Simona Wright 255

FRANCESCA SANVITALE: A POETIC AND NARRATIVE EXPLORATION

Francesca Sanvitale, one of Italy's most renowned contemporary authors, was born in in 1928 to an aristocratic but decayed family from Emilia Romagna. At the age of twelve her family moved to Florence. In that city she attended school and subsequently the university, where she graduated with a degree in Italian Literature under her mentor, Giuseppe de Robertis. Shortly after graduating, Sanvitale started her career as a journalist at the Florentine publishing house Vallecchi. She also accepted several assignments as reader and editor for various Italian publishing houses, among which were Bompiani and Mondadori. She worked as a manuscript reader for Elio Vittorini, influential intellectual and writer of the period. This demanding apprenticeship forged Sanvitale's literary experience in a twofold manner: on the one side it provided her with an extensive knowledge and comprehension of European and world cultures and on the other it helped her to refine her writing style. This period of intense learning culminated with Sanvitale's move to in 1961, where she entered a national competition and was awarded a job on the Italian national public television, RAI. Working for RAI, the writer remembers, was a particularly stimulating experience for it provided an excellent opportunity to employ the new medium as an effective and pervasive cultural and educational tool. Furthermore, television and its modes of communication captivated the attention of many Italian intellectuals, who actively participated in the development of original broadcasting programs: "Questi intellettuali, [tra i quali vi erano] Umberto Eco, Furio Colombo, Angelo Guglielmi, , Renzo Rosso, furono attirati dalla possibilità di usare un nuovo mezzo espressivo e poterlo condizionare, renderlo originale."1 During the first years at RAI, Sanvitale set out to write her first Simona Wright 256 novel that would be published with the title Il cuore borghese. After seven years of consistent labor, the author had completed a narrative that was structured as a compact succession of situations, juxtaposed not by a consequential or chronological story line but rather connected by the main characters' stream of thoughts, considerations and observations. The work clearly emerges as a personal response to the crisis of the traditional novel, which had been at the center of vehement scrutiny and criticism in the Sixties, particularly from many European literary movements as the French École du regard, and the Italian Gruppo '63. The protest voiced by these movements focused mainly on the obsolescent structure of the nineteenth-century novel, which was deemed unsuited to embody the dynamic transformations inherent in contemporary society. Modern culture and civilization called for more complex and heterogeneous modes of aesthetic expression and the novel was to conform to the tenets of this new philosophy or to succumb to inevitable decadence and death. Influenced in part by contemporary movements and in part by her inclination toward such authors as Robert Musil and Robert Walser, Sanvitale organized the philosophical structure of Il cuore borghese by first establishing strong cultural and intellectual bonds with the Mitteleuropean and modernist literary tradition. The plot follows no evident chronological pattern but it is rather organized as a sequence of disconnected episodes and scenarios that form a vast human fresco depicting and dramatizing the individual's search and inability to act in the external world and to react to the dilemmas and challenges that it poses. Every chapter in this mosaic is frozen in time, a fragment of a life where there seems to be no recognizable beginning or end, no discernible cause-effect progression. The main characters, Julius, Olimpia, Claretine, Tullio and their child, Fati, navigate through the story, intersecting paths and intertwining their self-exploration and self- analysis into dialogic and dialectic patterns. Every character is also isolated in an indefinite space and time, where s/he becomes prey to long meditative sequences in which thought processes leave no space for action. The narrative transforms itself into a long introspective discourse, where observation and reflection overshadow the objective world. Julius and Olimpia, Tullio and Claretine, are the opposing couples, the emblems of a generation of intellectuals who grew up during the Second World War and the Resistance, who are now adults, faced with Francesca Sanvitale 257 the inconsistencies of their human relations, constantly oscillating between intensifying or relaxing their sentimental bonds. Julius works for a national television channel; completely entrenched in his professional life he seems incapable of transforming his ideology into constructive action. Olimpia, who is neglected by her husband, searches unsuccessfully throughout the narrative for a stimulus, a relationship, a passion that will enable her to recover and regenerate her disarranged self. Tullio and Claretine represent the mirror image of the first couple, whose relationship is gradually being destroyed by Tullio's failure as a husband and by Claretine's sexual and emotional superficiality. Although in love with her husband, in fact, she never ceases to betray him. Tullio's indecision is an ulterior cause of failure. When his marriage shows symptoms of a crisis he decides to return to his native provincial town and to remain there, entangled in projects that will never materialize. Isolation, solitude, and hopelessness are the negative consequences of the characters' apathy, the seal of their diseased existence. Sanvitale stages her story in the capital of Italy, in the bourgeois interiors of Roman houses and squares, in a historical period apparently bursting with the activity and vitality emanating from Italy's economic boom but internally undermined by serious deficiencies and weaknesses at the private and personal levels. In return, as has been pointedly observed, the crisis experienced by the single individuals projects itself in the nation, in its social, political, and historical reality that only superficially appears calm and unchanging. It is to dramatize this concealed but impending crisis that Sanvitale negates in the novel any concept of conventional plot, abolishes any idea of time, discredits the possibility or the actuality of even the simplest decisions and most inconsequential actions. In one of the novel's chapters, "Stati d'animo: giochi e divagazioni," the above mentioned stylistic components are emblematized in Olimpia's card game:

Olimpia sta persistendo nel suo gioco, ha buttato per la decima volta le tre monete. Ritenta nuove combinazioni e gli ideogrammi si mescolano come i numeri per i dadi. Anche il numero è un ideogramma, ciò che lei cerca ha qualcosa in comune con i risultati meccanico-magici della matematica. Nel numero si supera il caos per entrare nelle combinazioni dell'eterno: lo spazio si libera dal tempo, il mondo si rappresenta simultaneamente — cause ed effetti — per Simona Wright 258

concetti sintetici; si abolisce la convenzione del futuro.2

For the originality of its structure, the modernity of its thematic content, the penetrating analysis of the characters and their dramatization, and last but not least, for its exacting language and style, Il cuore borghese should be regarded as a turning point in both the Italian literary universe and in Sanvitale's career as a writer. Il cuore borghese represents also the conclusion of a human and poetic evolution that had taken seven years to come to its culmination. Thus, at the time of the book's publication, the author had already recognized three fundamental components in the writing of literature that she elucidates as follows: the first is the necessity for the narrative project to convey a "sense of reality." The narrative process is anchored to the details of the objective world and therefore it is through the emergence and the significant presence of reality around us that events can be defined, comprehended and interpreted, that actions and emotions can carry a spiritual meaning and a subjective message. Furthermore, it is precisely the choice of details that distinguishes the novelist and shapes his or her expressive domain. The second essential characteristic of a literary work is its inclination to be a human narrative, encompassing not only, as resulted in Il cuore borghese, the protagonists' intellectual and mental quarries, but all aspects of the human quest. The third characteristic recognized by the author is the primarily aesthetic function of literature. Recognizing the necessity to liberate it from the constraints of an exclusively social discourse, from the limitations of a purely didactic mode, the mode in which the neorealist movement had attempted to entrap literature for years, and realizing that literature's basic principles derive from the exploration of the individual's nature and desires, Sanvitale set out, after a long period of silence, to write her second novel, Madre e figlia. The book appeared in 1980 and marked a complete transformation in the author's thematic and stylistic creativity. Sanvitale had undergone a conscious narrative metamorphosis. She had ascertained that writing emanates from the exploration and investigation of the most secret and concealed spheres of the subconscious, and most significantly, she had learned that the process of poetic invention cannot be disassociated from the search for self-identity and self-conceptualization. Madre e figlia, the story of the complex and intensely passionate relation between mother and daughter, is also Sanvitale's personal elaboration and response to contemporary feminist ideology. In the Francesca Sanvitale 259 sixties and seventies, influenced by the movement's political manifesto, which reiterated the necessity for self-investigation, Italian women had begun to endure a strenuous self-analysis. The result of this process was the intensification of women's presence and participation in the social debate, in which they acted as vigilant constituents while positing the necessity for changes in what was regarded as a traditionally male- dominated society. To the offer of a more vigorous involvement in societal issues and of a more animated cultural discourse the author responds with a novel that contained a courageous attempt to look at the individual's cryptic self, dramatizing the story of an exploration that attains historical and personal significance. After her mother's death, Sonia, one of the two main characters, tries to reorganize her existence and to recover her mother's, in order to shed light on her childlike actions and irresponsible behavior, actions and behavior that still perplex her. The attempt to understand the past evolves gradually into an elaborate lattice of emotional relationships, in which the narrator, through meticulous mental scrutiny, actualizes her quest for self-discovery and self-individualization. As in Il cuore borghese, the narrative structure again eludes the rigidity of a chronological ordering of events and favors instead the composition of an open and inclusive perspective in which occurrences from the past and the present, visions from dreams and reality, amalgamate in a complex and stratified memorial landscape. The novel is subdivided into two polarly opposed narrative planes, the past and the present. In the first the mother's past is reconstructed through old photos, fragments of conversations, and objects that give rise to imaginary settings. Profoundly visionary in nature, this level offers a composite canvas of mental images in which the young Marianna's idyllic life is portrayed as naturally innocent and uncomplicated. The past is the magic realm where fantasy, myth, and the human being harmoniously connect; it is a microcosm devoid of anguish, a dream-like world laden with yet unfulfilled promises of happiness. With the father's death and the outbreak of World War One, the idyll comes to an abrupt end. These events, which for the family mark the beginning of an irreversible financial and social decline, mean for Marianna the dramatic confrontation with the hardships and ordeals of reality. Her existence takes a negative turn when she becomes pregnant and later gives birth to an illegitimate child, Sonia, the unexpected Simona Wright 260 consequence of a secret and much romanticized liaison with an army officer. As a married man Sonia's father cannot and, more importantly, will not compromise his position by divorcing his wife. His sentimental relationship with Marianna progressively deteriorates while feelings of alienation and estrangement will later prevail between father and daughter. In the second part of the novel, Sonia narrates, both in the third and first person, the journey into a present that is diametrically opposed to the fantasized past, a daily existence that is characterized by ordinary struggles, as the protagonists experience the adversities of living without social recognition and financial stability. As Sonia progresses in her life she attains those comforts of bourgeois life that had always escaped her, but the discovery of her father's real life throws her into a state of desperation and grief from which she recovers only by reconstructing her story, by resituating her now more than ever disconcerted self. This painful process, she is aware, must necessarily start from a return to the mother's human experience. The objective world and her imaginative subconscious continuously offer Sonia sudden recollections and unexpected temporal links which enable her to recapture Marianna's life and to bring about around her that microcosm of events, characters, and emotional relations which distinguish the poetic structure of the novel. The narrative progresses into a summation of several individual stories which are embedded into a more comprehensive historical picture. While the reader follows Sonia's and her mother's journey, s/he is likewise able to discern in the background the vibrations created by events like the Second World War, Italy's post-war years, the rebuilding of its social and cultural infrastructure and the advent of economic prosperity. Francesca Sanvitale presents the character's autobiographical narrative discourse, not as a linear, chronological succession of cause and effect, but as a cohabitation of facts, emotional and physical impressions which have been accumulated in the subconscious and have become an essential component of the individual's experience. It is the author's responsibility to bring these cryptic elements to light, to order them in a system of significations, in the expression of one's own poetic universe. With Madre e figlia Sanvitale repudiates the poetic conception that had sustained the writing of Il cuore borghese. The novel must be primarily "un racconto di sentimenti," a narrative of emotions, passions, Francesca Sanvitale 261_ and feelings. She grants special attention to the characters' psychology, to their human and subjective physiognomy. As she explicitly declares, every gesture and every expression must coincide with the character's inner being, with his thoughts and feelings. The search for identity initiated with Madre e figlia continues to concern Sanvitale, whose third novel L'uomo del parco (1984) seems to be a further and more concentrated evolution in this direction. As in the preceding narrative a female character is the main protagonist. Abandoned by an abusive husband, Giulia has fallen prey to hallucinatory states in which she confuses a tormented inner reality with the embroiled fragments of the external world. Despondent and alienated, she floats in a space devoid of social and historical coordinates. The novel departs from the description of Giulia's delirium to subsequently accompany the reader, occasionally with the help of a first-person narration, through the most crucial passages of her life, the chronic depression, altered by deformed psychic activities, the encounter with Tommaso, a man she occasionally sees during her wanderings in the park of Villa Doria Pamphili, and the agonizing restoration of a rational and lucid consciousness. If in the beginning the story is characterized by the prevalence of the imaginary and the phenomenon of hallucination, this condition is gradually intertwined with the interference of the external world, where Giulia's life is necessarily inscribed. As the novel progresses the reader will learn that the protagonist lives and works in Rome, is married and has two children. In addition Tommaso's presence is a crucial element of the narrative, for it is his closeness and attentive demeanor that activate in Giulia the desire to reestablish the connection with reality by determining and analyzing the sources of her present crisis. On the path to self-recovery the protagonist experiences all the stages of depression, isolation, and marginalization but she also finds the strength to travel, to distance herself from the prison-like environment that had mutilated her being. Her journeys to Greece and to the island of Crete become human and psychological pilgrimages. The ancient myth of the labyrinth, explored by Giulia at Cnossos, while metaphorically mirroring her present condition, also reveals the objective of her mental itinerary and physical journey.

Voleva strapparsi da questi sentimenti senza interlocutore, strappare il velo che le impediva di vedere gli altri esseri umani e arrivare ad affrontare il loro tempo sempre a portata di mano e sempre in fuga: Simona Wright 262

come un viaggiatore nella nebbia che viaggia, che viaggia e tenta di raggiungere una nitida città che sta alle spalle facendo il giro del mondo.3

The teachings of the ancient Greeks inspire Giulia to see in her dreams and dream-like reality the celebration of a passage, and a ritual of purification that brings coherence out of the emotional derangement. Her diseased visions and dreams surface not as the perplexing apparitions of an aberrant mental landscape but rather chart the course to self-interpretation. Her return to Rome marks the final chapter in Giulia's recovery, the positive consolidation of her self in the reality of the present. In the third and last segment of the novel, the rapprochement with the world is narrated in the form of a heartfelt and often painful confession in which the protagonist speaks, now free from the constraints of her mental illness, with the independence and confidence of the first person. L'uomo del parco is certainly one of Sanvitale's most complex and courageous novels. Its structure reminds the reader of the intricate and extreme convolutions of baroque architecture and its content is a rich palette of themes and motifs, while its language is deliberately overflowing, copious in symbolic and metaphorical meaning. Although Sanvitale seems to initially imprison the protagonist in the perimeter of her visionary inner world, she refuses to admit the prevailing of chaos in the character's existence. Giulia crosses the enigmatic park, experiences the descent into the labyrinth as a suspension from reality, isolation and death but ultimately conquers the maze. She does so by attaining the wisdom of self-acceptance which in turn has taught her to treasure life and its inevitable transformations. In the final page of the novel, the protagonist sees her image reflected in the mirror:

Si ritrovò allo specchio, mentre per un gesto consueto allargava le dita nei capelli: erano candidi come la spuma sulla cresta dell'onda, e ancora marezzati di grigio e di castano, qua e là. Le piacevano, le ricordavano il cambiamento e la novità.4

The composite structure of the novel results from the remarkable juxtaposition of times, spaces, real and unreal settings, and from the intersection of different realities, Giulia's on the one side and the objective world's on the other. On the trail of the character's self- investigation the author has brought to light the constituents of a new Francesca Sanvitale 263 poetic conception that privileges the combination of minimal narrative segments, of dream-like scenarios and of visionary games. The elaborate style of the narrative discourse in L'uomo del parco is directly affected by the circularity of the plot, by its lack of chronological hierarchy and, last, but not least, by the author's obvious distrust toward the traditionally held ideals of the homogeneity of knowledge and of a universal historical perspective. Ideologically closer to the tenets of the postmodern manifesto and to the new feminist literary principles, Sanvitale believes the writing process to be the privileged medium to penetrate the individual's subjectivity, a subjectivity that has become perceptibly fragmented, heterogeneous, and remarkably changeable. The continuous transformations occurring in contemporary society urge the writer to adopt modes of expression that are consistent with the new reality. Moreover, Sanvitale believes that it is still literature's fundamental objective to bring order to the chaotic inner self and to recompose the new-found symmetry and to synthesize it on the written page. Concerned primarily with the state of "malaise" that permeates modern life, she converts this condition into a system of images, symbols, and analogies that is originally personal. The author's fourth book, La realtà è un dono, a collection of short stories, appeared in 1987. Sanvitale does not disregard the production of small narratives which she perceives as a more effective and compact mode of expression.

Per me il racconto è più divertente, ha una immediatezza e una concentrazione che stimolano alla creatività, che liberano la fantasia. Si è più spericolati nei racconti, poiché in essi si devono creare emozioni più forti per arrivare al lettore.5

In La realtà è un dono Sanvitale focuses her analysis on the sentimental relationships between the sexes, on the permanent deficiency and inadequacy of human communication and on the emotional failure that derives from it. Particularly in narratives like "L'ultima notte di Shahrazad" the author explores and exposes the isolation and the abandonment that accompany the theatralization and falsification of the sexual encounter. The female protagonist, Shahrazad, longing to regain her lover's attention, narrates an enigmatic story. Through dramatization and invention she hopes to enchant and seduce once again the unwary counterpart, to entice him, albeit evanescently, to yield to her desire. As she recognizes the hopelessness of her Simona Wright 264 undertaking she departs, only to be found dead, the next morning, on the emergency lane of a Roman thoroughfare. Death is the poignant culmination of her tragedy. Her suicide, the author seems to maintain, is the consequence of her inability to participate naturally, without pretenses and simulations, in the partner's emotional life. Falsification and make-believe destroy Shahrazad, who repudiates her role of actress in the relationship but who is ultimately unable to define herself as a subject, having lost connection with her authentic sensitive individuality. In the theatralization of the most intimate human contact the author sees the ultimate loss of the individual's subjectivity. Any sexual encounter, maintains Sanvitale, should emanate from the highest degree of innocence and affinity between the parts and should acquire, as essential element, a simple and harmonious form. It should develop a sort of natural, instinctual creativity. The reality of human relations is in fact more complex and troubling; it is a corollary of mental and emotional representations that the author never ceases to investigate and to problematize. "La realtà è un dono" is the last narrative of the collection and constitutes a crucial turning point in Sanvitale's writing. Irma, the protagonist, celebrates her fifty-eighth birthday reading a book on catastrophes, little facts, and events that have extraordinary consequences. She can easily find similarities between her life and the theories posited in the book.

L'autore sosteneva che piccole variazioni nelle cause possono produrre variazioni enormi negli effetti. Infatti il viaggio a Vienna di più di dieci anni prima, anzi tredici, era stato una variazione minuscola nel suo sistema di vita e aveva prodotto grandi variazioni sugli effetti. Da un microscopico forellino la realtà era entrata con un sibilo. Si erano creati a catena fatti sconvolgenti che a loro volta avevano portato imprevedibili atteggiamenti psichici.6

With a rapid time leap the narrator relates the long anticipated vacation in Vienna, the episodes that compose it and the mental scrutiny that irradiates from it, illustrating and clarifying past experiences and memories. The short trip has created a cleft, and has modified the protagonist's existence in unforeseen ways, producing a chain of brief sentimental encounters whose meaning is only now becoming clear, as Irma looks back and contemplates. Reality, she reflects, is a gift, every event is an enigma and every action an extraordinary source of self- Francesca Sanvitale 265 knowledge. The thematic palette of La realtà è un dono does not exclusively embrace the dilemma of interpersonal relations, as witnessed in "L'ultima notte di Shahrazad," "L'età dell'oro," "La realtà è un dono" or "Nostalgia per Admont" but comprises as well the investigation of childhood's traumas, the entry into adulthood and the solitude experienced by the human being as a consequence of his/her history. Every story is characterized by a painful and somewhat destructive inner search, every dramatic persona is entangled in a conflict with the most secret and cryptic realms of his or her psyche. Sanvitale's narratives depict a reality that is not comforting and harmonious, but rather grinding and difficult to endure. Surviving and accepting it means recognizing that a constant struggle, an agonizing examination of the self and its surroundings, is under way within every individual. Mettendo a fuoco (1988) and Il diavolo in corpo (1989) are respectively a collection of essays and the translation of Radiguet's novel Le diable au corps. Both works seem to constitute a digression from Sanvitale's narrative project but they represent indeed its natural extension. The author's permanent interest in contemporary society, in its human and cultural dilemmas and in its perpetual transformations is apparent in the essays that form the collection, all of which had appeared in prominent Italian newspapers and literary journals in the 1980s. The variety of issues discussed in these articles attests to Sanvitale's extensive knowledge of and intense concern for Italian society. Her attention and enthusiasm for literature are also evident in this collection but become more explicit in the translation of French author Raymond Radiguet's novel. By choosing to translate this work Sanvitale confirms her dedication to the written word in terms of an analytical self-quest which is never separated from the search for new narrative solutions, for original representations of personal realities. In 1991 the short novel Verso Paola was published by Einaudi. It was yet another of the author's attempts to render the complexity of an inner portrait while illustrating the oppressiveness of its neurotic meanderings. This time, the protagonist, as in many of the short stories of La realtà è un dono, is a male character. With this novel Sanvitale completes, in Antonio Porta's words, a search for narrative self-identity, self-representation, and self-expression that could be accomplished exclusively through the literary medium. Simona Wright 266

With Verso Paola the author marks a parting from the theorized vehement identification with the characters and the beginning of a different aesthetic experimentation. In tune with her most recurrent motifs the story is based on the chronicle of a journey. Alessandro, a middle-aged professor of linguistics, has decided to visit his wife, who is on vacation in the native Calabrian village of Paola. Returning from a mountain holiday, he boards the train that will take him on a vertical descent from the North to the South of Italy. This almost banal trip sets the stage for a variety of disparate encounters, conversations, personal considerations, and most of all, it progresses into a traumatic and unsuccessful struggle for transformation. Experiencing a period of psychological and possibly professional crisis, Alessandro seems to vacillate between two opposing emotional images. On the one side he is fascinated by his wife Matilde and the intricacy of her linguistic games. He is seduced by the theatrical transformations that she performs before and during every sexual act, as she invents and impersonates different roles. Her language is also a mixture of invention and intrigue, through which her otherwise uninhabited persona attains the attributes of a female ruler, who reigns by imposing her discourse as a supernatural instrument of knowledge.

Matilde non aveva altre abilità oltre a questa nell'amore. Era pigra e senza iniziative ma senza frustrazioni. A lui sembrava un essere più divino che umano, perché lo strumento che usava, il linguaggio, era lo strumento della conoscenza, un talismano che la trasformava in una regina.7

If Matilde represents the creative but supremely artificial burst of invention, Evelina, Alessandro's university assistant and lover, seems to embody the opposite disposition. In her impenetrable nature, in her monosyllabic and glacial answers the protagonist contemplates the unequivocal eloquence of silence. Language is for Evelina an ambiguous system of signs and significations, that one should use with frugality, perpetually conscious of its possible distortions and falsifications. Alessandro's search for a perfect language, for an absolute means of expression, is emblematic of the search for order that he is carrying on inside himself and in the external world, as he tries to connect all the fragmented events in his past and assign them a reasonable meaning. Reorganizing reality through language should help him reorganize the Francesca Sanvitale 267

conglomerate of experiences that have complicated his existence. As he boards the train to Paola, Alessandro is still confronted with unanswered questions and doubts that the brief sentimental liaison with Evelina was unable to dispel. The vacation has produced no solution and he finds himself returning to his wife's captivating tales of self-erasure. At the same time travelling grants him separation from both expressive worlds, Matilde's and Evelina's. In the journey's vacuum he will be given the chance to meditate about the purpose of language, to explore it in relation to reality and to compose it in a coherent symmetry of meanings. The course of his meditations is however immediately interrupted by the interference of the objective world that surrounds him in the train's compartment. As the journey progresses the protagonist acquires two different perspectives. The first is entirely centered on the external environment, where he perceives the gradual degradation of Italy's natural, historical, and cultural landscape. The second is internal, focusing on the conflict that pervades him and threatens to obliterate his identity, the cacophony between self and language and self and the objective world. A few kilometers outside Paola, the train stops and the journey ends after an exhausting day in which excruciating self-reflection has caused physical fatigue and psychological despair. Alessandro will finally reach his destination and return to Matilde only to be engulfed once again, as the reader can anticipate, in the meaninglessness of her erratic contrivances. A recurring motif in Sanvitale's writings, the metaphor of travel and discovery in this novel dramatizes the investigation of the self and its unavoidable integration into a much larger community, into social and historical contexts that cannot be ignored. Alessandro's journey problematizes a series of issues that extend from the private to the public domain, from the devastation of the individual's identity to the degeneration produced by the capitalistic system and by the absence of a concerned political agenda. But one of the paramount questions remains, in Sanvitale's words, that of language and its loss of significance, its devaluation and semantic crisis. On the cultural and political arena, the writer declares,

la parola perde sempre più di significato. Essa dovrebbe avere tante valenze, ma oggi non vuole dire più niente [...]. E mi pare che per gli intellettuali e per gli scrittori non dare un significato importante alla parola significa anche usarla con grande distrazione, significa non credere più che la scrittura abbia un senso profondo, per se stessa, ma Simona Wright 268

che sia soltanto un gioco, una utilizzazione, e questo può solo portare alla morte della letteratura.8

Verso Paola's journey can thus be interpreted as a metaphorical trip, an emblematic investigation of the crisis that pervades today's society by concentrating on its most consequential and valuable product, its language. The anxiety and distress experienced by the individual, Sanvitale argues, are the projections of a crisis that affects the entire system and threatens to disintegrate its most vulnerable components. By centering her short novel on this climacteric point the writer sounds an alarm. Language, she admonishes, cannot be criticized merely because it expresses a particular individual's communicative failure but must be analyzed within the framework of even more distressing societal consequences. Losing one's own language signifies the dissolution of one's world and consequently the invalidation of history, culture, and civilization. Alessandro's exhausting journey, in his oscillation and search for linguistic meaning, aims at defeating obliteration and at preventing the degradation of humanity's most cherished accomplishments. After completing her narrative cycle of quest and self-discovery with Verso Paola, Sanvitale dedicated herself to the ensuing poetic challenge. In 1993 Einaudi published her latest novel, Il figlio dell'impero, a narrative chronicle of Napoleon's son's forgotten existence. From the subjective and more introspective exploration, Sanvitale had charted a new literary course that incorporated a more "objective" and extensive historical viewpoint. With unfailing documentary competence, the author reconstructed Francois's and his mother's prolonged travels through a war-ravaged Europe, following Napoleon's final military defeat and political overthrow. Compassionately and perceptively, her eyes accompany their arrival in Vienna, Francois's conservative Austrian tutelage in the restricted premises of the Hapsburg's imperial palace, his unsuccessful attempts to obtain formal recognition as Napoleon's successor, his military detachment in a removed province of the empire, his devastating illness and premature death at the age of twenty-one. Franz's ill-starred human itinerary is played in the midst of momentous historical transformations, modifications from which he is kept at a distance, confined within the walls of a powerful monarchy, watchfully shielded by Metternich's diplomatic mastery. The plot is staged between Paris and Vienna, two capitals that dominated Europe Francesca Sanvitale 269 both politically and culturally. The narrative that emerges from the faithful investigation becomes a grand portrait of early nineteenth- century Europe, a penetrating analysis of an epoch and of the individuals who so intensely participated in its making. The image of the little François, admits Sanvitale, who on the tragic day of departure from the Tuilleries palace desperately clings on its balustrade and tearfully refuses to leave, inspired her to write the story,

Mi decisi a scrivere un lungo racconto, del tipo di Verso Paola, pensando di ritrovare la storia di questo bambino e, se fosse stato necessario, di ricostruire la sua vita dalla sua partenza da questo palazzo fino alla morte. Mi sono messa a leggere dei libri, ma sempre con un'idea leggera di quello che volevo fare, e leggendo nei libri, cercando di trovare il gesto di un bambino, mi è crollato addosso un impero.9

If the original idea had been to follow a single human itinerary, the author soon recognized the complexity of her particular project. To accompany Francois's steps, from French heir to Napoleon's short-lived empire to his days in Vienna, necessitated adopting a wide-angle lens, which could capture the external transformations and later a focusing zoom, which could penetrate the character's intimate realms and unveil his bitter conflicts. Sanvitale decided to narrate the making of history and its impervious ordeals through a child's gaze, and to make this a particularly crucial and contrasting experience she had chosen a protagonist whose access and participation in history would never be granted. After his arrival in Vienna, François undergoes in fact a dramatic transformation, his identity is modeled according to the values, ideals, and philosophical doctrine of power championed by the house of Hapsburg, in clear contrast with the political convictions espoused by his father. Caught in the middle of two opposing cultures, of two contrasting historical visions, the monarchic and imperial on one side, the more modern and revolutionary on the other, Franz becomes the epoch's designated victim. Emblematically embodying the conflict between tradition and modernity, he will search throughout his life for an autonomous identity but will ultimately succumb to the weight of history. While conflict, crisis, and search for identity mark Franz's existence and make him one of the first romantic heroes, they also illuminate the passages of a more universal itinerary, that of the human Simona Wright 270 condition in its battle against eradication, self-effacement, and isolation. Writing the novel was not exclusively a journey into the nineteenth- century European political and historical landscape. As an exploration into the agonizing wanderings of a split self, it also meant to posit a challenge to the notions of history, historical reality, and historical truth. Aware of potential ideological entrapments, Sanvitale defines her personal philosophical and aesthetic tenets and elaborates them on the written page. Since the strong presence of historical characters in the plot precludes any fictional ambitions, the writer must proceed with only the support of authentic documentation. Historical recovery, maintains Sanvitale, is based on the recognition that facts and circumstances cannot be altered by invention, they can only be analyzed with a critical and problematic disposition. "Io non ho inserito, in questo romanzo di seicento pagine, una sola parola di dialogo che sia stata inventata [...] in me è cosi forte il senso di una persona che c'è stata che mi impedisce di superarla e cancellarla con la mia presenza."10 The opposition between documented facts and invention and the predominance of the former against the latter in Sanvitale's poetics brings relevance to the next important issue in the novel, that of the specious contradiction between historical reality and historical truth. Documents, insists the writer, are the only reference, the only source of information on the past.

Ma il documento non è la verità, è il dubbio. Allora noi non possiamo ricostruire la storia se non attraverso un insieme di dubbi che noi dobbiamo onestamente riferire a chi legge. E il romanzo storico non può più essere impostato come un romanzo in cui siamo sicuri di tutto [...] ma piuttosto in cui dobbiamo cercare i possibili documenti e lasciare che chi legge decida, presentando i dubbi, offrendo ciò che non è consacrato, anzi dissacrare, per scoprire.11

As Sanvitale posits the question of historical documentation, she also questions its impartiality and reliability. Having witnessed the degeneration of major ideologies and the decline of all modern political dogmas, she aims at reconstituting a historical memory that is unencumbered by traditional absolute truths and more open to embrace diverse voices and perspectives. History does not offer the writer any definite lesson or conclusive interpretation but rather exposes the objective world, past and present, as a fragmented, heterogeneous and fluctuating reality. Finding the truth in this reality, admits Sanvitale, is Francesca Sanvitale 271 not the writer's responsibility, since its elusiveness would occasion only illusory quests. The author's concern is primarily to synthesize and to compose the multiplicity, the opposition and the questionability of events in a poetic and aesthetic system of signification. Sanvitale's literary journey continues with the publication, in 1994, of Tre favole dell'ombra e dell'ansia, a collection of three tales in which the author makes use of her vivid imaginative talent and of powerful metaphors to synthesize the torment and agony which characterize the writing process, its delving into the individual's psyche and past. In Fanciulla e il gran vecchio the writing of tales and stories metaphorically symbolizes man's eternal search for immortality, a search that penetrates into the most private realms of the subconscious and inevitably causes distress, anxiety and grief. In La principessa Rosalinda, Sanvitale represents the protagonist's gradual detachment from reality and her subsequent descent into a hallucinated and unreal world. Mirroring Giulia's experience, the protagonist of L'uomo del parco, the once happy princess Rosalinda separates herself from her surroundings and undertakes a long journey of self-discovery and self- reconstruction. Travelling toward the self, she experiences the darkness of intricate forests, the cruelty of wild animals but also the revelation of the world's complexity. The encounter with the old weaver emblematizes the purpose and extent of her search, aimed at fusing self- discovery with the representation of the external world on the written page, symbolized in this episode by the extraordinary patterns on the weaver's fabric.

La vecchina fece una carezza. "Cara bambina, le cose che un tempo hanno visto gli uomini sono rimaste nella memoria dei più vecchi e con loro spariranno. Per questo io tesso la tela, perché diventino favole."12

Sanvitale assigns memory a fundamental role in the search for the self. The past needs to be explored, and most importantly, needs to be comprehended and interpreted in the light of the present. To externalize this struggle, this labyrinthine itinerary of revelation, it is necessary for the individual to embrace the calling of the written word, and to brave the battle of the unwritten word. Bambina, the last tale, analyzes the opposition and failing of communication between the sexes. Sanvitale's mythical iconography Simona Wright 272 proposes two children who, by the gods' desire, have been given the gift to remain for ever young. A fatal mistake will, however, preserve childlike senses only in the female protagonist, while the boy will grow to experience the pains and desires of adolescence. The ensuing contrast destroys their perfectly harmonious relationship, as the introduction of lust brings suffering and pain, emotional conditions that Bambina cannot assimilate or admit. Incomprehensions, misunderstandings, and alienation produce an atmosphere of hostility and recrimination that exacerbates the protagonists' existence and will ultimately result in their separation and isolation. By locating the source of the prime misunderstanding between man and woman in a distant and mythical past, Sanvitale substantiates the thesis of an insuperable dilemma posed on the individuals from the dawn of time, an inextricable entanglement that ultimately falsifies and disintegrates any possibility of intimate relation and communication. Sanvitale's latest publication, Separazioni, is a collection of short stories which includes a selection of previously published stories and an additional five new short narratives written in the 1980s. As signalled in the title, the thematic structure of the stories is based on the disconnection, separation, and dissolution hidden behind even the most insignificant encounters and events in the individual's life. The renovation of one's residence in "Una nuova vita," the unexpected promotion of a colleague in "La promozione," the tale of a dinner party and the search for the solution to a riddle in "Il pensionante," the son's experience at summer camp in "La corsa del ragazzo sotto la luna," are all narratives inscribed in this framework. Thus, in "Una nuova vita," the protagonist's plans of house cleaning metamorphose into a sanitizing obsession that uproots all emotional bondings with his marital life and demolishes all signs of the uncherished past embodied in the inherited furniture of the once discreetly elegant family abode. In "La promozione," an extended working relation is suddenly discontinued by the unanticipated promotion of the partner. To the dumbfounded protagonist the leaving partner, for too long humiliated and kept under his dominance, becomes an enemy, a formidable adversary to overthrow and to annihilate. The all too easily acknowledged surface of reality and of human relations is subverted and invalidated, revealed in its vacuous inconsistency. What first appeared in fact as the permanent facade of life, the author perceptively suggests, is but an evanescent mirage, since even the most trivial event can distort it. Francesca Sanvitale 273

One of the climacteric new short stories, splendid for the juxtaposition of several poetic and thematic issues, is undoubtedly "Orient Express." Located at the center of the collection, it is a tale of memory, youth, life, friendship, and loss. The two protagonists meet after several years in a restaurant, the "Orient Express," to exchange old photographs, to talk about their present lives and reminisce about the past. It becomes immediately clear though that a "fact" has contaminated their lives, leaving an emotional scar which cannot be removed. Umberto, the third comrade, the summit of the triadic friendship, has died six months before. Although the existences of the three friends had taken different and apparently non- intertwining paths, this loss constitutes the absolute separation, the chasm opens beween life and death, and as such it urges the living to interrogate each other, to confront the reality of a loss that is chiefly internal. Death did not in fact take away only a friend, it also erased all those images of ourselves that belong to the past and that we can no longer retrieve.

Con un furto imprevisto ci vengono sottratte, insieme alla persona, le immagini del nostro corpo come fu e come nessuno nel presente lo conosce, e una spinta violenta sbalza via dal patrimonio del passato, costringe di forza a capire che cos'è la vecchiaia, in che cosa consiste il suo buio, quale perfido sortilegio sta per accadere; un salto pauroso verso zone considerate remotissime, la terra dei sopravvissuti.13

In the restaurant background a mythical train, the Orient Express, emblematizes the long journey through life, with its mysterious and unknown stations, its exotic tastes and flavors reproduced in the dishes that the protagonists have savored. Life is made of separations, maintains Sanvitale, events that force the individual to delve into his/her reality and to reject its superficial appearance. However, separations do not exclusively mean destruction and dissolution, they may guide the self towards a better understanding of the objective world, of humanity and its tormented history. Sanvitale's literary project, as made evident in this analysis, is focused on the human being and his/her search for self-knowledge and signification. The symbolic representation of this process, however, necessitates, as the author maintains, a new poetic canon. In the investigated novels, this canon emerges from a dynamic and Simona Wright 274 iconographically rich narrative style and from a thematic content which strives to embrace both the complexities and intricate itineraries of the human mind as well as the individual's interdependence with social and historical reality. Never comforting or simplistic, the author's message emphasizes the consequences of a poetic exploration which establishes in the writing process the most intense moment of self- creation and self-liberation. In conclusion, Francesca Sanvitale's impassioned narrative search, her constant efforts to elaborate on the individual's reality and to renovate the novel's tradition with inventive strategies, corroborates the significance of literature and its labyrinthine voyages into the self and the world as a civilization's fundamental means of expression and communication. SIMONA WRIGHT The College of New Jersey, Trenton, New Jersey

BOOKS

Sanvitale, Francesca. Il cuore borghese. Florence: Vallecchi, 1972. . Madre e figlia. Turin: Einaudi, 1980. . L'uomo del parco. Milan: Mondadori, 1984. . La realtà è un dono. Milan: Mondadori, 1987. . Mettendo a fuoco. Rome: Gremese, 1988. . Il diavolo in corpo. Turin: Einaudi, 1989 (translation of Radiguet's Le diable au corps). . Verso Paola. Turin: Einaudi, 1991. . Il figlio dell'impero. Turin: Einaudi, 1993. . Tre favole dell'ansia e dell'ombra. Genoa: Il Melangolo, 1994. . Separazioni. Turin: Einaudi, 1997.

TRANSLATIONS

Sanvitale, Francesca. "Nostalgia per Admont," Nuovi Argomenti (1988), Francesca Sanvitale 275

205-32. . "The Electric Typewriter," in New Italian Women, ed. Martha King (New York: The Quality of Light, 1989), pp. 176-86. . "Jolly e Poker," in Name and Tears, ed. Katherine Jason (Saint Paul, MN: Greywolf Press, 1990), pp. 181-8. . "La bella principessa Rosalinda," in Marvels and Tales, Special issue on "The Italian Tale," ed. Giuseppe C. di Scipio (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 1993), pp. 221-87.

INTERVIEWS

Ajello, Nello. "Sua Maestà? È Κ che gioca," La Repubblica (8 October 1993). di Scipio, Giuseppe. "Ten Questions for Francesca Sanvitale," Italian Journal (Italian Academy Foundation Inc., I-VII) (New York) (1993), 33-6. Glumetta, Sossio. "All'ombra di Napoleone. Il figlio dell'impero di Francesca Sanvitale," Il mattino di Napoli (17 November 1993), 18. Martellini, Giorgio. "La realtà serve per capire," Il Gazzettino (11 July 1984). Montevecchi, Federica. "Le ombre spezzate," Alto Adige (29 November 1994), 14. Rasy, Elisabetta. "Dal Cuore al sesso," Panorama (20 September 1987), 183-5. Sanvitale, Francesca. "Ognuno di noi è pieno di storie da raccontare," Uomini e libri 16 (1980), 36. Wright, Simona. "Intervista a Francesca Sanvitale," Italian Quarterly 127-28 (1996), 87-110.

REFERENCES

Aspesi, Natalia. "Il piccolo imperatore," Elle (December 1993), 169. Augias, Corrado. "Nascita e morte del Re di Roma," Il Venerdì di Repubblica (29 January 1994), 99. Baldacci, Luigi. "Là nel parco c'è un uomo," La Nazione (18 May 1984). . "Introduzione," in Il cuore borghese (Milan: Mondadori, 1986), pp. 5-15. . "L'uomo che non fu mai Napoleone," Il Corriere della sera (1 November 1993), 22. Bielloch, Paola. "Francesca Sanvitale's 'Madre e figlia': From Self-Reflection Simona Wright 276

to Self-Invention," in Contemporary Women Writers in Italy: A Modern Renaissance, ed. Santo L. Aricò (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1990), pp. 122-32. Cecchi, Ottavio. "Storia dei Bonaparte. Alla maniera di Proust," L'Unità (16 January 1994). . "Donne, entrate in questo labirinto," L'Unità (6 January 1984). della Fazia Amoia, Alba. Women on the Italian Literary Scene: A Panorama. New York: Whitston, 1992. di Fazio, Margherita. "Intervento su romanzo," in Narrare: percorsi possibili (Ravenna: Longo, 1989). Giovanardi, Stefano. "Le notti di Giulia," La Repubblica (5 May 1984). Giuffrè, Maria Teresa. "Francesca Sanvitale e il romanzo di idee al femminile," Tempo presente 167 (November 1994), 45-9. Golino, Enzo. "L'uomo del parco," Epoca (8 June 1984), 99-100. Grignani, Maria Antonietta. "Le cartoline della memoria," Corriere del Ticino (24 October 1987). Manacorda, Giuliano. "Francesca Sanvitale," in Letteratura italiana d'oggi, 1965-85 (Milan: Editori Riuniti, 1987). Manica, Raffaele. "Francesca Sanvitale, Storia e verità," Nuovi Argomenti 50 (April-June 1994), 125-7. Mannoni, Francesco. "Il figlio dell'impero," Le Libertà (23 November 1993), 3. Marchetti, Giuseppe. "La spenta giovinezza," La Gazzetta di Parma (30 November 1993), 15. Mauro, Walter. "Raccontando, Aristotele permettendo," Il Mattino (22 September 1987). Paccagnini, Ermanno. "E l'impero generò un perdente," Il Sole 24 ore (9 January 1994). Pampaloni, Geno. "Francesca Sanvitale. Modelli ed esperienze della prosa contemporanea," in Storia della letteratura italiana. Il Novecento, IX- II. (Milan: Garzanti, 1987). . "Introduzione," in Madre e figlia (Milan: Mondadori, 1986), pp. i-v. . "Cosi infelice," Il Giornale (31 October 1993). Parazzoli, Ferruccio. "E cosi il Re di Roma incontra il suo destino," Famiglia Cristiana (17 November 1993), 200. Pardini, Vincenzo. "Il romanzo di Francesca Sanvitale. Da Madre a figlio," La Nazione (15 December 1993). Pecora, Elio. "Fanciullo regale vissuto nel mondo dove non c'è gioia," La Voce repubblicana (13 December 1993), 5. Petrignani, Sandra. "Ritorno al passato," Panorama (17 October 1993), 123-4. Piccioni, Leone. "La favola triste del Re di Roma," Il Tempo (13 January Francesca Sanvitale 277

1994). Porta, Antonio. "Introduzione," in L'uomo del parco (Milan: Mondadori, 1987), pp. v-x. . "E ora, mio cuore, che farai?" Panorama (4 January 1987), 23- 5. . "Una signora della casa accanto," L'Unità (27 January 1988), 15. Siciliano, Enzo. "La rivolta di Francesca," L'Espresso (18 October 1987), 166- 7. . "Francesca Sanvitale," in AA. VV., Racconti italiani del Novecento, ed. (Milano: Mondadori, 1983). . "Il Cuore borghese di Francesca Sanvitale," Il Mondo (16 May 1972), 21. Toscani, Claudio. "Il sorriso della signora," Il Giornale di Bergamo (September 24, 1987). Vigorelli, Giancarlo. "Opera prima su un cuore borghese," Il Tempo (June 11, 1972). Wright, Simona. "Francesca Sanvitale: passato e presente come strumenti narrativi," La Fusta Special Conference Issue (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993/94), 241-9. . "In viaggio Verso Paola tra identità individuale e storia," Italian Quarterly 127-28 (1996), 61-75.

NOTES

1 Simona Wright, "Intervista a Francesca Sanvitale," Italian Quarterly 127-28 (1996), 89. 2 Francesca Sanvitale, Il cuore borghese, op. cit., p. 64. 3 Ibid., L'uomo del parco, op. cit., p. 106. 4 Ibid., p. 215. 5 Wright, "Intervista a Francesca Sanvitale," op. cit., p. 98. 6 Sanvitale, La realtà è un dono, op. cit., p. 210. 7 Ibid., Verso Paola, op. cit., p. 8. 8 Wright, "Intervista a Francesca Sanvitale," op. cit., p. 102. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., p. 103. 11 Ibid. 12 Sanvitale, Tre favole dell' ansia e dell'ombra, op. cit., p. 53. 13 Sanvitale, "Orient Express," in Separazioni, op. cit., p. 181.