: riflessi

by Aldo Palazzeschi

Il romanzo fu autoedito dall'Autore nel 1908, ricorrendo al nome (Cesare Blanc) del... suo gatto. Il titolo è ricavato da una poesia di 'Lanterna', raccolta apparsa l'anno precedente.

139 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1908

About the author

Aldo Palazzeschi (Italian pronunciation: [ˈaldo palatˈtseski]; 2 February 1885 – 17 August 1974) was the pen name of Aldo Giurlani, an Italian novelist, poet, journalist and essayist.

He was born in Florence to a well-off, bourgeois family. Following his father's direction he studied accounting but gave up that pursuit as he became enamored with the theater and acting. Respectful of his father's wishes that the family name not be associated with acting, he chose his maternal grandmother's maiden name Palazzeschi as a pseudonym.

His family's comfortable circumstances enabled him to publish his first book of poetry, I cavalli bianchi (The White Horses) in 1905 using his acting pseudonym.

After meeting Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, he became a fervent Futurist. However, he was never entirely ideologically aligned with the movement and had a falling out with the group over Italy's involvement in World War I which he opposed, even though he did spend a brief period at the front lines after having been inducted into the military in 1916. His "futurist period" (roughly the 1910s) was a very fecund time in which he published a series of works that cemented his reputation. Most notable of these are his book of poems L'incendiario (The Arsonist) (1910) and the novel Il codice di Perelà (translated into English as Man of Smoke) (1911). Marinetti used to give away more copies of the Futurist books he published than those he sold, and Palazzeschi later recalled that in 1909, so many copies of one of his books were given away that even he failed to secure a copy.

During the interwar years, his poetical production decreased, as he became involved in journalism and other pursuits. He took no part in the official culture of the Fascist regime, but he found himself working in various magazines that did. Some of those were: Pegaso, Pan, and Il Selvaggio.

In the late sixties and early seventies he started publishing again, with a series of novels that resecured his place in the new, post-war avant-garde. He died in 1974 in his apartment in Rome.

Today he is often considered an important influence on later Italian writers, especially those of the neoavanguardia in both prose and verse. His work is well noted by its "grotesque and fantastic elements".

Reviews

[Pavel Nedelcu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Se non fossi convinto che il romanzo sia una grande satira, lo valuterei diversamente. Una satira nei confronti della società dei nobili benestanti, ipersensibili, fuori da qualsiasi schema sociale, con comportamenti un po' liberty, incapaci di relazionarsi con gli altri e con sé stessi, annoiati, ecc.
Nella seconda parte diventa chiaro l'intento dell'autore quando, attraverso una pluralità di voci della stampa, spesso contrari tra di loro e sempre alla ricerca di qualcosa di straordinario da affermare, viene descritto un dramma misterioso, destinato a rimanere irrisolto, un po' come quello di un altro grande protagonista palazzesco: l'uomo di fumo, Perelà.

[ALEARDO ZANGHELLINI · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this under the title of a later edition -- 'Allegoria di Novembre'.

Plot (without giving too much away): 29 yo Italian nobleman from Rome separates from best buddy/lover (a 20 yo Englishman). The former retires to his country estate in the Tuscan mountains, the latter travels to Venice. The separation was proposed by the younger man, Johnny, because their relationship was not 'complete'. Clearly something from his past haunts the protagonist and he needs to find closure. Which he manages to do, but by the time he does, he seems to have also moved on from the love affair with Johnny.

Four reasons to read this novel:
1. It's wonderfully atmospheric.
2. Not many Italian books from the early 1900s feature same-sex relationships. This one does, though it is in the background, more like a narrative device than integral to the plot.
3. Given the open ending, it's fun to speculate what might have happened.
2. Technique: the first (lengthier) part of the novel consists in a monologue -- the protagonist's epistolary account to Johnny of how he's passing his days at the estate. Virtually nothing happens beyond the main character's severe mood swings and the changing weather. Yet, a combination of suspense, decadent/hallucinatory imagery, and lyricism keeps the reader's (or at least it kept this reader's) interest very much alive.

The book invites different interpretations, for sure, but I can’t agree with another reviewer, who surmises the author's intention was to write social satire. The first part is written with too much conviction for that. I suspect there are both a Freudian message (homosexual male's unresolved Oedipus complex)* and religiously edifying intent (if only a mild one) buried in the book. But also, possibly, a statement about the unspeakability of homosexuality -- hence the laconic ending.

* Freud had published the 3 essays on sexuality only 3 years before this book was first published.

[Bertrand · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is another work of Palazzeschi, which his reader can easily feel to belong to an earlier period than Il Codice or Incendiario. Critics have sometimes seen it as belonging, along with Aldo's early poetry, to the italian movement know as crepuscularismo, a sort of late late-romanticism, full of insecurities and decadent self-indulgence. There is certainly many traits of the decadent and the aesthetes in the Prince Valentino Kore, the hero of Palazzeschi. He describes himself, in one of a number of letters to his "special friend" Johny Mare which constitute the narration, as young, beautiful but of a deathly palor. He return, for reasons at first obscure, to the house of his childhood, of which some untold tragedy had driven him off. There is much lyrical outburst, much soul searching in front of the mirror, some preciosity in the attention to objects, a good dose of incest and some contrived aristocratic disdain. So far nothing particularly new, that could be Huysmans or Hofmannsthal, although Valentino has none of the depth of their characters.
However this does not stop here, and in fact through the cracks in his derelict fin-de-siecle we can already see the vigorous light of his avant-garde poetry: little by little elements of grotesque invade the narration, whereas traditional elements like the psychology of the characters recede insensibely, to make room for characters and motifs which prefigure his later poetry and an increasingly absurd outlook, on a situation which, in truth, has not changed much since the first pages.
Here is Palazzeschi's great strength: his irony does not spare him, and the reader can feel how, as the author laboured over his manuscript, he came to see the inherent ridicule of the decadent tropes on which he had based his novel, and it would seem, his identity. Indeed the epistolary account of Kore's ordeal stops abruptly and we then fall into the second part, which is essentially a collage of imaginary journal articles and gossips on what all this could have meant. As in Perela or his later poetry, celebrity culture and mass media seem to bring about the "death of the author" and leave the reader wondering, amongst the ruins, what can be or cannot be trusted, now that the sole figure of authority has left the building.