The Struggle for Life and the Modern Italian Novel, 1859-1925

278 Pages·2022·5.782 MB·English

by  Andrea Sartori

ITALIAN AND ITALIAN AMERICAN STUDIES
The Struggle for Life
and the Modern
Italian Novel, 1859–1925
Andrea Sartori
Italian and Italian American Studies
Series Editor
Stanislao G. Pugliese
Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY, USA
This series brings the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American his-
tory, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of special-
ists, general readers, and students. Featuring works on modern Italy
(Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society by
established scholars as well as new voices, it has been a longstanding force
in shaping the evolving fields of Italian and Italian American Studies by
re-emphasizing their connection to one another.
Editorial Board
Rebecca West, University of Chicago, USA
Josephine Gattuso Hendin, New York University, USA
Fred Gardaphé, Queens College, CUNY, USA
Phillip V.  Cannistraro†, Queens College and the Graduate School,
CUNY, USA
Alessandro Portelli, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Italy
William J. Connell, Seton Hall University, USA
Andrea Sartori
The Struggle for Life
and the Modern
Italian Novel,
1859–1925
Andrea Sartori
Politecnico of Milan
Milan, Italy
ISSN 2635-2931 ISSN 2635-294X (electronic)
Italian and Italian American Studies
ISBN 978-3-031-18849-7 ISBN 978-3-031-18850-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18850-3
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Front cover illustration: Guido Strazza (b. 1922, Santa Fiora, Italy), Decollo (The Takeoff),
1942, colored pencil on paper; Courtesy of the artist.
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A
cknowledgments
Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg’s passion for literature and critical theory has
always been inspiring. Massimo Riva has sympathetically supported my
research from its inception. David I. Kertzer provided me with the deci-
sive insight about the importance of Charles Darwin’s work for mod-
ern Italy.
I am also thankful to Ronald L. Martinez, who helped me read Dante’s
Commedia through new eyes, and to Evelyn Lincoln, who familiarized me
with the hermeneutics of visual arts, that is, with something that literature
often struggles to say, but usually fails to express.
Rhonda Hospedales, instead, gave me the determination to say pre-
cisely that which I thought could not be expressed through words.
I was able to conduct part of the research for this project at Biblioteca
Nazionale in Rome and Biblioteca Sormani in Milan, thanks to financial
resources made available by the Joukowsky Institute and the Graduate
School at Brown University.
In class, my students’ daily commitment to learn Italian language and
culture has been extremely rewarding and strengthened my dedication to
teaching. I would like to thank, in particular, Maria-Chiara Bellomo,
Giovanna Milano, and AnaSofia Velázquez.
Many thanks to Paolo Valesio, who supported my search for a publisher
and with whom I have the opportunity to talk extensively about poetry,
novels, philosophy, and espatrio (expatriation).
I am thankful to Elvira Ghirlanda, who reminded me of the significance
of Luigi Pirandello’s “Preface” to Six Characters within the context of the
struggle for life (Chap. 5). I would like to thank Tommaso Pepe and James
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Wang for the illuminating conversations on Primo Levi and the notion of
shame (Sect. 4 of Chap. 5 of this book) and on the crisis of Mitteleuropa
that affected Italo Svevo’s writing (Sect. 6 of Chap. 3). Thanks to Simone
Ticciati and to his kindness, I was able to read in anteprima some of
Svevo’s letters that he was editing for il Saggiatore. Lorenzo Cardilli gave
me the idea that a Darwinian reading of Federico De Roberto’s The
Viceroys was possible (Chap. 4).
My friendship with Antonella C. Sisto and her “cinematic” and eco-
critical intelligence have supported me in the most challenging moments.
For too many reasons to be enumerated here, I would like to extend my
appreciation to Ana Ilievska, Veronica Moretti, Diana Silva Cantillo,
Leonora Masini, Ciprian Buzila, Pablo a Marca, Simeon Simeonov, Giulio
Idone, Gary Sheppard, Grazia Deng, Peter Avanti, Monica Jensen,
Agustin E. Ferraro, Rachel Straus, Marco Spinelli, Stefano Ercolino, Dario
Gentili, Elettra Stimilli, Alan O’Leary, Giacomo Manzoli, Ernesto Livorni,
Roberto Risso, Carlo Baghetti, Stefano Redaelli, Luigi Gussago, Teresa
Valentini, Roberta Cauchi-Santoro, Chiara Borrelli, Joshua King, Simone
Pettine, Luca Pocci, Ernesto Virgulti, Fabio Milana, Vincenzo Salvatore,
Jim Carter, and Sabrina Righi.
I express my gratitude to my parents and my in-laws: Giuseppe, Wanda,
Vladimir, and Ekaterina. They were there when I was not. I am also grate-
ful to my cousins Marino, Caty, Lisa, and Eric who live in New Hampshire,
for their unselfish and constant support: They never made me think that a
gift is a debt.
I often think, with a sense of obligation, of Mino Vianello and William
E. Leparulo: From both sides of the ocean, they made my American expe-
rience possible. Chris Ellrich, Irene Zanini-Cordi, Silvia Valisa, Katy
Prantil, Mark Pietralunga, Reiner Leushuis, Robert Romanchuk, and Anel
Brandl offered me so much food for thought while I was at Florida State
University, that now it is difficult to find adequate words to express
what I feel.
Pamela Seymour Smith Sharp was a blessed encounter: She proofread
the entire manuscript, and she talked to me and got me talking for a year
and a half about twentieth-century European and American modernism,
so giving me the impression that my research could matter for someone
other than myself. Pamela also has the merit of having introduced me to
Maestro Guido Strazza, “the last of the Futurists.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
Molly Beck and Marika Lysandrou were of invaluable help as my edi-
tors at Palgrave Macmillan. I am also thankful to my project coordinator,
Tryphena R., for her thoughtfulness.
Nothing would have been possible—or would have mattered much—
without my wife Elena. This work is dedicated to our beloved son Matteo,
whose smile and loquacity bring joy to those who know him.
Fano (Italy), 24 July 2022
Praise for The Struggle for Life and the Modern
Italian Novel, 1859–1925
“Andrea Sartori’s book brilliantly illuminates the anxiety of modernization at the
outset of the 20th Century, setting out his powerful and thorough analysis of the
relationships between Darwin’s innovation in biology and the modern Italian
novel, and showing the importance fiction and stories can have as they express,
fictionalize and elaborate the negativity of the ‘morbid symptoms’ which still
encompasses our ‘struggle for life’ today. This book is an important reading.”
—Lin Yang, Nankai University
“The Struggle for Life and the Modern Italian Novel offers a fresh and valuable new
lens for understanding the development of Italian literature in the wake of Darwin’s
theory of evolution. Andrea Sartori balances a complex set of factors in this rich
treatment of Italian modernity, examining the reception of scientific theory, social
and cultural history, political transformations, and the formation and development
of modernist literature in response to the anxieties encapsulated by ‘the struggle
for life’ in a rapidly changing world.”
—Michael Subialka, University of California, Davis
c
ontents
1 Introduction: The Anxiety of Modernization 1
2 Darwin’s Traces 23
1 Struggle for Life: The Origin of a Metaphor 24
2 Derrida and Darwin 40
3 Darwin Contended: A Literary Perspective 53
4 In Italy: Fogazzaro, D’Annunzio, Verga, Pascoli 63
3 Svevo: (A) Life and Writing 73
1 December, 1902 75
2 Adaptive Demands 80
3 A Solitary Performance 97
4 The Struggle for Life and Woman 98
5 An Emotional Void 106
6 An Indelible Trace: Images of Deprivation 109
7 Delirium and Writing 121
4 De Roberto: Power and Transformism 129
1 Zola: The Features of a Dream 131
2 De Roberto: Writing about Negativity 134
3 De Roberto: The Viceroys 138
3.1 A Fading Inheritance 139
3.2 Suggestion: From Family to Politics 155
3.3 Final Curtain: The Unpredictable 171
xi