Silvio D'Arzo

Contenuto

David Paul, 1953

in THE OBSERVER, 4 gennaio 1953

"New Fiction. WHISPERING GALLERY Botteghe Oscure, No. 10. (Mondadori - Hamish Hamilton. 10s.6d.)

"Botteghe Oscure" - wich certainly offers the best in fiction this week - is a bi-annual anthology of creative writing in three languages, and four nationalities, English, French, American, Italian. It is steadily establishing itself as the best as well as the most inclusive of literary periodicals. The greater part of its space - and a word must be said, in passing, for the beauty of its compact yet uncramped format - is devoted to stories short and long. But apart from form j think there is no hard dividind line between the poetry and prose. Basically, the less mature experiments in both forms are much of a kind. They are attemps to catch the world, the writer's own, inexpicable world, in a net of personal images. As is usual in such casses, a laboured significance is meant to make up for structural vagueness. To read some of these stories and poems is like watching a series of hangings-out of washing. What interesting mental garments are worn by one's neighbours in Paris, Rome, New York! - but they would fit none but the wearer. Nevertheless, their contrasts and reemblances together form an eloquent comment on the life of the moment.

Judging the volume as a whole, j think it has to be confessed that of the four sections in the present number the English one is the poorest in enterprise and achievement. No more than an accident, perhaps. More significant is the contrast which declares itself between two halves of the volume, the Anglo-American and the Italo-French. The former is, on the whole, sometimes widly, sometimes timidly, romantic and sobjective in character. The best part of the latter has transcended the romantic or apologetic approach. The two finest stories, both Italian, have a detachment, clarity and passion which any such personal approach would not have allowed.
"Casa d'altri" (Another's house), by Silvio D'Arzo, the story of a priest in a lost Apennine hamlet, swathed in mist and snow half the year, and in monotony for all of it, is told with a pungency that invests the commonplace with tragic poetry, without ever sparing it. The priest in his boredom becomes obsessed with a new parishioner, an old woman with nothing in the world but a goat, a handcart, and the hut she lives in. There is someting she wants to ask him, but, after complicated attempts, she gives up. Finally he extracts it from her.
What she wants is simply, release-death with the Church's sanction. The title and opening of "La formica Argentina" (the Silver Ant), by Italo Calvino, might suggest a Kafkaesque insect allegory. But it is simply the story of a young couple who move into an ant-infested house, of their reactions, and their observations of ho their neighbours have adapted themselves to a permenent state of siege by insects. Symbolism is there, but it never protrudes beyond the reality of the incidents. Just as D'Arzo's story, stark as it may be, never sacrifices any of the comedy of its detail, so Calvino's never sacrifices any of the real desperation of his character for the sake of comedy. It is all the more deeply - wildly - comic for that. It is to be hoped these stories soon appear in translation. They will stand comparison with any pubblische in recent years.