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Rivista Letteraria - Literary Review |
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Tiziana Di Rocco - "Per sempre" by Tony "Merc" Mobily: A HERMENEUTIC READING OF A MODERNIST TALE
This short story is a typical example of originality absolutely "genuine", in that it is the "fruit" of an "unripe" talent, which has not been marred by reading books after books or literary essays.
We are not dealing with a young author who tries to emulate a model or to borrow a particular technique from a famous writer. The author confessed to me to having red some short stories by Asimov, but they represent just a starting point for him, nothing else.
In reading this tale the reader relishes the pleasure of drinking a sip of spring water - which is quite rare nowadays. Besides, the reader can't help considering the author a rought diamond that is just waiting for being discovered and appreciated by the reading public.
As for as textual analysis is concerned, we can notice many peculiar characteristics of the modern movement. In fact, firstly, the narrating voice is that of an homodiegetic and intradiegetic narrator, who is also the protagonist of the plot. Secondly, as regards syntax, we can see a reiterative use of the paratactic structure which helps in making the narrative rhythm faster and faster, and in suggesting almost the idea of a "stream of consciousness". As for as lexical categories are concerned, we can see, on the one hand, the paradigm of death, which is conveyed by the lexemes: "morto", "morta", "immortali" and "immortalità" and which we can infer from a continual reference to the coldness of the marble. On the other hand, unfortunately, we can't help seeing a redundant and pleonastic use of adjectives. Maybe we could interpret this like a proof of the "naïveté" of his tale.
What contributes also to place this tale in a modernist context is the way time-space relationship is dealt whith.
- Il tempo perdeva di significato
- Tempi infiniti
- Un'eternità dopo
- Non ero in nessun posto
- Ero in paradiso o all'inferno
- In quel posto nel nostro universo
In many passages there are a "timeless atmosphere" in that there are no direct time references.
This is because the author is more interested in conveying a symbolically expressed meaning than in continuing the diegesis. The space, on the other hand, is not referential, but symbolic and allegorical, being represented by these lexemes: "nessun posto"; "paradiso"; "inferno".
Past and present mingle in the texture of the prose because they mingle in the texture of consciousness, and this mingling is indicated by puns, by sudden breaks, into a modernist style.
An example of this "mingling", and of oneric atmosphere is that passage, little "chef d'oeuvre", which describes a worm going out the protagonist's back and where the reader can't help thinking of "Le metamorfosi" by Kafka.
Oppositive paradigms we can see in this work as regards themes: reality and dream, Eros and Thanatos, good and evil. All the tale is characterised by a dysphoric value, which reaches the paroxysm just at the end where the desperate attempt of the protagonist of going over his loneliness and of merging with the object of his love fails pitifully and the only one interlocutor possible for him it seems to be her: the death.