Image and Insight: Tabucchi and the Visual Arts
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MICHELA MESCHINI IMAGE AND INSIGHT: TABUCCHI AND THE VISUAL ARTS UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON PhD 2003 ProQuest Number: U643874 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U643874 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT Within the domain of the parallel studies of literature and the visual arts, the fiction of Antonio Tabucchi decidedly represents a crucial area of investigation. References and allusions to painters and paintings, cinematic quotations and photographic passages constitute an integral part of the author’s writing, giving shape to a narrative world that is deeply affected and permeated by the visual. By focusing on relevant works, this thesis analyses the role of the visual arts in the fiction of Tabucchi. It examines the ways in which painting, photography and cinema inspire the imagery of the author, informing the themes and structures of his novels and short stories. In the process of doing so, it also investigates the issue of visuality, showing how the relation between text and image constitutes a central impulse to Tabucchi’s literary project. For the author, literature and visual art are not mutually exclusive, but shed light on one another. They are neither rivals nor sisters, but are linked by a relation of complicity, through which word and image, the verbal and the visual combine to make sense in a play of dialectical tension. Given the interdisciplinary scope, this study draws both on literary criticism and art theory. Its principal objective is to develop a thematic profile of Tabucchi’s work, offering critical insight into one of the most prominent contemporary Italian writers, one whose fiction has not yet been the object of a comprehensive study. From the privileged perspective of the visual, it proposes a thorough interpretation of Tabucchi’s poetics, as originating from the interplay between text and image, while also attempting to position his work within the contemporary debate on postmodernism. TABLE OF CONTENTS List o f Illustrations iv Abbreviations o f Titles v Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 1. Chapter One: Visuality and Narration 1.1 Writing through Images 6 1.2 “Microprospettive” and “morceaux choisis” 11 1.3 “Il filo deii’orizzonte” 19 2. Chapter Two: Painting 2.1 Ktvixiimg Las Meninas 28 2.2 Quoting Pictures 41 2.3 The Iconic/Ironic Muse 49 2.4 Vision and Blindness 56 2.5 The “Iconic Temptation” of Writing 61 3. Chapter Three: Photography 3.1 Photography and the Pathos of Time Past 77 3.2 Photographic Memories 79 3.3 Photography, Time and Identity 82 3.4 Photography, Mourning and Nostalgia 93 4. Chapter Four: Cinema 4.1 A Passion for Films 103 4.2 Recollecting Images 108 4.3 The Unreal Reality of the Cinema 115 4.4 The Dream Screen 120 4.5 ‘Cinema’ 131 Conclusion 138 Bibl iography 143 111 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1. Diego Velasquez, Las Meninas, 1656, Madrid, Museo del Prado p. 33 Figure 2. Andrea Mantegna,The Dead Christ, c.1490, Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera p. 47 Figure 3. Andrea Mantegna,The Death o f the Virgin, 1461, Madrid, Museo del Prado p. 47 Figure 4. Paolo Uccello, The Battle o f San Romano, c. 1450, London, National Gallery p. 55 Figure 5. Vincent Van Gogh,The Langlois Bridge, 1888, Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum p. 59 Figure 6. Hieronymus Bosch, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1505-06, Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga p. 62 Figure 7. Bosch, detail from The Temptation o f Saint Anthony p. 64 IV ABBREVIATIONS OF TITLES OR H gioco del rovescio DPP Donna di Porto Pim e altre storie N I Notturno indiano PE Piccoli equivoci senza importanza FO II filo dell ’orizzonte VBA I volatili del Beato Angelico AN L 'angelo nero Requiem Requiem: Un 'allucinazione SP Sostiene Pereira UGFP Gli ultimi tre giorni di Fernando Pessoa DM La testa perduta di Damasceno Monteiro Sempre piii tardi Si sta facendo sempre più tardi For full bibliographical information, seeBIBLIOGRAPHY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A number of people made it possible for me to carry out my doctoral work, and I would like to express my gratitude to them. I am very much indebted to my supervisor, Prof. Laura Lepschy, for her invaluable advice and scrupulous assistance throughout the various stages of my research, and to Dr. Emmanuela Tandello for her constant support and encouragement. My gratitude is also for all the people in the Department of Italian at University College London and at the University of Macerata. Finally I wish to thank my family and friends, who have all witnessed the development of my work and have coped with my frequent “doctoral crisis”. Among them special thanks go to my affectionate parents and to my friend Philip, reluctant reader of my work and by now an expert on Tabucchi. The completion of this thesis is a relief both for me and for them. VI INTRODUCTION The idea for this study sprang primarily from a personal interest in the fiction of Antonio Tabucchi. My first encounter with Tabucchi's prose dates back to the preparation of my BA dissertation. While working at it, I had the occasion to analyse some works of fiction by the Tuscan writer and I was struck by the thematic density and richness of his writing. In particular, I was puzzled and intrigued by the frequent allusions to the world of painting, which I sensed were important but I could not quite easily grasp. At the time I thought that I would have liked to explore the role of painting in Tabucchi’s work, because I surmised it could offer me a privileged perspective from which to interpret and understand the writer’s literary enterprise. Luckily, the occasion to do so was offered to me by this doctoral research, in the course of which my original focus on painting widened to include other forms of visual arts that are equally relevant in Tabucchi’s texts, such as cinema and photography. As a result, my long-term fascination with Tabucchi’s writing and my amateurish passion for the visual arts jointly converge in this study, accounting both for its flaws and strong points. Recognized as one of the most significant contemporary Italian writers, Tabucchi was bom in Pisa in 1943 and is Professor of Portuguese Literature at the University of Siena. He is the author of numerous novels and short stories that for their formal and thematic qualities have attracted the attention of literary critics, in Italy and abroad. In 1994 his novel,Sostiene Pereira, became a bestseller, granting him mass popularity. This fame has been a controversial matter of discussion in the Italian literary circle, where the persisting separation between elite culture and mass culture, leads many critics to see in the market success of a book the proof of its lacking literary value or at least of a shrewd authorial compromise between artistic goals and the logic of the market. Nevertheless, before achieving widespread fame, Tabucchi was already an established writer and intellectual. During the Eighties his fiction had gained the attention of major critics and scholars, while his translations from the Portuguese of the works of Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) had initiated the Italian readers to the poetry of one of the most complex and extraordinary literary figure of the twentieth century. Centred almost exclusively on Pessoa, Tabucchi’s activity as editor and translator comprises the following works: Una sola moltitudine, II lihro delVinquietudine- both published in collaboration with Maria José de Lancastre -It marinaio, Lettere alia fidanzata and 7/ poeta è un fingitore. These editions of Pessoa’s works were followed by a collection of essays, entitledUn baule plena di gente (1990)/ In these essays Tabucchi comments on the themes and values characterizing the fictional world of the Portuguese poet, to whom he is deeply indebted for his conception of life as fiction, as well as for his pluralistic and heteronymic vision of the self. Conceived of as a literaryalter ego, Pessoa is a constant presence in the fiction of Tabucchi. The life and poetry of the Portuguese poet constitute an endless source of inspiration and reflection for the Tuscan writer, who constantly represents and recreates, through his writing, the image, or rather the multiple images of his literary father. Tabucchi’s narratives have also caught the attention of postmodern critics that devoted to them a considerable amount of studies. They discovered in the fiction of Tabucchi the postmodern cohabitation of seemingly opposite elements, such as realism and unrealism, engaged literature and pure literature, highbrow and lowbrow elements, formalism and ‘contentism’. In combining together these different elements, Tabucchi seems to positively answer the postmodern literary dilemma of whether “it is possible to have a non-comforting, rather problematic novel that at the same time is pleasurable”.^ Despite the author’s reluctance to accept the tag of a postmodern writer, it is undeniable that, in many of its expressive and semantic values, his fiction appears to ideally fit into the requirements of a postmodern literary code. The concern for themes relating to the ambiguous perception of time and history, the investigation of the multiplicity of the self, the conception of life as intimately tied to fiction, are all constitutive elements of his 'See Fernando Pessoa: Una sola moltitudine, ed.