The irreverent and irrational light in some texts by Carlo Emilio Gadda
Ritratto di Carlo Emilio Gadda, 1921 / Portrait of Carlo Emilio Gadda, 1921
Sede del Politecnico di Milano in piazza Cavour / Seat of the Politecnico di Milano in Piazza Cavour, Milan
Carlo Emilio Gadda( 1893-1973) graduated in industrial engineering in 1920, when the Milan Polytechnic was in piazza Cavour. From 1920 to 1935 he worked as an engineer in Italy and abroad, alternating this profession and his writing activity. In his initial literary compositions, the subject of his incisive satire was the Milanese society of the 1930s. First of all, he focussed on his colleagues, the engineers, who he described as being confounded by integral calculus and favoured by projection. Then, on the Polytechnic,“ I am your Polytechnic, and you shall have no other Polytechnics before Me”. Gadda remembered that the classroom which had no windows was illuminated by“ hanging enamelled steel dishes … where one had to squint to be able to draw, under those lights at 2 p. m. … and from which, in a fifty-year period, – estimates the author of Nuove battute sul Politecnico vecchio( New comments about the old Polytechnic) – twenty-eight thousand engineers came out short sighted”. The Milanese way of life during the Fascist period( 1926-1942) seemed“ too sloppy, too vulgar” to Gadda, and also the feats of the new architects turned him yellow like jaundice. The“ sharp and relentless” light of an electric lamp, in La madonna dei filosofi,( The Philosophers’ Madonna), made Gadda note the uncivil behaviour of the Italians in public places, throwing“ very typical sediments and leftovers all over the‘ Garden of Empire’. Within the sky of Italy, which is supposed to be this garden – Gadda highlights –, shining stars were sapphires for all lovers.” During World War II( 1939-1945), Gadda recomposes his irreverent yet healthy satire, with the intention of redeeming the fundamental values of the Milanese bourgeoisie, mainly work. Without giving up on the mockery of society, the author of Un concerto di centoventi professori( A concert of a hundred and twenty professors) focusses his attention on the theatre lighting, and carefully describes the work carried out in order to position the lights:“ crude arc lamps, suspended with long ropes to the framework of the curtain, and by these ropes held at the same level as the balcony, or slightly above it, so that they hit the people straight in the eyes.” A description that is a prelude, a few years before, to Utopie( Utopias), 1964 Lucio
Fontana’ s Ambiente spaziale( Spatial environment) made in collaboration with Nanda Vigo for the XIII Milan Triennale, which has been recently re-proposed at HangarBiccocca in Milan, where lights destabilize the spectator, altering the perception of space. After completing his studies in philosophy, Gadda perfects his grotesque language in a series of literary masterpieces, which were created before and published in the Sixties. Among these: La cognizione del dolore( Acquainted with Grief), which, albeit being incomplete, is considered his most important work, where Gadda illustrates his irrational conception of light in the celebration of work, in a text that is in the typical style of Gadda:“ Oh! along the path of generations, the light! … which recedes, recedes … opaque … of unaltered becoming. But in days, in souls, what calculating hope! … and abstract faith, stubborn charity. Every practice is an image, … zendado, motto, banner in the wind … the light, the light receded … and the endeavour urged its quarterings onwards, onwards: wanting to reach the fugitive west … And the breath of generations suffered, de semine in semen, from arms to arms. Until the incredible point of arrival.” Gadda, who liked to define himself as“ the convoluted Heraclitus from via San Simpliciano,” the irrational, the one that leads“ until the incredible point of arrival,” considered the reading of Acquainted with Grief as an itinerary of knowledge. Through a personal via crucis, the author precipitates in the glaring light of an“ exasperated awareness,” and, nevertheless, poetry involuntarily breaks through, and Gadda gives in, accepting it as a light of hope, even though it is opaque and receding.
6 – to be continued. For“ Epiphanies of light”, to date, the following short stories by Empio Malara have been published in LUCE:“ Alessandro Manzoni, a creator of light”( n. 317, September 2016);“ Herman Melville. Light that invites us on a journey”( n. 321, September 2017);“ Light and dark in the portrait of James Joyce as a young man”( n. 322, December 2017);“ Flashes and lights in Hemingway’ s A Farewell to Arms”( n. 323, March 2018); " The artificial sun in The Magic Mountain” by Thomas Mann "( n. 324, June 2018)
EPIPHANIES OF LIGHT / LUCE 325 27