Mark Chu 311 ANNE MULLEN INQUISITION AND INQUIRY

Mark Chu
311
ANNE MULLEN
INQUISITION AND INQUIRY. SCIASCIA S INCHIESTA
Market Harborough: Troubador, 2000. 78 pp.
his short book examines the documentary narrative form of the
inchiesta, which figured prominently in Sciascia s production
alongside his fiction writing. While avoiding a rigid categorization of
these diverse works, the author describes the form as one used by Sciascia to
point to flaws in the processes of law and misrepresentation in history, and to
offer a reinterpretation of history through the analysis of documents and
literary texts, including material previously excluded or neglected.
Stylistically, Mullen argues, the inchiesta is a combination of the detective
writing and investigative writing which, she suggests, Sciascia looked to as
alternatives to the exhausted narrative forms of neorealismo (p. 1).
The opening chapter of the book describes Sciascia s repeated reference to
what he considers key moments in Sicilian history the Inquisition, the
Risorgimento, the years of fascism and his own contemporary society to
which, according to Mullen, he attributes analogical and metaphorical
possibilities (p. 7). The author points to a paradox, namely that, despite
questioning the validity and veracity of history, and acknowledging its basis
in interpretation, Sciascia retained his faith in what could be learned from the
past in the present (p. 7). The question of Sciascia s attitude to history is a
complex one and central to his entire oeuvre, and, given that the author duly
dedicates a significant part of her essay to it, it is one to which I will return
below.
The second chapter seeks to establish the features of Sciascia s inchiesta
through an analysis of his earliest prose work, Le parrocchie di Regalpetra
(1956) which Mullen sees as exemplifying the process in Sciascia s writing
whereby documentary material is elevated to essay and transformed into
narrative and of his debt to Manzoni s Storia della colonna infame (1840).
While accepting in broad terms earlier critics definitions of Le parrocchie di
Regalpetra as having a double nature , between documentary and narrative,
Mullen identifies a need for closer examination of how documentary and
historical writing and more stylized narrative commingle and interact , as a
means of developing an understanding of the particular quality of Sciascia s
writing (p. 20). The author singles out Sciascia s use of analogy intended as
the use of the past as a means of coming to understand the present as the
defining feature of his prose (p. 21). The author analyses the juxtaposition of
past and present in the early work, which gives a steadily increasing
emphasis to the negative impact of the past on the present (p. 23). She
provides a theoretical framework for her examination of the structures and
techniques used by Sciascia in his way of telling stories , which is described
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as far from [ ] purely mimetic and realistic , while the historical motifs
constitute compelling, didactic imperatives (p. 23). Appended to this
chapter is a brief comparison of the giallo and the inchiesta, and a discussion
of their thematic and stylistic similarities, and it is argued that the
investigative practices of both forms were established in Le parrocchie di
Regalpetra.
Examining Sciascia s reading of Manzoni s Storia della colonna infame,
Mullen points to obvious differences in the ideology and attitude to historical
fiction of the two writers, but suggests that, ultimately, similarities in tone
and argument link them. The two inchieste defined by the author as closest to
the Manzonian model, Morte dell inquisitore (1964) and La strega e il
capitano (1986), are analysed in the first section of Chapter 3. The author
goes on to place Sciascia s technique in the context of the work of
historiographers Hayden White and Carlo Ginzburg: Mullen argues that
Sciascia shares with the former a belief in the narrativist view of historical
explanation (p. 44), and that a concern with the fate of classes otherwise
ignored in history and an attention to a wide assortment of texts, including
trial transcripts and inquisition records (p. 46) establishes an affinity
between Sciascia and the Italian historian. In the section on Other inchieste ,
Mullen traces a progression in Sciascia s inchieste from the rigorously
documented references of Morte dell inquisitore to a more narrative, less
academic interpretation of history in works such as La scomparsa di
Majorana (1975) and I pugnalatori (1976), and links this to a process of
writing which becomes increasingly dependent on literary referents as the
principal means of coming to the closest possible understanding and
interpretation of historical moments (p. 47). The author refers, in her
analysis of I pugnalatori, to the historian Paolo Pezzino s criticism of
Sciascia s literary perspective on this episode of the Risorgimento in Sicily,
but limits herself to an account of the similarities between the defeat of the
historical investigator in this inchiesta and that of fictional investigators in
Sciascia s gialli (p. 51).
Chapter 4 is dedicated to L affaire Moro (1978), described in the
introduction as a pivotal text, marked by the prevalence from the outset of
Sciascia s use of literature as a means through which he searches for a more
reliable form of truth (3). Regrettably, however, the author does not go
much beyond a synopsis of Sciascia s close reading of Moro s letters from
the prigione del popolo , on which he based his interpretation of the events
surrounding the kidnap and murder of the Christian Democrat politician by
the Brigate rosse.
In the final chapter, Mullen develops an idea previously mentioned when
seeking to define the inchiesta
namely, that Sciascia s curiosity and
investigations are progressively mitigated by a growing sense of
Inquisition and Inquiry. Sciascia s Inchiesta
313
disillusionment and introspective analysis (p. 29) and suggests that the
post-Moro inchieste function largely, by Sciascia s admission in the essay
Mata Hari a Palermo (Cronachette (1985)), as riposo e divertimento ,
inspired by a desire to arrive at the truth which tends, however, towards un
senso di puntiglio , and may, at most, inspire una sorta di pietà (III, 150).
Reference is made to Dalle parti degli infedeli (1979), Il teatro della
memoria (1981), Cronachette (1985) and 1912+1 (1986), and Mullen points
to the way in which any polemical intent is abandoned in the last of
Sciascia s inchieste, so that the narrative form becomes merely una
divagante passeggiata nel tempo (III, 319) (p. 73).
As already mentioned, central to Mullen s thesis is a discussion of the
relationship between literature and history in Sciascia s thought: A
fundamental characteristic of his perceptions of and perspectives on being
Sicilian is their resonance in literature: he has recourse to literary models,
principally Sicilian ones, to illuminate and validate his points of view on
Sicily and his approach to history is similarly pursued by him through
literature, and he identifies the dual role for specific moments in Sicilian
history as both catalyst and metaphor for understanding and interpretation.
Literature is the principal means through which Sciascia confutes the
historical record or endorses his own interpretation of history (p. 5). There is
a need to provide a critique of Sciascia s project, which is, however, probably
beyond the scope of the present work, but which is articulated tentatively in
the suggestion, regarding the literature on which Sciascia achieves his
representation of the Sicilian character, that by being accepted and
recognised as literature with universal significance , it may seem to be
literature that is merely conforming to and preserving what is already
established and accepted (p. 6): it is not developed, however, beyond the
affirmation that the universality of Sciascia s own narrative works is of a
complex negative nature (p. 7). In her comparison of the giallo and the
inchiesta, Mullen comments on Sciascia s technique of drawing the reader s
attention to and reinforcing the idea of the written text as artifice and history
as invention, intimating that, whatever the genre, writing obscures rather than
illuminates the truth (p. 31). This is, of course, also a feature of other types
of text, most notably, Il Consiglio d Egitto (1963), although it might be more
accurate to refer to Sciascia s emphasis of the ambivalence of the written
word, which is seen as capable of establishing both negative and positive
truths . Later, when referring to Sciascia s confidence in literature as a
means of expression and understanding [having] increased (p. 42) by the
time he wrote La strega e il capitano (1986), the author contents herself with
the statement that Sciascia seems to have lost interest in [the] contrast
between literature and historical data, supporting this with the quotation of
Sciascia s maxim in La strega e il capitano: Poiché nulla di sé e del mondo
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sa la generalità degli uomini, se la letteratura non glielo apprende (III, 207)
(pp. 42-43). Mullen does trace a progression in Sciascia s inchieste from the
rigorously documented references of Morte dell inquisitore to a more
narrative, less academic interpretation of history, and seems to link this to a
process of writing which becomes increasingly dependent on literary
referents as the principal means of coming to the closest possible
understanding and interpretation of historical moments (p. 47). It might be
useful to examine further the extent to which Sciascia s practice of
reconstructing the past in relation to the present, together with the strong
textual tradition within which he writes, becomes a factor which conditions
his interpretation of both the past and the present, rendering impossible other,
more positive views.
This book is a valuable contribution to Sciascia studies, but certain
reservations should nevertheless be mentioned. There is a tendency to rely
too heavily on Sciascia s eminently quotable declarations, without providing
the necessary critique of the same. Structurally, the argument is somewhat
repetitive: there is a frequent promise of analysis of the inchieste but,
ultimately, there is some imbalance between the scrupulous, general
introductory attempt to define the form and the subsequent inspection of the
works. A more up-to-date bibliography of the field might also have been
desirable, the most recent entries being Farrell s 1995 monograph and Ania s
short 1996 study of the detective novels, and an index would be a useful
instrument. Finally, although not central to the author s thesis regarding the
theme of the Inquisition in Sciascia s inchieste
specifically, in her
comments on his essay in Cronachette, L uomo dal passamontagna (pp.
70-71) , a major factual error regarding the historical role of Salvador
Allende might usefully be corrected if the book goes to a second edition.
These shortcomings notwithstanding, Mullen s study provides a useful
analysis of an important aspect of Sciascia s writing and of his development
as a writer, and it raises fundamental questions which merit a fuller
discussion than is possible here.
MARK CHU
University College,
Cork