Detecting falsehoods: History and mafia in the work of Leonardo Sciascia and Sebastiano Vassalli

Introduction

The literary encounter between Leonardo Sciascia (1921–1989) and Sebastiano Vassalli (1941–2015) unearths many of the complicated dynamics at play in the moral business of narrating truths about the past and its relationship with contemporary society. Their point of conflict reveals tensions surrounding contested notions of narrative authority as it relates to identity, the moral rights of authors to narrate their own or other regions, and the prickly question of truth as an ontologically valid notion. The different approaches of the two writers, their similar but distinct philosophies and ethical centers as well as larger questions of national identity and history are contained in their accounts of the Seicento, the Sicilian mafia, and in the polemic that surrounded Vassalli's publication of Il cigno (1993), his novel about the mafia.

Using the mechanisms of detective or crime fiction, both authors contemplate the Deleuzean idea of excessive falsehood as the primary motivator for both narrative and social systems, rather than the rather improbable search for truth. Additionally, Vassalli mobilized this notion to write against Sciascia. In interviews and newspaper articles, he accused Sciascia of being an improper detective/intellectual by trafficking in falsehood and by obscuring realities about his environment. These statements elicited a controversy that revolved around the fraught positionality in the context of Italian regional identities and the debate about who can be judged to inhabit the correct identity to write about Sicily. The qualities and methods of crime fiction therefore serve to expose and address a literary, cultural, and regional conflict. On a more specific level, crime fiction writing promotes a certain legitimacy and importance with regard to narratorial identity as the writer who acts as detective can be seen to reveal the truth of a society. Vassalli finds an advantage in identifying Sciascia as a flawed detective so as to have a foil for his own writing and a subject against whom to justify his own narration of Sicily, but also more broadly Italy and its regions.

In his discussion of the série noire in ‘The Philosophy of Crime Novels, Deleuze observes that the classic detective novel centered on a ‘genius detective’ in search of the truth and this quality made the genre fundamentally philosophical because it related purely to the workings of the mind (Deleuze, 2004: 81). The two schools of truth were based on deduction, which derives from the detective's intuition (French school), and induction on the basis of external clues (English school). In many ways, the Italian detective novel has often subverted the model of the genius detective and the English school's precise search for the truth by incorporating the background of national dysfunction and disruption (Tani, 1984: 52). As Alberto Moravia commented, Sciascia's detectives cannot undertake a rational pursuit of truth in a Sicilian context (Moravia, 1998: 39). The Italian interpretation of detective or crime fiction has consistently emphasized the defective political, social, and cultural systems that reflect contemporary reality and ultimately thwart the detective (Crovi, 2020: 100; Wren-Owens, 2006: 690).

With the série noire, Deleuze argues that truth is no longer the focus of the detective's endeavors or of the text and, indeed, ‘From a literary point of view, La Serie Noire made the power of falsehood the primary detective element’ such that this approach ‘allows a society, at the limits of cynicism, to hide what it wants to hide, reveal what it wants to reveal, deny all evidence, and champion the improbable’ (Deleuze, 2004: 83). This characterization of the série noire captures much of Vassalli and Sciascia's intentions in their representations of ‘a society in its entirety at the heights of its power of falsehood’ (Deleuze, 2004: 83, emphasis in original). It is exactly through the notion of hiding that Vassalli and Sciascia direct their despair at the societies they are narrating which situate falsehood as an aspiration and in which the improbable – for example, witchcraft – becomes doctrine. The deliberate concealment of the truth was immediately evident to both writers in the contemporary world, particularly in the close relationship of organized crime with politics. Uncovering abuses of power directed at the silencing of voices and histories is also a feature of the authors’ historical novels, where they confront Manzoni as the preeminent rational detective countering the forces of disorder and infamy through divine justice. Ultimately, Vassalli accused Sciascia of knowingly hiding facts about Sicilian life in his writing and thereby expanding the cynicism of a society constructed on, and promoting, an all-encompassing falsehood.

Points of contact

The clearest intersection between the two authors’ work is in two historical novels, Sciascia's La strega e il capitano (1986) and Vassalli's La chimera (1990). Their similar interest in a topic also appears in their books about the mafia particularly Il giorno della civetta (1972), among many of Sciascia's novels on the subject, and Vassalli's Il cigno (1993). In these novels, the authors’ examinations of past injustices and of the mafia's oppressive control of society reveal a shared interest in social and political commentary as well as a strong moral impetus. This engagement with social ills materialized in the wider Italian context of a resurgence of political and ideological participation in civic discourse by writers that took place between the late 1960s and the early 1980s (Burns, 2006: 81; Pischedda, 2011: 9). The proliferation of crime writing since the 1990s also derives from this genre's qualities of social engagement and criticism (Past, 2012: 6; Somigli, 2005). Crime fiction is particularly suited to social engagement since it occupies a moral space, providing a source of ethical knowledge as well as possessing a politically and socially subversive function (Haliburton, 2018: xiv). Importantly, Haliburton suggests that the settings of detective fiction generate metaphorical meanings and are important to moral life (Haliburton, 2018: xv); an observation that has resonance for Vassalli and Sciascia's representations of Sicily as the settings for their detective novels. Pasolini referred to the civic quality of Sciascia's moralism which is also pragmatic in that his role as detective – or witness and judge – is legal in nature (Pasolini, 1998: 18). The ability of genre to support an author's ethical purpose is therefore contained in Sciascia's innovation of the romanzo-inchiesta, a ‘moral treatise, a parable, or even a conte philosophique with social or political implications which transcended the individual case’ (Farrell, 2007: 1024), a view also shared by Joann Cannon (2006: 3). At the same time, the moral character of Sciascia's writing possesses a self-reflective element which enhances the creativity and interpretative role of the author (Castagnino, 2014: 16). This reflection of the text's ethical purpose back onto the figure of the author is certainly also the case for Vassalli and the substantially defined moral position of both authors provides the locus for their polemic.

An attested literary encounter between the two writers occurred when Vassalli edited the edition of Il giorno della civetta (1972) for middle schools as well as an edition of La scomparsa di Majorana (1981). Vassalli claims that he undertook this editorial work simply to earn money, rather than in response to a particular affection he had for the texts (Tani, 2001: 74). The other books he edited and annotated, however, also have a focus on social justice, the lives of the disadvantaged, and the importance of exposing oppression; they include Danilo Dolci's Racconti siciliani, Antonio Gramsci's Lettere dal carcere, Malcolm X's Autobiografia, and Nuto Revelli's Guerra dei poveri (Dolci, 1973; Gramsci, 1977; Malcolm X, 1975; Revelli, 1962). In the context of his other editorial work, which resonated with many of the social and political issues he espoused, it seems unlikely that he would have accepted to edit Sciascia's novels purely on the basis of financial need; rather he would have chosen to do so from an interest in his work.

Sciascia and Vassalli had a cordial working relationship, a fact that emerges from excerpts of the correspondence between the two writers and with the editors at Einaudi (La Mendola, 2011: 191–205). Vassalli accepted the assignment of providing the notes for Il giorno della civetta after initial cuts had been made to the text and approved by Sciascia. The finished version of the scholastic edition was endorsed by Sciascia, and there is no record of any disagreement over La scomparsa di Majorana. It was not until 1995, following the outcry over Vassalli's publication of Il cigno, that he began to be criticized for censoring Sciascia's texts (La Mendola, 2011: 200). Their early literary contact, however, reveals Vassalli as a student and careful reader of Sciascia. Not only was there no animosity between the two authors, but Vassalli adopted a tone of deference, referring to Sciascia as ‘l’onorevole’. The presence of Sciascia as a literary model for Vassalli's work certainly endured throughout his career, yet it took on a more complicated dimension as Vassalli later began to define himself in contrast to the Sicilian author.

Historical falsehoods

Sciascia turned to the historical genre for Il consiglio d’Egitto (1963), Morte dell’inquisitore (1964) and La strega e il capitano (1986) as an investigative mechanism despite his pessimistic view that the truth might be impossible to locate (Farrell, 2011: 64; Wren-Owens, 2007: 229). Many Sciascian qualities—particularly documentary research and moral commentary—also appear in Vassalli's writing, and they come to define his interpretation of the historical novel. Vassalli was more invested in this genre and developed it to a greater extent, with a large proportion of his writing after the early 1980s appearing as historical fiction. Indeed, Vassalli often frames his novels as an investigation, or uncovering, of a hidden episode which requires archival research or reliance on other documentary evidence. This paradigm is evident in his early works, including La notte della cometa (1984), his account of Dino Campana's life, and L’alcova elettrica (1986), the story of the trial concerning the Futurist journal Lacerba. As well as relying heavily on documentary evidence from the past, Vassalli follows the Sciascian model of guiding the reader to a moral conclusion concerning the events narrated.

Vassalli and Sciascia both approach the historical novel through a condemnation of the frequent distortions of the historical record. Sciascia questions the reliability of history in Il consiglio d’Egitto, when the protagonist Vella justifies his creation of a fraudulent manuscript by arguing that official history is equally false (Sciascia, 1963: 59). Vella's choice to confront history's lies with a falsity of his own demonstrates both the shortcomings of official histories and the power of literary imagination (Onofri, 1994: 82–83). The minor voices, events, and emotions do not register in traditional historical accounts, which fail to record these lesser narratives. Sciascia asserts that history is essentially flawed because it is beset with omissions and cannot register all the crucial facts. Vassalli similarly refutes the idea of revelation of truth through history since the loudest voices and most powerful narratives will always prevail (Zuccari, 2003). Indeed, a literary interpretation of the past motivated by a quest for justice can provide an antidote to history's lies and have superior ethical value (Sciascia, 1979: 82). This view is in part why his writing ‘overlaps the line between fact and fiction’ (Buckler, 2014: 10), following the Borgesian model of investigation that favors the imagination (Bo, 1998: 30). A principal aim of Vassalli's historical novels is similarly to combat an obfuscation of the truth present in official records (Barański, 1993: 254). He echoes Sciascia's analysis of the advantages of fiction when determining the veracity of historical events (Di Stefano, 1993a). With this collective determination to uncover the truth, or the ‘truth value’ of historical accounts laced with fiction (Francese, 2012: 384), coupled with an evident distrust of established or institutional accounts, Sciascia and Vassalli independently chose the 17^th century for their historical narratives.

Vassalli recounts how he and Sciascia almost overlapped directly in their subject matter as they researched the 17^th century. Both writers came across a 19^th-century historical novel, Caterina Medici di Brono. Novella storica del diciassettesimo secolo (1841) by Achille Mauri, which relates the 1617 trial of a forty-year-old woman accused of witchcraft in Milan (Mauri, 2022). Vassalli decided not to write a novel based on this text because of the prospect of coming into collision with Manzoni since the material was too close to that of I promessi sposi and included many of the same characters (Tani, 2001: 79). In La strega e il capitano, however, Sciascia wrote his own account of the trial narrated by Mauri. Vassalli comments with reference to La chimera: ‘… quando uscirono, a poca distanza l’uno dall’altro, il mio romanzo e quello di Sciascia, mi feci una risata, perché avevamo rischiato veramente di scrivere lo stesso libro’ (Tani, 2001: 79). Although Vassalli did not base a novel directly on Caterina Medici di Brono, he was inspired by this text for the most successful of his novels, La chimera (1990) (Cicala and Tesio, 2003: 55–56). La chimera tells the story of the life and untimely death of Antonia, an orphan who is abandoned outside a convent in Novara in 1590, then taken by a childless peasant couple to live in Zardino, a small village in the pianura, only to be accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake.

La strega e il capitano presents a pared-down account of the trial of Caterina Medici that is limited to facts and documents, with few narratorial observations as a form of ‘honest literary expression’ (Pezzotti, 2014: 91). In contrast, in La chimera, Vassalli aims to provide a panorama of the period and geographic region. The two stories the authors produce are chronologically contiguous to I promessi sposi and refer to Manzoni in a more or less overt manner, although Vassalli claims to have avoided such references as much as possible (Tani, 2001: 80). ¹ Despite Vassalli's professed attempts to minimize these references, the great Manzonian novel forms a clear subtext to La chimera, through which Vassalli creates a parallel account that contests many of Manzoni's fundamental narrative and ideological tenets. While Sciascia also seeks to question some Manzonian claims (Glynn, 2005: 94) in La strega e il capitano, he conducts an overt dialogue with Manzoni. He draws attention to the characters in La strega e il capitano who appeared in I promessi sposi, for example Ludovico Melzi, the son of the Capitano who is alleged to have suffered as a result of Caterina's spells (Sciascia, 1986: 12). He further includes direct quotes from Manzoni's novel, particularly from Chapter 31, which refers to the case of the witch trial and was the inspiration for Sciascia's account, written on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Manzoni's birth. Through these references Sciascia makes known his intention to expose areas of history that Manzoni omitted, intentionally or otherwise, from his presentation of the 17th century.

Both Sciascia and Vassalli thus acknowledge the Manzonian model – both were deeply indebted to Manzoni and considered him their most significant literary forbear (Tulante, 2020: 156; Vettore, 2014: 368) – but depart substantially from it, adding their own analysis of Manzoni's Seicento and elaborating themes introduced in I promessi sposi. They tell the story that Manzoni neglected about the witch trials that were a defining feature of the period, together with the exploitation, superstition, and injustice that they reveal. Unlike Manzoni, they present a view of history that does not follow a sense of divine order or justice, or a Manzonian Provvidenza: their narratives focus on the victims of history, who suffer because they are weak or marginalized and whose stories do not form part of the official historical record. Vassalli illustrates this point in La chimera through the figure of Rosalina, an older orphan in the Pia Casa who comments on the fate of Antonia and her companions: ‘… la sola cosa che vi aiuterà ad affrontare il mondo è quell’affare che avete tra le gambe. Lí c’è la Provvidenza, quella vera, l’unica che ci viene in aiuto anche quando il mondo intero ci è contro!’ (Vassalli, 1990: 34). Neither Sciascia nor Vassalli entertain the possibility of divine intervention or redemption, preferring a realism achieved through narrative as a means to discover and disclose abuses of power that are, in many cases, recreated in contemporary Italy as narrated through their other texts.

In his concluding note to La strega e il capitano, Sciascia explains that this account results from documents, akin to the Manzonian anonimo, that people have sent him ‘che dicono di fatti in cui l’ingiustizia, l’intolleranza, il fanatismo (e la menzogna di cui queste cose si coprono) hanno parte evidente o, quel che è peggio, nascosta’ (Sciascia, 1986: 87). His narrative aim is therefore dual: to bring to light the facts of a historical episode and to combat falsehoods. In this case, he works to uncover a mundane fact that led to the trial and death of Caterina Medici, a maid in the service of Ludovico Melzi. The case rested mostly on evidence from Caterina's supposed former employer, who claimed to have been bewitched by his maid, yet Sciascia reveals that there are two different women named Caterina and that this is a case of mistaken identity. His narrative fully expresses his indignation at the cruelty and blind injustice of the chain of events which he defines ‘fosco grappolo di atroce sofferenza, di feroce stupidità’ (Sciascia, 1986: 12).

Sciascia is sarcastic in his commentary on the Spanish and Milanese governments’ efforts to eradicate witchcraft ‘che per diffusione ed effetti bisogna ammettere che doveva essere piuttosto preoccupante’ (Sciascia, 1986: 24). The events of the 17th century, however, are not unique: ‘Terrificante è sempre stata l’amministrazione della giustizia, e dovunque. Specialmente quando fedi, credenze, superstizioni, ragion di Stato o ragion di fazione la dominano o vi si insinuano’ (Sciascia, 1986: 26). Despite the specific nature of the accusations against Caterina and her trial, it is evident that this episode could stand for many examples of injustice throughout history. Sciascia emphasizes the processes through which false narratives are transformed into accepted histories. The Inquisition adopted a range of practices that inexorably resulted in the creation of faulty evidence, including a general disregard of facts that contradicted the predetermined outcome of the trial, reliance on the testimony of interested parties, and the use of the accused's confession which had been extracted under torture. He notes the failure of the authorities to protect weaker members of society, for example when priests confirm popular superstitions like the existence of witchcraft, legitimizing these beliefs and resulting in a ‘pubblica follia’ (Sciascia, 1986: 68). Perversely, even the victim is caught up in the imaginary narrative: ‘in fatto di stregoneria, l’inquisitore e l’inquisito, il carnefice e la vittima, partecipavano dell’uguale credenza’ (Sciascia, 1986: 29). Sciascia and Vassalli display equal indignation in their reactions to the staggering cruelty of the Inquisition and to the participation of an entire society in collective hallucinations about witchcraft, as well as recognizing the echoes of Inquisition practices in 20th-century politics, which Sciascia explored also in Morte dell’inquisitore (1964) (Mullen, 2000: 10).

Vassalli's account of the 17th century also includes an examination of abuses of power. Throughout La strega e il capitano, Sciascia had evinced a certain historical pessimism, which he expressed in particular through his conclusion that tragic events, such as those concerning Caterina Medici, will inevitably recur over time. As a counterpoint to the Sciascian view of the immobility of history, Vassalli, in narrating an example of injustice in the past, holds some hope for change in the future. His historical narrative thus functions as an example of human failure with the accompanying implication that, by acquiring knowledge of mistakes in the past, society has the chance to develop strategies to avoid repeating the same errors. In La chimera, through the story of Antonia's life, trial for witchcraft, and death at the stake, Vassalli provides an account of a justice system that was either malevolent and dysfunctional or fundamentally absent from the experience of most of the population, particularly in rural areas such as Zardino: ‘ognuno badava a se stesso e alle sue cose, nel Seicento, e per badare a tutti c’era solo Dio’ (Vassalli, 1990: 68). When the courts did intervene in people's lives, the administration of justice was far from even-handed, favoring the powerful: ‘La giustizia dell’epoca, inflessibile con i poveracci che avessero avuto la ventura di incappare nelle sue reti, offriva ai veri delinquenti ogni genere di scappatoie …’ (Vassalli, 1990: 108). Vassalli shows that it is a consequence of this imbalance of power that Antonia's story and those of countless others like her were never recorded or, crucially, that the truth behind them was hidden.

The representatives of the legal system in La chimera are the members of the Inquisition, about whom Don Michele, Zardino's false priest/doctor comments: ‘Poveretta! Disgrazia per disgrazia, era meglio per lei se la prendevano i banditi …’ (Vassalli, 1990: 245). At the center of Antonia's trial is the friar Gregorio Manini da Gozzano, who embodies the brutality of the Inquisition: ‘Era un attore per temperamento e per nascita, un grande attore – vanitoso e crudele come tutti i grandi attori – finito per caso nel diciassettesimo secolo a fare l’inquisitore. Il mondo è strano.’ (Vassalli, 1990: 232). As well as enjoying the performance of the trial, Manini uses the forum to express his ideas about the relationship between truth and reality. Vassalli states that Manini did not believe reality to be either true or real, opining: ‘La realtà […] per se stessa non esiste, se non è ravvivata dal soffio della grazia di Dio; è soltanto un’illusione, una falsa percezione che la morte spazzerà via.’ (Vassalli, 1990: 226). This comment highlights how far the ideals of justice and an accurate account of past events have been disregarded – a ‘reality’ that Vassalli aims to correct through his historical novel. Antonia's trial becomes a theatrical spectacle in which reality and common sense are deliberately overlooked, as was often the case in the 17th century when ‘le chiese ancora erano teatri’ (Vassalli, 1990: 225). Vassalli, as narrator, observes that the charges against Antonia could have been dropped if the presiding judges had accepted the testimony based on facts and the evidence of Teresina, Antonia's closest friend. The narrator observes that this was an impossible outcome:

Purtroppo per Antonia, però, nessun inquisitore del Sant’Uffizio, in nessuna città, avrebbe accettato di considerare come risolutiva, in un processo d’eresia, una verità cosí volgare e grossolana da coincidere con l’evidenza stessa delle cose … (Vassalli, 1990: 195)

The task of collecting evidence and relating it is now in the hands of the author, who must use historical methods of archival research, as well as detective work, to uncover the facts of the case.

Historical subject matter thus provides Sciascia and Vassalli with a means to challenge the authority of official discourse and the imbalance of power in society. In La strega e il capitano and La chimera, the Church represents the authority responsible for creating flawed histories. In these novels and elsewhere, the authors express a distrust of organized religion and its institutions that is in keeping with their shared aim to expose the realities obfuscated by the exercise of institutional power. In contrast, Manzoni's confidence in the potential for good offered by the Church can be seen to explain his unwillingness to include the uncomfortable subject of witch trials in I promessi sposi. Sciascia describes how the ancient rituals and legends current in peasant societies came to represent a threat to the Church:

E quell’antico favoleggiare si configurò, fu configurato, come pericolo: per l’ovvia ed eterna ragione che ogni tirannia ha bisogno di crearsene uno, di indicarlo, di accusarlo di tutti quegli effetti che invece essa stessa produce in ingiustizia, di miseria, d’infelicità tra gli assoggettati. (Sciascia, 1986: 66)

The essential conflict between the Church and the local population thus revolves around questions of power and the need of the religious authorities to cancel out any alternative narratives. This historical example constitutes an instance of Deleuze's understanding of a society operating at the height of its power of falsehood. Sciascia believed, as did Vassalli, that it is the intellectual's work as detective to unearth such hidden realities and, as Gaetano Compagnino adds, to preserve ‘la loro mediazione nella memoria, come autocoscienza intellettuale (dell’intellettuale).’ (Compagnino, 1994: 68).

Mafia falsehoods

In their mafia narratives, both authors seek to address a sensitive and volatile topic that bears a direct relation to contemporary Italian society, yet one in which the truth appears harder to locate than in historical narratives about the 17th century. Vassalli's decision to address the mafia in a historical context contributes to the impression in Il cigno that the details behind the events he describes can be discovered and reported despite the many attempts over time to suppress the truth. In Il giorno della civetta, however, Sciascia does not allow the truth to be so easily revealed, a feature that, while in part due to the contemporary setting of the novel, also reflects a divergence between his and Vassalli's portrayals of the mafia. Where Vassalli seeks to expose the sordid details of mafia operation in a highly transparent way, Sciascia's novel does not offer such a clear presentation of the institution's workings, retaining some of the mystery surrounding the figure of the mafioso and mafia involvement in Sicilian life.

Despite the different temporal settings and scope of the narratives, definite similarities exist between Il giorno della civetta and Il cigno, potentially as a result of Vassalli's close editorial association with Sciascia's text. Il giorno della civetta tells the story of a mafia killing in a small Sicilian town and the subsequent investigation led by Capitano Bellodi, a carabiniere from Parma. Bellodi manages to gather information that links the crime to ministers in Rome, yet his investigations fail as he realizes that the forces operating against justice are too powerful to overcome. Vassalli also offers an account of the power of the mafia and corrupt systems of government in the administration of justice. In Il cigno, he recounts the 1899 trial that led to the acquittal for lack of evidence of Raffaele Pallizolo, following the 1893 assassination of Emanuele Notarbartolo, a bank employee who had been sent to investigate the money-laundering and other irregularities being perpetrated at the Bank of Sicily. Key figures in this panorama of turn-of-the-century Sicily are Pallizolo (Il cigno), the mafia boss and would-be governor of Palermo, and Francesco Crispi, the parliamentarian and politician who was instrumental in the founding of the Italian State as Garibaldi's chief political advisor.

Both novels begin with a murder, with the identity of the killers, or at least the organization that ordered the attack, an ill-concealed secret, constituting in Vassalli's words ‘una specie di romanzo giallo al contrario’ (Fotia, 1993). As Frederic Jameson argued with reference to Raymond Chandler's novels, the form of detective fiction provides the structure for ‘isolated perception’ that foregrounds and makes real lived experiences and perception. In this context, the genre allows for the concrete narration of the political, social, and cultural effects of the mafia that seem only to be perceived or ‘half-glimpsed’: ‘my attention flows back onto the neglected perception and sees it in renewed, heightened form …’ (Jameson, 2016: 4). Vassalli and Sciascia confront the code of silence that surrounds the mafia, exposing how this criminal organization pervades all levels of society and is able to exercise unrestrained power. There is no official resolution to the cases presented in Il giorno della civetta and Il cigno, an impasse showing that change is impossible until the corruption of the State at the highest levels is challenged. The authors’ aims converge in their narratives as they seek to repudiate the definition of the mafia as an expression of the Sicilian character and reframe the issue as one of public corruption. The failure of the State to function properly thus results from a severe displacement of authority and the evisceration of systems of justice that are either in collusion with the mafia or powerless to work against it, so that any truthful account of events is rendered impossible.

In the preface to the 1972 scholastic edition of Il giorno della civetta, with Vassalli's notes, Sciascia explains that when he wrote the novel in 1960, the government not only showed a lack of interest in the mafia but explicitly denied its existence, a problem compounded by the absence of literary works addressing the phenomenon (Sciascia, 1972: 5). While Sciascia offers a portrait of mafia organizations and their links to the government, an important component of his narrative concerns the relationship of Sicilians both to the mafia and to the State. In the preface, he asserts that the mafia is understood as:

… una visione della vita, di una regola di comportamento, di un modo di realizzare la giustizia, di amministrarla, al di fuori delle leggi e degli organi dello Stato. Ma la mafia […] non sorge e si sviluppa nel ‘vuoto’ dello Stato (cioè quando lo Stato, con le sue leggi e le sue funzioni, è debole o manca) ma ‘dentro’ lo Stato. (Sciascia, 1972: 6)

The State and the mafia are therefore interlinked, yet opposing, entities. Sciascia locates his novel at the points of contact between the two forces, ‘tra realismo e giallismo’ (Zangrilli, 2017: 192), suggesting that moral values become relative as distinctions between powerful influences at work in society are blurred.

In Il giorno della civetta, the distortion of justice by the mafia is illustrated through the words of a Church official, who praises the mafiosi for ‘il senso della giustizia … Istintivo, naturale: un dono … E questo senso della giustizia li rende oggetto di rispetto …’ (Sciascia, 1972: 75). The mafia's own code of justice exists in direct opposition to the dictates of the State and is more resilient and often more persuasive. Rather than directly criticizing the mechanisms that permit the mafia to thrive, Sciascia seeks to explain the ways in which powerful institutions, here the Church, ensure its success as an integral part of society.

In tandem with his characterizations of the mafiosi, especially don Mariano Arena, as potentially sympathetic figures, Sciascia dedicates a substantial proportion of his novel to examining the effects of the State on the lives of Sicilians and their relationship with its authority. The position of being in between the State and the mafia is exemplified by Calogero Dibella, known as Parrinieddu, the confidente, or informer. Although he lives in terror of the mafia, he is also at the mercy of ‘l’assoluta irrazionalità della legge, ad ogni momento creata da colui che comanda … da chi ha la forza, insomma’ (Sciascia, 1972: 35). There is no doubt in Parinieddu's mind that the law is applied with great inequality depending on the fortunes of the individual and their connections. This fact is exemplified by captain Bellodi's encounter with a peasant's dog – Barruggieddu or ‘bargello’ – so-called because of his aggressive nature. He acknowledges the sense in this appellative and considers that throughout history ‘Che cosa erano stati i bargelli se non strumenti della usurpazione e dell’arbitrio?’ (Sciascia, 1972: 102). Unlike his account in La strega e il capitano, there is little moral certainty in the positions delineated in Il giorno della civetta. Here Sciascia represents the difficulties of living between opposing, and equally immoral, forces where the truth is hard to identify and even harder to express.

Il giorno della civetta follows Bellodi as he comes to understand more about the Sicilian character. A crucial discovery is that: ‘Lo Stato, quello che per noi è lo Stato, è fuori: entità di fatto realizzata dalla forza …’ (Sciascia, 1972: 110). As the ultimate representative of this alien, often arbitrarily unjust force, Bellodi is doubly removed from the surrounding environment because of his identity as a Northerner, or ‘continentale’ (Sciascia, 1972: 20), in the words of a senior official of the carabinieri: ‘è uno che vede mafia da ogni parte: uno di quei settentrionali con la testa piena di pregiudizi, che appena scendono dalla nave-traghetto cominciano a veder mafia dovunque …’ (Sciascia, 1972: 40). Bellodi is both cognizant of his role in Sicilian society and aware that this sense of being in the middle of opposing forces leads to the ‘propria naturale e tragica solitudine’ experienced by Sicilians (Sciascia, 1972: 110). In Il cigno, Vassalli adopts this notion of social isolation first introduced by Sciascia. The pharmacist, who has just overheard a discussion among mafiosi, is threatened at knifepoint in broad daylight. Everyone in the street suddenly disappears, causing the terrified pharmacist to realize that no one would help him: ‘Per la prima volta da che era al mondo, il dottor Costanzo si rese conto della sua infinita solitudine di uomo e di siciliano, e ne fu annichilito’ (Vassalli, 1993: 84). The ‘solitudine’ described by both Sciascia and Vassalli encapsulates the misery to be found at the interstices of the State and the mafia.

Vassalli's narrative uses a historical setting to emphasize the fact that little has changed in the century that separates the assassination of Emanuele Notarbartolo in 1893, the initial event of the novel, and its publication in 1993 during the Tangentopoli investigations and immediately following the murders of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992. Parallels with the present are manifest both in the continued dominance of the mafia and in its close association with the government. One of Vassalli's principal aims in the novel is to attack the cultural mythologizing of the mafia, presenting it as an organization that is at once banal, despicable, and vicious, and condemning the bourgeoisie for their collusion with it. He offers a parody of such behavior and an unsympathetic portrayal of the mafiosi and their sympathizers, contrary to Sciascia's more abstract criticism of institutional failings. At a meeting of Palermo's high society to show support for Pallizolo and outrage at his trial in Milan, Prof. Ragusa Moleti cites the victimization of Sicilians: ‘la mafia è un pregiudizio degli italiani del nord contro i siciliani, che non esisteva prima dell’unità d’Italia e che è stato inventato dai nostri beneamati connazionali, per manifestarci cosí tutto il loro affetto’ (Vassalli, 1993: 142). Similarly, a nobleman advances the popular notion, also cited by Sciascia in Il giorno della civetta (Sciascia, 1972: 6), that the mafia is simply a way of describing the Sicilian character and values:

La cosidetta mafia […] non è altro che la coscienza, un poco esagerata, che i siciliani hanno della loro personalità, del loro onore e della loro dignità, che non si rassegna a sopraffazioni di sorta e che nelle persone inclinate al malaffare o nei bassifondi può portare alla delinquenza. (Vassalli, 1993: 146)

These statements adhere to the testimony of witnesses in the Notarbartolo trial and express the contemporary characterization of the mafia as a Northern prejudice (Coluccello, 2016: 59–69). Vassalli, as author, fulfills the same role as Bellodi in Il giorno della civetta since he represents the moral voice (Jackson, 2004: 20), and the point of view of an outsider from the North who comes to understand Sicilian life and the functioning of the mafia through close contact and investigation. Both Vassalli and Bellodi present their analyses of the events they observe and the motivations behind them that appear endemic to Sicilian society. Vassalli's commentary, however, is considerably more provocative and acerbic than Bellodi's musings.

Through the figure of Francesco Crispi in Il cigno, Vassalli displays the extent of the ties between mafia and government. In an early scene, Crispi meditates on a slogan accusing him of being the head of the mafia that had appeared on a wall near his house in Rome. He admits that an outsider might indeed consider him as such, but this would only be a partial truth ‘perché io la cosiddetta mafia l’ho sempre usata come ho usato tutto per un solo scopo, quello di fare unita e grande l’Italia’ (Vassalli, 1993: 33). While Sciascia identifies many of Sicily's problems with the mafia as resulting from a corrupt government, Vassalli takes an even broader view. By drawing attention to the involvement of the mafia in the creation of the Italian State, Vassalli suggests that the mafia is ineluctably intertwined with Italian national identity and is even a manifestation of some psychological characteristics of the nation. This conclusion is consonant with the investigations of Italian national identity that form a key theme of his writing, as well as with his strident polemicism.

Pallizolo is freed for lack of evidence, a result foreseen by Questore Lucchesi who is in charge of reopening the investigation, commenting: ‘voler mettere in galera un assassino, in Sicilia e dopo che sono passati quattro anni, è come voler vuotare il mare con un cucchiaio: una cosa assurda!’ (Vassalli, 1993: 96). The universal refusal to testify is the same phenomenon encountered by captain Bellodi in Il giorno della civetta and ensures that there cannot be a functional system of justice in Sicily. The existence of facts or truth becomes irrelevant, as one of the witnesses brought to Milan to testify complains: ‘A chi mai potrà servire la verità che si cerca nei Tribunali: ai giudici? Ai morti ammazzati? Ai giornali?’ (Vassalli, 1993: 104). Through such comments, Vassalli expands on Sciascia's more general conclusions about the corruption of the national government and the local profiteering of the mafia. As well as suggesting that the truth exists and could be identified, he articulates the senselessness of revelations about the mafia's crimes to a society whose members universally prefer silence. It is this representation of truth and its function in both Sicilian and Italian society that distinguishes him from Sciascia and provides him with a line of attack aimed at the Sicilian author.

Identity and positionality

Sciascia and Vassalli, while also guarding private identities as writers, both thrived in the public domain, actively initiating and participating in debates on controversial topics. They projected the sense that they fulfilled the role of a necessary voice of opposition in society and even a moral conscience for the nation. Vassalli, further, built on Sciascia's efforts in this area to define his own position as social commentator and ‘intelletuale disorganico’ (Benfante, 2009: 21). As well as speaking out through literature and the media on topics including the strategia della tensione, the reliance on testimony of pentiti, and the powers of the magistrature (Wren-Owens, 2007: 235), Sciascia courted controversy through his remarks concerning ‘I professionisti dell’antimafia’ (Sciascia, 1987). He criticized the appointment of Paolo Borsellino, who was later assassinated, as chief magistrate of Marsala, and also spoke out against Leoluca Orlando, the head of the first anti-mafia city council in Palermo. Sciascia objected to the promotion of Borsellino over more senior officials through a fear that disrupting the laws in such a way would signal a deterioration of society that could resemble Fascist abuses of power (Farrell, 1995: 21). Such a strong statement against the mechanisms for combating organized crime was certainly intended to stoke outrage and accusations of being an apologist for the mafia, as indeed occurred in public conversation, and led to his being ostracized by political parties and literary figures. One of the more significant public debates that Vassalli provoked concerned the publication of Il cigno, both in the novel's content and in his subsequent comments accusing Sicilian writers, particularly Sciascia, of neglecting their duties to fight a cultural battle against the mafia (Di Stefano, 1993a). Since Vassalli's comments about Sciascia took place against the background of the ‘professionisti dell’antimafia’ debacle, they highlighted the extent to which he saw Sciascia as contributing to the cynical and opaque nature of Sicilian literary self-representation.

Vassalli was also critical of Sciascia's portrayal of the mafia more generally in his novels, particularly in Il giorno della civetta, which he understood as a refusal to represent the organization's true nature and a sign of a failed impegno. In Il cigno he employed irony and parody to discredit the mafia and the government with which it colludes (Kerbaker, 2004: 191), while speaking out in the media against what he saw as instances of pandering to the myth of the mafia. He blamed Sciascia for insinuating that many of Sicily's problems come from Rome:

Un proverbio siciliano dice che quando il pesce va a male, incomincia a puzzare dalla testa. Non è vero. Quando il pesce va a male, la prima parte ad andare in putrefazione sono le interiora: la pancia. […] La visione del mondo di Sciascia si potrebbe riassumere in quel proverbio, e in un gioco di specchi dove gli effetti diventano cause, anzi: gli effetti sono le cause. Uno sguardo penetrante che non svela nulla, e una saggezza che non porta in nessun posto. Una saggezza immobile. Un’illusione di impegno civile. (Tesio and Vassalli, 2010: 82–83)

Vassalli believed that this inaction reflected a conscious suppression of information, or self-censorship, that is pervasive in Sicilian life and in Sciascia's case permits the illusion of real social engagement.

The Northern journalist interviewing Pallizolo in Il cigno reflects upon ‘questa immensa distanza che c’è qui, tra le parole e le cose’ (Vassalli, 1993: 162). While this observation relates to Pallizolo's autobiography, which he has fictionalized to the point of self-delusion, it can also be seen to reflect Vassalli's own opinions of the shortcomings of Sicilian writing in general, which he expressed in various articles in Il Corriere della Sera (1995b: 15). In Il cigno, Vassalli reprimands Sicilian writers for their oversight or unwillingness to take on the subject due to a fatalism that is often attributed to them (Rosengarten, 2020: 126). In the epilogue, a young Sicilian aristocrat learns the story of Palizzolo sixteen years after the end of the Notarbartolo trial. An older member of the club, the ‘Circolo Unione’, comments that the story ‘meriterebbe di essere raccontata dal nostro Pirandello, o addirittura dal grande Verga …’ (Vassalli, 1993: 172). Vassalli's underlying criticism here is that Sicilian writers did not address one of the more clamorous instances of mafia and governmental collusion that was at the heart of the founding of the nation and his rebuke to the literary world in Il cigno is echoed in his remarks in subsequent interviews and newspaper articles dismissing Scilian authors’ ‘difesa campanilistica della loro regione’ (Vassalli, 1995a: 95). In this way, Vassalli is condemning a lack of rigor, which Franco Cassano described as an essential element of Southern Thought: ‘Tutto questo non vuol dire indulgenza per il localismo, quel giocare melmoso con i propri vizi che ha condotto qualcuno a chiamare giustamente il sud un “inferno”’ (Cassano, 2007: 5–6). To this end, Vassalli emphasizes the duty, or impegno, that authors have to provide an absolutely frank and ethically defensible account of their local and national realities. In this context, the detective work undertaken by the author involves a philosophical investigation into the literary world as well as exploring social or political corruption and dysfunction.

Vassalli maintained that the distance between words and facts can be seen in Sicilian writers’ tendency to substitute names of other towns for the ones they are actually describing: Sciascia writes ‘Racalmuto’ instead of ‘Regalpetra’, and in Il gattopardo Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa refers to ‘Donnafugata’ rather than ‘Palma di Montechiaro’ (Tomasi di Lampedusa, 1992). Vassalli understood this reticence as symptomatic of an inability to acknowledge and relate pertinent information about social, political, and historical events (Tani, 2001: 74). Sciascia's principal flaw, according to Vassalli, lay exactly in this divorce of writing from reality which led to his representation of the mafioso as ‘un personaggio più folcloristico tutto sommato che temibile’ (Tani, 2001: 75). This comment referred to the re-publication in Avvenire in late 1993 of a 1987 interview from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in which Sciascia had spoken of the literary fascination of the mafiosi (Di Stefano, 1993b: 27). Vassalli struck back with a condemnation of the ‘oscura grandezza’ of Sciascia's mafia characters, which he believed indicated a more generalized ‘compromissione letteraria’ (Di Stefano, 1993b: 27). This is not a uniquely held opinion and emerges from the force of Sciascia's mafia characters, which Pasolini had addressed in his discussion of Sciascia's moralism and that he suggests follows an ideal code that results in ‘una specie di stima per i “cattivi” giudicati’ (Pasolini, 1998: 19). Some of the most trenchant comments by Vassalli appeared in La Repubblica:

… io non credo che l’infelicissima sortita di Sciascia contro i ‘professionisti dell’antimafia’ sia stata un lapsus. Credo invece che anche un intelletuttale e uno scrittore come Sciascia, che tanto ci ha aiutato a comprendere la cultura mafiosa, posto di fronte ad una scelta ultimativa tra Stato e mafia abbia subito la forza di fascinazione del Mostro, e abbia finito – non so quanto consapevolmente – per seguirne il richiamo. (Vassalli, 1992)

This article has been cited by scholars of Sciascia, including Joseph Farrell and Massimo Onofri, who acknowledge the apparent ambiguities in the representation of don Mariano in Il giorno della civetta. In considering Vassalli's statements about Sciascia's possible admiration for these figures, Farrell comments: ‘While that view is difficult to support, it is true that Arena has a flesh-and-blood energy that the idealized Bellodi lacks’ (Farrell, 2011: 65). Onofri recognizes the moment of connection shared by don Mariano and Bellodi, yet asserts that this occurs in terms of ‘una religione del vivere’ rather than a political or ethical sentiment since the two cannot share the same ideals (Onofri, 1994: 109).

Vassalli's portrayal of Sicilian society in Il cigno provoked highly critical reviews attacking various narrative features of the novel, as well as his qualifications as a Northerner to speak of Sicilian affairs. In particular, Sicilian writers responded to Vassalli's interview with Paolo di Stefano in Il Corriere della Sera in which he had accused Pirandello, Sciascia, and others of avoiding a true representation of the mafia: ‘È la solita omertà della letteratura siciliana: una letteratura omertosa’ (Di Stefano, 1993a). The censorious responses to Vassalli's remarks about Sicilian literature also centered on his audacity in reproaching Sciascia after his death, for example: ‘Il bersaglio vero è Leonardo Sciascia, che deve venire per l’ennesima volta riesumato per essere pugnalato un’altra volta, in un rito senza fine di purificazione, espiazione e fanatismo’ (Ragozzino, 1993: 11). Bruno Ventavoli provides a summary of some reactions to the novel and to Vassalli's commentary by authors and critics including Massimo Onofri, Nino Borsellino, Gesualdo Bufalino, and Vincenzo Consolo, the last of whom refers to Il cigno and to Vassalli's statements as being indicative of the ‘aggressività della neonata letteratura leghista’ (Ventavoli, 1993). Vassalli responded in turn to such accusations, for example in his article in ‘Mostro nordista, io’ (Vassalli, 1995a). A similar effort by Simonetta Fiori gathers both negative and positive reactions from authors and filmmakers, including Damiano Damiani, who covered the same topics as Vassalli in Il cigno as well as professors and anti-mafia politicians, among whom Pino Arlacchi praises Vassalli's novel ‘che ci vaccina contro un certo ‘sciascismo’ (Fiori, 1993). ²

The central question of this heated and polarized debate revolves around Vassalli's identity and his positionality. Vassalli writes against Sciascia in order to define his purpose and his position as a Northern writer narrating Sicily. In this, and other cases, identity does matter, and a non-Sicilian cannot take a neutral position, but is required to create an apology for writing and a debate in which to insert himself. Vassalli follows Sciascia in his self-presentation as a fearless provocateur and, as Sciascia was, a deeply uncomfortable author (Crovi, 2020: 100). Both authors stated their trust in literature to reveal truths about a society to itself. In La strega e il capitano, Sciascia remarks that ‘nulla di sé e del mondo sa la generalità degli uomini, se la letteratura non glielo apprende’ (Sciascia, 1986: 14). In the context of his view of the generalized indifference surrounding the funerals of Falcone and Borsellino, Vassalli commented: ‘È quest’indifferenza che io imputo agli scrittori: solo la cultura, e cultura sono anche le storie che gli scrittori possono raccontare, potrebbe rimuoverla’ (Fotia, 1993). He therefore positions Il cigno as a test case to gauge the reactions of Sicilians and of the literary establishment. In the preface to the English edition of Il cigno, he explained his aims in writing the novel:

I confess I have been naïve enough to write it down as a service to my country: I hoped it would be possible for me, in relating the history of a people, to do what a psychoanalyst does with the history of his patients, helping them bring to light the deep-buried mechanisms of their neuroses. It never occurred to me that such an illness is the patient's normal condition: that patients cling to their own neuroses, and that my ‘therapeutic’ book would end by unleashing – as very promptly happened – the same defence-mechanisms that had been triggered at the Palizzolo trial and after his condemnation. (Vassalli, 1997: viii)

This stance can be interpreted as a fairly cynical move or a trap by means of which he justifies his purpose in writing through the debates about identity and propriety that will inevitably emerge from a novel about the mafia penned by a Northern writer.

Identity is at the basis of Vassalli and Sciascia's literary endeavors and of their extra-literary discourse, which, as Margherita Marras observes with reference to Il giorno della civetta, is reflected in ‘un sentimento ‘identitario’—emblema di uno storico contrasto e di un sistema culturale, interiorizzato e singolare—che sembra imprigionare i Siciliani nel loro spazio-miroir’ (Marras, 2005: 108). Vassalli confirms this view of Sicilian life in a more general statement about his aims when writing about Italy, which he characterizes as ‘porre uno specchio davanti a qualcuno che non vuole vedere la sua immagine’ (Trecca, 1995: 263–264). The mirror is both a prison and a revelation and the detective/author has the ability to wield this reflection of a society. The detective novel is particularly suited to exploring questions of identity, as discussed in Rob Coley's consideration of noir theory and Deleuze's focus on immanence: ‘Detection, for Deleuze, is not just wrapped up with questions of knowing – it is also inseparable from processes of becoming’ (Coley, 2020: 129). The philosophical and ethical qualities of detective fiction or crime fiction provide a space in which Vassalli and Sciascia are able to create their own literary profiles while examining the function and limits of literature in human life.