Palazzeschi’s vecchie inglesi and the Performance of Difference in Stampe dell’800

Abstract

Palazzeschi’s vecchie inglesi and the Performance of Difference in Stampe dell’800 Silvia Ross (bio) Another major twentieth-century figure whose oeuvre captured the critical eye of Eduardo Saccone was Aldo Palazzeschi, in particular his earliest novel, :riflessi, which Saccone examined through the lens of psychoanalytic theory, focusing on the protagonist’s narcissistic impulses in “Anticipi di Palazzeschi: ‘Alleg(o)ria di Novembre,’” in his 1988 volume of essays, Conclusioni anticipate. Originally published in 1908 (subsequently revised and reprinted under the title Allegoria di Novembre), :riflessi takes largely the form of a correspondence between a young prince, Valentino Kore, and his beloved friend John Mare. Within the context of his study, Saccone had already alluded to the homosexual character of the relationship between the two young men (Saccone 52), and Francesco Gnerre has since also noted that it is the first of Palazzeschi’s works to address the theme of homosexuality. In fact, virtually all of Palazzeschi’s literary production concerns homoeroticism at least obliquely, as the topic is articulated through the writer’s almost obsessive discourse of difference (Gnerre 61). Critics, including Gnerre and Marchi, among others, have come to recognize that Palazzeschi’s characters—be they men, women or even animals—frequently embody an authorial transvestism and function as a means through which the writer is able to “come out,” without actually verbalizing his queerness, expressing it instead implicitly through a code of alterity. Furthermore, the theme of marginalization for Palazzeschi goes hand-in-hand with other related concerns such as laughter, divertimento and creativity. [End Page S140] I want to examine here a specific instance as a kind of case study where the mechanisms of masking emerge in a typically Palazzeschian setting—his native Florence. More precisely, I will focus on a chapter contained in the collection Stampe dell’800 (1932) entitled “Vecchie inglesi,” one of a series of sketches recounting the author’s childhood in late nineteenth-century Tuscany.1 This particular literary portrait (like many of the others) is episodic in character and examines Englishwomen who reside in Florence, their relationship to the city and its inhabitants, and provides accounts of individual incidents, such as two British ladies allowing a local shepherd’s sheep and then his rowdy pig to graze on their meadow, or the Florentines’ reaction to Queen Victoria’s sojourns in the Tuscan capital. The story in question serves as an example of how Palazzeschi’s prose plays with notions of masquerade, performance, cross-dressing, spectacle, the carnivalesque, and divertimento, among others. The strong presence of women reflects the importance of female figures throughout the collection, among whom not only Aldino’s mother, but a whole host of women who could be characterized as different, or to use a term employed often by Palazzeschi, as buffe.2 Stampe dell’800 is populated by an array of eccentric women who exert their fascination on Aldino—be it for their unusual physical stature, appearance or behavior—with many of them lending their names to chapter titles (e.g. “La sora Parisina,” “La sor’Isabella,” “La sora Sofia,” “La sora Rosina,” “La sora Vittoria,” etc.).3 Palazzeschi the author was fully aware of his predilection for these sorts of characters, whether buffi or buffe, and in an interview with Ferdinando Camon he explained that he identified with those marked by any kind of difference:4 [End Page S141] Quelli che io chiamo “Buffi” sono semplicemente creature che per qualche particolarità, a volte per una posizione sociale di eccezione, si distinguono dalle altre. Il mio spirito e il mio gusto mi porta [sic] ad osservarli, conoscerli, scoprire i loro segreti, e per conseguenza ad amarli. L’uomo comune, uguale o troppo poco dissimile da milioni di altri uomini, coi suoi problemi pratici, economici e sociali, col suo conformismo, non mi attrae, non mi interessa. (Camon 47) Indeed, in the chapter “Vecchie inglesi,” the narrator notes his childhood fascination with these “foreign” women whom he observes on the streets of Florence: Queste donne ch’io vedevo tutti i giorni, e così diverse da quelle del mio paese colle quali non avevano nel portamento nel volto e nel costume nulla in comune, pure vivendo fra esse con...