Uncanny Resemblances: Doubles and Doubling in Tarchetti

Uncanny Resemblances: Doubles and Doubling in Tarchetti, Capuana, and De Marchi
by
Christina A. Petraglia
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
(Italian)
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison
2012
Date of oral examination: December 12, 2012
Oral examination committee:
Professor Stefania Buccini, Italian
Professor Ernesto Livorni (advisor), Italian
Professor Grazia Menechella, Italian
Professor Mario Ortiz-Robles, English
Professor Patrick Rumble, Italian
i
Table of Contents
Introduction – The (Super)natural Double in the Fantastic Fin de Siècle…………………….1
Chapter 1 – Fantastic Phantoms and Gothic Guys: Super-natural Doubles in Iginio Ugo
Tarchetti’s Racconti fantastici e Fosca………………………………………………………35
Chapter 2 – Oneiric Others and Pathological (Dis)pleasures: Luigi Capuana’s Clinical
Doubles in “Un caso di sonnambulismo,” “Il sogno di un musicista,” and
Profumo……………………………………………………………………………………..117
Chapter 3 – “There’s someone in my head and it’s not me:” The Double Inside-out in Emilio
De Marchi’s Early Novels…………………..……………………………………………...222
Conclusion – Three’s a Fantastic Crowd……………………...……………………………322
1
The (Super)natural Double in the Fantastic Fin de Siècle:
The disintegration of the subject is most often underlined as a predominant trope in
Italian literature of the Twentieth Century; the so-called “crisi del Novecento” surfaces in
anthologies and literary histories in reference to writers such as Pascoli, D’Annunzio, Pirandello,
and Svevo.1 The divided or multifarious identity stretches across the Twentieth Century from
Luigi Pirandello’s unforgettable Mattia Pascal / Adriano Meis, to Ignazio Silone’s Pietro Spina /
Paolo Spada, to Italo Calvino’s il visconte dimezzato; however, its precursor may be found
decades before in such diverse representations of subject fissure and fusion as embodied in Iginio
Ugo Tarchetti’s Giorgio, Luigi Capuana’s detective Van-Spengel, and Emilio De Marchi’s
Marcello Marcelli. Though these Nineteenth-century authors enjoyed success among their
contemporaries and the bourgeois or mass reading public, they have been, or remain, relatively
marginalized by the Twenty-first-century Italian literary canon. Iginio Ugo Tarchetti (1839 –
1869) is of course remembered as a model of the anti-military, anti-bourgeois, and antiManzonian Scapigliatura, but the anti-conformist movement itself often falls by the wayside
between the other predominant literary currents of the turn-of-the-century, such as versimo and
decadentismo. Emilio De Marchi (1851 – 1901) also exists outside of the literary mainstream; as
a proponent and eventual reformer of the Italian romanzo d’appendice, he operated within the
Milanese journalistic market directed towards a mass readership. He escapes classification as a
verista, decadentista, or even as a scapigliato, although attributes of each exist in his works and
he remains the most marginal author among our threesome. Luigi Capuana (1839 – 1915)
1
Both Pascoli and D’Annunzio straddled the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, yet they are frequently
considered part of the latter or at least as Guglielmino categorizes them, part of the “il retroterra ottocentesco” (17).
He does include them however, as fundamental authors in his anthology Guida al Novecento, offering merely one
instance of their ubiquity in both centuries. Pirandello and Svevo are also two more examples of writers existing in
both centuries, but being most closely associated with the Twentieth for their thematics of fragmented identities.
2
usually receives attention as the father of verismo, and for his inaugural novel Giacinta, though
he frequently becomes overshadowed in literary studies by his peer Giovanni Verga, and his
admirer Luigi Pirandello.2 In fact, when one thinks of dualistic or multiple identities as
symptoms of neurosis, Pirandello immediately comes to mind; however, he is by no means the
first fin de siècle author to tackle the mutually inclusive tropes of the Doppelgänger, neurosis,
and the unconscious in his works, as the treatment of Tarchettian, Capuanian, and De Marchian
narrative will demonstrate in the present study.3 The marginalization of these three writers in
today’s canon recalls their periphery positions in Italian society of the late Nineteenth Century.
Tarchetti’s anti-militarism and anti-bourgeois ideologies, as well as his gothic tendencies (and
eventual untimely death from chronic illness) situated him against the status quo. He remains an
emblem of the Scapigliatura and many critical contributions, especially those by David Del
Principe and Elio Gioanola, highlight the psychoanalytical and Marxist implications in the
author; however, Tarchetti’s few, yet rich narratives, especially those of the Racconti fantastici,
are by no means exhausted. Often compared to Poe for the fantastic-uncanny, or because of the
marvelous elements of his texts, his alignment with the motif of the Doppelgänger does not
receive the deserved critical attention. The first chapter of this study entitled “Fantastic
Phantoms and Gothic Guys: Super-natural Doubles in Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s Racconti fantstici
and Fosca” discusses the variegated double in three novelle of his fantastic collection: “I fatali,”
2
Capuana is often condisered a precursor of, and an influence on, Pirandello. Ghidetti cites Capuana’s Profumo as
“un preludio misconosciuto quanto ineludibile agli ormai prossimi libri di Svevo e Pirandello” (L’ipotesi 185). In
his discussion of Il marchese di Roccaverdina, Sipala charaterizes Capuana’s novel as “la liberazione del romanzo
dai condizionamenti del naturalismo e sembra convergere nella direzione verso cui lo stesso Pirandello tendeva in
quegli anni agli inizi del Novecento” (Sipala 48). In his review of Il marchese di Roccaverdina, published in Natura
e arte in 1901, Pirandello himself praises his fellow Sicilian author.
3
As Edwige Fusaro rightly observes, “lasciando da parte l’esperienza specifica della Scapigliatura, se Pirandello è
l’iniziatore della nuova concezione dell’inconscio e delle nevrosi, Capuana è decisamente il suo profeta” (La nevrosi
358). Fusaro’s inclusion of the Scapigliatura implies the movement’s strong connection to (and depiction of)
neuroses and its treatment of the unconscious, while her affirmation of Capuana as a prophet that anticipates the
more well-known Pirandello emphasizes the frequently forgotten contributions of minor fin de siècle narratives.
3
“Le leggende del castello nero,” and “Uno spirito in un lampone.” In Fosca, the narratorprotagonist Giorgio struggles between his naturally diseased, dark, and melancholy nature as
embodied in Fosca who exists as an external representation of his internal fatality, and his ideal
love Chiara, whose light in the end reveals itself as merely bourgeois and ephemeral. Giorgio’s
two lovers both personify opposite sides of his own fragmented identity: Chiara exists as that
ideal of health, ethereal love, youth, and normality that he would like to be, while Fosca
eventually emerges as a mirror image of the self he attempts to repress, a representation of his
own shadow – obsessive, fatally passionate, and pathological. Similar to the macabre setting of
Fosca, whose femme fatale elicits that uncanny dread discussed by Freud, “I fatali,” “Le
leggende del castello nero,” and “Uno spirito in un lampone” all relate similarly gothic, though
more fantastic tales in their variegated portrayals of the Doppelgänger motif. The plural title, “I
fatali,” already foreshadows a certain multiplicity that will emerge in the mysterious figures of
the two “fatal men” as the elder willingly inflicts massive destruction, and the younger
unwillingly produces lethal effects on those around them. “Le leggende del castello nero” and
“Uno spirito in un lampone” present diversified manifestations of metempsychosis, the former
epically tragic and the latter fantastically comic, though each psychologically charged and
supernaturally inquisitive.
While Tarchetti came from the Northern province of San Salvatore Monferrato,
Capuana’s Sicilian origins (despite his intermittent sojourns in Florence, Milan and Rome)
linked him to the other veristi, yet circumscribed him with the fallout of the questione
meridionale. The Minean native, a staunch admirer and unrealized scholar of Tarchetti, receives
limited critical attention today beyond his first novel Giacinta and his masterpiece Il marchese di
4
Roccaverdina.4 Capuanian criticism flourished in the 1960s and before, thanks to the
fundamental works of Madrignani and Di Blasi, who among other scholars, often seek to situate
him within naturalist or idealist discourse, or somewhere in between. Though articles still appear
on Capuana’s most well-known novels and credence has been given to his eclecticism, or his
self-proclaimed ‘“eghelianismo [sic] ritemprato con gli studi delle scienze naturali moderne’”
(Valerio 98), there still remains much room for further study of verismo’s so-called progenitor,
his fantastic short stories and novels, in correlation with his parapsychological and critical
treatises.5 The second chapter, entitled “Oneiric Others and Patological (Dis)pleasures: Luigi
Capuana’s Clinical Doubles in ‘Un caso di sonnambulismo,’ ‘Il sogno di un musicista,’ and
Profumo,” focuses on the emergence of the double in parapsychological cases, through alternate
forms of consciousness in trance states and dreams in the respective novelle “Un caso di
sonnambulismo” and “Il sogno di un musicista.” The first short story depicts a police detective,
who, unbeknownst to him, is also a writing medium. While he sleeps, Van-Spengel writes the
account of a multiple homicide as it is occurring and when he awakens, the dumbfounded and
eventually horrified detective “solves” the crime. After he apprehends the murderers, he goes
insane; the tale itself pushes the reader towards madness as she attempts to comprehend
Capuana’s intricate manipulation of the time-space continuum. The second selected novella, “Il
sogno di un musicista” recounts the story of a young musician who composes the music of the
4
Various critics of both Capuana and Tarchetti – Madrignani, Ghidetti, and Del Principe – mention the connections
between these writers and underline the similarities of their fantastic tales, Racconti fantastici and L’aldilà.
Capuana expressed great interest in the scapigliati and in a letter from 1869 he writes that he plans to undertake a
critical study of Tarchetti, and even though he had almost finished it, the work was never published (Madrignani
Capuana e il naturalismo 56).
5
The definition of his own philosophy is found in Note autobiografiche, sent to Cesareo on February 17, 1884, and
reprinted in Valerio (98). Madrignani also discusses the ‘scientific heglianism’ of Capuana and the influence of
DeMeis (Capuana e il naturalismo 64-69). Capuana’s existential and aesthetic Hegelianism was a result of his
reading ofHegel’s Phenomenology of the Mind and of his study of the Desanctisian notion of form (derived from
Hegel’s philosophy of art) respectively.
5
spheres in his dreams, yet only remembers the first half of the melody upon waking. Should he
remember the second half, a voice tells him, he will die. Capuana therefore examines the
implications that the dreamscape wields on our waking lives, juxtaposing the realities of these
parallel universes. Capuana’s second novel Profumo is also addressed for its treatment of the
divided self in the male protagonist Patrizio, who is torn between allegiance to his mother and
his new bride Eugenia, the former acting a moralizing force and sexual repressor, and the latter
calling for his psychosexual maturation. The female characters thereby externally embody his
internal, identity struggles and function as vehicles for his coming of age. While his mother
functions as an extension of Patrizio’s socially-constructed conscience, Eugenia embodies
natural instincts for sensual pleasure, which he ultimately represses and forces her to repress as
well. In her yearning for licit, intimate relations with her frigid husband, Eugenia emits a scent
of orange blossoms from her skin so that both male and female protagonists exemplify the
contrasting forces of instinctual desire and social decorum. While Capuana’s oeuvre offers
numerous examples of doubles and doubling – both uncanny and marvelous – the confines of
time and space permit the discussion of only a small selection. The selected works, however, are
included because they effectively represent the recurrent Capuanian motifs of alternative
consciousness and conflicting desires.
The third chapter, “‘There’s Someone in My Head and It’s Not Me:’ The Double Insideout in Emilio De Marchi’s Early Novels,” continues the thread of the super-natural in its
treatment of the double as he appears in examples of role play and demonic possession. The
elements of the criminal and the theatrical, which color the tales of Tarchetti and Capuana, also
burst through the pages of Emilio De Marchi’s first and third novels Il signor dottorino and Due
anime in un corpo. De Marchi, undoubtedly the most marginal of our authors, assumed the role
6
as a writer for the mass reading pubic, which in fact consisted of merely non-intellectual
bourgeois or petit-bourgeois, for the actual masses belonged to the high number of illiterates in
post-Unification Italy. The Milanese novelist’s open and active participation in the journalistic
and editorial market, and his vocation to reform the romanzo d’appendice has assisted in his
relegation to a peripheral (if not non-existent) position in today’s literary canon. Valuable
critical works exist on De Marchi, many of which hail from the 1960s, and Vittorio Spinazzola’s
exhaustive study of the author’s works proves a great contribution. With Twentieth-century
interest in and variations of the genre of the giallo, De Marchi has often been cited as a precursor
for the detective story, as previously noted above. Though the Milanese novelist is sometimes
disregarded by scholars because of his obvious colloquial style and seemingly banal or strange
content, Spinazzola has rightly alluded to the inherent, though perhaps veiled psychological
implications that the author surreptitiously includes in his narratives. De Marchi’s first novel, Il
signor dottorino, proves an example of a typical romanzo d’appendice, filled with drama,
suspense, and a detailed plot; however, the relatively short serial portrays the identity crisis of its
protagonist. Doctor Marco is called upon by Baron Adriano Siloe to treat his daughter Severina
who is suffering from a sort of delusional hysteria because of abandonment by her fiancé Count
Giulio. When the young physician meets the crazed baroness, she believes him to be the count;
her father and Marco perpetuate her delusion by pretending that he is indeed her estranged
fiancé. During the charade which becomes Severina’s “treatment,” the doctor falls madly in love
with his patient, and even begins to create his own fantasy world in his mind where they build a
married life together. In short, Doctor Marco seems to contract his patient’s delusional
“disease,” as if invaded by a contagion of madness that ultimately leaves him confused as to his
own authentic identity. The real Count Giulio eventually returns and as Severina is cured, Marco
7
falls ill. After being cared for by his friend and medical colleague, Celestino, he is later reborn
into the altruistic little doctor he was before role play and passion overwhelmed him. The
protagonist of De Marchi’s third novel, Due anime in un corpo, also assumes the role of
someone else; however, he happens to be possessed by the spirit of the dead man he
impersonates. Marcello Marcelli, a name that reiterates the theme of doubling established by the
novel’s title, becomes a vehicle for the spirit of Giorgio Lucini as he attempts to see his beloved
once more, solve his own murder, and apprehend his killer, who, we find out, is actually his
estranged biological father. Marcello’s mind and body is invaded by this foreign consciousness
and even the narration reflects this duality as it often shifts between first and third person
narrators – when Marcello speaks and Giorgio is silent, and when Giorgio speaks and Marcello
remains dormant. The highly elaborate plot, coupled with the often labyrinthine narration, are
two reasons for which this serial novel has received little acclaim by critics; however, it is a
prime example of the supernatural manifestation of the double and it implicitly questions the
type of life after death that the spirit experiences. (De Marchi, a modern Catholic, believed in an
afterlife that did not necessarily completely adhere to the traditional rendition of it by the
Church.) Moreover, Due anime in un corpo presents a complex case of demonic possession that
could easily be viewed by skeptics as a clinical case of schizophrenia.
The works of Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, Luigi Capuana, and Emilio De Marchi run rampant
with diverse manifestations of the Doppelgänger, which as we have already established, is itself
a slippery, psychopathological concept. Despite its diachronic appearance throughout Western
literatures, the double especially emerges in Nineteenth-century fiction as both society and the
individual become “modernized” by industry, technology, and science. While the authors of the
present study have been examined to various extents by scholarly criticism, the motif of the
8
double has not yet received exclusive attention, nor have Tarchetti, Capuana, and De Marchi
been grouped together despite their gothic, fantastic, and pathological affinities. The objective in
the pages that follow is dig into the uncanny and marvelous depths of the selected prose works of
these three, often marginalized writers, in order to reveal the complexities of identity fissure and
fusion as the double surfaces in superstitions, fatal forces, reincarnation, alternative
consciousness, dreams, love triangles, role play, and demonic possession. Before delving into
the novels and short stories of our authors, a brief introduction into theories and criticism
surrounding the concept of the double, and the genres of the gothic and the fantastic in which it
so often appears, will assist in the textual analyses that follow.
The concept of the Doppelgänger – a term which in its familiarity and foreignness to the
English language succinctly conveys the essence of the Freudian unheimlich – is a variegated,
yet age-old theme that transcends the bounds of time and space, recurring diachronically
throughout Western literatures. The duplication and/or the cleavage of the self emerges
especially in moments of historical, cultural, and social upheavals and the post-Risorgimento
years in Italy most certainly represent a time of crisis whose effects were felt from the fin de
siècle well into the Twentieth Century. The North-South divide of the Italian nation-state
following its economically and culturally unsuccessful Unification reflected not only a
geographical and industrial fissure, but also echoed epistemological conflicts between science
and religion, ideological oppositions between naturalism and idealism, and fundamental
differences in social, linguistic, and cultural identities among the diversified Italian population.
The period from the Italian Unification to the pre-World War I years therefore offer fertile
ground for an investigation of the theme of the double in the narratives (novels and short stories)
of various authors – Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, Luigi Capuana, and Emilio De Marchi – all of whom
9
experienced first-hand the turbulent years of political change, industry, positivism, and spiritism,
and contributed to the search for a post-Manzonian Italian literature. Their interconnectedness
on an artistic level is evidenced by their common influences of realism and the Scapigliatura,
while they all sought with their own methods, styles, and genres, ways to revitalize the Italian
novel, by transcending naturalism and overcoming their Manzonian anxiety of influence. The
three above-mentioned novelists all address the trope of the double throughout their imaginative
prose works; through their fictional characters, they often identify the dilemma of not only
discovering an authentic identity, but also the more difficult conundrum of reconciling their
unconscious selves with their conscious egos, and/or with societal norms and expectations.
While the theme of the Doppelgänger in its diverse, though not mutually exclusive
representations outlined by Otto Rank – as a psychologically created double, a divided self
represented by a shadow, a reflection, or a portrait, and as a real or hallucinatory look-a-like – is
the focus of many comparative studies both in English and Italian, there exists little critical
material on the subject in Italian literature.6 The scholarly works that address the recurrence of
the double within the Italian milieu treat the topic almost exclusively in Twentieth-century
authors, and usually from a comparative standpoint.7 As Massimo Fusillo rightly notes, self6
Many comparative studies exclusively treat the theme of the double while other English language criticism deals
with the double in English and/or American literature. More often than not, comparative and English critics (with
the exception of classicists like Massimo Fusillo) focus mainly on Nineteenth-century novels, perhaps rendering the
lack of criticism on Italian prose from the same period a bit shocking. Furthermore, many of the same literary works
appear in the various studies concerning the double: Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and
“Markheim;” Poe’s “William Wilson;” Dostoevsky’s The Double; Hoffmann’s The Devil’s Elixir and Princess
Brambilla; Conrad’s The Secret Sharer; Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener;” and Heinz Evers’ The Student of
Prague, to name just a few of the usual suspects.
7
Anna Dolfi’s collection of essays, Identità alterità doppio nella letteratura moderna (2001), published from the
homonymous conference, include some theoretical contributions to the discourse of the double, while scholarly
contributions vary, including essays on such authors as Svevo, Palazzeschi, Silone, Manganelli, and Tabucchi.
Except for pieces on Machiavelli, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Verga, they explicitly treat Twentieth-century texts.
Other recent works in Italian published on the double include those of Bonino – Essere due: sei romanzi del doppio
(2006) and Io e l’altro: racconti fantastici sul doppio (2004) – anthologies with critical introductions by the editor.
Both contain short stories from a variety of European and American authors, and while the latter offers novelle by
10
division and duplication in literature prove a “transcultural” phenomenon (L’altro e lo stesso 7),
and though the present study is not an exercise in comparative analysis, it will nonetheless be
informed by, and perhaps briefly reference when relevant, other European texts. In both the
cross-cultural and strictly Italian studies of the double in literature, no critical volume has been
produced that deals specifically with the theme in the Nineteenth-century Italian narrrative.
Furthermore, literary criticism has yet to group Tarchetti, Capuana, and De Marchi together in a
single thematic study and address the diverse manifestations of self-duplication and division that
occurs in many of their novels and short stories. While each author treats the double differently,
often within particular narratives of his own oeuvre, all are concerned with the
psychopathological, existential, and ontological ramifications inflicted on the individual psyche
as the Doppelgänger emerges through opposing desires, inexplicable inclinations, or occult
forces (whether external in the form of supernatural entities, or internal in the hidden recesses of
the human mind). Furthermore, each of these novelists may be categorized differently,
according to the –ismi that so vexed Capuana; however, the principal, common thread that unites
them all is their transcendence of realism through their gothic and fantastic narratives. Tarchetti,
often considered the model of the Milanese Scapigliatura; Capuana, usually hailed as the father
of verismo; and De Marchi, recently re-examined by some critics as a progenitor of il giallo
(though still the most marginal of our writers because of his non-canonicity) all compose stories
Papini, Tarchetti, Bontempelli and Savinio (among other non-Italian writers), the former is comprised of only six
narratives in total, none of which authored by an Italian. Like other Italian scholars, such as Fusillo (in which the
only Italian work addressed is Pasolini’s Petrolio), Rutelli adopts a transcultural and transhistorical perspective.
Both of Funari’s studies deal with literature to an extent (from a cross-cultural perspective) while his main focus
proves to be the theoretical and psychological underpinnings of the double. Roda’s collection of essays published in
2008 include those of a comparative nature and his own, which deals with the double in the Nineteenth and
Twentieth centuries in the works of Verga, Pascoli, D’Annunzio and Papini. Bettini discusses the objects most
closely associated with the double, which Rank outlines in his seminal treatise on the subject: the mirror, the mask,
Narcissus, and twins. Papini’s recent La scrittura e il suo doppio is a study of modern Italian authors and much of it
utilizes a cross-cultural approach, reading Italian writers (D’Annunzio, Gozzano, Palazzeschi, Banti, Landolfi,
Ungaretti, Leopardi, Papini, Comi, Volponi, Manganelli, and others) in relation their international contemporaries.
11
grounded in the material world.8 By constructing a certain verisimilitude, however, their
overturning of it with the seeming inverisimilitude of spiritual or psychical occurrences proves
all the more unnerving and disorienting, inciting the reader herself to question the confines of
traditional realities established by historical, religious, or scientific dogmas. Each author
matured intellectually in the shadow of Manzoni, and witnessed the success of Zola, ultimately
polemically engaging these influences through their fictional works, which themselves
perpetuated another type of “realism,” not necessarily circumscribed by grand historical
narratives, nor entirely comprehensible through the myopic lenses of traditional Christian
religion and positivistic science. Because each author navigates the realms of the gothic and the
fantastic, creating tales of the uncanny and the marvelous, it is necessary to establish parameters
for these terms and it is essential to reference the critical groundwork from which they emerge.
The term “fantastic” has been defined, interpreted, and utilized in many ways by literary
scholars. In his introduction to Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader, David Sander offers a
valid affirmation of the fantastic’s denotative slipperiness:
The fundamental characteristic of the fantastic is displacement; the fantastic signifier
does not point, even superficially, to any clear signified and so causes the reader to
experience a lack, a disruption, inviting (if not provoking) an interpretation […]
However, the fantastic, as an overfull or empty form, eludes interpretation, leaving the
reader only with the uncomfortable experience of disjunction, an ill-fitting conception of
the presence of the impossible (9).
As if anticipating an inconclusiveness that nevertheless begs for interpretation, as if embodying
the endless chain of signification so prized in post-structuralist readings of literature and literary
8
Spinazzola refers to De Marchi’s “reformed” serial novel Il cappello del prete as “un giallo alla rovescia” (58) and
Adamo discusses the work as a precursor to the giallo, and references other critics who also classify it as such (145).
Cecconi-Gorra refers to it as a giallo (89) and Covi in his 2002 book entitled Tutti i colori del giallo. Il giallo
italiano da De Marchi a Scerbanenco a Camilleri examines the origins of the Italian detective novel in De Marchi.
In the most recent edition of the novel, published by Mondadori in 2006, the detective novel writer, Carlo Lucarelli
discusses the genre’s and the noir’s indebtedness to De Marchi in a short afterword.
12
language, the fantastic – even the pre-Kafkaesque fantastic that we are dealing with here –
presents itself as a dialogic genre par excellence in its openness to and elusion of absolutist
explanation.9 While the majority of scholars agree that the fantastic exists in the realm of
indefiniteness, and continually subsumes within it new characteristics while maintaining old ones
as in a state of aufheben, it nonetheless remains relevant to note some general conceptions of the
fantastic that will factor into the particular, diverse interpretations of the double motif within all
of the works under examination in the present study.
Tzvetan Todorov’s structural approach remains a universal benchmark for discussions of
the fantastic in general, and in regards to the particular literary texts that comprise it. Though his
treatment of the fantastic may seem too rigid for contemporary criticism because of the
seemingly inflexible categories he uses to classify narratives, these groupings nonetheless assist
us in situating the various manifestations of fantastical elements (including those that, in
Todorovian parlance, belong to the subgenres that overlap the fantastic). Todorov himself notes
that there is a small number of purely fantastic texts according to his definition, and thereby
acknowledges the specificity of the pure fantastic as he interprets it. Few works place and keep
9
In “‘Aminadab’ o del fantastico come linguaggio” in Che cos’ è la letteratura? Sartre establishes a diachronic
division of the fantastic in which the Nineteenth-century fantastic (that Calvino will later call the visionary fantastic)
involves a transcendence of the human and presents the reader with spiritistic phenomena, while Twentieth-century
authors, with models such as Kafka and Blanchot, compose a fantastic literature that returns to the human (a
literature that Calvino will classify as the everyday fantastic). According to Sartre, “il fantastico, per trovare posto
nell’umanesimo contemporaneo, finisce per addomesticarsi come gli altri, rinunciando ad esplorare le realtà
trascendenti e rassegnandosi a trascrivere la condizione umana niente succubi o fantasmi, niente fontane che
piangono, ma soltanto uomini, e il creatore del fantastico dichiara d’identificarsi con l’oggetto fantastico. Il
fantastico, per l’uomo d’oggi, non è altro che una maniera fra le tante di rimandarsi la propria immagine” (228 –
229). Despite Sartre’s differentiations between fantastic types, the genre is nonetheless always focused on questions
of the human, even if these questions reach into the supernatural or supra-human tropes so common in the
Nineteenth Century. Rosemary Jackson notes the dialogical nature of the fantastic and its tendency towards
subversion of realism in her post-struturalist study of the genre: “The fantastic exists as the inside, or underside of
realism, opposing the novel’s closed, monological forms with open, dialogical structures, as if the novel had given
rise to its own opposite, its unrecognizable reflection” (25). Jackson’s portrayal of the fantastic as a mirror of the
real, unfailingly calls to mind the image of the double, of (self) reflection and echoes Cesarini’s characterization of
the genre as, among the other literary genres, the most consciously auto-reflexive and self-conscious (7 – 8).
13
the reader in a liminal position between fantasy and reality, causing her to hesitate over the
plausibility or potential truth of the recounted events, never solving the riddle of reality at the
end of the story; however, numerous narratives begin with, and often maintain the hesitation of
the fantastic, only to fall into the uncanny or the marvelous at some point during the story, or at
its conclusion. In fact, Todorov’s stipulation of the subgenres – the fantastic-marvelous and the
fantastic-uncanny – do grant a measure of flexibility to the fantastic genre, for as subgenres, or
impure fantastics, they become part of the general category even if they fail to perpetuate
hesitation beyond the story’s end. The existence of these subgenres themselves demonstrates
how nuanced their creator’s definition of the fantastic becomes, for his seminal study does not
merely deal with the pure fantastic, it also addresses narratives that fall into the other categories,
and delineates in detail the elements associated with these categories. Todorov’s fantasticuncanny consists of the eventual, rational explanation of the supernatural, which is frequently
connected to madness (44 – 45).10 Freud’s uncanny draws from Schelling’s conception of it as
“what one calls everything that was meant to remain secret and hidden and has come into the
open” (The Uncanny 132). The unveiling of something hidden, present in both Rank and
Freud’s notion of the double, suggests the uncanny’s link to the unconscious and repressed
desires or guilt that often burst forth into consciousness, fueling neuroses, psychoses, and
10
Todorov’s conceives of the fantastic as textual content that causes the reader to hesitate over its truth or
plausibility in reality. The reader is unsure of whether what he reads describes supernatural and inexplicable, or
merely natural though strange occurrences. The trope of the double is intricately linked with the fantastic and with
its often consequential mesh with the uncanny and the marvelous respectively. One example of the fantastic that
Todorov provides is that of Poe’s “William Wilson” in which the protagonist is tormented by his own double (70 –
72) insofar as the reader cannot be sure of whether the doppelganger was truly, that is materially, existent; or
whether it was merely a figment of a psychotic’s imagination – questions that recall Golyadkin Senior and Junior in
Dostoevsky’s The Double. Todorov delineates different degrees of the fantastic, or genres that “overlap” it (44),
that include the fantastic-uncanny and the fantastic-marvelous, in which the riddle of reality is solved at the end of
the story. In the first instance, the seemingly impossible or supernatural occurrence is explained by various factors
grounded in reality: accident, coincidence, dreams, drugs, tricks, illusions, and madness so that the supernatural has
never actually surfaced in the diegesis (45). Narratives of the second category, the fantastic-marvelous, end with an
acceptance of the supernatural (55).
14
fragmentation of the self. The very inclusion of the uncanny and the marvelous in Todorov’s
work echoes and anticipates other, more liberal characterizations of what constitutes the
fantastic, such as those of Roger Caillois and Neuro Bonifazi, who respectively describe it in
contrast to the real, ordered world, and as a place of wonder and anxiety in front of the
unexplained and illogical.11 Moreover, the multifarious makeup of the fantastic-ness of the
fantastic echoes the genre’s inextricable dependency on realism, for one of its conditions is the
existence within the confines of the natural world as we know it (Todorov 33). Fairy tales and
epic journeys to the moon or to the underworld do not play by the phenomenological rules of
reality. On the contrary, the very nature of the fantastic requires that one examine it in
connection and in contrast to the real, as realism’s “underside” (Jackson 25), as its dark,
opposing (yet complementary) Doppelgänger, for it always involves the natural world
confounded, thereby lending itself to ontological questions.
It is no wonder that the trope of the double – a similarly slippery and evasive concept –
finds an appropriate niche among the multifariousness of gothic and fantastic literatures. The
Doppelgänger, like the genres in which it flourished in the Nineteenth Century, inherently
presents us with a discourse in which the individual is neither completely self nor other, but
simultaneously (albeit paradoxically) both. The ambiguity that one finds in the concept of the
double, always alludes to a breakdown and ultimate partition of a unified subject, a division of
the self that in turn produces a duplication, or in Fusillo’s words, “a consciousness split in two”
11
For Caillois, “‘the fantastic is always a break in the acknowledged order, an irruption of the inadmissible within
the changeless everyday legality’” (Todorov 26). For Bonifazi the fantastic is “il luogo spettacolare dello stupore e
del turbamento di fronte a fatti inspiegabili e inquietanti o apparizioni irreali e paurose, lo spazio libero
dell’invenzione, l’estremo limite della fantasia del senso, il mondo illogico del caso e delle coincidenze fatali, il
regno dell’impossibile, che si discosta dall’esperienza consueta e dalla norma” (9).
15
(L’altro e lo stesso 23).12 In his discussion of the themes of the fantastic, Todorov explicitly
notes the recurrence of the double, emphasizing its propensity to assume different meanings and
implications within each work:
such an image [of the double] may belong to different structures, and it may also have
several meanings. Moreover, the very notion of seeking a direct equation must be
rejected, because each image always signifies others, in an infinite network of relations;
and further, because it signifies itself: it is not transparent, but possesses a certain density
(144).
The double proves a phenomenon that constantly shuffles the reader towards various
interpretations, never allowing her to arrive at an absolute, but forcing her to remain in the chain
of signification, that like desire itself, always keeps one in a state of limbo. In other words, like
the fantastic genre in which it thrives, the double as a concrete concept eludes all homogeneous
definitions, and inevitably invites or necessitates a systrophic discourse.13 We can list
characteristics of the double or delineate different manifestations of it like the oneiric double, the
mirror image; the shadow (with both primitive and Jungian connotations); Roger’s latent and
12
Fusillo delineates three “situations” of the double that correspond to three time periods: antiquity (in which
doubling is brought about by an external force such as the gods and/or because of a stolen identity, but is never the
result of psychopathology); the Baroque era (that involves uncanny physical similarities between two individuals
that often share other traits as well); and the Nineteenth Century when “la duplicazione dell’io si basa
sull’identificazione totale con una coscienza scissa in due, senza esplicitare mai le cause (presumibilmente
allucinatorie) dello sdoppiamento […] È la situazione tipica del romanticismo e del suo interesse per la follia e per
ogni forma di patologia mentale: un interesse strettamente legato alle costruzioni sociali e culturali operate dalla
psichiatria nascente” (L’altro e lo stesso 23). Fusillo rightly insinuates, as other scholars before him had explicitly
affirmed (including Rank and Freud) that the explosion of the pathological double in Nineteenth-century fiction is
undoubtedly linked to crises of individual and collective consciousnesses born of industrial, scientific, and political
revolutions.
13
In Derrida’s discussion of clinamen (the unpredictable, indeterminate swerving of atoms in Epicurus’ atomistic
doctrine, as named by Lucretius) in “My Chances/Mes Chances: A Rendezvous with Some Epicurean
Stereophonies,” the concept of systrophé emerges (7 – 8), which (from the Greek ‘syn’ meaning ‘together’ and
‘strophe’ meaning ‘turning’) entails the listing of many qualities or descriptions of someone or something, without
providing an explicit definition. The double, like the gothic (which often meshes with the fantastic) lends itself to
such a discourse, for it is easy to enumerate the features by which the concept or genre is identified, but it is virtually
impossible to define it. The double can involve mirror images, shadows, portraits, revenants, autoscopic
hallucinations, dreams and so forth. The gothic is almost always identified for the hair-raising or uncanny effects it
produces in the reader alongside various objects such as ancient castles, labyrinthine and enclosed spaces, ghostly
presences, abandoned monasteries, mysterious women, to name just a few recurring narrative accoutrements. For a
more extensive list of gothic literary conventions and an informative survey of theories of the gothic, see Howard
(12 – 52).
16
manifest doubles; Roda’s double in time, and so on; however, no one definition will ever
absolutely suffice. Otto Rank’s fundamental study The Double (Der Doppelgänger) presents the
reader with various manifestations of the double in primitive beliefs, Nineteenth-century
literature, and early Twentieth-century film. Freud, who specifically cites Rank’s study of the
double in his treatise The Uncanny, discusses the “duplicated, divided and interchanged” (142)
self as a polyvalent symbol whose meaning changes over time, yet as “an object of terror” (143)
recurs as a fixture in literary representations of the uncanny.14 Ralph Tymms, another go-to
critic of the double who traces its historical and transcultural development, emphasizes at the
outset of his study that the double as a theme possesses hybrid origins and presents infinite
variations; “magical, occult, psychical or psychological qualities” run through “its ambiguous
nature” (15 – 16).15 In short, despite some common ground between various types of the double,
it is important to emphasize that it is not a monolithic or overly simplified concept that occurs in
literature only in twin characters or autoscopic hallucinations (such as those possible examples in
Poe’s “William Wilson” and Dostoevsky’s “The Double”). The fissure and fusion of identities
and representations of contrasting though complementary forces inherent in the very conception
of the double render its manifestations quite diversified. In this study, the double appears in
14
Freud, referring to Rank, notes how the figure of the Doppelgänger had been analogous to the soul in primitive
beliefs as “an insurance against the extinction of the self”, but has become “the uncanny harbinger of death” (142).
Freud’s notion of the uncanny abounds in gothic and fantastic literature and in the motif of the double, as is
evidenced by his choice of literary examples. He offers a lengthy analytical reading of Hoffmann’s “The Sandman,”
the literary poster-child for fantastic literature of the double and he refers indirectly (via Rank) to the emblematic
fantastic, uncanny (silent) film, Hanns Heinz Ewers The Student of Prague.
15
Tymms further explains that psychological approaches of “double-by-duplication” and “double-by-division” that
constantly mesh; in other words, an autoscopic hallucination for example is a manifest duplication of an internal
division of the self. This concept of division and duplication is essential in discussions of the double, for they may
be differentiated, but it is important to note that they may also be mutually inclusive, as happens in Fosca for
example, where in overly-simplistic terms, the dark and light side of the divided Giorgio are externally manifested in
his two doubles, Fosca and Clara. A classic example of division coupled with duplication would be Stevenson’s The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in which the protagonist’s inner division causes the doubling of the self
into two separate (and physically different) entities.
17
instances of metempsychosis in Tarchetti and De Marchi, dream visions and alternate states of
consciousness in Capuana and Tarchetti, and varied renditions of the love triangle in all three
authors. Because of the double’s own multifariousness as a concept and versatility in its
expressions, it calls for a hermeneutical approach which does not seek to reduce it into one strict
theoretical category. The indefiniteness of the fantastic genre itself, in which the double so
frequently appears, calls for the same openness of interpretation. The novels and novelle under
examination will be approached from a hermeneutical perspective insofar as their particulars will
be scrutinized in relation to their connections to the trope of the double, and always remembering
their position within a text circumscribed by fantastic discourse.
A hermeneutical approach therefore transcends the diegetic universe, functioning as an
avenue towards a (re)consideration of the fantastic genre, and causes us to think of the work’s
relation to other works of art and to the notion of art itself. At the outset of his treatise on the
fantastic, Todorov emphasizes the “double movement” of literary study, “from the particular
work to literature generally (or genre), and from literature generally (from genre) to the
particular work” (7). Hence we have movement from the general figure of literature, to the mode
of narrative, and to the genre of the fantastic. The specific or particular genre then assumes the
role of a whole, or in its general nature includes particular works that subscribe to similar
phenomenon – in the case of the fantastic or gothic: spirits, madness, hallucinations,
disorientation and so on – that overturn the real. The works of Tarchetti, Capuana, and De
Marchi will be situated within a fantastic milieu (the general, the whole) while looking at each
chosen narrative specifically in the interpretation of the double motif; therefore, we have a
hermeneutical approach insofar as particular texts are treated from the standpoint of the “mixed”
genres (to use Derrida’s terminology) (“The Law of Genre” 65) of the gothic and fantastic.
18
What is the double in these fantastic works of Tarchetti, Capuana, and De Marchi? By looking
at them from the starting points of what we delineate as fantastic discourse, we can move
towards – though never finally or finitely arrive at – a valid interpretation of the fantastic and
gothic doubles, which reveal themselves in the selected works in varied ways and as something
different in each one, but which nonetheless share the common characteristic of the pathological.
Incorporating the notion of liminality and differànce into our “definition” (keeping in mind that
no fixed definition per se is possible) of the fantastic in its opposition to and dependence upon
the real, and its own ambiguous nature that subsumes the uncanny and the marvelous, we
acknowledge its varied interpretations. Furthermore, we note the necessity to approach
fantastical texts depicting the double from a hermeneutical perspective in which we examine the
particulars in order to move toward a better understanding of the whole, finally considering the
narrative whole as belonging to the fantastic genre.
Of course, not all gothic and fantastic literatures present the theme of the double;
however, the Doppelgänger is always already circumscribed by the fantastic and the gothic
precisely because it directly engages the super-natural, which exists as a constant presence in
such works. “Super-natural” is hyphenated here to signify the super-carnal, that which is
immaterial or non-corporeal, the going beyond the flesh, whether this transcendence entails
spiritual or spiritistic phenomena (apparitions, transmigration of the soul, visitants) as is usually
meant by “supernatural” (sans hyphen), or whether it involves the mental sphere of
hallucinations, neuroses, psychoses – in short, the pathology of the conscious and/or unconscious
mind. As an embodiment of decentralization and fragmentation, the figure of the double is in
itself pathological, insofar as it presents an “abnormal” and therefore diseased (a là Foucault)
representation of the human, which subverts previous notions of a conscious, thinking, and
19
holistic Cartesian subject.16 The fantastic and the double’s abilities to highlight, to question, and
to even give voice to the pathological – that deviation from the “normal” state – situates the
respective genre and the motif as literary tools capable of socio-cultural dissention insofar as the
healthy, the positivistic, the normal, and consequently the bourgeois become debunked as valid
representations of reality.17 As Fusillo observes:
Il tema del doppio costituisce un attacco plateale alla logica dominante con cui leggiamo
il mondo, basata sui principi aristotelici di identità e non contraddizione; un attacco che,
come in tutte le tematiche del fantastico, implica il riemergere di un sapere magico e
arcaico (L’altro e lo stesso 12).
The theme of the double thereby provokes a conception of the world that rebelliously differs
from the dominant one of unity in identity. It incites us to seek interpretations through
contradictions rather than same-to-same identifications, for, as exemplified in Freud’s
deconstructive definition of the uncanny, the unheimlich is both familiar and foreign, both self
16
In The Birth of the Clinic, Foucault affirms that the Nineteenth Century witnessed the onset of the politics of
medicine, which established health as an indicator of normality and disease as a state of abnormality to be cured for
the good of a hegemonic bourgeois society. This binary opposition therefore subsumes within it a social, or as
Foucault would have it, a political connotation: “Medicine […] will also embrace a knowledge of healthy man, that
is, a study of non-sick man and a definition of the model man. In the ordering of human existence it assumes a
normative posture, which authorizes it not only to distribute advice as to healthy life, but also to dictate the standards
for physical and moral relations of the individual and of the society in which he lives” (34). As Badmington notes in
his study of the posthuman, from Descartes in the Seventeenth Century until the Nineteenth Century, rational,
conscious thought defines and unites us as human. His “cogito ergo sum” constitutes the basic human essence along
with the belief in common sense, logic, and reason – ideals which eventually fail to accurately portray what it means
to be human in the post-Enlightenment age of political unrest, industrialization, scientific advancement, and nascent
psychology. Freud’s “discovery” of the unconscious further confounds Descartes’ notion of the human as a fully
rational, conscious, and unified being, for if we are controlled by unconscious desires and are divided by repressed
wishes, then we lose our centeredness and unity. The acceptance of the unconscious as a facet of the human makeup, becomes as Badmington himself notes, a precursor to the discourse of the posthuman and interestingly fits into
our discussion of the super-natural, as that (whether spiritual or psychical) which intangibly exists beyond
materiality and often beyond human comprehension.
17
Such an observation becomes even more charged when one considers the anti-positivistic and anti-naturalistic
attitudes of our three authors, for they rebelled against the major socio-cultural currents of the era. (Capuana, of
course, dedicated his first novel Giacinta to Zola; however, he soon distanced himself from his French
contemporary and was never considered – nor considered himself – a staunch proponent of Zolian naturalism.)
Each author displayed his own ideological stances that contrasted those of the majority. Tarchetti was known for his
anti-Manzonianism and anti-bourgeois attitudes, while Capuana’s spiritism and spiritistic experiments gained him
criticism even from literary friends such as Verga. De Marchi’s dissatisfaction with the Italian serial novel (which,
at the time, was a cheap imitation of the French feuilleton and lacked any moral or cultural qualities) led him to an
attempt at reform with his novel Il cappello del prete, now hailed as the precursor to the Italian detective novel.
20
and other.18 One approaches meaning through difference (or rather, differànce) that is found in
the fantastic, super-natural – and sometimes supernatural – conception of the divided and/or
duplicated self. Furthermore, Fusillo’s observation reaffirms the visceral connection between the
theme of il doppio and the genre of the fantastic couched in esoteric and uncanny knowledge.
As the parenthesis in the introduction title indicates – “(super)natural” – the fantastic,
even when it presents the supernatural as we usually perceive it in the form of revenants,
metempsychosis, mediums, and so forth, nonetheless always entails human (un)consciousness,
the internal and hidden workings of the psyche, the stage on which the drama of the double plays
out. The Nineteenth-century fantastic, often relegated to an inferior status with respect to its
Twentieth-century counterpart because of its spiritistic sympathies, nonetheless entails existential
and ontological quandaries, and in its frequent treatment of the dark recesses of the mind,
anticipates the unconscious as Freud will later explore it. As Italo Calvino notes in the
introduction to his anthology of Fantastic Tales, the fantastic is:
18
In the first section of his literary-theoretical essay, The Uncanny (1919), Freud goes to great lengths to explicate
the chain of signification of the unheimlich in German, and offers possible translations of the word into other
languages. In Derridian fashion, the father of psychoanalysis painstakingly deconstructs the signifier, offering
various denotations and connotations of the term in order to approach his ambiguous definition of it. He positions
unheimlich, with its English equivalents “‘uncanny and eerie…[and] unhomely’” (124) as the opposite of heimlich
(that which is familiar, homely, and comfortable). Freud eventually concludes the semantic journey which
comprises the first section of his treatise, noting the fusion of the two initially opposite terms: among the various
shades of meaning that are recorded for the word heimlich there is one in which it merges with its formal antonym,
unheimlich, so that what is called heimlich becomes unheimlich […] the term ‘uncanny’ (unheimlich) applies to
everything that was intended to remain secret, hidden away, and has come into the open […] The uncanny (das
Unheimliche, ‘the unhomely’) is in some way a species of the familiar (das Heimliche, ‘the homely’) (132 – 134).
Throughout the first section of his essay, Freud effectively highlights the dichotomy of foreignness versus
familiarity, which remains integral to his conception of the unheimlich as something eerie, frightening, or seemingly
supernatural, which in its supposed strangeness recalls something that had once been familiar and primitive, but
which is now repressed and unconscious. In his introduction to The Uncanny, Haughton affirms that Freud assigns
the “uncanny idea of the double an eerily central place in the whole experience of modern selfhood” (li) and a large
part of the essay is indeed dedicated to the thematic of the double, which proves one of the manifestations of the
unheimlich, for its ability to incite fear or dread, its connection to a primordial Narcissism (142) and the realization
of unconscious or repressed desires. The ambivalent meaning of the German term, as that which is both familiar and
strange corresponds with the concept of the double itself insofar as the division or doubling of the self implies a part
that the subject retains familiar, the conscious I, and a part that he considers foreign: the internal unconscious I, or
the external Other (which often represents or elicits sublimated characteristics of the Self).
21
the genre that tells us the most about the inner life of the individual and about collectively
held symbols […] the supernatural event at the heart of these stories always appears
freighted with meaning, like the revolt of the unconscious, the repressed, the forgotten,
all that is distanced from our rational attention (vii).
The focus of the fantastic is always already on the human, even if the human is mitigated by the
superhuman, or in other words, the supernatural as it is traditionally conceived, which does not
necessarily negate the possibility of psychological depth. The supernatural often works
alongside the unheimlich in many fantastic works, ultimately creating a supernatural uncanny
that is not merely analogous to a simple, camp-fire ghost story. Rather, as Calvino emphasizes,
spiritualistic occurrences – much like the images of our dreams – have the potential to allude to
deeper, irrational, amoral, and melancholic, sublimated feelings and existential angst, such as
those encountered in Tarchetti’s Racconti fantastici, and De Marchi’s Due anime in un corpo.
One remembers that psychology as a discipline itself developed alongside of spiritism, with the
work of figures such as the physician Franz Mesmer whose theories of animal magnetism and
experiments with trance states formed the basis of hypnotism, which would later become a tool
of psychoanalytic practices in the early Twentieth Century.19 Moreover, the etymology of the
term “psychology” alludes to the spirit, the mind, and the soul – three concepts that differ
amongst themselves, but nonetheless transcend the materiality of the physical senses.20 In his
19
Born out of the science of the day, Mesmer’s Eighteenth- and early Nineteenth-century theories and practices are often
viewed as precursors to the science of psychoanalysis that exploded a century later. Ellenberger outlines the history and
evolution of psychiatry, examining its development from the end of the 1700s in the work of Mesmer through the early
1900s in the work of Freud. Mesmer’s treatise Mémoire sur la décovourte du magnetisme animal (1779) offered new
prospects on the human unconscious that according to Bonino, gradually illuminated “vari ricercatori sul fenomeno della
dissociazione della personalità, o la coesistenza nello stesso paziente d’una personalità multipla” (Essere due vi).
Mesmer’s practices were immediately well-received by the German intellectual community and beyond, eventually
becoming a staple of the somnambulism experiments that abounded in Nineteenth-century Europe.
20
“Psyche” comes from the ancient Greek ψυχή, meaning “breath, life (identified with or indicated by the breath),
the animating principle in man and other living beings, the source of all vital activities, rational or irrational, the soul
or spirit (as distinct from its material vehicle, the body, σῶμα ), sometimes considered as capable of persisting in a
disembodied state after separation from the body at death “the mind, soul, or spirit, as distinguished from the body.”
The term has come to be defined as simply as the “the animating principle of the universe,” yet more commonly as
22
discussion of the fantastic in the Scapigliatura, Bezzola differentiates between the two major
components of the fantastic in the scapigliati lombardi: madness or “simple neurosis” that are
appropriated as a “punto di partenza o di arrivo, con un gusto per l’anormale o per l’anomalo o
almeno per il bizzarro,” as opposed to “il racconto fantastico vero e proprio in cui il
soprannaturale è accettato come elemento profondo della vita” (66). Bezzola’s delineation of the
bizzarre, and the “vero e proprio” fantastic of the supernatural type, reiterates the inherent,
ambiguous nature of fantastic discourse in general, and coincides with other critic’s (and our)
differentiation between those tales depicting the strange, and those portraying the otherworldly.
While Tarchetti is usually hailed as a model of the Scapigliatura and thereby more often
associated with the gothic and the fantastic than the other authors of this study, Capuana and De
Marchi (who also had scapigliati known affinities, despite their diverse styles) also delve into
pathologies stemming from psychical and spiritual disturbances.21 In short, all of the writers
under examination produce works that depict the occult – that which is hidden either within the
immaterial, unconscious mind, or within the invisible, intangible realm of spirits. Though the
super-natural may appear in their narratives under the guise of spiritism, metempsychosis, trance
states, mysterious physiological abnormalities, or dream visions, these scientifically inexplicable
phenomena belong to that realm of the occult, or hidden, that often precludes or parallels the
pathological, and that subsumes within it both the uncanny and the marvelous.
the “mind, soul, or spirit as distinguished from the body,” and more specifically in modern psychology as “the whole
conscious and unconscious mind, esp. when viewed as deciding or determining motivation, emotional response, and
other psychological characteristics” (Oxford English Dictionary online).
21
Bosco refers to Tarchetti as “il precedessore più interessante di Luigi Capuana” (212) and other critics including
Ghidetti and Del Principe remember Capuana’s intensive study of Tarchetti, and his unrealized plan to dedicate a
work of literary criticism to his scapigliato predecessor. Ghidetti also calls Tarchetti “il precedessore più notevole
di Capuana” (“Introduzione” 41). Though Capuana never met Tarchetti, he like De Marchi, had contact with other
scapigliati. De Marchi was in fact a noted participant in discussions over coffee in the Galleria in Milan with
authors such as Boito, Verga, Sacchetti, Faldella, Gualdo, Fontana, Molineri, and even Capuana (Fittipaldi 204).
23
Though there most definitely exists a distinction between the previously mentioned
Kafkaesque that Sartre describes and the “supernatural” that pervades much of Nineteenthcentury fantastic literature, both fantastics nevertheless examine the occult regions of the
individual human mind, while concurrently investigating collective prejudices and morals in the
first case, and in the second, examining common myths and superstitions22. The oneiric world of
the Sartrian fantastic indeed poses a new manifestation of uncanniness that transcends the
supernatural (in the spiritistic sense); however, it follows in the footsteps of its predecessor,
inasmuch as it still deals with the human subject’s disorientation and alienation. Furthermore,
what is so fantastic about the Nineteenth-century fantastic (pun intended) is the fact that
collective prejudices, morals, and contemporary trends may also fall under scrutiny in the midst
of supernatural accoutrements that myths and superstitions easily bring to the forefront. In
Tarchetti’s “Un osso di morto,” for example, a former artist must save his deceased physician
friend Federico from the after-life nagging of a spirit whose preserved knee-cap serves as a
paperweight. In life, like a good positivist, Federico often argued with the narrator about
spiritual convictions, and ignored tradition when he failed to give Pietro Mariani’s skeleton
(among the others used in his anatomy class) the proper interment. The authority of the doctor
figure, essentially a new priest of modern society, is ultimately undermined after death when he
lives on as a spirit that – as insult added to injury – cannot rest in peace because of his disregard
for traditional burial rites while he was alive.23 Tarchetti undercuts the authority of the
22
Todorov’s reading of Sartre’s conception of the fantastic underlines the philosopher’s idea of the topsy-turvy
world in which, in Todorov’s words, “the ‘normal’ man is precisely the fantastic being; the fantastic becomes the
rule, not the exception […] and what in the first world was an exception here becomes the rule” (173 – 174).
23
One of the great epistemological myths born during the period of nascent modernity following the French
Revolution and rejected by Foucault in The Birth of the Clinic is that of a “nationalized medical profession,
organized like the clergy, and invested, at the level of man’s bodily health, with powers similar to those exercised by
the clergy over men’s souls” (31).
24
physician, a paragon of bourgeois health and order, in many of his other works, including “Storia
di una gamba” and Fosca where the doctors’ mistakes and bad judgments lead to physiological
disfigurement (in the first case) and nearly-fatal illness (in the second), coupled with the
exacerbation of psychological maladies in both male protagonists.24 Capuana also undercuts the
typical model of the God-like doctor, and challenges purely positivistic notions of the universe
intermittently throughout his works, often through the voices of his characters, such as the
physician-philosophers Doctor Follini (in Giacinta) and Doctor Mola (in Profumo). De Marchi
also contests purely materialistic conceptions of reality, and concurrently presents liberal
interpretations of spirituality as a modernist Catholic. Like his friend Antonio Fogazzaro whose
highly spiritualized works were, ironically, placed on the Index, De Marchi debunks traditional
notions of spirituality – through his portrayal of metempsychosis in Due anime in un corpo, and
in his depiction of a morally corrupt, usurer priest in Il cappello del prete. In short, the scope of
fantastic literature, whether visionary or everyday, nevertheless always deals with the human
condition, and just like its “realist” counterpart, offers a channel through which the author may
subtly (or unsubtly) criticize his contemporary, socio-cultural reality.
Like the “un-dead” vampire, who is neither alive nor deceased but contemporaneously
both, the fantastic is neither real nor unreal, and is therefore, consequently both; this two-faced
nature of the fantastic finds resonance in most critical treatments of the genre, from those both
preceding and following Todorov’s work. The Freudian uncanny, for example, is often achieved
through similar additives that emerge in fantastic literature such as death, animism, magic,
24
Del Principe emphasizes the subversive and critical nature of the Scapigliatura in respect to fin de siècle
bourgeois society and he observes the debunking of the physician in Fosca as an indicator of this, calling him “the
voice of ineffectual Science and so of Scapigliatura’s antipositivism” (69).
25
sorcery, the iettatore, revenants, and hidden supra-sensory powers.25 Freud’s Das unheimlich
stands as a pseudo-literary treatise that psychoanalyzes aesthetics and aestheticizes
psychoanalysis, a new “science” of the mind, which, as Freud so desired it, seems itself often
“uncanny” (150).26 Although his treatise is not a work of literary criticism on the fantastic, like
those of scholars who come after him, he nonetheless expresses similar convictions in regards to
the constitution of the fantastic in literature, which necessarily grows out of the natural world.
According to Freud, “the writer has to all appearances taken up his stance on the ground of
common reality […] he betrays us to a superstition we thought we had ‘surmounted’; he tricks us
by promising us everyday reality and then going beyond it” (The Uncanny 156 – 157). In short,
the author that evokes a sense of the strange works on our primordial superstitions, beginning
with, and ultimately transcending, the commonplace reality that follows the natural laws of
positivistic science.
25
Todorov differentiates slightly between his étrange and Freud’s unheimlich, for the latter is connected to the
appearance of images that originate in individual or cultural childhood; however, Todorov seems to be missing other
elements of the Freudian uncanny, including the sense of estrangement between self and other, as well as an
individual’s own sense of disorientation and unfamiliarity in regards to himself (as we remember Freud’s own
encounter with his reflection in the mirror of a train compartment). Even if Freud’s unheimlich in its
familiar/unfamiliar dynamic cannot be subsumed within the Todorovian definition of the uncanny, the inverse surely
applies. In other words, general “shocking […] disturbing or unexpected” (Todorov 46) phenomena are naturally
part of the Freudian unheimlich and the fantastic in its more general, open connotations may surely possess uncanny
elements. As both Freud and Rank affirm, notions which were once familiar but have become unfamiliar and/or
repressed – the material of myth, death, and superstitions – make up the uncanny and also appear in the fantastic.
Freud implies a relationship between the unheimlich and the fantastic when he declares: “an uncanny effect often
arise when the boundary between fantasy and reality is blurred, when we are faced with the reality of something that
we have until now considered imaginary” (150).
26
Haughton affirms rightly that “psychoanalysis began as a would-be science of the enigma. It soon found itself,
however, and as if inadvertently, deeply implicated in the enigma of art” (vii). The problematic and therefore often
symbiotic relationship between psychoanalysis and literature is commonly noted among literary scholars and
demonstrated in many of Freud’s own writings such as The Uncanny, Delusion and Dreams in Jensen’s Gradiva,
and Dostoevsky and Parricide to name just a few of those works compiled in Writings on Art and Literature. In
Lacan’s return to Freud (but departure from mere authorial psychoanalysis), one cannot forget his Seminar on the
“Purloined Letter” as a prime example of the interplay of psychoanalysis in literature as viewed through a
poststructuralist lens. An inverted relationship in which literature (and art) pays homage to psychoanalysis also
emerged in the years contemporary to the rise of the discipline; André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto proves a prime
example of psychoanalysis’s influence in art and literature and on the Italian forefront, one cannot help but recall
Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno and its protagonist’s (and author’s) troubled relationship with psychoanalytic
theory and practice.
26
The notion of taking the everyday and going beyond it finds resonance also in the
“monde à l’envers” (Bakhtin 122), the carnivalistic world turned upside-down of the classical
menippea whose modern-day descendents, according to Bakhtin, include such fantastic-gothic
writers as Hoffmann, Poe, Jean-Paul, Gogol, and Dostoevsky. Sartre’s classification of the
fantastic as a topsy-turvy world, “l’immagine rovesciata dell’unione d’anima e di corpo” (227)
also coincides with the Bakhtinian carnivalesque (and thereby the dichotomy of real and unreal
in the fantastic) insofar as Sartre’s treatment (albeit brief) of the Nineteenth-century fantastic
considers “il nostro umano potere di trascendere l’umano […] di creare un mondo che non fosse
questo mondo” (227) as a deviation from the norm.27 Literary critics after Todorov highlight the
mutually inclusive relationship between realism and its fantastic offspring and often hearken
back to their psychological, literary, and philosophical predecessors.28 In the first chapter of his
study of the fantastic and various authors who perpetuated it, Bonifazi depicts the genre as
partaking in the simultaneous and intentional creation of verisimilitude and inverisimilitude and
emphasizes the twofold imperative of the fantastic, which involves being “inverosimile” and
“vero o possibile nello stesso tempo” (10 – 11). Bonifazi differentiates the fantastic short story
from its realistic counterpart as possessing not only extraordinary, strange, and unnerving
content, but also exhibiting a “duplicità narrativa, un ‘double’, una doppia narrazione, un testo a
due facce,” affirming that:
27
Bonifazi claims that Sartre’s conception of the fantastic as “un mondo alla rovescia” recalls Freud’s consideration
of the uncanny as an objection to paternal authority: “Quando Sartre parla di ‘un mondo alla rovescia,’ sembra
interpretare a suo modo le parole che Freud adopera per definire il sogno assurdo, l’assurdità onirica, che
conterrebbe in sè un particolare accento critico, una più accesa polemica latente, contro gli altri, contro l’autorità
paterna, responsabile di tutto, e contro la società” (56).
28
Bonifazi’s treatment of the fantastic includes chapters on the Freudian uncanny and the Sartrian “mondo alla
rovescia.” Numerous other studies such as those of Tymms, Rogers, Cesarini, Albertazzi, and Fusillo (to name just a
few) also address the importance of Freud, Rank (especially for the double), and Todorov in fantastic discourse. See
also Silvia Albertazzi, Il punto sulla letteratura fantastica, an anthology of theories and interpretations of the
fantastic.
27
ogni racconto fantastico è raccontato, nello stesso tempo, almeno due volte, una volta per
mettere in evidenza la straordinarietà e inverosimiglianza della finzione, e una volta per
ribadire e difenderne la verità intrinseca e misteriosa sotto forma di verosimiglianza e
credibilità (18 – 19).
The double structure of the fantastic, in its adherence to and deviation from verisimilitude,
mirrors the thematic of the double. Like the fantastic, the conception of self division and
duplication is complex, and similarly presupposes certain connections to the quotidian, while
concurrently subverting or exceeding it. We are faced with a discursive mimesis, in which the
narrative’s dualistic structure recalls the doubling or splitting of the novella’s protagonist so that
we encounter a “testo doppio” (Bonifazi 19) at the levels of structure and content.
While we could continue to enumerate ad nauseam the various critics that discuss the
symbiotic relationship between the fantastic and its quotidian counterpart of realism, let us return
to the (in)famous touchstone, and his unapologetic structural approach, in which we encounter
another opposition, this time not between the modes of realism and fantasy, but between the
diverse subgenres of the fantastic.29 In the third chapter of The Fantastic, entitled “The Uncanny
and the Marvelous,” Todorov inserts a tell-tale structuralist diagram in order to demonstrate the
division between the uncanny, the fantastic-uncanny, the fantastic-marvelous, and the marvelous
– the first and the last category not belonging to fantastic literature.30 The line that divides the
29
Let it suffice to merely cite a few literary critics who emphasize the interconnection between fantasy and reality in
the fantastic genre. Italo Calvino declares that the theme of the fantastic is “the relationship between the reality of
the world we live in and know through perception and the reality of the world of thought that lives within us and
directs us” (“Introduction” to Fantastic Tales vii). For Jacqueline Howard, the fantastic lies in the tension built up
and maintained around the real and the irreal (39) and Gerard Hoffmann notes that “there is always a backgroundforeground relationship between the fantastic, which violates the schema, and the real, which establishes it” (276).
Rosemary Jackson effectively communicates the liminality of the fantastic, which is “a spectral presence, suspended
between being and nothingness” that “re-combines and inverts the real, but it does not escape it” (20).
30
Todorov defines the uncanny in its pure state as existing in works whose events “may be readily accounted for by
the laws of reason, but which are, in one way or another, incredible, extraordinary, shocking, singular, disturbing or
unexpected, and which thereby provoke in the character and in the reader a reaction similar to that which works of
the fantastic have made familiar” (46). For Todorov, the pure uncanny (like the pure fantastic) necessarily involves
the sentiments of the characters and/or reader, while the pure marvelous is defined by “the mere presences of the
28
middle terms (the fantastic-uncanny and the fantastic-marvelous) represents the space where the
pure fantastic resides, “a frontier between two adjacent realms” (Todorov 44) that may shift to
one side or the other, but like a repeating decimal only approaches a (de)finiteness; hence, the
Todorovian fantastic itself, like the hésitation it provokes, exists in a liminal space completely
belonging to neither the marvelous nor to the uncanny, and therefore belonging to both, resulting
in the hyphenated subgenres that exist on either side of the pure fantastic.31 In fact, these
subgenres of the fantastic-marvelous and the fantastic-uncanny provide effective reference points
for the ultimate differentiation of the fantastic and the gothic doubles that we will encounter, first
in the works of Tarchetti, then in the fiction of Capuana, followed by De Marchi.
“Fantastic” and “gothic” are often used interchangeably and understandably so; however,
it behooves us here to establish subtle differences between these classificatory terms for the
purposes of the present discussion, while simultaneously affirming their common ground in their
irrefutable focus on the human, and in their undeniable strangeness as opposed to the natural,
ordered reality of realism. Todorov observes that the gothic novel, belonging to a period of
“supernatural literature” (41) confirms the status of the fantastic as ever vacillating between the
marvelous and the uncanny; in gothic literature, he continues, such as in the works of Ann
Radcliffe and Horace Walpole (the respective queen and king of the gothic novel), we find the
genres “adjacent” to the fantastic: the supernatural explained (the fantastic-uncanny) and the
supernatural accepted (the fantastic-marvelous) (41 – 42). Todorov’s inclusion of the gothic
novel as part of his fantastic discourse seems logical, for much like the various nuances of the
supernatural” (47) and “supernatural elements provoke no particular reaction either in the characters or in the
implicit reader” (52).
31
The image of the generation of meaning between two “adjacent realms” recalls other divisions or oppositions
between two entities, such as that seen in Bakhtinian dialogism, where meaning develops out of the in-between
space of dialogue between two subjects.
29
fantastic, the gothic proves a combination of styles and elements, sometimes including but not
necessitating the presence of the supernatural.32 As gothic narrative evolves and enjoys a second
wind in the 1800s in the works of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe, the Brönte sisters, Wilkie
Collins, and the Italian scapigliati (among others), it becomes even more psychologically
charged and the supernatural explained often takes precedence over the marvelous.33 Jackson
notes that the gothic becomes progressively more internalized and cognizant of fears generated
by the self in the Nineteenth Century (24); along similar lines, MacAndrew effectively describes
it as a “literature of nightmare” whose conventions of myth, folklore and romance “have literary
significance and the properties of dream symbolism as well” (1). Following the cues of Jackson
and MacAndrew, we shall consider the gothic as the internalization, the naturalization of the
supernatural so that all that is left is the super-natural, as in the psychical (while what we call
fantastic exhibits both the supernatural and the super-natural). Classifying the gothic as a
“literature of nightmare” further emphasizes its propensity to reach into the dark corners of the
mind, into the unconscious where fears, desires, pathologies, and the unexplained reside; where
the preternatural may be imagined or dreamed, but not realized. As literary manifestations of the
marvelous and the strange, the fantastic and the gothic share the common sensation of the
uncanny which, (as we have already established in Freudian parlance) can be linked to either
32
In the Preface to the second edition of the inaugural Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole, the
father of a genre that flourished in the centuries to follow, offers a metatextual commentary on his work: “It was an
attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern. In the former, all was imagination and
improbability: in the latter, nature is always intended to be, and sometimes has been, copied with success. Invention
has not been wanting; but the great resources of fancy have been dammed up, by a strict adherence to common life.
– But, if in the latter species, Nature has cramped imagination, she did but take her revenge, having been totally
excluded from old romances” (xix). Even in Walpole’s characterization of the Gothic, we find a coexistence of the
imaginary marvelous and the real, which seems anticipate much modernist discourse on the nature of the fantastic as
simultaneously perpetuating verisimilitude and inverisimilitude, as functioning within the real and the imaginary.
33
Critics of the Ninteenth-century gothic frequently note how its fiction often deals with transformations, unstable
identities and debatable sanity. The Eighteenth-century gothic was often located in a remote past, was about history
and geography, while the modern, fin de siècle gothic focused on the urban present, examining contemporary
concerns through lens of terror (Dryden 19).
30
magical or psychical experiences. The fantastic and the gothic here become akin to fraternal
twins, insofar as they are not identical in their genetic blueprint, but share the same womb, which
is ultimately a space of strangeness, of the extra-ordinary, of the abnormal – l’étrange, il
perturbante, l’unheimlich. It is a space resembling the Twilight Zone where both the uncanny
and the marvelous reside, and often intermingle, without necessitating the final stasis of
hesitation required in the Todorovian fantastic. This space of “irreducible strangeness” a là
Caillois (Todorov 35) may be characterized under the umbrella of “fantastic discourse” in which
our fantastic and gothic will remain situated. Modern scholars of the fantastic, which (as already
noted, has become a more open, mixed genre) have looked to the poetics of various literary
authors for interpretations of its constitution. As observed by Remo Cesarini and Silvia
Albertazzi, novelists such as Nodier, Maupassant, James, Scott, Lovecraft, among others, have
defined the fantastic through the dialogues of their characters.34 Of course neither critic fails to
include Hoffmann, who is not only frequently cited as a fundamental influence on Tarchetti
(even explicitly called upon in “I fatali”), but also remains a celebrated model of the gothic and
fantastic whose obsession with the theme of the double dominates his oeuvre. In an excerpt from
Hoffmann’s “The Bleak House” (included in Albertazzi’s collection of fantastic pieces), the
clairvoyant Theodor differentiates between the “strange” (wunderlich) and the “marvelous”
(wunderbar):
Dalla sinonimica di Eberhard vengono definite ‘strane’ tutte le manifestazioni della
conoscenza e del desiderio che non possono venir giustificate da alcuna motivazione
razionale, mentre si definisce ‘meraviglioso’ ciò che si ritiene impossibile e
incomprensibile, ciò che appare andare oltre le forze note della natura o, aggiungerei, che
appare opporsi al suo normale andamento (Albertazzi 106).
34
Cesarini offers a catalogue of Nineteenth-century fantastic authors – Hoffmann, Nodier, Maupassant, James –
who define the fantastic by using their characters as mouthpieces within the fantastic tales they create (8 – 12). The
second half of Albertazzi’s book presents excerpts from various authors’ works in which the fantastic is addressed.
31
Interpreted as the author’s mouthpiece by Cesarini, Theodor elaborates the ambiguous nature of
the fantastic milieu in which both the wunderlich and the wunderbar exist, equally charged with
a sense of the bizarre and irrational, though essentially different. It is noteworthy that Theodor
adds the modifying phrase, “that which seems in opposition” to the normal happenings of the
natural world; here, we are reminded of the occult that occurs in nature, the invisible (and
perhaps even the still undiscovered) phenomena that reach beyond human comprehension. Like
Hoffmann before them, all of the authors of the present study also curiously questioned and often
investigated the confines of the natural world, dabbling in spiritistic practices, studying the
supernatural and the psychical, and examining their own convictions in occult phenomena.35
Just as the fantastic occupies that liminal space between the uncanny and the marvelous and
often bounces between the two, so does the double float between the self and the other, existing
as a figure that is contemporaneously familiar and foreign, never completely one or the other and
therefore always both.
The Doppelgänger, despite its omnipresence throughout Nineteenth-century fiction,
appears throughout literary history and may be traced back to classical texts. The motif of
35
Tarchetti experimented with mesmerism, hypnotism, and animal magnetism in addition to keeping himself
informed of the latest accounts of supernatural experiences in Italy. Salvatore Farina writes in “Ritratto di Iginio
Ugo Tarchetti” that Tarchetti had introduced him to animal magnetism through somnambulist experiments
performed on his sister. Tarchetti was also familiar with Teofilo Coreni’s Annals of Spiritism which was pubblished
in 1864 and circulated in Italy and Europe (Del Principe 80). The chain of influence: Hoffmann – Tarchetti –
Capuana is noted by numerous scholars. Ghidetti specifically sites the Racconti fantastici as exercising a crucial
influence on Capuana’s own fantastic tales: “Sulla base delle ultime opere certo è comunque che il Tarchetti appare
per più segni il precedessore notevole del Capuana, come conferma la lettura dei Racconti fantastici, che, se non
possono certo essere ritenuti fra le cose più felici di lui, tuttavia sono assai significativi in questo senso”
(“Introduzione” 41). Of course Hoffmann is not the only foreign author to influence Tarchetti. De Camilli
describes his literary formation as a mixture of all the novels of Ann Radcliffe, Féval, Dumas, the fantastic tales of
Hoffmann, with an Ortis (128). Rossi and Appollonio note Poe’s influence on the scapigliati, Tarchetti included.
Bonifazi sites Hoffmann, Nerval, Gautier, Poe, Erckmann, Chatrian, Nodier, Von Schubert Tieck, von Arnim,
Campfleury, “tutte le stelline del firmamento fantastico” (80), as some of the author’s major literary influences. In
Idee minime sul romanzo, Tarchetti himself names non-Italian literary models worthy of veneration that include:
Walter Scott, Sterne, Fielding, Dafoe, Lafontaine, Goethe, Beecher Stowe, Chateaubriand, Balzac, Hugo, among
others.
32
physical duplication through divine magic emerges in Euripides’s Helen and Plautus’s
Amphitryon, while Plato’s Aristophanes narrates the actual splitting of a human’s so-called
“original” material form in the Symposium. In the first two examples from antiquity, the external
force of the gods interfere in earthly reality, either by creating a clone of the original (as in the
case of Helen), or by transforming themselves into a twin of the men they impersonate (as in the
case of Jupiter’s infiltration of Amphitryon’s conjugal life). Various critics, anthropological and
psychoanalytic alike, note that the theme of the double in classical myth and literature differs
from its rendition in Romantic and post-Romantic literature (often concerned with nature,
emotion, and the psychological angst of the subject amidst the progress of modernity), insofar as
it entails an external duplication, or impersonation of the human form often undertaken by
supernatural entities and offering dramatic and comic effect.36 Ralph Tymms, for example,
traces the historical progression of the psychological significances of the double in literature and
also emphasizes its portrayal in a comedic light in antiquity, as in Plautus’ Amphytrion and
Menaechmi, in which material doubles both divine and physiological (twins) create a veritable
comedy of errors as does Shakespeare in his homonymous play, actually considered an
adaptation on Menaechmi (21 – 25).37 A possible explanation for the positive or comic
renditions of the double may be found in the Rank’s seminal psychoanalytic study on the subject.
In his first text of many others that address the concept of the double across cultures, Rank
examines the origins of the phenomenon in ancient times and traces its evolution, claiming that
36
The anthropological and historical critic Ralph Tymms discusses Plautus’s comedies – Amphytrion and
Menaechmi – in which material doubles both divine and physiological (twins) create a veritable comedy of errors as
does Shakespeare in his homonymous play, which is actually considered an adaptation on Menaechmi (21 – 25).
Claire Rosenfield (311) and Robert Rogers (27) also note the comedic effect of the theme of mistaken identity in
Plautus and Shakespeare (311).
37
Claire Rosenfield (311) and Robert Rogers (27) also note the comedic effect of the theme of mistaken identity in
Plautus and Shakespeare.
33
its initial connotations were positive because of its association with the soul and immortality;
however, the idea of the soul, frequently associated with the shadow or reflection in “primitive”
beliefs, also implied the death of the body. In pre-modern times, the notion of immortality
lessened the devastating impact of death, and the soul, as the first double of the body, proved a
guarantee against the extinction of the self (Freud The Uncanny 142). When mentioning
physical doubling, as in look-a-likes and shape-shifters, Otto Rank refers to the phenomenon as
the “Amphitryon motif,” yet notes how the comedic function of physical doubles assumes
darker, psychological implications in the Nineteenth Century, as demonstrated in the works of
Jean Paul, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Fyodor Dostoevsky (to name merely a few of the authors he
includes). In modernity, the double is no longer a deity impersonating a mortal for purposes of
pleasure or torment, nor is it a twin or a look-a-like that elicits the laughter of the audience;
either as an other or as a split personality, the Doppelgänger assumes more psychopathological
underpinnings as it allows the reader to venture into the dark recesses of the (fictional
character’s) mind.38 The “splitting of the ego” (Rank The Double 14), or the internal division of
a single psyche, may manifest itself through a supernatural or hallucinatory double (as in
Dostoevsky’s The Double, Edgar Allen Poe’s “William Wilson,” and Hans Heinz Evers’ silent
38
Despite the double’s usually tragic and psychopathological aura in modern literature, he usually appears in
fantastic fiction, which frequently contains within it elements of the comic that often render it even darker. In his
discussion of the menippea and its relation to modern fantastic literature in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics,
Bakhtin notes, “In antiquity, parody was inseparably linked to a carnival sense of the world. Parodying is the
creation of a decrowning double; it is that same ‘world turned inside out’” (127). He further emphasizes the
coexistence of comic and tragic elements as diachronic, affirming that Dostoevsky’s treatment of the Doppelgänger,
like those classical authors that deal with the double (Varro in Double Marcus), “always preserved alongside the
tragic element an element of the comic as well (in The Double and in Ivan Karamazov’s conversation with the
devil)” (117). Neuro Bonifazi also emphasizes the presence of humorous elements alongside tragic components of
the fantastic, claiming that they add to the verisimilitude of the text: “la scrittura fantastica prende toni lievemente
scherzosi, quasi grotteschi e comici [...] che hanno appunto il potere e la funzione di rendere più accettabili e
verosimili le invenzioni singolari” (20).
34
film The Student of Prague), or may emerge externally as an opposite or complementary other.
Freud expounds on Rank’s conceptions in The Uncanny, affirming:
these ideas [of the double] arose on the soil of boundless self-love, the primordial
narcissism that dominates the mental life of both the child and the primitive man, and
when this phase is surmounted, the meaning of the ‘double’ changes: having once been
an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death (The Uncanny
142).
We may certainly consider the Nineteenth Century as the period that surmounts child-like or
primitive notions of immortality, with the rise of positivism and the death of God as announced
by Nietzsche’s madman. In short, the theme of the double can take on various manifestations
and interpretations; for purposes of the current study, the Doppelgänger will be considered in its
diverse representations in the works of the chosen authors who all deal with the motif through
the relationships between self and other(s). As Freud notes, the double in “all its nuances and
manifestations” (The Uncanny 141) exists as an element of the uncanny, instilling fear or dread
and marking psychological unrest; however, it always already involves a relationship with an
external other with whom a person may identify himself, or which he will substitute for his own
self, thereby causing the self to be “duplicated, divided, and interchanged” (The Uncanny 142).
35
Chapter 1
Fantastic Phantoms and Gothic Guys: Super-natural Doubles
in Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s Racconti fantastici and Fosca
“Parmi di essere un uomo doppio. Un uomo doppio! Che stranezza!”39
Baron B.’s exclamations at the psychological and seemingly physiological effects of
ingesting raspberries infused with the spirit of the deceased Clara in “Uno spirito in un lampone”
– the final tale of Tarchetti’s Racconti fantastici, noted for its supernaturally bisexual or
hermaphroditic undertones – explicitly verbalize a manifestation of the multifarious motif of the
double, in this case that of two psyches, two wills in one material body.40 Aside from appearing
as the only few instances where the term doppio occurs in print among the works of Tarchetti
included in the present study, the baron’s astonished ravings subtly allude to the historical,
literary, and psychological underpinnings of the Doppelgänger. The amusing effect of Baron
B.’s amazement at his newly acquired duality of (gendered) consciousness, senses, and volition
recalls the comedic role of the double in ancient literature as outlined by Otto Rank in his
seminal treatise Der Doppelgänger, and further examined by Ralph Tymms in his study of
doubles in literary psychology. The protagonist’s outcry initially proves humorous, especially if
the reader’s horizon of expectations brings with it a naturalist mind-set; however, it is precisely
the confutation of realism, while simultaneously operating within its schemata of the physical
39
Tarchetti, Iginio. Tutte le opere, II. Ed. Enrico Ghidetti. Bologna: Cappelli, 1967. All citations from primary
sources will be given according to the volume and page numbers of Ghidetti’s edition of Tarchetti’s collected works.
40
According to Vittorio Roda, the Baron’s “bisessualità [volge] ad una monosessualità di segno femminile, elidendo
quel mélange maschio/femmina che è l’invenzione più significativa del racconto, e che lo raccorda ad un filone
speculativo inaugurato dal Simposio platonico e largamente documentato in area otto-novecentesca” (Homo duplex
80). David Del Principe characterizes the doubling of Baron B. as a monstrous transformation into a hermaphrodite
(158), situating it amongst other Gothic texts of monstrosity. For purposes of the present discussion, I avoid the
term “soul” because of its religious or Christian connotations in modern English. I intentionally use the term
“psyche” here in an ambiguous sense so as to associate it with its respective classical and psychological definitions
as provided by the Oxford English Dictionary: “the mind, soul, or spirit, as distinguished from the body” and “the
whole conscious and unconscious mind, esp. when viewed as deciding or determining motivation, emotional
response, and other psychological characteristics” (OED online).
36
world, that establishes the fantastic’s carnivalistic potential to turn the world “inside out,” just as
the figure of the double, in its various nuances of self-division and self-duplication ex-presses –
as in presses out, dissipates and thereby overturns – the neatly-packed conception of an
individual, unified self.41 Despite the comic result of Tarchetti’s virile aristocrat and
outdoorsman, comporting himself as if he were (though he indeed partly becomes) a coquettish
female maidservant, Baron B.’s declaration of his state as a “double man,” and especially the
observation “What strangeness!” situates him within a modern psychological discourse
characteristic of the fantastic that includes the unheimlich, for he enters into that place of
strangeness, of l’étrange, where he no longer recognizes himself, yet recognizes himself as other,
and as an other. As an individual who undergoes an internal duplication in which two
consciousnesses exist in one body, the baron’s case of temporary demonic possession, as an
“apparent double” to use Massimo Fusillo’s terminology, locates him (among many other
Tarchettian protagonists) within the milieu of the fantastic where the supernatural, the uncanny,
the gothic, and the double exist in an often mutually inclusive web of complex relationships.42
If speaking in terms of the Todorovian fantastic, one could dismissively affirm that “Uno
spirito in un lampone” exists in the sphere of the fantastic-marvelous, in which the ending
“suggests the existence of the supernatural,” while the occurrences within the narrative remain
41
The conception of turning the world as we know it inside-out, or on its head, proves a fundamental component of
fantastic literature according to literary critics and philosophers alike. Like carnivalistic life, which is “life drawn
out of its usual rut,” “‘life turned inside out’, ‘the reverse side of the world’ (‘monde à l’envers’)” (122), the
fantastic itself as a genre, and especially the fantastic of the Nineteenth Century, overthrows the socially-acceptable
authority of positivistic science and the late-century literary trend of French naturalist narrative. (One remembers
that Tarchetti’s Racconti fantastici were published during the same years as Zola’s Rougon-Macquart cycle.) The
fantastic thereby assumes a carnivalesque nature in its subversive potential.
42
In his comparative study of the other and the self, Fusillo differentiates between various manifestations of the
trope of the double in which he includes the phenomenon of two souls or consciousnesses in one body. He affirms,
“Possiamo parlare di doppio apparente quando il racconto ci presenta uno sdoppiamento interno ad una singola
persona (e quindi non una duplicazione effettiva), che può essere frutto di una possessione demonica se siamo in
ambito fantastico […] o di dissociazione schizofrenica se siamo in ambito scientifico o parascientifico” (L’altro e lo
stesso 14).
37
unexplained (Todorov 52). Under closer consideration, however, the reader notes that
Tarchetti’s short story is not so easily dismissed as a ghost story, whether serious or facetious. In
fact, the narrator’s logical or “scientific” explanation for the phenomenon of metempsychosis in
this case – the baron consumed the spirit of Clara that had transmigrated initially into the
raspberry bush that had grown out of her buried corpse – could be read in an almost positivistic
light (that paradoxically criticizes positivism itself), should we perceive the natural universe as
still possessing invisible and inexplicable mysteries, as both Tarchetti and his later admirer Luigi
Capuana had. Although Enrico Ghidetti claims that Tarchetti satirizes metempsychosis precisely
because of the “taglio naturalistico” of the undigested raspberries (Tarchetti e la Scapigliatura
lombarda 215 – 216), one could argue on the other hand that the author is actually parodying the
type of Zolian naturalism en vogue at the time in which all human and natural phenomenon could
be explained by the already-established laws of science and medicine. Should this be the case,
then the tale would fall into the category of the fantastic-uncanny, or of the supernatural
explained (Todorov 44), with yet another layer of complexity in which we must redefine what
constitutes our “natural” world. This brief exegesis of merely one element of “Uno spirito in un
lampone” (the regurgitated raspberries), serves as an example of the labyrinthine aesthetic,
ideological, and psychological interpretations that arise when dealing with the trope of the
double and the genre (or mode) of the fantastic, both literary phenomenon that escape any
conclusive, monolithic definition.43 As mentioned in the introduction to this study, the
43
The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms defines “mode” as “an unspecific critical term usually designating a
broad but identifiable kind of literary method, mood, or manner that is not tied exclusively to a particular form or
genre” (Baldick 213). “Genre” is defined as “a recognizable and established category of written work employing
such common conventions as will prevent readers or audiences from mistaking it for another kind […] While some
genres […] have numerous conventions governing subject, style, and form, others – like the novel – have no agreed
rules, although they may include several more limited subgenres” (140). For the purposes of the present study, the
fantastic will be called a genre, though scholars such as Remo Cesarini and Rosemary Jackson often refer to it as a
38
indefinable nature of the fantastic and its recurrent theme of the double is addressed by those
literary and cultural critics essential in establishing ample parameters for the genre and for the
notion of the double within that genre. Given that Tarchetti’s works fall into the categories of
the gothic and the fantastic and present various renditions of the double, they also call for a
hermeneutical approach.
Tarchetti’s attention to detail often looks toward a totalization informed by, and also
informing, its parts, as Roda rightly observes in his post-modern treatment of the double in
various Tarchettian narratives.44 An examination of both the particulars and the whole of a text
are necessary in order to approach a comprehension of each in its own right and both together,
which in turn leads us to questions and issues that reach beyond the text itself. For example,
Tarchetti’s poem “Memento!,” frequently cited by critics for the motif of the donna-scheletro
(which also appears in “Le leggende del castello nero” and Fosca) depicts perfumed lips
covering a white skull and a skeleton hidden beneath the flesh, these parts of the female (visible
and invisible) body that comprise the entire woman, which taken together (parts and whole)
metaphorically and metonymically hearken towards death.45 Another recurrent theme in
Tarchetti’s works is that of sickness – both physiological and psychological; hence, the notion of
mode precisely because of its openness. (In fact, many critics disagree on which texts may be considered fantastic.
For example, is Shelley’s Frankenstein fantastic or science fiction?) Keeping in mind of course that the classical
notions of genre as lyric, epic (which would become narrative), and drama outlined in Aristotle’s Poetics have been
expanded and complicated in modernity, I have chosen the traditional route of referring to the fantastic as a genre,
not because it is so easily defined in terms of its content and functions, but because it is recognizable as a category
of narrative that utilizes and subverts the confines of reality within the milieu of realism.
44
Roda also emphasizes the double’s propensity to elicit a wide range of interpretations because of its own
variegated identity: “Non esiste un solo tipo di doppio; nè ne esistono pochi; le varianti sono numerose, al punto da
rendere inattendibili le definizioni eccessivamente univoche, ivi inclusa quella che si legge nel Perturbante
freudiano” (Il tema del doppio 13).
45
The appearance of the donna-scheletro in “Memento!” as an uncanny manifestation of the death trope is
mentioned by critics including: Della Rocca (26); Ghidetti (Tarchetti 221); Bezzola (74); Mariani (372); Del
Principe (105); and Bonifazi (80). “Memento!” was originally published in the 30 november issue of Il Gazzettino
in 1867 and was later inserted into the collected poems of Tarchetti entitled Disjecta, compiled by Daniele Milelli
and published ten years after Tarchetti’s death (Ghidetti “Introduction” 57).
39
the symptom naturally enters into the discourse of disease, bringing along with it the dynamic of
the part (or particular) and the whole.46 When visiting a sick patient, a physician observes his
specific symptoms and interprets them individually and in their interrelations, in order to arrive
at a diagnosis, which represents the sum total of the symptoms. Without the symptoms however,
there would be no diagnosis; hence, the symptoms and the syndrome exist in a mutually
inclusive relationship, in which the former comprises the latter and the later collectively defines
the former. Tarchetti’s Fosca plays upon this hermeneutically circular rapport and complicates it
even further because of the indefinableness of Fosca’s affliction, as demonstrated by a
conversation between Giorgio and Fosca’s doctor:
“Ma che malattia ha dunque quella donna?”
“Tutte.”
“Tutte! Spiegatevi.”
“È una specie di fenomeno, una collezione ambulante di tutti i mali possibili. La nostra
scienza vien meno nel definirli. Possiamo afferrare un sintomo, un effetto, un risultato
particolare, non l’assieme dei suoi mali, non il loro carattere complessivo, nè la loro
base” (II, 274).
In Fosca’s inexplicable malaise, a doctor can only observe and attempt to treat the particular
symptoms. Her malady eludes conclusive definition and therefore must be classified as a
heterogeneous assemblage of a plethora of symptoms, a walking collection of all possible
diseases. In other words, her illness becomes totalized only by characterizing it as the
compilation of all illnesses; however, this relegates it to a status of non-being, for in being all
diseases it is never merely one and therefore always diagnostically indefinite. Reaching beyond
the pages of the text, the physician’s failure to interpret the symptoms and deliver a diagnosis
46
Though the reference to the symptom is here intended to be taken in a purely physiological context, the notion of
the symptom proves essential also in psychoanalytic discourse and could be useful to a reading of Fosca. From a
psychoanalytical standpoint, her myriad of symptoms – her emaciated body, headaches, bouts of hysteria, and so on
– could represent a return of the repressed, that is, the attempt of feelings and desires that have been sublimated
bursting forth into her conscious behavior and actions.
40
alludes to the incompetence of naturalism and positivism to fully portray and define reality. It
furthermore serves the function of debunking the authority of the doctor figure.47 A
hermeneutical approach forces us to consider (as in the examples from “Memento!” and Fosca)
the “thingly character” of the work of art; in other words, the reader must also consider that
which lies beyond the text – the socio-cultural and historical context of the time – in order to
move towards a fuller interpretation that nonetheless remains cyclical.48 The notion of
symptoms themselves also adds to this part-whole relationship, as one must study the symptoms
or the particular manifestations of a disease in order to define and comprehend the disease itself,
and one must be familiar with an illness in order to recognize its symptoms. This circle of
symptoms and disease continues spinning in Tarchetti’s works. The psychopathologies he
depicts present various symptoms; yet, as in the case of Fosca, whose illness is exactly
undetermined and incomprehensible, Tarchetti (like Capuana after him) portrays these
psychosomatic “diseases” as mysterious and indefinable, thereby leaving the reader in a state of
suspension and simultaneously undermining those certainties that positivisitic science and
medicine proclaim. In short, Tarchetti’s oeuvre is riddled with liminal spaces in which the
frontier between the two components of a dichotomy often becomes blurred and the opposing
sides bleed into each other: life and death intermingle in all of his works (including his poetry
and letters); health and illness collide, especially in Amore nell’arte, “Storia di una gamba,” and
Fosca; reality and surreality and presence and absence mesh in Amore nell’arte, Fosca, and
47
In “I fatali,” the fiancé of the lethal Saternez began suffering from an illness when her beau began to court her.
The doctors, like those in Fosca, are unable to diagnose her “malattia misteriosa” (II 26), providing another example
of medicine’s (and science’s) ability to fully understand the world.
48
In “The Origin of the Work of Art,” Heidegger emphasizes the importance of the “thingly character” of the work
of art – its place in the world, not as an aesthetic or commoditized object, rather in its cultural context. He
furthermore claims that artists, their works, and art in general must be understood in relation to each other, none of
which is fully comprehensible without the others (83 – 84).
41
“Storia di un ideale.” Circumscribed by these dichotomies, we encounter the figure of
Doppelgänger within Tarchetti’s anxiety-ridden, fragmentary subjects as they undergo either
conscious or unconscious psychical breakdowns. Unfortunately, we cannot address all of the
works mentioned above; however, the texts included in the current study all involve a division of
the ego manifested either internally in the form of metempsychosis and oneiric parallel lives
(“Uno spirito in un lampone” and “Le leggende del castello nero”), or externally through
complementary and opposing doubles (“I fatali,” and Fosca). The selected narratives have been
chosen because they effectively demonstrate the double in the milieu of the gothic and the
fantastic; Fosca incorporates the strange and unusual illustrated in the Racconti fantastici, yet
removes the supernatural element that many of the novelle include.
Tarchetti, as an author who has enjoyed many classifications as a scapigliato, a postromantic, and/or a pre-decadent, works within both of our categories of the gothic and the
fantastic.49 Building on the idea of the fantastic-marvelous and wunderbar, and the relation to
the pure fantastsic, the Tarchettian fantastic encompasses both the supernatural accepted and the
supernatural unconfirmed, but not denied. The Tarchettian gothic, like the fantastic-uncanny and
wunderlich, possesses an other-worldy aura in which the occult, parallel universe is the
microcosm of the mind and therefore disregards the supernatural realm of spiritism. (In this case
however, it may be added that in the works of Tarchetti, the super-natural or the pathological
49
Roda refers to Tarchetti as a “pre-decadente” (Homo duplex 84). Della Rocca observes Tarchetti’s propensity
towards the decadent while maintaining a level of romanticism: “i segni di una coscienza decadente appaiono
evidenti nell’opera del Tarchetti, anche se sono in controluce rispetto al suo acceso romanticismo” (15). Mariani
(463) and Del Principe (6) also situate Tarchetti between Romanticism and Decadentism, classifying him as a
precursor to the latter. Santoro underlines Tarchetti’s romantic idea of the individual coupled with traces of solitude
and exhaustion characteristic of the decadents that were to follow (327). Ghidetti’s definition of the Scapigliatura, in
which he places Tarchetti, exists as an “epifenomeno tardoromantico e insieme faticoso avvio in direzione della
nuova civiltà letteraria del decadentismo” (“Introduzione” 5). In short, many scholars view Tarchetti as having one
foot in Romanticism and the other in Decadentism; hence, in the author’s poetics itself, we have a duality, or a
division. His literary and ideological identities reside in two cultural epochs; as being part of both, he is not entirely
part of one nor the other, but like Petrarch, he has a foot in one period and in the other.
42
remains unexplained, despite diagnostic efforts on the parts of medical and lay characters alike.)
For purposes of clarity and brevity, “fantastic” will be utilized to characterize those Tarchettian
works – “I fatali,” “Le leggende del castello nero,” and “Uno spirito in un lampone,” – in which
one encounters the existence of the impossible, or at least the possibility of the supernatural
(resulting in either hesitation or confirmation). “Gothic” will be appropriated here to refer to
Fosca that contains no paranormal phenomenon, but that nonetheless communicate a freakiness
or other-worldly strangeness in its pathology. The Tarchettian Doppelgänger shall therefore
walk within both domains, hence the inclusion of the terms “fantastic” and “gothic” in the
chapter title. Both contain levels of inexplicability, yet the first seems to transcend what we
know as the material order of things, while the second – like the unused ninety percent of the
human brain – appertains to the natural universe, but remains incomprehensible.
Tarchetti has been hailed as the founder of the fantastic in Italy, a genre which existed on
the margins of the Nineteenth-century Italian literary scene, initially dominated by the historical
novel in the earlier 1800s, later by French naturalism, and eventually by verismo and
decadentismo (often referred to as the offspring of the Scapigliatura).50 In a period of fervid
narrative output of both fiction and non-fiction from 1867 – 1868, Tarchetti composed the five
short stories, which would later be published in volume form in 1869 with the title Racconti
fantastici (Ghidetti “Introduzione” 41).51 The aesthetic precursors of these fantastic tales can be
50
Bonifazi refers to Tarchetti as, “il fondatore del genere, o meglio il primo frammentario ed estemporaneo
sperimentatore in Italia,” observing that his fantastic tales were published about fifty years after the first appearances
of the Nineteenth-century fantastic in Europe, though they are contemporary to the resurgence of interest in the
fantastic in France (79). Binni characterizes Scapigliatura as a predecessor to Decadentism: “Per scendere ad un
concreto esame di questo periodo caotico e provvisorio, dobbiamo avvicinarci al primo ambiente di aspetto
decadente: la Scapigliatura milanese. È veramente in nessun gruppo letterario di questo periodo sono più chiari i
limiti, ma soprattutto gli accenti positivi di una nascente coscienza decadente” (45).
51
Tarchetti’s journalistic production explicitly demonstrates his ideological engagement and commitment to social
commentary. In collaboration with Sonzogno, he served as an editor of the periodical Emporio pittoresco from
January 1868 until his poor health forced him to take refuge in the country near his birthplace of San Salvatore
43
found in the strange tales of Hoffmann and Poe, as well as the Contes fantastiques of Erckmann
and Chatrian.52 Like in the fantastic in general, Tarchetti seeks to ground his super-natural short
stories in the everyday world; he wants to infuse them with credibility by establishing the
reliability of the narrator as a first-hand witness and by offering an “objective” account of the
psychical and/or paranormal phenomenon in the narrative frame, before the outset of the story
proper.53 Each of the tales begins with a first-person narrator pulling the reader into the text by
declaring in one way or another that he must recount the events that follow. With the exception
of “La lettera U,” often considered the masterpiece of the Racconti fantastici, the narrator
remains somewhat removed from the action of the story, acting as an observer and finally as a
witness, testifying to the “veracity” of the unusual occurrences, which remain inexplicable
according to the already-established laws of the positivistic universe.54 Tarchetti does not offer
Monferrato in June 1868. During his time with the journal, Tarchetti wrote articles addressing urban working
conditions, education, antimilitarism, antimonarchism, and antimanzonianism (Ghidetti “Introduzione” 46 – 47).
See also Ghidetti, Tarchetti e la scapigliagura lombarda, in which he affirms that Tarchetti’s articles, like his wellknown novel Una nobile follia, demonstrates an attentive and documented study of Italian society whose
denouncement and polemics against it failed to propose a resolution (223 – 230).
52
Ghidetti highlights the similarity between “Uno spirito in un lampone” and “Il borgomastro in bottiglia” from the
Contes fantastiques, in which deceased souls emerge again in food and drink, just as the spirit of Clara infuses itself
into the raspberries of Tarchetti’s novella (42). Mariani also cites the French collection as an influence and refers to
Gautier’s 1840 story, “Le pied de momie” as an influence on “Un osso di morto” (419), though he observes that
Tarchetti’s collection is born “anzitutto dalla suggestione Poe-Hoffmann” (407).
53
The insane narrator of “La lettera U” recounts his own story in which he and the letter “U” are the protagonists.
One could argue that the reliability of this narrator is certainly suspect because of his monomaniacal obsession with
that terrible letter; however, the reliability of the first person narrator is always in question and despite Tarchetti’s
choice to employ this naturally unreliable narrative device, he nevertheless attempts to imbue his narrator’s stories
with the proper dose of reality. Of course, one could argue of reality’s subjectivity and therefore claim that all the
tales recounted reflect the subjective truths and in doing so represent a reality.
54
Bosco refers to “La lettera U” as “il migliore dei racconti fantastici” (136). Ghidetti calls it “indubbiamente il più
originale dei cinque racconti” (“Introduction” 44). Roda includes the story as part of his study of the double in
Tarchetti’s works. Bonifazi emphasizes the symbiotic relationship of verisimilitude and inverisimilitude in the fantastic
short story in particular: “La natura stessa del racconto fantastico ne fa un testo doppio, e non per l’ambiguità tra reale e
irreale, ma per la congiunzione e lo scontro di verosimiglianza e di inverosimiglianza, che supera il contrasto tra la fede e
la miscredenza, e per il raddoppiamento della stessa narrazione, che ha almeno due piani, quello dove l’azione è narrata
come straordinaria, eccezionale, sovrannaturale, incredibile, ignota e ostile, e quello dove la medesima azione, nello
stesso tempo (e anche attraverso un contrasto polemico tra i personaggi o addirittura attraverso un personaggio sdoppiato
o anche attraverso la semplice suspence, lo sconcerto, l’incertezza, ecc.) è narrata come vera, autentica, credibile,
necessaria e conosciuta, familiare” (Bonifazi 58 – 59).
44
explanations of the strange occurrences that the reader experiences in any of his short stories;
rather, much like his protégé Capuana, he depicts scenarios that force us to question the confines
of the natural world and to investigate the dark recesses of the human mind. Tarchetti succeeds
in creating what Mariani refers to as an atmosphere of nightmare (401), as he plays upon the
collective myths and superstitions of la iettatura in “I fatali,” and reincarnation in “Le leggende
del castello nero” (in which much of the action occurs in the protagonist’s dreams and memories)
and “Uno spirito in un lampone” (in which we encounter a case of demoniacal possession).
“I fatali” or a double dose of Death: the Great Equalizer and the reluctant Reaper
As the first tale of the Racconti fantastici, “I fatali” opens the second volume of
Tarchetti’s collected works. The editor of these volumes, Enrico Ghidetti, declares in his
comprehensive introduction that death exists as the “nucleus” of the author’s narrative
production (6) and in this novella the reader encounters two hommes fatales instead of the
infamous femme fatale so often found in racconti neri such as this one. “Psyche” indicates a
collective anima or breath of life, and here the fatal men are the opposing forces of it, the
contrasting double (divided in two beings) of life, which is death. The aura of death and
devastation envelops this fantastic tale, from its obvious referent in the title, to the fatal events
recounted by the narrator, some of which he experienced and others of which he heard tell. A
focus of these uncanny horror stories within the story – some told in a café among the gossipy
narrator and his cronies – is the infamous, mysterious, and elusive Count Sagrezwitch, a socalled fatale for his power to wreak mass havoc in all corners of the world. The other fatale, the
Baron Saternez, at the very least an acquaintance of Sagrezwitch (and as we later discover, most
likely a familial relation), emerges as a focal character of “I fatali” as the narrator witnesses firsthand his unintentional virulence. In the conclusion of the story, Saternez becomes immortalized
45
in print (as his presumed father Sagrezwitch, or perhaps homonymous acquaintance, had in oral
legend) when his murder and true identity of Gustavo Sagrezwitch are revealed in the
newspaper, producing yet another story-within-a-story. The fatal men Saternez and Sagrezwitch
emerge as complementary, yet contrasting doubles because they both exact destructive
influences, yet their intentions, volitions and modes of operation differ. The elder Sagrezwitch
embraces his lethal abilities, seemingly finding pleasure in inflicting mass fatalities across the
globe, while the young Saternez loathes his condition as a deliverer of death, and attempts to
resist his fate by assimilating into everyday, bourgeois society by observing Carnival
celebrations, attending the opera, and even becoming engaged to Silvia, heiress to the fortune of
an honest Milanese businessman. His attempts at a “normal” life ultimately fail. A child at the
Carnival festivities is run over by a carriage after coming into contact with Saternez; a young
woman faints after locking eyes with him at the opera house; and his betrothed is dying of an
inexplicable and incurable disease.
Before examining the deathly duo, it is necessary to address the philosophically-charged
opening pages of the story, because they not only function as a narrative frame allowing for the
justification of the first person narrator, they also situate the tale within an ideological discourse
that will persist throughout the text and whose duality anticipates the double motif that runs
throughout the diegetic space. “I fatali” opens with a question: “Esistono realmente esseri
destinati ad esercitare un’influenza sinistra sugli uomini e sulle cose che li circondano?” (7).
Though the narrator’s interrogative address to the reader may provide less of a wow-factor than
Luigi Capuana’s poignant question mark in Spiritismo?, it nonetheless establishes an
atmosphere of inquisitiveness and initial hesitation regarding the constitution of reality, and the
potential truths surrounding superstitions. The narrator does not hesitate to answer his own
46
query, responding in the affirmative, and openly criticizing solely positivistic interpretations of
the cosmos, while venerating superstition as a (paradoxical) faith grounded in reality, and
thereby relegating it to a superior status, comparable to scientific knowledge. He claims that this
“superstition” that posits the existence of fatal forces enters into, and thereby becomes a part of,
“tutti i fatti della nostra vita” (II, 7). Referring to the phenomenon of fatality as both superstition
and fact essentially disrupts the traditional conception of each, and blurs the dividing-line
between the two, recalling the liminal spaces so prevalent in the discourse of the fantastic and the
double. The narrator declares that we observe (“osserviamo”) the effects of sinister influences,
just as we observe the effects of material phenomena, begging the question that Tarchetti’s
protégé Capuana will later pose: “Dove finisce il naturale e dove comincia quell’altro? Chi ne ha
segnato il confine?” (Mondo occulto 186).
If effects of both scientific and psychical (or
spiritual) phenomenon are indeed observable, then who decides which are real and which are
not? Where does the barrier between fact and belief emerge? The narrator emphasizes that we
see (“vediamo”) the often visible influences of things on things in the natural world, just as we
witness and experience the invisible influence of intelligences on intelligences, concluding that
the super-natural and the natural world coexist and are both governed by unseen laws and
complex systems (II, 7). His choice of visual terms – “osserviamo” and “vediamo” – usually
associated with the observation of the scientific method, elevates this so-called superstition of
fatality to a level equivalent to that of science, while concurrently undercutting the prestige of
positivism by equalizing it with superstition. The motif of visual and auditory observation will
factor into the believability of the events because the narrator witnesses with his own eyes the
calamities that befall those who come in contact with Saternez, and hears about the massive
destruction and uncountable fatalities imposed by Count Sagrezwitch.
47
The notion of faith also enters into this equation, given that men place their faith in
scientific facts, which “la penetrazione umana” has deciphered (II, 8) because, like the doubting
Thomas, they have seen and have believed. Doubt, as an essential component of the Cartesian
conception of the world so revered in the Enlightenment, is also necessary in scientific
experimentation; however, that which is perceptible by the senses is not the only reality, even
when considering what is understood as the natural world. Because positivism is based on
sensory perception and tangible “facts,” it often overlooks other intangible facts, as the narrator
rightly emphasizes when he further undermines the god-like authority of science, observing that
it has analyzed the material world, but “si è arrestata dinanzi ai fenomeni psicologici […] ha
trattenuto le nostre credenze sulla soglia di questo regno inesplorato” (II, 8). Even though it
dominates discourse over the visible world, science has failed to understand occult (as in hidden,
invisible) powers of the human mind and the collective superstitions and beliefs so vehemently
sustained by the masses. Ironically, Tarchetti simultaneously equalizes (and we recall Death, a
focal point in the story, as the Great Equalizer) positivism and spiritism through the affirmation
of his narrator:
Qualora io vedo una superstizione impadronirsi dell’anima delle masse, io dico che in
fondo ad essa vi è una verità, poiché noi non abbiamo idee senza fatti, e questa
superstizione non può essere partita che da un fatto […] Gli uomini hanno adottato un
sistema facile e logico in fatto di convenzioni; ammettono ciò che vedono, negano ciò
che non vedono; ma questo sistema non ha impedito finora che essi abbiano dovuto
ammettere più tardi non poche verità che avevano prima negate. La scienza e il
progresso ne fanno fede. Del resto, comunque sia, per ciò che è fede nelle influenze
buone e sinistre che uomini e cose possono esercitare sopra di noi, non v’è uomo che non
ne abbia una più o meno salda, più o meno illuminata, più o meno confermata
dall’esperienza della vita (II, 8 – 9).
The belief in beings that possess the power to exercise evil influences is a primeval superstition,
akin to faith which requires no proof in order to exist; however, the narrator argues in favor of
48
the true existence of these fatal forces. He utilizes a circular reasoning in order to “prove” the
validity of his argument. He claims that the proof of a superstition’s veracity is founded upon
the fact that it is held by large numbers of people; hence, we are faced with an example of
subjective truth further strengthened by the belief in it on the part of the masses. Moreover, the
narrator emphasizes that because no idea is generated without the basis of fact, superstitions
consequently must be born of facts (like the fantastic must emerge from the real). Scientific
truths themselves often surface from a belief in something and from the formation of a
hypothesis, which tested through observation and experimentation – in short through experience
– may be proven over a period of time through repetition. Science is constantly updating its
truths as new facts are discovered and its dependence only on what is visible has proved
inadequate. Superstitions undergo a similar process and the proof of their veracity lies in the
consistency of their manifestations and their wide-reaching scope across class boundaries. In
this case, according to the narrator, both popular and genteel classes have observed and
experienced deathly influences that one may wield over another, known as “la jettatura […] la
prevenzione, la diffidenza, il sospetto” (II, 9). Ironically, the narrator champions a
phenomenological approach to superstition, sustaining that good and evil influences are real
because we have all in one way or another experienced them. In short, he appropriates parts of
the scientific method – observation and experience – in order to “prove” the reality of the occult
and to characterize both science and superstition as faiths which can be proven. (Of course the
very nature of faith negates the necessity or perhaps even the possibility of proof; however, one
could argue that this is precisely the beauty of the initial pages of “I fatali” because Tarchetti
presents the reader with a spurious discourse concerning one of the great ontological
conundrums between science and faith, and the material and the spiritual.) Moreover, the
49
“credenza quasi istintiva” (II, 9) in such baleful beings links them to collective myths that
transcend time and space, as if they were part of our primordial collective unconscious.55
The power of superstition is indeed great, especially when one considers its place in the
discourses of spirituality (faith) and Jungian psychology (the collective unconscious), both facets
of the super-natural, which nonetheless (according to our narrator) prove just as real as the
positivistic universe. The narrator’s preemptive and somewhat lengthy ideological discussion
formally frames this first installment of the Racconti fantastici and reveals the binaries of fact
and belief; science and faith (and myth); however, Tarchetti, as a true author of the fantastic in
its verisimilitude and inversimilitude, often succeeds in confounding these oppositions by
dissolving the line that divides them and causing us to ask what is real.56 The notion of
superstition embodies both fact and fiction, for it is neither completely one nor the other; rather,
it is a “stato di mezzo tra una fede ferma e una fede titubante” (II, 9). Also akin to a hypothesis,
a superstition acts as “il punto di partenza di tutte le grandi verità” (II, 8); hence, it leads us to
grand truths that often transcend positivistic knowledge, thereby proving the inadequacy of
scientific facts to completely define the world.
In his discussion of the menippea and its modern fantastic descendents (in the works of
Dostoevsky, Hoffmann, Gogol, Poe, and Jean-Paul), Bakhtin emphasizes that the genre serves to
55
The common myth that fatal forces exist embodied in individuals who can wield negative or fatal influences is a
myth that transcends both time and cultures, as Jung would have it, part of humanity’s collective unconscious, which
remains inexplicable and unknowable, a hidden place that can never be fully reached nor understood, but which
nonetheless can factor into our dreams and instincts. In Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious, Jung
differentiates between the personal unconscious, which is made up of repressed desires and traumas reachable
through analysis, and the collective unconscious that contains “other things besides personal acquisitions and
belongings” and “impersonal collective components in the form of inherited categories or archetypes” (The Basic
Writings 121-122). The narrator of “I fatali” notes various instances in which a void surrounds Saternez; at the
Carnival people keep their distance and no one sits near him at the opera, as if their collective instincts or sixth
senses indicated his toxicity.
56
A series of asterisks visually divides the frame from the outset of the story, which begins with a traditional outline
of the temporal and spatial setting: during the Carnival of 1866 in Milano, during the evening of Fat Thursday (II,
10).
50
create “extraordinary situations for the provoking and testing of a philosophical idea, a
discourse, a truth” (114). He continues:
that the fantastic here serves not for the positive embodiment of truth, but as a mode for
searching after truth, provoking it, and most important, testing it […] And it is essential
to emphasize once again that the issue is precisely the testing of an idea, of a truth, and
not the testing of particular human character, whether an individual or a social type (114
– 115).
“I fatali” indeed fits this mold, for in it the narrator investigates, searches after, and tests the truth
through observation, hypothesis, and pseudo-experimentation (in the arranged meeting between
Saternez and Sagrezwitch which ultimately leads to the former’s death).57 The notion of testing
an idea, rather than testing a human character recalls various critiques of Tarchetti’s short stories,
often relegated to an inferior literary status because of the author’s inability to fashion
memorable, round characters; however, as if retroactively following Bakhtin’s suggestion,
Tarchetti utilizes these fantastic tales to test ontological and philosophical ideas and to overturn
traditional conceptions of reality, rather than to fully develop characters or plot.58 Tarchetti
further undermines the absolutist nature of facts and science (which comprise the realm of the
Symbolic – the law and the word) by emphasizing the presence of other truths in the world in
collective superstitions and myth (which constitute the realm of the Imaginary – the primitive
and the mytheme). The narrative is therefore framed by an ideological harangue that establishes
the slippery dichotomies (fact / superstition, and science / faith and myth) that constitute our
57
In collusion with Davide, Silvia’s former suitor (now overcome with jealousy), the narrator orchestrates an
experiment to see what happens when the two fatal forces are brought together. While concocting a plan to force
their meeting, Davide affirms that “l’uno dovrà distruggere l’altro, la disparità delle forze cagionerà lo squilibrio; la
sconfitta del più debole è inevitabile” (II, 31). As Saternez himself predicts, the result of the experiment is his own
annihilation because “due elementi contrari non posso incontrarsi senza lottare” (II, 33). The hypothesis of Davide
and the narrator is verified and the narrator succumbs to a sense of guilt for having assisted Davide and ultimately
Sagrezwitch in the assassination of Saternez.
58
Roda affirms that Tarchetti fails to invent round characters and only creates fragmented ones (Homo duplex 63).
Mariani claims that in the Racconti fantastici and in Amore nell’arte, we do not find real characters; instead we
encounter mere expressions of a paradoxical universe made up of ultrasensitive relations (403).
51
fantastic reality and that foreshadow the opposing forces, not of mere good and evil, but of notso-good and beyond evil, embodied in the deathly doubles Saternez and Sagrezwitch.
As we have already highlighted, the fantastic possesses the carnivalistic propensity to
turn the world on its head, to turn life “inside out” (Bakhtin 122), to confound binary power
structures and our notions of what is real and what is imaginary.59 Interestingly, the opening
scene of “I fatali” occurs in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Milanese Carnival, where the
number of spectators is greater than the number of costumed participants:60
il corso delle maschere era animatissimo di spettatori, non di maschere […] Queste feste
non sono più di una mistificazione, ed hanno ragione di esserlo, giacché le migliaia di
forastieri che vengono annualmente ad assistervi non sono però meno convinti di
divertirsi. Tutto stava nell’istilar loro la persuasione che il carnevale di Milano fosse la
cosa più comica, più spiritosa, più divertente di questo mondo. Una volta infuso questo
convincimento, non erano più necessari i fatti per confermarlo – lo scopo di divertire era
ottentuto (II, 10).
The narrator’s commentary on the spectacle of Carnival serves not only as a reminder of an
environment in which the quotidian order is disrupted and all present – both masked and
unmasked participants, subjects in both senses of the word – scrutinize others and are in turn
scrutinized; it also functions on various metaphorical levels that recall the previous argument
concerning the veracity of superstitions, and that allude to an inherent duality in all of us.61
Thousands of foreigners frequent the festivities each year in order to watch; however, once the
visitors were persuaded and convinced that the Milanese Carnival was the most fun in the world,
59
At the level of form and content, the fantastic as a genre undermines the authorities of naturalist narrative and
postivistic science so it also upholds the socio-political implications of debunking hegemonious discourses.
60
In her study of the modern gothic and literary doubles, Linda Dryden maintains that the fin de siècle gothic (unlike
its Eighteenth-century predecessor) is often set in urban spaces and examines contemporary issues through the lens
of terror. She argues that the double motif manifested in split identity, physical transformations, mistaken identity,
and Doppelgängers is often reflected in the social, geographical and architectural schisms of the modern city (19).
61
“Subject” is intended here as both subject that observes and gazes an other, but also as one that is the subject of an
other’s gaze, one that is subjected to the gaze of an other. Althusserian interpellation and the Foucauldian gaze are
relevant here insofar as they become overturned by the Carnival, which functions (like Death) as an equalizer
because members of diverse classes and nationalities intermingle, hegemony belongs to no one, and everyone is
under the scrutiny of the others.
52
they no longer needed facts to confirm this assertion because the power of suggestion proved
effective. In other words, once they were told it was the most fun, they consequently had fun. Is
the narrator’s observation a meta-literary commentary because as readers, we are akin to
forastieri entering into a text from the outside? In the frame of the tale, the reader was
convinced that superstitions can be proven and once convinced, she no longer requires facts to
support this belief; nonetheless, the narrator will offer it anyway. Though the spectators
outnumber the costumed Carnival-goers, the mention of la maschera foreshadows the
theatricality and the duplicity that will emerge in the figures of Death-incarnate, who each wear a
semblance of gentility and refinement, while harboring ineffable destructive forces within, a
description that could apply to any human being regardless of super-human powers.62
The image of the mask forces the reader to further focus on the conception of the gaze,
which is not only an important facet in the relations between self and other, but is also, in its
association with the visual, a reminder of the “truth” of these fatal powers that the narrator will
soon observe. The narrator further emphasizes the equalizing potential of Carnival when he
notes that: “gli onesti milanesi si frammischiavano fraternamente ai forestieri, e si inebbriavano
del piacere di guardarsi l’un l’altro nel bianco degli occhi – ciò che costituisce l’unico, ma
ineffabile divertimento di questo celebre carnevale” (II, 10). Both milanesi and forastieri are
objects in each others’ eyes, while they remain subjects bestowing their gaze on others; looking
into the whites of each others’ eyes is the only fun of Carnival, yet it is an ineffable
divertissement falling into the completely visual realm of the Imaginary, a purely sensory,
62
The mask, from ancient theatrical prop to the Commedia dell’arte to la maschera pirandelliana, always
potentially alluded to an individual’s ability to assume another personality, to in a sense become someone else, to
create (an)other identity for himself. In Jungian psychology, the persona (originally referring to the mask once worn
by ancient actors) is “a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on
the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual” (Basic Writings 166).
53
Dionysian place that goes beyond the observation and recording of data in written form so
characteristic in science. Glancing into the whites of another’s eyes – not the irises or the pupils,
the so-called windows to the soul – suggests an impenetrability, an incapability to fully know
another, that is echoed by the traditionally white Carnival masks that hide one’s countenance.
As both gazing subject and subject of the gaze of an other, the individuals in the crowd become
part of a complex system of intersubjective positions, in which the narrator watches the
“spectacle” of domestics and foreigners (“spettatori”) watching each other.63 Then within the
grandiose show of Carnival, the narrator watches the spectators watching “uno spettacolo assai
curioso” (II, 10), which is the young Saternez, encircled by a void as if emanating a toxic fluid
(II, 11). The crowd and the narrator continue to watch as he bestows confectionary favors and
caresses on a child amongst the crowd (who is run over by a carriage soon after their meeting).64
The motif of lo spettacolo continues as Saternez attends two of the greatest Italian spectacles: the
Carnival and soon afterwards, an opera performance of the Sonnambula;65 however, the first
fatale of the duo proves to be the true spectacle, for he commands the attention of those around
him, who nonetheless keep their distance as if their collective suppositions and fight-or-flight
63
In his Seminar on “The Purloined Letter,” Lacan analyzes the different glances of various characters in Poe’s
“The Purloined Letter” in the initial scene of the theft of the letter in order to delineate the intersubjective relations
between the triad of characters: the King who sees nothing; the Queen that witnesses the King noticing nothing and
therefore deluding herself of secrecy; and the Minister who views the Queen watching the King but leaving exposed
what should be hidden (the letter in this case). Lacan’s assertions, as well as those concerning Freud “regarding”
him, ultimately allude to the idea of the an other gaze that observes us, but that we do not see because we are
focused on objects in our field of perception, thereby failing to notice the gaze that frames them and us from the
outside. In Tarchetti’s story, there is not necessarily a power struggle or a battle of wits involved in the gaze;
however, the author nevertheless paints a complex intersubjective picture in which the multiplicity and diversity of
perceptions reflects the multifarious nature of collectivity and of the ambiguous individual, who (like those
costumed participants in the Carnival celebration) often wears a mask in public or displays an impenetrability in
front of others.
64
Let us not forget that the reader is the ultimate spectator, watching the narrator watching the crowds watch each
other and watch Saternez.
65
La sonnambula is an opera in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini with a libretto by Felice Romani. It was first
performed on March 6, 1831 in Milan and recounts the romantic confusion created by Amina’s sleepwalking (Upton
46 – 48).
54
instincts suspect his dangerousness. The women at the opera all spy him with their opera
glasses, yet he is surrounded by empty seats. One lady in particular stares unwaveringly at
Saternez and he looks at her; here again the reader notes the intersubjective dynamic occurring
between characters, narrator and reader, all circumscribed by the operatic spectacle that fails to
take center stage in the exchange of the gaze. The voyeuristic narrator watches the young
woman staring at Saternez, observing them as if they were a more compelling spectacle than the
one in front of him to which he eventually, though with difficulty, returns his attention. After the
girl falls ill, Saternez, and consequently the narrator watching him, notice the crowd’s “sguardi
curiosi e quasi reprensivi di cui era fatto oggetto” (II, 16); hence, the subjective / objective
exchange is emphasized and further suggests the subject / object relationship between self and
other inherent in the discourse of the double. In this case, however, doubling assumes a more
complex function insofar as we encounter two, similarly destructive, though seemingly opposing
forces incarnated in a father and a son. These supernatural, human beings (a paradoxical concept
in itself that exemplifies the dualistic coexistence of the human and the superhuman in the fatali)
stand in contrast to those natural human beings (like the narrator, Davide, Silvia and the reader)
possessing no other-worldly powers, so that the motif of duality extends beyond the obvious
twin-like, manifest doubles of Sagrezwitch and Saternez. In other words, the two fatali echo
other extra-diegetic dichotomies such as: natural / supernatural, life / death, and human /
superhuman; however, perhaps the originality of Tarchetti’s tale lies in his treatment of the trope
of the double in the father and son opponents that share a common fate as accursed men who
distribute the devastating destinies of others.
In Tarchetti’s inaugural story of the Racconti fantastici, the figure of the Doppelgänger
assumes a pivotal role as a destructive force in the natural order of things, as if embodying the
55
shift in the function of the double (noted by both Rank and Freud) from a primitive guarantee
against the extinction of the self to the modern herald of death. The personification of death is
an age-old trope, yet Tarchetti breaks from its traditional embodiments as Hades or the Grim
Reaper and splits it into two mysterious, well-dressed, aristocratic foreigners, who we assume
(especially at the end of the story) are father and son.66 Death is not just a simple conception in
Tarchetti’s narrative, given its division into two diverse characters each possessing different
wills and intentions while sharing the same lethal power. In a sense, Death undergoes a process
of “decomposition,” often encountered in stories of the double, in which various attributes of
(usually) a given character are disunited and distributed amongst other characters that in turn
function as his doubles.67 (Such an example of this would be the inner self-division of Giorgio
manifested externally in the characters of Clara and Fosca.) As Rank points out, modern
literature presents the double as a symbol not of eternal life but of death, as “a representation
which anticipates the division of the personality into two opposing forces” (Beyond Psychology
66). Instead of the splitting of a character, Tarchetti portrays the ambiguous nature of Death
through the fatali, the plural noun of the title already foreshadowing Death’s duplicity as either
merciful and magnetic like the effeminate Saternez, or as merciless and formidable like the virile
Sagrezwitch. Neither of Death’s personalities can be construed as purely evil, because like
Nature itself, Death is amoral; it is beyond good and evil. Moreover, as life’s opposite it lies at
66
One could argue that his choice of royalty to represent bringers of death and destruction is in itself a subtle
critique of the aristocracy and the bourgeois insofar as these classes contributed to the maintenance of a (dis)unified
post-Unification Italian State in which class, economic, and educational differences help to keep the masses
downtrodden, not vital participants in society.
67
Decomposition is a psychoanalytic concept discussed by Otto Rank in The Myth and Birth of the Hero (1909) and
Ernest Jones’ study of Hamlet (1910). Referred to as “Auseinanderlegung” by Jones, it consists of a literary
phenomenon in which various attributes of a given person are disunited and several individuals are invented, each
endowed with one group of the original attributes (Rogers 12). Decomposition occurs more commonly in literature,
while its opposite “condensation” or Verdichtung (in which attributes of many people or things are fused into the
creation of one figure) occurs more frequently in dreams. Though decomposition lends itself to literary analysis of
the double, it remains a minor concept in clinical psychoanalysis (Rogers 12 – 13).
56
the basis of ontology and lends itself to questions concerning the afterlife and the supernatural.
As Doppelgängers, possessing a “spiritual affinity” in their uncanny perilous powers and
influences, Saternez and Sagrezwitch effectively illustrate the presence of the supernatural
working on the natural world. In fact, Tymms notes that in tales of the divided or duplicated
self, the emphasis is in fact placed on “magical, occult, psychical or psychological qualities that
run through the double’s ambiguous nature” (16). Saternez and Sagrezwitch both exist in the
material world in human form though they seem to possess superhuman powers; in other words,
neither is an autoscopic hallucination of a single character, as may be the case in Dostoevsky’s
The Double or Poe’s “William Wilson.” Neither is born of the madness of an individual’s split
ego; rather, they exist in the physical universe, yet exact seemingly impossible or at least
incomprehensible feats of disaster. Their fatality seems to transcend the commonly-known
forces of nature and to go against the “normal” order of things, so that the reader is undoubtedly
dealing with the fantastic (as we have characterized it), with the wunderbar.
The marvelously macabre nature of the story coupled with the division of Death into a
seemingly ruthless father and a reluctantly toxic and guilt-ridden son may incite a cursory
interpretation of the theme of the double as a clash between the opposing forces of evil and good;
however, such a simplistic reading of a Tarchettian tale proves inadequate. Though Saternez
characterizes himself and Sagrezwitch as “due elementi contrari” (33), this does not necessarily
mean a facile division between benevolent and malevolent forces because both ultimately exact
similar powers on those around them. Neither member of the pair physically inflict harm on
others through direct contact; their presences conjure up devastation: illness, freak accidents, and
57
death.68 The good versus evil dichotomy falls short when one ponders the concept of death
itself, which (as mentioned above) is in fact, neither good nor evil; it merely is. Its dark
connotations emerge out of the fear and uncertainty of what lies beyond it; it acts as a transition
from an animate to an inanimate state of matter, the Doppelgänger of life itself, constantly
walking by its side, always already a part of life because once born, we are consequently dying. 69
As Rank notes, the figure of the double was initially an insurance against death in pre-modern
times because it acted as the projection of the soul and thereby a sign of immortality; however,
since the advent of positivism and industrialism, and the death of God, the double “appears as
precisely the opposite, a reminder of the individual’s mortality, indeed the announcer of death
itself’” (Beyond Psychology 76).70 The concept of the double is in itself divided, for it could
indicate life in primitive times and cultures, while in the modern world it portends death and
At the story’s mysterious conclusion, Saternez is found murdered by a knife through the heart and the assumed
assassin Sagrezwitch has vanished, but we never know for sure whether the father killed the son. We have merely
heard the hearsay of a traveling thespian and director in a café regarding the lugubrious legend of Sagrezwitch, his
multiple identities and the deaths he supposedly caused. Should the reader decide to trust the anonymous, first
person narrator, then she could choose to believe in his implication that the elder fatale had murdered the younger
one. The assassination of one’s corporeal double is a recurring element of the theme; in fact, Rank notes that “the
impulse to rid oneself of the uncanny opponent in a violent manner belongs, as we saw, to the essential features of
the motif” (The Double 16 – 17). Although Tarchetti creates a short story that resides in the milieu of the fantasticmarvelous, there nevertheless remain some aspects that cause general uncertainty on the part of the reader. Were
Saternez and Sagrezwitch really father and son? Did Sagrezwitch kill Saternez?
69
Jean Paul Richter is considered the inventor of the word Doppelgänger, a compound word coming from the words
“doppel” meaning “double” and the verb “gang” meaning “to walk”; hence, “the double walker, or the double that
walks.” Richter’s novels include doubles that “are pairs of friends (in the original sense of ‘fellows, two of a pair’)
who together form a unit, but individually appear as a ‘half,’ dependent on the alter ego. This duplication by
division is in one celebrated instance emphasized by the identical appearance of the soul-twins Leibgeber and
Siebenkäs (in the novel Siebenkäs)” (Tymms 29). Fusillo notes that the term Doppelgänger, coined by Richter,
means “‘persone che incontrano se stesse’” and is “il sinonimo delle lingue romanze ‘sosia’, che deriva dal primo
personaggio della letteratura occidentale a cui capita il trauma di scontrarsi con il proprio doppio, lo schiavo
dell’Anfitrione di Plauto (“Ombre” 16).
70
Many critics of the double emphasize its essential association with death. Coates affirms that the double is an
“emissary of death” (3) and its appearance in folk legend alludes to the imminence of death (32). Tymms sustains
this assertion, referring to primitive beliefs in which man would see his own image at the time of his death (17) and
Herdman cites the folkloric belief that encountering one’s double – an errant soul separate from the body and seen
by its owner – preempts death (2). Miller declares that “the modern double spells a fear of death, and is a form of
defense against that fear, while also being, or becoming, itself deathly. According to Freud, the course of human
history and the individual’s hazardous progress to maturity in the modern world are alike in exhibiting a
transformation of the double from immortal self to bad omen” (135). Dryden also argues that the double is often
evidence of supernatural forces (as in the case of “I fatali”) that bring death and destruction (38).
68
58
alienation. Conversely the figures of Eros (representing the life force associated with passion,
libido and love) and Thanatos (indicating the death drive, that is, a return to non-existence often
precipitated by trauma, aggression and the expulsion of the repressed) exist as textbook
Doppelgängers – à la Richter – for as a pair, they form a unit, and individually they form a half
of a symbiosis.
Rogers further emphasizes that birth and death are associated with doubles, adding that
fathers and sons may also be doubles for each other, because the child stands as the father’s
duplicate (9). Moreover, a child (like the primitive double) serves as the father’s guarantee
against death, that is, as his only possibility (outside of the sphere of historical or artistic fame)
for immortality because he lives on in his son. The narrator only alludes to the possibility of the
father-son relation between the two fatal men at the end of the story when Saternez’s real name –
Gustavo dei Conti di Sagrezwitch – is revealed in the newspaper. However, the father-son
relationship would not be unlikely; the men knew each other previously, were both of Polish
origin, and were seen by the narrator walking and talking (in another language) together in a dark
alley days before Silvia and Saternez’s wedding.71 The characterization of Saternez and
Sagrezwitch as father-and-son doubles has far-reaching implications that transcend the
boundaries of the text, while nonetheless taking cues from it. They are complementary insofar as
they are both capable of wielding harmful influences over others, who often avoid them “per
istinto” (II, 20); they are opposite in their appearances and attitudes toward their fates, yet
71
The image of Saternez and Sagrezwitch walking beside each other in a remote alleyway and the former’s
observation that “due elementi contrari non possono incontrarsi senza lottare; non possono percorrere la stessa via,
camminare l’uno a fianco dell’altro come non avessero che una virtù comune ad esercitare, una missione comune a
compiere” (II, 33 – 34), seems to echo the very connotation of the word Doppelgänger, as a double walking beside
his alter ego. As a veritable other being (and not an hallucination as occurs in some stories of the double), the
father-son pair as individuals comprise also a unity. One walking beside the other, as if they both possessed one
common virtue to distribute, a common mission to complete further emphasizes their unity and affinity, juxtaposed
with their differences and consequent opposition.
59
Sagrezwitch and Saternez also respectively differ in their characterizations as manly and
effeminate. These identifications with the masculine and the feminine, coupled with the father
and son dynamic, consequently invite a discussion of the double informed by issues of gender
and psychoanalysis.
The physical descriptions of both father and son highlight their respective masculinity
and femininity, and allude to their ties to language and the inexpressible, while still upholding
their common identification with Death incarnate. In other words, each double seems to embody
a different manifestation and reception of Death; Sagrezwitch’s lethality is far-reaching,
collective, and explosive while Saternez’s fatality affects individuals near (and often dear) to
him. Sagrezwitch is a loner and those who know his power avoid him, while those who do not,
ignore him out of instinct (II, 20); in short he, like the violent death he encompasses, elicits fear
and trembling from those around him. Saternez, on the other hand, (despite his repellent aura) is
engaged and attempts to insert himself into society; his girlish beauty and gentleness render him
attractive to many, as if he were a peaceful, sleep-like death. The detailed description of
Sagrezwitch, recounted by an acquaintance of the narrator72 in Café Martini,73 offers an initial
glimpse of this father figure:
72
Unlike the narrator’s description of Saternez as he beholds him with his own eyes, the description of Sagrezwitch
is heard second hand (and thereby third hand by the reader), adding to the sense of mystery but also of uncertainty
regarding its veracity. Can we trust this description? How do we know that Sagrezwitch actually takes pleasure in
inflicting devastation? The description is heard and not seen by the narrator; hence, the figure of Sagrezwitch
assumes a sort of presence in absence that renders his sudden and uncanny entrance into the café as all the more
unnerving, as if here were indeed a living legend. The motif of presence in absence abounds in the works of
Tarchetti; we remember the suspense that Fosca’s empty chair provokes in Giorgio’s mind. We cannot help but
think of the short story “Storia di un ideale” based on the actual non-existence of an ideal lover in which the
delusional inventor declares: “la mia amante non esiste […] è una creazione della mia fantasia, un ideale di fanciulla
che mi sono formato da tempo, col quale io vivo, e nella cui convivenza io trovo dolcezze assai superiori a quelle
che mi potrebbe dare un affetto reale di donna” (II, 97). One cannot forget the words of Lorenzo Alviati, “L’aveva
dimenticata viva, l’aveva amata morente, l’adorava già morta” (I, 589).
73
Ghidetti writes in a footnote in the short story that the Café Martini, situated in Piazza della Scala in Milan, was a
favorite gathering place of the scapgliati. The narrator’s description of the customers proves an amusingly
philosophical reflection for the group contains “artisti che non lavorano,” “cantanti che non cantano,” “letterati che
60
mostra cinquant’anni, ma i suoi capelli e la sua barba nerissima non hanno ancora alcun
segno di canizie. È un uomo di statura mezzana, di aspetto antipatico, benché le sue
fattezze sieno regolari e in qualche modo leggiadre. Porta quasi sempre nell’inverno un
berretto di pelo a foggia turbana e suol vestire volontieri i costumi dei paesi in cui si trova
(II, 20).
As a middle-aged man, Sagrezwitch commands a confident wisdom, while his black hair
indicates a youthful strength. In contrast to Saternez’s white-blond tresses that seem to belong to
a “fanciullo” (II, 14) and his “beltà più femminile che maschia” (II, 27), Sagrezwitch’s ebony
beard, combined with his “aspetto antipatico” (II, 20) signify a staunch virility. His medium
height and regular features align him with an everyman; in other words, besides a somewhat
elegant fashion sense (as demonstrated by his starched white gloves and leather beret), he could
be any one of us.74 In fact, as an acquaintance of the narrator notes, “Egli è d’altronde un uomo
come tutti gli altri; parla, veste, opera come tutti gli altri” (II, 20). This universality thereby
alludes to the common existence of those deadly forces and violent wishes in all of us that Freud
will later delineate as components of the death drive. Sagrezwitch could be classified as that
death instinct that partly expresses itself as “an instinct of destruction directed against the
external world” (Freud “The Ego and the Id” 381). As a father, who gives life and ultimately
takes life from his son, he stands as an authority figure par excellence, assuming even god-like
qualities in his power to kill at will (or influence?). As the father, Sagrezwitch embodies the law,
non scrivono,” “eleganti che non hanno uno spicciolo” (II, 17). While this commentary may be interpreted as a
criticism against those who call themselves something, but fail to actually do what it takes to be it, these descriptions
may also be considered an existential aside. The idea of not being defined by what you do, but by how you live
presciently contains Sartrian undertones, as if anticipating an aspect of the philosopher’s Being and Nothingness.
The conversation between these unnamed characters shifts between topics from pudding, to the gift of a goose to the
poor in London, to the queen’s speech in parliament. Not only do their diverse topics of discussion add that
humorous element so often found in the fantastic; they also demonstrate the shifting of the subject (that is, the object
of conversation) in a non-teleological discursive web.
74
As a character who calmly wreaks havoc, naturally elicits questions concerning life and death and the
supernatural, and may be associated with everyone’s own fatalism, Sagrezwitch seems to anticipate (albeit on a
banal level) Ivan Karamazov’s hallucination of a devil-like figure in a nightmarish fit of fever in Book XI, Chapter 9
of The Brothers Karamazov.
61
passes judgment on Saternez, and (we assume) executes him; he seems fully aware of his fatality
and it pleases him to exercise it (II, 20). Should we uphold the idea that Saternez and
Sagrezwitch are indeed father and son and that the former commits an act of filicide, we are
confronted with an interesting reversal of the typical psychoanalytical trope of parricide, which is
often tied to an appearance of the double in literature.75 Sagrezwitch is (seemingly) not only
capable of killing his son, he is also known for worldwide disasters, always present “sul teatro
delle calamità più terribili” and at “i disastri più spaventosi” (II, 18); he is a supposed murderer
of men, women and children, while Saternez inflicts harm on women and children.76 The power
of his gaze (II, 21) offsets the sweetness of his son’s “sguardo” (II, 28), and further enhances his
status as an authority figure, who watches and regulates the natural order of things. The elder
fatale is highly proficient in many languages and is capable of inserting himself into any given
society: “Egli parla correttamente molte lingue, ha le abitudini e i costumi di tutti i paesi che ha
visitato; in Italia è italiano, in Inghilterra è inglese, in America è americano modello” (II, 19).
His ability to assimilate effortlessly into different cultures, his many pseudonyms, and the
uncertainty surrounding his true nationality emphasize his own ambiguity, and suggest his
capability to assume various identities, much like a shape shifter or the devil himself. Perhaps
more importantly, his command of language further aligns him with the image of the father in
psychoanalytic discourse, for the father denotes the paragon of masculinity, the milieu of the
Symbolic, and the space of language and authority.
75
Various psychoanalytical studies of the double in literature discuss the father-son double in light of parricide.
Ernest Jones examines Hamlet from the perspective of decomposition in which Hamlet exists as the decomposed
part of a whole, for he represents the rebellious son of incestuous and patricidal impulses (Rogers 12 – 13). In his
treatise, Dostoevsky and Parricide, Freud addresses one of the great authors of the double and the dominating trope
of parricide in literature. Tymms discusses familial doubles (including that of father and son) in The Brothers
Karamazov (99 – 106).
76
It remains unknown whether the boy at the Carnival and the young woman at the opera die; however, one would
assume that they live. Silvia, in fact, makes a full recovery after the murder of her new husband, “proving” that his
fatal influence had incited her morbid state for the months leading up to the wedding.
62
Saternez, on the other hand, emerges as an extremely effeminate creature, with delicate
features that render his beauty childlike or womanly; such characteristics and his melancholic yet
passionate nature affiliate him with sensory or visceral space, apart from language. His
prettiness and sentimentality are indescribable and he exudes emotions through physical
reactions to stimuli. After the boy’s tragic accident during Carnival, an extremely pallid
Saternez quickly exits the cafe (II, 13). The girl’s fainting spell elicits a similar reaction: “il suo
volto coloritosi improvvisamente di un rossore vivace, era tornato in un istante di una pallidezza
cadaverica” (II, 16). His passion when speaking of his love for Silvia further associates him with
the emotional, and the visceral, both of which exist beyond words. As a self-proclaimed “abile
fisionomista” (II, 33), he aligns himself with a knowledge that transcends language, that is tied to
images and memories, much like the realm of the Imaginary which proceeds from the feminine.
The initial description of Saternez highlights his puerility and femininity:
Era biondo e bellissimo, eccessivamente magro, ma non tanto che la bellezza dei
lineamenti ne fosse alterata; aveva gli occhi grandi ed azzurri, il labbro inferiore un po’
sporgente, ma con espressione di tristezza più che di rancore; tutta la sua persona aveva
qualche cosa di femminile, di delicato, di ineffabilmente grazioso, qualche cosa di ciò che
i francesi dicono souple, e che io non saprei esprimere meglio con altra parola della
nostra lingua (II, 10 – 11).
His child-like pout and expression of sadness stand in stark contrast to the black beard and mean
look of Sagrezwitch. His delicate physicality – blond hair, blue eyes, thin stature – render him
akin to a typical Petrarchan beauty, an object of courtly love, or even as the narrator later
specifies “un essere sopranaturale” (II, 14). Saternez’s entire persona exudes something of
feminine delicateness and is ineffably pleasing; in fact, the narrator fails to express such beauty
turning to a French term for assistance. The inadequacy of language is thereby underlined, for
the boy’s beauty is beyond verbal description. It is not only a womanly beauty, but is also
63
ineffable and therefore all the more linked to a feminine conception of the world, similar to that
found in the Kristevian semiotic where the masculine symbolic code proves devoid of meaning.
The word “ineffable” either in adjectival or adverbial form occurs a total three times within the
story: in the instance cited above describing Saternez’s indescribable aesthetic; when the narrator
notes the indescribability of Carnival (a ritualistic celebration tied to images and a Dionysian
atmosphere); and later in the discussion of Silvia’s beauty as “ineffabilmente serena” (II, 14), yet
vivacious.77 The three instances associated with the ineffable are tied to images and myths,
while two of them characterize feminine beauty in Saternez and Silvia. The narrator again refers
to Saternez’s loveliness as “quella specie di bellezza che hanno le donne, e che ritrae dalla luce
un prestigio misterioso e affascinante” (II, 14), further underlining his effeminate appearance that
mystifies and fascinates, both effects of sensory or emotional stimulation and therefore free of
linguistic boundaries. Saternez’s effeminate beauty and seemingly unthreatening comportment
replicate a death instinct unlike the aggression turned outward in Sagrezwitch; rather, because his
fatality is circumscribed by a feminine gentleness and attractiveness, it reflects a death instinct
that is a return to non-existence, either to an inorganic state as depicted in the Nirvana principle
(Freud Beyond the Pleasure Principle 71), or to a pre-natal world associated with the feminine
and characteristic of the tomb / womb dynamic.
77
It is worth including the entire citation because of the obvious aesthetic implications of visual art’s ability to
portray the indescribable as opposed to literature’s capability of abstraction. “Non era una di quelle beltà fine e
delicata che preferiamo spesso alle beltà robuste - l'amore ha fatto da alcuni anni un gran passo verso lo
spiritualismo - ma la sua bellezza, benchè ineffabilmente serena benchè fiorente di tutti i vezzi della gioventù e della
salute era temperata da qualche cosa di gentile e di pensieroso che non hanno ordinariamente le bellezze di questo
genere. Nè io potrei dirne di più; ciascuno di noi porta in sè un ideale diverso di bellezza, e quando si è detto d'una
donna: è leggiadra, si è detto tutto ciò che si può dirne. Un pittore, uno scultore potrebbero darne nella loro arte un
immagine meno incompleta, la letteratura non lo può - le altre arti parlano ai sensi, la letteratura alle idee (II, 23 –
24). The narrator’s assertion that visual art such as sculpture and painting speaks to the sense, while literature
speaks to ideas differentiates between art comprised of materials (such as paint, and clay, marble, or stone) and art
made up of words as in literature. Even though poetry and prose expresse ideas, they remain incapable of fully
conveying vivid, visceral images. Here it seems that Tarchetti is hightlighting the inadequacy of language, while
concurrently celebrating its propensity toward the abstract.
64
The narrator’s propensity towards quick affection – not unlike Giorgio’s inborn “passioni
eccezionali” (II, 242) in Fosca – causes him to immediately fall in love with Saternez; however,
the young gentleman possesses a certain je ne sais quoi that attracts the gazes and admiration of
those around him, while concurrently repelling them as if, as the narrator observes, emanating
“un fluido ripulsivo” (II, 11). Hence, Saternez is himself a duplicitous individual, capable of
eliciting extreme love and also suspicion among those who behold him. Sagrezwitch also
possesses something strange “di magnetico e di inesplicabile […] che vi sforza quasi a guardarlo
e a salutarlo vostro malgrado” (II, 21), a similar power that contemporaneously attracts and
repels. During the lengthy conversation with the narrator, Saternez’s expression assumes a
severe look and the narrator observes the coexistence of strength and weakness in the young
lover: “Egli era sì bello, sì sereno, era tornato sì nobilmente calmo; e v’era qualche cosa di così
virile su quel suo viso di fanciulla, e v’era tanta forza in quella sua stessa debolezza” (II, 36).
His girlish countenance takes on a virile quality in those moments when he speaks of having
realized his life’s aspirations in his amorous relationship with Silvia. Conversely, the virility of
Sagrezwitch may be undercut by the elegance of his always-pristine white gloves, which would
seem to belong to a dandy rather than a manly mass executioner. While Saternez’s beauty,
melancholy, and gentleness affiliates him with the feminine, and Sagrezwitch’s physical
mediocrity, commanding presence, and violence correspond to the masculine, each fatale
possesses just a flicker of gender duplicity, further adding to the ambiguity of each. After
Silvia’s jealous admirer Davide surreptitiously and inexplicably informs the father of his son’s
whereabouts, thereby setting in motion an inevitable confrontation, the guilty narrator warns his
newfound, fatal friend. Knowing that he faces death, Saternez demonstrates his courage in the
acceptance of his inevitable fate (II, 35 – 36); however, as a type of superman (a man possessing
65
super powers) and certainly not an overman, the young deliverer of death still differs drastically
from his father, who seems to live his fatality with a sort of Nietzschean amor fati.78 The elder
and more refined Sagrezwitch accepts his destiny as a Great Equalizer and perhaps is even proud
of his fate, while Saternez recoils at his unwanted powers as if he were a reluctant vampire
sucking the life out of others because nature (or something supernatural) has willed it.
Consequently, Saternez only accepts his own death as dictated by fate so that in a sense he is
exercising his will to no longer harm others by facing his own mortality; one could thereby
affirm that the son defeats the father by exercising his will to death, refusing to play the cards
that destiny dealt him.79
The reader therefore knows that Saternez suffers, while Sagrezwitch seems to embrace
his fatalistic destiny; however, the elder fatale remains a mystery throughout the tale, never
speaking directly to the narrator. The reader can therefore only assume (based on hearsay) that
he does not suffer because of his lethal powers: “è fama che egli abbia coscienza della sua
fatalità, e che si compiaccia di esercitarla” (II, 20). Nonetheless, the possibility remains that he
may have once felt guilt, but has now accepted his fate, and like Milton’s Satan of Paradise Lost
deserves sympathy just as much as his errant, soft-hearted son. Speaking of the Devil, one
78
The opposition of fate versus free will is a trope that traverses all literary time periods, and as many critics note, it
finds resonance especially in those Romantic works in which the double appears. Herdman further emphasizes the
role of chance in the German Romantic’s rendition of the double as that inevitable part of the self that is destined to
come out (12). In the case of Faust and others, the stock excuse for evil – “the devil made me do it” – relegates the
characters to instruments of fate, unable to control their destiny because of the inability to exercise or suppress the
will. Tarchetti, influenced by German Romanticism (Goethe, Hoffmann) and indebted to the so-called Italian
Romantics (Foscolo and Leopardi, and from the perspective of the anxiety of influence, even Manzoni), is no
exception. We remember Tarchetti’s allusion to Hoffmann at the outset of “I fatali” who, “buono ed affettuoso” (II,
9), believed he was destined to be a fatal man. Della Rocca affirms that in “I fatali,” “il fenomeno della jettatura
considerato come la manifestazione di un potere che opera nell’uomo contro la sua volontà, costringendolo a fare il
male anche a chi vuol bene, assume un significato diverso da quello attribuitogli dalla comune superstizione, in
quanto simboleggia la tirannica interferenza del destino nella vita morale dell’uomo” (22 – 23).
79
From a Freudian perspective, one could affirm that Saternez finally refuses to turn his death instincts outwards in
the form of aggressiveness as his father does (Freud New Introductory Lectures 134).
66
remembers that Freud characterizes the Devil as a father-figure in “A Neurosis of Demoniacal
Possession in the Seventeenth Century” (Collected Papers IV, 436 – 472). Satan frequently
appears as the double or opposite of God, often called “God’s ape” (Rogers 6).80 Should we
subscribe to the possibility of Sagrezwitch’s portrayal as a devil figure, then his son would
emerge as an antichrist; however, this notion becomes overturned should we consider another
interpretation of Saternz’s willful death. The narrator is sure to mention that Silvia makes a full
recovery after the death of her new husband, suggesting that his presence was indeed hazardous
to her health and his ultimate decision to face his own fatal destiny functioned as a Christ-like
sacrifice performed in order to save his beloved’s life. The veil of mystery enclosing the
identities and purposes of the younger and elder fatale is never lifted. Moreover, we never know
the details surrounding the (father-son) relationship between Saternez and Sagrezwitch, nor the
circumstances of the former’s murder. Whether or not lethal beings exist may remain a mystery
to an unconvinced reader, and whether or not Sagrezwitch and Saternez are father and son
remains inconsequential; in fact, a level of uncertainty, or a willing suspension of disbelief
creates that liminal state so pleasurable (but not necessary) in fantastic discourse. The attentive
reader is left with an impression of Tarchetti’s ability to situate his fantastic tale within the
confines of natural universe, while he, his characters, and his readers simultaneously question
that material world and the extent of its boundaries. The first tale of the Racconti fantastici ends
80
Rattray Taylor observes: “The way in which the devil is made to provide a mirror image of the Deity is quite
striking. He has his Mass, his churches, his disciples […] he has great power and knowledge; he descends into hell.
Not for nothing has the devil been called God’s Ape […] men make gods in their own image, and if the Deity was
an image of their better selves, the Devil was an image of their worse selves. He engaged in just those forbidden
sexual acts which tempted them: and this is why he was so frequently accused of sodomy […] But it is also true that
the Deity is a father figure, and it therefore follows that his counterpart, the Devil, is a projection of many of the
aspects of a father. Not only has he great knowledge and power, not only is he extremely old, but he also obstructs
one’s plans and must be circumvented by cunning” (122 – 124).
67
with uncertainty and the story that follows, “Le leggende del castello nero,” picks up that thread
of hesitation, beginning with the declaration, “Non so…” (II, 41).
“Le leggende del castello nero” or the double in time: psychosis or metempsychosis?
The opposing forces of fact and superstition (or science and belief) implicitly color the
initial passages of “Le leggende del castello nero,” first published in the appendix of Pungolo
and later reprinted in Presagio. Strenna pel 1868 with the title “Il sogno di una vita. Frammento”
(Ghidetti “Introduzione” 41). Like the first story of the fantastic collection, the second
commences with a narrative frame in which the first person narrator – this time also the
protagonist of the strange events – densely fills four pages with ontological insights in a pseudomanifesto of his convictions concerning the transmigration of souls and the non-linear nature of
time. Even though Tarchetti addresses the phenomenon of diachronic metempsychosis,
consequently dealing with multiplicity rather than easily deciphered duplicity, he creates a
specific non-corporeal double through one of the protagonist’s dominant past identities that lives
on inside him and emerges in his dreams. The events that emerge as the focus of the narratorprotagonist’s memoirs reveal that he has in fact lived eleven separate lives (before the present
one), of which he catches glimpses in intermittent déjà vu experiences – unexplained occurrences
and uncanny presentiments that he claims everyone undergoes.81 Two particular lives (and one
woman) haunted him in two consecutive dreams when he was a young, fifteen-year-old boy (in
the present life); hence the recurrence of two corresponds with the motif of duality, in the figure
of the double in time. Furthermore, the narrator-protagonist in the present (as he is writing) is
doubled by the narrated protagonist twenty years earlier (still in this lifetime), who is in turn
81
Feelings of déjà vu are tied to a type of seeming temporal repetition that mirrors the repetition that comprises a
facet of the Freudian uncanny. The narrator affirms that such a feeling of strangeness has afflicted us all at one
point or another: “E chi non ha esclamato talora, parendogli di ravvisare in qualche persona delle sembianze già
note” (II, 42).
68
doubled by an older self in his dreams of the black castle. This Seventeenth-century self, which
is wrought with amorous and criminal connotations, acts as the principal past identity of this
story, thereby becoming an alter ego of the present protagonist and functioning as a sort of
“double consciousness” (Rank The Double 20).82 In the first oneiric scene, he is a young man
charging a castello nero in the midst of a battle. He finally accesses the black castle and
embraces his beloved sequestered within, but she decomposes in his arms in one of the most
critically-noted examples of the donna scheletro in the Tarchettian oeuvre.83 In the second
dream sequence she appears again in the same location but three hundred years later in another
life. Transcending the boundaries of temporal and spatial logic, she tells him that his present life
will end in twenty years on January 20; of course our narrator is thirty five years old and
anticipates his death so that these memoirs assume the form of a written memento mori. He had
forgotten those dreams until, in 1849, he came upon the place in Northern France where the
black castle once stood hundreds of years before, but where only ruins remain. After hearing the
legend of the black castle from a shepherd (the legend that he had in fact been part of, but which
is too ghastly to recount, an ineffable horror beyond words), he falls gravely ill: “E intesi da lui
un racconto terribile, un racconto che io non rivelerò mai, benché altri il possa allo stesso modo
sapere, e sul quale ho potuto ricostruire tutto l’edicifio di quella mia esistenza trascorsa” (II, 55).
82
In the second chapter of his seminal treatise on the double in literature and psychology, Rank describes a double
in contrast to the physical double (which we also already witnessed in “I fatali”) “a likeness which has been
detached from the ego and become an individual being” (The Double 20). Even though he refers to the shadow, the
reflection, and the portrait as external manifestations of this internal self-division, the splitting of the self can
manifest in other ways, such as the many past lives of the narrator-protagonist of the present story, which
specifically deals with his double consciousness concerning this life and the particular past life of the legend.
83
“Le sue forme piene e delicate che sentiva fremere sotto la mia mano, si appianarono, rientrarono in sé, sparirono;
e sotto le mie dita incespicate tra le pieghe che s’erano formate a un tratto nel suo abito, sentii sporgere qua e là
l’ossatura di uno scheletro…Alzai gli occhi rabbrividendo e vidi il suo volto impallidire, affilarsi, scarnarsi, curvarsi
sopra la mia bocca; e colla bocca priva di labbra imprimervi un bacio disperato, secco, lungo, terribile” (II, 51).
This passage is often compared with the donna-scheletro of the poem “Memento!” and the various descriptions of
the morbid Fosca, whose emaciated and deformed appearance is skeletal.
69
The image of reconstructing the edifice of his existence echoes the dynamic of multiplicity
versus totality in the tale, for like the many bricks of a single building, the narrator is the sum
total of a plurality of existences, all separate both spatially and temporally, but all comprising his
conscious and unconscious singular, diachronic self. Another image of fragments appears in the
two volume manuscript that the young narrator’s ninety-year-old uncle mysteriously received
and subsequently burned, for they contained the tragic and unnerving family history. The
fifteen-year-old narrator breaks into his uncle’s room and literally puts together the torn and
burnt fragments of the manuscript (II, 54), simultaneously re-membering the material text, and
remembering the events recounted within it concerning the black castle of which he had just
dreamt. The piecing together of memories is implied in the genre of the text itself; as a memoir,
the narrator remembers and re-members, as in puts back together, images from his past (in this
case, his multiple pasts). The fragmentary structure of the narration itself is further reinforced by
the disjointed, non-linear dreamscape and the flashes of memory that recur throughout the
memoirs.
We are left with inconclusiveness at the conclusion of “I fatali” whose events remain an
enigma that no one has ever been able to decipher (II, 40). Similarly, at the outset of “Le
leggende del castello nero,” we are thrust into another diegesis where logical explanation falls
short and we face an “enimma insolvibile” (II, 41) concerning the veracity of reincarnation. In
fact, the acknowledgement of the universe’s inexplicability acts as an implicit, sweeping
criticism of science’s presumption of absolute knowledge over reality. The narrator prefaces his
biographical story with an affirmation of uncertainty, not doubting the actuality of past lives, but
questioning other people’s interest and ultimate credence in these happenings:
70
Non so se le memorie che io sto per scrivere possano avere interesse per altri che per me
– le scrivo ad ogni modo per me. Esse si riferiscono pressoché tutte ad un avvenimento
pieno di mistero e di terrore, nel quale non sarà possibile a molti rintracciare il filo di un
fatto, o desumere una conseguenza, o trovare una ragione qualunque. Io solo il potrò, io
attore e vittima a un tempo (II, 41).
The opening “non so” of the memoirs, and the term “memorie” itself set the stage of
inconclusiveness and ambiguity that will continue throughout the narrator’s account of his
present and particular past lives. Unlike the narrator of “I fatali,” he does not plead his case as
one of truth to an audience, for he is writing for himself and he acknowledges the terror and
mystery of his life events without doubting their veracity. He is merely an actor and a victim at
the same time of the forces of nature, that is, of a nature that goes beyond the typical Christian
conception of life and death. Furthermore, proving the existence of past lives is impossible for,
unlike the observation of the effects of fatal forces, this spiritual phenomenon is unobservable by
the physical senses. The only “vision” involved is the one of dreams and the only sense that
factors into metempsychosis is the sixth sense, which is not a physical one. It would be
impossible to prove his dreams, memories, and inclinations because of their subjective nature;
one cannot observe with one’s own eyes the psychical experiences of another and the individual
experiencing such dreams and feelings of déjà vu is often subject to either spiritual or
unconscious forces. This indefiniteness is characteristic of the liminal space of the fantastic and
in this story the reader may actually question the sanity of the protagonist and wonder whether he
actually experienced metempsychosis, or whether he was merely suffering from psychosis.84
Only the narrator-protagonist can attest to the truth of these events and if the reader accepts the
notion of truth’s relativity, of its subjective nature, then she accepts that they were indeed real to
84
Metempsychosis is defined as the “migration of the soul or rational spirit at death into another body; the doctrine
of metempsychosis is part of the Hindu religion, which further teaches that the soul carries with it the memories of
former existences for a thousand years. It then induces forgetfulness by drinking of Lethe and begins all over again”
(Campbell 605 – 606).
71
him. The narrator’s disclaimer that only he can trace the thread of fact and the rationality of his
story demonstrates his acknowledgement of a reality that runs against our traditional conceptions
of the natural world. We are again faced with an opposition between fact and conviction that
echoes other dichotomies appearing in the tale, and that also anticipates the duplicity inherent in
the figure of the double, here appearing as a double in time, visible only in dream visions, yet
constantly present because always already subsumed within the personal (un)consciousness of
the narrator.
In “I fatali,” a superstition was “proven” to be a fact loosely based on the senses of visual
and auditory observation; the narrator and the masses were able to witness the effects of the fatal
influences of Saternez and Sagrezwitch, who were flesh and blood doubles, or to use Rank’s
terminology, “corporeal figures of the double” (The Double 16). The phenomenon of doubling
took place in the physical world, while the Doppelgänger of “Le leggende del castello nero” is a
double that walks beside the protagonist only in his dreams and intuitions. He is not a separate
physiological being, nor is he an autoscopic hallucination; he is something altogether different,
existing in immaterial corporeal form only in the subject’s dreams, yet always existing (whether
latently or actively) in psychical or spiritual form in the narrator’s mind as a type of double
consciousness. To use Roda’s terminology, it is a “double in time,” one of the many, though
perhaps rarer, manifestations of doubling that occurs in literature. According to Roda, the
temporal double emerges when a present self encounters his past self as either a vision or in the
“pre-personal” form of an ancestor; in this scenario the self and the alter ego are usually at odds
insofar as one disapproves of the other, acting as a sort of super-ego figure (Il tema del doppio
72
123 – 124).85 Even though such criteria does not apply in this Tarchettian short story because
there is no moralistic stint, the concept of the double in time proves apropos, for it effectively
communicates the double’s ability to exceed both temporal and material boundaries, existing as
an other, intangible subject (still part of the subject), who no longer exists in the present material
world but still resides within the mental sphere of the conscious and/or unconscious mind.
According to the narrator, these various “esistenze parziali” (II, 44) comprise our lives,
indicating a synchronic division of identity in an outwardly unified individual. However, our
(un)consciousness (or essence, or spirit, or soul), has experienced multiple existences in other
forms (i.e. other physical bodies) and is thereby multiplied even further though diachronically in
a type of sublimieren as in most cases (because of our incomprehension, or Lethian-induced
forgetfulness), or in a type of aufheben as in the case of the narrator-protagonist of this tale.86
The Tarchettian narrator therefore addresses both synchronic and diachronic doubling, calling
into question and ultimately deconstructing the notion of a unified self in the present and also
across time. The discourse of the double is ultimately a discourse of the self and in this fantastic
tale, the Seventeenth-century double – and implicitly the other diachronic identities – exist as
85
Roda mentions Schnitzler’s story “Il ritorno di Casanova” in which the elder Casanova meets a younger image of
himself, and Verga’s Mastro-don Gesualdo, who sees a feverish vision of his younger self on his deathbed, “un altro
se stesso,” that contemplates him with a disapproving air and calls him a beast (Il tema del doppio 126). He also
discusses D’Annunzio’s Claudio Cantelmo who converses with an ancestor that embodies his moral conscience.
Roda notes that the double in time as an emblem of a character’s personal past is difficult to find in Italian literature,
though it appears in works of Pascoli, Papini, and Pirandello (Il tema del doppio 125).
86
The parenthesis around “un” is meant to signify both his accessible and therefore preconscious and conscious
personal histories and memories, as well as his unconscious and therefore his inaccessible histories and memories of
which he possesses perhaps an inclination or a flicker, but which he cannot describe to the extent that he has
described the legend of the black castle. In “A Note on the Unconscious in Psycho-analysis,” Freud differentiates
between preconscious and conscious activity that pass in and out of consciousness and unconscious activity that
remains repressed and outside of consciousness. He notes that it is not impossible for unconscious activity to pierce
consciousness, but the patient resists it (Papers on Metapsychology 27). The words of Tarchetti’s narrator
concerning the possibility of the unknown presence of past lives seems to retroactively echo this Freudian aspect of
the psyche: “O che la mia natura è inferma, o che io concepisco in modo diverso dagli altri uomini, o che gli altri
uomini subiscono, senza avvertirle, le medesime sensazioni” (II, 43). Others may experience similar glimpses of
these repressed or hidden memories, or sensations of past lives, yet they remain incapable of comprehending them.
73
parts of a whole, phoenix-like consciousness that perennially dies and is reborn with another
body. With the phenomenon of reincarnation, the discourse of the self is even further
complicated (doubled, if you will) because the other selves (whether latent or partly conscious)
are always psychically connected to the present self and to each other in a complex web of
syntheses, similar to the coexistence of multiple personalities in a psychotic.
The double in time most effectively manifests itself in these memoirs through the
accounts of the narrator’s dreams in which the reader actually imagines the sleeping subject and
his oneiric alter ego in a state of coexistence, still not material though conceivable through the
dream images. The narrator is and has always been aware that he had lived other lives and
therefore possessed other identities before the present one:
Io sento, e non saprei esprimere in qual guisa, che la mia vita – o ciò che noi chiamiamo
propriamente con questo nome – non è incominciata col giorno della mia nascita, non
può finire con quello della mia morte: lo sento colla stessa energia, colla stessa pienezza
di sensazione con cui sento la vita dell’istante, benché ciò avvenga in modo più oscuro,
più strano, più inesplicabile (II, 43).
The ineffable arises again, for the narrator is attempting to describe a phenomenon that lies
beyond the realm of logical comprehension and linguistic expression. He possesses a sort of
preternatural knowledge that his birth in the Nineteenth Century was not the origin of his
consciousness, just as his death will not signify the end of his existence. The strength of this
conviction is itself inexplicable, for it appertains to a sphere beyond the Symbolic, to that type of
sensational residue outside of language that approaches the Real of the prenatal experience, that
liminal space between his birth into each life. In fact, the narrator affirms that there exist “delle
lacune tra queste esistenze” that will one day be filled when the mystery will be explained to us
74
(by whom, we are unsure), as if we will one day return to the Real, that timeless, inorganic space
where the threads of life “incominciano nell’eternità e si perdono nell’eternità” (II, 44).87
When the narrator-protagonist refers to himself as both “attore” and “vittima” at the same
time (II, 41), he evokes the motif of destiny versus liberty that surfaces in “I fatali,” and as
mentioned above, arises in many literary examples of the double. The term “actor” also recalls
the trope of spectacle that appears in “I fatali;” in fact, the conception of the gaze returns in this
story as well, insofar as it becomes directed inwards toward an observation and contemplation of
the dream self. The subject glimpses and scrutinizes an other that was at one time a part of the
self, or more simply was the self but has now become an object of observation. The ambiguity
that emerges in this shifting subjective position differs from that encountered in “I fatali”
because we are here dealing with a multiplication of one subject across time. Rather than the
decomposition of Death in the opposing, yet complementary doubles of Saternez and
Sagrezwitch, here Tarchetti presents us with a doubling akin to condensation (a psychological
phenomenon distinctive of the Freudian dream work in which the repressed emerges in different
ways). Condensation presents itself as the fusion of many thoughts and images into a single
element of the dream, which becomes a multifarious symbol; similarly, in “Le leggende del
castello nero,” many memories of the protagonist’s present life and various visions from one of
his past lives emerge in the form of recollections, intuitions, and vivid dreams, and are fused
87
The imagery utilized by Tarchetti in this passage recalls a similar discourse in Hoffmann that Tymms cites in his
work on the double: “To Hoffmann, the apparent absurdities of dreams, visions and other fragments of the irrational
mind imply deep mysteries of cosmic proportions, which might be revealed to man, if he were but able to
comprehend the message, and decipher its symbolism…there existed in his mind a ‘shadow-self’, standing in direct
communication with external forces inaccessible to the rational mind. Hoffmann held quite seriously the views he
attributes to the fictitious editor of Medardus’ ‘autobiography’ in The Devil’s Elixir, who claims that what is
commonly called dream and fantasy is really the symbolical realization of the hidden thread running through our
life, and connecting it in all its parts” (60 – 61). As an admirer and reader of Hoffmann it does not seem unlikely
that Tarchetti’s description of “lo spettacolo di una vita, le cui fila incominciano nell’eternità e si perdono
nell’eternità” (II, 44) echoes that of Hoffmann.
75
together in his present consciousness. In other words, a multiplicity of temporal identities is
condensed into one mind, which is physiologically single but psychically multiple. A list of
examples fills two pages of text as if they served as proof of his claim of metempsychosis and
many of his memories come from the Seventeenth Century, the often neglected age of Italian
literature where marvelous tales of Oriental travels, primitive peoples, gardens of supernatural
pleasure, and talking lanterns colored the pages of Baroque poetry and prose (II, 42 – 43).88
In the story proper, the protagonist’s dreams, sparked by a mysterious manuscript of their
family history, become the focal point. The dreamscape emerges as another world, as “una vita a
parte, un’esistenza distaccata dall’esistenza della veglia” (II, 44), in which another self exists.
The narrator’s observation that each night we die in one life and are reborn in another in our
dreams (II, 44) calls to mind the ancient Chinese proverb in which Chuang-tzu dreams he is a
butterfly only to awake and wonder if he is not a butterfly now dreaming that he is a man. In
fact, the narrator affirms the existence of two individuals residing within him and “all’uno
apparteneva l’azione, all’altro la coscienza e l’apprezzamento dell’azione” (II, 49). In other
words, besides the multiplicity of lives that live within the narrator (and perhaps within us all),
there is also the oneiric double, which is perhaps the simplest and most complex duplication of
the self. It is simple because we all frequently experience it, yet it proves complex because of its
capability to thrust us further into the dark regions of our own psyche where even hidden dream
88
Del Principe underlines Tarchetti’s own belief in the phenomenon of metempsychosis and while biographical
information does not supply a valid interpretation, it nonetheless reveals that Tarchetti lived, and not only wrote
about, ideological unconventionality: “The complex spate of foreign influences to which Tarchettti was receptive
and which posited the representation of Reality in the dichotomy between the natural and the preternatural, in
addition to a view of history inseparable from a belief in metempsychosis, do seem to indicate that his narrative sits
more comfortably among the Gothic novelists, such as Walter Scott and Edgar Allan Poe than among his late
Romantic contemporaries in Italy” (33).
76
thoughts are disguised as symbols.89 The dream world is a place where unconscious thoughts,
feelings and desires may reveal themselves and Tarchetti’s depiction of the elusiveness of pastlife memories echoes a similar slipperiness inherent in the (personal) unconscious, which may be
accessed, but not without much difficulty.90 G.H. Schubert, a precursor of Freud and Jung,
describes the self in our dreams as “‘the shadow-self dwelling in the night side of the mind’”
(Tymms 36) and in primitive beliefs, the soul of a sleeping person leaves his body, visits places
and performs actions of which the man dreams (Rogers 7). In short, the image of the self in
one’s dream reflects the dichotomy between the physical and the psychical and demonstrates a
human being’s innate non-wholeness. As Bakhtin observes in his consideration of the double in
the menippea: “Dreams, daydreams, and insanity destroy the epic and tragic wholeness of a
person and his fate: the possibilities of another person and another life are revealed in him, he
loses his finalized quality and ceases to mean only one thing; he ceases to coincide with himself”
(116). The narrator of “Le leggende del castello nero” undoubtedly fails to possess a finalized
quality due to the many lives that he had lived; even though his beloved tells him in the second
dream that this is his last earthly life, she suggests that they will live on together elsewhere in the
afterlife in non-corporeal form. The bellicose, amorous, and macabre images that occur in the
young protagonist’s dreams are indeed mysterious and though suggestive of battles, love and
violent crime, they nonetheless remain unexplained to the reader. She also remains ignorant of
89
In Chapter Six of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud explicates the dream work, addressing such phenomenon
as condensation and displacement; however, he begins the chapter with the claim that the images of dreams are not
necessarily what they seem to be, but themselves allude to other, forgotten or repressed thoughts or desires. He
states: “We have introduced a new class of psychical material between the manifest content of dreams and the
conclusions of our enquiry: namely, their latent content, or (as we say) the ‘dream-thoughts,’ arrived at by means of
our procedure. It is from these dream thoughts and not from a dream’s manifest content that we disentangle its
meaning” (295).
90
Della Rocca rightly observes a connection between the phenomenon of metempsychosis and the
incomprehensibility of the unconscious: “Qui il mito della reincarnazione gli [a Tarchetti] offre spunti per esprimere
quel confuso sentimento della vita, che, ad intermittenza, lo spinge ad esplorare il mondo vago dell’inconscio” (23).
77
the actual, tragic events surrounding the legend of the black castle because the narrator refuses to
reveal them, claiming that their horror is beyond words (II, 55).
The ineffability of the terrible story of the castello nero relegates it to a realm of visceral
revulsion that transcends language and the narrator’s morbid, physical reaction suggests a
movement towards the abject. The protagonist hears the legend of which he is the subject, but as
the listener his past-self is an object; hence he is both subject and object, both self and other.
One recalls that the abject results from a loss of distinction between self and other. As a
reminder of our own mortality this breakdown of identity (present in many stories of the double)
is embodied in the human reactions of horror and its physical manifestations, which in this case
would be the onset of sickness. After the narrator recovers, he returns to the ruins of the castle
(six months before the predicted day of his death) and wishing to leave his memory behind, he
begins to write “queste pagine sotto l’impressione di un immenso terrore” (II, 56) and it is at this
point, at the beginning of his memorial undertaking, that the text ends. Immediately following a
series of asterisks, two brief passages are inserted by a friend of the author, as a sort of
disclaimer that acts as a closing frame and recalls both the Manzonian narrator and the Ortisian
Lorenzo: “L’autore di queste memorie che fu mio amico e letterato di qualche fama […] morì il
venti gennaio 1850 […] Io ho trovate queste pagine tra i suoi molti manoscritti, e le ho
pubblicate” (II, 56).91 In this sense the reader realizes that she entered the text in medias res and
91
The narrative convention of the lost and found manuscript functions as an element of verisimilitude, helping to
give a sort of objectivity to a highly subjective, melodramatic, and fantastic story. Both Manzoni and Foscolo were
fundamental factors in Tarchetti’s intellectual formation. Tarchetti, like all of the other authors of this study, came
of literary age in the shadow of Manzoni and experienced an anxiety of influence in the wake of his critical and
popular fame. A certain affinity with Manzoni alongside a blatant critique of his grandeur may be seen in
Tarchetti’s early treatise, Idee minime sul romanzo, published in Rivista minima on October 31, 1865, and reprinted
in Ghidetti’s compilation of his works. In it, the young Milanese author attempts to outline the history of the novel,
characterizes it as the most natural of artistic expressions, and celebrates it for its educational potential, thereby
recalling Manzoni’s own moralizing objective in literature (and anticipating those of Fogazzaro and De Marchi).
Ghidetti notes the importance of Tarchetti’s early view of the novel’s scope precisely because of how far the writer
78
comes upon the beginning and the end of the narrative physically placed side by side on the final
page. The reader therefore comes to the beginning of the textual fabula at the end of the syuzhet,
which at a banal level exists in any narrative that presents remembrances or flashbacks. In this
case however, the fabula itself is so complex in its non-linearity that the flashbacks and dream
sequences appertain to other lives that have been superimposed onto the present life of the
narrator-protagonist; hence, the linear nature of time itself has been confounded not only by the
author’s non-chronological organization of the syuzhet (as any realist writer may do), but by the
very progression of the temporally rhizomatic fabula, which is in itself inherently nonteleological. This anti-teleological fabula suggests a non-linear conception of time that in fact
transcends the textual space, but that is echoed within it by the narrator’s assertion in the initial
passages of the story:
strayed from that initial opinion (“Introduzione” 10). Tarchetti criticizes I promessi sposi in his Idee minime sul
romanzo, describing it as aesthetically inferior to other European novels of the era: “Non vi ha luogo a dubitare che i
Promessi sposi sieno finora il migliore romanzo italiano, ma non occorre dimostrare come esso non sia che un
mediocre romanzo in confronto dei capolavori delle altre nazioni. Per chi ha letto Tom Jones, Gil Blas, il Don
Chisciotte e la Vita di Martino Scriblero, che sono dal lato dell’arte i grandi modelli del romanzo inglese, francese e
spagnuolo, per chi ha letto Walter Scott, che è il più grande romanziere del mondo, e quei tanti romanzi meravigliosi
e morali che possiedono l’America e la Germania, questa cieca ammirazione degli italiani cade nell’esagerato e nel
ridicolo” (528). While Manzoni’s masterpiece may indeed be considered the greatest Italian novel of the century, it
pales in comparison to its foreign contemporaries. Tarchetti and his scapigliati peers are indeed known for their
antimanzonian stances, especially in regards to literary style, bourgeois ideals, moralizing messages, and codified
religion. As editor of the journal Emporio pittoresco (from 1868 until his eventual incapacitation due to his illness),
Tarchetti also harshly criticized Manzoni’s socio-linguistic stances in four polemical Conversazioni. The first dealt
with the pubblication of Manzoni’s letter to Broglio on the unity of the language, and another letter on Dante’s
linguistic theories (Ghidetti Tarchetti 232). Should Tarchetti be associated with any “Romantic” writer, then he
should be aligned with Foscolo, whose first name – Ugo – he assumed as his middle name in an homage to his
predecessor. In addition to Anne Radcliffe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Paul Férval, Alexandre Dumans, and Georges Sand,
Foscolo and Chauteaubriand emerge as primary authors on Tarchetti’s reading list (Ghidetti “Introduzione” 10).
Della Rocca notes that from Foscolo, Tarchetti adopts “l’esempio ortisiano della poesia come sfogo, dell’arte
scaturita da un’adesione totale alla propria anima, dell’assunzione del sentimento a luce rivelatrice dell’essenza del
nostro essere” (48). In the fourth chapter of Fosca, Giorgio reveals that he was inspried to read Foscolo’s letters
after he meets Clara, undoubtedly foreshadowing the impending doom of their relationship because of the suggested
similarity to Jacopo Ortis and Teresa: “Passai quella prima notte in una specie di delirio; lessi l’epistolario di
Foscolo, - l’uomo antico – e rividi in un’allucinazione le scene passate della mia vita. Mi pareva che tutto fosse
finito lì, con quel giorno, con quella fuga, coll’incontro di quella donna; travedeva non so quali gioie nell’avvenire”
(II, 249).
79
la verità è nell’istante – il passato e l’avvenire sono due tenebre che ci avviluppano da
tutte le parti, e in mezzo alle quali noi trasciniamo, appoggiandoci al presente che ci
accompagna e che viene con noi come distaccato dal tempo, il viaggio doloroso della vita
(II, 41 – 42).
A view of the present as a center point with the dark spaces of the past and the future that
envelop it fixes us in time while paradoxically removing us from the continuum; we are in the
present, but always already containing within us the past and the future and thereby never
completely whole. This circular conception of time may be applied on an individual level, to a
single life or on a wider level, that is, to a single consciousness that subsumes within it the
consciousnesses of its past lives, while containing the seeds of its next life. This transient
permanence of consciousness is an age-old, unverifiable question that will appear again in
Tarchetti’s less grave “Uno spirito in un lampone,” as well as in De Marchi’s Due anime in un
corpo. One of the beauties of the fantastic is its carnivalistic capability to overturn notions of
reality and here Tarchetti proves himself a master manipulator of narrative temporality, while
concurrently questioning normative conceptions of time that literary realism and positivistic
science uphold.92
“Uno spirito in un lampone” or the double inside: demonic possession across gender and
class boundaries
The final and perhaps most humorous novella of the Racconti fantastici, “Uno spirito in
un lampone,” depicts yet another variation of the figure of the double, in which Baron B., a rich
Calabrese aristocrat is temporarily possessed by the spirit of Clara, a chambermaid who had been
92
Ghidetti passes harsh judgment on “Le leggende del castello nero,” referring to it as a bad story “in pieno
Seicento” that “finisce in un vero e proprio bric à brac di presagi, sogni, colpi di scena che, nella continua ricerca di
rinnovare e tener desta l’attenzione del lettore, ricorda gli ingenui armamentari ampiamente collaudati dalla peggiore
Radcliffe” (Tarchetti e la scapigliatura 220). Despite the melodramatic and textbook gothic elements (the castle,
the fair maiden ravaged by death, an ancient manuscript, the old portrait of a woman loved in another life),
Tarchetti’s tale offers far-reaching philosophical and psychological possibilities and stands as an original portrayal
of the double motif.
80
murdered and buried by a jealous admirer.93 Here Tarchetti portrays a strange psycho-spiritual
incident that could be loosely referred to as metempsychosis; however, this case of duplicated
consciousness differs drastically from the complex, diachronic transmigration of a single soul
illustrated in the lugubrious “Le leggende del castello nero.” The third person narrator (who we
later learn is a prison buddy of Clara’s murderer) attempts to give credibility to these events by
situating them specifically in November 1854, and by promising to communicate this “avventura
meravigliosa” with “maggior esattezza” (II, 73).94 These contrasting terms emphasize the
paradoxical nature of this story that is situated in the material world and told as a fact, but is
circumscribed by supernatural phenomenon. In this marvelously light-hearted, but by no means
vacuous story, two distinct consciousnesses – one male and one female – cohabitate the body of
Baron B. for only a few hours until the nobleman purges the raspberries that had contained
Clara’s spirit.95 The doubling that the protagonist undergoes is indeed a doubling, and not a
division of the ego because another consciousness joins his own within his mind; the added
female consciousness is most definitely an uncanny manifestation of the Doppelgänger, yet it
differs from the “visible cleavage of the ego” (Rank The Double 12) illustrated in the accessories
of the shadow and the reflection that often adorn stories of the double in which a splitting of the
self occurs.96 This episode of metempsychosis comprises an uncanniness in more than one sense
93
The term “demon” is used throughout this section in concordance with its first definition in the Oxford English
Dictionary: “in ancient Greek mythology (= δαίμων): A supernatural being of a nature intermediate between that of
gods and men; an inferior divinity, spirit, genius (including the souls or ghosts of deceased persons, esp. deified
heroes). Often written dæmon for distinction from sense.” (www.oed.com). It should not be taken in a Christian
context, that is as connoting an evil spirit associated with the devil.
94
Del Principe underlines the common month of November in this tale and in Fosca, as indicative of seasonal
decline, monsters and the Gothic especially when one considers that it is the month of All Souls (76).
95
Both Ghidetti (“Introduzione” 43) and Mariani (423) cite the novella “Le bourgmestre en bouteille” in the Contes
populaires (1862) of Erckmann and Chatrian as a source for “Uno spirito in un lampone,” for the French tale
recounts a bizarre case in which the souls of the deceased come back to live in food and drink.
96
These typical double accoutrements will appear later on in “Uno spirito in un lampone,” but they function more as
secondary props reiterating the already obvious duality of the protagonist’s consciousness.
81
of the word, for it portrays the strangeness of juxtaposed gendered consciousnesses, while
concurrently (though implicitly) alluding to the confluence of both masculine and feminine
inclinations that resides in all human beings regardless of their physiological sex.
The coexistence of two gendered consciousnesses in one physical body (albeit in this
case biologically male) recalls the “original” material form of the primitive “androgynous
person” (Plato 25), or third gender, that Aristophanes describes in Plato’s Symposium.97 To an
extent, it also presciently corresponds to a type of gendered duality of consciousness similar to
the kind that Jung explores in his conception of the anima and animus archetypes.98 In his
organization of the psyche, Jung proposed that man and woman contain both masculine and
feminine characteristics, but neither sex normally accepts and uses those behaviors associated
with the other, and as a result they remain unconscious. “Animus,” Greek for “mind” or “spirit”
is the male element that remains buried in woman’s unconscious, while “anima” the Greek term
for soul, is the female element that resides latently in man’s unconscious; therefore, a man’s task
in resolving the problem of incompleteness is to integrate the irrational soul (anima) that woman
consciously possesses, while a woman must integrate spirit or mind (animus) that man
97
According to this legend of human (and amorous) origins, Zeus diminished the power of the original human
beings (the male-male; the female-female; and the male-female) by severing them in two so “each half missed its
other half and tried to be with it” (Plato 27).
98
Jung addresses the animus and the anima in many of his works, so let it suffice to cite merely two instances in
which he clearly and concisely explains their general meaning: “Since the anima is an archetype that is found in
men, it is reasonable to suppose that an equivalent archetype must be present in women; for just as the man is
compensated by a feminine element, so woman is compensated by a masculine one […] The animus corresponds to
the paternal Logos just as the anima corresponds to the maternal Eros […] I use Eros and Logos merely as
conceptual aids to describe the fact that woman’s consciousness is characterized more by the connective quality of
Eros than by the discrimination and cognition associated with Logos” (Aion 151 – 152). Moreover, the anima and
animus “are much further away from consciousness [than the shadow] and in normal circumstances are never
realized” (Aion 148). In The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Jung offers a pseudo-scientific (and of
course contemporarily unfounded) explanation of the anima and animus: “Either sex is inhabited by the opposite sex
up to a point, for, biologically speaking, it is simply the greater number of masculine genes that tips the scales in
favour of masculinity. The smaller number of feminine genes seems to form a feminine character, which usually
remains unconscious because of its subordinate position” (27 – 28).
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consciously possesses.99 Though the baron’s overtly virile nature is invaded by a feminine
spiritual presence, rather than the latent presence of femininity à la Jung, we nonetheless
encounter a gendered double, in which (much like Plato’s androgynous being) typically
masculine and feminine psychological characteristics and behaviors coexist in one body.
Initially the narrator depicts Baron B. as the paragon of virility who possessed “la passione della
caccia, dei cavalli e dell’amore” (II, 73). A veritable macho man whose leather “stivali
impenetrabili” (II, 74, 75) seem to reinforce his formidable masculinity; furthermore, the baron’s
command of hunting, horses and women emphasize the model of bourgeois manliness, which
Tarchetti will consequently undercut when the coquettish spirit of Clara enters into his mind and
superimposes itself on his senses and comportment. Accompanied by his hunting dogs, Baron B.
tracks a flock of wild pigeons which ultimately leads him unawares to the final resting place of
the murdered maid. Thirty minutes after eating wild raspberries infused with the spirit of Clara,
the baron undergoes a change of character; he feels affection towards his dogs and sees the
beauty in anemone, some of which he gathers and positions on his breast as if he were a woman
(II, 76). Clara’s attraction to and affection for the flora and the fauna corresponds to the
traditional association of woman with the figure of Mother Earth.100 Her love of nature supplants
the typically masculine, domineering attitude towards it implicit in the act of hunting wild game.
In fact, the feminine is fighting to express itself and take command of his body, and actually
succeeds to a certain extent. Clara’s invasive consciousness alongside that of the baron causes
him to blush “come una fanciulla” (II, 78) in front of the field workers, and even changes the
99
Jung felt that the normal course of Western development already forces a man to integrate his spirit (or his
rational mind) and a woman to integrate her soul (or her irrational emotions) so that each must restore a missing
wholeness (Robertson 194 – 195).
100
In the Platonic conception of original beings expressed in Aristophanes’ speech in the Symposium, the female
gender was born of the earth; the male gender was born of the sun; and the androgynous gender was born of the
moon (25 – 26).
83
heaviness of his gait, so that the feminine presence is expressed not only mentally in his thought
patterns, but also externally in his behavior and physiology.101 Equipped with his rifle that he
had commanded with conviction and grace when he set out on the hunt, the baron, now imbued
with the spirit of Clara, carries it at arm’s length from his body, as if he were afraid of it and the
violent masculinity that it represents. During his time in the woods, the baron remains
predominantly himself as is evidenced by the dominance of his choice, in front of the fork in the
road, to take the path he usually travels, despite the temporary paralysis induced by the opposing
volition of Clara to take the other route (II, 78). Other instances occur where the conflicting
wills within him impede his movement or actions, especially once they begin to act upon him
with equal force in his castle’s courtyard:
Se agivano d’accordo, i movimenti della sua persona erano precipitati, convulsi, violenti;
se una taceva, erano regolari; se erano contrari, i movimenti venivano impediti, e davano
luogo ad una paralisi che si protraeva fino a che la più potente di esse avesse predominate
(II, 81).
His wish to act on something, but remaining paralyzed, alludes to the paralysis or indecision
within us caused by the conflict between our desires and those imposed on us by others or the
social and moral order.
The conflicting wills that dominate the protagonist on his walk back into town produce an
almost slapstick effect, as the reader envisions the baron acting like an affectionate, capricious
young girl and pulling his hair while repeating aloud, “io sono impazzito, io sono impazzito” (II,
79), as if surreptitiously alluding to the pathological nature of the double. The peasant folk are
initially stunned by his erratic behavior as he runs through town; however, they soon interpret it
as natural, as if they gleamed something truly uncanny: “pareva loro di aver travisto, intuito,
101
An argument for homosexual undertones could be made here and when the narrator reveals that the baron is not
attracted to the country girls as usual, but this is beyond the scope of the present argument.
84
compreso qualche cosa in que’ suoi atti e non sapevano cosa fosse” (II, 82). The narrator
suggests that they perceive something ineffable and familiar, though not less frightening, in the
baron’s strange behavior. Just as the masses prove intuitively knowledgeable regarding the
menacing influence of i fatali, here they also perceive something unusual in Baron B., as if they
were more receptive to the supernatural. At the tale’s conclusion, the masses ultimately confirm
the presence of Clara within the baron, and assist her with the apprehension of her assassin.
Even though they found themselves confronted with something inexplicable, “qualche cosa di
soprannaturale” (II, 84), they nevertheless accepted its validity. Here, as in “I fatali,” we
encounter a real-world scenario touched by the supernatural, which is observed by numerous
witnesses.102 The masses accept the mystery of supernatural forces; however, the “treatment” for
the baron’s psycho-spiritual malady – the administration of an emetic – is a medical cure. Some
critics view this naturalistic conclusion as indicative of Tarchetti’s interest in positivism.103 Even
if Hoffmann does not offer any positivistic explanation for the duplication of personality, one
cannot ignore that the so-called naturalistic explanation for the temporary transmigration of
Clara’s spirit is in itself fantastic. Instead, this marriage of the natural and the supernatural (as
already implicit in the psycho-spiritual nature of a demonic possession of one’s conscious mind)
on the one hand serves to “validate” the truth of these strange events, but on the other, functions
102
One can always play devil’s advocate, so of course it can be underlined that this tale does not present itself as a
first-hand account as does “I fatali,” nor is it based on an old manuscript as “Le leggende del castello nero;”
however, even here, where I would argue, Tarchetti wishes to elicit a laugh from the reader, he nonetheless inserts
stock narrative devices such as locations, pseudonyms to protect the “real” people’s identities and the testimony
format (a secondhand account based on a firsthand account). Even in the most absurdly fantastic tale of the
Racconti fantastici, Tarchetti, like any proper fantastic writer, instills at elements of verisimilitude.
103
In his discussion of “Uno spirito in un lampone,” Mariani claims that: “la storia del barone B. non è che il
pretesto per descrivere il lento sostituirsi di un essere all’altro nel gioco delle sensazioni che successivamente si
cancellano e si definiscono...di precise determinazioni fisiche, localizzate senza possibilità di equivoci,
dimostrazione non dubbia di quel positivismo scientifico al quale egli s’era decisamente accostato e che lo spingeva
a tradurre in termini di analisi medica le conseguenze di quello sdoppiamento della personalità che Hoffmann gli
proponeva in chiave puramente fantastica” (424).
85
as a critique of human knowledge of the natural world, for the symptom of the (spiritual)
infection is alleviated through purging the raspberries, although the cause and the progression of
the contagion (her spirit in the raspberries) remains unexplained. Should we take this
observation a step further, outside of the text, then we may propose that Tarchetti underhandedly
suggests the inadequacy of science and medicine to explain both uncanny and marvelous
phenomena. Furthermore, characterizing the final story of the Racconti fantastici as merely the
slow substitution of one being for another through an interplay of sensations reduces it to an
inferior status. Baron B.’s concise though poignant questions, “io non comprendo più nulla di
me stesso…sono ancora io, o non sono più io? o sono io ed un altro ad un tempo?” (II, 77) could
be asked by any modern individual, for we are always already simultaneously an I and a non-I,
from the moment we are initiated into the social order. Furthermore, humor and play are
inherent elements of fantastic discourse and do not necessarily negate a narrative’s suggestive
and subversive potential. The socio-psychological implications of this comical case of demonic
possession that affects both sensory and cognitive perceptions are indeed far-reaching. Tarchetti
depicts the inherent duality of the individual, here manifested in the protagonist’s androgyny,
while suggesting the complexity in the relation between self and other and between self and self,
and also commenting on the divided nature of love as an interesting, though relevant aside.104
In the public space of the hunting grounds and in town, the baron’s consciousness takes
precedence, but once he arrives in the private sphere of the home (often associated with the
feminine), Clara’s consciousness becomes more predominant. He fully realizes and somewhat
comprehends that there are two separate, opposing lives contained within his life (II, 80), that is,
104
Rank maintains that “the life of the double is linked quite closely to that of the individual self” (The Double 17);
hence, when dealing with the problem of the relation between self and other in the figure of the double, we are
essentially dealing with the problematic relationship between self and self.
86
contained within his mind. His double consciousness in fact reaches its apex, becoming even
more physically and cognitively pronounced, insofar as he sees double, he hears double, he
touches double and he thinks double (II, 79 – 80).105 As contemporary readers in a postpsychoanalytic world, we recognize a type of possession of individual consciousness by an other
that produces symptoms of dissociative identity disorder in which one personality is latent while
another is present; however, in this case two personalities are contemporaneously present and in
conflict, for Clara’s desires and sensations are and are not Baron B.’s desires and sensations, in a
type of cacophonic aufheben. Immediately after ingesting the raspberries, he is overcome by a
strange sensation as if he were no longer seeing with his own eyes: “non […] vedeva più cogli
stessi occhi” (II, 75). His visual perception is the first sense to be altered, for another gaze is
invading his own, usurping his authority over his mind and body. He is not necessarily being
contemplated by an other; rather, he is being partially supplanted by an other whose subjective
gaze intermingles with his, while each attempts to push the other aside. We so often forget that
our perception is not the only one, that we are not the only subjects glimpsing others, but we are
also subjected to the gaze of others who are also subjects; therefore, our subjectivity and our
perception may always potentially be threatened. It is the thinking double, however, that
confirms his provisionally split (or rather multiplied) personality that he further describes as “due
forze diverse di raziocinio, e giudicate da due diverse coscienze” (II, 80). The baron is aware
that there are both his consciousness and another coexisting within his body, and within his mind
as well. As in demonic possession, the other fuses itself to the self and there is a veritable
breakdown between subject and object a type of supernatural abjection as already mentioned in
105
I have maintained the incorrect use of an adjective in place of an adverb in order to reflect the same grammar
structure utilized by the Tarchettian narrator, for it effectively communicates that sense of strangeness and
indescribability (as per our common knowledge and experiences) that is associated with the double inside, in the
form of demonic occupation of one’s mind and body.
87
the case of “Le leggende del castello nero.” However, this scenario acts as a paradigm for a
more universal, socio-psychological phenomenon (again we have the supernatural mirroring the
psychical) – that of the interdependence of identity between self and other.
In addition to Baron B.’s organically sensory and psychical adventure of duality, he also
acquires the pure and beautiful memories of Clara and through them indirectly experiences
complex feelings of love and guilt never known to his male consciousness (II, 81 – 82). Once in
his bedchamber, Clara’s repetition of “Io vengo a dormire con lei, signor barone,” (II, 82)
suggests a carnal and spiritual knowledge that two people share in an amorous relationship and
that analogously manifests itself in this strange coexistence of consciousness. Through this
experience of two souls or consciousnesses in one body, the baron comes to comprehend the
complexity of love in which two exist as one:
egli comprese in quel momento che cosa fosse la grande unità, l’immensa complessività
dell’amore, il quale essendo nelle leggi inesorabili della vita un sentimento diviso fra due,
non può essere compreso da ciascuno che per metà. Era la fusione piena e completa di
due spiriti, fusione di cui l’amore non è che una aspirazione, e le dolcezze dell’amore
un’eco, un sogno di quelle dolcezze (II, 82 – 83)
The narrator describes the baron’s newfound, temporary pleasure in his duality with an erotic
language that underlines the indescribably orgasmic unity that results when two spirits join
together. Baron B. and Clara are united in a fusion that transcends – at both the physical and
psychical level – the unity that lovers share. After this figurative consummation of wills, the
baron undergoes a post-climax decline of pleasure as the two lives that animated him seem to
separate from each other (II, 83). This psychic copulation results in an inexplicable though
veritable physical metamorphosis in Baron B.’s facial features and the progressively dominating
88
presence of Clara in their union.106 As he gets out of bed, he touches his face “come per
cacciarne qualche cosa di leggiero…un velo, un’ombra, una piuma e sentì che il tatto non era più
quello” (II, 83). Aside from the transformation in his tactile sense, the reader notes a stock
image of the theme of the double – the shadow, which in primitive beliefs was associated with
the soul.107 While the notion of an immortal soul in the Christian sense does not comprise
Tarchetti’s repertoire of other-worldly entities, the continuance of consciousness after corporeal
death certainly appertains to his world-view in which matter does not constitute all essence. The
veil, shadow, or feather Baron B. feels corresponds to the lightness of a non-material entity that
has invaded his mind and cloaked his body. His curiosity piqued at the physical sensations he
experiences as a result of the psychic space he shares with Clara, the baron contemplates his
reflection in the mirror (yet another stock accoutrement of the double):
V’era lì presso uno specchio e corse a contemplarvisi. Strana cosa! Non era più egli; o
almeno vi vedeva riflessa bensì la sua immagine, ma vedeala come fosse l’immagine di
un altro, vedeva due immagini in una. Sotto l’epidermide diafana della sua persona,
traspariva una seconda immagine a profili vaporosi, instabili, conosciuti. E ciò gli pareva
naturalissimo, perché egli sapeva che nella sua unità vi erano due persone, che era uno,
ma che era anche due ad un tempo (II, 83).
The baron’s image is paradoxically his own and not his own at the same time, for he sees himself
and Clara’s image as if it were a hologram or filmic superimposition combined with his. This
106
Roda affirms that the “bisexuality” of the tale turns into a “monosexuality” where the feminine rules: “La
duplicità volge irresistibilmente ad unità, la bisessualità ad una monosessualità di segno femminile, elidendo quel
mélange maschio/femmina che è l’invenzione più significativa del racconto, e che lo raccorda ad un filone
speculativo inaugurato dal Simposio platonico e largamente documentato in area otto-novecentesca, dal Boehme e
dal Baader su fino al Weininger, allo Herman ed agli stessi Freud e Jung, con le relative ripercussioni letterarie ivi
incluso il Michelet carissimo al Tarchetti” (Homo duplex 80). Santoro concurs underling “il classico dualismo
maschio/femmina che ripropone l’impotenza maschile di fronte al carattere femminile fagocitante” (332).
107
To a certain extent, the shadow emerges as an element in all comparative studies of the double and one cannot
help but immediately think of Jung’s shadow archetype and its importance in the psychic make-up of the personal
unconscious. In The Double, Rank affirms: “Folklorists are in agreement in emphasizing that the shadow is
coequivalent with the human soul. From this fact we derive not only the particular regard for the shadow, but also
for all taboos referable to it and for superstitious fears of death after stepping upon it, since injury, harm, or loss of
one’s soul will bring about death” (57).
89
androgynous image of two souls in one body seems less than surprising to the baron because he
was already aware of the presence of another will and consciousness within his own, previously
singular mind. As he gazes at himself in the mirror, he also sees Clara beneath his skin in a
vaporous, unstable, yet recognizable form, recalling the immaterial, yet visible Shades of the
Dantean afterlife. As both spirits contemporaneously occupy the same body, Baron B. / Clara
look upon a portrait of the aristocrat from his youth, and the exclamation that follows – “Ah!
questo è il signor barone di B…Come è invecchiato!” – may be read in two ways. Though the
surprise regarding Baron B.’s aged appearance in comparison with his youthful image may be
interpretated as belonging to the spirit of Clara, it may also be read as the reaction of the baron
himself as he experiences first-hand the sense of estrangement at encountering his former,
youthful self, a material experience of the double-in-time, in a classic example of the Freudian
unheimlich.108 Soon after, he rushes to the hallway to look at Clara’s portrait where he becomes
the spectacle for a curious crowd who had gathered in the courtyard. Seemingly on the verge of
a fit of epilepsy (that was still associated with madness in the Nineteenth Century), his
appearance changes even further and the crowd finally recognizes him as Clara. Besides the
obvious inexplicability of these physical transformations, the reader recognizes that in just three
paragraphs the classic objects of the double – the shadow, the mirror, and the portrait have
appeared intermittently. Upon seeing her portrait, the spirit of Clara wishes to free herself from
the Baron’s body and reunite with her own image in the portrait, in order to become whole again
108
In The Uncanny, Freud recounts his own uncanny experience with a double: “Since the uncanny effect of the
‘double’ also belongs to this species, it is interesting to learn how our own image affects us when it confronts us,
unbidden and unexpected […] I was sitting alone in my sleeping compartment when the train lurched violently. The
door of the adjacent toilet swung open and an elderly gentleman in a dressing gown and travelling cap entered my
compartment […] I jumped up to put him right, but soon realized to my astonishment that the intruder was my own
image, reflected in a mirror on the connecting door. I can still recall that I found his appearance thoroughly
unpleasant” (161 – 162). One cannot help but recall this passage from Freud’s text when the baron (rather, Clara)
comments on how old he now appears in the mirror (in contrast to the portrait) for his perception of himself had
been different.
90
with a true representation of her original, corporeal form. The portrait, often a recurring object
in gothic fiction (and of course one cannot forget Dorian Gray), is associated with the discourse
of the double in death. Rank indicates that various peoples the world over (Native and Central
Americans, Asians, and some Europeans) dread one’s own portrait or photo because the soul is
visualized in the image, and therefore a fear arises should the possessor of the image construe
fatal wishes against him. Rank further notes that some “civilized” European superstitions sustain
that allowing one’s portrait to be painted leads to his death (The Double 65 – 66). The original
totality of one soul in one body is achieved after Baron B. purges himself of Clara’s soul and one
assumes that the spirit of the murdered maid finally found peace after the imprisonment of her
killer and the proper burial of her body. Baron B. only temporarily achieves this double
consciousness in which the masculine and feminine are unified and the author does not explicitly
affirm the latent presence of an opposite gender identity within us; however, the problematic,
enigmatic, and often pathological relations between men and women frequently surface in
Tarchetti’s works (and in his own ambiguous relations with women), emerging as a focal point in
his final, “incomplete” novel.109
109
Tarchettian protagonists often demonstrate ambiguous attitudes towards women, seeing them as both angels and
tormentors. Tarchetti’s own relationship with the sickly Carlotta to whom he wrote over seventy letters between
June 4, 1863 and November 18, 1865 was a love affair “tempestuoso e sconvolgente” that he conducted “fedelmente
e appassionatamente su schemi werteriano-ortisiani esasperando le venature romantiche sentimentali di quella
letteratura” (Mariani 375). Delirium, fury, and passion fill Tarchetti’s letters to Carlotta; according to Mariani, they
act as precursors to many of his fictional works (374). The fragments compiled in Pensieri contain a section of
aphorisms on “la donna” that begins: “La donna è un capolavoro abortito, il grande errore della creazione” (II, 480).
Critics mention autobiographical undercurrents in his works, and especially in Giorgio, who like Ortis to Foscolo,
becomes a self-projection. The Giorgio-Tarchetti identification is emphasized, according to Ghidetti who cites
Tarchetti’s relationship and correspondences with the epileptic Carlotta (Tarchetti 55). At the outset of Fosca in
Tutte le opere, Ghidetti inserts a footnote claiming that this novel was born out of “un duplice amore effettivamente
vissuto dallo scrittore nel 1865” (II, 237 – 239).
91
Out of the Light and into the Darkness: a macabre ménage a trois in Fosca
In the dark, dismal, and often surrealistic Fosca, Tarchetti continues his investigation of
the occult world, though he leaves the supernatural realm of fatal forces and metempsychosis
behind in the Racconti fantastici, and moves into the sphere of the fantastic-uncanny, that of the
pure psychopathological, as it surfaces through the pair of protagonists and fellow neurotics,
Giorgio and Fosca.110 One could of course classify Fosca as fantastic, and in the broad sense of
fantastic discourse it is; however, keeping in mind our parameters in which we consider those
narratives containing supernatural, as in spiritistic, occurrences – wunderbar – as fantastic, and
those works containing the freaky and the strange – wunderlich – as gothic, then Fosca belongs
in the latter category. Even though the femme fatale certainly wields a lethal influence over
Giorgio, it is more contagious than celestial. The vampiric female protagonist may be (and has
been) depicted as a succubus-like creature that sucks the life out of her beloved male victim. She
may be characterized as a fatal force insofar as her all-encompassing, indiagnosable “disease”
infects Giorgio’s mind and body, pushing him close to the edge of death by the end of the text.111
110
Tarchetti spent much of his final years with Salvatore Farina and even resided in his house in Milan for a time.
Farina himself writes about his completion of Fosca after the untimely death of his friend in Dall’alba al meriggio:
“‘Tornato a casa tentai invano di farmi confidare dal morente che cosa si proponesse di dire nel capitolo mancante;
egli delirando balbettò poche parole, poi si voltò sul fianco e cadde in sonno profondo. Per fortuna avevo corretto
ogni giorno le bozze della Fosca [...]; mi accinsi con coraggio all’opera che doveva esser pronta per il domani, e
nella medesima notte buttai giù quelle dieci pagine. [...] Quel capitolo famoso è il XLVIII’” (Ghidetti Tarchetti
257). For Ghidetti and other Tarchettian critics, this fact is seen as problematic because it leads one to wonder
whether Farina made other changes to the text. While this may never be known, most scholars note stylistic
differences between Chapter 48 (that Tarchettti had intentionally left to write last though it is not the last chapter of
the novel) and the rest of the narrative. According to Ghidetti, the consummation of Giorgio and Fosca’s love in
that chapter is “immaginata con i più vieti luoghi comuni della letteratura orrifica dal Farina” (Tarchetti 266). At
any rate, disregarding Fosca as worthy of analysis because of this so-called Farinian contamination seems to do a
great injustice to the rest of Tarchetti’s final novel which proves rich fodder for reflection.
111
Ghidetti speaks of Fosca’s “carattere vampiresco” (“Introduzione” 56) and Del Principe characterizes Fosca as a
vampire seductress (a lamia), a surrogate between Ludovico who victimizes her, and Giorgio whom she victimizes,
where transference is executed physically and psychically (76). Del Principe furthermore sustains that both “I
fatali” and Fosca have borrowed from vampire lore in other ways because in myth vampires choose their victims
from among those closest to them from life and they are often fugitives or world travelers (like the fatali, Fosca, and
Ludovico) (83). Santoro also underlines the psychical manifestation of the fantastic in the novel that is not a result
92
Fosca remains, however, a mere human, circumscribed by the strange and mysterious, but
nevertheless grounded in the material world, seemingly incapable of the supernatural, deadly
powers of Saternez and Sagrezwitch. Like Fogazzaro’s Marina di Malombra, Tarchetti’s Fosca
shares her name with the title of the novel; so, in both her appearance in the diegesis and in her
absence from it, the title character (pun intended) remains a constant, ghostly presence in the
narrator-protagonist’s memoirs, whose fragementary structure, first person narrator, and
frequent, flowery style obviously recalls Foscolo’s Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis. Unlike his
literary mentor’s epistolary novel, however, Tarchetti’s critiques on society (through the voice of
his antihero) are subtle and limited to socio-cultural realities such as conformity, the quotidian,
bourgeois life, and the inability of positivistic science to decipher psychopathological mysteries.
As opposed to Ortis, Giorgio does not die by his own hand, though he barely survives Fosca’s
infectious lethalness because, as his specular double, she reflects his own morbidity and
mortality. The uncanny journey into the human psyche emerges through the autobiographical
testimony the neurotic and sickly narrator-protagonist, who most likely never intended his
diaristic musings to be published.112 As in the Racconti fantastici, the reader here again
encounters a narrative frame that functions as “proof” of the text’s veracity (and thereby the
tale’s verisimilitude). The novel’s preface, composed by its compiler and “publisher,” reiterates
the motif of the manuscript discovered and published by an objective outsider that we have
of external spiritistic forces: “Il fantastico in Fosca non si concretizza come una forza che s’impone dall’esterno,
capace di creare uno scarto tra reale e paradossale, ma si manifesta come essenza oscura che risiede nell’individuo
stesso” (332 – 333).
112
In the initial pages of the novel, the narrator claims that he writes for himself, as an internal, personal, and
cathartic exercise: “Scrivere per noi per rileggere, per ricordare in segreto, per piangere in segreto. Ecco perché
scrivo […] Io scrivo ora per me medesimo” (II, 241). We remember that critics including Della Rocca (39),
Ghidetti (Tarchetti 262), Bezzola (75), Mariani (370), and Bonifazi (81 – 82) have argued that Tarchetti’s final
novel is quite autobiographical, deriving inspiration from his relationship with the epileptic Carlotta that he had met
in Parma in 1863 and with whom he maintained an epistolary correspondence.
93
already encountered in the fantastic “Le leggende del castello nero.”113 Instead of exploring the
fantastic-marvelous that is commonly associated with myth and superstition (though as we have
seen nonetheless subjectively “real”), Tarchetti shifts his focus in his final novel to the natural
uncanny that is inextricably linked to the dark recesses of the human psyche, to the modern
subject’s existential crisis in a world where mere positivistic science and literary realism fail to
effectively portray, address and probe the individual’s crisi di coscienza. Tarchetti’s
employment of the fantastic and the gothic, sometimes viewed as impediments to a realistic
portrayal of the world, paradoxically allows him to effectively explore representations of the
complex, psychologically-infused reality of the modern individual.114 The double emerges in
Tarchetti’s gothic novel through the pathological love triangle, for each female character stands
as part of the decomposed protagonist: Clara, as his oppositional double, represents the idealized
life and love that Giorgio wishes to attain and that he temporarily lives, while Fosca, reflects his
true identity, acting as a mirror image that initially appalls and repulses him, and finally attracts
him.115 Clara and Fosca will be discussed in relation to the narrator-protagonist, as each female
113
The allusion to the discovered and published manuscript recalls Manzoni (who, we remember, Tarchetti
vehemently critiques in Idee minime sul romanzo) and Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis, especially for the text’s
memorialistic style.
114
Tarchetti is often considered the inaugural author of the gothic and the fantastic into Italian literature, not only for
the undeniably grotesque antiheroine and funereal imagery in Fosca, but also (and especially) because of his
Racconti fantastici (Di Giulio 195). Del Principe discusses Tarchetti and the Scapigliatura in general in their
fantastic light affirming their place, not as a “footnote to Romantic sensitivities,” but as a “new territory in which the
thematics of dementia, psychosexuality, the Gothic, antibourgeois conformism, decadence and the avant-garde”
emerge (13). Cinzia Di Giulio affirms that Tarchetti’s goal was a representation of the real, “nel senso di verità
psicologica, che potesse raggiungere i livelli dell’inconscio […] il lato ‘ctonio e notturno dell’anima’” (195), and it
is precisely the reality of a divided and diseased psyche that the author portrays through Giorgio in his amorous and
arduous relationships with lightness and darkness, as embodied in Clara and Fosca respectively.
115
Fosca is frequently classified by scholars as a gothic novel that takes cues from other Nineteenth-century gothic
literature, such as that of Poe and Hoffmann. Del Principe, for example, situates Tarchetti (among other scapigliati
authors) within the gothic tradition: “The complex spate of foreign influences to which Tarchettti was receptive and
which posited the representation of Reality in the dichotomy between the natural and the preternatural, in addition to
a view of history inseparable from a belief in metempsychosis, do seem to indicate that his narrative sits more
comfortably among the Gothic novelists, such as Walter Scott and Edgar Allen Poe than among his late Romantic
contemporaries in Italy. Based on the assumption, then, that Tarchetti deserves a place within the Gothic tradition,
94
figure represents an external projection of Giorgio’s decomposed self, while concurrently acting
as opposites for each other. Their contrasting attributes will therefore naturally emerge in the
treatment of the diverse pairs of Giorgio / Clara and Giorgio / Fosca and because of the
triangular relationship, the discussion of the pairs will frequently bleed into each other.
At the outset of his memoirs, Giorgio declares that he will recount the tale of “due grandi
amori, due amori diversamente sentiti, ma ugualmente fatali e formidabili” (II, 242). His first
great love, Clara, immediately emerges as a contrasting figure for the melancholy, disheveled
soldier on leave in Milan. As the picture of health and vigor, she acts as a personified
juxtaposition to Giorgio’s melancholic disposition and sickly appearance. In fact, she falls in
love with him out of pity or pietà, recalling the courtly love trope of the lovesick suitor eliciting
pathos from the beautiful, nearly unreachable woman he adores.116 Recalling and essentially
deconstructing the courtly and religious implications traditionally conveyed through the notion
of pietà, Fosca adamantly declares at her first meeting with Giorgio: “La pietà non è che amore
passivo, amore morto” (II, 281); hence, Clara’s love, based on the mercy she feels for the
miserable and ailing protagonist pales in comparison with the overly active forms and extreme
manifestations of love of which he and Fosca are capable. Like his dark, female specular double
and in opposition to his luminous, contrasting double, Giorgio experiences emotions in extremes:
his repudiation of Manzoni need not be perceived as entirely in conflict with his admiration for Scott” (33). Though
we have already mentioned Tarchetti’s antimanzonian stances, he admired the Monaca di Monza’s sections in I
promessi sposi (Ghidetti “Introduzione” 14), which in fact, may be characterized as gothic for their darkness,
strangeness, and psychosexuality.
116
Clara, like the courtly beloved and the donna angelicata, takes pity and mercy on her ailing suitor and eases his
anguish by reciprocating his affections: “Fu la sua pietà, che la condusse all’amore, in quei giorni le nostre anime si
unirono” (II, 255). The motif of pietà is reiterated several times throughout the initial chapters and hence reinforces
the undertones of courtly conventions: “Se la sua pietà non fosse venuto a salvarmi, io mi sarei divorato il cuore” (II,
254); “ci eravamo amati, ella per pietà, io per gratitudine” (II, 258); “Tu sei data a me per pietà” (II, 263). Although
this association with pity or piety and her role as a maternal figure may also conjure up images akin to that of
Michelangelo’s Pietà, the succor she provides to Giorgio ultimately fails and its failure is rendered all the more
devastating precisely because of its original association with courtly, religious and maternal imagery.
95
“Passai sempre dall’apatia all’adorazione senza soffermarmi sull’amore. Perché riposarsi a
metà? Perché non mirare agli ultimi? Le grandi cose sono estreme – le grandi anime adorano o
odiano” (II, 253 – 254). Fosca’s critique of pietà thereby destabilizes the love that Clara felt for
Giorgio, and renders her fatal attraction to the despondent military man all the more profound,
for it is not based on pity, but on an irrational instinct that mirrors that same feverish passion in
her male counterpart. Although the narrator mentions the “due grandi amori” of his life, he
emphasizes his plan to speak in detail about only one of them: “Non scriverò che di un solo di
questi amori. Non parlerò dell’altro che pel contrasto spaventoso che ha formato col primo.
Quello non è stato che un amore felice. Raccontarlo, sarebbe lo stesso che ripetere la storia di
tutti gli affetti” (II, 242). While Giorgio indeed describes episodes from his and Clara’s love
affair, his belief that recounting one happy love story is the same as recounting them all
immediately underlines the banality of the amorous bliss that, at the time, he had found so
special. Because of this unoriginality in happy love, the reader anticipates Giorgio’s eventual
unfulfillment from it, especially when he reveals his own chronic distaste for conventionality:
La ripugnanza che ho sentito, e che sento ancora per tutto ciò che è convenzionale, per
tutto ciò che è metodico, non proveniva già dalla mia educazione, ma da una disposizione
speciale del mio carattere. Non mi bastava di essere da più o da meno degli altri uomini,
mi bastava di esserne diverso (II, 245).
The narrator’s repulsion for conformity obviously anticipates the failure of his idyllic romance
with Clara, who he initially believes to be his soul mate, “riflesso dell’anima mia” (II, 315), in
that overly clichéd notion that depicts one of the earliest renditions of the double in Western
literature.117 Giorgio’s retrospective recognition of their amorous relationship (which had, at the
117
In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes discusses human being’s “original” forms that were dualistic creatures
possessing two heads and eight limbs and appertaining to one of three sexes: male (two males in one); female (two
females in one); and androgynous (male/female). When these primal humans became too powerful, the gods cut
96
time, revitalized him and elicited his wholehearted passion) as nothing more than the happy,
repeated, and therefore mundane love story of every man, undercuts the importance he had
previously attributed to it. In fact, the narrator’s revelation of the commonplace nature of his and
Clara’s love from the beginning of his memoirs provokes a reading of the pages that follow as a
type of coming-of-age tale in which Giorgio himself is doubled. As the presently wiser narrator
who relates the story of his previously naïve self, the reader constantly perceives that duality of
character between first-person narrator and protagonist, as the former relives the journey of his
past self through the text, much like Dante the poet and Dante the pilgrim. The conventional
nature of his love story with Clara renders it in retrospect highly inferior to the wild tale of his
relationship with Fosca, especially when one considers both Giorgio’s and Fosca’s shared natural
inclinations for uncontrollable passions alongside feverish psychological (and physiological)
states. Moreover, Fosca’s liminal social status as a wife without a husband and a mother without
a child also removes her from the typical, female bourgeois role in which Clara so neatly fits.118
As Fosca’s polar opposite and the paragon of a beautiful bourgeois wife and mother, Clara’s
unfaithfulness and and final abandonment of Giorgio not only destroy her initial image as an
ideal lover, they also act as subtle critiques on the part of the narrator (and the author) directed
towards the institutions of marriage and family so celebrated in the culture of the majority.
Clara’s divergence from her familial role and her diversion with Giorgio are only temporary; she
decides to return to that mundane life, as she informs her lover in a farewell letter that her
them in two, and modern humans go about in search of their other halves, or their soul mates in order to become
complete once again as they had been in ancient times.
118
Ludovico, Fosca’s estranged husband, abandoned her after spending her entire dowry and her family’s fortune.
When he eventually returns to claims her she is pregnant with his child, though her parents refuse to allow him to
take her and pay him to leave. From her mysterious words written in a long letter to Giorgio inserted into the text,
Fosca reveals her misfortune in motherhood: “Mio figlio viveva, ma io non poteva diventar madre” (II, 273). It is
unclear whether she miscarried, or whether the child died during or after his or her birth; however, her unproductive
pregnancy rendered her a childless mother, and abandoned by Ludovico she remains a husbandless wife.
97
husband’s recent economic misfortune requires her to be there for him. In short, she abandons
Giorgio in order to participate more actively and fully in the bourgeois dynamic of faithful wife
and loving mother. The bejeweled cross she wears and eventually leaves him as a memento is
itself an indication of faith corrupt by materialism and modern signs of wealth. Another allusion
to her materialistic nature occurs when, visiting San Giorgio, Giorgio asks if she would like to
live there in the country with him, to which she responds: “ ‘No […] ho orrore della povertà’”
(II, 294). Scholars highlight Clara’s fundamental differences from her brooding lover from
social and existential perspectives. Roda, for example, sustains that Clara acts as “una
simbologia dove la vitalità e la normalità si coniugano col borghesismo” (Homo duplex 68).
Given Giorgio’s admitted abhorrence of conventionality as well as his fatalistic nature, his
eventual incompatibility with a woman who embodies normalcy and vitality is inevitable; as his
oppositional double, however, Clara stands as an idealized lover and as a social ideal that the
country-born soldier Giorgio will never respectively obtain or achieve.
In addition to her status as a model bourgeois beauty, Clara’s association with lightness
underlines a lack of passionate profundity and an intellectual vacuity; although Clara also reads
novels, she does so on her balcony surrounded by flowers, so that one naturally assumes she
reads romances directed towards women, as opposed to Fosca who devours literary works in her
chambers, and even makes notations in the margins. While Giorgio and Fosca discuss Rousseau
and Lafontaine, the narrator merely mentions Clara’s casual novel-reading and surrounds her
with banal objects associated with courtly love – flowers, the springtime, and pietà –, rendering
her all the more a figure of “un idillico pastello ottocentesco” (Ghidetti Tarchetti 56).119 Del
119
The recurrent image of the flower highlights Clara’s initial life-giving force, yet the flowers that surround her
eventually become withered as their romance nears its end. Before even speaking with his soon to be lover, the
protagonist observes her on the balcony of her apartment that is filled with “vasi di fuxie e di gerani” (II, 252) that
98
Principe recognizes Giorgio and Clara’s contrasting natures, despite the protagonist’s former his
assertions of their perfection as a couple: “Giorgio’s rosy characterization of his and Clara’s
compatibility is, by contrast, an omen of how she is unsuited for his extraordinary soul and
unparalleled misanthropy” (46). Giorgio’s unique soul and misanthropy undoubtedly find their
match in Fosca’s strangeness, compassion, and resigned disillusionment with humanity.
Clara is described as “sì serena, sì giovane, sì fiorita” (II, 251) and “sì felice, sì florida, sì
bella” (II, 251) and their love thrives in the springtime when “maggio fioriva” (II, 254), yet these
clichéd images of an ideal love will wither after only eight months, for just as the beauty of
flowers soon fades, so does the experience of an idealized love affair. During the last encounter
between Giorgio and Clara the motif of flowers reappears, though it is undercut by the funereal
nature of the “fiore di semprevivo” (II, 395), which signifies Clara’s subsequent failing health (as
a result of Giorgio’s thriving health), as well as the imminent end of their affair.120 Their
moribund relationship will eventually be relegated to the realm of memory and the presence of
the “fiore da morto” or “fiore delle memorie” (II, 395) anticipates the “death” of their love in the
present. Just as the usual association between life and flowers is confounded in their last,
maudlin encounter, the narrator anticipates the fatality of their romance many chapters before
are not yet in bloom. Though the gestational state of the plants may foreshadow the affair that will soon flourish,
and anticipate Giorgio’s subsequent “rifiorire” (II, 252), their present flowerless state and the previous reference to
the dried flowers that he keeps as a memento of solemn periods of his life (II, 250), cast a somber shadow over the
characteristic, positive connotations of flowers. The image of a bud inevitability emphasizes a latent stage of life,
but also alludes to the brief life cycle of plants, of which wilting and death are a part. The transient beauty inherent
in the flower suggests that Giorgio and Clara’s amorous relationship will be just as ephemeral as the blooms
associated with it.
120
Just as Fosca’s health briefly improves as a result of Giorgio’s affections, Giorgio’s health improves as a result of
his relationship with Clara; however, he becomes a parasite that transfers his illness into Clara: “la mia salute era
rifiorita, io ero ritornato forte, lieto, sereno; ma mi pareva aver tolto a lei tutto ciò che aveva aggiunto a me stesso”
(II, 257). Fosca also becomes akin to a succubus that drains the remaining life force from Giorgio, who becomes
convinced that she desires to drag him to the tomb along with her.
99
(though temporally five years afterwards, in the narrative present) through a similar overturning
of the flower – life force dynamic:121
Le dolcezze del mondo sono bandite da una vita veramente utile, e veramente benefica.
Gli alberi che danno frutti hanno fiori modesti e spesso inodori; i grandi fiori, quelli
ricchi di petali e di profumi, non sbocciano quasi mai che sulle piante sterili e velenose.
La virtù non ha fiori, ma ha frutti (II, 304).
Clara is akin to those rich flowers of a visual and olfactory aesthetic, but like them, she is only
superficially pleasing, for the relationship she offers Giorgio is sterile insofar as it is destined to
end regardless of her marital status and it proves venomous in its unoriginality and
incompatibility with his own darkness.122 If Clara can be read as the beautiful flower that yields
no fruit, then Fosca may be read via the above citation as the ugly tree that bears the rich fruit
(albeit unnerving) of Giorgio’s self-knowledge and insight into his true, diseased identity.
The protagonist’s repulsion towards the physical appearance of Fosca (sometimes
tempered by his realizations of particulary beautiful attributes in her, such as her eyes, and
especially her ebony hair) and his horror in the midst of her hysterics emerge from the
recognition of himself in her. Like him, she is diseased and dark, but by no means evil, while
Clara is luminous and beautiful, but certainly not all good. In Tarchetti’s topsy turvy world,
those elements embodied in Clara and essentially tied to the life force of Eros – lightness,
121
The diaristic structure utilized by the narrator transcends the traditional bounds of time and space, for he writes
his memoirs five years after the events he recounts and does not offer a chronological order; rather, like memory
itself, the narrative is non-linear (and therefore rebellious against realist schemata), recalling Foscolo’s epistolary
novel Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis and anticipating more “modern” novels that confound time and space, such
as Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno.
122
Giorgio asserts that the laws of Providence have estranged them: “È nelle leggi della Provvidenza che l’unione
dell’uomo e della donna debba essere passeggera, e la nostra separazione non fu che una conseguenza di questo
decreto inesorabile della natura; chè se le leggi umane hanno potuto imporre a questa associazione una durabilità a
vita, l’esperienza ci mostra che le leggi del cuore e le leggi provvidenziali ne trionfano sempre segretamente” (II,
267). He notes that even if human laws (in other words, had Clara been single) had permitted their union, it was
ultimately destined to fail because such a passionate, all-consuming and blissful love can only be ephemeral. His
emphasis on the impossibility of a lasting relationship with Clara under any circumstances further highlights his own
natural tendency to resist such a conventional love “tutte rose e fiori”. His connection to his own irrational instincts,
to his shadowy nature impedes him from ever realizing the ideal.
100
vitality, health, and beauty that begets physical desire – become relegated to an inferior position
because of their elusiveness, conventionality, and shallowness. On the other hand, those
elements incarnated in Fosca which are also linked to the death instinct of Thanatos – darkness,
fatality, illness, and a desire for non-existence still prove devastating, but entail a return to a state
of authenticity for the male protagonist.123 In addition to various psychoanalytic readings of the
obvious life and death forces present in the figures of Clara and Fosca, Roda characterizes
Tarchetti’s privileging of Thanatos as “lo scatto trasgressivo ed utopico,” while Eros indicates
the “legalità borghese” (Homo duplex 79).
In the end, in all of Clara’s idyllic portrayals as an angel (II, 262), a saint (II, 261), and a
reflection of Giorgio’s soul (II, 315), Clara emerges as the true monster in a tour de force of
identity with her grotesque counterpart, Fosca. After receiving Clara’s farewell letter, Giorgio
reflects upon his confusion of ideas but realizes that there is one clear, certain, definitive idea:
io aveva amato un mostro. Era possibile abbandonarmi così? […] Avrei io avuto il
coraggio pur di pensare a ciò che ella aveva predeciso e compiuto con sì facile
risolutezza? No, né io, né nessuno. Tal cosa non poteva essere immaginata che da un
essere mostruosamente ingrato, mostruosamente crudele. Io aveva amato questo essere.
Tutto l’edificio della mia fede era rovinato, tutto era caduto nel fango (II, 271 – 272).
Ironically, the beautiful and saintly Clara has finally transformed into a monster and Giorgio
realizes that he had adored a cruel, ugly and vacuous creature, whose love, or ability to love
paled in comparison with his fervent passion (and with that of Fosca). Giorgio had imagined
123
Gioanola offers a Freudian psychoanalytic reading of Tarchetti’s Fosca, declaring that Clara represents Eros, or
love and the life force (with of course strong Oedipal undertones in her likeness to Giorgio’s mother) and that Fosca
embodies Thanatos, of the death drive of the protagonist, which results from the moral guilt sustained for his initial,
incestuous attraction to Clara. Though Clara may obviously be aligned with the “life force” for her beauty, vitality,
and association with floral and springtime imagery, my use of the term “life force” is not meant to be taken as a
complete acceptance of Gioanola’s Oedipal interpretation of the text. Santoro also characterizes the complementary
doubles of Clara and Fosca as representations of Eros and Thanatos: “Fosca è la storia di un amore distruttivo e
nefasto che evidenzia una costante della narrativa tarchettiana: il rapporto eros-thanatos. In aderenza alle regole del
fantastico, alla rappresentazione dell’amore romantico (quello tra Giorgio e Clara) fa da contraltare un amore
perverso e distorto (quello tra Giorgio e Fosca) che sfocia nel desiderio malinconico, ossia in un desiderio smisurato
che conduce l’individuo ai confini della morte” (331).
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their relationship as a great love affair, yet he finally observes that Clara’s letter, though
seemingly heartfelt does not negate the fact that she was able to abandon him so easily. The
narrator anticipates Clara’s monstrosity by affirming his own: “Vorrei pur leggere nel cuore
degli altri uomini per conoscere se io ho realmente amato di più, se fui in ciò, come ho creduto e
temuto sempre, un’eccezione mostruosa e sventurata” (II, 304). Though he characterizes both
himself and his ideal beloved as monstrous, their horror differs insofar as he possesses excessive
and irrational passions, more profound than those of the average man, while her hideousness
conversely alludes to her inability to love deeply. The above epiphany regarding Clara’s atrocity
is juxtaposed by another realization a few pages later when Giorgio confesses to the doctor that
he does indeed love Fosca: “Quella donna mi ha amato, ella sola mi ha amato veracemente. Non
l’abbandonerò senza gettarmi a’ suoi piedi, e senza ringraziarla colle mie lacrime” (II, 413). He
finally comprehends the deep seated adoration and love that Fosca feels for him; the assertion
that only she has truly loved him demonstrates their mutual, fanatical mode of loving and their
inherent affinity.124 Giorgio’s relinquishment of the model of ideal and conventional love (and
life), assists him in finally realizing and accepting Fosca as his true love and kindred soul.
Giorgio’s relationship with Clara results in unfulfillment because of their incompatibility
and though her abandonment devastates him, it assists him in recognizing Fosca as the outward
projection of his shadow, and as the true reflection of himself in an other. Although Giorgio’s
sentimental torment reveals itself through both of his love stories, his relationship with Fosca
fundamentally emerges as the final confirmation and acceptance of his diseased psyche. As
124
Death and disease run rampant in all of Tarchetti’s works and many of his characters are in fact in love with
fatality and sickness, just as it seemed that Tarchetti himself had been in his relationship with Carlotta. One thinks
immediately of the tales of Amore nell’arte and especially Lorenzo Alviati’s poignant saying that not expresses his
passion for illness and death, while alluding to yet another Tarchettian motif of the absent presence. In reference to
his recently deceased beloved, he exclaims: “L’aveva dimenticata viva, l’aveva amata morente, l’adorava già morta”
(I, 589).
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disease personified, Fosca is most identified with illness throughout the novel, though as already
ascertained, Giorgio also suffers from poor physical and psychological health. In the initial
chapters, the narrator establishes la malattia as a trope that will inform the entire text:
Più che l’analisi d’un affetto, più che il racconto di una passione d’amore, io faccio forse
qui la diagnosi di una malattia. – Quell’amore io non l’ho sentito, l’ho subito. Non so se
vi siano al mondo altri uomini che abbiano superato una prova come quella, e nelle
circostanze in cui io l’ho superata; non so se vi sarebbero sopravvissuti (II, 243).
The diagnosis of an illness actually becomes the diagnosis of his own illness as it is personified
in Fosca. The description of his love for his fatal other as something to be overcome, including
the words “subito”, “superato”, and “sopravvissuti,” further reinforces the imagery of disease,
yet the self-congratulatory tone of having survived such an ordeal of self-consciousness renders
the confrontation of his shadow all the more noble, despite its harrowing effects. The term
“shadow” is used here quite loosely, for it is a staple in the discourse of the double. As Rank
outlines in The Double, the shadow was a “primitive” proof of the soul’s existence and therefore
one’s shadow, along with the mirror image and the portrait became staples of fiction of the
double for their allusions to another manifestation of the self. The shadow is also a fundamental
concept in Jungian psychology as it stands as one of the archetypes present in the collective
unconscious that sometimes bursts forth in the individual. Jung describes the “dark
characteristics” of the shadow which “have an emotional nature, a kind of autonomy, and
accordingly an obsessive or, better possessive quality. Emotion, incidentally, is not an activity of
the individual but smething that happens to him” (Aion 145). The shadow is part of the occult
realm of the unconscious, though when it enters into our consciousness, it threatens to eclipse
our rationality and lead us into harm. Both Giorgio and Fosca seem to be overshadowed by their
shadows, as they share overzealous passions and frequent exaggerated or obsessive behaviors.
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At the outset of his memorialistic text, Giorgio refers to his tendency towards instinctual
extremes:
Io rido di coloro che credono la nostra volontà avere un potere illimitato sulle nostre
passioni, che asseriscono esistere in noi una forza sempre superiore agli istinti, sempre
capace di dominarli […] Io ero nato per amare, e ho amato; se nato per uccidere, avrei
forse ucciso. La responsabilità sarebbe stata uguale. Tutto ciò che avrei potuto fare, è
ciò che ho fatto e che faccio – vergognarmi della mia natura! (II, 326).
Giorgio’s laughter at those who believe in the unlimited power of the will over the passions mark
him as anything but a rationalist and his anti-Cartesian affirmation highlights one of the immortal
dichotomies that all humans face: will versus desire, or conscience versus instinct. His assertion
that he was born to love, so he loved and if he had been born to kill, he would have killed
underlines another classic duality of love and death, which informs the entire novel, especially
because of their intersection in the figure of Fosca. She loves so wholeheartedly that she
dispenses all of her vitality; love, in a sense, progressively diminishes her physiological and
psychological well-being so that in expending her love and life-force (Eros) she grows nearer
and nearer to to its opposite of death (Thanatos). In the letters that she sends to Giorgio, Fosca
reveals her own natural inclinations to intense love and emotions: “L’intensità era invece la
maggiore dote della mia; amava le cose che amano i fanciulli, ma come le amerebbero gli
uomini” (II, 329). In addition to suggesting a certain virility in Fosca that renders her different
from the typical female, love-interest character (as found in Clara), Fosca’s emontional intensity
and her tendency to love like a man are similar to her beloved Giorgio’s propensity for intense
sentiments and actions. Giorgio’s reference to his “nature” in the above citation emphasizes his
own difference even before his all-consuming amorous affairs and also suggests that their
disastrous outcomes were predestined; we remember that destiny often enters into the gothic and
the fantastic as an inexorable force. In her farewell letter to Giorgio, Clara claims that “una
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predestinazione […] una volontà superiore e imperscrutabile” (II, 405) has divided them, for she
is destined to return to her bourgeois, mundane existence as wife and mother, and he is destined
to confront his specular image through the figure of Fosca.125 In short, Giorgio is unable to
effectively repress his shadow because of his own innate attraction to it and also because of
fate’s seemingly inescapable push towards it. He confronts the actual, external representation of
his shadow and his own existential disorientation and neuroses parallel Fosca’s hysteria. In fact,
the descriptions of their abnormal propensity for excessive passion closely echo each other.
Giorgio’s claim that he was born with “passioni eccezionali,” unable to reduce his affections to
the level of other, normal men (II, 242), parallel those identical qualities in Fosca, who affirms,
“io nacqui malata” (II, 329). Fosca affirms that the greatest symptom of her infirmity was the
need to become violently, immediately, and extremely attached to all that surrounded her, just as
Giorgio was unable to temper his extreme sentiments and desires. Through their common
psychical “disease” or abnormality, it becomes obvious that the male protagonist is a mirror
image of his dark, uncanny female counterpart; in the novel the focus is on the male antihero, yet
the title Fosca alludes to the principal female figure, to the protagonist of the only love story –
the diagnosis of a disease – that Giorgio will recount in detail.
The narrator undertakes the arduous task of recording a brief, definitive time in his life in
which he consciously becomes what he always unconsciously was – a tormented thinker and a
reclusive, though rebellious, pariah. At the outset of his memoirs, Giorgio reveals that even
125
In this argument, the term “self” is not meant to refer to Jung’s Self or “God-image” (Aion 162); rather it refers to
a more existential notion of self, as encountered in Heideggerian authenticity. Should we interpret Giorgio’s initial
melancholy, physical maladies, reclusiveness, and anticampanilismo (before he meets Clara) as his authentic nature
and then consider his story-book affair with Clara as a type of fallen-ness in which he attempts to reenter the world
of the One (here the bourgeois dynamic of city life, overly romantic love and vacuousness), thereby becoming
inauthentic. Giorgio’s return to authenticity could be construed in his acceptance of his true nature as it is reflected
(though perhaps a bit melodramatically but reflected nonetheless) in Fosca.
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before encountering his two great loves, his youth was “ricca di molte passioni” and his life was
“lungamente e orribilmente angosciata” (II, 241). He suffered from a natural, constant
“agitazione febbrile” (II, 245) that remains undefined as any specific disease. He also reveals
that his “malinconia profonda” (II, 246) transforms into a physical illness that isolates him for
five months, in a seemingly self-imposed sequestration that anticipates Fosca’s isolation in her
own rooms of her cousin’s house. His propensity towards physiological infirmity is reflected in
his melancholic mental state, and even recalls a type of hysteria or illness of the nerves, usually
associated with aberrant Nineteenth-century women, and explicitly embodied in Fosca.126 Even
though hysteria was originally classified a female disease, it later became considered as a
psychosomatic malady that could affect both men and women (especially in the work of Breuer
and Freud); though Tarchetti was not privy to such psychological studies at the time, it is
nonetheless interesting to note that both his male and female protagonists display symptoms of
hysteria, of that undefinable disease that later became relegated to the sphere of general neuroses.
From the perspective of gender stereotypes, however, the reader notices how the “hysterical”
Giorgio displays characteristics typically attributed to the feminine, while his female counterpart
possesses attributes usually associated with the masculine. Fosca is an intelligent, avid reader
whose natural curiosities, aggressiveness, and strangeness distance her from the typical image of
a woman; one may even affirm that these qualities alongside the boldness with which she
126
From its etymological origins in ancient Greek, hysteria was initially considered a female disease caused by the
uterus that seemingly possessed a mind of its own, wreaking havoc on a woman’s body as it wandered throughout;
later, these hypothesized biological causes were proven untrue. In fact, in the late Nineteenth Century, the French
neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot posited hysteria as a neurological disorder resulting from psychological factors
rather than physiological ailments. Of course, women, more than men were susceptible to such a disease because of
their fragile, pliable psyches – a reason also given for the use and abuse of women in spiritistic experiments, which,
like their psychological counterparts, utilized hypnosis. Even though Charcot’s “hysterical” patients were women,
his concept of hysteria as a mysterious, variegated mental syndrome nonetheless paved the way for later studies of
both female and male psychopathologies by physicians such as Janet, Freud, and Breuer. Hysteria – the Nineteenthcentury stock diagnosis for female anxieties and abnormal behavior – nonetheless remained “una malattia ‘fuori
della scienza’” to use Fusaro’s words (La nevrosi 47).
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pursues and expresses her feelings to Giorgio, reflect a certain masculinity.127 We recall, in fact,
her own assertation that even as a child she loved like men – not like women, or adults in general
– but like “uomini” (II, 329). Giorgio, on the other hand, in his proclivity towards excessive
passion, irrationality, and illness, undermines the traditional notion of virility in which
rationality, strength, and health prevail.128 In fact, Caesar sustains that “Fosca is identified by a
group of predominantly masculine attributes; where Giorgio’s own masculinity and health are
reinforced in his relationship with Clara, they are replaced by feminine attributes in his
subsequent affair with Fosca” (79). For example, Giorgio frequently recounts scenes in which he
rests his head on Clara’s breast, as if this woman who reminds him of his mother can heal him.
These images of a child-like Giorgio seeking comfort from a maternal figure are later juxtaposed
in his relations with Fosca, who searches for salvation upon his breast (II, 356) and the
traditional image of the Pietà is reversed: “La pietà che ne sentiva mi lacerava il cuore […] mi
avvinghiava tra le sue braccia con forza, quasi avesse voluto cercar salvezza sul mio seno” (II,
356). Fosca becomes the child in this scene as she seeks comfort from Giorgio who, like a
mother, holds her to his breast. This pair of specular doubles then not only shares a tendency
toward excessive passion, emotion, anxiety, and melancholy, each of them also displays
characteristics customarily associated with the opposite sex, so that Fosca and Giorgio both
contain attributes of the masculine and the feminine.129
127
Del Principe also underlines the masculine attributes of intellectual and sexual advancements in Fosca (45).
As is well-known, the scapigliati rebelled against traditional bourgeois ideals and institutions; therefore, an
alternate image of a man that opposes the typical, socially-constructed one perpetuated by the dominating class, is
not unexpected in an author such as Tarchetti, who goes against the norms and the status quo.
129
While the present study does not treat the works under examination from the perspective of gender studies, it is
nonetheless relevant and interesting to note the duality of the masculine and the feminine, and dare we say the bigendered nature of these Tarchettian protagonists. We remember that Tarchetti’s blending of genders also emerged,
albeit in a more pronounced way, in the fusion of Baron B. and Clara in “Uno spirito in un lampone.”
128
107
Labeled an hysteric whose disease includes all diseases, Giorgio unwittingly describes his
female counterpart in almost terms almost identical to the ones he uses to describe himself. Just
as he continuously remains in a state of feverish agitation (at least before his brief period of
physical health, experienced with Clara), and was born with exceptional passions, Fosca was
born ill with an immeasurable and inexhaustible emotional capacity that she describes (in her
narrative inserted into the text) as “una febbre” (II, 349). 130 Fosca’s cousin, the colonel that
befriends Giorgio, describes her as “la malattia personificata, l’isterismo fatto donna, un
miracolo vivente del sistema nervoso” (II, 271). Fosca’s constant diseased state baffles all
physicians that examine her, who, unable to arrive at a scientific explanation, attribute her illness
to a dysfunctional nervous system.131 The narrator’s obvious melancholic demeanor at the outset
of the novel and his own description of his despondent and overly-passionate nature immediately
130
We remember that during their time together, Giorgio’s physical appearance and overall health seem to improve;
however, Clara’s youthful glow seems to fade as if suggesting that her lover is sucking the life out of her. Fosca
will then in turn drain the newly acquired vitality from Giorgio, whose initial ill-health progressively worsens as he
continues to visit her at the behest of her physician. Ghidetti notes how Giorgio sucks the health out of Clara and in
turn Fosca sucks the life out of Giorgio so that “i due protagonisti maggiori sono dunque ‘fatali’” (Tarchetti 263).
131
The inability of the doctors in the novel to specifically diagnose and treat Fosca’s maladies reflects a negative
commentary on the inadequacy of positivistic science and medicine to fully comprehend and deal with
psychological illnesses. In one of Giorgio’s conversations with Fosca’s doctor who encourages to promise her his
love, the protagonist expresses his disdain for the theories and explanations of modern science that fail to understand
the occult recesses of the mind: “sapete che abborro da queste teorie materialistiche, che non voglio accettare, per
quanto la ragione si ostini a ripetermi che sono le vere” (II, 312). Though reason acts as proof of scientific and
medical theories, Giorgio refuses to be convinced that rational explanations incorporate, consider or even understand
the human soul / mind. Gioanola discusses the physician in Fosca as a father figure that completes the Oedipal
cycle (161 – 162). Del Principe also briefly addresses the figure of the doctor and medicine in general and their
inability to diagnose an ailment of the psyche as subtle social criticism on the part of Tarchetti: “[In Fosca] a band
of eight male mourners, military officials, and middle-class doctors, are anxious to rely on scientific absolutes and to
insist on a medical rather than spiritual explanation for her infirmities. However they are unable to diagnose them, a
glaring example of why her true condition is attributable not to physical dysfunction but is symptomatic of a much
graver illness (a premonition of the novel’s conclusion). A satisfying taxonomy of Fosca’s maladies is obstructed
because, by every indication, it seems that she suffers from no disease known to humans” (Del Principe 46 – 47).
Furthermore he affirms that the doctor signifies “the voice of ineffectual Science and so of Scapigliatura’s
antipositivism” (69). Though Del Principe offers an analysis in large part based on a psychoanalytical reading in the
second chapter of his study of Scapigliatura, he also examines how Tarchetti’s use of the fantastic and the uncanny
reveals the socially rebellious personality of the protagonist, which in large part resembles the anti-conformist and
antibourgeois persona of Tarchetti himself.
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align him with the psychopathological; furthermore, his poor physical health before meeting the
femme fatale also emerges as another similarity between the dark doubles.132
Giorgio’s comparison of himself to “i leoni [che] si trovano in uno stato di febbre
continuo” (II, 245) alludes to those animalistic or irrational tendencies that he shares with his
female double, yet the image of lions, presumably male and therefore adorned with long manes,
later becomes reflected in the many references to Fosca’s mane-like, beautiful, black hair.
During one of his visits to the ailing Fosca as she lies in bed, Giorgio stares fixedly at “i suoi
capelli neri, folti, lucentissimi [che] le scendevano scomposti per le spalle e ne incorniciavano il
viso” (II, 318), and finds her now much less ugly than he had initially thought her to be. The
mane-like nature of her hair that frames her face is reinforced, and more concretely connected to
the lion image of the feverish Giorgio, as he continues to observe her long, black locks that
remind him of a statue of the Madonna with “capelli di crine nero” (II, 318).133 Giorgio’s
eventual, strange, and seemingly paradoxical repulsion of and fatal attraction to Fosca may be
interpreted in multiple ways. Because of their status as specular doubles, Giorgio’s fascination
and inexplicable attraction to Fosca may be construed as a form of narciscism, for the mere
presence of one’s double in literature signals a desire to examine oneself. As Rank observes, “it
becomes clear that the life of the double is linked quite closely to that of the individual self” (The
Double 17); given the fact that the externalized double is a projection of an otherness within, the
double is therefore always already something foreign and familiar, a prime example of the
132
His feverish sickness upon his return to his hometown after five years of military service exemplifies a corporeal
manifestation of his inner sense of alienation, of his “malinconia profonda” (II, 247).
133
While a “crine” refers more specifically to a horse’s mane rather than the “criniera” or lion’s mane, the image of
an animal’s mane nonetheless acts as another attribute that unites these two specular doubles.
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unheimlich (as Freud himself later notes).134 As already mentioned, Giorgio’s captivation with
Fosca may be read in light of the death instinct in which one desires a return to a state of nonexistence and a nullification of the subject. Such a motif in literature of the double is typical
precisely because the Doppelgänger himself is an “uncanny harbinger of death” (Freud The
Uncanny 142). At the outset of his memoirs, the narrator reflects on piecing together these
fragments of his past life, and reveals his own attraction towards death, which he sustains all men
experience: “Un’avidità febbrile di morire affatica inconsciamente gli uomini” (II, 241). This
succinct statement encompasses within it the principal motifs of the novel that are all intertwined
with the figure of the double, and more specifically with Fosca, the alter ego of her beloved
Giorgio. A feverish avidity for death that unconsciously affects all men incorporates the tropes
of illness, fatality, and the unconscious which recur throughout the text (and throughout all of
Tarchetti’s works). Giorgio’s infatuation with Fosca, or as the colonel calls her – “la malattia
personificata” (II, 271) – is also essentially a fascination with the abnormal, the extraordinary, or
one could even say the exceptional, should we chose to remain in the same semantic field as the
protagonists’ common passioni eccezionali.
Fosca’s unconventionality, as compared with the typical portrayal of femininity that
Clara depicts, complements the protagonist’s abhorrence for all that is conventional (II, 245).
The first meeting with Fosca is greatly anticipated by Giorgio, who admits that he was
“curiossisimo di conoscere quella donna” (II, 276) and this anticipation is built up in large part
because of her constant absence from the colonel’s luncheon table. Her place remains set each
134
In his explication of Hoffmann’s unnerving short story, “The Sandman” and other literary works, Freud outlines
various manifestations of the unheimlich in literature and the double becomes one of the modes of its expression:
“E.T.A. Hoffmann is the unrivalled master of the uncanny in literature […] One must content oneself with selecting
the most prominent of those motifs that produce an uncanny effect, and see whether they too can reasonably be
traced back to infantile sources. They involve the idea of the ‘double’ (the Doppelgänger), in all its nuances and
manifestations” (The Uncanny 141).
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day so that in her absent presence she intrigues the protagonist even before meeting him. Upon
their first encounter, Fosca informs Giorgio that she has just recovered from “un periodo di
profonda maliconia” (II, 279), which echoes almost exactly the narrator’s description of his
illness after his initial military service, when in his hometown he experienced a “malinconia
profonda” (II, 247). During their first conversation, Fosca approaches topics of discussion that
no other woman would approach, feeling that she may do so because of the liberating nature of
her deformities (II, 291). She is, in fact, a great conversationalist as compared to Clara whose
puerile talk and flirtations relegate her to the category of the ordinary, pretty, though vacuous
woman. The gifts and garnishes of Giorgio’s and Clara’s love affair include birds, flowers,
ribbons, and candies, while the accessories of Giorgio’s relationship with Fosca include novels,
intellectual conversation, mutual failing health, suffering and hysterics, as befitting to the
identical feverish and pensive natures of the fatal couple.135 We recall that the first conversation
between Giorgio and Fosca includes a discussion of Rousseau’s Nuova Eloisa. From the
passages she highlights and the notes she takes in the margins, Giorgio is struck by her passion
and intelligence, attributes that undoubtedly contribute to her neurosis. He wishes to know her
better because of their similarities, as they are both “sventurati” and “infelici” (II, 277):
I passi controsegnati rivelavano, assieme alla natura intima dei suoi patimenti, una
intelligenza robusta, fina, perspicace. Quella donna aveva dell’ingegno. Ella non poteva
essere poco infelice, giacché era capace di conoscere la propria infelicità. Gli infelici
ignoranti fruiscono di una propria beatitudine, in confront dei dottamente infelici. Era
naturale che desiderassi ancora più vivamente conoscerla (II, 277).
In the conversations that ensue between Giorgio and his dark, female double, he admires and
relates to Fosca’s profound intellect: “Il suo spirito non era superficiale, la sua intelligenza era
135
In another example of gender role reversal, Fosca gives flowers to Giorgio and reveals that she like him keeps a
collection of dried flowers. Her final, posthumous gift to him is a bundle of her black tresses that he had so adored
during their time together.
111
assai più profonda di quanto non lo sia ordinariamente una intelligenza di donna: essa aveva del
talento, e una distinzione di modi affatto speciale” (II, 283). The combination of acumen and
deep, serious feeling is (in Giorgio’s opinion) unusual in a woman, yet he only realizes later,
after the development of his relationship with Fosca that these attributes are virtually nonexistent in Clara, whom he had mistakenly supposed to be the reflection of his soul (II, 315).
Giorgio’s resistance to his sensual and psychological attraction to Fosca signifies a repression of
his strange fascination with the grotesque and a struggle with his own neurotic nature.
Fosca’s ugliness is of an almost surreal nature, though Giorgio indeed feels a physical
and intellectual attraction towards her. He frequently notes the loveliness of her long, black hair,
sincerely referring to her braids as “meravigliose” (II, 322), and as their bond develops, Fosca
becomes less unattractive in his eyes. After a kiss and a declaration of love for Fosca (which is
not yet entirely sincere), Giorgio notices that her appearance seems less revolting to him: “Ella
stessa non mi parve in quel momento sì brutta come mi era sembrata nei primi giorni della nostra
conoscenza […] i suoi capelli neri, folti, lucentissimi, le scendevano scomposti per le spalle e ne
incorniciavano il viso” (II, 318). Giorgio also notes before the consummation of their love affair
that her softly illuminated countenance, her muslin gown and her gorgeous, abundant black hair
infuse her with such an aberrant beauty that “in quel momento nessuno avrebbe detto che Fosca
era assolutamente brutta” (II, 416). While the narrator offers little physical description of Clara,
he fixates on Fosca’s luscious, flowing locks and seems to highlight her deformities (such as her
ghastly pallor, skeletal frame, bulging eyes and protruding forhead) to such an extent that it
incites the reader to think that, “Giorgio doth protest too much!” In other words, his fixation on
her unsightliness has the opposite effect, for it ultimately indicates his unwilling, and perhaps
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one could say, unconscious attraction to her. In fact, Del Principe notes the protagonist’s
instinctual fascination with the dark and unconventionally ugly Fosca:
Giorgio’s unconvincing reiteration of his preference of Clara to Fosca functions in
reverse, to persuade himself that he is indeed excited by a Fosca-type and by the dark
side of life she represents […] Few contemporary authors, in fact, explored the recesses
of the conscious and unconscious as fearlessly as Tarchetti (67).
The narrator’s emphasis on Fosca’s hideousness demonstrates his captivation from it and
therefore suggests his attraction to it, even if it is an attraction that stems from an unconscious
affinity for the grotesque, an affinity that nonetheless coincides with his preference for the
unconventional and the abnormal, and with his own strangeness. Though long hair is a stock
image of feminine beauty and sensuality, it becomes imbued with another level of complexity
insofar as the abundance and often disheveled look of Fosca’s hair suggests her distinction from
other women, and further alludes to her deviant and rebellious nature that mirrors Giorgio’s own
abnormality.136
Fosca is not an autoscopic vision of the male protagonist like Dostoevsky’s Golyadkin
Junior, or Poe’s second William Wilson; however, she is most definitely Giorgio’s real (in the
sense that she exists and is neither an hallucination, nor a figment of his imagination)
Doppelgänger, an external projection of his internal shadow (in the Jungian sense) that he so
desperately tried to escape from in Clara’s embraces. Ultimately, Giorgio’s inherent inclination
towards his shady, irrational self prevails, as he yields to the infectious embrace of his femme
fatale and falls victim to a fever that attacks his body and mind after the duel with the colonel.
Despite his eventual recovery, he remains forever changed – more morose, brooding, displaced,
136
Del Principe discusses Fosca’s hair as an emblem of her affinity with Giorgio insofar as it characterizes her as
rebellious like her male counterpart. He offers a brief social and historical analysis of hair and also connects the
image of the “scapigliato”, or the disheveled one with Scapigliatura’s anticonformist and antibourgeois undertones.
According to Squarotti, in Fosca disease serves as a metaphor for diversity, as “illness affords Fosca a mode of
behavior that violently contests all social and moral conventions” (95).
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and solitary – from his parallel love stories, but most of all from his relationship with Fosca,
which he characterizes in restrospect at the outset of his memoirs as more than “una passione
d’amore,” as an actual disease that he survived, rather than felt (II, 243). In the love triangle of
Tarchetti’s final novel, the contrasting forces of light and darkness are embodied in Clara and
Fosca respectively, yet the author undoes the classic associations of good and evil that are
frequently embedded in that opposition. Clara, who represents that ethereal realm of sunlight,
and stands as the model of femininity in her blonde beauty, delicate features, and coy, ladylike
comportment proves to be a detrimental force, as she abandons Giorgio and leaves him
devastated. Fosca’s enigmatic malady reflects Giorgio’s own pathological nature, and in his true
twin spirit, he sees his own unconventionality and fatality, which he finally embraces. The
theme of the double culminates in Fosca in interesting and complex ways. From the moment
one reads their names, Clara and Fosca immediately emerge as opposing doubles, and may also
be construed as female manifestations of Eros and Thanatos respectively; in their contrasting
complementarity they “represent a bifurcation and division of an originally conceived character”
(Herdman 15). In other words, while the light and dark women exist as opposites of each other
and as embodiments of the life and death instincts, they also stand as Giorgio’s doubles, as each
personifies a different side of his cleft ego and thereby fall into the category of decomposition,
becoming “the two halves of the narrative ‘I’” (Del Principe 67). In other words, Clara and
Fosca function as external projections of Giorgio’s inner division, the former becoming a
bourgeois, amorous ideal, his conscious though unattainable desire for an idyllic existence of
health, light, and blissful love; and the latter becoming the outward manifestation of the
darkness, illness, and fatality intrinsic in his own shadowy self. While Clara embodies vitality,
coyness, and romance, Fosca incarnates death, intelligence, and unchecked, pathological passion.
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In his affair with the married Clara, Giorgio not only experiences pleasure, excitement, and good
health, he also seeks refuge from the morbid, gloomy life he had previously been living. In
short, he wishes to escape from himself, from the miserable, lonely and uneventful existence that
fails to satisfy those “passioni eccezionali” (II, 242) with which he was born. Giorgio’s
attraction to the hideously ugly, though equally passionate, femme fatale is born of the death
instinct that seeks a return to a primordial state of non-being, free from the toils of an unfulfilling
existence. We therefore encounter a form of duplication through self-division in which Tarchetti
portrays the divergent elements of the male protagonist – the macabre reality and the rosy ideal –
through his female doubles that in turn contrast and complement each other in their
opposition.137
Throughout the many works composed over a very short literary lifetime, Iginio Ugo
Tarchetti always presents his readers with abstract dichotomies such as: life versus death, health
versus illness, the real versus the surreal, and the real versus the ideal. His affinity for
conflicting forces and his ability to deconstruct them through their symbiosis or mutual undoing
naturally lends itself to the phenomenon of the double, which always already involves the
construction and the destruction of oppositions. Life and death, as well as health and illness have
informed all of the texts examined in this chapter. In “I fatali,” the binary of sickness and health
is found simply in Silvia’s unexplained disease that she contracts because of Saternez’s presence,
and that ultimately goes away after his murder. From the outset of the story, the reader
encounters superstitions surrounding fatal influences and the embodiment of Death in two
137
One remembers Rogers’ conception of two characters functioning as halves of an archetypal whole – the
good/bad father for example. In Fosca, however, we have female characters as composites of a male whole that
exists as a character (not an archetype) in the diegesis. Therefore Tarchetti’s protagonist becomes more “real”
because he is imbued with a roundness of character, and is not merely some archetypal abstraction that exists outside
of the text in the mind of the psychoanalytic reader.
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contrasting men, equally lethal in their powers, though starkly divergent in their intentions and
volitions. The doubles of Saternez and Sagrezwitch incarnate the peaceful death of Thanatos and
the violent death of the Keres, yet they also act as gateways into existential questions
surrounding the natural and the supernatural world. The narrator’s troubled mental state in “Le
leggende del castello nero” immediately relegates the tale to the realm of the pathological,
despite its highly fantastic-marvelous tone. As in “I fatali,” death saturates the entire novella and
goes hand in hand with the double (turned multiple) as the narrator-protagonist recounts his déjà
vu experiences in his waking and dreaming lives. The theme of transmigratory souls also colors
the pages of “Uno spirito in un lampone,” and therefore addresses the opposing forces of life and
death that merge into the notion of life after death, or life in death. Illness also enters into the
narration, as Baron B. is literally poisoned by Clara’s spirit in the raspberries he eats; from a less
simplistic standpoint, the demonic possession of the aristocrat presents itself as pathological
insofar as it is an aberration from his normal, singular, psychic state, and in his erratic behavior,
which causes the townspeople to think him mad. In their fantastic nature – that is, in their
depiction of supernatural phenomena – the three fantastic tales addressed in this chapter, all
exemplify the surreal as opposed to, though in harmony with, the real. While the characters of
each story experience close encounters with the marvelous, with those inexplicable forces that
seem inverosimili, the author grounds his narratives in the “real” world of the Nineteeth-century
quotidian, rendering them verosimili (as per Bonifazi’s definition of the fantastic). In Tarchetti’s
final novel the Doppelgänger is once again replete with the dichotomies of death versus life, and
illness versus health in the female characters of Fosca and Clara. The author undoubtedly
infuses his narrative with seemingly surreal elements, such as the blissful, almost euphoric
scenes between Giorgio and Clara, and the contrasting, pathogenic and macabre atmosphere of
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Giorgio and Fosca’s interactions. The tone of absurdity and disbelief with which the narrator
recounts his dealings with Fosca, and the femme fatale’s hideousness to which he is grotesquely
attracted further enhances the surreality of his memoirs. In Tarchetti’s gothic novel, the real also
collides with the ideal, for Giorgio’s true, diseased self as embodied in Fosca contrasts his ideal
lover and idealized life as personified in Clara. The double constantly surfaces in the works of
Tarchetti in relation to conflicting, abstract dualities; moreover, it also acts as a portal through
which the author may enter into ontological, existential, and socio-cultural discourse. In his
Racconti fantastici, Tarchetti succeeds in juxtaposing the empirical and the esoteric, often
undermining a science dependent on the senses by appropriating its very tools of observation,
specialized terminology, and supposedly reliable testimony in order to recount paranormal
phenomena.138 In Tarchettian fiction, materialism frequently stands in stark contrast to
supernatural mysteries and psychological quandaries, often emerging respectively through
double figures such as i fatali and Giorgio / Fosca.139
138
We remember how Tarchetti goes to great lengths to establish the reliability of his fantastic tales, while
concurrently and ironically debunking the markers of reality, often utilized in historical and naturalist narratives.
The all-too familiar device of the found manuscript in “Le leggende del castello nero;” the eye-witness account
given to the narrator of “Uno spirito in un lampone;” and the narrator who witnessed the strange happenings in “I
fatali” all serve to situate the marvelous or uncanny stories in the natural world while concurrently subverting the
traditional boundaries of reality. According to the necessary recipe for the fantastic as prescribed by Todorov,
Bonifazi, and others, the fantastic succeeds in provoking sensations of awe, confusion, (sometimes) hesitation,
disorientation and strangeness because as a “double narration” (Bonifazi 18-19), it depends on verisimilitude, its
foundation in the empiricist world. These roots in reality allow the fantastic, in its simultaneous inverisimilitude, to
act as a subversive force, or in Bahktinian terms, as a carnivalesque force that turns the world “inside out” (122).
139
In the narrative frame of “I fatali,” the narrator goes to great lengths to give credence to the so-called superstition
surrounding fatal forces and their embodiment in individual harbingers of death, ultimately claiming that if an idea
is believed by the masses or even by an individual, then it relatively becomes true. The slippery notion of truth as
something subjective and by no means absolute is reiterated in the philosophical frame of “Riccardo Waitzen” in
which the narrator affirms the validity of the existence of spirits and spiritistic phenomena stating, “Se essi [gli
uomini] credono, il fenomeno esiste” (Amore nell’arte 50). The trope of the double alluded to here in the form of an
external, non-corporeal other echoes other Tarchettian works in which the divided or duplicated self emerges in the
dream work (“Le leggende del castello nero”), or as an errant spirit possessing an individual’s consciousness (“Uno
spirito in un lampone”).
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Chapter 2
Oneiric Others and Pathological (Dis)pleasures: Luigi Capuana’s Clinical Doubles in “Un
caso di sonnambulismo,” “Il sogno di un musicista,” and Profumo
While Tarchetti challenges the confines of the natural universe and questions the
authority of science and medicine in his narratives, Luigi Capuana cultivates this initiative even
further, establishing through both his fictional and non-fictional works a problematic, though not
paradoxical relationship between science, the supernatural, and the psychopathological.140
Capuana, born the same year as his fantastic predecessor, is often noted by critics for his
propensity to depict strange psychological cases where both occult realms – the spirit world and
the unconscious – often emerge with unnerving effects on characters’ and readers’ perceptions of
reality.141 Like the gothic and fantastic doubles of his scapigliato contemporary, Capuana’s
Doppelgängers are embedded in a super-natural discourse, circumscribed by the typically
opposing forces of positivism and the occult, which he ultimately incorporates into his own
eclectic world view.142 In Capuana’s shorts stories and novels, scientism and spiritism become
opposing yet complementary forces – doubles if you will – insofar as they assume a yin-yang
140
In “Riccardo Waitzen,” before the story proper, the narrator laments the limits of our senses, which are incapable
of rationally explaining both spiritual and unconscious phenomenon. He asks, “Perocché chi ha mai potuto definire
la proprietà degli spiriti, e i rapporti che essi hanno tra di loro? Che cosa è il sogno, il sonnambulismo, il presagio,
l’astrazione, il pensiero, e più di tutto l’incubo?” (Amore nell’arte 49). He continues these observations, which
recall those made by scientists and doctors of the time (Charcot, Janet) and like them, considers spiritism – a
category under which somnambulism, telepathy, dreams, prescience, and psychosis fall – a branch of science, an
“applicazione singolare della scienza” (49). By considering spiritism a marginal branch of science, Tarchetti not
only undermines the traditional notion of positivistic science so revered in that era (and even today), he also
anticipates similar stances that Capuana will take in his treatises on the occult, in which the spirit world is seen as
part of the natural world.
141
While both Tarchetti and Capuana were born in 1839 at opposite ends of the Italian peninsula – the former in San
Salvatore Monferrato in Piemonte, the latter in Mineo, Sicily – Fosca’s creator died of tuberculosis before his
thirtieth birthday, while Giacinta’s slowly faded out of the literary public eye before dying in 1915, at the age of
seventy-six.
142
I refer to the term “super-natural” as it was defined in the first chapter on Tarchetti as the super-carnal, that which
is immaterial or non-corporeal, the going beyond the flesh, whether this transcendence entails spiritual or spiritistic
phenomena (apparitions, transmigration of the soul, visitants) as is usually meant by “supernatural” (sans hyphen),
or whether it involves the mental sphere of hallucinations, neuroses, psychoses – in short, the pathology of the
conscious and/or unconscious mind.
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dynamic through the representations of a divided and/or duplicated self, which always emerges
as a case study of an individual, diseased, or abnormal subject. In fact, the very seeds of verismo
and the varied creations that grew out of them were cultivated in a soil rich in psychology.
Besides the cult of impersonality associated with Italian realism of the late Nineteenth Century,
we encounter in the veristi (as in the scapigliati before them) a literary tendency (anticipating the
so-called crisi del Novecento) to dig into the hidden recesses of the afflicted human psyche.143 It
therefore seems especially fitting that the rhetoric of the “caso clinico” regularly enters into
critical discussion of Capuana’s works, as it also does in the treatment of Tarchetti’s oeuvre, for
the clinical case naturally thrusts us into a hermeneutical discourse in which the symptom(s)
inform – and are informed by – the overall neurotic, psychotic, or psychosomatic condition.
Much like his macabre scapigliato predecessor, the Minean author depicts particular,
pathological cases such as those of the somnambulist detective Van-Spengel in “Un caso di
sonnambulismo;” Cesare e Teresa in “Lettera di uno scettico;” Eugenia and Patrizio in Profumo;
and the unforgettable Antonio Schirardi in Il marchese di Roccaverdina, to name merely a few;
however, in concordance with the cyclical nature of the symptom/disease dialectic (as well as
interrelationships between the particulars and the whole, inherent in the hermeneutical circle
itself), Capuana merely portrays these instances of mental breakdowns and identity fissures,
143
Let us not forget the Verga scapigliato of the early novelle, as well as Tarchetti’s undeniable influence on
Capuana (as noted by various critics including Ghidetti and Del Principe). In fact, Nigro declares that Capuana’s
Giacinta is born out of Tarchetti’s Fosca: “Da Tarchetti a Capuana: ovvero da Fosca a Giacinta. Perché non v’è
dubbio che l’“eroina” di Capuana abbia preso il volo dall’opera di Tarchetti. Il romanzo di Capuana è il caso clinico
di una donna che, in tenera età, è stata violentata” (46). Nigro is merely one critic (among the others mentioned
elsewhere here) who uses the term “caso clinico” to refer to a Capuanian protagonist. Capuana most definitely
addresses existential issues that flourish in the fin de siècle and into the Twentieth Century. Ghidetti sustains that
Capuana lived “un percorso che dalle resistenze di un romanticismo ormai suranné e dalla sperimentazione e dalla
reintegrazione di modelli letterari latamente europei in chiave anarchica e antiborghese per merito della
scapigliatura arriva, attraverso le poetiche del verismo e del decadentismo, ben addentro la ‘crisi’ del Novecento”
(Introduzione ix).
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without ever offering a concrete remedy, or absolute definition of the disorder.144 Despite these
foggy conditions of indefinable and incurable syndromes all involving psychical and/or spiritual
phenomena, an underlying presence informs many of them – that of the fragmented or multiplied
identity.145 The Capuanian double, or as the chapter title reads, “the clinical double,” is
characterized as such in order to emphasize the pathological nature of the Doppelgänger that
populates the pages of the author’s gothic and fantastic narratives. Returning to our apropos twin
imagery, the clinical double may be considered the identical twin of the gothic or super-natural
double discussed in the previous chapter, possessing the same DNA, but given another name
here not only for purposes of differentiation, but also because we will be approaching Capuana’s
doubles through the lens of pathology, in both its mental and somatic manifestations.146 In this
chapter, we will be discussing the double in those particular narratives in which the pathological
and the uncanny prevail, where paranormal experiences are limited to psychic abilities, altered
states of consciousness, parallel lives, hysteria, neurosis, and madness147. While the Capuanian
oeuvre most certainly offers numerous stories of psychopathology in which the unheimlich
144
In his discussion of “Un caso di sonnambulismo,” Ghidetti notes how science does not offer any concrete
answers or remedies to the questions and conundrums of the story; rather, Capuana merely records an exceptional
paranormal phenomenon (Introduzione xx).
145
I use “syndromes” not only to indicate various psychopathologies, but also within the context of the Foucauldian
analogies of illness/abnormality, and health/normality. Consequently, we may refer to one’s “abnormal” ability to
see or to hear (in dreams, waking states, telepathy, prescience) that which the “normal” human being out of tune
with the spirit world cannot sense. Moreover, we remember that pathology connotes: “the branch of knowledge that
deals with emotions;” “the study of disease; the branch of science that deals with the causes and nature of diseases
and abnormal anatomical and physiological conditions;” and “the study of abnormal mental conditions; mental
disease or disorder (psychopathology)” (OED online).
146
In the previous chapter we discussed Tarchetti’s portrayal of the fantastic double in the Racconti fantastici where
the supernatural took center stage, as opposed to Fosca where the gothic double emerged in the uncanny, the supernatural, and pathological conditions of the story and its protagonists. Tarchetti could most definitely be approached
from the vantage point of pathology and while it factored into the treatment of selected works in Chapter 1, those
texts were examined through the lenses of the fantastic and the gothic, where we placed the “fraternal twins” of the
gothic and fantastic doubles under the umbrella of “fantastic discourse.”
147
Capuana most certainly composed tales of the fantastic-marvelous where spirits speak to and appear before the
living (and even vampires walk), and his belief in spiritismo grew stronger with age; however, those works where
the supernatural – ghosts, vampires, and Frankensteinian doctors – will be treated elsewhere in the future because of
purposes of time and space here.
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double colors the pages, the two novelle that have been selected for treatment in this chapter
present exceptional cases of the double that latently exists with in us and awakens when the
conscious mind lies dormant. In “Un caso di sonnambulismo” and “Il sogno di un musicista” the
double emerges as an oneiric other, a second self, an alternate existence, situated in an other state
of consciousness beyond our waking life, whether in a trance or in a dream. In contrast, in
Capuana’s second novel Profumo (1890), the Doppelgänger is projected outward, rather than
inward, assuming the form of complementary doubles as desire and guilt externalized. The
chosen texts therefore offer diverse manifestations of identity fissure and fusion, and recall
similar representations of it found in the Tarchettian narratives discussed in the previous chapter;
the dreamscapes of the selected short stories, though particular to Capuana, recall “Le leggende
del castello,” while the love triangle of Eugenia, Patrizio, and Geltrude in Profumo offers a
diverse (and perhaps more perverse) exemplum of the ménage a trois encountered in Fosca.
Before delving into the dreamy and diseased doubles of Capuana’s fictional works, we will
briefly examine the notion of the clinical case, and then address the opposing, yet
complementary doubles of positivism and idealism that underscore the author’s own diversified
ideology.
Any treatment of the double in literature from the early Romantics into the Twentieth
Century always already involves instances of pathologies, for the very appearance of the double
indicates a “cleavage of the ego” (Rank The Double 12) – a breakdown of the unified, “healthy”
subject, in which the “whole” is Other than the sum of its parts.148 Both Rank and Freud treat the
148
Playing with the maxim of Gestalt psychology, (Koffka’s famous phrase, “the whole is other than the sum of its
parts”), we recall that any study of the double, of something other than oneself and essentially of an Other (whether
in corporeal, psychic or spiritual form), is basically a study of the self, of the individual in her seeming totality and
hidden multiplicity. As Rank observes, doubles are a way “to arrive at an understanding of the problem of the ego,”
and “it becomes clear that the life of the double is linked quite closely to that of the individual himself” (16 – 17). In
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figure of the modern double as a morbid condition (in both senses of the word) – as a diseased
state in which the repressed invades consciousness, and as “the uncanny harbinger of death”
(Freud The Uncanny 142). Massimo Fusillo, in his fundamental study of l’altro e lo stesso,
locates the Romantic and post-Romantic double in the realm of madness and mental pathology,
thanks in large part to the cultural climate of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century,
when psychiatry was in its initial stages of development.149 Much like those medical doctors
studying individual cases of criminality, hysteria, trauma, such as Lombroso, Charcot, and Janet
respectively, Capuana (as Tarchetti before him) recounts particular “clinical cases,” of characters
undergoing various psychological crises.150 In his commentary on Capuana in La letteratura
della Nuova Italia, Croce classifies the once-hailed father of verismo as a type of philosopher in
his discussion of Bimarcus, Bakhtin refers to the double in the work as a “dialogue between two Marcuses, that is,
between a person and his conscience” (Problems 117). He further explains the double as an expression of the
dialogic relationship of man with himself: “This destruction of wholeness and finalized quality of a man is
facilitated by the appearance, in the menippea, of a dialogic relationship to one’s own self (fraught with the
possibility of split personality)” (117).
149
Fusillo delineates three critical, historical moments in the evolution of the double figure in literature: classical
antiquity, the Baroque period, and the Nineteenth Century. With each time period, or “situazione narrativa,” he
identifies a different manifestation of the double. In regards to the Nineteenth-century double, he remarks: “la
duplicazione dell’io si basa sull’identificazione totale con una coscienza scissa in due, senza esplicitare mai le cause
(presumibilmente allucinatorie) dello sdoppiamento: il lettore può quindi immergersi completamente in un mondo
fittizio in cui esistono due incarnazioni dello stesso personaggio. È la situazione tipica del romanticismo e del suo
interesse per la follia e per ogni forma di patologia mentale: un interesse strettamente legato alle costruzioni sociali e
culturali operate dalla psichiatria nascente” (L’altro e lo stesso 23). In short, Fusillo’s modern Doppelgänger is born
out of a “double consciousness" (Rank The Double 20), a consciousness split in two, and becomes associated with
madness and mental pathology.
150
As Capuana’s doubles could be examined through the lenses of the gothic and the fantastic, so may Tarchetti’s be
approached as clinical cases. Roda sustains that Tarchetti privileges “l’accidente, il caso, o l’errore come motori di
una realtà promossa meno dai macro che dai micro eventi” (Homo duplex 45). Ghidetti notes Tarchetti’s inclination
for the “caso clinico,” affirming a naturalist stint in the “diagnosi ed evoluzione di una malattia spirituale che si
sviluppa in concomitanza di una menomazione fisica” (Tarchetti e la Scapigliatura 251). According to Mariani,
Fosca’s ugliness and neurotic nature render her “un caso patologico” (386) and in his discussion of “Storia di una
gamba,” Mariani underlines Tarchetti’s fascination with the relationship between the physical and the spiritual
where we find “il definitivo trionfo, insomma, del caso clinico applicato sia al corpo che all’anima” (457).
Similarly, Pestelli affirms that “Capuana orienta la propria narrativa sul resoconto e sulla descrizione meramente
effettuale dei casi e delle loro conseguenze” (187). It is Bosco however, who loosely groups Tarchetti and Capuana
together for their common use of the clinical case in their texts: “I racconti [fantastici di Tarchetti] prendono anche
la forma esterna della relazione di un fatto in appoggio a una tesi generale (il ‘caso clinico’ concreto che illustra una
malattia della quale si siano descritte le caratteristiche generali) senza trarne apparentemente conclusioni e si vedono
anche digressioni per far posto a considerazioni generali [...] Questo è il procedimento tipico del novelliere
naturalista, in particolare del Capuana, il migliore seguace italiano della letteratura sperimentale” (130).
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his short stories in which “gli scienziati e le tesi scientifiche non fanno aperta mostra di sé, [ma]
la costruzione è sempre la medesima: studi di casi” (114). In the second edition of Giacinta, the
physician-philosopher Doctor Follini refers to the anti-heroine as a “bel caso” (239) and Giacinta
herself emerges as the primary case study of all editions of the novel, as her childhood trauma,
dysfunctional family life, stifling bourgeois microcosm, and “nerves” collectively contribute to
her suicide à la Bovary. In “Un caso di sonnambulismo,” Capuana plays with the idea of the
clinical case, placing it in opposition with the criminal case, yet concurrently intertwining them
as the protagonist, Detective Van-Spengel gradually loses his mind as the story progresses,
finally going mad after solving a multiple murder case. At the conclusion of “Un vampiro,”
Doctor Mongeri, a self-proclaimed positivist who nonetheless resorts to folkloric superstitions in
order to kill a vampire, writes his report of the paranormal phenomenon, giving it an empiricist
explanation in the text within the text, “Un preteso caso di Vampirismo.”151 The title of his
piece classifies the supernatural occurrence as an assumed case of vampirism, further blurring
the line between science and superstition, between fact and myth – a practice that Tarchetti had
done, and that psychoanalysts will do (as Ernest Jones does in On the Nightmare, and as Carl
Jung does in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious).152 In fact, the notion of the author
as an analyst of the individual case in a certain environment cannot help but recall the very
literariness of psychoanalysis itself, considered a pseudo-science at the turn of the century, and
151
The vampire itself is an uncanny and even abject “undead” figure in myth, for it is neither dead nor alive, but is
simultaneously both, existing in a limbo world. Capuana’s treatment of the vampire in “Un vampiro,” like all
vampire stories, builds upon the legends of myth and folklore; yet interestingly, unlike Bram Stoker’s infamous
Count Dracula, Luisa is the only one who can see and speak with her blood-sucking husband. The results of his
wrath (throwing objects, strange noises, breaths of air, and the deteriorating health of Luisa and Lelio’s infant son
who loses blood from bite marks in his neck) exist in the material world though their cause – Luisa’s first, deceased,
jealous husband – is a spiritual entity who is destroyed only when they burn his corpse.
152
Many literary critics, such as Fusaro note the liminal space that psychoanalysis occupies between science and
literature, floating between “i procedimenti scientifici e l’intuizione” (La nevrosi 50). Literature however, also took
advantage of the developing discipline of psychoanalysis in order to imbue its characters with a realistic life that
mirrored those strange cases occurring at the time.
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often criticized as being too literary by physicians, and too scientific by philosophers.153 The
writer, much like the psychoanalyst, assumes a duplicitous identity insofar as both observe
“facts,” occurrences, and physically-manifested symptoms in the literary subject or patient;
however, the immaterial or non-corporeal always enters into the equation in both instances.
Doctor and author are concerned with an individual’s inner life, with the case at hand that, in its
particularity, assists us in gaining perspective on human psychopathology in general. One could
say that a certain reciprocal rapport between medical science and literature assisted both the
physician and the novelist in moving respectively towards a better understanding, and a more
realistic representation of the diseased subject. Fusaro rightly emphasizes the connection
between post-Risorgimento Italian letters and the concurrent rise of positivistic science during
that epoch affirming: “Tutti sentivano che la loro collaborazione [quella fra scienziati e letterati]
fosse auspicabile […] Tutti gli scrittori di quegli anni, Capuana, Verga, Dossi, D’Annunzio,
Fogazzaro, Svevo, Pirandello, Tozzi, e tanti altri, erano dunque dotati di una solida cultura
scientifica’ (La nevrosi 57). In other words, Italian writers of the fin de siècle – scapigliati,
verisiti, decadentisti, and others alike – all came of age intellectually within the scientific climate
of the era.
153
Freud’s case studies “Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy,” “Some Remarks on a Case of Obsessivecompulsive Neurosis,” and “From the History of an Infantile Neurosis,” all given more literary aliases – “Little
Hans,” “The ‘Ratman,’” and “The ‘Wolfman’” respectively – often read like fiction and one cannot forget the most
famous of all his “characters,” Anna O, whom he “shared” with his collaborator at the time Josef Breuer. Freud’s
writings on art and literature includes such well-known treatises as “Dostoevsky and Parricide,” “The Uncanny,”
“Delusions and Dreams in Jensen’s Gradiva,” and “The Moses of Michelangelo” (not to mention his frequently
cited discussion of Macbeth in “Some Character-Types Met with in Psycho-analytic Work”). Otto Rank’s study of
the double departs from an analysis of the film The Student of Prague; the second chapter deals with examples of the
double in literature; while the third psychoanalyzes the very authors who included the double in their novels and
short stories. From just these few examples of the psychoanalysis’s use of literature and propensity for literariness
itself, one cannot fail to see the interconnectedness between the disciplines. The symbiotic relationship between
psychoanalysis and literature is perhaps most pronounced in Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno; however, we must
remember that questions concerning the self – neuroses, double consciousness, hysteria, and identity crises – were
accoutrements of literature since its beginning in the classical world. The veristi and the scapigliati before them
were already pondering similar questions of identity and “abnormal” psychology that psychoanalysis would later
examine from a medical perspective.
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Capuana in particular looked towards both scientists and philosophers in order to develop
his own diversified approach to literature and to our complex, modern reality where the material
and the metaphysical so often intertwine. Much like the scientist or physician who observes and
records facts, according to Capuana: “il romanziere, il novelliere guarda di qua e di là, osserva,
prende nota;” however, the novelist must also possess an imagination and inventiveness that the
average person does not (Per l’arte 43). To the realist recipe, Capuana added the imagination of
the artist that enlivened material gathered with the scientific and experimental methods
(Marchese 73), and tweaked the impersonal technique into a mimetic method of conscience, the
psyche, and the pathological (La Monaca 46). Moreover, the artist must be both a great observer
and documenter of human life, but he must also be a creator and a poet who can reveal or imbue
that reality with the ineffable beauty that transforms it into art; in short, the best artist must
possess a double consciousness – that of the poet and that of the scientist. In the author’s own
words, the modern novelist must be uno scienziato dimezzato, a cloven scientist:
Il romanziere moderno è uno scienziato, aggiungiamolo subito, dimezzato. Lo scienziato,
appena creato o scoperto un processo (val tutt’una) è più fortunato di quello: può
riprodurne il fatto a piacere, quante volte gli garba […] Il romanziere moderno, invece,
dopo che ha scoperto o creato un processo (ripetiamolo: val tutt’una) non può verificare il
fatto, non può riprodurlo a suo piacere (Per l’arte 44 – 45).
In the paragraphs leading up to the above citation, Capuana discusses the scientist as a novelist, a
poet, and a creator, who like his artistic counterpart “si mette quasi pari con Dio” (44). These
fundamental, god-like figures – the scientist and the artist, two seemingly opposing forces – are
in fact complementary doubles of each other and in order to excel in either field, one must
possess characteristics of, and inclinations toward the other. Of course the scientist has the
advantage that his experiments and variables can be repeated and his hypotheses can be proven,
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while the writer can neither prove his hypotheses, nor exactly recreate the experiments and the
variables because each work or art is different and each human situation, each case, is varied.154
The scienziato dimezzato proves an apt image of duality that nonetheless privileges its artistic
and idealistic components; as a scientist literally cut in half, the modern author is most certainly
not a slave to that material reality celebrated as the only truth in rigid positivistic interpretations
of the universe; he is governed by fantasy and imagination, “due divine facoltà” (45).155 On the
other hand, however, the modern writer does not completely negate nor disregard the
developments of contemporary scientific, medical, and technological advancements; rather, he
utilizes such knowledge to enhance his own portrayal of the natural universe and of the other,
hidden worlds of spirits and the psyche. As Cedola rightly notes, Don Lisi considered the occult
“come caso da trattare con strumenti d’indagine obiettiva, pur senza pregiudizi, per rivelarne e
mostrarne la spiegabilità” (59).156 The Sicilian novelist believed that preternatural phenomena
should be approached through a scientific lens because, simply put, the supernatural is not so
super. One could say that Capuana’s perception of the universe is a “fantastic-marvelous” one,
insofar as he believes that the natural world must redefine its boundaries and acknowledge the
true existence of occult occurrences, as he blatantly reiterates in many of his non-fictional works
154
At the outset of “Presentimento,” on the third day of the Decameroncino, Doctor Maggioli makes an interesting
observation about psychology that seems to anticipate the quandary that psychoanalysis will have in regards to its
status as a pseudo-science: “La psicologia non è ancora scienza positiva; le manca una delle più vitali condizioni:
l’esperimento. Essa studia certi fenomeni, certi fatti, ma non può riprodurli a piacere per sottometterli all’esame
provando e riprovando” (II, 272).
155
In Arte e Scienza (1904), Capuana expresses his qualms with a rigid naturalist approach to literature that viewed
the literary text as a scientific document: “Trasportare il metodo positivo nello studio del soggetto, stava bene;
trasportare anche nella forma la severità scientifica, la maniera obbiettiva, in modo da fare, fino ad un certo punto, la
illusione che l’opera d’arte si fosse fatta da sé, che i suoi personaggi vivessero in piena libertà come nella vita
ordinaria, stava benissimo. Ma pretendere che l’opera d’arte potesse assumere valore di dimostrazione scientifica, o
meglio, far servire la concezione artistica al preconcetto d’una teoria scientifica principalmente consistere in tal
preconcetto, in tale dimostrazione, ecco quel che diventava proprio assurdo” (8).
156
Capuana’s experiments with and beliefs in spiritismo (including somnambulism, magnetism, sedute spiritiche,
psychic phenomena) in his adult life gained him the nickname of Don Lisi amongst his Sicilian countrymen and
beyond, and we are reminded of his childhood in an environment where legends, superstitions, and beliefs in occult
happenings were indeed subjectively existent.
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on the super-natural. In Mondo occulto, with his conviction in spiritismo solidified, the affirmed
spiritist emphasizes the boundless nature of realities:
I confini del mondo naturale si spostano; il mondo naturale e il soprannaturale accennano
di confondersi insieme e formare una cosa sola, il mondo della realtà; realtà varia,
infinita, che parte dall’atomo per elevarsi via via fino alla forma, dirò così, senza forma,
alla spirituale, dove il fenomeno e il pensiero che lo studia si riconoscono identici (168).
In the above citation, the Minean author outlines a new conception of life where the traditional
dualities of the natural and the supernatural blend into each other and become part of the same
discourse. Added to the multifarious make-up of this equation, are the psychosomatic
phenomena of altered states of consciousness and neuroses. As mentioned above, he believes in
a symbiotic relationship between the scientism and the spiritism of the era, sustaining that
spiritual and psychical wonders in their immateriality, nonetheless belong to (un)conscious
reality despite their transcendence of the physical world and human comprehension. The new
science of psychoanalysis will eventually explore those ghosts that still live in our unconscious,
and that reveal themselves in our dreams.
Much like the notion of the unheimlich that incorporates within it both the homely
(heimlich) and the strange (unheimlich), so Capuana’s “Natural” world contains within it both
the familiar, so-called natural world and the unfamiliar, unseen “supernatural” world. In the
short piece “Il di là,” published in 1901, Capuana unites the traditionally opposing milieu under
the umbrella of the Natural, categorizing both realms as components of a multifaceted reality that
consists of various realities: spirits, dreams, telepathy, somnambulism, and so forth.157
157
In an open letter to Luigi Pirandello “A proposito di un fantasma,” Capuana reaffirms his spiritistic convictions
to a fellow believer: “Da allora in poi, però io mi sono ricreduto; ed ora penso che gli spiriti fanno bene a venire, di
tanto in tanto, in diversi modi, a ricordarci che c’è il mondo di là, che può essere anche parte del mondo di qua, di
cui ancora i nostri sensi non hanno la percezione immediata. E dico ancora perché ho la convinzione che un giorno
o l’altro, tra qualche secolo, tra parecchi secoli – il tempo non fa nulla; la natura è lentissima nella sua evoluzione –
le facoltà medianiche, ora privilegio di pochi, diverranno comuni” (239 – 240). The letter to Pirandello, now
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Oggi chiamiamo Di là il mondo che sfugge ai nostri sensi ordinari, e che una volta veniva
chiamato soprannaturale. Si è dovuto abbandonare ai teologi e ai metafisici l’uso
esclusivo di questa parola, perché essa implica nozioni ristrette e false delle grandi leggi
della Natura. Il Di là è soltanto qualche cosa che sta oltre i limiti delle comuni nostre
facoltà di vedere e di sentire, ma che esiste nella Natura precisamente come vi esistevano
tante forze fisiche prima ignorate e delle quali ora ci serviamo senza punto lasciarci
vincere dalla repugnanza ispirata da fatti quasi identici ai Raggi X e alla telegrafia senza
fili (Mondo occulto 225).
Capauna’s call for a reevaluation of what constitutes the “natural” world succinctly
communicates science’s disposition towards transformation, and forces one to question his or her
conceptions of the “real.”158 His allusions to previously unknown and newly discovered
technological advancements emphasize the propensity of empirical knowledge to evolve as
humans continuously unveil Nature’s mysteries over time. The constant redefinition of the
Natural as it is infiltrated by seemingly magical elements – like the X-ray and the wireless
telegraph – demonstrates an elasticity and a multiplicity that reflects the numerous selves
existing within the seemingly unified subject, echoing the narrator’s words of “Lettera di uno
scettico”: “il nostro io è doppio, triplo, quadruplo e forse infinitamente multiplo” (III, 149).
Don Lisi viewed science and its methods as valuable tools in approaching an understanding of
the world, and even though it was still incapable of explaining the spiritual and the psychological
occult, he hoped that one day it would.159 Capuana’s early admiration of naturalism and his
consideration of spiritism, somnambulism and other psychic phenomena as inexplicable
reprinted in the appendix of the modern edition of Mondo occulto, was originally published in the Gazzetta del
Popolo in Torino on January 2, 1906 with the subtitle, “Credenti e miscredenti dello spiritismo.” The open letter
was in response to Pirandello’s article “Cronache stravaganti. Un fantasma” that appeared in the same journal a few
days before.
158
I use the term “real” loosely here, hence the quotation marks and lower-case “r.” Of course, one can always play
with notions of the real, citing philosophers such as Plato or even psychoanalysts such as Lacan, who overturn its
meaning, essentially imbuing it with opposite connotations and implications than it usually possesses, as in Plato’s
allegory of the cave and Lacan’s structure of the psyche.
159
What would Capuana think of scientific, medical, and technological advancements today? The binary of natural /
supernatural seems to somewhat mirror similar contemporary discussions of the human versus the posthuman. Just
as Capuana had asked, “What is natural?” so today many critics ask, “What is human?”
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elements of the natural world (though nonetheless real) align him with those Nineteenth-century
intellectuals – both men of letters and men of medicine – who exposed individual cases of
“spiritistic” phenomena and “abnormal” psychology in order to move towards a better
understanding of the conscious, and more so, of the unconscious mind.160 The opposing though
complementary figures of the scientist and the littérateur are essential components of Capuana’s
philosophical eclecticism, greatly influenced by the true life doctor-philosopher Angelo Camillo
De Meis who, in his novelistic treatise Dopo la laurea (1868), sought to reconcile Darwinism
and Hegelian philosophy. In fact, the scienziato dimezzato assumes a different form in
Capuana’s fictional texts as early as the first edition of Giacinta (1879), surfacing as the medico
filosofo, and embodying the author’s own diversified philosophical and ideological influences.
Doctor Follini, interpreted by Croce as a literary incarnation of the writer himself (108), 161 is the
160
Spiritism was a vast category encompassing not only what we usually attribute to the supernatural (ghosts,
mediums, séances, spirits, astral projection), but also what we attribute to the unconscious mind (desire, repetition,
dreams, hallucinations) and psychic abilities (telepathy, clairvoyance, intuition) – all anomalies that one could
classify as “fringe science,” which studies precisely those strange phenomena that transcend the senses. G.H.
Schubert, a veritable physician philosopher, an influence on Hoffmann and precursor to Freud and Jung, lectured on
fringe science and examined dreams and similar states of suspended consciousness in his Symbolism of Dreams
published in 1814 (Tymms 35). Franz Mesmer’s (1734 – 1815) studies in animal magnetism are often viewed as
early forms of hypnosis. Jean-Martin Charcot (1825 – 1893) was a neurologist who believed that hysteria was a
neurological disorder and experimented in hypnosis in its treatment. Pierre Janet (1859 – 1947), a psychologist who
studied under Charcot at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, examined trauma and dissociation. The physician and
criminologist Cesare Lombroso eventually believed certain spiritistic phenomena as evidenced by his case study of
the medium Eusapia Palladino, recounted by the doctor himself in “Esperienze spiritiche” reprinted in the appendix
of Mondo occulto (195 – 199). Capuana and Lombroso knew each other and the former held the latter in high
esteem, mentioning him in the preface to Mondo occulto (165), and dedicating his collection Un vampiro (1907) to
the recently-converted Veronese doctor. After reading Capuana’s Spiritismo?, Lombroso writes him a letter
expressing his agreement with the Sicilian author especially in regards to artistic inspiration as analogous to
hypnosis (Di Blasi 151).
161
Capuana’s philosophy of literary representation proves to be an amalgamation of prominent Nineteenth-century
thinkers that, in addition to Hegel and De Meis, includes Zola and De Sanctis. Despite Capuana’s eventual, selfimposed distance from naturalism, the Minean author and self-proclaimed “believer” in the other world – the “di là”
as he so aptly calls it in the homonymous, 1901 essay – incorporated tenets of scientific study (observation,
experimentation, recording of evidence) into his own haphazard experimentation with mediums, hypnosis, and
séances. Both spiritistic and psychic phenomenon frequently find their way into Capuanian narrative; however, they
are often tempered by a physician within the diegetic universe that acts either as a mentor, confessor, or a deus ex
machina. While Tarchetti often portrays the doctor figure in a facetious or negative light, as in “Un osso di morto”
and Fosca, Capuana’s physicians – Dr. Follini of Giacinta, Dr. Mola of Profumo, and Dr. Maggioli of il
Decameroncino and La voluttà di creare – emerge as doctor-philosophers with one foot in positivism and the other
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first of many physician philosophers in the Capuanian oeuvre that personifies the unified duality
of positivism and idealism:
Egli era un medico filosofo, pel quale i nervi, il sangue, le fibre, le cellule non spiegavano
tutto nell’individuo. Non credeva all’anima immortale; però credeva all’anima ed anche
allo spirito: combinava Claudio Bernard, Wirchoff e Moleschott con Hegel e Spencer; ma
il suo Dio era il De Meis della Università di Bologna (160 – 161).
For Doctor Follini and his creator, positivist thinkers combined with idealist intellectuals find
their synthesis in the medical doctor and university professor De Meis whose conversion from a
youthful positivism to a mature Hegelianism assisted Capuana in reconciling aesthetic and
philosophical problems, each with both positivist and idealist registers (Madrignani Capuana
65). In fact, the Sicilian writer envisioned his own philosophy as a sort of syncretism, an
“‘eghelianismo [sic] ritemprato con gli studi delle scienze naturali moderni.’”162 Despite the
naturalist and verista taxonomies often imposed upon him, Capuana refused to classify himself
as an rigid follower of any –ismo, affirming his belief in artistic variety in many non-fiction
works, such as the polemical treatises Gli –ismi contemporanei (1898) and Cronache letterarie
(1899).163 As Capuana’s veristic inclinations and ambitions waned in the years following the
in the occult, mirroring the author’s own eclectic ideology. In fact, Madrignani describes Capuana as having “una
gamba nel positivismo e un’altra nell’idealismo egheliano [sic]” (Capuana e il naturalismo 70), an inclusive
division echoing De Santis’s notion of verismo as inclusive of both the Real and the Ideal (Bigazzi 232).
162
The definition of his own philosophy is found in Note autobiografiche, sent to Cesareo on February 17, 1884,
and reprinted in Valerio (98). Madrignani also discusses the author’s “scientific Hegelianism” and De Meis’s
influence on him (Capuana e il naturalismo 64 – 69). Capuana’s existential and aesthetic Hegelianism was a result
of his reading of The Phenomenology of the Spirit and of his study of the Desanctisian notion of form (derived from
Hegel’s philosophy of art) respectively. Hegel’s philosophy of art (with art itself being the first step, or the initial
embodiment of the Absolute, in the progression towards its ultimate manifestation, which of course occurs in
philosophy) deals precisely with this synthesis of the real, that is the material work of art, and the Ideal, or the
Idea/Absolute represented through the beauty of art and the reflection it provokes.
163
In a debate with Ugo Ojetti, Capuana declares, “io non mi aspettavo di sentirmi dire che sono stato e sono uno dei
capi dei naturalisti italiani…Io naturalista? Ma quando e perché? Perché quasi vent’anni fa ho dedicato un mio
romanzo allo Zola?” (Gli –ismi contemporanei 50). In the following year, in Cronache letterarie, Capuana writes:
“Dico dunque semplicemente che io, caso mai, sono naturalista, verista, quanto sono idealista e simbolista: cioè che
tutti i concetti o tutti i soggetti mi sembrano indifferenti per l’artista ed egualmente interessanti, se da essi egli riesce
a trar fuori un’opera d’arte sincera. Il mondo è così vasto, ha tante moltiplicità di aspetti, esteriori e interiori, che c’è
posto per tutti questi diversi aspetti nel mondo superiore dell’arte” (250).
130
initial publication of his first novel dedicated to Zola, he was nonetheless still striving to
reconcile the omnipresent positivistic interpretation of the universe with an idealism based on the
existence of extra-sensory phenomena – within the unconscious mind, and outside of it in the
metaphysical realm, each nevertheless present and affective in human reality. 164 Interestingly, in
the second, revised edition of Giacinta released in 1886, two years after the publication of
Spiritismo?, yet a decade before the release of Mondo occulto, the description of Doctor Follini
is dramatically different:
Il Follini […] studiava la Giacinta con la fredda curiosità di uno scienziato che si trovi
sotto gli occhi un bel caso. L’eredità naturale, le circostanze sociali, glielo speigavano
fino a un certo punto. Ma per lui, già discepolo del De Meis alla Università di Bologna,
per lui che, se non credeva nell’anima immortale, credeva nell’anima e anche nello
spirito, una passione come quella non poteva essere soltanto il prodotto delle cellule dei
nervi e del sangue. E voleva scoprirne tutto il processo, che era l’essenziale. Gli
interessava pel suo libro, Fisiologia e patologia delle passioni, a cui lavorava da due anni
(239).
The reader immediately notices the removal of those physiologists so critical to strictly positivist
perceptions of reality: Bernard, Wirchoff, and Moleschott; however, she also notes the absence
of Hegel, as if Capuana were trying to demonstrate, through the inclusion only of De Meis, that
he had finally succeeded himself in reconciling the seemingly opposing ideological forces.
Many critics speak of Capuana’s eventual self-imposed distance from naturalist interpretations of
the human condition and the obvious differences between the two citations above effectively
164
Capuana is often rightly credited with igniting the spark of verismo in Italy; however, Verga is definitely the
author who most concretely executed its principles in I Malavoglia, the model Italian realist novel. As Ghidetti
emphasizes, “il verismo di Capuana fu solo una fase transitoria del suo impegno di scrittore, non divenne in lui ‘la
sostanza dell’anima’, come sarebbe accaduto al Verga” (Introduzione lv). One could argue that Verga’s eventual
decline is attributable to his disillusionment with the veristic credo (especially when one considers that Il ciclo dei
vinti abruptly ended with Mastro-don Gesualdo) from which Capuana had already begun to creatively distance
himself in the 1880s. It is interesting to consider that unlike Verga, Fogazzaro succeeded in composing his narrative
cycle with Piccolo mondo antico, Piccolo mondo moderno, Il Santo, and Leila.
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exemplify this shift in perspective.165 For the “second” Doctor Follini, those characteristically
naturalist categories of heredity and social situation are valid only up to a certain point in the
analysis of the individual psyche. Like a scientist, Doctor Follini observes a particular “case” of
pathology, much like the psychoanalyst will do, and as physicians such as Charcot were already
doing in various spiritistic and psychological experiments.166 Physiology and environment only
tell part of a patient’s story, for passions, emotions, and neurotic behavior are not products of
one’s anatomical composition; rather, they come from an unknown, hidden place – if not from
the soul, then from the mind, the psyche, or the spirit. Doctor Follini (especially in the second
edition of the novel), much like Doctor Mola of Profumo, refuses to believe in the idea of
“l’uomo-macchina” (Profumo 231) – the man as machine completely comprehensible through
165
Even though Capuana’s world view and literary output certainly evolved throughout his long intellectual career,
he was never a naturalist in the Zolian sense and many contemporary scholars note this. Fioretti highlights
Capuana’s ambivalent attitude towards naturalism as early on as his review of Zola’s L’Assommoir in il Corriere
della sera in 1877. He further observes that “tuttavia Giacinta è un romanzo che risente solo in parte del modello
zoliano. Il verismo italiano infatti accetta del naturalismo francese soltanto la tecnica narrativa dell’“impersonalità”
e alcuni aspetti legati all’influenza dell’ereditarietà e dell’ambiente sull’individuo, mentre non condivide affatto la
volontà di denuncia e l’utopismo politico-sociale di Zola” (372 – 373). From Zola, Capuana assumed a naturalistic
outlook, without the blatant social and political critiques of his French model and without the absolute eclipse of
form and aesthetics by positivist science. One should perhaps classify Capuana’s post-Giacinta literary production
as the author’s return to a more authentic existence (in the Heideggerian sense), for he was always fascinated by the
otherworldly in the form of myth, folklore, superstitions, and Sicilian cults (much of which he discusses directly in
Spiritismo? and Mondo occulto and indirectly through the mouths of his fictional creations), which informed his
sheltered life before his first sojourn in Florence from 1864 until 1868. His first short story “Dottor Cymbalus” –
appearing in the Florentine journal Nazione in 1867, and frequently classified as a science fiction tale, with
pathological undertones and existential exigencies – acts as a prime example of the literary marriage that he would
continue to develop (more so in some cases than in others) between positivistic and esoteric notions of reality, a
reconciliation between science, spiritism, and the human unconscious.
166
The clinical approach (that is, of case studies), was born of the early work of practitioners of magnetism and
hypnotism at the Salpêtrière where Babinski and Freud studied under Charcot in 1885 (Fusaro La nevrosi 10). In
fact, the connection between spiritism, somnambulism, and clinical hypnosis becomes evident in the works of
Richet, Charcot and Bernheim, and especially Janet whose L’automatisme psychologique (1889) became an
essential text (Cavalli-Pasini 191). At the outset of the Twentieth Century, Pierre Janet introduced the idea of
patient’s personal history into the study of psychoneurosis. He also sustained that hysteria was caused by
subconscious ideas that emerge under hypnosis; furthermore, in the last decade of the Nineteenth Century, neuroses
became considered psychological illnesses to which both men and women were susceptible. (Fusaro La nevrosi 44
– 45).
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the study of his internal, purely-organic mechanisms.167 The clinical cases that Capuana’s
physician philosophers describe – much like the texts in which they appear – are quite Janus-like,
each head staring in a different direction: one glancing at positivism, and the other gazing fixedly
into the hidden crevices of the super-natural. Capuana’s classification of the novelist as a
scientist split in half further reinforces to this two-faced imagery; moreover, the reformed Doctor
Follini (as well as Doctor Maggioli and Doctor Mola), much like the preface to Mondo occulto
(1896) over a decade later, act as affirmative answers to the question mark in Spiritismo? insofar
as both fictional characters and paratextual commentary give credence to those occult worlds
existing beyond materiality: the supernatural and the psychical, the milieu par excellence for the
emergence of the oneiric and pathological doubles that we encounter in Capuanian narrative.168
Parallel Lives in Other Psychic Spaces in Luigi Capuana’s Short Stories
In the dedicatory letter to Eduard Rod that precedes the collection Delitto ideale
(comprised of novelle written between 1901 and 1902), Capuana celebrates the often undervalued short story as “il sonetto dell’arte narrativa” (Ghidetti Introduzione lii), aligning it with
167
Doctor Mola differs from Doctor Follini not only in age, wisdom, and experience, but also in his religious beliefs.
Even though Capuana inserts the hypothetical “if” (“se non credeva nell’anima immortale”) in the second edition of
Giacinta, as opposed to the affirmative “he did not” (“Non credeva nell’anima mortale”) in the original, the young
Follini is still not a confirmed believer in the afterlife. In contrast, the sixty-nine-year-old Doctor Mola (much like
the aged Capuana will become) is a converted, though firm believer in life after death, the immortality of the soul,
and the existence of a higher power. In fact, the jolly old physician refers to God as the only great doctor: “C’era un
solo grande medico: Dio! La scienza lo ha abolito. Io che ci credo ancora […] nei casi difficili mi raccomando a lui,
cioè gli raccomando il cliente. E se questi guarisce, ringrazio il gran medico per lui” (Profumo 51 – 52).
168
Don Lisi’s uncertainty regarding spiritistic phenomena was short-lived as he informs Pirandello in an open letter
in 1888. After citing his poem “?” from Semiritmi published by Treves in 1888, Capuana writes: “Da allora in poi,
però io mi sono ricreduto; ed ora penso che gli spiriti fanno bene a venire, di tanto in tanto, in diversi modi, a
ricordarci che c’è il mondo di là, che può essere anche parte del mondo di qua, di cui ancora i nostri sensi non hanno
la percezione immediata” (Mondo occulto 239 – 240). In the preface to the reader preceding Mondo occulto, the
now-convinced spiritist writes: “Il punto interrogativo di questo volume [Spiritismo?] significava allora prudente
riserbo. Da allora in poi però i fatti così detti spiritici, grazie alla savia spregiudicatezza di parecchi scienziati,
hanno assunto tal valore scientifico da permettermi di uscire dal riserbo parsomi necessario quando affrontavo, forse
primo in Italia, lo scabroso soggetto […] Il Bonghi, il Richet, il Siciliani e parecchi altri l’hanno però valutata per
quel che voleva essere, cioè, un piccolo contributo allo studio e alle ricerche intorno al sonnambulismo e allo
spiritismo” (165).
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the classical tradition of the sonnet, as well as with the modern art of narrative, and thereby
infusing it with a dual nature as both poetic and prosaic. The short story, like its lyrical sister the
sonnet, proves so prestigious and compelling because of its ability to address specific, poignant
questions in much fewer pages than its novelistic cousin. The brevity of the novella, however, in
no way undermines its worth or implications, for in hermeneutical fashion, it examines a
particular case in order to arrive at a more holistic outlook on the world. The Minean author,
most well-known for his novels, was a prolific writer of short stories that appeared in various
journals and collections throughout his half-century literary career. While Capuana’s novelistic
exordium happened rather late in life with the publication of Giacinta (1879) at age forty, Don
Lisi’s first short story “Dottor Cymbalus,” was written in 1865, and published two years later. 169
Enrico Ghidetti refers to the proto-science fiction tale of a Frankensteinian physician as the
inaugurator of the fantastic thread that eventually dominates much of Capuana’s work after
having taken a temporary back seat in the 1870s (Introduzione xlix). In this section, we will
address only a select few of Capuana’s novelle in which the fantastic thread manifests itself
through the internal, ethereal double that appears in dreams (“Il sogno di un musicista”), or in
trance-like states (“Un caso di sonnambulismo”). This second, unconscious other constitutes a
separate existence of the self, as opposed to its conscious counterpart who operates in the natural
world of waking life. The double as he exists in these tales is a complex case study because the
individual protagonist is literally both self and other at the same time; the other that lives within
him awakens while he sleeps and engages in another life that has repercussions on the waking
169
As previously noted, “Dottor Cymbalus” was published in the Florentine journal Nazione for the first time,
though it appeared in volume form alongside “Un caso di sonnambulismo” in the collection Un bacio e altri
racconti in 1881. Cedola describes these “fantastic” texts as inaugurators of a thread that redefines “i paradigmi
stessi del reale, allargandone le frontiere soprattutto in direzione del sondaggio delle ‘misteriose forze della psyche’”
(7). Cedola also classifies both stories as prime examples of tales that demonstrate il topos fantastico per eccellenza
del doppio” (8).
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one. The dream-like double takes on a corporeal form identical to that of its material version,
and exists as a visual projection within the sleeping (though dreaming and therefore active)
mind. Upon waking, the protagonists (except Van-Spengel of “Un caso di sonnambulismo”)
remember living another life while simultaneously watching themselves live it in a sort of
interior double vision, as is typical in the dream experience. Even though there is a type of
“body” doubling in autoscopic dream images, we are not dealing with a simple flesh-and-blood
or hallucinogenic Doppelgänger as in the cases of Hoffmann’s Medardus or Dostoevsky’s
Golyadkin respectively. Rather, the oneiric other forces one to realize that there is someone else
in his head that is at once, also, himself; it is a model representation of the dualistic, paradoxical
unheimlich, as something both familiar and foreign, in this case residing in the individual subject
while simultaneously forcing him to question his subjectivity. Furthermore, this dreamy double
is organically and psychically part of the original, for the physical body is present though latent
in sleep, while the unconscious self is active and potentially communing with the mystical
archetypes of the collective unconscious that often reveal themselves in dreams.170 It is this
second, unconscious self – awakened in sleep – that forms the basis for ancient, folkloric, and
pre-modern “proof” of a human being’s double existence – as a mortal, material, conscious
person subsuming within oneself a (possibly) immortal, immaterial, and unconscious spiritual or
psychical entity.171 In his discussion of the double in anthropology, Rank cites the Homeric
conception of man’s “twofold existence:”
170
In The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Jung defines the collective unconscious as an unreachable
part of the psyche whose contents “have never been in consciousness, and therefore have never been individually
acquired;” however, the archetypes that comprise the collective unconscious surface in dream images and psychotics
(50), and indicate “the existence of definite forms in the psyche which seem to be present always and everywhere”
(42).
171
We remember the classical and psychological definitions of the term “psyche,” defined by the Oxford English
Dictionary as “the mind, soul, or spirit, as distinguished from the body” and “the whole conscious and unconscious
135
In the living human being […] there dwells, like an alien guest, a weaker double […]
whose realm is the world of dreams. When the other self is asleep, unconscious of itself,
the double is awake and active. Such an eidolon and second self, duplicating the visible
self, has originally the same meaning as the genius of the Romans, the fravauli of the
Persians, and the Ka of the Egyptians (60).
The go-to psychoanalyst of the double affirms here and elsewhere that the Doppelgänger as a
shadow, reflection, and dream image acted in “primitive” times as reassurance of the soul’s
existence.172 Despite Capuana’s eventual declaration of faith, the oneiric other we encounter in
his short stories does not function as a proof of the soul per se; instead it demonstrates the
complex, multiple, super-natural realities that comprise human life, and illustrates the disunity of
the modern subject.173
In short, Capuana depicts “esistenze parallele,” as they are so aptly classified in the 2007
anthology of his various short stories, Novelle del mondo occulto, edited by Andrea Cedola.174
The notion of parallel existences presents us with an image of duality, of two separate lives
somewhat different though nonetheless related, concurrently existent though alternating between
latency and activity. Like the parallel lines of algebra that continue on into infinity without ever
intersecting, endlessly separated by a space between them, these parallel existences – that of the
mind, esp. when viewed as deciding or determining motivation, emotional response, and other psychological
characteristics” (OED online).
172
Rank continuously treated the conception of the double in his later studies including Psychology and the Soul and
Beyond Psychology where he reiterates the double’s ancient and folkloric connections to the soul and modern
superstitions surrounding it in the chapter entitled “The Double as Immortal Self:” “Numerous superstitions
regarding one’s shadow or image still prevalent in all parts of our civilized world correspond to widespread tabus
[sic] of primitives who see in this natural image of the self the human soul […] the double in its most primitive
form, the shadow, represents both the living and the dead person” (71).
173
In his unpublished “Testamento spirituale,” written in 1915 shortly before his death that same year, Capuana
writes: “‘Sono un credente! Forse faccio male a non essere un assiduo praticante, nel miglior senso di questa parola.
A poco a poco, dal vanitoso ateismo giovanile la mia sincera riflessione mi ha convinto che come accettiamo tante
ineluttabili leggi fisiche dobbiamo accettare anche le spirituali che non sono meno ineluttabili di quelle. Il fatto
religioso non è un’accidentalità’” (DiBlasi 289).
174
Cedola’s collection is organized according to established themes that appear throughout Capuana’s narratives
which include: “Esistenze parallele,” “I misteri dell’arte,” “I misteri della scienza,” “Revenants,” “Allucinazioni,”
and “Coincidenze?”. In this recent compilation of select short stories, Cedola places the occult tales that deal with
both the spiritual and the psychical milieu, demonstrating his use of the term “occult” to signify both the paranormal
and the psychological.
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waking life as opposed to that of the sleeping life – run for the duration of a man’s earthly or
biological life, separate yet paradoxically related because of the blank space that runs forever
between them. However, is that space between the parallel lines/lives truly blank, or is it full?
Or, is it like the white spaces in hermetic poetry, or the silence of plenitude in the Romantics,
where an absence actually indicates a presence? I would argue that the space between those
parallel existences (of the dream world and the material world) houses the mind, which in order
to remain sane, always keeps those parallel lives separate, while concurrently keeping them
united, always being touched by both. Should those two lines – the waking and the sleeping
lives, the conscious and the unconscious – ever cross and exist simultaneously in one’s
consciousness, then we encounter the convulsions of hysteria or a nervous fit, hallucinations,
prescience, déjà vu, and even madness. All of these rationally inexplicable phenomena cannot
be accounted for in words, nor explained by positivistic science because they are a regression (or
a progression?) toward a state of unconsciousness, to a collective existence in which there is no
individual mind nor subjectivity, or as Jung would have it, to the forever illusive and unreachable
collective unconscious.175 This non-existence in madness, fugue states, and bouts of hysterical
fits is at the same time an all-existence, insofar as one is in a state of oneness with the universe,
not only akin to the conception of the Jungian collective unconscious, but also like the Jewish
notion of death and immortality, or more simply (though nonetheless effectively) put, like certain
175
Jung further describes the collective unconscious as “a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and
impersonal nature which is identical in individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is
inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which
give definite form to certain psychic contents” (The Archetypes 43). Jung attributes the development of neuroses
and even lunacy to the activation of “those explosive and dangerous forces hidden in the archetype [that] come into
action” (The Archetypes 47 – 48).
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drug-induced states of consciousness, i.e., acid trips or psychotropic experiences.176 It is
precisely this state of non-existence and all-existence where the conscious subject is absent while
an Other is present that dominates the tale “Un caso di sonnambulismo” in which Detective VanSpengel becomes disembodied, as in separated from his body and even from his own conscious
mind. In this early Capuanian short story, a police detective once prone to sleep walking as an
adolescent visits a doctor in hopes of curing his recent insomnia. After a night of dreamless,
restful, death-like sleep, he awakens to find – in his own handwriting – a detailed, first-person
account describing an investigation surrounding a multiple homicide that occurred the night
before. In an unnerving series of events that shakes his (and our) conceptions of time, space, and
the wholeness of the human psyche, the detective uncannily investigates the very case his
somnambulist double had related in his report. Upon solving the case by following his
unconscious other’s comprehensive description of it, Van-Spengel’s rational mind cannot handle
the incongruousness of this inexplicable phenomenon and he succumbs to delirium at the end of
the story. The detective’s conscious self sleeps while the other, unconscious self animates his
body and dominates his mind. In his loss of subjectivity in the somnambulist state, he becomes a
medium scrivente and experiences a oneness with an alternate reality outside of the linear timespace continuum where he acquires a prescient knowledge of the material reality in which his
176
In the Jewish conception of the afterlife, death is not viewed as liberation of soul from the body, but as the
“reunion of soul and body to live again in the completeness of man’s nature” (Moore 295). In other words, the
individual returns to a state of personal non-existence, but oneness with the universe. Similarly, in drug-induced
states of consciousness, feelings of the loss of subjectivity and the acquisition of a communal existence often
emerge. Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist best known for synthesizing LSD, describes the hallucinogenic and
psychosomatic experience as a breakdown of the ego as it becomes one with the universe: “In the LSD state the
boundaries between the experiencing self and the outer world more or less disappear, depending on the depth of the
inebriation […] A portion of the self overflows into the outer world, into objects, which begin to live, to have
another, a deeper meaning. This can be perceived as a blessed, or as a demonic transformation imbued with terror,
proceeding to a loss of the trusted ego. In an auspicious case, the new ego feels blissfully united with the objects of
the outer world and consequently also with its fellow beings. This experience of deep oneness with the exterior
world can even intensify to a feeling of the self being one with the universe […] a reality is experienced that exposes
a gleam of the transcendental reality, in which universe and self, sender and receiver, are one” (95).
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conscious ego resides. Van-Spengel’s double is indeed himself; however, it is a completely
unconscious and inexplicable other consciousness active only in his sleep that sees events
happening elsewhere in the present, in the future, and even in the future of that future. Duality
and multiplicity abound in this complex hodgepodge of texts contained within a frame of an
unnamed narrator, presumably a fellow policeman, who witnessed the frenetic detective solve
the murder case. The Doppelgänger wears many hats in this story, appearing in: the dichotomy
of the waking versus the somnambulist Van-Spengel; the complementary doubles of the doctor
and the detective, and the reader and the detective; the multifarious narrative structure; the notion
of the medium as a writer and the writer as a medium; and the mirror-images of Death and Sleep.
The double especially emerges as a pathological condition and the reader is struck not only by
the fabula, but also by the intricate, mind-boggling syuzhet that disrupts all rational notions of
temporal progression and spatial orientation. The novella’s fragmentary structure with
flashbacks and flashforwards, and movement between various dimensions of wakefulness and
unconsciousness, ultimately incite a discussion unrestrained by a chronological order.
Capuana wrote “Un caso di sonnambulismo,” in 1873 during his residence in Catania, but the
story remained unpublished until its appearance in the collection Un bacio e altri racconti in
1881. The super-natural tale reads as if it were a clinical case come out of the Twilight Zone; it
has been considered by some as Capuana’s only attempt at the giallo or detective story and it
remains among the most intriguing and disorienting tales in his gothic-fantastic repertoire.177
177
In the introduction to Capuana’s collected short stories, Ghidetti refers to “Un caso di sonnambulismo” as “una
prova nel racconto giallo,” reminiscent of Poe (xx). Farnetti calls this novella “la singola prova del Capuana nel
racconto poliziesco” (48). Criminality and detective work often factor into stories of the double, as evidenced in
Emilio De Marchi’s early novel Due anime in un corpo, and especially in his reformed romanzo d’appendice, Il
cappello del prete, hailed by many scholars as the precursor to the modern Italian detective novel. In fact,
Spinazzola refers to it as “quasi un giallo alla rovescia” (58) and Adamo also discusses the novel as one of the first
Italian gialli (125 – 126).
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Not only does the protagonist’s double emerge in a veritable fugue state, but he also proves to be
a writing medium that accurately relates the minute details of a quadruple murder before it
occurs, as it is happening, and as it is solved. In the opening sentence, the narrator describes
Dionigi Van-Spengel’s case as: “tra i tanti casi di sonnambulismo dei quali la scienza medica ha
fatto tesoro […] certamente uno dei più meravigliosi e dei più rari” (209). From the outset then,
the narrator prepares the reader for the strange and marvelous events that will ultimately
confound her, just as they have already escaped any logical explanation by contemporary
medical science.178 The narrator’s initial commentary not only inserts the story into a fantastic
milieu, it also strongly suggests the clinical nature of the “case” at hand. In fact, the narrator
(presumably a member of the police force who witnessed the events) immediately informs us
that he will intermittently introduce passages from, and adopt the language of the recently
published, yet unobtainable memoir of Doctor Croissart.179 This inclusion of memoir excepts –
inserted throughout the text in quotation marks with parenthetical citations – in which there
appears a play-by-play report of a multiple homicide and apprehension of the culprits, written by
(an alternate self of) the protagonist, imbues the text with a multiplicity that is reflected in the
polyphony of narrating voices: the narrator, Doctor Croissart, Dectective Van-Spengel, and his
prescient, unconscious double. At various points in the novella, other voices of eye-witnesses of
the detective’s progressive psychological deterioration enter into the narration by way of
178
Like Tarchetti before him, Capuana here seems to be subtly undercutting the god-like authority and omniscience
frequently attributed to positivistic science and medicine.
179
The fact that the physician’s report is called a “memoria” (209) or a memoir confounds the very notion of a
scientific case study because a memoir is usually a highly personal and personalized account of one’s life
experiences, while a typical case report (whether medical or criminal) should objectively depict facts. Just as
Tarchetti had forced us to question the boundaries between science and superstition in the frame of “I fatali,” so
Capuana here surreptitiously presents us with a seeming paradox of a personal memoir fused with a supposed,
impartial account of facts. Such a scientific memoir in which the writer-analyst is both participant and evaluator
conjures up images of the psychologist and even the psychoanalyst a là Freud and Jung, whose accounts of patient
cases often reflect a memorialistic style in which the analyst includes his own musings on the events as, and after
they occur.
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transcription in Doctor Croissart’s account, enhancing even further the cacophony and
disorienting effect of the syuzhet. In addition, the fragmentary, paratactic nature of the text itself
mirrors that of the protagonist who is divided, duplicated, and ultimately multiplied; the
conscious, waking Van-Spengel possesses no knowledge of or insight into the murder case,
while the unconscious other within him is privy to present and future events surrounding the
crime. In other words, the detective and his crime-solving counterpart do not share the same
knowledge, despite their residence in the same mind and body; Van-Spengel’s second self
emerges in his sleep, yet remains unknown to his first, conscious ego. In addition to this
psychical duplication, Van-Spengel becomes multiplied by way of the text (written by his oneiric
other) within Doctor Croissart’s text, within the narrator’s account (within Capuana’s novella).
All of these narratives are overseen by the detective’s portrait – a typically gothic indicator of the
double motif – which adorns the front cover of Croissart’s memoirs, as if the spirit of VanSpengel were gazing into or even reading his own story from yet another perspective.
Furthermore, from an extra-diegetic vantage point, the rhetoric of multiplicity underscores even
the reader’s experience of the story. As she is reading, she becomes immersed in the action and
suspense, and possibly forgets that she is reading a narrator reading Croissart reading the
conscious Van-Spengel reading his unconscious double’s narration of a crime.
Beyond adding various levels of complexity in both the fabula and syuzhet, the text within the
text that recounts the unconscious composition of another text serves an empirical function. In
its materiality and its authorship (written by a presumably respected medical doctor, the
figurehead of modern authority) Croissart’s memoir acts as “proof” of the story’s authenticity,
and thereby serves the purpose of adding the component of verisimilitude to an otherwise
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implausible situation so characteristic of fantastic discourse.180 Reference to the famous,
historical figure Eugène-François Vidocq, French criminal turned detective, offers yet an extra
element of “reality” and thereby reliability to this strange case.181 The narrator provides other
“material” support for the “truth” of the bizarre account that follows, explicitly informing the
reader that the detective does not drink (211), as if he anticipates our incredulousness in regards
to the fantastic-uncanny tale that follows. While the previously-mentioned portrait of VanSpengel, executed by the fictional painter Levys, possesses gothic undertones and stands as
another other of the detective in its “rassomiglianza perfetta” (I, 209), the brief ekphrasis also
provides a certain reality effect to the seemingly absurd tale.182 The narrator observes or reads
Levys’s portrait of the police detective and relays a verbal description of his physical traits to the
reader. Van-Spengel’s corrugated brow and “un cervello che ignora riposo” (209) not only bring
180
We recall Bonifazi’s assertion that the fantastic is a double discourse that hinges on its portrayal of the
inverosimile within a fictional, though true-to-life world and we remember Tarchetti’s propensity to frame his
fantastic tales with manuscripts (“Le leggende del castello nero”), memoirs (Fosca), and “eye-witness” accounts (“I
fatali” and “Uno spirito in un lampone”) in order to enhance the verisimilitude of these otherwise outlandish stories.
Madrignani affirms that Capuana inserted these false and true facts here “per autenticare quell’atmosfera di
‘verisimile’ che è principio corollario di questa ispirazione” (Capuana e il naturalismo 85).
181
Both Doctor Croissart and the artist Levys prove to be fictional characters, and as Fusaro rightly notes (Forme e
figure 111), Capuana himself discourages the attentive reader from searching for a copy of the doctor’s memoirs in
the footnote he adds, informing us that the book is already out of print and is impossible to find. Furthermore, he
adds that should one attempt to compare Croissart’s narration of streets and locations in Bruxelles where the events
take place, one would find that the street names had been changed after 1873. Even though these “real” points of
reference prove fake, they nonetheless add those accoutrements of verisimilitude that are so essential in seemingly
marvelous tales such as this one. Eugène-François Vidocq, on the other hand, was indeed a real-life Parisian
criminal turned informant and then police detective. In 1812, he founded the Sûreté Nationale where he remained in
charge for many years. In 1833, he became the first private detective in history and his memoirs, released in 1828,
inspired Hugo and Balzac (Cedola 79), as well as Edgar Allan Poe’s infamous Dupin (Fusaro Forme 111), who first
appeared in “The Murders of Rue Morgue” in 1841.
182
Recalling his own eclectic hobbies that included drawing, painting, and photography, Capuana often
complemented his literary works with descriptions of paintings, sculpture, and music. His account of Van Dyck’s
ritratto d’ignota in the Galleria d’Accademia di San Luca in Rome in Spiritismo? (122 – 126), the novella “La
redenzione dei capilavori” (published in Il benefattore, 1901), “La nemica” (published in Perdutamente!, 1911) the
description of the Crucifix in Il marchese di Roccaverdina, and the musical presences in “Il sogno di un musicista”
(Decameroncino, 1901) and “Un melodramma inedito” (Fumando, 1889) are just a few examples of the appearance
of visual and performative arts in Capuana’s works. Such visual and musical ekphrasis reflect Capuana’s interest in
the unconscious and otherworldly nature of artistic inspiration, also discussed in his non-fictional works like Per
l’arte and Spiritismo?
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his image to life, they also allude to a troubled, worrisome, pensive, and restless nature, as well
as foreshadow his eventual psychotic break at the end of the story. The detective’s spectacled
eye “non guarda, ma penetra” (210), his gaze suggesting not only an intensified power of
observation and ability to decipher clues in order to solve a crime, but also a superior level of
authority, comparable to that of the physician whose gaze scrutinizes and decodes symptoms in
order to diagnose an illness.183 While the medical doctor diagnoses and treats clinical cases, so
the police detective investigates and solves criminal cases; as the former regulates the
physiological health of the body, the latter polices the moral well-being of society. Capuana
overturns the authority of these complementary doubles whose roles involve the establishment of
order and the maintenance of normative structures in the human body (and mind) and the
collective societal body respectively. The psychic phenomenon of a clairvoyant, writing medium
confounds any rational, medical explanation and therefore undercuts the physician’s power (and
consequently the authority of strictly positivistic conceptions of reality). Just as Croissart’s
agency is undercut by the inexplicability of occult phenomena, Van-Spengel’s ability though
mentioned by the narrator seems relegated as inferior compared to the hidden, intuitive
capabilities of his somnambulist self. Dectective Van-Spengel was not Vidocq’s prized pupil
(210) and though certain characteristics such as his long, strange nose, recent insomnia, “aria
scrutatrice” (210), and reclusive lifestyle render him a prime example of the quirky detective a là
183
In Foucauldian discourses on disease and abnormality in The Birth of the Clinic, the gaze of the doctor emerges
as a manifestation of bourgeois hegemony as it penetrates the sick body and diagnoses the illness. His gaze
supposedly uncovers the truth or reality of a patient’s malady or abnormality; however, his gaze must be regulated
by and through language, and in this “deciphering” (60) achieved through the ultimate union of gaze and language,
the physician becomes infused with the power to dominate the discourse of disease. For Foucault the binary
oppositions of health and disease pose social implications as well as pathological ones: “Medicine must no longer be
confined to a body of techniques for curing ills and of the knowledge that they require; it will also embrace a
knowledge of healthy man, that is, a study of non-sick man and a definition of the model man. In the ordering of
human existence it assumes a normative posture, which authorizes it not only to distribute advice as to healthy life,
but also to dictate the standards for physical and moral relations of the individual and of the society in which he
lives” (The Birth of the Clinic 34).
143
Colombo, we do not know for sure whether he was a talented investigator. Unlike Poe’s
Auguste Dupin (somewhat modeled on Vidocq) whose cunning and perceptiveness render him a
layman super-detective, Van-Spengel’s unconscious double, not the Detective Van-Spengel,
solves the case.184 Perhaps Capuana was wielding a subtle critique of the modern-day detective,
who, like the scientist or physician, focuses on facts and evidence without considering other
aspects of human behavior and ability. (We remember from “The Purloined Letter” that Poe’s
Dupin was so effective because he was both a mathematician and a poet.) These two figures –
the doctor and the detective – stand as modern marvels, yet their knowledge and power is
undermined by unconscious forces that are both part of and separate from Van-Spengel’s
multifarious psyche. The opening scene taken from the physician’s memoirs and inserted into
the story proper emphasizes the complementariness of these two authority figures seated across
from each other as the investigator seeks medical advice from the doctor, yet the latter feels
scrutinized by the former.
The initial report of Van-Spengel’s nocturnal writings is given by his aged servant Ms.
Trosse, who recounts what she saw to Doctor Croissart, who in turn transcribes her testimony in
his memoirs, which are then quoted in the story proper by the narrator. The spuriousness of the
text grows even more intricate as the fragmentary events progress and regress throughout,
creating multiple images of the protagonist. The maid recounts her master’s actions the morning
after the composition of the crime report, and the reader envisions Van-Spegnel drinking his
coffee around 9 a.m. on March 2 (first image). Then Croissart’s voice enters the narration and
reveals how Trosse awoke at 1 a.m. that night (early morning of March 2) to find the detective
184
Capuana was a great admirer of Edgar Allan Poe, or as Enrico Ghidetti affirms he was a “sostenitore della
modernità di Poe in quanto egli aveva fatto oggetto d’arte il ‘cervello’” (Introduzione xx).
144
awake and seated at his desk writing (second image, chronologically anterior to the first). We
then return to Van-Spengel about to leave his quarters at 9:30 a.m., the morning of March 2
when he discovers the manuscript on a table. Utterly dumbfounded, he examines the document
in his own handwriting entitled: Rapporto al signor procuratore del re sull’assassinio commesso
la notte del 1 marzo nella casa N. 157 Via Roi Leopold in Brusselle (third image, chronologically
posterior to the first two). After reading the title aloud, Detective Van-Spengel glances at the
calendar that reads “2 marzo” (212), an action that further highlights the disruption of time
within the novella, and within the memoir within the text. This disruption is also enhanced when
he begins to read the first line of the account – “Questa mattina (2 marzo) alle ore 11 ant –” (214)
– and abruptly pauses in order to note that it is now just a bit before 10:30 a.m. He then takes up
the narration again completing the sentence and beginning the narrative within the narrative
within the narrative. This temporal non-linearity coupled with reference to the detective’s early
childhood bouts of sleepwalking (213), yield multiple images of Van-Spengel, suggesting what
another Capuanian character will affirm over twenty years later in “Lettera di uno scettico” from
the collection Coscienze (1905): “il nostro io è doppio, triplo, quadruplo e forse definitivamente
multiplo” (III, 149). Aside from retroactively echoing an almost Deleuzian unlimited finity
characteristic of the postmodern, the skeptic letter-writer’s description of human multiplicity
may be easily transposed onto the doubled, multiplied protagonist of “Un caso di
sonnambulismo.” The detective possesses an other (un)consciousness within him and is
therefore divided and duplicated, achieving a spatial duality as well; moreover, the fragments of
the memoir within the text consequently multiply the figure of Van-Spengel (with a clairvoyant
other latently residing within him) so that we envision him in many different diegetic scenarios
in a sort of rhizomatic time-space dis-continuum.
145
The act of reading aloud the title of the report merits more attention here because the
detective becomes even further doubled, for he verbally voices the words that someone else, who
is also himself, had written. While a splitting and doubling of the ego occurs, yielding a waking
and a sleeping self, another type of division and duplication becomes evident, as Capuana
presents Van-Spengel in this brief scene as both conscious reader and unconscious writer. The
reading detective is completely separate from the writing medium, yet they exist within the same
psychic space; this relationship mirrors a similar one between the author and his written product
which are the same yet different. In this scenario, which applies also to the present narrative, the
text becomes a double of its creator as the author is both projected into, and simultaneously
subsumed by, his work of art. Here we encounter that doubling associated with the
parthenogenetic author-text dynamic so greatly (de)constructed in Derrida’s Plato’s Pharmacy,
in which the writing father gives birth to a textual son that is at once part of him, but also
something other, taking on different meanings and ultimately assuming a separate existence from
his maker. In an act of parricide, the son (the text) in turn kills the father (the author), the act of
murdering the father standing as the opposite of the birth of the son. This image of death at the
hands of an other often surfaces as a component of the Doppelgänger trope in which one ego
murders the other and consequently kills itself. At the end of the story, the crime report (the text,
the son) finally destroys its (visionary) author by driving his (waking) other mad.185 In other
185
In Plato’s Pharmacy, the act of writing posits itself as a parricide, for the author (the father) expresses himself
through the written word, but the text itself assumes its own identity as a son, thus killing the father and lending
itself to various interpretations. Writing though still a part of its progenitor, therefore overthrows the power of the
writer because it assumes its own authority once it is born and matured on the page. Derrida’s god of writing Thoth
“is opposed to its other,” yet is “that which at once supplements and supplants it” (92). The oneiric other may also
be likened to a text, or to a son that supplements and supplants its creator; the sleeping self, or the dreamer in anyone
is both an additive to and a substitution of the ego. When the waking self sleeps, the sleeping self awakes and vice
versa. Thinking beyond Derrida’s text, the mere image of the father-son power struggle and ultimate parricide in his
retelling of Plato’s story of Thoth cannot help but call to mind facets of Freud’s family romance and Rank’s
psychoanalytic / anthropological treatment of the Doppelgänger. Freud’s approach towards the double in literature
146
words, Van-Spengel’s telepathist, unconscious self inadvertently kills its waking, conscious
other through the very medium of writing (which had itself become an other of the writing
medium).
Returning to the story within the story, the transcribed dialogue between Trosse and VanSpengel reveals the latter’s incredulousness as he hears that he was seemingly awake for three
hours the night before writing in his notebook. At this point we uncover two simultaneous
images of the detective existing at two different times – as the confused discoverer of the
document in his handwriting at 9:30 a.m., as opposed to the somnambulist author of that same
document, written between the hours of one and four o’clock in the morning. The vision of his
own handwriting in a manuscript that he has no recollection of composing incites him to
consider some kind of spiritual influence, or the onset of insanity:
O il diavolo se ne mescola o io ammattisco – riprese a borbottare. – Questa scrittura è la
mia! Non c’è che dire, è la mia! –
E picchiava col dorso della mano sul quaderno deposto sulle ginocchia.
Eppure non l’ho fatta io, no davvero! (213)
The juxtaposition of the acknowledgement of his own handwriting with the exclamation that he
did not write it poignantly embodies the notion of the uncanny, and produces a shiver of disbelief
– on the part of the reader Van-Spengel, and on the part of the reader of Capuana’s fantastic tale.
The reader and the conscious, waking Van-Spengel together peruse the account of the
unconscious, alternate Van-Spengel; in other words, the reader reads the detective reading a
is of course tied to the notion of the son as a complementary though opposing double of the father whom he longs to
kill. We remember Freud’s treatment of Hoffmann’s “The Sandman” in which the double figures of Coppelius and
Coppola both stand as father figures who Nathaniel longs to kill (The Uncanny 135 – 142). In other less literary and
more clinical writings, such as the late “Splitting of the Ego in the Defensive Process,” the father of psychoanalysis
discusses the division and duplication of the ego in relation to the formidable patriarch and his fearful, though
rebellious son (Collected Papers V 372 – 375). Rank notes that the phenomenon of duplication and division is
closely linked with death, noting that one of the stock components of literary doubles is catastrophe (often
associated with a woman, though not in our present story), “predominantly ending in suicide by way of the death
intended for the irksome persecutor” (The Double 33).
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manuscript that he, but not he, had written the night before. The reader is a third person reading
a third person narrative, written by the hand of one of the players in the narrative, who is
concurrently a reader; hence, Van-Spengel is tripled as writer, character within the report, and
ultimately as reader of the report.186 He, like us, adopts a willing suspension of disbelief so that
he may proceed in his perusal of this uncanny account which essentially merges into ours. The
second Van-Spengel’s narrative situates us within a certain time and place:
Questa mattina (2 marzo) alle ore 11 antimeridiane, recandomi dal mio ufficio al
ministero dell’interno per ricevervi le istruzioni e gli ordini di S.E. il ministro, allo
sboccare della via Grisolles nella via Roi Léopold, vidi una gran folla radunata davanti la
casa segnata col N. 157, accanto al palazzo del signor visconte De Moulmenant (214).
Capuana’s reader immediately notices that the alternate Van-Spengel narrates his crime report in
the first person and uses the past tense to do so, thereby emphasizing the double nature of the
second self – as narrator narrating his own supposed past, which is in fact, the future of his
waking Doppelgänger. The sleeping Van-Spengel’s account of the crime begins with an overt
reference to the time – 11 a.m. – when, on his way to the Minister of the Interior’s office, he sees
a large crowd gathered at the address specified in the title of the piece, 157 Roi Léopold Street.
In fact, the reader Van-Spengel stops mid-sentence, and notices that it is a little before 10:30
a.m.; therefore, the actual story within the story (within the story) starts after the waking
detective begins reading it, so that he is reading an account of events that will indeed actually
186
Should we also consider the outer-most frame of the story, then Van-Spengel becomes even further multiplied,
for Doctor Croissart wrote this story that was then adopted by the narrator, all of whom are characters in Capuana’s
tale. Another interesting facet of this strange situation emerges when the detective reveals that he had been a
sleepwalker as a child and had lost the ability after an illness at age twenty, as if his second self had remained
dormant for decades, only to surface now that the fifty-something Van-Spengel has been suffering from insomnia
for the last few weeks. His recollection of his childhood abnormality depicts yet another image of the protagonist, a
kind of double-in-time to use Roda’s terminology as if the young Van-Spengel had come back to haunt (or animate)
the elder. In addition to this doubling in time and complete invasion of the sleeping life into the waking life, the
reader herself becomes a sort of extra-diegetic double of Van-Spengel, insofar as she merges with him as they both
read the narrative of the crime. As two separate readers reading the same text, they in a sense fuse into one reader,
who is at once divided and duplicated.
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happen in the near future. This continual dismantling of temporal linearity and spatial unity –
emphasized even further by reference to the time in addition to the date – disorients the reader
and produces a sense of vertigo, as Cedola rightly calls it “un vertiginoso cortocircuito […] tra il
tempo lineare dell’orologio e un tempo altro, non lineare, non misurabile” (14). In contrast to
the teleological progression of time in the material, so-called “real” world of our waking lives,
the chronology of the dreamscape, of the esoteric world of the psyche is in fact anything but a
chronology; rather, it is a collage of images that alludes not only to an alternate reality outside of
any chronotope, but also to an alternate consciousness hidden within us. The Doppelgänger
here, as in other tales of the double, acts as a catalyst for the protagonist’s descent into madness,
for he cannot handle the idea that something so other, so foreign resides within him and can look
into the past, present, and future. As Cedola rightly observes:
L’assurdo temporale si connette al tema del Doppelgänger, del secondo io che contende e
s’impossessa della vita e dell’identità del protagonista. Il secondo Van-Spengel è un
doppio anomalo, invisibile a lui stesso ma che agisce – da un’altra dimensione – come il
suo antagonista, al punto di spingerlo verso il precipizio e ‘la trista castastrofe’ della
follia (15).
The Doppelgänger in this early Capuanian tale is not an anomaly solely because he is invisible
and active; he is most strangely irregular because he – the second Van-Spengel who resides in
another state of consciousness – is also doubled by way of the text he composes.187 The
double(s) in this story become another, more complicated version of what Roda refers to as the
“double in time” (124 – 125). Instead of meeting his remotely past self as a vision or visitant, or
in the image of an ancestor as occurs with Roda’s diachronic double, Capuana’s detective comes
face to face with another consciousness within him whose knowledge defies all logical notions of
187
We encounter many other examples in literature, some of which we have already discussed in the narratives of
Tarchetti, where self-division and duplication yields no tangible, externalized double.
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time and space. Van-Spengel’s second self – this anomalous, invisible alternate consciousness
that acts upon him from another dimension – surfaces synchronically, as a double in a non-linear
conception of time, in which that time is contemporaneously, and paradoxically, the present,
recent past, and soon-to-be future.
Van-Spengel and consequently the reader become enveloped in the details of the crime as
disclosed by the detective’s psychic second self in the first-person narrative. The alternate VanSpengel depicts in great detail the bloody aftermath of the quadruple murder whose victims
include a marchesa, a marchesina, their maidservant, and the porter when he arrived and
investigated the crime scene. In his parallel universe these murders had already occurred, so he
is narrating an event that happened in his past, wherever and whenever that may be; therefore,
we encounter yet another Van-Spengel – that protagonist within the narrative of the writing
medium. Within his report, Doctor Marol the medical examiner determines the time of death of
the four victims as occurring between 2 and 3 a.m.; however, the alternate Van-Spengel awoke
within the original Van-Spengel who began unconsciously writing at 1 a.m., meaning that in his
waking reality the crime had not yet been committed. The Van-Spengel within the account of
the somnambulist author is however experiencing the discovery of the bodies after 11 a.m. on
March 2; therefore, in the chronotope of the manuscript he is actually learning about the time of
death, which for him is in the past the night before. To complicate matters even further, in the
story proper, that is, within Croissart’s narrative, the discovery of the murder victims is in the
future because it is just about 10:30 a.m., when the waking Van-Spengel begins reading it. In the
outermost frame of the novella however, in the time-space of the initial unnamed narrator, all of
these events are in the past. So we, alongside the detective are reading what will happen in
which there are also facts about what already happened. The initial doubling of the detective
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(conscious vs. unconscious subject) turns into a multiplication, just as the original two realities of
the waking life and the sleeping life become many realities that defy the traditional time-space
continuum.
The starring role of writing and reading throughout the overall, layered and polyphonic
diegesis forces us to reflect on the origins of a text and the reader’s role in decoding it. Just as
detectives must piece together clues, facts, and timelines in order to make sense of the crime, so
we as readers must attempt to reconstruct the narrative fragments of these various s, interrelated
texts in “Un caso di sonnambulismo;” however, the very impossibility of comprehending this
rhizomatic time-space is enough to drive us to madness, just as the original Van-Spengel
ultimately loses his sanity after solving the crime at the end of Croissart’s account. Both
attentive readers and astute detectives notice connections and discrepancies in their respective
milieu and both must possess the acumen to scrutinize the behavioral phenomenon unfolding in
their respective fictional and non-fictional “texts.” When the original Detective Van-Spengel
observes the crowd around the scene of the crime, he notices a seemingly ordinary young man
whose “nerves” give him away as an assassin. The narrator of the novella describes the
detective’s ability to closely “read” people, behavior, and situations:
Si tratta di sorprendere intime relazioni fra avvenimenti che paiono disparatissimi;
d’intendere il rovescio d’una frase, d’un motto o d’un gesto che cercherebbe di sviarvi; di
dar grave importanza a certe cose apparentemente da nulla; di afferrare a volo un
accidente da mettervi in mano il bandolo che già disperavate di trovare: lotta di astuzie, di
finezze, di calculi, di sorprese (224).
The “intel” work of a detective and his perceptive and analytical capabilities echo those skills
necessary for close reading: uncovering intimate relations between events that seem unrelated;
inferring a misplaced phrase, saying, image, or gesture; placing great importance on seemingly
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irrelevant details; and finally solving the case.188 “Reading” a case, reading a text, and even
“reading” a pathological case such as that of Van-Spengel himself always prove a struggle
between astuteness, finesse, calculations, and surprises. Just as the figures of the doctor and the
detective assume similar roles and become mirror-like images of each other, so do the detective
and the reader resemble each other in their tasks of deciphering the details of human nature, and
trying to reconstruct a chronology of events.189 The reader-detective analogy runs even deeper
than that of the physician-detective complementarity in this case, for Van-Spengel himself (the
protagonist of Doctor Croissart’s memoir) is, like us, a reader of a crime report; however,
Capuana transcends the reader-detective analogy and moves toward an implicit exegesis of
artistic inspiration and subsequent creation that reveal themselves as something truly uncanny, as
something residing within the artist while simultaneously being something other, coming from
someplace else.
Our detective work alongside the protagonist Van-Spengel (within the alternate VanSpengel’s narrative) is brought to an abrupt halt however when the first Van-Spengel (with
whom we had been fused in our mutual reading of the manuscript for the previous few pages)
breaks the flow of narration. Instead of a glance at the calendar, his onomatopoeic “hem!” (218)
thrusts us out of one textual space (that of the crime report), pushing us back into another (that of
188
I use the phrase “solving the case” very loosely here, referring to the Capuanian text that describes the skills
necessary for solving a criminal case. Of course no literary text can ever be solved, in the sense of determining its
absolute meaning; however, some of the philosophical, ideological, or socio-political questions it poses may be
uncovered. It is also worth mentioning that the narrator immediately informs us that despite past proof of Van
Spengel’s abilities as an investigator, he recognized the culprits in this case and solved the crime so quickly and
easily because he possessed the first-hand account of it in the alternate universe of his second self: “Ma qui la cosa
andava diversamente. Il signor Van-Spengel, letta la parte del suo lavoro di sonnambulo, vi aveva trovato, negli
interrogatori anticipatamente scritti, i più minuti particolari di quello che poi doveva accadere e si era messo, dirò
così ad eseguire, punto per punto il programma della giornata, visto che la prima parte aveva corrisposto così bene
(224 – 225).
189
We recall the detective’s double, the physician, who must examine piecemeal symptoms in order to diagnose the
general condition.
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Croissart’s memoir), and consequently into his present. Before rushing off for a breakfast date to
which he never arrives because the events of his day begin to sync up and fulfill his unconscious
prophecies, the detective jokingly remarks on his somnambulist composition to his maid: “siamo
sul punto di diventar scrittori, romanzieri, come il vostro Ponson du Terrail […] E i nostri
romanzi li scriveremo senza fatica, ad occhi chiusi, dormendo!” (218). Besides adding yet
another reality effect with reference to the true-life French feuilleton writer Pierre-Alexis Ponson
du Terrail, the detective’s facetious remark acts as a metatextual commentary that leads us to
consider the duality (and multiplicity) inherent in the novelist, and even within ourselves as we
all “become writers.”190 The text within the text within the text – the second Van-Spengel’s
manuscript included in Doctor Croissart’s memoir, inserted into the novella proper – is written
by an author who is at once an other and also himself. In fact, the image of the medium
scrivente, appears in other, non-fiction Capuanian works in which the spiritist author describes
various, real-life “cases” of mediums composing musical scores and literary texts in an alternate
state of consciousness, seemingly awake though consciously absent as in sleep. In Mondo
occulto for example, Capuana tells the story of maestro Bach, the great grandson of Sebastian
Bach, who after receiving a centuries-old harpsichord as a gift dreams of an old man who plays
various verses on the instrument with lyrical accompaniment. The maestro awakens to find that
exact musical score set to lyrics written in his own handwriting and this unconscious
composition inaugurates the career of this “medium meccanico scrivente, cioè medium che non
190
Whenever a reader thinks of multiplicity of character in modern narrative, she naturally thinks of Pirandello, and
the many faces or maschere that we wear in society and even to ourselves. It is widely known among critics that
Pirandello, who had a long-standing friendship with and respect for Capuana, considered his Sicilian paesano a
fundamental influence on his own work. In his review of Il marchese di Roccaverdina in the July 1 issue of Natura
e arte, Pirandello praises the brilliance of his literary colleague and elsewhere he refers to him as his “friend and
master” (Ghidetti L’ipotesi 166). Capuana has also been called a precursor to authors such as Svevo and Pirandello
(Portinari 217; Ghidetti L’ipotesi 185) and studies such as that of Sipala examine both authors together.
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ha coscienza di quello che scrive” (Mondo occulto 183), just like our own Detective VanSpengel who mechanically composes a text without consciously knowing or even understanding
what he is writing. In Spiritismo? Capuana discusses another medium scrivente meccanico, and
even includes some of the boy’s compositions in his own text (just as Doctor Croissart inserts the
second Van-Spengel’s report into his memoir) (93 – 116).191 In that same work, the spiristist
dilettante claims the existence of a link between the phenomena of somnambulism, spiritistic
forces, and psychical degeneration, posing the questions: “chi potrebbe dirci in questo momento
dove il sonnambulismo finisca e la gran nevrosi incominci? Dove il sonnambulismo finisca e
incominci lo Spiritismo?” (Spiritismo? 78).192 Capuana’s emphasis on the blurred lines between
somnambulism, neurosis, and spiritism not only undercuts contemporary science’s ability to
comprehend these occult phenomena, it also causes us to recall a similar notion of liminality
(albeit more theoretical rather than phenomenological) present in fantastic discourse, in which
the margins between the uncanny, the fantastic, and the marvelous often become clouded.
Capuana’s inquiries quoted above were at the center of the boom of spiritism in the Nineteenth
Century, echoing similar investigations conducted by physicians and psychologists alike,
interested in the study of paranormal phenomena inside and outside the human mind.
“Un caso di sonnambulismo,” and especially Van-Spengel’s remark that we are all becoming
sleeping novelists, incite us to look beyond the frames of this particular short story, and consider
191
In an unpublished letter addressed to Capuana dated 1882, neophyte spiritist Eugenio Checchi describes a boy
who had become a writing medium. At that time, Capuana was experimenting with spiritismo, yet his hesitation in
completely accepting the otherworldly reveals itself in the question mark in Spiritismo? written two years after
Checchi’s letter, as well as in the poem “?” composed in 1882 and later appearing in the collection Semiritmi
released by Treves in 1888 (Cigliana 216).
192
Capuana’s questions seem to anticipate similar assertions that psychologists and psychoanalysts will voice in the
following decades. For instance, in “On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomenon” in
Analytical Psychology, Jung underlines the indefinableness of nervous diseases such as hysteria and neurasthenia
and epilepsy (which he calls a form of hysteria), but mentions those altered states of consciousness that are
associated with them including: lethargy, narcolepsy, periodic amnesia, pathological dreamy states, double
consciousness, somnambulism, yet which are sometimes considered diseases themselves (1).
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how the notion of a double consciousness is linked to aesthetic and ideological questions
surrounding the authoring and the authorship of a text.193 How do we account for the seemingly
magical creation of a work of art? What is artistic inspiration? Where does artistic genius reside
– within or without, or within and without? Are artists overcome by something outside of them
that works on something – genius perhaps – already existing within them? Do novelists write
“without effort, with their eyes closed, sleeping?” These are all issues that Capuana addresses
throughout his body of critical and imaginative works, and that other non-literary intellectuals
were also considering at the time. In the sixth edition of his L’uomo di genio in rapporto alla
psichiatria, alla storia e all’estetica (1894), Cesare Lombroso establishes a pathological rubric
for those phenomena that accompany the creative phase of art and literature that included
unconsciousness, somnambulism, and instantaneousness (Fusaro La nevrosi 12). Artistic
inspiration, tied to genius and madness by many including Lombroso and Rank, belongs to that
category of the temporary loss of subjectivity occurring in altered states of consciousness
(dreams, hysteria, somnambulist musings), for the artist is invaded by an unknown, external
force that inspires him, literally breathing into him that which he expends as an artistic product,
whether it be in the medium of words, paint, clay, or music.194 This inspirational force could
193
In the other short story that will be addressed in this chapter, the creation of a work of art is a result of
unconscious forces acting upon the oneiric other of the protagonist; however, unlike the “mechanical, writing
medium” who possess no conscious knowledge or remembrance of what he writes, the musical piece that
Volgango’s oneiric double hears in “Un sogno di un musicista” is composed by an ethereal chorus in his dream, by
his unconscious mind as his physician friend suggests, and later remembered in his waking life.
194
In this text as well as in his previous Genio e follia (1874), the Italian criminologist classifies genius as a form of
madness, “two faces of the same psychobiological reality” (Fusaro La nevrosi 32), as a degenerative and decadent
psychosis. He discusses various neuroses including those he characterizes as “mattoidi letterari ed artistici” in the
third chapter of L’uomo di genio, yet the notion of the melancholic, eccentric artist and litterateur hearkens back to
pre-modern times and were even topics of study for pre-Enlightenment physicians such as Bernardino Ramazzini
who in the section on diseases of literary men in his treatise De morbis arteficum (1700), includes such ailments as
stomach weakness, paleness, melancholy, and nervousness. Psychiatrists of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth
Century also connect genius and madness. In The Double, Otto Rank links psychological disturbances to genius,
and ties the double with cases of pathology in literature and in the lives of authors such as Hoffmann, Maupassant,
Poe, Heine, Dostoevsky. In short, Rank suggests that the pathological cases of the double in literature are inherently
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therefore be considered an other, a double that temporarily supplants the conscious individual,
while contemporaneously being a part of that individual, existing either within his unconscious
mind or without as some sort of shadow, soul or spirit double that inserts itself in him,
possessing him during those periods of artistic inspiration. The medium scrivente in “Un caso di
sonnambulismo” – “un romanziere [che scrive] ad occhi chiusi, dormendo” (I, 218) – embodies
the image of an inspired artist, literally unconscious of what he is doing, as if artistic production,
creative inspiration, and artist himself were all separate, albeit interconnected, entities. In fact,
Capuana discusses the idea of art versus artist, as well as an art-producing other from a
theoretical standpoint in Per l’arte:
La Forma (coll’effe maiuscolo) ha più genio, è più divina di tutti i divini genii del mondo
presi insieme; cresce, si sviluppa, fiorisce; e quando è pronta per un nuovo frutto, cerca e
trova il fortunato individuo che le occorre, come ne avea trovati degli altri, uno, dieci
secoli avanti – essa non ha punto fretta – e gli si concede, in un fecondo abbraccio
spirituale, e gli lascia gettar nel bronzo, scolpir nel marmo, dipinger sulla tela, costringer
nelle note musicali o nelle pagine d’un libro quel momento dell’altra sua vita ideale (47).
“Form,” with a capital “F,” emerges from the pages of this treatise on aesthetics and the modern
novel as a veritable creative double, a personification that infiltrates the artist in its “spiritual
embrace.” In Per l’arte Capuana treats la Forma as something outside of the artist – more
mystical and divine than individual genius – that blossoms on its own, containing within it
inspirational properties. Form eventually finds its medium in the individual artist who, through
the secondary mediums of bronze, marble, paint, notes, or pages, transfers Form into the various
entrenched in dispersion of the lines between conscious and unconscious. As a true practitioner of psychoanalytical
criticism, which stakes much of its analysis on the analysis of the author (an approach which the New Critics were
the first among many to discredit), Rank cites the bouts of neurosis and psychosis of authors of the double in order
to explain the connection between illness and the double; however, even without considering biographical
information, the texts themselves make plain the pathological nature of the double. Something foreign to the
conscious ego – whether it be internal in the unconscious or external in the spirit world – invades it, often
overcoming it and resulting in either temporary loss of subjectivity (both in the sense of agency and consciousness)
in the form of hysterical fits, dreams, somnambulism, hallucinations, epileptic seizures that so color the pages of
Nineteenth-century fiction. (We remember that epilepsy was considered a form of psychosis given its origins in the
brain and nervous system.)
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forms of artistic creation.195 In this scenario, madness, genius and artistic creation all result from
(seemingly) external mystical (whether spirits, voices, or inspiration) forces or unconscious
powers, bursting into, and ultimately overrunning the conscious mind. On the other hand, in
Spiritismo? Capuana portrays artistic creation also as an internal, unconscious force that
produces the same unnerving effects of spiritual encounters.196 In an 1879 letter to Verga he
describes his fictional characters as possessing minds and wills of their own as they, not the
author, eventually compose the narrative and write themselves, a theme that Luigi Pirandello will
later make famous.197 Besides calling on us to consider spiritual and psychical forces inherent in
artistic creation in general, the first Van-Spengel’s metatextual commentary on the unconscious
composition of a novel incites us to reflect on the creative processes that the author himself
underwent in the composition of this novella (and of all his other imaginative works). The text
therefore becomes reflective on art and is also reflective, and essentially self-reflexive, on and by
195
The doubleness of Capuana’s depiction of the artist as an individual genius worked on by an outside creative
force (reminiscent of the classical Muses) echoes the duality of De Sanctis’s conception of art as being a
reconciliation of the Real and the Ideal. We recall that for De Sanctis the true art of verismo resided in the idea of
the Ideal descending into the Real in the literary work. Similarly, in Capuana’s notion of Form, we encounter the
Ideal descending into the Real in the artist; in other words, the Ideal other of inspiration, creative force (whether
spiritual or psychical) descends into the Real – the artist – who in turn creates the work of art. As previously
observed, De Sanctis’s influence on Capuana is widely documented by critics. Madrignani for example emphasizes
Capuana’s interest in the Real/Ideal dichotomy, and affirmation that the Real “‘non è altro che l’ideale che si attua’”
(Capuana e il naturalismo 100).
196
For Capuana, the unconscious and therefore uncanny composition of a text may also be likened to a spiritistic
experience: “Avviene non di rado che l’opera d’arte sgorghi fuor dell’immaginazione così intimamente
compenetrata colla forma, così completamente formata, senza preparazioni od elaborazioni di sorta, che la quasi
incoscienza del lavoro diventa una piacevolissima sorpresa. Un’incoscienza sui generis. Non c’è propriamente un
vero sviluppo, una vera coordinazione, assimilazione, organizzazione di elementi personali, recenti, remoti,
ereditarii; ma bensì una specie di fioritura della immaginazione nella temperatura primaverile dello spirito, sotto una
luce raggiante non si sa dove. L’analogia delle produzioni che ne risultano colle communicazioni spiritiche è
spiccatissima” (Spiritismo? 126). Once again we encounter an example of how the spiritual and the psychical are
intertwined, for despite their different associations with the marvelous and the strange respectively, they both
appertain to that realm of the occult.
197
The imagery that Capuana uses to describe the composition of Giacinta in a letter to Verga effectively
communicates familiarity coupled with foreignness: “I veri dolori di parto li ho provati fino al 6 o capitolo. Quando i
personaggi si furono nettamente disegnati ed ingaggiati nell’azione tutto andò da sé. Me li vedevo davanti come dei
personaggi reali, scrivevo quasi sotto la loro dettatura: mille cose alle quali non avevo mai pensato, cento
osservazioni che non avevo mai fatto si presentavano spontaneamente al lor posto, al momento opportuno” (Raya
72).
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the author respectively.198 The uncanny effect of the Van-Spengel’s remark results from
Capuana’s ability to superimpose the fictional world on the “real” world – once again breaking
with the notion of unity, and mirroring the multiple temporal and spatial realities the detective
experiences within the story. As an inspirational Doppelgänger, la Forma in turn leads to the
production of a work of art, of a text for example, that, as in Derrida’s depiction of parricide,
itself becomes an unruly double that destroys its creator – much like the clairvoyant writings of
the second Van-Spengel ultimately undo the primary Van-Spengel’s sanity, resulting in the
protagonist’s “morte psichica” (Cavalli-Pasini 119). The psychic death of the detective, although
not a physical fatality, nonetheless coincides with the often lethal role of the literary double as
the unnerving herald of death.
In “Un caso di sonnambulismo,” the figurative death of the protagonist’s rational,
conscious self happens at the hands of his mystically prescient second self who becomes doubled
to another degree through the document he composes; however, Van-Spengel is not the only
divided and dualistic character of the tale. Capuana plays with the age-old literary trope of
Death not only in its abstract connection with the act of writing as parricide, but also in its own
doubleness. While Tarchetti divided Death as the effeminate, benevolent Saternez and the virile,
bombastic Sagrezwitch in “I fatali,” in the present novella, Capuana doubles Death, not with its
198
Another example of Capuana’s ability to blur the lines between fiction and reality occurs in an anecdote within
Spiritismo? in which he recounts how, upon visiting the Galleria d’Accademia di San Luca in Rome in 1875, he
admired a Van Dyck portrait of an unknown woman (122). Her beauty and mysteriousness have a profound effect
upon him. He imagines what her life was like and she begins to become alive either in his mind or as a deceased
spirit that haunts him (neither he nor the reader know for sure). Capuana’s thought, “‘Un bel soggetto per una
novella fantastica!’” (123) is apropos, for this story itself becomes a novella within the non-fictional treaties, even
though he declares that he never wrote the novella because he never found the form to suit the subject. Ironically,
the author had in fact written the short story by recounting this true-life event and imbuing it with artistry, thereby
engaging in that descent of the Ideal into the Real that De Sanctis found necessary in modern narrative; however, the
mixture of the non-fictional and fictional genres makes both the treatise and the story within it all the more strange.
While texts often appear in Nineteenth-century novels and short stories in order to provoke a critical thought on the
nature of the text, Capuana’s command of this rhetorical device intensifies the uncanny effect that the already
strange subject matter – portraits come to life, somnambulist compositions, and madness – produces.
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obviously opposing Doppelgänger of Life (as is so wont do), but with its classical, more
mysterious mirror-image of Sleep. In Greek mythology, Hypnos the god of sleep and father of
the Oneiroi (dreams) was the twin brother of Thanatos, the god of non-violent death.199 The
image of Sleep as Death’s living twin recurs diachronically throughout literature as demonstrated
by just a few examples: Homer calls Hypnos and Thanatos “twin brothers” (Iliad XVI. 838);
Jesus describes the deceased Lazarus as “asleep” (John 11:11); and Macbeth refers to sleep as
the “death of each day’s life” (Macbeth II. 2. 49). Sleep, like death and also the spirit world,
exists outside of time and space, for we consciously lose all conceptions of both, while the
“night-side of the mind” (Herdman 12) comes alive in its own parallel universe. The oneiric
other who becomes active while his waking double remains dormant – whether he represents
repressed desires, psychic inclinations, occult knowledge, or proof of an afterlife – lives in an
alternate, atemporal reality, much like the spirit world in which Capuana so adamantly believed.
The notion of deceased spirits seeing into the future and possessing privileged knowledge of life
and death is a common one, for they also exist outside of the human constraints of time and
space and are privy to those ontological secrets that elude the living. Sleep – as Death’s “second
self” as Shakespeare so aptly describes it – could also be construed as a portal to the esoteric
worlds of the afterlife and the unconscious where the rules of the material, rational world do not
apply.200 A person goes somewhere else, lives another life in his sleep and in the present story,
199
In Theogony 211. 756, Hesiod describes the family tree of Nyx (night) whose fatherless offspring include Hypnos
and Thanatos. (Violent or cruel death and slaughter was embodied in the female spirits known as the Keres, the
sisters of the twin brothers.) According to Hesiod, Hypnos lives in the Underworld with his brother Thanatos, yet
unlike him, is welcomed by men. In the Iliad, Hypnos and Thanatos carry Sarpedon to his final resting place in
Lycia for burial (XVI. 671 – 675) and on Greek vases the brothers are depicted as transporting human warriors to
their graves (The Oxford Classical Dictionary 737; 1492).
200
In the second quatrain of Sonnet 73, Shakespeare writes, “In me thou seest the twilight of such day / As after
sunset fadeth in the west, / Which by and by black night doth take away, Death’s second self, that seals up all in
rest” (32). Interestingly, Capuana was a great admirer of Shakespeare and we recall the citation from Hamlet that
acts as the epigraph to Spiritismo?: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in
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Capuana masterfully depicts this universal, though nonetheless uncanny phenomenon. Van
Spengel’s second self emerges in Death’s second self where he accesses a hidden knowledge of
impending events, while concurrently confounding the typically linear progression of past,
present, and future. Capuana’s detective exists in two worlds of the living and of the dead, and
from an existentialist standpoint, essentially represents what every human being experiences
from the time of birth – that she is at once both living and dying.201
While a death-like sleep informs the entirety of Capuana’s somnambulist story, a character in the
outermost frame of the narrative draws a specific parallel between sleep and its fatal counterpart.
A member of the crowd gathered outside of the palazzo Rostentein-Gourny (where the four
murders occurred) declares that the marchioness, her daughter, the maid, and the porter “hanno il
sonno duro” (220).202 Van-Spengel, who had just been fused with Death’s second self in his own
slumber, immediately turns white. His sudden pallor mirrors the sallowness of the corpses that
he had just read about in his other’s manuscript, and that have just been discovered in his present
reality; here we note how the realities of the dream world (depicted in the second Van-Spengel’s
crime report) and the realities of the waking world of the first Van-Spengel intersect, and exist
simultaneously in the detective’s mind. The crossing of these parallel lines/lives sparks the
protagonist’s downward spiral into madness, which is foreshadowed by the “parola” (I, 220) (the
word, the authority) of Doctor Croissart’s narrative, inserted once again into the narrative proper:
your philosophy” (I.5.166 – 167). The same quotation (in Italian translation however) concludes into the novella
“Enimma,” and is spoken by a philosopher who cannot make sense of a spiritistic occurrence.
201
The idea that we are born dying is a common one, and notions of human’s desire to return to a state of
nonexistence in the tomb that mirrors that same state in the womb and beforehand are common in literature and
philosophy. In Heidegger’s discussion of a Being-toward-death in Being and Time, he cites the medieval Bohemian
poet Johannes Von Tepl: “‘As soon as man comes to life, he is at once old enough to die’” (289).
202
Capuana’s imagery of “il sonno duro,” the hard or deep sleep of death, explicitly emphasies sleep and death as
complementary doubles, and hearkens back to the iron sleep of death that Virgil describes in the Aeneid: “Olli dura
quies oculos et ferreus orguet / Somnus; in aeternum claudunter lumina noctum” (X. 745 – 746); “Olli dura quies
oculos et ferreus orguet / Somnus; in aeternum condunter lumina noctum” (XII. 309 – 310).
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‘È difficile – egli scrive – indovinar con precisione ciò che accadeva nell’animo del
signor Van-Spengel alla terribile conferma data dai fatti alla sua visione di sonnambulo.
Il giudice signor Lamère, appena arrivato sul luogo notò che l’aspetto del direttore era
nervoso. Guardava attorno un po’ stralunato; pacchiava colle labbra asciutte, impaziente.
Era di un pallore mortale, quasi cenerognolo; respirava affannato. Il signor Lamère gli
rivolse più volte la parola senza spillarne altra risposta che uno o due monosillabi’ (I, 220
– 221).
As soon as Judge Lamère arrives on the scene, he notices the detective’s nervous aspect, which
not only connotes anxiousness, but also in its Nineteenth-century context indicates a disturbance
of the nerves, so often cited as a prime symptom of hysteria.203 Van Spengel’s bewildered look,
impatience, deathly pallor, heavy breathing, and near speechlessness all appear as physiological
symptoms of his psychological anxiety in actually living the events that his slumbering double
had recounted the night before. These symptoms alongside the detective’s horror at seeing the
bodies, his own admonition that he was feeling “a little bit” ill (221), and his catatonic-like state
at the crime scene further foreshadow his ultimate plummet into the abyss of “psychic death” in
insanity. Van-Spengel rouses himself from his silent musing and refers to the manuscript his
oneiric other had written in order to determine how he should proceed with the investigation.
Upon reading those unknown lines written in his own handwriting, the detective assumes
“un’espressione stranissima” (I, 222) and as he continues reading the crime report his physical
characteristics seem to change:
Il luccichio dei cristalli degli occhiali, ogni volta che alzava il capo quasi cercasse una
boccata d’aria, accresceva il sinistro splendore della pupilla e del volto. Le rughe della
sua fronte parevano tormentate da un’interna corrente elettrica, e comunicavano la loro
violenta mobilità a tutti i muscoli della faccia. Le labbra si allungavano si contorcevano,
203
In Il secolo nevrosico (1887), Paolo Mantegazza defines “nervosismo” as “uno stato generale di tutto il sistema
nervoso, più difficile a intendersi che a definirsi” and refers to the common usage of the phrase “Io ho i nervi!” to
express anxiety and stress (6 – 7). In his study of Capuana’s “romanzo naturalista,” Valerio cites the author’s
contemporary Mantegazza as an influence on the Sicilian writer (94 – 95). As developments in medicine and
psychology continued in the Twentieth Century, the notion “nerves” became progressively less emphasized as
neuroses and psychoses became the subjects of medical and psychological studies.
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si premevano, l’uno sull’altro mentre i piedi sfregavano continuamente sul tappeto,
poggiando con forza (I, 222).
The enhanced splendor of Van-Spengel’s eyes and countenance may allude to the light of
(prescient) knowledge buried deep within his unconscious mind, belonging to an other
consciousness that has now, through writing, meshed with his waking life. The mutation of his
facial features – the wrinkled brow, the twitching muscles, the contorted lips – expose the other
policemen (and the reader) to another Van-Spengel, as if his second self speaking through the
manuscript has also begun to manipulate his physical appearance.204 The motifs of
transformation and consequently multiplicity are further reinforced when Van-Spengel
apprehends the murderer, who possesses three false identities (Doctor Bassottin, Signor
Colichart, Anatolio Pardin) and wears various disguises accordingly. During the dramatic
confrontation between Van-Spengel and the assassin, the former requires the latter to remove his
robe and wig, and put back on his fake mustache before handcuffing himself. The surprise and
humor provoked by such a scene à la Scooby Doo is undercut however by the deceased
marchioness’s letter and the final mental breakdown of the detective. The three identities of the
culprit reflect the three Van-Spengels that we encounter in the tale(s): the conscious, original
Van-Spengel of Doctor Croissart’s narrative; Van-Spengel’s clairvoyant second self who
composes the crime report; and the character Van-Spengel, protagonist of the crime report. In
fact, the mental degeneration of the original Van-Spengel began when the narrative of his second
204
The image of the electric current here, later used to describe the detective’s usual, “electric intuition” (224), is
noteworthy. Electric currents run through and make connections throughout the nervous system and are part of that
hidden world of the human that so fascinated physicians, psychologists, and artists of the time. For Capuana,
invisible phenomena such as X-rays and the wireless telegraph are part of the “di là,” which comprises that hidden,
unknown, but nevertheless existent part of the Natural world. We recall the author’s mention of these previously
inconceivable scientific advancements that expanded the parameters of the natural world. For Capuana, we
remember, spirits and psychic phenomena may be inexplicable according to present notions of logic and positivistic
knowledge; however, they still exist. The electrical imagery used to describe Van-Spengel seems to allude to this
Capuanian idea.
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self was progressively realized, that is, when the waking and the sleeping realms became mirror
images of each other and the detective became aware of this strange, inexplicable occurrence.
Furthermore, when the first Van-Spengel decides to enact the narrative of his somnambulist
double, he essentially loses his subjectivity and morphs into the protagonist of his second self’s
chronicle, confounding not only the notion of authorship once again, but also that of a fictional
character. As the original Van-Spengel (who contains his latent second self within him) literally
becomes the protagonist (and the third) Van-Spengel, the extra-diegetic world (which is still part
of the overall diegesis from the reader’s viewpoint) clashes with the internal, diegetic microcosm
(created by the somnambulist Van-Spengel) and these two realities fuse into one. The
intersection of these parallel worlds – the original Van-Spengel’s reality, the alternate reality
where his second self resides, and the narrative space of the crime report – proves disastrous, for
the detective cannot fathom such a paradox. In his final “fierissimo accesso nervoso” (229) we
witness Van-Spengel’s complete loss of subjectivity, his psychic death, as he suddenly loses
touch with reality upon presenting Judge Lamère with the case report that his second self had
presciently written the previous night. The detective’s last words – “Il verbale eccolo qui!” (I,
230) – are circumscribed by the unnamed narrator’s vivid description of his comportment as he
teeters on the edge of sanity. Van-Spengel’s stuttering voice, staggering stance, idiotic smile,
and convulsive laugh confirm the narrator’s exclamation, “Era ammattito!” (I, 230) and this
clinical case of “psicologia patologica” (I, 230) is closed. In case the reader should doubt the
veracity of the insanity diagnosis, the narrator ends his story as he began it – with reference to a
model authority figure, Doctor Croissart (who we are finally informed is the director of the
lunatic asylum in Brussels). In his memoirs, the physician poses one of those rhetorical
questions so frequently used by Capuana to argue the existence of occult phenomena: “Quando
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vediamo il nostro organismo mostrar tanta potenza in casi tanto eccezionali ed evidentemente
morbosi, chi ardirà d’asserire che le presenti facoltà siano il limite estremo imposto ad esso dalla
natura?” (I, 230). The doctor, not the detective nor the narrator, has the final words; his poignant
inquiry not only cements itself into the reader’s mind as food for thought, it also renders him a
predecessor of those other Capuanian physician-philosophers who refuse to believe solely in the
uomo-macchina, and who actively engage in the study of the spiritual and/or psychical
otherworldly.
The enlightened physician embodies the sometimes harmonious, sometimes conflictual
marriage of the real and the ideal – essential elements in Capuana’s approach to literature and
philosophy, and also fundamental components in fantastic discourse, of which all of our authors’
works find a place. While Doctor Follini and Doctor Mola remain the most memorable, dualistic
medical practitioners in the Capuanian oeuvre, less well-known (though nevertheless eclectic)
doctors enliven the pages of the author’s numerous short stories. The octogenarian Doctor
Maggioli acts as the inventor and narrator of the ten novelle (and “Conclusione”) of the 1901
collection Il Decameroncino that, as its diminutive title suggests, takes limited inspiration from
Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron.205 Often considered the alter ego of the author, Doctor
205
Capuana, a great proponent and executor of the short story, admired the immortal Boccaccio, yet thought that his
narrative art of the novella should and could be adapted to modern exigencies. In Per l’arte, Capuana expresses his
veneration of the Decameron, yet emphasizes it as an anachronistic approach to the short story: “Sarà sempre il
Boccaccio e sarà letto eternamente e l’ammirazione per quel suo Prencipe Galeotto diventerà ancora più grande
nell’avvenire. Però vorrei vedere che viso voi farete se uno dei nostri novellieri contemporanei si lasciasse prendere
dalla tentazione di presentarvi un volume di novella alla boccaccesca, e non pel capriccio di fare un pastiche, come il
Balzac coi suoi Contes drolatiques, ma sul serio, per tornare all’antico, per riannodarsi alla tradizione nazionale,
come predica certa gente…vorrei vedere che viso!” (46 – 47). Over fifteen years later, the Sicilian writer’s little
Decameron presents itself as a prime example of a contemporary take on the classic framed narrative in both form
and content. The most obvious difference is the length of the collection, as Capuana reduces it from one-hundred
tales and a conclusion to ten stories and a conclusion. Doctor Maggioli enacts multiple roles in the text, for unlike
his Boccaccian counterpart, the physician-philosopher is organizer and compiler of the tales (the outermost frame),
narrator (and therefore framer) of each short story within the collection, and personally involved in each tale
(because they are all supposedly accounts of his own life stories). As opposed to Boccaccio’s principal rustic
setting, Capuana’s diegetic universe is the aristocratic salon of the Baroness Lanardi, where various personages of
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Maggioli addresses various topics in his accounts, though they are all informed by his own (and
consequently Capuana’s) unwavering interests in exceptional psychopathological and spiritistic
cases.206 One of these paranormal instances presents itself in the novella recounted on the
seventh day, “Il sogno di un musicista,” in which the Doppelgänger emerges yet again in various
ways: as the complementary, manifest doubles of Doctor Maggioli (the character within the
framed narrative) and his housemate, the young Viennese musician Volgango Brauchbar; and
through the division and duplication inherent in the parallel existences of the waking and the
sleeping Volgango.207 A sickly admirer of Bach, the effeminate pianist composed only sacred
music, and believed that the greatest musical expression was solely reached through prayer and
invocation of God (II, 298).208 Doctor Maggioli, a materialist atheist at the time, humored his
young friend whose experiences ironically undermine the physician’s own convictions in a
different ideological and religious affiliations gather to hear the physician’s stories. Doctor Maggioli appears again
in the 1911 collection La voluttà di creare, which like the Decameroncino, contains stories that could be classified
as science-fiction.
206
Cedola refers to Maggioli as the “alter ego inaffidabile dell’autore” (39). Ghidetti classifies him as the
amalgamation of Doctor Follini and Doctor Mola whose interests, like Capuana’s, reside in “i fenomeni
parapsicologici e spiritistici, la attenta curiosità per il progresso tecnologico, mito dell’età del positivismo, e una
vena appena dissimulata di greve moralismo nei confronti delle nuove generazioni” (“Nota introduttiva” II, 59).
207
The Italianization of the name Wolfgang, “Volgango,” seems an obvious allusion to the most famous Viennese
composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who besides his musical genius was also a religious man, growing up a
Catholic and remaining so throughout his life. Even though Capuana could not have read Freud’s Interpretation of
Dreams, Volgango’s Austrian nationality and the dream motif produce an uncanny effect on the Twenty-firstcentury reader who naturally associates Vienna and dreams with Freud.
208
The musician’s passion for sacred music and initial qualms about earthly love – a disgrace, a misfortune for an
artist (II, 298) – elevate him to a plane beyond the physical, to a realm where language and the conscious subject no
longer exist, a pre-linguistic and pre-subjective space akin to that unlocatable place before birth and after death.
Moreover, Volgango’s seemingly paradoxical passion for sacred music itself proves an abstract representation of the
double motif if one ponders the contradictory connotations of “sacred,” just as we have previously considered the
opposite meanings of the unheimlich – the homely and the unhomely, the familiar and the foreign – that Freud
espouses in his homonymous treatise. The most well-known definition of the term “sacred” hinges upon its
association with consecration and holiness. One of its definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary reads: “of things,
places, of persons and their offices, etc.: Set apart for or dedicated to some religious purpose, and hence entitled to
veneration or religious respect; made holy by association with a god or other object of worship; consecrated,
hallowed.” That which is sacred is usually therefore considered inviolable and reverent because of its holiness;
however, something “sacred” may also signify something “accursed [after the Latin sacer]” (OED online). Either
connotation however suggests a certain untouchableness with a person, place, or thing that is considered sacred
whether it is holy or accursed.
165
purely positivistic universe.209 Awakened in the middle of a cold winter’s night by an
impassioned, marvelous composition on the piano, the doctor inquires what had possessed
Volgango to play such a piece at such an hour. The boy recounts a mysterious dream in which
he heard a chorus of feminine, angelic voices singing an ethereal melody; however, he was only
permitted to remember the first part of the musical piece.210 Should he recollect the second half,
a voice told him, he would die; so, after initially wishing to remember the entire score, the
superstitious musician decides to no longer tempt fate. At his wedding reception, however, with
Doctor Maggioli turning the sheets of music beside him at the piano, a glowing and exhilarated
Volgango suddenly begins playing his dream chorus of which he remembers the entire
composition. The groom becomes progressively paler as he plays and the audience – Doctor
Maggioli included – are literally enraptured and paralyzed by the miraculous melody. Upon
executing the final notes, Volgango rests his head upon the keys and dies and once again the
complete enmeshment of two parallel realities – the waking and the sleeping life – produces
devastating results.
209
As in any first person narrative where the narrator discusses events of which he was an integral part, the reader is
immediately aware of the split between Doctor Maggioli the character, as opposed to Doctor Maggioli the narrator,
which functions on a banal level as a narratological doubling found throughout literature. (Any Italianist cannot
help but think of the separation and specification between Dante the pilgrim and Dante the poet.) This
differentiation between the past Maggioli in the story and the present Maggioli telling the story is further
emphasized by the narrator’s own words as he describes his relationship with Volgango: “Allora io ero materialista,
ateo, e quei soliloqui dell’anima pregante e invocante Dio, mi facevano sorridere, con grande afflizione del biondo
Volgango; ma gustavo infinitamente le sue meravigliose esecuzioni” (II, 298). The initial “allora” underlines the
temporal and ideological fissure between the past, narrated physician and the present, narrating doctor, who by the
seventh day obviously stands out as an atypical, reformed medical practitioner, believing in both sensory and extrasensory phenomena. The narrator’s affirmation of a dream’s realness at the outset of the tale, and consequently of
the relationship between the unconscious (or spiritistic) underworld and the material world, preemptively undercuts
the materialist Maggioli’s pitying, almost condescending perception of Volgango in the story within the story.
210
A similar dilemma plagues the protagonist-narrator of the short story “Un melodramma inedito” (first published
in Fumando in 1889 and then in Le appassionate in 1893). Ludovico, a fan of Beethoven and Wagner though not a
musician himself, dreams of an entire operatic composition in which his is composer, musician, singer, and audience
all at the same time. His artistic creation, beyond the control of his waking, rational consciousness remains forever
lost in the dream world because he is incapable of remembering it and transferring it into musical notes. According
to Di Blasi, the Minean author himself experienced similar episodes in which he could not remember the music of
his dreams: “Soffermandosi sul ricordo di un viaggio dalla stazione a Mineo, il Capuana penserà spesso ad una
‘composizione musicale’ da lui creata e poi svanita tanto era ‘inafferabile’ alla memoria” (DiBlasi 134).
166
Even before the narrator begins the uncanny tale of Volgango’s double consciousness,
overtones of ideological duality appear in the conversation between the physician-philosopher
and his audience that serves as a frame. In anticipation of the opposition between Volgango’s
rational, primary consciousness and his eerie, secondary (un)consciousness in the dream state,
Capuana begins the novella with a brief aside that juxtaposes the natural and the super-natural,
and that cleverly undercuts purely positivistic conceptions of reality. In his dialogue with a
lawyer in the crowd, Doctor Maggioli refers to his little stories as “memorie parlate” (II, 296),
thereby recalling oral tradition associated with the occult of myth and folklore, confounding the
typical image of a chronicle in written form, and simultaneously creating an image of a
hybridized, spoken memoir. In the same breath, he affirms that if he wrote his memoirs (as we
recall Doctor Croissart had), “gli scienziati se ne impossesserebbero e darebbero valore di
documenti ai fatti narrati” (II, 296); hence the physician infuses his oral accounts of curious
events he witnessed with the same prestige as scientific reports based on observation,
experimentation, and proof. In fact, both Doctor Maggioli’s unwritten memoirs in the form of
his spoken stories and parts of the scientific method involve the observation, the recording
(either in memory or in ink), and the transmission of data (verbally or in print). Moreover,
equalizing personal and therefore subjective experiences with those documentary, objective facts
that belong to scientific investigation, implicitly challenges positivistic authority while
concurrently inciting us to ponder the (im)possibility of absolute “truths.” Scientific
advancements continuously force humans to redefine the confines of the natural world as new
truths are discovered that had previously seemed inconceivable. Capuana, abreast of medical
and technological advancements, explicitly notes this in the previously cited short treatise, “Il ‘di
là,’” when he discusses those natural phenomena and man-made inventions such as X-rays and
167
the wireless telegraph (Mondo occulto 225). Just as the human senses cannot physically observe
the invisibility of X-rays or the wireless waves of the telegraph, neither can they definitely
observe spiritistic or psychic phenomena; in both cases, they can only witness their effects. 211
Just as in “Un caso di sonnambulismo,” an alternate oneiric reality emerges in “Il sogno di un
musicista,” whose effects are felt in the waking world and are therefore undeniably real. The
first words of the novella, “I sogni?,” present an immediate object of inquiry, whose
interrogative form functions as the initial question out of which a hypothesis develops regarding
the notion of multiple realities. The philosophical musing that frames the tale becomes
analogous to a hypothesis, while Volgango’s individual clinical case described in the story
proper becomes the testing and “proof” of the hypothesis that two, equally “real” and parallel
worlds exist, each producing effects on the other while remaining separate, though not always
mutually exclusive.212 The experiences of Volgango and his oneiric Doppelgänger that Doctor
Maggioli witnessed first-hand become “una prova evidentissima” (II, 297) of his premise that the
dream world is in indeed an alternate reality existing in another hidden, atemporal space. The
“di là,” as he so calls it in the following passage, is just as real, if not “more real” (II, 297) than
211
Also in the short piece “Il ‘di là’” Capuana declares: “è naturale che la scienza si mostri diffidente davanti a
fenomeni che sembrano appartenere alle regioni dove la fantasia dei poeti può sbizzarrirsi a capriccio […] il limite
del possibile non l’ha segnato nessuno” (Mondo occulto 228). Statements such as these support the claims for
Capuana as a proto- science fiction writer.
212
The fine lines between material reality and imagination, and scientific investigation and artistry, become further
blurred when one considers that Doctor Maggioli expresses and claims to “prove” his hypothesis using a “storiella”
(II, 297). The use of an individual case study to prove a hypothesis concerning a general conception is obviously
problematic in the eyes of a science that values the ability of repetition in an experiment. Capuana himself was
aware of this as he demonstrates in “Il ‘di là:’” “La più forte obiezione che una volta soleva farsi alla maggior parte
dei fenomeni spiritici era la difficoltà di riprodurli a piacere nei laboratori per sottoporli a uno studio rigorosamente
scientifico” (Mondo occulto 226). In the frame of “Presentimento” in the Decameroncino, Doctor Maggioli affirms:
“La psicologia non è ancora scienza positiva; le manca una delle più vitali condizioni: l’esperimento. Essa studia
certi fenomeni, certi fatti, ma non può riprodurli a piacere per sottometterli all’esame provando e riprovando” (II,
272). One cannot help but think of the habit in psychoanalytical writings to utilize individual case studies to prove
the truth of hypotheses concerning consciousness and the unconscious. Many of Freud’s treatises on art and
literature are themselves considered hybrids of science and aesthetics, while Jung is often remembered for his use of
myth and philosophy in his approach to human consciousness and the unconscious; one can easily see why
psychoanalysis was labeled a pseudo-science for its marriage of seemingly opposing disciplines.
168
the natural, waking world. Like Tarchetti had so masterfully done before him in the frame of “I
fatali,” Capuana appropriates here (succinctly though still effectively) a scientific language of
hypotheses and proofs, coupled with the requisite observation of strange, paranormal events in
order to at once undermine traditional (positivistic) notions of natural reality, and give credence
to seemingly supernatural phenomena. In other words, Don Lisi utilizes the very apparatuses of
the scientific process – doubt, hypothesis, first-hand observation – in order to “prove” the
validity of a traditionally superstitious belief that dreams can in fact forebode the future, or
influence our conscious lives.
At the behest of his fellow soiree guests that include a baroness, a priest, and a lawyer
(among others), Doctor Maggioli expresses his opinion regarding the true nature of dreams. In
an affirmative statement that functions not only as a frame for the story, but also as an
ontological hypothesis concerning our waking and our dreaming lives, the doctor declares:
“dormendo, noi sogniamo sempre, anche quando non abbiamo nessun ricordo di aver sognato. Il
sogno differisce dalla realtà in questo soltanto: è un’altra realtà. È più bella, più libera, più reale
aggiungo” (II, 297). Maggioli’s aphoristic affirmation incites much reflection, for not only does
it dismantle the notion of a monolithic, absolute reality, it also reinforces the conception of the
dream as a more beautiful, freer, and more real reality. While such a statement seems absurd to
some of the ingenuous audience members of the tale, the reader understands that this dreamy
other space houses repressed or unconscious desires, and long-forgotten or collective knowledge,
and is therefore most definitely more free and more real.213 Maggioli’s thesis is by no means
213
In “A Note on the Unconscious in Psychoanalysis” (1912), Freud succinctly describes the dreamscape, in which
“the residue of the day’s mental work” fuses with “the unconscious tendencies present ever since childhood in the
mind of the dreamer, but ordinarily repressed and excluded from his conscious life” (54). The fusion of these two
realities in the dream – the conscious and the unconscious – therefore constitutes a more complete, a more real
reality; however, when these two parallel existences cross in the waking lives of our Capuanian protagonists, the
169
unheard of in the Nineteenth-century, for even before Freud deconstructed the dream work and
Jung searched for the archetypes there, humans were concerned with potential hidden meanings
and prophecies that could emerge in their sleep.214 Recent predecessors and contemporaries of
Capuana addressed the dreamscape, not as a fictional world, but as another, veritable reality that
exists alongside and sometimes flashes into our conscious existence through cloudy memories of
the dream in most cases, and through mystical phenomena in a few (such as those recounted by
Capuana).215 As Farnetti rightly observes, Samuel Taylor Coleridge depicts an instance of
artistic inspiration that seemingly invades the sleeping mind from somewhere else in the preface
to Kubla Khan (47).216 In “Riccardo Waitzen,” the narrator prefaces his story with the typically
Tarchettian philosophical frame in which he discusses the waking and the sleeping worlds as two
results are devastating as demonstrated by Van-Spengel’s insanity and Volgango’s untimely death. Jungian
psychology also posits dreams as the place where we encounter the most real reality, for the conscious, the personal
unconscious and the collective unconscious may all reveal themselves there (“The Concept of the Collective
Unconscious” 67).
214
Dreams have always been a source of interest and enigma, begging to be interpreted. The ancient Greeks
dedicated numerous temples to Aesculapius, the god of physicians who healed or provided advice in dreams. The
largest book on dreams remains Artemidorus’s three volume collection, Oneirocritica (The Interpretation of
Dreams), written in the second century A.D., which is a dream dictionary, as well as a guide to dream interpretation.
Artemidorus differentiated between dreams that came out of the quotidian and the present (insomnium) and dreams
that alluded to a more profound consideration of life at a mystical level (somnium). Another classification of dreams
was comprised of those that predicted the future (Lewis 20 – 21). In the frame of “Il sogno di un musicista,” Doctor
Maggioli underlines the prescient potential of dreams: “Egli spesso, nel sogno, vede chiarissimo il futuro; scioglie
problemi che, sveglio, non era riuscito a distrigare, crea opera d’arte che, sveglio, era incapace di creare” (II, 297).
215
In her reading of “Il sogno di un musicista,” Farnetti characterizes Doctor Maggioli’s affirmation in dual realities
as a predecessor of Twentieth-century works: “L’interpretazione dell’esistenza onirica come competitiva e non
meno reale dell’ordinaria, e addirittura come dimensione avvolgente la sfera del quotidiano, in cui questa si riflette
mediante un processo di indefinita e disorientante reciprocità speculare, è frutto di un’intuizione rilevante, che si
rinviene nella complessa e suggestiva Weltanschauung di alcuni illustri scrittore del Novecento” (45). Farnetti adds
that the physician’s soliloquy on the other reality of dreams seems to anticipate similar stances adopted by Jorge
Luis Borges (46).
216
“The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which
time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if
that indeed can be called a composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel
production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awakening he
appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and
eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved” (Coleridge 52).
170
viable realities, not necessarily mutually exclusive. He even suggests, like Doctor Maggioli, that
the oneiric existence is fuller, vaster, and therefore more real.217
The common knowledge of human forgetfulness regarding dreams that Doctor Maggioli
mentions in the above declaration incites us to recall once again the previously-addressed tale of
“Un caso di sonnambulismo,” in which Van-Spengel remembers nothing of his clairvoyant night
visions, and Sleep emerges as Death’s second self. The physician’s delineation of two parallel
existences touches upon the classical quandary of forgetfulness that frequently enters into
discourse on dreams and metempsychosis, which are inherently intertwined in ancient literature
and myth, as the doubles Sleep and Death both reside in the Underworld.218 Doctor Maggioli’s
assertion that the dream content may pass into oblivion after awakening, combined with the
conception of Sleep as Death’s twin, further emphasizes the dreamscape as a hidden, mysterious
alternate space – much like the afterlife – where mystical, ontological secrets remain tucked
away from a human being’s rational, conscious mind.219 The typical inability to retain clear
images or overly-specific information from the dream work not only echoes an issue that Freud
217
In the lengthy frame the narrator declares: “Chi vi dice che mentre vi si affaccia un’immagine nel sogno,
quell’immagine stessa non sia lì viva, palpitante, curvata sopra di voi o assisa presso il vostro guanciale? E chi vi
dice ancora che voi sognate? Che cosa è il sogno se non che un’esistenza piena, colma, smisurata, al cui confronto
l’esistenza della veglia non è che la vita monca e impotente della pietra?...Veglia, sonno…parole! Io non vi
domanderò quali fatti appartengono al mondo reale e quali a quello della immaginazione, non vi domanderò ancora
quale sia quella linea che separa questi due mondi – negatemi che i fenomeni esistano” (Amore nell’arte 51).
Ghidetti mentions “Riccardo Waitzen” in a footnote at the outset of “Il sogno di un musicista” because of the music
motif and the final scene where the musician, like Capuana’s Volgango Brauchbar, dies at the piano at the wedding
reception. In the same footnote, Ghidetti recalls that dreams were a frequent topic of discussion at Capuana’s
Roman residence that intellectuals including Luigi Pirandello frequented (II, 296). Dreams are a prevalent motif in
Capuanian writings and Doctor Maggioli’s assertion that the oneiric world is merely another reality is reiterated by
Gullini in the novella “Sogni…non sogni!” first published in Il Marzocco in June 1905 and later in volume form in
Figure intraviste: “noi viviamo due vite, quella della veglia e quella del sogno, egualmente reale tutti e due”
(Novelle del mondo occulto 267).
218
It is interesting to note that in mythology, Hypnos and Thanatos both reside in the Underworld, and according to
Ovid, a branch of the river Lethe runs past Sleep’s residence: “From under the rock’s base a little stream, / A branch
of Lethe, trickles, with a mumur / Over the shiny pebbles, whispering Sleep!” (Metamorphoses XI. 602 – 604).
219
In Freudian parlance, the interpretation of the events of our oneiric existence acts as “the royal road to a
knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind” (Standard Edition VI, 8).
171
addresses in The Interpretation of Dreams, it also conjures up mythological images of Lethe, the
river in the Underworld from which deceased souls drank in order to forget their past lives.220
The physician’s reference to the sleeping life as the “di là,” incites us to remember Capuana’s
use of the term to connote the various components of the occult realm, which include not only
spiritual or marvelous phenomena, but also psychical, uncanny occurrences.221 Doctor
Maggioli’s conviction in the parallel realities of the waking and the sleeping life implies a human
being’s intrinsic doubled existence, as both conscious and unconscious entity.
In response to Doctor Maggioli’s assertion that dreams are more real than waking life, a
cynical lawyer, who in stark contrast to the spirit-seer attorney Don Aquilante in Il marchese di
Roccaverdina, voices his incredulousness regarding the truth of dreams. Acting as the devil’s
advocate, the doubting lawyer interjects that he has died or been hurt in his dreams only to wake
up unharmed in the present life, which, according to him signifies that the dream world is purely
fictional. Doctor Maggioli’s rebuttal reinforces the existence of these parallel realities while at
the same time undermining the sensory and therefore materialistic side of the natural / supernatural dichotomy:
Ma di là, nella vita del sogno, è stato ferito davvero; ma di là, nella vita del sogno, è
morto davvero. E quando tra cento anni, se le fa piacere, morrà qui, in questa realtà, in
220
Freud notes that forgetfulness after dreaming is indeed common knowledge: “It is a proverbial fact that dreams
melt away in the morning. The can, of course, be remembered; for we only know dreams from our memory of them
after we are awake. But we very often have a feeling that we have only remembered a dream in part and that there
was more of it during the night; we can observe, too, how the recollection of a dream, which was still lively in the
morning, will melt away, except for a few small fragments, in the course of the day; we often know we have dreamt,
without knowing what we have dreamt […] All of this is very remarkable and not immediately intelligible (The
Interpretation of Dreams 73). Forgetfulness is also traditionally associated with the mystical phenomena of
reincarnation and we recall Aeneas’ voyage to the Underworld where his father Anchises shows him souls drinking
from the River Lethe so that they may return to the human world for another lifetime: “Souls for whom / A second
body is in store: their drink / Is water of Lethe, and it frees from care / In long forgetfulness” (Aeneid VI. 956 – 960).
221
We remember that in Capuanian parlance “di là” refers not only to the world of spirits that exist in a supernatural
world beyond the grave; it also indicates those inexplicable, invisible, uncanny phenomena – the super-natural as we
have designated them in this study, or the Natural as Capuana calls them – that make up the occult realities of
psychopathology and the unconscious where the clinical double flourishes.
172
questa natura, forse si desterà nell’altra, precisamente come da un sogno e dirà: ‘Che
stranezza! Mi era parso di morire! Come sembrano veri certi sogni!’ Lei ha troppo
fiducia nei suoi sensi; si figura che non lo ingannino. Ma sappia che la scienza non ha
ancora provato che quello che noi vediamo e tocchiamo sia precisamente quale noi
crediamo di vederlo e di toccarlo. L’enimma sta in questa essenza che noi chiamiamo
spirito e non sappiamo affatto che cosa sia (II, 297).
The juxtaposition of the physical senses with that indefinable and essentially unknowable
metaphysical element of human beings – whether it be called “spirito” as Maggioli says, or the
soul, or the psyche – continues to elude scientific explanation and human understanding. The
mind/body, or mind (and spirit)/body dichotomy (depending on one’s religious convictions) is
the oldest manifestation of the Doppelgänger motif, as we remember that in ancient beliefs the
soul was visualized as a precise counterpart of the body (Tymms 17), and dreams were often the
stage on which human beings saw themselves and others (both living and dead).222 In the above
citation, Capuana’s narrator ingeniously strips the waking and the sleeping lives of their typical
meanings and in a tour de force, imbues each with the other’s usual connotation. According to
Doctor Maggioli, if one dies in the dream world, then indeed they die there, yet are resurrected
here in the material realm. How are we to know if, dying in this world, we will not awaken in
some other place, whether it is called the afterlife or the otherlife? Our oneiric existence may in
fact be an alternate universe where half of the self, the one who walks beside us (the
Doppelgänger – who is at once an other and also ourselves), resides; as our dreamy double
merges with us in the waking life each day, so we merge with him in the sleeping life each night.
222
In the chapter on the double in anthropology, Rank discusses various ancient, folkloric, and modern non-Western
beliefs surrounding a person’s shadow as a human being’s mysterious double, as an extension and vital part of him,
and as “an actual spiritual being,” or “the oldest form of the soul” (The Double 58, 60). Tymms also notes: “In
some primitive beliefs, the soul-double, though it roams abroad with apparent independence when its owner is
asleep, ill or dead, is sensitive (like the shadow or reflection) to violence done to the body; so that, if it haunts living
people, it can be exorcised when the corpse from which it emanates is detected and destroyed” (17). Dreams also
provided human beings with “proof” that soul must exist outside of body because they could see souls of the absent
and the deceased in dreams (Rosenfield 312).
173
Should we die in this world and wake up in the other, then this life would have actually been the
dream. Doctor Maggioli’s observations echo similar ones made by the Tarchettian narrator in
“Le leggende del castello nero,” and also recall the same ancient Chinese proverb in which
Chuang-tzu dreams he is a butterfly and upon waking wonders if he is not a butterfly now
dreaming that he is a man. In short, the motif of duality that abounds in the narrative frame
anticipates the doubling-by-division and doubling-by-duplication that respectively emerge in the
story proper through the two Volgangoes, and in the complementary, manifest doubles of
Volgango and Doctor Maggioli.223
Like the somnambulist Detective Van-Spengel, the young Viennese musician experiences
both a self-division and a duplication, as he is both at once an other and also himself; he lives
contemporaneously, like all of us, between the alternating realities of this world and the
dreamscape, always already containing within him his oneiric other that he at once sees and
becomes in his sleep.224 In fact, the very uncanniness of dreams themselves greatly hinges upon
the dreamer acting as both subject and object in the dream insofar as he may observe others one
moment, and in the next actually watch himself, as if the oneiric scene were projected on a
223
I use Tymms’ terminology here to emphasize the ambiguous meaning of doubling. As the unheimlich contains
within it both the connotation of the familiar and the foreign, so does the double incorporate both division and
duplication. When an individual is divided, one becomes two and is therefore also duplicated. Tymms attempts to
differentiate between the double-by-duplication and the double-by-division. The former occurs with external
doubling, that is, when we are dealing with decomposition (when two characters each represent half of a
dichotomy), or with an outward projection of an internal division. In the double-by-division, the Doppelgänger may
be of a different substance from the original – a spiritual, hallucinatory, or oneiric double (Tymms 16 – 17).
224
While Detective Van-Spengel was unable to remember his parallel existence in the dream world, Volgango
vividly remembers his dream and carries the knowledge of the magical melody from his sleeping life into his
dreaming one. The pianist’s situation becomes even more complicated, however, as he informs Doctor Maggioli
that he was aware that he was dreaming: “avevo coscienza di sognare” (II, 300). The musician’s parallel existences
temporarily cross here as he reaches another level of consciousness, a liminal space between sleeping and waking.
Being aware that one is dreaming means that one is also aware of his oneiric consciousness differing from the
waking one; the slumbering individual is therefore existing both in the waking and the sleeping world
simultaneously, but in neither completely. The intersection of the dreamscape and the waking existence within the
dream itself most certainly confound the dreamer; however, the fatal implications of these two worlds crossing
happen later.
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movie screen with him as the protagonist.225 In fact, when Doctor Maggioli hears the first half of
the magical melody, he exclaims: “È il vostro capolavoro!” to which Volgango perplexedly
responds, “Mio?” followed by the physician’s thought-provoking comment, “Di chi dunque?”
(II, 301). This brief exchange between the doctor and the musician concisely communicates the
notion of the double-by-division, for (as Maggioli’s question implies) the conscious Volgango
did not compose the angelic song; his oneiric other hears the tune created by something deep
within his unconscious mind, in coalition with a feminine chorus.226 While Volgango’s
conscious mind sleeps, his unconscious mind awakens in the dream, so one could argue that half
of his psyche is active while the other half lies dormant. At the same time, one could also sustain
that Volgango becomes doubled, for his corporeal form remains present, while his psychic self
travels elsewhere, in a veritable out-of-body experience:227
Mi pareva di essere in mezzo a una fitta nebbia, illuminata da luce bianca bianca, assai
più bianca della luce lunare. Ero atterrito di trovarmi così sperduto, e non osavo di fare
un passo, quando tutt’ a un tratto una dolcissima voce mi disse, pian, all’orecchio:
‘Ascolta!’ Un coro di voci femminili; prima lento, quasi lontano, poi incalzante,
incalzante, con una melodia larga ma piena di fremiti, di lagrime…Oh! Oh! Una cosa
ineffabile! […] Ma ecco uno scatto di gioia, un sussulto, un inno di liberazione, di
redenzione, di trionfo! Tutte quelle voci lo lanciavano per lo spazio, tra la nebbia che
225
We recall that surrealists and avant-garde writers such as André Breton and Antonin Artaud considered cinema
the milieu that most closely mimicked the dream world. According to Breton, “‘From the instant he takes his seat to
the moment he slips into a fiction evolving before his eyes [the spectator] passes through a critical point as
captivating and imperceptible as that uniting waking and sleeping’” (Hammond 23). In the short piece “Sorcery and
Cinema,” Artaud affirms that “if cinema isn’t made to express dreams or everything in waking life that has
something in common with dreams, then it has no point” (Hammond 104).
226
The emphasis on the femininity of the voices that Volgango “hears” in his dream suggests a latent femininity
existent within him, and more active in the dream work. The co-existence of the masculine and the feminine within
a single subject not only recall Plato’s first, doubled human beings (man/man; woman/woman; and man/woman), it
also reminds us of the archetypes of the animus and the anima, the male and the female element present in all
human beings.
227
Near-death experiences continue to fascinate us today, as modern medical technology has allowed us to push
away the edges of death as it tries to take us; doctors are able to restart a stopped heart with electric shock or
adrenalin, actually reaching into death and pulling a patient out of it. Remembrance of dying and returning (whether
real or imagined), of a soul or consciousness leaving the body and returning to it finds resonance in ancient beliefs
or superstitions. For example, in some so-called “primitive” beliefs, the soul of a sleeping person may leave his
body, visit other places, and perform the actions of which the man dreams. It may therefore be fatal to suddenly
rouse a sleeper, for his soul is absent and might not have time to return (Rogers 7).
175
nascondeva ogni forma, via per l’infinito. Nessuna musica umana aveva mai attinto
quell’altezza di espressione e di forza. Me la sentivo vibrare dentro, dalla testa ai piedi,
come se tutte quelle voci scaturissero dai miei nervi in tumulto, dalle mie fibre, dal mio
sangue, dal mio spirito…E la sensazione era così forte che credevo di doverne morire (II,
300).
The fog, the bright lights, and the heavenly music retroactively imitate contemporary accounts of
near-death experiences when one teeters on the edge of the afterlife, of which the dream world
may be considered the mirror-image. We remember that the twins Hypnos and Thanatos both
resided in the Underworld, that place of pre-consciousness and pre-subjectivity, fleetingly
perceived in dreams and permanently reached in death. Volgango – already in the dream state
and therefore in an alternate state of consciousness – enters even deeper into another trance-like
state of heightened consciousness and rapture within the dream itself. The melody full of quivers
and tears sung by a chorus of female voices provokes exclamations of ineffable pleasure and
overwhelming sensations and emotions within Volgango, both in the dream and when he
recounts it to Doctor Maggioli. The overtly sexualized language – spasms, tears, tremors, joy,
liberation, redemption, triumph – does not merely indicate an orgasmic experience, it also
appertains to that alternative consciousness (or unconsciousness) of ecstasy that involves, yet
transcends the sensory and the emotional, and that belongs to both the profane discourse of
jouissance, and to the sacred discourse of religious mysticism.228 Volgango’s description of the
physical and mental rapture he experiences – the vibrations that shook him from head to toe, and
the complete engagement of his nerves, fibers, blood, and spirit that simultaneously absorb and
228
Ecstasy possesses many connotations. The first definition provided by the Oxford English Dictionary broadly
defines ecstasy as: “the state of being ‘beside oneself’, thrown into a frenzy or a stupor, with anxiety, astonishment,
fear, or passion,” and the image of being beside oneself implies a disconnect from the ego and hence a doubling of
the self. The OED also informs us that in early modern times the term was used to generally refer to “all morbid
states characterized by unconsciousness, as swoon, trance, catalepsy, etc;” hence, ecstasy is also pathological. The
final two definitions provided involve either the cancellation of the senses during “the state of rapture in which the
body was supposed to become incapable of sensation, while the soul was engaged in the contemplation of divine
things,” or “an exalted state of feeling which engrosses the mind to the exclusion of thought.”
176
excrete the ethereal music – are spot-on descriptions of the ecstasy felt in the breakdown
between self and other in jouissance, and between self and the divine in holy mysticism.
Volgango’s depiction of his sexual-sacred experience is far more complex than its duality, for
both jouissance and religious ecstasy exist in a Real space beyond words, where language has no
meaning, as his exclamation, “Oh! Oh!...Una cosa ineffabile!,” so succinctly discloses.229
Furthermore, these seemingly oppositional doubles of profane enjoyment and spiritual rapture –
in which the subject loses subjectivity and the “I” is apparently erased – also intrinsically share
the common denominator of death. Like jouissance and ecstasy, death – another state of nonbeing that exists outside of time, space, and language – is frequently connected to orgasmic
experience. Volgango’s inexpressible physical and emotional engagement in absorbing and
releasing the heavenly melody overcomes him, as he believed he should die from such an
indescribable, otherworldy, all-encompassing “sensazione” (II, 300).230 Volgango’s conviction
in the imminence of his own death amidst the presence of the ethereal chorus, his direct
confrontation with his own mortality within the dream, not only foreshadows his actual,
physiological passing on the evening of his nuptials, it also acts as an explicit encounter with that
uncanniness inherent in the very idea of dying.231 While his detective counterpart suffered a
229
“Real” is capitalized here in order to refer to the Lacanian conception of the Real that remains outside of speech
and language, but that is elusively present in the unconscious and felt in dreams, symptoms, and hallucinations of
psychotics (Childers 254). According to Kristeva, the Real erupts into our lives when we encounter the abject (a
breakdown of subjectivity in trauma, corpses, and excrement) that is also tied to fear and jouissance. In Kristevian
parlance, “when I seek (myself), lose (myself), or experience jouissance – then “I” is heterogeneous” (Powers of
Horror 10).
230
As discussed above, Capuana harbored great interest in the power of artistic expression and its relationship to the
occult realm of spirits and the psyche. Though the Sicilian author dabbled in painting, photography, and drawing
(much to his friend Verga’s dismay), he was not a skillful musician. Capuana’s placement of music at such an
elevated, spiritual level in “Il sogno di un musicista” incites us to recall the Schopenhauerian conception of music as
the highest form of art, as a direct expression of the Will.
231
The human struggle to come to terms with our own fatality is universal, for “our unconscious is still as
unreceptive as ever to the idea of our own mortality.” Among the instances of the unheimlich that he espouses in the
homonymous treatise, death takes a primary position: “to many people the acme of the uncanny is represented by
anything to do with death, dead bodies, revenants, spirits and ghosts” (Freud The Uncanny 148).
177
psychic death when faced with the truth of his prescient, other self, the sensitive, religious
Viennese musician actually dies in this world when he remembers and plays the entire beatific
tune. The warning from a single female voice among the oneiric chorus – “se ricordassi anche la
seconda [parte] morresti” (II, 300) – also anticipates the protagonist’s ultimate demise, and
echoes similar conceptions of the sublime and the unknowable that comprise discourse on the
divine.232 Whether the melody overheard in Volgango’s dream was indeed a forbidden
knowledge of the sacred music of the spheres, or a sonorous manifestation of ineffable,
unconscious desires, its entrance into the musician’s waking reality results in sensory and
psychical overload, in an ecstasy with a fatal outcome. Instead of experiencing la petit mort of
the marriage bed, the passionate musician collapses on the death bed of his piano in the throes of
a seemingly ecstatic experience.233 Elements of Doctor Maggioli’s description of his suddenly
moribund young friend could easily be utilized in the portrayal of lovemaking, characteristic of
the typical wedding night. Seated at the piano, Volgango plays the heavenly song without
stopping, becoming progressively paler as he goes on, with “occhi spalancati enormemente e
fissi davanti a sé, quasi non vedessero,” and “perline di sudore” on his forehead and temples (II,
232
Depictions of God the Father in the Old Testament, are always of the non-anthropomorphic kind, for human
beings are not meant to know certain things; humans cannot look into the face of God and live. In Exodus 33:20,
Moses asks to see God’s glory after He promises the leader of the Israelites that his presence will accompany them,
yet God responds, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” (New American Standard Bible
1995).
233
The analogy between death and orgasm hearkens back hundreds of years and one recalls the many comparisons
of the two purely physical, ineffable phenomena by Shakespeare, one of Capuana’s admired authors. In Sonnet 92,
the poetic voice exclaims: “Happy to have thy love, happy to die!” (41), and in Much Ado About Nothing, Benedick
declares: “I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap / and be buried in thy eyes” (V.2. 80-81). A succinct history of death
as a double entendre in Western literature may be found in Williams (371 – 373). The fact that Volgango dies on his
wedding night while playing a musical piece written by angelic beings in the dream world reinforce the
interrelationships often highlighted by cultural theorists such as Lacan, and Kristeva between death, orgasm, and
ecstasy (often tied to the sacred), expressed in their diverse notions of jouissance. Despite different theoretical
approaches, jouissance always involves an ineffable experience of exhilaration that exists beyond language in nonsubjective states such as the womb, death, orgasm, ecstasy, and even the abject, where there occurs a breakdown
between subject and object, or where the subject no longer exists as such seems to enter into “Il sogno di un
musicista.”
178
302). His breath becomes more labored and panting, as the physical and psychical exertion in
the execution of the forbidden melody take their toll on the groom, and his body finally
succumbs to a fatal passion. In the last moments of his life, as he plays the “inno di gioia, di
liberazione, di redenzione, di trionfo” (II, 302), the wedding guests gather round Volgango,
mesmerized by the musical miracle unfolding before them. Even Doctor Maggioli is assailed by
a sudden, inexplicable malady impeding him from intervening in Volgango’s passion (i.e. his
concurrent exhilaration and suffering), as if seated beside him, the physician undergoes the
residual effects of his housemate’s musical ecstasy.
The positioning of Doctor Maggioli beside Volgango Brauchbar offers the reader a visual
image of a modern authority figure, masculine and middle-aged contrasted with the overly
sensitive, feverish, and effeminate musician; however, this final placement of the two characters
is not the first indication of their dynamic as dissimilar, yet complementary manifest doubles. At
the outset of the story, Doctor Maggioli mentions that these scientifically inexplicable events
took place when he was still a positivist and he was initially and condescendingly amused by
Volgango’s religious fervor. Each character represents a divergent ideology: the physician as the
model positivist / atheist, a man of science who appreciates art as a spectator, as opposed to the
mystical musician, the artist / believer who thinks sacred music the only kind worthy of
composition and execution. As an artist, Volgango is privy to inspiration (whether, as we have
not absolutely determined, may come from without and/or within). The musician is not merely a
spectator; he does not just listen and appreciate music as the doctor does, he makes music,
possessing an organic and a mystical bond with the sacred melodies he composes. His final
performance seems to have been infiltrated – if not by something ineffable and repressed finally
179
bursting forth into consciousness – by a bevy of angels inspiring (a là dolce stil novo) into him or
drawing out of him, the ethereal melody that finally proves fatal.
As the modern authority figure par excellence, the middle-aged materialist Doctor
Maggioli in the story proper exudes virility and self-assurance, while the young and sickly, artistbeliever Volgango consults the physician in regards to his stomach aches, and frets over the fact
that he loves and is loved. The narrator describes the musician as “biondo, bianco, esile e di una
timidità infantile” (II, 297), not only reinforcing his fragile nature and suggesting an effeminacy,
but also reminding us of another double (or half of a pair) – Tarchetti’s pale, delicate and girlish
“fatale,” Saternez. Just as the Baron Saternez and his father Count Sagrezwitch each existed as
an opposing Doppelgänger of the other, so do Volgango and Doctor Maggioli stand as opposite
sides of an ideological coin, each a double for the other and at the same time a half in the
positivist / idealist dialectic that is ultimately synthesized in the figure of the medico-filosofo, the
narrator Maggioli. Volgango’s spirituality seems to be in part transferred to the character
Maggioli as evidenced by his entracement in the wake of his friend’s last performance; in fact,
the doctor narrator in the frame of the Decameroncino (already considered a double for the
doctor protagonist within the novelle) embodies the reconciliation of positivism and idealism, for
he belongs to that group of Capuanian physician-philosophers whose hyphenated identities
rendered them especially dear to their creator. The decomposition encountered in “Il sogno di un
musicista” reflects similar instances in other Capuanian works where characters represent
opposing sides or halves of a binary that ultimately becomes harmonized in the text itself.234
234
We recall that Ernest Jones discusses decomposition in which various attributes of a given person are disunited
and several individuals are invented, each endowed with one group of the original attributes. The novella
“Sogni…non sogni!” (Figure intraviste, 1905) for example begins with the declaration, “noi viviamo due vite,
quella della veglia e quella del sogno, egualmente reali tutti e due; non ne dubito più!” (Novelle del mondo occulto
267), and depicts a conversation between a young believer Gullini and his older scientist friend Làrcani. Gullini
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Capuana resolves these contradictions in various ways: either by leaving the reader in that
liminal state of hesitation characteristic of the fantastic in which neither normal nor paranormal
explanations completely suffice to explain the inexplicable; or by giving credence to both the
natural and the supernatural, and uniting them under the umbrella of the Natural. The
haromonization of the traditionally opposing forces of the natural and the supernatural, and the
typically contrasting ideologies of positivism and idealism, infuse the Capuanian fantastic with
an extra dose of the uncanny, insofar as these synthesized dichotomies abstractly echo the duality
present within the characters themselves, and in the parallel realities in which they exist.235 In “Il
sogno di un musicista” and “Un caso di sonnambulismo,” both Volgango and Van-Spengel are
doubled in the dreamscape; however, their experiences within that oneiric dimension and the
repercussions in this world belong to the realm of the eccentric and unusual that hearkens the
fantastic of the Twlight Zone. Whether these occurrences are the result of spiritistic forces
infiltrating human consciousness, or residual effects of unconscious disturbances, the strangeness
of Volgango’s ethereal music and untimely death, and Van-Spengel’s somnambulist mediumship
recounts his oneiric adventures with an unknown woman who he later sees in passing on the street, and who
seemingly recongnizes him as well. Before they can properly meet in the waking world, she takes leave of him in
the dream world one night and the next day he discovers that she had died the very night before, at the same hour in
which she had left him in the dream. The banter that takes place between Gullini and Làrcani in which each
criticizes the others’ beliefs and supposed ignorance, reinforces the notion that each character represents, along the
lines of decomposition, a separate part of a whole; in the respective characters, we encounter a human’s rational,
material, conscious side as opposed to his irrational, spiritistic, unconscious side that argue with each other. The
young lover believes that his otherworldly romance and the uncanny disappearance of the girl in his dreams
(followed by her death in the material world) proves his initial hypothesis that we indeed live two separate lives –
the waking one and the sleeping one, that may sometimes intersect. Làrcani, the unwavering positivist attributes the
strange phenomena to coincidence, to which his friend replies, “tra la tua sciocchezza…scientifica e la mia
possibilità fantastica, preferisco questa” (Novelle del mondo occulto 272). Even though the fantastic explanation is
obviously preferred also by Capuana, at the end of the story, the reader as well as Gullini and Làrcani remain
incapable of knowing what really happened as the author harmonizes these conflicting ideologies under the umbrella
of the unexplainable in the realm of the fantastic where hesitation and uncertainty reside. The two friends agree to
disagree, and walk off together side-by-side, reconciled with each other because they have ultimately acknowledged
the strangeness of the situation even if neither can ever explain it.
235
Such a reconciliation between oppositions is reminiscent of a Hegelian synthesis, a concept with which Capuana
was undoubtedly familiar given his study of the Phenomenology of the Spirit. Moreover, we remember that Don
Lisi’s model philosopher, “il suo Dio” (Giacinta 161), who was also a physician – Angelo Camillo De Meis –
sought to reconcile Darwinism and Hegelianism in his novel-treatise Dopo la laurea.
181
and subsequent insanity, belong to a discourse of abnormality, and consequently disease.
Furthermore, the Doppelgänger that emerges in the alternate reality of the dream world
eventually crosses over into the protagonists’ waking lives; he wreaks psychological and
physiological havoc on his material counterpart, resulting in a veritable clinical case in which the
“patient” suffers a psychical demise, or a physical death.
An Unhappy and Unhealthy Couple: Head Cases in Profumo
Whether a splitting or a multiplication of the self occurs internally (as in the cases of
Van-Spengel, Volgango, and their oneiric others), or becomes externalized through
complementary, manifest doubles (as in the complex love triangles in Profumo), self-division
and duplication always involve a deviation from so-called “normality,” from a state of wholeness
and unity attributed to models of health. The pathological condition of the double – as a
breakdown of seeming completeness, as a battle between opposing forces of expression and
repression within the psyche – may also produce physiological symptoms, such as Giorgio’s
paleness, fatigue, and ultimate physical collapse in Fosca as he simultaneously embraces and
repulses his shadow self in the figure of Fosca. Even more so than Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s antihero and his deathly beloved (and beloathed), Luigi Capuana’s second novelistic heroine
Eugenia surfaces as the very embodiment of the psychosomatic. Living in a remote Sicilian
village with her new, frigid husband Patrizio and his perversely possessive mother Geltrude,
Eugenia suffers because of the Oedipal relationship between mother and son, and her
powerlessness to dissolve it even after her mother-in-law’s death.236 Eugenia’s frustration with
236
The absence of a paternal figure renders this family romance even more dramatic as the young Patrizio had no
rival for his mother’s affection and Geltrude focused all of her attention on her son, growing extremely jealous of
any external relationships he developed, as evidenced by her extreme disapproval of his childhood playmate
Giulietta. Fusaro specifically addresses Profumo for the presence of infantile sexuality and the Oedipus complex
182
the dysfunctional rapport between the threesome, the repression of her sensual and emotional
desires, and her eventual passion for her friend’s brother Ruggero produce both psychological
and physical effects; intermittent hysterical fits assail her and a fragrance of orange blossoms
emanates from her skin, as the desires and frustration she represses must inevitably find an
outlet. Like Fosca before her, Eugenia’s yearning for love and passion proves overwhelming,
yet it is the repression of her wish for these instinctual emotions that eventually leads to her
malady. While Eugenia is initially treated by Doctor Mola for her nervous breakdown or “crisi
nervosa” (50) and is immediately labeled “un’isterica” (50) by Geltrude, the reader notes from
the outset of the story that both wife and husband battle their own, interrelated neuroses resulting
from a convoluted sense of intimacy (on Patrizio’s part), a struggle with repression (on
Eugenia’s part), and a mutual problem of expression.237 In fact, Doctor Mola – the only
seemingly stable character of the novel – later tells Patrizio: “Ho già capito che qui i malati siete
due, e che vi è qualcosa di comune nelle rispettive malattie” (231). Each half of the couple had
(“Intuizioni freudiane” 130). Elsewhere, she sustains that Capuana’s second novel anticipates the Oedipus complex
that Freud will later describe in The Interpretation of Dreams (La nevrosi 126).
237
In contemporary parlance, “neurosis” is defined as “a psychological disorder in which there is disabling or
distressing anxiety, without severe disorganization or distortion of behaviour or personality,” while “psychosis” is
defined as “severe mental illness, characterized by loss of contact with reality (in the form of delusions and
hallucinations) and deterioration of intellectual and social functioning, occurring as a primary disorder or secondary
to other diseases, drug ingestion, etc.” (OED online). Unlike psychotics, neurotics do not suffer from delusions or
hallucinations and their typical behavior is not socially unacceptable. In other words, they can function “normally”
in everyday society; the disturbance is an interior one. According to Freud, “neurosis is the result of a conflict
between the ego and its id, whereas psychosis is the analogous outcome of a similar disturbance in the relation
between the ego and its environment (outer world) […] the transference neuroses originate in the ego’s refusing to
accept a powerful instinctual impulse existing in its id and denying it motor discharge, or disputing the object
towards which it is aimed. The ego then defends itself against the impulse by the mechanism of repression…”
(General Psychological Theory 185 – 186). Eugenia and Patrizio are both neurotic, suffering from inner turmoil and
issues with repression and expression. The classification of Eugenia as “hysterical” falls neatly into Nineteenthcentury tendencies to categorize any aberrant or excessive female behavior as hysteria (from the Greek hystera
meaning “uterus”). Studies of spiritism and psychopathologies went hand-in-hand in the fin de siècle. In
psychological or spiritistic experiments, hypnosis was often used on hysterics, or hysteria often resulted from
hypnosis. Fusaro emphasizes that research on neurosis developed alongside studies of the occult, affirming that “la
scuola della Salpêtrière e Jean-Martin Charcot (altro menzionato da Capuana), assimila isterismo e ipnosi: i segni
clinici sono identici e solo l’etiologia, spontanea e provocata, consente di distinguere l’isteria dall’ipnosi” (La
nevrosi 9).
183
expected something different from their matrimonial union; Eugenia had rightly expected
passion and affection natural in a legal, santificed romantic relationship, while Patrizio, in his
sheltered life, boyish ignorance, and innate timidness, had invented an “ideale purissimo” (234)
of the stereotypically demure, asexual wife, a mirror-image of a maternal figure. Here Capuana
seems to invert the typical gender roles, creating a man who avoids physical intimacy and a
woman who strongly desires it, so that Patrizio and Eugenia themselves stand in opposition to
each other, as contrasting doubles who are finally united as one at the seemingly happy
conclusion of the tale, as “due cuori già diventati un sol cuore” (252). The final pages of the
novel that portray the couple as a unity reiterate the very creed upon which marriage is based as
esposed in Ephesians 5:31: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be
joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”238 Capuana’s Patrizio, classified by
Fusaro as the only hero of the story and the primary subject of analysis, is nonetheless half of a
spousal pair that is inherently double insofar as husband and wife are legally and religiously
considered a unity.239 The trope of twos in Profumo, however, proves much more complicated
than a banal marital union; even though the double is indeed present in the contrasting characters
238
New American Standard Bible 1995. While critics disliked Profumo for its seemingly happy ending, the apparent
resolution of unity in division is surrounded by clues that the blue sky after the storm does not necessarily indicate
the end of all problems. Will Patrizio be able to continue to refrain from his previously habitual trips to the
cemetery? Has he successfully cut the apron strings, or has he let go of his first mother, and merely fallen into the
arms of another maternal figure in his wife? Despite Patrizio’s confession that “scendeva nel cuore di Eugenia come
pioggia ristoratrice” (249) and her eventual astonishment at her husband’s change in behavior, she nevertheless
experiences pangs of strangeness or estrangement towards him. While he covers her with kisses she remains in his
arms “fredda, inerte, ora agitata, sobbalzante, ma senza ricambiargli nè baci nè abbracci” (250). Eugenia finally
thanks the Holy Mother that Patrizio is entirely hers (252), yet the reader cannot help but be suspicious. The
inconclusiveness, rather the indefineableness, of Eugenia’s psychological malady occurs in the literary space where
authors (like the auctores of the hospital – doctors) study a “clinical case” of hysteria or neurosis without offering
concrete explanations of its cause, without definitely diagnosing, or in other words naming, the disease, and finally
without offering a fail-proof cure. Will Patrizio and Eugenia have a happy marriage and not just a happy moment?
I would argue that Capuana purposely leaves us in this state of uncertainty.
239
Fusaro declares: “Capuana sceglie un personaggio maschile come soggetto d’analisi, sicché cerca di sfruttare la
tematica fuori del topos del personaggio nevrotico femminile. La guarigione di Eugenia avviene appena l’origine
del suo male (l’insoddisfazione della libido) viene sradicata, mentre quella di Patrizio dipende da un lavoro più
profondo e più difficoltoso. Egli è il vero malato e l’unico eroe del romanzo” (“Intuizioni freudiane” 130).
184
of Eugenia and Patrizio (whose maladies in turn parallel each other), dichotomies ultimately
morph into trichotomies. The Doppelgänger in Profumo appears in two complex, intertwined
threesomes in which a pair of same-sex characters become exterior projections of the interior
partition of a protagonist of the opposite sex, while concurrently existing each as a manifest,
contrasting double of the other. More specifically, Patrizio’s duplicitous identity of son/husband,
boy/man, and the corresponding composite dichotomy of exaggerated morality versus passionate
pleasure, are reflected in the contrary figures of Geltrude and Eugenia respectively. Moreover,
the two primary female presences in Patrizio’s life – his wife and his mother – essentially
become exterior representations of opposing forces existing in and working on all human beings,
whether one chooses to refer to them simply as desire and conscience, instinct and morality, or as
id and super-ego.240 We shall begin our investigation of the complicated ménages a trois – first
of Patrizio-Geltrude-Eugenia, and later of Eugenia-Ruggero-Patrizio – with a treatment of the
psychosomatic in the novel, for its own dualistic nature especially parallels and intersects our
first trichotomy of son/husband-mother-wife, in which Eugenia emerges as an emblem of the
life-force of eros and libido, while Geltrude conversely appears as the destructive, moralistic
negation of these instincts.
Profumo, published serially in 1890 and then in volume form in 1891, is a modern
literary testament of the mind / body connection that so fascinated physicians and intellectuals at
the end of the Nineteenth Century. Capuana’s second, less critically acclaimed novel, is an
240
Though we will utilize a psychoanalytical nomenclature when appropriate, Capuana’s characters are much more
complex than mere masks of abstract Freudian concepts; hence, we will note potential, conceptual precursors to
psychoanalysis within the novel without forcing the text into a strictly rigid psychoanalytical framework. We will
maintain a hermenutical approach that does not forget the author’s own eclectic philosophy, and interest in the
mysterious (and sometimes mystical) interworkings of the human psyche and body. As Tarchetti before him and
Fogazzaro and De Marchi after him, Capuana was constantly intrigued by the dark recesses of the mind, so it is
natural that these authors’ works address questions of identity, consciousness, and unconsciousness that also interest
psychologists and eventually psychoanalysts alike.
185
inconclusive case study that belongs to that “psicologismo senza psicologia di fine secolo”
(Ghidetti L’ipotesi del realismo 186).241 In their various treatments of Capuanian narrative,
Ghidetti and Fusaro rightly note the underlying proto-Freudian threads in Profumo, emphasizing
the Sicilian author’s interest in fin de siècle psychology that ultimately assisted in giving birth to
the psychoanalysis popularized soon afterwards by Freud.242 Psychoanalytical overtones run
rampant throughout the text, especially in the convoluted Oedipal triangle that, instead of pitting
father and son against each other for the mother’s affection, involves a competition between wife
and mother-in-law for the attention and recognition of the husband/son. Patrizio’s undying
adoration of and devotion to his mother impedes him from expressing his love for his wife;
instead of basking in newly-conjugal bliss, he is repelled and horrified by Eugenia’s physicality
and natural desire for sexual and emotional intimacy. Doctor Mola, the seventy-year-old
physician-philosopher and mouthpiece of Capuana, informs Patrizio of the mysterious and
inexplicable connection between corpo and anima that lies at the root of both his and his wife’s
psychological turmoil: “Si tratta di un disordine morale che ne produce uno fisico, a mio modo di
vedere. Io sono codino, credo nell’anima; l’uomo-macchina non mi ha mai persuaso. Se voi
241
Fellow veristi, Giovanni Verga and Federico De Roberto, friends and correspondents of Capuana, expressed their
dislike of Profumo in various letters because of its lack of verisimilitude. Part of the reason for critical
dissatisfaction with the novel was its seemingly happy ending with the clichéd scene in which the cured Patrizio and
dumbfounded though content Eugenia look out the window at a blue sky after a storm (Ghidetti L’ipotesi del
realismo 186). Fusaro interprets the ending as indeed happy, and in her psychoanalytical reading of the novel
classifies it as anticipatory of the cure ultimately sought after in psychoanalysis, and of modern conceptions of the
unconscious and neuroses. She affirms: “Capuana fa mostra di eccezionale chiaroveggenza, se si confronta l’esito
dello sfortunato Profumo con le considerazioni sviluppate nella Dottrina generale delle neurosi del 1917. Freud vi
si dice convinto che le nevrosi siano curabili. Pertanto, lasciando da parte l’esperienza specifica della Scapigliatura,
se Pirandello è l’iniziatore della nuova concezione dell’inconscio e delle nevrosi, Capuana è decisamente il suo
profeta” (La nevrosi 358).
242
Ghidetti affirms that Capuana was undoubtedly abreast of Charcot’s infamous lessons at the Salpêtrière and the
psychiatric studies of the times as evidenced by Doctor Mola, who mentions the American neurologist William
Alexander Hammond and the Polish psychologist Julian Ochorowicz (L’ipotesi 184). According to Fusaro,
Capuana never completely abandoned the theme of nervous diseases, and anticipated the discoveries of modern
psychiatry: “questa ostinazione lo porta, nelle sue cosiddette opere psicologiche, a sorpassare gli stereotipi del
genere e a raggiungere certi risultati che solo più tardi, cioè con Sigmund Freud, verranno considerate delle
scoperte” (“Intuizioni prefreudiane” 124).
186
domandaste in che maniera anima e corpo stiano uniti, vi risponderei che non lo so” (231 –
232).243 The author’s use of the multifaceted term “moral,” as in a “moral disorder” that
produces a physical one, indicates both underlying anxiety and neurosis that afflict the mind, as
well as a question of conscience or guilt that plauges one’s sense of morality as defined by
society. Despite the inexplicability of the body/mind dynamic, their inextricable interconnection
remains at the forefront of human consciousness and unconsciousness. The psychosomatic
effects of the double are naturally tied to this most ancient duality of body and mind, which is at
the core of our very humanity, as we are obviously not only sensory, but also cognitive beings.
Just as the natural and the supernatural become synthesized in the Capuanian Natural, so are
corpo and anima interrelated elements that comprise our humanness, and that mutually affect
each other, as is evidenced intermittently throughout the story by the scent of orange blossoms
that emanates from Eugenia’s skin in times of emotional and psychological turmoil. The
mind/body dialectic runs as an undercurrent throughout Profumo, and in its duality abstractly
echoes the overarching theme of the double that emerges in the male and female protagonists’
psychopathologies. While the most obvious manifestation of the psychosomatic occurs in the
unexplained phenomenon for which the novel is entitled, it not only emerges in the active form
of aromatic production, it also appears elsewhere – in the physiological symptoms precluding a
nervous attack, and in Patrizio’s passive reception of the perfume. For example, when Eugenia
feels nervous fit coming on as her desire for Ruggero becomes unmanageable, the “sintomi
243
Doctor Mola may also be construed as a dualistic figure, for he embodies the Capuanian synthesis of positivism
and idealism with the additive of religiousness and a belief in immortality that his predecessor Doctor Follini lacked.
In fact, as Capuana grew older he began to classify himself as a believer as noted in the reproduction of a manuscript
in Capuana originale e segreto, in which the author exclaims, “sono credente!” (DiBlasi 289). In an interview with
Ugo Ojetti, he also declares himself a believer (Pagliaro 124).
187
precursori” include “l’aridità della gola, l’indurimento alla punta della lingua” (216), and when
the triduum fails to eradicate her “illness,” the physical results are overwhelming:
si sentiva sconvolta, e gli orecchi le tintinnavano, le zufolavano, le davano sensazioni di
scrosci di pioggia; perciò le saliva dai piedi alla testa quel formicolio dei nervi che
ricominciavano a distendersi, a contorcersi, quasi a provarsi per nuovi accessi, come in
quel momento […] E nel portare le mani alla faccia, inaspettatamente sentì di nuovo, per
la prima volta dopo tanti mesi, l’odor di zàgara che riprendeva, percettibile appena (218).
Just as sexual intimacy may be a multi-sensory experience, so does the onset of hysteria affect
the auditory, the tactile, and the olfactory senses. The release of the citrus perfume stands at the
apex of the external manifestation of Eugenia’s internal, repressed desire; its biological
inexplicability only enhances its mystery, yet seems a pleasant, rather than a horrific symptom.
Eugenia’s orange blossom scent, here and throughout the novel, elicits a sense of confusion and
fear from her husband; however, the pleasant smell of citrus hardly seems horrific, offensive, or
diseased as Patrizio so adamantly sustains. One would think that a floral-fruity fragrance would
instead act as an aphrodisiac, and even possibly entice her husband to provide the affection she
so desperately desires; ironically, Patrizio wishes to “cure” Eugenia and thereby eliminate an
organic perfume that could be associated with pheromonal pull and attraction.244 Whether
Capuana was aware of the naturalist experiments with chemical secretions in insects that would
later be called “pheromones,” is uncertain; however, the power of the olfactory sense is a
244
A pheromone is defined as: “a chemical which is secreted and released into the environment (typically in minute
amounts) by an animal, esp. a mammal or an insect, and which produces a specific physiological or behavioural
response when detected by another individual of the same (or a closely related) species” (OED online). Even though
the term “pheromone,” based on the Greek “pherein” (to transport) and “hormone” (to stimulate), was not
introduced until 1959 by Peter Karlson and Martin Lüscher, scientists were studying the modes of communication
and attraction between animals a hundred years before. A cursory look at the history of pheromones reveals the
interesting and mysterious pull that chemical secretions of an animal wield over another animal. In the 1870s,
French naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre hatched a female peacock moth in his lab and within hours many male moths
arrived; he hypothesized that a chemical emanating from the female attracted them. Scientists continued to study
this phenomenon in the following decades. Finally in 1959, German chemist Adolph Butenandt isolated a chemical
that he called bombykol (after the Latin name bombyx mori) from female silkworm moths that emitted a scent to
attract males.
188
universal knowledge, as one’s bodily scent, whether natural or enhanced by an externally-applied
fragrance, may either stimulate libidinal attraction, or elicit a reactionary repugnance in the
receiver of the smell. The scent that Eugenia releases from her entire body, and especially from
her fingertips (73), is classified by Doctor Mola as a physical symptom of an underlying
psychological ailment, “una condizione eccezionale dell’organismo, indizio di grande
delicatezza dell’apparecchio nervoso” (74). While Doctor Mola’s perplexity over the
physiological symptoms of Eugenia’s so-called nervous condition echoes the confusion of
Fosca’s physician, the Capuanian medico-filosofo blatantly acknowledges science’s ignorance
regarding the diagnosis, treatment, and definition of nervous illnesses, in particular those
fantastic maladies involving scentual secretions. In reference to nature’s metaphysical mysteries,
Doctor Mola affirms:
Tornando al profumo, guardate come si comportano gli scienziati! Sono morti centinaia
di santi e di sante, consumati da penitenze e da digiuni […] Dai loro cadaveri si è sparso
attorno un odore delizioso, odore di paradiso, è proprio il caso di chiamarlo così;
centinaia, migliaia di persone hanno potuto verificarlo e quel profumo talvolta è servito
come imbalsamatura, ritardando la putrefazione del cadavere […] La Chiesa proclama:
Miracolo! Io sto con la Chiesa” (74 – 75).
The physician’s commentary on this physiological abnormality, not only underlines science’s
limited bank of knowledge, it also elevates Eugenia to a level with the saints, whose bodies often
exuded pleasing, even Edenic odors, similar to the heroine’s own orange blossom scent.245 The
245
The conversation between Doctor Mola and Patrizio assumes the form of a critique of modern positivism and its
inability to fully comprehend occult occurrences and the interworkings of the human mind and body. Those socalled nervous diseases to which hysteria is usually relegated, baffled scientists, as the Capuanian physician so
poignantly notes: “Con le malattie nervose, non si sa mai. La scienza è bambina intorno a esse, va a tentoni. Noi
mediconzoli, imbattendoci in un caso che c’imbarazza, specialmente se si tratta di donne, sogliamo uscirne per il
rotto della cuffia, dicendo ‘Nervi! Nervi!’. Parole, nient’altro. E questo per la diagnosi. In quanto alla cura, non ne
parliamo” (74). Women’s health and anatomy continuously confounded doctors and hysteria became the stock
diagnosis for female anxieties and abnormal behavior, always remaining “una malattia ‘fuori della scienza’” (Fusaro
La nevrosi 42). Like the trope of the double and the genre of the fantastic, neuroses (of which hysteria was the most
studied form in the Nineteenth Century) existed in liminal spaces insofar as neuroses were not absolutely definable
but consisted of many symptoms both behavioral and physiological. (One thinks of Svevo’s Zeno Cosini as the
189
physician’s implicit canonization of Eugenia, and the likening of her supposed disorder to a
miracle confounds notions of disease as negative, and incites us to draw a parallel between the
female protagonist’s own dual nature (which we will later examine more closely), and the
various connotations of passion, which range from suffering (often in conjunction with saints,
matyrs, and the Passion of Christ), to any strong or overpowering emotions, to affection, love
and sexual impulses.246 In fact, Eugenia’s passion throughout the novel, for which she seeks
refuge in and assistance from the Holy Mother, is actually her Passion.247 In other words, she
suffers intensely because of the strong affection, love, and sexual desire she feels first for her
husband, and later for Ruggero, her friend Giulia’s brother, and son of the mayor of Marzallo.
As Patrizio’s indifference and silence increases after his mother’s death, Eugenia’s attraction to
Ruggero slowly grows while his attention, emphasized in his ever-present seductive stares,
becomes a substitute for the lack of attention from her husband. Anxiety-ridden, Eugenia turns
to Our Lady of Sorrows, and even organizes a triduum in honor of the “Madonna dello Spasimo”
(193), or the Swooning Mary, in hopes of receiving mercy and strength for her own Passion
(caused by her passion). Even though Mary’s swoons are not specifically addressed in the
Gospels, many Medieval and Renaissance paintings depict a fainting Holy Mother during
various instances of the Passion, such as the carrying of the cross, the crucifixion, and the
removal of Jesus’s body from the cross (Penny 26). The local church in Marzallo houses a
neurotic par excellence, from his obsessive smoking and boot fetishes, to his limping and hip pain, a prime example
of a psychosomatic condition, albeit different from Eugenia.)
246
The first definition of passion found in the Oxford English Dictionary reads: “senses relating to physical
suffering and pain” with subcategories referring to the Passion of Christ, “the sufferings of Jesus in the last days of
his life, from the Last Supper to his death; the Crucifixion itself,” and the suffering of martyrs and saints. Obsolete
definitions of “passion” include: “a painful disorder, ailment, or affliction of the body or a part of the body,” and “a
fit or a seizure; a faint.” Passion also indicates “senses relating to an emotional state,” “strong affection, love” and
“sexual desire or impulses.” In short, Eugenia experiences passion in many of its connotations.
247
I utilize “passion” in order to refer to love, affection, and desire, while I use “Passion” in reference to suffering,
maintaining the capital letter “P” so as to emphasize the underlying connection in the novel between Eugenia’s inner
struggle and saintly suffering.
190
chapel with a statue of the Madonna dello Spasimo, who swoons at the foot of the cross.
Eugenia goes there to pray in hopes that the perfume emanating from her body and the strange
feelings inside her are the effects of pregnancy (as suggested by Doctor Mola, though only in
order to assuage her fear regarding her condition).248 In contrast to the Holy Mother depicted in
stone before her, Eugenia is assured by a phantom voice (whether from in her head, or from
elsewhere) that she is not with child. Like Tarchetti’s dark heroine, Capuana’s young bride is
also denied motherhood, and is thereby relegated even further to the category of an unfit woman
whose sexuality and therefore abnormality differentiate her from the idealistic Madonna figure.
On the other hand, Capuana nevertheless elevates her once again to a saintly status, and even
beyond, as she is likened to the suffering mother of Jesus. The hysterical breakdown that ensues
as Eugenia prays in the chapel renders her akin to the swooning Mary whose statue stands before
her; in a sort of living ekphrasis, Eugenia falls into the arms of her husband (91) as he arrives,
just as the statuesque Madonna dello Spasimo faints at the foot of the Crucifix. As already
mentioned, Eugenia’s passion ultimately leads to her Passion, which results in many passions (as
we recall that “passion” may also denote “a fit or a seizure; a faint”).249 In short, Capuana’s
heroine becomes both a profane and a sacred figure, an embodiment of the classic, spiritualistic
dichotomy of flesh versus spirit. Eugenia not only exemplifies this typically religious
opposition, she also incarnates the more gender specific, socially-charged juxtaposition of the
virtuous wife versus the provocative woman.
248
Doctor Mola is moved to compassion when he notices Eugenia’s extreme concern for the innocuous odor that her
body is releasing against her will. After emphasizing medicine’s inability to fully know all things, he suggests that
Eugenia could be pregnant even though it seems that he somehow mysteriously perceives that she is not: “Il dottor
Mola già sentiva rimorso per quella pietosa bugia, e osservava commosso la giovane che, affacciatasi alla finestra,
pareva provasse una deliziosa sensazione” (83).
249
OED online.
191
The repression of female sexuality in Nineteenth-century European society (and beyond),
and the Madonna/whore binary (which Freud categorized as a complex) are common knowledge;
“good” or “normal” women were wives and consequently mothers who tolerated sex for
reproductive purposes. Female sexual desire and passion on the other hand, were considered
aberrant in normal, healthy, marriage-worthy women, and were consequently attributed to
prostitutes and the mentally ill. (It is no wonder that many “hysterical” women confined to
asylums were considered sexually deviant.) A woman’s use value as a wife, her self-worth, and
even her identity as a “good” woman were gravely diminished should she be unable to bear
children. One assumes that part of Eugenia’s devastation at not being pregnant results from the
influence of these societal norms, just as her eventual embarrassment regarding her repressed
desires is informed by society’s codification of “proper” womanly and wifely behavior. After
Geltrude’s death, as if echoing her diagnosis of Eugenia’s hysteria, Patrizio accuses his wife of
still being “nervosa” and “malata” (156) and her response upsets him even more: “Che cosa
dicevo di strano poco fa? Voglio stare fra le tue braccia! Voglio essere accarezzata, baciata,
amata come tutte le altre! Ti sembra strano?” Patrizio’s horrified rebukes and excuses for his
distance underline even further his repulsion towards physical intimacy. In a veritable gender
role reversal, Patrizio assumes the part of a frigid married woman who resists her partner’s
advances, while Eugenia resembles a traditional, newlywed husband who desires physical
contact and affection with his spouse. In the initial heated confrontation after Geltrude’s death
before one of Patrizio’s daily journeys to the cemetery (to visit the womb in the tomb), Eugenia,
confused more than ever by her husband’s disinterest in her, expresses her desire to be loved,
caressed, kissed and embraced. Patrizio’s response, “Non lo diresti, se comprendessi!” (154),
replays in her thoughts for hours and days afterwards (156, 158, 169) until she finally begins to
192
question her own natural instincts for love and affection. Aside from his mother’s overt
jealousy, she nonetheless stood as the model of typical, socially-acceptable femininity. As a
widow and single mother who never remarried, she upheld the stereotypical idea that women
should be non-sexual beings interested only in the rearing of children and the familial order.
Geltrude’s fundamental jealousy coupled with Patrizio’s (faulty) perception of her saintliness
and mental stability, impeded from experiencing other profound interactions with women, and
influenced his own views towards sexuality. In the absence of a paternal figure, Patrizio
identified with the only living parent – his mother – and thereby adopted similar skewed, though
socially upheld views of female asexuality.250
While Capuana was most certainly not a champion of gender equality, Eugenia, as well
as his other novelistic heroines break the Madonna-whore stereotype and rebel (whether
intentionally or inadvertently) against bourgeois conceptions of “normal” female behavior.251
Eugenia embodies both sexuality and saintliness (undoubtedly possessing, as the expression
goes, the “patience of a saint” with both Geltrude and Patrizio), longing for emotional and
physical affection, while never succumbing to her passion for Ruggero. Capuana overturns the
traditional Madonna-whore binary insofar as he depicts Eugenia as both a sexual being and as a
250
In a discussion of the Oedipus complex, Freud emphasizes the necessary identification with the father after his
desire for the mother, lest the male child develop abnormally: “Along with the dissolution of the Oedipus complex
the object-cathexis of the mother must be given up. Its place may be filled by one of two things: either an
identification with the mother or an intensified identification with the father. We are accustomed to regard the latter
outcome as the more normal; it permits the affectionate relation to the mother to be in a measure retained” (The Ego
and the Id 41).
251
Giacinta rebels against female marital conventions and her suicide à la Bovary also functions as an insult, not
only to her lover, but to the norms that attempted to regulate her behavior. Agrippina Solmo, an exceptional case
and often considered the fictional rendition of Capuana’s own lower-class lover Beppa Conti (Zangara 59), shares
her name with the patron saint of Mineo and her selfless love of her master, the Marquis of Roccaverdina, contrasts
with her status of lover. It is interesting to remember however, that Agrippina is also denied motherhood, a fact that
pleases her lover: “ed egli possedeva non un’amante delle solite, ma una vera schiava, buona, sottomessa…che
aveva anche il gran pregio di non fare figliuoli!” (Il marchese di Roccaverdina 83). She is not, however, easily
dismissed as a simplistic whore-figure, for the marquis’ attachment to her runs much deeper than a superficial
relationship between man and mistress, resembling the complex master-slave dialectic in which each is
fundamentally dependent on the other.
193
saintly figure, as a dualistic character who experiences the throes of passion (albeit forcibly
repressed and exuded through the perfume and in her dreams), and who undergoes a terrible
Passion, thanks to the persecution of her mother-in-law and the cold indifference of her husband.
Denied motherhood, the young bride has fallen into a liminal category of woman according to
societal norms, for she is neither mother, nor virgin. Returning to the moments leading up to her
first bout of hysteria, we notice her husband’s disillusionment in this regard:
Colei che si vedeva davanti, altera e bella nel disordine dei capelli, nel turbamento
dell'aspetto e della voce, nella durezza insolita della parola, non gli pareva più la sua
dolce, la sua sommessa, la sua quasi timida Eugenia. Quel non so che di fanciullesco, di
spensierato, di allegro, di verginale che ne formava l'incanto era sparito. Tutti i
lineamenti di lei parevano cambiati di punto in bianco, con quelle sopracciglia aggrottate,
con quegli occhi dallo sguardo incerto, con quelle labbra aride e contratte, con quella
persona che pareva ingrandita, tanto il busto si ergeva fiero in quell'istante, elevando la
testa e il collo gonfio dallo spasimo (49 – 50).252
Much to his dismay, Patrizio views his new wife in a different light, now that their relationship
has been consummated and she has lost that supposed virginal glow and appeal. In short, she has
become another. Her physical appearance is altered by her pale complexion, furrowed brow,
uncertain gaze, and dry, contracted lips, which may all be interpreted as symptoms of an illness
(and in fact, her first hysterical breakdown is imminent). On the other hand, her grand presence,
her proudly erect chest, and elevated head suggest a confidence and a maturity that Patrizio does
not comprehend; rather than being necessarily diseased, Eugenia has merely come of age, and
transitioned from girlhood to womanhood. She even notices this maturation phenomenon
through her friendship with Giulia, who ultimately becomes a sort of “double in time,” the
Doppelgänger of her former, single self, full of illusions and hopes for marital bliss.253 The
252
253
Italics mine.
As Giulia’s confidant, Eugenia listens to her talk of her beloved Corrado, with whom she eventually runs away,
but ultimately avoids scandal because of their engagement. As Giulia swears, she will commit a scandalous act in
194
physical changes that Patrizio notices in his wife reflect the maturity that he still lacks, as he
even describes himself as a boy at various instances in the novel: “Mi sento fanciullo accanto a
te!” (157); and elsewhere, “Il mio passato mi opprime. In questo momento vorrei sfogarmi con
lei, e un fanciullesco ritegno mi tronca le parole in gola” (206). As Patrizio’s reference to his
oppressive past suggests, his displeasure in Eugenia’s mutation may be attributed not only to the
loss of mystery and marvelousness once the unknown is experienced, but also to his own skewed
view of companionship, born out of his mother’s morbid, life-stifling nature, and perverse
jealousy beginning with his boyhood girlfriend Giulietta, to whom he compares his wife, much
to her dismay.254
In the long citation above, the reader can almost see the vein in Eugenia’s neck – “gonfio
dallo spasimo” (50) – pumping the erotic force (the sensual love and life instincts) throughout
her body, as opposed to the constant corpse-like image of Geltrude, usually confined to her
armchair, then like death-incarnate, paralyzed and speechless on her deathbed. While the spasm
in Eugenia’s engorged neck preempts her first “crisi nervosa” (50) in which she is overcome by
convulsions, it also foreshadows her similarity to the Madonna dello Spasimo, and renders her
loss of consciousness akin to a mystical, saintly experience of suffering – a kind of modernized,
negative ecstasy in which the sensual, the spiritual, and the psychopathological collide. Capuana
essentially places Eugenia’s anguish at losing her husband to his mother on the same level as
order to force the approval of her parents, Eugenia remembers her own overwhelming love for Patrizio: “Le pareva
di sentirsi ripetere le sue stesse parole ai parenti: ‘Mi vuol bene! Ci vogliamo tanto bene!’ Sogni! Fantasie! E per
questo scrollava la testa […] Eugenia si sentiva presa da immense sconforto. Le confidenze di Giulia le
risuscitavano nella memoria tutto il suo dolce passato. Sì, aveva fatto così anche lei!” (147).
254
Upon their arrival to Marzallo, Patrizio recounts the tale of his childhood love for Giulietta, a relationship of
which his overbearing mother obviously disapproved. In fact, she even seemed to rejoice in the girl’s death, while
the young Patrizio suffered a nervous breakdown, falling into convulsions at the news of her accidental death. At
the end of his story Patrizio exclaims, “‘Ora Giulietta sei tu!’”, to which his disillusioned wife responds as she
withdraws her hand from his, “‘No, io sono Eugenia’” (40). Here we encounter another instance of the double,
which underlines even further Patrizio’s psychosexual backwardness, as he compares his womanly wife to his
prepubescent crush with whom he shared toys and innocent embraces.
195
Mary’s devastation at losing her son to his Father and this mingling of the profane and the sacred
emerges as just another way that the Sicilian author confounds traditional oppositions while
remaining within the discourse of Passion (and passion). Even though Geltrude refers to her
daughter-in-law as a vampire that sucks the life out of her prematurely-aged son (56) and
Patrizio refers to his mother as “santa mia” (57), the reader understands that, in reality, these
roles are reversed.255 Even Eugenia notes the poisonous nature of her mother-in-law, who has
stolen her husband even more so in death than in life:
Sentiva uno sdegno sordo, una specie d’odio misto a disprezzo al vederlo tranquillo,
indifferente, incurante di lei, tutto della sua morta, della sua malagurata morta, che non
poteva, no, essere in Paradiso! Andata via con il tossico nel cuore, contro di lei che non
l’aveva offesa, proseguiva anche di là la sua opera infernale! (218).
Despite Eugenia’s correct perception of her competitor as a venomous manipulator incapable of
residing in Heaven, Patrizio remains aloof to his mother’s toxicity for the entirety of the novel,
allowing her an unmatchable agency over himself and his bride. The deathbed scene of Geltrude
in which both Patrizio and Eugenia seem to temporarily lose their minds, the former “inebetito”
(128) and the latter succumbing to violent convulsions (129), depicts a dramatic confrontation
between the female rivals in which the old mother triumphs over the young wife. At his ailing
mother’s bedside, the complex trichotomy is emphasized by the exchange of gazes. Patrizio
watches his mother and as Eugenia observes him watching his mother, “si sentiva invadere da un
terrore folle, come se tra quei due avvenisse in quell’istante qualcosa di misterioso, a cui lei
doveva rimanere estranea. Qualcosa di malaugurato, che le sarebbe pesato addosso, anche
allorché lei non sarebbe stata più là” (122)! Eugenia realizes her exclusion from the privileged,
255
After Eugenia’s first hysterical fit, Geltrude admonishes her son: “Tu non ti guardi allo specchio, o ti guardi così
di sfuggita da non poter accorgerti quanto sei mutate e invecchiato da sei mesi! Non potresti riconoscerti. Lei se lo
beve, il tuo sangue! Lei se l’assorbe, la tua carne, il midollo delle tue ossa, la tua vita! […] prendi parte in favore
del vampire che ti succhia il sangue!” (56).
196
mysterious relationship between mother and son and the first pangs on jealousy on her part
begin, alongside a prescient perception of her mother-in-law’s seeming black magical powers.
The mute Geltrude fixedly glares at her daughter-in-law, her eyes “quasi maledicenti” (129),
jealous and embittered until the bitter end, causing Eugenia to undergo an hysterical fit, during
which her uncontrollable gasps intermingle with her mother-in-law’s death rattles. Geltrude’s
stare seems to possess telekinetic, witch-like powers as Eugenia feels herself being strangled:
“Portò le mani alla gola per tentar di sciogliere il nodo da cui si sentiva soffocare, e si rovesciò
indietro con un rantolo che si confuse con l’ultimo fioco rantolo della morente” (129). Her
unspoken evil-wishing on her daughter-in-law render Geltrude anything but a saint; however,
Patrizio (who fails to notice his wife’s nervous seizure) considers his mother, now more than
ever, “la prima, la più grande, l’unica adorazione del suo cuore” (129). Even Eugenia realizes
that she will never be able to compare to her husband’s first and greatest object of adoration and
after Geltrude is dead and buried, she asks herself: “Come lottare contro l’invisibile nemica?”
(135). Patrizio’s obsession with his dead mother continuously incites Eugenia’s jealousy as she
assumes the position that Geltrude had possessed in life, thinking: “Ora, al rovescio, la gelosa era
lei, non più la morta!”, and imagining her husband in front of his mother’s grave protesting,
“‘Sono sempre tuo, non di lei!’” (149).
The power of a love object often proves greater in its absence rather than in its presence
and while everyone is familiar with the maxim, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,”
Capuana (like his Scapigliato predecessor Tarchetti) frequently played with the notion of
presence in absence in his literary works.256 From a developmental psychology standpoint, the
256
In Il marchese di Roccaverdina, images of Agrippina Solmo and Rocco Criscione, plague the marquis’ mind and
contribute to his eventual insanity. In the short story, “Idem per diversa” from Le appassionate, Capuana depicts a
long-distance relationship in which Giorgio invents many romantic scenarios in his dreams and recounts them to his
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mother is in fact our first other, our first love object (whether one desires her sexually as in
Freudian theory, or whether one instead longs for the breast a là Klein); our realization that we
are separate from our mother is our first loss, and our first step towards subjectivity. Patrizio,
“un bambino,” as Doctor Mola calls him (126), experiences the actual physical loss of his most
adored love object, who ultimately grows stronger in her absence. The image of his mother as a
saint (57), and “[la] venerata sua morta” (130) is forever emblazoned in Patrizio’s mind; unlike
his maturing young bride, she remains in death forever unchangeable and therefore unparalleled.
Remembering Doctor Mola’s comparison of Eugenia’s fragrance to that of the saints whose
bodies remain in tact after death, Geltrude’s chair with “la spalliera e i braccioli rapati per l’uso”
(132), conjures up images of material deterioration, which consequently mirror the
decomposition of her body – “la putrefazione del cadavere” (75) – of which saints are exempt,
and to which Geltrude is certainly subject.
As opposing doubles of each other and external representations of the contrasting forces
of life/libido and death/conscience, Eugenia and Geltrude remain misunderstood by the
pathological Patrizio. In fact, Geltrude, not Eugenia, resembles a dark, demonic spirit – a
vampire or a succubus – that sucks the life-blood out of her son. In life, her jealousy –
characterized as “una mostruosità” (137) and “orrore” (155) by Eugenia – produces her son’s
anxiety and his convoluted sense of intimacy; like a growth-stunting disease, she kept him a boy,
while concurrently causing him to physically age as she herself notices (56). Twice compared to
an “apparizione” (40, 108), she slithers throughout the house like a ghost while she is alive.
beloved Silvia in letters; however, they eventually prefer to never see each other again, each having lived out their
own ideal relationship with the love object, without ever having the other physically present. In the Tarchettian
oeuvre, Lorenzo Alviati’s declaration, “L’aveva dimentica viva, l’aveva amata morente, l’adorava già morta,”
succinctly communicates the agency of the absent beloved over her lover, a power that increases even more when
the love object is forever absent as in death, or as in the case of another Tarchettian novella, “La storia di un’ideale,”
if she never existed at all.
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After her death, when her power over Patrizio seems to increase, a lingering fear of her presence
continues to haunt Eugenia: “Se la sentiva intorno in tutti i momenti. A ogni scrichiolio di
mobile, a ogni rumore di cui non sapeva rendersi subito ragione, trasaliva, stando in attesa,
trattenendo il respiro, origliando, spalancando gli occhi verso il posto d’onde il rumore era
partito” (135). Geltrude not only succeeds in infiltrating Eugenia’s thoughts and impeding her
happiness from beyond the grave, she also wields a bewitching power over her son that further
distances him from her rival. Just as she had given him life, she pulls him progressively closer to
death. His undying affection and attention for her is demonstrated by her well-maintained grave
decorated with flowers, as opposed to the overall unkempt appearance of the rest of the cemetery
(205). Patrizio’s mourning practices include a daily visit to the graveyard, which
contemporaneously functions as a metaphorical journey towards the tomb, and as a
psychological return to the womb, to that state of non-existence of which we all appertain before
being born, and then again after dying. Death is often construed as a return to the womb, to the
great Mother Earth, to the Netherworld where we exist before arriving, and after departing from
this world. The womb/tomb dynamic is complicated even further in Patrizio’s case, as his
movement towards death is a veritable regression towards the womb in a dual sense. He
becomes progressively more infantile, as initially noted by Doctor Mola when he admonishes
him at his moribund mother’s bedside, “Non essere bambino!” (126). In the final pages of the
novel Patrizio also admits to Eugenia that he had indeed been acting like “un fanciullo” (249).
His visit to the cemetery is literally a return to the womb that bore him, for his mother resides (no
longer consciously existent, or existent in some other place) in the tomb, or womb of the earth.
His desire to reunite with his mother is so overwhelming that at one point he even wishes to
physically enter into the tomb: “Guardava fisso, in fondo alla grotto, la lapide murata nel centro,
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contornata di rami di alloro e di mortella, e sembrava volesse penetrarla per vedere il cadavere
della sua povera mamma addormentata nel sonno eterno” (205). While his obsessive wish to see
the cadaver of his mother may seemed tinged with undertones of necrophilism, it may also be
linked, albeit neurotically, to the death-sex connection. We recall the comparisons between
death and jouissance, both states of non-being where subjectivity is lost, whether permanently or
temporarily. As Kristeva observes, the corpse – the prime example of abjection – reminds us of
our own materiality, of the dissolution of the subject: “The corpse, seen without God and outside
of science, is the utmost of abjection. It is death infecting life. Abject” (Powers of Horror 4).
The threatened breakdown of meaning caused by the loss of distinction between self and other
and by the awareness of our own object-ness occurs when one experiences either jouissance or
the abject. Patrizio, who presumably fails to enjoy the uninhibited, sexual ecstasy of the
marriage bed, instead imagines encountering its negative counterpart in the vision of his
mother’s corpse that would ultimately produce a sense of the abject.
The intermingling of death and sexuality in the mother figure appears in other instances
in the novel, forcing the reader to note undercurrents of a mother/lover duality in Gelturde and a
lover/mother dyad in Eugenia in their relationships to the male protagonist. During their
dramatic confrontation discussed above, in which Patrizio accuses Eugenia of still being
hysterical and ill, he declares how he doubly suffered because of his mother’s complaints and his
wife’s anger (157). Torn between these two rivals, he affirms how he loved Geltrude like a
mother, and Eugenia as a wife; however, his words that soon follow nonetheless demonstrate the
privileging of the former. He refers to Eugenia as “l’unica donna, dopo mia madre, che n’abbia
preso possesso e per sempre. Io ignoro come amino gli altri, ma so che ti voglio bene […] E mi
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sento fanciullo accanto a te!” (157).257 After his mother, Eugenia is the only woman that has
ever truly encaptured him; in other words, she is his second best girl, which is hardly a
complement. Patrizio essentially ignores one of the Biblical staples of marriage rites, which
sustains that a man should cling to his wife: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his
mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). 258 Patrizio failed
to leave his mother, both literally and figuratively, and even after her passing she is still a
constant presence in his and Eugenia’s marriage. This divine law of matrimony appears in
Capuana’s text through the mouthpiece of Benedetta, one of the mayor’s three daughters and
sister to Ruggero. In fact, her only lines in the novel appear in a conversation with Geltrude in
which she fishes for information about the newly married couple as if she sensed the tension
between mother and daughter-in-law: “Purtroppo, c’è un punto nella vita che un figlio non è più
della madre. Una viene, se lo prende e lo porta via […] Legge di Dio, dicono: ‘Lascia il padre e
la madre!’ (69). In this instance, a very minor character seems to pass the author’s own
judgment on the dysfunctional familial dynamic occurring in the Moro-Lanza household. Aside
from disregarding God’s law, Patrizio also disrupts the connubial norms in the previous citation
when he reveals that he feels like a little boy, un fanciullo, in the presence of his wife. The
maternal quality that he implicitly bestows on his young bride does not concur with the typical
image of the wife and mother; rather, Eugenia (still childless much to her dismay) becomes
identified as his wife and his mother. In other words, while Geltrude emerges as a mother/lover
in the implicit connections between death, sex, the tomb, and the womb, Eugenia assumes a
similar, though inverse duplicity as lover/mother.
257
258
Italics mine.
(New American Standard Bible 1995).
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Eugenia seeks to differentiate between motherly and wifely love throughout the novel in
hopes of inciting Patrizio to honor the importance of both, but to realize, as God commands, that
a man’s place and ultimate attention should be with and on his wife. Immediately before her first
bout of hysteria, she exclaims: “Ella ti ama come madre, io come moglie: ed è diverso. Ella ti ha
dato il latte…Io, il mio amore, l’anima mia, tutta me stessa! Ti appartengo, come tu mi
appartieni” (50). Eugenia underlines the difference between maternal and spousal love with the
image of mother’s milk as opposed to a wife’s love, soul, and body. While the mother gives
nourishment to her son in infancy and cares for him in childhood, nature (and the Bible) require a
certain “letting-go,” a degree of separation, or a different relationship between mother and adult
child. When a man passes from the care of his mother to that of his wife, he receives, as Eugenia
so succinctly describes, his wife’s body and soul. A child is initially part of the mother as he
grows in her womb for forty weeks; they exist in one body, though as two separate beings, so
that the whole is not equal to the sum of its parts (1 + 1 ≠ 1). In marriage, two people become
one as their souls are joined together permanently and their bodies temporarily in consummation;
similarly the whole is once again not the same as the sum of its parts (1 + 1 ≠ 1). A man’s wife
essentially becomes his other half and each belongs to the other, while the child only belongs to
the mother (in most cases, not Patrizio’s however) until he comes of age and finds a life partner.
Eugenia’s reference to an infant suckling the life-sustaining milk from his mother’s breast recalls
the opposing image of a vampire that sucks the life-giving blood of its victim that, ironically,
Geltrude employs to describe the effects of Eugenia on her son.259 We have already established
259
Interestingly, in vampire lore, the victim may also be chosen to be made into a vampire by the undead creature
who feeds upon him. By receiving a vampire’s blood, a human in turn becomes a vampire, and may be referred to
as the “child” of his maker. The taking and receiving of blood in the exchange between vampire “mother” and
“child” seems to loosely reflect the literal giving of milk to baby Patrizio and the figurative draining of the adult
Patrizio’s life-force.
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that the true bloodsucker in this love triangle is the two-faced Geltrude. As good mother, she
once gave life and nourishing milk to the infant Patrizio; as the terrible mother, she drains both
the physical and mental health of her son and daughter-in-law, depleting his life-force (which he
could potentially realize through Eugenia), and ultimately drawing him back to her body even in
death.
While Eugenia may be categorized as a lover/mother, Geltrude appears at various
instances that we have already mentioned in the text as a mother/lover. Especially after her
death (which consequently recalls the interconnection between the womb, the tomb, and sex),
Patrizio moves literally and figuratively closer to his mother’s absent presence, and hence closer
to death itself at other times during his mourning period. One cannot fail to notice the
potentiality of incestuous desires between mother and son, especially when he remembers her
“alito tiepido che gli scaldava il cuore!” (166). The extreme closeness necessary to feel the
warm breath of an other typically occurs between lovers, not between an adult son and his aged
mother; furthermore, one usually associates heat or hotness with a passionate, erotic love, rather
than with a maternal-filial bond. In short, the only warm breath that should heat his heart is his
wife’s; however, her passion and unapologetic sensuality seem to disgust and horrify him. When
Eugenia confronts her husband after his mother’s death because he constantly ignores and
abandons her, he insists that her desire to be loved with more than just words is indeed “nervosa”
and “ancora malata” (156). When she repeats her previous exclamations – “Voglio stare fra le
tue braccia! Voglio essere accarezzata, baciata, amata come tutte le altre!” – Patrizio begs her to
not repeat those words because they actually make him sick: “Non ripeterlo! Mi fa male” (156).
While the memory of his mother’s tepid breath warms his heart, his wife’s expressions of
affection and desire turn his stomach. The nostalgic yearning for his dead mother has replaced
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the emotions he should feel for his living wife, so that once again the fatal mixes with the sexual,
and here eclipses the erotic. In addition to bringing him closer to death as he feels compelled to
visit her grave each day, the objects she leaves behind in the house – her bed, and especially her
armchair – also seem to possess a magnetic pull that attracts her son as if her spirit were invested
in them. These objects that no longer serve a function, or contain a use value (given that their
owner is deceased), acquire a certain thingness with which Patrizio forms an emotional
attachment. With the loss of his first other, Patrizio not only attempts to return to her in the
tomb, he also seeks out her presence in her bedroom that he leaves exactly as she kept it in life.
Eugenia suffers even more because of her husband’s extreme mourning rituals and it seems that
she sometimes retraces his steps as if she wished to make sense out of them:
Vagava nella stanza d’ufficio dove Patrizio passava la giornata in preda della sua morta
che lo invasava di più; vagava nella camera lasciata intatta, dov’egli spesso andava a
chiudersi per sedersi su quella poltrona sulla quale la sua mamma aveva passato metà
della vita, o per buttarsi bocconi su quel letto dove egli l’aveva baciata l’ultima volta
(136).
Eugenia’s characterization of Patrizio’s mother as a possession – “[la] sua morta” – suggests that
she was not merely his mother, but was also a part of him; moreover, instead of using “morta” in
the adjectival form to modify the noun “mother” (as it would be in the case of “sua madre
morta”) Capuana chooses the noun “sua morta,” “his dead one,” which is uncannily graphically
and sonorically similar to “morte,” or death. Should we read this word choice from a
philological perspective, then we could argue that Patrizio searches for his “dead one” (also
known as his deceased mother), and for death itself, which seem to intermingle. For instance,
the graphic nature of Geltrude’s cadaver (that Patrizio wishes to see), and the presumed horror
that it would produce, as well as the disturbing death scene that sends both Patrizio and Eugenia
into convulsions, further emphasize his mother’s association with death, though not the peaceful
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passing incurred by Thanatos. Instead, this demonic, maternal figure becomes akin to a darker,
crueler type of death, embodied in classical mythology in the Keres, the evil sisters of Thanatos
and Hypnos, often depicted as vampiric, winged spirits. The above citation depicts Geltrude’s
room exactly as she had left it after dying, as if it were a shrine erected in her memory. Patrizio
sits in his mother’s armchair and the stale, aged (perhaps death-like) odor ironically mesmerizes
him, unlike Eugenia’s sweet-smelling perfume which frightens and repulses him. As Patrizio
sits in her old chair and throws himself in tears on her bed, he appropriates the space and the
misery that his mother once possessed. In other words, he occupies the same space his mother
once occupied in the chair and in the bed so that he feels closer to her. Essentially he becomes
one with her. This simultaneous occupation of the same space recalls that pre-natal identity
when mother and fetus are in one body, when the fetus occupies the mother’s corporeal space.
In this strange situation, Patrizio enters into the material, non-organic places that his mother once
inhabited and this communion with his mother’s resting places echoes his great desire to enter
into his mother’s tomb. Instead of desiring the erotic union of his body with Eugenia’s, he
prefers the spatial appropriation of where his mother’s body once laid (and sat). He seeks out
physical contact, not with his living wife, but with the inorganic objects his dead mother left
behind – a convoluted desire that seems to defy the natural order of things.
While the mother figure is usually construed as a generative force, she may also possess
another, alternative identity as a destructive power, already alluded to above in the discussion of
the association between the womb and the tomb. In fact, Geltrude’s overbearing behavior and
nasty treatment of her daughter-in-law, as well as her manipulation of her son, render her akin to
the archetype of the mater terribilis that not only gives life, but also has the potential and the
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drive to destroy it. In his discussion of the mother archetype, Jung notes the two-sided nature of
the maternal figure as a nurturer and also as a destroyer:
On the negative side the mother archetype may connote anything secret, hidden, dark; the
abyss, the world of the dead, anything that devours, seduces, and poisons, that is
terrifying and inescapable like fate […] These are three essential aspects of the mother:
her cherishing and nourishing goodness, her orgiastic emotionality, and her Stygian
depths (The Archetypes 82).
The mother archetype, in her duality, acts as the embodiment of the womb / tomb dynamic, for
she presides over this world and the next as humans begin and end in the dark space of the womb
and tomb respectively. We encounter this maternal duplicity in Geltrude as Patrizio depicts her
in a pitiful light, as a widow left destitute whose only comfort was her son, as a single mother
“piangendo lacrime di vedova” while concurrently “covando rancori di suocera” (132). The
narrator also portrays her as an embittered voyeur, who often interrupts Patrizio’s and Eugenia’s
embraces or even their conversations “con un preteso o con un altro, quasi istintivamente
cercasse così di sottrarlo all’importuna sorveglianza” (44 – 45). As the terrible mother, she
poisons and devours any potential for marital bliss between husband and wife and her presence is
inescapable. Even in her absences she seems to cast a disapproving eye on her son and his wife
and an argument over her constant presence, in which Eugenia accuses Patrizio of fearing his
mother, leads to her first hysterical outburst. After recounting the tale of his mother’s jealous
comportment towards his childhood playmate Giulietta, Patrizio attempts to embrace his wife,
but recoils upon glimpsing, “l’apparizione della signora Geltrude, che veniva avanti senza far
rumore il viale, simile a un fantasma, con la ruga della fronte più severa che mai” (40).
Aside from corroborating the “mostruosità” (137) of Geltrude’s inappropriate behavior and harsh
attitude, her portrayal as a ghastly apparition further underlines her dark, destructive nature.
During Eugenia’s initial nervous breakdown, her mother-in-law actually observes the scene with
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seeming pleasure: “Ella si fermò a pochi passi dall’uscio, severa più dell’ordinario, colpita dallo
spettacolo di quell giovane corpo agiato dalla crisi nervosa. ‘Lo vedi? È un’isterica! E non
volevi credermi!’ disse senza scomporsi” (50). Her severe look and indifference as she watches
the grotesque spectacle without losing her composure is complemented by her words, which
seem to shout “I told you so!” to her panic-stricken son. In fact, Geltrude is the only person who
explicitly refers to Eugenia as “un’isterica;” Doctor Mola never overtly diagnoses her as an
“hysteric,” and never uses the term “isterica” to refer to her. As the situation worsens and
Eugenia is afflicted by intermittent secretions of the citrus scent from her body, the couple grows
more apart and each notices the other’s taciturn indifference. When they finally discuss their
changed behavior with each other and Patrizio is almost ready to stand up to his overbearing
mother, fear of her appearance takes possession of him again: “Uno sforzo, un piccolissimo
sforzo, e la sua liberazione sarebbe avvenuta! Ma i suoi occhi si volsero con ansietà verso
l’uscio dirimpetto, paventando un’improvvisa apparizione; le braccia gli si rallentarono, e la
parola gli rimase a mezzo gola” (108). While she does not appear in this instance like an eerie
specter, she is nonetheless present even in her absence, as Patrizio’s fear of her disapproval and
his own irrational sense of guilt prevent him from asserting his independence as a man and as a
husband. In panopticon style, Patrizio has become so accustomed to regulating his behavior
because of the constant surveillance of his mother, that even in her absence he cannot escape her
control, nor the guilt at the thought of defying her. Geltrude has become the external
manifestation of Patrizio’s internal, overly-developed super-ego; rather, perhaps she is his superego, which is characterized as an unconscious internalization of a moralizing or parental function
(usually associated with the father, though here with the mother), eventually manifested in one’s
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conscience and sense of guilt.260 In other words, in Freudian psychology, our parents are the first
enforcers of morality and proper social behavior and their monitoring and correction of our
actions develops our senses of right and wrong, and our potential for feelings of culpability. As
discussed in detail above, even after her death Geltrude continues to wield power over her son
and daughter-in-law, acting as a “special critical and prohibiting agency” (Freud New
Introductory Lectures 34) of the super-ego, or the They of a very Puritanistic type. While we
have already observed how Geltrude’s dilapidated armchair functions as a substitute for a return
to a pre-natal (or a post-mortem) state of non-existence, it may also be aligned with a sociallyconstructed sense of conscience. In its synthetic materiality, the old chair alludes to Geltrude’s
role as an unnatural (that is, not inborn), even perverse, moralizing force in Patrizio’s mind.
While we presume that “l’odore di colei” (132) is a corporeal scent, it nonetheless intermingles
with the inorganic odor of the chair’s fabric, with something created and not with an inherent
quality. In other words, the armchair – as an inanimate, man-made object – coincides with the
notion of a moralizing force (whether we call it conscience, super-ego, or the They), a collective
conscience that man in society creates in order to regulate natural human desire and instinct.261
260
In an early discussion of the super-ego, to which he initially refers as the ego-ideal, Freud outlines its
unconscious power over the individual: “For that which prompted the person to form an ego-ideal, over which his
conscience keeps guard, was the influence of partental criticism (conveyed to him by the medium of the voice),
reinforced, as time went on, by those who trained and taught the child and by all the other persons of his
environment – and indefinite host, too numerous to reckon (fellow men, public opinon) (General Psychological
Theory 76). Later, Freud emphasizes how the super-ego is “less closely connected with consciousness” (The Ego
and the Id 35).
261
As Freud theorized, an individual’s super-ego is born out of the external policing and moral restrictions initially
placed upon the child by the father (in Patrizio’s case, the mother), and later by social institutions and authoritative
structures (such as the educational system, the Church, the government). In one of his many discussions of the
super-ego, Freud declares: “As a child grows up, the office of father is carried on by masters and by others in
authority; the power of their injunctions and prohibitions remains vested in the ego-ideal and continues, in the form
of conscience, to exercise the censorship of morals. The tension between the demands of conscience and the actual
attainments o fthe ego is experienced as a sense of guilt. Social feelings rest on the foundation of identifications
with others, on the basis of an ego-ideal with them” (The Ego and the Id 49).
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In Patrizio’s clinical case, each of his female counterparts acts in opposition to the other
as he is torn between his wife’s sexual desire and passion, and his mother’s jealousy,
disapproving gaze, and instillment of guilt. The pathological nature of Capuana’s novel does not
emerge in any illicit sexual conduct between lovers; rather, the disease or deviation from the
natural order of things presents itself in Patrizio’s repulsion of his wife’s need for connubial
affection, and in his obsessive relationship with his succubus-like mother.262 Intimacy between
husband and wife is not only celebrated as the physical manifestation of their soulfoul union
according to the rites of marriage (as the couple becomes spiritually one instead of two); it is also
a necessary, physiological element of a person’s life, so that Patrizio’s consternation towards
Eugenia’s desires defies both spiritual and natural logic. Geltrude and Eugenia stand as
opposing, yet complementary manifest doubles for each other, however, they also externally
embody Patrizio’s own internal duality as (inadequate, neurotic) husband and
(overcompensating, guilt-ridden) son. The principal female characters of Profumo loosely
partake of the psycho-literary dynamic of decomposition, in which (we remember) various traits
of a single person are disunited and other individuals are created and endowed with one of the
original attributes (Rogers 12); however, Capuana’s manifest, decomposed doubles are
multifaceted. Geltrude and Eugenia are respectively aligned with the opposing forces of death
and life, and socially-constructed morality versus instinctual desire. Moreover, each embodies
various characteristics of the male protagonist with whom they are physically and spiritually
connected. As his mother, Geltrude acts as the dominant (and domineering) figure of her son’s
childhood; she is associated with an adolescence from which Patrizio has never distanced
262
Even though a mutual attraction exists between Eugenia and Ruggero (who eventually declares his love for her)
and they kiss much to her dismay, the pair never consummates these desires.
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himself. She is therefore connected to the boy that resides within her grown son, while Eugenia
attempts to draw forth the man and his innate (albeit repressed), erotic instincts (for both selfpreservation and sensual pleasure). Futhermore, as the mater terribilis, Geltrude functions as
Patrizio’s moral conscience that ironically (or perhaps expectedly) continues to wield its power
even after her death. In contrast, Eugenia, as a so-called hysterical woman who occupies that
liminal space between virgin and mother, emerges as a life force that possesses the potential to
cure her husband’s pathological displeasures. Patrizio finally comes of age in the last chapters of
the novel as he realizes, with the help of the physician-confessor, and deus ex machina Doctor
Mola, that he was perhaps the more seriously ill half of the couple. After Eugenia’s violent
hysterical episode brought about by Ruggero’s kiss, Doctor Mola consults with Patrizio,
explicitly informing him that “qui i malati siete due” (231) and underlining the psychosomatic
nature of their issues, how “guarito lo spirito guarisce il corpo” (236). In fact, the portrayal of
Patrizio as an immature mammone changes in the final pages as he accepts the responsibility of
matrimonial intimacy, and intimidates his wife’s would-be lover Ruggero, finally feeling “forte,
grande, un colosso” (245). Interestingly, Patrizio changes, and accepts the fundamental necessity
of physical intimacy and affection in marriage only when he realizes the possibility that Eugenia,
like Padreterno’s former wife, could betray him with another man (242 – 243). He becomes
aware of a threat to his social status as a proper husband only after his consultation with Doctor
Mola and his conversation with the town cuckold Padreterno.263 Only then does he decide to
263
Doctor Mola admonishes Patrizio for his lack of physicality with his wife, claiming that only true saints could
live in a purely spiritual union: “I santi lasciamoli lì: sono altra gente […] Il matrimonio, per esempio, può essere tra
essi l’unione di due anime e nient’altro […] Voi, la vostra signora, io, tutti gli altri siamo misera carne. E la carne
non è poi gran brutta cosa. L’ha fatta pure Domeneddio con le sue proprie mani, e bisogna accettarla come l’ha fatta
lui che sa bene quel chef a, molto meglio di noi che non sappiamo niente […] Vostra moglie è una preziosa creatura
[…] Non la mettete a prova. Potrebbe darsi il caso – non vi offenda l’ipotesi – che la sua forza di resistenza non
fosse proprio invincibile” (234 – 235). After hearing the raw truth from Doctor Mola, Patrizio begins to fully realize
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bestow the attention on Eugenia that she so desires (and, according to Padreterno, could
definitely find elsewhere outside the marriage bed should she choose).264 Should we wish to
consider Profumo a psychosexual Bildungsroman, we would not be completely off base, for the
novel’s ending alludes to (though never certainly affirms) an imminent, final overcoming of the
male protagonist’s unhealthy obsession with his mother, as well as his emotional and sexual
maturation. Following Doctor Mola’s advice, he discontinues his daily visits to the cemetery
(247) and reconciles with his wife, his admission of guilt accompanied by a kiss (249), in stark
contrast to the revulsion he suffered from Eugenia’s caresses during their first days in
Marzallo.265 Patrizio finally (maybe) cuts the proverbial umbilical cord and acknowledges his
reprehensibility for his wife’s illness, and for his own psychological underdevelopment. As we
have already established, both Patrizio and Eugenia emerge as clinical cases, each suffering from
neuroses rooted in internal conflicts and disillusionment regarding the marriage contract. In
Patrizio’s case, a complicated family romance coupled with psychosexual backwardness lie at
the root of his pathology, and the contrasting (though complementary), external doubles of his
mother and his wife pull him in opposite directions, before the latter presumably triumphs at the
his own pathological condition, which could in turn finally alienate his wife forever. Similarly, Padreterno, warns
Patrizio of the dangers of neglecting the emotional and sexual needs of his young bride when he discusses his own
experience with infidelity: “Avrei dovuto ammazzarli tutti e due! Ma la colpa era un po’ mia! Ero stato cieco!
Ascolti le parole d’ un vecchio; se le scriva qui, nella mente (e mi scusi!...Ha moglie anche lei, e giovane e bella): si
guardi dai mosconi che ronzano intorno! Chi si guardò si salvo […] avevo una benda sugli occhi; le volevo bene,
non la credevo capace…Ah, le donne!” (242). Padreterno’s acceptance of his own blame in his wife’s betrayal
anticipates Patrizio’s culpability in Eugenia’s potential affair with Ruggero.
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This fact has the potential for both socialized and feminist critiques. Obviously, a cuckold loses his honor and
the respect of the community, just as Padreterno is frequently ridiculed by the townspeople because of his cheating
wife. From a gendered standpoint, one could argue that the threat to his identity as a male subject (whether a boy or
a man) emerges when faced with the idea that his wife, essentially his property, could be appropriated by another
male subject. While these arguments could be elaborated, limits of space prevent a deeper analysis here.
265
In response to Eugenia’s advances, the narrator reveals that “Patrizio tentava sempre di dominare il profondo
turbamento da cui veniva assalito a certe carezze di lei” (27). Although this statement may be interpreted as
indicating Patrizio’s own repressed carnal desire for his wife, his skewed view of sexuality and overly developed
sense of conscience nonetheless impedes him from embracing this instinctual “turbamento.” We may also chose to
consider Patrizio’s inner turmoil from his wife’s caresses as a learned reaction of repulsion, or “ribrezzo,” a
psychosexual reaction that Capuana explores in other narratives such as “Ribrezzo” and “Tortura”.
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tale’s conclusion. In Eugenia’s case, the battle between the repression and the expression of
desire overwhelms her at various instances in the story, causing her bouts of hysteria and the
secretion of the orange blossom fragrance from her skin. As the second half of the married
couple, she, like her husband, becomes the pinnacle of another trichotomy in which the
Doppelgänger emerges in the two very different male characters that attract her: Patrizio, her
immature, frigid, pushing-forty spouse; and Ruggero, the virile, passionate, eighteen-year-old
Casanova.
Eugenia ultimately undergoes a fragmentation of the self as she battles with her love for,
and eventual frustration with her indifferent husband, and her secret desire for her friend’s
brother, whom she eventually realizes acts as a surrogate for Patrizio.266 As oppositional
doubles, the elder, dispassionate mamma’s boy Patrizio and the young, vivacious womanizer
Ruggero correspond to Eugenia’s internal conflict between repression (in order to please her
husband), and expression (in order to please herself).267 In other words, Patrizio, in his
prudishness and coldness embodies the repression of desire and emotions, while Ruggero in his
passionate youth and extroverted nature stands as a model of uninhibited expression. Each man
corresponds to the heroine’s inner battle between the realization of her visceral, sentimental
desires, and the suppression of them required by societal and familial norms. Furthermore, as in
the previous triad, the same-sex characters – here Patrizio and Ruggero – stand as an opposing,
266
In the final pages of the novel, after Patrizio accepts his guilt and admits his wrongdoing to Eugenia, she thinks:
“Di Patrizio, soltanto di Patrizio voleva essere! Dio, la Madonna, tutti i santi del Paradiso, non lo vedevano? Oh!
Oh!” (249).
267
Fusaro rightly notes the internal division of both Patrizio and Eugenia, who according to her, ultimately suffer
because of their inability to communicate: “Infine, Luigi Capuana suggerisce l’esistenza di una scissione della
psiche rappresentando la lotta interna dei personaggi tra il bisogno di parlare e l’obbligo di tacere. In questo,
prefigure l’esistenza conflittuale del Super-io e dell’Es. Patente in Profumo, quest’aspetto è già accennato in alcune
opere precedenti [“Ribrezzo” e “Tortura”]” (“Intuizioni freudiane” 130). While she does not associate various
characters with super-ego and instinct, she nonetheless emphasizes the presence of such opposing forces in the
fragmented psyches of the protagonists in Capuana’s second novel and elsewhere.
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yet complementary Doppelgänger of the other. A fundamental difference between these
contrasting figures is their upbringing, Patrizio raised by his mother, imbued with a frigidness,
and impeded in his psychosexual development, as opposed to Ruggero raised by his father and
incarnating vivaciousness, passion, and virility (if not sexual potency). As already metioned,
Doctor Mola refers to him as a “bambino” (127) when he breaks down into hysterics at his dying
mother’s bed side. Patrizio often considers himself a boy rather than a man and during one of his
confessions to Doctor Mola, he declares: “Fra qualche mese avrò trent’otto anni, e mi sento
fanciullo senza esperienza” (206). During his final consultation with the physician-confessor,
Patrizio reiterates the same sentiment – “Non sono mai stato un uomo, ma un fanciullo!” (233) –
as opposed to Ruggero who refers to himself as “già un uomo” (189). In fact, Patrizio actually
envies his rival in love harboring “un egual senso di compiacimento e d’invidia per quel
giovanotto baldanzoso che camminava lesto, a testa alta,” and noting that “costui provava le sue
forze già uomo a diciotto anni!” (214). The explicitly addressed twenty-year age difference
between the two men ironically suggests Patrizio’s developmental immaturity in matters of love
and his childishness, as opposed to Ruggero’s experience with women and his blatant manly
comportment. Each man ultimately undergoes a role reversal towards the end of the novel and
the mayor’s wish – “Vorrei che questo signorino si specchiasse nel signor Agente” (166) is
fulfilled albeit in a different manner than the intended one. After confronted with the idea that
Eugenia could be unfaithful to him and that Ruggero could potentially present himself as a lover
to her (even though he already did unbeknownst to her husband), Patrizio feels himself
transformed from a boy into a man that could squash his rival in love with “un solo dito” (245).
At the same time, fearful that Eugenia revealed his attempted seduction to her husband, Ruggero
“si sentì diventare piccino piccino” (244) and is no longer a threat. Patrizio usurps Ruggero’s
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power over Eugenia by appropriating a similar aggressiveness and expressing his love with
kisses rather than words in the final pages of the novel. Patrizio there becomes a surrogate of the
surrogate lover, that is, the real and proper connubial companion to his wife and the order of
things is seemingly restored.
For most of the story, though, a fundamental difference between Patrizio and Ruggero
appears in their spatial associations – the former aligned with the artificiality of indoor spaces
and man-made structures, the latter associated with the wild of nature and instinctual, visceral
reactions. Throughout the novel, the interactions between Patrizio and Eugenia often occur
within the confines of the old monastery that they call home outside the town of Marzallo. The
cold stone of the palazzo with its large, echoing spaces further emphasizes the dispassionate
relations and the silent encounters between husband and wife that occur there. While Patrizio is
associated with the constructed, interior spaces of the compound, Ruggero is often depicted
outside, full of energy and enthusiasm for outdoor activities. He and Eugenia frequently meet in
nature (accompanied of course by his sister Giulia), taking walks in the woods, exchanging
surreptitious and libidinous glances in the grotto (174 – 176), and flirtatiously conversing
through her window. Ruggero’s physicality, wildness, and connection to nature (and thus to
natural, human instincts) is futher highlighted when he climbs the tree outside of Eugenia’s
window in order to impress her (198 – 199). His touch and the glances they exchange comprise
a plentiful silence in which each feels attracted by the other: “[Eugenia] si seniva attirata laggiù,
attirata da quegli sguardi, da quel sorriso pieno di sconforto, da quel silenzio, che pure
significava tanto, più di qualunque parola” (199). The attraction between the two young wouldbe lovers stems from a physicality, from an organic chemistry or the libido that Ruggero
embraces and Eugenia consciously represses, yet unconsciously confronts in her dreams. In fact,
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the evening after the scene at her window, which cannot help but recall the classic encounter
between Romeo and Juliet, Eugenia is assailed by racy dreams of Ruggero. Like other states of
alternative consciousness that we have addressed (trances, somnambulism, ecstasy), her dreams
emerge as another phenomenon in which the connection between the physiologocial and the
psychological is undeniable as she awakens first in a cold sweat and later breathless (200 – 201).
Upon waking from a dream in which she is on the verge of a passionate embrace with Ruggero –
“nel punto di un bacio supremo” (200) – she declares to her bedfellow Patrizio that she was
dreaming of “un mostro” that was chasing her (201). The monster may of course be interpreted
as either her own erotic instinct and desire for Ruggero (himself a substitute for her true object of
desire, her husband), or as that policing force of a socially-constructed conscience that forbids
such sensual impulses in decent women.
In the dramatic confrontation between Patrizio and Eugenia after Geltrude’s death
(referenced above), the twenty-two year old wife finally voices her wish to be wanted and loved
passionately, not in the lukewarm way he currently loves her: “‘Dell’amore a cotesta tua
maniera, oh! Non so che farmene! Amore a parole! Io non affermo soltanto di amarti: te lo
provo […] voglio stare fra le tue braccia e voglio sentirmi accarezzata, baciata e amata come
tutte le altre!’” (154). For Eugenia, her husband’s verbal proclamations of love (in contratst to
the silent plenitude of Ruggero’s actions) do little to satisfy her desire for affection, for she
requires physical demonstration of his so-called romantic love for her. His horrified response,
“‘Non lo diresti, se comprendessi!’” (154), replays in Eugenia’s mind in the following days,
causing her to doubt her own sanity and wonder whether she is not indeed the hysteric that her
mother-in-law and husband believed her to be. Patrizio’s admonition functions as an
authoritative voice in his wife’s mind born out of social conventions and established norms of
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proper womanly and wifely behavior. Much like Freud’s super-ego that “applies the strictest
moral standard to the helpless ego which is at its mercy” and “represents the claims of morality,”
Patrizio’s words function as a normalizing and moralizing outside force that judges and
condemns Eugenia’s natural erotic instincts (New Introductory Lectures 76) and his “blande
carezze” (81) leave her cold and unfulfilled.268 While Patrizio remains circumscribed by the
unimpassioned logos of his “amore a parole” (154) (words themselves part of an authoritative,
man-made structure that regulates social order), Ruggero becomes even more associated with
non-verbal, visceral actions – such as his touch and his gaze – that ignite Eugenia’s sublimated
passion and prove his attraction to her. The first time that Ruggero touches Eugenia’s hands in
order to observe their size in comparison to his sister Giulia’s, she blushes feverishly and the
contact with his palms “le faceva strana impressione, quasi di cosa che non stesse bene, e perciò
ritirò bruscamente la mano” (145). When Giulia escapes with her boyfriend, Ruggero – rash and
sensitive in nature – reacts with passion and devastation (while Patrizio remains calm and
reasonable), and grabs Eugenia’s hands once again (223). The pressure of his hands holding hers
offers a sense of intimacy lacking in her relationship with Patrizio: “le contrazioni delle mani le
insinuassero per la persona un senso nuovo d’intimità con quella viva partecipazione al dolore di
lui, qualcosa che già somigliava a un abbandono di se medisima” (223). Ruggero’s fervent
reaction to the news and his “gesto furibondo” (224) mirror that similar life force within that
Eugenia constantly attempts to stifle. Ruggero’s comportment and “gesto furibondo” (224)
reflects Eugenia’s nervous state for which Doctor Mola dispenses a sedative, in order to calm her
racing pulse, an inevitable psychosomatic reaction to the physical contact between the potential
268
In the New Introductory Lectures, Freud affirms: “The super-ego applies the strictest moral standard to the
helpless ego which is at its mercy; in general it represents the claims of morality, and we realize all at once that our
moral sense of guilt is the expression of the tension between the ego and the super-ego” (76).
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lovers. Ruggero’s non-verbal proofs of his attraction to her – his heated touch and especially his
intense “sguardo” – recur throughout the novel during each of their encounters. In fact, the
narrator mentions Ruggero’s impassioned glances sixteen times at various instances, often
accompanied by a touch of the hands, throughout his and Eugenia’s interactions. An especially
intense encounter between them occurs when, clasping her hand Ruggero leads Eugenia into a
grotto as she battles with “un senso d’imbarazzo sotto quegli sguardi che lasciavano trasparire
più ingenuamente la sincera ammirazione [di Ruggero]” (172). Once alone inside, he stares at
her more fixedly than usual – “sguardi, ora fugaci, ora insistenti” (174) – and she experiences
contrasting feelings of flattery and displeasure, the former due to her sublimated desire for
affection, the latter because of the moralizing force that tells her such sensual desire is wrong.
The effect of Ruggero’s gaze lasts until that night and Eugenia contemplates them while
undressing before bed:
Gli sguardi di Ruggero la inseguivano fin là, la molestavano, la irritavano con la loro
insistenza […] andava via via scoprendo dentro di sè un’inconsapevole compiacenza di
quegli sguardi, una tolleranza incoraggiante da poter essere interpretata in mala parte, e
quella timida protesta che le sorgeva dal fondo del cuore contro la propria rigidezza,
insinuando: ‘Ebbene? Lascialo fare!’ No, non voleva lasciarlo fare! (181).
Ruggero’s intense gaze seems to fixate on her even in its absence, contemporaneously
tormenting and pleasing her. Her “più intimo esame di coscienza” (181) reveals a previously
unknown (at least consciously) compliance with or participation in those lustful gazes.
Eugenia’s fear that tolerance of such behavior could be interpretated as encouragement;
however, a part of her would like to consummate such desire, while another part of her protests
that she does not want him. She nonetheless continues her interospection, gazing with her “occhi
interiori nelle più nascoste cavità del suo petto, quasi alla ricerca d’un nemico rifugiatovisi
all’insaputa di lei e che bisognava scovare e scacciar fuori” (182). Whether the enemy within is
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her internalized, though socially developed moralizing super-ego, or her sublimated erotic
instincts, a battle between opposing forces of desire and restraint is evident. Eugenia finally
admits to herself the attraction she feels for Ruggero, yet she cannot escape her sense of guilt.
As she looks into the mirror – the prop par excellence in stories of the double – Eugenia sees a
woman “ancora malata” (183) as the authority figures of Patrizio and Doctor Mola had sustained
because ironically, the desire for her husband has now been projected upon a potential lover and
therefore definitely exists outside of civil and religious structures. In an almost Pirandellian
umorismo, the natural, lecit passion she harbored for her disengaged husband, acceptable within
the confines of the marriage bond, is spurned and directed towards a surrogate lover so that she
now teeters on the edge of adultery.269
Eugenia undergoes a repressive “psychical censorship” (Freud The Uncanny 142), from
her own conscience even before it surfaces externally in Patrizio’s reproach, and prior to her
admission of attraction to Ruggero. In fact, as a girl she had experienced unspecified “disturbi
femminili” and “fenomeni interni” that one assumes refer to longings for intimacy and/or
affection; however, her internalized censorship mechanism of guilt over these instinctual feelings
quashed them and produced “l’ansia, il terrore, la sovraeccitazione” (80) as either a punishment,
or as an effect of the repression. After her initial nervous breakdown when the scent of orange
blossoms begins to emanate from her body, she confides in Doctor Mola, the “vecchio
confessore” (83), and reveals that she had wished to confess her discontent with her unrequited
269
Even though no specific indication of sexual relations between Ruggero and Eugenia appears in the text, besides
the kiss that so upsets her, the final lines of Chapter 19 leave an uncertainty in the reader. In a passionate exchange
of glances and declaration of love on the part of Ruggero, the young couple kisses and Eugenia faints. Upon
awaking, Ruggero asks for pardon and pity (typical of a classic courtly lover), assuring her that no one will ever
know what happens between them. Eugenia emphatically protests repeated with words, “ma l’accento, ma gli
sguardi, putroppo, dicevano sì” (229). This open-ended declaration by the narrator, and especially his judgmental
“purtroppo” could lead the reader to believe that the passion between Eugenia and Ruggero is indeed consummated
in this moment; however, Capuana effectively leaves us in a state of hesitation, on the margins of the fantastic.
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desire, yet felt obliged to remain silent. Finally speaking freely, she declares to her physicianconfessor: “‘Non tacevo io, c’era qualcuno che mi metteva una mano sulla bocca, allorché
volevo parlare…’” (84), suggesting a veritable other, an outside force that reaches into her
innermost feelings and forcefully censors them. According to Fusaro, the “qualcuno” that
Eugenia mentions may be classified as the “super-Io” and the internalization of the repressive
force is at the crux of the fissure in the female protagonist’s personality (La nevrosi 357).
Among the many treatments of the super-ego and its relationship to the ego, Freud declares: “By
slow degrees a special authority takes shape within the ego, performs the function of selfobservation and self-criticism, exercises a kind of psychical censorship, and so becomes what we
know as the ‘conscience’” (The Uncanny 142). Eugenia’s conscience rears its authoritative head
soon after her confession, as she kneels at the feet of the Madonna dello Spasimo, praying for
forgiveness and mercy; however, she feels a certain falsity in her pleas, as if she did not believe
that she required pardon for her sensuality: “Diceva così, perché si soleva dire così, perché tante
altre volte ella stessa aveva detto così. Le pareva, anzi, che le venissero suggerite da un’altra
persona inginocchiata al suo fianco” (90). Her prayers for absolution and compassion seem
dictated to her by another, by a socially-constructed conscience that resides within her
unconscious mind, regulating her actions and confounding her instinctual emotions. This same
internal, authoritative force seems to then whisper in her ear in “una maligna voce” (90),
declaring that she is not with child as Doctor Mola had led her to believe and as she had hoped.
After another “attacco nervoso” (90), she asks Patrizio to cure her with a kiss to which he
ironically responds: “‘Con i baci non si guarisce’” (92), when in fact, kisses and other
accoutremonts of intimacy would indeed “cure” her. Only at the end of the novel, when he
seemingly comes of age, does Patrizio cover her with kisses and beg forgiveness (249 – 250),
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essentially providing her with the remedy that he had previously considered useless. To his
“amore a parole,” Patrizio adds the healing kisses of affection that preempt natural and sociallyacceptable, conjugal rites of marriage so that the “cure” to both the protagonist’s neuroses stems
from a balanced dose of verbal communication and instinctual expression, encouraged by the
twofold dualistic figure of Doctor Mola, physician-philosopher and doctor-confessor.
The final pages of the novel depict a seemingly happy ending, uncharacteristic of
literature of the double, and especially of Capuana whose heroes and heroines often suffer
existential angst and/or insanity, or death (sometimes at their own hands) as in Rassegnazione, Il
marchese di Roccaverdina, La sfinge, and Giacinta respectively. Referring to the “Nota
dell’autore alla quarta edizione” of the novel, added in 1900 (the same year as the publication of
the long-awaited Il marchese di Roccaverdina in installments in L’ora, and during the time of the
composition of Rassegnazione) the reader notices a tinge of pessimism in the aging writer as he
mentions Patrizio’s initial inability to “rassegnarsi ad accettare l’amore qual è,” followed by his
final decision to “conciliarsi con esso perché finalmente capisce che la vita è l’ideale possibile”
(16). While this statement may seem to correspond to the novel’s happy ending, we are no
longer witnessing a Manzonian rassegnazione despite Doctor Mola’s words which seem to echo
those of Lucia: “Dio vuole così! Sia fatta la sua volontà!” (232). Capuana appropriates this
resignation to a higher power, by removing it from the context of duty, purity, and saintly
suffering present in I promessi sposi, and inserting it into a modernist discourse that supports his
convictions in the real, albeit hidden mysteries of the unconscious and the connection between
corpo and anima (231 – 232). The sacred images of rassegnazione turned profane in the face of
Nature’s unexplained phenomena are echoed by the classification of Doctor Mola (a dualistic
figure himself) throughout the novel, not only as an implicit medico-filosofo, but explicitly as a
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physician-confessor. Examining Doctor Mola from a contemporary perspective, one cannot help
but view him as a precursor to the psychoanalyst, himself a confessor belonging to an era that
witnessed the death of God, and the birth of modern psychology.
Contemporary scholars such as Ghidetti and Fusaro have examined the role of words and
silence in the novel through a psychoanalytical lens, and have noted how once the characters
communicate with each other and consult with the doctor-confessor Mola, their ailing
relationship and their own neuroses are cured. From this perspective, Capuana most definitely
seems to anticipate one of the fundamentals of the “talking cure,” and his Doctor Mola seems to
be a proto-psychoanalyst, to whom Patrizio and Eugenia confess. Both protagonists continue to
consult the physician-philosopher and seek his advice regarding their respective ailments.
Patrizio thinks of him as “quasi un confessore” to whom he revealed “i più intimi segreti
dell’anima sua” (53). The doctor even refers to himself as a “vecchio confessore” (83) as he
encourages Eugenia to confide in him, and as “il confessore medico” (233) when he incites
Patrizio to discuss his issues. Unlike many of his strictly positivist colleagues, Doctor Mola
refuses to believe in “l’uomo-macchina” (231), and openly dispels the stereotypical omniscience
attributed to physicians: “Noi medici siamo nell’obbligo di saper tutto; ma spesso – parlo di me e
dei miei pari – sappiamo poco o niente” (82). Unlike Foucault’s medicial practitioners, veritable
new priests of modern society, Capuana’s doctors – frequently involved in discourse surrounding
the pathological double – do not presume to absolutely delineate the confines of disease and
health, nor establish unwavering parameters of abnormality as opposed to normality.
Although Profumo differs from the short stories addressed in this chapter insofar as it
presents (at least on the surface) a talking and affective “cure” for “diseases” of the nerves, it
nonetheless appertains to the Capuanian tendency to depict clinical cases involving the
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breakdown of the unified subject. While the Doppelgänger walks through many of Capuana’s
narratives, those few presented in the current study – “Un caso di sonnambulismo,” “Il sogno di
un musicista,” and Profumo – all portray alternate states of consciousness suggestive of an
existence beyond the one lived in our conscious, waking lives. The selected novelle illustrate an
oneiric other as he surfaces – either in the somnambulist or the dream state – and the havoc he
may wreak when he crosses over from the unconscious mind into the conscious life of an
individual. Even though Profumo does not delve into the details of Eugenia’s hysterical
breakdowns (we do not know whether she has visions, or travels to another place), it
nevertheless reminds us of the potential for parallel existences in nervous seizures themselves,
and in dreams where repressed desires often surface as in the case of Eugenia’s oneiric fantasies
of Ruggero’s embraces. Capuana’s second novel, written in between the composition of “Un
caso di sonnambulismo” and “Il sogno di un musicista,” treats the double from a different
perspective, similar to Tarchetti’s representation of it in Fosca; the internal division of a single
protagonist becomes complemented by two characters that externally reflect these oppositional
forces, while concurrently standing as contrasting, manifest doubles for the other.
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Chapter 3
“There’s someone in my head and it’s not me:” the Double Inside-out
in Emilio De Marchi’s Early Novels270
PRESIDENTE. Il vostro nome?
ACCUSATO. Io sono un’anima doppia. (L’accusato sorride stupidamente.)
PRESIDENTE. Come vi chiamate?
ACCUSATO. Non lo so. Cogito ergo sum.271
The rather comical, though nevertheless enigmatic exchange between a presiding judge
and an accused murderer appears in one of the many accounts of courtroom proceedings inserted
into the pages of Emilio De Marchi’s third novel, Due anime in un corpo, published serially in
the Milanese journal Vita nuova in 1877. The inclusion of a court report into the narrative
undoubtedly functions as a reality effect characteristic of the double narration of verisimilitude
and inverisimilitude in fantastic literature, in which the author seeks to enhance the strangeness
of his story, and the sense of estrangement in the reader by situating the marvelous and/or the
uncanny in the “real,” material world.272 From a cultural perspective, the intermittent presence
in the memoirs of Marcello Marcelli of his trial proceedings (transcribed and published in the
newspapers) undeniably alludes to post-Risorgimento socio-literary phenomena in which De
Marchi was fully engaged: the boom of the newspaper, the rise in popularity of the feuilleton,
and consequently the development of an Italian journalistic and literary market directed at a mass
readership.273 In addition to conveying the extra-textual reality that naturally enters into the
270
The citation is from Pink Floyd. “Brain Damage.” The Dark Side of the Moon. Abbey Roads Studios, 1973. CD.
De Marchi, Emilio. Tutte le opere. III. Ed. Giansiro Ferrata. Milano: Mondadori, 1959. 186. All citations from
primary sources are given according to the volume and page numbers of Ferrata’s edition.
272
See footnote 82.
273
The phenomenon of mass literary production began to make its mark on post-Risorgimento Italy in the 1870s and
1880s as the country – primarily the Northern cities of Milan, Torino, and Firenze – experienced a rapid growth in
industry and technological improvements in the printing process, paper production, inks and typesets. The rise in
the printing of books in Italy (from 3,314 in 1836 to 15,973 in 1872), and the founding of many periodicals brought
the written word and socio-cultural issues to a greater number of Italians than ever before, and publications both
Italian and foreign alike, became an inextricable element of the country’s developing material culture. In the
decades following the foundation of the Italian nation, Milan showed the greatest increase in print production in
respect to other Italian industrial centers and its success continued throughout the century with rising literary and
271
223
fictional microcosm, the above excerpt from the seventh day of the accused’s hearing effectively
exemplifies the internal piecemeal nature of this particular narrative, in which other court
testimony, letters, photo ekphrasis, dreams, flashbacks, and multiple narrators unite to form a
narratalogical collage. In general, the genre of the serial novel inherently requires concurrent,
mutually inclusive levels of fragmentation and unity, insofar as each installment must stand
alone, while nevertheless remaining part of the larger, diegetic whole. De Marchi’s nine novels
– all initially published in periodicals, and later in volume form – are no exception, with clear
chapter or section divisions (when reproduced in volume format), often given terse, witty titles
that reflect the fast-paced nature and suspense characteristic of the genre.274 These elements that
comprise the external organization of a holistic though manifold text become echoed internally,
journalistic distribution (Turi 151). In 1836, nineteen periodicals were in circulation in Milan and by 1871 this
number rose to ninety. Only two years later in 1873, Milan produced one-hundred and thirty-seven periodicals (Turi
118). In contrast to France and England where serial novels exploded in the 1830s and 1840s, Italy began to publish
serial fiction in the 1870s (Briganti 108). The romanzo d’appendice appealed to a wider audience because the
newspapers themselves appealed not only to the bourgeois, but also to the petit-bourgeois and even the more
culturally advanced, literate proletariat in the final years of the century (Cecconi-Gorra 23).
274
While Tarchetti and Capuana are well-known as key figures in the Scapigliatura and Verismo respectively,
Emilio De Marchi remains a fin de siècle writer who, though popular during his lifetime and influenced by both the
Scapigliatura and Verismo, remains outside of the literary canon. His essential un-canonicity prevents familiarity
with his works among some contemporary students; therefore, he merits a few words regarding his bibliobiographical background. De Marchi initially gained notoriety as a journalist and contributor to the Milanese
periodical La Vita Nuova, in which he published pieces of social commentary, literary reviews, poetry, and his first
and third serialized novels between 1876 and 1877: Il signor dottorino and Due anime in un corpo. De Marchi’s
second novel Tra gli stracci, subtitled “un racconto popolare,” appeared during the same year (1876) as Il signor
dottorino, though in the journal La famiglia e la scuola (Spinazzola 35). Like one called to a vocation, De Marchi
consciously strove to improve and eventually reform the serialized fiction developing in post-Unification Milan and
that, much to his chagrin, proved to be artistically and morally vacuous imitations of the French feuilleton. In a
critical article printed in La Vita Nuova following the publication of his first two novels, he defended the relatively
new practice (in Italy) of the serialized novel by underlining its ability to enthrall a vast and diverse public, and its
pedagogical potential as ethically and culturally edifying (Briganti 108). For De Marchi, the modern literary
audience consisted of the majority of literate, though not erudite individuals and the duty of the writer should
involve pleasing and bettering the multitude by facilitating the comprehension – or at least veneration – of moral,
civil and aesthetic ideals (Briganti 67). Though his first three novels met with commercial success, two of them
published in volume form following their final installment, De Marchi spent the next decade composing short
stories, literary criticism, sketches, and social commentary for various Italian periodicals. He also maintained his
positions as a professional writer, professor of stylistics, and administrator at the Accademia Scientifico-Letteraria in
Milan, yet the desire to witness an improvement in the quality and quantity of Italian literature for the masses
remained, and would ultimately culminate in his reformation project of the romanzo d’appendice, Il cappello del
prete, in 1887.
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within the confines of the narrative universe; in a reading of any fiction, whether serialized or
not, the reader – much like the detective (as already discussed in the previous chapter) – must not
only read between the lines and decipher clues, she must also reconstruct the fabula and its
possible interpretations from pieces of the syuzhet. In De Marchi’s Due anime in un corpo,
much like in Capuana’s “Un caso di sonnambulismo,” the reader must organize and interpret
non-linear events based on flashbacks, dream visions, texts within the text, and oral accounts of
characters; furthermore, she must also evaluate the protagonist’s pathological condition as
stemming from either supernaturally marvelous, or naturally uncanny phenomena, or even both.
The judge’s interrogation of the obviously ailing (or possessed) Marcello, in its staccato nature,
graphically echoes the disintegration and dialogic exchanges that occur in fantastic scenarios of
dual consciousness such as this one, in which a single mind is internally at once both divided and
duplicated – a unity that is also a multiplicity, a compartmentalized whole, much like the
serialized text in which it occurs. Like a close reading, both the criminal and the clinical case
demand a piecing together of fragments – clues or symptoms – in order to arrive at an
understanding, rather, an interpretation of the whole, thereby placing them neatly (though by no
means simply) within the hermeneutical discourse of parts and wholes that we have previously
encountered in the discussions of both Tarchetti and Capuana.
The above excerpt from De Marchi’s Due anime in un corpo succinctly portrays the
intersection of a criminal and a clinical case, couched in theatricality, a trend that will appear in
the author’s other novel under examination in this chapter: Il signor dottorino.275 As aberrations
275
The questioning of the suspect by the Presidente, following this script-like model with the character’s names
(transcribed as merely “President” and “Accused”) and “stage directions” in parenthesis, orthographically
exemplifies the contextual element of theatricality common to many of De Marchi’s novels, and especially to those
tales of the double that will be addressed in this chapter. The primary ingredients of the feuilleton include those
225
from so-called normality, crime in its destruction of socially-established moral order, and
pathology in its supposed deviation from a state of health, parallel the Doppelgänger’s
subversion of previously conceived, early modern notions of the rational, conscious, and unified
Cartesian subject, which the Accusato so obviously disparages as passé with his ironic
employment of the stock phrase of rational philosophy, “cogito ergo sum”276. At his trial for the
murder of Giorgio Lucini, the wrongfully accused, psychologically fragile Marcello Marcelli,
fails to definitively identify himself in front of the tribune (and even to himself), as his psyche
concurrently houses both his and his deceased friend’s consciousness, as the fantastic feuilleton’s
title – Two Spirits in One Body – so blatantly indicates277. Like Tarchetti’s Baron B. of “Uno
spirito in un lampone” who declares himself “un uomo doppio” (II, 77), Marcello also seemingly
suffers from a usurpation of his own thoughts and volition by an errant spirit stuck between the
earthly realm and the afterlife. Tarchetti and De Marchi – both associated with the Scapigliatura
common to the theater: melodramma, suspense, “i colpi di scena,” and the propensity towards pathos and moralism
(Cecconi-Gorra 21).
276
I use the term “criminal” rather loosely to indicate not merely a crime against socially-established laws or
religious rules, but also as a transgression of natural laws, as a crime against nature or humanity. While both
Capuana’s “Un caso di sonnambulismo” and De Marchi’s Due anime in un corpo, and especially Il cappello del
prete are often considered precursors to the contemporary giallo because of their subject matter, criminality could
also be considered outside the margins of a story of murder, which still contain the psychological thrills found in the
poliziesco. In Capuana’s case, we encountered Patrizio’s dysfunctional relationship with his mother that not only
went against the Biblical rite of marriage, but also seemed contrary to a human’s natural maturation process into
adulthood. De Marchi’s works most definitely carry a moral weight because of his own convictions as a modern
Catholic, open to progress and theories of evolution, but nonetheless still attempting to convey morally edifying
messages in his literary works in addition to his exploration of the psychological quandaries of the fin de siècle
individual.
277
Emilio De Marchi, like his friend Antonio Fogazzaro, was a staunch modern Catholic, who believed in both
evolution and salvation, and of course in the Christian conception of the soul as living on after the death of the body.
Despite De Marchi’s religious beliefs which may lead us to think of the “anima” merely as the soul, the author’s
propensity to dig into not only questions of morality, but also into enigmas of the human psyche, force us to uphold
the multifaceted notion of the anima, which etymologically incorporates within it “air, breath, life, soul, spirit” from
classical Latin. In philosophical discourse, the anima is considered, “the animating principle in living things, the
soul; some part or aspect of the soul, esp. the irrational part of the soul as distinguished from the rational mind”
(OED online). Much like the German term geist, often translated as either “spirit” or “mind” with very different
implications in the English language, anima also subsumes within it connotations of both the spiritual and the
psychical outside the boundaries of the rational. Even though De Marchi was a believer in the soul, we must not
disregard the psychological weight implied in the term. In order to avoid such a conundrum, I continue to utilize the
terms “spirit,” “consciousness,” and “psyche.”
226
in Milan – situate their respective fantastic tales within the confines of realism in order to
effectively transgress them with the employment of the super-natural in their mutual,
carnivalistic propensity to turn the world inside-out278. De Marchi’s account of two
consciousnesses fused together in one mind over an extended period of time differs from
Tarchetti’s story of a temporarily possessed and bi-gendered aristocrat, however, insofar as the
ex-seminary student Marcello intermittently assumes (or is dominated by) Lucini’s identity as he
moves through the urban landscape of Milan, wearing the deceased’s clothing, inhabiting his
apartment, and even switching narrative voices between the first and third person. Marcello’s
inability to properly answer the first question of his interrogation (or of any first-time
acquaintance for that matter) – “[what is] your name?” – does not merely offer the comic effect
so often interspersed throughout fantastic narratives. Rather, as the reader envisions the murder
suspect smiling stupidly at the seemingly simple question, and ultimately failing to answer it
with the typical reply, “My name is…,” she realizes that perhaps the query, and especially the
response are by no means simple. While we all possess a first name given to us at the time of
our birth and a last name passed onto us from our fathers, these linguistic signifiers merely
identify us, but by no means fully establish our identities as complex (in this case doubled)
individuals.279 As Shakespeare’s Juliet so aptly observes, “What’s in a name? That which we
278
The young Emilio De Marchi often joined his literary peers for coffee at the Galleria in Milan for long
discussions regarding a variety of subjects. He made the acquaintances of authors including: the Boito brothers,
Verga, Capuana, Sacchetti, Faldella, Gualdo, Fontana and Molineri – all considered at one time Scapigliati, or at
least greatly influenced by them. Fittipaldi describes Due anime in un corpo as possessing motifs that reconnect
with the “esperienza scapigliata,” even though it had begun to fade into the background by 1875, three years before
the publication of De Marchi’s third novel (204). The Milanese author’s other novels undoubtedly and
intermittently hearken back towards the Scapigliatura, recalling their denouncement of the status quo, dissatisfaction
with the Italian literary scene, and their tendencies to expose the macabre complexities of human existence.
279
Of course, a person’s last name relegates him or her to a family, to a lineage, (whether aristocratic, bourgeois, or
lower class), and to a nationality or ethnicity, and thereby situates him or her within social, political, and ethnic
categories. While these outside factors undoubtedly enter into one’s identity, personal experiences, upbringing,
attitudes, and characters prove other variables that constitute one’s identity as an individual. Nicknames often arise,
227
call a rose / by any other word would smell as sweet” (Romeo and Juliet II. ii. 43 – 44). Names
serve to differentiate us from one another; however, they cannot encompass the essence of our
personhood, of who we really are (if we can even know who we really are). The accused is
called Marcello Marcelli (an amusing name that graphically precludes the internal duplication of
consciousness he experiences when Giorgio Lucini’s spirit supposedly takes residence in his
body); however, that name cannot completely convey his being, for he is neither entirely
Marcello, nor Giorgio, but is at once both Marcello and Giorgio so that his response, “I am a
double spirit,” proves especially apropos. Furthermore, his hesitation mirrors the reader’s own
uncertainty regarding the marvelousness or the uncanniness of the story; in other words, is he
suffering from demonic possession, or merely a mental breakdown? One could argue that Due
anime in un corpo lends itself to the Todorovian fantastic in its pure state, insofar as the reader
and often times the protagonist himself, remain unsure – in a veritable state of hésitation – in
regards to the presence of the supernatural versus that of the uncanny. Is Marcello truly
possessed by the spirit of Lucini at various instances throughout the novel, or is he merely
undergoing intermittent psychotic breaks in which he exhibits characteristics that one could refer
to today, in contemporary psychological parlance, as symptoms of dissociative identity disorder?
Whether we are in the realm of the marvelous or the uncanny, the phenomenon of double
consciousness that plagues Marcello after his friend’s death naturally situates De Marchi’s novel
within the discourse of the double, which always already involves the psychopathological,
whether we encounter, in Calvinian terms, the visionary or the everyday fantastic. Marcello’s
case proves another prime example of the double’s propensity to lend itself to both the
especially in cases of dualistic identities such as Verga’s Mastro-don Gesualdo and Capuana’s marchese-contadino,
in order to delineate an identity that one’s given name does not aptly describe. When one changes his or her name,
as Mattia Pascal becomes Adriano Meis, he or she not only undermines paternal, social, and nationality constraints,
he or she also assumes a primal authority over oneself.
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marvelous and the uncanny, and while De Marchi’s third novel is the only one of the present
study that hearkens towards the supernatural of spiritism, it nonetheless – like its strange sister Il
signor dottorino – delves into the dark recesses of the mind, while creating a bizarre diegetic
universe where the reader can almost hear the theme song of the Twilight Zone playing in the
background.
Marcello contains within his single body and mind, two separate psychical entities that
sometimes alternate in their presence, and other times contemporaneously coexist so that he, like
Tarchetti’s Baron B., experiences recurrent, double perceptions and feelings. The judge’s
rephrasing of the question, “Come vi chiamate?” – literally, “What do you call yourself?” –
elicits further confusion from Marcello/Giorgio as he claims not to know, while adding the alltoo-familiar maxim to an undoubtedly strange occurrence of double consciousness, “I think
therefore I am,” which (as already noted) succinctly undercuts the notion of a rational, thinking
subject, while simultaneously begging the question of what constitutes the human mind, of what
it means to be human. The accused is seemingly conscious, thinking, and speaking; however, his
giddy, confused state, and uncertainty regarding his “true” identity suggests that he is anything
but lucid. The advent of modern psychology, and especially the work of Freud, dispel Cartesian
humanism by “discovering,” rather, uncovering the unconscious, thereby confounding Descartes’
conception of the human as a fully, and solely rational conscious being.280 The unconscious,
alongside of the double consciousness we find in Marcello’s case, demonstrate that the mind is
not merely a monolithic construction with the conscious “I” at its center; instead, it potentially
contains within it something(s) Other – hidden or repressed desires (in Freudian parlance),
collective and personal archetypes a là Jung, oneiric others (that we recall from Tarchetti’s “Le
280
See footnote 57.
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leggende del castello nero” and Capuana’s novelle), alternate personalities (that we will later
encounter in De Marchi’s Il cappello del prete), and even other “I”s or sides of the self that, as
we have seen in Fosca and Profumo, become externalized in opposing, yet complementary
Doppelgängers in relation to the protagonists. As in the fantastic and gothic works of Tarchetti
and Capuana addressed in the previous chapters, De Marchi’s novels present the multifarious
figure of the double as it surfaces within an individual character, causing a “cleavage of the ego”
(Rank The Double 12) and/or the appearance of “un doppio apparente” (Fusillo L’altro e lo
stesso 14) – a veritable double consciousness attributable to consciously assumed personalities,
as in the case of il dottorino Marco, and also as a result of (spiritually or psychically)
supplemented identities within a single mind and body, as in the case of Marcello / Giorgio 281.
In sum, Marcello’s cross-examination succinctly emblematizes the intra-textual attributes of selfdivision and duality that recur throughout the De Marchian literary corpus, especially in the early
serials of the present study: Il signor dottorino (1876), the author’s literary exordium, considered
either a short novel or a long novella, and Due anime in un corpo (1877), his third serial, a supernatural tale with macabre undertones and a scapigliato aura.282 These early texts demonstrate the
evolution of De Marchi’s literary prowess as he appropriates various stylistic elements of the
feuilleton, such as simple language, fast-paced narration, suspense, melodrama, and humor,
supplementing them with culturally relevant and psychologically rich subject matter that
281
See footnote 42.
The dates provided in parenthesis indicate the year in which the novels appeared in the appendices of periodicals.
Due anime in un corpo (appearing in Vita nuova, which De Marchi helped found) and Il cappello del prete
(appearing first in L’Italia del popolo) were published the following year in volume form. Il signor dottorino, never
published in volume form and found only in Ferrata’s edition of De Marchi’s collected works, was released serially
in the appendix of the Milanese journal Vita nuova beginning in July of 1876. It is not however, divided into
chapters with titles, as are the other novels addressed in this chapter. The division in installments is apparent by the
white spaces that create sections of text in Ferrata’s compilation. With his later novels, De Marchi undoubtedly
honed his skills as a serial writer, utilizing chapter or section divisions and entitling each one, as if giving a single
identity to a part of the narrative, so that the whole narrative itself (under one title) actually consisted of several
identities that symbiotically interacted together to become a whole while remaining separate.
282
230
frequently reside between the lines of a multifaceted plot. While critics rightly note that “lo
sdoppiamento della personalità” (Gorini Santoli 59) is a recurring theme throughout all of De
Marchian narrative, the two novels under examination in this chapter have been chosen because
they share common threads, weaved around the internal and external manifestations of the
double. In addition to the presence of the uncanny and/or the marvelous, each story contains
strong undercurrents of the criminal, the theatrical, and the pathological – naturally
complementary components to the motif of division and duplication. Due anime in un corpo
may be considered a precursor to the modern polizesco or detective novel, as it depicts a murder
and the mysteries surrounding it. Il signor dottorino, despite its affinity with the rosa rather than
the giallo, contains sfumature of the criminal, for Doctor Marco’s medically and morally
unethical behavior towards his patient Severina and impersonation of Count Giulio borders on
illicit fraud. Just as Doctor Marco pretends to be the delusional Severina’s doting fiancé in order
to pacify and “treat” her hysterical condition, Marcello impersonates Giorgio, familiarizing
himself with the objects in his vacant apartment, wearing his clothes as an actor wears a costume,
and even presenting himself to others as his deceased friend. As these brief instances effectively
demonstrate, both of the novels under examination here are highly informed by the element of
theatricality, which always already implies or necessitates a doubled layer of reality between
one’s own identity fuori scena and the role that he plays within the performance. In other words,
an actor is contemporaneously both the character he plays on stage, and the person or persons he
is off stage, depending on the multiple masks he wears externally in the so-called “real” world,
and internally in front of himself. One cannot help but think here of the Jungian persona and the
maschera pirandelliana, two concepts organically tied to duplicity and multiplicity in an
individual (un)consciousness, as Pirandello observes in L’umorismo: “come dominano nel
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mondo sociale la simulazione e la dissimulazione, tanto meno avvertite, quante più sono
divenute abituali, così simuliamo e dissimuliamo con noi medesimi, sdoppiandoci e spesso anche
moltiplicandoci” (172 – 173). Pirandello’s observation of individuals habitually acting out their
social roles while simultaneously (and often unwittingly) pretending to themselves, and
concealing themselves from themselves is a psychological phenomenon that appears not just in
his own critical, literary, and theatrical works, but also very much so in the fiction and nonfiction of his lesser-known contemporaries, such as Emilio De Marchi. The Milanese writer, like
his Sicilian contemporary, depicts characters that perform in their diegetic social milieu, and
within their own mind so that a duplication (or in some cases, a multiplication) of personalities
occurs, which in turn echoes both the double essence of an actor who sembles and dissembles,
and also the very nature of theater itself. Just as the actor is inherently duplicitous for his roles
on and off stage, so the theater may be (and frequently has been) construed as the aesthetic
Doppelgänger of “real” life, as per the famous Shakespearian affirmation uttered by Jaques in As
You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players; They have
their exits and their entrances, / And one man in his time plays many parts” (II. vii. 139 – 142).
As a literary critic and great admirerer of both William Shakespeare and Carlo Goldoni, De
Marchi’s creative works portray characters that, unlike Dejanira of La locandiera, know how to
pretend “fuori di scena” (127).283
The overall, inherent pathological nature of the double has already been discussed at
length in the previous chapters; however, let it suffice to mention that each of these tales portrays
283
In De Marchi’s Lettere e letterati italiani del secolo XVIII, there appear fifteen lectures held by him at the
Circolo filologico milanese between 1881 and 1882, which include an excursus on the figure and the works of
Goldoni (Cecconi-Gorra 17). In his critical treatment of Goldoni, his admiration for the Venetian playwright is
evident: “Mi pare di incontrarmi finalmente in una faccia conosciuta, dopo un lungo viaggio fra gente ignota, non
sempre simpatica, e in un paese non sempre bello. Mi pare, dirò di più, di parlarvi di un vivo dopo tanti morti’”
(288).
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varying forms of neurotic behavior which result in the protagonists’ temporary insanity. Still
considered pre-reformatory serial novels and somewhat closely aligned with the French
feuilleton, Il signor dottorino and Due anime in un corpo incorporate love triangles, which as we
recall from Rank, are standard accoutrements of the double in literature.284 While the typical
rivalry in love indeed exists between the protagonists and their antagonists, these earlier De
Marchian works present the dysfunctional ménage a trois through a pathological lens, insofar as
the lovesickness of various characters (and especially the protagonists) escalates to such an
extent that there occur temporary losses of reason and breakdowns of the subject, akin to similar
phenomena occurring in madness, and perhaps a tongue-in-cheek nod on the part of the author to
the ancient notion of falling crazy in love.
As discussed above, the intersection of the pathological and the criminal within the
sphere of the double seems a natural one. Il signor dottorino and Due anime in un corpo explore
questions of identity, conscience, and neurosis that eventually lead to different degrees of
psychosis in which the respective protagonists theatrically assume alternate personalities, and/or
in Fusillo’s terminology, become apparent doubles (L’altro e lo stesso 14), two spirits or
consciousnesses in one body. Doctor Marco and Marcello Marcelli progress from the “disabling
or distressing anxiety” of neurosis to a “loss of contact with reality” that supposedly occurs in
psychosis.285 Each protagonist contains within him an other “I” that is both part of himself, but
284
In the second chapter of his seminal study, The Double, Otto Rank discusses various examples of the double in
literature and tropes that accompany it, including “rivalry for the beloved woman” (13). We of course remember the
diverse love triangles that appear in Tarchetti’s Fosca and Capuana’s Profumo. De Marchi, however, succeeds in
offering the reader even more renditions of the ménage a trois motif in both novels treated here.
285
We recall that “neurosis” is loosely defined as a “psychological disorder in which there is disabling or distressing
anxiety, without severe disorganization or distortion of behavior or personality,” as opposed to psychosis, which is
considered a “severe mental illness, characterized by loss of contact with reality […] and deterioration of intellectual
and social functioning” (OED). Unlike psychotics, neurotics do not suffer from delusions or hallucinations and their
typical behavior is not socially unacceptable. In other words, they can function “normally” in everyday society; the
disturbance is an interior one, while the disruption in intellectual and social functioning of the psychotic is
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not himself, an ego that seems to have come from without, or from the unreachable unconscious
within (which is essentially also a “without,” for it remains beyond conscious, knowable
knowledge). Dottorino Marco senses something foreign infiltrating his psyche while he plays
the role of his rival in love and Marcello feels his mind invaded by an outside spiritual presence
after his friend’s death. These characters’ pathologies therefore result from something seemingly
other than themselves, an “outside” force that nonetheless contemporaneously resides within
them. When they are dominated by this other consciousness, or supplanted by this alternate
personality, the double inside (that initially came from somewhere outside of the rational,
conscious ego) emerges, and we encounter what we shall refer to as the “double inside-out.” As
an embodiment of the Freudian unheimlich in its familiarity and foreignness, the double insideout, like the oneiric and artistic others discussed in Capuana’s short stories and non-fiction,
bursts forth into the consciousness of De Marchi’s protagonists, yet is always already a part of
the two great beyonds associated with humankind: the spiritual world and the unconscious mind.
The highly internalized double inside-out does not indicate the absence of opposing or manifest
doubles, such as those encountered in Fosca and Profumo. In fact, the Doppelgänger of our two
narrative selections not only wears the mask of the double inside-out, he also appears in the guise
of secondary characters that function as external, antithetical yet complementary others of the
primary characters.286 The double in De Marchi’s novels emerges as it does in our previous
authors’ fiction – as a highly nuanced literary trope organically intertwined with the mutually
externalized. Each neurotic DeMarchian protagonist in the chosen narratives eventually succumbs to either a
temporary or a permanent psychosis that destroys his ability to function “normally” in society and to interact
rationally and dispassionately with those characters surrounding him.
286
As we have previously noted in scenarios of the fissure and fusion of identities, division or duplication within
does not necessarily negate the possibility of a double without that functions as an opposition or a reflection of the
self. On the contrary, internal splitting and/or doubling usually exists in some type of relation to another character
within the fictional microcosm, an external other that functions as a complementary or manifest double.
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inclusive elements of pathology, criminality, and theatricality. The treatment of each of the
selected De Marchian narratives will therefore highlight the double inside-out, that is, the
internal fissure of the ego as it is acted upon by outside forces; it will also consider self-division
and duplication as it becomes externalized in the form of corporeal doubles – mirror images or
contrasting others – of the respective protagonists.
Mad Love, Mad Play, and Mad Men in Il signor dottorino
Emilio De Marchi’s inaugural novel is usually neglected by critics, even by those few
that address the writer’s works preceding his most popular Demetrio Pianelli (1890) and
Arabella (1893).287 Characterized as a narrative that vacillates between “romanzo e racconto e
romanzetto” (Gorini Santoli 52), and that speaks to “lettori del ceto medio” (Spinazzola 37),
neither the liminal structure, nor the novel’s intended audience nullify its socio-cultural and
psychopathological implications, for it depicts the then-contemporary phenomenon of clashing –
though changing – class hierarchies, alongside the stock “diseases” of hysteria and ennui that
flourished in the fin de siècle. Even before reading the first page of Il signor dottorino, the
novel’s title alone strikes the reader, as it immediately establishes a complexity that will remain
an underlying current throughout the text. The combination of two titles – signore and dottorino
– suggests an inherent duality in the protagonist for whom the novel is entitled, and cannot help
but recall other duplicitous literary figures such as Verga’s mastro-don Gesualdo and Capuana’s
marchese-contadino the Marquis of Roccaverdina. The added appendage of il signor suggests a
certain formality and nobility of character mentioned in the narrator’s introduction of the
287
Demetrio Pianelli first appeared in installments in the journal L’Italia with the title La bella pigotta in 1889. The
following year it was published in volume form with the title by which it is known today. De Marchi also added the
subtitle “ritratti e costume della vita milanese” because he had intended to compose a series of novels, as Verga had
proposed with his “ciclo dei vinti.” Like his Sicilian friend, De Marchi never completed the cycle. Arabella, the
second novel in the series, began its serial publication in the Corriere della sera in 1892 and was published in
volume form in 1893 (Gorini Santoli 19).
235
protagonist, and reiterated by Baron Adriano towards the end of the tale. The diminuitive
dottorino may be interpreted ambiguously as it not only alludes to a certain sweetness of youth,
it also undercuts the authority traditionally associated with the figure of the physician.288
Furthermore, the combination of “mister” and “little doctor” may also be read as an allusion to
Marco’s transformative coming of age that results from his unluckiness in love. He remains a
young physician at the conclusion of the story, but the narrator informs us how he matures into a
signore, who lives a long, happy, and healthy life.
Set in the vicinity of “la bella strada che costeggia il lato destro del lago di Como” (III,
3), Il signor dottorino recounts the tale of an amicable, generous, though solitary and eventually
reclusive young country doctor who is called upon by a wealthy Florentine baron in order to treat
and hopefully cure his sickly daughter whose initial hysteria has snowballed into a full-blown
delusional psychosis.289 After an homage to Manzoni in his description of the Lombardian
landscape, the third person narrator reveals how Doctor Marco had become hopelessly infatuated
with Baron Adriano Siloe’s daughter, Severina, during his daily walks or rides past their
residence.290 The young physician had been encouraged that his affection was reciprocated
because Severina greeted him each day, and had even gone so far as to wave her handkerchief,
blow him kisses, and toss him a red carnation. The baroness’s melodramatic actions, much in
the style of a heroine from a romanzo rosa or romance novel, are quickly undercut when Marco
and the reader discover that she has been living in a fantasy world since her betrothed Count
288
Even though De Marchi was indeed suspicious of authoritative structures such as positivistic science and ultra
conservative Catholicism in denial of evolutionary theories, he nonetheless sought to instill a sense of order,
morality, and conscience in his audience.
289
See footnote 124.
290
Spinazzola claims that in Il signor dottorino, De Marchi is concerned with both “un apologo morale” and “[il]
bello scrivere,” especially in the initial pages of the novel that read as “un candido omaggio al Manzoni” through the
description of the countryside on the right side of Lake Como (37).
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Giulio had deserted her for a French singer a year earlier.291 In fact, she believes that il dottorino
is actually her estranged beloved, and continues to unknowingly substitute the one for the other,
initially when he passes by her lodgings each day, and eventually when he meets her for the first
time in order to begin her treatment. The young physician’s plan to try “un esperimento che ha
già deluso i più dotti” (III, 17) in order to cure his patient of her baffling mental malady never
reaches fruition and remains unknown to the reader, for Baron Adriano convinces him to
temporarily pacify his daughter by pretending to be her fiancé with “una cura intesa più a
mitigare che non a sanare le aberrazioni di questa mente” (III, 30). Adriano and Marco
consequently concoct an entire other reality to correspond to Severina’s invention so that each
character becomes paradoxically ubiquitous, existing in and moving between two separate,
coexistent worlds – one of fiction and one of non-fiction – much like the reader of a novel
negotiates between the diegetic space and her own material reality. The all-too-familiar
intersection of life and art (or artifice) surfaces in Adriano’s own observation of their supposedly
therapeutic ruse, referring to it as an “avventura da romanzo” (III, 30). Such a statement not only
highlights the make-believe nature and the tragicomical absurdity of the protagonist’s charade, it
also destabilizes the gravity of the novelistic genre itself. The notion that such a ridiculous
scenario could only happen in a novel, and the fact that it actually is occurring in a novel, stands
as a metatextual tongue-in-cheek commentary by De Marchi that discloses the self-reflexive and
291
When the reader discovers that the delusional Severina has been sequestered by her father in their temporary
lodgings, she cannot help but remember Charlotte Brontë’s “madwoman in the attic” Bertha Mason, similarly
hidden from society because of her mental illness. While Severina’s case could elicit a feminist or gendered
discussion of the female hysteric, her isolation, and her maltreatment in the fin de siècle, it is unfortunately beyond
the scope of the present study. Severina undoubtedly appertains to the treatment of the double insofar as she
functions as a female counterpart to the neurotic Doctor Marco.
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often self-critical attitude that the fledgling genre adopts in the Nineteenth Century.292 The
Baron’s reference to a novel introduces another alternate, albeit fictitious place that we all enter
when reading narratives; we encounter an additional example of the contrasting, yet
complementary realities of literature and “real” life, echoing the duet of theatricality and “real”
life suggested in Marco’s role play, which is essentially a fiction (a farce), within a fiction (the
diegetic universe), within a fiction (the novel itself). In other words, the creation and
maintenance of this parallel fantasy alludes to the multifaceted layers of reality (or of varying
realities) within the diegesis and outside of it.293 One of those alternate realities emerges in a
comment made by Adriano. When Severina asks Marco, “mi vuoi proprio bene?” Baron Siloe
mumbles, “il nostro Dio si diverte,” (III, 28), in an allusion to the most commonly accepted
alternate realm of spirits and the afterlife. Adriano’s exasperated comment suggests that the
metaphysical domain does not merely circumscribe the natural world, it controls it and its
residents. The notion of God as amusing himself with human toils hearkens back to classical
292
In Nineteenth-century fiction, the self-referential nature of the novel especially emerges through anti-novel
attitudes within the story and narrators’ direct addresses to the reader, both features discussed in Brantlinger’s study
of the threat of mass literacy. In the introduction, he asserts that the “inscription of anti-novel attitudes within
novels is so common that it can be understood as a defining feature of the genre; accordingly, any fictional narrative
which does not somehow criticize, parody, belittle, or otherwise deconstruct itself is probably not a novel”
(Brantlinger 2). Whether characters voice anti-novel attitudes or the omniscient narrator continually calls on the
“dear reader,” these overt reminders of the text’s identity as a novel disorient the reader by emphasizing the
threshold between fiction and reality, while concurrently erasing that fine line that divides them so two separate
worlds exist, yet mesh together.
293
The dream world is a prevalent, alternate reality where the double emerges as we have noted in the works of
Tarchetti and Capuana. While dreams indeed enter into the narratives of De Marchi and Fogazzaro, they act as a
complementary, rather than a predominating milieu for the drama of the double. In Il signor dottorino, De Marchi
alludes to the oneiric space as yet another reality that undoubtedly reflects our waking life; however, he does not
delve into its implications as our previous authors do. In a confession to Doctor Marco (playing the role of Count
Giulio), Severina reveals that she had experienced ominous dreams about “him.” While the physician would like to
discuss the particulars of her dreams in order to better comprehend her waking fantasy world, her father interjects:
“‘Non credere a’ sogni, che sono l’ombra de’ nostri pensieri’” (III, 28). Even though Severina’s delusion remains
the principal alternate state of consciousness in the story, Baron Siloe’s affirmation that dreams are shadows of our
thoughts does not fully discredit them as he so intends. Although they possess no potential to portend the future,
dreams function as alternative expressions our innermost desires and fears that are usually kept in the shadows of
our minds. Dreams therefore act as another reality, as the double of the material world in which we live – a motif
that appears, whether majorly or minimally in all of our authors.
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antiquity where the gods toyed with humans for their enjoyment, and also recalls the similar
Shakespearean conception of the world as a stage on which players act out a drama orchestrated
by a higher authority, whether it be God, Fate, or something Other that moves and shapes its
earthly actors. Not only does their God amuse himself with Severina’s psychosis, he also
relishes in the umorismo inherent in the role Doctor Marco is eventually happy to assume. This
new, improvised “esperimento pericoloso” (III, 19), in which physician and father perpetuate the
psychotic’s delusion, becomes an experiment not of la scienza positivistica, but of la coscienza –
that is, of consciousness and conscience.294 This experimental treatment of the patient, however,
is turned on its head, for it becomes a trial of Doctor Marco’s sense of (self) consciousness and
conscience. He undergoes his own internal identity crisis, which in turn echoes his beloved’s
psychosis and he must eventually confess and repent for the subterfuge he orchestrates to delay
Count Giulio’s arrival.
Severina unconsciously constructs, and with the help of her enablers, maintains an
alternate reality in which the desire for her absent beloved is fulfilled through the presence of
Marco, who acts as a sort of stunt double for the philandering count. Her delusional space, as
opposed to the “real” world where the (supposedly) sane reside, complements and resonates the
presence of the Doppelgänger, as it forces each character to enact two different parts – one in the
“real,” material world, and another in the patient’s fantasy land. Ironically, Marco assumes the
294
Baron Adriano complains to Doctor Marco, declaring, “la scienza mi rifiuta ogni consolazione” (III, 15). His
statement not only discloses his frustration with traditional medicine, it also alludes to the notion that positivistic
science and a command of the anatomy cannot fully explain and understand the metaphysical complexities of the
human condition. The Baron’s lamentation of science’s inability to cure (or even explain) his daughter’s indefinable
and confounding condition, and his blunt declaration to Doctor Marco that “Severina è pazza” (III, 16) succinctly
and subtly – as in the style distinctive to De Marchi – emphasizes his (and consequently the author’s) dissatisfaction
with purely positivistic interpretations of the natural universe, and communicates the component of humor (or even
tragicomedy) – both characteristics of fantastic discourse as we well remember. The presence of comedy appears in
other instances throughout the story, especially in the character of the jovial and joking Celestino whose life’s
maxim, “Recipe vinum bonum et pippam longam” (III, 100) concludes the novel.
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role of his rival in love and in a Pirandellian manner, he plays the part of the lover, while actually
wishing he were the lover, and eventually becoming just as lovesick as his patient. The
baroness’s fabricated delusion subsequently sets the stage for the emergence of the double in
various manifestations throughout the novel: through the complementary, pathological figures of
Severina herself and Doctor Marco; in the physician’s own internal division between an
inauthentic, anachronistic ego ideal and an authentic existence; through the rivalry between the
protagonist and Count Giulio; and finally in the friendship between fellow doctors Marco and
Celestino. Foremost, the notion of a psychotic break (that obviously plagues Severina and
eventually threatens Doctor Marco) intrinsically suggests a division between objective,
“rational” reality and subjective, “irrational” reality in which the psychotic ultimately lives.
Severina, in her “ragione inferma” (III, 24), therefore embodies both objective, “rational,”
conscious reality in its absence, and her own subjective, (unconsciously) “irrational” reality in its
presence. This duplication of realities thus creates a certain, immaterial doubling of the baroness
(that is repeated in the figure of Doctor Marco as well); she becomes akin to the “double in
time,” insofar as the previously sane Severina (especially present, precisely because of her
absence) acts as a Doppelgänger that invisibly accompanies her delusional sister. Furthermore,
the ailing patient has remained oblivious to time’s passage, and seemingly unaware of the change
of venue from Florence to the outskirts of Lake Como so that she continues to essentially live in
the past. After Marco first learns of his beloved’s madness, he returns home, gazes out his
window at the young ladies passing by, compares them to Severina:
tutte queste avevano la coscienza della loro bellezza, dei loro dieciotto’anni […] Invece
Severina era pazza, peggio che morta! Vive erano ancora le sue guancie, accesi gli occhi,
magico il sorriso, ma da quegli sguardi e da quelle labbra scattava un pensiero scemo,
vanesio, dolorosamente buffo (III, 19).
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Severina’s lunacy, a fate worse than death, reminds us of Cavalli-Pasini’s la morte psichica, and
underlines the duality in psychosis in which the rational, conscious subject has been squashed
and made dormant by an unconscious irrationality or instinct that invades the mind from an
unknown within (and therefore a without). The physician paints a pathetic though comical
picture of his patient whose beauty and sweet nature is made ridiculous and “painfully funny” by
her insanity. While it may be argued that Severina functions more as a fun-house mirror image
of the male protagonist precisely because of her indubitable psychosis, the reader cannot ignore
Marco’s own obsessive thoughts about Severina and the images of them together that he creates
in his own, active imagination. The patient’s confutation of a fantasy with the material world
subsequently infects her physician as he – at first reluctantly and then almost happily –
undertakes the role of Count Giulio and creates a “mondo meraviglioso” (III, 61) with the crazed
baroness, deluing himself with the possibility of an eventual conjugal life with her. In fact, the
dottorino’s negotiation of these “real” and “imaginary” spaces confounds his very sense of self,
causing him to question the authenticity of his pre-love, bourgeois identity as opposed to the
fictional part he plays as Severina’s aristocratic fiancé. Even before meeting Severina face to
face, Marco had experienced psychological and physical symptoms of unfulfilled love, which
mimic the symptoms of the distressing and disabling anxiety associated with neurosis. He felt
life becoming progressively more boring and unsatisfying; he came to enjoy solitude and languor
even more; and in intermittent feverish states, he daydreamed of impossible scenarios that could
bring him closer to his socially inaccessible beloved (III, 7). Instead of vacationing in the Swiss
Alps to ensure his convalescence as he had planned, the young physician is called upon by Baron
Adriano in order to examine his “hysterical” daughter. Severina’s delusional lovesickness (for
Count Giulio) eventually infects her physician and exacerbates his own already-present amorous
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affliction as he had been “malato gravemente” with a “rabbiosa febbre” (III, 8). The notion of
love as a malady, that like madness, leads to a dissolution of the previously rational self,
continues throughout the text. Marco seems to realize this from the outset of his encounters with
Severina; however, his attempt to escape briefly and return “guarito da quell’amore che
minacciava la sua fortuna, e la dignità d’una famiglia illustre” (III, 9) fails. The conception of
love as an illness is indeed an age-old one, yet in Marco’s case (as in Tarchetti’s Giorgio before
him) De Marchi delves deeper into the notion of love as a potentially contagious psychosomatic
pathogen that causes a veritable breakdown of the rational self and the creation of an imagined,
though parallel reality of waking wish-fulfillment.
Love, like madness (or one might say mad love) acts as an outside force, like a disease
that invades him, undermines his rational mind, and destroys his mental – and eventually
physical – well-being. Doctor Marco masochistically assumes the role of Count Giulio and
revels in the attention that Severina bestows upon him so much so that instead of facilitating the
return of her fiancé, he tries to prevent it by intentionally placing the wrong address on the letter
directed to him. One could attribute his ignoble actions to something greater than himself,
modifying the motto, “The Devil made me do it” with “Eros made me do it.” This previously
honest and noble-hearted physician is infected by amorous passion that seems to work upon him
from the outside-in, uncannily transforming him into something other than but nevertheless still
himself. These invisible, foreign forces – love and madness – may also surface from some other
outside within – from the dark recesses of the mind, from the unconscious, or the repressed.
Should one choose to incorporate the notion of mimetic desire into the interpretation of the
triangular relationship between Doctor Marco, Count Giulio, and Severina, one could suppose
that the physician unknowingly wishes to fulfill the aristocratic role of the count as the
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baroness’s suitor. In fact, Marco constructs his own fantasy realm in which he convinces himself
little by little that a future with Severina is possible. The psychical parallel universes that both
Severina and Marco create seem to be borne of something other than themselves. In other
words, it seems that an outside (or inside-out) force has infiltrated their psyches, infecting them
with delusions of amorous grandeur over which they have no control. At his first meeting with
Severina, Doctor Marco recognizes his powerlessness in love as he thinks to himself, “l’amore è
maestro, l’amore rende audaci e presuntuosi anche i più timidi” (III, 17). The power of love to
infiltrate a person’s being, rendering him other than what he was before, effecting a change and
confounding his identity reflects the parallel phenomenon of madness as it infects and alters a
person’s behavior and identity. Much like the ambiguous implication of the ancient maxim, in
vino veritas, if we say that love or psychosis transforms us into someone or something that we
are not, then we are left with the question of who we really are.295 Are we truly ourselves we are
when we are in love, or when we are out of love? Is the madman an aberration of the sane man,
or is the sane man an aberration of the madman? As Marco falls more madly in love with
Severina and imagines that his feelings could be reciprocated, he questions his own sanity:
Come si chiama questo mio amore? Credo follia, ma follia indegna di ogni compassione
[…] Severina può intendere questi miei spasimi? Quel barlume di intelligenza che
splende in lei, quel po’ d’anima che la fa piangere e sorridere non sono per me, ma io
rubo ciò che altri ha ispirato (III, 43).
Even though his rational mind seems to recognize the absurdity of even pondering a life with the
socially unreachable and delusional baroness, Marco nonetheless continues to fantasize of a
relationship between them as he not only becomes comfortable playing the role of Count Giulio,
295
While the old motto in vino veritas suggests that honesty and our true selves emerge when we drink, it also
implicitly forces us to question who we are when we are sober.
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but also feels that her true fiancé is unworthy of her.296 He continuously vacillates, however,
between sentiments of entitlement and guilt as he desires her, yet attempts to repress it as he asks
himself what is this love that plagues him. Love and madness become one in the same as Marco
believes that his love is insanity, undeserving of compassion, perhaps because of the overt deceit
of his beloved. Even though he acknowledeges his robbery of emotive demonstrations inspired
by another, his questioning here and elsewhere in the text of whether Severina perceives his
feelings illustrates his own psychological instability.
After his initial visit with Baron Siloe and before officially meeting Severina, Doctor
Marco returns home and daydreams about the following day when he will finally meet his love
in person. He soon checks his imagination, saying to himself:
Ma alfine […] posso io amarla ancora? quelle grazie che mi fecero innamorato di lei
erano funesti segni di follia, e non per me soltanto. Persistere in un sentimento che oggi
ha radice soltanto in una materiale compiacenza mi sembra indegno d’uomo onesto. No,
no, svegliamoci da questo sogno e contiamola fra le avventure di gioventù (III, 19).
Marco’s observation that he fell in love with a presumably sane though overly giddy young girl
not only alludes to the classic duality of appearance versus reality, it also suggests an affinity
between the symptoms of love and madness. Severina’s affectionate actions towards him as he
passed by her house each day signified the love she had for another, but were also signs of her
self-constructed dream world in which, as Marco discovers the next day, he acted as a stand-in
for the count. Marco believes that he, as an honest man, will be able to quell his feelings for his
patient; however, he becomes pulled into Severina’s waking, oneiric universe as he begins to
imagine a life with her despite the obvious social, pathological, and (as we shall see) existential
impediments. In short, the doctor, like his sick beloved, fails to immediately wake himself from
296
Count Giulio indeed proves himself unworthy of a loyal fiancé such as Severina because of his flagrant
debauchery and Baron Adriano Siloe even views him as an ignoble match for his daughter; however, Doctor Marco
does not possess the authority from an individual or a social standpoint to pass judgement on his rival in love.
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“this dream,” though he eventually awakens from his fantasy, and indeed counts it among his
youthful adventures, giving the fantastic-uncanny story an uncharacteristic happy ending.
Just as Marco’s lovelorn state is manifested through his despondent demeanor, bodily
aches, and high fevers before meeting his beloved face to face, Severina’s own unbridled love of
Count Giulio yielded similar psychosomatic reactions before their official engagement and his
eventual abandonment of her. The Baron alludes to a pre-existing condition in his daughter
when he recounts how she had confessed her love of the Count to him in a highly agitated
physical and emotional state: “Umide erano le ciglia, accesa la fronte, trepide le labbra e in tutte
le membra irrequieta, come se le scorresse l’elettrico entro i nervi” (III, 11). These corporeal
manifestations of love for another – humid eyelashes, a burning forehead, anxious lips,
uneasiness and electrically charged nerves – could also easily comprise a description of sexual or
religious ecstasy, or a nervous breakdown preempting a descent into madness (to which Severina
ultimately succumbs). In these visceral experiences that transcend the Symbolic and approach
the ever-elusive Real, a loss of reason and logic (logos) and therefore a loss of the consciously
thinking Cartesian subject occurs. This fissure of the self in which the conscious, rational mind
seems to travel elsewhere, happens in alternate states of consciousness such as jouissance,
dreams, and psychoses, in which there exists already an inherent doubling of the self. We have
previously encountered this splitting of the ego in the oneiric, mystical experiences of the
protagonists in “Le leggende del castello nero,” “Un caso di sonnambulismo,” and “Il sogno di
un musicista;” in De Marchi’s inaugural novel, the heroine undergoes an analogous psychical
fracture in which her “ragione inferma” (III, 24) produces a purely subjective alternate reality,
akin to the wish-fulfilling space of dreams, in which Count Giulio (played by Doctor Marco) has
not deserted her. At the first meeting between doctor and patient, Severina’s exclamation,
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“Giulio, amico mio, anima mia!” (III, 26), reads as a potentially banal though undoubted allusion
to the duality inherent in soul mates, who of course marry and become one. Ironically, the
spiritual or psychical affinity implicit in the notion of twin “souls” actually exists between Marco
and Severina, rather than between Giulio and Severina because the former couple’s tendencies
toward nervous anxiety, fantasy-constructing, and self-delusion mirror each other.297 The
doctor’s reaction to his patient’s overt, passionate display of affection anticipates his imminent
identity crisis in which falling in love parallels a descent into madness (or an ascent into sexual
or spiritual ecstasy): “Il dottorino perdette per un istante la coscienza di se stesso, ma stette
rigidamente ritto al suo posto, come una colonna” (III, 26). While the instant in which Marco
loses himself in Severina’s kiss certainly sounds like an overused cliché in an amorous
description, the loss of consciousness of himself is essentially the nullification of the subject
experienced in those ineffable instances of the Real or the sublime, and recurrent in the discourse
surrounding the double. Moreover, the reader cannot help but note the double entendre of Marco
(or his member) standing rigidly still like a column, a sexualized metaphor that hearkens toward
the notion of jouissance, the phenomenon par excellence for the breakdown of the subject.
Severina’s kiss not only incites Marco to lose himself, it also exacerbates his already-present
infatuation, transferring her lovesickness into him, and recalling a similar scenario in Tarchetti’s
Fosca, when Giorgio falls even more gravely ill after sexual relations with the vampiric anti-
297
When Doctor Marco examines some of the letters Severina had written to Count Giulio (which her father had
never sent), the reader notes the soul mate motif again, in this instance however, hinging on the erotic: “‘senza di te
l’anima mia è vuota […] senza di te io sono zoppa; vieni mio caro bastone’” (III 44). In addition to the typical
discourse of a love-stricken young girl who is missing her other half, one may detect a double entendre in the
imagery of her “dear cane” without which her soul is “empty.” The feuilleton as a genre often bordered on the erotic
and one may assume that the novice De Marchi also intended on inserting subtle sexual allusions into his first, prereformatory romanzo d’appendice. Despite sharing characteristics with the romanzo rosa, De Marchi’s inaugural
novel, as well as the many novels he publishes in the following years, all convey a sense of individual conscience,
accountability, and social responsibility.
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herione. It is after this kiss and during his subsequent treatment of her, that Doctor Marco feels
himself becoming progressively more psychologically unstable, as begins to construct more
elaborate, imaginary, future scenarios in which he and Severina share the same feelings for each
other and build a life together as husband and wife. He even imagines how her love will
somehow transfer from Giulio to him, yet he stops and chastises himself for inventing such
ludicrous ideas, asking himself: “‘che la sua pazzia mi entri addosso?’” (62). Doctor Marco’s
overly active imagination – a symptom of his developing psychosis – convinces his rational mind
that there is hope for a future with Severina, despite the fact that she loves him as Count Giulio:
Severina aveva arrossito onestamente innanzi a lui; sia che ella l’amasse come conte, sia
che l’amasse come dottore, nessuno poteva negare che tornando miracolosamente alla
vita e alla ragione la fanciulla non si attaccasse a lui, come a un caro salvatore (III, 61).
It seems that Marco’s delusions of grandeur not only convince him that he could marry up on the
social ladder, they also speak to his authoritative status as a physician (and may be a subtle
undercutting of the modern doctor figure on the part of De Marchi). He believes that even if his
patient fully recovers her wits and recognizes his true identity, she will nevertheless realize that
she loves him for who he is, precisely because he is her “dear savior.” Upon awaking from the
fever that follows an hysterical outburst, Severina blushes at the doctor. Marco believes that the
blush was indeed an honest one of a girl in love, and that she recognized him as her physician
and not as her absent fiancé; however, neither he nor the reader ever find out the motivation
behind her flushed cheeks. A blush may be interpreted in two very different ways: as a display
of attraction to someone; or, as a sign of embarrassment or discomfort in the presence of another.
The overly-excited physician then imagines the conversation that he hopes will ensue the next
day, in which they will declare their reciprocal love. Doctor Marco, like his female counterpart
in pathology, has set down roots in a fantasy world, in a space completely constructed and
247
nurtured in his own mind. He indulges in further daydreams while alone in his room, and
continues to question whether his patient’s illness has infected him:
Il dottore […] tornò all’idea fissa della pazzia, nè gli parve improbabile questo pericolo
per un uomo che si trovava al cospetto d’un domani sì meraviglioso e fantastico. Gli
vennero in mente le favole di certi romanzi letti da lui in quella età che gli altri li fanno e
trovò non esser falsi del tutto quei personaggi, fabbricati a Parigi, pieni di peccati e di
milioni […] – Ma che diavolo! – mormorava e si batteva la testa col pugno. – Son io che
penso cosi? (III, 63).
Doctor Marco vacillates between the notions that Severina’s mental malady has been transmitted
to him, and that he is acting rationally. The very first sentence of the above citation exudes a
type of circular reasoning and obsessive thinking that could easily be attributed to a psychotic.
Insanity often emanates from a fixed idea or a monomaniacal obsession, so that “the fixed idea
of insanity” reads as a redundant concept; furthermore, a marvelous and fantastic world is
usually the milieu of a fanatical mind; so, Marco’s skewed observation that the threat of madness
seems improbable precisely because his future looks so “meraviglioso e fantastico” (III, 63)
proves paradoxical. The possibility of imminent madness in the confutation of fantasy and
reality is compounded even more, as the protagonist remembers the highly romanticized French
feuilleton that he has read in the past, and thinks that those rich and sinful Parisian characters are
not completely embellished. In addition to eliciting a chuckle from the reader, especially
because Nineteenth-century French serials alike were known for their sensational content, his
thought that the soap-opera-like figures were not completely false further emphasizes his
inability to differentiate between fiction and reality, and the crumbling of his rational
consciousness under the influence of desire and exaggerated imagination. Marco’s sudden
interjection enframed by two dashes – “Ma che diavolo!” (III, 63) – resembles an exclamative
that one would utter upon awakening from a bizarre dream and emanates from his rational,
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conscious mind that seeks to restrain and regulate his wishful daydreams. His fantasy world, this
alternate reality that he has begun to construct for himself is just as outlandish as those elaborate
French romances. In short, here as elsewhere throughout the text, Marco vacillates between
irrationality and rationality, his own mind – simultaneously a familiar, yet seemingly foreign
object – experiencing the effects of its inability to refrain from creating unreachable and
improbable fantasies. This essential collapse of his own consciousness precipitates a break with
reality which could potentially – as is characteristic of psychosis – inhibit his ability to function
within the social microcosm. Marco nevertheless checks himself, and remains truly
dumbfounded at the absurdity of his fantasy, as he violently pounds his fist against his head, like
a madman. His final query, “Son io che penso così?” (III, 63), effectively demonstrates the
uncanny fissure that is occurring in his psyche, for he has to question whether it is truly he – that
is, the “I” that he knows – that is capable of such wild, uncharacteristic, unfamiliar thoughts.
In addition to a sense of self-disorientation, Doctor Marco’s fractured psyche also
manifests itself in overt sensations of duplicity that he experiences internally in the progression
towards his ultimate nervous breakdown. De Marchi utilizes perhaps the most traditional image
of duality existing within the individual, as his protagonist battles with the angel and the demon
that concurrently inhabit, and attempt to influence his mind. This classical image of the
conflicting forces of human lawfulness and waywardness – rendered especially clichéd for
Twenty-First-century readers by cinematic pictures of a cherub and a devil sitting on the
shoulders of a conflicted character – appear at two specific instances in the novel, succinctly and
effectively portraying the collapse of of Marco’s sanity and the sense of estrangement he feels
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with his own self.298 After an unexpected encounter with his rival Count Giulio, who had been
canvasing the Siloe residence for the previous two weeks unbeknownst to everyone, the crazed
doctor decides that he will flee the situation and the woman that have so undermined his reason
and previously familiar sense of self. As he resolves to bid farewell to his bedridden beloved, a
wave of lunacy overcomes him, and an inner battle ensues between his passion and desire and
his conscience:
Il dottorino si strinse le tempia fra le due mani, e la pazzia dell’amore, della voluttà,
dell’odio svolazzò e lo toccò; il pianto che ruggiva chiuso nel petto, minacciò rompere il
suo silenzio, e il dottorino lottava atleticamente con un altro sé stesso più selvaggio, più
irriverente. Entrambi erano forti, ma il selvaggio conosceva certi impeti maligni, che
avrebbero ucciso un uomo, e perfino svegliata Severina. – Ah mia bella…! – soffiò il
maligno, e svincolavasi dalle strette; ma l’angelo buono lo buttava ginocchioni a piè di
quel letto, fremente, ma devoto, riverente, adoratore di quella divina bellezza assopita
(III, 69).
Doctor Marco exhibits the physical symptoms of psychological distress as he clenches his
temples and feels a cry ruminating in his chest, yet these psychosomatic reactions are
perpetuated by the madness of love, pleasure, and hate that flutters around him and touches him.
In other words, his internal psychical and physiological distress occurs precisely because of the
outside force of madness (which subsumes within it the passions of love, pleasure, and hate).
This intangible, foreign, pathological essence of insanity seems to infect him, thereby giving
birth to an other, more savage and irreverent self within him – “un altro sé stesso più selvaggio,
più irreverente” (III, 69) – so that he becomes duplicated, yet divided. The internal battle that
298
I use the term “waywardness” here to emphasize a deviation from the norm within the figure of the demon,
which, according to its initial meaning does not indicate an evil or malign spirit as it often does in contemporary
times. In ancient Greek mythology, well into the Nineteenth Century, a demon (or dæmon as it is often written for
purposes of differentiation) refers to, “A supernatural being of a nature intermediate between that of gods and men;
an inferior divinity, spirit, genius (including the souls or ghosts of deceased persons, esp. deified heroes)” or
“sometimes, particularly, An attendant, ministering, or indwelling spirit; a genius” (OED online).
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ensues because of the external force of mad love that plagues him occurs between his savage,
primordial self that houses the life and death instincts and his rational, moralizing self that is
informed by socially-constructed decorum and conscience. De Marchi’s depiction of two
concurrent forces struggling within his protagonist proves highly physical and externalized as the
little doctor fought “atleticamente” with his savage self, which is certainly not noble. The
malign Marco considers violence against his enemy (and even his beloved), and frees himself
from reason’s grasp, yet only for a minute, as Marco’s good angel throws the savage to his knees
at the foot of Severina’s bed in a prayer-like position. Within just a few seconds the doctor has
fought between his irreverent and reverent selves. The violence that the former considers
enacting on the sleeping Severina is soon juxtaposed by the latter as he tremulously admires the
divine, slumbering beauty, so that the reader also perceives the two, often contrasting depictions
of love – in its utter sensual desire and physicality, as opposed to its potential, transcendental
divinity. The inner angel seeking to tame the inner demon also hearkens toward one’s tendency
to repress true, primal desire because of one’s socially-constructed moral compass.
Just as Marco’s “angelo buono” (III, 69), brings him to his knees, his conscience prevails
at other instances in the novel. Following the temptation to do harm to his rival in love and in
some way violate the sleeping Severina, Adriano appears and confronts the doctor about his
feelings for the baroness. Surprisingly, the baron reveals his disdain for Count Giulio, as
opposed to his respect for the young physiciam, and even consents should he wish to marry
Severina; however, Doctor Marco checks his passion and desire in order to maintain his dignity
as an individual (and not merely exist as a substitute for another) and his authenticity in his
vocation. Despite his rational decision, Marco nonetheless demonstrates the opposing forces that
exist within him: “ – Non è meglio così? – riprese con voce più chiara il dottorino come se ora
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parlasse per conto altrui. – Il cuore non è ostinato e si lascia a poco a poco persuadere, se la
ragione sa parlar come va” (III, 76). Marco’s self-estrangement or unfamiliarity with his own
ego is undoubtedly perpetuated by his role playing over an extended period of time, and by the
previously unknown feelings he has experienced due to the pathogen of mad love that has
infected him. While the angel of reason seems to prevail once again over the demon of desire in
this particular inner struggle, Marco falls under the influence of that demon a few more times
before finally relinquishing his wish for Severina, as demonstrated by his blatant deceit in
wrongfully addressing the letter to Count Giulio, in his initial deception of his rival when they
first meet, and in the physical struggle between the two lovers as they sail to the Siloe residence.
Doctor Marco’s budding hysteria fully blossoms at the end of the novel when Count
Giulio returns (despite the protagonist’s underhanded attempt to keep him away). The physician
begrudgingly fetches his rival at an inn across the lake and informs him of Severina’s illness.
After a drunken Marco brings the count to his fiancé, she is miraculously cured of her
unexplainable hysterical disease and its symptoms. The similarities between early psychological
and spiritistic practices are well-known and both disciplines that deal with those hidden
phenomena of the human and post-human world share an affinity in their frequent ineffability
and inexplicability. It seems therefore apropos that spiritistic undertones could be attributed to
De Marchi’s description of her sudden convalescence: “Un grido acutissimo s’ udì, che non
pareva umano, e sparì la pazzia” (III, 91). Severina’s inhuman scream and the immediate
disappearance of her insanity recall similar phenomena as a demon is expulsed during an
exorcism. As Severina’s madness exits her body, which begins its path towards physical
recovery, it seems to travel outside to the lakeshore, and invade Marco’s drunken body as he
thrashes about in the mud beneath a thunderstorm: “infuriò sotto la pioggia, il vento, il freddo”
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(III, 92). De Marchi’s use of the verb “infuriare” cannot help but recall Ariosto’s crazed Orlando
furioso, and Fosca’s final infection of Giorgio during their initimate night together, after which
he, like Marco, falls physically ill.299 In short, Doctor Marco’s own psyche intermittently teeters
on the verge of sanity throughout the novel as he often fails to recognize himself and battles with
the conflicting forces of reason and imagination within, and with the opposing spaces of the ideal
and the real that seem to invade him from without. His final descent into madness and his
sojourn there (albeit brief) results from and parallels Severina’s hysteria, though these
complementary doubles eventually recover their wits and reenter the social dynamic in the roles
seemingly intended for them as wife and physician. Before examining in greater detail the
pathological pair of Marco and Severina, and the other external Doppelgängers that oppose the
protagonist, it behooves us to address the already-mentioned, interwoven aspects of theatricality
and authenticity because they inform the entire discourse of the double in Il signor dottorino.
Before learning of Severina’s mental instability and his mistaken identity, Marco had
acquiesced himself to the impossibility of ever having a legitimate relationship with her because
of the obvious social impediments – she, the daughter of a wealthy baron, and he (despite his
authoritative role as a physician), a member of an inferior class on the social hierarchy – the
petit-bourgeois. Nevertheless like a knight of faith, he failed to quell his affection for his
sequestered beloved, fancying ways that he could get close to her, yet knowing that he could
never act on such fantasies because “la condizione del barone Adriano non gli permetteva
neppure di sognare tanto scioccamente” (III, 7). These obvious, archaic rules of socio-cultural
decorum that inherently forbid the intermarriage of an aristocrat and a non-nobleman become
299
Despite the obvious differences in plot and style in Tarchetti’s Fosca and De Marchi’s Il signor dottorino, this
transmission of mad love from Severina into Marco cannot help but recall how Fosca’s all-encompassing and
inexplicable malaise fuses with and intensifies Giorgio’s own pre-existing psychopathological condition.
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subtly destabilized throughout the tale as Doctor Marco impersonates Don Giulio, and even more
so when Baron Adriano Siloe and his Marchioness sister eventually give their consent to the
young physician, should he chose to continue his role as Count Giulio’s imposter and actually
marry Severina. When the Marchioness arrives to hold vigil at her niece’s sickbed she suggests
that perhaps they should maintain the charade if the baroness’s physical health improves, and
marry doctor and patient (III, 61). In fact, Adriano despises Count Giulio for his betrayal and
flagrant licentiousness, believing him unworthy of his daughter, while Marco, despite his
intentional misdirection of the letter to his rival, has proven himself an honorable candidate for
Severina’s love (III, 73). Moreover, Baron Siloe respects the young physician, who reminds him
of his youthful self, so that we encounter a sort of external double in time:
La nobile e dignitosa condotta del dottorino, una speciale simpatia per lui, la gratitudine
naturale per il tanto bene da lui modestamente compiuto avevano risvegliato nell’animo
del barone non so quali antiche memorie di tempi giovanili […] credeva ritrovare nel
dottorino quel sé stesso, che la disperazione aveva da molto tempo ucciso (III, 74)
Adriano sees his younger, philosophical, honest and unjaded self in Doctor Marco and even
offers his daughter’s hand to the physician. Ironically, the nobleman Count Giulio is indeed no
noble man, given the lies and betrayal of Severina and their betrothal, and the debauchery in
which he engaged with the seductive French singer and later with Luisina, the tavern wench.
The humble doctor instead proves to be the true noble man. The old marchioness’s suggestion
that the physician actually remain the permanent substitute for the count, and the baron’s
acceptance of the match not only allude to changing attitudes and practices regarding class
boundaries in the post-Risorgimento state, it also implies, from a psychoanalytical standpoint, a
type of transference insofar as Marco has become the embodiment of the absent presence of
Giulio. In other words, in his absence, Count Giulio’s presence is felt; yet Severina’s mind has
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mistaken her doctor for her fiancé so that she experiences a pseudo-transference, displacing her
love for Giulio onto the doctor, yet believing that her beloved’s stand-in is actually the original.
Marco eventually realizes that to marriage to the baroness would be preposterous, not only for its
defiance of traditional class hierarchies, but also because of its existential inauthenticity.300 He
nonetheless fails to completely quell his desire and love for Severina and continues to experience
an internal division between the unbridled passion of his dæmon, and the moralizing rationale of
his “good angel.”
The young physician’s initial, foolish dreams of a future with Severina evolve throughout
their time spent together during his medical visits, eventually becoming delusions of grandeur as
Marco’s impersonation of Count Giulio confounds his identity, and ultimately leads to his own,
temporary nervous breakdown and subsequent illness. He often loses himself in thoughts of his
beloved, becoming oblivious to the outside world, “tirato dal filo delle sue idee, inconsapevole di
tutto ciò che avveniva fuori di lui, anzi in gran parte ignoto egli stesso a sé” (III, 17 – 18). The
image of Severina seems to have invaded his mind so much so that his fixation on her takes over;
he becomes unaware of everything happening around him, and begins to fail to even know
himself anymore. This unfamiliarity with his own ego not only facilitates his impersonation of
Count Giulio, it also permits him to actually consider permanently assuming a different
individual and social identity as the husband of the baroness. Marco’s role play in the material
world has actually extended into his own psychical world in which he and the baroness play
house. In fact, Marco’s acting prowess not only facilitates the creation of his inauthentic fantasty
300
Adriano Siloe’s eventual approval of a marriage between a physician and his daughter allude to the changes of
class hierarchies happening in post-Unification Italy, as the aristocracy either decadently fades away, or undergoes
an embourgeoisiement like the respective De Robertian characters, princess Teresa and her grandchild politician
Consalvo. The sequestration and mental decadence of Severina Siloe subtly allude to similar alienation and decline
of the nobility in the post-Risorgimento State, while both the little doctor and his friend Celestino belong to a rising
upper middle class that will eventually supplant its noble predecessor in power and influence.
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life with Severina, it also essentially contributes to his confusion regarding his own identity, for
as Hawthorne’s Doomsdale realizes: “No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to
himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the
true” (304). The physician’s impersonation of the count leaves him bewildered and disoriented,
as he considers living the life of an other, before realizing the fundamental absurdity of such an
idea. Doctor Marco’s role play then ultimately leads to the realization of his existential
authenticity, informed of course by De Marchian notions of morality and buon senso; he finally
understands his calling to be a doctor is genuine, while his amorous ideal is false. Should he
chose to transform himself into a husband of a nobelwoman, he would live an inauthentic,
useless life without purpose; not only would his nobility of character be compromised, he would
also never be a true nobleman. As he begins to actually consider living the life of an aristocrat
after the baron and the marchioness offer their approval, Marco wonders what would become of
him: “Che diverrei io in mezzo a questo mondo fantastico, falso di nome, fra abitudini non mie,
fra gente che mi compatirebbe, o riderebbe di me? troppi gruppi in una volta, mio Dio!” (III,
67). As he plays out the scenario of a life with Severina, he understands that he would be living
another life, the life of an other, permanently. Even if Severina were cured and truly loved
Marco as Marco (and not thinking he were Count Giulio), he would still be a middle-class doctor
playing the role of an aristocrat and knowing that he does not belong, an insight that Verga’s
Mastro-don Gesualdo realizes only too late on his deathbed.301
301
Vittorio Roda, in his study of the double in modern literature, discusses Verga’s Mastro-don Gesualdo within the
context of the double in time, and cites Chapter Four of the fourth part of the novel in which an aged, feverish, and
cancer-ridden Gesualdo teeters between dreams and hallucinations in his guest room in palazzo Trao. Roda notes
the narrator’s mention of “an other self” among the visions that parade in front of the delirious protagonist: “altri
ancora, un altro se stesso che affaticavasi e s’arrabbattava al sole e al vento, tutti col viso arcigno, che gli sputavano
in faccia: ‘Bestia! Bestia! Che hai fatto? Ben ti stia?” (Verga 345). Roda asks, “Ma chi è l’altro se stesso?
Un’immagine giovanile del protagonista; i connotati dell’alter ego – la fatica, l’arrabattersi al sole e al vento –
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The theatricality that underscores the entire diegesis of Il signor dottorino is therefore
organically intertwined with the conception of authenticity that subsumes within it the role
playing that occurs in the story – itself a prime example of doubling insofar as it involves leading
parallel lives. Doctor Marco ultimately refuses Baron Siloe’s offer of his daughter’s hand in
marriage with great tact because he finally realizes that life as a nobleman would prove less
fitting for his character as a noble man who cannot ignore his vocation as a medical practitioner
and active, productive member of society. When Adriano consents to a legitimate union between
the pathological pair, both the reader and Marco remain stunned; however, the physician perhaps
shocks the reader even more by his delicately diplomatic, yet firm refusal of the count’s offer:
vi fu un istante che io sognai questa lusinga e questa fortuna, ma cattivo consigliero è il
cuore innamorato e il più delle volte trionfa a danno della sana ragione. Quale sarebbe il
mio destino s’io non fuggissi? lo dica una parola: Sarei un uomo spostato. Innanzi agli
altri cesserei d’essere quel che sono, per diventare che cosa?...un amante, un marito, un
ricco fortunato e caro al cielo. Signore, per tutto ciò può meglio di me bastare il conte, e
lasci che io torni, ove sono desiderato, fra quella gente a cui ho promesso il mio aiuto,
dove il conte è inutile. – Amiamo l’equilibrio delle cose che regge il mondo. Chi mi
assicura oltre a ciò che Severina non si ravveda dell’inganno? Abbiamo incominciato
questa storia pietosa come una novella per le gentili, ma è tempo (e ne sento il bisogno)
di tornare al giusto senso delle cose, di ristabilire l’ordine, anche a dispetto del
cuore…Lasciamo i vecchi romanzi e facciamo della vita” (III, 75).
The protagonist’s lengthy apologia presents many fundamental ideas that recur throughout this
story of a young physician’s coming of age, of his going under the spell of love, and emerging
from it more sure of his identity and purpose. Doctor Marco openly confesses his love for
Severina to Baron Siloe, and even reveals his previous hope for her hand; however, he
rimandano al giovane Gesualdo ancora agli inizi della sua ascesa economica e la processione è formata da persone
che appartengono al passato dell’ex-muratore. Bianca e Nunzio sono morti e Diodata è allontanata da tempo; quello
che sfila davanti è il mondo del passato (Il tema del doppio 127). In addition to Roda’s observation that the image
of his younger self proves the representation of the double in time, it also suggests that Gesualdo’s realization of his
inauthenticity and vanity happens when it is already to late to change or make amends. While Verga’s and
Capuana’s (as well as Tarchetti’s) outlooks are often grim as the not-so-happy endings of their novels suggest, De
Marchi’s first novel ends on a positive note and his protagonist avoids meeting his double in time by undergoing a
coming of age early on in life so that unlike Gesualto his past will not return “con un atteggiamento giudicante e
aspre accuse” (Roda Il tema del doppio 127).
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immediately checks himself (as he does in other instances in the novel), acknowledging the
oppositional forces within him as his “cuore innamorato” battles his “sana ragione.” The image
of a lovestricken heart as a bad advisor that often triumphs over and damages healthy reason
reiterates the trope of love as a pathology and an aberration from a state of health, normality, and
consequently sanity. Doctor Marco’s instinctual desire and romantic love for Severina had
incited him to not only assume the identity of another, but to also long for the life and thereby the
identity of an other. The young physician realizes that living a life as the baroness’s husband
would be inherently false and therefore render him an eternal imposter, as he would no longer be
himself, nor an attendant to the sick that require his assistance. What would be his destiny,
should he chose not to flee the intensely dramatic situation in which he finds himself? In short,
he would be living an inauthentic life on both a social and an existential level. Should we remain
in the realm of Heideggerian authenticity, we acknowledge that an individual’s socio-cultural
milieu is an inextricable component of his individual identity and existence; yet, “social” here
also connotates the ever-present aspect of class. If we insert the question of authenticity versus
inauthenticity into a socio-political discourse relevant in the post-Unification state, we recognize
that despite the rise of the bourgeois, there still existed old, aristocratic traditions and prejudices
notwithstanding the widespread decadence of the upper class.302 This discourse of authenticity,
however, remains saturated in philosophy; in the above citation, Marco is not merely explaining
that his social class forbids him from marrying Severina (an impairment that the count himself is
302
The notion of exceeding the boundaries of social class only to suffer negative results emerges again in the final
pages of the novel as an intoxicated Doctor Marco passes out on the nighttime shore outside of the Ritiro after
having brought Count Giulio back to his crazed fiancé. Upon awakening, he attempts to enter the Baron’s residence
as he had so many times before, but finds the door locked and he thinks it a possible act of vengeance on him for
having set his sights on the baronessa. Even though we may dismiss his assumption as drunken paranoia (especially
because of Baron Adriano’s previous consent in the Marco-Severina match), the physician’s opinion nonetheless
expresses a clear conception of class consciousness, which undoubtedly plays a part in the question of authenticity
on a social and an individual level subsumed within the existential.
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willing to overlook in an atypical letting-go of atavistic pride), he is acknowledging his own
sense of displacement as he affirms, “sarei un uomo spostato”. The image of a displaced man
effectively illustrates the modern conception of disorientation and estrangement that the
individual often experiences when confronted with the existence of an other, but also when
confronted with himself, with an “I” that he recognizes as foreign yet familiar. Should Marco
chose to pursue a life with Severina, he would be both displaced and out of place (like Mastrodon Gesualdo), amongst those haughty lords who would probably laugh at him, as he previously
assumed (III, 67). The roles he would play married to Severina are not merely social ones; a
lover, a husband, a lucky rich man are also identities that an individual assumes in the eyes of
himself and he must decide whether the hats (or masks) that he wears in public coincide with, or
fulfill who he is in private. According to Marco, those roles could be performed by anyone;
however, not everyone, and certainly not Count Giulio, could fill the physician’s shoes, for he is
wanted and needed by those unfortunate sick country folk to whom he swore allegiance and
promised to help in times of illness. Marco’s declaration that we should love and perpetuate the
equilibrium that keeps the world going suggests a happy reconciliation (rather than a Manzonian
resignation or rassegnazione) with the true part that he must play in this balanced order of things.
Unlike the role of Count Giulio, which he or anyone could play, not everyone can assume Doctor
Marco’s true, destined role as a productive and contributing member of society, who regulates
health and treats disease. Keeping with the notion of Heideggerian authenticity, we could argue
that Il signor dottorino most certainly belongs to the genre of the Bildungsroman, as the young
protagonist questions his own identity and where he fits into the world. He imagines his life as a
rich man married to his beloved, and even tries to make it happen only to realize in a veritable
epiphany that such an existence would prove unfulfilling and inauthentic. The experiences of
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falling in love, of desire, of losing oneself, of wishing to emulate a peer (Celestino), and of
playing the role of another (Giulio) all lead Marco to question his own life and his rightful place
in his psychical microcosm, as well as in the chagining, post-Unification society.303 Marco’s
constant reflection on his amorous pathological condition and its implications continues even
after the epiphany that he can never become a permanent substitute for his rival in love;
however, the still lovesick doctor suffers a final bout of temporary insanity in his drunken
interactions with Count Giulio. Marco is cured of his mad love and restored to a state of
equilibrium after saving the life of a drowning man and spending a few feverish nights in bed,
from which he rises with his rediscovered vocation as a savior of the sick and suffering. The
final lines of the above citation – characterized by Spinazzola as “l’ancoraggio realistico della
favoletta” (38) – once again speak to the audience in their meta-textual and auto-critical
overtones. While Baron Siloe initially referred to the fictional world constructed around
Severina’s delusion as “un avventura da romanzo” (III, 30), Doctor Marco utilizes literature
imagery once again. He refers to their real-life drama as a “storia pietosa” that initially
resembles a novella for genteel folk; however, he affirms the necessity to end this fantasy, return
to the “giusto senso delle cose,” and reestablish order despite the wishes of his heart (III, 75).
The doctor declares that he must relinquish his imaginary, novel-like idea of a future with
Severina and begin to construct a realistic life for himself with achievable objectives rather than
303
Celestino emerges as Marco’s opposing though complementary Doppelgänger and the dottorino even envies his
perpetually jolly best friend especially because he is content with who and what he is as opposed to those who are
not: “‘Infelici coloro che non vogliono essere quel che sono!’” (III 45). In short, Marco wishes to be more like
Celestino, but fails to emulate him as long as Severina still plagues his mind and heart. While Celestino is obviously
happy with who he is, Marco not only wishes he could be more like him, he also longs to usurp the role of Count
Giulio for most of the novel. The physician’s admiration for his friend and his desire to become someone else is a
component of the process towards realizing his authenticity; he wishes to be something he truly is not, not just from
a social standpoint of middle class versus nobility, but at the level of character. Count Giulio leads a morally
reprehensible lifestyle and is prisoner to his passions, while Marco treats the sick, lives nobly and morally, and
though tempted and sinful (because of the deceit with the letter), he remains good. In sum, Doctor Marco battles
with that other, dark part of himself and prevails, finally achieving that equilibrium of things necessary in the world.
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outlandish and ingenuine ideals. This adventure fit for a novel should be left behind in favor of a
life of common sense and productivity; in addition to Spinazzola’s rightful observation, we must
add that this realistic anchor of the fable effectively demonstrates De Marchi’s desire to
reestablish order, balance, and harmony in his texts and beyond through moralizations that
promote good sense, duty, and conscience.
Doctor Marco’s lovesickness, subsequent progression towards madness, impersonation of
his amorous rival and opposing double, flirtation with a completely different lifestyle, and
ultimate realization that he is a noble doctor and not a nobleman relegate De Marchi’s inaugural
novel to that Romantic genre of the Bildungsroman, while simultaneously speaking to
Heideggerian notions of authenticity. Marco and Severina suffer a certain loss of subjectivity as
both undergo a doubling insofar as the original, healthy consciousness is replaced by an altered,
delusional state. In both pathological cases, an internal fragmentation of the ego occurs because
of the absence or unreachability of the love object; however, throughout the novel there is the
implication that a return to the original state of health, and the eradication of the diseased self is
possible. Nevertheless, such a feat does not prove easy, as Marco demonstrates in his continuous
vacillation between thoughts and behavior dominated by amorous sentiments and desire and
those informed by reason and conscience. In spite of the indelible presence of instinctual desire,
the protagonist eventually learns to regulate and channel his passion into productive good works
that speak to philia instead of bowing to eros. The coming of age that the little doctor
experiences is akin to an awakening to what he always already was, an evolution back to his
roots, effectively conveyed in the T.S. Eliot lyric “Little Gidding”: “We shall not cease from
exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know
the place for the first time” (240). Doctor Marco, who had always been known as a good, caring
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physician, finally realizes that the career of a medical practitioner is indeed his calling. His
willing return to his profession (which has become his vocation), and essentially the finding of
the self again after a period of temporary insanity, acts as the happy conclusion and the
restoration of balance in Marco’s life. Such equilibrium is also achieved in the lives of the minor
characters; Marco’s complementary double Severina returns to a state of health and normality as
her lunacy finally dissipates with the return of her prodigal fiancé.
The dyad of Doctor Marco and Severina Siloe – both of a melancholic, dramatic nature
that is severely aggravated by falling in love – becomes an obvious depiction of the manifest
double, in which doctor and patient mirror each other in their respective lovesickness, and adopt
similar coping mechanisms in the face of their unfulfilled desires.304 They both invent alternate
realities in which their amorous wishes are fulfilled, and either unknowingly (as in Severina’s
case), or uncontrollably though consciously (as in Marco’s case) transform into someone other
than their previously rational selves. Severina remains trapped in the past waiting for Count
Giulio’s return, unconsciously substituting him with her physician; Marco, on the other hand,
upholds his patient’s delusion, playing the role of the doting fiancé and imagining that perhaps
he could continue to do so if it meant she would love “him.”305 Despite their social differences,
the doctor and the baroness emerge early on in the story as a complementary pair because of
304
We recall Robert Roger’s discussion of the manifest double as a mirror image (sometimes a corporeal double that
resembles the original, sometimes an autoscopic vision) that complements the original, yet often times fails to
represent him in his totality. The manifest double may therefore be construed as a vehicle of decomposition, in
which various attributes of a given character are disunited and dispersed in various other characters (Rogers 12). It
is noteworthy that each half of the couple Marco / Severina possesses another, though opposing, double in the
respective figures of Count Giulio and his French lover Adriana. Count Giulio’s perception of his fiancé “troppo
santa” (III, 51) in opposition to his lover falls under the shadow of the Madonna / whore opposition. Moreover, the
saintly baroness literally pales in comparison to the French singer: “Severina […] gli appariva come una di quelle
sbiadite figure a guazzo, mingherline e grette, mentre Adriana brillava di tutti i colori ardenti di Tiziano” (III, 57).
305
I include “him” in quotes because should Severina remain locked in her fantasy world in which she believes
Marco to be Count Giulio, then the question arises as to whether she would be loving the doctor himself or the
doctor in the guise of Count Giulio and therefore loving Count Giulio, not Doctor Marco.
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their anxious states as victims of unrequited love, and their predispositions to melancholy. At
the outset of the story, the narrator suggests a certain “malinconia nell’anima” (III, 3) of the
protagonist, despite his nobility of character and affable demeanor (III, 4). When his friend and
fellow physician Celestino arrives in town, he advises Marco to find a wife because his lonely
life among books is adverse to his health (III, 20). While little is disclosed about the young
doctor’s past, Baron Siloe informs us of his daughter’s atypical childhood: “Anche Severina ebbe
le sue estasi e le sue visioni di angeli custodi […] ogni musica aveva le cadenze dell’organo di
chiesa, e nei sogni sfilavano le tredicimila vergini di santa Chiara intorno al suo letto” (III, 41).
He adds that as a girl she had mystical experiences that recalled those of “san Francesco o il
beato Jacopone” (III, 41), thereby suggesting a certain, biological sensitivity to the paranormal, a
receptivity to “outside” spiritual (or outside-inside, unconscious psychical) forces.306 While
Doctor Marco and the reader are left wondering whether Severina’s mother also suffered from i
nervi or gli spiriti, Baron Adriano discloses his own “natura […] inclinata a melanconia [sic]”
(III, 10), thereby suggesting some sort of hereditary disposition towards melancholy and anxiety
– an atavistic psychopathology that echoes the decadence of la razza in fin de siècle Italy, and
anticipates (albeit at a simpler level) the portrayal of nobility’s woeful state in Giovanni Verga’s
Mastro-don Gesualdo and Federico De Roberto’s I vicerè. While Severina’s pathological
condition pales in comparison to the untimely death of Verga’s Bianca or the stillborn
monstrosity of De Roberto’s Chiara, it nonetheless indicates both a deterioration of the
aristocracy, and a breakdown of the seemingly unified individual. As Doctor Marco
306
We recall that women were considered ideal subjects for spiritistic experiments (which, like contemporary
psychological ones, included hypnosis) because of their fragile, pliable psyches that also made them prime
candidates for the Nineteenth-century, catch-all “disease” of hysteria.
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(impersonating Count Giulio) takes leave of the patient after their first visit, his conversation
with Baron Adriano is soon interrupted by Severina’s uncontrollable hysterics:
[Doctor Marco] vide la fanciulla, che distesa, rovesciata, faceva strazio de’ capelli, come
se volesse strapparli; l’occhio era squallido; bieche le labbra e spaventoso il lamento; le
imprigionò le mani nelle sue e gridò tre volte – Severina! – ella colla forza d’un epilettico
si svincolò dalle sue strette e afferrandolo per le spalle esclamò: - Assassino! So dove
vai! Tu ami un’altra donna…Uccidimi prima… (III, 33 – 34).
The depiction of Severina’s hysterical fit (whose manifestations mirror those of an epileptic
seizure) recalls the similar, though perhaps less melodramatic nervous breakdowns of Capuana’s
Eugenia; however, such extreme reactions may be expected from a character whose name
suggests a little severity. De Marchi’s vivid description is especially fitting for a feuilleton, as
drama, surprise, and suspense are among its fundamental elements, yet Severina’s hair pulling,
desolate eyes, sinister grimace, and frightful moaning are not merely literary histrionics. Rather,
they effectively demonstrate the predominance of irrationality and the absence of the reasonable,
thinking subject as she is replaced by something other emerging from deep within her psyche.
(In fact, one could argue that Severina had been living in denial of her fiancé’s trespasses and
that repressed knowledge finally burst forth into her already-deteriorated conscious mind.) De
Marchi’s strikingly violent depiction of his heroine’s fit recalls the Biblical motif of weeping and
gnashing of teeth that occurs when one is cast into darkness or hell – both spaces where reason,
subjectivity, and individual volition are lost, much like the alternate consciousness of a psychotic
break. Furthermore, the absence of the rational, conscious subject coupled with the physicality
of her outburst may be compared to an ecstatic experience, to which, we remember she was
prone as a child. The physical manifestations of her anxiety and unfulfilled desire mirror similar
physiological reactions that potentially occur in an orgasmic state, while they may also mimic
spiritual ecstasy. As we have already witnessed through Profumo’s undoubtedly more rounded
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and compelling female protagonist, the alternate states of consciousness of madness (whether
permanent psychosis or temporary “hysteria”), religious ecstasy, love, and sexual pleasure, all
involve the absence of rational consciousness, a loss of the self in delusion, hallucination, desire,
or orgasm. The subsequent disconnection from everyday “reality” in what is lacking – the
rational self, the waking consciousness – is replaced by something other, whether it be the
ineffable experience of jouissance, or the logically indescribable existence of psychosis.307
The highly physicalized language used to describe amourous encounters occurs at other
instances in the novel, and further suggests an alternate state of consciousness in which the
conscious individual is lost and replaced by or combined with something other, thereby yielding
a doubling of the self. In one of the letters Severina had written to a friend before her illness, she
recounts the psychosomatic reaction produced within her when she locked pinky fingers with
Count Giulio: “sentii un fluido venire da lui a me, come quando in collegio tutte in catena si
provava la scossa elettrica. Davvero, n’ebbi lo stesso fremito e quell’istessa convulsione che fa
ridere, che strappa le lagrime e fa gridare: ahi! ahi! Cos’è l’amore?” (III, 45 – 46). Again we
encounter a language that could be used to refer to the intense chemical and emotional
phenonema that occurs when falling in love; the same language however, could characterize the
symptoms one experiences in neurotic episodes such as hysterical fits, as if an electric current,
akin to a rise in blood pressure and an elevated pulse passes through the body, accompanied by a
quiver and a convulsion that elicits laughter, tears, and screams. This description of corporeal
reactions to a mental state could also be read through a sexual lens in which the electricity,
307
While neurosis may be described in its symptoms by a third person narrator, madness or psychosis remain
essentially indescribable. Only a first person narrator, like Tarchetti’s monomaniacal patient in “La lettera U,” or
Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, or Blanchot’s narrator in “Madness of the Day,” or even De Marchi’s own
Marcello Marcelli can depict – through their embodiment of the “disease” and not through the a third person
narrator’s description – the nuances of a psychosis. In other words, madness or psychosis moves toward the
semiotic or that which is beyond linguistic description.
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spasms, quivers, convulsions, laughter, tears, and screams result from and accompany orgasm.
These lines could therefore describe: the romantic sentiments experienced when falling in love;
the physical and emotional pleasure of intercourse and orgasm; and the physiological and
psychological symptoms of a descent into madness. In short, these three psychosomatic
phenomena – love, sex, and madness – all involve the breakdown of the self, a loss of
subjectivity in which the ego dissolves. In love and sex, it could be argued that it fuses with
another ego and becomes one and therefore appertains to the discourse of the double. In
madness (whether temporary as in the case of Severina or permanent as in the case of the Baron
of Santafusca), there also occurs a collapse of the rational or conscious self as the individual
enters into another state of consciousness, thereby becoming divided and duplicated.308
The question that Severina poses in the last lines of the letter cited above, “Cos’ è
l’amore?” (III, 46), emphasizes the ineffability of love, and consequently of the related
phenomena of sex and madness, all of which cannot be fully conveyed in words, but can only be
experienced organically and first-hand. Her words nevertheless produce an effect on Doctor
Marco as he voyeuristically reads her love letters to Count Giulio; he finds himself adoring his
patient even more, as if each line of her letters were a germ that carried the contagion of love.
He thinks that “istinti immortali” and “maestose imaginazioni [sic]” could bring joy for all
eternity (III, 46). Although he soon checks fantastical thoughts, he begins talking to himself,
asking and answering his own queries before beginning to act rashly:
‘Ma che penso io mai? Non sono idee da matto anche queste? Perché vado aizzandomi?
Questo silenzio mi sgomenta’ – No, no – gridò a voce alta lacerando coi denti l’indirizzo
del conte, alle quali parole rispose un gemito, e un fruscìo di foglie nel giardino. Il
308
Count Giulio also undergoes similar reactions when he initially falls for Adriana, the seductive French singer:
“Don Giulio sentiva un fruscìo nelle orecchie e una vertine al capo, come uomo che giunto all’orlo d’una cascata
gira e precipita” (III, 52). Once again the reader notes how the description of falling in love implies a loss of
oneself, a descent into an abyss over the edge of a precipice or waterfall.
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dottore già coi nervi irritato e la fantasia tesa si sgomentò come innanzi a un grave
pericolo e tese ancora l’orecchio, ma non udì che un suono di piccoli passi scricchiolanti
sulla sabbia […] Il dottorino corse fino al letto, e vi si buttò vestito come uomo che per
paura si rintani. – È questo l’amore? – domandò a sé stesso e quando a Dio piacque si
addormentò (III, 46 – 47).
The physician’s visceral reactions to Severina’s passionate words intended for his rival in love
are among the initial symptoms of his own wild obsession with his patient; however, the
questions he poses to himself – “what am I thinking?” and “aren’t these crazy ideas?” – indicate
a struggle between his lovestruck, instinctive, irrational self and his fading, but still present
practical, logical self. In other clichéd words, Marco experiences the traditionally familiar,
though individually unfamiliar battle between his heart and his head. This strange struggle
between instinctual, inexplicable passions and socially constructed reason is indeed a prime
example of the unheimlich, as each half of the dichotomy informs the ego, but is still estranged
from it, respectively residing internally in the unconscious, and externally in the moralizing
forces of conscience. Doctor Marco, a previously dispassionate though compassionate man, had
never felt these drives before his infatuation and contact with Severina, whose own fanatical
sentiments and predispositions to the dramatic and ecstatic are transferred into him. Love has
therefore become a contagion; ironically, Severina’s malaise has infected the doctor who is the
modern figure of the healer, and the regulator of health and “normality” so that he, like his
hysterical patient has entered into the marginal category of the diseased and “abnormal.” Marco
recognizes his feelings and urges as outlandish and uncharacteristic and he even begins to doubt
his sanity, yet is unable to control his instinctual reactions to the situation. Following in the
foosteps of his female counterpart, he demonstrates symptoms of hysteria as evidenced in the
above citation; his annoyance with the silence he once enjoyed, his irritated nerves, his tense
fantasy, and the physical reactions to his mental state all indicate a transformation within him
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that results from his contact with the infectious Severina. His encounter with a previously
unknown, foreign part of himself shakes his notions of his subjective reality, and produces a fear
within him in the face of this “grave pericolo” (III, 46). In fact, the material danger he perceives
in the screeching steps in the garden is actually his rival Count Giulio, who arrived in town
unbeknownst to everyone in order to make amends with his fiancé. The debaucherous count, as
an opposing double for Doctor Marco, embodies the passion and recklessness that the
protagonist seeks to sublimate so that his fearful retreat to his bed from Giulio lurking in the
shadows represents a metaphorical flight away from his own instincts, lurking in the shadows of
his psyche. The image of the young physician cowering and fully-clothed in his bed not only
adds the element of humor frequently though subtly present in fantastic discourse, it also
demonstrates his progressively increasing psychological turmoil. Like Severina’s thrashing and
screaming outburst, Marco’s loud shriek and and sudden gnawing at the count’s address on the
envelope recalls the same image of teeth-gnashing in darkness or hell where reason subsides.
His final question before falling asleep – “E questo l’amore?” (III, 47) – reprises Severina’s
previous, written inquiry, “Cos’è l’amore?” (III, 46), and further emphasizes their affinity as
complementary doubles.
While Severina acts as her physician’s complementary, female counterpart, the minor
characters Celestino and Count Giulio emerge as the protagonist’s opposing doubles, as differing
parts of his decomposed character. Marco’s physician friend and his amorous rival themselves
stand as contradictory figures, the former embodying level-headed, good-natured common sense
coupled with humor, the latter conversely personifing vice, capriciousness, unchecked passion,
and irresponsibility. Celestino’s diminuitive name immediately associates him with il dottorino,
as they both emit a certain sweetness and youthfulness of character and composure; however,
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their age and implied noble goodness are their only similiarities. As Marco considers a respite
from treating Severina, he imagines that he could change for the better: “Dopo un mese sarebbe
tornato allegro come Celestino, con una lunga pipa, coperto d’una buona crosta di esperienza,
che salva l’anima dalle malattie croniche” (III, 68). He could return to his duties as a doctor,
cured from his illness, happy and with a long pipe like his dear friend, whom he implies is the
paragon of health. Celestino’s alignment with the celestial sphere suggests a lightness – a
leggerezza and a luminosità – that his despondent friend Marco does not possess. In fact, the
narrator’s juxtaposition of Marco’s melancholy described in such proximity to the contrasting
depiction of Celestino’s jollity underlines their connection as opposing doubles:
Celestino, come si vede, prendeva la vita più alla buona e si sarebbe detto, guandandolo
in viso, ch’egli avesse scoperto il segreto di crepar di salute. Egli aveva un cuor d’oro, ed
essendo per natura inclinevola alla bontà, nè sapendo d’altro lato sopportare il fastidio
della tenerezza, la disperdeva in risate sonore, in pungi sulle spalle degli amici e in
prediche stravaganti che avevano però la virtù di mettere sete al predicatore (21)
Celestino emerges as the paragon of good humor and health, who loses himself in sonorous
laughs, as opposed to his friend Marco who is described as “malato” (III, 8), and overcome with
“la malinconia” and “le lagrime” (III, 22). The cheerful and facetious physician laughs at his
lovesick friend’s complicated situation, yet his mere presence provides a sort of familiar comfort
for Marco, who cannot help but be drawn into Celestino’s orbit of positivity and common sense
(as in the senso comune so often found in Carlo Goldoni’s doctor or merchant deus ex machina):
“In compagnia così allegra, Marco ritrovò il retto senso della vita, il quale spesse volte sfugge a
chi col fantasticare va creandosi un mondo che non esiste nella lista dei pianeti” (III, 21). Not
only does Celestino’s joyful company comfort Marco in his time of amorous suffering, it (more
importantly) assists him in finding again his true purpose in life, which we later discover for
these young men is their vocation as noble-hearted doctors. Celestino, in seeming opposition to
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one implication of his name, acts as a touchstone that grounds his wayward, fantastical friend in
the common, material reality to which we all belong.309 He assists Marco in finding that “retto
senso della vita” (III, 21) that so often escapses those who lose themselves (like Marco) in a
fantasy world. In short, Celestino succeeds in bringing Marco back to a happier, realer reality
than the one he has constructed in his head, based on unchecked passion and subterfuge. In his
brief treatment of De Marchi’s first novel, Fittipaldi describes the good-natured physician as an
“amico ed antagonista di Marco” (207), which is fitting given his status as an opposing, though
complementary double of the protagonist. His further characterization of the antagonist as “un
personaggio antieroico e di lombardo buon senso” (Fittipaldi 207) proves more thoughtprovoking, for not only does it coincide with the Goldonian notion of il senso comune or il buon
senso, it also pushes us to recall Elio Vittorini’s well-known character from Conversazione in
Sicilia, Il Gran Lombardo. Like Vittorini’s memorable Lombardian landowner who inspires the
protagonist Silvestro to consider “altri doveri” or duties to the collective, human misery and a
lost, offended world, De Marchi’s Celestino acts as a positive force and motivates Marco to
return to his vocation as a medical practitioner, a career that hinges upon helping and healing the
suffering of others. Despite the ethereal nature of his name, Celestino succeeds in bringing
Marco back not only from his fever, but also from his self-constructed fantasy land and its
consequent maddening effects.310 In other words, the cheerful doctor rescues his fellow, self309
Celestino’s name could suggest an alliance with the celestial, ethereal or supernatural realm; however, he remains
grounded in the earthly world of good wine and pipes, common sense and humor.
310
After Count Giulio is reunited with Severina and her scream releases the craziness that had previously infected
her, it seemingly travels outside to the still inebriated Doctor Marco. He feels the need to escape immediately from
the site of his misery in love and takes off again in the small boat across the lake in a downpour. He encounters a
group of fisherman in the storm that are searching for one of their own who had gone overboard. Marco sees the
drowning man and jumps into the water to rescue him. After their safe return to the neighboring town, the little
doctor falls gravely ill for five days. When he wakes from his fever, Celestino is by his bedside watching over him
and he becomes recognized by the entire town as the “miracoloso Salvatore di Tonio” (96). A visit from Tonio and
his family ensues in which they thank him for saving his life and give him a large fish (III, 97-98). Marco is moved
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absorbed physician friend by reminding him of the material world where “altri doveri” greater
than his own personal afflictions necessitate his service. Celestino therefore becomes associated
with both the lightness of humor and the practicality of good sense and he is also circumscribed
by a luminosity that extends beyond the material, as his name also suggests.
In addition to the blatant reference to light and the color of the sky, the adjective
“celeste” from which the diminuitive “celestino” is derived may also carry with it a divine
connotation, which seems especially fitting in the case of Celestino, for he often comes to
Marco’s rescue like a guardian angel. In fact, his presence at the feverish Marco’s bedside after
his nervous breakdown resulting from Count Giulio’s return, and his highly influential motto that
a great life is made of good wine and long pipes, render him a savior of his friend’s sanity. As a
true deus ex machina, Celestino assists Marco in realizing that his authenticity resides in a life of
service and healing, in the life where he had already flourished before the Severina debacle.
Early on in the novel, Celestino is described as Marco’s peer, but more robust and seemingly
older than his friend. As he greets Marco, like a distributor of divine grace, he declares “Dio ti
benedica, anima mia” (III, 20), not only reinforcing his inherent celestial nature, but also
anticipating the same moniker – “my soul” – that Severina uses for him (when she thinks he is
Count Giulio) at their first meeting. Moreover, the reference to his friend as “anima mia,”
emphasizes their closeness and further suggests their connection as oppositional doubles. When
Celestino first arrives in town, he admonishes his gloomy friend to find a wife because “questi
libri ti assottigliano la vita, asinaccio” (III, 7), succinctly though effectively demonstrating the
pairs’ contrasting personalities: Celestino’s joviality and humor, versus Marco’s seriousness and
by this humble though great gesture of gratitude. and the doctor is moved. When Marco is finally healed, Celestino
departs, referring to his friend as “mio bel filosofo” (III, 99) as he walks away whistling.
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reclusiveness. Celestino’s ability however, to elicit laughter from his brooding friend
foreshadows the impact that his positivity will eventually have on the little doctor when he
arrives at the bitter end of his imaginary romance and consequently his coming of age journey.
We remember that when the aged Doctor Marco, who (as the narrator informs us) has lived a
long, happy, and healthy life is asked the secret to it, he shows them “una ricotta in latino, trovata
fra le carte del suo povero amico, la quale può conchiudere a guise di morale, queste pagine non
immortali: Recipe vinum bonum et pippam longam, e io la consiglio alle anime sensibili” (III,
100). The novel’s concluding words then are those, not of il signor dottorino for whom the
novel is named, but those adopted by him, from his dear friend and (perhaps) better half,
Celestino, who had obviously wielded a lasting influence on the once solitary and frequently
forlorn Doctor Marco.
While Celestino stands as an underlying positive force that ultimately effects Marco’s
future for the better and transmits the qualities of reason and health to his friend, Count Giulio, in
his absent presence (and eventually in his unexpected appearance at Baron Siloe’s estate),
functions as a negative opposing double for the protagonist. Marco’s initially reluctant and
eventually willing impersonation of his opponent in love obviously marks the pair as an
antagonistic dyad. Although the count does not intentionally or even actually harm the lovesick
doctor, the mere idea of him acts as a destructive force on Marco, filling him with jealousy and
inciting him to ignoble actions atypical for his inherently noble character. After Doctor Marco
learns of Count Giulio’s transgressions in regards to Severina, he cannot abide the idea that he
still has the right to marry her and it is as if an outside force, something other than himself,
provokes irrational and inexplicable sentiments in the good doctor:
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il dottorino […] non poteva impedire che un maligno demonio non gli soffiasse
nell’orecchio una parola strana, non mai compresa, e di minaccia contro un uomo
lontano, non mai conosciuto e punto invidiabile. Egli doveva invitare quest’ uomo in
nome dell’umanità e della scienza alle dolcezze de’ baci di Severina…Diciamolo: il
dottorino incominciava a odiare (III, 40).
The green monster of jealousy that rises up within the lovestricken little doctor emerges from the
depths of his heart, yet in its strangeness seems to also be a malign demon that whispers in his
ear from without so that we again encounter the duality that surfaces from an inside-out force or
intangible, unheimlich entity. Count Giulio, who Baron Adriano depicts as having an affinity for
the dark and dramatic, is ever present even in (or perhaps especially because of) his absence and
his image itself becomes duplicated as Marco plays his part in Severina’s fantasy without the
possibility of ever being him. The demons of passion and desire that seem to entice the count
into infidelity and indiscretion with the French singer Adriana exercise a similar power over the
physician, who engages in a blatant act of dishonesty by intentionally placing the incorrect
address on the invitation to his rival (written in the name of humanity and science, at the behest
of Baron Adriano, pleading with him to return to his fiancé because her health depends on it). In
short, Marco, like Giulio, allows himself to be acted upon and ruled by the internal, yet
seemingly external powers of passion, rashness, and desire as he plays the role of his rival and
mistakenly begins to believe himself the rightful candidate for Severina’s affections. In fact,
when Marco discovers Count Giulio unexpectedly wandering about in the gardens outside the
Siloe lodgings, he deceives him by saying that Baron Adriano intended to kill him and that all
hope for Severina’s hand in marriage was lost. The physician’s fantastical and fanatical
indulgence in his (and Severina’s) delusional world becomes obvious as he undergoes a sort of
nervous breakdown following their meeting, yet tries to rationalize his deception of the count:
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Marco era legato alla terra, né sapeva formolare un pensiero che avesse un colore e una
proporzione […] La peggior tempesta rumoreggiava in quella povera testa: non aveva per
avventura traveduto, sognato, delirato? No, il conte era vicino a due passi da Severina, a
due passi da lui. Come poteva egli indifferentemente rinunciare alla felicità per cedere il
posto a questo ladrone notturno? (III, 66)
The tempest that rages inside the physician’s head foreshadows the storm on the lake in which he
struggles with his competitor, and also alludes to the deterioration of his mental state and the
impending psychosis contracted from Severina. Marco’s fictional world is threatened with
destruction by the potential invasion of Count Giulio who, he feels will usurp his position as
Severina’s companion; ironically however, the doctor is essentially guilty of supplanting the
baroness’s actual fiancé and therefore the true usurper. In other words, he is the true thief in the
night, despite Giulio’s indubitably unsavory behavior in regards to his fiancé.
At the initial meeting between Doctor Marco and Severina, Baron Adriano notes a
physical resemblance between the physician and the count:
Come ognun vede Severina era vittima di un nuovo inganno, e il barone se ne accorse
subito nel riconoscere al portamento all’abito, e all’eleganza del dottore una non lontana
rassomiglianza con don Giulio; ma per Severina questo inganno era già cominciato quel
giorno che il dottore passando a cavallo sotto il villino, aveva rinnovato, senza saperlo, le
usanze del ben contino inamorato (III, 26).
Severina embraces and kisses Doctor Marco, believing him to be her estranged fiancé. Her
substitution of Marco for Giulio, along with Baron Adriano’s observation that the men indeed
bear a physical resemblance to each other, immediately flags them as a pair of rival lovers, and
situates them neatly within one of the traditional parameters of Rank’s Doppelgänger: two,
contrasting men vying for the love of one woman. The young doctor had even unknowingly
conducted himself just as Count Giulio had done in the past, walking or riding by the Baron’s
villa every afternoon, so that he had been acting out the same routine as his absent competitor,
feeding the baroness’s misconception even before their first official encounter. Severina’s
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delusion and her self-constructed dreamy reality sets the stage for an even uncannier drama of a
romantic threesome, as one lover substitutes the other until the other returns and displaces the
substitute.311
The triangular rapport, common in stories of the double, engenders a loss of reason and a
collapse of the individual self paralleled by the collapse of a unified psyche, as undoubtedly
occurs in Doctor Marco’s case and reaches its pinnacle as he drunkenly accompanies the
returned Count Giulio to the Siloe residence. After Marco informs his opponent of Severina’s
illness and imminent recovery (but not of his love for her), the pair set sail through a storm
across the lake towards the Ritiro (III, 84). The inebriated doctor feels jealousy and anger rise up
within him. He instead begins to paddle in the opposite direction, so that these competitors in
love, with oars in hand, essentially become two divergent powers whose contrasting energy
brings the vessel to a halt. Once Giulio perceives that Marco “era un rivale disperato” (III, 87),
he attempts to row so as to cause his drunken contender to fall overboard. The divergent forces
of energy expended in rowing recall the conflicting supernatural forces of “I fatali,” in which
Saternez declares that “due elementi contrari non possono incontrarsi senza lottare” (II 33). In
this rather comical scence where the boat comes to a standstill and almost capsizes, these
oppositional doubles – like Tarchetti’s fatal men minus the supernatural component, but adding
the physics of motion – depict the impossibility of two contrary elements coexisting in one space
together. Once Giulio understands the intensity of Marco’s drunkenness however, he pities him
enough to leave him wallowing on the muddy shore rather than drowning in the nocturnal
waters.
311
The element of humor in this love triangle is underlined by Baron Adriano when he laments, “– Povera Severina,
perdette un amante e ne ritrova due” (III, 71).
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In the style of the Florence Nightingale Syndrome, Doctor Marco falls more madly in
love (pun intended) with his patient as the story progresses, yet Severina remains madly in love
with her estranged fiancé, as in the all-too-familiar love triangle motif, already encountered
(albeit very differently) in Capuana’s Profumo and Tarchetti’s Fosca. Furthermore, it could be
suggested that this ménage a trois reflects a triangular desire a là Girard, insofar as Doctor
Marco’s infatuation with the love object Severina (and what is the Nineteenth-century woman if
not an object?) extends beyond romantic interest, and mimics his true desire for his rival Count
Giulio (with the emphasis on the title “count”). In other words, Marco’s willingness to enact the
part of his contender in love is partially the manifestation of his wish for the leisurely life of an
aristocract and his (perhaps unconscious) aspiration of social mobility. As the young physician
dreams of a future with the baroness for much of the novel, he is toying with the fantasy of living
another life, and thereby coveting (albeit briefly) the life of an other – in Girardian terms, the
model and what he embodies, rather than the initial, though eventual mediating object. As
already mentioned, Marco finally realizes however that if he did supplant Giulio as Severina’s
husband and actually assumed that role permanently, he would be living an inauthentic
existence. In the style of a Bildungsroman, the dottorino finally matures into a signore when he
decides to return to his true calling as a physician and live an authentic social and personal life.
The doctor’s desire for Count Giulio is of course not sexual, and not merely social either; rather,
it is also a desire to achieve a non-existence of the self through becoming someone else,
temporarily fulfilled in his role-play. The mimetic desire present in this threesome may be
further viewed through an existential lens as already done in the discussion of Heideggerian
authenticity, and may also be subjected to a nihilistic reading, with an anti-nihilistic message that
one would expect from an idealist believer (and subtle moralizer) such as De Marchi. In fact,
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early on in the novel, a brooding Doctor Marco thinks of the disconnect between what he desires
and what actually is, and the meaninglessness of his life:
Molte volte questo abbandono dello spirito aveva funestato la vita del nostro amico, sia
per una falsa coscienza della propria nullità, sia per un’inaspettata delusione, sia per un
desiderio immenso di amore e di verità; dalla lotta fra il volere e l’essere scaturivano
gioni di amara tristezza, di languida noja, per la quale la vita gli si rimpiccoliva alle
misure di un sogno, la natura gli appariva a colori scialbi, le sperenze si facevano sceme e
fatue, e i grandi travagli della umanità gli stuzzicavano un sogghigno crudele. Scarsi
erano questi giorni, ma egli li assaporava ora per ora in un ozioso dispetto, quasi
succhiasse il sugo di una vita inutile, penoso e troppo a sè stesso, invocando l’antica sorte
delle fate, lo scomparire (III, 22)
These highly introspective and philosophical lines, unexpected in a serial produced for a mass
reading public, effectively depict a state of ennui and indifference that a reader would anticipate
in either a canonical verisitc text, or a novel resulting from the so-called crisi del Novecento.
The affliction of an “abandonment of the spirit” suggests an angst, a resignation, and a loss of, or
a giving up on a part of the self – of lo spirito, or the breath of life (whether we call it spirit, soul,
psyche, or intellect). In its suggestion of resignation, Doctor Marco’s “abbandono dello spirito”
recalls the motif of la rassegnazione so prevalent in I promessi sposi. Despite De Marchi’s wellknown admiration of Manzoni, his “abandonment of the spirit” differs from that of his
predecessor insofar as Marco’s resignation, unlike the Manzonian Lucia’s, is not an
unquestioning acceptance of God’s will coupled with faith; rather, it is a proverbial throwing in
of the towel, a relinquishment of will and power, the act of a knight of resignation instead of a
knight of faith. The narrative voice of course overtly disapproves of Marco’s Leopardian
pessimism, because the physician’s knowledge of his own nothingness is indeed “false;” so,
while the protagonist’s resignation hearkens towards nihilism instead of acceptance and faith, De
Marchi the pedagogue illustrates it in order to undercut it. This obvious stand against the nullity
of the human being acts as a blatant disapproval of the nihilistic tendencies of the times, and
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emerges as an obvious divergence from the usual scapigliati suspects. While his pessimistic
resignation results from a false consciousness of his nothingness, his disillusionment, and his
(unrealized) desire for love and truth, Marco also suffers from a bitter sadness and laguid
boredom because of his internal struggle between what he wants and what actually is – a timeless
conflict that reaches into the realm of contemporary psychology and future psychoanalysis,
insofar as it subsumes within it the concepts of unfulfilled desire, the life force, and the death
instinct. He wishes for love or for eros, which not only embodies passion and sensuality, but
also the life force, yet at the same time he suffers in life and because of “i grandi travagli
dell’umanità” (III, 22). In contrast to his longing for love and life, the lonely physician also
yearns for a certain “death,” that is, for a state of non-existence in his desire to disappear,
“scomparire” (III, 22). As Marco vacillates between his own feelings of nothingness and
longing for life, he reflects contemporary philosophical debates over meaning and
meaninglessness in human existence found amongst the pages of Nietzsche and Dostoevesky, the
latter more akin to De Marchi because of their common Christian faith. In short, Doctor Marco’s
musings echo current fin de siècle (and anticipate future Twentieth-century) philosophical and
psychological issues of meaning, nihilism, truth(s), desire, bitterness, and ennui.
As we have already observed, Marco’s ephemeral dream of becoming Severina’s
husband and displacing his opponent in love can never be realized because of its fundamental
inauthenticity from both a social and an existential standpoint. In short, within Marco and
Severina’s fictional worlds, a happily-ever-after with their respective beloveds temporarily
remains a possibility for most of the novel. The baroness’s wish however is actually realized, as
the prodigal Count Giulio returns to her at the end of the tale, while Marco, like a superhero that
swears off love, fulfills his initial, desire to offer succor to the sick throughout the countryside,
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living the life of a humble, good, little doctor (as the novel’s title suggests). When he thinks of
his lost love, he sends a prayer to her as the narrator informs us that for Marco, “l’amore
diventava religione” (III, 98), so that Severina becomes, like God, a mysterious and never
completely accessible or comprehensible supernatural phenemon. Interestingly, we remember
that Severina had previously been associated with religion and the saintly when her father
discussed with Marco her childhood in which she was sort of a religious fool. As part of
Marco’s recovery from lovesickness and the subsequent temporary insanity, he elevates his lost
love to a divine, one might say, a donna angelicata status; however, as opposed to the stilnovista
or Petrarchan angelic woman, Doctor Marco finds the peace and distance from this saintly figure
that enables him to realize his potential as a productive member of society, instead of an
eternally scarred, musing poet. The paths of these complementary doubles therefore diverge, as
the female figure – cured of her psychosis because of her beloved’s return – reenters the social
dynamic, assuming the highest of feminine roles (besides mother) as the wife of an aristocrat.
The male protagonist also reestablishes contact with society (with the help of his extroverted
friend and opposing double, Celestino), embracing his vocation as a physician and acting as a
true noble man. Doctor Marco’s relinquishment of the object of his desire (and consequently his
rival-model), and the commitment to his vocation as a medical practitioner also allude to the
multiplicity inherent in the conception of Love itself. As the single Doctor Marco works towards
the health and well-being of his patients, he engages in that lofty love known as philia, which
overshadows its carnally-based relative eros. He is ultimately cured of the mentally and
emotionally crippling love of passion, and finds the nobler, brotherly love of his fellow human
beings. Unlike Tarchetti’s tale of parasitic love and obsession in which the pathological femme
fatale eternally scars her male counterpart, De Marchi’s inaugural novel concludes on a positive
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note, as both Doctor Marco and Baroness Severina reenter their “rightful” places in society, and
reenter their right minds again.312 While the triangular love story between Doctor Marco,
Severina, and Count Giulio undoubtedly possesses the ingredients of a romance novel, De
Marchi’s subtle commentary on cautionary social mobility and on individual duty to the
collective, as well as his vivid portrayal of a “hysterical” woman and man instill a greater socioliterary depth in Il signor dottorino than is usually (if at all) attributed to it.313
Double Consciousness Meets Demonic Possession in Due anime in un corpo
While Emilio De Marchi’s first novel has received very little critical consideration by
Twentieth-century literary scholars, the minimal attention paid to Due anime in un corpo is
frequently cloaked in negativity, as most critics harshly judge it as a disjointed narrative disaster,
due to its convoluted plot, and in large part because of its constant switching between first and
third person narrators.314 While the use of multiple narrators within a novel is not unheard of in
312
A socially allegorical reading of Il signor dottorino is indeed possible, though has remained at the margins of the
present study because of its focus on the existential quandaries and psychopathologies of the individual. De Marchi
is known for his belief in educating the masses, not only towards literacy and literariness, but also towards morality
and conscience. His more conservative viewpoints, his identity as a modern Catholic (like his friend and
correspondent Antonio Fogazzaro), and his overt admiration of Manzoni of course differentiated him from his
scapigliati influences. It could follow that in his first novel, the Milanese author admonishes his popular readers to
refrain from reaching too far beyond their station, or to desire that which is excessive, much like his contemporaries
do with the verisitic discourse of la roba.
313
Spinazzola also notes the melodramatic elements of Il signor dottorino, claiming that De Marchi’s first novel
“rimescola gli ingredienti che potremmo chiamare narrativa rosa [...] in modo da convalidare il significato
ottimistico e consolatorio attraverso una esaltazione dolceamara del senso di responsabilità individuale” (37 – 38).
The Milanese author undoubtedly utilized those romantic elements of the romanzo rosa in order to attract and
maintain the interest of the mass reading public; however, as Spinazzola notes, De Marchi inserted an optimism and
a moralistic message of individual responsability, insofar as Doctor Marco recognizes his rightful place as a
contributing member of society, as a middle-class physician. He renounces his love for Severina and the
opportunity to marry her precisely because realizes his place in the social hierarchy and his duty as a doctor to treat
the sick. The relinquishment of the love object and the acceptance of one’s duty in De Marchi’s first novel seem to
anticipate the story-within-a-story of Fogazzaro’s Malombra; Corrado Silla’s Il sogno narrates the tale of two lovers
who recognize their social and individual duties and remain apart.
314
While De Marchi is generically categorized, like any author of the Nineteeth Century could be, as a realist writer,
some scholars modify his so-called realism as stemming from his early experience of la Scapigliatura, like so many
other realist authors of the day, including all of those in the present study. Fittipaldi asserts that De Marchi’s
youthful literary production culminates in the publication of Due anime in un corpo, which demonstrates motifs that
hearken back to the author’s “esperienza scapigliata” (204). The detailed and often absurd plot is characteristic of
280
the Nineteenth Century, the Milanese author adds another layer of complexity to this
narratological strategy by imbuing his protagonist, Marcello Marcelli, with two narrative voices
– one for each spirit housed in his body after the death of his friend and opposing double,
Giorgio Lucini.315 The narrating protagonist shifts from first to third person often within the
same paragraph or even in the same sentence as one personality seems to emerge, and the other
goes dormant only to return soon afterwards. De Marchi’s third novel presents the reader with
an extravagant fabula and an intricate, web-like syuzhet comprised of flashbacks and an
especially non-linear progression/regression of events. The tale is complicated even further by
the presence of texts – letters, courtroom proceedings, newspaper articles, and even an account
written by another narrator – within the text, which enhance the novel’s already fragmentary
nature and force the reader to piece together the diegetic puzzle.316 While the narrative structure
(or perhaps one could say anti-structure) may elicit confusion on the part of the audience and
incite critics to dismiss the novel as an inferior work in the De Marchian oeuvre, a curious reader
cannot help but wonder whether the author intentionally obfuscated the linearity and the
the feuilleton and anticipates the intricate storyline of his reformatory serial novel Il cappello del prete, whose
blatant moral message against atheism, nihilism, hubris, and greed is circumscribed by its involved plot.
315
The novel is divided into two separate parts, the first part containing fourteen chapters and the second part
containing seven chapters (the final entitled “Conclusion”). There also appears a preface to the first chapter of the
second part in which Marcello explains (using the third person to refer to himself) that he heard the story of the
Sultan and Marina from someone privy to the situation. He asked for a report that he could include in his story, but
given that this supposedly first-hand witness was “un poeta irrompente” and a prolific writer, Marcello thought it
better to merely insert his text rather than edit it (III, 208). There exists then another narrator and therefore another
piece to an already variegated narrative; however, Marcello is still the compiler of the narrative and in that sense
possesses the ultimate power in its arrangement.
316
Gorini-Santoli classifies De Marchi’s first two narrative works, Il signor dottorino and Tra gli stracci as long
short stories, whereas according to her, Due anime in un corpo should be considered the author’s novelistic
exordium (19). I have chosen to consider these three De Marchian early narratives as novels because of their
publication in installments that were intended to comprise part of a larger whole. Despite the relative brevity of Il
signor dottorino and Tra gli stracci, I would argue that these works nonetheless still seem too elaborate in both plot
and number of pages to be considered short stories; however, there certainly exists a fine line between a long short
story and a short novel. At any rate, whether De Marchi’s first three literary, serial publications are categorized as
novels or novellas remains mostly irrelevant given the parameters of the present study, which is primarily concerned
with the hermeneutical implications of the narrative content.
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transparency of the syuzhet in order to mirror the protagonist’s own cacophonous psyche in
which two consciousnesses collide and often intermingle, and where thoughts, memories, desire,
and knowledge reside as a collage rather than a telos.317 The polyphonic nature of the novel
reveals itself in the initial pages in which the first-person narrator Marcello describes the
labyrinthine corridors and the diverse, caricatured residents of the Milanese apartment building
in which he lives. As the reader seemingly overhears the words and witnesses the actions of
Marcello’s neighbors (recounted by him), she notes the chorality of thoughts, voices, and
behaviors, which in turn sets the stage for the intricate plot, the multiplicity of narrative voices,
and the dominant presence of the Doppelgänger as he surfaces from within – or/and invades
from without – the muddled psyche of the narrator(s)-protagonist .318
Like its predecessor, Due anime in un corpo depicts the double inside-out; however, the
outside force that invades the protagonist is neither love nor madness, though he is indeed driven
mad and perhaps even falls in love; rather, the foreign power is the spirit of the deceased Giorgio
Lucini, which transmigrates into the mind and body of Marcello so that he becomes the dual
consciousness Marcello/Giorgio within one body, in a veritable case of metempsychosis.319 The
fragmentation of the self occurs here not because of a love object as in Il signor dottorino, but is
317
The motif of putting together occurs here as Marcello remembers his trial by re-membering, or piecing together
the fragments of newspaper articles. He is essentially rewriting his own story – (his)story – yet because he is the
author of it, or the compiler of it, he is reclaiming a certain subjectivity, a power that he had lost as Marcello when
he was also housing the spirit or the consciousness of Lucini. These blurbs of the trial and the transcribed testimony
that reads like a play script, and of course a court report has a double duty insofar as they add to the detective-like
nature of the novel. Furthermore, they reiterate not only the fragmentary essence of the text, but also that very same
multiplicitous nature of the human psyche that functions in pieces not teleologically.
318
In her discussion of Il cappello del prete, Cecconi Gorra notes an “architettura corale” of the scene in which
Filippino the haberdasher wins the lottery and compares this chorality with that of the collective presentation of
“caseggiato milanese” at the beginning of Due anime in un corpo (96).
319
I have chosen to refer to the possessed narrator as Marcello/Giorgio using the slash rather than the dash to
emphasize the coexistence of two consciousnesses within one psyche and body, rather than the dash that recalls
Verga’s Mastro-don Gesualdo or Capuana’s marchese-contadino because I interpret the dash as connoting
contrasting identities or personas stemming from the same psyche, and not from an actual double consciousness.
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perpetuated by the love object of Marina, Giorgio Lucini’s estranged beloved, who is married to
a wicked, wealthy man known as the Sultan. (It is eventually revealed that the Sultan had
arranged and executed the murder of his wife’s lover; however, he later finds out to his dismay
that Giorgio was the long lost son he had abandoned years ago in Naples.) After seeing portraits
of Marina and reading her letters to Lucini, Marcello begins to idealize her and eventually falls
in love with her, only to meet her face to face as she is dying.320 Marina undoubtedly factors into
the drama of the double, as she prevents Giorgio’s inability to pass calmly from this world into
the next, and acts as the motivating force behind his spirit’s need to possess Marcello’s mind and
body. (In fact, once Marcello fully acknowledges the presence of his friend’s spirit within him,
he resolves solve his murder and rescue Marina from the evil clutches of the Sultan.) As
Marcello holds the dying Marina in his arms, and her spirit passes from this world into the next,
Giorgio’s spirit follows her and the lovers in life become eternal soul mates in death. The motif
of the double – circumscribed by the common aspects of theatricality and criminality – emerges
in various forms in Due anime in un corpo. The present discussion will be especially limited to
the principal, complex manifestation of the Doppelgänger as it occurs through the fusion of two
consciousnesses in the figure of Marcello/Giorgio; however, the individual protagonists Marcello
and Giorgio will also each receive acknowledgment as the oppositional, external double of the
other. The minor characters – Marina, the Sultan (Giorgio’s father), and Graziano Marcelli
(Marcello’s father) – will also be briefly examined, insofar as they affect the doubled narrator,
and transform the tale from one of simplistic duality into one of complicated multiplicity.
320
The reader could also argue that Giorgio’s spirit within Marcello is actually the one who continues to idealize
Marina and remains in love with her while he resides in his friend’s psyche and therefore evokes these feelings in
Marcello or perhaps confounds Marcello as to what he really feels.
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As in other cases of dual consciousness that involve the transmigration of a soul, such as
those we have already encountered in Tarchetti’s novelle and the unforgettable case of (possible)
metempsychosis that we will witness in Fogazzaro’s Marina di Malombra, the reader is incited to
that hesitation characteristic of the fantastic. She must decide whether the presence of the
Doppelgänger is caused by supernatural or psychical forces, or a combination of both. GoriniSantoli rightly mentions the common theme of “lo sdoppiamento della personalità” (59) in Il
signor dottorino and Due anime in un corpo; however, in De Marchi’s third serial, we encounter
yet again a diversified manifestation of the double, as this tale, situated between Scapigliatura
and verismo (Fittipaldi 214), is surrounded by an aura of the fantastic-marvelous that is lacking
in its romantic, uncanny predecessor.321 In fact, the possible presence of the marvelous in the
form of demonaical possession initially seems more apropos of our previous, spiritistically
inclined authors, Tarchetti and Capuana, especially when one remembers De Marchi’s
advocation of temperance, good sense, and collective duty in his first romanzo d’appendice.
Despite his conviction in literature as a transmitter and perpetuator of culture, morals, and buon
senso to the masses, the Milanese writer never fully escapes neither his early scapigliato
influences, nor his spiritualism, as he always imbues his narratives with elements of the strange,
321
Branca notes a “realismo romantico” that pervades De Marchi’s early fiction, transforming itself into a “realismo
violento” in Il cappello del prete (“La vigilia del narratore” 108). As already mentioned, Spinazzola refers to Il
signor dottorino as a “narrativa rosa” (37), thereby imbuing it with another sense of the romantic as opposed to the
romantic realism that Branca attributes to De Marchi’s first serial novels. Gorini-Santoli sustains that in Due anime
in un corpo, “lo sdoppiamento è diverso da quello di Il signor dottorino perché qui abbiamo l’assunzione in un
personaggio della personalità di un altro e da questa condizione, raffigurata in Il fu Mattia Pascal, prenderà l’avvio
la problematica pirandelliana” (60). I would argue that De Marchi’s first novel depicts the assumption of an
alternate personality insofar as Doctor Marco plays the part of his rival Count Giulio. As Gorini-Santoli rightly
observes however, there exists a difference between the author’s first and third novels, yet they both involve the
assumption, whether volontarily or involontarily, of another identity. Her comparison between De Marchi’s
Marcello and Pirandello’s Mattia Pascal is only partially valid, for the difference between the two duplicitous
protagonists is obvious. Marcello stands as a personification of sublation, while Mattia merely invents an alternate
personality, yet remains nevertheless Mattia acting out his self-constructed role as Adriano Meis.
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the ironic, and the fantastical.322 His affinity for Catholicism, albeit for a modernized ideology,
marks him as a believer in inexplicable, metaphysical phenomena, in some ways like his
spiritistic contemporaries Tarchetti and Capuana, and in many ways like his spiritualist friend
Fogazzaro.323 In Due anime in un corpo, however, the marvelous and the unheimlich coexist as
the reader questions whether the protagonist actually experiences a type of metempsychosis, or
whether he suffers from a temporary psychosis sparked by the death of his friend that he secretly
envied. In other words, it contains elements of the supernatural and the uncanny, and therefore
floats in that liminal space of the fantastic, though it undoubtedly hovers more closely to the
fantastic-marvelous. While the audience may relegate the various instances of reincarnation in
our authors’ super-natural stories to the sphere of the purely psychopathological in which
madness, delusions, and hallucinations emerge (as its seems in the case of Fogazzaro’s Marina of
Malombra), De Marchi attests to the presence of the marvelous (alongside that of the uncanny)
from the outset of the novel through the choice of the title, and throughout the text by way of the
narrator’s constant allusions to the coexistence of two consciousnesses within him.324
322
The scapigliato influence is especially felt in the modern gothic aura of the tale, in its ambiguity and strangeness.
The narrator’s attention to objects (like a picture viewer found in Giorgio’s room, the Sultan’s palatial retreat at the
end of the tale, Giorgio’s flowy coat that Marcello wears), and setting of the city (as opposed to the almost pastoral
setting of Il signor dottorino. Dryden emphasizes the “modern gothic” literature of the fin de siècle focuses on the
urban present and contemporary concerns (19), unlike its Eighteenth-century predecessor. De Marchi’s
unapologetic incorporation of gothic and fantastic elements in this novel as well as his other narratives does not
impede the transmission of a moralizing message, present in all of his works. In the Epilogue to the short story
collection Nuove storie di ogni colore (1895), the author declares: “Un libro può ben essere senza cartone, ma non
senza morale. Chi a libro chiuso si accorge di non avere acquistata nessuna nuova e bella persuasione, era meglio
per lui che l’autore fosse annegato nell’inchiostro” (III 1022). De Marchi’s sense of obligation to the reader shines
through the pages of his stories in blatant affirmations of his vocation such as this one and through overt or
sometimes subtle messages of morality, good sense, and temperance.
323
I use the term “spiritistic” to refer to those authors – Tarchetti and Capuana – who believed in the existence of
scientifically inexplicable, supernatural phenomena that are not necessarily tied to traditional notions of a Christian
afterlife or theology. “Spiritualistic” also implies a belief in the spirit world, but a belief that is circumscribed by
monotheistic, Christian ideas.
324
Whether the reader interprets the notion of “due anime in un corpo” as two souls, two spirits (as in Geist and
therefore not necessarily informed by religion), or two psyches, the conception of two spirits existing in one body, if
taken literally, already alludes to the occurrence of some type of supernatural phenomenon. Of course, one could
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Beginning in medias res with Giorgio Lucini’s highly theatricalized funeral procession
described as part of “lo spettacolo continuo dei funerali” (III, 119), the deceased’s neighbors,
including the first-person narrator (and protagonist), accompany his casket to the cemetery.
Some of the participants in the deathly spectacle, however, remain confused as to the identity of
the murdered man. The reader also finds herself becoming confused as one of the tenants of the
palazzo asks another if it were the narrator who was killed:
Il Manganelli domandava alla Rosa in un angolo del pianerottolo, se il morto era quel
giovinotto serio, coll’aria di prete, che viveva a dozzina presso i Tanelli; ma, vedendomi
passare in quel mentre, mi ficcò gli occhi addosso, mortificato del torto, che mi aveva
fatto, e forse sorpreso nello scoprire in me qualche cosa di insolito, che non sapeva ben
definire, qualche cosa che non era tutta mia. Anche la signora Medaglia, che parlava di
me e del povero Lucini, al mio sopraggiungere troncò il discorso repentinamente e mi
tenne l’occhio addosso, non persuasa del tutto sul mio conto (III, 110).
Although the unreliability of a first-person narrator remains a given in any subjective, written
account, the words overheard by Marcello blatantly indicate the perplexity of his neighbors
regarding his (mistaken) identity.325 From the outset of the tale then, we immediately observe a
sort of exchange of identity between the dead Lucini and the narrator, whose name we discover
only later at the beginning of the second chapter. The other tenants’ initial uncertainties and
their realization that the departed was not that serious young man with the air of a priest, but
aruge that two spirits and exist in one person and not necessarily indicate an other psychical entity or a psychosis, as
in Pirandellian style, we are never the same individual in front of everyone, and even wear a mask in front of
ourselves. We are always more than one person, or as Jung would have it, we assume various personas depending
on our interactions with others.
325
One could easily attribute the seemingly obvious presence of the supernatural in this story to the narrator’s own
clouded perception resulting from a diseased mental state, which could have resulted from his own identity crisis
exacerbated by the death of a peer and friend who he obviously admired. It would therefore remain debatable
whether this novel indeed belongs to the realm of the fantastic-marvelous because one could argue the unreliability
of the first person narrator, not only because a firsthand account of anything is always innately subjective and
therefore untrustworthy, but even more so because of seeming obvious psychosis. In tales such as this one where
the supernatural and the psychopathological collide, there always already exists that doubt of the veracity of the
former because of the presence of the latter. Let it suffice that we have noted this, yet maintain that Due anime in un
corpo belongs to the fantastic and gothic milieu precisely because it illustrates the dramatic (a là spectacle)
coexistence of the wunderlich (the “strange”) and the wunderbar (the “marvelous”).
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someone else, suggest an affinity between the dead Giorgio and the living Marcello. The
neighbors’ stares and their recognition of something unusual and indefinable, of something that
was not completely his, cannot help but speak to the notion of the unheimlich in which there
exists the clash of the familiar and the foreign, of the self and something seemingly other. To the
uncanny we may also add the supernatural because the something other is eventually described
as the alien spirit that enters Marcello’s once familiar body and mind. In the above citation,
signora Medaglia also notices – like the others, as if through a spiritistically receptive sixth sense
– something odd within the narrator. Her gaze seems to penetrate beyond the surface of
Marcello’s body and perceive something other within him, as she is not completely convinced
that he is indeed Marcello. Even the protagonist feels something strange and unusual inside of
himself during the viewing and the subsequent procession to the cemetery:
Anch’io sentivo in me qualche cosa, che non era del solito Marcello. Quel funerale fatto
in casa mia, la mia stanza chiusa a chiave, quella buona gente, che per amor mio seguiva
il feretro, tutto ciò mi faceva pensare, sto per dire, che le esequie fossero un pochino per
me, molto più che in quel tragitto, attraverso la città fino al cimitero, io vestiva gli abiti
del Lucini (III, 114).
The fact that Marcello is wearing Giorgio’s clothes acts as a visual manifestation of his newly
found double consciousness, and concurrently adds another stratum of complexity to the motif of
duality. While he unwillingly assumes Lucini’s identity within his psyche, Marcello (seemingly)
willingly assumes the other’s identity outwardly when he dresses in the dead man’s garments,
eventually allowing other people to recognize him as Giorgio. As he remains in the “costume”
and continues to play the role of Lucini in the outside world, the reader’s uncertainty is piqued
yet again as she wonders whether Marcello is actually volontarily impersonating Giorgio, or
whether Giorgio’s spirit, clothed in Marcello’s body is inciting him to don the clothes he wore in
life. Either or both scenarios are possible, especially considering the narrator’s statement that
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“Lucini era stato ucciso per una donna, e non per nulla io vestiva gli abiti del morto” (III, 120),
which suggests that he has chosen to impersonate him in order to solve the mystery of his death
and to assist him in finding the idealized Marina. (In fact, Marcello later thinks that pretending
to be Giorgio will gain him access to Marina.) The image of wearing the clothes of another
emerges throughout the tale as the narrator reiterates the fact that he is dressed as Giorgio and it
seems that De Marchi cannot resist the temptation to instill a bit of humor into this image as
Marcello/Giorgio takes leave of his protesting neighbors before his first attempt to find Marina,
which leads to his subsequent arrest: “se loro si mettono nei miei panni…Questa frase, tanto
vecchia, mi ricordò che io non era ne’ miei panni e non mai come in quel momento io perdetti la
coscienza di me stesso […] Ero confuso, umiliato, incerto fra questi due personaggi che si
trovavano ne’ miei panni” (III, 143 – 144). Marcello actually catches himself using this cliché
which confounds his whole sense of being in that moment, for he is neither in his own clothing,
nor is he completely the master of his crowded psyche; on the other hand, Lucini is also in
someone else’s shoes (as the saying goes in English), for he is “dressed up” in the skin of
Marcello. This play on words, juxtaposed with the protagonist’s sense of devastating confusion
as he loses consciousness of himself and the certainty of his true identity, seems to anticipate an
umorismo that Pirandello will soon popularize. Marcello, like Doctor Marco, plays the role of
another; however, unlike il dottorino, he actually shares a psychical space with his physically
absent (though psychically present) Doppelgänger, as his mind is invaded by Giorgio’s
postmortem spirit. In addition to the protagonist’s assertion that something out of the ordinary
and unfamiliar is stirring inside him, the funeral rituals held in his house (because Giorgio died
there), and those participating in them evoke a sense of familiarity. He even feels as if the
funeral pomp is also in his honor, as he declares above: “tutto ciò mi faceva pensare, sto per dire,
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che le esequie fossero un pochino per me” (III, 113). While this seemingly perplexing sensation
could be considered as appertaining to Giorgio who has been cohabitating Marcello’s
consciousness since his untimely death, it could also be interpreted as an indicator of change or
rebirth within the narrator himself. We later learn that he recently left the priesthood after
deciding to “chiudere le orecchie alla voce di Dio” (III, 114), and has been attempting to build a
new life for himself.326 In other words, Marcello “died” in his former, religious existence as
Padre Lumaca and was reborn into his current, layman life, just as Giorgio actually passed from
the material world into the metaphysical world in corporeal death.327 Moreover, death – the only
certain, inevitable, and permanent phenomenon of our lives – like its opposite of birth, inherently
necessitates a transformation, a passing from one state of being into another. The notion of death
and birth (or rebirth) becomes further multiplied when one considers the transmigration of
Lucini’s consciousness into Marcello’s, for the former is reborn in the psyche of the latter and
the latter is transformed from a single into a double consciousness and hence experiences a recreation.
326
Certain declarations such as this one that allude to Marcello’s ability to hear God words, and his choice to close
his ears to close his ears to them could be easily interpreted ambiguously given that both madmen and mystics hear
voices. In the Catholic tradition (of which De Marchi was a part, despite his desire for a more modernized faith),
those members of the religious orders – priests, nuns, monks – are called by God to their vocation, while often times
saints speak directly with Him and hear His voice. Marcello’s assertion that he closed his ears to God, and therefore
had previously heard his voice, could be read as either a confirmation of the supernatural in the text (if the reader
herself is a believer), or it could be perceived as an indication of the protagonist’s psychosis that includes auditory
hallucinations in addition to visual ones that will be discussed later.
327
After Marcello/Giorgio decides to leave town in search of Marina, he stops in a Milanese café, still dressed
though now comfortably in Lucini’s clothing and feeling “rinnovato” and the imagery of renewal continues as he
observes: “andava dicendo che una mano ignota aveva versato dell’olio nella lampada della mia vita. Provavo
insomma, se è lecito indovinare, quel piacere proprio delle biscie, quando lasciano la pelle vecchia e raggrinzata
sulla strada, e belle nuove si scaldano al sole” (III 139). Like a snake shedding its old skin, Marcello has cast off the
garb of Marcello and now wears the threads of Giorgio, conducting himself as the dead man. After responding as
Giorgio to a letter addressed to him, he waves to “il signor Lucini nello specchio di contro” (III 139). While the
image of the mirror occurs elsewhere, here we do not know whether Marcello actually sees himself in the mirror as
Lucini (as he does after the funeral), or whether he says this because he has visibly assumed Lucini’s identity, or
both.
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Opening the novel with vivid images of fatality and subtle allusions to reincarnation
therefore immediately sets the macabre yet mystical tone that will inform the entire narrative,
and forces us to recall the timeless, opposing yet complementary doubles of Eros the life force
and Thanatos the death force – powers that we have already encountered in the works of
Tarchetti and Capuana. The narrator’s own confusion regarding the singularity of his identity, as
well as the question of his mistaken identity and strangeness depicted in the citations above,
anticipate Marcello’s observation that he is at once both himself and his deceased friend. In the
midst of the funeral proceedings, Marcello’s mind initially wanders to the mysteries surrounding
Giorgio Lucini’s unsolved homicide, which resulted from a brutal beating by two unknown
theives (who we later discover were the Sultan’s hitmen). The reader is therefore made privy to
the story behind the victim’s death and the inexplicable transference of his spirit into
Marcello.328 The depiction of the moribund Lucini attended by his curious and concerned friend
not only reaffirms the coexistence of the marvelous and the uncanny in De Marchi’s novel, it
also hearkens toward notions of the abject, spectacle, and intersubjectivity:
Chi abbia vegliato appena due o tre notti di fila presso un malato e, senza scostarsi dal
letto, se l’abbia veduto mancare a oncia a oncia fino all’ultimo, quando torna fra la gente,
sente in modo molto confuso di non essere tutto quello di prima; un po’ di noi se ne va,
credo, col morto, e un po’ di lui resta in noi, insieme a quel brivido, che filtra nelle ossa e
a quei cerchi giallognoli, che fluttuano nelle pupille. A me pareva infatti che tutto quel
chiasso, che aveva intorno, venisse con rumore sordo da un mondo lontano; molto più
328
Giorgio sustained massive injuries to the chest and the torso and he died after four days of suffering. The
murderers are not apprehended, yet Marco and the authorities rightly believe that the crime was personal because the
victim was only robbed of a wallent containing only the portrait of a woman. Marcello’s mention of this fact invites
us to think again on Rank’s affirmation that many stories of the double often involve a woman that stands between
them and for whom they are rivals. In Due anime in un corpo however, the romance and is more complex than the
mere love triangle; initially Giorgio Lucini and the Sultan’s wife Marina fall in love. We later discover that the
Sultan is Giorgio’s biological father that had abandoned him and his mother when he was an infant. A fourth party
enters into the equation when Marcello begins to fall in love with Marina based on objects he finds in Lucini’s
room: correspondences between the lovers and a stereoscope, a type of viewfinder in which film images are inserted
and viewed. Marcello finds images of Venice’s Grand Canal and of Marina. Marcello is incited by these objects, by
Giorgio’s desire within him, and by his own fascination with Marina to leave Milan in search of her.
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che un pensiero fisso, peggio d’un chiodo, non lasciava di tormentarmi; Lucini era stato
ucciso per una donna (III, 120).
We encounter the very physicality of Life and Death in Marcello’s depiction of their effects on
the body; as the dying man passes into the next world, the living man feels the “brividi” pass
through his bones as he also hears a silent noise from a far away world, a paradoxical image
within itself apropos of the seemingly impossible scenario of two consciousnesses occupying the
same psychic space. The fixed thought that pierces Marcello’s mind like a nail (in a quite tactile
simile), concerns Marina. She, like many female figures in stories of the double stands between
two rivals; in this case, Marina first stands between her husband the Sultan and her beloved
Lucini, and later acts as a common point between Giorgio and Marcello, as the latter thinks that
he can act as a substitute for the former. The element from the above citation most relevant to
the present discussion of the metempsychotic double however, is of course Marcello’s assertion
that part of the living departs with with the dying, while a portion of the moribund man remains
with the person he leaves behind. There occurs then a sort of transfer or exchange of spirit or
Geist between the two anime as each keeps with it a part of the other so that both exist
contemporaneously in this world and in the “mondo lontano” of the afterlife.329 In this reciprocal
exchange of essences, both consciousnesses occupy two spaces at once – one material and the
other immaterial. Just as Giorgio’s spirit lives in the earthly realm because of its presence within
Marcello, so does Marcello partially exist in the occult realm of the great beyond because he is
organically and psychically connected to the spirit of Giorgio, who in death resides in the
329
One could argue for an allegorical reading of Marcello’s condition of double consciousness insofar as the
proverbial saying is true and we are all born dying. In other words, precisely because we live are we also
simultaneously dying; so, Marcello’s duplicity as a living and dead spirit housed in one body and mind is essentially
what we all are – a living being that because we are all going to die, are always already dead. From the perspective
of a believer (such as De Marchi himself), the opposite could also be read into Marcello’s pathological state; once
we die, we are born again into the afterlife and death becomes a rebirth. We are born dying, but in dying we are
born again as the oppositional forces of Eros and Thanatos exist contemporaneously in all of us.
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immaterial space of the afterlife. This disparity between, yet concurrent fusion of the material
and the immaterial emerges especially in and in-between the lines of the narrator’s description of
death. The confusion or disorientation that one feels after viewing mortality first-hand, along
with the little bit of us (the living) that departs with them, and the little bit of them (the dead) that
stays with us belong to that intangible and therefore hidden psychic space. Moreover, the
immediate confrontation of our own mortality through the death of another and the vision of the
corpse in front of us provokes within us an instinctual reaction akin to shock or horror. In our
experience of the abject which involves that very sense of disorientation that Marcello describes
above, we encounter a breakdown of subjectivity; in other words, when we come face to face
with the corpse, we are reminded of our essential materiality, of our existence as an object that
once devoid of the life force (whether we call it soul, spirit, or psyche) means nothing.
The narrator’s vivid description of the visceral visuality of the fatal scene imbues it with
a theatricality grounded in visionary spectale: the portrayal of one (i.e., himself) remaining
awake with eyes open (“vegliato”) beside a deteriorating friend; the emphasis that he had seen
(“veduto”) life fading; the obviously tactile, yet visual sensation of goosebumps; and the yellow
hue flowing in the dying man’s eyes. In short, the living spectator watches the spectacle of death
work its magic on its unfortunate victim. The mere image of a man holding vigil at the deathbed
of another is a spectacle in itself, for not only does the dramatic, suspenseful and sometimes fatal
sickbed scene often color the pages of Nineteenth-century fiction, it also plays upon a
fundamental ingredient of spectacle – the gaze. The observer of death’s handiwork and the one
who undergoes it intermingle in an intersubjective exchange, for the observer watches and
through his observation, experiences visually what the dying man experiences organically.
Furthermore, by watching the observer watching him, he witnesses the horrorific spectacle of his
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own death through the gaze of an other. Both men, still living, are being worked upon by Death
in some way and both are players in the Life and Death spectacle. Each man simultaneously
exists as both living and dead in a liminal space of undeath, neither alive nor dead, but
simultaneously both.330
The loss of distinction between subject and object characteristic of the abject appears in
other psychosomatic phenomena not necessarily linked to fatality, but nevertheless still
connected to that same space of non-existence (on non-subjectivity) inherent in death.331 Just as
we encountered a loss of reason, consciousness, and subjectivity through love, sex, and madness
in Il signor dottorino, in Due anime in un corpo, death, love (to a lesser extent), and music
emerge as places in which the rational, consciously thinking subject is ultimately lost as he
meshes with an other. The narrator alludes to the transfer of Giorgio’s spirit into Marcello at the
time of his death. The physical and psychical sense of estrangement Marcello feels also occurs
while he is staying in the deceased’s apartment. Surrounded by Lucini’s possessions, Marcello
picks up the violin, and slowly begins to play it despite his inability to do so; however, he hears a
voice in the music and the notes begin to flow as (we assume) the spirit of Giorgio takes over:
Queste note lunghe tutto l’arco, si querelavano sotto la volta della camera, chiamavano
qualcuno, scuotevano le fiamme delle candele, facevano rotolare nella cenere scheggie e
330
The vampire is one supernatural creature who exists in that liminal space between death and life, for his body
dies a human death, yet is preserved by his immortal spirit, cursed to remain within it for the rest of his immortal
life. Vampires are known as the “undead” precisely because of their paradoxical existence as living dead creatures.
331
In the thirteenth chapter of part one, entitled “Intermezzo,” the narrator describes his inability to differentiate
between himself and the spirit of Giorgio that possesses him, as well as between other people and objects: “Io non
distinguevo più me stesso dagli altri e dalle cose intorno: io non sapeva se fossi un morto risuscitato o un poveretto
sotterrato vivo […] Se in me si faceva un po’ di silenzio, sedendo sul mio letticciuolo a guardare in quei gorghi,
vedevo come due personaggi, posti nel medesimo atteggiamento del mio, che si movevano l’uno a fianco dell’altro a
somiglianza di certi fenomeni viventi, esposti nei baracconi. Alcune volte al contrario la coscienza ch’io fossi il
Lucini tornava così schietta e sicura, che io pensavo a Marcello, come a un buon giovinotto conosciuto da me alla
trattoria e che abitava una casipola laggiù” (III, 193). Marcello/Giorgio’s observation of his feelings during his
incarceration stand as a prime example of one in the midst of an identity crisis in which the former, unified self has
been displaced; moreover, his notion that one person is moving alongside of the other within him recalls a similar
observation made by Tarchetti’s Baron B. who saw and heard double.
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scattare scintilla, scorrevano come spiriti dentro e sotto a quel mucchio di pieghe e di
roba con tanta evidenza, ch’io guardai nella pancia dell’istrumento, se mai vi fosse
rannicchiata un’anima. Sentiva crescermi le lagrime agli occhi, come la notte stessa che
l’amico moriva col nome di una donna sulla bocca (III, 134).
The physical effects that the music wields over the objects in the room as it calls out to someone,
shakes the candle flames, and overturns ashes in the fire, exemplifies yet again the connection
between the opposites of the material and the immaterial. As Marcello creates a beautiful
melody with the violin (an instrument that he had never studied, nor played before), it is obvious
that his consciousness has been invaded by another, yet still remains present as he searches in the
belly of the instrument for a spirit hiding there. He is unsure of his complete presence in that
moment and in the intermingling of the two spirits, paired with the ineffable, passion-evoking
nature of music, there occurs that loss of differentiation between self and other, characteristic of
the abject. Instead of the individual’s sense of horror in front of death or ecstasy as in
jouissance, the narrator experiences a disorientation inside of himself as he confronts the
unheimlich in a veritable fusion of consciousnesses (his and Giorgio’s) in which both, yet
neither, completely exists.
Marcello experiences the loss of his consciousness as it intermingles with Giorgio’s spirit
amidst sweet melodies created by their psychosomatic synthesis; however, the narrator’s
previous description of the living Lucini’s magical music reveals the violinist’s own experience
of a subjective breakdown as he plays:
Si lasciava cadere dietro le note morenti, si rizzava al tornare della voce e gli occhi
scintillavano all’incontro d’un accordo prediletto […] tornava il sangue alle sue gote,
socchiudeva gli occhi, respirava colle labbra schiuse quell’aria tutta sua, scuoteva i
capelli come un re sdegnato, urtava la testa contro gli aggrovigliamenti delle crome, e
snodava colla mano sinistra, magra, nervosa, elettrica e se nell’ardore della musica una
corda per caso scattava, Lucini impallidiva dello spavento. Questa era l’anima (III, 130).
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As in Capuana’s musicista, we see the otherworldly nature of music, that is, its organic
connection to not only the physical senses but also its engagement of the ineffable ecstasy that
the anima (whether it be the mind or the spirit, or both as in Geist) can experience disconnected
from, yet still connected to the body, though always transcending language. The blood rush, the
half-closed eyes, the breathing with open lips, the hair tossing, and the nervous, electric hand are
symptoms of a musical ecstasy, as the violinist becomes psychically and physically engaged in
the notes and disengaged from the world around him, and even from his rational, thinking self.
In short, both protagonists experience an ecstatic state in which the conscious subject dissolves
as they play a mystical melody that originates from an occult elsewhere, whether from an errant
spirit within (as in Marcello’s case), or from somewhere without that reveals “tante belle cose,
che esistono nell’universo” (III, 130) (as in the living Giorgio’s case).
The double, which we remember Freud calls “the uncanny harbinger of death,” (The
Uncanny 142) frequenly signals or accompanies death in many fictional works, yet De Marchi
adds his own spin on the motif of fatality in its relation to the Doppelgänger insofar as the
protagonist’s double is at once both dead and alive. (Consequently the protagonist himself is
both partly living and partly dead.) Just as De Marchi adds his own flair to the underlying theme
of death typical in literature of the double, he also appropriates the mirror (the accoutrement par
excellence of double fiction), at first in a scene out of a ghost story, and again later with a play on
light and multiplicity. Following the funeral, Marcello, still wearing the dead man’s cloak and
hat spends the evening in Lucini’s apartment amidst fading daylight, squeaky furniture, and an
overall spookiness that first pervades his waking vision, and then his dream vision:
Stetti un po’ sospeso sul da farsi, grattandomi la zucca come smarrito e smemorato […]
Viste a spiccare innanzi alla specchiera, posta sul camino, due candele rite, come
sentinelle, presi la seconda risoluzione di accenderne una […] vidi oltre la candela il
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Lucini, pallido, immobile, che mi guardava, cioè mi rividi nello specchio. Il mio volto
quella sera non era men bianco del suo, gli occhi solamente vivi e le guancie più fatticcie;
egli aveva due baffetti neri, io no; i suoi capelli erano ricciuti e scapavano di sotto al
cappelletto verde in una bella zazzera; i miei egualmente neri, ma rasati alla canonica
[…] Con un raschio di voce richiamai a sè Marcello, che cominciava a venir meno (III,
124 – 125).
The state of being suspended – “sospeso” – establishes a sense of limbo, while a lost and
forgetful head reinforce a liminal state, or a space of uncertainty where two consciousnesses
reside. Not only will each alternate between dominance and dormancy, but they will also
intermingle, becoming one while paradoxically always remaining two. The narrator’s choice to
light one candle, which then reflects in the mirror, the flames becoming two, parallels his own
figure standing on one side of the glass and the reflection of Lucini, not of his own physical
body, appearing on the other side.332 As Marcello actually sees the image of Giorgio staring
back at him through the mirror, one notes a twist on the not-so uncommon, uncanny experience
of a man’s mortality staring back at him through the glass. Marcello however witnesses not his
aged or dead future self, but the image of Giorgio and the reader finally receives a physical
description of the narrator’s double. In fact, Marcello and Giorgio resemble each other slightly
and their physical differences emphasize also their reciprocal roles as opposing though
complementary doubles. Both are pale with dark hair, yet Marcello is clean-shaven and still
bears the shaved haircut of a seminarian that leads an uneventual, unambitious life; on the other
hand, Giorgio’s mustache and long, curly hair suggests a wild, adventurous, artistic personality
and as the reader learns more about these oppositional others, she realizes their physical
resemblance and divergent styles act as external manifestations of their contrasting
332
This scene depicts the morphing of due anime in un corpo, and resembles a similar scene in “Uno spirito in un
lampone” when the images of Baron B. and Clara seem to be superimposed on each other in the mirror. Generally
speaking, the mirror scene is informed by popular superstitions involving reflections. Rank discusses such
“primitive” beliefs as covering mirrors during a wake so as to keep the dead soul from getting trapped in them, or
refraining from gazing at oneself in the mirror at night, unless one wants to lose his soul, among others (62 – 65).
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complementarity. The visual eerieness that dominates this scene is complemented by Marcello’s
“raschio di voce” as he attempts to call himself back to himself, for he is becoming progressively
less present in this mélange of consciousnesses and Lucini is taking over, gazing back at him
through the looking glass. The reciprocal gazes exchanged between the doubles as each exists in
their respective worlds of the living (on this side of the mirror), and of the dead (on “the other
side”) suggest an equal level of subjectivity within the psychical space previously occupied only
by Marcello, despite the narrator’s claim that Marcello “cominciava a venir meno” (III, 125).
Though the narrator calmly recounts this unnerving encounter with the ghost occupying
his mind and body, we assume that he remains at least somewhat perplexed by it, as evidenced
by the unsettling dreams that ensue. De Marchi offers us yet another manifestation of duplicity,
which in turn leads to multiplicity, as the slumbering Marcello becomes doubled once more in
the dream state, an alternate reality where an alternate consciousness and an alternate body (in
the internal, visual image of the dream) exist.333 In brief oneiric visions, Marcello/Giorgio sees a
white hand on his shoulder, a man in the corner of the room with a bag under his arm, the
shadows of his neighbor Gaspare and his daughter Gioconda, another neighbor Placido with an
English parrot, and even himself:
Vedeva […] Marcello nello zimarrone tané, che, vedendomi incontro, mi raccontava una
lunga e ingarbugliata storia di Gioconda e di letto elastic […] Erano sonnellini brevi […]
ritornava in me con una scossa, ricadeva, e così per un pezzo, finché tra un tintinnamento
di campanelli seniti chiaramente: - Signor Lucini! – e un picchio allo stomaco. Giuro che
non sognavo in quel momento, sebbene avessi gli occhi tra i peli e come affumicati (III,
131).
In his dreams, Marcello not only meets acquaintances and interacts with them (as is typical of
any ordinary dream), he also sees himself in his dream; he becomes the object of his own
333
We have already established the manifestation of multiplicity in the dream state in some of the works of Tarchetti
(“Le leggende del castello nero”) and Capuana (“Un caso di sonnambulismo” e “Il sogno di un musicista”). As an
alternate state of consciousness, it remains the domain of the double, of one’s unconscious self made “conscious.”
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observation, as if he were outside of his body looking at himself. He thereby becomes both
subject and object as there are two Marcellos: the one having the dream and the one within the
dream. The dynamic becomes even further complicated as we reach another level of multiplicity
because the dream image of Marcello meets and greets the dreaming Marcello so that the reader
witnesses two Marcellos – veritable clones – talking to each other. The narrator recounts how in
his dream Marcello (an autoscopic hallucination) tells him (i.e., himself) a long, seemingly
irrelevant and presumably erotic story about Gioconda and her elastic bed, which suggests his
repressed sexuality as opposed to Giorgio’s passionate nature as musician and a lover. Even
more strange than his caleidescopal dreams is his abrupt return to consciousness; he “returns to
himself” with a shake in an obvious allusion to having been away from, or not himself. Marcello
suddenly hears the doorbell and a voice call for Lucini. At the same time, he feels a pang in his
stomach, as if Lucini were indeed there inside him in some kind of quantifiable form, like a fetus
responding to the call of his name. The oneiric space appears again in all its fantastic grandeur
when the incarcerated protagonist falls asleep the evening before his trial for murder:
A poco a poco perdetti la conoscenza del luogo e del tempo, ed entrai in una laterna
magica di spaventi, di sogni, agitandomi tutta la santa notte fra le visioni più matte […]
seguitai a correre di qua e di là, da Venezia a Milano, dal Corso al numero ventitre, su per
le scale, giù pei corridoi; vidi e parlai a lungo con Marina, le baciai la punta delle sue
cinque dita bianche e sottili e partii […] Oh mio Dio! […] Mi piacchiano sullo stomaco
con sacchetti di sabbia, mi calano in una fossa adagio, adagio, adagio, adagio (III, 185).
The narrator, from the perspective of Marcello it seems, characterizes his dreams as ludicrious;
however, the reader assumes that it is either Giorgio’s consciousness that is dreaming and
Marcello is merely witnessing it; or, she presumes that Marcello is actually experiencing through
shared recollection the past events that happened to Giorgio – from his love affair with Marina,
to the violent attack on him, to his final memory of being lowered into the grave. Whether
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Lucini is dreaming and Marcello is the spectator, or Marcello is viewing Lucini’s memories
because of their shared mental space, the traditional, sometimes simplistic duplicity intrinsic to
stories of the double becomes complicated once more. To the dual consciousness of two spirits
in one body, De Marchi has added the oneiric milieu in which unconscious desires and past
memories of each individual consciousness collide.
In addition to the alternate consciousness of the dreamscape, another recurrent motif tied
to the double – that of the mind/body dialectic – appears throughout the novel, first revealing
itself in the title, Due anime in un corpo, and especially emerging through the relationship
between the living and the undead protagonists. After Marcello has been living in Giorgio’s
apartment for several days following the funeral, he affirms the indubitable presence of the
supernatural, while concurrently highlighting the mind/body connection, one of the oldest
examples of opposing though complementary dichotomies:
Che uno spirito fosse disceso in me, quasi non era da dubitarne. Anche la Sacra Scrittura
parla di spiriti erranti, per non dire dei casi confermati da certe scienze magnetiche e
cabalistiche […] Dico solamente che Marcello sentiva in modo assai diverso e
stravagante, che rabbrividiva al minimo soffio d’aria, che vedeva più netto e sentiva quasi
l’armonia degli atomi intorno a lui. Non solo, ma in me avveniva anche un conflitto fra
due anime, che cercavano farsi posto, e alle quali la respirazione commune quasi non
bastava più; le cose mi apparivano doppie, come se per ciascuno degli occhi guardasse
un’anima diversa (III, 159 – 160).
As Marcello overtly affirms the presence of another spirit within him, the reader witnesses an
obvious example of dual narration that alternates between first and third persons, mirroring the
battle for dominance occurring between the two consciousnesses within the body and psyche of
Marcello. The narrator’s reference to the Bible and other “authorities,” such as magnetism and
cabalistic science, demonstrates the author’s belief in a spirituality heavily informed by
Christianity, and open to elements of spiritism, and cabala. The presence of metempsychosis in
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scripture, as well as in magnetic and cabalistic “science” (in which scienza indicates science,
knowledge, and consciousness) functions as a testament to its existence, as Marcello tries to
convince the reader of the demonic possession that has occurred within him.334
The first person narrator’s reference to himself in the third person – “I am only saying
that Marcello…” – emphasizes here as elsewhere the concurrent existence of two
consciousnesses within Marcello’s mind and body. His intangible feelings of strangeness and
extravagance complement and/or cause those physiological sensations of goosebumps and
improved vision. His ability to experience the harmony of the atoms around him proves a
hybridized image of positivism and spiritism, as it mixes the physically scientific with an
otherworldly, implied sixth sense that can perceive the invisible. Furthermore, while the allusion
to atoms may undoubtedly be associated with positivistic knowledge, the reader cannot ignore
the invisibility and immateriality of these particles that actually constitute matter. Just as the
invisible, immaterial psyches of Marcello and Giorgio comprise his material, corporeal form (in
addition to his dual consciousness), so do immaterial atoms – the building blocks of matter –
make up tangible objects. The two spirits in Marcello’s single body are not always in harmony
however, as each seeks to assert himself in order to dominate the vehicle in which it resides. The
narrator suffers from other physiological symptoms of his psychopathological condition,
including difficulty breathing and trouble seeing. Marcello notes his sudden onset of double
vision, describing it as if each consciousness – that of Giorigo and that of Marcello were gazing
through one eye in the latter’s skull. Corrupt vision here not only reinforces the trope of the
double, it also signals a skewed perception of reality, or alludes to one’s capability to see things
334
One could also read the narrator’s reference to magnetism and cabala as “sciences” in a critical light, as a subtle
undercutting of positivism, which is not the only scienza or gateway to knowledge of the universe.
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from another perspective, which is exactly the case here as Giorgio views the world through his
host’s eyes, while Marcello’s vision becomes clouded and unfamiliar. The description of this
fantastic phenomenon of duplicated vision (which recalls Baron B.’s seeing and hearing double)
imitates the distorted sight one experiences should he allow his eyes to lose focus, become lazy
and eventually cross, literally producing a double vision.335 Giorgio’s spirit wields other
physiological transformations in the body of his host, for Marcello becomes more agile and
delicate in his movements, while the accent of his speech often mingles with Lucini’s accent
which amuses them both: “qualche volta io rideva di lui od egli di me, o si rideva insieme” (III,
160). After Marcello is acquitted of the crime of murder and it is determined that the Sultan was
indeed the true culprit, the narrator – the only person who had seen Lucini’s father face to face –
accompanies the detective in search of him. As they get closer to his hideout near Venice,
Marcello is exhausted and thinks about stopping, yet Giorgio’s spirit within prevents him from
doing so. Marcello observes: “le gambe, quasi obbedissero a una seconda coscienza, a me
sconosciuta, continuarono la salita finché fra due filari di pini, vagamente spruzzolati di neve,
apparve un palazzotto o gran casolare signorile” (III, 250). Once again, the dæmon that has
possessed him governs his bodily movements, much like the ghost of Clara intermittently
controls the baron’s actions and comportment in Tarchetti’s “Uno spirito in un lampone.”
The most telling manifestation of Giorgio’s consciousness in Marcello’s mind and body
occurs in the music he produces in Lucini’s apartment in the days following the funeral. When
Marcello plays the violin, he can feel the same anxiousness in his left hand that the late Giorgio
had experienced when he used to play. Marcello had previously revealed how his friend
“confessava di sentirsi molto pigro nelle mani, che odiava, specialmente la sinistra” (III, 130).
335
Should a person allow their eyes to lose focus, they can possibily temporarily cross and cause double vision.
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Lucini possessed the musical inclination and the ability capable of producing beautiful, visceral
melodies; however, there was sometimes a disconnect between what his mind envisioned, and
how his hands executed it. When he plays Giorgio’s violin, the narrator notes his creation of
“suoni non mai uditi” (III, 160) emphasizing his previous ignorance of the instrument, while
simultaneously suggesting the achievement of those same ethereal melodies that Lucini used to
produce. The most ancient duality of the mind and the body is effectively communicated in this
image as a dialectic, as two things that are separate yet united, sometimes in conflict though
capable of harmony and collaboration as each subsumes the other within it. In short Marcello
conducts a “duplice esistenza” (III, 160), dressing as his deceased double and inhabiting his
apartment, just Giorgio’s spirit wears the guise of Marcello’s body, inhabits mind, and ultimately
wields influence over both.
The title of the novel itself emphasizes the organic connection between the mind and the
body and sets the stage for the constant reminders of the psychosomatic throughout the text. In
the final pages of the narrative, when Marcello arrives at the Sultan’s palatial hideaway, he
begins his search for Marina, despite the inclination that tragedy has already struck. His
description of this indescribable premonition alludes to another duality, that despite its difference
from the mind / body connection, nevertheless parallels it: “V’è un punto di esaltamento in cui il
cervello par che si mescoli al cuore e allora ciò che prima era dubbio, pensiero, imaginazione
dolorosa, diventa vero dolore che si sente” (III, 262). The differentiation between the mind and
the heart proves another complex dynamic that is tied to the mind half of the spiritual / corporeal
dichotomy. Within the human psyche – that non-material, metaphysical essence that is part of
our humanness – resides the brain, the supposed seat of rationality and consciousness, and the
heart, the home of inexplicable, often irrational emotions and longings. In Marcello’s seemingly
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simple, yet profound observation, we find the elements of the human psyche – rational
consciousness (il cervello) alongside emotions and desires (il cuore) – set in a prepsychoanalytic discourse that reflects the trajectory of contemporary psychology.
De Marchi’s narrative presents the pathological case of a fragmented psyche that is at
once both duplicated and divided, in the coexistence of two consciousnesses in one body;
however, the phenomenon of reincarnation itself in any form (whether in the somewhat comical
possession of Baron B., or the eerie remembrance of past lives in “Le leggende del castello
nero”) intrinsically also belongs to the realm of the preternatural. While all of the fictional
works under examination in the present study delve into the occult regions of the human mind
and/or the realm of spirits, Due anime in un corpo remains unique for two main reasons. The
first unusual treatment of the double appears in the duplicitous figure of Marcello/Giorgio, for
each exists as an external, antithesis of the other. Their only resemblance is physical, for the
former priest Marcello is introverted, untalented, and ordinary, while the violinist Giorgio was
vivacious, emotional, and mysterious. Fittipaldi rightly notes “l’antagonismo fra quotidiano ed
eccezionale” (217) in reference to the pair of opposites as the average Marcello appertains to the
quotidian, while the musical genius Lucini belongs to the exceptional, given his ability in the
loftiest of art forms.336 After learning of Giorgio’s childhood hardships and eventual triumphs as
a violinist in Paris, Marcello realizes that he covets the former life of his friend for both its
conflicts and its adventures: “Invidiai ad occhi chiusi la sorte di quel qualunque antipode, che
passeggiasse sotto di me nell’altro emisfero” (III, 171). The protagonist’s blatant admission of
envy occurs often in stories of the double, as usually one half of the pair excels individually
336
We again recall Schopenhauer’s belief in music as the highest form of art.
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and/or socially while the other half either fails at many things, or remains very ordinary.337
Marcello led an uneventful life, intimidated by his overbearing, middle class father, as opposed
to Giorgio who was born out of wedlock in Naples, orphaned, and eventually raised in Paris by a
benevolent musician, who became his adoptive father and provided him with a good education
and musical training. The imagery of the dead man walking underneath him in the other
hemisphere recalls the etymological origin of the term Doppelgänger, as a double walker, as one
who walks beside his other. The allusion to the other hemisphere presumably represents the
afterlife, itself a double of the present, earthly life; more specifically, it recalls Dante’s
cosmology and the motif of two as depicted in the hemispheres of Earth and the living, and
Water, out of which Purgatory and Paradise emerge. Interestingly, the narrator later describes
Giorgio’s eventual discontent with his sojourn in Marcello’s body, describing it as “il suo
purgatorio” (III, 243). Towards the end of the story the narrator alludes to the fundamental
differences between himself and the spirit cohabitating his body:
sentivo in modo confuso che l’anima del povero Lucini era stanca di vivere dentro di me,
o dirò meglio: sentivo che Marcello, uomo dalle scapre grosse, cominciava a desiderare il
suo zimarrone tanè, e con lui i corti piaceri d’una vita casalinga, da consumarsi giorno
per giorno fra la casa e l’ufficio per sessanta o settant’anni di fila. L’animo del Lucini, o
meglio la passione violenta e bizzarra, che mi aveva invasato, era agli sgoccioli; il
destino, l’astuzia, la legge, il capriccio avevano mortificata quella povera anima, mandata
forse dal Signore a patire dentro di me il suo purgatorio (III, 243).
Besides offering an example of the spurious narration in the novel, the above citation effectively
outlines the contrasting doubles of the two spirits vying for possession of Marcello’s body.
Marcello had been impersonating the dead Giorgio before being apprehended by the police, tried
and eventually absolved of the murder. Still sharing his mind with the deceased’s spirit, he
337
The reader cannot help but think here of Dostoevsky’s Golyadkin senior and Golyadkin junior of The Double, the
former unliked by others and socially awkward, the latter liked by everyone and dynamically attractive.
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agrees to assist the authorities in the search for the true culprit of the crime, the Sultan (Lucini’s
biological father and Marina’s husband). The opposing pair is growing tired of occupying the
same mental space and the differences between each of them are obvious: the timid Marcello
longs for the monotony of his dispassionate, routine life, free from the throngs of love, while the
overly passionate and bizarre spirit of Giorgio is at his wit’s end, suffering a veritable Purgatory
as he occupies a foreign psyche.338 Marcello’s desire to conduct the uneventful life of a
homemaker that slowly consumes itself over decades starkly contrasts the violent passion that is
Giorgio, and that had suddenly invaded the former priest’s body. Before his obsession with
Marina, ignited with the entrance of Giorgio’s spirit into his body, Marcello had very little
interest in women even after leaving the seminary. In fact, his neighbors had attempted to force
an engagement to their daughter Gioconda. Even the narrator, referring to himself in the third
person affirms that “Marcello non tirasse tanto alle gonnelle” (III, 121), as opposed to Lucini
who could resist a married woman, and who defied death in order to “see” her once again.339
The second chapter of the second part of the novel entitled “Marcello ritorna,” obviously
indicates that the return of the singular consciousness of Marcello is imminent, as the narrator
(the only person who had seen the Sultan in the flesh) assists the police in apprehending him for
the murder of Lucini. Marcello’s thoughts reinforce the idea that Giorgio’s spirit had entered his
body for the dual purpose of seeing Marina once again, and bringing the orchestrator of his
murder to justice: “‘Ah Lucini! Lucini! […] quanto mi costa la tua eredità! Quel giorno ch’io
338
Giorgio Lucini’s unchecked passion leads to an affair with the married Marina. Perhaps De Marchi’s
incorporation of Purgatory in the above citation, not only functions as a clever mélange of Catholic cosmology and
typically Eastern notions of the afterlife (in which reincarnation and transmigration are possibilties), it also acts as a
subtle condemnation of adultery. We remember that the Milanese author was interested in communicating
moralizing messages to the mass readership.
339
Marcello constantly reiterates the undeniable presence of Lucini’s spirit within him and underlines his double’s
desire to be close to Marina: “Se l’anima dopo la morte è libera di sé e può intercedere grazie dall’Eterno, quella del
Lucini, scendendo nel mio corpo, era meno lontana da Marina e poteva seguitare l’illusione della vita (III, 159).
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potrò spogliarmi di questo abito non mio, spero che anche la tua povera anima uscirà dal mio
corpo. Voglio tornare il Marcello di prima, povero, galantuomo, senza ambizioni’” (III, 231).
Marcello still feels Lucini’s desire for vengeance and retribution within him (III, 232), yet he
feels restrained by a destiny that is not his. The protagonist’s final longing to return to a
humdrum routine that had previously left him indifferent, signals a change in attitude and a
coming of age, so that this story may also be read as a type of Bildungsroman. The question of
authenticity arises here as well because Marcello seemingly matures by reverting back to who he
always was – a recluse, a lover of tranquility – after having experimented with the kind of
conflictual and chaotic, yet enticingly dramatic life that his double Lucini had lived (and because
of which he had died). In short, each individual component of the Marcello/Giorgio combination
exists as the opposite of the other even before the murder, as reclusive ex-priest contrasts the
artist adventurer. Furthermore, Marcello becomes duplicated on the inside as his psyche houses
two consciousnesses; he stands as another model of the double inside-out, as Lucini’s spirit
invades his mind and possesses his body so that he is essentially doubled internally by his
external double.
The second reason for this novel’s uniqueness, and perhaps one could argue its avantgarde nature, is De Marchi’s transformation of the double’s duplicity into a multiplicity that
nonetheless still contains within in it combinations of twos in a type of sublation. The duality
that informs and frames the entire novel multiplies as the two components of a whole, that is, the
two spirits in one body are themselves each doubled. As the doubly conscious protagonist
Marcello/Giorgio harbors the consciousness of each individual within him, the singular spirits
themselves are dualistic – Marcello Marcelli a former priest torn between the world of the spirit
and that of the flesh, and Giorgio Lucini, also known as Giorgio Linucci, an orphan musician
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that unknowingly battles his father the Sultan for the affection of his young wife.340 Both
Marcello and Giorgio possessed other identities before they met that nevertheless still comprise
their respective, newfound identities as an indifferent layman, and as a fugitive (of the wrath of
the Sultan) hiding in self-imposed exile.341 Because each half of Marecello/Giorgio is itself split,
we are not merely dealing with the typical, binomial equations associated with adding and
splitting: 1 + 1 = 2, or 1 ÷ 2 = ½, or ½ + ½ = 1; instead, De Marchi offers us the more
complicated, polynomial equation of (½ + ½ ) + (½ + ½ ) = 2, in which each half of the
Marcello/Giorgio character is divided in half, so when the four halves are added together the
result is two. Because our treatment of the double always considers both division and
duplication, another equation that could represent the doubled doubling in the possessed
protagonist would be (1+1) + (1+1) = 4, or
= 4. In order to witness a more concrete example
of this doubled doubling within De Marchi’s text, we return to one of the key scenes that
includes the fundamental prop in fiction of the Doppelgänger – the mirror. As already
mentioned, Marcello/Giorgio’s experience in front of the looking glass in Lucini’s apartment the
night following his funeral emerges as an especially ghastly and unique approach to the notion of
seeing one’s own mortality. After Marcello/Giorgio awakens from unsettling dreams, he goes
back to the mirror and lights the second of the two candles standing in front of it so that two
flames appear on his side of the mirror, and two on the other (III, 132). The four flames in the
340
Marcello experiences various vivid dreams in which he sees himself from outside himself; the inclusion of these
other oneiric worlds in the narrative further suggests an internal fissure between the protagonist’s conscious, waking
self and and his unconscious, dreaming self. Seeing oneself in one’s dreams also involves a duplication of the ego
as the dreamer watches and often realizes that he is watching himself as if on a movie screen. The oneiric double
recurs throughout the works of these authors and we remember especially Capuana’s short stories of the present
study, as well as Tarchetti’s tale “Le leggende del castello nero,” which, like De Marchi’s Due anime in un corpo,
depict the metempsychotic and the oneiric double in the same text, and through the same character.
341
Giorgio Lucini’s “real” name was Giorgio Linucci (which the reader knows is also a pseudonym), is an obvious
example of reappropriating one’s identity by creating and being christened into a new one, much like the most
famous Mattia Pascal who flees his dysfunctional life and recreates himself as Adriano Meis in Rome.
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visual field correspond to the multiple identities at play. In the living world where two of the
flames burn, Marcello contains two identities within him – his past life as a reclusive priest, and
his present one as a mischevious layman. In the realm of spirits that exists beyond the looking
glass where there also burns two flames, Giorgio is doubled, as he had two identities in life – as
Giorgio Lucini and Giorgio Linucci. Moreover, Giorgio’s physical absence though spiritual
presence in the material world infuses him with an additional type of duality, similar to the
double in time, for he – the past, living Lucini – exists in the memories of others and the present,
deceased Lucini currently resides in metaphysical form inside of Marcello. The typical duplicity
encountered in representations of the Doppelgänger therefore becomes a multiplicity that one
could argue anticipates later depictions of the fragmented and compounded “individual,” such as
those found in the Pirandellian oeuvre, or in the post-modern repertoire of the floating or nonexistent subject. While many stories of the double may involve third parties that factor into the
dynamic in cases of family romance and triangular desire (as encountered in Profumo and Il
signor dottorino respectively), Due anime in un corpo transcends the seemingly simplistic
duplication espoused in its title as it depicts the fission inherent in the identity conflicts of
Marcello and Giorgio, as well as the duplication that ensues from Marcello’s case of double
consciousness, or demonic possession. Moreover, instead of the ménage a trois that sometimes
occurs in scenarios of the double (as two external others represent conflictual sides of a single
protagonist, as in Fosca), in his third novel De Marchi creates a ménage a multiple of two
dualistic spirits and therefore four figures in one body, and adds to this mix external others in the
form of the minor characters of Marina, Giorgio’s biological father the Sultan, and Marcello’s
father as well.342
342
The multiplicity that pervades De Marchi’s text extends beyond the diegesis, as the narrator informs us twice of
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Though Marina does not function as a double for either male protagonist, she nonetheless
unites them and also connects them to her husband (and Giorgio’s father) the Sultan so that she
becomes the center of the ménage a multiple.343 The absent, though ever-present Marina acts as
a catalyst that reveals points of communion and divergence between Marcello and Giorgio, and
also helps to unveil diverse manifestations of the double. On the night of his death, Lucini
repeated Marina’s name over and over again, as if it gave him comfort. In a flashback
characteristic of the variegated syuzhet, Marcello reflects on the night of his friend’s death as he
witnesses him speaking his lover’s name:
Nasceva perciò nel mio capo una babele, una sordia, come se una mano vigorosa
agistasse un branco di sassolini in una zucca; e nel cuore, in questo cuore alla buona,
entravano per la prima volta sentimenti straordinari. Nel genere umano, tanto citato sui
libri e sul pulpito e che solevo considerare all’ingrosso, non più che un formicolaio di
vivi, esisteva adunque anche la donna? […] Perché dunque il nome di Marina quella
notte chiamò le lagrime su’ miei occhi? (III, 128 – 129).
The imagery of a Babel inside of his head obviously implies a confusion of language, and a
multiplicity of voices and identities, which interestingly parallels his present psychological state
comprised of two consciousnesses. Marcello reveals that upon hearing the name of Marina,
uttered by his moribund friend, he experiences emotions previously foreign to him and finally
becomes aware of and interested in the existence of the opposite sex. Her name brings tears to
the use of pseudonyms in order to protect the true identity of those persons involved in the criminal case (III, 190,
208). Aside from adding an element of drama and wonderment, alongside of the reality effect of a “true story,” the
use of fictional names immediately suggests a duplicity of personalities. Moreover, when one considers that within
the story itself, Giorgio Lucini was previously known as Giorgio Linucci and both names are presumably
pseudonyms so that “Linucci” is in fact a pseudonym for a pseudonym, we arrive at a multiplicity of identities
instead of a mere duality. Once again we think of Pirandello and the mask that each person assumes in front of
different people and even often in his own eyes.
343
At a simplistic level, Marina acts as double as a double for Giorgio insofar as she could be classified as his “soul
mate.” As Marcello’s idealized, absent beloved Marina is essentially a mere projection of his desires and therefore
of himself. As he searches through Giorgio’s belongings, Marcello finds a stereoscope in which he views image
slides of the Grand Canal in Venice and he imagines Marina living nearby. He creates an entire fiction around the
images before he realizes that night has fallen (III, 134 – 135). Then he finds images of Marina, and admires her in
the stereoscope (III, 136 – 137).
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his eyes, tears that could be attributed to the sympathy and la pietà (always a factor in love,
especially when we think back on Tarchetti’s Fosca). This pity that wells up inside of him acts
as the initial step towards a love for the idealized Marina and it also incites the feeling of a
certain communion with Lucini. The doubles of life and death, or Eros and Thanatos, are also
hightlighted here, as the moribund Giorgio expresses and seemingly experiences the love he still
feels for Marina. The former priest Marcello never experienced passionate love, so he is an
observer, not just of death, but also of love, of a love communicated to him so simply through
Lucini’s dying voice repeating her name.
Marina acts as a common thread between the three, principal male characters in the story,
for each one adores her in his own way; she is essentially the object of desire that connects
Marcello, Giorgio, and the Sultan and this role is especially discernible in the letters that the
narrator uncovers at his deceased friend’s apartment. The figure of Marina, in her absence
becomes especially present in the images of her that accompany the stereoscope, as well as
through her epistolary correspondences with Giorgio, the excerpts of which Marcello reveals in
his narrative. While Marina acts as the link that unites her three admirers, her letters themselves
also reiterate the fundamental multiplicity present in De Marchi’s text. In the eighth chapter of
the first part of the novel, Marcello reads a dozen letters written by Marina to Giorgio which
allow him to “radunare i frammenti di quella storia […] riundendo questi antecedenti” (III, 152 –
153). The reference to the assembling of the fragments of Marina and Giorgio’s story (within
the story), and the reuniting of previous occurrences reiterates the image of the narrator
collecting and piecing together the parts of his own story. Moreover, the compiling of the
murder victim’s actions and whereabouts, as well as those of his lover, resembles the
investigatory work conducted by detectives on a criminal case. The multiple pieces of Lucini’s
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story that must be reconstructed through the collection of individual letters also parallels a
fragmented identity, whose parts, when put together comprise a whole, while nevertheless still
remaining other than the whole. These fragments of information that recall the staccato nature
of the syzuhet itself, are included in the text and are separated from the narrator’s own
interjections by quotation marks and white spaces, two graphic elements that flag and reinforce
the multifarious nature of the novel itself, divided into short chapters with titles (for the
pragmatic purpose of its serialization), alongside the inclusion of flashbacks and other “texts”
such as newpaper articles, court reports, and even the account of another third person narrator.
These narratives within the narrative add layers of complexity that also parallel the layered, often
rhizomatic nature of one’s consciousness and unconscious. The chapter’s title, “Una donna fra le
carte,” further emphasizes the whole versus the part dynamic. There exists a woman between the
papers that is not merely the unification of these papers but is something else, while nevertheless
subsuming within her these epistolary pieces.344 Marcello opens the chapter with a comment on
the nature of love as it is espoused in Marina’s letters:
intanto non rifinivo di guardarle parola per parola, ingegnandomi di intendere anche
quelle cose che di solito vanno perdute nell’inchiostro. Ognuno sa che nelle lettere
amorose il bello e il buono è quello che si tace, perché il pensiero infervorato sfugge alle
leggi sistematiche della logica, e parla meglio con uno sguardo e con un tremito delle
labbra. Passavo alcune ore, muto, a contemplare lo spazio bianco fra le righe, dove erano
passati senza posarsi i desideri di Marina, e frattanto davo ascolto a una voce non mia,
che mi parlava dal fondo del cuore (III, 159).
The beauty and the goodness of love letters exist in in those spaces between the words, in the
full, empty space of the void where the most meaning resides, that space reminiscent of the
Romantic plenitude of silence (and dare say anticipatory of thingness?). While the paper and
344
Marina met Linucci when he was in Venice staying in her father’s house. Marcello imagines that Marina was
seduced by Lucini’s music, thereby adding his own assumptions, his own pieces to the story: “Può darsi che le note
del suo violino, giungendo dalla camera vicina, mentre la figliuola sedeva presso suo padre, scendessero, come per
incanto, a carezzarle il cuore, che già da due anni lusingavasi d’essere morto” (III 153 – 154).
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ink’s use values are obviously to communicate words, the words themselves become devoid of
meaning, for in love – in that irrational, meta-linguistic state similar to the psychical and/or
spiritual phenomena experienced in music (that ethereal music that Lucini created) – the blank or
sonoric spaces contain the actual nature, the authenticity, the Being, the Realness of love. In one
of her letters, Marina refers to the novel Il flutto that Lucini had written as an “onda sonora” as if
those spaces between the lines had the virtue to make her “pensare per ore ed ore” (III, 157).
Like Heidegger’s potter that produces not just a jug but also the empty space within it where its
thingness, its Being resides, so does the love letter writer beneath the ink and between the lines
disclose his/her ineffable passion, his/her Being. Just as Giorgio’s novel caused Marina to sit
and think for hours, so do her epistolary words cause Marcello to remain mute for hours
contemplating the white space between the lines where her desires and wishes resided. The final
phrase of the above citation in which the narrator claims that he was listening to a voice that was
not his, but which spoke from the depth of the heart, could be read ambiguously. Marcello
listens to Marina’s voice as she speaks wholeheartedly in the spaces between the lines of her
letters; however, one could also consider the voice as belonging to Giorgio’s spirit, which speaks
to Marcello from within. After reading her correspondences, the narrator realizes how he had
placed himself “fra due anime innamorate,” and resolves to offer Marina some sort of closure by
writing to her as Lucini, and declaring that he was on his way to America (III, 164 – 165). As he
writes the farewell letter in the guise of her beloved, he stops after the words, “vi amo, Marina”
(III, 166). Then Marcello “si accorse veramente di due anime, che si accapigliavano dentro di
lui” (III, 166) and Giorgio’s spirit takes command of his mind, heart, and hand, proclaiming:
“‘Vi amo, Marina, come avrei amata mia madre, come amo la luce e l’arte, perché sento che
l’anima vostra corrisponde alla mia. Piangiamo insieme e inventiamo soltanto per noi la voluttà
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delle lagrime’” (III, 166). This rather banal instance of duality in the notion of soul mates is
soon complemented by the overwhelming presence of the marvelous as Marcello’s heart begins
to race. He can no longer distinguish who holds the pen and he becomes akin to a medium
scrivente, truly possessed by Lucini’s consciousness: “Sentivo un impulso ignoto, che mi
spingeva innanzi, la mente scopriva con sua meraviglia parole nuove, e concetti fantastici, che
avevano del diabolico” (III, 166). Giorgio’s words seem to pour forth from Marcello’s pen (just
as his music had previously emanated from the violin bow in Marcello’s hand) as he writes to
their beloved: “‘o Marina, è impossibile che le anime nostre non siano eterne? Non ci siamo
conosciuti in quell’atmosfera luminosa, fra i raggi puri del sole, e l’infinita estensione del
cielo?’” (III, 166). Marcello/Giorgio’s allusion to a previous meeting in the luminous
atmosphere of another universe appertains to the discourse of soul mates, but becomes elevated
to a higher level because of the suggestion that they knew each other even before this lifetime,
whether in a previous life (as in “Le leggende del castello nero”), or in that pre-natal state of
existence in the underworld, before passing through the river Lethe and being born into this
worldly existence.
After meeting Marina through Marcello’s accounts of her letters to Giorgio, she
reappears in the final scenes of the novel, in the flesh rather than in words. In the third chapter of
the second part entitled “A due passi da Marina” (perhaps a subtly comical reference to the motif
of two), Marcello/Giorgio and the detective in search of the murderer travel through the Friuli
towards the Sultan’s remote villa. A voice within the protagonist tells him that Marina is already
dead (III, 243), though he does not want to believe it. When Marcello arrives at the Sultan’s
palace he searches everywhere for Marina whose groaning he finally hears behind the doors of a
hermetically closed room. He smells coal and smoke and realizes that she has shut herself inside
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in order to commit suicide by affixiation (III, 265 – 266). Even though he breaks down the door,
it is too late and he kisses her as she dies in his arms (III, 268). Once again Marcello confronts
death as he witnesses someone dear to him leave this world and travel to the next:
Anch’io mi sentii morire. L’aria della camera era avvelenata e l’aspetto della morte è
fatale. Poiché il suo volto si raffredda sotto i miei baci, poiché le sue braccia si
svincolano come cosa morta dal mio collo, e io sento la sua testa pesare, e indarno le
afferro e l’una e l’altra mano, e le carezzo i capelli, e la chiamo e grido, è giusto che
muoia anch’io. Chi mi trattiene ancora sulla terra? Sento che in me v’è qualche cosa di
troppo, di inutile, d’ingombro: quell’anima nuova e bizzarra, che discese in me col primo
pensiero d’amore, tenta scatenarsi […] le forze mi escono da tutte le membra. È un dolce
venire meno, che sembra un addormentarsi, anzi provo strana sensazione di chi si
immerge in un bagno tiepido di latte. È così bello il morire? […] io muoio tentando di
aggrapparmi a lei (III, 268).
In Marina’s death scene the reader perceives the presence of both Marcello and Giorgio as their
voices seem to intermingle in the narration. Marcello also feels himself dying, yet at the same
time he senses something superfluous, useless, and cumbersome within him, which he blatantly
refers to as that new and bizarre soul that had previously invaded his body and mind. Lucini’s
voice seems to emerge intermittently throughout the passage, also speaking in the first person (as
he does throughout the novel), especially as the narrator questions what is keeping him on this
earth. While Marcello may certainly be thinking this because he has fallen in love with his
double’s ex-lover, Lucini within the mind of Marcello most likely speaks these words, as he no
longer has a reason to remain in this world in another’s body, for Marina has now passed into the
realm of spirits where he also exists. Consequently, Giorgio’s spirit may now move on to the
other world in hopes of reuniting with his beloved.
The complete convergence of Marcello and Giorgio’s consciousnesses occurs as the
narrator feels energy exiting his body, as if here were falling asleep or being submerged in a
warm milk bath. This tranquil slipping away from life coincides with the figure of Thanatos,
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who remember embodies a peaceful, non-violent death similar to the loss of consciousness
evoked by his twin brother Hypnos, god of sleep. While Marcello was merely a spectator at the
death of Giorgio’s body, he is here an active participant in the passing of Giorgio’s spirit into the
other world, as he experiences first hand the fatal phenomenon that few return from. While
Dante’s pilgrim visits the spiritual realm beyond death and lives to tell about Hell, Purgatory,
and Heaven, De Marchi’s protagonist actually experiences the psychosomatic phenomenon of
death itself, first indirectly through the spectacle of his friend’s physical passing, and then
directly as Giorgio’s spirit (which had become fused with his and hence a part of him) passes
permanently into that space beyond the looking glass, finally reunited in death with his beloved.
The description of Marina’s death encompasses within it the “deaths” of both Giorgio and
Marcello, and underlines not only the double consciousness of the protagonist, but also recalls
another duality in the pair of lovers whose spirits move on to the great beyond together.
In addition to the multiple death experiences of Marcello, Giorgio’s spirit, and Marina
portrayed in the latter’s first, final, and only appearance in the novel, the death / sex duality
(intrinsically informed by the abject) also emerges in this scene. The description of the life
leaving Marina’s body mirrors similar physiological occurrences during the sex act; her face
becoming cold beneath his kisses, her arms falling from around his neck, and her heavy head
parallel post-orgasmic reactions when the life force exits the body in the state of jouissance. At
the same time, it is as if Marcello also experiences that loss of subjectivity in the jouissance of
orgasm and the abjection of the corpse as he screams her name and affirms that it is fitting that
he also dies. We could also argue here that Lucini living within Marcello also experiences this
orgasmic abjection as he exits the second corporeal form that he had possessed in order to be
united in spirit with his beloved Marina in a type of supernatural marriage in the afterlife.
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Even though Marina does not stand as a double for the male protagonists of the story, she
nonetheless connects them, reveals other instances of duality, and in her absence, wields a great
influence over both Marcello and Giorgio. Graziano Marcelli and the Sultan also function as
minor characters that complement the pair’s relationship; however, they do act as rival doubles
for their respective sons (each to a different extent), and thereby add to the already-present
multiplicity in the text. Marcello led an uneventful life, intimidated by his overbearing, middle
class father, as opposed to Giorgio who was born out of wedlock in Naples, orphaned, and
eventually raised in Paris by a benevolent musician, who became his adoptive father and
provided him with a good education and musical training. While Giorgio’s adoptive father never
makes an appearance in the story, both Graziano and the Sultan surface in the flesh in the first
part of the novel, in the tenth chapter entitled “I miei due padri – arresto importante.” The title
again reiterates the motif of two that informs the entire narrative and explodes here as we
encounter two fathers and two sons within the same scene. As already established, the sons
Marcello and Giorgio are doubles of each other, while the father figure is traditionally
interpreted as a double of the son; so, once again we are dealing with a multiplicity and not a
simplistic duality. The narrator’s choice to call the chapter “i miei due padri” reinforces his own
duality, and also suggests the possibility that like Lucini, it is possible to have two fathers – a
biological one and one that acts as your caretaker and guardian.345 In this chapter, Marcello is
forced to confront both Giorgio’s biological father and his own father and neither encounter
yields a positive outcome, for the Sultan plants evidence that incriminates him in Lucini’s
murder, and Graziano expresses his disappointment in his son.
345
It is interesting to remember that Marcello used to be a priest, Padre Lumaca, so that he was also a “father.”
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After Marcello writes his farewell letter to Marina in the name of Lucini, an unexpected
visitor (who we later learn is Lucini’s father and murderer, the Sultan) arrives at his apartment.
He claims to be the father of the deceased and Marcello, revealed as an imposter, confesses his
charade to this unknown man whose eyes in fact remind him of Giorgio’s eyes. After he
attempts to lie again and claim that Giorgio had departed for America, Marcello finally recounts
the entire twisted tale of Lucini’s death and his suspicions of Marina’s husband as the true
culprit. The visitor asks to see Marina’s portrait and when the narrator turns his back to look for
it, the conniving assassin plants incriminating evidence that will eventually lead to Marcello’s
false arrest. At the same time, Marcello’s father arrives, and barely recognizes him. In the
confusion that follows, Lucini’s father takes his leave. The narrator’s initial description of his
Graziano’s unexpected arrival marks the father and the son as opponents, a motif that saturates
the fiction of the double: “Era la voce più sincera che obbligante di mio padre, il quale, avvertito
per lettera dal signor Leonardo, droghiere, veniva a insegnarmi la legge. Egli spalancò
francamente l’uscio e lo tenne aperto col bastone, stando fermo sulla soglia” (III, 175). The
timeless image of the father as an authority figure who teaches his son the law could obviously
be read through a psychoanalytical lens insofar as he becomes an enemy of his son. Despite the
material absence of a mother figure in both father-son relationships, the conflict remains here
between Marcello and Signor Marcelli, for the son has rebelled against his father, initially by
leaving the seminary, now by acting rashly in his impersonation of Lucini, and finally refusing to
return home with him, escaping with some of Lucini’s money, and Marina’s letters and
portrait.346 The narrator reflects on these final actions as uncharacteristic of the usually reserved
346
At Marcello’s trial, when asked why he left the seminary, he responds that he had “poca disposizione allo stato
ecclesiastico” (III, 199). While this reason could be interpreted in many ways, the reader notices the phrasing
“ecclesiastical state,” which could be considered a subtle undercutting of the Church’s political power on the part of
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Marcello: “Vedendo che tutti i miei grandi progetti, le mie promesse e i miei sogni d’amore
erano per svanire e che Marcello ritornava Marcello, fui preso da un coraggio che aveva un po’
del cattivo” (III, 178). In his desire to remain in this state of dual consciousness and his refusal
to lose the psychical company of his friend, Marcello continues to behave like somenone else, or
is Giorgio controlling not only his mind, but also directing his actions here? The above citation,
like so many other instances in the novel, effectively demonstrates the contemporaneous
existence of both anime as the narrator speaks of himself in both first and third persons. There
appears a differentiation between the two consciousness and a fusion of them within one divided
psyche; hence, we encounter the formula of the double that is always both a duplication and a
division. Moreover, during those few seconds in Giorgio’s apartment when Signor Marcelli
arrives and the Sultan is leaving, both fathers and both sons occupy a common space, thereby
creating yet again a polynomial multiplicity comprised of different combinations of dualities: the
oppositional doubles of Marcello and Giorgio, coexisting within and dividing the psyche of
Marcello; the duplicituous narrator Marcello/Giorgio; and the father son pairs of Marcello and
Signor Marcelli and Giorgio (in spirit) and the Sultan.
Both the Sultan and Graziano Marcelli appear again during Marcello’s trial, the first
through the presence of the letter he had written to the authorities falsely accusing the suspect of
murder, the latter as a character witness on behalf of his son. The fathers therefore emerge
during the courtroom proceedings as contrasting representations of the malevolent and the
benevolent father, both figures and enforcers of power and authority, yet the the former seeking
the author, who believed in the separation of Church and State. Though she never appears in the text, Marcello’s
mother is mentioned briefly by his father during their conversation in Lucini’s apartment. Graziano Marcelli
informs Marcello that his mother had consulted a medium known as “la santa di Pusiano,” who claimed that their
son was harboring the spirit of another that would be with him only temporarily. Graziano only begins to believe
this seemingly outlandish information after he hears his son play the violin, which he had never known how to play.
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the destruction of a filial figure (already having killed his biological son), and the latter
attempting to preserve the life and well-being of his offspring. The Sultan, associated with the
written word (by way of his accusatory letter), attempts to send an innocent man to jail for a
crime he committed, yet is eventually held accountable for his lies. Graziano Marcelli, through
his verbal testimony at his son’s trial, becomes aligned with the spoken word that seeks to
disclose the truth to the jury as he maintains that his “figliuolo è incapace di ammazzare una
mosca” (III, 199). The differences between the opposing paternal figures are reinforced at other
instances in the story, as Graziano Marcelli is described in the trial proceedings included in the
narrative (and not written by Marcello) as possessing “l’aria d’un buon campagnuolo” (III, 199).
The Sultan, on the other hand, is characterized in the second part of the novel by the third person
narrator (whose account is transcribed by Marcello and therefore also “objective”) as
“ricchissimo, calvo, tondo, senza un briciolo di cuore” (III, 209). The contrasting characters of
Graziano Marcelli and the Sultan offer an example of a simplistic dichotomy of the good and the
evil father; however, the conflictual pair of Giorgio Lucini and the Sultan offers a more
complicated rendition of the father/son dynamic, somewhat reminiscent of Tarchetti’s fatali in
which the father represents the giver of life and the bringer of death in relation to his son. We
recall that the father and the son may be considered doubles insofar as the male child stands as a
reproduction, or a duplicate of his father (Rogers 9). While the competition between father and
son is often relegated in psychoanalytical terms to the family romance in which both males vie
for the love and affection of the wife/mother, the rivalry between the Sultan and Giorgio stems
from their common desire for the Sultan’s wife Marina. Even though she is Lucini’s stepmother
(and therefore their relationship could be considered incestuous), Marina is certainly not depicted
as a maternal figure. The father/son relationship is further complicated because the Sultan only
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decides to search for his long-lost son out of guilt for having ordered his death (not knowing that
his wife’s lover was indeed his son), as if finding the life he created would cancel out the life he
just took. He soon discovers that Giorgio could have been his son, and he wishes to confirm his
identity. After speaking with the porter in Lucini’s palazzo (who had been seeing Marcello in
disguise coming and going from the residence for days), the Sultan is at once relieved and
shocked that perhaps the man he had killed was not in fact his son Giorgio Lucini (known by the
name Linucci in Venice). In De Marchi’s contemporary adapation of the Manzonian
Innominato, the evil Sultan displays a degree of sensitivity:
Che Linucci avesse uno stomaco di bronzo? Perché no? Dio è grande e misericordioso.
Se egli poteva rivedere suo figlio, era uomo da rinunciare a Marina, da ritirarsi in una
solitudine, da spendere tutto il suo denaro in opera buone. Se c’è Dio – borbottò – avrà
provveduto perché il mio delitto non sia possibile sulla terra (III, 218)
While the Sultan’s evocation of God, his promises to do acts of goodness, and his questioning of
God’s existence (“Se c’è Dio”) slightly recall the Innominato’s battle of conscience before his
conversion, his prayers are not answered, for his son is indeed dead because of his order. His
crime is therefore more heinous than those offenses of the Innominato, for it is against nature for
a father to kill his son and unlike Manzoni’s penitent and reformed murderer, the Sultan does not
expiate any of his sins. While De Marchi admired Manzoni and was influenced by him, his
villain highlights the fact that the neither the Manzonian worldview, nor his type of fiction is
possible in this post-Unification society, where inexplicable atrocities happen that cannot always
be expiated or remedied.347 Once the Sultan realizes that his son is dead by his hand, he does not
347
Despite De Marchi’s literary debt to Manzoni, he realized that a work such as I promessi sposi need be surpassed
on both a social and psychological level, because his Italy was not that of his predecessor. As Pacifici notes, “The
traditional hero of the early decades of the nineteenth century had a special dimension: he learned and matured as he
lived, and his character was slowly molded by his experience. And in this sense there is no question that there is
something reassuring about Manzoni’s Renzo and Lucia, for example, who live in a well-structured society where
the line of separation between good and evil is generally extremely clear” (10). De Marchi’s post-Unification
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confess to the authorities, nor to any religious figure in order to seek forgiveness; rather, he
escapes to his home in Venice and upon seeing his wife Marina in bed, he cannot help but think
with satisfaction, “è mia” (III, 221). He displays little if any remorse, remembering that though
his rival in love was his own son, he was nonetheless his rival. Instead of feeling guilt for killing
Giorgio, the Sultan experiences a sense of embarrassment, perhaps for his ignorance in regards to
his son’s true identity, or perhaps due to his own feeling of insult because of his cuckoldry.
Unlike the Innominato, who indeed suffers from overwhelming guilt and seriously considers
suicide, the Sultan cannot abide by such an idea: “Ma fra tanta vergogna non gli sortì mai l’idea
di uccidersi” (III, 224). At the story’s conclusion the murderer is finally apprehended, yet
becomes confused once again as to whether he really killed his son because he sees Marcello
wearing Giorgio’s cape and hat. As the police are taking him away, the Sultan remains unsure as
to whether consider the man dressed in his son’s attire (and consequently his son) “come nemico
o come figliuolo” (III, 252). While the allusion to the father-son rivalry coincides with the
double’s manifestation in this conflictual dynamic, it also reinforces Marcello’s own duplicitous
nature as two consciousnesses in one body (and psyche), and as an impersonator of the deceased
Giorgio. Still dressed in his double’s attire, Marcello physically resembles Giorgio, and thus
maintains the element of blatant theatricality until the final pages of the novel. Lucini’s spirit is
still inhabiting Marcello’s mind and body, so that he is not only Marcello dressed as Giorgio, he
is Giorgio “wearing” the corporeal garment of Marcello. The Sultan’s perplexity over the true
society suffered social and political instability, corruption, and rapid change in a world constantly advancing
industrially and scientifically; resignation to God’s will and the restoration of order by Providence’s divine grace
and forgiveness would prove anachronistic. Manzoni’s famous character, the Unnamed - a vicious thief, kidnapper,
and murderer feared by everyone in the novel – undergoes a religious conversion, repents, and becomes the most
beloved man in his region, never compensating for his crimes within civil authoritative structures. While the
Innominato is only hinted at in this instance in Due anime in un corpo, De Marchi overtly references him in Il
cappello del prete. After murdering a corrupt priest, the Baron of Santafusca refers to the Unnamed and affirms that
the Manzoni’s transformed hero met a good priest and never a police inspector because times back then were
unsophisticated and no one asked him to pay for his crimes with the penal code in hand.
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identity of Marcello Marcelli is therefore paradoxically comic because it is indeed grounded in
both the material reality that he witnesses, and unbeknownst to him, in the immaterial reality that
remains hidden. While the novel may have ended with the criminal’s apprehension by
authorities, it continues towards the climax in which Marcello, exhausted and frightened, though
driven by the will of Giorgio within him, finally finds Marina as she dies of smoke inhalation.
After a graphic division in the text of dots following Marina’s dramatic death scene discussed in
detail above, Marcello reveals that he had fainted and had been unconscious for two days before
finally becoming “conscious” again. The choice of words – “ritrovai la coscienza di me” (III,
269) – seems a tongue-in-cheek statement on the part of the narrator. Not only did he wake up or
come into consciousness, he found his consciousness, as “la coscienza di me” could be read as a
possessive – my consciousness – which would suggest the return to singularity in his psyche.
Moreover, Marcello also found again (“ritrovai”) consciousness of himself in the sense of
coming of age, and realizing his authenticity, much like Doctor Marco of Il signor dottorino, so
that once again De Marchi has provided his public with a moralizing, uncanny, Bildungsroman.
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Conclusion
Three’s a Fantastic Crowd
In addition to the double’s propensity to incite a far-reaching – or perhaps one should say,
deep-reaching – investigation of the super-natural, occult regions of the spirit world and the
human psyche, it may also assist in the creation of a narrative space which naturally acts as an
environment for socio-cultural critiques. Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, Luigi Capuana, and Emilio De
Marchi all rest on the margins of the traditional literary canon, and during their lifetimes, they
were also marginal figures insofar as they rebelled against literary and social norms, and their
anti-normative ideas also inhabit the pages of their texts, often residing between the lines. In
addition to his anti-bourgeois attitudes and anti-Manzonianism, we remember Tarchetti’s
discontent with, and harsh criticism of the Italian military (of which he was a part) in his second
novel Drammi di vita militare (1866 – 1867), published in volume form as Una nobile follia in
1869. The works addressed here – “I fatali,” “Le leggende del castello nero,” “Uno spirito in un
lampone,” and Fosca all call into question the dominating, authoritative structures of positivistic
science and bourgeois ideals. The frame of “I fatali” especially functions as an obvious
challenge to phenomenological knowledge based solely on the rules of science, while “Le
leggende del castello nero” and “Uno spirito in un lampone” completely undo Christian notions
of life and death. Giorgio’s uncontrollable and unconscious-made-conscious attraction to Fosca
dismantles the traditional conceptions of ideal, romanticized images of beauty (as incarnated in
the blond-haired Clara), and ventures toward the grotesque (itself circumscribed by antibourgeois sentiments). Moreover, Giorgio’s paradoxical repulsion to, and desire for Fosca exists
as an effect of the uncanny (for he sees himself in his female mirror image), and becomes almost
a sort of perversion, frowned upon by those around him. In fact, Fosca’s cousin the colonel
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cannot abide the “offense” against his house guest and challenges Giorgio to a duel as retribution
for his intimate relations with his moribund specular double.
Much like his literary mentor, Luigi Capuana sought to deconstruct absolutist, positivistic
interpretations of the natural universe, repeatedly affirming in his fiction and non-fiction works
that the natural world indeed extends beyond the human senses, and even transcends current
scientific knowledge. The Minean author’s eclectic worldview is an answer in the affirmative to
his own inquiry – Spiritismo?; his belief in spiritistic forces as part of the Natural world, coupled
with his interest in the inner workings of the human psyche set the stage for treatment of the
supernatural and/or the psychopathological in his entire oeuvre, two occult spaces in which the
figure of the double thrives. Nevertheless, Capuana, like his literary predecessor Tarchetti and
his novelistic contemporary De Marchi, infuses his narratives with socio-cultural critiques,
especially directed towards normalizing structures such as marriage or family, and the alreadymentioned positivistic interpretation of the universe.348 The short stories “Un caso di
sonnambulismo” and “Il sogno di un musicista” both portray alternate realities of the trance and
dream states, emphasizing that human knowledge and perception can extend beyond that which
we retain in our conscious minds. Although Dectective Van-Spengel does not interact
romantically with any women, Volgango’s marriage in “Il sogno di un musicista” indirectly
leads to his death, for he remembers the final part of his ethereal melody as he plays the piano at
his wedding reception. A dysfunctional family is at the heart of the conflict of Profumo as it
exacerbates Patrizio’s own maladjusted sexuality and maturity, and causes Eugenia to fall
mentally and physically ill. Geltrude’s overbearing, voyeuristic nature may be interpreted as
348
Capuana himself never married; however, like his protagonist il marchese di Roccaverdina, he had a peasant
lover for most of his life, and eventually married her off to someone else of the same class.
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extending beyond the family romance because, as we established, she also emerges as the
embodiment of socially-constructed norms and as the projection of Patrizio’s own conscience
(itself formed by outside social authorities). Even though Capuana’s socio-cultural dissention is
mostly apparent in his conception of reality as a reconciliation between science and spiristism, as
represented in his physicians – Doctor Follini, Doctor Maggioli, and Doctor Mola – he
nonetheless subtly criticizes the other social institutions of marriage and family in the works
discussed here.
While Emilio De Marchi did not rail against the institutions of marriage or family, he
most certainly rebelled against the Catholic Church with his explicit modernist views. As a
modern Catholic who believed in primitive Christianity based on poverty, democracy, prayer,
and community among its followers, he stood against the Church as a wealthy, political
powerhouse. He also advocated for a Catholicism that accepted modern society, evolutionary
theory, scientific discoveries, and technological advancements; so, it is no wonder that he,
alongside his friend and contemporary modern Catholic writer, Antonio Fogazzaro, did not
receive the praise of the Church. Although more staunch criticism against the worldly corruption
of the Church appears in the novel Il cappello del prete in its inclusion of a morally corrupt,
avaricious priest, the early novels treated in the previous chapter illustrate De Marchi’s
disapproval of civil structures, and advocation of a simple morality not necessarily informed by
any specific religion. Despite the arrest of the Sultan at the end of Due anime in un corpo, the
murderer is eventually released and not held legally accountable for his crime because the victim
was his son. Although this reason is not explained in the text, the reader assumes that the law
had decreed that a father holds the right of life and death over his offspring. Like Capuana’s
marquis of Roccaverdina, the Sultan is not held accountable by the law for the crime he has
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committed; however unlike his Capuanian counterpart, he presumably does not suffer the
repercussions of guilt exercised by a troubled conscience. The Sultan’s evasion of legal
retribution for his son’s death – a morally reprehensible crime against nature – reads as critique
on the part of the author of the contemporary legal system. The villain’s escape from any lawful
form of punishment produces shock in the reading audience and thereby incites them to cast a
critical eye, much like the author, on such norms that allow a murderer to roam free. The
inclusion of the sensationally dramatized court testimony in the first part of the novel, and the
narrator’s assertion that it was published in the newspapers, proves another example of De
Marchi’s propensity to critique the society and the culture of his time through his popular
narratives. The Milanese novelist prided himself on writing to the mass readership that
consumed his romanzi d’appendice and his intermittent direct addresses to the reader, or his
references to the story’s material form as a text – much like those of his admired Manzoni –
serve to more actively involve her or him in the novel, emphasize the text as an artifact, and
connect the work to the extra-textual reality of the time.349 We recall Baron Adriano Siloe’s
remarks on the absurdity of his daughter’s pathological plight and the charade that he and Doctor
Marco perpetuate, as material suited for a novel. Also in Il signor dottorino, the baron and the
349
Direct addresses to the audience abound in De Marchi’s serial novels; however, his reference to the quantity of
readers in the preface to the completed Treves edition of Il cappello del prete in 1888 overtly conjures up
contrasting images to the Manzonian twenty-five readers of I Promessi sposi. In his preface, De Marchi proudly
notes the double release of his novel in periodicals at opposite ends of the peninsula (serialized in the Milanese
journal La Vita nuova and then in Scarfoglio’s and Serao’s Neapolitan periodical Il Corriere di Napoli the previous
year). De Marchi’s discussion of the positive reception of his novel in both journals culminates in a declaration that
recalls and also parodies the Manzonian narrator’s address to his “venticinque lettori” (18), or twenty-five readers:
“I signori centomila hanno letto di buona voglia e, da quel che si dice, si sono anche commossi e divertiti” (III, 283).
De Marchian critics also praise novel’s ability to have satisfied the demands of a vast audience, and to have moved
towards the establishment of a nationally cohesive reading public (Adamo 141). De Marchi’s affirmation directly
reflects the writer-reader relationship essential to the successful construction and reception of texts, and underlines
the importance of pleasing a large audience in the modern literary market. Moreover, the increased quantity of
readers, from “twenty-five” to “one hundred thousand,” proudly emphasizes the expansion of the Italian market, the
author’s own ability to reach a large audience, and the growth in the number of Italian readers in the new nation.
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doctor both challenge traditional class hierarchies – the former in his acceptance of a potential
non-noble husband for his daughter, and the later in his anachronistic (temporary) desire to climb
the social ladder before realizing that the noblest profession for him is the one he already
exercises. In the twelfth chapter of the first part of Due anime in un corpo, Marcello Marcelli
directly addresses the reader so she definitely knows that he is now narrating a past event and
therefore has somehow survived it. He informs the reader that he has pieced together “alcuni
brani di giornali cittadini” (III, 185) that reported on his trial, so there appears another facet and
another voice (albeit translated through the voice of Marcello) to this piecemeal text. Other overt
references to the reader occur throughout the novel and demonstrate De Marchi’s interest in the
mass readership from the outset of his literary career. When Marcello introduces the text of this
first-hand reporter of the Sultan’s story, he comments on the writing style: “I lettori
guadageranno senza dubbio nella semplicità dello stile e della grammatica” (III, 186). These
sentiments echo those more critically noted ones that the author expresses in the preface to the
1888 volume from of his novel Il cappelle del prete, in which he celebrates the mass readership
as opposed to an aesthetic elite of intellectuals: “L’arte è una cosa divina; ma non è male di tanto
in tanto scrivere anche per i lettori” (III, 284). De Marchi’s assertion of the value of art and his
contemporaneous belief in writing specifically for the reader – in this case a mass, middle-class
public – illustrates a narrative pact with his audience for whom he will provide quality literature
capable of pleasing, entertaining, and conveying an ethical message. De Marchi affirms in the
foreward to his inaugural “reformed” serial novel that he has composed “un romanzo
d’esperimento” (III, 284), in an obvious undercutting allusion to Zola’s roman experimental,
(especially given the author’s italicizing of the noun “experiment” that recalls though differs
from the adjective sperimentale). The seeds of his novel of experiment had been previously
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planted, however, in his early fiction, for both Il signor dottorino and Due anime in un corpo not
only depict the psychopatological depths of the human individual through the trope of the
double, they also criticize the corruption present in contemporary society, such as licentiousness,
deception, murder, and sensationalism, while concurrently seeking to perpetuate morality in hope
(albeit paternalistic) of educating the masses.
The motif of the Doppelgänger as it appears in literature across many centuries and
cultures, and especially in the socially, politically, and existentially turbulent years of the fin de
siècle, indicates a splitting of the unified self, which in turn mirrors the fracture of the Cartesian
subject and the rupture of pre-Nietzschean system-building, characteristic of many modernist and
some postmodernist literary and critical texts. One thinks of Derrida’s attempt at the dissolution
of binary oppositions based on the hegemony of one of the terms, or of Calvino’s infinite and
kaleidoscopic combinations. Although these poststructuralist thinkers confound wholeness and
even the dialectic between oppositions, the division or doubling of the self signifies an initial
dismantling of the subject, which, with the advent of deconstruction and postmodernism will
eventually transform into a polymorphous, floating, or disappearing subject. Moreover, the
double as a threat to the integrity of self (Dryden 38) not only anticipates the fragmentation of
the postmodern subject within itself, it also blurs the lines between the “I” and the “non-I,” or the
other. In other words, this division within the self – the conscious “I” and the repressed or
unconscious “I,” often manifested externally through an other, or internally through split
personality or dual consciousness – like structuralism itself, paves the way for the undoing of
these oppositions, and often deconstructs them within those same texts that construct them. In
the fiction of the three authors discussed in this study, we have explored the psychopathological,
ontological, existential, and socio-cultural implications of the double as it surfaces in:
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complementary, opposing characters; demonic possession and reincarnation; theatricality;
dreams and alternate states of consciousness; and various renditions of the love triangle. The
slipperiness of the double itself and its diverse manifestations in the gothic and fantastic works
we have explored, have demonstrated that its duality is not set in stone, for in some of the literary
texts addressed here, the double transforms into triples and multiples. We immediately think of
Emilio De Marchi’s Due anime in un corpo, in which pairs become multiples in the various ways
that the double appears through the demonic possession of the already dualistic Marcello
(previously known as Padre Lumaca) by Giorgio Lucini (also known as Giorgio Linucci). In
“Un caso di sonnambulismo,” Luigi Capuana confounds the traditional conception of linear time
and breaks the bounds of material spaces through a sort of astral projection into the present and
the future. The complex novella, considered an early example of the short detective story, with
Capuana’s characteristic spiritistic twist, through its manipulation of the time-space continuum,
creates a multiplicity of consciousnesses. Dectective Van-Spengel reads the written account of a
triple homicide, composed by his unconscious self that narrates the actions of another, oneiric
self as he solves the crime and apprehends the criminals; however, the waking Van-Spengel
finally goes insane, as he is unable to comprehend the uncanny abilities of his unconscious mind.
Dualities are also multiplied in Tarchetti’s “Le leggende del castello nero” in which the unnamed
narrator-protagonist reveals hazy details of past lives, and discovers that he had existed
previously throughout history, eleven different times. In short, the marvelous and uncanny
phenomena through which the Doppelgänger manifests itself offer opportunities for a
metamorphosis, as its inherent duality of self and other mutates into a multiplicity of self, and
self, and other, and other in a fantastic ménage a multiple.
329
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