Feminine Roles and the Existential Condition in Nino Palumbo's Writing

Abstract

Palumbo's considerable literary output is almost totally imbued with a critical realism which many contemporary critics found so admirable.1 It is lamentable that his literary and editorial fortunes have waned since his death (1982), in spite of the efforts of his supporters and admirers, 2 for few writers have been able to understand, to encapsulate, and to participate in the human condition, the struggle and loneliness of his characters. With only minor exceptions, his entire opus' central themes are the existential condition of the individual and its corollary, loneliness. At the time of Palumbo's most intensive activity, these were by no means original themes. They had already attracted enormous attention, in literature but also in film, as exemplified by Michelangelo Antonioni' s L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), The Eclipse (1962), and Red Desert (1964). Federico Fellini even made an obviously ironic reference to the commonality of the topic when he had one of the characters in 8 1/2 (1962) say that she was writing her thesis, whose title was the Solitude of Modern Man in Contemporary Theater. Palumbo focuses primarily on male characters, setting the diagesis in a