CONTRIBUTI THE SUBLIME WOMAN: A READING OF IGINIO UGO TARCHETTI’S FOSCA GIORGIO MELLONI State University of New York at New Paltz New Paltz, N. Y. Abstract: This article on the short novel Passion (original title, Fosca ) by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti offers textual evidence, through the individuation of the sublime woman as central character, or myth, of the story, for the inclusion of Tarchetti in the aesthetic canon of the Post-Romantic Sublime (see Bloom 1982; De Man 1971; Foster 1997; Freeman 1997; Hertz 1985; Lyotard 1994). The essay investigates the differences between the Romantic notion of the Sublime and that of Tarchetti (a member of the Scapigliatura , “ The Disheveled Ones ”, a post-romantic Italian literary movement), which anticipates the poetical themes and aesthetic forms of later authors such as D’Annunzio, Tozzi, and Anile. Indeed, in many Post-Romantic writers, such as the well studied French poet Baudelaire (see Auerbach 1959), the paradoxical tranquility guaranteed by the Romantic Sublime to the individual – at least in its manifestation as an infinite destructive danger, however remote – seems to be converted into a sensation of annihilation or devastation in which the act of perception of the object reaches a peak. In the Post- Romantic Sublime the contemplation of the aesthetic object is not resolved in the survival of the subject, an act permitted by the Romantic sublime. Instead, it concludes in the frustrating defeat or death of the individual before the impenetrable veil which filters reality. Key-words: Female Body, Sublime, Picturesque, Grotesque, Romantic, Scapigliatura, Stylistic Hermeneutics. ny reader who explores that controversial manifesto of criticism and poetics set forth in the “Idee minime sul romanzo” ( Tutte le opere, AVol. II, pp. 522-35) of Tarchetti is presented, almost at the beginning of the essay, with a declaration on the historical destiny and the ethical purpose of Literature: 72 THE SUBLIME WOMAN: A READING OF IGINIO UGO TARCHETTI’S FOSCA S’egli è vero che l’umanità progredisca lentamente, ma in modo sicuro, e che nulla possa arrestare e far retrocedere il genio nel suo cammino, i nostri posteri, fra migliaia di anni, vivranno moralmente della nostra vita attuale: le lettere avranno raggiunto per essi quello scopo sublime e generale, che è di moltiplicare ed accrescere ed invigorire nello spirito quelle mille ed infinite sensazioni per le quali si manifesta il sentimento gigantesco della vita. (“Idee minime sul romanzo”)1. (pp. 523-24) (If it is true that humanity progresses slowly but surely, and that nothing can hinder or turn back the genius in his course, then our present life will be the spiritual fodder for our descendents in a thousand years: for them, literature will have achieved the general and sublime end, that of multiplying, increasing, invigorating the many infinite sensations in the spirit through which the immense feel of life manifests itself.) (My translation) This passage recalls unequivocally the terms and keywords of Romantic aesthetics, through which the reader must also decipher the belief – expressed by Tarchetti in a previous passage not far from the one just quoted – that the “fine comune delle lettere ” (“common goal of literature”) is “ l’istruire e educare allettando ’ (“to instruct and educate while entertaining”; “Idee minime’ p. 522). This eighteenth-century version of Horace’s principle of the utile dulci is filtered, however, through an eye that belongs neither to the Enlightenment nor to Neo-Classicism (Finzi, “Introduzione”, Fosca , p. 7) 2. Tarchetti was considering the advantages which a broader diffusion of the artistic form of the novel 3 would provide to human history. We must therefore reflect more closely on the contextual, semantic meaning of the specific terms used by the author. First of all, we are struck by the presence of one of the keywords of Romantic poetics: “genius”. Indeed, though the word is used here more in the collective sense of an intellectual and creative principle of the history of society, and of the development of humankind, than that of the original intuitive and “poetic” power of the artist, it is nevertheless a sign of a purposeful metaphorical choice. Tarchetti’s selection sinks its roots in the semantic patrimony of Romanticism, which is also related to the idea – idealistic and positivistic at the same time – of the progress of the human being. The adjective “ sublime ” followed by “ generale ’ in the structure of a dicholon , may at first appear to be employed in a very bland way indeed. Immediately after, however , the writer specifies the concept by means of the triple synonymic anaphora of verbs which indicate the intensification of perception. Its “phenomenology’ as Merleau-Ponty would term it, is articulated – surely not by coincidence – around a dynamic hierarchy of three spheres of the human mind-body, namely lo spirito, il sentimento and la sensazione, typical of what we call Romanticism. The simple use of these 73 GIORGIO MELLONI particular verbs ( moltiplicare , accrescere , invigorire ) immediately implies a corresponding adjective ( infinite ), which insists on the idea of infinity implied in the recurring nature of sensations (underlined by the connection between the explicit appearance of the adjective and the hyperbole of the syntagm “mille ed infinite ”), and on the extraordinary dimensions that the sense of life can attain. But it is precisely this notion of infinity and of the “gigantic” disproportion between the limits of man and the power of Nature that results in one of the key concepts of the Romantic reflection on the Sublime. In this way, Tarchetti wants to indicate an interpretive key or path to his own poetics, in addition to the delineation of an aesthetic synthesis of the cultural and artistic times in which he lived (particularly of the “current” of the Italian Scapigliatura , alias “the disheveled ones” 4). The Romantic idea of the Sublime is alive in many of Tarchetti’s works, but it finds its truest expression in his short novel Fosca 5, as this article will show. Indeed, Tarchetti’s Fosca is a great example of a nineteenth-century Italian novel of seduction, where an unsightly woman (a “sublime woman”) seduces the main male character, who also represents the focal point of the narration, and puts him in a revolutionary 6 situation of confusion regarding the traditional sense of masculinity. Thus, in order to identify the “sublime” modalities used by Tarchetti in Fosca , it seems proper to recall briefly some of the conceptual nuclei of Romantic speculations on the Sublime. Whoever considers the problem of the sublime in Romantic aesthetics and painting must always keep in mind that fundamental text entitled A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful , published in 1757 by the statesman Edmund Burke. Burke, on a theoretical path trod by Joseph Addison 7, Francis Hutcheson 8 and David Hume 9, opposes both the interpretations of Boileau and the hypotheses of Winckelmann. He clearly distinguishes the aesthetic concept of “Beauty” or “the Beautiful” from that of the “Sublime”. With the first are associated notions of order, composure, and harmony, understood as expressions of a form that reflects Nature’s sense of proportion and symmetry, in the perfection of its earthly finiteness. From this natural perfection, a peaceful feeling of “pleasure” is born in the mind of the spectator or the reader. To the Sublime, on the other hand, are connected ideas of disorder and disharmony, embodied in the infinite dimensions of the portrayed Object, emblematic of the negation and destruction of the traditional or classical artistic Form. The result is the feeling of “delight”, a strange enchantment that does not exclude what is dreadful and hideous, but indeed requires and welcomes it (De Paz, p. 212). Burke writes: No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. For fear being an apprehension of pain or death, it operates in a manner that resembles actual pain. Whatever therefore is 74 THE SUBLIME WOMAN: A READING OF IGINIO UGO TARCHETTI’S FOSCA terrible, with regard to sight, is sublime too, whether this cause of terror be endured with greatness of dimension or not; for it is impossible to look on anything as trifling, or contemptible, that may be dangerous. There are many animals, who, though far from being large, are yet capable of rising ideas of the sublime, because they are considered as objects of terror, as serpents and poisonous animals of almost all kinds. And to things of great dimensions, if we annex an adventitious idea of terror, they become without comparison greater. A level plain of a vast extent on land is certainly no mean idea; the prospect of such a plain may be as extensive as a prospect of the ocean; but can it ever fill the mind with anything so great as the ocean itself? This is owing to several causes; but it is owing to none more than this, that the ocean is an object of no small terror. Indeed terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently, the ruling principle of the sublime. […] To make anything very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes. Every one will be sensible of this, who considers how greatly nights add to our dread, in all cases of danger, and how much the notions of ghosts and goblins, of which none can form clear ideas, affect minds which give credit to the popular tales concerning such sorts of beings. (pp. 57-59) The beholder of the Sublime is petrified, invariably seduced by an irrepressible and irresistible strength which often assumes features of the monster .