Abstract
Reviewed by : Enrico Minardi, Arizona State University, USA
In his book, Alberto Comparini focuses on an epoch of Italian literature often either overlooked or studied following conventional and unoriginal criteria. His critical standpoint (called “geo-critics”) is instead very original and innovative, being at the crossroads of philosophy, literary criticism, and geography. By this, I intend the analysis of an intellectual exchange taking place within a limited space throughout a determined time period. In this case, it is the city of Milan, and the intertwining of poetry and philosophy in the decennial preceding the Second World War and the years afterwards. The intellectual and spatial context is the teaching of Antonio Banfi, and his heritage (in particular, the work of Enzo Paci), at the university of Milan, and its significance in Antonia Pozzi and Vittorio Sereni's poetry. After the “Premessa” (pp. 7–10), the author tackles the theory of geo-literary criticism (“Geo-esistenzialismo letterario. Storia, teoria, prospettive,” pp. 17–96), and introduces his field of study (phenomenology and existentialism in Italy between the end of the 1920s and 1940s, and their relation to literature). He starts outlining the founding principles of the “genealogia letteraria dell'esistenzialismo” (p. 18), as presented in various essays written between 1946 and 1993 (by authors such as Anceschi, Cantoni, Pacifici, Gioanola, Benussi etc.). They have the merit to present existentialism as coextensive with the founding novels of Italian modernism by Svevo, Pirandello, Moravia, and Pavese (pp. 31–33). He afterwards presents the theoretical setting for an “ermeneutica dello spazio” (p. 49). By determining “dove e come la filosofia dell'esistenza è penetrata in Italia, e quando [...]” (p. 45), the author succeeds in identifying four centers of expansion of existentialist philosophy in Italy: the cities of Milan, Florence, Turin and Padua, around the figures prominent in each one (Banfi, Abbagnano, Chiodi, and Stefanini), and foremost through the translation of Husserl and Heidegger's works. Missing such a figure, Florence represents an exception, and Comparini speaks of “esistenzialismo estetico” (p. 52). Showing an exceptional care for detail and completion, he evokes thus the “incontro tra la geografia dell'esistenza e la letteratura del Novecento” (p. 65), as laid out in his brief analysis of the above referenced (pp. 68–75) “romanzi protoesistenzialisti” (p. 81). By largely quoting from Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (pp. 78–82), he closes describing the trajectory of those novels' existentialist characters (p. 81).
In the second chapter, “La ‘scuola Banfi’ fra fenomenologia e esistenzialismo” (pp. 97–119), Comparini focuses on the Milanese intellectual network influencing Pozzi and Sereni, revolving essentially around the teaching and works of philosopher Antonio Banfi, who introduced Edmund Husserl and his phenomenology to Italy. Distancing himself from phenomenology's idealistic horizon, he also welcomed the influence of existentialism, reframing its irrationalism (and the connected concept of crisis) into his “esistenzialismo fenomenologico” (p. 108). Comparini defines Banfi's project as the “pretesa filosofica di ricongiungere l’essenziale e l’esistenziale” (p. 109), which, quoting Paci, translates into the attention to the “modo con il quale io ho esperienza della realtà” (p. 111). His attention for life's diverse and concrete manifestations clearly foresees the development of phenomenology into what the author calls “fenomenologia ermeneutica dell’esserci” (p. 117). It is, then, not surprising to find out that for Banfi (and Paci as well), language, and above all poetic language (p. 115), ensures the mediation between essence and being, as for Heidegger. In the third chapter, “Antonia Pozzi e la poesia dell’esperienza” (pp. 121–156), the author analyzes the only collection completed by Antonia Pozzi (Parole, 1939), and published only after her suicide in 1938. He draws a parallel between the evolution of Pozzi's poetry and Heideggerian philosophy, from his early embrace of the phenomenology to his late elaboration of a philosophy of the being, or in other words, “un allargamento della visione del mondo e quindi della comprensione dell’essere a partire da se stesso e non dall’ente” (p. 155). To understand this change, it is essential to put at the center, as for the German philosopher, the progressive awareness of the role of death as a guarantee of authenticity: in fact, “la morte è condizione del linguaggio e foriera di autenticità” (p. 150). By analyzing in detail each poem from the collection (in the form of a diary), Comparini reconstructs the stages of the poet's elaboration culminating in the last poems (Approdo, L'ava, and I morti), which translate the poet's “impossibilità di trasformare la morte sincronica in presenza” (p. 155), thus preventing her from “poter-essere, in particolare con-gli-altri” (p. 155).
In the fourth and longest chapter, “La poesia di Vittorio Sereni tra fenomenologia, esistenzialismo, relazionismo e nichilismo” (pp. 157–344), the author analyzes in depth each of Sereni's collections. For Frontiera (1941), Comparini conceptualizes the frontiera as something “permeabile e direzionale, dunque osmotica” (p. 167), allowing the poet to look mutually at both the phenomenological world and the internal I. As for Pozzi, the relation to the dead is of primary importance, providing the being with the fundaments of its historical existence (pp. 198–199). In this respect, the author examines various poems such as Inverno a Luino, La strada di Zenna and the Versi a Proserpina (added in the collection's 1956 second edition). In the section on Diario d’Algeria (1947), the poet's philosophical reference shifts toward Jaspers’ concept of “situazione-limite (Grenzsituation)” (p. 222). For Sereni, it expresses the subject's possibility of transcending the present immanent limit to a higher degree of authenticity and freedom (p. 223). Again, death (pp. 243–244) seems to define conveniently the prisoner's ontological impasse, suspended as he is outside of history in a situation described as “naufragio dell’essere” (p. 238) and “purgatoriale” (p. 243). Evoking this condition, he concludes the chapter with an in-depth reading of the two iconic texts Non sanno di essere morti (pp. 238–239) and Il mal d’Africa (pp. 251–252). Enzo Paci's relationist dialectics (pp. 257–260) is the conceptual frame for Strumenti umani (1965). His continuous dialogue with the dead, in a “condizione onirica” (p. 276), in fact helps the poet to overcome the impasse experienced in his condition as a survivor of imprisonment. Paci's reading of Heidegger (pp. 293–294) plays a central role in this instance, leading the poet to question the subject's historical responsibility (in a poem such as Nel sonno, p. 281) and to set a “prospettiva etica e plurale” (p. 295), as crucially exemplified by Intervista a un suicida (pp. 296–297, and passim). Comparini evokes here the name of German poet Paul Celan (pp. 305–307), highlighting the presence, in the poem, of religious semantic allusions (p. 312). Ultimately, through the relation to the dead, the poet can question the nothing, as the condition for the existence of the being (p. 313). Sereni's last collection, Stella variabile (1981), marks the embrace of nihilism (p. 320), and the abandonment of any “risoluzione dialettica e di superamento del vuoto” (p. 329). His purposely fragmentary collection reflects in fact the “fallimento della Storia” (p. 320) and the “notte semiotica del mondo” (p. 331), where reality seems to acquire ambiguous meanings. The poem Posto di vacanza holds a strategic place (p. 331 and passim), sketching an all-embracing “orizzonte nullificante” (p. 336). However, concludes Comparini, nihilism has now become the only philosophical horizon possible, being the right perspective needed for the re-apparition of the being (p. 343).
The exceptional endeavor carried out by Comparini in his patient and scrupulous reconstruction of the articulation of philosophical concepts and poetic achievements deserves to be fully acknowledged. With his book, he has successfully renewed the methodological and critical approach to literary studies, and has dramatically deepened our knowledge of two of the most relevant Italian poets of the 20th century.