Uncanny Resemblances: Doubles and Doubling in Tarchetti, Capuana, and De Marchi by Christina A. Petraglia A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Italian) At the University of Wisconsin-Madison 2012 Date of oral examination: December 12, 2012 Oral examination committee: Professor Stefania Buccini, Italian Professor Ernesto Livorni (advisor), Italian Professor Grazia Menechella, Italian Professor Mario Ortiz-Robles, English Professor Patrick Rumble, Italian i Table of Contents Introduction – The (Super)natural Double in the Fantastic Fin de Siècle…………………….1 Chapter 1 – Fantastic Phantoms and Gothic Guys: Super-natural Doubles in Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s Racconti fantastici e Fosca………………………………………………………35 Chapter 2 – Oneiric Others and Pathological (Dis)pleasures: Luigi Capuana’s Clinical Doubles in “Un caso di sonnambulismo,” “Il sogno di un musicista,” and Profumo……………………………………………………………………………………..117 Chapter 3 – “There’s someone in my head and it’s not me:” The Double Inside-out in Emilio De Marchi’s Early Novels…………………..……………………………………………...222 Conclusion – Three’s a Fantastic Crowd……………………...……………………………322 1 The (Super)natural Double in the Fantastic Fin de Siècle: The disintegration of the subject is most often underlined as a predominant trope in Italian literature of the Twentieth Century; the so-called “crisi del Novecento” surfaces in anthologies and literary histories in reference to writers such as Pascoli, D’Annunzio, Pirandello, and Svevo.1 The divided or multifarious identity stretches across the Twentieth Century from Luigi Pirandello’s unforgettable Mattia Pascal / Adriano Meis, to Ignazio Silone’s Pietro Spina / Paolo Spada, to Italo Calvino’s il visconte dimezzato; however, its precursor may be found decades before in such diverse representations of subject fissure and fusion as embodied in Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s Giorgio, Luigi Capuana’s detective Van-Spengel, and Emilio De Marchi’s Marcello Marcelli. Though these Nineteenth-century authors enjoyed success among their contemporaries and the bourgeois or mass reading public, they have been, or remain, relatively marginalized by the Twenty-first-century Italian literary canon. Iginio Ugo Tarchetti (1839 – 1869) is of course remembered as a model of the anti-military, anti-bourgeois, and anti- Manzonian Scapigliatura, but the anti-conformist movement itself often falls by the wayside between the other predominant literary currents of the turn-of-the-century, such as versimo and decadentismo. Emilio De Marchi (1851 – 1901) also exists outside of the literary mainstream; as a proponent and eventual reformer of the Italian romanzo d’appendice, he operated within the Milanese journalistic market directed towards a mass readership. He escapes classification as a verista, decadentista, or even as a scapigliato, although attributes of each exist in his works and he remains the most marginal author among our threesome. Luigi Capuana (1839 – 1915) 1 Both Pascoli and D’Annunzio straddled the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, yet they are frequently considered part of the latter or at least as Guglielmino categorizes them, part of the “il retroterra ottocentesco” (17). He does include them however, as fundamental authors in his anthology Guida al Novecento, offering merely one instance of their ubiquity in both centuries. Pirandello and Svevo are also two more examples of writers existing in both centuries, but being most closely associated with the Twentieth for their thematics of fragmented identities. 2 usually receives attention as the father of verismo, and for his inaugural novel Giacinta, though he frequently becomes overshadowed in literary studies by his peer Giovanni Verga, and his admirer Luigi Pirandello.2 In fact, when one thinks of dualistic or multiple identities as symptoms of neurosis, Pirandello immediately comes to mind; however, he is by no means the first fin de siècle author to tackle the mutually inclusive tropes of the Doppelgänger, neurosis, and the unconscious in his works, as the treatment of Tarchettian, Capuanian, and De Marchian narrative will demonstrate in the present study.3 The marginalization of these three writers in today’s canon recalls their periphery positions in Italian society of the late Nineteenth Century. Tarchetti’s anti-militarism and anti-bourgeois ideologies, as well as his gothic tendencies (and eventual untimely death from chronic illness) situated him against the status quo. He remains an emblem of the Scapigliatura and many critical contributions, especially those by David Del Principe and Elio Gioanola, highlight the psychoanalytical and Marxist implications in the author; however, Tarchetti’s few, yet rich narratives, especially those of the Racconti fantastici, are by no means exhausted. Often compared to Poe for the fantastic-uncanny, or because of the marvelous elements of his texts, his alignment with the motif of the Doppelgänger does not receive the deserved critical attention. The first chapter of this study entitled “Fantastic Phantoms and Gothic Guys: Super-natural Doubles in Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s Racconti fantstici and Fosca” discusses the variegated double in three novelle of his fantastic collection: “I fatali,” 2 Capuana is often condisered a precursor of, and an influence on, Pirandello. Ghidetti cites Capuana’s Profumo as “un preludio misconosciuto quanto ineludibile agli ormai prossimi libri di Svevo e Pirandello” (L’ipotesi 185). In his discussion of Il marchese di Roccaverdina, Sipala charaterizes Capuana’s novel as “la liberazione del romanzo dai condizionamenti del naturalismo e sembra convergere nella direzione verso cui lo stesso Pirandello tendeva in quegli anni agli inizi del Novecento” (Sipala 48). In his review of Il marchese di Roccaverdina, published in Natura e arte in 1901, Pirandello himself praises his fellow Sicilian author. 3 As Edwige Fusaro rightly observes, “lasciando da parte l’esperienza specifica della Scapigliatura, se Pirandello è l’iniziatore della nuova concezione dell’inconscio e delle nevrosi, Capuana è decisamente il suo profeta” (La nevrosi 358). Fusaro’s inclusion of the Scapigliatura implies the movement’s strong connection to (and depiction of) neuroses and its treatment of the unconscious, while her affirmation of Capuana as a prophet that anticipates the more well-known Pirandello emphasizes the frequently forgotten contributions of minor fin de siècle narratives. 3 “Le leggende del castello nero,” and “Uno spirito in un lampone.” In Fosca, the narrator- protagonist Giorgio struggles between his naturally diseased, dark, and melancholy nature as embodied in Fosca who exists as an external representation of his internal fatality, and his ideal love Chiara, whose light in the end reveals itself as merely bourgeois and ephemeral. Giorgio’s two lovers both personify opposite sides of his own fragmented identity: Chiara exists as that ideal of health, ethereal love, youth, and normality that he would like to be, while Fosca eventually emerges as a mirror image of the self he attempts to repress, a representation of his own shadow – obsessive, fatally passionate, and pathological. Similar to the macabre setting of Fosca, whose femme fatale elicits that uncanny dread discussed by Freud, “I fatali,” “Le leggende del castello nero,” and “Uno spirito in un lampone” all relate similarly gothic, though more fantastic tales in their variegated portrayals of the Doppelgänger motif. The plural title, “I fatali,” already foreshadows a certain multiplicity that will emerge in the mysterious figures of the two “fatal men” as the elder willingly inflicts massive destruction, and the younger unwillingly produces lethal effects on those around them. “Le leggende del castello nero” and “Uno spirito in un lampone” present diversified manifestations of metempsychosis, the former epically tragic and the latter fantastically comic, though each psychologically charged and supernaturally inquisitive. While Tarchetti came from the Northern province of San Salvatore Monferrato, Capuana’s Sicilian origins (despite his intermittent sojourns in Florence, Milan and Rome) linked him to the other veristi, yet circumscribed him with the fallout of the questione meridionale. The Minean native, a staunch admirer and unrealized scholar of Tarchetti, receives limited critical attention today beyond his first novel Giacinta and his masterpiece Il marchese di 4 Roccaverdina.4 Capuanian criticism flourished in the 1960s and before, thanks to the fundamental works of Madrignani and Di Blasi, who among other scholars, often seek to situate him within naturalist or idealist discourse, or somewhere in between. Though articles still appear on Capuana’s most well-known novels and credence has been given to his eclecticism, or his self-proclaimed ‘“eghelianismo [sic] ritemprato con gli studi delle scienze naturali moderne’” (Valerio 98), there still remains much room for further study of verismo’s so-called progenitor, his fantastic short stories and novels, in correlation with his parapsychological and critical treatises.5 The second chapter, entitled “Oneiric Others and Patological (Dis)pleasures: Luigi Capuana’s Clinical Doubles in ‘Un caso di sonnambulismo,’ ‘Il sogno di un musicista,’ and Profumo,” focuses on the emergence of the double in parapsychological cases, through alternate forms of consciousness in trance states and dreams in the respective novelle “Un caso di sonnambulismo” and “Il sogno di un musicista.” The first short story depicts