Rompere il silenzio : i romanzi di Vincenzo Consolo

Abstract

The following study proposes a reading of Vincenzo Consolo’s novels which focuses on the topos of aphasia, madness, suffering, and rebellion against the reality that the writer strongly objects to. The thematic analysis concentrates on five novels — La ferita dell’aprile (1963), Il sorriso dell’ignoto marinaio (1976), Retablo (1987), Nottetempo, casa per casa (1992), Lo spasimo di Palermo (1998) — and four macrostructures (the attitude of the committed writer, fragmentariness as a writing style, memory and its displays, and the poetics of distance). This monography of the Sicilian writer points to vitality, universality, and significance of the problems the five novels tackle. The analyses also prove that the adaptation of the topos of unspeakability, quietness, and silence serves to emphasize the attitude of rebellion and protest against widespread injustice and marginalization of underprivileged communities. The dominant characteristics of the Sicilian writer’s prose are the plurilinguistic and pluristylistic poetics, as well as the method of historical inquiry, inherited from Leonardo Sciascia. As a hopeless witness to the tragic decline of Sicily, Consolo tries to preserve both its unique atmosphere, and its history which has been disregarded and passed over in silence. The island is a leading motif in Consolo’s narratives as the representation of concrete reality, and as a metaphor of the world overwhelmed by discrimination and violence. Consolo’s rigorous reconstruction of history, endowed with symbolic meanings, transforms his narratives into a homogenous whole of a highly irregular nature, whose dominant is the multiplicity of subjects. The most important threads that are a testimony to the writer’s social commitment are the difficult coexistence of passion and reason, the role of an intellectual in a society, as well as the attitude towards culture, power, literature, and history. The contemporary reflection on history and its consequences struggles with the seriousness of its subject and this subject’s metaphorical references. This monograph is built on an assumption that present-day reality — not necessarily Italian — needs a deeper reflection, and that positive and negative thinking patterns inscribed within it also deserve attention.