The Surreal Voice in Milan's Itinerant Poetics: Delio Tessa to Franco Loi

City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects CUNY Graduate Center 2-2021 The Surreal Voice in Milan's Itinerant Poetics: Delio Tessa to Franco Loi Jason Collins The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4143 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] THE SURREALIST VOICE IN MILAN’S ITINERANT POETICS: DELIO TESSA TO FRANCO LOI by JASON M. COLLINS A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2021 i © 2021 JASON M. COLLINS All Rights Reserved ii The Surreal Voice in Milan’s Itinerant Poetics: Delio Tessa to Franco Loi by Jason M. Collins This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy _________________ ____________Paolo Fasoli___________ Date Chair of Examining Committee _________________ ____________Giancarlo Lombardi_____ Date Executive Officer Supervisory Committee Paolo Fasoli André Aciman Hermann Haller THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT The Surreal Voice in Milan’s Itinerant Poetics: Delio Tessa to Franco Loi by Jason M. Collins Advisor: Paolo Fasoli Over the course of Italy’s linguistic history, dialect literature has evolved a s a genre unto itself. The scope of research presented in this study examines the question of dialect literature as a valid genre which bears lines of demarcation that would assign it the distinction of genre. Research reveals that in fact the simple election of a language, or dialect, does not itself constitute a genre; moreover, most dialect literature bears characteristics that would neatly place it in another genre. To examine this verity, this research compares two dialect poets who employ Milanese as a means of transmission instead of standard Italian, Delio Tessa and Franco Loi, with the Paris Surrealist group members who coined the infamous anti-novels on the 1920’s and 1930’s, André Breton, Robert Desnos, Louis Aragon, and Phillipe Soupault. By intersecting dialectology, sociolinguistics, and genre and literary theory, the poetics of Tessa and Loi show the same characteristics as the Surrealist anti-novel. Due to similar influences, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé, similar traumas of modernity, and the same social exigency to write, Tessa and Loi’s iv work can be placed within the lines of demarcation of Surrealism. Further, this is revealed to be a trajectory as genre invention and the development of Italian and its dialects have been historically concomitant. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge and thank the following people for their contribution to this dissertation: My committee—Drs. Paolo Fasoli, André Aciman, and Hermann Haller. Paolo Fasoli for everything that I have accomplished, for my academic career, and for being a mentor, teacher, and friend. André Aciman for his enduring honesty and Hermann Haller for his vast knowledge. My mother, Lynda Roberts, and my grandmother, Leona Marks for instilling in me the belief that I could do anything. Rita Macchi and Roberto Melani (le grandi famiglie milanesi) for your friendship and for contributing to my research more than you will ever know. Drs. Maureen Keenan and Regina Castro McGowan for your support, encouragement, and friendship. Dr. Marko Dragojevic for the dizzy figures and more. Maria Galeta, language savant extraordinaire, for your interpretations of my interpretations. Claudio De Mattos for being my husband. vi CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………..viii CHAPTER 1…………………………………………………………………………….1 CHAPTER 2…………………………………………………………………………….67 CHAPTER 3…………………………………………………………………………….135 CHAPTER 4…………………………………………………………………………….209 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………….271 vii FIGURES Page Fig. 1 Concentric Circle One.….………………………………………………………....256 Fig. 2 Concentric Circle Two…….….…………………………………………………….257 Fig. 3 Concentric Circle Three……………………………………………………………258 Fig. 4 Concentric Circle Four…………………………………………………………….259 Fig. 5 Venn Diagram One…….…………………………………………………………. .260 Fig. 6 Venn Diagram Two………………………………………………………………....261 Fig. 7 Venn Diagram Three………….……………………………………………………262 Fig. 8 Salvador Dalí’s Young Woman at a Window……………………………………….263 Fig. 9 Max Ernst’s Oedipus Rex…….…………………………………………………….264 Fig. 10 Max Ernst’s Two Children Are Threatened by the Nightingale…………………..265 Fig. 11 René Magritte’s The Human Condition….………………………………………..266 Fig. 12 René Magritte’s Euclidian Walks…….…………………………………………...267 Fig. 13 Joseph Cornell’s Toward the ‘Blue Peninsula’ (for Emily Dickenson) ………….268 Fig. 14 René Magritte’s The Key to the Fields…………………………………………….269 Fig. 15 René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images……….……………………………….270 viii Chapter One Introduction “Scrivo per il mio unico piacere e scrivo in dialetto perché so che la lingua italiana non può, assolutamente non può, fornire quel mondo di suoni che mi occorre per esprimermi come voglio” (3).1 Delio Tessa from “Perché scrivo in dialetto?” “Credo di non essere posseduto da una lingua così profondamente, intimamente, come il milanese . il milanese mi canta dentro, autonomamente” (403).2 Franco Loi from “Attorno a L’angel” La questione della lingua, or debate on the Italian language, harbors all the potential connotations derived from or equaling the word “questione”: inquiry, problem, and uncertainty. It is in fact a debate, arising from many queries with roots in the rise upsurge of the vernacular and the decline of Latin as a spoken language, with the most obvious and pertinent question being which of the many Italian vernaculars, or volgari is to be used. It became evident with time that it would be necessary—for the sake of communal determinations—to cause the debate to ensue. La questione della lingua unfurls over time unremittingly with no distinct inception but certainly reaches a fervent moment in the 16th century when the Tuscan tongue of Dante, strengthened by Petrarch and Boccaccio, is set forth by a handful of theoreticians as the language for literary use. At the same time, the debate addresses a new issue when other participants purport to use their own dialect, or a hybrid, rather than the Tuscan. Continuing into the 18th and early 19th century, the schism in belief regarding the purity of the language finds opposing sides in Melchiorre Cesarotti on one side, and Giovanni Francesco Galeani Napione and his supporters 1 Translation: “I write as my only pleasure and I write in dialect because I know that the Italian language cannot, absolutely cannot, provide that world of sounds I need to express myself as I want.” All translations from Italian and Milanese to English are mine. 2 Translation: “I believe I am not possessed by a language so deeply, so intimately, as Milanese. Milanese sings to me inside, independently.” 1 (or puristi), Giulio Cesare Becelli and Antonio Cesari on the other. Cesarotti advocated for an Italian that could move and mutate freely and naturally with time, while the puristi3 devoutly and steadfastly held to a pure and monolithic language based on the three fathers Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. A further debate (and eventually a polemic) on dialect versus standardized Italian occurred in Milan between Giuseppe Parini, Carlantonio Tanzi, and Domenico Balestrieri. The question is revisited with the same fervor in the mid-19th century with the Risorgimento and the release of a prototype of both a modernized literary and spoken Italian in Manzoni’s I promessi sposi. The waxing and waning of the debate that reveals the nature of the questione della lingua caused Antonio Gramsci in the 20th century, during another swell in the consideration of a national language, to famously remark in his Prison Notebooks that “ogni volta che affiora, in un modo o nell’altro, la quistione [sic] della lingua, significa che si sta imponendo una serie di altri problemi” (2346).4 The discussion continues today, and the contemporary debate’s origins stems from Gramsci’s statement that brought to light the sociopolitical and sociocultural nature of the language debate, and that it was not just a linguistic debate but a polemic regarding Italian society. In general, it eventually culminates in Pasolini’s anthropolitical detection and assessment of a new sociocultural shift that involves a linguistic accumulation transmitted through means of technological dissemination: television, radio, and mass publication of newspapers and other linguistic normative apparatuses. Continuing on with Gramsci, we see his assessment of such a structure as he notes the problems associated with the questione della lingua cataloging them as: 3 Purists. 4 Translation: “every time the question of language emerges, in one way or another, it signifies that a series of other problems are emerging.” 2 la formazione e l’allargamento della classe dirigente, la necessità di stabilire rapporti piú intimi e sicuri tra I gruppi dirigenti e la massa popolare-nazionale, cioè di riorganizzare l’egemonia culturale. Oggi si sono verificati diversi fenomi che indicano una rinascita di tali quistioni: publicazioni . rubriche nei giornali, intervento delle direzioni sindacali.5 (2346) Such

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