Lo slabbrarsi dell'io nelle prose brevi di Tozzi

Abstract

This article considers the configuration of the psychical dynamic in short prose texts by Federigo Tozzi – texts, which switch between self-reflection, lyrical prose and storytelling, and which respond to a poetics that overcomes naturalism. Through textual and intertextual analysis of the recurring motifs as well as discursive and rhetorical strategies in Barche capovolte, Bestie, Cose and Persone, we can see that the subject who is speaking in these texts appears to be exposed to the phenomenon of an overlapping relationship between what is perceived and what is imagined, and sometimes also to a blurring of the spatial and temporal limits of his experiences. This ‘I’ begins to communicate with the ‘other’ (with objects of a reality that is both internal and external, considered animate and endowed with intentionality) in order to analyse the enigmatic multiplication of the self or rather the fragmentation of the self. And it is a communication destined to remain on hold. In these texts there is a clear mark left also by the reading of William James’s psychological studies. By examining Tozzi´s literary works and letters, it is evident that he was interested in some of the American philosopher and psychologist’s theses, including those concerning the conscience, but he freely used them in a literary function in respect of his own views on poetics.