BODIES IN CRISIS: TECHNOLOGIZATION AND THE LIMITS OF THE HUMAN IN MODERN ITALY A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Amanda Jane Recupero August 2022 © 2022 Amanda Jane Recupero BODIES IN CRISIS: TECHNOLOGIZATION AND THE LIMITS OF THE HUMAN IN MODERN ITALY Amanda Jane Recupero, Ph.D. Cornell University 2022 My dissertation brings together three early-twentieth century Italian novels—Mafarka il futurista by F.T. Marinetti, Forse che sì forse che no by Gabriele D’Annunzio, and Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore by Luigi Pirandello—to examine the ways psychological distress manifests in bodies and minds engaged with modern technology. In these novels, a series of anxieties around sexual difference, the ability to give birth, and the relationship to oneself in the face of increasingly automated machines encourages dependence on technology as a way to prolong life and protect the fragile human body. I argue that, as technology becomes more invasive, the relationship of the subject to the self deteriorates. By changing the way humans interact with one another through time and space, modern technology alters the way the individual experiences life and holds the potential to fracture experience entirely, leaving the subject with only fragments of memories or sensations without a context. My research challenges traditional readings of Italian modernism and moves beyond preoccupations with the mind, psychic disturbances, and uncertainties of identity to interrogate how the body fits into these concerns and may even cause them. To do this, I employ a feminist reading practice of privileging embodied experience and women’s stories that often go ignored by traditional critics. Inspired by philosophers of sexual difference, my approach does not focus exclusively on the heroic modern subject but dissects what constitutes the heroic journey depicted in each text. I break down the hero’s journey into critical moments, habits, and actions that make this trajectory unique or modern. In every case, the role that the feminine and women play has been glossed over or ignored by leading scholarship. By studying the centrality of the body-mind connection to representations of the modern subject, I demonstrate that as technology and life become increasingly imbricated, the human subject stands to lose the ability to have a relationship to the self and to lived experience. This approach reveals that a physiological disruption between the mind and body—leading in the worst cases to psychological trauma—is a key component in the journey to become modern. iii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Amanda Recupero is a Ph.D. candidate in Romance Studies at Cornell University, where she has completed minors in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Modern European History. She received her B.A. from New York University and wrote a senior thesis titled, Speaking from the Periphery: La questione della lingua meridionale. She is very proud to have been in one of the first cohorts to graduate from the Global Liberal Studies program there. In 2020 following the COVID-19 outbreak, Amanda started her own academic editing and website design business which she and her husband, Paul, run from home. She has published in Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures and has given conferences papers at the annual meetings of the Society for Italian Philosophy, the Canadian Association for Italian Studies, and the Society for Utopian Studies. While at Cornell, she also held the position of Graduate Resident Fellow in the Hans Bethe House living-learning community for four years, creating and implementing community-building programs for undergraduate residents and mentoring first-generation students. Amanda looks forward to pursuing more creative writing projects in the future, including the translation and adaptation of some Italian novels that she has worked on for her doctorate. She is also excited about beginning work as an Instructional Designer for eCornell following her graduation. iv For those women whose stories are seldom told or acknowledged. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As with any challenging and unpredictable project, this dissertation and the journey towards completing it would have looked very different or perhaps not even existed without the support of an exceptional group of people, for whom I am overflowing with gratitude to have in my life. Before I start naming them, however, I want to make a second dedication of this dissertation to my mother, Patricia Troy. I want to thank her for pushing me to stay strong when things got tough—especially when I didn’t think I could—and doing so with a care and patience that I continue to work towards and admire. Thank you for leading by example and for your tireless trust and faith in me. My dream of finishing a doctorate would not have been possible without the inspiration and guidance of my first mentor at NYU, Lindsay Davies, whose Cultural Foundations courses shaped my academic trajectory. I did not know how much I could live in literature until you showed me how much more there is to it. Thank you for never shying away from the difficult topics, for taking risks with us in the classroom, and for telling me the hard truths in a way that allowed me to grow from them. From NYU as well, I want to thank Luis Ramos and Brendan Hogan for their encouragement, example, and support in helping me reach Cornell and begin an academic journey. At Cornell, I would first like to thank Katy Kempf, Marcus May, Rob Van Brunt, and Mary Beth Martini-Lyons for the very practical and material work they do of keeping the department and graduates (and professors) on schedule, equipped with the correct forms, and well-fed throughout the year. I am grateful for Katy in particular for her patience, wealth of knowledge, and humor that has made dealing with the endless number of bureaucratic hoops much less painful. None of my research could have reached the level it did without the work of vi our amazing librarians and their willingness to help faculty and students equally. Thank you especially to Sarah How for her dedicated support of my interests and project. During my time as a graduate student, I was lucky to have been part of the Hans Bethe House living-learning community, where I met some of my closest friends and stellar colleagues. I was extremely fortunate to be hired and trained by the infamous Erica Ostermann, whose example of what leadership can look and feel like changed the way I approach every situation and hold myself as a leader on and off campus. I cannot thank her enough for bringing together, under one big house, some of the most empathetic, creative, and caring individuals that I have ever worked with. Bethe and the miraculous people who worked there made Cornell feel like home and supported me through a seriously troubling time. I would especially like to thank Andre Frankenthal, David Miller, Stephen Kim, Valentina Loaiza, Shriya Rangarajan, Juhwan Seo, Salaiha Mughal, and Drishti Wali for their companionship, willingness to help me work through things, encouragement, and for sharing a dark sense of humor about the graduate student experience that bordered on severe cynicism at times but somehow (mostly) bounced back, and for being awake at odd hours of the night to help with random crises and questions. I have grown so much and in such profound ways in this cohort of Bethe staff under Erica’s leadership and will often think back to this time to find sparks of joy and strategies for challenging situations. In a similar vein, I want to thank the dynamic group of young scholars I came into Romance Studies with and those I met along the way. Matias Oviedo, Yen Vu, Magdala Jeudy, Kelly Moore, Romain Pasquer, Hannah Hughes, Penelope Murav, Benedetta Carnaghi, Vinh Pham, Marc Kohlbry, Laura Francis, and Mary Jane Dempsey, thank you for sharing your ideas and dreams with me and for listening and helping me work through mine. And to my “science” friends, Sarah Naiman, Josue San Emeterio, Chris Peritore, Marysol Luna, Jamal Elkhader, and vii Amnon Ortoll-Bloch, grad school would have sucked without you and the Ithaca dance scene would have been severely lacking; your salsa moves are unparalleled and I will miss being around you tremendously. Finally, I want to thank my committee members Enzo Traverso and Cathy Caruth for their shining examples of what scholarship can be and the work it can do. I am particularly grateful for your patience and willingness to help me explore research directions and topics that were nowhere close to being ready to present to the committee. Your thoughtful comments and our discussions made writing this dissertation significantly more enjoyable and fruitful. Thank you especially to Marilyn Migiel for creating courses specifically to help with my academic development and giving me practical guidance on teaching as well as doing research. I will always remember our lunches with Dante and your amazing homemade bread, among other prepared goods. You have been a pillar of stability in rough times, both personally and professionally, and I cannot thank you enough for extending such generosity and kindness to me over the course of this program. Most of all, I could not have written this dissertation and taken on the authors and topics I did without the fierce support of my advisor, Tim Campbell. He encouraged me at every turn to be fearless, dig deeper, and ask better questions to get at the drama driving each chapter. Thank you for balancing your scholarly suggestions with space to explore, especially those authors who did not make it onto my A exam lists but nevertheless found themselves in the dissertation in full force. I never felt completely at home in Italian studies but with your help, I found an uncanny home of sorts in the outrageous modernist tradition. Your attention and coaching around the practice of writing and what makes for good writing took this dissertation to a level that I could only have wished for when I started. And not just that—I am able to read, write and edit and do the things I love better because of your viii influence and guidance. Thank you for challenging me and for your continuous encouragement when other challenges proved overwhelming. This goes without saying but I could not have reached this point without my rockstar husband, Paul Rinaldi, who has survived not one, but two theses and graduations. The resilience of his patience and kindness catches me by surprise still even though I witness it every day. Your pep-talks helped me realize this dream and I will always be thankful for them and you. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch....................................................................................................................... iii Dedication...................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements......................................................................................................................... v Introduction................................................................................................................................... 13 Project description............................................................................................................ 13 Bodies in Crisis: The Subject of Trauma between Mind and Body................................. 26 Latency and the Temporality of Trauma.......................................................................... 28 Bodies in Crisis................................................................................................................. 34 Stimuli from the Inside..................................................................................................... 42 The Experience of Modernity: Listening to Trauma in Modern Italian Literature........... 45 Critical Perspectives on Italian Literary Modernism........................................................ 50 The Stakes of Technologization in Modern Italy............................................................. 60 Chapter Outline................................................................................................................. 67 What Does It Take To Be Modern?.................................................................................. 72 Chapter 1: Unexpected Organs: The Futurist Body and Its Maternal Parts................................. 74 Introduction: Marinetti, Manifestos, and Mafarka........................................................... 74 Futurist Rhetoric in the Early Years: The Future is Ma(n)chine...................................... 76 The Maternal Pit of Futurism............................................................................................ 85 The Trial of Mafarka: A Futurist Address........................................................................ 91 Mafarka on the Table........................................................................................................ 98 The Vulva as Decoy.......................................................................................................... 99 Il Ventre della Balena..................................................................................................... 106 Greedy Containers: Maternal Graves and Lethal Wombs.............................................. 112 Consuming the (M)other: A Modernist Approach to the Threat of the Womb.............. 122 Failed Mourning, Indigestion, and the (Maternal) Crypt................................................ 126 x Traumatic Repetitions and Reproductive Death............................................................. 138 Chapter 2: The Superuomo and the Vortex................................................................................. 141 Introduction..................................................................................................................... 141 Readings of Forse che sì forse che no............................................................................ 143 Chapter Outline............................................................................................................... 152 Inspiration and Birthing the Self in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra...................... 156 Nietzschean Overtones: Inspiration and Man’s Highest Hope....................................... 158 The Highest Height from the Deepest Abyss: Struggle and the Overman’s Transformation................................................................................................................ 162 D’Annunzio’s Modern Übermensch: The Man Who Flies Over the Crowd.................. 167 Where the Crowd Stands: From Racialization to Animalization.................................... 175 Racialized Trajectory: The Colonial Underpinnings of Modern Flight.......................... 184 What Is Perceived Is Already Lost: The Bellicose Underpinnings of Modern Flight.... 192 Paolo and Isabella: Making the Übermensch.................................................................. 197 The Will to Repeat: Trauma as an Essential Experience of Modern Superuomismo..... 199 Losing the Mother: Reproducing Trauma....................................................................... 207 Uncertainty of the Real: Isabella as the Subject of Trauma............................................ 212 Un’altra violenza: The Breaking Point........................................................................... 220 Trauma in a Technologized World................................................................................. 223 Traumatic Repercussions................................................................................................ 226 Chapter 3: (Dis)Embodied Dreams: The Body Behind the Camera & the Object in Front of It 234 Introduction..................................................................................................................... 234 Chapter Outline............................................................................................................... 239 Crisi dell’io: Pirandello between Vita and Forma.......................................................... 242 The Structure of Experience: The Perfect Operator is Not the Perfect Narrator............ 245 Non vedo altro che mani: Between Alienation and Dissociation................................... 249 xi A Gap in Experience: The Effects of Mechanization on Life........................................ 253 The Compartmentalization of Experience: Between Dissociation and Trauma............. 264 Between Subject and Object: The Brightside of Dissociation........................................ 268 Viva la Macchina che meccanizza la vita!: The Machinic Nature of the Superfluo....... 276 Two Forms of Address: The Hand that Writes and The Body that Testifies................. 285 Sono anche due: My Body/My Monster......................................................................... 294 The Face of Objectification: The Image on Screen........................................................ 308 Conclusion: To Some Degree Inorganic......................................................................... 312 Bibliography............................................................................................................................... 319 12 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1, Mafarka manuscript photo........................................................................................... 118 Figure 2, Mafarka manuscript photo........................................................................................... 119 Figure 3, Tunisian War newspaper photo................................................................................... 131 13 Introduction Project description Few would argue that human experience is unrecognizable from what our ancestors dealt with in their daily lives. By most accounts, we are better off: not having to worry about wild carnivores and being able to pick up a prescription when we feel sick makes contemporary life significantly easier to live by comparison. The very same drive for knowledge and mastery over our environment that led to these modern miracles continues to motivate technological progress today, although seemingly for a different purpose. Since we no longer have to fear a hungry lion or the common cold, what is the target of this drive toward technological progress?1 Contemporary technological innovation promises a future where all human subjects— freed from the duties and grievances of terrestrial living—can embrace their creative potential. Hannah Arendt intuited as much in the opening to her exceptional Human Condition (1958) when she noted how the immediate reaction to the successful launch of a man-made satellite echoed the sentiment carved on the tombstone of a great Russian scientist twenty years prior— belief in man’s entrapment on earth and in his ability to break free from it.2 We have only inched closer to the future she saw captured in this seed of space exploration underwritten by the same disdain for what is perceived as the curse of earth-bound life. 1 However, the COVID-19 pandemic has recently put us to the test in this regard. This dissertation largely came together under the threat that COVID-19 posed to our contemporary ways of life, which challenged the most interconnected and technologized environments to realize the many ways in which we are still in physical contact with one another despite the digital nature of much of our work. 2 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 1. The original reads: “the immediate reaction, expressed on the spur of the moment, was relief about the first ‘step toward escape from men’s imprisonment to the earth.’” 14 Today, feats from interplanetary travel, gene editing, and the all-but-assured creation of a general artificial intelligence threaten to push humanity beyond itself into another state of being altogether. Such technologies also continue to beg the question: what for? Why pursue a way off of a planet fully equipped to sustain human life? Why attempt to meddle with the DNA that has, evolutionarily, allowed us to adapt to our environment and survive? Why seek out a more advanced consciousness that could put the human mind to shame? It seems that with the persistent drive for technological progress, we have created other dangers that threaten human life and experience in novel ways, and that these new dangerous demand new protective responses.3 Contemporary breakthroughs in technological innovation have indeed augmented human capability far beyond what it is naturally able to achieve. But what have we lost in the process?4 We rarely stop to ponder this question today, caught as we are between a habit of distraction and an uncritical belief in the promise of technological innovation.5 The present occupies our daily lives without pause, which we stoke by willingly giving our time to distractions that monetize our attention and data.6 While today much of the world operates on a 3 In a similar vein, Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein argue as much through their accessible and entertaining new book, A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century (2021). They draw on their expertise in evolutionary biology to address contemporary problems. 4 Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the many significances it symbolized and promised for the future, Bruno Latour suggests a similar sentiment in We Have Never Been Modern (1991): “The West thinks it is the sole possessor of the clever trick that will allow it to keep on winning indefinitely, whereas it has perhaps already lost everything” (9). 5 There have been five iterations of the iPhone alone since I began this dissertation. 6 This issue has grown in popular interest over the past five years, and most recently with the release of the docudrama The Social Dilemma (2020), directed by Jeff Orlowski. The Social Dilemma argues, along with others such as Jaron Lanier in Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (2018), that social media companies compete for their customers’ attention and use costumer data to develop strategies to retain that attention that are tailored to the individual user. New research suggests that the effects of consistent use of these apps threaten individuals, particularly adolescents and teenage girls, with addiction and increased likelihood of suicide. For a deeper technical understanding of what is at stake in the use of unregulated algorithms that collect and use data to run much of contemporary life, see Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction (2016), and Shoshana 15 digital landscape, the pace of contemporary life finds its roots in the altered relationship to the present and the accelerated rhythm of life that took hold in the early-twentieth century. Our relationship to time and space radically changed with a series of technological, scientific, and artistic inventions that characterize modernity as a particular historical moment in Western culture. The telephone, for example, bended space and time by allowing people to speak across great distances and to consider and “respond at once without the time to reflect afforded by written communication.”7 Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity, published in 1905 and 1916 respectively, shattered the notion that time was absolute by demonstrating that time was relative to the object and its motion. New methods of representing consciousness in novels also drew attention to the experience of time and particularly the ways the human mind resists logical ordering, preferring to “shift erratically” between past, present, and future in no particular order.8 The effects of such new capabilities and perspectives were felt between people, in their Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019). For a critical reading of the “attention economy” from a Marxist perspective, see Claudio Celis Bueno, The Attention Economy (2017). 7 Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918, 69. For an investigation in a similar spirit into how modern technologies impacted how authors thought about modernity and incorporated popular notions into their works, see Jennifer Lieberman, Power Lines: Electricity in American Life and Letters, 1882–1952 (2017). For an alternative perspective on the impact of the telephone on interpersonal relationships and communities, see Claude Fischer, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 (1992). Of interest in this regard is also Leo Marx’s The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (1964), which attempts to make explicit the ways American writers contemplated and responded to industrialization and the increasing entwinement of life and technology. See also Ronald Kline and Jennifer Lieberman “Dream of an Unfettered Electrical Future: Nikola Tesla, the Electrical Utopian Novel, and an Alternative American Sociotechnical Imaginary” in Configurations, v. 25, n. 1, 2017, 1–27. 8 Kern notes that the term stream of consciousness “came into literary use in 1890, following William James’s famous definition,” and demonstrates how “private time extends over a large duration and shifts erratically within it.” See Kern, 28. Kern is often critiqued for not acknowledging the role that capitalism played in the development of these great scientific and technological innovations. As Frank Turner notes, changes in the structures of business “were themselves, in a very real and major sense, technological inventions of the era...and served as corporate engines of further innovation and change” (457). Critics also point to the fact that Kern does not allow for creativity or deviant uses of technology by its users. On this point, see Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch, ed., How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technology (2003). See Turner’s review of Kern in The International History Review, v. 7, n. 3, 1985, 455–458, and David Topper’s review in Leonardo, v. 20, n. 3, 1987, 287–88 for classic critiques of Kern. While I agree with Turner that Kern’s text does not provide an historically concrete analysis of the connections between the vastly different fields that he discusses, such as literature and physics, I have found his argument and the examples he gives to be generative for a literary and cultural understanding of how such 16 relationships with others, but also within themselves, having to reconsider the place of the human in the “time of the machine” and redefine what exactly constitutes human experience to begin with. Some authors took up the challenge of these questions in their novels, poems, and essays in an attempt to make sense of modernity and what it means to be a modern subject.9 Luigi developments in different fields paralleled one another and created resonances across multiple areas of life. Read in this light, Kern is not the first cultural critic to comment on this phenomenon, as others such as Walter Benjamin have noted how radical scientific findings entered into public discourse and transformed the way artists and others represented the human subject in their works. Giacomo Debenedetti in a strictly literary sense discusses as much in his noteworthy Romanzo del Novecento (1971), in which he describes how literature captures at least one experience of modernity in the way authors chose to illustrate how the human character (personaggio-uomo) “seems to have unlearned to live, in the sense that he is in a chronic state of perplexity about his own being, of doubt or even disbelief about his power to communicate with others or with the world, of disbelief painful and often uncritical about the existence, consistency, accessibility of things” despite the radical shift in human capability and knowledge afforded by modern scientific and technological innovations. The original reads: “Per quanto adulto, per quanto costretto ad azioni tremendamente responsabili, guerre, rivoluzioni, scoperte di nuove energie che possono trasformare il mondo terrestre, l’abitabilità di questo mondo, allargarne i confini nel cosmo, ma possono anche disintegrarlo in poche ore o in pochi attimi, questo personaggio sembra tuttavia che abbia disimparato a vivere, nel senso che egli si trova in uno stato cronico di perplessità circa il proprio essere, di dubbio o addirittura di incredulità circa il proprio potere di comunicare con gli altri o col mondo, di miscredenza dolorosa e spesso acritica circa l’esistenza, la consistenza, l’accessibilità delle cose” (Romanzo 417). 9 Modernism as a critical category developed in the context of Anglo-American literary criticism and history, and grew in tandem with a canon of experimental texts of the early-twentieth century, grounded first and foremost in the literary production of Pound, Eliot, Joyce, and Lewis; as such, the use of the term in other European traditions implicitly carries with it an ambition to compare the modernist production of one culture to that of the English original as it is difficult to find direct equivalents of modernism in this sense in other cultural contexts. This first grouping was helped in no small part by Hugh Kenner’s critical endorsement and analysis in The Pound Era (1971), which is an example of a trend in literary criticism of the 1960’s and 70’s to define, or at the very least identify the protagonists of, a modernist movement. This original grouping widened to include other English authors like Woolf, Yeats, and Stevens through similar attempts by critics such as Spender in The Struggle of the Modern (1963) and Ellmann and Feidelson Jr. in The Modern Tradition (1965). For an overview of English high modernism, see Levenson, A Genealogy of Modernism (1984); see also his updated study, Modernism (2011) for more recent debates in relation to his by now classic text. For a wider perspective on the emergence of modernism as a critical category, see Levenson’s introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Modernism (2011). See also Eysteinsson, The Concept of Modernism (1990); Cianci, Modernismo/modernismi: dall’avanguardia storica agli anni Trenta e oltre (1991), especially the introductory chapter “Modernismo/modernism.” The classic studies that one would consult to get an historical perspective on European modernism and its evolution in regard to previous literary movements and traditions include Wilson, Axel’s Castle (1931); Auerbach, Mimesis (1946); and Debenedetti, Il romanzo del Novecento (1987), and Il personaggio uomo (1988). Critical accounts of literary modernism tend to fall along a spectrum defined by two opposing points: on the one side, a tendency to cast a wide net and include authors from different time periods or cultures based on a refusal of tradition and/or mainstream literature and their experimentation with form or literary technique that they share with the original English modernists; on the other, a strict definition of modernism based on a single “school” of authors defined by the critic and largely isolated to the English context. Foundational texts that fall into the inclusive camp of this spectrum are Riding and Graves, A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927), the already mentioned volumes by Wilson, Spender, and Ellmann and Feidelson Jr., and Bradbury and McFarlane, Modernism (1976), which elaborates the concept of modernism as a literary 17 Pirandello considers explicitly in his 1893 essay, “Arte e coscienza,” what defines modern consciousness: phenomenon spanning Western culture between the late-nineteenth century and the Second World War. In the opposing camp, one finds Kenner, The Pound Era (1971), and Faulkner, Modernism (1977), to name the most influential. I will say more about the debates around literary modernism particular to the Italian context later on; for now, it is sufficient to say that modernism as a critical category is much newer to Italian literary criticism, with respect to its English counterpart, and Italian critics have developed their own version of the debates rehearsed by these classic English critics. One classic text that bridges some gaps between the various European modernisms is Mario Praz, The Romantic Agony (1970), through a thorough and intricate tracing of specific themes that develop across multiple authors, texts, and countries. The Cambridge Companion to The Italian Novel (2003) has a number of essays more useful to the concerns of Italian modernism than other volumes in the Cambridge series; in this collection see especially the essays by Ceserani, “The Belated Development of a Theory of the Novel,” and Dombroski, “The Foundations of Italian Modernism.” Scholarship on literary and artistic modernism today has shifted toward a more inclusive and flexible understanding of modernism and invites further study, expansion, and critique of the term, as is demonstrated by the emergence of scholarly journals and societies that do not limit themselves to a single national modernism or time period but invite studies of any object with the intention of honing the metrics with which modernist studies are conducted. This includes new collected critical essays such as The New Modernist Studies (2021); Alla ricerca di forme nuove: Il modernismo nelle letterature del primo ‘900 (2018); Handbook to Modernism Studies (2013); The Cambridge Companion to European Modernism (2011); and The Oxford Handbook of Modernisms (2010). The emergence of scholarly associations like the American Modernist Studies Association and the Italian Centro Studi Arti della Modernità and their respective scholarly journals Modernism/Modernity and CoSMo: Comparative Studies in Modernism, as well as the Modernist Cultures journal, promote an interdisciplinary and international study of art, music, and literature under the umbrella of modernism that continues to broaden modernist studies. Equally as broad is the discourse around modernism and how it has been taken up by newer theoretical perspectives such as feminist, queer, and sexuality studies. For an introduction into the ways modernist studies has grown to incorporate feminist, queer, and postcolonial theory, see Mao and Walkowitz, Bad Modernisms (2006). See especially Scott’s four-volume study Gender and Modernism (2008) for a rich and diverse collection of intriguing essays that spans literary criticism, theoretical frameworks, and topics; see in particular the introductory essays to volume 2, “Tradition and the Female Talent: Modernism and Masculinism” by Gilbert and Gubar, and “Introduction to Gender in Modernism” by Scott to get an overview of the critical debates around feminist readings of modern authors, reading women modernists, and the introduction of queer and gender studies critical perspectives into the study of modernism writ large. Also in this volume, see “The Women and Men of 1914” by Longenbach. On these points in a literary context, see also Delsandro, Women Making Modernism (2020); and Liska, From Topos to Trope: Feminist Revisions of Modernism (1995). For a discussion on how gender norms and the modernist movement shaped and modified one another across disciplines, see Bucur-Deckard, Gendering modernism (2017). For an in-depth critical exploration of the relationship between trans-feminine experience and modernist representation, see Heaney, The New Woman: Literary Modernism, Queer Theory, and the Trans Feminine Allegory (2017), which argues that initial medical understandings of sexology and pseudoscientific distillations and codifications of sex categories in the modern era continues to live on “as the dominant popular explanation for trans feminine experience” today. With regard to the most recent critical discussions around postcolonial theory and modernism, see Gennaro, Modernism after postcolonialism: toward a nonterritorial comparative literature (2020); and Doyle and Winkiel, Geomodernisms: Race, Modernism, Modernity (2005). See Hankins, Interwar modernism and the liberal world order (2019) for a recent updated account of modernism and its relation to the crisis of liberalism in a global political context, with dedicated analyses of queer and black authors and traditions. Baker’s Modernism and the Harlem renaissance (1987) marks a significant reframing of modernism and elaboration of it in the American context that decenters the traditional criticism of modernism as bound to the European, male, bourgeoise subject as the origin of modern experience. For a related study on the intersections of the Negritude movement, race, and modernism, see Wilks, Race, gender, & comparative Black modernism (2008). 18 A me la coscienza moderna dà l’immagine d’un sogno angoscioso attraversato da rapide larve or tristi or minacciose, d’un battaglia notturna, d’una mischia disperata, in cui s’agitino per un momento e subito scompajano, per riapparirne delle altre, mille bandiere, in cui le parti avversarie si sian confuse e mischiate, e ognuno lotti per sé, per la sua difesa, contro all’amico e contro al nemico. È in lei un continuo cozzo di voci discordi, un’agitazione continua. Mi par che tutto in lei tremi e tentenni… Che avverrà domani? Siamo certamente alla vigilia d’un enorme avvenimento.10 Modern consciousness appears to me as a distressful dream traversed by swift shadows, now sad, now threatening; a night battle, a desperate melée in which thousands of flags flutter for a moment and immediately disappear to be replaced by others, in which the enemies are confused and mixed, and everyone fights for himself, for his own defense, against both friend and foe. There is a continuous clash of discordant voices within it, an incessant agitation. It seems as if everything in it trembles and wavers… What will manifest tomorrow? We are certainly on the eve of an enormous event.11 The distressful dream that he imagines suggests not fear per se, since fear demands a clearly defined object, but something more nebulous and sprawling.12 The sentiment here appears all the more torturous for it since, not being tethered to a specific object, it swells to take up an even larger space, potentially contaminating more thoughts and experiences as it grows. The chaotic ruckus that the subject cannot make sense of and the lingering question, che avverrà domani?, betray a feeling of apprehension about not knowing what is to come but also not knowing what is happening in the moment. The continuous clash of voices and the confusion of wavering flags 10 Pirandello, “Arte e coscienze,” 880. This essay was first published in La Nazione letteraria I.6 (Florence, September 1893). 11 This translation is cited in Gieri, “Of Thresholds and Boundaries: Luigi Pirandello Between Modernity and Modernism,” in Italian Modernism, 294. I have modified and corrected Gieri’s citation and translation where needed. 12 Here and throughout the dissertation, I follow Freud’s differentiation between fright, fear, and anxiety that he delineates in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. He defines them as follows: “‘Anxiety’ describes a particular state of expecting the danger or preparing for it, even though it may be an unknown one. ‘Fear’ requires a definite object of which to be afraid. ‘Fright’, however, is the name we give to the state a person gets into when he has run into danger without being prepared for it; it emphasizes the factor of surprise.” Fright is caused by a “lack of any preparedness for anxiety.” See Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 11, 36. 19 speaks to an inability to decipher the experience of modernity altogether.13 Pirandello strikes at a sensation that I suspect motivates a great deal of technological innovation: anxiety, specifically an anxiety about what will happen tomorrow, what will concretize in the future (“avverrà”), and the status of the human in this future moment. At the center of all this chaos stands the fragile human, surveying the battle between a comfortable past, defined by (presumed) understanding of the human as subject, and a violently uncertain future that seems to happen all around him and inside his mind at once. Pirandello’s sogno angoscioso calls to mind an image from another discerning thinker of modernity, Walter Benjamin, who describes the dramatic shift in experience motivated by scientific and technological innovation that began to show itself with the Great War: A generation that had gone to school on a horse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothing remained unchanged but the clouds, and beneath these clouds, in a field of force of destructive torrents and explosions, was the tiny, fragile human body.14 In his essay, “The Storyteller,” Benjamin articulates the gravity of such a shift in how the individual relates to the newly technologized world and how it alters not only the way humans experience life but also how we communicate that experience to others. He asks: “Was it not noticeable at the end of the war that men returned from the battlefield grown silent—not richer, 13 I will say more on the definition of modernity later, but for now, I understand it to mean an historical time period marked by a series of radical new discoveries across disparate fields—psychology, physics, technology, art, photography, literature, philosophy, etc.—that made people question the experience of reality, both external and internal, in their relations with others and with themselves. See note 75 for a gloss on the critical debates around the term modernity in the literary field. 14 Benjamin, “The Storyteller,” 84. 20 but poorer in communicable experience?”15 Nothing remained unchanged, the relationship between the mind and body included. What brings these perspectives on different aspects of modernity together is the experience of being present, the embodiedness that underwrites any physical or psychical experience. Like two sides of a coin, the body or the mind tends to go missing as the other side is examined. That is precisely what we see exemplified in these passages. Pirandello’s emphasis on the psychical, on consciousness, does not negate the physical, it simply overshadows it. Likewise, Benjamin’s image might set the body in relief against the bombarded landscape, but the fragility of the human is not only physical, as his question suggests. Soldiers come back poorer in communicable experience precisely because their psyches have suffered a trauma greater than the violence their bodies have endured.16 Taken together, these passages point to an unconscious anxiety about human fragility in the face of the machine, what I believe lies at the heart of technological innovation in modernity and still today.17 Anxiety describes the state a person enters when he or she anticipates a potential threat, even if it is unknown, and is integral to the defense against trauma. The definition of trauma is perhaps just as contested as the definition of modernity and there is an extensive literature on the history of trauma as a concept 15 Benjamin, “The Storyteller,” 84. 16 Freud suggests that “a wound or injury inflicted simultaneously works as a rule against the development of a neurosis.” See Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 11. On the temporal structure of trauma in Freud’s early texts, see Jean Laplanche’s classic book, Vie et mort en psychanalyse (1970), published in English as Life and Death in Psychoanalysis, translated by Jeffrey Mehlman (1976) and his essay, “Notes on Afterwardsness,” in Jean Laplanche: Seduction, Translation, Drives (1992). 17 Some of the most vivid and chilling examples of this overlapping of human fragility, technological innovation, and violence in the modern age are written by soldiers in the Great War. A sampling of the many autobiographical or semi-fictionalized texts that serve as testimonies to this enmeshment include Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel (1920), F.T. Marinetti’s L’alcova d’acciaio (1921), Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), and Louis Ferdinand Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night (1932). For an incisive historical account of how the experience of trench warfare seeped into everyday life after the war, see George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars. For an exploration of how we might trace fear through history, see Joanna Bourke, Fear: A Cultural History. 21 and diagnosis. I will leave an elaboration of trauma until later, but for now I understand it to mean an exceptional event that breaches “the mind’s experience of time, self, and the world” resulting in a missed experience that cannot be fully integrated into the subject’s conscious memory; this breach is followed by behavioral and bodily symptoms such as involuntary intrusions of memories or sensations without context, obsessional preoccupations, somatic reexperiences, unconsciously repeated actions, among others.18 The pursuit of technologies that enhance human capability or understanding in this light might then be seen as an attempt to prepare for potential traumatic experiences. We place the mechanical apparatus or algorithm in front of our fragility as if it were a shield to protect us from threats that it creates. I would pause here to refine my original opening questions to one that encompasses them all: why pursue technologies that might supersede human life or could, at the very least, render it unrecognizable? One possible response might be that even though contemporary technologies threaten to render humans obsolete, we pursue them out of an anxiety that we already are obsolete.19 Put differently, an unacknowledged apprehension about the viability of the human mind and body in an increasingly dangerous environment drives technological progress. Yet, 18 Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 4. In my understanding of trauma, however, I emphasize Janet’s findings on the primacy of dissociation that happens as a result of a physiological breakdown of functioning in the mental apparatus in a traumatic event. While my understanding still carries with it Caruth’s insights on Freud’s analysis of trauma as an experience not locatable in a single event, but necessarily double and epistemologically destabilizing, I grant the physiological problem of trauma more weight to get closer to understanding how the bodily experience of traumatic experience plays a part in or is excluded from the mind’s recollection of it. As such, my understanding still follows the definition of trauma by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), which defines Post-traumatic Stress Disorder as: “The essential feature is the development of characteristic symptoms following a psychologically traumatic event that is generally outside the range of usual human experience. The characteristic symptoms involve reexperiencing the traumatic event; numbing of responsiveness to, or reduced involvement with, the external world; and a variety of autonomic, dysphoric, or cognitive symptoms” (APA, 236). 19 As opposed to the fragile human body, the metallicized body of the machine can take the brunt of modern experience because it is immune to time and decay; it is in a sense already dead. For an incisive account of how Italian authors writing in the early twentieth century began to think differently about the relationship between man and machine, see Ernesto Livorni, “The Machine as the Rebirth of Humankind: Marinetti and First Futurism” in Futurismo: Impact and Legacy (2011). For a more recent monograph on Italian Futurism in English, see Katia Pizzi, Italian Futurism and the Machine (2019). 22 even as we ward off threats with the help of technological prosthetics, the body of the machine evokes a repulsion deep within us to the inorganic, to death. Perhaps this has to do with seeing a piece of ourselves reflected in its metallic armor. In Freud’s model of the psyche, consciousness itself depends on a small death, the sacrifice of a piece of itself for the survival of what remains. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Freud elaborates a theory that attempts to account for war neuroses. He tries to explain the cause of repetitious dreams that do not follow the pleasure principle and fulfill an unconscious wish. These dreams instead wake the dreamer up “in another fright” by returning him to a moment before the event or accident happened. In trying to make sense of this phenomenon within the economy of his thought, Freud postulates the true purpose of consciousness and offers a speculative account of how it came to be. Returning to the most primitive life-form, an inanimate organism, Freud describes a scenario not unlike the condition the modern subject finds himself in: This little fragment of living substance is suspended in the middle of an external world charged with the most powerful energies; and it would be killed by the stimulation emanating from these if it were not provided with a protective shield against stimuli.20 Consciousness is the protective shield, “a barrier of sensation and knowledge,” that rises out of the unsuspecting organism when threatened by the assault of external stimuli.21 As Caruth argues, like the physical crust-like barrier that would have grown to encase its fragile body, consciousness stands between the inside and outside of the organism to minimize the intrusion of 20 Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 30. 21 Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 63. 23 stimuli to the psyche. The shield diminishes the stimuli’s intensity by becoming “to some degree inorganic” and losing the “structure proper to living matter,” thereby allowing the psyche to absorb the stimuli safely. “By its death, the outer layer has saved all the deeper ones from a similar fate.”22 Freud defines as traumatic “any excitations from outside which are powerful enough to break through the protective shield.”23 In an analogous relationship in the physical world, we imagine that machines can take the brunt of modern stimuli because they are immune to decay and overwhelm; they are, in a sense, already dead. At the same time, facing the unfathomable feats executed by technology forces us to contend with our own mortality, an anxiety that rests at the core of consciousness. Modern experience brings to light the fact that each of these shields comes at a cost to the human and may even pose a threat themselves. The unfiltered exposure to death, to the inorganic, underwrites the human experience of trauma and defines the modern subject; both push the subject into another state of being, if only partially, so that he can live, if only in part. By taking up the tool, the machine, or the film camera, man augments his ability and gives greater accuracy, power, and effect to his actions. Likewise with the automatic response to potential trauma, the psyche armors itself by sacrificing a piece of itself so that the rest may live. But in so doing, the subject of technology and the psyche of trauma diminish a part of the human that is essential and generative in its own way: vulnerability. The state of being aware of one’s fragility among a host of hostile machines or stimuli is what makes humans unique and engenders creativity and creation. Human fragility finds its roots in mortality and the conscious knowledge of death, in the body and in the mind. As modern machinery and human life become even more entwined, modern subjects drift towards 22 Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 30. 23 Freud, 33. 24 death in novel ways. Where some see technological innovation as an extension of human capability, more skeptical readers like Pirandello see a relinquishing of human subjectivity that diminishes the mind and body alike. In reaching for that prosthetic tool, we actually hand over our arms for appropriation by the machine and undermine our stability as subjects. In this light, this project brings together three early-twentieth century novels, Mafarka il futurista by F.T. Marinetti, Forse che sì forse che no by Gabriele D’Annunzio, and Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore by Luigi Pirandello, to examine the ways anxiety and trauma manifest in bodies and minds engaged with modern technology and how these manifestations respond to the increasingly invasive effects of technologization. Although each text points to a slightly different take on the nexus of modern technology and psychological distress, the texts unanimously identify detrimental if not deadly consequences of imbricating life with technology. In these novels, a series of anxieties around sexual difference, the ability to give birth, and dominance in the face of increasingly automated machines encourages dependence on technology as a way to prolong life and protect the unarmored body. Read with a critical eye towards the way they are described as embodied experiences, these anxieties collectively betray an inherent motivation toward death that originates in the death drive. Mortality, the very thing that we are afraid of, drives us into the metallic claws of something that could irrevocably change humanity or bring it to a stop for good. In the novels I analyze here, the fact of being exposed to death and of knowing that fact reside in the recognition of oneself as a subject, as a living being with a sense of self.24 The 24 I follow Michel Foucault’s elaboration of the relationship between the subject and the self as he investigates it in his lectures on The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981-1982 and The Courage of Truth: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1983-1984. In The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Foucault discusses how maintaining a relationship to the self differentiates us as rational animals from nonrational animals and stresses the importance of being able to make an object of oneself for the self: “Zeus has determined that unlike animals, and 25 progression through these novels shows that, as technology becomes more invasive, altering more acute capabilities of the human body, the relationship of the subject to the self deteriorates. The augmentation of such capacities as perception and knowledge acquisition loosens the connection between the body and mind, producing dissociative results and altering the relationship one has to the self as a subject. In the most extreme cases, the subject devolves into an object of the machine, in part or entirely. In relative terms, the bodily fragmentation that characterizes the technological power of the mid-twentieth century and exemplified in the Great War is preceded by a psychical fragmentation through seemingly innocuous machines decades earlier. By changing the way humans interact with one another through time and space, modern technology alters the way the individual experiences life and holds the potential to fracture experience entirely, leaving the subject with only fragments of memory or sensations from an event that do not add up to a whole.25 Marinetti, D’Annunzio, and Pirandello reveal that the psychical and corporeal manifestations of trauma experienced by their protagonists are in fact responses to this technologization of life. this is one of the fundamental differences between the rational animal and nonrational animals, men are entrusted to themselves and have to take care of themselves. That is to say, in order to realize his nature as a rational being, in order to conform to his difference from animals, man must in fact take himself as the object of his care. Taking himself as the object of his care, he has to ask himself what he himself is, what he is an what are the things that are not him. He has to ask himself what depends on him and what does not depend on him. And finally he has to ask himself what it is appropriate for him to do or not do, in accordance with the categories of kathēkonta or proēgmena, etcetera.” What is at stake in the care of the self is nothing short of the care and sustaining of the human community: “consequently, the person who takes care of himself properly—that is to say, the person who has in fact analyzed what things depend on him and what things do not depend on him—when he has taken care of himself so that when something appears in his representations he knows what he should and should not do, he will at the same time know how to fulfill his duties as part of the human community” (Foucault, Hermeneutics, 197). 25 Similar readings to mine include Elissa Marder’s Dead Time (2001), where she rereads works by Baudelaire and Flaubert through Benjamin’s insights on their use of poetic language to reveal how the French authors meditate on and describe time and memory to “examine some of the ongoing temporal effects of modernity’s unassimilated legacy” (3). A recent work that takes a similar approach to mine includes Zilcosky, The Language of Trauma: War and Technology in Hoffmann, Freud, and Kafka (2021). 26 Bodies in Crisis: The Subject of Trauma between Mind and Body Over the course of the dissertation, I bring together literary theory, clinical study, and fictional texts to demonstrate that the body testifies to psychological crisis and trauma through verbal and physical manifestations, such as muteness, excessive speech, paralysis, and the repetition of behaviors or movements.26 This methodology insists that we read the body’s gestures, movements, and habits as significant of an underlying disconnect between what the body experiences and what the mind consciously knows. My framework puts the work of Bessel Van der Kolk in the clinical study of people suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) into productive dialogue with the work of Shoshana Felman, Dori Laub, and Cathy Caruth in trauma theory in a literary context.27 In my view, too much emphasis on the 26 I follow Shoshana Felman’s conception of testimony, grounded in its psychoanalytic origins, which holds that one does not need to possess the truth in order to bear witness to it. Dori Laub provides a vivid example of this in his essay, “Bearing Witness or the Vicissitudes of Listening,” in Testimony, 59–63, as discussed in note 48 in this dissertation. Literature has the unique opportunity to allow the expression of testimony in any form that the survivor chooses, consciously or not. Whereas the courtroom and legal system in general must maintain certain rules and necessarily impose structured forms onto witness testimony to allow it into the record, literature and art grant the witness space to represent their experience in whatever way it comes out. A significant critique of trauma theory in the literary and cultural studies fields comes via its integration with theories of testimony. Anne Rothe in particular pinpoints the beginning of this trend of blurring the categories of “victim” and “perpetrator” with the study and popular captivation by certain narratives of the Holocaust, an event that is especially important for the formation of Shoshana Felman’s and Cathy Caruth’s work on trauma. Rothe argues that American media attention of the Eichmann trial and the popularity of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel in particular “introduced the notion that the past is best understood via witness testimony, rather than the analytical and self-critical discourse of professional historians” (Rothe 54). She notes a “discursive shift from the ambiguous figure of the victim to the survivor” whereby witness testimony and the victims who spoke it transform into a new form of authority over the past that supersedes historical research in the public’s eyes. Rothe’s main concern is that this situation has erected a paradigm of “trauma culture” in which all suffering is equated to victimization; this is dangerous because it effectively eliminates the specificity of individual experience, and therefore of possible recognition and compensation, and could actually serve real perpetrators by obscuring their responsibility in creating harmful or traumatizing circumstances. While these ethical concerns are warranted, I think Rothe’s criticisms in particular do not take full account of the specificity that literary critics who follow this line of thought on trauma bring to the objects they study and specifically to the conception of trauma that they articulate. See Rothe, “Popular Trauma Culture: The Pain of Others Between Holocaust Tropes and Kitsch-Sentimental Melodrama” in Interdisciplinary Handbook of Trauma and Culture (2016). For a recent introduction to testimony and the various ways of using it as a theoretical concept, see Axel Gelfert, A Critical Introduction to Testimony (2014). 27 See Van der Kolk, Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society (1996); Felman and Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (1992); Cathy 27 temporality of trauma does not adequately address the experience of the body and how that experience correlates or strays even further from the missed experience of trauma in the mind. By grounding my investigation of these novels in the clinical study of what happens in the body and brain during a traumatic event, my research exposes the limits of our current practice of reading trauma and testimony in the literary field. Van der Kolk’s studies, for example, grant us Caruth, Unclaimed Experience (1996). Following the publication of Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery (1992), there was a push to historicize the study of trauma and map out the various if not conflicting approaches to it. The line of thought that emerges out of Van der Kolk’s research is a central figure in these debates. Mark Micale and Paul Lerner eloquently distill the reason for such debate over the concept and interpretation of trauma. They suggest that the “debates over the nature, ‘reality,’ and significance of traumatic suffering have had enormous cultural resonances as we struggle to make sense of a ceaselessly violent and chaotic world” and that, as a result of such debate, “the concept of traumatic pathogenesis has become an attractive, but controversial paradigm for explaining a number of the most important and troubling features of late twentieth century Western society” (Traumatic Pasts, 1, 6). Studies such as Micale and Lerner’s edited volume and J. Roger Kurtz’s Trauma and Literature analyze how historical and economic factors, such as industrialization and urbanization, as well as political factors, like the emergence of nation states and welfare states, have influenced the development of the treatment of trauma and the ways it comes to be recognized as a diagnosis. Nicole Sütterlin reminds us of an often overlooked insight by Foucault in his lectures on psychiatric power, that the concept of trauma may have been deployed by such people as Charcot and the labor movement to further their political agendas: for Foucault, she argues, “trauma is essentially the product of a power struggle, that is, an ‘event’ in a particular constellation of discourses” (Sütterlin 14). Foucault’s insight here demonstrates the fraught history of the concept of trauma. For a classic historical account of the idea of trauma in the medical field, see Esther Fischer-Homberger, Die traumatische Neurose (1975). For a genealogical approach to the history of the study of trauma, see Ruth Leys, Trauma: A Genealogy (2000). See especially the introduction to this text for a concise and incisive gloss of what is at stake in these debates surrounding the concept of trauma and what each approach implies in a larger context. As Leys puts it, at stake in Van der Kolk’s understanding of trauma, and by extension all those who ground their understanding of trauma in his research, is a moral and ethical position vis-à-vis victims and perpetrators. In focusing on the neurobiological breakdown of the mental apparatus in a traumatic event, Van der Kolk’s research eliminates “the question of autobiographical-symbolic meaning” and “makes manifest the mechanical-causal basis of much recent theorizing about trauma.” As such, she sees it as one slippery step away from eliminating “the issue of moral meaning and ethical assessment” (Leys 7). In other words, refocusing the study of trauma on the body essentially dissolves the difference between victims and perpetrators in human-made atrocities like war and genocide by allowing that both parties may experience the same trauma in such an event—that both may become victims. The Vietnam war is often pointed to as an example of this, whereby the American soldiers returned home traumatized by their actions as the perpetrators of violence. Because trauma often occurs at the hands of other human actors, the history of trauma as a diagnosis has been fraught with debates about the validity of the claims of trauma survivors and questions regarding what the establishment of PTSD as a psychological diagnosis means politically and ethically. Fassin and Rechtman argue that it is more indicative of a shift in the “moral economy” that marks a greater willingness on the part of society to believe and advocate for victims more so than previously (Fassin and Rechtman 8). See Fassin and Rechtman, The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood (2007). 28 the vantage point of the body in crisis and show in greater detail that the interruption of the body- mind connection is responsible for the effects of trauma.28 Latency and the Temporality of Trauma It is easy to disregard the pressure technology exerted on life in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, especially in comparison to the abject horrors that machines caused during the Great War. Given the extent of literary and philosophical texts written on this period regarding violent death, trauma, and the collision of man and machine, it might appear inconsequential to investigate this earlier time period just before the war broke out. And yet, Marinetti, D’Annunzio, and Pirandello anticipate those very discussions through encounters with technologies as mundane and ostensibly harmless as the automobile, the telephone, and the film camera. They speak to both the anxiety about what is to come and the trauma that such 28 Van der Kolk et. al. cites Janet with the discovery of the nature of psychological trauma—dissociation. In his dissertation “L’automatisme psychologique” (1889), Janet produced the first elaborate model of dissociation and identified it in people who experienced such “vehement emotions” to the extent that their minds became “incapable of matching their frightening experiences with existing cognitive schemes” (Kolk, Traumatic Stress 52). Without the ability to make this connection, to make sense of the new, traumatizing experience, they are unable to respond appropriately to stress. As a result, “the memories of the experience cannot be integrated into personal awareness; instead, they are split off (dissociated) from consciousness and from voluntary control” and “continue to intrude as terrifying perceptions, obsessional preoccupations, and somatic reexperiences such as anxiety reactions” (Kolk 52). I follow Caruth’s definition of trauma as an exceptional event that breaches “the mind’s experience of time, self, and the world” resulting in a missed experience and the behavioral and bodily symptoms that accompany this such as paralysis, unconsciously repeated actions, and others described by Van der Kolk (Unclaimed Experience 4). Trauma as a wound of the mind is “experienced too soon, too unexpectedly, to be fully known and is therefore not available to consciousness until it imposes itself again, repeatedly, in the nightmares and repetitive actions of the survivor” (Unclaimed Experience 4). In my understanding of trauma, however, I emphasize Janet’s findings on the primacy of dissociation that happens as a result of a physiological breakdown of functioning in the mental apparatus in a traumatic event. In this way, I hope to grant more weight to the body as the mind has had a monopoly on critical understandings of trauma in the literary field thus far. It goes without saying that my thoughts and research here are not meant to, in any way, sway the medical study of trauma and PTSD in people, as some critics of this line of thought seem to think. Sütterlin has referred to this more recent shift in focus of literary trauma studies as a “psychotraumatological framework inspired by Janet’s models of dissociation and “dédoublement” (Sütterlin 20). 29 technological progress brings with it.29 The novels I analyze suggest that it takes much less than a tank or a bomb to overwhelm the individual. They also suggest a need to rethink trauma in the modern, technologized environment. Much of the study of trauma in the literary field converges around the temporal quality that characterizes it: latency. Cathy Caruth in the field-defining book Unclaimed Experience (1996) highlights latency as the defining element of trauma, which imparts its temporal duality and unknowability.30 Trauma is never just a single event, she argues, since it is “missed” in its first instance and only surfaces in the subject’s life after the fact through repetition compulsion or 29 It should be noted that there is a hermeneutic difference in the way authors interpret the concept of trauma and PTSD as a diagnosis. Some understand trauma to be “a timeless, quasi-universal disorder that can be identified in any number of historical events and texts,” grounded in today’s diagnostic measures and understanding of trauma (Micale and Lerner, 6). In addition to Caruth, Felman, and Van der Kolk, see for example Michael Trimble, Post- Traumatic Neurosis (1981); Berthold Gersons and Ingrid Carlier, “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: The History of a Recent Concept” in British Journal of Psychiatry v. 161, (1992), 742–748; John P. Wilson, “The Historical Evolution of PTSD Diagnostic Criteria: From Freud to DSM-IV,” in Psychotraumatology (1995). Others, especially those approaching trauma from the fields of anthropology, history, and the social sciences, see it as a “historically contingent, socially and culturally constructed” theory (Micale and Lerner 7). In their by now classic critiques of trauma, authors Allan Young and Ian Hacking argue that trauma is not a legitimate psychological diagnosis but rather a historical construct tied to the immediate social and political conditions of modernity in which it formed as a diagnosis. These accounts among others offer insight into “trauma as an interface of specifically modern discourses and of the conditions that led to the ‘trauma paradigm’ that has taken hold in Western societies over the past thirty years” (Sütterlin 15). See Young, The Harmony of Illusion: Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (1995); and Hacking, “Making up People” in Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought (1986). Other notable texts that argue that trauma is a product of its modern context include Ralph Harrington, “The Railway Accident: Trains, Trauma and Technological Crisis in Nineteenth-century” in Traumatic Pasts: History, Psychiatry, and Trauma in the Modern Age, 1870–1930 (2001); Luckhurst, The Trauma Question (2008); Tatu and Bogousslavsky, La Folie au front: la grande bataille des névroses de guerre (2013). I would like to make clear where I stand on the relationship between trauma and modernity. Steffens argues that “what is uniquely modern about trauma is the shift from corporeal to psychic wound, a transition coinciding with the forces of sociocultural, technological, political, and economic modernity in the nineteenth century through the First World War” (Steffens 37). It seems to me that this understanding of the concept of trauma and its modern transition to the psychic wound model is not at odds with Van der Kolk’s research, which shows that there is a physiological malfunction in the mechanics of the mind (which is not a modern phenomenon) and which presents itself as a psychological breakdown of memory and perception along with corporeal symptoms. Mine is therefore not a strict psychoanalytic reading of trauma because I privilege the physiological aspects that condition the experience of trauma. I do not think trauma, as the result of an overwhelming event or exposure to great distress, is strictly a modern occurrence, though modernity did indeed increase the likelihood of traumatic experience as many have pointed out. 30 In a later text, Caruth states explicitly what she uncovers in Unclaimed Experience, stating that Freud’s central insight intro trauma is that “the impact of the traumatic experience lies precisely in its belatedness, in its refusal to be simply located” (Caruth, “Trauma and Experience: Introduction,” 8). 30 dreams that take the subject back to the event. Recalling Freud’s figuration of the shield, if consciousness acts as a barrier of sensation and knowledge, it does so “by placing stimulation within an ordered experience of time.” 31 In a traumatizing event, consciousness is overwhelmed because it receives too much information too quickly. It simply cannot account, in real time, for what happens and so the conscious mind misses it entirely. Latency names this belated quality of traumatic experience, the “delay or incompletion in knowing,” and focuses discussion of trauma on its temporal aspects.32 Much of the scholarship that flows out of or is in conversation with Caruth’s understanding of trauma’s temporality calls attention to the epistemological problem that this poses, suggesting that trauma’s belatedness accounts for its effects: “The shock of the mind’s relation to the threat of death is thus not the direct experience of the threat, but precisely the missing of this experience, the fact that, not being experienced in time, it has not yet been fully known.”33 For Caruth and other theorists such as Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, this constitutes a problem of history and a crisis of truth in that traumatic experience may be known to the subject “only in and through its inherent forgetting.”34 It creates “an impossible history” as a knowledge that eludes the conscious subject and yet, at the same time, grips him totally through its recurrence. Such a history can only be grasped “in the very inaccessibility of its 31 Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 63. 32 Caruth, “Trauma and Experience: Introduction,” 5. Other key theorists that take up Caruth’s insight into the temporality of trauma or operate under the same assumptions include Jean Laplanche, Shoshana Felman, Robert Jay Lifton, Françoise Davoine and Jean-Max Gaudillière, and Geoffrey Hartman. See the following examples of their works: Laplanche, Life and Death in Psychoanalysis (1976); Felman, The Juridical Unconscious (2002); Lifton, Home from the War, (2005); Davoine and Gaudillière, History Beyond Trauma (2004); Hartman, “On Traumatic Knowledge and Literary Studies” in New Literary History v.26, n.3 (1995), and The Longest Shadow (1996). 33 Caruth, 64. 34 Caruth, 18. The term “crisis of truth” comes from Shoshana Felman’s essay, “Education and Crisis, or the Vicissitudes of Teaching,” found in her and Dori Laub’s collection of essays, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (1992). 31 occurrence.”35 Trauma, in other words, harbors a paradox at its core: the overwhelming immediacy of an event puts its veracity in question. Being all too present for an occurrence undercuts one’s certainty that it in fact happened. My readings here pose the question, what if the pace of life itself were felt in such overwhelming immediacy? If modernization increases the tempo of all aspects of life in accordance with its own movement, then might it lower the threshold of tolerance for stimulation and effectively predispose the modern subject to trauma? Clinical studies of people with PTSD have shown that the bodies of survivors “continue to react to certain physical and emotional stimuli as if there were a continuing threat of annihilation; they suffer from hypervigilance, exaggerated startle response, and restlessness.” 36 These bodily reactions are often accompanied by “intense negative emotions (fear, anxiety, anger, and panic),” resulting in overreaction or freezing, all of which may occur “in response to even minor stimuli.” 37 I am not suggesting that everyone considered to be a modern subject, real or fictional, is traumatized; but what we name as modern does indeed encompass an increased exposure to stimuli and overloaded experience that parallels, at the very least, a trajectory towards traumatic experience. Taking just a cursory glance at the protagonists and supporting actors in these novels shows that modernity comes at the human cost of some loss of experience as a result of trauma.38 35 Caruth, “Trauma and Experience: Introduction,” 5. In this introduction, Caruth revisits her reading of Freud and latency from Unclaimed Experience and strengthens the connection she makes there between what makes traumatic experience impactful (belatedness) and the crisis of truth that the contributors to this volume interrogate from different perspectives, emphasizing how trauma puts historical truth into question. The insight that this volume offers might be summed up in a single line: “what trauma has to tell us—the historical ad personal truth it transmits—is intrinsically bound up with its refusal of historical boundaries; its truth is bound up with its crisis of truth” (8). 36 See Kolk, McFarlane, and Weisæth, Traumatic Stress, 13. 37 Ibid, 13. 38 Much the same way modernity has multiple valences depending on what field it is being used in or by whom, trauma likewise has various competing definitions and participates differently in a number of discourses that have emerged out of the diverse academic and medical fields that the study of trauma has touched. Even within the 32 medical field there is a discrepancy in the definition and consequently the recognition of trauma. While the APA today only recognizes trauma as a result of a specific, external event, others who study the treatment of trauma survivors in the field of psychotraumatology, such as Charles Figley, Gottfried Fischer, and Peter Riedesser, take the subjective factor into account and define trauma as “an emotional state of discomfort and stress resulting from memories of an extraordinary, catastrophic experience which shattered the survivor’s sense of invulnerability to harm” (Figley xviii). The significant difference between the APA’s definition and others such as Figley’s is the emphasis the APA places on the external nature of the cause of trauma, on the event: “the essential feature is the development of characteristic symptoms following a psychologically traumatic event that is generally outside the range of usual human experience” (APA, Diagnostic, 236; cited also in Sütterlin). This is true also of Felman and Caruth’s line of thought regarding the experience of trauma. Though Caruth holds that the event is always double, she understands the cause of trauma to arrive from the outside of the subject: “In trauma, there is an incomprehensible outside of the self that has already gone inside without the self’s mediation, hence without any relation to the self, and this consequently becomes a threat to any understanding of what a self might be in this context” (Unclaimed Experience, 159 n.5). In Caruth’s understanding, one experiences trauma not because of the threat to life but because the mind has not consciously integrated the event or having survived it into the individual’s conscious memory: “trauma is suffered in the psyche precisely...because it is not directly available to experience” (Unclaimed Experience, 61). What we define as trauma today was first investigated in the 1860s as a somatic disorder associated with train accidents and a strange condition termed “railway spine.” For greater insight into the historical context in which trauma was first studied, see Marc Micale and Paul Lerner’s essential interdisciplinary collection of essays, Traumatic Pasts: History, Psychiatry, and Trauma in the Modern Age, 1870–1930 (2001). For more detail on the imbrication of the study of trauma and its emergence with the new technology of the train, see especially the essay by Ralph Harrington in this volume, “The Railway Accident: Trains, Trauma and Technological Crisis in Nineteenth-century.” On the relationship between the train and modern European literary contexts, see Remo Ceserani, Treni di carta (1993).It was not until closer to the turn of the twentieth century that trauma was rethought as a neurological disorder and then finally as a psychological condition with the help of Charcot in particular. In 1889, the German neurologist Hermann Oppenheim first introduced the term “traumatic neurosis” into the study of the mind and psyche to describe “victims of shock-like impact [who] seemed physically unharmed, yet reported motor and sensory deficits such as paralysis and convulsions” (Sütterlin 12). Until that point, trauma, Greek for “wound,” had only been used in the medical sense to mean a physical injury. Nicole Sütterlin suggests that Oppenheim’s deployment of this term in the field of neurology paves “the way for the notion that a shattering life experience can cause neurological and indeed psychological wounds analogous to physical wounds,” and thereby initiates the expansion around trauma studies that we have seen grow exponentially in the past twenty-five years (Sütterlin 12). This has been the case especially in the fields of literary criticism and literary studies with the publication of the following texts in the 1990s: Shoshanna Felman and Dori Laub’s Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (1992), Cathy Caruth’s Unclaimed Experience (1996), and Dominick LaCapra’s Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma (1994), and Writing History, Writing Trauma (2001). However, in her essay on the history of trauma theory, Sütterlin among others notes that the true “watershed moment” for the explosion of the concept of trauma as a psychological wound in and beyond literary studies came with the American Psychiatric Association’s 1980 edition of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, in which they added post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a diagnosis. See American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th revised edition (2013); Figley, Trauma and Its Wake: The Study and Treatment of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (1985); and Fischer and Riedesser, Lehrbuch der Psychotraumatologie (2009); Caruth, Unclaimed Experience (1996). For what I would call feminist critiques of the APA definition of trauma, see Judith Herman Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (1992) and Laura Brown, “Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma”, in Trauma: Explorations in Memory (1995). These authors draw attention to the male-oriented assumptions that this definition leans on, namely that violence, harassment, and oppression are not part of everyday experience. In a similar line of thought that draws attention to structural violence such as racism or what has been called “slow violence,” see Craps, Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds (2013); Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (2009); and Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (2011). For further insight into the development of trauma theory in the psychoanalytic context, see Barnaby “The Psychoanalytic Origins of Literary Trauma Studies” in Trauma and Literature (2018). For a more profound understanding of the significances of the APA’s designation of PTSD as a 33 What the novels also suggest is that part and parcel to this loss of experience is a loss of a part of the self. This diverges from dominant readings in trauma theory by putting pressure on the understanding of this loss as solely an epistemological one—a loss in knowledge of one’s subjective experience—and resituating it as a loss of connection with a part of the self experienced through emotional and corporeal sensations. The protagonists in each novel have conflicting internal experiences where their emotional or physical awareness challenges and puts into question their conscious understanding of themselves. A traditional reading through the lens of trauma theory might ground its analysis in the idea that a crisis of truth for the individual emerges from the “blankness” or “black hole” that traumatic experience leaves in place of memory.39 My methodology here shifts focus to the body-mind connection that is lost in the overwhelming of the shield of consciousness, or in different terms, to the disruption of this connection within the black hole of trauma. In privileging the body and its responses to modern life, my readings are not interested as much in the temporal duality of trauma, the unlocatability of it in a single event. Instead I investigate the subject in the interim, between bouts of flashbacks or attacks, in their lived experience after the initiating event of trauma or prior to it. I follow the characters between events to elucidate the traces those events have left behind and how they affect the character in his or her relationship to the self.40 In so doing, my research shifts focus diagnosis for non-medical fields, see Diedrich, “PTSD: A New Trauma Paradigm” in Trauma and Literature. For a closer look at Oppenheim’s work, see Paul Lerner, “Rationalizing the Therapeutic Arsenal: German Neuropsychiatry in World War I” in Medicine and Modernity: Public Health and Medical Care in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany (1996). For more on Charcot and trauma, see Mark Micale, “Charcot and les névroses traumatiques: Science and Historical Reflections” in Revue neurologique n.150, 1994, 498–505. 39 Caruth has described the “blankness” of traumatic experience to be its defining element and the reason that it is accessible only through recurring flashbacks, repetition compulsion, or dreams. Van der Kolk describes trauma as a “black hole.” See Caruth, Trauma: Explorations in Memory; Van der Kolk, Traumatic Stress. 40 In some cases, the characters, and women in particular, exhibit symptoms of this loss of self prior to, or even in anticipation of, a catastrophic event. 34 away from latency to the disruption of the connection between the body and mind. These novels suggest that the rupture of this body-mind connection is felt as a loss of a part of the self, at times even a sacrifice, that is equally important to the process of becoming a modern subject as the mastery of technology.41 The technologized modern subject, in other words, necessarily suffers a sequestration of a part of the self. Bodies in Crisis To facilitate this new direction, I draw on the clinical research undertaken by Bessel Van der Kolk, Alexander McFarlane, and Lars Weisaeth with people who suffer from PTSD. Trials of different therapies on real patients and brain imaging to see how different parts of the brain respond reveals that what actually happens at the biological level in a traumatic event is “the breaking down of a set of relations.” 42 In the moment of crisis, the psyche experiences a “disruption of an associative process” that would normally pair knowledge of the event with whatever the body experiences in the moment.43 An overwhelming of the consciousness causes the integrative functions of the brain to malfunction and for fragments of the experience to remain untethered from time and knowledge. The parts of the brain responsible for putting pieces of lived experience together and producing memory cease to operate and leave the subject with recorded material that lacks a context. With these pieces scattered across the body and mind, the 41 The way this happens in each novel differs, but all three male protagonists lose access to a part of themselves, whether deliberately, as is the case of Mafarka, or unintentionally, as it happens to Serafino. Mafarka’s denial of his brother’s death and his fear of feminization leads him to refuse to mourn this death and (happily) sacrifice what Marinetti codes as the feminine aspects of himself. On the other side of this spectrum, Serafino does not fully appreciate how much of himself has been sequestered through his engagement and subjugation to the film camera until the very end when he pronounces himself a “perfect operator” now devoid of emotional attachment and reaction. 42 Van der Kolk, “The Body Keeps the Score: An Interview with Bessel Van der Kolk,” 159. 43 Van der Kolk, 159. 35 subject cannot construct a complete narrative. As a result, the subject has an uncontrollable memory of sensations alongside an inaccessible context in which to locate them, that allows them to resurface any time a triggering situation occurs. This coexistence of hypermnesia (enhanced memory) and amnesia (inability to remember) disrupts the subject’s corporeal experience from consciousness and precludes a more complete recognition of the self. In addition, their findings suggest that trauma is felt most forcefully in the “spatial/emotional part of the brain” rather than in the analytic or verbal areas.44 During a flashback, brain scans showed that part of the patient’s brain, “the left hemisphere responsible for translating personal experience into communicable language—‘turned off.’”45 The traumatized subject loses the ability to formulate communicative speech about the event and instead has a tendency “to experience emotions as physical states rather than as verbally encoded experiences.”46 The experience of trauma effectively shuts down the “symbolic brain” and short circuits the subject’s ability to express what happened in words.47 For this reason, the body poses a possibility as well as a problem for those who study trauma. The body may potentially function as a medium for the expression of traumatic experience and offer an outlet for communicating that to others; yet, the corporeal form that such expression might take precludes representational speech or signification beyond representation. To make sense of the signals given off by the body of trauma, then, we must move away from a reliance on listening and adopt a form of decoding. The readings I offer here assume that the body may be deciphered in a way not dissimilar from how Freud read dreams—as the 44 Van der Kolk, “The Body Keeps the Score: An Interview with Bessel Van der Kolk,” 164. 45 Van der Kolk, “Trauma and Memory,” in Traumatic Stress, 293. 46 Van der Kolk, Traumatic Stress, 293. 47 A problem not just for survivors of trauma but students of literature as well. Van der Kolk, “The Body Keeps the Score: An Interview with Bessel Van der Kolk,” 164. 36 symbolic representation of a traumatic encounter and not necessarily as directly mapping on to the experience itself. For example, in Pirandello’s novel, Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore, there is no physiological reason for Serafino to have lost his voice, yet it is not a stretch to say that the voice holds a particularly fraught position in Serafino’s work in the film studio. The voice acts as the primary vehicle of affective representation which is suppressed in the silent movie (which he films) and by the film camera (which he operates). His “going mute” might be read then as a bodily signal that communicates what he feels as he becomes more and more part of the machine, and less and less human. In this way, the body makes up for the sudden loss of communicable experience by manifesting the fragments of experience it retains in physical symptoms and behaviors as a way to connect with others and testify to its suffering. This also suggests that the body can contribute to something like a traumatic language “that is not addressed to anyone” but manages under certain conditions, in literature at least, to communicate experience. 48 What has interested literary scholars far too little is how the body of the subject of trauma “keeps the score” of what the psyche cannot. Philosophical and literary understandings of trauma have focused on its temporality, as an event experienced in two or more moments, and considered this a primarily psychic disorder. This understanding of time as the key factor in the interruption of experience and thereby of self-knowledge focuses on the narrative function of time for the subject, which operates much like a psychic language and allows the psyche to assign meaning to experience.49 As a vehicle for self-narration, it enables the psyche to tie all the 48 Van der Kolk, “The Body Keeps the Score: An Interview with Bessel Van der Kolk,” 165. 49 Freud alludes to the notion of time as a sort of shield in itself for the managing of external stimuli: “our abstract idea of time seems to be wholly derived from the method of working of the system Pcpt.-Cs. and to correspond to a perception on its own part of that method of working. This mode of functioning may perhaps constitute another way of providing a shield against stimuli” (Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 32). Laplanche and Pontalis clarify that the 37 pieces of an experience together so that it makes sense to the subject and is communicable to others. But even the narrative reconstructed through careful testimony cannot account for the excesses that mark trauma as an exceptional event.50 Such excess resists narrativization in psychic time and linguistic testimony. Leaning on the clinical studies discussed above, I suggest that the body testifies to traumatic experience in ways that the psyche cannot. Interpreted through the right lenses, the body might betray a truth of the experience of trauma that is inaccessible to memory and language. This includes narrativization through spoken testimony and other forms of reconstructing traumatic memory that impose a narrative structure onto an explosion of experience. The excess of crisis resists formulation into an ordered account through language precisely because it is felt, in the moment, through emotion and bodily sensations. Because the body does not express itself on a linguistic plane, it might have more to tell us about the experience of trauma than narrative alone, as it does, for example, in the involuntary ways it responds to triggers that resemble the traumatic event. Even narrative reconstructed through the testimonial process, aided by an external listener, attempts to give structure to an event that was emphatically experienced as an eruption of temporal and linguistic structure. Pcpt.-Cs. (perception-consciousness system) acts a receptive layer underneath the protective shield in Freud’s topographical model and that “Freud later compared this layered structure to a ‘mystic writing-pad’” (Laplanche and Pontalis, 358). They further explain that “the breaking-down of the mass of stimuli may therefore be treated as the work not of a purely spatial apparatus but of a temporal mode of functioning which assures a ‘periodic non- excitability’” (358). 50 Dori Laub makes the same case in “Bearing Witness,” that it does not matter that a witness gets the historical facts wrong because it is precisely in this misremembering that something else is added to the account of the event that historical accounts overlook—the “breaking of the frame,” the affective significance of the event and its effects on the body and minds of those who witnessed it. He gives the example of a survivor misremembering three chimneys instead of one at an uprising in Auschwitz and argues that this speaks to her own “resistance, to the affirmation of survival, to the breakage of the frame of death.” Ultimately “she is breaking out of Auschwitz even by her very talking.” See Laub, “Bearing Witness or the Vicissitudes of Listening,” in Testimony, especially 59—63. 38 My argument for the body’s testimonial possibilities extends Shoshana Felman’s notion of “unconscious testimony,” as the telling of some truth unknown to the speaking subject, and suggests that such testimony may also be expressed through the body.51 While this idea has been incredibly generative for literary studies and for the actual practice of helping survivors construct testimonies of their experiences, one limit that I would like to push against is the privileging of speech that this line of thought holds.52 Felman’s insight into the nature of testimony comes out of her reading of Freud and his engagement with dreams and the Irma case.53 His own analysis of 51 My argument is not, however, an expansion of the definition of trauma. Rather it is a proposed new angle to view and understand the experience of trauma in the context of modernity. What is unique about Caruth’s and Felman’s work and why, I believe, it is so widely generative for literary and cultural studies scholars is precisely because of the connection they make between trauma’s nature of latency or belatedness (Nachträglichkeit) and poststructuralism’s attention to the arbitrariness of language—the many ways in which language as a medium of representation may be undermined or fail to capture what the subject intends it to represent, and the limits of what it is capable of representing. By drawing on the deconstructionist thought of Derrida, Caruth’s approach to trauma studies and the Freudian conception of it elaborates a way of recognizing trauma in literature and narrative forms of representation. This offers another lens through which to account for silences and marginalized experiences in literary texts by shedding light on the ways anxiety, fear, and overwhelm shape individual experience. For my study here and with the aid of Van der Kolk’s research, it has granted me the vocabulary and insight to make sense of women’s narratives in masculinist texts by acknowledging the participation of the body in traumatic experience. 52 Even in Felman’s distinguished analysis of the Eichmann trial, where she reads K-Zetnik’s body falling onto the witness stand as a failure of the legal system to allow for testimony outside of language, she does not go so far as to say that the body itself testifies, only that it demonstrates the limits of legal discourse. In “The Body’s Testimony,” Caruth extends Felman’s reading of the trial and argues that at the core of the trial rests a problem of address rather than a problem of knowledge. Caruth suggests that the collapse of the witness introduces a new legal meaning to the falling body which is the imperative of witness that touches and connects K-Zetnik and the audience. It passes between bodies, “between an unconscious re-enactment and a wider imperative of witness,” since as the one falls the other stands to know what has happened. Caruth goes on to suggest that this unconscious bodily expression “extends the trial beyond its own strictly legal boundaries and links its encounter with trauma to a call for a new and broader form of cultural and historical address.” See Caruth, “The Body’s Testimony” in Paragraph, v. 40, n. 3, 2017, 259– 278. 53 Felman regards “psychoanalytic discovery” as “a model…of the very birth of knowledge through the testimonial process.” See Felman, “Education and Crisis, or the Vicissitudes of Teaching,” 16. As scholars from different disciplines continue to take up trauma as a lens to view histories and literatures, the limits of trauma theory vis-à-vis other subjects that it had not initially taken account of become visible. See especially Craps’s critique of the Western-based concept of trauma and an argument for expanding its geographical and theoretical borders in Craps, Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds (2013). For similar attempts to expand the dialogue of trauma studies to non-Western cultures and put it into conversation with other modes of critique, see Buelens, Durrant, and Eaglestone, The Future of Trauma Theory: Contemporary Literary and Cultural Criticism (2014); Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (2009); and Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (2011). This branch of trauma theory, in dialogue especially with memory studies and postcolonial studies, is becoming quite extensive. To name just the most recent notable books in this category, see Kurtz, Trauma and Transformation in African Literature (2021); Lopez-Gonzalez, The Latinx Urban Condition: Trauma, Memory, and Desire in Latinx Urban Literature and Culture (2020); Rajiva, Toward an 39 his dreams and the free associations that he makes suggests to Felman the hidden power of testimony. Freud’s significant work on the Interpretation of Dreams, Felman argues, reveals the presence of truth in testimony even when the truth of an event is unknown to the conscious subject: Psychoanalysis, in this way, profoundly rethinks and radically renews the very concept of the testimony, by submitting, and by recognizing for the first time in the history of culture, that one does not have to possess or own the truth, in order to effectively bear witness to it; that speech is unwittingly testimonial; and that the speaking subject constantly bears witness to a truth that nonetheless continues to escape him, a truth that is, essentially, not available to its own speaker.54 Much like dreams that must be interpreted with the help of an analyst, testimony may be unconscious, unintentional, and unplanned.55 It signifies beyond its linguistic utterance. The survivor may already bear witness to an event despite not being able to actively recall or tell the facts of what happened. Indeed, the distortions of empirical facts and the gaps in knowledge, as the very fallibility of testimony, may contribute more to historical truth than facts alone because they speak to a truth of the rupturing of experience that only a survivor of a traumatic event could attest to.56 What these inconsistencies give unconscious expression to is the excess of Animist Reading of Postcolonial Trauma Literature: Reading beyond the Single Subject (2020); Wales Freedman, Reading Testimony, Witnessing Trauma: Confronting Race, Gender, and Violence in American Literature (2020). 54 Felman, “Education and Crisis, or the Vicissitudes of Teaching,” 15, emphasis in original. 55 Robert Musil suggests something similar in The Confusions of Young Törless, in which Törless speaks of aspects of himself that “have a second, secret life” which require a “second sight”: “There’s something dark in me, deep under all my thoughts, something I can’t measure out with thoughts, a sort of life that can’t be expressed in words and which is my life, all the same” (Musil, The Confusions of Young Törless; cited in Bertoni, “Il romanzo,” 28–29). 56 On this point, see Laub, “Bearing Witness, or the Vicissitudes of Listening,” 59–63. A significant critique of trauma theory that comes out of poststructuralism, made by such authors as Dominick LaCapra, Wulf Kansteiner, Harald Weilnböck, and Anne Rothe, contends that the generative nature of this approach to and understanding of trauma has been so influential to a number of fields and disciplines that it has authorized a detrimental conflation between all human suffering and the specific experience of trauma. Critics argue that this line of study is essentially responsible for diluting the categories of “victim” and “perpetrator” by making perpetrators out of even inanimate/unconscious things, like cancer, and victims out of anyone who has ever suffered, regardless of where they stand vis-a-vis fault in a human-made catastrophe like war. I acknowledge that trauma theory, as it has evolved 40 experience, what cannot be put into words. Unconscious testimony, as “a truth that is, essentially, not available to its own speaker,” might also name what lives on in the body after the event and remains inaccessible to consciousness and language. The line of questioning that I open here through the emphasis on bodily experience points at another limit of current conceptions of trauma and specifically the communication of the experience of trauma through testimony. Bringing the findings of Van der Kolk and his associates into conversation with the literary interpretations of modernity in these novels allows us to think more concretely about how the body participates in the experience of trauma and what it might be able to divulge about it. Where Mafarka exposes the stakes involved with out of the Yale school of poststructuralism and deconstruction, has indeed allowed for a reevaluation of suffering in light of clinical studies of trauma survivors, and that the intertwining of discourses between literary studies and medical research around trauma has widened the scope of what it possibly names. However, I do not think that the public’s adoption of terminology from these discourses is cause to dismiss or abandon this line of questioning. This critique of trauma theory in the literary field tends to bunch together different actors working around similar notions of trauma and in so doing neglects the nuances between them. For example, although there is quite a bit of overlap between the discourses around trauma by such literary critics as Caruth and Felman that analyze literature and the representation in language of traumatic experience, others like psychologist Dori Laub and documentarian Claude Lanzmann who archive the testimonies of actual survivors of traumatic events, and still others like psychiatrist and researcher Van der Kolk who studies those survivors in a medical environment to find more effective ways of treating the symptoms of trauma, ultimately each engages with the study of trauma and others’ experiences of trauma differently. A general understanding of trauma that acts as a common denominator between these very different groups of researchers who engage with it does not weaken the definitions or approaches that each of them take as long as they articulate them thoroughly and consistently. I have found the interdisciplinary discussion that takes place across literature, medicine, and archives enriches our understanding of the experience of trauma and helps all of those engaged with survivors and their testimonies to better understand what that experience is like and how it fits into human experience more broadly. As Sütterlin also points out, many critics of trauma theory neglect to acknowledge the role that the medical and scientific communities, the APA in particular, played in the “universalization” of trauma. On this point, see Sütterlin, “History of Trauma Theory,” 19. For the most contemporary critiques of poststructuralist inspired trauma theory as it relates to cultural trauma, see Rothe, “Popular Trauma Culture: The Pain of Others Between Holocaust Tropes and Kitsch-Sentimental Melodrama” in Interdisciplinary Handbook of Trauma and Culture (2016); Kansteiner and Weilnböck “Against the Concept of Cultural Trauma,” in Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook (2008); LaCapra, History in Transit. Experience, Identity, Critical Theory (2004); Kansteiner, “Genealogy of a Category Mistake: A Critical Intellectual History of the Cultural Trauma Metaphor,” in Rethinking History n.8, v.2, 193–221 (2004). For an alternative critique regarding the understanding of experience and narrative as it is used by poststructuralist accounts of trauma, see Meretoja, “Philosophies of Trauma” in the Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma (2020). For a concise overview of the major debates surrounding trauma theory and its many tentacles, see Sütterlin, “History of Trauma Theory” in the Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma. Of interest in this volume as well is the essay by Davis, “Trauma, Poststructuralism and Ethics.” 41 technologization and what it threatens for the modern male subject, Quaderni poses the question, “is any human immune to the radical changes imposed by modern life?” (to which he answers with an emphatic “no”).57 Following the thread of the body-mind relationship through these novels allows us to see that the site of trauma is as much in the body as it is in the mind. They push us to question what role the body has in bearing witness to a detrimental disconnect that occurs in a traumatic event and how language fails to capture, communicate, or represent the experience of trauma to others.58 In each of the novels, the body of the modern subject betrays signs of emotional distress even when the conscious subject does not acknowledge, or even denies, feeling this way.59 Grounding my analysis in the physiological disruption that occurs in traumatic experience also gives us the tools to explore the possibility Freud leaves open 57 Pirandello’s text exemplifies the internal conflict born out of a disruption in the body-mind connection. Quaderni, in my view, is primarily concerned with how the relationship one has to oneself dramatically changes with the film camera and how those changes ripple through society; curiously though, Pirandello chooses to convey the disintegration of the body-mind relationship almost exclusively through the body. This has the effect of illustrating quite vividly the feeling of dissociation and also deliberately brings the body back into a conversation that might otherwise go on without reference to it. 58 Of late, there has been a greater interest in reading Italian texts through the lens of trauma but rarely does one see a monograph dedicated to this line of questioning. Three notable exceptions are Sambuco, ed. Transmissions of Memory: Echoes, Traumas, and Nostalgia in Post-World War II Italian Culture (2018); Natale, Per-formare il trauma: evoluzioni narrative dai conflitti mondiali al terrorismo (2019); and De Paulis, Curzio Malaparte: Il trauma infinito della grande guerra (2019), where De Paulis argues that Malaparte returned to the theme of the Great War throughout his literary texts as a way to “recucire la lacerazione psichica” by revisiting the traumatic experience through linguistic expression in an attempt to integrate it fully into his conscious experience. Otherwise, study of Italian literature through the lens of trauma is quite isolated to contemporary texts and especially those by Elsa Ferrante, whose novels lend themselves well to such an interpretive key. See especially the following article published in MLN’s latest Italian volume, the special issue on Elena Ferrante in a Global Context v. 136, n. 1: Caffè, “Global Feminism and Trauma in Elena Ferrante’s Saga My Brilliant Friend.” See also Waters, “Writing History, Trauma, and the (Dis/Re) Appearance of the Body in Cutrufelli’s La briganta” in Writing and Performing Female Identity in Italian Culture. (2017); Carpita, “Per una poetica dell’inclinazione: Scrittura del trauma ed etica relazionale nella poesia di Amelia Rosselli” in Carte Italiane: A Journal of Italian Studies (2017); Leavitt, “Repressed Memory and Traumatic History in Alberto Moravia’s The Woman of Rome” in Transmissions of Memory: Echoes, Traumas, and Nostalgia in Post–World War II Italian Culture (2018); Lešnik, “Pavese, Antonioni, and the Spectres of a Silenced Past: Adaptation and the Transmission of Historical Trauma” in The Journal of Literature on Screen Studies (2019); Slater, “Primo Levi’s Chernobyl: Ecology and Trauma in The Reawakening” in New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation (2021). 59 Mafarka, for example, in the midst of a sexual encounter with two ladies, unexpectedly erupts in a fit of tears and sobbing at an intruding thought of his dead brother; in another instance, Isabella in Forse che sì imagines an image of herself, that she cannot and will not recognize, take physical form in her reflection at the accusing words of her younger sister. 42 regarding consciousness as a shield against stimuli from the inside—an autoimmunitary response to the experience of the divided self.60 Stimuli from the Inside To widen the scope of vision on this possibility, I trace how elements such as anxiety and delirium, that would not normally constitute trauma, consistently accompany or anticipate other psychical symptoms that readily point to traumatic experience, such as dissociation. The subjects I consider exhibit a changed relation to reality that also detrimentally changes their relationship to the self. What Elissa Marder calls a temporal disorder does indeed accompany many of the symptoms that I read as anticipating or contributing to a traumatized relationship to the self.61 These include recurring memories that transport the subjects back to a previous moment, hallucinations that project them into the future, or paralysis that freezes them in a perpetual present. However, instead of interrogating the temporal and narrative disruptions that many literary thinkers of trauma theory attend to first, I tune into the bodies and physical expression of these characters and ask what they might signify instead. These expressions take the form of unexpected crying in moments of pleasure, an inability to articulate an image that takes hold of the mind, or a total-body terror at the reflection and recognition of oneself, among others. What these symptoms have in common is a resistance to death, an inability or refusal to accept it, whether it is the literal death of a loved one or the metaphorical death of a part of themselves. This might also be felt as a sequestering of a part of the self or an inability to access 60 Laplanche and Pontalis elaborate on psychic defenses turned against internal stimuli: “Generally speaking, defence is directed towards internal excitations (instinct); in practice, its action is extended to whatever representations (memories, phantasies) this excitation is bound to...” (The Language of Psychoanalysis, 104). 61 To paraphrase here, a temporal disorder refers to the interrupted experience of the present and the “changed structure of experience” in modernity. See Marder, Dead Time, 1–13. 43 and know a piece of one’s own being. If we follow Freud’s theory of trauma faithfully, though, death of a part of the self does not constitute a traumatic experience, despite the similarities it shares with the experience of someone who has been traumatized. But it might be explained by taking a divergent path that Freud leaves open regarding how consciousness as a shield could respond to a distressing intensity of stimuli arising from the inside. Freud acknowledges the possibility that stimuli from within can cause such a degree of unpleasure that the shield may be brought into operation against them as if they were acting from the outside: A particular way is adopted of dealing with any internal excitations which produce too great an increase of unpleasure: there is a tendency to treat them as though they were acting, not from the inside, but from the outside, so that it may be possible to bring the shield against stimuli into operation as a means of defence against them. This is the origin of projection...62 Projection, as understood through Melanie Klein’s reading of Freud, describes the fantasied externalization of what causes the unpleasure “as though it were necessary, if the instinct or the affect is to be truly expelled, for it to become embodied in an object” and is the inverse of introjection.63 The literary characters under discussion here pose a question to this possibility: can the externalized object be a dissociated part of the self, something internal that the subject wishes to avoid recognition of or with? Indeed, two of the female protagonists might be seen to 62 Freud, 33, emphasis in the original. 63 Laplanche and Pontalis, The Language of Psycho-Analysis, 353, emphasis in the original. Klein holds that the dialectic between introjection and projection actually constitutes the foundation of discrimination between subject (ego) and object (outside world). In her understanding, introjection and projection are essential to the stabilization of the subject and his or her experience: “The introjection of and identification with a stable good object is crucial to the ego’s capacity to cohere and integrate experience. Damaged or dead internal objects cause enormous anxiety and can lead to personality disintegration...” See Elizabeth Bott Spillius et al., The New Dictionary of Kleinian Thought, 40. See also Spillius, Melanie Klein Today (1988) for a collection of helpful essays that interpret Klein’s thought. 44 project outward a version of themselves in an attempt to shield themselves from internal turmoil. D’Annunzio’s Isabella Inghirami in her relationship with her sister and Pirandello’s Varia Nestoroff in her performance as film actress unconsciously give body to a part of themselves that they cannot recognize without serious emotional or psychological consequences. Similarly in Marinetti’s Mafarka, Mafarka sees a feminized version of himself in Colubbi and wishes to violently destroy her and any other feminine figure that resembles her, fearing as he does feminization himself. What these instances seem to suggest is that turning the shield against the self provokes other psychical functions such as incorporation and disavowal as if they were immunitary responses, that is, as if they were responding to a physical threat rather than one that is psychical. The body and mind resonate in the experience of emotion that this projection provokes.64 Significantly, the subjects’ responses to these externalized versions of themselves are visceral and experienced through the body, gripping the subject in terror, shock, or rage. The body-mind connection that we see in these instances points to another temporal disorder that at once projects the mind into the future in an attempt to prepare the psyche for potential trauma, and grounds the body irresistibly in the present through physical sensation. By deciphering these corporeal signs, we can better understand another layer to the experience of trauma and the way it unfolds for the subject—namely as a felt disconnect between what the body experiences and what the mind consciously knows. The novels grant us a uniquely rich context that allows us to follow these literary characters in the moment, when certain emotions arise unexpectedly, and to notice the resonances and repetitions between these instances and previous events. By attending to individual characters in their interpersonal relationships as well 64 Emotions hold a privileged place as the go-between between the psyche and the body; they can be just as hostile to the subject as stimuli found in the external modern environment. 45 as in the relationship they hold to themselves, my readings show that these characters dramatize the disintegration of the body-mind connection, the effects of which rupture manifest in the body. The Experience of Modernity: Listening to Trauma in Modern Italian Literature My research addresses a hiccup in the study of modern Italian literature and in trauma theory vis-à-vis technology and sexual difference. Each chapter attempts to rethink the relation between the body and mind through the problem of trauma and the different subjects who experience it in modernity, when fundamental experiences of life—how bodies and information move though time and space—change dramatically due to new technologies. To do this, I examine the literary production of three of the most influential literary patriarchs of the modern Italian tradition—F.T. Marinetti, Gabriele D’Annunzio, and Luigi Pirandello—focusing on one central novel from each author and other related texts. The three novels that ground my analyses are Mafarka il futurista (1910) by Marinetti, Forse che sì forse che no (1910) by D’Annunzio, and Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore (1925) by Pirandello.65 While they might appear a bit at odds with one another at first glance, taken together and read as contributing different responses to the question of the modern subject, the result is a generative perspective on concerns that modernity provoked regarding human vulnerability. Each of these novels might be read as a modern twist on particular lines of questioning that concerned their authors in earlier texts but that, in these iterations, engage actively with modern technology. 65 The original French version of Marinetti’s text, Mafarka le futuriste, was published in 1909 a few months after the Manifesto del Futurismo. I cite and refer to the Italian version throughout since I analyze the reception and trial of the Italian text as well as the language of that version. 46 For example, a central current of thought that runs through D’Annunzio’s Forse che sì is the concept of blood and heritage in its relation to the growing literature around mental pathologies espoused by people such as Paolo Mantegazza and Cesare Lombroso.66 D’Annunzio’s interest in this discourse emerges in his novelistic writing as early as 1894 in Il trionfo della morte and can be traced through other novels and texts as well.67 Yet, it is only with Forse che sì that the author shifts his thinking around bloodlines and figures out how to “overcome and transform the fate of hereditary illness.” Not coincidentally, in Forse che sì D’Annunzio funnels his interests in physiological illnesses through the lens of the modern subject and the airplane. The technological ability that this contraption affords, to distance oneself from the crowd of people that one belongs to, offers D’Annunzio the critical distance to think differently about the individual’s relationship to his lineage and inspires a twist in his view on blood, race, and birth. What changes with Forse is the ability the plane grants the subject to modulate distance between himself and his bloodline without losing connection to it; this in turn allows him the 66 D’Annunzio relied heavily on Cesare Lombroso’s and Guglielmo Ferrero’s work, La donna delinquente, la prostituta e la donna normale (1893), which reduced all romantic and even most unrelated behaviors to maternity and a maternal drive inherent in all women. Authors operating in the same vein of pseudoscience at the time, such as Paolo Mantegazza, Giuseppe Sergi, and Alfredo Niceforo disseminated the idea that blood or “stock” dictate the negative social conditions experienced by specific groups of people and that these social and often moral “deformities” could be recognized through the study of an individual’s physiology. These disciplines advanced the idea that a person’s genetic heritage determined his value and future; or, conversely, that one could determine an individual’s moral and social potential by looking at his lineage. Blood could, in other words, raise an individual up to greatness or condemn him irrevocably. Either way, destiny written in blood could not be overcome. These discourses fall under the broader category of biological determinism, however each has its own genealogy and contributed differently to the rhetoric of race prominent in nineteenth to twentieth-century Italy. For a detailed and thorough reading of psychoanalysis in the Italian context, see Michel David, La psicoanalisi nella cultura italiana (1990). See also Lilioza Azara and Luca Tedesco eds., La donna delinquente e la prostituta: l'eredità di Lombroso nella cultura e nella società italiane (2019) for a collection of essays on the impact of Lombroso’s thought on Italian culture and discourse. Of interest is also volume 7 of Storia d’Italia: Annali: Malattia e medicina (1984), edited by Franco Della Peruta. 67 For a compelling, in-depth genealogy of the intertwining of pseudoscientific discourses around physiological illness and its literary correlatives in decadentismo between the French and Italian traditions, see Spackman, Decadent Genealogies, especially chapters 1 and 3. See also Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (1983). 47 ability to inspire others. I argue that, with his new formulation of inspiration, D’Annunzio flirts with a Futurist tenet: that maternal birth is the origin of decay, contamination, and mortality. For D’Annunzio, the survival of not just the individual but the nation is at risk when mothers are in charge of birth and when technology does not inspire men to be greater than themselves. Paolo Tarsis must better himself through the overcoming of dual wills in order to inspire others through example. Only through this rebirth of his own making does man have the opportunity to rise above his base nature and become more than human, an Übermensch. If we turn to Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore, we find that the novel holds a similar relation to a line of thought that dominates much of Pirandello’s works—the crisi dell’identità and scissione dell’io, what might be described as the disparity between self-identity and imposed identity, and division of the self. These themes are perhaps most notable in his plays Così è (se vi pare) (1917) and Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore (1921), but also form the underlying current in his novels Il Fu Mattia Pascal (1904) and Uno, nessuno e centomila (1925).68 Quaderni’s uniqueness in this list derives from its explicit engagement with the psychological and social effects of the film camera and film industry as new technological innovations. Pirandello digs deeper into the questions he poses in these other texts by interrogating how the phenomenon of the crisi dell’identità interacts with or is exacerbated by the technology. In Quaderni, Serafino becomes mute after witnessing a violent death. Not only does he witness this first-hand but does so through the camera while filming. Serafino’s occupation as 68 Quaderni has been read as being part of a series of novels, starting with Il Fu Mattia Pascal (1904) and ending with Uno, nessuno e centomila (1925). Since Uno, nessuno was the last novel Pirandello wrote before moving into theatre, these novels are also read as precursors to the dramatic texts for which Pirandello will become most well- known. 48 camera operator forces him to bury his affects deep within the self so that they do not interfere with his work. They are in a sense held captive in the body through his engagement with modern technology. Whereas the novel, as a written account, attempts to give context to the violent event he witnesses, Serafino’s body, in going mute, bears witness to the overwhelming character of the experience. Reading this muteness as the body’s testimony to a traumatic event, I consider how prevailing theories of testimony privilege language and speech above corporeal expression and muteness. I expand the notion of testimony by thinking how the captivity of affects in the body and their dissociation from the event radically change the subject’s retelling of a traumatic experience. In relation to D’Annunzio’s and Pirandello’s texts, Marinetti’s Mafarka appears to stand as an outlier. It is by far the more fantastical, not only taking place in a fictionalized environment but also imagining impossible outcomes like the birth of a living machine, by a man no less. However, it sets the stage rhetorically and thematically for the novels that follow that choose to take up the question: “what does it mean to be modern?” In his Futurist writings and especially in Mafarka il futurista (1910), Marinetti imagines modern man as a technological savant, fortified by an intimate relationship with the machine which shields him from mortality.69 Immune to this curse of the human condition inherited from feminine birth, the Futurist is armored against the shocks and shrapnel of modernity.70 Marinetti creates in Mafarka his new 69 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista. The novel was originally published in French in 1909 as Mafarka le futuriste: roman africain and translated into Italian the following year by Decio Cinti. 70 Already in the Manifesto Marinetti expresses a desire to overcome death: “La Morte, addomesticata, mi sorpassava ad ogni svolto, per porgermi la zampa con grazia, e a quando a quando si stendeva a terra con un rumore di mascelle stridenti, mandandomi, da ogni pozzanghera, sguardi vellutati e carezzevoli” (Marinetti, “Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo,” 8). Of interest in this regard is Leonardo Tondelli’s Futurista senza futuro: Marinetti ultimo mitografo (2009), which discusses the multiple paradoxes at the heart of Marinetti’s Futurism. It should be noted that Mario Morasso’s work, particularly in La nuova arma: la macchina (1905) and Il nuovo aspetto meccanico del mondo (1907), influenced Marinetti’s and Futurism’s imaginary of the machine. For more on 49 Futurist body through a confusion of the reproductive and digestive systems that reveals the Futurist’s dependency on an unacknowledged maternal technology of reproduction. By considering the specific aggression against what Marinetti codes as maternal, I argue that the maternal function—as the ability to give life—is a necessary capability that the Futurist must acquire. However, in appropriating this capability, Mafarka ends up reproducing death through an unforeseen consequence of mixing organ functions and failed mourning. The undigested death of Mafarka’s brother leads directly to the birth of a mechanized airplane child whose first Futurist act is to destroy the world. Marinetti’s fantasy of male birth and absolute excision of the feminine puts into stark relief what is at stake in modernity, something that lingers as a concern in the modernist imagination: the preservation of masculinity and the modernization of man. Placing these three novels side by side allows us to see the development of a current of masculine anxiety provoked by the increase in machine ability and an unconscious comparison of the fragile human body to the armored body of the machine. Each author offers a response to the question of the modern subject and his defining traits, but Marinetti opens the conversation on the themes of trauma, the status of reproduction and birth in modernity, and man’s place between woman and machines. Indeed, none of the authors here escape the tendency towards othering and exclusion that familiar forms of misogyny make available. As the machine becomes more capable, man seeks to distinguish himself as its master in familiar ways by reestablishing his difference from woman through violence that often results in physical and psychical trauma. Morasso’s influence, see Roberto Tessari, Il mito della macchina: Letteratura e industria nel primo Novecento italiano (1973) and Paolo Pieri, La politica dei letterati: Mario Morasso e la crisi del modernismo europeo (1993). 50 Yet, the value of these novels lies not so much in what they tell us about masculine fantasies and the imaginary of the machine that they feed into (though they do say quite a bit on these points). Rather, they showcase how the fantasies of the modern subject come into being through the imagined confrontation with death and reveal the common threads of anxiety to which these fantasies respond. Reading these novels together and noting what changes occur within and between them, we can see how the conception of modernity revolves around a concern for the fragile human. Indeed, Pirandello’s text could be read as a forfeiture of the human to the machine as one possible way to cope with the realty of modernity, whereas Marinetti’s and D’Annunzio’s texts retain a glimmer of hope that man can armor himself for the potential trauma of tomorrow.71 Each author might have his own interpretation of the technologized environment of modern Italy, but all betray an unacknowledged anxiety around the impact that technologization has on the individual and human experience. Critical Perspectives on Italian Literary Modernism Literary critics describing Italian “modernism” seemingly agree on only two things: first that the term sits uncomfortably within their vocabulary.72 Writing as recently as 2018, Romano 71 As Hal Foster has noted in Prosthetic Gods, the fantasy of technological armament tends to the extreme in movements that “aspire to technologize nature and naturalize technology.” The consequences of such fantasies, though, are dire: “in this crossing, the human and the natural only appear to be reconciled; in fact they are forced together in a technological hybrid that confuses the creative and the destructive.” Following McLuhan, Foster identifies and elaborates a “double logic of prosthesis” and notes that it “governed the machinic imaginary of high modernism in the first decades of the twentieth century—underwrote its utopias, even subsumed in new technologies, as well as its dystopias of the body reduced, even dismembered by them.” See Foster, Prosthetic Gods, 120. 72 The bibliography on the evolution of Italian modernism as a critical category is vast, but I have found the following contributions especially helpful to grasp the contours of this multi-generational and transcultural discussion. For a detailed and thoroughly researched account of the relevant debates and evolution of the term modernism as it relates to the Italian literary context, see Somigli, “Dagli ‘uomini del 1914’ alla ‘planetarietà’. Quadri per una storia del concetto di modernismo” in Allegoria, n. 63, 2011. Other precise and useful essays in this volume regarding narrative include those articles by Baldi, “A cosa serve il modernismo italiano,” and Tortora, “La narrativa modernista italiana.” Of the contemporary Italian critics who have taken up the debates around literary 51 Luperini holds that, despite the many iterations it has gone through, “today we often talk about modernism in an indeterminate way and therefore not without inaccuracies and confusions.”73 This has to do with the various goals that critics hope the term achieves and with the etymology of the word itself in the literary context specifically. Modernism as a critical category developed in the context of Anglo-American literary criticism and history, and grew in tandem with a canon of experimental texts of the early-twentieth century, grounded first and foremost in the literary production of Pound, Eliot, Joyce, and Lewis; as such, the use of the term in other European traditions implicitly carries with it an ambition to compare the modernist production of one culture to that of the English original as it is difficult to find direct equivalents of modernism in this sense in other cultural contexts. 74 The term modernism arrives at the door of Italian literary modernism, see Il modernismo italiano (2018), a recent collection of essays edited by Tortora with contributions by a number of leading authors on Italian modernism broadly conceived; in this volume, see Bertoni’s essay on “Il romanzo” for a succinct overview of the main themes and questions surrounding the modernist novel. See also Luperini and Tortora’s edited volume Sul modernismo italiano (2012), in particular the two introductory essays by Donnarumma, “Tracciato del modernism italiano” and Luperini “Il modernismo italiano esiste.” For an attempt to isolate a school of Italian modernist novels, see Castellana, “Realismo modernista” in Italianistica, v. 39, n. 1, 23– 45, 2010. In his essay, Castellana suggests that the dates of the initial version of Si gira..., published in the magazine Nuova Antologia in 1915, and its final iteration as a novel Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore in 1925, serve as chronological markers for what he calls realismo modernista. This term does not relate the novelistic writing of this period to the French Realism of Balzac or the Italian Verismo of Verga, as it might suggest at first glance; instead, Castellana creates this category to identify those texts that probe and problematize the “realtà quotidiana di persone ordinarie e comuni, compiuta non secondo i canoni e gli stereotipi della tradizione, ma al contrario mediante tecniche di straniamento, cioè di deautomatizzazione dei normali meccanismi percettivi,” (23). For opposing views to this trend in the study of modernism, see Meneghelli, “Quanto è modernista il ‘modernismo italiano’? Letteratura mondiale, storia letteraria, periodizzazione” in Narrativa, n. 35–36, 77–91, 2013–14; and Giglioli, “Risentimenti antipostmoderni” in CoSMo, n. 9, 213–218, 2016. For greater insight into how these discussions evolved in the Italian context over time and with regard to the literary field in particular, see Luperini, Il Novecento: apparati ideologici, ceto intellettuale, sistemi formali nella letteratura italiana contemporanea (1981); Ceserani, Raccontare il postmoderno (1997); and Carlo Salinari, Miti e coscienza del decadentismo italiano: (D’Annunzio, Pascoli, Fogazzaro e Pirandello) (1960). 73 Luperini, Alla ricerca di forme nuove, 26. The original reads: “oggi si parla spesso di modernismo in modo indeterminato e quindi non senza imprecisioni e confusioni.” 74 See note 9 above for the relevant bibliography surrounding the evolution of the term “modernism” in the English context and as it relates to Italian modernism. See also Luperini, “Modernismo, avanguardie, antimodernismo,” in Alla ricerca di forme nuove for a recent exploration of the term’s origins and changes to its usage regarding literary movements in Europe. 52 studies as somewhat of a lost puppy—critics want to adopt it but have a difficult time reconciling its provenance with the needs and uniqueness of the Italian literary canon. The difficulty of anthologizing a modernist tradition and codifying a strict set of modernist techniques that plagues any attempt to address the concept of modernism in literature might be summed up in the following tension: the use of the term to denote a moment in the history of Western artistic production, and the use of the term to identify an aesthetic concept that can be applied broadly to artistic production. Coupled with the term’s origins in the Anglo- American context, this tension is a direct result of the constant pull on “modernism” to confront questions raised by modernity, which I understand as an historical time period marked by a series of radical new discoveries across disparate fields—psychology, physics, technology, art, photography, literature, philosophy, etc.—that made people question the experience of reality, both external and internal, in their relations with others and with themselves.75 It is in the second 75 Sanford Schwartz in “The Postmodernity of Modernism,” calls attention to how the difficulty of defining both modernity and modernism in relation to one another in turn affects and essentially destabilizes postmodernist critiques as well. See Schwartz, “The Postmodernity of Modernism” in The Future of Modernism (1997). For a Marxist inflected perspective, see Marshall Berman’s ambitious All That Is Solid Melts into Air (1982). Berman interprets modernism not only as a response to modernity but more importantly a critical reflection on modernity that participates in an attempt to wrest control over the production of the modern world out of the hands of the bourgeoisie. For a critique of Berman, see Perry Anderson, “Marxism and Revolution” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (1988). Anderson critiques Berman for not adequately considering the specific social, political, and economic contexts that each different modernism evolved in. For greater insight into this debate see Osborne, “Modernity Is a Qualitative, Not a Chronological Category” in New Left Review, n. 192, 1992, 65–84. In a similar vein to Anderson, see Frederic Jameson’s A Singular Modernity (2002), quite possibly the most important elaboration of a Marxist and poststructuralist analysis of the relation between modernity and modernism. Jameson sees a continuity between modernity and postmodernity in the sense that postmodernity is the aesthetic expression of modernization completed, where modernism is the aesthetic correlative to an incomplete modernization. The discussion over the relationship between modernity and modernism originates in a similar debate over the word “modernity,” which had multiple valences even before the use of the term “modernism” entered the critical debates around literary studies in the 60’s and 70’s. Matei Calinescu discusses the emergence of two distinct and “bitterly conflicting modernities” in his classic text, Five Faces of Modernity (1987): modernity “as a stage in the history of Western civilization...and modernity as an aesthetic concept,” which precedes a very similar division in the use of the term “modernism” in the literary context. The first valence speaks to a bourgeois idea of modernity that encapsulates the values of progress, science, and reason, and is “oriented toward pragmatism and the cult of action and success” (Calinescu, 41). The second valence holds instead a more radical spirit, epitomized by the avantgarde and its hostile attitude toward tradition. Of interest is also Calinescu’s discussion on “literary and other modernisms,” especially 68–85, with regard to how different inflections and uses of the term modernism may have 53 sense, as an aesthetic category within a given national or cultural tradition, that the term modernism and the study of modernisms has grown into a transcultural category today.76 Two main points of contention between critical understandings of Italian modernism are demarcating when it begins and ends, and the inclusion or exclusion of other categories, namely decadentismo and the avantgarde. In the introduction to their 2004 edited volume, Italian Modernism: Italian Culture between Decadentism and Avant-Garde, Mario Moroni and Luca Somigli note how these two terms, themselves nestled uncomfortably under the umbrella of modernism, fall short of reliably capturing the tendencies, movements, and shifts that they name. To combat this, the editors opt to use modernism broadly to investigate “the network of cultural responses...which reflect upon, react to, and seek to articulate alternatives to the triumph of the institutions of modernity.” 77 For them, modernism “thematizes a series of issues that are central to the understanding of the culture of period,” which spans the late-nineteenth century to the hindered its success in different cultural contexts. See also Antoine Compagnon, The Five Paradoxes of Modernity (1994), especially the preface to the English translation, for further discussion of where the term “modern” runs into conflict in different European linguistic contexts. Somigli notes that it is not rare to find “modernismo” used in the pejorative sense of ‘superficial enthusiasm for modernity’” given the term’s previous negative connotations in the Italian context (Somigli, “Dagli ‘uomini del 1914’ alla planetarietà,’” 8, my translation). In relation to Catholic modernism and the negative connotations it carried with it, see Daniela Sarasella, Modernismo (1995). For a more recent overview of modernism and its sprawling connections with other fields, see Mark Morrisson, Modernism, Science, and Technology (2017). 76 This includes new collected critical essays such as The New Modernist Studies (2021); Alla ricerca di forme nuove: Il modernismo nelle letterature del primo ‘900 (2018); Handbook to Modernism Studies (2013); The Cambridge Companions to European Modernism (2011); and The Oxford Handbook of Modernisms (2010). The emergence of scholarly associations like the American Modernist Studies Association and the Italian Centro Studi Arti della Modernità and their respective scholarly journals Modernism/Modernity and CoSMo, as well as Modernist Cultures journal, promote an interdisciplinary and international study of art, music, and literature under the umbrella of modernism that continues to broaden modernist studies. For an introduction into the ways modernist studies has grown to incorporate feminist, queer, and postcolonial theory, see Mao and Walkowitz, Bad Modernisms (2006). On women and modernism, see Scott, Gender and Modernism (2008); Delsandro, Women Making Modernism (2020); Liska, From Topos to Trope: Feminist Revisions of Modernism (1995); Bucur-Deckard, Gendering modernism (2017). For the most recent critical discussions around postcolonial theory and modernism, see Gennaro, Modernism after postcolonialism: toward a nonterritorial comparative literature (2020); see also Doyle and Winkiel, Geomodernisms: Race, Modernism, Modernity (2005). See Baker’s Modernism and the Harlem renaissance (1987) for a significant reframing of modernism to include marginalized authors and experiences; and the more recent Wilks, Race, Gender, & Comparative Black Modernism (2008). 77 Moroni and Somigli, Italian Modernism, 12. 54 early decades of the twentieth.78 Donnarumma and Castellana on the other hand follow Luperini’s proposed chronology of modernism which begins with Pirandello’s Si gira... in 1915. But even here there are disagreements: Donnarumma traces modernism into the 60’s with Gadda, while Castellana cuts it off at 1925 with the final version of Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore in 1925.79 The problem of the periodization of modernism also comes into conflict with previously established categories, such as the avantgarde.80 Both terms identify literature that straddles the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, strained between its emergence from previous conventions and its, at times, ballistic launch into new ones. The difference comes down to, in part, the way the term modernism is being deployed and one’s understanding of the avantgarde tradition in the specific cultural context. For many critics of Italian modernism, the avantgarde’s militancy and 78 Moroni and Somigli, 12. This is similar to other critics of modernism such as Pellini who proposes to begin the periodization of modernism with verismo and Verga, to include the avantgarde, and “mandare in pensione” the term decadentismo because of its unacceptable inclusion of such authors as Fogazzaro and D’Annunzio alongside Pirandello and Svevo. See In una casa di vetro (2004), 58; cited also in “La narrativa modernista italiana” by Tortora. Of interest in this regard is also Pellini’s Naturalismo e modernismo (2016). In relation to the wider literary network of modernist writers, or authors writing in a modernist key, in Europe in the early twentieth century, see Donnarumma and Grazzini, La rete dei modernismi europei: Riviste letterarie e canone (1918–1940) (2016). 79 Castellana sees this periodization reinforced by the publication of Moravia’s Gli indifferenti in 1929 which he sees as marking another shift in modernism. See Donnarumma, Gadda modernista (2006) and the already cited article by Castellana, “Realismo modernista.” Of interest to the debate around periodization is also Luperini’s Verga moderno (2005). 80 The debate over the relationship between modernism and the avantgarde is of course nothing new. Two foundational texts on this topic are Renato Poggioli, Teoria dell’arte d’avanguardia (1962), and Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde (1984). Poggioli elaborates an understanding of the avantgarde that finds its first stirrings in the late-eighteenth century as a response to “the particular tensions of [European] bourgeois, capitalistic, and technological society” in an attempt to break out of tired and traditional modes of artistic expression (107). Bürger offers a more precise historical definition of the avantgarde and considers its social intent and spirit as well. For Bürger, what distinguishes the avantgarde from other literary and artistic movements or schools at the time is its self-awareness as socially in opposition to the institution and commerce of art. In the expansive and detailed introduction to the English translation of Bürger’s text, Jochen Schulte-Sasse sums up the differences in this way: “Modernism may be understandable as an attack on traditional writing techniques, but the avant-garde can only be understood as an attack meant to alter the institutionalized commerce with art. The social roles of the modernist and the avant-garde artist are, thus, radically different” (xv). Williams offers a less confrontational option that captures the similarities between both modernists and avantgarde artists/writers while also recognizing their differences. In his essay, “The Politics of the Avant-Garde” in The Politics of Modernism (1989), he suggests that the avantgarde is the next stage of modernism, grounded as it is in aggressivity to the institution of art as it is today. 55 volatile break with tradition found most prominently in Futurism immediately divides those authors from others, like Pirandello and Svevo, who employ a more subtle erosion and contortion of traditional conventions.81 Federico Bertoni suggests that the avantgarde “premeditates” the destruction of the old, almost nervously or with anxiety. Instead, what modern authors have in common is “the fact of having sabotaged, from the inside, the rules and instruments inherited from the narrative tradition in which they took their first steps.”82 Sabotage, not explosion. Marinetti, for example, only appears among other “modernists” when the term is used broadly to define multiple artistic tendencies from the late-nineteenth to early twentieth century as a shorthand for the “crisis of the culture of modernity.”83 Futurism with its provocative language and imagery appears too hyperbolic to fit unconditionally in the category of modern, with most critics preferring to locate it squarely in the avantgarde. D’Annunzio, on the other hand, rarely appears in the protagonist role as a model modernist, even though some of his texts, Forse che sì being one of them, contemplate the very questions that define modernity as a cultural turning point.84 Pirandello and Svevo are the only two authors that are reliably placed alongside more recognizably modern European authors such as Joyce, Woolf, and Kafka.85 The reader will not find D’Annunzio’s prose or Marinetti’s Mafarka listed in any of the accounts by Debenedetti, Luperini, Donnarumma, or Castellana, due to the insistence on 81 These critics include Luperini, Bertoni, and Donnarumma. 82 Bertoni, “Il Romanzo,” in Il modernismo italiano, 22, my translation. The original reads: “Se c’è un tratto che accomuna scrittori molto diversi come Tozzi, Svevo e Pirandello (ma anche Joyce, Woolf, Proust, Musil e perfino Kafka) è il fatto di aver sabotato dall’interno codici e strumenti ereditati dalla tradizione narrativa in cui hanno mosso i primi passi. Invece di demolire l’edificio del romanzo classico con slancio avanguardistico e tripudio di espulsioni, i modernisti lo sgretolano dalle fondamenta, ne limano pilastri e strutture portanti…” 83 Somigli, “Dagli ‘uomini del 1914’ alla planetarietà,’” 22, my translation. The full quote reads: “Invece il modernismo inteso nel senso ampio di cultura della crisi della modernità …può contenere, fra le varie sue espressioni, anche quella avanguardistica.” 84 D’Annunzio does appear as a sort of proto-modernist in some accounts such as in Moroni and Somigli. 85 Tozzi appears in this grouping as well, though not as reliably as Pirandello and Svevo. 56 experimentation of form that these critics value above all else. While I agree that this metric is an important one, I suggest that an expanded notion of modernism, that considers the kinds of questions that literary texts take up in response to the peculiarity of the experience of modernity, should be included when we try to identify a modernist tradition in Italian literature. My readings of these three novels through the lens of the body and trauma reveal that Marinetti’s and D’Annunzio’s texts do indeed contemplate and speak to an experience of modernity as felt in the individual and his or her relationship to the self. The questions that these two novels begin to raise about how one’s relationship to the self becomes compromised with the introduction of modern technology come into full view in Pirandello’s text, which sits more comfortably beside other novels deemed modern by the critical consensus. Given the progression that we see across these novels and what we have to gain by asking more pointed questions of Italian modernism’s precursors, I gravitate towards Somigli’s understanding of modernist literature, whose position he describes in this way, following Bradbury and McFarlane’s notion of the crisis of modernity as a “crisis of culture”: “in all its multiform expressions, including the most celebratory ones, modernism would therefore register a condition of loss—of certainties, of points of reference, of faith—to which the artist gives shape and which, at the same time, elaborates the sorrow (“lutto”).”86 Part of what we have to gain by revisiting these novels by such literary masters is a different perspective on how modernity affected not only the way people perceived themselves 86 Somigli “Dagli ‘uomini del 1914’ alla planetarietà,’” 17, my translation. The original reads: “[modernismo] in tutte le sue multiformi espressioni, comprese quelle più celebratorie, il modernismo registrebbe dunque una condizione di perdita—di certezze, di punti di riferimento, di fede—a cui l’artista dà forma e di cui allo stesso tempo elabora il lutto.” It should be noted that “lutto” might be translated as sorrow, grief, or mourning, all of which pose a slightly different perspective on the ways these texts respond to modernity and what that response indicates vis-à-vis the authors’ own positions as writers, or artist-intellectuals, in the time of the machine. 57 as subjects in the world, but how the destabilizing effects of this shift changed the way the individual relates to him or herself.87 Nearly all literary critics of modernism agree that the texts considered to be modernist respond, albeit in varying degrees, to the changes in the way humans perceive the world. More specifically, modernist literature in some way speaks to how the emergence of new technologies and discoveries changed the modes by which people interact with the world and others to the point of undermining the certainty in the one’s psychological experience of oneself as a subject. Referring to the constellation of innovations across scientific, medical, and artistic disciplines, Debenedetti in Romanzo del Novecento (1971) calls our attention to the uniqueness of this historical moment: Sono altrettanti avvenimenti che sfaccettano e significano, nei loro campi diversi e rispettivi, quello che [si può chiamare] un nuovo sistema di coordinate dell’uomo nel mondo, una nuova percezione che l’uomo ha della struttura e quindi un nuovo sentimento e giudizio del mondo, e del proprio essere ed esserci nel mondo. They are so many events that chisel and signify, in their different and respective fields, what [one might call] a new coordinate system of man in the world, a new perception that man has of the structure and therefore a new feeling and judgment of the world, and of one’s being and being there in the world.88 This understanding of modernity and critical approach to modernist texts remains consistent even to today.89 Massimiliano Tortora’s Il modernismo italiano (2018), the most recent critical 87 While the novels I treat here are outliers in regard to their respective authors’ oeuvres, the authors themselves are not. Marinetti, D’Annunzio, and Pirandello were all renowned in their time for their literary works, in and beyond Italy. It would be interesting to trace the intertextual relations between these novels and the literary production of their respective authors around such themes as trauma, technology, and the body-mind connection and how these themes mutate across texts. 88 Debenedetti, Il romanzo del Novecento, 3–4, my translation. Cited also in Bertoni. 89 Debenedetti’s choice of Italian authors to include in this study reflects this perception of modernity. Though he does not use the term “modernism,” Debenedetti attends to many of the same themes that other critics of modernist 58 collection of essays that take up the question of Italian modernism, opens with the notion that modernists share a “compromised relationship with the truth” (“rapporto compromesso con la verità”) and agree that “any interpretation of reality is in fact partial...because it is the fruit of subjective instances and of an ‘I’ that already invests and deforms reality in the act of perceiving it.”90 The problem that my research addresses here is the blind spot this approach carries with it in regard to the body and the interaction between psychical and corporeal experiences. This underlying diagnosis of modernity privileges perception and the working-through of the subject’s position in relation to the world which happens internally. So when critics approach the literature emphasize, especially matters of experimentation with characterization and major shifts in the ways characters perceive themselves as actors in the world. However, he tends not to consider the entwinement of technology and life as a primary indicator of modernist leanings. He notes that the issue of periodization—of identifying authors who are truly contemporaries of one another and reflect the modernization of the novel—is made that much more challenging by the lentezza of literary and artistic developments with respect to scientific progress. Benedetto Croce dominated Italian literary criticism for much of the first half of the twentieth century, not only in the prominence of his thought but also in the style of his critique. Croce’s influence began in 1902 with the publication of L’estetica and continued especially with critical essays published in the magazine La Critica, later collected in the multivolume series La letteratura della nuova Italia, and La poesia (1936). He took issue with positivist methods, such as those used by Giosue Carducci and Francesco De Sanctis, for their tendency to explain a text’s genesis through examining biographical facts of the author or the influence of other textual sources. His position vis-à-vis positivism had its roots in his interpretation of a final piece of literature as an expressive, unrepeatable, and specific singularity that cannot be compared to others or subjected to norms of a genre. Art in his view is “intuizione pura” that is free from any empirical, intellectual, moral, or historical condition or reference (Martignoni 683). According to Croce, the work of the critic is to distinguish the “poetic” (poetici) elements from the non-poetic elements—anything that refers to what is external to the text, such as social polemics, ideology, historical or moral interests. This manifests in a clear distinction between poesia and struttura that defines Crocean readings. This resulted in the proliferation of many monographs that considered a single author or movement and restricted the breadth of literary criticism with regard to comparativist studies between cultures, traditions, or even authors. Croce’s literary criticism was grounded in a liberal perspective that sought to defend the ethico-political and moral values of the Enlightenment (Ceserani, “Critica” 887). As such, he denounced decadentismo on moral grounds for its sensual, irrational, and pathological character. In this light, it is not surprising that Croce did not take up the authors of modern Italian or European literature with their predispositions towards “l’inquietudine, disgregazione e dissociazione dell’io.” In response to Croce’s hostility toward contemporary writing that did not fit his preferred style or theme, Giacomo Debenedetti established an alternative modernist canon that emphasized the expression of “typical cognitive and existential experiences of modernity” and experimental techniques both in and beyond Italy (Ceserani, “Italy and Modernity” 54). For Debenedetti, the year 1921–1922 marks the beginning of the modernist novel in Italy as announced by its dismembering of the human character (personaggio-uomo) in the works of Tozzi, Pirandello, and Svevo. He has been called the “true critic of modernity” on more than one occasion for his uncanny ability to isolate modernist elements in the literature of his time and its antecedents (Ceserani, “Italy and Modernity” 54). 90 Tortora, 12–13, my translation. The original reads: “qualsiasi interpretazione del reale infatti è parziale…perché frutto di istanze soggettive e di un io che ormai investe e deforma il reale nell’atto di percepirlo.” 59 study of modern texts through this lens, they necessarily prioritize the mind over the body. Indeed, the body rarely comes into the forefront of scholarly critique of modernist texts.91 By prioritizing the lenses of trauma and the body, my readings show how trauma puts the mind and body into question and does so in particular ways through the entwinement of technology and life within the historical context of modernity. The novels I read here speak specifically to two problems that broadly define modernity: innovative technologies that change human capability and traumatic experience as it affects the mind and body. This dissertation begins to identify the ways these two problems intertwine in the early-twentieth century and how the literary responses to this fusion suggest another category that we have not given enough attention to—the body of trauma.92 My research here does not so much comment on Italian modernism as a category of literature, but rather offers another way of thinking about Italian novels from the early-twentieth century that has to do with their attitude towards modernity and the problems they intuit it will bring. The chapters that follow bring together texts that do not appear in any anthology of Italian modernism or even in the introductions to their respective authors’ oeuvres. They are misfits that are more easily glossed 91 A notable and recent exception to this is Modernism and the Avant-Garde Body in Spain and Italy, by Fernández- Medina and Maria Truglio. Of interest is also the collection of essays in Scritture del corpo: atti del XVIII Convegno internazionale della MOD, 22-24 giugno 2016, edited by Marina Paino et. al. 92 While there has been a proliferation of critical studies around literature and trauma in many national and global contexts, this has not been the case in the Italian context. The majority of literary analyses that take up trauma and Italian literature have been in the form of journal articles that deal with contemporary texts and authors, such as Elena Ferrante. Trauma is rarely taken up as the main theoretical framework for book-length studies on Italian literature. Notable exceptions to this include Maria Pia De Paulis, Curizio Malaparte: Il trauma infinito della Grande Guerra (2019) and Aureliana Natale, Per-formare il trauma: Evoluzioni narrative dai conflitti mondiali al terrorismo (2019). De Paulis argues that Malaparte returned to the theme of the Great War throughout his literary texts as a way to “recucire la lacerazione psichica” by revisiting through linguistic expression the traumatic experience in an attempt to integrate it fully into his conscious experience. 60 over or ignored completely than integrated into the authorial or national literary traditions, modernism included.93 In some ways, this in itself makes them modern, but that is not why we should read them together. I bring these novels into the same research project to articulate a subterranean current that I see course through the very different traditions that these three authors more readily call to mind. From decadentismo to the avantgarde, the new experiences of modernity touch each of them and made these authors skip a beat and question how the ways in which life becomes imbricated with technology would change humanity in the future and alter the experience of the present. Reading them together makes this current more visible and allows to ask better questions of other Italian literary traditions and of our own responses to unparalleled experiences around novel technologies. The Stakes of Technologization in Modern Italy If I were to choose a single characterization of Italian literary modernism, that encapsulates the critical debates that surround it, it would have to be Bertoni’s. He suggests that: Il modernismo non designa infatti un’epoca, un canone e tantomeno un movimento organizzato: identifica piuttosto una ‘somiglianza di famiglia’, 93 Another possible reason why these novels have not been taken up as much by Anglo-American scholars might be found in Somigli’s point regarding the retrospective construction of the category “modernism” as the precursor— and hence diametrically opposed other—to postmodernism, elaborated by the school of continental theory which took the American academy by force in the 1970’s. This “posthumous birth” of modernism had the effect of latching a negative connotation onto the term for its apparent hierarchical character, phallogocentrism, and rigidity—a catchall for everything that postmodernism opposed. It is not difficult to imagine that Marinetti, D’Annunzio, and Pirandello are more readily dismissed or wholeheartedly skipped by literary theorists coming out of postmodernist schools of thought given the authors’ political sympathies and even a vague association with modernist lineage. Somigli notes that the emphasis that critics put on autonomy, difficulty, and auto-referentiality (“l’autonomia, la difficoltà, e l’auto-referenzialità”) as the main characteristics of modernist art and literature contributed to framing modernism as elitist, defined by a strongly hierarchical relationship between the producer and the consumer that rendered the work of art “inaccessible to the general public” (Somigli, “Dagli ‘uomini del 1914’ alla planetarietà,’” 13). On this point see also Ihab Hassan, “Postface 1982: Toward a Concept of Modernism” in The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature (1982). 61 l’esigenza comune di scrittori che si sono distaccati—con forme e opzioni espressive molto diverse—dalle convenzioni estetiche, tecniche e spesso anche etiche delle tradizioni a cui appartenevano. In termini molto generali, può essere considerato un ventaglio di risposte possibili ai problemi generati dalla modernità e dalla modernizzazione, sullo sfondo di brusche trasformazioni storiche, politiche, scientifiche e tecnologiche che investono l’Occidente a cavallo tra Otto e Novecento. Modernism does not in fact designate an epoch, a canon, let alone an organized movement: it identifies more than anything else a ‘family resemblance,’ the common need of writers who detached themselves—with very diverse forms and expressive options—from the aesthetic, technical, and often even ethical conventions of the traditions to which they belong. In very general terms, it can be considered a range of possible responses to problems generated by modernity and by modernization against the backdrop of abrupt historical, political, scientific, and technological transformations that assaulted the West between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.94 Through this research project, I attempt to add an alternative perspective to the discussion of Italian modernism that places the body in direct conversation, if not contradiction, with the mind. I offer another way of thinking about modernism that moves beyond preoccupations with the mind, psychic disturbances, and uncertainties of identity and interrogates how the body fits into these concerns and may even cause them. In so doing, I intentionally approach the same questions from a different angle to get a better view of the whole situation. To do this, I employ a feminist reading practice of privileging embodied experience and women’s stories that often go ignored by traditional critics. Insights from gender and disability studies ground my assumption that gender and ability are not fixed or natural but are rather constructed. I draw particular inspiration from work in philosophies of sexual difference. In particular, Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero’s approach guides my reading practice when interpreting the masculinist texts 94 Bertoni, “Il Romanzo,” 19, my translation. 62 that I focus on in this project, some of which have clear proto-Fascist tendencies. Cavarero shows us that Western philosophy and language grounds itself in an artificial distinction between embodiment and abstract thought, which has historically had the purpose of excluding women from philosophical inquiry.95 The quintessential example of this is the place that the word “man” holds to signify all humankind, a position that supposes men and masculinity to be the norm and relegates women and femininity to an abnormal/subpar version of it. When read with Cavarero, even the study of modernism appears to be skewed masculinist with its narrow focus on matters of the mind. My research here provides another avenue of analyzing the same authors and texts but with an equal portion of attention given to embodied experience and the experiences of women characters. My approach does not just focus on heroes but dissects what constitutes the heroic journey depicted by the text. I break down the hero’s journey into critical moments, habits, and actions that make this trajectory unique or modern. In every case, the role that the feminine and women play in the constructions of the hero’s journey has been glossed over or ignored. Using embodied experience as a key critical lens allows us to see just how much the feminine and women play in constructing the myth of the hero. This feminist reading practice subsequently reveals that trauma is also a key component in the journey to become modern. 95 Adriana Cavarero has written extensively on the association of women with mortality through embodiment and birth. See in particular her work in Nonostante Platone: figure femminili nella filosofia antica (1990), “Per una teoria della differenza sessuale” in Diotima: Il pensiero della differenza sessuale (1987), and “Thinking Difference” in Symposium, vol. 49, no. 2, 1995, 120–29. For an introduction to the figure of the mother in Italian feminist thought and philosophy of sexual difference, see Cesere Casarino and Andrea Righi, Another Mother: Diotima and the Symbolic Order of Italian Feminism (2018). On the politicization of female reproductivity and the association of women with giving life and death today, see Penelope Deutscher, Foucault’s Futures (2017). The following collections of essays are invaluable for understanding the complexities and stakes of Italian feminist thought: Graziella Parati and Rebecca West, Italian Feminist Theory and Practice: Equality and Sexual Difference (2002); Sandra Kemp and Paolo Bono, The Lonely Mirror: Italian Perspectives on Feminist Theory (1993); Robin Pickering-Iazzi, Mothers of Invention: Women, Italian Fascism, and Culture (1995); and Giovanna Miceli Jeffries, Feminine Feminists: Cultural Practices in Italy (1994). 63 D’Annunzio’s and Pirandello’s text have not received that much attention from feminist scholars or even from those who draw on psychoanalysis or other theoretical frameworks that use sexual difference as an interpretative key. This might be explained by the classical reception that these authors share as being irrevocably misogynist, a condemnation passed onto their texts as being useless to feminist criticism or gender studies. Derek Duncan, for example, notes plainly that “D’Annunzio’s texts have nothing to tell us about women apart from their value as currency exchanged between men.”96 Even Roberto Tessari, who offers a compelling and thorough reading of the novel within the larger context of the Italian modernist imaginary, cannot see beyond the superficial orientation of the female protagonist to the male hero. He argues that Forse “is built on the tension between a future ‘third realm’ of humanity...and the past of the dead city,” where Isabella’s is nothing more than the personification of the ills associated with the past and the city of death, while Vana, the “donna-angelo,” represents the pure, spiritual path toward the future.97 Likewise critics of Quaderni such as Angelini, Mazzacurati, and Pupino write off the drama that surrounds Varia Nestoroff as a pretext for Serafino’s philosophical musings and liken it to a feuilleton typical of the Ottocento.98 Marinetti’s early manifestos and even Mafarka, on the other hand, have generated critical attention from prominent feminist scholars, perhaps because his hyperbolic and provocative language cannot help but direct scholarly attention towards Futurism’s defamation of women and 96 Duncan, Reading and Writing Italian Homosexuality, 25. 97 Tessari, Il mito della macchina, 191. The original reads: “è costruito sulla tensione tra un futuro ‘terzo regno’ dell’umanità … e il passato della città morte.” 98 See Franca Angelini, “Si gira...: l’ideologia della macchina in Pirandello,” in Il romanzo di Pirandello, 143-160; Giancarlo Mazzacurati, “Il doppio mondo di Serafino Gubbio” in Pirandello nel romanzo europeo, 241-268; Angelo Pupino, Pirandello, o L'arte della dissonanza: saggio sui romanzi (2008). Of interest to the reader might also be Pupino, Pirandello: maschere e fantasmi (2000); Angelini, Serafino e la tigre: Pirandello tra scrittura, teatro e cinema (1990). 64 femininity. Much of that feminist scholarship emphasizes how violence against women and the feminine in literature reinforces political or ideological stances. What these studies leave wanting, though, is a thorough investigation into how the disintegration of the female subject’s body-mind relationship contributes directly to the stabilization of the male subject. By focusing on the manifestation of trauma in female characters as conditions for the triumphs of male protagonists, my project shifts feminist critique away from an emphasis on rhetorical strategy and towards a symptomatology of bodily expression. The effects of physical and emotional violence against women result in the construction of a debilitated feminine other against which the modern male subject defines himself. The process of becoming modern appears as a process of fragmentation and defeminization, in addition to traumatization. My methodology of studying the corporeal symptoms helps to widen the vocabulary around a symptomatology of the body of trauma by grounding my readings in what we might call traditional subjects of trauma—subjects that experience trauma as it is defined by the APA.99 99 While the majority of the characters I analyze experience an easily recognizable traumatic event, there are some whose experiences are not fully known to the reader or fall within the “common experiences” that do not generally produce symptoms of trauma, namely Mafarka, Vana, and Varia Nestoroff. In these instances, I gauge my analysis on the characters’ symptoms, actions, and the relation between the context and the emotional responses that it provokes. While I do not argue for an expansion of the definition of trauma, it is worthwhile to note in the APA’s definition of it the amount of flexibility there is in the recognition of the symptoms of PTSD. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (1980) notes that “the stressor producing this syndrome [PTSD] would evoke significant symptoms of distress in most people, and is generally outside the range of such common experiences as simple bereavement, chronic illness, business losses, or marital conflict” (APA, 236). However, it goes on to suggest that there is a great deal of variation in the way PTSD expresses itself: “the traumatic event can be reexperienced in a variety of ways. Commonly the individual has recurrent painful, intrusive recollections of the event or recurrent dreams or nightmares in which the event is reexperienced. In rare instances there are dissociativelike states, lasting from a few minutes to several hours or even days, during which components of the event are relived and the individual behaves as though experiencing the event at that moment” (APA, 236). Furthermore, there is a wide range of events that could constitute a traumatic event and the type of event that causes trauma in some does not necessarily indicate that the same experience will be felt by others: “the trauma may be experienced alone (rape or assault) or in the company of groups of people (military combat). Stressors producing this disorder include natural disasters (floods, earthquakes), accidental man-made disasters (car accidents with serious physical injury, airplane crashes, large fires), or deliberate man-made disasters (bombing, torture, death camps). Some stressors frequently produce the disorder (e.g., torture) and others produce it only occasionally (e.g., car accidents)” (APA, 236). 65 In my readings, I zoom in on the corporeal symptoms and let them guide my analysis of the psychic symptoms, relations between characters, and the actions those characters take. The symptoms I tune into do not manifest in the same way across all of the literary texts I consider. The texts do share, however, a reliance on the body as a medium of expression, akin to an exhaust valve, be it literally or figuratively. For example, in Mafarka, Marinetti’s use of the body, its organ functions, and the significance he gives to different organs is more suggestive of the protagonist’s experience of trauma than Mafarka’s actual bodily symptoms. On the surface, those symptoms are nothing special—he cries a lot and has indigestion. Yet, when taken together with the context in which these symptoms arise and the manner in which they do so, they stand apart from what we would consider normal grieving. The same is true of Isabella’s and Vana’s memories of their mother. If we ignore the larger context in which these characters exist and the dynamics between characters, then it is easy to write off a flashback, memory, or irrational reaction as inconsequential. By assuming that their storylines are integral to the protagonist’s trajectory and that what happens in each “thread” impacts the other, a very different picture comes into view, one that is more nuanced and detailed than most critiques acknowledge.100 I consider this privileging of the body and using it as a starting point for my readings as a feminist practice because it not only reveals more about the female characters, and thereby grants 100 A lack of appreciation for the storylines that surround the female characters hinders classic readings of D’Annunzio’s and Pirandello’s texts. This could be a residual effect of Croce’s influence which denounced the themes of decadentismo that female characters disproportionately tend to embody and demanded that the critic treat the poetic elements of a text separately from the non-poetic elements. See note 89 for more discussion on Croce’s influence. For example, most critics of Quaderni note two “filoni” that entwine to form the novel, but only a handful analyze the two narrative strands as having anything to do with one another. Critics such as Angelini, Mazzacurati, and Pupino argue that the essay-like reflections in the novel contain the most important subject matter of the text and write off the drama that surrounds Nestoroff as a pretext for Serafino’s philosophical musings and compare her storyline to that of a feuilleton typical of the Ottocento. 66 them the critical attention that they demand, it also upsets the dominant preference for ideas and the abstract—a critical position that Cavarero among other philosophers of sexual difference tie to masculinist domination of the direction and attitude of Western philosophy and which we see as well in much literary criticism of modern Italian texts. My readings accomplish two critical goals; first, to bring the insights of trauma theory and the clinical study of trauma to bear on the study of modernist Italian texts. The lens of the body sharpens the image of the traumas that these characters suffer and reveals other possibilities that arise with such catastrophic experience. Marinetti shows us a fantastical reimagining of the body itself in the ideal Futurist subject that mixes and matches organs and organ functions to suit man’s modern needs; D’Annunzio’s characters struggle to break out of their destinies and compulsion to repeat the traumatic events of their pasts; and Pirandello’s cameraman and actress grapple with the dispossession of all or parts of their bodies to the voracious film camera. In the later two novels, the experience of trauma lends its subjects impossible foresight and knowledge that remains foreclosed to others.101 Second, my research shifts focus away from authorial intent (and the narrative about these authors by traditional critics) and opens a new line of questioning that considers the experience of women characters and what they have to tell us about modernity and the heroic modern subject. The chapters here reveal the way birth and reproduction are appropriated for heroic/masculinist trajectories and myths; a more nuanced view of technology by the authors; and an embodied relation to technology that moves beyond alienation towards dissociation and traumatic experience.102 This approach allows us to see where the heroic project 101 Though it is unlikely that these characters could be said to benefit from this strange side effect. 102 For a Marxist-inflected understanding of the role of literature and art broadly in the Italian context, see Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere (1948). Across his Quaderni, Gramsci elaborates a theory of cultural hegemony that relies heavily on his interpretation of the role language and culture plays in shaping the way people view the world around them. Gramsci’s unique Marxist perspective is grounded in the belief that language and culture had a central 67 breaks down and illuminates the very real effects on the subject and the extent of those effects on his or her relation to the self. Chapter Outline The dissertation is divided into three chapters. Each of the authors I study is concerned with the status of the human, and particularly the artist-intellectual, in the “age of the machine,” as Pirandello puts it. The novels in question draw on the language of myths, dreams, and fantasies to show the potential of modern technology or, in the case of Pirandello, to emphasize the danger it poses for the individual and social communities. In each chapter, I identify a technological fantasy that the novel engages with, a specific myth surrounding modern technology. I then analyze its component parts, with particular attention to how sexual difference and trauma operates within its logic. Finally, I analyze the protagonists’ desires in relation to that myth and the response the novel gives to my larger research question: What are the limits of the role to play in enabling the proletariat and subaltern classes to gain control of the forces of production and establish a communist state. The English translation and restructuring of many of the Quaderni essays in Selections from Cultural Writings (1985), edited by David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, is immensely helpful for readers interested in specific topics as it is restructured around themes. For further insight into Croce’s influence on Gramsci, see Eugenio Garin, “Gramsci e Croce” in Intellettuali italiani del XX secolo (1996). Other important literary critics that continued in a Marxist key include Alberto Asor Rosa, Edoardo Sanguinetti, Franco Fortini, and Cesere Cases. Asor Rosa’s Storia d’Italia recalls the narrative model of literary historiography that De Sanctis made popular with Storia della letteratura italiana (1870-71), which resembles a novel with historical protagonist. Of those who tried to reconcile a Marxist perspective with rhetorical analysis, see especially Galvano Della Volpe, Critica del gusto (1960); Arcangelo Leone De Castris, Il decadentismo italiano (1971), L’anima e la classe (1972), and Estetica e politica. Croce e Gramsci (1989). For a philological reading of the Italian novel that developed out of other European scholars such as Spitzer, Auerbach, and Starobinski, see Gianfranco Contini’s work, especially Varianti e altra linguistica (1970) and Esercizi di lettura (1974). Contini became the principal exponent of “espressionismo,” what he conceptualized as a mixing of dialects or other languages, styles, and deviations from standard literary norms. Central to his methodology was confronting previous versions of completed works, the so called “scartafacci” (Ceserani, Critica e storia” 895). Out of the study of philology came another shift in literary criticism in the 60’s towards semiotics and structuralism. D’Arco Silvio Avalle, Maria Corti, Cesere Segre, and Dante Isella founded the literary magazine Strumenti Critici in 1966, which became the primary seat of this school of thought in Italy. For a thorough mapping out of the major shifts in Italian literary criticism, see Ceserani, “Critica e storia letteraria” in Manuale di letteratura italiana (1996), edited by Brioschi and Di Girolamo; and Guida alla letteratura italiana v. 3, Dall’unità d’Italia a oggi (1996), edited by Lavezzi, Martignoni, et. al. The reader might also want to consult Ceserani’s Guida allo studio della letteratura (1999). 68 sexed body and mind in modernity and how does technology intercede to extend or further restrict them? Central to my methodology is the privileging of female character’s experiences and perspectives, especially when they have not traditionally been considered as protagonists. Chapter 1 opens with a discussion of Futurist rhetoric from the Manifesto and other early texts to situate Marinetti’s poetic misogyny and its importance for the Futurist literary movement. It then poses Mafarka il futurista (1910) as an exceptional example of Marinetti’s, and by extension Futurism’s, anxieties around the metallicized machinic body and the insecurities this raises for the male body in relation to the female body.103 In Mafarka, Marinetti fantasizes about immortality as the overcoming of decadence (as a literary phenomenon and physical deterioration), contagion, and death. My argument follows Marinetti’s construction of a “Futurist body” through his confusion of organs and his assignment of significance to them, including mapping the male intellect onto the reproductive organs to connote artistic/procreative ability. The technologized body of the mythic Futurist father turns out to be more of an amalgamation of technologies than a technologized god. What is more, the appropriation of the maternal function confirms a deeply rooted anxiety about feminine power that underwrites much of Marinetti’s Futurist imagination and rhetoric. Women, like libraries, museums, traditional poetry, and literature, threaten to impede progress by capturing the desires of men who would otherwise join the ranks of Futurists in a pursuit of risk and likely death. But women also, furtively, threaten to take the place of the Futurist under the right circumstances, one of which is surprisingly through motherhood. The figure of the mother dislocates pieces of Marinetti’s Futurist body by presenting him with a powerful feminine figure who can do much more by 103 The original French version was published in 1909. 69 nature than the manufactured Futurist can do by appropriation. As a threshold between death and life, the figure of the mother and the maternal function haunt Mafarka as the hero attempts to appropriate this misunderstood ability and unconsciously gives death a new life. The final section focuses on failed mourning (incorporation) and its role in Mafarka’s heroic journey that turns out to be not quite as masculine as he or Marinetti would have us believe. Diverging from Spackman’s reading of the novel, I suggest that the airplane-child that Mafarka gives birth is really the product of “undigested” death, Mafarka’s inability to recognize and come to terms with the death of his brother. This inability is steeped in an unacknowledged anxiety of feminization, which would occur if Mafarka were to mourn as other women do for his dead brother. Mafarka’s ex-lover, Colubbi, acts as a counterpoint to the king-turned-mother and appears as a sexualized and maternal figure. She poses a significant threat to Mafarka as she exhibits all of the traits that constitute a Futurist and naturally possesses the technology of the maternal function. Chapter 2 focuses on D’Annunzio’s novel Forse che sì forse che no (1910) and related texts such as Il trionfo della morte (1894) and Le vergini delle rocce (1895). No other novel of his treats the themes of psychological disorder and the advent of new technologies in such detail, even though many of his texts feature a woman character who is deemed mentally or physically “unhealthy.” Thinking through what it means to become modern and his vision of the modern subject, D’Annunzio offers a more nuanced view of technology than Marinetti and in particular suggests another kind of violence that man needs to confront in order to pass from regular man to modern man. As opposed to the Futurist emphasis on ballistic motion and explosive bodily danger, D’Annunzio points to something closer to emotional suffering as a necessary, even self- inflicted, violence that opens the door to modern subjectivity. Where Marinetti delights in 70 volatility and contradiction, D’Annunzio savors the subtleties of difference, be it between masculinity and femininity, flying a plane and driving an automobile, or even between different versions of the self.104 Forse che sì offers a more intimate perspective on the intricacies of the hero’s transformation into the modern subject and identifies additional conditions for his success in doing so. I focus on the Nietzschean underpinnings of the novel and how will and ability shape who becomes the superuomo, or Übermensch, and how the presence of two competing wills ultimately dictates who survives. This chapter interrogates the heroic status of Paolo Tarsis in relation to Isabella Inghirami, a potential feminine counterpart to the modern male subject who is ultimately committed to an insane asylum. Paolo only solidifies his identity as pilot-Übermensch after Isabella reaches the inverted yet equivalent status of debilitated feminine villain. His status as the modern subject depends on the construction of Isabella as a perverted madwoman, an identity that emerges as her self-identity comes into conflict with the identity imposed on her by societal pressures. Isabella’s mind begins to disintegrate as her will to be a good maternal figure for her siblings clashes with her desire to be with Paolo. Her conflict of wills increasingly manifests itself psychologically and physically as she continues to interact with Paolo until a breaking point occurs, following a physically and sexually violent encounter, that exacerbates and amplifies the internal struggle she has with herself. As the airborne Übermensch inches closer to the cielo, Isabella morphs into the abysmal other and sinks further down into the terra. In reading Forse che sì as a modern epic in which the masculine hero journeys to reach his 104 For a thorough analysis of the ambiguous masculinity of many Dannunzian male characters, see Duncan, Reading and Writing Italian Homosexuality, 17–40. 71 destiny, I give equal importance to the complementary storyline of Isabella’s earth-bound trajectory towards the chasm. Chapter 3 analyzes how sustained engagement with technology (here, the film camera and the film industry), severely disrupts the individual’s relationship to the self in Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore (1925). Though this relation has been read as one of alienation, I argue that it is more complex than this reading suggests. Marxist readings of the novel often fail to account for how the acquisition of knowledge affects the relationship Serafino has to his body and to himself as a subject. Significantly, Serafino comes to a particular knowledge of modern life through a series of dissociative and traumatic experiences. I examine the temporal structure of the journals and the connection between his body and mind to uncover the nature of his experience and how he uses writing to come to terms with it. The language Serafino uses to describe working with the camera focuses almost exclusively on how he relates to his body and mind in terms of affect and body parts. I argue that the irregularity of how and when information is shared with the reader of the journals reveals more about Serafino’s relationship to writing and to himself than he does intentionally or, perhaps, is able to consciously. I discuss at length how this relation is one of dissociation that occurs because of a traumatic experience that sequesters memory from bodily sensation, leaving the subject shutoff from the full experience of an event. In Quaderni, the fantasy that the technology of the film promotes is that life can be as marvelous as it is in the movies. Yet, through Serafino’s eyes, the face of technology that we see is ghastly and atrocious. It is so powerful that it bends everything around it like a black hole. Through its influence over reality (through the choices people make to portray themselves as if they were in a film) and ability to produce a “reality” as “marvelous” as a dream, technology has enabled people to create ad nauseam. This ultimately leads to a radical change within the self. 72 This is demonstrated most radically by Serafino and Varia Nestoroff, a film actress and protagonist of the novel. The desire here (expressed by Serafino) is to dismantle this myth/dream of a marvelous reality and the obsession with technology (especially as a measure of human life) in order to reveal what it does to one’s relationship with the self. I dedicate the final section to examining how Nestoroff’s experience as an actress changes the way she relates to herself through technology, both in seeing her image on screen and in her personal life away from the camera. The way she treats her body suggests that even she cannot address herself as a subject but only as an object, despite her cognizance of the “game” at play around her. What Does It Take To Be Modern? In focusing on the subject’s entanglement with modern technology, this dissertation investigates how technology impacts the already vulnerable position of the subject of trauma. Both trauma and technology appear to feed off one another, each drawing out something inherent in the other and increasing its potency. The extension and augmentation of human capability through new technologies like the automobile, airplane, and film camera, led to new fantasies and dreams of what the modern subject would be able to accomplish—from male birth to conquering the sky. But such radical change in capability also led to anxieties about the status of the human body and mind in the “time of the machine” and what the future would entail for man when humans act more like mechanized objects and machines more like human subjects. I argue that in the early-twentieth century and still today, an unconscious anxiety about human ability and fragility in the face of the machine lies at the heart of technological innovation. By studying the representations of the modern subject and the imagined ways he comes into being, often by way of traumatic experience, we uncover what the modernist writers discussed here could 73 already foresee—that as technology and life become ever more imbricated, the human subject stands to lose touch with more than just our animal nature. We stand to lose the ability to have a relationship to the self and with it, the ability to address ourselves and one another through testimony. 74 Chapter 1: Unexpected Organs: The Futurist Body and Its Maternal Parts Introduction: Marinetti, Manifestos, and Mafarka It may seem odd to open a discussion of Italian modernism and the modern subject within it with a chapter devoted mostly to F.T. Marinetti’s novel, Mafarka il futurista (1910). It does not sit top of mind for those schooled in Italian Futurism or to anyone familiar with European modernism more broadly, and yet it is among the first narrative attempts in Italian to contemplate what it means to become modern. In relation to his more well-known manifestos and poetry, Marinetti’s Mafarka appears to stand as an outlier in genre and style. It is by far the more fantastical, not only taking place in a fictionalized environment but also imagining impossible outcomes like the birth of a living machine, by a man no less. However, it sets the stage rhetorically and thematically for novels that follow that choose to take up the question: what does it mean to be modern? In his Futurist writings and especially in this novel, Marinetti imagines modern man as a technological savant, fortified by an intimate relationship with the machine which shields him from mortality.105 Immune to this curse of the human condition inherited from feminine birth, the Futurist is armored against the shocks and shrapnel of modernity.106 Marinetti creates in Mafarka his new Futurist body through a confusion of the reproductive and digestive systems that reveals the Futurist’s dependency on an unacknowledged 105 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista. The original French version of Marinetti’s text, Mafarka le futuriste: roman africain, was published in 1909 a few months after the Manifesto del Futurismo. It was translated into Italian the following year by Decio Cinti under Marinetti’s strict supervision. I cite and refer to the Italian version throughout since I analyze the reception and trial of the Italian text as well as the language of that version. All quotes are taken from the Mondadori publication of Cinti’s translation. 106 Already in the Manifesto del Futurismo Marinetti expresses a desire to overcome death: “La Morte, addomesticata, mi sorpassava ad ogni svolto, per porgermi la zampa con grazia, e a quando a quando si stendeva a terra con un rumore di mascelle stridenti, mandandomi, da ogni pozzanghera, sguardi vellutati e carezzevoli” (Marinetti, “Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo,” 8.) 75 maternal technology of reproduction. By considering the specific aggression against what Marinetti codes as maternal, I argue that the maternal function—as the ability to give life—is a necessary capability that the Futurist must acquire. However, in appropriating this capability, Mafarka ends up reproducing death through an unforeseen consequence of failed mourning and mixing organs and organ functions. What I read as the undigested death of Mafarka’s brother leads directly to the birth of a mechanized airplane child whose first Futurist act is to destroy the world. I open the chapter with a look back towards the original manifestos and writings that cement Marinetti’s Futurist rhetoric, with particular attention to the “Foundazione e Manifesto del Futurismo” (1909), “Contro Venezia passatista” (1910), and “L’uomo moltiplicato e il Regno della macchina” (1915).107 This helps to situate the reading of Mafarka in the larger system of Futurist rhetoric. I then turn to I processi al Futurismo per oltraggio al pudore (1918), where Marinetti and his futurist brothers record their closing remarks at the novel’s sequestration trial in October of 1910, in which I discuss Marinetti’s artistic vision in Mafarka and his utilization of misogynist rhetoric to move this project forward.108 Next, I begin an analysis of Mafarka in light of this editorial history and larger Futurist context.109 Marinetti creates in Mafarka his new Futurist body through a confusion of the reproductive and digestive systems that reveals the Futurist’s dependency on an unacknowledged maternal technology of reproduction. By 107 I will refer to the “Foundazione e Manifesto del Futurismo” simply as the Manifesto del futurismo. 108 Marinetti used this trial as an opportunity to draw attention to the novel and Futurism. Part of this strategy included publishing an account of the trial as an appendix to Distruzione: Poema futurista complete with parentheses marking the crowd’s applause and laughter. The appendix is reprinted in Mondadori’s 2003 publication of the Italian translation. For further details regarding the trial, see Clauda Salaris, Marinetti editore (1990), 105–11. 109 For an overview of Marinetti’s Futurist texts and their editorial history, see Luciano De Maria’s introduction to Teoria e invenzione futurista xix–lxxi, and Claudia Salaris, Storia del futurismo (1985), 30–35. Of interest might also be Salaris, Marinetti: arte e vita futurista (1997). 76 considering the specific aggression against what Marinetti codes as maternal, I argue that the maternal function—as the ability to give life—is a necessary capability that the Futurist must acquire. I focus on the ways Marinetti and Mafarka fragment women’s bodies into consumable parts and how this strategy actually backfires for the Futurist project. I pay particular attention to the way both author and protagonist try desperately to separate the maternal function from the female body so that modern man can appropriate it. The figure of the mother, or any potentially reproductive woman, consequently becomes a target for the Futurist’s violence. However, in appropriating the maternal function, Mafarka ends up reproducing death through an unforeseen consequence of mixing organ functions and failed mourning. Finally, I analyze how the unexpected death of Mafarka’s brother, Magamal, sets a series of events in motion that are motivated by a desire to replace the mother in the scene of birth. Mafarka’s inability to mourn his brother’s death leads directly to the birth of his mechanical son, Gazurmah, and the repetition of the displacement of woman from the scene of birth and a confusion of creation and destruction through an uncritical embrace of technology. I discuss how failed mourning and an unconscious anxiety around feminization leads to introjection and the unintentional creation of an intrapsychic crypt, which ultimately has the effect of making death reproductive and reproducing death on larger scales. The undigested death of Mafarka’s brother leads directly to the birth of a mechanized airplane child whose first Futurist act is to destroy the world. It is to the sequestration trial of Mafarka and Marinetti’s provocative rhetoric that I now turn. Futurist Rhetoric in the Early Years: The Future is Ma(n)chine On October 8th, 1910, future war-veteran, Fascist, and original Futurist poet, F.T. Marinetti took the stand to defend his novel, Mafarka il futurista. The novel, charged with 77 “offending public decency,” tells the story of a hero who rises above his bad behavior to become an artist. Mafarka shows his heroic qualities at first by killing his uncle Bubassa in battle and seizing the throne. But Marinetti’s hero only reaches his lofty potential by creating a mechanical son. Using his masculine will and a collection of stolen parts, Mafarka gives life to the ideal Futurist. Gazurmah, whose body resembles an airplane more than a human, combines male virility and vigor with the latest modern technology to realize Marinetti’s fantasy initially sketched in the “Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo” (1909). Not by accident does Gazurmah’s birth occur without any female participation. Overcoming the laws of biological reproductivity is part and parcel of Mafarka’s heroism in this act of artistic (pro)creation. As Marinetti states in his defense at the trial, “[Mafarka] vuol creare e crea, in una lotta sovrumana contro la materia e le leggi meccaniche . . .”110 To supersede the human, it would seem, the Futurist must overcome the human body and the ways it is reproduced. Marinetti’s statement euphemistically echoes what Mafarka says in the text itself, that “i difetti che provengono dalla vulva” predispose the body “alla decrepitezza e alla morte.”111 Put differently, Mafarka’s claim to be a Futurist depends on his parthenogenetic ability to give life “senza il concorso della vulva” and, in so doing, to thwart mortality imagined as a byproduct of female birth.112 Not just any human body must be overcome, then, but the female body in its reproductive inflection as maternal. As a body against which the Futurist must position himself as male (but to which he aspires for its reproductive ability), the maternal body threatens to feminize him as a competing but similarly creative entity. Through an unexpected 110 Marinetti, “Il processo e l’assoluzione di Mafarka il futurista,” 7. 111 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, 209. 112 Marinetti, 163. 78 exchange of organ functions, as Mafarka approximates this reproductivity, the maternal body takes on identifiably Futurist properties—virility, pleasure in the risk of death, and the capacity for physical violence. Despite the centrality of the threat it poses, the maternal body scarcely occupies the position of adversary. Instead, a hypersexualized female body appears as the main target of male aggression and violence. Marinetti’s sexualization of women and the violence against the feminine works as a rhetorical strategy to distract the reader (and perhaps himself) from recognizing the danger of the maternal body. By reducing the female body to desirable parts, Marinetti draws attention away from the reproductive threat that lies behind them. Emphasis on woman as a sexual and permissive being, coupled with grotesque language and graphic descriptions of violence, act as a decoy to obscure the presence of female reproductivity and its potential to undermine Marinetti’s Futurist project. Following the coincidences of these rhetorical elements, I trace the relations between male and female bodies in three significant scenes where Marinetti’s overemphasis on sexed parts attempts to hide an anxiety provoked by them. What comes to light is the threat that Marinetti refuses to recognize as maternal: a virile reproductive female body that confronts the male with the depletion of his creative capacity. In addition, my reading opens the possibility that Marinetti’s Futurist rhetoric relies on a gendering of violence, where masculine violence appears as fragmentation and mastication, and feminine violence appears as contamination and draining. Such gendering of action allows Marinetti to construct a masculine Futurist identity, one that, however, does not preclude a feminine version despite his intentions. Marinetti’s vision of a Futurist subject may not be as undeniably autarchic as he would have us believe. Instead, it relies on the consumption of the maternal into the imagined Futurist body. 79 Marinetti’s fantasy of male birth and attempt to excise the feminine puts into stark relief what is at stake for him in modernity, something that lingers as a concern in the modernist imagination: the preservation of masculinity and the modernization of man. The anxiety that this concern betrays and the misogynist attitude that it manifests as appears as early as the 1909 and continues to underwrite much of Futurist rhetoric regarding who gets to be modern. In the “Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo,” Marinetti positions the literary figure of woman alongside other institutions like libraries and museums as symbols of the past. The Futurist diagnosis of the Italian literary tradition identifies “l’immobilità pensosa, l’estasi e il sonno” as a chronic illness that precludes innovation.113 This rhetoric associates women with such tropes as sentimentalism, romance, and love and thereby with Decadentismo as a contagion that threatens the future. To wake poets out of this toxic slumber, he calls for a new kind of beauty to adore: speed. This modern, technologized beauty replaces woman as the idealized poetic inspiration of yesterday in futurist poetry and rhetoric. In his manifestos, Marinetti often codes inanimate things—cities, feelings, buildings, objects— as feminine and marks them for destruction; while he reduces female characters to hollow, clichéd figures meant to highlight the grandeur of their male counterparts in his novels. This identification serves as a warning to men and specifically to those interested in realizing a technologized, modern future. The greatest threat to the Futurist, it would seem, is the lethal pull of the past, something Marinetti sees in the poetic tradition but also in museums, libraries, ancient architecture, and women. An exchange of properties occurs in his feminization of objects that marks women with the contagion of the past just as it marks these objects as feminine. 113 Marinetti, “Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo,” in Teoria e invenzione futurista, 10. 80 Through this process of resignification, women appear as accomplices in the perpetuation of passéist practices and women and femininity become inextricably with death, infection, and decay.114 So when Marinetti’s exaltats “il movimento aggressivo, l’insonnia febbrile, il passo di corsa, il salto mortale, lo schiaffo ed il pugno” as poetic markers of modernity, we cannot overlook the gender he assigns to them.115 What Futurism desires, strives to achieve, or does is coded as masculine. Marinetti’s association of women with the past, however, has a deeper significance than poking fun at previous literary traditions; it signals a core tenet of futurist rhetoric—that only men can embody the future. In exclaiming, “la poesia deve essere concepita come un violento assalto contro le forze ignote, per ridurle a prostrarsi davanti all’uomo,” Marinetti does indeed challenge the Italian canon; yet these words reveal a furtive anxiety about the fatal threat of the (feminine) past.116 His futurist rhetoric splits and distorts the dichotomy between life and death along gendered lines, exalting masculinity as modern, energetic, and vital, and condemning femininity as passéist, draining, and lethal. As a negative counterpoint for the futurist subject, woman imagined in this way allows man to be the bearer of life, energy, modernity, and speed—the opposite of what she embodies. In this respect, the feminized past takes on the much more exigent sheen of danger: it quite literally threatens death, as do women who threaten the Futurist. 114 For a discussion of other dangers women pose to men in Marinetti’s texts, see Spackman, Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Italy, 7-16. On the image of the “gaping mouth,” see Bakhtin; on the inversion and displacement upward of the feminine “other mouth” in Italian poetry, see Spackman, “Inter musam et ursam moritur: Folengo and the Gaping ‘Other’ Mouth.” 115 Marinetti, Teoria e invenzione futurista, 10. 116 Marinetti, Teoria e invenzione futurista, 10. 81 Women continue to drain modern masculinity in Contro Venezia passatista (1910) in which Marinetti offers a vision of the birth of an industrialized Venice. What survives as a single text today is the combination of two component parts. The first originally appeared as a pamphlet titled Manifesto futurista ai Veneziani and was thrown from the top of the Torre dell’Orologio in Venice by Marinetti and his fellow Futurists, Boccioni, Carrà, and Russolo.117 The second part, Discorso futurista ai Veneziani, was a spoken provocation, improvised and shouted from the stage of the Teatro La Fenice by Marinetti. Together, these texts explicitly link the feminine with the past as contagion and emphasize inaction, lack of energy, and complacency as qualities culpable of perpetuating passéism. The Manifesto futurista ai Veneziani in particular stresses the identification of femininity with disease and lethargy and points to an immunitary logic also found in the Manifesto del Futurismo: Noi vogliamo guarire e cicatrizzare questa putrescente, piaga magnifica del passato. Vogliamo rianimare e nobilitare il popolo veneziano, decaduto dalla sua antica grandezza, morfinizzato da una vigliaccheria stomachevole…Affrettiamoci a colmare i suoi piccoli canali puzzolenti con le macerie dei suoi palazzi lebbrosi e crollanti. Bruciamo le gondole, poltrone a dondolo per cretini, innalziamo fino al cielo l’imponente geometria dei ponti metallici e degli opifici chiomati di fumo per abolire le curve cascanti delle vecchie architetture…118 We want to cure and heal this putrefying city, magnificent sore from the past. We want to cheer and ennoble the Venetian people, fallen from their ancient grandeur, drugged by a contemptible mean cowardice...Let’s hasten to fill in its little reeking canals with the shards of its leprous, crumbling palaces. Let us burn the gondolas, rocking chairs for cretins, and raise to the heavens the imposing geometry of metal bridges and howitzers plumed with smoke, to abolish the falling curves of the old architecture.119 117 De Maria, “La Battaglia di Venezia,” in Teoria e invenzione futurista, 229. 118 De Maria, “La Battaglia di Venezia,” in Teoria e invenzione futurista, 230. My use of the term “immunitary” is indebted to the thought of Italian philosopher, Roberto Esposito. See Roberto Esposito, Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life (2011), and Bíos: Biopolitics and Philosophy, trans. Timothy C. Campbell (2008). For a different perspective on immunity, see Cohen, A Body Worth Defending. 119 Flint, Marinetti: Selected Writings, 55. 82 Marinetti’s use of medicinal vocabulary is telling. He describes Venice’s sickness, the “vigliaccheria stomachevole,” as a disease that rots from the inside but also marks the exterior. Lesions visibly cover the body of the city in their various states of putrefaction (“putrescente,” “decaduto,” “cascanti”). It is no accident that this terminology evokes images of decomposition, decadence, and decay. Marinetti signals his distance from the literary tradition Decadentismo and its most notable Italian figure, Gabriele D’Annunzio, by connecting the internal moral decay to an externally visible malady, positioning both in conflict with the modernity he imagines. While the passage largely focuses on the city, Marinetti still points to its citizens who, lounging on their “poltrone,” drugged in their insolence, do not qualify as modern subjects. Only those who aggressively pursue the future, especially at the cost of their own lives, can be Futurists. For this reason, Marinetti does not find fault in the fact that Venice is dying; death is not the problem. Instead, it is Venice’s passivity in allowing itself to be drained of life that is concerning. The rot of the past that threatens to decompose the city also threatens to spread and must therefore be buried. Indeed, Marinetti indicates that the Futurists will cure such a sickness through a covering over, creating a scar (“cicatrice”). Only through such a suturing back together of the gaping wound might he prevent the disease from contaminating others. This Venetian disease is particularly nauseating for the Futurist who exalts danger and willingly throws himself towards death. While Flint translates “vigliaccheria” as “cowardice,” I propose we keep in mind its secondary inflection, as the action of insulting others with brazen arrogance, trusting that there will be no consequences.120 As Marinetti makes numerous 120 As Treccani Encyclopedia lists: “Azione, comportamento di chi sopraffà, insulta o danneggia altri con sfacciata protervia, nella fiducia o sicurezza di restare impunito.” 83 references to Venice’s past as being the source of its infection—the “piaga magnifica del passato”—it is not a stretch to suggest that Marinetti reads the city’s reliance on its historical standing as a great center of commerce, industry, and art as a form of cowardly inaction.121 Remaining complacent in its ancient glory, Venice does not venture to improve itself or progress in any way. The city has not moved from its former position, but neither has it maintained it; Venice believes itself to retain the same seat of power when in fact, Marinetti claims, the city is very much dying due to its nostalgia. Futurism equates such lethargy with cowardice as it does not seek speed, movement, energy; in short, modernization. For Marinetti, the process of modernization is more than the addition of new technologies to society: it is the vitalizing encounter with technology that modernity brings which Marinetti yearns for and which is denied to Italy so long as cities, like Venice, languish in the past. It is precisely through such a confrontation that Marinetti proposes to heal the city in the Discorso futurista ai Veneziani. Having coded as feminine all those things that constitute Venice as passéist, Marinetti demands a complete renovation that will at once destroy and masculinize the old city: Noi vogliamo ormai che i globi elettrici dalle mille punte squarcino brutalmente le tue tenebre misteriose, affascinanti e persuasive. Il tuo Canal Grande diventerà fatalmente un gran porto mercantile. Treni e trams, lanciati sulle grandi vie costruite sui tuoi canali finalmente colmati, verranno ad ammuchiare mercanzie…122 Now we want electric lamps brutally to cut and strip away with their thousand points of light your mysterious, sickening, alluring shadows! 121 The two passages immediately preceding the one quoted above point to something similar: “Noi ripudiamo l’antica Venezia estenuata e sfatta da voluttà secolari, che noi pure amammo e possedemmo in un gran sogno nostalgico. Ripudiamo la Venezia dei forestieri, mercato di antiquari falsificatori, calamita dello snobismo e dell’imbecillità universali, letto sfondato da carovane di amanti, semicupio ingemmato per cortigiane cosmopolite, cloaca massima del passatismo.” 122 Marinetti, Teoria e invenzione futurista, 231. 84 Your Grand Canal, widened and dredged, must become a great commercial port. Trains and trams, launched on wide roads built over canals that have finally been filled in, will bring you mountains of goods and a shrewd, wealthy, busy crowd of industrialists and businessmen!123 Appearing as a “vecchia mezzana,” Venice fosters a decadent lifestyle through prostitution, lethargy, and veneration of the past. Her curved architecture, mysterious shadows, and Canal Grande threaten to perpetuate the contagious passéism that defies progress and defines this city. Marinetti’s solution lies in reanimating Venice by feeding the feminine to the great Futurist machine. In this process, that which is feminized is now masticated for a Futurist modernity. Venice’s canals are stuffed with the debris of her own palaces; her rounded edges are decimated in favor of a steely geometry; her shadows lacerated by a thousand points of electric light. We see here how modern technology potentializes the city and its people through a nearly lethal embrace. The proximity to death, brought about by technological innovation, immunizes life to the pathogen of the past carried by the feminine. That is why it is not enough for Marinetti to simply destroy the old; he has to sear the wound through this invigorating collision in order for the immunization to take hold. For there to be a complete transformation of the city into a modern (masculine) power, the old (feminine) cannot remain standing. The reason has to do with the way in which it’s killed. Such violent actions do not suggest that the feminine is wasted, though. Rather, it is broken down and used for parts. In so doing, Marinetti recognizes the existential value in the reproductive capacity to give life that he unconsciously genders as female. In previous texts, especially “Contro il matrimonio,” Marinetti locates the only positive quality woman possesses 123 Flint, Marinetti: Selected Writings, 56 85 in her ability to give birth—to children and, through them, to the future.124 While the fact that women give birth might be obvious, it should not be taken lightly, as Marinetti certainly does not. His futurist rhetoric relies heavily on the ability to give life to the future, and yet he has already gendered this ability as feminine. After all the work he has done to condemn the feminine in its various forms throughout Venice and other places, he cannot very well change his position now. Instead, he incorporates it into his shiny new modernity. Venice’s canals, its unique spatial marker, for example, are filled to the brim with its kindred rubble and paved over to make commercial highways. Marinetti uses the feminine literally to build the new masculine and the maternal function gets recycled in this process. The Maternal Pit of Futurism Marinetti’s futurist project cannot be thought apart from the ability to give life, but birth cannot remain feminine and serve such a masculinist project. Marinetti solves this conundrum by converting birth into a masculine capacity much like he does the city. The transformation of the city into a modern power is certainly not the child of the Canal Grande, said to be “impregnata di lussurie rare.”125 Rather, Marinetti codes the fantasized birth of modern Venice as masculine and imagines it as a demolition. He masculinizes the creative faculty of birth by converting it to a destructive action. Marinetti does not simply level the old city to make room for a new one: its very destruction facilitates and fortifies the new. Modern (masculine) Venice is born in the futurist image only in dying a futurist death. 124 Marinetti states: “La donna non appartiene a un uomo, ma bensì all'avvenire e allo sviluppo della razza.” Marinetti, Teoria e invenzione futurista, 319. 125 Marinetti, Teoria e invenzione futurista, 231. 86 Marinetti’s confusion of creation and destruction results in a distortion of the maternal function which allows him to become a Futurist. Returning to the Manifesto del futurismo, we see this most clearly in its narrative, quasi-mythic opening that envisions “the birth of a centaur.” As in the Venice text, becoming modern requires an exposure to death facilitated by technology. Here, the messy wreck of flesh and machinery constitutes the birth of the Futurist subject.126 Other accounts of this famous passage have approached the relation between sexual difference and technology, technology and death, and birth and death.127 Yet even those scholars such as Cinzia Blum that come close to naming the site of reproduction as the critical location of Marinetti’s futurist subjectivity neglect to consider how birth and the maternal function operate in the manifesto and beyond. It is on this point that I wish to focus. What actually happens in the mud? How does Marinetti give birth (to himself) as a Futurist? Tagliai corto, e, pel disgusto, mi scaraventai colle ruote all'aria in un fossato...Oh! materno fossato, quasi pieno di un'acqua fangosa! Bel fossato d'officina! Io gustai avidamente la tua melma fortificante, che mi ricordò la santa mammella nera della mia nutrice sudanese... Quando mi sollevai - cencio sozzo e puzzolente - di sotto la macchina capovolta, io mi sentii attraversare il cuore, deliziosamente, dal ferro arroventato della gioia!128 I stopped short and to my disgust rolled over into a ditch with my wheels in the air…Oh! Maternal ditch, almost full of muddy water! Fair factory drain! I gulped down your nourishing sludge: and I remember the blessed black breast of my Sudanese nurse… When I came up-torn, filthy, and stinking-from under the capsized car, I felt the white-hot iron joy deliciously pass through my heart.129 126 Jeffrey Schnapp’s “Propeller Talk” continues to lay the groundwork for readings of Marinetti. See Jeffrey T. Schnapp, “Propeller Talk,” Modernism/Modernity 1, no. 3 (September 1, 1994): 153–78. 127 Campbell, “Vital Matters: Sovereignty, Milieu, and the Animal in Futurism's Founding Manifesto” in Annali d'Italianistica, v. 27, A Century of Futurism: 1909–2009 (2009), 157-173; Blum, The Other Modernism. 128 Marinetti, Teoria e invenzione futurista, 9. 129 Flint, Marinetti: Selected Writings, 40-41. 87 Marinetti finds himself sunken under his “pescecane” in a gutter filled with factory run-off, out of which both must be fished. From here, he asks us to think differently about birth, for the symbols of giving life are not what they appear. We might easily read the maternal ditch as a womb of sorts, and the “dive” into it a fantasy of returning to the mother; the factory waste, eagerly gulped down, as milk.130 Yet, Marinetti does not code the cesspool nor the waste as feminine. He superimposes maternal imagery onto the toxic material and lethal collision as part of his gendering of birth as masculine. We immediately recognize the industrial slush and the action of careening towards death as being masculinely charged. The pit, like Marinetti, is transformed by the liquid remnants of machinery. No longer a natural, organic entity, the originally female cavity should be read in its affinity with both the womb and the grave. As containers of bodies usually poised in opposition to one another, the womb and the grave intertwine in Marinetti’s reimagining of Futurist births and deaths. The transfusion of technological substance from factory to ditch enables the once feminine crater to give life through giving death. Or differently, the technologized sump provides the fatal conditions for the crash, thereby allowing Marinetti to collide and ultimately merge with technology in this animating encounter. The crash muddies the relation between birth and death just as it does Marinetti and his car; neither are clearly distinguishable from the other after this event. Such confusion of material begs the question: who, or what, gives life here? While Marinetti points to the birth of the centaur, it is far more instructive to think about its conception. What reproductive parts are necessary for the creation of the Futurist? If birth is made masculine, what becomes of the 130 Blum, The Other Modernism. 88 mother? Marinetti further solidifies his gendering of birth as masculine by purging the reproductive scene of female figures. The only potential female mothers involved in the production of the Futurist here are either transmuted into a technological basin or are removed from the start. It is worthwhile to remember that Marinetti makes reference to his own mother only through her absence in referring to his Sudanese wet nurse. What remains of the maternal function—the ability to give life— having been detached from the only feminine object, is diffused between Marinetti and the car and transformed into the capacity to give life through death. Indeed, the violent imbrication of man and machine invigorates and gives shape to the Futurist subject. Despite the sex-change of birth and the displacement of the feminine, the muddy cavity should still be read as a site of reproduction. Marinetti imagines giving birth to himself through his technologized leap toward death and autogenesis takes the place of sexual reproduction. In a zone of virile masculinity that no longer takes woman as its love-object, the Futurist longs for and identifies with the car—symbol of speed, danger, and modernity. The disposal of woman-as-muse noted later in the Manifesto mirrors this displacement of the mother and technology’s replacement of her as desired object and reproductive partner. In Marinetti’s Futurist imagination, technology holds the privileged position as facilitator of an exposure to death and as prosthetic replacement of the mother at the site of reproduction. The fantasy of autogenesis incorporates a number of futurist attitudes and ambitions into a single figure. As a self-generative function, autogenesis implies a futility of parents or any external stimulus for reproduction. Marinetti’s autogenesis goes one step further to refute not one but two sets of parents: his literary forefathers, and D’Annunzio in particular; and his biological mother and father. Imagining this self-produced birth, Marinetti rejects any assumed continuation of or connection to previous Italian poetic production. Such a dismissal affords him 89 greater agency as a poet to create without the hindrances of tradition. Marinetti articulates this attitude in greater detail and theoretical spunk in his defense of parole in libertà, the technical manifesto of futurist literature, and in letters to various artists and friends.131 In his noted reading of Marinetti’s first manifesto, Hal Foster points to this moment as an “autogenetic fantasy” which “positions Marinetti as father, mother, and sacrificial son in one.”132 Foster reads the plunge into the ditch as a “primal scene that allows Marinetti to reimagine his own conception.” 133 The reviving yet risky encounter with the car and ditch displaces the female in the production of the Futurist. As important as this rejection might be for the poet, its significance for the Futurist lies in its relation to the maternal function as a feminine ability. Keeping in mind what the feminine signifies for Marinetti—death associated with the past, but also cowardice, weakness of will, licentiousness—the mother is no exception to these ills, and it is she, as matrice, that perpetuates them by giving birth to mere men.134 Marinetti collapses what he identifies as femininity and the maternal function into one so that the function becomes inseparable from this gendered coding.135 In his fantasized birth, Marinetti removes the mother out of fear of mortality, imagined 131 For a collection of “tables” of Futurist parole in libertà, see Luviano Caruso and Stelio M. Martini, eds., Tavole parolibere futuriste (1912-1944) (1977). For a combination of artwork, written drafts, and history of Futurism, see Carlo Vanni Menichi, Marinetti il futurista (1988) and Salaris, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1988). 132 Foster, Prosthetic Gods, chapter 3, 109–150. 133 As Foster notes, the fantasy of autogenesis and the fantasy of technological procreation tend to the extreme in movements that “aspire to technologize nature and naturalize technology.” The consequences of such fantasies, though, are dire: “in this crossing, the human and the natural only appear to be reconciled; in fact they are forced together in a technological hybrid that confuses the creative and the destructive.” Foster, 120. Following McLuhan, Foster identifies and elaborates a “double logic of prosthesis” and notes that it “governed the machinic imaginary of high modernism in the first decades of the twentieth century—underwrote its utopias, even subsumed in new technologies, as well as its dystopias of the body reduced, even dismembered by them.” 134 See Marder, “Pandora’s Fireworks; or, Questions Concerning Femininity, Technology, and the Limits of the Human” in The Mother in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction; and Blum, The Other Modernism, 180 n. 36. 135 This identification of the maternal function as a strictly female ability infiltrates his later texts just as it does the manifesto, especially his novel, Mafarka il futurista. 90 as the byproduct of being born of woman. Through technologized self-generation, he can negate the first birth and reject the mother’s contribution that left man susceptible to death. Marinetti becomes sovereign over himself—unconditioned by history, woman, or death—by displacing the mother from the site of reproduction and replacing her with technological prosthesis.136 By placing this procreative pit at the center of his manifesto—the document that gives birth to Futurism—Marinetti privileges autogenesis as the primary figure of the futurist refusal of both literary fathers and biological mothers, both history and death.137 While autogenesis dreams of rejecting the maternal function entirely on account of its feminine nature, the Futurist (and the future) must be born of something. The ability to give life, to impart something markedly new, must be saved from the fate delegated to all things female. Like the ditch flooded with machine excretion, Marinetti modifies the maternal function to work within his futurist limits. Since natural birth begets bodies disposed to decay, Marinetti, merged as he is with the remains of a car, gives birth to the machine centaur that occupies the futurist ideal and ambition. The Futurist, then, does not actually eject the maternal from the pit; he rather metaphorically becomes a mother to himself, just as the protagonist in his first novel, Mafarka il futurista, becomes a mother to a machine. This founding myth of birthing oneself into the future and into a new subjectivity is laden with anxiety about what is to come, the consequences of imbricating technology and life, and the precarious role of the artist-intellectual. These concerns 136 Marinetti’s imagined autogenesis points to an undertheorized aspect of sovereign power: that the core function of sovereignty, the ability to produce bare life, is nothing less than a distortion of the maternal function. Sovereign power, conceptualized by Agamben, creates politically relevant life by exposing it to death: only homo sacer can be a political subject. Likewise, it is only through a lethal encounter with technology that one can be a modern subject, a Futurist. Reading Agamben through Marinetti reveals another aspect of the relationship between power and life— the ability to give unconditioned life and to expose others to it has the potential to undermine the sovereign. The mother as a figure who creates unconditioned life therefore puts the sovereign in jeopardy. 137 It would be interesting to take this point up with Blum’s analysis of Marinetti’s project being almost exclusively a challenge to regain the self. 91 rise to the surface as Marinetti dives deeper into his Futurist project. It is to this maternal threat in Mafarka that I now turn. The Trial of Mafarka: A Futurist Address The misogynist elements evident in Marinetti’s manifestos erupt in full explicity in his first novel, Mafarka il futurista. From the very first chapter, “Lo stupro delle negre,” the novel does not cease to surprise and disgust its reader with visceral scenes of rape and violence. While the poet considered this work to be the expression of his “gran sogno futurista,” the Italian government sequestered it upon its publication for its “oltraggio al pudore.”138 The first chapter was the official catalyst for the legal case, but as any reader of Mafarka knows, the novel’s sexual violence is not limited to one part, though this is perhaps the most graphic and disturbing chapter. Excessive violence against feminized objects and women appears with alarming ubiquity throughout. Different from violence against the feminine in other early texts, violence here takes on an explicitly sexual character in both its enactment (rape) and description (death “caresses” and “kisses”). However disturbing this material may be, Marinetti’s unabashed and unwavering support of the text remains unsurprising. His short “Dedica” that opens the novel announces the work of art (“capolavoro”) to his futurist brothers: Ecco il grande romanzo esplosivo che vi promisi. È polifonico come le anime nostre, ed è, insieme, un canto lirico, un’epopea, un romanzo d’avventure e un dramma. Io sono il solo che abbia osato scrivere un simile capolavoro, il quale morirà per mano mia… 138 Marinetti, “Il processo e l’assoluzione di Mafarka il futurista,” in Mafarka il futurista: edizione 1910, ed. Emilio Settimelli (Mondadori, 2003), 240. 92 Io vi annuncio che lo spirito dell’uomo è una ovaia inesercitata…E noi lo fecondiamo per la prima volta! 139 This is the great fire-brand novel I promised you. Like our own soul, it is polyphonic. It is at once a lyric poem, an epic, an adventure novel and a play. I am the only one who has dared to write this masterpiece, and it is by my hands that it will some day die... I tell you that the mind of man is an unpractised ovary...It is we who are the first to impregnate it!140 In calling the male spirit an ovary, he articulates a defining aspect of the novel that has not appeared in his texts previously. As a piece of female anatomy which participates in conception but not generation of children, Marinetti takes issue with the laws of biology which accord to the female sex the ability to give birth. This particular fragmentation of the female body into reproductive and sexual(ized) organs indeed characterizes the novel’s stance towards the feminine and is perhaps no more than an exaggeration of the poet’s original disdain for woman noted in the Manifesto. His statement in defense of Mafarka, however, suggests otherwise. In I processi al Futurismo per oltraggio al pudore (1918), Marinetti and his futurist brothers record their closing remarks at the novel’s sequestration trial in October of 1910. In his testimony, Marinetti emphasizes the theme of heroism as central to the text: Vi ho descritto l’ascensione impressionante di un eroe africano, fatto di temerità e di scaltrezza, che dopo aver manifestato la più irruente volontà di vivere e di dominare in battaglie ed in avventure molteplici, sbaragliando gli eserciti dei negri e conquistando lo scettro della sua città liberata, non sazio ancora di aver foggiato il mondo a suo piacimento, si innalza subitamente dall’eroismo guerresco a quello filosofico ed artistico. Egli vuol creare e crea, in una lotta sovrumana contro la materia e le leggi meccaniche, il suo figlio ideale, 139 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, 3-5, my emphasis. 140 Diethe and Cox, Mafarka the futurist, 1-3. 93 capolavoro di vitalità, eroe alato a cui trasfonde la vita in un bacio supremo senza il concorso della donna, che assiste al tragico parto sovrumano.141 I have described the impressive ascension of an African hero, made of recklessness and shrewdness, who after having manifested the most impetuous will to live and dominate in multiple battles and adventures, defeating the armies of the blacks and conquering the scepter of his a liberated city, not yet satisfied with having shaped the world to its liking, it suddenly rises from warlike heroism to philosophical and artistic heroism. He wants to create and does create, in a superhuman struggle against matter and mechanical laws, his ideal son, a masterpiece of vitality, a winged hero to whom he instills life in a supreme kiss without the help of the woman, who witnesses the tragic superhuman birth.142 Not one but two heroes emerge. The first is Mafarka, a warrior unsatisfied with martial glory and sovereign power over others, who seeks fulfillment in “philosophic and artistic” creation; the second, Gazurmah, is the product of Mafarka’s second journey—an aerodynamic, mechanized son built of organic and industrial material. We might characterize both heroes by what they overcome: Mafarka rises above (“si innalza”) the destructive, physical accomplishments in war to a more elevated skill involving the mind and creation. His struggle to create Gazurmah is superhuman (“sovrumana”) in surpassing the laws of nature by giving life without the female ability to give birth. Gazurmah is himself superhuman as the product of such genesis and as his modern and mechanized build humbly boasts. The resonances between these two quotations that frame the novel—the “Dedica” which opens the novel, and the closing statement which arrives after its publication—point to a third likeness between Mafarka and Marinetti as creators. Marinetti indeed suggests that he alone willingly risks the production of this novel: “Io sono il solo che abbia osato scrivere un simile 141 Marinetti, “Il processo,” 240, my emphasis. 142 My translation. 94 capolavoro.”143 The insistence on male autarky that pervades the novel and drives the production of “superhuman” works of art—Gazurmah as an “uccello invincibile,” and the novel as Marinetti’s “gran sogno futurista”—indicate a crisis and conflation of artistic and sexual reproduction with respect to the future and modern technology.144 Marinetti indeed defends his work in the novel and the work of the novel by implicitly invoking evolution: Io volli, con questo romanzo, dare all’uomo una speranza illimitata nel suo perfezionamento spirituale e fisico, svincolandolo dalle ventose della lussuria e assicurandogli la sua prossima liberazione dal sonno, dalla stanchezza e dalla morte. Volli descrivere l’elevazione gloriosa della vita, che fu vegetale, animale e umana…145 With this novel, I wanted to give man unlimited hope in his spiritual and physical improvement, freeing him from the suckers of lust and ensuring his next liberation from sleep, fatigue and death. I wanted to describe the glorious elevation of life, which was vegetal, animal and human ...146 In so doing, he suggests that what is at stake in the novel and for Futurism is no less than the future of humanity, artistically and biologically. I would suggest that the vehemence and urgency with which Marinetti and Mafarka urge on their respective projects point outside the novel to an inarticulatable anxiety around modernization and the human’s (and poet’s) position within it. Mafarka’s violent misogyny is not a simple outgrowth of Marinetti’s disdain for women found in the Manifesto but an elaboration and expansion that questions the relationship between the maternal function, 143 F.T. Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, p. 3. 144 I follow Spackman’s use of the term “autarky” to designate a male “desire for self-sufficiency in a world without women.” See Spackman, Fascist Virilities, 54. 145 F.T. Marinetti, “Il Processo,” 240. 146 My translation. 95 modernity, and technology.147 At the core of this novel and Marinetti’s futurist project is a question of overcoming biology, human limitations embodied in woman, an evolution that is just as biological as it is intellectual or artistic. I argue that the reproductive ambitions which appear isolated to the latter half of the novel actually inspire the whole narrative and betray Marinetti’s anxiety about the state of masculinity in the time of the machine. Read in this light, Futurism appears as a project to modernize man and make him compatible with the coming future. Such a reading asks: what does Mafarka testify to? In keeping with Marinetti’s words, what if we listened to the text as a polyphonic epic that told the story of two heroes responding to crisis? Doing so would suggest that this text is more than an isolated collection of discontinuous chapters, but instead something closer to what Felman calls a “life-testimony,” a point of conflation between text and life. As a testimony, the novel speaks to its reader about a particular history, testifies to the anxiety produced by it, and bears witness to the fragmentation of the subject that it causes. Marinetti as author of such testimony imparts (much the same way Mafarka “partorisce”) something new to the future in the hopes of creating a new history. Reading Mafarka in this way, as a testimony to an anxiety around masculinity and the male body provoked by modernity, I consider the text in relation to itself and am attentive to how it points beyond itself to a larger concern around modernization and the technologization of life. Marinetti’s cure offers to modernize literary creation in part by replacing the woman as muse with another inspiring beauty: speed, sought first in the automobile and later in the airplane. This radical shift in poetics that Futurism provokes is intimately tied to the desire for a 147 Modernity here should be read in the second valence Calinescu points out—as an aesthetic category that expresses a radical spirit and wants to break violently with tradition to shape the future entirely in the new. See note 75 in the Introduction to this dissertation. 96 fortified, machinic male body that is a recurring image in many of Marinetti’s writings following Mafarka. For example, in “L’uomo moltiplicato e il Regno della macchina,” Marinetti expresses the desired qualities of the ideal Futurist and the necessary changes the body must undergo to get there: Il tipo non umano e meccanico, costruito per una velocità onnipresente, sarà naturalmente crudele, onnisciente e combattivo. Sarà dotato di organi inaspettati: organi adattati alle esigenze di un ambiente fatto di urti continui. . . L’uomo futuro ridurrà il proprio cuore alla sua vera funzione distributrice. Il cuore deve diventare in qualche modo, una specie di stomaco del cervello, che si empirà metodicamente perché lo spirito possa entrare in azione.148 This nonhuman and mechanical being, constructed for an omnipresent velocity, will be naturally cruel, omniscient, and combative. He will be endowed with surprising organs: organs adapted to the needs of the world of ceaseless shocks. . . Future man will reduce his heart to its true distributive function. The heart must in some way become a kind of stomach for the brain, which methodically empty and fill so that the spirit can go into action.149 The machine is not only the new love-object of Futurist literary imagination, but also the body to which every modern man should aspire.150 It is important to note that this machinic transformation of the male body hinges on a reimagining of the rhythm and functioning of vital organs. The ideal body operates in accordance with the velocity of modern life and accomplishes a mechanical repetition of motions.151 Significantly, the heart no longer houses emotion but is reduced to its functional utility as a “stomach” for the brain. By distancing the heart from its 148 Marinetti, “L’uomo moltiplicato e il Regno della macchina,” 256-257. It is Marinetti’s blindness to the potential of certain organs that allows for a maternal Futurist to appear and threaten the integrity of the male Futurist body. 149 Flint, Marinetti: Selected Writings, 92. 150 For an incisive reading of Marinetti’s representation of the male body and its relation to modern art, see Poggi. 151 Foster notes a “double logic of prosthesis,” at play in Marinetti’s work. See Foster, Prosthetic Gods, chapter 3, and Schnapp, “Propeller Talk” for analyses of the body/machine complex in Marinetti. 97 literary identity as the figure of sentimentalism and reclaiming it as a mechanized element, Marinetti inscribes his poetic aspirations onto the idealized Futurist body in a gesture that mimics the construction of his hero in Mafarka.152 The figure of the woman, imagined as a pathogenetic counterpoint to the Futurist, allows man to be the bearer of life, energy, modernity, and speed. In Mafarka, however, the deadly femininized pull of the past shifts to an active obstacle barring the Futurist from realizing his reproductive project. Women now threaten to spread the disease of mortality and challenge men with their creative, maternal potential. If this is the case, why target the sexualized female body rather than a body figured as maternal? The answer I believe has to do with Marinetti’s unusual organization of the Futurist body and his confusion of its reproductive and digestive organs. As Marinetti builds his superhuman Futurist, he mingles the properties of such organs as the stomach and the womb by making consumption a strictly male ability. Consumption of both exotic delicacies and women through sexual violence appears as an act of virility available only to men. The Futurist distinguishes himself by demonstrating his ability to control these sexual and gastronomic appetites in the service of more creative pursuits. What Marinetti does not account for, and what I believe both he and his hero fail to see, is the same confusion of organ functions in the maternal body. In the maternal body, the vulva and womb adopt the masculine ability to consume and so confront the male Futurist with a female body not so different from his own. The maternal threat lies in the combination of masculine violence and feminine gluttony, where the ability to consume goes unchecked by the will. It is to this maternal threat in Mafarka that I now turn. 152 On the intertextuality of Mafarka and other texts by Marinetti as a narcissistic practice, see La Penna. 98 Mafarka on the Table It has been noted that Mafarka as a novel is fragmentary and does not present itself as a unified text. Even within a single chapter, the narrative diverts into strange dream-like sequences and hallucinations that remain unexplained and have no apparent bearing on the story. To the reader, this might seem like an oversight on the author’s part. But taken in all seriousness, might it not be part of the very story itself? Could this structure that is held together by threads tell us something more about the modern relationship to the self as an ostensibly unified subject? In the interest of answering some of these questions, I trace the fragmentation of the novel through its scattering of organs throughout. Approaching Mafarka as a body full of organs allows us to acknowledge its disorganization but entertain the idea that this is perhaps intentional or, at the very least, significant. Doing so situates Mafarka as a corpse on the examining table and classifies my reading as an autopsy.153 By framing my reading this way, I intentionally imply the questions, “what can the body testify to that the mind cannot,” and “what does Mafarka and the literary techniques that Marinetti employs tell us about Marinetti and Futurism as an artistic practice in response to modernity?” Such a reading reveals that Marinetti’s confusion of creation and destruction responds not only to modernity, as a moment in time that challenged long-held notions of the soundness of human perception and undermined the subject’s sense of self, but specifically to the exposure to death that modernity brings with its novel entanglement of life and technology.154 In the novel, 153 I follow the OED definition of autopsy as an “examination of the organs of a dead body in order to determine the cause of death, nature and extent of disease.” 154 Unless noted otherwise, I will use the term “modernity” to mean an historical time period marked by a series of radical new discoveries across disparate fields—psychology, physics, technology, art, photography, literature, philosophy, etc.—that made people question the experience of reality, both external and internal, in their relations 99 Mafarka responds in a modernist key to the death of his brother, Magamal, which I read as an exceptional loss for the soon-to-be Futurist. Mafarka’s inability to mourn his brother’s death leads directly to the birth of his mechanical son, Gazurmah, and the repetition of the displacement of the female from the scene of birth and a confusion of creation and destruction through an uncritical embrace of technology. The circumstances surrounding Gazurmah’s birth, particularly the impetus for it in Magamal’s death, suggests another question that the novel brings to the surface but does not quite answer: how does the body testify to the fragmentation of the subject of crisis? I return to this question in the following chapters on D’Annunzio’s Forse che sì forse che no and Pirandello’s Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore. For now, it is sufficient to notice how this theme of bodily testimony begins to bubble up in the context of modernity and in relation to the imbrication of life and technology. The Vulva as Decoy The first chapter that initiates Mafarka’s heroic trajectory also establishes Marinetti’s preferred gender politics as a relation of consumption between men and women. In these first pages, men objectify women as foodstuffs and attribute gastronomic terms to sexual encounters. Women are characterized as exotic indulgences to be consumed and likened to goods Italy would have absorbed from colonial holdings in Africa such as sugar and vanilla.155 While Marinetti’s racialization of women assists in assigning value to certain bodies over others, his excessive with others and with themselves. See note 75 of the Introduction for a gloss on the critical debates around the term modernity in the literary field. 155 On the racialization of women’s bodies, see Blum, “Incorporating the Exotic”; Spackman, Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Italy (1996), 49–77; Belmonte, “Syncronies of Violence: Italian Colonialism and Marinetti’s Depiction of Africa in Mafarka le futuriste” in Vision in Motion (2016). Texts that take up colonial imagery in Italian literature include Caponetto, “Art of Darkness: The Aestheticization of Black People in Fascist Colonial Novels” in Fascist Hybridities (2015); and Welch, “Here and Then, There and Now: Nation Time and Colonial Space in Pasolini, Oriani and Marinetti” Italica, vol. 91, no. 4, 2014, 625–53. 100 sexualization of female bodies contributes significantly to the gender dynamics of the novel. Violence against the feminine in Mafarka is explicitly sexual and dehumanizing. As Barbara Spackman and Alice Kaplan have noted, the novel seems obsessed with turning women into inert matter and destroying the feminine as a means to create the masculine. While these accounts are incisive, they leave unaddressed a significant question: at what is the violence specifically aimed? Marinetti’s scorn for woman in narrative form takes shape as a metastasis of femininization; natural figures (wind, land, sea), metaphysical figures (Death, War, Youthful Past), and sexed others (prisoners, servants, past lovers) diffuse the feminine over the textual topography.156 In choosing to represent the feminine primarily through figures, he evacuates the feminine of substance and ensures his ability to fill it with anti-Futurist matter.157 Yet there is one figure that attracts substantial virile abuse above most others—what Marinetti casually refers to as “the vulva.”158 This strategy has two significant effects: the substitution of the vulva for woman underscores Marinetti’s projection of sexuality and insatiability onto the figure of the woman. It additionally collapses the difference between gender and sex and condenses Marinetti’s fear of the feminine to this one hypersexualized organ. 156 Kaplan argues that “the earth is played by woman—so is war, the machine, the sea, and, in fact, nearly every possible thing except woman herself, who, having given over her essence to everything around her, is completely void of intrinsic meaning.” See Kaplan, Reproductions of Banality: Fascism, Literature, and French Intellectual Life (1986), 86. Spackman agrees with Kaplan’s characterization of Mafarka as an “obsession with mater” and matter. See Spackman, Fascist Virilities, 55. 157 As Kaplan points out, female fertility is continually represented only to be canceled out “in the form of muddy spaces, decay, and death.” See Kaplan, Reproductions of Banality, 81 158 We see this in its most literal and vicious form in the opening chapter. Equally ubiquitous is the gelatinous environment of a fictionalized Africa coded as feminine. This backdrop marks a temporal disconnect between what has been—the feminine and a naturalized past—and what will be—Gazurmah and a Futurist modernity. However, as the novel continues, the female image and what is meant by “femininity” metamorphosizes into an unpronounceable threat that calls for unrelenting/violent defense mechanisms. This duality of temporal belonging appears in Mafarka between the setting—this gelatinous backdrop of a metastasized feminine, embodied is liquified, gooey solutions throughout—and the shiny new, metallicized creature that is Gazurmah. On his nostalgia for his place of birth, see also Claudia Salaris, Marinetti editore, 105. 101 “Vulva,” which refers only to external sexual organs, might more appropriately be heard in its valance as a sexed organ, characterized by its capacity for possessing pleasure and distinction from the reproductive functions of the internal organs, namely the uterus. The vulva is secondly sexed in its metonymic signification of a particular biological category. Marinetti’s use of the word alone signals his desire to separate the ability to give birth from sexual difference. Making the vulva stand in for woman undermines the maternal function as a female power, thereby driving a wedge between sex and the female ability to give birth, between pleasure and reproduction. As an indicator of difference rather than a fundamental part of gestation or natality, Marinetti’s emphasis on the vulva draws the reader’s attention away from that other integrated organ that poses an even greater danger to man.159 His gesture in Mafarka is indeed to filter out the useful parts for collection while destroying those other parts that pose a threat to male creativity. The disdain for women and drive to make birth a masculine capacity surfaces as the attempt to distance the vulva from the maternal function. If this is the case, why focus on the vulva, an organ that plays only a marginal role in the process of giving life? Few critical texts take up Mafarka with, if not feminist lens, then an eye towards unraveling the overt misogyny of the novel. Kaplan in Reproductions of Banality and Spackman in Fascist Virilities put Mafarka in a series of other works by Marinetti that have a relationship with fascist discourse. Each of these texts analyzes the underpinning logic at play in a handful of Marinetti’s work that may also be seen, in the same or mutated form, in Fascist discourse. Cinzia Blum’s psychoanalytic reading in The Other Modernism suggests that the consumption of women and the reduction of female bodies to pieces across Marinetti’s texts 159 Keeping in mind Marinetti’s essentialism—that a womb and a vulva make a woman, and a woman is nothing but the combination of those sumptuous parts. 102 “manifests an obsessive wish for absolute control and possession.”160 As “apotropaic reactions,” violence against the feminine is meant to shore up the male’s identity against anxieties of feminization and “the dissolution of borders sweeping away any possibility of distinction and symbolization.”161 This position, however, does not account for the emergence of masculine futurist qualities in female characters, and Colubbi in particular. It situates women as external, objectified others to a damaged male ego and not as subjects in their own right. While these studies emphasize the destructive violence against female bodies, none analyzes its relation to the reproductive female body or the maternal function as its target. They do not so much answer the question of Marinetti’s obsession with (forgoing) the vulva as they do point it out and link it to later mutations of gendering and misogynist practices in Fascist discourse. However, if we zoom in on the way Marinetti uses the figure of the vulva and his unusual organization of the Futurist body via the (dis)placement of its organs, a possible answer appears. Three key passages suggest why Marinetti takes such issue with this sexed organ rather than other properly reproductive ones. The figure of the vulva appears in numerous places, but never so audaciously as in the first chapter. Titled, “Lo stupro delle negre,” it narrates in grotesque detail the mass rape of captured women following Mafarka’s battle.162 Marinetti’s strategy here is grounded in his association of the woman-as-muse with canonical Italian literature. Taking aim at the venerated female body of poetic tradition, he anticipates the shock value of this sexual violence and counts 160 Blum, The Other Modernism, 95. 161 Blum, 59. 162 As many have noted, the decimation of female bodies calls to mind Theweleit’s study of the Freikorps’ male fantasies, especially those that have to do with turning others into pulp. This chapter provoked the sequestration of the novel in Italy. 103 on the disgust and contempt it would incite. In his defense of the chapter, the author highlights the necessity of this imagery and language: Scrissi dunque Lo stupro delle negre, perché da una gran fornace torrida di lussuria e di abbrutimento potesse balzar fuori la grande volontà eroica di Mafarka. La descrizione cruda, e i particolari osceni, le parole che possono suscitare disgusto sono di una necessità assoluta nel mio poema. Ho potuto, così, produrre secondo una legge di contrasto e direi quasi “di trampolini” il balzo dello spirito umano . . .163 So I wrote The Rape of the Blacks, so that from a great torrid furnace of lust and brutality the great heroic will of Mafarka could spring out. The crude description, and the obscene details, the words that can arouse disgust are an absolute necessity in my poem. In this way I was able to produce the leap of the human spirit according to a law of contrast and I would almost say "springboards". . .164 For Marinetti, this horrendous scene works as a backdrop against which his hero may distinguish himself from other soldiers who might have been Futurists but could not overcome the gravity of their lust. Unlike Mafarka, the rapacious men succumb to their violent tendencies and indulge their sexual impulses. Dazed by alcohol and the sugared poison of women, they behave as if mindlessly lost in a trance. They have lost all logic and strength, their limbs weak with pleasure and flailing uselessly. At issue here is the use of their creative capacities, which Marinetti maps onto both the male intellect and reproductive organs. Sexual indulgence appears as a bodily distraction from the wakeful work of the mind; if the soldiers are intoxicated with lust, then they cannot control their will or actions. Intemperance of this kind is additionally wasteful in that the soldiers do not conserve their vital reproductive forces for worthier pursuits. “[L]a grande 163 Marinetti, “Il processo,” 8. 164 My translation. 104 volontà eroica di Mafarka” stands out as willpower over the incredible pull of sexual desire and the desire for rest seen in the inebriated soldier. Amidst this harangue of ugliness and carnage, a single female voice interrupts the narrative. Biba expresses an alternative, female perspective in a short passage that appears in the middle of the rape scene. The passage in question undoubtedly suggests a troubling reading. The quasi-pornographic language used by Biba and in the description of her enjoyment suggest that she and the other women take pleasure in the heinous instance of their own rape. This depiction furthers Marinetti’s claim that women strive only for self-satisfaction and corporeal gratification as opposed to the intellectual and creative ambitions of the Futurist male. Mafarka stands out as exceptional from both the soldiers and the women through his self-control and elevated desires. However, it is important to acknowledge the distinct, if marginal, perspective Biba offers here, namely that of a virile feminine.165 In her brief speech, Biba celebrates the unintended pleasure of this violence and suggests that she gains something from it: —Mahmud, ya Mahmud!...uccidimi!...Oh! tu mi riempi d’un piacere caldo!...Tu colmi di zucchero e di hallahua la bocca della mia gattina!... Ed essa è felice d’essere rimpinzata, cosi, di dolciumi!...Le sue labbra succhiano ora un grosso pezzo di zucchero ardente, che si fonderà fra poco, ad un tratto! 166 165 Scholarship that takes up the question of female figuration in this novel often refers to this passage as exemplary of Marinetti’s representation of women in the novel. Spackman’s and Kaplan’s accounts, for example, rightly highlight how this passage typifies Marinetti’s depiction of female bodies and his interest in rendering the feminine inert. Biba is first described as the most beautiful and youngest of all the captured women and likened to valuable food-goods (sugar and vanilla): “Aveva sottile la vita e i suoi fianchi eran lucidi e inzuccherati, color di vaniglia…” (Mafarka 29). Marinetti describes the relation between men and women here, as he does throughout, as a relation of consumption, where men objectify women specifically as foodstuffs and attribute gastronomic terms to sexual encounters. Neither study, however, takes up the female perspective presented in Biba’s speech or even names her. And yet, it is Biba’s sexed organ that seemingly takes the upper hand in her speech that ends the sequence. For a literary example with a first-person female perspective, see Marinetti’s and Robert’s Un ventre di donna: romanzo chirurgico (1919). For a recent study of female Futurist writings, see Paola Sica, Futurist Women: Florence, Feminism and the New Sciences (2016); Silvia Contarini, Le femme futuriste (2006); and Salaris, Le futuriste: donne e letteratura d'avanguardia in Italia (1909-1944) (1982). 166 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, 29, emphasis in original. 105 Mahmoud, Mahmoud, kill me, kill me like this! Oh! you cram me with hot pleasure! You fill my little pussy’s mouth with surgar and halva. It’s happy to be so gorged on sweetmeats! Now its lips are sucking a big lump of red-hot surgar that’s suddenly going to melt...167 What erupts along with Biba’s avalanche of enjoyment is no simple, nor simply sexual, matter. Without lessening the violence and the revolting suggestion Marinetti inscribes here, what comes to light is Biba’s adoption of a virile and masculine voice. In spite of Marinetti’s intentional figuration of women as licentious and cowardly, Biba appears to exhibit what Marinetti will later name as true Futurist characteristics—joy in the face of death and a capacity for physical violence. Here, Biba consumes “dolciumi” and melts “zucchero.” She adopts the position of the male who, in most other instances, enjoys women as luxurious sweets. Biba consumes like a man and so opens the possibility of a feminine virility that challenges Marinetti’s prescribed gender dynamics. Foreshadowing a crucial moment later on involving the voice of another woman, this outburst additionally marks a break into the narrative of something extraneous to it.168 Biba’s speech goes unnoticed by Mafarka and all others present, emerging as it does from a “victim,” someone who, despite having the ability to speak, does not have a voice; and yet, it remains as a thorn through the skin of an otherwise uniform narrative. The contrast between the action of the scene and the speech’s content and its abruptness marks it as a rupture. Her response to this violence is unexpected and escapes from her mouth as if she could not contain it. It is in excess 167 Diethe and Cox, Mafarka the futurist, 25. 168 Something we might consider in regard to this is how the ear goes unacknowledged in the novel and yet plays a significant role in moving the plot forward and threatening the protagonist. The “voices” of the sea, melody, and Colubbi all at one point or another nearly succeed in coercing Mafarka into suicide through sonorous methods. It is also the cries of women that alert Mafarka to the horrendous rape by his betraying soldiers. 106 of both her own containing capabilities and those of the novel—even Marinetti cannot stop this vocal expression. Marinetti’s rhetorical strategy here is to draw attention away from Biba’s virility and embrace of sexual violence by deliberately constructing an atrocious, revolting scene out of which it is admittedly difficult to argue for any sort of counter-perspective to that of the male’s. And yet, we would be amiss to discredit it entirely on account of its vulgarity and horrific content given the import Marinetti attributes to this scene for the novel’s creative project and the precedent it sets for gender relations in the text. Biba’s speech is the strongest instance in which a woman’s voice adopts the vulgarity and virility that the male’s violent sexual act attempts to communicate. She not only openly enjoys herself but drains the male’s “vital forces” in the process, much the same way men consume women throughout the novel. While rape superficially appears as the prominent, if not singular, relationship between male and female figures throughout the novel, Biba’s surprising outburst puts that relation into question. Are women truly the conquerable prey of unchecked male virility that Marinetti leads us to believe? Might they too pose a virile threat to men? And if so, in what does this threat consist? The answer is not articulated until four chapters later in “Il Ventre della Balena.” Il Ventre della Balena Before relocating there, it is worth noting that Marinetti uses “ventre” for both men and women in the novel. As one definition suggests, the meaning is dependent on the sex of the person to whom it refers, since it may mean: “addome, parte cava del corpo contenente gli 107 intestine e lo stomaco e, nella femmina, anche gli organi della riproduzione.”169 Marinetti may have used a number of more specific terms to designate the particularity of the womb but often reverts to “ventre,” or even “viscere,” which has a wider suggestion of inner organs and does not specify where or to whom they belong.170 Neither the slippage between stomach and womb nor the obfuscation of the womb as a reproductive organ are a coincidence within the corporeal context of Marinetti’s Futurist body. The choice of two equally vague signifiers to refer to the same specific referent intentionally obscures the figure of the womb in its delineated singularity. No longer a distinct organ with a particular function, the womb is subsumed into the general location of the lower body. Whereas in most cases, the ambiguity of “ventre” is isolated to phrases involving a female, the ambiguity here goes both ways, inflicting uncertainty onto the male stomach as well as the female womb. Such uncertainty of organs and bodies abounds in the space of the fourth chapter. In the belly (or womb) of the whale, we join Mafarka and his supporters for a feast in his now overthrown uncle’s submarine banquet hall. 171 A corridor lined with stalagmites reminiscent of teeth opens onto a dim room lit by torch with piles of cushions for lounging. 172 This monstrous vaginal opening, while unintelligible to Mafarka, initiates a series of repeating image clusters that join the feminine to the lethal and the reproductive to the digestive. That Mafarka does not recognize the resemblances between this ominous opening that feeds into a large womb-like 169 “Ventre,” Garzanti, in Il nuovo dizionario italiano Garzanti, 985. 170 Terms such as “grembo,” “matrice,” or “utero” leave little doubt as to which organ is in question. While “womb” is an acceptable translation of “ventre” and “viscere,” both terms carry a multiplicity of meanings that additionally relegate the womb to a mere undifferentiated organ of the lower body. 171Blum translates the chapter title as “The Womb of the Whale” and reads it as a descent, or return, to the maternal. Blum, The Other Modernism, 99. 172 The implications of a toothed vulva recur throughout the chapter and novel in increasingly significant ways. In particular, Marinetti draws attention to this very theme of the lethal feminine when he describes Colubbi’s mouth (or vulva) as “il succo dei frutti del paradiso…o anche l’interno di una ferita...” See Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, 183. 108 room and the female threat that resides there suggests an unconscious refusal to see the connection between the vulva and the womb as members of a cohesive bodily system. 173 As we will see, this refusal is in part motivated by his inability to come to terms with an anxiety about the future and his ability to create in it. For now, it is sufficient to notice Mafarka’s emphasis on the vulva and ignorance of even the suggestion of a womb behind it despite the many references to the relation between the two. For Mafarka, these conjoining spaces evoke the digestive tract more than the female reproductive system. In describing his exile to this very place, Mafarka calls himself a “diamante inghiottito” that was “esiliato nel ventre di Bubassa” only to reemerge from his uncle’s excrement causing terrible pain along the way.174 The confusion of digestive and reproductive functions in this chapter plays a central role in how Mafarka imagines overcoming the female threat and coopting the maternal ability he needs to create his son.175 The male stomach becomes capable of absorbing the maternal function from consumed female bodies and giving birth as if it were a reproductive organ. Marinetti figures women as food to ingest through sexual encounters, and so combines the digestive properties of the stomach and the reproductive properties of the womb to create a superhuman organ tailored to the Futurist’s needs.176 173 The likeness between Mafarka here and the excremental creation derived from the ingestion of the maternal described by Sofia is too great to discount. While this discussion requires ample room unavailable here, a note we might make is how this too codes Mafarka as a mother. See Marinetti, 107–8. 174 Mafarka 108, 107. 175 On the male appropriation of female reproductivity through consumption, see Sofia. 176 Blum’s psychoanalytic reading suggests that the consumption of women and the reduction of female bodies to pieces across Marinetti’s texts “manifests an obsessive wish for absolute control and possession” (Other Modernism 95). As “apotropaic reactions,” consumption and reduction are meant to shore up the male’s identity against anxieties of feminization and “the dissolution of borders sweeping away any possibility of distinction and symbolization” (59). This position, however, does not account for the emergence of masculine Futurist qualities in female characters, Colubbi in particular. It additionally situates women as external, objectified others to a damaged male ego and not as subjects in their own right. 109 Both the spectacle of violence and the hypersexualized women appear as significant distractions for the Futurist and reader. The belly of this edifice boasts an aquarium that looks into the open ocean and doubles as a trap for large aquatic carnivores. Its grandeur lies in the proximity it affords guests to such large, deadly creatures without risk.177 The juxtaposition of danger and comfort, of risk and pleasure foreshadows a piece of the female threat already expressed in the toothed corridor. Mafarka encourages the others to wonder at the spiked, scaly bodies of these sea monsters and even treats them (and the sharks) to a gastronomic spectacle of two traitors being thrown into the water and the ensuing meal. The sharks are not the only ones to eat: the host offers an extravagant feast which the guests devour without restraint: —Ecco, ora, delle vivande, per divertire il vostro palato e per rimpinzarvi il ventre… Mangiavano golosamente, con un languido oscillar del corpo, pronunciando rare parole alternate con grugniti di piacere. A quando a quando, le loro mani dalle unghie tinte di rosso s’immergevano tutte insieme nel piatto do mezzo, come galline che beccassero tutte in una sola scodella.178 Now I shall offer you something to delight your tastes and fill your bellies! ...They ate greedily, their languid swaying interspersed with occasional words and grunts of approval. Every so often their hands, with their scarlet nails, all dived into the platter in unison, like hens pecking from the same bowl.179 The supporters of the general-turned-king stuff themselves silly with food, wine, and show, enjoying the sharks’ dinner as much as their own.180 In the process, their words and food muddle together in a mouthy promiscuity that reinforces the confusion between food and figures and 177 As is indicated in the novel and supported in a manuscript draft, Marinetti’s semi-fantasized fish exhibit both poisonous spikes and spines, and large, bone-crushing teeth. 178 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, 103–4. 179 Diethe and Cox, Mafarka the futurist, 91-92. 180 The literary figures of consumption and ingestion have varying functions across Marinetti’s texts. See in particular Le Roi Bombance and “Un pranzo che evitò un suicidio” in La cucina futurista. On the sexualized alimentary imagery and its relation to the temporality of the body in Marinetti’s novellas, see Cesaretti. 110 amongst organs. Both the banquet and the sharks’ violent eating satisfy the bodies of those present. While the unrestrained consumption of food satiates the stomach and lower organs, the show appeases the mind as entertainment. 181 Such indulgent relaxation renders the guests inarticulate, lazy, and unsuspecting of potential dangers nearby. Following the gastronomic activities, Mafarka calls in two dancers to liven up the crowd. He instructs the slaves to blow out the torches and the musicians to stop playing; the women are to choose the men “più forti e più belli” from among the guests guided by “[l]’istinto della . . . vulva.”182 What follows is a confusing turn of events that, judging by the guests’ vocal protests, none could have imagined. As one of the dancers descends on Mafarka in the dark, his emotional and physical responses unexpectedly imply revulsion tinged with fear. What could possibly be so terrifying about a half-naked, desiring dancer? The passage in question merits citation at length: Ad un tratto, Mafarka si sentì scivolare fra le braccia un corpo di donna ardente e gelido a un tempo…Non era il ventre squamoso di uno dei pescicani dell’acquario, scomparsi al declinare della luna? Ma la bocca ignota che si addormentava sulla sua era soave e sinuosa, ed egli si sentì sconvolte le viscere dalla delizia e dal terrore. . . —Maledizione! Maledizione! Come le farfalle e le mosche, voi avete delle trombe, per pompare le forze e il profumo del maschio!...Come i ragni, voi vi colorite così da somigliare a bocciuoli di rose, ed esalate persino dei profumi inebbrianti per attirare insetti come noi, ghiotti di fiori!183 Suddenly Mafarka felt the body of a woman slide into his arms, both burning hot and icy cold. Wasn’t this the scaly belly of one of the sharks which had vanished with the waning of the moon? But the unknown mouth that drowsed upon his own was smooth and sinuous, and his insides heaved with terror and delight... Curse you! Curse you!...Like butterflies and flies, you an unseen proboscis to suck out the strength and savor of the male!...Like spiders, you disguise 181 Both ultimately appear as distractions for the Futurist. 182 Mafarka, 114. 183 Mafarka, 114-115; 1st and last ellipses in original. 111 yourselves to look like rose-buds, and you even give off heady scents to attract insects like ourselves, so fond of flowers!184 From afar, the dancers appeal visually with their scant clothing and mesmerizing movements; but a closer, physical inspection reveals a shocking aspect. Mafarka’s confusion of the body of the dancer for the body of the shark is telling of a more significant similarity between the two. As he claims, the women have instruments to suck out “le forze e il profumo del maschio,” not unlike the shark who previously eviscerated the traitorous generals. The same stealthy, predatory instinct prevails in both the women and the sharks, the only difference being how each consumes its dinner. Mafarka compares the women to butterflies, flies, and spiders suggesting that it is not teeth so much as mouths that are the concealed instruments of depletion. The passage leaves open the possibility that the organ in question is not a mouth at all but actually a vulva. We recall that the game Mafarka initiates is one in which the vulva plays a central role; as instinctual guide, much like the shark’s sense of smell, it is supposedly meant to sniff out the strongest man and extract the most valuable substance. The pairs of contrasting words—“ardente,” “gelido,” “soave,” “sinuosa,” “delizia,” “terrore”—evoke the changing and duplicitous nature of the vulva-mouth.185 Mafarka accuses women of masking the true purpose of the vulva in paint and perfume to attract permissive men. Such a figuration suggests that the vulva is not a pleasure-seeking device but a ravenous mouth. The feigned appearance of licentious desire hides the malicious and reproductive intention of the vulva. Acting as a decoy to 184 Diethe and Cox, Mafarka the futurist, 101-102. 185 On the image of the “gaping mouth,” see Bakhtin; on the inversion and displacement upward of the feminine “other mouth” in Italian poetry, see Spackman, “Inter musam et ursam moritur: Folengo and the Gaping ‘Other’ Mouth.” 112 make men believe they engage this organ on a plane of sexuality, the vulva schemes to drain men of their reproductive resources. The gendering of eating practices points to Mafarka’s underlying anxiety around the reproductive female body. That the mouth pumps out (“pompare”) instead of chews (“mordere”) again points to the ultimate purpose of this organ. Given his comparison of women to insects, Mafarka fears being drained more than being eaten or killed. Men, as “ghiotti di fiori,” consume women through a breakdown into pieces—vulva, hips, waist, breasts. What the vulva threatens, however, does not affect the integrity of the male body but instead drains it of useful resources and leaves an empty shell. As a method of extraction that resembles transfusion more so than masculinized mastication, depletion stands out as an alternative form of ingestion. This threat results from Marinetti’s own tinkering with organ functions. In enabling the male stomach to act reproductively, he also allows the womb to operate as a stomach, thereby opening the possibility of a vulva-mouth that consumes. We can see the initial implications of this division of consumption techniques in the coincidence of the reproductive and digestive systems. His rearrangement of organs in his construction of the Futurist body amounts to a resignification through extension and transferal of properties of those organic parts. The confusion of the womb and stomach reveals another threat that Mafarka will not see until it is too late—that of the container. Such confusion threatens to destabilize the Futurist body while reinforcing the threatening feminine body. Greedy Containers: Maternal Graves and Lethal Wombs In part, Marinetti’s focus on the vulva stems from an ingrained fear of being drained demonstrated by his confusion of the sexed organ for a mouth. On the heels of this insight, 113 though, follows a cluster of remaining questions: what is the significance of Marinetti’s confusion of organs? Why are women met with violent death? But perhaps namely, how does the woman-as-container threaten the Futurist body? The answer has to do with the larger bodily system that lies behind the sexed organ and its relation to the maternal function. Different from “birth” as an event, the maternal function names the ability to give life that does not belong to a single gender or body.186 It rather communicates a technology that enables the production of another being, making its relation to death not as easily discernable as we might hope. An exemplary figure for this relation is the likeness of the womb and the grave that the novel unintentionally shows. The uncanny resemblances between these containers that line the border between life and death and from which issue unexpected matter appear as furtive figures informing Marinetti’s reproductive anxieties.187 And it is precisely in their resemblances to containers of both life and death that women threaten masculine creativity. We may begin by asking, how do women resemble containers? It is worth noting the gendered yet unacknowledged categorization of technologies typical in the Western philosophical tradition, as Zoë Sofia points out: One might propose this neglect has less to do with modesty than with a misogynistic metaphysics that has represented space as a passive, neutral receptacle …and the mother as a personless nutritive vessel…The problem with this representation…is man’s failure to grow up and acknowledge indebtedness to the spatial/maternal environment and the labors of those who sustain this facilitating space.188 186 See Marder’s The Mother in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction for a larger discussion of the uncanny position of the mother in psychoanalysis. 187 Reproductive in two ways: one, Marinetti is anxious about his ability as a man to create the future he desires as he sees no way to do so without recourse to woman—this is a poetic issue, the issue of replacing the muse, and his solution is to replace a life-giving muse with a machine, which gives death to the worker but also drains life of its spontaneity by making it repetitious and mechanical. Two, it is this very anxiety that reproduces itself in the creation of a mechanized airplane son. 188 Sofia, “Container Technologies.” 114 Sofia draws attention to the action of holding that is spatial in its effects and maternal in nature. She emphasizes that, in holding, containers exert influence and energy to maintain the space and do so in ways that remain discreet. When technologies are openly gendered in interpretation, what appears unobtrusive, neutral, or as “background” are named feminine, while dynamic, motorized, active pieces are coded as masculine. Innocuous technologies that maintain space, fluids, and matter often go overlooked as technologies at all. We are distracted by the delicious cake that comes out of the oven, but do not recognize the “sieve, bowls, or beaters” that enable a cake’s production.189 That is to say, container technologies surreptitiously insert themselves into the functioning of even the most mundane of operations and as such perhaps pose the greatest threat. Containers need not be as bland as we may imagine, nor their aspect always as conventional as a vase or pot. In Spackman’s reading of the novel, she identifies women as the currency with which men mitigate the proximity between them.190 In order not to be homosexual (or perversely incestuous), men pass women around as monetary emblems to maintain the proper space between them. Here, women modify distance and act as the organizing principle between bodies, much the same way a utensil holder keeps our forks and knives separate. As a restrictive presence that regulates space, she allows what operates within it to function “normally.” The indispensable technology of the container, then, goes beyond the mere ability to hold or conduct substances and extends to the ability to bind space, arrange bodies, and preserve contents. 189 Sofia, 188. 190 Spackman, Fascist Virilities, especially chapter 3. 115 I argue that containers appear more sinister than this model suggests if we take a closer look at the maternal figures in Mafarka. The assumption underlining the gendered practice of categorization, that “space is merely an unintelligent container, or containers dumb spaces,” is implicitly challenged in Mafarka by the very figures with which Marinetti intends to uphold it. We see this most clearly in Colubbi, Mafarka’s ex-lover—a woman who calls herself Gazurmah’s true mother. She emerges from the night “lavat[a] dal ricordo di un chiaro di luna goduto nell’infanzia lontana” and announces herself by calling out Mafarka’s name. Mafarka’s reaction is telling and suggests a number of potential traps at work in this single character: Il mondo, i secoli, la luce…tutto cominciava con quella voce che lo palpeggiava amorosamente… Non desiderava più nulla al mondo, poiché gli pareva d’aver fra le mani, come un tesoro, la gioia, la gioia delle gioie… E infatti si vide piccolo, non più grande di un frutto, entro la bocca di quella donna, tra i suoi denti, che ella mostrò ad un tratto, come si estrae un pugnale dalla guaina. E fu come se ella avesse mostrato uno dei cantucci più segreti e più ghiotti del suo corpo…Mafarka fu attanagliato alla gola dalla tortura di una sete insopportabile, davanti alla dolcezza fresca e melata di quelle labbra che si schiudevano su un po’ di voluttà bianca. Il succo dei frutti del paradiso…o anche l’interno di una ferita…191 The world, the centuries, light, everything began with this voice which felt its way amorously...He wanted nothing further from the world now that he held joy, the joy of joys, between his hands like a treasure... In truth, he saw himself as small, no bigger than a berry in the woman’s mouth, between her teeth, which all at once she bared, as one draws a dagger from its sheath. And it was as if she had bared one of her body’s most secret and dainty recesses...192 Trailing behind Mafarka like a memory, Colubbi embodies Mafarka’s youthful past and all the indulgent pleasures that lie there. Mafarka’s immediate reaction to her appearance, already 191 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, 183, my emphasis. 192 Diethe and Cox, Mafarka the futurist, 163-164. 116 marked by the moonlight of nostalgic longing, betrays the strength of the temptation that she offers. Her voice abruptly pulls Mafarka back to a moment when he desired nothing more than to grow old with her. As a character meant to stand in for the figure of woman from the futurist perspective, Colubbi textually contains all the ills that Marinetti associates with femininity— sentimentalism, nostalgia, romance, and sleep. Marinetti often describes her movements as furtive, her footsteps barely audible to Mafarka just as her gestures scarcely give away their intentions. Colubbi extends the deception implied in the dancers’ masking of the vulva-mouth to a full-body strategy. Presenting herself as the object of love par excellence, Colubbi quenches Mafarka’s ambition with “un sonno d’acqua gelata.”193 She contains his ambition by replacing it with a thirst (“una sete insopportabile”) that is a physical desire for her.194 While this is a central threat posed by the female container, it is by far the most dangerous. The passage suggests that the threat of the toothed vulva has not gone away but is magnified with the extension of deceit to the whole body. After realizing his contentment in joining Colubbi, Mafarka describes how he feels in relation to her: “si vide piccolo, non più grande di un frutto, entro la bocca di quella donna, tra i suoi denti…” He finds himself trapped like a fruit between her teeth, significantly described as sheathed daggers. In showing this aspect of her mouth, it is as if she shows one of the most secret and gluttonous crevices of her body: “E fu come se ella avesse mostrato uno dei cantucci più segreti e più ghiotti del suo corpo.” Again we see a confusion of the reproductive and digestive systems that this time directly jeopardizes Mafarka as a male subject and ultimately the viability of Marinetti’s futurist body. 193 Marinetti, 192. 194 I address the significance of the throat in the next section. Here we can already see how the throat functions as a site of mixed meaning, that tangles signification of what sits there. 117 In Colubbi’s imagined female body, the mouth (a highly visible organ) shares its gluttony with the vulva (as a “cantuccio più segreto”) in significant ways; namely in the ability to consume like a man. In transferring the consuming properties of the mouth, revealed in the teeth, to the vulva, Marinetti combines the containing and digestive properties of the womb and stomach in an undecipherable mixture.195 By extension, the woman who now has a stomach for a womb also possesses the ability to consume through her vulva-mouth the way men have consumed women up to this point. Put differently, the danger Colubbi exposes is an inversion of the established gender relations. What Mafarka unconsciously articulates but does not quite recognize is the dual threat of being drained of life forces and feminized as a hollowed container. His fear of feminization through a process of consumption in relation to Colubbi, and by extension all potential mothers, surfaces in the final pages of the novel and with Gazurmah’s birth. It is as a potential mother, as an empty container, that Colubbi presents herself to Mafarka and is one of the reasons he ultimately shuns her. Unlike his own mother, now a mummified corpse, Colubbi is virile in expressing sexual desires and attempting to drain him. Such masculine traits are in stark contrast to the characterization and body of his mother: a sorrowful woman who mourns the loss of her son and offers memories of times past. The differences between the two mothers are significant and suggest that the act of preservation implicit in container technologies is a threat to Mafarka’s reproductive project. As is shown in one of the early manuscripts of the novel, Marinetti was interested in the ancient Egyptian use of artificial eyes in mummification. A torn excerpt from a newspaper article, “Gli occhi artificiali,” 195 As I discuss in the next section, the overlapping of the reproductive and digestive does not function well in all cases and ultimately leaves the futurist body open to corruption/seizure. 118 describes how the “imbalsamatori egiziani” used beeswax and plaster to inlay precious stones or marble into the eye sockets to better “preserve signs of life” in the dead.196 Figure 1, Mafarka manuscript, Box 27, 1384, Marinetti Collection, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University 196 See Figure 1 and Figure 2. That this is something of Egyptian origin is interesting for its relevance to Mafarka as a “romain africain” and Marinetti being born in Egypt, especially since this novel has a great deal to do with swapping out organs. 119 Figure 2, Mafarka manuscript, Box 27, 1384, Marinetti Collection, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University It is worth noting that in mummification, the internal organs are removed and the body drained or dried of its moisture, leaving only the shell of the person intact.197 Colubbi too offers the preservation of “signs of life” without the parts that, for the futurist, make life meaningful. 197 It should also be noted that the heart was usually left inside since the Egyptians honored this particular organ as the center of emotion and intelligence. 120 She offers sleep to calm the mind, sensual pleasures to distract the body, and memories of young love that keep Mafarka emotionally transfixed on her. In her first appearance, she announces her intentions of perfuming Mafarka’s body upon his death: “—Vengo a profumare le tue labbra pel bacio che ti aspetta!”198 The French text gives us a better sense of what Marinetti meant in using “profumare” here: “—Je viens embaumer tes lèvres pour le baiser qui t’attend!”199 The presence of a mummified mother in the novel and use of artificial eyes in the clipping point to the act of preservation as a significant if understated element of the container technologies implicated. The process of preserving the shell of a life recalls the threat Colubbi actively presents and that Langurama, Mafarka’s mother, passively implies. The danger present in Colubbi as a female lover is one of drainage, a loss of ambition, and feminization, the consequences of which threaten to transform Mafarka into a container himself. Langurama as a semi-living, mummified mother strangely threatens something similar. When Mafarka addresses his son Gazurmah and describes how he created him, Mafarka highlights the significance of this as a parthenogenetic project: Oh! la gioia di averti generato così, bello e puro di tutti i difetti che provengono dalla vulva malefica e predispongono alla decrepitezza e alla morte!...Sì! tu sei immortale, figlio mio, eroe senza sonno!200 Oh, the joy of giving birth to you like this—handsome, free of all the blemishes that come from the inefficient vulva and bias us to old age and death!...Yes, you are immortal, my son, my sleepless hero!201 198 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, 184. 199 Marinetti, Mafarka, le futuriste, 190. 200 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, 209. 201 Diethe and Cox, Mafarka the futurist, 188. 121 Mafarka emphasizes the connection between being born of a woman and having the defect of mortality. Our predisposition towards death imposed on us at birth by our mothers conditions us as mere humans. The Futurist, however, and Gazurmah above all others, remains immortal for having been given birth through masculine, mechanized creation. The danger that might have been contained in Langurama’s tomb along with her corpse is the gift of mortality. Yet, it is precisely mortality and death that Langurama helps to reproduce when she authorizes Mafarka to breathe life into his son through a kiss. Mafarka’s final confrontations with Colubbi expose the precarity and coincidence of artistic and biological reproductivity at stake in the encounters between the masculine and feminine throughout the novel. In a moment of particular rage (“ira sorda”) aimed at Colubbi, Mafarka unintentionally voices the anxiety behind the drastic measures to eliminate the feminine threat: Mio figlio appartiene a me solo! Io, io gli ho fatto il corpo! Io, gli do vita col solo sforzo della mia volontà!...E non ti ho chiamata per aiutarmi!...Non ti ho stesa supina per iniettarti nell’ovaia, con degli sfregamenti di piacere, la divina semenza!...Essa è ancora qui, nel mio cuore, nel mio cervello! E bisogna che io sia solo, per dar la vita a mio figlio! ...Copriti il viso e non spogliarti! Nascondimi il tuo seno!202 He is mine alone! It is I who made his body. It is I who engender him through sheer exertion of my will!...And I didn’t call on you to help me!...I did not lay you on your back and pump the divine seed into your ovaries, with heaves of pleasure!...The seed is still there, in my heart, in my brain! I have to be alone to bring my son to life!...Cover your face!...And do not undress! Hide your bosom from me!203 202 Marinetti, 204. 203 Diethe and Cox, Mafarka the futurist, 183. 122 Mafarka’s vehement insistence on being alone in the creation of his son’s body and in the act of giving him life points to the very place where such functions normally take place—the womb. His repetition of io, solo, me, and mi emphasizes his singularity and linguistically distances him from the person he addresses. In drawing attention to her sexual difference, exposed in the nakedness of her maternal parts, Mafarka responds as much to Colubbi’s femininity as to her claim to be Gazurmah’s mother. In so doing, he shows himself to be trapped by Marinetti’s misogynist reduction of the maternal function to a feminine power. Whereas in earlier texts, women are reduced to the singular ability to give birth, here the maternal function is inescapably coded as feminine. Mafarka’s claiming to do what, in other instances Marinetti tells us only women can do, invokes that which cannot be articulated—an anxiety about the sex of the maternal function. Consuming the (M)other: A modernist approach to the threat of the womb In his defense of the novel, Marinetti states that its main concern is creative production, “l’eroismo… filosofico ed artistico.”204 The birth of Gazurmah as the climatic end of Mafarka’s journey makes this a project of (pro)creative (re)production that does not distinguish between artistic and biological reproductivity. As such, Mafarka’s ambition of parthenogenesis depends on his ability to give birth without the help of a vulva, or, more importantly, a womb. When he names the threat of the vulva, though, he does not recognize the threat of the womb that lies in wait behind it. Instead, virility acts as a defense mechanism to shield him from what he cannot consciously accept. Mafarka fears the consequences of sexual encounters with women in an unconscious attempt to isolate the many feminine threats to that one, sexed organ. He 204 Marinetti, “Il Processo e l’assoluzione di Mafarka il futurista,” 240. 123 consequently does not realize his anxiety that the maternal function is sex specific, nor the anxiety he has about his own (pro)creative capabilities which might more appropriately be mapped onto the womb. To understand why the vulva is met with such violence instead of the womb, it is worth considering the kind of destructive violence women on the whole are met with. Such violence is demonstrated most clearly in the first chapter where the women are literally raped to a pulp. What Mafarka names “Lo Stagno Bubassa” is made up of “donne squartate e schiacciate da una foia sanguinaria.”205 Variously referred to as a “stagno lastricato di putredini,” “mare umana,” and “melma,” the scene of destruction is accomplished through the liquefaction of bodies.206 We see the same kind of decomposition of the female body in the aftermath of Magamal’s rabies- induced rage, where he has torn his bride, Uarabelli-Ciarciar, to pieces leaving only a “scarlet mud”: Egli scivolò su una specie di poltiglia molliccia, e non comprese. Ma un odore caldo e dolce di seme umano e di putrefazione lo morse alle narici, e i suoi occhi, abituati a poco a poco alla penombra, indovinarono i lembi di un cadavere femminile, sparsi dappertutto, intorno a lui, sinistramente, come dopo una flagellazione…Il letto era tutto imbrattato di una specie di fango scarlatto, e pareva sfondato da una lotta diabolica. Fra i cuscini intrisi di sangue, si scorgevano ciuffi di capelli, vertebre e ossa, che sembravano esser state masticate dai denti di una tigre in foia.207 Mafarka slipped on something soft and clotted, and didn't understand, but a hot, sweet stench of human sap and decay stung his nostrils, and his eyes, slowly growing used to the half-light, made out the shreds and fragments of a female body strewn gruesomely all around him, like the aftermath of a lethal flagellation. … The bed appeared to be daubed in a scarlet pulp, and wrecked by a devilish combat. Out of its blood-soaked depth, and tufted with scattered locks of hair, 205 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, 33. 206 Marinetti, 26, 32, 30. This scene and the scene of Uarabelli-Ciarciar’s murder are additionally marked by an olfactory indicator—the smell of putrefaction and mixture of bodily fluids. 207 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, 127. The rabies eventually kills Magamal. 124 spilled vertebrae and bones that seemed to have been chewed by the teeth of a tiger in rut.208 This scene is reminiscent not only of the rape of the African women, but also the feeding of the dancers to the sharks. All three scenes begin with a sexual premise that threaten the male with depletion. Mafarka and others read this threat as being inherently sexual and therefore gendered in the feminine. As such, women are met with an exaggerated disfiguration of the body that takes the form of a denaturing and a degendering. It is a breakdown of parts to such a degree that they become unrecognizable as feminine. Whereas in earlier texts like Venezia, fragmentation of the feminine resulted in distinguishable pieces that were then used to reconstitute the male body, here the threat of the maternal function being a sexed ability is so great that women are reduced to a liquid state so that not even their sex remains. They are reduced to pure potentiality from which the male can create.209 Marinetti’s strategy for dealing with the threat of woman as a greedy container and competing mother is to consume her in an ingestion that is also an immunization.210 Much the same way the futurist in the manifesto exposes himself to death in order to inoculate himself from its most lethal effects, the futurist in Mafarka masticates women to such a degree that their most valuable attribute—the maternal function—becomes even more appropriable. In so doing, he saves himself from feminization through the incorporation of a feminine organ and vaccinates himself against the other feminine ills by taking in this small piece. This method of 208 Diethe and Cox, Mafarka the futurist, 113. 209 Here I follow Agamben’s understanding of potentiality in The Fire and the Tale. See Agamben, The Fire and the Tale, especially “What is the Act of Creation?” 210 My use of the term “immunitary” is indebted to the thought of Italian philosopher, Roberto Esposito. See Roberto Esposito, Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life (2011), and Bíos: Biopolitics and Philosophy, trans. Timothy C. Campbell (2008). For a different perspective on immunity, see Cohen, A Body Worth Defending. 125 immunization contrasts the act of preservation seen with Colubbi and Langurama in significant ways. Immunization appears as a masculine activity in presupposing a mastication or liquefaction of the other before ingesting it into the body of the subject. Preservation, entwined as it is with containers, remains well within the feminine domain. This logic is even visible in the Manifesto del futurismo’s call to danger and bodily risk: “La letteratura esaltò fino ad oggi l’immobilità pensosa, l’estasi e il sonno. Noi vogliamo esaltare il movimento aggressivo, l’insonnia febbrile, il passo di corsa, il salto mortale, lo schiaffo ed il pugno.” The fault line between, on the one hand, sleep and safety and ballistic movement and the risk of death on the other, opens along gendered lines and divides into two craters of preservation and immunization. At this juncture, we are in a position to notice how Marinetti’s misogyny functions within this immunitary logic and as a crucial part to his larger Futurist program. As Foster has argued, the Futurist needs “ever more shields for ever more stimuli.”211 Drawing on Freud’s theory of trauma in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Foster argues that the modern subject needs at once ever-greater “shields,” thought of as a technological prosthetic, and ever more stimuli, both of which are produced by the exposure to and merging with technology. I would add that these shields may not look like shields at all, nor function externally, and are definitely not necessarily always masculine. In considering the maternal function as a technology necessary for his artistic- reproductive project, Marinetti views women as stores of technology, sources from which he can extract a necessary part. Viewing women in this way, Marinetti can properly arm himself for the future he imagines. Modern man, in other words, must be able to appropriate and use technology in any situation if he is to survive the future. Such is the changing rhythm and landscape of life 211 Foster, Prosthetic Gods, chapter 3, 109–150. 126 that one who does not know how to acquire technology will surely be left to the past. Marinetti’s misogyny, it would seem, is intimately tied to an underlying anxiety about modern technology. To make sense of how the maternal function as a technology consumed by the futurist body is put to use, I turn to a third unlikely relationship between Magamal and Gazurmah. Failed Mourning, Indigestion, and the (Maternal) Crypt In a scene that is often overlooked, Mafarka oscillates between seeking emotional refuge in the fleshy pleasures of two young women and recoiling in revulsion at the act. Dark, soft fabrics wrap Habibi and Luba while each holds a basket “overflowing with fruit” on her head.212 As they pine over Mafarka, watching him secretly from a cliff, they take inventory of their cargo: —Che cose gli hai portato? —Dei banani, dei pasticcini profumati di rosa, e delle conserve di datteri. —Io, ho del vino di Siria, delle mandorle e dei pistacchi pestati…Tutte cose buonissime!213 —What things did you bring him? —Banana trees, rose-scented pastries, and date preserves. —I have some wine from Syria, some almonds and crushed pistachios… All very good things!214 Not just any foods sit in the perched baskets, but exotic, luxurious indulgences. When Mafarka discovers their trespassing near the sacred grounds of his son’s impending birth, Habibi and Luba justify their presence with a gastronomic alibi: a food-offering of their “drinks, sweets, and 212 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, 169. The original reads: “Erano avvolte in stoffe cupe e morbide.” It should be noted that this fabric contrasts with their light skin, a subtle but significant marker of race that seems to influence Mafarka’s interaction with them as opposed to other women in the novel. 213 Mafarka il futurista, 170. 214 My translation. 127 lips,” which the king accepts as reward for his labors.215 The women not only present themselves as suppliers of delicacies, they are themselves something to unwrap and consume. As the passage continues, it becomes clear that Mafarka’s relapse into the extravagances of sexual encounters with women is not unprovoked. Rather it emerges from the intimate but concealed connection between his brother’s death and his own reproductive project. Marinetti buries this relation in the peculiar tract of organs that shapes the passage and mirrors Mafarka’s own abnormal narrative journey.216 Tracing the irregular channel formed by the heart (cuore), throat (gola), and eyes (occhi) exposes Magamal’s unlikely relation to Gazurmah. The sequence in question begins with Mafarka’s accepting of the offered treats: “Ho fame, ho fame…e sete, anche!...Ho la gola piena di sabbia amara! Ma il mio cuore è contento, perché…il mio figliuolo possente e immortale è ormai nato!”217 As Mafarka affirms his desire to eat, another desire announces itself almost without his knowledge. He is very hungry…but also thirsty. His throat is “filled with bitter sand,” but his heart remains content because his son will be born soon.218 The dissonance between organs within the same body gives us early warning of Mafarka’s unsettled state. Moments after Mafarka empties the pitcher of wine poured by Luba, a dark emotion overtakes him. He hallucinates his past life incarnate as an abandoned mother speaking to her traitorous husband; she asks why the children she bore him are not good enough 215 Mafarka il futurista, 169. 216 Tract here means the conduit formed by the organs, but also recalls its once literary connotations. The passage is indeed the text on the page, but is also the passage through of grief, sorrow, melancholia, of the undigested death of his brother through his body and through the text. 217 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, 173. 218 The reader will recall how Mafarka gives birth to his son through a kiss. See Mafarka il futurista, 218. 128 and then promises to give him better ones.219 This speaking vision carries with it a recent disturbing memory for Mafarka: Ella sembrava dire, come una madre abbandonata al suo sposo: “Vedi i figliuoli che ti ho dati?...Non sono belli?...Perché mi abbandoni?...Te ne darò degli altri, ancor più belli e più forti di questi!” Tutta l’acre dolcezza della gioventù scomparsa gli saliva su per la gola…Poi, ad un tratto, gli occhi gli si empirono di lagrime che traboccarono sulle guance come un liquore delizioso. —…Magamal, fratello mio adorato! Tu sei là, ancora, raggomitolato nella tua pelle d’ippopotamo…E i tuoi occhi son chiusi, e il tuo sorriso s’è spento! Mai più, mai più, udrò la tua voce…220 It seemed to say, like a deserted woman to her husband: ‘Do you see the children I’ve give you?...Are they not beautiful? Why are you leaving me? I’ll give you others, finer and stronger than these!’ All the bittersweetness of bygone youth rose in his throat...Then, suddenly, tears sprang to his eyes and flowed down his cheeks like a delicious liquor. ‘Oh, you, Magamal!...Magamal, my dear brother!...You are still there, huddled up in the hippopotamus skin...and your eyes are shut, and your smile extinguished! Never again, never again, shall I hear your voice...221 To combat the onslaught of such emotion, Mafarka demands the women show him their breasts and lift up their skirts. “Mafarka s’inabissò di nuovo nel piacere…”222 The women, like the treats, offer no form of necessary sustenance, but are instead gratuitous distractions for the mind and body. Here too a show of virility acts as a defense mechanism to shield the male subject from what he cannot consciously accept. This time, however, it is not the sex of the maternal function but the reality of his brother’s death. It is no coincidence that his sorrow physically manifests itself as a lavish drink, nor that such a break in Mafarka’s bravado should come in a moment of indulgent consumption. As 219 It is not insignificant that Mafarka makes this same promise to his own mother when he tells her of Magamal’s death. 220 Mafarka il futurista, 175. 221 Diethe and Cox, Mafarka the futurist, 156. 222 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, 176. 129 Mafarka’s statements suggest, there remains an unacknowledged connection between the throat and heart. Recall that the sun-hen fertilizes Mafarka’s heart-egg in what we might call the conception of Gazurmah. We should again hear the heart’s intimate connection with Gazurmah in this passage, especially as it comes into conflict with what sticks in the throat. The bitter sand which coats the passageway and provokes Mafarka’s thirst is the undigested recognition of Magamal’s death. His yielding to Habibi and Luba is a precursory and unconscious indication of the unresolved remorse Mafarka feels for his brother’s death. Mafarka’s sinking into pleasure offered by the women and their baskets recalls an earlier moment when Mafarka resisted a similar temptation. In “Il viaggio notturno,” Mafarka transports his brother’s body in a hippopotamus-skin sack on a boat to the resting place of their dead parents. Along the way, grief and sorrow pull his body apart in pieces. His heart wants to give itself up to the pain of losing Magamal; his spirit chastises him for even considering such a notion; and his soul takes off above the clouds as if to distance itself entirely from the commotion. Drawn towards the waves by a melody played by a deckhand, a song from Magamal’s wedding no less, Mafarka feels himself slipping into the water for relief: Egli si sentiva scivolare dolcemente, con quei bagliori rosei, nella trasparenza delle acque…per fuggir l’uragano che sconvolgeva, al di fuori, i fogliami del suo pensiero. Ed ascoltava così una sorridente e mite lezione di suicidio. Le onde lo chiamavano … —Laggiù…Vi troverai una morte soave e lenta!...Vieni! Tu puoi inabissarti fra le nostre braccia, e svanire come un riflesso!223 He entered those liquid dwellings, in the home circle of those family lamps, amid the musing of the calm, secluded, religious reflections, to escape from the storm above, which battered at the branches of his thoughts! And it was sweet, appealing lesson of suicide that he heard. The waves beckoned to him with a supple, ceaselessly persuasive motion!... 223 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, 137. 130 ‘Down here...You’ll find a sweet, slow death. Come, you can sink into our arms and vanish like a reflection!’224 In the same way that Mafarka’s plunge into the sexual and gastronomic pleasures of Habibi and Luba is a bodily distraction from his mental and emotional instability, his wading into the waves offers a sedative to his distressed mind. Both immersions take the form of a corporeal retreat from the occupations of the mind marked by a movement downwards towards the lower portions of the body. Mafarka names this withdrawal from the wakeful work of the intellect as a “galleggi[a] in regioni sublimi di felice incoscienza”225 Such actions, however, threaten no less than slow death (“una morte soave e lenta”). The potent corporeal quality of these distractions makes them exponentially deadlier since they do not seem to affect the mind—the most valuable, because most creative, organ a man has—but actually put it to sleep. Acknowledgement of Magamal’s death threatens the very same death that the waves offer and for this reason Mafarka resists consciously recognizing it to the point of engaging in other risky activities. Marinetti does not by chance signal Mafarka’s relation to Magamal’s death through the figure of sand. The memory tinged with nostalgia (“l’acre dolcezza della gioventù scomparsa”) that wells up in Mafarka’s throat and provokes a surge of liquor tears harkens back to the beginning of the passage and the “sabbia amara” that first incites his thirst. As a newspaper photograph found among Marinetti’s writings suggests, sand has a particular quality of destruction that mimics the sea.226 224 Diethe and Cox, Mafarka the futurist, 121-122. 225 Marinetti, 139. 226 See Figure 3. The sand here threatens to erase even memory. 131 Figure 3, Tunisian War newspaper photos, Box 37, 1659, Marinetti Collection, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University Taken from the vantage point of an airplane overhead, the photo reveals the remains of an abandoned village. Sand occupies the majority of the shot, irregularly broken up by fragments that look more like bones than construction material. The caption reads: “Dove la sabbia inghiotte la vita: il vecchio villaggio abbandonato di Hun, nel Sahara libico: come appare dall’aeroplano.” While this photo did not necessarily influence Marinetti’s decision directly, it does suggest at least one way of perceiving the consequences of being surrounded by sand. Sand, like the waves and a particular kind of death, can engulf life. The way sand appears around Magamal suggests that it threatens not only a slow death but an overwhelming of the mind and body. We see this most clearly during Mafarka’s night 132 cruise at a moment of unbearable vulnerability. Listening to the flute and remembering the vibrancy of his brother’s life, Mafarka nearly gives in to the nostalgia and sorrow: E il cuore di Mafarka diceva: —Ho abbandonato la lotta!...O vele del mio desiderio, vampiri miei, volete dunque addormentarmi per sempre?... Veramente, egli sentiva a poco a poco crollare il proprio corpo sotto la pioggia di quella sabbia melodiosa, e sì fine, che saliva dal flauto e ricadeva furtivamente per seppellirlo.227 And Mafarka’s heart said: ‘I’ve given up the fight! Oh sails of my desire, oh my vampires, are you going to make me sleep forever?’ He truly felt his body subsiding by degrees under the rain of fine melodious sand that rose from the flute, then drifted slyly down to bury him.228 Just before letting himself slip into the waves, Mafarka is almost buried by the sheer memory of his brother. As a materialization of Magamal’s wedding song, the sand rains down on Mafarka’s body, forcing it to collapse like his brother’s corpse which fits in a sack crumpled up in a ball.229 The differences in these bodies stress the danger of giving into the sorrow of death. Whereas the idealized futurist body stands erect in the face of death, his own or that of another’s, the weak body clings to the memory of the past and mourns its loss. Mourning consequently threatens to cloud the mind and feminize the body. Mafarka dives into the sexual pleasures of Habibi and Luba to avoid the waves of grief that threaten to overtake him from within. Whereas sand “swallows life” in the photo, Mafarka may be said to have swallowed sand in an attempt to combat the threats posed by mourning. As an alternative to mourning the death of his brother, which would require an acknowledgement of 227 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, 136. 228 Diethe and Cox, Mafarka the futurist, 121. 229 “—…Magamal, fratello mio adorato! Tu sei là, ancora, raggomitolato nella tua pelle d’ippopotamo…E i tuoi occhi son chiusi, e il tuo sorriso s’è spento!…” My emphasis. See Marinetti, Mafarka, 175. 133 that very death, Mafarka turns to a familiar strategy. Much the same way the Futurist consumes the feminine to avoid its most lethal effects, Mafarka metaphorically ingests the body of the dead as a means to keep Magamal alive inside him instead of “swallowing” the reality of his brother’s death. Mafarka metaphorically eats his brother’s corpse in a radical act of denial. Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok call this process incorporation, in which the fantasy of consuming the dead other arises from the inability to express one’s mourning for the lost love- object through figurative language: Because our mouth is unable to say certain words and unable to formulate certain sentences, we fantasize…that we are actually taking into our mouth the unnamable, the object itself. As the empty mouth calls out in vain to be filled with introjective speech, it reverts to being the food-craving mouth it was prior to the acquisition of speech…The crucial move away from introjection…to incorporation is made when words fail to fill the subject’s void and hence an imaginary thing is inserted into the mouth in their place.230 Introjective speech describes the language we normally use to communicate our mourning and emotions with others in a community of speaking subjects. By filling the void of the empty mouth with words that represent that emptiness, introjection allows the subject to transform the loss of a love-object into figurative or representational language that may be shared with others.231 Unable to do so out of fear of feminization and being overwhelmed by grief to the point of suicide, Mafarka refuses to openly mourn Magamal or even mention him after he deposits his brother’s body at the feet of their mummified mother.232 Such is the shock of 230 Abraham, The Shell and the Kernel, 128. 231 “So the wants of the original oral vacancy are remedied by being turned into verbal relationships with the speaking community at large.” See Abraham, 128. 232 Caruth speaks about the quality of possession, where the “dreams, hallucinations, and thoughts are absolutely literal” and therefore “unassimiable to associative chains of meaning.” “…this scene or thought is not possessed knowledge, but itself possesses, at will, the one it inhabits…” Caruth, Trauma: Explorations in Memory, 6. 134 Magamal’s death that Mafarka is unable to bear witness to it in time, to register it completely as a full and past event. And yet, reminders of the reality of his death recur unexpectedly in moments such as in the sexual embraces of Habibi and Luba. The repeated intrusion of the reality of this death, that Mafarka repetedly refuses to recognize through mourning, suggests to me that he experiences Magamal’s death as a traumatic event that he cannot consciously accept. Laplanche and Pontalis, in the Language of Psychoanalysis, state that disavowal or denial are terms used to define a specific “mode of defense which consists in the subject’s refusing to recognize the reality of a traumatic perception.”233 For Mafarka, the trauma of losing his brother is wrapped up with the anxiety of becoming feminized through the demonstration of weakness through mourning. As a somewhat happy though unintentional result of this situation though, Mafarka creates the conditions necessary to turn that very death into a fertile ground for the birth of his son. This inability to recognize Magamal’s death results in the construction of a crypt. As an intrapsychic tomb, the crypt immures the reality of the loss to a part of the psyche where it cannot reach the consciousness of the subject. It conceals the death and keeps it a secret even from the subject’s conscious mind: The words that cannot be uttered, the scenes that cannot be recalled, the tears that cannot be shed—everything will be swallowed along with the trauma that led to the loss. Swallowed and preserved…Reconstituted from the memories of words, scenes, and affects, the objectal correlative of the loss is buried alive in the crypt as a full-fledged person…234 233 Laplanche and Pontalis, The Language of Psycho-Analysis, 118. 234 Abraham, The Shell and the Kernel, 130. 135 Through the figure of the crypt we may finally see the full extent of Marinetti’s entwining of the reproductive and digestive systems in his Futurist body. While the dead love-object is ingested through the mouth, it does not remain there—it travels to the crypt or, following the logic of Marinetti’s futurist body, the stomach. In a strange demetaphorization, Mafarka consumes Magamal’s body through lavish food-goods proffered by Habibi and Luba.235 Instead of being digested in the belly, however, this nourishment is transubstantiated into the corpse Mafarka tries so desperately to hide from himself. Unable to process what has been consumed, the body rejects the food in an act of indigestion that we see in the hallucination and sudden outburst of sorrow. While in normal mourning, the sharing of food with others in acknowledgement of the dead, as in the case of a wake or funeral, may be considered introjection, Mafarka’s failure to narrate his grief restricts his ability to use figurative language. He therefore consumes literally what might, in normal mourning, represent figuratively the object of his loss.236 The indigestion that appears as a hallucination points to a second consequence of Marinetti’s abnormal anatomy. If we consider the resonances between the hallucinated mother and an earlier encounter between Mafarka and his own mother, the relationship between Magamal and Gazurmah becomes clearer. Kneeling before the sarcophagi of his parents, Mafarka offers his brother’s corpse and his remorse for Magamal’s death alongside him in battle: LA VOCE DI LANGURAMA: —Te l’avevo dato vivo e bello…ed eccolo morto e putrefatto!...Che vuoi ch’io ne faccia, ora?...Riprendilo! portalo via!... 235 Abraham, 126. 236 Where the loss is commemorated figuratively through the communal sharing of food, as Abraham and Torok explain: “Introjecting a desire, a pain, a situation means channeling them through language into a communion of empty mouths. This is how the literal ingestion of foods becomes introjection when viewed figuratively. The passage from food to language in the mouth presupposes the successful replacement of the object’s presence with the self’s cognizance of its absence. Since language acts and makes up for absence by representing, by giving figurative shape to presence, it can only be comprehended or shared in a ‘community of empty mouths.” See Abraham, The Shell and the Kernel, 128. 136 MAFARKA: …Ma se tu non vuoi questo, madre, madre mia …ho altro da offrirti!...Per consolare il tuo cuore e per distrarre la tua solitudine, io ti porto un figlio…Il figlio di tuo figlio!...Il figlio delle mie viscere!...Un figlio nascerà da me…Ma sarà immortale, sai?...Immortale, madre mia!237 The Voice of Langurama: ‘I gave him to you alive and handsome...now he is dead and decayed!...What would you have me do with him?...Take your brother back! Take him away... Mafarka:...But if you don’t want this, Mother! I have something else to offer you!...To console your heart and to lighten your solitude, I bring you a son, Mother...The son of your son, the son of my heart! ...A son will be born of me, a son of flesh and blood!...But immortal, Mother, do you know?238 Like the woman in the hallucination, Mafarka promises to give his mother a better son, immune to mortality the way Magamal was not. Attention to both the visible and invisible characteristics of the body marks how each “mother” discusses her child. The preferred body is perceivably strong and beautiful in ways that recall the descriptions of Mafarka and foreshadow those of Gazurmah. As in Venezia, where the outer appearance of decay corresponds to internal moral decadence, Langurama draws our attention to Magamal’s current state of putrefaction where he had once been beautiful. When the memory of his brother rises up, Mafarka too notices how the body is curled by death (“Tu sei là, ancora, raggomitolato nella tua pelle d’ippopotamo”). His speech to his mother also takes up the rhetoric of immunization present in Marinetti’s earlier texts and in Mafarka’s later exaltation of Gazurmah. In his first address to the winged hero, Mafarka expresses his joy (and pride) in creating a son immune to the pitfalls of being birthed by 237 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista, 153. Though I have not spent much time on it here, it is significant that Magamal dies in battle for Mafarka and another analysis regarding the circumstances of his death in war and the representation of war in the novel vis-à-vis modern warfare, just a few years off from the publication of this novel, might yield a deeper insight into the significance of Magamal’s death for Mafarka. 238 Diethe and Cox, Mafarka the futurist, 137. 137 woman (“la gioia di averti generato così, bello e puro di tutti i difetti che provengono dalla vulva malefica e predispongono alla decrepitezza e alla morte”).239 In calling attention to how his son, as a replacement for Magamal, will be immortal, Mafarka notes the mortality present in all humanity. As a way to overcome the “predisposition towards death,” Mafarka’s feat of reproducing without the help of a “vulva” appears as a direct result of the knowledge of Magamal’s mortality. The relationship formed by the description of these bodies is again mirrored in the confusion of the stomach and the womb. In keeping alive inside the body that which would die outside of it, the stomach that holds Magamal in life resembles the womb as much as it does the tomb. In slightly different terms, the crypt that keeps the secret of Magamal’s death and the knowledge of his mortality becomes maternal in its participation in the gestation of the idea of creating Gazurmah. The maternal crypt buried in Mafarka’s body gives life to the idea of Gazurmah as a being capable of overcoming mortality and even provides the initial sustenance for the growing hero. In yet another disfiguration of bodily processes, Mafarka’s birth of Gazurmah may be read as the excremental result of consuming Magamal in failed mourning.240 239 Marinetti, 209. 240 La Penna reads Mafarka’s relationship to Gazurmah and Magamal as one of narcissistic identification in which the subject identifies himself in the love-object (Gazurmah). In this particular case, La Penna notes that Magamal is a “double” of Mafarka onto which the king projects his repressed anxieties of femininity. He argues that “i protagonisti maschili del romanzo rappresentano, quindi, differenti stadi di una medesima personalità e, a livello narrativo, ognuno di essi costituisce non solo il doppelganger dell’altro ma anche l’investimento libidinale che Mafarka proietta su di essi,” See La Penna, “La trama e la struttura” in Italianist: Journal of the Department of Italian Studies, University of Reading, v. 19, 133–163. While I agree that both Mafarka and Gazurmah share a resemblance in that they are both prototypes of the ideal futurist that Marinetti attempts to articulate through the novel, I would not call Mafarka’s relationship to his son narcissistic due to the progression at play in the step from Mafarka to Gazurmah that depends on their distinct differentiation. If Mafarka is the male mother of Gazurmah, then there will of course be some inherited traits from his proto-futurist father; but I think Mafarka and Marinetti both see in Gazurmah the next step in the evolution of the futurist subject and welcome the distinction between father and son because it signifies radical progress and breaking from even evolutionary tradition. 138 Traumatic Repetitions and Reproductive Death We are now in a position to say something about how the absorbed maternal function operates in the futurist body. If Gazurmah’s birth is the idealized outcome of the acquisition of the ability to give life, we might say that the maternal function is modernized in the Futurist body to make even death reproductive. Where Marinetti’s goal in the Manifesto del futurismo is to make death give more life, in Mafarka the ingestion of Magamal’s death not only produces a new being, but also is reproduced throughout the novel in the various deaths that make Gazurmah’s birth possible. Magamal’s death was in fact two, including the shredding of his wife, Uarabelli-Ciarciar. The repetition of this event ripples through the novel in both directions and ultimately overflows its binding in Gazurmah’s final act of destruction. As a container of both life and death, the crypt gives birth to what amounts to total planetary destruction. Hidden in the quasi-cryptonomy of Marinetti’s deranged organization of organs is the fear of mortality that is also visible in the relation between Magamal and Gazurmah. The direct link that runs from Magamal’s unheroic and mundane death and Gazurmah’s fantastically modern birth suggests to me that an unacknowledged fear of human mortality, brought into relief against the possibilities of modern technology, drives the plot of this novel and perhaps of futurist rhetoric. While the ideal amalgamation of technology and humanity pictured in Gazurmah is meant to overcome mortality, the result of such a merger should be taken into consideration: Gazurmah’s birth results in the destruction of all life in the blowing up of the planet. One possible reading of this finale is Marinetti’s unconscious insight into the pitfalls of such a union—that this entwinement of man and machine might render mortality obsolete only as it exorcises from humanity of what is intrinsically human. And what appears as intrinsically 139 human here is femininity, history, memory, and knowledge of our own death. If we take the creation of Gazurmah as an artistic endeavor, what can we make of its final statement? What does it mean in the modern era to make death reproductive? Though this novel does not make it into any anthologies of modernist Italian literature, or even into the footnotes, the concerns that underwrite its plot and the themes that motivate it all point to the very same set of questions that more traditionally modernist texts speak to: namely an unconscious anxiety about human fragility in the face of the machine and the suspicion that modern technology comes at a cost to the human. In Mafarka, the metallicized body of the machine puts the male body into question and stimulates a misogynist response that ultimately erupts in grotesque violence against women. What involves this novel and Marinetti’s futurist writings in a discussion of Italian modernism, aside from Futurism being heralded as a leading movement of the avantgarde, is how they expose the relationship between the anxieties modernity provokes around the uncertainty of the subject and a reassessment of gender relations and sexual difference. Marinetti’s response to the threat of the machinic body is to immunize the male subject with the most productive feminine parts. In his texts on Venezia, this takes the form of demolishing the feminized city of the past and using the necessary parts to create a new city. Mafarka repeats the same process in the novel but instead emulsifies the traditional feminine maternal figure and appropriates the maternal function so as to birth the future himself. At stake in each of these texts, and I would argue in modernist literature broadly, is control over the future or, at the very least, an ability to manipulate its construction for a favorable outcome for a portion of humanity, though the definition of which portion will be saved changes depending on who is speaking. I do not think it is a coincidence that both Marinetti and D’Annunzio, as I discuss in the next chapter, contemplate the imbrication of life and technology that is a hallmark 140 of modernity with novels that, at their very cores, involve confronting a traumatic loss and armoring the male subject in preparation for the future. Read together in this light, the novels almost seem to suggest that modernity itself is felt as a traumatic experience; it is at minimum felt as a loss of knowledge or certainty in the subject, and specifically to the male subject, who is forced to reassess himself in regard to both the machine and woman. Marinetti’s response to trauma in this technologized environment is to deny it entirely and remove the possibility of death altogether. As we see, however, that does not necessarily lead to a better future for humanity; this finale suggests that, in order to become a modern subject and survive the changes of modernity, one must sacrifice certain pieces of the self and appropriate others that are more useful. Mafarka and Marinetti’s manifestos do not address how this loss of a part of the self is felt by the individual. To shed more light on what that process looks like on the level of the individual and in his or her relationship with others, I turn to D’Annunzio’s Forse che sì forse che no. 141 Chapter 2: The Superuomo and the Vortex Introduction In his Futurist writings and especially in Mafarka (1910), Marinetti imagines modern man as a technological savant, fortified by an intimate relationship with the machine which shields him from mortality.241 Immune to this curse of the human condition inherited from feminine birth, the Futurist is armored against the shocks and shrapnel of modernity.242 He communicates faster and more efficiently, he masters his will, and, most of all, he fears nothing, not even violent death. Though every man has the option, only those who risk death through an explosive encounter with newly minted machines are truly Futurist and therefore, modern. This requisite necessarily disqualifies women from the running, as women are, by nature, passéist— purveyors of tradition, immobility, decadence, and sentimentality. Pathogens that preclude progress. The technologized body of the mythic Futurist father, though, turns out to be more of an amalgamation of technologies than a technologized god. What is more, the appropriation of the maternal function confirms a deeply rooted anxiety about female power that underwrites much of Marinetti’s Futurist imagination and rhetoric. Women, like libraries, museums, traditional poetry, and literature, threaten to impede progress by capturing the desires of men who would otherwise join the ranks of Futurists in a pursuit of risk and likely death. But woman also, 241 Marinetti, Mafarka il futurista. The novel was originally published in French in 1909 as Mafarka le futuriste: roman africain and translated into Italian the following year by Decio Cinti. 242 Already in the Manifesto Marinetti expresses a desire to overcome death: “La Morte, addomesticata, mi sorpassava ad ogni svolto, per porgermi la zampa con grazia, e a quando a quando si stendeva a terra con un rumore di mascelle stridenti, mandandomi, da ogni pozzanghera, sguardi vellutati e carezzevoli” (Marinetti, “Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo,” 8.) 142 furtively, threatens to take the place of the Futurist under the right circumstances, one of which is surprisingly through motherhood. The figure of the mother dislocates pieces of Marinetti’s Futurist body by presenting him with a powerful feminine figure who can do much more by nature than the manufactured Futurist can do by appropriation. As a threshold between death and life, the figure of the mother and the maternal function haunt Mafarka as the hero attempts to appropriate this misunderstood ability and unconsciously gives death a new life. Marinetti’s fantasy of male birth and absolute excision of the feminine puts into stark relief what is at stake for him in modernity: the preservation of masculinity and the modernization of man. Futurism’s enthusiastic embrace of technology signals the anxiety that the metallicized body of the machine incites. In an effort to stop the machine from supplanting man as the modern subject par excellence, Marinetti envisions a union between the two and does so by taking aim at the aspects of the human that he deems inferior, contaminated, deteriorating— the feminine parts. Construing the conflict of modernity as one between masculinity and femininity, Marinetti displaces his anxiety about the increasing autonomy of the machine onto woman, a familiar enemy. Mafarka becomes a hero by distinguishing himself from woman and covertly appropriating the maternal function to use for his own artistic (pro)creation. In this process of excision and grafting, what the Futurist sees as a technology operates much more than a neutral catalyst; it is the extraordinary element that allows man to overcome death. Without it, man would be just as vulnerable to mortality as the mother who exposed him to it. The Futurist process and goal of becoming modern is inextricable from a process of defeminization. Where Marinetti sees the use and mastery of technology as the means to supplement the feminine aspects of humanity (hoping to overcome the human altogether in favor of the 143 machine), Gabriele D’Annunzio views the use of technology as an aid in the pursuit of higher orders of man. D’Annunzio does not advocate ejecting the feminine aspects of man to make space for something closer to a machine. Instead, he wants man to overcome himself entirely for a state of being that remains human but surpasses the ordinary or average man. Readings of Forse che sì forse che no D’Annunzio responds to the changes of modernity most explicitly in his last novel, Forse che sì forse che no (1910).243 Thinking through what it means to become modern and his vision of the modern subject, D’Annunzio offers a more nuanced view of technology than Marinetti and in particular suggests another kind of violence that man needs to confront in order to pass from regular man to modern man. As opposed to the Futurist emphasis on ballistic motion and explosive bodily danger, D’Annunzio points to something closer to emotional suffering as a necessary, even self-inflicted, violence that opens the door to modern subjectivity. Where Marinetti delights in volatility and contradiction, D’Annunzio savors the subtleties of difference, be it between masculinity and femininity, flying a plane and driving an automobile, or even between different versions of the self.244 Forse che sì offers a more intimate perspective on the intricacies of the hero’s transformation into the modern subject and identifies additional conditions for his success in doing so. Much like Mafarka, Forse che sì forse che no contemplates the journey that its protagonist, Paolo Tarsis, must take and the obstacles he must overcome to become a modern hero. Paolo is a war veteran and pilot who now partakes in risky flight competitions with his war 243 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 519–870. 244 For a thorough analysis of the ambiguous masculinity of many Dannunzian male characters, see Duncan, Reading and Writing Italian Homosexuality, 17–40. 144 companion and best friend, Giulio Cambiaso.245 Much of the novel revolves around Paolo’s romantic relationship with a young widow, Isabella Inghirami, and their entanglement and fraught relationships with her three siblings, Vana, Aldo, and Lunella. Understudied by many modernist critics, Forse che sì is historically read as an allegorical tale of modern heroism, where clear lines unambiguously distinguish masculine heroes from feminine antagonists. On the cusp of becoming the most skilled Italian pilot and climbing to the highest height, Paolo must choose between his celestial ambitions and the terrestrial temptation that Isabella presents. As a secondary, though not quite as obvious, obstacle, Vana falls in love with Paolo, initiating one of the two contorted love triangles between which Paolo’s heroic journey proceeds. The second triangle includes Isabella, Paolo, and Aldo, Isabella’s brother with whom she has had some sort of incestuous relationship.246 Rhetorically at least, this text recalls much of what Futurism affirmed as the contamination of the past in the Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo of 1909.247 Women 245 D’Annunzio was enamored with all aspects of flight. He was present at the very well-attended airshow at Brescia in 1909 and took rigorous notes as Peter Demetz points out. For a full account of D’Annunzio’s time at the airshow, see Demetz, The Air Show at Brescia, 1909, 149–85. For a discussion of how D'Annunzio's aeronautical imaginary is entangled with racial and nationalistic beliefs, see Welch, Vital Subjects, 131–90. See Re, “Italians and the Invention of Race,” for a broader account of the evolution of racial discourse within the Italian literary tradition and D’Annunzio’s role in it. Costa reminds us that the “sogno d’avventure celeste” that Giulio and Paolo chase originates with a man they meet in Cairo, which calls to mind Mafarka’s setting and the Orientalist overtones that these novels share. 246 Tessari argues that there are two different triangles, both which put Paolo at the center and depict the two options he has as the potential Übermensch: the “triangolo del future celeste, [e] il triangolo del fato terrestre” (Tessari 195). The first consists of Vana, Giulio, and Paolo and represents a pure, heavenly association, a “triangolo di simbolico e spirituale erotismo” (Tessari 192). The second consists of Isabella, Aldo, and Paolo and represents a “negatività irrimediabile” and the inescapable contamination of earthly life (Tessari 195). Tessari, Il mito della macchina. 247 It is tempting to lump D’Annunzio’s treatment of women throughout his works together with Marinetti’s, especially in the care of Forse and Mafarka that were published in the same year. Marinetti’s female characters in Mafarka, however, with the exception of Colubbi, cannot be said to contribute to the story in the same way that Isabella contributes to Forse. Marinetti significantly does not give the female characters much, if any, backstory, internal motivation or personal qualities; they are truly hollow representations of attributes and values that Futurism despises, as would make sense given Marinetti’s strategic rhetorical use of feminine figures in the novel and in his Futurist rhetoric more broadly. The character of Isabella Inghirami constitutes the emotional and physical landscapes on which Forse plays out. Without her and D’Annunzio’s attention to her characterization, not only would there be 145 appear as vortexes, perpetually tied to the earth and its terrestrial grievances, while men have the option of leaving earthly existence behind through flight. Many critical readings consider these characterizations only superficially, giving the impression that D’Annunzio’s text closely follows Marinetti’s literary treatment of women as either “instigators” or sacrificial objects devoid of any significant contribution to the story or the ideas depicted therein.248 D’Annunzio’s previous literary examples certainly make it difficult to see otherwise; all of his novels feature a strong male protagonist, in comparison to whom the female characters appear empty or insignificant.249 Derek Duncan, for example, notes plainly that “D’Annunzio’s texts have nothing to tell us about women apart from their value as currency exchanged between men.”250 Even Roberto Tessari, who offers a compelling and thorough reading of the novel within the larger noticeably fewer pages, there would be little left of Paolo’s journey since she constitutes the main obstacle to reaching his goal. To say that this novel is primarily about Paolo Tarsis is to ignore the majority of it. 248 Costa, “La macchina e il labirinto nell’ultimo romanzo: Forse che sì forse che no,” in D’Annunzio (2012), 139. Tessari shares this view, that the female characters in Forse are mere representations of the male protagonist’s choices: Vana is the “donna del cielo,” a personification and stand-in for the “pure,” heroic path of the Übermensch and celestial savior; unsurprisingly, Isabella is the “donna della terra,” representative of earthly desires, base ambitions, and contamination (Tessari, 192). 249 What separates Paolo from previous Dannunzian heroes is his practicality, a certain “impegnarsi nella prassi” that eludes his literary predecessors. Baldi notes that Paolo is the first “uomo d’azione, la cui vocazione e la cui compiuta realizzazione sono unicamente nella vita pratica” (Baldi, “D’Annunzio e il nuovo eroe,” in Modernità letteraria, 2008, 73). Roncoroni emphasizes Paolo’s difference from other male protagonists who are aristocratic, intellectual, incapable of making their own lunch, and un-practical in every way. Paolo on the other hand “si trova perfettamente a suo agio nel mondo moderno, tra donne e motori,” (Roncoroni, “L’ultimo romanzo,” 213). Despite these aesthetic differences, though, Paolo Tarsis adheres to the Übermensch hero archetype of his literary predecessors like Claudio Cantelmo of Le vergini delle rocce and Stelio Effrena of Il fuoco. In Roncoroni’s estimation, following the critical consensus on this text, the narrative core “si reduce al solito motive del Superuomo (Paolo Tarsis) che cade vittima di una passione infeconda e paralizzante per una donna distruttrice (Isabella Inghirami) fino a perdere di vista il vero scopo della sua esistenza (la vita eroica e, in particolare, il volo aereo) . . . ” (Roncoroni 211). For a detailed analysis of how Taris and Forse differ from D’Annunzio’s previous superuomo novels, see Roncoroni, “L’ultimo romanzo” in D'Annunzio moderno?: “Forse che sì forse che no” (1990). 250 Duncan, Reading and Writing Italian Homosexuality, 25. However, what’s missing from Duncan’s reading is the element of the superuomo. Duncan does not consider this a key factor in the figuration of Paolo even though he notes how Paolo’s identification with the plane and desire for “a sleek ideal” differentiates him from hypermasculine figures like the boxers. In my opinion, this differentiation comes from his superior relationship with Giulio and his superior relationship with himself, which allows him to have that relation to the plane, even though the crux of the novel hovers around the fissures in these relationships. Said differently, Paolo is meant to achieve the superuomo destiny that Giulio did not but is constantly met with obstacles that arrive from within (doubt, grief, unresolved emotions for Isabella) and without (physical obstacles to flight). 146 context of the Italian modernist imaginary, argues that Forse “è costruito sulla tensione tra un futuro ‘terzo regno’ dell’umanità … e il passato della città morte” where Isabella’s is nothing more than the personification of the ills associated with the past and the city of death, while Vana, the “donna-angelo,” represents the pure, spiritual path toward the future.251 In categorizing this novel as another tale of the superuomo, many critics overestimate how much Paolo’s success is tied to the mastery of technology. But does Paolo’s ascension to the Übermensch status hinge on his affinity for or domination of the airplane, as it might in Marinetti’s immaginario superomistico?252 Though the plane and his relationship to it influence Paolo’s decision between two different paths, his destiny of becoming the superuomo does not appear to coincide with his aeronautical skill alone. D’Annunzio indicates this explicitly in the distinction he draws between mundane technologies like the telephone and automobile, and the airplane, which stands out as an exceptional form of mechanical ability imbued with metaphorical significance for Paolo and the adoring crowds that watch him. The author also suggests it with the dynamic between Paolo and Isabella, particularly in comparison to the fraternal relationship the protagonist shares with Giulio, and even more subtlety in the position Isabella holds vis-à-vis her siblings. If Paolo is destined to become the Übermensch in a relatively faithful following of Nietzsche’s elaboration of this figure in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, then what sets the Overman apart from the average man—and Paolo from the crowd—is not technical mastery but challenging oneself to meet a greater objective.253 251 Tessari, Il mito della macchina, 191. 252 Trecanni Encyclopedia defines immaginario as: “la sfera dell’immaginazione quale si costituisce e si può riconoscere attraverso i miti, la produzione letteraria e cinematografica, la pubblicità.” See Treccani Encyclopedia, “Immaginario.” 253 Until this point, I have used the Italian term superuomo and the German Übermensch interchangeably, in part because that is the accepted translation of the original German into Italian. In adding the English “Overman” here, I want to stress the difference between this term and the other common translation into English as “superman.” As 147 Tessari argues as much in his reading of the opening scene, which features Paolo driving with Isabella on a dusty road: 254 Due sono infatti i volti dell’“ordigno” moderno che dominano l’avventura di Paolo Tarsis e si esprimono nella presenza dell’automobile da corsa e in quella del velivolo da competizione. A proposito della prima, va subito detto che la sua evocazione si colloca nel quadro d’un tentativo di seduzione e d’un esperimento di affermazione eroica intimamente commisti . . . 255 In fact, there are two faces of the modern “apparatus” that dominate the adventure of Paolo Tarsis and are expressed in the presence of the racing car and the racing aircraft. Regarding the first, it must be said immediately that its evocation is placed in the framework of an attempt at seduction and an experiment of heroic affirmation that are intimately mixed. . . 256 The difference between the automobile and the plane that Tessari points out here is a difference in goal. The objective of the man driving the car is simply, and brutishly, to win over a woman.257 When Isabella neither accepts or rejects Paolo’s affection—giving him instead an ambiguous “forse” in response—Paolo transposes “nel possesso del meccanismo il mancato possesso della donna.”258 Some machines, it would seem, do nothing more than feed the beastly Kaufmann argues, Overman more accurately captures Nietzsche’s intent in the depiction of the Übermensch, who is not meant to be more human, as the prefix “super” suggests, but is meant instead to overcome or surpass the self and reach a higher state of being. See Kaufmann, “Translator’s Notes,” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 3. 254 This scene appears to be the main culprit in persuading critics to believe that D’Annunzio shared Marinetti’s uncritical celebration of the machine. Costa in particular argues for the “stark similarities” between the two authors, citing this passage as evidence. See Costa, “Introduzione,” in Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore, Mondadori (1992). 255 Tessari, Il mito della macchina, 182–183. 256 My translation. The Italian term ordigno (including its other spelling “ordegno”) appears in a number of places across the texts I discuss in this dissertation, the contexts of which all suggest a technological apparatus of some sort with a certain degree of complexity and mystery as to how it works. Apparatus, contraption, device, and even technological instrument are acceptable translations of the term; I have chosen to be consistent throughout and use “apparatus” because it conveys both sentiments that I believe lie behind the authors’ use of the term, though I admit it is not the only option. 257 This scenario, as Tessari also points out, is intentionally reminiscent of Marinetti’s Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo and the myth around the automobile that it ignited; D’Annunzio places this scene front and center as a way to intentionally distinguish the plane from the car in how man relates to each. In a different sense, the scene also calls to mind Futurism’s radical disprezzo della donna and its attempt to supplement woman and the feminine aspects of man with the machine. 258 Tessari, Il mito della macchina, 183. 148 nature of man, while others, namely the airplane, are uniquely suited to helping man overcome his animal nature and achieve a higher state of being. The plane literally and figuratively distances man from earth and the earthly tendencies he has inherited from his animal ancestors. “Il veicolo terrestre è quindi segno della ‘velocità che striscia’: di una forza, cioè, che non può svincolarsi da un destino di prona aderenza alla terra,” as opposed to the “forza che si solleva” of the airplane.259 Such divergence between technologies that in other modernist imaginaries appear closely aligned underwrites Tessari’s argument that this novel fits squarely into the superuomo genre and provides the basis for an unambiguous categorization of masculine and feminine characters.260 He continues this line of argument, holding that the pilot–plane dynamic: non contempla la presenza femminile: è, insomma, alleanza per una sfida alla morte purificata da ogni elemento eterogeneo . . . Si stabilisce, quindi, da un lato un rapporto uomo-macchina-donna dai connotati eticamente negativi, dall’altro una simbiosi pilota-velocità predisposta a soluzioni significative. 261 does not contemplate the female presence: it is, in short, an alliance to challenge death purified of every heterogeneous element. . . Thus, on one hand, a man- machine-woman relationship with ethically negative connotations is established, and on the other a pilot-speed symbiosis predisposed to significant solutions.262 Tessari argues that the two eldest sisters and potential partners to Paolo act as representatives for these different technological trajectories. Isabella, as the donna della terra, is associated with the crude nature of the automobile and “cose torbide e crudeli,” whose love is described as an “indugio perverso.” Vana, the donna del cielo, is associated with pure, lofty ambitions that have 259 Tessari, Il mito della macchina, 184. Tessari does go on to note the similarities in the relationship the driver or pilot has to the car or plane. 260 “[Illustra] didatticamente la difficile ascesi dell’uomo teso a trasfigurarsi in Ubermensch” (Tessari 182). 261 Tessari, Il mito della macchina, 184–185. 262 My translation. 149 greater ambitions in mind. With Isabella, Paolo may pursue only earthly pleasures and is condemned to a repetitious cycle of life and death, with only momentary sparks of contentment and satisfaction; with Vana, he is free to pursue the goal of reaching new heights through flight and inspiring greatness in the crowds that watch him. This path leads to happiness which is lasting and nobler than mere earthly pleasure. In choosing between these two paths, Paolo must decide to shun his destiny (with Isabella) or fly toward it (with Vana). What goes missing in Tessari’s argument are the differences between Marinetti’s driver and D’Annunzio’s pilot and the significance each author assigns to the ability to give birth. Recall the narrative opening of Marinetti’s manifesto, where he and his soon-to-be Futurist friends seek out new thrills to awaken their spirits: Ci avvicinammo alle tre belve sbuffanti, per palparne amorosamente i torridi. Io mi stesi sulla mia macchina come un cadavere nella bara, ma subito risuscitai sotto il volante, lama di ghigliottina, che minacciava il mio stomaco. La furente scopa della pazzia ci strappò a noi stessi e ci cacciò attraverso le vie . . .263 We went up to three snorting beasts, to lay amorous hands on their torrid breasts. I stretched out on my car like corpse on its bier, but revived at once under the steering wheel, a guillotine blade that threatened my stomach. The raging broom of madness swept us out of ourselves and drove us through streets as rough and deep as the beds of torrents.264 Even before the famed scene of the “materno fossato,” the car brings the driver back from the dead, reanimating him and giving him new life through an exposure to speed.265 The 263 Marinetti, “Fondazione e Manifesto del Futurismo,” in Teoria e invenzione futurista, 8. 264 Flint, Marinetti: Selected Writings, 40. 265 Campbell, “Vital Matters” 161. Campbell makes the point that “the transformation, brought on . . . by Marinetti’s placing himself behind the wheel and stepping on the gas, is intimately connected to speed and its effects on Marinetti's body/corpse” (165). He goes on to argue that this reanimation indicates the replacement of the traditional sovereign by technology and results in an animalization of both the driver and the car. See Campbell, “Vital Matters: Sovereignty, Milieu, and the Animal in Futurism's Founding Manifesto” in Annali d'Italianistica, v. 27, A Century of Futurism: 1909–2009 (2009), 157-173. 150 technological element powers the “dramatic shift from death to life” and facilitates the modernization of man. Moments later when the driver and car crash into the pit, technology assumes the position of the mother and diffuses its life-giving capacity to all elements present in the ditch in the mythical autarchic (re)birth of the Futurist.266 The pilot, however, is responsible for bringing himself to life before any transformative encounter with technology can occur. Only at the very end of Forse che sì, in the final scene, does Paolo reach what some understand to be his superomistic destiny.267 This marks a significant difference between the two masters of technology. The real significance of D’Annunzio’s technological dualism lies in what each technology allows man to accomplish: a selfish rush of adrenaline and surge of masculine prowess after winning a street race, or a colonial achievement never before realized, what amounts to, for D’Annunzio, conquering the sky and inspiring a nation.268 Though with greater subtlety, D’Annunzio draws on the same vocabulary of birth as Marinetti when, in the final scene, he figures Paolo’s aeronautical achievement as a type of rebirth: E il cuore gli tremò perché v’era rinata la volontà di vivere, la volontà di vivere per vincere… 266 See Chapter 1 for a detailed analysis of this scene: “What remains of the maternal function—the ability to give life— having been detached from the only feminine object, is diffused between Marinetti and the car and transformed into the capacity to give life through death. Indeed, the violent imbrication of man and machine invigorates and gives shape to the Futurist subject. Despite the sex-change of birth and the displacement of the feminine, the muddy cavity should still be read as a site of reproduction. Marinetti imagines giving birth to himself through his technologized leap toward death and autogenesis takes the place of sexual reproduction.” I follow Spackman’s use of the term “autarky” to designate a male “desire for self-sufficiency in a world without women.” See Spackman, Fascist Virilities, 54. 267 It is true that, before this point, he has the ability to control the plane, but that in itself does not initiate any noticeable change in him or his destiny. 268 This is colonial in the sense that there a conquering of new territory but also because part of the process of colonization is in service of (re)building the nation (see Welch on this especially) and so contributes to safeguarding the life of the nation. Inspiring the nation is a form of birth since inspiration is meant to push man beyond his current state and into a different one. In many ways, Marinetti’s rebirth was a reimagining of himself, and specifically his bodily capabilities, that left much intact. 151 Era la vita. Era la vita! . . . E come allora e assai più, di tutta la sua volontà egli fece un dardo inflessibile, fece uno di quei dardi che i feditori chiamavano soliferro, tutto ferro asta punta e cocca: un ferro che vedeva come nessuno mai vide, un ferro che udiva come nessuno mai udì.269 And his heart trembled because the will to live had been reborn, the will to live to win ... It was life. It was life! . . . And as then and much more, with all of his will he made an inflexible dart, he made one of those darts that the feditori call soliferro, all iron shaft, point, and nock: an iron that saw as no one ever saw, an iron that heard as no one ever heard.270 The transformation of the pilot’s body into a pure, unalloyed iron dart here reflects the setting of Paolo’s will to survive and therefore differs substantially from Marinetti’s mythic rebirth in the “materno fossato.” The will to live (“la volontà di vivere”) that is reborn (“rinata”) in this triumphant flight cannot be uncoupled from the will to win or prevail (“la volontà di vivere per vincere”).271 In the alchemy of life and victory, “vita” and “vittoria,” D’Annunzio’s hero distinguishes himself from Marinetti’s and from the average man who only benefits himself. The individual must transform himself and only in so doing can he hope to inspire others to do the same. The imagery of birth and creation underwrites Paolo’s epithet, too, as “il costruttore d’ali.” Whereas Marinetti asks the question, “who gets to give birth?,” at stake in D’Annunzio’s dream of the Overman is the answer to the question: who gets to give birth to the future? D’Annunzio raises the stakes from the individual to the nation and even the Italian race. 269 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 868–69. It is significant that D’Annunzio chooses to describe the singularity of this new Paolo by indicating his unique vision and hearing, since that is precisely what frustrates Zarathustra about the crowd he addresses in the “Prologue.” Just before he begins his speech on “the last man,” he says to his heart: “They do not understand me; I am not the mouth for these ears. Must one smash their ears before they learn to listen with their eyes?” (16). 270 My translation. 271 My emphasis. 152 For D’Annunzio, then, in comparison to his Futurist contemporary, the final step towards modern subjectivity and the Overman does not come with the domination and approximation of the machine by man, but instead with the ability to transform or birth himself into a higher being that can inspire greatness in others. Modern man must be able to seize the new capabilities afforded by technology but it is not the primary requisite of moral, intellectual, or social superiority. Where Marinetti saw the use and mastery of technology as the means to supplement and eventually replace the pieces of the human that he deemed inferior, contaminated, and deteriorating (the feminine pieces), D’Annunzio sees the use of technology as an aid in the pursuit of higher orders of the human. By unfettering the technological dualism, represented by the plane and the car, from the duality of femininity, depicted in the differences between Vana and Isabella, we can note a tendency in traditional readings of the novel to collapse the many dualisms that D’Annunzio employs into one master duality between good and evil, celestial and earthly. Such a reduction, though, obscures the extent to which these characters operate in relation to Paolo’s heroic journey and how different technological elements affect its outcome. While Isabella does share an affinity with the uncontrollable passion that the automobile represents, she has quite a greater influence over Paolo and his destiny. The mastery of technology, be it the plane or the automobile, does not impact the outcome of the hero’s journey, yet the choice of staying with Isabella might very well mean the permanent grounding of this airborne Übermensch. The technological element does not play nearly as great a role in determining Paolo’s fate as Isabella does. Chapter Outline 153 Forse che sì begins to answer some of the questions that Mafarka leaves unaddressed, namely what must the individual do to become modern? If Marinetti gives an outline of what the modern subject should look like, then D’Annunzio draws a map of experiences that he should take to get there. With Forse che sì, we can begin to understand what choices and dispositions distinguishes the modern subject from his predecessors. D’Annunzio also offers a more nuanced understanding of modern technology. Rather than embracing every metallicized thing equally, D’Annunzio constructs a hierarchy of technologies based on how they inhibit or help the subject reach his potential. I use Forse che sì forse che no to point out the limits of Marinetti’s Futurist approach to technology and vision of the modern subject, and as window into other ways traumatic experience shapes the experience of modernity for different subjects. Through an analysis of how Paolo distinguishes himself from other male characters and potential heroes, and with an extended analysis of Isabella as an independent character with her own journey that mirrors Paolo’s, I challenge traditional readings of the novel as a simple story about the hero’s ascent to Übermensch status. I open the first section with an extended gloss on Nietzsche’s tremendously influential text Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This discussion brings into focus the many ways D’Annunzio carries over Nietzsche’s thought into Forse che sì and lays the groundwork for the next section that discusses how the protagonist, Paolo, distinguishes himself from the crowd and the majority of humanity that it represents. In the second section, I discuss the significance of Paolo being a pilot and the critique that D’Annunzio makes against Marinetti’s undiscerning embrace of all technology. This insight leads me to a discussion on the place of inspiration in both Nietzsche’s text and D’Annunzio’s and how both men link it to birth. Reproduction fades away in Forse che sì as a central concern for the protagonist but the vocabulary of birth remains, as does the critique 154 of motherhood and female birth that it implies. In Mafarka, the hero strives for the ability to reproduce, to bring life to where there is death, but in Forse, the ability to give birth takes on a metaphorical meaning and changes its goal. Paolo hopes to become more than human, an Übermensch, by distinguishing himself from the average man through a rebirth that he accomplishes by superseding all previous flight records. Where Marinetti asks the question, “who gets to give birth?,” D’Annunzio wants to know, “who gets to give birth to the future?” I then trace D’Annunzio’s engagement with the concept of blood and heritage in its relation to the growing literature around mental pathologies espoused by people such as Paolo Mantegazza and Cesare Lombroso.272 D’Annunzio’s interest in this discourse emerges in his novelistic writing as early as 1894 in Il trionfo della morte and can be traced through other novels and texts as well.273 Yet, it is only with Forse che sì that the author shifts his thinking around bloodlines and figures out how to “overcome and transform the fate of hereditary illness.” Not coincidentally, in Forse che sì D’Annunzio funnels his interests in physiological illnesses through the lens of the modern subject and the airplane. The technological ability that this contraption affords, to distance oneself from the crowd of people that one belongs to, offers 272 D’Annunzio relied heavily on Cesare Lombroso’s and Guglielmo Ferrero’s work, La donna delinquente, la prostituta e la donna normale (1893), which reduced all romantic and even most unrelated behaviors to maternity and a maternal drive inherent in all women. Authors operating in the same vein of pseudoscience at the time, such as Paolo Mantegazza, Giuseppe Sergi, and Alfredo Niceforo disseminated the idea that blood or “stock” dictate the negative social conditions experienced by specific groups of people and that these social and often moral “deformities” could be recognized through the study of an individual’s physiology. These disciplines advanced the idea that a person’s genetic heritage determined his value and future; or, conversely, that one could determine an individual’s moral and social potential by looking at his lineage. These discourses fall under the broader category of biological determinism, however each has its own genealogy and contributed differently to the rhetoric of race prominent in nineteenth to twentieth-century Italy. 273 For a compelling, in-depth genealogy of the intertwining of pseudoscientific discourses around physiological illness and its literary correlatives in decadentismo between the French and Italian traditions, see Spackman, Decadent Genealogies, especially chapters 1 and 3. 155 D’Annunzio the critical distance to think differently about the individual’s relationship to his lineage and inspires a twist in his view on blood, race, and birth. What changes with Forse is the ability the plane grants the subject to modulate distance between himself and his bloodline without losing connection to it; this in turn allows him the ability to inspire others. I argue that, with his new formulation of inspiration, D’Annunzio flirts with a Futurist tenet: that maternal birth is the origin of decay, contamination, and mortality. For D’Annunzio, the survival of not just the individual but the nation is at risk when mothers are in charge of birth and when technology does not inspire men to be greater than themselves. Paolo Tarsis must better himself through the overcoming of dual wills in order to inspire others through example. Only through this rebirth of his own making does man have the opportunity to rise above his base natures and become more than human, an Übermensch. I end this section with a discussion of the drift towards death that the imbrication of life and technology brings, with a gloss on how the airplane was first used in colonial war attempts by the Italian government in Ethiopia. Turning to Paul Virilio’s insight into the technologization of sight, which distorts subjects into objects and finally into images and projections, I make the case that the plane as a technology cannot be thought outside of these colonial and bellicose underpinnings. I dedicate the final section to understanding Isabella’s trajectory as a traumatized subject and what part her descent plays in making Paolo’s ascent a success. It is primarily through Isabella’s figuration as a perverted mother that she presents Paolo with an inverted version of himself and with an alternative, dismal path into the abyss. Her descent mirrors Paolo’s ascent as the pilot-Übermensch and condemns her entire family to a similar fate. Paolo, on the other hand, as a masculine hero offers a non-familial form of inspiration likened by D’Annunzio, calling on Nietzsche, to birthing a higher man. He gives the crowd the opportunity to better themselves 156 through this instance of inspiration. Crucially, however, his status as the Übermensch depends on the construction of Isabella as a perverted madwoman, an identity that emerges as her self- identity comes into conflict with the identity imposed on her by societal pressures. Isabella’s mind begins to disintegrate as her will to be a good maternal figure for her siblings clashes with her desire to be with Paolo. Her conflict of wills increasingly manifests itself psychologically and physically as she continues to interact with Paolo until a breaking point occurs, following a physically and sexually violent encounter, that exacerbates and amplifies the internal struggle she has with herself. When searching for potential causes of Isabella’s crumbling consciousness, we consistently run into conflicts between her and her female siblings that can be traced back to the early loss of their mother and its consequences that ripple outward in time. Focusing on where these conflicts arise and how they manifest in Isabella and Vana suggests that the trauma of losing their mother and its recurrence in other actions taken by the sisters directly affect their psychological and emotional stability. Paolo only solidifies his identity as pilot-Übermensch after Isabella reaches the inverted yet equivalent status of debilitated feminine villain. As the airborne Übermensch inches closer to the cielo, Isabella morphs into the abysmal other and sinks further down into the terra. In reading Forse che sì as a modern epic in which the masculine hero journeys to reach his destiny, I give equal importance to the complementary storyline of Isabella’s earth-bound trajectory towards the chasm. Inspiration and Birthing the Self in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra In separating out D’Annunzio’s treatment of the questione della donna from his representations of technology, the choice that Paolo must make appears rather as one between Isabella and Giulio—a life of average contentment and the satisfaction of base desires, or a 157 somewhat self-less objective of overcoming the self and inspiring the nation. Of what does this choice entail, then, between Isabella and Giulio? What must the hero confront in order to reach this higher state of being if not the domination of modern technology or the irrefutable pull of desire? What role does Isabella play in Paolo’s heroic trajectory? Nietzsche’s figuration of the Overman in Zarathustra offers an answer: the man who has the potential to be a bridge from average man to the Overman demonstrates this capacity by challenging himself and forgoing physical and emotional contentment. Joy, after all, “is for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and to lose himself.”274 The challenges that modern man confronts enable him to overcome himself because they force him to recognize himself at both his weakest and strongest. In order to build “over and beyond yourself,” Zarathustra teaches, “first you must be built yourself.”275 The transformation from average man to Overman depends on the confrontation with and overcoming of difficult and painful experiences, not simply on a refusal of temptations. While Isabella might be a physical temptation, she is more importantly the presentation of suffering for Paolo, who revels in the duplicity of her personality, beauty, and love.276 Their quasi- sadomasochistic relationship grounds the narrative and constitutes the emotional and physical landscapes on which Forse che sì plays out. Isabella, then, is not simply a feminine temptation or the representation of other traditionally femininized things like sentimentality; she embodies the 274 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 31. Zarathustra continues: “Drunken joy and loss of self the world once seemed to me.” 275 Nietzsche, 69. 276 “Egli si sentiva disarmato della sua volontà, in balia a una forza estranea ch’era per trascinarlo verso eventi cui già la sua infausta veggenza dava gli aspetti del vizio, del delitto e della tortura. Aveva ceduto all’imposizione dell’amante insensata; ma già così intimamente l’aveva corrotto il contagio, che in fondo alla sua riluttanza era l’ansietà d’esperimentare il nuovo, era una curiosità amara e ardente della colpa arcana, della promiscua pena, era il fascino dell’inferno.” See D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 717. 158 most significant obstacle to the hero’s journey. The Übermensch does not exist outside of a confrontation with human suffering, which is precisely what Isabella presents to Paolo. If Marinetti responds with anxiety to the metallicized body of the machine, D’Annunzio responds to modern technology as a challenge to man to finally reach his potential. However, the stakes have not changed as much as one might imagine between these two responses. Both Mafarka and Forse che sì forse che no acknowledge a need to transform the position man holds vis-à-vis woman before modernization to a more dominant and autarchic one in modernity. To do this, the modern subject must either immunize his own life through a deadly encounter with technology, or, in D’Annunzio’s view, give birth to a modern version of himself through the process of self-overcoming. Whereas in Mafarka, the Futurist is born from an appropriation of stolen parts from woman and machine, D’Annunzio’s modern subject is born through an arguably more torturous process of overcoming the self without any external help. If the overcoming of desire and lust is not enough to reach the superomistic state of being, what are the critical moments involved in such a transformation of the self? And what does this have to do with D’Annunzio’s privileging of the airplane as a singular technology? A closer look at the relationship between self- overcoming and inspiration in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra brings compelling answers into focus. Nietzschean Overtones: Inspiration and Man’s Highest Hope The story of Zarathustra itself hopes for two different yet inextricable aspirations: the transformation of human values and the founding of a goal for all of humanity. Early on in the “Prologue,” Zarathustra announces, “Man is something that shall be overcome” and immediately follows this statement with a challenge addressed to the gathered crowd: “What have you done to 159 overcome him?”277 Nestled at the heart of the gargantuan ambition of transforming Man lies the individual’s challenge to transform himself. The entanglement of the universal with the individual remains critical to Zarathustra’s teachings throughout the text, as does the belief that ordinary man is just a steppingstone or bridge to another kind of being: All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman…Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape.278 Nietzsche’s unsympathetic attitude toward the average man is no secret. Yet, the scorn that lines Nietzsche’s evaluation of the masses suggests something more complex than a simple condemnation. The ferocity and detail with which he underscores the point that man, in his current state, should not be “the last man” indicates a deep concern for humanity. That ordinary man might be the last version of man to exist should indeed be taken as a grave threat to humanity as a whole, according to Nietzsche, because the last man “represents the greatest danger for all of man’s future.”279 The most remarkable thing about the last man is that there is nothing to remark on—he is simply content. He lives in-between extremes, neither rich nor poor, exuberant or depressed; he remains comfortably in the middle and mistakenly calls this “happiness.” When the crowd first hears about this person, they cry out to meet him (“Give us this last man”) and then ask to become him (“Turn us into these last men!”). Such is the allure of contentment. But why should 277 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 12. 278 Nietzsche, 12. Zarathustra goes on to describe what is greatest in man is his ability to be a bridge: “What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under.”278 279 Nietzsche, 213. 160 this mean “a great danger for all of man’s future”? What could be so bad about being happy? Nietzsche ties this desire for happiness to a more poignant question, a vital concern that points back to his comparison of humans with apes. In desiring happiness or contentment, a desire not for a lack of work—work, he reminds us, is a form of entertainment—but for ease and an agreeable amount of exertion, humans wish to ease their struggle. Either of the extremes—rich- poor, joyful-depressed, ruler-ruled—require more effort and strain on the body and mind than what the average man willingly wants to exert. “One still quarrels, but one is soon reconciled— else it might spoil the digestion.”280 It is in our nature to seek to maintain homeostasis, to preserve life as long as possible until we are ready to die of our own accord or doing.281 In bringing up our ancestral relation to apes, however, Nietzsche suggests that this is only part of our animal nature and that we have greater abilities, currently dormant, should we choose to wake and pursue them. The danger that the last man poses, then, is an evolutionary one; with him, the future of humanity dies because he is unwilling to toil and struggle to overcome his desire for ease. He chooses to remain more apelike than human by neglecting the potential dormant in his humanity. 282 And when there reaches a critical mass of people who wish to follow the last man’s example, enough to constitute a “herd,” then the average man becomes the last of his or any human kind. 280 Nietzsche, 18, emphasis mine. 281 Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle suggests that the primary instinct behind consciousness is “the instinct to return to the inanimate state.” This instinct, which he later names the death drive, underwrites the desire for happiness/contentment that Nietzsche points to here as well. See Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 46. 282 As Kaufmann notes, Nietzsche holds that the function of the spirit is “to counteract man’s tendency to yield to his impulses…it [is] an instrument used by life in its effort to enhance itself. Spirit is not opposed to life altogether, but directed only against one level of it. Its mission is not to destroy but to fulfill, to sublimate or…to transfigure and perfect man’s nature,” (271). 161 Humanity’s evolution, it would seem, hinges on the presence of a goal or something to inspire man to overcome the pull of his brutish nature and tap into that potential. Nietzsche goes so far as to suggest that the presence of a goal constitutes humanity itself: “if humanity still lacks a goal—is humanity itself not still lacking too?”283 Of what does this goal consist, exactly? And how does the Overman figure into this dream of an inspired humanity? In his speech to the reluctant crowd, Zarathustra presents the goal as both a seed and a dancing star: The time has come for man to set himself a goal. The time has come for man to plant the seed of his highest hope. His soil is still rich enough. But one day this soil will be poor and domesticated, and no tall tree will be able to grow in it. Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer shoot the arrow of his longing beyond man, and the string of his bow will have forgotten how to whir! I say unto you: one must have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves.284 Zarathustra cautions that, right now, man’s potential “is rich enough” but that soon, “this soil will be poor and domesticated.” In another phrasing, Nietzsche might call this potential the spirit, “the life that itself cuts into life.”285 Nietzsche holds that the function of the spirit is “to counteract man’s tendency to yield to his impulses…an instrument used by life in its effort to enhance itself.”286 In this farming parable, Zarathustra’s emphasis on cultivation indicates man’s responsibility in the development of the soil-spirit. If the spirit is to succeed in its mission “to transfigure and perfect man’s nature,” it is up to the individual to ensure its proper growth.287 Such a loss in the fertility of the spirit leads directly to a loss in the ability to dream and be 283 Here he talks about good and evil and makes the point that the Overman must change his values, make his own values that go beyond good and evil to break the cycle of “praising and censuring” that does not allow for or promote any growth. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 60. 284 Nietzsche, 17. 285 Nietzsche, 104. The whole quote reads: “Spirit is the life that itself cuts into life; with its own agony it increases its own knowledge.” 286 Kaufmann, Nietzsche, 271. 287 Kaufmann, 271. 162 inspired: when the soil dries up, “man will no longer shoot the arrow of his longing beyond man, and the string of his bow will have forgotten how to whir!”288 If we lose our ability to dream or to imagine beyond ourselves, we stop growing, stop evolving, not unlike the apes. At stake in the cultivation of the spirit is nothing less than the future of mankind, since only the cultivated spirit can give birth to “man’s highest hope” and make dreaming beyond the self possible. The figure of the Overman encompasses this “highest hope.” As both the seed that must be cultivated—which illustrates the transformation of the spirit—and the dancing star—the fulfillment of this transformation, its goal—this figure brings together the individual’s challenge to overcome the self and the aspiration buried within that process to inspire humanity to do the same. In this way, inspiration might be seen as a kind of life-giving ability; it safeguards and ensures humanity’s future. The possibility of inspiration, and of reaching the “dancing stars” of our human potential, appears inextricable from the fertility and cultivation of the spirit. By thinking through the implicit duality of Nietzsche’s Overman as the seed and the star, we can better appreciate the parallel processes that D’Annunzio’s protagonist has to go through to become the Übermensch. In particular, further discussion on how struggle factors into the process of overcoming the self, as a birth proper to modernity, brings into focus the relationship between inspiration and technology that plays out in D’Annunzio’s tale of the pilot- Übermensch. The Highest Height from the Deepest Abyss: Struggle and the Overman’s Transformation There is something to be said about what happens to humanity if it remains uninspired, which is what concerns Zarathustra most. Even D’Annunzio, who does not hold “the masses” in 288 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 17. 163 high regard, nevertheless worries about what the effect too much ease and leisure will have on them and their future. For this reason, struggle is a critical part of the process of transforming the spirit. If ordinary man is resigned to complacency and apathy, then the Overman must be galvanized by ambition, persistence, action, and resilience—all of which are forged through struggle. Ease and contentment might well be seen as poison to Zarathustra because they do not promote growth but rather enable immobility and fixedness, characteristics that have not served the ape or worm well. Struggle is key to the Overman’s success. In “On Virtue That Makes Small,” Zarathustra returns briefly to the metaphor of the tree to illustrate the importance of challenging oneself, engaging resistance, and overcoming obstacles. It is not enough that the seed of the man’s highest hope is cultivated in a rich soil; that foundling tree needs to grow a sturdy foundation to support its eventual height. “Too considerate, too yielding is your soil,” he shouts into the wind, “but that a tree may become great, it must strike hard roots around hard rocks.”289 Pliancy and kindness, favorable conditions, in other words, make for weak trees whose roots remain shallow. At stake in the receipt/assent of struggle is the cultivation of the spirit and specifically the virtues by which the spirit lives. Over many parables, Nietzsche uses the notions of height and depth to convey spiritual profundity and give shape to the kinds of struggle that lead to/can give birth to that higher form of spirit. In his constellation of values, superficiality and unquestioned virtues go hand-in-hand: They have become smaller, and they are becoming smaller and smaller; but this is due to their doctrine of happiness and virtue. For they are modest in virtue, too— because they want contentment. But only a modest virtue gets along with contentment…Some of them will, but most of them are only willed. Some of them are genuine, but most of them are bad actors. There are unconscious actors among them and involuntary actors; the genuine are always rare, especially genuine actors. 289 Nietzsche, 171, emphasis in the original. 164 . . . Round, righteous, and kind they are to each other, round like grains of sand, righteous land kind with grains of sand…At bottom these simpletons want a single thing most of all: that nobody should hurt them. Thus they try to please and gratify everybody. This, however, is cowardice, even if it be called virtue.290 The narrow yet flexible virtues of good and evil, which have gone unchallenged by most and remain “doctrine” among men, do nothing to raise humanity out of its animal nature.291 The kindness ordinary man shows his neighbor is borne out of a selfish desire to remain unharmed. And rather than test himself to see his potential, the ordinary man refuses to challenge himself or the virtues that structure his comfortable lifestyle. The majority of people, what Nietzsche mockingly calls the “herd,” are unconscious actors because they are uncritical followers; they accept everything that’s put in front of them like a pig at a troth. “But to chew and digest everything—that is truly the swine’s manner,” not the human’s.292 Instead, Zarathustra dares these “comfortable ones” to challenge their long-held virtues and overcome what has guided their spirits to this point: a desire for ease and contentment. To do so, Nietzsche makes quite clear, the individual must expose himself to obstacles and suffering, for “it is out of the deepest depth that the highest must come to its height.”293 Reaching man’s potential has a direct correlation to his experience of the deepest abyss, as we see in Zarathustra and again in Forse che sì. For Zarathustra, challenging the self does not imply physical risk, as it might in a Futurist sense, but more crucially the endurance of emotional and physical suffering and discomfort. The reason for this has to do with what is perceived as 290 Nietzsche, 169–170, emphasis in the original. 291 In another instance, Zarathustra points to how these virtues shift from good to evil or vice versa depending on who you speak to. 292 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 194. 293 Nietzsche, 154. 165 happiness by the comfortable, “last man,”—what we might call pleasure instead—and what Nietzsche understands to be true happiness. In a gloss on Nietzsche’s use of the terms “happiness” and “pleasure,” Kaufmann notes that “Nietzsche’s own terminology is far from rigid or consistent, but on occasion he did make a clear distinction the closely parallels ours: Glück is marked by the absence of pain; Lust includes some pain.” The German term “Lust” is “sometimes used by Nietzsche to connote that joy which exults in the face of suffering. He even goes to the extent of considering this joy a kind of suffering.” 294 Put differently, pleasure is “a particular sensation that is marked definitively by the absence of any pain or discomfort,” while happiness is a state in which neither of those things are of any consequence. The kind of happiness that fulfills the Overman’s spirit and to which, Zarathustra believes, all men should strive is achieved in “the process of overcoming itself” and necessarily includes resistance and suffering.295 For this reason, Zarathustra envisions even friendship as a sort of trial, because anything less would foster complacency and hinder growth. In speaking about the most productive kind of friendship, Zarathustra remarks: If one wants to have a friend one must also want to wage war for him: and to wage war, one must be capable of being an enemy…In a friend one should have one’s best enemy. You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him. …What is the face of your friend anyway? It is your own face in a rough and imperfect mirror.296 294 This definition seems to fit more accurately the picture Nietzsche gives of happiness in The Will to Power, where he “contends that happiness is a creative activity and that there is ‘in every action an ingredient of displeasure [Unlust],’” quoted in Kaufmann, Nietzsche, 274–75. For further insights into this point, see Tim Stern, The New Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche (2019); Vanessa Lemm, Nietzsche and the Becoming of Life (2015); and Keith Ansell Pearson (ed), A Companion to Nietzsche (2006) 295 Kaufmann, 274. 296 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 56. 166 The friendship or companionship that one seeks out should, in other words, raise the individual out of the prescribed, un-scrutinized virtues and habits of ordinary man. Critical to this relationship is the ability of both parties to despise, to be “an enemy.” The ability to despise others and despise oneself enables the Overman, or the one who will become him, to question the virtues therein, thereby combating the undiscerning nature of ordinary man, member of the herd. Struggle and resistance at all levels and in all aspects of life is therefore absolutely fundamental to the process of transforming the spirit and raising humanity to a higher state of being. The Overman, we might say, is modern in the sense that he breaks dramatically from tradition and forms his own virtues. The one who achieves this modernity of spirit ideally uses it to further not just his individual potential but to inspire such transformation in others as well. If the example of Paolo in Forse che sì is any indication, however, the individualistic drive is equally as difficult to throw off as the comfort of an established value system. For D’Annunzio, overcoming the self constitutes a birth proper to modernity, when technology gives man the power to do almost everything else with ease. The difference between the plane and other technologies like the automobile or telephone is that other technologies enable man’s worst nature while the plane challenges him to do better. The significance of the Overman here, as it does in Zarathustra’s agronomic parables, does not stem solely from his being the next stage in human evolution but above all from giving humanity something to aspire to. In transforming his own spirit, man can give birth to himself as the Overman and, in so doing, inspire transformation in others. While Paolo may not be able to physically take the entire human species up with him 167 as he skims the stars, he does just that by drawing their eyes off the ground, lifting them and their spirits up and away from their animal tendencies.297 D’Annunzio’s Modern Übermensch: The Man Who Flies Over the Crowd The teachings of Zarathustra appear in Forse through a technologized vision of overcoming or giving birth to the self. The introduction of technology into the process of transforming the spirit, however, has unintended consequences for the hero and those around him.298 At stake is the reproduction of the self, an autarchic transformation that pushes man beyond what he is naturally. It is by no means insignificant that Nietzsche’s figuration of inspiration, intimately tied as it is to the future of humanity, shares the same vocabulary of birth that D’Annunzio uses to describe his hero’s aeronautical achievement, first at the air show and again in the final scene. In these triumphant ascents, D’Annunzio pictures the realization of man’s “highest hope,” the culmination of the transformation of the spirit or the growth of the seed into the tree. The pilot and plane who fuse together in this moment depict quite literally the “arrow of [man’s] longing” that travels beyond himself (“egli fece un dardo inflessibile”).299 The pilot-plane takes man off the earth, thereby lifting humanity out of its current state of animality and into a higher state of being through inspiration. And yet, there is a clear thanatos at play in the way the Übermensch births himself and inspires others in this technologized world. Lingering underneath the veneer of spirituality and the betterment of humanity is an unmistakable current that pulls life in the direction of death, grasping at any piece it can sweep 297 “La folla trasse allo spettacolo come a una assunzione della sua specie. Il periglio sembrò l’asse della vita sublime. Tutte le fronti dovettero alzarsi.” D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 567. 298 While the introduction of technology into the process of transforming the spirit is meant to modernize it, the effects of this addition appear quite catastrophic. 299 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 868–69. 168 away. Whereas for the majority of the text Isabella embodies the various elements that make up this current, in the context of heroic flight, there is something noticeably contaminating about technology’s introduction to the process of betterment at the individual and universal levels.300 In the context of the universal goal of raising humanity up, this drift towards death appears most noticeably in the relation between Paolo and the crowd and the colonial scaffolding that buoys the desire for new heights. The dual goal that we see in Nietzsche’s Übermensch, to overcome the self and inspire the masses, drives D’Annunzio’s technologized superuomo as well. Each of the two scenes of ascent depict one of the defining aspects of this goal. At the airshow, Paolo’s achievement of reaching the highest height foreshadows his ability to inspire others once he reaches the spiritual height of the Overman. And the final scene depicts his completing this spiritual transformation, though perhaps not as immaculately as some critics claim. In reading these scenes together, the primacy of the dream becomes clearer, as does its corrupted underside. Whereas the descent into the abyss contributes to the Overman’s ascent to the maximum height in Nietzsche, and indeed lives on in the Overman as a past experience, in D’Annunzio the abyss conditions the height. The abyss must coexist with the height, thereby allowing the superuomo to soar while someone else languishes underground. This first becomes evident among the biplanes and pilots at the airshow. The airshow scene is significant for a number of reasons: it is the first time we see Paolo fly; the first and only time Vana and Giulio meet; and it marks Giulio’s death and the beginning of Paolo’s transformation. Yet, the most important aspect that this scene depicts is the 300 In a much broader context, Campbell asks a similar question: “what is it about techne that calls forth thanatos in a context of life?” The discourse around thanatos, a tendency towards death, especially as it relates to Heidegger’s thought. Cavarero on natality and how the being towards death is masculine. See Campbell, Improper Life, viii. 169 uniqueness of reaching new heights through flight—an ability so singular and rare that most people fail in their attempt. Indeed, Paolo’s first heroic journey into the sky takes place against a backdrop of fallen and falling men. Not long after the planes take off “l’un dopo l’altro a conquistare il cielo magnifico,” they begin to drop “l’un dopo l’altro.” D’Annunzio conveys the danger involved in flight not only through the detailed descriptions of bodies burning, bones broken, and planes splintered, but significantly through the number of examples he gives of this happening. While other modernist imaginaries, and Futurism in particular, envision the machine as armored and impenetrable, here D’Annunzio pulls back the curtain on just how similar the machine body and the human body are. One such passage pinpoints the various mechanical parts of the plan after it and the pilot crash violently to the ground: Come una grande falarica avvolta di stracci intrisi in olio incendiario, scagliata dalla corda della balista, l’ordegno percosse la terra con tale impeto che vi s’addentrò. Esplose nell’urto il serbatoio inondando la carcassa schiantata e l’uomo vivo. La fusoliera ardeva come un brulotto. Nella coda simile alla cocca del quadrello, erette le timoniere stridivano.301 Like a large gavalin wrapped in rags soaked in incendiary oil, thrown by the ballista's rope, the apparatus struck the earth with such force that it penetrated it. The tank exploded on impact, flooding the crashed carcass and the man alive. The fuselage burned like a fireboat. In the tail, similar to the nock of the arrow, the helmsmen screeched upright.302 In other instances, pilots are caught unprepared and blinded suddenly “come quei rapaci notturni” by the attempt of such an undertaking, leading the majority of them to come crashing down in various hideous wrecks. 303 As the mangle of limbs, torsos, and plane parts scatter the 301 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 590–91. 302 My translation. 303 One such passage pinpoints the various mechanical parts of the plan after it and the pilot crash violently to the ground: “Come una grande falarica avvolta di stracci intrisi in olio incendiario, scagliata dalla corda della balista, l’ordegno percosse la terra con tale impeto che vi s’addentrò. Esplose nell’urto il serbatoio inondando la carcassa 170 airfield over the course of the competition, Paolo is among the very few that keep off the ground. Where disfigurement marks the fallen pilots, unity and wholeness characterize Paolo and Giulio, not just within themselves but with the plane as well. It is in this unity with oneself, that extends to a oneness with the plane, that Paolo glimpses the state of the Overman: Di nuovo gli si creò nei sensi l’illusione di essere non un uomo in una macchina ma un sol corpo e un solo equilibrio. Una novità incredibile accompagnò tutti i suoi moti. Egli volò su la sua gioia. Una intera stirpe fu nuova e gioiosa in lui.304 Again the illusion was created in his senses that he was not a man in a machine but one body and one equilibrium. An incredible novelty accompanied all of his movements. He flew on its joy. A whole lineage was new and joyful in him.305 Realizing this record height generates a sense of rebirth, a “novità incredibile,” that infuses his movements and gives new life even to those who watch. In reaching cruising altitude or at least the record height for a biplane in 1910, the propeller does not sustain Paolo’s flight, but rather a bond of happiness that he shares with the crowd lifts him up. There is a sense of communion between the achievements of the pilot and the possibility of the witnesses that does not go unnoticed by those left behind on the ground. Despite their distance from Paolo physically and spiritually, the onlookers see the potential of humanity in that single individual act of flying: La folla era protesa in ascolto, con l’anima nelle pupille, trattenendo il respiro. E la diminuzione graduale del suono creava in lei un sentimento della lontananza così profondo, che la sua vista n’era illusa. L’uomo sembrava già assunto in un’altezza incalcolabile, interamente disgiunto dalla sua specie, solo come nessuno mai fu solo, fragile come nessuno mai fu fragile, di là dalla vita come il trapassato. Lo spavento dell’ignoto incavò tutti i petti. schiantata e l’uomo vivo. La fusoliera ardeva come un brulotto. Nella coda simile alla cocca del quadrello, erette le timoniere stridivano.” See D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 590–91. 304 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 594. 305 My translation. 171 …Lo spasimo della folla era come la pulsazione incessante d’una febbre unanime, che si comunicasse all’aria insensibile e giungesse fino a quell’ali d’uomo…Il cielo fu come un destino imminente.306 The crowd was leaning out to listen, with their souls in their pupils, holding their breath. And the gradual decrease of the sound created a feeling of distance so deep that the sight of it was deluded. The man already seemed lifted to an incalculable height, entirely detached from his species, alone as no one was ever alone, fragile as no one was ever fragile, beyond life as the deceased. The fear of the unknown hollowed out all of their chests. ... The spasm of the crowd was like the incessant pulsation of a unanimous fever, which communicated itself to the numb air and reached those wings of man ... The sky was like an imminent destiny.307 So enthralled is the crowd that its eyes and soul are glued to what they perceive as the throes of destiny taking place above them. Witnessing takes on a new significance and power here in that it allows for the conveyance of inspiration from the pilot’s journey upward to the static mass of people underneath. Inspiration itself acts a sort of invisible link that continues to grow even as the distance between the plane and the earth increase. Indeed, the greater the expanse between the pilot, who seems to be “already assumed by an incalculable height,” and the crowd with their soul in their eyes (and presumably their hearts in their throat), the greater the sense of wonder and joy. The dream and promise of Nietzsche’s seedling lives in this act of technologized triumph not just for those who watch but for all humanity, for if one person can achieve this then others might follow. The pilot distinguishes himself from indistinguishable mass of people below and the entire species with one heroic trajectory: “l’uomo sembrava…interamente disgiunto dalla sua specie, solo come nessuno mai fu solo.”308 306 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 596. 307 My translation. 308 “Egli era solo: non vedeva più nulla, se non l'astro vorticoso dell'elica; non udiva più nulla, se non il palpito eguale del motore, la settupla consonanza.” D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 593. 172 It is not a coincidence that D’Annunzio takes great measures to convey the gruesome details of the consequences of falling or the greatness of the expanse that separates the flying hero and the gawking crowd. Doing so allows him to figure Paolo and any others that manage to survive as nothing short of mythical. He likens the pilots to gladiators, fighting fierce beasts armed with engines and height instead of fur hides and talons: “L’uomo non più andava alle fiere nell’arena angusta, ma alle macchine micidiali su le vie della terra del mare e del cielo.”309 The ferocity and deadliness of the “macchine micidiali” give credence to the idea that piloting a plane is difficult, and that flight is made all the more difficult because it is played out over many arenas (“terra,” “mare,” “cielo”) and with many other variables (“forze naturali”).310 Such a figuration, in both the onlooking crowd and the novel itself, contributes to the dream of the Overman that Paolo unwittingly hopes to achieve. Despite the skill that controlling a plane demands and the calamity that flying risks, those who are left grounded by it look longingly up at the “victorious ones,” not unlike the mass of people in the audience: Pallidissimo, vacillò, si ripiegò, mozzò tra i denti il ruggito dello spasimo, sotto le dita che lo palpavano. Aveva il femore in frantumi. Due soldati lo trasportarono sopra una delle tavole abbattute dal cozzo, supino con gli occhi verso le nubi. L’ombra d’un volo vittorioso passò su la sua disperazione.311 Very pale, he staggered, bent over, the roar of agony cut off between his teeth, under the fingers that palpated him. He had a shattered femur. Two soldiers carried him on one of the boards knocked down by the collision, on his back with his eyes towards the clouds. The shadow of a victorious flight passed over his despair.312 309 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 592. 310 This logic is antithetical to Marinetti’s in the Manifesto e Fondazione del Futurismo, where fierce animals (sharks and lions) lend their animality to the automobile, thereby consecrating it as a worthy counterpart to the Futurist and vital in its own right. For an engaged analysis of Marinetti’s animalization in the Manifesto, see Campbell, “Vital Matters: Sovereignty, Milieu, and the Animal in Futurism's Founding Manifesto” in Annali d'Italianistica, v. 27, A Century of Futurism: 1909–2009 (2009), 157-173 311 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 590. 312 My translation. 173 The possibility of flight itself gives birth to a new myth and meets the human need for inspiration. It has power enough to draw the eyes of the fallen wounded upward and even fills in a gap that they were hoping to fill themselves. If the victorious pilot achieves hero status, then technologized flight sits in the cultural psyche as a modern myth: “Il mondo dei miti e dei sogni rioccupava la cavità del cielo, evocato dal nuovo sogno e dal nuovo mito.”313 Critical to this figuration of the pilot as a mythical hero for all humanity is the wholeness that he feels in flight as D’Annunzio contrasts it to the brokenness of the fallen pilots and the indistinctness of the crowd. The unity that the pilot exhibits in and with the plane, which is echoed in Paolo’s final flight, would not hold as much significance for the individual who flies or the witnesses who watch if it did not occur against the backdrop of brutal crashes and inhuman fires. This violence that befalls humanity normally conditions the triumphant ascent of the plane and with it, the Overman. Perhaps the most telling indications of the true nature of flight and its place in the technologized myth of the Übermensch show themselves in the crowd’s response and engagement with it as spectacle. E allora fu visto l’uomo vivo avviluppato dal fuoco senza colore rotolarsi su l’erbe arsicce con una furia così selvaggia, che il suo cranio dirompeva il suolo friabile. La folla urlò, presa alle viscere non dalla pietà pel morituro ma dalla frenesia del gioco mortale. . . Il soffocatore della vampa era sorto in piedi, nericcio, fumido, oleoso, coi capelli strinati, con le vesti incarbonite, con le mani cotte, atrocemente vivo. A duecento metri da lui, del suo ordegno distrutto non rimaneva se non il motore arroventato fra i tubi contorti e divelti. Egli guardò le sue mani che avevano strozzato il fuoco ribelle. Un delirio crudele venò di rosso i mille e mille e mille occhi levati verso il convesso circo celeste. La cruenta gioia circense rifluì nei precordii ansiosi. Un subito aumento di vita estuò sotto l’imminenza della morte.314 313 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 589–90. 314 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 591, emphasis mine. According to Treccani Encyclopedia, synonyms of the dated literary term “estuare” include “ribollire, ardere, [e] ondeggiare.” A few translations might include: to ferment 174 And then the living man enveloped by colorless fire was seen rolling on the dry grass with such a savage fury that his skull broke through the crumbled soil. The crowd screamed, gripped not by pity for the dying man but by the frenzy of the mortal game. . . The smother of the flame had risen to his feet, black, smoky, oily, with his hair scorched, with his clothes charred, with his hands cooked, atrociously alive. Two hundred meters from him, only the red-hot engine remained of his destroyed apparatus between the twisted and torn pipes. He looked at his hands that had choked the rebel fire. A cruel delirium tinged with red the thousand and thousand and thousand eyes raised towards the convex celestial circus. The gory joy of the circus flowed back into the anxious precordium. An immediate increase in life extinguished under the imminence of death.315 The crowd remains firmly brutish in nature, cruel and savage, as their voyeurism indicates. The pupils, cradling their soul, flood red with a “cruel delirium” while their guts churn with the “frenzy of the lethal game.” D’Annunzio’s figuration of the crowd as eminently corporeal also differentiates the mass of people from the spiritualized pilot who soars above them. Even feelings spread among the crowd “non da voce a voce ma da carne a carne.”316 The indistinct crowd is offset by the single, fallen pilot who gazes down at his horribly burnt hands, while the hungry eyes of the crowd hasten to return to the sight of Paolo, swooping down to see who the crashed plane carried and lifting up again. Much the same way as the herd that Zarathustra despises, this mass of people, indistinct because undistinguishable, like the last man, appear deeply in need of heroic inspiration. If left to their own devices, in the face of human suffering, it seems that none would try or even think to aid those who fall.317 They would rather watch a man or foam; to burn or boil; to sway or ripple, the main idea behind the term connoting something that is not yet present but is making its way to the surface. 315 My translation. 316 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 597. The whole line reads: “E il terrore si propagò per tutta la folla, non da voce a voce ma da carne a carne.” 317 In this sense, the flight competition differs only from the boxing match ostensibly because it is a competition with oneself; the pilot has to battle with the natural elements of wind and gravity, but more importantly with himself. Recall that most pilots who attempted to reach the record height were “blinded like nocturnal birds of prey” by the sheer enormity of the task. The audience at the boxing match and the audience at the airshow are identical, though. 175 burn and pore over his corpse than put out the flames. The drift towards death, introduced by the contaminating technological element of the plane, manifests in the crowd’s voyeurism of the flight competition and its perverse fascination with death.318 Where the Crowd Stands: From Racialization to Animalization D’Annunzio’s figuration of the crowd in Forse belongs to a genealogy intimately tied to concerns over race and identity, both individual and communal.319 Welch and Re among others have traced a clear genealogy across D’Annunzio’s novels in which his use of terms such as sangue, razza, and stirpe metamorphosize over time to signify (and elide) different clusters of meaning. As Welch notes, the terms stirpe and razza in general are “mobile signifiers” that “are aligned with either bloodline or progeny at any given moment” in Italian literary history.320 In Il trionfo della morte (1894), the last installment of his series Romanzi della rosa, D’Annunzio draws on notions of heredity popularized by criminal anthropology, as many literary authors did at the time, to explore “not only the fatality of ‘blood’ and race, but also how individuals can overcome and transform the fate of hereditary illness and criminality.”321 In it, the aristocrat Giorgio Aurispa attempts to excise his decadent tendencies, specifically an obsessive attraction to his lover of “plebian blood” and a lingering self-loathing, by returning to his birthplace where 318 A similar fascination and savoring of dead, decaying, or morbid things characterizes Isabella. D’Annunzio associates her tendency towards “cose torbide e crudeli” with perversion and juxtaposes it to the way Paolo and others view Vana, as the pure “donna del cielo.” 319 Culicelli understands the crowd as an expression of the feminine in D’Annunzio’s work. In her incisive reading, she traces its genealogy back to a mythic origin in which poet speaks to the crowd as a hero, whereby the “gesto dell’eroe” is “l’uccisione del mostro mitologico, della Sfinge, della Medusa, della Chimera.” See Culicelli, L’archetipo dell’anima: miti e immagini femminili in d’Annunzio, 115–16. 320 The rhetorical significance of sangue, for example, transforms over the course of his series Romanzi della rosa, connoting at first purely erotic, non-reproductive relations in Il Piacere (1889), and culminating in Il trionfo della morte (1894) where it stands in for “racialized descent.” See Welch, Vital Subjects, 132. 321 Re, “Italians and the Invention of Race,” 13. However, the reader would be hard-pressed to find a Dannunzian hero who successfully overcomes the destiny of their blood without qualifications. 176 he hopes to reunite with “la razza da cui sono uscito.”322 Aurispa’s communion with his own race, here the Abruzzese, promises to reinvigorate his best qualities and save him from an otherwise condemned trajectory: Non io ora cerco la verità, ma sì bene cerco di ricuperare la mia sostanza, di rintracciare in me i caratteri della mia razza per riaffermarli e renderli quanto più potrò intensi. Accordando così la mia anima con l’anima diffusa, io riavrò quell’equilibrio che mi manca. Il segreto dell’equilibrio per l’uomo d’intelletto sta nel saper trasportare gli istinti, i bisogni, le tendenze, i sentimenti fondamentali della propria razza in un ordine superiore. 323 Now I am not looking for the truth, but yes, I am trying to recover my substance, to trace in myself the characteristics of my race to reaffirm them and make them as intense as I can. By thus harmonizing my soul with the diffused soul, I will regain that balance that I lack. The secret of balance for the man of intellect lies in knowing how to transport the instincts, needs, tendencies, fundamental feelings of one's race into a higher order.324 Aurispa believes in the salvific properties that proximity to one’s race imbues.325 He hopes that bringing his soul (“anima”) into accordance with the soul of the people he shares a heritage with will recalibrate his spiritual direction, thereby allowing him to be the savior of those very same people. In so doing, he falls somewhat naively for what contemporary pseudosciences like phrenology, physiognomy, and criminal anthropology promoted as the inevitability of heredity. Authors such as Paolo Mantegazza, Cesare Lombroso, Giuseppe Sergi, and Alfredo Niceforo disseminated the idea that blood or “stock” dictate the negative social conditions experienced by specific groups of people and that these social and often moral “deformities” could be recognized through the study of an individual’s physiology. These disciplines advanced the idea that a 322 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 1, 848. 323 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 1, 848. 324 My translation. 325 Re ties this particular iteration of blood and race to the influence of Barrès on D’Annunzio. See Re, “Italians and the Invention of Race,” 12. 177 person’s genetic heritage determined his value and future; or, conversely, that one could determine an individual’s moral and social potential by looking at his lineage. Blood could, in other words, raise an individual up to greatness or condemn him irrevocably. Either way, destiny written in blood could not be overcome.326 In these discourses, the concepts of blood and heritage fold easily into the concept of race, which remains equally difficult to pin down as it too continued to metamorphosize overtime and in different contexts.327 In the literary context, for example, Re notes that, for D’Annunzio, “‘razza’ and ‘stirpe’ are hardly fixed biological (or even social or cultural) categories, but rather shifting rhetorical constructs, to be deployed in different ways as circumstances and his own image-making process dictate.” 328 D’Annunzio’s texts operate rather 326 These discourses fall under the broader category of biological determinism, however each has its own genealogy and contributed differently to the rhetoric of race prominent in nineteenth to twentieth-century Italy. 327 For this discussion of D’Annunzio’s writing, razza should be read in its affinity to its sister signifier, stirpe, which connotes more reliably “origin, lineage” or “stock.” Welch gives a detailed account of how D’Annunzio deploys these terms and what inspired him to do so in her book, Vital Subjects. See especially chapter 3, “Mutilated Limbs.” The history of the term “race” and of racializing discourses in the Italian context is particularly complicated as it is bound up with the nation’s process of unification and forging a national identity. The racializing discourses I discuss here were first deployed against Southern Italians before being projected outward through Italy’s colonization of Libya. As Re notes, in late-nineteenth, early-twentieth century Italy, “the so-called sciences of physiognomy and phrenology and the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, and criminology…contributed a great deal to racialize the Southern question as well as the woman question.” According to this rhetoric, Southerners were “effeminate, volatile, and unstable,” evolutionarily arrested by “decadence, chronic weakness, passivity, and lack of energy and ability to struggle.” Such discourses explained these negative features by drawing a (imagined) line of descent from the racially inferior Africans to the “italici” which Giuseppe Sergi distinguishes from northern Italians of Aryan descent, what he terms the “arii” (Re, “Italians and the Invention of Race,” 19). Welch argues that “the tenor of the post-Unification racial discourse…was overwhelmingly positive, focusing on making Italians vital subjects—robust, vigorous, well-nourished, and (re)productive. Paradoxically, it was articulated through figures of racial degeneracy and corporeal mutilation that reflected specific anxieties…” (Welch, Vital Subjects, 12). See her Vital Subjects for a discussion of how the notions of race, blood, and (re)productivity participated in a biopolitical making of Italian identity in fictional and political discourses. The collection of essays, Nel nome della razza: Il razzismo nella storia d’Italia 1870–1945 (2000), edited by Alberto Burgio, offers extraordinary insight into the various ways racism and its many forms acted in Italy between the industrial revolution and the dopoguerra. In this volume, see especially Alessandro Triulzi, “La costruzione dell’immagine dell’Africa e degli africani nell’Italia colonial,” 165-181; and Labanca, “Il razzismo coloniale italiano,” 145-163. Of interest is also Angelo Del Boca, Italiani, brava gente?: Un mito duro a morire (2005) and Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller, Italian Colonialism (2005). 328 Re, “Italians and the Invention of Race,” 15. 178 like theatres in which a “negotiation” of these terms plays out.329 Despite the arena, however, “whether local, national, or transnational…D’Annunzio’s rhetoric of race is always based on the idea of a violent and ennobling struggle” against an “other.”330 In general, even as the term razza moved into more colloquial parlance and its significance shifted to something closer to “type,” “it nevertheless remained tethered to a rhetoric of value: ‘di razza’ (and variations there upon) is used to connote worth.”331 In its connection to an estimation of value, “race” holds the tension between inclusion and exclusion at its core. Belonging to a particular race and bloodline confers value at times, yet it might also betray the fatal flaw that compels one literally or metaphorically off a cliff. As one might expect from a decadent Dannunzian hero, Aurispa’s spiritual realignment does not go as planned, as he is viscerally reminded of the differences between himself and the “tremenda folla che emanava un lezzo nauseabondo,” guided as it is by superstition, fear, and animal instincts: Il disgusto li prendeva alla gola, li eccitava a fuggire; e pure l’attrazione dello spettacolo umano era più forte, li tratteneva nelle strettoie della calca, li portava dove la miseria appariva peggiore, dove si rivelavano con peggiori eccessi la crudeltà, l’ignoranza, la frode, dove le grida irrompevano, dove le lacrime scorrevano.332 Disgust took them by the throat, excited them to flee; and yet the attraction of the human spectacle was stronger, it kept them in the bottlenecks of the crowd, carried them where misery appeared worst, where cruelty, ignorance, fraud were revealed with worse excesses, where cries broke out, where tears flowed.333 329 Welch, Vital Subjects, 134. 330 Re, “Italians and the Invention of Race,” 15. 331 Welch, Vital Subjects, 136. 332 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 1, 875. 333 My translation. 179 Aurispa’s fraught homecoming underscores the confluence of D’Annunzio’s figurations of the crowd, blood, and race. In Trionfo, the mass of people unites social class with unsavory characteristics that Aurispa believes himself to be above—superstition, brutishness, moral decrepitness. Social and racial inferiority converge in the crowd. This presents a great problem for Aurispa who at once wishes to return to the racial fold to reinvigorate himself but simultaneously shirks away from the mass of people who represent it. He cannot see a positive way to escape his inscription into this crowd through blood. Like the crowd, Auripsa’s lineage condemns him to, if not social then, moral degeneracy. This tension between being close to one’s race and being removed from it, between proximity and distance, conditions Aurispa’s unproductive return home. In his separation from the crowd, Aurispa can safely claim to belong to a particular race, and benefit from the value that belonging confers on him, while maintaining his social difference from it. Yet, in order to save the people who make up the crowd and raise “the race from which he came” out if its misery and degeneracy, he must bridge that gap. D’Annunzio reminds us through terms such as “plebeo,” “strato infimo” and “torme,” that the people who make up the crowd, while still Abruzzese, come from a different razza, implying that whoever makes up the crowd is of an inferior, and hence forever condemned, destiny. 334 Ultimately, Aurispa commits suicide like his uncle before him and murders his mistress Ippolita in the same act of falling off a cliff. He succeeds in eliminating the possibility of a continued line of corrupted blood only by ending the potentially reproductive couple altogether. In fact, D’Annunzio only figures out how to “overcome and transform the fate of hereditary illness” by either ending the line of descent (as his heroes do in 334 A “torma” being an “insieme di persone che vanno senza ordine” or a “branco, specialmente di animali grossi.” See Garzanti, “Torma,” in Il nuovo dizionario italiano Garzanti, 941. 180 Trionfo and Vergine) or by shifting his thinking around race and the crowd as he does in Forse, where the masses can be saved from their hereditary condemnation through inspiration. Just as D’Annunzio’s use of razza, stirpe, and sangue have changed over the course of his novels, so too has his figuration of the crowd. 335 Whereas in Trionfo, the figure of the crowd moves along the axes of social class and heredity, in Forse, it moves along the axes of spirituality and ability. The crowd in Forse rises or falls not by its ancestry but by its capacity to lift itself up. This uncoupling from racial and social inferiority has sizeable consequences for the relationship between the hero and those who watch him: in Trionfo, the hero’s genetic and physical proximity to the crowd signals his inevitable fate as part of a condemned bloodline. In Forse, however, the hero’s connection to the crowd ennobles him and gives him purpose. Recall that a bond of happiness and achievement between the pilot and the watching masses sustains Paolo’s flight (“Egli volò su la sua gioia. Una intera stirpe fu nuova e gioiosa in lui”).336 Such a positive connection depends on the element of distance, as proximity to the crowd still threatens to trap the hero in the crowd’s current state of spiritual stagnation and inhibits any form of inspiration. In contrast to the crowd at the flight competition, a smaller crowd, crammed together around a boxing ring, highlights the importance of creating distance between potential heroes and their spectators. Paolo first learns of this boxing match from the “scroscio di applausi” emanating from a theatre nearby. Such “clamore di folla” recalls the exuberance surrounding the airshow and indicates already that a spectacle of some kind will follow. Two oversized posters of 335 Re notes a shift in D’Annunzio’s idea of the crowd in his speech known as the “Discorso delle siepe” where he places a greater emphasis on war and struggle as a way to bring the traditionally excluded peasant and working classes into the fold. With this speech and his literary texts that follow, “social and racial inferiority no longer coincide in d’Annunzio.” See Re “Italians and the Invention of Race,” 15. 336 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 594. 181 “pugilatori giganteschi in atto di combattere, seminudi, coi pugni armati di guanti enormi” confirms this suspicion as does the portico, “violentemente illuminato” that draws attention to the event. The hyperbole surrounding the match equals the intensity of the larger-than-life portrayal of these combatants in the hanging images and reverberates in the crowd’s rowdy response. Even before Paolo enters the theatre, these characteristics cannot help but call to mind the airshow and the heroism performed there. Such exaggeration underscores the differences between the boxers and ordinary men, thereby promising a show of heroic feats. And yet, when Paolo does enter, the difference between the fighters and the crowd becomes murkier than the banners outside imply: Entrò in una vasta sala gremita, afosa di mille petti anelanti. Sopra un palco recinto di corde un bianco e un negro combattevano assistiti dall’arbitro. Ma non era un combattimento, era una carneficina disgustosa. Il bianco, già ridotto un cencio sanguinante, aveva le labbra lacere, il naso pesto le palpebre gonfie tutto il ceffo disfatto…Il negro ghignava dalla larga fauce piena di denti d’oro, e senza pietà scagliava contro la mascella dell’avversario il pugno infallibile. Facilmente egli avrebbe potuto con un urto nello stomaco abbatterlo in modo che non si rialzasse più; ma pareva ch’egli avesse un vecchio rancore da sfogare, una lunga vendetta da compiere. Il bianco era ormai stremato di forze; ed egli lo teneva in piedi, come se giocasse con un fantoccio, rimettendolo a piombo per la rapidità dei colpi alterni a destra e a sinistra. Tutto il palco era sparso di sangue. Le viscere della folla urlarono: - Basta! Basta! - I denti d’oro brillavano nel ghigno scimmiesco.337 He entered a large crowded room, sultry with a thousand panting breasts. On a stage enclosed by ropes a white and a black fought assisted by the referee. But it wasn't a fight, it was a disgusting carnage. The white man, already reduced to a bloody rag, had lacerated lips, a bruised nose and swollen eyelids all the unmade face ... The negro grinned from the large mouth full of gold teeth, and mercilessly threw his fist at the jaw of the opponent infallible. Easily he could have knocked him down with a blow in the stomach so that he would never get up again; but it seemed that he had an old grudge to vent, a long revenge to take. The white man was now exhausted of strength; and he held him upright, as if he were playing with a puppet, plumbing him again for the rapidity of the alternating strokes left 337 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 832–33. 182 and right. The whole stage was spattered with blood. The bowels of the crowd shouted: - Enough! Enough! - The gold teeth shone in the simian grin.338 The boxing match, which Paolo seems to think is not a competition at all but purely a “blood bath” (“carneficina”), shares a number of elements with the flight competition: combatants perform a hyperbolized, heroic masculinity in front of a crowd; the spectacle fully enthralls the spectators, so much so that they pant out of excitement and make the cramped space sweltering with body heat; and an element of distinction denotes heroic potential. Participants must prove themselves to be heroic, as simply being up on the stage as a boxer or in the sky as a pilot does not automatically make one a hero. The difference between Paolo as a victorious pilot and the victorious yet uncelebrated boxer has to do both with their relation to other combatants and to the crowd. In the flight scene, pilots demonstrate their difference from other pilots with ability: victorious pilots control the plane and do not crash. This ability distinguishes them from the others and distances them even from humanity itself (“interamente disgiunto dalla sua specie”). In the boxing scene, race reappears, this time transformed to indicate differentiation rather than association. The boxing scene holds a somewhat divergent position in terms of the way race is deployed with respect to the rest of the novel. Race here depends on skin color rather than on the social rank of one’s ancestry. At the same time, moral and spiritual inferiority detach from social standing and fold into this biological racism. D’Annunzio characterizes the black fighter as smiling like a monkey (“ghigno scimmiesco”), as someone who cannot or refuses to control his emotions (“pareva ch’egli avesse un vecchio rancore da sfogare”), and one who excessively 338 My translation. 183 enjoys the violent nature of boxing (“ghignava… senza pietà”). A string of adjectives that mark the white boxer as broken into pieces suggests that the victorious black boxer fragments his opponent without moderation: “cencio sanguinante,” “lacere,” “pesto,” “disfatto.” In this instance, biological racism coincides with an understanding of razza as connoting a particular moral capacity. However, given the way that the term razza is used in this text and D’Annunzio’s vacillating understanding of it, I want to draw attention to the fact that race as a concept operates differently when ascribed to Italians, with whom Paolo shares an ancestry. When ascribed to the crowd at the airshow, the sharing of a cultural and biological heritage imparts value onto Paolo and allows for inspiration to flow between them. Such emphasis on “unmaking” that distinguishes the black boxer’s action from his opponent’s runs violently in contrast to the goal of the pilot-Übermensch who, even as a fallen pilot looks up from a gurney, inspires and offers hope. It seems as if this fighter has no other objective than to destroy his adversary, which makes it difficult to distinguish him from the crowd itself as a mass of spiritually inept or unenlightened sheep. Though the boxer should be celebrated as the hero-winner of the match, D’Annunzio’s characterization of him as an animal and savage preclude him from that title. Even as the crowd responds viscerally with disgust to the scene, it participates in the very savagery that it watches. In almost the exact same way as the crowd at the airshow, this folla cannot get enough of the blood-spattering spectacle. Only Paolo, it seems, walks away in disgust. D’Annunzio’s projection of animality onto this particular boxer subsumes what the vocabulary of race and blood achieved in previous texts like Trionfo. In fusing hereditary, moral, and spiritual inferiority with a lack of moderation and overall animality, this new category of brutish or bestial works to differentiate the heroes or would-be higher men from the masses. 184 Such language calls to mind the colonial rhetoric and logic used in the Italian war against Libya and in colonizing projects more broadly. With the exception of this scene, however, D’Annunzio’s use of razza and his conceptualization of the crowd operates within the realms of morality and spirituality, thereby subduing its biological and colonial implications but not eliminating them altogether. The pilot-Übermensch no longer sees the crowd as another razza, but rather as a mass of people who are unable to overcome and move beyond themselves. He sees the crowd as a herd in need of inspiration and guidance not because of its lower stock or social class but because of its moral and spiritual inferiority. It becomes the target of his inspiration, a moral position that recalls a colonialist perception of anyone deemed to be “other.” Racialized Trajectory: The Colonial Underpinnings of Modern Flight Taking a step back to view the entirety of the first flight scene, the sense of inevitability that the falling planes betray is perhaps the most striking aspect, along with the tainted view it gives of the inspiration that the crowd is meant to find in the victorious pilot. Planes hurdle to the earth as if launched intentionally by a cruel marksman (“come una grande falarica…scagliata dalla corda della ballista…con tale impeto che vi s’addentrò”). When we might expect a triumphant celebration of flight to inaugurate the themes of the novel and the story of Paolo as the great pilot-Übermensch, D’Annunzio gives us a sharp contrast, revealing the “circo celeste” to be the much celebrated but under-scrutinized double of the “cerchio d’orrore.”339 Paolo and 339 The whole passage reads: “Allora fu visto un altro velivolo, come quei rapaci notturni che abbarbagliati dal sole cozzano contro l’ostacolo e tramortiscono, precipitarsi contro lo steccato, abbatterlo per un lungo tratto fra alte strida, capovolgersi con tutte le tele lacere, tutti i nervi recisi, tutte le ossature stronche, silenzioso dopo lo stroscio in un cerchio d’orrore, muto sfasciume sul suo cuore di metallo ancor caldo e fumante. La folla sbigottita e avida fiutò il cadavere, non apparendo dell’uomo se non le gambe prese nei fili d’acciaio aggrovigliati.” See D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 590. 185 the crowd revere the sky as the “destino imminente” of man, a “cielo magnifico” where man can create new constellations through flight, and drink in the fairytale that it offers them (“La moltitudine respirava nella favola come se là, dove s’affisavano le miriadi delle sue pupille, fosse per risplendere una nuova costellazione”). 340 But this imagined purity contrasts gruesomely with the “femore in frantumi” and “ossature stronche” that underpin it. Zooming out even further to view not just this particular incident of fantastical flight but the cultural imaginary that surrounds it, we find more of the same. The same dark underbelly of the abyss still buoys up the shiny bright miracle of aviation as it propels certain bodies above others. Recall that not just any crowd fuels Paolo’s flight, but a strictly Italian one. Not umanità but a particular stirpe.341 The dream of human achievement, of conquering the sky and reaching new heights, both spiritual and material, is itself inspired by a colonial logic. Indeed, D’Annunzio’s version of this ability to birth oneself and inspire others exhibits a markedly racialized and nationalistic aspiration. Instead of inspiring all of mankind, Paolo is most interested in raising Italians specifically to new heights and reviving the glory of their Roman heritage. Remembering the roar of the crowd beneath him as he flew to a record height at the airshow, Paolo expresses the significance of that rumble of voices: «Àrdea!» Il vincitore di Brescia riudì entro di sé il grido della moltitudine, riebbe un brivido dì quell’ebrezza quando una intera stirpe fu nuova e gioiosa in lui; rivisse gli attimi sublimi…quando il cuore gli tremò perché v’era nato il pensiero d’andare più oltre, quando non la Nike soltanto ma tutta la gloria di sua gente era alzata su la colonna di Roma. 342 “Ardea!” The winner of Brescia heard within himself the cry of the multitude, he got a shiver of that thrill when a whole lineage was new and joyful in him; he relived the sublime moments ... when his heart trembled because the thought of 340 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 597. 341 “una intera stirpe fu nuova e gioiosa in lui” 342 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 829. 186 going further was born, when not only Nike but all the glory of his people was raised on the column of Rome.343 In D’Annunzio’s modern imagination, “technology is mobilized…to propel the racialized body skyward.”344 And while biological racism does not often surface explicitly in the novel, its logic remains immanently present in recurring tropes. D’Annunzio’s use of stirpe and the animalization of crowd, for example, points back to the project of the Risorgimento and nation- building, and participates in the creation of Italian identity that undergirds these processes and Italian colonialism.345 Forse che sì was published just one year prior to the Italian government’s declaration of war against Turkey, which was quickly followed by its invasion and bombardment of Libya’s capital, Tripoli.346 Despite its euphemistic representation of aviation as a purely inspirational achievement, D’Annunzio’s Romanzo dell’ala nevertheless precipitates the horrifying reality of aviation and its unique position in Italian colonial logic and identity building.347 The war in Libya contributed to the solidification of Italian identity primarily because it allowed Italy to project its internal differences of class, region, and even gender onto a largely imagined other.348 Re writes on this point that: 343 My translation. 344 Welch, Vital Subjects, 129. 345 On this point, see Mario Alberto Banti, Sublime madre nostra. La nazione italiana dal Risorgimento al fascismo; Simonetta Soldani, “Il Risorgimento delle donne”; Lucy Riall, “Eroi maschili, virilità e forme della guerra”, in Banti and Ginsborg (eds.), Storia d’Italia. Annali 22: Il Risorgimento (Einaudi, 2008). 346 Salerno, Genocidio in Libia, 139. 347 Annamaria Andreoli notes that D’Annunzio considered this as a subtitle to Forse che sì. D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, 1988, 2:1316. 348 Many scholars have made and examined this point. See especially Gabriele Proglio, Libia 1911-1912. The classic text on this is Giorgio Rochat, Il colonialismo italiano (1974). See also Ben-Ghiat, “Modernity is just Over There: Colonialism and Italian National Identity”; Labanca, “Il razzismo coloniale italiano” in Nel nome della razza, 145- 163; Del Boca, Italiani, brava gente?, especially 13–56; Brambilla, “Shifting Italy/Libya Borderscapes at the Interface of EU/Africa Borderland: A ‘Genealogical’ Outlook from the Colonial Era to Post-Colonial Scenarios”; Del Monte, Staging Memory; Deplano, La madrepatria è una terra straniera. 187 This new identity was constructed and reinforced increasingly by applying the debasing colonial logic of otherness outside rather than inside the nation’s borders. The creation of an imaginary (and in fact for the most part literally and even willfully unseen) racially different and inferior “other” on the other side of the Mediterranean (rather than…in the Italian South) finally allowed for an Italian identity to cohere as never before. In Italy, more than in other countries, racism thus played a key role in the belated formation of national identity. The Libyan war press campaign, and the war itself in its largely literary construction, had, with its highly racialized symbolic logic, a paradoxically healing function for the fractured and contested identity of Liberal Italy.349 Rhetorically at least, Italian intellectuals and politicians made a concerted effort to influence the newly united country’s perception of itself as a people by displacing their internal differences onto the “inferior, less civilized ‘other’” that Italy imagined in the people of Libya. In this sense, D’Annunzio’s deployment of race in Forse is unique in its predominantly positive connotation of belonging that it underscores. With the exception of the boxing scene and the few instances where Paolo remembers his time as a soldier abroad, race appears in the form of stirpe, connoting “origin, lineage” or “stock” and acts as a positive signifier of belonging to a privileged group, here the Romans and their descendants. D’Annunzio’s forging of racial, national, and technological status into a single complex identity, on the other hand, falls in line with prominent notions of italianità of the time as popularized by literary authors, reporters, and politicians alike. For most Italians, the only knowledge of Africa and the people who lived there came from literary texts set in an imagined African landscape, flooded with stereotypes and orientalist figurations, or news reports which were themselves heavily biased. Indeed, books, magazine, and newspapers “si impegnano 349 Re, “Italians and the Invention of Race,” 9–10. She goes on to say, “The Libyan war represents both a turning point and the culmination of a racial process of self-definition by Italians as ethnically “one people,” through which the profoundly disintegrating internal differences of race, gender, class, and religious belief that threatened the very notion of a united Italy were at once repressed, forgotten, and surpassed” (10). 188 dunque in una vasta impresa di propaganda che affianca le decisioni parlamentari all’interno e le operazione militari sul suolo africano e fa da sponda, amplificandoli, agli interessi industriali, commerciali e ideologici di una parte della classe dirigente del paese.”350 The rhetoric around the war itself became central to the role that colonialism played in solidifying Italian identity. The myth of Italy as Libya’s moral and technological superior absorbed even the violence of colonization, which remained obscured from the public until recently: “l’imperialismo veniva inteso come stato di fatto della nazione…e la guerra come espressione della vitalità della nazione, del suo popolo.”351 The airplane figured heavily as a brutal means to achieve Italy’s imperial goals in this particular theatre. Drawing on extensive archival research, Salerno states plainly that, “la Libia fu per l’Arma aeronautica italiana ciò che Guernica fu in Spagna per la Luftwaffe di Hitler: un campo vivo su cui sperimentare le ultime tecniche della guerra. Per preparare altre guerre ed altre conquiste,” specifically the colonial conquest of Ethiopia.352 From the height of the plane, Paolo’s gaze at the crowd and the soldier’s gaze at the to-be-colonized share a moralistic telos: to bring civilization to a barbaric people. The adept use of technology appears as part and parcel of Italy’s imagined identity as a modern nation. In an article written for the French journal, The New York American, “La data dell’occupazione di Tripoli…,” D’Annunzio speaks frankly about the moral importance of the Italian occupation of Libya: 350 Schiavulli, La guerra lirica, 10. 351 Proglio, Libia 1911-1912, 85. 352 Salerno, Genocidio in Libia, 58. Salerno continues, “Le prove di ciò esistono negli archivi italiani ma furono totalmente e volutamente ignorate dal Comitato per la documentazione dell’Opera dell’Italia in Africa.” On this point, see also Alberto Sbacchi, “Poison Gas and Atrocities in the Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–1936)” in Italian Colonialsim (2005). 189 In verità, dopo una guerra d’indipendenza e lo sforzo di ricostituzione civile, l’Italia non si era ancora trovata a dover sostenere una causa più giusta, più chiara e di più alto interesse nazionale. Né mai impresa si presentò a un popolo civile con un più profondo carattere di necessità. Non si tratta del problema esclusivamente economico di un paese da sfruttare, e neanche di un problema esclusivamente politico inerente quella terra, la Turchia e altre potenze mediterranee. Si tratta di un terribile e magnifico problema morale, che riguarda l’essenza stessa della nostra razza e la realizzazione del nostro imminente destino.353 In truth, after a war of independence and the effort of civil reconstitution, Italy had not yet found itself having to support a more just, clearer and higher national interest cause. Neither enterprise ever presented itself to a civilized people with a deeper character of necessity. It is not a question of the exclusively economic problem of a country to be exploited, nor of an exclusively political problem inherent in that land, Turkey and other Mediterranean powers. This is a terrible and magnificent moral problem, which concerns the very essence of our race and the fulfillment of our imminent destiny.354 For D’Annunzio, nothing short of a “terrible and magnificent moral problem” motivates the Italian colonial effort in Libya, an effort that he ties directly to “the essence of our race” and “the realization of our imminent destiny,” where “our” refers unsurprisingly to the Italian people. The rhetoric that casts Italy as a civilizing moral superior to Libya plays a significant role in most colonial narratives written by the imperial power, as does the suggestions that conquest belongs to the destiny of the colonizer. Less common perhaps is D’Annunzio’s implication that the “essence” of the Italian people might somehow be compromised if the new nation forgoes this opportunity to elevate another popolo. That is, the ability to raise others to new heights of civilization distinguishes the moral and modern nations from the rest. The subtle difference that D’Annunzio draws attention to between simply having the right to conquer and having an existential obligation to, in his mind, bring moral and spiritual salvation to an inferior people, 353 D’Annunzio, “La data dell’occupazione di Tripoli…,” in La guerra lirica, 55–56, cited in Re “Italians and the Invention of Race”; my emphasis. 354 My translation. 190 suggests that all the technological or civil advancements fall short of making a nation truly superior if it cannot inspire that same development in others. The fact that Libya and its people acted as a crucible for the nascent Italian identity and yet remained largely out of sight and blurred by political and colonial bias should not be overlooked. Such disparity between the role Libya held in Italy’s process of identity formation and the all but imagined knowledge that the majority of Italians had of it points to the crucial part distance plays as an element of inspiration. It would be difficult to imagine the Libyan war having as great an impact on Italian identity if the Italian public were familiar with Libyan culture beforehand, through authentic sources and contact, or if it had any true idea of the atrocities that its government committed against the Libyan people. The physical distance between the two countries allowed for a doctored image, concocted by the literary and political elite to further their own nationalistic goals, to take the place of a real, tangible place and, heartbreakingly, of a people now treated as targets rather than citizens. Distance allows an imagined notion or fabricated image of an object to take the place of its embodied reality, thereby opening the possibility of actions that an accurate depiction or direct observation would otherwise obstruct. Distance figures heavily as a condition for inspiration in Forse che sì as well. Both the boxing match and the airshow make this clear. The boxing scene reveals the spectacle to be nothing more than a potent distillation of the crowd’s own bloodthirstiness where the lines between potential hero and witness blur. Due to this lack of separation, the boxing match comes up short in a comparison with the airshow as a site of inspiration. The proximity of the fighters to the crowd suffocates any possibility of dreaming—there is literally no space for inspiration or seeing beyond oneself because the same image fills the entire field of vision. The bloody scene 191 onstage extends from the fascination with violence and even death that many Dannunzian crowds share. The difference between the boxing match and the airshow, then, lies in the distance between the pilots and the crowd rather than on the actions of the potential heroes. The Overman’s ability to inspire originates in the distance he creates between himself and humanity and the ability to see beyond himself and beyond man in his current state that such distance grants him. “Man’s highest hope,” the dream that only the Overman can envision and create through inspiration depends, in other words, on perspective and distance. The distance required to accomplish this in the modern era, where technologies like the automobile and telephone conspire to minimize space between people, only becomes available with the airplane. This unique technological element radically changes the relationship between the hero and the crowd by offering him a new perspective over it. The inspiring effect of the pilot-Übermensch derives from his ability to separate himself physically and spiritually from the crowd. As opposed to D’Annunzio’s earlier novels Il trionfo della morte and Le vergini delle rocce, where his Nietzschean heroes grapple with racial and reproductive obligations that continually remind them of their human condition, Forse puts the question of ability to destiny and considers how technology inflects its outcome.355 Forse depicts a site of negotiation between man and technology not in terms of struggle but rather as a potential communion that might raise man up to new heights.356 However, such a union poses a risk to the spiritual goal of inspiring the masses. Bargaining with the plane for greater perspective, the pilot-Übermensch implicates 355 There’s also something about escaping these particular reproductive obligations by distancing himself from the earth as well. 356 OED defines “communion” as: “the action or fact of sharing or holding something in common with others; mutual participation; the condition of things so held, mutuality, community, union.” This idea of something shared between man and machine could be the death drive, as both participate in it through traumatic experience. 192 inspiration in a logistics of bellicose perception and, in the process, succumbs to the drift towards death. What Is Perceived Is Already Lost: The Bellicose Underpinnings of Modern Flight What about the technological element of the plane initiates this drift? Comparing the two scenes where the crowd holds a prominent position, distance appears as a critical distinction between the airshow and the boxing match since it enables the pilot to see beyond himself and man. It takes him out of the crowd. But the plane pushes him one step further: it places the hero above the crowd, thereby giving him a spatial perspective over it that quickly slips into temporal projection. This slippage between the spatial and temporal acts as the linchpin in what Paul Virilio calls a logistics of perception. Virilio proposes this logistics, “in which a supply of images [becomes] the equivalent of an ammunition supply,” to account for the many correlatives between cinema and the cinematic camera, and the way sight becomes, if not weaponized, then, implicated in modern warfare.357 While his argument focuses largely on the entanglement between early cinema, cinematic techniques, and war tactics and operations, Virilio’s compelling insight into the dynamics of perception suggests that the combination of height and sight that uniquely coincides in the airplane dramatically alters the passivity of sight. With the capabilities afforded by aviation, the view from the plane becomes indistinguishable from target-location. In understanding the history of battle as “primarily the history of radically changing fields of perception,” Virilio highlights an inextricable relation between perception and war:358 357 Virilio states that “at the turn of the century, cinema and aviation seemed to form a single moment” and notes in particular the inaugural “weapons system” devised in the First World War “out of combat vehicle and camera.” See Virilio, War and Cinema. 358 Virilio, War and Cinema, 7. 193 … alongside the ‘war machine’, there has always existed an ocular (and later optical and electro-optical) ‘watching machine’ capable of providing soldiers, and particularly commanders, with a visual perspective on the military action under way. From the original watch-tower through the anchored balloon to the reconnaissance aircraft and remote-sensing satellites, one and the same function has been indefinitely repeated, the eye’s function being the function of a weapon.359 Within the context of modern war, aviation originated in a desire to see more since, in war, sight is paramount to victory. To make a sufficiently educated projection of what an enemy’s possible maneuvers are, one needs ample enough information—the space and location of the enemy’s position, the amount of artillery, the number of troops, etc. Such information necessarily comes in the form of optical recognition enhanced by distance, since the quickest way to locate and target the enemy is to observe the whole of its position from above. This increased reliance on images catalyzes modern warfare from a war of objects to a war of interpretation and prediction. Whoever sees better, wins. But what does it mean to see better? How do you augment sight in such a way that it will make a strategic difference? At the turn of the century, it was no longer enough to see objects far away, the way one might through binoculars or scopes; industrialized warfare demanded a way to see across time. To defeat a modern enemy, one has to know his movements in advance. The superposition of the camera lens onto the weapons scope on the aircraft made this possible. The mounting of the camera onto the combat vehicle, and later the airplane, prefigured “a growing derealization of military engagement” by allowing images to take the place of objects and for military commanders to make decisions based on projections of combatants’ actions rather than on direct observation in real time. By combining the plane’s capability to create 359 Virilio, 3. 194 distance and the camera lens’ ability to retain focus on an object, the modernization of sight effects a monumental enhancement of the perceptual quality of war. Not only are target-location apparatus made better and more accurate, but the importance of perception and sight to the manufacture of war increases dramatically. As perception becomes increasingly dissociated from the otherwise exceeding tangibility of war, knowledge too begins to drift toward the imaginary. The representation of events comes to “[outstrip] the presentation of facts,” as “the image was starting to gain sway over the object, time over space,” the imaginary over the real.360 The drift away from tangibility or corporeality towards representation and the imaginary opens the door for the distortion of other dimensions, namely space and time: However great the area of the battlefield, it is necessary to have the fastest possible access to pictures of the enemy’s forces and reserves. Seeing and foreseeing therefore tend to merge so closely that the actual can no longer be distinguished from the potential.361 In this slippage between the actual and the potential, the ability to see the enemy amounts to knowledge of the present and even of the future. The supplementation of representation for observation not only blurs the lines between the present and future, but effectively replaces the tangible facts of objects with the imagined action of targets. It is this swapping of directly visible objects for the represented target that allows images to take the place of bullets as the decisive component of war. In a logistics of perception, seeing is synonymous with destroying or, at the very least, changing radically. Given the updated status of perception in modern warfare, “once 360 Virilio, 1. 361 Virilio, 3. 195 you can see the target, you can expect to destroy it.”362 Visibility equates to assured destruction; perceptual advantage ensures victory. The initially undervalued ability of the airplane to create and maintain distance turns out to be critical to this process of derealization.363 Aviation, outfitted with the latest electro-optical technology, finally allows one to gather enough information to replace unmediated observation with the representation of reality captured on film. The slippage between the actual and the potential that characterizes this evolution in the logistics of military perception coincides with the “falsification” of distance made possible with the plane. In combining perceptual proximity and physical distance, the plane distorts spatial temporality of distance, leaving the pilot with a skewed and in part imaginary perception of the target. Aviation grants the pilot access to his targets from a safe distance while also providing him more knowledge of their movements and potential actions. This in turn gives him more time to decide his next move. Such distance makes it seem as if the target’s likely movements are indeed real actions that just have not yet taken place. Virilio makes two points about sight that shed light on how the plane as a technology drags Paolo and aviation towards death. The first, that sight cannot be entirely divorced from its bellicose tendencies in the era of modern technology (or after); and second, that the dynamics of perception which emerge with the airplane allows for the dimensional distortion of space and time. Paolo’s relationship to the crowd undergoes a similar process of derealization to what Virilio describes in the context of industrialized warfare. In the case of Forse, while Paolo is not 362 Virilio, 4. 363 Virilio notes that “the reconnaissance aircraft itself, whose function was to supply ground troops with information, to direct artillery barrages or take photographs, gained acceptance merely as a ‘flying observation post’, almost as static as the old balloon with its cartographers, pencils and paper.” See Virilio, War and Cinema, 17. 196 at war in the conventional sense, he does intend to produce an effect in the onlooking crowd as if it were a target, as it is indeed the target of his inspirational flight. The pilot himself participates in the drift towards thanatos as a result of the now-mediated relationship he has to the crowd—a mediation of technologically enhanced sight. While Paolo does not view the crowd through a scope, he nevertheless cannot distinguish between individuals and instead sees only the crowd. The crowd, much like the audience for the film director or the enemy for the soldier, appears as a target in which he can produce effects in and at which he can aim. The consequence of this relation to the crowd pushes Paolo further toward thanatos, a step farther away from the position of pilot-Übermensch and toward that of pilot-warrior. Thinking back to Aurispa, who wants to save his people but cannot do so without being swept away by the riptide surrounding the crowd, the plane might have allowed him to maintain a necessary distance and keep the crowd in his sights by granting him a perceptual advantage over the masses. With every kilometer that Paolo flies, the crowd moves closer to being an object of war rather than a relatable subject. Instead of being able to distinguish between people, the pilot can only distinguish between landscapes and targets. The technologization of sight, it seems, distorts subjects into objects and finally into images and projections. Aerial perspective replaces reality with its representation and the actual with the potential. It is precisely this slippage between the actual and potential, fostered by distance, that allows for inspiration at the airshow. At the boxing match, where the crowd and boxers share much of the same violent tendencies and desires, the proximity of bodies stifles any possibility of inspiration; instead, at the airshow, a landscape typified by space, requires the pilot to move beyond the crowd and, in D’Annunzio’s vision, rise above man’s base nature. The pilot- Übermensch’s status as hero depends on his ability to unequivocally distinguish himself from the 197 crowd and make it his target. The same factors that allow images to stand in for bullets and make target-location indistinguishable from perception, then, condition the inspiration that this flight arouses in the crowd. Technologized distance, in other words, allows for both a logistics of military perception and inspirational flight. Thinking back to Nietzsche’s figuration of the dream that the Overman inspires in man, we might say that ability to dream depends on the capacity to other and the hero’s definitive distance from the masses. The seed of man’s highest hope feeds on alterity and, in D’Annunzio’s vision of modernity, participates in a cycle of electro-optical confrontation and othering informed by a logistics of military perception. The modern hero’s dependency on the plane to inspire change in the crowd and himself catches inspiration in the contaminating drift towards thanatos. Paolo and Francesca Isabella: Making the Übermensch The previous two sections demonstrate that aviation and inspiration have dark underbellies that necessarily participate in and condition the fantastical feats of modern heroism they participate in, flight included. The discussions of Italy’s colonial history in Libya and Virilio’s insight into flight’s bellicose underpinnings reveal a dependence on othering that cannot be divorced from the technology of the plane. Target location, predicated on the derealized image of an object, supplants direct observation in modern flight and modern forms of inspiration that seek to produce an effect in its object. Whereas in post-Unification Italy, a heavily distorted image of a distant “other” directly inspired a new sense of national identity, in Forse che sì, the plane’s inspirational ascent demands more than an identification of an “other” or target. It requires a sacrifice of sorts, someone to drop into the abyss so that the pilot-Übermensch may rise. Even though 198 D’Annunzio’s discourse around aviation and myth of the flying hero has significant colonial underpinnings, race does not act as the lynchpin by which Paolo flies and the other falls. Rather, command over one’s will and an ambition to overcome the self marks who flies and who falls. While superficially the fault lines of these traits seem to share a seam with gender and sexual difference, the fissures’ location is not as easily discovered as many critics believe. A simple biological dichotomy does not dictate the hero’s outcome by which Paolo becomes the Overman due solely to his sex; even Paolo must prove that he has what it takes to become the Overman before reaching the record height in the final scene. Said differently, the destiny of the Overman does not depend on sex or bloodline as it might have in earlier Dannunzian novels, but rather on ability and ambition. On closer look, the dynamic between Paolo and Isabella presents a complicated economy of perversion, ambition, and identity that ultimately constricts who has the opportunity to reach new heights. Though this dynamic does not rely on the racialization of bodies to distinguish between winners and losers, it nevertheless employs a similar logic of othering which enables the male subject to transform himself. Paolo only solidifies his identity as pilot-Übermensch hero after Isabella reaches the inverted yet equivalent status of debilitated feminine villain. His status as the modern subject depends on the construction of Isabella as a perverted madwoman, an identity that emerges as her self-identity comes into conflict with the identity imposed on her by societal pressures. Isabella’s conflict of identities increasingly manifests itself psychologically and physically as she continues to interact with Paolo until it reaches a breaking point that lands 199 her in an insane asylum.364 It is only in confrontation with the societal responsibilities and the imposed role of mother for her younger siblings that Isabella’s mind begins to disintegrate. What has gone missing in most critical readings of this text is a dedicated analysis of Isabella as a counterpoint to Paolo rather than a simple obstacle to his heroic success. If we read Forse che sì as a modern epic in which the masculine hero journeys to reach his destiny, then any complete analysis must recognize the complementary storyline of Isabella’s earth-bound trajectory towards the chasm. As the airborne Übermensch inches closer to the cielo, Isabella morphs into the abysmal other and sinks further down into the terra. Just as the projection of otherness onto Libya had “a paradoxically healing function for the fractured and contested identity” of Italy, so does the projection—which accelerates towards and induces manifestation—of debility and a weakness of will onto Isabella ensure the solidification of Paolo’s identity as superuomo. The Will to Repeat: Trauma as an Essential Experience of Modern Superuomismo Roncoroni’s evaluation of Isabella exemplifies traditional criticism of her, arguing that she acts as a selfish “donna distruttrice” with a “passione infeconda e paralizzante” that affects everyone immediately around her.365 Tessari offers a slightly more nuanced description and suggests that her ability to immobilize the lives of those closest to her makes her particularly dangerous: L’amore di Isabella è definito come “indugio perverso,” e finisce col rivelarsi gusto di stringere ogni presenza umana — da Paolo a Vana ad Aldo — in una rete 364 It should be noted that part of the reason she stays in the asylum is because the doctor agrees that sending her to live with her father and stepmother would be worse, and because Paolo does not opt to take care of her. She is the sacrifice he makes in order to “save” the nation. 365 Roncoroni, “L’ultimo romanzo,” 211. 200 di dominio erotico che esclude l’essere amato da ogni prospettica di sviluppo, lo immobilizza nella staticità di un eterno presente…366 Isabella's love is defined as "perverse delay," and ends up revealing the pleasure of holding every human presence - from Paolo to Vana to Aldo - in a network of erotic domination that excludes being loved from any prospect of development, immobilizes in the stillness of an eternal present ...367 The majority of critics agree that Isabella embodies everything antithetical to the heroism of the superuomo and falls squarely into the category of femme fatale due to her excessive sexual desire and the threat it poses to Paolo on his heroic journey. After all, she does fit within a set of literary figures that D’Annunzio regularly recycled in his works. Marinoni identifies three typologies of female characters that haunt D’Annunzio’s texts and argues that all are a form of “dissociazione interna del personaggio” (internal dissociation of the character).368 Typical characteristics of these internal dissociations include: un delirio panico che pone in nuovo rapporto con la realtà circostante; una forte sensibilizzazione erotica che produce effetti decisivi negli uomini; un legame con le sfere più oscure e perverse dell’eros, come l’incesto, e una vocazione primaria alla morte, spesso desiderata.369 a panicked delirium that puts you in a new relationship with the surrounding reality; a strong erotic sensitization that produces decisive effects in men; a link with the darkest and most perverse spheres of eros, such as incest, and a primary vocation to death, often desired.370 These traits form a new grammar of beauty and the basis for a number of female characters positioned antagonistically to the male hero in D’Annunzio’s novels and earn their characters 366 Tessari, Il mito della macchina, 193. 367 My translation. 368 Marinoni, D’Annunzio lettore di psicologia sperimentale, 61. 369 Marinoni, 64. 370 My translation. 201 names such as la demente, l’inferma, la misera, la povera folle, and pazza. Put together, we might more simply call them sick feminine villains. The story that these critical analyses tell, however, has nothing to do with the female characters as individuals, let alone fully articulated and embodied participants of a complex story. Many critical accounts hold that D’Annunzio’s “dementi” exist merely to ready the ground for the male hero’s transformation.371 Most scholars of Forse che sì in particular are overly concerned with explaining D’Annunzio’s use of the psychological studies of the time that few stop to consider that the female villains might actually have a good cause to go mad. Part of this is due to the conception of D’Annunzio as a misogynist author who has little to nothing to offer about or through his female characters.372 Such a categorization of authorship is severely limiting, though, and leaves much to be explored about his women characters.373 What then begins Isabella’s radical descent into the psychological chasm of madness? For all that is said about Isabella as being the female antagonist of D’Annunzio’s novels, we have yet to find an explanation for her madness or what may have caused it.374 No one has seriously considered why Isabella goes mad or takes into account the events leading up to Isabella’s breakdown; like most other criticisms, Marinoni’s analysis focuses on D’Annunzio’s use of the trends in the psychological study of hysteria, the trope of the femme fatale, and the recurring triad of “pazzia–eros–morte.”375 He further specifies Isabella’s condition as “una 371 Marinoni, 62. 372 Recall Duncan’s evaluation of D’Annunzio’s texts, which “have nothing to tell us about women apart from their value as currency exchanged between men” (Duncan, Reading and Writing Italian Homosexuality, 25). 373 Two exceptional authors who show just how much we can miss by taking this approach include Adriana Cavarero in Nonostante Platone and Marilyn Migiel in A Rhetoric of the Decameron. 374 Tessari argues that Isabella is D’Annunzio’s attempt to realize “la sua più problematica creatura femminile.” See Tessari, Il mito della macchina, 195. 375 Marinoni, D’Annunzio lettore di psicologia sperimentale, 57. 202 duplicità interiore…causata dalla pazzia” or “duplicazione condizionata.”376 But what leads to such pazzia in the first place? It is not a coincidence that Isabella’s infertility is first mentioned alongside a suggestion of her (unnatural) promiscuity, anxiety, and her inability to be a mother: “non vergine ma sterile e affaticata dall’ansia perpetua della maternità inespressa.”377 D’Annunzio’s prose in this way mimics the tendency in pseudoscientific discourse of the early-twentieth century to seek explanations for psychological maladies in women’s bodies rather than in the social and historical environments that envelop and seek to control them. As many have already noted, as soon as scientific questioning opened onto the mental pathologies of women, it immediately turned toward corporeal and especially sexual aspects like sterility as explanations for them, essentially reducing instances of hysteria, among other illnesses, to a physiological inevitability.378 D’Annunzio drew on the growing literature around mental pathologies in women as source material for his characters. He relied heavily on Cesare Lombroso’s and Guglielmo Ferrero’s work, La donna delinquente, la prostituta e la donna normale (1893), which reduced all romantic and even most unrelated behaviors to maternity and a maternal drive inherent in all women. They proposed such explanations for “normal” female behavior as “l’amore femminile è una funzione subordinata della maternità.”379 Unlike the imagined feminine other of Mafarka, Isabella’s maternal reproductivity does not contribute to her being seen as a threat to Paolo. Quite the opposite: it is her infertility that stands out as both the mark of and a reason for her 376 Marinoni, 62. 377 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 820. 378 While D’Annunzio never mentions hysteria by name, the description of Isabella’s experience recalls diagnoses of it consistent with the time period. See Marinoni, D’Annunzio lettore di psicologia sperimentale, 62. Of interest in this respect is also Edward Shorter, Psicosomatica: storia dei sintomi e delle patologie dall'Ottocento ad oggi (1992); and Storia d’Italia: Annali 7: Malattia e medicina (Einaudi, 1978). 379 Lombroso and Ferrero, La donna delinquente, 125. 203 characterization as the villain. Mental illness or disturbances in women were commonly reduced to physical problems and imagined to be inherently constitutive of the female body in both medical diagnoses and literary reflections of it. Rather than blaming women’s bodies, I read Isabella’s social and historical context alongside her physical and mental manifestations of distress to answer the question: what leads Isabella into madness? When this question takes precedence over D’Annunzio’s style and Paolo’s success, a subtle storyline comes through more potently. The problems for Isabella bubble to the surface with the impending clash of two identities: one internal, driven by her desire, and the other externally imposed on her by the circumstances of her siblings’ lives. Since her mother’s death at a young age and her father’s marriage to an unfathomably vile woman, Isabella has stepped in to support her siblings with the fortune left to her by her dead husband. However, given the social constrictions on women at the time, these two wills—to pursue her desire and to support her siblings—are irreconcilable; she cannot be romantically involved with another man, retain her fortune, and be a maternal figure. This dilemma crystalizes late in the second book when Isabella announces her and Paolo’s fake engagement to her siblings ahead of their return to Volterra.380 When she justifies this action, she indicates the social cover it provides, which will allow her to bring Paolo with her despite her status as widow: “è utile che noi giochiamo il gioco dei promessi sposi, utile non tanto per le solite convenienze quanto perché io vi possa condurre nel giardino dei gelsomini.” 381 She decides to play this “game” without consulting Paolo or her siblings, regardless of how it 380 For a critical discussion of the importance of Volterra in this novel, see Alessia Dei, Volterra nel romanzo “Forse che sì forse che no di Gabriele D’Annunzio” (2008). 381 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 709. 204 will affect them. And yet, the same conversation quickly turns to her siblings for whom she feels guilty leaving “lassù, abbandonati, dimenticati” in the Inghirami house while she is away with Paolo.382 Isabella’s relationship to maternity does indeed circumscribe her descent into madness, however for reasons other than infertility. From the end of the second book on, we learn much more about Isabella that would make any reader question her suitability to be a maternal figure— an incestuous relationship with her brother Aldo being only one of many red flags.383 When searching for potential causes of Isabella’s crumbling consciousness, we consistently run into conflicts between the female siblings that can be traced back to the early loss of their mother and its consequences that ripple outward in time. Focusing on where these conflicts arise and how they manifest in Isabella and Vana suggests that the trauma of losing their mother and its recurrence in other actions taken by the sisters directly affect their psychological and emotional stability. If we bring these considerations to bear on the Nietzschean inspirations of the novel, keeping in mind Nietzsche’s dual goal of inspiring and becoming the Übermensch, then D’Annunzio’s presentation of Isabella as a perverted mother, alongside his celebration of Paolo’s individualistic and inspiring feats, appears as a critique of motherhood and motherhood by women specifically. The ability to birth oneself operates in this text as a sort of technology or 382 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 710. 383 This is an easy target: incest is a common theme in Dannunzian novels and appears in other texts of his. Most critics, however, neglect to interrogate the implications of this choice on Isabella’s characterization. She admits to not being ashamed of this love and describing Paolo’s reaction to news of it as steeped in misunderstanding and jealousy, which signals to me that, in her mind, it does not come from a place of perversion so much as it does a place of exercising her will. In her unspoken explanation of this affair, Isabella describes her relationship with her brother in more positive terms than we might describe her relationship with Paolo. Rather than sexual deviancy, which constitutes a key characteristic of donne delinquenti according to Lombroso, her desire for her brother arrives from a desire for a different kind of love. 205 techne that is achievable only by very few (men), if any. At stake is the reproduction of the self, an autarchic transformation that pushes man beyond what he is after just one birth. Nietzsche does not spend much time contemplating women or maternity or birth in Zarathustra. Yet the concept of birth underwrites Nietzsche’s whole project of self-overcoming and D’Annunzio’s vision of the modern subject. By making this a masculine feat, both authors implicitly take aim at feminine maternal figures, which is then reflected in D’Annunzio’s characterization of Isabella and her fraternal relationships. Indeed, it is primarily through Isabella’s figuration as a perverted mother that she presents Paolo with an inverted version of himself and with an alternative, dismal path into the abyss. Her descent mirrors Paolo’s ascent as the pilot-Übermensch and condemns her entire family to a similar fate. Paolo, on the other hand, as a masculine hero offers a non-familial form of inspiration likened by D’Annunzio, calling on Nietzsche, to birthing a higher man. He gives the crowd the opportunity to better themselves through this instance of inspiration. Crucially, however, Paolo can only do this after he has overcome his own duality of wills. He only attains superuomo status after Isabella has gone to live in the walled villa and he accepts this new reality without her. This ability to overcome the part of himself that desires Isabella in favor of a higher ambition—to inspire the nation—qualifies him as the Übermensch. When Tessari and Marinoni conclude that Paolo has been saved “grazie al valore catartico del volo,” a more accurate description would be that he is reborn, given the language of life, rebirth, and the details of the struggle he has in the moments just prior to reaching his goal of record flight miles: E il cuore gli tremò perché v’era rinata la volontà di vivere, la volontà di vivere per vincere…E il suo amore del fratello e il suo dolore e il suo ardore furono il sole dietro a sé, sopra a sé, furono una presenza raggiante, una immortalità incitatrice. 206 Era la vita. Era la vita! 384 And his heart trembled because the will to live had been reborn, the will to live in order to win ... And his brother's love and his pain and ardor were the sun behind him, above him, they were a presence radiant, an inciting immortality. It was life. It was life!385 In D’Annunzio’s technologized vision of giving birth to the self and inspiring the nation, the moment of rebirth only happens with unequaled achievement and the acceptance of distressing emotions, which does not happen for Paolo until this final flight. Paolo must literally surpass Giulio’s record in order to win the title and be able to overcome his grief for driving Isabella into madness. His choice to let Isabella go to the walled villa, where she refused to stop her relationship with Paolo despite the harm it caused her family, constitutes the difference between them and ultimately allows Paolo to succeed in his heroic flight across the sea. In this light, we might see Isabella’s insanity as not simply the destined end to a delinquent seductress, but rather one possible outcome of a collision of wills in a single individual. By removing Isabella from the equation, Paolo overcomes his own competing wills and enables himself to pursue his heroic flight free of terrestrial ties. The circumstances of Isabella’s life, however, drive her into madness because she does not have a way to overcome her dueling wills as Paolo does. She must choose one over the other or attempt to pursue both. In choosing the latter, Isabella somewhat presciently knows that it will lead to her to a bleak destiny. Her descent, then, plays no small part in Paolo’s final flight as it conditions his ability to become the Übermensch. By analyzing Isabella’s trajectory toward the abyss, we may understand Paolo’s triumph more fully and the consequences of their entwinement. It might seem 384 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 868. 385 My translation. 207 that he did not intentionally sacrifice their relationship or Isabella at all but rather was unable to inhibit a series of unfortunate events that befell her. However, taking stock of the events of the third book shows that specific actions and conversations contributed unmistakably to Isabella’s disintegration into delirium. One event above all marks a turning point for Isabella from which she does not return. This moment might be seen as the equivalent of Paolo’s rebirth, yet for Isabella, it unequivocally condemns her to the abyss. This encounter with Paolo challenges her fitness as a maternal figure and ends in sexual violence, after which her mind and personality are irrevocably changed. The implications of this action on Paolo’s part and the impact it has on Isabella are part and parcel of the discussion of Paolo’s fitness to be the superuomo and the consequences of his pursuit of such a goal. Afterall, the pilot-Übermensch is supposed to rise above the vulgar violence exhibited in the crowd and in such places like the boxing ring. Why would this kind of violence, described as a “gutting” and “ripping,” be placed in a different category? To begin to address these questions and the extent of Isabella’s collapse into madness, I now turn to the manifestations and repetitions of the traumatic loss of the Lunati’s mother. Losing the Mother: Reproducing Trauma Before discussing the extent of Isabella’s psychological descent, I want to consider how the trauma of losing their mother reverberates through Isabella and her madness to impact the other Lunati siblings. The traumatic loss of their mother sets in motion pivotal circumstances that govern the lives of the Lunati siblings and the women in particular. While their mother’s death is mentioned early on in the novel, the effects of this trauma only surface late in the second book 208 and it is not until the final book that the consequences and repetitions of the trauma truly play out. These repetitions act as a subterranean thread connecting the fates of all four siblings. Following the early death of their mother, their father marries a woman so awful the siblings only refer to her as the “sciacallo.” This replacement of their mother with such a cruel and greedy woman, coupled with the social humiliation it brings to the family, does nothing to fill the gap left by the original loss and may be said to have exacerbated it. Not only were they now abandoned by a maternal figure for a second time, but they would be socially castigated due to their father’s second marriage. This loss cascades years later into obliging Isabella to take on the motherly role in order to save her siblings with the fortune left to her by her dead husband. However, Isabella’s will to be an individual perverts these good intentions, thereby leading her support to feel like a prison for her siblings: Dopo la morte della madre, dopo che il loro padre Curzio Lunati era passato in seconde nozze con la concubina, la sorella maggiore, rimasta vedova di Marcello Inghirami ed unica erede d’una larga fortuna, li aveva raccolti tutt’e tre dal disagio e sottratti all’umiliazione del nuovo giogo familiare. Ridotti quasi in povertà dalla turpe dissipatezza paterna, ora non vivevano se non di lei e senza angustia vivevano, ma in una specie di sottomissione larvata, che ogni atto libero e ogni libera parola potevan sembrare un disconoscimento del benefizio, provocarne e il raffaccio e il peso. Nessuno di loro aveva altra risorsa, altro rifugio. Tutt’e tre eran legati alla vita della sorella, ai suoi casi, alle sue sorti. 386 After the death of their mother, after their father Curzio Lunati had passed in a second marriage with the concubine, the elder sister, widow of Marcello Inghirami and the only heir of a large fortune, had collected all three of them from the discomfort and free from the humiliation of the new family yoke. Reduced almost to poverty by their paternal shameful dissipation, they now lived only by her and without distress they lived, but in a kind of disguised submission, which every free act and every free word could seem a disavowal of the benefit, provoking and the snatching and the weight. None of them had any other resource, any other refuge. All three were linked to the life of their sister, to her cases, to her fate.387 386 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 634. 387 My translation. 209 When Isabella’s desire to be with Paolo intensifies and she announces the fake engagement, she puts even greater stress on the fragile fraternal relationship that the Lunatis balance in Volterra. The financial precarity of the situation drives Vana to contemplate suicide by jumping off the Balze as she and Aldo consider what this engagement means for them: - Rinunzia così a tutta la sostanza di Casa Inghirami. - Bisogna. Era per essi il ritorno alla povertà, la separazione, la dispersione, la vita di lotta e di strettezza, forse il ricovero nella casa odiosa del padre e della matrigna, forse il lavoro umiliante, tutto l’orrore dell’avvenire incerto. Ognun d’essi era due volte colpito, due volte tradito.388 - She will renounce all the substance of Casa Inghirami. - She must. For them it was the return to poverty, separation, dispersion, a life of struggle and closeness, perhaps the refuge in the hateful home of the father and stepmother, perhaps the humiliating work, all the horror of the uncertain future. Each of them was hit twice, betrayed twice.389 The first time Vana tells Aldo this news, they feel the landscape begin to spin around them as if caught in a vortex (“vortice”): “la campagna pareva che girasse tutta in un sol vortice.”390 Whereas in most other instances, D’Annunzio uses the image of the vortex to evoke the encompassing chaos that technology provokes, he uses vortice to describe the feeling Vana in particular feels when confronted by the unbearable presence of Isabella’s desires, which catch everything in their path and suck the life out of it.391 The financial constriction that Isabella 388 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 693. 389 My translation. 390 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 692. 391 The most significant of these quotations has to do with the “macchina precipitosa” or the “ellica” of the airplane. In relation to the automobile, the vortex appears as a result of the speed and voracity of the machine: “Il vento le rapiva e le mesceva all'immenso vortice di polvere alzato nella traccia spaventosa” (523); “Dietro, il vortice della polvere nascondeva il passo della morte” (525). As it relates to the airplane, “vortice” usually describes the propeller and highlights its uniqueness; yet, it cannot be separated from the pull towards death. The propeller and vortex combination first appears when Paolo reaches the same height as Giulio moments before his companion crashes to 210 somewhat knowingly holds over her siblings does more than just entangle their lives with her own; it is just one way in which she effectively paralyzes them socially and romantically as well. Vana’s tendencies toward suicide might begin with the uncomfortable financial and familial relationship she has to her elder sister, but they intensify because of how Isabella thwarts Vana’s chances of marrying Paolo. The vortice appears again when Vana confesses her love to Paolo and she realizes that he will choose to stay with Isabella regardless of her feelings. At the beginning of his relationship with the Lunatis, Paolo had considered courting Vana but instead pursued a romantic relationship with Isabella, knowing full well that she was widowed. What could have been a chance at freedom, individuality, and personal growth for Vana turned into another reminder of how her relation to Isabella imprisons her. Likewise, Isabella’s incestuous relationship with Aldo prevents him from pursuing other romantic and social interests, enclosing him as well as Paolo and Vana in her garden of jasmine to rot.392 Her infertility metaphorically reflects the paralysis of life that Isabella brings with her into every relationship.393 In her role as surrogate mother, Isabella presents a second failed mother to her siblings and repeats the trauma of losing their real mother. the ground and again just before Paolo realizes what has happened to his friend: “Paolo Tarsis raggiungeva il compagno, gli passava a portata di voce, era preso nel vortice dell'elica gemelli” (588); “Egli era solo: non vedeva più nulla, se non l'astro vorticoso dell'elica; non udiva più nulla, se non il palpito eguale del motore, la settupla consonanza. - Dov'era il suo compagno? che gli era accaduto?” (593). The final time vortice is mentioned, Paolo remembers the day Giulio died while thinking about the identical statues that are being made to commemorate him and his friend: “Credevi tu che avremmo ripreso insieme il volo come in quel giorno quando ti venni sopravvento per raggiungerti, e nel vortice dell'elica ti gittai il nostro grido di richiamo e di allarme? Se tu vinci, io vinco. Se io vinco, tu vinci. Così pensavo io, così tu pensavi. Ora, vedi?, ci hanno fatto due statue gemelle, ci hanno dato il fuoco e il metallo; e saranno fuse l'una dopo l'altra nella stessa fornace, per la tua vittoria e per la mia vittoria, per la tua memoria e per la mia memoria” (830—831). 392 Isabella’s beloved jasmine garden recalls another garden from Vergine delle rocce that becomes putrid due to an excess of life with no escape or greater objective. 393 I agree with Tessari and Roncoroni on this point, however I maintain that there are other motivations for Isabella’s behavior that go unexplored in their analyses, namely the tension between her role as stand-in mother and her desire to be with Paolo. 211 Vana’s suicide, too, recalls her mother’s death and repeats it for Lunella, the youngest Lunati. As she dresses herself and combs her hair in preparation for her death, Vana remembers how her mother looked: “Ella sapeva come la salma si ponga in apparecchio di sepoltura: si ricordava di sua madre.”394 The description of Vana’s preparation to her body, as the only thing that will remain once she is dead, suggests that she unintentionally compares herself to her mother and the way she looked on her death bed: elegant, beautiful, and too young. What is striking about her decision to take her own life, though, is not so much that she remembers her mother as she gets ready to do it, but that she does not think about the effect it will have on Lunella.395 While many might read Vana’s death similarly to Giulio’s, as a pure escape from a contaminated world, another possibility lies in the tragic conclusion of her inability to deal with the trauma of losing her mother and the imposition of her sister as a stand-in maternal figure any longer.396 Right before she begins to get ready, she visits Lunella. The little girl is so tired and so comforted to see her sister that she falls asleep while hugging her in a moment that demonstrates the closest thing to maternal love in the novel: E serrò perdutamente sul suo petto la creatura palpitante; e la tenne. E quella non si disciolse ma restò nella stretta, nella calda tenerezza; vi s’accomodò con piccoli moti dei muscoli come per meglio aderire, sentendo un calore materno esalare da quelle braccia e penetrarla, un calore materno, che pur la sorella sentiva sorgere a poco a poco dal suo petto verginale con la rivivente immagine di quella che le aveva carezzate entrambe nel tempo felice.397 394 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 804. 395 The idea to take Lunella with her flashes across her mind, though: “Non ebbe pietà di sé, né di nessuno, fuorché di Lunella. Resistette alla tentazione di rivederla; resistette a un'altra tentazione disperata che l'afferrò un istante: quella di non lasciarla nella casa dell'ignominia, quella di portarla via con sé dove nessuna profanazione poteva giungere mai.” 396 Vana’s reaction to the relationship and power her sister exercises over her and their siblings suggests that she experienced the loss of her mother as a trauma and that the abandonment she feels in Isabella’s engagement to Paolo repeats this traumatic loss for her. 397 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 800. 212 And he clenched the palpitating creature madly upon his breast; and he held it. And that did not dissolve but remained in the grip, in the warm tenderness; she settled into it with small movements of the muscles as if to adhere better, feeling a maternal warmth exhale from those arms and penetrate her, a maternal warmth, which even her sister felt rising little by little from her virginal breast with the reviving image of what he had caressed them both in the happy time.398 In the end, Lunella loses three maternal figures: her mother, Vana, and finally Isabella. She most likely feels Vana’s death as a repetition of the death of their mother more so than Isabella’s going away since she and Vana have a stronger, less contentious relationship. While Isabella does not die, she can no longer care for herself or others in her mental state, and so her madness again removes her as a mother of sorts from Lunella’s life. The trauma of losing their mother resounds through Isabella’s madness, compelling the Lunati sisters to relive and repeat it. For Isabella, this experience is compounded as her poor treatment of Vana and her insanity costs her two would-be daughters. Rippling through her life, the loss pushes Isabella into the role of mother, thereby challenging her will to be an independent woman with the undeniable responsibility of caring for her family. The pressure of this confrontation compels her to repeat the traumatic loss and builds to such a degree that it ruptures the integrity of her mind and reduces her to a paranoid sliver of her former self. Uncertainty of the Real: Isabella as the Subject of Trauma To many, Isabella might seem completely selfish and inconsiderate, as she places her desire above the good of her family. Yet, if we take a closer look at when her madness manifests, we see that the thought of abandoning her family or harming them almost always triggers a hallucination or a confrontation with a part of herself that she does not (or does not wish to) 398 My translation. 213 recognize. D’Annunzio describes Isabella’s psychological illness as “demenza” and “delirio,” and denotes it with two kinds of recurrences: hallucinations (“idee deliranti”) and feelings of dissociation or not recognizing herself. Isabella’s experience, though, defies regular categorization and resides between the definitions of demenza (as insanity), delirio (delirium), and diniego (disavowal or denial) while also exhibiting premonitory visions. Through her hallucinatory visions, she sees the future, which in turn compels her to deny her role in creating it. While “dementia” is an acceptable translation of demenza, the English definition underscores a medical reason for disturbances of regular brain function, specifically a “degenerative disease of the brain” that does not accurately explain Isabella’s condition or dismal trajectory. Treccani defines demenza as “il decadimento grave e irreversibile dell’attività psichica che… coinvolge, nel suo decorso progressivo, le facoltà creatrici dell’intelligenza e i processi di sintesi del pensiero.”399 It defines delirio as the “stato di alterazione mentale, consistente in una erronea interpretazione della realtà, anche se percepita normalmente sul piano sensoriale, dovuta a profonda trasformazione della psiche e della personalità.”400 Laplanche and Pontalis, in the Language of Psychoanalysis, state that disavowal or denial are terms used to define a specific “mode of defense which consists in the subject’s refusing to recognize the reality of a traumatic perception.”401 For most of the novel when Isabella exhibits this combination of demenza-delirio- diniego, the scale tips towards a rearranging of thoughts and memories, though there is a definitive moment that marks “a profound transformation of the psyche and personality” that 399 Treccani Encyclopedia, “Demenza.” 400 Treccani, “Delirio.” 401 Laplanche and Pontalis, The Language of Psycho-Analysis, 118. 214 inverts this tendency and drives Isabella further into delirium. In the first phase leading up to the breaking point, the deterioration of Isabella’s ability to synthesize thoughts reflects the irreconcilability of her two desires and manifests in an inability to put the images that flash across her mind into words. These images more often than not carry premonitions or visions of her destiny or someone else’s. Later on, the hallucinations bleed into a constant state of delirium and trap her in an incessant loop of “erroneous interpretations of reality,” such as seeing or hearing things repeatedly from the past. This shift follows closely on the heels of a pivotal moment in Isabella and Paolo’s relationship: when Paolo confronts Isabella about her incestuous relationship with Aldo in an argument that ends in beating and rape. The first instance of this demenza-delirio surfaces when she and Paolo are racing towards Volterra following their announcement in the “macchina precipitosa.” This is the first time that she intentionally brings together her two wills, to be Paolo’s lover and a mother to her siblings, and is noticeably anxious the entire way there, alternating between thinking about turning around and begging Paolo to stop the car. Only after she has a vision of what will be her future does she demand he stop the car: Il pànico le afferrava la vita, su quell’erta spaventosa, e la rivoltava. Un terrore cieco e subitaneo la faceva più bianca delle biancane sterili. Ed ella voleva dire: «Contro un muro scialbo le pazze sono sedute a cucire i ferzi delle lenzuola; e intorno gracidano le oche. I dottori hanno lunghi camici, e l’aria indifferente... Bisogna passare di là. Prima di giungere sul sagrato di San Girolamo si vede la Casa, di là dalla rete di ferro. Invece del cancello, c’è un telaio di legno, dipinto di rosso, con la rete di ferro, come davanti a un pollaio…Fabbricano, fabbricano sempre, essi stessi; perché non c’è più posto. Il numero cresce ogni anno. Essi stessi portano la calcina, portano le pietre. S’intravede un muro fresco che s’alza. C’è l’odore di quella cosa nell’aria…È chiuso, è tutto murato, con una porta stretta...» Imagini le balenavano incoerenti sul sangue congesto; ma parevano scoppiare come bolle all’altezza del cervello, prima di formarsi nella parola… 215 - Voglio tornare indietro. Arresta!402 Panic seized her life, on that frightening slope, and revolted her. A blind and sudden terror of her made her whiter than her sterile whites. And she meant: ‘Against a dull wall the mad are sitting to sew the frictions of the sheets; and around the geese croak. The doctors have long gowns, and an indifferent air ... We have to go there. Before reaching the churchyard of San Girolamo you can see the House, beyond the iron net. Instead of the gate, there is a wooden frame, painted red, with an iron net, as if in front of a chicken coop ... They always manufacture, themselves; because there is no more room. The number is growing every year. They themselves carry the mortar, they carry the stones. A fresh wall can be glimpsed rising. There is the smell of that thing in the air ... It's closed, it's all walled up, with a narrow door ...’ Images flashed incoherent on her congested blood; but they seemed to burst like bubbles at the height of the brain, before forming in the word ... - I want to go back. Stop!403 She knows already before they arrive that this engagement will have devastating consequences for her siblings, yet, more than that, she imagines her future as one of the mad women (“le pazze”) that live in “la villa murata” near her home. Unable to express this vision in words as the images rupture like bubbles before she can capture them in language, she begins through this vision to anticipate her eventual solitude in madness and in the walled villa. The themes that first arise in this initial hallucination recur with increasing ferocity as her mental state worsens. The woman sewing in a striped apron (“nel grembiule rigato”) behind the wall becomes a recurring figure that plagues Isabella in these moments of delirious prescience and becomes a constant spectre following her collapse into madness. The wall and the feelings of enclosure, suffocation, and repetition that it invokes also remain with Isabella through her other hallucinations and manifests physically in the hiding place she chooses right before being sent away to the very 402 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 721–22. 403 My translation. 216 villa she imagined. It is as if she knows that this is the only destiny allowed her given her family’s situation and refusal to choose them over Paolo. Isabella’s most visceral hallucinations and accompanying visions of the future emerge with a collision of her desire and her familial obligations. A second highly significant invasion of visions occurs the first night she stays with her siblings in the Volterra house: L’insonne levò la fronte bagnata di sudore; e l’atto ch’ella compiva le fu presente come in uno specchio. Una sensazione confusa di duplicità era nel suo corpo. Ella stessa pareva trarre sé fuori di sé. Poi dalla sua sostanza si foggiavano cose mostruose, come quelle malattie che ci deformano nei sogni e che talvolta sono un indizio latente… «Chi cammina? dove?» Nell’allucinazione del senso, nel romorio che le riempiva le tempie dolenti, ella non riusciva ancora a determinare l’origine del suono. L’aveva ella in sé? nella sua mente malata? Le parole di Lunella le ritornarono: «Bisogna andare andare, mettersi in cammino e andare, a piedi, a piedi, chi sa dove...» Il terrore di nuovo l’agghiacciò. Ella temette che la sua ragione fosse per decomporsi, e che quel passo continuo fosse già, un fantasma della sua demenza, e ch’ella dovesse udirlo sino alla morte, che ella dovesse fino alla morte essere abitata da quell’essere estraneo che camminava camminava senza posa. Le riapparve la femmina dal grembiule rigato, dai capelli rossicci e lisci, dal viso sparso di lentiggini, dagli occhi albini.404 The insomniac raised his forehead wet with sweat; and the act she performed was present to her as in a mirror. A confused feeling of duplicity was in her body. She herself seemed to draw herself out of herself. Then monstrous things were fashioned from her substance, like those diseases that deform us in dreams and which are sometimes a latent clue ..."Who walks? where is it?" In the hallucination of her sense, in the roar that filled her painful temples, she still could not determine the origin of the sound. Did she have it in her? in her mind sick of her? Lunella's words returned to her: "We have to go go, set out and go, on foot, on foot, who knows where ..." The terror froze her again. She feared that her reason was to decompose, and that that continuous step was already, a ghost of her dementia, and that she should hear it to death, that she should be inhabited until death by that stranger who walked walked ceaselessly. The female with the striped apron, with straight reddish hair, with a face strewn with freckles, with albino eyes reappeared.405 404 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 729–30. 405 My translation. 217 Vana’s footsteps and the figure of the woman in the striped apron crystalize as the recurring markers of Isabella’s insanity. Above many other potential moments of tension that could have stayed with Isabella, the steps stick in her mind because they are intimately attached to the pain she causes Vana and the guilt she feels for her part in Vana’s suicide. In this moment of demenza-delirio, Isabella forecasts the “decomposition of her reason” and the soundtrack of the steps which will accompany it. The hallucination ends with the figure of the woman in the striped apron, a version of herself not too long after this. As Isabella descends farther into madness, she forgets who the footsteps belong to, but a feeling of terror remains all the same: “L’inferma, a intervalli, crede di sentire qualcuno che cammina sotto il suo cranio…e il suo terrore di quel supplizio e dell’eternità di quel supplizio è tale che non si può assistere all’accesso senza profondo strazio.” This residual terror originates in the confrontation she has with Vana just after hearing the footsteps. Once she realizes that she is under Vana’s room, Isabella goes to see her. Vana’s anger and accusations present Isabella with another version of herself that she denies recognizing: Sotto l’impeto ostile [Isabella] si curvava come sotto la burrasca; ma non la sbigottiva la violenza, sì bene quell’imagine di sé ch’ella vedeva foggiata dalle parole di Vana, ch’ella vedeva là, esternata, come una creatura che vivesse in lei, ed ora fosse escita da lei e palpitasse là nella vergogna. Ripeteva, curvata sul letto della sorella, con gli occhi smarriti: - No, non ho fatto questo. …Tu giochi con la mia vita, come se la mia vita più profonda non valesse il più fugace dei tuoi piaceri. Io non sono per te più di quel che Tiapa sia per Lunella. Ma Lunella piange se Tiapa cade sul pavimento e si spezza il piede o s’ammacca la fronte; piange e si dispera, e la veglia, e cerca di guarirla. Tu sei della razza feroce. Tu mi apri il petto per vedere quel che c’è dentro. - Ingiusta! Ingiusta! Nostra madre non avrebbe potuto avere per te una tenerezza più attenta della mia.406 406 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 735–36. 218 Under the hostile impetus [Isabella] bent as if under a storm; but the violence did not frighten her, so well that image of herself which she saw shaped by the words of Vana, which she saw there, externalized, as a creature who lived in her, and now had come out of her and throbbed there in the shame. She repeated, bent over her sister's bed, with bewildered eyes: - No, I didn't do this. … You play with my life, as if my deepest life was not worth the most fleeting of your pleasures. I am no more to you than Tiapa is to Lunella. But Lunella cries if Tiapa falls to the floor and breaks her foot or bruises her forehead; she cries and despairs, and watches over her, and tries to heal her. You are of the fierce race. You open my chest to see what's inside. - Unfair! Unfair! Our mother could not have had a more attentive tenderness for you than mine.407 Isabella continues to deny the accusations and descriptions Vana gives of her, but as the injuries fly, Isabella’s tone changes. Where she had defended herself and spoken with conviction, now she speaks with fear, with “qualcosa che era come un raccapriccio confuso e come una interrogazione tremante.”408 Isabella fears the knowledge that Vana’s words seem to give physical form to in this scene; the elder sister begins to question herself and her actions towards Vana and remains terrified of this being the truth and of knowing it. It is significant that D’Annunzio uses the same verb, “foggiare” (to sculpt or mold), to describe how this other self that Vana extracts from Isabella takes shape and how, in the previous scene just moments before the confrontation, Isabella herself envisions “cose mostruose” forming from her very body, deforming reality like a sickness. This language calls to mind what Isabella cannot bring forth from her body that Vana and Lunella might stand in for—children. Instead, it is as if Isabella can only bring pain and suffering to life and contaminate others with it. Vana in this way presents her sister with a mirror of herself twice over: she admits to being the unintended result of Isabella’s 407 My translation. 408 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 736. 219 teachings over the years and throws in her face the image she has of Isabella as a sister-turned- mother. Until this point, Isabella had managed to evade this version of herself by simply ignoring it or ignoring the topics, such as motherhood, that would trigger her self-doubt. One thing that consistently draws her attention to it, though, is her reflection in Vana and in mirrors. Twice Isabella accidentally finds herself in front of a mirror that presents her with a face she does not recognize as she tortures herself over her decision to bring Paolo with her to Volterra: “Il suo viso in fondo allo specchio s’allontanava s’allontanava senza lineamento, poi si riavvicinava ritornando dal fondo, e non era più il suo viso.”409 The theme of the mirror appears throughout the novel, almost always in association with a (negative) imagined reality or a confrontation with the true reality that the subject does not want to admit. It begins in Mantova when Isabella mistakenly sees Aldo and Vana instead of her and Paolo’s reflection. As many have noted, the mirror represents the duplicity of identity and is intimately connected with the literary trope of the “double.” Marinoni notes that the reflected image “costringe a consapevolezza di un’alienata frammentazione interiore”410 The mirror confronts Isabella with the truth of her own dissociation which terrifies her, leading her to deny it even more furiously. These encounters with the mirror reenforce a collision of her two wills. Whenever she spies her reflection or the reflection of someone else, she is in the midst of both her siblings and Paolo or thinking about the confliction between the two. Because of her competing wills, she can only see a “lontananza da sé,” the estrangement from herself that only further induces her madness and delirium.411 409 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 725. 410 Not unlike what Nestoroff experiences when she sees herself on the screen. See Marinoni, D’Annunzio lettore di psicologia sperimentale, 59. 411 Marinoni, 59. 220 Isabella’s psychological collapse might have begun with the traumatic loss of her mother and the circumstances that followed, but her relationship with Paolo as superuomo catalyzes her trajectory toward the abyss. Each interaction she has with Paolo exacerbates and amplifies the internal struggle she has with herself. Yet, we can pinpoint one encounter between them that not only forces her to confront the conflict of her two wills but also questions her ability to be a motherly figure and which is experienced as a trauma as well. Un’altra violenza: The Breaking Point Isabella only arrives at this point of delirium following a violent confrontation with Paolo about her relationship with Aldo. Paolo’s reaction to Isabella acts as the final push into the abyss for her, solidifying both of their destinies. Paolo confronts her with the information Vana has told him. As Isabella is about to leave, Paolo starts to beat her out of rage and jealously. The violence quickly turns into another form of aggression: E col pugno [Paolo] la percoteva sul viso su le braccia sul petto, ruggendo la parola vituperosa…[Isabella] sentì il noto sapore dolciastro nella sua bocca, e non d'una sola stilla; e poi sentì l'altra bocca schiacciarla, più pesante del pugno, e i colpi cessare, e le mani passare a un'altra violenza, e la carne penetrare la carne come il ferro che sventra…L’uno urlò come se in lui si compisse lo strappo atrocissimo; si sollevò, poi ricadde. L'altra si scrollò, con un rantolo che si ruppe in un pianto più disumano dell'urlo. Ed entrambi rimasero abbattuti sul pavimento, nel barlume violaceo, sentendosi ancor vivi entrambi e lordi, ma con qualcosa di esanime fra loro, con i resti di un oscuro assassinio fra i loro corpi disgiunti. Ed ella non cessava di piangere.412 And with his fist [Paolo] he beat her on the face on the arms on the chest, roaring the vituperative word… [Isabella] felt the well-known sweetish taste in her mouth, and not just a single drop; and then she felt the other mouth squeeze her mouth, heavier than his fist, and the blows cease, and the hands shift to another violence, and the flesh penetrate the flesh like the gutting iron ... The one screamed as if in him it was fulfilled the atrocious tear; he rose, then fell back. 412 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 812—813. 221 The other shook, with a gasp that broke into a cry more inhuman than the scream. And they both lay spent on the floor, in the purplish glimmer, both still feeling alive and gross, but with something lifeless between them, with the remains of a dark murder between their disjointed bodies. And she did not stop crying.413 This violence vividly calls to mind the ferocity of the boxing match that Paolo thought so little of, where the one combatant had no chance of fighting back against the prevailing boxer. One difference between the black boxer who won the match and Paolo here is that Paolo goes on to be heralded as a hero. This sexual violence against Isabella goes unnoticed by characters and critics alike. And yet, this is the moment that sets in motion their respective trajectories towards the sky and the abyss. Paolo enables himself to rise in the airplane because, after this event, Isabella will no longer be an obstacle to his ascent as he no longer wishes to be with her following her collapse into insanity. This violence marks a profound transformation in Isabella’s personality and mental- emotional stability and thereby directly affects Paolo’s destiny as the pilot-Übermensch. By the end of it, Isabella cannot stop crying and tries to hide within herself, covering up her face and trying to make herself small. Where she might have extended herself, taking up as much space as she wanted previous to this, Isabella now recoils on the floor as if in a stupor. The sexual violence alone would constitute a traumatic experience, but this particular event and the argument leading up to it encapsulate all of the doubts and unwanted realities that Isabella faces daily. As such, it has profound effects on Isabella psychologically. The argument and Paolo’s reaction confronts her with the truth about her inability to be a good mother as it involves her excessive desire and Vana’s dedication to Paolo. By following her own desires, she puts Vana at 413 My translation. 222 risk of not finding a husband and Aldo at risk of not finding a wife, not to mention the taboo of incest. From now on, she cannot escape the truth that his accusations confront her with. “La parola vituperosa” becomes another recurring memory that haunts her delirious thoughts along with Vana’s footsteps. Paolo notes how changed she appears immediately after the beating: “non era l’inquietudine ch’egli le conosceva, era un’altra.”414 She becomes suspicious, checking the corners of the room as if someone were watching, and then has vision about what will happen to her later on when she is locked out of the house and wanders the street, the exact events that lead to her enclosure in her father’s house and her complete collapse into delirium.415 The “remnants” of the sexual violence, too, offer some insight into how this event affects Isabella. The language D’Annunzio uses to describe the rape calls to mind not violence in general but death specifically. Isabella feels this rape as a gutting, as if Paolo is stabbing her with a knife (“il ferro che sventra”). While this certainly might only refer to the physical violence, the imagery recalls how Vana describes her experience of Isabella’s motherhood (“Tu mi apri il petto per vedere quel che c’è dentro”) and the monstrous creature that Vana’s words draw out of her (“esternata, come una creatura che vivesse in lei”). D’Annunzio figures the revealing of what is inside as a form of cruelty and something that repeatedly happens to Isabella when others confront her with the truth about herself. Here, as in the argument with Vana, Isabella faces a version of herself that others experience but she does not recognize. Implicit in all of these instances is a turning inside out, an externalizing or exorcising of some part of her that always lived along with her but that she refused or could not acknowledge. This dissociation mirrors her duality of wills and reflects her inability to reconcile the two. That the only result of this hideous 414 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 815–17. 415 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 815. 223 act is more death (“un oscuro assassinio”) and a feeling of lifelessness (“qualcosa di esanime fra loro”) suggests again that her infertility and failure to be a good mother weigh as heavily on her as Paolo’s savage violence. Trauma in a Technologized World We are now in a position to expound on what pushes Isabella into madness. Her hallucinations invoke Vana and their relationship more so than any other person or action. Indeed, the single night in Volterra seems to echo through her madness and even define it. The trauma of losing their mother also surfaces in this encounter, as both Vana’s accusations and Isabella’s statement about their mother suggest. Vana’s comparison between herself and Lunella’s doll, Tiapa, gives the idea that Isabella’s style of mothering was less than even a child’s care for her favorite toy. All Isabella managed to do was torture Vana incessantly and inhibit any chance of happiness that she had: “quello che tu m’hai tolto è più del mio sogno e più della mia vita.”416 Isabella continues to deny this accusation even as it seeps into her realization that she really was a terrible mother to Vana. Given the centrality of Vana’s footsteps in Isabella’s recurring hallucinations, Vana’s death and Isabella’s part in it encapsulates Isabella’s inability to reconcile her two wills and the consequences of her indecision. Vana also manifests the repetition of their mother’s death in her suicide, which is itself a consequence of Isabella’s refusal to be a true maternal figure for her younger sister. Even the words Isabella repeats when she rambles incoherently are in fact Vana’s. After learning about the engagement, Vana tells Lunella that they will have to leave Isabella’s house and go somewhere else. Lunella repeats 416 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 737. 224 them to Isabella as she scolds her for making Vana cry. “Bisogna andare andare, mettersi in cammino e andare, a piedi scalzi, chi sa dove...” becomes another leitmotif of Isabella’s delirium in conjunction with the incessant footsteps. The contexts in which Isabella’s hallucinations arise grant them greater significance and specificity than random visions of potential futures. The fact that the hallucinations consistently show her a future state of being where she would be completely removed from her family in the walled villa and concurrently remind her of the vulnerable state her indecision imposes on her family, what the hallucinations convey comes across as something close to a latent wish. Following Freud, latent content is usually found in dreams and appears initially as a “narrative in images.” Once understood, though, it shows itself to be “an organization of thoughts, or a discourse, expressing one or more wishes.”417 The somewhat contradictory images and sounds that Isabella experiences during these visions distress her and yet also suggest an escape from the pressures of her situation. Removing herself from her family’s lives presents itself in the image of the woman in the striped apron as the only remaining option left for Isabella, given what her perverted mothering has done to Vana. This suggests that her hallucinations and delirium in general “strive towards the reduction of tensions” and push her towards a death of sorts that would leave her family in peace.418 For Isabella, that reduction of tension would mean removing the pain she causes her family and inhibiting repetitions of it, which in turn reduces the pressure of balancing two wills within herself as well. We can also say something more about the way trauma manifests in this technologized environment. Whereas in traditional scenarios of trauma, where wishes are expressed in coded 417 Laplanche and Pontalis, The Language of Psycho-Analysis, 235. 418 Laplanche and Pontalis, 97. 225 form through dreams and through repetition compulsion, Isabella’s trauma takes a slightly altered form. Anxiety and panic often accompany Isabella’s hallucinations. Normally, anxiety as a signal functions by defending the consciousness from impending threats; instead of arriving too late, anxiety as a signal warns the subject too soon in order to prepare the consciousness for a possibly traumatizing experience.419 Isabella’s visions, however, seem to combine the dream function of expressing latent wishes and the warning anxiety gives against what might threaten her consciousness, namely confrontation with the part of herself that she continuously denies. Isabella’s hallucinations and her disavowal of Vana’s version of her as a perverted mother demonstrate themselves to be defense mechanisms that Isabella’s psyche employs to ward off the painful effects of self-recognition—of accepting the truth of her inability to be a good mother. The visions, as symptoms of the repetition compulsion to repeat the mother’s death, exhibit a kind of automaticity by arriving mechanically whenever the psyche perceives Isabella’s actions as contributing to her being a perverted mother or when she recalls the consequences of the traumatic loss of her mother. The technologization of vision that we see in the airplane refracts in Isabella’s premonitory hallucinations; by arriving too soon, as signals meant to alert the subject to potential dangers, these hallucinations do not warn so much as (re)traumatize the subject. They convince her that she has lost her mind before she really does. As we see in the flight competition and the bellicose underpinnings of modern aviation, repeated violence inscribes technologization. Technology mimics the effects of trauma that continue to emerge in the subject’s life through repetitions of similar or identical occurrences. The fraught relationship between Paolo and 419 Laplanche and Pontalis, 422. 226 Isabella shows that the repetition compulsion imbued in technology and its drift toward death affects both the subject of technology and the people he is in close contact with. Isabella is by no means the subject of technology but she is nevertheless affected by Paolo’s technologized ambition and desires. It is only through her continued engagement with Paolo that Isabella’s will splinters in two and puts her family in jeopardy. Her collapse into the abyss stands alongside the fallen pilots as necessary casualties in the superuomo’s technologized trajectory towards a higher state of being. Traumatic Repercussions Isabella’s experience with trauma, and trauma specifically caused by Paolo, affects him and his destiny more than one might think. Paolo must confront and accept his part in driving Isabella into madness in order to become the Übermensch. Reflecting on how Isabella found herself lost and alone on the street, Paolo recognizes that his actions were the worst possible thing that could happen to her.420 The memory of her distorted and bruised face haunts him until the day she travels to the walled villa, after which he decides to abandon the pain of losing her and focus instead on his flying: “E si scrollò, e prese la sua via. E la sua volontà e il suo dolore furono una sola tempra.”421 In this moment, his pain (“dolore”) fuses with his will (“volontà”) and empowers it. A similar event happens when Paolo surpasses Giulio’s record in the final scene. Only in this moment does he truly overcome his competing wills and achieve superuomo status: 420 “Rivedeva quella faccia distrutta, simile a un pugno di cenere. Poi risentiva soffiare su sé la feroce insania, rivedeva sé nell’atto di percuotere l’atterrata sul viso su le braccia sul petto ruggendo l'ingiuria. Poteva il destino schiacciare la povera creatura con un calcagno più lurido? Quale invenzione mai poteva eguagliare quella realtà?” See D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 845. 421 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 859. 227 La grande Àrdea di metallo di legno e di canape era immune dall’ombra, come sparente, come inesistente, come cosa della riva di là, come segno spettrale. Ma in quelle due mani le ossa i muscoli i tendini i nervi erano tesi a un’opera disperata di vita, erano furenti di vita come quelle che brandiscono l’arme alla suprema difesa, come quelle che s’aggrappano al bordo del battello o alla scheggia dello scoglio nel naufragio. Egli vedeva a faccia a faccia il suo Pilota come in quell’altro giorno funebre quando gli aveva chiesto: «Tu vuoi? Tu vuoi?» E il cuore gli tremò perché v’era rinata la volontà di vivere, la volontà di vivere per vincere.422 E il suo amore del fratello e il suo dolore e il suo ardore furono il sole dietro a sé, sopra a sé, furono una presenza raggiante, una immortalità incitatrice. Era la vita. Era la vita! Tale quel sogno sognato con tutto il peso della carne sanguigna… E il tempo passava; e la raggiera irta rombava in ritmo; e l’astro dell’elica trivellava il cielo. Era la vittoria. Era la vittoria! E come allora e assai più, di tutta la sua volontà egli fece un dardo inflessibile, fece uno di quei dardi che i feditori chiamavano soliferro, tutto ferro asta punta e cocca: un ferro che vedeva come nessuno mai vide, un ferro che udiva come nessuno mai udì.423 The great Àrdea of metal, wood and hemp was immune from shadow, as if it were vanishing, as non-existent, as a thing of the shore beyond, as a ghostly sign. But in those two hands the bones the muscles the tendons the nerves were tense at a desperate work of life, they were furious with life like those who wield their arms at the supreme defense, like those who cling to the edge of the boat or to the splinter of the rock in the shipwreck. He saw his Pilot face to face as in that other funeral day when he had asked him: "Do you want? You want it?" And his heart trembled because the will to live had been reborn, the will to live in order to win. And his brother's love and his pain and his ardor were the sun behind him, above him, they were a radiant presence, an inciting immortality. It was life. It was life! Such was that dream dreamed of with all the weight of blood flesh ... And time passed; and the bristling halo rumbled in rhythm; and the star of the propeller drilled the sky. 422 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 867–68. Just before this, Paolo recalls a previous flight he took just after Giulio died attempting to reach a similar distance. His will to live might also owe its rebirth to surpassing Giulio’s record and, in so doing, defeating a similar fate. See Prose di romanzi, 624–627. 423 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 867–68. 228 It was the victory. It was the victory! And as then and much more, of all his will he made an inflexible dart, he made one of those darts that the feditori called soliferro, all iron shaft, point and nock: an iron that saw as no one ever saw, an iron that heard as no one ever heard.424 These two passages bookend the moment in which he feels himself change, from when he realizes that he might surpass the record to when he actually does. While he has traveled a significant number of miles at the beginning point (“più di cento miglia marine”), Paolo has yet to assume the position of superuomo. The juxtaposition between how the machine fares with the threat of death (“era immune dall’ombra”) and how Paolo’s human body struggles to maintain control as if in a desperate fight for life (“un’opera disperata di vita”) suggests that something remains unfinished. That is the accomplishment of surpassing Giulio’s flight record. Just before his will to live is reborn, Paolo recalls a previous flight he took just after Giulio died attempting to reach a similar distance. Only when he realizes that he has gone beyond Giulio’s record does Paolo feel himself change (“il cuore gli tremò”). In reaching a new height, Paolo simultaneously overcomes his grief, pain, and passion, all of which turn into an “inciting immortality” (“immortalità incitatrice”) that spurs him on rather than holds him back. His will might then also owe its rebirth to surpassing Giulio’s record and, in so doing, defeating a similar fate. The identification of “vita” with “vittoria” in his exclamations demonstrates that nothing short of survival is at stake in the conquest of the sky or the pursuit of bettering oneself and inspiring others. Thinking back to Marinetti’s vision of a heroic modern subject, what is at stake here is not unlike what is at stake for Mafarka—the overcoming of death. Where Mafarka does this by 424 My translation. 229 appropriating the maternal function and giving life to a living machine, Paolo does this through escaping the abyss by means of the airplane. However, D’Annunzio’s privileging of heroic inspiration as a form of birth suggests that the stakes are higher for his modern superuomo. For D’Annunzio, the survival of not just the individual but the nation is at risk when mothers are in charge of birth and when technology does not inspire men to be greater than themselves. Paolo must better himself through the overcoming of dual wills in order to inspire others through example; only through this rebirth of his own making does man have the opportunity to rise above his base natures and become more than human, an Übermensch. So what could it mean that the superuomo only reaches this pinnacle of human potential through the destruction of another human through violently savage means? The fact that Paolo reaches Übermensch status only after Isabella descends completely into madness, following the traumatic encounter including sexual violence, suggests to me that the drift towards death inherent in technologization contaminates even its own subjects. Paolo as the subject of technology saves himself from the abyss by sacrificing Isabella, and one might say Giulio too, but he cannot escape the violent means by which he accomplishes this feat. Like the bodies of fallen pilots and the vortexes following the speeding car, Isabella’s destiny testifies to the dark consequences of technologizing life. One could even argue that, as Paolo accomplishes this seemingly impossible feat of aviation, he denies a part of himself in overcoming his feelings of guilt and grief for Isabella. His choice to no longer acknowledge their relationship in light of what happens to her could be read as a form of failed mourning, a refusal to recognize a loss, or a disavowal of the experience of losing her entirely. In either case, achieving superuomo status appears to demand a sacrifice of the self as well. 230 While D’Annunzio does not say for certain that the loss of Isabella impacts Paolo beyond his triumphant flight, the fact that he has a rocky landing that leaves him injured does suggest a less-than-perfect execution of the flight and conclusion to the novel: Poi fece l'atto di balzare nella sabbia; ma lo spasimo della bruciatura perversa gli strappò un grido, lo contenne. Allora discese cauto, cercando intorno un qualche sostegno… Ecco che la sua carne ridiventava miserabile: non si poteva più esprimere se non col soffio lamentevole non udito da alcuno, chiedendo il sollievo d'un attimo a quella piaga empia che novamente costringeva e imbestiava in un punto angusto la volontà vittoriosa… Respirò dal profondo. Girò gli occhi verso la grande Àrdea immune. Fu certo dell'aver compiuto, primo e solo. Allora al suo spirito parve che gli medicassero la piaga immersa gli spiriti del mare.425 Then he made the act of leaping into the sand; but the pang of the perverse burn made him cry out, contained it. Then he cautiously descended, looking around for some support ... Here his flesh became miserable again: he could no longer express himself except with the lamentable breath not heard by anyone, asking for a moment's relief from that impious wound that again forced and infested the victorious will in a narrow place ... He took a deep breath. He turned his eyes to the great immune Àrdea. He was certain of having accomplished, first and only. Then it seemed to his spirit that the spirits of the sea were healing the plagued wound.426 Paolo lands the plane on a beach but is burned in the process; only by washing the wound in the sea does he begin to heal. He notices again the differences between his penetrable, fragile body 425 D’Annunzio, Prose di romanzi, v. 2, 870. Guido Baldi arrives as a similar conclusion, that Paolo does not succeed in becoming the Übermensch with the last flight of the novel. Baldi gives a compelling interpretation of the hero’s surname, Tarsis, to support this reading, in which he argues that D’Annunzio’s choice of Tarsis over Alis (“alis” being a name that would properly mirror the heroic qualities Paolo is meant to embody through flight) indicates “il limite che gli [a Paolo] impedisce proprio di adempiere al suo compito eroico, la schiavitù al terrestre che lo opprime.” In Baldi’s view, “il Forse che sì forse che no è effettivamente non il romanzo di chi vola sulle ali, ma di chi insiste solo sui «tarsis»” as that which remains attached to ground. See Baldi, “D’Annunzio e il nuovo eroe della modernità: il Forse che sì forse che no” in Modernità letteraria, 86. 426 My translation. 231 and the invulnerable Àrdea looming above him. This image recalls the first flight scene when Paolo flies Àrdea above the crowd as the fallen pilots look on, inspired, from the gurney. Now, at the close of the novel, Paolo looks on his trusted airplane as the source of inspiration rather than another man or even partnership between man and machine. This ambiguous landing leaves a few different conclusions open. While it does not rule out that Paolo did succeed in becoming the superuomo (he did land without crashing, after all), his return to the earth, injured and needing assistance from the sea, strongly suggests that his ascension to this higher state of being was only temporary or, at the very least, that Paolo remains subject to the same fate as Giulio. Given the significance of the landing to the flight, and that his was flawed at best, we might conclude that Paolo only escaped death by a slim margin. This would still count as a success but it does raise some questions about the integrity of Paolo as the pilot-Übermensch and his capabilities. In either case, the contaminating element of technology persists, infecting even its subjects as they achieve their heroic, modern accomplishments. This underlying thread concerning the dark consequences of technology connects Marinetti’s vision of modernity to D’Annunzio’s despite their nuanced differences. Marinetti embraces technology in all forms and even goes so far as to see a technological element in anything that could help him armor his body and prepare him for a modern future, including the maternal function. D’Annunzio sharpens the image of technology and zeros-in on a finer point by deliberately distinguishing between different kinds of machines. In Forse che sì, Paolo uses the car and the airplane to meet distinct ends, the first having to do exclusively with terrestrial desires, and the second to transcend his own abilities and inspire others. Even in this categorization of technologies, though, D’Annunzio admits a common trait between them. He uses the figure of the vortex to convey the potentially lethal effects that technology provokes in 232 the automobile and airplane, but also, significantly, the contortion of Isabella’s desire which suffocates everything in its path. This figuration suggests that a drift towards death underwrites both modern technology and selfish desire that could, if not properly tethered by the will, spiral out of control. Even in Mafarka, Marinetti emphasizes restraint and the dominance of the will over one’s desires as characteristic of the futurist subject. A form of self-denial fastens the subject to his modern identity in both Marinetti’s and D’Annunzio’s visions. In both novels, the protagonists welcome this denial or may not even recognize it as such. Mafarka continues to the end of the story without fully accepting the death of his brother out of an anxiety around becoming too feminine. And yet, this act of rejecting mourning and the emotion that comes with it catalyzes his heroic journey towards giving life to the animated airplane. In Forse che sì, while we cannot say for sure that Paolo resists a relapse into the guilt and grief he felt for his part in driving Isabella into madness, we can see that his deliberate dismissal of his feelings for Isabella allows him to surpass Giulio’s record in the final flight. Both heroic trajectories, though, end in a drift towards death, which raises the question: at what point does this denial of a part of the self turn into disavowal in the sense that Isabella knew it, as a refusal to recognize the reality of a traumatic perception?427 Or put differently, at what point does the subject experience this denial of the self as traumatic, resulting in something like a traumatized or dissociated relation to the self? And what might the subject find if he or she were to look into that traumatic perception rather than away from it? Luigi Pirandello’s 1925 novel Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore offers one rather pessimistic response to this question. Written from Serafino’s perspective in diaristic form, this 427 Laplanche and Pontalis, The Language of Psycho-Analysis, 118. 233 novel follows Serafino as a camera operator through his first experiences with the camera to a final traumatic event that leaves him speechless but not entirely worse-off, in his opinion. In becoming mute he gains access to an enhanced form of sight that allows him to see aspects of modern experience inaccessible to everyone else. Serafino offers another version of the modern subject who is forced to deny a part of himself but in so doing, gains a glimpse into the traumatic perception that evades most others, including Marinetti’s and D’Annunzio’s heroes. Serafino’s vision instead approximates Isabella’s hallucinations, not in their premonitory capacity but in what they reveal; both vision and hallucination grant access to a concealed truth about technologization and its effects on modern life. Where Isabella can see the future consequence of her selfish actions, Serafino sees the anxiety and mindless compulsion undergirding the bustle of modern-day life. More than that, however, Quaderni allows us to see how technologization affects the mental and bodily experience of the individual whose life becomes irrevocably imbricated with technology, in this case, the film camera. Serafino’s association with the actress Varia Nestoroff also brings him into close proximity to unresolved trauma and its manifestations, and to first-hand experience of complete overwhelm. Both Serafino and Nestoroff have mental and corporeal reactions to the effects of the camera on them that do not add up to whole experiences. This leaves them with a fractured reality and understanding of themselves as subjects and adds an additional layer to the traumatizing experiences they suffer. It is to this novel and the questions around disavowal of the self, dissociation, and testimony that I now turn. 234 Chapter 3: (Dis)Embodied Dreams: The Body Behind the Camera and the Object in Front of It Introduction If it seemed odd to start a discussion of modern Italian literature with Marinetti’s Mafarka, it may seem equally odd that I end with a reading Pirandello’s Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore for no other reason than that it is the only novel discussed here that has any apparent resemblance to a modernist style.428 First appearing in 1915 with the title Si gira…, the novel is a collection of seven journals written in the first person by Serafino Gubbio. Serafino writes his considerations in the Quaderni as a person who goes unseen but who observes more carefully than anyone else. As a camera man for the Kosmograph, a leading film house in Rome, he becomes quite used to this solitary position behind the lens and even takes pride in his ability to go unnoticed and yet learn so much about others simply by watching them. By the conclusion of the journals, he has become “un ottimo operatore,” known especially for being “vigile, preciso e d’una perfetta impassibilità.”429 So perfect is he at his profession that he moves freely between production companies, making “un ricco dono e frequenti gratificazioni.”430 428 Riccardo Castellana notes that despite its experimentation with form and its unique perspective on film, it was not well received at the time: “È il primo romanzo italiano, infatti, a riflettere, con interesse e apprensione, sul fenomeno che più avrebbe modificato l’immaginario [il cinema]. Eppure non è mai veramente entrato nel canone del Novecento. Il pubblico (e la scuola) continua a preferirgli romanzi meno coraggiosi e sperimentali, sia dal punto di vista dei contenuti sia da quello delle forme.” Castellana attributes this to the style of the journals that critics of the time thought to be “troppo involuti nella trama e nello stile, non possiedono la freschezza linguistica e la capacità di coinvolgimento del Fu Mattia Pascal, non hanno il rigore geometrico delle novelle.” It should also be noted that Quaderni, despite the number of modernist checkboxes that it ticks off, is rarely shortlisted as an example of Italian modernism, perhaps for the very same reason Castellana gives for its not being accepted by the Italian public and schools. See Castellana, “Pirandello o la coscienza del realismo: I Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore” in Sul modernismo italiano, 105–106. 429 Luigi Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, ed. Giovanni Macchia and Mario Costanzo, Mondadori, 1973, 549. 430 Pirandello, 549. 235 In his essay, “Realismo modernista,” Riccardo Castellana suggests that the dates of the initial version of Si gira..., published in the magazine Nuova Antologia in 1915, and its final iteration as a novel Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore in 1925, serve as chronological markers for what he calls realismo modernista. This term does not relate the novelistic writing of this period to the French Realism of Balzac or the Italian Verismo of Verga, as it might suggest at first glance. Instead, Castellana creates this category to identify those texts that probe and problematize the “realtà quotidiana di persone ordinarie e comuni, compiuta non secondo i canoni e gli stereotipi della tradizione, ma al contrario mediante tecniche di straniamento, cioè di deautomatizzazione dei normali meccanismi percettivi.”431 The Quaderni might most properly be described as an experiment in the “deautomatization of normal perceptual mechanisms,” as an artistic attempt to render visible the kinds of perception that is readily available to humans and the ways technology can intercede, cloud, enhance, or disrupt them.432 While the novel has almost unanimously been read for its critique of film, the aspects of the novel that most critics disregard as pure entertainment or a trial of a new writing technique in my opinion points to a quite serious repercussion of the uncritical imbrication of life and technology, namely the ability to address one another and even oneself. Quaderni holds a similar relation to a line of thought that dominates much of Luigi Pirandello’s works—the crisi dell’identità and scissione dell’io, what might be described as the 431 Castellana, “Realismo modernista” in Italianistica, v. 39, n. 1, 23–45, 2010, 23. 432 For example, Castellana describes it as an “un instant book (e un pamphlet) sul cinema, cioè sul più grande mutamento subito dalla narrativa nell’età moderna,” and Bertoni points to its modern persective on film, “dove una delle invenzioni decisivi della modernità novecentesca, il cinema, non viene vista come strumento mimetico di riproduzione del mondo ma come mezzo di svelamento, specchio perturbante dell’alterità.” Both of these critiques however are quite sound and persuasive as they move beyond a superficial reading of the novel as a critique of cinema. See Castellana, “Pirandello o la coscienza del realismo: I Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore” in Sul modernismo italiano, 105–106; Bertoni, “Il Romanzo,” in Il modernismo italiano, 28. 236 disparity between self-identity and imposed identity, and division of the self. These themes are perhaps most notable in his plays Così è (se vi pare) (1917) and Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore (1921), but also form the underlying current in his novels Il Fu Mattia Pascal (1904) and Uno, nessuno e centomila (1925).433 Quaderni, however, is unique in its explicit engagement with the psychological and social effects of the film camera and film industry as new technological innovations.434 Pirandello digs deeper into the questions he poses in many of his other texts by interrogating how the phenomenon of the crisi dell’identità interacts with or is exacerbated by modern technology and its increasingly invasive relationship with human life. The result is a bitterly pessimistic view on how the invasiveness of technology intercedes in the individual’s relationship to himself and exacerbates the impossibility of understanding oneself or one’s actions fully. In Quaderni, Serafino becomes mute after witnessing a violent death. The scripted scene that he is supposed to film involves an amateur actor, Aldo Nuti, and a live tiger in an enormous cage camouflaged as a jungle. Nuti is meant to shoot the tiger for a film called, La donna e la tigre. Instead, Nuti shoots the actress Varia Nestoroff from inside the animal’s cage and then is mauled to death by the beast. Serafino films all of this with “perfect impassivity.” Not only does Serafino witness this first-hand but does so through the camera while filming. Serafino’s occupation as camera operator forces him to bury his affects deep within the self so that they do 433 Quaderni has been read as being part of a series of novels, starting with Il Fu Mattia Pascal (1904) and ending with Uno, nessuno e centomila (1925). Since Uno, nessuno was the last novel Pirandello wrote before moving into theatre, these novels are also read as precursors to the dramatic texts for which Pirandello will become most well- known. 434 Castellana makes a similar point, noting the exceptional technique Pirandello employs by splicing together one form of narration that appears to be objective with interior monologue and emotional reaction to the scene as it appears in front of the protagonist. See Castellana, “Realismo modernista” in Italianistica, v. 39, n. 1, 23–45, 2010; 34–39. 237 not interfere with his work. They are in a sense held captive in the body through his engagement with modern technology. Whereas the novel, as a written account, attempts to give context to the dissociative effects of working with the camera and to the violent event he witnesses, Serafino’s body, in becoming mute, bears witness to the overwhelming character of a traumatic experience. Reading this muteness as the body’s testimony to a traumatic event, I consider how prevailing theories of testimony privilege language and speech above corporeal expression. In so doing, I expand our understanding of testimony by considering how the captivity of affects in the body and their dissociation from the event radically change the subject’s retelling of a traumatic experience in modernity. In both Marinetti’s Mafarka and D’Annunzio’s Forse che sì forse che no, the modern male subject locates himself between woman and machine, mapping out or testing these coordinates. Pirandello’s Quaderni diverges from this constellation, zooming out to use the notions of subject and object as markers for where not just the male subject but the human subject may or may not reside in the “time of the machine.” I argue that the form these journals take, with regard to their structure and temporality, are part and parcel to Pirandello’s critique of film and the ways technology attempts to fix what is fluid and changing in humanity into rigid, machine-like functions. This happens through a process of objectification that I read as being felt by the subject as a dissociation from a part of the self. Bessel Van der Kolk and his associates who study PTSD in trauma survivors describe dissociation as the instance when an “experience is split into its isolated somatosensory elements, without integration into a personal narrative.”435 435 Kolk, McFarlane, and Weisæth, Traumatic Stress, 307. 238 When people develop a split between the “observing self” and the “experiencing self,” they report having the feeling of leaving their bodies and observing what happens to them from a distance. During a traumatic experience, dissociation allows a person to observe the event as a spectator, to experience no, or only limited, pain or distress; and to be protected from awareness of the full impact of what has happened.436 Quaderni presents us with two different forms of dissociation: one that happens in Serafino’s everyday engagement with the camera and which has been read in terms of alienation; and another that follows the traumatic event of Nuti and Nestoroff’s deaths. Rather than rely on the terminology that traditional critiques of Pirandello employ, namely that of maschere or identity, I draw on Michel Foucault’s understanding of the self that he elaborates when speaking about the subject of truth-telling and especially the Cynic form of life in his lectures on The Hermeneutics of the Subject and The Government of Self and Others.437 This shifts focus away from traditional critiques of Pirandello that focus on the external effects of having two selves—one that is presented to society and one that is personal— and instead isolates as much as possible what happens between the subject and his relation to himself in this particular technologized environment. While D’Annunzio’s novel overwhelmingly suggests that the price of going beyond natural human capabilities for some demands a sacrifice of others, Pirandello’s text speaks to the ways that the modern subject must forfeit part of the self to the machine in order to access enhanced ability. It is no longer a sacrifice that can be made by someone else but now has to be 436 Ibid., 192. 437 See Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981-1982 and The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1982-1983. Foucault further develops this same line of thought through the figure of the Cynic in his lectures, The Courage of Truth: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1983-1984, especially the lectures from the following dates: 22 February 1984, 29 February 1984, and 14 March 1984. 239 made by the subject of technology. By the end of Quaderni, Serafino comes to the realization that the only way to make man better, that is, to allow him to survive in the modern environment, is to make him more machine-like. This conclusion nearly comes full circle to Marinetti’s explosive Futurist vision; however, Pirandello does not share the Futurist’s enthusiasm for this imbrication of man and machine. Quaderni adds an additional layer to the question of the mechanization of life by situating this story within the context of capitalism and labor. Serafino films primarily for work and it is on the job that he witnesses, through the camera, a horrific and traumatizing scene, the footage of which is then reproduced and sold for a fortune by the film company.438 However, I argue that Pirandello suggests that what is at stake for the modern subject, in the last instant before being reduced to a mere object in service of a machine, is not only alienation but instead the relationship one has to the self and the ability to testify to experience. Chapter Outline The subject’s relationship to him or herself and to the body drives my reading of modern subjectivity in this novel. To do this, I first situate Quaderni in relation to Pirandello’s other novels and text that take up the same theme of the crisi dell’io. At the center of Pirandello’s understanding of human nature is the tension between what he calls vita and forma that he discusses in his essay, L’umorismo (1908).439 I frequently return to these concepts to articulate 438 This aspect of the novel has been widely commented on and is the focus of much of the scholarship on this novel. However, the traditional Marxist critique of this novel leaves wanting an analysis of the human experiences and internal turmoil that Serafino describes. See section “Non vedo altro che mani: Between Alienation and Dissociation” of this chapter for a full discussion of this point. 439 Vita describes the expression and living of human life through all its instincts, and forma refers to the maschere or identities that society imposes on the individual or that the individual imposes on him or herself. See Pirandello, L’umorismo. 240 how they appear or mutate in the novel. The conflict between these forces takes place both externally to the subject and internally. By focusing on the body and how it becomes entangled in this discord, I argue that what is at stake in this novel is the individual’s understanding of himself as an embodied subject. My analysis considers how disparate parts of the body, such as the hand and eyes, are called on by machines to perform in mechanical ways and how this experience radically alters the subject’s relationship to the self. In the final section, I discuss how gender adds an additional layer of objectification that further distances the individual from a relationship to the self through a reading of the character Varia Nestoroff. Next, I turn to the written style of the novel and argue that the inconsistency of the journals’ temporality and their structure, coupled with the way Serafino describes his experience, suggest that the dissociative effects of working with the camera share significant similarities to the dissociative state of trauma. The irregularity of how and when information is shared with the reader of the journals reveals more about Serafino’s relationship to writing and to himself than he does intentionally or, perhaps, is able to consciously. I then examine the way Serafino describes his experience with working with the camera in its relation to dissociation and to trauma. This leads me to an analysis of the concept of the superfluo, a uniquely human trait that allows for self-expression and discovery, and its relation to modern technology. As described by Pirandello, the subject comes to understand himself through the expression of the superfluo while also creating new realities in the process; however, with modernity, this expression is increasingly corrupted into meaningless creation of artifacts that are not conducive to a peaceful internal life. The dissociative effects that Serafino experiences due to his work grant him an enhanced vision that allows him to recognize more about modern life than anyone else, to see 241 beyond what is readily visible to others, what he calls the oltre. But the very same dissociative effects change his relation to his superfluo and consequently to himself. My reading traces the origins of the superfluo to the death drive and analyzes how modern technology exacerbates its most lethal attributes. I argue that the superfluo might be read as the motivation behind our drive towards technological innovation, which is also rooted in a self-sabotaging desire to exert ourselves beyond our physical and intellectual capacities in a destructive search for control over our environment. Following this discussion, I address how Serafino’s writing of the journals may be seen as an attempt to shift into the world of address and testimony. Whereas many scholars disregard the majority of what is written in the journals as the simple recording of what he observes as a replicant camera, I argue that this act of writing offers him a way to speak through the dissociative effects of working with the camera and to address another. Central to my reading of the novel is the concept of unconscious testimony, or the telling of some truth unknown to the speaking subject, and how it might be expanded to include something like bodily testimony. Departing from Shoshana Felman’s and Dori Laub’s work, I understand bodily testimony to be an unconscious manifestation of what may or may not be known to the conscious subject.440 I explore how the body can testify in ways that betray a truth about the self that is unknown and unpossessed by the conscious subject. Reading Pirandello’s outlier of a novel through this concept of testimony asks the reader to reconsider what it means to testify and the ways the ability to address one another or even oneself are put at risk when life becomes too imbricated with technology. 440 See in particular Felman and Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (1992), for their collaborative elaboration of a theory of testimony after crisis. 242 The final sections offer a sustained reading of how objectification by the machine affects Varia Nestoroff in particular and explore additional examples of bodily testimony. I consider how Nestoroff’s expressions and movements in particular instances testify to a division that she feels internally as being partially di là da se stessa. In other terms, she feels that a part of herself exists beyond her grasp and understanding. Pirandello uses the figure of the “ossessa,” as someone who is possessed or the state of being possessed, to represent the internal turmoil Nestoroff feels. Instead of questioning how Pirandello uses the figure of Nestoroff to represent something else, or establish the conditions for Serafino’s own trajectory, I ask how she holds within and represents with her body the conflicting identities or selves. In so doing, I question how sexual difference and the established gender dynamics of the film industry intensify the negative effects of objectification and identify something more about the experience of modernity to which bodily testimony speaks. Before turning to the main argument of this chapter regarding dissociation, the objectification of life, and how technology puts the self and one’s ability to address the self and others at risk, I situate the themes of Quaderni in relation to Pirandello’s other works and where my terminology differs from other critical perspectives. Crisi dell’io: Pirandello between Vita and Forma Many of Pirandello’s works take up the theme of identity and question the assumed ability to know oneself entirely. Of his novels, Il Fu Mattia Pascal and Uno, nessuno e centomila raise this question most explicitly. It is no wonder then that many critics read Quaderni with an eye toward how these themes appear in this novel in the same ways as they appeared in others, coming as it does in between the two. Pirandello contemplates concepts such as la maschera and 243 il doppio in his fictional works and essays alike; both appear as elements of what is critically discussed as the crisi dell’io, crisi dell’identità, or the scissione dell’io. These terms describe the division of the individual into multiple individuals. As he explains in a more philosophical text, L’umorismo (1908): “L’uomo non ha della vita un’idea, una nozione assoluta, bensì un sentimento mutabile e vario, secondo i tempi, i casi, la fortuna… L’albero vive e non si sente…All’uomo, invece, nascendo è toccato questo triste privilegio di sentirsi vivere, con la bella illusione che ne risulta: di prendere cioè come una realtà fuori di sé questo suo interno sentimento della vita, mutabile e vario.”441 This concept holds that, because each person approaches a situation from his or her own perspective, which changes continuously, there cannot be a single objective truth but only various subjective truths shaped by an individual’s experience. His late novels explore the crisi dell’io through the concepts of perspective, truth, and relativism. In particular, the notion of identity comes to the fore as a way of understanding the impact of the relative truth on human interaction and positions in society. For example, in Il Fu Mattia Pascal, Pirandello demonstrates the constraints of an imposed identity and how the putting on of another, or multiple, “masks” potentially liberates the subject but nevertheless restricts the living of one’s life. Likewise in Uno, nessuno e centomila, he explores the impossibility of recognizing all of the multiple persons held in a single individual through the figure of the mirror. When his wife points to a flaw of his nose that he had not noticed before, Moscarda comes to the realization that he exists as “Moscarda” for others in a different way than he exists for himself. In L’umorismo, Pirandello elaborates these ideas through a discussion of 441 Pirandello, L’umorismo, 162–63. 244 “vita e forma,” where vita describes the expression and living of human life through all its instincts, and forma refers to the maschere or identities that society imposes on the individual or that the individual imposes on himself: La vita è un flusso continuo che noi cerchiamo d’arrestare, di fissare in forme stabili e determinate, dentro e fuori di noi, perché noi già siamo forme fissate, forme che si muovono in mezzo ad altre immobili, e che però possono seguire il flusso della vita, fino a tanto che, irrigidendosi man mano, il movimento, già a poco a poco rallentato, non cessi … Ma dentro di noi stessi, in ciò che noi chiamiamo anima, e che è la vita in noi, il flusso continua, indistinto, sotto gli argini, oltre i limiti che noi imponiamo, componendoci una coscienza, costruendoci una personalità. In certi momenti tempestosi, investite dal flusso, tutte quelle nostre torme fittizie crollano miseramente.442 Life is a continual flux which we try to stop, to fix in stable and determined forms, both inside and outside ourselves, because we are already fixed forms, forms which move in the midst of other immobile forms and which however can follow the flow of life until the moment, gradually slowing and becoming more and more rigid, eventually ceases…But within ourselves, in what we call the soul and is the life in us, the flux continues, indistinct under the barriers and beyond the limits we impose as a means to fashion a consciousness and a personality for ourselves. In certain moments of turmoil all these fictitious forms are hit by the flux and collapse miserably under its thrust.443 The tension between vita and forma runs through many of Pirandello’s works, Quaderni included. However, this conflict does not present itself in the same way or lead to the same conclusions in this novel as it does in other texts. The reason for this has to do with the place Pirandello assigns technology and the critique he makes of modernity. Whereas the novels that precede and follow it focus on the negative consequences of an identity imposed by society onto the individual, Quaderni questions the effects of a fragmented subjectivity on the individual’s relation to the self. In other terms, what is at stake in this novel is the incongruity between the 442 Pirandello, L’umorismo, 159. 443 Pirandello, On Humor, 137. 245 subject’s experience and the subject’s recognition of himself in it. Rather than use the terms “identity” or “mask,” which imply a relationship to external factors, I propose a shift in terminology to the “self,” “recognition,” and “self-understanding” to emphasize the internal dimension of this misalignment which in the case of Serafino manifests itself primarily through dissociation and a sequestration of emotion in both body and mind. To begin to address the paradox of Serafino’s engagement with the camera and the ways it alters his relationship to the self, I first turn to the structure of the journals and then to the effects of technologization on the human mind and body. The Structure of Experience: The Perfect Operator is Not the Perfect Narrator The diaristic form of the novel poses a number of obstacles to understanding what deserves critical attention. Is it the saga of romantic affairs, suicide, and jealousy, including the love triangle that ends with two violent deaths? Or could it be the essay-like philosophical reflections that these melodramatic situations prompt?444 In addition to this, whether or not Serafino has reached a level of perfetta impassibilità when he begins writing remains a contentious point for many critics. Already in the opening journal Serafino suggests that his sight stands out as a unique quality. He appears to have an enhanced form of vision that enables him to 444 The question of subject divides scholarship of this novel. Most critics note the two “filoni” that entwine to form the novel but only a handful analyze the two narrative strands as having to do with one another. See Baldi, chapter 5 in particular for a convincing example of this. Critics such as Angelini, Mazzacurati, and Pupino argue instead that the essay-like reflections contain the most important subject matter of the text. Still others like Martinelli read the novel allegorically and argue that characters like Varia Nestoroff are really symbols of discord internal to Serafino (and Pirandello). See Angelini, “Si gira...: l’ideologia della macchina in Pirandello,” in Il romanzo di Pirandello (1976), 143-160; Mazzacurati, “Il doppio mondo di Serafino Gubbio” in Pirandello nel romanzo europeo (1987); Pupino, Pirandello, o L'arte della dissonanza: saggio sui romanzi (2008); Baldi, Pirandello e il romanzo: scomposizione umoristica e "distrazione" (1996); Martinelli, Lo specchio magico: immagini del femminile in Luigi Pirandello (1992). For a compilation of essential bibliography on Pirandello, see Alfredo Barbina, Bibliografia della critica pirandelliana, 1889-1961 (1967) and Corrado Donati, Bibliografia della critica pirandelliana, 1962-1981 (1986). 246 see and know more about the experience of modernity than others. This appearance of quasi- omniscience is made all the more difficult to pinpoint since the temporality of the journals is non-linear and inconsistent, as one critic confirms not without a hint of frustration: “Nessuna certezza allora sulla sequenza temporale, né che la scrittura sia ordinate su di essa.”445 Serafino plunges the reader into memories without warning, pulls away from one object to speak at length about something apparently unrelated, and foreshadows in such detail that it gives one pause—is he omniscient, or has this all already happened?446 The way in which the journals are written continuously raises the suspicion that they have all been written following the traumatic event that renders Serafino mute, by which time he has fully acquired the abilities of observation of a “perfect operator.” The structure of the journals continues to beg the question: “Ma se, sempre al principio, il soggetto dichiara i propri ‘occhi intenti e silenziosi’, questo suo mutismo, implicherebbe la posteriorità dei Quaderni rispetto al trauma che lo causò?”447 Nowhere does Serafino situate the journals in historic time. The reader does not have an external reference to point to when he occasionally lets slip a “ieri,” “dopo circo un mese,” or “un anno fa.” Such metanarrative phrases in themselves might indicate that the journals were written at the time of the narrated events, yet they repeatedly clash against other content that reads as if it were written retrospectively. 445 Pupino, Pirandello, o L’arte della dissonanza, 254. 446 As Angelo Pupino points out, the way in which the journals are written continuously raises the suspicion that they have all been written after Serafino has become mute and fully acquired the abilities of observation of a “perfect operator”: “Ma se, sempre al principio, il soggetto dichiara i propri ‘occhi intenti e silenziosi’, questo suo mutismo, implicherebbe la posteriorità dei Quaderni rispetto al trauma che lo causò?” See Pupino, Pirandello o l’arte della dissonanza. 447 Pupino, Pirandello, o L’arte della dissonanza, 254. 247 This becomes a contentious point among readers because it determines in part how we understand Serafino’s perfection.448 Indeed, Angelo Pupino points out the importance of how we interpret the structure of the journals by suggesting that the change in title of the 1925 edition underscores the significance of the novel’s structure by placing Serafino and his occupation in a subordinate position to the journals; the emphasis changes from the action of filming and the one who films (Si gira...) to the kind of writing that makes up the novel (Quaderni).449 Pupino goes so far as to say that the journals “subtract the text ... from any rigid typological classification (memoirs, diary, confessions, secret book or other, however fictitious” and that they instead should be read as “an utterance that follows the fortuitous wanderings of its imaginary subject, and follows it ... without any need to respect an objective logical and temporal order.” 450 I would add that this form of writing responds to and signals another step technology takes into the human body, grafting itself onto the human subject in even more malicious ways. It is no coincidence that this novel is written in diaristic form, an intensely personal and subjective mode of writing, given the experience that it intends to capture—a traumatizing encounter with the modern film camera and its monstruous conglomerate body of the film industry as a uniquely 448 Critics are torn over how to read the temporality of this novel and most either neglect to analyze it or assume that Serafino writes the journals after having witnessed the violent scene. See Costa’s introduction for example; while she holds that Serafino did experience a traumatic event, she also argues that the journals were written after this event. Critics such as Angelini and Mazzacurati argue that he is a mere observer and understand the novel as having been written while he is mute. Others like Pupino recognize the inconsistencies in the timing of the writing but explain it as the indication of an unreliable narrator. Of those who consider critically the temporality of the journals, none suggest that it is an effect of dissociation. See Costa, “Introduzione,” in Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore, Mondadori (1992); Angelini, “Si gira...: l’ideologia della macchina in Pirandello,” in Il romanzo di Pirandello, 143-160; Mazzacurati, “Il doppio mondo di Serafino Gubbio” in Pirandello nel romanzo europeo, 241- 268; Pupino, Pirandello, o L'arte della dissonanza: saggio sui romanzi (2008). 449 Pupino, Pirandello, o L’arte della dissonanza, 252. 450 Pupino, Pirandello, o L’arte della dissonanza, 252. The original reads: “i quaderni, sottraggono il testo…ad ogni rigida classificazione tipologica (memorie, diario, confessioni, libro segreto o altro ancora, per quanto fittizio). Esibiscono invece un’enunciazione che segue l’erranza fortuita del suo soggetto immaginario, e la segue…‘senza alcuna necessità di rispettare un ordine logico e temporale oggettivo’.” In this quotation, Pupino also cites Mattesini, “La poetica dello ‘sguardo’ nel personaggio pirandelliano (in margine a Si gira…)” in Figure e forme di vita letteraria: Da Carducci all’ermetismo (1983). 248 invasive technology. I suggest that the diaristic form of this novel and the play of temporality within it lends itself to a deeper understanding of the imbrication of technology and life. The structure and temporality contribute to a form of testimony that exceeds the forms of normal communication and narrative, but in so doing offer more truth of Serafino’s experience in the time of the machine. While he remarks on his impassivity and ability as an operator throughout the journals, Serafino stresses that he only becomes “perfect” with the violent deaths that he witnesses through the camera: “Nessuno intanto potrà negare ch’io non abbia ora raggiunto la mia perfezione. Come operatore, io sono ora, veramente, perfetto.”451 The repetition of “ora” here highlights the specificity of the moment in which this transformation happened. He continues: “una penna e un pezzo di carta: non mi resta più altro mezzo per comunicare con gli uomini. Ho perduto la voce; sono rimasto muto per sempre.”452 But what happens in this moment is much more significant than this first version of events suggests. To say that he “lost his voice” is quite an understatement; rather, it extinguishes itself in his throat: “Non gemevo, non gridavo: la voce, dal terrore, mi s’era spenta in gola, per sempre.”453 Serafino is so unprepared for what he witnesses that his body responds without conscious action. Serafino’s written and bodily testaments to the impact this event has on him suggest an overwhelming experience that we would be mistaken not to acknowledge as traumatic.454 Neither should the fact that he goes mute and reaches this notable ability in the same moment be disregarded as coincidence or choice. 451 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 729. 452 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 729. 453 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 729, my emphasis. 454 The majority of critics have neglected to read this event for its full import in the novel. Angelini is one of the few Pirandello scholars to recognize this scene as traumatic and call it such, but it still does not occupy a central or even minimal role in her analyses of the novel. Scholars such as Angelini, Dombroski, Donati, and Mazzacurati, either write off Serafino’s muteness as a choice in the face of an unbearable modern reality or fail to consider the 249 In much the same way he loses control over his hand that turns the handle, Serafino loses control over his voice in this moment and forever afterwards.455 To be sure, the inability to pin down the temporal order of the novel frustrates any reading of it, but I believe that this is part of Pirandello’s intention and, perhaps more significantly, allows the structure of the journals to add something more to the reader’s understanding of Serafino’s experience.456 More important than deciding when the journals were written is deciphering what their confused and inconsistent temporality suggests about Serafino’s experience. Given what he describes of his engagement with the camera throughout his occupation as an operator and the effects of Nuti and Nestoroff’s deaths on him, I suggest that the journals’ structure points to the dissociative effects that working with the camera has on his body, which foreshadow the traumatic effects that the final scene has on his body and mind. In splicing two temporalities together throughout the novel, Pirandello draws attention to the parallel effects of trauma and dissociation that occurs through objectification by the machine. Non vedo altro che mani: Between Alienation and Dissociation possibility that this muteness is an unavoidable effect of a traumatic event. Debenedetti recognizes this as a traumatic event that results in the loss of Serafino’s voice but he does not analyze the novel in light of this event (Il romanzo del Novecento, 452). See Angelini, “Si gira...: l’ideologia della macchina in Pirandello,” in Il romanzo di Pirandello, 143-160; See Donati, “‘Persona’ e scrittura in tre romanzi di Pirandello: Pascal, Gubbio e Moscarda interpreti della crisi dell’Io,” in La ‘persona’ nell'opera di Luigi Pirandello, 291–95; Dombroski, Le totalità dell'artificio: ideologia e forma nel romanzo di Pirandello; Mazzacurati, Pirandello nel romanzo europeo; Debenedetti, Il romanzo del Novecento. 455 The correlation between these corporeal effects of using the camera opens the possibility that the journals were in fact written after the final scene, despite the temporality some notes suggest as being written in the moment. However, I think there is more evidence that suggests the traumatic event does in fact happen after the other notes have been written, as I argue in this chapter. 456 Pupino shares a similar opinion and suggests that the temporality and structure of the journals is in direct confrontation with the effects of film and photography that “fisserebbe il suo oggetto ‘in un momento, che già non è più in noi; che resterà e che si farà man mano più lontano’” (Pirandello, o L'arte della dissonanza, 252). Pupino also suggests that this could be a reference to Nietzsche’s discourse on the circularity of time or an echo of the various debates of the time regarding the non-linearity of time. 250 Serafino’s bodily manifestations of dissociation, his feeling of becoming only a hand and a hand of the machine at that, raise the question of the nature of this dissociation. The novel has almost unanimously been read as a dramatization of the alienating effects of modern technology, and even cited as anticipating the tone and horror of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927).457 Giancarlo Mazzacurati argues that “il congegno centrale del romanzo è infatti . . . una sgomenta immagine della vita collettiva come ‘meccanismo’ agito dalle macchine, governato dalla loro ‘fame’, che dalla parte di Pirandello è sinonimo di alienazione.”458 The critics who agree take their cue from the essay-like asides in which Serafino criticizes phenomena associated with technology and its effects on people and society, perhaps none more so than the following, in which Serafino’s describes the Kosmograph as an army of hands that work in the dark: Mani, non vedo altro che mani, in queste camere oscure; mani affaccendate su le bacinelle; mani, cui il tetro lucore delle lanterne rosse dà un’apparenza spettrale. Penso che queste mani appartengano ad uomini che non sono più; che qui sono condannati ad esser mani soltanto: queste mani, strumenti. Hanno un cuore? A che serve? Qua non serve. Solo come strumento anch’esso di macchina, può servire, per muovere queste mani. E così la testa: solo per pensare ciò che a queste mani può servire. E a poco a poco m’invade tutto l’orrore della necessità che mi s’impone, di diventare anch’io una mano e nient’altro.459 Hands, I see nothing but hands, in these dark rooms; hands busily hovering over the dishes; hands to which the murky light of the red lamps gives a spectral appearance. I reflect that these hands belong to men who are men no longer; who are condemned here to be hands only: these hands, instruments. Have they a heart? Of what use is it? It is of no use here. Only as an instrument, it too, of a machine, to serve, to move these hands. And so with the head: only to think of what these hands may need. And gradually I am filled with all the horror of the necessity that impels me to become a hand myself also, and nothing more.460 457 See Simona Costa, “Introduzione,” in Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore, Mondadori (1992), xix. 458 Mazzacurati, Pirandello nel romanzo europeo, 255. 459 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 572. 460 Pirandello, Shoot!, 85–86. 251 Much of Serafino’s critique of the mechanisms involved in producing filmic images has been read as Pirandello’s critique of not just the film industry and this new art form, but of modernity writ large.461 Serafino regularly comments on his own position as “una mano che gira la manovella” and maintains a hostile attitude towards the nearly automated technologies he discusses throughout the novel. More than anything, he laments the reduction of the human subject to a piece of the body and its utility that serves the machine. When Serafino comments on the hands that move eerily in the dark room, scholars generally hear a case of alienation where the laborer is distanced from his labor and product. And given the unrestrained deprecation Serafino launches at technology’s intervention into everyday life, it is not surprising that many have read this and other passages in Marxist terms.462 However, that does not appear to be Serafino’s main concern. The novel’s critique of modernity focuses predominantly on the incompatibility between the subject’s own body, the machine’s intentions for it, and the emotional response this evokes in the subject. In this passage especially, Serafino’s emphasizes the parts of the human body that are made to work for the machine and draws attention to the emotional conflict this provokes. As the passage continues, the legs, arms, and even the head are marshalled to work alongside the hands in service of the machine: Vado dal magazziniere a provvedermi di pellicola vergine, e preparo per il pasto la mia macchinetta. Assumo subito, con essa in mano, la mia maschera 461 Much scholarly criticism regards Serafino as a thinly veiled stand-in for the Sicilian author and draws categorical comparisons between his others works (essays and novels alike) to make sense of Quaderni. In particular, Quaderni has been read as being part of a series of novels, starting with Il Fu Mattia Pascal (1904) and ending with Uno, nessuno e centomila (1925). Since Uno, nessuno was the last novel Pirandello wrote before moving into theatre, these novels are also read as precursors to the dramatic texts for which Pirandello will become most well-known. I address this point in more detail later in the chapter. 462 A number of critics speak about the condition of modern life as seen by Serafino as being “contaminated” and “condemned.” See for example Baldi’s description of what Serafino confronts as “realtà contaminante del moderno” in Pirandello e il romanzo, 128. 252 d’impassibilità. Anzi, ecco: non sono più. Cammina lei, adesso, con le mie gambe. Da capo a piedi, son cosa sua: faccio parte del suo congegno. La mia testa è qua, nella macchinetta, e me la porto in mano.463 I go to the store-keeper to provide myself with a stock of fresh film, and I prepare my machine for its meal. I at once assume, with it in my hand, my mask of impassivity. Or rather I cease to exist. It walks, now, upon my legs. From head to foot, I belong to it: I form part of its equipment. My head is here, inside the machine, and I carry it in my hand.464 “Cammina lei, adesso, con le mie gambe”: the camera becomes the subject of action and appropriates the human’s legs to do its own work. Taken by itself, this passage is easily read as reification of the subject; he becomes a prosthesis to a machine.465 But such a reading over- emphasizes the effect machines have on man and elides the fraught relationship Serafino has to himself because of it. Serafino does not concern himself much with what he makes or the fact of working in this passage or elsewhere. What strikes Serafino as horrific is the realization that he must allow himself to be reduced to a mere lever. He, unlike the other mani, acknowledges “[la] necessità…di diventare anch’io una mano e nient’altro.” As in the opening passage, Serafino’s recognition of the truth of modern life and the role he necessarily has to play in it to survive distinguishes him from other subjects. This complicates a question I alluded to earlier: how does Serafino’s engagement with the camera grant him an enhanced ability to see and know, and how does this affect his relationship to the self? Alienation, though present in his critique of modern society, does not adequately answer these questions. Marxist readings of the novel cannot 463 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 572, emphasis in original. 464 Pirandello, Shoot!, 86. 465 For a broader theoretical lens on the relationship between the human body and machines, see Mark Seltzer, Bodies and Machines (1992); for its relation to modern art, see Hal Foster, Prosthetic Gods (2006); for its relation to Futurism, see Jeffrey T. Schnapp, “Propeller Talk,” Modernism/modernity v. 1, n. 3 (1994): 153–78. 253 account for how the access to enhanced perception of modern life affects the relationship Serafino has to his body and to himself as a subject. Taking into consideration the inconsistency of the journals’ temporality and the way Serafino describes his connection between his body and mind, however, reveals that he has suffered a traumatic event and that, even prior to this, the dissociative effects of working with the camera share significant similarities to the dissociative state of trauma. The language Serafino uses to describe his experience focuses almost exclusively on how he relates to his body and mind in terms of affects and body parts rather than labor and products which would point more readily to a Marxist-inflected critique. The irregularity of how and when information is shared with the reader of the journals reveals more about Serafino’s relationship to writing and to himself than he does intentionally or, perhaps, is able to consciously. A Gap in Experience: The Effects of Mechanization on Life Serafino gives two reasons for writing the journals, but they only provoke more questions when pushed. As he gives more context to his thoughts, more questions arise while others, apparently already answered, reappear. Serafino opens the second chapter of the first journal with one reason for writing: Soddisfo, scrivendo, a un bisogno di sfogo, prepotente. Scarico la mia professionale impassibilità e mi vendico, anche; e con me vendico tanti, condannati come me a non esser altro, che una mano che gira una manovella.466 I satisfy, by writing, a need to let off steam which is overpowering. I get rid of my professional impassivity, and avenge myself as well; and with myself avenge ever so many others, condemned like myself to be nothing more than a hand that turns a handle.467 466 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 522–23, emphasis in original. 467 Pirandello, Shoot!, 8. 254 Writing relieves the tension created by his use of the camera and the professional impassivity into which it forces him. Describing the action of writing as a release gives the impression that engaging with the camera as its operator is akin to being held captive or crammed into a small space. This experience causes such distress in Serafino that it overflows the bounds of the mind and demands a physical outlet. This stress may manifest itself as and in writing due to Serafino’s approximation of the characteristics of the camera, including its silent gaze. It could also be that writing is the only form of communication left available to him, as he says following the violent scene. Regardless of its root cause, which the reader may never know for sure, the fact that writing occupies such an important place for Serafino in making sense of this experience signals two things. One, the experience of operating the camera is unbearably distressing and leads Serafino to feel as if he exists in two separate states of being. And two, this stress is not isolated to the hand in its separation from the rest of the body but affects the mind as well. The second reason he gives is that writing vindicates others who, like Serafino, are compelled to be nothing more than “una mano che gira una manovella.” One man in particular sparks Serafino’s contempt for the results of the mechanization of life. Indeed, he remarks that “tutte le considerazioni da me fatte in principio sulla mia sorte miserabile . . . hanno per punto di partenza quest’uomo incontrato la prima sera del mio arrivo a Roma.”468 When Serafino meets him for the first time in a homeless shelter, the man is dressed as the others are in the compulsory white robe and slippers but carries a violin protectively under his arm. He shuffles slowly, “inarcocchiato . . . tenendo il capo chino e sospeso, come se gli pesasse enormemente il naso 468 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 536. 255 rosso e carnuto.”469 Not even when his own tragic story is shared aloud does this man break his impassive façade but remains silent and unmoving. The impact this man and his story have on Serafino should not go unnoticed as this figure foreshadows what will happen to the camera operator following the violent scene.470 More importantly though, this man and Serafino experience the same effects of engaging with machines, which then directly influences Serafino’s writing of the journals. This man presumably has a name, and definitely has a nickname not unlike Serafino’s that he accepts without enthusiasm, but the writer-narrator sadly never mentions either. The novel refers to him either as “un artista” by Simone Pau, Serafino’s friend who introduces them, or simply as the man with the violin. The violin plays no small part in what makes this man significant. It is at once his passion and his downfall. After inheriting a printing press from his father, the man let it go to ruin after spending all his money on alcohol and frivolities. To earn a living, the man would play in pubs and bars but would inevitably spend the money on drinks before the evening’s end. This perilous cycle pushes him to search for work in other printing presses where the temptation of alcohol is nonexistent. Responding to one such position, he is confronted with “una macchina nuova: un pachiderma piatto, nero, basso; una bestiaccia mostruosa, che mangia piombo e caca libri.” 471 The new monotype “fa tutto da sé” and does not require much of its attendant, only to be fed with lead every once in a while. The violinist “si sente cascare il fiato e le braccia;” and after only one week, he becomes “avvilito, mortificato, 469 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 533. 470 Though the violinist has been read as a doppio of Serafino, I would argue that what we see in this figure is one potential outcome of Serafino’s engagement with the camera that demonstrates a crucial difference between the two. How Serafino responds to the same situation as the violinist with the hand that turns the lever sets him apart and, as some argue, saves him from the fate of the violinist. I will come back to this point in the following section. 471 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 535. 256 oppresso di vergogna e avvelenato di bile.” 472 The feeling of being reduced to a servicer of a machine challenges his creativity and self-identity as an artist. He quits this position to find one which incorporates his love of music. But when he responds to an ad for a violinist, the man finds himself in front of an automated piano which he and his violin must accompany. This comes as perhaps the most difficult blow because it affects him personally and now also affects his relationship to his instrument. Simon Pau explains to Serafino just how much this impacts the man with the violin: Capisci? Un violino, nelle mani d’un uomo, accompagnare un rotolo di carta traforata introdotto nella pancia di quell’altra macchina lì. L’anima, che muove e guida le mani di quest’uomo, e che or s’abbandona nelle cavate dell’archetto, or freme nelle dita che premono le corde, costretta a seguire il registro di quello strumento automatico! Il mio amico diede in tali escandescenze, che dovettero accorrere le guardie, e fu tratto in arresto e condannato per oltraggio alla forza pubblica a quindici giorni di carcere. Ne è uscito, come lo vedi. Beve, e non suona più.473 Do you understand? A violin, in the hands of a man, accompany a roll of perforated paper running through the belly of this other machine! The soul, which moves and guides the hands of the man, which now passes into the touch of the bow, now trembles in the fingers that press the strings, obliged to follow the register of this automatic instrument! My friend flew into such a towering passion that the police had to be called, and he was arrested and sentenced to a fortnight’s imprisonment for assaulting the forces of law and order. He came out again, as you see him. He drinks now, and does not play anymore.474 The way that the hand plays the violin differs from the way Serafino’s hand works for the camera and the way he sees other hands operating machines, or like machines, at the studio. When the man plays the violin for pleasure, he expresses his “anima,” a term mostly used to designate emotions, sentiment, spirituality, in general, aspects of an individual that are 472 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 535-536. 473 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 536. 474 Pirandello, Shoot!, 28. 257 completely internal and subjective. The “anima” motivates the movement of the violinist’s hands and fingers, to press the right chords and move the bow. The violin does not possess its own internal logic or express a will over the one who plays it. Quite differently, when Serafino’s hand turns the handle to film a scene, it is as if the camera moves it for him. In picking up the camera, Serafino becomes “da capo a piedi, son cosa sua: faccio parte del suo congegno.” 475 His hand “feeds” the camera the life and souls of others the same way the perforated paper feeds the piano and the printing press.476 The hand detaches from the body and becomes a component part of the series of mechanisms that makes up the machine. Even the creative action of playing an instrument, when put in the service of a machine, loses its meaning for the artist. This has more to do with the relationship the man has to himself as mediated by the violin than it does with his relationship to the player piano as a machine. Because the violin in this capacity serves the piano, it no longer acts as a “sfogo” for the man’s “anima.” It thereby loses one of its functions of connecting the body and the mind, of enabling the release of what is felt internally in an external form. Playing the violin for the piano does not simply reduce the man to a piece of the machine; it alters the relationship he has to himself by 475 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 572. 476 Pirandello’s alignment of machine logic with animal logic, what Angelini calls the “l’aggressività bestiale” that he associates with animals and also with machines in identifying the camera as a carnivorous spider, suggests something that attracted the Futurists’ attention. When describing “the beast,” Serafino argues that the human cannot fault it for devouring a man because it is out of necessity and it is in its nature. So when Pirandello describes the camera as a spider, and the printing press as a hippopotamus, he seems to suggest that humans should equally not fault the machine for its own logic, for operating in its own interests rather than in the interests of man. In the Futurist Manifesto, Marinetti also employs a bestial vocabulary to identify his car, first calling it a lion and then, once revived from the maternal pit, a shark. Again, the carnivorous nature implied by these choices of animal suggests an element of nature than man has either lost or was never fully endowed with that the machine approximates with more ease. That element in both the Manifesto and the Quaderni appears to be a simplified logic, stripped of emotional attachment, concern for (human) others, and a deep, nearly unconscious drive to survive. The Futurist’s dream of metallicized flesh comes equipped with a secondary desire of self-sufficiency, or autarky, that it associates with animalistic survival instincts. This term comes from Poggi’s analysis in “Metallicized Flesh” in Modernism/modernity, v. 4, n. 3, 1997, 19-43. Futurism’s appropriation of animal-machine survival techniques, however, twists this originally organic function to meet the futurist’s modern needs, since the ferocity and desire for danger that Futurism maps onto animal instincts ultimately lead the subject into peril if not violent death. 258 interfering with how he connects his physical presence to his internal sensations. Since the intrusion of the piano eliminates the possibility of maintaining this connection, the man chooses not to play or speak anymore. Doing so would remind him of how the automatization of technology reduces his art to a mere accompaniment of the machine and, through it, how his relationship to himself is radically altered. This points to a larger theme within the text: the confrontation between the natural and the machinic. While the majority of the examples of this involve characters and their interactions with technology, Serafino also discusses this phenomenon in a more expansive way in rhetorical asides throughout the text. He explicitly laments this time as “il tempo della macchina” and technology’s intervention into all aspects of life. In particular, he takes note of how life becomes mechanized, from the inorganic rhythm of the watch that puts people on machine time, to the incessant buzz of electric trams and telephone lines that make the city hum. Such contraptions might make life easier but they also push the organic to become more and more machine-like in how it functions, to the point that it no longer functions at all. A classic example Serafino gives is that of the “vecchio cavalluccio” and the “carrozzella” that are overtaken by an automobile: ma che avete veduto voi una carrozzella dare indietro, come tirata da un filo, e tutto il viale assaettarsi avanti in uno striscio lungo confuso violento vertiginoso. Io, invece, ecco qua, posso consolarmi della lentezza ammirando a uno a uno, riposatamente, questi grandi platani verdi del viale, non strappati dalla vostra furia, ma ben piantati qua, che volgono a un soffio d’aria nell’oro del sole tra i bigi rami un fresco d’ombra violacea . . . Tutti gli passano avanti: automobile, biciclette, tram elettrici; e la furia di tanto moto per le strade sospinge anche lui, senza ch’esso lo sappia o lo voglia, gli sforza irresistibilmente le povere gambe anchilosate, affaticate nel trasporto, da un punto all’altro della grande città. . . . Povero cavalluccio, la testa gli s’abbassa di mano in mano, e non la rialza più—, neanche se tu lo frusti a sangue, vetturino!477 477 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 567; Mazzacurati reads this passage for its juxtaposition of perspectives: the automobile and the horse and carriage. The perspective from the car mirrors the effect of the film camera—images 259 but what have you seen? A carriage drop behind, as though pulled by a string, and the whole avenue rush past you in a long, confused, violent, dizzy streak. I, on the other hand, am still here; I can console myself for my slow progress by admiring one by one, at my leisure, these great green plane trees by the roadside, not uprooted by the hurricane of your passage, but firmly planted in the ground, which turn towards me at every breath of wind in the gold of the sunlight between their dark boughs a cool patch of violet shadow… Everything passes him by: motor-cars, bicycles, electric trams; and the frenzy of all that motion along the road urges him on as well, unconsciously and involuntarily, gives an irresistible impetus to his poor stiff legs, weary with conveying, from end to end of the great city, so many people…Poor little horse, his head droops gradually lower, and he never raises it again, not even if you play him with your whip, coachman!478 In the same way humans are made to operate mechanically, as in the dark room, the horse is swept up by the tempo of modern transportation that does not tire or wear with constant use. Serafino distinguishes two different perspectives here: the actresses’ riding in the automobile, and Serafino’s, who watches the car race by from the carriage. As Mazzacurati among others have noted, the automobile, like the film camera, “affolla le immagini in un coacervo confuso, indecifrabile, che non supporta più distinzione tra gli oggetti.”479 The speed at which the automobile travels along the street renders the objects that can be seen from the vehicle indistinguishable from one another. At stake with the intrusion of machinic elements into life, then, is the ability to know what one sees. Put differently, human perception cannot keep pace with the time of the machine and consequently fails the subject. Objects, including the body of the seeing subject, move too quickly through space for the eyes to pick out what goes by. are blurred, nothing can be distinguished from the thing beside it. From the carriage though, even the types of trees retain their integrity. See Giancarlo Mazzacurati, “Il doppio mondo di Serafino Gubbio,” in Pirandello nel romanzo europeo, 263–64. 478 Pirandello, Shoot!, 78–79. 479 Mazzacurati, Pirandello nel romanzo europeo, 263. 260 That does not mean, however, that the subject misses what is in front of them; the mind still records everything that passes. The difference is that, because of the speed at which these objects fly by, the subject cannot recognize what it sees. Speed distorts the image and the subject’s understanding of it.480 The actress in the car does not recognize the tree that she passes, but rather sees the blur of a landscape. What distances the actress from the tree in turn creates a gap in her knowledge of what she sees. Not only does her connection to nature go increasingly slack, but the gap in the recognition of what she sees grows larger. She will not be able to consciously recall which kinds of trees lined the street despite seeing them because of the speed at which these images passed by her. And yet, her mind still recorded the image of each of those trees individually. In other words, something that the subject does not know consciously can nevertheless exist internally. When the mind records something that cannot be registered in time because it moves too quickly or is too overwhelming, something of the outside world goes inside the subject’s psyche without being noticed by the conscious mind. Even though this knowledge might be unavailable to the conscious mind of the subject, it nevertheless remains a part of her. Angelini calls Pirandello’s juxtaposition of the “visione della macchina” to such natural elements as the beating of the heart and the gallop of a horse “una sintesi antifuturista” in the strictest sense, “perché [è] condotta con la stessa percezione spazio-temporale dei futuristi ma in termini valutativi rovesciati”481 Balla’s paintings and Bragaglia’s photography that attempt to visualize movement and speed come to mind above all. Where the Futurist aesthetic as the 480 This is similar, though perhaps not as lethal, as the way the perspective from the airplane changes the capabilities available to human perception. See the section titled “What is Perceived is already Lost” in chapter 2 for this discussion. 481 Angelini calls Quaderni “the first antifuturist novel.” See Angelini, “Si gira...: l’ideologia della macchina in Pirandello,” in Il romanzo di Pirandello, 152. See also Mazzacurati, “Il doppio mondo di Serafino Gubbio” in Pirandello nel romanzo europeo, 254-255. 261 “visione della macchina” valorizes its destructive consequences to the body, Pirandello’s critique of speed in particular calls attention to how these consequences are felt individually in the relationship between the body and mind. He uses terms like “vertiginoso” to highlight the sensation overload that comes with a surge in movement. Throughout the novel, other terms— fragore, vertigine, intronare, stordimento, sgomento—emphasize how the experience of movement debilitates or confuses the senses. “Fragore” and “intronare” specify an intensity of sound that nearly deafens, while “vertigine” describes the confusion of senses which makes it seem as if everything were spinning and leads to a loss of balance.482 “Stordimento” and “sgomento” refer to an overpowering of all senses simultaneously out of fear, amazement, or surprise and leads to a loss of their functioning entirely. Modern life, it would seem, overwhelms its subjects. Movement here takes on a double significance: it refers to the physical moving of objects as heightened speeds, and the abbreviated time it takes for information to arrive. Objects move more quickly through space, while subjects move more quickly through time as they are presented with more input in the form of information or images in a shorter amount of time than they were in the past. In both instances, the individual receives too much stimulus too soon. The story of the man with the violin and the perspective from the racing car demonstrate two significant effects of the mechanization of life on the human body: the first being the overwhelming of the senses; the second, a disconnection with the body. Whereas the Futurists welcomed a machinic takeover of the body, in the hopes that this would inhibit the effects of mortality, Pirandello casts this scenario as nightmarish.483 As machines become more and more 482 Vertigine: “turbamento del senso dell’equilibrio e della vista per cui sembra che ogni cosa si muova intorno.” See Garzanti, “Vertigine,” in Il nuovo dizionario italiano Garzanti, 989. 483 Costa among others argues that this novel should be read alongside Pirandello’s previous novels and successive plays as humoristic. However, I am not convinced that the circumstances of the violinist or of Serafino offer the same “sentimento del contrario” as Pascal’s or Moscarda’s do. The few scholars who take this argument up point 262 automated and take greater control of their own functions, humans inch closer to becoming their objects.484 The “silenzio di cosa” that Serafino endures is emblematic of this.485 The violinist and the racing actresses instead point to the effects that the mechanization of life has on the individual. Both suggest that the increasingly tighter imbrication of technology and life and its effects of objectification on the human changes the way individuals relate to and understand themselves. The relationship that Pirandello underscores with these examples is not so much about how the individual relates to the machine as it is about how one relates to him or herself as a subject in this “time of the machine.” The violin, as a prosthetic to the piano, interrupts the violinist’s relationship to himself and his anima. In not being able to express his anima through playing the violin, he loses a connection to and an understanding of himself as an artist. He carries the effects of this visibly on his body. Even his movements suggest to Serafino a warning, as if to say, “Fate largo! Fate largo! Vedete come la vita può ridurre il naso d’un uomo.”486 The violinist reacts to the dejecting confrontation with the piano at first with uncontrollable rage, which lands him in prison, and then by shutting down his affective capacities altogether and mostly to the Cavalena family and Aldo Nuti as representative of this humoristic element. While it is true that other people identify Serafino with the camera and hence he, much like Pascal and Moscarda, experiences this socially imposed identity that he would rather do without, that imposed identity does not cause him as much distress as does the interaction he has with the camera. Where as Il Fu Mattia Pascal and Uno, nessuno e centomila take society’s imposition of identity on the individual as the main problem that afflicts man, the Quaderni problematize specifically how one’s own identity affects how one relates to oneself. Pascal and Moscarda deal almost exclusively with how the individual subject manages the imposed identity with the felt identity; Serafino tries to come to terms with how to understand himself as a result of his identity as a camera operator and in relation to the machine. 484 Heidegger speaks about this possibility in his famous “The Question Concerning Technology.” See Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology” in Basic Writings: from Being and time (1927) to The task of thinking (1964). 485 I will address this point later on. For now, it is sufficient to notice that Serafino experiences the adoption of the characteristics of the camera, particularly its silence as an observer, at least in part as a negative reduction of his full capacities to that of an object—the hand. 486 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 533. 263 tying himself off from his emotions. Though the actresses appear happy and in control of the car, they are quite literally along for the ride. The car and its speed distort their vision and inebriate them—“il meccanismo le inebria e suscita in loro una così sfrenata vivacità”—which wrests control over what they experience from their hands and concedes it to the engine.487 Only Serafino and the horse perceive reality as it exists naturally, without any mechanical intervention, from the position of the slow-moving carriage. In both examples, the dissonance between what is experienced and what is available to the conscious mind creates a gap in the knowledge the subject has of a given event. The violinist’s encounter with the piano incapacitates his affects and his ability to relate to himself fully through connecting his internal sensations to his external form. The actress in the car has a similarly fragmented experience because what she can consciously recall is less than what she actually perceived. These incongruities in experience play out as a rupture between the body and mind that inhibit the subject from experiencing an event fully. This rupture in the body-mind connection threatens to undermine the understanding the subject has of himself. If the individual cannot recall a particular experience, because at the time they did not experience it fully, the subject cannot be said to know himself fully, or as completely as it is possible to know oneself. The same is true of the subject who cannot access her emotions, affects, or desires. Experience in these cases is stunted to say the least and fragmented in the most extreme situations. This is in part due to how consciousness mediates stimuli from the outside world. In Freud’s understanding of the psyche, consciousness stands between the inside and outside of the psyche as a barrier that protects the subject from being overwhelmed. In emotionally or physically overwhelming 487 The opening scene of Forse che sì forse che no characterizes the relationship between driver and automobile as enabling of the worst human impulses, in Tarsis’ case violence. 264 moments, though, the “incomprehensible outside of the self” has “already gone inside without the self’s mediation, hence without any relation to the self.”488 As such, the subject’s knowledge of himself and his experience are compromised, leaving him with unknown traces of experience that remain part of him but that he cannot access. This inability to experience an event in its totality is broadly understood as dissociation and refers to “a compartmentalization of experience,” where elements of that experience “are not integrated into a unitary whole or an integrated sense of self.”489 This raises the question, what is the relationship between the experience Serafino has with working with the camera, which is described as a sort of dissociation, and the effects of trauma that he suffers following the death of Nuti and Nestoroff? To get closer to a response to this question, I draw on the clinical research undertaken by Bessel Van der Kolk, Alexander McFarlane, and Lars Weisaeth with people who suffer from PTSD. It is to these findings that I now turn. The Compartmentalization of Experience: Between Dissociation and Trauma Trials of different therapies on real patients and brain imaging reveals that what actually happens at the physiological level in a traumatic event is “the breaking down of a set of relations.” 490 In the moment of crisis, the psyche experiences a “disruption of an associative process” that would normally pair knowledge of the event with whatever the body experiences in the moment.491 An overwhelming of the consciousness causes the integrative functions of the 488 Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 159, n. 5. 489 Bessel Van der Kolk, Onno Van der Hart, and Charles R. Marmar, “Dissociation and Information Processing in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” in Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society, 306. 490 Van der Kolk, “The Body Keeps the Score: An Interview with Bessel Van der Kolk,” 159. 491 Van der Kolk, 159. 265 brain to malfunction and for fragments of the experience to remain untethered from time and knowledge. The parts of the brain responsible for putting pieces of lived experience together and producing memory cease to operate and leave the subject with recorded material that lacks a context. With these pieces scattered across the body and mind, the subject cannot construct a complete narrative. As a result, the subject has an uncontrollable memory of sensations alongside an inaccessible context in which to locate them, that allows them to resurface any time a triggering situation occurs. This coexistence of hypermnesia (enhanced memory) and amnesia (inability to remember) disrupts the subject’s corporeal experience from consciousness and precludes a more complete recognition of the self. In addition, their findings suggest that trauma is felt most forcefully in the “spatial/emotional part of the brain” rather than in the analytic or verbal areas.492 During a flashback, brain scans showed that part of the patient’s brain, “the left hemisphere responsible for translating personal experience into communicable language—‘turned off.’”493 The traumatized subject loses the ability to formulate communicative speech about the event and instead has a tendency “to experience emotions as physical states rather than as verbally encoded experiences.”494 The experience of trauma effectively shuts down the “symbolic brain” and short circuits the subject’s ability to express what happened in words.495 In writing about his engagement with the camera, Serafino describes an experience of dissociation that calls to mind what Van der Kolk describes in his studies of trauma. Serafino thinks about his daily routine of picking up the camera as a severing of his intellectual-emotional 492 Van der Kolk, “The Body Keeps the Score: An Interview with Bessel Van der Kolk,” 164. 493 Van der Kolk, “Trauma and Memory,” in Traumatic Stress, 293. 494 Van der Kolk, Traumatic Stress, 293. 495 A problem not just for survivors of trauma but students of literature as well. Van der Kolk, “The Body Keeps the Score: An Interview with Bessel Van der Kolk,” 164. 266 life from his physical body. Not only does he experience a dissociated reality, he becomes dissociated from himself in the process: Quando poi, alla fine, sono reintegrato, cioè quando per me il supplizio d’esser soltanto una mano finisce, e posso riacquistare tutto il mio corpo, e meravigliarmi d’avere ancora su le spalle una testa, e riabbandonarmi a quello sciagurato superfluo che è pure in me e di cui per quasi tutto il giorno la mia professione mi condanna a esser privo; allora...eh, allora gli affetti, i ricordi che mi si ridestano dentro, non sono tali certo, che possano persuadermi ad amare questa donna.496 When, finally, I am restored to myself, that is to say when for me the torture of being only a hand is ended, and I can regain possession of the rest of my body, and marvel that I have still a head on my shoulders, and abandon myself once more to that wretched superfluity which exists in me nevertheless and of which for almost the whole day my profession condemns me to be deprived; then…ah, then the affections, the memories that come to life in me are certainly not such as can persuade me to love this woman.497 The psychosomatic refiguration he undergoes following a day’s work cannot help but call to mind the assembly of another machine, or perhaps the systematic activation of a factory. He repetitiously “reintegrates,” “regains,” “reawakens” his body, affects, and memories, as if he were a machine approximating human life. Yet, he is quite the opposite; he is a human approximating machine life. Every time he picks up the camera, he denies the very thing that film is meant to capture—life. The machine obliges him to act as if he had no internal or mental reality. The distancing of the emotional aspects of himself from the physical aspects causes him the most distress. As opposed to the factory worker of the next decade, Serafino’s stress does not come from being pushed to perform like a machine. His instead emanates from the incongruity between his internal experience and his physical experience. The journals and especially the 496 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 555. Serafino often refers to Nestoroff as “questa donna.” 497 Pirandello, Shoot!, 58. 267 asides such as this one attest to the dissociative side effects of engaging with modern machinery on the body-mind connection. Working with the camera additionally distances his body from its integral parts. When he writes that he has become “soltanto una mano” and that his legs, arms, and even head become part of the camera, they do not travel together. The machine compartmentalizes the human body into utilizable parts.498 These pieces work independently of one another as if the camera were controlling each of them individually and not as a single body. So when he puts the camera down, it is almost shocking to him that he has a head on his shoulders (“ancora”). It is perhaps due to this additional layer of dissociation that Serafino can write with such detail about his experience. Van der Kolk among others distinguishes Secondary Dissociation as a “further disintegration of elements of the personal experience.”499 In some cases, someone who has lived through an overwhelming experience may be able to recount factually what happened to them without associating any sensations with the experience. It is as if they were there only as an observer. However, this does not mean that they have fully integrated the experience into their personal narrative but further demonstrates the extent of its impact. Because the information of the event is so far removed from the sensations felt during it, the subject can discuss the event as if it did not happen to them even if they know consciously that it did. Dissociation, or a compartmentalization of experience, appears at the center of the rupture in the body-mind connection in trauma, but also in the effects of mundane experiences of modern life, as the examples of the violinist, the actresses in the car, and Serafino’s own 498 This strategy is the very same Mafarka uses to isolate the usefulness of the female womb and appropriate its maternal function for his own masculinist purposes. It is not surprising that this strategy appears here as part of the machine’s logic. 499 Van der Kolk, van der Hart, and Marmar, “Dissociation and Information Processing in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” in Traumatic Stress, 307. 268 engagement with the camera show. Whereas the violinist shuts down, becoming detached from the expression of his anima and hence from his emotions, the actresses’ perception of reality is separated from its actuality. Both scenarios leave the individual with only a partial experience, an incomplete knowledge of what they have experience.500 The mechanization of life that compels Serafino to pick up a pen to write his journals affects how he externalizes emotions and how he internalizes information. By mediating the barrier between the internal life of the subject and the external world, technology mediates how the subject relates to him or herself by interfering with how (internal and external) stimuli are processed. Dissociation, as the parceling of experience, particularly into corporeal and mental categories, appears as a more appropriate name than alienation for what afflicts Serafino and what he hopes to vindicate through writing. And yet, it appears as if Serafino is able to see and know more about modern life than others because of the effects of this dissociation. Between Subject and Object: The Brightside of Dissociation in the Time of the Machine A closer look at the opening passages suggests an intimate relationship between Serafino’s dissociated relation to himself and the act of writing, where dissociation both enables a certain form of sight and disables an emotional response. In the opening paragraphs, Serafino describes his “più forte passione”: people watching. 501 He studies pedestrians as they go about their most ordinary activities and notes in particular their gestures and how their eyes respond to his: 500 Caruth speaks about this as a “missed experience” in regard to trauma survivors. 501 This opening line calls to mind the preface to Verga’s I malavoglia, which reads: “Questo racconto è lo studio sincero e spassionato del come probabilmente devono nascere e svilupparsi nelle più umili condizioni, le prime irrequietudini pel benessere…” 269 Studio la gente nelle sue più ordinarie occupazioni, se mi riesca di scoprire negli altri quello che manca a me per ogni cosa ch’io faccia: la certezza che capiscano ciò che fanno. In prima, sì, mi sembra che molti l’abbiano, dal modo come tra loro si guardano e si salutano, correndo di qua, di là, dietro alle loro faccende o ai loro capricci. Ma poi, se mi fermo a guardarli un po’ addentro negli occhi con questi miei occhi intenti e silenziosi, ecco che subito s’aombrano. Taluni anzi si smarriscono in una perplessità così inquieta, che se per poco io seguitassi a scrutarli, m’ingiurierebbero o m’aggredirebbero. No, via, tranquilli. Mi basta questo: sapere, signori, che non è chiaro né certo neanche a voi neppur quel poco che vi viene a mano a mano determinato dalle consuetissime condizioni in cui vivete. C’è un oltre in tutto. Voi non volete o non sapete vederlo. Ma appena appena quest’oltre baleni negli occhi d’un ozioso come me, che si metta a osservarvi, ecco, vi smarrite, vi turbate o irritate. Conosco anch’io il congegno esterno, vorrei dir meccanico della vita che fragorosamente e vertiginosamente ci affaccenda senza requie . . . Nessuno ha tempo o modo d’arrestarsi un momento a considerare, se quel che vede fare agli altri, quel che lui stesso fa, sia veramente ciò che sopra tutto gli convenga, ciò che gli possa dare quella certezza vera, nella quale solamente potrebbe trovar riposo. Il riposo che ci è dato dopo tanto fragore e tanta vertigine è gravato da tale stanchezza, intronato da tanto stordimento, che non ci è più possibile raccoglierci un minuto a pensare. 502 I study people in their most ordinary occupations, to see if I can succeed in discovering what I feel that I myself lack in everything that I do: the certainty that they understand what they are doing. At first sight, it does indeed seem as though many of them had this certainty, from the way in which they look at and greet one another, hurrying to and fro in pursuit of their business or their pleasure. But afterwards, if I stop and gaze for a moment in their eyes with my own intent and silent eyes, at once they begin to take offense. Some of them, in fact, are so disturbed and perplexed that I have only to keep on gazing at them for a little longer, for them to insult or assault me. No, go your ways in peace. This is enough for me: to know, gentlemen, that there is nothing clear or certain to you either, not even the little that is determined for you from time to time by the absolutely familiar conditions in which you are living. There is something more in everything. You do not wish or do not know how to see it. But the moment this something more gleams in the eyes of an idle person like myself, who has set himself to observe you, why, you become puzzled, disturbed or irritated. I too am acquainted with the external, that is to say, the mechanical framework of the life which keeps us clamorously and dizzily occupied and gives us no rest…No one has the time or the capacity to stop for a moment to consider whether what he sees other people do, what he does himself, is really the right 502 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 519–20, emphasis in original. 270 thing, that the thing that can give him the absolute certainty, in which alone a man can find rest. The rest that is given us after all the clamor and dizziness is burdened with such a load of weariness, so stunned and deafened, that it is no longer possible for us to snatch a moment for thought.503 Superficially, these busy people seem to have a certainty about what they are doing; they have plans, meetings, and not enough time to do everything they want to or think they have to do. Serafino observes how they greet each other in passing with a brief salutation followed by an explanation of why they are in such a hurry. Serafino links this desire to pack each day with productive activities to what he calls the “superfluo”: a uniquely human characteristic, neither machines nor animals have this “something extra.” It may be described as a drive to create, to make things that are not necessary for the survival of the subject or species but that make living an indulgent activity. It allows humans to do or make things purely in the service of their affects, to make themselves happy or distract them from being unhappy. Compared to what animals are endowed with, it is something superfluous to the needs of living.504 Though it seems an innocuous enough quality, Serafino notes how it condemns humans to perpetual discontent: “un superfluo, che di continuo inutilmente li tormenta, non facendoli mai paghi di nessuna condizione e sempre lasciandoli incerti del loro destino.”505 The people on the street run after their affairs and whims not because they control them, or even possess them, but because they are compelled by them. In addition to the compulsion to chase their desires, in this time of the machine people try to mimic the efficiency of modern technology. Confronted with the perfection of machines, humans are painfully aware of their own imperfect actions and seek 503 Pirandello, Shoot!, 3–4. 504 In Nietzschean terms, we might associate this superfluo especially with “the last man” who mistakes contentment for true happiness. See the section “Nietzschean Overtones: Inspiration and Man’s Highest Hope” in the previous chapter. 505 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 526. 271 to ameliorate this by approximating machine efficiency and precision. In this respect, the inconsistency of the journals might also be an unconscious response to the kind of perfection demanded of Serafino by the camera. However, as the pedestrians’ experiences attest to, any attempt to approximate the precision of the machine produces a frenetic movement rather than the product they truly seek—certainty in their actions. Serafino’s immobility and impassivity distinguishes him from the bustling bodies that populate the modern-day sidewalk. In this opening passage, he seems to have already taken on the characteristics of the camera, especially its silent gaze and motionless position. This is especially visible in his eyes, “intenti e silenziosi” that seem to unnerve the people he watches. What angers some, more than the fact of being watched, may be what they see watching them. Different from the other people who hurry by, Serafino remains silent, fixed in his position, and unperturbed; his eyes do not offer any emotional connection that the eyes of others most likely do. Recall that when he works with the camera, he is shut off from his “superfluo” and all that comes with it—his affects, memories, desires, etc. In this sense, he already exhibits characteristics of the camera lens in its unresponsive gaze that records without offering anything in return.506 From what perspective, then, might Serafino be called “un ozioso”? Defined as a person, “che si astiene da ogni occupazione utile, inattiva, inoperosa, per pigrizia o anche per necessità, per bisogno di riposare,” Serafino uses the word apparently to highlight his own silently fixed position vis-à-vis those he watches.507 But does he believe it himself? How can Serafino consider 506 Mazzacurati makes a similar point saying that “intenti” signifies “un’immobilità senza emozione, che scruta senza lasciarsi scrutare e perciò dissemina inquietudine, incertezza, infine reazioni adirate, perché non dà luogo a scambio, assorbe soltanto e dunque domina, irretisce, imprigiona, proprio come la macchina assorbe gli attori e le loro vite nel proprio ventre oscuro.” See Mazzacurati, “Il doppio mondo di Serafino Gubbio,” 249. 507 Treccani Encyclopedia, “ozioso.” 272 himself a person who “abstains from every useful occupation,” as “inactive,” if he is part of a machine which is, by its own definition, something useful?508 The choice of this word suggests the fraught relation Serafino has with the camera as a machine. He is at once replaced by it as an observer and recorder of events, and yet, in his very replacement, acquires abilities that enable him to see more than he could before engaging with the camera as its operator. What remains unclear is the extent of his likeness to a machine in the opening chapter and what his approximation to the film camera allows him to do. Many scholars read the journals as a form of documentation of what Serafino sees in his capacity as an impassive observer.509 Corrado Donati notes in particular the mix of narrative modes that Serafino uses to relay his observations. Initially, Serafino addresses the reader directly, “come ad un ipotetico, silenzioso interlocutore, chiamandolo per così dire al ruolo di testimone di secondo grado.” 510 Not long after, though, he lends the word to other characters as if he were omniscient and writes as if he knew what they were thinking. Serafino’s address to figures from the past and anticipation of events that have yet to happen in the text further complicates the temporality of the novel. Most scholars read this mélange of narrative inconsistencies as a form of cinematic recounting, especially in the way that time skips, rewinds, and jumps ahead of itself. Franca Angelini for example argues that “il diario funziona qui da 508 Treccani Encyclopedia defines “macchina” as: “qualsiasi dispositivo o apparecchio costruito collegando opportunamente due o più elementi in modo che il moto relativo di questi trasmetta o anche amplifichi la forza umana o animale o forze naturali (come quelle prodotte dall’acqua e dal vento), e capace di compiere operazioni predeterminate con risparmio di fatica o di tempo,” thus highlighting the fact of its creation for a specific purpose in augmenting human capability. 509 The majority of scholars also read the novel as taking place after the final scene, which implies that Serafino is already mute in the opening passage. 510 He goes on to argue that Serafino’s silence is the physical correlative of his impassivity and suggests that this mutism is a choice. See Donati, “‘Persona’ e scrittura in tre romanzi di Pirandello: Pascal, Gubbio e Moscarda interpreti della crisi dell’Io,” in La ‘persona’ nell'opera di Luigi Pirandello: atti del XXIII Convegno internazionale, Agrigento, 6-10 dicembre 1989, 291–95. 273 omologo narrativo del film” in the way that it “registra impassibile (o almeno ci prova), ingrandisce, isola, dispone il tempo nella linea della sequenza, anticipa con un’immagine lo svolgimento dell’azione, usa il flash-back.” 511 Such a reading of the journals as cinematic, though, rests on the assumption that Serafino has already gone mute when he begins writing and that he stays a mere recorder throughout the novel. Indeed, Angelini goes on to say that, “Serafino è solo un filo conduttore di temi ideologici, una coscienza che registra la crisi e una scrittura che comunica l’impossibile comunicazione.”512 Mazzacurati too attributes this kind of writing to the supplantation of Serafino by the camera as the thing that observes. Regarding the opening passages, he suggests that the first chapter, which posits Serafino as somehow different from the people he watches, does not offer a portrait of Serafino as a subject but rather as already the object of the camera, “già…accessorio di un oggetto.”513 However, this argument neglects to consider what is at stake in Serafino’s gaze. A closer look at the object of Serafino’s attention in this passage reveals that he is not simply recording but is in fact searching: “Studio la gente …se mi riesca di scoprire negli altri quello che manca a me per ogni cosa ch’io faccia: la certezza che capiscano ciò che fanno.” 514 For this reason, it would be mistaken to assume that all of the journals, but especially the first one, were written retrospectively. If he had written the opening chapter after he had witnessed the violent scene, then he would not take interest in the people he watches or follow his passion of searching for certainty in them. After he witnesses the unexpected and gruesome 511 Angelini, “Si gira...: l’ideologia della macchina in Pirandello,” 143. 512 Angelini argues that this is an intentional move on Pirandello’s part: by appropriating strategies and aesthetics from cinema, he criticizes it as an art form and draws attention to the ways it feigns objective observation. She also points to the letter Pirandello wrote to Bragaglia. Angelini, “Si gira...: l’ideologia della macchina in Pirandello,” 148. 513 Mazzacurati, “Il doppio mondo di Serafino Gubbio,” 251. 514 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 519, my emphasis. 274 deaths of Nestoroff and Nuti, Serafino goes mute and becomes fully cut off from his affects. In the opening passage, though, however much he already resembles a camera lens, he nevertheless engages with his superfluo as is indicated by his clear desire to know more about the people he watches.515 I suggest that the dissociation Serafino feels in working with the film camera should be considered separately from the state of being he goes into following the traumatic event which costs him his voice. While I agree that the effects of both experiences share a striking similarity, conflating the effects of working as an operator and those which occur following the traumatic event precludes a full understanding of the effects of either situation. In what follows, I treat these situations as distinguishable experiences and pay attention to the differences in their effects on Serafino—the most important being the simultaneous opening of an enhanced perception and the closing off of affective aspects of the self. The dissociation of his affects and body paradoxically grants him insight into how the intrusion of mechanical technology into life disrupts the subject’s relation to and understanding of himself and his actions. Serafino refers to the truth of this situation as the “oltre,” as something beyond what is readily perceivable about modern life. In Serafino’s case, however, the sequestration of his emotions from his perception allows him to observe how others struggle to understand what it is they do in this “time of the machine.” Whereas others believe uncritically 515 In arguing for this reading, however, critics ignore the vulnerable moments in his writing and the fluctuation of sentiments that he endures over the course of the journals. As Baldi points out, Serafino is by no means a purely objective observer or narrator, and he does not remain impassive throughout despite how much he insists on it. Serafino’s romantic interest in Luisetta causes him such suffering that he abandons his resolution to abstain from social life and goes to visit Ducella in the hopes of convincing her to take Nuti back and free up Luisetta’s love for himself. Even in the opening passage, on which most of such readings are based, Serafino wants something from the people he watches. He wants to know if they too are uncertain of themselves, if they too feel as if modern life prohibits them from understanding what is good for them. See Baldi, Pirandello e il romanzo, 128. 275 in the perceived positive effects of the technologization of life and what it affords their superfluo, Serafino sees how this mechanization interferes in the relationships people have with themselves and others. Through the use of the camera, he acquires the ability to see the “oltre” while others either cannot see it at all or refuse to even try. Yet, he does not possess this truth as his own; he is only able to glimpse it and recognize it as such.516 Reflecting on the opening passage, what is remarkable about Serafino vis-à-vis the people he watches is the incongruity between his impassive stare and the internal distress that he feels. The dissociation as an effect of working with the camera apparently allows him to see this struggle in others and yet does not exempt him from it. Serafino’s comment that he lacks the same certainty of action betrays a connection, albeit deteriorated, to the superfluo. Whereas the superfluo of the people on the street manifests in their trying to reach a certain machinic perfection, Serafino’s superfluo manifests in his study of people and search for a certainty of 516 He only glimpses it as it flashes (“baleni”) in his eyes: “C’è un oltre in tutto. Voi non volete o non sapete vederlo. Ma appena appena quest’oltre baleni negli occhi d’un ozioso come me, che si metta a osservarvi, ecco, vi smarrite, vi turbate o irritate” (Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 519) (“There is something more in everything. You do not wish or do not know how to see it. But the moment this something more gleams in the eyes of an idle person like myself, who has set himself to observe you, why, you become puzzled, disturbed or irritated” Pirandello, Shoot!, 4). Here, the figure of the flash conflates seeing/visibility with knowledge/conscious acknowledgement and points to the revelatory aspects of Serafino’s dissociation. The oltre as the truth of the effects of the technologization of life that flashes in Serafino’s silent eyes angers the people who see it; it irritates them and puts them off much like an unexpected burst of light would. The oltre, as a truth, is felt and not told. It is not a truth that Serafino owns but that he nevertheless bears witness too. In flashing across his eyes, the oltre breaches the barrier of his impassivity and affects others. Serafino uses this verb in other moments of the novel almost exclusively to refer to feelings or sensations that cannot or are not verbalized but are nevertheless felt. Significantly, the threat that Giorgio’s ghost poses to Nestoroff and Nene’s jealous fury are both figured as “flashes” that Serafino sees flicker across the faces or minds of others. In this way, the flash might more properly be called a figure for breaching in its various forms but especially as the breach of consciousness—as the external that goes inside without mediation, thereby causing surprise if not trauma; or as the unconscious breaks through to consciousness. This reading is consistent with how Serafino describes modernity as the technologization of life through a vocabulary that implies a sudden action that disorients the subject. The oltre, then, is the truth that breaks through to consciousness and the brevity that accompanies its appearance figures its inability to be possessed. Baer similarly reads the flash in his study on photography and trauma: “The flash creates a physical disorientation that corresponds on an experiential level to the philosophical ‘disturbance to civilization’ produced by looking at the photograph, which signals the ‘advent of yourself as other.’” Ulrich Baer, Spectral Evidence: The Photography of Trauma (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002), 34. 276 action in others. The very core of each of these actions, though, is the same. Both the pedestrian and the operator search for an external affirmation of himself and his actions. In this process, though, they risk further distancing themselves from the very thing that could give them a sense of certainty: an understanding of the self. Said differently, searching for affirmation elsewhere instead of in a personal understanding of oneself and one’s actions, man comes dangerously close to losing contact with himself entirely. This is in part what happens to Serafino. Other clear examples of this appear in the saga Nestoroff leaves in her wake, the Cavalena family, and in film. Serafino differs from the pedestrians and these other characters in his ability to recognize his own uncertainty and points to how the use of technology overdevelops the superfluo inside man. The dissociation Serafino feels as a result of working with the camera, becoming more and more “solo una cosa,” allows him to observe others in more detail and see into the motivations of their actions in ways that evade most if not all others. The journals act a sfogo or relief from this dissociated state he is put into by the camera; but in writing them, Serafino nevertheless utilizes the heighted perception he is granted through this dissociated state. This returns us to the question, what purpose do the journals serve? Are they simply an outlet of Serafino’s frustrations or do they bear witness to something more profound? Before taking this question up, a brief detour through the importance of the superfluo and its relation to the technologization of life that Serafino addresses in his journals is needed to understand the significance that these writings have for our understanding of modernity. “Viva la Macchina che meccanizza la vita!”: The Machinic Nature of the Superfluo 277 Serafino first comments on the superfluo as a “malattia” that manifests in Simone Pau in his tendency to philosophize: “Ho anch’io - inestirpabilmente radicata nel più profondo del mio essere - la stessa malattia dell’amico mio.” He likens the superfluo to an instinctual compulsion that works beyond consciousness and not necessarily for the good of the subject: Superfluo inesplicabile, chi per darsi uno sfogo crea nella natura un mondo fittizio, che ha senso e valore soltanto per essi, ma di cui pur essi medesimi non sanno e non possono mai contentarsi, cosicché senza posa smaniosamente lo mutano e rimutano, come quello che, essendo da loro stessi costruito per il bisogno di spiegare e sfogare un’attività di cui non si vede né il fine né la ragione, accresce e còmplica sempre più il loro tormento, allontanandoli da quelle semplici condizioni poste da natura alla vita su la terra, alle quali soltanto i bruti sanno restar fedeli e obbedienti. Intendo dire, che su la terra l’uomo è destinato a star male, perché ha in sé più di quanto basta per starci bene, cioè in pace e pago…Tanto peggio poi l’uomo vi sta, quanto più vuole impiegare su la terra stessa in smaniose costruzioni e complicazioni il suo superfluo. Lo so io, che giro una manovella. 517 An inexplicable superfluity, which, to afford itself an outlet, creates in nature an artificial world, a world that has a meaning and a value for them alone and yet one with which they themselves cannot ever be content, so that without pause they keep on frantically arranging and rearranging it, like a thing which, having been fashioned by themselves from a need to extend and relieve an activity of which they neither the end nor the reason, increases and complicates evermore and more their torments, carrying them farther the simple conditions laid down by nature for life on this earth, conditions to which only dumb animals know how to remain faithful and obedient. What I mean is, that on this earth man is destined to fare ill, because he has in him more than is sufficient for him to fare well, that is to say in peace and contentment… So much the worse, then, does man fare, the more he seeks to employ, upon the earth itself, in frantic constructions and complications, his own superfluity. This I know, I who turn a handle.518 517 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 526–27. 518 Pirandello, Shoot!, 15–16. 278 It is important to note here that he, as the one who turns the handle, sees this trait in others because he is like an animal or a brute removed from it. He sees it in Simone Pau, who believes himself to be liberated from the superfluo because he lives a minimalist lifestyle, “come un lumacone ignudo.” Compared to Simone, Serafino thinks himself liberated from the superfluo because of his experience with the camera and its dissociative effects that leave him impassive and distanced from his affects. However, the superfluo distinguishes humans from animals and machines. So it is significant that, in comparing himself to his friend, Serafino says that he knows this to be true because he turns the handle. Said differently, being so far removed from his own superfluo, Serafino can see clearly how the people on the street participate in and feed their superfluo through constant engagement with technology and with the kind of society that technology has helped to build. Being closer to a machine, without actually being one, allows him to see how the superfluo functions in others. The superfluo is a key figure for understanding Serafino’s condition and his relation to writing because it at once distinguishes humans from machines and animals and is responsible for an incessant torment that humans repeat ad nauseum. Technology, be it automobiles, planes, telephones, or film, exacerbates the compulsion and effects of the superfluo. As Serafino says early on, man has moved beyond his poetic tendencies and thrown aside his affects as useless, harmful encumbrances. The subject becomes modern through an increased entanglement with and subjection to technology that demands a distancing from one’s affective reality, which in turn precludes an understanding of the self and one’s actions. Modern man “s’è messo a fabbricar di ferro, d’acciajo le sue nuove divinità ed è diventato servo e schiavo di esse.”519 519 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 523. 279 Through technological development, man hopes to reach the stars and so gives as much of himself as possible to the machine in the form of his soul and life, “l’anima e la vita.” The result? “Ecco qua: in pezzetti e bocconcini, tutti d’uno stampo, stupidi e precisi, da farne, a metterli sù, uno su l’altro, una piramide che potrebbe arrivare alle stelle. Ma che stelle, no, signori! Non ci credete. Neppure all’altezza d’un palo telegrafico.” 520 In this aside, Serafino points to the tension between a kind of non-logic that humans operate by and the systematic logic of survival that Pirandello assigns to both machines and animals. What Angelini calls the “l’aggressività bestiale” links the kind of animals that appear as survivors in the novel and machines that come to overpower man. Recall that Serafino often calls the camera a carnivorous spider. When describing “the beast” in his elaboration of the superfluo, Serafino argues that the human cannot fault it for devouring a man because it is in its nature and the beast does it out of necessity. When Pirandello describes the camera as a spider, and the printing press as a hippopotamus, then, he seems to suggest that humans should equally not fault the machine for its own logic, for operating in its own interests rather than in the interests of man. Compared to the self-sufficient logic of survival found in the animal and the machine, the non-logic of the superfluo appears rather as a self-sabotaging impulse. In L’umorismo, Pirandello offers an explanation for how such an impulse like the superfluo may be tied to logic and the exceedingly human desire to assign significance: L’[uomo] ajuta in questo una certa macchinetta infernale che la natura volle regalargli, aggiustandogliela dentro…La chiamano LOGICA i signori filosofi. Il cervello pompa con essa i sentimenti dal cuore, e ne cava idee. Attraverso il filtro, il sentimento lascia quanto ha in sé di caldo, di torbido: si refrigera, si purifica, si i-de-a-liz-za. Un povero sentimento, così, destato da un caso particolare, da una contingenza qualsiasi, spesso dolorosa, pompato e filtrato dal cervello per mezzo 520 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 523. 280 di quella macchinetta, diviene idea astratta generale… [L]a logica, astraendo dai sentimenti le idee, tende appunto a fissare quel che è mobile, mutabile, flùido; tende a dare un valore assoluto a ciò che è relativo. E aggrava un male già grave per sé stesso. Perché la prima radice del nostro male è appunto in questo sentimento che noi abbiamo della vita.521 [Man] is helped in this by a certain devilish machine that nature chose to give him and to fix inside him…LOGIC is what our revered philosophers call it. The brain uses it to pump the emotions from the heart and to extract ideas from them. In passing through its filter, the emotions leave behind whatever they contain that is heated and troubled: they cool, purify, and i-de-al-ize themselves. Thus, a poor emotion—which initially is evoked by a particular event or by circumstances that are often painful—becomes a generalized and abstract idea once it is pumped and filtered by the brain through the little machine…[L]ogic, by abstracting ideas from emotions, tends precisely to fix what is changeable and fluid. It tends to give an absolute value to what is relative, and thus is aggravates an ill which is already serious in itself since the prime root of our ills consists precisely in this feeling that we have of life.522 Logic and the search for forma—for fixity and, in the novel, the certainty of action—are tied to the superfluo and to consciousness (“questo sentimento che noi abbiamo della vita”). The desire to arrest what is mobile and fluid, which is to say life (vita), or what Serafino in other moments calls anima, is tied to a desire to make sense of life and control it. Consciousness is employed to try to understand actions, emotions, and relations between people as if those things followed a pattern, as if there were one explanation for the affective nature of humanity. Through logic, humans inadvertently destroy life by trying to understand it in terms that cannot grasp it. Life resists the imposition of logic and form, or, as Serafino puts it, “la vita non si spiega; si vive.” As humans attempt to impose logic onto the chaotic world that surrounds them, the superfluo works in the background to understand the subject itself. Serafino’s insight into this inherently human property points out that art, as self-expression made possible through 521 Pirandello, L’umorismo, 162–63, my emphasis. 522 Pirandello, On Humor, 139–40, my emphasis. 281 prosthetic means, and the kind of mechanical reproduction of life exemplified in film, may both be attributed to the superfluo. The likeness of these activities, to which humanity appears inescapably drawn, creates confusion of the two and leads to the production of artifacts that are not conducive to human life.523 Language too, as a means by which to make sense of and order the world, may be attributed to the dual compulsion of the superfluo to create and to understand. The same characteristic that makes humans unique also condemns them to a consistently agitated life. In seeking out new ways of expressing the superfluo, humanity distances itself entirely from what it tries to express in the first place: a well-defined, cohesive subjectivity. The superfluo as a function of consciousness appears “irremovably rooted” in human nature. And yet, it operates in a surprisingly mechanical way. It repeats the same function incessantly, regardless of the effects it has on the human psyche or body. The pedestrians on the street search for a certainty of their actions through more movement and productivity; Serafino desperately studies others for a sign that someone, anyone, might have found peace in knowing oneself. Eventually though, the pedestrians will not be able to keep pace with the time or action of the machine; their minds and bodies will break down under the constant pressure to perform and the lack of rest. As much as man may want to embrace this tendency towards mechanization 523 In “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Benjamin discusses these two iterations in terms of the auratic experience of art as different from the shock experience of mechanically reproduced images. Many scholars have argued that this is a central theme to the novel: the definition of art and Pirandello’s critique of film as something besides art. While this does appear as a key theme, I argue that this novel has more to say about the choices people make in deciding how to express themselves. This is clearly pictured in the distinction between the violinist, Giorgio, and Serafino. Each expresses himself in recognizably artistic ways—through music, painting, and writing. But Serafino is the only one we could call a modern subject since the other two remove themselves entirely from the world or shut themselves off from their affects, both of which amounts to a certain kind of death. Serafino only survives somewhat intact by sacrificing a part of himself in the loss of his voice and a full connection to his affects. 282 that the superfluo provides, and indeed instigates, human nature remains too organic in both speed and material to compete with or even approximate the modern machine. Both Pirandello and Freud suggest a reason for this duality of the superfluo and its oscillation between a machinic logic and affective expression, and that is its possible origin in the death drive.524 Pirandello thought that most of human pain and suffering originates with consciousness, or the ability to “feel oneself alive” (“sentirsi vivere”). In Freud’s model of the psyche, consciousness itself is motivated by a desire for death. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), the psychoanalyst postulates that consciousness arose out of an inanimate organism as a way to shield itself from external stimuli. In so doing, the primary instinct behind consciousness is “the instinct to return to the inanimate state.”525 Other instincts that seem to support the continuation of life, like that of “self-preservation, of self-assertion, and of mastery,” instead are “component instincts whose function it is to assure that the organism shall follow its own path to death, and to ward off any possible ways of returning to inorganic existence other than those which are immanent in the organism itself.”526 The reason the subject “struggles most energetically” against situations and events that pose a threat to the subject’s life is because she instinctually wishes “to die only in [his] own fashion.”527 The superfluo as it is described by Serafino appears to be a manifestation of the death drive. As the compulsion to create and to make sense of the world, the superfluo drives humans to become masters over their reality and, in so doing, over their own destinies. If the subject controls the world that they experience, through knowledge and intervention, he will be able to 524 Pirandello did not know Freud’s work but was familiar with Binet’s. See Macchia’s introduction to Tutti i romanzi. 525 Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 46. 526 Freud, 47. 527 Freud, 47. 283 die in his own way due to internal circumstances rather than external ones. So while the superfluo is responsible for such things as art and it distinguishes humans from animals and machines, it also predisposes humans to death through exhaustion by compelling them to exert themselves beyond their physical and intellectual capacities in a destructive search for control over their environment.528 We are now in a position to say something more about the status of the journals. The journals, as a space in which Serafino satisfies an overpowering “need to let off steam” participate in the exercise of the superfluo and specifically in Serafino’s quest to understand himself the way he can understand others. Rest appears as a necessary condition for self- knowledge that is gravely impacted by the intrusion of machinic technologies into life.529 In the figure of Serafino, though, a certain surrender to the machine’s negative impact on human experience has enabled him to “rest” and to find, to some degree, a knowledge inaccessible to others in the oltre. Serafino is able to rest—to remain immobile and silent, “un ozioso”—because he has given into the demands of the camera. Yet his inertness is only skin deep. What disturbs the pedestrians, which he can see through their hurried movements, disturbs him as well but does not manifest with as visible a symptom. The same frenzy that drains people of their energy and time affects Serafino internally. Instead, the dissociation of his mind and body doubles. Despite knowing the truth of technologization and being able to see the oltre, he remains uncertain of what he does, and this uncertainty distresses him. His ability to see the oltre, in other words, does not grant him additional insight into his own self. Dissociation closes off access to the affective 528 A question that comes up is how can the superfluo be tied to the death drive and also allow for the possibility of testimony? 529 As Serafino notes in the opening passage, “Nessuno ha tempo o modo d’arrestarsi un momento a considerare, se quel che vede fare agli altri, quel che lui stesso fa, sia veramente ciò che sopra tutto gli convenga, ciò che gli possa dare quella certezza vera, nella quale solamente potrebbe trovar riposo.” 284 aspects of the self and heightens his critical potential by negating all emotions that would cloud the study of others but does not permit him to see into himself quite as clearly. Serafino’s writing of the journals then may be seen as an attempt to shift into the world of address. Whereas many scholars disregard this action as the simple recording of what he observes as a replicant camera, this act of writing offers him a way to speak through the dissociative effects of working with the camera and address another.530 Serafino’s becoming an appendage to the machine has its perks—it gives him access to the oltre; allows him to understand people more deeply than others; and offers refuge from the “realtà degredata”—but it does not grant him the ability to write. He does this in spite of the dissociation he experiences as an operator. In using the hand that turns the handle to pick up the pen, Serafino defies the demand of the machine to be “solo una cosa.”531 Writing the journals is a defiant act in the face of the technologization of life. It is also significantly a response to the effects of the camera on the human—objectification that is analogous, for Pirandello, to death. Serafino’s choice of a diaristic form, perhaps the most subjective form of representation, must be thought alongside the critique this story makes of film and the demands of the film camera on both its operator and the 530 I am specifically responding to Angelini’s claim that “Serafino è solo un filo conduttore di temi ideologici, una coscienza che registra la crisi di coscienza e una scrittura che comunica l’impossibile comunicazione,” (“Si gira...: l’ideologia della macchina in Pirandello,” 148). Whereas Angelini understands Serafino’s muteness and camera-like characteristics as the result of complete identification with the camera, I argue that his relation to the camera should be understood in terms of how he experiences it as dissociation and hence place more critical emphasis on his internal reality. Neglecting to consider this personal experience renders any positive position Serafino might have in the novel mute. We critically condemn him to be nothing more than a hand that turns a lever. See Angelini, “Si gira...: l’ideologia della macchina in Pirandello.” 531 Baldi and Donati argue that Serafino’s writing of the journals indicates a kind of salvation from the “realtà contaminante del moderno” (Baldi, Pirandello e il romanzo, 128). Donati argues that “alla ‘mano che gira la manovella’, emblema di una impassibilità conquistata esistenzialmente attraverso la conoscenza della negatività del vivere, si oppone la mano che scrive per sfogo e per rivincita” (Donati, Il sogno e la ragione: Saggi pirandelliani, 108; cited in Baldi). While I do not think that we can call this a “salvation,” because Serafino remains traumatized at the end of the novel, I do agree that this defiant act of writing with the hand that has become an appendage to the machine leaves open the possibility for finding a positive way of living in the “time of the machine,” though I suspect that any form of modern subjectivity requires some kind of relinquishing of a part of the self. 285 actor. The journals in their very state of being written bear witness to an experience that has dramatically changed the way Serafino relates to himself and to others. Serafino testifies to the dissociative effects of this experience by attempting to make sense of them through writing.532 Two Forms of Address: The Hand that Writes and The Body that Testifies If the journals act as a form of testimony, how might we understand what Serafino records in writing in relation to the filmic recording of the final scene? Rather than mere documentary, the journals as a form of testimony appear similar to what Shoshana Felman describes as a “discursive practice” that is “always a use of memory or of one’s experience in order to address another.”533 Testimony differs from narration in its performative nature: it does not simply tell a story but accomplishes an action. The subject of testimony commits his story to himself and to others; “to testify is, in this sense, always metaphorically to take the witness stand, and the narrative account of the witness is always implicitly engaged both in an appeal and an oath.” 534 The appeal of testimony is a call to witness what has happened to the one testifying. That testimony becomes an oath, a claim to have experienced this event or witnessed it firsthand. When Serafino takes up the pen to write down his experience, he addresses this account to a hypothetical reader, to a voi. In doing so, he calls on the reader to bear witness as well. 532 However, I would not go so far as to say that the writing of the journals vindicates Serafino from the effects of working with the camera; after all, he is able to write with that much more attention and detail to what he observes because of the critical distance his dissociated state allows him. I argue against other critics like Angelini that he does more than simply record events in the journals—he testifies, or at least tries to through them. If critical distance were the only thing that he accomplished in writing the journals—the objective recording of events—then he would still function as part of the machine but in a different format. Rather, he is only able to play the role of demystifying intellectual because he has undergone a radical dissociation within himself and recognizes it as such, whereas others ignore the signs that their bodies and minds give them, or else don’t even know to notice such signs. For an alternative perspective on this point, see Costa, “Introduzione,” in Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore, Mondadori (1992), xxi. 533 Caruth, “A Ghost in the House of Justice: A Conversation with Shoshana Felman,” 322. 534 Caruth, 322. 286 At times, though, he writes as if to himself, offering no introduction to the theme or topic. At one point, he even admits to writing these journals solely as a way to make sense of his experience: Conosco bene adesso questa donna, o almeno quanto è possibile conoscerla, e mi spiego tante cose rimaste lungo tempo per me incomprensibili. Se non che, la spiegazione ch’io ora me ne faccio, rischierà forse di parere incomprensibile agli altri. Ma io me la faccio per me e non per gli altri; e non intendo minimamente di scusare con essa la Nestoroff.535 I know the woman well now, or at least as much as it is possible to know her, and I can now explain many things that long remained incomprehensible to me. Though there is still the risk that the explanation I now offer myself of them may perhaps appear incomprehensible to others. But I offer it to myself and not the others; and I have not the slightest intention of offering it as an excuse for the Nestoroff.536 The inability to parse out who the addressee is speaks to the kind of action that the journals participate in. Where one might be tempted to make a decision about the status of the addressee, I suggest that we withhold judgement and allow an external reader to exist alongside the possibility that Serafino writes these journals for himself. In either case, the status of his writing does not change. Testimony as a practice of addressing experience to another, even if that other is internal, offers the possibility of integrating pieces of an experience that have not been fully processed by the conscious mind. Reflecting on Van der Kolk’s notion of a “compartmentalization of experience,” testimony offers a way to give context to feelings and thoughts and begin the process of integrating these elements into a personal narrative. Through testimony, someone like Serafino can start to make connections between sensations, facts, and partial memories to get closer to constructing a full narrative of a traumatic event or piecing 535 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 551, my emphasis. 536 Pirandello, Shoot!, 52. 287 together aspects of two dissociated states. The presence of an external listener, even imagined, makes this possible. For this reason, I suggest that we read these journals as testimonial as we, its readers, might very well be the intended addressees. Only in accepting the role of addressee can the journals as testimony do the work of bearing witness. It is important to note here the place of Nestoroff’s story within the journals. Many have read hers as its own, independent story and have not regarded it with much critical attention.537 Scholars often split the journal into two tonalities: a narrative tone that deals with the tragic story with Nestoroff at its center, written mostly in the past tense; and an essay-like, philosophical tone written in the present tense. However, the text does not suggests that these two tones should be read separately. Rather, the dissonance between what Angelini calls the time of the racconto and the time of the sfogo happens within the same chord.538 That is, both pieces belong to the journals and are symptomatic of the problem that Serafino faces—a dissociation within himself. His attempt to make sense of and give context to emotions and sensations that do not have a temporal grounding for him due to dissociation manifests in the two tones of the journals and their strange temporal arrangement. However, this explanation of the journals as testimony of the dissociative effects of working with the camera does not account for Serafino becoming mute following the death of Nuti and Nestoroff. The body’s response to this traumatic event suggests another form of address that resists representation or communication in language. Instead, it comes closer to what Felman 537 Angelini, Mazzacurati, and Pupino write off the drama that surrounds Nestoroff as a pretext for Serafino’s philosophical musings and compare her storyline to that of a feuilleton typical of the Ottocento. See Angelini, “Si gira...: l’ideologia della macchina in Pirandello,” in Il romanzo di Pirandello, 143-160; Mazzacurati, “Il doppio mondo di Serafino Gubbio” in Pirandello nel romanzo europeo, 241-268; Pupino, Pirandello, o L'arte della dissonanza: saggio sui romanzi. 538 See Angelini, “Le case di Serafino Gubbio.” 288 calls “unconscious testimony,” or the telling of some truth unknown to the speaking subject. While this idea has been incredibly generative for literary studies and for the actual practice of helping survivors construct testimonies of their experiences, one limit that I would like to push against is the privileging of speech that this line of thought holds.539 Felman’s insight into the nature of testimony comes out of her reading of Freud and his engagement with dreams and the Irma case. His own analysis of his dreams and the free associations that he makes suggests to Felman the hidden power of testimony. Freud’s significant work on the Interpretation of Dreams, Felman argues, reveals the presence of truth in testimony even when the truth of an event is unknown to the conscious subject: Psychoanalysis … profoundly rethinks and radically renews the very concept of the testimony, by submitting, and by recognizing for the first time in the history of culture, that one does not have to possess or own the truth, in order to effectively bear witness to it; that speech is unwittingly testimonial; and that the speaking subject constantly bears witness to a truth that nonetheless continues to escape him, a truth that is, essentially, not available to its own speaker.540 Much like dreams that must be interpreted with the help of an analyst, testimony may be unconscious, unintentional, and unplanned. It signifies beyond its linguistic utterance. The survivor may already bear witness to an event despite not being able to actively recall or tell the 539 Even in Felman’s distinguished analysis of the Eichmann trial, where she reads K-Zetnik’s body falling onto the witness stand as a failure of the legal system to allow for testimony outside of language, she does not go so far as to say that the body itself testifies, only that it demonstrates the limits of legal discourse. In “The Body’s Testimony,” Caruth extends Felman’s reading of the trial and argues that at the core of the trial rests a problem of address rather than a problem of knowledge. Caruth suggests that the collapse of the witness introduces a new legal meaning to the falling body which is the imperative of witness that touches and connects K-Zetnik and the audience. It passes between bodies, “between an unconscious re-enactment and a wider imperative of witness,” since as the one falls the other stands to know what has happened. Caruth goes on to suggest that this unconscious bodily expression “extends the trial beyond its own strictly legal boundaries and links its encounter with trauma to a call for a new and broader form of cultural and historical address.” See Caruth, “The Body’s Testimony” in Paragraph, v. 40, n. 3, 2017, 259– 278. 540 Felman, “Education and Crisis, or the Vicissitudes of Teaching,” in Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, 15, emphasis in original. 289 facts of what happened. Indeed, the distortions of empirical facts and the gaps in knowledge, as the very fallibility of testimony, may contribute more to historical truth than facts alone because they speak to a truth of the rupturing of experience that only a survivor of a traumatic event could attest to.541 What these inconsistencies give unconscious expression to is the excess of experience, what cannot be put into words. Unconscious testimony, as “a truth that is, essentially, not available to its own speaker,” might also name what lives on in the body after the event and remains inaccessible to consciousness and language. Indeed, Serafino’s corporeal response in becoming mute suggests that unconscious testimony may also be expressed through the body.542 Yet, the radically different nature that this testimony takes, as the unintentional expression of the excess of trauma and its indelible rupture of the body-mind connection, indicates that what it in fact testifies to is 541 On this point, see Laub, “Bearing Witness, or the Vicissitudes of Listening,” 59–63. A significant critique of trauma theory that comes out of poststructuralism, made by such authors as Dominick LaCapra, Wulf Kansteiner, Harald Weilnböck, and Anne Rothe, contends that the generative nature of this approach to and understanding of trauma and testimony has been so influential to a number of fields and disciplines that it has authorized a detrimental conflation between all human suffering and the specific experience of trauma. Critics argue that this line of study is essentially responsible for diluting the categories of “victim” and “perpetrator” by making perpetrators out of even inanimate/unconscious things, like cancer, and victims out of anyone who has ever suffered, regardless of where they stand vis-a-vis fault in a human-made catastrophe like war. For the most contemporary critiques of poststructuralist inspired trauma theory as it relates to cultural trauma, see Rothe, “Popular Trauma Culture: The Pain of Others Between Holocaust Tropes and Kitsch-Sentimental Melodrama” in Interdisciplinary Handbook of Trauma and Culture (2016); Kansteiner and Weilnböck “Against the Concept of Cultural Trauma,” in Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook (2008); LaCapra, History in Transit. Experience, Identity, Critical Theory (2004); Kansteiner, “Genealogy of a Category Mistake: A Critical Intellectual History of the Cultural Trauma Metaphor,” in Rethinking History n.8, v.2, 193–221 (2004). For an alternative critique regarding the understanding of experience and narrative as it is used by poststructuralist accounts of trauma, see Meretoja, “Philosophies of Trauma” in the Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma (2020). For a concise overview of the major debates surrounding trauma theory and its many tentacles, see Sütterlin, “History of Trauma Theory” in the Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma. Of interest in this volume as well is the essay by Davis, “Trauma, Poststructuralism and Ethics.” 542 My argument is not, however, an expansion of the definition of trauma. Rather it is a proposed new angle to view and understand the experience of trauma in the context of modernity. 290 also in excess of the horrific exposure to death in the final scene. In other terms, Serafino’s muteness points to something beyond what we might call a traditional traumatic experience.543 The question becomes, to what does this muteness testify? One way of approaching this question is through the illocutionary and perlocutionary effects of Serafino’s muteness.544 The opening passage offers the first clue as to what these effects might be. Serafino’s mute gaze raises suspicion and incites irritation, anger, and violence in those that he watches. This happens because his eyes do not return what they receive; they do not reflect back empathy or commiserate, thereby offering a feeling of comradery in the way other eyes might. Serafino’s eyes do not reciprocate an external connection. At the end of the novel, we see that his body in becoming mute acts the same way: Ho perduto la voce; sono rimasto muto per sempre.545 Non gemevo, non gridavo: la voce, dal terrore, mi s’era spenta in gola, per sempre. 546 I have lost my voice; I am dumb now forever.547 I uttered no groan, no cry: my voice, from terror, had perished in my throat forever.548 543 By traditional, I mean an understanding that follows the definition of trauma by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), which defines Post-traumatic Stress Disorder as: “The essential feature is the development of characteristic symptoms following a psychologically traumatic event that is generally outside the range of usual human experience. The characteristic symptoms involve reexperiencing the traumatic event; numbing of responsiveness to, or reduced involvement with, the external world; and a variety of autonomic, dysphoric, or cognitive symptoms” (APA, 236). 544 J.L. Austin first defined these forces as part of his theory of performative speech-acts put forward in How to Do Things with Words (1962). Illocutionary force describes the effect of a speech act; it is the implied effect of stating something rather than the simple fact or content of the statement. The perlocutionary force describes the affective consequence of the statement on another, or how the statement affects the listener. 545 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 729. 546 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 733. 547 Pirandello, Shoot!, 327. 548 Pirandello, Shoot!, 332. 291 Serafino’s voice “extinguishes” in his throat forever. The horror of what he sees overwhelms him to the point that it renders him speechless. What I want to focus on though is not the violent scene that causes this but the effects of his muteness. For Serafino personally, it enables him to be the best operator in Rome: “Nessuno intanto potrà negare ch’io non abbia ora raggiunto la mia perfezione. Come operatore, io sono ora, veramente, perfetto.”549 But for others, his muteness is terribly disturbing. Take for example the response it provokes in his friend Simone Pau: Simone Pau che viene ogni giorno a scrollarmi, a ingiuriarmi per smuovermi da questo mio silenzio di cosa, ormai assoluto, che lo rende furente. Vorrebbe ch’io ne piangessi, ch’io almeno con gli occhi me ne mostrassi afflitto o adirato; che gli facessi capire per segni che sono con lui, che credo anch’io che la vita è là, in quel suo superfluo. Non batto ciglio; resto a guardarlo rigido, immobile, e lo faccio scappar via su le furie. 550 Simon Pau, who comes every day to shake me, to abuse me, in the hope of forcing me out of this inanimate silence, by now absolute, which makes him furious. He would like to see me weep, would like me at least with my eyes to show distress or anger; to make him understand by signs that I agree with him, that I too believe that life is there, in that superfluity of his. I do not move an eyelid, I sit gazing at him, rigid, motionless, until he flies from the house in a rage.551 What infuriates Pau is what infuriates the pedestrians: Serafino’s refusal to engage emotionally with others. All Pau wants from his friend is a sign that he still feels, that he still has a connection to his affects and to his superfluo. Muteness here encompasses more than the inability to speak. It gives corporeal expression, in its significance and its effect, to the impassivity that Serafino comes to fully embody following the traumatic scene. His voice is muted as is his superfluo which cannot express itself in a way that would allow him to form a 549 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 729. 550 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 734. 551 Pirandello, Shoot!, 334. 292 community. The part of himself that would allow for sensations to escape through tears, laughs, or sudden expressions fails and bars the ventilation of his affects, thereby precluding a relation to others through the communal sharing of emotions. This is perhaps one reason that he turns to writing, as a sfogo for what would otherwise remain captive inside him. While the fact that Serafino writes the journals hints at some albeit deteriorated connection to the superfluo, his muteness suggests otherwise. With regard to the conscious act of writing the journals, his muteness is an unconscious refusal to engage with others and himself in language. As such, his muteness suggests something beyond the effect of witnessing a traumatic event. In refusing to address another and engage linguistically, through physical or verbal signification, the body’s muteness calls attention to how language is implicated in the tendency of the superfluo to make sense of life and impose form. Language appears as the primary plane on which the tension between vita and forma confront one another because it can be used for creative expression but also for logical categorization. It is also the principal means by which the subject gives form to himself, or in Pirandellian terms, it is partially through language that the subject constitutes the mask that he wears in society. In this light, the body’s becoming mute may be read as a refusal to participate in the construction of yet another false reality and, in so doing, calls attention to how representation itself is implicated in the objectification of life and its flattening into death. Part of the appeal of an increasingly technologized existence is the relinquishing of conscious responsibility, a dampening of the mental and emotional demand of managing oneself or one’s activities. This silver, albeit frightening, lining of an increase in the technologization of life that we discuss at length today has no obvious place in Pirandello’s vision of modernity. Serafino instead stresses the machine’s escalating subjectification and the human’s subsequent 293 objectification as the central problem for modern man, around which a host of other issues grow and feed. Serafino addresses the objectification by the camera in a quote that Benjamin takes up in his essay on mechanical reproduction. In the essay, Benjamin notes another form of dissociation in the actors’ experience of moving from live theatre to film. The camera objectifies the actors by creating distance between their bodies and their actions. The turning of live performance, in which actions and bodies are unified, into a mere representation of it constitutes a kind of death. By turning life into an object of study, the camera and by extension all representational technologies, kills it. Serafino discusses objectification as a form of death in terms of what the actors feel as a result of this process: Qua si sentono come in esilio. In esilio, non soltanto dal palcoscenico, ma quasi anche da se stessi. Perché la loro azione, l’azione viva del loro corpo vivo, là, su la tela dei cinematografi, non c’è più: c’è la loro immagine soltanto, colta in un momento, in un gesto, in una espressione, che guizza e scompare. Avvertono confusamente, con un senso smanioso, indefinibile di vuoto, anzi di vôtamento, che il loro corpo è quasi sottratto, soppresso, privato della sua realtà, del suo respiro, della sua voce, del rumore ch’esso produce movendosi, per diventare soltanto un’immagine muta, che trèmola per un momento su lo schermo e scompare in silenzio, d’un tratto, come un’ombra inconsistente, giuoco d’illusione su uno squallido pezzo di tela. 552 Here they feel as though they were in exile. In exile, not only from the stage, but also in a sense from themselves. Because their action, the live action of their live bodies, there, on the screen of the cinematograph, no longer exists: it is their image alone, caught in a moment, in a gesture, an expression, that flickers and disappears. They are confusedly aware, with a maddening, indefinable sense of emptiness, [or rather of an emptying out,] that their bodies are so to speak subtracted, suppressed, deprived of their reality, of breath, of voice, of the sound that they make in moving about, to becomes only a dumb image which quivers for a moment on the screen and disappears, in silence, in an instant, like an unsubstantial phantom, the play of illusion upon a dingy sheet of cloth.553 552 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 585–86, emphasis in original. 553 Pirandello, Shoot!, 106. I have modified the translation to better reflect the original Italian. 294 What Serafino describes here might also be said of the experience of trauma, where the subject is left after the event with only a “maddening, undefinable sense of emptiness, even of emptying out,” of experience or knowledge of a particular experience. This quotation also speaks to the dissociation that trauma survivors may feel between their conscious memories and their bodily sensations, as if “the body is quasi subtracted, suppressed, deprived of its reality,” deprived of its context. The actor offers his own life to the camera in an attempt to give life to something inherently devoid of it. In return, he is struck mute in the sense that he is made into an object of the camera; he is put in front of others as an object of study, especially so in the silent films that Serafino shoots. Inherent in this process of objectification and subjectification is an exchange of life: as the human gives life to the camera, the camera returns objectification, a removal of life in favor of its shadow. It is to this process that Serafino’s muteness testifies and that his going mute repeats. Serafino becoming mute gives concrete form to the objectifying effects of the camera; he becomes “solo una cosa” as the film takes on new life. Muteness here is not a simple a return to silence but rather a testimony to the inherent compulsion towards death that underwrites the superfluo and the objectification of life that modern technology demands. “Sono anche due”: My Body/My Monster Up to this point, I have focused exclusively on Serafino’s experience of the technologization of life, but the figure of Nestoroff offers a way of understanding how gender complicates this experience. Varia Nestoroff is in many ways a typical femme fatale, the figuration of a threatening femininity that stands opposed to heroic protagonists in the literary imagination of the late eighteenth to early-nineteenth century. In the Italian tradition, her name and affiliation with the tiger that Serafino comments on call to mind specifically Verga’s Nata of 295 Tigre reale (1875).554 In similar fashion to her predecessors, Nestoroff is overburdened with signification and yet is rarely the protagonist of a sustained critique. Ganeri, one of the few critics who analyze her position in the novel, notes that: La diva diventa una metafora del cinema e quindi della modernizzazione, incarnandone il fascino invincibile e la carica di morte. L’attrice si identifica infatti anche con la seconda tigre, la macchina cinematografica…Antitetica all’imperturbabile Serafino, la donna ha dunque la funzione di un perturbante: incarnazione di eros e thanatos, è la virago il cui ventre attira…esattamente come quello della macchina cinematografica e delle camere oscure della Kosmograph. Ma è anche una Medusa, dalla fascinazione oculare pietrificante…555 The diva becomes a metaphor of cinema and therefore of modernization, embodying the invincible allure and charge of death. In fact, the actress also identifies with the second tiger, the film camera...Antithetical to the imperturbable Serafino, the woman therefore has the function of the uncanny: the incarnation of eros and thanatos, she is the virago whose bowels attract...exactly like those of the film camera and of the dark rooms of the Kosmograph. But she is also a Medusa, with the petrifying ocular fascination...556 How can one figure hold so many valences? In what follows, I consider the figure of Nestoroff as an embodied subject, that is, as a character whose lived experience cannot be divorced from its corporeality. Instead of questioning how Pirandello uses the figure of Nestoroff to represent something else, or establish the conditions for Serafino’s own trajectory, I ask how she holds within and represents with her body the conflicting identities or selves. In so doing, I question how sexual difference and the established gender dynamics of the film industry intensify the negative effects of objectification. I refocus the analysis on her experience of the valences assigned to her and her body from without by emphasizing her embodiment and how it interacts 554 Ganeri postulates what the name “Varia Nestoroff” could signify but does not offer a definitive answer. See Margherita Ganeri, Pirandello romanziere, 195. 555 Ganeri, 194–95, emphasis in original. 556 My translation. 296 with the effects of the camera. This allows us to say something more about the kind of experience of modernity to which bodily testimony speaks. Nestoroff is no more or less embodied than Serafino. They share a similar connection to the body that in many ways leads to their condemnation as fragmented, if modern, subjects. Nestoroff, like Serafino, becomes modern through her subjugation to the camera that represents “the destruction of nature and man, the acceleration of time, and the superficialization of life and human relationships” that in Pirandello’s estimation defines modernity.557 Yet, her existing relationship to her body influences to a larger degree her engagement with the camera. It does not seem that Serafino had a particularly negative relationship to his hand prior to becoming an operator. Nestoroff, however, arrives on set already burdened with a baggage that puts her estimation of her body and relationship to it front and center, much the same way the directors put her, as a body, front and center—immodestly. Immodesty might be the most appropriate term to describe the treatment of her body by all that come into physical or visual contact with it. This does not exclude (predominantly male) critics who excavate her character and corporeality for significance. Nestoroff in some ways is more at home among other Pirandellian characters then Serafino, for she explicitly confronts the conflict between vita and forma. Her body appears as the site in which this tension plays out. Though a terrible film actress with a bad habit of moving outside of the frame and going off script, Nestoroff plays the role of marvelous, decadent movie star seamlessly in real life; so much so that only Serafino’s gaze penetrates her honed façade of superficiality. A glimpse of a more profound interior life appears, fleetingly, in how she reacts to 557 Ganeri, 188. 297 seeing her image on screen. The passages in which Serafino describes her reaction reveal how male objectification of her body and her own fragmented subjectivity entwine around her in increasingly suffocating ways: Nemici per lei diventano tutti gli uomini, a cui ella s’accosta, perché la ajutino ad arrestare ciò che di lei le sfugge: lei stessa, sì, ma quale vive e soffre, per così dire, di là da se stessa. Ebbene, nessuno si è mai curato di questo, che a lei più di tutto preme; tutti, invece, rimangono abbagliati dal suo corpo elegantissimo, e non vogliono aver altro, né saper altro di lei. E allora ella li punisce con fredda rabbia, là dove s’appuntano le loro brame… Si vendica, facendo getto, improvvisamente e freddamente, del suo corpo a chi meno essi si aspetterebbero: così, là, per mostrar loro in quanto dispregio tenga ciò che essi sopra tutto pregiano di lei. 558 Enemies, to her, all the men become to whom she attaches herself, in order that they may help her to arrest the secret thing in her that escapes her: she herself, yes, but a thing that lives and suffers, so to speak, outside herself. Well, no one has ever taken any notice of this thing, which to her is more pressing than anything else; everyone, rather, remains dazzled by her exquisite form, and does not wish to possess or to know anything else of her. And then she punishes them with a cold rage, just where their desires prick them…She avenges herself by flinging her body, suddenly and coldly, at those whom they least expected to see thus favored: like that, so as to show them in what contempt she holds the thing that they prize most of all in her.559 The way others have treated her body mediates her own relationship to it. Like the marvel of film, Nestoroff visually entices both men and women. Luisetta, the young Cavalena, wonders at Nestoroff the first time she meets her as some sort of perfect version of what famous femininity should look like. Men ogle at her physical beauty and often project onto her the identity that best suits their desires. Rather than resist these projections, Nestoroff embraces them with an unsettling coldness. She utilizes how people perceive her as a shield of sorts to inhibit others from recognizing her vulnerability. Playing the part of a shallow movie star, flaunting her body 558 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 558, emphasis in original. 559 Pirandello, Shoot!, 62. 298 and eroticism, she conceals the part of herself that terrifies her from external view. In so doing, Nestoroff reflects back to the viewer only what they wish to see of her and suppresses the fractured part of herself that she internally identifies with the most. She mediates and filters what truth of her identity, if any, passes through to visibility and does so mainly through the use of her body. Nestoroff’s contempt and blatant disregard for her body underwrites this sheen of superficiality. She throws her body with disdain, as if it were something that she no longer wants: “facendo getto, improvvisamente e freddamente.” Such an act of self-abdication suggests that she too has come to objectivize herself and treat her body as a meaningless thing. This has a significant effect on how she relates to herself as a subject. Nestoroff feels herself split between her body and the internal understanding she has of herself even before she steps in front of the camera. The identities that society, and particularly men, impose on her exacerbate this sense of dissociation. For most, she is the fatuous film star. But for some, namely Giorgio Mirelli, she is something altogether foreign to what she personally identifies with. Giorgio, the artist and her fiancée, painted her portrait six times over and never once captured what she felt herself to be. The paintings show an angelic presence that radiates virtuosity which, in her opinion, only highlights the distortion of his vision of her when compared to how she understands herself. This opinion surfaces through a distinct expression she makes unintentionally. When Serafino accidentally compares Nestoroff standing in front of him to the portraits that hang behind her, it is as if he is stunned by something atrocious. His face goes pale, it contorts into a grimace “quasi truce,” and his eyes momentarily lose their ability to apprehend what he witnesses. Serafino’s reaction in turn paralyzes Nestoroff, almost as if Giorgio’s specter rises up to confront her through the operator’s expression: 299 Guardandomi, ella comprese subito il perché del mio pallore e del mio sbalordimento, e subito diventò pallidissima anche lei; gli occhi le s’intorbidarono stranamente, le mancò la voce e tutto il suo corpo mi tremolò davanti quasi una larva. L’assunzione di quel suo corpo a una vita prodigiosa, in una luce da cui ella neppure in sogno avrebbe potuto immaginare di essere illuminata e riscaldata, in un trasparente, trionfale accordo con una natura attorno, di cui certo gli occhi suoi non avevano mai veduto il tripudio dei colori, era sei volte ripetuta, per miracolo d’arte e d’amore, in quel salotto, in sei tele di Giorgio Mirelli. Fissata lì per sempre, in quella realtà divina ch’egli le aveva data, in quella divina luce, in quella divina fusione di colori, la donna che mi stava davanti che cos’era più ormai? in che laido smortume, in che miseria di realtà era ormai caduta?560 Looking at me, she at once guessed the reason of my pallor and bewilderment, and at once she too turned pale as death; her eyes became strangely clouded, her voice failed, and her whole body trembled before me as though I were a ghost. The assumption of that body of hers into a prodigious life, in a light by which she could never, even in her dreams, have imagined herself as being bathed and warmed, in a transparent, triumphant harmony with a nature round about her, of which her eyes had certainly never beheld the jubilance of colors, was repeated six times over, by a miracle of art and love, in that drawing-room, upon six canvases by Giorgio Mirelli.561 Nestoroff perceives in Serafino’s knotted expression a piece of what haunts her: the adoration Giorgio had for her and the tragic end to which her infidelity pushed him. Giorgio kills himself after learning of Nestoroff’s affair with Nuti, who at the time was engaged to Giorgio’s younger sister. Serafino’s reaction serves as an unwelcome reminder of the suicide and Nestoroff’s role in it. Given her response to this memory, it seems that Nestoroff has not fully accepted Giorgio’s death. Instead of acknowledging the suicide and its significance, she carries with her the guilt of participating in this death. Serafino suspects as much after studying her romantic relationships with other men. He believes that she chooses to stay with someone like Ferro, an aggressive brute in Serafino’s estimation, as a form of self-punishment. In much the same way that she 560 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 688. 561 Pirandello, Shoot!, 263. 300 neglects and abuses her body, Nestoroff puts herself in emotional and perhaps physical danger in a masochistic attempt to atone for what she has done. The representation of Giorgio’s love through the portraits, though, betrays an inauthenticity about him and the artworks. In them, Nestoroff appears exactly how Giorgio imagines her to be: divine.562 Even her hair, now dyed, makes her appear as if in a fallen (“caduta”) state compared to the innocent image in the painting. Yet, this image only captures his perspective of her and does not attempt to represent her as she sees or understands herself. While that is a tall order in any representational endeavor, the reader gets the sense that Giorgio, as Nestoroff’s fiancée, did not truly try to understand her shield of superficiality. It seems that the artist did not know Nestoroff on a more profound level or the tortured relationship she has with herself. The portraits consequently do not even represent his perception of her but rather his projection of identity onto her. Serafino conjectures that this is the reason why Nestoroff intentionally sabotaged her relationship with Giorgio by having an affair with Nuti. Nestoroff did not feel herself worthy of Giorgio’s estimation since such feelings were at odds with her understanding of herself as anything but divine. Instead, Nestoroff feels herself to be lost. The relationship she has with her body mirrors a division that she feels internally as being partially “di là da se stessa.” Put differently, a part of herself exists beyond her grasp and understanding. Serafino notices this on set; Nestoroff, he says, “ha in sé qualche cosa, questa donna, che gli altri non riescono a comprendere, perché bene non lo comprende neppure lei stessa.” 563 Part of this sensation of being beyond her own 562 Baldi discusses the significance of the repetition of “divina” three times in this passage and how Nestoroff might be read as a humoristic figure. See Baldi, Pirandello e il romanzo, 150–56. 563 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 555. 301 apprehension has to do with her guilt for Giorgio’s death. Because she does not come to terms with the death but instead denies it to herself and others, Nestoroff carries that unresolved event with her like a disease that occasionally, under the right circumstances, flares up to remind her of what she tries so hard to forget. But another part of her internal fracturing stems from a previous experience that prevented her from having a successful intimate relationship with Giorgio. Serafino supposes that, “la ragione, forse, era da cercare lontano, altrove. Chi sa le vie dell’anima?...La ragione, forse, si doveva cercare nel male che gli uomini le avevano fatto fin da bambina, nei vizii in cui s’era perduta durante la prima giovinezza randagia…”564 Even before she met Giorgio or became an actress, Nestoroff feels a part of herself to be out of reach and unknowable to her. This other piece does not exist externally, though, but is torturously nestled into her very person. It is this duality of the self that she hides from others through the sheen of superficiality and that she at the same time desperately wants someone else to witness. Serafino uses a vocabulary for ghosts and runaways to describe Nestoroff’s internal discord. Such language hints at how she experiences it. The figure of duality rises up again as the defining feature of her dissociation. The actress at once cannot grasp a piece of herself and is agonizingly possessed by it. One Nestoroff constantly pursues another that evades capture (and understanding). The part of her that flees (“sfugge”) appears condemned to be forever on the run and without peace: Forse da anni e anni e anni, a traverso tutte le avventure misteriose della sua vita, ella va inseguendo questa ossessa che è in lei e che le sfugge, per trattenerla, per domandarle che cosa voglia, perché soffra, che cosa ella dovrebbe fare per ammansarla, per placarla, per darle pace. 565 564 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 689. 565 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 557. 302 Possibly for years and years, through all the mysterious adventures of her life, she has gone in quest of this demon which exists in her and always escapes her, to arrest it, to ask it what it wants, why it is suffering, what she ought to do to soothe it, to placate it, to give it peace.566 The term “ossessa” in particular touches on the complexity of Nestoroff’s situation. “Ossessa” has two possible definitions, one literal the other figurative: “indemoniato” or “persona molto agitata e quasi fuori di sé.”567 Treccani Encyclopedia only references ossessa as a possible synonym for “baccante,” “[una] donna dominata da passione frenetica,” with a connotation of eroticism.568 “Indemoniato,” what would translate as “possessed,” gives the sense of a person invaded by something foreign and external to the self, be it demons and spirits, or ideas, passions, and sentiments. It denotes a loss of control over the body and the mind and the unintentional giving presence to something other than oneself. Possessed also strangely describes a person who cannot let go of something; it signals a person who grips tightly onto something else as the thing that is actually being gripped. The second definition of a person, “molto agitata e quasi fuori di sé” registers the idea of being outside of or different from the self brought on by the gripping too tightly of something that grips back. It is difficult to say for sure to what or who ossessa refers in the actress’s situation. Is it the vulnerable Nestoroff that wishes to know herself completely and be whole, or the frenzied Nestoroff that punishes herself? The confusion arises from the fact that neither Nestoroff can find peace. For the actress, multiple things seem to reach back to grip her; Giorgio’s death for one, but also her sensation of being incomplete or broken. In chasing after the part of herself that flees, she participates in the same chase as the pedestrians, though on a much more profound 566 Pirandello, Shoot!, 61. 567 Garzanti, “Ossessa,” in Il Nuovo dizionario italiano Garzanti (Milano: Garzanti, 1984), 610. 568 Treccani Encyclopedia, “Baccante.” 303 level. Where they do not see that they are chasing a certainty of self, Nestoroff recognizes herself to be fragmented and deliberately pursues the manic side of her in the hope that she finds a way to give it peace. To give her peace, though, she has to catch herself; to possess the ossessa as a part of herself and not in the way that she has been possessed by what escapes her understanding. The difference is significant. As Serafino sees in her involuntary expressions, Nestoroff is possessed by guilt and the inability to know herself, by “ciò che di lei le sfugge.” What could be figured as a ghost or mirage prevents her from possessing, that is understanding or recognizing, herself entirely, or at the very least understanding what that other piece of herself wants. Though her past traumas haunts her like someone else’s ghost, they nevertheless constitute her as a subject. Another way of expressing this paradox is to say that she is possessed by what exists “di là da se stessa.” The fleeing mirage that possesses her manifests in physical form during Nestoroff’s performance of “la danza dei pugnali.”569 A minor role in the film, Nestoroff plays a “savage and fanatic” Indian girl who kills herself in a sort of religious rite. She enters the set almost completely nude, wearing just a loincloth around her waist. What strikes Serafino first is not her naked body but her cold disregard for it in the midst of so many men. Her stare, however, has the greatest effect on him: intense to the point of piercing, her fixed gaze makes his eyes falter and his vision blur: La Nestoroff, facendosi in mezzo al semicerchio coi due pugnali branditi, ha preso a guardarmi con una così acuta e dura fissità, ch’io, dietro al mio grosso ragno nero in agguato sul treppiedi, mi sono sentito vagellar gli occhi e intorbidate la vista. Per miracolo ho potuto obbedire al comando di Bertini: - Si gira! E mi son messo, come un automa, a girar la manovella. 569 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 598. 304 Tra i penosi contorcimenti di quella sua strana danza màcabra, tra il luccichìo sinistro dei due pugnali, ella non staccò un minuto gli occhi da’ miei, che la seguivano, affascinati. Le vidi sul seno anelante il sudore rigar di solchi la manteca giallastra, di cui era tutto impiastricciato. Senza darsi alcun pensiero della sua nudità, ella si dimenava come frenetica, ansava, e pian piano, con voce affannosa, sempre con gli occhi fissi ne’ miei, domandava ogni tanto: - Bien comme ça? bien comme ça? Come se volesse saperlo da me; e gli occhi erano quelli d’una pazza. Certo, ne’ miei leggevano, oltre la maraviglia [sic], uno sgomento prossimo a cangiarsi in terrore nell’attesa trepidante del grido del Bertini.570 The Nestoroff, advancing to the chord of the semicircle brandishing the pair of daggers, began to gaze at me with so keen and hard a stare that I, behind my big black spider crouching on its tripod, felt my eyes waver and my sight grow dim. For a wonder I managed to obey Bertini’s order: “Shoot!” And I set to work, like an automaton, to turn my handle. Through the painful contortions of that strange, morbid dance, behind the sinister gleam of the daggers, she did not take her eyes for a minute from mine, which followed her movements, fascinated. I saw the sweat on her heaving bosom make furrows in the ochreous paint with which she was daubed all over. Without giving a though to her nudity, she dashed about the ground as in a frenzy, panted for breath, and softly, in a gasping whisper, still with her eyes fixed on mine, asked now and again: - Bien comme ça? bien comme ça? As though she wished to be told by me; and her eyes were the eyes of a madwoman. Certainly, they could read in mine, apart from wonder, a dismay that hovered on the verge of terror in the tension of waiting for Bertini to shout.571 The incongruity between her exposed, eroticized body and her captive stare perform the duality of her experience as an ossessa.572 In her performance of the crazed fanatic girl, Nestoroff’s body becomes the medium through which the part of her that flees manifests itself. Or differently, the body in this performance gives presence to what exists beyond Nestoroff’s understanding of herself. This is most apparent in the strange, contorted movements that her body makes. 570 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 598–99, emphasis in the original. 571 Pirandello, Shoot!, 127–28. 572 “Captive” here has two meanings: the first refers to the stare that holds Serafino’s attention throughout the scene; the second suggests how the eyes relate to the vulnerable part of Nestoroff that she normally holds captive away from external view. 305 “Dimanarsi” gives the image of a body thrashing around or struggling against something; two motions that resist being caught or stopped. The placement of “penosi” suggests that these movements distress the viewer, here Serafino, more so than Nestoroff. They take an affective toll on him as he anticipates the finale, where she is meant to kill herself. Though this death should be fake, Serafino gets the impression from Nestoroff in this very moment that she wants to kill herself for real. He notes, “Ebbene, questa mattina, mentre giravo la macchinetta, ho avuto tutt’a un tratto il terribile sospetto ch’ella - rappresentando, al solito, come una forsennata, la sua parte - volesse uccidersi: sì, sì, proprio uccidersi, davanti a me.” 573 This impression does not come solely from the feverish motions of her body. Rather, the combination of her flailing figure and what she conveys through her eyes encapsulates the duality of the ossessa and provokes anxiety in Serafino. Her piercing stare and the way it locks onto Serafino reveals her vulnerability as a fragmented subject that she usually hides through her everyday performance of superficiality and eroticism, a performance for which she relies heavily on the body to portray. The fictional performance of this dance allows the dissonant pieces of herself to surface through different components of her body; whereas the frenzied part of her that flees manifests in the limbs and through the actions of the body, the vulnerable part surfaces through the eyes in their fixed stare.574 The eyes and vision act as the privileged site of transmission for what cannot be articulated. Both Nestoroff’s and Serafino’s eyes betray what their bodies and language cannot pronounce. Serafino waits in terrorized anticipation for the 573 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 597. 574 In a longer discussion on this passage, one might address the aspects of the character that Nestoroff plays in this scene that perhaps allow for the performance of her own experience as an ossessa. The eroticization of the female body and the Orientalizing of the character as “an Indian girl” that is meant to add “color” to the film in particular appear to liberate Nestoroff from the burden of keeping this experience locked away by providing a sufficiently “other” outlet that nevertheless resonates with the duality of her internal self. 306 finale where Nestoroff stabs herself, yet his body remains impassive and devoid of emotion. He is even surprised when, at the end of the scene, he responds to Bertini: “Ho guardato nella macchinetta e mi sono trovata in gola una curiosa voce sonnolenta per annunziare al Bertini: - Ventidue metri.” 575 Likewise, Nestoroff’s fixed stare appears at odds with the violent movements of her body. In their stillness and intensity, the eyes search for Serafino’s and, in them, a sort of approval: “sempre con gli occhi fissi ne’ miei, domandava ogni tanto…Come se volesse saperlo da me; e gli occhi erano quelli d’una pazza.”576 In maintaining such eye contact, Nestoroff appeals to Serafino to bear witness to her discontent. She seems to address the dance to Serafino and thereby calls on him to witness the violence of being divided against oneself and one’s body. The eroticization of her body here still comes from without as a projection onto her by the male gaze and the camera that amplifies it. Yet, the performance of this eroticized character and its difference from the sentiment her eyes convey, calls attention to how objectification and sexualization of her body is bound up with the part of herself that flees. The tension between her still eyes and thrashing body clearly disturbs Serafino. The dance, as the manifestation and composite of the duality of the ossessa, has a perlocutionary effect on him: it makes him anxious to the point of near panic. It provokes an affective response made visible in his eyes that show “uno sgomento prossimo a cangiarsi in terrore.” Not only does Nestoroff call on him to bear witness through her stare but the dance itself as a bodily testimony affects the viewer by provoking this affective response and compels him to participate emotionally in its testimony. Serafino becomes invested in knowing the 575 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 599. 576 It is unclear to me whether Nestoroff actually pronounced those questions or if Serafino interpreted her eyes to ask them. 307 outcome of the dance, in knowing the truth of Nestoroff’s intentions regarding her distress and possible desire to kill herself. The placement of the camera in this episode admittedly makes it difficult to call this a scene of witnessing. Because a camera cannot feel, it cannot be a witness to testimony the same way as a subject can; the absolute impassivity of the lens precludes it from participating in testimony as a human listener or viewer might. This is precisely what the pedestrians perceive about Serafino’s impassive gaze in the opening passages of the novel—a void where the possibility of address and affect should be. But the camera does not exist for Nestoroff here as it might in other instances. Instead it takes on a symbolic presence and becomes an object that represents the male gaze and modern society that forces her to take on the mask of superficial film star. As such, this moment more closely resembles live theatre. Nestoroff looks beyond the camera to Serafino and addresses her performance to him as a theatre actor might perform for a live audience. In so doing, she enables a form of bodily testimony that would otherwise have gone without a witness.577 Nestoroff in most other moments mediates physically what extent of the truth about her breaches the horizon of her body and gestures. Self-abdication and objectification grant her some relief in that they shield her from the recognition of a truth about herself that she would rather not confront; that is, her duality and unknowability. And yet, she cannot be said to be the master or owner of her body. It signifies without her consent and even betrays what she consciously 577 This episode highlights how filmed acting differs from live theatre. Film precludes the possibility of address (by the actor/actress) by replacing the audience with a lens. Benjamin’s discussion of the loss of the aura in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” touches on this point to a degree. He suggests that the substitution of the camera for the audience causes the aura of the actor to vanish since “the aura is tied to his presence.” In this sense, presence is also what allows for the possibility of address and testimony. See Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, 229. 308 seeks to hide. The camera, recording everything like a hungry beast, does not pass up such a meal. A closer look at what the camera captures of her and her reaction to her image on screen suggests a revelatory function of filmic reproduction. The Face of Objectification: The Image on Screen Much the same way Nestoroff’s body betrays aspects about herself unconsciously to Serafino in the dance of daggers, her appearance on screen captures something unexpected about her. This is most apparent in the expressions she makes when being filmed, which escape without conscious consent and give Serafino a glimpse of Nestoroff’s internal life. Serafino first notices Nestoroff’s psychological unrest through these corporeal slips: Ha in sé qualche cosa, questa donna, che gli altri non riescono a comprendere, perché bene non lo comprende neppure lei stessa. Si indovina però dalle violente espressioni che assume, senza volerlo, senza saperlo, nelle parti che le sono assegnate…E non c’è verso di tenerla in freno, di farle attenuare la violenza di quelle espressioni. 578 She has something in her, this woman, which the others do not succeed in understanding, because even she herself does not clearly understand it. One guesses it, however, from the violent expressions which she assumes, involuntarily, unconsciously, in the parts that as assigned to her…And there is no way of keeping her in check, of making her moderate the violence of those expressions.579 Not only do these expressions risk exposing her and her relation to herself as an ossessa, but she cannot contain them. They threaten to shatter her mask of superficiality from the inside out. Serafino takes these moments as an opportunity to study Nestoroff and try to understand what it is she suffers from. He concludes that the faces captured on film unconsciously reflect her 578 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 555–56. 579 Pirandello, Shoot!, 59. 309 struggle to apprehend and understand herself. Her face in these instances behaves similarly to the way her body behaves in the dagger scene—it contorts violently. Like the body, these expressions exhibit an unstoppable momentum and surprise even Nestoroff. It is not a coincidence that these expressions breach the surface in their most violent forms in front of the camera. What the expressions testify to and the effects of the camera on life are one in the same: the subject’s dissociation from a part of the self. When Nestoroff visually goes off-script, the expressions are to blame, though she is powerless to control them. Only Serafino recognizes that these involuntary grimaces are an unconscious manifestation of her inner turmoil. Although Nestoroff does not consciously want others to see this vulnerable part of herself, another part of herself reaches out and appeals to others through these expressions. Something unexpected happens when the camera fixes these expressions into an image on screen. Nestoroff’s peculiar reaction to the image suggests that she sees something in addition to the figure emptied of life that other actors see. The mechanical reproduction of her image confronts her with a truth of technologization that terrifies her: Resta ella stessa sbalordita e quasi atterrita delle apparizioni della propria immagine su lo schermo, così alterata e scomposta. Vede lì una, che è lei, ma che ella non conosce. Vorrebbe non riconoscersi in quella; ma almeno conoscerla. Nessuno, che non abbia gli occhi velati da una passione contraria e l’abbia vista uscire dalla sala di prova dopo l’apparizione di quelle sue immagini, può aver più dubbii su ciò. Ella è veramente tragica: spaventata e rapita, con negli occhi quello stupor tenebroso che si scorge negli agonizzanti e a stento riesce a frenare il fremito convulso di tutta la persona.580 She herself remains speechless and almost terror stricken at her own image on the screen, so altered and disordered. She sees there some one who is herself but whom she does not know. She would like not to recognize herself in this person, but at least to know her. 580 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 557. 310 No one, whose eyes are not clouded by a passionate antipathy, and who has seen her come out of the rehearsal theatre after the presentation of those pictures of herself, can retain any doubt as to that. She is really tragic: terrified and enthralled, with that somber stupor in her eyes which we observe in the eyes of the dying, and can barely restrain the convulsive tremor of her entire person.581 Nestoroff’s reaction to the image resembles the reaction she had to Serafino’s face when he saw the paintings of her; however, where in that instance a sense of guilt pervaded her expression, here fear overcomes all other sensations. She is profoundly stunned. The language Serafino uses to describe her reaction stresses the quality of being overwhelmed and in awe. “Sbalordita” in particular suggests a condition of near paralysis in the face of something unknown or unexpected, whereas “rapita” gives a sense of being captivated to the point of losing one’s sense of self. More disturbing than that, however, are her eyes that take the form of someone on the edge of death and in danger of losing control over the body. What could this image possibly confront Nestoroff with that would produce such a drastic reaction? Some scholars suggest that the image she sees on the screen is not so different from the reflection that Moscarda sees in the mirror in Uno, nessuno e centomila. Pupino argues that both present the subject with the realization that he exists as multiple people for others and as someone entirely different for himself. In a word, the reflection shows the subject his doppio and the impossibility of being only one person.582 However, this understanding does not take into consideration the mechanism that subtends the filmic image. Each frame fixes an individual into “attimi sospesi”; it disintegrates the action of the body from its physical and temporal form only to restore that original unity later by feeding these suspended moments into another machine. Whereas Moscarda sees in his reflection the possibility of not knowing the many versions of 581 Pirandello, Shoot!, 61. 582 See Pupino, Pirandello, o L’arte della dissonanza, chapter XI. 311 himself from other people’s perspectives, the image on the screen confronts Nestoroff with a glimpse of what Serafino recognizes in her, that is, a disintegrated relation to the self. The image on the screen allows her to witness a truth of herself that she very much wishes to deny, the fact that part of herself escapes her understanding or even recognition. The camera’s ability to fix the expressions of the ossessa, the part of Nestoroff that escapes her, also forces Nestoroff to confront that truth about herself. This is tantamount to a form of death in itself. In Pirandellian terms, one cannot see oneself live (“vedersi vivere”) as others do. To do so would be akin to dying, because one would no longer feel oneself living (“sentirsi vivere”).583 Serafino repeats the same point in a passage which immediately calls to mind Pirandello’s condemnation of logic in L’umorismo: Come sono sciocchi tutti coloro che dichiarano la vita un mistero, infelici che vogliono con la ragione spiegarsi quello che con la ragione non si spiega! Porsi davanti la vita come un oggetto da studiare, è assurdo, perché la vita, posta davanti così, perde per forza ogni consistenza reale e diventa un’astrazione vuota di senso e di valore. E com’è più possibile spiegarsela? L’avete uccisa. Potete, tutt’al più, farne l’anatomia. La vita non si spiega; si vive. La ragione è nella vita; non può esserne fuori. E la vita non bisogna porsela davanti, ma sentirsela dentro, e viverla.584 What fools all the people who declare that life is a mystery, wretches who seek to explain by the use of reason what reason is powerless to explain! To set life before on as an object of study is absurd, because life, when set before one like that, loses all its real consistency and becomes an abstraction, void of meaning and value. And how after that is it possible to explain it to oneself? You have killed it. The most you can do now is dissect it. Life is not explained; it is lived. Reason exists in life; it cannot exist apart from it. And life is not to be set before one, but felt within one and lived.585 583 Moscarda explains it in this way: “Perché bisogna che lei fermi un attimo in sé la vita, per vedersi. Come davanti a una macchina fotografica. Lei s’atteggia. E atteggiarsi è come diventare statua per un momento. La vita si muove di continuo, e non può mai veramente vedere se stessa.” 584 Pirandello, Tutti i romanzi, 662. 585 Pirandello, Shoot!, 224. 312 Any attempt to distill the representation of action from its living embodiment amounts to a negation of life. What terrifies Nestoroff seems to go beyond the recognition of herself as ossessa in the image. While the image in its imperfect replication of her visualizes the dissociation she feels internally, the very reproduction of her in the image provokes the most profound terror because it confronts her with a truth about the effects of technologization on life: that through it, all life is flattened into an object and experience fragmented into distinct parts. The image on screen might then be read as an artifact of the process of objectification implicit in all representation but most visible in the process of film. Confronting this artifact, Nestoroff glimpses the death that modern technology demands of life. Conclusion: To Some Degree Inorganic As Nestoroff’s experience demonstrates, modernity and the intrusion of machinic technology into everyday life puts at risk the ability to maintain a relationship to the self or even recognize oneself in one’s actions. Similarly for Serafino, the dissociating effects of working with a nearly automated camera radically alter how he relates to his body and his emotions. Though he survives the engagement with modern technology in ways that Giorgio or the violinist do not, he is only able to do so after losing access to his emotions. In Nestoroff’s case, her interactions with the camera and the film industry exacerbate and amplify the internal struggle she has with herself; her body becomes an afflicted medium in which imposed identities collide with her own incomplete understanding of herself. In Pirandello’s rendering of modernity, it seems that the only avenues open to the modern subject are dissociation or death; only in giving up a part of the self will the subject survive “the 313 time of the machine.” The author in this way takes a nostalgic position that favors a time before autonomous machines filled instead with instruments that allowed the artist-intellectual to express his anima. The examples of Giorgio the painter or the violinist, or even the writer who now sends texts to press without having to pick up a pen attest to this. Each form of artistry has been supplanted by a modern technology that not only replaces the artwork with a product but replaces the artist with a machine. The only space left in such a world for someone with artistic- intellectual tendencies is as a prosthetic to a mechanism or as fodder for the camera, which is to say dead meat. Either way, the subject stands to lose a part of himself in the form of dissociation or a compartmentalization of experience.586 We are now in a position to say something more about how Nestoroff’s experience with her image on screen relates to Serafino’s becoming mute. Nestoroff unconsciously reacts to glimpsing the truth of technology’s objectification of life; her body bears witness to this realization in its facial expression, terror, and partial paralysis. In much the same way, Serafino’s muteness testifies to the way language too attempts to fix testimony as something fluid and creative into something rigid and absolute. His muteness as bodily testimony of a traumatic experience makes evident how language participates in the same process of objectification of the subject and of life by technology. What Serafino sees in the oltre and what exists beyond the self but that is nevertheless a part of the self, Nestoroff’s il di là da se stessa, might then be read as figures for the same thing. At stake in the fight over subjectivity between the human and machine is the relation the human subject has to the self that is bound up with an awareness of the constructedness of reality. The volatile combination of the human superfluo and mechanical 586 D’Annunzio in other non-literary writing comments on the shifting place of the writer-intellectual in the twentieth century as well. See his interview with Ojetti in Ojetti, Alla scoperta dei letterati. 314 reproduction creates increasingly more examples of the ways technology pushes the human subject towards death and yet—because of the extent to which life is imbricated with technology—the recognition of this truth becomes even more dangerous. The oltre and the image of the ossessa captured on screen are figures for the truth about the technologization of life. As Pirandello suggests in his essay on umore, at risk in taking more than a cursory glance at this truth that lives beyond the veil of our consciousness is something close to death: In certi momenti di silenzio interiore… ci sentiamo assaltare da una strana impressione, come se, in un baleno, ci si chiarisse una realtà diversa da quella che normalmente percepiamo, una realtà vivente oltre la vista umana, fuori delle forme dell’umana ragione. Lucidissimamente allora la compagine dell’esistenza quotidiana, quasi sospesa nel vuoto di quel nostro silenzio interiore, ci appare priva di senso, priva di scopo; e quella realtà diversa ci appare orrida nella sua crudezza impassibile e misteriosa, poiché tutte le nostre fittizie relazioni consuete di sentimenti e d’immagini si sono scisse e disgregate in essa. Il vuoto interno si allarga, varca i limiti del nostro corpo, diventa vuoto intorno a noi, un vuoto strano, come un arresto del tempo e della vita, come se il nostro silenzio interiore si sprofondasse negli abissi del mistero. Con uno sforzo supremo cerchiamo allora di riacquistar la coscienza normale delle cose, di riallacciar con esse le consuete relazioni, di riconnetter le idee, di risentirci vivi come l’innanzi, al modo solito. Ma a questa coscienza normale, a queste idee riconnesse, a questo sentimento solito della vita non possiamo più prestar fede, perché sappiamo ormai che sono un nostro inganno per vivere e che sotto c’è qualcos’altro, a cui l’uomo non può affacciarsi, se non a costo di morire o d’impazzire.587 In certain moments of inner silence…we are seized by a strange impression, as if, in a flash, we could clearly perceive a reality different from the one that we normally perceive, a reality living beyond the reach of human vision, outside the forms of human reason. Very lucidly, then, the texture of daily existence, almost suspended in the void of our inner silence, seems meaningless, devoid of purpose; and that new reality appears to us dreadful in its sternly detached and mysterious crudeness, for all our usual fictitious relationships, both of feelings and images, have separated and disintegrated in it. The inner void expands, surpasses the limits of our body, and becomes a weird emptiness that engulfs us as if time and life had come to a stop, as if our inner silence had plunged into the abyss of mystery. With a supreme effort we then try to recapture the normal consciousness of things, to renew our usual relationships with them, to reassemble our ideas and 587 Pirandello, L’umorismo, 160–61, my emphasis. Of interest might also be Dombroski’s essay, “Pirandello e Freud: le dimensioni conoscitive dell’umorismo” in Paola Daniela Giovanelli, ed. Pirandello saggista (1982). 315 to feel alive again in the usual way. But we can no longer trust this normal consciousness, these newly recollected ideas and this habitual sense of living because we now know that they are deceptions which we use in order to survive and that underneath them there is something else which man can face only at the cost of either death or insanity.588 Recognition of the congegno (apparatus, dispositif) of life, as Pirandello calls it in another moment, becomes impossible because it would essentially unravel life; it amounts to death. Surprisingly, however, no one can see it despite its ubiquity in modernity; Serafino and Nestoroff are able to glimpse it only at great personal cost. Pirandello offers a possible explanation for this, too. In this passage, Pirandello appears to speak of another, more elusive and potentially more dangerous truth that lives underneath even the truth of the congegno. He articulates an anxiety about coming into too close a relationship to the self that the superfluo and our drive for more technological progress seemingly fight against. He suggests that if we take too long a look at ourselves and try in earnest to understand our human nature, we might learn that the congegno and our part in developing it is a function of our own consciousness—that our superfluo, perhaps the very thing that makes us human, is responsible for our inability to relate to ourselves completely.589 The result of this recognition, so it would seem, is the ruin of our modern world and the relationships we form with others in it. The “something else, which man can face only at the cost of either death or insanity,” might be understood as the truth of humanity’s need to shield itself from a part of itself. Said differently, the superfluo, our incessant drive for technological innovation, even consciousness, work against us and are the root causes of the art and world we create and also the torment that comes with it. 588 Pirandello, On Humor, 138, my emphasis. 589 The Cynic way of caring for the self and the kind of relationship the Cynic has to the self might offer one antidote to this conundrum. See Michel Foucault’s The Courage of Truth: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1983- 1984, especially the lectures from the following dates: 22 February 1984, 29 February 1984, and 14 March 1984. 316 Serafino appears as an exception to Pirandello’s prediction; the small death of his affects spares him the fate of one who looks too closely at their “vuoto interno.” He is able to glimpse the oltre and bear witness to this truth—that the world which corrupts nature, experience, and interpersonal relationships is a product of human nature—without being lost in the silence of this knowledge forever. He does not, however, escape this realization unscathed. Serafino’s muteness testifies to the experience of glimpsing this knowledge and of being unexpectedly privy to a truth that would kill him entirely if he gripped it too tightly. Like consciousness itself, as the shield that hardens around the fragile organism of Freud’s model, he becomes “to some degree inorganic and thenceforward functions as a special envelope or membrane resistant to stimuli,” shut off from his affects and desires. He becomes partially machinic, a hand that turns a handle, so that the rest of him may live.590 Pirandello’s exceedingly pessimistic view of modernity raises the stakes for the modern subject compared to both Marinetti’s and D’Annunzio’s visons of modernity. Mafarka and Forse che sì forse che no conclude that in order to become a modern subject, one must negate or sacrifice a part of the self, which suggests at best a change in the relationship one can have to the self. For Pirandello, however, in order to survive in the time of the machine and become a modern subject, the individual must forgo any relationship to the self. We see this most clearly in Serafino who becomes absolutely shut off from his emotions to the extent that he now functions as a part of the camera without any complaint. The example of Nestoroff leads us to the same conclusion: the dissociation she feels as an inability to reconcile her external form or expression with what she feels herself to be internally is intensified by her engagement with the camera and 590 Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 30. See the “Project Description” of the Introduction to this dissertation for a discussion of this passage in Freud. 317 in the confrontation of her image on the screen. Such discord prevents her from having a relationship to herself or even to a part of herself. Instead, both characters appear possessed if not traumatized by the truth of modern life. In discussing the modern subject’s impossibility of maintaining a relationship to the self in Quaderni, I want to draw attention to the way even those who do not work with or engage with technology become its subjects and are put at risk of becoming its objects. Whereas in D’Annunzio’s Forse che sì, Paolo is both the modern subject and the subject of technology and Isabella suffers the consequences of this due to her relationship with Paolo but not because she herself is the subject of technology; in Pirandello’s Quaderni, both Serafino and Nestoroff become the subjects of technology. However, this position, prized as it is in Marinetti’s and D’Annunzio’s visions of modernity, does not come with quite the same perks in Pirandello’s view. Pirandello equates becoming the subject of technology to objectification, to the forfeiture of human life to the machine. While Serafino and Nestoroff have different relations to the camera, both experience a form of dissociation because of it and are reduced to objects at the mercy of the nearly autonomous macchina da presa. This objectification undermines the subject’s the ability to address the self and others through traditional forms of testimony. Giacomo Debenedetti’s interpretation of Nestoroff’s experience helps to zero in on what her dissociated state shares with Serafino’s and other characters we have seen so far. Debenedetti explains the experience of the ossessa as “quando una parte viva di noi si fa sentire come un corpo estraneo e ineliminabile, ne proviamo un senso di coazione, di possessione, di invasamento. Basterebbe pensare alla patologia e alla sintomatologia del rimorso.”591 This is not 591 Debenedetti, Il romanzo del Novecento, 453. 318 so different from what Isabella Inghirami experiences when she hallucinates seeing another version of herself concretize in front of her. 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