Representations of Hybridity:

Science, Techne and the Human in the Works of Alberto Savinio

By

Nicole Torian Gercke

B.A., Dartmouth College, 1998

M.A., Middlebury College, 2008

Dissertation

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Italian Studies at Brown University

PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

MAY 2015

© Copyright 2015 by Nicole Torian Gercke

ii This dissertation by Nicole Gercke is accepted in its present form

by the Department of Italian Studies as satisfying the

dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Date ______Massimo Riva, Advisor

Recommended to the Graduate Council

Date ______Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg, Reader

Date ______Keala Jewell, Reader

Approved by the Graduate Council

Date ______Peter Weber, Dean of the Graduate School

iii

CURRICULUM VITAE

Nicole Gercke was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 17, 1976. She earned her

Bachelor of Arts in Classics, with a minor in Studio Art from Dartmouth College in 1998.

She taught English in Italy for four years before returning to pursue a Masters of Arts in

Italian Studies from Middlebury College, which was awarded in 2008.

iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank wholeheartedly all of the faculty and my colleagues in the Italian

Studies department and those friends and family, near and far, who through all these years have supported me, believed in me, challenged me to think critically, inspired me with their creativity and dedication, made me laugh and kept my eyes open to the world around me. My deepest love and gratitude to you all.

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Curriculum Vitae iv Acknowledgements v Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The Vita di Mercurio Project: Electricity, the Body and the Human 1. Introduction 12 2. Electricity and Modernity 15 3. A Different Metaphysics 21 4. Electricity in Popular Culture and Literature 24 5. Life of Mercury 29 6. Life of Mercury: a Genealogy 34 7. Alternative Versions 41 8. Electricity, Magnetism, Hysteria 51 9. Conclusion 66

Chapter 2: The Hybrid Psyche of Savinio’s La nostra anima 1. Introduction 69 2. The Retelling of the Myth 78 3. Electricity and Psychoanalysis 94 4. Human-Machine 117 5. Conclusion 134

Chapter 3: Petrified Bodies: A New Earthly Immortality 1. Introduction 143 2. History and Techniques of Mummification, Embalming and Petrification and the Intersection of Art and Science 152 3. Museo di Famiglia 171 4. Paradiso Terrestre 179 5. Conclusion 186

Conclusion 195

Bibliography 201 Abbreviations 206

vi Introduction

A me non importa la ‘forma’ della teoria scientifica e che la teoria sia vera. (Attraverso quante verità è passata la storia del mondo?). Importa che la teoria scientifica sia tale di forma da ispirare idee di movimento e di libertà.1

As a glance though the catalog of his personal library held in the Fondo Savinio at the Archivio Contemporaneo of the Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence can attest, Savinio indeed looked to science in the late 1930s until his death in 1952 as yet another source of inspiration for his creative projects. In these projects, as he clearly states, the purpose of his inclusion of scientific theories (and technologies) is not focused on faithfully representing these theories, but rather on using them as a starting point for elaborating ideas. Savinio’s style of self-defined “dilettantismo” or “stendhalismo” celebrates precisely this freedom and movement of thought, one that mirrors the Presocratic concept of panta rei:

Abbiamo veduto riaccendersi lo spirito greco nell'Umanesimo, ma ora i vincoli di parentela diventano più stretti; e nello stendhalismo vediamo riaccendersi lo spirito della Grecia presocratica, ossia della Grecia più greca, più libera. (Dobbiamo abituarci a considerare la Grecia socratica e scopritrice della coscienza come una Grecia “decadente”.) La Grecia presocratica è dilettantesca e stendhaliana. Il suo dilettantismo, cioè a dire il suo disinteresse, la sua purezza di vita, la sua mancanza di finalismo si esprimono particolarmente nel panta rei di Eraclito, questo precursore di Enrico Beyle. Tutto è stendhaliano nella Grecia presocratica, tutto è dilettantesco, tutto è asimbolico e fine a se stesso; quelle varie e contraddittorie spiegazioni della natura, sono la prima forma dei giochi speculativi che dilettano noi. Non lo spiegare la natura ferma la mente dell'uomo, la polarizza, l'abbrutisce: ma lo spiegarla "in un modo solo".2

This free movement of thought doesn’t exclude the development of ideas – in fact, Savinio defines his own form of “surrealismo mio” as “dar forma all’informe,

1 “Navighiamo sopra un mare di fuoco,” SD 964; orig. in “Il Corriere della Sera,” Nov 27, 1948. 2 “[Tomasso Campanella],” SD 61-62 fn; orig. Prefazione a Tommaso Campanella, La città del sole, Colombo, Roma, 1944. 1 coscienza all’inconscio,”3 pointedly distinguishing it from the efforts to merely register the unconscious of the Surrealist automatic writing –, rather, it vehemently resists the limiting, immobilizing attempt to explain nature in one way only, to create and reinforce the concept of an idealized One. As Savinio explains it, the role of the artist is, instead, to

“aumentare il numero delle verità, fino a rendere impossibile la ricostituzione della

Verità,”4 and, in so doing, to contribute to the reconceptualization of the universe as

‘horizontal.’5 For Savinio, there is not a single truth, “ci sono le verità”, there are truths

(in the plural), and it is imperative not only to recognize this multiplicity, but also to protect against forces or mentalities that would exalt instead a One, a centralized power, a definitive model. He avowedly opposes every form of Idealism, Authority, unifying principle, single God – any structure that offers a vision of the world and of nature as immutable and fixed, and which subjects us, even enslaves us, to an external power.

In his works, and through his hybrid forms, Savinio demonstrates a reluctance to conform to fixed or predetermined criteria and ideologies (or to any linguistic, stylistic or

3 Preface to Tutta la vita, 1945. 4 “[Gigiotti Zanini]” Scritti Dispersi 582; orig. “Il montanismo di Zanini” in “L’Illustrazione Italiana,” Nov 2 1947. 5 In an essay from 1946, Savinio elaborates on this concept of ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ universes, connecting the idea of ‘horizontality’ back to Heraclitus, and suggesting the elimination of all of the vertical authority figures that inhibit the free flow of life with their immobilizing Ideals: “Prima riforma da fare: eliminare i modelli che riflettono il concetto dell'universo; e dunque anche lo Stato. Con quali nuovi modelli sostituirli? Vizio della simmetria! Non è detto che tutto che finisce, debba essere sostituito. Impariamo ad apprezzare la felicità del libero spazio. La libertà è fatta anche di vuoto. Pensare soprattutto al mutamento «geometrico» dell'universo. L'universo era verticale, e tutto ne suoi derivati era verticale, fino nelle infime istituzioni. L'universo copernicano invece è orizzontale, e tutto ne suoi derivati dev'essere orizzontale, fino nelle infime istituzioni. Panta rei disse un uomo della «parentesi», e con venticinque secoli di anticipo Eraclito ci dà l'immagine del «nostro» universo. Eliminare d'in mezzo a questa «orizzontalità» tutto quanto è verticale – Dio, re, dittatura, Stato, punti fermi della cultura, – e ostacola il libero fluire della vita.” “Lo stato” in Sorte 106. This essay is included an anthology with writings from various authors entitled Dopo il diluvio. Sommario dell’Italia contemporanea, a cura di Dino Terra, Garzanti, Milano, 1947.

2 contextual homogeneity), in favor rather of shattering conventional models, bending or deforming accepted paradigms, and blurring the lines between established categories.

Exploring the theme of hybridity, I would argue, is a useful starting point for understanding Savinio’s approach to and view of the world, art, life in general. Certainly, for Savinio, the idea of hybridity is closely associated with the representation of multiple perspectives and is often interwoven with the concepts of metamorphosis, of the monster, of the fantastic, of the marvelous, of synthesis and fragmentation, of composition and decomposition (construction and deconstruction) and of the interchangeability of parts, features, even of experiences. To a large degree, these hybrid representations undermine or challenge notions of identity or subjectivity as pure, stable, indivisible, unitary concepts and question the idea of the Human as fixed and self-contained. In his artistic and literary works, Savinio creates worlds that provide alternate visions or perceptions of the ‘reality’ around him and that contest the fixed, conditioned or conventional manners of perceiving nature and the environments through which we move.

The classical, Christian-humanistic notion of the human as a privileged being, wholly distinct from other species and, by and large, superior over them, had been increasingly called into question, turned upside down and inside out: from Copernicus, who disputed the Ptolemaic vision of the cosmos and the belief system constructed around it (prompting a reevaluation of the human relation to God and to the universe)6; to

Darwin, who blurred the lines of distinction between species (prompting a reevaluation of the human relation to animal); to Freud, who in describing the inner workings of the

6 This discovery was not entirely new news, but Savinio recurrently and insistently sets up a contrast between a Ptolemaic and Copernican view of the world, arguing that though the scientific discovery had happened centuries before, people continued to live within a Ptolemiacally-constructed (and mirrored) social system and with a Ptolemaic mindset. 3 psyche, contested the primacy of logic and reason, of man’s mastery of himself

(prompting a reevaluation of the human relation to self)7. Furthermore, emerging technologies which pushed the limits of the visible – from microscopes and telescopes to the X-ray, photography and cinema – and scientific advancements which challenged the notion of the human body as stable, integral, unique – advancements in quantum mechanics (the particle, wave mechanics, etc.) or the developments in organ transplantation – all contributed to a general, and perhaps accumulated, crisis of identity in the first part of the 20th century.

Much of the criticism on Savinio’s works has traced the artistic and theoretical precedents of his hybrid forms and situated them within the artistic context of his time –

Savinio’s hybrid forms, like many of his contemporaries’, can be read as reactions to or expressions of a broader crisis of modernity which saw man attempting to come to terms with dramatic shifts in social, economic, political, scientific and technological organization, as well as in humankind’s conception of itself, its relation to others, to the world and to nature.

For Ugo Piscopo, Savinio’s tendency to depict hybrid forms can be explained, in part by the “volontà demistificatoria di tante pie e inconsistenti illusioni, che si sprecavano durante la tragica fantocciata del regime fascista, dall'irrisione di tanti paraventi dietro cui si nascondevano la miseria morale e la mancanza di fantasia” (176).

Filippo Secchieri sees them as a broad anti-systematic challenge to canons and traditions:

7 Freud himself characterized these three moments as “major blows” to the “naïve self-love of men” and to “human megalomania”: first, associated with Copernicus, that “our earth was not the centre of the universe but only a tiny fragment of a cosmic system of scarcely imaginable vastness”; second with Darwin and his contemporaries, “when biological research destroyed man's supposedly privileged place in creation and proved his descent from the animal kingdom and his ineradicable animal nature;” and third, the most “wounding blow,” with the psychological research of Freud’s time that seeks to “prove to the ego that it is not even master in its own house, but must content itself with scanty information of what is going on unconsciously in its mind.” (Introductory lectures on Psychoanalysis 284 1916). 4 “In virtù di tale assetto assiologico il caos, l’informe, il momentaneo entrano stabilmente a far parte delle risorse del discorso letterario, ridisegnandone canoni e statuti: la pratica dell'ibridazione, inaugurata con Hermaphrodito e perseguita in ogni altra realizzazione artistica saviniana, altro non è che l'adeguata traduzione operativa di questa scommessa anti-sistematica” (17). Alfredo Giuliani and Giovanna Caltagirone both interpret

Savinio’s use of hybridity as an attempt to express a sense of continuity – between humans and animals, organic and inorganic, memory and material.8 For Maria Elena

Gutierrez, the hybrid forms are necessary for discarding an illusory identity in order to understand one that’s perhaps ‘truer’: “il personaggio deve diventare uomo-mostro, uomo-monumento, uomo-Dio, uomo-donna. In questa trasformazione, i costumi, i travestimenti e la maschera sono appunto gli strumenti essenziali della perdita dell'identità ordinaria che permettono la conquista della ‘vera identità’” (13); his metaphysical poetics give space to the workings of the unconscious, uncage ‘monsters’ which have been repressed: “In antagonismo al mondo della ‘coscienza’, Savinio propone un'arte il cui compito è di far emergere il centro reale della vita attraverso la mise en scène di quanto, mostruoso e inquietante, scabroso e perturbante, è stato rimosso nella

8 For Giuliani: “Questo divertimento infantile, questo gusto ellenistico di animalizzare il mondo umano, è esorcismo, allegoria. ... La maniera di Savinio, più affabile che provocatoria, espone per immagini la continuità psichica tra materia e memoria, tra gli ordini e i disordini della natura, tra l'organico e ciò che chiamiamo l'inorganico, tra il naturale e l'innaturale. Il discontinuo e l'incongruo sono rivelazioni ironiche della continuità, pensieri dell'originario, che l'arte fa vedere.” (Giuliani xxxv-xxxvi). And Caltagirone: “Allora il ritratto di Rothspeer altro non è se non un modello della continuità bestia-uomo che Savinio arricchisce, a sua volta, di altre numerose e ramificate continuità, ivi compresa quella fra uomo e congegni meccanici e fra vivi e morti e quella incerta, fra animale e vegetale, che oggi sappiamo essere propria dei virus.” (Caltagirone 129). Savinio himself affirms this idea of continuity, or “non interrompimento”: “La barriera che separava l’organico dall’inorganico è pochissimo che è rotta e per pochissimi ancora. Uno dei prinicipî che giusticavano quella separazione, cioè a dire la facoltà al solo mondo organico consentita di nutrirsi e assimilare, è caduto. Il sentimento del non interrompimento tra mondo organico e mondo inorganico, deve diventare comune a tutti. Questo il sentimento che ispira me e sempre più ispirerà l’intelligenza e la poesia di domani. Se vogliamo essere uomini quaggiù e non fantasmi, il mondo diviso in organico e inorganico, dobbiamo lasciarcelo dietro le spalle.” (“Il neo sulla guancia,” SD 477; orig. “Il Corriere della Sera,” Dec 1, 1946). 5 società attuale dall'educazione, dalla cultura e dalla civiltà” (72). In The Art of Enigma, which considers the works of both of the de Chirico brothers, Keala Jewell sees their use of hybridity not only as “a mirror of the deformity of modern times” (24), but also suggests that the brothers engage in a sort of “politics of hybridity,” which, on the one hand, questioned traditional or idealized gender stereotypes, whose “hybrid figures came to embody a transgressive, liberating breakdown of restrictive social definitions” (22), and, on the other, introduced a way of thinking of national identity that, in fact, might even be the “very sign of democracy” (189).9

Within the context of Savinio’s poetics of hybridity, this dissertation explores

Savinio’s representations of science and technology in his literary works (primarily from the early 1940s) and his exploration through these representations of the liminal spaces between human and machine, animate and inanimate, life and death, and the changing understandings of the relationships between the body, mind and soul. Scientific theories and technological advancements had been complicating these binary relationships, with increased capacity both to simulate and give the illusion of life, as well as detect, prolong, and possibly (re)create life … and ‘conquer’ death. Increasingly human- and life-like automata, as well as technologies that replicated the human image or voice, were dissolving the distinctions between life and the appearance of life. Attempts at reanimation of dead bodies or the lasting preservation of corpses challenged the traditional definitions life and death, and brought to the forefront questions related to the invasiveness or ethics involved in these interventions on the human body, as well as to

9 Jewell warns, however, that these visual and written depictions are complicated and at times problematic, that the attempts at overturning stereotypes do in some ways also reinforce them, that the Metaphysical school is a “powerful aesthetic movement … forged out of ideologies of difference that sometimes are imbricated with forms of intolerance.” (Jewell, Enigma 22) 6 the treatment of the patient as cared-for individual or as an object or resource exploited for continued scientific investigation.

What emerges in Savinio’s writings from the late 1930s and 1940s is a distinct skepticism about the figure of the scientist – and, by extension, modern Science – perhaps as yet another iteration of the one idealized and idealizing Authority. His portrayals of medical doctors (Dottor Sayas in La nostra anima) and ‘mad’ scientists (Dottor Speranza in Vita di Mercurio, Signor Didaco Paradiso terrestre) read as critiques of or cautionary tales against what may result from the union of personal ambition (and an impulse to

‘play God’) and increasing scientific knowledge and technological capabilities: they are characters who hubristically manipulate and dehumanize their patients/wards, all in the name of Science, in efforts to further or uncover the Truth, or advance their own particular agendas.10

Savinio had expressed anxieties before about the potential overexhuberance of scientists and the unintended consequences of their blind ambition. In a short story from

1926, “La gigantessa,” in which a giant statue built by thousands as a monument to the city rises of her own accord and wanders around destroying the city and several people, he writes:

«Non toccherà anche a me cadere vittima di un automa, di una macchina, di un bamboccio messo su da quattro presuntuosi per superare le sette meraviglie del mondo.» così io mi pensai, . . .”11

10 It might also be useful to consider the ways in which the concept of the hybrid might function as a counterpoint to (the etymologically-related) hybris, precisely because it challenges or thwarts any tendency toward purity, any perfection of an ideal, perhaps even a too-centralized accumulation of power or authority (given that a hybrid imagination might suggest not only the simultaneous presence and acceptance of diverse perspectives within an individual’s mind, but also of difference voices within a larger group or population). 11 “La gigantessa,” AI 118-19; orig. in “La Tribuna,” Feb 17, 1926. 7 And in a review of a performance of Il sorprendente dottor Klitter in 1938, he comments on patients’ vulnerability and the risk of their exploitation at the hands of doctors:

Per meritarsi il titolo di «sanatore» e giustificare le virtù raccolte nel giuramento di Ippocrate, il medico deve associare alle qualità del medico quelle del filosofo e quelle del sacerdote. Nel medico uomo comune, la porta aperta sui segreti del nostro organismo e della nostra psiche costituisce una tentazione costante di «giocare» coi nostri segreti, un invito alla delinquenza. […] Nel Sorprendente dottor Klitter, il caso del medico delinquente che s'immerge nel mondo della delinquenza credendo di obbedire all'alta voce della scienza, è reso con efficacia.12 (italics mine)

This temptation, on the part of the doctors and scientists, to ‘play with the secrets of our organisms’ extends to the great secret and mystery of life and death: in a search for immortality that interrupts the normal biological processes associated with death, either through their reversal (reanimation) or their immobilization (lasting preservation of corpses). For Savinio, who in Dico a te, Clio writes “la vera méta della vita: sparire” (12), these attempts at earthly immortality obstruct the natural flow of life and prevent the passage on to eternity. As he writes in the preface to Casa “la Vita,” death – and dying well – is important precisely because it provides this passage:

… nella vita «degli» uomini la cosa più importante è la morte. Morire è un problema. Vari sono i problemi che ci tocca risolvere nel corso di quest’avventura terrestre nella quale non per volontà nostra ci siamo trovali implicati. Problema di saper vivere,

12 PR 279-80; orig. “Il dottor Klitter,” in “Omnibus,” Aug 6, 1938. In the part elided, Savinio describes a personal experience from 1917 at the Seminario outside of Ferrara (where electrotherapy was one of many treatments administered to patients and soldiers) when he often visited his brother: “Durante la guerra, abbiamo visto i sanitari di un neurocomio trattare come oggetto di spasso un disgraziato degradato da una ferita alla spina dorsale alla condizione di uomo-tacchino (camminava a scatti, impettito, e faceva glu-glu- glu) ed esibirlo come una comica curiosità ai colleghi di passaggio. E quando ci càpita di doverci mettere nelle mani di un medico, la cui intelligenza e il cui senso morale non ci dànno pieno affidamento, il ribrezzo ci opprime di quella curiosità sadica china su di noi: peggio, il suo scetticismo.” (source) Many years later, Il Signor Dido recalls the same patient of the “glugluglu”: “Ricorda quel soldato ricoverato nei sottosuoli che non camminava ma avanzava a zompi, non parlava ma cacciava brevi gridi arrotolati come il gulugulugù del tacchino. Gli avevano calzato sul cranio bucato uno zuccotto nero.” (SD 797) This hole in his head perhaps suggests the patient had, in this case, undergone trepanation. 8 problema di saper invecchiare, problema di saper morire: il più importante di tutti perché è il problema ultimo e che dà il passaggio.

Death and the passage into eternity eliminate differences and reunite all matter, resolve the ‘dualism’ of body and soul that we have invented:

… perché anche le differenze, le diversità, le ottusità la morte le fa sparire; e tutto e tutti unisce e riunisce; e per questo è assurdo pensare i morti divisi in colpevoli puniti e innocenti ricompensati, quando si sa che la morte scoglie quello che noi chiamiamo male, cancella quello che noi chiamiamo peccato, risolve quel dualismo da noi inventato di corpo e anima, fonde tutto ciò che è vissuto in una…13

The three chapters of this dissertation each address the relationship of human- machine, animate-inanimate, life-death with emphasis on the physical body (and its relation to the mind and soul): the first sees the transformation from statue to human and the eventual passage into eternity; the second shows an ambiguously human-machine- talking statue stuck in subterranean limbo; the third looks at the transformation of human body to statue and the creation, therein, of a new form of earthly immortality. Each considers Savinio’s representation of the figure of the scientist, whose ambition and demiurgical desires result in a dehumanizing treatment of his patient or ward. I argue that though in these stories, Savinio specifically targets the scientist (and Modern Science), these criticisms can also be read as a cautionary tales against any forces of external authority that manipulate the individual, and who, in attempting to fix, immobilize,

13 Also from the preface to Casa “la Vita.” In an article from 1945, Savinio warns of the political implications of interrupting of this natural movement and flow of life through any effort to create a “stabile and definitive condition,” to establish and exalt a One, an Authority, an Ideal: “La morte si capisce solo quando pur continuando a vivere, si entra nella «giurisdizione della morte». Si allarga allora la prospettiva, le ombre si ammorbidiscono e la portata del nostro occhio cresce straordinariamente. La vita appare allora come vista dall'alto e da lontano. E solo allora si capisce la vita com'è. Solo allora si capisce la parola del vecchio Eraclito che «panta rei», e che qualunque tentativo di contrastare o peggio di arrestare l'eterno fluire della vita creando artificiosamente una «condizione stabile e definitiva» in forma di stato totalitario o altrimenti, è un atto pericolosissimo e criminoso, che prepara la cancrena della vita.” (“Inquieti adoloscenti,” SD 172; orig. in “Il Tempo,” Oct 28, 1945). See Il Signor Münster for an example of a man who, though still living, has a vision of death and this eternity. 9 violate the “mystery” and flow of life, deprive the individual of autonomy, humanity, and the free movement of body and thought.

The first chapter explores the relationship of electricity to the body, especially in medical applications and the creation of increasingly ‘human’-like automata, and

Savinio’s reelaboration of these theories and technological advances in what may be called the Vita di Mercurio project, a series of published and unpublished writings that spans decades (from 1920s to 1949) and provides a perhaps unique perspective on

Savinio’s evolving representation of the scientist. The basic premise remains the same throughout the versions: the god Mercury, trapped in statue form, must become human so that he might die and pass from earthly immortality to the much desired eternity.

However, whereas in the initial version the scientist is presented sympathetically and actually aids Mercury in this transformation, the final filmscript juxtaposes Mercury’s successful process of humanization through human experience with the depiction of a

‘mad’ scientist’s unsuccessful Frankenstein-ish attempts to reanimate a dead man with electricity.

The second chapter considers La nostra anima (1944), in which a doctor takes

Nivasio Dolcemare (a Savinian alter-ego) and his partner on a tour of a bizarre

Fleshworks museum where a caged human-animal-machine named Psyche gives them a radical retelling of the myth of Psyche and Eros. Though Psyche may recount a tale of liberation from the God and from a hypermasculine authority figure, her unhappy condition trapped in the museum under Doctor Sayas’ watch reads also as a cautionary tale against merely replacing one authority with another. This chapter provides three readings of the story: the first considers Savinio’s retelling in relation to the traditional

10 myth; the second takes a look at Savinio’s representation of psychoanalysis; the third examines Savinio’s presentation of the relationship between human and machine.

The third chapter provides a brief history of the techniques of, motivations for, and moral and ethical questions surrounding the preservation of corpses and addresses the overlap and interrelation of science and art (aesthetics) in the treatment of dead bodies; it then looks at two instances when Savinio mentions ‘petrification,’ a technique developed by Gerolamo Segato (1792-1836), that through a process of mineralization of the body, appears to turn the human body into stone. The first instance is in a passage from

Ascolto, il tuo cuore città (1944) that reads as a sort of fantastical family reunion, in which he muses about creating a ‘museo di famiglia’ with the petrified bodies of deceased family members instead of portraits. The second is the story Paradiso Terrestre

(1942), in which a ‘mad’ scientist realizes his dream of recreating the Earthly Paradise with embalmed bodies by murdering his young wife and her lover so they might be his

Adam and Eve.

11 Chapter 1: The Vita di Mercurio project – Electricity, the Body and the Human

1. Introduction

This chapter looks at a collection of unpublished notes and manuscripts for a screenplay contained in the Fondo Savinio at the Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence that constitute what may be called the Vita di Mercurio project. These papers date from the

1920s to 194914, that is, a span of time which includes the Fascist years, the Second

World War and the immediate postwar period, and contain versions of the same story which describes the narrator/protagonist’s encounter with Hermes-Mercury in statue form and the god’s experience of a human life. More specifically, in relation to the topic of this dissertation, they provide a perhaps unique opportunity to trace the evolution of Savinio’s representation of the relationship of electricity and the body and of the figure of the doctor-scientist over two crucial decades.

There are three versions of the Vita di Mercurio: an early 9-page handwritten version, which is undated - however, if we accept Savinio’s own account of his work on this project, might be considered from the late 1920s or early 1930s; a film synopsis

(soggetto cinematografico), dated 1945-4915; and a 50-page typed screenplay from

December 1949 (subsequently lightly corrected in pen)16. My analysis also takes into account several other early published texts that are associated with, or variations on, episodes from the Vita di Mercurio project: namely, Sogno Ermetico (1920), Vita dei

14 In fact, file 10.11 contains three pages related to Mercury and dated from 1910 to 1930: on two handwritten sheets is the story Hérmes Skeptómenos/La statua pensante, unpublished; on the other is the beginning of Savinio’s own translation into Italian of the Introduction à une Vie di Mercure. (Usai, “Essere se stessi … ” 173 fn316) 15 The film synopsis is the only version that has been published (in Sogno meccanico 26-29) 16 Several versions of the manuscript and other notes and papers relative to it can be found in 21.7 and 21.8 of the Fondo Savinio at the Archivio Contemporaneo del Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence. 12 fantasmi (1925) and Introduction à la vie de Mercure (1929), as well as the unpublished manuscripts Hérmes Skeptómenos/La statua pensante (1910) and Primo passo (undated).

The basic plotline remains the same through the three extant versions of Vita di

Mercurio: it’s a tale of the encounter between Maurizio (a Savinian alter-ego) and the god Mercury who, trapped in statue form and weary of his terrestrial immortality, asks

Maurizio to help him become human so that he might die and pass on to eternity

(“Immortalità è il non morire sulla terra: eternità è il morire a tutto ciò che è mortale, e dunque nascere a una essenza di là dal tempo, di là da qualunque forma di vita, di là da qualunque modo di esistenza,” (21.8: D2 6)). The story recounts the various, often comical, episodes which see Mercury’s process of humanization – slowing gaining control of his human body as he transforms from statue to flesh, and developing his human ‘anima’ and morality (god becoming man) by passing through the various phases and dimensions of human experience. The ‘vita’ of the title refers not so much to

Mercury’s previous life as a Greek deity but to the experience of becoming and being human the story describes.

In each of the versions, a scientist offers his assistance to Maurizio and Mercury to help resolve a situation, explains to them his theory on the relationship of electricity to the body (and mind), and subsequently invites the group back to his laboratory where he hooks up one of the characters to his electrical machine and administers electricity.

But many of the details and the plot itself change considerably from the early version (which, we may conjecture, goes back to the 1930s) to the final manuscript, including, quite notably, the representations of the relationship of electricity to the body and the portrayal of the scientist himself: in the early version, the scientist administers

13 electricity to the statue Mercury himself in order to assist him in his process of humanization, with successful results; in the later versions, the humanization and medical electricity plotlines split, the one juxtaposed against the other: Mercury transforms – becomes human – through experience alone (no medical aid), while the doctor administers electricity instead to a man who has recently killed himself, with disastrous results.

Savinio’s descriptions of the scientist’s theories of electricity enter into some detail (with changes from version to version), drawing upon conceptions of the “human body as battery,” which first gained widespread popularity in the 18th century with galvanism but enjoyed a revival of sorts in early 20th century high-tech electrotherapy,17 and upon common analogies to electromechanical and technological models employed to explain the function of electricity in the body, especially as it pertains to the working of the brain and the nervous system.18 Advancements in detection and recording instruments and techniques allowed for a more precise medical mapping and understanding of the body’s neural network, and these neural maps shared a striking resemblance to the expanding energy and communication technologies (power grids and telegraph lines, for instance) – to the point that internal networks seemed to mirror the external, and vice versa.

17 Bertucci and Pancaldi, eds., Electric Bodies, 2001, 12. 18 These analogies arose with the origins of the telegraph in the 1840s. They were enormously common and reciprocal – used to explain to the public, at turns, both the human nervous system and the developing technologies. Not only might nerves be described as “bio-telegraphs,” for example, but Electric Telegraph Company’s headquarters characterized as “the great brain - if we may so term it - of the nervous system of Britain.” (Morus, “Panacea” 106). Scientists themselves often used these analogies: in the presentation speech by Professor the Count K.A.H. Mörner to the Nobel Prize winners in Physiology or Medicine in 1906 to Camillo Golgi and Santiago Rámon y Cajal, while describing the varying complexity of the nervous system, he adds “The peripheral nerves, which act as transmitters – they may be compared to telegraph wires – are relatively simple as regards to structure.” ("Physiology or Medicine 1906 - Presentation Speech”). Decades later, the 1912 Nobel Prize recipient for Physiology or Medicine Alexis Carrel explained: “Neurons articulate with each other in a system of relays, like electrical relays.” (Carrel, Man, the Unknown 95) 14 This suggestive similarity gave rise to considerations of the operations of the human body (and mind) in purely mechanistic and technological terms; or to an understanding of the developing technologies as a natural and “organic projection” of the human system onto the outside world.19 The structural correlation between internal and external reduced and confused the conceptual distinction between human and machine, and the developing electric technologies, which allowed for greater precision in both detection and administration for medical purpose “offered new means for intervening in the brain, and constructing the brain as an electric device.”20

2. Electricity and Modernity

The dissemination of what we may call the electric epistemological model in the

19th- and early 20th-century was fostered by the increasing expansion of electrical appliances and machinery into everyday domestic as well as industrial settings, with machines taking over operations formerly performed by humans, and human work reduced by Taylorism to repetitive mechanical tasks aimed at improving performance and productivity. Perhaps best exemplified by the subjugation of the human in service of a

19 “The conceptual interrelatedness of the nervous system and the telegraph convinced the contemporary philosopher of technology, Ernst Kapp, that human technology, from the very beginning to its most advanced state, was the result of ‘organic projection,’ of a reconstructive externalization of organic principles. To him, the nervous system was the true blueprint, from which humans were able to build the telegraph; and vice versa: the construction of the telegraph made human beings comprehend the functional organization of the nervous system.” (Borck 240-241) 20 “Electric circuits and electromagnetic oscillations integrated society with nets of communication and power. At the same time, they offered technologically mediated concepts of neurophysiological interaction and communication control in the body. The electrification process passed from the outside world into the inner organization of the human body, and resulted in the construction of an electro-technological neurophysiology. The electric stimulation of sets of precisely defined spots on the cerebral cortex caused the body to execute distinct bodily routines and turned the brain into a complex arrangement of electric circuitry; instructing the body with wired electric programs. Research with electromagnetic field conceptualized the cell, the body and its brain as bits and pieces of radio equipment adapting the living organism to cosmic, psychic, and technical broadcasting.” (Borck 263)

15 larger ‘war machine’ structure, as in WWI, it contributed to further complicating the human-machine divide. Moreover, with applications of electricity to machines and of electricity to the body, it was becoming possible to create machines that resembled or approximated human movement and functions, and human bodies that performed like machines. Ever since the Enlightenment period, the production of automata that could replicate human and animal activity in an ever more convincing manner fascinated and astounded philosophers and the public alike, rendering the boundary between bodies and machines increasingly “porous” (Morus, “Panacea” 94). The introduction of electricity to these automata, with it’s uncanny ability to ‘awaken’ the machine, served to nudge their performance from mere representation (as in puppets21) to increasingly convincing simulation of the human, which included not only physical movement and processes but mental functioning and ‘thinking’ processes, as well. Experimental scientists, from the public performances of attempted reanimation of recently deceased corpses by Aldini and

Ure in the early 19th century which generated unsettling convulsive movement in dead bodies,22 to Duchenne’s manipulation of the facial muscles to reproduce human expression in the mid 19th century, to Cerletti’s development of electroshock therapy in

21 In fact, Victoria Nelson positions the puppet at the opposite end of the spectrum from the automata that had developed up to the beginning of the nineteenth century: “At the beginning of the nineteenth century, as we have seen, the two mutually opposed traditions of the artificial human had taken their modern shape as (1) the uncanny but soulless mechanical shell, as imagined by Hoffmann, and (2) the Neoplatonic ensouled idol, as perceived by Kleist and other Romantics.” (Nelson 249)” For Kleist, the puppet was indeed closer to the idea of divine than the human: "Grace [Grazia] appears purest in that human form which has no consciousness or an infinite one, that is, in a puppet or a god.”(Heinrich von Kleist “On the Marionette Theater” (1812)). Nelson points out the paradox that Kleist puzzles over: that “what seems on the surface like a hollow shell, the antithesis of life and a parody of its expressive nature, in some ineffable way embodies its deepest essence.” (Nelson 37). With the introduction of electricity to these automata, and an ‘animating’ force that operates from within the ‘hollow shell,’ the automata may still not be as graceful as the puppet, however, they have something that more closely approximates a ‘soul’ – or mind, at least. 22 Among their many performances, Aldini, in 1803, and Ure, in 1818, each famously administered electricity from a galvanic battery to recently executed criminals, provoking convulsive movement of the limbs in each case and eliciting mixed reactions of approval and horror from their audiences. 16 1938 which switched off and ‘restarted’ the brain, in a sense – demonstrated that the human body could indeed be externally ‘operated’ by turning on and off the electricity.

In the medical world, naturally occurring forms of electricity had been used to treat various symptoms since ancient times: amber was recognized for its ability to generate what would later be identified as static electricity, for its powers of attraction, and for its great healing properties, including protection from madness23; electrical fish and eels were known to give a mild shock with a numbing effect that was used therapeutically to treat pain and other discomforts24. In 1600, William Gilbert first used the term electricus25 (“of amber” or “like amber” from the Greek, ήλεκτρον: amber) in his book De Magnete to distinguish between magnetism and electricity, which had before been considered similar occult principles. From the 17th and 18th century, philosophers contemplated the nature of electricity (was it fire, electrical fluid, a force, a vital fluid with the capacity to bridge the division between mental and physical, was it the life force itself?26) and scientific conversations, like the Galvani-Volta controversy, continued to

23 See Roberts. Savinio himself notes Paracelsus’ belief that amber (electricity) could help with mental illness: “Se fossi matto porterei anelli di elettro alle dita, che come dimostro in uno dei miei sette libri magici, capitolo “De origine dementiae,” frenano i travolgimenti della pazzia.” (Paracelso to Pina in, “Il primo amore del Bombasto,” NU 321; orig. in 6 parts in “Oggi,” Nov 1 to Dec 6, 1941). 24 Roman scientist-philosphers like Scribonius Largus and Galen document the application of electric torpedo fish to relieve pain - through numbing and heal through muscle stimulation. See Licht and also Manzoni. 25 This association gave rise to the English words "electric" and "electricity", which made their first appearance in print in Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica of 1646. 26 Many during the 18th century considered electricity as the “vital spirit or spark of divinity mediating between matter and God. Supporters of such theories during the 18th century believed that the ethereal qualities of electricity bridged the divide between the physical and spiritual without interposing mechanistic limitations on the divine. Stimulated by electrotherapy and observations of the effects of electricity upon animate bodies, Deists believed that electricity provided an explanation for animation in a mechanistic universe.” (Elliot 9). Additional theories of ‘electrical theology’ developed from, among others, Prokop Divisch and Oetinger: Divisch who believed that the light which filled the world in Genesis 1:3 (the sun didn’t appear until later) was the ‘electrical fire’ added to matter. He writes, “I do infer from sacred Scripture itself, especially in the first chapter of Ezekiel, that the nature of the soul is analogous to electrical phenomena” (Benz 51). “Friedrich Oetinger, a contemporary of Divisch and the founder of the theosophical movement, expanded this notion into a complete electrical theology. In this theology, which combined Biblical revelation and the natural sciences, the electrical fire, as life spirit, spread out over chaos 17 debate the relationship of electricity to the body (was there an intrinsic “animal electricity,” an electrical bodily fluid produced naturally within biological organs, as

Galvani believed, or was the animal body a physical apparatus which merely conducted electricity from outside sources, as Volta maintained?). The fields of electrophysiology and electrotherapy gained significant momentum in the 18th century when the invention of the Leyden Jar (1745) and the Voltaic pile (1800) allowed for this natural phenomenon to be replicated, stored and concentrated in laboratory settings, and, importantly, dispensed in more easily regulated doses. This century saw the first major and consistent attempts in electrotherapy to treat paralysis, nervous diseases, melancholy and hysteria.27

Throughout the 19th century technological developments allowed for greater precision in managing currents; increased capacity for diagnosis, detection and localization of identified ‘problem areas’; and extended uses in surgery and treatment. However, despite efforts from scientists and doctors to monitor and document the effectiveness of their new treatments, electrotherapy’s reputation suffered much from quackery, due, in part, to the increased availability of electrical sources not only to specialists but to the general public.

Electrical applications to the body continued to be used to treat an ever expanding number of physical and psychological ailments – it was considered by some almost as a panacea –, both with more sophisticated devices in controlled medical situations and with a growing number of portable devices available for common domestic use (galvanic

as matter, stimulating, warming and finally fusing with it. The ‘electrical fire concealing in all things’ is the life principle that again and again manifests itself by penetrating into new forms. Since the Creation life has been bestowed upon matter in a secret concealed impulse. Oetinger and Divisch consider this life source the nature of which was ‘analogous to electrical phenomena.’ This soul was termed the ‘animal soul’ as distinct from the more overt ‘rational soul’ of the mind. It is through the animal soul that spirit and matter come together, that body and psychic functions cohere” (Schenk 66). 27 From, among others, Jallabert, Abbé Nollet, Ben Franklin, John Birch (melancholy), Erasmus Darwin. 18 rings, galvanic belts, electric baths, violet rays, etc)28. The combination of the invention of the microscope and of a staining technique by Golgi in the late 1890s allowed scientists to identify physical operations and changes in the brain, and the early 20th century witnessed an increasing medicalization of the fields of the study of brain activity, development of fields of neurosciences and their intersection with psychiatry. This medicalization was not so much pointed towards therapy (psychotherapy or psychoanalysis) as towards research, a search for organic causes to be treated with medical procedures – with a resulting shift from the subjectivity of a person’s life experience to the objective healing or realignment of physical tissues or biological mechanisms.29 The development of EEG – method of detection and recording electrical activity (by Berger in 1929, confirmed and developed by Adrian and Matthews in 1934)

– provided an observable record and representation of brain activity, suggesting a mental life possibly independent from a physical one and, in so doing, contributing to an increasingly complicated definition of death (as patient might seem lifeless, for example, but still register electrical brain activity). The Italians Cerletti and Bini developed electroshock therapy in 1938, an experimental means of treating schizophrenia and other neurological disorders, and the promise of this new frontier in the treatment of neuro/psychopathology was a source of great pride to the Fascist government, a promise of the return of the Italian genius.

28 See Thomas de la Peña and also Morus, “Batteries.” 29 Morus points out that the patient’s subjectivity had been diminished for centuries with electrical experimentation, often accompanied by a public performance of it: “Paradoxically, electrical performances could simultaneously situate the body within culture whilst removing it from culture at the same time. Electrical experimentation provided a means of disciplining and managing the body, making sense of it by taking it out of nature and putting it into culture. Electrical performances provided a new set of tools for making the individual body universal- for making 'the body' as a trans-historical, acultural object for inquiry.” (Morus, “Panacea” 93) 19 By the first half of the 20th century, electricity had itself for centuries been implicated in the discourses surrounding the relationship between human and machine, life and death: from applications which simulated or gave the appearance of life, but which could not provide or restore it, could not fully or persistently animate lifeless automata nor bring bodies back from the dead, to applications that simulated or gave the appearance of death (electroshock, for example, which triggered convulsions and a lapse into unconsciousness), which were employed with the goal of restoring or ‘rebooting’ physical capacity or psychic life. The use of electricity for therapeutic purposes, like the relief of pain and the potential engagement and reactivation of paralyzed parts of the body offered hope to those whose physical conditions had begun to restrict their normal interactions and capabilities, and technologies like EEG could register signs of brain waves, thus providing scientifically documented and to some extent quantifiable evidence of independent psychic activity. As much as electricity was almost universally accepted as a fundamental component of life, at the same time it had also become associated with danger and death: the official, and by all reports, disastrous introduction of the electric chair – as a, theoretically, more humane and effective method of execution than the guillotine, hanging or firing squads, for example – occurred in 1890 in New York,30 and contemporary newspapers were full of articles and reports of accidental harmful and often fatal interaction with the expanding electrical networks that had otherwise so gloriously marked the advancement of modernity and man’s technological progress.

30 See Morus, “Panacea” and Martschukat. 20 3. A different Metaphysics

The purpose of our analysis is not to determine which theories of electricity

Savinio sustains – it’s not entirely clear that he particularly espouses or categorically refutes any specific theories, at least not consistently. Instead, he draws non systematically from myths, ancient philosophies, alchemy, modern science (and pseudosciences) as well as from contemporary culture, and recombines elements to create composite depictions of theories: suggestions which stimulate the imagination – are fantastical, or perhaps capture a “metaphysical” or “superior and larger” reality which nevertheless constitutes a continuum with “common reality”31 – but that would not necessarily and that are not intended to hold up to rigorous scientific scrutiny. I intend to argue that Savinio's increased interest in science, and – for this chapter – in theories about the relationship between electricity and the body, mind and soul, instead allows him new possibilities for contemplating and exploring different notions of what it means to be human: this within a contextual framework that, as we have seen, not only questions the difference between human and machine but also introduces increasing elements of

“dehumanization” in everyday life. Indeed, Savinio is not a scientist, but an artist, and

31 In the screenplay manuscript, Savinio shies away from the term ‘fantastical’: according to him, the cinematic portrayal of these events should scrupulously capture a “vaster and superior reality” mixed with "common reality" in a way that any distinction between the two is imperceptible; his emphasis on the recognition that one is a natural continuation of the other (not separate from or opposed to) is a fundamental component to his definition of “metaphysical”: “… Nella sceneggiatura, e soprattutto nell’attuazione cinematografica di questo soggetto, dovrà essere scrupolosamente rispettata la verità dei personaggi, oggetti, mobilio, ambiente, ecc. un soggetto di questo genere, nel quale un realismo più vasto e superiore si mischia al realismo comune (e non al “fantastico” come certuni potrebbero credere) la verità dev’essere riprodotta fedelmente, cosi da non lasciare avvertire un qualsiasi distacco tra realtà comune e realtà superiore e vasta, e presentare questa come una naturale continuazione di quella.” (21.8:D2 29). And again, from Anadioménon (May 1919): “Con l'acquistare questo senso nuovo e vasto in una realtà più vasta, metafisico or non accenna più a un ipotetico dopo-naturale; significa bensì, in maniera imprecisabile - perché non è mai chiusa, ed imprecisa dunque, è la nostra conoscenza - tutto ciò che della realtà continua l'essere, oltre gli aspetti grossolanamente patenti della realtà medesima.” (NV 47-48) This conviction persists throughout his work, as confirmed by this citation from a 1952 text: “…perché anche il signor Dido pensa che tra fisico e metafisico non c’è frattura, e che il metafisico è la diretta e naturale continuazione del fisico.» (“Scomparsa del signor Dido,” Dido 163) 21 his engagement with existing and emerging conceptualizations of the interrelations between biology, chemistry, physics and metaphysics opens up for him new creative dimensions for representing the “superior and larger reality” in which the human being is situated (including by depicting what is not human), and for framing arguments and pushing boundaries toward a new vocabulary for expressing multiple truths, and thus fulfilling his duty as an artist, namely by expanding and increasing the number of truths so that the construction of one Truth becomes impossible: no one God, one Truth, one

Principle.32 Savinio's radical critique of onto-theology, of a univocal metaphysics - no one ideology, religion - includes science and can be perhaps connected to his refusal of a single authority principle. All this is also crucial to a better understanding of Savinio's peculiar ideas about “metaphysics” in relation to other definitions of this key word (for example, by other representatives of the Scuola Metafisica ferrarese, including his brother Giorgio De Chirico, and Carlo Carrà).

Moreover, what does emerge from an analytical look at these materials is a (not entirely consistent but) progressive skepticism about the figure of the scientist or medical doctor, and about the inherent potential (or danger) for this figure to manipulate or exploit the patient (in the name of science), to regard the patient as an object or resource for experimentation, in short, to divorce the patient from his humanness and treat him/her as an object33. Amid all the early 20th century enthusiasm generated by the advancements

32 “C’è la verità? No. Ci sono «le» verità. Grande conforto per noi. Quanto più alto il numero delle verità, tanto più bassa la possibilità di una verità sola. Nostro còmpito è di aumentare il numero delle verità, fino a rendere impossibile la ricostituzione della Verità. Còmpito sacrosanto. Perché la fisima della Verità è la cagione di ogni follia quaggiù; e l’uomo che crede in una sola verità (Dio unico, verità unica, prinicipio unico) porta in sé il germe della pazzia.” (“[Gigiotti Zanini]” SD 582; orig. “Il montanismo di Zanini” in “L’Illustrazione Italiana,” Nov 2 1947). 33 This also raises serious questions about the power relations between the doctor and the patients, who were to a large extent, either criminals, sufferers of mental disorders, or women (electrotherapy was very commonly used to treat hysteria). 22 in science and technology that not only allowed for the deferral or postponement of death, but also sparked hope for the potential reversibility of it – even the prospect of creating life from inanimate matter or objects – Savinio’s writings (in their playful and ironic tone) take a cautious step away from this fervor to question the assumption itself that these should indeed be primary goals for humanity as a species, and to examine the cost at which these investigations and experiments come – to the individuals themselves, to their particular human dignity, and to a broader sense of humanity.

What emerges in Savinio's writings and his lampooning of the scientist-physician might be seen as a tension between the understanding (and acceptance of) the natural state of the human as fundamentally hybrid, thanks in large part to scientific theories and contributions (from Copernicus to Darwin to Freud, to name a few), on the one hand, and his skepticism as an artist, on the other: hence, his portrayal of the doctor-scientist who, victim of hybris, confuses his role as observer, identifier and caretaker of reality with that of creator, who believes he can easily reproduce or recreate in his laboratory that which occurs naturally, and on his own terms and on his own timeframe.34 This tension has also a social and "political" valence, quite relevant if we consider the context of the 1930s in which Savinio wrote, when Italy was ruled by the authoritarian and increasingly totalitarian Fascist regime: as mentioned before, Savinio, who recoils at the idea of being

‘puppeted’ or manipulated by outside forces, already hinted at a suspicion about scientists and the patients’ vulnerability in their hands in his review of a performance of Il sorprendente dottor Klitter in 1938.35

34 A criticism, perhaps, of the scientists who try to manipulate or replicate these laws, often in delayed or accelerated fashion (either to promote hybridization or to push towards ‘purity’). 35 See the introduction. 23 With all the emerging technologies multiplying the possibilities for experimentation and perhaps compromising procedures justified in the name of science, through his representation of the scientist-doctor, Savinio reminds of the importance of considering individual human life and warns of the potentially dehumanizing effect of practicing science for science’s sake. Science can lead to discoveries and understanding of our bodies and the world, but again, Science itself is not Truth. And, as Savinio advises, “L'uomo non sarà libero finché Dio esisterà, sia pure in forma di Scienza …” 36

All this boils down to an ambivalent attitude toward modernization, or better toward the ideology of modernization: if scientists are the priests of a new secular religion, the role of the artist is to counterbalance their power and remind us of the multiple values and dimensions of truth, the larger and “superior” scope of reality that only art is able to capture. Savinio is, somewhat paradoxically, an anti-metaphysical writer who pursues a different and, if possible, “pluralistic” kind of metaphysics, opposed to the authoritarian, reductionist or univocal kinds (albeit religious or scientific). In the Vita di Mercurio project, Savinio ironically stages the encounter between an idea of the human and an idea of the divine that will transform our ways of conceiving both of them. As an enigmatic and ironic “statuary” presence, Mercurio haunts Savinio's mind like statues and dummies haunt metaphysical paintings.

4. Electricity in Popular Culture and Literature

In the 1930s and 1940s, electricity was a frequent topic in major newspapers and scientific magazines, treated from many and diverse angles. Pages were filled with

36 “Tommaso Moro e l’Utopia” SD 116; orig. Prefazione a Tommaso Moro, L’Utopia, Colombo, Roma,1945 24 reports of emerging technologies and their applications in the industrial, communication, medical and military spheres; with speculation about future technological progress; and with retelling the history of advancements in electricity, often highlighting important scientists from centuries past. Some articles celebrated and reminded the reader of the many domestic appliances now available to ease modern life; others raised questions about the moral implications of this new life of convenience; still others warned of the dangers of contact with electricity and advised on the safe usage of these appliances.

Articles on advancements in x-ray technology and the electron microscope were accompanied by photographs that opened readers’ eyes to new visual representations of the body. Scientific contributors sought to articulate theories of the neural network and the function of electricity in the body, and expressed hope that developing techniques in electrotherapy and transcranial electrical application might help ease or cure physical and psychological ailments. Writers discussed the relationship of human and machine, attempting to refine and specify the similarities, distinctions and possible interchangeability between the two. There were photographs and reports of new robots, fictional series with robot protagonists, even the possibility to have a robot – ‘Firmino’ – answer your questions.37

The electrification of everyday life, its mysterious nature and animating potential, and the history of performances (from medical and scientific demonstrations to parlour games) that highlighted electricity’s transformative effect on the body all made it a

37 Firmino’s responses appeared in La Stampa on Saturdays at the end of 1934. As the introduction cheerfully advertises, Firmino is happy to respond to any type of question, and because of his nature, “non imprimerà alla sua corrispondenza un’impronta personale poiché non è soggetto alla debolezza della carne e all’ambizione che ne deriva. Sarà sempre gaio, perché non rischia il malumore delle digestioni difficili, né l’umano nervosismo di amorucci disgraziati. Contrariamente a quanto si potrebbe sospettare, non è un pappagallo e questa è la meraviglia più grande.” (“La Stampa,” Nov 11, 1934) 25 compelling contemporary topic for artists and writers, especially in works that explored the boundaries between life and death, between animate bodies and inanimate objects, the nature of sexual attraction. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) – first inspired in part by the Galvani-Volta debates and Aldini’s attempts at resuscitating the dead – was revisited in a series of Frankenstein films in the 1930s, which provided a much more explicit depiction of the electrical processes and machinery at work. Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-

Adam’s L’Ève future (1886) recounts a fictionalized Edison’s creation of an electrically- animated android as an improved version of and replacement for Lord Ewald’s wife. The first Futurist Manifesto (1909) famously begins with the line: “Avevamo vegliato tutta la notte — i miei amici ed io — sotto lampade di moschea dalle cupole di ottone traforato, stellate come le nostre anime, perchè come queste irradiate dal chiuso fulgòre di un cuore elettrico.” Raymond Roussel’s Locus solus (1914) tells the story of the scientist Canterel who has invented several methods of reanimating the dead using electricity, including preserving Danton’s head in electrically charged water and using electricity in conjunction with the serum ‘resurrectine’ to allow corpses to reenact the most important moments of their lives. André Bréton himself used an electrical metaphor in his theorization of Surrealist activity and automatic writing.38 As far as Italian literature is

38 In the First Manifesto of Surrealism, Breton links electricity to the unconscious and the Surrealist mode of producing art: “The value of the image depends upon the beauty of the spark obtained; it is, consequently, a function of the difference of potential between the two conductors. When the difference exists only slightly, as in a comparison, […], the spark is lacking. Now, it is not within man's power, so far as I can tell, to effect the juxtaposition of two realities so far apart. The principle of the association of ideas, such as we conceive of it, militates against it. […] We are therefore obliged to admit that the two terms of the image are not deduced one from the other by the mind for the specific purpose of producing the spark, that they are the simultaneous products of the activity I call Surrealist, reason's role being limited to taking note of, and appreciating, the luminous phenomenon. And just as the length of the spark increases to the extent that it occurs in rarefied gases, the Surrealist atmosphere created by automatic writing, which I have wanted to put within the reach of everyone, is especially conducive to the production of the most beautiful images. One can even go so far as to say that in this dizzying race the images appear like the only guideposts of the mind. By slow degrees the mind becomes convinced of the supreme reality of these images. At first limiting itself to submitting to them, it 26 concerned, we could mention, at opposite extremes, Luciano Folgore's reverent futurist ode to Electricity (in Il canto dei motori, 1912) and Massimo Bontempelli’s Minnie la candida (1928), in which the protagonist suffers an existential crisis about the authenticity of life, and is faced with the difficulty of determining whether the people she encounters are instead merely ‘finti’ e ‘fabbricati,’ electrically activated automata.

A number of Savinio’s works feature electrical themes or components that touch upon these themes of life-death, animate-inanimate and sexual energy (for a link to psychoanalysis, see the next chapter). From way back in the Chants de la mi-mort (1914),

Daisyssina (who is described in terms of machine-human-animal39 and represents for

Breton the “Eternal Feminine,” (Black Humor 388)) is killed by a “lametta d’acciaio fissata a un manico di legno collegato a un filo elettrico” (before she dies, she appears

‘alive’: she briefly lights up, lifts her arms up, and then falls back on the bed dead40); in

Dico a te, Clio (section originally published 1939), on a trip to the necropoli of the metaphysical Etruscans, Savinio imagines a dead Etruscan couple springing back up to life like ‘rane galvanizzate’ and dancing.41 In Il Signor Münster (1944), the plot unfolds as a sort of Frankenstein in reverse, where instead of being assembled from a collection

soon realizes that they flatter its reason, and increase its knowledge accordingly. The mind becomes aware of the limitless expanses wherein its desires are made manifest, where the pros and cons are constantly consumed, where its obscurity does not betray it. It goes forward, borne by these images which enrapture it, which scarcely leave it any time to blow upon the fire in its fingers. This is the most beautiful night of all, the lightning-filled night: day, compared to it, is night.” (Breton, Manifestos 37) 39 “«Tu avais un corps bizarre, triste comme une machine, / ètre compliqué, animal étrange»” (CMM 82) 40 Sabbatini reads this scene as a possible reference to the American executions by electric chair which had begun (famously badly) in 1890: “Un altro elemento che potrebbe rafforzare l'ipotesi dell'origine americana di Daisyssina, oltre alla consonanza inglese del nome, è il modo in cui viene uccisa la donna, fulminata dall'elettricità come i condannati alla sedia elettrica, recente invenzione statunitense (1890) che colpisce l'immaginario degli scrittori contemporanei.” (Sabbatini 227) He cites examples from Apollinaire (Poète assassiné, 1916) and Alfred Jarry (Surmâle,1902). 41 “Gli Etruschi noi li vediamo morti. Li vediamo coricati sui sarcofaghi, a due a due, coniugi fedeli. Ma, dovessero levarsi in piedi, li vedremmo attaccare tutti assieme, con scatti di rane galvanizzate, col ritmo del tallone battuto a terra e il doppio salto, le danze polovziane del Principe Igor. Pensando agli Etruschi, noi udiamo le musiche di Borodin.” (DC 96-97) 27 of body parts and made to ‘live,’ Signor Münster instead watches his transition from living to dead, the weight of his body lightening as body parts slowly fall away one at a time (“le quattro dita si staccano dalla mano e rotolano per terra come quattro salsicce”,

“la gamba rotola per un tratto spargendo frammenti di sé”), until he survives as only anima,42 at least for the moment – after he observes the extinguishing of the last “scintilla della sua energia vitale.”43 In “Visita di K…” (1949), the story revolves around Signor

Dido’s (a Savinian alter-ago) meeting with K…, who for years had planned and procrastinated his suicide, but who had recently undergone electroshock therapy and claims to be feeling better. More explicitly sexual references include the electrical

“marito meccanico” of Achille innamorato misto con l’Evergeta (1933)44, “l’Evergeta” who is supposed to relieve overfatigued husbands in the satisfaction of their wives; and

Psyche, from La nostra anima (1944), who sits on display in a fleshworks museum – similar to a wax museum, but with “la corrente che anima le figure di carne” – as an ambiguously animate-inanimate, human-animal-machine, and who, when plugged in, gives her scandalous and demythologizing ‘true’ account of her relationship with Eros

(we will address this story in Chapter 2).

42 “Non sente più il proprio corpo. Levarsi in piedi lo ha voluto lui, ma il movimento è avvenuto «a folle». Ora egli potrebbe bucarsi una mano, un piede senza soffrire. La sua anima va in giro, guarda, ascolta, cerca un altro amore, diverso da quello che cercava quaggiù e non ha trovato.” (SM 113) 43 Again a nod to Frankenstein, who instead gave the first spark of life to his monster. From the Italian translation of Shelley: “Con un'ansia simile all'angoscia radunai gli strumenti con i quali avrei trasmesso la scintilla della vita alla cosa inanimata che giaceva ai miei piedi.” The films of the 30s make this connection with electricity much more explicit, taking care to emphasize updated technology and elaborate electrical machines. 44 A censored version had previously appeared in “L’Italiano” (Sept 30, 1929). Savinio comments on this censorship in a footnote in La nostra anima: “Per maggiori chiarimenti sul funzionamento di questo strumento, vedi «Achille Innamorato misto con l'Evergeta» di Alberto Savinio; non nella edizione espurgata edita dal Vallecchi, ma nella edizione integrale pubblicata in «Le Surréalisme au Service de la Révolution», série 1933.” (NA 52 fn 1) 28 5. Life of Mercury

And we come back now to Vita di Mercurio, as we said, a project close to

Savinio's heart: he worked on it for decades, but the work remained (and remains) unpublished. An analysis of these scattered preparatory materials will allow us to link the electricity motif to Savinio's more general attitude toward modernity, dehumanization and the role of art and the artist.

The last precise date we have for this project comes from a handwritten note attached to a typed manuscript conserved in the Fondo Savinio at the Archivio

Contemporaneo del Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence which reads: “Oggi, 19 dicembre

1949, comincio la stesura definitiva della Vita di Mercurio,” though he likely worked on this project past that date. In an entry from 1942 for his recurrent column, Nuova

Enciclopedia, whose entries were later collected in a volume of that same name (1977)45,

Savinio remarks:

Una idea mi si aggira in testa da molto tempo, di un dio greco (Ermete) il quale è stanco della immortalità, della sua 'inutile' immortalità, e vuole farsi uomo per poter morire.46

This life of Mercury is one of a series of ‘miti rivissuti’ that Savinio was working on, and one in which he was particularly invested, not the least because he identifies so closely with the god.47 Savinio appreciates Mercury first of all because the god by the winged shoes (talaria) represents autonomous movement. “Mio dio è Mercurio: dio della

45 Included in the volume Nuova enciclopedia (1977) are entries from the columns Nuova Enciclopedia (“Domus”), Dizionario (“La Stampa”), Finestra (“Il Corriere della Sera”), Voci (“Documento”), Dal passato al futuro (“La nazione”), Il vaso di Pandora e Miti (“Il popolo di Roma”), Finestra (“Il Tempo”), Casa di Vetro (“Il lavoro fascista”) and I Rostri (“Film”). 46 “Baudelaire,” NE 38-39; orig. in “Domus,” Jan 1942. He continues: “Anche la poesia un giorno fu stanca di essere immortale, e scese nella poesia di Baudelaire, per poter morire.” 47 Savinio (debenedetti 45 - talking about Inconscio and its importance to Savinio - says that the essay is datable to around 1945, though published in 2011) 29 strade terrestri, delle strade celesti, della strada infera,”48 he writes in a piece entitled

"Camminare," published in “La stampa” in on Jun 29, 1943. He continues:

Nell’uomo che non cammina si sviluppa il fantasma. Se l’uomo persiste a non camminare, diventa fantasma. … I fantasmi, cioè, a dire le larve degli uomini morti male ossia in maniera incompleta (non basta saper vivere, bisogna anche sapere morire e all’élan vital [di Bergson] deve corrispondere l’élan mortel) non hanno autonomia di movimenti e si attaccano ai viventi per farsi rimorchiare. … Pigro, l’uomo crede supplire alla necessita del camminare con le macchine. Errore. La macchina più veloce non dà all’uomo quell’autonomia che gli dà il camminare, ed anche seduto in una macchina che percorre mille chilometri all’ora, l’uomo egualmente è schiavo.

Self-movement as a fundamental expression of freedom, life and death, humanity and divinity, the shortcoming of an existence which depends on mechanical devices, are all intertwined motifs in Savinio's adoption of Mercury as a personal deity for the artist.

Savinio's friend, the critic Giacomo Debenedetti, mused that Savinio felt close to

Mercurio because he represented introspection and, as the guide of the souls to the underworld, led to the discovery of one's own deeper roots: “ma non è un caso che a

Mercurio abbia volto le sue ricerche e i suoi interessi a questa divinità che, tra gli altri suoi attributi, possedeva quello detto dai Greci dello ‘psicopompo,’ cioè guidatore delle anime verso i regni profondi, alla scoperta insomma delle radici di se stessi.” (45)

Writing in 1944 to Bompiani about the reprinting of two of his previous works

(La casa ispirata, from 1925, and Angelica, o la Notte di Maggio, from 1927), Savinio explains how Mercurio, his protector saint, will be the last one of the series of “miti rivissuti”:

Angelica o la Notte di Maggio invece, come Adonis, come Derby Reale, come Icaro, come Il Capitano Ulisse fa parte di quei ‘miti rivissuti’ che io tuttora mi porto vivi nella mente, e di cui chiuderò probabilmente la serie quando avrò scritto anche “La Vita di Mercurio”, ossia la vita ‘umana’ di questo dio che senza illusioni ma senza abbagli io

48 “Camminare,” in “La Stampa,” Jun 29 1943). 30 considero come il mio “santo protettore”, e che si fa uomo perché stanco di essere immortale, vuol passare nel grande riposo dell’eternità.49 (my italics)

He seems to be thinking about Vita di Mercurio a lot in the late 30s and early 40s,50 after having begun it decades before, and to be particularly invested in its realization as a sort of swan's song or artistic testament:

Ai due lati della scrivania riposano due cartelle turchine nelle quali da decine e decine di anni è raccolto il materiale grezzo della Notte della mano morta e della Vita di Mercurio, i due libri che tre giorni su cinque mi gridano con deboli voci di carta: “Scrivici! scrivici!”, e che quando finalmente li avrò scritti, mi sarà consentito di uscire da questa vita senza eccessivi rimorsi e col sentimento che tutto sommato il mio soggiorno quaggiù non è stato vano.51

In Il gallo, Mercury presents himself to Savinio as a rooster in his brother-in-law’s yard and after explaining the origins of both his Greek and Roman names, and clarifying that his primary purpose is as "guida delle strade e delle vie” (in a moral sense, above all), he adds: « . . . Anche questo mio occhio luminoso ha scopo indicatore, e fa da fanalino ai morti che io guido nel regno delle ombre. Quando vieni anche te?» Pregai Mercurio di aver pazienza per qualche anno ancora, finché io porti a compimento alcuni lavori che mi stanno a cuore. «Che te ne fai? Tutto è vano quaggiù e se non è oggi sarà domani. Che lavori sono?». «Sto scrivendo un libro su te, Vita di Mercurio, e mi dispiacerebbe lasciarlo in tronco».52

In fact, Mercury often makes humorous appearances in Savinio’s work: he shows

49 Letter to Bompiani from May 1944, conserved in the Fondo Savinio (see Tinterri, “Note ai testi: La casa ispirata,” H 934). About these ‘miti rivissuti’ and Savinio’s love for Mercury, Giuliani writes: “Ermes e suo figlio Ermafrodito sono gli dèi più amati da Savinio. Chiamava Ermes più volentieri col nome latino, Mercurio, probabilmente perché questo gli suggeriva meglio l'inafferrabilità, il mutare rapidissimo. Messaggero degli dèi, guida dei viaggiatori e delle anime dei defunti, dio-gallo che annuncia la resurrezione del giorno, unico dio (nella personale mitologia saviniana) che aspira a diventare uomo per attingere la morte, il passaggio all'eternità, condizione ben superiore all'immortalità terrestre, Ermes- Mercurio trama e protegge le trasformazioni, la moltiplicazione dei ruoli. Con un rovesciamento, che è il segreto svelato della propria creatività metafisica, a furia di identificarsi con le sue genealogie, Savinio le partorisce. (Giuliani xv-xvi) 50 In a letter to Henri Parisot from January 27, 1939, Savinio writes: “Je suis très content que vous fassiez paraìtre ‘Introduction à une vie de Mercure.’ Ce text est vraiment une introduction à une vie de Mercure, qui depuis plusieurs années dejà est composé et prete dans ma tête, mais que jusqu'ici je n'ai pas trouvé le temps d'écrire.” (Savinio and Parisot 142) 51 “Ultimo incontro,” SD 95; orig. in “Il Tempo,” Jan 7 1945. La notte della mano morta would be developed into a fairly lengthy cinematic script, which remained unpublished and unproduced during Savinio’s lifetime. It can now be found in Sogno meccanico, 30-53. 52 CLValtri 773; orig. in “La Stampa,” Dec 17, 1942. 31 up as “Ermete oneiropompo” (guide of dreams) in Hermaphrodito (1918); as a pilot

“vestito da aviatore, con elmo di cuoio, occhiali e casacca pure di cuoio” in the play

Capitano Ulisse (1934); in Alla città della mia infanzia dico… (1941), Savinio compares

Mercury to a golden scarab plunging from the sky and bouncing back to heaven,

“piombava dal cielo, scintillante come uno scarabeo nella sua corazza d’oro, posava un piede alato sulle case per riprendere lo slancio, rimbalzava in cielo”; the protagonist of Il

Signor Münster (1943) also observes Mercury's oblique flight (the god pretends to be a mailman) “per diporto vola ancora in obliquo, reggendo a braccio teso un bastone e fingendo di recapitare delle lettere”; and in Vita di Enrico Ibsen (1943), he’s a lightning- quick cyclist who crosses the empty sky as an "aluminum flash":

La bicicletta oltre a tutto è il veicolo di Mercurio, del «nostro» Mercurio: con questo in più che Mercurio ciclista sa andare anche sui muri come una mosca a ruote, sa andare sopra le case, scavalcare i monti, correre il mare, girare intorno alle nuvole, traversare come un lampo d'alluminio il cielo più sgombro, più puro, più vuoto.

In each of these examples, the metamorphic Mercury appears under a different guise – emanating human, animal, divine aspects – but in each of these occasions the point of emphasis is on his autonomous movement, in all directions, by many means. The engine of metamorphosis.

The Vita di Mercurio project, then, stands out from these other examples because it depicts this mobile, dynamic god inhabiting – if not trapped within – a statue form

(stone or bronze), searching to regain mobility, liberate himself from the confines of this imposed or unnatural terrestrial stillness, to achieve a state of atemporal, eternal repose.

As Savinio explains in the film synopsis and screenplay, in a way, it is a story of the transformation of the pagan god to Christianity – he would like to die, but before he can do that, he must first live as a man. The Christian motif of “incarnation” (of a god into

32 human form) is thus linked to a meditation on time, immortality and eternity. As a pagan god - Savinio writes in the film synopsis, Mercury is condemned to earthly immortality.

An “obscure desire” now drives him to aspire to a “state of eternity” and in order to do so he has to die and in order to die he has first to live as a man. Mercury explains to his friend Maurizio the difference between immortality and eternity, which also encapsulates the difference between pagan gods and the revealed divinity of Christ: “Immortality is not to die on earth: eternity is to die to all that is human” and be reborn “beyond time and any form of life or mode of existence.”53 This philosophical assessment not only provides a general plot summary of the story, but alludes to a theme that will become important to

Mercury’s transformation: Savinio often connects the idea of the ‘human’ to his own redefinitions of “cristiano,” which as we will see is a concept disconnected from its religious context – is perhaps even ateo, atheistic rather than secular or pantheistic – , and seems to be, at times close to his concept of amore, a “horizontal” feeling, the most human of feelings which can lead to a “christian community with every creature and thing, beyond just man: animals, plants, minerals,” down to the most minimal particles, even deeper than cells and atoms - only then the fullest and deepest christian feeling of life can be achieved. Other times, this transformative idea of “Christianity” is something

53 “Mercurio che appartience alle divinità pagane, è condannato come tale alla immortalità terrestre. È una esistenza minore, chiusa a ogni divenire, immobile e muta. Un oscuro desiderio si è andato chiarendo a poco a poco nell’animo di Mercurio, gli ha suggerito di passare dallo stato di immortalità terrestre, allo stato di eternità. In certo modo, questa trasformazione sarebbe il passaggio del dio pagano alla cristianità. Mercurio insomma vuole morire, ma, prima di poter morire, deve vivere come uomo. Chiede perciò a Maurizio di aiutarlo.” (Sogno meccanico 26). From the final filmscript: “Mercurio spiega a Maurizio la differenza tra gli dei pagani e la divinità rivelata da Cristo. È la differenza tra immortalità e eternità. Immortalità è il non morire sulla terra: eternità è il morire a tutto ciò che è mortale, e dunque nascere a una essenza di là dal tempo, di là da qualunque forma di vita, di là da qualunque modo di esistenza. […] Un oscuro desiderio si è andato chiarendo a poco a poco nell’animo di Mercurio, gli ha suggerito di uscire dalla immortalità, di entrare nell’eternità. Con voce più bassa, come un gelosissimo segreto, Mercurio confida a Maurizio che lui, un dio, vuole diventare cristiano.” (21.8 5, 6, 6bis) 33 like an animating force which also pervades the social fabric, – a call for a more comprehensive humanity.54

6. Life of Mercury: a genealogy

If we do look back in time a few decades, “decine e decine di anni,” we can trace the seeds of this project already starting in published and unpublished works. In Savinio's archives, there are several different versions or elaborations of the Vita di Mercurio, most clearly divided into three sets: 1) a set of early handwritten page-length sketches of six chapters (possibly datable to the mid to late 1920s, a sort of raw material, ‘materiale grezzo’55); 2) a film storyline, dated 1949, but written perhaps earlier; and 3) the typed manuscripts, also dated 1949. As typical of Savinio's work, in which everything seems to be intimately connected and motifs recur over time, there are also a few other published works form the 1920s (even from 1910) which share many aspects with the project, and

54 “Il cristianesimo è un fatto umano, soltanto umano. Il più umano dei sentimenti. Opera da uomo a uomo. Si muove sul piano orizzontale. È un sentimento che ogni uomo ispira agli altri uomini, ogni uomo trae dagli altri uomini. (L'allargamento, cui io tendo con tutto l'animo, del sentimento cristiano della vita, porterà alla cristiana comunione con le creature e le cose di là dall'uomo: animali, piante, minerali; e con le particelle che compongono le creature e le cose; fino alle cellule e agli atomi; e di là dalle cellule e dagli atomi; e allora solamente sarà raggiunto il pieno, profondo sentimento cristiano della vita) … Prima di Cristo, questa energia era chiamata Eros nella lingua di Platone, e salutata con le parole di Lucrezio nell'alma Venere. Cristo approfondì questa energia e il sentimento che la esprime, allargò il repertorio dei comuni interessi umani svegliando il voluttuoso sentimento della pietà e quello più voluttuoso ancora della carità, rese anche più ‘umano’ questo più umano dei sentimenti. Il quale, perché così umano appunto, non regge a quanto umano non è, non regge soprattutto all'autorità unica e accentratrice - questo arresto, questa paralisi, questo punto. E ancor meno regge al riflesso metafisico dell'autorità: Dio. Ateo è il cristianesimo. E se ateo io sono, tale non per ragionamento io sono, ma perché cristiano” (“Europa,” NE 141-43) 55 These early handwritten pages are not dated, but if we take Savinio at his word - that he had been working on this project for decades, they are perhaps also from the 20s or early 30s. The striking differences in the story outlined in these early handwritten pages and in the later versions would perhaps also support this dating. In a letter from July 12, 1949, to his friend and editor Henri Parisot, who had previously published his Introduction à la vie de Mercure, he indicates he’s been carrying around this story of the life of Mercury in his head for 25 years: “De toute façon, je me déciderai de faire moi-meme la traduction de mes livres; ou encore de les écrire directement en français, comme j'ai l'intention de faire pour La Vie de Mercure - ce livre que je porte dans ma tête depuis vingt-cinq ans, et dont vous avez publié l’Introduction.” (Savinio and Parisot 200) 34 in a way all serve as preliminary or introductory material for the events related in the Vita di Mercurio: Sogno ermetico(1920),56 (1920), Vita dei fantasmi (1925), 57 and

Introduction à une vie di Mercure (1929) 58 – all also works in which a Savinian alter-ego converses with a statue of Mercury.

The three versions of Vita di Mercurio all feature a doctor who administers electricity to a patient: in the early version to Mercury himself in an attempt to

‘humanize’ him, in the later versions with the goal of bringing back to life a man who has shot himself. In the early version, this electrical treatment is successful and Mercury’s limbs (he is a statue) gradually soften and gain a human-like agility; in the later versions, the electricity does provoke lifelike movement, but results only in the man’s mechanical reenactment of his last action (i.e. his suicide) repeated in a continuous loop.

Furthermore, the doctor’s reaction to the effect of his electrical treatment differs in the two later versions: in the film synopsis, the doctor is ‘desperate’, dismayed not only at what is a horrific scene (in front of his grieving wife, no less) but also at the artificial production of movement that cannot be considered life (a return to movement that cannot be considered a return to life); in the manuscript, on the other hand, the doctor revels in his ‘success’, deeming it his ‘capolavoro’ (masterpiece) and criticizing as petty and constantly complaining the wife who screams “This is not life!” In the name of science, this Doctor Speranza seems to have reduced his definition of ‘life’ to an observable

‘action-reaction’ sequence, rather than concern himself with broader less quantifiable meanings of life (something that Savinio's expansive concept of “christianity” seems to point to). Whereas most of Savinio’s references to his Vita di Mercurio project focus on

56 In “Il Mondo,” June 13, 1920, reprinted in Italia 438-445. 57 In “Rivista di Firenze,” Feb 1925, then VF 53-66. 58 In “Bifur,” Dec 31, 1929, now H 441-460. 35 the ‘humanization’ of Mercury, he does already have this mad scientist element in mind at least as early as 1942:

Un giorno narrerò la storia di quello «scienziato» che faceva rivivere i morti, ricaricando il loro cervello di energia elettrica, ma in verità non riusciva se non a mettere in moto il cadavere, che con monotonia raggricciante ripeteva all'infinito l'ultimo gesto della sua vita.59

The two themes are clearly related, perhaps as two opposite sides of the same argument.

Again, the development of this project over the course of the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s allows us to consider shifts in Savinio’s representations of medical electricity as well as his portrayal of the figure of the doctor-scientist in relation to Mercury's metamorphosis, and to attempt to determine how the political situation, scientific and technological discoveries and the cultural production of his contemporaries may have also influenced or inspired these changes.

There are several elements that appear and reappear throughout all of the works associated with the Vita di Mercurio project, including the early introductory works.

They include: the death of the narrator/protagonist’s father, which serves as the transformative and fundamental preparatory experience that provides the narrator/protagonist the possibility of understanding Mercury’s metaphysical revelations

(Savinio’s own father died when he was thirteen years old); a dream-vision in which the narrator/protagonist encounters Mercury in statue form who moves and speaks to him; the arrangement that they will meet at a later date in a Northern city; other typically

Savinian ‘metaphysical’ descriptions of the setting, i.e. a window in the sky; the explanation of the difference between immortality and eternity; elements that relate to electricity, from associations of Mercury with lightning-speed to scenes that specifically

59 In “Peer Gynt di Warner Egk,” SS 250; orig. in «Film» May 16 1942. In this passage, Savinio is commenting on the state of musical theater and considers this scene an appropriate analogy. 36 describe theories of medical electricity - as we see, the theme of electricity is clearly an important component of Savinio's “mercurial” mindset.

The first indication that electricity will play a part in Savinio’s rewrite of the life of Mercury comes from the earliest handwritten pages of the unpublished Hérmes skeptomenos/La statua pensante (1910, 2 pages), where, as Antonella Usai notes, the title and subtitle themselves ironically play off the idea of the lightning-fast god immobilized in a meditative statue, reminiscent of Rodin’s The Thinker:

Hérmes Skeptómenos/La statua pensante, nei quali il dio viene caratterizzato dall’epiteto derivante da σκηπτός, «fulmine», «lampo» e µένος «anima» o «forza vitale». L’epiteto è posto in ossimoro al sottotitolo, La statua pensante: la vitalità fulminea del dio alato si contrappone così alla sua condizione di immobilità statuaria e meditativa. Un’immobilità che però contiene in sé un ulteriore ossimoro, poiché la statua è pensante ed il pensiero è movimento.60

The brief Sogno ermetico (1920), after emphasizing the narrator’s witness to his father’s death - “mio padre morì” (438), which he then restates: “vidi morire mio padre” (438) - then comments on a perceptible physical transformation, drawing a comparison of the gaze of the dead to that of an artistic creation, suggesting some reciprocity between techne and life: not only do statues seek to depict a moment of, or approximate, life, but the result of the transition from life to death is likened to a product of techne: “Però egli guardava ancora; guardava in modo trasformato: come guardano le statue” (439).61 The narrator-Maurizio slips into a dream, where a jokester Mercury greets him, only to indicate to the narrator that this experience of his father’s death has opened up a new dimension to his understanding of mystery. In typical Savinian fashion, though this story

60 Usai 184. The Greek-English dictionary Liddell and Scott offers these definitions for σκηπτός, ὁ, (σκήπτω) A.thunderbolt; and µένος , εος, τό, might, force, life, spirit. 61 He makes this analogy more explicit when he describes the statue of Mercury as: “un uomo nudo e senza braccia che mi guardava in modo ché i suoi occhi pieni e bianchi non s'aggiravano pupille animatrici.” (SE 442) 37 revolves around death and a glimpse into the afterlife, the tone is far from morose, so upon registering the narrator’s surprise, the statue quips, alluding to a couple of the contemporary medical-scientific uses of his onomastic element (in thermometers and to treat syphilis):

Tu mi credevi ormai rinchiuso nei tubetti dei termometri! - soggiunse sogguardandomi dall'alto-; ridotto all'impotenza in questo mondo di fumose esaltazioni! sussidio igienico contro le lue celtica e altri simili malanni! (443).

Another ironic example of how science tries to harness the essence of the ancient god,

Mercury, transforming him into a utilitarian element.

These first two, notably, are the only versions in which Mercury seems to reside peacefully within his stone body – does not ask for the narrator’s assistance in becoming mortal, rather only wants to initiate him in the secrets of the universe. It is also here that

Savinio first hints at the narrator of the later versions mysterious (metaphysical?) name, behind which perhaps are hidden both an alter-ego and references to other figures and characters familiar to Savinio: Maurizio … “tenebroso,”62 itself a suggestion that this young narrator is by nature drawn to the shadowy, difficult to discern, magical and mysterious. Here, engraved on the statue, we find again: HERMES SKEPTOMENOS. It is therefore into the Hermetic nature of the god that one must look in order to capture its secrets.

Five years later, Savinio published Vita dei fantasmi (1925), and in this episode,

Mercury expresses a desire to become human and seeks the narrator’s aid. Mercury

62 “Voi, per carattere, siete tenebrosi e fantasmagorici” (SE 444). In fact, in all three versions, the Savinian alter ego of the Vita di Mercurio will have the name of Maurizio (and in the Introduction, he will be Maurice), or as Savinio helpfully points out in his comment to Campanella’s Città del Sole: “Molti nomi dinotano qualità, come … Maurizio che significa «tenebroso»” (140, note 31). Maurizio may also be a reference to Savinio’s friend, the artist Jean Cocteau, whose second name was Maurice and who identified so closely with Mercury that he often dressed up in character for dinner parties. 38 explains to the narrator the particular unfortunate predicament that ghosts face: they are not able to participate in the natural cycle of the universe, which allows for their natural transformation and reabsorption into eternity.63 These poor ghosts “(m)uoiono e rimuoiono […] Durano e non vivono” (59), a description that anticipates to some extent the fate of the electrically ‘reanimated’ husband of the later film synopsis and screenplay, who keeps reenacting his own death.64 Mercury in his statue form finds himself in a situation similar to the ghosts, terrestrially trapped and unable to cross over, dissolve back into eternity65. In the postille, the narrator reflects: “le speranze di questo convalescente straordinario convergono tutte al destino umano e alla morte. La chiave di una risoluzione così curiosa è da cercare, credo, nella differenza tra ‘immortalità’ e

‘eternità’ ” (64). It is for this reason that he has promised to help Mercury become human. Ghost life is for Savinio a sort of transitional stage and as a remnant of an ancient culture Mercury is condemned to live the immortal life of a ghost, unless he can remedy his condition by becoming human and dying (in order to achieve eternal life).

63 “Oh, quanto più vasto, e ricco è l’universo, di ciò che a occhio umano appare! Ascolta: la vita, nascita, esistenza, morte, trae dall’eternità: da uno stato cioè, che esclude quanto a sé il nascere, l'esistenza, la morte. -Pure si associano! - Oscura questione. Fatto sta che quel primo operato stringe un patto tra gl'inconciliabili. Formata la vita, stesa nel tempo, si esaurisce nuovamente nell'eternità. Ma non tutto ciò che muore rientra in quella. Talune creature, il passato le respinge.” (VF 58) 64 Given the historical context, it is tempting to consider perhaps also a political metaphor for the ghosts – linking it to the dehumanizing, deindividualizing and easily manipulatable phenomenon of the mass. The young (recent) ghosts manage to roam fairly well, but suffer increasingly as they age. They are refused by eternity, will one day eat up everything on earth. In this same story, a ghost is defined as: “Colui che perde il sentimento della propria individualità, si converte in fantasma. La folla è fantasma. Fantasma è l’uomo apatico, l'uomo che si fa trasportare.” (VF 64). Vita dei fantasmi was published on Feb 25, 1925 not quite two months after Mussolini’s Jan 3 speech in which he consolidated his dictatorial power. Much later, Savinio will assert that it is the crowd itself that creates the dictatorship: “La folla è ignorante, smemorata, incapacè di giudizio. Primo compito di uno stato civile dovrebbe essere di sopprimere la folla. La folla si potrebbe sopprimere educando e illuminando la mente di ogni singolo componente di essa folla, ossia facendo sì che la folla non sia più folla. Ma la dittatura quanto a sé ha bisogno della folla. La dittatura vive della folla. La dittatura è una espressione della folla. È la folla che crea la dittatura. In una nazione priva di folle ignoranti e bestiali, la dittatura non ha possibilità di allignare. (“Germanesimo,” NE 185) 65 “Ci somigliamo troppo. Invisi al destino entrambi.” (VF 58) 39 With the Introduction à une vie di Mercure, published in French in 1929, Savinio again sets the stage for a whimsical telling of the life of Mercury with this highly surrealist66 part-Odyssean, part Dantesque account of the Wakener of the Gods’ voyage across the ‘Pharoah’s ex-sea’ from the Object Isles (which the narrator points out are not found on any atlas), through a geography of body parts67 to attend a séance at the Casa

Rana68, and, finally, to his arrival in a piazza in a large northern city, where a statue of

Merx69 calls out to him “Maurice! Maurice!”70 Oblique echoes of the first canto of the

Inferno when the pilgrim encounters the three beasts71, seem to prepare the reader for yet

66 In fact, it is a section from this work that Breton includes in his Anthologie de humour noir in 1940. Savinio was the only Italian writer represented, Breton comments: “The whole, as-yet-unformed modern myth rests at its origins on two bodies of work that are almost indistinguishable in spirit - by Alberto Savinio and his brother, Giorgio de Chirico” (Breton, Anthology of Black Humor 287). 67 They take a steamship on wheels to “le faubourg des Pieds-Réunis” where “Après avoir louvoyé autour de la Place de l’Oeil, ils longèrent par petites bordées la rue de l’Oesophage puis, ayant doublé le carrefour de l’Épgastre, ils cinglèrent bravement vers l’interminable avenue des Intestins. À la hauteur du square de l’Anus, une effroyable tempête se déchaîna.” (IVM 447-48). This sought-after quarter is populated only by very old aristocratic families and is where the Casa Rana is located. 68 The medium Maria Rana a parody of Nadja-Mélusine, and Savinio employs the aesthetics of Surrealism to make fun of it: “De façon admirable l'Introduction met en œuvre l'esthétique de la beauté convulsive en même temps qu'elle la tourne en derision” (Rosowsky 53 and 55). The outrageous séance scene at the Casa Rana (associations especially with Mesmer) foreshadow the electrical treatments in the Vita di Mercurio, which are based on ‘animal magnetism,’ recall Galvani’s experiments, and his nephew Aldini’s demostrations of mechanically reanimating corpses, and which play into fears or skepticism about the new and popular practice revived from Mesmer’s theories: hypnosis (by Charcot, for example). In a passage from Ascolto il tuo cuore, città, Savinio reminisces on a séance he had attended at Casa Rana in 1918 (ACC 149-151). 69 The name Merx here places an emphasis on Mercury’s role as guardian of commerce – with plays on both ‘merce’ and ‘Marx.’ In fact, the statue’s first words will be: “Das,” “Texaco,” “Eco,” “Mobiloil.” (IVM 79). 70 The narrator addresses his protagonist, encouraging him to proceed with the “miracle”: “Éveilleur des Dieux! Te voici maintenant au milieu du cadran nocturne, où l’ombre antisolaire indique par son fatai mouvement la marche d’un «autre» jour. Devant toi, parmi les fontaines qui se meurent de soif, la bianche anatomie attend son heure. Avance vers elle avec courage et brise par ton amour l’ultime et très légère écorce qui vous sépare ancore. Saisis ta voix à pleines mains e lancela contre ce rempart fragile. ‘Maurice! Maurice!’ Ce cri, ce nom ont éclaté à son insu. Il vibre d’Épouvante. D’une voix boursouflée que personne ne reconnaitrait comme sienne, la voix du prisonnier qui la nuit appelle sa mère, il répète: ‘Maurice! Maurice!’” (IVM 457-58) 71 Maurice’s traveling companion (and distant uncle) is the diplomat Mr. Pard, whose name will be more fully explained (“«Léopard», qu'est-ce au fond sinon un pléonasme?” IVM 442) and whose “peau diplomatique est savamment mouchetée” (IVM 442, cfr. Inf. I.33: “Che di pel macolato era covert”). The narrator notes that some of the old bestial habits survive in this descendent (“Dans ce rejeton des fauves survivaient les us bibéiques de ses ancétres.” IVM 442). There are possibile allusions to the two other 40 another journey about to begin: one framed loosely with Maurice as Virgil to Mercury’s

Dante, and one which will not be a process of divination so much as one of humanization.

In the final lines, we get the first suggestion of a medical relationship, with

Maurice established as a nurse, or caregiver to the paralytic Monsieur Merx (again, one of the oldest and most common applications of electrotherapy was to attempt to regain movement in paralytic limbs), a relationship which will carry on through the Vita di

Mercurio:

Arm in arm, the majestic paralytic and his loving nurse went off toward the charming apartment the young man had rented for his divine friend. (79)72

7. Alternative versions:

The dating of the three separate versions conserved in the Fondo Savinio (the early handwritten notes, the ‘materiale grezzo’ which could likely be dated from the late

1920s-early 30s73, the film storyline, dated somewhere between 1941 and 194974 and the

45 page typewritten filmscript whose final draft Savinio began on December 19, 1949, which includes handwritten edits presumably from after this date) though not entirely precise, does seem to indicate that the screeplay is the final version on which Savinio was working. This tentative chronology – from early handwritten sheets to film storyline to

‘fiere’ as well: there is a hint of lion vague description of a chimera (the mythical lion with goat head and snake tail): “Lui, rien ne le trompe. Il sait qu'au fond de cette mer à l'apparence si calme, une armée formidable est en marche depuis des siècles, derrière son roi aux longs yeux de chèvre et tout d'or rutilant ainsi qu'un scarabée.” and to the starving aspect of the wolf in “les fantòmes faméliques.”(IVM 443) 72 “Paralytique majestueux, infirmier plein d'amour, ils s'acheminèrent coude à coude vers la coquette garçonnière, que le jeune homme avait louée pour son divin ami. » (IVM 460) 73 In addition to the other dating, these handwritten notes say: “Maurizio ha ventiquattro anni . Ora che ha doppiato il capo della ventina.” Savinio was born in 1891. 74 In Il sogno meccanico, Vanni Scheiwiller publishes the soggetto cinematografico with the date 1949, and in the bibliography gives it the range 1945-49. In his introduction to Scheiwiller’s book, Savinio e il cinema, Mario Verdone dates it 1945. Records (letters of receipt) contained in the Fondo Savinio indicate that a version of the Vita di Mercurio storyline was submitted to the SAFIR (Società Anonima Film Italiani Roma) in 1941 and in 1943. It is not clear whether it is the same version or whether this published storyline has undergone alterations. 41 screenplay (“la stesura definitiva della Vita di Mercurio”) – as mentioned above, allows us trace a development in Savinio’s representations of the relationship between electricity and the body and of the figure of the doctor-scientist. After an initially positive portrayal of the electrical doctor and his success in ‘humanizing’ (or bringing to ‘life’) Mercury in the early version, the later versions both depict the disturbing, unsuccessful efforts of a doctor to revivify a recently deceased man. While the later versions are quite similar plotwise, what makes this dating of the versions particularly compelling is the vastly different portrayal of the doctor-scientist: in the film storyline, at the alarming results of his experiment the doctor is – like those around him – horrified at what is clearly not a return to life, but a distressing, mechanized ‘approximation’ of human movement; in the screenplay, the doctor, ‘lost’ to science and enamored of his ability to trigger motion, to elicit a physical response through his administration of electricity, is depicted as a cold, ridiculous, unsympathetic character who objectifies his patients and can no longer recognize what it is to be ‘human’ (and whose patient-experiments will, in the end, avenge their mistreatment). It is interesting to consider here the choice of film as a privileged medium for the Mercury project, as though Savinio, the painter and writer, saw the challenge of a technical medium (much appreciated and used by surrealists) which, as a modern mythopoietic apparatus, animates ghosts, bring ancient gods back to life and allows spectators to travel virtually anywhere, at the speed of light.75

75 Savinio was quite interested in cinema. His theoretical writings and critical reviews date from the 1920s and early and mid 1930s, and with particularly frequent contributions in the period from 1938 to 1940, with regular columns first in “Lavoro fascista” then in “Oggi.” He also wrote at eight film storylines, all from 1940s: Didone abbandonata, Andrea Mantegna, San Francesco, Vita di mercurio, La notte della mano morta, one based on L’Asino d’Oro, Se Cristoforo Colombo facesse visita a Truman, one untitled. See Savinio and Scheiwiller, Il sogno meccanico. Also for Savinio’s references to the cinema in his other writings, see Bernardi, Al cinema con Savinio. 42 The early version follows the process of ‘humanization’ Mercury undergoes, and the episode of the electrical treatment is incorporated into this process. In the later versions of Vita di Mercurio, however, as already mentioned, the storyline splits and there are parallel narratives: one of the humanization of Mercury, which is accomplished through the experience of human impulses and emotions; the other of the unsuccessful attempt to reanimate a dead man through the external administration of electricity.

Within the folder containing the early version, there is a handwritten sheet, possibly a sketch of another introduction to this life of Mercury, that situates the story at the outbreak of the First World War and finds Maurizio now a grown man whose brain has come to function as a ‘perfect mechanism’ (a curious, likely intentional description).

Tired of disappointment from his travels, he now looks to satisfy his adventurous spirit within his mind – in his fantasies and imagination. As cultural avenues for inspiration have dried up, Maurizio turns to science as his last hope. Savinio ends this note with a provocative question, contesting the easy equivalency of scientific knowledge with intelligence:

Rimarrebbe il capitolo “scienze”, sul quale gli occhi di Maurizio non si sono mai posati. Ma quali commozioni può dare l’esplorazione di un giardino pubblico, e cosa c’entrano le scienze con l’intelligenza? 76

The manuscript of this first version is divided into five sections – all on nine handwritten sheets total – five scenarios which will be repeated in both the film synopsis

76 “Maurizio ha ventiquattro anni. Non è il caso di mettere la sua vita a rapporto. Gli atti esteriori di Maurizio non costituiscono ‘avventura.’ La sua avventura è silenziosa e tutta chiusa tra la scatola cranica e gli occhi. Quando suo padre morì, Maurizio era un ragazzo. Ora è un uomo, e in questo frattempo il suo cervello è diventato un meccanismo perfetto. Un meccanismo che funziona anche troppo bene. Maurizio soffre di essere troppo intelligente. Si duole di non trovare qualcosa che non capisce, un pensiero che lui non ha ‘già’ pensato. Altre volte interi mondi erano oscuri per lui. Si buttava a corpo morto nell’avventura, ma non era volta che la sua fede di esploratore non fosse ripagato con una delusione. Ormai il mito della cultura è sciugato, e a Maurizio non restano più speranze. Rimarrebbe il capitolo ‘scienze,’ sul quale gli occhi di Maurizio non si sono mai posati. Ma quali commozioni può dare l’esplorazione di un giardino pubblico, e cosa c’entrano le scienze con l’intelligenza?” (21.7) 43 and the screenplay, though in some cases significantly altered: “L’elettrologo” (2 pages),

“Incontro con il padre” (2 pages), “Merx, la statua pensante” (3 pages), “La vendetta dei morti” (1 page), “La stella in fiamme” (1 page, above which is written: “Capitolo _____

(verso la fine)”)77.

In the section entitled “L’elettrologo”, Mercury and Savinio are seated at a café in

Milan, and Mercury is complaining to his friend about how slowly his process of humanization is proceeding. A doctor overhears them and offers a solution. After an initial hesitation to the idea, Mercury decides to give it a try and the three of them depart immediately for a place in the Prealpine hills of northern Italy (we discover later that it is

Velo Veronese78). The notes read:

Entriamo nello strano stabilimento. [sic] d’elettrologo. Ci spiega il suo sistema. Egli ha scoperto che tutta l’energia della vita dell’uomo risiede nella sostanza cerebrale. Dimostrazione anatomica della sostanza cerebrale, accumulatrice di elettricità. Dimostrazione della procreazione mediante la trasfusione della materia cerebrale per mezzo dello sperma (gioire: scaricare sostanza piena d’elettricità), Dimostrazione dell’imprgnamento [sic] d’elettricità del corpo umano. Morte: scaricamento, esautorazione completa dell’energia elettrica contenuta nel cervello. Perciò è l’elettrologo [p.... p...... ?] la vita degli uomini, caricando di nuova energia elettrica il cervello di un uomo morto.

77 “L’elettrologo” (2 pages) describes the scientist’s theory of the relation of electricity to the body. “Incontro con il padre” (2 pages) describes Mercury’s visit to and embrace of a statue of his father Giove in a Roman museum, the statue’s subsequent crumbling to the ground, having been warmed and ‘enlivened’ by Mercury’s filial love, and the attempt by the authorities to make sense of this unusual occurrence. “Merx, la statua pensante” (3 pages) describes a situation on the train where Mercury, acting upon his emergent impulses, jumps on top of a woman, her husband tries shoot him and not understanding why his bullets don’t have an effect, turns the gun on himself and dies, the woman shocked at first is ultimately relieved because he was a terrible person, she becomes Mercury’s lover. In “La vendetta dei morti,” (1 page) the dead want revenge on Mercury because he has transported them to the underworld… in a contemporary/anticipation of the zombie theme: “Tosto si vedono scopririsi le tombe. Ne escono i morti, agitando i loro scheletri, alcuni vestiti di lembi di carne, dimenando i sudari a brandelli, taluni carichi di terra, alcuni veggendo il coperchio della tomba alla guisa di scudo. I morti riconoscono Mercurio.” Luckily for Mercury, dawn arrives. In “La stella in fiamme” (1 page), an astronomer sees a great flash (bagliore) and what seems to be blood running down from the planet-star Mercury. Terrified, he runs to alert others who inform him that all of the statues of Mercury have fallen over bleeding, and all the thermometers, barometers, etc have turned red and warmed. 78 This location in a large villa/laboratory in the hills/mountains recalls Frankenstein. Velo (‘velare’ ‘svelare’ ‘rivelare’) suggests an atmostphere of secrecy, mystery and its eventual revelation. Two of the scientists discussed in this dissertation were from the Veneto: Ugo Cerletti, the inventor of electroshock was from Conegliano, Girolamo Segato who practiced ‘pietrificazione’ was from Belluno. 44 Mercurio è sottoposto all’operazione, che riesce appieno, e Mercurio acquista una morbidezza e una agilità nelle membra tale che è diventato simile quasi a un mortale.

In these notes, Savinio seems to have envisioned dedicating a significant amount of space to the demonstrations of how electricity functions within the human body – from how it accumulates in the brain matter to how it is transferred through the sperm to create

(‘activate’) and sustain life in a new human body. This description metaphorically draws upon conceptions that liken the body to a battery – popular in early galvanism and considered with renewed interest in early 20th century high-tech electrotherapy – , whose power source is specifically localized in the brain; it verges on a characterization of robot-like/android (re)production (or an electrified version of ancient theories of sperm as cerebrospinal fluid). The mix of biological (cerebral substance, sperm) and electrochemical-mechanical (electric accumulator, charge, discharge) terminology highlights the overlap or fusing of human-machine composition and energy, and suggests

(the doctor’s belief) that administering electricity to this stone statue (an ‘inhabited’, but inert substance) might effectively animate and bring life to it, just as he would maintain that human procreation relies predominantly on the transfusion of electricity (the animating fluid) through the sperm. The doctor’s operation succeeds in rendering

Mercury’s body almost human (there remain small distinctions between flesh and stone, human and divine, perhaps; and the real completing step in Mercury’s humanization is his experience of love, empathy and compassion, fundamental elements to this process in the later versions). This depiction of the benefits of electrical applications to the body – to the softening of skin and the ‘illusion’ of humanness – contrasts sharply with the mechanical, jerky movements that result from the doctor’s intervention in the later

45 versions.79 Savinio portrays the doctor in this version as a facilitator to the humanization process; there is no condemnation of his theory or results, and this indeed stands in stark contrast to the later versions, as though Savinio over time had developed a much more critical and disenchanted attitude toward the metaphorical power of ‘electricity.’

The other section of this manuscript that undergoes a significant change in representation from the early to the later versions is the one entitled “La vendetta dei morti.” In this early version, Mercury becomes curious about his old powers as psychopomp and summons the dead with some sacramental words. They emerge zombie-like from their graves and are, as the undead are typically portrayed, feral and violent. They seek vengeance against Mercury for having transported their souls not to a gentle afterlife, but to the underworld. Mercury is saved just in time by the rooster’s crow at dawn, Maurizio accompanies him to the nearby village, where he falls in love with the woman, Zilde, who takes care of him.

The two later versions – the film synopsis and the screenplay – both differ considerably from the early version in their explanation of theories of the relationship between electricity and the body and in their depiction of the doctor-scientist. The two follow similar plot developments: a young Maurizio mourns the death of his father, falls asleep and dreams that he meets a statue of Mercury who predicts a future meeting in a large northern city. Years later, Maurizio finds himself in a deserted piazza in such a city

(‘che potrebbe essere Milano’) and hears himself summoned, the statue-Mercury asks for

79 Though representations of electricity are most often associated with movement, or speed and intensity of movement and feeling, in L’Ève future (1886), Villiers de l’Isle-Adam also attributes to electricity the ability to ‘soften’ the material body: “This is the arm of an android I made, animated for the first time by this surprising vital force which we call Electricity, which gives her, as you can see, all the softness, all the tenderness, all the illusion of Life!” (Villiers de l’Isle-Adam and Adams 183-84) 46 his assistance in becoming mortal, so that he might die80 (and pass on to eternal repose).

Maurizio agrees to help his ‘strange friend’ and a series of comical scenes follow in which the audience witnesses the difficulties of assimilating this divine, barely-mobile statue into everyday social interactions81. As part of the process of humanization,

Mercury must learn to control his animal instincts (“impeto bestiale”), however, that doesn’t happen immediately. Maurizio and Mercury find themselves on a train where:

La natura umana di Mercurio continua a fare progressi. Maurizio si accorge con terrore che il dio nasce alla vita dei sensi. Ma Mercurio non ha coscienza ancora di pudori e della morale umana.

Mercury is suddenly attracted to a woman on the train and throws himself onto her. Her husband, taken aback, pulls out a revolver and tries to shoot Mercury five times – to no avail (we understand that at this point Mercury is still too immortal). In a moment of confusion and desperation, to verify the effectiveness of his bullets, he points the gun at his own head, shoots himself and dies immediately. A doctor on the train explains that he has been working on a way of bringing back to life those who have died violent deaths82.

They all hurry to the doctor’s laboratory, and try this new technique – administration of electricity – with horrific results. Mercury and Maurizio try to leave and accidentally enter into a room full of other ‘reanimated’ corpses who are reenacting their own last

80 “Un oscuro desiderio si è andato chiarendo a poco a poco nell’animo di Mercurio, gli ha suggerito di passare dallo stato di immortalità terrestre, allo stato di eternità. [...] Mercurio insomma vuole morire.” (VM soggetto 26) 81 The statue that steps out of its stillness and begins to move recalls Jensen’s Gradiva, analyzed by Freud in Delusion and Dream in Jensen’s Gradiva (1907) and also the name of the gallery opened by Bréton in 1937. In both later versions of the Vita di Mercurio, there is a plot parallel that is more touchingly described, though Savinio still retains the authorical distance to render it in part comical. As Maurizio is mourning his father, for Mercury there is a similar father-dynamic: he, too, longs to reconnect with his own father (Jove) by helping him move from terrestrial immortality to eternity. So, finding a statue of his father at a museum, Mercury hugs it. This display of apparent filial ‘human emotion’ causes the statue to crumble and Mercury and Maurizio must run away to avoid being arrested. When Jove’s statue is discovered, the insides of the marble are inexplicably soft and slightly warm. This news is reported in all the papers. This episode only reinforces the notion that love – and, perhaps, love alone – humanizes. 82 “Il medico dice però che tutto non è perduto, perché lui sta appunto sperimentando il modo di riportare i morti di morte violenta in vita.” (VM soggetto 28) 47 actions. Then follows the relationship between the widow and Mercury (his experience of love), his complete transformation into ‘man’ including the feelings of hope and ‘what’s to come’, his recounting to her of his life as a god (which, in contrast to the rest of the film that is in black and white, will be shown in color), and his decision to return to the city he had abandoned as protector (in statue form) when he hears it has fallen into disarray. The wild crowd, without knowing what provokes it sets out on “una vendetta collettiva,”83 and attacks the statue which then falls to its ‘death,’ bleeds human blood, and thus completes and fulfills Mercury’s wish.

The principle differences in these two later versions – besides the length and detail – are the descriptions of the electrical theory, the depiction of the doctor-scientist’s reaction to the results of his experiment and the inclusion in the longer screenplay of scenes illustrating the doctor’s own fate/punishment. The passage relative to electricity in the shorter film synopsis reads:

La sua teoria, sviluppo di quelle sul magnetismo animale, consiste nel considerare il corpo umano come un organismo che riceve l'energia da una centrale elettrica che è il cervello. Il medico ha fabbricato una macchina per rifornire di elettricità il cervello. Comincia l'operazione sul corpo di colui che si è sparato nel treno. Il morto è collocato sopra un sedile e il medico comincia a far funzionare la sua macchina. E infatti il morto rivive. Si alza in piedi e si mette a ripetere l'ultima azione della sua vita, ossia l'atto di spararsi. Il medico davanti a questo risultato, è disperato. Questo è appunto il grande difetto della sua invenzione. La sua macchina, che ridà energia ai corpi, non fa insomma se non riportare a galla, e in una maniera del tutto meccanica, l'ultima azione che il morto ha compiuto nella vita. È, per dare un esempio, come il disco del grammofono che, per un guasto, continua a ripetere sempre la stessa nota e la stessa parola. Il medico è disperato. Il morto del treno continua come un automa a ripetere l'atto di spararsi, cacciando sempre lo stesso grido di dolore e di terrore. (my italics)

83 Here the crowd is not composed of zombies who want to punish Mercury for having guided them to the underworld, but rather a mass (folla) who strike out semi-blindly at the god. Yes, maybe, for abandoning his capacity as protector of commerce, but what Savinio writes seems to leave the motivation for the violence unclear, and perhaps his critique is more pointed: “La folla si precipita in piazza. Non si capisce quali passioni agitino quella gente. Per una vendetta collettiva, la folla si scaglia minacciosa sulla statua. Mercurio cade.” (VM soggetto 29) This is, of course, quite similar to the plot of Frankenstein. 48 In this film synopsis, though the application of electricity to the husband does not create the desired result (and though the good doctor seems to have accumulated an entire room full of mechanized, automi ‘di carne,’ not unlike those in La nostra anima), the doctor is not portrayed entirely unsympathetically: he is “desperate” (Savinio twice mentions that) at the chilling results of his experiment; he is hapless or ineffective, perhaps, but not mad.

Here, the description of the electrical theory of the body is also composite, alluding to popular comparisons between the nervous system to communications and electrical networks, with the brain corresponding to the power center,84 as well as to animal magnetism. The effect of the electrical application on the body is quite different from the earlier version: we see, not a general humanizing, ‘softening’ and material transformation of the body, but rather the disjointed results of what appears to be a malfunction of the network circuitry that, as much as we can tell from this description, controls only the movement of the body (with no indicated effect on the material substance) and produces only a very mechanical movement, the repetition of an action that has already occurred. Whether the doctor’s theory considered that electricity would bring back both mind/soul and body is not entirely clear, but the results show that merely resupplying electricity to the brain proves insufficient even in bringing a corpse back to a full approximation of life, and give no indication that it would be able to create for itself a living present or future, rather than merely reproducing the past. (Again, this is not the first time – he has an entire room full of these automata). In this version, Savinio emphasizes not so much the electrical theory as the results – the mechanical movement,

84 Again, this had been a common analogy for years, but it was also supported by Carrel and articulated in L’uomo, questo sconosciuto (1935, Savinio owned and had underlined the Italian edition from 1938.) 49 like that of automa.85 The implication, then, is that treatment and consideration of the human body as (only) a powerplant/machine results in the human body functioning like

(only) a powerplant/machine. Electricity may contribute to the animation of the body, but its presence alone does not constitute life or furnish the ‘human.’

Savinio expands his explanation of the effect of electrical administration to include an analogy to a relatively new development in media technology, that is, to the gramophone, a device that was used to record sounds to be played back unlimited times in subsequent moments temporally removed from the original occurrence (a ghostlike reproduction of an auditory moment).86 Here, too, however, Savinio’s representation points not to the aspect of this technology that could preserve a memory, or to some extent bring the dead ‘back to life’ (keep a remnant of the dead in life), but rather focuses on what has gone awry, the skipping of the record, “per un guasto,” that only accentuates the awkward mechanical and disorienting effect of technology falling short of imitating

‘human’ life. Again, only the reenactment of the past, no new creative present or future.

Both technologies, in short, fail to accomplish what the positivistic figure of the doctor-

85 The result has a direct antecedent in Roussel’s Locus Solus (1914), where a lengthy passage that describes eight tableaux vivants in which corpses are reanimated to perform and reenact the most important moments from their lives. (I will address this reference more completely in the next section) 86 This reproduction shifts the ‘realm the dead’ from the memory and imagination of the living to technology: “As long as the book had to take care of all serial data flows, however, words trembled with sensuality and memory. All the passion of reading consisted of hallucinating a meaning between letters and lines: the visible or audible world of romantic poetry. And all passion of writing was (according to E. T. A. Hoffman’s) the poet’s wish ‘to pronounce the inner being’ of these hallucinations “in all its glowing colors, shadows, and lights’ in order to ‘hit the favorable reader as if with an electric shock.’ Electricity itself has brought this to an end. If memories and dreams, the dead and the specters have become technically reproducible, then the hallucinatory power of reading and writing has become obsolete. Our realm of the dead is no longer in books, where it was for such a long time. No longer is it the case that ‘only through writing will the dead remain in the memory of the living,’ as Diodor of Sicily once wrote.” (Kittler 10) Kittler also seems to appreciate the correspondence between the central nervous system/brain and technology: “The telegraph as an artificial mouth, a telephone as an artificial ear — the stage was set for the phonograph. Functions of the central nervous system had been technologically implemented.” (Kittler 28) and “From this point of view it would be neither very imprecise nor very disconcerting to define the brain as an infinitely perfected phonograph - a conscious phonograph.” (Kittler 33)

50 scientist sees as their ability to conquer the limits of life: bringing a body back to life from death and recording life in all its richness and harmony - indeed, both experiments amount to a mechanical parody of human life, reduced to an electro-mechanical shortcircuit, a glitch, the eternal repetition of a paradoxical gesture (suicide), like a broken record.

8. Electricity, Magnetism and Hysteria

Savinio’s mention that the doctor’s theory derives from animal magnetism, especially within the context of automata, also deserves attention. The term ‘animal magnetism’ was coined by Franz Mesmer in the late 18th century (1773) to describe an invisible fluid or substance contained within humans and other animals – similar, in some ways, to electricity – that was subject to the magnetic pulls of planetary influences (like the tidal ebbs and flows of the oceans). Physical and psychological disturbances resulted from an imbalance of these magnetic forces, but natural equilibrium (free flow of the vital force) could be achieved through the doctor’s transmission of his own animal magnetism to the patient.87 However, by the mid-19th century through the beginning of the 20th century, there had indeed been developments in this theory of animal magnetism and in its application: most notably, hypnosis,88 practiced famously in the rooms of the

Salpêtrière by Charcot in the late 19th century for his work on hysteria, for example, and

87 “ … the magnetist feeds the nervous system of his patient by real transmission of fluid from his own nerves.” (Helmstädter 135 fn). In L’Histoire de l’Occultisme (1937) – Savinio owned and underlined the 1939 edition – , Gérin-Ricard describes the theory of animal magnetism as: “Les corps célestes, écrivait-il [Mesmer], exercent, en vertu de leur force d’attraction, une influence sur les corps animés et, par conséquent, sur le système nerveux” (Gérin-Ricard 275). Gérin-Ricard also traces this concept back to Paracelsus (Gérin-Ricard 186), about whom Savinio wrote a long ‘creative biography,’ now in Narrate, uomini, la vostra storia (1942). 88 James Braid had proposed the term in 1843 to distinguish this practice from the more occult and parlour game ‘mesmerism,’ and attributed the trance-like state to attention not to magnetism or universal fluid. He also believed that hypnotism should be used exclusively in medical practice. 51 which saw a resurgence and continued coverage in newspapers and magazines in the late

1930s related to both its clinical applications and popular performances89. In Charcot’s days, hypnosis was already controversial, fascinating and terrifying for the apparent elimination of subjectivity – the disappearance of autonomous will –, and the subsequent potential for manipulation at the suggestion of an external force/voice. In fact, there had been a debate between the Salpêtrière school and the Nancy school about the possibility that hypnosis might be used for nefarious purposes, a type of ‘hypnotic crime,’ in which a body had been compelled to commit or perform criminal acts, even murder, under instruction from another.90 By the 1930s, these anxieties were in part amplified by the fear that, thanks to advances in radio and telegraph technologies, they might be implemented not only on a personal level, but systematically, to a broader population,91 in a type of large scale mind control experiment with human bodies effectively reduced to automata and guided by a central command. In fact, Savinio outlines a similar scenario in a passage from La nostra anima (see the next chapter) in which electrically animated bodies stripped of their own autonomous will, perform all their tasks under the direction

89 “La Stampa,” for example, in addition to many other articles on the topic in those years, ran a 9-piece series from December 11-23, 1937, translated from the German “Die Woche,” entitled “Al confine del mondo dei vivi”, all about different – often unsettling – cases of hypnosis. The first article, suggestively entitled “L’ipnòsi: come uccide,” provides a smaller ‘outline’: “Uno studio documentato sui fenomeni della volontà umana - Come viene “svuotato” il cervello di un individuo e come gli si può comandare - Nessun limite: anche l’istinto di conservazione distrutto,” and a caption under his portrait: “T. A. Mesmer [sic], vissuto nella seconda metà del secolo XVIII, fu tra gli uomini più discussi del suo tempo. La sua memoria non è svanita neppure oggi. Malgrado l’alone di «miracolismo» di cui amava circondarsi, non gli si possono negare doti di studioso. Da molti è considerato come l’inventore del «magnetismo animale», cioè dell’ipnotismo. Le sue avventure sono degne di Casanova e di Cagliostro.” Another suggestive article title from the same period: “Gli uomini radio: come il cervello umano funziona da ricevente e trasmittente” (“La Stampa,” Aug 30, 1938) 90 See Bogousslavsky and Walusincki, “Gilles de la Tourette's Criminal Women” and Bogousslavsky, Walusincki, and Veyrunes, “Crime, Hysteria and Belle Époque Hypnotism.” The position of the Salpêtrière School sustained that a person under hypnosis would not perform acts against his or her will. Many newspaper articles from the 1930s express doubt about either the actual ‘non-conscious’ state of the hypnosis, or suggest that a person under hypnosis would not perform acts against his or her nature. 91 See Borck. 52 of the central command, establishing perhaps an analogy between hypnosis and the effects of a mindless ‘collectivism’ or groupthink.

Meanwhile, as the doctor’s attempts to reanimate the husband go off course and produce only an automaton approximation of life, Mercury’s humanization steadily proceeds, and as Savinio explicitly indicates, it will be completed through love.

È l’amore che completa la trasformazione di Mercurio in uomo. Ormai egli ha perduto la forza, l'impassibilità e l'immortalità della statua, ma, assieme con il sentimento della morte, ha acquistato il vasto sentimento della speranza e del divenire. (VM soggetto 28)

As in the film synopsis, in the longer film manuscript Savinio explores the human-machine relationship and the figure of the scientist through two contrasting storylines: Mercury’s process of humanization and the doctor’s attempted reanimation of the husband. In the first, Mercury, aided by his ‘alienista’ Maurizio,92 successfully completes his transformation, once again, through the experience of love and other human emotions93; in the second, Professor Speranza, concerned exclusively with the physical functioning of the body, though able to induce movement in the newly dead corpse through the administration of electricity, proves unsuccessful in bringing the husband back to life, in any (commonly held) meaningful sense of the word.

92 In an effort to excuse Mercury’s bizarre behavior on the train, Maurizio identifies himself as Mercury’s ‘alienista’ and offers this doctor-patient relationship as a cover story [Maurizio: Sono medico: medico alienista. È un mio cliente, poveretto! Lo accompagno a Roma, per affidarlo alla famiglia…” (VM 24)]. However, this attribution only solidifies the contrast between the two storylines: the one ‘doctor’-guide concerned with the mental/emotional state of his ‘patient,’ the other positivist scientist concerned with the physical body. 93 This element has been consistent across all three versions; the major difference is that in the early version, the electrical treatment and the experience of human emotion work together to humanize Mercury (electricity for the body, emotion for the soul?); in the later versions the electricity is applied jarringly, ineffectively to the body of the husband, while Mercury undergoes no scientific or medical treatment or administration, rather the experience of human emotions and love, as well as ‘natural’ physical interactions (contact with friends, sex) humanizes him: love awakens and nourishes the soul. In fact, Savinio emphasizes this in an extended scene from the filmscript in which, Mercury’s filial love for his father also causes a statue of Jove to soften and fall to the ground – to Mercury’s dismay, the scientists attribute this event to the “disgregazione delle sostanze costitutive della pietra…” 53 Through the course of this longer text, Savinio introduces other subplots and a number of conversations in which Maurizio and Mercury reflect upon the nature of sleep, ghosts, modernization, etc. In my analysis, however, I will focus on three main sections:

Maurizio’s observations and Professor Speranza’s theory of the relationship of electricity to the body; the representation of the doctor and his reaction to the outcome of his experiment; and the revenge element of the plot, which in the early version is directed towards Mercury by those buried in the cemetery, but in the filmscript is directed towards

Professor Speranza by the those who have been subject to the doctor’s reanimation experiments.

In the manuscript there are three primary moments in which Savinio speaks specifically about electricity, each within the context of life and death: a) in the scene of the father’s passing; b) in the doctor’s explanation of his theory of the relationship of electricity to the body; c) in the scene of the application of electricity to the dead husband’s corpse.

a) Maurizio’s father’s death: The filmscript opens with a young Maurizio summoned home from school to be with his father in the last moments of his life.

Maurizio witnesses his passing and likens the moment of his father’s death to someone flipping a switch, as if someone had shut off the electrical supply to the body. Maurizio perceives this change in his father’s eyes: one moment they are ‘on,’ staring at the wall; the next they are ‘off,’ no longer looking at anything.

Non c’era che aspettare. Tutti aspettavano. Anche suo padre aspettava. Aspettava che da quella parete dalla quale i suoi occhi aguzzi non si staccavano, arrivasse la ‘cosa’ che era ormai nell’aria, presente. E la ‘cosa’ arrivò. Apparentamene non avvenne nulla. Gli occhi di suo padre continuarono a stare fissi sulla parete, ma non guardavano più la parete: non guardavano più nulla. La ‘cosa’ che sembrava così difficile, si era risolta nella maniera

54 più facile del mondo. Le maraviglie dell’elettricità stimolavano ancora lo stupore di Maurizio: pensò che qualcuno avesse girato un interruttore… (3)

On the following page, Savinio returns to the analogy between the interruption of electrical current and the sudden absence of the father’s gaze. Years later, as Maurizio is reading a medical textbook, he finds an explanation of sleep as the disconnection of the electrical circuitry of the body, which reminds him immediately of what he witnessed as a child.

Molti anni dopo trovò nel trattato di anatomia di Testut, una singolare teoria del sonno. Non del Testut stesso: questi anzi la dava come una idea curiosa ma poco seria. I centri nervosi sarebbero tante centrali elettriche, e i nervi i fili che propagano l’energia in tutto il corpo. Nel momento in cui ci si addormenta, c’è distacco tra i fili e centrale: il contatto è tolto. Questa teoria Maurizio l’aveva scoperta molto prima di leggerla nel trattato di Testut: quando gli occhi di suo padre avevano cessato di guardare. Vero è che là si parla del sonno. Ma sonno e morte... (4)

Following Maurizio’s interpretation of this theory, if sleep is the temporary interruption of the electrical circuitry (that presumably reconnects with awakening), death would be the permanent interruption, or loss of electrical flow in the body. Though the textbook’s author seems skeptical of the theory, it appears to resonate with Maurizio, at least on a superficial level: even if the science isn’t right, the analogy works.

In an article from 1941, Savinio gives a similar account of the death of Mozart: Com'è stata la morte di Mozart in quella notte del 5 dicembre 1791? Eguale è stata a tutte le morti: ossia negli occhi di Mozart, gonfi di prolungata e innaturale fanciullezza, avvenne d'un tratto quello stacco che somiglia allo spegnersi subitaneo di una lampadina elettrica per distacco del filo che conduce la corrente, e che meglio di ogni altra dimostrazione dimostra come noi tutti quaggiù siamo delle creature passive e fatte a vivere elettricamente, legate al filo di quella misteriosa corrente di energia che chiamiamo vita. (italics mine)94

When the electricity ceases to flow, life ends for the body. But something other – an energy, anima, soul, ghost – remains. If someone with very sharp sight (“vista

94 “Mozart,” SS 54; orig. “L’altro Mozart” in “Il Mediterraneano” Dec 20, 1941. 55 sovracuta,”95 metaphysical capacity), had been there, he would have seen a young child dancing around the room and looking back at the old body that had housed him (a detail strikingly reminiscent of the scene in which the boy Pinocchio looks at his old wooden puppet form).96 The “mechanical” body has to die in order for the eternal spirit of youth

(embodied by Mozart and Pinocchio) can live on. In Il Signor Münster (1944), too, over the course of the story, we see the soul gradually liberated from Signor Münster’s body as the limbs fall off one by one, and this soul in the end rises up, separate from and independent of its human body, raising the question of the soul’s eternity, and whether the soul itself is material and subject to a later deterioration.97 With these descriptions,

Savinio not only acknowledges an association of electricity with life, but also,

95 The word ‘sovracuto’ is primarily a musical term, and is the same word used to describe the sound in the Fleshworks museum in La nostra anima: the sound of “la corrente che anima le figure di carne” is ‘mi bemol sopracuto.” 96 “Ma quella fu la morte apparente di Mozart. Se nella camera nella quale Mozart mori si fosse trovato uno di quegli uomini di vista sovracuta, che vedono i paesaggi dell'aria e scoprono la forma invisibile delle creature, costui avrebbe veduto al momento del «distacco» il fanciullo ritornato alla sua freschezza e vivacità di quando liberamente poteva domandare: «Mi volete bene?», balzare fuori dalla spoglia del fanciullo stanco, del fanciullo gonfio, del fanciullo morto, stirarsi le membra come uno che è rimasto per qualche tempo in un armadio, fare due giri nella camera per sgranchirsi le gambe, e mettersi a contemplare il vecchio fanciullo morto e goffamente piegato da una parte sulla poltrona, con la espressione ironica e commiserativa di Pinocchio diventato un ragazzino perbene, che guarda, appoggiato alla sedia, l'estinto burattino che era.” (“Mozart,” SS 54-55, italics mine). 97 “Nota. Il caso del signor Münster - di questo uomo che ha veduto il proprio corpo andarsene a pezzi, è un caso nonché unico in sé e inaudito di morte fisica, ma anche la riprova più suadente, la prima, sola, vera testimonianza che nell'uomo anche un'altra cosa vive oltre il corpo, e sopravvive alla morte del corpo. Perché il signor Münster ha veduto con i propri occhi, è il caso di dire, il suo corpo asciugarsi, frantumarsi, cadersene a pezzi, mentre lui, in una maniera che noi ignoriamo, continuava a vivere. E non al modo comune dei viventi, ma in una maniera sconosciuta finora e cosi acuta, penetrante, analitica, che gli consenti di scomporre gli aspetti delle cose e di scoprire gli elementi che li costituiscono; una maniera che gli mostrò la vita non come apparenza ma come meccanismo intimo; una maniera che gli rivelò gli abitanti del cielo nella loro essenza ineffabile, gli angeli che passano, i santi in giro per le loro faccende, gli dèi morti; una maniera che gli mostrò l'Aurora quale effettivamente è, ossia una signora avanti con gli anni, che consuma le notti in avventure equivoche, e solo di lontano, e con l'aiuto dei cosmetici e delle creme, riesce ancora a far bella figura. Quale prova migliore che l'anima del signor Münster - che l'anima dell'uomo è immortale? Resta a conoscere la vera portata di questa immortalità, misurare la sua autonomia, sapere se essa giustifica l'ottimismo con cui la mente umana l'adorna, ossia se la nostra anima è indipendente al tutto dal tempo, o se essa pure, tutto sommato, è una emanazione del mondo fisico, un gas, un fluido, e soggetta essa pure, benché più longeva del corpo, al deperimento e alla morte. Le quali cose soltanto il signor Münster ce le potrebbe rivelare, cioè a dire quello che del signor Münster è rimasto, dopo che il residuo della sua spoglia corporea continuò debolmente a palpitare sotto il mantello della signora Münster, di fronte al ponte Milvio. Ma dove rintracciarlo?” (SM 121, italics mine) 56 significantly, associates it with the moment of death, charged with emotional implications

(the death of the father); however, what’s absent is any sense that death may be reversible, or that its reversal would even be desirable – death is, after all, the true goal of life, or a step along the way at least. (“la vera méta della vita: sparire,” DTC 12)” Here becomes clear the connection between the search for an alternative, richer definition of life as dynamic, autonomous movement, encompassing rather than simply exorcising or overcoming death, corporal death at least, as in christian doctrine, and the parody of

(modern) humankind’s means to achieve immortality, from classical art (the statue of the god which freezes life) to scientific theories and contraptions which reduce life to an electro-mechanical force. As a revived and re-lived myth, Mercury is thus a critical entity in-between (as is his nature as inter-mediary, interpreter, messenger, etc.) mortality and immortality, time and eternity, obsolete ideas based on an irreconcilable dualism of body and soul, or mind, and new, perhaps liberating ideas that have to emerge.

b) Professor Speranza’s theory of the relationship of electricity to the body: As in the film synopsis, here, the doctor’s explanation of the relationship of electricity to the body alludes to both developments in the theory of animal magnetism as well as to analogies of the central nervous system to electrical power networks, in this case referring more explicitly to the wiring of the nervous network. This description, however, includes more practical and realistic details of medical implementation and procedure:

Professor Speranza specifies that his experimental method will work only on bodies that have suffered a violent death, and in so doing, makes a key distinction between bodies whose vital force has been cut short because of a sudden incident and so might have

57 residual electrical potential, and those whose electrical centers have run their full course

(organ consumption) and whose electrical potency/possibility has thus expired.

Speranza: Si tratta, beninteso, di morti per morte violenta. Il morto per morte naturale, ossia per consunzione degli organi, io non lo posso fare rivivere. La teoria del professore Speranza deriva dalle teorie sul magnetismo animale, di cui essa é [sic] un’amplificazione. Il professore Speranza considera l’organismo umano come una macchina che si muove per forza elettrica. L’elettricità, secondo il professore, è la forza vitale dell’uomo98. Il cervello è, dunque, la centrale elettrica dell’uomo. Il sistema nervoso è l’impianto dei fili che diffondono l’energia elettrica in tutto il corpo. Quando avviene la morte naturale, ossia per consunzione, ciò significa che la centrale elettrica (cervello) ha esaurito le sue possibilità produttrici di energia. Ma quando avviene morte per trauma, il cervello scarica di colpo la sua energia elettrica, ma è ancora in condizione di accumulare nuova energia. Chi riuscisse dunque (dopo che la lesione degli organi provocata dal trauma è stata riparata) a ricaricare di energia il cervello, centrale elettrica dell’uomo, il morto necessariamente riprende a vivere [his italics]. Il professore Speranza ha appunto inventato degli accumulatori che ricaricano di elettricità il cervello scaricato per trauma. (VM 38)

The doctor explains that the patient first needs to be stabilized and his other injuries treated before he can perform the recharging of the brain.99 And indeed he –

Professor Speranza – with his assistant Doctor Zero (names which illustrate a typical

Savinian irony, together they form the couple Zero Hope), attend to these medical procedures before attempting their experiment. In this representation, through his mention of procedural steps and protocols, Savinio situates these scenes more convincingly within medical practice, and in a sense brings them closer to reality, adds an element of plausibility to the operation. All of which heightens the impact of the absurdity of the outcome itself and of the doctor’s response to it.

c) The application of electricity to the corpse: Savinio specifies the setting of this scene: “Nel laboratorio del rivivificatore di morti.” After Professor Speranza and Doctor

98 In a previous version of the screenplay, Savinio writes: “L’elettricità, secondo il professore, sarebbe nell’uomo, ciò che finora è stato considerato la misteriosa forza vitale.” 99 Professor Speranza explains to the woman that her husband has died “per perforazione del cuore, e che prima d’iniziare la ricarica del cervello, bisogna restaurare l’organo leso.” (VM 38) 58 Zero have finished all the preparatory work on the body of the husband, they call the woman, Maurizio and Mercurio into the laboratory where the ‘morto’ is already positioned on the operation chair, with a metallic cap on his head that is wired to a moving dynamo (already turned on) – an image that recurs many times in the cinema of the 1920s and 30s most famously in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.100 The visitors wait while the husband’s brain is recharged, the motor rumbles, the doctors monitor the application on the instrument panel. Again, here, the attention to process details and the appearance of good practice contribute to situating this scene within the realm of the medically or theoretically possible, to make it familiar, and ultimately to warn that the following of medical procedure does not guarantee good science or desirable results.

When the administration of electricity is complete, Savinio reports the following results:

Gli occhi del morto si sono accesi e guardano fissi, le mani fanno dei movimenti convulsi, ma il morto non si può ancora muovere, perchè è legato con solide cinghie alla sedia d’operazione. Il professore Speranza scioglie le cinghie, mentre l’assistente tiene fermo il morto rivivente. Quando l’assistente lascia libero il morto, questi scatta in piedi, e comincia, con bruschi e angolosi movimenti d’automa, a ripetere l’ultima azione da lui compiuta nella vita, ossia i movimenti di quando lui nel vagone guarda con stupore la rivoltella che non faceva effetto su Mercurio, poi volge la canna verso di sé, spara e cade per terra, cacciando un gridone di dolore e terrore. Caduto a terra, il morto torna a levarsi in piedi, e ricomincia gli stessi movimenti di prima. Così all’infinito. E questi movimenti sono anche più irreali, perchè il morto fa l’atto di spararsi, ma ora non ha in mano la rivoltella. (VM 40)

Here, as in the synopsis, there is a reduction of the human to automa, whose movements are convulsive, sharp and abrupt, and the ‘reliving’ dead man manages only to repeatedly and continuously reenact the last act of his life: shooting himself. This scene not only

100 “Il morto è già collocato sulla sedia d’operazione. Sulla sua testa è una cuffia metallica, collegata con fili a una dinamo già in movimento.” (VM 40) 59 recalls Shelley’s Frankenstein,101 but also James Whale’s Hollywood films of the 1930s with the ‘creatures’ bound to the operation tables, and in particular, the closeup of the vacant and fixed eyes of the bride the 1935 film “The Bride of Frankenstein” when she’s first exposed to electricity (as in the original, also here Dr. Frankenstein exclaims “She’s alive!” and indeed Speranza proudly announces “Signora, vostro marito vive!”).

In addition to the Frankenstein references, the corpse’s reenactment of a specific moment from his life is an allusion to Roussel’s Locus Solus, which in the final line of this passage becomes even more pointed and explicit. Savinio admired Roussel as a writer and mentions him by name in multiple works and articles.102 In a lengthy passage from Locus solus (1914), Roussel describes his protagonist-scientist Canterel’s production of eight tableaux vivants in which corpses – through the administration of an electric current along with the substances resurrectine and vitalium – reenact the most important moments of their lives. The purpose of this reenactment is not to bring the corpses back to life, so much as to enable a faithful re-presentation, a tribute, a re- evocation of these highlight moments in celebration of the deceased, to give comfort to those who are still alive – it’s a commemoration, perhaps, an externalized memory.103

Canterel gives particular attention to providing these moving corpses with all of the props and stage settings that will allow for the most natural and reassuring recreation of these

101 “I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. … I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.” (Shelley 45) 102 For the most part, these references are to Roussel’s quite particular compositional technique, however, Savinio also quotes from Locus Solus in “Fine dei modelli” (SD 567; orig. “La Fiera Letteraria,” Apr 24- May 8, 1947) 103 “Cantarel received many letters from frightened families, who, out of affection, wished to see their loved ones live again before their eyes after the fatal moment.” (119). These tableaux vivants could be read as staged and three-dimensional extensions of the post-mortem photography that had become popular in the late 19th century. (See also the third chapter of this dissertation.) 60 moments, but, again, there is no insistence that these corpses have been restored to life.104

Savinio, on the other hand, not only has the husband reenact a dubiously proud moment of his life (his own accidental suicide), but deprives him of the props (the revolver) that would make sense of that action in a physical reenactment; the husband’s continuous re- performance of his own suicide then results in a scene that repeatedly focuses on his death (not a glorious moment from his life), and does so in a manner made more ridiculous by his jerky awkward motions, gesticulations with bad consequences. Black humor indeed but also a parody of surrealist black humor, with all its props....

The doctor’s reaction: A masterpiece! His very masterpiece! Contrary to the wife who faints in horror at the outcome of her husband’s ‘revivification,’ Professor Speranza himself is thrilled with the results. In his assessment, he has indeed managed to bring the husband back to life – only his definition of ‘life’ differs significantly from the woman’s

(and perhaps also from the reader’s):

La signora guarda per un po’ quel terribile spettacolo, senza capire, poi lancia un grido: Signora: Che è questo? Che è questo? Professore Speranza: È vostro marito vivo, signora. Signora: No! Questo non è mio marito vivo! Non è vita questa! Non è vita! Professore Speranza: Io vi avevo promesso di ridare a vostro marito la -(41) vita, cioé a dire il movimento: non anche l’anima. Questa, se proprio la volete, ve la farete dare da Dio.

104 There is a particular emphasis on the fact that the corpse is playing a role: “Given a free rein, and dressed according to the character of his part, the corpse, finding furniture, supports, various resistances and things to lift all in their right places, performed without falls or false moves. After completing his cycle of operation, which he would repeat indefinitely without any variation at all, he was brought back to his starting-point. (120).” Foucault points out how even in this approximate world that Canterel has staged, there is still only a semblance of resurrection - Savinio’s representation, of course, makes this much more evident: “The resurrectine demonstrates that resurrection is impossible: in this world beyond death that is staged, everything is like life, its exact image. But it is imperceptibly separated by a thin black layer, the lining. Life is repeated in death, it communicates with itself across that absolute event, but it can never be rejoined. It's the same as life, but it's not life itself. … All his machines function at the inferior limit of resurrection, on the threshold where they will never turn the key. They form the outward image of a discursive, mechanical, and absolutely powerless resurrection. The great leisure of Locus Solus, the "holiday," is an Easter Sunday which remained free. Look among the dead, Canterel said, for the one to be found there; here, in fact, he has not been resuscitated.” (Foucault 87-88) 61 La signora guarda il professore Speranza con indicibile orrore. Non regge più, cade svenuta. Professore Speranza: Che oca! Queste donne! Non sono mai contente! (Si volta a guardare il morto che continua a ripetere l’ultima scena della sua vita) Che meraviglia! Che capolavoro! È il mio capolavoro! (Il professore si esalta via via fino a gridare) È il mio capolavoro! (VM 40-41)

For the woman, the performance she witnesses is not only terrifying, but uncategorically falls short of any consideration as ‘life.’ (Savinio again uses the gramophone analogy, of the husband’s disorienting movements like those of the broken record105). For the

Positivist professor, on the other hand, whose conception of life relates only to the physical (to the body) and to the scientifically demonstrable, verification of life is confirmed through movement alone; any manifestation of autonomous will or factors that may be difficult to quantify (matters of the soul, for example), do not enter into his determination – in fact, he wants nothing to do with them – , and he haughtily invites her to look for them elsewhere (from a God, in whom, we imagine, he may not believe). To the scientist any further verification beyond this physical motor evidence is indeed even petty and superfluous – “Queste donne! Non sono mai contente!”

Savinio’s representation of the scientist suggests a cold, clinical modern mind that has reduced his conception of life to all body, no soul – an idea of life that is both easier to recreate as well as easier to control (in theory at least). In fact, in a passage that was ultimately left out of the final drafts of the filmscript, Savinio documents Professor

Speranza’s rather extensive explanation (reminiscent of Occam’s razor) of his theory of the body and soul and reveals his rational and logical decision to exclude the soul from his attempts to replicate life: taking in consideration the idea of ‘soul’ complicates the

105 “La macchina inventata dal professore Speranza, ridà il movimento ai corpi morti, ma non fa se non riportare in vita, e in maniera del tutto meccanica, l’ultima azione che il morto ha compiuto nella vita. È, per dare un esempio, come il disco del grammofono che, per un guasto, continua a ripetere sempre la stessa nota e la stessa parola.” (VM 41) 62 situation too much, allows for too many variables; eliminating the soul means eliminating all the problematic, diverse, hard to manage and discordant variables, and so would result in a clean, harmonious, orderly experiment. Getting rid of the soul allows for order, simplicity and a higher level of manipulability.106 Interesting to compare and contrast this theory with the Futurist Marinetti’s positive vision of the “tipo non umano e meccanico” in L’uomo moltiplicato.107 As the following sections suggest, it may be difficult to strip the bodies completely of their souls; the scientist’s attempt to bring these corpses back to (his definition of) life constitutes an unnatural interference in the natural process of death – and will have its own unintended consequences.

The corpses’ revenge and Mercury’s sacrifice: Whereas in the early version

(handwritten pages), Mercury is brought to task by the zombie-like characters for having forced them down to the underworld and barely escapes his own death,108 in the filmscript the corpses’ revenge is directed towards Professor Speranza. Maurizio and Mercury

(carrying the fainted woman in his arms) leave the laboratory where the Professor continues to marvel at his creation, and they pass through a room full of previous experiments – they pause for a moment to contemplate this horrible danse macabre –

106 Though it was not ultimately included in the versions of the screenplay, in the files at the Gabinetto Vieusseux related to the Vita di Mercurio screenplay (21.7), there is a 7-page handwritten text that is datable from on or after 1944 (it is written on the reverse side of typed drafts of a text that was published on Aug. 6, 1944). “Tutta l’agitazione, tutto il disordine, tutti i conflitti, tutto il male insomma che è nel mondo nasce dall’anima, da questo quid imponderabile che noi chiamiamo anima, e che sta nel nostro corpo come uno stato nello stato, e dirò meglio: come un gatto infuriato sta in una gabbia. Perché l’anima significa volontà, significa desiderio, significa arbitrio, significa capriccio, significa voler fare tante cose che non c’è né necessità né possibilità di fare.” 107 “Certo è che ammettendo l'ipotesi trasformistica di Lamarck, si deve riconoscere che noi aspiriamo alla creazione di un tipo non umano nel quale saranno aboliti il dolore morale, la bontà, l'affetto e l'amore, soli veleni corrosivi dell'inesauribile energia vitale, soli interruttori della nostra possente elettricità fisiologica.” (Marinetti, “L’uomo molteplicato e il regno delle macchine,” 1910) 108 “Divampa nei morti una grande rabbia contro colui che li costringeva a scendere nell’inferno. Vogliono vendicarsi adesso di Mercurio.” (VM early) 63 “‘balletto’ dei morti in movimento”109 – before heading into town. Doctor Zero urges

Professor Speranza to leave before the police come looking for them, but Speranza refuses to abandon his creations. After an altercation, Zero locks Speranza in the room of the ‘morti in movimento’ who repeating their identical mechanical movements, eventually trample him.110 Savinio suggests a hint of intention behind this resolution, almost as if corpses had sought revenge on the scientist who has violated the mystery of life: “È come la vendetta dei morti, su colui che in loro ha voluto violare il mistero della vita.” (D2: 48) And, indeed, the next scenes confirm the presence of the remnants of the soul, and therefore, of will and purpose, still connected to the bodies: not only have the corpses been locked the scientist’s laboratory and locked into the same repetitive movement, the souls have been stuck on earth and prevented from moving on, toward eternity. (This is, again, the fate of ghosts).

Mercury remembers these ‘morti’ who because of Professor Speranza’s interference, haven’t been able to find peace. So, in an act of mercy, he returns to the laboratory, kills them all and transports them to the cemetery where he buries them.

Voices cry out “Chiunque tu sia, noi ti ringraziamo di averci dato la pace!” (48).

Mercury has effectively but paradoxically resumed his role as psychopomp, and helped provide the souls with a dignified death and closure with this world.

109 Doctor Zero expresses concern to Professor Speranza that with this escape, they might be exposed for performing these experiments in this remote laboratory. All their previous corpses seem to have been drifters and loners – no one would come looking for their bodies. With this detail, Savinio touches upon a persistent ethical issue associated with medical experimentation, and reinforces his skeptical view of this scientific tinkering with bodies. “Gli altri morti sui quali abbiamo fatto i nostri esperimenti, non lasciano interessi dietro a loro, non gente che li pianga, e nessuno verrà mai a ricercarli; ma quella donna e i suoi due compagni informeranno la polizia. Dobbiamo metterci in salvo.” (VM 43) 110 “Ora che il professore Speranza non può più muoversi e schivarli, i morti semoventi lo urtano nei loro movimenti ripetuti e identici, lo scavalcano, lo calpestano.” (VM 47-48)

64 Over the course of the Mercury’s humanization, from rigid and unchanging statue form he began first to slowly and uncertainly move and explore the world around him, then experienced the more ‘animal’ impulses and physical pleasures of love. Gradually, he experienced more profound types of emotional love: friendship for Maurizio, filial feelings for his father Jove and with the woman (who will be called Angela for the last part of the filmscript) the spiritual essence of love, “l’essenza spirituale dell’amore,” – of hope and of the future.111 He feels empathy for the ‘morti’ and helps them find a final resting place and resting peace.

As in the film synopsis, Mercury returns to the town in which he had stood as a statue. The town had fallen into disorder and economic hardship, which the inhabitants attribute to the disappearance of the statue. In a final phase of Mercury’s transformation from pagan god to christian figure (in Savinio's sense), he understands compassion and prepares to sacrifice himself for the good of his people.112 He returns to his place upon the pedestal, and the confused crowd, acting in a crazed collective frenzy, attacks the living statue.113 The statue falls, and Mercury lies on the ground, bleeding human blood,114 having thus ultimately himself achieved his entry into eternity. Not only does Mercury become human, but he martyrs himself to save his people; he has absorbed and then demonstrates a sense of what it means to be ‘cristiano’ and embodies that progression with the help of his human guide Maurizio and his own ‘angel’ Angela. Importantly,

Savinio’s usage of the term ‘cristiano’ does not correspond to the practice or ideology of

111 È l’amore che completerà la trasformazione di Mercurio in uomo. Egli ora non ha più l’impassibilità della statua, è uscito dallo stato di immortalità della divinità pagana, avverte in sé il vasto sentimento della speranza e del divenire.” (VM 44) 112 “Mercurio, che ora è accessibile alla pietà, delibera di riportare, con la sua presenza, agli abitanti della citta la tranquillità e la ricchezza.” (VM 48) 113 “Davanti al miracolo, la folla, in una crisi di furore collettivo, si scaglia minacciosa sulla statua.” (VM 49). Here again Savinio’s warns against the dangers of crowd mentality and the masses, in general. 114 “Il sangue, un sangue umano, caldo, scorre dalle ferite del dio diventato uomo.” (VM 49) 65 the religion itself, but rather resonates or is loosely synonymous with his understanding of ‘amore’ and ‘umano,’ and involves the presence and participation of not only the body, but also the soul – defined as the experience of the very ‘human’ emotions of love, hope, empathy, compassion. The institution, the authority, the hierarchical structure, the external power are dangerous; it is, in the end, the original message of Christianity that is important – and to illustrate this point, Savinio chooses Mercury, the messenger par excellence.

9. Conclusion

In the development of the Vita di Mercurio project, Savinio reworks his account of the interaction between Maurizio and Mercury trapped in statue form whose main objective is to become human so that he might die, and in so doing, liberate himself from a state of terrestrial immortality to pass over to one of eternal repose. Many themes and components of this story remain consistent throughout the various versions, but the way in which Savinio uses and reconfigures them changes throughout the years. Through these changes, and in his portrayal of the figure of the doctor-scientist, from a benign and helpful ally to a crazed, manipulative scientist who exploits his patient in his own attempt to engineer life, we can trace an evolution in Savinio’s understanding of what it means to be human.

Savinio’s portrayal of the relationship of the human to machine does not deny the relevance of this analogy, but rather the assertion that the two terms are interchangeable.

The movement of human bodies (and as we will see later, also human thought) can very well be described in mechanistic terms; however, for Savinio, one cannot reduce the

66 ‘human’ to a performance of these processes, much less (re)create a human by successfully programming their implementation. In fact, for Savinio, the concept of the

‘human’ is not tethered to the body, it is an expansive concept, based on these understandings and practices of love, hope, empathy and compassion, that should be broadened and considered also in relation to animals, plant, minerals, inanimate objects, the dead, related to but perhaps not entirely synonymous with soul. What he does critique is the manipulation of the body and the attempted resuscitation by doctor- scientists, which constitute violations both of the dignity of the objectified individual as well as of the natural process of life including the return to an eternal state.

In a work contemporary to filmscript of the Vita di Mercurio, Savinio proposes another of his ‘miti rivissuti’ in Orfeo vedovo (performed in October of 1950). Here also we find several familiar elements, including a character named Maurizio, whose function in the play, however, is quite different – and, importantly, a machine that promises bring people back to life, in a sense. We find Orpheus mourning the death of Euridice and desperate that everything in their apartment reminds him of her. He stands with revolver in hand, having decided that instead of living without her, by shooting himself he could rejoin her. An agent from the IRD (Istituto Ricostituzione Defunti) knocks at his door and proposes his own solution: with their machine the Cinecronoplastica, they will instead bring Euridice back to Orpheus. Building on the technologies of the cinema and television, this Cinecronoplastica gathers bodies from one point in time and recomposes them in another115 – it is a type of time travel machine, and one that proposes to defer or

115 “Una volta c'era il cinematografo, che coglieva le immagini nel loro movimento, e le proiettava sullo schermo. Poi venne la televisione che coglieva le immagini in un punto dello spazio, e in altro punto dello spazio le ricomponeva. Oggi abbiamo la Cinecronoplastica, che coglie i corpi in un punto del tempo, e in altro punto del tempo li ricostituisce. Invenzione sbalorditiva. Ho portato l'apparecchio con me. L'ho 67 cheat death by always offering the possibility of teleporting a living version of that body from the past. Orpheus reluctantly agrees, and the agent turns on the machine, it lights up from within, “Régolo le onde,” the motor hums, Euridice appears… but she is reconstituted in a different time, a different ‘present’ from Orpheus.116 Euridice can’t see or hear Orpheus, but he can see her, and what he witnesses is not only the return of

Euridice, but his beloved in the arms of his typist as they speak of their affair. Not only has the use of the machine presented the false hope of a reunion with a loved one, but it has produced the performance of a scene horrible and heartbreaking to behold. Even the agent, at this point recognizes the damage the use of the machine has caused and says

“Proprio vero che la macchina è nemica all'uomo...” (256) In the end, the agents reverse the effects of the machine and allow Orfeo to continue with his own suicide so he can pass to the otherworld. Perhaps, more accurately, it is not the machine itself that is enemy of man, but rather the temptation to use them to recreate life, manipulate bodies and defy death. A task that only poetic deities like Mercury and Orpheus can perform, but only at the price of their own immortality.

deposto qui fuori, nel corridoio. Se le nostre condizioni le convengono...” (“Orfeo vedevo” 245) 116 “La sincronicità non è ancora perfetta. Qualchevolta - ma di rado- la persona è ricostituita in un tempo diverso dal presente che noi viviamo.” (“Orfeo vedevo” 248)

68 Chapter 2: The Hybrid Psyche of Savinio’s La nostra anima

1. Introduction

This second chapter takes a look at Savinio’s La nostra anima (1944) – one of his

‘miti rivissuti’ –, which contains a radical retelling of the ancient myth of Eros and

Psyche, from her point of view and in a contemporary setting. Through the process of contextualizing and reworking this traditional myth, Savinio also plays off of modern understandings of his protagonist’s name to expand this story into an exploration of contemporary theories of the mind (and of the soul), especially within the field of psychoanalysis: it is a tale of both Psyche and psyche (and anima). In Savinio’s account, the myth is buried within a series of narrative frameworks, and the process itself of advancing from one to the next, of delving deeper into the narrative, recalls not only the nesting of the episode within other storytelling frameworks in Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, but also Freud’s description of the ‘archaeological’ work of digging into the buried levels of the unconscious, where Psyche’s true story, one perhaps deemed inappropriate for the

(general) conscious, will be revealed. A scientist (and initiate in these mysteries117) guides two young lovers down into the depths of a bizarre Fleshworks museum, one that is monitored and controlled by invisible forces. Here, they find a human-animal-machine hybrid Psyche who recounts her tale, unveiling the ‘true’ dynamics of her relationship with the god of Love. As might be expected, Savinio weaves into his portrait of La nostra anima metaphysical and surrealist imagery, hybrid bodies and liminal subjects, creating a world in which mannequins (wax figures), machines and ambiguously animate-inanimate creatures perform and enact their dramas at the will of the performance master. We see this most explicitly with Psyche, but understand on some level that she is just one of the

117 Sayas refers to himself and his colleagues at the museum as “noi iniziati.” (32) 69 ‘acts’ on display. This chapter will examine how through his portrayal of the hybrid

Psyche, and the tourists’ visit to the Fleshworks museum to observe her, Savinio considers evolving notions on the nature of the Human, specifically in light of scientific and technological discoveries, while examining the figure of the modern scientist, with particular attention to the power relationships between doctor and patient, subject and authority.

What is the relationship of human to machine, and how is it changing in the years

Savinio writes? How do we conceive of the ‘human’ and the interrelation of the body and soul? What happens when we consider these concepts in light of ideas about natural functioning versus manipulation, autonomy and control, observation and intervention, revelation and exploitation, subjectivity and objectification? How do we perceive the roles of nature and artifice in both the understanding of the human and in its representation, in the comprehension of being, in the construction of identity and in its portrayal? Who or what is Psyche/psyche and how do we interpret Savinio’s depiction of her/it – what do we make of this hybrid Psyche? Is her hybridity reductive or does it illustrate the true nature of the Human? What might be the broader considerations on the role of science in modern society, the new religion of Science? Does Savinio’s demythologizing account of the ancient myth also undermine the mythologized role of the positivistic doctor and of science in general in modern times? What are the broader critiques of fascism and authority underpinning this text? Where does the soul – both individual and that which pertains to a broader humanity – stand in wartime? This chapter will try to provide some answers to these questions.

70 Throughout this dissertation I argue that Savinio presents and accepts the idea of the Human as fundamentally hybrid – monstrous, not only in combination with the animal (the animate) but increasingly also with the machine (the inanimate and its mechanical imitation). The fundamental disharmony in the world arises from man’s attempts to arrest or to deny the natural flow and transformation, and to cling to an unnatural fixed stability and established order of things. The recognition of this hybridity requires the reconsideration of man’s privileged position in the world – and a leveling or destruction of the hierarchical paradigms established by traditional humanism: instead of enjoying the status of God’s entitled representatives on earth, of ruling over the animal kingdom, and of believing the illusion that we are full masters of our own minds and rationally determine all our actions, modern man must relinquish this fantasy of utter control and reassess and reimagine his place within nature and alongside other ‘beings’ – animate and inanimate. As we have seen, Savinio proposes an understanding of

‘christian’ (human) that is no longer anchored necessarily to the traditional physical human body itself, but that is a feeling or consciousness that should be extended more broadly. Also important is that the Human retain or strive for autonomy and independence – both within his own mind and with respect to external/power relationships. La nostra anima can also be read as a cautionary tale: Savinio cautions against merely replacing one Authority (God, perhaps Fascism) for another (Science), and in this story brings out in sometimes explicit sometimes implicit ways the complicated relationships between the human-mind-soul/human-machine plexus and its authority. Psyche is of a fundamentally hybrid nature, and some questions about her

71 composition, condition, and autonomy are not necessarily resolved neatly, they remain ambiguous – and left purposefully so, as it is typical in the ironic style of Savinio.

1.2 Reframing the story of Psyche

Published in 1944, La nostra anima opens with a question: “Chi sono quei tre personaggi che mentre la guerra infuria nelle cinque parti del mondo, entrano tranquillamente nel museo dei manichini di carne?” We immediately learn that the voice who asks this is that of the author’s own father,118 who, as we said, died when Savinio was thirteen. A window in the sky opens, the muse of history and song Clio looks at the old man, deems him worthy of a response, and identifies the three characters: Nivasio

Dolcemare (Savinian alter ego); a Doctor Sayas; and Perdita, a young woman who is

Nivasio’s current lover but whom he suspects, without jealously, of also having a relationship with Doctor Sayas. The introductory discussion between the author’s father and Clio immediately situates this work on both personal (semiautobiographical) and historiographical levels, a theme which parallels the tension between individual and collective experience, suggested by the name of the protagonist and the title itself

(Psyche’s story and the story of La nostra anima). When the old man asks Clio if there are indeed things that history doesn’t know, Clio responds “Tutte che compongono la parte essenziale della vita. La storia è veramente la scienza di tutti, e come tale non ricorda se non quello che tutti possono vedere e intendere, ossia il lato più vano degli

118 “… quel signore anziano e venerabile del secolo passato, barba a ventaglio e ghette bianche, in altre parole il padre stesso dell’autore” (11, italics mine). Collapsing further the author-narrator distinction, Clio will identify Nivasio as the old man’s son (12). 72 uomini e delle cose” (11): history is basically the lowest common denominator of human knowledge and experience and fails to “document” what is most essential in life.119

This scene already situates the storytelling on several different physical and metaphysical levels and with its theatrical exchange establishes from the outset that it will be a tale told from a multiplicity of perspectives. Even the opening question brings into focus a few key elements: the observed “personaggi” (the Italian term = characters) that suggest a blurring of life and performance; the wartime setting; and the museum of flesh-mannequins (‘fleshworks’). In the brief ‘Antefatto’ that follows, which functions more or less as would a cinematic flashback, we learn some of the backstory of these

‘characters’ and that they themselves come to the museum as a quick detour on their way to a society bal de têtes – performance, masking and unmasking are central themes here, even on the outside world. We discover that the war in question is not in fact the ongoing

Second World War, but rather the First World war: this story takes place in Thessaloniki in 1917 and, among other things, makes a connection between Savinio’s physical presence in the central places of the two wars – in Thessaloniki as an official translator during the First World War, then in Rome, where he lives during the Second.120 The characters will later find Psyche in the Fleshworks Museum; Sayas tells the visitors:

“Vedrete, è una specie di Museo Grévin, con questo in più che le figure non sono di cera ma di carne” (14). The renowned French wax museum Museo Grévin housed likenesses

119 A few years earlier, in Dico a te, Clio (1940) Savinio had proposed his idea of a “fantasma della storia,” that itself contained the lost, but most memorable or or highest expression of human experience: “Accanto alla storia, che ferma via via le azioni degli uomini, le rinchiude, le rende inoperanti, c'è il fantasma della storia: il grande buco, il vuoto che assorbe via via le azioni che sfuggono alla storia, e le annienta. […] E se i fatti annientati fossero i soli memorabili? Se il massimo destino delle vicende umane, se la sorte più nobile, più alta, più «santa» di noi e dei nostri pensieri fosse non la storia, ma il fantasma della storia?” (DTC 12-13) 120 “Ne lascia traccia, in primo luogo, l'esteriorità stridente dell'ambientazione bellica: la Salonicco del 1917, a ridosso del teatro di guerra balcanico, evoca la Roma del 1943 e l'Europa intera nuovamente balcanizzata dalla seconda guerra mondiale.” (Cenati 644) 73 of important figures from French history and culture. In general, the composition in wax of sculptures rendered them particularly uncanny not only for the striking lifelike resemblance to the figures represented, but also because their creation also carried with it the physical trace of the human body – they were modeled from a cast of the (often dead) body itself.121 The particular figures in this fleshworks museum collapse further the distinction between life and lifelike appearance as the works of ‘art’ displayed not only resemble human (or humanoid) forms, but are realized – at least partially – out of the very same organic flesh material of the living creatures they reembody: immobilized, composed, assembled and reactivated. The ambiguous term that Savinio uses in Italian –

‘manichini di carne’ (flesh mannequins), which in no uncertain terms recalls the mannequins in paintings of the Metaphysical School – highlights the tension between life and the approximation of life, the Human and art, ‘animato’ and ‘automa’ (animated and automated being) and raises the question of whether the forms are humans that have become manipulatable objects or are instead objects that now take on a more human aspect because they are composed of flesh material and perform in ‘humanlike’ ways. As we will see in detail further on in this chapter, Savinio investigates this indeed

“metaphysical” question specifically through the protagonist Psyche who as a hybrid human-beast-machine, a modern monster who rewrites the history of her relationship to the divine, dismantles the illusions of the old myth and indicates a new position of the human at the intersection of biology and technology. Psyche, in her incarnation in the

Fleshworks museum, also represents the junction of body-mind-soul, and Savinio, with

121 Interesting to remember that in the myth of Pygmalion, as his beloved transforms from ivory to flesh (woman), Ovid first uses the metaphor of wax, as it uncannily evokes the elasticity and malleability of flesh (‘ut Hymettia sole/ cera remollescit tractataque pollice multas/ flectitur in facies ipsoque fit utilis usu. (Ovid, Metamorphoses X. 284-286) 74 characteristic irony, calls attention to the inherent contradictions that might arise from this representation: Sayas, indicating this heavy burdened physical Psyche slumped in the corner, explains to Nivasio and Perdita that for the initiates, “Psiche è l’anima, e il suo nome che ha il significato fisico di soffio e di alito, ha anche il senso di quel soffio ineffabile che è la parte immortale di noi” (32). This becoming physical– or reification122

– of the ineffable breath renders this mythological figure more obviously the object of

Doctor Sayas and the museum, and perhaps, by extension, alludes to our collective soul subjected to the scrutiny, surveillance and authority of modern Science and institutional authority.

For Savinio, the early 1940s saw not only an increased interest in science,123 but also in psychoanalysis, specifically in the works of Freud, and from many points of view,

La nostra anima can be considered, as we shall see, a tale about psychoanalysis (or at least its central “myth”).124 In his retelling of the myth of Psyche, Savinio incorporates again elements of modern science and technology: specifically, the role of electricity in the functioning of the body and of the mind; the analogies between mechanical operation and the processes of physical and psychic activities; the creation of automata that more and more convincingly approximate human behaviors. When Nivasio inquires about an insistent, jarring and disorienting ambient sound that the visitors hear, Doctor Sayas

122 “In lei, caratteristiche animali di varie specie, dal becco di pellicano alle deiezioni caprine, convivono con caratteristiche proprie degli apparecchi elettromeccanici: ibrido all'incrocio tra biologia e tecnologia, appare avviata a un processo di reificazione che la rende completamente sottomessa alle direttive del museo e del dottor Sayas. Così, gli esseri mitologici discendono nell'orizzonte degli eventi materiali, delle cose manipolate e sfruttate: Psiche diventa un personaggio posto sul medesimo piano di Nivasio, Sayas e Perdita; da nume olimpico o superna prosopopea, si fa manichino animato, automa organico.” (Cenati 647, italics mine). 123 From the catalogue of his personal library, at the Fondo Savinio. See also Pia Vivarelli, “Alberto Savinio, artista dallo squardo ‘leggero’.” 124 In Dalla tragedia all’enciclopedia (2013), Davide Bellini argues that Savinio expanded his familiarity with Freud’s works significantly through his reading of Enzo Bonaventura’s La psicoanalisi (1938). 75 responds that “it’s the current that animates the flesh figures” (“è la corrente che anima le figure di carne”): this strange and, to an extent, dehumanizing characterization of a figure which traditionally represents the human soul, picks up on the centuries’ long debates about electricity as an animating force, fluid, energy, that we outlined in the previous chapter, but also specifically alludes to contemporary understandings of the role of electricity in the nervous system. Therefore, while on the one hand, La nostra anima represents a reproposal of the ancient myth in a modern scientific setting, on the other hand, the story might also be read also as a critical review of the mythology/iconography of the Metaphysical School in technological terms: the mannequins of the 1920s, most famously represented as still figures in painting, are now reborn as organic- electromechanical bodies who give the appearance of moving and performing

‘(semi)autonomously’ when properly supplied with electrical current; certainly they are still manipulatable like the painterly mannequins, but this updated representation contains the additional suggestion that their actions may be programmed or remotely transmitted, playing directly upon popular ideas of cinematic, radio and domestic appliance technologies. In other words, one could ask whether Psyche is the first literary character who is “plugged in.” Moreover, Savinio’s depiction of the doctor’s presentation and exhibition of his ‘patient’ to the visitors calls into question the sometimes blurred boundaries between scientific study/observation and demonstration and the point at which scientific demonstration slips into pure spectacle. The ambiguity about the origin of Psyche’s ‘voice’125 – whether what she tells is in fact her own story or a wild

125 Psyche is described as having a ‘voce cornea’ – a somewhat unusual description that finds precedent in both Psalms 97:5-6, as a way to honor God (“Psallite Domino in cithara, in cithara e voci psalmi/in tubis ductilibus et voce tubae corneae iubilate in conspectus regis Domini”) and in Pirandello’s “Nel dubbio” 76 provocative new version programmed by Sayas – further questions her (our) subjectivity: who is really in control of the narrative itself (the content) when she tells it/it is performed.

As striking as Psyche’s re-evolutionary retelling of the famous myth is, her tale, in fact, constitutes only the second half of La nostra anima. The tale itself is recounted directly by Psyche, in the first person, very effectively engaging her listeners (and

Savinio’s readers) and creating an aura of revelation or dénouement to her version of how her relationship with Eros transpired. Her recollection of the events becomes the text on which we directly focus our attention, rapt in the unraveling of the traditional myth, privy to the secret she’s been previously silenced from divulging. And the fact that La nostra anima ends with the sudden interruption of her tale – with Sayas disconnecting her electrical source at the frantic cries of Perdita, who with her delicate bourgeois sensibilities, cannot reconcile with her worldview this disillusioning version of Psyche's tale, her dismantling of the comforting, romantic myth of redemption – leaves also the reader with the sensation that she has been given a key and revelatory glimpse into the human condition and human knowledge – that the true “enlightening” effect of Psyche’s unmasking of her divine husband, as we shall see, proves to be the demythologizing of both love and of the god, a sort of pulling back the curtain on Oz.

However, we as readers might be effectively manipulated by Psyche’s performance, if we do not go back to consider the framework in which it is told. In the first half of La nostra anima leading up to Psyche’s great ‘revelation,’ Savinio dedicates significant space and effort to setting up and contextualizing her tale, to providing the

(one of his “Novelle per un anno”), in which the voce cornea belongs to a parrot – which as a reference might suggest Psyche’s recorded ‘parrotting’ of what Sayas has programmed her to say. 77 background of her visitors and setting the scene for her performance. In the rest of the chapter, we will examine not only the implications of Psyche's retelling and the way in which she retells her own myth, but also the narrative structures that Savinio uses to introduce and frame her tale: the information he provides about the spectators, their backstories, and his own/the narrator’s philosophical musings, as well as his characterizations of Psyche herself; finally, we will discuss Doctor Sayas’ implied role in the instrumentalization of Psyche’s performance, and the broader commentary that

Savinio seems to be making about authority.

Savinio reelaborates Psyche's individual story, weaving into it broader associations as representative of the ideas of the soul in ancient and later Christian allegorical texts, and of early 20th century understandings of the mind, especially in the field of psychoanalysis. Finally, it is quite interesting that this peculiar revisitation of the myth takes place toward the end of the Fascist Ventennio and in the middle of the Second

World War, “raging in the four corners of the world.”

2. The Retelling of the Myth

The myth of Amore and Psyche finds its first surviving written record in

Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, from the 2nd century CE, though was arguably handed down orally from earlier126. The Golden Ass, known originally as the Metamorphoses, tells the story of Lucius, who, fascinated by magic, inadvertently transforms himself into an ass, and then embarks on a journey of adventures and misadventures until he is finally saved by the goddess Isis who helps him transform again into human form. It is, “a story of

126 See Gollnick, Love and the Soul (1992), chapter “Origins and Nature of the Eros and Psyche Story”; and Rohde, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks (1925) 78 humanity lost, both figuratively and literally, and then humanity regained” (Relihan xvii), a theme to which Savinio’s narrative relates on several levels, albeit ironically. The myth of Amore and Psyche is an episode nested within the larger context of Lucius’ misadventures. It is a tale of love and redemption, told by an old woman to a captive young woman Charite in an effort to comfort her. However, as an example of Apuleius’ own irony, it proves indeed just a story, only an illusion – for the young woman, we learn is later murdered.127

The basic premise of the myth is that Psyche, married to a mysterious figure who comes to her only in the nighttime and has forbidden her from looking upon him, is tricked by her sisters into believing her husband is a terrifying monster. But when she holds a lamp to his face, she discovers that instead of a monster, before her lies the divine god of Love. The god awakens and, angered at this betrayal, leaves Psyche. Psyche, determined to regain his love, endures a period of suffering and completes a series of impossible tasks. Eros takes her back, Zeus makes her immortal and they celebrate a glorious wedding on Olympus and the birth of a child, Pleasure.128 Psyche, who like

127 As Relihan says, after the episode of Charite, Cupid and Psyche “proves to be just a story: pretty, positive, sympathetic—and untrue.” (Relihan xxiv) In Savinio’s version, this same myth of Psyche and Eros is revealed as untrue – by Psyche herself, and her story was not entirely made up, just wildly misrepresented. 128 Apuleius’ version can be summarized as follows: Psyche, one of the three beautiful daughters of a king and queen was so extraordinarily beautiful that people began to worship her instead of Venus. Jealous and enraged, Venus sent her son Cupid to punish her perceived rival. No one wanted to marry her, she was terribly lonely, so her father consulted an oracle that commanded him to take her to a crag and sacrifice her in marriage to a dragon. Instead she was swept away to a grassy valley near a luxurious castle. She entered, marveled at its opulence and servants waited upon her. That night her ‘husband’ came to her, whispered to her, made love to her and left before the dawn broke. She soon got used to this routine, and was very happy though she never knew the identity of her husband, who had forbidden her to look upon his face. Her sisters, upon learning of the idyllic situation their youngest sister had found herself in, became enormously jealous themselves and tricked Psyche into believing her husband was a dangerous monstrous snake who preyed on pregnant women (she had just learned she was expecting). They convinced her that she needed to kill him before he could prey attack her and her unborn child, so she took to bed a sharp knife and an oil lamp. But when she went to look at him, she realized that he was not a monster at all, but the god Cupid. Drops of hot oil fell from the lamp onto Eros’ shoulder, waking him from his sleep. He flew away, up into a tree where he reproached her for having disobeyed him and said he would punish her by staying away 79 Lucius before her, is unable to contain her curiositas, looks where she shouldn’t have looked and then has to undergo a series of initiatic tests to regain entry/access into the divine.129

Over the course of millennia, this myth about the relationship between the soul and love, has been reproposed and adopted as an allegory illustrative of various religious, philosophical and psychoanalytical discourses aimed to interpret the relationship of the human to the divine and of the human consciousness to itself, to its own interior life.130

As Lionello Sozzi describes it, Psyche’s story is:

la storia di un’elevazione, di una sublimazione, sia che debba leggersi in chiave cristiana (colpa e riscatto), sia che debba intendersi in termini allusivi all’ascesa spirituale dell’uomo, agli avanzamenti della storia umana, alla crescita di una presa di coscienza, alla scoperta del proprio spazio interiore.” (207)

forever. Realizing what had happened, Psyche then tricked both of her sisters into killing themselves, and went in search of Eros. After wandering through many lands and appealing fruitlessly to other goddesses, Psyche decided to surrender to Venus. Venus tortured and mocked her, then ordered her perform seemingly impossible tasks, but Psyche succeeded with the help of some ants, a reed and by Zeus’ eagle. Venus sent her on a final task, seemingly to her death – to journey to the Underworld and request that Persephone put a little beauty in it. This time a tower told her a secret way to the Underworld and she succeeded in this task. But on her way back, Psyche got a little greedy and thought she should have a bit of the beauty for herself. When she opened the box, though, instead of beauty, a shadow of death wrapped around her and she fell like a sleeping corpse. When he learned of all of Psyche’s trials and her Stygian sleep, Cupid rushed to Zeus to implore him to help her. Zeus made Psyche immortal and they celebrated an honorable marriage. The gods all celebrated at a great wedding feast and Psyche bore a daughter, Pleasure. 129 Psyche’s story finds many parallels with Lucio’s own adventures: beginning with an erotic episode, they are both punished for their curiositas by stripping them of their privileged situation. Each, after having committed this sort of hybris (attempting to penetrate a mystery that they were not authorized to access), must undergo humiliations and hardships before being deemed worthy of rejoining with God, and after a series of trials and tribulations, they are saved by a divine figure – by Eros and by Isis, respectively. 130 In Amore and Psiche: un mito dall’allegoria alla parodia (2007), Sozzi traces the evolution of the interpretation of the Psyche and Eros myth as essentially: from sensual yet moralizing (Renaissance) to hedonistic and libertine (17th-18th) to the Romantic “rien n’est beau que ce qui n’est pas” to historicist and progressive (19th) to intimate (decadent) to irreverent and demythologizing (20th) – all of which address some element of the myth but none of which manages to incorporate all the vast complexities of the it: “Né coprono interamente la semantica dell’episodio le altre interpretazioni che nel corso dei secoli sono state date del nostro mito, da quella insieme voluttuosa e moralistica che caratterizzerà l’età umanistica e rinascimentale, a quella edonistica e libertina che prevarrà tra Sei e Settecento, a quella storicistica e progressiva che sarà tipica del secolo della storia, a quella intimistica cui si darà spazio in età decadente, a quella dissacrante e demitizzante che forse ha caratterizzato le più recenti stagioni. Tutte ci appariranno di singolare interesse, tutte riveleranno, di quella semantica, un aspetto o un livello, ma nessuna ne coprirà interamente le vaste, complesse e inesauribili dimensioni.” (Sozzi 16-17) 80 Traditionally, the myth of Psyche and Eros represents a human wish to join with the divine, to aspire to higher spiritual or intellectual spheres and understandings. Savinio takes this tale of ascension and turns it ironically on its head: his version instead focuses on the descent and the revelation, the demythologization and the ultimate rejection of the divine; it both celebrates and mocks the human advancements through history, and suggests perhaps greater levels of consciousness are attainable through the acceptance of the unconscious; the story represents indeed the discovery of an interior space (in which the characters of La nostra anima find Psyche), and relates the reflections this prompts for his alter-ego Nivasio about his own interior; Nivasio even seems on the verge of learning the answer to the great question – the real identity of ‘true love’…. But this is cut short.

La nostra anima is not the first text in which Savinio addresses the myth of Eros and Psyche. The highly surrealist tale Angelica, o la notte di Maggio (1927) was an earlier Savinian reinterpretation. Baron Rothspeer, a wealthy industrial man falls desperately in love with a beautiful young theater star, whom he can’t manage to appreciate as more than merely the object of his desires. This Angelica-Psyche spends most of the tale in a trancelike state of mezza-morte (“Mi sono portata dietro una statua, una statua morbida e calda. Mi guarda e non mi vede, mi ascolta e non risponde. E viva! viva! viva in una sua vita che io non... Felice... In quel sonno...” Angelica, cap X, 423).

In the end, we learn that Rothspeer in a fit of jealousy shoots Eros who has secretly been coming to visit the half-dead Angelica-Psyche, and time has come to a standstill while Psyche completes her pilgrimage.131 Though this version of the Psyche

131 “Che ora sarà? Gli orologi non camminano più. Il tempo si è fermato nel cuore di una notte infinita, senza domani. E ora? 81 and Eros myth differs somewhat from La nostra anima, beyond the theatrical setting and multi-perspective narration there are some seeds of the tale to come: in La nostra anima,

Eros himself becomes a sort of wealthy baron who wants Psyche only for her usefulness to him; though she speaks to her visitors, Psyche arguably remains in a trancelike state, ambiguously human-automaton. What differs, of course, is that in La nostra anima,

Psyche embarks on no such pilgrimage to regain her lost love.

Savinio returns again to the myth in 1941 for the entry Amore in his rubric Nuova enciclopedia. This version includes several more details, specifically about the setting, that will end up in La nostra anima. Aniceto (another Savinian alter ego) finds himself in

Salonicco in 1917, in a room of the Russian consulate (where the bal de têtes of La nostra anima will take place):

Mi rimarrebbe da riferire la singolare avventura capitata a Salonicco, nel l917, al mio amico Aniceto, la quale risponde direttamente' alla voce «amore». In verità quest'avventura è l'incontro fatto dal mio amico Aniceto, in una camera del consolato russo di Salonicco, di Psiche, ancor calda di lacrime e palpitante di dolore perché Eros l'aveva abbandonata. Ma quest'avventura risponde anche troppo direttamente alla voce «amore ». E su questa voce è bene calare un velo. Fra tante sciocchezze, Marcel Prévost disse una volta anche una cosa giusta: «Il y a toujours quelque chose de mal dans

Salgono a noi le voci, i gemiti più lontani del mondo: Preghiera dei superstiti: Arianna, gelido fiore costante, Dormon nel fondo degli specchi l'ore; O stelle, o pleiadi, Sanate Amore! BERGER. Écoutez: ils pleurent. Plus d'espoir! IO. No: diamo tempo all'infelice Psiche di terminare il suo pellegrinaggio. E quando avrà ritrovato il suo sposo che quello scemo di Rothspeer ha sbadatamente ferito in quella notte di maggio... BERGER: Mais quoi! c'était elle, Psyché? IO. Questo non lascia dubbio. Allora tutto rientrerà nell'ordine, nella tranquillità.” This world-out-of-order/time-standing-still recalls the traditional myth, in which a tern visits Venus to complain about the state of disharmony that has overcome the world since Psyche and Eros are separated, where there are no longer any of the social bonds or affections amongst people. Within the context of La nostra anima, as well, the world is indeed in a state of disharmony – with the war ravaging the world – but in Psyche’s tale, Eros himself has come to represent the “repulsion, revulsion, tawdry, tasteless copulation” (Apuleius and Relihan 110) and the real Love that will restore those social bonds, the harmony, the humanity is another. 82 l'amour».132

By La nostra anima, (whose date of composition we’ll discuss in more detail in a bit), the myth has evolved even further: what the visitors hear from the mouth of Psyche herself – her story – is not the tale of a woman on a pilgrimage to regain her love, not the tale of a woman still crying because Eros had abandoned her, but another, strikingly different account.

In La nostra anima, Savinio mentions by name two authors who had written or rewritten this myth: Apuleius and Agnolo di Firenzuola. In introducing his ‘act’ to

Nivasio and Perdita, Doctor Sayas says:

“Non occorre dirvi chi è Psiche. Voi conoscete le Trasformazioni di Lucio Apuleio, avete letto nei libri quarto, quinto e sesto la storia di questa giovinetta vittima della sua troppa bellezza, e la parafrasi che del libro di Apuleio ha fatto Agnolo Firenzuola nell'italiano più corrusco e immagliato che mano di scrittore abbia mai tessuto, e nel cui finale soprattutto è un accento che in Apuleio manca, un sentimento più profondo, più malinconico, più dolce non solo ma dilungato ancora di là dalle frontiere della vita: il sentimento ‘cristiano’ dell'amore. Se non che questa è la storia a uso dei profani.” (32)

Though La nostra anima departs radically from these earlier versions from Apuleius and

Firenzuola, Savinio’s reelaboration engages with them in significant ways, preserving many of the narrative and stylistic elements, and accentuating the differences by underscoring their intentional variations.133

132 “Amore,” NE 35; orig. in “Domus” June 1941. 133 In fact, though Savinio turns on its head much of the Psyche and Eros myth, he retains many stylistic and storytelling elements from each of these earlier versions, including the lightness of his prose of Firenzuola and the correspondence (and overlapping) between author-character of Lucio: “Sull'esempio di Firenzuola, anche Savinio colloca la favola mitologica in un contesto attualizzante di connotazione autobiografica. Ma per tramite di Firenzuola egli torna ad Apuleio: nel senso che il rapporto di corrispondenza istituito tra Savinio e Nivasio è affine più a quello sussistente tra Apuleio e Lucio, che non a quello sussistente e Agnolo-personaggio.” (Cenati 646) Joel Relihan’s introduction to The Golden Ass, in which he warns the reader to “look for the wearing of two hats in all respects: author and actor; high and low styles; seriousness and humor; sublimity and venality; naked truth and veiled imposture” (Relihan xiii) can be well applied to La nostra anima. 83 In the same years that Savinio was writing La nostra anima, he was also preparing the notes and introduction for Bompiani’s republication of Luigi Settembrini’s translation of Luciano di Samosata’s Saggi e dialoghi and Una storia vera (1944), which included the story Lucio o l’asino.134 In his notes to this story, he also mentions both

Apulieus and Firenzuola, again indicating that the change from Apuleius to Firenzuola is that “Tra l’Asino di Luciano e l’Asino di Fiorenzuola è passato il Cristianesimo”135:

Firenzuola’s protagonist is not saved by the goddess Isis, but, rather, by a woman named

Costanza, whom he continues to thank and recognize for her help for the rest of his life.

Savinio identifies in this ending an early example of feminism,136 and, indeed, in a later film storyline, “Soggetto di film tratto dall’Asino d’oro di Apulejo” (late 1940s), he specifies that he would instead prefer to use Firenzuola’s ending (Sogno meccanico 53).

134 There is some debate about whether this story was written by Luciano, merely attributed to him, whether he wrote both this version and also published under the name Lucio di Patre, etc. Savinio relays his understanding of the Lucio transformation stories, following the account of Photius of Constantinople: “Lucio o l’asino è uno scritto del primo periodo di Luciano: del periodo sofistico. Al dire del patriarca Fozio, Luciano avrebbe derivato il suo Lucio da una Metamorfosi di un tale Lucio di Patre, dalla quale del resto anche Apuleio avrebbe derivato le sue Metamorfosi scritte intorno ai 170 e dunque anteriori al romanzetto di Luciano. Al tempo di Luciano le metamorfosi erano di moda.” (Savinio, “Luciano di Samosata” 105) 135 In the last note to Lucio e l’asino, Savinio comments on the more ‘Christian’ message of Firenzuola: “Nella versione italiana che Agnolo Firenzuola ha fatto dell’Asino d’oro, lucida e trasparente come cristallo, Lucio ridiventa uomo per virtù delle rose che gli dà una donna di nome Costanza. E Lucio che riconoscente l’ha tolta di poi in sposa, ringrazia in ultimo l’ombra di lei che tante volte di poi l’ha salvato dal ridiventare asino. Tra l’Asino di Luciano e l’Asino di Fiorenzuola è passato il Cristianesimo.” (nota di A.S. (150). However, for Savinio this concept doesn’t have a maintain its religious sense, but suggests a sense of social connectedness, humanity. Or perhaps, as Danilo Romei interprests it: “Il Firenzuola adatta a sé e ai suoi tempi la magica metamorfosi: il protagonista è diventato Angelo e si aggira nelle domestiche campagne tra l'Emilia ed il Lazio, anziché nelle lande della misteriosa Tessaglia. La sua conversione perde ogni solenne implicazione religiosa e si accontenta di accorciarsi in un 'passaggio di facoltà' - si direbbe oggi - dall'«asinino studio delle leggi» a quello delle «umane lettere», per l'amoroso influsso di una donna «valorosa».” (http://www.nuovorinascimento.org/n-rinasc/saggi/html/romei/firenz93.htm) 136 “Come si sa, L'Asino d'Oro è stato voltato in italiano da Agnolo Firenzuola. Questa versione, assieme a quella di Dafne e Cloe fatta da Annibal Caro, è uno specchio di prosa italiana; e nel finale, che differisce alquanto dal testo originale, è uno dei pochissimi esempi di femminismo che ci offra la nostra letteratura. ...Dopo tanto somaresco patire, Lucio incontra, finalmente colei che lo farà tornare uomo. («Le rose fanno morire gli asini» ha detto lo Stagirita). Costanza si chiama la portatrice di rose, ed è bellissima. E Lucio che riconoscente l'ha impalmata, ringrazia in ultimo la memoria di lei (melanconicissimo questo «saluto all'ombra») che tante volte, di poi, lo aiutò a non ridiventare somaro»; (“Metamorphoseon” in TG 116-117, orig. in “La Stampa” Apr 18, 1935) 84 In the film storyline he further suggests that to distinguish or separate better the tale of

Psyche and Amore – “questa forma di spettacolo nello spettacolo,” the love story with a feminist twist – from the larger account of Lucio’s adventures, the episode of Psyche and

Amore could be shot in color, while the rest of the film would be in black and white.137

Savinio references Luciano, Apuleius and Firenzuola and their tales of Lucius and his transformations to and back from animal and human form in a few other writings, including a passage in which he gives particular praise to Firenzuola’s ability to write learned prose wherein the words themselves don’t interfere with the free movement of the ideas (Savinio’s praise of Firenzuola’s “lightness” somewhat anticipates Calvino).138

However, there is one question, specifically about the myth of Psyche and Eros that

Savinio can’t quite shake, and in La nostra anima, he puts this in the mouth of Sayas, again as a theatrical introduction for Psyche’s subversive retelling of the events:

Mirabile è il libro di Apuleio, ma possiamo noi dire che esso appaga pienamente la nostra aspettazione? C'è nella storia di questa fanciulla una parte enimmatica che Apuleio non chiarisce: la ragione per cui Amore, che viene ogni notte invisibile a congiungersi con lei, le vieta sotto la minaccia di andarsene per sempre, di conoscere il suo aspetto. […] Ecco il punto, signori. Quale è la misteriosa ragione per la quale Amore non vuoi essere veduto? (35-36)

This question is not only a great set up for Psyche’s performance and revelation, but a point about which Savinio had wondered for years. In an article from 1935, entitled

137 In his film storyline for Vita di Mercurio, Savinio makes a very similar suggestion: that the scenes in which Mercury recounts his mythical life be shot in color and the rest of the film in black and white. In the film on Lucio, Savinio further specifies that there will be a stylistic contrast between the Psyche tale (mythical lyricism) and the rest of the film (strong realism). 138 Firenzuola is named among a select few of Savinio’s models: Educazione (NE) "...dall'altra la prosa educata ove le parole sono disposte con tanto ordine che nessuna fa ostacolo e facendosi particolarmente notare intralcia il senso, ma 'spariscono' quanto a sé e lasciano passare libera l'idea; che è la prosa delle grandi civiltà letterarie come la prosa di Luciano di Samosata, di Voltaire, di Stendhal, e da noi quella di Annibal Caro, di Agnolo Firenzuola, e oggi fa prosa di Massimo Bontempelli e quella che io stesso cerco di scrivere. (NE 132) – Domus, dicembre 1942. 85 “Metamorphoseon,” Savinio poses a more direct version of this same question, wondering whether or not there is something truly ‘un-look-upon-able’ about Amore:

Nell'Asino d'Oro è incastrata, gemma fulgidissima, la favola di Amore e Psiche. A risolvere il misterioso «divieto» di questa favola nessuno, e non lo stesso Schopenhauer ha posto mente, per quanto ghiottissimo costui di simili bocconi. Unita con Amore, Psiche deve astenersi dal guardarlo, pena le più gravi sanzioni. Dietro il velo magico e l'ineffabile voluttà, si cela dunque qualcosa di «non guardabile»? «Il y a toujours quelque chose de mal dans l'amour »: così tra tante scemità, ebbe una volta intelligentemente a dire Marcel Prévost. (TG 117)

As in his entry for Amore in 1941, Savinio cites Marcel Prévost’s observation that “There is always something bad in love.” But, what precisely is behind that magic veil? What is the “unsustainable sight” really all about? Is there something truly horrible hiding behind/in love? Psyche’s retelling of her myth in La nostra anima will be one answer

Savinio imagines for that question he’d been asking for years.

However, if this is the fundamental secret (taboo) that will be unveiled by

Psyche’s retelling of the myth, again we must also consider the elaborate manner in which Savinio sets the scene for this revelation: he dedicates the first half of La nostra anima to constructing a narrative framework that both contextualizes and complicates this unveiling, this ‘moment of truth.’ From the opening scene of the book to Psyche’s tale, there is a sort of microscopic zooming in: from the skies and an eternal physical space, to the city streets of Salonika, down into the museum, into the Psyche’s cage-pen- room behind the door marked I,139 and even closer in on her body itself to inspect the graffiti-tattooes which, as we will see, cover it. While this focus zooms in, in a typical

Savinian fashion the text fills with multiple voices, multiple perspectives – from different characters, to the narrator’s philosophical musings, memories and seemingly tangential or

139 « Eccoci al primo quadro » annunciò il dottore. Di fianco al gradino sul quale Sayas si era fermato, era una porta dipinta di nero, in mezzo alla quale spiccava in bianco un grande I, sotto al quale in lettere egualmente bianche era scritto: «Qui vedrete la vostra anima». (23) 86 unrelated stories – creating a sort of ‘antinarrative’ narration. Even after Psyche begins her tale and the narration becomes predominantly hers, Savinio marks the text of her story with footnotes and with the occasional interruption from other characters. This use of multiple perspectives and détours not only illustrates a human experience (within the mind and within the world), but, as Keala Jewell has noticed, is yet another effort from

Savinio to “extricate himself from idealist norms – be they societal, philosophical, or literary”140 – to perform his role as an artist, by increasing the number of the truths, not the truth.141

The three visitors enter what resembles an avant-guarde theater (or hall of illusions, perhaps a circus),142 and descend into the bowels (womb, “visceri”), into the mysterious penetralia143 [“misteriosi penetrali”] of the museum, again echoing the

140 Keala Jewell makes both these points about Savinio’s use of multiple perspectives: “Once the narration of the museum visit begins, the reader is catapulted rather quickly, though, into a mind-boggling multiplicity of perspectives typical of the human, not the godly, experience.” (Jewell, Enigma 149) and “La nostra anima incorporates all the suspicions and all the expertise of a veteran monster watcher. It is important to understand that Savinio is constantly trying to extricate himself from idealist norms - be they societal, philosophical, or literary. Narrative technique, especially framing, is central to his effort. His extreme use of multiple perspectives dispels any sense of harmonious unity. He also allows his narrator some random observations for good measure, in order to ensure that the narration will be interrupted in disturbing ways; but contradictory, skewed perspectives are the most important method for deforming the ‘classic’ in general and the ‘classic’ myth of Psyche in particular. The technique reminds us of de Chirico's method of creating ‘impossible’ spaces.” (Jewell, Enigma 148) 141 “Nostro compito è di aumentare il numero delle verità fino a rendere impossibile la ricostituzione della Verità.” ([Gigiotti Zanini], SD 582); and “Ma penso altresì che le verità sono molte, che l'assoluto non esiste, che la verità è appunto tale perché si contradice.” (Hermaphrodito, H 142) 142 Here Savinio calls to mind specific places of illusion, circus and experimental avant-garde theater in Paris and in Rome, “Più che all'ingresso di un museo, l'ingresso del nuovo Museo Grévin somigliava all'ingresso di quegli stabilimenti d'illusioni come Le Paradis e l'Enfer, che a Montmartre costituivano una volta gli svaghi meno peccaminosi. Ricordava anche l'ingresso del museo romano delle Terme, tanto simile al fascinoso ingresso di un circo equestre. Ricordava soprattutto l'ingresso del Teatro degli Indipendenti, che Anton Giulio Bragaglia aprì nella via degli Avignonesi in Roma, pochi anni dopo la fine della prima guerra mondiale.” (22) 143 The usage of this term “penetrali” finds an interesting correspondence in the scene from Book 6 of Vergil’s Aeneid in which Aeneas goes to consult the Sibyl, who foretells the troubles and war which await the displaced Trojans (including the ‘Tiber foaming with much blood’ [“et Thybrim molto spumantem sanguine” (6.87), possible resonance with the ongoing Second World War] and advises Aeneas on his descent into Hades. He promises to build for the priestess an inner shrine (‘penetralia’), addresses the Sibyl as ‘alma’ (an etymological variant of ‘anima’) and requests that instead of writing her prophecies on leaves that might scatter in the wind, she chant them (“ipsa canas oro”). Though Psyche’s body is inscribed with 87 progression down through the layers of the unconscious, as if entering into the deepest abysses of the psyche … down into the Inferno,144 or into a grotto – a place of concealing, transformation and uncovering, of death and resurrection.145 It is from this place of darkness that Psyche will illuminate us.

After this elaborate set up, now to the performance! We arrive at Psyche’s retelling, which perhaps comes as a bit of a surprise as Dr. Sayas gets Psyche's performance going:

Sayas batté le mani con gesto da domatore, e disse alla fanciulla: «Su, bella! Di’ a questi signori perché Amore non voleva farsi vedere da te». (36)

Sayas compels her to ‘animate,’ and when she finally sputters to life, she narrates her tale. Within her retelling, which is filled with changes and variations from the original, there are two major shifts: one in the revelation itself, the other in Psyche’s response to it.

Savinio reverses the main moment of discovery from the traditional myth (the supposed monster snake revealed by lamplight to be the divine god of Love), so that the primary disillusionment that his Psyche faces is that instead of the beautiful divine husband she

various graffiti-like writings, her oral narration is the primary method of delivery for her ‘revelation.’ It’s not clear whether Savinio had this episode in mind, but a reading of Psyche as a Sibyl-esque figure, who ‘reveals’ great mysteries, but only through channeling the voice of Apollo (Sayas?) might have interesting potential here Te quoque magna manent regnis penetralia nostris: his ego namque tuas sortes arcanaque fata, dicta meae genti, ponam, lectosque sacrabo, alma, viros. Foliis tantum ne carmina manda, ne turbata volent rapidis ludibria ventis; ipsa canas oro." (6.71-76) 144 Sanguineti will characterize Doctor Sayas as a sort of degraded Virgil (“degredato Virgilio”) (Edoardo Sanguineti, “Alberto Savinio,” in Studi sul surrealismo, ed. Argan 1977, 424) 145 Victoria Nelson writes: “A century after the Domus Aurea excavations, the grotto or artificial cave had become nothing less than the "place of birth and death, passing away and rebirth, descent and resurrection," a highly charged microcosmic container of selected physical objects that drew down the arcane energy of counterpart Forms in the superior world.” (Nelson 2). The style related to this metamorphic space of the grotto, the grotesque – one of the descriptors for Savinio’s style - “is a mode that is first and foremost about crossing into a different and transformative order of reality, and second about the unexpected recombinations of events, objects, species we encounter once we are inside. (Nelson 22) 88 believes beside her, when she holds the lantern up to his face she sees instead a priapic and phallic monster:

… la cosa più brutta, più stupida, più avvilente, più sconcia, più informe, più bestiale, più inumana, più ridicola, più immonda, più illogica, più grottesca, più oscena, più inguardabile che occhio umano abbia mai veduta! ... E quello era mio marito! Quello era il Signore di Tutto! … (62)

Not only was Psyche herself surprised to find this monster, but when she reports this discovery to her visitors, Perdita, shocked and dismayed, cries out in disbelief:

«No! Non è vero! Non è vero!». Psiche puntò su Perdita il suo occhio lucido e rotondo, nel quale un po’ di sprezzo era diluito in molta compassione. «Sorella, tu dici che non è vero? Provati a guardare. Tu sei giovane. Voli ancora sulle ali dell’illusione.» (64)146

Secondly, in La nostra anima, Psyche’s story ends with this horrifying revelation and her subsequent rejection of the god: it includes none of the successive attempts at redemption and sublimation. Nivasio, curious that her narration seems to have finished without this ending, inquires about her long journey, punishments from Venus, descent into the underworld and ultimate reunion and marriage with her husband. And Psyche responds, in no uncertain terms, that all of this happy ending-redemption business was made up:

«Fandonie» rispose Psiche. «Apuleio era uno sciocco che praticava un ottimismo di maniera, e credeva che per rendere le storie più gradite ai lettori, bisogna adornarle di lieto fine. Come se bastasse questo per nascondere la verità!» (65)

146 As far as keeping the ‘revelation’ of Eros’ true appearance is concerned, the publishing decisions are a bit puzzling because of the placement of the lithographs, which seem to undermine to an extent the reader’s surprise: in the latest edition from Adelpi, the lithograph of Psyche is at the beginning, while Eros is appropriately placed in the section that describes his uncovering. In the second edition (Bompiani, 1960), the two lithographs are placed confoundingly: Amore before the text of the story; Psyche after the story and at the beginning of a long section of notes to the text and bibliographical notes. In the first edition (Bompiani, 1944), the image of Psyche is placed within the descriptions of the engravings on her skin, while the placing of Eros anticipates by a significant amount his physical description and instead appears while Psyche and her sisters are spying on potential suitors. 89 Savinio thus reverses the ascension, the sublimating movement from base to divine in both the moment of revelation, and in the truncated version of the myth: the demythologization of the divine and the ultimate rejection of it.

We find an interesting treatment of Psyche's myth in the work of Giacomo

Leopardi, an author that Savinio knew intimately. For Leopardi, the fundamental lesson of the myth of Psyche, as with the story of the Tree of Knowledge from Genesis, was representative of the corruption and fall/decline of humankind, from happiness to unhappiness (infelicità) because of excessive knowledge and understanding of oneself and of the world.147 It is, as Leopardi points out, fundamentally a meditation on our human desire for knowledge and the, at times, profound unhappiness or disappointment that results from that knowledge, from the crumbling of the illusion.148 In fact, this interpretation proves particularly interesting in relation to La nostra anima, as Psyche’s own telling is a potent and persistent destruction of the redemptive and transcendent illusion of the old myth of Eros, operating on two levels: the illusion shattered first for

Psyche through her own experience, and then for her audience (and the reader) in her

147 “Dalle lunghe considerazioni da me fatte circa quello che voglia significare nella Genesi l’albero della scienze ec., dalla favola di Psiche della quale ho parlato altrove, e da altre o favole o dogmi ec. antichissimi, che mi pare avere accennato in diversi luoghi, si può raccogliere non solo quello che generalmente si dice, che la corruzione e decadenza del genere umano da uno stato migliore, sia comprovata da una remotissima, universale, costante e continua tradizione, ma che eziandio sia comprovato da una tal tradizione e dai monumenti della più antica storia e sapienza, che questa corruttela e decadimento del genere umano da uno stato felice, sia nato dal sapere, e dal troppo conoscere, e che l’origine della sua infelicità sia stata la scienza e di se stesso e del mondo, e il troppo uso della ragione. E pare che questa verità fosse nota ai più antichi sapienti, e una delle principali e capitali fra quelle che essi, forse come pericolose a sapersi, enunziavano sotto il velo dell’allegoria e coprivano di mistero e vestivano di finzioni, …” (Leopardi, Lo Zibaldone, July 11, 1823, 2939-2940) 148 “Tuttavia la favola di Psiche, cioè dell’Anima, che era felicissima senza conoscere, e contentandosi di godere, e la cui infelicità provenne dal voler conoscere, mi pare un emblema così conveniente e preciso, e nel tempo stesso così profondo, della natura dell’uomo e delle cose, della nostra destinazion vera su questa terra, del danno del sapere, della felicità che ci conveniva, che unendo questa considerazione, al manifesto significato del nome di Psiche, appena posso discredere che questa favola non sia un parto della più profonda sapienza, e cognizione della natura dell’uomo e di questo mondo” (Leopardi, Lo Zibaldone, Feb 10, 1821, 637-638). 90 retelling of this experience. Sozzi’s criticism of this admittedly seductive romantic interpretation is that Leopardi fails to recognize that Psyche’s unhappiness is only temporary: that Leopardi considers only the effect of the revelation of Cupid, and not

Psyche’s redemption and eventual happy ending.149 This is precisely the part that Savinio cuts out so that we are tempted to read Savinio's treatment of the tale as the post-

Leopardian and proto-feminist tale of a liberated Psyche that has not only rejected the

“divine” in the effigy of Eros, but opted for something other than the traditional resolution of the myth.150 A liberation through disillusion, on the one hand, finds Psyche free from traditional figures of patriarchal religious authority (god and a masculine ideal of Love), on the other can be also read as a rejection of the hypermasculine, priapic ideology proposed by the Fascist regime.151 Yet, La nostra anima seems to frustrate any attempt at reading it simply as a liberating demystification: Nivasio and his companion see her slumped in the corner of a fetid underground cell, in which she is practically kept captive; this may represent, as Jewell writes, “the loss of a comfortable position for the

149 Sozzi comments on Leopardi’s view: “Interpretazione romantica, dicevamo, che probabilmente oggi continua a sedurci (torneremo a parlarne), ma che forse è anche la più discutibile, la meno aderente alla lezione del mito, almeno per un motivo, e cioè perché in realtà, secondo il racconto di Apuleio, Psiche non perde definitivamente, ma solo provvisoriamente il suo bene, che ritroverà invece alla fine, dopo lunghe traversie, quando sarà assunta nel consesso degli Dèi, berrà l’ambrosia, cioè la bevanda che rende immortali, sposerà Cupido e sarà madre celeste di Voluttà.” (Sozzi 16) 150 This reading is, however, problematic when we consider the true source of this alternative telling – is it Psyche herself, or is it fed to her by Sayas? Jewell further comments on Savinio’s ‘feminist’ take, and contends that Savinio, great admirer of the Hermaphrodite, criticizes not only the traditional “patriarchal representation of the human,” but also the separatist sexual politics of some of the feminist movements: “In this context I analyze the marriage theme inherent in the Eros and Psyche tale and consider Savinio's debunking of gender myths, especially the deification of males. Just as Savinio deplores patriarchal representations of the human, he also attacks any apotheosis of the feminine. I view Savinio's text as influenced by the specter of the separatist sexual politics ostensibly put forward by feminist movements in the twentieth century.” (Jewell, “Creatures” 16-17) Furthermore, Jewell questions the whether Savinio’s omission of the trials and tribulations that Psyche undergoes – and conquers – is does not itself undermine a claim to a feminist reading: “This competent, evolving protofeminist heroine is written out of Savinio's tale. It is as though, fearful that feminism falls into the traps set by dualists, he could not imagine a woman's way of pursuing a self or power at all.” (Jewell, Enigma 160) 151 “Eros si presenta in forme affatto svirilizzate, ridotto ai minimi termini di metonimia idraulica, a scorno della pomposità fallocratica inastata dalla dittatura.” (Cenati 644) 91 human being in the universe, and a redirecting of the human search for knowledge”

(Jewell, “Creatures” 29), also a post-Leopardian motif. Yet, it does question the “proto- feminist” allusion we mentioned above, speaking of Firenzuola. Furthermore, just as it seems that Nivasio will have access to a new element of human knowledge – as Psyche is about to reveal to him the ‘true’ love – Sayas pulls the plug and shuts her down. Science, as it were, precludes Psyche's ultimate revelation.

Our attention turns again to Psyche herself and the way she is represented in

Savinio's text: is she just an illusion, or a parody, of a soul? Is she the human Psyche who has finally been able to divulge her secret of liberation from the divine by showing the ugly and grotesque face of Eros? or is she just an electrified puppet, an automaton who merely recites a narrative that has been suggested or supplied to her?152 A woman or automaton who has traded her “servile femininity” to Eros, only to become a “feminist puppet” to Sayas?153 And who is Doctor Sayas, or what exactly does he represent in this context?

According to Sozzi, Savinio’s myth of Psyche and Eros illustrates the very human tendency through myth and bad literature to create our own illusions and to let ourselves be fooled by these unfounded or unsubstantial chimeras.154 Caltagirone argues that La nostra anima affirms the myth as a natural event, as the nexus between past and future,

152 In L’Eve Future (Tomorrow’s Eve), Villiers de l’Isle-Adam writes: “This is the arm of an Android of my making, animated for the first time by this vital, surprising agent that we call Electricity, which gives it, as you see, all the soft and melting qualities, all the illusion of life! -An Android? -An Imitation Human Being, if you prefer.” (61) 153 “With Eros, she was servile femininity; for Sayas she is instead a feminist puppet.” (Jewell, “Creatures” 38) 154 “La Psiche di Savinio, invece, vorrebbe non aver mai acceso quella luce, vorrebbe che il buio si spandesse sul mondo, ha scoperto, cioè, che la vita è menzogna, che l'amore è un inganno. Lo scrittore sembra pertanto proporci l'idea che i miti idealizzano e deformano i dati oggettivi del reale, la sua lezione è ispirata, sotto la burla faceta, al più amaro ripensamento: gli uomini, incoraggiati dalla cattiva letteratura (l'allusione a un Apuleio «dannunziano» fa sorridere ma tradisce una certa idea dell'artificio letterario), immaginano beni irreali, si lasciano sedurre e ingannare da inconsistente chimere.” (Sozzi 203-204) 92 only that now the myths have become machines.155 For Jewell, in this “allegory of the posthuman soul,” skepticism triumphs as myth breaks down and ideologies are exposed in this meditation on both the known and the unknown.156 Jewell argues that for Savinio

“monsters and gods alike are necessary to cultural self-definition. He sets out to create a

‘meta-monstrous’ narrative, to design a novella about monster-making itself.” (Jewell,

Enigma 145). Guglielmi, too, sees this monstrous combination of animal and machine not only in the description of hybrid Psyche herself, but also in the creative process as wordplay and association expand into the narration itself, 157 one that combines the automatic mechanical progression with human imperfection in telling a highly sexualized

(animal, instinctual) tale of psyche and eros. The blurring of the distinction between animal, human and machine – in a dedivinized world, perhaps prompts a reconsideration of what it means to be human, and is consistent with Savinio’s fundamental idea that the

Human may not be a fixed, but rather malleable and always-transforming concept.

155 “I miti divenuti macchina, congegno, automa, non solo entrano a far parte dell'universo saviniano, ma sono anzi il nesso fra passato e futuro, l'esito del mito. Il mistero è di nuovo salvo, è la vita artificiale cui assurge l'inanimato: il sacro rimasto all'uomo o la perdita definitiva di esso. Oggi il dilemma è quanto mai aperto.” (Caltagirone 138) 156 Savinio's tale seems to be one of liberation from the deity through disenchantment. Once the deity is unmasked, the classic allegory of the soul collapses, because there is no longer any reason for an arduous journey to achieve union with the deity. Savinio follows this logic to the end, writing a postclassic, post- Christian myth without the benefit of teleology, of a direction toward a supreme end. Myth loses its form, literature loses its graceful architectures, and skepticism triumphs. The dawn of skepticism means that we are banned from paradise, that there is no longer any comfortable place for us. (Jewell, Enigma 143-144) 157 “E con il bisticcio - che è qui congiunzione paradossale di animalizzazione e meccanizzazione - si dichiara infine il procedimento formale (anch'esso comico) di Savinio. Grottesco e gioco di parole (o motto di spirito) sono infatti indissociabili nella sua arte. Il linguaggio, non piu controllato dal proprio oggetto, può foggiarselo liberamente, obbedendo soltanto ai propri meccanismi associativi. E il gioco di parole può diventare la tecnica di costruzione del racconto. La nostra anima, in particolare, è un gioco di parole continuato, un gioco di parole che si espande in narrazione.” (Guglielmi, “La lucerna di Psiche,” in La prosa italiana del Novecento. Umorismo, metafisica, grottesco,” 1986, 174). 93 3. Electricity and Psychoanalysis

It is interesting to note that one of the more harrowing lines in the text - “It’s the current that animates these figures of flesh” – is not included in the beginning drafts of La nostra anima. In fact, the entire paragraph is missing from both the original handwritten pages of a partial manuscript, as well as from a full draft (partially handwritten, partially typed). The original handwritten pages end at the visitors’ arrival in Psyche’s room/cell where they note that she is crying (“Piange”). They do not include Psyche’s retelling of the myth. It is difficult to determine precisely when Savinio decided to include the reference to electricity. In the partially handwritten, partially typewritten draft, although the reference to the electrical current still doesn’t appear in the beginning, the scene at the very end in which Doctor Sayas disconnects the cord that supplies the current to Psyche is included. This brings us back to consider more closely the time of composition of this work.

Based on a series of letters with Bompiani, Tinterri establishes the period of composition as the two months between December 1943 and January 1944. In these letters, Savinio reports on the growth of this story from 20 pages to 40 and jokes that if he should continue working it will arrive at 150.158 However, I believe that it’s not entirely to be excluded that the first handwritten pages may date from as early as December 1941.

Given Savinio’s prior references to the Psyche and Eros myth, and especially his formulation of the driving question (“why didn’t Cupid want to show his face?”) as early as 1936, this seems a reasonable prospect. Furthermore, the handwritten pages are written on the back of other documents (letters, communications, drafts), all datable to December

1941 or before, with the exception of one, which is on the back of a typed draft (not an

158 Tinterri, “Note ai testi: La nostra anima,” CLValtri 946. 94 editor’s proof) of Il signor Münster, on which, according to the records at the Fondo

Savinio, Savinio was working from 1940 to 1943, the year of publication in Casa “la

Vita.” Tinterri suggests that all elements included in Casa “la Vita” besides the

Prefazione were already finished on or before 1942.159

If this is in fact the case, then one wonders whether something in particular or some combination of sources might have inspired the addition of the evocative and chilling detail of the audible “electrical current that animates the fleshfigures”: images from contemporary works of art; readings about the role of electricity in the nervous system; articles on automata or robots; some interaction with domestic appliances, radio and other communication technologies. It is not too farfetched to speculate that the inclusion of the electrical current detail in Psyche's tale might be connected to the emergence in those same years of electroshock therapy, developed by the Italians Ugo

Cerletti and Lucio Bini in 1938. At first, the coverage of the new therapy was not widespread, but by the early 40s it was becoming more extensive, as the Fascist regime sought to hail these two scientists as representative of the Italian genius. For example,

“La Stampa” – to which Savinio contributed fairly frequently – ran a five-part series on electroshock (“Il turbine che guarisce,”) from Dec 27, 1941 to Jan 15, 1942. The fourth installment in the series ran on Jan 9, 1942 right next to an article by Savinio, “Il cane,” which would later be included in Capri. The headline of the article on electroshock was:

“ ‘Agitati’ sulla soglia dell’attacco. Il meccanismo ed il ‘senso’ della crisi convulsivante attraverso cui si scaricano gli automatismi del sistema nervoso.”160 This brings us to the

159 Tinterri, “Note ai testi: Casa ‘La Vita’,” CLValtri 933-934. 160 The other headlines in the series were: “La pazzia, dichiarata sino a ieri inguaribile, è vinta, oggi, in tutte le forme più penose e diffuse: spettacolarmente violenta è la cura, ma l’uragano che comporta bruschi mutamenti interni: rapidi sbalzi funzionali, determina il riequilibrio della mente malata” (Dec 27, 1941); “ 95 issue of psychoanalysis as an alternative way to manage or “discharge” the energy of the psyche.

On Savinio’s relationship to psychoanalysis, Michel David writes that he is someone who “che [la] conosce male teoricamente, ma [la] intuisce prontamente.”

(David 358).161 Though over time Savinio certainly becomes more familiar with the theoretical framework of psychoanalysis, he is not so much interested in its technical intricacies or therapeutic efficacy, but rather in the new non-idealized conceptualization of the human and associative functioning of the mind, the secrets and contradictions uncovered and the mechanisms exposed.162 In Savinio’s early works, like Hermaphrodito and in his collaborations with “La Ronda,” there was little or no detectable ‘Freudism’; at times, his writings even adopted a relatively hostile or dismissive tone toward psychoanalysis.163 However, with the early drafts in 1920-1921 of La casa ispirata

(which David considers perhaps more “parapsychoanalitical” (359-360)) and Tragedia

‘Non più! È la morte’: Vi è un momento nella cronistoria dell’ “elettroshock” che si anima del respiro del romanzo ed è quando si è compiuta la saldatura fra le applicazioni sperimentali e quelle reali, quando queste esperienze condotte sugli animali sono state tentate per la prima volta sull’essere umano” (Dec 30, 1941); “125 Volta: 1/10 di secondo. La corrente è lanciata attraverso il capo del paziente: un grido breve acuto, che è come un gemito, e poi, immediata, la perdita della coscienza: inizia l’attacco che, ripetuto in serie, porterà al riordinamento della psiche malata” (Jan 4, 1942);“Come si torna alla normalità. Schizofrenici e depressi risanati in alte percentuali. Una casistica che si infoltisce giorno per giorno” (Jan 15, 1942) 161 David cites as an example that in 1952, the year of his death, Savinio still speaks often of the ‘subconsicous’. 162 “Quello che a me interessa, è la parte fondamentale della psicanalisi: la scoperta del profondo. Questo il lato più «importante» dell'opera di Freud. Freud ha scoperto la profondità, che prima era nascosta. Ha portato la profondità in superficie.” (“Le cose come sono non come si vorrebbero,” SD 1577; orig. in “Il Corriere della Sera,” June 18, 1951) 163 In a footnote to illustrate this point, David includes this quotation from Savinio, on psychoanalysis and relativity - two theories Savinio will come to embrace wholeheartedly: in the Surrealist journal “Littérature,” 279-80 [1922?] David finds an article “anonimo, ma certamente di Savinio” in which “si scherza sulla relatività e sulla psicoanalisi demolite dal ridicolo: ‘sembra uno scherzo. Cionondimeno, noi invitiamo tutti i filosofastri di casa nostra, che della Relatività e della Psicoanalisi hanno fatto il loro pane quotidiano, a meditare su questo scherzo con molta serietà… questi mostruosi prodotti della scienza moderna che oggi travagliano i fumosi cervelli del Nuovo e dell’Antico Mondo.’” (David 360 fn 42). 96 d’infanzia,164 there are the first signs in Savinio’s writings of an increased familiarity with psychoanalysis and an embrace of the creative potentials its theories presented. As

Bréton suggests in the First Manifesto of Surrealism (1924), it is thanks to Freud that the imagination will revindicate itself, opening up greater possibilities and freeing the

“human explorer” to “carry his investigations much further.”165 For Savinio, Freud is above all an educator, he guides us – without judgment – to a fuller understanding of ourselves and of the impulses that influence our desires, thoughts and decisions:

Per noi, dopo Schopenhauer, Freud è il migliore degli educatori. Anche il passo grave e pacato della sua prosa è un passo da educatore. Freud mostra le cose della vita, «tutte» le cose, anche le più sepolte, ma non le giùdica: lascia all'allievo libertà di prendere o lasciare. Educare, come dice la parola, non dev'essere altro che «guidare».166

Freud challenges the perception of the psyche or anima as the most beautiful part of the human, as the “beautiful ideal,” and replaces the fixed stability of dogma in our minds with the rotary movement that makes the mind an “idea mill” – a dynamic metaphor that evokes not only the images of breaking ideas down into pieces and but also of producing new ones: of separating into fragments that can then be reassembled:

164 Giuliani also sees in these two works some influence of Freud: “Comunque sia, è difficile immaginare Tragedia dell'infanzia e La casa ispirata, le cui prime stesure risalgono al 1920-21, concepite senza il seme di Freud” (Giuliani xxix) Savinio himself points out that he started to become familiar with Freud later on: “Quando io cominciai a conoscere Freud, l’età del discepolo io l’avevo superata da tempo.” (“Contro il fanatismo,” SD 344; orig. in “La Lettura,” Aug 24, 1946). 165 “It was, apparently, by pure chance that a part of our mental world which we pretended not to be concerned with any longer - and, in my opinion by fare the most important part - has been brought back to light. For this we must give thanks to the discoveries of Sigmund Freud. On the basis of these discoveries a current of opinion is finally forming by means of which the human explorer will be able to carry his investigations much further, authorized as he will henceforth be not to confine himself solely to the most summary realities. The imagination is perhaps on the point of reasserting itself, of reclaiming its rights.” (Breton, Manifestoes 10) Breton describes Savinio and De Chirico as pre-Surrealist and pre-Freudian, and identifies them as the foundation of the “modern myth”: “The whole, as-yet-unformed modern myth rests at its origins on two bodies of work that are almost indistinguishable in spirit – by Alberto Savinio and his brother, Giorgio de Chirico – and that reached their culminating point just before the war of 1914. […] We are here at the very heart of the symbolic sexual world, as Volkelt and Schemer described it before Freud. […] In these two brothers, humor surges from their intermittent but very acute awareness of their own repression.” (Breton, Black Humour 287-288) Savinio is the only Italian included in the anthology. 166 DTC 132; orig. “Tarquinia” in “Oggi,” Sept 9, 1939. 97 Freud è lo scienziato atteso, lo scienziato necessario di un'epoca che ha scoperto che l'uomo non è creazione di Dio ma creazione di se stesso... Indagatore, Freud è sceso a scoprire Dio nell’intimo dell’uomo. Freud è l'antropologo di un'epoca che ha rotto i ponti tra sé e il beau idéal. … Si tratta di togliere al cervello la sicura del domma e dei principi posti una volta per sempre e imprimergli quel moto rotatorio che di ogni cervello fa un macinino di idee.167

Savinio’s familiarity with Freud grows significantly through his reading in 1940 of La psicoanalisi (1938) by Enzo Bonaventura.168 In fact, when the library recalls the copy he had been using, he writes to the editor Mondadori for a copy of the text so that he could continue to develop the ideas he had gotten from it.169 Savinio’s reading of

Bonaventura furnishes him not only with a greater understanding of the theoretical framework but also provides him with elements and ideas that he can use and recombine in the formulation and narration of his works.170

The influence of psychoanalytical theory and concepts are evident on several different levels in La nostra anima. First of all, it features a doctor tending to a

167 “Contro il fanatismo” SD 346, 349. Though Savinio says he can’t attest to the efficacy of psychoanalysis as a treatment, he appreciates the insights that Freud’s theories provide for understanding ourselves: with the advent of psychoanalysis, in fact, man passes from an incomplete state, dependent on external forces to that of ‘uomo completo,’ autonomous and self-sufficient. (“Dalla condizione di uomo incompleto, l'uomo passa alla condizione di uomo completo. L'uomo completo, cioè a dire fornito di piena e attiva vita fisica e assieme di piena e attiva vita psichica, è l'uomo che ha raggiunto il perfetto «equilibrio» umano, né ha più bisogno dunque, come fa l'uomo incompleto, di «fare il peso» caricandosi di zavorra presa da fuori.” (“Uomo nuovo” SD 747-49, orig. in “Il Corriere della Sera,” Feb 27, 1948). 168 See Bellini, Dalla tragedia all’enciclopedia, esp. chapter 5. 169 “P.S. Scusate la richiesta di questo altro favore. Presi in prestito alcun tempo fa da una biblioteca di Roma "La Psicoanalisi" di Enzo Bonaventura, ed. Mondadori, collez. "Cultura d'oggi". Il libro mi ha interessato e molti passaggi vi ho annotato come utili e da ricordare. Ma ora debbo restituire il libro alla biblioteca. L'ho chiesto in parecchie librerie di Roma, tutte mi hanno risposto che il libro è esaurito né sanno se sarà ristampato. E le mie note allora e l'utile che speravo di trarne? Se qualche copia rimanesse ancora a Milano, una di queste, per ordine Vostro, mi potrebbe essere spedita in porto assegnato: a me fareste un grande favore e io ve ne sarei molto grato ». (lettera a Mondadori, July 15, 1940. In Tinterri, “Note ai testi: Infanzia di Nivasio Dolcemare,” H 963.) 170 “Per un verso, infatti, l’autore si confrontava per la prima volta in maniera diretta con l’edificio teorico della dottrina freudiana, assimilandone immagini e spunti concettuali, imparando a valutarne confini e problematiche […] Su un altro piano, però, agiva poi la vena creativa del narratore surreale e dell'ideologo- dilettante: che trasformava quei materiali teorici in figure per la scrittura, e, combinandoli con altri spunti culturali, ne ricavava nuovi orizzonti di immaginario e di poetica. (Bellini 181-82). Savinio himself will later, in 1948, identify Freud as his “favorite author” (“Freud è il mio autore preferito.” in “Per vie deserte” SD 819-20; orig. in “Il Corriere della Sera,” Jun 11, 1948). 98 Psyche/psyche and listening to her talk about her past experiences, especially those familial and sexual in nature. Secondly, the architectural modeling and description of the fleshworks museum functions as a sort of allegory of the psyche. Thirdly, the narration is infused with allusions to psychoanalytical themes/tropes and inflected with symptomatic expressions. Then, the hybrid human-animal-machine Psyche can be interpreted as a physical embodiment of the psyche – a creature who represents the human by incorporating (making manifest) the mechanisms and animal impulses that operate within her body, a body that is, furthermore, covered with “apparent hieroglyphics” (images) that upon closer observation reveal the language fragments inscribed into her body.

Savinio’s restoration of the myth back to its original Greek setting reestablishes the identity of the god of Love as the mature, charming and cunning Eros (from the connotations of a mischievous child that Cupid might evoke). This return to Eros squares the tale with Freud’s own terminology and understanding of this divine figure,171 and allows Savinio to – all the more potently – subvert those more sophisticated associations.

Psyche, who in the traditional myth was married to Eros and granted immortality by Zeus, has, in La nostra anima, rejected Eros and been granted a different sort of immortality in her hybrid form by Doctor Sayas and his colleagues (Zeus and Sayas, perhaps a play on words, as we know associations often work through sound). The

171 Says Bettleheim: “In a preface to the fourth edition, written in 1920, Freud stressed "how closely the enlarged concept of sexuality of psychoanalysis coincides with the Eros of divine Plato." For readers who, like Freud, were steeped in the classic tradition, words such as "Eros" and "erotic" called up Eros's charm and cunning and--perhaps more important--his deep love for Psyche, the soul, to whom Eros is wedded in everlasting love and devotion. For those familiar with this myth, it is impossible to think of Eros without being reminded at the same time of Psyche, and how she had at first been tricked into believing that Eros was disgusting, with the most tragic consequences. To view Eros or anything connected with him as grossly sexual or monstrous is an error that, according to the myth, can lead to catastrophe. (It would be equally erroneous to confuse Eros with Cupid: Cupid is an irresponsible, mischievous little boy; Eros is fully grown, at the height of the beauty and strength of young manhood.) In order for sexual love to be an experience of true erotic pleasure, it must be imbued with beauty (symbolized by Eros) and express the longings of the soul (symbolized by Psyche).” (Bettelheim, Freud and Man’s Soul, 6) 99 psyche now, instead of joining with the divine, is entrusted to the care or observation of a

Doctor. This doctor is not described as a psychoanalyst, but as Jewish and a surgeon;172 however, as Savinio will later say, in perhaps a more metaphysical sense, psychoanalysis itself is a form of “ineffable surgery, a surgery of the psyche.”173

Perhaps connected to the psychoanaltyical subtext of La nostra anima is the architectural setting: the journey of the tourists into the fleshworks museum is like a descent through an architectural allegory of the psyche, a spatial model of the psychical apparatus, one that, as Bellini points out, Savinio had used before in Casa “la Vita” and can most likely be traced to Savinio’s readings of Bonaventura.174 Jewell also discusses these “architectures” that individuals and cultures alike create in order to represent different ways of being in the world, but emphasizes how these architectures are often used or appropriated by those who “wield power” to exercise their authority, and indeed it could be argued that Savinio uses the architectural metaphor to illustrate some of those power structures and how they directly and indirectly reinforce themselves.175 And, in fact, in La nostra anima, Savinio uses this architecture, the museum/jail in which

172 “… israelita di razza e di professione medico chirurgo …” (11) 173 “Alla psicanalisi io non credo, per meglio dire non credo alla psicanalisi come sistema terapeutico. E, d'altra parte, io, così pudico, così restìo a lasciarmi manipolare dalla chirurgia manuale (chiedo scusa per il pleonasmo) come abbandonarmi a quella chirurgia ineffabile, a quella chirurgia della psiche, e tanto più impudica dunque, che è la psicanalisi?” (“La superstizione è un ostacolo e come tale la si può «girare»” SD 1428; orig. in “Il Corriere della Sera,” Sept 20, 1950). 174 Bellini writes: “l'allegoria della psiche come casa a più piani o come spazio separato da porte, che informa il racconto eponimo di Casa «la Vita» (luglio 1941) e quello intitolato Mia madre non mi capisce

(luglio 1942) (fn 50) gli viene probabilmente suggerita proprio da un passo di Bonaventura: nel capitolo II, infatti, parlando degli «schemi spaziali che sono stati immaginati per esprimere in forma intuitiva la struttura dell'apparato psichico, e in ispecie i rapporti tra coscienza, precosciente e incosciente», Bonaventura cita quello che raffigura «le varie sezioni dell'apparato psichico come delle stanze separate da pareti e comunicanti per delle porte più o meno socchiuse, o come i piani di una casa congiunti dalle scale»” (Bellini 170) 175 “Savinio constantly parodies not just myth but the myth-making enterprise itself. His human characters create imaginary ‘architectures’ and mythic narratives that correspond to evolving ways of being in the world. These ‘forms’ are eternally pressed into the service of those who wield power through belief and value systems.” (Jewell, Enigma 142) 100 Psyche/psyche is kept, to depict a hierarchal spatial representation (or revelation) of the unconscious in its relation to the conscious and to authority. As the narration begins,

Sayas – who up to this point has seemed in control of the narrative – responds to a question that Perdita asks, but is reminded by a higher authority (superego-like command center) to step aside: “Una voce di altoparlante rimbombò: «Silenzio! Non interrompete la narratrice!»” (38).176 When Perdita looks around confused, Sayas explains the way things work in this mysterious museum of the Unconscious, of which they themselves seem to have become elements, in which needs are met/fulfilled automatically but movement cannot be influenced by human will:

“Non si spaventi, signora. Dentro questa sala le cose avvengono per virtù propria, non per intervento della umana volontà. Se putacaso le venisse prurito in qualche parte del suo graziosissimo corpo, ella si sentirebbe grattare da unghie addestrate e invisibili, senza fatica delle sue bellissime mani. Quando verrà il momento per noi di uscire da questa sala, vedrà che ci toccherà uscire per propulsione di una misteriosa forza ‘uscente’ la quale opererà in noi in maniera dolce ma irresistibile.” (39)

Nivasio’s tour through this architectural psyche prompts him to reflect on the power relations within his own psyche. When he wants to ask a question but something prevents him (‘defectus vocaboli’), he muses about his own “internal tyrant":

Riuscirà egli un giorno ad abbattere questo vigilantissimo, questo insonne tiranno interno che finora gli ha vietato e tuttavia gli vieta di dire tutto quello che egli ha da dire? Nescimus. Questo uomo intanto va guardato come si guarda la porta chiusa sul tesoro di una cattedrale, come si guarda lo sportello blindato serrato sul sotterraneo della banca più ricca di accumulato oro. (15-16)

Even more pressing than battling the external tyrant, combatting the “internal tyrant” is the most fundamental priority, for the arbitrary rules of the “internal tyrant” constitute the greatest threat to personal liberty, the greatest obstacle to being free:

176 The loudspeaker reiterates this instruction several pages later: “Perdita sussurrò a Sayas: «Di quale stato vorrà parlare?». Sayas stava per rispondere, ma echeggiò nuovamente la voce dell'invisibile altoparlante: «Silenzio! non interrompete la narratrice!»” (46) 101 L'uomo che con pertinacia inesauribile combatte l'arbitrio esterno e la tirannia che un altro gli vuole imporre, non pensa invece, stolto che è, a combattere prima di tutto questa tirannia e questo arbitrio che egli si porta dentro di sé. I tiranni più crudeli, i nostri nemici peggiori sono dentro di noi, e se pochi uomini sono liberi di fuori, uomo non c'è che dentro di sé si possa dire veramente libero. (15)

While observing the graffiti on Psyche’s body, Nivasio understands them to be an expression of the unconscious, still unaffected by the filtering effects of the rationalizing ego and the moralizing superego, where memory-traces from high and low culture, from famous, unknown and anonymous authors, stand side by side without negating each other.

Era la prima volta che Nivasio Dolcemare vedeva formato grammaticamente e fermo come un documento perenne, quello che la nostra anima dice a se stessa nei momenti di indipendenza e spontaneità, quando essa minacciata non è, non impaurita, non ispirata dalla ragione; e a questa scoperta Nivasio Dolcemare sentì la luce dell'aurora battergli in fronte il suo fiato cristallino. (34)

Upon seeing these “signs of labile, fugacious personalities” (“segni di personalità labili e fuggitive”), he wonders:

Quale significato in quelle parole insensate tra cui brillava talvolta un'idea, un pensiero, un ricordo? Tutti i significati. meno quello che gli uomini danno solitamente alla parola «significato». (33-34)

Nivasio understands that these words might represent anything – or potentially everything – through some combination of association, displacement, wordplay, connotation, etc… besides the one meaning that we would attribute to them precisely because don’t operate according to the rational logic (meaning) of the conscious. They contain traces that when reconfigured might come to represent something different to each of the different visitors.

This revelation to Nivasio – tourist in the Fleshworks museum observing the etchings on Psyche’s body – inspires him to imagine and explore the possibilities of what

102 extraordinary performances might be awaiting within his own mind, if only he were to dive in to observe them as a spectator and not a regulator (interpreter of his own thoughts). He humorously proposes an Internal Tourism Company whose objective would be to promote the exploration of our own soul/mind (anima), and he argues that these wonders of internal inspection, beyond allowing the most amazing discoveries, would also have the effect of extinguishing the evil from this world – not through the victory of good, but through the more powerful state of indifference: we would all be so consumed and engaged by the marvels within our own mind, that there would no longer be time or interest to distract or concern ourselves with external power struggles and conflicts.177

Besides the numerous Freudian themes that Savinio includes in this story, the narration is filled with wordplay and lapsus, often highly sexualized and most of which are concentrated in the section of Psyche’s narration. These lapsus are furthermore frequently and jokingly commented upon by the author (as was Freud’s tendency as well, although Freud seriously interpreted jokes and lapsus), in what effectively functions as a sort of secondary revision, a parody of Freudian analysis, not only clarifying but also cleaning up, desexualizing, making appropriate the content of these lapsus for the reader

177 “O sconosciute ricchezze della nostra anima! Basta svegliarsi dal sonno che dentro ci riempie e che spettacoli improvvisi, insospettati, stupefacenti! L'uomo è una bara che trasporta se stesso morto. … Nivasio Dolcemare progetta una società di Turismo Interno che avrà per iscopo l'esplorazione della nostra anima. L'uomo assisterà a impensati e straordinari spettacoli di se stesso. Compirà le più audaci esplorazioni nelle parti ignorate di sé, farà le più incredibili scoperte senza muoversi dalla propria poltrona, senza levarsi dal proprio letto. Affonderà nelle ricchezze, nuoterà nel mare delle novità, non avrà più tempo di annoiarsi, desiderare, volere; e gli scambi, i furti, le lotte, le guerre finiranno d'incanto. Il male sparirà dal mondo perché sarà vinto non dal bene, ma da un avversario ben più potente e risoluto: l'indifferenza.” Nivasio also imagines that in one of the rooms of this tourist agency, there would be a “Hall of Personal Firmament,” where, perhaps to satisfy the narcissistic impulse, each person could see projected onto the ceiling (of this new personal cosmos, of the museum, of the inside of the skull?) the various moments of her life. (“Annessa alla suddetta società di Turismo Interno, Nivasio Dolcemare ha in progetto una sala detta «Sala del Firmamento Personale», nella quale ciascun uomo potrà vedere ricostituito il cielo dei vari momenti della sua vita, siccome nel Planetario si ricostituisce il cielo di Carlo Quinto, di Abelardo, del divino Platone.” (34-35)). 103 (a caricatural opposite of what psychoanalysis would do).

“era un bel popò” [“È chiaro che Psiche vuol dire «era un bel po’»] (48) a letter addressed “ai genitali di Psiche” [“Non siamo riusciti a vedere l’originale della lettera Bianca, ma siamo sicuri egualmente che «genitali» è una alterazione di «genitori» ] (52); “le tette più alte della città” [“Singolare la forma femminile di «tetti», che qui troviamo usata per la prima volta.”] (56) Savinio even includes an instance of lapsus in reverse, when his self-censoring pen writes

“sasso” instead of “sesso.”178 From a psychoanalytical point of view, lapsus are unexpected and can provide some comic relief, but Bonaventura points out that to the

"serious scientist" some of these ‘goofs’ (papere) may hide the key to the interpretation of important facts:

A un tipo un po' diverso di atti mancati appartengono le «papere»: un vasto gruppo di errori di linguaggio che, sotto vari nomi (lapsus linguae, lapsus calami, false letture, false audizioni) formano inesauribile materia di piacevolezze da salotto, di per finire giornalistici e di letteratura allegra. Valga anche qui, per lo scienziato arcigno che arricciasse il naso, il monito di Francesco Bacone. Son fenomeni, e vanno spiegati; chi sa che proprio dall'analisi di queste piacevolezze non scaturisca anche l'interpretazione di fatti di ben più alta importanza! (Bonaventura 92)

As Guglielmi writes, these commented lapsus, as well as the other expressions of the unconscious – instances of worldplay, jokes, associations, etc – inform Savinio's rhetorical machine.179

Una volta posto il tema, e fissata la chiave metaforica, la macchina retorica provvede a dissezionarlo e ricomporlo, sfruttando sia gli automatismi associativi, sia la convenzionalità dei materiali. (Guglielmi 176)

In fact, Savinio himself, only a few pages into the story, in the very first footnote,

178 “Invece di «sesso» la mia penna aveva scritto «sasso». Caso singolarissimo di lapsus «contrario». Il lapsus non è un semplice scambio di parole, cioè a dire che non ogni scambio di parole costituisce lapsus. Il lapsus è psicologicamente valido, quando alla parola in un certo senso insignificante, si sostituisce una parola in un certo senso significativa. Qui invece è avvenuto il contrario: alla parola significativa «sesso», si è sostituita la parola insignificante «sasso». Segno che il nostro subcosciente ha in serbo anche dei sentimenti manifestabili e assieme le parole che li esprimono, con le quali tenta di tanto in tanto di nascondere gl'immanifestabili sentimenti della nostra coscienza.” (46) 179 “… è un gioco di parole continuato, un gioco di parole che si espande in narrazione.”(Guglielmi 174) 104 gives us an example of how lapsus (and by extension other association and wordplay) and our natural tendency to associate concepts and provide rational explanations for connecting them, provide a key to how myths are born; in so doing gives the reader a clue about how to approach the story of Psyche that is about to be told. To the sentence in the text that reads: “Non si vuol dire con questo che Nivasio Dolcemare fosse geloso di

Sayas” (16), Savinio-narrator adds a footnote:

Qui sopra, dov’è la parola «geloso» la nostra macchina da scrivere aveva messo la prima volta «gelso». Ecco come nascono i miti. Per virtù di quel lapsus era nato un uomo- albero, un uomo anatomicamente misto col gelso, questo più utilitario degli alberi. (16 fn 1)

The sudden and unexpected juxtaposition of two previously non-associated words not only calls our minds to attention and provides nonsensical comic relief (or emotional discharge), but sets in motion the natural human tendency to rationalize this association --

- prompts the rational part of our minds – to create a narrative around them, to generate an explanation for their apparently nonsensical and random relationship.

Bellini argues that what gives a particularly psychoanalytical feel to the text is that instead of a strictly first person narration, like in Svevo, for instance, in La nostra anima - as in Maupassant o l’Altro - the events of the story are mediated and interpreted by Savinio the author, thinly disguised as his anagrammic alter-ego Nivasio, who lends some semblance of authority to the interpretation, and who guides us through the, at times, loosely connected parts of the narration.180 Effectively, the Author's interventions

180 Bellini notes that, as opposed to Svevo’s narrations in the first person, in Savinio “invece, questa tipologia di narrazione in prima persona manca; il nodo psicologico è quasi sempre affidato a personaggi o situazioni nitidamente esposti al sapere interpretante dell'autore implicito, e le forme letterarie adottate (voce pseudo-enciclopedica, favola filosofica, saggio biografico) tendono ad avvalorare tale superiorità prospettica. È cioè da una posizione di chiaroveggenza che Savinio conduce il discorso, anche se lo fa attraverso i percorsi non rettilinei dell'ironia e del paradosso. Non a caso i due capolavori “psicoanalitici” del 1944, La nostra anima e Maupassant e «l'Altro», funzionano entrambi con questo stesso meccanismo retorico, in cui il primato enunciativo non spetta alla 105 in his own story work as a parody of psychoanalitical (but also mythographical) interpretation.

On the one hand, Psyche’s tale is told almost entirely from the first person, with only a few interruptions which, I would argue, place the reader also in the role of

(amateur) interpreter/analyst of the myth (and its debunking); on the other hand, a multiplicity of perspectives are represented within the text making it difficult to know whose ‘interpretation’ we receive: we hear Psyche’s story, explanations from Doctor

Sayas, objections from Perdita, Nivasio’s thoughts and memories; the text is framed by the metaphysical staging in the sky with Clio and Nivasio/the author’s father and includes a backstory before the narration picks up; and from the footnotes we learn that the additions, suggestions and modifications – the surgical interventions, perhaps – on the text itself have been at the hands of many: the author/narrator, the copyist,181 both the author’s pen and his typewriter – there even seems to be, remarkably, an original text to compare this recitation to since, in one footnote, the author remarks:

Abbiamo esaminato il testo: la parola usata da Psiche è proprio «imprecavamo». Si vede che per questa incolta fanciulla «imprecare» e «deprecare» hanno lo stesso significato. (44 fn 1)

The presence of this other text begs a question about its origin: did Psyche write down a version of her story? Or might this be a script that the doctor has given her to recite? The author chalks it up to the girl’s uneducated confusion.

While the narration builds through wordplay and association, and in so doing,

narrazione ma all'interpretazione. In entrambi i testi, costellati di digressioni e postille, campeggia la figura interpretante dell'autore, appena mascherata dal noto pseudonimo di Nivasio Dolcemare: ne La nostra anima, come visitatore di un «museo di manichini di carne» in cui ascolterà, accompagnato da un medico e da un'aristocratica amante (il medico: altra istanza interpretativa), un'inedita versione del mito di Psiche dalla viva voce della mitologica fanciulla, trasformata in pellicano (Bellini 176-177) 181 “L’originale porta «i discorsi surriferiti», ma al copista «surriferiti» non piace e ha messo «surrogate». Non possiamo dargli torto.” (40 fn 1) 106 embraces a certain liberty and playfulness, moving back and forth in time and various spatial and conceptual dimensions, the representation of its protagonist as a caged physical embodiment of a psyche paints a picture of her reality in stark contrast to the apparent freedom of the thought/mind. In his well known preface to Tutta la vita, Savinio offers an explanation of his artistic (and critical) production: “dare forma all’informe e coscienza all’inconsciente.” In a sense, he gives himself the same role as educator that he recognizes to Freud, who reinterprets myths as disguised allegories of the mind. To an extent, his rendering of Psyche as psyche (or the collapsing of the two), does indeed give form to what is often considered unformed, and conscience to the unconscious as she builds a narration of her experience that differs significantly from a mere registration of the unconscious (it is not an example of automatic writing). Similarly, Savinio's moral engagement (supercivismo) comes through recounting the origins of a harmonious world gone awry: the ‘divine Eros’ has been revealed to the P/psyche as nothing more than a grotesque impostor, but the P/psyche does not necessarily find herself better off with this knowledge; she is instead caged under the control of authorities that have quickly and efficiently substituted the god. When la nostra anima suffers, the world is in discord.

Psyche is first introduced as static, still, reduced to a sad monument to her former self. Nivasio remarks on what appear to be hieroglyphics182 covering her body, and the visitors inspect her more closely – with binoculars. They find instead graffiti-like inscriptions, “che ciascuno di noi può leggere sul muro di qualunque città d’Italia” (28),

182 Another Savinian reference to Freud, as for Freud, dream content was presented as a sort of hieroglyphics, a picture puzzle or rebus whose elements must be deciphered. Bonaventura explains the process of interpreting dreams: “… si tratta ora di scoprire la chiave di questi geroglifici, o le regole secondo cui questi rebus vengono costruiti: poiché nulla avviene a caso in natura: tutto è determinato, ed anche la trasformazione delle idee latenti nel contenuto manifesto del sogno è sottomessa a certe leggi.” (Bonaventura 190) 107 with writings from famous, anonymous and unknown people, so she becomes also a monument to a collective history. She is marked in different ways: pencil tracings, pocketknife etchings, carved by pin and filled with gunpowder – techniques that evoke a range of human experience from creating literature to enduring the scarring ravages of war. On Psyche, there are even inscribed some words that have fallen out of use, forgotten words that are like “documenti in un archivio” (34), traces of a lost history of language. In his “A Note on the ‘Mystic Writing Pad’” (1925), Freud considers the mind and its physical recording of experiences in the world: our “mental apparatus […] has an unlimited receptive capacity for new perceptions and nevertheless lays down permanent – even though not unalterable – memory-traces of them” (208): our memories and perceptions both penetrate and spread across the surface of the mental apparatus

(psyche), just as they do on Psyche’s skin.

These markings carry with them political implications as well: inscriptions on the body are the locus for a negotiation between the individual and society, perhaps even more so, in Psyche’s case, as her markings have been inscribed by many hands. On the one hand, when willingly acquired they can be a form of individual expression, a way of

“writing one’s own autobiography on the surface of the body”183 and situating the individual within a cultural landscape; on the other, they can be a form of punishment, a sign of ownership, devaluation of the individual, inscriptions of political power (in

183 “The body as a canvas, is not only the site where culture is inscribed but also a place where the individual is defined and inserted into the cultural landscape. Tattoos, scars, brands, and piercings, when voluntarily assumed, are ways of writing one’s autobiography on the surface of the body. These practices express belonging and exclusion, merge the past and the present, and, for the individual, define what Csordas (1994) has called “a way of being in the world” (p.10). Second, bodily inscriptions are all about boundaries, a perennial theme in anthropology between self and society, between groups, and between humans and divinity. (Schildkrout 338). 108 slaves, for example, or with the Nazi concentration camp markings),184 a suggestion that carries particular weight in the wartime years when Savinio was writing. In her physical embodiment, Psyche then becomes a sort of collective inscription - something that with its multiple interpretations myth can also be considered to be.

We are reminded of the physicality of P/psyche not only through the markings inscribed on Her/it, but also through her description as electrically powered/animated.

Doctor Sayas’ explanation at the very beginning of the story that the flesh figures in the museum are ‘animated’ by electricity, as well as his very clear demonstration that they are shut down with the cessation of this electrical current when he pulls the plug at the end, adds another layer to the psychopathological interpretation of this text. As suggested above, it seems to draw upon contemporary understandings of the role that electricity plays in relationship to both the body and the mind: in studies in both electrophysiology and neuroscience, electricity had been demonstrated to be a fundamental force in the operations of the nervous system, essential not only to the movement of the physical body, but also associated with psychic processes. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the late 19th and early 20th century saw frequent comparisons between the neurological network and external electrical and communication networks of power grids and radio and telegraphic systems. Freud had himself likened mental functioning (and libido) to electrical charges and currents, likely influenced by his early work in neurology which taught him that nerve impulses were electrical in nature.

184 “Human beings become canvas for the inscription of political power; on the other hand, they raise the question of the agency of the individual in constructing a relationship between body and society […] Tattoos, scarification, and brands can be imposed by authoritarian regimes in a symbolic denial of personhood. The brands and tattoos made by slave owners in ancient Greece and Rome, in the southern United States, Nazi concentration camp marking and tattooes made a punishment in south Asia, Europe, Russia, and colonial East India, and in convict transports to Australia are inscriptions that are part of systems of control and surveillance” (Schildkrout 323) 109 In his essay on The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence (1894), Freud hypothesizes that in mental functions, there is something that “possesses all the characteristics of a quantity (though we have no means of measuring it), which is capable of increase, diminution, displacement and discharge, and which is spread over the memory-traces of ideas somewhat as an electric charge is spread over the surface of a body. This hypothesis, which, incidentally, already underlies our theory of ‘abreaction’ in our

‘Preliminary Communication,’ can be applied in the same sense as physicists apply the hypothesis of a flow of electric fluid” (74-75). In the section on “Psicoenergetica,”

Bonaventura, following Freud himself, explains Freud’s theory of displacement as similar to an electron that can detach from its original material particle and attach itself to another, and in so doing associate the original emotional charge with another, transfer it to a different person, or animal, plant or inanimate object. This becomes particularly interesting when we consider the series of hybrid human-furniture representations, including most notably Poltrobabbo and Poltromamma, that Savinio creates starting in

1943, where his memories and emotional attachments to his family members are entangled with the furniture, the iconic material objects, with which they were most associated.185 Moreover, in explaining Freud’s theory of sublimation as it relates to the production of art, Bonaventura reports the electrical metaphor used by Freud (Savinio marked this passage in his copy of the book): the redirection of the libido into art through sublimation allows for a cathartic discharge of the accumulated energies sufficient for

185 “Come, poi, l'elettrone si stacca dalla particella materiale a cui inerisce, così la carica psichica può staccarsi dalla rappresentazione e fissarsi sopra un'altra, la quale quindi assume un valore affettivo che non aveva: e tale dislocazione (Verschiebung) ha una grande importanza nella vita psichica normale e patologica. Quante volte p. es. ci accade di sfogare un rancore, che non aveva potuto scaricarsi, sopra un'altra persona del tutto innocente ed estranea alla nostra ira! o, al contrario, di amare teneramente una persona, che non era l'oggetto diretto del nostro amore, ma sulla quale, come «sostitutivo», si riversa il nostro affetto! Anche gli animali, le piante, le cose inanimate possono attrarre su di sé i nostri sentimenti «dislocati» o spostati dai loro veri oggetti.” (Bonaventura 106) 110 relieving a disturbing pressure.186 It is precisely La nostra anima that Michel David points to as an example of Savinio’s rendering of sublimation:

[Savinio] fa del concetto di “scarica” o di “sfogo” la base della sua interpretazione del potere dell’arte: scaricare l’“isterismo”, o "sublimarlo", è compito dell'artista, "masochizzarsi all'estrosa riproduzione della loro miseria" è compito dei consumatori d'arte; coincide con Freud nell'indicare come scopo della civiltà la desessualizzazione dell'Amore, attraverso la favola di Psiche; e coincide anche con Freud nel riconoscere - con sempre maggiore intensità ironica e tragica - la realtà dominatrice di Thanatos. (David 361)

Although an interpretation of Savinio's text is necessarily more complicated than just this simplifying reading, indeed, within the story, Psyche first unmasks and then rejects the hypersexualized Eros, channeling the libido-electrical current that animates her into the retelling of her tale. And Savinio uses Psyche’s debunking of her own myth, and unmasking of Eros, as a way of “discharging” the tension within his own tale, La nostra anima: telling her tale, Psyche does indeed seem to have also rejected her relationship with Eros in order to recognize the dominating reality of Thanatos, or something quite similar to it. Caged in the underground Fleshworks museum, electrically reanimated, and ‘killed’ again by Sayas (pulling the plug) at the end when her story becomes too uncomfortable, Psyche’s control of her own story seems only barely autonomous, if at all.

3.1 Electroshock Therapy

As we have seen in the previous chapter, by the time Savinio wrote La nostra anima, the presence and importance of electricity in the functioning of the body and mind

186 “Come ogni forma di sublimazione, anche questa della libido nell'opera d'arte ha una funzione biologica utile in quanto scarica le energie accumulate, dà loro una soddisfazione sostitutiva ma sufficiente, le fa defluire e annulla così la loro pressione perturbatrice. Tale è la catarsi che già Aristotele assumeva come risultato psicologico e fine etico della tragedia” (Bonaventura 298-299). Bellini notes that Savinio had specifically indicated this section in his copy of Bonaventura. (Bellini 173) 111 had been well established for years: scientists were continuing to investigate and increasingly understand the specific nature of its potential applications. In addition to the connection to psychoanalysis and the Freudian conception of psychological drives,

Savinio’s apprehension stems from the expanding ways in which this new scientific knowledge is applied, not only for care but also in research and experiment. When he touches upon this matter, the target of his critique is most often the medical establishment that at times privileges its quest for knowledge over the dignity of the individual; for example, Savinio does not contest the idea that electricity performs an essential role in human physical and psychic activity, he questions some manners of its administration by doctors and scientists.

As discussed in Chapter 1, from ancient times, and with substantially increased frequency in the 19th and 20th century, electricity had been used for therapeutic purposes in the treatment of physical and mental illness conditions. However, some demonstrations of the effect of electricity on the body, from Aldini’s traveling tours of the electrical ‘reanimation’ of recently deceased corpses in the early 19th century to

Duchenne’s electrical stimulation of facial muscles to replicate (emotional) expressions, for example, not only demonstrated very visibly the powerful effect that the administration of electricity has on the body, but raised significant ethical questions and made evident the matter of manipulation or exploitation of the patient – for good or bad.

Against this backdrop, in 1938, two Italian scientists, Ugo Cerletti and Luigi Bini, brought this jarringly visible demonstration of electricity’s power also to the field of psychiatry with the development of electroshock therapy. Electroshock promised a much more humane and less expensive alternative to the other shock therapies used at the time

112 to treat schizophrenia,187 and the two scientists were hailed by the Fascist regime as examples of the Italian genius. It was explained as a way to reanimate (or ‘reboot’) the

‘living dead,’ to recover the person lost within the condition, restore life and ‘proper functionality’ to the psyche. However, the administration of this therapy was documented in the Italian press not only as effective, but also as sensationally violent (the first patient was reported to have screamed out “No more! It’s death!”; it was likened to the electric chair) and some questioned the ethics involved in ‘rebooting’ the psyche – whether it was not instead just cancellation of the individual or a form of mind control with effects not entirely different from hypnosis. Savinio himself, in later writings, seems skeptical about these treatments, for the violence inflicted on the patient as well as for the effect it has on the psyche. Writing about a friend who undergoes electroshock, he describes the procedure as a “form of incomplete electrocution that take the patient to within a hair of death and the tremendous anguish of the passage to the beyond crushes her within.”188 In a later article he wonders whether electroshock therapy, along with insulin and malaria treatments, weren’t just a modern update to cold showers, strait-jackets and beatings:

“What difference between the old systems and the new ones? Different methods.

Chemicals and electricity now, cold water and whip then. But the basis of the therapy is

187 Ladislas Meduna had theorized a ‘biological antagonism’ between epilepsy and schizophrenia, so shock therapies were developed to combat schizophrenia through the provocation of a seizure. The primary of these were through the use of insulin (proposed by Manfred Sakel in 1933) and through cardiazol (a type of chemotherapy, developed by Meduna in 1935). These two drugs took a tremendous toll on the body with side effects and treatments that lasted for weeks or longer. In 1936, António Egas Moniz proposed prefontal leucotomies (later renamed lobotomies), which were a particularly inexact method which erased/destroyed large swaths of the brain. 188 “In sèguito a quella cantata notturna nella neve, la mia povera amica fu ricoverata in una clinica per malattie nervose e, di poi, a varie riprese, fece altri soggiorni in quelle cliniche, e una volta le fu anche praticata quella forma di elettrocuzione intotale che porta il paziente a un dito dalla morte e la tremenda angoscia gli spreme dentro del trapasso nell'aldilà." (“Il senno rapito,” SD 661; orig. in “Il Corriere della Sera,” Sept 18, 1947) 113 the same: violent action.”189 In an already mentioned short story from 1949, “Visita di

K….,” Savinio writes about a visit an old acquaintance “K….” pays to il Signor Dido

(another of his alter-egos). “K….” has recently finished his rounds of electroshock therapy, and is tremendously enthusiastic and convinced of its effectiveness; however, after these assertions, he reports the loss of memory (which he says is coming back) and strange violent dreams in which he derives immense pleasure (euphoria) from killing men with tails, and after a while, he continues to speak, but only “in monosyllables, or in pairs of words detached one pair from another. His body stretched toward me. Evident on the forehead, in the eyes, the effort to concentrate, the enormous wish to persuade”190 – to persuade Signor Dido of the effectiveness of his treatment, which he doesn’t.

In La nostra anima, there is already a current running through Psyche when the visitors arrive, although she doesn’t move when the visitors arrive, but sits still in the corner: “Il braccio abbandonato lungo il fianco, la sua mano giocava mollemente con gli escrementi in forma di palline. Di tanto in tanto le sue spalle avevano uno scatto repentino” (26). However, when Sayas compels her to tell her story – at the doctor’s command, as it were – the electricity has a much greater effect on her body as if the current had been turned up considerably:

189 “Quali i sistemi terapeutici della psichiatria moderna? L'insulina, la malaria, l'elettroshock o l'ettrochoc. (Ignoro se la seconda parte di questa parola è stata presa dall'inglese o dal francese e dunque come va scritta: se si dicesse elettroscossa non avrei questi dubbi). Sistemi violenti tutti e tre, e uno così violento da portare il paziente a un pelo dalla morte. Quali i sistemi dell'antica psichiatria? La doccia fredda, la camicia di forza, le botte. Sistemi violenti. Abbandonati come barbarici e crudeli, e l'epoca che li consentiva flagellata d'oscurità. Quale differenza tra i sistemi di allora e i sistemi di ora? Differenza di mezzi. Chimica e elettricità ora, acqua fredda e frusta allora. Ma la base della terapia è la stessa: azione violenta. Era stato notato? «Identità» preoccupante. Una volta si credeva che il matto fosse posseduto dal diavolo, e per cacciare il diavolo si tiravano gran botte al matto. Sono sicuri i nostri psichiatri che le botte per mezzo dell'insulina o dell'elettroshock non hanno lo scopo di cacciare il diavolo?” (“Chiarito il mito di Orfeo nei boschi tranquilli dell'Apuania” SD 661; orig. in “Il Corriere della Sera,” Sept 30, 1948) 190 “O a monosillabi, o a parole appaiate e staccate paio da paio. Il corpo proteso verso me. Manifesto sulla fronte, negli occhi, lo sforzo di concentrazione, la grandissima volontà di persuasion.” (“Visita di K….”, SD 697; orig. “Corriere d’Informazione” Feb 14, 1949) 114 Un brivido corre il corpo della fanciulla, e il suono continuo laggiù nei penetrali del museo sale improvvisamente di tono come per effetto di una tensione maggiore, e dal mi bemol passa al mi naturale. […]Piena di liquido gorgoglio, la cornea voce non può continuare. Psiche vibra dal capo alle piante con un ribattere secco di castagnette, come se la centrale del museo le avesse acceso un focolare di elettricità sotto il sedere. Nivasio Dolcemare non si spiegò a tutta prima il rumore delle castagnette, ma indi a poco ne scoprì la cagione negli sbattimenti che al vibrare di quelle membra elettrizzate dava il lungo becco da pellicano pendulo per mezzo metro giù dalla faccia della fanciulla, e che le conferiva una espressione malinconica e inconfondibilmente tonta.” (36-37, italics mine)

This description suggests the convulsive fits that electroshock was meant to provoke. It seems plausible to propose that Savinio’s representation of a P/psyche to whom electricity is administered includes also an acknowledgment of the new and celebrated therapy that, as we said, had just in those years been developed by Italian scientists, and that consisted of administering electricity to the brain in order to restore psychic health. Though in Savinio’s story, it seems, the allusion to this new electrical therapy plays upon notions of the uncanny, the fantastical world Savinio creates, its distance from ‘common reality,’ the playful antinarrative tone don’t necessarily elicit a feeling of the uncanny in the reader. However, Psyche is a creature who exhibits many of the elements that might trigger the uncanny in someone who really sees her (like the visitors do, in particular Perdita): she is, after all, ambiguously human-inanimate, electrically returned from the dead, and herself represents a sort of "return of the repressed" by exposing what should have remained hidden, the true (and monstrous) face of Eros.

Freud begins his essay with Jentsch’s theory of the uncanny:

Jentsch has taken as a very good instance “doubts whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might not be in fact animate”; and he

115 refers in this connection to impression made by wax-work figures, artificial dolls and automatons.191

According to Jentsch definition, Savinio's Psyche would be a great candidate for eliciting a feeling of uncanniness, and indeed, as he looks upon Psyche, a question torments Nivasio (the verb ‘torment’ too suggests an experience of the uncanny for

Nivasio, its insistent and persistent return or haunting): “È una creatura viva costei, oppure una macchina?” (39-40). Freud asserts that a mere ‘intellectual uncertainty’ cannot itself produce a feeling of uncanniness, but that rather: “the ‘uncanny’ is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar.” To a degree, Savinio seems to suggest that la nostra anima - what we should be mostly familiar with, but we are estranged from - has been taken from us and imprisoned in a sordid room in the basement of a museum, that we – as a civilization - have entered disharmonious times in which we have lost our soul. Furthermore, in his essay Freud also provides a long list of quotations about the uncanny, and ends with these last two: from

Schelling, “‘Unheimlich’ is the name for everything that ought to have remained . . . hidden and secret, and yet has become visible,” and (unattributed) “To veil the divine, to surround it with a certain Unheimlichkeit.” Savinio's Psyche has unveiled the divine, exposed what ought to have remained hidden and secret: first by holding up the lantern to

Eros’ face, now in retelling her story to the visitors. Her tale is a shocking (for its readers,

Perdita first) form of “reversed” psychoanalisis, a debunking of an illusory (and somewhat authoritarian) myth, performed by a hybrid, humanoid, half-mechanical creature re-animated by electroshock. That the shock it conveys is of the comical and not

191 Freud continues, about Jentsch: “He adds to this class the uncanny effect of epileptic seizures and the manifestation of insanity, because these excite in the spectator the feeling that automatic, mechanical processes are at work, concealed beneath the ordinary appearance of animation.” (xx) 116 the “uncanny” kind only completes its reversal of psychoanalytical discourse, a

“surgical” linguistic therapy preferable to the application of electricity to the limbs.

4. Human-Machine

If, in the last section we looked at the evolution of Psyche into psyche, or the reinterpretation of Psyche’s tale as instead the psyche’s story, this section explores the relationship of ‘anima’ and ‘animato’: it will examine the human-machine relationship and the rise of both automata and of an understanding of the human as machinelike as a backdrop to Savinio’s text.

Recapitulating, Doctor Sayas has guided his guests down into the Fleshworks

Museum, populated by “manichini di carne” who are animated by an electrical current that rings insistently through the building. They have entered the room in which Psyche is displayed and examined both the conditions in which she ‘lives’ and – very closely – her own body and the signs, images, phrases, graffiti that has been inscribed onto its surface.

She begins to speak, and just after the first sentence she utters, the narrator reports

Nivasio’s thoughts:

È una creatura viva costei, oppure una macchina? Il sospetto tormenta Nivasio Dolcemare che questa rappresentante della nostra anima non sia veramente se non una figura disanimata. Quale la verità? La perfezione con che costei imita fino le imperfezione della natura, perfeziona lo stesso mistero di se stessa. (40)

In response to his initial question of whether Psyche is alive or a machine,

Nivasio is “tormented by the suspicion that this representation of our soul was really just a de-animated figure (“una figura disanimata,” my italics).” The original Italian wording, fairly rare in Italian, evokes a series of rich connotations: it suggests not only that she might be an inanimate object that is brought to ‘life,’ but implies that she was indeed

117 once animated and no longer is; that her soul has left or been taken away. Moreover,

“disanimato,” in a figurative sense, also conveys the meaning “disheartened,” depressed.

From this point of view, Psyche is a (grotesque) figure of melancholy.

In The Golden Ass, several times Apuleius describes Psyche in a way that confuses the distinction between animate/inanimate or alive/dead. Psyche’s beauty is so great it renders her a simulacrum or statue in the eyes of others.192 When she is led to her

“wedding with Death” (which will instead lead to her marriage with Eros), she is described as a “living corpse” (vivum funus). 193 With the completion of her final task in sight, as she returns from Hades back to the world of the living, Psyche opens the box given her by Persephone and is surprised to find not beauty but Stygian sleep that renders her a “sleeping corpse” (dormiens cadaver).194 From each of these corpse-like states,

Eros saves Psyche, restoring her to life. In La nostra anima, however, Sayas has replaced

Eros as the reanimator of Psyche, and now not through (divine) love, but through science and technology. This parallel-counterpoint of Sayas and Eros continues throughout the book.

Dante uses the word ‘disanimato’ in Purgatory, book XV, to suggest a body that is

192 “To be sure, they are astounded at the divine paradigm; but all are astounded as if at an image, a statue polished to perfection by some true artist’s skill.” (Apuleius and Relihan 89); “mirantur quidem divinam speciem, sed ut simulacrum fabre politum mirantur omnes.” (Apuleius 4.32) 193 “And so, after all the solemn ceremonies for this wedding with Death had been recited and enacted with the greatest of grieving, the entire population of the city follows along as the living corpse is escorted out, and they accompany the sobbing Psyche not to her bridal bed but to her burial.” (Apuleius and Relihan 90); “perfectis igitur feralis thalami cum summo maerore sollemnibus toto prosequente populo vivum producitur funus et lacrimosa Psyche comitatur non nuptias sed exequias suas.” (Apuleius 4.34) 194 “But there is not a single thing in it, nor any beauty, but only the sleep of the dead, the incontrovertibly Stygian sleep. And instantly brought to light by the removal of the stopper it lays siege to her, pours itself over every one of her limbs in a coagulated and comatose cloud; Psyche is stopped in her tracks, falls to the ground on the path, and it takes possession of her. And so she lay there, unable to move, nothing more than a sleeping corpse.” (Apuleius and Relihan 126); “Nec quicquam ibi rerum nec formonsitas ulla, sed infernus somnus ac vere Stygius, qui statim coperculo revelatus invadit eam crassaque soporis nebula cunctis eius membris perfunditur et in ipso vestigio ipsaque semita conlapsam possidet. et iacebat immobilis et nihil aliud quam dormiens cadaver.” (Apuleius 6.21) 118 “like-dead,” lacking in soul or unconscious – not conscious to the outside world, again implying the (apparent) loss of the soul from a being that was formerly alive195:

Non dimandai ‘Che hai?’ per quel che face I did not ask: ‘What is the matter?’ like one who Chi guarda pur con l’occhio che non vede, looks only with an eye that does not see, when quando disanimato il corpo giace; someone’s body lies unconscious (Purg. XV.133-135)

Within the contemporary context, Giuseppe Ungaretti uses the word ‘disanimata’ in his poem Sono una creatura (1916; written the year before La nostra anima is set) to convey the desperation he feels in the midst of war, suggesting that he is a creature now de-animated, as soulless as the rock on which he is sitting.196 Savinio’s pairing of creatura and disanimata to describe Psyche, surely echoes Ungaretti’s poem to describe the desperation of individual and collective souls in wartime.

Nivasio can’t figure out whether the electrically ‘animated’ Psyche is alive or only activated by this current. This ambiguity follows many predecessors both within the field of technology and in the arts that blur the lines between human and machine. Just after Doctor Sayas informs his guests that they will be stopping by a Fleshworks

195 Translation from Durling and Martinez, who tie this section to the contrast between physical and spiritual modes of vision: “The ‘eye that does not see’ is the eye of the body, which cannot see the events taking place within someone who is outardly unconscious, as the eye of the mind can do. Again the antithesis between the physical and spiritual modes of vision.” (257) Benvenuto da Imola explains ‘disanimato’ as: “idest, mortuum; quia post mortem oculus hominis non videt, sed spiritualis sic”; Francesco da Buti: “priva di anima”; Niccolò Tommaseo: “morto.” 196 Sono una creatura (1916) di Giuseppe Ungaretti: Come questa pietra del S. Michele così fredda così dura così prosciugata così refrattaria così totalmente disanimata Come questa pietra è il mio pianto che non si vede La morte si sconta Vivendo 119 museum, Nivasio formulates a question that he can’t quite manage to get out:

Nivasio Dolcemare era curioso di conoscere il misterioso processo per cui gl’imbalsamatori di questo nuovo Museo Grévin erano riusciti a conservare le figure di carne senza che queste si corrompessero, ma la domanda gli si fermò sulla lingua. (14)

Though it isn’t clear whether the flesh figures are indeed embalmed – (or just entirely electrically manipulated, mannequin-puppets made of flesh), Nivasio’s assumption that they are dead recalls the scenes from Roussel’s Locus Solus, in which the scientist Canterel electrically resuscitates (‘activates’) the dead in carefully curated tableaux vivants so that they may reenact important moments from their lives. In what might be considered a grotesque version of a tableau vivant – number I as her door indicates –, Savinio’s Doctor Sayas presents to his guests a revivified Psyche who does indeed recount – if not physically act out – important moments from her life. Like the actors in Locus Solus, Psyche performs until her electrical current is taken away, though in La nostra anima, her electricity is shut off abruptly, cutting short her whispered response to Nivasio. While Canterel’s intent is to celebrate the lives of the dead, Sayas’ intentions are not so clear. Savinio also depicts Sayas as a sort of Frankenstein who has assembled different flesh parts into a whole body – a full ‘creature’ – that has been brought back from the dead, but whose composition itself and electrical reanimation may still constitute some form of violation of natural laws or violation of ‘human’ dignity – only in Sayas’ case, his creature hasn’t managed yet to escape his ultimate control and remains trapped in the basement of the museum.

Earlier and contemporary literary, cinematic and art works provide Savinio with models for his ambiguously animated automaton Psyche as a woman-like creature who is pure and idealized, the object of sexual desire and/or a source of fear and repulsion.

120 Hoffmann’s Olympia and Villiers de L’Isle-Adam’s Hadaly explored the idea of building a passive idealized woman superior to the real one because rid of her emotional and intellectual shortcomings, a perfecting that included stripping her of her own voice.197

The Surrealists held a different vision of the idealized Woman: Muse, machine, Virgin, beautiful, terrifying, powerful and sexy.

The female mannequin/doll was a particular obsession for many (male) Surrealists, as an object of subliminal longing and of erotic objectification, but at the same time a source of anxiety, conflating fear of the artificial and the mechanical with fear of Woman and femininity. She embodied the idealised woman, always available, always remote and always scary. With desire being the main driving force behind the omnipotent thought, and Surrealism being the almost exclusive preserve of male artists, it is no surprise to find so many object-women in Surrealism’s Golden Age. (Bauduin 186)

Surrealism itself was defined by Bréton in the First Manifesto as “psychic automatism,”198 and his use of an electrical metaphor to describe the creative process199 along with the identification of the woman not only as Muse but as the Unconscious itself

(as in Breton’s Autoportrait écriture automatique) led to a series of depictions of the electrified woman (or woman-machine, woman-mannequin).

As a muse, automatic woman stretches as the ideal conductor between the male surrealist poet and his art. Woman, as a “conductor of mental electricity” (Breton, Arcane 17 11),

197 Though Hadaly spoke, she was created to reflect and affirm the thoughts and desires of Lord Ewald. Savinio plays with this love for the woman-object, and admits to his fascination with this silent creature: “Ora sì che io intendo l'anima di Hoffmann, e le ballate lunari e l'amore di Pigmalione, e come si possa dare il cuore, e l'anima, e l'onore, e la vita a una statua, a una bambola, a un simulacro. Ben li diede Paride al simulacro di Elena... È tempo di luna. Stasera mi nasconderò nella Triennale fra le trine e i tessuti; e quando mezzanotte sonerà, e lo sguardo di Ecate entrerà attraverso la vetrata, io, piano piano e tremante, uscirò dal mio morbido nascondiglio, piegherò il ginocchio sulla pedana davanti a Olimpia, e a lei muta, a lei arcana, a lei viva della sua vita senza vita, a lei bellissima e più bella di ogni creatura viva, la destra sul cuore, con voce rotta dai singhiozzi, dirò….” (ACC 231-232) 198 “SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express – verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner – the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.” (Breton, First Manifesto 26) 199 “It is, as it were, from the fortuitous juxtaposition of the two terms that a particular light has sprung, the light of the image, to which we are infinitely sensitive. The value of the image depends upon the beauty of the spark obtained; it is, consequently, a function of the difference of potential between the two conductors. When the difference exists only slightly, as in a comparison, the spark is lacking.” (Breton, First Manifesto 37) 121 generates creative sparks within the poet. At the same time she figures as a metaphor for the art he produces: she links the poet with his object of art and is the object of his art. (Conley 27)

In his design notes for The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (1915-

23), Marcel Duchamp stresses that the connections between the bride and the bachelors are meant to be electric, producing cinematic effects with the stripping – the electricity both animating force behind the work as well as a metaphor for the sexual attraction.200 In

Man Ray’s series, Electricité201 (1931) one of the images superimposes electrical waves over a background image of two female torsos. A gelatin print of Hans Bellmer’s The

Doll (1934-35) shows an eerie electrical aura emanating off the disfigured doll. The 1938

International Exhibition of Surrealism featured a “Rue Surréaliste” lined with sixteen mannequins, which, though not electrical, were provocatively dressed decorated and staged by artists of the movement, some veiled or caged, associated with animals (birds, bats, beetles) and machinery, lust and danger. (This exhibit could indeed be considered an inspiration for Sayas’ museum.)

In addition to these representations of object-women, disfigured dolls and literary automata, women were also often presented as vessels for communication, the delivery mechanism for messages from the unconscious or from the beyond or automatized bodies controlled by an outside source. Hypnotized subjects, Spiritualist mediums and performances of pseudoautomata further blurred the lines between human and machines.

200 “In spite of this cooler. there is no discontinuity between the bach. machine and the Bride. But the connections. will be. electrical. and will thus express the stripping: an alternating process. Short circuit if necessary- Take care of the fastening: it is necessary to stress the introduction of the new motor: the bride. […] The bride accepts this stripping by the bachelors, since she supplies the love gasoline to the sparks of this electrical stripping; moreover, she furthers her complete nudity by adding to the 1st focus of sparks (electrical stripping) the 2nd focus of sparks of the desire-magneto. Blossoming (Duchamp 39, 44) 201 This series of 10 photographs reproduced as photogravures was commissioned in 1931 by the Compagnie Parisienne de Distribution d'Electricité (CPDE) for “promoting the personal consumption of electricity.” (Getty, “Wind”) 122 Following on the heels of Mesmerism, hypnotism had been a source of fascination and anxiety from the middle of the 19th century, especially from the time that Charcot and the

Salpêtriere School associated it with hysteria. Hypnotized individuals were feared to be reduced to the status of automata and their actions dictated by external forces of suggestion, which could even lead them to commit crimes. Hypnotism was frequently a source of great interest in the newspapers and scientific magazines of the 1930s; “La

Stampa,” for example, ran a 9-part series on hypnotism in December of 1937.202

Mediums presented themselves as the vessels of communication between the living and the dead, and as technologies developed, including the telegraph, the telephone and the radio, they incorporated them into their acts to make them increasingly marvelous and convincing.203 The Surrealists, too, embraced mediums and séances as demonstrations of automatic writing: a photograph by Man Ray, entitled Waking Dream Séance that appeared on the cover of “La Revolution Surréaliste” on January 12, 1924, shows an all

202 These articles addressed the history of hypnotism (back to Mesmer) and the possibilities of linking hypnotism to radio control and telepathy, for example. 203 “In spiritualist circles the somnambulist was reinvented as the medium, and s/he was often regarded as a medium in a material sense: a relay, a human device through which a spirit could communicate; an ‘information machine’ as Hanegraaff calls it. Such technical materiality is relevant here, as Spiritualism was partly inspired by the uncanny nature of new technological inventions. This was not a new development; on the contrary, technical and scientific inventions such as magnets and electricity had played a role in mesmerism and subsequently artificial somnambulism from the outset. A magnetic tub with metal rods was often used in the practice of Mesmer’s animal magnetism. This squared with the scientific aspirations and expectations of many mesmerists and magnetisers; in the minds of many others, though, it also bred the notion that technology could be quite uncanny. It is no coincidence that table rapping, apparently carried out by spirits, started not long after the invention of the telegraph, and the term ‘spiritual telegraph’ became current in spiritualist discourse. With the invention of the planchette or writing board around 1854, a writing device that seems to separate the pencil-holding hand from the body (let alone mind), spirits to all appearances began to write through their medium. With the advent of photography, spirits were ostensibly captured on the sensitive plate, often leading to very surprising and even dramatic results. With the invention of the telephone spirits started to speak through the medium and apparent phone calls from the dead began to occur. The radio emphasised even further that disembodied voices of real beings could effortlessly and quite instantaneously be heard over immense distances, and mediums themselves were seen as analogous to this new technology.” (Bauduin 69-70). “The medium was passive, but passive in a particularly dynamic way. She was receptive, sensitive, a vehicle-a medium-by which manifestation appeared. All mediums, men or women, had to be, in Spiritualist parlance, feminine, or negative (borrowing again from electricity and magnetism, a technical term which also has implications for photography), in order to let the spirit world manifest itself. (Gunning 52) 123 male group of artists gathered around a lone woman seated at a typewriter, channeler of the beyond. Savinio himself (as usual, “tra il serio e il faceto”) relates a story about one such sitting:

Una sera dell'inverno 1918, durante una seduta spiritica in casa Rana (Corso Buenos Aires 5, Milano) la signora Violetta Rana, medium di straordinaria potenza, evocò per invito di un suo cognato, affetto di catoblefarite in seguito a gasamento in guerra, un suo zio morto molti anni prima. La signora Rana non praticava il dialogo coi morti mediante il tavolino pulsante, ma per mezzo della scrittura automatica, usata a poetici fini dai surrealisti, e nel corso della quale essa, in istato di transe, riusciva a scrivere anche in lingue a lei ignotissime. (ACC 149-150)

Not only could new technologies help to channel the dead and report their messages, but others like the photograph, gramophone and cinema could register images and voices from the past and replay and redisplay them.204 Pseudoautomata were machines that appeared to autonomously interact and engage with the viewers but were actually operated or manipulated by a person hidden out of sight. Some of the most famous played games, like Wolfgang von Kempelen’s “The Turk” chess player (1770) or

Psycho the Whist Player (1875), while others could be seen writing, drawing, playing musical instruments, delivering food to customers, etc.205 Some pseudoautomata replicated speech and could converse with the audience: an early example, from 1845, was Joseph Faber’s Euphonia (presented with the face of a woman) who was a speech synthesizer able to speak in any European language.206 As technology developed, it became incorporated into these talking devices. The ‘fortuneteller’ Madam Radora

(1922), also known as the “Chatterbox,” combined modern technology with the divining

204 See Kittler. 205 See Chapuis and Droz, Automata: A Historical and Technological Study, 1958, esp. Chapter xviii on “Trick Machinery, Fake Automata Plays and Semi-Automata” 355-377 and Goldston, Exclusive magical secrets. 206 It is "... a speech synthesizer variously known as the Euphonia and the Amazing Talking Machine. By pumping air with the bellows ... and manipulating a series of plates, chambers, and other apparatus (including an artificial tongue ... ), the operator could make it speak any European language.” (Lindsay) 124 power of a medium: thanks to an assistant who operated a keyboard that strung together sequences of sound film, she was able to give personalized responses to her visitors. 207

We could conclude from this cursory survey that Savinio's Psyche herself could belong to this genealogy.

In La nostra anima, Psyche herself indeed evokes various aspects of these electric dolls, automata and (semi)automated, externally controlled devices; she, too, might be the vessel for someone else’s communication: the narrator describes Psyche as trancelike in her telling, suggesting perhaps a state of hypnosis or that her narration might be an automated or prerecorded track that Sayas or some other authority at the museum has activated. Though Sayas and Perdita have been conversing on the side, the narrator observes:

Costei in verità, mentre Perdita e Sayas scambiavano le parole qui sopra riportate, non aveva cessato di parlare. È evidente che messa una volta sulla via del racconto, nulla può arrestare Psiche, interromperla, deviarla. (39)

207 From Chapuis, who reports the article from “Je sais tout” July 1939: “One of these mechanical creatures called "the chatterbox" talked very well, but it was worked by a different system which Papp describes as follows : ‘Sitting in her armchair, this lady answers any questions put to her by her visitors, whereas all the other figures of this type have a vocabulary which is limited by the number of discs that can be stored inside their chests. This untiring gossip, however, is helped by a human being placed in the wings, to whom she is connected by two wires. This 'assistant' operates a kind of piano with fifty keys. Each of these sets in motion a fragment of sound film corresponding to one of the most frequently used syllables in the English language. When the question has been asked, the operator first writes down his answer and then presses the keys of the appropriate syllables one after the other. In this way he arranges next to each other corresponding strips of sound film and transmits, through a loud-speaker concealed in the mechanical lady's head, the answer which has been requested. Just as by pressing down the keys of a typewriter the letters forming the words are written on the paper one by one, so the series of selected syllables make up a complete sentence.’” (Chapuis 382) She is described also in “Reading Thoughts by Radio: Can thoughts be read by radio?”, Popular Mechanics, May 1924, 770: “Madam Radora” seems to prove that they can. Madam is not a human being, but a life-size automaton shown at the Permanent Radio Fair in New York. Her “thoughts” and movements are controlled entirely by wireless; no wires of any kind are attached to the table whereon she rests, and a liberal reward is promised the person who can prove that this is not true. Persons desiring to ask questions simply stand before ‘Madam Radora’ with their hands resting on a special pedestal carrying a number of electrical contacts. Radora then bends over her crystal, and answers the questions put to her in a clear, feminine voice.” 125 Perhaps Psyche is merely the vehicle (medium) to deliver a message from Doctor

Sayas, her narrative has been supplied to her, and she recounts it automatically from start to finish.

However, part of the ambiguity of Psyche’s nature is that she does not merely recite her narrative, but also interacts with her visitors, answering Perdita’s questions about the differences between her story and Apuleius’ version and, at the end of the story, beginning to whisper a response to Nivasio’s question about what true love is. As we have seen with the pseudoautomata, though, the technology of the time does not exclude that this apparently autonomous reaction doesn’t originate instead from some other source, isn’t still a veiled form of manipulation.

One very famous automaton that Savinio almost certainly has in mind when describing Psyche is Vaucanson’s “Digesting Duck” (1739),208 an automaton heralded for simulating not only the mechanisms of movement like other automata of its time, but also the biochemical processes of digestion: it was an “eighteenth-century mechanical duck that swallowed corn and grain and, after a pregnant pause, relieved itself of an authentic- looking burden was the improbable forebear of modern technologies designed to simulate animal and intelligent processes.” (Riskin 599). In describing his part-avian Psyche,

Savinio highlights her digestive process in two consecutive sentences:

Sul pavimento posavano due ciotole: una piena di acqua inverdita dalla corruzione, l'altra gialla di chicchi di granturco. Intorno alla ignuda fanciulla le ulive escremenziali erano più fìtte da sotto il sedere dilagava a falda sul pavimento un liquido denso e giallastro.” (25-26)

208 See Chapuis 233-242 (on Vaucanson and Rechsteiner’s ducks) and Riskin. 126 Savinio’s Psyche, of course, is not a duck but a pelican (recurrent Savinian image as well as, somewhat oddly, a symbol of Christ), 209 but her bird-like appearance, her diet of corn and immediate association of it with the resulting ‘excremental olives’ link her to

Vaucanson’s automaton. In L’Ève future, Edison mentions Vaucanson as an example of a previous crafter of automata, whose automata, lacking in electricity were no better than scarecrows.210 In Psyche, Savinio updates Vaucanson’s Duck not only by making her electric and but also by making the inner process she simulates not only the biochemical process of digestion, but also the psychical operations of the mind.

Though the Duck could perform amazing mechanical acts, the digestion itself was faked. However, for Riskin, this simulation demonstrated Vaucanson’s “organizing assumption that the imitation of life’s inner processes had limits. The Duck, in its partial fraudulence, made manifest both the process of mechanical simulation and its boundary.”

(610). The automata of the time did not represent their creator’s contentions that life and

209 Dante uses the metaphor of the pelican for Christ in Par. XXV 112-114: Questi è colui che giacque sopre ‘l petto del nostro pellicano, e questi fue di su la croce al grande officio eletto. Savinio had used the image of “l’uomo pellicano” in an article La realtà dorata in “La voce” (1916). Pietromarchi reads this description as messianic. About the ‘uomo di ferro’ from Chants de la Mi-mort, he writes: “È soltanto, mi è parso, attraverso la mediazione di Apollinaire e di Soffici, che Savinio raggiunge ne La realtà dorata la definizione di un «Uomo Nuovo» in cui l'essere meccanico è sublimato da un'ascendenza divina, e il cui carattere ideale è frenato dalla sua dichiarata appartenenza al presente. […] E già nella conclusione de La Realtà Dorata si può ravvisare il presentimento che l'Uomo di ferro non è che un sogno, forse una chimera: Gl'ingranaggi delle viscere spasiman nel fermento; dei sobbalzi sismici annunziano l'evento della loro stridente maternità. Da quel lievito scaturirà il prototipo della genialità mediterranea - l'uomo à coulisse, l'uomo religioso, l'uomo pellicano che si dilania il petto donde schizza la folgore e l'ombra, ed il cuore fiammeggiante!...... Ma quell'uomo, ov'è?... Chi è?... (Pietromarchi 119-120, 116-117, citing Savinio at the end) 210 “Poor fellows, for lack of the proper technical skills, they produced nothing but ridiculous monsters. Albertus Magnus, Vaucanson, Maelzel, Horner, and all that crowd were barely competent makers of scarecrows. Their automata deserve to be exhibited in the most hideous of wax museums; they are disgusting objects from which proceeds a rank smell of wood, rancid oil, and gutta-percha” (Villiers de l’Isle-Adam 61) 127 machine are the same, rather “their simultaneous enactment of both the sameness and the incomparability of life and machinery.” It already conveyed the profound ambivalence, extended throughout modernity, about the relationship between man and machine: “The defecating Duck and its companions commanded such attention, at such a moment, because they dramatized two contradictory claims at once: that living creatures were essentially machines and that living creatures were the antithesis of machines.” (612).

Savinio, too, embraces this fundamental contradiction; his portrayal of Psyche serves to reinforce, not elucidate, this mystery.

What makes it so difficult to determine whether this creature is alive or a machine is the “perfection with which she imitate(s) nature even in its imperfections, which

(brings) to perfection her own mystery.” The presence of imperfections, which characterize both the human condition and Psyche’s lapsus-filled narration, only reinforce the mystery about what precisely constitutes a Human and about the operations of the unconscious. As Savinio has repeatedly asserted, the Human is fundamentally hybrid and monstrous, a non-homogeneous and imperfect being. In an essay from 1920,

Savinio comments on man’s lingering unhappiness notwithstanding his apparent victories over nature and the other creatures, and his privileged though solitary position in the cosmos, and attributes this unhappiness to his fundamental condition as “uomo ironico”: in his effort to become strong, invincible and invulnerable, man “abituò la propria mente non ad affrontare gli ostacoli, ma ad aggirarli per così dire e penetrarli per le vie più nascoste e remote. Scoprì in sé le infinite risorse dell'ironia, e si sentì sicuro e signore”; however, though with irony as his weapon he had thought to have dominated or

128 eliminated the forces he feared stood against him, there still remained traces of all of them:

Fu allora che, la prima volta, egli si chinò sullo specchio, e subito dovette ritrarsene, inorridito all'aspetto ibrido e mostruoso della sua faccia su cui, confusamente, vide rispecchiate tutte le scorie di cui aveva mondato la terra.211

In an essay Lo Stato from 1947, Savinio again identifies this fundamental hybridity, this connection to nature and inability to detach ourselves completely from it, as the underlying and fundamental explanation for our unhappiness and discord:

Difficile è staccarsi interamente dalla natura. Difficile uscire del tutto dalla natura. Difficile liberarsi completamente dalla natura. Difficile trasformarsi interamente, o meglio formare interamente la nostra natura di uomini, diventare integralmente «noi», del tutto autonomi, soltanto uomini. I più perfetti di noi trascinano ancora lembi di sé nella natura. Questo il dramma dell'uomo, la sua condanna, la sua dannazione. Questo ibridismo, questo dualismo, questa mostruosità. Questo partecipare di due nature diverse, una delle quali estranea. E questa la ragione principale della nostra infelicità. (Sorte 93- 94)

In both of these passages, written in the aftermath of the First and Second World

Wars, Savinio meditates on the unhappy and disharmonious human condition, one that

Psyche embodies in her hybrid form, mechanized actions, bitter sarcastic retelling and degraded state in the museum basement. However, Savinio also argues that we can cope through the production of art, even channeling those imperfections and translating them into creative possibilites. Psyche too reinforces her own mystery through the

‘imperfections’ in her narration, especially in her lapsus. However, these imperfections, precisely because they are unexpected – as he explained in the example of the “uomo- gelso” – can be fortuitous and fertile, by dramatically altering perspectives and creating new possibilities for interpretation.

211 He continues: “… Ma nemmeno stavolta conviene perdersi d'animo, e nonostante i pericoli e gli effetti che ne nascono, ci rimane a prendere una nuova e più forte risoluzione: quella cioè di essere uomini ironici, sapendo di essere tali.”(Prime chiose sull'ironia, in «La Ronda», July 1920, 18-20, 25-26) 129 Guardiamoci dunque di contaminare l’Inaspettato, e onoriamolo invece come si conviene quando esso si presenta a noi candido e sincero. Onoriamolo nel rifuso, e soprattutto in alcuni refusi particolarmente felici, ... e che mutando il significato di una parola è riuscito a sconvolgere per un po’ e a trasformare in noi il concetto della verità. E perché non continuare d’ora innanzi a pensare la Verità, anche nel modo così inaspettatamente suggerito da quel refuso? Contributo involontario alla pluralità delle verità, e alla monotonia della Verità felice correttivo. 212

These imperfections are the condition of man but as such should be celebrated as contributing to the plurality of truths, deviations from an idealized, authoritarian or repressive norm (that had been the paradigm for centuries, but also exalted under the

Fascist regime), possibilities extending forward and outward in an everexpanding network of associations.

As she begins to speak, the hybrid Psyche solidifies her own mystery. And just as this thought comes to him, Nivasio abandons his attempt to solve the mystery, to determine whether she is alive or machine. The same uncertainty governs another work by Savinio that we have already mentioned: Il Signor Münster,213 which was written in those same years and functions to an extent as a companion piece to La nostra anima,214 tells the story of a man who, as he goes about his daily activities, one day realizes that

“he has begun to die … he has begun to be dead”.215 The plot unfolds as a sort of

212 Savinio comments on a mistake in transcription by Croce which suggested that “la verità nasce dall’inganno,” and uses this instance to both celebrate the ‘unexpected’ and as an opportunity to distance himself from the automatic writing proposed by the Surrealists. He introduces the quote above with: “Negli’incontri fortuiti delle parole, i Greci riconoscevano la voce della divinità. La sede dell’ispirazione poetica a noi ripugna collocarla nella regione inquietante dell’arbitrio e del caso (più che altro per ragioni umanamente sentimentali, come a un figlio ripugna il pensare che sua madre ha degli amanti) ma non osiamo neppure collocarla nella regione della logica, in mezzo alle sue strade squadrate e al suo urbanismo razionale. Sugl’incontri fortuiti delle parole, e per mezzo della scrittura automatica, i surrealisti avevano tentato di fondare una nuova poetica; ma il fascino e il mistero dell’inaspettato (se pur è il caso di parlare di fascino e di mistero) svaporano ove l’inaspettato sia voluto, predisposto e organizzato da una piccola tribù di scrittori sterili, privi di poetica fantasia, e in condizione di trance più o meno simulata.” (“Refuso (felice),” NE 318-19; orig. in “Il Mediterraneo” May 31, 1941) 213 Written in 1941, published in 1943 CLV. See Tinterri, “Note ai testi: Casa ‘La Vita’,” CLValtri 933- 934. 214 They are, in fact, republished by Adelphi together (1981). 215 “Non gli rimangono piu dubbi. Egli sa che «ha cominciato a morire». […] aveva cominciato a esser 130 Frankenstein in reverse, where instead of being assembled from a collection of body parts and made to ‘live,' Signor Münster instead watches his transition from living to dead, becoming lighter and lighter as body parts slowly fall away one at a time, surviving only as anima.216 Where Psyche has become heavy, caged in the basement of the museum, the soul trapped within the body – or become the body itself, with Signor Münster, the soul is liberated from the body, light and wandering through the streets of Rome. On the mystery of Signor Münster’s life that continues after death the narrator says:

Resta da svelare il mistero della sua vita che continua anche dopo la morte del corpo, di questa luce che arde anche dopo la distruzione della lampada. Ma non sa il signor Münster, lui che tanto ha meditato intorno a questi problemi e tanto ha scritto, che è indelicato, e nonché indelicato è imprudente, e nonché imprudente è immorale, e nonché immorale è vano cercare di sollevare il velo sui misteri dell'anima, e che la metafisica della vita va accolta senza esame, senza diffidenza, con animo puro e grato come la poesia? (SM 87)

The implicit suggestion here is that metaphysics is precisely the poetic mystery of life and death, its source is our uncertainty before the animate and inanimate, what Freud called the Uncanny. After using the metaphor of the lamp (arguably the central object of

Psyche’s tale) to describe the relationship of body and soul, the narrator suggests that is it not only indelicate, imprudent and immoral, but also useless (vano) to attempt to lift the veil on the mysteries of the soul (anima). As Nivasio looks upon Psyche (la nostra anima), he also concludes that it would be useless (vano) to continue to try to interrogate this mystery and elaborates on why: morto.” He is not afraid, but suddenly quite curious to see what happens, even somewhat in spite of himself: “Resta da svelare il mistero della sua vita che continua anche dopo la morte del corpo, di questa luce che arde anche dopo la distruzione della lampada. Ma non sa il signor Münster, lui che tanto ha meditato intorno a questi problemi e tanto ha scritto, che è indelicato, e nonché indelicato è imprudente, e nonché imprudente è immorale, e nonché immorale è vano cercare di sollevare il velo sui misteri dell'anima, e che la metafisica della vita va accolta senza esame, senza diffidenza, con animo puro e grato come la poesia?” (SM 86-87) 216 “Non sente più il proprio corpo. Levarsi in piedi lo ha voluto lui, ma il movimento è avvenuto «a folle». Ora egli potrebbe bucarsi una mano, un piede senza soffrire. La sua anima va in giro, guarda, ascolta, cerca un altro amore, diverso da quello che cercava quaggiù e non ha trovato.” (SM 113) 131 Del resto sarebbe vano tentar di penetrare esso mistero, partendo dai princìpi tuttora in vigore sui modi di conoscenza della natura delle cose. Non è neppur il caso di compiere una delle cosiddette «tramutazioni dei valori», siderando naturale quello che è considerato artificiale e viceversa. Questo procedimento niceano e puerile ci farebbe cadere nel duplo dell'errore che annebbia la mente umana. L'uomo pensa male perché pensa circolarmente. Ritorna di continuo sugli stessi pensieri, e scambia per pensieri nuovi l'altra faccia dei pensieri già pensati. È il pensiero classico. Il pensiero chiuso. Il pensiero conservatore. Il pensiero che di se stesso trova Dio. Chi ha il coraggio di rinunciare a questa «divina» conclusione, rompe il cerchio e si mette per una via libera e diritta, che non conosce meta, non conosce conclusione perché è infinita.” (40)

Our ways of knowing the nature of things cannot penetrate the mystery of the

Psyche, the mystery of the anima. Whether she is alive or machine is not really the fundamental question, as the contraposition of artificial and natural sets up a false binary, and leaves us trapped within circular thinking. Savinio sees the circle not as a form of perfection, but as a prison217 – and a prison that traps people in the inhuman condition of immortality, instead of allowing for the most human and desired death (umanissima morte).218 If we manage to escape the circle – break from the “divine” conclusion, not only will we be liberated on our own paths, set free to explore and understand beyond the binary of natural and artificial, but we will eventually reach the stillness of eternity.219

217 “Protagora nel cerchio vedeva il segno della perfezione, io vedo il segno della prigionia. E questi cerchi che mondi e mondi tracciano in perpetuo intorno a noi, questo infinito girare dell'universo non è se non la forma di uno sterminato carcere: una giostra pazza e disperata.” (“Giostra” NE 205; orig. in “La lettura” July 1943). Savinio held this view of the circle even from his earliest days of writing: “Quel greco, che si chiamava Protagoras e propugnò la giustezza del cerchio, si diceva filosofo: fu invece un malfattore.” (Hermaphrodito; orig. in “La Voce,” from Mar-Dec 1916) 218 “Per Protagora sofista il cerchio indicava la perfezione. Noi preferiamo l'angolo, il rettangolo, il quadrato. Chi loda Giotto per il suo o, non sa che danno gli fa. […] Il cerchio è anche il segno dell'immortalità. Questa condizione inumana noi non l'amiamo, non la desideriamo e aspettiamo con fiducia l'umanissima morte.” (dated, August 16 in DTC 49; orig. “Francavilla” in “Il Mediterraneo,” Sept 16, 1939) 219 “Pensai che per seguire il proprio destino l'uomo deve sfuggire alla rotazione, a qualunque rotazione, alla rotazione della giostra, alla rotazione della terra, alla rotazione universale, la quale vuole chiuderlo nel suo giro e implicarlo nel destino comune. Pensai che anche l'ordine morale è rappresentato da una retta che contrasta al cerchio. Pensai che l'uomo nel suo ideale cammino non deve mai tornare indietro e tanto meno sui propri passi, come lo costringe il cerchio. Pensai che nostro dovere è di rinunciare alla seduzione del cerchio, è di salvarci dal cerchio e da qualunque movimento meccanico o ideale, da qualunque movimento fisico o metafisico, e arrivare a poco a poco, puri di movimento, al cuore dell'immoto: alla nostra eternità.” (“Decadenza della giostra” NE 209-10) 132 This metaphysical reality requires that we also rupture the rigid boundaries we establish in cataloging people, animals, objects, etc., in dividing and organizing them into separate and distinct categories220 – and develop a more ‘christian’ understanding of the universe(s), one that sees the various elements as interconnected:

È da questo principio [cataloguing] che viene tutto il meschinamento ‘personale’, tutto l'isolato, tutto l'incongregabile, tutto il non-universale, tutto il non-cristiano; in una parola tutto lo ‘sterile’. (Considero il cristianesimo come il sentimento più poetico, più alto, più profondo, più ‘completo’ dell'universale, e tanto più universale che nell'idea dell'universo il cristianesimo ha fatto rientrare anche tutto quanto la mente può concepire di là dall'universo - di là dagli universi: un sentimento che non ha bisogno, che non ha possibilità di perfezionamenti, che ha superato antico e moderno, passato e futuro e sul quale la Storia non ha presa: la condizione 'non drammatica' per eccellenza).221

It’s worth noting that in both cases – with Signor Münster and with Nivasio – each must break away from trying to penetrate the mystery, the exercise was even tormenting Nivasio; the change in thinking is not automatic, perhaps even difficult, but necessary.

The fundamental question shifts away again from whether Psyche is alive or machine (composition and form), to questions of control: whether she retains autonomy or whether she has been constructed or conditioned to fulfill some need of her master- creator, an object that he might exploit and manipulate to deliver his message or onto which he can project his desires (sexual, conceptual, spectacular). For a lover of

220 “Da questo non vedere e non capire l'uomo, la cosa, l'oggetto se non dentro una loro breve e ridotta cubatura, nasce anche la ‘misteriosa' necessità di catalogare gli uomini, le cose, gli oggetti e dividerli in categorie: per distinguerli; nasce la misteriosa necessità di dare a ciascun uomo, a ciascuna cosa, a ciascun oggetto un titolo: necessità che tanto più viva diventa quanto più l'uomo è basso di mente.” (“Teatro” NE 357; orig. in “La Stampa” Feb 28, 1943) 221 “Teatro” NE 357-358. “L'idea 'umano' ostacola la stessa umanità dell'uomo. L’’idea ‘umano’ è una restrizione dell'umanità dell'uomo. L'idea ‘umano’ tende a costituire dentro l'uomo un uomo ridotto, limitato, incompleto e tale da diventare un nemico della stessa umanità: un nemico di se stesso. L'umanità ‘umana’ diventa una controumanità e quanto è al mondo di meschino, di egoista, di malvagio, di stupido, viene dall'umanità ‘umana.’ L'uomo, per essere uomo, deve dimenticare di essere ‘umano.’ (“Teatro” NE 357) 133 etymology (“psychology of language”222), after all, autonomous (“having its own laws”) and automatos (“acting of itself”) would seem to be compatible concepts, regardless of the composition of the actor or being.

5. Conclusion

Savinio implicitly establishes a parallel between Eros and Sayas, Psyche’s two male counterparts: one the de-divinized husband within her tale, the other her caretaker

(and guardian) at the museum in the larger narrative framework. Both are identified as surgeons, a profession that suggests an external being or force that not only acts upon, but that actually penetrates and carves the body with his instruments.223 As mentioned before,

Savinio has earlier voiced his suspicion about doctors, not only for the potential invasiveness of their procedures, but also because, as he says, “in the common doctor, the door open to the secrets of our organism and of our psyche constitutes a constant temptation to ‘play’ with our secrets, an invitation to delinquency,” which they perform

“believing that they are obeying the high voice/calling of Science.”224 In the name of

Science, these doctors exploit and experiment with our deepest secrets, treating them as objects for play, and in so violating the patient’s dignity and subjectivity.

222 “L’etimologia a me piace, perché traversa la superficie della parola e “inventa” quello che la parola nasconde dentro di sé. Io uso “inventare come lo usano gli archeologi, per scoprire e tirare su dalla terra. L’etimologia è la psicologia del linguaggio. La psicologia per parte sua è uno strumento della morale, perché scopre quello che l’uomo e la natura si adoperano a coprire. Ora perché coprire se non per nascondere il male” (“L’ultima statua di Martini” SD 460; orig. in “Il Corriere della Sera,” Apr 11, 1947) 223 “Ascolta il mio consiglio. Innamorati se così ti piace del tuo chirurgo, ma non gli guardare i ferri del mestiere.” (64) 224 “Il sorprendente Dottor Klitter” PR 279-280) 134 Beyond this identification as surgeons, Savinio further links these two figures by transposing the characteristics commonly associated with each of them: Sayas is portrayed as a highly sexualized doctor who not only takes advantage of Perdita in a previous medical visit, but seems to have made sexual acts a part of his therapy;225

Psyche’s interaction with the disinterested god of Love, on the other hand, transpires in a clinical setting, with antiseptic preparation and disinterested precision.

With Eros, ultimately revealed to be nothing but an enormous winged phallus –

“monstrous both by excess and reduction” (Jewell, “Creatures” 37) –, Savinio seems to take aim not only at the god himself, but also at the hypermasculine, priapic ideal of the

Fascist regime. The act of love is stripped down to a surgical ‘operation’ (“atto operatoio”), preceded by the required preparatory procedures (purgative, cleaning, shaving, waxing, anesthesia), and performed with mechanical efficiency (“tutto funzionava con automatismo perfetto, con inesorabile ordine.” (59)) Not only does

Psyche accept her fate and lie down in her “coffin-shaped bed” (35),226 as Eros approaches her:

Un gelido fiato mi entrò attraverso le narici, una imperiosa voce impersonalmente disse: “Respirare forte.” L’infinto di quell’infinito mi avvolse d’infinito e senza forza, senza volontà, senza desiderio mi abandonati. (60)

Savinio paints the portrait of a young woman passive to the point of being anesthetized, having completely lost her agency, baffled at the funereal ceremony surrounding it (“So this was love?”). However, in the following paragraph, he illustrates

225 Nivasio suspects that Doctor Sayas and Perdita are lovers, but claims he is not jealous: “I rapporti sessuali tra il medico e la cliente fanno parte in certo modo della cura” (17); at the end of the book, Sayas tries to calm Perdita by massaging “le parti più carnose” (66). Savinio jokingly alludes to this practice among some psychoanalysts especially in treating hysteria. 226 “Ero arrivata al punto cruciale del mio destino di donna. La mia ora stava per scoccare. Ormai ero quello che per ragioni fatali dovevo essere e, rassegnata, mi coricai sul letto in forma di bara che mi prese tra le sue braccia come una madre prende il figliolo, come una levatrice prende la partoriente, come la terra ci prende morti.” (58) 135 how easily – even for an act originally against their will and judged unworthy of praise – people become conditioned by their authorities through repetition, even come to desire or exalt them.227 Their marriage before the unmasking is represented as Psyche’s compliance with, conformation to and reverence of her husband’s will and expectations.

Savinio’s critique not only breaks through the veil of awe surrounding they mythical and the divine, but extends to the institution of marriage, especially as it was deployed as a form of social control by the Fascist regime.228

With the revelation of the ugly truth of her husband, Psyche ultimately rejects

Eros, demythologizing not only the god of love but also her past experience, and seemingly reclaiming and asserting her own agency in a protofeminist narrative. But within the larger context of La nostra anima, Savinio shows that the caged Psyche has in fact only traded in one authority for another – again, as Jewell puts it, “With Eros, she was servile femininity; for Sayas she is instead a feminist puppet.” (Jewell, “Creatures”

37). With this muddling of the distinction between Science and Love (or Sex), Savinio reinforces that idea that we – la nostra anima – have merely switched ideology or mythology, and exposes Sayas’ motivations for programming Psyche to recite this narrative: the belief that upending both the divine and Fascist models for marriage supports the idea of a secular culture that would instead clear the way for Science to

227 “La notte seguente l’operazione si ripeté, meno chirurgica a dir vero e anzi addolcita da un certo quale piacere, e nelle notti successive il piacere si accentuò. Mi innamorai a poco a poco del mio chirurgo, come seppi di poi che avviene a tutte le signore che o per ptosi della matrice o per altro simile guasto all’apparato genitale, si sottopongono ad atto operatorio.” (60) 228 As Jewell notes, Savinio mocks the institution of marriage not only in the relationship between Psyche and Eros, but also in his portrayal of the marriage between Psyche’s parents, which upends traditional gender roles, and in the frantic search for a husband for the three daughters: “This spoof of the institution of marriage does more than poke fun at human superstitions and silly rituals. It strikes right at the heart of social control, especially during the years of Fascism, when a repressive "matrimonial politics" emerged. Formal government policies included protecting the Italian ‘race’ through decrees against mixed marriages, preventive sterilization, and, in general, ‘health’ practices that penalized the ‘abnormal.’ (Jewell, “Creatures” 37) 136 assume the ultimate authoritative role.229 In Savinio’s view, with the Janus-like, palindromic Sayas (again, perhaps a thinly disguised phonetic alteration of Zeus) and his manipulation of Psyche, Science has taken over from Religion the status of the predominant dogma, doctrine, myth. It is the triumph of de-humanizing modernity:

In Savinio's view, the modern doctor/scientist labors to preserve a crucial pretense of autonomy for modern culture and the author sets out to uncover the machination. In La nostra anima, Savinio casts the proponents of purely "human" knowledge-of science, in short-not as misguided believers in human potential or human "divinity" but rather as perverse figures who profess objectivity while deceptively pushing their line of "thought products." (Jewell, “Creatures” 39)

Savinio muddles the distinction between science, religion and performance by putting the scientist Sayas in charge of the fleshwork exhibits in the museum and the divine Eros attendant to the Clinic of Love. He further dissolves these boundaries through the portrayal of Sayas, who alternates between zookeeper (domatore), positivist scientist

(per noi scienziati230), initiate (per noi iniziati231) and showman/carnival barker who brings the guests to the fleshworks museum to show off his latest curiosity. Sayas professes science’s inability to penetrate the “unfathomable mystery of nature” and the limits of human knowledge (“Ignoramus”), but in programming Psyche’s narrative and shutting her off when she’s about to reveal the True Love to Nivasio then controls what knowledge is allowable and made available. As Jewell says, Psyche then comes to represent both false discourse and repressed discourse.232 Sayas’ presents her to his

229 “Love is the basis for both devotion to gods and the conjugal regime of patriarchal cultures. Anti-love breaks down that devotion and supports a secular culture. Dr. Sayas knows this. Psyche's ‘feminist’ rejection of love and marriage must be understood, then, to be a narrative deployed by her creator.” (Jewell, Enigma 152) 230 “Che posso dirle, signora? Io sono uno scienziato. Per noi scienziati l'anima è un composto di ossigeno, azoto e anidride carbonica. Ma che può la scienza davanti all'insondabile mistero della natura? Questo solo possiamo dire con la sicurezza di non sbagliare: Ignoramus”.” (33) 231 “Per noi iniziati, Psiche è l'anima, e il suo nome che ha il significato fisico di soffio e di alito, ha anche il senso di quel soffio ineffabile che è la parte immortale di noi.” (32) 232 “On the one hand, her character represents ‘false discourse’ because she is programmed by Sayas. She 137 guests to reassure and demonstrate “that monsters no longer populate the world as portents of the supernatural. They can only appear projected into the modernity that preserves them as the exclusive province of a medico-scientific establishment”233 –

Science has domesticated the monsters, and keeps them under control and ready to perform.

And indeed hybrid Psyche is not the only monster in the Fleshworks Museum, as we learn from the experiments in social control of the ‘autonomous wills’:

«Non si spaventi, signora. Dentro questa sala le cose avvengono per virtù propria, non per intervento della umana volontà. […] L'inventore di queste misteriose forze da lui chiamate " autonome volontà" sta sperimentando l'applicazione di esse alla vita sociale, e prima di uscire da questo museo visiteremo una sala nella quale è in prova un modello di società perfetta, con uomini che si muovono, mangiano, lavorano, amano non per volontà e impulso propri, sì per effetto di una forza che emana da una centrale e alla quale non è possibile sottrarsi. Sarà il trionfo del collettivismo. Durante la prova si sperimentano pure guasti eventuali della centrale con interruzione della forza animatrice, ed è uno spettacolo edificante vedere i componenti quella società perfetta che cascano giù di colpo, e alla vita perfettamente organizzata succede l'immobilità e il silenzio della morte». Perdita si era fatta pensosa. «Non sarà, dottore, che anche quella vita è in fondo una forma di morte?» (39)

This dystopian “model of a perfect society” (with a hint of Soviet “collectivism”) effectively reduces its members to automata who function only in the service of and at the will of the central authority, an external organizing force, and plays off fears of a both a hypnotized and radio-controlled mass and of the more subtle forms of social control and conditioning that results from the exaltation of collectivism and of a higher authority.

also represents ‘repressed discourse’ because she is not free to speak for herself. She has two functions in the narrative structure, and her hybridity is overdetermined in more ways than one. Her dual structural role - as pure untruth, on the one hand, and as what ‘truth’ represses, on the other - is subtle but important. It suggests the author's inability to steer clear of ambiguities in his own thought. He seems to rejoice in the subversive side of Psyche: The woman/animal can embody repressed difference, with its potential to transgress imposed norms. At the same time, Savinio creates a character who sits abjectly in her excrement, horrifically infantile and fully regressive, a character from whom he and his readers must recoil. He has heaped negative traits upon Psyche in order that they might reflect the even greater monstrosity of Dr. Sayas. Psyche is, in short, both heroic and intolerable. (Jewell, Enigma 162) 233 Jewell, “Creatures” 39. See also the discussion of Canguilhem and teratology in Jewell, Enigma 153-54. 138 Savinio looks to both psychoanalysis and his idea of ‘christian’ as remedies to these controlling external forces precisely because they provide models of an internal authority, affirm the self and the soul as personal – not as reflections of some external authority –, and restore autonomy to the individual. In a later writing “Uomo Nuovo,” from 1948,

Savinio explains how the totalitarian state (like Sayas and the central command of the

Fleshworks museum), had caged and regulated not only the physical movements but also the psychical activities of its citizens:

… la fine del fascismo, tra altri effetti in Italia, ha avuto anche quello di aprire la porta alla psicanalisi [sic]. … Lo Stato totalitario non regola soltanto e amministra le attività pratiche del cittadino, ma regola ancora e amministra le sue attività psichiche, meglio le chiude e le ferma, come il pneumotorace chiude e ferma il polmone. E infatti perché lasciare in funzione le attività psichiche dell'individuo, se l'esercizio dell'attività psichica non è più dell'individuo ma dello Stato? Con questo il regime totalitario dimostra di non riconoscere al cittadino una vita psichica personale e autonoma, e avversa perciò la psicanalisi, la quale per parte sua, dimostra invece che l'uomo possiede egli stesso gli elementi necessari per governarsi da sé in tutto e per tutto, può fare a meno dunque di un'autorità centrale, e ha diritto dunque, soprattutto nell'esercizio della sua vita psichica, a una piena autonomia. ... La psiche è un guastafeste che dice agli uomini: «Non vi vergognate? Scendete dalle amache nelle quali sdraiati vi lasciate cullare, e camminate con i vostri piedi»."234

With this liberating re-animation of the psyche (the rescue of la nostra anima from the Fleshworks museum), man passes from an incomplete to a complete condition, with full psychical activity and autonomy, no longer dependent on external forces to guide him:

È la scoperta della psiche, questa «nuova dimensione» dell'uomo; per meglio dire il risveglio della psiche, il suo riconoscimento, la sua entrata in funzione. Dalla condizione di uomo incompleto, l'uomo passa alla condizione di uomo completo. L'uomo completo, cioè a dire fornito di piena e attiva vita fisica e assieme di piena e attiva vita psichica, è l'uomo che ha raggiunto il perfetto «equilibrio» umano, né ha più bisogno dunque, come fa l'uomo incompleto, di «fare il peso» caricandosi di zavorra presa da fuori.235

234 “Uomo nuovo” SD 744-45, 748; orig. in “Il Corriere della Sera,” Feb 27, 1948. 235 The fuller context of the passage reads: “Ecco perché la psicanalisi, questa «dimostrazione» della completa condizione dell'uomo, è diventata senza volerlo l'avversaria di ogni fisica o metafisica autorità 139

However, a few years earlier, Savinio concludes La nostra anima with Sayas reasserting his authority over the hybrid Psyche and shutting her off just as she is about to speak for herself and reveal to Nivasio the True Love. In a bleak ending and commentary on the condition of our soul at the end of a Fascist regime and in the midst of a devastating world war, she flickers as the electricity leaves her body until finally “She’s gone.” [“Si è spenta”]

With this move, though, Savinio also avoids dictating outright a single limiting response and requires a measure of intellectual autonomy from his reader to understand what this True Love might be. Here are three possibilities: love of self, love for humanity, love as death. As Nivasio has already explained when proposing his Internal Tourism

Company:

Il male sparirà dal mondo perché sarà vinto non dal bene, ma da un avversario ben più potente e risoluto: l'indifferenza. Anche l'amore finirà, perché l'uomo ama la donna, ama i figli, ama gli altri uomini perché non sa quanto più fecondo e meglio ripagato è l'amore con che l'uomo ama se stesso. (35, my italiacs)

Indeed, as Signor Münster observes, and with a explanation that recalls Psyche’s account of her relationship with Eros, love means giving your soul to another, and always creates an imbalance in which one loves and the other is loved:

Amare è dare altrui la propria anima, è animare altrui con la propria anima, è illuderci di dare altrui una vita felice e profonda che altrimenti gli mancherebbe. Non c'è posto che dall'esterno vuole imporsi all'uomo. Per screditare la psicanalisi è stato anche detto che questo sottofondo della coscienza chiamato «profondo», nel quale la psicanalisi si prefigge di portare luce, è una specie di reparto inviolabile, un santuario, un luogo tabù, e che è peccaminoso affondarvi lo sguardo. Come vietare all'uomo di esaminare il proprio cervello, il proprio cuore, il proprio sangue, e convincerlo che i pensieri che egli pensa gli sono riflessi da un Iperencèfalo centrale, i palpiti che egli sente gli sono trasmessi da un Supercuore centrale, il sangue che dentro lo irriga gli viene da una Centrale del Sangue.. […] [passage cited above] La scoperta della psiche è anche più importante, nella sua essenza e noi suoi effetti, della scoperta dell'universo copernicano. (Molte analogie del resto fra queste due scoperte). Il rivolgimento che sta avvenendo per effetto della scoperta della psiche muta la faccia del mondo e più ancora la muterà. Chi ancora non se ne accorge, abbia la pazienza di aspettare. (“Uomo nuovo” SD 747- 49) 140 nell'amore per due anime. E quando si dice che amandosi, compongono un anima sola, si vuol dire che una sola di queste due anime opera amorosamente, mentre l'altra si sta in dolce e grata inazione. Ma quando anche l'anima sopita si risveglia, allora le due anime si separano e l'amore finisce. (SM 87-88)

However, love might also be a sense of humanity – the idea of ‘christian’, “loving union of men” – that should be extended also to other creatures, animate and inanimate, dead and alive – the restoration of a social fabric that might repair the fundamental disharmony in the world. As he will write later, after the War, in 1950:

Molto usata oggi è la parola cristianesimo. Con fini diversi. E non sempre legittimi. Un fine c'è, e legittimissimo. Ritrovando l'essenza originale e profonda del cristianesimo, in quanto rivoluzione psicologica che ha portato l'uomo a non più trarre le ragioni della vita da un mondo ideale, ma dal profondo di se stesso - dal profondo della sua anima - dal profondo della sua psiche. Oggi, nel vuoto lasciato dalla scomparsa del mondo ideale, di ogni mondo ideale, le condizioni sono come non mai favorevoli a un cristianesimo totale, a un cristianesimo prettamente umano. Insegni dunque lo scrittore il cristianesimo totale. Amorosa unione degli uomini, in un mondo spoglio - e libero - di ogni finzione ideale.236

This sense of ‘christianity’ is fundamental also to Savinio’s personal surrealism and its ‘supercivic’ intent, as the war comes to an end: In 1945, he writes:

Noi stiamo traversando la crisi di allargamento dell'universo. Guerre, rivoluzioni, angoscia dell'uomo, tutto che è crisi nel mondo da più anni a questa parte, tutto è conseguenza di questo allargamento - di questo universo più vasto nel quale Dio non trova più luogo né modo di fermarsi e di affermarsi, almeno in quella forma concreta e suadente che dava sicurezza e protezione all'uomo e pace al suo animo. Anche il cristianesimo segue la sorte di questo universo più vasto. Non sarà cristiano in avvenire chi non porterà anche agli animali, alle piante, ai metalli, quell'amore cristiano che finora egli portava soltanto all'uomo. (TV preface)

Finally, love as death. Perhaps narratively fitting here as Savinio completes, in a way, Psyche’s sentence “True love is …” with her own death, this answer also figures the interconnection of Eros and Thanatos. In fact, in his entry for “Amore” in the column

Nuova encyclopedia, Savinio writes: “Desiderio è l'illimitato, l'infinito. Amore è la

236 “Compito dello scrittore,” SD 1328; 1950. 141 morte.”237 But death also provides the possibility of an entryway to eternity, an escape from terrestrial immortality: “Di là dalle più tenebrose profondità, di là dai più insondabili abissi, la nostra anima riconoscerà la vera meta della vita: sparire.” (DTC

12). And like Signor Münster, with the dissolution of his body and his soul liberated, “la sua anima va in giro, guarda, ascolta, cerca un altro amore, diverso da quello che cercava quaggiù e non ha trovato” (SM 113), a love that he finds when after a cosmic vision of the world, he enters into eternity :“terminò la sua morte nel sentimento ineffabilmente felice di una nascita cosciente e che l'uomo si è scelta da sé.” (SM 129)

In the crucial years between the late 1930s and the late 1940s, against the backdrop of the second world conflict he has witnessed during his lifetime, Savinio seems to mature a radical disillusionment with both sides of modernity: with the positivistic, mechanistic, materialistic and scientific-technological ideas about the human generated by the Enlightenment (which seem to lead straight to authoritarianism and totalitarianism) and the persisting idealistic myths that have informed Romanticism and the 20th-centurty avant-garde has swept away. La nostra anima could be read as a negative allegory of modernity, not far from the spirit of Leopardi’s Operette morali, and its open ending leaves room for the reconstruction of an alternative humanism, a different

“metaphysics” perhaps unable to reconcile the unchained forces of Eros and Thanatos, but at least capable of recognizing how they condition our mind.

237 “Amore” NE 35; orig. in “Domus,” June 1941. 142 Chapter 3. Petrified Bodies: A New Terrestrial Immortality

1.Introduction

The first chapter examined the liberation of the unusually immobile Mercury from

his statue form so that he could pass into eternity (through human experience that

transformed the statue into flesh), and the second looked at Psyche as an ambiguously

human-talking puppet-machine trapped in the basement-limbo of the Fleshworks

Museum. This third chapter considers another aspect of the relationships human-machine,

animate-inanimate, life-death, Savinio’s representations of the transformation of the

human body into statue, most specifically in two works in which he addresses the

technique of ‘petrification’: a passage in the chapter “Fallatajà” in Ascolto il tuo cuore,

città and the short story “Paradiso Terrestre,” included in Tutta la Vita.

Processes of the preservation of corpses necessarily impinge upon the natural

deterioration and decomposition of the dead human body, they seek to slow down or

arrest this organic transformation. The manipulation of the biological processes of death

renders the body both atemporal and immobile: a statue, a monument to itself, a

conserved work of art, an artifact. The scientist approaches the body not only as an object

for scientific inquiry, but also of artistic realization and expression; not only the chemical

processes, but the aesthetic aspect of mummification, embalming, and petrification

acquires a great importance, and in their practice, the scientist-artist fulfills to an extent

not only the practical applications of this work, but demiurgical aspirations: not in

creating the human itself, but in creating with the human (dead body).238

Many of Savinio’s earlier writings show a connection or correspondence between

the human body and statues – and something of a fluidity between the two states, the

238 About the overlap of science and art in the handling of corpses, see Kemp and Wallace, Mayer, Nelson. 143 possibility to shift from one to the other: some statues move and speak (Chants de la Mi- mort, “Casa della stupidità,” the Vita di Mercurio series239), suggesting that they are not entirely ‘lifeless’ and immobile and could perhaps reanimate. At times, at the moment of death, human bodies transform into stone statues. In his account of witnessing his father’s death from Sogno ermetico (1920), Savinio describes the alteration of his father’s gaze from human to statue-like: “However, he was still looking, looking in a transformed way: how statues look.”240; in Chants de la Mi-Mort (1914), when the Yellow man – “at the height of his dementia” – leaps on his mother and kills her, she shrinks down and becomes “nothing more than a large stone doll”241; on seeing her murdered children in La morte di Niobe (1925), Niobe raises her fist to the sky in pain and contempt and remains petrified in that position.242 In Canto della solitudine ovvero il naufragio del commendatore (1935), the shipwrecked commander finds a friend when the “roccia tagliata a figure d’uomo”243 begins to sing; he later learns that the man had sculpted the rock in his own image so that his soul wouldn’t be adrift (“à la dérive”) after his death, but could reside instead within the sculpture. Each of these transformations seems

239 In Chants de la Mi-mort (1914), in the Scène de la Tour, "Les statues placées dans la partie basse de la tour commencent à se mouvoir" and "les statues s’acheminent à pas cadencés"; in “Casa della stupidità” (orig. in “La Stampa,” July 15, 1942, then in Tutta la vita), the atlantes (telamoni) supporting the balcony speak to the neighbor and announce their intention to walk right away; the state of Mercury-Hermes moves and speaks throughout the series. 240 “Però egli guardava ancora; guardava in modo trasformato: come guardano le statue” (SE 439) 241 In the Préface poétique, “la bonne mère est pétrifiée, rapetissée comme un fantoche”, we find out later, in the Scène de la Tour what happened: “Au paroxysme de la démence, l’homme-jaune bondit sur sa mère et la tue. La vieille rapetisse; bientôt, elle semble n’être plus qu’une grosse poupée de pierre." 242 “Niobe guarda i figliuoli morti. La folla fa largo, rispettosa. Niobe rabbrividisce al ricordo delle frecce divine. Contempla i cadaverici con infinita tenerezza. Sorge in piedi, scaglia il pugno contro il cielo: il braccio non si riabbassa più.” La morte di Niobe (orig. in “Rivista di Firenze,” May 1925, then in VF 67- 80). And: “Qualche brivido scuote ancora quel corpo, che alfine rimane rigido, sbarrato gli occhi: statua vestita di flabalà [sic]. […] Poi, sopra una specie di zoccolo basso levato su rotelle, gli stessi volenterosi issano la Niobe pietrificata, teso il pugno contro il cielo.” (La morte di Niobe, VF 79-80) 243 “Il Canto della Solitudine” AI 75; orig. in “Broletto,” May 1935. 144 metaphorical or metaphysical in character, a natural shift that occurs at the de-animation of the person.

However, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Savinio seems to anchor these human to statue transformations in language that reflects the – scientifically-based and externally administered – processes of embalming and techniques of preservation. In “Flora”

(1942),244 the statue-protagonist whose lifeforce has strengthened through the attention of

Marco, explains to him the mysterious life of statues:

… le quali non sono materia inanimata come crede il volgare; ma creature che già furono vive e poi imbalsamate nella pietra, ov’esse abitano per sempre, in compagnia della loro anima e dei ricordi della loro vita mortale. 245 (my italics)

Zia Apollonia (1942) with her “face of wax” is embalmed on a circuitry that allows her to be in constant motion. As Nivasio’s cousin Fliquet explains to him:

Volle per testamento essere imbalsamata e messa a girare perpetuamente su questo meccanismo, che del resto aveva ideato da sé.246

In La nostra anima (pub. 1944, this part written 1942),247 Nivasio wonders about the particular process that prevents the deterioration of the bodies, though he’s not quite able to get the question out:

Nivasio Dolcemare era curioso di conoscere il misterioso processo per cui gli’imbalsamatori di questo nuovo Museo Grévin erano riusciti a conservare le figure di carne senza che queste si corrompessero, ma la domanda gli si fermò sulla lingua. (NA 14)

Savinio seems particularly interested in the suggestively named ‘petrification’

(which would be more accurately described as a form of mineralization), a technique that

244 Originally published in “Documento,” January-February-March 1942, then in Casa “La Vita.” 245 He continues: “Ma la vita ridottissima delle statue, impercettibile dall'esterno, quella goccia di vita in mezzo alla fredda pietra, che cosa l'aveva scaldata ed enfiata così da spanderla per tutto quel corpo di marmo, e intiepidirlo, e dare colore alle labbra e luce agli occhi?” (“Flora” CLValtri 267) 246 “Zia Apollonia” CLValtri 784; orig. “La Stampa” Aug 29, 1942. 247 This section is in the early manuscript which I argue is also from 1942. 145 had been first developed by Girolamo Segato (1792-1836) over a century before. Savinio owned, made notes in and quotes directly from a biography of Segato by Carlo della

Valle that was published in 1934, and not only Segato but also the other ‘pietrificatori’ that followed were frequently mentioned in the press in the mid- to late-1930s. Preserved corpses were noteworthy items of popular culture in the first part of the twentieth century: there were important discoveries of Egyptian mummies (including King Tut in

1922), Lenin’s body was famously embalmed and displayed in 1924,248 and in

Hollywood, a series of mummy movies came out starting with “The Mummy” (1932). In the late 19th and early 20th century, there was both a greater wish for and possibility of maintaining a lifelike appearance of the dead body – through improved embalming practices and the emergence of post-mortem photography, or photographs in which the recently deceased were posed, often with surviving family members, in familiar situations or family portraits. The depiction of the body in the three-dimensional arts over the centuries also demonstrated a progression towards the more lifelike: from highly realistic sculpture in natural poses to the vivid wax sculptures of the 18th and 19th centuries (many of which retained a trace of contact with the dead bodies used to cast the models) to the sculptural bodies and parts created directly from the cadavers themselves through embalming and petrification, in which the bodies were not used only as the starting or reference point, but as the material itself for creating sculptures with the human flesh.249 In the works examined in this third chapter, unlike in the first two, there is no electricity, nor the same attempts to animate bodies, but rather the opposite effort to

248 Savinio specifically mentions Segato and Lenin’s body in both the “Fallatajà” chapter and in Paradiso Terrestre.

249 See Quigley, Panzanelli, Kemp and Wallace, 146 still, to immobilize the subjects – to preserve them either in a dubious effort to recreate the ‘eternal’ Earthly Paradise (Paradiso Terrestre), or in the suggestion (as Savinio imagines it) that we might update the old way of memorializing the dead through portraiture in a new three-dimensional Family Museum of preserved bodies, that has, eerily, not the same ghostlike, ephemeral quality of cinema, the gramophone or photography, but instead the exact opposite – the stillness, the non-ethereal, and entirely physical monument of, and to, the tangible body of the deceased.

In the section entitled ‘Immobilità terrestre, ispiratrice delle arti plastiche’ of

Savinio’s Primi saggi sulla filosofia delle arti (1921), in which he outlines the theoretical framework of the Metaphysical School, he explains that rhythmic arts are inspired by and reflect the movement and transitory reality of life, and precisely because these arts (and life itself) evoke a feeling of uncertainty or impermanence, the human mind seeks to balance this mobility and temporality with the plastic arts that represent instead an immobility, and therefore atemporality (this desire for stability, he adds, is also the psychological origin of the concept of immortality and future life.)250 In their absoluteness, these immobile objects confer a comforting idea of stability and offer a taste of the future eternal/immortal immobility, as they are born from that same idea:

Nasce così l'idea dell'eternità terrena, la quale, non che essere l'idea forse più profonda che gli uomini abbiano avuto fin adesso, è fecondissima per le arti, poiché è nella rappresentazione dell'eternità terrestre che noi ritroviamo l'origine misteriosa delle arti plastiche.

250 “Le arti nelle quali è implicito l'elemento ritmico, s'ispirano all'idea del tempo, del moto, del divenire, della vita insomma. Tale idea non porta a una nozione di stabilità, perché riflette il destino transitorio cui è fatalmente connesso ogni movimento. Il sentimento di codesta precarietà suscita, per effetto di reazione, il desiderio della stabilità, che viene a essere la più profonda e costante nostalgia dei mortali. È appunto perciò che la mente umana contrappone sempre alla nozione del tempo e del moto (nozione generatale dalla vita stessa) una nozione contraria, la nozione dell'immobilità, e questa sovrappone a quella, o, per meglio dire, la nozione dell'immobilità viene a costituire la soluzione, la mèta, il premio (a seconda delle varietà morali degli individui) di ogni movimento. Non altra che questa ha da essere la fonte psicologica onde gli uomini hanno tratto il concetto dell'immortalità e della vita futura.” (“Immobilità terrestre” NV 97) 147

However, the plastic arts are a mediated and not a direct representation of the

“common and living images of nature”:

Ci è rivelata altresì la ragione precisa di quel senso particolare delle arti plastiche, che ci presenta non la riproduzione diretta degli oggetti, delle cose, degli esseri, ma come un ricordo immutabile e definitivo di essi oggetti, cose o esseri. Allora soltanto cominciamo a intendere la necessità e il valore degli artifici di cui si rivalgono le arti plastiche nella loro attuazione. Allora soltanto ci si rivela il perché della linea, della determinatezza dei contorni nella composizione di un quadro o di una statua, della singolarità dei colori, di una certa quale arbitrarietà riconoscibile in qual si sia opera plastica. Allora soltanto vengono a essere giustificati tutti quei mezzi, insomma, che costituiscono la tecnica e la psicologia delle arti plastiche, e i quali sono intesi alla rappresentazione non della realtà quale essa è naturalmente visibile, ma di quella particolare realtà plastica che è l’aspetto ineffabile dell’eternità terrestre. (my italics)251

These early observations on the nature and purpose of the plastic arts are highly relevant for a critical understanding of Savinio’s later writings on petrification and, as we have seen, his conception of the “metaphysics” of the Metaphysical school (and beyond): which leads us to ask whether his conception has evolved in the two decades between this essay and his new interest in petrified bodies. How do statues and sculptures produced directly from and out of bodily material, fit into Savinio’s understanding of metaphysical art, (and the true nature of the enigmatic mannequins which appear in metaphysical paintings)? At first sight, the immobilization of the body, the interruption of the natural transitory and transformative process of decomposition of the dead human body seems to impede the goal and process of ‘dying well,’ preventing the passage to eternity, that

251 “Ma il concetto dell'immobilità - contrapposizione alla nozione movimentata e drammatica della vita - non si mantiene sempre allo stato futuro, poiché il fondamento psicologico di ogni saggezza porta a una sorta di pregodimento della calma definitiva, durante la vita presente. Sorge in tal modo la nozione di una immobilità terrena. La vita stessa, gli oggetti, le forme, persino gli avvenimenti sono riguardati nell'aspetto di una loro presunta assolutezza. Il mondo sensibile e visibile viene ad acquistare una consolante apparenza di stabilità. L'occhio si posa sugli oggetti con fiducia; vediamo ovunque una calma sicura e troviamo una specie di inamovibilità nella natura. [first passage cited above] Viene a essere spiegato in tal modo l'aspetto di stabilità e di assolutezza che è il carattere proprio delle arti plastiche, e assieme la ragione per cui le arti plastiche non rispondono se non in una maniera mediata e come dire lontana alle immagini comuni e viventi della natura. [second passage cited above]…” (“Immobilità terrestre” NV 98-99) 148 Savinio (as we have seen in the previous chapter) has suggested as the ‘ultimate goal’ of life.252 A terrestrial immortalization seems to consign the (former?) ‘inhabitant’ anima to this world, trap it like Psyche in the fleshworks museum. Doesn't this preservation of the body intact on earth, extracted from the processes of decomposition, prevent the psyche

(anima) from reentering the natural transformative cycle of (eternal) life/death? In other words, how do we reconcile Savinio's ideas about petrification with his conception of a metamorphic metaphysics characterized by a hybridization of life forms that encompasses the animate and inanimate? Other questions also emerge: Is using the human body as material for art ethically acceptable? What would be the relationship of these petrified dead bodies to the animated furniture, for example, as mementos of or memorials to, the dead (parents)?

Medusa was, of course, the most famous mythological petrifier. Vincenzo Trione suggests that Savinio’s vision of the plastic arts places him in the role of the ancient

Gorgon – “he fixes everyday moments (“tasselli,” tiles) in works of art similar to tombstones. Like Medusa, as a plastic artist he freezes the rush of becoming, making the images resplendent.”253 However, he does so in works of art that represent everyday

252 This willingness to look death straight in the face, to approach it head on is a recurrent theme in in many of Savinio’s works, – fictional, biographical and autobiographical. As he observes in the introduction to Casa ‘la Vita’ “Pochissimi sanno morire. Starei per dire: pochissimi uomini; perché morire è un atto di energia che da pochissimi è compiuto come tale […] Si tratta invece di arrivare alla morte trionfalmente, come la capitana di un’armata vittoriosa che entra nel porto a bandiere spiegate.” As, we have seen, death should be embraced also because “si sa che la morte scioglie quello che noi chiamiamo male, cancella quello che noi chiamiamo peccato, risolve quel dualismo da noi inventato di corpo e anima, fonde tutto ciò che è vissuto in una…" (his ellipsis); it serves not so much as the cutting short, but as the final and culminating act in our terrestrial lives, one that allows us to return to eternity. 253 “Nessun gesto, nessuna azione. La solitudine agghiacciante del mondo, come avviene nelle nature morte, è pietrificata. Le voci e i sussurri si attenuano, fino a spegnersi nelle contrade del silenzio. Affidandosi a una precisione insicura, il pittore ferma le modulazioni di una realtà che cambia di continuo, in una proliferazione abitata da intersezioni da campi di forza. Non scioglie l'universo; lo solidifica. Vuole dare una forma all'informe, raccogliere le schegge che si disseminano di fronte ai suoi occhi dentro un «quadro». Mira a ricondurre la realtà in una fortezza. Blocca i tasselli della quotidianità in opere simili a lapidi. Come la Medusa, congela la corsa del divenire, rendendo le immagini splendenti. Capovolge il 149 objects, things and beings, but that are not materially composed of them; the plastic arts provide us with a comforting image or imagination of stability, they have not frozen or immobilized life (and death) itself, they are not an actual "petrification" of the living. In the story Il signor Münster (1944), in which the Savinian alter-ego Münster (a man who confronts the day with the knowledge that he is “already dead”) sees his soul liberated as his body fall to pieces, he expresses a particular fear of and wish to avoid mirrors. After identifying the larger and more obvious dangers in his apartment, he notices a smaller and potentially more threatening one: his wife’s handheld mirror, all the more unpredictable and potentially dangerous because it has no fixed location.

C'è infine un piccolo specchio a mano, dal manico e dalla cornice dipinti a smalto bianco dalla stessa signora Münster, e che non avendo una collocazione fissa 'è più pericoloso degli altri due. Il signor Münster gira guardingo per l'appartamento, col timore che il piccolo specchio salti fuori d'un tratto e gli mostri ciò che egli non vuole vedere. Il signor Münster, che ha sempre avuto un grande amore per la mitologia greca, si pensa in questo momento in istato di Medusa, e come se la vista di se stesso possa farlo morire: far morire lui che è già morto. (SM 102-103)

Here the narrator suggests the possibility of a second death: the image of Signor

Münster captured in the mirror is a sort of petrification of his intact and still not yet de- composed (as it falls off in pieces) body, that would both arrest the natural decaying processes of the body, and perhaps trap or hinder the unburdening and liberation of the soul. Interestingly enough, the mirror is not described as a shield against the petrifying gaze of Medusa (as in the mythological account), but as a threatening device which accomplishes precisely the “petrifying” effect (however, the fact that the mirror belongs to Münster's wife should be also taken into account). In short, for Signor Münster, the

«movimento suicida» che, nel reale, conduce ogni elemento verso il nulla. Fa incontrare, nell'opera, la «triade imprendibile» - passato, presente, futuro. Interrompe il fluire dell'esistenza, per ingabbiarlo in una serie di attimi immobili. Dispone volti, cose e situazioni in stanze prive di echi. Fa in modo che la danzatrice si libri a mezz'aria in eterno; arresta il paesaggio di un uomo in una strada sul volgere dell'istante...” (Trione 155-156) 150 mirror is Medusa, and reveals what “he doesn't want to see.” How does this (for Signor

Münster) frightening prospect relate to the “ineffable power” of the plastic arts to capture the “eternal on earth”? To use Murray Adams' terms, if the mirror is a metaphor for mimetic art and Psyche's lamp (revealing the true identity of Eros) a metaphor for

Romantic art, in Savinio both seem to be subjected to a humorous critique, perhaps in the name of a new hybrid art capable to avoid the metaphysical pitfalls of both.

The study of and interventions on dead human bodies have been used for artistic and scientific inquiry for millennia (as well, of course, for religious and political purposes). Savinio, here, too, engages with the (pseudo)-scientific arguments of his day, weaving them into his narratives and mixing them with mythology, history, contemporary events, etc. After a brief history of the techniques of embalming, mummification and petrification, in the rest of this chapter we will take a closer look at two instances in which Savinio represents the petrification of dead bodies: a scene in which he imagines the creation of a ‘museo di famiglia’ composed of the petrified bodies of his family written in 1941, and in the short story Paradiso terrestre from 1942, in which a scientist recreates an immobile version of the Garden of Eden by freezing in time the plants, animals and a young Adam and Eve. While Savinio’s musings about a ‘museo di famiglia’ read as a nostalgic and fanciful vision of a family reunion, “Paradiso terrestre,” composed near the end of the Fascist regime and in the middle of the Second

World War, instead reads as another cautionary tale against demiurgical tendencies taken too far and against the potential abuses of science, authority and any efforts to attain an

Ideal.

151 2. History and Techniques of Mummification, Embalming and Petrification and the Intersection of Art and Science

This section provides a brief history of the techniques of, motivations for, and moral and ethical questions surrounding the preservation of corpses and addresses the overlap and interrelation of science and art (aesthetics) in the treatment of dead bodies (in processes of mummification; dissections for ritual, educational and performance purposes; the creation of anatomical illustrations and wax figures, based on and cast from cadavers; death photography; modern embalming practices; and petrification). It considers the implications of the creation and handling of what John Troyer calls the

“postmortem subject,” or a “body with a ‘life’ after life”254 and the increasingly widespread importance placed on maintaining a lifelike appearance in the dead body.

Finally, it takes a closer look at the Italian ‘pietrificatori,’ Segato and those who followed: their works, renown and the mystery that surrounded their processes of transforming human bodies into stone-like objects. Though the primary analysis of this chapter will be on two works in which Savinio draws upon the techniques of petrification to elaborate his ideas on the implications of preserving corpses and the motivations for doing so, I provide this history in an effort to establish that petrification cannot be seen as merely the recovery of the ancient Egyptian secret of mummification, but must be considered within the larger context of an almost continuous discourse, at least since the

Late Middle Ages, about the handling and preparation of corpses, the ethical issues involved and their use in both scientific and artistic research of the body. Furthermore,

254 Troyer uses this term to describe the new status of the preserved dead human body made possible with modern embalming techniques, one that becomes an atemporal, cultural object that is not only subtracted from the natural effects of deterioration (and so, outside of time), but that can also be transported (eliminating locational limitations), aesthetically resituated (in death photography, for example) and commodified (through an emerging funeral business). I believe, however, that this term also is useful in thinking retrospectively about the management of corpses. (Troyer, “Technologies of the Human Corpse”) 152 this research and intervention on the dead body was not limited to private investigation behind closed doors, but thanks to religious ceremonies, scientific performances of dissection and the scientific-artistic diffusion of renderings of the body itself and of lifelike replicas, put on display and offered for public viewing, the uncanny presence of a preserved corpse (or close facsimile) was not an entirely foreign nor always solemn sight for the broader public.

Towards the end of the chapter “Fallatajà” of Ascolto il tuo cuore, città, Savinio begins his fairly extensive reflections on Girolamo Segato and petrification.255 Segato was an Egyptologist, and Savinio connects his research and work on preserving corpses back to processes of Egyptian mummification, even asserts that he discovered his

‘mysterious system’ through his research and time spent in Egypt:

Massima cura alla conservazione dei corpi davano gli Egizi, ed è significativo che il suo misterioso sistema per conservare i morti, Girolamo Segato lo abbia scoperto dopo ripetuti e prolungati soggiorni in Egitto, ov'egli si recava in qualità di viaggiatore e di cartografo, interpretando papiri, esplorando tombe antichissime, studiando l'interno delle piramidi. (ACC 139)

For the Egyptians, mummification, or the preservation of the body after death, was an absolutely essential process in enabling and facilitating reincarnation: the mummy was not a remnant or symbol of the deceased soul, but was the material version of the soul itself,256 in a system that saw the separation of the soul also into ka (double or life principle) and ba (personality or spirit).257 Preserving the integrity of the human body

255 Again, Savinio owned and made notes in/on a Carlo della Valle’s biography and collection of correspondence on Girolamo Segato, originally published in 1934. 256 As Victoria Nelson puts it, “The heart of their intricate religious system […] was the notion of a material soul – an entity that the embalmed mummy did not represent or symbolize (in our worldview's automatic way of supposing) but simply was.” (Nelson 33) 257 “In the religion of the Old and New Kingdoms, humans consequently had three bodies: the physical body, the double or ka, and the personality or ba; all three were united after death in the akh, a glorified being of light.” (Nelson 33). Marinozzi explains: “… per gli Egiziani la morte non è annientamento, ma solo una trasformazione dell’energia vitale, il ka, ossia il principio della vita, che estrapolato dalla fisicità 153 was fundamental for maintaining the possibility of communication between the earthly and divine worlds,258 and through successful mummification, the human body could become an immortal divine body.259 In his L’Histoire dell’Occultisme, Gérin-Ricard explains that, in order to allow for possible immortality even in the case of tomb-raiding or decomposition of the body, in place of the actual body, a statue or image – as faithful a replication as possible – could function as a substitute so that the ka (double) could continue to exist; 260 these body substitutes were an early instance of talking or communicative statues, which Savinio acknowledges in an article from 1940:

Presso gli Egizii [la potenza del verbo] era altrettanto grande quanto la fede nella potenza del Ka, del «doppio», ossia della nozione creatrice delle statue parlanti e origine della necromanzia egizia.261

As Nelson points out, mummification was not only a ritual preparation of the dead bodies for the afterlife, but a compelling indication of theurgical or demiurgical powers:

del corpo, entra in contatto con l’energia cosmica. Lo spirito del defunto, il ba, continua a restare accanto al corpo ed a visitare i luoghi a lui cari, in una continua comunicazione tra il mondo dei vivi e quello dell’oltre tomba.” (Marinozzi 11) 258 “Solo un corpo conservato integro può quindi permettere al proprio ba di continuare a tornare a visitarlo, e al ka, la forza vitale, di trovare, nelle preghiere e nelle offerente funerarie, il nutrimento necessario alla sua sopravvivenza.” (Marinozzi 11-12, first phrase my italics) 259 “Because the Egyptians saw no separation in kind between soul and body, they believed that the physical body of a human or animal could, with human intervention, become an immortal divine body” (Nelson 33) 260 Savinio owned and made notes in a 1939 edition of Gérin-Ricard’s L’Histoire dell’Occultisme. Gérin- Ricard writes: «Les Egyptiens en vinrent à penser que si le corps était détruit, il pouvait être remplacé, afin que le ka conservât son existence, par une image, aussi fidèle que possible, du mort. Ce fut l'origine des statues découvertes dans les tombeaux égyptiens et que les riches déposaient dans une chambre spéciale. Mais, comme toute pratique magique, celle-ci était soumise à un formalisme strict. La statue, pour être substituée au corps momifié, pour servir de support au ka, devait, elle aussi, subir l'opération magique du sa. On la posait sur un tas de sable, image de la montagne funéraire et on la soumettait à l'influence de la momie qui tenait le sceptre magique à tête de serpent et le fouet à triple lanière, puis elle était adossée au naos (arche) dans lequel était enfermé le cadavre et le fluide du mort enveloppait la nuque de la statue. Par le moyen de ces statues magiques, supports du ka, les prêtres et les nécromanciens pensaient entrer en communication avec l'esprit du mort ou du dieu. Ce furent les statues parlantes dont les papyrus ont conservé les discours.» (Gérin-Ricard 16-17) 261 “Potenza del verbo” TG 203; orig. in “La Stampa,” May 8, 1940. Gérin-Ricard had written: “Bien des fois (à en croire les documents égyptiens), la cour du monarque ou le peuple entier furent les témoins émerveillés des manifestation divines, des étonnants rapports entre les prêtres et les dieux.” (Gérin-Ricard 17). He continues by noting that in addition to the believers, there were some who were skeptical, as well. 154 The making of mummies remained the ultimate expression of the notion that humans could imitate the gods' powers of creation. The embalmers themselves, through the magical powers they channeled from the gods, were credited with transforming the mortal organic body into an immortal being. (35-36)

Though mummification processes continued in the for the well-do-do under

Greek and Roman rule for several centuries, in the late 4th century, the Edict of

Theodosius forbid any non-Christian rites, so the official practice of mummification was banned.262 In the Late Middle Ages, the Church began to authorize embalming practices to preserve the bodies of popes and royalty for commemorative, religious and political purposes – through the embalming of the physical body, the symbolic power of the political and mystical body was also conserved, allowing for a extended period of celebration and devotion.263 The preservation of parts of the bodies in the form of relics also played and important role in the collective observance and spread of religious rituals.

One of the first recorded public human dissection was conducted in Bologna in

1316 by Mundinus, author also of the Anathomia Mundini from the same year, a practical guide for human dissection, and this practice gradually spread throughout Europe, though the physicians still largely used Galen’s texts as their guides and attributed discrepancies between his writings and their procedures to errors or anomalies of the bodies before

262 For a history of mummification and embalming practices, see Marinozzi, Nelson, Mayer, Porter. Mummification processes continued for the well-to-do under Greek and Roman rule, but the most widespread treatment of dead bodies in Jewish, Greek and Roman traditions involved the application of oils and aromatics, temporary embalming preparations that more than anything slowed desiccation and neutralized the odors normally involved in the natural decomposition so that the bodies could survive long enough to be honored properly. 263 This embalming often looked to natural mummification processes, like lining the bodies along walls, in crypts or underground locations of churches, in order to take advantage of suitable – very dry or very cold – conditions to maintain the integrity of the corpses. Otherwise, they tended to follow traditional Arab medicine and Egyptian practices that involved the cleaning and flushing of the body that promoted the dehydration and mineralization of the organs without mutilating the body. 155 them.264 With a Papal Bull in 1482, Pope Sextus IV first granted religious permission for the dissection of corpses – provided they be performed on the bodies of executed criminals and that the body eventually be granted a Christian burial – recognizing both the scientific and artistic importance of anatomical investigation. With the Papal Bull of

1531, Pope Clement VII officially recognized and affirmed the study of anatomy as a scientific discipline and encouraged its inclusion in the medical curricula.

Early dissection of the human body was a spectacle in and of itself, not reserved to the scientific establishment, but rather a ritual opening of the body offered in public or semi-public performances in special anatomical theaters constructed for this purpose. The physician-professor directed the performance, in which a surgeon (dissector) cut the body and an assistant (ostensor) pointed out the important features.265 These dissections were important not only for scientific and medical fields, but for the arts, as well, since in the

Renaissance, proponents of the arts were trying to affirm its place as field of higher intelligence and evidence their basis in anatomical knowledge.266 Vesalius, a Padovan

264 Beforehand, and well into the Middle Ages, for an understanding of the anatomical structure of the human body, science and medicine had still relied primarily on the texts written by Galen, the influential 2nd and 3rd century physician, who in his extensive research into the body had been limited to animal – not human – dissections. 265 “Dissection of the human body – always a fraught business in any society – was for much of its history not primarily a technical process conducted fro teaching, research or autopsies. Nor were the dissections most commonly undertaken in the privacy of dissecting rooms in medical institutions. Rather, the opening up of a body was a ritual act, a performance staged for particular audiences within carefully monitored frameworks of legal and religious regulation. The most prominent dissections were staged as public or semi-public performances in specially constructed ‘theatres’ (the term still used for the room in which operations are conducted in modern hospitals). The audience was as likely to consist of curious non- specialists as aspiring or actual members of the medical profession, and the interior wonders of the body were rendered open to view in sequence according to a pre-determined choreography. The professor acted as the master of the performance, which was generally conducted according to the plot of a set text that was being read out loud to the eager press of spectators. […] Such staged events, exuding an exciting aura of wonder and morbid fascination, are a far cry from the low-key privacy and professional exclusivity of the modern dissecting room in a medical school.” (Kemp and Wallace 23) 266 “During the Renaissance, theorists and artists “came to insist that it was necessary for the artist to acquire a mastery of the body as a functional system of motion and emotion. This understanding, in the hands of the more intellectually-inclined practitioners, included not only the muscular and skeletal mechanisms, but also those aspects of the human constitution that resulted in the outer signs of character 156 physician, emerged as the first major figure to challenge Galen’s understanding of the human body, publishing the highly aestheticized but more anatomically accurate De humani corporis fabrica in 1543,267 full of engravings with skeletons and bodies in dramatic positions (often with the held tilted back like in Christ paintings of the period and those of martyred saints). These renderings provided a visual anatomical model and everyday reference for both physicians and artists and extended this possibility of looking into the body to those who were unable to attend the dissections themselves. And, as

Kemp and Wallace point out, these artistic renderings of the scientific investigations into the organization of the interior of the body served as much to illustrate the important relationship of the body to the universe, of the microcosm to the macrocosm, as they helped in practical medical purposes for the basic reason that “contemporary medical practice simply did not have the means to intervene with the levels of refinement that the representations delivered.”268 These clean, beautiful and elegant images depicted by the artists further aestheticized the process of dissection that was in reality a gory and messy

and emotional expression.” (Kemp and Wallace 11-13). “In company with the optical sciences of perspective, light and colour, anatomical mastery of the structure an motion of the human body formed the basis of the Renaissance artists’ and theorists’ claims that the visual arts possessed their own basis in scienza; that is to say, in a recognized body of systematic knowledge which was akin to other disciplines of high intellectual standing.” (Kemp and Wallace 69) 267 Vasari attributes the images in Vesalius’ Anatomia to Jan Stephan van Calcar, a member of Titian’s studio. The bodies are set against pastoral backgrounds with ancient ruins, one skeleton leans contemplatively over a tomb that sometimes has an inscription that reads “Vivitur ingenio, caetera mortis erunt” [“Genius lives on, all else is mortal”]. Vesalius even indicates that a couple of the renderings of his ‘muscle men’ (Table I and II) are not really for teaching purposes as the musculature is already evident in the renderings of ‘erudite’ painters and sculptors of the time; he “expresses hope, however, that the models will prove useful for ‘the painter, the sculptor, and the molder,’ as well as for physicians.” (quoted from the site). For the Anatomia, with commentary, see NIH “Vesalius.” See also Valverde’ de Amusca’s Historia de la composicion del cuerpo (1556), with the famous corpse holding his own skin by Gaspar Becarra. 268 “The purpose of anatomical images during the period from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century had as much to do with what we could call aesthetics and theological understanding as with the narrower intentions of medical illustration as now understood. Indeed, much of the detailed anatomy was of no use to the physician, or even the surgeon, because contemporary medical practice simply did not have the means to intervene with the levels of refinement that the representations delivered. Rather, the disclosing of the ‘divine architecture’ that stood at the summit of God’s Creation remained the central goal of anatomical representation across at least three centuries.” (Kemp and Wallace 11) 157 endeavor, and one which was considered an additional punishment levied on the body of convicted criminals (as, for example, the engraving by Hogarth reminds us, fig x)269

The increasing importance of anatomy in scientific and artistic fields led to the both the development of new embalming techniques and to the production of three- dimensional wax models on which could be repeatedly performed a sort of virtual dissection. Embalming procedures provided for the treatment of bodies from different social and economic backgrounds, and numerous guides tracing the history of embalming, describing various techniques and suggesting preferred methods circulated

Europe. These embalming practices were successful to an extent, but the bodies eventually broke down, adding to the demand for a more lasting model upon which to work and study. In the 1730s, Bologna became the site of the first major collection of wax models designed specifically for the teaching of anatomy, with the anatomist-artists

Ercole Lelli, Anna Morandi and Giovanni Manzolini producing wax models of not only healthy bodies and parts, but also examples of deformed and diseased bodies and parts. In

1771, the Natural History Museum, ‘La Specola,’ in Florence, under the direction of

Felice Fontana became the second great seat of anatomical wax modeling, and renowned wax modeler Clemente Susini joined the workshop shortly after in 1773. These wax

269 “With the exception of aristocratic autopsies, conducted with an air of posthumous reverence, the majority of the subjects arrived on the table at the end of unedifying stories of crime and punishment. The secular and religious laws that reluctantly sanctioned dissection of human cadavers from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, generally reserved the violation of dissection for those condemned to die at the hands of an executioner. To be dissected was a punishment pronounced to selected criminals while alive, serving to heap posthumous retribution onto the condemned man - and they were almost always men.” (Kemp and Wallace 29) During this period, dead bodies were not only used for anatomical study, but parts were used in a type of corpse medicine – skulls ground to powder form, blood tonics, fat applied as ointments – from remedies that required no particular skill to formulate or apply to those which demanded an alchemical expertise. Mummies were in such high demand (Paracelsus used mumia in his elixir for prolonging life, for example) that a significant counterfeiting business emerged, one that only contributed to the questionable practices surrounding the procuration of dead bodies for anatomical research. See Sugg, Mummies, Cannibals, and Vampires, the History of Corpse Medicine, and Marinozzi’s chapter on “La mummia come rimedio terapeutico.” 158 bodies not only provided anatomical representation but were dramatically and expressively posed; the wax figures from ‘La Specola,’ for example, as Kemp and

Wallace put it, were modeled with the “vocabulary of form and gesture … of Baroque saints, martyred to serve a higher purpose than merely living.” (Kemp and Wallace 61)270

Susini’s cleverly named Venere dei Medici (‘of the Medici’ and ‘of the doctors,’ at ‘La

Specola’ in Florence) and his Venerina (at the Museo Poggi in Bologna) show a young woman whose midsection may be opened and allows for a virtual dissection, but, at the same time, whose head is suggestively tilted back and an expression that captures both the agony and ecstasy of the death.271 The models themselves were both so realistically modeled and dramatically posed that they seemed almost participant in the ‘performance’

270 Though the wax models may be static, the sculptural material itself evokes transformation: “As a sculptural medium, wax is at the same time malleable and fragile, ephemeral and enduring, voluptuous in texture and cold to the touch, adaptable in form and allegedly unchanging in its aesthetics. Wax straddles permanence and impermanence, rendering permanent the fleeting features of nature, the appearance of people destined to age and disappear, the quickly decaying anatomized corpses, and temporary biological processes such as pregnancies. Wax is "extended, flexible, and mutable.'" It is transformed by the warmth of skin, a hard substance receptive to heat and pressure, its form altered by the magic of touch, which epitomizes creation and organic forces: female passivity and male resistance. While historically wax has largely embodied the feminine passivity of a medium on which form is imposed, it remains a resistant material constantly striving to revert to an organic, premorphic state. As described by Didi-Huberman, wax "possesses a viscosity, a sort of activity and intrinsic force, which is a force of metamorphism, polymorphism, imperviousness to contradiction (especially the abstract contradiction between form and formlessness)." [she cites Georges Didi-Huberman in the same volume 155] Wax retains the "memory" of the impressed form time and again, while never losing its fundamental quality, an ever-changing life. (Panzanelli 3) 271 The description from the Museo Poggi reads as follows, highlighting both the functional and aesthetic aspects of this model: “The Bolognese ‘Venerina’ is one of the more or less faithful replicas of the original model, the Venere dei Medici, that Clemente Susini (1754-1814) made between 1780-1782 in Florence. The agony of a young woman is represented in her last instant of life as she abandons herself to death voluptuously and completely naked. The thorax and abdomen can be opened, allowing the various parts to be disassembled so as to simulate the act of anatomic dissection. A virtual dissection, to be carried out by lifting the movable layers or ‘pieces’ to reveal veins, arteries and internal organs. A young woman, the Venerina carries a foetus in her womb – to suggest the procreative potential of the female body – despite the total lack of any outward signs of pregnancy. The alienating effect that the statue produces by combining anatomical detail, crude and repulsive, with a harmonious and sensual litheness, is the result of a precise scientific choice: sensitivity is an essential quality of matter; sensitivity – with its wide range of manifestations, including the sensuality of the Venerina who surrenders herself to death – lies at the core of the physical and physiological organisation of man.” (http://www.museopalazzopoggi.unibo.it/75/dettaglio_collezione/clementesusinisvenerinaanatomicalwaxm odel.html) 159 of their own dissections:

The lively hues and fresh sheen of the waxen organs somehow seemed truer to the colourful vitality that we expect to find within ourselves than the dull grey-brown confusion that dominates the appearance of an actual dissection of a corpse. This death- defying vitality was made even more manifest by openly theatrical poses. As in the great picture-books, the figures often appear to be conscious, compliant and even active participants in the great human quest to ‘know thyself’. (Kemp and Wallace 59)

So uncannily lifelike were these wax models, that it seemed “the wondrous machine had indeed been remade in the perfection of all its parts, albeit in static form”

(Kemp and Wallace 59), and they found their way out of the scientific halls into popular museums, like Madame Tussaud’s or the Grevin Museum in Paris (as we have seen, a possible model for Savinio's La nostra anima).272

As wax modelers were creating uncannily realistic sculptures of bodies, representing deathlike-lifelike bodies in works of art, modern embalmers and petrifiers were, in a sense, making works of art out of the dead bodies themselves, or at least transforming them, in their own way, into sculptures or statues of the “immortal dead,” by slowing or arresting the decomposition of the corpse; and when they did manage to

272 See Panzanelli, Bloom, and Huet (especially the chapter “Family Undertaking: Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum”). These museums included not only wax portraiture and staged scenes of renowned political, scientific and artistic figures, but housed exhibits that depicted infamous criminals and bloody executions. Philippe Curtius, a Swiss physician and wax modeler who became Madame Tussaud’s mentor, set up an exhibit in 1782 in Paris of the “Cavern of Great Thieves”; Madame Tussaud herself created the famous “Chamber of Horrors” (with likenesses of the guillotined heads of the Revolutionary figures and of the graverobbing ‘Resurrectionists’ Burke and Hale, among others); the Grévin staged the Assassination of Marat. In many cases, to contribute even more to the authenticity of the recreation, the curators traced and procured props for the exhibitions that were linked to models themselves. As Panzanelli writes: “This apparent delight in the lifelikeness of the material carries, however, morbid undertones, as the ability of wax to imitate flesh applies all the more to tissue once alive but no longer. […] When associated with dead flesh, wax finally demolishes the incongruity between lifelikeness and stillness: the immobility of the wax simulacrum transports the representation of life into the "realm of the immortal dead." Wax represents the living outside life itself: "più che vivo" is, indeed, dead.” (Panzanelli 2). She indicates in a footnote: “ ‘Più che vivo è ... morto’ is a quote from Philippe Alain Michaud during the final discussion at the workshop ‘Lasting Impressions: The Art of Wax Sculpture,’ Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 14-16 April2005. His contribution, as well as those of other participants and attendees, brought to the fore many of the issues presented here. The continuous use of wax for funerary and devotional purposes attests to and explains – if only in part – these associations.” 160 stop decomposition, it remained a lasting enduring dead body, no longer alive, but preserved in its corpse state. The Egyptians had, of course, with their mummification practices and associated rituals also sought to produce a lasting dead body that would facilitate the reincarnation process, for religious purposes. From the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance and through the 18th century, again, embalming was performed for a combination of religious and political purposes, for either the display of the body in public ceremonies or for the preservation of relics that to an extent, collapsed time and provided a direct contact or connection between the observers and the original bodies of the saints and religious figures,273 and within scientific and artistic circles, to extend the time that was available for the investigation of the anatomical structure of the body through dissection. The 18th century saw a “democratization” of embalming practices, which had been predominantly a privilege of only the highest levels of society, and whose diffusion, Marinozzi explains, can be attributed both to the reconsiderations of the relationship between body and soul (the body as the substantial and essential element and physical locus of the spirit) as well as to socio-cultural and political transformations of the Enlightenment, specifically regarding the proper handling of dead corpses for reasons of public health and hygiene (Marinozzi 72-72).274 Modern embalming practices not only allowed for the hygienic handling and transportation of dead bodies, but provided the increased possibility for the surviving friends and family to view the deceased in a comforting, peaceful repose (closely related to an enduring sleep); this final ‘body image’

273 The shroud of Turin would also enter into this category, with the ‘impression’ of Christ’s body providing a tangible connection for the believers to his or her God. 274 These earlier embalming techniques mostly involved the flushing of the body with fluids, sometimes with the removal of internal organs and introduction of drying agents into those cavities. A shift to modern embalming methods occurred in the early to mid 19th century with new techniques of injecting drying agents directly into the veins, and the emerging use in the later 19th century of mechanical pumps that further facilitated the circulation of these fluids. 161 gave the living an opportunity to honor the dead and acknowledge the passing, a key step, it is maintained, in the modern grieving process (Mayer 6-7). Postmortem photography, which included images of the dead in these tranquil ‘sleeping’ states or posed in more lifelike individual and family portraits, also allowed the living to have a lasting image to remember the dead by and to carry with them. 275 These new technologies of embalming and postmortem photography effectively challenged and redefined the image of human death, creating what Troyer calls an “embalmed vision,” a fixed and immobilized

“mediated image of the dead body” that separated it out of the natural process of decomposition.276 (Of course, the vision of the body, as well as of the corpse, changed dramatically from the turn of the century, affected by technologies – like the X-ray, powerful microscopes, organ transplants, etc. – and the devastating effects of the two world wars.277

275 For more on post-mortem photography, see: Linkman, Photography and Death; Burns, Sleeping Beauty II; Orlando, Fotografia postmortem; Vidor, “La photographie post mortem dans l'Italie du XIXe et XXe siècles. Une introduction.” Photographs of dead relatives were knowingly superimposed over photographs of their surviving loved ones, often in watchful and protective stances. Rather than claiming evidence for survival after death, such images used photography's reproductive possibility to create a convincing (or consoling) image of mourning and faith. If there is a belief embodied in these images, it would have to be translated by the acknowledgment that the subjects of photographic portraits may die, but their images are eternally reproducible.” (Gunning 66) 276 “Almost imperceptibly, the act of looking at a corpse in the late nineteenth century shifted from seeing uncontrolled death to seeing a mediated image of the dead body. As the unregulated postmortem conditions of the dead body came under control, first through photography and later through embalming practices, the embalmed vision that affected the living observer effectively sealed the corpse. The dead body was placed in a space of death stripped of any adverse smells, appearances, and ultimately of human death itself. The corpse was no longer controlled by biological death in the late nineteenth century; rather, human control of the corpse and the “death” it presented became mediated by human actors.” (Troyer 45-46). Geoffry Gorer, in an article entitled “The Pornography of Death,” comments on embalming practices as exercises the denial of death, through the denial its natural process: “Pornography is, no doubt, the opposite face, the shadow of prudery […] In the 20th century, however, there seems to have been an unremarked shift in prudery; whereas copulation has become more and more “mentionable,” particularly in the Anglo-Saxon societies, death has become more and more “unmentionable” as a natural process” […] The natural processes of corruption and decay have become disgusting, as disgusting as the natural processes of birth and copulation were a century ago; preoccupation about such processes is (or was) morbid and unhealthy, to be discouraged in all an punished in the young. […] The ugly facts are relentlessly hidden; the art of the embalmers is an art of complete denials. (Gorer 50-51) 277 Troyer’s section on “embalmed vision” addresses the history of American embalming in the late 19th century, and so does not directly include the European experience or the devastating effects of the two 162 In addition to embalming practices, another method for preserving human bodies that developed from the early 19th century were the so-called techniques of ‘petrification,’ beginning with the interventions on corpses by the Bellunese Egyptologist Girolamo

Segato (1792-1836) and continuing at the hands of several Italian ‘pietrificatori’ through the time that Savinio was writing during World War II. Segato traveled and conducted extensive research in Egypt, and ultimately set up in Florence to dedicate himself to perfecting this technique of mineralization of the body. The legend surrounding Segato’s new techniques holds that he had rediscovered the ancient secrets of the Egyptian mummification,278 and his research was both the source of marvel and of great controversy (the Florentine Church, for example, was opposed to his experiments

(Pocchiesa 183)). His correspondence documents the great difficulty he encountered in finding support and funding for his experimentation and his unsuccessful attempts to procure a university position.279 He died destitute at the early age of 44, just over a month

World Wars on the collective image of the dead body. However, he and others document the connection to and attribute the growth of the American embalming and funerary and the increased demand for a means of hygienically transporting fallen soldiers home from the battlefield for proper burial services. Postmortem photography was diffuse in the United States as well as throughout Europe. 278 An article in 1936 from “Sapere” reports: “Segato, invece, sorto fuori della scuola, on aveva alcun ragione per persegnirne i fini, e, se i suoi preparati sono rappresentati da piccoli animali o da visceri e parti staccate del corpo umano, la sua aspirazione fu sempre quella di poter arrivare alla conservazione di una intera salma. Sembra infatti accertato che egli sia stato indotto alle sue esperienze da quanto potè osservare durante la sua lunga permanenza in Egitto; e, per quanto si riferisce al suo metodo di pietrificazione, v’è stato chi ha asserito averlo egli dedotto da quanto incidentalmente gli era capitato di osservare su corpi umani da lui rinvenuti come fossilizzati fra le sabbie del deserto; mentre altri non esitò ad esprimere il convincimento che il metodo stesso vecchio documento capitatogli fra le mani nel tempo che lavorava a levar carte geografiche per conto del Vicerè.” Giugno Salvi, “Girolamo Segato e la pietrificazione,” “Sapere,” Dec 15, 1936. Savinio had published an article “Vetri a oro con graffiti” in “Sapere” a few months earlier, on Feb 29 1936. 279 Della Valle’s book on Segato published a letter from Segato himself to his brother Vicenzo, dated “Firenze, 13 Dicembre, 1832,” in which writes of his experiments in petrification and these financial and professional difficulties he faced “Sono parecchi anni, che fra le branche che mi sono formato nel pensiero ed occupazione, scelsi quella della conservazione dei tessuti animali in istato asciugo, siccome mancante; dopo molteplici tentativi giunsi a potermi ripromettere e garantirne la conservazione dei pezzi tanto di anatomia umana e comparata, come dell’intiero corpo animale non escluse le viscere, nonché de’ Molluschi ed altri animali quasi intieramente formati di sostanza mucosa (come l’antologia ne fece cenno in dietro), Molti Professori d’anatomia, d’istoria naturale ed altri dotti mi hanno favorito, onde verificare ed esaminare 163 after having finally attained authorization for his research from Pope Gregorio XVI.280

Segato was ultimately buried in Santa Croce, having taken his secrets for petrification with him to the grave, as the inscription on the monument in his honor (finalized fifty years after his death) acknowledges: “Qui giace disfatto Girolamo Segato da Belluno che i pezzi, che tengo in mia casa, e concordi hanno dichiarato tenerne leale il vantaggio, sia per la parte istruttiva che economica, stante la permanenza del colore, della forma e di molti caratteri, nonché pella solidità e secchezza aquisita, e per l’inalterabilità dell’azione atmosferica da tarme, o altri insetti distruttivi. Incoraggiato, anzi stimolato dai prelodati Signori, ne feci parte a questo I.R. governo, oferendo il mio servizio sia in vantaggio dell’I. e R. museo, che per il gabinetto anatomico di questo arcispedale, cosa ben desidera da quelli illustri professori; dichiarai che, siccome italiano, preferivo un discretto assegnamento obbligandomi, come dissi, al processo, istruendo degli alunni, piuttosto che portarlo in estero paese; ma nulla ottenni, stante la invidiosa malignità di persone … acquistato avrebbero ben volentieri i miei pezzi preparati che ascendono a circa un centinaio fra anatomia umana, comparata, entomologia, ittiologia, erpetologia, ecc.; ma non mi convenne di farlo, siccome li rifiutai manco a gabinetti ultramontani, calcolando di trarne miglior profitto in paese, o capitale, ove ancor vi sia per le scienze e per le arti protezione. Prima per altro di lasciar o l’Italia o l’Europa, verro infallantemente ad abbracciarvi: i vostri consigli mi possono essere sempre utili; e non prometto però d’oltrepassare Rovigo dopo gli funesti avvenimenti.” Carlo della Valle adds a footnote explaining the content of this letter and expanding on the difficulties he had with the Church: “Si tratta della scoperta che procurò maggior fama al Segato cioè quella di ridurre a rigidità lapidea corpi e parti di corpi, umani ed animali. Difficile sarebbe scrivere in poche righe di questo modo di pietrificazione, il cu segreto fu portato con se nella tomba dal suo scopritore. La leggenda vuole che il Bellunese lo trovasse durante il suo viaggio nel deserto: probabilmente i suoi studi ebbero inizio ed ispirazione in Egitto e furono completati Firenze. Fin da ragazzo il Segato si era appassionato di studi e ricerche di chimica. Si ricordi il post-scriptum della lettera al padre in data Cairo […] A Firenze, in un locale sul Lungarno Acciaioli, nel palazzo Spini, egli impiantò un suo laboratorio. E le ricerche gli assorbirono gran parte della sua attività e tutti i suoi guadagni e larghi aiuti avuti da amici. Alla fine potè mostrare una collezione di circa 300 insetti, rettili, pesci, molluschi ecc. pietrificati, una tavola con un mosaico quadrato composto di 214 organi umani pietrificati, oltre a numerosi altri pezzi umani, del pari solidificati. Questi lavori gli attirarono l’attenzione degli studiosi, ma anche l’invidia e l’odio di molti di essi, e l’ambiente ecclesiastico formulava per di più accuse di empietà. Riuscitogli vano il tentativo di ottenere una cattedra universitaria di chimica tecnologica, continuarono le amarezze e le difficoltà; e il permesso pontificio di ottenere cadaveri per i suoi lavori gli giunse pochi momenti prima che esalasse l’ultimo respiro. Bisogna inoltre ricordare iterative fatte per ottenere, con precipitazioni calcaree dalle acque minerali, oggetti artistici. È da ricordare altresì il suo processo per la composizione dell’ambra artificiale. (Della Valle 80-81) 280 Segato’s friend Luigi Muzzi had written an appeal to the Pope, who was also from Belluno. The papal response was somewhat vague, not entirely an approval, but a declaration, at any rate, that he wouldn’t stand in the way of Segato’s experiements. Muzzi had gone through a man from Ferrara and the Pope through a man in Udine to circumvent the Tuscan curia. “... Mgr Pro Leg. Ferrara, 24 Dec. 1835, 39817 : ‘Sapendo che per mezzo di V. S. L s'è qui inoltrata una supplica colla quale il Sig. Professor Segato di Belluno ha invocata una Pontificia dichiarazione concernente la sua scoperta sul modo di pietrificare i corpi animali, mi reco a dovere di prevenirla che il S.P. non crede né necessario né opportuno il procedervi. "Se per tutti i delirj, a cui possono abbandonarsi gli uomini dovessero in preveggenza emettersi dottrine capaci di fissare la retta credenza del Capo della Chiesa, questi non dovrebbe mai discendere dalla cattedra di verità, e forse non giungerebbe mai a tutti riprovare i possibili errori. L'oracolo del Sommo Pontefice colpisce le dottrine e le proposizioni perverse, e pericolose, ma quando queste sono enunziate, ed alterano o minacciano la Fede o la morale Cattolica. V. S. I. saprà nella sua prudenza trarre da questi miei cenni ciò che le occorra onde far nota in bel modo al prof. Sig. Professor la mente del S. P. (Santo Padre) in riguardo alla di lui istanza. Rinnovo ecc.’” See the chapter “Girolamo Segato e Gregorio XVI,” in Pocchiesa 183- 188. 164 vedrebbesi intero pietrificato se l’arte sua non periva con lui. Fu gloria insolita dell’umana sapienza esempio d’infelicità non insolito.”

After Segato’s death, other dedicated pietrificatori (among the most famous of which were Paolo Gorini, Efisio Marini and Francesco Spirito, the latter a contemporary of Savinio’s) sought to rediscover his methods, working for the most part alone and outside of official academic environments: “They experimented without revealing their methods, often changing techniques and recipes, surrounded by an aura of secrecy. They were for this reason, the object of reverential awe/fear (timore reverenziale) from a part of the population, giving rise to true legends”281 The petrified pieces they created were used for didactic purposes, for medical and artistic study, they were displayed in natural history museums, kept as personal relics or remembrances of a the deceased, and celebrated as marvels of scientific accomplishment.

In 1934, Carlo della Valle published a book on Segato (again, owned and marked by Savinio) that included a historical introduction, various letters and documents, annotations and tables. Numerous articles in the 1930s and 1940s addressed processes of petrification and the scientists who performed them, in part for the commemoration of

Marini’s death in 1935 and, in 1936, on the occasion of the centenary of Segato’s death.

An article by Angelo Viziano from 1940, “Sulle orme di Segato,” related an interview with Francesco Spirito, a gynecologist and petrifier, and a tour of his own petrified pieces. Most articles spoke breathlessly about the “miracolo” or “prodigio di Segato” and

281 “I pietrificatori operavano solitamente al di fuori dell'ambiente accademico ufficiale. Sperimentavano senza rivelare i loro metodi, spesso cambiando tecniche e ricette, circondati da un alone di segretezza. Erano per questo oggetto di timore reverenziale da parte della popolazione, dando origine a vere e proprie leggende” (Garlaschelli 5). 165 hailed both his own genius282 and that of his followers who were able to preserve bodies and parts indefinitely in a lasting, eternal form that retained not only the form but the color of the tissues.283 They exalted the scientists’ ability through petrification to not only slow the effects of time, as with embalming, but to defeat time:

Si chiederà il pubblico: «non esiste già l'imbalsamazione? Non si immortalano già animali (ed anche uomini se si vuole) coi ritrovati della tassidermia. Che bisogno de di farli diventare di sasso o di pietra?». Il pubblico ignora che la pietrificazione nei confronti dell'imbalsamazione rappresenta un progresso decisivo e che la perpetuità imbalsamata è relativa, mentre quella pietrificata è assoluta; ignora che l'imbalsamazione ritarda il tempo, ma non lo vince; lo sfida, ma non lo annienta, e che a lungo andare anch'essa è vulnerabile, sia pure ottenuta con ì metodi più moderni.284

These journalists write admiringly about the ability to transform the human flesh into stone- or marble-like material, impervious not only to the natural processes of decomposition but also to external impact.285 However, these statues made from humans retained, again not only the form, but the color and a certain residual ‘freshness’; these bodies defied death, and the scientist, working his magic, transformed not only flesh into

‘stone,’ but himself into artist.

Ma il processo addirittura meraviglioso, che sorprende come cosa sovrumana e forma il più bel titolo di gloria per l'inventore ò quello della conservazione in uno stato

282 An example of a reverential text: “Ma uomo d’azione, instancabile, vivace, combattivo, insaziabile nell’apprendere come incontenibile nella molteplicità delle vie verso le quali indirizzare la propria attività, tentò la chimica come l’archeologia, la zoologia, la botanica e la mineralogia come la geografia e la topografia, la fisica come il disegno e la plastica, e fu ad un tempo filologo, idraulico, incisore, cartografo, naturalista, preparatore anatomico, esploratore, artista, in tutto rivelando uno spirito di innovazione ed una individualità che richiamano su di lui l’attenzione e fanno pensare a quella genialità schiettamente latina che è nostro patrimonio millenario ereditario e le cui più alte, addirittura formidabili, impersonazioni hanno stupido e stupiscono anche ora tutto il mondo.” (Giunio Salvi, “Girolamo Segato e la pietrificazione.”) 283 For example, “La scoperta che consente di conservare indefinitivamente nei sepolcreti il corpo d'una persona cara, senza che il tempo ne alteri le sembianze.” “Una scoperta che non è perduta” in “La Stampa,” August 4, 1935. 284 “Le invenzioni eccezionali. Il segreto della pietrificazione è stato scoperto?” in “La Stampa,” May 15, 1940 (signed ‘betra’). 285 “Il secondo processo, detto di pietrificazione, ma diverso dal sistema di Gerolamo Segato, riduceva a solidità marmorea qualunque tessuto umano. Un seno di donna pietrificato resistette al colpi dati con un ferro proprio come fosse di marmo e per marmo si sarebbe potuto scambiare, se l'epidermide e il colore non l'avesse fatto riconoscere per parte di corpo umano.” “Da Gerolamo Segato a Elisio Marini. Non è perduto il prodigioso segreto della pietrificazione dei corpi?” in “La Stampa,” July 15, 1935. 166 permanente di freschezza, morbidezza e flessibilità naturali. I corpi cosi conservati non danno alcuna idea di morte. Sembra invece ch'essi nascondano gelosamente la vita e che un dolce torpore ne illanguidisca il movimento. […] Come un incantesimo. Ma la commozione più profonda è quella che deriva dalla conservazione integrale ed estetica dei corpi umani. Lo scienziato si trasforma in artista e la morte con l'opera mirabile si riduce a un riposo dolce e sereno, che dell'abbandono ha tutta la grazia e tutta la bellezza. (my italics) 286

As part of their artistic ambitions, several of these pietrificatori, including Segato and Marini, not only managed to preserve human bodies or parts in sculptural or statue- like works that sought to fix them in their original form, they also used the material – the flesh and organs themselves – to create works that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the original human body: they used the human body as raw material for the creation of other works, the most famous of which were a table inlaid with colored tiles made from different organs (one of Segato’s works) and a table top made from mixing different organs of different color to replicate marble (one of Marini’s works).287

Against this backdrop, and given Savinio's explicit interest in Segato, we can go back and look at the treatment of this theme in the texts we mentioned above. In an article from 1946, Savinio seems to suggest that the fate of the dead body is not entirely important:

Spesso le bare dei grandi uomini ispirano un sospetto di vuoto, e che la preziosa salma abbia preso il volo. Quale importanza ha la presenza o l'assenza del cadavere? Nessuna a mio pensare, ma non tutti la pensano come me e per moltissimi la sorte del corpo morto è anche più importante di quella del corpo vivo.288

And, as we’ve seen, Signor Münster’s body falling to pieces functions as a liberating event for him, his anima survives separately and is lightened, born to this new

286 Ibid. 287 Frederick Ruysch, of course, had done something similar years before in creating dioramas from fetal skeletons and other body parts, tableaux in which the tiny skeletons were seen crying into handkerchiefs, playing the violin or other activities. 288 “Il pio Enea” SD 256; orig. in “La Lettura,” Apr 4, 1946. Here Savinio makes no specific mention of lasting preservation of the body, but the article is written years after his pieces on petrification. 167 existence.

La sua anima diventa sempre più lucida, via via che la sua materia si addormenta. (SM 111)289

What Savinio does target for criticism, at times, is the external intervention or dissection of the corpse, which pulls the body out of its natural course and makes it the locus of experimentation by scientists. Savinio includes in his ‘creative biography’ of

Nostradamus, originally published in 1938 and included in Narrate, uomini la vostra storia (1942), a comical grotesque scene from a medical dissection, in which the physicians, followed by a swarm of students, continue to incise the putrifying body of a convict even as it protests its own dissection and demands to have his own body back.

With black humour, Savinio paints a picture of aspiring doctors above the law, whose abusive actions towards the corpse they justify by official authorization, but who nevertheless, year to year, with each slicing of the body, cannot extract from the cadaver his “secret” (the secret of life):

A Montpellier gli aspiranti dottori godevano privilegi e impunità. Contraevano debiti ma non anche l'obbligo di pagarli; avevano facoltà di far espellere i vicini troppo rumorosi che li distraevano dagli studi, come fabbri, falegnami e simili; erano esenti da tasse e per nessun reato dovevano comparire davanti ai giudici ordinari. E sì che in quella città i giudici ti pigliavano un forastiero e te lo schiaffavano in fondo alla cella più umida e tetra, a semplice richiesta di un cittadino leso nei propri interessi. Chi osa negare la maestà della Scienza? Una campana squillò l'ora della lezione, e i due studenti, forniti di calamo e scrittoio, si avviarono verso l'aula. In quel mentre un tumulto scoppiò nell'androne, e una stridente voce di vecchio gridò: «Rendetemi il mio cadavere! Rendetemi il mio cadavere!». Nostradamo fece appena in tempo a scansarsi: una mano verdastra e grondante sangue descrisse una sinistra parabola, sbatté sul muro ove l'impronta rimase come un marchio di

289 SM 111. Earlier in the story, the narrator writes: “Il suo corpo che tra poco - egli lo sa - marcirà, andrà a pezzi, egli lo sente come un misterioso tempio. Le più profonde formazioni della vita si compiono nel lezzo. Quale pensiero ha traversato la mente del signor Münster? Egli si sente madre. Si sente madre di se stesso. Della parte migliore, incorruttibile, immortale di se stesso” (SM 85). Signor Münster feels himself a mother because in a way he is giving birth to his soul into another existence, allowing it to emerge from the body as a child emerges from the mother’s womb. The falling to pieces and decomposition of the body fall into the panta rei, the flow of life and natural transformation. 168 maledizione, cadde a terra con un orrendo «plaf». Due vecchioni uscivano a urtoni da una porta, in robone rosso entrambi e berretta nera con fiocco cremisi, e tiravano questo per le braccia quello per i piedi un cadavere decapitato e in istato di avanzata putrefazione, mentre un terzo vegliardo, vestito egli pure con abiti dottorali e munito di scalpello, andava sezionando il morto, fra gli acutissimi stridi propri e dei suoi colleghi. Il sinistro corteo si allontanò fra i tira e i molla, circondato da uno sciame schiamazzante di scolari e spargendo dietro a sé sangue e pezzi di cadavere. Una livida luce traversava le vetrate e spazzava dai muri le negre tracce dei sogni. E poiché le lezioni della Scuola cominciavano al finire della notte, agli stridi dei vecchioni morticidi si aggiungevano quelli dei galli che annunciavano il sole. «Che succede?» domandò Nostradamo, col raspo in gola. «La nostra Scuola» rispose l'anziano con manifesto compiacimento «è più avanzata delle altre e pratica la dissezione fin dal 1376, ossia da quando il duca d'Angiò ci autorizzò a richiedere ogni anno il corpo di un giustiziato. Ma con un solo cadavere all'anno che fare? Ecco perché questo morto annuale è atteso con tanta impazienza e disputato al suo arrivo come un tesoro dai pirati ». «E la lezione?». «Poiché il morto prima di rivelarci il suo segreto è ridotto a spezzatino, la lezione è rimandata ogni anno all'anno successivo». (my italiacs)290

These physical investigations alone cannot provide the doctors with the “secret” of life. Savinio not only graphically describes a scene in which these ceremonially dressed physicians carry the body of their ‘martyr for science’ in a bizarre annual nocturnal procession, but he describes them as “old killers of the dead” (vecchioni morticidi), suggesting that their invasive inquiries into the dead body might themselves constitute a second death or execution of the dead. The idea of the a second death or violence to the body finds resonance, again, in Signor Münster’s worry that he, Medusa- like, might accidentally petrify himself with a mirror and thereby kill his already dead body, and, in a related sense, as we saw in Vita di Mercurio, Doctor Speranza’s interventions on the dead bodies (his attempts at electrical reanimation) prevent the souls from finding peace and being liberated from their corpses, until, of course, Mercury

290 “Nostradamo” NU 193-194, orig. “Vita prodigiosa di Nostradamo” in “La Stampa,” April 3-10, 1938. This «plaf» is, incidentally, the same noise that Signor Münster’s hand makes when it falls to the ground, but his body’s ‘falling to pieces,’ in contrast, is portrayed as a natural process of the soul liberating itself from the body. 169 ‘rescues’ them.291

Perhaps thinking of Segato and the Egyptians, Savinio recognizes the importance of the mummified body in its function as the physical continuation of the deceased on earth - the embodiment of a metaphysical condition of "earthly eternity," and a vessel for psyche, an alternative to the separation from the body traditionally required to "liberate" the soul: a similar, albeit apparently reversed process produces (as we shall see in detail in Museo di famiglia and in the poltrobabbo and poltromamma paintings) those anthropomorphic objects that, like the favorite chairs or portraits of a deceased loved one, comfort the living by physically representing, or better embodying, the memory of them.

Here Savinio establishes a humorous and ambivalent connection between works of plastic art and the mummification process,292 and the role it plays as facilitator for a reincarnation process.293

In the next section, we will thus try to answer the following questions: how does

Savinio represent petrification, this process of turning flesh into stone, human body into statue? How do his ideas about, and metaphorical use of, petrification and mummification in painting and writing relate to traditional religious conceptions, on the one hand, and his satire of scientific-medical practices in secularized modernity, on the other? How are these mummified characters or hybrid animate-inanimate beings representative of

Savinio's rethinking of the nature and function of mannequins in metaphysical painting?

291 Savinio is not a physical, but rather a metaphysical anatomist. See Sabbatini, L’argonauto, l’anatomico, il funambolo. 292 “I mobili, come i ritratti, come le mummie per gli Egizi, sono la continuazione quaggiù dei nostri genitori, dei nostri parenti, dei nostri amici; e la poltrona nella quale usava sedere nostro padre dovrebbe continuare a rappresentarlo fra noi, in maniera immobile e silenziosa, ma non per questo meno rispettabile; e nessuno dovrebbe sedercisi sopra ad eccezione del figlio primogenito, e questi pure nelle occasioni solenni e nelle ricorrenze sacre.” (SM 77) 293 In his “Commento alla Città del Sole,” Savinio writes: “Molto prima della Chiesa Cattolica, gli Egizii non solo non bruciavano i cadaveri ma li imbalsamavano, perché il morto dopo mille anni trovasse pronto a riunirsi novamente con la propria anima.” (151 note 46) 170 How do they relate to the elaboration of Savinio's own personal artistic "metaphysics"?

Does arresting the natural decomposition of the body impede the process of ‘dying well,’ prevent the soul (or residual essence) from continuing on to eternity? How does the terrestrial immortality of a petrified body relate to the terrestrial immobility attained through the plastic arts? Is the figure of the (mad) Scientist in Savinio both an alter-ego and antagonist of the Artist?

3. Museum of the Family

In an article “Fallatajà,” published in “Oggi” on October 9, 1939, and later included in Ascolto il tuo cuore, città (1944),294 Savinio includes a section in which he discusses the works of Girolamo Segato and imagines the creation of a ‘museo di famiglia’ that would replace the usual portraits of deceased family members with their actual petrified bodies. The publication of this article is contemporary with the publication of the final entries of his ‘travel diary’ series (later collected in Dico a te,

Clio, 1939)295 in which Savinio recounts his visits to the Etruscan necropolis, where he has pleasant interactions with the dwellers of these cities of the dead; the Etruscans have

294 Also published as “Museo in famiglia” in “La Stampa,” January 13, 1941. The manuscripts included in the folder of ‘Fallatajà’ include the section where Savinio writes of having planned to visit the Spirito’s collection in 1940. 295 The articles of this series were published in “Domenica,” “Oggi” and “Il Mediterraneo,” and are a collection of reflections about the people and places Savinio visits in Abruzzo and Etruria with his wife Maria in the summer and early fall of 1939. He takes us on a wild fantastical, metaphysical journey first through the towns of the living in Abruzzo and then to the Etruscan necropoli, or cities of the dead. The book is organized to highlight this passage from the one land of the living to the other of the dead, complete with the appearance of Charun, the Etruscan psychopomp, or figure which guides souls to the underworld, in three framing instances: the first, after the brief introduction, before the journey begins; the second, between the tour of Abruzzo and before heading to the necropoli; and the third, in conclusion as the journey has come to an end, and Charun abandons the narrator who must return to the realm of the living. With the exception of two articles published in 1944, the entries are dated from August 12 to September 6, 1939 and published from July 22 to October 14, 1939. The dating of these articles is in and of itself noteworthy, given the particular importance of the impending war and because they are somewhat out of order chronologically, and would make for an interesting topic for further study. All of the articles relative to the Etruscan necropoli were published, as was “Fallatajà,” in “Oggi." 171 in fact extended to Savinio an invitation to remain with them in their peaceful world and he is tempted to stay, especially as Europe finds itself on the brink of a horrific impending crisis: World War II296. Savinio’s imagining of this ‘museo di famiglia’ strikes a similar tone: envisioning a cozy intergenerational scene with the dead and the living reunited and comfortably arranged at home.

In this section, as with many of Savinio’s writings, and certainly those included in

Ascolto il tuo cuore, città, the tone is conversational and meandering, full of references and insights, following his associations.297 Savinio transitions from a discussion about various types of cheese and the fact that their maturation is at times accelerated by artificial means (“Questi aiuti che l'uomo dà alla natura sono di uso antichissimo …”

(134))298 to a discussion of the petrification of corpses – from speeding up natural processes to slowing down, even arresting them – through a mention of Lodi: “Lodi è illustre per tre cose: perché è patria del Lodigiano, perché ha dato i natali ad Ada Negri, perché possiede alcuni pezzi umani pietrificati dal professore Gorini, contemporaneo ed

296 “È mezzogiorno, che per i morti è mezzanotte. I boccaporti delle tombe si aprono a uno a uno, appaiono sulla soglia i nostri amici nuovi e carissimi: il barone etrusco, l'Andrea Sperelli del V secolo avanti Cristo, gli uomini rosa, le donne col tùtolo in testa, i cavalli che ridono, tutti. Alcuni restano a terra, altri si sollevano come palloncini, tutti assieme compongono un graffito nel quale più per intuizione che per scienza leggiamo: «Perché parti? Tuona la guerra sul mondo. Resta con noi e ti troverai benone». Che risolvere? Tornare tra i vivi? Ascoltare il consiglio degli Etruschi morti?…” (Dico a te130) 297 See, for example, Leonardo Sciascia, “Savinio o delle conversazione”: “La conversazione di Savinio, per quanto possa sembrare divagante, capricciosa e magari contraddittoria a chi immediatamente, vi si accosta, è una visione della vita, un sistema – che rifiuta ogni sistema – di leggere il mondo, di capirlo e di trarne (nell'intelligenza di decifrarlo anche nei segreti minimi, i segni per troppa familiarità e quotidianità quasi invisibili, gli avvertimenti anche banali) ogni possibile felicità. La felicità dell'intelligenza.” (X) 298 Savinio segués to the section on preservation of corpses from an almost four page discussion on different types of cheese (he mentions Parmesan, the Taleggios, Crescenzas, Robiolas, Stracchinos, white Montevecchias, Stella Alpina, Marscapone, Gruyere/Emmenthal, Reggiano, Lodigiano, Camembert, the “adult” Gorgonzola and its younger version Panerone). He notes that the Panerone is Gorgonzola not yet subject to the fermentation processes sometimes accelerated by artificial means, and remarks that this human intervention on natural processes is something that dates back to ancient times, mentioning both Herodotus and Artistotle. 172 èmulo di Girolamo Segato” (134).299 He then continues with: “Girolamo Segato morì a quarantaquattro anni, il 3 febbraio 1836, lasciando alcuni debiti e portando con sé nella tomba il suo segreto della pietrificazione dei cadaveri” (135). Savinio then follows with a brief observation about Segato’s bizarre style of writing and a sample of it from a letter he wrote; a sonnet dedicated to Segato by Rambelli; and a mention of his famous table inlaid with petrified human tiles – with, interestingly, the only comment that an American bought it for 16,000 lira in 1837.300 He also remembers a time he was in Siena in

September 1940 when he had planned to see the petrified pieces of Prof. Francesco

Spirito, whom, he notes, was said to have discovered Segato’s secret. Though he didn’t end up going, in the hotel that evening, to combat his loneliness, he imagined his room filling up with smiling, illustrious dead people,301 which got him thinking:

Cominciai a pensare. Cominciai a pensare che la conservazione del corpo, per mummificazione o pietrificazione che sia, in parte risolve il problema della morte. Vero è che mummificazione o pietrificazione concernono soltanto la conservazione del corpo, non anche quella dell'anima. Ma la conservazione dell'anima perché ci deve preoccupare? L'anima, come tutti sanno, è immortale, e a conservarsi provvede da sé. È il corpo invece la parte corruttibile di noi. È il corpo che muore. È il corpo che si distrugge. È il corpo che si riduce pulvis, cinis, nihil. È il corpo dunque che ci deve preoccupare. È alla conservazione del corpo che dobbiamo volgere tutte le nostre cure. (138)302

299 In both the manuscript for Fallatajà at Fondo Savinio (Fondo Savinio, 18.5, p 14), and in the article “Museo in Famiglia” from 1941, Savinio had originally misidentified the petrified parts in Lodi as those of Segato: "Lodi è illustre per tre cose: perché è patria del Lodigiano, perché ha dato i natali ad Ada Negri, perché possiede un piccolo museo dedicato alle opere di Girolamo Segato. Le opere di Girolamo Segato sono dei morti pietrificati. Geloso del suo segreto, Segato non lo comunicò a nesso e se lo portò con sé nella tomba…”, from “Museo in Famiglia,” in “La Stampa.” The change is made for its inclusion in Ascolto il tuo cuore, città. 300 “Una delle opere più pregiate di Segato pietrificatore, è un tavolino fatto di pezzi umani intarsiati, per il quale un americano offrì nel 1837 sedicimila lire. (Lettera di Luigi Muzzi a Giuseppe Pellegrini, del 1° marzo 1837, da Bologna)” (ACC 136) All of this information that Savinio includes comes directly from Della Valle’s book. 301 “Ora, mentre io aspettavo nella camera calda ancora della mia notte, seduto sul letto disfatto, tra due specchi che moltiplicavano la mia immagine, senza risolvere per questo il problema della mia solitudine, cominciai a pensare. E a poco a poco il pensiero sedò l'impazienza, cancellò la delusione, mi riempì la camera di morti illustri e sorridenti. L'amico pensiero una volta ancora intervenne a buon punto e operò a ragion veduta. n pensiero è il nostro amico migliore, il nostro compagno più fidato.” (137) 302 Keeping the body intact through petrification, he points out, would furthermore be advantageous at Judgment Day: “Ma se carne e figura si potranno ritrovare intatte al suono dell'angelica tromba anziché 173

Savinio informs the reader that Segato had rediscovered the ancient Egyptian secret for preserving corpses (a subject of debate) and then provides a history of Egyptian mummification,303 in what is essentially a loose translation of Herodotus 2.86-89; he describes three different processes associated with varying levels of quality and cost. In the highest level, in addition to the mummies themselves:

Questi fanno fare una teca di legno dipinta a figura umana, ci mettono dentro il morto, lo collocano in piedi nella camera mortuaria, accosto al muro, e ve lo custodiscono preziosamente. Si forma così a poco a poco una specie di museo di famiglia. (140)304

Savinio then remarks that if the Egyptians were happy enough with their mummies, all the more reason we would be with our petrified bodies, as clean and glowing as they are, as much as the techniques for preserving the corpses have improved:

Se gli Egizi si contentavano dei loro morti mummificati, a maggior ragione noi ci contenteremo dei nostri morti pietrificati e conservati in tale apparenza di pulizia e

doverle ricostituire, sarà tanta fatica di meno e si tratterà soltanto di ridare a esse, come a certi medicinali, un po' di fluidità: «Scioglierle in due dita d'acqua». È certo in ogni modo che al buon esito del Giudizio Universale, il sistema Segato-Spirito recherebbe grandissimi vantaggi.” (139) 303 Here, Savinio writes the word “imbalsamazione,” not “mummificazione.” Though he sometimes makes a distinction between the three processes (embalming, mummification, petrification), other times he uses the terms somewhat interchangeably to refer more generally to the processes of preservation of the corpse. In an interview in “La Stampa,” Spirito clarifies the distinction for the interviewer: “‘Pensate - ho detto al mio illustre interlocutore - che altri, dopo il Segato, siano riusciti nell’intento?’ ‘-Sulla loro riuscita bisogna certamente fare qualche tara, poiché troppo facilmente si equivoca tra imbalsamazione, mummificazione e pietrificazione. Nell’imbalsamazione si tratta di processi diversi di conservazione di corpi nei quali permane la succulenta dei tessuti. La mummificazione è invece un essiccamento dei tessuti con maggiore o minore detrazione del corpo stesso. Nella pietrificazione invece si tratta di infiltrazione minerale dei corpi.’” Angelo Viziano, “Sulle orme di Segato,” “La Stampa” Dec 27, 1939. 304 The first step in the process of the top two levels requires the removal of the brain, the third does not provide for that, a point upon which Savinio remarks in footnote that reads like a zombie awakening (this passage also appeared in similar form as an article “Cervello delle mummie” in “Il Popolo di Roma” on November 1, 1942): “Preoccupa l’ablazione del cervello da un corpo che in capo a mille anni doveva ritrovare la sua anima e il suo spirito. Dice bene Voltaire (Dizionario filosofico, voce «Api»): «Se speravano la resurrezione del corpo, perché gli toglievano il cervello prima d’imbalsamarlo? Dovevan dunque risuscitare senza cervello gli Egiziani?» Si agghiaccia il cuore a pensare quei principi, quei governatori, quegli uomini autorevoli che alla fine del loro millennio ritrovano lo spirito animatore, riaccendono gli occhi, escono dalla teca di legno, si svolgono dalle bende, tornano a mischiarsi alla vita degli altri uomini, ma non hanno cervello e magari nessuno se ne accorge. Si è costretti ad argomentare che in Egitto, a un certo momento, soltanto il popolo e la gente da poco aveva conservato uso di ragione, ossia coloro che erano stati imbalsamati con i sistemi più economici e conservando il cervello.” (141) 174 floridezza, quali da vivi non se la sognavano neppure. Mancheranno, si, di movimento e di parola, ma chi sa che con progresso di tempo, e con i passi da gigante che fa la scienza, non si riesca un giorno a dare anche la parola e il movimento a queste bambole lucide e care? (141)

Their appearance is striking, though they are silent and immobile. Savinio jokingly wonders if science won’t one day be able to give them words and movement305 – whether restoring their old selves, or just providing words (Psyche) and movement

(Mercurio), is not clear. Savinio then imagines the formation of our own family museums

(Segato, too, had expressed his wish that he might have been able to petrify his parents306):

Così, a poco a poco, si formeranno i musei di famiglia. I nostri morti pietrificati continueranno ad abitare la casa nella quale vissero, tra i mobili e gli oggetti familiari. Si aggraverà tutt'al più il problema dell'abitazione, e per ogni generazione nuova bisognerà aggiungere alla casa o un'ala nuova, o un nuovo ripiano. In compenso però le dinastie non saranno più documentate soltanto dai ritratti, e al caso dei ricordi, secondo la fantasia degli affetti, si scenderà ora al secondo piano per vedere la mamma, ora al primo per vedere la zia Zenaide, ora al pianterreno per rivedere il nonno in uniforme di ambasciatore del re di Sardegna, con i ricami d'oro e le decorazioni. (142)

The petrified loved ones, in a sort of three-dimensional version of postmortem photography, can show themselves as they were, not merely through portraits or memories colored by emotion. Savinio has a model for this ‘museo di famiglia’ already in mind, from a time when he and his wife Maria stayed above an old antiques store in

Florence and, reentering at night, they had to pass by the statues downstairs; they drew

305 In September of 1940, in fact, a German scientist Busse-Grawitz, working in Argentina, claimed to have brought back to life some cells from a ancient mummy. “La Stampa” reported this claim in two articles “Gli staordinari esperimenti di uno studioso tedesco. Cellule di una mummia di 5300 anni sono che tornano a vivere” from January 4, 1941, and “Cellule di una mummia di 5300 anni fa che riprendono la vita” from February 10, 1941. A section from the first article reads: “Dopo tali risultati il dott. Busse-Grawitz ottenne dai dirigenti del Museo Nazionale di La Plata il permesso di prelevare «saggi» da una dozzina di mummie, le cui età aggirava intorno ai 5300 anni, e la carne umana, morta da migliaia di anni, è tornata a «vivere». Una seri di micro-fotografie ha fissato il processo di «resurrezione» delle cellule.” 306 “Oh se ero in patria, permesso non avrei, che i corpi dei nostri amorosi genitori fossero consegnati alla dissoluzione, essi ben meritavano di essere conservati nella loro integrità.” (Segato’s letter to his brother) 175 strange comfort from the idea that the statues were watching out for them, standing guard. And yet, these statues, to them were only “bambole di cera,” Savinio writes, imagine instead if they were the actual bodies of your family members. Here begins the nostalgic (but still playful) vision of the generations reunited together, where he imagines that all the people dear to him could know each other, be in the same place and that he could finally meet his sister, who had died just before he was born:

Ma sapere che colui è nostro padre, i suoi baffi, la sua barba; sapere che colei è nostra madre, il suo neo sopra il labbro, la sua mano irrigata di vene azzurre; sapere che quella fanciulla cui i capelli fanno manto è nostra sorella Adelaide, le sue magre braccia di vergine... E pensare che si vive tutti sotto lo stesso tetto, nostro padre di pietra e freddissimo, il nostro figliolino caldo caldo nel suo sonno odoroso, mentre fuori piove e tira vento... (143)307

Savinio imagines a similar scene of family reunion after death in his Preface to

Casa “la Vita” (1943), in which he meets his grandfather and grandmother and sister

Adelaide for the first time, is reunited with his parents, rejoins Giorgio where their relationship is restored to how it was twenty years before when nothing divided them and they were of “un pensiero solo.” – “La morte dunque sarebbe essa pure una condizione familiare? La più familiare delle condizioni?” 308 In this Preface, however, he doesn’t

307 Again, this is reminiscent of the Etruscan necropoli, protected from the wind and the rain in the ‘museo di famiglia,’ from the war about to break out in the lands of the living. In Dico a te, Clio, Savinio says to Charun: “Mi porti a visitare il paese tuo, mi fai intravedere quanto bene, quanta pace, quanta dignità è in queste case che sembrano vuote e invece sono... (spes mortuum: l'espoir des morts)” (DTC 139) 308 “È là che io conoscerò di persona il mio nonno Giorgio de Chirico, che finora io vedo soltanto nel ritratto su pergamena che lo raffigura nei suoi tratti fini e ancora settecenteschi, biondissimo nei capelli e negli scopettoni, il petto ricamato di alamari e costellato di croci. Là conoscerò mia nonna Adelaide che in vita non volle mai farsi ritrarre da mano di pittore, perché sapeva che se la sua immagine fosse stata «fermata» sulla tela, essa avrebbe perduta quanto a sé ogni ragione di vivere e sarebbe scomparsa. O pudichi e disperati drammi della bellezza! Mio nonna, mi dicevano, era una bellezza mirabile. In quel timore di mia nonna è tutto il «mistero» del ritratto che in altro luogo io ho spiegato; del resto questo timore dell’immagine riprodotta, altri lo estende anche all’immagine riflessa e teme gli specchi. È la che io ritroverò mio padre e gli dirò quello che ho fatto in questi trentotto anni che non ci siamo più veduti, e lui certo sarà contento. È la che io ritroverò mia madre, di là da quella reticenza che in vita vietava a lei di aprirsi come forse avrebbe voluto a me, a me di aprirmi come disperatamente volevo a lei. È la che io e mio fratello ci ritroveremo quali eravamo vent’anni sono, quando nulla ci divideva ancora e in due avevamo un solo pensiero. È la che per la prima volta io vedrò mia sorella Adelaide, morta sei mesi prima che io 176 mention his children, and the only person still living is Giorgio, the brother who is three years older than he, from whom he feels already separated. This reunion is not a comingling of the dead and living, but is a reunion of the dead liberated from the

“gravitational pull of this world.”309

In the section on the ‘museo di famiglia,’ after imagining the generations of his family reunited, Savinio considers again the question of the soul, and wonders whether the soul might not itself return to reanimate these clean and shiny bodies, restored to their luster and protected from decay:

Rimane la questione dell'anima. Di un corpo senza anima, per quanto lustro e tirato a pulimento, si continuerà a dire che è un corpo morto. Chi fermerà l'anima nel suo viaggio? Chi le suggerirà di fare ritorno? Chi la riporterà al corpo ond'essa si partì? L'anima spicca il volo dal corpo che muore, siccome gl'inquilini abbandonano la casa rotta dal terremoto, i topi fuggono la nave che brucia. L'anima, che è quintessenza di fluidità, aborre dalla materia che si corrompe. Ma ritrovando in condizione di tanta compattezza e pulizia la spoglia che essa abbandonò, chi sa che l’anima non le si riaccosti innamorata, e non torni fedele a rianimarla di sé? (143-44)

The soul might be diverted from its flight into eternity and return to inhabit the immortal terrestrial statue of the body, not unlike in Il canto della solitudine,310 except

nascessi, e forse questa è la ragione «fisiologica» perché costantemente io mi porto dentro il pensiero della morte. È la che io vedrò o rivedrò gli uomini e le cose, tutti gli uomini e tutte le cose che sono e sono stati; e tutti li vedrò come vedrò questa «mia gente» che più sopra ho nominato; […] La morte dunque sarebbe essa pure una condizione familiare? La più familiare delle condizioni?... Colpito dalle mie proprie armi! Dopo aver gettato il mio dispregio su coloro che non sanno vivere fuori delle condizioni familiare, ecco che io stesso incorro nell’elogio della più «famigliare» delle condizioni. Ma quanto maestosa questa condizione familiare! Di là da essa nulla più è, e invano la nostra scaltrezza si studia di scoprire anche nella morte qualche passaggio segreto. Hic manes e uomo volevi una meta? Eccola.” (Preface to Casa “la Vita”) 309 As Savinio had explained earlier in the Preface (in reference to his previous book Narrate uomini, la vostra storia, but after which he continues his musings on death and the family reunion): “Una persona sola, per quello che io mi so, in quello che quel libro ha di più profondo: il mio «nuovo» amico Andrea Emo Capodilista, al quale mi è caro dare in questo luogo il nome di amico. Letto il mio libro, Andrea Emo mi scrisse: «Ho molto ammirato le morti e le scomparse dei vostri «eroi» che proseguono in linea retta il loro viaggio liberati dalle gravitazioni terrestri».” 310 «Je suis un homme. Pour mieux dire, je l'étais. Mon âme est enfermée dans ce rocher, qu'avant de mourir j'ai taillé à mon image. Vous avez ramassé tantôt mon crane, mais vous l'avez laissé choir avec horreur. Est-ce là tout le respect que vous inspirent les restes d'un mort? Si vous fouillez le sable à vos pieds, vous y découvrirez mon squelette». (“Canto della solitudine” AI 76) 177 that in this instance it would inhabit not a stone carving of a body, but the petrified dead body itself. That day, Savinio writes, immortality would be born:

Quel mattino sarà simile apparentemente a tutti gli altri mattini, ma in realtà sarà molto diverso; perché senza squilli di trombe né urli di altoparlanti, sulla terra abituata da tanto tempo alla morte, sarà nata l'immortalità.311

And if Savinio has to this point followed the course of his metaphysical nostalgic imagining about the ‘museo di famiglia,’ here he suddenly, but still a bit offhandedly, changes tone, as if he’s caught himself in a reverie. Immediately after, he writes:

Ma parlare di morti, desiderare la loro conservazione, è illecito e immorale. Schopenhauer diceva che voler conservare il proprio corpo dopo morti, è come voler conservare i propri escrementi. (145)312

It’s as if the word itself – immortality – and the idea of the soul returning back to the body, instead of continuing on to eternity, has snapped him out of his daydream with an idea that is not entirely agreeable, so he abandons this fanciful vision and continues on

311 He adds a long footnote from Schopenhauer talking about Kant’s ideality of time: “Se qualcuno avesse dei dubbi sulla perfetta conservazione e inalterabilità dei nostri morti pietrificati, legga il seguente brano di Schopenhauer: «L'idealità del tempo scoperta da Kant, rientra nella legge d'inerzia che è parte della meccanica. Perché in fondo quello che questa legge stabilisce, è che il tempo, da sé, non produce effetti fisici di nessuna sorte, né può recare mutamenti al riposo o al moto dei corpi. Dal che risulta che manca al tempo ogni realtà fisica, e che esso ha soltanto una esistenza ideale, trascendentale, cioè a dire che trae la sua origine non dalle cose, ma dal soggetto conoscente. Se il tempo fosse proprietà delle cose o un loro accidente, bisognerebbe che la sua quantità, la sua lunghezza o la sua brevità, potessero mutare le cose in qualche misura. Ma ciò non avviene. Al contrario: il tempo passa sulle cose senza lasciare traccia. Perché quello che agisce sono soltanto le cause che si svolgono nel tempo, non il tempo in se stesso. E però, se un corpo è tratto a qualsiasi influenza chimica - come ad esempio il mammut dentro i blocchi di ghiaccio della Lena, o gli scarabei dentro l'ambra, o un metallo prezioso circondato di un'aria perfettamente asciutta, le antichità egizie o anche le capellature delle mummie chiuse nelle loro necropoli -, i secoli non vi possono recare nessun mutamento. È questa assoluta inefficacia del tempo che costituisce, nella meccanica, la legge di inerzia. Se a un corpo è stato impresso un movimento, il tempo non ha possibilità di arrestare esso movimento o soltanto di rallentarlo. E questo movimento è assolutamente senza fine, se cause fisiche non reagiranno contro di lui. Del pari, un corpo un riposo riposerà eternamente, se cause fisiche non interverranno a metterlo in movimento».” (144-145 fn 2) 312 The offhanded way in which he changes his mind here is belied by the fact that he mentions this same idea from Schopenhauer in two other passages: In a footnote from his “Commento alla Città del Sole,” he writes: “Schopenhauer per parte sua dice che conservare il cadavere dell'uomo è come conservarne gli escrementi. (151 fn 46); and in a footnote to Maupassant e l’altro, he even creates a lapsus that encapsulates this concept: “Volevamo scrivere «cadavere», ma tre volte la nostra mano ha scritto «cacadevre». Infine, soggiogati da questa volontà misteriosa e più forte della nostra, abbiamo lasciato «cacadevre».” (Maupassant 83 fn 23) 178 with his next thought. The metaphysical reunion of body and soul, whether performed through artistic or scientific means, remains for him a problematic prospect.

4. Paradiso terrestre

On October 12, 1942, Savinio published in “La Stampa” a story called “Paradiso terrestre” (later included in Tutta la vita, 1945), which recounts the recreation of a

Garden of Eden by Professor Didaco, “detto il Padreterno,” through processes of embalming/petrification. In this work, Savinio examines the scientist-artist’s drive to create worlds – “to build, to build, to build” – and highlights the fine line that both scientists and artists alike straddle in wanting to immobilize the natural flow of life, to memorialize by extracting elements from the natural processes of transformation and fixing them in still and lasting form.

Savinio opens the story by describing a small shop (“Capricci di Belzebù”), at the intersection of “via Tolomeo” with “via Copernico,” an address that unites two opposing views of the world and, in so doing, creates a “little limbo in which jokes and games lived in their purest anarchy, free from any divine or human law.”313 The young Didaco’s destiny is determined in part by the gift his mother gives him of a tiny fake tree that had been displayed on the Ptolemaic side of the shop:

Non a caso l'alberello che primo determinò il destino del signor Didaco era esposto nella mostra affacciata su via Tolomeo e non in quella su via Copernico; il destino del signor Didaco è prettamente tolemaico, cioè a dire improntato a finzione. Tolemaico significa finto; significa soprattutto fisso e inalterabile, ossia diverso dalla vita reale che è

313 “Abbiamo ragione di credere d'altra parte che la collocazione dei Capricci di Belzebù tra via Tolomeo e via Copernico, alla congiunzione di due concezioni del mondo opposte fra loro ma che riunite assieme esauriscono il problema dell'universo, il signor Codro l'avesse scelta a ragion veduta, a significare che la sua bottega e gli oggetti in essa contenuti erano di là da ogni concezione cosmica, di là da ogni meccanismo o terrestre o celeste, un piccolo limbo nel quale lo scherzo e il gioco vivevano nella loro purissima anarchia, sciolti da qualunque legge divina o umana.” (579)

179 alterabile per sua natura e passeggera. Significa: non secondo naturale verità, ma secondo il desiderio dell'uomo e la sua finzione ispirata dal timore di morire e dal desiderio di durare. (CLValtri 581)

The acquisition of this tiny fake tree instills in the young Didaco a desire for the artificial lasting immobility – and immortality –, for the fixed-in-time (atemporal) that operates by any means to supersede any natural tendency to transform, to decompose. It matters little that our knowledge has revealed the Ptolemaic vision of the world absurd, man continues to design and build both physical and ideological constructs through technology and through the arts:

Che importa se cognizioni sempre più vaste hanno ridotto di poi quella terra, quel cielo, quel dio a un assurdo? Costruire rimane pur sempre l'ideale dell'uomo, ossia tenere viva questa finzione necessaria dell'immobile e del duraturo; e l'uomo continua a costruire, con le mani e col cervello, con le macchine e con l'arte; costruire, costruire, costruire; dal minimo oggetto a Dio: questo supremo capolavoro dell'uomo. (581)

One of the impressions that the small fake tree left on the young Didaco was, perhaps, philosophical in nature, “una impressione di «pensiero»,” of the opposition of two worlds – one natural and one created by man:

… la rivelazione assieme dei due mondi diversi e «avversi» in che si divide la vita dell'uomo: il mondo naturale, che è mutabile e transitorio, e quello costruito' dall'uomo, che è immutabile e fisso. (582)

And Didaco for the first time felt himself ‘man,’ that is, capable of building lasting things, of conquering nature, of building out of his wish to preserve:

Didaco per la prima volta si sentì uomo, ossia costruttore e conservatore; per meglio dire, costruttore di conservazione; per dire meglio ancora, costruttore per volontà di conservare. (582)

He began to build small fake trees, fake animals, fake people, and developed extraordinary skills. By the time he was grown, he realized there would be no other profession for him than embalmer (“fermamente egli dichiarò che nessun'altra

180 professione avrebbe scelto all'infuori di quella dell'imbalsamatore”). He studied the three methods of Egyptian mummification mentioned by Herodotus, he attempted to learn

Segato’s secret, and he made “some brilliant discoveries that preserved the color and appearance of life in the bodies removed from mobility and transported into immobility.”

Signor Didaco was an embalmer, not “per professione, ma per sentimento: per amore di quella vita che si sottrae al destino della vita, e di cui l'uomo stesso è padrone”314: in other words, not only for the love of life, but for the power and ownership he felt over his creations, of his demiurgical role and his satisfaction in having succeeded in conquering nature. Didaco does not merely want to successfully petrify bodies, but yearns to recreate the Earthly Paradise: he is a scientist-artist with the highest of ambitions.

The tone of the story enthusiastically mirrors (mocks) Didaco’s idealistic motivations for embalming, for purifying and immobilizing life in the height of its beauty. The narrator, while delineating the perfecting aspirations of Padreterno, also includes remarks that undermine the innocence of these intentions, that comment on the implications of pursuing these methods. When people bring him animals to embalm,

Didaco happily saves them from decomposition and ‘fixes’ them in an unalterable state:

…le salvasse dalla corruzione, la quale è essa pure movimento e dunque in certo modo continuazione della vita, e le «fermasse» in una condizione inalterabile: ritte sulle zampette, il muso lustro, gli occhi lucidi e fissi, e pronti diresti a uno scatto che per fortuna non viene più. (584)

314 “… e nella fabbricazione dei finti alberi, dei finti animali, dei finti uomini, Didaco acquistò a poco a poco scienza e destrezza straordinarie. Poi, venuto in età di pensare a una professione o, come si dice, al proprio avvenire, l'idea della conservazione delle cose si era talmente radicata e sviluppata in lui, che fermamente egli dichiarò che nessun'altra professione avrebbe scelto all'infuori di quella dell'imbalsamatore. Imparò i sistemi imbalsamatorii più pregiati, per parte sua li perfezionò e ne inventò di proprii. Studiò in Erodoto i tre modi usati dagli Egizii nella mummificazione dei morti, si volse alla pietrificazione dei cadaveri, tentò il segreto di Gerolamo Segato, fece alcune geniali scoperte che ai corpi tolti dalla mobilità e trasportati nell'immobilità, serbano i colori e l'apparenza della vita. Crebbe la sua fama e diede a lui la ricchezza. Imbalsamatore il signor Didaco non era per professione, ma per sentimento: per amore di quella vita che si sottrae al destino della vita, e di cui l'uomo stesso è padrone.” (583-584) 181 However, as the narrator points out, it is precisely in this saving them from decomposition that the ‘life-loving’ Didaco deprives them of life, for the decomposition itself is a ‘continuation of life.’

Moving on from animals, Didaco starts to embalm people, as well, and the reader begins to understand that in his fervor for constructing and preserving, the Padreterno has become blinded by his ambition, his pursuit of the ideal threatening to overwhelm any true appreciation for life: “la soddisfazione maggiore del signor Didaco, dicevamo, era d'imbalsamare uomini, e se gli fosse stato consentito di imbalsamare uomini vivi, ossia di ucciderli per poterli imbalsamare nella piena freschezza della vita, l'ambizione del signor Didaco sarebbe stata del tutto paga.” (585)

In an painting from 1930, Le Père Eternel contemple la maquette du Paradis

Terrestre, Savinio had depicted an old man with a white beard gazing upon and contemplating a small model of Eden he had (presumably) constructed in his house; it seems to be the garden only, with no animals or Adam and Eve. In this literary update, twelve years later, Padreterno instead creates a more life-size and extracted-from-life model of the Paradiso Terrestre, composed of embalmed plants and animals, complete with a Tree of Knowledge in the center:

Quando le condizioni finanziarie del signor Didaco gli consentirono di non più badare a spese, egli attuò finalmente il grande disegno della sua vita. Mirabile nell'abitazione dell'imbalsamatore, oggetto di curiosità e meta di numerosi pellegrinaggi divenne un immenso locale a serra, nel quale il signor Didaco aveva ricomposto il paradiso terrestre, raccogliendovi animali perfettamente imbalsamati, piante esse pure imbalsamate, e in mezzo aveva collocato l'albero del bene e del male, ricco dei suoi pomi fatali, e intorno al quale si avvolgeva il serpente tentatore. Ed era il riposo del signor Didaco, il suo riposo e il suo diletto, il suo diletto e il suo premio passeggiare in quell'eden in miniatura, avvolto in una zimarra a stellone, fluida la candida barba sul petto e fluidi i candidi capelli sulle spalle, fra gli animali immobili e miti che lo guardavano con innocenti occhi di vetro. (585)

182 This replica Garden of Eden was not only a popular pilgrimage destination, but was the glory and solace of Didaco, who garnered enormous pleasure in contemplating his creation, this immobilized victory over the transitory effects of nature, his sense of accomplishment reaffirmed by the innocent gaze of the glass eyes of his embalmed creatures. Padreterno felt himself a creator-god, a demiurge:

In breve volgere di tempo, il solo nome che distinse il signor Didaco fu Padreterno. E padreterno il signor Didaco naturalmente si sentiva, senza sforzo né affettazione, un dio fabbricatore, ossia un demiurgo. (585-586)

Though Didaco himself becomes progressively more asexual, he marries a young girl named Teresina and promptly renames her Eve. And, in part because of the success and demands of his embalming practice, also hires an assistant, Gerolamo Saltincasa,315 whom he renames Adam. One night, upon returning from work travels, Didaco goes to take his habitual stroll through his miniature Eden and finds:

Nella calma luce che rischiarava il piccolo eden attraverso la vetrata, le piante e i miti animali erano immobili ciascuno al proprio posto sui prati di vellutello: il bue, il cammello, l'onagro; e a completare l'edenica famiglia, Adamo ed Eva, ossia Teresina Saliscendi e Gerolamo Saltincasa, giacevano avvinti ai piedi dell'albero della scienza e immersi nel sonno, e i loro corpi avevano quella pallida fosforescenza che hanno i corpi nudi nella penombra. (588)

‘Adam’ and ‘Eve,’ having consummated their carnal love – (“addormentati nella dolcezza del peccato,” 589), lie peacefully and fittingly under the Tree of Knowledge.

And at that moment, Didaco decides to permanently ‘complete’ and preserve the Edenic and idyllic scene:

Che cosa sentì a quella vista l'animo del signor Didaco, soprannominato Padreterno? Gelosia? sorpresa? indifferenza? Non lo sappiamo: non lo sapremo mai. Né sapremo d'altra parte in quale maniera il signor Didaco riuscì, senza destarli, a far passare Teresina Saliscendi e Gerolamo Saltincasa dal sonno dell'amore al sonno della morte. (588)

315 In the original manuscript, the assistant’s name was Giulio Saltincasa. Savinio changes it, suggestively, to Gerolamo, presumably a reference to Segato. (Fondo Savinio 19.3) 183

Didaco will later explain to the judge at his trial that he used a strong anesthetic to painlessly immobilize them. Though the narrator insists we will never know Didaco’s reasons for laying them to permament rest, the fact that he had already renamed them

Adam and Eve suggests that, upon finding them beneath the tree, far from jealousy or indifference, Didaco felt an overwhelming pride, tenderness and elation at the promise of his completed project. In fact, at his trial, he exclaims:

«Li avesse visti, signor Presidente! Adamo ed Eva! Adamo ed Eva spiccicati! E che pensiero delicato! Io mi ero fatto il paradiso terrestre, loro avevano provveduto a fornirlo dei suoi abitatori». (589)

Just as the renderings of the Venerina and other wax models (and anatomical drawings) gave the idea of their complicity in their study and dissection, of their willing sacrifice in the name of science, here too Didaco has convinced himself that the young couple willingly martyred themselves, offering their bodies for his project.316 As the powerful dose of anesthetic has already put them to eternal rest, Didaco decides to embalm his Adam and Eve and at the completion of his masterpiece (again, the scientist’s

‘capolavoro,’ just as it was called in Vita di Mercurio), he invites all he knows to come see it:

Era la pura verità. Sicuro che sotto l’azione dell’anestetico Gerolamo e Teresina non si sarebbero svegliati, il signor Didaco procedé all'imbalsamazione: diede mano a tutta l’arte di cui era capace, superò se stesso, fece il suo capolavoro; e infine, salvati i due corpi dalla corruzione e resa la loro bellezza tornò a collocarli freddi e bianchi ai piedi dell’albero del bene e del male. Poi, terminata l'opera, il signor Didaco si attaccò al telefono, si lanciò inviti agli amici, ai conoscenti, ai clienti, perché venissero a visitare il suo paradiso terrestre, finalmente completato dalla presenza di Adamo ed Eva. (589, italics mine)

316 Savinio worked on a drawing “Il sonno di Eva” (1941-1942) with a stone-like figure on a stage, surrounded by trees standing over a sleeping Eve. A mosaic from this drawing was completed by Enrico Galassi in 1943. 184 However, Savinio’s ironic criticism does not limit itself to this portrayal of the overenthusiastic scientist-artist who, wrapped up in his own powers over natural processes and in his ability to manipulate or arrest them, then hubristically becomes the arbiter of life and death, willfully losing sight of the ethical implications of his interventions (in this case, murdering two young lovers to complete his project). Rather, we can perhaps read “Paradiso terrrestre” also as a cautionary tale about the

"metaphysical" powers of the modern scientist-artist, caught up in the marvel of human accomplishment and blind, to an extent, to the implications or applications of these powers. The response to Didaco’s invitation to see his masterpiece is, at first, a grand success:

E uomini, donne, bambini sfilarono davanti ad Adamo ed Eva coricati ai piedi dell'albero del bene e del male e lodavano, ammiravano, stupivano. Taluni volevano anche toccare, ma allora interveniva il signor Didaco soprannominato Padreterno, avvolto nella zimarra a stellone, fluente la candida barba sul petto, fluenti i candidi capelli sulle spalle; e con gesto paterno, con voce pacata ammoniva che non bisognava toccare i due primi uomini, addormentati nella dolcezza del peccato. (589)

In a hopeful turn, however, the story ends with someone from the public recognizing the situation, breaking the spell so that the rest of the public is, too, snapped out of its trance.

Infine qualcuno capì e l'incanto fu rotto. E da quella festa che doveva essere l'apoteosi della sua carriera, il signor Didaco uscì in zimarra a stelline fra due carabinieri. Più Padreterno che mai. Fra due angeli. (590)

In the conclusion of his story, Savinio not only implicitly warns the reader against the subliminal power of art and science but also provides an ironic ending to the delusional hubris of the scientist-artist who believes himself and acts "like a Padreterno.".

The Padreterno, in his long star-covered mantle, does ultimately get escorted away by

185 two carabinieri, two ironic ‘angels,’317 still, it seems, deliriously unaware of the violence he has enacted on the lives of the two young lovers, and perhaps on nature itself in trying to fix forever its elements, interrupting its flow.

5. Conclusion - Science and Art

In a story from Ascolto il tuo cuore, città, that is somewhat reminiscent of Didaco,

Savinio writes of a time when he went to painter Massimo Campigli’s house for dinner and recounts that afterwards, they are joined by a certain Professor Palloni, a scientist- artist who composed his still lives (‘nature morte’) with pieces of cadavers:

L'invisibile ala della pazzia sbatteva presso il soffitto, in un volo lento e discontinuo. Il professore era versatile. Parlava di tutto. Parlava con logica che superava la logica. Parlò anche di pittura. Disse che egli stesso si dilettava di pittura e amava dipingere delle nature morte. «Come componete le vostre nature morte, professore?». «Con pezzi di cadavere, beninteso» rispose il professore. «Con che altro comporre una natura morta?». All'ultimo rintocco della mezzanotte, due robusti giovanotti in càmice di infermiere vennero a prendere il professore Palloni, per ricondurlo alla clinica di cui egli era uno degli ospiti più tranquilli. Ma il professore aveva preso gusto alla nostra compagnia. Ruppe la sua calma nera e cominciò a dare in ismanie. Allora i due infermieri lo inquadrarono e lo condussero in anticamera per fargli una iniezione calmante. (ACC 73-74)

These nature morte produced by the mad professor Palloni (who belongs in a mental hospital) bring to mind Ruysch’s dioramas or Segato and Marini’s reinterpretive

‘artistic’ compositions petrifying parts of the body. Savinio himself, in perhaps anticipation of his Edenic story, identifies three of his natura morta paintings from 1939-

1940 with the name “Piccolo Paradiso,” though they show no human parts. In a writing on art from 1945, Savinio comments on the change in the treatment of the body – in the

317 Several of the stories in Tutta la vita end with the protagonists escorted away by guards, cops, nuns, etc. 186 arts and in the sciences – with the passage from a Ptolemaic to a Copernican concept of the world:

Nel mondo tolemaico l'uomo regnava soprattutto per la potenza del suo sguardo fermo, diritto, sicuro. Nel trapasso dal concetto tolemaico dell'universo al concetto copernicano, la figura dipinta perde la «dignità dello sguardo». L'uomo non è più creatura di Dio. Il suo corpo è sconsacrato. Il divieto è caduto di notomizzare [sic] il corpo umano, sezionarlo, bruciarlo. Tutte le deformazioni sono consentite. E tutte le deformazioni alle quali il corpo umano è incorso da più di mezzo secolo a questa parte, e non solo il corpo umano ma gli oggetti, il paesaggio, tutti gli aspetti del mondo animato e del mondo inanimato, e che hanno trovato la loro suprema espressione nel belluismo, nel cubismo, nelle altre variazioni deformative alle quali noi stessi abbiamo dato la nostra parte, non sono se non la conseguenza della perdita che ha fatto il corpo umano del suo carattere sacro. Come tornare indietro e «perché» tornare indietro? Come far rivivere quello che è morto e «perché» farlo rivivere? E soprattutto perché considerare regresso quello che effettivamente è marcia in avanti ossia progresso?318

The body is no longer the sacred whole, the powerful ideal it once was: anatomical study, dissection, cremation are allowed on the body itself, and, correspondingly, in the arts, deformations of the physical unity of the body not only represent this new status, but also reflect the logic of progress. The attempt to represent a metaphysical reality, an “internal anatomy,” the “psiche delle cose” was one of the defining elements of the Metaphysical School.319 And the Metaphysical nature morte in some ways share certain qualities with these lasting elements of anatomized human bodies. In an essay on Verdi from December of 1941, Savinio writes:

… Verdi, pur nella sua ignoranza del vero Dio, è patetico, ossia oscuramente tormentato

318 “Illusione del definitivo,” SD 157-158; orig. in “La vita intelletuale,” Sept 1945. 319 “La distinzione tra anima e psiche nell’uomo, va fatta anche tra anima e psiche nelle cose, e tra anima e psiche nell’universo. E noi poeti la facciamo tra poesia e poesia. Per molti la poesia viene da fuori alle cose, le tocca, le penetra, le anima di sé; per altri, tra i quali io mi pongo, la poesia non viene da fuori, ma nasce dentro la cosa stessa: dal fondo di ciascuna cosa. Questa la proprietà della poesia «metafisica», questo alimentarsi da sé, come i laghi di origine vulcanica. Ricordo l’insistenza di mio fratello e mia, al tempo in cui di conserva illustravamo e commentava il carattere della «nostra» poesia metafisica, a parlare dello «spettro» delle cose, ossia della loro sembianza interna. Da qui il carattere «di sogno» della nostra poesia metafisica, di un mondo in condizione di sogno, ossia di nuda interiorità e sgombro delle rivestiture aggiunte dall’esteriorità. E ricordo che l’anatomia interna era un elemento che più spesso ricorreva nella nostra poesia metafisica, come un’«architettura», come una specie di «geografia» di quella nostra poesia.” (“Talete e Pitagora,” SD 736-38; orig. in “La Fiera Letteraria,” Feb 13, 1948) 187 da questo ignorare, e degno perciò del Nobile Castello. E questo suo patos, questo suo calore senza oggetto, questo suo grido senza eco, queste sue domande senza risposta hanno lo stupore lucido, la tragica atonicità, la spaventosa inespressione delle nature morte metafisiche, il poetismo rigido e spettrale del museo scolastico Paravia, con le teste sezionate e schierate sulle tavole, le facce coperte di finta carne a destra, e a sinistra scoperte sui misteri della dentatura, i globi oculari seguiti da una rossa chioma di nervi come una medusa dalla sua frangia, i grandi toraci anatomici vestiti per metà della fascia muscolare, e che nell'altra metà svelano in un tremendo arlecchinismo il labirinto grigio delle budella, un cuore enorme e senza palpito, due polmoni scarlatti e senza soffio.320

Certainly, the “lucid stupor, the tragic atonality, the frightening inexpression” of the nature morte (it is useful to consider both this term and the English “still life”) do not suggest freedom, movement and life, and neither does the rigid and spectral poetism of the anatomical museum.

Both the works of art and the anatomical models represent forms of earthly immobility; the distinction between the two, in part, lies in the scientist’s use of the human body as raw material, while the artist uses other media to create these still monuments to slices or moments of life.321 However, the dehumanization of art, or the movement of art towards nonrepresentation, that “deform(s) reality, shatter(s) its human aspect,” and is the artistic reflection of the new conception of the universe in which man is no longer an integral, self-contained whole nor central figure (Ortega y Gassett 21), is entirely different not only from the markedly representational figures of human bodies fixed in time by methods of petrification, for example, but also substantially different from the dehumanization of individuals enacted by outside forces of Authority.

Precisely how problematic Savinio considers the immobilizing of the body through petrification (and its consequent subtraction from panta rei) is not entirely clear:

320 “Verdi” SS 155; orig. “Musica: Interpretazione di Verdi,” in “Documento,” Dec 1941. 321 Again, in his essay from 1921, “Immobilità terrestre,” Savinio writes that the plastic arts offer a representation, not a direct reproduction of life: “… che ci presenta non la riproduzione diretta degli oggetti, delle cose, degli esseri, ma come un ricordo immutabile e definitivo di essi oggetti, cose o esseri.” 188 in the ‘museo di famiglia,’ his concern is that the anima – or residual life force – might perhaps get stuck (ghostlike or body reanimated) in an earthly immortality; in “Paradiso terrestre,” his main focus is on the unbounded ambition of the scientist-artist and his killing of the young lovers to complete his demiurgical project.

A few years before Paradiso terrestre, in Domestica selva from Achille

Innamorato (1938),322 in what was a significantly reelaborated version of a work from years before, Savinio tells the tale of a professor-scientist who has tried to domesticate the wild forest within his own house. He enjoys some level of success, but when the narrator visits him and a thunderstorm approaches, he responds:

«Questo temporale, lei, dottore, lo può regolare a volontà?». «No!» gridò il dottore. «Ho raccolto la natura intera nella mia casa, ma questo tour de force ha qualche svantaggio. Sugli elementi non ho la più piccola autorità. Spero più tardi riuscire a dominarli, ma per ora sono gli elementi che dominano me». (AI 89)

In the time from 1938 to 1942, from Domestica selva to Paradiso terrestre,

Savinio’s figure of the scientist-artist had become more ambitious, working not only with trees, but with animals and people. And he had, in the meantime, in fact, managed to dominate nature, in a delusionally, megalomaniacal attempt to recreate the Garden of

Eden (the original state of creation) that is precisely the type of stabilizing and definitive

“optimistic art” typical also of totalitarian regimes:

L'idea che la poesia da Baudelaire in poi, la pittura da Cézanne in poi esprimono con tanta «stupida» sincerità il panta rei ossia il pessimismo della vita, solo questa idea spiega l'avversione «programmatica» che i governi totalitari hanno per questa arte che loro chiamano borghese, e che borghese non è perché è pessimista, e spiegano altresì il bisogno che i regimi totalitari hanno di un'arte ottimista, che illustri quella condizione stabile e definitiva che è il punto fondamentale del loro programma, la finzione più

322 Tinterri notes that a somewhat different version of this story was originally published as La foresta in “Ambrosiano” on March 13, 1926 and a much more similar version as Foresta d’appartamento in “Nazione” on November 9, 1933. (see Tinterri, “Note ai testi: Achille innamorato,” CLValtri 891-892) 189 brillante della loro ideologia; ossia la vita non come veramente è, ma come i teorici dei regimi totalitari dicono che sia. Che manca a quest'arte ottimista per essere perfetta e accetta a tutti? Solo questo, che essa non somiglia affatto alla vera condizione della vita. Panta rei. Resta a dire questo. L'arte ha il fine, come io stesso più volte ho ripetuto, di dare all'uomo quello che all'uomo naturalmente manca e la vita gli nega, restituirgli quello che egli ha perduto, attuare le sue speranze, rendere stabile quello che è transitorio, immortale quello che è caduco. Ma questo è il fine «supremo» dell'arte. Questo è il fine di un'arte «suprema», di un'arte tutta quanta trasferita su un piano superiore, in un clima perfettamente lirico. Le quali condizioni non mi consta che siano contemplate dai reggitori dei regimi totalitari; e nemmeno a dir la verità da quelli dei regimi democratici.323

Embracing Baudelaire's famous definition of modernity in The Painter of Modern

Life,324 Savinio explicitly links it to an anti-totalitarian, anti-political, anti-metaphysical ideal. His representation of the figure of the (mad) scientist-artist, in Didaco and his aspirations to recreate an idealized Garden of Eden (the emblem of a Natural perfection before the fall), critiques not only Padreterno’s delusional disregard for human life and autonomy, and for the natural transformative flow of life, but reads more broadly as a cautionary tale about the risk of an absolutistic artistic manipulation and exploitation

(here also through scientific means) of individual life forms and against the abuses of their own powers in an effort to perfect and demiurgically dominate, and "fix" nature.

Moreover, it demonstrates the potential that not only the scientists (and artists) themselves, blinded by their ambition, but also the marveling crowd, swept up in their awe and groupthink, will all too easily sacrifice a sense of individual human dignity in their reverence for the new possibilities to construct and correct a perfect still image of life. Considering the time at which it was written, it is not too far-fetched to extend this

323 “Illusione del definitivo,” SD 159-160. 324 "By ‘modernity,’ I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half it the eternal and immutable… This transitory, fugitive element, whose metamorphoses are so rapid, must on no account be despised or dispensed with. By neglecting it, you cannot fail to tumble into the abyss of an abstract and indeterminate beauty, like that of the time the first woman before the fall of man” (Baudelaire 13).

190 critique of the (mad) godlike scientist-artist’s construction of an ideal ‘society’ in miniature to a broader condemnation of project of totalitarian regimes. This critique is entirely coherent with Savinio's research for alternatives to a traditional binary metaphysics, which separates the body and the soul, the animate and the inanimate, life and death - and then tries to reunite them through absolutistic means, instead of accepting a “pessimistic” Heraclitean view of the “eternal” flux of all living, and dead, things. If modern art cannot provide an answer to the “supreme,” “metaphysical” dilemma and reconcile the eternal and the ephemeral, the contingent and the immutable (by a plastic mummification of the living body or a poetic liberation of the captive soul), it can at least undermine all those authoritarian discourses that promise to do so, in the process destroying the body or denying the soul. In the end, Savinio's humorous satire of the

(mad) scientist must be read against the backdrop of the contemporary madness of war, the ultimate killing machine in the service of abstract ideologies and will to power. His personal meditation is not very distant from the black humor and pessimism of another great Italian author Giacomo Leopardi, as it is expressed in his Operetta morale,

"Dialogo di Federico Ruysch e delle sue mummie,"325 a work that Savinio himself cites

325 Coro di morti nello studio di Federico Ruysch: Sola nel mondo eterna, a cui si volve Ogni creata cosa, In te, morte, si posa Nostra ignuda natura; Lieta no, ma sicura Dall'antico dolor. Profonda notte Nella confusa mente Il pensier grave oscura; Alla speme, al desio, l'arido spirto Lena mancar si sente: Così d'affanno e di temenza è sciolto, E l'età vote e lente Senza tedio consuma. Vivemmo: e qual di paurosa larva, E di sudato sogno, 191 in a Storta la vita sana? (written in 1941),326 and included in Casa “La Vita”: Malino

Fers (a Savinio alter-ego) is rushed to the hospital where he will be operated on his groin by a surgeon and assistants.327 As he contemplates death, he wonders also what comes next, noting the that fear of the nothingness at seeing the “open mouth of the abyss” causes the founders of religions, poet and artists to conceive of ideal constructions that might exist in the al di là:

E come scenario che un ciclone improvviso fa crollare e spazza via, la nostra vita – quello che era, quello che credevamo fosse la nostra vita crolla intorno a noi, sparisce e ci troviamo di colpo circondati da una inaspettata mancanza di cose, di fatti, di immagini, di persone; da una terrificante assenza di mobili, appigli, punti di riferimento; spaventosamente affacciati su un cielo nudo di stelle, sulla spalancata bocca del vuoto, sulla faccia nera del nulla. Come si capisce allora lo sforzo patetico che fondatori di religioni, poeti, artisti fanno per gettare un ponte di là dallo scenario lercio e scavalcare questo cielo senza stelle, renderlo valicabile, riempirlo di costruzioni ideali, più belle sì e più ricche, ma fatte a imitazione tuttavia dello scenario di carta e travicelli in mezzo al quale noi siamo vissuti. E se questi appaltatori di paradisi ci domandassero: "Preferite un al di là paradisiaco, tutto incorporea felicità e ineffabile gaudio, oppure la continuazione, potendo, la continuazione in eterno della vostra vita stentata, nel vostro minuscolo angolo di terra"; tutti, meno forse qualche straordinario illuso che la vanità travolge nei più

A lattante fanciullo erra nell'alma Confusa ricordanza: Tal memoria n'avanza Del viver nostro: ma da tema è lunge Il rimembrar. Che fummo? Che fu quel punto acerbo Che di vita ebbe nome? Cosa arcana e stupenda Oggi è la vita al pensier nostro, e tale Qual de' vivi al pensiero L'ignota morte appar. Come da morte Vivendo rifuggia, così rifugge Dalla fiamma vitale Nostra ignuda natura; Lieta no ma sicura, Però ch'esser beato Nega ai mortali e nega a' morti il fato. (Leopardi 150) 326 Casa “la Vita” was published in 1943, but from “Storta la vita sana?” was finished between August and November of 1941 according to Tinterri, “Note ai testi: Casa ‘la Vita’,” CLValtri 933. In “Storta la vita sana?” Savinio writes that Malino’s trip to the hospital occurs between the night of May 23 and May 24, “194…,” suggesting perhaps that it had been a recent event for him. 327 The description of the ‘preparativi’ for surgery for Malino is not entirely different from the preparations that Psyche undergoes when she first arrives at Eros’ palace in La nostra anima, and it predates it. 192 assurdi inumani, risponderebbero: "Preferiamo continuare la nostra vita stenta, nel nostro minuscolo angolo di terra". Questo dice anche la saggezza delle mummie di Ruysch: "Lieta no, ma sicura". (399)

Rather than face the ineffable and unanchored, likely illusory, promise of a paradisiacal afterlife, Malino would prefer, like Ruysch’s mummies and the Egyptian mummies before them, to continue his “difficult life” in death, “in his tiny corner of the earth,” one that for him, it could be argued would be “non lieta, ma sicura,” not only because in death he would be shielded from those difficulties of life, but also because rather than facing the terrifying Unknown alone, in this conception he maintains ties to his former life: the idea of death remains a “condizione familiare,” as he will later suggest in the Preface to

Casa “La Vita,” and which we see in his nostalgic imagining of the ‘museo di famiglia.’

It is perhaps an entirely human feeling to imagine preserving, continuing and maintaining in death the familiar and familial attachments of life.

Writing years later, in 1948, after the end of the war, Savinio offers another view, another way of contemplating death, one more reflective and less visceral: the look into the nothingness, the vision of death while still living (just like Signor Münster experiences), acquires the ‘metaphysical’ feel of a larger and superior perspective and reality, one that finds us participant in the Heraclitean panta rei, and one that condemns all that would impede the natural flux of life.

La morte va sentita «come fatto personale». La morte si capisce solo quando pur continuando a vivere, si entra nella «giurisdizione della morte». Si allarga allora la prospettiva, le ombre si ammorbidiscono e la portata del nostro occhio cresce straordinariamente. La vita appare allora come vista dall'alto e da lontano. E solo allora si capisce la vita com'è. Solo allora si capisce la parola del vecchio Eraclito che «panta rei», e che qualunque tentativo di contrastare o peggio di arrestare l'eterno fluire della vita creando artificiosamente una «condizione stabile e definitiva» in forma di stato totalitario o altrimenti, è un atto pericolosissimo e criminoso, che prepara la cancrena della vita.328

328 “Inquieti adolescenti,” SD 172. 193

194 Conclusion

This dissertation has considered some of the ways in which Savinio represented science and technology in his works, especially from the late 1930s and the 1940s. As

Savinio suggests in the quotation cited at the beginning of the introduction, his interest in looking to these scientific theories (and technological advances) lies not in his desire to faithfully and accurately illustrate them, but in their ability to inspire in him “ideas of movement and liberty,” to spark his imagination, to provide additional points of departure and associative possibilities in his creative process of “dilettantismo.” However, in the works examined in this dissertation, the ideas of “movement” and “liberty” play a fundamental thematic role, as well, specifically as they pertain to the concepts of the human as hybrid and continuously transforming, and to the physical and mental autonomy of the individual. Savinio explores the dissolving or blurring boundaries and complicated relationships between human-machine, animate-inanimate and life-death through representations of the physical mobility-immobility of the body and by illustrating the ways in which external forces – from positions of authority – might interfere with or obstruct the liberty or autonomy of the individual’s body, mind and soul.

Savinio’s primary target of criticism and parody in these works is the doctor or scientist,

‘mad’or enamored of his own ability to create, to build, to manipulate, to play god, who from his position of power violates the dignity of the patient, objectifying and exploiting him/her for his own purposes, in pursuit of knowledge, in his quest to achieve a perfection, an Ideal: through his treatment and consideration of his patients as resources for experimentation and as puppets of performance, the doctor-scientist, himself a victim of hybris, contributes to the devaluation and dehumanization of the individual, and in a

195 broader context, to humanity itself. I argue that Savinio’s critique of the doctor-scientist in these works can be extended to modern Science, as well, and specifically to a Positivist

Science that does not accept what is not demonstrable, provable, visible, and in so doing, denies or ignores the ‘secret’ and ‘mystery’ of life. More generally, these works, written in a moment of particular crisis (through the end of Fascism and during the Second

World War), read as cautionary tales not only about the danger of interactions with single

‘mad’ scientists whose personal ambitions exploit the vulnerability of the patient, but against the risk inherent in sacrificing individual liberty and dignity to any Authority, in the granting of too much power to or in the excessive faith in any idealized One, be it

Science, God, a Totalitarian State, any Unifying Principle. Furthermore, the warning is not directed only against the authority figure itself, but also to our willingness and haste to blindly grant it that authority.329

In these works, Savinio draws upon theories of the relationship of electricity to the body, mind and soul, increasingly life-like automata, psychoanalysis, and techniques of embalming and petrification to articulate, in literary form, figures that may be, in part, considered reincarnations or updates of the mannequins of the Ferrarese Metaphysical

School of painting: body-objects that may be compelled to move through the administration of electricity (the reanimated husband of Vita di Mercurio and Psyche of

La nostra anima) or forced into immobility (the young ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ of Paradiso terrestre) through the intervention of the scientist-doctor, but that, like the mannequins, are ultimately incapable of autonomous movement, lacking in agency, and whose

329 Savinio’s warnings about the crowd and mass mentality, and also the internal tyrant in La nostra anima: though external forces challenge our liberty, it is perhaps the inner tyrant who threatens it the most: “I tiranni più crudeli, i nostri nemici peggiori sono dentro di noi, e se pochi uomini sono liberi di fuori, uomo non c’è che dentro di sé si possa dire veramente libero.” (NA 15) 196 purpose is display or performance.330 Savinio’s personal artistic ‘metaphysics,’ conceives of the metaphysical as a “continuation” of or extension through the physical world, not an

“ipotetico dopo-naturale,” but rather a larger and superior reality, everything that exists beyond the obviously visible or perceptible. Again, as he recounts in 1948, his (and his brother’s) metaphysical poetics aim to represent, fundamentally, the “spettro delle cose,” their internal appearance, internal anatomy, architecture, geography331; hence, Savinio’s tendency in these works not only to critique the external forces that operate on individuals (the doctor-scientist), but also to incorporate scientific theories and technologies that explore how the body, soul, and mind ‘work’ internally, what – perhaps invisibly – powers them from within (electricity, automata, psychoanalysis). In these works and in his elaboration of his new ‘metaphysics,’ Savinio challenges traditional binary relationships between human-machine, animate-inanimate, life and death that – as

Nivasio notes in La nostra anima – trap us within circular thinking; he contests, on the one hand, the positivistic, materialistic, mechanistic views of the human generated in the

Enlightenment, and, on the other, the idealizing myths employed in the promotion of contemporary ideologies and authorities, and argues instead for new and multiple formulations of the continuously transforming human: “Non lo spiegare la natura ferma la mente dell'uomo, la polarizza, l'abbrutisce: ma lo spiegarla ‘in un modo solo.’”

330 In these examples, as with the faceless mannequins, their individual identity has been stripped or omitted, at least in part: the husband has no name, Psyche doubles as the titular “la nostra anima,” the young wife and assistant have been renamed (rebaptized?) ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’. 331 “Ricordo l’insistenza di mio fratello e mia, al tempo in cui di conserva illustravamo e commentavamo il carattere della «nostra» poesia metafisica, a parlare dello «spettro» delle cose, ossia della loro sembianza interna. Da qui il carattere «di sogno» della nostra poesia metafisica, di un mondo in condizione di sogno, ossia di nuda interiorità e sgombro delle rivestiture aggiunte dall’esteriorità. E ricordo che l’anatomia interna era un elemento che più spesso ricorreva nella nostra poesia metafisica, come un’«architettura», come una specie di «geografia» di quella nostra poesia.” (“Talete e Pitagora,” SD 737) 197 Savinio considers the figures of both the scientist and the artist, specifically in the roles they assume in the treatment and representation of the human and in their function as mediators and creators of worlds, architects of animation and immobility, transformation and preservation. Victoria Nelson argues that after the Renaissance, the figure of the ‘magus’ divided along two lines:

The good magus role, with its benign demiurgic powers first divorced from divine inspiration, then aestheticized and psychologized, was ultimately absorbed into the figures of the artist and the writer; the bad magus role, with its supernatural powers linked to the dark grotto of the underworld, was absorbed into the figure of the scientist. (Nelson 8)

This, she contends, is ultimately the origin of trope of the ‘mad scientist.’332

Looking at the works examined in this dissertation, one could argue that Savinio, indeed, tends towards a characterization of the scientist as ‘mad,’ or at least willfully ignorant or dismissive of the dehumanizing effects that his actions have on his patient-object-ward. If the scientists are hailed (or regard themselves as) all-powerful priests of a new secular religion, Savinio, then, positions the artist as a counterbalance to their power, one whose primary and fundamentally important function is to remind us of the multiple values and dimensions of truth (the role of the artist is, after all, to “aumentare il numero delle verità, fino a rendere impossibile la ricostituzione della Verità”), to provide the innumerabale perspectives of the larger and superior scope of reality that only art is able to capture and suggest. And in both the Vita di Mercurio and in La nostra anima, the figure of the scientist is juxtaposed with a Savinian alter-ego (who is, we might assume, a stand-in for

332 She continues: “The figure of the ‘mad scientist’ did not arise, as is commonly believed, from a mistrust of the new empirical science's stupendous achievements, good and bad, but rather from a much older mistrust of those who mediate with the supernatural outside the bounds of organized religion. Now, as then, it represents a disguised fear of sorcery.” (Nelson 8) While the origin of the mad scientist may have been that, Savinio’s representation of the ‘mad’ scientists certainly also critiques contemporary science, influenced by the injustices enacted upon and exploitation of the individual, and the assertion that Science provides the one and only Truth. 198 the artist): in Vita di Mercurio, the mechanical farce of life (the continuous reenactment of the moment of suicide) that Doctor Speranza manages to recreate in ‘reanimating’ the husband, consigning him to a grotesque performance of earthly immortality, is countered with Maurizio’s guidance of Mercury through the range of human experience so that he can achieve his desired passage into eternity; in La nostra anima, Doctor Sayas’ thinly- veiled manipulation of his caged Psyche’s narrative is questioned by the skeptical

Nivasio, to whom, in going off-script, she is about to reveal the meaning of ‘true love,’ a concept perhaps the artist is better equipped to understand (as it is, of course, not quantifiable). However, the two roles are not entirely distinct: the artist borrows from scientific theories and vocabulary to imagine his works and employs deeper understandings of anatomy, biology, chemistry and the operations of the mind to produce more lifelike and complex (hybrid) representations of the human; in a long tradition of interventions on the body and mind, the scientist performs his operations with the intent not only of producing the desired functional results, but is often attentive also to aesthetic considerations, particularly in the presentation of his work to the public. Both the artist and the scientist generate works of movement (the rhythmic arts – words, images and sounds that derive from and spark inspiration and imagination333; here, the electrical

(re)animation of the husband and Psyche); both craft or construct forms of immobility (in the plastic arts; in the petrified bodies of Signor Didaco). One primary distinction, it may be argued, is that that artist does not directly (re)produce life and death, but offers a poetic version or interpretation of it;334 the scientist, as Savinio represents him in these

333 “Le arti nelle quali è implicito l'elemento ritmico, s'ispirano all'idea del tempo, del moto, del divenire, della vita insomma” (“Immobilità terrestre,” NV 97) 334 This distinction is perhaps itself not entirely clear, as the boundary between organic and inorganic has dissolved and the definitions of life and death have become more complicated. What precisely is 199 works, instead operates directly on the human body and mind, positioning himself as arbiter of life and death, manipulator of human movement and expression. However, it is not the existence of an interaction between doctor-scientist and patient that Savinio critiques – he is neither anti-science nor anti-scientist – rather, in these works, he examines the risk of that interaction falling into a relationship of power or authority to object. These cautionary tales illustrate the potentially greater stakes involved when the

(mad) scientist, rather than the artist, indulges his demiurgical fantasies: Doctor

Speranza’s horrifying results in his attempt to reverse death; Doctor Sayas’ caging and exploitation of ‘our soul’; and, in the ultimate tale of ‘playing god,’ Padreterno’s murder and immobilization of the young lovers in his effort to recreate Earthly Paradise. Again, in these works, Savinio does not target science and technology themselves, rather the misuse and the potential for (in)advertent harm and dehumanization at the hands of those who, whether blinded by personal ambition or operating idealistically ‘in the name of science,’ value their own pursuit of knowledge or creation over the human and dignified treatment of the individual.

considered human and at what point does that appear or disappear? What are the ethical implications of preserving a dead body, for example, and perhaps even using it in the production of art? Again, Savinio mentions – without apparent judgment – Segato’s table inlaid with tiles of petrified body parts. 200 Bibliography

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Stillwell, G. Keith and Sidney Hermann Licht. Therapeutic electricity and ultraviolet radiation. Baltimore, Williams & Wilkins. 1983. Print. Sugg, Richard. Mummies, Cannibals, and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians. London: Routledge, 2011. Print. Tinterri, Alessandro. Savinio e "l'altro". Genova, Il melangolo. 1999. Print. Tinterri, Alessandro and Alberto Savinio. Savinio e lo spettacolo. Bologna, Il Mulino. 1993. Print. Tordi, Rosita. Mistero dello sguardo: studi per un profilo di Alberto Savinio. Roma, Bulzoni. 1992. Print. Trione, Vincenzo. “L’Elisse e il cerchio,” in Savinio, La nascita di Venere, 2007: 127-157. Troyer, John, Technologies of the Human Corpse. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 2006. Usai, Antonella. Il mito nell'opera letteraria e pittorica di Alberto Savinio. Roma, Nuova cultura. 2005. Print. Vidor, Gian Marco. “La photographie post mortem dans l'Italie du XIXe et xxe siècles. 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205 Abbreviations for Savinio’s Works:

AI Achille Innamorato: Gradus Ad Parnassum. Milano: Adelphi, 1993. Angelica Angelica: O, la Notte di Maggio. Milano: Rizzoli, 1979. ACC Ascolto il tuo Cuore, Città. Milano: Adelphi, 1984. CLV Casa "la Vita". Milano: Adelphi edizioni, 1988. CLValtri Casa "la Vita": e altri racconti. Milano: Adelphi, 1999. DTC Dico a te, Clio. Milano: Adelphi, 1992. H Hermaphrodito: e altri romanzi. Milano: Adelphi edizioni, 1995. DIDO Il Signor Dido. Milano: Adelphi, 1978. IVM Introduzione a Una Vita di Mercurio. Brescia: Edizioni L'Obliquo, 1990. NV La Nascita di Venere: scritti sull'arte. Milano: Adelphi, 2007. NA La Nostra Anima; Il Signor Münster. Milano: Adelphi Edizioni, 1981. Maupassant Maupassant e L'“altro”. Milano: Adelphi, 1975. NU Narrate, Uomini, la Vostra Storia. Milano: Adelphi, 1984. NE Nuova enciclopedia. Milano: Adelphi, 1977. Orfeo “Orfeo vedovo” in Tinterri, Savinio e lo spettacolo, 1993: 241-264. PR Palchetti Romani. Milano: Adelphi, 1982. SD Scritti Dispersi, 1943-1952. Milano: Adelphi, 2004. SE “Sogno ermetico,” in Italia, Il pellegrino appassionato, 2004: 438-445. SM Il Signor Münster, in La nostra anima; Il Signor Münster, Adelphi, 1981. Sorte Sorte dell'europa. Milano: Adelphi, 1977. TG Torre Di Guardia. Palermo: Sellerio, 1977. TV Tutta La Vita. Milano: Adelphi, 2011. VF Vita dei Fantasmi. Milano: All'insegna del pesce d'oro, 1962. VM Vita di Mercurio, typed filmscript, Fondo Savinio 21.8, 1949. VM early Vita di Mercurio, early handwritten pages, Fondo Savinio 21.7, 1920s or 1930s VM soggetto Vita di Mercurio, soggetto cinematografico, Fondo Savinio 21.7, 1941-1949?

206