[Italian mixed cityscape. Foto Rb 2016]
Carlo Cassola was born on March 17th, 1917,
and died on January 29th, 1987. His work may be subdivided into four phases.
In the first period, in
the 1940s and early 1950s, the basic aspects of his subject matter and style were
formed. They include a world of manual workers and middle class characters; an
existential view on life; and bareness of words. Some of the works in this decade
were La visita (1942), Rosa Gagliardi (1946), Il taglio del bosco (1950) and Il soldato (1957). Il taglio del
bosco tells the story of Guglielmo who,
after recruiting a team of woodcutters, leads them to the forest where they
work for a while. The techniques they use, a description of nature and personal
preoccupations characterize this novella. Guglielmo is coming to terms with
grief for the death of his wife. The story ends with him in front of the
graveyard, his pain still unresolved. Rather than telling a series of eventful adventures,
Cassola focuses on thoughts and emotions, or what he called “a poetics of
subliminal life”.[1]
Time “flows always the same and in tranquillity”.[2]
Though a believer, Guglielmo’s recollections of his wife are based on her concrete
life rather than on spirituality. Attention to the activities of the working class
is revealed by the specific words used to describe the cutting. Historical
events are mentioned, especially war, recession, and emigration, but the story
remains indeterminate rather than based on the zeitgeist. On an intertextual level,
in this as in other texts, to remain just with two authors in the English language
who were particularly important for Cassola, one could mention the universe of
local roots and sentimental involvement of Thomas Hardy, and the symbolic
realism of Joyce’s Dubliners. Among
contemporary Italians, Cancogni (1916-2015) and Bassani (1916-2000) were perhaps
the most compatible of his peers.
In 1949, Cassola went through what he called himself a
“crisis” which prompted “rejection of the previous project of existential narrative”.[3]
Even though the rejection was not full, he did write stories based on the Resistance
movement and antifascism in general, most famously: Fausto e Anna (1952), I
vecchi compagni (1953), Baba
(1959), La ragazza di Bube (1959-’60),
La casa di via Valadier (1960).
Perhaps the most interesting, and partly contentious, of these novels is La ragazza di Bube which tells the story
of a Communist partisan, Bube, who, in 1945, about a month after liberation, with
another Communist, kills a police sergeant and his son in a confused situation
in which the sergeant opens fire first but also on the ground that they are fascist.
Initially protected by radicals within the Italian Communist Party, he hides in
Jugoslavia and France, but is eventually extradited and arrested. The trial is
prolonged until 1948, a year of elections in which the leadership of the
Communist party, in order to appease the middle class, and also due to losing
the election, prefers to have Bube imprisoned rather than defended in the light
of the heated atmosphere of the time when the crime took place. This political
story interacts with Bube’s private love story with Mara, who is sixteen at the
beginning of the novel and goes through a process of growth into adulthood by
proximity with these tragic events. In this respect, La ragazza di Bube is a bildungsroman.
On the level of moral values, while being independent and proud, Mara, despite
the courtship of another young man, Stefano, when Bube hid in France, is also
traditionally loyal to her boyfriend and her father’s Marxist ideals while
opposite to violence and favourable to humane considerations in life as well as
in political matters. According to Italo Calvino, she is one of the best
characters in post-war Italian literature (“Mara, forse la prima apparizione
umana positiva di grande statura della nuova letteratura italiana”). The novel
is emotional and it was a bestseller, yet, despite its clear condemnation of
Fascism, it was criticized by some on the left because it presented the left-wing
movement in a non-heroic, though tragic, light, but perhaps this is precisely
its merit.
The third phase of Cassola’s career, in the 1960s and
early 1970s, was seen by the author as “a partial return to the poetics of my
youth”,[4]
with stories such as Un cuore arido
(1961), Ferrovia locale (1968), Una relazione (1969), Paura e tristezza (1970). Un cuore arido tells the story of dressmaker
Anna and her sister Bice. Enrico, in love with Anna, after being rejected by
her, eventually marries Bice. Bice’s previous boy-friend, Mario, also falls in
love with Anna and finally emigrates to the US. Anna has an affair with a rich
man, Marcello, who does not really care about her and marries a girl of his
milieu. Mario calls Anna to America, but she refuses to go, and decides instead
to live on her own quenching passion and having a quiet life. The concept of
aridity is the most relevant here, rescued towards a positive meaning of
withdrawl from error, excess and insincere sentimentality, and a move towards
dignity and loyalty to oneself.
The last phase of
Cassola’s career saw three main directions. Some novels continued motives
previously confronted which had granted Cassola success. But at the same time,
strangely perhaps, he was intent, as he states, to “destroy the myths that had
guided me, especially two of these: the myth of the pure, simple girl, and the
myth of the antagonist”.[5]
An example of this is Gli anni passano
(1982), a sequel to La ragazza di Bube.
In Gli anni passano, when Bube gets
out of prison he isn’t any longer the assertive antifascist of his youth. He
has become an “opportunist” who,[6]
in line with the official policies of the Italian Communist Party, even defends
Togliatti whose directives in the 1940s had contributed to his arrest in the
first novel. In Gli anni passano,
Bube is disappointed by Mara who therefore appears to have waited for him in
vain all those years. The novel informs us that Bube still “seemed a young
man”,[7]
whereas Mara, who has a traditional role of wife and mother in this text, is
described as a middle-aged person who “had put on weight and had withered”.[8]
Bube and Mara divorce, and he starts a relationship with a woman the age of his
daughter. Cassola’s 1960 ideals of conjugal fidelity, loyalty to principles and
idealism were indeed torn apart in 1982.
Other directions in the
last phase of Cassola’s work are historical novels such as Il ribelle (1980), set in Roman antiquity, and characterized by a positive
evaluation of the original message of Christianity which the pagan protagonist,
Severiano, comes to see as a revolutionary ideology; and some science fiction
novels in which Cassola voiced his concerns about the environment and the
possible end of human life due to war, ecological irresponsibility and catastrophe.
In this narrative
cycle, we find L’uomo e il cane (1977), Il superstite (1978), Il Paradiso degli animali (1979), Ferragosto di morte (1980) e Il mondo senza nessuno (1982).
Cassola wrote with honesty, in a concise and
non-rhetorical mode, about a defined geographical area, which is occasionally
Rome, but mostly a section of Tuscany between Grosseto, Livorno, Volterra and
Cecina. He portrays life through details reduced to the essential. His
characters’ problems and choices, while understandable within the historical
events that they witness, are at the same time meaningful to all readers for
their universal nature.
REFERENCES
1 – Works by
Carlo Cassola
a) Fiction
Alla
periferia, Florence,
Giannini, 1942.
La
visita, Florence, Parenti,
1942.
Rosa
Gagliardi (1946), in Il soldato, Milan, Feltrinelli, 1958.
La
moglie del mercante, “Botteghe
oscure”, 3, 1949.
Il
taglio del bosco, “Paragone”,
12, 1950. Fausto e Anna, Turin,
Einaudi, 1952.
I
vecchi compagni, Turin,
Einaudi, 1953.
Le
amiche, in Il taglio del bosco, Milan, Fabbri,
1954.
La
casa di via Valadier, Turin,
Einaudi, 1954.
Il
soldato, Milan,
Feltrinelli, 1958.
Baba
(1959), in Il taglio del bosco, Turin, Einaudi,
1960.
La
ragazza di Bube, Turin,
Einaudi, 1960.
Un
cuore arido, Turin,
Einaudi, 1961.
Il
cacciatore, Turin,
Einaudi, 1964.
Tempi
memorabili, Turin,
Einaudi, 1966.
Storia
di Ada (contiene anche La maestra ), Turin, Einaudi, 1967.
Ferrovia
locale, Turin, Einaudi,
1968.
Una
relazione, Turin,
Einaudi, 1969.
Paura
e tristezza, Turin,
Einaudi, 1970.
Monte
Mario, Milan, Rizzoli,
1973.
Gisella,
Milan, Rizzoli, 1974.
Fogli
di diario, Milan,
Rizzoli, 1974.
Troppo
tardi, Milan, Rizzoli,
1975.
L’antagonista,
Milan, Rizzoli, 1976.
La
disavventura, Milan,
Rizzoli, 1977.
L’uomo
e il cane, Milan,
Rizzoli, 1977.
Un
uomo solo, Milan,
Rizzoli, 1978.
Il
superstite, Milan,
Rizzoli, 1978.
Il
Paradiso degli animali, Milan,
Rizzoli, 1979.
Ferragosto
di morte, Reggio Emilia,
Ciminiera, 1980.
La
morale del branco, Milan,
Rizzoli, 1980.
Vita
d’artista, Milan,
Rizzoli, 1980.
Il
ribelle, Milan, Rizzoli,
1980.
La
zampa d’oca, Milan,
Rizzoli, 1981.
Gli
anni passano, Milan,
Rizzoli, 1982.
Colloquio
con le ombre, Milan,
Rizzoli, 1982.
Il
mondo senza nessuno, Reggio
Emilia, Ciminiera, 1982.
Mio
padre, Milan, Rizzoli,
1983
Racconti e romanzi, ed. Andreini, A.,
Milan, Mondadori, 2007. This volume includes Paura e tristezza (1937), La
visita (1942), Le amiche (1949), Il taglio del bosco (1950), Fausto e Anna (1952), I vecchi compagni (1953), Rosa Gagliardi (1956), La ragazza di Bube (1960), Un cuore arido (1961), Il cacciatore (1964), and Paura e tristezza (1970).
b) Essays
Viaggio in Cina, Illustrations by Treccani, A., Milan,
Feltrinelli, 1956.
I
veleni critici, “Le
ragioni narrative”, 5, 1960.
Ultima
frontiera, Milan, Rizzoli, 1976.
Il
gigante cieco, Milan, Rizzoli, 1976.
Conversazione
su una cultura compromessa, Palermo, Il Vespro, 1977.
Letteratura
e disarmo, Milan, Mondadori, 1978.
La
lezione della storia, Milan, Rizzoli, 1978.
Il
Romanzo moderno (1970-79), Milan, Rizzoli, 1981.
La
rivoluzione disarmista, Milan, Rizzoli, 1983.
Ai
lettori, in La ragazza di Bube, Turin,
Einaudi, 1986, pp. 5-11.
2 -
Criticism
A. Andreini, Il romanzo delle origini, in Romanzi
e racconti, Milan, Mondadori, 2007, pp. XI-LXVIII.
A. Asor Rosa, Cassola, in Scrittori e
popolo, Rome, Samonà e Savelli, 1965, pp. 283-348.
A. Cadioli, La ragazza di Bube, in L’industria
del Romanzo, Rome, Editori riuniti, 1981, pp. 85-93.
I. Calvino, in Inchiesta su La ragazza di Bube, “Mondo operaio”, XII,
luglio-agosto 1960.
E. Esposito, Sulle tracce di una tipologia di personaggio femminile in alcuni testidi Carlo Cassola, undated.
G. Falaschi, ed., Carlo Cassola: Atti del Convegno di Firenze, 3-4 novembre 1989,
Florence, Becocci, 1993.
G.C. Ferretti, Bassani e Cassola tra idillio e storia, in Letteratura e ideologia, Rome, Editori riuniti, 1974, pp. 17-142.
F. Fortini, Di Cassola (1952), La ragazza di Bube (1960), Un cuore arido (1961), in Saggi italiani, Milan, Garzanti, 1987,
pp. 219-232.
R. Macchioni-Jodi, Cassola, Florence, Nuova Italia, 1977.
G. Manacorda, Invito alla lettura di Cassola, Milan, Mursia, 1973.
H. K. Moss, The existentialism of Carlo Cassola, “Italica”, 3, 1977, pp.
381-398.
T. O’Neill, Introduction, in C. Cassola, Il
taglio del bosco, London, G. Harrap, 1980, pp. 6-38.
P.N. Pedroni, Existence as theme in Carlo Cassola’s
fiction, New York, Peter Lang, 1985.
V. Spinazzola, Il realismo esistenziale di Carlo Cassola, Modena, Mucchi, 1993.
[Roberto Bertoni]
