi capiti di ascoltare da tanto tempo” (124). Cette attitude projette le roman au-delà de son temps, caractérisé au contraire par la méfiance à l’égard de la littérature et des gens de lettres. Pourtant, ce même sentiment n’est pas du tout étranger à cet ouvrage, et il suffit de lire la phrase finale des remerciements d’ouverture pour s’en assurer: E grazie a quelli che capiranno che questo non è un romanzo e che io non sono uno scrittore, che di stronzi è già pieno il mondo.
Comme l’auteur l’affirmera dans la postface de 1988 (145), tout en regrettant cette phrase, il la justifie par rapport au monde de Boccalone, monde qu’il voulait préserver – aussi bien que luimême – de la littérature, car la profession d’écrivain renvoyait de toute évidence à quelque chose de pourri. Il ne s’agit là que d’un échantillon des situations contradictoires de Boccalone dont le sous-titre, “storia vera piena di bugie”, révèle déjà une ambiguïté de fond. Et ces poussées centrifuges et centripètes tant de l’histoire que de son auteur à l’égard du contexte font de Boccalone un romancharnière entre deux époques. Si les années 70 étaient soumises à la politisation de la culture et des arts d’où la crise 447
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d’inspiration du roman traditionnel, 3 pour la nouvelle génération, bien plus distante de l’engagement politique, l’ambition n’est plus de donner un sens aux grands événements de la société et de la culture, mais d’afficher avant tout un retour à l’ordre. Cette génération, sensible au cinéma, à la musique, à la bande dessinée, donc aux suggestions postmodernes, marque un tournant décisif dans la littérature italienne, car elle anticipe la fin du vingtième siècle bien avant la date de son expiration naturelle (Barenghi), avec la complicité d’une série de contingences historiques comme la chute du mur de Berlin qui, entre autres, inspirera à Palandri Le colpevoli ambiguità di Herbert Markus, seul roman italien relatant ce fait. Mais avant de tracer les principales lignes de force du nouveau paysage littéraire qui va prendre forme, analysons dans quelle mesure Boccalone traîne le fardeau des années 70 pour s’en débarrasser progressivement. Rappelons tout d’abord que ce mince ouvrage se situe dans le cadre de la révolution culturelle du Mouvement des marginaux réunissant chômeurs et étudiants qui se déversent dans les rues de Bologne en février 1977 pour une nouvelle vague subversive neuf ans après 1968. Selon l’historien Paul Ginsborg, ce Mouvement présente deux tendances antithétiques: l’une autonome et militariste cherchant de nouveaux sujets sociaux aptes au combat contre l’État, l’autre spontanée, ironique et créatrice, représentée par les “Indiensmétropolitains” qui, par leur façon de s’habiller et leur visage peint symbolisant le refus de la société industrielle, aspiraient au F
3
F
Il convient de rappeler qu’au moins trois autres facteurs contribuent à déstabiliser le roman: l’accusation de populisme lancée par Alberto Asor Rosa (Cf. Scrittori e popolo. Saggi sulla scrittura populista in Italia, Samonà e Savelli, Roma 1967), la diffusion des théories linguistiques et anthropologiques privilégiant une approche scientifique de l’objet littéraire, et les recherches expérimentales de la Néo-avant-garde, qui renforcent l’incommunicabilité entre écrivains et public.
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contraire à créer des structures alternatives à celles du pouvoir. Or, ce contexte transparaît à plusieurs reprises, comme le montrent les références à l’Anti-Œdipe de Deleuze et Guattari, 4 source directe du Mouvement – “avevo finito di leggere da poco l’antiedipo, senza capire nulla di quello che c’era scritto” (29) – et à la terreur d’être la cible de l’instruction de mars du juge Catalanotti –“io sento la catastrofe che si avvicina, la polizia che mi arresta, forse maurizio o claudio sono già stati presi, catalanotti, mia madre?” (62). De même, émergent les allusions au collectif A/traverso, moyen d’expression privilégié de cette frange de jeunesse avec Radio Alice, l’une des nombreuses radios libres surgies à Bologne, elle aussi souvent évoquée, comme l’arrestation de son promoteur et animateur Francesco Berardi dit “Bifo”, le colloque de septembre et la publication Bologna, marzo 1977…Fatti nostri.. Mais l’ancrage de Boccalone dans son époque réside aussi dans sa structure narrative, notamment dans le langage. Selon Eco, 5 cette génération de “l’An 9” fait table rase de 1968 par un F
F
F
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4
Voici un résumé de cet ouvrage par Umberto Eco: “L’Anti-Œdipe […] fait du désir – que la morale et la politique traditionnelle avaient enrôlé et discipliné dans les structures paranoïaques de l’État, de la famille, des institutions; que Freud lui-même avait ramené au triangle, gouvernable, des rapports œdipiens, et qui reste jusque chez Lacan désir d’une illusion, dans le déplacement continuel de son propre objet – une force positive; machines désirantes, les êtres humains sont des producteurs potentiels de positivité jamais close; cette positivité n’aboutit à la schizophrénie d’hôpital qu’en cas d’échec et de répression; car en lui-même, le ‘processus schizophrénique’ est positif: et schizophrène est l’activité révolutionnaire qui brise les idéologies et les grandes machines paranoïaques du capitalisme et des institutions répressives.” (Cf. Italie 77. Le Mouvement, les intellectuels, pp. 131-2).
5
Umberto Eco dans Italie 77. Le Mouvement, les intellectuels, pp. 111-116. En voici un extrait significatif: “Il s’agit d’une génération qui, dès son apparition, fait table rase de tout ce qui a été dit avant et pendant 1968: soixante-dix-sept moins soixante-huit font neuf; je parlerai par conséquent de génération de l’An 9. La philosophie de l’An 9, qu’exprime le collectif 449
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discours “transversal” qui libère le désir de toute idéologie et fait du langage l’élément subversif permanent, d’où l’anarchie ortho-syntaxique déjà relevée. À ce sujet, Palandri affirme que son roman naît dans un contexte bigarré dont la langue désarticulée est peut-être le signe le plus évident, dès lors qu’elle contient un peu de tout: la politique, les chansons, la pression de l’anglais mais surtout beaucoup de néologismes (Boccalone 150-51), comme “piacevolire” (100) et “rabbinare” (116). D’ailleurs, le protagoniste montre souvent sa propre désarticulation, son identité fragmentée puisant dans la source collective: non ho uno stile nello scrivere e neppure nel parlare; parlo un po’ come maurizio, un po’ come gianni, un po’ come gigi eccetera eccetera, cioè chissà come quanti altri. (133)
Il est évident que le groupe, rempart des années 70, représente ici aussi un univers solide et gagnant. Ce n’est pas un hasard si le jeune Enrico lui confie idéalement la rédaction du livre – “dovremmo scriverla tutti assieme questa storia” (52) – , d’ailleurs il ajoute: “credo che questo sia un oggetto collettivo” (134). D’une certaine manière, le déficit identitaire du narrateur le conduit à se fondre dans plusieurs personnalités imaginaires, car, à sa vie réelle, il juxtapose l’univers fictionnel du cinéma, du théâtre, de la littérature: “da oggi in poi io sono morgan” (23) – dit-il au début du roman, se glissant dans la peau du protagoniste du film de Karel Reisz, Morgan, a suitable case for A/traverso, affirme que ‘le désir, aujourd’hui, a pris la parole’; contre les velléités du pouvoir de ‘criminaliser’ l’acte créateur et le rapport libérateur, cette génération veut pratiquer une écriture ‘transversale’, qui circule, produit, transforme et ‘libère le désir’. […] Libérer le désir signifie refuser les carcans de la raison, du sens, de la morale et de la politique, pour retrouver ‘l’irrationnel sous la carapace de chacun’”. 450
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treatement (1966). 6 Plus loin, il s’identifie à Woody Allen dans le film Annie et moi, à Macbeth de Shakespeare et enfin au bandit basque de Carmen de Mérimée. Outre ces références, les citations émaillent régulièrement les pages du roman: d’Aragon à Maïakovski, du Tasse à Rimbaud en passant par Jules Verne, dont Michel Strogoff avait déjà conquis un jeune garçon de La banda dei sospiri, roman de Gianni Celati paru en 1976. En effet, l’influence de cet écrivain, fin traducteur et aussi professeur au DAMS, est bien claire dans la formation de son disciple qui, d’ailleurs, le désigne ici comme “gianni, il mio amico scrittore” (18). Né du Gruppo 63, il fait preuve d’une évolution personnelle des théories néo-avantgardistes en abordant le comique et le fantastique filtrés par la langue presque argotique du quotidien. Il emprunte donc un chemin bien singulier dans la production narrative des années 70, marquée au contraire par la crise du roman en tant qu’œuvre d’invention. Dans sa foulée, Palandri s’attache au mélange des genres qui témoigne des influences postmodernes: le cinéma, le théâtre, la littérature, mais aussi les chansonniers – Bob Dylan, véritable bande de son, puis Lucio Battisti et Claudio Baglioni – et la bande dessinée, d’où les fréquentes interjections “gasp! bleard! slurp!” De plus, parmi les dettes contractées auprès de Celati, rappelons que la condition de folie amoureuse, dont Boccalone reflète l’image la plus appropriée, dérive du Lunario del paradiso paru en 1978, qui clôt le cycle des romans entre jeunesse et âge adulte. Outre le fait d’évoquer l’importance de cette transition pour tout individu, la quatrième de couverture célèbre le plaisir de raconter et le rôle capital de l’amour dans la vie quotidienne. Il est donc aisé de comprendre comment Celati sème les graines du renouveau littéraire des années 80 dont Palandri sera F
6
F
Morgan matto da legare est le titre de la version italienne de ce film. 451
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le premier à récolter les fruits après avoir adroitement balayé le terrain de la décennie précédente. Mais comment ce transvasement s’est-il produit? Il existe, en effet, des signes infaillibles auxquels on reconnaît une transformation du protagoniste, car si à un moment donné il affirme que “la politica è noiosa, non può non esserlo” (81), et “non sogno più la polizia, sogno grandi aironi azzurri che passano le nuvole, toccano le stelle e il sole” (65), indubitablement c’est qu’un changement a eu lieu. De surcroît, même le déroulement narratif évolue dans une telle direction à travers la division en chapitres visant à “rintracciare dei cambiamenti nel mio modo di vivere, come, ad esempio, di spendere denaro (agosto tirchio, dicembre scialacquone) […]: i capitoli sono spostamenti, o di luogo o di azione, o di testa, meglio, di queste cose assieme” (120). Comme l’a observé Pier Vittorio Tondelli dans Un weekend postmoderno, Boccalone è soprattutto una storia d’amore, prima ancora che di crisi politica, la storia di come un innamoramento possa far scoppiare i propri equilibri, creare intensità nuove. (213)
En outre, il ajoute que ce livre a ouvert le chemin à la nouvelle littérature des années 80 en vertu de la quête identitaire et stylistique dont il témoigne. En effet, ce sujet marque les premiers ouvrages des “jeunes écrivains”, selon l’étiquette créée par les éditeurs lors du Salon du Livre de Francfort de 1985. Aux débutants Tondelli (Altri libertini) et Busi (Seminario sulla gioventù), révélateurs d’une pluralité de styles et d’une débordante vitalité expressive, s’adjoignent les “calviniens” De Carlo (Treno di panna) et Del Giudice (Lo stadio di Wimbledon), dont la géométrie formelle et les atmosphères raréfiées se mêlent à la source lumineuse qui les inonde et qui, d’ailleurs, les unit à Boccalone. Toutes proportions gardées, Altri libertini, Treno di panna et Seminario sulla gioventù sont à 452
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juste titre qualifiés de “romans générationnels” pour l’intérêt qu’il portent à la condition juvénile: “La giovinezza è tante cose, anche una particolare acutezza dello sguardo” – observe Calvino dans la quatrième de couverture du roman de De Carlo. Mais Boccalone s’attache aussi à un changement remarquable qui se produit dans la géographie littéraire italienne. En effet, Palandri et ensuite Tondelli, notamment dans Altri libertini et Un weekend postmoderno, montrent que la capitale morale de la décennie n’est plus la métropole mais la ville qui, à l’instar de la province, est dotée d’une plus grande sensibilité réceptive suite à l’isolement des années précédentes. S’il est vrai qu’Antonio Delfini, Silvio D’Arzo et Goffredo Parise nous avaient accoutumés à des microcosmes exerçant un contrôle social à la fois hilare, ironique et mélancolique, la Bologne de Boccalone représente un contexte urbain pullulant de suggestions variées, comme l’auteur l’explique dans la postface de 1988: negli anni in cui il confronto stato-terrorismo stava per dividere di nuovo la società in schieramenti di guerra, a Bologna si parlava di tutto con tutti, i nostri professori non nascondevano curiosità […] e forse il desiderio di un certo rinnovamento nell’ascoltare quello che ci si diceva in questi gruppi. (147)
Et encore, quelques lignes plus loin: A Bologna il terrorismo non esisteva, arriva nel libro attraverso la televisione da un mondo che pare remotissimo dagli eventi tra cui l’autore si muove. (150)
En revanche, Palandri s’exprime de toute autre façon à l’égard du contexte général de son pays:
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Quando ho scritto Boccalone, occuparsi di letteratura sembrava una cosa un po’ stramba. Era un periodo in cui si sparava, succedeva di tutto e la scrittura sembrava un’attività quasi frivola. (Palandri dans Panzeri, 39)
Indubitablement, la genèse de cet ouvrage représente un événement singulier, d’autant plus que, loin de plonger dans ce climat de “guerrilla”, il relate une folie amoureuse et ses conséquences. Outre Boccalone, en 1979 paraissent Centuria de Manganelli et Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore de Calvino, véritables exemples d’hyper-micro-romans, qui témoignent à la fois de la volonté de raconter des histoires et de la difficulté à dresser un échafaudage narratif. Cette même année Parise rédige L’odore del sangue, 7 troublant récit à la première personne porteur du présage de mort et du ton tragique de l’époque. Si l’on compare les œuvres de ces écrivains réputés à celle de Palandri, la distance est immense, car c’est de ces trois premières qu’émanent les “années de plomb” dans toute leur charge destructrice. Peut-être le débutant Palandri pouvait-il plus aisément s’affranchir de la lourdeur de cette page ahurissante de l’histoire par rapport aux écrivains déjà connus, garrottés dans leur rôle d’intellectuels censés “occuper l’espace vacant d’un discours politique intelligible”, comme l’affirma Calvino dans Una pietra sopra (355). Néanmoins, il convient de rappeler qu’Alberto Arbasino, dans Un paese senza, se dit désemparé face aux “jeunes gens qui, tout en ayant dépassé la trentaine, ne montrent ni créativité individuelle ni collective” (153), ce qui rend au moins courageuse l’irruption de Palandri, âgé de vingt-deux ans à l’époque, dans la scène littéraire. Annonciateur d’une nouvelle sensibilité, on a pu remarquer que son regard n’est pas atteint par la “myopie de ceux qui F
7
F
Ce roman paraîtra posthume en 1997.
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STEFANIA RICCIARDI (UNIVERSITÉ MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE BORDEAUX III)
voudraient réduire ces temps-là au terrorisme et la jeunesse à un désir”. 8 Loin d’être un désir, la jeunesse vit de désirs. En fait, le désir constitue le moteur de Boccalone; sans celui-ci il aurait écrit une histoire vraie et non pas pleine de mensonges. Ce n’est donc pas un hasard s’il adore le film de Reisz et s’identifie à Morgan lorsqu’il dit à sa femme: “Tous mes désirs te désirent” (119). Tant qu’Enrico désire Anna, il lui suffit de peu de choses pour que ses fantasmes se réalisent: F
F
Il chiaro della luna quasi piena entra dalla finestra, guardo nel mio piccolo quadrato di cielo e vedo la diligenza che parte, a fatica prende quota, si alza lentamente, vola alta sopra le cose. (96)
Tel le regard rêveur de Boccalone, la montgolfière Palandri nous a conduit vers de nouveaux limbes narratifs sans savoir que la solitude progressive de leur exploration nous ramènerait bientôt sur terre. Ouvrages cités
Arbasino, Alberto. Un paese senza [1980]. Milano: Garzanti, 1990. Asor Rosa, Alberto. Scrittori e popolo: saggio sulla scrittura populista in Italia. Roma: Samonà e Savelli, 1964. Barenghi, Mario. Oltre il Novecento. Milano: Marcos y Marcos, 1999. Belpoliti, Marco. Settanta. Torino: Einaudi, 2001. Bologna, marzo 1977 … Fatti nostri. Éd. par Enrico Palandri, Claudio Piersanti, Carlo Rovelli, Maurizio Torrealta et d’autres copains. Verona: Bertani, 1977. 8
Enrico Palandri, Postface de 1997 dans Boccalone p. 157. 455
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Busi, Aldo. Seminario sulla gioventù. Milano: Adelphi, 1984. Calvino, Italo. Una pietra sopra [1980] dans Saggi 1945-1985. Éd. établie par Mario Barenghi. Milano: Mondadori, 1995. De Carlo, Andrea. Treno di panna. Torino: Einaudi, 1981. Del Giudice, Daniele. Lo stadio di Wimbledon. Torino: Einaudi, 1983. Ginsborg, Paul. Storia d’Italia dal dopoguerra a oggi: società e politica, 1943-1988. Torino: Einaudi, 1989. Italie 77. Le Mouvement, les intellectuels. Documents rassemblés par F. Calvi, traduits par E. Grande, M. Fusco, A. Della Penna. Paris: Seuil, 1977. Palandri, Enrico. Boccalone. [Milano: L’erba voglio, 1979; Milano: Feltrinelli, 1989 et 1997]. Milano: Bompiani, 2003. ---. Le colpevoli ambiguità di Herbert Markus. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1997. Panzeri, Fulvio. Senza rete. Conversazioni sulla nuova narrativa italiana. Ancona: PeQuod, 1999. Tondelli, Pier Vittorio. Un weekend postmoderno. Milano: Bompiani, 1990. ---. Altri libertini. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1980.
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Le constat pasolinien
Dans un article de 1973, écrit pour sa rubrique littéraire dans Tempo, 1 Pasolini s’interrogeait sur le fait qu’il n’avait pratiquement encore jamais parlé d’une première œuvre. Très vite il dut se rendre à l’évidence: s’il n’en parlait pas, c’était tout simplement parce qu’il y avait une carence manifeste de jeunes écrivains et plus on descendait dans les tranches d’âge, plus ce pénible constat se confirmait. Pourquoi donc les jeunes n’éprouvaient-ils plus le besoin d’écrire ou plutôt pourquoi n’écrivaient-ils plus? Tout en se déclarant impuissant à expliquer le phénomène, il hasardait quand même, avec beaucoup de lucidité, trois motifs. Le premier tenait aux séquelles engendrées par l’attitude de la neo-avanguardia qui avait sévi entre 1963 et 1968: le terrorisme intellectuel régnant aurait en quelque sorte coupé les ailes à toute velléité d’écriture et les jeunes se seraient mis à faire de l’anti-littérature avant de faire de la littérature. Attitude suicidaire qui consistait à s’autocritiquer avant même de faire ses gammes. La tension morale régnant alors aurait en somme empêché l’éclosion d’expériences littéraires utiles d’un point de vue formateur. On aurait limé les dents aux jeunes loups avant qu’ils n’aient eu le temps de les aiguiser. TPF
TP
1 PT
FPT
“I giovani che scrivono” in Descrizioni di descrizioni, p. 241. http://congress70.library.uu.nl/
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Mais le mouvement de mai 68 aurait lui aussi joué un rôle néfaste. Ce qu’on réclamait, dans une période d’agitation pourtant prolixe, c’était paradoxalement de demander aux intellectuels de se saborder. La littérature devait avoir par rapport au message idéologique une fonction subalterne, être la servante du discours militant. Elle se voyait privée de ses rôles traditionnels pour ne plus avoir qu’une fonction pratique voire utilitaire. Remettre en question une vision aussi radicale, c’était faire preuve de tiédeur voire d’égotisme pernicieux. Comment s’opposer à une déferlante aussi massive, à fortiori pour un jeune écrivain individualiste? On ne saura jamais sans doute à quel point cette vague a pu submerger les divers balbutiements ou les tentatives d’écriture personnelle. Simplement, Pasolini, qui eut lui-même énormément à souffrir de l’intransigeance à son égard de certaines avant-gardes, se rendait compte de ce que ce climat pouvait représenter en termes d’inhibition pour des jeunes peu aguerris. Tout cela lui apparaissait, pour reprendre ses termes exacts, à la fois “monstrueux et idiot”. Enfin, il serait injuste de rejeter toute la responsabilité sur les milieux d’avant-garde et sur mai 68. Pasolini se rendait bien compte que le premier problème, c’était l’émergence de cette non-culture de masse, de cette société de consommation qui avançait inexorablement comme un rouleau compresseur, sous la houlette d’un pouvoir moderne, froid, n’ayant que faire de la littérature dès lors que celle-ci n’était pas une valeur marchande. Pour ce Pouvoir tendu vers la course matérielle aux profits, la littérature appartenait désormais au passé, reliquat désuet de valeurs d’un autre temps. Mais ce que Pasolini regrettait par-dessus tout, c’est qu’en méprisant la littérature et les possibilités d’expression de la révolte qu’elle offrait, l’avant-garde et les différents mouvements contestataires avaient en quelque sorte fait le jeu du pouvoir. Les jeunes qui auraient pu allumer des contre-feux à la culture de masse à partir d’une position originale avaient été découragés ou dévoyés avant même d’avoir pu poser un choix 458
DANIEL MANGANO (ISTI-HEB - INSTITUT SUPÉRIEUR DE TRADUCTEURS ET INTERPRÈTES DE LA HAUTE ECOLE DE BRUXELLES)
conséquent. Pasolini avait-il raison en se déchaînant contre cet aveuglement anti-littéraire des avant-gardes? Il ne savait en tout cas pas encore que sur le plan de la contestation politique allait se déclencher le grand mouvement de 77, il Movimento, ce qui dans un premier temps à priori ne devait pas nécessairement engendrer une reprise du roman, au vu du purgatoire auquel on l’avait relégué. Boccalone: un filtre générationnel
Rien dans le climat culturel de cette période ne semblait donc prédisposer à l’éclosion de Boccalone. Publié par une petite maison d’édition au nom délicieusement transgressif, “L’Erba Voglio”, le premier roman d’Enrico Palandri, jeune écrivain de vingt-trois ans, est en fait par rapport au mouvement de 1977 une sorte de construction en miroir. Le Movimento s’est en effet amplifié grâce aux mille torrents impétueux que charriait une jeunesse idéaliste et déboussolée en quête d’absolu, mais il a à son tour gonflé chaque page du roman de Palandri de toute une puissance cherchant à sourdre, à trouver une issue dans les mots, dans une langue italienne nouvelle ouverte à des formes parfois maladroites. Le livre baigne tout entier dans le mouvement dont il est issu et celui-ci en imprègne chaque page, chaque phrase. Boccalone est une œuvre de jeunesse par rapport à laquelle son auteur lui-même a pris depuis quelques distances et dont il a, avec beaucoup d’honnêteté, désavoué – sans se renier – certains excès. Le mouvement de 77, on le sait, est né d’une réaction contre une réforme universitaire, la réforme Malfatti, qui entérinait de manière scandaleuse l’organisation d’une structure hiérarchique pyramidale confortant le pouvoir accru des mandarins et éloignant encore un peu plus des études supérieures les couches les plus modestes de la population, perpétuant par là même un système de classes. Mais, en termes d’analyse et de réflexion politique, qu’a à nous dire un jeune auteur (la question se posera à peu près dans les mêmes termes 459
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pour Enrico Brizzi) dont les pages sont essentiellement consacrées à un itinéraire sentimental personnel? Car enfin, Boccalone, ce n’est tout de même pas Jacques Vingtras, L’insurgé de Jules Vallès. Alors que peut nous apprendre un roman tels que celui-ci sur ces formes de rébellion ou de révolte collective qui ont fait l’histoire d’une génération? En d’autres termes, quelle est sa valeur de témoignage? Personnellement, je crois que cet aspect documentaire est loin d’être quantité négligeable. Dans ses excès même, ce type de livre nous fait sentir des choses qui échappent aux ouvrages des historiens et des sociologues, aux écrits des commentateurs politiques les plus avisés. Les romans à l’état brut comme ceux de Palandri ou de Brizzi nous restituent un climat en creux: ils font abstraction de toute perspective théorisante pour nous faire passer de l’autre côté du miroir. C’est encore plus vrai dans le cas de mouvements spontanés comme celui de 1977 car aucune réflexion historique ou politique ne pourra épuiser les aspects multiformes d’une catharsis qui, même si elle avait de par sa nature une dimension d’aventure collective, était la résultante d’une série de frustrations et d’aspirations individuelles imprécises souvent inconscientes. Ce roman écrit par un adolescent hypersensible qui se trouve dans l’œil du cyclone, nous informe peu ou guère sur les tenants et les aboutissants d’un mouvement social qui forcément le dépasse, mais il nous fait en tout cas sentir physiquement l’état d’âme des protagonistes, nous nous sentons traversés par cette énergie vibrante qui ébranle les cœurs et les esprits. 2 On peut vibrer à l’unisson ou rejeter Boccalone, on ne peut y rester indifférent. TPF
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Cela rappelle ce que dit Claude Mauriac, ex-secrétaire du général De Gaulle, de Paris en mai 68: “ce qui était fabuleux en mai, c’était l’atmosphère, l’air. Ceux qui ne l’ont pas connu ne peuvent pas comprendre, et il leur manquera toujours d’avoir vécu cette expérience” (Claude Mauriac, cité in Jean-Pierre Le Goff, Mai 68, l’héritage impossible, Paris, La Découverte, p. 62).
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DANIEL MANGANO (ISTI-HEB - INSTITUT SUPÉRIEUR DE TRADUCTEURS ET INTERPRÈTES DE LA HAUTE ECOLE DE BRUXELLES)
C’est ce qui le distingue de tant de premiers romans d’adolescents d’aujourd’hui. Palandri a été un précurseur malgré lui, ouvrant la voie à la “Giovane Narrativa” des années quatrevingt; il a fait souffler sur une littérature italienne anémique un souffle de vie, balayant des habitudes morphosyntaxiques typiques du roman traditionnel qui ronronnait sans se soucier du décalage par rapport à une tranche de lecteurs incapables de se reconnaître en lui. Entre contestation et “punk attitude”
On ne peut faire l’économie des différences entre Mai 68 et le Movimento de 77. Ce dernier se déroule lui aussi sur fond de contestation intellectuelle mais il a incontestablement un caractère plus dur, plus plébéien et plus direct, en un mot, plus radical. Certes, il se traduit par une nouvelle série d’occupation des facultés italiennes comme pour signifier que mai 68 n’a pas été qu’un épiphénomène mais il prend rapidement une dimension existentielle, exige une véritable autodétermination et surtout revendique une complète autonomie par rapport aux institutions, notamment par rapport aux forces d’opposition traditionnelles. Vis-à-vis du jeu politique ou de la gauche, le désamour est complet. Mais le malaise est plus profond car même les revendications qui ont présidé aux contestations précédentes ne sont plus de mise. On ne croit plus aux idéologies qui peuvent changer la vie. Il ne s’agit plus simplement de prendre le pouvoir, on est plus que jamais convaincu que le pouvoir ne peut appartenir à personne et que l’avenir ne passe pas par de nouvelles institutions, eussent-elles un caractère alternatif. Le mot “avenir” apparaît comme singulièrement galvaudé. C’est qu’entre-temps, entre les deux mouvements, celui de 68 et celui de 77, la Grande-Bretagne a assisté à l’explosion du phénomène punk et son slogan “No future” a été hurlé à pleins poumons par une jeunesse orientée vers une contre461
DE BOCCALONE À JACK FRUSCIANTE: CONTINUUM OU HIATUS?
culture radicalement anarchique, engendrée par le désastre social né des crises économiques qui ont mis les plus défavorisés à genoux. Une succession de crises sans précédent depuis l’aprèsguerre, liée notamment à l’impact des chocs pétroliers. L’Europe a pris la mesure de sa fragilité et de sa dépendance. En Italie, le rêve des “Golden Sixties” s’est promptement évanoui alors même que beaucoup n’ont même pas pu encore en goûter les fruits. La frustration est d’autant plus grande. Nourri de ce sentiment mais aussi d’une formidable espérance, le mouvement de 77 n’a rien d’univoque. Il est avant tout un malaise généré par une somme de refus. En 1968, la gauche française pouvait encore appuyer les manifestants en espérant unir étudiants et travailleurs, même si les divergences entre l’idéalisme voire l’utopisme des jeunes et les revendications beaucoup plus concrètes et terre-à-terre des travailleurs ont sonné le glas du rêve d’un destin commun. En 1977, un tel rapprochement entre gauche officielle et Movimento n’est même pas concevable. La méfiance est totale et réciproque. Rappelons, pour ne prendre qu’un seul exemple, la conduite de Grenoble infligée à Rome au secrétaire de la CGIL, Luciano Lama, par les Indiens métropolitains. Le Movimento a grandi en-dehors des cadres et des formes traditionnelles de la lutte. Il ne s’agissait plus d’améliorer les conditions de vie et de travail, mais de refuser celui-ci, de réclamer l’assouvissement d’autres besoins relevant de l’hédonisme et de la sphère existentielle. On parlait de “droit au luxe” et la critique féroce de la société de consommation était souvent remplacée par une critique de la politique d’austérité mise en place par les différents gouvernements européens. Mais laissons de côté l’aspect factuel et politique d’un Mouvement déchiré entre l’utopie pacifiste et la solution de la guérilla urbaine. Si l’on s’attache à sa composante culturelle, on ne peut que constater que même dans ses expressions les plus libres et dans son invention permanente de nouveaux codes, elle reste veinée d’un certain pessimisme dû précisément à l’arrière462
DANIEL MANGANO (ISTI-HEB - INSTITUT SUPÉRIEUR DE TRADUCTEURS ET INTERPRÈTES DE LA HAUTE ECOLE DE BRUXELLES)
fond de terrorisme et de lutte armée qui ravage les esprits. Malgré cela, paradoxalement, la volonté de se soustraire aux cycles de production et de ne pas respecter les règles d’un capitalisme dévastateur, annonce par bien des aspects le mouvement altermondialiste d’aujourd’hui qui s’efforce cahincaha de construire un projet, écartelé lui aussi entre les tentations les plus extrêmes mais porté, semble-t-il, par un optimisme nouveau. La filiation culturelle est évidente, ne serait-ce que sur le plan des formes ludiques de protestation collective. Certes, le mouvement de 77 a eu ses livres de chevet comme l’Anti-Œdipe de Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari qui montrait que dans une société répressive et castratrice, il n’y avait plus guère de place pour des formes naturelles de désir capables d’engendrer liberté et individualisme. Mais c’est par sa force dévastatrice que l’“aile créative” du mouvement s’est affirmée avec un tel élan iconoclaste que l’on serait tenté de parler peut-être d’un “néofuturisme” de gauche. Bien entendu, outre l’inclination politique totalement opposée, la grande différence, c’est qu’il ne s’agit pas d’un petit détachement avant-gardiste coupé des réalités sociales, mais d’une explosion qui prend d’emblée un caractère générationnel. Le Movimento naît au moment où l’on a pratiquement officiellement décrété la mort du roman et donc le petit livre écrit à la hâte et dans la fièvre par un étudiant du Dams de Bologne arrive comme un ovni et sans le savoir, ouvre la voie à tout ce qui va suivre très vite: la “Giovane Narrativa” des années 80, P.V. Tondelli, les Under-25 et tous ceux qui s’aperçoivent que la littérature n’est pas un domaine réservé. L’objet “livre” est dépoussiéré. Mensonges, style et décalage
Cette dimension générationnelle est immédiatement perceptible dans Boccalone: si certains ouvrages deviennent emblématique d’une génération par le jeu fortuit des circonstances, ce n’est pas 463
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le cas du livre de Palandri. Car la caractéristique majeure du livre et du mouvement est là: il s’agit d’une génération qui comme le dira plus tard Palandri dans un entretien 3 à propos de Le colpevoli ambiguità di Herbert Markus, avait en quelque sorte collectivisé sa vie privée, la raccrochant à un engagement plus grand. Dans Boccalone, même si le narrateur parle énormément de lui-même, il sait que s’exprime à travers lui un “peuple de jeunes”, un groupe qu’il appelle “il popolo alto dei camminatori” et dans lequel il s’inclut: TPF
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Il s’y fond même complètement: sono un popolo alto anch’io! (75)
Boccalone est le roman d’une évolution à la fois individuelle et collective. On y voit se profiler l’évolution d’une Italie qui ne sait pas encore comment elle va pouvoir se dégager de l’engrenage infernal de la violence qui va bientôt tout broyer sur son passage. Dès la première page, Palandri se situe expressément et délibérément sous le signe de la candeur et de la naïveté. Le titre choisi a un côté narcissique, puisqu’il est le nom du personnage principal mais en même temps il ne manque pas de dérision. Boccalone veut dire “uno con bocca grande che parla di sé senza interrompersi” et le narrateur parle souvent de sa bouche qui fuit comme un robinet, “una bocca che perde in continuità”. Mais Boccalone désigne aussi “un bambino che 3
La solitudine di una generazione: Enrico Palandri e le ambiguità della storia, .
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Le style itératif de la page en question fait d’ailleurs irrésistiblement penser au premier chapitre de Conversazione in Sicilia et aux “astratti furori” de Vittorini.
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DANIEL MANGANO (ISTI-HEB - INSTITUT SUPÉRIEUR DE TRADUCTEURS ET INTERPRÈTES DE LA HAUTE ECOLE DE BRUXELLES)
piange facilmente”, peut-être une variante post-soixantehuitarde inattendue du “fanciullino” de Pascoli? Le sous-titre du roman est lui aussi d’une fraîcheur désarmante dans sa formulation: “une histoire vraie pleine de mensonges”, un oxymore qui met le doigt sur le principe moteur de la narration frénétique de Boccalone: la sincérité, le mentir vrai. La sincérité, c’est le mot-clé, le sésame qui permet au récit de se frayer un chemin dans les circonvolutions d’une époque chaotique où le discours politique est sorti de son lit pour inonder les rues. Tout retour à la forme romanesque, territoire du mensonge par excellence, toute tentative de réconcilier la jeune génération avec la chose écrite, ne peut s’opérer qu’après avoir inscrit l’oxymore sur le frontispice du livre comme l’avertissement qui figure sur la porte de l’Enfer de Dante. La formule est un avertissement adressé à ceux qui s’apprêtent à franchir le seuil: la sincérité s’offre à eux, elle est le viatique qui leur permettra de saisir simultanément les si nombreuses contradictions dans lesquelles se débat une génération qui s’efforce de se construire, de grandir. Dès le début, Palandri s’affranchit des conventions littéraires en recourant à des solutions qui ne sont pas sans rapports avec celles des écrivains futuristes: usage intensif de la minuscule comme pour s’effacer devant la collectivité envers laquelle il se sent débiteur et accentuer encore le rythme frénétique de la narration, recours aux onomatopées, rupture de la disposition traditionnelle des paragraphes, ponctuation désordonnée, le tout conférant à son écriture un aspect visuel, différent, transgressif et essayant surtout de donner au roman l’aspect d’un journal intime un peu confus: Mi servono modi e costrutti sintattici di movimento, che mostrino la confusione dalla parte della confusione, e devo perdere questo soggetto prepotente e arrogante che determina tutte le situazioni in cui si trova (19) 465
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déclare le narrateur de Boccalone. Un reflet des positions de Celati. Et après quelques pages, il ajoute avec des accents marinettiens: Adesso che vorrei scrivere queste stesse cose ho di nuovo il problema dei tempi e dei modi; il libro che vorrei scrivere dovrebbe essere più o meno: acido, ridere, amore, andrea, salopette, musica, scappare, buono. (24)
Livre d’un adolescent qui pleure sur ses amours, Boccalone est aussi volontairement un objet collectif qui revendique le droit pour tous d’être écrivain. On retrouve là aussi une caractéristique du mouvement punk si l’on songe que l’émergence de ce phénomène sur la scène musicale rock internationale fut un rejet des musiciens pointus qui se perdaient dans des solos instrumentaux kilométriques et sophistiqués, composant ou improvisant une musique compliquée pour spécialistes ou “happy few”. Le narrateur de Boccalone, dans sa quête de sincérité, ressent une volonté de pureté voire d’animalité. Si le livre se proclame une histoire vraie pleine de mensonges, c’est aussi parce que la faculté langagière même est à la base du mensonge de l’homme. Il y a à plusieurs reprises dans Boccalone une revendication de l’analphabétisme, un culte de la simplicité, de l’immédiateté des sentiments. Même les livres dont le Mouvement de 77 fait grand cas sont considérés avec une certaine ironie: à propos de l’Anti-Œdipe, le narrateur déclare qu’il n’y a rien compris du tout. Une affirmation lapidaire, une manière de signifier que les discours théoriques sont de plus en plus inopérants. Une attitude en complète rupture avec celle des contestataires de mai 68.
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DANIEL MANGANO (ISTI-HEB - INSTITUT SUPÉRIEUR DE TRADUCTEURS ET INTERPRÈTES DE LA HAUTE ECOLE DE BRUXELLES)
Dans le phalanstère
Comme Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis (la comparaison est abusive mais Foscolo et Palandri ne sont-ils pas deux Vénitiens révoltés ayant un lien privilégié avec l’Angleterre?), Boccalone est un roman bref qui mêle passion politique et passion amoureuse. La Teresa de Palandri s’appelle Anna (ou plutôt anna): la rencontre est spontanée, c’est le printemps, après une première phase d’approche, on se parle et la saison semble faire naître dans le cœur du narrateur une envie de mariage, on aurait plus envie de dire d’union: “avevo chiesto in moglie almeno tre ragazze nell’ultimo mese” (12). Encore une fois dimension individuelle et dimension collective se conjuguent, la curiosité d’Enrico pour Anna se situe dans le cadre d’une curiosité qu’il éprouve à l’égard de toutes les femmes, dont il avoue qu’il voudrait tout savoir. Cette grande bouche qui ne cesse de parler n’est pas douée pour la drague ni même pour la conversation, dès lors qu’il y a une arrière-pensée. S’il ne peut parler de manière instinctive, Enrico avoue lui-même qu’il se transforme en machine à débiter des inepties. Tout fonctionne par cercles concentriques: au milieu du tourbillon, il y a la piazza et au milieu de la piazza le couple Anna/Enrico. Ne dit-on pas que c’est lorsqu’on est au cœur d’une tornade qui emporte tout que l’on est en fait le plus à l’abri? Aucune allusion dans ces moments-là aux troubles qui secouent la ville. Un verbe curieusement utilisé par Boccalone pour rendre compte de ses états d’âme est “traboccare”. Avec le printemps, Boccalone déborde de partout et semble traversé par les ondes de tout l’“alto popolo” dont il fait partie: “siete traboccanti quando vi sentite stretti in tutti i fidanzamenti, in tutti i legami che l’inverno ha costruito. I legami costruiti in primavera forse funzionano meglio, non nel mio caso comunque” [...] Ma… tanto non c’è nulla da fare, quando si 467
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trabocca si trabocca, non ha molto senso spiegare il significato, bla bla bla la vita contro l’ideologia, bla bla bla l’individuale contro il collettivo, bla bla e bla; descrivo solo qualche sintomo.” (16)
Palandri anticipe aussi par rapport à tous les jeunes auteurs qui s’engouffreront dans la brèche en parsemant le roman de références culturelles et littéraires dans lesquelles chansons ou œuvres plus doctes sont traitées sur le même plan, sans hiérarchie. Le mouvement de 77 a développé ses propres valeurs, ses codes, et il s’y accroche avec détermination. Ne pouvant définir trop précisément sa vision du monde encore confuse, il a un besoin d’affirmation qui passe par ses choix culturels et dans Boccalone on trouve pêle-mêle son goût de la poésie marginale, Rimbaud, Maïakovski, les protest songs (Dylan reste la référence), le cinéma américain indépendant. Il y a deux films particulièrement présents dans le livre de Palandri. Le premier est Annie Hall de Woody Allen sans doute parce que la complexité d’une relation sentimentale s’y exprime avec profondeur et légèreté et que le film fonctionne comme un écho de l’histoire d’amour qui naît entre les deux protagonistes, une histoire qui connaît elle aussi ses hésitations et ses volte-faces. L’autre film est anglais et moins connu: il s’agit de Morgan un film de 1966 de Karel Reisz, film sous-titré “A Suitable Case For Treatment” puisque le héros en est un jeune Anglais excentrique et inadapté, “fou à lier”, un éternel adolescent follement amoureux de sa femme qui veut divorcer et qu’il s’efforce de reconquérir sans renoncer à sa folie, dans un climat de fièvre que l’on retrouve dans Boccalone. Enrico s’identifie au personnage jusque dans sa démesure et ses outrances. Le Morgan du film ayant une passion pour le personnage de King Kong, Enrico déclare: voglio vedere gli animali, sentirmi come loro, duellare con i miei rivali, forte come una montagna e 468
DANIEL MANGANO (ISTI-HEB - INSTITUT SUPÉRIEUR DE TRADUCTEURS ET INTERPRÈTES DE LA HAUTE ECOLE DE BRUXELLES)
tenero come un uomo giovane; è un film pieno di una forza animale, dove anche gli eroi della rivoluzione russa sono privi di ideologia; andate a vederlo se potete da oggi in poi io sono morgan (27)
Bologne la rouge est bien évidemment le cadre naturel de cette aventure individuelle et collective: il y règne un climat de liberté et même si tout parvient encore à travers le filtre idéologique, on cherche à s’en abstraire. La référence idéologique implicite guette cependant à chaque coin de phrase. Qui par exemple utiliserait le mot “phalanstère” pour décrire le cœur de sa ville traversé par un vent de liberté? Quando è bella la piazza sembra il falansterio; luogo dei corteggiamenti amorosi, dei brevi incontri, degli sguardi o del lungo bighellonare, starci dentro è facile e divertente. (23)
Bologne, ville savante par excellence mais aussi ville jeune et bouillonnante, est un nid, un refuge contre la société de consommation extérieure. Elle est avant tout un refuge contre la solitude – et l’on verra que ce n’est plus le cas chez Enrico Brizzi – et grâce à tout ce “peuple” qui se croise et partage quelque chose de commun, elle crée un sentiment de fraternité collective qui fera cruellement défaut aux adolescents des années 90, contraints pour s’affirmer au niveau collectif de se replier sur certaines formes de tribalisme moderne. Lorsqu’on parcourt les premières pages élégiaques de Boccalone, on a du mal à imaginer que cette même ville sera aussi durement touchée par le terrorisme aveugle et la violence et qu’elle verra défiler dans ses rues les forces casquées de l’“ordre démocratique”. Plus le récit avance, plus les pleurs vaguement narcissiques du héros font place à sa dimension collective, comme si en s’enfonçant dans sa narration, il s’était au passage 469
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laissé imbiber par toutes les personnes rencontrées dans ce grand phalanstère à ciel ouvert. C’est l’écriture elle-même qui subit alors la contagion des voix environnantes, celles des amis qui sont également les premiers lecteurs du livre: Non ho uno stile nello scrivere, e neppure nel parlare; parlo un po’ come maurizio, un po’ come gianni, un po’ come gigi eccetera eccetera, cioè chissà come quanti altri. (137)
Le narrateur semble ne plus se percevoir que comme une caisse de résonance, celle d’un mouvement qui le dépasse et l’enveloppe de sa chaleur: siccome non sono mai sicuro di quello che dico e le cose individuali fanno tutte schifo, e anche le persone individuali mi fanno tutte schifo, le cose che gli amici mi hanno detto sul libro, o che col libro non c’entravano nulla, sono tutte entrate nel racconto, lo hanno tutte bucato di cose che succedevano nel frattempo, nel mentre che lo scrivevo […] (il libro è) un racconto che non riguarda nessuno, e allo stesso tempo parla di tutti. (137)
Dans la post-face de 1988 de l’Edizione Universale Economica Feltrinelli, Enrico Palandri regrette certains excès (des propos méprisants pour le métier d’écrivain) et insiste surtout sur le climat politique qui régnait alors à Bologne. Il prend évidemment du recul par rapport au narrateur de Boccalone, il en parle à la troisième personne, irrité par certains aspects de sa rébellion qui semblent à courte vue ou s’apparentent à la défense de privilèges, mais il ne le renie pas, assurant que l’essentiel du livre réside dans les contradictions elles-mêmes qui se traduisent aussi sur le plan du fond et du style. C’est ainsi que le roman se patine et devient plus qu’un simple témoignage. 470
DANIEL MANGANO (ISTI-HEB - INSTITUT SUPÉRIEUR DE TRADUCTEURS ET INTERPRÈTES DE LA HAUTE ECOLE DE BRUXELLES)
D’un Enrico l’autre
Si à présent nous nous penchons sur Jack Frusciante è uscito dal gruppo d’Enrico Brizzi, un autre premier roman qui se passe à Bologne, mais écrit en 1994, posons-nous la question de ce qui reste de toute cette effervescence de 1977. Le roman de Brizzi porte lui aussi un sous-titre: “una maestosa storia d’amore e di rock parrocchiale” et les points communs avec Boccalone ne sont pas minces. Mais au-delà de modèles italiens, c’est L’attrape-cœurs de J.D. Salinger qui est au cœur de l’inspiration de Brizzi: cette manière d’appeler “vieux” un adolescent (il vecchio Alex), le même romantisme, le même ennui par rapport à l’institution scolaire, le même élan refoulé par rapport au religieux, et tant d’autres choses qui rapprochent Alex d’Holden Caufield. Notons par ailleurs que L’attrape-cœurs est également cité au passage dans Boccalone. Alors, y a-t-il transmission continue entre Palandri et Brizzi, puisqu’au fond ils appartiennent tous deux à une “génération excédentaire” pour reprendre l’expression de Pasolini (même si ce n’est pas la même)? En fait, dans l’intervalle, les temps ont subi une profonde mutation. Les aspirations d’Alex, dix-sept ans, qui s’ennuie mortellement sur les bancs de son bahut et ne rêve que de la belle Adelaide sont clairement de l’ordre de l’individualisme. Désormais, la société de consommation est omniprésente et écrase tout sur son passage. On ne parle plus de crise, les mouvements alternatifs sont moribonds et la jeunesse n’a plus de grands idéaux ou de grands projets auxquels se raccrocher: elle est entrée dans ce que Gilles Lipovetsky appelle “l’ère du vide” ou l’âge “post-moderne”. Enrico Palandri, se penchant sur la génération d’aujourd’hui, la qualifie de “baroque” 5 car en l’absence de tout projet fédérateur, elle s’est segmentée, et cette TPF
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segmentation s’est opérée par le biais des modes et des styles. Un sectarisme qui renforce l’incommunicabilité: on se définit de manière behaviouriste par ses choix mais le débat ne peut exister entre segments séparés d’une société dont codes et langages ne coincident plus. C’est ce qui se passe dans Jack Frusciante et le titre même reflète déjà la crise d’identité par rapport à la génération précédente. En effet si nous comparons les titres, dans le cas de Boccalone, le choix est évident: le narrateur se désigne luimême, même si c’est par un sobriquet, il n’a pas de problème d’identification. Par contre, le roman de Brizzi ne s’appelle pas “Alex”: c’est un portrait en décalage, il a fallu qu’il trouve un modèle identitaire dans le panthéon médiatique. Et pourquoi un titre si long? Parce qu’Alex ne s’identifie pas à Jack Frusciante mais uniquement à son geste: Jack Frusciante était le guitariste des Red Hot Chili Peppers, un groupe rock américain à succès, et en pleine gloire, il a préféré tout lâcher plutôt que de se compromettre avec le système. Une position en retrait, un style qui sont à bien y réfléchir peut-être aussi ceux d’une génération. “Le style, c’est l’homme” disait Bailly; il est en tout cas au cœur des préoccupations du jeune Brizzi (un autre de ses livres ne s’intitule-t-il pas Elogio di Oscar Firmian e del suo impeccabile stile?) Et l’évasion? En fait, les échappées à bicyclette dans une Italie où dominent les voitures et la frime sont pour Alex l’image de la liberté bien plus que les voyages. Dans les années 90 en effet, les voyages des jeunes ont acquis un caractère utilitaire, comme celui d’Adelaide en Pennsylvanie ou le bref séjour de deux semaines d’Alex en Angleterre dont il ne retient pas grand-chose: Il corso d’inglese e le facce tipo Benetton di Paulos, Ivan, Shoko e di tutti gli altri amici conosciuti davanti ai toast di pollo nella canteen della scuola; un match di cricket sull’erba rasata a puntino con un fuoricampo 472
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suo poco meno che spettacolare; delle partite a biliardo; certe seratine a frecce e drinking under age al George’s Inn; un paio di giorni verniciati di mal di testa da sbornia; dei risvegli alle sei del mattino perché la finestra non aveva la tapparella; i bei sorrisi da coyote alla ragazza bionda che passava a distribuire il giornale; un paio di storie insignificanti; qualche concerto gratuito. (119)
Un inventaire moins long que la seule description de l’aéroport! Bref, c’est du voyage sur commande, téléguidé par les parents, au milieu de hordes de Japonais et de provinciaux italiens en goguette. Difficile pour la rébellion de se frayer un chemin dans cette ère du vide où d’ailleurs si peu d’adultes montrent l’exemple. Seul un professeur aura le courage d’arborer silencieusement le portrait d’un juge antimafia assassiné avant que sa collègue ne le fasse décrocher à la leçon suivante. Le geste, encore une fois. L’éphémère. Dans cette société où mafia et monde politique font leurs petites affaires en douce, les jeunes se sentent impuissants. Résignés. Mais paradoxalement, un certain frémissement d’intérêt pour la gauche officielle semble renaître. On va au moins voter pour elle, même si c’est sans illusion ou par choix négatif: Va bene essere anarchici, ma quando ti trovi davanti la scheda con stampati sopra lo scudo crociato e il garofano non ci vedi più e ti viene in mente che quella famiglia con gli occhiali che è entrata al seggio dietro di te di certo ha votato compatta per i socialdemocristi con preferenza per qualche gerarco amico di famiglia, e allora butti tutto il tuo peso all’opposizione, no? Voglio dire: e che cazzo. (95)
Le délitement de la chose politique a donc ramené la génération des années 90 à une attitude plus pragmatique. 473
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Quant à la révolte, elle s’apparente souvent à la blague de potache et s’exerce essentiellement à l’égard de certains professeurs ou des insupportables filles conformistes de l’école, ces camarades de classe si disciplinées qu’Alex et ses amis appellent les “Semprevergini”. Si la filiation avec le livre de Palandri est indéniable, l’époque a beaucoup trop changé pour dire que le roman de Brizzi présente un portrait similaire. Les aspirations demeurent mais la génération de Brizzi est beaucoup plus déboussolée, nettement moins “à l’aise dans ses baskets”. Le processus de segmentation dont nous parlions tout à l’heure a abouti à une désubstantialisation. Il y a un déficit de la “civitas”, une perte du bien commun. Encore une fois l’Italie semble en décalage: c’est à l’époque de Palandri que l’Angleterre criait “No Future” et c’est à celle de Brizzi que les jeunes Italiens semblent le plus désemparés. Ils ont dû se forger une myriade d’identités individuelles de substitution pour pallier l’absence de la dimension collective si présente dans Boccalone. “Les jeunes” ne sont plus qu’une atomisation de désirs. Le toc, la fausse monnaie sont omniprésents, principalement dans la culture dite “jeune”. Le “popolo alto” de Palandri aspirait à l’hédonisme, les personnages de Brizzi ont dû constater que les biens matériels n’ont rien résolu. Deux éléments qui apparaissaient peu dans Boccalone sont ici très visibles (et désopilants): la famille et l’institution scolaire. Ils représentent les deux faces de l’oppression à base d’ennui profond qui contraignent Alex à tenter de survivre. L’école est totalement déconnectée de tout et sans le moindre intérêt: les seules conversations motivantes sont celles qui se tiennent entre copains aux toilettes, le “dernier salon où l’on cause”. Quant à la famille, Le héros les affuble de sobriquets peu affectueux et le roman commence d’ailleurs par le portrait navrant des proches d’Alex en train de regarder Sylvester 474
DANIEL MANGANO (ISTI-HEB - INSTITUT SUPÉRIEUR DE TRADUCTEURS ET INTERPRÈTES DE LA HAUTE ECOLE DE BRUXELLES)
Stallone à la télévision. Une famille où l’on n’a plus rien à se dire, où la communication est sans objet. Comme Palandri, Brizzi essaie de donner à son récit un rythme oral très travaillé et un aspect de journal intime (certaines parties de chapitres sont d’ailleurs intitulées Dall’archivio magnetico del signor Alex D.) Les références abondent, la syntaxe se libère et l’humour sert de palliatif. Et puis au-dessus de tout cela, il y a l’amour, car s’il pleure et se répand moins que Boccalone, Alex est lui aussi un romantique hypersensible. On le voit, c’est surtout cet élément intemporel qui semble rapprocher encore les deux jeunes personnages séparés par quinze ans de distance. Cependant l’apathie qui semble régner dans le premier roman d’Enrico Brizzi ne devrait pas nous faire penser que le renoncement à la violence est un fait acquis. Elle fera son entrée avec fracas dès le deuxième roman d’Enrico Brizzi, Bastogne, où sur fond de drogue et d’individualisme, on verra ces cavaliers de l’apocalypse d’un nouveau genre semer mort et désolation autour d’eux dans un baroud desespéré. Prenons garde: la gratuité de la violence n’en atténue en rien le caractère effroyable. Dans l’ère du vide, toutes les chimères peuvent s’engouffrer.
Ouvrages cités
Brizzi, Enrico. Jack Frusciante è uscito dal gruppo. Ancona: TranseuropA, 1994. ---. Bastogne. Milano: Baldini & Castoldi, 1996. Deleuze, Gilles et Félix Guattari. L’anti-Œdipe, capitalisme et schizophrénie. Paris: Minuit, 1972. Le Goff, Jean-Pierre. Mai 68, l’héritage impossible, Paris: La Découverte, 2002. Lipovetsky, Gilles. L’ère du vide. Essais sur l’individualisme contemporain. Paris: Gallimard, 1983. 475
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Palandri, Enrico. Boccalone. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1988. ---. Le colpevoli ambiguità di Herbert Markus. Milano: Bompiani, 1997. ---. “La solitudine di una generazione: Enrico Palandri e le ambiguità della storia.” Caffé Letterario. Consulté le 13.01.04. . Pasolini, Pier Paolo. “I giovani che scrivono” in Descrizioni di descrizioni. Torino: Einaudi, 1979. 241-245.
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Pier Vittorio Tondelli à la Recherche d’une Patrie? Christoph Oliver Mayer (Technische Universität Dresden, Institut für Romanistik/SFB 537 Projekt E)
Parmi les jeunes auteurs qui sont entrés dans le champ littéraire italien dans les années 80, Pierre Vittorio Tondelli est celui qui reçoit dès son début littéraire l’étiquette d’écrivain gay. Ce qui semblait impliquer, vu la situation marginale des homosexuels en Italie, une réception très limitée et restreinte, devient en fait garant de son succès littéraire. On constate alors non sans étonnement: “The position of Pierre Vittorio Tondelli within the Italian literary canon is an unusually central one for a gay novelist” (Prono). Les causes en sont diverses; les romans de Tondelli auraient trouvé leur place dans le canon littéraire, malgré lui ou bien comme résultat d’une stratégie raffinée. La trajectoire de l’auteur de l’avant-garde aux grandes ventes explique mieux ce paradoxe. Les critiques catholiques avaient pu accepter l’écrivain, car Tondelli crée cette marge d’interprétation nécessaire qui fait de ses romans avec des héros de la subculture l’expression d’une altérité non voulue. Il convient toutefois de retenir que l’écrivain se distingue par son style propre et son habitus très spécial. En parcourant les romans de Tondelli on constatera qu’il tente de s’intégrer dans le canon littéraire traditionnel ou bien d’y trouver cette patrie que lui refuse la société. Nous nous intéressons en premier lieu aux réactions de la critique ainsi que du marché littéraire et du public plutôt bourgeois pour mettre en évidence les mécanismes institutionnels qui régissent le canon
http://congress70.library.uu.nl
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littéraire. 1 Un auteur comme Tondelli sait très bien comment éviter une lecture trop simple. C’est pourquoi il importe de distinguer deux niveaux de lecture différents: D’un côté, les protagonistes de Tondelli qui se trouvent à la périphérie de la société, leurs sentiments de différence et de solitude. De l’autre côté, l’auteur Tondelli qui atteint par le biais de son activité littéraire cette consécration 2 qui lui serait interdite en tant qu’homosexuel. Et comme le champ littéraire reste un champ de l’avant-garde, Tondelli sait jouer l’agent provocateur en luttant contre les conventions sociales et en soulignant le statut social précaire des homosexuels. TPF
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L’entrée de Pier Vittorio Tondelli 3 (1955-1991) sur la scène littéraire fut plus que spectaculaire. Il débute avec six contes réunis dans Altri libertini (Tondelli 1980), qui furent ressentis comme un événement: la censure condamnait ce livre qu’elle jugeait trop obscène. 4 Représentant d’une nouvelle génération – on parle souvent de ritratto di una generazione 5 –, Tondelli semble avoir trouvé le meilleur moyen d’attirer l’attention sur TPF
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1
Pour la théorie du canon on consultera Olivieri 2001, Assmann 1985, von Heydebrand 1998. Pour les manières de vieillir Bourdieu 1977.
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Pour la terminologie (trajectoire, habitus) je me réfère à ce qu’avait proposé Viala 1985 pour le siècle classique.
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Panzeri et Picone 1994. Pour un aperçu on consultera Ghidetti et Luti 1996.
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Dall’Orto 2003: “il solito magistrato oscurantista ordinò il sequestro del libro per ‘oscenità’. Fu l’apocalisse. Tutti volevano leggere il libro ‘scandaloso’. Altri libertini fu assolto e divenne da un giorno all’altro un best-seller, e il suo autore divenne un ‘caso letterario’”.
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Ibid.: “Tondelli diventò così il simbolo d’una generazione (quelle del ‘Settantasette’) [...], colui aveva dato voce a una fauna di ‘alternativi’, femministe, tossici, gay, travestiti, ‘scoppiati’ che fin lì non aveva avuto accesso all’aureo mondo della carta stampata”.
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CHRISTOPH OLIVER MAYER (TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITÄT DRESDEN, INSTITUT FÜR ROMANISTIK/SFB 537 PROJEKT E)
son recueil et sa personne. Si l’on suit les analyses de Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1992), Tondelli se comporte exactement comme tous les nouveaux venus dans le champ littéraire, il essaie de s’emparer une place dans le canon en introduisant une nouvelle mode, une nouvelle écriture, un nouveau langage (Bonura 1992, Carnero 1998, Spadaro 1999). Il sait par ailleurs profiter de l’image créée par la critique littéraire italienne. L’habitus de l’auteur alternatif qui avait vécu à Bologne pendant les années du mouvement de ’77 faisait de Tondelli le nouvel auteur gay italien par excellence. Cependant sa trajectoire semble témoigner de cette insécurité typique de l’écrivain à la recherche de son écriture, à la recherche d’une identité et à la recherche d’une patrie. Tandis que les critiques littéraires avaient loué Altri libertini qui leur semblait exprimer les sentiments d’une nouvelle génération ayant renoncé à s’engager politiquement, ils refusaient d’accepter le succès de Rimini (Tondelli 1985), le best-seller avec plus de 100.000 ventes qui rangeait l’auteur parmi les écrivains du champ de grande production. 6 Camere separate (Tondelli 1989), paru deux ans avant la mort de Tondelli, signale le retour de l’auteur aux sujets issus du milieu homosexuel. Il reprend donc sa place première dans le champ littéraire italien, qui reste malgré tout une place à la périphérie. Cette existence le distingue des auteurs plus enracinés dans le mouvement de ’77. Tondelli garde d’emblée sa place et se sert de la littérature pour mieux intégrer le milieu homosexuel dans la société, ou du moins dans le TPF
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Dall’Orto 2003 parle de Rimini comme d’un romanzo di consumo come Via col vento o come quelli della Fallaci”. Il ajoute: “in lui c’era il desiderio di essere non (o non solo) uno scrittore che sforna best-seller, ma uno scrittore che esprime qualcosa. Quel ‘qualcosa’ che né Pao Pao né Rimini ahimé contengono”. Lüderssen 2003 244: “Während der Roman Rimini formal noch nicht ganz souverän ist und etwas auseinanderfällt, wirkt Camere Separate organischer und reifer”. PT
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champ littéraire. Il accepte l’étiquette de l’écrivain gay et sait en tirer profit. Les protestations des années 70 (Gruber 1997, Grispigni 1997, Calvi 1977) visaient à changer cette Italie très catholique en un État un peu plus séculaire. On disputait du droit du divorce, on lisait Marx, Adorno et Marcuse, on se nommait antiautoritaire. Malgré le grand nombre de changements, la société n’oubliait pas ses principes bourgeois et donc hétérosexuels (Cf. Mignone 1998, Caldwell 1991). Un auteur qui écrit pour le grand public, doit prendre en compte cette réalité. Tondelli sait très bien qu’un héros homosexuel reste une provocation ou au moins une transgression. Les gays sont soit des artistes exotiques soit des solitaires marginaux auxquels le public s’intéresse à condition qu’ils ne s’insinuent pas dans la vie quotidienne. De fait, il movimento omosessuale était avant tout un mouvement révolutionnaire, le FUORI (Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Rivoluzionario Italiano) revendiquait tous les droits civils pour les homosexuels en se référant en premier lieu aux théories marxistes. 7 Il avait Bologne pour son centre, la ville où Tondelli avait étudié au DAMS, où il avait débuté comme écrivain et où, en 1977, 200 homosexuels du circolo di cultura omosessuale 28 giugno, commençaient à organiser des manifestations en revendiquant A ciascuno la sua dimensione. Tondelli représentait toute autre chose, à savoir la normalité et une grande conscience de soi. Il ne revendiquait pas ouvertement ses droits, mais il se contentait de dépeindre des existences à la périphérie de cette société (Zigaina 1999, Colombo 1992). TPF
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Mignone 1998: 319: “The movement proclaimes the New Revolutionary Homosexual, who, while he critized the limited nature of class politics, preferring a trans-class approach, nonetheless emphasized economic and social opression and paid attention to such questions as homosexuality in the factory”. Pour l’histoire du mouvement gay cf. Bolognini.
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L’écrivain Tondelli n’appartient pas vraiment à cette génération révolutionnaire, il écrit plutôt pour une génération frustrée qui ne proteste plus, qui ne fonde plus ses revendications sur des écrits. Comme les jeunes cessent de lire les livres emprunts d’idéologie, la littérature doit être investie d’une signification nouvelle, tout comme en témoigne l’œuvre de Tondelli. Notre auteur écrit avant tout sur ces jeunes et sur leurs problèmes qui ne dépendent pas nécessairement de leur orientation sexuelle. Dans son œuvre on assiste au retour à l’histoire comme chez Del Giudice, De Carlo ou Eco (Cf. Rajewsky 2003, Meinert 1989, Zancani 1993). Afin d’être revalorisée, la littérature a donc grand besoin de ces auteurs nouveaux qui, au lieu de suivre le slogan il personale è politico, contribuent à restaurer l’art de plaire. De nouveau on constate une prépondérance du divertissement ainsi qu’une certaine application à bien raconter une histoire. Le chemin concret qu’emprunte Tondelli est un des chemins qui mènent au centre du champ littéraire: il commence par un roman qui détruit toutes les conventions, qui néglige le langage littéraire et va à l’encontre des sujets traditionnels; ses héros, ce sont d’abord ces gens hors norme, qui tournent le dos à la grande culture italienne, qui ne veulent plus se révolter, mais qui se droguent, se prostituent, qui préfèrent la musique pop et rock, la vie nocturne, la sexualité excessive. Après ce premier roman, Tondelli écrit une seconde œuvre plus acceptable pour le nouveau champ littéraire. Dans Rimini, il y a des éléments romanesques conventionnels qui se retrouvent dans le roman policier, la comédie sentimentale ou le roman existentialiste; nous avons à faire à un spectateur qui certes décrit les anormalités, mais qui ne les vit plus. En dissimulant ces aspects typiques du roman traditionnel, Tondelli peut retourner, quelques années plus tard, à l’histoire d’un couple homosexuel – Camere separate – sans perdre sa position dans le champ
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littéraire qui est encore aujourd’hui plus précaire qu’on ne le pense. Si l’on consulte les manuels d’histoire de la littérature italienne, 8 on n’y trouve généralement pas plus de dix lignes consacrées à Tondelli et ses protagonistes gayosi. Tondelli y est toujours présenté comme un écrivain gay qui parle de ses propres expériences, quoiqu’il recherche la normalité et le succès littéraire, comme un auteur qui ne sait raconter que ce qu’il a vécu, que ce qu’il connaît. Ce qui le rend intéressant, c’est le sujet nouveau, en combinaison avec une brillante capacité de conter. Tondelli, ce serait donc l’histoire de l’altérité homosexuelle en Italie qui doit prendre ses distances vis-à-vis de l’excès sexuel pour rêver d’une existence bourgeoise. C’est pourquoi la critique catholique l’accepte comme un pécheur qui, juste avant sa mort, revient sur le droit chemin de la foi. 9 Mais cette critique oublie souvent que Tondelli thématise la recherche d’une place dans le canon littéraire ainsi qu’une place pour le monde homosexuel dans la société. Bien qu’il soit intégré dans la série des classiques chez Bompiani, bien qu’on le lise encore aujourd’hui comme un des giovani autori 10 et cannibali, on n’a pas beaucoup réfléchi sur la question de la représentation des homosexuels. Ses romans, il est vrai, reflètent la recherche d’une patrie: ses personnages qui ne parviennent que difficilement à trouver une identité propre contribuent à propager une image de l’homosexualité comme souffrance. TPF
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Par exemple Manacorda 1997 ou pour l’Allemagne Jacobs 1989.
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Cf. la communication de Antonio Spadaro “Pier Vittorio Tondelli: l’esigenza del ritorno” tenu au colloque “Letteratura e cattolicesimo nel Novecento: la poetica della fede nel secolo della morte di Dio”, tenu le 28 mars 2001 à Rome, sur Internet .
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Pour Dall’Orto 2003, cette étiquette est encore pire que celle de l’écrivain gay parce que “l’omosessualità è uno stile di vita e di cultura, mentre la giovinezza è solo una malattia che guarisce spontaneamente dopo un po’, come il morbillo...” TP
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CHRISTOPH OLIVER MAYER (TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITÄT DRESDEN, INSTITUT FÜR ROMANISTIK/SFB 537 PROJEKT E)
Mais cette recherche répond en premier lieu à un cliché répandu dans la société hétérosexuelle et contribue par là même au succès de ces romans pleins des allusions au monde homosexuel. La recherche est donc caractérisée par trois moments qui aident les protagonistes à s’orienter et qui les marginalisent en même temps: la musique, la sexualité et le voyage. La musique pop, l’acte homosexuel et le voyage ininterrompu ne sont pas compatibles avec la société traditionnelle, ils sont des marques de distinction. Une différence qui de fait incite l’intérêt des lecteurs, qui invite à lire ces livres et qui garantit que la littérature qui, pour les protagonistes, a perdu la valeur du remède, reste du moins importante pour Tondelli et la gay community. 11 En introduisant cette différence, Tondelli se distingue des auteurs de sa génération comme De Carlo (Due di due 1989) ou Tamaro (Va’ dove ti porta il cuore 1994). 12 TPF
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Cf. Schmidt-Henkel 1996. Une interprétation personnalisée se retrouve chez Minardi 2003: 53 qui parle d’un testament spirituel: “dalla difficile costruzione delle ‘Camere seperate’ come fuga da una passionalità distruttiva, al rischio dell’annulamento della propria identità (centrata sulla scrittura) in seguito alla perdita del compagno e ancora fina alla riabilitazione definitiva, sia della scrittura come sostanza e alimento del proprio essere sia, viceversa, di tutta la sostanza pulsante e desidernate del proprio essere in quanto subordinata alla ‘vita’ della scrittura”. TP
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Même s’il y a des réminiscences aux années ’68 et ’77, Tondelli reste un écrivain hors du commun parce qu’il a choisi un sujet pas anomal, seulement hors du commun. Dans Rimini, Beatrix est à la recherche de sa sœur Claudia disparue qui représente la génération hippie. Souvent, on se souvient de la beat generation qui se prononce contre les valeurs traditionnelles, contre l’Italia di Boom. Cf. Piersanti 1992. TP
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reste seulement un langage vulgaire qui répète des mots d’argot comme cazzo. Tondelli choque avec des tirades reprouvées.13 La musique sert à montrer que les protagonistes sont tout de même des êtres sensibles, quoique solitaires, marginaux et en quête de beaucoup de choses. 14 Souvent la musique pop et rock est la seule solution à leurs problèmes. On a comparé Camere separate à une jam session, Rimini à une symphonie orchestrale dominée par le saxophone, on a parlé en général d’une scrittura rock (Lorenzini 1992, Wahl 1992, Ballestra 1992). Les personnages du roman aiment la musique et vont à des concerts rock; dans Camere Separate, Léo se rappelle le concert de Bronski Beat à Paris où il avait rencontré Thomas, son futur amant, pour la première fois, en entendant la chanson I feel love (Mauri 1989, Piersanti 1992). Tous les deux se sentaient seuls, exclus, sans avenir, mais ils trouvèrent l’amour. Le texte de cette chanson traduit leurs sentiments: Oh it’s so good, Oh I’m in love. Mais la suite du texte reflète également l’histoire de cet amour dans la rétrospective: Johnny remember me, Johnny why don’t you remember me, Johnny I feel love for you, Johnny I love you, Why don’t you come back. Voire leur conversation tourne autour TPF
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On a constaté l’influence de Jack Kerouac et d’Alberto Arbasino. Cf. Tagliaferri 1992, Jacobs 1989, Giuliani s.a. TP
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Tondelli 1989: 8. Le début de Camere separate illustre ce sentiment de solitude et d’altérité. C’est le protagoniste Léo qui est caractérisé par l’auteur de la façon suivante: “Solo qualche mese fa ha compiuto trentadue anni. È ben consapevole di non avere una età comunemente definita matura o addirittura anziana. Ma sa di non essere più giovane. I suoi compagni di università si sone per la maggior parte sposati, hanno figli, una casa, una professione più o meno ben retribuita. Quando li incontra, le rare volte in cui torna nella casa de suoi genitori, nella casa in cui è nato e da cui è fuggito con il pretesto degli studi universitari, li vede sempre più distanti da sé. Immersi in problemi che non sono i suoi...” TP
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de la musique 15 ; l’ambiance des fêtes est dominée par cette musique culte dans la subculture gay. Thomas joue du piano et il n’existe – selon le texte – qu’un seul remède au désespoir de Léo: le souvenir, c’est-à-dire la musique. Autres exemples: Dans Rimini, le roman polyphone, il y a un paratexte, une citation de Joe Jackson, chanteur américain 16 , qui se dit entertainer; il y a des réminiscences de Cyndi Lauper ou de Leonard Cohen. Les musiciens aident à recréer l’atmosphère des années 80 et la combinaison de l’activisme et du plaisir de vie. Tondelli, dans une interview accordée à Fulvio Panzeri, exprime sa tristesse en ce qui concerne le présent. Il critique le caractère superficiel de cette décennie, tout en soulignant l’internationalité par la multitude de mots et de titres anglais et français présents dans ses contes. Ce qu’il veut, c’est fuir: “Per me la scrittura, il cinema, il teatro rappresentavano un modo per evadere, in essi potevo riconoscere il mio desiderio” (Panzeri 2003: 144). En sa qualité d’entertainer il veut distraire les lecteurs avec la seule chose que sait encore plaire aux jeunes: la musique. A la fin de Rimini, il ajoute la liste des musiciens et des musiques nommés dans son roman laissant ainsi penser qu’il s’agit d’un film illustré par ces musiques. Ce sont surtout des chansons qui traitent de l’amour, avant tout de l’amour tragique et sentimental, par exemple Square Rooms de l’acteur américain Al Corley. Par contre, d’autres incitent à l’engagement politique, par exemple Band Aid, Born in the U.S.A., U2 Sunday Bloody Sunday. Ce qui conte avant tout, c’est l’actualité de la musique: Matt Bianco, Duran Duran, Thompson Twins, Ultravox. Tondelli ne s’attarde TPF
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Tondelli 1989: 10: “Non si azzarderebbe mai a discutere con lui di letteratura o di filosofia, ma dei music-hall di Broadway sì”. TP
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Tondelli 1985: paratexte: “Che lo voglia o no, sono intrappolata in questo rock’n’roll. Ma sono un autore e sono un musicista, per molti versi un entertainer”. TP
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d’ailleurs pas de citer correctement, il ne recherche pas les textes, il ne fait que s’en souvenir d’où les maintes petites inexactitudes qui lui permettent d’adapter la chanson au contexte. La totalité des chansons fonctionne comme un soundtrack. Déjà dans Altri libertini, dans Viaggio, il y a une stream of consciousness causée par la musique en anglais. 17 Il répète des vers des textes, il les chante, mais il sélectionne les vers qui conviennent à son état d’âme. De cette manière, il reflète l’atmosphère créée par la musique, la solitude, le monde des protagonistes. TPF
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La sexualité comme expression de l’altérité
Le second moment, la sexualité, surpasse les essais de l’union libre ou de la promiscuité. Avec l’homosexualité et les autres pratiques sexuels, Tondelli met en scène une forme d’amour encore interdite dans la société italienne. On avait bien, pendant le mouvement de ’77, manifesté de la solidarité avec tous ceux qui étaient différents, on avait beaucoup écrit sur le corps, mais en réalité, décrire l’acte homosexuel, cela choquait encore et rendait impossible l’intégration de tel texte dans le canon littéraire. Non que les lecteurs n’eussent pas favorisé ce genre de sujets hors du commun, mais ils ne voulaient pas vraiment en lire des descriptions détaillées, même si elles thématisaient les plus tristes existences en dehors de la normalité. Tondelli n’est pas du tout militant 18 et ce qu’il raconte n’est pas extraordinaire. La plupart du temps, il ne fait qu’évoquer les relations sexuelles TPF
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17
Il y a deux chansons des années 70 citées dans cette partie du texte. La première est une chanson de Leonard Cohen qui s’appelle Bird on the wire. Quant à la deuxième, il s’agit d’un passage de la chanson Goodbye and Hello interprétée par Tom Buckley et écrite par Larry Beckett. TP
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Il se dit plutôt “infantilmente apolitico”, cf. Panzeri, Picone 1994. Je ne partage pas l’opinion de Dall’Orto 2003: 4, qui le trouve trop timide – “Che altro si può dire di uno scrittore che prova fastidio nel fatto che si legga ciò che scrive?” TP
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de ses personnages qui se déclarent eux-mêmes busone. Il ne se contente pas de raconter la vie de ses protagonistes, il les dépeint comme personnalités pour qui l’altérité n’est plus un problème spécifique. Ils sont conscients de leur différence et en sont fiers; il leur manque seulement l’intégration sociale. Dans Rimini, Tondelli ne manque pas de mettre en scène l’homosexualité, pourtant il la décrit comme l’aurait fait un auteur hétérosexuel. Il fait parler le protagoniste Marco Bauer, pour lequel les gays sont entièrement soumis à leur instinct sexuel: “Omosessuali tirati a lucido che procedevano come tanti robot girando continuamente la testa indietro o di lato in movimenti indipendenti dal resto del corpo” (Tondelli 1985: 40). 19 La description d’un hétérosexuel qui découvre ses désirs homosexuels renforce le processus de l’acceptation. A l’occasion d’une douche commune Marco Bauer oscille entre dégoût et aveu du plaisir: “Una invidia che poi è tutt’uno con l’ammirazione e fosse anche, l’emulazione, Guglielmo mi piaceva: per quanto si posano piacere, tra loro, due uomini” (Tondelli 1985: 85). Rimini, c’est l’Italie en miniature, une Italie dont les amours hétérosexuels sont tragiques ou banals, comme le sont les homosexuels. L’acte sexuel entre Bruno et Aelred est aussitôt décrit très détaillé – Tondelli n’a pas honte de le montrer comme quelque chose de bien. 20 Quant aux gens qui prennent un bain de soleil sur la plage “Only gay – una spiaggia a luci rosse”, ils sont tous “abbronzato, baffi, capelli convini, tinti, una catena d’oro al collo, un bracciale d’oro alla caviglia, una serie d’anelli d’oro e avorio ai polsi” (Tondelli 1985: 8889). Ils dansent comme des sioux, ils désirent seulement faire TPF
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19
Cf. ibid. la description des lesbiennes: “Lesbiche longilinee che passagiavano altere con le mani ficcate nelle tasche della giacca Giorgio Armani”. TP
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Mais la description ne ressemble en aucun cas à une prière comme le suggère Lüderssen 2003: 291. TP
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fête. Tandis que le protagoniste hésite à se déshabiller, les gays sont, bien sûr (presque) nus. 21 Le personnage Aelred est un beau, tandis que l’auteur ne s’intéresse pas aux détails de la beauté féminine. 22 La perspective de Marco Bauer est souvent celle d’un personnage hétérosexuel, sans intérêt pour les détails esthétiques; la perspective d’Aelred inaugure une longue mise en scène de l’acte homosexuel. 23 Ces passages pleins de promiscuité exhibitionniste et d’hétérogénéité thématique ont suscité de fortes réactions: à cause des épisodes érotiques, on refusa de présenter le roman à la télé. La liberté sexuelle qui fait scandale reste le signe de la différence des homosexuels, et en outre, pour eux, elle reste le moyen de montrer qu’ils ne sont pas seuls. Dans Viaggio, un des contes de Altri libertini, les protagonistes gays sont les mêmes, fugitifs, caractérisés par leurs relations sexuelles, sans liens familiers. L’acte sexuel est spontané et rapide – en signe de distinction des longs rites bourgeois. 24 Tondelli présente ouvertement la sexualité de ses TPF
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Tondelli 1985: 88: “alcuni in tanga, altri nudi, altri ancora con un pareo attorno ai fianchi”. TP
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Tondelli 1985: 160: “piccola, tozza, terribilmente sexy, con un gran culo”. Cf. Lüderssen 2003: 237, qui parle d’une image pleine de clichés en ce qui concerne la représentation des femmes (hétérosexuelles). TP
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Tondelli 1985: 197-200. Cette scène cumule dans “...sentì il profumo del sesso rigido di Aelred...Aelred scese con la punta della lungua a baciargli il membro...erano in orbita et termine avec Bruno si abbandonò sul letto e ringraziò Dio per abergli fatto conoscere, attraverso il corpo di Aelred, la preghiera nascosta, e universale delle sue creature”.
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Tondelli 1980: 81: “Mario ha venticinque anni, è bello. D’improvviso penso che andarci a far l’amore sarebbe bello, molto bello baciargli la barba. Mi rannicchio al suo fianco, quando mi passa la marja, mi struscio al suo braccio e gli bacio le dita. Lo alza raccogliendomi, ci passiamo il fuma in bocca, ci baciamo, entro nel suo sacco a pelo che abbiamo aperto un poco lontano, facciamo all’amore ma è soprattutto un odore, il suo, il mio”. TP
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protagonistes. Les protagonistes sont toujours convaincus de leurs propres droits, ils sont à la quête de leur identité et ils veulent vivre ouvertement leur désir. On n’attend pas de Tondelli qu’il s’excuse de la différence, il fait cependant scandale parce qu’il n’est pas un écrivain exclusivement gay et parce qu’il écrit aussi pour le public bourgeois et catholique. De premier abord, le public qui n’est pas habitué aux descriptions de l’acte homosexuel se montre irrité, mais l’irritation est le premier pas vers la tolérance. Le voyage à la recherche de soi-même C’est un autre moment qui donne plus d’espoir: le voyage à travers l’Europe 25 , un voyage qui n’en finit pas, qui passe par toutes les métropoles gays de l’Europe. Le voyage sert de fuite et en même temps de nouveau point de départ, et ce voyage se reflète dans la vie moderne, dans les aéroports, la mode, le walkman etc. (La Porta 1992, Betto 1992) Tandis que l’Italie reste le pays d’inspiration homosexuelle pour maints romanciers, les protagonistes essaient de se libérer de l’Italie et en même temps d’estomper les différences entre l’Italie et le reste de l’Europe. Viaggio est conçu comme un roman d’apprentissage entre Bruxelles, Amsterdam, Francfort et Bologne et se concentre sur le retour frustré après un long voyage. Au début le conteur – il s’agit d’une focalisation interne – s’imagine qu’il roule le long des boulevards américains magnifiques bien qu’il ne se trouve que dans les rues de l’Emilia-Romagna. Il parle de son partenaire qui veut s’en aller en Inde, une idée qu’il n’approuve pas et qui lui rappelle son stage à Bruxelles où tous deux partageaient la vie quotidienne, les drogues, les plaisirs et TPF
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Gramigna 1992 a fait une liste des lieux cités: Bologna, Reggio, Modena, Correggio, Milan, Paris, Amsterdam. Le choix des lieux montre une nette prédominance des villes du nord. TP
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les petits travaux. Les repas sont internationaux: le couscous, la pasta, le Birchermuesli et le Bloody-Mary figurent le voyage global. Il y a tous les clichés – par exemple la Hollande, c’est le hasch, ce sont les relations sexuels fugitifs. Chacun doit s’identifier, qu’il le veuille ou non, avec les idées reçues qui sont cependant génératrices d’une identité. Mais les romans montrent bien que les homosexuels sont plus complexes que le public ne le pense. Et comme ils sont toujours en route ils sont difficiles à saisir. Tous les contes de Altri libertini forment l’ensemble d’un road movie, thématisant la recherche d’un lieu où vivre. Ils se consacrent au tourisme et au vagabondage des jeunes qui voyagent à travers Amsterdam, Bruxelles et Londres. Ainsi, Marco Bauer s’installe à Rimini où il espère son succès professionnel comme journaliste au centre touristique. Bruno May rencontre son futur assassin Aelred à l’occasion d’un vernissage à Londres. Il va à Paris pour consulter son confesseur. Tout ce roman de Tondelli est plus qu’un voyage de polyphonie, parce qu’il mélange plusieurs styles littéraires et plusieurs genres, il se déroule dans plusieurs lieux, plusieurs centres et les acteurs se déplacent à grande vitesse. Dans Camere Separate, le pays natal reste omniprésent. Dans son appartement, Leo rassemble les souvenirs de ses voyages pour bâtir sa propre patrie. Comme il ne peut pas simplement suivre les traditions existantes, il est obligé de se former sa propre place. La relation de Leo avec Thomas débute à Paris, ils voyagent beaucoup ensemble, ils vont au Québec, mais ils ne réussissent pas à s’installer définitivement à Milan. Ils sont toujours en route, ils se manquent l’un à l’autre, et Leo ne fera jamais parti de la famille de Thomas, même pas au moment de sa mort (Tondelli 1989: 37). Le spleen de l’automne inaugure le voyage en Europe du Nord qui les mène à Dresde où Thomas se souvient de son enfance. Son retour à Milan l’incite à relire la Bible. Quand ils se trouvent à Munich, ils fréquentent le lieu le plus gay de cette ville, la Deutsche Eiche, un lieu de rencontre, un restaurant, une sauna gay. Léo réfléchit sur sa 490
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différence, parce qu’il ne partage ni le sadomasochisme ni la féminité des gays qui y sont décrits. Tondelli essaie de souligner la normalité de Leo, pour ne pas choquer les lecteurs, pour les assurer qu’il s’agit d’une personne plutôt acceptable. Mais en même temps, il souligne sa solitude et sa différence. 26 Alors que le monde en dehors doute encore de leur sexualité, Leo et Thomas la vivent déjà et cherchent un lieu où ils peuvent vivre ensemble comme une couple hétérosexuelle. Cette tournure d’esprit bourgeois suscite l’intérêt du lecteur qui cependant ne se reconnaît pas dans les deux gays. Le voyage dans tous les centres de la vie gay n’est pas d’une grande aide pour combattre la solitude (Severini 1992). Le titre de Camere separate implique déjà qu’il n’y aura pas de solution – Leo veut rester seul, mais Thomas recherche la compagnie. Il s’agit de voyager à travers sa propre âme, il s’agit d’une introspection. L’évolution de Altri libertini à Camere separate présente une image typique des homosexuels. Après avoir été considérés comme des criminels, on les juge par la suite comme restreints à la sexualité et puis comme des tristes victimes d’une maladie incurable qu’on obtient par cette sexualité excessive. Bien sûr, le voyage est une fuite, mais aussi un essai de mettre en scène les difficultés des personnes qui ne se distinguent que par leur marginalité à la société traditionnelle. TPF
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La valeur de la littérature chez Tondelli
Ces trois éléments, la musique, la sexualité et le voyage, suffisent à résumer les caractéristiques de la génération des années 80 qui s’oriente vers des objectifs nouveaux. Même si ce 26
Tondelli 1989: 61-62: “Né lui né Thomas avevano modi femminili. Né l’uno né l’altro rientravano nei luoghi comuni sull’omosessualità. Non erano teatrali, non erano sgargianti, non facevano chiasso, non erano volgari, non parlavano continuamente di sesso. Erano indefinibili e questo creava maggior imbarazzo”. TP
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n’est pas la littérature des engagés de 68, c’est l’écriture ou l’acte d’écrire qui permet de se trouver soi-même bien qu’ils ne garantissent pas automatiquement l’acceptation sociale. Au lieu de s’intégrer dans la société italienne, les protagonistes restent en dehors, vivent dans un autre monde, le monde “queer”, le monde des drogués, des criminels, de la night life. C’est seulement dans la littérature qu’ils ont les mêmes droits, le droit d’être des héros de romans, romans qui témoignent de fortes aspirations à trouver leur place dans le canon littéraire. Mais les protagonistes n’ont pas peur de vivre (Palandri 1992), ils ne luttent même pas contre l’Italie en se déclarant ennemis du patriotisme. Cet altra Italia existe surtout par le biais de la littérature. Et il y a une certaine logique, une évolution d’Altri libertini à Camere separate qui ne s’explique pas par la biographie de l’auteur, mais par sa forte volonté de réussir comme romancier qui innoverait dans la littérature italienne. Altri libertini, un roman obscure, se concentre sur cette existence à la périphérie de la société; Rimini, un roman polyphone, met en scène des personnages gays, pas vraiment sympathiques, plutôt comme tous les autres. Dans Camere separate on se trouve confronté aux sentiments intimes d’un amant qui ne trouve pas de place dans la société. Bourdieu dirait que Tondelli avait établi un enjeu nouveau, un enjeu qui n’est pas du tout défini comme gay, mais comme la description des sentiments de la vie contemporaine. Que nous reste-t-il des romans de Tondelli? Ils ne sont pas reconnus comme chefs-d’œuvre de la littérature italienne, mais ils peuvent ouvrir la littérature à de nouveaux sujets et contribuer à la formation d’un nouveau langage. Tondelli se retrouve donc dans le champ littéraire, pas seulement dans celui de la production restreinte, mais aussi dans celui de la grande production. Suivant Prono (Prono 2003), on peut parler d’un étrange processus de canonisation. Les critiques catholiques admirent son retour au catholicisme (Panzeri 1991, Marozzi 1991), mais l’étiquette de scrittore generazionale ne remplit 492
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plus son rôle: Il s’inscrit dans le canon traditionnel parce qu’il est rebelle. Les instances de consécration ignorent les contenus subversifs en parlant d’un retour à la normalité. Le champ littéraire italien doit intégrer dans le marché littéraire et parmi les experts de la littérature cet écrivain qui a produit un bestseller et renouvelé la littérature.27 Tondelli devient sous l’étiquette de cannibale de plus en plus un auteur canonique, surtout un auteur du canon contemporain. La transgression est toujours permise aux artistes en ce qui concerne la littérature, mais non en ce qui concerne la vie réelle qui joue un rôle de plus en plus important dans le monde des médias. Les limites du champ littéraire ont changé, même si elles n’ont que peu changé. Au contraire de l’affirmation de Dall’Orto 28 , on peut prétendre que l’homosexualité donne des ailes à Tondelli, mais, comme l’avait dit Baudelaire dans L’Albatros, les “ailes d’un géant qui l’empêchent de marcher” dans le monde littéraire bourgeois. TPF
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Ouvrages cités
Assmann, Aleida et Jan (Ed.). Kanon und Zensur. Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation II. München: Fink, 1985. Ballestra, Silvia. “Intrapolato in questo rock”. Panta – I nuovi narratori. Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Milano: Bompiani, 1992: 329-335. 27
Dans ce sens il faut différencier Tondelli de Aldo Busi, ce dernier ne faisant partie du champ de grande production, à l’exception de son livre Seminario sulla gioventù. C’est pourquoi je ne suis pas du tout d’accord avec ce qu’écrit Dall’Orto: “Tondelli abbia aperto un’epoca nella letteratura italiana, ma che il protagonista ne sia stato Busi”. Mais quand Dall’Orto essaie d’expliquer la carrière de Tondelli, qui “fu dunque catapultato alla notorietà quasi suo malgrado..., il ruolo di scrittore-scandalo, cosa che non fu mai”, il a de nouveau tout à fait raison. TP
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Dall’Orto 2003: “Ancora un paradosso: l’omosessualità ha dato (attraverso lo ‘scandolo’) le ali a Tondelli, ma poi gli ha tagliato le gambe”. TP
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Betto, Filip. “Viaggi, riti, ritorni”. Panta – I nuovi narratori. Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Milano: Bompiani, 1992: 309-317. Bolognini, Stefano. “La nascita dell’orgoglio”. . (7.6.2002). Bonura, Giuseppe. “Tondelli tra stile e prosa”. Panta – I nuovi narratori. Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Milano: Bompiani, 1992: 29-35. Bourdieu, Pierre. “La production de la croyance. Contribution à une économie des biens symboliques”. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 13 (1977): 3-44. Bourdieu, Pierre. Les règles de l’art. Genèse et structure du champ littéraire. Paris: Le Seuil, 1992. Caldwell, Lesley. Italian Family Matters: Women, Politics and Legal Reform. London: Macmillan, 1991. Calvi, Fabrizio (Ed.). Italie 77. Le ‘Mouvement’, les intellectuels. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1977. Carnero, Roberto. Lo spazio emozionale. Guida alla lettura di Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Novara: Interlinea Edizioni, 1998. Casini, Bruno (Ed.). Tondelli e la musica. Colone sonore per gli anni ottanta. Firenze: Baldini&Castoldi, 1994. Colombo, Furio. “Tondelli”. Panta – I nuovi narratori. Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Milano: Bompiani, 1992: 241-248. Dall’Orto, Giovanni. “Con le ali tarpate: Pier Vittorio Tondelli (1955-1991)”. . (6.12.2003). Ghidetti, Enrico, Giorgio Luti. Dizionario critico della letteratura italiana del Novecento. Roma: Riuniti, 1996. Giuliani, Alfredo. Autunno del Novecento. Cronache di letteratura. Milano: Feltrinelli, s.a.: 172-175. Gramigna, Giuliano. “Dentro la scrittura”. Panta – I nuovi narratori. Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Milano: Bompiani, 1992: 26-28. Gruber, Klemens. L’avanguardia inaudita. Milano: Costa&Nolan, 1997. HT
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Grispigni, Marco. Il Settantasette. Milano: Il Saggiatore, 1997. Heydebrand, Renate von (Ed.). Kanon – Macht – Kultur: theoretische, historische und soziale Aspekte ästhetischer Kanonbildung. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1998. Jacobs, Helmut C. “Pier Vittorio Tondelli”, Kritisches Lexikon der romanischen Gegenwartsliteraturen. Ed. Wolf-Dieter Lange. Tübingen: Narr, 1989: 7-10. La Porta, Filippo. “Tra mimesi e dissimulazione”. Panta – I nuovi narratori. Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Milano: Bompiani, 1992: 263-273. Lorenzini, Niva. “Una sincopata apocalisse”. Panta – I nuovi narratori. Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Milano: Bompiani, 1992: 57-64. Lüderssen, Caroline. “‘Love is Natural and Real’. Zum literarischen Werk von Pier Vittorio Tondelli”. Italienische Erzählliteratur der Achtziger und Neunziger Jahre. Zeitgenössische Autorinnen in Einzelmonographien. Ed. Felice Balletta, Angela Barwig. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 2003: 235-244 Manacorda, Giuliano. Storia della letteratura italiana contemporanea 1940-1996. Roma: Riuniti, 1997: 909-910. Marozzi, Marco. “Morto Tondelli. Ha sfidato l’Aids da cristiano”. Il Resto del Carlino 17.12.1991: 1/4. Mauri, Paolo. “Pier Vittorio Tondelli: Camere separate. Libertino innamorato”, La Repubblica 2.6.1989: 32. Meinert, Joachim. “Von Aussteigern und Aufsteigern. Leseeindrücke von drei jungen italienischen Erzählern: Pier Vittorio Tondelli, Andrea De Carlo, Daniele Del Giudice”. Weimarer Beiträge 33 (1989): 236-255. Mignone, Mario B.(Ed.). Italy Today. At the Crossroads of the New Millenium. New York: Lang, 1998. Minardi, Enrico (Ed.). Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Roma: Cadmo, 2003.
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Olivieri, Ugo M. (Ed.). Un canone per il terzo millennio. Testi e problemi per lo studio del Novecento tra teoria della letteratura, antropologia e storia. Milano: Mondadori, 2001. Palandri, Enrico. “Altra Italia”. Panta – I nuovi narratori. Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Milano: Bompiani, 1992: 18-25. Panzeri, Fulvio. “Il sofferto cammino di uno scrittore verso la redenzione”. Avvenire 18.12.1991: 34 ---. “Conversazione con Pier Vittorio Tondelli”. Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Ed. Enrico Minardi. Roma: Cadmo, 2003: 141155. ---. Generoso Picone. Tondelli. Il mestiere di scrittore. Una conversazione-autobiografia. Ancona: Transeuropa, 1994. Piersanti, Claudio. “Nel mondo di un altro”. Panta – I nuovi narratori. Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Milano: Bompiani, 1992: 97. Prono, Luca. “Pier Vittorio Tondelli”. An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. Ed. Claude J. Summers . (6.7.2006). Rajewsky, Irina O. Intermediales Erzählen in der italienischen Literatur der Postmoderne. Von den giovani scrittori der 80er zum pulp der 90er Jahre. Tübingen: Narr, 2003. Schmidt-Henkel, Hinrich. “‘...was die anderen selbstzufrieden verschweigen’. Anmerkungen zum Werk von Pier Vittorio Tondelli (1955-1991)”. Zibaldone 21 (1996): 91-103. Severini, Gilberto. “Private liturgie”. Panta – I nuovi narratori. Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Milano: Bompiani, 1992: 102-108. Spadaro, Antonio. Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Attraverse l’attesa. Reggio Emilia: Diabasis, 1999. Tagliaferri, Aldo. “Sul motore tirato al massimo”. Panta – I nuovi narratori. Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Milano: Bompiani, 1992: 12-17. Tondelli, Pier Vittorio. Altri libertini. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1980. 496
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---. Rimini. Milano: Bompiani, 1985. ---. Camere separate. Milano: Bompiani, 1989. Viala, Alain. Naissance de l’écrivain. Sociologie de la littérature à l’âge classique. Paris: Minuit, 1985. Wahl, François. “PVTTPV”. Panta – I nuovi narratori. Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Milano: Bompiani, 1992: 251-256. Zancani, Diego. “Pier Vittorio Tondelli: The Calm After the Storm”. The New Italian Novel. Ed. Zygmunt Baránski, Lino Pertile. Edinburgh: University Press, 1993 Zigaina, Giuseppe (Ed.). Pier Paolo Pasolini. Organizzar il trasumanar. Venezia: Marsilia, 1999.
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1977: les “Indiani Metropolitani” Déterrent la Hache de Guerre Excursion sur les Traces des Avant-Gardes des Années 70 qui Descendirent en Ville à la Recherche de Nouveaux Parcours d’Art, de Littérature, de Communication et de Vie Renzo Ardiccioni (ICR – Université de Ker Lann) T
voglio che il mio popolo cresca forte, che passi le montagne con le sue urla;il popolo degli uomini dicono i sioux (Enrico Palandri, Boccalone)
L’apparition des indiani metropolitani
En 1977, seulement neuf ans après 68, apparaît en Italie un nouveau mouvement de contestation globale aux facettes multiples qui voulait surtout se démarquer, d’un point de vue politique et idéologique, des mouvements précédents. Le mouvement de 77 se présente comme une Hydre multiforme, en raison des diverses composantes qui forment ses tentacules: anarchistes, féministes, ex-hyppies, freaks, sous-prolétaires chômeurs, syndicalistes révolutionnaires, organisations autonomes d’extrême-gauche et même éléments de l’extrêmedroite marginale. Un mouvement qu’Alberto Asor Rosa appela la “seconda società”, une société déracinée qui s’oppose à la “prima società” productive et formée par des gens intégrés. 1 PF
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Cf. Alberto Asor Rosa, “Le due società”, L’Unità, 20 février 1977. L’article sera plus tard le point de départ d’une publication en livre: Le due società.
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Le mouvement de 77 fut perçu au début comme un nouveau 68 (Salaris, Il movimento del 77). Mais il résulta rapidement que cette perception n’était pas la bonne, parce que entre-temps tant de choses avaient changé. Entre indiani metropolitani, trasversalisti, maodadaisti, cani sciolti, parodisti, émergea en fait une nouvelle tendance qui récupérait le langage des avantgardes historiques, en passant par les provocations idéologiques du situationnisme (nombreux d’entre eux avaient lu et assimilé les enseignements de Vaneigem et Debord). Le mouvement de 77 était bien sûr conscient du fait que les temps avaient changé et qu’ils continuaient à changer. Ces années-là, la nouvelle génération prenait de plus en plus conscience du fait que les médias avaient un rôle central et fondateur dans le fait de diffuser une idée où de faire en sorte qu’elle ne le fût pas. C’est pour cela que, mettant en cause le jargon politique le plus traditionnel, ils essayèrent de trouver un nouveau langage et une nouvelle manière d’utiliser la langue et la communication qui pourraient avoir un impact plus efficace. Comme l’a observé Umberto Eco, à partir de cette période les intellectuels se sont trouvés devant une génération qui s’exprimait sur un mode complètement nouveau qui rendait difficile la compréhension de leurs valeurs et de leur projet idéologique. On était complètement devancés et déroutés par cette ironie. Il ne s’agissait pas seulement de langages artistiques. Ce qui auparavant paraissait acceptable comme utopie abstraite, hypothèse de laboratoire, apparaît inacceptable quand elle se présente en chair et en os. C’étaient les mêmes difficultés qu’avait toujours éprouvées la gauche traditionnelle à comprendre ces nouveaux phénomènes, comme par exemple les hypothèses de laboratoire des mouvements d’avant-gardes, auxquelles ils opposaient la raison d’un sain réalisme. Eco écrit dans L’Espresso: 499
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Récemment dans une manifestation de rue les étudiants criaient: “Gui et Tanassi sont innocents! Les étudiants sont des délinquants!”. C’était une manifestation d’ironie provocatrice. Aussitôt un groupe d’ouvriers, pour manifester sa solidarité, a repris le slogan, mais en le traduisant selon ses propres grilles interprétatives: “Gui et Tanassi sont des délinquants! Les étudiants sont innocents!”. Les ouvriers voulaient dire la même chose, mais ils ne pouvaient pas accepter le jeu de l’ironie et ils avaient élaboré de nouveau le slogan en termes réalistes. Non qu’ils fussent capables de comprendre l’ironie mais parce qu’ils ne la reconnaissaient pas comme un moyen d’expression politique. 2 PF
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De nombreux sujets sociaux apparaissaient à l’horizon. A ce moment-là, il s’agissait plutôt de voir comment un projet abstrait et littéraire d’expression subversive (du langage au comportement) pouvait rencontrer d’une part le processus de diffusion des mass-media et, d’autre part, une situation historique et économique déterminée. On était dans une situation où le “moi dissocié”, le “sujet fragmenté”, le syndrome de l’apatride et la perte de l’identité ont cessé d’être hallucination expérimentale ou préfiguration de laboratoire et se sont transformés en réelle condition psychologique et sociale pour une grande partie de la population. Dans les années 60, à l’époque du boom économique, les courants de contre-culture − auxquels étaient liés les communautés hippies et le mouvement étudiant, soutenus par de 2
Aussi in Nanni Balestrini et Primo Moroni, L’orda d’oro, pp. 608-612; Umberto Eco, Sette anni di desiderio. Luigi Gui (Psdi) et Mario Tanassi (Dc), anciens ministres de la Défense, étaient impliqués à l’époque dans l’“affaire Lockheed”. TP
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nombreuses revues comme Re Nudo, Muzak, Gong, etc. − malgré leur caractère antagoniste avaient cependant réussi à exprimer sécurité et confiance dans un avenir radieux et des lendemains qui chantent. Précisément pour cette raison de tels mouvements représentaient sans aucun doute l’autre facette de la société du bien-être. Mais, dans la décennie suivante le cadre de référence économique et politique changea radicalement, à cause du choc pétrolier, et il se profila alors un scénario qui laissait transparaître un futur incertain et souvent sombre. Les étudiants de 68 étaient en majorité des enfants de la bourgeoisie,3 ceux de 77 étaient pour la plus part des “étudiants-travailleurs” dont la perspective était le chômage et la précarité. La fracture de la société est maintenant visible: à une couche sociale de privilégiés garantiti s’opposent les non-garantiti, les travailleurs en situation de précarité, les chômeurs, les “étudiantstravailleurs” (Asor Rosa). En ce qui concerne la composante idéologique, les groupes extraparlementaires historiques avaient subi une crise profonde vers le milieu des années 70, juste après l’importante victoire du Parti communiste italien. Il y avait eu aussi un important “riflusso”, un désengagement, un recul dans le milieu de la contre-culture. En fait, le dernier grand festival pop de 1976 au Parco Lambro de Milan organisé par la revue Re Nudo, avait révélé de nombreuses fractures entre les groupes et les groupuscules de participants ainsi que de nombreux problèmes d’organisation dans ce qui avait dû être une fête politique PF
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Rappelons, à ce sujet, la célèbre polémique de Pier Paolo Pasolini qui, en 1968, prit à plusieurs reprises la défense des agents de police, fils d’un sud pauvre, en opposition aux riches contestataires, enfants gâtés de la bourgeoisie du nord. PT
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collective. L’année suivante, en juin 1977, fut organisé sur un mode quasi confidentiel, par le bouche à oreille (ce qui peut rappeler les modalités d’organisations des rave-parties aujourd’hui), toujours par la revue Re Nudo, un autre rassemblement à Guello sur le lac de Côme. Cette fois-là l’événement passa inaperçu de tout le monde. Il y eut peu de participants, mais cette manifestation signe le début d’une très importante inversion de tendance. Pour la première fois très peu d’espace fut dédié à la politique, mais la revalorisation de la sphère privée et aussi du sacré fut beaucoup évoqué à l’intérieur du mouvement des jeunes. Les organisateurs, parmi lesquels Marina et Andrea Valcarenghi, qui avaient milité pendant des années dans le mouvement étudiant ainsi que dans les organisations d’extrême-gauche, manifestèrent à ce moment-là leur intention de se dissocier définitivement de la politique pour se diriger plutôt vers de nouvelles sphères spirituelles (à cette époque-là partir en Inde pour un voyage initiatique et purificateur était très à la mode), constituant ainsi le premier noyau des “arancioni” (du nom de la couleur de leur vêtement) et ouvrant la porte à tous les mouvements d’inspiration orientale ultérieurs qui vont des bouddhistes aux différentes sectes new age, en passant par les hare-krishna. Entre-temps s’était développé le mouvement des autonomes qui, partant des usines, s’était propagé sur tout le territoire. Le mouvement de l’Autonomie, soutenu par les revues Potere Operaio, Rosso et Autonomia donnait de la place à de nombreux éléments parmi les plus divers. Par ce concept d’“autonomia” ses partisans entendaient prendre leurs distances par rapport aux partis de la gauche traditionnelle. Il comprenait dans sa structure aussi bien des franges de sous-prolétariat que des extrémistes de droite. C’est dans ce climat que s’étaient formés les Circoli proletari giovanili lesquels, portés par l’urgence et le désir d’une nouvelle façon de faire de la 502
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politique, mettaient au centre de leur préoccupations la priorité des besoins, en récupérant la fête et le concert rock comme des espaces “alternatifs” (c’était le mot-clé) de socialisation. Et en pratiquant aussi de nouvelles formes de contestation paradoxale4 ils proclamaient le “droit au luxe”, le “caviar gratuit pour tous” et le “désir du superflu”. Les circoli proletari refusaient ainsi la politique des sacrifices qui était souvent le refrain de tous les partis politiques traditionnels, politique qui ne touchait presque jamais les classes aisées, mais surtout les masses populaires. Il y eut deux ou trois épisodes importants qui annoncèrent l’émergence du phénomène des indiani metropolitani. Le premier fut en décembre 1976: un grand happening du “proletariato giovanile” (ainsi l’appelait-on, peutêtre pour le distinguer d’une image désormais désuète d’un prolétariat ouvrier digne d’un musée néoréaliste). A l’Université d’Etat de Milan (Statale), à cet happening fut convoquée toute la “jeunesse créative” au cri de “Nous avons déterré la hache de guerre!”, comme on pouvait le lire sur le tract-manifeste diffusé à cette occasion. 5 S’ensuivit une vive contestation à la première PF
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Par exemple: l’”autoriduzione”, la réduction qu’ils pratiquaient eux-mêmes, d’une façon arbitraire, sur les billets de cinéma ou de concert; l’“esproprio proletario”, l’appropriation illicite des marchandises dans les magasins de luxe et les supermarchés.
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L’emphase sur les adjectifs “giovane”, “giovanile” etc., avait été la même dans le mouvement futuriste. Cf. Renzo Ardiccioni, Culture cybernétique en Italie, p. 70: “Les futuristes dédient à la jeunesse sa propre politique. Le slogan fasciste ‘Largo ai giovani!’ synthétise cette innovation politique. Le programme futuriste envisage le seuil d’éligibilité au parlement à 22 ans et le remplacement du Sénat par une Assemblée composée de 20 jeunes élus au suffrage universel où les femmes ont le droit de vote. Par ailleurs, la possibilité théorique de formation d’un gouvernement de tecnici, c’est-à-dire de professionnels, se substitue aux politiciens en place. L’esprit novateur et révolutionnaire des futuristes transforme une Italie somnolente en un pays où 503 PT
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de la Scala de Milan qui représentait depuis toujours la vitrine de la bonne société italienne. Dans cette vague de rébellion confluaient les expériences et les réflexions des années précédentes: le dépassement de l’opposition entre sphère publique et sphère privée (c’est-à-dire l’idée féministe du personnel = politique), le rejet de l’engagement politique perçu comme un volontarisme aliénant, la critique des hiérarchies, le “refus du travail” comme unique dimension de l’existence, voire même, dans les franges les plus radicales, le refus du travail tout court. 6 D’autres valeurs étaient diffusées comme le refus de réduire la vie aux intérêts économiques, le besoin de temps et d’espaces libres pour communiquer et créer selon la dimension de chacun. Le temps et l’espace sont perçus comme les véritables richesses et leur reconquête est indispensable. Il se PF
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“la participation de tous les citoyens italiens, hommes et femmes, au gouvernement [par] un suffrage universel est devenu signe de modernité”. 6
L’abolition du travail aliénant avait aussi été une aspiration des futuristes, qui avaient repris quelques idées radicales anarchistes ou marxistes. Cf. Claudia Salaris, Dizionario del futurismo, Roma, Editori Riuniti, 1996, p. 37: “A fianco di queste rivendicazioni il futurismo ha praticato anche il terreno dell’utopia, particolarmente caro a Marinetti, che ne offre un saggio significativo nello scritto La guerra elettrica (1910), dove [...] prende consistenza l’ipotesi dell’estinzione del lavoro grazie alla tecnica e alla scienza, con la conseguente liberazione del tempo di vita, lo sviluppo dell’attività ludico-mentale-creativa e il trionfo dell’intelligenza in un mondo smaterializzato” / “A côté de ces revendications, le futurisme a pratiqué aussi le terrain de l’utopie, particulièrement cher à Marinetti, qui en offrit un essai significatif dans La guerra elettrica (1910), où prend forme l’hypothèse de l’extinction du travail grâce à la technique et à la science, avec pour conséquence la libération du temps, le développement de l’activité ludicomentale-créative et le triomphe de l’intelligence dans un monde dématérialisé”. Pour l’abolition du travail d’une perspective postsituationniste cf. Bob BLACK, The Abolition of Work, New York, NSP, 1997, passim.
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manifesta alors un désir de “communisme” fait non seulement de “pain” mais aussi de “roses”. 7 Mais la chance des indiani metropolitani fut de courte durée. Au cours des mois suivants, la révolte se répandit et s’étendit aussi aux universités, mais elle prit aussitôt une tournure de style politique classique. Ce qui alarma les universités fut une circulaire du Ministère de l’Education Nationale (Ministero della pubblica istruzione) qui tendait à limiter les acquis et les droits obtenus grâce aux luttes de 68. Par la suite, il suffit de l’incursion d’une groupuscule d’extrême droite à l’université de Rome pour mettre le feu aux poudres le matin du premier février. Une soixantaine de provocateurs armés de barres de fer, de matraques, mais aussi d’armes à feu entrèrent dans les facultés de Lettres et de Droit en scandant des chants et des slogans fascistes. Un coup de feu blessa gravement l’étudiant Guido Bellachioma. En retour la faculté des Lettres fut aussitôt occupée par des militants de gauche et la révolte fit aussi tache d’huile dans les autres villes italiennes. La plus grande difficulté fut de faire cohabiter les deux natures du mouvement 77 qui étaient en train de s’affirmer. En fait, il y avait bien un mouvement composé de deux natures: l’une créative, ironique, goguenarde, ludique, à Bologne; et une autre plus sombre, nihiliste qui se manifestait surtout à Rome et Milan. La fraction la plus créative trouvera sa place dans les nouvelles stations de radio (Radio Alice, à Bologne sera leur référence) et de télévisions “libres” qui apparaissaient à l’époque et qui n’étaient pas encore récupérées par le marché qui PF
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Un vieux slogan anarchiste fut repris: “Vogliamo il pane ma anche le rose!”. Ce n’est pas un hasard si, dans ces années-là, la maison d’édition Savelli intitula une de ses collections “Il pane e le rose”, et dans cette collection fut publié le controversé livre culte de cette génération: Lidia Ravera, Marco Lombardo Radice, Porci con le ali. PT
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en ferait bientôt des télévisions et des radios “privés”. La fraction la plus dure du mouvement s’exprimera majoritairement dans des organisations extraparlementaires traditionnelles, avant que les plus extrémistes d’entre eux ne soient récupérés par des mouvements de lutte armée. Les difficultés à cohabiter furent tellement insurmontables qu’on en arriva rapidement à un divorce. Les 26 et 27 février 1977, à Rome, il y eut un rassemblement national des étudiants. Ce fut la répétition générale de ce qui devait arriver peu après, le “riflusso”, le retour en arrière, le désengagement politique de la part d’une génération qui croyait de moins en moins aux grands idéaux et aux lendemains radieux de la génération précédente. C’était un chaos total: on ne savait pas qui était délégué et qui participait à titre personnel. De nombreux membres d’extrême-droite infiltrèrent l’assemblée, ainsi que des provocateurs et des curieux de toute sorte. Tous cependant avaient le droit de vote, ceux qui intervenaient devaient souvent affronter les sifflets, les chants, les slogans, les cris. Les féministes et les indiani abandonnèrent l’assemblée en dénonçant un climat d’agression et de violence hallucinante qui ne permettait pas d’exprimer quoi que ce soit. Avant d’abandonner le rassemblement national du mouvement universitaire, les indiani metropolitani diffusèrent un communiqué: Noi, indiani metropolitani e gli emarginati, denunciamo e rifiutiamo l’allucinante clima di violenza e prevaricazione creatosi in questa assemblea in cui tutta la forza, la fantasia e la creatività del movimento è stata soffocata, violentata e distrutta da un modo di fare politica che non ha niente di diverso, se non negli slogans contrapposti, cioè rumore contro rumore, dalla politica praticata da chi odiamo e vogliamo distruggere. 506
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La penetrazione degli altoparlanti, la prevaricazione di chi è più tozzo e maschio, la violenza contro gli emarginati, che rifiutano di esserlo anche nel movimento, sono gli ultimi e violenti sussulti di un mostro che sta morendo e speriamo lo faccia in fretta e saremo noi a praticargli l’eutanasia.Denunciamo con tristezza ma soprattutto con rabbia il tentativo di ridurre le espressioni di creatività del movimento a semplici fatti di folklore e abbellimento per nascondere quanto di vecchio marcisca ancora fra di noi. In questo senso va il modo con cui la presidenza e parte dell’assemblea (per non parlare poi di una sedicente riunione di studenti medi che in realtà era uno squallido raduno di baffoni stalinisti che volevano negarci la parola!) ha accolto gli interventi degli indiani metropolitani e delle compagne femministe (che non vogliamo difendere perché le compagne hanno la forza e l’autonomia per farlo da sole e molto meglio!). Abbiamo l’impressione, che sta diventando sempre più certezza, che il Nuovo faccia paura a molti; faccia paura soprattutto a chi tenta di cavalcare il movimento, con le solite vecchie armi della prevaricazione organizzata, con le mani a corna o a pistola, disponendosi nell’aula come se fossimo nel parlamento borghese. Noi chiediamo che i gruppi parlamentari prevaricatori vengano sciolti, in caso contrario noi dichiariamo sciolto questo parlamento il cui fine non è altro che offrire uno splendido materiale di calunnia ai pennivendoli della borghesia. Ci dissociamo perciò da qualsiasi conclusione di questa assemblea, dalle migliaia di mozioni e contromozioni presentate dai professionisti della 507
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politica. Facciamo appello a tutti quanti si riconoscono nella autonomia vera del movimento di ritrovarsi martedì a Lettere liberata alle ore 17 per una assemblea dell’area creativa del movimento in preparazione della giornata di lotta di mercoledì a Campo de’ Fiori. Diffidiamo ad intervenire all’assemblea di martedì chiunque voglia riproporre il clima di violenza di questa corrida nazionale 8 . PF
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Comunicato degli indiani metropolitani all’assemblea nazionale del movimento universitario, Roma, 26-27 février 1977: “Nous, marginaux et Indiens métropolitains, dénonçons et refusons le climat hallucinant de violence et de prévarication qui règne dans cette assemblée où la force, l’imagination et la créativité du mouvement sont étouffées, brutalisées et annihilées par une façon de faire de la politique qui n’est en rien différente, sinon dans des slogans qui ne sont que bruit contre bruit, de la politique pratiquée par ceux que nous détestons et que nous entendons détruire. L’introduction de haut-parleurs, la prévarication de ceux qui sont plus rudes et plus mâles, la violence exercée sur les plus faibles, qui refusent de l’être également au sein du mouvement, ne sont que les ultimes sursauts du monstre qui meurt, nous l’espérons rapidement, et que nous n’hésiterons pas à euthanasier.
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Avec tristesse mais surtout avec colère, nous dénonçons la tentative de réduire les expressions de la créativité du mouvement à de simples manifestations folkloriques destinées à embellir et cacher tout ce qu’il y a de vieux, de pourri parmi nous. C’est dans cet esprit que la direction et une partie de l’assemblée (et ne parlons pas de la pseudo réunion d’étudiants moyens qui n’était en réalité rien d’autre qu’un abominable rassemblement de staliniens à moustache qui voulaient nous empêcher de parler!) a accueilli les interventions des Indiens métropolitains et de nos compagnes féministes (que nous n’entendons pas défendre car elles sont assez fortes et autonomes pour le faire seules et bien mieux que nous!). Nous avons le sentiment, qui devient de plus en plus une certitude, que la Nouveauté fait peur à beaucoup, et surtout à ceux qui cherchent à court-circuiter le mouvement, avec les armes habituelles de la prévarication organisée, les mains en forme de mégaphone ou de pistolet, et sont dispersés dans la salle comme si nous étions au Parlement bourgeois. 508
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Dans le langage de ce communiqué on perçoit quelques échos futuristes. Par exemple, dans cette phrase: “Avec tristesse mais surtout avec colère, nous dénonçons la tentative de réduire les expressions de la créativité du mouvement à de simples manifestations folkloriques destinées à embellir et cacher tout ce qu’il y a de vieux, de pourri parmi nous”. L’empreinte de l’idéologie futuriste transparaît surtout dans le choix d’opposer le “nouveau” créatif et libérateur, et un “vieux” oppressant et putrescible. Toutefois, on y lisait aussi différentes formules quasi bureaucratiques appartenant à une politique plus traditionnelle. Le communiqué s’ouvrait sur une dénonciation et se concluait sur une espèce de sommation qui n’avaient rien à voir avec un langage nouveau et créatif: “Noi [...] denunciamo e rifiutiamo [...] Diffidiamo a intervenire [...]”. Cela se concluait au contraire par une retraite et une fermeture qui étaient bien loin des élans futuristes. C’est par contre lors du rassemblement contre la répression, du 23 au 25 septembre à Bologne, que le mouvement exprimera au mieux ses énergies vitales et ses élans créatifs. Mais ce sera son chant du cygne.
Nous demandons que les groupes parlementaires prévaricateurs soient dissous, sans quoi nous-mêmes déclarons dissous ce parlement dont le but n’est autre que d’offrir généreusement matière à calomnie aux sicaires de la bourgeoisie. C’est pourquoi nous nous dissocions de toutes les conclusions de cette assemblée, des milliers de motions et contre-motions présentées par les professionnels de la politique. Nous en appelons à tous ceux qui se reconnaissent dans l’autonomie véritable du mouvement. Retrouvons-nous mardi à 17 heures à la Faculté des Lettres libérée pour une assemblée de l’aile créative du mouvement préparatoire à la journée de lutte de mercredi au Campo de’ Fiori. Nous mettons au défi de prendre la parole à l’assemblée de mardi quiconque voudrait en revenir au climat de violence de cette corrida nationale”. 509
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Du mythe de la communication analogique au mythe de l’information digitale, entre vieilles et nouvelles avant-gardes
Du 23 au 25 septembre, à Bologne, se déroula le rassemblement contre la répression, le “Convegno contro la repressione”. Le Pci, pour sa part, accepta comme un défi que le rassemblement se déroulât à Bologne. Dans cette ville qui est sa vitrine, il veut démontrer que tout le monde a droit à la parole et que sa bonne administration peut offrir toute la logistique nécessaire: repas à prix réduits (on parlait à l’époque de “prezzo politico”), transports, campings, services, toilettes pour les 100 000 jeunes qui arrivaient de toute l’Italie. Du reste, le Pci a maintenant abandonné la “théorie du complot”, à la suite de quoi nombre de ses dirigeants ont reconnu que le parti n’avait pas affronté comme il convenait le mouvement de 77. Achille Occhetto, responsable du Pci pour l’Education, propose d’ouvrir une franche discussion avec ceux qui pensent différemment, y compris parmi les franges les plus radicales. Massimo D’Alema, secrétaire de la Fgci (Federazione giovani comunisti italiani), affirme qu’il est nécessaire de comprendre les vraies raisons du mouvement de 77. Gerardo Chiaromonte affirme que le Pci est très en retard. Fabio Mussi reconnaît que le Pci ne peut avoir de préjugés hostiles à un phénomène de société qui naît de la crise du principe d’autorité. Enrico Berlinguer, lui, dans son discours de clôture de la Festa dell’Unità à Modène, le 18 septembre avait déclaré que ce ne seraient certes pas de “poveri untorelli” qui déstabiliseraient Bologne, ce qui signifiait, outre la confirmation d’un jugement négatif évident sur le mouvement, l’acceptation du défi d’accueillir le rassemblement à Bologne. Toutes les composantes du mouvement se présentent au rassemblement: de l’Autonomia plus radicale aux partis de la Nouvelle gauche en passant par les indiani metropolitani. Les fractions les plus politisées se confrontent, ou plutôt s’affrontent, voire même physiquement, au cours de l’assemblée 510
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au palais des sports. Chaque fraction participe à l’affrontement dans un état d’esprit très sectaire qui ne laisse aucune place à l’ouverture. Les différents éléments de l’Autonomie s’allient et expulsent les autres organisations qu’ils considèrent comme la droite du mouvement: Mls (Movimento lavoratori studenti), puis Ao (Avanguardia operaia) et enfin Lc (Lotta continua). L’assemblée montre l’incapacité de la classe politique à envisager des perspectives politiques concrètes. Plus intéressante est l’expérience vécue par les milliers de jeunes qui dans les rues de Bologne improvisent diverses formes d’animation, de théâtre de rue, de culture alternative, diffusant des dizaines de revues, fanzines et de tracts du mouvement. La fracture entre l’aspect politique et l’aspect culturel est nette. La fin politique du mouvement de 77 a en effet lieu à Bologne, dans l’incapacité de prendre des décisions alors que l’héritage culturel sera beaucoup plus consistant et donnera vie à des revues comme Il Male, Frigidaire, Cannibale, des groupes de “rock démentiel” comme les Skiantos, qui se distingueront par leur sens de l’ironie et de la satire. Un autre héritage du mouvement est aussi la critique des formes traditionnelles de l’activité politique, l’esprit libertaire et la découverte de l’écologie et de l’antinucléaire que l’on retrouvera plus tard dans les mouvements anti-mondialistes ou alter-mondialistes. D’autre part, la répétition générale de ces nouvelles techniques de propagande et de communication publicitaire que furent, en un certain sens, les happenings de groupes contestataires comme celui des indiani metropolitani représentèrent aussi un tremplin pour le désengagement politique des années 80 et 90. Leurs slogans, leur ironie, le caractère folklorique de leur communication, sarcastique et satirique, seront par la suite des éléments dont on se resservira, et qui, à travers les nouveaux réseaux de communication privés, ouvriront la porte à la politique-spectacle et au berlusconisme. 511
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La caractéristique principale du mouvement des indiani metropolitani se retrouve dans la variété de ses éléments qui ont, certes, une provenance sociale hétérogène mais aussi une provenance géographique différente, dans le pays du campanilismo où l’origine régionale reste un facteur très important, même pour des mouvements qui aspirent à une dimension internationale. 9 C’est donc pour cela que les expériences de Bologne, Milan, Rome, Naples, etc. ont eu des connotations originales très diverses. Les indiani metropolitani revendiquèrent donc leur appartenance à un territoire propre, tout en dénonçant la ghettoïsation comme les indiens d’Amérique l’avaient eux aussi subie un siècle auparavant. Les premiers signes du mouvement des indiani étaient arrivés des Circoli proletari giovanili de Milan lesquels avec leur manifeste “Nous avons déterré la hache de guerre !” 10 avaient relancé un état d’esprit déjà palpable à la Festa del Parco Lambro en juin 1976. De ce cri de guerre on fit de nombreuses hybridations dans les différents secteurs de la contestation. En 1977, les hybridations furent telles et tellement nombreuses qu’il fut le plus souvent difficile de s’y retrouver. 11 PF
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9
En fait, très souvent, à un internationalisme étranger correspond un “provincialisme” à l’intérieur: ce fut déjà le cas, par exemple, du futurisme, qui publiait son manifeste unitaire à Paris, alors qu’en même temps se disputaient en Italie ses tendances milanaise et florentine.
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Manifeste des indiani metropolitani, “Abbiamo disotterrato l’ascia di guerra”, Wow, décembre 1976. Une génération qui avait fait de l’ironie, de la désacralisation, de la folie ludique et du calembour, son arme de bataille ne pouvait pas ignorer l’assonance entre ascia (hache) et hascisc (hasch), entre hache de guerre et calumet de la paix. TP
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Il était assez évident que la génération des indiani descendait en ligne directe de la génération urbaine de la machine et de la vitesse du début du siècle. Toutefois ses composantes étaient nombreuses et ses contradictions inévitables (comme, d’autre part, elles l’avaient été pour le mouvement 512 TP
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Les indiani metropolitani, nés comme véritables sujets politiques au sein de la “Commissione emarginati” pendant l’occupation de l’université de Rome, étaient formés pour la plus part d’étudiants, artistes, intellectuels, mais aussi de prolétaires, ainsi que d’exclus et de marginaux. Mario Appignani, alias “Cavallo Pazzo”, qui était passé par de dures expériences personnelles de marginalité et d’emprisonnement, s’autoproclama leader actif du mouvement, sans que personne ne cherche à contester son leadership. Son habileté dans les happenings et les performances était indubitable.12 Il y avait des artistes comme Olivier Turquet (alias “Gandalf il viola”) ou Pablo Echaurren, collaborateur à la revue Oask!? puis dessinateur pour Frigidaire, qui revendiquèrent leur filiation futuriste, leur redécouverte poétique et politique du futurisme italien. 13 De nombreux fanzines “indiani” naquirent à PF
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futuriste). Pour une comparaison entre indiani et futuristes voir aussi le tableau “parolibero” de Francesco Cangiullo, La danse des Apaches, 1918, in Giovanni LISTA, Futurisme: manifestes, documents, proclamations, Lausanne, L’Age d’Homme, 1973. 12
Quelques années plus tard, d’ailleurs, en 1992, sa trace n’avait pas été perdue: il se lança dans un happening improvisé, en direct, lors du festival de Sanremo présenté par Pippo Baudo. L’animateur populaire venait de monter sur la scène majestueuse du théâtre Ariston quand Cavallo Pazzo cria au micro: “Ce festival est truqué !”. Il fut aussitôt bloqué par le service de sécurité. Au sujet de son histoire difficile et douloureuse, voir l’autobiographie: Mario Appignani, Un ragazzo all’inferno, Roma, Napoleone, 1975, préface de Marco Pannella. TP
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13
Dans une préface-interview Pablo Echaurren déclare: “Sai, io come molti della nostra generazione, guardavo solo a dada, al massimo al surrealismo. Ma il futurismo... Puah! spazzatura dell’Italietta fascista. Scoprii che non era così, che l’avanguardia era già tutta lì, poi ripresa, copiata, dagli altri movimenti. Per cui mi tuffai a risciacquare i panni, i pennelli e i pennarelli in Marinetti. Dagli indiani metropolitani ai poeti degli aeroplani” / “Tu sais, moi, comme beaucoup de ma génération, je regardais seulement vers dada 513 TP
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cette époque. 14 Parmi les plus connus, il y avait A/traverso de Bologne, Oask!?, Wam et Zut de Rome, Wow de Milan. Puis, d’autres sortirent qui se distinguèrent des précédents en devenant satire de la satire, une espèce de jeu de poupées russes: Altrove, A/prescindere, Abat-jour. Tous ces fanzines et revues, par leurs rédacteurs (Maurizio Gabbianelli, Massimo Terracini, Carlo Infante, Massimo Pasquini, etc.) s’inspiraient plus ou moins des règles de la poétique futuriste. 15 PF
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Voici quelques exemples extraits des pages des revues du mouvement des indiani: 16 PF
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tout au plus vers le surréalisme. Mais le futurisme... Pouah ! Poubelle de l’Italietta fasciste. J’ai découvert que ce n’était pas comme ça, que l’avantgarde y était déjà toute entière, et ensuite reprise, copiée par les autres mouvements. C’est pourquoi j’ai plongé [...] dans Marinetti. Des indiani metropolitani aux poètes des aéroplanes”. In Pablo Echaurren, Parole ribelli. I fogli del movimento del 77, Roma, Stampa Alternativa, 1997. 14
En effet, il n’existe pas de véritable littérature “traditionnelle” produite par les indiani, parce qu’ils croyaient surtout, comme les futuristes avant eux, en une communication éphémère, rapide et temporaire faite de tracts, communiqués, manifestes, fanzines, etc. TP
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Cf. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, “Supplemento al manifesto tecnico della letteratura futurista”, manifeste futuriste (tract), 1912: “Le parole liberate dalla punteggiatura irradieranno le une sulle altre, incroceranno i loro diversi magnetismi, secondo il dinamismo ininterrotto del pensiero.Uno spazio bianco, più o meno lungo, indicherà al lettore i riposi o i sonni più o meno lunghi dell’intuizione” / “Les mots délivrés de la ponctuation rayonneront les uns sur les autres, entrecroiseront leurs magnétismes divers, suivant le dynamisme ininterrompu de la pensée. Un espace blanc, plus ou moins long, indiquera au lecteur les repos ou les sommeils plus ou moins longs de l’intuition”. TP
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InAA.VV., “Lingue e linguaggi degli indiani metropolitani.”. Voir aussi Maurizio Calvesi, Avanguardia di massa, p. 98. TP
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Parodie de léninisme: Abbiamo visto le mille immagini frantumate e ingiallite dei vostri volti decomposti dalla MILIZIA INDIANA... [...] IL GIOCO NON CI VA... UACCIUARIUARIUÀ [...] DIFFIDATE DELLA REALTÀ... DIFFIDATE DELLO STATO DI AGGREGAZIONE PRESENTE!! [...] il nostro leninismo ci dà la gioia di poter scendere dal treno blindato e andare autonomamente a piedi...
Onomatopées futuristes: Ho assaltato l’armeria che calibro come si carica via via la falsa via via la nuova. FLASH candelotto. FLASH candelotto. TAPUM? TAPUM sparano. TAPUM TAPUM spari ma non ti vedo da dietro le teste. Pesa porca miseria pesapesa per correre pesa per scappare. Buttalo stronzo buttalo. Via via la falsa via via la nuova. SQUASC nel Tevere.
Guerre futuriste: Sì tu violenza detonazione crollo sparire via [...] ma via via via [...] funeralerura cadaveletruta ritmunebre putrevermisterio [...] kryxyulpv... via via... qui tu cataclismoto meccarigidato tascabile qui spaccraniumb liberruzione distraripoltramento qui qui qui REVOLVERISSIMO! 17 PF
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C’est une référence évidente au pré-futuriste Gian Pietro Lucini, Revolverate, préface de Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. TP
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Parodie du marxisme: E voi che cercate di ricomporre la classe attorno al vostro bisogno di marxismo missionario siete avvertiti la classe si scompone sotto i vostri occhi incapaci L'AUTONOMIA OLTRE GLI AUTONOMI e poi si ricompone seguendo l'unico ordine dell’ormai antico filo di Arianna e poi si scompone di nuovo in un groviglio di fili senza alcun senso per voi logico [...] DESIDELIRIO SEMPRE!!
Entre Dada et vitesse futuriste: Strani bagliori si disegnano nel cielo... sinistri lampi accecano le menti dei semplici: tempeste magnetiche si preannunciano? Questi sono giorni decisivi... PER NOI IL TEMPO SCORRE VELOCISSIMO... OGNI GIORNO ANNI LUCE. IL DESIDERIO HA SCONVOLTO L’ORDINE CODIFICATO DI ESISTENZA. [...] WAM è soggetto, tempo liberato che distrugge l’ordine separato di esistenza. WAM è testo in movimento, scrittura che cessa di muoversi nella separatezza dell’arte. WAM è DADA, WAM è una strega. WAM urla, teorizza, crea, delira, si strugge, distrugge [...]. WAM è lo spettro della disgregazione che vi soffia tra i capelli, WAM sono io. Fuori dal tempo vivide aurore si disegnano nell’etere: i Vascelli Alieni sono già oltre il presente...
Mythe de l’aéroplane futuriste: Noi ritagliammo i nostri aeroplani futuristi nella tela color d’ocra dei velieri. Alcuni avevano ali equilibranti e portando i loro motori, s’innalzavano come avvoltoi insanguinati che sollevassero in cielo 516
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vitelli convulsi. [...] E si parte, nell’ebbrezza di un’agile evoluzione, con un volo vivace, crepitante, leggiero e cadenzato come un canto d’invito a bere e a ballare.
Entre culture apache et féerie: Mi chiamo Gandalf il Viola. Parlerò a titolo strettamente personale. Perciò parlo a nome degli Elfi del bosco di Fangorn, dei Nuclei Colorati Risate Rosse, del MPFA (Movimento Politico Fantomatico Assente) delle Cellule Dada Edoniste, di Godere Operaio e Godimento Studentesco, dell’Internazionale Schizofrenica, dei NSC (Nuclei Sconvolti Clandestini), della Tribù di Cicorio, dei Cimbles e di tutti gli indiani metropolitani.
Le mouvement était aussi accompagné par les notes et les commentaires diffusées par plusieurs radios libres. Parmi les plus connues, il y eut Radio Alice de Bologne, Radio Città Futura de Rome et Controradio de Florence, aux micros desquelles quelques théoriciens comme la transgender Helena Velena ou Franco Berardi (alias Bifo) purent donner en quelque sorte une direction au mouvement en important en Italie les idées de penseurs français comme Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari. 18 PF
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Un livre culte pour la génération 77 avait été Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari, L’Anti-Oedipe, capitalisme et schizophrénie, Paris, Minuit, 1972. En France on accorda beaucoup d’attention à la contestation de 77. En observant le vif mouvement de protestation dans toute la péninsule, peut-être orphelins d’un 68 désormais dépassé, quelques maîtres à penser français publièrent en mai un manifeste contre la répression en Italie signé par Sartre, Barthes, Foucault et Guattari. Sur la base même de ce manifeste (in Lotta Continua, 5 juillet 1977) fut organisé le Convegno contro la repressione à 517 TP
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Le mouvement de 77 eut une connotation assez ludique, en particulier à Rome et à Bologne, en se rattachant aux avantgardes historiques et à leur goût pour la provocation, et pour le dépassement de l’opposition entre art et vie. Un fil rouge semble vraiment unir les futuristes italiens aux indiani metropolitani. Comme l’avaient déjà fait leurs prédécesseurs, ces derniers − à travers les jeux de mots, les anti-slogans, l’amour pour le paradoxe et pour la farce, bref, par l’ironie et par l’humour − vont aussi essayer de produire de nouvelles formes d’art et de littérature, des performances pour démonter l’ordre du discours des médias et du pouvoir constitué. 19 La naissance même du futurisme avait été un acte médiatique. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti imprima son manifeste dans un tract qu’il adressa ensuite à la presse internationale, “en transformant l’annonce même d’un événement en un événement à part entière” (Lista 289). En effet, ce qui avait caractérisé le surgissement du futurisme, c’était le fait d’apparaître au monde non pas sous la forme d’une oeuvre déjà réalisée mais sous la forme d’un manifeste, c’est-à-dire d’un objet publicitaire annonçant l’apparition d’une marque artistique, les oeuvres estampillées de cette marque demeurant encore à venir. Mais surtout, la recherche des futuristes dans le domaine des massmedia les plus modernes s’est basée sur une constatation de la fin du statut ontologique de l’art. C’est pourquoi Marinetti a PF
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Bologne, en septembre. La production théorique de Franco Berardi est très vaste, et elle s’étendra à l’analyse du phénomène de l’introduction de la culture cybernétique en Italie dans les années 90. Cf., en particulier, Franco Berardi, Politiche della mutazione; Internet e il futuro della comunicazione. Voir aussi Helena Velena, Dal cybersex al transgender.. 19
De nombreuses analogies lient les performances des futuristes avec celles des indiani metropolitani. Cf. Roselee Goldberg, Performance Art from Futurism to the Present. TP
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proclamé “l’avènement d’une esthétique de l’éphémère” (Lista 289). L’art n’étant plus destiné au musée, il devient une “pratique sociale”. Sa nouvelle fonction “permet à l’artiste moderne non plus d’interpréter le processus de transformation de la société, mais d’y participer directement en devenant l’un des acteurs de cette modification constante de la réalité qu’engendre le nouveau monde de la métropole, de la machine, de la vitesse” (Lista 289). Dès lors “le futurisme a toujours travaillé en termes de communication” (Lista 289). Les indiani metropolitani s’étaient aussitôt distingués, pendant l’occupation de l’Université de Rome, par leur détachement polémique par rapport aux autres commissions rivées sur les paradigmes de la politique. Ils avaient joué justement sur la confusion entre avant-garde et tradition, politique et anti-politique. L’opération se déroula à plusieurs niveaux: le premier, le plus déterminant, consistait à inventer des slogans, à les faire lancer dans les assemblées par celui qui avait la plus grosse voix (“Beccofino” Grechi fut leur mégaphone) et à les écrire à la bombe et sur des dazibaos. A un autre niveaux, il s’agissait d’accomplir des actes exemplaires comme, par exemple, organiser des cortèges, en file indienne, où chacun lançait le cri “Oask!?” en l’associant à un mouvement particulier des bras, comme pour nager, ou encore à se faire du thé (ou le carcadé) dans le cortège, ou bien à organiser des “sabbats” au Panthéon (une sorte de rave avant la lettre), où à appliquer sur leur bouche des pansements. Par milliers ils se grimaient et dansaient dans le plus grand désordre au cri de “ea ea... ea ea... ha! ha!”. Les médias, les journaux et les télévisions n’attendaient pas autre chose. Les indiani metropolitani mettaient de la couleur et faisaient parler d’eux. Ainsi que l’écrit Carlo Infante: “Ce fut aussi pour ça que notre groupe, rapidement, en l’espace d’à peine deux mois se 519
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dissout comme groupe actif dans le mouvement de 77: il ne se reconnaissait pas dans la logique de masse, il aimait inventer des langages-comportement et chercher d’autres espaces pour élaborer sa poétique particulière d’intervention. C’est ainsi qu’en mai, avec l’occupation de la maison de via dell’Orso 88, la “maison du désir”, le mouvement trouva un espace pour vivre et produire. Ce lieu fut en effet davantage un creuset de bouillonnement créatif qu’une communauté hippy. Déjà dans Oask!? nous signions ‘Indiani Metropolitani en dés/agrégation’. Nous revendiquions notre dimension moléculaire et psychonomade. Un peu aristocratique mais heureusement auto ironique”. La flambée joyeuse des indiani metropolitani fut de courte durée et s’éteignit rapidement en même temps que le mouvement de 77. A partir de ce moment-là, les langages du militantisme politique se mélangèrent. La récupération de certaines valeurs traditionnelles (écologie, antinucléaire, campagne,...) allaient de pair avec l’intégration de valeurs plus modernes (technique, médiatisation, ville,...) tout comme les valeurs de strapaese et stracittà avaient été en même temps présentes dans le mouvement futuriste du début du XXe siècle. Tout se mélangea et commença l’ère des hybrides. Il devint impossible de distinguer l’éthique et l’esthétique. La “babel” de signes et de messages annonçait la condition postmoderne (Lyotard). La saison du riflusso commença ainsi et plusieurs éléments furent intégrés dans la politique traditionnelle ou bien dans le monde des médias et de la publicité (qui bientôt deviendrait politique aussi). D’autres s’égarèrent dans le monde P
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de la drogue ou de la lutte armée. D’autres encore restèrent simplement des marginaux ainsi qu’ils l’avaient toujours été. 20 Mais pour certains débuta aussi la nouvelle ère de la “mutation” télématique (Dagnino; Alfano Miglietti). Parmi eux nombreux sont ceux qui se sont fait un nouveau corps digital à l’intérieur des réserves virtuelles sur internet. 21 Comme le PF
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Voir Laura Maragnani, “Indiani sì, ma niente assalto alla diligenza”: “La generazione del ’77 è una generazione perduta. O è stata annientata dalla repressione o si è autoannientata con l’eroina. Non ha conquistato posti di potere, come quella del ’68. Ma i sopravvissuti hanno fatto percorsi molto più interessanti. ‘Questa è una generazione dispersa. E che, per fortuna, ha conquistato poco potere’ garantisce Enrico Ghezzi, situazionista mediatico a Raitre, padre di Blob. Negli anni ’70 apparteneva all’ala ‘ludico-luddista’ del Movimento a Genova. Oggi non rinnega nulla, nemmeno la mancata presa del potere: ‘Trovo che sia la cosa più positiva dei settantasettini’” / “La génération de 77 est une génération perdue. Ou elle a été anéantie par la répression ou elle s’est autodétruite par l’héroïne. Elle n’a pas conquis de postes de pouvoir, à la différence de ceux de 68. Mais le survivants ont eu des parcours beaucoup plus intéressants. ‘C’est une génération dispersée qui, heureusement, a conquis peu de pouvoir’ affirme Enrico Ghezzi, situationniste médiatique à Raitre, père de [l’émission] Blob. Dans les années 70 il appartenait à l’aile ‘ludico-ludiste’ du Mouvement à Gênes. Aujourd’hui il ne renie rien, pas même la prise manquée du pouvoir: ‘Je trouve que c’est la chose la plus positive de la génération 77’”. TP
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Cf. Antonio Miredi, “Il corpo digitale”, Ariele Magazine, janvier 1998: “Che fine hanno fatto gli indiani metropolitani che verso la fine degli anni settanta, le facce colorate, le performances ironiche, gli slogan ad effetto, rappresentavano l’ala creativa di una sinistra forte di parola ma povera di corpo? [...] Dalla strada metropolitana alla piazza telematica il passaggio sembra necessario. La fine delle ideologie celebra l’unico feticcio rimasto e totem moderno: lo schermo mediatico. Il corpo digitale è diventato l’ultima forte ideologia” / “Que sont devenus les indiani metropolitani qui, vers la fin des années 70, avec leur visage maquillé, les performances ironiques, les slogan à effet représentaient l’aile créative d’une gauche riche en paroles mais pauvres en gestes? [...] De la rue au forum télématique, le passage semble nécessaire. La fin des idéologies célèbre le dernier fétiche et totem 521 TP
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souligne Carlo Infante “dans l’agitation diffuse, le fait d’être projeté dans une révolution anthropologique, qui se précise aujourd’hui seulement avec l’avènement du digital, était perceptible: du fait de l’émergence de nouveaux processus cognitifs non linéaires. Synaptiques comme notre imaginaire. Le jeu libre des associations, des idées, une sorte d’automatic thinking de libre énergie créative. Des potentialités qui trouvent aujourd’hui une forte résonance dans la navigation sur internet”. En soulignant l’importance des espaces autonomes parallèles, des tribus, des réserves qui permettent de se soustraire aux pouvoirs dominants les indiani metropolitani ont anticipé, par leur utilisation non conventionnelle des moyens de communication à disposition, les taz (temporary autonomous zones), c’est-à-dire les groupes autonomes temporaires en dissolution informatique continue. Ils anticiperont donc d’une quinzaine d’années les communautés artistiques in progress qui se retrouvent plus tard dans les territoires provisoires, dans les réserves virtuelles, dans les espaces de liberté nomade, dans les interzones annoncés et recommandés sur internet par Hakim Bey, le gourou de la cyberculture au fil des années 90. 22 En outre, leur tentative d’associer l’étique à l’esthétique, la politique à l’art, par leurs messages parfois insensés et contradictoires, a anticipé aussi le passage d’une culture de la communication à une culture de l’information. Les indiani metropolitani ont été les derniers représentants d’une culture analogique de la communication et ils ont, parmi d’autres, ouvert la porte au chaos d’une culture digitale PF
FP
moderne qui demeure: l’écran médiatique. Le corps digital est devenu la dernière idéologie puissante”. 22
Cf. Hakim BEY, TAZ. The Temporary Autonomous Zone. Voir aussi . TP
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de l’information, dont chacun de nous peut voir les effets aujourd’hui. 23 PF
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Ouvrages cités
Alfano Miglietti, Francesca. Identità mutanti. Genova: Costa & Nolan, 1997. Appignani, Mario. Un ragazzo all’inferno. Roma: Napoleone, 1975. Ardiccioni, Renzo. Culture cybernétique en Italie: histoire et perspectives. Lille: ANRT, 2004. Asor Rosa, Alberto. Le due società. Torino: Einaudi, 1977. Balestrini, Nanni, et Primo Moroni. L’orda d’oro. Milano: SugarCo, 1988. Berardi, Franco, et Veronica Bridi. 1977, L’anno in cui il futuro incominciò. Bologna: Istituto Gramsci Emilia Romagna, 2002. Berardi, Franco. Internet e il futuro della comunicazione. Roma: Castelvecchi, 1995. ---. Politiche della mutazione. Immaginario cyberpunk nel paesaggio paradigmatico. Milano-Bologna: Synergon, 1991. Bey, Hakim. TAZ. The Temporary Autonomous Zone. New York: Autonomedia Anti-copyright, 1985. . Black, Bob. The Abolition of Work. New York: NSP, 1997. Calvesi, Maurizio. Avanguardia di massa. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1978. Calvi, Fabrizio. Italie 77. Le “Mouvement”, les intellectuels. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1977.
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23
Cf. mon travail précédent: Renzo Ardiccioni, “La médiatisation en littérature”. Cf. aussi Frank Hellemans, “Towards Techno-Poetics and beyond”. PT
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Culicchia, Giuseppe. Il paese delle meraviglie. Milano: Garzanti, 2004. Dagnino, Arianna. I nuovi nomadi. Pionieri della mutazione, culture evolutive, nuove professioni. Roma: Castelvecchi, 1996. Debord, Guy. La société du spectacle. Paris: Buchet-Castel, 1967. Deleuze Gilles, et Félix Guattari. L’Anti-Oedipe, capitalisme et schizophrénie. Paris: Minuit, 1972. Di Nallo, Egeria. Indiani in città. Bologna: Cappelli, 1977. Echaurren, Pablo. Parole ribelli. I fogli del movimento del 77. Roma: Stampa Alternativa, 1997. ---. Volantini italiani. Frammenti italiani del Ventesimo secolo. Bertiolo: AAA Edizioni, 1997. Eco, Umberto. “C’è una nuova lingua, l’italo-indiano.” L’Espresso 14 (1977). ---. Sette anni di desiderio. Milano: Bompiani, 1983. Goldberg, Roselee. Performance Art from Futurism to the Present. London: Thames & Hudson, 1988. Traduction française de Christian-Martin Diebold. La performance du futurisme à nos jours. Paris: Thames & Hudson, 2001. Grispigni, Marco. Il Settantasette. Milano: Il Saggiatore, 1997. Gruber, Klemens. L’avanguardia inaudita. Genova: Costa & Nolan, 1997. Lista, Giovanni. Futurisme: manifestes, documents, proclamations. Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1973. ---. Le futurisme. Création et avant-garde. Paris: Les Editions de l’Amateur, 2000. Lucini, GianPietro. Revolverate. Milano: Edizioni di Poesia, 1909. Lyotard, Jean-François. La condition postmoderne. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1979. Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso. La guerra elettrica. Milano: Edizioni di Poesia, 1910. Palandri, Enrico. Boccalone. Milano: L’erba voglio, 1979. Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Scritti corsari. Milano: Garzanti, 1975. 524
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Ravera, Lidia, et Marco Lombardo Radice. Porci con le ali. Roma: Savelli, 1976. Ronchey, Alberto. C’est arrivé en Italie, la crise 1968-1977. Paris: Fayard, 1977. Salaris, Claudia, et Pablo Echaurren. Controcultura in Italia 1967-1977. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1999. Salaris, Claudia. Dizionario del futurismo. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1996. ---. Il movimento del 77. Linguaggi e scritture dell’ala creativa. Bertiolo: AAA Edizioni, 1997. Vaneigem, Raoul. Traité du savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations. Paris: Gallimard, 1967. Velena, Helena. Dal cybersex al transgender. Tecnologie, identità e politiche di liberazione. Roma: Castelvecchi, 1995. Weisberger, Jean. Les avant-gardes littéraires au XXe siècle. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadò, 1984. P
P
Articles, documents, manifestes AA.VV. “Abbiamo disotterrato l’ascia di guerra.” Wow, décembre 1976. AA..VV. Circoli proletari giovanili di Milano. “Sarà un risotto che vi seppellirà.” Squi/libri, février 1977. AA.VV. Collettivo A/Traverso. “Alice è il diavolo. Sulla strada di Majakowskij: testi per una pratica di comunicazione sovversiva.” Milano: Edizioni L’Erba Voglio, 1976. AA.VV. “Comunicato degli indiani metropolitani all’assemblea nazionale del movimento universitario.” Roma, 26-27 février 1977. AA.VV. “Lingue e linguaggi degli indiani metropolitani.” DeriveApprodi 15, novembre 1997. 525
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AA.VV. “Settanta7. Dissocupate le strade dai sogni!” Torino: Cric editore, 1977. Ardiccioni, Renzo. “La médiatisation en littérature: le passage de l’expression analogique à l’expression digitale et l’influence du futurisme italien sur les nouvelles formes technopoétiques.” Commposite v, 2003.2, . Hellemans, Frank. “Towards Techno-Poetics and beyond − The emergence of modernist avant-garde poetics out of science and media-technology.” . Infante, Carlo. “Dada dappertutto.” []. Maragnani, Laura. “Indiani sì, ma niente assalto alla diligenza.” Panorama, 14 mars 2002. Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso. “Supplemento al manifesto tecnico della letteratura futurista.” manifeste futuriste (tract), 1912. Miredi, Antonio. “Il corpo digitale.” Ariele Magazine, janvier 1998. HT
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“The Incarnation of the Spirit of Liberty” La Perception de Provo par la Contreculture Italienne des Années Soixante à Nos Jours Niek Pas (Institut Mediastudies, Université d’Amsterdam) Le 4 novembre 1966 parut dans Il Giorno, un article sur une manifestation d’une cinquantaine de jeunes qui s’était produit à Milan, et dont le titre disait: “I capelloni si sono organizzati come i ‘provos’ olandesi. Ieri, 4 novembre 1966, prima manifestazione ufficiale antimilitarista, erotico-pacifista (make love, don’t war) dei beatniks della Madonnina” (Pivano 88). Dans ce texte une expression juvénile italienne, ‘i capelloni’, était mise en relation avec une expression rébelle hollandaise, le mouvement Provo d’une part, et une manifestation contreculturelle américaine, les beatniks, de l’autre. Au début des années soixante les cultures alternatives à travers lesquelles la jeunesse montante tentait de s’exprimer étaient, comparées aux Pays-Bas ou l’Angleterre, encore faiblement développées en Italie. Ce n’était que dans la deuxième moitié de la décennie qu’elles commencèrent à se manifester pleinement. Quand, en plein été 1965, les premiers ‘capelloni’ furent remarqués par la presse italienne, souvent il s’agissait de jeunes gens de passage dans la capitale italienne issus du Nord de l’Europe, la Scandinavi, l’Allemagne de l’Ouest, l’Angleterre et les PaysBas. Dans un article paru en novembre 1965 dans le Corriere della Sera de la part de Paolo Bugialli, devenu fameux par la suite, cette nouvelle culturele de jeunes fut dénoncée (Marwick 493). Le présent article se veut une première interrogation sur le contexte transnational de la génèse de la contreculture
http://congress70.library.uu.nl/
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italienne dans les ‘années ’68’ (Dreyfus-Armand 13-21). Loin d’être exhaustif, notre curiosité porte sur la perception et la réception du mouvement Provo néerlandais en Italie. Tout comme en Belgique, France, Grande Bretagne, Allemagne, Suède ou bien en Tchécoslovaquie, Provo laissa des traces – dans des cultures alternatives et dans la presse. Avant de considérer ce que Provo représentait pour l’émergence de cultures alternatives et contestataires en Italie, regardons d’abord de plus près le mouvement Provo tel qu’il se manifestait aux Pays-Bas. 1 F
F
L’essor Provo
Provo se constitua au printemps de 1965 à Amsterdam et peut être considéré à la fois comme une expression politique et culturelle. Contrairement au mythe de la génération baby-boom, selon laquelle les cohortes nées dans les années quarante auraient constitué l’alpha et omega des ‘swinging sixties’, Provo fut avant tout un phénomène multi-générationnelle. Ce mouvement contestataire qui rassemblait une nébuleuse complexe sous plusieurs noyaux se caractérisa en même temps comme sociologiquement mixte et géographiquement diverse. Le terme ‘Provo’ vient de provoquer, provocare, ce qui implique une action, une activité. D’une part provoquer la société moderne de la deuxième moitié du vingtième siècle: critiquer les autorités, ridiculiser le comportement des classes politiques, questionner les opinions reçues et les mentalités existantes. De l’autre, ce phénomène témoigna également d’un rêve utopique: un plaidoyer pour vivre autrement, une tentative de vivre plus consciemment et de trouver des modes de vie alternatifs. Provo fut la manifestation d’une révolution expressive, artistique, créative,
1
Voir ma thèse de doctorat intitulée: Imaazje! De verbeelding van Provo (1965-1967). 528
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ludique et profondément impregnée de valeurs romantiques.2 Les provos agissèrent dans la pratique, ils ne théorétisèrent pas ou peu leurs convictions pacifistes, anti-militaristes et anticapitalistes. Difficile donc de le ranger parmi les mouvements d’avant-garde ‘classiques’, comme le Futurisme ou le Situationnisme. Provo prôna une nouvelle politique et un style de vie expressif. Les activistes néerlandais avancèrent un répertoire d’action très varié. D’une part, ils montaient des actions classiques, participaient aux manifestations type grand cortège bien organisé (dans le cadre des manifestations contre la guerre du Vietnam), s’inscrivaient aux élections municipales et sortaient une revue mensuelle. Parallèllement, le mouvement se distingua de toutes ces formes connues en soulignant un côté artistique et créateur, ce dont témoignaient les fameux ‘happenings’. Ce théâtre en plein air avait été développé à partir de 1961 par Robert Jasper Grootveld, un marginal appartenant à une génération plus âgé (il était né en 1932). Ce Mouna Aguigui néerlandais fut un intermédiaire culturel (Vovelle 171-84) avant la lettre. Pour ses happenings il puisait à la fois dans des registres artistiques3 et charivaresques, ces formes anciennes d’actions collectives qui visaient à dénoncer et à ridiculiser. Son théâtre expressif en plein centre d’Amsterdam rélévait donc à la fois de la folklore et de l’art moderne. Pour Grootveld, qui se considérait être un exhibitionniste, c’était en même temps un moyen de générer de la publicité et de se faire connaître devant l’opinion publique. La jeune bande des provos qui comprenait quelques dizaines de personnes tout au plus F
F
F
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2
Une excellente élaboration sociologique du concept ‘expressive revolution’ a été réalisée par Bernice Martin.
3
Le happening fut développé comme performance art aux Etats-Unis dans les années cinquante avant de faire son apparition dans l’avant-garde européenne. En 1962 à Amsterdam Grootveld participa à un happening en salle qui fut réalisé par des milieux artistiques néerlandais en collaboration de Jean Jacques Lebel (voir son essai Le happening). 529
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s’inspira de ce prophète et instrumentalisa la formule du happening pour leur propre cause. A partir de mars 1966 commença la deuxième phase dans la vie du mouvement et celle-ci se caractérisa par une reconnaissance croissante en dehors d’Amsterdam et des milieux d’activistes et, en même temps, par un début d’institutionnalisation. C’est à travers trois événements que les provos se firent connaître sur un plan international. Le 10 mars 1966 ils jetèrent des bombes fumigènes au sein du cortège nuptial de la princesse Béatrice et l’Allemand Claus von Amsberg. Les images télévisées de cet incident firent le tour du monde. Quelques mois plus tard, en juin 1966, les provos apparirent sur les Unes des journaux et dans les émissions à la radio et la télévision après avoir annoncé leur participation aux élections municipales. Dans cette période, Amsterdam fut le décor d’une révolte ouvrière. La responsabilité de cette émeute fut attribué à Provo. Ces événements entrainèrent une médiatisation galloppante qui fit que Provo devint un phénomène connu sur un plan mondial. Parallèllement à ce développement le mouvement devint un style, une forme fixe et, dans ses composantes, un phénomène figé. Les actions spectaculaires dans la rue disparirent en faveur de participations aux débats en salle et dans les écoles devant des étudiants; quelques-un des chefs de file commencèrent à réaliser des rétrospectives sur leur propre engagement. Ajoutons également les écrits d’innombrables spécialistes, sociologues et psychologues, criminologues et politologues, journalistes et publicistes confondus, qui s’interrogèrent sur ce groupe rébelle surprenant. Ensuite plusieurs éléments du répertoire expressif furent repris par l’industrie culturelle. Dans la mode, la musique beat, le cinéma et même dans la publicité il y eut des tentatives de capitaliser l’esprit provo en vogue, notamment le concept de leurs fameuses idées blanches. Les folk devils d’Amsterdam, à l’instar des Mods et Rockers anglais au début des années soixante en 530
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Angleterre, devinrent à la mode, furent imités, assujettis aux stratégies marketing et absorbés par la société de consommation (Cohen). Provo, puissant symbole de l’anti-structure, devint luimême de plus en plus structuré. Dans une tentative de devancer tant bien que mal ce développement, les chefs de file décidèrent de passer à l’auto-dissolution. En mai 1967, deux ans après les premières actions montées, le mouvement se saborda avec un happening dans le Vondelpark à Amsterdam. Diffusion d’un modèle contreculturel en Italie
Comment expliquer la diffusion des idées et des tactiques provocatrices à l’étranger, en l’occurence en Italie? A cet effet, nous proposons de distinguer parmi quatre vecteurs qui aideront à expliquer ce processus (Hollstein 35). En premier lieu, des itinéraires personnelles, des Italiens se rendant à Amsterdam comme l’éditeur Giovanni Semerano ou bien le jeune beatnik Vittorio di Russo. Chacun à sa manière ces personnes s’inspirèrent du groupe amstellodamois. Semerano demanda au journaliste Paolo Romano Andreoli d’écrire un livre sur les provos intitulé Provo, qu’il fit sortir en 1967 4 tandis que Di Russo alla jouer un rôle important dans les milieux contreculturels de Milan, à partir de l’automne 1966 (Guarnaccia 1997, 143-45). Un deuxième vecteur concerne la circulation des informations dans des milieux militants, anarchistes, gauchistes F
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4
Andreoli s’expliqua sur la genèse de ce premier livre en italien sur les provos: “Un mio amico editore, Giovanni Semerano, era stato ad Amsterdam e aveva assistito ad una manifestazione dei provos. Tornato a Roma, mi propose di scrivere un libro su questo fenomeno. [...] Così partii per l’Olanda e feci una ricerca sul campo, come un cronista. Cominciai a lavorare sul materiale che avevo raccolto e riuscii a trovare a Roma, due giovani olandesi che studiavano all’Academia di Olanda. Ebbi con loro alcune conversazioni molto interessanti, che mi aiutarono a capire. Scrissi il libro molto rapidamente.” Lettre de Paolo Romano Andreoli à l’auteur, Rome, le 17 septembre 2004. 531
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et activistes de tous bords. Assez tôt, dès l’été 1965, ces cercles – dans lesquels notamment des groupes libertaires français tenaient une place importante – se renseignèrent sur ce qui se passait aux Pays-Bas et en témoignèrent dans leur revues. Des militants se rencontraient également lors des manifestations internationales (contre la guerre du Vietnam, l’opposition à la guerre étant l’un des catalysateurs de la contestation naissante), pendant les vacances de Pâques ou d’été aux campings libertaires ainsi qu’aux congrès et débats internationaux. Troisième vecteur important dans cette diffusion, le rôle de la presse et les mass média (les grandes magazines, journaux et hebdomadaires confondus) d’un côté, la radio et la télévision de l’autre. Soulignons qu’en 1966 le mariage de Béatrix fut l’événement le plus amplement médiatisé dans l’histoire hollandaise et diffusé dans le cadre de l’Eurovision. Le journaliste italien Andreoli a remarqué à cet égard: I giornali italiani ne avevano parlato in occasione del matrimonio della Principessa Beatrice d’Olanda con il diplomatico tedesco Klaus Von Amsberg. Il corteo nuziale, riferivano i cronisti, era stato disturbato dai ‘provos’, da giovani provocatori, forse reppublicani, o comunisti; forse solo ragazzacci. Ma quei ragazzacci avevano conquistato nel giugno del 1966 un seggio nel Consiglio Municipale di Amsterdam e la storia cominciava a diventare interessante.
Le dernier vecteur que nous devons prendre également en considération concerne les publications Provo, articles et livres confondus, traduites en langues étrangères. Parmi ceux-ci figurent le fameux ‘appèl au provotariat international’ (‘Appello al Provotariato internazionale’ dans Provo (Milano) numéro 2, 1967) ou bien des articles de la main d’un des chefs de file, Roel van Duijn (1943), comme par exemple son “Introduzione al pensiero provocatore” qui fut publié dans Arte Segrete (1967). 532
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Sa réputation fit que Provo suscita des réactions très diverses: il est hors de doute que dans la grande majorité de la presse italienne, il y avait peu de souci de différencier et de nuancer ce que fut que Provo. D’un côté, il y avait la presse libérale, L’Espresso ou Panorama, dont les articles montrèrent un monde exotique et captivant; de l’autre, le Corriere della Sera qui avança le côté scandaleux (Lumley). Mais il est vrai aussi que les provos suscitèrent l’admiration de la part d’une frange de la jeunesse italienne. En voici un exemple d’un fragment issu d’une lettre envoyée par des étudiants de Prato: We are a group of Italian students and we have read in several newspapers of Provo’s demonstrations in occasion of princess Beatrice’s wedding day […] We want to show you all our solidarity for your cause! We have read many things about Provos and now we know that you are fighting for a great ideal: […] We also admire you because we see in you the incarnation of the spirit of liberty of all the young ones in the world: Young Ones want to be free and we hope we shall be like you, though in Italy we are still far from a real freedom. (Savorelli et Carboncini)
Pour ces étudiants, qui expriment dans ce texte le désir de se libérer des contraintes qu’ils éprouvent devant la société italienne, Provo fut un symbôle de liberté. Parfois cette admiration alla plus loin: des revues et groupes contreculturels naissants, comme Mondo Beat et ‘Onda Verde’ à Milan ou ‘Gruppo Provo Roma’ à Rome s’inspirèrent profondément des Néerlandais. Ils s’intéressèrent notamment au “metodologie provocatorie” ou bien “metodi di provocazione ironica” et se manifestèrent pendant des happenings contre la guerre du Vietnam ou à travers des actions ludiques dirigées contre les visites de chefs d’Etat de pays occidentaux en Italie (Echaurren et Salaris 26-27, 31, 35). 533
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Tout comme leurs homologues néerlandais, les militants italiens se déclaraient pacifistes, anarchistes dotés de l’autodérision et d’humour ironique et se montraient critiques envers la société de consommation. Une comparaison de leurs pamphlets et publications avec ceux de Provo, aussi bien d’un point de vue du discours (le style) que du contenu (les thèmes abordés) reste encore à faire. Mais la ressemblance entre les idéaux, et la manière dont ceux-ci passèrent entre les jeunes générations italiennes et néerlandaises, semble confirmée. Les Italiens aspirent également “scatenare una guerriglia controculturale condotta con le armi della satira e del gioco.” (Echaurren et Salaris 32). Ils essayèrent d’imiter répertoire et idées de ce que c’était que Provo, un peu comme il en arriva à la musique beat d’époque quand, sur le vieux continent, apparirent de groupes de jeunes à imitation Beatles et Rolling Stones. Dans une certaine mesure les provos amstellodamois figurèrent donc comme role models, bien entendu parmi d’autres modèles, pour cette frange de la jeunesse italienne appartenant à la contreculture naissante. Ainsi s’opéra un transfer symbôlique: dans plusieurs manifestations l’emblême et le nom ‘Provo’ figurèrent sur les panneaux et pancartes. Dans plusieurs villes le style vestimentaire provo, à travers jeans et blousons blancs, apparut dans les rues. Provo en tant que source d’inspiration ou mode de critique qui permit aux adeptes de la contre-culture italienne d’avancer des thèmes propre à la société italienne. Par exemple, le ‘Gruppo Provo Milano Uno’ diffusa à Noël 1966 un tract ronéotypé intitulé ‘Provokazione. Messagio papale al provotario italiano’. Ce texte était un pastiche d’un discours du pape, tout comme les provos néerlandais diffusèrent des tracts contenant des déclarations inventées et attribuées aux autorités hollandaises. Dans le tract milanais, le pape tient un discours assez farfelu dans lequel il avoue ne plus pouvoir supporter la guerre au Vietnam: 534
NIEK PAS (INSTITUT MEDIASTUDIES, UNIVERSITE D’AMSTERDAM)
Non posso più sopportare questa guerra terribile. Cosa possiamo aspettarci da une Chiese piena di gente che rutta, tutta piena di vino e carne, e che ogni anno permette ai maghi della reclam di eccitare l’erezione economica natalizia. E per questo, provos, figli miei, che io ripongo la mia ultima speranza in voi: La festa natale e una festa pagana – percio’ partecipate! Pisciate nell’acqua benedetta, guerra sulla terra, pace in Viet-Nam!
Toutefois, à l’encontre des Néerlandais, qui eurent développé leur répertoire d’action à tâtons, en improvisant beaucoup, les groupuscules italiens tentèrent de systématiser les différentes formes de manifestation. Des textes parus dans Mondo Beat en témoignent. Dans ces fragments il est question de ‘metodologia strategica’ et ‘metodologia tattica’, termes d’ailleurs, que les provos néerlandais n’emploièrent jamais (De Martino et Marco Grispigni 404-05). Fin 1966 les contacts s’intensifièrent entre Néerlandais et Italiens, ce dont témoigne un congrès anarchiste international à Milan. Deux provos hollandais étaient présents, Rob Stolk (1946-2001) et Tom Bouman (1937). Ce dernier fut un ancien journaliste du quotidien Het Parool qui s’était rapproché du groupe au point de devenir un drop out de son milieu professionnel. Stolk et Bouman firent un exposé sur le mouvement qui fut longuement discuté. L’issu du congrès fut assez paradoxal: d’un côté les anarchistes latins admettèrent que la tactique de la provocation était “un des moyens les plus efficaces d’intéresser les gens” et ils manifestèrent beaucoup d’estime pour la provocation en tant que “forme d’action”. Mais, de l’autre, le congrès reprocha à Provo son faible sujet théorique (refus de croire encore à une analyse de classes sociales, le prolétariat s’opposant à la bourgeoisie) ainsi que son parlementarisme. La participation aux élections municipales 535
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d’Amsterdam en juin 1966 qui résulta en un siège au conseil municipal, siège occupé par le provo Bernhard de Vries (1941), nuisa à l’anarchie et fut considéré comme une forme “d’identification a l’ordre établi”. Il est intéressant de voir que les militants latins avaient du mal à reconnaître le côté publicitaire et ludique dans cette participation aux élections. Pour les provos ce fut “un moyen comme un autre de faire de la publicité” même si tous au sein du groupe ne furent pas d’accord. 5 Le mouvement néerlandais Provo suscita non seulement de l’admiration mais prêta aussi au malentendu. Apparemment l’idée Provo diffusée par les milieux militants et la presse ou les médias ne correspondait pas toujours à l’idée que les provocateurs amstellodamois se faisaient d’eux-mêmes. F
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Vers une esthétisation croissante
Malgré l’attention internationale portée à ce qui se passa aux PaysBas en cette houleuse année 1966, les limites de la diffusion de l’image provo hors des frontières hollandaises furent assez rapidement atteintes. Début 1967, le fameux éditeur Giangiacomo Feltrinelli s’adressa à Provo et demanda leur coopération pour faire sortir en Italie une antologie du mouvement. A deux reprises il s’adressa aux Amstellodamois: “I would like to inquire about progress in the Provos anthology we talked about when you were in Milan. I am still very interested in this idea of publishing such an anthology in Italy.” En vain. Sa demande resta sans réponse. Il en était de même d’un projet d’une artiste néerlandaise habitant Milan, Conny van Kasteel, dont l’idée de publier un livre sur les contestataires chez Giordano Editore n’aboutirait pas. Et dans le cas où une publication sur Provo sortit, comme il en fut le cas du livre écrit par le journaliste Paolo Romano Andreoli en 1967, la réception fut plutôt décevante à en croire l’auteur: “Amici 5
Bulletin Europeen de Liaison des Jeunes Anarchistes; correspondence Tom Bouman et Rob Stolk avec l’auteur. 536
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giornalisti ne parlarono sui loro quotidiani, ma non trovai molti lettori.” 6 Plusieurs commentataires soulignèrent qu’il était tout simplement difficile d’imiter la tactique de provoquer ou d’intéresser l’opinion publique pour ce qui se passa aux PaysBas. Regardons les paroles de Matteo Guarnaccia à cet égard: F
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in un paese pietosamente conformista come l’Italia, ossessionato dalle portinaie e dai vicini (chissà cosa diranno i vicini?), a provocare lo stato basta veramente poco. E lo stato italiano, che non è un sistema moderno ed elastico come quello olandese, risponde come ha sempre risposto contro le idee nuovo, ‘a mazzate’.
Et, pour ajouter une vérité stéréotypé: “l’Italia naturalmente non è l’Olanda” (144-45). Il est vrai que l’esprit ludique et critique des provos pourrait être facilement reconnu à l’étranger, mais l’appliquer dans un contexte tout différent de celui des Pays-Bas fut tout à fait autre chose. Il fut donc difficile de concrétiser la tactique de la provocation dans un environnement autre que celui d’Amsterdam. De la réception et perception Provo en Italie reste surtout l’idée d’une source d’inspiration pour une frange de la jeunesse militante et engagée ou s’identifiant avec la contreculture naissante. C’était une source d’inspiration et un symbôle de vivre autrement plutôt qu’un véritable exemple à imiter. Provo représenta bel et bien l’idéal d’un collectivisme utopique, libertaire et pacifiste et fut, jusqu’à un certain degré, un role model pour une culture alternative et latine. De l’autre, sur un plan individuel et commercial cette fois-ci, il y eut une spectacularisation croissante de l’image Provo. Celui parmi les provos d’Amsterdam qui était devenu une personnalité 6
Lettre de Paolo Romano Andreoli à l’auteur, Rome, le 17 septembre 2004. 537
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médiatique après avoir été élu conseiller municipal, Bernhard de Vries, fut contacté début 1967 par le cinéaste Ugo Liberatore après que celui-ci avait remarqué ce provocateur aux traits nordiques dans un entretien paru dans un hebdomadaire italien pour jouer dans un de ses films. De Vries abandonna son siège, partit pour Rome, réalisa son rêve et joua dans Il sesso degli angeli. Au total il devait jouer dans cinq films italiens dans la période 1967-1972. Notons que Il sesso degli angeli porte sur la consommation de drogues par la jeunesse. A travers la culture populaire, en l’occurence le cinéma, des thèmes émanant de la contre culture furent introduits dans la société.7 Le symbôle provo le plus connu sur un plan international, aussi bien en Angleterre qu’en Italie, fut celui de la bicyclette blanche. Blanc, parce que c’était le symbole de la pureté et parce que cela traduisit un côté mystique ce que les provos appelèrent ‘magie blanche’ versus ‘magie noire’. Chez Provo il y avait une forte volonté de puiser dans la mythologie, le mysticisme et la théosophie. Ce genre de références religieuses et symboliques ne furent d’ailleurs jamais bien vus par des groupes militants hors des Pays-Bas. La prédilection pour cette couleur s’explique également par le fait que cela impliquait une dichotomie qui servait bien leur cause: blanc et noir, le bien et le mal, la gauche versus la droite, l’individu rébelle versus le conformiste autoritaire, la jeunesse progressiste versus le vieux bourgeois réactionnaire - tous des schémas interprétatifs et quelque peu simplificateurs certes, mais qui se révélèrent très efficaces devant les médias et l’opinion publique. Les provos lancèrent d’innombrables plans blancs plusieurs dizaines couvrant tous les aspects de la vie quotidienne. F
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Parmi lesquels figuraient Ugo Liberatore, Il sesso degli angeli (1967); Sergio Bergonzelli, Le dieci meraviglie dell’amore (1969); Filippo Maria Ratti, Erika (1971); Luigi Petrini, La ragazza dalle mani di corallo (1972) and Franco Zeffirelli, Fratello sole, sorella luna (1972).
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Ce fut celui de la bicyclette blanche qui devint le symbôle d’une forme de contestation originale. Le vélo blanc représentait une expression utopiste voire collectiviste – bicyclettes à la disposition de tous les citadins, écho lointain du fameux ‘la propriété, c’est le vol’ et écologiste le vélo en tant qu’alternative pour la voiture, afin de rendre les centres-villes plus vivables. Même s’il ne s’agit pas d’une idée originale (aux Pays-Bas ce genre d’initiatives avait existé avant que ne se manifeste Provo) la force de ce plan résida dans sa présentation originale, expressive et artistique. Ce fut une manière ludique de tirer l’attention sur le problème de la qualité de la vie dans les grandes villes. Qui plus est, la bicyclette rentra parfaitement dans les stéréotypes de la Hollande classique connue dans le monde entier: pays non seulement des digues et tulipes, mais aussi celui des vélos et, par la suite, de la marihuana. La bicyclette devint le totem Provo par excellence à l’étranger. Il y eurent des tentatives d’imitation et dans plusieurs villes apparurent en 1966 et 1967 des bicyclettes blanches: de Bruges en Belgique en passant par Oxford, Londres et San Francisco. A l’étranger, nous retrouvons cette idée sous plusieurs formes, parmi lesquelles figure la chanson Le Biciclette Bianche, écrit par Francesco Guccini et chantée en 1967 par Caterina Caselli: “Una mattina ti alzerai / un mondo un mondo bianco / e un mondo bianco troverai / un mondo mondo bianco […] Andremo per tutto il mondo poi, su biciclette bianche / e tante voci sentirai cantare assieme a noi”. Cette chanson ne fut pas l’unique exemple de la manière dont une forme d’expression originelle fut absorbée par l’industrie musicale. Il en était de même pour la chanson My white bicycle du groupe anglais beat psychédélique Tomorrow. A quel point l’idée de la bicyclette blanche en tant que totem artistique et symbôle d’une pensée écologiste est présente jusqu’à nos jours dans l’Italie contemporaine nous est montrée par l’exposition Senza mani! Provos e biciclette bianche, 539
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réalisée en 2001 à Milan, dans la galérie Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea. Pendant l’inauguration de l’exposition – qui fut largement couverte par la presse italienne – il y eut la volonté de créér une ambiance provo avec le groupe rock Timoria jouant “un pezzo inedito ispirato al movimento dei Provos”. 8 Un autre exemple de la force de cette image Provo par excellence nous est fourni par des publications actuelles comme Abitare. Ce mensuel liant design, art et architecture consacra en 2002 un numéro spécial aux Pays-Bas avec, parmi d’autres articles, une contribution de la plume de Guarnaccia sur Provo et la fameuse bicyclette. Dans ce genre de manifestations et publications le côté anti-autoritaire, utopiste ainsi que l’esprit ludique de Provo est avancé certes, mais il est souligné aussi une dimension nostalgique et esthétique. De cette manière, rétrospectivement, le caractère original et subversif du mouvement historique Provo est fourni d’une légitimité politique et esthétique. F
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Remerciements
Je remercie Luuk Dijkstra d’avoir lu et corrigé une première version de ce texte. Ouvrages cités Andreoli, Paolo Romano. Provo. Roma: Semerano Stampa, 1967. “Bici e rivoluzione.” La Repubblica delle Donne, [septembre] 2001. Bulletin Europeen de Liaison des Jeunes Anarchistes (publié par le collectif parisien du CLJA), 3, février 1967, intitulé “Rencontre européenne de Milan”. Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils & Moral Panics. The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. Oxford UK/Cambridge USA: Basil Blackwell, 1972. 8
Voir Matteo Guarnaccia et Marco Cingolani, 2001; Carlotta Niccolini, 2001; “Provo a Milano”, 2001; “Bici e rivoluzione” 2001; Pablo Echaurren, 2001, p 77.
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De Martino, Gianni et Marco Grispigni, I Capelloni. Mondo Beat, 1966-1967. Storia, immagini, documenti. Roma: Castelvecchi, 1997. G. Dreyfus-Armand, R. Frank, M.-F. Lévy, M. Zancarini-Fournel (dir.), Les années 68. Le temps de la contestation. Bruxelles: Éditions Complexe, 2000. Duijn, Roel van. “Introduzione al pensiero provocatore.” Carte Segrete 1, 2 (1967): 3-5. Echaurren, Pablo et Claudia Salaris. Controcultura in Italia 19671977. Viaggio nell’underground. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1999. Echaurren, Pablo. “Provosmostra. Ciclisti in autostrada.” Carta. Cantieri Sociali 3, 12 (27 septembre / 3 octobre 2001): 77. Feltrinelli, Giangiacomo. Milan. Lettre de 10 février 1967. Amsterdam, Institut International d’Histoire Sociale. Collection Provo boîte 48.2. Gruppo Provo Milano Uno, Provokazione. Messagio papale al provotario italiano (1966). Amsterdam, Institut International d’Histoire Sociale. Collection Provo boîte 42.4. Guarnaccia, Matteo. Provos. Amsterdam 1960-67: gli inizi della controcultura. Bertiolo: AAA Edizioni, 1997. Guarnaccia, Matteo et Marco Cingolani, éds. Senza Mani! Provos e biciclette bianche. Catalogue de l’exposition. Milan: Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea, 2001. Guarnaccia, Matteo. “Provos. Le biciclette bianche.” Abitare (Speciale Olanda) 417 (mai 2002): 262-264. Hollstein, Walter. Die Gegengesellschaft. Alternative Lebensformen. Bonn: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, 1979. Kasteel, Connie van. Milan. Lettre de 10 janvier 1967. IIHS Collection CSD VRZ 001 boîte 14 feuille 5 intitulée “Provo kor 8.2 april 1967”. Lebel, Jean Jacques. Le happening. Paris: Denoël, 1966. Lumley, Robert. States of Emergency. Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978. London: Verso, 1990. Martin, Bernice. A Sociology of Contemporary Cultural Change. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981. Marwick, Arthur. The Sixties. Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, c.1958-c.1974. Oxford/New York: 541
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Oxford University Press, 1998. Niccolini, Carlotta. “Bicicletti e ribellione. Una mostra sui Provos.” Corriere della Sera, 18 septembre 2001. Pas, Niek. Imaazje! De verbeelding van Provo (1965-1967). Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2003. Pivano, Fernanda. C’era una volta un beat. 10 anni di ricerca alternativa. Roma: Arcana Editrice, 1976. “Provo a Milano.” Il Manifesto, 18 septembre 2001. Savorelli, Alessandro et Giancarlo Carboncini. Prato. Lettre de 15 mars 1966. IIHS Collection CSD VRZ 001 boîte 48 feuille 2 intitulée “Rob Stolk”. Vovelle, Michel. Idéologies et mentalités. Paris: Gallimard, Folio Histoire, 1992.
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The Alì Babà Project (1968-1972): Monumental History and the Silent Resistance of the Ordinary Anna Botta (Smith College, USA) Historical Context of the Alì Babà Project
In the wake of May ’68, a host of new books saw the light of day, both in philosophy and the human sciences; they were, as Gianni Celati remembers, “daring and complicated, obscure and militant or merely windy and exaggerated, books which gave readers the impression that they were confronting something radically new under the sun” (Celati, Alì Babà 316). 1 Together the studies gave the impression of “a collective adventure into unexplored lands” (316); to name just the most important, Claude Lévi Strauss and his structural anthropology, Jacques Derrida’s elaboration of the concept of “différance”, Deleuze and Guattari on repetition and becoming, Michel Foucault’s study of epistemological paradigms (The Order of Things, 1966) and his subsequent book on the relationship between power and knowledge (The Archeology of Knowledge, 1969). An important role was also played by earlier foreign thinkers whose ideas circulated within French intellectuals only in the sixties, such as Mikhail Bakhtin and his analysis of “heteroglossia” or Ferdinand de Saussure’s fundamental study of linguistics. Such was the intellectual turmoil, which characterized Paris, both preceding and in the aftermath of the May ’68 barricades. Between 1968 and 1972, a group of five Italian intellectuals – each an insatiable and omnivorous reader of the May ’68 boom – came together in order to discuss the possibility of founding a new literary review, one which “would TPF
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1 PT
FPT
All translations from French and Italian texts are mine. http://congress70.library.uu.nl/
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take literature out of its ghetto” (Celati, Alì Babà 313). The expression is by Celati, who explains further: In attempting to take literature out of its confinement [“ghetto”], we realized that the “something more” we were after involved how literature functions (and its function as well); it was a question of asking ourselves what books, novels, poems are for, of digging under foundations which have been taken for granted, of thinking everything over again. (313)
Together the five – the writers Italo Calvino and Gianni Celati, together with the historian Carlo Ginzburg, the philosopher Ezio Melandri and the critic Guido Neri, saw the project of such a review as an opportunity for enlarging literature’s horizons, for re-establishing its anthropological value, in opposition to an era in which politics and ideology seemed about to prevail. In their view, Alì Babà – the most frequently suggested name for such a review – would thus be an attempt to re-found literature by stressing “its capacity to confront itself with everything which exceeds literature itself” (Barenghi, Alì Babà 19). Here Calvino envisions the context in which literature “takes on meaning”: Literature […] is the field of forces which supports and engenders such an encounter and confrontation of studies and operations in different disciplines, even apparently distant and alien disciplines. Literature as the space of meanings and forms which are valid not only for literature. (Calvino, 199)
Italo Calvino and Gianni Celati were the founders of the Alì Babà editorial project. In 1967-68, Calvino was already exploring the possibility of publishing a new literary review which would replace Vittorini’s Menabò (Vittorini had died in 1966). He had also moved to Paris, where he had directly witnessed the events of May ’68 with great excitement; he felt 544
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as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders and that the time had come for him “to turn the page” (Celati, Alì Babà 314). Yet, as he says in a 1981 RAI interview, the very writer who had himself often been praised for the creative power of his imagination was very suspicious of the famed slogan,“L’imagination au pouvoir.” For Calvino, imagination should never become an institutional constraint or a political practice which regulates forms of discourse. At the end of the sixties and beginning of the seventies Calvino is interrogating himself on the right distance an intellectual must keep vis-à-vis historical actuality and politics. He likes to think of himself as a sort of Saint Jerome, someone who lives in seclusion, yet not too far from the city (see The Castle of the Crossed Destinies 105111). Gianni Celati, who was only thirty when he met Calvino in the summer of 1968, engaged the older author in an intense exchange of ideas and debates. As Celati recalls thirty years later, Calvino, like Kublai Kahn in Invisible Cities, used to listen attentively to Celati as if he were Marco Polo spreading out his intellectual merchandise during the visits he paid to Calvino at his “court” in Paris. Calvino’s “Lo sguardo dell’archeologo” (“The Archeologist’s Gaze”) and Celati’s “Il Bazar archeologico” (“The Archeological Bazaar”), two essays which were originally meant as manifestos for the review (but which were finally published separately), bear witness to the extraordinary collaboration which took place between the two writers during those years. Despite their very different intellectual journeys, it is remarkable how close the two writers are in their understanding of history and literature. In the seventies, Calvino takes his distance from both his own direct political engagement of the forties and fifties and from the formal experimentations of Gruppo 63 (“Group 63”). Celati, on the other hand, although he begins his career in the seventies with works which are formal experimentations (“il pararomanzo”), is more interested in translating modernist 545
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writers (Joyce, Eliot, Céline) or their precursors (Swift, Melville, Lewis Carroll) than in belonging to Gruppo 63. The review which they envisioned – Alì Babà – never found its way to publication. In the end, Einaudi did not support the project; Calvino went on with his own literary projects (Invisible Cities) and Celati, then the most effervescent mind of the group, left for the States and lost regular contact with the others. Despite this disappointing turn of events, the group’s discussions (recorded in articles, prefaces, protocols and letters, and recently collected in an issue of Riga, edited by Mario Barenghi e Marco Belpoliti) constitute fertile ground for understanding the seventies, an era of strong fascination for intellectual models and theoretical approaches, and one with an equally strong desire to displace man from the center of such concepts and deconstruct his anthropocentric certitudes. Alternative History: The Bazaar and the Warehouse
In his 1998 essay “Il progetto Alì Babà, trent’anni dopo”, Celati writes: “In those times, it looked like there was an abyss between the unshakeable intellectualism of the cultured elite and the banality of ordinary life” (Celati, Alì Babà 315). The more abstract contemporary theories had become, the less successful they had been in accounting for the material conditions of our existence. Calvino begins his essay “Lo sguardo dell’archeologo” with the following realization: “We have understood it now for quite some time: the warehouse of materials stocked by mankind – mechanisms, machines, goods, markets, institutions, documents, poems, emblems, photograms, opera picta, arts and crafts, encyclopedias, cosmologies, grammars, topoi and tropes, parental, tribal and work relationships, myths and rites, operative models – we can’t manage to keep it in order any more” (Calvino, Alì Babà 197). Ten years later, we find the same distress in Calvino’s character, Mr. Palomar, who is unable to find an adequate model to apply to “the shapeless and senseless reality of human society” (Mr. 546
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Palomar 108) and can only “erase from his mind all models and models of models” (111) in an epistemological move which the critic Philippe Daros calls “l’utopie pulvérisée” (“pulverized utopia”, 103). In Celati, Calvino’s warehouse becomes “the bazaar,” a disordered collection of disparate objects and quotations which have become useless and forgotten. Whereas seventeenthcentury cabinets de curiosités exhibited one-of-a-kind marvels which could nevertheless be displayed and ranged in a systematic fashion, Celati’s bazaar seems to be material embodiment of an uncanny enumeración caótica which resists classification and abstract conceptualization, In the collectionist’s bazaar everything appears as a Heteroclitean flux, an archeological bric-à brac of rejects, as fragmentary images of an estrangement which can find its expression only in the echolalia of mad speech, as in Eliot: “These fragments I have shored against my ruins / Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.” (Celati, Alì Babà 202)
Celati’s bazaar and Calvino’s warehouse remind us of Borges’s Chinese encyclopedia, that heterotopic ensemble which elicits Foucault’s uncanny laughter by presenting a disordered set and suggesting at the same time, paradoxically, that “fragments of a large number of possible orders glitter separately in [that] dimension” (Foucault 1970, XVII). Up until this point, what had allowed us to find the correct placement and classification for every single item in the bazaar? In a word, “History,” as Calvino comments. History, that is to say, “the choice of a subject called MAN” which once allowed us to arrange any narrative or justify any classification in the name of a continuous and linear development of a transcendental entity (the “I” man, the white man, spirit,
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conscience, thought, civilization, the European subject, the subject of all predicates and metaphors). In the seventies, both Calvino and Celati saw the need for an alternative history which could replace the old, superseded model (the type of history that Nietzsche had called monumental history). To the historian, they oppose the figure of the archeologist, the intellectual whose duty is to describe pieceby-piece disparate fragments without trying to place them permanently in some historical collocation or explanation. The archeologist’s poetics must consequently privilege discontinuity, differences, and minimal signs over tradition, order and general schemata. The kind of archeology undertaken by the Alì Babà writers is both similar and different from that advocated by Michel Foucault in his 1969 study, The Archeology of Knowledge, with its focus on the social stratification of discourses. By analyzing language at the concrete level of the specific social rituals, Foucault’s archeology enabled him to determine who gets to say what to whom. Rather than being something that one group possesses or uses over other individuals, power is for Foucault a network of relations that encompasses the rulers as well as those they rule in a vast web of discrete, local conflicts. Foucault’s archeology therefore works with discontinuities and fragments in a synchronic way, as much as Celati and Calvino do in their archeologist’s poetics, yet the latter take as their focus concrete objects, “the materials collected by mankind,” a heterotopic pot-pourri of objects which mix human beings and machines, culture and nature, rather than limiting their interest to discourses and technologies of power.
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Georges Perec’s Infraordinary
In particular, I would like to analyze the emphasis given by Calvino and Celati to the ordinary as a privileged locus for the study of archeological history – study which takes place, not along the vertical axis of history’s teleonomic development, but along the horizontal axis of its multiple and articulated surfaces (Calvino, Alì Babà 198). The title Alì Babà was understood, in short, not as the enchanted cave in which the treasures of European intellectualisms are stored, but rather as a warehouse in which one can find rejects and discarded residues, “an heterogeneous dust of detritus” (Celati, Finzioni occidentali XI), abandoned to the banality of everyday life. Following Walter Benjamin’s interpretation of history (where the historian is not a genealogist, but a collector looking for traces of lost systems), the Alì Babà group invites us to focus our attention on the ordinary and its most invisible objects. In his article “Lo sguardo dell’archeologo,” Calvino directs his writerly gaze to things with the hope that “the refusal to use ‘ushere-today’ as an explanation for things will, in the end, oblige things to explain us, here, today” (Calvino, Alì Babà 198). In his text “Bazar archeologico,” Celati calls for a poetics of the “objet enfoui” (“buried object”), a poetics that aims at reactivating the lost meaning of silent fragments. In a similar spirit, in Il formaggio e i vermi, the historian Carlo Ginzburg develops an analysis of the dispersed traces of microhistory, the history of a subaltern culture forgotten and overshadowed by monumental History. By scrutinizing the ordinary in its most minute details (whereas Foucault advocates a microphysics of power, a study of power dynamics), the Alì Babà group proposes a science of the past not based on representation and evaluative criteria but on the inventory of minimal signs, secondary facts, faults, silences. Once one learns how “to see” the invisible continuum that the ordinary places each day under our very eyes and one learns how to hear a “bruit de fond” (“background noise”) which 549
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faintly speaks to us, one ends up by putting into question the knowledge that our present has of the past. In its study of the ordinary’s resistance to monumental history, the Alì Babà project parallels the studies done, not by Foucault, but rather through the anthropological interests of Georges Perec, a fellow writer Calvino met when invited to join the Oulipo in 1967. In an essay written in 1973 (“Approches de quoi?” “Approaches to What?”), Georges Perec coined the term “l’infra-ordinaire” (the infra-ordinary) for those minimal aspects of reality which he hoped to zero in on: What happens everyday, the banal, the quotidian, the evident, the common, the ordinary, the infra-ordinary, the background noise, the habitual; how can one account for it, how can one question it, how can one describe it? (Perec 1989, 11)
Perec noticed that our eyes are conditioned to scan the horizon of our habitat only for the unusual. Yet the scandal, the exceptional, the news-making event, even if more prominent, can hardly be as meaningful as the anonymous “endotic” (a term coined by Perec in opposition to “exotic”). Trains begin to exist only when they are derailed, the more passengers are dead, the more trains exist; planes have access to existence only when they are hijacked; the only meaningful destiny for cars is crashing into a sycamore: fifty-two weekends per year, fifty-two totals; so many dead and all the better for the news if the figures keep increasing! [...] In our haste to measure the historic, the meaningful, the revealing, we leave aside the essential. (9-10) What really happens, what we live, all the rest, where is it? (11)
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To begin investigating the “infra-ordinary,” Perec invites us to ask what may seem, at first, to be trivial and futile questions in order to provoke the necessary discontinuity between signs and habits of observations. Defamiliarization, Perec notes, is a technique of inquiry which requires both perseverance and inventiveness and which must also resist systematization. It is of no importance to me that these questions here are fragmentary and simply hint at a method, or, at the most, a project. It is of great importance to me, on the contrary, that these questions appear to be futile and trivial: it is precisely that which makes them as essential as, if not more essential than, so many other questions through which we have vainly tried to capture our truth. (13)
The anthropology of the “endotic” advocated by Perec intends “to rescue [common things] from the mire in which they remain stuck” (11). By creating fissures between common things and their background, by introducing distance and surprise, estrangement, his anthropology makes it possible for things to becomes visible to the human eye and therefore meaningful. Perec wants to devote his attention to the basic connective tissue of our lives, that “bruit de fond” (background noise), which is the level at which life manifests itself whenever a human body moves in its space and/or uses objects (Venaille 89). “Approches de quoi?” was written as a sort of manifesto for Cause commune, the short-lived journal (1972-1977) founded by the architect Paul Virilio and the sociologist Jean Duvignaud – themselves key figures during the May ‘68 revolution. The journal intended to “to search for common causes, taking as starting point common things;” in other words, an investigation of “everyday life at all its levels, in all its generally disregarded or forgotten folds” (Burgelin 119). Their stated goal was ultimately “to attack at the roots and to put in 551
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question the ideas and beliefs on which the functioning of our ‘civilization,’ of our ‘culture,’ rests” (as quoted by Burgelin 119). Paul Virilio views this new anthropology as a study by man of man “au ras de terre” (at ground level) (Duvignaud, Perec ou la cicatrice 51), while Duvignaud quotes Georg Lukàcs and his reference to “everyday life’s chiaroscuro.” (Duvignaud, “Effet d’éloignement” 23-24) Perec asks himself: “What is the real in people’s life, what is the real in people’s consciousness? What real still belongs to them?” (Perec 1972). For him, the real is not what merits inclusion in History, but instead what is likely to be forgotten, what is fleeting, inconsequential. As Duvignaud writes: “The infra-ordinary evokes that labyrinth of sense and familiarity which does not interest either historical powers or its actors” (Duvignaud, Perec ou la cicatrice 51). The anthropologist’s task is to rescue things from their opacity: “what we call quotidian is not evidence, but opacity – writes Perec – : a kind of blindness, a sort of anesthesia” (Perec, Espèces d’espaces book flap). In order to free oneself from such blindness, phenomenologists prescribe the bracketing of the world as a necessary precondition to understanding. Similarly, Perec’s first step is to detach himself from contingency, yet for him the process of bracketing focuses on what is the narrative material for other writers or journalists, evidence itself (Duvignaud, “Effet d’éloignement” 27). He will scrupulously avoid any “interesting” detail; instead he will launch himself into a diligent analysis of the most trivial aspects of the here and now. One of the most interesting essays published by Perec within the project of Cause commune is “Tentative d’épuisement d’un lieu parisien” (“An Attempt to Exhaust a Place in Paris”). Over a period of three days, Perec stationed himself in three different cafés bordering Place Saint Sulpice. Writing on café tables, in between a few sandwiches and numerous cigarettes and cups of coffee, he proceeded to register in a simple, unfigurative and ostensibly neutral language exactly 552
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what he saw. Patrice Delbourg comments: “[Perec’s] Attempt to Exhaust a Place in Paris is an herbarium of apparently insignificant details, itineraries of passer-bys recorded with a notary’s diligence; it remains a masterpiece of infra-quotidian anthropology” (7). The text begins with a very long first sentence in which all the buildings, monuments, stores which surround the square are listed. After this quite exhaustive exercise in “topo-analysis” (another of Perec’s newly coined terms), the reader is surprised to learn that: Many, if not most, of these things have [already] been inventoried, photographed, written about, or itemized. My intention in the following pages was rather to describe what remains: what we generally don’t notice [...]: what happens when nothing happens, what passes when nothing passes except time, people, cars, and clouds. (Perec, Tentative d’épuisement 12)
What continues to preoccupy Perec is “what remains;” he wants to explore the interstices, the spaces between the uneventful minutiae of the everyday (Adair 104). He monotonously records the numbers of all buses he sees, the various ways that people walk or carry things, pigeons, cars being driven or parked. From time to time a note of humor comes in to interrupt the litany, for example when Perec wonders why he should bother enumerating bus numbers or when he introduces into the list a line à la Queneau: “passe un papa poussant une poussette” [an alliteration which could be translated: “A papa passes pushing a pram” or “ramming a pram” or “perambulating with pram”] (Perec 1975, 35). Explication is here intended in its etymological sense of “ex-plicare,” “to un-fold,” to open up those “disregarded or forgotten folds” that are usually engulfed in the unruffled monotony of the everyday. In Perec, recorded experience lends data which resist formalization or rationalization; the world seen 553
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from Perec’s café tables becomes a collection of discrete things, synecdoctic signs which no longer stand for a recognizable whole. In such a world, the imprint of our human trace is continuously threatened by the limitless repertory of the indistinct, an unfolding heterogeneity which seems to defy received orders. Many of the aspects of Perec’s endotic can be found in Calvino’s attention “to the cracks and faults” (Calvino, Alì Babà 197) in his call to retrieve the submerged, the excluded, the marginal. Archeology for Calvino is slow work which entails a step back in order not to regress into complacency (“after all, everything is inexplicable”); it calls for the patient application of new experimental exercises in description (hence Calvino’s interest in description in the late seventies and eighties). Calvino writes: “You can’t advance except by putting into question something believed from the start to be a conquered certitude” (197). As for Celati, the following passage demonstrates how close he is to Perec’s search for “the bruit de fond”: The lost object, the fragment which cannot take us back to some original unity of a design introduces into the present the effect of a subterranean and invisible apocalypse, one which has just past or is still present. As in some horror stories, a strange presence appears and upsets the normal continuity of the present; into this divide, a foundational silence introduces itself, a silence which terrorizes because it is unsayable, unreasonable, undecidable. (Celati in Alì Babà,210)
The incongruous fragments of the past are a scandalous presence which threatens the apparently calm surface of “the endotic”. For Celati, however, the “infra-ordinary” is not only, if properly observed, able to disrupt the invisible continuum of the our everyday experience; the Italian writer views it as potentially apocalyptic, an abyss where the present can at any moment lose 554
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its material consistency and be engulfed into a silent void which resists meaningful explanation. Dust as Resistance to Monumental History
By advancing further and further into the smallest cracks of the ordinary – what Denis de Rougemont at the beginning of the XIX century had called “l’inframince” (“the infra-thin”) – one arrives ultimately to dust (Grazioli 66). In this context, dust is not only the invisible fallout from everyday activities (the monotonous, gray and useless trace of entropy), it takes on the active connotations of incongruity, indeterminacy, chaos, and “écart” (deviance). Much as silence in the above quote from Celati, dust can be viewed as a disruptive agent of change and innovation, both materially and metaphorically. One has only to think of the semantic frequency with which images of dust recur in Calvino to be reminded of the literal and metaphoric importance that this substance has for him. 2 Similarly, many years after Alì Babà, in his 2001 collection Cinema naturale (“Natural Cinema”), Celati will write a few stories which are centered on the postmodern implications of dust, a dust which promotes nomadic, metaphysical wanderings and musing. 3 TPF
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Dust and its variations, sand and “pulviscolo” (fine dust cloud), take on philosophical meaning throughout Calvino’s narrative, from the cleaning woman in the short story “All in One Point” in Cosmicomics to a few of Invisible Cities, such as Laudomia, to the conversations between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo: “Each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents” (137). The posthumous collection of essays Collezione di sabbia (“Collection of Sand”) is a philosophical investigation on the connections between sand, everyday objects and knowledge. See Marco Belpoliti’s article “Calvino che crea con la polvere.”
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See, for instance, the stories “Il paralitico nel deserto” (“The Paralitic in the Desert”), “Nella nebbia e nel sonno” (“In the Fog and Sleep”) and “Cevenini e Ridolfi” (“Cevenini and Ridolfi”). PT
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The two Italian writers are not the first, however, to claim a revolutionary role for dust; its centrality for modern art perhaps began with Marcel Duchamp and his famous work “Elévage de poussière” (1920). Thanks to Duchamp, this impalpable matter suddenly discards its traditional symbolic connotations (everything ends up in dust, dust is the product of time) and assumes performative and spatial meaning. If dust is, on one hand, transformation, passage, becoming, entropic energy, as Jean-François Lyotard points out in his essay on Duchamp’s art (LES TRANSformateurs Duchamp), it is, on the other hand, inert and receptive matter, that which is formless and open to all forms and signs, a surface ready to be “imprinted ”(photography becomes the privileged medium for modernist aesthetic because it is founded on a chemical synthesis which captures light and dust). In avant-garde artists such as Duchamp, as well as for Dubuffet, Rauschenberg, and Pollock, dust is viewed as a subversive substance, something to be rehabilitated and a metaphor for art itself (representing “difference”, those values discredited by society). In his 1998 essay, Celati recalls the influence that modern and pop art had on his archeological endeavors “to dig out” counter-history during the years of the Alì Babà project. In his opinion, in the twentieth century, literature and art underwent a similar radical change of perspective. Similar to the literary writer, who is meant to reveal the fine dust of heterogeneous traces left behind by monumental History, the artist explores objects as rejects and residues of our present, viewing them “as an archeologist who sees in anonymous pottery pieces the signs of collective cultural systems” (Celati in Alì Babà 318). Celati particularly loved Rauschenberg’s paintings because they appeared to him to have “rejects placed in the foreground […] Everything was there on the surface, as residue or detritus from the general banality which characterizes our everyday life experience” (318). 556
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If modernism looked at the status of our culture in dismay and was overwhelmed by the impossibility of finding meaning in the ruins of our past, postmodernism (or avant-garde artists such as Duchamp) has become suspicious of any grand narrative for history. The postmodern archeologists believe that the most insignificant traces constitute our culture’s richest treasure, its cave of Alì Babà. In their artistic practice, those minimal, unrecoverable signs become performative insofar as they are indexes of the incongruous and the entropic, signs of what gets discarded by any narrative which develops teleonomically. Faced with a landscape which reminds us of Eliot’s “Waste Land,” Calvino, Celati and Perec shore up the dust of the ordinary against the blind unfolding of monumental History.
Works Cited Adair, Gilbert. “The Eleventh Day: Perec and the InfraOrdinary.” The Review of Contemporary Fiction 1 (Spring 1993): 98-107. Barenghi, Mario and Belpoliti, Marco, eds. Alì Babà. Progetto di una rivista 1968-1972. Riga 14. Milano: Marcos y Marcos, 1998. Belpoliti, Marco. “Calvino che crea con la polvere.” La Stampa (March 29 2003). Burgelin, Claude. Georges Perec. Paris: Seuil, 1988. Calvino, Italo. Cosmicomics. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968. ---. Invisible Cities. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974. ---. The Castle of Crossed Destinies. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976. ---. Mr. Palomar. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985. Celati, Gianni. Finzioni occidentali. Fabulazione, comicità e scrittura. Torino: Einaudi, 2001 (3rd revised edition). 557
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---. Cinema naturale. Milano: Feltrinelli, 2001. Daros, Philippe. Italo Calvino. Paris: Hachette, 1994. Delbourg, Patrice. “Préface” in Georges Perec. Entretien (avec Gabriel Simony). Paris: Le Castor Astral, 1989. Duvignaud, Jean. “Effet d’éloignement par rapport aux choses.” L’Arc 76 (1979): 23-27. ---. Perec ou la cicatrice. Paris: Actes Sud, 1993. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things. The Archeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Random House, 1970. ---. The Archeology of Knowledge. New York: Harper and Row, 1976. ---. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics 1 (1986): 22-27. Ginzburg, Carlo. Il formaggio e i vermi. Torino: Einaudi, 1976. Grazioli, Elio. La polvere nell’arte. Milano: Bruno Mondadori, 2004. Lyotard, Jean-François. I TRANSformatori Duchamp. Trad. It. Milano: Hestia, 1992. Perec, Georges. “L’Orange est proche.” Cause commune 3 (October 1972): 1-2. ---. Espèces d’espaces. Paris: Galilée, 1974. ---. Tentative d’épuisement d’un lieu parisien. Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1975. ---. L’infra-ordinaire. Paris: Seuil, 1989. Venaille, Frank. “Le travail de la mémoire (Entretien avec Georges Perec).” in Georges Perec. Je suis né. Paris: Seuil, 1990. Virilio, Paul. “L’inertie du moment.” L’Arc 76 (1979): 20-22.
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Gianni Celati’s “Natural” Narration and the Call of the Plains Marina Spunta (University of Leicester) “Ascoltare una voce che racconta fa bene, ti toglie dall’astrattezza di quando stai in casa credendo di aver capito qualcosa ‘in generale’. Si segue una voce, ed è come seguire gli argini d’un fiume dove scorre qualcosa che non può essere capito astrattamente.” (Celati, Verso la foce 57). 1 Dated 20th May 1983, this passage is taken from “Esplorazioni sugli argini”, the second section of Gianni Celati’s Verso la foce. Published in 1989, this text originates from the diary that Celati kept during his journey along the Po river with the photographer Luigi Ghirri in the 80s, while collaborating in the project of describing the “new Italian landscape.” Together with Narratori delle pianure and Quattro novelle sulle apparenze – published earlier in the 80s and similarly set in the Po valley – Verso la foce is a focal point in Celati’s poetics or anti-poetics of “natural” narration and an interesting point of departure to reassess the value of literature after the 70s and to tackle the Italian problematic move to the postmodern condition. In this essay I will explore Celati’s notion of natural narration as a “space of affection”, a space that merges the dichotomy between landscape and inscape, the subject and the object, and between listening and narrating, and listening and seeing, in the effort to reject any claims of general truths. With this aim I will first consider Celati as a political writer – for his commitment to F
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“Listening to a narrating voice does you good; it takes you away from the state of abstraction when you are at home thinking you have understood something ‘in general’. You follow a voice and it is like following the banks of a river where something flows that cannot be grasped abstractly”. Where not otherwise specified, all English translations are mine. http://congress70.library.uu.nl/
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literature and narration – and then focus on the resonance between the notions of voice and listening, as intrinsically ephemeral and impermanent, and on the space of the plains, as anti-monumental and subjective, escaping any exact definition, like the river banks of the opening extract that follow the flow of the river and disappear on the horizon. In the attempt to highlight Celati’s centrality in the crisis that from the 70s leads to the present cultural condition, I will move from the “model” offered by Calvino, that Celati seeks to discard in order to build his own poetics. In a way not too dissimilar from Calvino, Gianni Celati is a political writer in a broad sense of the word, in that he is deeply committed to portraying Italian culture and society, despite his apparent distance from it; to educating his readers to the value of literature and narration; and to renewing the role of literature within society, while protecting it against the impact of media consumerism. This commitment runs throughout his work of fiction and criticism and his collaborative and editorial projects, from the aborted journal Alì Babà (for which he collaborated with Calvino in the late 60s and early 70s) to his editorial commitment in the 90s, which appear in his effort to foster the career of young writers with Narratori delle riserve and in his establishing a community of writers who share a “simple” poetics and collaborated to the short-lived project of the Almanacco delle prose Il Semplice. 2 When comparing these editorial experiences that are two decades apart we notice both the coherence of Celati’s impegno and the development of his poetics, which in turn reflects the changes that have occurred in Italian culture since the 70s. Despite the time and cultural gap – that is reflected for example in the less theoretical approach of Il semplice when compared to Alì Babà (and a less theoretical and F
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more broadly educative approach was favoured by Calvino for their project) – we can detect a considerable coherence in the intents of the two projects, from the key role that is attached to literature and particularly narrative to the anti-establishment intents which give the journals a marked ironical tone. This complex relationship to the 70s attests to Celati’s liminal position – between the generation of post-war writers and the postmodern age. With the writers of the previous generation, such as Calvino, Celati shares a sense of commitment to renewing both literature and the world, which emerges in his relentless effort to forge a poetics geared towards a new vision of reality, rather than celebrating the death of poetics, as postmodernity advocates. 3 Yet Celati strives to reject traditional literary models, which he sees embodied in Calvino’s example, in order to embrace a more postmodern sensitivity that celebrates the loss of certainties, while at the same time reverting to a pre-modern idea of literature as shared narrative practice, as storytelling. “Per prima cosa: la letteratura non è niente di oggettivo in sé e per sé, la letteratura esiste prima di tutto come uso – per l’uso che facciamo di poesie, di narrazioni, di commenti critici, e per come queste cose hanno rilievo nella nostra vita” (Spunta F
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As Carla Benedetti reminds us, “se in Calvino, in Pasolini (e ancora in Celati), il crollo delle poetiche è la conseguenza di un tragico ‘apprendimento’, che contemporaneamente esprime una critica nei confronti della logica artistica moderna, già nei narratori degli anni Ottanta esso è un dato pacifico che può perfino essere sfruttato come una vera e propria poetica.” (If in Calvino, Pasolini (and also in Celati), the collapse of poetics is the consequence of a tragic process of learning, that also expresses a criticism towards the modern logic of the arts. This is already an accepted fact in the narrators of the 80s – a fact that can even be exploited as an actual poetics) (40). 561
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“Dialogo con Gianni Celati” unpublished). 4 With these words Celati makes the point about literature in a recent unpublished interview that he has chosen to dedicate to this topic – a decision which in itself reveals the high value that he attaches to literature. In stressing its primary nature as usage, Celati puts forward a notion of literature as social practice, which is shared by a community, and whose rituals are learnt through apprenticeship. In so doing, while lamenting the disappearance of “ciò che un tempo chiamavamo fiduciosamente ‘letteratura’” (“Dialogo con Gianni Celati”), 5 Celati takes a distance both from a humanistic view of literature that seeks to express the essence of “man” and postulates the existence of literary experts who pretend to convey the “truth about humanity,” and also from the contemporary literary market that turns literature into a show business, considering success as the sole parameter through which to measure literary quality. The debate on the value of literature, which was a key issue in the 70s, took centre stage also in the collaboration for Alì Babà, as emerges in the renewed interest for literature, and particularly for narrative and narration, that were indeed equated to literature in the effort to move beyond the constraints of Institutions and the market. Celati’s later poetics follows on this line, placing even greater emphasis on narration, as the means of escaping the claustrophobic dangers of a self-absorbed literature. In the preface to Narratori delle riserve, Celati defines his “natural narration” as the process of re-reading a text afresh, or describing a common reality as if it was seen for the first time. In so doing – while maintaining the metaphor of reading reality that was central to Calvino’s poetics and that he wanted to be F
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“what once we used trustingly to call ‘literature’”.
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the theme of Alì Babà’s first issue – Celati changes the value associated to reading, from a strong means of interpreting reality from the fortress of a coherent outlook, to a weak means of seeing reality from a lowered and uncertain perspective. The Almanacco delle prose. Il Semplice develops the topic of narration as reading, particularly reading aloud, and especially as listening, which becomes the key metaphor of the sharing of ideas of a community of writers and of their common sensitivity to simple narrations, as opposed to the pompous style of selfproclaimed writers. As it transpires from the development of Celati’s poetics, while rejecting the example of Calvino since the time of their collaboration for Alì Babà – and their divergence of views was one of the main obstacles to the realization of the project – Celati repeatedly goes back to Calvino’s “model” in order to discard it. While this emerges in the choice of low, comic mode in his experimental fiction of the 70s, it is even more apparent in the 80s, as the adoption of natural narration and of the short form clearly results from the rejection of a “strong” novelistic model and leads to a process of desubjectivization, to the flattening of the narrative voice, and to the shift from the category of a coherent time to that of a horizontal, scattered space. In this perspective, we could read Celati’s trilogy of the plains (and particularly Verso la foce) as his definitive departure from Calvino’s classicist, Newtonian view of reality, as Celati suggests (Spunta “Conversazione con Gianni Celati”), and from the disaffected conclusion of Le città invisibili (164), which, in Celati’s words, “kills all the affection that you can have for this strange thing that is the world, for you can only have affection for something that is indefinite” (Narratori dell’invisibile 166). As Palomar shows, the failure of reason to comprehend reality and overcome its vagueness was a real problem for Calvino (Spunta “Conversazione con Gianni Celati”), which, according to Celati, showed his greatness in his very ability to voice this impasse. In the effort to overcome the “blocked road” (Ibid.) of 563
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Le città invisibili, Celati finds a new voice, a new “syntax” in the flatness of the Po valley, which he defines as “un punto in cui tirare il fiato” (Narratori dell’invisibile 166), 6 overcoming the risk of excessive literariness and abstraction encountered by Calvino, whose main difficulty was “dove trovare l’ispirazione, standosene chiuso in casa” (Ibid.). 7 According to Celati, this conveyed “un deficit di tutta una cultura, [la cultura di sinistra, e che porta a] una messa al bando dei paesaggi, perché paesaggio, contemplazione e ispirazione fanno parte dello stesso nesso [e sono] sinonimi di perdita di coscienza” (Ibid.). 8 F
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Space of affection
Rather than a fixed and graspable space, in Celati’s fiction the plains become an ambivalent, vague space, “uno spazio di affezione” (a space of affection) that is defined by an equally mysterious and evocative voice. 9 In a long essay recently published in Il Verri, titled “Collezione di spazi,” 10 Celati intends the representation of space, just like narration, as a means to comprehend reality, merging general and subjective categories. The state, or modality of affection – an expression F
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“a point where to take a breath”. “where to find inspiration without leaving home”.
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“the fear of losing conscience of the dominant left-wing culture of the times, which led to banning landscape description, contemplation and inspiration as synonyms of loss of conscience”.
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Like space, voice for Celati is defined by a state of affection, since, in his words, “quello che voi chiamate oralità non è che un fatto timbrico, una intonazione affettiva”. Celati, in Monica Bandella and Peter Kuon (184). On Celati and space see in particular Giulio Iacoli; Marco Sironi; Spunta, “Lo spazio delle pianure come ‘territorio di racconti’ – verso la foce con Gianni Celati”; Rebecca West.
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that Celati takes from Ghirri, and before him from Spinoza and Leopardi 11 – indicates a change in the subject’s conscience when relating to space, a personal way of “sentire la lontananza” (feeling the distance), and the “fusione tra il vedere e la cosa vista, che non può essere oggettivato, perché dipende dal mio piazzamento relativo” (“Collezione di spazi” 62-63). 12 Rather than a clearly defined space, Celati’s plains – and their narration – are a space of affection, a mental space that discards clear-cut divisions between subject and object, and vision and hearing. This is particularly apparent in Verso la foce, as emerges in the following extract: F
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Contro il cielo su un argine papaveri mossi dal vento, e un cielo così cupo, così pesante. Campagne vuote. Tutto questo mi dà voglia di scrivere, come se le parole seguissero qualcosa che è fuori di me. Se guardo in distanza, prima di tutto c’è una grande apertura nello spazio là fuori, il vuoto che accoglie tutte le cose: solo in secondo tempo l’apertura si restringe per fissarmi su qualcosa che manda un richiamo, come in un film di John Ford spunta un indiano all’orizzonte. Noi siamo guidati da ciò che ci 11
On Spinosa see Celati, in Bandella and Kuon (181-82). Celati gave an interesting reading of Leopardi at the Istituto di Cultura Italiana in London, 27th January 1997, by the title “Gianni Celati legge Leopardi”. 12
“merging of the act of seeing with the object that is seen, which cannot be objectified for it depends on my relative positioning in space”. And also: “‘Vedere’ il paesaggio infatti dipende dal ‘trovare comuni elementi affettivi’. Del resto, aggiungo io, il mondo osservato non è quello che appare attraverso il punto di vista di un individuo singolo. È quello che, prima di lui, è già comune alle varie osservazioni e rappresentazioni, perché appartiene ad una forma di vita.” (“Seeing” the landscape in fact depends on “finding common affective elements”. What is more, I can add, the world observed is not what appears through an individual point of view. It is what, before him, is already shared in various observations and representations, for it belongs to a form of life). Celati, “Commenti su un teatro naturale delle immagini”, 10 May. 565
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chiama e capiamo solo quello; lo spazio che accoglie le cose non possiamo capirlo se non confusamente. Idee che mi sono portato in viaggio, ricavate da un pensiero di Leopardi (agosto 1821). (54-55) 13 F
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In its simple, fragmented, diary-like style, this passage encodes a number of key concepts in Celati’s narration which attest to the centrality and interdependence of the notions of voice and space, on which the author has reflected since the 70s. In the extract they emerge in the emphasis on the open space of the plains that take centre stage, while the human element disappears, and in the impact of the visual, of the low perspective, photographic, cinematic view that moves from the long shot on the empty countryside to the close up onto a mysterious call that has the power deeply to affect the viewer. This state of affection is triggered by the very voice of this vague space – and it is to the voice and to listening that I will now turn. Voice
Throughout his career Celati has always stressed the importance of the voice as the core element, the music of a text, and the need to develop the ability to listen to this voice, and perform it, by reading texts aloud as in oral storytelling. By adopting this stand Celati clearly voices his critique both of the tradition of high, literary language that has distinguished Italian literature 13
“Against the sky on a river bank some poppies moved by the wind, and the sky is so dark, so heavy. Empty fields. All this makes me feel like writing, as if the words followed something that is outside myself. If I look in the distance I see a great openness in the space out there; the void that envelops everything. Only later the openness focuses on something that sends a call, as in a film by John Ford when an Indian appears on the horizon. We are driven by what calls us and only this we can comprehend; the space that welcomes things can only be understood vaguely. Ideas that I’ve carried with me on my journey, from one of Leopardi’s thoughts (August 1821)”. 566
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and education, substituting the voice with the written word, and also of the commodification of the voice in much contemporary language and “commercial” fiction. The questions of vocality and orality inform the whole of Celati’s work, starting from his first experimental novels of the 70s – or rather, as he calls them, “lunghe narrazioni di voce” (long voice narrations) – and developing since the 80s into his short natural narrations. As the author explains in the essay “Il narrare come attività pratica,” this new poetics results from his leaving behind the inwardlooking experimentation with the voice of his early comic/obsessive protagonists and in opening to others’ voices and disciplines, moving away from a strong notion of the subject (however close to illness or insanity he may be) and from the claustrophobic practice of literary/linguistic experimentation of the 60s and 70s. As the author explains: Uno dei passaggi, o cambiamenti, è stato quello di spostarmi all’esterno, verso l’esteriorità, e di abituarmi a piccole attenzioni sparse: così c’è stata anche la sostituzione d’un tipo di ascolto con un altro ascolto, dove c’entra anche il vedere, non più disgiunto dall’ascoltare. Noi vediamo delle voci e ascoltiamo delle cose, non c’è spartizione tra i sensi nel lavoro narrativo. L’espressione “senso comune” anticamente voleva dire l’insieme di tutti i sensi, cioè il fatto che noi percepiamo l’esterno con l’insieme di tutti i sensi, senza separazioni di compiti. [...] Io credo davvero che si vedano voci, e che il visibile sia qualcosa che si ascolta. Questo è il principio di meraviglia, ed anche ciò che mi fa sentire gli enormi limiti in cui mi trovo e in cui ci troviamo tutti. (33) 14 F
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“One of the shifts, or changes, was that of moving towards the external, the exteriority, and getting used to little things around me, replacing a type of listening with another type of listening, which is deeply connected with seeing. We see voices and listen to things and there is no division between the senses in the narrative work. Traditionally, the expression “common 567
GIANNI CELATI’S “NATURAL” NARRATION AND THE CALL OF THE PLAINS
In this process, Celati shifts the focus from the “subject” and its inscape to a landscape such as that of the plains that, for their vastness and vagueness, escape the very possibility of description, and that are no longer a projection of the “cogito” (as in Calvino’s Palomar) but rather a “state of affection,” in that they are a landscape that calls, that affects the character (as we have seen in the extract from Verso la foce) and not a landscape that is defined (or at least attempted to be defined) by the character as in Calvino. In equating listening with seeing Celati moves away from the Western tradition of the philosophy of the eye – which postulates the priority of visibility, thus of the ability to comprehend an external truth – and adopts a philosophy of the ear, of listening, that assumes the need for opening up to alternative narratives that are no longer “grand,” that encodes the impermanence of meaning through the metaphor of sound waves, and celebrates it. As suggested by recent works on vocality, such as those by Cavarero and Nancy, turning one’s attention from the visual and the written sign to the oral and particularly the vocal (which, unlike the oral, is devoid of meaning implications) leads us to be receptive of the individual and to relate to the other, rather than focusing on the self and theorizing the general and the abstract. Since the late 60s Celati has stressed the importance of re-evaluating the individual voice and has increasingly moved away from abstract theorization, originally encoding the debate on orality, while at the same time reflecting the changes that the Italian language and culture have undergone in the space of three decades.
sense” meant the collection of all the senses, that is the fact that we perceive the external through all of our senses, without dividing up the roles. […] I truly believe that we can see voices and that the visible is something that we listen to. This is the principle of wonder and is also what makes you feel the enormous limitations of our condition”. 568
MARINA SPUNTA (UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER)
Celati’s notion of natural narration is closely linked to his effort to recreate an effect of orality in his texts, and in this endeavour he has proved to be one of the most innovative and influential writers in contemporary Italian fiction, as someone who, in Tabucchi’s words, “prima che narratore, si è posto come ascoltatore” (10), 15 and certainly not as an “author.” After the linguistic experimentation of the 60s and 70s, when orality still had a strong impact, a marked anti-establishment value, as a sign that is external to the system and seeks to subvert it, in the 80s the “lowering” of the standard language into neo-standard Italian reflects the introduction of many substandard, spoken varieties, which make orality increasingly embedded into the “norm.” This shift to an orality that becomes normalised, less disruptive, internal to the system, is reflected in Celati’s move to a poetics of natural narration, that no longer needs to render orality in such a marked way, but rather embeds it into the simple style of his prose. As I mentioned earlier, this shift is accompanied by a move to the short form, as the best means of rendering the actual dispersal of the voice, the loss of a strong sense of the subject and of a leading role for literature. The paradox that exposes this notion of natural narration can be traced back to Enzo Melandri’s imperative, “Be spontaneous”, and to Guido Fink’s image of the plains, as “questo paesaggio tutto in orizzontale, che sembra privo di asperità, di nascondigli, di zone oscure e di segreti, deve contenere il suo mistero nell’apparente assenza di ogni mistero” (5). 16 In resurrecting a notion of an original, unmediated orality – and in registering the change of values associated to orality since the 70s – Celati renews the myth of oral storytelling, that is of the ritual of listening and narrating to a F
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“presents himself as a listener, even before a narrator”.
16
“this all-horizontal landscape, that seems devoid of roughness, of hidden zones and secrets, must hide its mystery in the apparent absence of any mystery”. 569
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real audience through a simple, natural style. 17 The voice of this narration and of its space can only be heard by a reader that has tuned his or her internal ear to this music, as “un modo imponderabile in cui gli uomini si intendono anche senza parole” (an imponderable way in which people understand each other even without words), as opposed to “il modo in cui i critici e gli universitari parlano di letteratura, come se fosse una cosa che loro sanno bene cos’è” (the way in which critics and scholars talk about literature, as if it were something they really understand) (“Modena, 18 Luglio 1994” 141-42). This notion of an ideal empathy with the text and with a community of “real” readers reminds us of the myth of the Gamuna people, the imaginary population that Celati describes in the story “Fata morgana,” who are scared of hights and believe that everything they see on the horizon is an illusion, a mirage, and who, in conversation, accompany the speakers’ words by softly singing a harmony that is in tune with the interlocutor’s speech, thus focusing on the voice rather than on the meaning of the words they hear. In conclusion, in his decade-long reflection on the value of literature and narration – particularly on the key notions of voice and space – Celati’s work represents a focal point in contemporary Italian culture, as emerges since his trilogy of the Po valley, and particularly in Verso la foce. As a diary/travelog, a “fictional documentary”, this text most powerfully conveys the weakening of the postmodern subject who is lost in a vague space and the loss of a strong role for the writer who can only record fragmented observations and thoughts, which are evoked by the very landscape. In underlying the emotional empathy with space, rather than its rational comprehension, and in embracing listening even before seeing, as a metaphor for the F
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Like the landscape of the plains narrations are perceived as music, particularly as jazz music, that is continuously realized in new performances. See Celati, “Jazz e scrittura” (18); Giorgio Rimondi. 570
MARINA SPUNTA (UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER)
impermanence of meaning, Celati moves away from the classical model that he still sees informing Calvino’s fiction – though Calvino himself sought to question this very model. Celati’s poetics results from his rejecting Calvino’s lesson of a geometrical, abstractly precise and inward looking prose in order to build an alternative “panoramic mode of narration,” which follows a zigzagging plot direction and is open to multiple voices. In this movement, while retaining a deep belief in the role of literature in mediating reality and in its reliefgiving potential, Celati leads Italian culture towards the call of a postmodern space of affection.
Works cited
Bandella, Monica and Peter Kuon. “Voci sparse. Frammenti di un dibattito.” Voci delle pianure. Ed. Peter Kuon and Monica Bandella. Florence: Cesati, 2002. 177-202. Benedetti, Carla. “Celati e le poetiche della grazia.” Rassegna europea di letteratura italiana 1 (1993): 7-33. Calvino, Italo. Le città invisibili. Turin: Einaudi, 1972 (new edition 1993). Invisible cities. Translation by William Weaver. London: Harvest, 1978. ---. Collezione di sabbia. Milan: Garzanti, 1984. Cavarero, Adriana. A più voci. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2003. Celati, Gianni. Narratori delle pianure. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1985. Voices from the plains. English translation by Robert Lumley. London: Serpent’s tail, 1990. ---. Quattro novelle sulle apparenze. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1987. Appearances. English translation by Stuart Hood. London: Serpent’s tail, 1990. ---. Verso la foce. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1989. ---. “Commenti su un teatro naturale delle immagini.” Luigi Ghirri, Il profilo delle nuvole. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1989: 10 May. 571
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---. “Jazz e scrittura.” Il Manifesto. 10 January 1990: 18. ---. “Modena, 18 Luglio 1994.” Il semplice 1 (1995): 141-47. ---. “Fata morgana.” Il semplice 2 (1996): 15-30. ---. “Il narrare come attività pratica.” Seminario sul racconto. Ed. Letizia Rustichelli. West Lafayette, Indiana: Bordighera, 1998: 15-33. ---. “Collezione di spazi.” Il Verri 21 (2003): 57-92. Cottafavi, Beppe and Maurizio Magni Ed. Narratori dell’invisibile. Simposio in memoria di Italo Calvino. Modena: Mocchi, 1987. Fink, Guido. “Viaggi verso la foce.” Il cinema in Padania: i luoghi, le immagini, la memoria 5-6 (1989): 3-11. Ghirri, Luigi. Il profilo delle nuvole. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1989. Iacoli, Giulio. Atlante delle derive. Geografie da un’Emilia postmoderna: Gianni Celati e Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Reggio Emilia: Diabasis, 2002. Kuon, Peter and Monica Bandella Ed. Voci delle pianure. Florence: Cesati, 2002. Nancy, Jean-Luc. A l’écoute. Paris: Galilée, 2002; All’ascolto. Translated by Enrica Lisciani Petrini. Milan: Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2002. Pellegrini, Franca and Elisabetta Tarantino Ed. Il romanzo contemporaneo: voci italiane. Market Harborough: Troubador, 2006. Rimondi, Giorgio. La scrittura sincopata. Jazz e letteratura nel Novecento italiano. Milan: Mondadori, 1999. Rustichelli, Letizia Ed. Seminario sul racconto. West Lafayette, Indiana: Bordighera, 1998. Sironi, Marco. Geografie del narrare. Insistenze sui luoghi di Gianni Celati e Luigi Ghirri. Reggio Emilia: Diabasis, 2004. Spunta, Marina. “Lo spazio delle pianure come ‘territorio di racconti’ – verso la foce con Gianni Celati.” Spunti e ricerche 18 (2003): 5-38. 572
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---. “Il narrare semplice, naturale di Gianni Celati e i suoi progetti editoriali.” Rassegna Europea di Letteratura Italiana 22 (2003): 53-72. ---. “Conversazione con Gianni Celati” Pellegrini and Tarantino. 117-31. ---. “Dialogo con Gianni Celati.” unpublished. Tabucchi, Antonio. “Voci sperdute fatte racconto. Il nuovo libro di Gianni Celati.” Il Manifesto (22 June 1985): 10. West, Rebecca. Gianni Celati. The Craft of Everyday Storytelling. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.
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Alì Babà and Beyond: Celati and Calvino in the Search for “Something More” Monica Jansen (Utrecht University) & Claudia Nocentini (University of Edinburgh)
Alì Babà: cave of fables or cave of intellectualism
The journal that Calvino, Celati, Guido Neri, Carlo Ginzburg and Ezio Melandri planned to publish between 1968 and 1972 originated from the idea that it was necessary to break through the boundaries of literature and other disciplines in order to achieve “something more”. This “something more” was not clearly defined but was felt to be urgent. When Calvino met Celati in 1968 at a conference in Urbino and spoke to him for the first time about his project to create a new journal, he was still very excited about what he had seen during May ’68 in Paris. He felt as if he had been liberated from a heavy burden and was looking for a radical change, “voltare pagina”. In 1967 Calvino had just ended his engagement with Il Menabò, which had been brought to an end by the death of Elio Vittorini, a man who would have been in his element in the midst of a society in turmoil, while Calvino needed to distance himself from it, to change rhythm.
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http://congress70.library.uu.nl/
MONICA JANSEN (UTRECHT UNIVERSITY) & CLAUDIA NOCENTINI (UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH)
Calvino felt that he was at a turning point, or rather in a phase of transition, in which the militant intellectual who spoke in terms of “we” was disappearing in favour of a period of “nonidentification” (Barenghi, Alì Babà 14). Furthermore, in 1972 he would become a member of OULIPO, embracing a concept of the intellectual as “giocoliere”, juggler, and demilitarizing his militancy of the fifties and sixties. 1 It is through the younger Celati that he is able to find in the revolution of the imagination an alternative for the dream of ’68, in Italy suffocated almost immediately by the “strategia della tensione” followed on the bomb placed in Piazza Fontana in 1969. The collective aim of Celati’s and Calvino’s project was a journal able to restore literature to its essential role in a period when political and ideological polemics seemed to drain the social function of literary imagination. According to Belpoliti, who agrees with Carlo Ginzburg’s remark that “Celati was Calvino’s 1968”, Calvino would never have accepted Celati’s ideas about literature without his own experience of 1968. Nevertheless, the great difference between the two – the former shaped in the 30s and 40s by his contribution to the Italian Resistance, the latter formed in the 60s by the experiments of the neo-avant-garde – was that Calvino had difficulty in leaving behind a rationalistic and positivistic matrix of thought to define the relationship between literature and society, while Celati moved from the idea that human society was nothing but an effect of language and F
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1
One may indeed argue that creative acts are necessarily political and that any creative endeavour to voice or bring about understanding is also consciously or unconsciously progressive. On the cultural front, the very late Calvino, the writer of Palomar, was still involved in current affairs and the book itself was at least partly born out of contemporary reflections published as newspaper articles. Furthermore his posthumous volume I saggi, under the heading Cronache planetarie. Cronache italiane, brings together 25 articles written between 1974 and 1980, dealing with issues ranging from the legalization of the termination of pregnancy to the Moro affair. 575
ALÌ BABÀ AND BEYOND: CELATI AND CALVINO IN THE SEARCH FOR “SOMETHING MORE”
that only through language could one reach for an alternative (if not a truer) view of reality. While Calvino did not want to abandon reason, Celati was interested in forms of the irrational, mental illness, slapstick and extra-linguistic corporeal and oral communication. Significant for the differences between the two authors is an expression used by Calvino in 1957 and quoted by Belpoliti, the idea of “looking at the world while falling into the stairwell” (“guardare il mondo cadendo nella tromba delle scale”), concept in which the gaze garanties a critical distance alien to Celati for whom “falling” is the starting point of his boundless imagination.(Barenghi, Alì babà 39). Another example recalled in the article by Mario Barenghi that makes explicit their divergent ideas is a comment by Calvino on Comiche, in which he compares Celati’s writing to the naive infantile pictures by Klee. Celati tells Calvino in a letter that he does not recognize himself in this comparison first because Klee stands for “the static and cartesian geometry” that he detests, and secondly because the term infantile “gets on his nerves because it conceives of childhood as a separate zoo”. He himself likes nothing more than a “row, when everyone beats everyone, everything explodes, crumbles, parts get mixed up, the world shows itself for what it really is, hysterical and paranoid, and in brief, you have the effect of general madness”. 2 Just as their views on the function of literature are difficult to reconcile, the same can be said of their project for the envisioned journal Alì Babà in the final phase of 1972. Calvino told Celati that he wanted to produce a review for a nonspecialized middle-brow public, following the example of the comics’ review Linus, in other words, to present new ideas using popular forms of writing like the feuilleton. Celati found his attitude too didactic and was contrary to the idea to teach. He F
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“niente mi interessa come la bagarre, quando tutti si picchiano, tutto scoppia, crolla, i ruoli si confondono, il mondo si mostra per quello che è, e insomma si ha l’effetto dell’impazzimento generale” (Barenghi, Alì Babà 20).
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MONICA JANSEN (UTRECHT UNIVERSITY) & CLAUDIA NOCENTINI (UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH)
did not want to bother about the ideal readers of the journal, and was more interested in his role as a writer than in his role as an organiser of culture. Calvino and Celati went their separate ways and the journal was destined to remain the amalgam of ideas that it was from the beginning, the virtual status of the project being probably its most appropriate form. 3 The story of the would-be journal Alì Babà is, as has been shown, reconstructed in all its details by Belpoliti and Barenghi in Riga, a journal that considers itself to be its ideal offspring. The editorial for issue 14, 1998, describes how Riga, when it was founded in 1990 by Marco Belpoliti and Elio Grazioli, wanted to recover in the 90s what it considered to be the main inheritance of the 70s. What this legacy consists of – besides some programmatic principles like the interdisciplinary character of the journal and the publication of monographs – is clearest from the epilogue, in which Celati reconsiders the F
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As a first introduction to the project from the point of view of Calvino and Celati, the two main literary figures, it is hard to beat the clarity of “Congetture su un Dissenso” (“Conjectures on a Disagreement”) the introductory article, published in Riga 14, by Mario Barenghi. With admirable concision, Barenghi sketches out the history of the project from 1968 to 1972 within the wider context of Italo Calvino’s literary and journalistic output, and proceeds to examine the main areas of disagreement between the two authors. As their readers will no doubt recognize, aesthetic differences appear to centre mainly on the role and relevance of the subconscious, the instinctual, and the corporeal. They extend, however, to a wider relationship with cultural values, so that even the possible title for the journal was never agreed upon. Apocripha was probably dismissed by Calvino for his Latin and classical associations; Insiemi mobili was suggested by Celati and summarily dismissed by Calvino as “orribile”. Finally Alì Babà remained in critical memory as the most successful possibility, simply because none of the contributors ever rejected it openly. Barenghi sees the main area of polarity between the authors as the role that they envisaged the journal taking on that of a literary version of the successful Linus, from Calvino’s didactic perspective, and that of a theoretical reflection on the role of literature from Celati’s authorial stance. 577
ALÌ BABÀ AND BEYOND: CELATI AND CALVINO IN THE SEARCH FOR “SOMETHING MORE”
project thirty years later, returning in different ways to the concept of the cave of Alì Babà. First of all, the cave stands for the enthusiasm felt by Calvino, after his experience of May ’68 in Paris, and his younger interlocutor Celati, for the “frantic intellectualism of those years” (“l’intellettualismo forsennato di quegli anni”; Celati, Alì Babà 316), the enormous number of new theories, all those books that seemed to them “a cave of Alì Babà” (Celati 317). 4 Secondly, Celati reflects on the divide between ideas and daily practice, between the essence of meanings and the way in which we perceive and register them, and consequently looks at the cave full of the treasures of European intellectualism with a certain ironic distance, considering it as a warehouse with “intellectual leftovers condemned to become banal objects deprived of affection, like a Coca Cola can thrown into the ditch”. 5 In the winter of 1971 he returned from the United States to meet Calvino, who was writing his Città invisibili, meanwhile cherishing the idea to produce not a cultural journal anymore but something like Oreste del Buono’s Linus, an ideal formula to playfully collect floating ideas. The title Alì Babà now should stand for a cave of fables and not for a cave full of intellectual treasures. This would have meant a change of approach, but it was never put into practice. Calvino, in the passage quoted by Barenghi, stated that Celati objected to his more reader-oriented approach with the intention “to restore, with the help of the journal, the true functions of a relationship with the public: crying, laughing, F
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4
See on this subject Anna Botta, “The Alì Babà project (1968-1972): Monumental History and the Silent Resistance of the Ordinary”. 5
“residuati intellettuali destinati a diventare presto banali oggetti di disaffezione, come una lattina della Cocacola gettata in un fosso” (Celati 319).
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MONICA JANSEN (UTRECHT UNIVERSITY) & CLAUDIA NOCENTINI (UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH)
fear, adventure, mystery...” 6 In his recount of the final phase of the journal Celati shows again to have been more interested in the speculative implications of the Alì Babà project. He asks himself what we should learn from it. According to Celati “what we learned was to accept the tenability and the profound instability of any form of knowledge”. 7 For those interested in seeing what is left of the project he refers to the essays intended for it by Calvino, Ginzburg and himself on the subject of archaeology and traces. F
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Calvino and Celati: the geographer and the traveller
It is not our purpose here to discuss the form of archaeology undertaken by the different Alì Babà writers. We want only to recall an observation by Belpoliti that the titles of the essays by Calvino, “Lo sguardo dell’archeologo”, and by Celati, “Il bazar archeologico”, point again to the fundamental difference between the two authors, with Calvino identifying himself with the archaeologist who investigates and interprets his findings of the past in the hope of reconstructing their context, and Celati reading the ruins without privileging any particular point of view. Paraphrasing the words of Benjamin quoted by Celati in the note added to his essay when he included it in his Finzioni occidentali (1986), one could say that, like the Surrealists, Celati is in search of the “Stimmung” concealed in those objects that could make them explode instead of recompose (Celati, Alì Babà 222). 8 F
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“attraverso questa rivista ritrovare le funzioni vere d’un rapporto col pubblico: il piangere, il ridere, la paura, l’avventura, l’enigma...” (Calvino quoted by Barenghi, Alì Babà 22).
7
“noi abbiamo imparato ad accettare la deperibilità e l’instabilità profonda di qualsiasi forma di sapere” (Celati, Alì Babà 321).
8
The link between Celati and the Surrealists is Guido Neri, born in Bologna in 1927 but living in Rome from 1956 to 1971 and working as a journalist and as an editor, like Calvino, for Einaudi. Neri was Einaudi’s most competent translator from French and responsible for the introduction of the 579
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According to Belpoliti, what makes Celati author of Narratori delle pianure an example for many young writers to follow, while Calvino’s last works (Palomar and the essays in Collezione di sabbia) remained almost without a sequel, 9 is exemplified by the images of the geographer and the traveller, the latter fully immersed in the landscape without being tormented by the search of an explanation of origins like Calvino’s Mr. Palomar. Celati himself argued that Mr. Palomar cannot abandon himself completely to the contemplation of the world because of the culture the young Calvino has grown up with, especially the “category of consciousness” (“categoria della consapevolezza”; Belpoliti, Alì Babà 47). This interpretation seems to find confirmation in Calvino’s essay of 1976 about right and wrong political uses of literature. In this essay, Calvino declares that literature is one of the instruments of self-consciousness that society possesses, and that it is a fundamental instrument because its narrative power connects to the origins of different types of knowledge and different forms of critical thought (Una pietra sopra 291). He concludes his famous essay as follows: “When we become aware of our disease or of our hidden motives, we have already begun to get the better of them. What matters is the way in which we accept our motives and live through the ensuing crisis. This is the only chance we have of becoming different from the way we are – that is, the only way of starting to invent a new way of being.” (Una pietra sopra 293). F
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école du regard in the late 50s and the critical fortune of Surrealism in the 70s in Italy. When he returned to Bologna in 1971, he became, like Celati in 1973, a lecturer at DAMS, part of the University of Bologna. 9
The notable exception are the works by Del Giudice and De Carlo, which are considered part of the legacy of the late Calvino.
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MONICA JANSEN (UTRECHT UNIVERSITY) & CLAUDIA NOCENTINI (UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH)
This brings us to a discussion between Calvino and Celati on pathology. 10 In a letter to Calvino, Celati defends his position against the suspicion of being irrationalist, arguing that when one considers illness to be a symptom of certain forms of conditioning (“condizionamenti”), then there is only one way to reach an alternative point of view: to pass through the disease from inside, to speak its language without giving space to one’s own voice (Belpoliti, Alì Babà 38). This means that consciousness can play no role in the process; on the contrary, reflecting on the way in which one lives through the crisis, as Calvino recommends to his readers, would render the results of this experiment irrational. F
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Beyond Alì Babà: from Il Semplice to Zibaldoni
Considering Celati as an example for future generations, we want now to have a closer look at the role he plays as a source of inspiration for young writers and new journal projects. Without any doubt , Celati has been an important figure for those who wanted to convey their experience of the 70s in Bologna. We can find Celati in Boccalone by Enrico Palandri as the writerfriend “gianni” who advises him to rewrite his pages without, however, performing the part of the professional writer: “riscrivere è pazzesco, me lo ha consigliato gianni, il mio amico scrittore. cioè lui ha detto: ‘che non ti scappi di scriverlo’, che 10
Aesthetic disagreements between Calvino’s and Celati’s work focus on the role and relevance of the subconscious, the instinctual, the body. The dichotomy between consciousness and the unconscious was one of the themes sparked off by the discussion of Bachtin’s essay on the Carnivalesque. In the letter by Calvino and Celati written at Cinquale in 1969 to Neri, Calvino was actually thinking of a succession of issues centred on the opposite poles of Carnival and Lent, with related themes branching off one another (Alì Babà 118). The ensuing pattern did not have any consequence for the journal, but became the structure of Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore, with the opposition Carnival-Lent transformed into that between the vital minimum and the search for fullness. 581
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vuol dire di metterti a fare lo scrittore, perché il bello di queste pagine è che tutti possono scriverle e che tutti sono scrittori. poi ha detto anche che i miei fogli scarabocchiati non li prende nessuno” (Palandri 18). 11 The editors of Riga, the journal that hosted the Alì Babà project, declared that when they started their review in 1990 they took great encouragement from Celati’s support. This could be indicative of Celati’s role as promotor of literary journals. Between September 1995 and May 1997, Il Semplice. Almanacco delle Prose, founded by Celati and published by Feltrinelli, was a short-lived e experiment that brought out only 6 issues but that has been, at least for one of its collaborators, the writer Ugo Cornia, of fundamental importance (“un oggetto importantissimo”), overshadowed, however, by the simultaneous and more clamorous event of the so-called ‘young cannibal’ writers launched with the Einaudi-anthology Gioventù cannibale. The journal consisted of short stories without any critical comment. Celati declares in the first issue that: F
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È impressionante il modo in cui i critici e gli universitari parlano di letteratura, come se fosse una cosa che loro sanno bene cos’è, spesso mostrando anche di sapere come bisognerebbe scrivere. L’assurdità sta proprio nel partire dall’idea che si sappia qualcosa di preciso: mentre a parte un certo numero di cose che s’imparano per esperienza, tutto il resto rimane un grande mistero. Ma è un mistero nel senso proprio della parola, cioè qualcosa di cui non si può parlare: e qui ricordo che la parola mestiere viene proprio dalla lingua mistero, che significa mestiere in molto lingue europee.” 12 F
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11
On the influence of Celati on Palandri see also Stefania Ricciardi, “Enrico Palandri, Boccalone: une montgolfière vers les années 80”. 12
This theme is strongly indebted to Neri’s contribution to Alì Babà published in Riga, starting with the highly theoretical, all-encompassing 582
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Celati’s anti-intellectualism seems here to prevail. Central to the journal is a strong territorial characterization of the Emilian countryside through the item of orality, as has been analysed by Marina Spunta. The issues are conceived as follow-ups of the oral performance of its texts. A strong presence of Celati and the learnings from the Alì Babà experiment is to be found again in the on-line journal Zibaldoni e altre meraviglie that in January 2004 celebrated its first year of existence. The journal is introduced in L’Indice dei libri del mese by the critic Andrea Cortellessa who highlights the link with Celati. One of the editors, Enrico De Vivo, is the author of Racconti impensati di ragazzini that was published in 1999 by Feltrinelli with a foreword by Gianni Celati. Furthermore, the first issue contains a contribution by Celati in which he proposes a “leopardian line for prose” (linea leopardiana della prosa). Leopardi’s Zibaldone exemplifies for him the phrasing of someone who is thinking while he writes, a mobility that pursues the surprise of saying something that was not thought yet, a “mobilità eccitatoria che è l’anima di questa scrittura, e di ogni modo di scrivere non ancora catturato dalle rappresentazioni del reale”. Besides the Benjaminian Stimmung now it is Leopardi who helps Celati to conceive of a nonrationalist ‘affective’ approach of reality: “Le condizioni affettive sono la sua [of Leopardi] chiave per uscire dalla triste
question “What is literature. Is this question meaningful?” (“Che cosa è la letteratura. Ha senso questa domanda?” (Alì Babà 113). While Neri continued until his death in 1992 to operate as a cultural referent both as an editor and as a scholar, involved in projects such as the publication of Baudelaire’s letters together with his students 1980-83, it is hard to establish how, if at all, his participation in the Alì Babà project influenced his future work. On the other hand “What is literature? Is this question meaningful?” is the starting point and recurrent theme for Celati’s “I lettori di libri sono sempre più falsi”, the third of his Quattro novelle sulle apparenze 1985. 583
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ragionevolezza delle filosofie analitiche, recuperando energie che contrastano la noia e l’uniformità delle società moderne.” By way of parenthesis one could compare this lecture by Celati with the one by Calvino on exactitude in Lezioni americane. Here Calvino defends the hypothesis that Leopardi, in order to reach the beauty and pleasure of vagueness, dedicates an extremely precise attention to the composition of every image (60). By doing so he is not a philosopher of sensations but rather a cultivator of metaphysics like Descartes and Kant, trying to understand the relationship between the idea of infinite as absolute space and absolute time, and our empirical cognition of space and time (63). It seems that Celati finally found in Enrico De Vivo from Angri (Salerno) and Gianluca Virgilio from Lecce the ideal persons to bring into being the journal that Alì Babà could have been. While Calvino looked for creative and yet generally accepted forms of writing to bring back the confusion of floating ideas to a dialogue with the reader , abandoning in this way the initial project of a cultural journal, De Vivo and Virgilio propose with their title Zibaldoni e altre meraviglie exactly the way in which Alì Babà could have been realized without betraying its original intentions. According to the editors in their presentation (“Presentazione”) of the review, the etymology of “zibaldone” can be derived from “zabaione”, that is the chaotic status of a work, the tension towards the work but not the work itself, in short a work in progress, a big “calderone (hotchpotch) di scrittura”. Besides the reference to Leopardi, Benjamin too is back into the picture with his concepts of the collectionist and the flâneur, central to the essays on archaeology recommended by Celati. “Zibaldone” also appears as an anti-genre in which everything is mixed up, thus preventing genres to be recognizable as such. The result of this hotchpotch is Zibaldoni e altre meraviglie, in which the marvellous is equivalent to the alternative reason of narrative knowledge. 584
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In De Vivo’s and Virgilio’s own creative contributions to the journal, respectively the “Divagazioni stanziali” and the “Scritti zibaldoniani”, many echoes of Celati’s thoughts about narration as a “discursive/conversational manifestation of memory” can be found. De Vivo’s attempt to give an idea of his personal geography, the village of Angri, is greatly inspired by the author of Narratori delle pianure: “Noi dovremmo fare qualcosa di sommamente semplice: dare un’idea dei luoghi in cui viviamo, non snaturarci e non forzarci a fare cose che non ci riguardano molto a fondo e molto direttamente. Non voler fare i registi, i teorici, ecc. Scrivere per dare un’idea, innanzitutto.” In thought number 8 of Virgilio’s “Scritti zibaldoniani” art is descibed as a contingent experience, a conclusion that is not the result of some theory but of the earthquake that damaged the basilica of S. Francesco in Assisi. 13 Also in this case speculation is linked to a form of geography of the ordinary and opposed to the stereotypical reproduction of reality by mass media. In thought number 129 Virgilio comes to speak of Fango by the ‘young cannibal’ Niccolò Ammaniti. Although he cannot deny that the lightness of the book gave him some pleasure in reading, he disapproves of a prose that is “ancilla of television programmes”. In fact, Zibaldoni is also a political programme, but in an ironically “militant” way, as Cortellessa observes in his review of the journal. This comes to the fore during the first anniversary F
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“Un evento catastrofico naturale, come il terremoto che distrusse qualche anno fa la basilica di Assisi […] può darci la possibilità di pensare a fondo questo rapporto tra catastrofe e arte, al di là e al di fuori di ogni considerazione politica, moralistica, patetica e sentimentale dei fatti occorsi. Arte e natura non sono termini antitetici. In realtà l’estetica deve tenere conto dell’estrema possibilità che tutto venga meno, che un evento catastrofico determini improvvisamente la scomparsa dell’opera d’arte. L’arte allora ci appare come una esperienza contingente, che soltanto una forzatura di pensiero può costringerci a dotare di un valore assoluto e intriso di sacralità.” (Zibaldoni e altre meraviglie 1). 585
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of Zibaldoni celebrated with a text by the editors, first published in L’Unità (31-1-2004), on politics and literature. The “something more” that literature could offer Calvino and Celati searched for, is now interpreted in terms of ideas that live and circulate within a community. Leopardi’s “zibaldone” is viewed as an alternative to the opposition between the engagement of realism and the disengagement of the fantastic. Literature according to Virgilio and De Vivo is not a discourse that is technical or theoretical, fantastic or referential, but a “vision” of the world. It is the visionary power of literature that should permit it to break with a self-referential discourse. “Zibaldone”, because of its never-fixed and collective nature, becomes an ideal metaphor to embody the idea of literature as “expression of a community”. Politics has to be understood as “participating with the ‘private’ in ‘communal’ activities” (“partecipare con il ‘proprio’ alle attività ‘comuni’”). The philosopher of weak thought, Gianni Vattimo, is also called into the debate with his idea expressed at a conference in Istanbul (“Heidegger filosofo della democrazia”, 2003) of considering the intellectual as a priest without hierarchy (“prete senza gerarchia”), or as a street artist (“artista di strada”). He is someone who, in a postmodern era characterized by the end of metaphysics and in the context of antiauthoritarian democracy, looks for the ontology of being not privileging , like Heidegger did, great works of art, but the collective experience of the ordinary instead. Thus the intellectual in its role of priest or artist has the task of constructing within the community a natural continuity between past and actual experiences, helping to find new ways of understanding, and here Vattimo refers to Habermas’ concept of the philosopher as Dolmetscher, interpreter.
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Back to Celati and Calvino: a “funambulist” and a “priest without hierarchy”
Maybe with the help of Vattimo it is possible to reconnect Celati’s and Calvino’s views on the function of the writer intellectual. Celati in his epilogue on the Alì Babà project describes himself as a “saltimbanco confusionario” (319), a confused acrobate that could be related to Vattimo’s image of the street artist. Because of his lack of discipline and his recklessness he is the one who performs best the role of disclosing new ways of understanding: “credo che fossi io ad attizzare di più il fuoco, semplicemente perché ero il più sbandato” (317). Within Vattimo’s framework Celati’s acrobatisms can be endowed with ‘political’ implications. To Belpoliti, who in the special issue of Riga expresses his intention to study Alì Babà in order to narrate “an idea of literature and a project of society” (Alì Babà 313), Celati objects to leave out the part on the “project of society”, but in the light of the intellectual as Dolmetscher this recommendation could be overruled. Calvino on the other hand is best characterized as a “prete senza gerarchia”. Like a priest he considers giving pleasure and emotions, using literature as a persuasive machine, to be true functions of an authentic relationship with the public. His continuing oscillation between the search for an intelligible order and the impossibility of grasping the world makes him however a priest without hierarchy. Both forms of intellectualism are conceivable within the era of the end of authoritarianism in Western thought and in Western democracy. Does this mean that the antiauthoritarianism of the 70s that formed the model of intellectual militancy is left behind once and for all? Certainly not. If one looks at the Italian literary journals that in 2004 dominate the internet, one must conclude that anti-authorianism is alive and kicking again. We refer to the front formed against the so-called oligarchy of literary critics and against a society 587
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that after September 11 nationally and internationally is dominated by neo-conservative reactionary forces. The avantgarde of cultural resistance is formed by the on-line journals – or, rather, blogs resisting any editorial hierarchy –, Carmilla on line, directed by SF author Valerio Evangelisti, I Miserabili, directed by author and critic Giuseppe Genna, and Nazione Indiana, co-founded by Carla Benedetti, known for her polemic essays Pasolini contro Calvino and Il tradimento dei critici. Hot topic in 2004 is of course the Italian authorities’ request for the extradition of ex-terrorist Cesare Battisti, domiciled in Paris since 1990, who, after the protests of French intellectuals and of these ‘warriors’ on the internet was temporarily released from prison until the rehearing of his case on April 7 2004. Even after his escape his case is still defended, as is shown by the section “Il caso Battisti” on Carmilla on line. 14 In Nazione indiana, that in March 2004 celebrated its first year of existence, one finds a discussion provoked by an article by literary critic Romano Luperini in L’Unità (“Intellettuali, non una voce”, 18-2-2004), in which he argues that after Calvino and Pasolini there are no voices of writers or intellectuals to be publicly heard. It is known that Luperini considers the post-68 journal Alfabeta, which ended in 1989, to have been the last cultural journal with a collective voice and an intellectual impact: “Dopo Alfabeta non ci saranno più, in Italia, riviste letterarie e politico-culturali capaci di esprimere il punto di vista degli intellettuali e la loro volontà d’intervento complessivo. È la fine del dibattito culturale [...] È anche la morte dell’intellettuale (inteso come uomo di cultura generale, capace di problematizzare le questioni in termini etico-politici e di intervenire attivamente nel dibattito ideologico)” (1102). One of the objections to this so-called “party of the lament” (Carla Benedetti) is that Luperini is not aware of the birth of another F
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medium of intervention, namely the internet. Writer Tiziano Scarpa in his reaction to Luperini’s lament (“La generazione dei padristi”, L’Unità 26-2-2004) calls him a “padrista”, who in order to rule eliminates, or rather ignores the existence of all future generations of intellectuals. Still thinking in terms of generations he does not take note of what is happening beyond the reach of his fatherhood: “Eppure siamo qui. Vivi e fortissimi. In attitudine di combattimento e di sogno.” The quest for the “something more” that literature could offer is still in evolution, a cave of Alì Babà.
Works Cited
Barenghi, Mario and Belpoliti, Marco. Alì Babà. Progetto di una rivista 1968-1972. Riga 14 (1998). Belpoliti, Mario. Settanta. Torino: Einaudi, 2001. Calvino, Italo. Una pietra sopra. Torino: Einaudi, 1980. ---, Lezioni americane. Milano: Garzanti, 1988. ---. Saggi 1945-1985. Vol. II. Milano: Mondadori, 2001. Carmilla. Letteratura, immaginario e cultura di opposizione, . Celati, Gianni. Quattro novelle sulle apparenze. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1985. ---. Finzioni occidentali. Torino: Einaudi, 1986. ---. “La linea leopardiana della prosa.” Zibaldoni e altre meraviglie. I serie 1 (2003). 1 Nov. 2006 . Cornia, Ugo. Intervista in Maltese Narrazioni. 1 Nov. 2006 . Cortellessa, Andrea, “Scrittura degenere.” L’Indice, riportato su da Giuseppe Genna (12-32003). H
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De Vivo, Enrico and Gianluca Virgilio. “Una presentazione.” Zibaldoni e altre meraviglie. I serie “Idee per partire”: < http://www.zibaldoni.it/idee/index.htm>. De Vivo, Enrico. “Divagazioni stanziali.” Zibaldoni e altre meraviglie. I serie 5 (2003). 1 Nov. 2006 I Miserabili. Letteratura e mondo. . Luperini, Romano and Pietro Cataldi, La scrittura e l’interpretazione. Storia della letteratura italiana nel quadro della civiltà e della letteratura dell’Occidente. 3 II. Palermo: Palumbo, 1999. Luperini, Romano. “Intellettuali, non una voce.” L’Unità 18-22004. Nazione Indiana. 1 Nov. 2006 . Palandri, Enrico. Boccalone. Milano: Bompiani, 1997. Scarpa, Tiziano. “La generazione dei padristi.” L’Unità 26-22004. Spunta, Marina. “Il narrare semplice, naturale di Gianni Celati e i suoi progetti editoriali.” Rassegna europea di letteratura italiana 22 (2003): 53-72. Vattimo, Gianni. “Heidegger filosofo della democrazia?” Mondial Conference on Philosophy, Istanbul, 2003. Vattimo Newsletter. 1 Nov. 2006 . Virgilio, Gianluca. “Scritti zibaldoniani.” Zibaldoni e altre meraviglie. I serie 1 (2003). 1 Nov. 2006 . Zibaldoni e altre meraviglie. Trimestrale on-line di racconti, studi, pensieri, stupori letterari. I-III series. 1 Nov. 2006 . H
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Les Villes invisibles d’Italo Calvino: entre Utopie et Dystopie Els Jongeneel (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) Io credo nell’avvenire delle città acquatiche, in un mondo popolato da innumerevoli Venezie. (Italo Calvino, 1974)
Une utopie à contrainte
Vers la fin des années soixante, l’œuvre d’Italo Calvino dont les origines remontent à l’immédiat après-guerre, prend une tournure nettement plus formelle. Si dans ses ouvrages antérieurs Calvino avait surtout combiné le fantastique et l’engagement politique et social, dans les textes des années ’70, Les villes invisibles (1972), Le château des destins croisés (1973) et Si par une nuit d’hiver un voyageur (1979), il se met à expérimenter avec la forme littéraire. Ce formalisme s’explique par l’influence du poststructuralisme français dont Calvino s’inspire à l’époque. De 1967 jusqu’en 1980 il séjourne régulièrement à Paris, où il s’associe avec ‘L’Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle’. L’Oulipo consiste en un groupe d’auteurs d’origine française pour la plupart, qui ont des affinités avec le poststructuralisme par l’intérêt qu’ils manifestent pour le pouvoir heuristique de la forme textuelle. Les oulipiens essayent d’exploiter au maximum les possibilités narratives et expressives du langage à partir de ‘contraintes’, des
http://congress70.library.uu.nl/
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règles de construction textuelle empruntées à des domaines divers, tels la versification, les mathématiques et le jeu d’échecs. 1 Calvino est admis comme ‘membre étranger’ de l’Oulipo. En 1967, il traduit en italien un roman du chef du groupe, Raymond Queneau. 2 En outre il collabore aux recueils collectifs du groupe, la Bibliothèque Oulipienne. 3 Cependant, en dépit de tout formalisme Calvino n’abandonne pas pour autant sa position critique vis-à-vis de l’actualité historique. Au contraire, il reste attaché avec toutes les fibres de son être et de son art à la terra incognita de la vie humaine. Ainsi, à l’époque des expériences oulipiennes, il rédige une anthologie des écrits de Fourier pour les éditions Einaudi. 4 Ces travaux l’amènent à se pencher sur le genre de l’utopie. L’utopie le fascine, étant donné qu’elle réunit la critique sociale et le merveilleux, une combinaison de thèmes qu’il n’avait cessé d’exploiter lui-même jusque-là dans ses ouvrages (Petersen). TPF
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Cependant la place importante que les oulipiens ont réservée au récit à l’intérieur de leurs ouvrages les distancie des poststructuralistes officiels (tels les auteurs liés à la revue Tel Quel), qui, eux, ont abjuré tout lien avec l’aventure romanesque.
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I fiori blu (Les fleurs bleues), Einaudi, Torino 1967. En 1981Calvino écrit une introduction pour la traduction italienne des essais de Queneau, Segni, cifre e lettere, e altri saggi, publiés également chez Einaudi. TP
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Voir ses lipogrammes (dans Bibliothèque Oulipienne IV, 1977), Piccolo sillabario illustrato inspiré de Perec (dans Bibliothèque Oulipienne VI, 1978) et un conte resté inachevé, ‘L’ordre dans le crime’, où Calvino a eu recours à l’ordinateur pour sélectionner des réalisations textuelles compatibles avec des contraintes (voir Oulipo. Atlas de littérature potentielle (319-331)). TP
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Charles Fourier, Teoria dei Quattro Movimenti – Il Nuovo Mondo Amoroso e altri scritti sul lavoro, l’educazione, l’architettura nella società d’Armonia, Einaudi, Torino 1971. L’introduction de la main de Calvino s’intitule “L’ordinatore dei desideri”.
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On pourrait donc dire que dans Les villes invisibles qu’il publie tout de suite après l’anthologie fouriériste, Calvino poursuit son interrogation critique de la société. Pour ce faire, il a opté cette fois-ci pour une adaptation moderne du récit de voyage de Marco Polo. On rencontre souvent des réélaborations de textes ou de thèmes littéraires connus chez Calvino. Tel Borges, un de ses auteurs préférés dont il se réclame souvent, Calvino aime à s’inscrire dans la Bibliothèque en tant que glossateur et continuateur. S’y ajoute qu’il connaissait assez bien les aléas de Marco Polo, vu que, en 1960, il avait entrepris des recherches sur le célèbre voyageur vénitien pour un scénario de film qui finalement resta inédit (Falcetto). Dans Les villes invisibles, il a transformé le voyageur beau parleur de La description du monde en utopiste engagé et lucide et son employeur, l’empereur des Tartares, 5 en cosmopolite désillusionné et anxieux. Les deux interlocuteurs s’interrogent à tour de rôle sur le monde moderne en construisant et déconstruisant des villes fabuleuses à force de paroles, de gestes et d’objets. De même que dans l’œuvre antérieure de Calvino, où elle constitue un thème récurrent, 6 la ville figure ici comme symbole de la société humaine. C’est ce symbole complexe de la ville utopique dans Les villes invisibles, le texte que Calvino à son propre dire préférait à ses autres ouvrages (Leçons américaines 118), que je me propose d’interroger. TPF
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Commentaire de Calvino: “Dans la réalité historique, c’était un descendant de Gengis Khan, empereur des Mongols; mais dans son livre, Marco Polo l’appelle Grand Khan des Tartares et c’est ainsi qu’il est entré dans la tradition littéraire”, ‘Préface par Italo Calvino’, dans Les Villes invisibles, (IV) (il s’agit d’une conférence donnée à la Columbia University de New York en 1983).
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Pour un aperçu, on consultera La visione dell’invisibile (10-21).
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Furor mathematicus
Les Villes invisibles reposent sur une structure rigoureuse qui répond à une règle de jeu inventée par l’auteur lui-même (“Préface par Italo Calvino” III). Les villes décrites sont au nombre de cinquante-cinq, réparties sur neuf chapitres ou sections. Les sections sont séparées par des textes cadres en italique comprenant les dialogues entre Marco Polo et Kublai Khan. Les villes ont été réparties en onze rubriques: ‘Les villes et la mémoire’, ‘Les villes et le désir’, ‘Les villes et les signes’, ‘Les villes effilées’, ‘Les villes et les échanges’, ‘Les villes et le regard’, ‘Les villes et le nom’, ‘Les villes et les morts’, ‘Les villes et le ciel’, ‘Les villes continues’, ‘Les villes cachées’. Chaque rubrique comprend cinq villes. Chaque section introduit une nouvelle rubrique et en termine une autre, sauf la dernière section. La règle du jeu est la suivante: après avoir introduit la première rubrique, ‘Les villes et la mémoire’ (A), l’auteur change de rubrique à chaque fois que le numéro de la position x à l’intérieur de la rubrique courante réduit de 1, équivaut à 1 ou à plus d’1 que le numéro de position de la rubrique successive, donc A1 A2 (x-1) B1 A3 (x-1) B2 (x-1) C1 A4 etc. (Kuon 27). Ainsi chaque ville est reliée aux autres villes par un lien paradigmatique, à l’intérieur de la section où elle se trouve et par un lien syntagmatique, à l’intérieur de la rubrique en question qui, elle, enjambe les sections. La structure fermée s’inspire de la méthode mathématique de l’exhaustion actuellement appliquée dans le calcul intégral (Milanini 134). Elle permet à l’auteur de multiplier les points de vue sans devoir se soucier de la causalité narrative. Par conséquent elle offre au lecteur la possibilité de plus d’un trajet de lecture (le parcours selon les rubriques par exemple). Cependant le texte stimule en même temps la lecture linéaire grâce à un développement thématique que ponctuent les textes cadres (Milanini 133): dans les sections I et II Marco Polo et le Kan se demandent si le discours humain est capable de 594
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remédier à la déchéance du monde, mais ils constatent bien vite que cela est impossible; dans les sections III -VII ils cherchent fiévreusement d’autres moyens pour connaître le monde, tandis que dans VIII et IX, après avoir testé plus d’un système descriptif du réel, Marco opte pour l’approche directe du présent. En dépit de ce pragmatisme du hic et nunc, le texte fait preuve d’un pessimisme croissant: dans I-IV dominent les thèmes du désir et de la mémoire, tandis que dans V-IX règnent la dégénération et la mort. Sans aucun doute Calvino s’est inspiré ici des expériences formelles de l’Oulipo, néanmoins la règle du jeu à la base des Villes invisibles n’est pas une contrainte proprement dite. 7 La structure à contrainte, elle, règle la causalité de l’histoire, comme dans Si par une nuit d’hiver un voyageur par exemple, tandis que le réseau structural soutenant les Villes invisibles n’influe guère sur le cours que prennent les fantasmagories de Marco et du Khan. 8 Au contraire, la macrostructure régulière du texte contraste avec la microstructure fragmentaire et ouverte des esquisses urbaines. En outre, la structure ingénieuse du texte ne correspond pas à un développement thématique parallèle. Ainsi certaines rubriques ne sont pas entièrement distinctives, étant donné que les mêmes TPF
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Témoin aussi l’Atlas de littérature potentielle (415), qui classe Les villes invisibles parmi les œuvres non oulipiennes de Calvino.
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Les remarques de Carol P. James, in “Seriality and narrativity in Calvino’s Le città invisibili”, sont particulièrement révélatrices à cet égard. Voir surtout p. 147: “The arrangement of Calvino’s cities is not one that builds up a story or anything at all except its own system” et p. 148/-49: “The cities refuse to give themselves over to a thematic pattern that would support, replicate, or mirror the numerical pattern. Seen from this perspective, the cities fragment themselves thematically because of the impossibility of reading any coherence into the various sets […]. The cities remain, or better put, are remainders or fragments at odds with their arrangement”. James compare le système numérique des rubriques au palindrome. PT
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thèmes réapparaissent dans plusieurs séries. Par exemple, on rencontre le désir, la mémoire, les échanges et les signes, en tant qu’éléments fondamentaux de la sémiose, dans un grand nombre de portraits. Cette tension entre forme et vie, cette ‘double postulation’ vers le système rationnel et vers l’histoire dynamique qui en fin de compte ne se laisse pas endiguer au moyen de structures, nous la rencontrons souvent dans les écrits de Calvino des années soixante-dix. Tout en se considérant ‘membre du parti des cristaux’ (Leçons américaines 118), dans ce sens qu’il adhère à la rationalité de la structure géométrique pour pouvoir expliquer l’énigme de la condition humaine, Calvino avoue en même temps de ne pas pouvoir abandonner ‘le parti de la flamme’, le dynamisme des choses qui échappent continuellement à l’emprise des structures et réseaux. Ainsi lors d’une interview en 1973 sur la fonction du système utopique fouriériste et saint-simonien dans la société moderne, Calvino répond: Pour moi le ‘système’ fonctionne lorsqu’on sait qu’il s’agit de quelque chose de mental, d’un modèle rationnellement construit que l’on vérifie continuellement en ayant recours au réel; en revanche, si l’on croit que le système coïncide avec le dehors, avec le monde… […]. Je tiens beaucoup au modèle formel, déductif, structural, je suis d’avis qu’il s’agit là d’un instrument opérationnel nécessaire soit en tant que schéma du présent soit en tant que projet pour le futur (ou utopie, ou prophétie) que l’on oppose au présent. Là aussi, lorsque nous l’appliquons au réel il deviendra toujours autre chose, car le réseau des déterminations sera toujours plus touffu et plus varié que nos modèles théoriques, et alors il nous faudra toujours de nouveaux systèmes (mentaux) pour comprendre le présent et diriger le futur’. (Saggi 19451985, Vol. II 2795-96) 596
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La ville dystopique
Les Villes invisibles présentent la société moderne comme un prolongement de l’homme, de ses désirs (d’où les noms de femmes que portent les villes), de sa soif de comprendre, de connaître et de se connaître (d’où les noms de ville grécisants), de son orgueil et de ses ambitions, de ses craintes et de ses souvenirs. Les portraits urbains, ainsi Calvino, sont issus d’un dossier où il notait au jour le jour ses préoccupations concernant l’actualité politique: Il y eut une période où je n’arrivais à imaginer que des villes tristes et une autre que des villes heureuses; à une époque je comparais les villes au ciel étoilé et à une autre époque, j’étais sans cesse tenté de parler des immondices qui se répandent chaque jour hors des villes. C’était devenu une sorte de journal qui suivait mes humeurs et mes réflexions. (‘Préface par Italo Calvino’ I-II ) TP
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Les villes décrites par Marco allégorisent donc la vie en tant que projet et construction humaine. C’est surtout dans les rubriques ‘Les villes et le désir’, ‘Les villes et la mémoire’ et ‘Les villes et le regard’ qu’est tracé le lien ombilical entre l’homme et la société. Ainsi Despina se présente différemment selon qu’on l’approche par terre ou par mer, le chamelier la voit comme un navire grâce auquel il pourrait s’évader du désert, le marin la songe comme un chameau qui lui permettrait de fuir la mer. 9 Le plan des rues de Zobéïde fut construit comme une trappe destinée à capter une femme entrevue en rêve par les architectes (59-60); et la physionomie de Zemrude change selon l’humeur de celui qui la regarde (81). La ville de Phyllide, elle, reste en TPF
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9
Les Villes invisibles, Seuil 2002, pp. 23-24. Toutes les références sont à cette édition. PT
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partie invisible pour ses habitants, parce que ceux-ci ne reconnaissent que les points dans la ville qui sont reliés à telle ou telle sensation (108-109). Le rapport entre l’homme et son entourage s’exprime à travers le dialogue permanent: les villes heureuses continuent au travers des années et des changements à donner leur forme aux désirs (46), à poser des questions à l’homme et à lui apporter des réponses (cf. 56). 10 Calvino part d’une vision existentielle du monde. Cela signifie que pour lui le hic et nunc constitue l’unique base à partir de laquelle il évalue l’entreprise dynamique de la vie humaine. Effectivement Marco, le porte-parole de l’auteur, ne cesse de synchroniser l’histoire des villes imaginaires qu’il étale aux yeux du Khan. Il s’intéresse uniquement aux ‘tristesses inessentielles’ des villes existantes et aux “cendres des … villes possibles” (74). Sa vision dystopique de la vie porte sur l’instantanéité de tout effort humain perceptible à travers le “résidu de malheur qu’aucune pierre précieuse ne pourra compenser” (74). Elle contraste avec l’utopie proposée par le Khan qui, lui, est obsédé par l’avenir. L’empereur préférerait perspectiviser l’existence selon la triple dimension temporelle du passé, du présent et de l’avenir. A sa question: “Tu voyages pour revivre ta vie passée?”, Marco répond: “L’ailleurs est un miroir en négatif. Le voyageur y reconnaît le peu qui lui appartient, et découvre tout ce qu’il n’a pas eu, et n’aura pas” (38). C’est surtout à l’intérieur de la rubrique ‘Les villes et la mémoire’ qu’est développée la perspective existentielle du TPF
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La thématique du lieu intériorisé fait penser à Proust. Voir la fin de “Noms de pays: le nom”, la dernière section de Du côté de chez Swann: “le souvenir d’une certaine image n’est que le regret d’un certain instant; et les maisons, les routes, les avenues, sont fugitives, hélas! comme les années”. De même que le narrateur de la Recherche, Marco s’essaie aussi à titre expérimental à la sémantisation des noms (cf. par exemple 110-111, le nom de Pirra). TP
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présent. Le passé du voyageur se transforme à mesure qu’il change d’itinéraire. Le présent est le produit des désirs changeants de l’homme, ce n’est pas le prolongement du passé qui lui dicterait la voie à suivre. Ainsi la ville moderne de Maurillia, elle, ne ressemble en rien à la Maurillia de jadis, “une autre ville qui par hasard s’appelait aussi Maurillia” (40). L’homme utilise le passé en l’incorporant dans ses projets. Témoin la ville de Zaïre qui s’est imprégnée du passé et le possède “pareil aux lignes d’une main” (15). Bref, l’homme fait le réel, il ne le subit pas. L’existentialisme de Calvino est quasiment dépourvu de facticité. Comme le remarque le visiteur de Zoé, la ville où les différences ont été effacées, “l’existence en chacun de ses moments est tout entière elle-même” (44). L’importance du présent, à chaque fois l’unique et irrévocable point d’embarquement vers de nouvelles entreprises, se manifeste surtout à travers le motif de la ville sans retours, qui revient à plusieurs reprises dans les débats que soulèvent le Khan et Marco (cf. 68-69). C’est que le premier est continuellement à la recherche de villes modèles afin de pouvoir maîtriser son empire. Par contre Marco, lui, explique que chaque ville est unique et faite d’exceptions (84). Pourtant, l’attitude existentielle de Calvino n’amène pas à un refus désabusé de l’Histoire, mais à une approche critique et vigilante de l’actualité. Il rejette la terre promise, la projection vers l’avenir utopique du marxisme qui l’avait tenté au début de sa carrière. Témoin le dernier dialogue entre le Kan et Marco sur la ville parfaite et la ville infernale, si souvent cité dans les anthologies: “Parfois”, dit Marco, “il me suffit d’une échappée qui s’ouvre au beau milieu d’un paysage incongru, de l’apparition de lumières dans la brume, de la conversation de deux passants qui se rencontrent dans la foule, pour penser qu’en partant de là, je pourrai assembler pièce à pièce la ville parfaite, composée de fragments jusqu’ici mélangés au reste, d’instants séparés par des intervalles, de signes que l’un fait et dont on ne sait pas qui les reçoit. Si je te dis que la ville à 599
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laquelle tend mon voyage est discontinue dans l’espace et le temps […], tu ne dois pas en conclure qu’on doive cesser de la chercher” (188-189 – pour un autre exemple modérément optimiste de la ville discontinue, voir 186-187 la Bérénice juste enroulée dans la Bérénice injuste). Mais le Khan a de la peine à renoncer à la futurologie: Tout est inutile, si l’ultime accostage ne peut être que la ville infernale, si c’est là dans ce fond que, sur une spirale toujours plus resserrée, va finir le courant. Et Polo: l’enfer des vivants n’est pas chose à venir; s’il y en a un, c’est celui qui est déjà là, l’enfer que nous habitons tous les jours, que nous formons d’être ensemble. Il y a deux façons de ne pas en souffrir. La première réussit aisément à la plupart: accepter l’enfer, en devenir une part au point de ne plus le voir. La seconde est risquée et elle demande une attention, un apprentissage, continuels: chercher et savoir reconnaître qui et quoi, au milieu de l’enfer, n’est pas l’enfer, et le faire durer, et lui faire de la place’ (189).
Soulignons donc que d’un côté Calvino s’inspire des utopies subjectivistes des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, qui traitent d’un monde meilleur hypothétiquement réalisable dans le cours de l’Histoire. De l’autre, comme le remarque à juste titre Kuon (36), il s’appuie sur les utopies des XVIe et XVIIe siècles, des utopies à la Rabelais, Campanella et More, qui représentent non pas des états historiquement réalisables, mais des miroirs critiques confrontant le lecteur avec sa situation dans le monde. 11 TPF
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Ainsi Calvino a emprunté le cadre narratif des Villes invisibles, comprenant deux interlocuteurs aux points de vue divergents, à l’Utopia de Thomas More. Voir aussi Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo qui remarque à propos de l’utopie calvinienne: “Le livre de Calvino [= Les Villes invisibles] se maintient dans TP
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La vision dystopique du réel que Calvino étale dans Les Villes invisibles l’amène à parodier toute forme d’utopisme idéalisé. La parodie se manifeste surtout mais pas exclusivement à l’intérieur de la rubrique ‘Les villes et le ciel’. Citons par exemple les habitants de Bersabée qui sont obsédés par une ville céleste qu’ils imaginent toute en or et en pierres précieuses, d’après laquelle ils construisent la Bersabée terrestre. Cependant il y a encore la Bersabée souterraine et infernale comprenant les détritus et les matières fécales de la Bersabée terrestre. Cependant ils ne se rendent pas compte qu’ils sont en train de construire une ville infernale basée uniquement sur la soif du gain, qui cyniquement contraste avec la ville des “dons libres” de la Bersabée terrestre, “la ville qui cesse d’être avare, calculatrice, intéressée, seulement quand elle chie” (132). 12 Les habitants de Périntie, eux, ont voulu s’assurer la grâce des dieux, en construisant leur ville d’après les calculs des astronomes. Malheureusement cette ville prometteuse n’a produit que des créatures horriblement déformées (166-167). Les habitants de Tecla à leur tour pensent éviter la débâcle en bâtissant et rebâtissant sans arrêt leur ville. Ces utopistes acharnés ont divinisé leur projet de construction à tel point qu’ils craignent la destruction totale une fois les travaux terminés (147-148). 13 TPF
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l’écart et la tension continuels entre l’utopie et le réel, de sorte que l’utopie se présente explicitement comme telle et en même temps veut être jugée suivant son degré de plausibilité et de déviation du réel” (417; c’est nous qui traduisons). 12
A mon avis la description de Bersabée constitue le portrait social le plus cynique des Villes invisibles. Calvino s’inspire ici du grotesque corporel dans l’utopie satirique, où chier et déféquer sont à l’ordre du jour. Exemple: Les voyages de Gulliver de Jonathan Swift (1726). TP
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C’est ainsi que j’interprète la crainte des Bersabéens que le ciel étoilé n’explose (voir aussi 115-116, la ville d’Eudoxie et le ciel étoilé). Il semble que Calvino se moque de l’absolutisme des idéologies religieuses et politiques. TP
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Une autre catégorie de citadins misanthropes a tourné le dos à la terre en s’isolant à l’intérieur de villes effilées. Tels les habitants d’Octavie qui ont construit une ville suspendue en l’air, attachée par des cordes aux crêtes des montagnes, ou les habitants de Baucis qui ont bâti leur ville sur des perches et qui “préfèrent ne pas descendre” (94). La vie des habitants d’Octavie, ainsi le commentaire cynique de Marco, est moins incertaine que celle des habitants des autres villes, car ils savent que le filet ne pourra durer toujours (91). La parodie de l’utopisme se manifeste encore à travers les descriptions des villes dualistes. Dans les villes des rats et des hirondelles, de l’eau de la terre, des morts et des vivants, on se demande quelle ville doit servir de modèle à l’autre et pourquoi, et comment la copier. Signalons encore, à l’intérieur de la dystopie calvinienne, l’espèce rarissime de Lalage, la ville légère qui est discutée dans la première conversation-cadre de la cinquième section, la section centrale des Villes (cf. 90). Lalage est régulièrement visitée par la lune qui s’y repose grâce à des haltes que les habitants lui ont construites. Pour la remercier de son hospitalité, la Lune a conféré à Lalage le privilège de croître en légèreté. Dans ‘Légèreté’, la première des Leçons américaines. Aidemémoire pour le prochain millénaire, 14 une série de conférences lucides et érudites où Calvino se prononce sur le rôle de la littérature à l’intérieur du monde moderne, l’auteur traite de la thématique du vol et de l’envol dans la littérature. Il y discute entre autres le rôle de la lune qu’il relie au pouvoir de l’imaginaire poétique. Telle la Lune qui fait croître la ville de Lalage, l’art aide l’homme à recommencer, 15 car il l’affranchit TPF
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Malheureusement Calvino n’a plus pu prononcer ces conférences rédigées pour un cours à l’Université Harvard. TP
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Le recommencement est un thème récurrent dans la littérature existentielle – voir par exemple l’épilogue de L’Etranger de Camus. TP
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de la pesanteur de l’existence, 16 non pas par des rêveries évasives mais en proposant des combinaisons toujours nouvelles sur l’échiquier de la vie. Lalage forme une de ces “faibles lumières du lointain” (73) à l’intérieur de l’empire infernal. TPF
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La description du monde
Il est clair que Calvino rejette le subjectivisme idéaliste qui fait coïncider la connaissance et la perception du monde. Témoin l’illogisme absurde développé dans la conversation-cadre qui clôt la septième section. L’idéalisme finit par annihiler ceux qui l’avaient conçu: “Nous avons démontré”, commente Kublai, “que si nous y étions, nous n’y serions pas” (137). 17 Les deux interlocuteurs abandonnent donc en cours de route les raisonnements sur la place du sujet dans l’univers. Pour se comprendre, il ne reste qu’à décrire la ville née des désirs du sujet. Dans ce projet, l’art joue un rôle primordial. Dès l’incipit, l’urgence de la description du monde actuel s’impose: le monde se présente tel un empire en dissolution qui risque de nous entraîner dans sa chute. En tant que souverain las et inquiet, le Khan représente tous ceux qui découvrent le vide de l’existence qu’ils se sont construite: TPF
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Il y a un moment dans la vie des empereurs, qui succède à l’orgueil d’avoir conquis des territoires d’une étendue sans bornes, à la mélancolie et au soulagement de savoir que bientôt il nous faudra renoncer à les connaître et les comprendre; une 16
Le thème de la légèreté fait aussi partie du lexique de la littérature existentielle, en tant que réaction à la pesanteur de l’existence. Calvino y réfère dans “Légèreté” (54). TP
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17
Voir aussi à ce propos les remarques de Claudio Milanini: “Si l’on s’accorde pour dire que ‘l’être’ ne serait rien d’autre qu’‘être perçu’, on tombe dans des paradoxes théoriques sans issue …” (133). TP
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sensation dirait-on de vide, qui nous prend un soir […], c’est le moment de désespoir où l’on découvre que cet empire qui nous avait paru la somme de toutes les merveilles n’est en réalité qu’une débâcle sans fin ni forme… (9-10).
Significativement en effet, c’est l’amorphe qui est la cause principale de la décadence générale qui nous menace. C’est par cette constatation qu’ouvrent Les Villes invisibles. Calvino, nous l’avons vu, part du principe existentiel basal que c’est l’homme qui se construit le monde en s’y projetant. Par conséquent la menace de l’amorphe implique la chosification de l’homme. Dans les Leçons américaines, Calvino discute entre autres le problème de la perte de l’expressivité dans la société contemporaine. Cette menace de l’amorphe, il la constate en première instance dans l’usage de la parole. D’après lui l’unique remède contre cette “peste langagière” qui contamine tous les domaines de la vie humaine, c’est la littérature. En tant que forme rationnelle et ennemie du hasard, le texte littéraire permet de redonner un sens à l’amorphe, parce qu’il garde intactes les différences et empêche le réel de se scléroser: L’œuvre littéraire est une de ces menues portions en quoi l’existant se cristallise, prend forme, acquiert un sens qui n’est nullement figé […] mais aussi vivant qu’un organisme. La poésie est la grande ennemie du hasard, bien qu’elle-même fille du hasard, et consciente qu’en dernière instance il gagnera la partie. (Leçons américaines 116)
Ainsi, tel le vent métamorphosant en figures les nuages audessus de Tamara (cf. 20), les paroles de Marco remédient à l’amorphe: “C’est dans les seuls comptes rendus de Marco Polo que Kublai Khan pouvait discerner […] le filigrane d’un dessin suffisamment fin pour échapper à la morsure des termites” (10). 604
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Notons que les figures, dessins, réseaux et réticules abondent dans les portraits urbains dessinés par Marco et par le Khan. 18 Bien souvent ces structures relèvent de la représentation esthétique ou sont associées à elle (voir les emblèmes de Marco, resp. 10 et 30, les statues de Tamara, 19, les photos de Maurillia, 39, les maquettes emboîtées dans des boules de verre de Foedora, 41, et le tapis d’Eudoxie, 115). Ainsi l’œuvre d’art, d’après Calvino, est le moyen par excellence pour capter et réorganiser la vie amorphe. 19 Mais il n’y a pas que les artistes à se servir de dessins et figures. Les réseaux, filets, et leurs dérivés, les parcours et trajets, abondent à l’intérieur des villes de l’empire. L’homme est un ‘animal symbolicum’ qui communique de préférence à la base de signes. C’est surtout dans les rubriques des ‘Villes et les signes’ et des ‘Villes et la mémoire’ que ces points de repère sont discutés. Ainsi les habitants d’Ersilie (92-93) ont coutume de tisser des fils entre leurs maisons, en signe de liens affectifs ou formels de toutes sortes. Lorsque les fils empêchent la libre circulation dans les rues, les Ersiliens vont s’installer ailleurs pour y reconstruire leurs réseaux de communication. 20 Les deux interlocuteurs qui s’interrogent à tour de rôle sur la description problématique du monde, abordent le réel d’une façon totalement différente. Marco est l’homme à la mémoire associative. A l’opposé de son modèle historique, le fanfaron qui a dicté à autrui sa vision du monde, le Marco que nous présente Calvino est un urbaniste beaucoup moins assuré. TPF
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18
“Le réseau constitue une des structures topologiques fondamentales dans l’œuvre calvinienne” (Milanini 145 note 5). TP
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19
Voir le chapitre sur la visibilité dans les Leçons américaines, où Calvino se prononce de façon positive sur l’image en tant qu’instrument de recherche du réel. TP
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Cesare Segre cite la description d’Ersilie en exemple de l’intérêt que Calvino manifeste pour l’anthropologie de Lévi-Strauss (47). TP
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Il s’essaye à différents moyens descriptifs: la parole, les gestes, la mimique, les emblèmes, la charade. La plupart des villes invisibles sont les produits rationnels de sa mémoire imagée. Cette faculté logique et lucide de penser en des images claires qui ne dérivent pas vers le fantastique confus, Calvino l’appelle, dans les Leçons américaines, la “fantasia icastica” (149). Marco est l’homme de l’immanence, il approche l’empire en anthropologue postmoderne modéré (étant donné qu’il ne désespère pas de le connaître): il tient à représenter le réel du dedans, en recherchant les différences entre les choses. Témoin la brève discussion qui clôt la cinquième section: Marco décrit une à une les pierres formant l’arc du pont, tandis que le Khan ne s’intéresse qu’à l’ensemble de l’arc. Effectivement Kublai, lui, tient à une approche structuraliste du dehors. Il privilégie les survols, le modèle, la loi et le code. La ville est gouvernée, à son avis, par la raison et le hasard. Il aimerait dominer le réel moyennant les procédés, le jeu d’échecs par exemple grâce auquel il pense de mieux pouvoir contrôler la vie protéiforme (“Il pensa: Si chaque ville est comme une partie d’échecs, le jour où j’arriverai à en connaître les règles je posséderai enfin mon empire” (141)). Les échecs réfèrent à Saussure qui compare les règles de ce jeu au système syntaxique de la langue, 21 et aux écrivains de l’Oulipo, qui se servent entre autres des coups du jeu d’échecs comme contrainte. En revanche, Marco utilise l’échiquier comme symbole anthropologique de la société qui se renouvelle en se déplaçant continuellement (voir 79-80 la ville d’Eutropie), voire comme TPF
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Voir Segre (47), et Christoph Hoch (205). Hoch ( 206-207) renvoie encore à des parallèles entre le texte de Calvino et certains traités médiévaux sur les échecs, tel le Libellus de moribus et de officiis nobilium super ludo scaccorum de Iacopo da Cessole (fin du XIIIe siècle), où apparaît la métaphore des échecs en tant que miroir du monde. TP
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indexe du réel (cf. 152-153 le bois de l’échiquier). Les deux attitudes face au réel qu’incorporent Kublai et Marco, ainsi Calvino dans les Leçons américaines, renvoient à la tension entre l’utopie et le réel dans son œuvre: En écrivant cette page [la page des Villes invisibles sur l’échiquier, 152-153], j’ai clairement compris que ma recherche de l’exactitude s’orientait dans deux directions différentes. D’un côté, la réduction des événements contingents à des schémas abstraits, permettant le calcul et la démonstration de théorèmes; de l’autre, l’emploi de mots qui rendent compte avec la plus grande précision possible de l’aspect sensible des choses. (Leçons américaines 120-121) 22 TPF
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Néanmoins il est clair que le narrateur des Villes invisibles opte pour la perspective anthropologique de Marco et qu’il se méfie des abstractions de Kublai. Bien qu’il tâtonne lui aussi, Marco figure comme le maître qui dirige les pensées du Khan, qui le provoque et le corrige. Dans les dialogues c’est lui qui en général a le dernier mot. Ses leçons semblent être fructueuses: le Khan apprend à manier les signes échangeables du réel sans vouloir les réduire à un modèle abstrait quelconque. A partir des discours de Marco il réussit à construire ses propres villes en déconstruisant celles du Vénitien, c’est-à-dire qu’il réussit à concevoir le réel en tant que prolongement de ses propres désirs et pensées (voir 55-56). Outre le jeu d’échecs il y a l’atlas de Kublai qui figure également comme moyen descriptif du monde. C’est cette mappemonde miraculeusement exhaustive, représentant les villes du passé, du présent et du futur, qui l’emporte comme moyen d’enregistrement, parce qu’elle “garde intactes les
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Voir aussi le commentaire de Mengaldo (417-418). PT
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différences” (160) et permet d’élargir les sphères de l’imaginable. Par sa dimension historique et utopique en même temps, elle symbolise le texte littéraire tel que Calvino le conçoit. Elle fonctionne à la manière de ces fantaisies que Calvino appelle les “machines logico- fantastiques autonomes”, qui servent à concevoir un monde selon d’autres valeurs et d’autres rapports. 23 TPF
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Conclusion: Les mots et les choses
Etant donné le caractère évanescent du réel, les discussions entre Marco et le Khan portent en première instance sur les moyens que nous possédons pour le décrire, et sur l’efficacité communicative de ces moyens. Plusieurs modèles descriptifs passent la revue, notamment dans les rubriques ‘Les villes et le nom’ et ‘Les villes et les signes’. 24 Bien que sujettes à caution (“Il n’est pas dit que Kublai Khan croit à tout ce que Marco Polo lui raconte”, 9), ce sont les paroles, d’après Calvino, qui déterminent en premier lieu notre rapport au monde. Par là il diffère de ses collègues poststructuralistes pour qui c’est le texte écrit qui constitue l’unique et l’ultime point de repère dans un monde opaque. En outre, Calvino est d’avis que le langage ne peut être dissocié des choses: “L’écriture comme modèle de tout procès dans le réel […] et même comme seule réalité connaissable […] et même comme seule réalité tout court […] Non, je ne suivrai pas ces rails qui m’entraînent trop loin de l’acception qu’a pour moi ce mot: perpétuelle poursuite des choses, faculté de s’adapter à leur TPF
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Cf. Calvino, “L’utopia pulviscolare”, in Saggi, Vol. I (312). Sur l’idée de la machine logico-fantastique en rapport avec l’utopie chez Calvino, voir aussi P. Kuon (26-27). Sur l’écriture-mappemonde-indexe, voir Calvino, Le Chevalier inexistant, ch. IX. TP
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Pour un aperçu des codes de communication discutés par Marco et Kublai, voir Bernardini (195). TP
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infinie diversité” (Leçons américaines 54). Ou bien, pour citer Kublai: Il me semble quelquefois que ta voix [celle de Marco] m’arrive de loin, tandis que je suis prisonnier d’un présent tapageur et invisible, dans lequel toutes les formes humaines de la vie en commun sont arrivées à un bout de leur cycle, et on ne peut imaginer quelles formes nouvelles elles vont prendre. Et par ta voix j’écoute les raisons invisibles pour lesquelles vivaient les villes, et pour lesquelles peut-être bien, après leur mort, elles vivront de nouveau. (158)
Notons qu’en bons esthéticiens de la réception, les deux descripteurs du monde partent du principe que “ce qui commande au récit, ce n’est pas la voix: c’est l’oreille”. 25 Cependant, les paroles s’avèrent en même temps mensongères, parce qu’elles standardisent le réel qui dépasse continuellement le modèle descriptif. Le signifiant (cf. 110-111 le nom de Pirra) aussi bien que le signifié (cf. 59-61, Ipazie et les signes échangeables) tendent des pièges à celui qui considère le langage comme le nec plus ultra pour circonscrire le réel. Calvino partage donc le scepticisme de ses collègues poststructuralistes vis-à-vis du langage. Le colloque de Marco est lardé de silences et le Khan préfère les objets concrets que Marco a collectionnés en cours de route à ses discours tâtonnants (voir 30). Comme les objets risquent d’emblématiser celui qui les utilise (31), Marco s’essaie aussi à l’hypothèse contraire: “le mensonge n’est pas dans les discours, mais dans les choses” (76). Puisque les choses de par leur dynamisme TPF
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plurivalent défient sans cesse tout système descriptif, il est peutêtre vain d’essayer de les circonscrire. Marco est à la recherche d’un nouvel ordre de mimésis où l’hiérarchie de la chose et du nom soit abandonnée. Bref, Les Villes invisibles dénoncent l’impossible dépassement de la dialectique du couple modèle-réalité (Bernardini 191-92). Chez Calvino, note Mengaldo, il n’est donc pas question d’une mystification du discours face à une prétendue vérité vierge et indicible des choses: le mensonge est à la fois dans les paroles et dans les choses; par conséquent le mensonge du langage répète celui du réel, mais en même temps […] il peut par un mouvement inverse révéler le caractère trompeur du réel. Mais cela arrive seulement si la dimension du ‘mensonge’ est assumée à fond et de façon délibérée, c’est-à-dire lorsque le rapport entre le discours et les choses est le rapport oblique, négatif, de la fable utopique. (416)
Ainsi l’approche du monde dans Les Villes invisibles se situe entre l’utopie et la dystopie. Il s’agit d’une approche constructiviste de la ville “discontinue dans l’espace et dans le temps”. Elle concerne en première instance le rapport entre l’homme et son entourage. La vie future, selon Calvino, peut être comparée à une ville qui ne pourra être fondée par nous mais qui pourra se fonder elle-même à l’intérieur de nous, se construire morceau par morceau grâce à notre capacité de l’imaginer, de la penser jusqu'au fond, ville qui prétend nous habiter, non pas d’être habitée, et ainsi elle fait de nous des habitants possibles d’une troisième ville […] née de l’heurt entre de nouveaux conditionnements intérieurs et extérieurs. (‘L’utopia pulviscolare’ 312) 610
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Ouvrages cités
Bernardini Napoletano. I segni nuovi di Italo Calvino. Roma: Bulzoni editore, 1977. Calvino, Italo. Le città invisibili. Torino: Einaudi, 1972. Traduction française: Les Villes invisibles. Paris: Seuil, 2002 [1974]. ---. Lezioni americane. Sei proposte per il prossimo millennio. Milano: Garzanti, 1988. Traduction française: Leçons américaines. Paris: Seuil, 2001 [Gallimard 1989]. ---. Saggi 1945-1985. Vol. I. Milano: Mondadori, 2001. ---. Saggi 1945-1985. Vol. II. Milano: Mondadori, 2001. ---. “L’ordinatore dei desideri.” Saggi Vol. I: 279-306. ---. “L’utopia pulviscolare.” Saggi Vol. I: 307-314. ---. Préface. Les Villes invisibles. Paris: Seuil, 2002. I-VIII. Camon, Ferdinando. Il mestiere di scrittore. Conversazioni critiche. Milano: Garzanti, 1973. Falcetto, Bruno. “Le cose e le ombre. ‘Marco Polo’: Calvino scrittore per il cinema.” Mario Barenghi et autres, La visione dell’invisibile. Saggi e materiali su Le città invisibili di Italo Calvino. Milano: Mondadori, 2002. 6273. Hoch, Christoph. “Eudossias Teppich: Zu Theorie und Praxis intertextuellen Erzählens in Italo Calvinos Le città invisibili.” Romanische Forschungen 106 1 (1994): 187210. James, Carol P. “Seriality and narrativity in Calvino’s Le città invisibili.” Modern Language Notes 97 ( 1982): 144-161. Kuon, Peter. “Critica e progetto dell’utopia: ‘Le città invisibili’ di Italo Calvino.” La visione dell’invisibile: 24-41. Mengaldo, Pier Vincenzo. “L’arco e le pietre.” La tradizione del Novecento. Da D’Annunzio a Montale. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1975. 406-426. Milanini, Claudio. L’utopia discontinua. Saggio su Italo Calvino. Milano: Garzanti 1990. 611
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Oulipo. Atlas de littérature potentielle. Paris: Gallimard 1981. Segre, Cesare. “Le città invisibili di Calvino e la vertigine epistemica.” Strumenti critici XIX 1 (janvier 2004): 43-53. Waage Petersen, Lene. “Il fantastico e l’utopia. Le strategie del fantastico in Italo Calvino con speciale riguardo a Le città invisibili.” Revue Romane 24 1 (1989): 88-105.
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L’Idéologie dans Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore (1979) d’Italo Calvino Gian Paolo Giudicetti (Université Catholique de Louvain/ FNRS Belgique) La utopía volaba y nadaba y corría era ella por sí misma un universo y no pude salir (Benedetti: 61)
Calvino et les modèles dans les années 70
En janvier, la revue mensuelle de la Neue Zürcher Zeitung, un des quotidiens les plus influents de la Suisse, a publié un entretien d’un architecte de prisons. Un des points forts du dialogue était la difficulté de concilier des résultats esthétiquement satisfaisants avec les exigences pratiques de la construction d’une prison (comme celle d’éviter les évasions). L’architecte, un américain, ajoutait pourtant: “Auch Einschränkungen können ein kreativer Ansporn sein” (Köhler). Les limitations aussi peuvent être un stimulant créatif. Vu le contexte (la prison comme objet esthétique), l’affirmation de Kessler tel est le nom de l’architecte est une définition précise de la littérature combinatoire: décider de partir d’un sujet ou d’une structure préétabli, qui sert de ressort à la création. La nature du sujet et de la structure est aussi importante que leur existence, que la présence d’un modèle. Chez le Calvino des années 70 et 80, la réflexion ne s’arrête pas sur un type particulier d’idéologie, mais sur la relation à entretenir avec celle-ci, dont les contours ne sont plus précisés. Dans ces œuvres, il ne s’agit plus de politique, mais de la façon de vivre la politique (et le discours va au-delà de la politique). Dans les ouvrags des années 70, et ici l’argumentation se basera sur Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore et, dans une http://congress70.library.uu.nl/
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moindre mesure, sur Le città invisibili, la relation avec l’idéologie signifie la relation avec des modèles à appliquer ou à ne pas appliquer dans la vie, et par conséquent elle signifie la relation entre théorie et pratique, idéalisme et pragmatisme. Dans Le città invisibili, la série Le città e il cielo synthétise au mieux l’équilibre nécessaire entre ces deux pôles: avoir un idéal flexible et en même temps incontournable (cfr. Kuon 37). Dans Se una notte d’inverno, le discours est explicitement développé dans ses implications métalittéraires (la liberté du lecteur vers le texte, la présence de préjugés dans l’esprit du lecteur), et il ne garde sa force qu’à condition que les implications métalittéraires soient perçues comme symboles d’une méditation plus générale. La réflexion sur la liberté commence avec le choix du ‘tu’ comme sujet de la narration, qui semble laisser un grand espace au lecteur, mais qui ne le laisse pas. Ce ‘tu’ personnage est essentiellement analogue à un personnage à la troisième personne. Son importance a été surestimée par la critique, qui a appliqué au roman la catégorie de l’‘interaction avec le lecteur’. Dire (comme Lavagetto 73) que Se una notte d’inverno est un roman antiréferentiel parce que le personnage est remplacé par le lecteur, signifie négliger que le lecteur-personnage reste un personnage et que le lecteur vrai se comporte comme celui d’un quelconque autre livre. C’est la même faute commise par Milanini (XXIII), qui soutient que Calvino, avec ce livre, recommence à s’adresser au lecteur moyen, comme si le fait que le personnage soit un lecteur moyen impliquait que le lecteur vrai puisse être défini comme tel, alors que ce qui est déterminant pour la compréhension d’un roman est plutôt le détachement, la superiorité que le lecteur en chair et en os doit avoir sur tous les personnages. Dans Se una notte d’inverno, le thème de la liberté par rapport aux modèles est introduit dès l’ouverture, avec une contradiction entre l’impératif des ordres-conseils donnés au 614
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lecteur-personnage (ou Lecteur) et la liberté de celui-ci de faire des choix. À la fin du premier paragraphe, le narrateur ordonne au personnage, de façon à ce qu’il ne soit pas dérangé pendant la lecture: “dis-le plus fort, crie: ‘Je suis en train de commencer à lire le nouveau roman d’Italo Calvino! Ou, si tu ne veux pas, ne le dis pas; espérons qu’ils te laisseront tranquille’” (Calvino 613). 1 Tout de suite après, il lui commande: “Prends la position la plus confortable: assis, allongé, pelotonné, couché. Couché sur le dos [...].” 2 Le personnage-lecteur peut se mettre dans la position qu’il préfère, jusqu’à être renversé, avec la tête vers le bas, 3 ce qui souligne ironiquement une liberté absolue, avec la constatation réaliste qu’il n’est pas possible de trouver une position idéale 4 et un regret, encore ironique, sur le passé, quand “on se reposait en lisant debout, fatigué d’aller à cheval”.5 F
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La liberté par rapport aux modèles se développe souvent dans Se una notte d’inverno avec un contexte et des implications métalittéraires. La discussion sur la façon correcte ou erronée de lire doit être interpretée dans cette perspective. Les conversations entre personnages à ce sujet, comme celles de l’avant-dernier chapitre entre les lecteurs dans la bibliothèque, sont trop explicites pour nous attirer. La critique envers Lotaria, une des deux héroïnes du roman, coupable de lire de façon trop abstraite, avec des préjugés idéologiques qui l’éloignent du 1
“Dillo piú forte, grida: ‘Sto cominciando a leggere il nuovo romanzo di Italo Calvino!’ O se non vuoi non dirlo; speriamo che ti lascino in pace.” La traduction en français est à moi, comme celle des autres passages cités. 2 “Prendi la posizione piú comoda: seduto, sdraiato, raggomitolato, coricato. Coricato sulla schiena [...]”. Cfr. aussi Calvino, Se una notte (614). 3 Cfr. “Puoi anche metterti a testa in giú, in posizione yoga. Col libro capovolto, si capisce”. 4 Cfr. “Certo, la posizione ideale per leggere non si riesce a trovarla” (164). 5 Cfr. “Ci si riposava cosí [in piedi] quando si era stanchi d’andare a cavallo” (164). 615
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texte, en opposition à sa sœur Ludmilla, lectrice plus ouverte et donc meilleure, est particulièrement explicite aussi, mais la thématique se retrouve dans la texture des métaphores. Un champ sémantique central est celui de la lumière et de l’ombre, dont les coordonnées sont établies dans le premier chapitre, lorsque le narrateur ordonne au personnage-lecteur: Fais ainsi que la page ne reste pas dans l’ombre, un amas de lettres noires sur fond gris, uniformes comme un troupeau de souris, mais fais attention qu’une lumière trop forte ne lui tombe pas dessus et qu’elle ne se réflète pas sur le blanc cruel du papier en rongeant les ombres des caractères comme dans un midi du Sud. (Calvino 614) 6 F
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Au-delà de la possibilité d’une ombre excessive, on retient l’avertissement d’éviter une lumière trop intense, laquelle, relative à un livre et à la lecture, connote une attitude trop lucide avant de prendre le livre en main, l’imposition de quelque chose de prédisposé, la superposition d’une lumière propre à celle du texte. Dans ce premier chapitre, le narrateur répète le concept, une fois clairement, quand il parle de la généralité bienvenue de la note critique sur la couverture (“Mieux ainsi, il n’y a pas un discours qui prétend se superposer indiscrètement au discours que le livre lui-même devra communiquer directement” (Calvino: 619) 7 et une autre fois, plus indirectement, quand il parle des “Livres Déjà Lus Sans Même Pas Besoin De Les F
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Ouvrir En Tant Que Faisant Partie De La Catégorie Du Déjà Lu Avant Même D’Avoir Été Écrit” (Calvino 615). 8 Dans le premier des dix récits qui composent le niveau intradiégétique du roman, la lumière a une connotation négative. Les lumières de la gare où se trouve le personnage “semblent avoir la tâche de dissoudre plus que d’indiquer les choses qui émergent d’un voile d’obscurité et de brouillard” (Calvino 621), 9 sont envahissantes comme la musique qui, dans le même récit, remplit tous les espaces. Dans le troisième chapitre, un des livres défectueux que le Lecteur rencontre a des pages blanches qui alternent avec des pages correctement imprimées et empêchent de continuer à lire. Le héros du troisième récit, à cause d’une maladie, ne peut pas sortir après le coucher du soleil, et trouve dans la lumière du jour “une obscurité plus dense que celle de la nuit” (Calvino 669). 10 Le professeur UzziTuzii, dans le quatrième chapitre, hésite entre la possibilité d’appliquer des interventions critiques qu’il appelle “lumières interprétatives” (Calvino 677) 11 et la peur d’exercer de la violence sur le texte. La métaphore se prolonge dans tout le roman, jusqu’à l’allégorie de l’Organisation du Pouvoir Apocryphe, l’ennemie de la littérature fondée par le faussaire Ermes Manara, et, depuis, partagée en deux ailes qui se combattent, la Wing of Light et la Wing of Shadow, également extrémistes et ridiculisées, prêtes à interpréter en leur faveur toute information. F
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“Libri Già Letti Senza Nemmeno Bisogno D’Aprirli In Quanto Appartenenti Alla Categoria Del Già Letto Prima Ancora D’Essere Stato Scritto”. 9 “Le luci della stazione e le frasi che stai leggendo sembra abbiano il compito di dissolvere piú che di indicare le cose affioranti da un velo di buio e di nebbia”. Cfr. aussi p. 622. 10 “trovo nella luce del giorno, in questa luminosità diffusa, pallida, quasi senz’ombre, una oscurità piú densa che quella della notte”. 11 “lumi interpretativi”. 617
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Une lumière positive parce que plus discrète et poétique est, inversement, dans le titre du huitième chapitre, celle de la lune, qui éclaire doucement les tapis de feuilles: Sul tappeto di foglie illuminate dalla luna. Le vieux et le nouveau
Une différence essentielle est de lire avec des préjugés qui influencent la lecture et effacent le texte et de lire avec une disponibilité à s’ouvrir au nouveau. Le thème avait été abordé dans Le città invisibili, avec la ville de Fillide, qui fascine le visiteur seulement lorsqu’il la découvre, avant l’habitude qui efface les impressions. Le problème est que rien est nouveau, qu’il n’y a pas de début absolu – c’est la raison pour laquelle il est possible d’écrire un roman composé par dix incipit –, et que “tout discours est le prolongement de vieux discours” (Calvino 628). 12 La thèmatique revient à plusieurs reprises dans le roman. Dans le deuxième récit, le jeune narrateur est sur le point de partir pour la première fois de chez lui, mais Pokno, un garçon du même âge et d’une autre ville, prendra sa place dans sa famille et continuera son existence. L’assistant universitaire narrateur du huitième récit cherche à se détacher du professeur pour lequel il travaille afin d’avoir des nouvelles perspectives de carrière, mais l’attraction érotique exercée par la fille et par la femme du professeur est encore trop forte. En se préparant à lire le premier récit, le lecteur-personnage est indécis quant à préférer si la gare où se déroule l’action sera ancienne ou nouvelle. La problèmatique est liée à celles de la falsification et du miroir, thématiques importantes dans le roman. 13 Composer des F
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récits, comme le fait le personnage Ermes Marana, en falsifiant des œuvres existantes, est la conséquence de la croyance qu’il est impossible d’en inventer de nouveaux. L’homme d’affaires narrateur du septième récit, collectionneur de kaléidoscopes, commence sa narration avec une remarque qui est valable pour d’autres personnages aussi, en expliquant que “spéculer, réfléchir: toute activité de la pensée me renvoie aux miroirs” (Calvino 769), 14 c’est-à-dire qu’il n’y a pas de réflexion nouvelle et que chaque mot est le reflet d’un autre, au point que le miroitement continu entre les mots cache l’essence au lieu de la révéler, comme le collectionneur multiplie ses identités, à l’aide de sosies, non par vanité mais pour se cacher (cfr. Calvino 770). Sauf que le miroir, on le rappelle dans le même récit, est aussi, selon le néo-platonicien Porphyre et, nous ajoutons, selon un récit magnifique de Borges, Los espejos velados, le révélateur de la divinité ou de la vraie identité. Le miroir est en même temps falsificateur et révélateur, dans une coexistence des contraires qui, chez Calvino, est éloignée de l’annulement réciproque des opposés du postmodernisme et qui est définissable comme la dialectique continue, la spirale des relativisations qui conduit l’homme à s’approcher de la vérité. Dans la lecture, il faut chercher ce qu’il y a de nouveau, en sachant qu’il ne s’agit pas de nouveautés absolues, mais de la “nouveauté véritable, qui, en ayant été nouveauté une fois, continue à l’être pour toujours” (Calvino 617), 15 et que cette quête est rendue difficile par le poids du passé, par les lectures qu’on conserve dans la mémoire. D’une part, comme le narrateur du premier récit l’explique, il est impossible de récupérer le passé, parce que chaque mouvement ajoute quelque chose et nous en éloigne (cfr. Calvino 623-6). D’autre part, plusieurs personnages des dix récits sont écrasés par les fautes F
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d’un passé dont ils ne peuvent pas se libérer, à partir du héros du premier récit, qui traîne avec soi une valise symbolisant (comme Aurore Frasson-Marin 315 l’a remarqué) son passé. Lavagetto (75) se trompe, en disant que Se una notte d’inverno n’a ni de début ni de fin. Il faudrait plutôt observer que la forme de ce roman, la structure à deux niveaux, dont un niveau est celui d’une histoire qui se conclue avec un happy end traditionnel et ironique, et l’autre celui des dix incipit, qui ont une fin pour nous mais pas pour le lecteur-personnage, permet de faire cohabiter l’insistence sur le nouveau avec celle sur les liens entre les choses, la construction apparemment fragmentaire avec l’unité et organicité de toute œuvre littéraire. Ouvrages cités Belpoliti, Marco. “Le clair miroir de l’esprit.” Europe(mars 1997): 87-100. Benedetti, Mario. El porvenir de mi pasado. Madrid: Alfaguera, 2003. Calvino, Italo. Romanzi e racconti, vol. II. Milano: Mondadori, 1992. Citati, Pietro. “Le roman du lecteur.” Europe (mars 1997): 65-9. Frasson-Marin, Aurore. Italo Calvino et l’imaginaire. GenèveParis : Slatkine, 1986. Köhler, Andreas. “Der Gefängnisarchitekt.” Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Folio, 1 (janvier 2004): 50-53. Kuon, Peter. “Critica e progetto dell’utopia: Le città invisibili di Italo Calvino.” AAVV. La visione dell’invisibile. Saggi e materiali su ‘Le città invisibili’ di Italo Calvino. Milano: Mondadori, 2002. 24-41. Lavagetto, Mario. “Un écrivain d’apocryphes?” Europe mars 1997: 70-79. Milanini, Claudio. “Introduzione.” Romanzi e racconti de Italo Calvino. Vol. II. Milano: Mondadori, 1992. XI-XXXVI.
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Synecdoches, Disjunctions: Eco, Pareyson, and Literature after Kant and the Platypus Jonathan Smith (Prifysgol Abertawe / Swansea University) Values, literature
All but inaudibly now, histories of 1970s revolutionary hope (whether in Portugal, Italy, or elsewhere) allude to values other than those of the market, as does the very marginality of literature to collective ways of being consolidated since then: what follows examines literary resources surveyed by one Italian – Eco – since 1968, while suggesting they are obscured when his contribution to literary theory is abstracted from his broader semiotic enquiry (often by association with his fiction). 1 Correctives to this are suggested by “Sull’essere” (“On Being”) , which orients semiotics (now qua theory of perception and cognition as well as signification and communication) relative to philosophical tradition, locating literary and other aesthetics within its range, and demarcating it from market-friendly postmodernisms (such as might not distinguish between, say, Vattimo, Deleuze, and Derrida): contrary to rumours of their dissolution, and just because they are less constraining for art than elsewhere, artistic practice is an interminable testing of the limits of interpretation (Eco 1997b: 1-42 / 1999: 9-56). At the same time as thus echoing the conception of “epistemological metaphor” established in Opera aperta (1962; 1989), and the PF
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tendency of the mature semiotic theory to construe the work of art as an apparatus of cognition (1968b; 1976), “Sull’essere” also proposes a highly selective reading of “The Origin of the Work of Art”, continuing a negotiation with Heidegger’s legacy opened at the semiotic enquiry’s inception (1968b: 323-60). These continuities will assist in contextualizing material dating from the 1990s and since, collected in Sulla letteratura (2002b / 2005): although “Sull’essere” follows Heidegger in substituting poetry synecdochically for art more generally conceived, Eco practices turbulent synecdoches (and disjunctions) on his own account, and throughout. Some functions of literature
A programmatic piece “Su alcune funzioni della letteratura” (“On Some Functions of Literature”) flirts with considering literary tradition an accumulation of texts produced gratia sui rather than for practical purposes, but moves on rapidly to define it, in terms of artful generality, as an immaterial power in and over collective and individual human existence (Eco 2002b: 722 / 2005: 1-15). As in the cases of Dante, Homer, Luther, or Pushkin (although the argument is in general less ethnocentric than these examples suggest, and somewhat less focussed on canonical monuments), literature contributes to the formation of languages, and of a sense of community and identity, but correspondingly also to that of the linguistic faculties of individuals, and thus to the practical accessibility of “un mondo di valori che arriva da e rinvia a libri”. 2 The more so, Eco partly affirms and partly insinuates, after the social, technical, economic and cultural changes of recent decades which might be considered evidence of his argument’s superannuation, and in view of the inequalities of educational and cultural opportunity which might still provoke charges from another direction that it TPF
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is an élitist one: the right to literature (and to its value or values) is assumed, and in being so, declared. From this point, a theme of individual and collective libidinal management is central. 3 Despite declining engagement with problems of metaphysics or ontology elsewhere entrusted to Peirce (Eco 1984; 1997b / 1999), Eco makes it a criterion of truth: PF
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certi personaggi sono diventati in qualche modo collettivamente veri perché la comunità ha fatto su di essi […] degli investimenti passionali. Noi facciamo investimenti passionali individuali su tante fantasie che possiamo elaborare a occhi aperti o nel dormiveglia. Noi possiamo realmente commuoverci pensando alla morte di una persona che amiamo, o risentire reazioni fisiche immaginandoci mentre abbiamo con essa un rapporto erotico, e parimenti, per processi di identificazione o di proiezione, possiamo commuoverci sulla sorte di Emma Bovary o, come è avvenuto ad alcune generazioni, essere trascinati al suicidio dalle sventure di Werther o di Jacopo Ortis […] e la fantasia di cui parliamo non è più privata, è una realtà culturale su cui l’intera comunità dei lettori conviene. 4 TPF
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This crucial and difficult aspect of Eco’s theoretical production is canonically broached by de Lauretis (1980; 1984), and developed from a different direction by Pezzini (1992; 2002). Eco’s readings of Freud are partially mediated by Ricoeur, probably the single most instructive commentator for readers outside the therapeutic professions (Eco 1964; 1984; Ricoeur 1970; 1989); but in addition to being supported by his extended reading of Peirce, Eco’s is an Aristotelian as well as a Freudian theme: see for example 2002b: 253-73 / 2005: 236-54. I return to these matters briefly below; for more extended discussion, see Smith (2006).
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(2002b: 17); “Certain characters have become somehow true for the collective imagination because ... we have made emotional investments in them. We all make emotional investments in any number of fantasies, which we dwell on either with open eyes or half-awake. We can be moved by PT
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The consequences are remarkable: questi personaggi vivono e determinano i nostri comportamenti, così che li eleggiamo a modello di vita, nostra e altrui, e ci comprendiamo benissimo quando diciamo che qualcuno ha il complesso di Edipo, un appetito gargantuesco, un comportamento donchisciottesco, la gelosia di un Otello, un dubbio amletico, è un dongiovanni inguaribile, una perpetua. E questo, in letteratura, non accade solo coi personaggi, ma anche con le situazioni, e gli oggetti […] le donne che vanno e vengono per la stanza parlando di Michelangelo, i cocci aguzzi di bottiglia infissi nella muraglia, nel sole che abbaglia, le buone cose di pessimo gusto, la paura che ci viene mostrata in un pugno di polvere, la siepe, le chiare, fresche e dolci acque, il fiero pasto, diventano metafore ossessive, pronte a ripeterci a ogni istante chi siamo, cosa vogliamo, dove andiamo, oppure ciò che non siamo e ciò che non vogliamo. 5 TPF
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thinking about the death of someone we love, or experience physical reactions when imagining ourselves having an erotic relationship with that person. Similarly, we can be moved by Emma Bovary’s fate through a process of identification or projection, or, as happened to several generations, be drawn towards suicide by the fortunes of young Werther or Jacopo Ortis ... and the fantasy we are talking about here is not private, it is a real fact on which the entire community of readers agrees” (2005: 10). 5
(2002b: 17-18); “these characters live and shape our behaviour to such an extent that we choose them as role models for our life, and for the life of others, so that we are clear about what we mean when we say that someone has an Oedipus complex or a Gargantuan appetite, that someone behaves quixotically, is as jealous as Othello, doubts like Hamlet, is an incurable Don Juan, or is a Scrooge. And in literature this happens not only with characters but also with situations and objects ... the women who come and go, talking of Michelangelo, Montale’s sharp shards of bottles stuck in the wall in the dazzling sun, Gozzano’s good things of bad taste. Eliot’s fear that is shown us in a handful of dust, Leopardi’s hedge, Petrarch’s clear, cool waters, Dante’s bestial meal, become obsessive metaphors, ready to tell us over and TP
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Despite the closing proviso (itself a quotation from one of Montale’s poems), this anthology of canonical quotations veers disconcertingly toward telling us who to be and what to want. Insofar as the literary canon is cast as a focus of identification, aspiration, and existential interpretation of self and others, it has usurped a role it shared, in Eco’s pre-semiotic studies in cultural politics, 6 with visual and musical arts and contemporary popular culture (film, radio and television, popular music and fiction, comics, advertising), but also with the material products of consumer capitalism. Whatever its theoretical achievements (and whatever the earlier work’s shortcomings when viewed in historical perspective), the semiotic project has seldom if ever equalled the nuanced complexity of these earlier studies of the social negotiation of meaning and identity. Yet insofar as one of their prototypes of mass communication is the didactic use of mediaeval Christian iconography and ecclesiastical architecture, as Biblia pauperum, the function now illustrated by literature was there described as being enacted through channels predicated on their audiences’ illiteracy: “Su alcune funzioni” is enmeshed in terms of argument previously anchored to the investigation of visual communication and architecture (as well as religion). This an index of the semiotic project’s engagement in philosophical tradition, since the synecdoche of poetry for art more broadly conceived was authorized in “Sull’essere” by PF
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over again who we are, what we want, where we are going, or what we are not and what we don’t want” (2005: 10-11). P
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Eco 1964: it is regrettable that Eco’s principal theoretical works have not been translated into English more systematically than they have; for marketoriented abridgements of some of this material, see 1979b: 107-24; 1989: 180-216; 1994a: 17-57; see 1979b: 144-72 for the roughly contemporaneous essay on Fleming implicated in the same train of thought, but caricatured in the English-language reception as a canonical work of literary structuralism, as by Waites et al. 1982; Easthope 1988; Frow 1995. For more extensive discussion of all these matters, see Smith (forthcoming). P
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reference to Heidegger (although the intricacies of his exposition were scarcely acknowledged); but it is no less open for that to being read as marking or masking a theoretical deficit, or regression. Whereas “Sull’essere” interprets art as alternating between indulgence towards the infinity of desire, and admonishment, “Su alcune funzioni” improvises around a theme of freedom and fidelity in literary interpretation, construed as an interplay of blind drives and social regulation, before closing on a motif of refusal: “Questo ci dicono tutte le grandi storie […] contro ogni nostro desiderio di cambiare il destino, ci fanno toccar con mano l’impossibilità di cambiarlo […] ci insegnano anche a morire” . 7 This conclusion might appear finely balanced between literal and figurative interpretations of mortality: “se si potesse decidere del destino dei personaggi, sarebbe come andare al banco di una agenzia di viaggi: ‘Allora dove vuole trovare la Balena, alle Samoa o alle Aleutine? E quando? E vuole ucciderla lei, o lascia fare a Quiqueg?’ La vera lezione di Moby Dick è che la Balena va dove vuole”. 8 Yet it also echoes an endorsement of Heidegger on mortality in “Sull’essere”, linked in turn to a broader argument that the fundamental and universal components of meaning are primitive perceptions of human embodiment in relation to its environment (1997b: 37, 121-38 et passim / 1999: 50, 144-63 et passim; compare 1997a / 2002a): mortality would then be the limit of all interpretation, and (rather than being conditioned by them) the condition of all TPF
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(2002b: 22); “This is what all the great narratives tell us [...] against all our desires to change destiny, they make tangible the impossibility of changing it. And in so doing, [...] they [...] also teach us how to die” (2005: 14-15).
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(2002b: 21); “If you could decide on characters’ destinies it would be like going to the desk of a travel agent who says: ‘So where do you want to find the whale, in Samoa or in the Aleutian Islands? And when? And do you want to be the one who kills it or let Queequeg do it?’ Whereas the real lesson of Moby-Dick is that the whale goes wherever it wants” (2005: 13-14).
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meanings, figurative or literal. Literature’s privilege results from synecdochic reduction, not simply of a broader spectrum of artistic practices (however defined), but of all human meaning. Some readers of Kant: Pareyson and Peirce, Eco and Lyotard
Nonetheless, Sulla letteratura returns to modes of argument and authorities antedating Eco’s direct negotiations with Heidegger. Salient in this regard is “Sullo stile” (“On Style”) (2002b: 17290 / 2005: 161-79), less directly concerned with the value or functions of literature than to defend the technical means of access to them against obscurantisms both residual and emergent: “ritengo si debbano affermare due cose: una, che una semiotica delle arti altro non sia che una ricerca e messa a nudo delle macchinazioni dello stile; due, che la semiotica rappresenti la forma superiore della stilistica, e il modello di ogni critica d’arte”. 9 The relevant conception of style (which is a capacious one, covering every aspect of the work) is that of the modo di formare established by Eco’s mentor Pareyson (Pareyson 1954), while the historical prototypes of the semiotics envisaged are the treatise On the sublime of Pseudo-Longinus, and Aristotle’s Poetics. The first and third of these authorities are explored in dedicated essays (2002b: 215-26 and 253-73 / 2005: 201-111 and 236-54), and Eco’s reading of all three has developed substantially since he first identified them as prime resources of resistance to Croce’s legacy (1968a: 9-31, 62-78, 171-73, 28895); yet his review-essay on Pareyson’s Estetica, completed in 1958, underscores the extent to which the latter’s philosophy is a Christian existentialism, transformed into an aesthetics and a hermeneutics by adopting art as a general model of human cognition and practice (1968a: 9-31; for a preliminary version TPF
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(2002b: 175); “I believe two points must be made here: one, that a semiotics of the arts is nothing other than searching for and laying bare the workings of style; and two, that semiotics represents the most advanced form of stylistics, and the model for all criticism” (2005: 164). PT
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unreliably translated, 1989: 158-66). More often acknowledged than recognized by Eco’s commentators, this is key to the genealogy of his synecdoches, whether or not it is central among them. The review ventures an interpretation of Pareyson’s aesthetics which exploits its emphasis on interpretation to erase its religious and metaphysical requirements that meaningful form be given before it can be open to human manipulation or elaboration, and this anxiety informs all Eco’s subsequent negotiations with transactional psychology and phenomenology as well as with structuralism (1962; 1989; 1968b; 1976; 1984), and indeed with Peirce. Only in the 1990s, in conjunction with the thematic prominence of human embodiment entailed by a developing semiotics of perception and cognition, does it subside. Especially in conjunction with repeated appeals to classical authority, repeated invocation of the Estetica in Sulla letteratura resonates strongly with the extensive use made of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and the qualified endorsement of Pareyson’s Ontologia della libertà (1995), 10 in “Sull’essere”: these texts take a turn which demands careful definition, whether or not as a humanist one. In the early 1960s, aspiring to re-conceptualize aesthetics against the received tradition and for an industrializing democracy, Eco called on Hume’s “Of the standard of taste” to argue the relativity of judgement: 11 whereas the range of valid responses to European artworks from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century was relatively easily delimited (because a PF
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See Eco 1997b: 390 (note 14); this is excised without trace from the English translation (Eco 1999), which is thereby more marketable than it otherwise would be, but correlatively diminished in its sense. P
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This discussion is based on Eco 1964, particularly 1-25, 151-83 and 275357; on the sociology and manner of the early Italian writing on television against which much of this material reacts, see also Cesareo 1996, and Dagrada 1996. P
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closed community had drawn its criteria from a closed canon normative both for its own reception and for further production), contemporary economies of communication and culture circa 1964 deal in a more extended and dynamic range of objects and genres, and in economic and political principle with a universal audience, its diversity figured both as that of ethnic difference (after Hume), and of species mutation relative to the community of taste established by such canonical instances as Raphael’s painting and Mozart’s symphonies. On these grounds, Eco combatively declares it illegitimate to assume the meanings or effects of mass communication without empirical fieldwork, and impossible, without reference to the relevant spectrum of expectations, for analysts even to identify the textual features or structures open to interpretative response. The ensuing semiotic enquiry is directly addressed to this ethnographic and futuristic conundrum, conceptualizing message or text as empty form open to multiple decodings (1968b: 361-80; 1976: 196-200): this requirement, together with the need to conceptualize communication without submitting to the tradition’s bias towards verbal language, prompts Eco’s re-interpretation of Peirce’s semiotic logic of enquiry, contra Saussure, as a logic of culture (Eco 1976). Whether subsequent work regresses from this point is a key interpretative and evaluative question canonically posed by de Lauretis (1980; 1984), with reference to Lector in fabula (1979): certainly Eco’s attempt to account for the possibility of successful communication, working chiefly with examples of literary narrative on the grounds that they pose the most complex theoretical problems, begins here to flex toward proposing normative criteria of literary interpretation (Eco 1990 / 1994b; 1992), enacting a synecdoche now driven by terms of international debate informed or deformed by the turbulence of the (primarily North American) market in literary theory. Yet insofar as each establishes its own rule only in practice, Eco subsequently identifies both Pareyson’s conception of 629
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formatività, and Peirce’s of abduction, as re-interpretations of the reflective judgement of Kant’s third Critique (Eco 1997b: 74, 106, 396 / 1999: 92, 127, 402; compare 2002b: 223-4 / 2005: 209), while extending his definition of aesthetics by construing both as modes of perception and cognition as well as textual production and interpretation. If his thought’s salient contemporary affinity were for this among other reasons with Lyotard’s, 12 stark differences would nonetheless arise from Eco’s seeking criteria of interpretative and cognitive protocol, after Peirce, in the consensus of a community of experts (Eco 1990: 325-38 / 1994b: 23-43; 1997b: 71-81 / 1999: 89-98); but precisely his conception of the work of art or literature disrupts the symmetry of the undoubted difference with Lyotard, as well as the appeals to consensus and tradition audible in Sulla letteratura, about which the following concluding observations may be made. PF
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Re-reading Marx and Freud
One is that the canon proposed by “Su alcune funzioni” (Sophocles, Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Byron, Manzoni, T.S. Eliot, Montale, Gozzano, Leopardi, Petrarch, Dante) appears perilously closed to ethnic, sexual, and generational difference (and thus to much empirical literary history since 1964), especially when combined with the same text’s statements of interpretative protocol. Yet secondly, literature gains in value to the extent that its relation to theory (or scholarship) is not allowed to petrify into that of object to subject: in Sulla letteratura, a series of three essays focussing primarily on Joyce and Borges underline the part played by the reading of these authors as well as Peirce in the genesis of Eco’s key semiotic concept of the global semantic universe, or 12
For introductions to this much misunderstood body of highly creative thought, see one or more of the following: Lyotard 1992 and 1993; Bennington 1988; Readings 1991; Williams 1998. P
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“encyclopaedia” (2002b: 91-146 / 2005: 84-135; compare 1976; 1979; 1984; 1990 / 1994b; 1994c: 90). Moreover, Sulla letteratura’s penultimate essay closes with a maxim that “il primo dovere dell’uomo di cultura è quello di tenersi all’erta per riscrivere ogni giorno l’enciclopedia”: 13 literature’s service to theory leads theory’s to a broader intellectual practice which assumes an interrogative role akin to the poet’s as underwritten by reference to Heidegger in “Sull’essere”. The synecdochic reduction is here thrown into reverse. Thirdly, if all this were insufficient evidence for a conception of literature as something other than an insulated or autonomous domain of verbal artistry, or canon of dramatic, narrative, and poetic monuments, “Sullo stile del Manifesto” (“On the Style of The Communist Manifesto”) might assist (2002b: 30-34 / 2005: 23-27). Its own style and brevity make this a remarkable complement to Specters (Derrida 1994); but not – from any point of view, unless one of somnolence – for easy digestibility, since Eco recommends the Manifesto as a model of rhetoric for trainee advertising copywriters (as well as for study in schools alongside Cicero and Shakespeare), while also identifying a problem too thorny for even Marx and Engels to grasp: religion. It remains for commentators and successors to develop a tantalizingly discontinuous strand of Eco’s semiotic enquiry encapsulated in the imperative to “rewrite the encyclopaedia”, linking a densely impacted theory of rhetoric and ideology (1968b: 83-104 and 165-88; 1976: 359-71; 1984 passim), fractured suggestions of a return from Lacan (and Kristeva) to Freud, assisted by Peirce (and Aristotle) in dismantling the semiotics foisted upon him (1984), and the conception of culture informing “Su alcune funzioni” but first adumbrated in the 1960s, as an ensemble of more or less consciously administered apparatuses of collective and TPF
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individual libidinal management. This is rewarding for its strong sense of mystery’s contemporary reincarnations in secular garb, if less so, for becoming enmeshed in insoluble questions of literary interpretation better and worse, albeit partly to protect the results of earlier engagements in the field. Literature, value
Finally, these results are signalled in Sulla letteratura by an extract, summarizing fifty years’ work , from Eco’s postface to his translation of Nerval’s Sylvie (2002b: 35-69 / 2005: 28-61; compare 1994c passim). In Eco’s more technical or idiosyncratic sense of the term, “interpretation” attempts to define the work’s singularity (initially phrased as “aesthetic idiolect”, and later as “textual strategy”), but can do so only by infinite asymptotic approximations, repeatedly theorized as such (1968b: 61-81; 1976: 261-71; 1990: 126-41), 14 and partially reenacted in the instance of Sylvie. On the one hand, this singularity is the condition of every other type of reading, “use”, interpretation less narrowly defined (and however faithful), or indeed experience of the work, while also being condemned to be obscured from view by them, and therefore to demand they be contested. On the other, just these other readings, uses, or interpretations constitute the work’s raison d’être (as “Sull’essere” construes it) of interpreting and stimulating further interpretation of the world, and, to that end, of itself. This disjunction of (structural) concept and (hermeneutic) experience is identified as marking an “aporia” at the semiotic enquiry’s inception (1968b: 69), and is reiterated with reference to Sylvie as the most concertedly literary phase of Eco’s investigation draws to a close (1994c: 43): it does not respond to the claims of “use” against those of “interpretation”, however supported by reference to the historical variety of regimes of reading (Van TPF
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den Bossche), because the work’s singularity is the principle of their differences. However formulated, any attempt to assess the value of the work’s cognitive effects must therefore be contradicted by its incalculable singularity: the value of literature can never, on these terms, be a matter of consensus, and criteria of interpretative propriety guaranteed by a community of experts are no more practicable than the pure dissensus of Lyotard’s aspiration. Insofar as it bears on works of art and literature, Eco’s semiotic theory has an essentially prescriptive dimension, since the postulate of the work’s singularity, once expounded (Eco 1968b: 66-81 and 270-84; 1976: 261-75), imposes a requirement to explain how it can be understood at all (1979), and then to defend the terms of this inevitably reductive explanation against disruption by other interests (1990 / 1994b; 1992), however oriented and expressed in theory or practice. Yet the initial prescription can neither be fully realized, nor for that reason fully recognized, even to itself: it is condemned to fail to coincide with itself, unless limited to a single peremptory declaration (which would be very far from Eco’s characteristic style). Neither in Eco’s work nor a fortiori elsewhere, however, is the disjunction of concept and experience restricted to works of art, or literature. Much of its promise in Eco’s formulations arises from its repeated mutations through a series of synecdochic reductions and expansions: not only is the literary work exemplary of works of art in general; its functioning, theirs, and the definition of their singularity (and thus of their functioning) also model other textual, cognitive, or otherwise semiotic processes. From Opera aperta to Sulla letteratura, literature assists Eco in a project which attests intermittently from the outset to being led by embodied experiences of perception and cognition, moving via Piaget’s introduction as Pareyson’s primary competitor in articulating the nature of meaningful form (1962; 1989; 1968b), and the exploration of abduction and reflective 633
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judgement (1976; 1979; 1984; 1990 / 1994b; 1997b / 1999), to the reading of Sylvie as staging the temporal flux of experience, and the mutual subversions of successive objects of desire (2002b / 2005). Yet embodiment meets art or artifice more directly, and in a broader sense of either term, where “Sull’essere” follows Heidegger in noting the encounter, in architecture: by contrast with the mysticism Eco finds in his interpretation of van Gogh’s painting, Heidegger’s Greek temple solicits the hermeneutic attention Eco follows him in turning, synecdochically, towards poetry, and into it. A comparable movement already resonated through Eco’s entire semiotic enquiry, having been introduced simultaneously with the disjunction of concept and experience: initially, the work of art is conceptualized in literary and pictorial terms, but the experience reported, to which conceptualization is unequal, is the tactile as well as visual one of the structure and stonework of a Renaissance palazzo (1968b: 70; compare 1976: 265). That architecture may be a displaced but fundamental term of reference is suggested by the brevity of Eco’s attempt to conceptualize it directly (1968b: 189-249), and by a moment or moments of failure or refusal to employ it as a metaphor for the encyclopaedia, metamorphosing via description of different types of labyrinth into the anamorphosis of an impossible architectural object (1983: 76-77; 1984b: 81). Whatever else might be at issue in this displacement, it undoubtedly plays its part in narrowing the definition of art relative to what either Pareyson or Heidegger could authorize, and in deflecting attention away from its market value (as qua real estate), no less than in bringing to light forms and senses in which it eludes that or any criterion of value or valuation.
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Works Cited
Bennington, Geoffrey. Lyotard. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1988. Bouchard, Norma & Veronica Pravadelli, eds. Umberto Eco’s Alternative. New York: Peter Lang, 1998. Capozzi, Rocco, ed. Reading Eco. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997. Cesareo, Giovanni. “Televisione.” La cultura italiana del Novecento. Ed. Corrado Stajano. Bari: Laterza, 1996. 75372. Dagrada, Elena. “Television and its critics: a parallel history.” Italian Cultural Studies. Eds. David Forgacs & Robert Lumley. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. 233-47. De Lauretis, Teresa. Umberto Eco. Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1980. ---. Alice Doesn’t. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984. Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx. London: Routledge, 1994. Easthope, Antony. British Post-structuralism since 1968. London: Routledge, 1988. Eco, Umberto. Opera aperta. Milano: Bompiani, 1962. ---. Apocalittici e integrati. Milano: Bompiani, 1964. ---. La definizione dell’arte. Milano: Mursia, 1968a. ---. La struttura assente. Milano: Bompiani, 1968b. ---. A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1976. ---. Lector in fabula. Milano: Bompiani, 1979. [The Role of the Reader. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1979.] ---. “L’antiporfirio.” Il pensiero debole. Eds. Gianni Vattimo & Pier Aldo Rovatti. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1983. 52-81. ---. Semiotica e filosofia del linguaggio. Torino: Einaudi, 1984.[Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. London: Macmillan, 1984.] ---. The Open Work. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1989. ---. I limiti dell’interpretazione. Milano: Bompiani, 1990. [The Limits of Interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994b.] 635
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---.
Interpretation and Overinterpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992. ---. Apocalypse Postponed. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994a. ---. Six Walks in the Fictional Woods. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1994c. ---. Cinque scritti morali. Milano: Bompiani, 1997a. [Five Moral Pieces. London: Vintage, 2002a.] ---. Kant e l’ornitorinco. Milano: Bompiani, 1997b. [Kant and the Platypus. London: Vintage, 1999.] ---. Sulla letteratura. Milano: Bompiani, 2002b. [On Literature. London: Secker & Warburg, 2005.] Frow, John. Cultural Studies and Cultural Value. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Explained to Children. London: Turnaround, 1992. ---. Political Writings. London: UCL Press, 1993. Magli, Patrizia et al., eds. Semiotica. Milano: Bompiani, 1992. Musarra, Franco et al., eds. Eco in fabula. Firenze: Cesati, 2002. Pareyson, Luigi. Estetica. Milano: Bompiani, 1954. ---. Ontologia della libertà. Torino: Einaudi, 1995. Pezzini, Isabella. “Le passioni del lector.” Magli et al., eds.: 227-42. ---. “Les limites de la passion.” Musarra et al., eds.: 209-22. Readings, Bill. Introducing Lyotard. London: Routledge, 1991. Ricoeur, Paul, Freud. New Haven: Yale UP, 1970. ---. The Conflict of Interpretations. London: Athlone, 1989. Smith, Jonathan. “De te fabula narratur: narrativity, ethics, and psychoanalysis in the critical thought of Umberto Eco.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 42, 2 (2006): 168182. ---. “Umberto Eco; or, A Portrait of the Semiotician as a Young Media Critic.” Rethinking Media Studies. Eds. Philip Bounds & Mala Jagmohan. Oxford: Peter Lang, forthcoming. 636
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Van den Bossche, Bart. “Confessions d’un écrivain italien.” Musarra et al., eds.: 233-44. Waites, Bernard et al., eds. Popular Culture: Past and Present. London: Croom Helm, 1982. Williams, James. Lyotard. Cambridge: Polity, 1998.
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The Italian Detective Novel: The Literary and Cinematic Giallo Joseph Eynaud (University of Malta) Introduction
The crime fiction genre was relatively slow to catch hold in Italy although it gradually became very popular and eventually influenced some of the country’s most talented writers. As in most other countries the mystery entered Italy in the form of translations of American and especially British stories. There were, however, some very early local mystery writers including Francesco Mastriani who published The Blind Woman from Sorrento (Bietti, Milan, 1973) in serial form in 1852. Emilio De Marchi published an inverted mystery (one in which the guilty person is known at the outset) entitled The Priest’s Hat in 1858 (republished in 1927 by Fratelli Treves, Milan, 1927). The genre was really begat, however, in 1929 when the publishing house Mondadori began to turn out mysteries and especially translations of U.S. and British mysteries in the “pulp” style with yellow covers. These were christened “I libri gialli” or the “yellow books”. Thus “giallo” caught on as shorthand for the crime fiction genre, a term that eventually expanded to mean also thrillers and suspense and was also extended to films. Giallo (gialli, plural) became, as in most countries and especially Italy, a mass-market, popular type of literature. Gradually, indigenous writers were attracted in larger numbers to the genre. For example, Alessandro Varallo adopted an ironic tone in a number of his works (e.g. Dramma e Romanzo Poliziesco, Comoedia, 1932). Arturo Lanocita published Forty Million (Mondadori, Milan) in 1931 with comedy as the main theme. Luciano Folgore employed a surreal approach in his Colored Trap published in 1934. And, Augusto
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JOSEPH EYNAUD (UNIVERSITY OF MALTA)
De Angelis in a series of novels (e.g. De Vincenzi e la Bruchetta di Cristallo, Sonzogno, 1974) created a serious and talented Italian police procedural set in Milan. His detective/commissioner, De Vincenzi, was a literate and clever hero who attempted to get inside the criminal’s mind. The relatively feeble beginnings of indigenous mystery writing was sharply threatened and curtailed by the Fascist government in 1941 and the genre was banned outright in 1943 as an unpatriotic in its portrayal of the state. After WW II the importation of American hard-boiled mysteries inundated the country. By the late 1950s and early 1960s Italian writers took to the genre with gusto. One of the most important and prolific writers, Carlo Emilio Gadda, had a significant impact on later authors. His novel, That Awful Mess on Via Merulana was published in 1957 (available in English from a number of publishers – e.g. G. Braziller, N.Y., 1984). It was set in fascist Italy of the 1920s and provided a somewhat negative view of the police. It can be characterized as an antidetective novel and led to a type of crime fiction without certainty of solution. This model was adopted and enlarged upon by a number of later writers. (See also Gadda’s, Acquaintance with Grief, G. Braziller, N.Y., 1966). By the 1960s the mystery genre attracted two types of writers – the traditional, mass-market crime fiction writers and the “literary” detective writers. The latter employed the detective structure – crime, plot, puzzle – but developed a socalled anti-detective novel which rejects the expected outcome of restored order found in most mysteries. The traditional detective storywriters grew in number and popularity through the decades after 1960. One of the best was Giorgio Scerbanenco who created a Milanese physician as his hero (see Duca and the Milan Murders, Harper and Row, N.Y. 1978). Attilo Veraldi began a hard-boiled series set in Naples in the 1970s (see The Payoff, Hamilton, London, 1978) and Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini published an extremely popular novel – La Donna Della Domenica – The Sunday 639
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Woman (Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, N.Y., 1973). These two also wrote The D. Case: the Truth About the Mystery of Edwin Drood (Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, N.Y., 1992), a pastiche based on Dickens’s unfinished mystery in which they resurrect Poirot, Father Brown and Holmes! Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini’s La verità sul caso D. is the fruit of a joint writing project between two well-known Italian writers of detective fiction who most of the time operate as a couple – hence the use of the ampersand. But even more so, this is the fruit of a joint writing project between them and Charles Dickens. La verità sul caso D. consists actually in Dickens’s own unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood interpolated by chapters written by Fruttero & Lucentini which represent about one third of the whole. The two parts form a single text, a dialogue between the two authors and Dickens, or, as some reviewers defined it, “a three-way collaboration” or, even better, “un romanzo a sei mani” (a novel for six hands). To continue the numerical escalation (and borrow Wolfgang Iser’s definition of reading), the new novel is a dramatic example of “the interaction between its structure and its recipients” (1987: 106), in this case not only the common reader but also the over two hundred writers who attempted to complete and complement the novel. Fruttero & Lucentini use the narrative framework of a debate among the most famous fictional detectives as they are trying to make sense of Dickens’s intentions. Sherlock Holmes, Maigret, Dupin, Poirot (and even a Hercule Popeau, a character created by Hilaire Belloc’s sister well before Agatha Christie gave birth to her immortal sleuth), join some equally famous roman noir colleagues such as Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer. To them we should add Porfirij Petrovic from Crime and Punishment, De Quincey’s Toad in the Hole, Dickens’s own Inspector Buckett and Collins’ Sergeant Cuff. Last but not least comes a token academic, Dr. Wilmot, the fictional editor of The Dickensian.
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The genre grew greatly in popularity and in 1980 the journal Panorama commissioned a series of stories written by a number of Italian celebrities – judges, politicians, professors, etc. – related to their fields of endeavour. These booklets were called “I gialli verità” or “True detective stories” and became extremely popular and successful. In 1983 a television series – “Giallosera” (The Evening Detective) was produced by the Italian TV network RAI. The series was also very popular and involved the viewing audience in attempting to solve the crimes. The mass-market mystery writers in Italy tend to have a very regional voice. Laura Grimaldi, one of the finest current writers, is also the director of the publishing house Interno Giallo. Her stories are all set in Milan. Bruno Ventavolis is Turin-oriented, Andrea Pincketts sets his hard-boiled series in Milan, Silvana La Spina employs Sicily as a crime site, Loriano Macchiavelli prefers Bologna and Corrado Augias is comfortable in Rome. Among the most popular authors today is Andrea Camilleri whose Commissario Montalbano has even been produced for television. Unfortunately, most of the work of these authors is not always available in English. Italy as a backdrop
There are also a few non- Italian writers who set mysteries in that country and are worthy of mention. One is the very popular Donna Leon who has created a most fascinating Venetian detective/commissioner Brunetti. Her novels are redolent of every section of Venice and capture the personality of the city and region. Michael Dibdin has created a worthy Italian policeman in Aurelio Zen who fights corruption and bureaucracy all over the country. For a glimpse of ancient Rome and its empire one might enjoy Lindsey Davis’ historical mysteries as well as those of Steven Saylor. All four of these writers’ many novels are readily available. Readers of Italian might well enjoy Loris Rambelli’s Storia del Giallo Italiano (The Story of Italian Detective Fiction). 641
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“Italian hearts”, Stendhal wrote in The Charterhouse of Parma, “are much more tormented than ours by the suspicions and the wild ideas which a burning imagination presents to them...” Living in Italy, one quickly realises that suspicion and paranoia are the standard emotional twinges of “imaginative Italians”: suspicion about amorous betrayal, paranoia that the goodies in government might actually be the baddies, suspicion about whether organised crime is quite as organised in reality as it appears in books and films. Rampant suspicion is the reason Italians love the dinner-party game of dietrologia (X-Files-style conspiracy-theorising), in which participants try to out-trump each other with paranoid ideas about the country’s terrorism, its fascism and the links between the two. The reason for that Italianate suspicion is that there is so much food for thought. The country seems to have an unlimited supply of real-life thrillers, called gialli or “yellows” because thrillers are published with yellow bindings. “It’s an incredible yellow” is a common phrase used by excited newscasters as they introduce breaking news about a dramatic murder or an intricate financial scam. Each time a new “illustrious corpse” is unearthed, suspicions soar once more, the conspiracy-theorists go to work, and it’s impossible for an observer to understand quite what is reality and what fantasy. All of which makes Italy the perfect backdrop for noir detective fiction. The private eye isn’t just chasing the criminals; in all probability, the criminals – who may be his superiors or his politicians – are themselves on his tail. It’s arguable that many of the best Italian writers of the 20th century (Silone, Sciascia, even Gadda) used that sophisticated, bewildering “yellow” genre: events happen without explanation, so that the reader is never sure of the moral identities of characters or of the reach of their power. Evidence disappears, witnesses are murdered; in the end the beleaguered detective’s only resource is suspicion, that “antechamber of truth”. The crime might never be solved, the criminal certainly won’t be punished, but it’s a thrilling journey through the moral maze of Italian life. 642
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Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen books are steeped in Italy’s suspicion. The paranoia drips from every page, as his arch detective, a Venetian carabiniere, cleans up bizarre crimes across the country. By now the detective’s name is synonymous with, or – the ultimate compliment – more famous than his creator’s. But Aurelio Zen’s allure is due to the fact that the novels effortlessly paint a sharper portrait of Italy than any guidebook, cookbook or academic history. Dibdin and Camilleri
Italy has produced, in the last few years, a parallel publishing phenomenon very similar to Dibdin: a writer of detective fiction whose critically acclaimed books regularly reach the sacred sales bracket of six figures. Given that book sales in Italy are generally minute compared to Britain, the success of Andrea Camilleri, a Sicilian novelist in his 80s, has been extraordinary (making it even harder to understand why no shrewd translator has rendered him into English). His detective, Commissario Montalbano, is not unlike Zen: a man who pieces together clues out of coincidences, and who has an acute moral conscience while being worldly enough to understand how to exploit immoral means for noble ends. It is probable that anyone living outside Italy who reads about Zen or Montalbano might think it all too much: murders in the Vatican, the mafia and fascism installed in the upper echelons of parliament, sinister policemen who use batons and bullets to dispel protesters. Yet Camilleri and Dibdin are admired because they put into fiction many of the unsavoury facts that British visitors, eager only for a Tuscan beach or bottle, are reluctant or unable to see. And that ugly side of the Bel Paese has led to a new Italian detective story: one being played out in real time, in front of the television cameras, in which the ageing Sicilian novelist has himself become a protagonist. It isn’t a traditional whodunit, but something subtler: we think we know whodunit, but wonder if he’ll be caught before the evidence disappears and the legal system is 643
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stitched up. In the most recent chapter of this real-life thriller, the suspect has become the country’s prime minister; each time he seems on the brink of arrest, his government passes legislation, which lets him off the hook. Some might say that this, too, is paranoia. Not according to Camilleri, who has proved himself as tenacious as his detective. He claims that Silvio Berlusconi is the incarnation of evil – “ male with a capital M” – and has frequently inveighed against his collusion with the “powers that be” in Sicily (in the last general election, Berlusconi won 61 out of the available 61 constituencies on the island). As ever in Italy, the only real clues to the suspect’s guilt are the coincidences: that electoral result in Sicily, his recent refusal to sign a European Union accord against financial fraud, the fact that his first legislative act was to decriminalise false accounting and his second to put a bureaucratic spanner in the works of detectives investigating international financial fraud. There are endless other coincidences. It’s a story, which is as unbelievable, brilliant and strangely thrilling as anything written by Dibdin or Camilleri. And as one watches the plot thicken by the day, it becomes obvious why suspicion is the staple diet of Italian hearts: there’s simply so much about which one can be suspicious. Italy, says Michael Dibdin, is a country in which the concept of closure is alien. Court cases rumble on for decades; crimes remain unsolved indefinitely; convictions are overturned on appeal; known criminals chill out in the piazzas without fear of arrest. Examples are legion. Take the case of the bombing of the Bologna railway station in 1980, killing 85 people and mortifying the nation. To this day, says Dibdin, nobody knows exactly who did it or why. Dibdin’s vision of Italy is distilled through his detective, Aurelio Zen, who makes his ninth appearance in Medusa, a typically elegant, sophisticated and intricate novel. Zen, says Dibdin, would prefer to work in the rationalist or scientific tradition, intent on demonstrating the validity of truth. But in Italy that’s never going to happen. Though Zen desperately 644
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wants to get at the truth, he also has a very strong fatalistic sense that it is beyond his grasp. “Basically all he can do is damage limitation”, says Dibdin. In Medusa, Zen starts out investigating a body, which has turned up in a cave and happens upon a plot, which could have destabilised the government 30 years previously. As ever in Italy, politics are at the heart of the matter. But by the time Zen becomes involved everyone wants the kind of resolution, which has no legal repercussions, or uncomfortable questions being asked. In short, they want to forget. Only in Italy, for instance, could a detective be complimented by his superior for not having brought a killer to book. Who needs closure when no one cares? Medusa, says Dibdin, is a novel about an Italy that is history, what Italians refer to as “the First Republic”, from the end of the second world war to 1998, a period of unprecedented corruption at the highest level: That gang of thugs, crooks, murderers and villains have been replaced […] and they’re all now either in prison or dead or in disgrace or waiting to go to prison. Or, in the case of former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, for example, imprisonable because under Italian law you can’t send someone of that age to prison. You don’t want to be sending 80-year-old blokes to prison. […] We’ve now got to the so-called Second Republic of Berlusconi and his bunch of thugs and all the terms I used before. […] Whatever you think of Berlusconi and his pals from the Northern League, they’re repulsive in a very different way, as Berlusconi proved the other week when he made that totally inappropriate remark about the German Social Democrat at the European Parliament.
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The postmodern novel
The second group of writers mentioned earlier who use the detective format to create what is essentially an anti-detective or postmodern novel are a very noteworthy group. Probably the best known to English readers in Umberto Eco whose Name of the Rose (Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, N.Y. 1994) was set in the 1300s with a Franciscan monk detective with the name of William of Baskerville (note the Holmsian ring to the hero’s name). The best-known writer of this group in literary circles, however, was Leonardo Sciascia who wrote many novels in the detective mode and also wrote a number of essays about the mystery genre. His stories were all set in crime-ridden Sicily and explored issues of political morality and corruption – especially the impact of the Mafia culture. His stories were filled with imperfect heroes, clues left for the reader to solve the crime on his or her own, and often no justice meted out to the offender. His best works include By All Means – Todo Modo – (Harper and Row, N.Y., 1977) and A Ciascuno il suo – To each His Own (or sometimes translated as A Man’s Blessing, – Harper and Row, N.Y. 1968). The latter is a fascinating window on Sicilian life and one in which the bad guys win! More than a dozen of his novels are available in English. Incidentally, one can sample short crime fiction stories by Sciascia, Calvino and Grimaldi in The New Mystery edited by Jerome Charyn (Dutton, N.Y., 1993). Since Edgar Allan Poe invented it, the detective story never went out of fashion. Alive and well both on page and on the screen, it has evolved into a surprisingly wide variety of subgenres and styles. It probably sells more than any other kind of fiction. For a long time, the very existence of an Italian detective story was considered an “absurd hypothesis”, as Alberto Savinio once said. In fact, to most writers, sunny Italy was an unlikely scene for the intrigues and machinations of diabolical criminal minds. Italian detective storywriters have to deal with this preconception, and do so re-interpreting the genre, shifting their interest from the “solution to a mystery” to the “mystery to a 646
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solution”. The solution to a mystery often turns into a much more complex quest, where the crime committed, which primed the plot of the novel, is only one of the issues that the detective/reader has to face in order to establish his own identity, and justify his own investigation. Today, gialli continue to be written by Italians, Umberto Eco’s Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose) in 1984 being the most famous and prestigious outside of Italy. There are also numerous translations into Italian of novelists such as Thomas Harris and Patricia Cornwell. The film giallo
However, it is the cinematic giallo that emerges during the “Golden Age” of Italian cinema in the early 1960s. One interesting point about the giallo in its cinematic form is that it appears to be less fixed as a genre than its written counterpart. The term itself doesn’t indicate, as genres often do, an essence, a description or a feeling. It functions in a more peculiar and flexible manner as a conceptual category with highly moveable and permeable boundaries that shift around from year to year to include outright gothic horror (La lama nel corpo [The Murder Clinic, Emilio Scardimaglia, 1966]), police investigations (Milano, morte sospetta di una minorenne [Sergio Martino, 1975]), crime melodrama (Così dolce, così perversa [So Sweet, So Perverse, Umberto Lenzi, 1969]) and conspiracy films (Terza ipotesi su un caso di perfetta strategia criminale [Who Killed the Prosecutor and Why?, Giuseppe Vari, 1972]). It should be understood then that the giallo is something different to that which is conventionally analysed as a genre. The Italians have the word filone, which is often used to refer to both genres and cycles as well as to currents and trends. This points to the limitations of genre theory built primarily on American film genres but also to the need for redefinition concerning how other popular film-producing nations understand and relate to their products. This introduction to the giallo, therefore, begins from the assumption that the giallo is 647
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not so much a genre, as its literary history might indicate, but a body of films that resists generic definition. In this respect it is unlike the Italian horror and poliziotto (police) genres yet, at the same time, the giallo can be understood as an object to be promoted, criticised and studied. By its very nature the giallo challenges our assumptions about how non-Hollywood films should be classified, going beyond the sort of Anglo-American taxonomic imaginary that “fixes” genre both in film criticism and the film industry in order to designate something specific. As alluded to above, however, despite the giallo’s resistance to clear definition there are nevertheless identifiable thematic and stylistic tropes. There is a stereotypical giallo and the giallo-fan has his or her idea of what constitutes the giallo canon. The following points therefore, are an attempt to clarify and define familiar aspects of this “canon.” In 1963, Mario Bava directed the first true Italian giallo: La ragazza che sapeva troppo (The Girl Who Knew Too Much). It can be argued that the Italian giallo pre-dates Bava’s film, as the term has frequently been used to associate Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (1943) with the tradition. However, the reason why Bava’s film is the “true” starting point of the giallo is its explicit and successful attempt to say to the spectator, in effect, “The Italian giallo has arrived”. The familiar black raincoat associated with the giallo killer stems from continental fashion trends in the 1960s and has since shifted its meaning over the decades to become the couture choice of the assassin by default in addition to serving as one of the giallo’s most identifiable visual tropes. Bava’s Sei donne per l’assassino (Blood and Black Lace, 1964), set in a fashion house, confirms this observation as the use of a black Macintosh for disguise purposes potentially means it could be any number of the models and, at the same time, situate itself on the pulse of fashion (Humphries). The hybrid medico-detective discourse is a popular one in the giallo. Hallucinations and subjective “visions” are central 648
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both to the protagonists and the narrative enigma in Una lucertola con la pelle di donna (Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, Lucio Fulci, 1971) and Lo strano vizio della signora Wardh (Next!, Sergio Martino, 1971) and are part of the giallo’s inherent pathologising of femininity and fascination with “sick” women. Hysterics are in abundance here: films such as Il coltello di ghiaccio (Knife of Ice, Umberto Lenzi, 1972) and Tutti i colori del buio (They’re coming to get you, Sergio Martino, 1972) anchor their narratives around the collapse of the “sickness” and mystery, albeit through the conduit of femininity. The 1960s made a slow but sure inroad for the giallo in Italian cinema. The period following 1963’s The Evil Eye was clearly a mapping out of new territory for Italian directors, not only for the giallo but also for the Italian horror film. The earlyto mid-60s giallo didn’t exhibit the strength of other genres of the period such as the western, the horror and the peplum (“sword-and-sandal” movie). However, one remarkable thing about the giallo is its longevity; even if its presence has been slight at times, it has still spanned over four decades of Italian cinema with the latest Dario Argento film, Non ho sonno (Sleepless, 2001). Not only does Sleepless constitute a return to form for the director, but it signals a revisiting of his own debut, L’Uccello dalle piume di cristallo (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, 1969). Perhaps again the giallo’s staying power can be reduced to a resistance of the homogenising constraints that traditional genre membership often imposes on bodies of films by making them fit particular historical and critical categories. Instead of defining the giallo in generic and historical terms, I would like to suggest that we understand it in a more “discursive” fashion, as something constructed out of the various associations, networks, tensions and articulations of Italian cinema’s textual and industrial specificity in the post-war period. It happens that the giallo revolves around murder, mystery, detection, psychoanalysis, tourism, alienation and investigation. 649
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The giallo literally begs for psychoanalytic inquiry and at the same time stages both the “analytical scene” and the “classic symptoms.” As usual, this staging occurs through the conduit of femininity but in some cases – as in (almost) every Dario Argento film – masculinity becomes the focal point. The typical Argento protagonist is the victim/witness of trauma who must keep returning to the scene of the crime (the Freudian retranscription of memory; popularly represented via flashback sequences), often committed by a killer who just can’t resist serial murder (the psychoanalytic “compulsion to repeat”). All sorts of vision/knowledge dynamics are explored in the giallo, but never to such great effect as in L’Uccello dalle piume di cristallo, whose foreigner abroad, flaneur Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante), is eyewitness to a knife assault in a chic Roman art gallery. The gallery is explicitly concerned with maximising clarity and vision: the space is minimal so there are no distractions for the gaze other than that of the crime; the doors/façade are enormous glass panels; nothing is obscured; the entire area is brightly lit. However, despite all of these supports aiding Dalmas’s vision, he fails to see (or in psychoanalytic terms, he misrecognises) the truth of his gaze. Other gialli which foreground the eye-witness narrative strand are Passi di danza su una lama di rasoio (Death Carries a Cane, Maurizio Pradeaux, 1972) and, of course, Bava’s La ragazza che sapeva troppo. Quite related to the theme of eye-witnesses and unreliable sight – and in the spirit of Carol Clover (1994) – are the numerous incidents of violence done to the eyes (including those in Gatti rossi in un labirinto di vetro [Eyeball, Umberto Lenzi 1974] and Opera [Dario Argento, 1988]) and the generous amount of titles with “gli occhi” in them, whether this refers to the eyes of detectives, victims, killers or cats (e.g., Il gatto dagli occhi di giada [The Cat’s Victim, Antonio Bido, 1977] and Gli occhi freddi della paura [Cold Eyes of Fear, Enzo Girolami Castellari 1971]). The giallo eye is both penetrating and penetrated. 650
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As a work of detection, the giallo is less a set of conventions than a playful resource about them. Detection is often the point of entry for an exploration of how to sort out the normal from the pathological through identity and representation. Along with psychoanalysis, detection was one of the great ends of nineteenth-century epistemology and it is by now a cliché to make the analogy between detective and analyst. Many gialli clearly define the pathological, including Sette scialli di seta gialla (Sergio Pastore, 1972) and La bestia uccide a sangue freddo (Slaughter Hotel, Fernando di Leo, 1971), and it is the sole purpose of these particular films to exploit this characterisation. The detective’s job thus becomes one of uncovering, naming and containing otherness as something socially and morally threatening. However, several progressive gialli (again mostly those of Argento, but also Giornata nera per l’ariete [The Fifth Chord, Luigi Bazzoni, 1973]) play with the conventions of detection and investigation procedures in order to explore issues of masculinity and identity. Key themes in such gialli include alienation, failed detection, otherness and the well-worn European concept of the “subject in process/on trial”. Referring back to the giallo’s origins in the 1930s with the translations of British and early American murder mysteries, it appears that the cinematic giallo has never quite forgotten its debt to the literary. The most explicit examples include the staging of the giallo book as an object in La ragazza che sapeva troppo and the author/reader of the giallo as central to the narrative in Unsane. In the latter film, Peter Neal (Antonio Franciosca) is an American gialli author, and Giuliano Gemma’s detective is an avid reader of Sherlock Holmes stories who even quotes what is perhaps the mantra of the giallo’s dénouement: “Whatever remains, however improbable, must be truth” (from Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles). Although unaccredited, Agatha Christie is the main source of inspiration and imitation for Concerto per un pistola (The Weekend Murders, Michele Lupo, 1970) and Cinque 651
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bambole per la luna d’agosto (Five Dolls for an August Moon, Mario Bava, 1970). Edgar Allen Poe is also represented in gialli such as Sette note in nero (The Psychic, Lucio Fulci, 1977), not to mention Argento’s ineffectual cut-and-paste of Poe’s world in the “black cat” episode of Due occhi diabolici (Two Evil Eyes, Dario Argento and George Romero, 1990). Main features of Italian films
Travel, tourism, exoticism, hybridism and foreignness are all familiar features of the giallo. The textuality of Italian cinema after the 1950s has many features that seem to open up queries problematising the concept of a national film movement and a national identity. The main protagonist of the giallo is often the foreigner in Italy or the Italian on holiday. “Exotic locations” include Scotland (L’iguana dalla lingua di fuoco [The Iguana with a Tongue of Fire, Riccardo Freda, 1971]), Haiti (Al tropico del cancro [Death in Haiti, Edoardo Mulargia, 1972]) and Africa (L’uomo più velonoso del cobra [Human Cobras, Bitto Albertini, 1971]). Characters don’t seem fixed to a home or location; they are always (in) between different places. This justifies the advertisements for various transatlantic airlines that bookend the giallo, not to mention the promos for every traveller’s favourite drink – a J&B whisky. This must be the most plugged product in the history of European Cinema. When the giallo is set in Italy it typically takes one of three different routes. Sometimes it promotes “Italian-ness” through a foregrounding of identifiable tourist spots that often halt the narrative and serve as sheer spectacle. Other times it strives to erase Italian-ness by establishing the setting as an (other) anonymous European city, avoiding distinctive signifiers of Italy altogether. And still other times it constructs a “ruralhistorical” locale as a place of the uncanny, as in La casa dalle finestre che ridono (The House with the Windows that Laugh, Pupi Avati, 1976). Italian popular cinema tends to promote the nonnational, and this variably results in a tendency to exaggerate 652
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and exploit the “foreign” through the tropes of travel and the tourist’s gaze. Ugo Liberatore’s Incontro d’amore a Bali (1969) and the Black Emanuelle series (1975-83) instigated a whole filone of soft-porn desert island and globe-trotting adventure films, fuelling what Anne McClintock calls the “porno-tropics”, and which in turn influenced the direction of the giallo towards a more pan-exotic exploration of mystery, detection and murder to sustain the public’s interest and changing tastes. 1 The giallo is quite difficult to pin down as a body of films. Criticism tends to gather around author directors or singular examples. However, if we can understand the giallo discursively, we may begin to make interesting connections between its textual, industrial and cultural features. Such a strategy would allow us to open the giallo up rather than close it down. One final note specifies the giallo’s discursive potential in everyday criticism. A recent Japanese animated feature, Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997) was referred to as an animated Japanese giallo. There is also a frequent and longstanding tradition of appropriating Spanish (Una libelua para cada muerto [A Dragonfly for Each Corpse, Leon Klimovsky, 1974]), Belgian (De Potloodmoorden [The Pencil Murders, Guy Lee Thys, 1982]), Japanese, French and Dutch films for inclusion in the gialli tradition. The last decade has seen the rise of a literary phenomenon quite unknown to Italian culture: the widespread production and consumption of genre fiction – mysteries, science-fiction, fantasy, or horror fiction – not imported from abroad, but rather written in Italy and more often than not set there. Of course, genre authors like Andrea Camilleri, who has consistently been at the top of the best-seller charts for the past several months, or Valerio Evangelisti are not the first practitioners to come out of Italy: the history of Italian paraTPF
FPT
TP
1
For more on colonisation and (post-) colonial issues in the giallo, see Frank Burke (1970). PT
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literature – for the most part yet unwritten – should certainly record pioneering experiments such as the review Il cerchio verde, which sought to implement a limited autarchy in detective fiction or the work of honest and often original writers such as Giorgio Scerbanenco, best known as a giallista, but who was also the author of a number of works of science-fiction, or Vittorio Curtoni who, among other things, is the author of what remains to this day the most complete – if somewhat outdated – history of Italian science-fiction. But this tradition of genre fiction has always existed in a doubly liminal space, that is, on the margins of both the official literary establishment on the one hand and of the market of popular literature, whose access was open mainly to authors in translation (American, English, French and, in the case of science-fiction, even Russian). It is thus legitimate to question the reasons why Italian genre fiction has emerged so forcefully in the last decade. It is significant that this phenomenon seems to have taken by surprise the popular fiction industry itself. The back cover blurb of Evangelisti’s second novel, Le catene di Eymerich (1995), published in the Mondadori science-fiction series “Urania”, made the book sound like a minor miracle: “Autore del romanzo che ha vinto l’ultima edizione del Premio URANIA, oggi Valerio Evangelisti ha l’onore di essere il primo scrittore italiano a venire pubblicato su queste pagine al di fuori di ogni tenzone o competizione letteraria.” And in an editorial by the editor in chief of the series, Marzio Tosello, much is made of the fact that Evangelisti has managed to break the traditional hostility of the Italian public towards Italian genre fiction, which resulted in lower sales “ogni qual volta si dava spazio a un autore che magari italiano non era ma il cui nome suonava tale”, such as the mystery writer Bill Pronzini. It seems to me, however, that this renewed interest in genre fiction is an aspect of a broader coming together of and outright contamination between high and popular literature. I do not want to imply that we are in the presence of a “closing of the gap” between high and low culture, to use Giuseppe Petronio’s famous expression, 654
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given the fact that much of our younger narrative – from Paola Capriolo to Paolo Maurensig to Alessandro Baricco, and so on – is impervious to the allure of genre. Rather, we are in the presence of a process of appropriation which on the one hand has made certain of the stylistic and structural elements of genre fiction available to writers who do not necessarily locate themselves within that horizon, and on the other has “sanitized” – “sdoganato,” to use the political jargon – home-made genre fiction enough to make it a viable alternative to the imported variety. Serious or trivial literature?
Of course, there is a long-standing tradition of exchange between genre and “serious” fiction, in spite of the lack of a national tradition for the former, going back at least as far as Leonardo Sciascia’s Il giorno della civetta. In Italy an extraordinarily well-written detective novel by one of the few professional writers of the genre will always remain “only a detective novel,” while even a mediocre novel with a detective structure, if written by a traditional “serious” writer (i.e., Michele Prisco), has every chance of coming to be considered by critics a valuable innovative novel. “Serious” is the operative word here, the one that distinguishes this early appropriations of the conventions of “letteratura di consumo:” genre is used to establish a horizon of expectation which the novel violates – and it is precisely this violation that locates it outside of the contaminated space of the popular – but the violation is functional to the plot itself and to the message it vehicles, and leaves the structures of the genre untouched. In other words, Captain Bellodi’s defeat in Il giorno della civetta is functional to the novel’s thesis about the pervasive nature of the Mafia and of its entanglements with the political realm, but the novel still delivers the truth (for all of Don Mariano Arena’s Pirandellian talk about its shiftiness). Marchica’s guilt is proved by the detective, if not by the legal system. In the end, then, what is explicitly negated by the novel, 655
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namely the possibility of justice, is what is in any case always denied by the very conventions of the detective genre itself, which stops short of showing the messy details of trials and sentences, usually bringing the text to a closure with the act of naming the guilty party. On the contrary, the contemporary contamination between consumer and high literature has been the result of a more conscious re-working of the structures and codes of genre fiction. Carla Benedetti has summed up the terms of this complex relationship clearly in an essay on the genres of modernity (“I generi della modernità”) (and we will notice, en passant for the moment, the introduction into the discussion of the notion of postmodernity). Benedetti writes: I generi di recupero sono sostanzialmente il frutto dei mutamenti di criteri estetici portati dal postmoderno, anche se il fenomeno va ben al di là del postmodernismo inteso come poetica. Come è noto, uno dei tratti specifici del postmodernismo è la commistione (o meglio l’indifferenza della distinzione) tra cultura di massa e cultura di élite. [...] Se la modernità svalutava l’essere di genere, nella postmodernità quella svalutazione viene attivamente contrastata. La nuova produzione attinge a piene mani dalla letteratura ‘di genere’, non più svalutata come tale ma anzi recuperata proprio in quanto di genere. La via del genere insomma si riapre al traffico creativo [...] [L]a nuova produzione [...] fa un uso ‘serio’ [del genere], o per lo meno un uso che, per quanto ironico e ammiccante, non è mai stravolto o improprio. (51)
Benedetti’s picture appears somewhat overtly optimistic here, but she then goes to qualify it in a way that, it seems to me, hits the problem squarely in its centre. Because the apparent recovery and even celebration of genre by serious literature has not pushed genre literature itself within its horizon, but has 656
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rather resulted in a parasitic relationship whereby the nonliterariness of genre fiction becomes a resource for the literary text itself. The often cited example of Umberto Eco’s Il nome della rosa is a case in point. In Eco’s novel, as is well known, the rules of the genre are both re-asserted and subverted, as the denouement of the novel reveals that the truth uncovered by William of Baskerville is both a formally legitimate interpretation of the clues and a colossal misreading of the same. Thus, the appropriation of the rules of the mystery genre is not simply carried out in an “ironic and knowing” way, as Benedetti has it – and that, in any case, would already be incompatible with a “serious” appropriation of those very same rules – but it is rather aimed at a destructuring of the mechanisms which govern the rules themselves. Il nome della rosa always calls for a double reading, as a mystery and as a meta-mystery about the (re)-construction of the crime carried out by William, which works according to what his inter-textual referent Sherlock Holmes called the “science of detection.” The double-play of the novel between narrative and meta-narrative level of course is rearticulated at the point of decoding – if, in any case, we can accept Eco’s own testimony as having theoretical validity and being more than a mere instance of much-maligned authorial intention – as it calls for a reader who can both “read for the plot” and thus enjoy the fictional world on its own terms (Eco: “I wanted to create a type of reader who, once the initiation was past, would become my prey – or, rather, the prey of the text – and would think he wanted nothing but what the text was offering him”) and be the narrator’s “accomplice” in distinguishing between the historical reconstruction or the detective plot and the structural, rhetorical, and narrative conventions which govern them – in other words, a reader who does not mistake the play of linguistic and cultural codes with something outside them, i.e., “reality.” The fate reserved to the “ingenuous reader” who is unable to carry out these operations is, of course, to be deceived by the text itself. The novel, finally, 657
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calls for “post-modern readers”. With the modern, anyone who does not understand the game can only reject it, but with the post-modern, it is possible not to understand the game and yet to take it seriously. Which is, after all, the quality (the risk) of irony. There is always someone who takes the ironic discourse seriously. Through irony, the distinction between popular and elite culture, supposedly called into question by post-modernism, is re-asserted at the level of the reader: the post-modern reader is the discerning consumer whose giving in to the pleasure of the text, to the hypnotic and seductive allure that makes him/her its prey, is redeemed by the knowledge that the whole thing is a shadow play of semiotic codes. Works Cited
Benedetti, Carla. “I generi nella modernità.” Eds. Luca Lugnani, Marco Santagata e Antonio Stussi. Studi offerti a Luigi Blasucci. Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1996. 51-75. Burke, Frank. “Intimations (and more) of colonialism: L’Uccello dalle piume di cristallo (The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, 1970).” Kinoeye 2,11 (10 June 2002). Clover, Carol J. “The Eye of Horror.” Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film. Ed. Linda Williams. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995. Doty, Alexander. Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose including Postscript to the Name of the Rose. San Diego: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1984. Humphries, Reynold. “Just another fashion victim in Mario Bava’s Sei donne per l’assassino (Blood and Black Lace, 1964).” Kinoeye 1, 7 (26 November 2001). Iser, Wolfgang. L’atto della lettura: una teoria della risposta estetica. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987. T
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McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Context. New York: Routledge, 1995. Petronio, Giuseppe. Sulle tracce del giallo. Roma: Gamberetti Editrice, 2000. Rambelli, Loris. Storia del Giallo Italiano. Milano: Garzanti, 1979.
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Loriano Macchiavelli and the Italian Detective Novel of the ’70s Franco Manai (University of Auckland) The serialization of Fruttero & Lucentini’s model
Loriano Macchiavelli’s work was produced in the wake of Fruttero and Lucentini’s success with La donna della Domenica (1972), 1 which had given a new impetus to the Italian detective novel genre, not only within the literary field, but also in the sphere of the imaginary and generally in social life. Like the successful literary duo, he also finds in the detective novel genre a way of establishing a relationship with a mass public. Yet his concern is not to find ways of making high culture accessible to a low-brow readership by writing for the people, on the people’s side with nonchalance. Rather, his concern is to create a literature that responds to his expressive needs and that at the same time is in tune with a large number of readers. The detective story genre is for Macchiavelli a tool which allows him to bring to his public a series of plays that, apparently based on a few recurrent elements, permit the representation of interests and problems which are different each time. From the very beginning Macchiavelli as a narrator pokes fun at detective novel narration; he parodies the genre. Both the plots and the characters are ostentatiously presented as caricatures of traditional detective novel plots and TPF
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On Fruttero and Lucentini see Gisella Padovani (1989); Gianni Canova (1985).
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characters or, to be more precise, of that ideal form of detective novel that, following Todorov, one must always imagine as underpinning each individual actual novel. 2 We should first note that Loriano Macchiavelli is one of the few Italian authors who proved himself able to cope with the challenges and rhythm of serialization. The fact that serialization is an unavoidable characteristic of the detective novel is not the result of abstract theories, but of a lesson learned, one that is easily understood by looking at what had happened in the great Western literatures. Of course literature has always involved some degree of serialization. After all the whole mechanism of the literary genres is based on repetition, but with infinite and highly stereotyped variations of characters, situations and actions. Indeed it is the repetition of these stereotypes that allows the public to have the expectations, which new works will satisfy. 3 The case of the detective novel is a little more peculiar; it offers the public not only the same scheme and main characters, but also the same suspense; this suspense may be effected through different plots, however this does not change the basic elements of the relationship that the public establishes with their heroes and heroines. It is this serialization which permitted the development and proliferation of a cultural industry based on an assured sale. As it has been often recognized and as experience has proved e contrario, a series of detective novels, which does not respect the rules of punctuality and homogeneity in quality, has no chance of success. TPF
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We are of course referring to Zvetan Todorov (1970). Anyway irony is imbedded in the genre: the recognized master of the detective novel, Conan Doyle, does not spare his fine irony on the figure of his protagonist Sherlock Holmes and even less so on that of his second actor, Dr. Watson.
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See Gian Carlo Ferretti (1983); Vittorio Spinazzola (1985). 661
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But the production of sufficient numbers of stories, which obey these rules, can only happen with rigorous serialization. This requires that the author takes the attitude and consciousness of a craftsperson. It presupposes that the authors actually recognize themselves as intellectual workers, as workers in the assemblyline of culture. It is not resignation but conscious choice. And it is precisely the need for such a choice that has long kept Italian intellectuals out of the detective genre and away from intellectual work that is really aimed at the wider public and not at a small elite. The system of the characters
Macchiavelli first novel of 1974, Le piste dell’attentato, was followed by numerous novels and stories that have as their protagonist the police sergeant Sarti Antonio, always surrounded by characters whose names and characteristics have remained constant over the years or, if they have changed, these changes are not substantial. Macchiavelli also proposes anew the classic duo whose prototype is that of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. In this regard, we might point out the conscious reversal of these roles: the protagonist Sarti Antonio is a police sergeant (and we must also note that there is no such rank in the Italian police system; in other words, this is another sign of the author’s attitude towards his character) and thus should not only be in charge of the inquiry but also solve the case. Instead, he is a sort of sidekick to his friend, the student Rosas, who is the real problem solver. Rosas suggests which trails should be followed, the people to interrogate, the hypotheses to verify. He often has to explain the connections between apparently unrelated elements because Sarti Antonio is not able to do so himself. The two other main figures in these plots are the simple-minded police officer Felice Cantoni, whose most important task is to drive the police car, and the chief inspector, Raimondi Cesare, who is Sarti Antonio’s superior and has a talent for taking the glory when 662
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cases are solved by his subordinate. Of course, Raimondi’s claiming of another’s work emphasizes even more strongly the fact that Sarti Antonio is completely dependent on his intellectual friend for solving the crimes. Another figure in the system of characters is that of Sarti Antonio’s friend, the journalist Gianni ‘Lucciola’ Deoni. As one would expect, this character too has a personality that is completely different from that of the ideal, skilled reporter working for a big newspaper or the television news. He works for a local newspaper, and would be a good journalist but he is too shy and too self-conscious, thus his work is never adequately recognized and he is the first to see his work as worthless. Playing with these and a few other fixed elements Macchiavelli writes a series of novels that creates a further protagonist, maybe the most important one: the city of Bologna. This city is not transfigured into an anonymous metropolis or into a badly camouflaged American city. On the contrary it is represented, albeit through hyperboles and grotesque deformations, in its historical and social truth, in the way it has changed over the years. It has already been pointed out that in Macchiavelli’s work the city of Bologna is given a voice, and that the changes it underwent between the early 1970s and the 1990s are well represented. Indeed the city saw radical changes including the huge expansion of two extremely voracious institutions: the university and the fair. Bologna transformed itself from a rich provincial city, the heart of various economic and organizational activities (as the capital of the regions Emilia and Romagna), into a university city and a center of national and international fairs and exhibitions. 4 This process entailed considerable demographic transformation and thus provoked a profound crisis TPF
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over what was considered the peculiar Bolognese modus vivendi, that is, easy and merry sociability, curiosity and openness. The massive influx of students from all over Italy, who were attracted by this very modus vivendi, caused the aftereffects of ‘68 to take an ideological character that was particularly strong and often extreme. An example of Macchiavelli’s representation of Bologna: Fiori alla memoria
The dynamics of this ongoing progressive change in identity has been at the core of Macchiavelli’s fiction over the years. The writer, even when he was facing what many described as a mere loss of identity, remained faithful to the reading of the city which he himself gave in his novels of the ’70s.We will focus our attention on what might be considered the most representative of these novels, both in terms of its enduring success and the clarity with which the essential data for the question can be found, Fiori alla memoria (1975). First we must note that it is the second novel in the series and thus appears within an already established set of expectations. As is often the case with serial works, here too there are references to the previous work but comprehension of this later work does not rely on knowledge of the former. Also the pretense of objective representation is completely avoided: there is an internal narrator, a ghost-like figure, who narrates in the first person and at the same time interacts with the characters – especially the protagonist – through dialogues and speeches. The narrator moreover enters directly into the story; for example, at a certain moment in the novel, Sarti Antonio orders four coffees at a bar, one for himself, one for the driver (the officer Felice Cantoni), one for Rosas, the student intellectual, and the fourth for the narrator. The latter equally states that he is participating in this or that car drive, resolves to remind the protagonist about something or other; in other words he participates in the story without really 664
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being in it. His comments and his observations on the other hand in no way represent those of the author. He is indeed a far cry from both the omniscience of the classical nineteenth century narrator or the external or psychological presentation of the twentieth century narrator. Generally he declares his ignorance or confesses he does not understand. This strange narrator, who has been described as petulant (Carloni), should be seen as a double of the reader rather than of the author; certainly, he is not a character that would make a reader feel uneasy. Just like the protagonist, as we will soon see, this narrator-reader-spectator is not placed on a pedestal of heroism and ability, but on a level of absolute parity with many readers – perhaps even on an inferior level to that of most readers. This is one of the elements that allows the creation of that particular atmosphere of complicity and amused participation which makes the play possible. However the first to pay the price for this is certainly the protagonist, starting with the way he is named. The formula of family name followed by first name (Sarti Antonio) brings to mind the language of bureaucracy at its lowest level: the language of reports, of depositions, of the civil certificates already casts per se Sarti Antonio in a caricatural light. The effect is increased by the epithet “sergeant” that almost always accompanies his family and first names. The same technique is used for Raimondi Cesare, chief inspector, and with the variatio first name and family name plus epithet for Felice Cantoni, officer. Quite often the three characters are mentioned repeatedly in the space of a few lines, each time with the full name and epithet: the effect is a hammering repetition that increases the ridicule and works as an amused hint of complicity with the reader. If perplexity arises from denomination, the other characteristics of both the protagonist and his second leads only increase it. Sarti Antonio’s most frequent activity is to massage his stomach in a desperate attempt to placate his neurotic colitis, 665
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which torments him and forces him to look for a bathroom at the most delicate of moments. When he cannot find a bathroom he must make do with a secluded place, as happens in our novel when Sarti is on duty near a monument to the Resistance. He abandons his vigil for a few minutes to attend to this pressing need, during which time an unknown hand smears the monument he was supposed to be guarding. When they discover the misdeed, both the sergeant and Officer Felice Cantoni react in a heedless and unbecoming way. In the darkness of the night they end up finding not the culprit but the corpse of a murdered man. The connection (that later will be found to be casual) between the writing on the monument and the finding of the corpse offers the opportunity for a false start, one of those wrong moves of which Sarti appears to be an absolute master. Indeed the vandal is soon found and is automatically accused of the murder. However when another murder takes place, in the same pleasant and quiet mountain village of Pieve di Pino 50 kilometers from Bologna, it appears quite clear that the accusation of murder should not have been so automatic. This does not bring about the immediate release of the presumed murderer; on the contrary, the fate of the vandal appears to be the last thing on the minds of the police and the judiciary. This forces the student Rosas to collaborate with Sarti. In the novels, Rosas always plays the role of the intellectual partner, the one who gives Sarti the clues to solve the case. He is also presented as a caricature, however he is given a status quite different from both the protagonist’s and that of the other characters in the novel. It is not just the fact that his actions lead to the solving of the mystery, but above all it is because through him that behavioral and ideological values, which are presented as right and exemplary, are explicated. Thus Rosas, together with some other students, spends his nights supporting the group of leftists who have decided to defend the monument from further attacks. The initial intervention by the police came about 666
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after a fire broke out in the cabin of the workers who were building the monument. Suspicion fell on an extremist rightwing group who were suspected of wanting to delay the building of the monument. This also offers the opportunity for a false start – false only to a point, though. This particular political line of investigation does not expose a connection with the fire, an element that appears to have been forgotten at the end of the story and that might have been purely coincidental. However the origins of the three murders which punctuate the novel certainly have political overtones, and are indeed linked to the Resistance, specifically, to the historical episode to which the monument, around which the story takes its first steps, is dedicated. The monument was being built to commemorate the ambush and massacre by German troops of a partisan brigade which was on its way to support the Allies in the liberation of Bologna. For most of the book though Sarti Antonio, helped by the journalist, Gianni ‘Lucciola’ Deoni, – another caricature – follows lines of investigation that are all but political. The most imagination he can conjure up seems to be that inspired by the old cherchez la femme. During the investigation of some leads, which are certainly not too difficult to identify but still have to be suggested by Rosas, Sarti reconstructs a singular village idyll in which the three murdered people form the core. The first one, Giacinto, is a young man, all home and church, but who has clandestine meetings in a Bolognese brothel with the distinctive village Carabinieri chief petty officer, a well-respected family man. It is not this relationship that disturbs the chief petty officer’s sleep; rather, it is his wife’s affair with the second victim, the handsome Gaetano, also known as the village rooster. This is why the chief petty officer does not hesitate to send her away to her native Sicilian town for a holiday of unspecified length. Indeed the investigation immediately reveals that the 667
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second victim had shared a bed with all 18 of the available women in the village, beautiful and ugly, young and less young, unmarried and married. Sarti is looking for the passion that motivated these murders and thus before his puzzled eyes he sees a village where all the husbands knew of their wives’ affairs and were indifferent if not consenting. It is clear that here Macchiavelli is playing on two levels with the reader: on the one hand he flavours his literary delicacy with that dose of sex which appears indispensable to the roughest palates; on the other he charges the deeds of Mondini Gaetano, the rooster, with a hyperbole which is close to a Leporello catalogue: bedding all 18 of the available women is just too much, even more so when among the 18 there are some, like the farmacist’s wife, who are represented as completely unpalatable. However the irony of an extremely drawn out tract on the ‘latin’ mentality, i.e. admiration for the man as a ‘hunter’ who is able to conquer as many women as possible, is further reinforced by the revelation that this village Don Giovanni was actually a poor, unhappy man, with problems of early ejaculation which poisoned his sexual relationships and worried him to the point of depression. The sex ingredient is further exploited with the representation of a totally satisfactory encounter between Sarti Antonio and the young and beautiful wife of the village doctor, following a topos of the series, according to which in each novel Sarti Antonio is given the adventure of making love to at least one woman of great beauty. This is perhaps the major compensation given to a character who is for the most part presented as a model ‘loser’, but who nonetheless, being the protagonist, should offer the readers something to identify with. Sex is also dealt with in that aspect of student life which surfaces in the book’s pages. Without clamour, but also without shame, a couple of students who are guarding the monument make love. The student intellectual, Rosas, who is presented almost as a blind mole, always 668
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immersed into his studies and his political commitment, has a clearly sexual relationship with a young student who appears as a voluptuous and flexible tule (giunco flessibile) to the greedy eyes of Sarti Antonio. To complete the picture, mercenary love is not overlooked: it comes with the journalist Deoni who, malgré lui, is sent by Sarti to investigate the Bolognese brothel attended by the first victim. If the intention to provide ‘low cuisine’ we hinted at above is quite clear, it is also evident that there is in Macchiavelli the desire and the ability to offer a variegated and, albeit ironically deformed, realistic picture of an important aspect of Italian culture, precisely in a time like the mid-’70s, when this part of social life was undergoing tumultuous change. The hint of a hidden relationship between the protagonist and a street prostitute has a function which is internal to the genre. The treatment of this character differs slightly in this novel, compared to others in the series: here Sarti limits himself to looking for her on the streets and thinking of her sometimes without actually meeting her. Another detective comes immediately to mind: the celebrated, parodic and serious protagonist par excellence of the novels by Manuel Vásquez Montalbán, that Pepe Carvalho who has a long-term relationship with the prostitute Charo, but who nonetheless does not let the other opportunities that his professional life offers him go by. The first novel of the series involving Carvalho and his bizarre philosophy, Yo maté a Kennedy, had been published in 1972, and was followed by Tatuaje in 1974 5 : the Barcellona antifranchist writer became far too popular and influential with his sociological slant to be ignored by any detective novel writer from the ’70s onwards. TPF
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In Fiori alla memoria, Sarti Antonio spends most of the novel following lines of investigation which are all centered on these troubled sexual relationships. First he suspects the consequences of the rooster Mandini’s frenzied activity, then he becomes quite sure of the relevance of a homosexual lead which would incriminate none other than the chief petty officer of the Carabinieri. Yet at the end the novel offers a reversal, following the best tradition of the enigmatic detective novel, where the suspense is kept till the very end on a false lead. Indeed at the heart of the triple murder there is neither adultery nor an attempt to hide an ambiguous double life. There had been instead the discovery by the three victims during their excursions together into the mountains of the hide-out of a famous partisan brigade, the Brigata Volpe – the same one whose members were slaughtered by the Germans in the ambush commemorated by the monument at Pieve del Pino. From the diary of Commander Volpe, which had remained hidden in the hide-out all those years, it can be deduced that the German ambush was successful thanks to the treachery of the parson of Pieve di Pino, who had been acting as a mediator between the brigade and the Allies. But that same person was still administering to the village souls, and had an excellent relationship with each of the three murdered young men. The latter trusted him and told him every secret: and in doing so they signed their own death warrant. Thus at the centre of the plot in this singular detective novel by Macchiavelli there is neither sex, nor money, nor base power struggles. There is rather the defense of a world of values whose continuity with the present the author, through the voice of his mouthpiece Rosas, wanted to stress. The Resistance does not appear in the pages of this book with the almost flag-waving emphasis of the founding moment of the Republic because in the ’70s, in contrast to the present day, the values that the Resistance stood for were taken for granted. It appears rather as the blooming of civic, civil and moral, political 670
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and ideological commitment. It appears also as an opportunity to rethink the social and cultural order of the country: the heritage of the Resistance should be honored and kept alive by those present-day souls for whom the construction of a better and more just society is a cherished goal. Thus in the hands of Loriano Macchiavelli the detective novel, a popular and mass genre par excellence, is realized as such but is also capable of offering a representation of the world which is thorough, complex and multifaceted, disenchanted and committed. The passing of time, from the close of the ’70s with the killing of Aldo Moro and the anni di piombo, the head-long fall into the crisis of the backlash (riflusso) and the triumph of rampant capitalism of the ’80s and the emergence a postmodern, postindustrial and postpolitical society in the ’90s, did not make it any easier for the writer to give a faithful representation of the world around him. However, Macchiavelli did not become disheartened. The Bologna which emerges in his later work assumes a darker and darker tonality: it is a city where the lively element of the young people’s civil protest movement (la contestazione giovanile) is missing. That generation, open to change and at the same time able to remember the past, has been substituted by a youth whose attention is only attracted by fancy labels and artificial paradises. It is a youth on which it becomes harder and harder to pin those hopes which certainly cannot find the right support in a social and institutional establishment that at each turn of history appears weaker and more corrupt. The 1995 novel Coscienza sporca is emblematic of this: here we find again a Sarti Antonio who drags his colitis and loose brains through a tangle of private and public criminality over which the shadow of Aids looms threateningly and symbolizes the internal rot of a society that finds it harder and harder to produce the antibodies needed to stop its dissolution (Manai). 671
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Works Cited
Bernardi, Marcello. “Postfazione” a “Fiori alla memoria.” Fiori alla memoria. Ed. Marcello Bernardi. Torino: Einaudi, 2001. 125-35. Canova, Gianni. “Il romanzo supermarket di Fruttero e Lucentini.” Il successo letterario. Ed. Vittorio Spinazzola. Milano: Unicopli, 1985. 293-305. Carloni, Massimo. L’Italia in giallo. Geografia e storia del giallo italiano contemporaneo. Reggio Emilia: Diabasis, 1994. Colmeiro, José F. Crónica del desencanto: la narrativa de Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Chicago: North South Center Press, 1996. Ferretti, Gian Carlo. Il best seller all’italiana. Fortune e formule del romanzo di “qualità”. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1983. Fruttero, Carlo, and Franco Lucentini. La donna della domenica. Milano: Mondadori, 1972. Macchiavelli, Loriano. Le piste dell’attentato. Milano: Garzanti, 1974. ---. Fiori alla memoria. Milano: Garzanti, 1975. ---. Sui colli d’alba. Milano: Garzanti, 1976. ---. Sequenze di memoria. Milano: Garzanti, 1976. ---. Ombre sotto i portici. Milano: Garzanti, 1976. ---. “Fra gente per bene.” Buon sangue italiano. Ed. Raffaele Crovi. Milano: Rusconi, 1977. 35-55. ---. Passato presente e chissà. Milano: Garzanti, 1978. ---. Sarti Antonio, Un questurino una Città. Milano: GarzantiVallardi, 1979. ---. Sarti Antonio, Un diavolo per capello. Milano: Vallardi, 1980. ---. “Storia breve e molto semplice, da una storia lunga e più complessa.” La Lettura XLVII (1980): 15-28. ---. Sarti Antonio: Caccia tragica. Milano: Mondadori, 1981. ---. La strage dei centauri. Milano: Garzanti-Vallardi, 1981. ---. L’archivista. Milano: Mondadori, 1981. 672
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---. “Diamo una sbiancata al mito.” Orient Express 6 (1982): 1215. ---. La balla delle scarpe di ferro. Milano: Garzanti-Vallardi, 1983. ---. Sarti Antonio e L’amico americano. Milano: GarzantiVallardi, 1983. ---. “Invito al funerale.” L’Altra Letteratura 0 (1985): 21-28. ---. Stop per Sarti Antonio. Bologna: Cappelli, 1987. ---. La rosa e il suo doppio. Bologna: Cappelli, 1987. ---. “Trieste 1985: Dagli anni ’30 al giallo d’oggi.” Il giallo degli anni ’30. Ed. Giuseppe Petronio. Trieste: Lint, 1988. 21522. ---. “Il poliziesco va a scuola.” Nuovo albero a elica 4 (1989): 15-16. ---. [pen name Jules Quicher]. Funerale dopo Ustica. Milano: Rizzoli, 1989. ---. [pen name Jules Quicher]. Strage. Milano: Rizzoli, 1990. ---. Un poliziotto una città. 1. ed. Milano: Rizzoli, 1991. ---. Un triangolo a quattro lati. Milano: Rizzoli, 1992. ---. Partita con il ladro. Milano: Rizzoli, 1992. ---. Sarti Antonio e il mistero cinese. 1. ed. Torino: Sonda, 1994. ---. Coscienza sporca. 1. ed. Milano: Mondadori, 1995. --- and Francesco Guccini. Macaronì. Romanzo di santi e di delinquenti. Milano: Mondadori, 1997. ---. “Senza Attori in Scena.” Delitti di carta 3 (1998): 51-53. ---. Sgumbèi. Le porte della città nascosta. Milano: Mondadori, 1998. --- and Francesco Guccini. Un disco dei Platters. Milano: Mondadori, 1998. --- and Francesco Guccini. Questo sangue che impasta la terra. Milano: Mondadori, 2001. Manai, Franco. “I gialli di Loriano Macchiavelli: Gusto dell’affabulazione e denuncia sociale.” L’Italia nella lingua e nel pensiero. Eds. Anthony Mollica and Riccardo 673
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Campa. Vol. I. Roma: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 2001. 267-78. Montalbán, Manuel Vázquez. Tatuaje. Barcellona: Batllò, 1974. ---. Yo maté a Kennedy. Barcellona: Planeta, 1972. Padovani, Gisella. L’officina del mistero. Nuove frontiere della narrativa poliziesca italiana. Enna: Papiro editrice, 1989. Resina, Joan Ramón. El cadáver en la cocina. Paris: Anthropos, 1997. Spinazzola, Vittorio. Ed. Il successo letterario. Milano: Unicopli, 1985. Todorov, Zvetan. Introduction à la littérature fantastique. Paris: Seuil, 1970. Tyras, Georges. Geometrías de la memoria, Conversaciones con Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. Barcellona: Zoela, 2003.
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Benni’s Tristalia Inge Lanslots & Annelies Van Den Bogaert (University of Antwerp and Louvain) Prolegomena
Stefano Benni (1947, Bologna) is without any doubt one of the best contemporary Italian writers. However, surprisingly little research has been undertaken on his literary prose. Ever since his debut critics seem to resort to the definition of the “caso letterario”, mainly for his linguistic qualities, his inimitable, effervescent, and light-footed style. His literary prose can not be seen as separate from his theatre, his poetry, his journalistic contributions (i.e. columns), his work as a director and scriptwriter (cf. bibliography and website). His entire oeuvre shows the same commitment towards society. Indeed, through his protagonists, rebellious and non-conformist youngsters, Benni never stops criticising today’s wheeling-and-dealing, the consumer society and the socio-political herd instinct, of which Silvio Berlusconi seems to be the ultimate incarnation. Benni might have inhereted his criticism from the seventies, years which he witnessed at Bologna. Yet he claims that his criticism concerns a larger context: Più che con Bologna credo di avere un rapporto ben preciso con l’Italia e con quello che è successo in Italia. (Degli Esposti 104)
This particular relationship with Italy becomes very clear in Saltatempo (2001), Benni’s penultimate novel. It is the story of the young Saltatempo who has a special gift. Thanks to his “orobilogio” he seems to be able to live according to two
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rhythms which allows him to travel in time, into the past as well as into the future. Through flashbacks and previews Saltatempo will thus portray the Italian twentieth century society by depicting its incongruities and difficulties (socio-economic and political problems, strikes, corruption, racism, natural disasters caused by man, upcoming capitalism and mass media) and he will also witness – in a non chronological order – the major events of the twentieth century, such as the student protests in France and Italy and the struggle of the working class. At the same time he will try to come to terms with himself. Saltatempo’s ability to travel into time is obviously a narratological strategy that allows Benni to cover the history of last century, but in combination with the choice of a young protagonist – his openness relates Saltatempo to the main characters of Benni’s other novels – it enables the author to propose a detached though committed perspective. Given these premises, we aim to analyse the narrator’s perspective – which can probably be situated between utopia and dystopia – in order to determine Benni’s commitment to society, i.e. the exact role of the writer-intellectual Benni within Italy. Therefore, within the framework of the Conference, we will study the impact of the seventies on his narrative, i.e. the explicit and implicit presence of ideas from the seventies and the following decades, explicit and implicit references to the political and sociological context, and links with political and ideological movements (starting with the seventies until now). In doing so we will deal with the evolution of utopian and dystopian elements over time, the specificity of the main characters and Benni’s typical style and hybrid language. Referring to the past: The real revolutions
Our reading of Benni’s prose in search of explicit references to the political and sociological context, revealed, paradoxically, that there are few of them. Moreover, they seem to be all concentrated in the one, rather recent novel we already referred 676
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to: Saltatempo (2001); his debut, a collection of short stories, dates from 1976. In Saltatempo, most references are extremely punctual: such as the one to feminism (105) and the sexual liberation (116); or the hippie culture (‘Make love not war’ 99-100). The protagonist, also mentions the 1969 Piazza Fontana Bomb Explosion (241) and the shooting in the legs of industrials, the so-called ‘tools of imperialism’ (259), but does not seem to be bothered with it. Apparently the harsh cold on that 12th December affects Saltatempo more than the Piazza Fontana Bomb explosion. More attention is paid to the student strike and the following Revolution of May 1968 (178; 184sqq.; 227), and the occupation of the schools in Italy in the early seventies (187sqq.), but still even those revolutions are not at the centre of the narrative. During his stay in Paris, for example, Saltatempo misses all of the action because of his infatuation with Françoise, a girl he has just met, which ties them to her room; during the occupation of his school Saltatempo gets enchanted by another girl with whom he will share a sleeping bag in the occupied school building. Therefore, in spite of his being present he does not witness the events directly but will later present the testimonies of others as his own. Thus, the references to these major events seem to constitute a mere historical background for the coming of age of the teenager Saltatempo upon which the novel focuses: his search for his own identity, his on-and-off-relationship with Selene, a girl he grew up with, his erotic fantasies. It reminds us the slightly older Ulisse, the main character of Achille piè veloce (2003), whose life turns around Pilar, a Spanish girl he is madly in love with. Just as Saltatempo, the novel merely alludes to the two political wings in Italy and focuses on the rightist one, and besides that on racism, corruption, the untenable situation of illegal immigrants and the precarious economy of the consumer society. P
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As for the time setting, Achille piè veloce draws closer to the present, but centres on the editorial world and the writing process, the topics that are related to the coming of age of Ulisse. Saltatempo remains the novel closest to historical reality – it covers almost the entire twentieth century narrated through the eyes of Saltatempo and the stories of others, particularly of his father who was directly involved in the strikes, the struggles that the working classes had to go through. That is why Saltatempo’s father tries to pass the ideas of communism on to his son, but in vain. Finally, we ought to observe that in spite of its secondary, almost irrelevant role, the historical framework does capture the (adult) reader’s attention: the lively Paris “becomes a book” (cf. Benni 180). We are even inclined to say that the background is – indeed – the stronger part of the story. Other revolutions & their leaders
Whereas Saltatempo and to a lesser extent Achille piè veloce remind the reader of the major (ideological) revolutions of the twentieth century as a footnote to the growing pains of the teenage protagonists and their impossible loves, Benni’s other fiction incorporates fictitious revolutions involving younger characters, mainly children. However, “revolution” might not be the proper term, rebellion is probably more adequate, more specifically, an unexpected uprising against a totalitarian or dictatorial regime. In command of the rebellious group (an underground movement) is a young child, a task the child – it is always a boy – 1 did not ask for and which he unwillingly accepts. His height is inversely proportional to the task but the boy will always TPF
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manage to fulfill it because he possesses a particular gift: a high IQ (Elianto in Elianto), for example, or incredible powers (Salvo in Spiriti) which on the other hand make the boy(s) also vulnerable. The opponents would like to eliminate him – and they will make many attempts to do so that the boy has to hide away. Even before his hiding away, within society, the protagonist has a marginalized position and has no future: the fragile Elianto is confined to a hospital, Salvo is an orphan and has received an alternative education from his grandmother, but has no home to go to; both risk to die by disease or the system (that does not tolerate their existence); their cunning will helps them to escape. Elianto, Salvo and their equals do not stand alone. They are assisted by numerous helpers that can be divided into three groups: 1. the (Homeric) Nestor figure: is the elderly person who becomes the spiritual guide of the young protagonist although at first sight he looks rather eccentric and behaves rather strangely; the obscure trader Poros, for example, is to the young Salvo (Spiriti) what the philosophizing and countercultural (male) nurse Talete is to Elianto (Elianto); notice that the two characters, i.e. mentor and pupil, are very often separated and that they get to know each other precisely because of the mission – their meeting seems casual but has been planned by the mentor; 2. the friends of the young boy on the other hand do accompany him on his mission; the friends are members either of music group/band (Elianto) 2 or of a sport team TPF
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(Comici spaventati guerrieri, 1986, Compagnia dei celestini, 1992); they are as audacious as the protagonist but less gifted; they also belong to an underground movement or counterculture; 3. finally, the protagonist is assisted by a variety of fantastic characters: ghostlike creatures that can make themselves invisible and assume another (humanlike) form, namely the spirits as in Spiriti, among which the sensuous Melinda or her sister Zelda; seduction is not their only strategy, some of them are masters in the martial arts, such as, for instance, the Kung Fu warriors and minifighters in Elianto. Often, there’s an overlap of the categories and their characteristics. Poros, for example, is not only a Nestor, he is also a “spirit”. Besides, it is not clear from the beginning that he is on Salvo’s side. His ambiguity is related to his changeable nature. Fantascienza
The presence of the last group of helpers perfectly suits the particular setting of the novels. The stories of Elianto, Spiriti, Comici spaventati guerrieri and La compagnia dei Celestini take place in a science fiction-like world. The most extreme example can be found in Elianto that in fact contains seven worlds, going from “Protoplas”, the primary world, over “Bludus”, the world of games, to Mnemonia, the world of memories (or oblivion ) – there is a map at the beginning and the end of the novel. The seven worlds could be considered as a universe with its own cosmology described in the “Prologo” that is in fact a comic rewriting of the Big Bang Theory (Benni 1996 13sqq.). Creatures are not bound to rules of gravity and can fly or, as already told, travel in time: Elianto just needs the form a call for action for the characters. Moreover, they increase the rhythm of the books and contribute to the parodic level of the stories. 680
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reflection of a map on the room wall to let him out of the hospital; characters can even intrude in each other’s dreams. Actually in the extravagant setting, a clear transgression of the verisimilitude, the reader recognises an enlargement of the world he is living in. Every exaggeration deriving from a blow-up has its key. Let’s give away a few easy ones. (1) In Elianto the presentation of the twenty presidents and their respective party in arbitrary order (“in ordine sparso”, 43) on the eve of the battle of ideas recall political parties, politicians, VIPs, and the cover-up operations from the eighties and nineties: Mathausen Filini, del PNC (Partito Nazi-Chic), aveva scelto una bellissima divisa del Reich con berretto da skipper. […] Il generale Zeta, del PLSS (Partito Logge, Sette e Servizi Segreti), sarebbe venuto travestito da sua moglie, e vice versa. […] Previtali, del RFDS (Ricchi Fatti da Soli), sarebbe venuto vestito da imperatore romano, su una biga catalitica. […] Zeroli, del CCC (Centro Centrista Calibrato), aveva scelto un sobrio abito grigio con una cravatta a bersaglieri. Ospitale, del FIN (Fuori i Negri), avrebbe indossato il costume tipico della sua valle, camicia bianca, braghe corte corte di cuoio e cintura di coglioni di stambecco. Natassia Fodera, dell’AS (Alleanza Stilisti), avrebbe fatto una clamorosa entrata con una gonna di velluto nero larga diciotto metri, sospinta all’interno da quattro inservienti su altrettanti go-kart, e avrebbe portato in testa un colbacco di visioni vivi saldati con il bostik. (43-45) 681
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(2) In Spiriti (2000) the president of the United States shares with Bill Clinton the love for apprentices, but the fictitious president is much more a puppet of his staff (almost each staff member seems to have more power than he does). Although he does not play (the) sax, he is also an amateur (music) player. His dog is called Baywatch, a so-called “Labrador Water Ranger” (39) – it will turn out he is another spirit, just as the enchanting apprentice Melinda. “Juicy detail”: Baywatch will get the company of two other dogs, the ones that mysteriously disappeared from the Velázquez painting, Las meniñas – Benni is clearly playing with the levels of the story. The president’s Italian colleague Berlanga, “sua innocenza l’onorevole Berlanga” (103), is a copy of the real “Cavaliere”: “anomala gloria di Usitalia, uomo predestinato all’eutanasia del paese” (103). For today’s reader the keys seem to lie in the present, and to a certain extent they do – the presidents in Spiriti are indeed clownish copies of their real counterparts, but in the earlier texts the reader encounters characters and situations that anticipated what happened later (but not that much later) in Italy, alias Usitalia (Spiriti), Tristalia with the capital Megalopoli (Elianto), Gladonia (La compagnia dei celestini). These earlier texts give a prospect of the future that has already become our present. The perspective is not (yet) historical, but visionary (and broader than the historical one because it is more widely applicable).
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Benni announced the consumer-centered society that was imposed on its citizens under the pretext of progress:3 it is the “prezioso tempo di Creatori del Presente, e […] Grandi Appuntamenti, Fusioni di Imperi, Affari Colossali, Leasing e Truffe li attendevano” (Benni, La compagnia dei celestini 131). Citizens are indeed pushed to consume as much as possible by means of the media and social control. “Siate maggioranza!” is the slogan (and title of chapter 4) presented on the television in Elianto that invites the audience to vote for what the majority would vote for (if not, electricity will be cut of for a while – which happens to Elianto’s family). Having a deviant opinion is no longer acceptable and implies exclusion as a punishment. There is only room for mainstream and levelling out in the age of videocracy. In other words: “Big brother is watching you” – “Siate maggioranza” is the mere translation of George Orwell’s “Think majority” in 1984 (cf. Jones 239). “[B]asta qualche televisione a rincoglionire tutti”, says the (arms) merchant Hacarus in Spiriti (Benni 27). That explains why “[l]a gente si indegna di più per un rigore non concesso che per un delitto non risolto” (49). Television is mind control by the system (regime). The many sport events and quizzes are exemplary of that control. The infotainment affects also the news programmes that are thoroughly manipulated, superficial and smooth messages. The overwhelming influence of the medium television is most developed in Elianto and L’ultima lacrima. In Elianto Fido PassPass recalls Emilio Fede, the anchorman of Rete4, the channel of “His Emittenza” Berlusconi (Jones 127) and on the cover of L’ultima lacrima we see a family watching television; L’ultima lacrima opens with the story of that same family watching the execution of the father in TPF
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a life transmission – the father, as well as his relatives, is pleased with his one day of fame. The pushed mass media of Benni’s fictitious worlds enables and at the same time justifies the conflict of interests of the leaders who control in an obscure way both economy and politics or ideology in a globalising world. 4 In that respect fiction equals reality: TPF
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L’Italia è un Paese dove poche persone possono decidere, e di nascosto. Dove non si può cambiare quasi niente. Un’oligarchia regolata dai partiti, dalla mafia e dalla grande economia. (Loredan51)
And, as in real life, there is just this small rebellious nucleus, an opposition that succeeds in its mission yet fails to overthrow the system (in spite of the success of the mission which apparently only leads to of the survival of the opposition). Benni’s fiction can therefore be qualified as highly dystopian. It is the story of a near future, of an imminent danger-disaster (cf. Jameson), that of society being swallowed up by consumerism and political opportunism (incarnated, for instance, by the character Biszenyski in Benni’s L’ultima lacrima 207). A disaster that within the story is seen as utopian except by the rebellious group. Unlike the literary utopia, the dystopia does not present a “what if”, a construct of something new. In other words it does not offer an epistemologic tool; on the contrary, the dystopia unveils the intrinsic nature of society not an alternative nor the end of the current ideology-era (Jameson). However, the dystopia does allow the presence of some utopian elements – the possibility of an ideological change or rupture – that are more
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diversified in Saltatempo and Achille. At crucial moments the narrator presents some alternatives, called “possibilities” or “scenarios”, which adds an extra metatextual dimension to these two novels. Still, even the latest novels reflect Benni’s pessimistic view on today’s society (cf. La Porta). Nevertheless, because of his style Benni’s fiction never becomes unbearably “heavy” or sombre. Hybrid
Benni’s writing process results in the composition of a highly constructed text. During the analysis we already broached the parodist tendency on an onomastic level. First, the name changes are derived from the blow up-effect: Mussolardi, Berlangar… Other names are clearly intertextual: just think of Baywatch, Talete, Avis Presley (Spiriti), Edgar Allan Disney (La compagnia 191). Both strategies have a grotesque effect. “Sono uno scrittore, un romanziere con una forte inclinazione al linguaggio fantastico e umoristico” (Degli Esposti 100). And therefore “E ci tengo a scegliere bene i nomi, in un libro ogni parola è preziosa”, Benni confesses in an interview (Poli). The intertextuality in Benni consists also largely of a tendency of rewriting 5 of both high and low literature and culture, combining epic, picaresque elements or fragments with bits of reality tv. The “uso spregiudicato e divertito dei generi, semplicità comunicativa popolare e pessimismo apocalittico da élite, curiosità-disgusto per il presente e continue, funamboliche fughe dell’immaginazione” (La Porta 187) connects Benni to writers as Pynchon and Vonnegut. Next to that the reader will find pseudo-quotations which complicate the anchorage of the text(s). TPF
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Particularly interesting in this respect is Achille piè veloce. The editor Ulisse carries along manuscripts of aspirant writers reminiscent of existing texts. TP
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On the other hand this shows the high degree of contamination (“contaminatio”) on a linguistic level: words are being contracted “fidipà” (Benni, La compagnia) or attached to one another (“dissUlisse” Benni Achille 22, 27, 100, 122); dialects, regional variants and registers are mingled; on some occasions Benni invents a language of its own; he often resorts to foreign languages, such as French, Latin and – mainly – English, in an incorrect or eventually comic transcription (“Lesgò!” Benni Comici 144). The multilinguism aims for that matter to render the complexity of our reality, its multiracial and multimedial dimensions: ma l’aspetto formale della complessità dei linguaggi, cioè un tipo di scrittura che non si deprime davanti alla complessità, davanti al fatto che stiamo diventando una società multirazziale o multimediale, bene, questo aspetto del postmoderno, cioè della confusione dei linguaggi, della nascita di un linguaggio nuovo di comunicazione che comprende lingue diverse, dialetti diversi, e lingue meticce, mi interessa molto. (Degli Esposti 104)
This excerpt from an interview with Benni is obviously an ideological statement but it also shows the writing process of the author. The textual polyphony and code-switching (Degli Esposti 99) – the narrator repeats a word in various languages (“shopping center i quali, lesquells, which […]” Benni Achille 19) – result in an accelerating and sometimes exhilirating rhythm of the text, which could be called the elemento espressionista che, pure in un pieno recupero del romanzesco, infiamma e movimenta la sua scrittura. Il procedimento stilistico è l’enumerazione, presente in quasi ogni pagina (tassonomie, elenchi, decaloghi) […] Elenchi lunghissimi, eccessivi, 686
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fantasiosi, come per abbracciare l’intera realtà (che scappa da tutte le parti) e che hanno soprattutto un valore musicale, nel senso cioè di dare alla pagina una cadenza ritmica marcata, non scoppiettante ma direi tenace, ipnotica, come un rap metropolitano (La Porta 185).
Within the lists particular attention should be paid to the lemmatic excerpts (such as the definitions of the non-familiar, fantastic creatures, as the KOFS, the memory eating device, in Elianto, 101). The combination of lists and repetitions – the repetitio inscribes itself at various textual levels – creates a circular effect: at a macrotextual level, for instance, the incipit and explicit entangle, which brings us back to the content. Transgression
Needless to say that Benni’s fiction responds to Italo Calvino’s definition of “lightness” as proposed in The Norton Lectures (Lezioni americane. Six Memos For the Next Millennium), but in Benni that same lightness meets the weight of being in this world: humour and surrealism meet criticism in a hyperrealistic world. In other words: “Non credo che nessuno scrittore riesca mai ad allontanarsi dal suo tempo” (Degli Esposti 103).
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Works Cited
Primary Literature: Prose & Columns
Benni, Stefano. Bar Sport. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1997. (Milano: Mondadori, 1976.) ---. Terra! Milano: Feltrinelli, 1985. (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1983.) ---. Comici spaventati guerrieri. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1989. (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1986.) ---. Il bar sotto il mare. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1989. (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1987.) ---. Baol, una tranquilla notte di regime. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1990. ---.La compagnia dei celestini. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1992. ---. L’ultima lacrima. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1996. (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1994.) ---. Psicopatologia del lettore quotidiano. 1996. 26 Jan 2004. ; ; . ---. Stranalandia. Disegni di Pirro Cuniberti. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1999. ---. Saltatempo. Milano. Feltrinelli, 2001. ---. Dottor Niù. Corsivi diabolici per tragedie evitabili. Milano: Feltrinelli, 2001. ---. Achille piè veloce. Milano: Feltrinelli, 2003. Website: . HT
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Secondary Literature
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Degli Esposti, Cristina. “Interview with Stefano Benni: a Postmodern moraliste.” Italian Quarterly 123-124 (Winter-Spring 1995): 99-105. Jones, Tobias. The Dark Heart of Italy. London: Faber and Faber, 2003. 688
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Jameson, Fredric. The Seeds of Time. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. La Porta, Filippo. La nuova narrativa italiana. Travestimenti e stili di fine secolo. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1995. Loredan, Jacopo. “Lezioni di Baol.” Epoca (30 Oct. 1990): 4851. Poli, Fabio. “Achille piè veloce. Intervista al lupo.” 2003. 26 Jan.2004. . HT
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The Tools of the Detective: Leonardo Sciascia’s Approach to Literature in the mid to late 1970s Liz Wren-Owens (University of Warwick) In their introduction to a collection of essays on detective fiction, Klaus and Knight argue that “crime fiction is a form that, by being so close to the populist grass roots, is in direct contact with social and political attitudes and so capable of revealing to a sufficiently acute analysis, the point where society and culture interrelate” (Klaus and Knight 8). Detective fiction, in other words, is able to reflect the key issues of its time, the belief systems and concerns. This is certainly true in the case of Leonardo Sciascia, a writer credited by Farrell to be the first Italian writer to use the genre systematically (Farrell 61). Indeed, although there had certainly been what Luca Crovi called “protogialli” (‘proto-detective stories’) in Italy from the 1880s onwards, fully fledged detective stories only began to take root in Italy from around the 1930s onwards and the genre did not enjoy the deep-rooted tradition of France and Britain (Crovi 23-36). Sciascia himself began writing detective fiction in the 1960s, using the genre as a means of exploring social concerns particularly in Sicily. In this article I will explore how later on, in the 1970s, he used the detective mode to analyse factual events, examining how his changing use of the mode dialogues with the shifting concerns of the ‘leaden years’ of the 1970s, with a society living under the shadow of violence, fear and difficult moral choices.
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Early Detective Fiction
Before turning to Sciascia’s factual detective forays of the 1970s, it is worth briefly charting his use of detective fiction up to that point. He used the detective style to illustrate the webs of power and corruption that dominated Sicilian life, pointing to the impossibility of securing justice in a world dominated by the Mafia. Two texts of the 1960s, The Day of the Owl (Il giorno della civetta) and To Each his Own (A ciascuno il suo), recount Mafia murders and the subsequent omertà (or code of silence) that prevented the murderers from being brought to justice. The texts are particularly interesting as they invert the traditional setup of a detective novel: usually the individual investigator and society are united in a bid to find the murder who has upset the social order. In Sciascia’s texts however, it is the investigator rather than the murderer who is isolated, as the murderer and society are united to preserve the social order in which Mafia killings may take place with impunity. In The Day of the Owl, the northern detective Captain Bellodi cannot secure a conviction in Sicily and returns to his native Parma for reasons of health, whilst Laurana, the amateur sleuth in To Each his Own, is murdered. The investigator then, rather than being society’s hero, as he seeks to restore order, is an outsider who ultimately fails in his attempts to bring the murderer to justice. This theme continues in Sciascia’s detective novels of the 1970s, Equal Danger (Il contesto) and One Way or Another (Todo modo). The novels are no longer set in Sicily, but in an un-named space which may be read as emblematic of Italy or indeed of the whole world. The Mafia is no longer seen as the chief evil as its ethics of corruption and collusion with the authorities has transcended Sicilian space and has become the modus operandi of all politics. Equal Danger was read as a damning critique of the Communist Party, whilst One Way or Another was seen to condemn the Christian Democrat Party.1 1
Sciascia accepts these readings in La palma va a nord p. 19. 691
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Justice and morality had no place for either leadership, and the investigator in both texts is an outsider from a society that has no interest in discovering and punishing the murderer. The Case of Majorana
Up to the mid 1970s, Sciascia used the detective novel as a way of commenting on political and social issues, focussing on the inherent corruption in society, initially in Sicily and then further afield. In the mid 1970s Sciascia uses the detective mode to approach two factual investigations, The Disappearance of Majorana (La scomparsa di Majorana) (written in 1975) and The Moro Affair (L’affaire Moro) (written in 1978). The Disappearance of Majorana is an investigation into how the Italian physicist Ettore Majorana suddenly vanished in 1938. The scientist left two suicide notes (one addressed to his family, one to a colleague) yet later sent a telegram saying he had changed his mind and would return to Naples (from where he had disappeared). He was never officially seen again, although a nurse who knew him claimed to have spotted him coming down some steps in Naples. The police were convinced it was suicide. Sciascia investigates two issues surrounding Majorana’s disappearance: firstly, his ultimate fate and whether or not he committed suicide or simply chose to vanish and secondly his motivation for disappearing. The majority of the novel focuses on this second question and looks far into Majorana’s past to construct a case for the theory that the scientist was beset by moral unease at the direction that physics was taking, towards the construction of an atomic bomb. What detective approach does Sciascia adopt in this text? Early on in the work he tells the reader that such a case required the talents of Edgar Allen Poe’s Dupin (Sciascia, Majorana 129, 217).2 The choice of Dupin is interesting, as in his “Breve storia 2
The page references refer to the English and Italian texts cited respectively.
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del romanzo poliziesco” (“Brief History of the Detective Novel”) Sciascia sees Dupin as embodying French Enlightenment thinking, of reaching his conclusions through simple logic, without being endowed with the genius or divine enlightenment of a Sherlock Holmes. Dupin uses his “lucid and visionary intelligence”, which is “capable of mathematically ordering facts and unknown elements of absolutely anything which appears as a mystery” (Sciascia, “Brief History” 1186). This is an approach which it is possible for Sciascia, as detective to adopt, with a realistic chance of solving the mystery. Sciascia firstly adopts this approach to deal with the issue of Majorana’s final fate. Sciascia initially lists the facts as he knows them, “mathematically ordering” them in his best Dupin-esque fashion, before turning to the two suicide letters that Majorana wrote. Sciascia tells us that, “on the evening of the 25 March, Etttore Majorana departed on the 10.30 pm Naples-Palermo mailboat. He had posted a letter to Carrelli, Head of the Institute of Physics and had left one in his hotel room addressed to his family” (Sciascia, Majorana 160, 253). In his letter to Carrelli, Majorana wrote that he would remember his colleagues at the Institute of Physics “at least until 11 o’clock this evening and perhaps beyond” (160, 254). Sciascia analyses this statement and reads it as a clue that Majorana did not mean to commit suicide, as he could not possibly think of throwing himself overboard a mere thirty minutes into the ferry journey, when all the passengers would still be on deck and so he would be spotted and rescued. If the reference is not to his planned suicide, then it must, Sciascia argues, be a clue to his future plans. There is, Sciascia tells us, “some hidden message in this number eleven. Perhaps a mathematician, a physicist, an expert in the movement of the tide could decode it” (161, 254). Herein lie the two key words of Sciascia’s enquiry: message and decode. Sciascia holds a belief that by addressing the case in a logical manner, then it can be understood, or at least that more 693
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can be understood than was known before. Eventually, Sciascia is unable to say with any certainty where Majorana ‘disappeared’ himself to. Did he retreat to a monastery as some monks hint? Did he go abroad? Only one thing is certain: Sciascia holds firm to the belief that Majorana went somewhere safe and did not commit suicide. The other letter, addressed to Majorana’s family, exhorted them to shun mourning and, if they felt they must wear mourning, then to limit it to three days. Why three days, Sciascia asks? Is this another clue? Should the three and the eleven from the other letter be paired? Is fourteen then a significant number? Sciascia cannot discover the code of these numbers but is convinced that they do have a significance, and this, paired with his discovery of other factors, such as that Majorana took his passport and cash with him when he disappeared, leads him to conclude that his disappearance was too elaborate, too calculated, to point to suicide. The rational, logical and Dupin-esque enquiry had answered the question of whether or not Majorana committed suicide. Sciascia’s main focus in the text concerns Majorana’s motivation for disappearing. To discover this, Sciascia reads and analyses not only Majorana’s letters but also his actions, conversations and behaviour of the preceding years, treating his past as a set of clues through which to view his disappearance. The emphasis on Sciascia’s readings indicates that Majorana had foreseen developments in physics which would lead to the possibility of building an atomic bomb, and that he did not want to be a part of that. Sciascia does not doubt that Majorana was capable of carrying out such developments, despite the doubts raised by others.3 Sciascia insists that Majorana simply chose not to develop these ideas, based on clues found in his behaviour some years before his disappearance. Sciascia looks in particular at how Majorana would develop complex new formulae on the 3
Sciascia responds to these doubts in La palma va a nord p. 143.
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tram in the morning, scribble them on a cigarette packet, and then, after having dazzled colleagues with the new idea, casually throw away the cigarette packet (and formulae), despite their anxious pleas to publish the new theories. Sciascia reads such actions as “part of the instinct of preservation. Doubly so, it would seem today. Self-preservation and the preservation of the species” (139, 228). Following on from this, Sciascia reads Majorana’s unusually friendly relationship with the German physicist Heisenberg as evidence that Majorana had ambiguous feelings towards scientific progress. Heisenberg gained recognition for his theory on protons and neutrons in the nucleus, which Majorana had (independently) developed six months previously. Yet rather than resent Heisenberg, Majorana conceived for the German physicist “a feeling of sincere admiration […] Heisenberg represents for him an unknown friend to him – someone who without knowing, without knowing him, had in a way saved him from disaster, has saved him from a disaster, enabled him to avoid a sacrifice” (139, 229) [“concepisce nei riguardi del fisico tedesco un sentimento di ammirazione […] Heisenberg gli è come un amico sconosciuto: uno che senza saperlo, senza conoscerlo, l’ha salvato da un pericolo, gli ha come evitato un sacrificio”]. Heisenberg then, by publishing the theory that brought the use of atomic energy that much nearer, had taken away Majorana’s dilemma about advancing science, but in a possibly harmful way. Many of the actions and statements by Majorana that Sciascia reads are quite solid clues towards his analysis of Majorana’s motives, such as Majorana’s declarations to his sister that “physics or physicists were on the wrong track” (his sister did not remember the exact words) (156, 248) [“la fisica è su una strada sbagliata, o (non ricorda esattamente), i fisici sono su una strada sbagliata” (italics in text)]. Other ‘clues’ are less convincing: Sciascia devotes an entire chapter (there are eleven in total) to the story of a family dispute involving a cousin and some uncles of 695
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Majorana. A baby was burned in a cot, a servant girl confessed, and then later on, after the idea had been suggested to her, began to implicate others as having ordered her to carry out the murder, eventually blaming the baby’s (and thus also Majorana’s) uncles. Sciascia devotes a good deal of space to the legal wrangling of the incident and the preceding family dispute that seemed to make the servant girl’s claims tenable, concluding that Majorana would have been greatly affected by the incident and that the image of the burned child would have made him more conscious of the potential dangers of atomic energy. Sciascia reads the family tragedy as a clue pointing towards Majorana making certain decisions about his future. Sciascia then sees many actions in Majorana’s life as pointing towards a moral dilemma whereby he no longer wished to help physics to progress to the manipulation of atomic energy. He reads actions and statements as clues that ‘prove’ this theory. So at this point, Sciascia sees logic, Dupin’s methodology, as the best way to understand the world. He uses the detective mode to uncover a moral dilemma that was particularly pertinent to the debates of the 1970s, when violence was being used to justify moral positions of both the left and the right, when the same means of violence were used to gain ground. Sciascia spends some time recreating the dilemma of scientists in the 1930s and denies that there was any difference between the ‘slave’ scientists seeking to develop atomic energy for Hitler and the ‘free’ scientists attempting to create the same destructive force at Los Alamos for Truman (147, 238-9). Sciascia insists that in the 1930s there was no difference then between the forces that used atomic energy, and perhaps in that we can read an analogy for the 1970s, where what should have been stark differences between the positions of the left and the right became blurred by the use of paramilitaries by both sides. In The Disappearance of Majorana, Sciascia displays his faith in the processes of literature as a way to understand the 696
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world. He reads reality – the events in Majorana’s life and his actions – in the same way that he reads the written word (in this case Majorana’s suicide notes). Sciascia believes that there is a hidden truth that can be discovered, through ‘deciphering messages’ and through textual means. This is striking given the post-structuralist and semiotic thought of the time, which sought to problematize ideas of a hidden truth and of ways to discover it. Sciascia maintains his belief that such truths do exist and that rational thought and the tools of literary investigation will help us to discover them. The Moro Affair
To ‘solve’ the case of Majorana’s disappearance, Sciascia draws on a host of ‘clues’ from the Physicist’s life. To solve the Moro case, Sciascia is far more limited and can use only the letters that Moro wrote when he was in the ‘People’s Prison’. The known facts of the case were limited and brief: all that was definitely known was that the President of the Christian Democrat party was kidnapped by the Red Brigades at via Fani on March 16th 1978 on his way to inaugurate the new Government of National Solidarity, when his car was stopped by a collision and his security guards killed. He was kept in the ‘People’s Prison’ for fifty-five days, stood trial in a Kangaroo Court for crimes of the SIM (Multinational Imperialist States) and then executed after the Communist and Christian Democrat Government refused to negotiate. His body was left mid-way between the Communist and Christian Democrat headquarters in Rome. That was all that was known. Many questions remained, such as ‘Were the Red Brigades working alone?’, ‘Where was Moro held prisoner?’ and ‘What role did the Christian Democrat stance play in his fate?’ The question of whether the Red Brigades acted alone is addressed in the final section of Sciascia’s book, in the Parliamentary Minority Report that Sciascia submitted on behalf 697
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of the Radical Party, for whom he was a deputy. Here, he acts as a detective, picking up clues from the testimony of the widow of Moro’s chief security guard, from police actions and from concrete evidence. The widow of the security guard Leonardi claimed that her husband had repeatedly asked for an armoured vehicle after receiving threats. He had been refused. Police attempts to find Moro had been very visible, had seemed very impressive, yet had achieved nothing and had missed some very obvious leads, leading Sciascia to condemn police investigations as “more for show than for the purpose of investigating” (Sciascia, Moro 105, 583). And a photocopier, previously belonging to the Secret Services re-emerged in a Red Brigades’ hideout. All of these unhappy coincidences led Sciascia to conclude that the Red Brigades were not working alone when they kidnapped Aldo Moro. Sciascia arrives at this conclusion through traditional detective work, much as he did in the Majorana case. However the bulk of The Moro Affair (the Parliamentary Report was only added in later years) focuses on Moro’s time in the ‘People’s Prison’ and has only the evidence of his letters. Sciascia sees these as “messages […] to be deciphered” (35, 490), that reflect the lucid thoughts of Moro. He uses them to reconstruct how Moro felt, even where Moro believed that he was being held, despite the fact that though the letters were derided by Moro’s ex-associates as the product of probable torture and undeniable stress and therefore “cannot be ascribed to him ethically” (45, 502). Crucially, Sciascia uses the same terminology as when he discussed Majorana’s letters, again calling them “messages to decipher”. Yet to decipher Moro’s letters is far more difficult, not only because of censorship by his captors but also as the politician was well-versed in the art of ‘non-saying’ in his speeches. The only clues to the Moro case lie in these ambiguous and enigmatic letters, where nothing is certain. A very high level of interpretation is required on the part of the 698
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investigator, as a few examples will illustrate. Sciascia read Moro’s phrase “might not a preventative intervention from the Vatican (or from elsewhere? Where?) be opportune” as an indication that Moro believed that he was being held in the grounds of the Vatican (36, 489). Similarly, Sciascia reads the phrase “had I not a family so dependant on me things might be a slightly bit different” as an allusion to the Christian Democrat party and his role within it (47, 504). These are all highly subjective interpretations, which owe little to the Dupin-esque mathematical logic of the Majorana case. Dupin is in fact evoked in The Moro Affair, where Sciascia adopts Dupin’s methodology of having to identify with the criminal when investigating a crime (35, 489). However Sciascia notes that this process is problematized in the Moro case by the need to identify both with the Red Brigades and with Moro himself. Dupin’s mathematical enquiry is, in 1978, no longer sufficient and Sciascia shifts from Dupin’s methodology to incorporating Borges’ world of mirrors, labyrinths and shifting worlds. He stresses this point by quoting heavily from Borges’ Fictions in The Moro Affair: I have already said that this is a detective story…after seven years I can’t recall the details of my plot but here is the broad outline to which the gaps in my memory have reduced (or refined) it. There’s an inexplicable murder in the first few pages, a slow investigation in the middle ones, a solution in the last. Then, once the mystery has been solved, there is a lengthy revision which contains the sentence: ‘Everybody believes that the two chess players had met by chance. From this sentence it becomes clear that the solution is the wrong one. The perplexed reader re-reads the misleading chapters and finds another solution, the right one (98, 565).
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Sciascia, as detective, has no concrete clues to work with, only ambiguous hints and veiled language. On several occasions Sciascia likens the Moro kidnapping to a work of fiction, saying that “Moro and his vicissitudes seem to be have emerged from a certain literary genre” (25, 479), mainly because “only in fantasy, in dreams is such perfection achieved. Not in real life” (26, 480). The tools of the detective have a limited place in discovering the truth about the Moro affair, because it does not belong to the world of logic but to the world of interpretation and fiction. This perhaps reflects the increasing confusion of the latter end of the 1970s, when all divisions had become blurred, when the Communists and Christian Democrats, two supposed opposites, had formed one government and had indeed adopted the same stance towards Moro. Similarly, the terror tactics of the left and right paramilitary groups had become indistinguishable, and previously clear-cut divisions were blurred. Forces of law and order, meant to be protecting citizens, were implicated in generating the very terrorism that they were meant to impede, as indeed were various politicians. Life under terrorism seemed not to belong to real-life, but to theatricality. The worlds of reality and of fiction had merged, as reality began to become more fantastic than reality. Sciascia is still looking for clues, attempting to establish a truth that he believes exists, even if it is hidden. The clues that he has for the Moro case are confined to the realm of literary analysis, an examination of Moro’s letters, rather than the examination of events and letters that characterized the Majorana case. Sciascia holds onto his faith in literature as a means of reading reality, even if this literary process owes more by 1978 to Borges than to Dupin’s ratiocinatic logic. This is crucial, as the post-structuralist vision of literature had undermined belief in finding truth and ‘deciphering messages’. In The Disappearance of Majorana, Sciascia adopts the tools of Dupin as a way of exploring moral issues of his time. By 1978, 700
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with The Moro Affair, Sciascia has turned more to the methodology of Borges, where reality and literature intertwine and reality takes on the vestiges of literature. In both cases, the detective mode is used to explore questions relating to society and to the nature of literary processes, of how we may understand the world around us. By using the tools of the detection, the detective is, as Crovi puts it, able to “thoroughly investigate the customs and ills of our country”, to become “a mask used to lay bare the tragedy of our contemporary world” (Crovi: 11).4
Works Cited Crovi, Luca. Tutti i colori del giallo: Il giallo italiano da De Marchi a Scerbanenco a Camilleri. Venice: Marsilio, 2002. Klaus, H. Gustav and Stephen Knight, eds. The Art of Murder: New Essays on Detective Fiction. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 1998. Farrell, Joseph. Leonardo Sciascia. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995. Sciascia, Leonardo. L’affaire Moro, in Opere 1971-1983. Ed. C. Ambroise. Milan: Bompiani, 2001. 467-599. [English Version: The Moro Affair; and, The Disappearance of Majorana. Trans. S. Rabinovitch. Manchester: Carcanet, 1987.] ---, “Breve storia del romanzo poliziesco” in Cruciverba in Opere 1971-1983. Ed. C. Ambroise. Milan: Bompiani, 2001. 11811196. ---, A ciascuno il suo in Opere 1956-1971. Ed. C. Ambroise. Milan: Bompiani, 2001. 779-887. [English Version: To Each his Own. Trans. A. Foulke. Manchester: Carcanet, 1989.]
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Translations of Crovi’s work are my own. Crovi writes that “il giallo è divenuto uno stilema che è stato spesso adottato da grandi narratori […] per indagare a fondo nei costumi ma soprattutto nei malcostumi del nostro paese. Il giallo è divenuto nel tempo una maschera che è stata utilizzata per mettere a nudo la tragicità della nostra età contemporanea”. 701
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---, Il contesto, in Opere 1971-1983. Ed. C. Ambroise. Milan: Bompiani, 2001. 5-96. [English Version: Equal Danger. Trans. A. Foulke. New York: New York Review Books, 2003.] ---, Il giorno della civetta, in Opere 1956-1971. Ed. C. Ambroise. Milan, Bompiani, 2001. 391-483. [English Version: The Day of the Owl; and, Equal Danger. Trans. F. Kermode, Manchester: Cancarnet, 1984. ---, La scomparsa di Majorana, in Opere 1971-1983. Ed. C. Ambroise. Milan: Bompiani, 2001. 209-270. [English Version: The Moro Affair; and, The Disappearance of Majorana. Trans. S. Rabinovich. Manchester: Carcanet, 1987.] ---, Todo Modo, in Opere 1971-1983. Ed. C. Ambroise. Milan: Bompiani, 2001. 101-203. [English Version: One Way or Another. Trans. A. Foulke. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.] ---. La palma va a nord. Ed. Walter Vecellio. Milan: Gammalibri, 1982.
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Quel Rôle pour l’Écrivain (et la Littérature) Face au Souvenir des années de plomb? Tabucchi, Riotta, Guccini et Macchiavelli Carmela Lettieri (Université de Provence - Aix-Marseille I) La littérature doit dépasser le bout de la rue, montrer ce qu’une caméra ne voit pas, illuminer les coins obscurs de la vie, de la réalité, insinuer les doutes dans la tête des gens. Elle ne peut pas, elle ne doit pas entrer en compétition avec les autres médias, utiliser leur langage, leur méthode. La littérature a un rapport différent avec le monde. (A. Tabucchi, entretien avec Catherine Argand, Lire, été 1995)
Que l’on considère la période qui a fait suite aux mouvements contestataires de la fin des années soixante-dix en Italie comme un splendide “printemps des mouvements” ou bien comme un véritable traumatisme collectif, dont l’expression années de plomb rendrait compte, cette période reste encore fortement inscrite dans les histoires individuelles et dans la conscience collective. 1 TPF
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La vision plutôt positive est commune aux auteurs issus des mouvements de protestation, qui en ont donné un témoignage de l’intérieur, et à un certain nombre de sociologues. À titre d’exemple, Nanni Balestrini et Primo Moroni, L’orda d’oro; Sidney Tarrow, Democrazia e disordine. Sur un autre versant, on dresse un panorama plus sombre dans lequel les réponses institutionnelles aux tensions sociales auraient permis l’entrée de l’Italie dans un “tunnel”, l’issue inévitable étant la“catastrophe” de la violence terroriste. Cf. Guido Crainz, Un paese mancato. http://congress70.library.uu.nl/ 703 PT
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D’autant plus que les années de normalisation qui ont suivi ont eu comme conséquence l’occultation à la fois des changements positifs qui s’étaient opérés au sein de la société italienne et des clivages exacerbés dans le système politique. Ce sont ces derniers qui, transformés en conflits et en fractures profondes, ont souvent produit des affrontements sanglants. Au moment où le souvenir même des faits commençait à s’estomper, on a considéré, à tort ou à raison, que l’Etat était sorti vainqueur de sa lutte contre les terrorismes 2 par la mise en place de mesures législatives spéciales et aussi grâce aux révélations des repentis ou des dissociés qui avaient permis le démantèlement des réseaux. Le contexte actuel, centré autour des suites judiciaires (affaire Sofri, affaire Battisti), ne semble pas non plus favoriser un retour distancié sur ces questions. Au-delà des interrogations d’ordre socio-historique que cette période suscite, force est de constater que nombreux sont les discours en compétition qui proposent des visions partielles (et partiales) de la “réalité”. Il est alors d’autant plus difficile d’adopter une certaine distance critique vis-à-vis de ces années embourbées dans des enjeux socio-politiques actuels. En effet, si l’on se place dans la perspective de penser l’Histoire comme une multiplicité de récits, les mécanismes complexes de construction de la mémoire collective passent par la compétition entre les discours qui décrivent et analysent les événements dits “réels” (Veyne). À travers ce procédé de représentation linguistique, qui contribue à la construction symbolique de la réalité, certains discours deviennent, à un moment donné, des discours dominants en réussissant à imposer leur propre vision. La question peut alors être soulevée concernant la manière dans laquelle la littérature a abordé le FPT
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Nous partageons sur ce point les précautions linguistiques de Donatella Della Porta qui utilise le pluriel afin de mieux faire ressortir l’hétérogénéité et la complexité du phénomène. Voir notamment l’introduction de son ouvrage Il terrorismo di sinistra.
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souvenir des années de plomb. Quelles ont été les spécificités du langage littéraire par rapport à celui des autres discours qui investissent la scène publique? Autrement dit, cela revient à s’interroger sur la possibilité pour la fiction littéraire de contribuer à un retour sur ce passé récent dénoué des limites de tout discours partiel ou empreint d’idéologie. Plus largement, la fiction peut-elle contribuer à la compréhension des phénomènes sociaux? Permet-elle de jeter une lumière particulière sur ces événements, d’y porter un regard autre que celui qui est répandu dans le débat politico-médiatique, en dépassant, comme le dit Antonio Tabucchi, le bout de la rue et en illuminant les coins obscurs de la réalité? Les auteurs des trois œuvres que nous nous proposons d’examiner, dans le but de repérer quelques éléments de réponse, composent un panel assez diversifié: un écrivainintellectuel, Antonio Tabucchi; un journaliste prêté à la fiction littéraire, Gianni Riotta; un binôme désormais consacré par quelques succès éditoriaux et composé par Loriano Macchiavelli et Francesco Guccini. On le voit, mis à part Tabucchi, il ne s’agit pas d’écrivains “purs”: Guccini est en effet plus connu comme cantautore, même s’il s’adonne depuis un certain nombre d’années à l’écriture d’un genre particulier de roman historico-policier et/ou autobiographique, tandis que Riotta, après avoir été co-directeur du quotidien turinois La Stampa, recouvre le rôle de correspondant des Etats-Unis pour le Corriere della Sera de Milan. Outre cette familiarité avec des moyens d’expression autres que l’écriture de fiction, des éléments contextuels et biographiques méritent d’être soulignés. Ceux-ci peuvent en effet jeter une lumière particulière sur leurs différentes sensibilités. La nouvelle de Tabucchi, intitulée Piccoli equivoci senza importanza, paraît vers la fin de la période dite des années de plomb en 1985; on y trouve l’écho des grands procès dans lesquels les membres des groupes terroristes, de droite comme de gauche, étaient jugés. Le recueil de Riotta, Cambio di 705
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stagione, qui inclut la nouvelle Ethica, ordine politico demonstrata, a été publié plus tard (1991), pendant la phase d’organisation progressive de l’oubli. Quant au roman de Macchiavelli et de Guccini, Questo sangue che impasta la terra, il est sorti en 2001. Les trois récits couvrent donc une période assez étendue, ce qui nous permet de dégager les liens entre les œuvres et un type particulier de conjoncture. Par ailleurs, à l’hétérogénéité des styles et des genres d’écriture pratiqués correspondent également des différences de générations. Tabucchi, né en 1943, a vingt ans dans les années 1960; tout comme Macchiavelli et Guccini, il est très sensible aux questions concernant les origines du phénomène terroriste, en s’interrogeant sur les modalités dans lesquelles l’action protestataire s’est ensuite transformée en action violente. Riotta, né en 1954, fait partie de la génération suivante, celle qui a eu vingt ans pendant la décennie 1970, génération qui n’a pas participé aux mouvements de 1968 et 1969, mais qui en a vécu les conséquences. C’est en effet une génération dont la socialisation politique s’est faite dans le conflit et dans l’opposition permanente. Cette comparaison permet aussi de voir la complémentarité de ces projets littéraires. Ils posent tous en effet la narration en tant qu’“acte de connaissance” par la révélation d’une vérité cachée ou bien par la mise en évidence d’aspects négligés de cette même réalité. Par des voies différentes, ces auteurs se posent de façon problématique et critique par rapport aux référents qu’ils mettent en récit en suggérant que la narration représente une des formes de connaissance du monde et aurait donc une valeur “heuristique”. Dans les trois cas, ce retour sur un passé sensible est accompagné de la volonté de proposer, chacun à sa façon, un rôle positif pour l’écrivain-intellectuel et pour la littérature, face à la difficulté du souvenir.
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Au-delà des alternatives classiques entre engagement et distanciation, 3 entre utopie et désenchantement, des nouvelles fonctions se dessinent qui renvoient à la capacité de la littérature de (re)chercher (Macchiavelli et Guccini), de montrer (Riotta) et de “déchiffrer les charades”, c’est-à-dire les énigmes, les mystères qui font toute la complexité du réel (Tabucchi). TPF
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Les mécanismes du récit
Les trois dispositifs fictionnels mis en œuvre comportent des mécanismes de fonctionnement implicites qui renouvellent le rapport entre réalisme et formalisme. Ici la forme et le contenu se rejoignent dans le but de représenter une réalité qui, si elle n’est pas inconnue, est sans doute incertaine. La mise en récit ne peut pas adopter une quelconque linéarité puisque les événements historiques échappent à ce type de représentation et s’offrent à des lectures divergentes. Il ne s’agit pas seulement de représenter une réalité qui serait donnée a priori, il s’agit tout d’abord de comprendre cette même réalité en saisissant les faits sans pourtant s’arrêter à la surface des choses. Il convient dès lors d’aller au-delà de la question pourtant légitime de repérer les éléments de réalité historique. Cela reviendrait par exemple à établir la quantité de référents externes injectés dans le récit ou bien à vérifier le procédé d’augmentation de la population par l’implantation de personnages réels parmi des personnages fictifs. 4 Toutefois, établir “le rapport de chacun avec la haute mer du réel” (Corti 411) signifie tout d’abord définir ce qu’est le réel, car il ne s’agit TPF
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Nous reprenons ici l’alternative discutée par Norbert Elias dans son ouvrage Engagement et distanciation.
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Pour cette problématique, voir les contributions au colloque organisé par le GRILUA (Groupe de Recherche Inter-Langues de l’Université d’Angers), Histoire, fiction, mémoire, Université d’Angers, 27-29 mars 2003. Voir aussi Dorrit Cohn, Le propre de la fiction, et Paul Ricœur, Temps et récit, vol. I et III. P
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pas de la description et/ou retranscription d’une réalité qui existerait en dehors du récit mais bien de sa recherche et de sa construction par la proposition de règles particulières de lecture du monde. C’est ainsi que dans ces œuvres qui fictionnalisent le passé par la construction d’un récit à mi-chemin entre le référentiel (vérifiable et incomplet) et le non référentiel (invérifiable et complet), et qui représentent des réponses personnelles à la crise de la diégèse, les frontières entre réalité et fiction en résultent brouillées. 5 On peut repérer certains procédés (spazializzazione, giallizzazione, erranza) – communs aux trois récits, même s’ils sont parfois utilisés de façon inversée. D’autres mécanismes sont la prérogative de l’un ou l’autre de ces auteurs. L’accumulation, par exemple, semble être le trait distinctif de la nouvelle de Gianni Riotta dans laquelle l’architecte Michele Serveto, victime d’un attentat terroriste de la part d’une militante d’extrême droite, veut promouvoir la construction d’un monument en souvenir de ces années. Il parcourt l’Italie à la recherche de soutiens. Les rencontres avec les parents de victimes et/ou de terroristes sont l’occasion pour évoquer des faits de violence, des attentats, des meurtres. Le lecteur est donc plongé dans le climat de guerrilla urbaine, de violence généralisée et l’accumulation de détails réalistes produit un sentiment de rejet. Mais c’est surtout dans la mise en récit de l’espace que les différents projets littéraires semblent trouver leur explicitation. Cela se passe chez Riotta, à travers la construction d’un récit centrifuge qui part d’un point de vue fixe et arrêté, celui du protagoniste Serveto et qui s’élargit ensuite à la pléthore de personnages secondaires, aux innombrables factions et groupes en opposition ainsi qu’à l’Italie entière parcourue par le personnage tout au long de la narration. Cette TPF
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Il serait par ailleurs hasardeux de parler de réalisme à propos de Antonio Tabucchi, auteur pour lequel on a le plus souvent mis en relief les aspects oniriques ou fantastiques.
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construction permet de constater la difficulté du débat, un débat bloqué, qui stagne, et offre une tentative de recomposer les fractures et les lignes de fuite tout en soulignant l’incapacité de dépasser les divisions et la persistance des déchirures. On retrouve le même refus de la linéarité dans le roman intitulé Questo sangue che impasta la terra, mais le mécanisme est ici inversé. Francesco Guccini et Loriano Macchiavelli construisent en effet un récit centripète qui part de points de vue différents: un groupe de jeunes impliqués dans la découverte d’un camp d’entraînement paramilitaire; les habitants d’un village sur les Apennins où se déroule une partie de l’action, le maresciallo Santovito qu’on arrache à sa paisible retraite et à qui on demande d’éclaircir le mystère du meurtre d’un jeune et la disparition de deux autres; la compagne de Santovito qui mène sa vie en parallèle aux Etats-Unis. La vérité sera dévoilée par la convergence de ces points de vue différents vers le nœud central qui révèle l’imbrication des faits. À cela il faut ajouter de nombreux signes d’organisation externe qui relèvent parfois du péritexte: les chapitres sont ponctués, à intervalles réguliers, par les pages du Diario americano de la compagne de Santovito; dans la première édition, une carte en annexe permet au lecteur de situer les lieux sur la scène de l’action. Face à la complexité de la réalité à représenter, les auteurs proposent un type de narration qui doit donner un ordre, un sens, aux faits évoqués et qui nourrit la quête de la vérité typique du genre policier. Le type de spazializzazione dans la nouvelle de Antonio Tabucchi, Piccoli equivoci senza importanza, est centrifuge et centripète à la fois, mais concentré autour du sujet-narrateur, d’où l’on part et vers lequel on revient après des allers-retours et des ouvertures successives. Le refus de la linéarité vise ici à adopter un autre point de vue fait de mécanismes parfois contradictoires et à passer de la Simplicité à la Complexité. C’est le but de l’interrogation “qu’est qu’un destin?”, qui met en valeur les ruptures, les équivoques, les passages brusques d’un stade à l’autre, les imprévus. Il en est ainsi pour l’équivoque à 709
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l’origine du parcours de l’un des personnages qui le conduit à suivre des études de lettres plutôt que de droit. Les histoires individuelles sont donc présentées comme étant le fruit de nombreuses stratifications, alors que l’Histoire n’est rien d’autre que la composition par superposition de couches successives à travers les traces laissées par chaque passage d’un stade à l’autre. Le point d’arrivée, l’adhésion à la lutte armée, est le produit d’une continuité particulière où ce qui est donné au départ contient une partie du produit final tout en ne le prévoyant pas complètement. Tandis que le récit s’oppose à la reconstruction officielle (considérée comme fausse et superficielle) des parcours individuels proposée lors du procès auquel assiste le narrateur, l’écriture cherche à donner sens à cela comme l’exprime l’image finale de la nouvelle: J’ai continué sur le quai à pas lents et réglés, essayant de ne pas poser les pieds dans les interstices du pavé, comme quand j’étais enfant et que, selon un rituel naïf, j’essayais de régler sur la symétrie des pierres mon déchiffrement enfantin du monde, encore sans rythme et sans mesure. (18) La littérature comme acte de connaissance
Le rôle de la narration en tant qu’“acte de connaissance” se pose alors sur un continuum. Pour Riotta, il est important de montrer afin de rendre manifeste la multitude des facettes des événements et de la réalité historique et pour cela il faut multiplier les exemples et les points de vue. À côté de ce prisme évident, qui rend si compliqué le débat puisque chacun cherche à imposer son propre point de vue, Guccini et Macchiavelli s’efforcent de rechercher aussi ce qui est caché, les non dits, pour dévoiler ce qui n’est pas évident ou ce qui est occulté. C’est pourquoi on retrouve en filigrane dans leur roman l’idée, même si atténuée, du complot lié à l’action de forces occultes 710
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qui agissent dans la construction de ce qu’on a appelé la strategia della tensione. 6 Quant à lui, Tabucchi nous offre un projet sans doute plus ambitieux dans lequel le rapport entre ce qui est subjectif et ce qui est objectif est remis en question, par la prise en compte d’un point de vue individuel. Loin d’une quelconque forme d’intimisme, son œuvre renvoie à une mouvance culturelle dans laquelle la micro-histoire et les récits de vie se retrouvent à la base des analyses sociologiques. C’est sur cette base que l’on peut aussi préciser le sens des parcours et des destinées individuels. Les choix de chacun seraient-ils alors simplement le fruit du hasard, de petits malentendus sans importance, comme les erreurs et les malentendus dont sont victimes ses personnages? Ou bien les choses seraient-elles plus compliquées, les individus étant le fruit de tout ce qui les a précédés, des stratifications et de la complexité de l’Histoire? TPF
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En un instant [...] j’ai compris que nous étions là à cause d’une chose qui s’appelle Complication, et qui pendant des siècles, des millénaires, des millions d’années, a accumulé, couche après couche, des circuits toujours plus complexes, pour former ce que nous sommes aujourd’hui et ce que nous sommes en train de vivre. (17)
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La période que l’on indique par cette expression désormais consacrée dont l’origine remonte à un article de l’Observer du 14 décembre 1969, a été analysée par Franco Ferraresi. Cet historien en indique les principaux acteurs, la droite radicale, les services secrets, la police, la magistrature, dont le but était celui de provoquer un tournant autoritaire. Il met également en garde sur le sens à donner au terme de stratégie. Plus que d’un véritable complot, il s’agissait des effets d’un climat politique: les acteurs impliqués n’agissaient pas nécessairement en suivant un plan défini et en accord entre eux. Franco Ferraresi, Minacce alla democrazia. P
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Ce qui enrichit ce projet littéraire est le fait que la littérature fonctionne comme une conscience critique, un sujet de préoccupation, qui propose méditations et réflexions (Gumpert 15). Cela est également conforme à la conception de l’écrivain porteur de cette conscience proposée par Antonio Tabucchi, qui se pose en “déchiffreur de charades” face à la complexité du réel. La confiance dans le rôle de l’intellectuel, seul capable d’une mise à distance pour la compréhension, l’explication et l’apaisement des conflits, semble être un élément commun à ces auteurs. Les personnages principaux de ces trois récits renvoient tous à la fonction intellectuelle au sens large du terme puisqu’ils sont tous amenés à manier des symboles: le narrateur/journaliste de Piccoli equivoci senza importanza, l’architecte de Ethica, ordine politico demonstrata, tandis que le maresciallo Santovito de Questo sangue che impasta la terra, qui mène une vie paisible dans la contemplation de la campagne d’Emilie, apparaît comme une métaphore de l’intellectuel arraché à ses méditations que l’on ramène dans les feux de l’histoire. Les projets littéraires dont on a essayé d’esquisser ici quelques lignes renvoient à la réflexion habituelle menée par chacun de ces auteurs et que l’on peut déduire d’une sorte de métadiscours autour de leur activité qu’ils produisent en tant qu’écrivains installés dans le système médiatique et dans l’industrie culturelle et, plus généralement, dans les différents secteurs de production des biens culturels. Toutefois, même si l’on se limite à l’analyse des œuvres, afin de privilégier la poetica implicita par rapport à la poetica esplicita, la lecture croisée de ces trois récits permet de voir que les œuvres échappent à leurs auteurs et expriment peut-être plus que ceux qu’ils y mettent de façon consciente. Dans la question à l’origine de ce parcours, il convient en outre de dissocier le rôle de l’écrivain et le rôle de la littérature. Si celle-ci acquiert un véritable statut heuristique et donne sens au réel, l’écrivain quant à lui n’est rien de plus qu’un filtre. Loin d’une quelconque position de surplomb, il est plutôt à l’écoute et 712
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restitue, comme une sorte d’éponge, les interrogations de son époque. L’insatisfaction qui découle du constat d’un statut fragile est peut-être à l’origine de la recherche d’autres moyens de communication et d’intervention. C’est un aveu d’impuissance car l’écriture (surtout sous la forme de récits brefs) est sectaire, ce qui les amène à la recherche d’un public plus large. Tabucchi a endossé un véritable rôle d’intellectuel critique dans la suite de la carrière littéraire, universitaire et journalistique. Pour Riotta la littérature accompagne et vient compléter le journalisme d’opinion et de commentaire. Dans tous les cas, on peut émettre l’hypothèse d’un sentiment d’incomplétude. Dans l’attitude qu’ont ces auteurs contemporains vis-à-vis de l’histoire récente du pays, il reste clairement des traces du pessimisme qui habitait Goffredo Parise ou Italo Calvino qui vivaient, à la fin des années soixante-dix, une période de désenchantement. Le contexte avait laissé les écrivains avec le sentiment de la fin d’une époque tandis que la déception et la désillusion alimentaient la perspective d’un univers réduit à un chaos de particules (Belpoliti). L’aveu contenu dans la Note qui ouvre le recueil de Tabucchi souligne la tendance à repérer les mépris, les incertitudes, les souvenirs trompeurs, les remords inutiles, les erreurs stupides et irrémédiables même si cette vocation n’est pas noble, étant plutôt une sorte de “pauvre stigmate qui n’a rien de sublime”. La contribution est modeste parce que nous vivons le temps des allumettes après celui des grands embrasements. Moi, si je réussis à éclairer un pan d’obscurité avec une petite flamme, cela me suffit. (7)
Ces auteurs témoignent donc d’une forme d’engagement désenchanté et sont l’expression d’une littérature, qu’on pourrait certes qualifier de civique, mais qui demeure bien consciente de ses limites. 713
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Ouvrages cités
Balestrini, Nanni et Primo Moroni. L’orda d’oro (1968-1977). Milan: Feltrinelli, 1997. Belpoliti Marco. Settanta, Turin: Einaudi, 2001. Cohn, Dorrit. Le propre de la fiction. Paris: Seuil, 2001. Corti, Maria. “Reale e realismi.” Letteratura italiana del Novecento. Bilancio di un secolo. Ed. par Alberto Asor Rosa. Turin: Einaudi, 2000: 410-421. Crainz, Guido. Un paese mancato. Dal miracolo economico agli anni ottanta, Rome: Donzelli, 2003. 411-604. Della Porta, Donatella. Il terrorismo di sinistra. Bologne: Il Mulino, 1990. ---. “Il terrorismo.” Dizionario di politica italiana. Ed. par Gianfranco Pasquino. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1995. 535-548. ---. Social Movements, Political Violence and The State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Elias, Norbert. Engagement et distanciation. Paris: Fayard, 1996. Ferraresi, Franco. Minacce alla democrazia. La destra radicale e la strategia della tensione. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1995. GRILUA (Groupe de Recherche Inter-Langues de l’Université d’Angers), Histoire, fiction, mémoire. Actes du colloque du 27-29 mars 2003, Presses de l’Université d’Angers: 2004 Guccini, Francesco et Macchiavelli, Loriano. Questo sangue che impasta la terra. Milan: Mondadori, 2001. Gumpert, Carlos. L’Atelier de l’écrivain. Conversations avec Antonio Tabucchi. Paris: éditions la passe du vent, 2001. Ricœur, Paul. Temps et récit, vol. I et III. Paris: Seuil, 2001. Riotta, Gianni. Cambio di stagione. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1991. Sommier, Isabelle. “Les années 68. Entre l’oubli et l’étreinte des années de plomb.” Politix 30 (1995): 168-177. TP
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Tabucchi, Antonio. “Antonio Tabucchi, le contrebandier.” Entretien avec Arnould de Liedekerke. Le Magazine littéraire (jullet-août 1997): 351-360. Tabucchi, Antonio. Piccoli equivoci senza importanza. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1985. Trad. française par Martine Dejardin. Petits malentendus sans importance. Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1987. Tarrow, Sidney. Democrazia e disordine. Movimenti di protesta e politica in Italia (1965-1975). Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1990. Veyne, Paul. Comment on écrit. Essai d’épistémologie. Paris: Seuil, 1971. Zavoli, Sergio. La Notte della Repubblica. Milan: Mondadori, 1992.
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Primo Levi in the Seventies: “letterato” or “impegnato”? Raniero Speelman (Utrecht University) Introduction
At first sight, Primo Levi does not seem to be one of the most characteristic authors of the Seventies. He did not partake in any discussion on the present and the future of the historical novel (he would rather write one: SNOQ) 1 nor in political debates on the position of the intellectual. Of course, Levi was a leftist intellectual, as most people of his social and religious background. He was immune for anti-Soviet ideology, having been liberated by the Russians and having travelled in their country, as he had described in his successful book T. On the other side, he was unable to identify with the Catholic and rightist movements that had ruled Italy from 1948 onwards. But this did not make him a militant intellectual. He was primarily a working man, a technician who was sometimes remembered as an author of remarkable books and, in fact, spent some of his leisure time in writing. And, of course, he was a witness of the shoah. Within the Einaudi “stable”, he was associated with somewhat similar amateur writers as his friends Nuto Revelli and Mario Rigoni Stern, all of them interested in war memories and in nature, preferably that of mountain regions. TPF
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Still, for Levi, the Seventies form a crucial period, both in his life and in his being a writer. We shall therefore try to give a short chronology of his life in this period, before analysing into some detail the importance of Levi’s work in the Seventies. Life and works in the Seventies
Some dates: 1971: Levi collects a second series of short stories, publishing them under his own name: VF. 1972-73: for his work at the varnish plant SIVA, Levi travels more than once to the Soviet Union. This fact should not be ignored, neither as the artistic matrix of his later book CS nor as an activity with a political meaning. I shall explain myself further on. 1973: Levi becomes a member of Cogidas, an organisation of parents and teachers opposing the increasing neo-fascist intimidation on schools. Involvement includes posting at threatened schools, writing reports and submitting ‘squadristi’ for prosecution. 1973-74: the oil crisis causes serious problems for Italian economy, and still more for SIVA, that depends on petrol-based raw materials. Levi takes part in two television-documentaries, one by the Dutch Rolf Orthel about Eduard Wirths, a doctor at Auschwitz, and one filming his reunion with Jean Samuel and Charles Conreau, his former camp companions, in Strassbourg. 1974: Levi decides, after much deliberation, to retire from SIVA. This was one of the most difficult decisions he made in all his life, because his colleagues and his superior, Federico Accati, wanted him to stay and Levi was not the kind of man that liked turning his back on his responsibilities. Of course, the reason for this move was Levi’s desire to dedicate himself to full-time creative writing. He resigns as a director but, for the next three years, he continues working half-time as a senior consultant. 717
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1975: Levi is elected as President of the Parents’ Council of the Liceo Massimo D’Azeglio, his own former secondary school. This is a difficult function, because Levi had to face the students’ demands for self-government, as well as new types of teaching and introduction of new courses, such as those of sexual education. Levi publishes SP with Einaudi and an anthology of poems, L’osteria di Brema, with Scheiwiller as a publisher. The frequent collaboration with the newspaper La Stampa dates from the beginning of this year, when Arrigo Levi asked Primo for an article on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The first texts deal prevalently with the shoah, but Levi published as well on the cultural page of La Stampa a series of poems and tales he would later include in other books. 1977: final retirement from SIVA; working on L and CS, some texts of which books are published in La Stampa. 1978: CS appears, and wins the Premio Strega, maybe the most important Italian literary price. In this years, the activity for La Stampa reaches a total of 24 pieces.2 Towards the end of this year, Darquier de Pellepoix, the Vichy regime’s commissioner of Jewish affairs, and Roberto Faurisson, a professor at Lyons, launch their extreme denial of the shoah, which meant a shock of great impact for Levi. 1979: Levi, in obvious reaction to the aforesaid, returns to writing on the Holocaust, with a number of articles (11 in 6 months) and stories that would become part of L and received the group title of “Passato prossimo” (past tense), which literally means that even it is behind us, it is still so close to us as to retain its relevance. Of his essays, I’d like to mention “L’intolleranza raziale” (Racial Intolerance), maybe Levi’s P
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longest essay before the group of SS 3 and really a lecture held in Turin. So, if we do not take in consideration L, we have four titles in one decade, three of which we may regard as really important books, not to count the translations, such as that of Presser’s De Nacht der Girondijnen (La notte dei Girondini). Only in the eighties, Levi would prove to be (still) more productive, but we should not forget that much of the eighties’ production was actually written, or at least conceived, in the last years of the seventies. Carol Angier justly observed that the gestation period of SS begins around 1975, when Levi read Presser and was impressed by the grey zone between suffering as a victim and collaboration with the enemy that the Dutch historian wrote about. TPF
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If we try to find a common denominator of the said three books VF, SP and CS, what strikes us is that they have all to do with technology and science. It is this very aspect that was present in Levi’s first book of short stories, that Levi published under the pseudonym Damiano Malabaila, which mainly deals with classic science-fiction: strange machines cause both hilarious and menacing situations. The authors Levi as a writer of science-fiction has most in common with are Calvino, Buzzati and Landolfi, as can be clearly seen when reading “Cladonia rapida” (SN), that is based on Buzzati’s “La peste motoria” (from Sessanta racconti, 1958) or “A fin di bene” (VF) which goes back to “Scioperi dei telefoni” (from the same volume of tales ). Buzzati’s “La creazione” (Il colombre, 1966), in which angelic technicians present the Project Earth to God, obviously inspired “Il sesto giorno” (SN). For Landolfi, it is not difficult to establish a parallel between his “In treno” (from Racconti impossibili, 1966) and Levi’s “Anagrafe” (UNG), or between “La mattinata dello TP
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scrittore” (from In società) and “Il Versificatore” (SN). As far as Calvino is concerned, he was one of the writers Levi admired most and had frequent contacts with. He was the one Levi had sent his SN tales to when he was practically an unknown writer and Calvino had encouraged Levi to go one writing. 4 The one thing Levi did not want at this stage was giving the impression that he was an epigone of Calvino. Levi’s short story (from VF and dedicated to Calvino) “Il fabbro di sé stesso”, however, is a kind of ‘Cosmicomico’, but clearly differs from his friend’s stories. Levi’s interest for Roberto Vacca is that of a “man of two cultures”, as both men were, and Levi wrote about at least two of Vacca’s books. 5 In VF, attention shifts from the machine-related fantasy to the reductio ad absurdum of elements of reality intrinsically present in modern society, such as lab-built babies, communication networks, environmental pollution and so on, even if the fantastical technical inventions would play an important part in some tales, such as “Lumini rossi” (Little Red Lights). Levi would explain, in the “Letter to the publisher” he wrote on occasion of the book’s 1987 reprint, that the stories were inspired by Roberto Vacca’s essays Medioevo prossimo venturo (Middle Age On Hand), a book that gave an apocalyptic vision of the future. It was a few years before the Club of Rome’s Report (1972) gave a shock to Western readers, stating that natural resources had nearly run out and life would come to an end in a few decades’ time due to energy shortage. Levi not only translated this kind of concern in gripping tales, but created strong metaphors as well, such as in “Verso Occidente” TPF
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Cf., among other references, G. Einaudi, “Primo Levi e la Casa editrice Einaudi”, p. 396.
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“L’ingegnere-filologo e i suoi sogni proibiti” (1966), now in Opere I, pp. 1152-54 and “Le parole esportate” (1978), ibid., pp. 1223-26. It is not clear if Levi, when discussing the book Parliamo itangliano knew that its author, ‘Giacomo Elliot’ , was really Vacca. TP
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(Westward), where the suicidal behaviour of mankind is juxtaposed to that of lemmings throwing themselves into Northern seas. Critics stress the pessimistic tone of the VF stories. This is correct, but we should be careful not to closely associate them with signs of depression. One could even say that modern (or post-modern) science-fiction only makes sense if it is pessimistic, linking the fantastic elements to real concern and thus assuming a moralistic dimension. The shift from technical fantasy towards more philosophically inspired tales of the imagination, would proceed in the fantastic short stories of Lilit ed altri racconti. The second title, SP (The Periodic Table) has become one of Levi’s most beloved books. Strangely, when Levi wrote an autobiographical profile for Einaudi as an introduction to an edition of collected works (in the Biblioteca dell’Orsa), Levi arrived until 1975 and mentioned nothing at all about SP. In the book, that may be read as a series of interrelated tales, as a novel or as an autobiography, Levi writes about his youth, studies at university, his first jobs as a chemist and – briefly – about his weeks as a partisan and his life in Buna Monowitz. But still more attention is given to the years after his return and various professional experiences. The way he writes about them is profoundly different from that of leftist writers of the Seventies. Levi does not question labour and the alienation it causes, he doesn’t discuss workers’ rights and demands. He doesn’t see work as degrading, but as a challenge and, possibly, a source of great satisfaction and even happiness in life. 6 Philip Roth has justly stated that the effort to give back to work its TPF
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“It would be good for the individual and therewith, for society as well, if the work one chooses is one that can become pleasant. Who succeeds in this, has some possibility of experiencing happiness, at least now and then”, cf. P.L. Conversazioni e interviste, p. 117. PT
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human dignity, freeing it from the cynic Nazi slogan Arbeit macht frei, can be seen as the central theme in Levi’s work. 7 After the book on inorganic chemistry, Levi planned a kind of sequel that would take organic chemistry as its focal point. The book would be named Il doppio legame (TheDouble Bond), but it was never finished and its materials ended up in Levi’s next book, CS (The [Monkey’s] Wrench). 8 CS further develops Levi’s new idea about work. The book is, as, in a certain sense, its predecessor, a frame story, inspired by Levi’s travels to the Soviet Union, and the tales he tells are partly his own. But more important is the book’s hero, the engineer Faussone, which Levi himself has called his alter ego. 9 Levi’s response to the ideology of class struggle, that was a rather important item of debate in those days, is shifting attention from the traditional dichotomy of the intellectual and the common worker, to that of an intermediary character, that of the qualified technician. Faussone is not a worker (operaio), but neither an intellectual. He is a man that faces technical problems he has to solve, and he does so. Even the language Levi attributes him with is highly original: it is the Piedmontese Italian spoken in the world of industry and technicians. This could be seen as a subtle kind of polemics: Levi, himself a Turinese, living within walking distance of the FIAT, the most important Italian industry whose workers have played a leading role in social struggle, gives a language to a character that could have been one of them, but denies all class struggle. Doing this, TPF
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According to Angier p. xvii (for the complete references, cf. the Index on p. 882), Levi was working again on a book with the same title in the last year of his life. Angier claims to have read many sketches of the book. However, according to Thompson, “The Double Bond was [in the beginning of 1987] as yet little more than an outline” (p. 521).
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he took the risk to be misunderstood as the writer of a rightist book and to have to enter in discussion with trade-unionists 10 . Levi tried to polemize both with the classic idea that only a humanistic education can give an educational value to work and “with the armchair trade-unionists for whom the world is made up out of slaves of the assembly line and bad-intended bosses” 11 TPF
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1982 and the Peace in Galilee campaign - the end of the Seventies?
Until now, we have clung with some discipline to the idea of the seventies as being the decade between 1970 and 1979 or, maybe between 1971 and 1980. As many other contributors, we might, however, loosely apply this definition and suggest, at least for Jewish Italian authors, an important alternative milestone: the months of August and September of the year 1982. This year was marked in Israel by the war Shalom le-Galil (Peace In Galilee), in which for the first time, the young State of Israel took the initiative for a big military campaign – before that date, it had only reacted to Arab aggression. Aim of the campaign, or war, was the activity of terrorists attacking Israel from across the Lebanon border. Its military leader was the general Ariel Sharon, with whom later history would become more familiar, and who had the reputation of begin a hard-liner. Sharon bombed two Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Chatila, causing many casualties and a huge death toll. Leftist intellectuals all over the world reacted. In Italy, a traditionally pro-Arab country, this reaction had a markedly anti-Semite character. Italian Jews were practically accused of everything the Israeli army had done, they were menaced, aggressed and challenged in public opinion. Synagogues and schools had to be protected by the army, outward signs of Jewish culture had
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On this misunderstanding by some contemporary readers, cf. ibid., p. 153. Ibid., pp. 117 (1975) and 119 (1979) 723
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better be suppressed and, of course, anti-Semite slogans and symbols abounded in graffiti-loving Italy. This seemed to end an idea: the illusion that racial discrimination had finished with the fall of Fascism and Nazi Germany’s defeat, that Jews in Italy were once again normal citizens, Jewish intellectuals had a normal place in public life and Jewish writers were normal writers writing about the same subjects as anybody else. Henceforward, many Jewish authors chose to ‘come out’, to stress their Jewishness. From 1982, Jewish Italian literature became far more Jewish. Writers that had never written from a Jewish point of view or from their experience of being Jewish, now started writing on Jewish subjects. We shall limit ourselves to one eloquent example. Paolo Levi, who was born in the same years as Primo, had become a well-known writer of detective stories in the seventies. In all these books, not a single word can be found to refer to Jewishness. In 1984, however, appears Il filo della memoria (The Thread of Memory), a history of his own family from 1800 till the present and maybe his best work. For Primo Levi, stressing his Jewishness more than he had already done in books as SQ, T or SNOQ was, of course, impossible. His concern for the State of Israel made him plead for “suppressing our impulses of solidarity with Israel, so as to be able to reflect with lucidity upon the error of the actual Israeli ruling class. To bring about its downfall. To help Israel to recover its European origins, the equilibrium of its founding fathers, Ben Gurion, Golda Meir. Not that they had clean hands, but who has?” 12 Levi’s stance, which was essentially moderate if somewhat naive, has been criticised by some Jewish intellectuals and been adhered to by others. Levi wrote a number TPF
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of articles and granted a series of interviews on the Israeli campaign, and was among the first to sign a public appeal “Perché Israele si ritiri” (Let Israel Retire) asking Sharon and Prime Minister Begin to resign. This appeal foreshadows the conclusions a special Israeli commission was to draw as to mr. Sharon’s responsibility for the massacre. For Levi, however, there was a far more important ideological and historical battle to fight: that against revisionism, the current that tried to deny or, at least, to belittle the horrors of the shoah. From 1979 onwards, Levi tried to mobilise public opinion with his articles on revisionism and its champion Faurisson. 13 At the same time, he proposed to write about the relation between oppressor and oppressed in the extermination camps. It is, of course, the origin of SS (The Saved and the Drowned), the book Levi was to publish in 1986. In the years 1981-1982, Levi published the personal anthology RR (Searching for the Roots), the collection of various short stories and concentration camp memories L (Lilith and Other Tales, published in the US in 1986 under the title Moments of Reprieve) and finally his successful novel SNOQ (If not now, when?). In the meantime, Levi regularly contributed to La Stampa’s cultural page (the so-called terza pagina) with his poems and columns and began translating Kafka’s Der Prozess. So the period we are examining is a highly fruitful one. TPF
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There is still another field on which Levi was very active: that which regards the role of science and scientists. Levi was very worried by the cold war and the arms race. This concern can be at least traced back to the text of T, that ends with the nuclear 13
Ibid., pp. 278-28, and, among other texts, “Ma noi c’eravamo”(1979), now in Opere I, pp. 1253-54, “Il difficile cammino della verità” (1982), now in Opere II, pp. 1173-80, and “Il buco nero di Auschwitz” (1987), now in Opere II, pp. 1321-24. TP
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bomb on Hiroshima. Levi would return in the early eighties to this subject, focusing on the important role of the scientists in the arms race: their research provides the know-how deadly arms are made with. In his essay, “Le lance diventino scudi” (Let the Lances Become Shields, 1981, later in RS) 14 Levi asks the military to spend their money on defensive weapons rather than on attack arms. “That would be a clear signal to make known to the other side that vigilance has not slackened, but that they have no aggressive intentions”. In the essay “I padroni del destino” (Masters of Destiny, 1982) 15 Levi proposes that young scientists take a modern kind of “Hippocrat’s oath” not to do research that is obviously harmful to mankind. “It is naïve, I know; many will not take the oath, others will commit perjury, but there will be some who will keep true to it, and the number of witch-pupils will diminish.” This idea is repeated a few months before Levi’s death, in an interview in the review “Uomini e libri”. 16 The essay “Eclissi dei profeti” (The Eclipse of Prophets, 1984, later in AM) 17 appeared on the front page of La Stampa and is to be considered a text meant for topicality. Levi states that everybody in Europe has a safer and better life than before, but feels a kind of unrest all the same, mainly motivated by ‘nuclear fear’. The man in power, politicians, soldiers, scientists and important technicians should not forget that “if they give way to an apocalypse, they too will be wiped away by it”. Significantly, the essay is placed as the last piece of the book, so it has a special value as a message. One could observe TPF
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Now in Opere II, pp. 935-38. Now in Opere II, pp. 782-85. Now in Conversazioni e interviste, pp. 58-60. Now in Opere II, pp. 853-56.
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that AM begins with “La mia casa”, describing the house Levi had been born, and ends with the idea that the whole world should be seen as the home of mankind, so the book moves from individuality to universality. Conclusion
Gradually retiring from his work as director at the SIVA paint factory in the years 1974-1977, Primo Levi chose to lead the life of a writer. As such, he was fully conscious of the social and human responsibilities of his “new trade”. Even if he stayed far from literary and political polemics, he mobilised public opinion when he considered it necessary, such as in the case of the 1982 Israeli campaign. In the “anni di piombo”, which were particularly hard in the industrial metropolis of Turin, Levi actively engaged in opposing intimidation of school pupils by fascist thugs and pursued important school reforms. Neither did he hesitate to put forward ideas on the role of scientists in the arms race. On closer examination, Levi has lived throughout the Seventies as other engaged and avant-garde writers, exploring the borders of literary tradition and renewal, without ever ignoring actuality.
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Works Cited
Angier, Carol. The Double Bond. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002. Einaudi, Giulio. “Primo Levi e la Casa editrice Einaudi.” Ferrero 393-399. Ferrero, Ernesto, ed. Primo Levi: un’antologia della critica, Torino: Einaudi 1997. ---. Opere I-II. Torino: Einaudi 1997. ---. P.L. Conversazioni e interviste. Torino: Einaudi, 1997. Thompson, Ian. Primo Levi. London: Vintage 2002. Roberto Vacca. Medioevo prossimo venturo. Milano: Mondadori 1971.
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‘Bad Girls’ in the 1970s and 1990s: Female Desire and Experimentalism in Italian Women’s Writing Adalgisa Giorgio (University of Bath) Introduction
This paper is concerned with the link between women’s writing and experimentalism in the 1970s and beyond. 1 I begin my discussion with an account of two critical assessments of women’s output in the 1970s published towards the end of that decade, the time when women’s presa di parola was approaching its peak in Italy. The first, by Anna Nozzoli, examined a strand of narrative which, finding inspiration in feminism, focused on the condition of women from the urban lower-middle and middle classes. This writing consciously rejected the high linguistic codes of the Italian (male) literary tradition and the harmonic structure of the traditional novel, in favour of a linguistic expressionism and disorganic forms which, being rooted in women’s lives and their own fragmented perception of self and reality, were aimed at freeing women from received stereotypical images and creating new forms and new representations of female subjectivity. While Nozzoli stresses the “capacità di urto e la ricchezza di denotazioni” permitted by the zero degree of style and form adopted by such TPF
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http://congress70.library.uu.nl/
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authors as Carla Cerati, Giuliana Ferri, Armanda Guiducci, Gabriella Magrini and Dacia Maraini, she also underlines the ensuing loss in literariness and suggests that their work should be interpreted with reference to its socio-anthropological implications rather than to aesthetic codes. 2 This type of writing was later broadly referred to as “realismo femminista”. 3 At about the same time, Silvana Castelli drew attention to a different set of narratives which presented self-willed segregation and silence as strategies for resistance to a reality caught at the point of laceration. The female characters created by Leila Baiardo, Mariapaola Cantele, Rosetta Loy and Toni Maraini succeed in turning ‘la gabbia’ into ‘l’ombra’: the cage – the traditional places of female enclosure such as the asylum, the convent, bourgeois childhood, femininity – becomes the shadow, a marginal space of dissidence, from where women are able to overthrow the repressive machine of conformity and escape literal or metaphorical death. The shadow is also a place of transgression for the writer, a workshop in which she can experiment with language and create free forms capable of expressing repressed desire. 4 Not much critical attention has TPF
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Nozzoli, “Sul romanzo femminista italiano degli anni settanta” (74), reprinted as “Verso l’identità: ipotesi sul romanzo femminista degli anni settanta” (70).
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Nozzoli later used the phrase “cosiddetto realismo femminista”, in “19701980: dieci anni di romanzo al femminile” (207 and 223).
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Castelli, “Miti, forme e modelli della nuova narrativa”. Her short section on women writers, entitled “La gabbia e l’ombra” (123-32), is suggestive rather than analytical. Castelli’s argument is underpinned by a dense, though implicit and unsystematic, web of poststructuralist notions, whose relevance to the texts she quotes is not demonstrated. Carol Lazzaro-Weis later teased out the theoretical issues implicit in Castelli’s discussion with reference to Castelli’s own novel Pitonessa (which I discuss later in this paper) and to the late 1970s-early 1980s Italian debate on women’s linguistic and cultural marginality and on the possibility and desirability of creating a feminine 730 TP
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been paid to this strand of writing, while the first strand has come to be considered as representative of Italian women’s output in the 1970s. Both sets of texts deal with women’s entrapment in the cage, the struggle to break out of it and the search for a voice. However, while the texts examined by Nozzoli stress the acquisition of voice, those chosen by Castelli focus on the link between language and power and on silence. Both groups of narratives reject the abstract prose of 1960s neo-avant-garde writing and Italian formal literary style in favour of a language and style close to orality, yet the second group uses simple syntactic structures and style to convey a complex signified, one which the (sophisticated) reader must retrieve from beneath the fluid signifier. This discussion of the similarities and differences between the two sets of texts throws into relief the controversial issue of women’s relationship with language, writing, reality, realism and experimentation, thus prompting the following questions. Should women choose formal and linguistic experimentation, which is subversive but potentially uncommunicative, or should they opt for communicative representational modes which, however, perpetuate the literary as well as the social and political status quo? But is realism inevitably conservative or reactionary, reproducing women’s oppression, and is experimentalism automatically subversive and thus liberating for women? Can/should women’s traditional ‘attachment’ to things and realism be reversed, or can realism, instead, be made capable of producing alternative meanings? My aim in this paper is to use these complex issues as a critical perspective on four novels which combine a language/writing practice: Lazzaro-Weis, “From Margins to Mainstream: Some Perspectives on Women and Literature in Italy in the 1980s”. LazzaroWeis sets this debate into an international context in “Feminism and Its Literary Discontents”. 731
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commitment to experimentation (characteristic of 1960s texts) with a commitment to the real and communication (typical of 1970s narrative). These novels also share a thematic focus: childhood and youth as a space/time of female freedom and resistance, which is subsequently erased through the superimposition of orthodox gender roles. Starting with Alice Ceresa’s earlier metanarrative La figlia prodiga (1967), which laments the non-existence of female ‘prodigality’, I then examine Leila Baiardo’s L’inseguimento (1976) and Castelli’s own novel Pitonessa (1978), to look at the way they start to make inroads into the representation of female rebellion. I conclude with some considerations on the legacy of the 1970s for the young writers of the 1990s and their stories of ‘bad girls’, focusing on Isabella Santacroce’s novel Luminal (1998). Alice Ceresa, La figlia prodiga (1967)
La figlia prodiga is an ironic, pseudo-philosophical discussion of the (un)representability of a hypothetical character, the prodigal daughter. The text rests on a paradox: we read a narrative lacking in récit entitled La figlia prodiga which for 213 pages dissects this character’s non-existence or invisibility and thus the impossibility of its being written. The narratorwriter insists on the prodigal daughter’s disobedience and deviation, on her duplicity and skills in dissimulation, and, using the same game of concealments and revelations as that which she claims the prodigal daughter has adopted as her way of life, tells us that her prodigality may be invisible simply because “ci viene a bella posta nascosta” (107-108). The ironic, parenthetical closing sentence of the novel acts as an afterthought beckoning the reader to look behind the surface and retrieve the story it conceals: (Ma a bene pensarci, benché a noi sembri con ciò di essere giunti alla fine della nostra storia e al 732
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principio della sua, non è detto che anch’essa non sia stata digià magari all’inverso, o per negazione, o per esclusione, raccontata. Sarebbe necessario, per sincerarsene, ricominciare questa storia da capo: il che e per chi l’ha letta e per chi l’ha scritta sarebbe certamente di troppo. Senza contare che si tratterebbe di un lavoro che caso mai alla sola figlia prodiga, se a qualcuno rimanesse, rimarrebbe ed evidentemente rimane benché al difuori dei libri da fare). (213)
The prodigality of which Ceresa speaks in such a roundabout way is a daughter’s most extreme transgression, homosexuality, a practice that strikes at the heart of patriarchy. Consequently, the text can only be concerned with the modalities of its nonmanifestation within the social institutions and linguistic and literary codes which deny it (De Lauretis). Ceresa’s unspeakable character can only be represented in negative, and only by means of a non-representational metanarrative. Thus the text underscores the usefulness of deconstructive narrative experimentation for the feminist enterprise. Whether deconstructive experimentalism is a permanent strategy, or only a short-term tactic aimed at bringing about the ‘coming out’ of female prodigality into ‘constructive’ experimental or representational writing modes, is not clear. Ceresa herself did not move on to tell us stories of female prodigality ‘in positive’: in her 1990 novel Bambine, the prodigal daughter is still unspeakable.
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Leila Baiardo, L’inseguimento (1976)
This novel is an ironic take on the ideologies of the late 1960s, which are seen as antithetical yet permeable, with the new drug/music/sexual/anti-capitalist/anti-bourgeois counter-culture exerting an attraction, through its modernizing and liberating thrust, upon figures of the establishment such as church and army people. Agostina, the young narrator-protagonist, is a product of the 1960s youth revolution. She is independent, sexually liberated and committed to a life free from materialism and hypocrisy. The beginning of the novel catapults her into a surreal and protean world, where biological and social expectations are constantly overturned, events defy the ‘either/or’ logic and people straddle traditional class and gender divides. L’inseguimento also interrogates itself as a text. During the course of her picaresque adventures, Agostina starts to write a novel whose form and subject-matter she discusses at length, with ironic allusions to the 1960s debate on the role of literature, on Marxism, structuralism and experimentalism. The protagonist of her novel is the pope, a man in the grip of a philosophical and moral dilemma: when/if he assassinates the president of an imperialist power which violates “inviolabili principi etici e religiosi” (72), will he kill as a pope or as a man? This quandary takes him on a search for his identity beneath the clothes (literally) of his holy office and into the concrete matter of life, the body. The pope’s search is paralleled by Agostina’s own dilemmas as a writer and her own search for the right style and form for her novel: is writing fiction a solipsistic activity which has no political value or can it have the same force as political action and perhaps even a greater impact upon the real world? Through what technical and stylistic means, through which writing modes, can or should the political function of literature be realized? In the following passage, Agostina outlines a poetics of the novel as a vehicle for social and 734
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political change which rejects both obscure, over-technical and uncommunicative neo-avant-garde writing, which bears no relation to life, and straightforward realism which requires no effort of interpretation and no contribution from the reader. Yet, for her, a commitment to communication and reality is paramount: Azioni vere e proprie non ce ne sono. L’unica azione vera e propria avviene nell’ultimo capitolo, quando il presidente va a rendere omaggio a Sua Santità e Sua Santità lo ammazza [...] Quanto alla tecnica, ho deciso di creare un contrasto tra l’argomento, che è piuttosto classico e ricorrente nella storia, e il linguaggio che dovrà adattarsi, innestarsi direi, nell’arte intesa come vita di ogni giorno, del tempo attuale come astrazione dei significati di questo tempo. Tutto deve essere sfumato e simbolico, così scritto che chi legge non capisca quasi nulla, o meglio capisca tutto ma si secchi perché non sa se capisce bene, e tuttavia non possa fare a meno di leggere e una volta finito il libro dica: chissà se ho capito bene; proviamo a rileggere. E una volta riletto, e una volta convinto d’aver capito, vada subito ad ammazzare qualche presidente di qualche potenza imperialista. È un libro ambizioso, lo so. Quanto alla scrittura propriamente detta, allo stile, sono indecisa se usare o no delle virgole, se servirmi di parole come semiologia, tassonomico, poliembronia (ma che cavolo vogliono dire?), oppure usare un modo politico-ecclesiale [...] oppure una forma semplice, come la userebbe un vero papa che si mettesse un bel giorno a parlare cuore alla mano da papa a uomo non tanto ai fedeli quanto a se stesso. Non so neppure se trattare i personaggi reali, presi dalla vita reale [...] col loro vero nome […] oppure lasciare tutto nel vago. Questa indecisione deriva anche dal fatto che non sono molto ferrata nelle 735
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questioni politiche, e anzi ho dentro una certa confusione (confondo sempre Abba Eban con Feras Abbah e Farah Dibah, il Muro del pianto col Muro della vergogna, i Baschi blu coi Caschi blu e sino a qualche giorno fa ero convinta che El Sadat si chiamasse Elsa Dat e fosse una donna, come cosa, lì, Golda). (72-73)
Throughout the story Agostina grapples with the issue of integration vs. marginalization (an important motif in the literature of the period), with the problem of how to preserve her freedom as an individual, a woman and a writer, in a corrupt world that attempts to seduce and control her. Her literary, political and sexual revolution does not quite succeed. She never completes her novel. As for sexuality, she never questions her entitlement to pleasure. Yet, although she overthrows women’s sexual subordination to men by practising active sex – to the point of having intercourse with a dead man and being in complete control of the sexual act – and although she chooses to share her life with two men on the threshold of conventional sexualities, she remains a heterosexual woman. Dissident sexualities are the prerogative only of male characters. Sexuality without/beyond the phallus is only adumbrated. The novel thus reflects the coming out of male homosexuality in Italy in the 1960s and early 1970s, but the continued invisibility of lesbians. 5 TPF
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Silvana Castelli, Pitonessa (1978)
Pitonessa deals with a theme present in many narratives of the period: female childhood as an original time and space of freedom upon which culture inscribes its norms and the need to 5
For an analysis of this novel’s engagement with sexual, political and novelistic ‘dissidence’, see Giorgio, “From Little Girls to Bad Girls” (10003).
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challenge the notions of femininity which young girls are trained to accept as natural. In contrast to the more optimistic stance displayed by other novels, 6 Castelli applies a complex and pessimistic perspective to the issue, suggesting the difficulty of combating highly organized psychological, linguistic, social and political structures which shape women’s selves and lives. Like Ceresa, she puts the novel form to the test to convey a critique of language and society. Narrative structure and style highlight, in a graphically aggressive manner, the discontinuities between female childhood and adulthood and draw attention to women’s social and linguistic repression. The text consists of unpunctuated paragraphs which stop arbitrarily and of untitled chapters, the beginnings of which are indicated by a new page. The chapters alternate between two different settings and characters – the forays of a gang of six rebellious bambine on the verge of puberty and an adult woman segregated in her bedroom – and are skilfully arranged to counterpoint one another. For example, the third one, devoted to the little girls’ energetic exploits outdoors, conveys colour, movement and vitality: TPF
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ma intanto ormai le bambine sono sole e lontane da casa [...] nessuna di loro ha paura e pedalano piú in fretta gonfiando l’elastico dei loro calzini per fare prima infatti già si vede il posto con la casa del contadino [...] e poi il campo piú avanti tutto circondato dagli alberi da frutta in particolare le 6
See, for example, Marina Jarre, Negli occhi di una ragazza (1971, 1985) and Gina Lagorio, La spiaggia del lupo (1977), best-selling Bildungsromane of adolescents who succeed in overcoming constraining societal and cultural expectations. Elena Gianini Belotti’s pioneering essay Dalla parte delle bambine (1973) should also be mentioned: an extremely lucid analysis of the early conditioning of children into gender stereotypes, it was a very influential international best-seller. TP
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susine gialle e mature con la buccia che a quest’ora è sottile e ancora tiepida per via del sole del tramonto ma ormai ci sono e non devono fare altro che scavalcare con una sola sgambata le biciclette e coi piedi tutti e due da uno stesso lato frenano con la suola delle scarpe e una volta a terra e ferme ognuna cerca il suo nascondiglio [...] (22)
The bambine pursue pleasure, a pleasure which is made all the more intense by prohibition and danger and by the awareness that it is limited. Against the moderation, modesty, propriety, cleanliness, beauty and silence preached by their mothers and by the priest, the little girls keep pushing the boundaries of their freedom, revelling in the intense feelings produced by their bodies employed in forceful and forbidden activities. They just cannot be reduced to “obbedienza” and “silenzio” (157). By contrast, the fourth chapter, detailing the adult woman’s lethargic isolation, suggests non-colour, stasis and asthenia. The colour grey which dominates the chapter – the cigarette ashes (a symbol of ruin and death), the protagonist’s colourless face and lips, the grey telephone – throws a hue of suspension and indeterminacy over both her existence and the narrative. The young and bold warriors have given way to a woman in the grip of anxiety and phobias. We are able to identify a progression towards individuality in the negative (as in the traditional female Bildungsroman) in the three discrete times/stages of life portrayed in the text: between the bambine’s free childhood and the segregation of the adult woman, an intermediate stage is represented indirectly, showing the transition to young adulthood and the incarceration into femininity. This incarceration is strongly contextualized, with allusions to women’s exploitation and silencing by a patriarchal and authoritarian society bent on war, violence, blood and terror. 738
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The novel appears to point to the possibility of finding the means of overcoming this male-dominated culture in women’s community and exchanges. Legacies: the 1990s and the bad girls
Female childhood continued to be an important aspect of women’s writing in the 1980s, but only as a layer of the older character’s self, recovered through memory and revisited within the context of family relationships, especially the motherdaughter connection. It was not until the 1990s that young women came back on the scene. Much attention has been paid recently by feminists to the phenomenon of the presence of female children and youth, as producers, protagonists and readers, in literature, comics and other cultural productions of the 1990s, in a way that suggests a continuity between the 1970s and the 1990s ‘girl power’. 7 Yet, the new generations do not recognize themselves as part of any tradition of Italian women’s writing. Silvia Ballestra (b. 1969), Rossana Campo (b. 1963) and Isabella Santacroce (b. 1968) claim such neo-avant-garde writers as Arbasino, Balestrini and Tondelli as their antecedents and forefathers, thus negating and bypassing Italian women’s writing of the 1970s and 1980s. 8 TPF
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See Leggendaria: Bambine.
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In Giuseppe Caliceti (ed.), /bao’bab/. Autodizionario, they talk about the writers they have read: the only women writers mentioned are Virginia Woolf and Joyce Lussu. Ballestra appears to have felt the need for literary mothers after becoming successful: see her book-long interview with Lussu, a writer, political activist and feminist from her own area: Joyce L. Una vita contro (1996). Ballestra is strongly committed to making Lussu’s work better known (personal communication). Campo demonstrates an interest in feminism: in her preface to Bad girls. Scelte, pensieri, stili di vita delle ragazze italiane, she speaks of the value of feminism for contemporary young women. Since I wrote this essay, more work has been done on these writers which reveals their engagement with an Italian and non-Italian female 739 PT
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Yet, their work reveals that women’s social, cultural and literary conquests in the 1970s and 1980s constitute a collective legacy taken for granted by the young generations. The protagonists of many short stories by Ballestra and Campo feel comfortably part of a female lineage of mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts and cousins. 9 Writing/language and female identity do not pose problematic exclusions for these writers nor for their characters: their ‘bad girls’ are adult sexual versions of Castelli’s rebellious bambine in search of love, sexual fulfilment and money, preferably by means of becoming successful writers. Whereas the free life of Castelli’s bambine stops at puberty, the terms of reference of the subjectivity of the 1990s young protagonists are almost exclusively sexual. This is invariably the case in the ironic short stories of mild rebellion in Bambine cattive (1994), in the black-humour novel Benzina (1998) by Elena Stancanelli (born 1965) with two young lesbians as protagonists, or in the neo-gothic story of extreme sex in Santacroce’s Luminal (1998). It appears that female desire has finally ‘come out’ in the new generations of women writers. There are formal and stylistic continuities between the work of the new generations and women’s writing in the 1970s, both of the experimental and the more representational kinds. In Santacroce’s Luminal, we can see the contamination of genres and styles, the attempt to explode gender and sexual stereotypes, the focus on sexual relationships as the basis of human relations, the prominence given to the senses, to the vocal/aural as well as to sight, recalling the voyeuristic attitude of much avant-garde writing. Cameras, photographs and mirrors enable Santacroce’s protagonist to ‘peep’ at and love her own body, in a TPF
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literary tradition: see Claudia Bernardi, “Recalcitrant Daughters: The Search for Literary Mothers in Italian Women’s Fiction of the 1990s”. 9
See Ballestra, “Cari, ci siete o no?”, in her collection Gli orsi (1994), and Campo, “La volta che Mina mi ha baciata”, in Racconta 2 (1993).
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‘revolutionary’ twist which makes the female eye that watches coincide with the body that is watched. Luminal also reflects 1980s and 1990s themes in Italian feminism and women’s writing, for example in its representation of a deep passion between women which is now sexual besides being symbolic, 10 and its placing the source of female subjectivity in the (highly sexual) body – one’s own, one’s mother’s and other women’s. Santacroce breaks through many taboos, among which the daughter’s sexual desire for the mother’s body. In the same vein as 1970s women’s writing, the new writing has not relinquished its commitment to communication, even though the codes of youth subcultures which underlie it exclude large sections of the reading public. Luminal succeeds in combining everyday language, music and youth jargons with a lyrical register, resulting in a breezy and fluid style despite the crass sexual vocabulary and the employment of English words, a style which almost succeeds in diverting our attention from – and alleviating the shock of – the violent sexuality practised by the characters. The novel’s opening is exemplary: TPF
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A volte penso sia stata la luna a partorirmi tra spasmi di cosce pallide sapientemente allargate tra le stelle proprio in alto. Così appesa sopra un concerto di David Bowie lei si apriva lasciandomi cadere. Io sono Demon e la luna è mia madre. Ci sono pareti bianche e angeli dalle piccole ali in volo attorno a noi abbracciate nello stesso letto con poca luce e il suo respiro sopra che ascolto stringendola in una 10
See the practice of affidamento and the activation of a maternal symbolic within the female philosophical community Diotima. For an introduction on these practices, see Adalgisa Giorgio, “Mothers and Daughters in Italian Feminism: An Overview”. TP
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delle tante notti-luminal con Davi-dolce accanto che ora avvicina le sue labbra alle mie sussurrandomi saremo amiche per l’eternità. Questa è la storia di Demon e Davi. Non conosco la luce di Zurigo. Quella vera. Vivo da anni in questa mia realtà capovolta che non conosce luce. Passo ore zurighesi nei locali più bui con la forte convinzione che siamo nati tutti per farci fottere. (11)
To return to the question of the relationship between writing and the creation of new forms of female subjectivity and desire, Luminal’s self-conscious narrator-protagonist reveals Santacroce’s writing project: “Romanticamente ingravidiamo discorsi con progetti di struggente voglia” (33). Although Santacroce does not set out to produce écriture féminine, she seems to have created a writing which comes close to that invoked by Castelli and by the French writers and theorists Monique Wittig and Hélène Cixous, a type of writing that, in speaking an embodied language of radical female desire, cements together signifier and signified, form and content. Interestingly, the more experimental texts by the young writers also deploy characters whose rebellion to middle-class provincial mediocrity is more radical and who choose death as the ultimate form of resistance. 11 However, can one define a female desire which expresses itself through abuse and violence, both self-inflicted and inflicted upon others, as female jouissance and a celebration of female sexuality? 12 Perhaps not. TPF
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11
Suicide seems to have become a topos of the new narrative, a trend possibly set by the film Thelma and Louise (see, for example, the spectacular suicide, in front of the police, of Stancanelli’s protagonists in Benzina). TP
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On Santacroce’s representation of female desire, see Lucamante.
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Conclusion
The 1970s narratives examined in this essay inherited the 1960s neo-avant-garde’s commitment to experimentation with narrative form and language which ‘feminist realist’ writing consciously rejected. Yet the two strands of 1970s women’s writing shared the project of breaking the stronghold of patriarchal literary language and capitalist bourgeois ideology which silenced women. Both types of writing also initiated the process of producing a writing founded in the body and expressing female desire, a desire which has finally come out in 1990s youth narrative. The suggestions I have put forward in this paper need to be further explored. More texts from the 1970s must be brought to light in order to draw a more articulated panorama of women’s writing in that decade and to test my hypothesis that there is a tradition, otherwise neglected or denied by critics, of consciously anti-realist writing by women which originates in the 1960s and the 1970s and finds its point of arrival in the 1990s.
Works Cited
Ballestra, Silvia. “Cari, ci siete o no?” Gli orsi. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1994. 59-72. ---. Joyce L. Una vita contro. Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 1996. Baiardo, Leila. L’inseguimento. Milan: Bompiani, 1976. Bambine cattive. Sette racconti. Introduced by Antonella Fiori. Rome: Ediesse, 1994. Bernardi, Claudia. “Recalcitrant Daughters: The Search for Literary Mothers in Italian Women’s Fiction of the 1990s.” Adalgisa Giorgio and Julia Waters, eds. New Women’s Writing in Western Europe: Gender, Generation, and Literary Legacies. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, forthcoming 2007. 743
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Caliceti, Giuseppe (ed.). /bao’bab/. Autodizionario. Comune di Reggio Emilia, 2000. Campo, Rossana. “La volta che Mina mi ha baciata.” Rosaria Guacci and Bruna Miorelli, eds. Racconta 2. Milan: La Tartaruga, 1993. 53-59. ---. “Prefazione.” Fabia Falduto, ed. Bad girls. Scelte, pensieri, stili di vita delle ragazze italiane. Rome: Castelvecchi, 1995. 5-7. Castelli, Silvana. “Miti, forme e modelli della nuova narrativa.” Walter Pedullà, Silvana Castelli and Stefano Giovanardi. La letteratura emarginata. I narratori giovani degli anni ’70. Rome: Lerici, 1978. 111-75. ---. Pitonessa. Turin: Einaudi, 1978. Ceresa, Alice. La figlia prodiga. Turin: Einaudi, 1967. ---. Bambine Turin: Einaudi, 1990. De Lauretis, Teresa. “Figlie prodighe.” DWF: Omelie di donne 2-3 (1996): 80-90. Gianini Belotti, Elena. Dalla parte delle bambine. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1973. Giorgio, Adalgisa. “Mothers and Daughters in Italian Feminism: An Overview.” Anna Bull, Hanna Diamond and Rosalind Marsh, eds. Feminisms and Women’s Movements in Contemporary Europe. Basingstoke & London: Macmillan, 2000. 180-93. ---. “From Little Girls to Bad Girls: Women’s Writing and Experimentalism in the 1970s and 1990s.” Anna Cento Bull and Adalgisa Giorgio, eds. Speaking Out and Silencing: Culture, Society and Politics in Italy in the 1970s. Leeds: Legenda/MHRA/Italian Perspectives & Maney Publishing, 2006. 95-114. Jarre, Marina. Negli occhi di una ragazza. Turin: Einaudi, 1971 (1985). Lagorio, Gina. La spiaggia del lupo. Milan: Garzanti, 1977. Lazzaro-Weis, Carol. “From Margins to Mainstream: Some 744
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Perspectives on Women and Literature in Italy in the 1980s.” Santo L. Aricò, ed. Contemporary Women Writers in Italy: A Modern Renaissance. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990. 197-217. ---. “Feminism and Its Literary Discontents” (Chapter 1). From Margins to Mainstream: Feminism and Fictional Modes in Italian Women’s Writing, 1968-1990. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. 1-32. Leggendaria: Bambine 3-4 (July-August 1997). Lucamante, Stefania. “Everyday Consumerism and Pornography ‘above the Pulp Line’.” Lucamante, ed. Italian Pulp Fiction: The New Narrative of the Giovani Cannibali Writers. Madison, Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press/ London: Associated University Presses, 2001. 98-134. Nozzoli, Anna. “Sul romanzo femminista italiano degli anni settanta.” Nuova DWF 5 (1977): 55-74. Reprinted as “Verso l’identità: ipotesi sul romanzo femminista degli anni settanta.” Tabù e coscienza. La condizione femminile nella letteratura italiana del Novecento. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978. 147-70. ---. “1970-1980: dieci anni di romanzo al femminile.” La parete di carta. Scritture al femminile nel Novecento italiano. Verona: Gutenberg, 1989. 203-27. Santacroce, Isabella. Luminal. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1998. Stancanelli, Elena. Benzina. Turin: Einaudi, 1998.
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Remembering World War II in 1970s Italian Women’s Writing Miriam Halpern (University of Chicago)
Introduction
By the 1970s, Italians had swept away the dusty remains of World War II. Coupled with the drive for physical reconstruction, the decades that immediately followed the war had been characterized by the desire of a nation to clean up this reminder of those treacherous years. However, memories of a past under Fascism and Nazism could not be swept away like so many other dusty ruins. Instead, the memories of those years settled in the consciousness of the Italian people in the form of so many fragmented episodes of a life of despair. The slow reemergence of difficult memories of World War II that had been repressed by its victim in the immediate aftermath, would ceaselessly cast doubt on the way the past had heretofore been remembered and represented. Early historical and literary accounts of the war that focused on binaries of good and evil, innocence and guilt, or victim and oppressor, would soon be replaced by accounts that would take into consideration a broader range of wartime experiences. The subject of war could now be returned to and examined within a new context that took into account individual, rather than merely collective, experiences during the war.
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These shifts in mentality were reflected in a linguistic change, specifically the increase in the number of terms used to express an individual’s social position. 1 The demand for such terms demonstrated that there was an increased interest in, and number of, marginal figures who were able to voice publicly their concerns and demands with regard to their own social and political agendas amidst a public that had until now, not considered them a voice that could or should be heard. Though many of the physical reminders of the war were eventually cleared away, the collective memory of a nation was a constant indication of the cultural, social, and political residue left behind by the Fascist dictatorship. Shaped by images and ideas about the war already in circulation in the form of literature, film, newspapers, and magazines, the collective memory of many Italians included both their own personal experiences as well as events known only secondhand. Accounts of the violence of fighting, bombing, casualties, hunger, hiding from the Fascists, and the horrific experiences in concentration camps all contributed to how the war years were remembered. In many ways, Fascism continued to maintain its stronghold on the memory of a nation. After 1968, Fascism would begin to emerge as a literary and cinematic theme, demonstrating how the regime had not been completely wiped away in 1945, leaving behind many laws, institutions, public buildings, and even some Fascist officials in office (Bosworth 174 and 236; Torriglia xii). For Italians who quickly rejected Fascism, either during the war or following the liberation, there was now a sentiment 1
According to Lumley in States of Emergency these terms included: “Marginals (emarginati), emergent groups (ceti emergenti), proletarian youth (giovani proletari), minorities (minoranze), the unprotected (non garantiti), the precarious (precari), and plebians (plebe)” (341). According to the Dizionario di parole nuove, 1964-1984, the word emergente was used for the first time in 1978 to mean a person or class who was in the process of acquiring greater importance in some sector of activity (Cortelazzo and Cardinale 68). 747
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that they had been victims of Fascism instead of active participants. For many Italians who experienced the war firsthand, the memories of Fascism could not be easily compartmentalized after the war. Instead these memories invaded the collective consciousness of a nation that was yet unable to understand their own role in the events of the recent past. Some authors writing during the postwar period who had a need to express their personal experiences under Fascism, wrote about how the war was now being integrated into the collective consciousness. The neorealist films and literature of the immediate postwar years aimed to disclose the hidden Italy that had fallen victim to violence, poverty, hunger, and unemployment (Caesar and Hainsworth 28). By the 1950s, a growing sense of defeat was emerging, and with it, a greater willingness to write and think about those who were victimized during the war. Positive memories of Fascism were unpopular and had practically been erased in literary accounts of the wartime (Forgacs 221). Stories appeared that told of personal experiences and confrontations with evil during the war. Some of the most striking examples were written by a group of authors who came of age under Fascism. In Primo Levi’s (b. 1919) autobiographical accounts of his experiences written shortly following the end of the war, Se questo è un uomo (1947) and La tregua (1963), he examines his experience of evil and man’s ability to survive a life of struggle and victimhood. Alberto Moravia (b. 1907), wrote Il conformista (1951), a story of a man, Marcello, who confronts his own violent tendencies as well as the corruption that he inherits from his mentally deranged father and the experience of living under a Fascist dictatorship. Another of Moravia’s novels, La ciociara (1957), which was loosely based on his own experience of fleeing the Fascists and going into hiding in the mountains, confronts the daily hardships and struggles of life during World War II. Giorgio Bassani’s (b. 1916) Storie ferraresi (1956) and 748
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Il giardino dei Finzi-Conti (1962) are further examples of a greater need and willingness to tell and read stories about the war (Hallamore Caesar 251). During the 1950s, however, there was still an unwillingness of many Italians who had been involved in the war to take responsibility for their action, or inaction, under Fascism. Thus, literature dealing with the realities of Italian involvement in the oppression and destruction wrought by Fascism was rare at best. However, among the war stories that were being written and published during this time, the majority were written by men. 2 Notable exceptions, Renata Viganò’s L’Agnese va a morire (1949) and Ada Gobetti’s Diario partigiano (1956), told stories of women’s involvement in the Italian Resistance. However, of the stories written about the war by women, there remained, in many cases, an unwillingness or inability to recognize and confront difficult memories of the past. An example of this type of writing can be seen in Natalia Ginzburg’s works during this period. Ginzburg’s Tutti i nostri ieri (1952), though set during the fight for Italy’s liberation, does not attempt to recount the history of Fascism, war, or the resistance effort (Wood 142-43). Hallamore Caesar points out that even after Ginzburg had become quite well established as an author, she still did not include very much information about how her husband had been captured, imprisoned, tortured, and killed by the Fascists in her autobiographical novel Lessico famigliare (1963) (Hallamore Caesar 252). It would not be until the following decade that a group of women writers would 2
In Sharon Wood’s Italian Women’s Writing 1860-1994, she comments that although Renata Viganò wrote L’Agnese va a morire (1949) and Donne della resistenza (1955) during this time, both dealing with themes of the Resistance, “Neorealism remained a largely male enterprise. Already defined and prescribed for by the various ideologies of post-Unification liberalism and Fascism, women showed themselves in no hurry to line up behind another flag, of whatever colour” (114). 749
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emerge who would begin to examine the difficulties of not only their own personal and private memories of the war, but additionally the way that these memories could be articulated through a language and style relevant to their own types of wartime experiences. The Social and Political Aftermath of 1968
The social movements of 1968 and the following decade helped transform the way the past was remembered and recorded. In particular, the student and worker movements of 1968 were essential to the emergence and expansion of the women’s movement during the 1970s. Among a new group of Italian intellectuals that had emerged in the PCI, the sense of crisis that resulted from the political events of 1968, as well as the increase in terrorist activity that followed during the 1970s, was an organic crisis which subjected long existing structures to a series of critiques (Chambers and Curti 117; Chambers 179). The PCI, which spoke of Marxism as “founded on a loss of organicity, on fragmentation, and the confused drives and desires of metropolitan society” (Chambers and Curti 117) was an example of this plurality of opinions and cultural expression. The new proliferation of diverse cultural experiences that became more prevalent in Italian society was in conflict with those conventions that had already been accepted as daily realities (Chambers 179). This new vocabulary of crisis further demonstrated how after 1968, the public discourse included new marginal voices that spoke of diversity in ways that had previously not been publicly critical. Iain Chambers has observed that the effect of these shifts in Italy’s social ordering was a refusal to accept the notion that history was based on some type of “metaphysical truth or finality” (Chambers 180) that could explain the present moment in Italian politics and culture. Instead, there was a sense that history was merely a compilation of stories told by those in 750
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power to promote their own self-interest. From this crisis in thought emerged the necessity to reexamine the fragments and remnants of the past in order to understand the present situation in a way that better reflected the needs and concerns of the new cultural climate. These shifts in mentality were reflected in a linguistic change, specifically the increase in the number of terms used to express an individual’s social position. The demand for such terms demonstrated that there was an increase in interest in, and number of, marginal figures who were able to voice publicly their concerns and demands with regard to their own social and political agendas amidst a public that had until now, not considered them a voice that could or should be heard. The rewriting of history had to take into account the “shifting interpersonal and political contexts” 3 that were taking place in Italy. The marginal subject could be understood as what feminist theorist Teresa de Lauretis has described as a conglomeration of many different voices and ideas, “neither unified nor singly divided between positions of masculinity and femininity but multiply organized across positions on several axes of difference and across discourses and practices that may be, and often are, mutually contradictory.” (Teresa de Lauretis, “Eccentric Subjects,” 137). The margin’s adoption of the slogan “History is killing us” became a clear indication of this new contestation of the manipulation of national memory (Fraser 241). After 1968, many Italians began to question their own individual and familial identities in relationship to a troubling Fascist past. 4 3
Biddy Martin and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Feminist Politics: What’s Home Got to do With It?” cited in Teresa de Lauretis, p. 136.
4
“Rapporto sulla situazione sociale del paese,” 1977 on 1976, cited in John Fraser, p. 116. Bertolucci’s back-to-back films, La strategia del ragno (1969) and Il Conformista (1970), are strong examples of this type of questioning of familial identity. Bertolucci has commented, “Both films share the theme of betrayal, the weight of the past and of the father-figure.” Enzo Ungari, p. 71. In La strategia del ragno (1969), the son of an anti-Fascist hero seeks 751
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The past was now reopened to the interpretation of many different groups of people, none of whom had experienced the war in the same way. The Women’s Movement
The notion that there was not simply one acceptable version of the past allowed for those on the margins of discourse, women in particular, to express publicly a multiplicity of views and ideas about the wartime. Historian Luisa Passerini observes that “there was a complex interplay between these dimensions [cultural movements and the increase in women’s writing], a matter not of causal relationships but of common participation in the process which was creating language, values, and consciousness” (Luisa Passerini, “Gender Relations” 151). The relationship between the personal and political was central to the social movements that allowed women to rethink their relationships and positionality, both in the public arena and at home. In order for many women to understand the ways that the prevalent social and political power structures functioned, they examined how these constructions of power were already at play in their private lives. Since there were women who could not identify with the political parties and unions that claimed to represent them, they expressed a need to explore new ways of living (Robert Lumley, “Social Movements and the Ecology Question” 120). Female activists set about challenging laws that kept them in subordinate positions, both politically and within their families. The subsequent emergence of the feminist information about his father’s death thirty years later. In a disturbing twist, the son discovers that his father was likely a traitor. Therefore, the truth, instead of comforting the son, encumbers him even more. In Il conformista, the protagonist attempts to overcome the troubling moments of his childhood by conforming and becoming entrenched in the Fascist party. Throughout the film, he seeks a replacement for the authority figure of his father who has been institutionalized. 752
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movement in Italy during the seventies found strength by mobilizing around female experiences and created a demand for books by and about women. In the 1970s, the exploration of areas of experience that had previously been ignored by literature became a way of challenging “the political and moral status quo.” 5 Many women found new ways to express themselves in their writing by showing an awareness of the past and present cultural and political climate. Bookstores and publishing houses set up by activists created new outlets for these texts born of the necessity to explore a female identity formed from multiple experiences (Lumley, “Social Movements and the Ecology Question” 118). Though many women authors had already been writing about their experiences for many years, including under Fascism, it was not until the 1970s that a group of women authors used writing as a way to make political connections between their own need to tell their stories publicly and the need of other women to hear these accounts. The changes and challenges brought forth by the social movements of 1968 made these women, as well as other marginal groups who had not been able to voice publicly their concerns, rethink the way they had been examining the past. Following the current trend of challenging the historical truth of existent histories of the past, this group of authors now looked at their experiences under Fascism in different ways. There was now a political atmosphere that underscored the value of a wide range of experiences and discarded the notion that there was a definitive version of the past. This made way for women, and others with stories yet untold, to fashion their accounts of the past in a way that was not merely a part, or secondary, to previous historical accounts. Instead, these marginal authors redefined the historical 5
Sharon Wood, “Rosetta Loy”, p. 121. Wood further explains that in the 1970s, women’s writing “moved away from an overtly feminist stance which took the real lives of women as material for short stories and novels.” 753
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novel for themselves, with an emphasis on narrating the past in a way that better represented their own personal experience of the war. The personal and political were interdependent in their writings, because implicit in writing women’s experience was the context of women’s 1970s political and cultural activism. War Stories
Many feminist novels were published during this time, however, there was also a group of women writers writing about their experiences during World War II who were not self-proclaimed feminists. Yet even women authors who did not have any interest in becoming politically active and participating in the movements of 1968, were nonetheless affected by the political and social changes being brought about in Italian society. These texts: Rosetta Loy’s La bicicletta (1974), Elsa Morante’s La Storia (1974), Francesca Duranti’s La Bambina (1976), Giuliana Morandini’s I cristalli di Vienna (1978), and Luce d’Eramo’s Deviazione (1979), all feature female protagonists, sometimes the author herself, who experience life at the margins during World War II. These authors were of different generations, each one experiencing the war during a different life stage, ranging from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. Therefore, each of these authors did not, and could not, be said to have experienced the war from a similar generational perspective. Their varying ideas and attitudes about the war and the current changes taking place as they were writing these novels can be observed through their relationships to the women’s movement and how they perceived themselves as writers. Therefore, their perspectives on the society in which they live is one characterized by distance, resulting not only from societal constraints, but also due to their own identity as marginal figures. At times the voice is demonstrative of more than one type of liminality, for example, both female and Jewish. They attempt to reappropriate their
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buried histories by re-writing their past as a series of discontinuous moments. For this group of women authors, telling their stories was a way for them to take ownership of their past and consequently rewrite history in a way that demonstrated how women in particular experienced and remembered those years. For some of these women authors, this meant revisiting everyday wartime experiences, while for other authors, this involved the process of becoming conscious of overwhelming experiences that continued to disrupt their present. The experience of such traumatic moments can take the form of a personal injury or painful psychological experience. It is not until the individual or community is able to confront and work through the memories of the past that they can integrate those memories into their present identities. Together these remnants, leftover from past difficult moments or personal physical and psychological injuries, form a collage of experience that is then figured in a text rooted in a traumatic moment. The trauma event itself is an eternal present, one that defines its history as an unassimilated residual moment that cannot be overcome. 6 Trauma allows for the possibility of a history that is not based on “simple models of experience and reference” but resituates understandings of the past (Caruth 11). The historical experience becomes recognizable only in connection to another time and place due to the latency period that must pass before the trauma can be re-experienced (Caruth 17). It is in this way that the crisis of the 1970s takes on a particular relevance in that World War II traumas can be seen as resurfacing during this period. In retrospective accounts, the texts revisit the stories and lives of victims through a return to 6
Bessel Van der Kolk and Onno Van Der Hart’s “The Intrusive Past” explains that trauma memories are unassimilated scraps of overwhelming experiences that must be integrated with existing mental schemes and be transformed into narrative language. 755
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the time of the trauma in order to locate memories that had been repressed for about thirty years. They are texts of memory that rely heavily on traces and remnants to reconstruct the events of the past, and to reveal the state of upheaval and guilt that remained a presence in Italian society in the seventies. 7 Women’s 1970s stories about their experiences during World War II took shape through an innovative use of language and technique that demonstrated the particular ways that they remembered and experienced the past. The atmosphere of social and political change in Italy after 1968 opened up a space for women to tell about personal experiences in ways that challenged previous versions of the past. Whether intentionally or otherwise, their stories became political because they spoke of the need to understand how Fascism was experienced, not just by men fighting the war, but additionally, by little girls, women, and families living the reality of war at home. While it is impossible to make any sweeping generalizations about women’s literature of the 1970s, it is reasonable to suggest that what have been termed by many literary critics as novels of memory, might be more accurately discussed as novels of remembering. 8 What this slight alteration in terminology suggests is that these stories do not conjure up past images and tell stories of the war or some other significant moment in time, but instead these stories are conscious reassessments of particular memories in ways that now factor in a 1970s sensibility of a determined search for self-knowledge. Literary theorist Judith Ryan explains that remembering the past is a way of reconstructing the past, “searching for missing 7
Luisa Passerini’s Fascism in Popular Memory: the Cultural Experience of the Turin Working Class discusses how shame, guilt, silence, and injury become recurring themes in the memoirs following the fall of Fascism.
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Ann Hallamore Caesar observes how women’s literature has “given enormous importance to memory” (259).
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pieces, filling in gaps, re-creating lost images” (13). Therefore, events that might have already been recounted numerous times, are now told in ways that demonstrate their relationship to the current social and political situation. As stories of the war are remembered from the perspective of a decade of social change, relationships that were perhaps previously looked over as insignificant now emerge as defining moments. Traumatic memories of personal or collective injury and violation are no longer relegated to some marginal meta-space in memory. These moments are confronted, worked through, and most importantly, considered in relationship to present conceptions of truth and identity. The text’s actual structure thus becomes emblematic of the social and political changes of 1968 and the way that women viewed themselves and each other. The emergence of a new vocabulary and stylistic models that broke with traditional forms, meant that women now had new ways to express their experience at the margin: visually, audibly, and psychically. Just as women sought a relationship with their wartime past, they also sought to reassess their current relationships with both other women and men, and to understand how the individual pieces of their histories could be rearranged in a new order that more appropriately demonstrated the way they remembered and envisioned their lives. The novels discussed here show a self-conscious awareness of the necessity to narrate the past in a way that at least aims to approximate some of the types of experiences shared by women during the war. In examining what Linda Hutcheon has called “truths in the plural” these authors raise the question of whether or not it is possible to know the “past other than through its textualized remains” (18, 20). By unearthing fragments of memory and placing these individual shards of the past into a larger frame, those difficult memories can be placed in a present collage composed of remembered pieces. The picture that emerges is then a recontextualized representation of a past that can no longer find meaning apart from the present. 757
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Works Cited
Baranski, Zygmunt G. and Robert Lumley, eds. Culture and Conflict in Post-war Italy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. Bosworth, RJ.B. The Italian Dictatorship. London: Oxford UP, 1998. Caesar, Michael and Peter Hainsworth. “The Transformation of Post-War Italy.” Writers & Society in Contemporary Italy: A Collection of Essays. Caesar, Michael and Peter Hainsworth, ed. Warwickshire: Berg Publishers, 1984. 134. Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Chambers, Iain and Lidia Curti. Formations of Nation and People. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984. Chambers, Iain. “Rolling Away From the Centre Towards X: Some Notes on Italian Philosophy, ‘Weak Thought’ and Postmodernism.” Baranski and Lumley: 178-191. Cortelazzo, Manlio and Ugo Cardinale, eds. Dizionario di parole nuove, 1964-1984. Torino: Loescher Editore, 1986. De Lauretis, Teresa. “Eccentric Subjects: Feminist Theory and Historical Consciousness.” Feminist Studies 16 1 (Spring 1990): 115-150. David Forgacs and Robert Lumley, eds. Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Forgacs, David. “Days of Sodom: The Fascism-Perversion Equation in Films of the 1960s and 1970s.” Italian Fascism: History, Memory, and Representation. R.J.B. Bosworth and Patrizia Dogliani, eds. New York: St. Martins’s Press, 1999. 216-236. Fraser, John. Italy: Society in Crisis/Society in Transformation. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. Hallamore Caesar, Ann. “Post-War Italian Narrative: An Alternative Account.” Forgacs and Lumley: 248-260. 758
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Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York and London: Routledge, 1988. Lumley, Robert. States of Emergency. Cultures of Revolt from 1978 to 1978. London: Verso: 1990. ---. “Challenging Tradition: Social Movements, Cultural Change and the Ecology Question.” Baranski and Lumley: 115136. Passerini, Luisa. Fascism in Popular Memory: the Cultural Experience of the Turin Working Class. Trans. Robert Lumley and Judy Bloomfield. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987. ---. “Gender Relations.” Forgacs and Lumley 1996:144-159. Ryan, Judith. The Uncompleted Past: Postwar German Novels and the Third Reich. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1983. Ungari, Enzo. Bertolucci by Bertolucci. Trans. Donald Ranvaud. London: Plexus, 1987. Van der Kolk, Bessel A. and Van Der Hart, Onno. “The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma.” Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Caruth, Cathy, ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. 158-182. Wood, Sharon. “Rosetta Loy: The Paradox of the Past.” The New Italian Novel. Zygmunt G. Baranski and Lino Pertile, eds. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1993. 121-38. ---. Italian Women’s Writing 1860-1994. London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Athlone, 1995.
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La Forme Autobiographique dans la Littérature Féminine depuis les Années 70 Sabina Gola (Université Libre de Bruxelles) Littérature et société: les années soixante et le “grand changement”
Les bouleversements d’ordre économique, politique et social qui se sont produits au sein de la société italienne à partir des anneés soixante – notamment le 68, le mouvement néoféministe (entre 1970 et 1977) et la nouvelle législation concernant la famille et les rapports conjugaux 1 – entraînent pour les femmes un “grand changement”, ainsi le définit la philosophe Luisa Muraro (DoniFugenzi VIII) – qui permettra aux femmes de se reconnaître en tant que sujets sociaux et de refléchir à une nouvelle conception de soi. Sur le plan littéraire, les années soixante représentent la ligne de partage entre le Novecento et “l’actualité de notre présent”, affirme Marina Zancan dans son essai Il doppio itinerario della scrittura. La donna nella tradizione letteraria italiana (6). En effet, c’est au long de cette décennie que les TPF
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1970: introduction du divorce, confirmée avec le referendum de 1974; 1971: abrogation de l’article du code qui interdisait les anticonceptionnels; 1975: approbation du nouveau droit de la famille (parité entre les époux); 1978: approbation de la loi qui permet l’interruption de la grossesse dans les premiers 90 jours (interruption volontaire); 1996: approbation de la loi contre la violence sexuelle (Doni et Fugenzi).
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écrivaines, au nom d’une nouvelle subjectivité féminine, commencent leur relecture de l’histoire humaine et plus particulièrement des formes de représentation de la femme dans la tradition littéraire, pour tenter d’établir, entre autres, des liens entre la culture italienne et l’écriture feminine. Mémoire personnelle et mémoire collective
Les écrivaines de la deuxième génération du Novecento 2 portent un regard différent sur la réalité, un regard plus large et moderne, par rapport à la génération précédente: elles déterminent leur point de vue, expérimentent des nouvelles structures narratives, introduisent des thèmes nouveaux. Leur écriture s’identifie avec la récupération de la mémoire, personnelle (“lunga memoria difensiva”, Zancan XXVI) et collective. Leurs ouvrages, qui racontent des histoires de femmes, dans un monde d’hommes et de femmes, montrent ainsi un caractère fortement autobiographique. 3 La femme-écrivain “raconte son expérience” et c’est par ce biais qu’elle légitime soi-même et son écriture. Natalia Ginsburg et Alba de Cespedes représent deux façons possibles et differentes d’être femme et, partant, écrivaine. La première, en affirmant que les femmes, de temps à autres, ont la mauvaise habitude de tomber dans un puits et de se laisser prendre d’une profonde mélancolie et donc de se noyer dans ce puits, TPF
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Fausta Cialente, Elsa Morante, Anna Banti, Anna Maria Ortese, Maria Bellonci, Natalia Ginsburg, Lalla Romano, Alba de Cespedes, Gianna Manzini, Paola Masino. (Zancan 100)
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Cfr. Carla Carotenuto: “In Camera ottica la scrittrice [Sanvitale] precisa il significato del concetto di memoria, distinguendolo da quello di ricordo: ‘Confesso che la parola “ricordo” non mi piace. Mi piace la parola “memoria”. La memoria mi sembra un fatto attivo, è con noi nel presente, è la grande caldaia che accompagna, genera, rifiuta e si unisce ai grandi e piccoli atti della nostra quotidianità. La parola “ricordo” isola le immagini e le allontana in un Olimpo gelato, Olimpo o Ade di ombre che possiamo rendere vivide o scolorirle a nostro piacere’” (65). PT
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représente la souffrance d’être femme qui rend impossible la liberté féminine; l’autre croit, au contraire, qu’il suffit que les femmes prennent conscience des vertus de ce puits et qu’elle diffusent l’expérience qu’elles ont faite au fond de ce puits (Cutrufelli). Francesca Sanvitale (1928) e Rosetta Loy (1931), au cours d’un colloque consacré à l’écriture féminine au XXe siècle, 4 témoignent des difficultés d’exercer le métier d’écrivaine au tout début de leur carrière littéraire, c’est à dire dans les années soixante-septante (1970 pour Sanvitale et 1974 pour Loy). Loy rappellait qu’Elsa Morante s’appelait elle-même “scrittore”, “ecrivain”, ce qui met en évidence l’ostilité de la société vis à vis de la femme“écrivain” ainsi que de la littérature féminine; Sanvitale, pour sa part, mettait l’accent spécialement sur la tache difficile à laquelle les femmes de son époque étaient confrontées: la découverte d’une identité féminine, son acceptation avant tout par les femmes et ensuite par la société. Au fur et à mesure que les revendications du mouvement féministe pénètrent dans tous les domaines de notre civilisation (occidentale) et à plusieurs niveaux, dans la littérature ainsi que dans tous les domaines de l’écriture, la femme passe d’une position de marginalité à une position centrale: le nombre d’écrivaines se multiplie et chacune raconte son histoire et représente son univers. C’est le résultat de leurs réflexions, en tant que femmes avec une conscience féminine, qu’elles présentent dans leurs ouvrages, qui donne lieu à une pensée philosophique féminine, à des théories et à une critique féministe au féminisme. P
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Rome, Letteratura italiana del Novecento - Bilancio di un secolo, colloque organisé par le Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari, l’Assessorato alla Cultura del Comune e du Sistema Biblioteche Centri Culturali, 1996.
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Les typologies narratives
À partir des années 80 du XXe siècle et jusqu’à nos jours, dans la production littéraire féminine se présentent essentiellement deux pôles théoriques, observe Elisabetta Rasy dans son livre Le donne e la letteratura: d’un côté, l’altérité opposé à l’identitéfemme, la sexualité autre à l’étérosexualité, le positionnement ailleurs à celui dans le monde; de l’autre, l’ordre symbolique de la mère ou de la généalogie féminine, où la femme, en tant que corps de sexe féminin, tente de retablir sa position dans le monde et dans son savoir du monde (Rasy 10). Les typologies narratives choisies pour représenter cet ordre “autre” sont: 1. l’autobiographie, qui est essai critique ou recherche historique et anthropologique sur le savoir de soi même et sur son histoire sexuée; 2. le roman-investigation, le roman recherche sur des personnages féminins du passé (mythiques, historiques ou familiales) considérés comme “mères” de cet ordre symbolique (13). 5 Ce type de narration prends aussi la forme d’autobiographie, où on peut parler de soi par personne interposée sans tomber ainsi dans le piège de la subjectivité. Les femmes, en racontant leur histoire, ou leurs histoires personnelles, renouent le fil de leur memoire personnelle et, en même temps, de l’Histoire collective. 6 P
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Voir aussi Maria Teresa Navarro Salazar, “Donne e storia sul volgere del secolo: Romanzo, biografia, autobiografia”.
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Francesca Marciano, dans un interview sur son roman Casa Rossa, affirme: “mi interessava ‘ancorare’ quel misfatto presunto di cui parlavo prima a due momenti centrali della nostra storia, così che la storia di una famiglia – le omissioni, le bugie e le falsificazioni – riflettessero come in uno specchio anche le omissioni e le presunte verità dell’Italia in due momenti cruciali della sua storia. Era proprio questo il parallelo che mi interessava nel romanzo”. À propos de ce roman voir aussi Rorato. TP
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La pratique: Sanvitale, Loy, Rasy, Tamaro, Marciano, Vinci
Nous avons choisi, à cette occasion, de présenter les ouvrages de quelques écrivaines qui ont débuté leur carrière littéraire dans les années septante jusqu’à arriver à la littérature féminine plus récente: Francesca Sanvitale (1928) et Rosetta Loy (1931), qui débutèrent dans les années septante; Elisabetta Rasy (1947) et Susanna Tamaro (1957) qui publièrent leur premier roman à la fin des années quatre-vingt; Francesca Marciano (1955) et Simona Vinci, à la fin des années quatre-vingt dix . Les romans choisis sont les suivants: Madre e figlia (1980), La bicicletta (1974), Va’ dove ti porta il cuore (1994), Tra noi due (2002), Casa Rossa (2003), Come prima delle madri (2003). Les personnages féminins
Ce sont des histoires de famille au féminin ou bien des histoires de femmes entourées, presque uniquement, d’individus de sexe féminin (enfants, amies, vielles femmes, etc.). Les hommes (pères, compagnons, grands-pères) restent plutôt dans les coulisses; s’ils sont admis à jouer leur rôle dans le théâtre de l’histoire, c’est parce qu’ils sont des hommes au caractère féminin ou des hommes carrémment devenus femmes. L’héritage génant
Les situations décrites et les personnages qui interprètent ces histoires sont très variées. Toutes les femmes protagonistes de ces romans, ainsi que la plupart des personnages féminins mineurs, ont procrée, de gré ou de force, une fois seulement ou à plusieurs reprises. D’aucunes obligées par les conventions sociales, ont vécu l’expérience déchirante de l’avortement, d’autres y ont été contraintes pour des causes naturelles. Ces femmes exercent leur rôle de mères (généralement seules, étant séparées de leur mari ou compagnon), plus ou moins à leur aise, dans une société où, au sein de la famille, les liens de parenté verticaux (rapport parents-enfants) et horizontaux (entre sœurs, généralement, ou frère et sœur) sont en crise. La famille, dans le 764
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sens traditionnel du mot, n’existe plus (sauf en Loy, où on trouve le stéréotype de la famille traditionnelle); c’est plutôt l’union d’“individus” qui l’emporte, d’individus réunis sous le même toit, qui vivent dans une condition de malaise existentiel et qui ne ressentent pas de sentiments d’affection réciproque. Chacune doit supporter le poids d’un héritage “génant” que leur mère et, encore plus loin, leur grand-mère leur ont transmis et qu’à leur tour chacune d’elles transmettront à leur fille/ filles; 7 un héritage qu’elles ne comprennent pas toujours – peut-être la recherche du “vrai amour”? ou la transgression des conventions sociales (un enfant né d’un rapport extraconjugal, l’homosexualité)? – et qui les rends coupables vis-à-vis de la société, ou même de leur propre famille. Seules, elles fuient la réalité; pour elles, il semble impossible d’établir ou de retrouver un lien entre elles-mêmes et la collectivité, entre leur intériorité et le monde extérieur. D’autres, sans aucune certitude sur leur futur, essaient de rompre la chaine “du crime” et de se construir une nouvelle vie. TPF
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“Qualcosa è passato di mano in mano da una donna all’altra, nella mia famiglia. Non so quale nome dargli.” “Èun segreto, un lascito di cui è bene non si parli. Qualcosa che ci pesa.” TP
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“Sì, mi rendo conto che né Alba né Renée né Isabella ci fanno una gran figura come madri. Ma alla fine del romanzo, ognuna di loro ha una specie di rendenzione o di ‘riscatto’. Mi interessava raccontare la storia di donne che sbagliano, senza perdere di vista la loro umanità. Volevo raccontare una famiglia attraverso il percorso di tre donne, ognuna delle quali appare colpevole di un ‘misfatto’, che non è poi chiaro se ha veramente commesso o no. In altre parole, ognuna di queste donne consegna una eredità scomoda alla propria figlia, e in un certo senso il peso della sua presunta colpa finisce per ‘storpiare’ la natura fragile della figlia, che a turno ripeterà la stessa cosa. Ogni volta le conseguenze saranno più gravi. Mi interessava raccontare questo ‘passaggio del testimone’ da donna a donna”. Interview à Francesca Marciano. PT
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“È stato proprio quel peso a storpiarci lentamente, l’una dopo l’altra come il fil di ferro torce il fusto di una pianta.” (Marciano 19) L’infelicità abitualmente segue la linea femminile. Come certe anomalie genetiche, passa di madre in figlia. Passando, invece di smorzarsi, diviene via via più intensa, più inestirpabile e profonda. [...] Noi per generazioni e generazioni, abbiamo frequentato soltanto la stanza da letto, la cucina, il bagno; abbiamo compiuto migliaia e migliaia di passi, di gesti, portandoci dietro lo stesso rancore, la stessa insoddisfazione. (Tamaro 39) Tradition et modernité
Les femmes presentées dans ces romans se situent entre la tradition et la modernité. Pour quelques-unes, la maison reste le lieu traditionnel de l’exil féminin. D’autres, en pélerines à la recherche de leur identité, sont obligées aux déplacements incessants en de nombreux endroits. D’aucunes considèrent la cuisine comme le lieu privilégié pour se retrouver, se rapprocher (mère et fille par exemple) et parler entre elles (Marciano, Vinci). D’autres, en révolte ouverte contre les conventions sociales refusent absolument d’y entrer ou de preparer à manger (Vinci). Rosetta Loy raconte l’histoire d’une famille de la haute bourgeoisie italienne pendant et après la deuxième guerre mondiale, jusqu’au boom économique. La mère de famille, naive, éternellement angoissée pour ses enfants, sur lesquels d’ailleurs elle n’a aucune autorité (au contraire de son mari, naturellement autoritaire et respecté par ses enfants), craintive de l’inconnu, se cache derrière l’institution familiale. La maison est son royaume 8 et elle, elle seule, en a les clés. 9 . Ses gestes TPF
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“Voci caute e autorevoli abituate a contare i resti della spesa e le uova nel paniere di vimini; generazioni di donne sono passate lasciando un lume, la
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quotidiens, toujours les mêmes depuis des générations, rassurent ses enfants; ses reproches auxquels ils restent indifférents ou réagissent d’une manière verbalement violente et impolie sont les seuls témoignages de son existence. Déscendante d’une famille où “le donne per generazioni hanno ricamato centrini e borse per il tabacco, si sono inginocchiate nel medesimo banco riservato con offerta annuale alla Parrocchia e nella morte hanno avuto congiunte le mani in casse con borchie d’ottone poi calate nella cappella dalla volta celeste” (Loy 18), elle reste étrangère à tout ce qui se passe autour d’elle (la guerre, la vie politique, ...), aussi bien que ses filles. Elle ne ressent pas les changements qui se font dans la société: elle montre ouvertement sa répulsion en voyant ses filles, qui ne sont plus des adolescentes, bavarder, jouer et fumer avec des garçons, ainsi que son incompréhension “naive” face à la légerté avec laquelle ses enfants considèrent le mariage, qu’elle juge un lien éternel. Mais le futur presse: 10 la mort du mari et les enfants qui quittent la maison pour se construir leur existence l’obligent de plonger dans la réalité. C’est à ce moment qu’elle se rend compte de sa faiblesse et de TPF
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coppia di candelieri a zampa di gallina o il tavolino fumoir, hanno dipinto tralci di rose dove lo specchio si era incrinato; Una ha ricamato le tende trafiggendo con l’ago il telaio nei pomeriggi di sole, il profilo illuminato dal candore del lino: la Dotti bellissima rimasta ‘fantina’. Bucando rose di filo tra ditali d’argento e matassine dalle mille sfumature, lei si era convinta ‘che bene come a casa sua non sarebbe stata da nessun’altra parte’”(Loy 123). 9
“A casa la madre va e viene con il mazzo delle chiavi, siede sotto il noce e fare le presine per il caffè in coton perlé. [...] Lui [Giovanni] resta a lungo a guardarla intrecciare le maglie attratto dal filo bianco che corre veloce fra le dita, un’abilità da giocoliere. La guarda e le parla godendo del ritmo dei gesti sempre uguali: lei ha una macchia nell’angolo dell’occhio sinistro, una macchia rossastra nata forse con lei e Giovanni la ritrova ogni volta con affetto mentre l’ombre del noce spegne i lampi del crochet. Sempre più lontano e struggente il sorriso a fossette sotto il cappello a cloche. Un piccolo cumulo di proposizioni quotidiane che lei quotidianamente controlla e le parole passano lievi e incolori, informi come larve” (Loy 102-103).
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“Il passato non esiste tanto il futuro preme” (Loy 59). 767
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son impuissance, en reprenant conscience de sa situation d’infériorité par rapport au mari, qu’elle avait oubliée, qu’elle avait détestée, mais qu’elle avait dû accepter, malgré elle.11 Si la flamme de la révolte s’était reveillée dans la mère, ses filles ont déjà accepté la condition que la société leur impose: l’étude leur semble inutile, “che idea questa del padre di farle fare per forza l’Università, poi una si sposa e a che serve tutto quello studio?” (Loy 134), commente la plus jeune de ses filles, en sachant que sa sœur aînée a dû présenter un examen étant déjà enceinte. Elles obéissent à leur père, même en ce qui concerne “l’amour”, non sans expliquer leurs raisons dans les conflits. Malgré cette représentation des femmes dans leur rôle traditionnel de mères de familles, exilées de la réalité pendant toute leur vie, le roman se clôt sur une note optimiste, déjà annoncée par le titre: la byciclette, pour les femmes, un signe de liberté, la possibilité d’être indépendantes. Le narrateur (l’écrivaine) qui avait toujours raconté à la troisième personne, se dévoile dans la phrase par laquelle le roman s’achève: “Lei (une femme allemande) mi insegnò ad andare in bicicletta. Una legnano argento” (Loy 166). Le “grand changement” ne fait que commencer. TPF
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Peut-on changer son destin de femme?
Simona Vinci nous offre une vision beaucoup moins optimiste dans son roman, en ce qui concerne la condition des femmes. Tea, la protagoniste, afin de ne pas devenir comme sa mère, a voulu changer sa situation de pauvre fille paysanne, et pour cela a été punie. L’histoire du roman se déroule pendant la guerre civile en Italie, au déclin du fascisme. Le chapitre que Vinci consacre à Tea, où elle-même raconte son histoire de jeune adoléscente et, ensuite de femme mariée, s’ouvre sur une scène 11
“A volte si irritava di questa condizione di inferiorità, a volte piangeva e convulsa raccattava le sue cose minacciando di andarsene, nebulosamente consapevole di un’ingiustizia” (Loy 156). TP
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de famille, à la campagne, dans le Nord de l’Italie: “La madre che si muove in continuazione: affetta il pane, riempie piatti e bicchieri, e loro tutti lì, muti. Indifferenti alla stanchezza della madre, alla sua, nella pretesa di essere serviti così, ogni giorno che Dio manda in terra perché è così che dev’essere. Perché loro sono uomini e voi donne e la vita è così che va” (Vinci 189). Le narrateur intervient personnellement pour souligner, dirionsnous, une injustice, à laquelle, apparemment, on ne peut porter remède. Le regard du narrateur pénètre dans les pensées de Tea: La ragazza pensò a sua madre, al suo corpo sfasciato che un anno dopo l’altro ha portato il peso di un figlio non voluto. Tutti quei bambini, quelli vivi e quelli morti, le hanno succhiato il sangue e l’hanno fatta diventare decrepita. Questo è quello che tocca anche a lei. Lo sa da sempre. Prima o poi le sceglieranno un marito. Il meglio che le può accadere è che sia lei a sceglierselo. Un uomo rozzo e ignorante come i suoi fratelli. Sempre stanco, sudato e affamato. Tempo dieci anni e anche lei sarà uguale a sua madre: sfatta e risucchiata. (Vinci 189)
Depuis son enfance, Tea travaille dans la “trattoria” de son père, avec sa mère et ses frères. Sa maman vivait en esclave de son mari et de ses garçons; Tea était destinée de prendre sa place, elle en était consciente. Son père la frappait et, même si elle était une fille, il prétendait qu’elle assiste à l’abattage du cochon. Sa mère non plus ne la traitait différemment de ses frères; il n’y avait aucune complicité entre elles. A Tea, qui a presque 18 ans, se présente, un jour, la possibilité de sortir de ce cercle vicieux: elle part avec un étranger pour aller dans un autre pays (l’Allemagne) loin de sa famille, afin d’échapper à son destin. Mais son destin “de femme” la poursuivra jusque là. En effet, ce n’est pas son père qui lui imposera un mari, mais un allemand qu’elle connaît à peine, et cela pour proteger Tea ainsi que son 769
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enfant (qu’elle aura à 19 ans) à cause de la disparition du vrai père de l’enfant. Elle vivra sa vie, en femme riche, mais avec un homme qu’elle n’aime pas. Ce n’est que la drogue et l’alcol qui lui donneront la sensation d’avoir atteint sa liberté; en réalité elle restera prisonnière des conventions sociales. L’argent de son mari lui permet de s’habiller à la mode, ce que les autres femmes du village ne pouvaient pas faire vu qu’elles étaient nées, comme sa mère, pour faire des enfants: “Io non ne farò mai più. Mai. Non mi interessa cosa dicono. Cosa dice nessuno, piuttosto me li levo dalla pancia con le mie mani. Tanto mio marito non gli interessa di fare figli. Pensa solo a lavorare” (Vinci 255). Ce n’est que dans le mensonge, dans l’assassinat, dans les allucinations qu’elle trouvera son identité de femme libre. Tea avait appris à écrire pour travailler, pour écrire le menu sur le tableau de la “trattoria” ou pour prendre les commandes des clients. Seule, dans un hôtel de Berlin, dans l’attente de l’homme qu’elle considère comme son “prince charmant” qui l’a apparemment sauvée d’une vie annoncée, pour la première fois, Tea met sur papier ses pensées. Elle n’écrit que cent fois son nom. Mais l’encre mouillé tache la feuille et efface son nom. Tea, en effet, est encore “una ragazza di diciassette anni, vergine, appena scappata di casa, con uno sconosciuto, una serva con le mani rovinate dal lavoro” (Vinci 210). C’est l’acte sexuel qui la catapultera dans l’univers des adultes et marquera à jamais sa vie de femme mensongère et assassine.
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Tea tient un journal, 12 où elle raconte sa vie quotidienne à partir du début de sa grossesse jusqu’à l’assassinat, perpetré par ellemême, de l’homme qui aurait dû la “sauver” de son destin de femme pauvre et paysanne. Elle se regarde dans le miroir de ses mots, au moment même où elle les écrit. “Scrivo, ma dentro la testa le frasi suonano molto più belle. Quando le metto sulla carta sono morte, non hanno lo stesso fiato di prima” (Vinci 239). Le filtre de la conscience qui présente des événements passées manque totalement. Le regard de Tea ne touche que le présent. En effet, Téa n’a ni de passé (qu’elle renie) ni de futur, ni en tant que femme, ni en tant que mère. C’est son fils qui prendra la relève TPF
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À la recherche de l’identité feminine: le rapport entre mère et fille
La mère est “memoire de la chair”, affirme Luce Irigaray, philosophe et psycanaliste française. Cependant, elle ne peut pas rester“mémoire” à jamais, si le rapport entre mère et fille veut dépasser la phase conflictuelle et atteindre son équilibre. L’objet maternel, à un certain moment, ne doit plus être au centre de notre vie affective ou de notre univers psychique; il doit prendre une forme plus ouverte et devenir récit. 13 En se reconnaissant dans la mère, chaque femme définit son identité. Chaque TPF
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12
Il est d’ailleurs significatif de remarquer que Vinci utilise cette même forme d’écriture pour un autre personnage, adversaire déclaré du personnage principal, une jeune fille (Irina) de 13 ans qui croit être la fille de cette femme, mais qui en réalité ne l’est pas et, de plus, en est détestée à cause de son regard pénétrant qui sait lire la méchanceté cachéé de cette femme. Vinci, en leur attribuant la même forme d’écriture, situe les deux personnages sur le même plan à l’intérieur de l’histoire. Chacune, par l’écriture, a la possibilité d’expliquer sa version des faits. Dicotomie bien-mal, c’est le mal qui gagne. TP
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13
“La madre è memoria della carne. [...] Ma non può restare sempre e soltanto memoria della carne. L’oggetto materno che si incorpora nella nostra vita affettiva, nel nostro mondo psichico, divenendone il fulcro o l’asse, a un certo punto deve sciogliersi in una forma più respirabile, deve accedere a una qualche forma di racconto” (Salvo 13). TP
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écrivaine doit partant se confronter avec ce rapport à un moment ou l’autre de sa vie. Rasy, Marciano et Sanvitale, 14 dans leurs romans, mettent en évidence spécialement le rapport entre mère et fille. Si dans l’ouvrage de Vinci c’est la mère qui se raconte à la première personne, dans les romans des trois autres écrivaines, c’est la fille, en effet, qui désormais adulte, se raconte en utilisant comme moyen d’introspection le rapport avec sa mère et l’histoire de sa famille. Dans le cadre des Dialoghi di Trani, une manifestation littéraire qui réunit pendant trois jours onze auteurs, Dacia Maraini, Anna Salvo (psycothérapeute) e Silvia Vegetti Finzi (psycologue) se sont confrontées sur le thème Madri e figlie. Ieri e oggi, qu’elles ont analysé en tant que “filles”, d’un point de vue anthropologique, social, historique, biologique, psycanalitique et littéraire. Dans les grandes lignes, les sujets principaux qu’elles ont traités sont les suivants: 1. absence ou présence de la mère; 2. les rapports de la fille avec les autres femmes de la famille (tantes, cousines, belle-sœurs, ...), étant la mère absente; 3. la mère, objet d’adoration ou figure vivante; 4. l’identification de la fille avec sa mère; 5. la mère comme “pietra di paragone (pierre de touche) o pietra di inciampo”; 6. le rapport biologique entre mère e fille, en relation avec la société et l’histoire; 7. le regard de la mère sur la fille et le refus de la mère de voir la sexualité de la fille; 8. la ridéfinition de la maternité; 9. la puissance génératrice des femmes. Les ouvrages choisies pour cet essai sont imaginés autour d’un ou plusieurs de ces thèmes. Ce qui ne fait que confirmer que le rapport entre vie et littérature constitue pour une bonne partie des écrivaines le point de départ de la création littéraire. À l’aide de ces points, nous avons donc comparé les TPF
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Dans Madre e figlia de Sanvitale, il y a aussi des passages à la première personne ainsi que des passages où c’est la mère, réinventée dans l’imagination de la fille, qui raconte.
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differentes représentations des femmes et du rapport entre mère et fille. Dans le roman de Tamaro, qui se présente sous forme de longue lettre et au même temps de journal, c’est la grand-mère qui écrit à sa petite fille et c’est à travers son écriture que nous decouvrons le rapport entre elle (mère) et sa fille. Ce sont les dates du journal qui signent le temps de la nouvelle écriture, par le biais de laquelle une femme, désormais à la fin de sa vie, raconte, dans le temps présent de la conscience, des faits qui se sont passés auparavant en reconstruisant ainsi son image de fille malheureuse, de mère absente et de grand-mère, soucieuse de rompre la chaîne des mensonges pour donner un meilleur futur à sa petite fille. Quelles typologies de femmes-mères représentent les écrivaines dans leurs ouvrages? En général, les mères racontées sont des femmes historiquement perdantes,15 mais qui cependant tôt ou tard, personnellement ou par le biais de leur descendance, trouvent un moyen de se liberer de l’héritage génant qui les écrase, chacune d’une façon différente. Dans le roman de Rasy, c’est une mère depressive, “tombée au fond du puits” – pour utiliser l’image de Natalia Ginzburg, que la fille nous présente. Une mère “che non invecchiava ma sfioriva come i fiori che uno coglie e non mette nell’acqua per incuria o cattiveria, non lentamente cioè, ma precipitosamente, senza argini, barattando la disperazione con la vecchiaia” (Rasy 26). Une mère qui diffère de ses amies du même âge et des autres femmes, mères des copines de classe de TPF
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15
“Non credo che madre e figlia siano biologicamente in guerra, mentre purtroppo, storicamente, spesso lo sono. [...] Credo che ci sia in molte ragazze, in molte figlie, la difficoltà a identificarsi con le madri perché le madri sono perdenti [...] Ma sono storicamente perdenti non biologicamente perdenti: [...] perché a un certo punto si sono arrese, perché hanno perso il treno, perché hanno abbandonato le loro ambizioni, i loro sogni” (Maraini in Tulanti 20-21). TP
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sa fille. 16 En tant que femme et mère, elle a renoncé à toutes ses ambitions professionnelles au nom de l’amour. 17 Elle a eu une fille de sa première relation amoureuse et un garçon de la deuxième, pour lequel elle montre une affection morbide. 18 Son amour maternel était sa raison de vie, ou mieux, sa passion extrême, une religion sévère. Elle “disprezzava le convenienze e le comodità e la rispettabilità perché credeva che l’unica cosa reale della vita fosse l’amore” (Rasy 34). Mais l’amour l’a trahie (elle a fuit de son mari et elle a été en suite abandonnée par son amant) et sa vie, après la quarantaine, se déroule, en solitude, dans une maison romaine située dans une rue sécondaire de la ville dans un quartier silencieux, en compagnie de sa fille adolescente, “miroir de son infance retrouvée”, et qui, au fur et à mesure que le temps passe, représente le seul intermédiaire entre elle et la réalité extérieure jusqu’au moment où elles s’éloignent réciproquement, où le silence règne entre elles et la place de la fille sera occupée par la télévision 19 . La mère s’écarte de la TPF
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16
“Le altre amiche erano diverse. Tutte e due avevano dei figli della mia età, ma a differenza di mia madre il cui unico programma di vita era stato e in fondo continuava a essere la militanza più feroce del proprio sentimento, facevano ancora le attrici” (Rasy 42). TP
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“Perciò le figlie si identificano molto meglio e molto di più col padre, che di solito è una persona che si è espressa nel suo lavoro, che ha avuto delle soddisfazioni, che ha un posto riconosciuto nel sociale. Un uomo si costruisce, spinto dalla famiglia, dall’ambiente, una conoscenza, una competenza specifica nella materia che tratta, e questo gli dà fiducia, mentre una donna è incoraggiata a rinunciare per amore dei figli, del marito, e spesso, se non è particolarmente determinata, rinuncia alle sue ambizioni e rimane nel limbo dei desideri non risolti” (Maraini 25). TP
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“Avrei voluto giocarci, ma mia madre non lo lasciava avvicinare mai a nessuno, neanche a me. In quel furioso attaccamento al figlio piccolo si consumava tutto il rancore che in quel momento la legava al mondo [..] “ (Rasy 16). TP
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“Quando comprò il televisore, nell’estate del ’60, mi sembrò che il tempo dello stupore infantile fosse finito – o per meglio dire fosse finito lì, non più TP
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réalité en se renfermant sur elle même, sur son passé qui représente d’un côté le désir d’oublier 20 et de l’autre son unique possibilité de survivance. “Mia madre non amava le origini e non si curava del futuro, eccetto che per noi, i suoi figli. Amava il presente, ma in tutto cio’ che ha di non attuale, e cioè la luce che si rinnova giorno dopo giorno, e le sfumature che rendono un giorno diverso dall’altro, l’odore che cambia a seconda delle ore e che va guastandosi” (Rasy 162-163). Peu à peu, elle sent qu’elle n’a plus rien a dire, même pas à sa fille, pour laquelle, au contraire, le rapport avec sa mère était très important, surtout au moment de son adolescence: “Per me era assolutamente necessario che mia madre parlasse, tra noi allora non poteva esserci che un solo resto prezioso di quanto c’era stato prima, le parole” (Rasy 30). C’est une famille russe, qui habite le même édifice, qui représente, d’une part, la famille “traditionnelle” (mère, père, enfant) mais, de l’autre, ce qui ne peut plus avoir sa place dans la réalité contemporaine: “Con loro parlava perché non li temeva, non ne temeva il giudizio, l’incomprensione, la diffidenza, il disprezzo, l’ostilità, tutto quello che aveva cominciato a temere, seppure senza ammetterlo, dal mondo degli altri quando era rimasta sola, sola senza amore” (Rasy 3031). 21 TPF
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nello specchio dei miei occhi apprensini, ma nel vetro scuro dello schermo” (Rasy 63). 20
“A quell’epoca mia madre non aveva ancora incominciato a esporre in casa qualche foto sua da giovane e quelle dei figli come avrebbe fatto più tardi, guardava al passato e al lontano alternando furiosamente nostalgie e avversione” (Rasy 175). TP
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21
Voir aussi: “Con i Mnoukine ritrovava una lingua perduta, usciva per venti, trenta minuti dall’isolamento in cui si era rinchiusa, e che era tanto più insopportabile perché fuori, all’esterno, cominciava ad avanzare un mondo dai connotati strani che, al contrario dei Mnoukine, non pensava con dolcezza al proprio passato, ed era ferocemente lieto di sostituire i ricordi, i sogni con le comodità che un presente smemorato poteva offrire” (Rasy 33) TP
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Elle s’éteint peu à peu et l’incommunicabilité la plus totale s’installe entre elle et sa fille, entre elle et le monde extérieur. Ce n’est que la rage contre sa mère (qui vivait dans la même maison) ou contre sa fille, les anneaux contigüs de la chaine de la destinée féminine qui la torturait, qui lui donne l’occasion de rompre son mutisme. Le roman s’ouvre avec la mort de la grand-mère le premier maillon de la chaine: elle avait eu une vie très difficile, avait abandonné sa famille ainsi que l’homme qui était le père de ses deux filles, en leur causant beaucoup de douleur. La fille (de la troisième génération), qui raconte son histoire et l’histoire de sa famille, est bien décidée à ne pas devenir le troisième maillon de cette chaine de douleurs: “Io sarei sfuggita, così decisi allora, a quelle geometrie del male, a quelle simmetrie della colpa che vedevo agire nella mia famiglia, neanche un dio burattinaio avesse assegnato le parti e regolato la trama” (Rasy 17). C’est justement sa mère, entre autres – le “due” du titre est représentée aussi par l’école, les copines, le premier amour, un professeur de philolophie, une professeur de français -- qui l’aidera a se soustraire à son destin de femme, en lui apprenant à s’éloigner des conventions et des opinions communes: [pour la mère] quella femminile era piuttosto una figura perimetrata dalla sofferenza e dalla resistenza, da saperi e da piaceri che non necessariamente si esprimevano nella mimica e nelle frasi del gergo sociale, e animata da una fiamma che io già allora capivo, malgrado la reticenza di mia madre, essere il seme della passione. Una passione senza allettamenti, insofferente agli ornamenti come alle regole. E piuttosto lontana, o straniera, al comune commercio sociale e carnale tra gli uomini e le donne. (Rasy 9495)
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Rasy termine son roman par la description d’une statue du cimetière, une sculpture qui représente un garçon en train de prendre un peu de repos avant de recommencer son chemin. C’est par là qu’elle nous fait comprendre que mère et fille ont trouvé, au cours de leur vie, la distance correcte à laquelle situer leur relation, afin de rester ensemble sans devenir“eau dans l’eau”, sans se confondre. La fille regarde sa mère – “le premier objet d’amour et de nostalgie” selon Freud – avec douceur et indulgence, en lui pardonnant ses limites. 22 Cela lui a permis de reprendre son chemin après la séparation psycologique (les différents passages de l’infance à l’adolescence à l’âge adulte) et humaine (la mort de sa mère) de sa mère. L’incompréhension la plus totale règne entre les femmes de Casa Rossa de Francesca Marciano, qui va jusqu’à se tranformer en vraie haine, surtout des filles envers leur mère. Alba, c’est son nom, reste elle-même une enfant jusqu’à la fin du roman, comme une Alice dans le pays des Merveilles. Elle n’assume aucunement son rôle de mère; physiquement présente, elle, en réalité, est absente. Elle est indifférente aux comportement de ses filles, elle préfère ignorer ce qui se passe autour d’elle et de sa famille. Les filles imitent son indifférence. C’est Alina, la plus jeune (qui appartient à la génération des années soixante), qui, en racontant l’histoire de sa famille – qui se situe entre le début du XXe siècle et nos jours et qui touche aux moments cruciaux de l’histoire italienne: le fascisme et les années de plomb – se propose de denouer les mystères et les vérités cachées qui, probablement, sont les causes des TPF
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“Forse impareremo ad amare la madre quando saremo capaci di vederne i limiti, quando potremo perdonarle di non essere per noi quel tutto onnipotente che la circondava e la custodiva fin dalla primissima infanzia. Molti conflitti interni, molti contenziosi espressi verso la figura materna hanno di sottofondo proprio questo desiderio infantile che la madre sia, ancora e sempre, un essere perfetto, una fata, colei che continua a rispondere ad ogni nostro desiderio” (Salvo 63). TP
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bouleversements des existences de toutes les femmes de la famille: la fuite en Allemagne de Renée, la grand-mère, (qui découvre son homosexualité quand le rapport avec son mari est en crise), accusée par son mari d’être une collaborationniste des Allemands; l’apparent suicide du premier mari de Alba, la fille de Renée; l’appartenance d’Isabelle, la fille aînée de Alba aux groupes terroristes et l’assassinat présumé d’un magistrat par sa main. Alina aussi, au moment du passage de l’adolescence à l’âge adulte chosit la drogue pour s’aliener d’une vie qu’elle déteste parce qu’elle ne lui appartient pas. Elle réussira à réagir, ainsi que sa mère. Les deux trouveront, enfin, leur vérité qui les aidera à établir leur identité de femmes, à se retrouver comme mère et fille. Isabella, qui depuis son plus jeune âge déteste sa mère (coupable selon elle de l’assassinat de son père), n’y réussira pas: Non riuscivo a smettere di pensare quanto mi apparisse inutile il percorso di Isabella. Aveva perso la fiducia nella politica, nella propria identità, nel suo unico amore, e adesso stava perdendo la giovinezza. Tutto cio’ per restare fedele al proprio ideale di integrità e di coerenza. E alla fine non aveva ottenuto niente, non aveva cambiato il mondo di una virgola. (Marciano 289)
Isabelle ressemble plutôt à son grand-père: l’une et l’autre manipulateurs de la réalité pour faire retomber les fautes qu’ils ont commises sur les autres. Le roman est construit sur l’opposition passé/présent, mensonge/vérité, fiction/réalité. C’est au moment où la vérité sur Renée est retablie (elle n’était pas une collaborationniste des Allemands, mais son mari avait tout inventé pour couvrir sa faute à lui) que la memoire des personnages ainsi que l’histoire du Pays reprennent la valeur de “magistri” pour le temps présent, que mère et fille se retrouvent. À ce propos, le rôle joué 778
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par le cinéma est aussi très important: il acquière la valeur d’intermédiare entre la fiction et la réalité, entre le passé et le futur, entre l’histoire personnelle et l’histoire collective: Questa storia qui [Oliviero Strada qui avait écrit le scénario du film Il sonno della memoria, qui racontait justement l’histoire de la famille de Alba, sa femme] non è più la storia della tua famiglia. Questa storia ci riguarda tutti, è la nostra. E’ la storia di una generazione che ha fatto finta di nulla, ha chiuso gli occhi e si è svegliata quando è passato tutto, come se il fascismo fosse stato un sogno, capisci, il sogno di qualcun altro, però. E’ la storia di tutti quelli che hanno detto: io non c’entravo niente, erano gli altri. Tuo padre si tormentava su questo fatto, non lo accettava. Ecco perché si era appassionato a questa storia. Ma forse allora era troppo presto, era una ferita ancora così recente (Marciano 352)
Il ne faut plus oublier le passé. Il faut l’utiliser pour se construir un futur meilleur. Alina et sa mère y réussiront. Mère et fille: les roles renversés
Si dans les ouvrages que nous avons presentées jusqu’à présent, le rapport entre mère et fille se résout après la phase conflictuelle, selon le concept de généalogie féminine – “L’individuazione di sé come essere femminile non può avvenire per separazione, quindi, ma solo grazie all’amoregratitudine nei confronti della madre” (Finocchi) – dans le roman de Sanvitale, les rôles de mère et fille se renversent, et la fille s’identifie avec sa mère 23 . L’histoire est la reconstruction TPF
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“Ecco il peso della figura materna quando il legame non viene svolto e risolto in un confronto o in un dialogo, in un corpo a corpo; quando la figlia non conosce fino in fondo il beneficio della separazione. Ci si incolla alla madre o si fugge inorridite da lei; la si celebra per via diretta, magnificandola, o per la via opposta, rinnegandola pervicacemente” (Salvo 16). TP
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d’une vie à deux, mère et fille; une vie pleine de difficultés et de mensonges. Depuis le début, ces deux femmes doivent se confronter aux conventions sociales et c’est à cause du poids que la société exerce sur elles que leurs rôles, dans cette même société, seront inversés. C’est au moment où le père de Sonia lui impose un mariage avec un homme qu’elle n’aime pas, que la situation change radicalement et Sonia quitte sa condition de fille et se transforme en mère. Les deux femmes deviennent un seul individu, la volonté de la fille devient la volonté de la mère, jusqu’à la mort de celle-ci. Cette mort, qui ouvre et clôt le roman, est le fil conducteur de l’ouvrage. Cependant, la mort de Marianne ne permet pas à Sonia de reprendre sa vie: elle a encore un corps, mais l’interieur est vide. Sa mère lui a pris son souffle de vie. Elle survit biologiquement à sa mère, mais en réalité, elle est morte avec elle. Conclusions Fausse autobiographie, essai critique, roman recherche
Loy, Tamaro, Sanvitale, Marciano, et Rasy ont choisi, dans leurs romans, l’écriture autobiographique pour affirmer leur propre subjectivité. Tous les ouvrages se développent autour de la memoire de l’enfance et le temps présent, qui est le temps de la conscience et de l’écriture. Les thèmes communs à tous sont: l’enfance, l’adolescence, la famille, l’amour (dans toutes ses manifestations), la solitude, l’héritage biologique, social et culturel des femmes, duquel elles sont incapables de se libérer (Cfr. Elena Gianini Belotti qui affirme que ce n’est pas la mère qui construit l’enfant de sexe féminin, c’est la société dans laquelle elle vit) la mort, la recherche de la vérité et de l’identité dans une société où les rapports humains semblent ne pas pouvoir se réaliser. Loy, Tamaro, Marciano et Rasy expriment un sentiment plus optimiste par rapport à Sanvitale, pour laquelle le poids de la société sur les femmes est tellement écrasant qu’elles ne peuvent que succomber malgré leur lutte 780
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infatigable. La vision de Vinci est aussi plutôt négative. Son roman peut être lu comme une fable à l’envers. Même si les femmes ont le droit de parole, ce n’est que pour affirmer leur défaite vis-à-vis de la réalité et leur incapacité de lutter contre le mal, représenté par la société et par l’homme. Comment définir ces ouvrages selon les différentes catégories d’autobiographie mentionnées au debut de cet article? Les romans de Loy, Marciano et Sanvitale, peuvent être considérées des “fausses” autobiographies – les écrivaines appartiennent à la génération du narrateur principal et, se cachant derrière lui, et par son intermédiaire, racontent leur histoire, en l’interrogeant dans le présent d’une conscience de soi-même qui de l’intérieur regarde l’extérieur; les romans de Rasy et Tamaro appartiennent à la catégorie de l’autobiographie ‘essai critique’ – l’auteur illustre par son histoire les théories psycoanalitiques relatives à l’identité féminine – mais aussi à celle du ‘roman recherche’ – c’est à travers l’écriture qu’une vie entière retrouve enfin le sens de sa propre existence e de sa propre identité. C’est un voyage à la recherche de ce qui nous appartient le plus et de ce qui nous distingue. 24 Le roman de Vinci est seulement en partie une autobiographie ‘roman recherche’. Par le biais de la vie commune de ces femmes quiconque revit aussi la grande histoire du XXe siècle: les protagonistes tentent, en effet, non seulement de renouer les fils de la mémoire individuelle mais aussi de la memoire collective afin de donner un sens à la vie de l’homme contemporain qui préfère le mensonge à la vérité, l’oubli à la mémoire. TPF
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“Quanto ti sei messa in gioco scrivendo ‘Va dove ti porta il cuore’? Completamente. Ci ho pensato a lungo. Volevo scrivere un libro sulla ricerca interiore. Ho pensato a diecimila forme, diverse da quella del diario, alla fine ho capito che non dovevo avere paura di scegliere quella più diretta. Appena finito, il libro mi ha terrorizzata, perché era molto intenso e temevo che i tempi non fossero pronti” (Tamaro in Finocchi). TP
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Dans presque tous les ouvrages ressort particulièrement la rélation entre mère et fille, un couple qui est resté dans une sorte de clair-obscur, dans une position marginale. Le mythe de la maternité est absent: ce ne sont que des filles les fruits des relations amoureuses. Et naître “fille” comporte un jugement négatif de la société. Raconter le rapport entre mère et fille est, partant, une autre manière de sortir du silence, d’affirmer le prestige et l’autorité morale de la mère et donc de la femme (autonomie, identité, reconnaissance sociale), de s’autorevendiquer comme matrices d’une nouvelle subjectivité. Ouvrages cités Carotenuto, Carla. “Separazioni di Francesca Sanvitale. Tecniche narrative della passione tra memoria e assenza.” Sabina Gola et Michel Bastiaensen éd. Sguardo sulla lingua e la letteratura italiana del terzo millennio. Actes du colloque international (Bruxelles 15-16 mars 2002). Firenze: Franco Cesati Editore, 2004. 63-80. Cutrufelli, Maria Rosa. Creazione e critica letteraria al femminile. 2000. Janvier 2004. . Doni, Elena et Fugenzi, Manuela. Il secolo delle donne. L’Italia del Novecento al femminile. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2001. Finocchi, Daniela. “Nati da donna,.” Informa Giovani. Marsavril 2003. Décembre 2003. . Giordano, Maria Pia. DW Press, Il notiziario delle donne. 18-24 novembre 1996. Décembre 2003. . Loy, Rosetta. La bicicletta. Turin: Einaudi, 1974. Marciano, Francesca. Casa Rossa. Milan: Longanesi & C., 2003. HT
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---. “Intervista all’autrice di Casa Rossa.” 9 février 2003. Février 2004. . Navarro Salazar, Maria Teresa. “Donne e storia sul volgere del secolo: Romanzo, biografia, autobiografia.” Scrittori del Duemila. Narrativa 20/21 (juin 2001): 45-65. Oates, Joyce Carol et Janet Berliner). Figlie e madri. Milan: Marco Tropea Editore, 2003. Rasy, Elisabetta. Le donne e la letteratura. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 2000 (3e édition). ---. Tra noi due. Milan: Rizzoli, 2002. Rorato, Laura. “Memoria e oblio in Casa Rossa di Francesca Marciano.” Scrittori del Duemila: Gli esordienti. Narrativa 25 (septembre 2003): 157-168. Salvo, Anna. Madri e figlie. Legami e conflitti tra due generazioni. Milan: Mondadori, 2003. Sanvitale, Francesca, Madre e figlia, Turin: Einaudi, 1980. Tamaro, Susanna Va’ dove ti porta il cuore, Baldini & Castoldi, 1994. Tulanti, Maddalena (ed.). Dacia Maraini, Anna Salvo, Silvia Vegetti Finzi, Madri e figlie. Ieri e oggi, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2003. Silvia Vegetti-Finzi, Il bambino della notte. Divenire donna, divenire madre. Milan: Mondadori, 19923. ---. Psicoanalisi al femminile. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 19932. ---. Storia delle passioni. Rome-Bari:Laterza, 2000. ---. Parlar d’amore. Le donne e le stagioni della vita. Milan:Rizzoli, 2003. Vinci, Simona, Come prima delle madri, Turin: Einaudi, 2003. Zancan, Marina Il doppio itinerario della scrittura. La donna nella tradizione letteraria italiana, Turin: Einaudi, 1998. HT
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“L’individu [...] n’est que le produit de son histoire, de l’échange avec les contextes dans lesquels il s’inscrit” (Kaufmann 91); “l’individu est fait de matière sociale, il n’est pas une pure conscience (encore moins purement rationnelle) hors de l’histoire et séparée de son contexte” (Kaufmann 49). Ces deux citations soulignent l’importance du rapport existant entre le contexte et l’identité des créateurs de textes littéraires. Il s’agit, dans notre cas spécifique, d’une identité double caractérisée aussi bien par l’appartenance géographique et sociale (insulaire) que biologique (femmes romancières). Des identités aux frontières mouvantes, où tout individu – s’inscrivant dans un contexte et/ou appartenant à une catégorie précise – adopte, élabore ou transforme, phagocyte ou repousse, selon l’ensemble des héritages et des problématiques provenant de ces deux déterminations (sociale et/ou biologique). En partant de ces bases, on essayera de mettre en valeur les rapports entre le contexte et la création artistique des romancières de Sicile et Sardaigne et de mesurer leur spécificité et/ou leur autonomie vis-à-vis du système culturel et littéraire dont elles sont issues. Toute évolution sera évaluée en fonction des sollicitations diverses à l’origine des transformations de leur inspiration, ainsi que des mouvements et des changements continuels déterminant, dans le champ littéraire, des assonances et des dissonances, des convergences et des divergences par rapport aux expériences artistiques précédentes. Un cheminement qui s’avère indispensable pour comprendre les 784
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significations actuelles, de la littérature féminine dans ces deux îles. La littérature sicilienne féminine entre texte et contexte, identité biologique et insulaire
Dans les années 1970 la littérature narrative sicilienne est marquée par une représentation identitaire qui se nourrit de points de repère insulaires et extra-insulaires. Les romancières tirent profit des leçons passées et présentes: derrière elles, les luttes incisives des années 50 menées par des écrivaines (entre autres, la sicilienne Livia De Stefani, Anna Maria Ortese et Alba De Cespedes); devant elles, les nouveaux acquis du féminisme des années 60 – caractérisés par un questionnement “entre soi et soi et entre soi et autrui” (Ehrenberg 125) – et les combats des années 70 comportant “la mise en avant du concept de genre” (Kaufmann 103). Ces acquis et ces nouveaux questionnements sont l’explication la plus valable à la persistance massive de récits autobiographiques ou d’ordre biographique qui, liés par un rapport indissoluble 1 , présentent un but commun: la reconstruction de l’histoire d’un moi qui est “la matière première d’une construction identitaire” (Kaufmann 69). Ainsi Paola Uscé, dans le récit autobiographique Storia di Paola (1973), dénonce – comme auparavant l’avait fait la sicilienne Maria Occhipinti 2 – la sous-estimation dont les femmes étaient l’objet dans la société sicilienne, et Teresa Carpinteri retrace, dans son TPF
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Comme le fait remarquer Massimo Romano, en passant par Starobinski, “l’autobiographie est l’histoire d’un Moi qui se regarde au miroir et, à travers un mécanisme complexe de projections, déformations et réticences, devient Autre; la biographie est l’histoire d’un Moi vue par un Autre, qui est d’une façon inexorable capturé par un rapport de symbiose, d’échange émotif et intellectuel” (38).
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Maria Occhipinti est une romancière sicilienne des années 50, auteure du roman autobiographique Una donna di Ragusa (1957). PT
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récit biographique L’Eringio (1978), le triste parcours existentiel de Mariannina Coffa, poétesse sicilienne du XIXème siècle. Toutefois, même si la biographie et l’autobiographie, dans les décennies qui suivent, continuent à être au rendez-vous, il est indéniable que le choix de ces “genres” ne se fait plus sur les mêmes bases. L’écriture n’est plus considérée par les romancières comme une arme pour bouleverser un monde où “la parole avait été toujours une parole privée, intime prononcée dans un intérieur”, 3 ni comme un précieux instrument pour transformer en lieu public le “lieu secret” de sa vie privée, un lieu secret dont la femme a été pendant des siècles la gardienne. 4 Les écrivaines contemporaines témoignent, en effet, d’une nouvelle perception de l’espace romanesque: la biographie est désormais strictement liée à des intentions divulgatrices et d’ordre politique. Ce n’est pas un hasard si le choix de ce genre est fait par des femmes toujours en première ligne, telles que Maria Attanasio ou Maria Rosa Cutrufelli. 5 Dans Di Concetta e le sue donne (1999) Maria Attanasio, comme Teresa Carpinteri auparavant, porte sur la scène la vie de Concetta La Ferla de Caltagirone, avec laquelle elle partage – outre l’appartenance biologique et géographique – une même activité: le militantisme dans les rangs du Parti Communiste. Deux expériences qui apparaissent complémentaires étant donné TPF
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Adele Cambria, “Etica della scrittura femminile”, in Daniela Corona (357).
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Lieux dans le sens traditionnel, comme la maison, mais aussi symboliques: son âme, son rôle d’épouse ou de mère.
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Maria Attanasio, essayiste et auteure d’un récit historique (Correva l’anno 1698 e nella città avvenne il fatto memorabile (1994); Maria Rosa Cutrufelli a débuté dans les anées 70 en tant qu’essayiste privilégiant l’étude de la condition féminine. Son dernier roman, La donna che visse per un sogno (2004), est une biographie d’Olympe de Gouges auteure de la “Déclarations des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne”.
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que l’activisme de la protagoniste s’arrête dans les années 60, époque à laquelle Maria commence le sien. A l’intérieur de ce récit se dessinent de petits parcours autobiographiques qui témoignent de deux générations et de deux façons différentes de vivre, en Sicile, l’engagement politique au féminin. Un même engagement est perceptible chez Maria Rosa Cutrufelli dans Mama Africa (1993) et dans Giorni d’acqua corrente (2002), livres de voyage où la composante autobiographique se croise avec une analyse des problèmes féminins. Malheureusement, le genre autobiographique – ou tout au moins certains récits de femmes à la première personne – a connu aussi une grave dérive: Lara Cardella auteure du best seller Volevo i pantaloni (1989) et Melissa p. avec 100 colpi di spazzola prima di andare a dormire (2003) marquent de par les accommodements commerciaux et le vide idéologique de leurs ouvrages, un changement de cap néfaste en total discordance avec une littérature féminine sicilienne riche de significations. Pendant les années 1970 le roman social, l’un des genres des plus représentatifs de la littérature narrative féminine sicilienne, a donné l’occasion aux romancières de porter sur la scène les problèmes les plus urgents de la réalité sicilienne. 6 L’appartenance biologique et sociale est à la base de Le tre mogli (1967) et L’inferriata (1976) de Laura Di Falco, romans où est évidente sa volonté “de nouer les thématiques de son expérience personnelle de femme et de sicilienne (le rapport d’amour, la maternité, l’archipel des émotions et déceptions féminines, et la Sicile, Syracuse, Ortigia, un paysage marin, campagnard et urbain) avec la problématique du roman idéologique contemporain et la tension logique et démystifiante TPF
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Entre autres, Teresa Carpinteri qui traite de problèmes d’ordre social dans ses romans Le stelle dell’orsa (1962) et La Dionea (1971). PT
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du pamphlet, dans un cadre historique et social structurant”. 7 Laura Di Falco montre un chemin qui amènera à un dépassement progressif des schémas du roman social traditionnel, grâce à la présence de nouveaux éléments narratifs tels que “l’irrationnel, l’alogique, le paranormal, le visionnaire, le fantastique” (Verdirame in Zappulla Mascarà 215). Depuis les années 70, le roman social se transforme en genre “hybride”, comme en témoignent, dans ces dernières décennies, les romancières qui s’inscrivent dans des styles et des genres (entre autres le policier et le roman historique) jusqu’alors pratiqués et privilégiés par les hommes. Un “envahissement du terrain” qui contribue à estomper et à mettre en cause les frontières entre littérature sicilienne “feminine” et “masculine”. Maria Rosa Cutrufelli est l’une des auteures qui représente le mieux la transition entre la tradition féminine des années 1970 et cette révision romanesque: elle s’est mesurée au roman policier 8 et au roman historique 9 mais elle a aussi choisi d’autres formes de narration axées sur la recherche identitaire, entre autres, dans Il paese dei figli perduti (1999). Si on analyse ce roman par rapport à la littérature féminine précédente, il est indéniable que Cutrufelli a pris ses distances avec toutes les contraintes et particularités du passé. Chez elle, tous les critères utilisés auparavant pour parvenir à une détermination au féminin conférant “l’identité par les roles” (Kaufmann 108), ne sont plus que marginaux. En effet, le parcours identitaire d’Anna Paola, 10 TPF
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Rita Verdirame, “Laura di Falco oltre ‘L’inferriata’”, in Sara Zappulla Mascarà (211).
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Complice il dubbio (1992) porté à l’écran par Emanuela Piovano.
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La Briganta (1990).
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Le parcours identitaire de Anna Paola, jeune fille d’origine sicilienne, coïncide avec son voyage en Australie, où elle se rend pour (entre autre) connaître son père. Il s’agit d’un voyage initiatique dans la terre du “Rêve”, TP
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la protagoniste de Il paese dei figli perduti, n’est pas marqué par une différence biologique mais se construit sur une recherche de repères existentiels. Anna Paola est avant tout un individu cherchant à réaliser ses rêves et dont la conquête identitaire passe par l’élargissement de ses procédés d’identification, qui l’aident progressivement à mesurer ses propres limites et ses ressources et l’amènent à une juste évaluation de valeurs telle que la liberté. Ce roman inaugure ainsi une nouvelle conception identitaire – concernant l’idée, l’image et la perception de soi en tant que femme – strictement liée aux changements engendrés par les conquêtes féministes et le féminisme des années 60 et 70 ayant, selon Marina Zancan, “broyé, pour les femmes, la possibilité de se refléter dans une image de soi qui se dessine avec les contours nets du modèle prefigure” (Zancan 827). Une autre écrivaine qui mérite l’attention est Silvana Grasso. Dans ces romans 11 trouve place la représentation de la société sicilienne vue et interprétée à travers un langage imprégné de figures de rhétorique (hyperboles, métaphores redondantes) utilisées pour mettre en valeur la caractéristique première de son monde de fiction: la violence. Grasso, tout en s’inspirant de la tradition littéraire sicilienne – où elle puise sa matière et ses thèmes – donne de par son écriture originale et audacieuse “des réponses tangibles à cette parité sexuelle, acquise [par les romancières siciliennes] au fil des ans” (Marras 42). TPF
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“du sommeil primordial”, Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, Il paese dei figli perduti, p. 36. 11
Il bastardo di Mautàna (1994), Ninna nanna del lupo (1995), L’albero di Giuda (1997), La pupa di zucchero (2001). TP
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La littérature féminine sarde: histoire d’un parcours difficile...
La littérature narrative féminine sarde, en opposition à la sicilienne, se caractérise par le manque d’intérêt total pour la cause des femmes. Il existe un fil conducteur pour tous les romans, parus dans les années 60 et 70, concernant la représentation d’une minorité (sarde) qui, oubliée par le pouvoir central, vit exclue de la “grande histoire”. Il s’agit d’une production assez médiocre faite, trop souvent, par de modestes auteures de journaux intimes sans épaisseur (Susanna Zedda) ou de récits porteurs de revendications d’ordre socioanthropologique (Mariangela Satta) ou identitaire (Lina Tidore Cherchi). Ces écrivaines, peu connues y compris dans l’île sarde, vont grossir les rangs de nombre d’auteurs mineurs d’ouvrages dont la faible valeur est liée à leur caractère de témoignages et documents d’une époque. Pendant ces années la seule exception est Maria Giacobbe dont les ouvrages présentent deux pôles narratifs principaux qui nous ramènent à l’enfance et à la critique sociale. 12 Une critique plus voilée dans le récit Il mare (1967) mais qui retrouve un caractère virulent dans son dernier roman Gli arcipelaghi (2001), situé au cours des années 60 dans un village de l’intérieur de la Sardaigne à l’économie agropastorale. Dans cet espace est représentée une communauté soumise à la tradition et aux codes de comportements hors la loi, communément reconnus par ses membres. A la base de l’intrigue, le mal-être de l’île où des bandits n’hésitent pas à couper la langue, avant de le tuer, à un enfant soupçonné d’avoir parlé d’un vol de chevaux qu’ils avaient commis. Nombreuses TPF
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La critique sociale et le monde enfantin sont à l’origine de Diario di una maestrina (1957) récit où Giacobbe raconte la vie misèrable des villages où elle a travaillé en tant qu’institutrice. Dans Piccole Cronache (1960) on trouve le point de vue de la petite Marina Geremia qui raconte la misère de l’île sarde pendant le fascisme. Il mare (1967) a comme protagoniste une adolescente, Rosa, dans son initiation à la vie adulte. TP
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sont les thématiques tirées de la tradition littéraire sarde: la vendetta, la loi du silence, les paradoxes liés à la représentation d’une terre à la fois de splendeur et de pauvreté. Ce qui apparaît nouveau est la volonté de Giacobbe d’insérer plusieurs personnages aux points de vue différents: la mère et la grandmère de Giosué, l’enfant barbarement massacré, qui perpétuent les lois ancestrales en armant la main d’Oreste, son frère, pour accomplir la vendetta; la sœur de Giosué qui répugne à la vendetta; Rudas, la femme médecin à la philosophie de vie imprégnée d’un respect socratique envers la loi; le mari de Rudas, Lorenzo, continental (mais de mère sarde) vivant en Sardaigne qui arrivera à convaincre sa femme, malgré son obstination initiale, à témoigner en faveur d’Oreste. Ainsi, dans ce roman se croisent un ensemble de conceptions différentes qui contribuent à la recomposition d’une identité culturelle complexe dont la configuration nous ramène à celle des archipels. Maria Giacobbe restera pendant toute la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle un cas littéraire, au féminin, intéressant mais isolé. Il faudra attendre l’année 2003 pour voir paraître des romans d’une bonne valeur artistique: c’est le cas de La stirpe dei re perduti (2003) de Paola Alcioni et de La città d’acqua (2003) de Giulia Clarkson. La stirpe dei re perduti de Paola Alcioni se présente comme un roman labyrinthique, riche de stratifications narratives (lettres, notes, documents) autour desquelles se déroulent les vicissitudes de la famille d’origine catalane Ballester-Baher. Le récit de l’histoire de cette famille apparaît indissociable de la macro-histoire qui inspire des visions, des rêves et des cauchemars. Divers sont les espaces représentés 13 TPF
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Même si le village imaginaire de Gurtei reste le centre de la narration, d’autres espaces (Cagliari et Valencia par exemple) sont les cadres où se situent différentes scènes indispensables à la résolution de l’enigme historique et humaine. TP
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ainsi que les périodes historiques 14 qui se croisent continuellement et deviennent des pièces indispensables pour construire et débrouiller des événements mystérieux, aussi bien passés que présents. Alcioni nous offre une lecture personnelle et légendaire de la Sardaigne catalane, espagnole, de la période savoyarde, fasciste puis contemporaine. Elle aussi, comme Giacobbe, s’inspire des auteurs sardes qui l’ont précédée, notamment de Sergio Atzeni, 15 écrivain très novateur qui a conçu le roman pseudo-historique comme un instrument pour donner consistance à une identité sarde aux contours instables. Alcioni, comme Atzeni, a voulu retracer les racines d’un peuple et d’une terre conçue comme lieu de l’âme, “où le sommeil peut se transformer en rêve, et le silence en rage” (Alcioni 347). Les liens avec la tradition littéraire sarde sont aussi évidents chez Giulia Clarkson qui, dans La città d’acqua, raconte la vie et la fin du monde des pécheurs de la lagune de Giorgino, aux environs de Cagliari. De l’époque fasciste aux années 70, son intrigue se construit autour de la misère et des bouleversements (entre autres, la précarité, le déracinement et l’anéantissement de la tradition et de l’identité) engendrés par la politique des Pôles de développement 16 qui a été, à maintes reprises, mise en question par les romanciers sardes des années 60 et jusqu’aux années 90. 17 TPF
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14
Le livre s’ouvre en 1867 mais nombreux sont les passages à d’autres époques qui se présentent avec des dates ou périodes bien précisés: 1944, les années 60, 1494 et 1995. TP
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15
Parmi les romans pseudo-historiques de Sergio Atzeni Apologo del giudice bandito (1991) et, surtout, Passavamo sulla terra leggeri (1996). TP
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16
Il s’agit d’un Plan extraordinaire, approuvé par le Parlement italien en 1962, prévoyant des améliorations des structures économiques et sociales de l’île sarde. TP
PT
TP
17 PT
Entre autres Giulio Angioni, Antonio Cossu, Francesco Masala.
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Alcioni et Clarkson, au même titre que les écrivaines sardes qui les ont précédées, n’ont pas utilisé l’espace romanesque pour raconter leur identité biologique ni pour contester les assignations sociales de rôles enracinés dans la tradition. Elles ont fait de leur contexte d’appartenance la matière première d’identification et de narration, un choix partagé par de nombreux romanciers sardes contemporains, y compris ceux dont la renommée a franchi depuis longtemps les limites insulaires. Conclusion
Ce bref parcours nous a permis d’évaluer les différentes étapes et les évolutions qui se sont produites dans les littératures féminines sicilienne et sarde en l’espace de quarante ans environ. Un cheminement qui a engendré un rapprochement progressif de ces deux littératures, lié au processus historique et aux bouleversements sociaux qui sont à l’origine de changements dans la conception identitaire des écrivaines et de leur nouvelle perception de l’espace romanesque. Certes, aussi bien la littérature sarde que la sicilienne gardent des spécificités, mais on a pu remarquer des évolutions fort intéressantes qui ont amené à un croisement de leurs cheminements narratifs. Leur point commun est aussi perceptible dans l’attention qu’elles continuent à attribuer à leur identité insulaire qui, toutefois, pour les Siciliennes, ne rime plus avec une identité féminine minorée et oppressée. Comme pour toute écrivaine contemporaine l’espace romanesque est un espace de liberté: aujourd’hui plus qu’hier, les Sardes comme les Sicilennes peuvent donner libre cours à leurs goûts et prédispositions littéraires car leurs exigences ont changé ainsi que les facteurs sociaux qui, quoique d’une façon différente, ont orienté pendant longtemps leurs choix de genres, de styles ou de langage. Kaufmann affirme que: “Dire qu’il y a mille manière d’être une femme [...] c’est déjà commencer à remettre en cause l’existence d’une identité 793
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feminine” (108). En paraphrasant cette citation on peut affirmer qu’en Sardaigne et en Sicile dans ces dernières années il existe “mille manière d’être romancière”. On peut donc “remettre en cause l’existence d’une littérature typiquement féminine” dans les îles. Une remise en cause qui, tout au moins pour la Sicile, n’aurait pas eu de sens il y a quelque temps, mais qui à l’heure actuelle représente, dans les îles comme ailleurs, le signe indiscutable d’une parité acquise qui efface toute différence passée avec la “littérature des hommes”. Ouvrages cités
Alcioni, Paola. La stirpe de re perduti. Nuoro: Il Maestrale, 2003. Asor Rosa, Alberto (sous la direction de). Letteratura italiana. Le questioni. Torino: Einaudi, 1986. Attanasio, Maria. Di Concetta e le sue donne. Palermo: Sellerio, 1999. Carpinteri, Teresa. L’Eringio. Palermo: Flaccovio, 1978. Clarkson, Giulia. La città d’acqua. Nuoro: Il Maestrale, 2003. Cutrufelli, Maria Rosa. Il paese dei figli perduti. Milano: Tropea, 1999. Corona, Daniela (sous la direction de). Donne e scrittura. Palermo: La luna, 1990. Ehrenberg, Alain. La Fatigue d’être soi. Dépression et société. Paris: Odile Jacob, 1998. Giacobbe, Maria. Gli Arcipelaghi. Nuoro: Il Maestrale, 2001. Kaufmann, Jean Claude. L’invention de soi. Paris: Armand Colin, 2004. Marras, Margherita. “Ecriture féminine et univers insulaire”. Europaea 1/2 (2000): 31-49. Romano, Massimo. “La maschera e il vampiro”. Sigma 1-2 (1984): 36-42. 794
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Zappulla Mascarà, Sara (sous la direction de). Narratori siciliani del secondo dopoguerra. Catania: Maimone, 1990.
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Petits Meurtres en Famille Que dit le Meurtre? Comment Dire le Meurtre? Réflexions sur le Meurtre dans la Littérature Féminine Marie Françoise Zana Regniez (Université Stendhal de Grenoble 3)
Le meurtre dont il sera question ici, est le meurtre écrit par des femmes. Ce qui implique donc de réfléchir à une éventuelle particularité des thématiques féminines, voire de l’écriture féminine et, tout autant, aux genres dont vont s’emparer les femmes pour écrire le meurtre. Une première constatation s’impose: le roman policier italien n’a pas été aussi massivement investi par les femmes que cela peut être le cas dans d’autres pays, notamment dans les pays anglo-saxons où la tradition du roman policier féminin est depuis longtemps établie. Chez les Italiennes, alors qu’on voit se développer une littérature féminine dans tous les domaines, leur apport au polar est récent. Un frémissement en effet semble cependant parcourir l’édition italienne, en particulier à Bologne où des noms nouveaux apparaissent ces dernières années. Dans ou hors de groupements d’écrivains comme le Gruppo 13 bolonais ou sur Internet avec Incubatoio 16, des individualités féminines émergent comme Danila Comastri Montanari et Simona Vinci ou Nicoletta Vallorani. Ces femmes ont la particularité de situer leurs intrigues dans des espaces originaux: la Rome antique pour la première, les milieux marginaux de Bologne ou Milan pour les deux autres. On pourrait aussi rappeler le polar légèrement déjanté de Lidia Ravera, Bagna i fiori e aspettami, qui fait ici figure de précurseur ou encore le polar féministe de Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, Complice il dubbio. 796
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Mais en fait, en Italie plus qu’ailleurs peut-être, c’est dans différents types de romans – romans au sens traditionnel, romans autobiographiques – que vont être abordés les problèmes de société. Ou encore dans des romans qui, pour avoir la forme du roman policier, ne sont pas avant tout cela. Et précisément dans ce que, depuis Sciascia notamment, on désigne comme “giallo non giallo”, des romans où la résolution de l’énigme passe largement après l’étude de société. Du coup, la recherche exaspérée de l’originalité deviennent parfois un but en soi. Cela revient à créer un monde parallèle (monde de la marginalité contre monde officiel; monde de la nuit contre monde du jour; valeurs officielles contre valeurs de la marge etc.). Selon le talent de l’auteur, ce monde renversé peut être plus ou moins crédible, plus ou moins subversif ou au contraire on ne peut plus convenu.1 La recherche stylistique et langagière est parfois innovante, souvent elle se contente de jouer sur un changement de registre. Une certaine complaisance morbide est parfois aussi de mise. La peinture d’univers alternatifs semble, en tout cas, être au centre des préoccupations des nouveaux auteurs de polars. Des univers où la provocation voire la transgression qui règnent peuvent d’ailleurs n’être que verbales. De fait, on assiste avant tout, au gauchissement d’une tendance déjà présente dans le roman noir. La critique de la société officielle – avec ses «flics ripoux» – devient plus systématique et se déplace vers les groupes sociaux émergents. Les univers des laissés-pour-compte de la mondialisation, ou 1 Voir, en particulier, pour les Italiennes, Vallorani. Son enquêtrice Zoe Libra est éboueuse. Pour elle la vie est “trash”, à des années-lumière des utopies féministes et gauchisantes personnifiées par sa sœur Arianna “universitaire, féministe et irresponsable” (La fiancé de Zorro, p. 191). On y rencontre aussi Soft, un marginal, génie de l’informatique et quelques autres phénomènes dont une grand-mère octogénaire qui s’habille comme une star du porno... 797
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encore de tous ceux qui gravitent autour des économies parallèles, de la toxicomanie, de l’émigration clandestine apparaissent comme des nébuleuses à explorer. Les criminels subissent le même type de métamorphose sous l’effet d’une évolution de la société, avec en particulier l’apparition du tueur en série,2 parfois à son tour manipulé par quelque pouvoir occulte. Omniprésence de la thématique mère-fille
En revanche sur le plan des thématiques, on ne s’éloigne guère des thématiques traditionnelles de la littérature féminine. Souvent même les héroïnes ou anti-héroïnes du néo-polar sont confrontées, comme leurs consœurs plus traditionnelles – à la tentation du sentimentalisme le plus mièvre: Zoe Libra, que l’on rencontre chez Nicoletta Vallorani, évoque dans Cuore meticcio – à sa façon certes – la fête des amoureux avec son compagnon... Et surtout les rapports à la mère et à la maternité, sont omniprésents. Des héroïnes accouchent (telle Lupin la complémentaire de Zoe Libra)3, les pères ont souvent déserté, les familles sont recomposées de façon non traditionnelle. Renversement de valeur oblige, les mères peuvent être des poids et les enfants, des enfants de substitutions. Il y a profusion de neveux et plus encore de nièces, de jeunes voisins en détresse. La Matilda de Simona Vinci – elle l’appelle, avec affection, “la mia Matilda” dans un roman qui cible plutôt les adolescents – 2Le
roman Il sospetto de Laura Grimaldi s’inspire du “giallo di Firenze”: dans les années 80, un tueur en série s’en prenait aux couples; cette affaire restée assez mystérieuse est également traitée par Carlo Lucarelli dans un chapitre des Nuovi misteri d’Italia, qu’il intitule “I mostri di Firenze”. 3Complémentaires comme on le dit des couleurs: l’une est boulimique l’autre est anorexique!
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MARIE FRANÇOISE ZANA REGNIEZ (UNIVERSITÉ STENDHAL DE GRENOBLE 3)
sauve le jeune fils d’un petit dealer maghrébin. Cet hommage déclaré à la Gloria de Cassavetes se déroule dans “la notte bolognese che profuma di umido e puzza di guai” comme il est dit en quatrième de couverture. Zoe Libra a en charge, plus qu’épisodiquement, ses trois nièces. Des ambiguïtés sur les identités sexuelles, sur les identités sociales, voire sur les valeurs font florès. Même la gentille Matilda se définit “couillue” (“cazzuta”) parce qu’elle conduit un scooter et pratique le kick-boxing! Au vu de ce tableau, faire émerger une quelconque ligne de force est de l’ordre la gageure: ce ne sera pas le genre en tous les cas, puisque tous ces auteurs jouent à le chambouler, ni l’écriture, puisqu’on rencontre des écritures classiques et sages, et d’autres qui bousculent la syntaxe. Il reste néanmoins que le lien familial semble relativement pouvoir faire fonction de fil conducteur. Même chez Vallorani – qui cherche à innover – on trouvera ce lien familial avec le meurtre: dans Dentro la notte e ciao, la mère d’une des narratrices est tuée par son père qui se révèle être un serial killer... Dans La fidanzata di Zorro, le lien avec l’assassin se fait par l’intermédiaire de la sœur de l’enquêtrice, dans Cuore meticcio, Zoe Libra est amoureuse du principal suspect. La même prédilection pour les relations familiales se retrouve dans des nouvelles de Susanna Tamaro.4 Cette thématique commune – du meurtre en famille – est en particulier flagrante dans un groupe de cinq romans: deux sont des romans policiers, au sens traditionnel du terme, dus l’un et l’autre à la plume de Laura Grimaldi: Il sospetto (1988) et La paura (1993); les trois autres sont des chroniques familiales. Il s’agit de I padri lontani (1987) de Marina Jarre,
4.
L’une et l’autre donnent des relations familiales des visions plutôt féroces. 799
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Madre e figlia (1980) de Francesca Sanvitale, et enfin de L’amore molesto (1995) de Elena Ferrante. La réflexion qui a précédé ce choix est la suivante: dans les cinq cas qui sont étudiés ici, chacun des “meurtres” – en réalité des meurtres fantasmés et des meurtres effectifs – ont tous lieu dans le cadre familial. Les différents romans couvrent vingt ans d’édition italienne et dépassent le cadre strict d’un seul genre; leur point commun est la fiction romanesque féminine. Si l’on en s’en tient aux études sur la criminalité féminine (Trinquier), on observe que les femmes sont surtout les auteurs de deux types de crime: les infanticides et les infractions dites astucieuses. On sait que les femmes sont dans les infanticides, sur-représentées par rapport aux hommes(Casarini). Les autres crimes dont les femmes sont, plus que les hommes, les auteurs sont des infractions, dites astucieuses, contre les biens. Très loin derrière, pouvant être relégué au niveau du stéréotype, on trouve le crime passionnel. Les femmes tuent, semble-t-il, plus par défense (contre un conjoint violent envers elles ou leurs enfants) que par passion. On prend note de cela avec intérêt, dans la mesure où dans ces romans, on va se trouver face à des crimes domestiques, mais jamais à des crimes passionnels dans l’acception habituelle du terme. En revanche, on trouvera des traces de crimes de femmes contre leur mari en particulier, dans la littérature du XIXème, entre autre chez Regina di Luanto dans Un matrimonio et jusqu’aux années cinquante, chez Alba De Cespedès (Dalla parte di lei) ou Natalia Ginzburg (È stato così). La littérature donne, on le sait bien, des clés d’interprétation sociale de son époque.
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La crise de génération
Dans I padri lontani, Marina Jarre, la narratrice – mère d’enfants adultes, écrivaine déjà consacrée, retraitée de l’enseignement – qui est en période de relecture de son autobiographie, rêve qu’elle tue sa mère morte depuis deux ans déjà. Ce sont des rêves récurrents comme l’atteste l’utilisation de l’imparfait: Facevo sogni orrendi: affrontavo una cosa che di mia madre aveva l’aspetto e tentavo a colpi di ascia di tagliarla a pezzi; mentre invano tentavo di distruggerla, la cosa continuava tra fiotti di sangue a proclamarsi mia madre che io, invece, piangendo e urlando, invocavo: “vieni a dirle che tu sei quella vera, che sei morta, che non sei lei. (158)5
L’horreur même du mode d’accomplissement du meurtre – les coups de hache – ainsi que le réalisme de la description sont euphémisés par l’utilisation du terme “cosa” qui s’oppose à l’évocation de la mère “vera” déjà morte. Cette dernière étant invoquée pour venir soutenir sa fille dans cette lutte contre la “chose” sanguinolente. Mais l’expression “la détruire” nous met au cœur du conflit entre mère et fille. Car ce rêve récurrent répond, en fait, à des désirs que la fille a déjà exprimés verbalement. Au moment de la maladie de sa vieille mère, les relations entre les deux femmes étaient telles que la soigner
5 “Je faisais des rêves horribles: j’affrontais une chose qui de ma mère avait l’aspect et je tentais à coup de hache de la découper en morceaux; tandis que je tentais en vain de la détruire, la chose continuait, au milieu de flots de sang, à se proclamer ma mère et moi au contraire, en pleurant et en hurlant je l’invoquais “viens lui dire que tu es la vraie, que tu es morte et que tu n’es pas celle-là” (C’est nous qui traduisons) 801
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voulait dire pour sa fille être “encore une fois enchaînée”. Elle écrit textuellement: “je l’aurais tuée”. Sans passage à l’acte, il va sans dire. Ce meurtre – écrit – assume alors une valeur particulière, il représente la séparation suprême (Lemoine Luccioni), la coupure (au sens de coupure du cordon ombilical) d’avec sa mère (“qui n’avait pu l’accepter”). Une séparation qui n’avait pu jusqu’alors s’accomplir. Entre les deux femmes, il y a tout un arriéré de tension voire d’insoumission chez la fille, qui cherche à sa construire en échappant au rôle que sa mère a prévu pour elle. Contrairement au conflit qui suggère la lutte pour le pouvoir, la crise de génération met l’accent sur la rupture dans la transmission des rôles. C’est de cela dont il question chez Marina Jarre. C’est dans ce cas spécifique d’autant plus intéressant que la mère, une pionnière par certains côtés, a beaucoup mieux réussi sur un plan social que sa fille. Mais elle a réussi, selon cette dernière, “comme un homme” (Jarre 143). Marina Jarre a du, quant à elle, trouver sa place en tant que femme dans une société qui ne lui a pas fait de cadeaux. Cette crise des générations pourrait se situer, pour les femmes, dans les années du néo-féminisme, c’est-à-dire plus tardivement qu’on ne la situe, habituellement, chez les hommes (Mendel). I padri lontani ou encore le roman Piazza mia bella piazza de Francesca Duranti de 1978 sont éclairants sur ce point. La rupture entre mère et fille, dans le roman de Francesca Duranti, s’accomplit quand la fille quitte son mari non pour un autre homme, mais pour vivre sa vie de “femme libre”, ce que la mère ne saurait accepter, ni même imaginer, enfermée qu’elle est dans les conventions sociales. Perpétrée par une fille sur la personne de sa mère, la tentative de meurtre se trouve dans les pages centrales de Madre e Figlia de Francesca Sanvitale. 802
MARIE FRANÇOISE ZANA REGNIEZ (UNIVERSITÉ STENDHAL DE GRENOBLE 3)
Elle est évidemment centrale aussi dans le cadre d’un rapport mère-fille défini comme une relation interchangeable de victime à bourreau. Les deux femmes vivent dans un climat de “délire théâtral”, où les non-dits, les mensonges et les affabulations torturent l’esprit de l’une et l’autre. Dans ce délire, les rôles mère-fille sont également interchangeables. L’écriture du texte à la troisième personne entretient l’ambiguïté et les identités se confondent. La fille en est venue à prendre soin de sa mère infantile. La tentative de meurtre, qui cessera d’ailleurs devant l’injonction maternelle est écrite ainsi: Alcuni anni dopo una notte, mentre persistevano identiche le cause delle angosce, si alzò […] e prima di deciderlo si trovò davanti al corpo della madre. Invece di scuoterla e di svegliarla, sospinta da una furia che le faceva battere i denti, strinse le dita intorno al suo collo. Doveva farle capire una volta per tutte che la tortura sarebbe finita a qualunque costo, che l’agonia aveva un termine. [...] “Uccidimi!” esclamò inaspettatamente la madre senza paura, con un tono melodrammatico da film, con ira e sdegno nobilissimi. “Uccidi tua madre se hai coraggio!”. (130)6
6 “Quelques années plus tard, une nuit, tandis que les causes des angoisses persistaient, identiques, elle se leva […] et avant de l’avoir décidé, elle se retrouva devant le corps de sa mère. Au lieu de la secouer et de la réveiller, poussée par une folie qui la faisait claquer des dents, elle sera ses doigts autour de son cou. Elle devait lui faire comprendre une fois pour toutes que la torture devait finir à tout prix, que l’agonie avait un terme [...] “Tue-moi!” s’exclama de façon inattendue la mère, d’un ton mélodramatique comme dans les films, avec une colère et un mépris très nobles. “Tue ta mère si tu en as le courage!” 803
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Ce meurtre avorté de la mère précède, de fait, la fuite salvatrice – “par instinct” – de la fille, hors de la maison maternelle. Casa et madre étant symboliquement associées dans un même refus, la fuite hors de la maison maternelle représente un espoir de seconde naissance. Paradoxalement, si on les oppose aux deux premiers cas présentés (le meurtre fantasmé et la tentative de meurtre) qui sont tirés de romans traditionnels, les meurtres effectifs qui ont lieu dans les deux romans policiers sont écrits d’une façon étrangement pudique. Dans Il sospetto, la mère décide de supprimer son fils qu’elle croit l’auteur de crimes sexuels particulièrement atroces et qu’elle sait terriblement malheureux. Elle choisira pour lui une mort douce en augmentant les doses du médicament qu’il prend. L’achat, les gestes de substitution des flacons sont décrits avec précision, ainsi que les affres de la mère qui titube avant de prendre le somnifère qui lui permettra d’attendre le lendemain et la découverte programmée du corps de son fils (213).7 La mort, en revanche, aura lieu hors-champ. Dans La paura, l’acte est encore plus éludé. Maddalena, fille adulte, d’un couple formé par une mère effacée et un père – un tyran domestique qui impose au domicile familial (la maison de la mère) la présence de sa maîtresse – tue celui-ci au nom de la famille. Pour sauver sa famille. Elle tue son père en particulier pour protéger les maillons faibles de cette famille: sa mère et un frère fou que le père allait faire enfermer. Ici, on assiste en direct au meurtre du père. Assis sur un rebord de fenêtre, il a le temps de voir le regard de sa fille qui le
7 “Elle avait clairement à l’esprit ce qu’elle trouverait dans la chambre de son fils. Elle connaissait bien les manifestations du coma diabétique”. 804
MARIE FRANÇOISE ZANA REGNIEZ (UNIVERSITÉ STENDHAL DE GRENOBLE 3)
pousse dans le vide,8 mais il n’a pas celui de trouver un appui pour se retenir. Cette “dernière caresse” est bien sûr à souligner: pas de haine ici mais un amour déçu. Justicière comme la mère dans Il sospetto, Maddalena tue par amour des siens celui qu’elle juge indigne. Dans le dernier cas évoqué ici, celui du roman de Elena Ferrante, L’Amore molesto, réapparaît le thème des rapports mère-fille. Ici, il n’est plus question cependant de matricide, mais bien plutôt toujours de recherche identitaire. La narratrice, Delia, peu après avoir reçu un coup de téléphone étrange de sa mère Amalia, qui lui tient des propos obscènes, apprend la nouvelle de la mort de celle-ci dont le corps tuméfié est retrouvé sur une plage. Or cette plage où Amalia n’avait aucune raison de se trouver, est la plage où la famille se rendait en vacances, bien des années auparavant. Delia est persuadée que cette mort n’est pas naturelle et entreprend une enquête informelle sur les derniers jours de sa mère, où elle-même va se perdre et se retrouver. Se retrouver toujours plus semblable à cette mère dont elle était tellement éloignée et qu’elle avait finit par haïr: “Era a lei che volevo fare del male” (120).9 La quête identitaire va dévoiler une vérité enfouie sous un mensonge. Délia, enfant, a été victime d’une agression sexuelle de la part du grand-père d’un camarade de jeu, mais, refusant la vérité, sur ce qu’elle a éprouvé alors – de la terreur, 8 Laura Grimaldi, La paura, p. 226. “Maddalena tendit une main, elle la lui posa légèrement sur la poitrine, comme pour une dernière caresse. Cela suffit pour qu’il perde l’équilibre”. 9 “C’était à elle que je voulais faire du mal. Parce qu’elle m’avait laissée dans ce monde toute seule pour jouer avec les mots du mensonge, sans mesure, sans vérité”. 805
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mais aussi du plaisir – elle a refoulé l’épisode. Qui plus est, elle a maquillé les faits – pour les confier à son propre père – en une conversation surprise entre sa mère et l’amant supposé de celleci. De ce fait, le mensonge de la fille, qui est avant tout un refoulement, va être à l’origine d’une rupture violente entre la mère et le père. Or ces mots, les mots du suborneur – “les mots du mensonge” répétés au père – sont ceux-là mêmes que la mère avant de mourir a – à son tour – répétés à sa fille au téléphone, pour lui dire, peut-être qu’elle n’avait pas été dupe du mensonge, mais – suggère l’auteur – plus encore parce que: “quelle parole erano dicibili” (120).10 En tout cas, ces mots resurgis, ces mots réhabilités, vont amener la narratrice à s’identifier à cette mère dont elle s’était voulue différente: “Amalia c’era stata. Io ero Amalia”, “Amalia avait été, j’étais Amalia” tels sont les derniers mots de ce premier roman, qui laisse une impression curieuse. Le traitement onirique du récit certes se justifie. Delia effectue ce pedinamento à la recherche de la mère à travers des brumes d’une conscience anesthésiée par la douleur et les affleurements des réminiscences. Elena Ferrante, dont on souligne l’héritage morantien, fait évoluer sa narratrice entre mensonges et sortilèges. Delia poursuit son image maternelle – de huis-clos en huis-clos – qui sont autant d’antres – la maison de la mère, une chambre d’hôtel, un ascenseur, un téléphérique, une arrière boutique – peuplés d’ogres grimaçants, de vieillards terribles, d’hommes menaçants. Mais la curieuse impression tient aussi très certainement à ce final inattendu qui intrigue. Que représente, en fait, dans le
10 “Peut-être voulait-elle simplement me démontrer que même ces mots, on pouvait les dire, et que, contrairement à ce que j’avais cru toute ma vie, ils pouvaient ne pas me faire du mal”. 806
MARIE FRANÇOISE ZANA REGNIEZ (UNIVERSITÉ STENDHAL DE GRENOBLE 3)
cadre du roman féminin, cette identification à la mère présentée comme positive ou à tout le moins résolutive? L’amore molesto est un roman de 1993, il est le plus récent dans la série étudiée ici. Or, le roman féminin italien a connu d’abord des vagues de romans à la gloire de la mère, irréprochable modèle,11 puis une série de romans, de la veine néo-féministe qui traitaient de la “mère mauvaise”, de la sphinge dévoratrice dont I padri lontani et Madre e figlia sont des exemples parfaitement représentatifs. Il sospetto, se présente, quant à lui, comme une variation à coloration psychanalytique sur la figure de la mère toute puissante qui supprime la vie qu’elle a donnée, tandis que dans La paura, la fille tue le père au nom de la cohésion de la famille comme une nouvelle Antigone... Le fait nouveau dans L’amore molesto, c’est qu’il est ouvertement question de sexualité: la sexualité animale de la mère est porteuse de vie puisque la fille interprète les derniers mots obscènes de sa mère, au téléphone, comme une invitation à les prononcer, et pour elle, qui vit le sexe comme une angoisse, à affronter ses peurs, à affronter la sexualité. A passer outre l’agression qu’elle a subi enfant. S’inscrit-elle alors, à contrecourant par rapport l’approche actuelle de l’enfance bafouée, dans la ligne de Marguerite Yourcenar qui dans Quoi? L’Éternité, relativise ce type d’épisode qu’elle même a vécu (271)? Elena Ferrante, à travers le rôle joué par le sang menstruel dans l’un et l’autre roman, rejoint également un quart de siècle plus tard Marie Cardinal qui avait alors trouvé “les mots pour […] dire […] cette peur qui [la] paralysait, qui 11
Voir, par exemple, les images de la mère chez Fausta Cialente, Le quattro ragazze Wieselberger, ou chez Lalla Romano, La penombra che abbiamo attraversato. 807
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paralysait [sa] mère et les femmes en noir” et qui – selon elle – “n’était pas la peur du phallus” mais “la peur du pouvoir des hommes” (315). Alors, en ce sens L’amore molesto nous annonce-t-il un nouvel avatar en cours des rapports mère-fille? Et, en conséquence, s’il n’y a plus à avoir peur du pouvoir des hommes, ce roman préfigure peut-être aussi un avatar à venir des rapports entres les sexes, dans le roman féminin italien, du moins. Puissent-ils ne pas être molesti! La principale conclusion que nous entrevoyons la suivante: si dans le roman féminin italien (mais est-ce bien différent ailleurs?) le nœud à dénouer reste le nœud familial, si c’est là, effectivement sa spécificité, paradoxalement, en le résolvant (ou à tout le moins en écartant cette thématique), n’abandonnera-t-il pas ce qui fondait sa légitimité au risque de se banaliser? Mais, à ne pas le dépasser, à ne traiter que de cela, le roman féminin court le risque d’aller vers une impasse.
Ouvrages cités
Cialente, Fausta. Le quattro ragazze Wieselberger. Milano: Mondadori, 1976. Cardinal, Marie. Les mots pour le dire. Paris: Grasset, 1975. Casarini, Maria Pia. “Il buon matrimonio, tre casi di infanticidi nell’800.” Memoria. Rivista di storia delle donne 7 (1981): Madri e non madri. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier. 27-35. Cutrufelli, Maria Rosa. Complice il dubbio. Milano: Mondadori, 1992. Duranti, Francesca. Piazza mia bella piazza. Milano: La Tartaruga, 1978. Ferrante, Elena. L’amore molesto. Roma: Edizioni e/o, 1993. Grimaldi, Laura. Il sospetto. Milano: Mondadori, 1988. 808
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---. La paura. Milano: Mondadori, 1993. I delitti del gruppo 13. Bologna: Metrolibri, 1991. Jarre, Marina. I padri lontani. Torino: Einaudi, 1987. Lemoine Luccioni, Eugénie. Le Partage des femmes. Paris: Le Seuil, 1976. Lucarelli, Carlo. Nuovi misteri d’Italia. Torino: Einaudi, 2004. Mendel, Gérard. La crise des générations. Paris: Payot, 1969. ---. La psychanalyse revisitée. Paris: La Découverte, 1988. Ravera, Lidia. Bagna i fiori e aspettami. Milano: Rizzoli, 1986. Romano, Lalla. La penombra che abbiamo attraversato. Torino: Einaudi, 1964. Sanvitale, Francesca. Madre e figlia. Milano: Mondadori, 1980. Tamaro, Susanna. Per voce sola. Venezia: Marsilio, 1991. Trinquier, Christel. Femmes en prison. Paris: Le Cherche-midi, 1997. Vallorani, Nicoletta. Dentro la notte e ciao. Bologna: Granata Press, 1995. ---. La fidanzata di Zorro. Milano: Marcos y Marcos, 1996. La fiancé de Zorro. Trad. française de A. Lauterbach. Paris: Gallimard, 2000. ---. Cuore Meticcio. Milano: Marcos y Marcos, 1998. Vinci, Simona. Corri Matilda. Trieste: Edizioni E.L., 1998. Yourcenar, Marguerite. Quoi? L’Éternité. Paris: Gallimard, 1988.
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