Cultural Crossovers in the Sicily of Vincenzo Consolo

Abstract

In his Il pensiero meridiano, Franco Cassano identifies the Mediterranean as the meeting point of a number of cultures which can interact with each other without losing their own identities and, in southern Europe, Italy, and Sicily in particular as a major linking bridge. These ideas are fundamental to the fictional works and essays of Vincenzo Consolo. He dedicates the same energy to both these areas, and draws a vital distinction between “writing” and “narrating”, history and memory, and the contribution of Arabs and Africans to the formation of the Sicilian and Italian identity. We may consider, for example, Lo spasimo di Palermo, Di qua dal faro, and Retablo, in which, just as in Le pietre di Pantalica, his debt to Greek culture is also clear. For this reason, Consolo is not only able to define Sicily as a land “d’antiche migrazioni, d’incroci fruttuosi di culture” (Natali sepolti, in La mia isola e Las Vegas), but also, thinking of the Africans who surround him, in Milan, with “con un’ondata di mediterraneita, di meridionalita”, is aware of “una sensazione di distensione, di riconciliazione” (Porta Venezia). Otherness therefore is not a threat, but an enrichment. Consolo himself has admitted that his modes of expression reveal the fertile cultural crossovers typical of Sicily. One example of this is the linguistic blending that can be found in Lunaria.