Italian Novels of Peasant Crisis, 1930-1950: Bonfires in the Night by Brian Moloney

Abstract

MLR, I03.2, 2oo8 56I fascination of urban night lifeand the effectsof artificial light (subjects explored in various Futurist paintings) are often vividly evoked. Poems such as Dessy's 'Stato d'animo', Jannelli's 'L'arcobaleno dei miei sensi', and Pocarini's 'Cocaina' illustrate explorations of inner perceptions. Marchesi's 'La guerra' and 'Ho visto lamorte' of ferstrikinglydifferentviews ofwar fromFuturism's typical glorification of violence. Inventive wit is displayed in poems such as Dinamo Correnti's 'Gomma da lapis', where the eraser embodies the self-righteous hypocrisy of the 'gente per bene' who stifleoriginality. Translating Futurist experimental writing poses particular challenges, most of which are successfully met here. The infinitivesprescribed byMarinetti to escape restrictions of time and subjectivity are effectively rendered, usually by present par ticiples; and the imaginative links between nouns (often not clarified by syntax or punctuation) can usually be intuited from theEnglish versions. Expressive spellings are preserved bywell-chosen words, as in 'motors panting whirrrrring' forAlfredo Trimarco's 'ansimante turrrrrbinaredimotori' (pp. I32-33). Colourful portmanteau words are cleverly imitated, as in 'phosfreezing' for Corra's 'fosfreddissimo' (pp. I02 03). Bohn explains (p. 9) thatwhere repeated sounds were called for,he occasionally had to eschew literal translation: his version of Carlo Belloli's 'vuoto /vedo /vita / vicino' as 'vacuum/ view /vigour/ vicinity' (pp. 302-03) represents a successful com promise. His policy on visual poetry, however, is not explained: many of the iconic elements in themost typographically complex autoillustrazioni are not reproduced, so that these translations functionmore as guides tounderstanding the original than as self-explanatory texts accessible to readerswith no Italian. Errors, unfortunately, do creep in.For instance,Govoni's 'cantidelle vie' are street corners, not 'street songs' (pp. 30-3 I), D'Alba's 'camini' are fireplaces, not 'roads' (pp. 48-49), Volt's 'assalto ai trams' is an assault on not by the streetcars (pp. I22 23), Folicaldi's 'Feerie' is the French 'enchanted world' rather than an expressive spelling of the Italian 'ferie' (pp. I92-93), and 'perle' inDolfi's unspaced line 'calan dosigiuiperlesartiedifuoco' should be disentangled as thepreposition and article, not as 'pearls' (pp. I6o-6I). The inclusion of biographical information on the (often little-known) poets fea turedwould have increased thevolume's usefulness; but itshould give newcomers to Futurism a stimulating taste of themovement's complexity. UNIVERSITY OF READING SHIRLEYW. VINALL Italian Novels ofPeasant Crisis, I930-I950: Bonfires in the Night. By BRIANMOLO NEY. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2005. 256pp. /55. ISBN 978-I-85182-880-7. This book brings history to literature and literature tohistory, ameeting which one encounters all too rarely. Its particular achievement consists of itsnew readings of themodes of representation of thenation through its rural narratives: the novels of peasant crisis produced from the I930S to the I950S by Ignazio Silone, Carlo Levi, Francesco Jovine, and Cesare Pavese. Moloney's study applies the terms 'peasant' and 'crisis' to a series of novels (Fontamara, Cristo si efermato ad Eboli, Signora Ava, Le terredel Sacramento, and La luna e ifalo) which imply forms of 'protest' offering 'alternatives' (p. 22), which address not somuch thepresent as the future, as well as how differentnarratives and social paradigms can be brought into being. Although mainstream, thesewriters provide social solutions which are conceived both within and without theMarxist paradigm of the day. Specifically, the analysis focuses on how the narratives themselves enter into dialogue with extra-textual elements, as in the case of the detailed discussions of Fascist agricultural policy inChapter 3 and 562 Reviews thatof literary images of rural contentment inChapter 4. Hence the significance of Moloney's claim that 'we interpretwhat we read [. . .] in the lightof our experience and knowledge of history,which in turn leads us to take account, in our reading, of thepolitical and cultural experience of thenovelists concerned' (p. I I). So far,toomany scholars have risked giving toomuch weight to a self-referential and 'author-centred' reading of the texts in question, without exploring the terrain they inhabit. Brian Moloney, on the other hand, begins his book with an incisive, strictlyhistorical, discussion of thevexed 'questione meridionale', which, in rejecting the idea of an exclusively top-down, exoticizing gaze of thedominant North over the South, accounts for the complexity...