Archaeology of the Unconscious: Italian Perspectives [8] 1000113558, 9781000113556

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Archaeology of the Unconscious: Italian Perspectives [8]
 1000113558, 9781000113556

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Half Title......Page 2
Series Page......Page 3
Title Page......Page 4
Copyright Page......Page 5
Contents......Page 6
List of Contributors......Page 8
Acknowledgements......Page 12
Introduction......Page 14
1 Uneasy Sensibility: Pietro Verri on Pain and Pleasure......Page 26
2 Francesco Soave and the Unconscious of the Somnambulist, Dreams, Madness, and Distraction in Eighteenth-Century Italy......Page 46
3 Jacopo’s Secret......Page 63
4 Leopardi’s Night (T)errors, the Uncanny, and the ‘Old Wives’ Tales’......Page 80
5 At the Frontiers of Dreams: The Nightmares of the Vita Nuova Read Through Freud and Manzoni......Page 99
6 Italian Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious: Irresistible Analogies from Muratori to Morselli......Page 126
7 Magnetic Culture and the Self in Post-Unification Italy......Page 154
8 Drawing-Room Shivers: Spiritualism and Uneasy Presences on the Pages of La Domenica del Corriere......Page 177
9 Subconscious and Oneiric Consciousness in the Late Nineteenth Century (and Beyond): A Focus on Sante De Sanctis’s Studies on Dreams......Page 198
10 Metamorphosis and Nightmare in Leopardi and Svevo......Page 230
11 Is There an Unconscious in This Text? On Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno......Page 248
Bibliography......Page 270
Index......Page 294

Citation preview

Archaeology of the Unconscious

In reconstructing the birth and development of the notion of ‘unconscious’, historians of ideas have heavily relied on the Freudian concept of Unbewussten, retroactively projecting the psychoanalytic unconscious over a constellation of diverse cultural experiences taking place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries between France and Germany. Archaeology of the Unconscious aims to challenge this perspective by adopting an unusual and thought-provoking viewpoint as the one offered by the Italian case from the 1770s to the immediate aftermath of the First World War, when Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno provided Italy with the first example of a ‘psychoanalytic novel’. Italy’s vibrant culture of the long nineteenth century, characterized by the sedimentation, circulation, intersection, and synergy of different cultural, philosophical, and literary traditions, proves itself to be a privileged object of inquiry for an archaeological study of the unconscious, a study whose object is not the alleged ‘origin’ of a pre-made theoretical construct but rather the stratifications by which that specific construct was assembled. In line with Michel Foucault’s Archéologie du savoir (1969), this volume will analyse the formation and the circulation, across different authors and texts, of a network of ideas and discourses on interconnected themes, including dreams, memory, recollection, desire, imagination, fantasy, madness, creativity, inspiration, magnetism, and somnambulism. Alongside questioning pre-given narratives of the ‘history of the unconscious’, this book will employ the Italian ‘difference’ as a powerful perspective from whence to address the undeveloped potentialities of the pre-Freudian unconscious, beyond uniquely psychoanalytical viewpoints. Alessandra Aloisi is Lecturer in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French at the University of Oxford (Jesus College). In 2015–2017, she was Marie Curie post-­ doctoral fellow at the University of Warwick, UK, with a research project on Distraction as a Philosophical Concept and Stylistic Device in France and Italy, from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. She obtained her PhD in Aesthetics at the University of Pisa in 2011, and her thesis was published as Desiderio e assuefazione. Studio sul pensiero di Leopardi (Ets, 2014). She is currently working on a monograph on the concept of distraction (under contract with Il Mulino). Fabio Camilletti is Associate Professor and Reader at the University of Warwick, UK. His specialism is Gothic and Romantic literature from a European viewpoint: he published, among others, monographs on D.G. Rossetti and Giacomo Leopardi, and finalized in 2015 the first complete edition of the German-French anthology of ghost stories Fantasmagoriana. His most recent works include Italia lunare (Peter Lang), The Portrait of Beatrice (Notre Dame UP), and Guida alla letteratura gotica (Odoya). He is currently working on a BA/Leverhulme-funded project on supernatural anthologies in the early nineteenth century.

Warwick Series in the Humanities Series Editor: Christina Lupton

Titles in this Series Picturing Women’s Health Edited by Kate Scarth, Francesca Scott and Ji Won Chung Knowing Nature in Early Modern Europe David Beck New Jazz Conceptions History, Theory, Practice Edited by Roger Fagge and Nicolas Pillai Food, Drink, and the Written Word in Britain, 1820–1945 Edited by Mary Addyman, Laura Wood and Christopher Yiannitsaros Beyond the Rhetoric of Pain Edited by Berenike Jung and Stella Bruzzi Mood Interdisciplinary Perspectives, New Theories Edited by Birgit Breidenbach and Thomas Docherty Prohibitions and Psychoactive Substances in History, Culture and Theory Edited by Susannah Wilson Archaeology of the Unconscious Italian Perspectives Edited by Alessandra Aloisi and Fabio Camilletti For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Warwick-Series-in-the-Humanities/bookseries/WSH

Archaeology of the Unconscious Italian Perspectives

Edited by Alessandra Aloisi and Fabio Camilletti

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Alessandra Aloisi and Fabio Camilletti to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-26373-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-29304-7 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

List of Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction

vii xi 1

A lessandra A loisi and Fabio C amilletti

1 Uneasy Sensibility: Pietro Verri on Pain and Pleasure

13

S abrina F erri

2 Francesco Soave and the Unconscious of the Somnambulist, Dreams, Madness, and Distraction in Eighteenth-Century Italy

33

A lessandra A loisi

3 Jacopo’s Secret

50

F ranco D ’ I ntino

4 Leopardi’s Night (T)errors, the Uncanny, and the ‘Old Wives’ Tales’

67

Fabio C amilletti

5 At the Frontiers of Dreams: The Nightmares of the Vita Nuova Read Through Freud and Manzoni

86

A ndrea M alagamba

6 Italian Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious: Irresistible Analogies from Muratori to Morselli

113

Paola C ori

7 Magnetic Culture and the Self in Post-Unification Italy M orena C orradi

141

vi Contents 8 Drawing-Room Shivers: Spiritualism and Uneasy Presences on the Pages of La Domenica del Corriere

164

Fabri z io F oni and I rene I ncarico

9 Subconscious and Oneiric Consciousness in the Late Nineteenth Century (and Beyond): A Focus on Sante De Sanctis’s Studies on Dreams

185

S ara B oe z io

10 Metamorphosis and Nightmare in Leopardi and Svevo

217

O lmo C al z olari

11 Is There an Unconscious in This Text? On Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno

235

A lessandra D ia z z i

Bibliography Index

257 281

List of Contributors

Alessandra Aloisi is Lecturer in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French at the University of Oxford (Jesus College). In 2015–2017, she was Marie Curie post-doctoral fellow at the University of Warwick, UK, with a research project on Distraction as a Philosophical Concept and Stylistic Device in France and Italy, from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. She obtained her PhD in aesthetics at the University of Pisa in 2011, and her thesis was published as Desiderio e assuefazione. Studio sul pensiero di Leopardi (Ets, 2014). She is currently working on a monograph on the concept of distraction (under contract with Il Mulino). Sara Boezio studied at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, and at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and in Lyon. Her MA thesis on the essays of Federico De Roberto was awarded the Galilei-Carducci prize. Her PhD thesis (University of Warwick) explores from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective how historical, political, social, and cultural changes shaped new perceptions and representations of time in fin-de-siècle Italy. Her research interests concern finde-siècle European literary cultures and the late nineteenth-century periodical press, as well as the relationship between poetry and visual arts in early modern Italian literature, and cognitive literary studies. Olmo Calzolari is a DPhil Student at the University of Oxford. Before starting his doctoral project, he obtained an MPhil from Oxford and a BA from the Università degli Studi di Siena. His interests revolve around nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature, the presence of Leopardi in the Italian Novecento, and the history of medicine. He collaborates with LEO (Leopardi Studies at Oxford) and the Oxford Italian Postgraduate Seminars. Fabio Camilletti  is Associate Professor and Reader at the University of Warwick, UK. His specialism is Gothic and Romantic literature from a European viewpoint: he published, among others, monographs on D.G. Rossetti and Giacomo Leopardi, and finalized in 2015 the first complete edition of the German-French anthology of ghost stories Fantasmagoriana. His most recent works include Italia lunare (Peter Lang), The Portrait of Beatrice (Notre Dame UP), and Guida alla letteratura

viii  List of Contributors gotica (Odoya). He is currently working on a BA/Leverhulme-funded project on supernatural anthologies in the early nineteenth century. Paola Cori  is Lecturer in Modern Languages (Italian) at the University of Birmingham, where she is also Honorary Research Fellow at the Leopardi Centre. Her main research interests are in the literature and philosophy from the eighteenth century to the present day, particularly Giacomo Leopardi. Her most recent article, Ipnotismo e iperrealtà. Spunti per un dialogo tra Leopardi e il postmoderno, is forthcoming with Italian Studies, 74, 3, summer 2019, while her monograph Forms of Thinking in Leopardi’s Zibaldone. Religion, Science and Everyday Life is forthcoming with Legenda (Cambridge, August 2019). Morena Corradi  is Associate Professor at Queens College and at the Graduate Center, CUNY (City University of New York). Her research focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian literature and printed media, fantastic and gothic literature, narrative theory, and nation building. She has published articles on the fantastic in the works of the Milanese Scapigliatura and on post-unification political and literary journals. She is Author of the monograph Spettri d’Italia: scenari del fantastico nella pubblicistica postunitaria milanese (Longo Editore, 2016). Alessandra Diazzi  is Lecturer in Italian studies at the University of Manchester. In 2015, she was awarded a PhD in Italian Studies from the University of Cambridge. She published on contemporary Italian ­literature – Italo Calvino, Alberto Moravia, Giorgio Manganelli, and Ottiero Ottieri, among – cinema (Gianni Amelio), and René Girard’s mimetic theory. She works primarily on the reception of psychoanalysis in Italian literature and culture in post-World War II Italy. Franco D’Intino is Professor of modern Italian literature at the University of Rome Sapienza where he directs the ‘Laboratorio Leopardi’ (School of Advanced Studies). His main areas of research are the autobiographical genre and Romanticism, in particular the work of ­Giacomo Leopardi. He is the critical editor of Leopardi’s translations in prose and verse and autobiographical writings, and co-editor of the English translation of the Zibaldone (Farrar Straus & Giroux/ Penguin 2013, 20152). Sabrina Ferri is Associate Professor of Italian at the University of Notre Dame. Her research encompasses Italian literature, philosophy, and science in the long eighteenth century. She has written on Casanova, Alfieri, Vico, and Leopardi, among others. Her first book, Ruins Past: Modernity in Italy, 1744–1836 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2015), reconstructs Italy’s philosophy of history between the eighteenth and

List of Contributors  ix early nineteenth centuries. She is currently working on modern theories of the imagination and on the relationship between fiction and revolution. Fabrizio Foni (Umbertide, 1980)  is Lecturer in the Department of Italian and Member of the Institute of Anglo-Italian Studies at the University of Malta, with a specialisation in popular culture. His research interests include horror, thriller and science fiction, the adventure novels by Emilio Salgari and his followers, comic-book series, 1960s and 1970s Italian gothic cinema, as well as the multifaceted fictional representations of sideshows and freaks. He co-authored the most comprehensive annotated bibliography of criticism on the Fantastic in Italian literature: Stefano Lazzarin, and others, Il fantastico italiano: Bilancio critico e bibliografia commentata (dal 1980 a oggi) (Florence: Le Monnier Università, 2016). Irene Incarico (La Spezia, 1981)  is Visiting Senior Lecturer in the ­Department of Italian of the University of Malta, where she teaches study-units ranging from medieval literature to women’s writing. She is also International Students and Programme Leader at Chiswick House School (Malta), where she teaches French. She published articles on science fiction, Emilio Salgari, and Stephen King. She co-­ authored a ‘cybergoth’ novel, and authored several science fiction and horror short stories. She also co-edited with Alice Favaro the book Eurofumetto & globalizzazione: Studi su graphic novel e linguaggi dei comics (La Spezia: Cut-Up Publishing, 2018). Andrea Malagamba  teaches in Rome. He is the author of the monograph “Quell’ombra io sono”. Io, Tu, Noi nella poesia di Eugenio Montale (Giulio Perrone 2011) and the editor of the anthology of texts: Giacomo Leopardi, Il gusto. Bellezza, sapori, mondanità nello Zibaldone (Edizioni Estemporanee 2015). He has published several studies on Leopardi’s poetry and philosophical vocabulary, as well as on the intertextual relationship between Dante and Primo Levi. He also works on social media, cinema, and TV series, and he edited the volume Figure della serialità televisiva (Bevivino 2010).

Acknowledgements

Our thanks are due to the editors of the Warwick Series in the Humanities, for having welcomed the idea of this book, and to all the contributors, for their careful work, enthusiasm, and collaboration. We also would like to thank Katherine Astbury, Michael Caesar, Francesco ­Giusti, Elsa Richardson, and Susannah Wilson, for their feedbacks and invaluable help in preparing the text for publication; Frances Clemente and Joseph Shafer, for their support during the finalization of this volume; and David Lines, for his advice and assistance with the preparation of the book proposal. This research was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie S­ klodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 660528. The idea of this book was first inspired by Mesmerized! – a series of seminars and workshops that took place at the University of Warwick (5–12 May 2017) and addressed the practice of mesmerism as a point of departure for exploring some of the themes related to the emergence of the notion of the unconscious. We therefore would like to warmly thank all the speakers and participants to that event, in particular Iwona Janicka, Cecilia Muratori, Martina Piperno, and Mariano Tomatis, for the opportunity to discuss, at their early stage, some of the matters covered in this volume, and the University of Warwick’s Institute of Advanced Studies, Connecting Culture GRP, and Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning, who kindly supported our initiative. Our thanks are also due to the Leopardi Centre at Birmingham, for having hosted the first launch for this book during the workshop Literature and Psychology. Italian Perspectives (University of Birmingham, 18 June 2018), organized in collaboration with the Laboratorio Leopardi (Università ‘La Sapienza’ di Roma) and generously sponsored by the Cesare Barbieri Endowment (Trinity College, Hartford CN, USA) and the Dante Society at Birmingham.

Introduction Alessandra Aloisi and Fabio Camilletti

We write nineteenth-century. We love nineteenth-century. We vote nineteenth-­century. We film, we paint, we write nineteenth-­century. We are afraid of being nineteenth-century. We rejoice if others are. We have nineteenth-century references, nineteenth-century taste, nineteenth-­century aesthetics. We hope, sing, torment and despair nineteenth-century. Philippe Muray, Le XIXe siècle à travers les âges

Freudian Slips In its threefold aspect of therapeutic practice, psychopathological investigation, and metapsychological theory – the three components whose coexistence only allows to properly speak of ‘psychoanalysis’ in the Freudian understanding of the term1 – the psychoanalytic discourse has a specific date and a place of birth: Vienna in the fin de siècle.2 According to this narrative, repeatedly reiterated across the twentieth century, psychoanalysis would come out from the intersection of several concurrent, interdependent phenomena: Sigmund Freud’s own clinical practice as a physician; Freud’s and Joseph Breuer’s work with hysterical patients, and most notably with ‘Anna O.’ (Bertha Pappenheim), culminating in their acknowledgement that hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences3; and a series of misfortunes – from the death of Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow in 1891, after Freud prescribed him cocaine, to the passing of Freud’s father Jacob in 1896 – leading to Freud’s self-analysis and the laboratory of The Interpretation of Dreams (1899).4 Once narrativized as such, the discipline’s discourse ends up in entirely coinciding with Freud’s own biographical parabola: in other words, as Ernest Jones puts it, ‘the basic history of psychoanalysis is the account of how it grew in Freud’s own mind, for Freud developed its concepts all by himself’.5 Recent scholarship, however, has highlighted how the psychoanalytic discourse has a more ramified genealogy, examining Freud’s connections with the broader cultural environment of his own time as well as the historical, cultural influences feeding his work.6 Concerning this last aspect, there seem to be three principal currents of Western thought whose intersection contributes to shaping Freud’s invention.7

2  Alessandra Aloisi and Fabio Camilletti The first one is the cultural syncretism of Jewish-German culture and the cultural apogee it reached from the mid-nineteenth century to the rise of National Socialism, against the background of Mitteleuropa and its most refined civilization: the ‘spiritual synthesis unique in its kind’, in Michael Löwy’s terms, ‘which gave the world Heine and Marx, Freud and Kafka, Ernst Bloch and Walter Benjamin’.8 Once annihilated by the criminal apparatus of the Third Reich, the defeated generation to which Freud belonged (together with, among others, Walter Benjamin, Aby Warburg, and Sabina Spielrein) was to be posthumously betrayed by a cultural context that was unable, or unwilling, to inherit its legacy. James Strachey’s English translation of Freud’s works, on which the majority of translations in other languages (including Italian) are based, is a patent example of the domestication undergone by Freud’s thought, as well as by its ‘profoundly, “organically” and inseparably Judeo-Germanic’ framework, once revisited by the compartmentalization of Anglo-­A merican academic tradition and its aversion towards figurative language.9 The second is the legacy of German psychology and its exploration of the ‘unconscious’ – intended here as an inaccessible area of the human mind, subtracted to the control of rational will – in the Romantic age, at the intersection between the post-Kantian philosophy of Friedrich Schelling, the natural philosophy of Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, and the coeval literature of the circle of Jena, including Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis, ‘out of and alongside a concern with mesmerism and animal magnetism’.10 Between the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, in German-speaking countries, ‘psychology grew from a minor branch of philosophical doctrine into one of the central pillars of intellectual culture’.11 Among the consequences of this process, we witness an increased porosity of different disciplinary discourses to suggestions coming from the psychological field; and, conversely, a more accentuated metapsychological vocation of the discipline itself. Freud’s propensity to broaden the scope of psychoanalysis beyond the medical sphere, and the numerous literary references underpinning his work since The Interpretation of Dreams (Sophocles, Shakespeare, Goethe, and the Classicism of Weimar) are arguably to be understood with reference to this cultural genealogy. And it is perhaps no accidental that Freud’s first explicit incursion in the field of aesthetics – the essay on The Uncanny of 1919 – is built on an analysis of a tale by Hoffmann, namely one of the authors that are most influenced by psychological themes.12 The third current is the tradition of French psychiatry, originating in eighteenth-century hybridizations of medicine, psychology, neurological physiology, and mesmerism, and culminating in Jean-Martin Charcot’s work with the hysteric patients at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. Alongside with German psychology, and largely independently from it, French psychiatry developed a theory of passions and a symptomatological

Introduction  3 approach to hysteria that would find its way into the literary field.13 Works such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761) or Denis Diderot’s La Religieuse (1796) employ the description of bodily symptoms to signify mental suffering, thereby paving the way to ­Charcot’s theory that hysterical convulsion signifies, in a metaphor-like way, the reminiscence of a past trauma.14 The influence of such a current is not only circumscribed to Freud’s stay in Paris of 1885–1886, from whence he incorporated Charcot’s methods in his practice, but first and foremost in the shape he would give to the written outcomes of his work: the theatricality of Freud’s case studies is intimately indebted to Charcot’s sense of ‘dramatic unity’ and ‘scenography’,15 which was, in turn, shaped by aesthetic debates on the portrayal of passions in French theatre and novel-writing.

Freud, Italy, and More From these three currents, Italy remains at large isolated, for reasons that are historical, cultural, and geopolitical. Although historically perceived by foreign writers and travellers through ‘Meridionist’ lenses,16 and therefore as a pre-modern location plagued by superstition and irrationalism,17 Italian-speaking culture, from the Renaissance onwards, has always viewed itself as innately ‘rational’ – which explains, among other consequences, the well-known ‘resistances’ psychoanalysis and its understanding of the ‘unconscious’ met when entering the Italian domain, as reconstructed by Michel David.18 Within a context of political and linguistic deterritorialization, in the absence of a unified nation, Italian thinkers and writers historically conceptualized Italianness at the encounter between the legacy of Classical antiquity, Catholic religion, and philosophical rationalism, thereby rooting cultural identity in the worship of aesthetic ‘measure’, the refusal of superstition, and philosophical/theological rigour. Ragione/ratio (‘reason’, but also ‘rationale’, and even ‘method’ in a Cartesian sense)19 is here to be intended as the guiding, normative principle underpinning, at large, the discursive practices of the West – including the logical-philosophical, the theological, the cognitive-psychological, the ethical-moral, and even the one of aesthetics. And its contrary, ‘unreason’, comes to denote – in Michel Foucault’s terms – a variety of phenomena, from magic to folly, bizarrerie, and incorrect reasoning.20 Irrationalism can, thus, coincide with a form of fallacy, incorrect philosophical premise, and – more broadly – incorrect thinking or misinterpretation, including heresy and superstition as opposed to religion; with a form of deviation from Cartesian models of subjectivity, and therefore as a surrender to passions, desires, bodily drives, and involuntary operations of the mind, including distraction, fantasy, imagination, dream, somnambulism, mental disease, hysteria, and uncontrolled impulses;

4  Alessandra Aloisi and Fabio Camilletti and with a form of subversion of aesthetic normativity (normally (Neo) Classical), leading to disproportion, absence of measure, lack of taste, excess, marvel, absurdity, or horror. All these senses are present in Giovanni Vincenzo Gravina’s Della ragion poetica, of 1708: in providing a literary manifesto to the anti-­ Baroque reaction of the Academy of Arcadia, Gravina postulates ‘reason’ as the guiding principle, norm, and rationale of poetic praxis, but also as the characterizing trait of Italian mind and taste. Throughout the long eighteenth century, ragione is progressively constructed as the pivot of philosophical, conceptual, ideological, and aesthetic normativity. As such, it shows itself a powerful concept for grasping the intrinsic homology of different cultural phenomena: the impact on Italian culture of René Descartes’s, John Locke’s (via Francesco Soave), and later Étienne de Condillac’s philosophical/psychological theories, determining the pre-eminence of cognitive approaches and a problematized approach to the exploration of the ‘unconscious’ side of mind; the reclaiming of classical antiquity as the characterizing feature of Italy’s specificity; the incessant battle against superstition in the name of reason 21; the ideal of ‘measure’ and the refusal of ‘excess’ in literature and the arts, concretizing itself in the repeated rejection (or filtered assimilation) of trends such as the German Sturm und Drang, British and French ‘Sentimental’ novels, and Romanticism, as well as of their portrayal of passions.22 All these phenomena can be seen as facets of a broader process, addressing and polarizing Italian culture according to a fixed narrative, and underlying discourses of national identity, in a fluid moment when the notion itself of Italy undergoes a deep change, from a primarily linguistic, geographical, and ethnic understanding of the term to its ‘Romantic’ refashioning in the decades following the Napoleonic Wars, when the term comes to denote a nation.23 From this viewpoint, the relationship between Italians and the ‘rational’ is connected to the historically shifting boundaries of ‘Italy’, in that discourses on the ‘irrational’ entail broader reflection in terms of cultural geography, in particular in opposition against ‘Central’, ‘Northern’, and ‘Eastern’ Europe(s). The Classicist/ Romantic quarrel of 1816–1827 is a fundamental step in this process: over the course of it, one of the principal features dividing Northern ‘Romantic’ literatures from the Italian one is identified in the exacerbated ‘psychologism’ exhibited by the former, as well as its tendency to indulge in the representation of uncontrolled, irrationalist passions and drives.24 At the same time, the ‘Italian way to Romanticism’, of which Manzoni is seen from the beginning as the epitome and champion, configures Italianness as a peculiar way of reconciling tradition and revolution, national tradition and foreign influences, according at the same time a special privilege to the first terms of these dichotomies.25 Particularly this last cliché has determined (and still determines) misrepresented accounts of Italian modernity as a failed and somewhat incomplete transition, and at the same time as a case study displaying the intrinsic contradictions of

Introduction  5 modernity as a whole.26 Pre-Risorgimento discourses on Italian identity configure ‘Italianness’, at least since the Napoleonic age, as a tendency to reconcile tradition and innovation, but also as a propensity to drain, thanks to the weight of its historical legacy, the potentially dangerous drives of ‘Northern’ forms of knowledge and discursive practices.27 This trait remains unaltered even in the twentieth century, when ‘irrational’ – a modern coinage – emerges as a portmanteau employed by the Italian cultural establishment (no matter whether coming from Marxist, Idealistic, or Catholic backgrounds) in order to condemn potentially threatening intellectual drives, from an ideological, logical, and ethical point of view. 28 The label of ‘irrationalism’, originally a philosophical concept derived from Lukács’s The Destruction of Reason of 1954 (but often coupled with terms borrowed from literary history such as ‘Romanticism’ and ‘Decadentism’, with ambiguous expressions such as ‘mysticism’, or even with ‘Fascism’) invested a broad range of disciplines, domains, and cultural experiences, determining phenomena of rejection, ostracism, or intellectual manipulation. Disciplines that were perceived to be intrinsically ‘irrationalist’ included, for example, ethnography and history of religions, 29 or folklore (see the caveats pervading Carlo Ginzburg’s I benandanti and Storia notturna).30 The label could also be applied to individual thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche (Giorgio Colli’s critical edition of Nietzsche’s works, projected since 1945, was ostracized until 1964), 31 to literary genres such as the Gothic (described by Italo Calvino, as late as in 1984, as intrinsically alien to Italian sensibility), 32 and even to geographically determined textual bodies, as happened with Central European literature.33 In later decades, even after the publication of such seminal work as Aldo Gargani’s Crisi della ragione in 1979, 34 the sphere of ‘irrationalism’ would also provide a terminological framework for expressing, normally in derogatory terms, Italy’s foreignness to intellectually threatening trends such as Post-­Modernism or Deconstruction. And, of course, psychoanalysis – perhaps the ‘irrationalist’ discourse par excellence for twentieth-century Italian culture. It is not accidental, if seen from this angle, that psychoanalysis enters Italy from a zone, such as Trieste, placed in a liminal position with the Mitteleuropa; and that its first recognized high-brow literary ­manifestation – Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno (1923) – takes places under the guise of irony, by the means of a novel that introduces psychoanalysis while deconstructing it at the same time.

Towards an Archaeological Theory of the Unconscious This book adopts a different perspective. Starting from the idea that Freud retrospectively polarized a pre-existing field of investigation, it attempts an archaeological inquiry concerning the notion of the unconscious: an inquiry aimed at highlighting, in their complexity, the different and multiform configurations of this notion before the advent of

6  Alessandra Aloisi and Fabio Camilletti psychoanalysis. The adoption of an archaeological perspective allows us to avoid the two major risks inherent in any reconstruction having as its object the history of ideas: the search for an alleged point of origin and the implicit presupposition of the concept as we know it today as the point of arrival of a continuous cultural evolution. Our study does not look for the origin of the notion of the unconscious, nor does it see the Freudian concept of Unbewussten as the culmination of a historical process. On the contrary, in line with the theorization undertaken by Michel Foucault in his seminal work on the Archaeology of Knowledge, 35 we rather investigate the progressive formation and stratification of this field of inquiry, through the sedimentation of different intellectual paths which do not necessarily tend to Freudian unconscious in a teleological way. Viewed through an archaeological perspective, the notion of the unconscious reveals itself to be historically much more stratified, multiform, and composite than it appears when only considered within the narrative that culminates in psychoanalysis. If the use of the term ‘unconscious’ is established, in its substantive form, only at the end of the nineteenth century, the field of investigation that it designates gradually took shape, in the previous centuries, through a complex conceptual landscape and a vibrant network of ideas, discourses, and practices which were not completely absorbed in Freud’s synthesis and systematization. 36 Let us just think, for example, of the reception and development of Locke’s and Leibniz’s philosophies over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when they gave rise to ways of conceiving the unconscious which were alternative to the paradigm then followed by psychoanalysis. If the Lockean idea of the mind as a tabula rasa prepared the ground for the theorization, within the context of sensationism, of a model of ‘horizontal fragmentation’ of the self which was different from the ‘vertical fragmentation’ promoted by Freud, 37 Leibniz is the founder, with his theory of ‘small perceptions’, of the idea of a purely perceptive, material unconscious, which will be continued in particular by Maine de Biran and will know significant developments in French philosophy. 38 It is also worth mentioning the varied domain of studies examining altered states of consciousness, such as dreams, somnambulism, and mental illnesses, which received, at the turn of the century, new impulses with mesmerism and the practice of hypnosis. This will pave the way not only for Freud, via Charcot, but also for Alfred Binet, Théodule Ribot, and Pierre Janet, 39 whose theories will inform, at the intersection between medicine, philosophy, and literature, the description of a series of mental phenomena and psychological processes ascribable to the sphere of the unconscious, such as involuntary memory, instincts, habits, automatisms, or distraction.40 This heterogeneous and segmented field, which is constituted before and independently of psychoanalytic knowledge, finds in Italy a formidable

Introduction  7 ground of elaboration and experimentation. Precisely because, for political and geographical reasons, it was excluded from cultural processes taking place in other countries, the peninsula represented, during the long nineteenth century, an ideal laboratory for the circulation and contamination of ideas and intellectual paths which were started elsewhere but in Italy knew eclectic variations and revealed potentials remained unexplored in other contexts. What Roberto Esposito has observed, in general, about the unexpected resources of Italian thought, holds true, even more so in this case.41 Precisely what at first seems a brake factor or a historical, political, and linguistic lack – the presence of ecclesiastical power, the absence of a strong and consolidated political institution, the continuous redistribution of borders, and the lack of a specific v­ ocabulary42 – proves to be a strong point because it determines the development of heterodox paths, which cannot be systematized and follow another logic. From this standpoint, not only does it become possible to speak of unconscious in Italy, but, thanks to its heterogeneity with respect to the Freudian paradigm, Italian culture of the long nineteenth century also proves be more equipped than others to respond to the challenge that cognitive sciences are launching today to psychoanalytic knowledge.43 Unlike what happened in other contexts, in Italy the notion of the unconscious emerged through a plurality of discourses, languages, and paradigms that cannot be traced back to a single path which incorporates and dissolves them. All these discourses, codes, and paradigms turn out to be indeed significant precisely because of their mutual difference and lack of unity. This plurality of discourses and experiences remains differently localized and localizable, both in geographical terms, due to the lack of a capital that functioned as a cultural centre, and in disciplinary terms, as it often took shape in the areas of overlapping and contamination between the medical, philosophical, and literary fields, or following alternative, unofficial channels, such as magazines and popular literature. This is why, in conducting an archaeology of the unconscious in Italy, it is important to keep firm the semantic distinction between ‘territory’ and ‘nation’, according to a crucial difference already highlighted by Roberto Esposito when defining the contours and specificity of Italian thought within the framework of European philosophy.44 The characteristics of the territory should not be confused with those of the nation. We have seen above how the classic ideal of rationality and balance, which made Italian culture impervious to certain cultural processes taking place in the rest of Europe (romanticism, psychoanalysis, etc.), belonged to the semantics of the nation. It was part of a rhetoric that attempted to construct and establish, on an ideal plane, a unity and an identity that de facto did non-exist on the political level. Our investigation gravitates completely beyond this national and nationalist horizon and looks at the Italian difference not in terms of nation, but of territory. We will see how the multiform and stratified field of investigation which is the object of

8  Alessandra Aloisi and Fabio Camilletti our study often takes shape in Italy in a segmented and intermittent way, on the borders of that ideal of reason, measure, and balance that, from the Renaissance onwards, has informed Italian national identity in the philosophical, aesthetic, and literary fields. The volume includes eleven chapters, covering a time span that largely coincides with the long nineteenth century: that is to say, from the 1770s, the decade witnessing the circulation and reception of Locke’s ideas in Italy through the mediation of Pietro Verri and Francesco Soave, to the immediate aftermath of the Great War, when Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno provides Italy with its first example of ‘psychoanalytic novel’. These chronological confines encompass the broad parabola of the birth of modern Italy, from the Enlightenment to the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, from Risorgimento to political unification, and from the birth of the nation-state in the late nineteenth century to the war and Fascism (Svevo’s novel appears in 1923, one year after Mussolini’s march on Rome). Throughout this age, political fragmentation and turmoil made Italy a unique laboratory for the sedimentation, circulation, intersection, and synergy of different cultural, philosophical, and literary traditions, such as Enlightenment, Catholicism, sensationism, idéologie, mesmerism, vitalism, Romanticism, occultism, Marxism, and Idealism. The opening chapters by Sabrina Ferri and Alessandra Aloisi discuss the multifaceted presence and theorization of unconscious mental dynamics in the psychological and philosophical discourses of the Italian Enlightenment. Ferri’s Uneasy Sensibility examines Pietro Verri’s Discourse on the Nature of Pleasure and Pain (1773–1781), showing how Verri, by rejecting the idea that the self is fully knowable, proposes a theory of ideas and sensations whose origin eludes the grasp of reflection. In her Francesco Soave and the Unconscious of the Somnambulist, Alessandra Aloisi takes as her starting point Francesco Soave’s commented translation of Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding (1775), demonstrating how this extremely layered and complex text is not only a case study in the reception of Locke but also a paradigmatic example of the way notions such as somnambulism found their way into Italian thought. The following three chapters, in different ways, relate to the ‘Three Crowns’ of Italian Romanticism: Foscolo, Manzoni, and Leopardi. In Jacopo’s Secret, Franco D’Intino draws a comparison of Foscolo’s The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse, in order to show how Foscolo’s novel conceals a hidden subpath, questioning the claimed ‘sincerity’ of the protagonist’s confessions. Andrea Malagamba’s At the Frontiers of Dreams examines Freud’s oneiric dynamics in the light of texts belonging to the Italian literary tradition, including Dante’s Vita Nuova and Manzoni’s I Promessi sposi. Finally, in his Leopardi’s Night (T)errors, the Uncanny, and the ‘Old Wives’ Tales’, Fabio Camilletti reconstructs the genealogy of a passage appearing in Leopardi’s juvenile essay on the ‘popular errors’ of the

Introduction  9 ancients, reinstating Leopardi’s text within the broader framework of post-Enlightenment discourses on superstition and fear. The essays by Paola Cori and Morena Corradi adopt a wider focus, ideally creating a bridge between pre- and post-Unification Italian culture in the light of ‘magnetism’ and its relation to the unconscious. On the one hand, Cori’s Italian Mesmerism addresses the controversial overlapping of magnetic and religious imagery in Italian culture through the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, showing how religion met the needs of compensating for the lack of rigorous terminology and conceptualization associated with the unconscious-related discourses. Corradi’s chapter on Magnetism and the Self in Post-Unification Italy, on the other hand, examines the way magnetism permeates late nineteenth-­century Italian culture, highlighting how the various declinations of magnetism speak to the tensions between rationality and the unconscious, science and pseudoscience, secular state and religion in post-1860 Italy. The symbolic year 1899 ideally brings together the book’s ninth and tenth chapters, respectively, by Fabrizio Foni and Irene Incarico and by Sara Boezio. In Drawing-Room Shivers, Foni and Incarico examine the role played by Sunday magazine La Domenica del Corriere – first published in 1899 – in disseminating occult-related topics: phenomena such as mediumship, telepathy, and clairvoyance, alongside captivating the audiences’ interest, also contributed to questioning the stability of the subject as conceptualized by Positivist psychology. 1899 was also the year witnessing the publication of Sante De Sanctis’s I Sogni, being the object of Boezio’s essay. Appearing at the same time as Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, De Sanctis’s book can be seen as an alternative, unfollowed pathway in the exploration of the oneiric realm, aiming to found a new semiology of dreams, coupled with a nosography of various forms of mental disease. The two closing essays by Olmo Calzolari and Alessandra Diazzi eventually deal with Italo Svevo, the first Italian author to explicitly use psychoanalysis in his literary works. In Metamorphosis and Nightmare, Calzolari adopts a ‘diffractive reading’ to Leopardi’s Elogio degli uccelli and Svevo’s Rapporti difficili, suggesting Svevo’s combined reading of Leopardi and Freud and exploring, at the same time, the presence of Leopardi’s negative philosophy within the context of Italian modernism. Diazzi’s Is There an Unconscious in This Text? directly challenges La coscienza di Zeno, arguing that Italy’s first psychoanalytic novel, rather than representing the dominion of the unconscious dimension over the Ego, seems instead to enact the protagonist’s conscious rethinking of his own life. Svevo’s book appears, therefore, as a first attempt to transform psychoanalysis’ inward twist into an extroverted discourse, a tendency that would recur in most of the approaches to Freud’s teaching in Italy. This, however, would be a quite different story, although perhaps not completely unrelated to the complexity of influences that this book’s archaeological outlook attempts to reconstruct. Our hope is that this book,

10  Alessandra Aloisi and Fabio Camilletti ending where others begin, may not only shed some light on its direct, explicit object – Italian culture of the long nineteenth century – but also contribute to discussion concerning Italy’s troubled relationship with the irrational from a solider historical perspective, beyond the toxic ideologization of twentieth-century debates.

Notes 1 Elio Gioanola, ‘Psicanalisi e critica letteraria’, in Freud and Italian Culture, ed. by Pierluigi Barrotta and Laura Lepschy, with Emma Bond (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 9–30 (p. 9). 2 On the environment surrounding the genesis of Freudian psychoanalysis see Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1979). 3 Sigmund Freud and Joseph Breuer, ‘Preliminary Communication’ (1893), in Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, ed. by James Strachey, 24 vols. (London: The Hogarth Press, ­1953–1974), vol. II, pp. 3–17 (p. 7). 4 Matt ffytche, The Foundation of the Unconscious. Schelling, Freud and the Birth of the Modern Psyche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 1. 5 Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (London: Penguin, 1964), p. 12. 6 Eli Zaretsky, Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychonalysis (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004) and George Makari, Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis (London: Gerald Duckworth, 2008) focus primarily on Freud in the context of fin-de-siècle culture; ffytche, The Foundation of the Unconscious examines psychoanalysis from a historical angle. 7 See also the incredibly rich and deep analysis of Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious. The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (London: Fontana Press, 1994). 8 Michael Löwy, Redemption and Utopia. Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe: A Study in Elective Affinity, transl. by Hope Heanery ­(London: Verso, 2017), p. 1. 9 Löwy, Redemption and Utopia, p. 1. On the philological problems posed by Freud’s texts and the necessity to move beyond Strachey, see Lydia Marinelli and Andreas Mayer, Träume nach Freud: Die ‘Traumdeutung’ und die Geschichte der psychoanalytischen Bewegung (Vienna & Berlin: Turia + Kant, 2009). 10 ffytche, The Foundation of the Unconscious, pp. 2–3. 11 Matthew Bell, The German Tradition of Psychology in Literature and Thought, 1700–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 1. 12 Ibid., pp. 194–207. 13 Sabine Arnaud, L’Invention de l’hystérie au temps des Lumières (1670– 1820) (Paris: Éditions EHESS, 2014). 14 ‘All the efforts of pathological anatomy in the nineteenth century were not only directed toward configuring the illness through a distribution of symptoms, but also and above all to subsuming this configuration: to localizing the essence of the ill’ (Georges Didi-Huberman, Invention of Hysteria. Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of Salpêtrière, transl. by Alisa Hartz (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003), p. 71). 15 Ibid., p. 135. 16 See Roberto M. Dainotto, Europe (in Theory) (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2007), pp. 52–86.

Introduction  11 17 See Robert Casillo, The Empire of Stereotypes: Germaine de Staël and the Idea of Italy (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006 and Attilio Brilli, Un paese di romantici briganti. Gli italiani nell’immaginario del Grand Tour (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003). 18 Cf. Michel David, La psicoanalisi nella cultura italiana (Turin: Boringhieri, 1966). 19 Giambattista Vico, Opere, ed. by Andrea Battistini, 2 vols. (Milan: ­Mondadori, 1990), vol. II, p. 1325. 20 Michel Foucault, History of Madness, ed. by Jean Khalfa, transl. by Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa (New York and London Routledge, 2006). 21 Mario Rosa, ‘Lumi, stregoneria e magia nell’Italia del Settecento’, in Storia d’Italia. Annali 25. Esoterismo, ed. by Gian Mario Cazzaniga (Turin: ­Einaudi, 2010), pp, 359–375. 22 Giovanna Gronda, Le passioni della ragione: studi sul Settecento (Pisa: Pacini, 1984). 23 Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento. Parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell’Italia unita (Turin: Einaudi, 2006) p. 7. 24 In his Discorso di un italiano intorno alla poesia romantica, of 1818, Giacomo Leopardi opposes the ancient poets to the Romantic ones: ‘gli effetti della sensibilità, come gl’imitavano gli antichi naturalmente, così gl’imitano i romantici e i pari loro snaturatissimamente. Imitavano gli antichi […] schiettamente e, possiamo dire, innocentemente, ingenuamente, scrivendo non come chi si contempla e rivolge e tasta e fruga e spreme e penetra il cuore, ma come chi riceve il dettato di esso cuore e così lo pone in carta senza molto o punto considerarlo’ (Giacomo Leopardi, Discorso di un italiano intorno alla poesia romantica, ed. by Rosita Copioli (Milan: Bur, 1998), p. 132, my emphases) [the effects of sensitivity, as they were imitated naturally by the ancients, similarly, the Romantics and their peers imitate them wholly unnaturally. The ancients imitated these and other natural things, with a divine nonchalance and sprezzatura, frankly and, we may say, innocently, ingenuously even, writing not like one who contemplates himself, turning and groping and searching and squeezing and penetrating its own heart, but like one who receives a dictation from this heart, and exactly in that way writes it down without much care or consideration, if any at all]. The English translation comes from Giacomo Leopardi, ‘Discourse of an Italian on Romantic Poetry’, transl. by Gabrielle Sims and Fabio Camilletti, in Fabio Camilletti, Classicism and Romanticism in Italian Literature: Leopardi’s Discourse on Romantic Poetry (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), pp. 113–173 (p. 153). 25 Bollati, ‘L’italiano’, in Id., L’Italiano. Il carattere nazionale come storia e come invenzione (Turin: Einaudi, 2011), pp. 35–127 (pp. 78–79). 26 Joseph Luzzi, Romantic Europe and the Ghost of Italy (New Haven & ­London: Yale University Press, 2008) and Sabrina Ferri, Ruins past: modernity in Italy, 1744–1836 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 27 Fabio Camilletti, ‘“Timore” e “terrore” nella polemica classico-romantica: l’Italia e il ripudio del gotico’, Italian Studies, 69(2) (2014), 231–245 and Id., Classicism and Romanticism. On the same topic see also Alessandra Aloisi, ‘Una macchina dal nome infernale in arrivo da un paese romantico’, Intersezioni. Rivista di storia delle idee, n. 2, 2017 (August), 163–183. 28 Gianni Vattimo, ‘Irrazionalismo, storicismo, egemonia’, in Norberto Bobbio et al., La cultura filosofica italiana dal 1945 al 1980 (Naples: Guida, 1982), pp. 263–283. 29 See the exchange of letters between Cesare Pavese and Ernesto De Martino, La collana viola: lettere, 1945–1950, ed. by Pietro Angelini (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1991).

12  Alessandra Aloisi and Fabio Camilletti 30 Carlo Ginzburg, I benandanti. Ricerche sulla stregoneria e sui culti agrari tra Cinquecento e Seicento (Turin: Einaudi, 1966) and Id., Storia notturna. Una decifrazione del sabba (Turin: Einaudi, 1989). 31 For a detailed chronology see the webpage of the Archivio Giorgio Colli in Florence: online, www.giorgiocolli.it/it/editoria/nietzsche-colli-montinari [accessed 14 January 2016]. 32 Italo Calvino, ‘Il fantastico nella letteratura italiana’ (1984), now in Id., Mondo scritto e mondo non scritto (Milan: Mondadori, 2002), pp. 219–30. 33 Roberto Calasso, ‘I libri unici’, in Id., L’impronta dell’editore (Milan: Adelphi, 2013), pp. 13–76 (pp. 13–14). 34 Aldo Gargani (ed.), Crisi della ragione. Nuovi modelli nel rapporto tra sapere e attività umane (Turin: Einaudi, 1979). 35 See Michel Foucault, Archéologie du savoir (1969), transl. by A. M. Sheridan Smith, Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language (New York: Pantheon Books, 1971), in which Foucault described and assessed the methodology adopted in his previous historical works: History of Madness (1961); Naissance de la clinique: une archéologie du regard médical (1963), transl. by A. M. Sheridan Smith, The Birth of the Clinic: an Archaeology of Medical Perception (New York: Vintage Books, 1994); and Les mots et les choses: une archéologie des sciences humaines (1966), The Order of Things: an Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York and London Routledge, 2002). 36 See, for instance, Jacques Rancière, L’inconscient esthétique (2001), transl. by Debra Keates and James Swenson, The Aesthetic Unconscious (Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2009). 37 Jan Goldstein, The Post-Revolutionary Self, Politics and Psyche in France (1750–1850) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). 38 Fernand Vial, The Unconscious in Philosophy, and French and European Literature (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2009), pp. 81–104. 39 See Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious. By the same authors, see also: Beyond the Unconscious: Essays of Henri F. Ellenberger in the History of Psychiatry, ed. by Mark S. Micale (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 40 See Michal R. Finn, Figures of the Pre-Freudian Unconscious from Flaubert to Proust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 41 Roberto Esposito, Pensiero vivente. Origine e attualità della filosofia italiana (2010), transl. by Z. Hanafi, Living Thought: The Origins and Actuality of Italian Philosophy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012). 42 The use of the term ‘inconscio’ is established quite late in the Italian vocabulary. In the dictionary of La Crusca, the adjective appears for the first time only in the 5th editions (1863–1923), as a calque from the Latin inconscious, and is considered a ‘voce di nobile linguaggio’ [term belonging to a high language]. 43 See, among others, John F. Kihlstrom, ‘The Cognitive Unconscious’, Science, 237, 1445–1452, Timothy D. Wilson, Stranger to Ourselves, Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2002), Ran R. Hassin, James S. Uleman, and John H. Bargh (eds.), The New Unconscious (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 4 4 See Esposito, Living Thought, pp. 14–15.

1 Uneasy Sensibility Pietro Verri on Pain and Pleasure Sabrina Ferri

In 1773 the Milanese intellectual Pietro Verri (1728–1797) anonymously published a treatise on the origins of human pleasure and pain entitled Idee sull’indole del piacere e del dolore. A few years later, in 1781, a significantly revised version appeared with the title Discorso sull’indole del piacere e del dolore, as part of a collection of philosophical works that included discourses on happiness and political economy.1 Verri’s research into the origins of the feelings of pleasure and pain situated itself within a field of enquiry dominated by two approaches: the empiricism of John Locke and David Hume and the sensationism of Étienne de Condillac, Claude Helvétius, and the writers of the Encyclopédie. His enquiry was stimulated not only by a declared dissatisfaction with the answers provided by the philosophical tradition that had preceded him but also by a desire for self-knowledge, rooted both in the humanistic ideal of defining the essence of human nature and in the Enlightenment assumption that the human mind is a stable point of departure for all knowledge. The Discorso develops a theory of negative hedonism, which explains pleasure as the rapid cessation of pain. Verri argues that pain is always an active emotion, and pleasure, as a response to the absence of pain, a negative one. The conclusion of his enquiry is that pain always exceeds pleasure in the life of human beings and that it is the principal motor of our actions, since we act to make pain cease, rather than to seek pleasure. By focussing on the dynamic of pain and pleasure, Verri sheds light on what Immanuel Kant would call the ‘economy of human life’: the reasons that stimulate us to act, the moral considerations affecting our choices, and the ethical dimensions of pain and pleasure. 2 The first paragraph of the Introduction, though, immediately reveals a tension in the essay between a rationalistic faith in the knowability of human passions and the elusiveness of the object of study. In the interpretation of human sensibility, defined as ‘il grande arcano’ [the great mystery],3 lies the key to self-knowledge. The workings of sensibility, however, which Verri calls ‘la parte preziosa dell’uomo’ [the precious part of human beings],4 are shrouded in ‘tenebre’ [darkness].5 Relying on the commonality of human experience, Verri sets out to shed light on these hidden mechanisms of feeling and proposes to identify the common

14  Sabrina Ferri features of both painful and pleasurable sensations through a process of decomposition, or reduction to the simplest elements, and comparison.6 Verri’s method was inspired by Condillac’s esprit systématique [systematic spirit].7 This empiricist approach consisted in a combination of analysis and synthesis: after identifying and isolating the basic parts of the object under observation, each part was to be compared with another and the results were to be arranged in a scientific explanation. The method was based on principles of simplicity and obviousness, which were not only rational but also, in Condillac’s opinion, consonant with the way in which the human mind worked. Condillac, after all, was indebted to Descartes and underlying his method was the idea of a relative transparency of the mind. Over the course of Verri’s enquiry, however, the analytic rationalism of the philosophes is pushed to its limits on several occasions. At the beginning of the Discorso, Verri presents direct self-­observation as a reliable strategy to illustrate the mechanisms of sensibility. Ultimately, though, his investigation fails to shed full light either on the confused origins of passions or on the complex workings of memory. Memory, in particular, emerges as something that often functions not only independently of the will but also against it. Time and again, Verri makes clear that, against common opinion, we do not have immediate and certain access to our sensations or mental states. His account of human psychology highlights the self’s ultimate opaqueness to itself: the sense of a concealed dynamic of pleasure and pain, the unpredictability of memory, and sentiments whose origins are impervious to the rational mind. Each of these aspects will be central to later psychoanalytic theories and discourses about the unconscious. In this essay, I read Verri’s Discorso in the context of eighteenth-century theories of the mind and by placing it in dialogue with Verri’s accounts of his experiences in his autobiographical writings and letters. I aim to demonstrate how Verri, working within Enlightenment epistemological categories, sketches an account of the self and of the human mind that shows an awareness of unconscious mental processes. The inception of a concern with such processes has been connected with the emergence in Europe of new accounts of individual identity.8 During the eighteenth century, the perception that thinking and consciousness coincide and the idea that memory is an uncomplicated process of recollection begin to give way to new modes of conceiving of the self, according to which the self is not always a conscious and willing agent. My purpose, though, is not to trace lines of filiation with psychoanalysis, but rather to bring to light how, in his enquiry into human passions, Verri comes to confront problems that are similar to those that will define new theories of the mind in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Throughout the Discorso, Verri is in dialogue with the thinkers and philosophers who preceded him. His first interlocutor is John Locke who, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), asserted

Uneasy Sensibility  15 that pleasure and pain are ‘the hinges on which our passions turn’.9 Verri frames his essay with a binary conception of the affections of the soul: pain and pleasure are the two pillars on which to found an analysis of human sensibility. In addition to Locke, Verri engages with major theorists of pleasure, such as René Descartes and Pierre-Louis de Maupertuis.10 His dialogue, in fact, also develops in response to the questions raised by Maupertuis’s arithmetic of pleasure.11 In his Essai de Philosophie Morale (1749), Maupertuis argued, from a sensationist perspective, that it should be possible to measure exactly both the duration and the intensity of pleasure and pain experienced by an individual.12 He specified that while the duration of pleasure or pain is objectively quantifiable, the intensity is subjective. Since both duration and intensity, however, depend on natural judgement, the calculation retains an objective validity.13 According to Maupertuis, then, the relative happiness or unhappiness of a person can be measured by multiplying the intensity of either pleasure or pain by its duration.14 By proceeding more matematico, Maupertuis linked pleasure and pain not only with the ideas of happiness and unhappiness but also with two other quantifiables, the good and the bad: ‘Le bien est une somme de moments heureux. Le mal est une somme semblable de moments malheureux’ [the good is a sum of happy moments. The bad is an analogous sum of unhappy moments].15 Maupertuis concluded that both in the case of the body and in that of the soul, the sum of evils surpasses the good in everyday life.16 He thought that both Epicureanism and Stoicism were ways of coping with this surplus of pain in human life: the former responded to the natural need of increasing pleasure, while the latter offered ways of managing pain. He concluded, though, that only Christianity, with its promise of a better life, could offer true happiness in the form of an escape from the evils of humankind. Verri agrees with Maupertuis that in the balance of pain and pleasure there is always an excess of pain. Unlike the French philosopher, however, he thinks that neither pleasure nor pain can be subjected to strict mathematical calculations. ‘La mente umana’, he writes, ‘non ha mezzi onde graduarli, né abbiamo veruna macchina che serva di misura, come i termometri, i pendoli, i palmi, le once ci fanno paragonare i gradi di calore, il tempo, l’estensione, i pesi, ec.’ [The human mind has no means to measure them, nor do we have any machine or scale that can do so, as thermometers, pendulums, palms, and ounces let us compare the degrees of heat, time, length, weight, etc.].17 Verri expresses a cautious scepticism about any claim to objective measurement of sensations. For him, the degrees of pain and pleasure cannot be gauged with certainty not only because they are intrinsically subjective but also because the human mind, as Verri sees it, is not a transparent mechanism. After the introduction, Verri begins his enquiry by distinguishing between physical and moral pleasures and pains. If physical pain is caused

16  Sabrina Ferri by a laceration or violent irritation of the body, the cause of moral pain is neither immediately evident nor can it be connected to what Verri calls ‘una immediata azione sulla nostra macchina’ [an immediate action upon our machine].18 Precisely because moral sensations, such as elation or melancholy, do not depend upon direct physical impulses, their origins are difficult to identify. Relying on self-analysis and on the universality of immediate experience, Verri empirically ascribes moral pleasures and pains to two principles, or ‘sentimenti motori’ [moving sentiments], fear and hope.19 Here the distance between Verri and Maupertuis is clear. If Verri agrees that the knowledge of physical phenomena can be easily translated into quantitative terms, he cannot say the same about the knowledge of moral or mental phenomena, where the qualitative aspect comes to the fore. The qualitative differences, in this case, derive not only from the differences in subjective perception but also from the fact that moral pain and pleasure are mediated, whereas physical pain and pleasure are experienced directly. Moral pain and pleasure depend, in fact, on the interplay of memory and imagination. It is the juxtaposition of past memories and images of the future – a crowd of ‘phantasms’ that constantly haunt the mind 20 – that gives rise to feelings of pain or pleasure. As Verri himself explains, ‘Essi [dolori e piaceri morali] non si risentono se non in quel momento in cui l’animo, dimentico quasi del presente, si risovviene e prevede; e a misura che o teme o spera, sente o dolore o piacere’ [They [moral pains and pleasures] are not felt if not in that moment when the mind, as if forgetful of the present, remembers and anticipates; and to the extent that it either fears or hopes, it feels either pain or pleasure]. 21 According to Verri, therefore, pain and pleasure are experienced in a moment of distraction, when the mind is almost ‘forgetful of the present’ and wanders into the past and future. He explains that in such moments, when either pleasure or pain prevails, past events and future expectations are actively compared. 22 This comparison implies a conscious rational process, which is very close to Maupertuis’s arithmetic and is based on a utilitarian logic. The way in which past experiences and future expectations surface in the mind, however, seems to suggest a mechanism that is not entirely conscious or wilful. In the example he gives of how the sensation of moral pleasure arises, for instance, Verri imagines what would happen if he received the announcement of a prestigious appointment. He begins by noting the impossibility of controlling one’s memory and continues by describing how the recollections of injustice and indifference endured in the past spontaneously present themselves to the mind: ‘Se io potessi dimenticarmi del passato […] la novella recatami riuscirebbe insipida e il mio animo non sentirebbe ­niuna sensazione piacevole. Ma si affacciano alla mia mente le ingiustizie, l’orgoglio, la fredda indifferenza’ [If I could forget the past […] the news brought to me would seem insipid and my mind would not feel any

Uneasy Sensibility  17 pleasing sensation. But injustices, pride, and cold indifference present themselves to my mind]. 23 The language that Verri uses here, obliquely calls attention to mechanisms of memory that lie outside the control of the will and that are subject to laws that cannot be easily explained. The elusiveness of memory is addressed explicitly in the Discorso and is a central point of the discussion, since memory, according to Verri, not only defines who we are but is also at the origin of all our feelings of pain or pleasure. Memory, Verri explains, is an ‘ignota parte di noi’ [unknown part of ourselves] that agisce sopra di me, che tien luogo di oggetto esterno, che da sé eccita moti e passioni, che, essendo io paziente, opera in me, mio mal grado talvolta, e forma essa sola quel me, quell’io, che consiste nella coscienza delle mie idee; quest’enigma della mia propria essenza tanto umiliante, questa memoria è la produttrice di ogni mio piacere, o dolor morale. 24 [acts upon me, that replaces external objects, that excites emotions and passions on its own, that, as I am subject to it, works in me, sometimes against my wishes, and it alone forms that ‘me’, that ‘I’, which consists in the consciousness of my ideas; this utterly humiliating mystery of my own being, this memory is the producer of all of my moral pleasures and pains] In these few lines Verri describes the challenge of self-knowledge. Memory is constitutive of one’s sense of self, but it appears to be inaccessible to the rational mind. Thus, although it is a part of us, it remains a ‘humiliating mystery’. Silvia Contarini explains that Verri’s understanding of memory as the substitute for an external object is derived from Locke’s account in his Essay on Human Understanding. Locke describes remembrance as the capacity to evoke ideas in one’s mind without the direct action of an external object on our senses. 25 His influence on Verri is clear. Throughout the Discorso, however, Verri emphasizes especially the instances in which memory seems to work, as in the passage above, against the individual’s will. The description of past injustices spontaneously resurfacing is, as we shall see, one of many such examples. In the Essay, Locke also describes specific instances of remembering in which the will of the subject is not actively involved. In Chapter X of book two, he likens remembering to the appearance of ‘dormant pictures’. These are ideas that were lost or seem to have been lost after apprehension, but which can either be actively evoked with a wilful act or can be made to surface by an intense passion. He writes, ‘The mind very often sets itself on work in search of some hidden idea […] though sometimes too they start up in our minds of their own accord, and offer themselves to the understanding; and very often are roused and tumbled out of their

18  Sabrina Ferri dark cells, into open daylight, by some turbulent and tempestuous passion’. 26 The end of this passage alludes to memories that arise without reflection and independently of one’s will. Reverie, which Locke lists as one of several forms of remembrance, is similarly involuntary: ‘When ideas float in our mind, without any reflection or regard of the understanding, it is that which the French call reverie’. 27 For Locke, however, the mind is presented primarily as an active organ. It is always in control and acts more or less consciously on the train of ideas. Reverie, for instance, is still a degree of thinking and thus never entirely passive. 28 Verri, instead, focusses on how the mind works passively and presents the subject not only as an active and self-conscious thinker but also as the passive recipient of ideas. The individual, for him, is first and foremost ­paziente – someone who, as the etymology suggests, undergoes the effects of memory and of the passions. Accordingly, both in the Discorso and in Verri’s autobiographical writings, the resurgence of memories appears more unsettling and far more destabilizing than in Locke. Certain reminiscences or ideas can affect the individual so profoundly that they trouble the body as much as the mind. In the Discorso, Verri explains that the mere memory of a past negative experience can cause such upsetting somatic reactions as ‘il pallore, l’ansietà del respiro, il precipitoso battere delle arterie, il tremore delle membra’ [pallor, shortness of breath, hurried pulsation of the arteries, shaking of limbs]. 29 Similar descriptions of physical turmoil accompanying the acts of remembering or imagining are also found in Verri’s personal correspondence. For example, in some of his letters from the battle lines, during the Seven Years’ War, Verri talks about his grief for Barbara Corbelli d’Adda’s death. 30 The emotional and physiological symptoms he describes are analogous to those mentioned in the previous passage. After learning about her untimely death in August 1759, he is in shock, weeping hopelessly and unable to sleep for more than two hours each night.31 He also describes himself as feverish, waking for days, and sustaining ‘un abbattimento non ordinario di forze’ [an extraordinary physical dejection].32 As elsewhere in his autobiographical writings, Verri is particularly alert to the ways in which an intense personal event can elicit conflicting responses. In such cases, involuntary and ungovernable impulses come into contrast with the dictates of reason. Here, in particular, he draws attention to the intrusions of involuntary memory. The description of his physical collapse in the letter of 16 September 1759, for example, is immediately followed by the resigned realization that his will is helpless: ‘Ma la mia povera Contessina non v’è rimedio che mi possa sortire dalla fantasia, mi pare d’averla sempre sotto gli occhi’ [But there is no way of removing my poor Countess from my memory; I seem to have her always before my eyes]. 33 Throughout the different phases of his mourning, from utter despair to melancholy to resignation, Verri always casts himself as passive – as someone at the

Uneasy Sensibility  19 mercy of his pain and memory. The experience of grief, which activates involuntary memory, also emerges in the Discorso as an example of the opaque processes of the human mind. In the Discorso’s enquiry into passions, Verri seems to be more interested in the elusive and hidden sources of thinking than in the orderly processes of the active mind. In Chapter XIII, for example, in which he analyses the nature of pain and pleasure, he focusses his attention especially on extreme situations and on the appearance of violent emotions, the causes of which are not immediately evident. For example, he mentions the ‘libertina sfrenatezza’ [libertine dissoluteness] of a man who has survived a terrible catastrophe and the tears of a general after winning a battle.34 This latter example is also found in a slightly different form in one of the letters of his Memorie sincere, 35 dated 15 April 1760: Il tumulto dell’anima nel tempo d’una battaglia è sommo e tale, che dopo la vittoria si vedono gli uomini più insensibili e induriti a versare abondanti lacrime di consolazione, le quali il volgo le attribuirà ad affetto per il suo Principe; ma il filosofo le conosce un effetto della cessazione d’un violento timore, unito alla idea de’ vantaggi ­personali che si sperano con questo nuovo grado di gloria acquistata.36 [The soul’s turmoil during a battle is so great and such that after victory one sees the most insensitive and hardened men shed abundant tears of consolation, which common people will interpret as affection for their Prince. But the philosopher knows that they are an effect of the cessation of a violent fear, combined with the idea of the personal advantages that are hoped for with this new degree of glory that has been acquired] Both here and in the Discorso, Verri’s interest in the intense display of emotions is due not only to its seemingly incongruous nature, but also to the fact that it is a reaction that is likely to be misinterpreted. The soldiers’ abundant tears, in Verri’s interpretation, demonstrate the validity of his theory of negative hedonism, or the idea that pleasure is to be understood as a rapid cessation of pain. Equally important, however, is the fact that they are the manifestation of psychological mechanisms that are not immediately intelligible. Interestingly, this passage also describes a reaction that is not the result of a conscious act of the will. The emotional response is explained rationally: the constant fear in which the soldiers have lived is suddenly lifted and the memory of past trials is overcome by the thought of the benefits to come. This response is not, however, presented as intentional nor does it appear to be mediated by reflection – in fact, we could call it machinal, or mechanical, to use a term dear to sensationists. In the Encyclopédie, Denis Diderot defines the adjective machinal as something that happens without reflection or the intervention of the will. It is an automatic movement of the

20  Sabrina Ferri body – ‘la machine’ – that occurs as a response to external stimulation.37 Contarini observes, furthermore, that the passage above has some points of contact with Henry Lloyd’s analysis of the emotional predicaments of soldiers at war in his Introduction à l’histoire de la guerre en Allemagne en 1756.38 Lloyd devotes the second part of his book to what he calls a ‘philosophy of war’. This section is in fact an analysis of the psychology of soldiers, which, as Lloyd himself explains, presupposes ‘une profonde connaissance du coeur humain’ [a deep knowledge of the human heart].39 A short chapter focusses on the ‘crainte machinale’ [mechanical fear] that can grip soldiers in times of great danger.40 Lloyd likens this fear to an animal instinct and describes it as ‘une impulsion irrésistible’ [an irresistible impulse] that involves both mind and body.41 In fact, in the eighteenth century the adjective ‘machinal’ already occupies a semantic field that is in flux and that concerns both physiology and psychology, including the uncertain realm of emotion.42 Verri’s ‘violent fear’ is no doubt reminiscent of Lloyd’s ‘mechanical fear’, as are the soldiers’ ‘tears of consolation’ after a victory, which appear as the result of a sudden internal impulse. Verri’s interest in these mechanical aspects of human behaviour, or seemingly automatic reactions, however, is not linked to the idea that human beings are predictable machines. Rather, Verri is drawn to them because they indicate something that is left un-thought or un-processed by the rational mind. In this respect, Verri might remind us of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for whom the origin of automatisms is to be found in the Pascalian ‘reasons of the heart’, or those deep motives of which we are not immediately conscious.43 For Verri, as for Rousseau, self-knowledge comes about through an enquiry into the passions and involves becoming acquainted with and confronting what lies beneath the surface of human consciousness, especially when it comes to actions and responses whose logic escapes reason. Example after example, in the Discorso Verri revises the idea that the self and its motives and feelings are fully predictable and knowable. Not only are our sentiments never entirely subordinated to reason, but also the origins of our passions often remain beyond the reach of understanding. If our sentiments could be analysed through the ‘prisma della ragione’ [prism of reason], he explains, ‘una gran folla di dolori morali verrebbe ad annientarsi per noi’ [a great crowd of moral pains would be erased for us].44 This is not possible, however, because ‘la previsione dei mali è talmente nebbiosa e tumultuaria nell’uomo appassionato, che non dà luogo sittosto a sminuzzarli uno ad uno; anzi […] ci rattristano per le tenebre medesime, che in parte li involgono, e questo sconoscimento accresce in noi la diffidenza di superarli’ [the anticipation of bad things is so foggy and tumultuous in the passionate man, that it makes it impossible to take them apart easily one by one; rather […] they sadden us with that very darkness which partly surrounds them, and this lack of knowledge increases our hopelessness in overcoming them].45 The image

Uneasy Sensibility  21 of darkness, recurrent throughout the Discorso, suggests that Verri is presenting his project in Enlightenment terms: the light of rational analysis should dispel the obscurity in which the psychology of the passions is shrouded. Reason, however, often proves to be an insufficient tool. Verri’s enquiry, in fact, emphasizes those very mechanisms that influence us but that remain rationally inaccessible. For instance, in the passage following the words quoted above on the prism of reason, Verri describes the formation of sentiments as an accumulation of numerous disparate ideas that the human mind cannot quite grasp: Un’altra difficoltà incontra l’uomo per uniformare ai dettami della tranquilla ragione tutt’i suoi sentimenti, ed è questa, che difficilmente possiamo noi stessi ritrovar l’origine e la genesi di molti de’ sentimenti nostri: è come un fiume, di cui propriamente non sai indicare qual sia la prima sorgente, poichè lo formano mille piccoli, divisi, e lontani ruscelletti, i quali si frammischiano col discendere; così i sentimenti sono conseguenze di tante, e sì varie, e sì mischiate idee in tempi diversi, e successivamente avute, sì che la mente umana si smarrisce, e si perde rintracciando i capi di tanti piccolissimi e intralciatissimi fili che ordiscono la massa d’una passione; e come d’un fiume non puoi toccare con sicurezza il punto onde comincia, così nemmeno esattamente puoi toccare il più delle volte l’idea p ­ rimordiale da cui nasce un sentimento.46 [Human beings encounter another difficulty in bringing all of their sentiments under the calm control of reason. That is, only with difficulty can we find in ourselves the origin and genesis of many of our sentiments. It is like a river, of which one cannot properly indicate the original source, since it is formed by thousands of small, divided, and distant streams, which flow into one another downstream. In the same way, sentiments are consequences of so many, so varied, and such confused ideas, which we have had at different times one after the other, that the human mind strays and becomes lost, as it tries to find the ends of so many utterly minute and incredibly entangled threads that form the mass of a passion. In the same way that you cannot touch with certainty a river’s point of origin, so you cannot touch exactly, most of the time, the primordial idea from which a sentiment is born] Through the double imagery of a river and of tangled threads, Verri explains how countless microscopic and confused ideas, which are not necessarily related and may originate at different moments in time, are all involved in shaping individual sentiments. This description is reminiscent of a key concept in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s theory of the mind, the often-discussed petites perceptions, or small perceptions. While for Locke, it is ‘impossible for anyone to perceive, without perceiving that he

22  Sabrina Ferri does perceive’,47 Leibniz distinguishes different degrees of awareness or perception. At one end of the spectrum are apperceptions, which Leibniz equates with consciousness or a kind of ‘connaissance reflexive’ [reflective knowledge].48 While we are reflexively aware of apperceptions, we are not conscious of small perceptions, which are barely discernible and are indistinguishable from one another. ‘Il y a à tout moment une infinité de perceptions en nous’, Leibniz writes, ‘[…] dont nous ne nous appercevons pas, parce que ces impressions sont ou trop petites et en trop grand nombre, ou trop unies, en sorte qu’elles n’ont rien d’assez distinguant à part’ [there is in us an infinity of perceptions […] of which we are unaware because these impressions are either too minute and too numerous, or else too unvarying, so that they are not sufficiently distinctive on their own].49 It has been argued that for Leibniz, who is generally seen as one of the precursors of the conceptualization of the Freudian unconscious, these small perceptions are to be understood as something that takes place beneath consciousness, rather than as properly unconscious. In this sense they would be only a weaker form of apperception, something that might rise to consciousness given the right conditions. 50 Leibniz, however, emphasizes how our actions – including thinking – are often the result of such perceptions, which continuously influence us without our awareness.51 In the passage above, Verri describes a similar phenomenon where an overwhelming multitude of minute ideas lie – one might say – beneath the threshold of consciousness. All of these ideas have a cumulative effect: they combine and coalesce until they make themselves known as a sentiment. Up until then, they are so confused and numerous that, the suggestion seems to be, they are not attended to or reflected upon – they are subliminal. Yet, this incoherent and magmatic mass of ideas is at the origin of our passions, and unbeknownst to us it determines what we feel. Verri also suggests how these ‘utterly minute and incredibly entangled threads’ represent a part of the mind that is inaccessible to reason and that will always elude full comprehension. The origin of feelings, then, remains impervious to Condillac’s analytic approach, inasmuch as the mass that forms a passion is a tangle that cannot be unravelled or démêlé, as the French philosopher would say. Verri’s intuition of a mechanism that determines what we feel without our knowledge is related to the notion of dolori innominati, or ineffable pains, which he describes in his taxonomy of pain in Chapter VII of the Discorso. These are pains that ‘più o meno ogni uomo soffre senza esattamente distinguerne la cagione, e sono questi dolori innominati, dolori non forti, non decisi, ma che ci rendono addolorati senza darci una idea locale di dolore, e formano vagamente sì, ma realmente il nostro mal essere, l’uneasiness conosciuta dal pensatore Giovanni Locke’ [more or less every human suffers without exactly distinguishing the cause, and these are ineffable pains, which are not severe or defined, but which make us

Uneasy Sensibility  23 feel in pain without giving us a local idea of pain, and that, however vaguely, nevertheless truly form our malaise, that uneasiness recognized by the thinker John Locke]. 52 When he first introduces the concept of dolori innominati, Verri gives the example of bodily ailments, such as a fleeting headache or a faint internal pain, that, while causing a vague discomfort, are not debilitating. Soon, however, he clarifies that dolori innominati are not only physical in origin, but may also depend on ‘sensazioni morali mal conosciute’ [hard-to-define moral sensations].53 Boredom, ennui, and melancholy, he explains, are all dolori innominati, or states of mind involving a generalized malaise or a condition of mental unrest that we cannot define.54 If Verri’s dolori innominati of a physical nature could be related to an emerging idea of the unconscious operations of the body, the dolori innominati of a moral nature take on a more psychological dimension. As Verri delves deeper into his analysis of human passions, it becomes clearer that one of his main objects of interest is precisely that internal flow of ideas, sensations, and memories which is never fully comprehensible, clear, or distinct. Locke’s uneasiness, which Verri invokes, is a painful feeling of lack, or a desire for something that we do not have and whose possession could make us happy. This sense of dissatisfaction, according to Locke, is not a hindrance. Rather, it functions as a spur for us to act, or even as the main motive for action.55 In his book on the European crisis of consciousness, Paul Hazard placed Locke’s notion of uneasiness at the origins of a ‘psychology of inquietude’ that would distinguish the mentalité, or way of thinking, of the modern intellectual. Locke’s disciples, such as Condillac and Helvétius, Hazard argued, would ‘take up this theme and […] push it to its ultimate conclusion’.56 By stressing the ambivalent role of desire, they transformed uneasiness into what would eventually find expression in the ‘yearning spirit’ of the Romantics. Their re-elaboration of the Lockean notion was a step forward in the development of a psychology of desire that would be much more complex than the mechanics of passions allowed. Verri participates in this re-elaboration and gives uneasiness a central psychological role in his theory of the mind. Similar to Locke, Verri conceives of this feeling of malaise as a dynamic force, which pushes us to action or acts as a drive for us to seek something. 57 With Condillac and Helvétius in mind, though, he complicates the notion by making uneasiness take the form of a specific kind of pain, which is weak in intensity and has no apparent cause. In certain respects, his appropriation of Locke’s concept is reminiscent of Leibniz’s reinterpretation, which transformed uneasiness into the more diffuse semi-pains, or demies douleurs, which are qualitatively and quantitatively different from the original Lockean concept.58 For Leibniz, uneasiness is experienced principally outside of our rational awareness. Verri comes quite close to Leibniz. In particular, he focusses both on the idea of a generalized sense of distress

24  Sabrina Ferri and on the vague nature of these pains, which, he emphasizes, cannot be individuated by reflection. Ineffable pains, he explains, are ‘alcune affezioni dolorose sordamente, le quali fanno un mal essere in noi, senza che la riflessione nostra ne abbia analizzata e riconosciuta esattamente la cagione’ [some affections of dull pain, which create a malaise in us, without our reflection having analysed or recognized the exact cause].59 Dolori innominati are not intense and clearly localized, but rather they are experienced as a diffuse discomfort or malaise. Whether in urging us to act, or, as we shall see, in predisposing us to enjoy the aesthetic experience, these pains are at work, we could say, just beneath the threshold of conscious perception. Verri’s Memorie sincere offer an interesting piece of literary evidence that shows the author himself caught in an uncanny moment of self-opacity. The incident centres on a thick fog that overcomes him and forces him to stop as he is traveling on horseback. The fog metaphor is repeatedly used in the Discorso to convey the challenge of investigating the origins and nature of passions and to denote the fact that they are ultimately impervious to reason and shrouded in mystery. An ‘impene­ trabile nebbia’ [impenetrable fog] surrounds feelings of physical pain and pleasure, while fear and hope, the two principles that move us, are barely discernible through ‘la nebbia sacra del nostro essere’ [the sacred fog of our being].60 The anecdote, which is as simple as it is revelatory, is told in a letter from Dresden dated 20 December 1759. Seven months earlier Verri had enlisted as a volunteer in the Austrian Army and had left for Vienna to fight in the Seven Years’ War. The experience was a disappointing one and the letters up to this moment record a progressive disillusionment with war and military life.61 Now in Dresden, Verri writes that he has been stationed in the city for the past month after participating in the battle of Maxen, in which the Austrians defeated the Prussian troops. More than three-quarters of the letter is devoted to the minute facts of his daily life and to the beauty of the place. Towards the end, though, Verri mentions the tensions between the local population and the Austrians and explains that, despite his attempts to act civilly towards the Saxons, he has often had to endure ‘l’odio nazionale’ [the native hatred].62 As an example of the hostility encountered, he tells of having been abandoned in the midst of a thick fog by a local farmer: Una mattina singolarmente voleva prima del giorno essere al quar­ tiere del Sig. Maresciallo per unirmi alla marcia. Posto tutto in ordine vedo una nebbia così densa che non ho veduto cosa simile; figuratevi che stando a cavallo non vedeva il terreno in nessuna guisa. I fuochi dell’Armata mi facevano come una aurora all’orizzonte senza distinguerli quantunque fossero vicini. Ho regalato, pregato, accarezzato il villano, perché mi guidasse, egli mi ha condotto pochi passi fuori di casa poi ho avuto bello chiamarlo, promettergli nuovi regali

Uneasy Sensibility  25 son rimasto isolato ascoltando la voce dei miei domestici senza distinguerli ed avrei avuto bisogno d’una bussola per non dare nuovamente colla testa del cavallo nella casa. Ho dovuto aspettare su quattro piedi del cavallo immobile che spuntasse il giorno e allora si diradò la nebbia che pareva quella di Mosè nell’Egitto. Ma la mia lettera è troppo lunga vi abbraccio ec.63 [On a certain morning I wanted to be at the Marshall’s quarters before daylight to join the march. After preparing myself, I see a fog so thick the likes of which I have never seen. Just imagine, on horseback I could not see the ground at all. The fires of the Army seemed like the light of dawn on the horizon, but I could not distinguish them even if they were close by. I tipped, beseeched, and flattered the farmer, so that he would guide me. He led me a few steps beyond the doorway, but then however much I called him and promised him more money, I was left isolated, hearing the voices of my servants but unable to distinguish them. I would have needed a compass to avoid bumping into the house with my horse. I had to wait immobile on horseback for the sun to rise and only then did the fog lift, like the fog of Moses in Egypt. But my letter is too long. Hugs, etc.] The descriptive intensity of the passage and its almost aphoristic quality point to the symbolic significance of the episode. Verri describes himself engulfed in a dense fog, which makes it impossible for him to distinguish the landscape that surrounds him. Left to his own devices by those who are supposed to help him, and deprived of any external points of reference that may help him make sense of where he is, he is seized by a sort of horror vacui that paralyses him. He remains immobile on his horse until sunrise, when the fog lifts. One would expect a few words of comment, but the letter is abruptly brought to a close immediately after the conclusion of the anecdote and the reader is left with the sense of something unsaid, of an unresolved tension related to an inner unease. In his analysis of Verri’s autobiographical writing, Bartolo Anglani recognizes the emblematic value of the episode and wonders whether it may indicate a weakening of reason faced with the madness of the world.64 Anglani leaves the question unanswered but notices how this letter is immediately followed by another, written thirteen days later, in which Verri announces his decision to leave the battlefield and the military life for good. According to Anglani, the incident in the fog foreshadows Verri’s return to his initial position of historical Pyrrhonism after the parenthesis of the war. Anglani is right to suggest a connection between the two moments, even if he does not offer a proper explanation of their relationship. As I see it, the fog episode discloses its full meaning only when it is juxtaposed with Verri’s announcement, which is communicated abruptly halfway through the following letter, dated 2 January 1760: ‘Io adunque domani ho destinato di partire e verosimilmente darò

26  Sabrina Ferri un addio per sempre a questo mestiere che […] è un mestiere da dispe­ rato’ [So tomorrow I decided to leave and probably I will say farewell forever to this career which […] is a career for desperate men].65 What surfaces here points back to the unsaid in the previous episode. The initial sense of disorientation that Verri experiences in the midst of the fog coincides with the loss of the objective world, as Anglani seems to suggest, but the paralysis is the result of a horror vacui turned inward. Unable to read himself, the subject is powerless to move or to act. Either an inner conflict or contradictory thoughts block him. The fog, then, becomes a metaphor of Verri’s confrontation with unconscious feelings and thoughts – that is, with those opaque mental processes that will culminate in his decision to abandon the army. The fog in this episode is but another instantiation of that figurative fog which, in the Discorso, is associated with the self and with internal processes that Verri repeatedly declares to be unable to explain fully. The dolori innominati, however, are not only the cypher of an inner obscurity. Verri explains that they are also the source of all aesthetic pleasures, or ‘i piaceri più delicati della vita’ [the most delicate pleasures in life].66 They are the reason why human beings enjoy the fine arts and why they derive pleasure both from engaging with them and from practicing them. Verri explains how ‘non solamente ogni piacere che r­ isvegliano le scienze e le belle arti nasca dai dolori principalmente innominati, ma dai dolori nasca ogni spinta a conoscerle, a coltivarle, a ridurle a perfezione’ [not only are all pleasures awakened by the sciences and fine arts born from principally ineffable pains, but every drive to know them, cultivate them, and perfect them is born from pain].67 Verri associates dolori innominati, some irreducible core of the self that is ever in pain, with inner emotional and physiological elements that draw us towards the work of art and that make aesthetic pleasure possible. If we are sad, for example, ‘la melodia d’un bel concerto’ [the melody of a beautiful concert] will release us from the ‘dolore innominato da cui nasceva la tristezza’ [ineffable pain from which that sadness was born] and lead us to feel pleasure. Suffering, then, or what Verri calls ‘un modo di esistere doloroso’ [a way of existing in pain] is the precondition to aesthetic enjoyment.68 Thus the aesthetic experience presupposes an inclination of the subject to pleasure – an uneasy pain that stirs us to seek relief – and the presence of something within the object that can soothe our painful uneasiness. In other words, Verri identifies a disposition of the human psyche that is fundamental to aesthetic responsiveness and establishes a correlation between mental states and art. This is why he is especially interested in ways of responding to and engaging with a work of art that do not rely exclusively on the intellect. He emphasizes, for instance, the role of the imagination in shaping and intensifying the effects of the aesthetic experience, and pays particular attention to imaginative associations, thanks to which the subject can not only add to the object of aesthetic contemplation, but also establish direct correspondences with

Uneasy Sensibility  27 his own mental states.69 Hence, rather than focussing on the question of taste or on the issue of aesthetic judgement, which were central concerns to eighteenth-century aesthetics, Verri turns to the psychology of the aesthetic experience. The mere presentation of the object of art, thus, is not enough to elicit an aesthetic response. The first requisite is that the subject be in a state of discomfort, prey to one of the many dolori innominati that can vex us. Second, the subject should be willing to engage with the object through the imagination. One specific experience analysed in the Discorso is particularly indicative of Verri’s approach. Verri describes his reactions when looking at a painting of the Roman commander Atilius Regulus70: Io ho provato un piacere assai vivo nel mirare la prima volta un quadro rappresentante la partenza d’Attilio Regolo da Roma. L’eroe campeggia nel mezzo, vestito della toga, e del lato clavo: la fisiono­ mia presa dall’antico esprime una placida e ferma virtù; pareami però nel riflettervi ch’ei premesse a forza un profondo dolore. […] una figlia si copre il volto colla mano del padre in atto di baciarla, e stringendola fralle due tenere sue mani, cela le proprie lagrime, e la sua disperazione. […] Tutto il quadro esattamente è conforme al costume, e spira maestà, grandezza, e sentimento. La voluttà che ne provai non fu breve; mi sentii commovere come da una tragedia; mi feci illusione, come se esistessero gli oggetti; m’immaginai i loro sentimenti, le loro parole in quell’atto; tristezza, compassione, rispetto, ammirazione, stupore, furono i diversi affetti che successivamente mi agitaron l’animo.71 [I felt an extremely vivid pleasure in admiring for the first time a painting that represented the departure of Atilius Regulus from Rome. The hero stands in the middle, wearing a toga and a laticlave. The ancient facial features express a placid and firm virtue, but as I reflected, it seemed to me that he was forcefully repressing a profound pain. […] a daughter covers her face with her father’s hand as if to kiss it and, grasping it between her own tender hands, she hides her tears and her desperation. […] The entire painting conforms exactly to custom, and inspires majesty, greatness, and sentiment. The pleasure that I felt was not brief. I felt moved as if by a tragedy. I produced the illusion that the subjects existed. I imagined their feelings and words in action. Sadness, compassion, respect, admiration, and stupor were the various affects that shook my mind one after the other] As Stefano Ferrari has pointed out in his analysis of this passage, Verri’s description is much more than a traditional ekphrasis, inasmuch as it is a complex critical reflection on the purposes and effects of the artistic object.72 Ferrari highlights how, in describing the painting, Verri places the emphasis not so much on the painter’s use of hypotyposis, but rather

28  Sabrina Ferri on how the painting relies for its effect on the active involvement of the spectator’s imagination. With hypotyposis, the vividness of imitation blurs the line separating the real from the reproduction. According to Ferrari, though, Verri’s intention is to convey how the painting appeals to the emotional imagination. Thanks to the imagination, the observer can not only grasp but also ‘interiorize’ those aspects of reality, such as feelings and words, that cannot be represented directly in a painting.73 More precisely, I think that Verri pushes the limits of conventional ekphrasis by giving a thorough account of his psychological reactions to the work of art. He focusses on the mental impression that the painting has on him and carefully records each phase of his emotional response, starting with the intuition of Atilius Regulus’s profound pain. He draws attention both to the deception of illusion, whereby he experiences the portrayed action as reality, and to the work of the imagination, whereby he conjures up feelings and words that contribute to the realism of the scene. This process moves him so intensely that he feels both the very emotions experienced by the characters on the canvas and those elicited by their tragedy. In part, the free play of the imagination is possible, as Contarini suggests, because of what is left ‘unsaid’ in the painting. The rhetoric of reticence, which is symbolized by Regulus’s daughter covering her face with her father’s hand, invites the viewer to engage with the painting by filling the gaps in the visual narrative.74 But as Contarini notices, the intense response is possible because the scene depicted on the canvas stirs the memory of a past experience in the observer’s mind.75 Faced by the work of art, Verri describes himself as experiencing a re-awakening of vague memories stored away in his mind, but which are not present to him. The moment of aesthetic appreciation, then, which is neither fully natural nor fully mechanistic, is defined as a powerful experience that gives rise to the awareness of something else in oneself, something ungraspable and never directly accessible. Something that is only available through free association and the encounter with the movingly beautiful. The analysis of aesthetic phenomena gives Verri the opportunity to examine once again psychological and physical responses whose sources the rational self cannot locate. The eighteenth-century discourse of aesthetic experience, an experience that Verri connects with the self’s pained core, is a fundamental step in re-thinking not only the perceptions of pleasure and pain, but also the very notion of human subjectivity. As is the case with aesthetics, Verri’s account of the thinking- and feeling-self leads him to confront issues that are central to the emergence of new categories of individuality: the position of the self in history, the relationship between will and corporality, and a new concern with memory. In the Discorso, there is a revealing disjunction between method, object of study, and concrete results. While Verri endorses a rational approach to the study of the mechanisms of the mind, his analysis shows that neither

Uneasy Sensibility  29 can passions be reduced to a mathematical formula nor can they be entirely penetrated by reason. The enquiry ultimately evidences layers of the mind and of feeling that remain hidden and that nonetheless have the power to influence moods, thoughts, and even one’s disposition to the aesthetic experience. In coming to terms with the powers and limits of the rational mind, Verri finds himself dealing with a philosophical problem that he had not anticipated – that of making sense of the obscure components and phenomena of mental life, which twentieth-century theories of the mind would conceptualize as the unconscious. Verri’s investigation finds its limit in the opaqueness and ineffability of these processes, but it is able to bring to the fore their fundamental importance. The painful state or malaise that pushes us towards pleasure remains indefinable and ungraspable, but is recognized as a powerful drive – a form of energy that drives us even though it continuously eludes us.

Notes 1 I have used throughout the critical edition of the Discorso produced for the national edition of Verri’s works: Pietro Verri, Discorso sull’indole del pia­ cere e del dolore, ed. by Silvia Contarini and Sara Rosini, in I ‘Discorsi’ e altri scritti degli anni Settanta, ed. by Giorgio Panizza with Silvia Contarini, Gianni Francioni, and Sara Rosini (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2004), pp. 23–152. The translations of Verri are my own. 2 Kant’s reading of Verri’s Discorso marked a turning point in his philosophical thought and influenced the way in which he understood both the concept of happiness and the relationship between nature and history. See Susan Meld Shell, ‘Kant’s “True Economy of Human Nature”: Rousseau, Count Verri, and the Problem of Happiness’, in Essays on Kant’s Anthropology, ed. by Brian Jacobs and Patrick Kain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 194–229. 3 Verri, Discorso, p. 53. 4 Ibid., p. 55. 5 Ibid., p. 54. 6 See ibid., p. 68. 7 See Contarini’s note in ibid., p. 68, n. 14. 8 See Matt ffytche, The Foundation of the Unconscious: Schelling, Freud and the Birth of the Modern Psyche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); and Angus Nicholls and Martin Liebscher, ‘Introduction: Thinking the Unconscious’, in Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth-Century German Thought, ed. by Angus Nicholls and Martin Liebscher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 1–25. 9 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. by Roger Woolhouse (London: Penguin, 1997), p. 216 (2.20.3). References to Locke’s Essay indicate in brackets the book, chapter, and paragraph numbers. Verri read Locke’s Essay in the 1758 French translation by Pierre Coste. 10 See Verri, Discorso, p. 67, where Verri quickly reviews and dismisses as imprecise the definitions of pleasure given by Descartes, Christian Wolff, Johann Georg Sulzer, and Maupertuis. For Verri, pleasure is not an awareness (Descartes) or a feeling (Wolff) of perfection, nor is it an activity of the soul dependent on the faculty of desire (Sulzer). Maupertuis’s definition, that pleasure is what we would rather experience than not, is also set aside as redundant.

30  Sabrina Ferri 11 On the Italian debate surrounding Maupertuis’s ideas, see Contarini, ‘Nota introduttiva’, in Verri, Discorso, pp. 25–61 (pp. 31–33). On Verri and Maupertuis, see Corrado Rosso, ‘Pietro Verri, il “Discorso sull’indole del piacere e del dolore” e Maupertuis’, in Id., Illuminismo, felicità, dolore: miti e ideologie francesi (Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1969), pp. 42–65. 12 Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, ‘Essai de philosophie morale’, in Oeuvres, 4 vols. (Lyon: Jean-Marie Bruyset, 1756), vol. I, pp.  171–252 (pp. 195–196). 13 Ibid., p. 196. 14 See ibid., p. 195. 15 Ibid., p. 197. 16 See ibid., p. 203. 17 Verri, Discorso, p. 150. 18 Ibid., p. 71. 19 Ibid., p. 97. 20 Ibid., p. 73: ‘riunione de’ fantasmi che occupano la mia mente’. 21 Ibid., p. 74. 22 See ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., p. 97. 25 Locke, Essay, p. 213 (2.19.1). 26 Ibid., p. 150 (2.10.7). 27 Ibid., p. 214 (2.19.1). 28 Locke distinguishes different types of remembrance (reminiscence), depending on the degree of involvement of the mind. Some, such as recollection, contemplation, and study, are fully intentional, others, such as reverie, are more passive activities of the mind, but not entirely so. See ibid., pp. ­214–215 (2.19.3). 29 Verri, Discorso, p. 98. 30 In May 1759, Verri left Lombardy to serve in the Seven Years’ War as an officer of the Austrian Army. Before leaving for the war, he had a relationship with Barbara Corbelli d’Adda, who died in August 1759 while he was away. He talks about his grief both in the letters to his friend Ilario Corte and in those to his uncle, in which understandably he is much more sober. 31 See Verri to Ilario Corte (ca. 25 August 1759), in Carlo Capra, ‘“Il cuore è il padrone”. Ventinove lettere inedite di Pietro Verri dall’Armata e da Vienna’, in Studi dedicati a Gennaro Barbarisi, ed. by Claudia Berra and Michele Mari (Milan: CUEM, 2007), pp. 377–427 (p. 405). 32 Verri to Corte (16 Sept. 1759), in ibid., p. 407. 33 Ibid. Less than a month later, Verri again describes to Corte how the memory of the Countess still haunts him. See Verri to Corte (7 Oct. 1759), p. 412. 34 Verri, Discorso, p. 147. 35 The Memorie sincere are a collection of letters without addressee in which Verri recounts his experiences as an officer during the Seven Years’ War and his experience as a public servant in Milan in the years immediately after the war. Based on Verri’s actual correspondence with his uncle, the letters were almost certainly re-elaborated fifteen years after the episodes they narrate. Many have noticed their distinct literary quality and novel-like traits, especially as far as the section on the war experience is concerned. For the text of the Memorie, I have used the critical edition produced for the national edition of Verri’s works: Pietro Verri, Memorie sincere del modo col quale servii nel militare e dei miei primi progressi nel servigio politico (ca. 1764–1775), in Scritti di argomento familiare e autobiografico, ed. by Gennaro Barbarisi (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2003), pp. 1–156. On the Memorie

Uneasy Sensibility  31

36 37

38

39 40 41 42 43

4 4 45 46 47 48

49

50 51

sincere and its textual history, see Barbarisi’s introductory note at pp. 3–15. See also Bartolo Anglani, ‘L’uomo non si muta’: Pietro Verri tra letteratura e autobiografia (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2012), pp. 73–105. Verri, Memorie sincere, p. 95. The Encyclopédie specifies that ‘machinal’ refers to what the ‘machine’ performs without any intervention of the will. See Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, etc., ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Autumn 2017 Edition), http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/, s.v. ‘machinal’ [21 November 2018]. See Contarini’s note in Verri, Discorso, p. 148, n. 214. Among Verri’s few friends on the front was in fact the Welsh army officer Henry Lloyd. Both the Introduction and the Essais philosophiques sur les gouvernements (ca. 1766), another of Lloyd’s works, were important for Verri’s elaboration of a theory of pleasure as release from pain. Henry Lloyd, Introduction à l’histoire de la guerre en Allemagne, en 1756 (Brussel: Pion, 1784), p. 80. Ibid., pp. 98–99. Ibid., p. 98. On the nuances of the term ‘machinal’, see Jean-Luc Martine, ‘L’article ART de Diderot: machine et pensée pratique’, Recherches sur Diderot et sur l’Encyclopédie, 39 (December 2005), 41–79. On automatism in the thought of Rousseau, see Masano Yamashita, ‘Rousseau and “The Mechanical Life”’, in Rousseau between Nature and Culture: Philosophy, Literature, and Culture, ed. by Anne Deneys-Tunney and Yves Charles Zarka (Boston: De Gruyter, 2016), pp. 67–81. Yamashita, who has paid particular attention to Rousseau’s reflection on mechanical behavi­ ours, argues that for him ‘the analysis of the mechanical holds the key to self-knowledge’ (p. 79). Yamashita also observes that Rousseau’s interests in automatisms show him to have anticipated in some respects Freud. Verri, Discorso, p. 95. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 95–96. Locke, Essay, p. 302 (2.27.9). See Gottfried W. Leibniz, ‘Principes de la nature et de la grâce, fondés en raison’, in Id., Principes de la nature et de la grâce, fondés en raison; Principes de la philosophie ou Monadologie, ed. by André Robinet (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986), pp. 25–65 (pp. 35 and 37): ‘Ainsi il est bon de faire distinction entre la Perception qui est l’etat interieur de la Monade representant les choses externes; et l’apperception, qui est la conscience ou la connaissance reflexive de cet état intérieur’ [Thus it is good to distinguish between perception, which is the internal state of the monad representing external things, and apperception, which is consciousness, or the reflective knowledge of this internal state]. English translation in Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, ed. and transl. by Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989), p. 208. Leibniz, ‘Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain’, in Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, ed. by André Robinet and Heinrich Schepers (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1962), pp. 39–527 (p. 53) (New Essays on Human Understanding, ed. and transl. by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 53). See Nicholls and Liebscher, ‘Introduction: Thinking the Unconscious’, pp. 7 and 20. See, for instance, Alfred Schutz’s account of small perceptions in ‘Choice and the Social Sciences’, in Collected Papers V. Phenomenology and the

32  Sabrina Ferri

52 53 54 55

56 57 58

59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

70

71 72 73 74 75

Social Sciences, ed. by Lester Embree (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), pp. ­75–92 (pp. 81–83). Verri, Discorso, p. 107. Ibid., p. 114. See ibid., p. 106. See Locke, Essay, p. 217 (2.20.6): ‘The uneasiness a man finds in himself upon the absence of anything, whose present enjoyment carries the idea of delight with it, is that we call desire, which is greater or less, as that uneasiness is more or less vehement. Where, by the by, it may perhaps be of some use to remark, that the chief if not only spur to human industry and action, is uneasiness’. Paul Hazard, The crisis of the European mind 1680–1715, transl. by J. Lewis May (New York: New York Review of Books, 2013), p. 402. See Rosso, ‘Pietro Verri’, p. 42. See Verri, Discorso, p. 112. Leibniz believes that pleasure is a ‘continual victory’ over demies douleurs: ‘Et dans le fonds sans ces demies douleurs il n’y auroit point de plaisir, et il n’y auroit pas moyen de s’appercevoir, que quelque chose nous aide et nous soulage, en otant quelques obstacles qui nous empechent de nous mettre à notre aise’ (Leibniz, Nouveaux essais, p. 165 [In fact, without these semi-­ sufferings there would be no pleasure at all, nor any way of being aware, that something is helping and relieving us by removing obstacles which stand between us and our ease], Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, p. 165). Verri, Discorso, p. 115. Verri, Discorso, pp. 104 and 148. After less than a month on the battlefield, in a letter dated 2 August 1759, Verri writes that instead of finding conviviality and camaraderie on the front, he was confronted with human sorrow. See Verri, Memorie sincere, p. 37. Ibid., p. 80. Ibid. Anglani, ‘L’uomo non si muta’, p. 131. Verri, Memorie sincere, p. 83. Verri, Discorso, p. 108. Ibid., pp. 113–114. Ibid., p. 108. See ibid., p. 108. While Verri recognizes that the civilized man is more inclined to be affected by the work of art, he also admits here that anyone just barely capable of enthusiasm will be able to use the imagination to add to the work of art. Both Contarini and Stefano Ferrari have identified the painting that Verri describes without mentioning the title or author, as a painting by Martin Knoller completed between 1765 and 1766, Attilio Regolo si congeda da Roma. See Ferrari, ‘Ut pictura philosophia: Pietro Verri e l’Attilio Regolo di Martin Knoller’, Studi Trentini. Arte, 2 (2015), 275–295 and Contarini, ‘Figure della reticenza: un salon di Pietro Verri’, in Ead., Una retorica degli affetti: dall’epos al romanzo (Pisa: Pacini, 2006), pp. 137–154. Verri, Discorso, pp. 110–111. Ferrari, Ut pictura philosophia’, p. 279. See ibid., p. 289. Contarini, ‘Figure della reticenza’, pp. 149–151. Ibid., p. 143.

2 Francesco Soave and the Unconscious of the Somnambulist, Dreams, Madness, and Distraction in Eighteenth-Century Italy Alessandra Aloisi Introduction Interest in somnambulism – a widespread obsession in eighteenth-­ century and nineteenth-century psychology, such that Victor Cousin saw it as one of the main problems of his age1 – was almost entirely eclipsed in the subsequent century. This is not to say that studies of the phenomenon disappeared, but rather that somnambulism (whether ‘natural’ or ‘artificial’) no longer played a central role in the study of the unconscious dynamics of the human mind. Why was somnambulism so critical? What type of problems and anxieties, related to the emerging notion of the unconscious, did it allow to convey and come across? An answer to these questions might be found in Pierre Janet, one of the last psychologists who devoted ample space to the study of somnambulism. His work in L’automatisme psychologique (1889) can be considered, in many respects, as a systematization of the medical and philosophical knowledge that the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had developed on the theme. 2 What appeared to interest Janet and the scholars who preceded him about somnambulism was in particular the fact that it made it possible to observe, in their pure state and ideal conditions, the functioning of psychic phenomena rooted in the sphere of automatism and the involuntary, such as habit, memory, instincts, distraction, dreams, and mental illnesses, which Janet strove to oppose with the activity of the self and the intellect. Indeed, a fascinating aspect of somnambulism was the fact that it seemed to blur the boundaries between the state of sleep and wakefulness, and between passivity and activity. According to a definition still embraced by Janet, in the Encyclopédie, somnambulism was defined as a kind of illness in which a subject is able to carry out while asleep, and sometimes with more precision and skill than when awake, targeted actions, such as walking, talking, reading, and writing, which seem to require the intervention of the will.3 Astonishing stories proliferate during this period of somnambulists who were able to accomplish, as if they were awake, enterprises that would be impossible in waking life, such as walking confidently along the cornices of buildings or revealing astonishing intellectual capacities.4

34  Alessandra Aloisi In this essay, I will examine the way in which the theme of somnambulism, within which one of the first formulations of the unconscious emerged,5 can be traced in Italy. In particular, I will focus on a text that played a critical role in cultural and linguistic mediation among England, France, and Italy between the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries: the Saggio Filosofico di Gio. Locke Su L’umano Intelletto, translated and annotated by Francesco Soave.6 First, I will show how somnambulism played a central role in the definition and understanding of unconscious mental phenomena such as distraction, dreams, and madness. Second, by referring to Jan Goldstein’s seminal distinction between ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical fragmentation’ of the self,7 I will show how the conception of the unconscious which is traceable in Soave seems to waver between the two. This will be explained as a result of two different cultural impulses: the legacy of Locke and the study of somnambulism.

Locke Revised When Francesco Soave decided to produce an Italian translation of the abridged edition of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published by John Wynne in 1696,8 Locke’s philosophy had already produced its major effects. The Essay, the first edition of which was published in 1689 (although dated 1690), was already widely circulated in Europe, especially in the French version by Pierre Coste,9 enjoying considerable development (in particular by Condillac) and eliciting bitter polemical reactions (namely by Leibniz). Soave, whose desire to popularize Locke’s ideas was inextricable from his own philosophical aspiration, therefore set himself a far more ambitious project than simple translation. As he explained in the preface, the Italian version of the essay, published in 1775, aimed to offer not only a text purged of all of the elements that could seem to be opposed to the Catholic religion10 but also an updated volume in step with the times, supported by copious notes and appendices in which Locke’s ideas were integrated, developed, or discussed in light of the discoveries of the later ‘metaphysicists’, such as Condillac and Charles Bonnet. The idea was to enclose within the volume nothing less than ‘un compiuto sistema di Metafisica’ [a complete system of Metaphysics]. The result was a singular, extremely layered, and complex text. A crossroads of various cultural impulses, it is an ideal text for studying the emergence of the notion of the unconscious in Italy. It allows us not only to closely follow the development of Locke’s philosophy in Europe during the eighteenth century but also to study the way in which particular ideas were expressed and modified within the Italian cultural domain. The various appendices introduced by Soave include one of special interest to the present study: ‘Riflessioni intorno ai Sogni, ai fenomeni de’ Sonniloqui e dei Sonnamboli, e al Delirio, e alla Pazzia’ [Reflections on

Dreams, Madness, and Distraction  35 Dreams, the Phenomena of Somniloquy and Somnambulism, Delirium and Madness], inserted after Chapter XIX (Book II), on the ‘­modificazioni del pensiero’ [modifications of thought]. It provides us with a representative cross-section of how, between the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, specific involuntary mental processes, today identified with the sphere of the unconscious, were conceived on the basis of the associationist paradigm elaborated by Locke. In the first place, we find the idea of a continuity between psychic phenomena that are part of ordinary life (dreams and states of distraction or reveries) and pathological psychic phenomena (somnambulism, madness, and delirium).11 All of these phenomena were held to have identical functioning and explained as simple quantitative variations on a single principle, the ‘risvegliamento meccanico delle idee’ [mechanical awakening of ideas], which was believed to be in play any time that the attention was not deliberately directed by the mind. While distraction, Soave observed, is a kind of dream or somnambulism, but shorter and easy to snap out of, delirium is a long dream or somniloquy: ‘fra un delirante e un sonniloquo non v’ha altra differenza fuorché la durata, e la vivezza ordinariamente maggiore con cui nel primo le idee sono svegliate’ [the only differences between a delirious person and one affected by somniloquy are duration and the normally greater vividness with which ideas are awakened in the case of the former]. Similarly, madness is considered a ‘delirio più lungo, e divenuto abituale’ [longer delirium that has become habitual], ‘un lungo sonniloquio, o sonnambulismo, un lungo sogno’ [a long somniloquy or somnambulism, a long dream].12 In short, the only difference between all of these phenomena was one of degree (degree of intensity and duration), not of nature, which is why it was possible to explain each in light of the others. To adopt the words which will be later used by Renan, we might also say that it is the pathological phenomena (somnambulism, madness, and delirium) that seem to acquire here experimental value, because, thanks to their ‘exaggeration’, they provide a better opportunity to observe what is also present, although in a ‘more tenuous’ form, in the normal state.13 In the second place, this appendix shows how it is thanks to the idea of continuity between all of these phenomena that it becomes possible to positively conceive – that is, to conceive as a psychic positivity or mental reality – phenomena previously defined in a purely negative or privative way. This is not only the case for dreams and madness (which were for Descartes simply forms of non-thought)14 but also states of distraction. More than the simple absence of thought or attention, distraction here begins to be defined as a different mode of thought or attention. This idea later enjoyed considerable development, especially in the sphere of theories of creativity and inspiration. As a different mode of thought and attention that is exercised independently of the control of the will, distraction was therefore associated

36  Alessandra Aloisi with dreams and somnambulism. Apparently, Soave was here continuing the path indicated by Locke, who considered sleep accompanied by dreams as a state in which the mind, although withdrawn from the senses, ‘retains a yet more loose and incoherent manner of thinking’,15 which we also experience in states of distraction or reverie, when the association of ideas escapes the control of reflection.16 Whereas in the state of wakefulness – we read in Soave’s appendix – the soul deliberately directs the attention and gives a certain order to the succession of ideas, when dreaming the attention is instead ‘rapita tumultuosamente’ [tumultuously swept] from one idea to the next and creates ‘successioni d’idee mostruosissime e stravaganti’ [series of monstrous and extravagant ideas]. The same thing happens when we are distracted or daydreaming: ‘Quante volte in quei momenti, che chiamiamo di distrazione, non ci troviamo noi in mezzo a idee disparatissime, senza saper nemmeno talvolta trovarne il filo, o tornando indietro scoprire le tracce, per cui vi siamo arrivati?’ [How often do we find ourselves, in those moments we call moments of distraction, in the midst of the most disparate ideas, sometimes not even knowing how to find the thread or going back to discover the paths that brought us there?]. When we are distracted, we are thinking without being aware of doing so. The proof of this is in the fact that, when we come out of these states of absentmindedness, we are surprised to find ourselves in the company of thoughts without knowing from whence they came. But – Soave reassures us – these ‘ca­ stelli in aria’ [castles in the air], these ‘sogni fatti vegliando per ordinario sono brevi, poiché l’esterne impressioni frequentemente richiaman l’animo dalle sue distrazioni, e l’attenzione rimenano agli oggetti, che attualmente operano sopra i sensi’ [daydreams are ordinarily brief, since external impressions frequently call our minds back from their distractions, and attention returns to the objects that are presently working on the senses].17 This happens to us, for example, when we are reading and let ourselves become distracted by some external sensation or some idea suggested by the book itself, shortly after which, the sight of the book or some other impression pulls us back from our distraction and redirects us to our interrupted reading. However, while Locke aimed to alert his readers to the connections that the mind habitually forms in the absence of its deliberate direction, Soave shows that he has absorbed the teachings of sensationism. The concatenations that form spontaneously when thought is left to its own devices are not always monstrous, incoherent, or extravagant. Reducing thinking to a pure passive activity, Soave notes that there are cases of individuals who, through the mechanical awakening of ideas, ‘seppe[ro] anche sognando far delle lunghe operazioni di Aritmetica e d’Algebra’ [were able to do complex maths and algebra even while dreaming].18 This happens because one of the ideas awakened during sleep ‘rapisce’ [seizes] the attention so forcefully that it becomes its master,

Dreams, Madness, and Distraction  37 spontaneously determining the course of thought. In the Rapports du physique et du moral de l’homme (Xème mémoire), Cabanis will illustrate a very similar mechanism in order to explain some bizarre episodes reported to him by Benjamin Franklin and Condillac. While the former found solutions in his dreams to problems that were plaguing him, the latter sometimes completed work while asleep that he had left off when he went to bed. Cabanis’s conclusion is reminiscent of Soave’s: ‘En effet, l’esprit peut continuer ses recherches dans les songes; il peut être conduit par une certaine suite de raisonnements à des idées qu’il n’avait pas; il peut faire, à son insu, comme il le fait à chaque instant durant la veille, des calculs rapides qui lui dévoilent l’avenir’ [In fact, the mind can continue its work in one’s dreams. It can be led, through a determinant series of arguments, to ideas that it did not have. It can do, unbeknownst to itself, as happens constantly while awake, quick calculations that reveal the future].19 In other words, the mechanical awakening of ideas that enters into play in dreams or in states of distraction does not necessarily imply illogical and irrational connections. Indeed, without the oversight of the self or the will, the mind can not only carry out the same operations that it can during wakefulness, but is sometimes even more powerful and penetrating. It is here that the possibility of an unconscious and impersonal dimension of thought begins to be outlined: one that, during the nineteenth century, came to be considered as the main source of creativity. 20 Dream states and states of distraction thus reveal, in their creative and productive aspect, a certain resemblance to what happens during somnambulism, when, thanks to force of habit, an individual can do things that he would be unable to do awake. Just as the somnambulist walks calmly along the cornices of buildings, so is the sleeping or distracted individual able to reason in creative ways that would be impossible when fully lucid. It is indeed distraction itself that sometimes puts us in a kind of somnambulism state: Quante volte non ci accade egli nelle campagne di andare per sentieri strettissimi e tortuosi senza errar mai […] benché la mente frattanto sia distratta da mille pensieri, e gli occhi vadan vagando continuamente d’intorno in mille parti, o sian fissi su di una lettera o un libro? Or troppo è chiaro che in questi casi non è la riflessione né l’occhio che ci dirigga, ma il piede stesso e l’abitudine […]. Così noi spesso arriviamo a far lunghissimi tratti seguendone tutte le si­ nuosità e ripiegamenti senza neppure avvedercene. [How many times has it happened that we walk along extremely narrow and tortuous trails in the countryside without ever erring […] even though our minds are in the meantime distracted by a thousand thoughts, and our eyes are constantly looking around in a thousand directions or fixed on a letter or a book? It is now all

38  Alessandra Aloisi too clear that in these cases it is neither reflection nor the eye that guides us, but the foot itself and habit […]. And so we often end up covering long distances following all of the turns and bends without even noticing them]21 This description could have been inspired by a passage in which Condillac, in the Traité des animaux, describes man’s two selves: ‘le moi d’ha­ bitude’ [the self of habit] and ‘le moi de réflexion’ [the self of reflection], the former being what makes it possible for a mathematician to walk through Paris evading every obstacle that he encounters while the latter is immersed in solving a problem. 22 At the same time, this description seems to anticipate Xavier De Maistre’s observations on the ‘système de l’âme et de la bête’ [the system of the soul and the beast], which Janet later considered the best description of the automatism of thought during states of distraction 23: Je me suis aperçu, par diverses observations, que l’homme est composé d’une âme et d’une bête […]. Un jour de l’été passé, je m’ache­ minai pour aller à la cour. J’avais peint toute la matinée, et mon âme, se plaisant à méditer sur la peinture, laissa le soin à la bête de me transporter au palis du roi. ‘Que la peinture est un art sublime’, pansait mon âme, ‘heureux celui que le spectacle de la nature a touché […]’. Pendant que mon âme faisait ces réflexions, l’autre allait son train, et Dieu sait où elle allait! – Au lieu de se rendre à la cour, comme elle en avait reçu l’ordre, elle dériva tellement sur la gauche, qu’au moment où mon âme la rattrapa, elle était à la porte de Mme de Hautcastel, à un demi-mille du palais royal. Je laisse à penser au lecteur ce qui serait arrivé, si elle était entrée toute seule chez une aussi belle dame…. [I have come to the conclusion, by way of various observations, that man is composed of a soul and a beast […]. One day last summer, I was making my way on foot to Court. I had spent the whole morning painting, and my soul, enjoying its mediations on painting, left it to the beast to transport me to the King’s place. ‘What a sublime art is painting!’, my soul was thinking. ‘Happy is the man who has been touched by the spectacle of nature […]’. As my soul was reflecting thus, the other kept right on going – God knows where! Instead of making its way to Court, as it had been ordered to, it drifted away so far leftwards that, by the time my soul caught up with it, it was already at the door of Mme de Hautcastel, half a mile away from the royal palace. I will leave to the reader to imagine what would have happened if the other had entered all by itself the home of such a beautiful lady]24 However, whereas De Maistre roguishly warns his reader about the risks that we run when the soul leaves the beast on its own, Soave is more

Dreams, Madness, and Distraction  39 concerned with the risk to which we expose ourselves waking the mind when the beast is charged with guiding it. In his appendix, we read: Se nell’atto che noi passeggiamo sovra il sentiero anzidetto, guidati dal piede stesso unicamente, venisse la terra a sprofondarsi dai lati […] senza che noi ne avvedessimo, questo non turberebbe punto il nostro cammino, e noi saremmo nel caso di un sonnambolo che passeggia d’intorno a un cornicione, o al margine di un tetto. [If while walking along the above-noted trail, guided by our feet alone, the ground on either side were to suddenly fall away […] without our noticing it, this would not disturb our walk at all, and we will be like the somnambulist who walks along cornices or on the edge of a roof] Not so if we notice what has happened to the earth: in that case, ‘ne saremmo turbati orrendamente […]. Sottentrando allora la riflessione all’abitudine, e traendo seco lo spavento, ci farebbe perdere la direzione, l’equilibrio, e noi verremmo a precipitar senza scampo; come appunto si narra di qualche sonnambulo…’ [we would be horribly upset […]. Reflection thus taking the place of habit, and bringing fear with it, we would lose our direction and balance, and we would take a fatal plunge, as we have heard about some somnambulists…]. 25 Not only does the execution of these complex tasks not require our conscious attention, but we risk failure if for some reason our distraction is interrupted by reflection and our beneficial state of unconsciousness is suspended. 26 The juxtaposition between distraction and somnambulism became recurrent theme in the nineteenth century, which can be found not only in the work of Maine de Biran (where it has, however, a negative connotation) but also in that of Pierre Janet.27 Given its paradigmatic value, we shall now take a closer look at the case of somnambulism analysed by Soave.

The ‘sonnambulo meraviglioso’ The somnambulism case discussed by Soave provides us with an opportunity to observe how, in the medical and scientific imaginary of the time, the somnambulist (a figure that would soon be typically seen as female, in the belief that women, possessed of a natural passivity, were more predisposed to this state)28 was a direct descendent of Condillac’s animated statue: [I]maginons’, we read in the Traité des sensations, ‘une statue organisée intérieurement comme nous, et animée d’un esprit privé de toute espèce d’idées. Nous supposâmes encore que l’extérieur tout de marbre ne lui permettait l’usage d’aucun de ses sens, et nous réservâmes la liberté de les ouvrir à notre choix, aux différentes impressions dont ils sont susceptibles.

40  Alessandra Aloisi [Let us imagine a statue that is organised internally just as we are, and animated by a spirit lacking in ideas of any kind. Let us also suppose that the marble exterior does not permit it the use of any of its senses, and we reserve ourselves the freedom to open them up, at our discretion, to the various impressions to which they are susceptible]29 Similarly, starting from a condition of initial insensibility, 30 the somnambulist was gradually ‘educato’ [educated] and ‘ammaestrato’ [taught] to use his senses and advanced faculties, in order to provide an opportunity to study up close the relationship between sensibility and memory, the genesis and mechanical awakening of ideas and the relationship between mental representations and motility. While, however, Condillac’s statue was only an abstract hypothesis, with no element of reality, the somnambulist offered the clear advantage of empirical and experimental evidence. Although the case analysed by Soave belonged to the category of ‘natural’ somnambulism (in which the subject falls into the state spontaneously), once asleep, he was subjected to a series of experiments aimed to artificially control what happened. The case discussed in this appendix was recounted by P.M. Domenico Pino in a report published in 1770 under the title Discorso sopra un meraviglioso sonnambulo [Discourse on a Marvellous Somnambulist]. The report, long sections of which are cited by Soave, concerns a Dominican friar residing in the Convento delle Grazie in Milan, whose ‘persona dormiente’ [sleeping persona] was the protagonist of a series of singular episodes. This case closely resembles the one reported in the Encyclopédie, which also talks of a monk who wrote sermons in his sleep, reading them aloud and correcting them as necessary.31 However, as we shall see, the somnambulism case analysed by Soave was not limited to illustrating the amazing things that the ‘macchina dormiente’ [sleeping machine] could do in the absence of the self but also provided an opportunity to reflect on the profound relationship between the body, memory, the environment, and the sense of one’s own identity.32 Let us quickly summarize the case. After experiencing convulsions during his sleep, a friar entered into a somnambulism state and believed that he was living in a past completely separate from the real present. His ‘sleeping persona’ was convinced that he was in Turin, where the man had lived years earlier before entering the seminary. He had no knowledge of his future life in Milan and while sleeping he addressed his confrères as if they were the servant and the brother he had lived with back then. Almost anticipating the mechanism of involuntary memory, Soave suggested that the convulsions, which the friar had suffered when he was a young man, had reawakened, through the association of ideas, images from the past that had been ignored up until then, and that were now regularly present while he slept. Two distinct selves, each ignorant

Dreams, Madness, and Distraction  41 of the other, began to alternate between the wakefulness and sleep of the same individual. As if two separate memories were in play, when awake the friar had no knowledge of the ‘sleeping persona’, and the latter, although ignorant of the awake self, had a detailed memory of what happened during his somnambulism episodes. I believe, however, that it would be misleading to speak, in the case of phenomena such as this one, of a simple ‘doubling of the personality’.33 Indeed, nothing guarantees that the self is divided into only two ‘personae’ (or, as Janet will later say, ‘personalities’)34: the one that is awake (and tied to the present) and the one that is sleeping (rooted in the past). The case described by Soave suggests that, on the contrary, there can be as many sleeping personae as there are temporal layers or periods of life that determinant circumstances (like the convulsions) can accidentally awaken. As was already the case in the Encyclopédie, ‘alternate memory’ and ‘oblivion upon reawakening’ are here considered to be the distinctive features of somnambulism.35 Soave initially tried to explain these two phenomena through recourse to the association of ideas. If the awake individual does not remember anything about the ‘sleeping persona’, this is because the association of ideas between the two states was interrupted. The same thing happens with dreams, which we tend to forget when we awaken. On the other hand, thanks to the association of ideas, the ‘sleeping persona’ can preserve the memory of previous somnambulism episodes while remaining entirely ignorant of what happens during wakefulness. This capacity for acquiring memories and experiences through ideas association is what makes it possible to ‘educate’, ‘teach’, and ‘train’ the somnambulist to the point of reaching a level of skill that is sometimes indistinguishable from that of an awake individual.36 But Soave was quick to note that while the association of ideas can explain alternate memory, it does not seem to be able to fully explain oblivion upon reawakening. Why is somnambulism never remembered in the waking life, whereas we can sometimes remember our dreams? This happens, for example, when we wake up in the middle of our dreams or right at the end, and the dream images can be tied to those of wakefulness. Shouldn’t the same happen with somnambulism, and especially when one is gradually reawakened? Why are the ideas of the somnambulist never tied to those of the awake individual? Soave thus hypothesized that the state of sensibility must be so altered in the somnambulist that the ideas that he forms are too different to be tied to these of wakefulness. This alteration of the state of sensibility would depend – as in the case of madness or delirium – on the predominance of interior images, which gain the upper hand over external stimuli, determining their reception and decoding. Evidence of this is found in the case of the somnambulist friar. When in state of somnambulism, he gave no sign of hearing the voices of his confrères who questioned him, ‘e ciò probabilmente perché la sua attenzione, occupata dalle idee che aveva

42  Alessandra Aloisi attualmente presenti alla immaginazione, non badava punto alla leggera impressione di poche parole, che non avevano con queste idee niuna relazione’ [and this was probably because his attention, taken up by the ideas present at the time in his imagination, paid no heed to the light impression of just a few words, which had no relation to these ideas]. However, as soon as the confrères started addressing him as if they were his brother and the servant, the ideas of which were fixed in his imagination, the friar began to ‘udire le altrui parole, o piuttosto a prestarvi attenzione, perché relative alla sua idea attuale’ [to hear others’ words, or rather to pay attention to them, since related to his current idea].37 As if to say that he heard their words before as well, but did not listen to them. The state of initial insensibility in the somnambulist is therefore only apparent and depends on the discrepancy between interior images, which are besieging him, and external stimuli, which have no relationship to these images. Soave’s thoughts on the sensibility of the somnambulist are reminiscent of the conclusions drawn not long after by Maine de Biran. According to the latter, what takes place in somnambulism is a kind of reversal of the usual relationship between sensation and imagination. While during wakefulness sensation determines the state of the imagination and the accompanying images, in somnambulism states, sensation is subordinate to the imagination. In the first case, the imagination represents what is really experienced by the senses, whereas in the second, ce tableau imaginaire est donné à l’avance ou est antérieur aux objets qui doivent venir s’y adapter, et ne sont admis ou ne frappent même les sens extérieurs que sous la condition de cette convenance ou ressemblance avec le tableau fantastique qui est indépendant d’eux. [the imaginary picture comes first or is prior to the objects, which therefore need to adapt to it, and they are not recognised or do not fully strike the external senses except in the case of harmony with or resemblance to the fantastical scenario that developed independent of them]38 The somnambulist, therefore, pays attention solely to the objects that resonate with the pre-existing interior images that are occupying his mind. Like Maine de Biran, Soave also pondered whether this inversion of the usual relationship between imagination and sensation occurs more often than we think and is also proper to the normal states. 39 When we are deeply occupied by something and do not realize that night has fallen or hear a door open, isn’t it the same as what happens, albeit in a lighter form, to the somnambulist, who gives no sign of hearing what is being shouted in his ear?40 Soave specifies that, in all of these cases,

Dreams, Madness, and Distraction  43 ‘la limitazione delle forze’ [the limitation of the forces] of the mind (what Janet later called the ‘rétrécissement du champ de la conscience’ [narrowing of the field of consciousness]) depends not so much on a sensory problem as on a hypertrophy of interior images. The impressions continue to penetrate ‘infino all’anima’ [all the way to the mind], but the latter is occupied by other thoughts that prevent it from paying attention to them.41 In short, as with those suffering madness or delirium, the somnambulist makes an ‘uso imperfetto dei sensi’ [imperfect use of his senses]42 determined by the predominance of interior images. Here it is worth noting a slight (but significant) shift with respect to the concept of madness expressed in Locke’s Essay. On the one hand, considered analogous to dreaming, delirium and madness are still being presented, in a Lockean way, as disturbances that concern the senses or the state of sensibility, but leave the mind and reason intact. In his translation of Chapter XI in Book II of the Essay, Soave made no changes to the definition of the madman as someone who reasons properly but on the basis of incorrect premises.43 On the other hand, the observations found in the appendix represent a shift away from this vision of madness. As we have seen, in both somnambulism and madness, the imperfect use of the senses is traced to a dysfunction of the imagination, which gives certain interior images more weight than external stimuli. In the person suffering madness or delirium, Soave specifies, this constant force of interior ideas can depend on either physical causes (the deformation of part of the brain) or moral causes (the presence of a fixed idea).44 Here, madness evidently ceases to be seen as merely a sensory and peripheral fact, and begins to be conceived as a reality rooted in the spiritual and moral world, which eats into the mind and the very organ of reason. Soave, whose aim in translating the Essay was to purge it of ideas that conflicted with Catholicism, seems surprisingly unaware here of the theological implications of such a vision – a vision which, exhibiting the corruptibility of the soul, points at its materiality and questions its immortality.45

Conclusion Soave’s analysis offers at least one element which marks his difference with respect to contemporary and later treatments of somnambulism. This phenomenon reveals the temporal stratifications of the self, which is composed of many successive personae or identities that an entirely chance occurrence can cause to resurface thanks to the weakening of the will and senses that somnambulism entails.46 What Soave touches on here is a series of problems that, although independently from the theme of somnambulism, enjoyed significant development in the fields of philosophy and literature during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From Leopardi to Proust, involuntary memory and the states

44  Alessandra Aloisi of distraction became, for the same reasons (the weakening of the will and the senses), the main keys to a past that lies buried and apparently forgotten.47 Whether real or fictitious, the story of the friar who, assailed by convulsions while asleep, enters a state of somnambulism in which he is convinced to be in a city where he had lived many years before, in the company of completely different people, might be reminiscent of the passages in which Proust describes the hesitation of the self in the moments of reawakening. Waking up in a dark room in the middle of the night, the narrator of the Recherche feels all the rooms in which he lived, and the successive identities connected to the memory of those places, swirling around his body. Almost as if in a somnambulism state, his senses, numbed by sleep, go back over, for each room, the arrangement of the furniture and directions of the walls, in a ‘circular or spiral movement’48 that ultimately resurfaces in the present.49 This is precisely the movement that seems to get stuck in the story recounted by Soave, permitting a past self to force its way into a completely silenced present identity. In The Post-Revolutionary Self, Politics and Psyche in France (1750–1850), Jan Goldstein identifies three fundamental types of fragmentation of the self that correspond to the main ways of conceiving the unconscious prior to psychoanalysis: ‘horizontal fragmentation’, ‘segmentation’, and ‘vertical fragmentation’.50 While the second type of fragmentation, which is based on the oppositions authenticity/inauthenticity and sincerity/dissimulation, seems to have less to do with the issues we have discussed here, 51 the other two types of fragmentation can instead help us to define the concept of the unconscious traceable in Soave. ‘Horizontal fragmentation’ developed out of the legacy of Locke through sensationism and the idéologie, which carried on the idea of the mind as tabula rasa. This type of fragmentation put the Cartesian idea of the self as a thinking, unitary, indivisible, and perfectly knowable substance in crisis for the first time. It implies the decentring and dispersion of the self, conceived as an accumulation of discrete units that are all on the same level with no hierarchies among them. ‘Vertical fragmentation’, introduced by the psychological theories influenced by the practice of hypnosis, was instead formulated on the oppositions depth/surface and sleep/wakefulness and implied the idea of a self floating above hidden depths. This is the type of fragmentation that later opened the way to Freudian theory. The conception of the unconscious that we find in Soave, resulting from different cultural impulses, seems to waver between a form of ‘horizontal fragmentation’ (of sensationist origin, conceiving the self as an aggregate of sensations and the result of memory and habit) and a form of ‘vertical fragmentation’ (derived from his interest in somnambulism, in which he found empirical evidence for the temporal stratification of the self). However, unlike the type of fragmentation that would later

Dreams, Madness, and Distraction  45 open the way to the Freudian concept of the unconscious, vertical fragmentation preserves, in Soave, the multiple and plural character proper to horizontal fragmentation. The problem, is other words, is not so much mental duality (the dialectic between the self and its deeper double, the depth/surface dualism), but mental plurality (there are as many latent personae or personalities as there are temporal layers). Both horizontal and vertical fragmentation spread the idea of a decentralization, split and opacity of the self, prey to involuntary processes that it only minimally controls. Perhaps perceiving the dangers of this vision, Soave, after having pushed his ideas so far, abruptly retreats and plays down the import of his thesis. Towards the end of the appendix to Chapter XIX, he expresses his hope for the reabsorption of the unconscious and the plurality of the self into the unity and full light of the conscious: ‘Una sola cosa io bramerei che diligentemente si ritentasse, cioè di continuare i discorsi’ until the somnambulist ‘si svegliasse gradatamente da se stesso, dimodochè la catena delle idee avute nel sonno [possa] riunirsi con quelle della veglia’ [I long for just one thing to be diligently reattempted, which is to continue speaking to the somnambulist until he gradually reawakens from himself, in such a way that the chain of ideas that he had in his sleep can reunite with those of his wakefulness]. What Soave wished to obtain was the abolition of the unconscious dimension and reunification of the ‘sleeping persona’ and the awake individual, under the aegis and control of the latter. ‘Io son persuaso ch’egli si sovverrebbe allora de’ suoi sonniloqui, come noi ci sovveniamo dei’ nostri sogni, e noi potremmo forse averne la storia da lui medesimo: storia che sarebbe certamente una delle più interessanti’ [I am convinced that he would then remember some of his somniloquy episodes, just as we remember some of our dreams, and we might get to have the story from he himself: a story that would certainly be one of the most interesting].52 Behind his presumed scientific interest, the hope of being able to restore unity to the different personae conceals a moral and religious anxiety. The idea that a single individual can host a plurality of distinct personae was a great embarrassment for the metaphysical theory of the unity of the self that Soave strove to maintain.

Notes 1 Oeuvres philosophiques de Maine de Biran, ed. by Victor Cousin (Paris: Ladrange, 1841), IV, p. xiii. On the emergence of the problem of somnambulism as an object of scientific concern in the 18th century, see Guy ­Pomiers, ‘Le somnambulisme. Un problème philosophique’, Dix-Huitième Siècle, 10/1978, 299–318. 2 See Pierre Janet, L’automatisme psychologique. Essai de psychologie expérimentale sur les forms inférieures de l’activité humaine, introduction by S. Nicolas (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005). 3 See Denis Diderot & Jean-Baptiste Le Rond R. D’Alembert, Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (Paris: Le

46  Alessandra Aloisi Breton, Michel-Antoine David, Laurent Durand, & Antoine-Claude Brias­ son, ­1751–1772), 28 Vols., art. ‘Somnambule, & Somnambulisme’, vol. XV (1765), ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Autumn 2017 Edition), http://­ encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/. 4 The remarcable intellectual capacities of the somnambulists were remarqued in particular by François Boissier de Sauvages in his Nosologie méthodique (1763). 5 See Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (New York: Basic Books, 1970), chapters 2 and 3. 6 G. Locke, Saggio filosofico sull’umano intelletto, abridged by Dr Winne, translation and commentary by Francesco Soave (Milan, 1775), 3 vols. (from now on indicated as Saggio filosofico). Writer, translator, popularizer, and philosopher, Francesco Soave, who belonged to the order of the Somaschan fathers, was a key figure in Italian culture during this period, in part due to his position as a teacher and school system reformer. He knew Condillac personally and contributed to the spread and mediation of sensationism and Idéologie in Italy. The young Manzoni was one of his students and his work was known to Foscolo and Leopardi. See Giorgio Orelli, ‘La Svizzera italiana’, in Letteratura italiana, ed. by Alberto Asor Rosa (Turin: Einaudi, 1989), vol. III, pp. 885–918 (p. 894). 7 Jan Goldstein, The Post-Revolutionary Self, Politics and Psyche in France (1750–1850) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). 8 Wynne’s abridgement was approved by Locke, as we learn from a letter of the latter to Molineaux, cited by Wynne in the ‘Dedication’. It was also translated into French by Bosset in 1720. 9 On Locke and Coste, see Gabriel Bonno, ‘Locke et son traducteur français Pierre Coste. Avec huit lettres inédites de Coste à Locke’, Revue de littérature comparée, 33 (1959), 161–179; Anne Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Repubblic of Lettres, 1680–1750 (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1995), pp.  117–123; Ann Thomson, Locke, Stillingfleet et Coste: La philosophie en extraits, “Cromohs”, 12 (2007), 1–16; John Milton, Pierre Coste, John Locke, and the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, in Sarah Hutton, P. Schuurman (eds.), Studies on Locke: Sources, Contemporaries, and Legacy (Dordrecht: Springer 2008), pp. 195–223. 10 On the suspicion, which characterized Locke’s reception in Italy, in particularly in the early eighteenth century, that his system concealed dangers for Christianity, see Mario Sina, Locke e la filosofia dell’illuminismo lombardo, in Aldo De Maddalena, Ettore Rotelli, Gennaro Barbarisi (eds.), Economia, istituzioni, cultura in Lombardia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1980), pp. 239–254 (pp.  245–248). On Locke’s reception in Italy more generally, see: Eugenio Garin, Storia della filosofia italiana (Turin: Einaudi, 1966), part V, chapters I and IV, and Paolo Casini, Introduzione all’Illuminismo (Bari: Laterza, 1973). 11 Dreams actually represent a borderline case. For example, Alfred Maury, still considered them a pathological phenomenon, which involved the predominance of automatisms to the detriment of will, a split personality, and confusion between external sensations and internal images (see his ‘Nouvelles observations sur les analogies des phénomènes du rêve et de l’aliénation mentale, Mémoire lu à la Société médico-psychologique dans sa séance du 25 Octobre 1852’, Annales médico-psychologues, no. 5, 1853, and ‘De certains faits observés dans les rêves et dans l’état intermédiaire entre le sommeil et la veille’, Annales médico-psychologiques, no. 3, 1857). On this topic, see Jacqueline Carroy and Régine Plas, ‘La volonté et l’involontaire:

Dreams, Madness, and Distraction  47 l’exemple de l’automatisme’, in Jean-Louis Cabanès, Didier Philippot and Paolo Tortonese (eds.), Paradigmes de l’âme. Littérature et aliénisme au xixe siècle (Paris: Presse de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2011), pp. 23–37 (pp. 26–27). 2 Saggio filosofico, pp. 161–162. 1 13 As Ernest Renan later observed in L’avenir de la science, Pensées de 1848 (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1923), p. 184: Le sommeil, la folie, le délire, le somnambulisme, l’hallucination offrent à la psychologie individuelle un champ d’expérience bien plus avantageux que l’état régulier. Car les phénomènes qui, dans cet état, sont comme effacés par leur ténuité, apparaissent dans les crises extraordinaires d’une manière plus sensibles par leur exagération. [In studying the psychology of the individual, sleep, madness, delirium, somnambulism, hallucination offer a far more favourable field of experience than the normal state. Phenomena, which in the normal state are almost effaced because of their tenuousness, appear more palpable in extraordinary crises because they are exaggerated] According to George Canguilhem, Le normal et le pathologique (Paris: Puf, 1966), p. 17, this way of thinking will become generally accepted in nineteenth-­century medicine and psychology: ‘C’est dans le pathologique, édition en gros caractères, qu’on déchiffre l’enseignement de la santé, un peu comme Platon cherchait dans les institutions de l’État l’équivalent agrandi et plus facilement lisible des vertus et des vices de l’âme individuelle’ [‘It is in pathology, writ large, that we can unravel the teaching of health rather as Plato sought in the institutions of the State the larger and more easily readable equivalent of the virtues and vices of the individual soul’, The Normal and the Pathological, transl. by Carolyn R. Fawcett, with an introduction by Michel Foucault (New York: Zone Books, 1989), p. 43]. It would be inaccurate to employ, in the case of Soave, the notion of ‘normal’ as opposed to ‘abnormal’ and ‘pathological’, given that the current meaning of that term entered the dictionaries relatively late (see Caroline Warman, ‘From Pre-Normal to Abnormal: The Emergence of a Concept in Late Eighteenth-Century France’, Psychology & Sexuality, 1(3) (Sept. 2010), 200–213). However, the proximity between the thesis expressed by Soave in this appendix, and the arguments later found in psychologists such as Renan, Ribot, and Janet might be considered an evidence of the persistence, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, an idea of the mind and the unconscious that had its roots in Locke’s philosophy. It is significant, for instance, that Janet, a follower of Maine de Biran for his attempt to distinguish an active and a passive component in psychic life, continued to refer to the authority to Condillac and La Mettrie (see L’automatisme psychologique, pp. 137, 464). 14 See Michel Foucault, Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), pp. 55–59; eng.: History of Madness, ed. by Jean Khalfa, transl. by Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 44–47. 15 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. by Roger Woolhouse (London: Penguin, 1997), II, XIX, 4. 16 See Locke, Essay, II, XIX, 1. 17 Saggio filosofico, pp. 149–150. 18 Saggio filosofico, p. 151. 19 Pierre Cabanis, Rapports du physique et du moral de l’homme (1802), huitième édition, augm. de notes et précédée d’une notice historique et philosophique sur la vie, les travaux et les doctrines de Cabanis, avec une

48  Alessandra Aloisi

20

21 22

23 24

25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

table analytique par Destutt de Tracy (Paris: J.-B. Baillière, 1844), Xème Mémoire, ‘Du sommeil en particulier’, pp.  563–575. These anecdotes are also referred to by Maine de Biran in Nouvelles considérations sur le sommeil, les songes et le somnambulisme, in Maine de Biran, Ouvres, ed. by François Azouvi, 13 voll. (Paris: Vrin, 1984–2001), vol. V (1984), pp. ­82–123 (111–112). See for instance Pierre Chabaneix, Le subconscient chez les artistes, les savants et les ecrivains (Paris: Baillière, 1897), and Michael Finn, Figures of the Pre-Freudian Unconscious from Flaubert to Proust (New York: ­Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 164–165. Saggio filosofico, p. 159. See Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, ‘Traité des animaux’, in Œuvres de Condillac revues, corrigées par l’auteur, imprimées sur ses manuscrits autographes; et augmentées de la Langue des calculs, ouvrage posthume, ed. by Guillaume Arnoux (Paris-Strasburg: Gratiot, Houel, Guillaume et Gide; Levrault, 1798), 23 vols., vol. II, p. 553. See Janet, L’automatisme psychologique, pp. 468–470. See Xavier De Maistre, Voyage autour de ma chambre, ed. by Florence Lotterie (Paris: Flammarion, 2003), ch. 6–7. English: A Journey Around my Room, transl. by Andrew Brown, with a foreword by Alain de Botton (­R ichmond: Alma Classics, 2013). Saggio filosofico, p. 160. On the centrality of this issue, from Montaigne to Leopardi, see Franco D’Intino, ‘Il funambolo sul precipizio. Leopardi verso Montaigne’, Critica del testo, XX/1 (2017), 179–217. See Janet, L’automatisme psychologique, p. 462, who also quotes some passages from Biran’s Journal. This gender-based connotation of the somnambulist is consolidated by the introduction of ‘artificial’ somnambulism, later called hypnosis, in which a clear power relationship is established between the active subject (the doctor or mesmerist) and the passive subject (the mesmerised patient). See Chiara Gallini, La sonnambula meravigliosa. Magnetismo e ipnotismo nell’Ottocento italiano (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1983), and Jan Goldstein, Hysteria Complicated by Ecstasy: The Case of Nanette Leroux (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). Condillac, Traité des sensations, in Œuvres, vol. III, pp. 49–50. See Saggio filosofico, p. 156: early on, ‘non dava segno di sentir nulla’ [he gave no sign of feeling anything whatsoever]. Similar cases were reported and commented by Ludovico Antonio Muratori, Della forza della fantasia umana (Venice: Pasquali, 1745). For Muratori, see the essay by Paola Cori in this volume. See Saggio filosofico, p. 151. As was argued, for example, in the nevertheless fundamental study by Tony James, Dreams, Creativity, and Madness in Nineteenth-century France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). On the way in which the term ‘persona’ seems to preserve, in cases like this, the original meaning of ‘mask’, see Barbara Chitussi, Lo spettacolo di sé. Filosofia della doppia personalità (Milan: Meltemi, 2018). I am adopting here the terminology proposed by Janet, who considered those two features as proper to natural somnambulism as they were to artificial. In this sense, as it will be observed by Janet, somnambulism is always a ‘relative’ state and it is only in relation to wakefulness that it can be recognised as such. It is interesting to note that the somnambulist discussed by Soave had his eyes open. According to Janet, the idea that the somnambulists keeps their eyes

Dreams, Madness, and Distraction  49

37 38 39 40

41 42 43

closed is popular belief and if some do it, this is only because they are told that they are sleeping. Saggio filosofico, pp. 156–157. Maine de Biran, Nouvelles considérations sur le sommeil, p. 114. Biran in particular suggests that this mechanism comes into play in phenomena of instinct or in seeing ghosts. Soave quotes here the example of Archimedes, who, it is said, was so wrapped up in solving a geometry problem that he did not notice the siege of Syracuse. This example, quoted in Saggio filosofico, p. 157, was discussed in note 1, Chapter IX, Book II. See Saggio filosofico, p. 93. Ibid., p. 162. Locke, Essay, II, XI, 13: For they [mad men] do not appear to me to have lost the faculty of reasoning: but having joined together some ideas very wrongly, they mistake them for truths; and they err as men do, that argue right form wrong principles. For by the violence of their imagination, having taken their fancies for realities, they make right deductions from them. Thus you shall find a distracted man fancying himself a king, with a right inference, require suitable attendance, respect, and obedience: others who have thought themselves made of glass, have used the caution necessary to preserve such brittle bodies.

4 4 See Saggio filosofico, p. 163. 45 As Voltaire noticed in his Dictionnaire philosophique (Paris: Garnier, 1935), t. I, p. 286 (entry on ‘Folie’), this kind of vision ‘peut faire soupçonner que la faculté de penser, donnée de Dieu à l’homme, est sujette au dérangement comme les autres sens’ [‘may arouse the suspicion that the faculty of thinking, given by god to man, is subjected to derangement like the other senses’ (Philosophical dictionary, transl. by Theodore Besterman, Harmondhworth: Penguin, 2004, p. 211]. See Foucault, Histoire de la folie, pp. 226–33 (eng., pp. 208–214). 46 This aspect, which later became central to regressive hypnosis, did not receive much consideration at the time, especially in studies of natural somnambulism. Janet himself, studying the different personalities that can be evoked, one after another, through somnambulism, does not seem to have been interested in reflecting on the fact that they can correspond to multiple and successive temporal stratifications in the same individual. This aspect was only touched upon tangentially (see L’automatisme psychologique, p. 117). 47 See Alessandra Aloisi, ‘Memoria e attenzione involontaria nello Zibaldone’, Rivista internazionale di studi leopardiani, 7/2011, 83–94. 48 Marco Piazza, L’antagonista necessario. La filosofia francese dell’abitudine da Montaigne a Deleuze (Milan: Mimesis, 2015), p. 195. 49 See Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), pp. 6–7. 50 See Goldstein, The Post-Revolutionary Self, pp. 1–17, 328–329. 51 For a discussion of how this type of fragmentation, which according to Goldstein was expressed above all by Rousseau, found its way to Italy, in particular in the work of Foscolo, see the essay by Franco D’Intino in this volume. 52 Saggio filosofico, p. 161.

3 Jacopo’s Secret* Franco D’Intino

When speaking of the unconscious, we tend to think of it in terms of depth; that is, as something hidden that may nonetheless come to light, no matter how fragmentarily or obliquely. In Post-Revolutionary Self, Jan Goldstein places beside this model, which she terms ‘vertical fragmentation’, a different idea of the unconscious, to which she gives the name of ‘segmentation’, and which she describes as a ‘disparity among the self’s various roles’.1 In this second model, which is no longer vertical but rather horizontal, what is crucial is ‘the issue of its sincerity and authenticity, its being all of a piece’. 2 According to Goldstein, the author best-suited to verify the nature of this kind of unconscious, lurking between various personæ and within the fissure between truth, lie, and (self) deception, is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the spokesperson for an allegedly authentic and unitary self, yet grounded in something as impalpable and unascertainable as the ‘feeling of existence’. Such a claim for an individual essence, built as a psychological ‘truth’ against factual evidence, seems made purposely for challenging interpreters, and many have, indeed, exerted themselves to give the lie to Rousseau, by dismantling the integrity (and the virtuousness) of the subjectivity he constructs in his autobiographical writings and elsewhere. The most accomplished attempt at understanding Rousseau’s basic psychological mechanism has been that of Jean Starobinski, who portrayed an identity under threat of the watchful eye of the religious community ­ hysically – by going of Geneva, which Jean-Jacques tries to escape, first p away – and later symbolically. That eye, Starobinski writes, never abandoned him, and Rousseau himself plays the role of the caught-out sinner, seeking all sorts of ways to obliquely express desires that he feels to be illicit and culpable. This produces a knot of psychological attitudes that, shown by Freud to be interrelated and complementary (voyeurism and exhibitionism, sadism and masochism), are functional to the dynamics of a subjectivity that feels it is not only persecuted and illegitimate but constantly guilty in the presence of authority because it has not been embedded in an organically corporative system. The fear of being spied * The English translation to this chapter, as well as of its primary sources (unless noted otherwise), is by Fabio Camilletti.

Jacopo’s Secret  51 on and blamed brings Rousseau to accuse the entire world of observing, spying on, and persecuting him but also leads him to be observed, spied on, and persecuted, and to take delight in it – which also explains his ‘virtuous extremism’ as a victim and a scapegoat, who always feels superior to others.3 Rousseau feels the impulse, on the one hand, to blame himself a priori in the name of the vindicatory authority that he introjected in his own ego, and to feel ashamed of his own (ipso facto illegitimate) desires; on the other, to confess and justify himself, introjecting the absolving power of that same authority. For him, getting out of it and obtaining what he desires is not enough. He desires, instead, precisely what he is not authorized to desire. Hence the constant need to be understood and absolved. And to be caught, by displaying the fragment, the clue, or the trace of some guilt, revealing some (illegitimate) desire to be punished for; to justify himself immediately afterwards, and to hide, and to re-legitimatize himself. Jean-Jacques – certainly reminding us of St. ­Augustine’s theft of pears – steals the apples because he already knows he will be caught (Confessions), and that enables him to orchestrate his own defence, and to more or less have the last word about himself. Such is the psychological drive behind the Confessions. The mechanisms Rousseau employs in his autobiographical account are complex, and certainly I cannot recapitulate all of them here. In an excellent analysis, another critic who paid special attention to Freud’s teaching, Mario Lavagetto,4 basically confirms the validity of Starobinski’s insights. The strategy of Rousseau, the first to doubt Montaigne’s sincerity, consists not in concealing but, rather, in exhibiting and showcasing the scar in order to prove that the entire organism is in good health; or, conversely, in putting a scar under the reader’s eye in order to conceal a deeper, open wound. The first way of behaving tells the reader: if I am showing you my scar, it means that my wound is healed, and you can trust my self-diagnosis – my body (my Ego) is intact. What matters is the gesture of confessing, namely of disowning/refusing what is nonetheless, at the same time, shown. The second way of behaving consists in exaggerating the importance of certain faults in order to divert attention from worse ones, allowing them to pass unnoticed. A third way of behaving would be to reverse the roles, enabling the criminal Ego to disguise itself as a victim, as in the well-known episode of the stolen ribbon in the Confessions. Clearly these three strategies are not incompatible, and indeed they support one another. The element they have in common is the possibility of managing the self-accusatorial discourse, and of calibrating and cautiously measuring the fragments of guilt (of truth) so that they acquire a rhetorical coherence, in order to generate an overall image of innocence/ authenticity. In the end, it is nothing but a process of purification, or idealization – in Foscolo’s terms: sacralization. The unconscious, in this sense, would coincide not with some deep truth that ought to resurface in the light of consciousness but, rather, with the system of cracks, fissures, and dissonances generated by such rhetorical and medico-religious

52  Franco D’Intino self-management. Of course, it is possible that the discourse of innocence and sacralization stems from an act of psychological repression, what Foscolo, in the Notizia intorno a Didimo chierico, terms ‘segreto’ ­[secret] – a key word in his vocabulary: Non partecipava né una dramma del suo secreto ad anima nata: Perché, diceva Didimo, il mio secreto è la sola proprietà sulla terra ch’io degni di chiamar mia, e che divisa nuocerebbe agli altri ed a me. [He did not entrust a farthing of his secret to any living soul: for, Didimo said, my secret is the only thing on earth I dare to call my own, and which, if shared, would be harmful to others and to me]5 Readers may have suspected the reason for this brief preamble in an essay on Foscolo. What I’ve said so far recalls his fundamental attitude, which I will discuss in greater detail shortly. Still, it is a fact that only a few readers have been suspicious and doubtful about Foscolo’s self – or, rather, about the strategies by which Foscolo constructs his literary self. Of course, everybody knows that the actual poet, Ugo from Zante, was a thorough-going, compulsive liar. There is no want of evidence, and this is no place to record it. One has only to read with attention, checking it against the historical data we possess, the ‘Notizia bibliografica’ [bibliographical note] that Foscolo adds, unsigned, to the edition of Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis published in Zurich in 1816, and which is full of inaccuracies and even of actual lies: as Dionisotti puts it, there is no text more untruthful than this.6 Something, however, is true. Ortis, Foscolo remarks, ‘fu generalmente accusato di troppe reticenze’ (EN IV, p. 482) [was generally accused of being excessively reticent], and adds: the author ‘accenna più che non esprime a parole’ (EN IV, p. 484) [drops hints rather than expressing in words]. Which is also true. Foscolo’s ability to wear multiple masks appears in a funny epigram that his contemporary Mario Pieri, like him of Greek origin, has handed down as having been popular in the literary circles of Milan after the fiasco of Ajace (1811): ‘Nel presentarci il furibondo Ajace,/L’altero Atride, e l’Itaco fallace,/Gran fatica Ugo Foscolo non fe’/Pinse se stesso, e si divise in tre’ [To show us Ajax the raging, Agamemnon the arrogant, and Ulysses the deceiver was no great hardship for Ugo Foscolo: he painted himself, and split it into three].7 This is a minimal clue, albeit telling, to how Foscolo’s personality was publicly perceived to be split (Foscolo himself ironically phrased the problem in terms of ‘perplessità’ [perplexity] in the Notizia intorno a Didimo chierico).8 Three years later (1814), Pieri, notwithstanding his respect for his fellow countryman, again spots in him something uncanny and indecipherable, some dark depth: ‘Egli è un pazzo, e forse anche peggio, ma è tutto cuore, fantasia ed ingegno’ [he is insane or maybe worse, but he is all heart, imagination, and wits].9 We do not know what Pieri means by something ‘worse’ than insanity,

Jacopo’s Secret  53 but we get the same impression of restless, ungraspable mobility when looking at Jacopo Ortis the character – who in any case admits it, as it were, with candour: ‘il flusso e riflusso de’ miei umori governa tutta la mia vita’ (EN IV, p. 192) [the ebb and flow of my moods rules my entire life]. The greatest merit of Ortis, its endless ‘unconscious originality’,10 derives precisely from the fact that Foscolo – who is ruled, like Jacopo, by his moods – tries, in turn, to rule them but isn’t entirely successful. What he manages to do, instead, is create confusion and cheat by wearing several masks, playing with the ambiguity of a genre in which life and writing are superimposed and confounded. If we rise progressively from the character to the author, we see: Jacopo, the protagonist/alter ego; the various figures of friend-editors that are internal to the novel (Lorenzo, Angelo); the anonymous authors of the footnotes (who, as some argue, may not coincide with the editors)11; the several ‘authors’ of the novel’s various editions, whose number is still unknown and whose mysterious paternity a throng of philologists have still not worked out; the anonymous author of the ‘Notizia bibliografica’ added to the Zurich and London editions, which, as I said, is a mixture of inventions and lies; and, eventually, Foscolo himself, who publishes warnings and rejections in newspapers that disavow the work and, at the same time, claim possession of it.12 Such a complex stratification cannot derive uniquely from external circumstances, that is to say from the fact that Foscolo abruptly abandoned the publication of Ortis in Bologna, in 1798, and left for Florence to join the army. The structural incompleteness of Ortis and the difficulty (or rather impossibility) of identifying its authorship may not depend on a definite plan, but certainly these features are influenced by some deep, unconscious penchant for forgery, which has little to do with the taste for editorial confusion typical of the XVIII century (let us think of Swift), and goes hand in hand with the intention of passing on to posterity an image – a beautiful image – in which, as Foscolo says of Didimo, his ‘secret’ does not get out. Incidentally, the importance of the role of the protagonist’s portrait in the several editions of the novel is well known, and even in this respect there are well-grounded suspicions of forgery and splitting in two, if it is true that one of the engravings portrays Foscolo’s brother Giovanni. In short, what Lavagetto says of Rousseau applies to Foscolo13: that ‘il lettore ha la sensazione di essere circuito’ [readers feel they are being deceived], and perhaps the author ‘abbia predisposto con una puntigliosità e uno scrupolo imbarazzanti, quello che il lettore dovrà fare’ [arranged with embarrassing meticulousness and scrupulousness what the reader should do]. Generally speaking, the seduction of the reader seems to be successful. Those who approach Ortis with a certain degree of naivety – that is, without bias, and without any Freudian ‘suspicion’ (no need here to quote Ricoeur) – will emerge from the reading with the conviction that Jacopo Ortis is a sublime hero, a generous and passionate young man,

54  Franco D’Intino a victim of his time and of circumstances, and not a domineering, libertine, and manipulating youth, full of himself, and perhaps – as Pieri thought of Foscolo – ‘insane, or maybe worse’. Criticism is not much craftier. However, it is clear that Foscolo, no matter how intentionally and/or self-consciously, in order to construct his own character this way, learned his lesson from Rousseau, from his duplicity and his subtle strategies of concealment and self-purification. To the extent that it is almost impossible, even for those who are critically aware, not to superimpose and confound the various ‘characters’ and roles mentioned above. Despite the differences, it seems to me that these two authors share a common psychological background, which derives from the primary condition, typical of penniless exiles, of alienation from places and roles that the ego feels uneasy with. Hence the tendency to idealize some past ‘elsewhere’, which coincides with a maternal figure to worship and to possess. As a consequence, both seek a place to fully call their own: an obsession with ownership, beyond all conflict and meditation, of a place, as it were, absolute and imaginary, from which all the others are excluded. As we already know from the Notizia intorno a Didimo chierico, this place, for Foscolo, coincides with a ‘secret’: ‘Non partecipava né una dramma del suo secreto ad anima nata: Perché, diceva Didimo, il mio secreto è la sola proprietà sulla terra ch’io degni di chiamar mia, e che divisa nuocerebbe agli altri ed a me’.14 From this self-idealization derives the victim-like attitude of the one who is persecuted, who finds no rest except in the place of origin, in solitude, and in total and exclusive possession (and therefore, as we will see, the innate conflict against all who block – I will return to this point when discussing an episode of Ortis – the road to desire). For the real Foscolo, the endless flight is caused by the absence of any organic connection to a place, which makes it necessary to create an ideal, abstract, and clean image (high and haughty, sublime and sacred) that reality – which he constantly perceives as a stain, an ugly thing, a wound, and an obstacle – threatens with its aggressions. In the novel, this image symbolically materializes in the ‘due pertiche di terreno’ [two perches of land] that Jacopo possesses (or, rather, inherits) in the Euganean Hills, which become the shelter in which he can construct an idealized image of himself. Jacopo starts the plot by moving precisely from the place of political conflict (which is also the place where his mother lives). The first Ortis (Bologna 1798) begins with the apologetic theme (‘ho senza mia colpa congiurato con i ministri de’ conquistatori’ [faultless, I have conspired with the conquerors’ ministers]), and clarifies how moving to the Euganean Hills is functional to the plotting of what, in Foscolo’s imagination, takes the shape of a ‘velo’ [veil] or, in this case, of a ‘manto’ [cloak]: ‘ma da questo momento io m’avvolgo nella oscurità della mia solitudine, e nel manto della mia innocenza’ (EN IV, p.  5) [from this

Jacopo’s Secret  55 moment on, however, I envelop myself in the darkness of my solitude and the mantle of my innocence]. The events taking place in the hills, however, will show how conflict follows Jacopo: or, rather, that he is the one who causes it, because he carries it within himself. The true nature of this conflict, to which I will soon return, is a secret that neither Jacopo nor Foscolo wishes to reveal in full, and which flashes up in the cracks of the story both horizontally (amongst the character’s many words/masks) and vertically (i.e. through the editing, by manoeuvring the relationships between authors, editors, and the character). Let us look first at the protagonist’s discourse. The idealized Ego (the fundamental structure of Rousseau’s Confessions according to Starobinski) tends to attribute to others an accusation that, although internally generated, is immediately confuted. A clear example of this mechanism is the letter of 22 November, in which Jacopo tells how he felt his conscience pierced by the Other’s gaze – not incidentally, a male, paternal figure, Mr T*** (Teresa’s father): Non devo abusare dell’amicizia del signore T. e della sua buona fede.  – Tenete buona compagnia alle mie figliuole, mi diceva egli questa mattina. A vedere, egli mi reputa Socrate – me? e con quell’angelica creatura nata per amare, e per essere amata? e così misera a un tempo! ed io sono sempre in perfetta armonia con gl’infelici, ­perchè – davvero – io trovo un non so che di cattivo nell’uomo prospero. Non so com’ei non s’avvegga ch’io parlando della sua figlia mi confondo e balbetto; cangio viso e sto come un ladro davanti al giudice. In quel punto io m’immergo in certe meditazioni, e bestemmierei il cielo veggendo in quest’uomo tante doti eccellenti, guaste tutte da’ suoi pregiudizi e da una cieca predestinazione che lo faranno piangere amaramente. – Così intanto io divoro i miei giorni, querelandomi e de’ miei propri mali e degli altrui. (EN IV, pp. 312–313) [I must not abuse Mr T.’s friendship and good faith. – Be good company for my daughters, he told me this morning. Apparently, he considers me a Socrates – me? and with that angelic creature, who is born to love and be loved? and at the same time so miserable! and I am always in perfect harmony with the wretch, because I truly find a certain evil in the wealthy man. I do not know how he could not perceive how I, when talking of his daughter, get lost and stammer; I change my expression, and stand like a thief before a judge. In that moment, I become absorbed in certain meditations, and would curse heaven when I see the many excellent gifts of this man, all spoiled by his prejudices and by some blind fate that will make him shed the bitterest of tears. And thus, in the meantime, I consume my days, complaining about my misfortunes and those of others]

56  Franco D’Intino Let us read this passage attentively. In spite of his intention not to abuse Mr T***’s naivety, Jacopo not only mocks his undeserved confidence, or ‘good faith’, by anticipating an assault on Teresa’s virtue (‘he considers me a Socrates […]?’); he not only justifies his desire to seduce the lone girl by attaching it to her (she is born to love and be loved, therefore it is not my fault if I love her); he even goes so far as to justify his attempted seduction (and rape) by saying he is in ‘perfect harmony’ with the ‘wretch’, and is obviously careful to call Teresa ‘miserable’ just a moment before. It’s a step from here to blaming others, and here is Jacopo finding, in general, ‘a certain evil in the wealthy man’. All three mechanisms mentioned above operate in this passage: 1. The partial and ambiguous unveiling of a fault that is disowned/ refuted: ‘I must not abuse’ (‘to abuse’ is a very candid summary of the plan he has in mind: seducing Teresa in the absence of rival males); 2. The displacement to a minor fault, such as the embarrassed confusion caused by the passion for Teresa (‘I get lost and stammer’): a virtual fault, this one, and almost innocuous compared to the bad intentions that are concealed in the claim of being no Socrates (i.e. not to remain unmoved before Teresa’s body, as Socrates had next to Alcibiades); 3. The reversal, that is to say transforming his sexual desire for Teresa into the virtuous fondness, generalized and abstract, for a ‘miserable’ girl. The second part displays a further, even more violent reversal: formerly the defendant, Jacopo turns into a judge, and while cursing heaven he blames Mr T*** for obstructing his desires because of his own (Mr T***’s) perversions: his ‘excellent gifts’ would actually be spoiled ‘by his prejudices and by some blind fate that will make him shed the bitterest of tears’. Mr T***’s tears will be caused not by prejudices but by the determination with which Jacopo pursues the seduction of Teresa. Such an idealizing tendency constantly superimposes itself on aggressive, even criminal drives, whose nature is (often unsuccessfully) concealed or disguised: the real conflict, which is of an erotic nature, is displaced onto the political terrain. From this viewpoint, the Treaty of Campoformio offered Foscolo a wonderful opportunity, which he excellently exploited. Even now, Italian students read Ortis, without fail, as the political persecution of a victim. Foscolo’s genius consists precisely in disguising a fundamentally libertine novel as a completely different story, in which the heroic model of Plutarch collapses among the confused and indecipherable ambivalence of ‘passions’. We find a lucid focalization of this shifting in the ‘Notizia bibliografica’, which contains this plot summary of Ortis: Un uomo strascinato dall’amore a violare l’ospitalità, a contaminare una vergine e a ravvolgere una famiglia in pericoli; e che lo elude morendo, non somministra, quanto a principio parrebbe, prova del

Jacopo’s Secret  57 potere del libero arbitrio: da che quest’uomo lascia discernere che tutti gli atti d’onestà sono effetti non tanto della ragione, quanto di passioni più forti. (EN IV, p. 532) [A man drawn by love to abuse hospitality, violate a virgin, and surround a whole family with danger; that he escapes it by dying does not furnish, as it might seem at first, any proof of the power of free will: for this man enables us to discern that all honest actions are induced not by reason but rather by stronger passions] The same text shows how Foscolo was well aware of the corpus of libertine literature. Once again, the principal connection is with Rousseau, in this case La Nouvelle Héloïse, ‘il romanzo più celebre del secolo addietro’ (EN IV, p. 491) [the last century’s most famous novel]. Criticism, influenced by Foscolo himself, has stressed mainly his relationship with Goethe’s Werther, the explicit model, but the connection with La Nouvelle Héloïse is perhaps stronger.15 One need only to read the openings of the two novels. Goethe’s has a clear, ringing tonality: ‘Wie froh bin ich, daß ich weg bin!’ [How happy I am to be away!].16 Rousseau’s has the tragic, grave tone of some pathetic sniveller: ‘Il faut vous fuir, mademoiselle, je le sens bien’ [Madam, you are one to flee from, I feel it strongly].17 In one case, we have the pleasure of freedom, the happiness of independence regained: and the story of a love affair that has nothing to do with the female protagonist, as if the affair with Carlotta were merely one of many, which, because of an excess of heart and sentiment, has an unhappy ending. Stress falls on self-correction and repentance, but what the young man repents is that he has taken some flirt seriously, whereas he should enjoy pleasure, live in the present moment, and then move beyond, like Faust: ‘ich will das Gegenwärtige genießen, und das Vergangene soll mir vergangen sein’ [I mean to enjoy the present moment, and what is past will be over and done with].18 Quite the contrary is the case of Saint-Preux, whose behaviour is ambiguous, undecided, and ingratiating. The novel opens with a verb related to duty, as opposed to desire: ‘il faut’, and a verb (‘fuir’) connected to flight from the truth, so explicit that it raises Julie’s suspicions. She immediately unmasks the double-dealing, and perceives the poison with which her preceptor is inoculating her: ‘Homme artificieux! […] Dès le premier jour que j’eus le malheur de te voir, je sentis le poison qui corrompt mes sens et ma raison; je le sentis du premier instant, et tes yeux, tes sentiments, tes discours, ta plume criminelle, le rendent chaque jour plus mortel’ [You, artificial man! […] From the first day I had the bad luck to meet you, I felt the poison that corrupts my senses and my reason: I felt it from the first moment, and your eyes, your feelings, your speech, and your criminal pen make it more lethal every day].19

58  Franco D’Intino Saint-Preux, however, denies this, showing instead – in an affected manner, as always – naivety and sensibility: ‘Je ne suis point un vile séducteur comme tu m’appelles dans ton désespoir, mais un homme simple et sensible, qui montre aisément ce qu’il sent, et ne sent rien dont il doive rougir’ [I am not at all the vile seducer you call me in your despair, but a simple and sensitive man, who readily shows what he feels and does not feel anything to blush about]. 20 Quite a suspicious excess of morality; indeed, the whole novel is enveloped in suspicion (Julie to Saint-Preux: ‘car le coeur nous trompe en mille manières, et n’agît que par un principe toujours suspect’ [our heart deceives us in a thousand ways, and operates on a principle that is always suspicious])21 and of the danger that virtue conceals – vice, falsehood, and hypocrisy. And, in any case, this is precisely the way Foscolo – in the manner of Voltaire – interprets Saint-Preux’s personality in the ‘Notizia’: ‘St. Preux è carattere dispregievole; giovine altero a parole, e servile a fatti; spirituale e platonico in fantasia, ed epicureo sino alla crapola ed al postribolo’ (EN IV, p. 492) [Saint-Preux is a contemptible character: a proud young man in word, servile in deed; spiritual and Platonic in his imagination, an epicurean devoted to intemperance and the brothel]. Saint-Preux, in short, displays sublime idealism while, in truth, he is a cheap materialist, a vulgar, common libertine whose conscience assists him only ‘per inorgoglirsi della sua immaginaria virtù e adonestare per essa le libidini e il tradimento’ (EN IV, p. 492) [in taking pride in his pretended virtue and using it to dignify his lust and his treacheries]. However, such sour annoyance on Foscolo’s part vis-a-vis Saint-Preux is suspicious too: and the reader of Ortis may actually feel that Jacopo resembles him a lot – more, in any case, than the naïve, if self-confident, Werther. The reader will therefore be surprised to discover that, a few pages later, Foscolo acknowledges it with a great deal of intellectual honesty: ‘Ben pare che a lui [Jacopo] il sacrificio di rispettare la virtù di Teresa gli rincresca talvolta; ed or pare ch’ei n’abbia certa compiacenza orgogliosa’ (EN IV, p.  512) [It seems that he [Jacopo] regrets at times the sacrifice of respecting Teresa’s virtue; at times, it seems that he feels some haughty complacence about it]. Confirmation follows immediately afterwards, sealed by the same definition employed for Saint-Preux: ‘La lettura de’ poeti, l’entusiasmo per le idee sublimi conferiscono alle lettere amorose dell’Ortis un non so che di platonico’ (EN IV, p. 512) [the acquaintance with poets, the enthusiasm for sublime ideas, endow the love letters of Ortis with a certain Platonic something]. So here we have a Platonic Ortis, venturing into the quicksand of haughty morality and sublime self-deception, imprisoned by a heroic image of himself. With a difference, signalled by Foscolo in the following sentence: ‘non però asconde i desiderj veementi e i delirj notturni che ardono l’uomo innamorato’ (EN IV, p. 512) [he does not conceal, however, the violent desires and nocturnal ravings that inflame those

Jacopo’s Secret  59 who are in love]. This, then, is the reason that Foscolo feels that his character (as well as his novel) is superior to Rousseau’s, both morally and artistically: in its brave unveiling of the intimate, deep, and hidden truth of a hero venturing into the dark – and, of necessity, sorrowful – side of passions, more precisely of that ‘desiderio violento’ [violent desire] that constitutes ‘il principio ed il termine di tutte le nostre agitazioni’ (EN IV, p. 500) [the beginning and end of all our anxieties]. We would do better to move to the letter of 14 March at midnight, when Jacopo, frightened by his own thoughts, does not flee from their extreme consequences and unveils to himself the ‘truth’ from which he can no longer hide, and which resurfaces at several points in the novel: universal egoism, the fight – theorized by Hobbes, but also by Sade – of all against all. ‘Torna a spaventarmi quella terribile verità ch’io già svelava con raccapriccio − e che mi sono poscia assuefatto a meditare con rassegnazione. Tutti sia­mo nemici. Se tu potessi fare il processo de’ pensieri di chiunque ti si para davanti, vedresti ch’ei ruota a cerchio una spada per allontanare tutti dal proprio bene, e per rapire l’altrui’ [That horrible truth returns, frightening, which I already revealed in horror, and which I have learned to meditate on resignedly. We are all enemies. If you could put on trial the thoughts of anyone you meet, you’d see that he’s waving a sword in a circle to push everybody away from his own goods and to steal the goods of others]. 22 It is no accident that, in this almost Dostoevsky-like passage, one of the key verbs of libertine literature appears: ‘rapire’ is to steal, but more specifically to steal and rape the virtue, the innocence, and the honour of a young woman. The proposition is conditional: truth would emerge if the ‘trial’ were led by a higher authority, impartial, and focussed on facts. But what if conscience attempted self-analysis, as Foscolo accused Saint-Preux of doing? Or if it, like Rousseau, delegated this thankless task to some invisible, divine court? Here is the result, a few pages later, in the letter of Friday at 1am, tellingly echoing the apologetic opening of Rousseau’s Confessions: Che se il Padre degli uomini mi chiamasse a rendimento di conti, io gli mostrerò le mie mani pure di sangue, e puro di delitti il mio cuore. Io dirò: Non ho rapito il pane agli orfani ed alle vedove; non ho perseguitato l’infelice; non ho tradito; non ho abbandonato l’ami­co; non ho turbata la felicità degli amanti, nè contaminata l’innocenza, nè inimicati i fratelli, nè prostrata la mia anima alle ricchezze. […] Corrotto quasi dal mondo, dopo avere sperimentati tutti i suoi vizj − ma no! i suoi vizj mi hanno per brevi istanti forse contaminato, ma non mi hanno mai vinto − ho cercato virtù nella solitudine. [If the Father of men called me to settle my accounts, I would show him my hands unstained by blood and my heart untouched by crime. I will say: I never stole bread from orphans and widows;

60  Franco D’Intino I never persecuted the miserable; I never betrayed; I never disturbed the happiness of lovers, or corrupted innocence, or sowed discord between brothers, or made my soul the servant of riches. […] Almost corrupted by the world, after trying out all its vices – well, no! its vices perhaps infected me for some moments, but never won me over – I sought virtue in solitude]23 It is as if Jacopo wished not so much to justify and forgive what he has been but rather to make resolutions for the future. So he admits his guilt, even if, as usual, conditionally and with many allowances: he has indeed been ‘corrupted’ and ‘infected’ by the world, but ‘almost’, and only ‘for some moments’.24 Unveiling, in short, takes place – much more than in La Nouvelle Héloïse – but is a conditional, partial, and provisional one, merely lifting the ‘veil’ for a fleeting instant and immediately turning away, leaving the veil to cover a scene the sight of which has become unbearable. We can assess how well this mechanism is rooted in Foscolo’s imagination by moving from the level of the characters’ speech to other levels in the structure of the plot. Again, a single example will suffice: the famous episode of Jacopo’s crime, summarized by Foscolo himself in the ‘Notizia bibliografica’ as ‘contadino calpestato dal cavallo’ [peasant trampled by a horse], significantly shifting responsibility for the accident onto the horse.25 We will again find themes such as obstacles, property, and theft. Here are the facts: on 14 March 1799 (we are approaching the end of the story), after a long journey in the North of Italy, Jacopo is back in the Euganean Hills and writes to his friend Lorenzo: ‘ho un secreto che da più mesi mi sta confitto nel cuore: ma l’ora della partenza sta per suonare; ed è tempo ch’io lo deponga dentro il tuo petto’ (EN IV, p. 444) [For many months I’ve had a secret fixed in my heart: the hour of my departure is about to strike, and it’s time for me to place it in your heart]. Again, a secret: which, for Foscolo, always has to do with undivided property, unconditional possession, and a sort of transcendental feeling of belonging. The sentence I’ve quoted several times from the Notizia intorno a Didimo chierico (‘il mio secreto è la sola proprietà sulla terra ch’io degni di chiamar mia, e che divisa nuocerebbe agli altri ed a me’)26 leads us to suspect that Jacopo’s secret coincides with his homeland, an ideal mother-land to which one belongs always and forever, the one to which he returns from the war, the one that, in a crucial letter, his father uselessly fertilized. 27 What is this secret, then? While he was galloping insanely along some avenue, looking (he says) for death, Jacopo killed a peasant who was peacefully going about his business. The crazy gallop was certainly not a single episode. Actually, after the only real erotic contact between Jacopo and Teresa, of 14 May 1798 (the kiss episode), Jacopo enters into a state of agitation that makes him wander alone, first on foot and then on horseback, through the countryside. On 25 May he speaks of wild,

Jacopo’s Secret  61 solitary forays, stressing his lack of control: ‘Vado correndo come un pazzo senza saper dove, e perché: non m’accorgo, e i miei piedi mi trascinano fra precipizj. Io domino le valli e le campagne soggette; magnifica ed inesausta creazione!’ (EN IV, p. 371) [I go running like a madman without knowing where or why I am going: I don’t realize it, and my feet drag me to the cliffs. I overlook the valleys and the countryside below: how magnificent and inexhaustible is creation!]. After declaring his total possession of the countryside, on 2 June he shows himself the prey of some devastating ‘fury’, turned against nature as if in some sort of defloration: ‘Guardo le piante ch’una volta scansava di calpestare, e mi soffermo sovr’esse e le strappo, e le sfioro gittandole fra la polvere rapita dai venti’ (EN IV, p. 377) [I see the plants I once refrained from treading on, and I stop at them and pull them out, and strip the petals and throw them in the sand swept by the wind]. Here Lorenzo steps in, and intervenes at length (‘A chi legge’, EN IV, pp. 379–382) in order to inform the reader of Jacopo’s increasingly critical condition: one evening, while quarrelling with Odoardo, he even starts ‘a disputare, a gridare come un invasato, a minacciare, a percuotersi la testa, e a piangere d’ira’ (EN IV, pp.  380–381) [to argue, to shout like a lunatic, to threaten, to hit his head, and cry with fury]. A moment later, Foscolo plays his masterstroke: ‘Aveva sempre un’aria assoluta’ (EN IV, p. 381) [he always had an appearance of absolutes], that appearance of absolutes of those who are ‘spiritual and Platonic in their imagination, epicurean, devoted to intemperance and the brothel’ (EN IV, p. 492), and who do not tolerate obstacles to their desire. Jacopo has so little tolerance for them that he now needs to run even more quickly: at this point, we learn, ‘fu veduto da’ contadini cavalcare a briglia sciolta per luoghi scoscesi, e in mezzo alle fratte e a traverso de’ fossi, ed è maraviglia com’ei non sia pericolato’ (EN IV, p. 381) [he was seen by peasants as he rode an unbridled horse in steep places, through groves and over ditches, and it was a miracle that he did not have an accident]. During one of these rides, instead, Jacopo must have had that accident, hitting one of those peasants – the reader, however, does not know that yet, and must wait for the letter of 14 March 1799 to learn the details. It’s strange that Jacopo kept such an important occurrence on his conscience for ten months, without even mentioning it to his confidant and confessor Lorenzo. 28 The reader, however, will be alerted by Jacopo’s many opaque allusions, reinforced by footnotes (marked by an asterisk) that are not easily attributed: they are not the protagonist’s or Lorenzo’s – whose, then? The first and the third are unsigned, the second is signed by some mysterious ‘editore’ [editor]. 29 Here Foscolo splits into two or, rather, three (protagonist, friend-confidant-editor, mysterious editor), in order to keep the suspense going.30 We find here again the same mechanisms I’ve already mentioned. In the first place, crime is exhibited and concealed/veiled at the same time.

62  Franco D’Intino Second, the fact of drawing the reader’s attention to the incident’s ‘secret’, with an effect of suspense, diverts it from another, much more important secret that deals, as we know, with some absolute and undivided possession (of Teresa? of some other, more ancient object of desire?). This is Jacopo’s original crime, of which the other is merely a consequence: that is, the terrain of conflict.31 Third, Foscolo twice reverses the dynamics and the meaning of the accident, first of all in reconstructing the facts. Let us read them closely: Entrando in un viale tutto alberi, stretto, lunghissimo, vidi una ­persona – ripresi le briglie; ma il cavallo più s’irritava e più impe­ tuosamente lanciavasi. – Tienti a sinistra, gridai, a sinistra! Quello sfortunato m’intese; corse a sinistra; ma sentendo più imminente lo scalpito, e in quello stretto sentiero credendosi addosso il cavallo, ritornava sgomentato a diritta, e fu investito, rovesciato, e le zampe gli frantumarono le cervella. (EN IV, p. 444) [Entering a very long, narrow avenue of trees, I saw someone – I drew in the reins, but the more irritated the horse became, the more furiously it ran. Keep to the left, I cried, the left! That wretch understood me, and ran to the left: but hearing the pounding hooves coming closer, and, as the path was narrow, believing the horse was almost upon him, he turned in fear to the right, and so he was hit and knocked down, and the hooves shattered his brains] In the end, it is the fault of the peasant, who heard the master’s orders (in italics in the text) but did not execute them. If only he had remained on the left! I deliberately say ‘master’. Episodes such as this – a master on horseback abusing a peasant on foot – were common, at the time, in real life as much as in literature (from Parini to Edoardo Calvo), and Foscolo himself had indignantly dealt with the topic in an article.32 Here, however, Jacopo the master generously compensates the peasant, as he wishes to let us know with a wealth of detail: Nessuno fu imputato. Ben mi accusavano nel mio secreto le be­ nedizioni di quella vedova perchè ho subitamente collocata la sua figlia al nipote del castaldo; e assegnato un patrimonio al figliuolo che si volle far prete. E jer sera vennero a ringraziarmi di nuovo dicendomi, ch’io gli ho liberati della miseria in cui da tanti anni languiva la famiglia di quel povero lavoratore. – Ah! vi sono pure tanti altri miseri come voi; ma hanno un marito ed un padre che li consola con l’amor suo, e che essi non cangierebbero per tutte le ricchezze della terra – e voi! Così gli uomini nascono a struggersi scambievolmente! (EN IV, p. 445)

Jacopo’s Secret  63 [No one was charged. Still, in my heart the blessings of the widow accused me when I promptly placed her daughter with the tenant’s nephew, and allocated a sum of money for her son who wished to become a priest. And yesterday they came again to thank me, saying that I freed them from the misery in which that poor worker’s family had languished for so many years. Ah! there are so many, who are miserable like you: but they have a husband or a father who comforts them with his love, and whom they would never exchange for all the riches of the world – but you! So are men born to destroy one another!] Not only, then, does Jacopo gets away with it, despite the ‘accusation’ of the widow’s ‘blessings’ (quite an odd choice of words), but he even blames the victim’s family for lack of generosity, abstractly moralizing on how ‘men are born to destroy one another’ (EN IV, p. 445). The abstract idea – and certainly a reassuring one, for a murderer and a would-be rapist – that all men are equal is elaborated several times in the novel: for example, in the letter from Ventimiglia; it also appears, however, at the very beginning, in an apparently extravagant scene that Foscolo, in the 1802 edition, anticipates in comparison to the Bologna edition of 1798, placing it between making the acquaintance of Odoardo (‘un bravo e buono giovine’ [an honest, good young man], whose face, however, ‘non dice nulla’ [says nothing]), and that of Teresa, ‘la divina fanciulla’ [the divine maiden]. It is a light yet crucial interlude, in that it sets out the theoretical grounds for what is about to happen – and which we are able to understand thanks to René Girard –33 that Jacopo fell in love with Teresa before seeing her, when he met his rival. Here is the passage: L’ho pur una volta afferrato nel collo quel ribaldo contadinello che dava il guasto al nostro orto, tagliando e rompendo tutto quello che non poteva rubare. Egli era sopra un pesco, io sotto una pergola: scavezzava allegramente i rami ancora verdi perchè di frutta non ve ne erano più: appena l’ebbi fra le ugne, cominciò a gridare: Misericordia! Mi confessò che da più settimane facea quello sciagurato mestiere perchè il fratello dell’ortolano aveva qualche mese addietro rubato un sacco di fave a suo padre. – E tuo padre t’insegna a rubare? – In fede mia, signor mio, fanno tutti così. – L’ho lasciato andare, e sca­ valcando una siepe io gridava: Ecco la società in miniatura; tutti così. (EN IV 299) [Once I even grabbed him by the throat, that little rascal of a peasant who vandalized our garden, and broke and cut all he could not steal. He was in a peach-tree, and I under an arbour; he was happily breaking all the branches, still green, because there was no more fruit; as soon as I got him he started crying: Pity me! He confessed

64  Franco D’Intino that he’d been doing that miserable job for a few weeks, because the greengrocer’s brother had stolen a sack of fava beans from his father. – So your father teaches you how to steal? – By my fay, Sir, everybody does it. I let him go, and while climbing over a hedgerow I cried: Here’s society in miniature: all the same] Jacopo is presented here as a landowner who catches a young ‘peasant’ while he is stealing some fruit (a ‘peasant’, again, like the one he will later murder). Is it an allusion to Jean-Jacques the apple-stealer? Or to the account of the Fall in the Bible? In the first place, I would say, there is a reference (made by Jacopo) to the masculine nature of theft: the female (mother) earth is made the object of vandalism and robbery by some masculine principle, incarnated in the son who acts (Jacopo observes) on behalf of his father. The young peasant justifies himself by saying that ‘everybody does it’ (fanno tutti così), thereby turning to the masculine Mozart’s Così fan tutte (premiered a few years before, in 1790). Jacopo adds to it by identifying theft as a basic principle of all societies. The scene, therefore, means: all males do the same. Meaning, they steal. But what do they steal? We know that: what the libertines value the most – virtue, naivety, innocence. Two more things to notice in the end. The first is that this scene will later be amplified (EN IV, pp. 357–359) in another scene of conflict between Jacopo, the owner of ‘two perches of land’, and a peasant – again a peasant! – who wishes to chase him away from the land where he lies, the land Jacopo will possess in an absolute way only by dying. The second is that, in the 1798 text, the letter is placed between the news that Odoardo has left (letter XII) and the scene of transplanting pines on the rise in front of the church (letter XIV). Both these letters relate to the theme of the male propensity for conflict (which, however, also means sharing in the destiny of fertilizing). Odoardo’s departure means that Jacopo has full access to Teresa, who is now alone. Lorenzo understands that well, and in letter XI he reveals that he would like his friend to ‘confessare’ [confess] his ‘compiacenza segreta’ [secret pleasure] at the news of Odoardo’s leaving (EN IV, p. 22). Here is the real secret: the desire to seduce an ungraspable sexual object. This is, according to Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, the ultimate origin of hysteric psychosis, which we easily diagnose in Jacopo’s moody and violent conduct. In the edition of 1802, this letter has disappeared, perhaps because Lorenzo had understood the real secret concealed in Ortis. What the impossible object may be – Teresa or, rather, Teresa as an image of something/somebody else – we are not supposed to know. I have a suspicion, though, and I may have given the reader some clue.

Notes 1 Jan Goldstein, The Post-Revolutionary Self. Politics and Psyche in France, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 3.

Jacopo’s Secret  65 2 Ibid. 3 Jean Starobinski, The Living Eye, transl. by Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 21. 4 Mario Lavagetto, La cicatrice di Montaigne. Sulla bugia in letteratura (­Turin: Einaudi, 1992), pp. 127–156. 5 EN V, p. 183 (my emphasis). The works by Foscolo are cited in the endnotes and in the text from Edizione Nazionale delle Opere (Florence: Le Monnier), as follows: EN IV: Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis, ed. by Giovanni Gambarin (1955); EN V: Prose varie d’arte, ed. by M. Fubini (1951); EN VI: Scritti letterari e politici. Dal 1796 al 1808, ed. by Giovanni Gambarin (1972); EN XIX: Epistolario, VI, eds. Giovanni Gambarin and Francesco Tropeano (1966). 6 Carlo Dionisotti, Appunti sui moderni. Foscolo, Leopardi, Manzoni e altri (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988), p. 172, n. 37. 7 Mario Pieri, Memorie II, ed. by Claudio Chiancone (Ariccia: Aracne, 2017), p. 59. 8 ‘Che la gran valle della vita è intersecata da molte viottole tortuosissime; e chi non si contenta di camminare sempre per una sola, vive e muore perplesso, nè arriva mai a un luogo dove ognuno di que’ sentieri conduce l’uomo a vivere in pace seco e con gli altri. Non trattasi di sapere quale sia la vera via; bensì di tenere per vera una sola, e andar sempre innanzi’ (EN V, p. 177) [that the huge valley of life is crossed by many, many winding tracks; and those who are not content to walk on one and one only, live and die in perplexion, nor they ever reach a place where each of those tracks leads one to live in peace with himself and the others. The point is not to know which is the true pathway, but to hold one and one only as the true one, and always to keep going]. 9 Pieri, Memorie II, p. 198. 10 Franco Ferrucci, Addio al Parnaso (Milan: Bompiani, 1971), p. 57. 11 Riccardo Stracuzzi, Una confessione di Jacopo Ortis, in Figure dell’anomalia, ed. by A. Berrè and M. Pinelli (Bologna: Pendragon, 2017), pp. 161–162, speaks of ‘deriva dell’autorità testuale’ [textual authority in adrift]. 12 See Maria Antonietta Terzoli, Le prime lettere di Jacopo Ortis. Un giallo editoriale tra politica e censura (Roma: Salerno, 2004). 13 Lavagetto, La cicatrice di Montaigne, p. 133. 14 EN V, p. 183 (my emphasis). 15 See Enzo Neppi, Il dialogo dei tre massimi sistemi. Le ‘Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis’ fra il ‘Werther’ e la ‘Nuova Eloisa’ (Naples: Liguori, 2014), although from a different perspective. 16 J. W. Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werther/The Sorrows of Young Werther, ed. by M. Hulse (London/New York: Penguin, 1989), p. 25. 17 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, La nouvelle Héloïse, in Oeuvres complètes, ed. by Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (Paris: Gallimard, 1964–1969), IV, p. 9. 18 Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werther, cit., p.  25. On the dark side of Werther’s libertinism see, however, Giuliano Baioni, Il giovane Goethe (­Turin: Einaudi, 1996). 19 Rousseau, La nouvelle Héloïse, p. 39. 20 Ibid., p. 42. 21 Ibid., p. 370. 22 EN IV, p. 451. On the metaphor of the veil see a passage from the Chioma di Berenice: Ugo Foscolo, Scritti letterari e politici. Dal 1796 al 1808, ed. by Giovanni Gambarin (Florence: Le Monnier, 1972, EN VI, p. 304). 23 EN IV, pp. 467–468. 24 Behind ‘il passato prossimo dell’esame di coscienza’ [the simple past of soul searching], it has been noted, there hides – as per the Biblical structure –

66  Franco D’Intino

25 26 27 28 29

30 31

32 33

‘l’imperativo del precetto’ [the imperative of precept]. Comment is by Maria Antonietta Terzoli, in Ugo Foscolo, Opere, ed. by Franco Gavazzeni (Turin: Einaudi-Gallimard, 1995), II, p. 844. Not incidentally, the version of the same passage in the ‘Notizia’ is different, and the gesture of unveiling is more decisive and radical. What is missing is actually the counterbalance that virtue concedes to vice: ‘ah no! i suoi vizj mi hanno per brevi istanti forse contaminato, ma non mi hanno mai vinto’. The sentence, instead, runs as follows: ‘Fui corrotto quasi dal mondo dopo avere sperimentati tutti i suoi vizi: e quanto più sente l’orror della morte, tanto più le passioni che sono immedesimate alla vita lo tentano a feroci delitti’ (EN IV, p. 530) [I was almost corrupted by the world after having experimented all its vices; and the more he feels the horror of death, the more the passions that are the same as life tempt him to commit horrible crimes]. The quotation is doubtlessly eclipsed, in the ‘Notizia’, by the shadow cast by the passage on Sade, which immediately precedes it. EN IV, p. 486. The wide bibliography on the topic will allow us to quickly reach the point: see Stracuzzi, Una confessione di Jacopo Ortis. EN V, p. 183 (my emphasis). Letter XIV. Foscolo might be here imitating Rousseau, who enacts the same strategy in his Confessions, see Oeuvres complètes, I, p. 86. Here are the most explicit allusions. First allusion, from Ferrara, 20 July, in the evening: ‘perchè io, Lorenzo, non sono forse omicida; ma pur mi veggo insangunato d’un omicidio’ (EN IV, p. 397) [I, Lorenzo, am not a murderer, perhaps: but I see myself covered with murderous blood]. The asterisked gloss, which appears in the Zurich edition of 1816 (and which is still there in the London edition of 1817) says: ‘Di questo rimorso d’omicidio, che spesso prorompe dal secreto del misero giovine, il lettore vedrà la ragione verso la fine del libro, in una lettera datata 14 Marzo’ [the reader will see the reason of this remorse for murder, often erupting from the secret of the miserable youth, about the end of the book, in a letter dated 14 March]. Second allusion, from Florence, 7 September, when relating of the whirlwind that devastated the small chapel, leaving him ‘lo spirito atterrito di tenebre e di rimorso’ [the spirit aghast darkness and remorse]. Here the note says, ‘Vedi alla fine di questo volume la lettera 14 marzo. –L’Editore’ (EN IV, p. 403) [see at the end of this volume the letter of 14 March.– The Editor]. Third allusion, from Florence, 25 September (when discussing the battle of Montaperti, one of those slaughters in which ‘il figliuolo tronca il capo al padre e lo squassa per le chiome’ [the son cuts off the father’s head and shakes it by the hair]): ‘uno spettro più tremendo di tutti, e ch’io solo conosco’ (EN IV, p. 409) [the most terrible ghost of all, of which I am the only one to know]. Here the Editor remains silent. Stracuzzi, Una confessione di Jacopo Ortis, p. 165. Letter to Quirina Mocenni Magiotti of 20 March 1816 (EN XIX, p. 342) ‘mi sono fatto colpevole! e della seconda vera colpa della mia vita; n’ho commessa un’altra e crudele nel 1800 – quando feci – non te lo posso scrivere; ma nell’Ortis n’ho toccato in generale’ (p. 167, note 22) [I am guilty! the second, real guilt of my life. I committed another one in 1800, when I… I cannot write it to you, but I touched upon it in general terms in Ortis]. See Stracuzzi, Una confessione, pp. 166–168. See René Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel. Self and Other in Literary Structures, transl. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965).

4 Leopardi’s Night (T)errors, the Uncanny, and the ‘Old Wives’ Tales’ Fabio Camilletti

Exit, light Enter, night Metallica, Enter Sandman Watching horror films the night before Debating witches and folklore The unknown troubles on your mind Iron Maiden, Fear of the Dark

Bugbears of 1815 As a child, Nathanael was afraid of the Sandman. His mother tried to explain that it was merely a metaphor – ‘When I say the Sandman comes, I only mean that you are sleepy and cannot keep your eyes open, – just as if sand had been sprinkled into them’ –, but her answer did not ‘satisfy’ him: ‘in my childish mind the thought soon matured itself that she only denied the existence of the Sandman to hinder us from being terrified [fürchten] at him’.1 After all, someone came up the stairs every night, at bedtime. And ‘the old woman’ (alte Frau) who took care of the children, interrogated on the subject, had given a detailed answer, more marvellous and terrible than the ‘number of wonderful stories [wunderbare Geschichten]’ that Nathanael had heard from his father or from those ‘picture-books’ [Bilderbücher] by which the man tried to appease his children. 2 The Sandman, the wet-nurse explained, ‘is a wicked man [ein böser Mann] who comes to children when they will not go to bed, and throws a handful of sand into their eyes, so that they start out bleeding from their heads. These eyes he puts in a bag and carries them to the half-moon to feed his own children, who sit in the nest up yonder, and have crooked beaks like owls with which they may pick up the eyes of the naughty human children [unartigen Menschenkindlein]’.3 As a consequence, Nathanael writes to his friend Lothar, ‘a most frightful image of the cruel Sandman was horribly depicted in my mind [malte sich nun im Innern mir das Bild des grausamen Sandmanns aus], and when in the evening I heard the noise on the stairs, I trembled with agony and alarm

68  Fabio Camilletti [Angst und Entsetzen]’.4 Lothar and Clara – Nathanael’s fiancée – may comment that these are ‘childish stories’ (Kindereien)5: childhood fears, however, are not to be easily forgotten, as the follow-up of the story will dramatically show. E.T.A. Hoffmann’s published ‘Der Sandmann’ [The Sandman] in 1816, in Berlin, as the first tale of his Nachtstücke [Night-pieces]. One year before, in a provincial city of central Italy, a seventeen-year old ­philologist  – Giacomo Leopardi – completed a Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi [Essay on the popular errors of the ancients], which would only appear posthumously in 1846.6 Two texts generated in different contexts, therefore, with different purposes, and different shapes: which, nonetheless, share a common concern for childhood fears, for the indelible impression scary stories leave on the tender minds of infants, and for the ways fearful associations survive – in the psychological as much as in the cultural sphere – in spite of the enlightening power of reason. The eighth chapter of Leopardi’s Saggio, dealing with the ‘terrors of the night’, is indeed framed within a bitter polemic against those caretakers (allevatrice) and wet-nurses (nutrice, balia) who threaten children with bogies such as Hoffmann’s Sandman: muove la bile del filosofo il vedere con quanta cura s’istruisca un fanciullo intorno alle favole più terribili, e alle chimere più atte a fare impressione sulla sua mente. Egli sa appena balbettare […] che la storia dei folletti e delle apparizioni ha già occupato il suo luogo nel di lui intelletto pauroso e stupefatto. […] Eccolo […] divenuto attonito e timoroso; riguardare l’avvicinarsi della notte come un supplizio, i luoghi tenebrosi come caverne spaventevoli; palpitare nel letto angosciosamente; sudar freddo, raccogliersi pauroso sotto le lenziola; cercar di parlare, e nel trovarsi solo inorridire da capo a piedi (Saggio 130) [philosophers have a fit, when they see how much care is taken in instructing a child through the most terrible stories, and through those chimeras that most effectively can impress his mind. He barely babbles, and already the business of goblins and apparitions has already taken its place in his fearful and amazed mind. Lo! he has become dazed and fearful; he sees the coming of the night as if it were a torture, and dark places as if they were frightening caves; in his bed, he trembles with anxious fear; in a cold sweat, he gathers timorous under the bed sheet; he tries to speak, and when he finds himself alone he appals from head to feet] Both texts, thus, cope in various ways with problems of survival and return: how imagination retains the impressions received in early years, and how childhood fears turn into adult anxieties; how exploded beliefs

Leopardi’s Night (T)errors  69 may survive in a philosophical age so that Leopardi (perhaps confusing Voltaire with Rousseau) may write that ‘Voltaire, quel banderaio degli spiriti forti, quell’uomo sì ragionevole e nemico dei pregiudizi, tremava nelle tenebre come un fanciullo’ (Saggio 132) [Voltaire, that flag-bearer of fortified souls, who was so reasonable and so adverse to prejudices, trembled in the dark like a small child]7; how, in sum, what ‘ought to have remained secret and hidden’ may nonetheless ‘come to light’ (alles, was ein Geheimnis, im Verborgenen bleiben sollte und hervorgetreten ist), beyond the will of rationalizing consciousness.8 Not incidentally, these words – by Friedrich Schelling – largely underpin Sigmund Freud’s essay on ‘The Uncanny’ (1919), including a detailed commentary on ‘The Sandman’. A few months before, Max Weber had published his lecture on ‘Science as a vocation’, introducing the notion of ‘disenchantment of the world’ (Entzauberung der Welt)9: the idea, in other words, that modernity is primarily characterized by the abandonment of superstitious beliefs that affect ‘primitive’ or pre-modern societies, and which, notwithstanding being ‘rigorously contested and critiqued, […] has nevertheless established itself as a central pillar of Western modernity’.10 Both Freud and Weber moved from a similar paradigm: after all, ‘the history of “superstition” and the responses to it’ are ‘inextricably tangled with the questions of the rise of the “rational” and the supposedly “modern” in European history’11 so that, from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, ‘discourse about superstition helped shape the highly charged theoretical category of modernity itself’.12 Freud, however, did more than that, understanding the relationship between reason and magic not only in terms of rejection and violent removal (Ent-Zauberung) but also through the more nuanced process of repression (Verdrängung), borrowed from his own theory of the unconscious. Throughout his essay, Freud systematically and deliberately juxtaposes the spheres of individual psychology and of history of religion, locating the uncanny feeling in the resurfacing of supernatural beliefs that have been ‘surmounted’ by the repressive drive of rationalism: ‘we – or our primitive forefathers –’, writes Freud, ‘once believed’ in magic; ‘nowadays […] we have surmounted [überwunden] these modes of thought; but we do not feel quite sure of our new beliefs, and the old ones still exist within us […]. As soon as something actually happens in our lives which seems to confirm the old, discarded [abgelegten] beliefs we get a feeling of the uncanny’.13 Moreover, and quite tellingly, at the time he composed ‘The Uncanny’ Freud was particularly concerned about wet-nurses’ tales. Although ‘The Uncanny’ did not leave any substantial trace in Freud’s oeuvre after its publication (but would enjoy an exceptional critical afterlife in the second half of the twentieth century),14 the essay was in many ways an appendix to the Wolf-Man’s case, published just one year before, and to the way picture-books for children and the scary stories of a Russian

70  Fabio Camilletti njanja had shaped the phobic imaginary of his patient, not differently from what had happened to Hoffmann’s Nathanael.15 From this viewpoint, the possibility of a Freudian reading of Hoffmann (and of Leopardi)16 seems far less productive than that of a ­Hoffmannian – as well as Leopardian – reading of Freud. The image of the ‘storytelling nurse’ actually provides Hoffmann, Leopardi, and Freud with a powerful ‘formula of pathos’ for articulating a psychology of fear and an anthropology of superstition, as well as with the possibility of articulating the survival of ‘early’ terrors in an age of disenchantment, beyond the rational control of consciousness. I will, consequently, use Leopardi’s Saggio as a starting point for exploring this dialectic image, and the ways post-Lockean thought constructs it as a dynamic emblem of what modern philosophy has discarded – without, nonetheless, being fully able to erase it.

Ancient Terrors In the Saggio, the polemic against the wet-nurses’ scary stories is characterized by surprising violence of expression: Leopardi meticulously describes the descent of a vivacious child into apprehension and fear, to the point of labelling the use of bugbears as ‘una specie di omicidio presso il genere umano’ (Saggio 131) [a sort of murder against the humankind] that is perpetrated everyday by caretaking women. Such vigorous harangue has often been interpreted as the outcome of personal, traumatic experiences of childhood: a hypothesis that is certainly supported by a fair degree of evidence, but which should not, in any case, make us forget that diffidence against wet-nurses and their teachings had ancient roots, before being later constructed as one of the pillars of Enlightenment pedagogy.17 Ancient culture – with which Leopardi, as a classical philologist, was greatly familiar – generally expressed contempt against folktales, and anilis fabula or fabella (in Greek, γραῶν ὕθλος) – the term used for labelling ‘old wives’ tales’, not without sexist, ageist, and even racist n ­ uances18  – ‘was the ultimate insult that a literary critic could apply to a writer’s work, or that anyone could apply to another person’s speech’: as Alex Scobie comments, ‘the term among the literati was equivalent to “nonsense”, “rubbish”’, ultimately coming to denote whatever was untrue, incoherent, non-instructive, and in the end pernicious for the intellect of children.19 As such, it appears in Macrobius’s commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, where it is applied in relation to Petronius’s and Apuleius’s romances – whose most appropriate destination, for Macrobius, is the nursery (nutricum cunas)20 – and where distinction is established between different types of fabula: narratio fabulosa – ­employing fantastic elements for pedagogic purposes – fabula – an intermediary genre  – and fabula nutricum [wet-nurses’ tale], namely that kind

Leopardi’s Night (T)errors  71 of narrative possessing no other purpose than the one of mere entertainment, and which Macrobius’s ‘narratophobia’ severely condemns. 21 Among these allegedly ‘meaningless’ narratives, a special place was held by the ‘gruesome stories […] told to frighten children into obedience’22: the ‘nursery bogies’23 recalled under several names in ancient sources, 24 and whose pedagogic use Leopardi castigates, strictly following an argumentative pattern that goes back to Classical antiquity. The principal source was arguably Plato’s Republic, admonishing both ‘poets’ and the ‘mothers’ not to frighten (ἐκδειματούντων) children through unhealthy and false stories (τοὺς μύθους κακῶς), lest they become fearful (δειλοτέρους) (II, 381e): such stories included the image of the gods walking the streets at night in the guise of wanderers and beggars, explicitly recalled by Leopardi in the Saggio.25 Warnings to parents were also expressed by Tacitus, who condemned the way the ‘fables’ and ‘errors’ (fabulis et erroribus) of some Greek maidservant (Graeculae ancillae) could make a strong impression in the tender imagination (animi) of children (Dialogus de oratoribus [Dialogue on orators], XXIX), whereas Strabo conceded that the ‘portentous’ (τὸ τερατῶδες) could be used for educational purposes: as prodigies can be both pleasing and fear-inspiring (φοβερὸν), myths about monstrous figures could be used for the education of children, as well as for the moral guidance of adults (Geographia [Geography], I. 2.8). Two ‘nursery bogies’ appear to be particularly documented in ancient sources. One is Lamia, a relatively undefined figure – sometimes a monster, sometimes a witch – that was usually mentioned to frighten children, and which Leopardi extensively examines in the Saggio26: in his treatise Adversus Valentinianos [Against Valentinians], Tertullian speaks of ‘fables’ (fabula) concerning Lamia as something everyone must have heard in their childhood (in infantia), told by some wet-nurse when they could not sleep (inter somni difficultates a nutricula audisse) (3, 3). As such, Lamia – who would witness a singular afterlife in the age of Romanticism (John Keats’s Lamia is of 1820) – underwent a subterranean survival in Western culture, arguably contributing to shaping the most popular of modern bogies: the ogre of fairy-tales. 27 The other one is Μορμώ or Μορμολύκη, a typical bogie (φόβητρον) of ancient Greece, whose very name relates to the semantic sphere of fear: as has been reconstructed by Maria Patera, Μορμώ is an expressive word performatively mimicking the uncertain noises of the night by means of onomatopoeia, and therefore coming to denote, by extension, the fear of the dark; as such, Μορμώ forms the roots of verbs like μορμολύττομαι and μορμύσσομαι (to frighten, said of bugbears, but also to induce fear), or of nouns like μόρμορος, μορμυραία (fear), and μόρμοι φόβοι κενοί (empty fears, as those experienced by the weak and the ignorant). 28 It is likely that Leopardi, when speaking of nocturnal terrors, was actually rendering the Greek expression Μορμολύκη – literally, the Μορμώ-wolf – as is

72  Fabio Camilletti confirmed by his insistence on the wolf as a typical bugbear: not incidentally, the eighth chapter of the Saggio closes with Avianus’s fable of the wet-nurse threating a child to throw him to a wolf (De nutrice et infanti), one of the paradigmatic texts of antiquity related to the use of wolves and werewolves as Schreckgestalten. 29

Modern Terrors This rhetorical repertory was widely recuperated in the late modern age, adapted to the needs of modern pedagogy: in particular, John Locke’s theory as outlined in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding – one of the principal sources of Leopardi’s Saggio, and of eighth chapter specifically – stressed the centrality of early years in the formation and connection of ideas. No surprise, then, if Locke and the reformers following his theories recuperated all the ancient stereotypes about wetnurses, handmaids, and their tales, and if the Essay became the text ‘most forcefully articulat[ing] the particular success of these narratives for instilling ghost beliefs in the minds of young children’30: in the pedagogy of the Enlightenment, wet-nurses – exactly as in ancient times – were described as simple-minded and credulous people, generally prone to alcohol, and naturally brought to tell stories that only children could believe (radoteuses, crédules et portées à la bouteille, elles racontaient naturellement des histoires tellement absurdes que seul un infant pouvait y croire).31 As such, Patera comments, they were assimilated to their audiences.32 The Enlightenment sphere of ‘superstition’ and ‘error’  – what Michel Foucault terms ‘unreason’ (déraison)33 – homologized a broad spectrum of categories, all united by their proneness to uncritical credulity: children and servants, hysterical women and the mentally weak, country-people and mountain dwellers, ‘savages’ and, ultimately, the ancients, ‘i quali vivendo in un tempo in cui le scienze erano bambine, erano bambini ancor essi’ (Saggio 132) [who, living in a time when sciences were in their infancy, they were children themselves]. In Locke’s Essay, which Leopardi read in Francesco Soave’s compendium based on Winne, the problem of scary stories was part of a broader reflection on the ‘influence of association to be watched educating young children’: ‘antipathies’, Locke argued, are mostly ‘acquired’ by ‘undue connexion of ideas’, a process that normally takes place in childhood as ‘the time most susceptible of lasting impressions’ and which is ‘a great cause of errors’.34 The first example coming to Locke’s mind was precisely the connection between night and the fear of ghosts, which is arbitrarily created by ‘maids’ who invent bugbears for putting the kids to bed: The ideas of goblins and sprites have really no more to do with darkness than light: yet let but a foolish maid inculcate these often on the mind of a child, and raise them there together, possibly he shall

Leopardi’s Night (T)errors  73 never be able to separate them again so long as he lives, but darkness shall ever afterwards bring with it those frightful ideas, and they shall be so joined, that he can no more bear the one than the other.35 This passage of Locke’s – witnessing, it should be noted, no significant alteration in Soave’s rendering – would prove itself to be immensely successful for eighteenth-century pedagogical thought, in cementing the ideas that ‘ghost beliefs were manufactured rather than inherited’, and that ‘the storytelling of servants’ was one of the main sources of superstitious beliefs and erroneous thinking.36 In an age witnessing an increasing attention to childhood as the veritable cradle of adult life, ‘the activities of nursemaids and servants were put under the microscope’37: despite being mostly limited to the English-speaking world, the examples collected by Sasha Handley testify to a true obsession of the eighteenth century for the wet-nurses’ scary stories, which were perceived as a threat to truly ‘enlightened’ education and, ultimately, to the progress of society as a whole.38 On the one hand, reformers and pedagogues invited parents to watch their servants closely. Nicolas Andry’s highly influential medical treatise L’Orthopédie (1741), for example, devoted a paragraph to the fear instilled in young children by stories of ‘Loups garous, d[e] Revenans, d[e] Sorciers, & de cent autres sujets semblables’ [werewolves, ghosts, witches, and many other similar subjects] – or, more simply, by the superstitions concerning thunders – which were told them by their caretakers, and which was even seen as the principal root of epilepsy: ordinairement les nourrices gâtent l’esprit des enfans par les peurs ridicules qu’elles leur font. Il ne faut jamais effrayer sur rien les enfans. Ces frayeurs qui leur affoiblissent l’esprit, leur sont aussi très-dangereuses pour le corps, & parmi un grand nombre d’enfans attaqués du formidable mal caduc, il n’y en a presque point qui ne soient redevables de cette horrible maladie, à des peurs qui leur ont été faites de l’enfance […].39 [wet-nurses customarily endanger the minds of children by instilling in them ridiculous fears. One must never frighten children about anything. These frights that weaken their minds are also very dangerous for their bodies, and in a great number of children who are affected by the powerful falling sickness [i.e. epilepsy], there are few who do not owe such horrible disease to having been frightened in childhood] On the other hand, we witness an increasing aestheticization of storytelling scenes, and of ghost storytelling in particular: in the moment when ‘the rise of industrial economies’ dissolves ‘the communal forms of sociability created by extended families and broader kinship units beg[in]

74  Fabio Camilletti to break down’, the old veillée around the fireside is constructed as an object of cultural nostalgia, and the emblem of an authenticity of experience that new practices – such as bedtime reading in private rooms, what Maria Tatar terms ‘the great migration: from the fireside to the nursery’ – cannot any longer afford.40 Once the most debatable practices of pre-industrial pedagogy – including feeding babies with compounds of opiates, certainly more powerful than stories in the terms of creating visions41 – have not only been abandoned, but literally obliterated from collective memory, the storytelling at bedtime becomes a commonplace of pre-Romantic and Romantic anti-industrial fantasies. Early nineteenth-century autobiographies recall scenes of ‘silence and awe’, in which the children, ‘scarcely breathing, contemplated in imagination, the visions of an unseen world, […] conjured up’ by the ‘strange and fearful tales of spirits, and apparitions’ told by their aunt42; folklorists and antiquarians – from Johann Karl August Musäus to the brothers Grimm – present themselves as the mediators between the oral, bodily ‘authenticity’ of stories told by the fireplace and the sanitized, impersonal sphere of the printed page. Even Joseph Addison, who scornfully describes in The Spectator the scene of ‘several young Girls of the Neighbourhood sitting about the Fire […] and telling Stories of Spirits and Apparitions’, cannot refrain from a certain ambiguity in presenting his moralistic account: I seated myself by the Candle that stood on a Table at one End of the Room; and pretending to read a Book that I took out of my Pocket, heard several dreadful Stories of Ghosts as pale as Ashes that had stood at the Feet of a Bed, or walked over a Churchyard by Moonlight: And of others that had been conjured into the Red-Sea, for disturbing People’s Rest, and drawing their Curtains at Midnight; with many other old Women’s Fables of the like Nature. As one Spirit raised another, I observed that at the End of every Story the whole Company closed their Ranks and crouded [sic] about the Fire: I took Notice in particular of a little Boy, who was so attentive to every Story, that I am mistaken if he ventures to go to bed by himself this Twelvemonth. Indeed they talked so long, that the Imaginations of the whole Assembly were manifestly crazed, and I am sure will be the worse for it as long as they live. I heard one of the Girls, that had looked upon me over her Shoulder, asking the Company how long I had been in the Room, and whether I did not look paler than I used to do. This put me under some Apprehensions that I should be forced to explain my self if I did not retire; for which Reason I took the Candle in my Hand, and went up into my Chamber, not without wondering at this unaccountable Weakness in reasonable Creatures, that they should love to astonish and terrify one another.43

Leopardi’s Night (T)errors  75 Emma Clery comments on the ‘surreptitious involvement of the observer in the scene he condemns’, and suggests an ‘identification with the attentive little boy, in the man apparently unable to tear himself away as story after story is recounted, whose pallor is remarked by another of the children, and who finally retreats rather sheepishly, ­unwilling – or unable? – to “explain himself”’.44 Addison, in other words, displays the ‘iconic […] juxtaposition’ between ‘an order of society which achieves cohesion through its myths, a circle bound and tightened by the shared sensations of fascination and terror’ and the isolation of the learned, adult man, a book in his hand, experiencing ‘the emptiness and isolation of rational judgement, a sentiment of loss’.45 This contrast between a group of chatting girls, living in a sphere of orality and full of hope and illusions, and the nostalgic solitude of the male intellectual, trapped in the disillusioned world of books, writing, and disenchantment, may sound familiar to the readers of Leopardi’s much later poem ‘A Silvia’ (1828).46

The Metamorphoses of the Night Locke’s disjunction of the concept of ‘night’ from those of ‘ghosts’ and ‘apparitions’ had not only philosophical, but also strong historical implications. The threshold between the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries corresponds to what historians term as the progressive ‘nocturnalization’ of human life, that is, the transition from the strict division between day-time and night-time of the medieval and early modern ages to the ‘willingness to deploy and manipulate darkness and the night’ by means of ‘purpose-built baroque theaters’, until to the widespread diffusion of urban and domestic lightning in the eighteenth century, enabling individuals and families to take possession of the other side of the day.47 Such steady ‘victory over the night’ (victoire sur la nuit), in Fernand Braudel’s well-known terms,48 corresponds also to the de-­ supernaturalization of night hours: whereas medieval and Old Regime theologians and moralists admonished against night-wandering, seen as a disturbance of natural order,49 in the eighteenth century La caduta del tabù della notte, la sostituzione del tempo di cultura a quello di natura, la presa di potere dell’artificiale sul naturale avevano segnato una profonda coupure nella rete dei condizionamenti intessuta silenziosamente dai secoli e dai millenni. Il ‘tempo di notte’ aveva perduto il livido alone delle ore sinistre care alle streghe e ai negromanti, l’orrore delle apparizioni spettrali e dei ‘rumori’ degli spiriti ritornanti. Alla luce sfavillante delle soirées galanti era naufragata anche la pur saggia interdizione della vecchia medicina sugli effetti deleteri dell’‘andar di notte’, del viaggio notturno perturbatore dell’ordine della natura e insidiatore di quello morale.50

76  Fabio Camilletti [The breakdown of the night taboo, the replacement of the time of nature with the time of culture, the takeover of artificiality against naturalness, had created a deep fissure in the complex of conditionings silently interwoven through the centuries and the millennia. The ‘night time’ had lost the livid aura of those sinister hours dear to witches and necromancers, the horror of ghostly apparitions, and the ‘noises’ of revenants. The sparkling light of soirées had also dispelled the nonetheless wise interdict of old medicine about the dangerous effects of ‘wandering at night’, of night travels as a disturbance of the order of nature and as a danger for the moral one] Before Locke, ‘the association of ghosts with the night was axiomatic’,51 and as such it had crossed the long debate on the existence of a­ pparitions – spirits of the dead, diabolical illusions, or, eventually, deception of the senses – that had animated the European sixteenth century from both the Protestant and the Catholic flanks.52 Ludwig Lavater, a Swiss theologian and the author of a monumental treatise De Spectris [On Spectres], widely translated in French, English, and German, argued that Spectra olim apparuerunt, adhuc die noctúque apparent, præcipuè verò noctu, & ante intempestam noctem primo somno. Item diebus Veneris, Saturni, diebus ieiuniorum, & ut confirment superstitiones. Non autem mirari debemus hæc noctu sæpius quàminterdiu audiri. Ille enim quo authore hæc ferè fiunt, in sacris literis Princeps tenebrarum vocatur, & lucem Verbi divini refugit.53 [Spirits appeared in old time, and do appeare still in these dayes both day & night, but especially in the night, and before midnighte in our first sléep. Moreouer on the frydayes, saterdayes, & fasting daies, to confirme superstition. Neither may we maruel, that they are heard more in the night, thā in the day time. For he who is the author of these things, is called in the holie Scriptures the Prince of darkenesse, and therefore hée shunneth the light of Gods worde] From a Catholic perspective, the French scholar Pierre Le Loyer maintained nonetheless such connexion between night, apparitions, and diabolic influence: si la superstition, le desespoir, la credulité sont aimees du Diable, non moins la nuict, les tenebres, l’horreur des precipices, des torrens, des lieux effroyables, les bois desertez, & les landes escartees sont hantez & cherchez de luy, & doivent estre suspects: de sorte que s’il se presente des apparitions en temps de nuict en un precipice, en des bois & landes desertes, on les doit plustost soupçonner en la mauvaise part qu’en la bonne. Et de nuict s’il s’apparoit un Spectre, qui se feigne estre Ame, & neantmoins que par les effects il se

Leopardi’s Night (T)errors  77 monstre contraire à la nature des Ames, inquietant les personnes en leur dormir, les foulant, voulant coucher avecques ells, comme Incube, ou comme Succube, luittant, iettant des pierres, siflant, leur ostant la couverture dessus le lict, & faisant autres pareils actes; il n’y a doute que ce ne soit un Diable.54 [if the Devil loves superstition, despair, and credulity, nevertheless darkness, the horror of cliffs, of streams, of dreadful places, of deserted woods, of abandoned places, are haunted and sought by him, and must be regarded with suspicion: as a consequence, if apparition manifests itself at night on a cliff, or in deserted woods and places, we must suspect the worse rather than the better. And if, at night, a spirit manifests itself pretending it is a soul, and still it appears to be contrary to the nature of souls by its effects – disturbing those who sleep, oppressing them, trying to sleep with them as an Incubus or as a Succubus, fighting, throwing stones, pulling the sheets off their beds, and by doing similar things – there is no doubt that it is a devil] The connection between spectres and the night had common currency in early modern treatises, to the extent that late-sixteenth- or early-­ seventeenth-century works like Thomas Nashe’s Terrors of the Night (1594) and Pierre Thyraeus’s Daemoniaci cum locis infestis et terriculamentis nocturnis (1604) [The possessed, with the addition of Haunted places and Night terrors] could adapt the Biblical expression timor nocturnus (Psalms XC, 5) to describe hauntings, cementing an equation that Leopardi’s Saggio would further reiterate.55 Moreover, these texts play a central role in constituting a canon of ancient ghost stories, hauntings, and superstitions, which would provide the grounds to collections such as Leopardi’s: born as theological treatises, aiming to support or to dismantle the belief in apparitions from a dogmatic point of view and employing classical sources in order to reinforce their argument through the use of auctoritates, they committed to later generations a repertoire of anecdotes that would later find their way –in the philosophical and enlightened eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – in the space of literature.56

Back to 1815 An isolated exercise in erudite compilation, if read within the context of early-nineteenth-century Italian culture, Leopardi’s Saggio reveals instead quite unpredictable ties when considered within the broader context of Napoleonic Europe.57 Indeed, quite a strange constellation of texts inhabits the years around 1815, a canon that still needs to be fully mapped but which, nonetheless, may offer productive confrontation with Leopardi’s experiment: those ‘hastily assembled compendiums

78  Fabio Camilletti drawing on sources as diverse as the French fairy tale, German romantic poetry, the Gothic novel, and folklore’, as Terry Hale writes, which, following the ‘intellectual chaos’ left by the French Revolution, gathered together ‘a collection of short anecdotes concerning imps, demons, gremlins, alchemists and vampires’ and ‘proliferated […] and were still thriving as late as 1820’, 58 widely drawing on the theological treatises of the sixteenth century, the repertoires of wonders of the seventeenth century– including Strozzi Cicogna’s Palagio de gli incanti (1605) [Palace of enchantments], Tommaso Garzoni’s Il serraglio degli stupori del mondo (1613) [Collection of the wonders of the world], Jacob Spon’s Recherches curieuses d’antiquité (1683) [Curious researches on antiquity], 59 and Thomas Brown’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646) [Epidemic pseudo-knowledge] – and eighteenth-century erudite works of Augustin Calmet and Nicolas Lenglet Du Fresnoy. A handful of dates and a working list may help in remarking the chronological coincidence of these compendiums, mostly published in France, with Leopardi’s Saggio: 1802, anonymous, Le Livre des prodiges [Book of prodiges]; 1810, anonymous, Histoire des Revenans, ou prétendus tels [History of revenants, or so-believed], Johann August Apel’s and Friedrich August Schulze’s Gespensterbuch [Book of Ghosts], and Jacques-­Barthélemy Salgues’s Des erreurs et des préjugés répandus dans la société [On the errors and prejudices that are widespread in society]; 1812, Jean-­ Baptiste Benoît Eyriès’s Fantasmagoriana; 1813, Sarah Elizabeth Utterson’s Tales of the Dead; 1817, J.P.R. Cuisin’s Spectriana and Eusèbe Salverte’s Essai sur la magie, les prodiges et les miracles chez les anciens [Essay on magic, prodiges, and miracles by the ancients]; 1818, J. S. C. de Saint-Albin’s (but Jacques Collin de Plancy) Les Contes noirs, ou les frayeurs populaires [Dark tales, or: the popular terrors] and Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire infernal [Infernal dictionary]; 1819, Collin de Plancy’s Le Diable peint par lui-même [The Devil painted by himself] and Gabrielle de Paban’s Histoire des fantômes et des démons [History of ghosts and demons]; 1820, Paban’s Démoniana; 1820, Cuisin’s Les Ombres sanglantes [The bloodstained shadows]; and 1822, Charles Nodier’s Infernaliana. Alongside the associations proposed by Bronzini – Anthelme Richerand’s Erreurs populaires relatives à la medicine (1810) [Popular errors concerning medicine] or Michele Placucci’s Usi e pregiu­ dizi de’ contadini della Romagna (1818) [Customs and prejudices of the peasants of Romagna]60 – these works, although born in an entirely different context than the Saggio and certainly aiming to meet the needs of different audiences, may help us in historicizing it within the context of a widespread interest in the powers of imagination and the survival of superstition. After all, with these texts Leopardi’s Saggio shares at least one of the principal sources – an Italian translation of Laurent Bordelon’s L’histoire des imaginations extravagantes de monsieur Oufle [History of the extravagant imaginations of Mr Oufle], originally published in

Leopardi’s Night (T)errors  79 1710 – and a French compilation of ‘curiosities’ (Jules Berger de Xivrey’s Traditions tératologiques [Teratological traditions], a treatise on monsters of 1836) would be the only published destination of a part of it during Leopardi’s lifetime. Most of all, these texts share with the Saggio the oscillation between the condemnation of superstitious (t)errors, on the one hand, and the necessity to expose them as objects of entertainment on the other. The epigraph of Fantasmagoriana employs a quotation from Ovid in order to declare its fictitious nature and to define its contents as ‘deceitful terrors’; Plancy’s Dictionnaire infernal opens with an engraving that represents an allegory of superstition, accompanied by a quotation from Plutarch that condemns erroneous beliefs; a poetic quatrain in the frontispiece of Histoire des fantômes wishes for readers to ‘have fun’ and ‘open their eyes’ (Que le lecteur s’amuse, et qu’il ouvre les yeux); and Démoniana declares itself as a ‘work fit to reassure the fearful imagination against superstitious terrors’ (ouvrage proper à rassurer les imaginations timorées, contre les frayeurs superstitieuses). While dislocating, in other words, the terrors of the night to the reassuring limbo of alterity – as something that the enlightened people have abandoned, and that only pertains to others such as country-people, children, and maidservants – these texts present themselves as ‘medi[a] in which rationally thinking readers can engage in a form of self-fashioning by which they portray themselves as having overcome […] fear […] and can now enjoy such titillating pleasures’.61 At the same time, as David Punter points out, the interest in the superstitions of the ‘past’ by readers of the Gothic age actually relies on the displacement of tensions that are entirely engrained in the present: ‘the middle class displaces the hidden violence of present social structures, conjures them up again as past, and promptly falls under their spell’.62 After all, moderns are not exempt from the fear of the dark – which has even become more disquieting once darkness has been defeated, and no spirit is actually known to lurk in the shadows. Suffice it to compare what, on the subject, two writers so reciprocally different as Leopardi and Jean-­ Baptiste Benoît Eyriès, the compiler of Fantasmagoriana, have to say: Un ribrezzo involontario in qualche occasione, una ripugnanza secreta ad entrar solo di notte in una camera tenebrosa, o attraversare un appartamento oscuro, è quasi commune a ogni uomo. […] L’esperienza ha dimostrato che i più prodi militari, soliti a bravare i pericoli e a mirare senza turbarsi l’aspetto della morte, hanno ceduto al timore degli spiriti. (Saggio 131–132) [Some involuntary disgust in certain times, some secret revulsion in entering alone some dark room or in crossing some unlighted property, is almost common to every man. […] Experience proves

80  Fabio Camilletti that the most valiant soldiers, used to challenge dangers and behold without any trouble the face of death, have surrendered to the fear of the spirits] On pense assez généralement que personne ne croit plus aux revenans. Cette opinion ne semble pourtant pas tout à fait exacte, quand on y réfléchit un peu mûrement. En effet, sans parler des mineurs et des montagnards, […] ne peut-on pas demander pourquoi, parmi nous, certains individus répugnent à passer dans un cimetière lorsque le jour a disparu? pourquoi d’autres éprouvent un frisson involuntaire en entrant la nuit dans une église, ou dans an edifice vaste et non habité? pourquoi, enfin, des gens qui jouissent d’une reputation méritée de bon sens et de hardiesse, n’osent, dans les ténèbres, se hazarder à visiter des lieux où ils sont sûrs de n’avoir rien à redouter des vivans [sic]? On répète sans cesse que ceux-ci sont les seuls à craindre, et néanmoins on a peur la nuit, parce que l’on croit, par tradition, que ce temps est celui que préfèrent les fantômes pour apparoître aux habitans [sic] de la terre.63 [It is generally believed that at this time of day no one puts any faith in ghosts and apparitions. Yet, on reflection, this opinion does not appear to me quite correct: for, without alluding to workmen in mines, and the inhabitants of mountainous countries, […] may we not ask why amongst ourselves there are certain individuals who have a dread of passing through a church-yard after night-fall? Why others experience an involuntary shuddering at entering a church, or any other large uninhabited edifice, in the dark? And, in fine, why persons who are deservedly considered as possessing courage and good sense, dare not visit at night even places where they are certain of meeting with nothing they need dread from living beings? They are ever repeating, that the living are only to be dreaded; and yet fear night, because they believe, by tradition, that it is the time which phantoms choose for appearing to the inhabitants of the earth] The fear of the dark, instilled by the bugbears conjured by some careless wet-nurse (Leopardi) or somewhat innate to human nature or inherited from tradition (Eyriès), becomes, thus, the case study by which writers of the age of the Gothic articulate the problem fear poses to the stability of the post-Enlightenment subject, who is supposed to have defeated darkness in a both literal and metaphorical sense. Through the mediation of Hoffmann, such narrative will contribute to shaping Freud’s conceptualization of the uncanny as a return of repressed fears and beliefs.64

Notes 1 I quote from E.T.W. [sic] Hoffmann, ‘The Sandman’, in Tales from the ­German, transl. by John Oxenford and C. A. Feiling (London: Chapman and Hall, 1844), pp. 140–165 (p. 141) and the German text from the first

Leopardi’s Night (T)errors  81 edition [E.T.A. Hoffmann], Nachtstücke, 2 vols. (Berlin: Realschulbuchhandlung, 1817 [but 1816]), pp. 1–82 (p. 5). 2 Ibid., p. 141/pp. 5 and 4. 3 Ibid., p. 141/pp. 5–6. 4 Ibid., p. 141/p. 6. 5 Ibid., p. 140/p. 3. 6 I quote from Giacomo Leopardi, Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi, ed. by Giovanni Battista Bronzini (Venosa: Osanna, 1997): henceforth Saggio, followed by page numbers between brackets in the main body of text. 7 In his Confessions, Rousseau wrote that ‘my natural inclination is to be afraid of obscurities, I dread them and I hate their black air, mystery always makes me anxious, it is far too antipathetic to my natural character which is open to the point of imprudence. The sight of the most hideous monster would frighten me little, it seems to me, but if in the night I catch a glimpse of a figure under a white sheet, I will be afraid’ (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions and Correspondence, including the Letters to Malesherbes, ed. by Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters, and Peter G. Stillman, transl. by Christopher Kelly (Hanover & London: University Press of New England, 1995), p. 473). 8 The expression is Friedrich Schelling’s and is quoted in Sigmund Freud, ‘The Uncanny’, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, ed. and transl. by James Strachey, 24 vols. (London: Vintage, 2001), vol. XVII, pp. 217–256 (p. 225). 9 Max Weber, ‘Science as a Vocation’, in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. and transl. by Hans H. Gerth and Charles Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), pp. 129–156 (p. 155). Although editors date the lecture to 1918 (p. 129), Wolfgang Mommsen provides enough evidence for asserting that it was actually delivered on 7 November 1917 and published in 1919 (Wolfgang Mommsen, Max Weber und die deutsche Politik 1890–1920 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004, p. 289, n. 291). 10 Michael D. Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies. Boundaries of Superstition in Late Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY & London: Cornell University Press, 2013), p. 224. 11 Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe. Superstition, Reason, & Religion, 1250–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 10. 12 Bailey, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, p. 223. 13 Freud, ‘The Uncanny’, pp. 247–248. For the German text, see ‘Das Unhemliche’, in Gesammelte Werke, ed. by Anna Freud, 18 vols. (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1999), vol. XII, pp. 227–268 (p. 262). 14 On the afterlife of the Freudian Uncanny see Anneleen Masschelein, The Unconcept: The Freudian Uncanny in Late-Twentieth-century Theory ­(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011). 15 The first allusion to the Wolf-Man appears, tellingly, in an article of 1913 on ‘The Occurrence in Dreams of Material from Fairy Tales’ (in Freud, The Standard Edition, vol. XII, pp.  281–287); the clinical case would appear in 1918, a few months before ‘The Uncanny’ and in a moment witnessing strong tensions with Carl Gustav Jung and his theories on myth (‘From the History of an Infantile Neurosis’, in ibid., vol. XVII, pp.  7–122). On the folkloric implications of the Wolf-Man’s case see Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Freud, the Wolf-Man, and the Werewolves’, in Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, transl. by John and Anne C. Tedeschi (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), pp. 146–155. 16 See, for example, Angiola Ferraris, introduction to Giacomo Leopardi, Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi, ed. by Angiola Ferraris (Turin:

82  Fabio Camilletti

17 18

19

20

21 22 23 24

25

26

Einaudi, 2003), pp. vii–xv (p. xiv): ‘Nel Saggio leopardiano il “perturbante”, la sensazione del “sinistro” nascono dal ritorno di credenze solo razionalmente represse, come le “chimere” sulle apparizioni degli spiriti’ [in Leopardi’s Saggio, the ‘uncanny’, the feeling of the ‘unhomely’, are born out of the return of beliefs that have only been surmounted by means of reason, like the ‘chimeras’ on the apparition of spirits]. I have discussed extensively this possibility in Fabio Camilletti, Leopardi’s Nymphs. Grace, Melancholy, and the Uncanny (Oxford: Legenda, 2013), pp. 125–126 and 131–144. In the ancient world, ‘nurses […] were usually slaves’ (Alex Scobie, ‘Storytellers, Storytelling, and the Novel in Graeco-Roman Antiquity’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 122, 3/4 (1979), 229–259 (p. 244)), and therefore foreigners: the majority of them came from Egypt or from Sub-­ Saharan ­A frica (see Alex Scobie, Apuleius and Folklore. Toward a History of ML3045, AaTh567, 449A (London: The Folklore Society, 1983), pp. 17 and 59, n. 91). Nurses could also be perceived as witches: see Francesca Mencacci, ‘La balia cattiva: alcune osservazioni sul ruolo della nutrice nel mondo antico’, in Vicende e figure femminili in Grecia e a Roma, ed. by Renato Raffaelli (Ancona: Commissione per le pari opportunità tra uomo e donna della Regione Marche, 1995), pp. 227–237 (p. 231). In his treatise on Gynaecology, repeatedly re-published until the modern age, the physician Soranus of Ephesus advised mothers not to hire superstitious nurses, lest their erroneous beliefs harmed the children (ibid., p. 231, n. 8). Ibid., pp. 244–245. Synonyms expressing the same concept were fabulæ nutricularum [nurses’ tales], which, for Quintilian, had to be replaced by Aesop’s fables in the education of children (p. 245) or neniæ aniles (see Scobie, Apuleius and Folklore, pp. 19–20). On the topic, see also Matteo Massaro, ‘Aniles fabellae’, Studi italiani di filologia classica, XLIX, 1–2 (1977), 105–135. Macrobio, Commento al Sogno di Scipione, ed. and transl. by Moreno Neri (Milan: Bompiani, 2007), p. 240. Another storytelling-related location was the spinning room: see Scobie, Apuleius and Folklore, p. 16 and 44, n. 14 for related sources. Vered Lev Kenaan, ‘Fabula analisi: the Literal as a Feminine Sense’, Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History, X (2000), 370–391 (pp. 375–378). Scobie, ‘Storytellers, Storytelling, and the Novel’, p. 245. Definition is Katharine Briggs’s, A Dictionary of Fairies. Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies and Other Supernatural Creatures (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), p. 313. For a list, accompanied by references, see Scobie, ‘Storytellers, Storytelling, and the Novel’, pp. 246–247 and nn.: ‘Akko, Alphito, Empousa, Ephiales, Gello, Gorgo, Karko, Lamia, Mania, Mormo/Mormolyke, Onoskelis, Sybaris’. ‘Unfortunately’, Scobie comments, ‘we do not today possess a single Greek or Roman witch-tale in a form uninfluenced by literary convention’ (p. 247). ‘Era cosa indegna che […] gli stessi Dei, in luogo di provvedere alla quiete dei mortali commessi alla loro cura, passeggiassero di notte e prendessero sollazzo in ispaventar chi dormiva e in molestare chi camminava per le strade’ (138) [It was shameful that even the Gods, instead of providing for the rest of those mortals who were entrusted to their care, wandered at night and took fun in frightening those who slept, or in annoying those who walked in the streets]. ‘Altro oggetto dei terrori degli antichi erano le Lamie, o Striges. Della loro natura non siamo bene istruiti, perché gli antichi non hanno avuto il coraggio di darcene piena contezza. Altri vuol che fossero pesci, altri uccelli, altri maghe,

Leopardi’s Night (T)errors  83

27

28

29

30

altri animali di strana specie. Tutto incerto, perché nessuna fino ad ora se n’è veduta’ (134) [Other terror-inspiring objects, for the ancients, were Lamias or Striges. We are not well informed about their nature, because the ancients did not dare to make us fully aware of it. Some pretend they were fish, some birds, some sorceresses, some animals of some strange kind. All is uncertain, because none has thus far been seen]. For a first survey of the Lamia figure see Scobie, Apuleius and Folklore, pp.  24–25. Lamia was the most typical of terriculæ, the Latin name for bogies (Antonio Stramaglia, Res inauditae, incredulae. Storie di fantasmi nel mondo greco-latino (Bari: Levante, 1999), p. 83, n. 61 for a detailed list of ancient sources); in commenting a passage from Ovid, grammarian Pomponius Porphyrion confirms the use of ‘Lamia’ as a general term for ‘nursery bogie’, stating that ‘[Lamia] ad infantes terrendos solet nominari’ [Lamia is generally mentioned for frightening children]. Tommaso Braccini, Indagine sull’orco. Miti e storie del divoratore di bambini (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013), pp. 144–149 and related bibliography brings further evidence to the hypothesis that the fabula mentioned by Tertullian, who vaguely speaks of ‘Lamiæ turres et pectines Soli’ [Lamia’s towers and the combs of the Sun], could be a variant of the Rapunzel-type fairy-tale. Maria Patera, ‘Comment effrayer les enfants: les cas de Mormô/Mormolukê et du mormolukeion’, Kernos, 18 (2005), 371–390 (pp. 372–374). Later in her essay, Patera shows how μορμολυκεῖα was increasingly used as a synonym for ‘vain terrors’: whereas Aristophanes intends the term as a generic word for denoting all that causes fear, in Plato’s Phaedon the fear of death is assimilated to the μορμολυκεῖα of children, and the same consideration can be found in Proclus as well as, later, in proto-Christian authors (pp. 375– 376). See also Maria Patera, ‘Reflections on the Discourse of Fear in Greek Sources’, in Unveiling Emotions II. Emotions in Greece and Rome: Texts, Images, Material Culture, ed. by Angelos Chaniotis and Pierre Ducrey (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2014), pp. 109–134 and – on the way the ancient discourse on fear was perceived in Leopardi’s time – Fabio Camilletti, ‘“Timore” e “terrore” nella polemica classico-romantica: l’Italia e il ripudio del gotico’, Italian Studies 69, 2 (2014), 231–245. Scobie, Apuleius and Folklore, pp.  29–30, who mentions the original nucleus of the story by Babrius. On Leopardi and Avianus see my ‘Urszenen: Dream-logic and Myth in the First Page of Leopardi’s Zibaldone’, Italian Studies, 67, 1 (2012), 56–69; on Μορμολύκη see also Carmine Pisano’s highly fascinating essay ‘Da spauracchio per bambini a indictio silentii. I “mostri dell’infanzia” nell’antica Grecia’, in Monstra. Costruzione e percezione delle entità ibride e mostruose nel Mediterraneo antico, ed. by Igor Baglioni, 2 vols. (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2013), vol. II, pp. 69–78, presenting interesting points in common with Franco D’Intino’s comments on the wolf and the intimation to silence in Leopardi’s works: L’immagine della voce. Leopardi, Platone e il libro morale (Venice: Marsilio, 2009), pp. 203–207. Sasha Handley, Visions of an Unseen World. Ghost Beliefs and Ghost Stories in Eighteenth-century England (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007), p.  14. It is telling, however, that seventeenth-century British intellectual John Aubrey saw this custom as exploded after the Reformation: ‘When I was a child […] before the Civil Wars […] the fashion was for old women and maids to tell fabulous stories nighttimes, of Sprites and walking of Ghosts, etc. […] When the wars came, with them Liberty of Conscience and Liberty of inquisition [inquiry], the phantoms vanished. Now children fear no such things, having heard not of them’ (quoted in Craig Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire. A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), Kobo edition).

84  Fabio Camilletti 31 Patera, ‘Comment effrayer les enfants’, p. 379. 32 Ibid. 33 Michel Foucault, History of Madness, ed. by Jean Khalfa, transl. by Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa (New York and London: Routledge, 2006). 34 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Kitchener, Batoche Books, 2001), p. 321. The text reproduces the edition of 1690; Locke deals with ghostly narratives in the XXXIII chapter of the Essay, ‘Of the Association of Ideas’. 35 Ibid., p. 322. 36 Handley, Visions of an Unseen World, p. 14. 37 Ibid., p. 192. 38 Ibid., p.  193. For a selection of examples running throughout the whole century, see pp. 193–197. 39 [Nicolas] Andry, L’Orthopédie ou l’art de prevenir et de corriger dans les enfans, les difformités du corps, 2 vols. (Paris: Alix, 1741), vol. II, p. 334. 40 Maria Tatar, Enchanted Hunters. The Power of Stories in Childhood (New York: Norton, 2009), pp. 52 and 51; see pp. 54–67 for a survey of scenes of storytelling in the visual arts, from the seventeenth through the late nineteenth centuries. 41 ‘Così preparata e “condita” la creatura veniva affidata alla bocca oscura della notte. L’iniziazione al sogno controllato, all’artificiosa dolcezza del sonno “alloppiato” cominciava fin dalle fasce. Dalla prima infanzia alla vecchiaia la narcosi dominava sovrana’ (Piero Camporesi, Il pane selvaggio (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1980), p.  17) [Thus prepared and ‘spiced’, the baby was handed to the dark mouth of the night. The initiation to the mastered dreaming, to the artificial sweetness of ‘opiated’ sleep, began since the child was in arms. From the early childhood to the old age, narcosis reigned]. 42 From the Autobiography of Victorian radical Samuel Bamford, who was born in 1788: quoted in Handley, Visions of an Unseen World, p. 194. 43 [Joseph Addison], The Spectator, 12 (14 March 1711). 4 4 Emma Clery, The Rise of Supernatural Fiction, 1762–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 3. 45 Ibid., pp. 3–4. 46 On the way this tension is incorporated in Leopardi’s poem, see my Leopardi’s Nymphs, pp. 46–47. On orality and writing culture in Leopardi’s oeuvre, see D’Intino, L’immagine della voce. 47 See the conclusion to Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire, Kobo edition. 48 This expression appears in Fernand Braudel, Civilisation matérielle, Économie et Capitalisme XVe–XVIIIe siècle, 3 vols. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1967), vol. I, p. 232. 49 ‘[L]’andar di notte senza bisogno, altro non è che un perturbare l’ordine della natura’ [wandering at night out of need is nothing but a disturbance of the order of nature]: from the highly popular Ricordi, overo ammaestramenti of Renaissance humanist Sabba da Castiglione (first published in 1554), quoted in Piero Camporesi, Il brodo indiano. Edonismo ed esotismo nel Settecento (Milan: Garzanti, 1990), p. 18. 50 Ibid., p. 18. Camporesi devotes an entire chapter of his seminal Il pane selvaggio to the night-time in pre-industrial societies (pp. 111–124). 51 Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire, 8.1, Kobo edition. 52 On this debate see Paola Aretini, I fantasmi degli antichi tra Riforma e Controriforma. Il soprannaturale greco-latino nella trattatistica teologica del Cinquecento (Bari: Levante, 2000). 53 Ludovicus Lavaterus [Ludwig Lavater], De Spectris, lemuribus et magnis atque insolitis fragoribus, variísque præsagitionibus quæ plerunque obitum

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54

55

56 57 58

59 60 61

62 63

64

hominum, magnas clades mutationésque Imperiorum præcedunt (Tigurii [Zurich]: Ioannes Crispinus [Jean Crespin], 1570), pp.  109–110. The text was translated in French in 1571: Trois livres des apparitions des esprits, fantosmes, prodiges & accidens merveilleux qui precedent souventesfois la mort de quelque personnage renommé, ou un grand changement és choses de ce monde (s.l.: Jean Durant, 1571); into English in 1572, by Robert Harrison (from whence I cite): Of Ghostes and Spirites, Walking by Night, and of Strange Noyses, Crackes, and Sundrie Forewarnings, Which Commonly Happen Before the Death of Men: Great Slaughters, and Alterations of Kingdomes (London: Bennymen for Watkyns, 1572), p.  90; and in German in 1586, within a broader compilation entitled Theatrum de veneficiis, published in Frankfurt. On Lavater see Aretini, I fantasmi degli antichi, pp. 69–86. Pierre Le Loyer, IIII Livres des spectres ou apparitions et visions d’esprits, anges et demons se montrans sensiblement aux hommes (Angers: Nepveu, 1586), book IV, p. 301. On Le Loyer see Aretini, I fantasmi degli antichi, pp. 131–161. Thomas Nashe, The Terrors of the Night or A Discourse of Apparitions (London: John Danter for William Jones, 1594); Petrus [Pierre] Thyraeus, Dæmoniaci cum locis infestis et terriculamentis nocturnis (Coloniæ Agrippinæ [Cologne]: Gosuini Cholini [Goswin Cholin], 1604). On Thyraeus see Aretini, I fantasmi degli antichi, pp.  210–219. The text of the psalm, in St Jerome’s Vulgata, is ‘non timebis a timore nocturno’; the Greek text of the Septuagint reads, ‘όυ φοβηθήση ὰπό φόβου νυκτερινοῦ’. I have discussed elsewhere how this expression could possess a particular meaning for Leopardi’s emotional memory, given that the line ‘non timebis a timore nocturno’ was painted on one of the walls of his native house: ‘Il passo di Nerina. Memoria, storia e formule di pathos nelle Ricordanze’, Italianistica, XXXIX, 2 (2010), 41–66 (pp. 49–50). See Aretini, I fantasmi degli antichi, pp. 229–232. On the varied critical reception of the Saggio see Bronzini’s introduction to his edition of the work, pp. 7–56 (pp. 10–13). Terry Hale, ‘Translation in Distress: Cultural Misappropriation and the Construction of the Gothic’, in European Gothic. A Spirited Exchange 1760–1960, ed. by Avril Horner (Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press, 2002) pp. 17–38 (p. 27). Aretini, I fantasmi degli antichi, p. 29. On these collections in the Baroque age see also David R. Castillo, Baroque Horrors. Roots of the Fantastic in the Age of Curiosities (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2010). Bronzini, introduzione, pp. 13–14. Barry Murnane, ‘Haunting (Literary) History: An Introduction to German Gothic’, in Popular Revenants. The German Gothic and Its International Reception, 1800–2000, ed. by Andrew Cusack and Barry Murnane (Rochester: Camden House, 2012), pp. 10–43 (p. 18). David Punter, The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day, 2 vols. (London: Longman, 1996), vol. II, pp. 218–219. [Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès], preface to Fantasmagoriana, ou Recueil d’histoires d’apparitions de spectres, revenans, fantômes, etc., 2 vols. (Paris: Schoell, 1812), vol. I, pp. v–xiv (pp. v–vi); English translation from Tales of the Dead (London: White, Cochrane, & Co., 1813), pp. iii–iv. I have discussed elsewhere, however, how it can be problematic to do the inverse operation, namely to employ the Freudian uncanny for interpreting these texts: see my ‘Beyond the Uncanny: Fantasmagoriana, Intertextuality, and the Pleasure Principle’, Compar(a)ison, 1–2 (2015), 61–81.

5 At the Frontiers of Dreams The Nightmares of the Vita Nuova Read Through Freud and Manzoni* Andrea Malagamba Dante’s Unconscious? In a most cutting passage of The Western Canon, Harold Bloom defined in his usually agonic and provocative terms the relationship between Freud’s discovery of the unconscious and the oeuvre of Shakespeare, whom he placed, together with Dante, at the centre of the West’s canon: ‘Hamlet did not have an Oedipus complex, but Freud certainly had a Hamlet complex, and perhaps psychoanalysis is a Shakespeare complex’.1 In defining such relationship, Bloom took the opportunity to give contemporary criticism a biting lecture in textual hermeneutics: Whether you believe that the unconscious is an internal combustion engine (American Freudians), or a structure of phonemes (French Freudians), or an ancient metaphor (as I do), you will not interpret Shakespeare any more usefully by applying Freud’s map of the mind or his analytical system to the plays. 2 These considerations given, even the title of this contribution seems to imply a certain degree of provocation. Analysing Dante’s description of dreams in the Vita Nuova through Freud’s Interpretation and his other works enables us to see them from a different angle than that of ancient and medieval oneiric exegesis, and therefore to disconnect them from their prophetic value, which Dante himself does not seem to find entirely satisfactory.3 Such reading, however, may perhaps be also helpful in showing the ways Dante’s text resists against Freud’s hermeneutical model, especially if we take it, following Freud’s initial intentions, as a universally valid methodology for investigating the latent content of dreams and, through it, the unconscious.4 More in general, notwithstanding the temptation to scrutinize Dante’s early book in search for characterizing features of the Freudian unconscious ahead of their time – including the conflicts of psychic life, the ability to symbolize, and the * The English translation to this chapter, as well as of its primary sources (unless noted otherwise), is by Fabio Camilletti.

The Nightmares of the Vita Nuova  87 persistent survival of experiences and memories of early childhood5  – interpreters should not overlook those aspects relating to Dante’s will of becoming a canonical author: the Vita Nuova narrative, therefore, cannot be disjointed from the cultural context of the Middle Ages and to its highly codified tradition, which remains beyond the full grasp of psychoanalysis’s ontological categories. Although Dante’s book is crossed by several dreams (or, more precisely, visioni [visions] and immaginazioni [fancies]),6 I have decided to focus on those relating to the action’s central event, the death of Beatrice, and which are consequently coloured by disquiet, uncertainty, and dismay.7 The two nightmares related in VN III and XXIII can be read as a single, recurring dream, progressively revealing to Dante the character of the story its frightful message: frightful, yet always present as an innate aspect of human nature, and constantly deferred to a dark corner of the psyche in that it is related to the beloved. They therefore become privileged mental places, in which the deepest fears find intelligible, albeit enigmatic, forms of representation. This aspect provides Dante’s book with a distinctive analytical n ­ ature: for Dante as an author, the Vita Nuova opens up a space of challenge with himself. This challenge consists in trying and stage the way in which unconscious thoughts make their way into Dante as a character, and gradually emerge into his consciousness. The dynamics of such progressive revelation – that Beatrice must by necessity die – can be reasonably connected to Freud’s definition of the concept of the ‘uncanny’, elaborated through a cut-up of texts by Schelling, Hoffmann, and Schiller: ‘the unheimlich is what was once hemiarch, familiar; the prefix ‘un’ [‘un-’] is the token of repression’.8 The revelation of VN XXIII, ‘di necessitade convene che la gentilissima Beatrice alcuna volta si muoia’ [There is no escaping the fact that the most gracious Beatrice will have to die some day],9 sounds like the emergence of some awareness that for a long time, and not unwillingly, had remained repress, notwithstanding the strenuous effort of dreams to let it out: after all, everyone knows that ‘“involuntary thoughts” are liable to release a most violent resistance, which seeks to prevent their emergence’.10 We can, therefore, hypothesize that oneiric visions, no matter how disturbing they may be, are Dante’s allies, as happens with all patient who starts psychoanalytic treatment: and yet we may ask – allies of which part of the self? In which war? The textual machinery of the Vita Nova, principally geared by dreams, does not only enable Dante to represent a gradual realization by which he comes to define the nature of love, but also sustains a meta-poetic discourse, meticulously weighed, through which Dante tries and manages to practise scorched earth of the vernacular tradition preceding him: and to do so without sparing any rival, poetic fathers, nor old and new friends.

88  Andrea Malagamba

The Dreamer Dreamt: Overlapping Dreams in Dante and Manzoni The analysis of the function of dreams in the Vita Nova seems to be massively linked to the specific narrative situation staged by Dante’s book – in which, as is well known, Dante re-orders a number of poems of his youth by framing them in a story. The temporal distance separating poems (or the vast majority of them)11 from the prose frame generates the splitting between a Dante of the past, who wrote the poems and underwent the love experience described in the book, and a Dante who, in the present, looks at those very experiences with the wisdom of hindsight, understanding their overall meaning (as the first chapter announces, ‘la loro sentenzia’ [the essence of their meaning], VN I). Under the veil of plain autobiography, both the structure and narrative of the Vita Nuova display a remarkable complexity, connected to the meta-textual level that all autobiography implies. The reader confronts the account of a writer who delineates, transforming it into an explicit theme of his own work, his own training as a poet, understood as a course leading him to expressive and sentimental originality and enabling him to surpass the greatest poets of vernacular tradition, including Guido Cavalcanti. The story of Dante’s own poetic apprenticeship can be made explicit or underlie his writing: yet, it appears so detailed, as well as so closely linked to the love story with Beatrice, that one would be tempted to see the ‘rubrica’ [rubric] of memory bearing the title ‘Incipit vita nova’ (VN I) as the beginning of a life renovated by poetry (and by Dante’s life as a poet) much more than by love, given that love has generated the poetry that now makes it possible to fully praise Beatrice.12 For this reason, it is worth reminding that both characters – the Dante who experiences events in the past and the one recalling them in the present – have to be technically thought as characters of fiction, even if the latter encourages a natural identification with Dante the writer, actively dealing with the reorganization of his poetry of youth. However, inasmuch as it happens in the Commedia, even the ‘Dante in the present’ is a character entering the work as an intradiegetic narrator, and whose sentimental and authorial ‘physiognomy’ is delineated by Dante the writer.13 Two different tensions coexist, therefore, in the book, which we may define a forward-facing and a backward-facing one. The first one corresponds to the progressive advancement of narration, as well as with the evolution of the love story experienced by Dante the character, who is guided by forces and drives of which he not always knows the origin. The second one pushes the narrator, and consequently the reader, to rethink and understand the pieces of that story in more rational terms in order to connect them with his own autobiography in poetic traineeship,

The Nightmares of the Vita Nuova  89 so to grasp and to focus on, in the linear progression of events, those anticipations and returns that invest what has been lived and told with new significance. Adelia Noferi has spoken, in this respect, of ‘prorsus reversum’: La caratteristica della temporalizzazione della V.N. è quella del tempo retroattivo, della Nachträglichkeit freudiana: quel tempo che rovescia il rapporto consueto tra la serie temporale e quella causale […], per cui è invece il ‘dopo’ che determina il ‘prima’. […] La retroattività del tempo regola inoltre in tutto il testo il processo di conferimento del senso: ciò che accade verrà compreso (dal perso­ naggio, dagli altri personaggi, dal lettore stesso) soltanto ‘dopo’, nel verificarsi di un nuovo evento che investe il primo di un senso che ‘allora’ era mancante, difettivo, non percepibile nella sua totalità.14 [Structure of time, in the Vita Nova, is primarily characterized by retroactive time, by Freud’s Nachträglichkeit: the kind of time that reverses the usual connection between the temporal and the causal streamline, by which ‘after’ determines the ‘before’. Moreover, the retroactivity of time determines the process of significance throughout the entire text: what happens will be understood (by the character, by other characters, even by the reader) only ‘afterwards’, when a new event will invest the former of some meaning that was ‘once’ missing or incomplete or imperceptible as a whole] This retroactive reflection – which is founded on the story that Dante the character still lives unconsciously, and revealed in the considerations of Dante the narrator – presupposes a moment of synthesis, already accomplished by Dante the writer, who works to consciously build his own authorship and poetic authority through the Vita Nuova.15 By reorganizing his poems of youth, Dante constructs a story whose temporality proceeds like a spiral, pivoting his narrative on a character (in turn a writer), caught in the effort of signalling the steps of his own poetic apprenticeship; and, at the same time, of generating new understanding of himself and of his sentimental experience by means, precisely, of writing, through an interplay of concentric circles more and more tightened, as if trying to grasp their original centre of irradiation. From this narrative scheme there strongly emerges, almost another circle, a third character, who systematically appears in all the most meaningful moments of the work: the oneiric Dante, who makes Dante in the past, retroactively narrated, a narrator, in turn, of his own dreams, and of the twists in knowledge dreams prepare and guide.16 The connection between the dreamer and the dreamed subject seems to be reinforced by the indication of the place where dreams take shape and develop in the psyche: the ‘camera’ [chamber, room] where Dante takes refuge for

90  Andrea Malagamba thinking of Beatrice is the same room appearing as the setting for the ‘vision’ of VN III and the one featuring in the last part of the ‘erronea fantasia’ [hallucination] of VN XXIII. The room in which Dante’s fantasy takes place should be thought, therefore, as part of the oneiric setting: and also, when considering how it structurally recurs within the book, as some sort of narrative frame enclosing – as if to establish an ideal link between them – the nightmares of VN III and XXIII.17 Moreover, the room constructs a liminal space in that it is present both when Dante is intent at thinking while awake and when he is dreaming: Dante dreams himself in the same room where he ‘really’ is so that imagination acquires a certain degree of realism in the eyes of the dreamer or, at least, it seems capable of establishing truthful connections with his own past life, even when oneiric content openly exhibits its distance from diurnal life. If, on the one hand, these two episodes take place in a space that is familiar to the Vita Nova character, thereby bringing extra-oneiric material into the space of the dream; on the other hand, the overlap of dream and external reality is precisely what characterizes Dante’s vision as nightmares. Already in the Old Testament, frightful dreams were accompanied by trouble and by remarkable physical phenomena: in the Book of Job, for instance, the awareness of man’s vulnerable and ephemeral nature generates in Elifaz such fear ‘which made all my bones to shake’ and ‘the hair of my flesh stood up’ (The book of Job 4, 14–15). Such bodily reactions, however, correspond to generic ways of somatizing fear (trembling) in relation to a clear message that the dream communicates to the dreamer,18 whereas the Vita Nova nightmares display physical situations and manifestations that tend to trespass the borders of dream in order to reappear, almost unchanged, in the life of Dante the character. Such dynamics of trespassing, on which Dante repeatedly returns throughout the story, is a veritable narrative topos, meeting vast success in later works: let us just think of the nightmare induced by the Fury Alecto in Argillano’s shattered, discouraged mind in Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata: a nightmare that leaves his eyes full of rage and poison.19 Or, one can think of the troubled and vivid dreams of captain Achab, which resuming his own intense thoughts through the day, carried them on amid and clashing of phrensies, and whirled them round and round and round in his blazing brain, till the very throbbing of his life-spot became insufferable anguish; and when, as it was sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned him leap down among them; when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard through the ship.20

The Nightmares of the Vita Nuova  91 The dreamed event that overlaps into reality, that is, producing a real consequence of the body, has the effect – for every dreamer, and the more in the dreamer described by Dante – of validating the dream’s content, as if such event was a physical link, or some bodily evidence, connecting dream scenes to the truth held by the dream and communicated to the dreamer, although through enigmatic and anti-realistic means. Thus, the overlap seals a binding agreement with memory, as if the body asked the mind to retain the memory of the dream in order to elaborate and understand it. From this viewpoint, the dream assailing Don Rodrigo in Chapter XXXIII of I promessi sposi is exemplary: Manzoni plays with the superimposition of the physical pain caused by bubo of the plague in reality and the image of the sword’s pommel pushing against Don Rodrigo’s armpit in the dreamt scene. Just like the visions of the Vita Nova, Manzoni’s nightmare relies on a complex codification of the narrating voice, of its relationship with the Anonymous seventeenth-century Author, with characters, and with the reader. The fictive presence of a manuscript validating the actuality of facts, Spinazzola shows, enables Manzoni to create an author-character through the gaze of whom ‘la finzione artistica raggiunge il massimo effetto di doppiezza tra spirito di verosimiglianza oggettiva e unilateralità ideologica’ [artistic invention exploit to its best the duplicity of objective verisimilitude and ideological one-sidedness]21: the actuality of things happened, authenticated by the Anonymous, enables Manzoni’s narrator to discuss events by applying on his judgements the same degree of truth attached to the facts. Still, as Manzoni-related criticism generally highlights, such judgement is not deprived of a certain degree of emotional participation, undermining the strictness and univocal aspects of its ideological traits. Manzoni’s characters, I would argue, are basically constructed through a ‘pluridimensional’ perspective: not the mere description of all-round characters, whose conflicts and metamorphoses Manzoni delineates, but rather a complexity grounded on the gazes that other characters (including the narrator) have of each character. Such technique of multiple, variable focalization elicits the reader, I believe, to ‘immedesimarsi parzialmente con ciascun personaggio, a seconda delle attitudini rivelate nelle varie circostanze della vicenda’ [identify themselves with each character according to the attitudes revealed through the various circumstances of narration]. 22 The nightmare of Chapter XXXIII witnesses the convergence of: the narrator’s gaze, framing the emotional tonality of both dream and dreamer in the sphere of a gradual accumulation of rage; the gaze Don Rodrigo projects onto himself while undergoing, as if through an inflexible law of retaliation, the feeling of oppression and impotence he has so far caused in his neighbours; and, eventually, the one of the image of Father Cristoforo that Don Rodrigo has interiorized since the day, quite

92  Andrea Malagamba close, in which the former uttered his frightening ‘predizione’ [foretelling] that now seems to concretize. The ‘giorno’ [day] foreseen by Cristoforo has arrived, yet no reader can remain indifferent to the dream or behold it in coolness and satisfaction, although it relates to the story’s villain and of the nightmare by which the author wishes to punish him.23 Manzoni accurately describes the moment of transition between wakefulness and sleep. Don Rodrigo’s nightmare is preceded by troubles in falling asleep: summer heath, the effects of wine, and the spreading of the disease produce unbearable temperature in the dreamer’s body so that ‘le coperte gli parvero una montagna’ [the counterpane seemed to him like a mountain] and he does not manage to put himself to sleep although he ‘moriva dal sonno’ [he was dying of sleep]. These two hyperboles preceding the dream slowly project the reader in the atmosphere of the nightmare: the first one plays with the construction of an image of oppression and imprisonment through the amplification of a physical sensation; the second one is a patent prolepsis of the moral condemnation assigned by Manzoni to his oneiric narration, a condemnation to death. The surreal ‘trial’ to Don Rodrigo takes place in a court that leaves no escape: a church hosting the most feared judge, Padre Cristoforo, and a most inflexible executor of the sentence, a crowd of beggars that Don Rodrigo cannot overpower. The trajectory leading the ‘dreamed dreamer’ to the sentence he fears moves on the border between reality and fiction: Dopo un lungo rivoltarsi, finalmente s’addormentò, e cominciò a fare i più brutti e arruffati sogni del mondo. Ed’uno in un altro, gli parve di trovarsi in una gran chiesa, in su, in su, in mezzo a una folla; di trovarcisi, ché non sapeva come ci fosse andato, come gliene fosse venuto il pensiero. [After a long battle, he at length fell asleep, and began to dream the most gloomy and disquieting dreams in the world. He went on from one thing to another, till he seemed to find himself in a large church, in the first ranks, in the midst of a great crowd of people; there he was, wondering how he had got there, how the thought had ever entered his head]24 The feeling of confusion of the dreamt character, who finds himself amidst the crowd and still ‘non sapeva come ci fosse andato’ [wondering how he had got there], actually coincides with the unconscious, mental process unwillingly pushing dreamers from one scene to the other. The dividing line between inside and outside, between body and soul, seems to be broken. In order to construct the nightmare’s main scene, Manzoni – in accordance with Freud’s statement of a few decades later – portrays the dreamer’s mind in the moment of re-elaborating both a physical sensation and a few images of his encounter with Father Cristoforo, which

The Nightmares of the Vita Nuova  93 had since caused in Don Rodrigo a feeling of ‘lontano e misterioso spavento’ [a secret and mysterious fear]. 25 Narrative, in this case, moves from the outside to the inside, from reality to dream: the ‘puntura dolorosa’ [painful and heavy pressure] of the bubo originates Don Rodrigo belief that the pommel of his sword is pushing against his armpit, while the gesture of holding Father Cristoforo’s arm, raised against him, is unconsciously drawn from memory and appears, identical, in Chapters VI and XXXIII. 26 And yet, at the culminating moment of the dream, Manzoni forces the reader to invert the direction of his gaze from the outside into the inside, from the oneiric scene to the one taking place in the privacy of the dreamer’s room: ‘una voce che gli andava brontolando sordamente nella gola, scoppiò in un grande urlo; e si destò. Lasciò cadere il braccio che aveva alzato davvero’ [a voice, which had been vainly and secretly struggling in his throat burst forth in a great howl; and he awoke. He dropped the arm he had in reality uplifted]. 27 The cry and the gesture of raising the arm overlap into reality, signalling that, although the nightmare reveals itself to be born out of the dreamer’s mind, the dreamt scene is far from being deprived of truth: what seemed to be confined in the space of nightmare has found the way to get out of it, and push its way into the dreamer’s real life. Contrary to what one may think, it is not the simple, actual presence of a pain-spreading centre – the bubo – beneath Don Rodrigo’s armpit, but rather the moral sanction it brings along, quickly (and uncannily) moving from the observation of a fact to the judgement about it: the forecast of imminent condemnation now becomes actuality, and the ‘lontano e misterioso spavento’ [secret and mysterios fear] of that day, repressed since a long time, develops into ‘terrore’ [terror]. 28 In Chapter XXXIII of Manzoni’s novel, both dreamer and reader face a perfect equivalent of the idea of the ‘material of dreams’ outlined by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams: All the material making up the content of a dream is in some wat derived from experience, that is to say, has been reproduced or remembered in the dream – so much at least we may regard as an undisputed fact. But it would be a mistake to suppose that a connection of this kind between the content of a dream and reality is bound to come to light easily, as an immediate result of comparing them. 29 Manzoni and, far before him, Dante, clearly understand and highlight the connection between what is experienced in wakefulness and oneiric representation: yet, contrary to Freud’s way of treating oneiric material, they rather try to outline the contrary movement – from outside the dream to inside the dream – as the foundation of the truth possessed by dream-like representation. Such dynamics of inverted overlapping, powerfully staged in Don Rodrigo’s nightmare, is central in the vision of

94  Andrea Malagamba VN XXIII: the element revealing the repressed content of the nightmare, and the truthfulness experienced by the dreamer in his body, are the real tears and the words Dante actually pronounces. Yet, some images of the enigmatic vision of VN III find their correspondence in external reality, silently operating as an engine for narrative action and dissolving the boundaries between dream and actual events.30

‘Le oscure qualità che amor mi dona’: The Vision of VN III Just like Don Rodrigo’s nightmare, the dream narrated in VN III takes place in the privacy of an enclosed space, Dante’s room. It presents itself to the dreamer in a familiar setting, as the effect of an extraordinary experience that brought the protagonist to ‘vedere tutti li termini della beatitudine’ [I seemed to see to the farthest reaches of beatitude]: for the first time, Beatrice turns her eyes towards him, who stays aside ‘molto pauroso’ [I stood gripped by fear], and greets him. Among the verbs Dante chooses for narrating this second meeting of him with Beatrice, two of them – ‘questa mirabile donna apparve’ [that marvellous lady appeared to me] and ‘lo suo dolcissimo salutare mi giunse’ [her lovely greeting came to me] – project the reader into a dream-like atmosphere, softening and almost dissolving the barriers dividing the domain of reality from that of the dream-world: E pensando di lei, mi sopragiunse uno soave sonno, ne lo quale m’apparve una maravigliosa visione: che me parea vedere ne la mia camera una nebula di colore di fuoco, dentro a la quale io discernea una figura d’uno segnore di pauroso aspetto a chi la guardasse; e pareami con tanta letizia, quanto a sé, che mirabile cosa era; e ne le sue parole dicea molte cose, le quali io non intendea se non poche; tra le quali intendea queste: ‘Ego dominus tuus’. Ne le sue braccia mi parea vedere una persona dormire nuda, salvo che involta mi parea in uno drappo sanguigno leggeramente; la quale io riguardando molto intentivamente, conobbi ch’era la donna de la salute, la quale m’avea lo giorno dinanzi degnato di salutare. E ne l’una de le mani mi parea che questi tenesse una cosa la quale ardesse tutta, e pareami che mi dicesse queste parole: ‘Vide cor tuum’. E quando elli era stato alquanto, pareami che disvegliasse questa che dormia; e tanto si sforzava per suo ingegno, che le facea mangiare questa cosa che in mano li ardea, la quale ella mangiava dubitosamente. Appresso ciò poco dimorava che la sua letizia si convertia in amarissimo pianto; e così piangendo, si ricogliea questa donna ne le sue braccia, e con essa mi parea che si ne gisse verso lo cielo; onde io sostenea sì grande angoscia, che lo mio deboletto sonno non poteo sostenere, anzi si ruppe e fui disvegliato. [VN III, my emphasis]

The Nightmares of the Vita Nuova  95 [And thinking about her, a sweet sleep came over me, in which appeared a tremendous vision: I seemed to see a fiery cloud in my room, inside which I discerned a figure of a lordly man, frightening to behold. And it was marvelous how utterly full of joy he seemed. And among the words that he spoke, I understood only a few, including: ‘Ego dominus tuus.’ In his arms I thought I saw a sleeping person, naked but for a crimson silken cloth that seemed to be draped about her, who, when I looked closely, I realized was the lady of the saving gesture, she who earlier that day had deigned to salute me. And in one of his hands it seemed that he held something consumed by flame, and I thought I heard him say these words: ‘Vide cor tuum.’ And when he had been there a while, it seemed that he awakened the sleeping lady, and he was doing all he could to get her to eat the thing burning in his hands, which she anxiously ate. Then his happiness turned into the bitterest tears, and as he cried he picked up this woman in his arms, and he seemed to go off toward the sky. At which point I felt more anguish than my light sleep could sustain, and I woke] The first lines of this account feature Dante, both as a dreamer and a dreamt character, in an attitude of active receptivity: the ‘vision’ arrives as the consequence of a reflective activity on memory (‘e pensando di lei’ [and thinking about her]), and Beatrice’s very figure is not immediately pinned down by the dreamer, who needs to observe the scene ‘molto intentivamente’ [closely] in order to acknowledge ‘la donna della salute’ [the lady of the saving gesture]. The sudden apparition of the women of Dolce Stil Novo, and also of Beatrice herself – all passing in the street and making the air tremble with light – leaves room, in Dante’s dreams, to almost indistinct apparitions. The vision shows the figure of a woman that is not immediately recognizable, while Love makes a speech of which Dante only understands isolated fragments. In his commentary to the Vita Nuova, Domenico De Robertis shows how Dante’s difficulty to understand exactly Love’s words in the dream is functional to the representation of the irrational functioning of dreams, and also to the attempt – at the time, a groundbreaking one – of rendering into prose an entirely fictitious event.31 However, such difficulty in understanding, which is due to the obscurity of Love’s language, seems more to me as a response to more specific narrative needs, connected to the relationship with the reader, so much so that it recurs again to Chapter XII, in a new vision: Love, seated next to Dante in bright-white robes, addresses him with Latin words that he cannot interpret and therefore require further clarification, almost a ‘translation’ in the vernacular language – that same language which Dante the author had chosen to talk about a new love, whose conceptual and expressive manifestation can be glimpsed right at this point of the story.

96  Andrea Malagamba In other words, the passage from Latin – which Dante the character perceives as obscure – to the vernacular language represents a sort of linguistic mimesis of the progressive discovery of a different nature of love itself, in its becoming increasingly intelligible for the protagonist of the story.32 For the moment, in Chapter III, the obscurity of Love’s language represents, I believe, a perfect textual complement, I believe, to the incompleteness of gaze preventing Dante to immediately recognize Beatrice. Moreover, it mirrors the reader’s difficulty in deciphering the vision’s meaning. In other words, Dante does not recognize Beatrice since the beginning, nor he understands the words of Love, in the same way as the reader does not grasp the dream’s enigmatic meaning, although the single parts it is composed of possess a high degree of intelligibility: a cultivated reader of that time would easily connect them to the meaning assigned to them by tradition.33 Our condition as post-Freudian readers makes it compelling to tray and interpret those images by connecting them to the logic of desire. Dante’s description of the dream, therefore, does not tend to send readers on the wrong track through the choice of images, besides quite conventional ones (the cloud, the red cloth, the eaten heart).34 It rather does so by assembling them by means of concise montage and most softened junctions, thereby making the vision an obscure and enigmatic one, and diverting the attention from what seems to me to be its most uncanny trait: why should Dante struggle in recognizing Beatrice and understanding the way Love talks to him? Interference of the senses normally generates a feeling of disease and unfamiliarity in dreams: dreamers are not fully sure they understand what is happening and, most of all, if what happens is only happening in their minds. Although the sequence of actions, in the dream, tends to reproduce by montage an irrational (unconscious?) process of Dante the character, it seems to follow a well-defined pathway of Dante the narrator, who tries to make those dreamy fragments anticipations of what will later happen in diurnal life: as if the dream, through an inverse overlap from oneiric fancy to reality, encompassed the energetic potential that will later develop in the story following a clear plot. These aspects of the dream overlapping into reality are at least three. Dante orders them accurately and in a sort of sustained release between Chapters IV and IX of the Vita Nuova. The first one precisely concerns the failed identification of the ‘donna della salute’ [the lady of the saving gesture]. Quite strangely, Dante critics have never highlighted, as far as I know, how Dante’s difficulty in identifying Beatrice in is dream is a form of visual interference that will be later reproduced in a central moment of the story: the misunderstanding of the ‘screen lady’. In VN V, the young lover is beholding his beloved in the church, but his contemplation is imperfect because ‘nel mezzo di lei e di me per la retta linea sedea una gentile donna di molto piacevole aspetto, la quale

The Nightmares of the Vita Nuova  97 mi mirava spesse volte, maravigliandosi del mio sguardare, che parea che sopra lei terminasse’ [VN V – in the middle of a direct line between her and me was seated a gracious and very attractive woman who kept looking at me wondering about my gaze, which seemed to rest on her]. Sight meets an obstacle as in the vision of VN III, and Dante, as if turning the perspective onto himself, begins to experience his encounters with the screen lady (although never described, yet at the foreground of this part of the book) as if they were a weakened concretization of his love for Beatrice.35 The consequences of this misunderstanding – an actual but also a spiritual one – are well-known: Beatrice denies Dante her salutation, a hindrance in the sphere of language staged by the dream through the incomprehensibility of Love’s speech. Dante’s state of confusion in the vision is due to one of the most puzzling questions it poses to the dreamer (as well as to the reader), to the point that it becomes the fulcrum of the sonnet ‘A ciascun’alma’ [To all besotted souls], which Dante sends to the poets of his own time: the need of giving a reason to Love’s sudden change in behaviour (‘appresso ciò poco dimorava che la sua letizia si convertia in amarissimo pianto’ [then his happiness turned into the bitterest tears]). The dream, therefore, epitomizes the need for solving a question that is quite banal, yet almost urgent for every young lover: how can the joy of love be at the same time a source of sorrow? This question gives birth to narrative solutions that characterize the emotional tonality of VN IV–VIII. Immediately after the dream, Dante shows in his face the joy of love, and when his fellows ask about that happiness and of the person that is causing it, Dante is unable to answer if not by these words: ‘ed io sorridendo li guardava, e nulla dicea loro’ [VN IV, my emphasis – I would look at them smiling and tell them nothing]. Dante’s smile, again replacing a linguistic act in order to hide its content, echoes Love’s joy, which will suddenly turn into tears: ‘Piangete, amanti, poi che piange Amore,/udendo qual cagion lui fa plorare’ [Cry, lovers, since Lord Love is crying here; listen why he laments]. Love’s tears in VN VIII marks the entrance of Death within the story: the death of a young friend of Beatrice, ‘lo cui corpo io vidi giacere senza l’anima in mezzo di molte donne, le quali piangeano assai pietosamente. Allora, ricordandomi che già l’avea veduta fare compagnia a quella gentilissima, non poteo sostenere alquante lagrime’ [VN VIII, my ­emphasis – whose body I saw bereft of its soul among many women who were crying pitifully. Then, recalling I had seen her in the company of that most gracious of women, I couldn’t hold back my tears].36 Tears for the lady’s death connects, in VN IX, to the third, patent overlap of the dream into reality: the anxiety caused by the physical distance from Beatrice. In the final part of the vision of VN III, Love takes Beatrice in his arms and brings her to the heavens: ‘onde io’ – Dante adds – ‘sostenea sì grande angoscia, che lo deboletto sonno non poteo sostenere’ [VN III,

98  Andrea Malagamba my emphasis – I felt more anguish than my light sleep could sustain]. Short after the young woman’s death of VN VIII, Dante is forced to leave Florence and meet the screen lady: his mind is seized by so much sorrow ‘che quasi li sospiri non poteano disfogare l’angoscia che lo cuore sentia, però ch’io mi dilungava de la mia beatudine’. [VN IX, my ­emphasis – even sighs could not release all the anguish my heart was feeling because I was leaving behind my beatitude]. Often dream visions overturn roles: everybody recalls Freud’s extraordinary idea of the inversion of the gaze in the clinical case of the WolfMan.37 It is, therefore, not surprising that the one who leaves, in truth, is actually Dante. Moreover, the two experiences are strictly connected by the traits of necessity and unbearableness they possess in Dante’s mind, as if the young lady’s death and the absence from Beatrice formed a short circuit, vinifying the clear-headedness that should keep those two experiences separated, and letting emerge, albeit darkly, the ultimate meaning of the vision’s final part, the meaning that neither Dante nor other ‘trovatori’ [poets] had been able to see and express – Beatrice’s death. Pensando io a ciò che m’era apparuto, propuosi di farlo sentire a molti li quali erano famosi trovatori in quello tempo: e con ciò fosse cosa che io avesse già veduto per me medesimo l’arte del dire parole per rima, propuosi di fare uno sonetto, ne lo quale io salutasse tutti li fedeli d’Amore; e pregandoli che giudicassero la mia visione, scrissi a loro ciò che io avea nel mio sonno veduto. E cominciai allora questo sonetto, lo quale comincia: A ciascun’alma presa. [VN III] [Thinking over what had happened to me, I decided to relate it to several of the well-known poets of that time, and since I already had some experience in the art of writing verse, I decided to compose a sonnet in which I would greet all of Love’s faithful. And asking them to interpret my vision, I wrote to them about what I had seen in my sleep. And then I started the sonnet To all besotted souls] Such request could not sound surprising for original readers. It was quite common, even for Dante, to challenge other poets on the puzzling meaning of dreams. Dante begins his poetic career by interpreting Dante da Maiano’s sonnet ‘Provedi, saggio, ad esta visïone’. The sonnet relates a quite clear dream of love and desire, whose meaning no modern reader would find it difficult to interpret, including a detail that must have stricken Dante and which seemed to move the text’s focus from passion to death: ‘del più non dico, che mi fé giurare./E morta, ch’è mia madre, era con ella’ [I do not tell the most part, as she made me swear, and a dead person – my mother – was with her]. In replying to Dante da Maiano, Dante separates the dream into parts and gives each a precise

The Nightmares of the Vita Nuova  99 meaning, playing with the allegorical displacement from concreteness to abstraction that is typical of medieval culture. The final part of vision is related to the love for the dreamed girl: the dead mother becomes a ‘figure’ representing the firmness (fermezza, l. 14) of such love.38 Apart from the overall interpretation of Dante da Maiano’s dream, young Dante must have at least noticed the reticence of the former’s sonnet: evidently a form of censorship on the dream’s content and clear eroticism, it is presented as an effect of the girl’s request within the dream, as if there was no distance between the dreamed scene (the girl asking her lover not to tell something) from the communicative reality established by the sonnet (the poet does actually not tell something of the dream’s content).39 The request of silence overlaps the dream and becomes a rhetorical instrument: the skilful use of reticence is part of the technique of composition of the Vita Nova, and, as we will shortly see, it plays a primary meta-poetic role. In this phase of his poetic traineeship, young Dante tries to cut his teeth by confronting Dante da Maiano, a more experienced rhymer, maybe with the same spirit that Dante would later apply to the agon between Guido Guinizzelli and Guido Cavalcanti40: to eclipse, by his poetry, the poetry of Dante da Maiano, so that the very name ‘Dante’ would only pertain to the Alighieri family. Certainly, such aspiration cannot be possible at the time of the tension with Dante da Maiano, but it seems to be plausible during the composition of the Vita Nuova: not incidentally, Dante ‘forgets’ to mention his name among those who commented the vision of VN III, and chooses only to mention Cavalcanti’s response. By so doing, Dante is trying, so to say, to raise the bar, and point to the readers the new poet-rival he intends to challenge; and to leave the memory of Dante da Maiano confined to the interest of the learned, so to earn himself the title of the true and only ‘Dante’.41 At the same time, with skilful reticence, he omits in the sonnet ‘A ciascun’alma’ [To all besotted souls] the final part of the dream as related in the prose (‘e così piangendo si ricogliea questa donna ne le sue braccia, e con essa mi parea che se ne gisse verso lo cielo’ [and as he cried he picked up this woman in his arms, and he seemed to go off toward the sky]). Dante is already attempting at questioning Calvalcanti’s greatness, as well as his ability to fully grasp the inner meaning of the dream: and, together with it, the nature of love and its unbreakable connection with death.42 Dante’s operation appears, therefore, to be quite an ambitious one, and if a possibility can be retraced of interpreting this episode from a psychoanalytical angle, this should not consist in reading the dream in its erotic connotations, but rather in the premeditated killing of Dante’s poetic fathers, who have become intrusive rivals. In VN III, Dante settles his scores with Dante da Maiano: for Cavalcanti, as is well known, we have to wait for VN XXIII–XXIV.

100  Andrea Malagamba

Love Is Death: The Nightmare of VN XXIII The same traits of necessity and unbearableness underlying the mood of VN III pervade the horrible nightmare of VN XXIII.43 This one reveals without any interference ‘lo verace giudicio’ [VN III – the correct interpretation] of the first vision, which had remained unknown at the time of ‘A ciascun’alma’ and its challenge. Many of the details of this new ‘imagination’, and even a possible key for its interpretation, can be found in the preceding Chapter XXII. After announcing the death of Beatrice’s father, Dante describes the sorrow that it must have caused in the ‘gentilissima’ [this most gracious of women]: Onde con ciò sia cosa che cotale partire sia doloroso a coloro che rimangono e sono stati amici di colui che se ne va; e nulla sia sì intima amistade come da buon padre a buon figliolo e da buon figliuolo a buon padre; e questa donna fosse in altissimo grado di bontande, e lo suo padre, sì come da molti si crede e vero è, fosse bono in alto grado; manifesto è che questa donna fue amarissimamente piena di dolore. [VN XXII, my emphasis] [Thus, inasmuch as such parting is painful to those who stay and who were friends of the one who goes; and no friendship is so intimate as that of a good father toward a good son or daughter and of a good son or daughter toward a good father; and since this lady was good to the highest degree, and her father, as is rightly thought by many, was good to a high degree, it is clear that this woman was most bitterly grief-stricken] Dante’s argument follows the structure of a syllogism, aiming to rationally motivate the intensity of Beatrice’s sorrow, which Dante could incidentally not behold personally.44 This syllogism prepares, both logically and conceptually, a form of ‘transitivity’ of sorrow on which, I believe, the entire chapter is pivoted, also bearing in mind the follow-up of the story. Onde io veggendo ritornare alquante donne da lei, udio dicere loro parole di questa gentilissima, com’ella si lamentava; tra le quali parole udio che diceano: ‘certo ella piange sì, che quale la mirasse dovrebbe morire di pietade’. Allora trapassaro queste donne; e io rimasi in tanta tristizia, che alcuna lacrima talora bagnava la mia faccia […] Appresso costoro passaro altre donne, che veniano dicendo: ‘Questi ch’è qui piange né più né meno come se l’avesse veduta, come noi avemo’. Altre dipoi diceano di me: ‘Vedi questi che non pare esso, tal è divenuto!’ [VN XXII] [so that I, seeing several women coming back from her house, heard them talking about this most gracious of women and how she was

The Nightmares of the Vita Nuova  101 grieving. One of the things I heard them say was, ‘The way she is crying surely would be enough to make anyone who watched her die of pity.’ Then these women passed by, leaving me so full of grief that here and there a tear wet my face. (…) After them, other women passed, saying, ‘This man is crying neither more nor less than he would if he had seen her, as we have.’ Still others were saying nearby, ‘Look at how this man is so changed he doesn’t seem himself!’] Dante does not observe Beatrice’s sorrow, and yet he experiments it through the words said of her by many women, who had gathered around Beatrice for comforting her, as per the city’s custom. This passage converts the syllogistic transitivity of sorrow into a narrative and imaginative transitivity accomplished by means of ‘words’: and, exactly as the women’s words are the means by which Beatrice’s sorrow is conveyed to Dante, Beatrice’s tears mediate an experience of death, which Dante conceptualizes in Cavalcanti’s terms, namely as a loss of self-control.45 Beatrice becomes, therefore, the simulacrum through which the death of her father is conveyed to Dante, not without leaving traces on herself. E così passando queste donne, udio parole di lei e di me in questo modo che detto è. [VN XXII, my emphasis] [And so, as the women passed by I heard things said about her and about me] The ‘words’ accomplish such experience of transitive circularity of sorrow while sanctioning, in the mind of those who pass, the union of Dante and Beatrice, who are now seen as united in the same sorrow and in a death-in-life state. The nightmare of VN XXIII seems to bring this fantasy to its extreme consequences; and at the same to unveil, as some sort of ideal prosecution of it, the meaning of the first vision-nightmare, which has been so far repressed, notwithstanding the most strong signals by which Dante shows it attempts at erupting. Some ‘dolorosa infermitade’ [painful illness] forces the protagonist to lay still in his own house. Thoughts start spinning around, until, after a long incubation, it generates a new ‘imagination’. E quando ei pensato alquanto di lei, ed io ritornai pensando a la mia debilitata vita; e veggendo come leggiero era lo suo durare, ancora che sana fosse, sì cominciai a piangere fra me stesso di tanta miseria. Onde, sospirando forte, dicea tra me medesimo: ‘Di necessitate convene che la gentilissima Beatrice alcuna volta si muoia’. E però mi giunse uno sì forte smarrimento, che chiusi li occhi e cominciai

102  Andrea Malagamba a travagliare sì come farnetica persona ed a imaginare in questo modo: che ne lo incominciamento de lo errare che fece la mia fantasia, apparvero a me certi visi di donne scapigliate, che mi diceano: ‘Tu pur morrai’; e poi, dopo queste donne, m’apparvero certi visi diversi e orribili a vedere, li quali mi diceano: ‘Tu se’ morto’. Così cominciando ad errare la mia fantasia, venni a quello ch’io non sapea ove io mi fosse; e vedere mi parea donne andare scapigliate piangendo per via, maravigliosamente triste; e pareami vedere lo sole oscurare, sì che le stelle si mostravano di colore ch’elle mi faceano giudicare che piangessero; e pareami che li uccelli volando per l’aria cadessero morti, e che fossero grandissimi tremuoti. E maravigliandomi in cotale fantasia, e paventando assai, imaginai alcuno amico che mi venisse a dire: ‘Or non sai? la tua mirabile donna è partita di questo secolo’. Allora cominciai a piangere molto pietosamente; e non solamente piangea ne la imaginazione, ma piangea con li occhi, bagnandoli di vere lagrime. [VN XXII, my emphasis] [And after having thought about her for a while, I went back to thinking about my incapacitated life; and seeing how fleeting it was, even when it was healthy, I started to weep over such misery. Then, letting out a great sigh, I told myself: ‘There is no escaping the fact that the most gracious Beatrice will have to die some day.’ As a result, such powerful turmoil came over me that I closed my eyes and started to suffer like someone in a delirium, imagining things. As my fantasy started to stray, faces of women appeared, their hair loose, telling me, ‘You too will die.’ Then, after these women, some grotesque faces appeared, horrible to look at, telling me: ‘You are dead.’ With my fantasy starting to stray like this, I came to a point at which I didn’t know where I was. And I seemed to see women walking along with their hair all loose, crying as they went, in extraordinary pain. And it seemed I saw the sun go dark, so that the stars showed a color that made me think they were weeping; and it seemed that the birds flying through the air were falling dead, and that there were tremendous earthquakes. And marveling over that fantasy, and full of fear, I imagined that a friend came to say: ‘Don’t you know now? Your miraculous lady has left this world.’ Then I started to sob piteously—I wasn’t crying only in imagination but I was crying with my eyes, wetting them with real tears] Although this ‘imagination’ is not recognized by Dante as a veritable dream, the connection with the first nightmare of the Vita Nuova is, I believe, suggested by the character’s mental attitude, again located in a progressive lowering of vigilance and in a dimension of acute receptiveness (‘e quando ei pensato alquanto di lei […] mi giunse’ [And after

The Nightmares of the Vita Nuova  103 having thought about her for a while … such powerful turmoil came over me]). The setting is the same of that nightmare: the room, unmentioned at the beginning, appears in the last phases of the ‘erronea fantasia’, both as a final shelter after the bewilderment staged by the dream and as a narrative frame that puts an end to it. The room is the place where everything begins, as suggested by verb ‘to come back’: it indicates the parting from an initial place that does not need to be specified, as already mentioned in the vision-nightmare of VN III, of which this new nightmare provides a sort of backward deciphering. Oneiric montage, compared to that vision, seems to be more complex: Dante replaces the linear succession of images with a simultaneity principle, reached by means of repetitions that tend to superimpose dream figures the one onto the others and to invert the order of time. The story leaves room to what Freud, by quoting Artemidorus, defines a ‘conglomerate’46 of images. It is impossible not to notice how the narrator signals the beginning of the fantasy in two consecutive times, bringing the image of the ‘donne scapigliate’ in two places at the same time and superimposing to the, by an instant jump of imagination, the ‘visi diversi e orribili’ [some grotesque faces, horrible to look at] that overtly announce Dante’s death. The ‘smarrimento’ [turmoil] described in the dream does not coincide, therefore, only with a state of inner trouble or with the loss of orientation in the oneiric space, but rather with a confusion of the axis of time. Precisely such superimpositions in time enable the past, even the remotest one, connected to the memory of the Bible, to stand before the dreamer’s gaze and be intertwined with the present: the sun is darkened, stars change their colour, the earth is shaken by violent earthquakes.47 Dante sees a multitude of angels intent at singing the glory of Beatrice, and only then he understands that her death is not only imagined, but true and imminent. A new change in scene brings the dreamed character to behold Beatrice’s dead body just as it is being covered with a white veil, as if to sublimate the visual interference originated in VN III and impart it with new meaning. The dreamed scene comes very close to what Dante relates of having observed in VN VIII, as if the lament for the death of Beatrice’s young friend was the memory connection for this new vision of death. Only after eye-witnessing the loss of his beloved and called for his own death, the nightmare’s protagonist can return to the ‘room’, surrounded by caring women who are present both in the dream and reality: from this moment on, oneiric writing testifies to a progressive attenuation of the distance that separates reality and fiction, again pivoting narration on the transitivity of suffering. Allora mi parea che lo cuore, ove era tanto amore, mi dicesse: ‘Vero è che morta giace la nostra donna’. E per questo mi parea andare per

104  Andrea Malagamba vedere lo corpo ne lo quale era stata quella nobilissima e beata anima; e fue sì forte la erronea fantasia, che mi mostrò questa donna morta: e pareami che donne la covrissero, cioè la sua testa, con uno bianco velo; e pareami che la sua faccia avesse tanto aspetto d’umilitade che parea che dicesse: ‘Io sono a vedere lo principio de la pace’. […] E quando io avea veduto compiere tutti li dolorosi mestieri che a le corpora de li morti s’usano di fare, mi parea tornare ne la mia camera, e quivi mi parea guardare verso lo cielo; e sì forte era la mia imaginazione, che piangendo incominciai a dire con verace voce: ‘Oi anima bellissima, come è beato colui che ti vede!’. E dicendo io queste parole con doloroso singulto di pianto, e chiamando la Morte che venisse a me, una donna giovane e gentile, la quale era lungo lo mio letto, credendo che lo mio piangere e le mie parole fossero solamente per lo dolore de la mia infermitade, con grande paura cominciò a piangere. Onde altre donne che per la camera erano, s’accorsero di me, che io piangea, per lo pianto che vedeano fare a questa. [VN XXIII, my emphasis] [Then it seemed that my heart, where so much love was, said to me: ‘Truly our lady lies dead.’ And at this I seemed to go to see the body in which that most noble and beatified soul had been; and the straying fantasy was so intense that it showed me this lady dead; and it seemed that women were covering her—that is, her head—with a white veil. And it seemed that her face had such a humble look that it seemed to be saying: ‘I am gazing upon the very source of peace.’ (…) And when I had seen all the mournful rites that are customarily done with the bodies of the dead, it seemed that I returned to my room, and there I seemed to be looking toward the sky; and my fantasy was so strong that, weeping, I started to say with my actual voice: ‘O beautiful soul, blessed is he who sees you!’ And once I had said these words with an agonized tearful sob, calling on Death to come to me, a young and gracious woman, who was beside my bed, believing that my crying and talking were only caused by the suffering brought about by my illness, started to cry because she was so afraid. So, other women who were in the room became aware of me, that I was crying, because of this woman’s bursting into tears] Through a skilfully constructed parallel, the dream scene reproduces through an inversion of role the transitivity of sorrow outlined in the preceding chapters: whereas once Beatrice’s tears came to Dante through the words of women, now Dante wishes to take the inverse route, ‘infecting’ with his tears the ‘donna giovane e gentile’ [a young and gracious woman] who stands beside him; thanks to his tears, the other women

The Nightmares of the Vita Nuova  105 notice Dante’s sorrow and decide to wake him up from the horrible imagination he has experienced even in his body: ‘e vidi che io era ingannato’ [VN XXIII – I opened my eyes and saw that I had been deceived]. Although Dante frequently employs terms indicating the incorrectness of his imagination, and although he explicitly declares to have been deceived, body signals leave no doubt, as it will happen with Don Rodrigo: tears are ‘vere’ [real] and voice is ‘verace’ [actual], both when Dante is invoking Death and when he calls Beatrice, showing that what has been dreamt was no deception. Once again, the nightmare overlaps from the oneiric space and leaves its trace in the body, as some physical evidence of its truthfulness. The dividing line between reality and fiction is trespassed, and Dante the narrator holds the upper hand on Dante the character, trying now to distance himself from the content of the nightmare and to remark its effect upon the latter. Not incidentally, the following chapter starts with Dante’s trouble in thinking of his dream and defining his emotion with an image that goes beyond the dream-space: a ‘terremoto nel cuore’ [VN XXIV – a tremor starting up in my heart]. Only in the light of what he imagined, and of the terms by which he described such imagination, can Dante’s heart be again the site where everything happens and explain the extreme sensation caused by the first encounter with Beatrice: ‘lo spirito della vita, lo quale dimora nella secretissima camera de lo cuore, cominciò a tremare sì fortemente’. [VN II, my emphasis – the vital spirit, which dwells in the innermost chamber of the heart, started to tremble so powerfully]. As María Zambrano writes: L’aver percepito il reiterato palpitare del cuore come pulsazione del centro della vita resta come una cognizione indimenticabile che attende di essere rivelata; e di esserlo a poco a poco. E ciò che più colpisce quando si sente per la prima volta questa pulsazione è la sua strana vulnerabilità, il suo scaturire come su uno strano confine col nulla o con il vuoto; col non essere o con la morte.48 [Perceiving the repeated palpitation of the heart as the pulsation of the center of life, remains a sort of unforgettable cognition waiting to be revealed; and to be so little by little. And what is most striking when you feel this pulsation for the first time is its strange vulnerability, as if it were emerging from the strange borders of nothingness or emptiness; of not being or death] At the point of VN XXIII, Dante finds himself at the crossroads regarding the possible continuation of the story, as Franco Ferrucci demonstrates: on the one hand the protagonist’s death, hurt by ‘dolorosa infermitade’ [a painful illness], and on the other hand the death of Beatrice, fancied in the delirium caused by the disease.49 In truth, the ‘vana imaginazione’ [unreal imaginings] only brings to the fore a double narrative possibility

106  Andrea Malagamba that was implicit, although in a condensed form,50 in the vision of VN III: from that, Dante the character could infer both an announcement of his own death, conceived in the terms of a sacrifice (Dante’s heart given by Love to Beatrice as a meal), and a forecast of Beatrice’s death and her celestial glory (Love brings her to the heavens). Dante seems willing to verify the degree of novelty of a story concerning the death of the beloved by sending the sonnet ‘A ciascun’alma’ to the ‘famosi trovatori’ [well-known poets]: these, however, do not understand at all the innovative aspect Dante intends to impart on the story. Dante da Maiano interprets the dream in a strongly erotic key, while Cavalcanti sees in it Dante’s sacrifice for the beloved. Dante does not fail in remarking how both interpretations are distant from truth, declaring that the dream would result very clear from the follow-up of the story51: consequently, what happens next is constructed as an emanation in the realm of reality of the energetic potential inscribed in the oneiric vision. The nightmare of VN XXIII closes a phase of the Vita Nuova. It coincides with the awareness – reached through the means of an extenuating self-analysis – of what had been realized, albeit darkly, since the beginning. Now there resurfaces what had been repressed (in a Freudian sense?) in previous chapters, so to confirm how the Vita Nuova superimposes the narrative tension that pushes the story forward, and the backward one extrapolating the ‘meaning’ of the story inscribed in the ‘Book of Memory’.52 Still, such attempt seems to be excessively skilful, in its meta-poetic implications, to be only functional to the representation of a progression in knowledge: young Dante wishes to establish himself in the circle of his time’s poets, and cannot certainly do so by singing the death of the character who says ‘I’, insistently exhibited by Guinizzelli and Cavalcanti, and primarily by the latter. Choice is unescapable: Beatrice must die.53 We see, here, the veritable end of a match, the one started with the ‘primo amico’ [my best friend] in VN III, whose stake was one’s affirmation and establishment in the literary canon. 54 Dante learned the language of Love and cost has been great: the death of his beloved. Only now can Beatrice be seen as other, and not only in relation to the Ego. Dante would fulfil in later years the promise implied by such ‘we’.

Notes 1 Harold Bloom, The Western Canon. The Books and School of the Ages (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994), p. 376. 2 Ibid., p. 371. 3 See Vincent Truijen, entry Visione mistica, in Enciclopedia dantesca (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1984), vol. V, pp. 1072–1073. 4 We may think to Freud’s intense delusion for the half-hearted reception of experts to The Interpretation of Dreams, the work by which he hoped to

The Nightmares of the Vita Nuova  107 take his place in the Western Canon. See Sigmund Freud, The Origins of Psychoanalysis. Letters to Wilhem Fliess, Drafts and Notes: 1887–1902, ed. by Maria Bonaparte, Anna Freud, Ernst Kris, transl. by Eric Mosbacher and James Strachey (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Co., 1954), letter of 11 March 1900. 5 See Leonardo Ancona, Psicanalisi e psicologia del profondo viste dalla Chiesa di oggi, in Psicoanalisi e strutturalismo di fronte a Dante. Dalla lettura profetica medievale agli odierni strumenti critici (Florence: Olschki, 1972), vol. III, pp. 419–442. 6 Bibliography on dreams in medieval culture is immense. For a first introduction, see Jacques Le Goff, L’imaginaire médiéval (Paris: Gallimard, 1985), transl. by Arthur Goldhammer, The Medieval Imagination (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988); I sogni nel Medioevo, ed. by T. Gregory (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1985); Steven F. Kruger, Dreaming in Middle Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Mauro Mancia, Breve storia del sogno (Venice: Marsilio, 1998). For a classification of dreams in the Vita Nuova see: Ignazio Baldelli, Visione, immaginazione e fantasia nella Vita Nuova, in I sogni nel Medioevo, pp. 1–10; Françoise Glénisson-Delannée, ‘Apparitions, “imaginations” et visions dans la Vita Nuova’, Chroniques italiennes, n. 45 (1996) 1–23: ‘En fait, l’ “imagination” est plus subjective que la vision – qui est prophétique – et davantage ancrée dans le réel’ (p. 3) [Indeed, ‘imagination’ is more subjective then vision – the latter being prophetic – and even more rooted in reality]. We should, however, remark how the dreams of the Vita Nuova cannot be easily connected to the schematism of medieval culture. See Dino S. Cervigni, Dante’s Poetry of Dreams (Florence: Olschki, 1986), in particular chapter I, Tradition and Innovation, pp. 13–37. 7 The theme of dismay in the Vita Nuova is examined in Carmela Pesca Cupolo, ‘Smarrimento e delirio: Vita Nuova XXIII’, The Italianist, n. 15 (1995) pp. 29–47. 8 Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, ed. & transl. by James Strachey, 24 vols. (London: Vintage, 2001), vol. XVII, p. 245. 9 Dante Alighieri, Vita Nuova, in Opere minori, Vol. I, 1 (Milan – Naples: Ricciardi – Mondadori, 1995), transl. by Andrew Frisardi (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 2012). 10 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, in The Standard Edition, vol. IV, p. 102. 11 For the phases of composition of Dante’s book, see Guglielmo Gorni, Vita Nova, in Storia della Letteratura italiana. Le Opere, vol. 1: Dalle origini al Cinquecento (Turin: Einaudi, 1992), pp. 153–186. 12 This hypothesis can be read between the lines in the sections on Dante’s formation of Giorgio Petrocchi, Vita di Dante [1983] (Bari: Laterza, 1993), pp. 35–48. Gragnolati reads the performance of the Vita Nuova from the perspective of Dante’s transformation ‘in un auctor, vale a dire uno scrittore che è allo stesso tempo “un’autorità”, qualcuno cioè non solo da leggere ma anche da rispettare e a cui credere’ [into an auctor, namely a writer who is at the same time ‘an authority’, someone not to be read but also to be respected and believed in], in Manuele Gragnolati, Amor che move. Linguaggio del corpo e forma del desiderio in Dante, Pasolini e Morante (Milan: il Saggiatore, 2013), pp. 17–34 (p. 19). 13 See Adelia Noferi, Riletture dantesche (Rome: Bulzoni, 1998), pp.  15–16 e 55–89, and Juan Varela-Portas de Orduña, L’eresia dell’io, in Il mondo errante. Dante fra letteratura, eresia e storia, ed. by Marco Veglia, Lorenzo

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14 15

16

17

18 19

20

21 22 23

Paolini and Riccardo Parmeggiani (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro di Italiano di Studi Alto Medioevo, 2013), pp. 523–535; Winfried Wehle, Poesia sulla poesia. La ‘Vita Nova’: una scuola d’amore novissimo (Florence: Cesati Editore, 2014), p.  28: ‘L’Io della prosa, che scrive in retrospettiva, sa fin dall’inizio come andrà a finire […]. Il libro è quindi organizzato a partire dalla sua meta finale, il che gli conferisce, per così dire, una logica analitica’ [The ‘I’ of prose, who writes retrospectively, knows from the beginning what is going to happen […]. The book is therefore organized starting from this final destination and this provides it with a sort of analytical logic]. Noferi, Riletture dantesche, pp. 73, 75. Even the relationship between poetry and prose in the book reflects the diffraction between the character’s gaze and that of the narrator. On the one hand, the poems can be read as fragments of a past that one needs to interpret and as emotional resources to interrogate in order to undertake the process of self-analysis. On the other hand, the poems can be seen as a review of codified love situations, which require – in order to be overcome and to be able to say something new about love – to be the object of a broader reflection represented by prose but also to friction with a story that unfolds over time according to a principle of progression rather than simple juxtaposition. On the relationship between prose and poetry in the Vita Nuova, see the rigorous conclusions reached by Wehle, Poetry on poetry, in particular pp. 19, 28–30, 62 and 122. There exists a most strict relationship between oneiric representations and the turning points in poetics as thematized in the Vita Nuova. See Cervigni, Dante’s Poetry of Dreams, p.  66: ‘The true time category which emerges from the Vita nuova consists essentially of the protagonist’s realization of a temporal lapse between apparimenti, imaginings, dreams, and visions on the one hand, and his understanding of them on the other’. See also Annamaria Carrega, La scrittura sognata. Dimensione onirica e pratica letteraria nei ‘Discorsi sacri’ e nella ‘Vita nuova’, in Testi e modelli antropologici, ed. by Massimo Bonafin (Milan: edizioni Arcipelago, 1989), pp. 73–92. Santagata has demonstrated how it was scarcely probable that Dante’s house had a room granting the degree of intimacy described in the Vita Nova: it is a quite implausible detail, and the place is better to be ascribed to the literary fiction of an ‘ideal autobiography’. See Marco Santagata, Il poeta innamorato. Su Dante, Petrarca e la poesia amorosa medievale (Milan: Guanda, 2017), pp. 157–158. The representation of the trouble related to the manifestation of God in dreams and to the difficulty in interpreting its meaning is instead central in the dreams of Nabucodonosor as related in the Book of Daniel (DN 2 e 4). Torquato Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata, transl. Jerusalem Delivered, ed. by A. M. Esolen (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), VIII, octave 62, v. 6. The nightmare of Argillano covers the octaves, pp. 57–62. Hermann Melville, Moby Dick (London: Usborne, 2004), chapter 44, The Chart (my emphasis). The topos of dreams overlapping into reality reaches contemporary horror cinema: the wounds inflicted in dreams by Freddy Krueger in Nightmare (Wes Craven 1984), cause real wounds on dreamers’ bodies, until their death. Vittorio Spinazzola, Il libro per tutti. Saggio sui ‘Promessi sposi’ (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1992), p. 83. Spinazzola, Il libro per tutti, p. 65. Not incidentally, then, the nightmare includes the agoraphobic traits of a dream on imposture told by Manzoni to Bonghi on 8 September 1852.

The Nightmares of the Vita Nuova  109

24 25 26 27 28

29 30

31 32

33 34

35 36

37 38

39

Ruggiero Bonghi, Studi manzoniani (Florence: Le Monnier, 1933), pp. 30– 31. See Salvatore Nigro, La tabacchiera di Don Lisander. Saggio sui ‘Promessi sposi’ (Turin: Einaudi, 1996), pp. 114–124. Alessandro Manzoni, I promessi sposi (Turin: Einaudi, 1960), XXXIII, p. 528, transl. The Betrothed (London: James Burns, 1844), vol. II, p. 679. Manzoni, I promessi sposi, p. 87. Ibid., pp. 87 and 529. Ibid., p. 529. Ibid., p. 529: ‘il terror della morte l’invase’ [the terror of death seized him]. Remnants of repression are still present in the nightmare, as pointed out by Giuliano Gramigna, Le forme del desiderio (Milan: Garzanti, 1986), pp. 35–36. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 11. The absence of whatever urban, architectonical, and geographical determination in the Vita Nuova, together with the confusion of temporal linearity, Barolini writes, throws the reader “in an atmosphere of murky abstraction” so that the events themselves of the Vita Nuova seem to take place in the space of a dream. See Teodolinda Barolini, “Cominciandomi dal principio infino a la fine” (V.N., XXIII, 15): forging anti-narrative in the ‘Vita Nuova’, in La ‘gloriosa donna della mente’. A commentary on the ‘Vita Nuova’, ed. by Vincent Moleta (Florence and Perth: Olschki, 1994), pp. 119–140 (pp. 123–124). Vita Nuova, cap. III, p. 38. For a different, although not conflicting, interpretation concerning the coexistence of Latin and vernacular in this and other passages of the Vita Nuova, see Michelangelo Picone, ‘Vita Nuova’ e tradizione romanza (Padua: Liviana Editrice, 1979), pp. 1–26 (pp. 18–19 in particular). See Jean-Jaques Marchand, Considerazioni sulle visioni della ‘Vita Nuova’ di Dante, in ‘Musaico per Antonio’: miscellanea in onore di Antonio Stäuble, ed. by J.-J. Marchand (Florence: F. Cesati, 2003), pp. 23–33 (p. 30). For an analysis of the images of this dream see Robert Harrison, ‘Mi parea vedere una persona dormire nuda’ (V.N., III, 4): The body of Beatrice, in La ‘gloriosa donna della mente’. A commentary on the ‘Vita Nuova’, pp. 21–35 (pp. 28–32). For a close analysis of this dream, see, by the same author, The Body of Beatrice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). See Franco Ferrucci, Il poema del desiderio. Poetica e passione in Dante (Milan: Leonardo, 1990), pp. 17–19. Emmanuel Levinas, Le Temps et l’Autre (1948), transl. by A. Cohen Time and the Other (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987), p. 68, writes: ‘Pain of itself includes it like a paroxysm, as if there were something about to be produced even more rending then suffering, as if despite the entire absence of a dimension of withdrawal that constitutes suffering, it still had some free space for an event, as if it must still get uneasy about something, as if we were on the verge of an event beyond what is revealed to the end of suffering’. Sigmund Freud, ‘From the History of an Infantile Neurosis’, The Standard Edition, XVII, pp. 3–123 [the original German text is of 1918]. For the complete text of these sonnets, their interpretation, and the entire poetic dialogue between Dante Alighieri and Dante da Maiano, see Dante Alighieri, Rime giovanili e della ‘Vita nuova’ [2009], ed. by Teodolinda Barolini (Milan: Rizzoli, 2017), pp. 47–79. See Corrado Calenda, Reticenza e allusione: strategie comunicative dell’autore e attese del lettore sulla soglia della ‘Vita nuova’, in ‘Per beneficio e

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40

41

42

43

4 4

concordia di studio’. Studi danteschi offerti a Enrico Malato per i suoi ottant’anni, ed. by A. Mazzucchi (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2015), pp. 247–254. The two tercets of Purg. XI and the intention of Dante they convey are very famous: ‘Credette Cimabue ne la pittura/tener lo campo, e ora ha Giotto il grido,/sì che la fama di colui è scura.//Così ha tolto l’uno a l’altro Guido/ la gloria de la lingua; e forse è nato/chi l’uno e l’altro caccerà del nido’ [In painting Cimabue thought that he / should hold the field, now Giotto has the cry,/so that the other’s fame is growing dim.//So has one Guido to the other taken/the glory of our tongue and he purchance/is born, who from the nestshall chase them both (transl. by H. Wadsworth Longfellow (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867)]. Teodolinda Barolini seems to go in this direction when affirming that the tension between the two Dantes can be read as a form of “auto-promozione professionale e sociale” [professional and social self-promotion] of Dante Alighieri, in Dante, Rime giovanili e della ‘Vita nuova’, p. 60. It is striking, from this perspective, that the entire ‘tension on the sorrow of love’ still witnesses a problem of attribution on which criticism has not reached final consensus. The declaration about the dream’s clarity seems to go in this direction. See Robert Harrison, ‘Mi parea vedere una persona dormire nuda’ (V.N., III, 4): The body of Beatrice, p. 24: ‘By making such a declaration and yet refusing to disclose the dream’s true meaning for his reader, Dante seems deliberately to have preserved for us the dream’s most essential quality, namely, its hermeneutic provocation’. Although the nightmare of VN XXIII should strictly be considered as an imagination generated by a condition of disease and frenzy, the nature of such ‘fancy’ comes close, although it cannot be completely assimilated to it, to that of dreams already described in the book. See I. Baldelli, Visione, immaginazione e fantasia nella ‘Vita Nuova’, p. 1: “la trattatistica medico-­ filosofica del tempo pareggiava il sonno e le infermità in questo punto, in quanto, debilitando il corpo e impedendo così intellctum et cognitionem, rendono l’imaginazione libera di operare. Appare poi certo che tali imaginazioni abbiano (o possano avere) carattere profetico quando siano preparate, per così dire, da intenso pensamento” [medical-philosophical treatises of that time assimilated dreams and diseases in that both, by weakening the body and therefore hampering intellectum et cognitionem, left imagination free to operate. It seems also certain that such imaginations have (or could have) prophetic nature when they are prepared, so to say, by intense thinking]. Baldelli relies on a passage of Convivio (IV, xv, 17), as well as on authorities Dante knew well, such as Avicenna and Albert the Great (pp. 6–7). Natascia Tonelli agrees with him, ‘Stilistica della malinconia: Vita Nova XXIII–XXV e Un dì sì venne a me Malinconia’, in Tenzone. Revista de la Asociación Complutense de Dantología, 2003, IV, pp. 241–263, in citing Aristotle’s De insomniis di Aritotele and Boethius’s De somniis. Dino. S. Cervigni (Dante’s poetry of dreams, pp. 50–51) highlights the closeness between this imagination of the Vita Nuova and the dream described in Purg. XVIII, vv. 139–145. It cannot be omitted the uncustomary proliferation of expressions (‘vana imaginazione’, ‘erronea fantasia’ [unreal fantasy]), signalling a certain intolerance for the excessively impermeable classifications elaborated by ancient and medieval tradition on dreams. ‘Secondo l’usanza della sopradetta cittade, donne con donne e uomini con uomini s’adun[a]no a cotale tristizia’, [VN XXII, my emphasis – In keeping with the customs of the city mentioned earlier, women with women and men with men come together on such sad occasions].

The Nightmares of the Vita Nuova  111 45 See at least the best-known texts: ‘Li mie’ foll’occhi miei, che prima guardaro, L’anima mia vilment’ è sbigotita, Io non pensava che lo cor giammai, Voi che per gli occhi mi passaste ’l core, Donna me prega, Gli occhi di quella gentil foresetta, Io temo che la mia disavventura, La forte e nova mia disavventura. For the connection death-tears, see at least Vedete ch’i’son un che vo piangendo, Perché non fuoro a me gli occhi dispenti, S’io prego questa donna che Pietate, O donna mia, non vedestù colui. Guido Cavalcanti, Rime (Milan: Rizzoli, 1978). For the influence of this central theme of Cavalcanti’s poetry on Dante’s Commedia, see Roberto Mercuri, ‘Il poeta della morte’, Critica del testo, IV/1 (2001) 173–197. 46 Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 99. 47 Criticism, although with some reservations, has connected these natural phenomena to the death of Jesus. See Stefano Carrai, I segni premonitori della morte di Beatrice nella ‘Vita Nova’, in I sogni e la scienza nella letteratura italiana, ed. by N. Tonelli (Pisa: Pacini, 2008), pp. 49–58. 48 María Zambrano, Claros del bosque (1977), it. transl. Chiari del bosco ­(Milan: Mondadori, 2004), p. 77. 49 Ferrucci, Il poema del desiderio, pp. 26–32. 50 As is well known, the ‘condensation’ is at the basis of the construction of dreams and of the necessity to interpreting them: ‘Dreams are brief, meagre and laconic in comparison with the range and wealth of the dreamthoughts’, Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 279. 51 VN III, thus, is not only for Dante “un atto di iniziazione con il quale egli vuole essere accettato nella scuola di poesia dominante” [an act of initiation by which he wishes to be admitted in the dominant school of poetry] (­Ferrucci, Il poema del desiderio, pp. 16–17), but a sort of challenge posed to the best-known poets of the late thirteenth century. 52 Not incidentally, after Chapters XXIII and XXIV, the progressive re-­ appropriation and introjection of the figure of Love – first conceived, in terms amply attested in the Romance lyric tradition, as an entity outside itself: the ‘pauroso segnore’ [VN III, a lordly man, frightening to behold], the pilgrim [VN IX] and the young man dressed in white who speaks to Dante in Latin [VN XII] – comes to an end. Now love no longer appears as a character and speaks in a totally intelligible way directly to Dante’s heart: ‘queste parole, che lo cuore mi disse con la lingua d’Amore’, ‘e parve che Amore mi parlasse nel cuore’ [VN XXIV – these words, which my heart told me in Love’s own language]. In line with this appropriation of the feeling and language of love, Chapter XXV, which contains the most extensive theoretical-literary reflection in the Vita Nuova, intends to dispel any doubt about the bodily and anthropomorphic representation of Love, in order to bring it back within the space of the self. 53 Beatrice’s death, as is well known, is necessary in that it enables Dante to perform his new poetic of praise. On this point see Roberto Antonelli, La morte di Beatrice e la struttura della storia, in Beatrice nell’opera di Dante e nella cultura europea 1290–1990, ed. by M. Picchio Simonelli (Naples: Cadmo, 1994), pp. 35–56 (p. 49). By the same author, see also: ‘Per forza convenia che tu morissi’, in Guido Cavalcanti laico, ed. by R. Arques (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2004), pp.  203–216, where it is rightly mentioned a ‘volontà omicida nei confronti dell’amata’ (p. 206) [a murdering desire against the beloved], and it is remarked how the expression that opens the reflection on Beatrice’s death in VN XXIII – ‘di necessitade convene che la gentilissima Beatrice alcuna volta si muoia’ [There is no escaping the fact that the most gracious Beatrice will have to die some day] – is a distant answer to Cavalcanti’s line ‘Per forza convenia che tu morissi’ [it must happen

112  Andrea Malagamba that you died], of the song Io non pensava che lo cor giammai. The author, however, highlights a profound distance between the two expressions, in that, for Cavalcanti, ‘la necessità della morte non è dovuta agli esiti di un rapporto o di una storia, all’evoluzione di una vicenda, ma è data come un fatto, un evento inevitabile, un destino che si attiva nel momento dell’innamoramento’ (p. 208) [the necessity of death is not due to the conclusion of a relationship or of a story, to the development of a narrative, but is given as a fact and an unavoidable event, a destiny that is activated in the very moment of falling in love]. For a systematic reconstruction of the agon between Cavalcanti and Dante, see Noemi Ghetti, L’ombra di Cavalcanti e Dante (Rome: L’asino d’oro, 2010). 4 VN XXIV seems to be the accomplishment of the confrontation with 5 ­Cavalcanti. In a new imagination, Monna Giovanna, the beloved of young Guido, walks before Beatrice, in the same way – Dante infers – John the Baptist announces the coming of Christ: equally, by completing this deductive argument, Cavalcanti himself is reduced here to a ‘figure’ of Dante. See Gragnolati, Amor che move, pp. 29–30.

6 Italian Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious Irresistible Analogies from Muratori to Morselli Paola Cori Mesmerism and Religion Mesmerism (or animal magnetism), the first model of psychological healing devised by Viennese doctor Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), was based on the belief in the existence of an invisible fluid akin to electricity, which permeated the entire universe and was responsible for conditions of well-being or malady depending on either its balanced or unbalanced presence in the body. Through touch and gestures intended to induce trance in the patients, the fluid could be re-directed and harmony restored. This system was not absolutely revolutionary in itself. Practices of healing through touch were known already in primitive cultures, states of trance had antecedents in mediaeval mysticism, while in the Renaissance some philosophers had already theorized about mutual influences between individuals exercised by thought. Indeed, as Enrico Morselli reminds us in his synthetic reconstruction of the history of mesmerism, Pomponazzi, Ficino, and Bacon had already started to employ the word ‘fascinazione’ [fascination].1 Therefore, when Mesmer constructed his system revolving around the action of an invisible fluid capable of bringing about modifications in the physical balance, it was not so much the fluidic nature (or its agency) that was innovative in itself, but society’s predisposition to welcome a certain kind of popular science which was not directly concerned with theological questions. In this respect, Morselli’s statement ‘Mesmer non fece altro che copiare Gassner, liberando le pratiche di costui da ogni misificazione teologico liturgica’ [Morselli did nothing else than copy Gassner, by freeing his practices from any theological or liturgical mystification]2 finds a counterpart in the analysis of Frank Podmore, who observes how individuals gifted with special healing powers were recorded in any time and place in the history of mankind, but always in connection with ‘some peculiar sanctity in the healer, allied with peculiar strength of faith in the sufferer’. 3 Even in sympathetic and magnetic medicine, healing practices were primarily a ‘spiritual affair’, whereas Mesmer was the first to propose a rational model of healing based on ‘mechanical force’.4 A later scholar of Revolutionary mysticism, Renzo De Felice, observed how in France, before the

114  Paola Cori Revolution, mysticism and Enlightenment were quintessentially Christian, in the sense that the constant point of reference for the mystics were Christ and the Bible, so much so that conceiving of a new society, a new age or a new millennium to come meant at the same time conceiving of a new Church. After the Revolution, mysticism in France detached itself from theological dogma, and saw a transfer of fervour from the religious into the political sphere.5 This is an analysis that Robert Darnton, in his pioneering work on Mesmerism, also sustained when talking about the ‘progressive divorce of science from theology in the eighteenth century [which nevertheless] did not free science from fiction’.6 However, even though the scopes of Mesmerism were no longer directly fuelled by religious concerns, Mesmer’s lack of rigorous hypotheses regarding the nature of the alleged universal fluid stimulated in the following years a certain overlapping between pseudo-science and Christianity, and many thinkers who were influenced by his mastery revisited and re-interpreted the Scriptures through a magnetic lens. While animal magnetism could offer a sensible model for the representation of the abstract truths of the Revelation, its all-permeating essence could also be adopted to facilitate the ‘drammatica ricerca del senso nascosto delle cose, a svelarne il segreto’ [dramatic research into the hidden meaning of things, thus to reveal their secret], which theorists of mysticism were pursuing, in order to resist the ‘crisis of presence’ of the divine, which was in their view adumbrating a spiritual catastrophe.7 In Italy, the relationship between animal magnetism and religion was characterized by moderatism,8 in the sense that it did not produce an integral re-adaptation of religious into magnetic imagery, as with magnetic Catholicism in France, where its followers considered Mesmerism almost as a new Revelation,9 or with enthusiasts in North America.10 However, as I aim to highlight in this contribution, the interconnection between the two models is perhaps paradoxically even tighter and more long-lasting than in the other traditions, where mutual applications were more explicit. In Italy, animal magnetism was extremely popular on stage, but never became an alternative medicine as in other countries.11 Nevertheless, religious models subtly shaped the way the discourse on animal magnetism was formulated within the framework of psychological inquiry. Mesmeric and religious imagery merge in conceptualizations which apparently have no explicit reference to religion, or which are not motivated by any religious aims. The employment of certain religious imagery in scientific works – and if not rigorously academic or written by professional scientists and academics, certainly inspired by purposes of scientific divulgation – reveals concerns with atavistic messages which penetrated the innermost structures of lay discourses. The very common insistence on Biblical stories and Christian personalities as terms of comparison can be seen as a means to explain subconsciously the audacious change of paradigms of identity brought about by mesmerism,

Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious  115 by relocating the idea of animal magnetism within a legitimate religious conceptual framework which could at the same time be alert to the dangerous territory, in the field of identity and split consciousness, which the new science was entering. The recurrent comparison between animal magnetism and the myth of the origin reveals a more or less conscious association with sin and guilt for having embraced a practice relying on unknown forces, which aimed to expand the powers of the mind to an almost divine degree. In Italy the language of the most prepared and convinced supporters of mesmerism was deeply shadowed by uncertainty, while they believed very strongly in the progress of science. At times this optimism took on a providential character, reconciling hazardous exploration with confidence in an errand soon to be perfected through progressive spiritual and intellectual clarification enhanced by God. At other times, despite envisioning subsequent achievements in the history of civilization, many thinkers found it challenging to discern the boundary where legitimate clarity extends into diabolical hyper-clarity; and this applied both to the point of view of the researcher who had to establish what was or was not a moral and legitimate methodology, and to the somnambulist patient, who, in the experience of clairvoyance, found herself in the questionable position of allowing a momentary handover of identity. Setting the limits between the human and the super-human, as well as defining the parameters of what constitutes the person, became a troublesome matter of concern. Over the course of the nineteenth century, with the new ‘scientific’ age of mesmerism having been inaugurated by James Braid’s theory of hypnotism,12 entering an altered state of mind became a practice which could also be self-induced through the fixation of sight. This introduced into the realm of the science of the mind an idea of technique and reproduction which the advent of the bourgeois society was also starting to experiment with in both social and economic fields. Trance – now a state reachable through the mastery of appropriate skills in driving ­focalization – was therefore furthermore taken out of the hands of supernatural and divine intervention. At the same time, the second half of the nineteenth century also saw the proliferation of Spiritualism, which tended towards a certain secularization and reproducibility of the irrational experience guided by particularly sensitive individuals, who, even if not professionally or ‘officially’ accepted, were trained or self-trained to perform a set of procedures which became recognizable and repeatable as part of the specific rituals connected to the séances. If Spiritualism had in common with Mesmerism the idea of the inter-­communicability between visible and invisible entities, and if trance as the common originating condition of Mediumism, Mesmerism, and Hypnotism secured a sense of affinity between these practices,13 at the same time the experimental method of the positivist school also allowed for a certain continuity with Mesmer’s theory, at least from a methodological viewpoint,

116  Paola Cori given that, in terms of substance, Braid had definitely proved the existence of the fluid as illusionary.14 While the Viennese doctor had always bypassed the problem of engaging in a disquisition on the essence of the mysterious fluid, similarly Morselli could proudly profess an anti-­ ontological approach: Il positivismo vero consiste nello studiare e analizzare i fenomeni senza preoccuparsi della loro spiegazione. La fisica può asserire che per una legge necessaria tutti i corpi cadono verso il centro terre­ stre ma l’essenza di questa legge le è ignota e la fisica non sarebbe scientifica se pretendesse conoscerla. Così la fisio-psicologia può asserire […] che possediamo i mezzi per produrre nell’uomo sano o malato uno stato nervoso speciale che si manifesta appunto medanite i fenomeni detti ‘magnetici’: uno non può nè deve asserir nulla intorno alla loro essenza intima.15 [True Positivism consists of the study and the analysis of phenomena without concerning oneself with their explanation. Physics can assert that in response to a necessary law all bodies fall towards the centre of the Earth, but the essence of this law is unknown and physics would not be scientific if it claimed to know it. Similarly, Physio-psychology can assert that we possess the means to produce a special nervous state in either a healthy or a sick person, which manifests itself precisely through those phenomena called ‘magnetic’. [However], one cannot and must not assert anything concerning their intimate essence] Italian positivist science thus declared itself immune from the risk of inquiring into the origin (meant as the search for the primary causes of a certain unconscious phenomenon). Morselli claims to treat hypnotism in a purely scientific (modern) way, but I argue in this essay that a remnant of a certain concern with the religious insinuates itself in his prose. More in general, my hypothesis is that while Italian ‘magnetic culture’ – meant broadly as the multifaceted reflection derived from mesmerism and hypnotism and concerned with manifestations of out-of-vigilance mental states produced by philosophers, scientists, and self-professed magnetizers – is very careful not to abandon orthodoxy, it is also very self-aware of this risk, given the potential of mesmeric imagery as a very malleable representational system. Forms of control of the boundaries of orthodoxy often reverberate into a persistent presence of the religious in the (pseudo-)scientific. Even in those reflections less concerned with religious mysticism per se, and aimed at explaining religious suggestion through experimental science (such as the case of Morselli), there are archetypical religious structures which resurface, characterizing the Italian reflection on the pre-Freudian unconscious through hidden but powerful Christian forms.

Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious  117

The Displacement of the Self The mesmeric and hypnotic age is characterized by a two-fold concern: on the one hand, the exploration of augmented faculties of the mind, which could be pushed to almost super-human capacities by states of induced somnambulism and trance. On the other hand, a constant warning of its excess and monitoring of the danger of certain induced conditions which seemed to trespass the natural boundary and invade spheres traditionally associated with the religious and the occult. And indeed, for the first time in the history of civilization, as magnetism and hypnotism revealed a reality outside the bounds of mechanistic laws, the occult began to emerge in the realm of science in the form of a legitimate yet provisionally unknown state of phenomena that might, in a more or less foreseeable future, be understood and brought to light. While certain religious positions continued to face the emergence of this new hyper-intellectual potency with the same traditional shields that had for centuries confronted the demonic,16 at the same time the newly unveiled second nature of the mind, and one which was distinct from the conscious self, started to call for an investigation of what constitutes self-awareness and required the scrutiny of previously inconceivable questions regarding issues of communication, personal identity, and law. In this complex cultural atmosphere, old structures of thought linked to a unitary conception of the mind at times coexisted alongside new ideas of a more shifting self, and at other times emerged in violent outbursts against a magnetic sensitivity which resisted clear explanation. The reflection on intellectual faculties and on the relationship between states of vigilance and states of somnambulist sleep in hypnotic science often generates psychological accounts that seem to replicate, as in a hidden parallel mental reality made of different layers of reflexivity, certain relations of moral and social power and fear of excess which are completely interiorized. The relationship between magnetizer and magnetized subject favours the exploration of newly discovered mental faculties, not only because of what these two subjects really ‘say’ to each other, or do, according to the magnetic procedure. What is most important is what happens within the mind of the patient once the ‘transmission’ of thought has taken place. Here, subject and magnetizer, having both become sets of cerebral impulses and influences within the mind of the patient, can interact in either a harmonious or antagonistic way. They can either merge their ‘fluids’ to focalize more powerfully and attentively on specific visions, or they can clash and swiftly assert control over the opponent’s lower level of consciousness. When, for instance, a patient resists hypnotism, the mental territory becomes a battlefield between layers of consciousness that attempt to overwhelm each other to prevail in lucidity and to render the opponent a less conscious being. While the roots of these tensions can be found already in the earlier reflection on the ‘perils of imagination’ that characterized Italian

118  Paola Cori philosophy and philosophy of language in the eighteenth century,17 animal magnetism paves the way towards the formulation of a subject haunted by something which is difficult to grasp. David Armando has demonstrated how the word ‘unconscious’ has undergone a transition from a passive to an active understanding of the term. First, it was conceived as something external that is not known by the subject (who could potentially know it under different circumstances), and then as something that does not let itself be known. Over the course of the second half of the nineteenth century, while the term ‘inconscio’ continued to be employed as an adjective and to refer to something outside the subject and about which the subject was not aware, it also started to denote a human subterranean reality that is unreachable by the conscious self.18 The term ‘unconscious’ thus progressively underwent a process of reification which gave it more substance within the psyche and transformed the adjective into a noun, while its essence became more and more alien to our understanding. While magnetism and hypnotism convert the mind of the somnambulist into a field of tensions between intentions which germinated in the outside reality but are actualized during the subject’s sleep, at the same time the new magnetic science reveals how intellectual faculties do not necessarily continue to hold a ‘real’ relationship with external reality. Talking about an intellectual potency or psychological agency which cannot be reduced to a rational model means accepting adjacency to an uncanny reality that cannot be circumscribed, and as the exploration enters into the innermost recesses of the mind, the magnetic vision faces an imagined reality which seems to advance and become more and more tangible. The most striking revelation of magnetic culture was that the mind can be self-sufficient and that the outside world which had for centuries offered itself to the senses for experience and understanding was in effect essentially irrelevant once the mind had entered magnetic sleep. Of this experience, however, the reawakened subject would only carry a faded remembrance, if any. The relationship between the two (or more) split subjects in states of vigilance and somnambulist sleep became one of uncanny cohabitation and incommunicability; and while the mind is potentiated, but accessible only to the impulses of the trained magnetizer with whom it engages in a privileged relationship that excludes all others, the body becomes more and more exposed, scrutinized, publicly manipulated, and trained to respond mechanically, at the expense of its human individuality. It therefore serves as an automatic medium of intermittent clairvoyance, stupefaction, and resurrection.

An Irresistible Analogy In France animal magnetism soon became an almost unavoidable source for theoretical or metaphorical overlapping between different areas of

Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious  119 human inquiry. It offered fertile humus for analogy in discourses of a religious and psychological nature (from the re-visitation of Biblical legends to the analysis of ungraspable faculties of the mind). Amongst laymen still influenced by a certain religious constraint, positions attributing an aura of sacredness to magnetic phenomena were not uncommon, whether in the sense of divine origin (on behalf, for instance, of the socalled ‘Catholic magnetism’– widely received also in Italy) or, vice versa, as a dangerous practice dealing with atavistic boundaries which were not to be crossed. Magnetic performances in general were at times confused with magic or accused of diabolical inspiration, and it became essential to develop a precise definition of a set of parameters which would enable one to distinguish a supernatural miracle from a magnetic effect. In Italy, the intellectual who first expounded French Mesmerism was Lisimaco Verati (pseudonym for Giuseppe Pellegrini). In his treatise on the history and practice of animal magnetism, which reconstructed chronologically and historically the main theories of animal magnetism, their development and reception, as well as accurate information on the career of Mesmer, the Marquis de Puységur, Joseph Philippe François Deleuze, and other crucial figures of the magnetic age, Verati quotes authors who believe that magnetism provides all possible analogies to describe the natural essence of religion, in particular Jesus’s miracles and the natural foundation of most of the stories and divine manifestations narrated in the Scriptures.19 Bearing in mind that Verati did not support the application of animal magnetism to religion, and that he rather attacks and condemns this magnetic aesthetics of religion as contrary to religious orthodoxy, it is significant how the incredible metaphorical and representational power of animal magnetism imposed itself on the attention of such a detractor. Verati understood the opportunities that magnetic imagery offered in a century which was extremely concerned not so much with the tensions between science and religion, but between religious or irreligious science, or in other words between a type of science which was ‘pursued in the interest of natural theology and that relates its findings to moral and religious values, and a new, professional, “value free” science’.20 Indeed, a very detailed repertoire of associations between animal magnetism and religion can be found in the preliminary chapter devoted to various opinions regarding the alleged Adamic origins of animal magnetism. The author derides and mocks many positions of those who re-interpreted the Scriptures through a magnetic lens and underlines the weaknesses and fanciful character of certain readings. Many French sources of the Catholic-magnetism school are mentioned, 21 which date the first manifestations of animal magnetism back to the creation of Adam and expand the idea of the magnetic origin of life to the point of implying that the sleep during which Adam was deprived of the rib which would form Eve was a magnetic sleep and therefore that God

120  Paola Cori himself was the first magnetizer. Although Verati’s tone is clearly ironic and dismissive of these attempts to merge magnetic with religious imagery, he himself falls prey to the magnetic imaginative power and enters into a dialogue with the authors he quotes (Fabre d’Olivet, Meillier, and Gauthiers among others) by inventing many possible further applications of their theories. For instance, he declares himself surprised that the authors in question had not also stated that the delights in Eden were magnetic enchantments, that the allurement through which the serpent overcame Eve’s prudence was a magnetic crisis; that this was also the means through which Eve herself managed to halt Adam’s obedience to God, and that the pair, once banished from Eden, roamed through desolate lands in a state of magnetic catalepsy. One could also assume, continues Verati, that the creative breath that God blew into clay was magnetic, and that the appearance of the Cherub angel after Adam’s sin was a magnetic vision. 22 In fact Verati expresses an explicit derogative judgement of animal magnetism applied to religion, but cannot help experimenting on a creative level with its metaphorical potential, so much so that almost half of the text devoted to magnetic representations of religious stories is in fact occupied by his own additions echoing the authors he quotes. In this Verati seems to manifest what Roberto Esposito has defined the ‘problematic’ relationship with the origin typical of Italian culture, 23 in the sense that Verati’s most conservative positions seem to be exposed to the attraction of the imaginative potential of animal magnetism, which destabilizes the orthodoxy he defends through creative centrifugal forces. The association between magnetic and primordial intellectual power is highlighted also by another central figure of Italian mesmerism, namely, Francesco Guidi, founder in Turin of the Società Filomagnetica (1855) and editor of the journal Luce magnetica (1856), as well as author, in 1854, of a treatise on animal magnetism which would soon face the intervention of the Inquisition. 24 In a reflection which links states of somnambulist lucidity with the condition of Adam before the Fall, Guidi expresses the view that stages of clairvoyance in which for instance completely illiterate persons reached the highest degree of vision and knowledge could only be induced by the same divine sparks that God infused in the first man with the Creation, and that the first man preserved until his sin. 25 In this observation one can see concentrated together both the sense of fear and risk associated with mesmerism and a faint admission of guilt and sin which can be absolved through immission of the magnetic model into a religious paradigm. There is a subtle operation of naturalization of religious senses into the unveiling, if only via intuitive perception, of spiritual faculties which had rested hidden in the pre-magnetic age and which now seem to become autonomous from theological free will. Guidi also expands the metaphorical and spiritual significance of a harmonic bond by asserting the conformity of animal

Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious  121 magnetism with the Christian message: animal magnetism concentrates in itself ‘l’assoluta pratica delle tre virtù evangeliche che ci vengono direttamente da Dio: la fede, la speranza e la carità’ [the absolute practice of the three Evangelical virtues that come directly from God: faith, hope and charity]. 26 Other theorists, in addition to the theological virtues, chose the apostolic image to describe the magnetic healer. Giulio ­Belfiore, for instance, in summarizing Figuer’s observations regarding Cagliostro, recalls how the latter heals the invalids with the imposition of his hands.27 However, not all magnetizations were driven by benevolent aims and it is in the accounts of these less charitable intentions that we find the centrality of states of unconsciousness analysed. In his Trattato teorico­pratico sul magnetismo animale, Giacomo Nani opens his chapter ‘Dei danni e degl’inconvenienti del magnetismo animale’ by stating that he does not subscribe to the position of those who believe that if animal magnetism cannot do any good, it certainly cannot do harm either. It is not possible to use such a powerful agent on our organism without consequences, and nothing exists that cannot be abused. By telling her ‘voglio che tu non intenda altri fuori di me’ [I want you to hear no one but me] – note the language of religious commandment – a magnetizer can paralyse his patient and make her numb to any other external impulses that are not his own, up to the point of condemning her to complete immobility and to the external passivity of a life fully intuitive. 28 Alternatively, he can cause motions and enhance sensations even without words and by transmission of pure desire. However, in Nani’s view, one should not exaggerate the power of the magnetizer, which is never so strong as to make the magnetized patient leave her natural state. This is particularly important when the magnetizer is not acting in good faith and wants to take advantage of the weakness of the somnambulist. Indeed, first of all it is likely that, because of his devious secondary aims, the evil purpose takes possession of the mind of the magnetizer and distracts him from directing his impulses towards the induction of sleep. Here the evil purpose, which in order to be pursued would require as a condition that the patient be fully asleep, overwhelms the concentration of thought on the primary objective (that of inducing sleep) and the magnetizer loses control of his influence. Most importantly, an unconscious intuition on behalf of the patient becomes the tool that allows her to anticipate the magnetizer’s will, who in this battle of intentions becomes the least aware subject: Alcuni magnetizzatori hanno detto che i magnetizzati regolando a loro insaputa tutte le transazioni della propria intelligenza sopra le vostre, penetrano i vostri desiderii anche i più nascosti, associandosi a tutte le emozioni della vostra anima, e prevenendo, senza accor­ gersi, che essi non fanno che obbedire alla vostra volontà, finanche le

122  Paola Cori più secrete intenzioni; ed è giustamente per ciò che il magnetizzatore non potrà mai commettere nulla d’infame, perchè il magnetizzato avrà previsto la vostra intenzione e si sarà opposto. 29 [Some magnetizers have said that the magnetized subjects, by regulating all the transactions of their intelligence over yours [‘yours’ here refers to the intelligence of the magnetizers], in a process unbeknown to them, penetrate your desires (even the most hidden) by associating themselves with all the emotions of your soul; they anticipate, without realizing, that they do nothing except obey your will. It is rightly for this reason that the magnetizer will never be able to commit anything infamous, as the magnetized subject will have foreseen your intention and will have opposed it] The outcome of this interior and purely intellectual contrast is entirely determined by the intervention of unconscious defences. The magnetized subject shapes, almost automatically, the cerebral information in her mind in the form of the impulses present in the magnetizer’s mind. The first consequence of this action is a deep penetration into the opponent’s desires, which leads her to anticipate the magnetizer’s moves. It is important to note that although the result is supreme lucidity for the somnambulist, the process that leads to this illumination is entirely unknown and unperceived: ‘senza accorgersi’ [without realizing]. Moreover, the vision that she gains focusses on the most secret intentions of the magnetizer, that is, purposes that are not yet actualized or not fully visible to their very ‘owner’ (the magnetizer), although they reside in his soul as the drive that brought him to this evil magnetization in the first place. Although from a purely external point of view it would seem that it is the magnetizer who exercises power on the patient and apparently reduces her to the sleep of an automaton, in fact it is the latter who manipulates the unconscious potential perpetrator and reduces him to a mere object to be supervised. Another strategy to resist magnetization was that of preventing the execution of orders received in the somnambulist state but intended for actualization in later states of conscious normality, without the subject’s knowledge. An important manifestation to which the science of hypnotism devoted much attention was indeed the so-called ‘irresistible force’, an idée fixe or suggestion (induced in advance by the magnetizer or self-induced) so powerful as to fully dominate the mind and body of the subject. The ‘irresistible force’ shapes and transforms the entirety of her sensations and thoughts in order to elicit absolute persuasion in the necessity and inevitability of a certain resolution (often linked to criminal ends). We are dealing with an idea which insinuates itself into the mind of the subject and gains augmented substance and consistency. The act that is carried out in the pursuit of this idea assumes a character of such spontaneity that it will seem voluntary also to the somnambulist, who

Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious  123 will seek in herself the reasons to justify more or less the actions that she has committed.30 Around a completely irrational and inconsistently built idea, the subject constructs a totally hyper-realistic setting which she strengthens by also configuring vain but at the same time perfectly logical justifications. For this reason, patients who knew of the possible sudden loss of consciousness that could happen during a common everyday state, often warned their magnetizers that, if they were not preliminarily re-assured that the command for a certain second-stage execution of orders would not be issued, they would not let him re-awaken them during the session.31 Subject and magnetizer are here bargaining for the power over the unconscious as if in a commercial trade. The subject ‘prebooks’, as it were, her control to the full possession of her own lucidity and the magnetizer has to issue an insurance that concedes her full rights on her own mind. The problem highlighted here is primarily a moral and religious one, as the subject cannot cope with an idea that is repugnant to her own conscience. Establishing whether the soul was sinful in acts committed in states of unconsciousness was indeed a very controversial area of inquiry. Already Muratori, in his book Della forza della fantasia umana, which is a point of reference for the majority of the Italian treatises on animal magnetism, discusses the relationship between guilt and unconscious or involuntary acts. Muratori envisions imagination as a very creative but at the same time dangerous tool, often in contrast with the authority of the mind. While in conditions of wakefulness and vigil the mind (representing our spiritual potency) generally dominates the imagination (the material potency), the latter’s impetus can at times overwhelm the control of the former and produce disorder. It is difficult, for instance, to grasp the dynamics of sleep, and more specifically ‘in che gabinetto ella [l’anima ragionevole] si ritiri, e come si trovi […] non già dormigliosa, ma come in una specie di volontario riposo’ [in what chamber the reasonable soul withdraws, and how it finds itself not only sleepy, but as in voluntary rest].32 It is equally unaccounted for how in dreams the reasonable soul can allow and treat as truthful many exaggerations and false images, such as for instance when we see ourselves flying or ‘passare sopra fiumi a piede asciutto’ [walking on rivers with dry feet]33 – note another biblical reference, which connects the religious with the somnambulist and unconscious imagery. However, believes Muratori, because the mind is used to assess only what comes from the senses, when these transmitters are resting and imagination takes over, the mind cannot do anything but assume that the products of imagination are the result of experience; thus it confers on inconsistent images a full status of reality. For this reason, and because in such circumstances both free will and judgement are abolished, ‘Niun peccato commetterà, perchè la Libertà dell’Arbitrio allora è in lui sospesa nè l’Anima può dissentire’ [it will commit no sin, because the freedom of will is suspended, and the soul cannot dissent].34

124  Paola Cori A similar point of view is shared by one of the first Italian writers of treatises on animal magnetism, Carlo Matteo Litta. In discussing the somnambulist’s capacity of vision at a distance and divination of illnesses, he declares that neither the magnetizer who questions him nor the somnambulist patient who gives voice to his visions are sinful. The latter, in particular, ‘è fuori di sè’ [is outside of herself], 35 and ‘non pecca se non chi vi ha l’intenzione’ [sinful is only he who has the intention to be so]36, while the former would be cruel not to listen to the patient who is trying to scrutinize her own illness to issue a remedy. In magnetic science, concludes Litta, ‘chi opera meglio è chi […] ha per unico scopo l’ardente amore del Prossimo, fine così Cristiano, che più puro di così non può desiderarsi, come quello de’ primi Cattolici’ [he who has as his only objective the ardent love for another operates more effectively. This is the purest Christian aim one might desire, like the aim of the early ­Catholics].37 Litta does not limit himself to abstract reasoning but provides a real example of one who clearly embodies this Christian model. The appendix of Litta’s book hosts a section edited by the publisher quite tellingly entitled ‘Storia delle vicende sofferte dal magnetismo a Milano’. Here one finds some additional observations on magnetism and in particular a discussion of the troubled career of Litta’s master and former surgeon Carlo Sacchi, who had been banned from magnetizing and was only later partially rehabilitated. Litta sympathizes with the misadventures of his initiator into the art of mesmerism. Sacchi had to suffer the accusation of impostor and see his own art treated as an imposture. His life was ruined, laments Litta, while he had only pursued the intention to benefit his compatriots with an incredibly precious gift: ‘ricevendo male per bene […] senza sua colpa ha perso tutto il suo’ [by being punished for doing good, for no fault of his own, he lost all that was his].38 Thus the Sacchi described by Litta is a real martyr to altruistic science (‘Tormento simile non si dà: poter vantare onestà, e abilità, e passar per Impostore, e morir di fame’ [a similar torment must not be inflicted: one who can boast honesty and ability, passes for an impostor and dies of starvation]), 39 and the personification of the Christian impulses which Italian mesmerism had subtly but powerfully absorbed.

Magnetic Miracles According to Guidi, animal magnetism was created by God to demonstrate to the materialists that, in addition to faith, there is a remnant of the Adamic power that God predisposed to show the vast powers of our souls, not completely subjugated by primordial sin.40 A religious inclination is here not absolutely determinant but rather a favourable accessory which can help a process directed by psychological faculties.41 However, in insisting on the premise that mesmeric psychological processes must be considered as a divine gift, Guidi aims to subtract his discourse from the

Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious  125 risk of unorthodoxy.42 He is also very careful to separate natural from super-human empowerment, in accordance with a very popular branch of theoretical magnetism aimed at setting parameters for distinguishing between truly miraculous and merely naturally enhanced events. Some detractors of magnetism completely dismissed the value of magnetic healings, as in the case of Vincenzo Tizzani, who devotes the chapter ‘Miracoli di Cristo’ of his book on animal magnetism to an accurate confutation of Mesmer’s achievements.43 He does so by way of comparisons between divine and magnetic healings drawn on the basis of analogous illnesses, and concludes that compared to Jesus, Mesmer’s healings addressed less serious pathologies, were slower if not completely useless, and often had only temporary effects. For the Jesuit Giovanni Giuseppe Franco, a campaigner against magnetism in his Il magnetismo tornato di moda, all parallels between Christ and a magnetizer should be considered as blasphemies. A man is not allowed to either ‘spegnere il lume dell’intelletto’ [turn off the light of the intellect],44 or render a man mancipium of another, and as for the hypnotized patient, he is ‘un uomo che ha segnato una cambiale in bianco’ [a man who has signed a blank promissory note].45 Other theorists tried instead to promote openness towards a re-­ visitation of miraculous healings which could lead to a clear systematization. What recurs among various miracle assessors as the most evident clue for distinguishing between the two typologies is the instantaneity and the sudden change of statuses brought about by miraculous intervention, while magnetic effects can operate only through progressive modifications. While animal magnetism necessarily avails itself of existing conditions in the mind that might not be visible or known to the subject, but which can emerge in moments of extreme focalization of mental activity, God can produce manifestations which are completely unrelated to any causes or agents present in previous states. In their Fatti relativi a mesmerismo e cure mesmeriche, Angelo Cogevina and Francesco Orioli, among the most committed and engaged theorists and at the same time practitioners of magnetism, call for the need to commit to an ‘esame filosofico’ [philosophical examination] aimed at promoting a liberal acceptance of magnetism, and a natural approach in investigating marvellous manifestations.46 Drawing from Tertullian, Cogevina and Orioli remind us how our soul is intrinsically ‘dominatrice e divinatrice’ [dominating and divining] as it naturally intuits the secrets of nature. However, because it is constricted within the limits of the body ‘la maggior parte [delle] sue facoltà restano […] latenti ed inattive, come se non esistessero’ [the majority of its faculties remain latent and inactive as though they didn’t exist].47 In certain individuals who are affected by illness the soul can regain part of its liberty as well as the use of its natural potency. Alternatively, add the authors, when this ‘return’ is neither spontaneous nor induced by illness, it is the effect of either one’s own will or an external will that elicits it. When an external will

126  Paola Cori is in charge, it is necessary, for the successful outcome of this return to liberty, that the patient is well disposed to be dominated – the rather paradoxical way of re-gaining freedom through subjection, which is typical of mesmeric healing processes. Thus, ‘rallentati od elisi gli altri vincoli, l’anima già più libera, spiega […] il volo sin oltre a superiori intuizioni d’un mondo arcano ed inaccessibile all’uomo’ [once the other bonds are either loosened or broken, the human soul, already freer, sets flight even beyond the superior intuitions of a world arcane and inaccessible to the living man in his normal state].48 As Guidi notes in a passage containing similar considerations, the soul ‘acquista meravigliose proprietà spirituali che eran prima latenti’ [gains marvellous spiritual properties which before were latent].49 In physiological terms, this liberation is progressively achieved by deactivating all physical impressions that are capable of producing a sensation. One ‘si circonda d’oscurità’ [surrounds oneself with obscurity] and concentrates the intensity of one’s thought onto one isolated physical or speculative object while submerging concomitant ideas into oblivion, 50 a procedure, that of fixation of sight, described here in purely mental terms, but which corresponds to the ‘external’ technique employed by the most famous and controversial magnetizer of the magnetic age, Alfredo D’Hont, better known as Donato, to induce fascination in states of wakefulness. The process of focalization also lent itself to parallels with mystical experiences, such as for instance when Belfiore compares somnambulist ecstasy to the spiritual ecstasy in the Middle Ages, when the ecstatics used to fix their thought ‘su di una unica idea, che ne aveva invaso il cervello, e che ordinariamente era quella di unificarsi con Dio’ [on one idea only, which had invaded the brain, and which ordinarily was that of unifying oneself with God].51 More generally, the re-visitation of religious ecstasies through the lens of hysteria was a recurrent motif in the positivist school, and finds in Alfonso Asturaro’s re-reading of Saint Catherine’s mystical experiences the most extreme attempt,52 in the Italian context, to merge hagiography with psychiatric science and Spiritualism. Religion is here read as an influence which can develop into fixation and a form of illness, as well as representing a fertile territory to nourish and sublimate all the most carnal aspects of women’s nature. Returning now to the ‘politica del miracolo’ [the politics of miracle] that interested the generation of theorists prior to the affirmation of positivism,53 it is unquestionable, Cogevina and Orioli believe, that there are not only miracles and prophecies deriving from divine virtue alone but also mesmeric prodigies which show analogies with divine divinations. The latter, however, must be investigated from a natural point of view, and with the confidence that explanations which are now obscure might become clear in the future. In summarizing the requirements set by the Church to recognize divine inspiration, Cogevina and Orioli mention the absolute leap between what preceded and follows the miraculous effect,

Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious  127 as well as the sudden unprepared passage between a precedent and a subsequent state, which is impossible to foresee.54 Later reflections into hypnotism and automatism would continue to approach the actions of the nerves as capable of making manifest latent states of thought stored by the mind and never previously revealed. A crucial manifestation which lent itself to immediate analogy with the super-human was the apparition of bleeding and other exterior marks often chosen by the hypnotist as a proof of validation of magnetization coming into effect at a temporal distance. These marks, appearing at a pre-set time or after hearing specific words, naturally recalled the stigmata that God induces as a sign of spiritual distinctiveness or election. Here again the exterior manifestation is read as an extrinsicality of a condition already present but latent, which is now pushed to emerge by an excess of concentration. In some cases the bleeding was the result of self-induced hypnotism, as in an account by Belfiore, narrating the experience of somnambulist ‘V.’. Having fallen into magnetic crisis, he was able to reproduce the dialogue with his own magnetizer and enact a new, purely mental magnetization by performing both roles of patient and doctor. During sleep, the side of himself playing the part of the magnetizer would instruct the other self to follow certain procedures. At a certain point in the dialogue he commands himself to start bleeding from a ‘v’ traced by the finger on his arm in a quarter of an hour, and indeed, after fifteen minutes, V. starts bleeding. To explain this phenomenon Belfiore, following Henri Mabille’s opinion, assumes that this haemorrhage can be understood as the effect of an auto-­fascination of cortical origin because the centre of peripheral impressions was suppressed. Thus one must consider it as the ‘risveglio e l’esteriorizzazione di sensazioni anteriormente immagazzinate’ [the awakening and the exteriorization of sensations previously stored’].55 In the pre-magnetic age, certain states of beatitude (or intellectual fulfilment) or manifestations of exceptionality could only be achieved in rare cases of divine ecstasy. Now they could be induced, self-induced and improved by a somnambulist education which made marvel available, repeatable, and usable while religion lost its exclusive power to induce escape from the ordinary occupations of the spirit.

Autonomous Will During the nineteenth century the role of the emotions in determining the activity of our nervous system started to be theorized for the first time from a physiological point of view, and as an essential issue to be taken into account in the formulation of the penal code. As shown by Emilia Musumeci, interest in the ‘irresistible force’ within hypnotic science falls inside a line of thought engaged in an anti-Cartesian re-­visitation of the relationship between mind and body, which begins with the thought of Charles Darwin and William James and arrives at the most recent

128  Paola Cori theorization of Antonio Damasio.56 Notwithstanding their theoretical specificities, what is common to these theorists is the importance assigned to the role of emotions in determining rational choices. Rather than two separate realms, emotions (traditionally relegated in the field of the irrational) and reason are instead deeply intertwined, as the former actively influences decisional processes. Whereas for Darwin emotions such as fear help develop an adaptive neurological system, for James emotions perceive changes occurring at the innermost neuro-­vegetative level and are recognized at cognitive level at a second stage, thus influencing the way we process thought. Drawing from James, Damasio rejects the dichotomy between reason and emotions and believes that our emotional nervous system actively contributes to rational decision-­ making. Somatic markers associated with specific emotions inform us in advance of the possible consequences that could be derived when similar circumstances re-occur.57 While over the course of the nineteenth century emotions start to be investigated as elements of pathological conditions that might lead to crime, the conception that an accused might not be imputable even when perfectly capable of reasoning, but prey to disordered emotions, also starts to gain ground. Paolo Marchetti has analysed the history of the unconscious within penal law and discussed how, up to the Old Regime, there had been no conflicts between medical science and law. The latter was based on the attribution of responsibility as a matter of rational decisions and conscious will, while the former had so far associated folly with a momentary or permanent loss of reason. While the law addressed the subject as endowed with reason and capable of self-determination and making choices, medicine intervened when that natural condition was altered, that is, in situations which no longer fell under the jurisdiction of law: the ‘individuazione della linea di confine che separa la normalità dalla follia […] è stata da sempre indispensabile per il diritto penale, perchè considerat[a] come soglia di applicazione della stessa sanzione penale’ [individuation of a boundary that separates normality from folly has always been indispensable for penal law, because it was considered as the threshold of application of the very penal sanction]. 58 This was, in Foucault’s terms, ‘the principle of the revolving door’ that kept separate crime from madness and justice from the medical institution: madness cannot be crime, just as crime cannot be, in itself, an act rooted in madness. […] When pathology comes in, criminality must go out. In the event of madness, the medical institution must take over from the judicial institution.59 However, during the nineteenth century a difficult overlap started to occur between the two disciplines as a consequence of a shift of focus in the determination of guilt. While in 1811–1812 the French penal

Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious  129 code (which was also imposed by Napoleon on the Kingdom of Italy) established that an act committed when the accused was under the influence of an irresistible force – seen as induced by external rather than internal factors – could not be considered a crime,60 in the second half of the century attention began to be directed more towards will rather than reason. Cases of split personalities, indeed, provided the evidence of subjects who acted and deliberated in a perfectly rational way, although they were not in control of the shifts from one personality to the other. Although theirs was an altered state, their rational and decisional capacities remained intact. This revealed a dangerous risk of continuity between normality and abnormality, which became the primary target of analysis for scientists like Lombroso, who were determined to define biological and physiological elements of distinction between different conditions of subjectivity. In this period, and through the concept of entropy, the science of thermodynamics in the meantime provided evidence of continuity between physical states only apparently alien from one another. Productive and dissipated levels of energy appeared no longer to characterize separate entities but were shown to belong to the same thermal system evolving in time. This was thus capable of manifesting a variable spectrum of activities and could even be comprised of opposed conditions. Similarly, some theorists started to see a difference in degree and quality rather than in nature between conscious and unconscious states. In discussing the boundary between wakefulness and sleep, Belfiore expresses the view that during the state of somnambulism external sensations do not cross the threshold of consciousness,61 while the impressions intrinsic to the hypnotic relationship are converted into representations. Here it is not so much consciousness that is overwhelmed but will, and between wakefulness and magnetic sleep there are infinite degrees of modifications. What changes between the two states is not the faculty of attention and focalization itself, but its actual object of interest, which switches, unbeknown to the subject, from external sensations to purely interior somnambular perceptions.62 The philosophy of imagination and the science of somnambulism had stimulated early reflections on the relations between reason, imagination, and will, as we have partially already seen in the thought of ­Muratori and Nani. However, with the development of magnetic science, alongside processes of absolute concentration and focalization, that which was unregistered started to be conceived of as the hidden base beneath the most lucid outcomes. Cogevina and Orioli, for instance, remark how sometimes one employs one’s strong will without awareness of its intensity, which makes one believe that a supernatural intervention is taking place that justifies that very same force: Certamente può alle volte accadere […] che altri impieghi la propria volontà con grande energia senza credere d’impiegarla, o credendo

130  Paola Cori impiegare, o chiamare in ajuto, un’altra volontà, la quale in realtà non è che nell’immaginazione […;] de fatti portentosi […] del genere di quelli […] tratti dal vangelo […] mai non si son veduti uscire dall’uomo operante con persuasione d’impiegare una forza propria, ma sempre andarono congiunti coll’invocazione della divinità […] o al più con persuasione, viceversa, d’impiegare un’altra forza ch’è negli spiriti […] condannati.63 [It can certainly happen that one employs one’s own will with great energy without thinking to employ it, or in the belief that one avails oneself or can seek the assistance of another will, which is in fact only in one’s imagination. One has never seen such great deeds as those from the Gospels produced by a man convinced that he is using his will power alone; these events were always concomitant with the invocation of divinity, or, vice versa, at most, with the persuasion of employing another force that is from condemned spirits] It is interesting to note that while Cogevina and Orioli affirm the validity of the authority of the Church and the importance of relying on religious authorities in miraculous matters, they in fact uncover a very dangerous speculative area, that of the unconsciousness of the acts of volition. It is true, in other words, that man alone cannot operate true miracles and that a supernatural force, for good or evil, necessarily determines a truly prodigious outcome, but the magnetic operator can be deluded with regard to his own faculties of determination. The moment in which the divine seems apparently to be so close as to inspire our innermost invocation is when in fact God is most remote and deaf to our call. It is our own faculty of imagination that deceives us, and we are unable even to assess whether, what or how intensely we feel and want. The authors implicitly allude to an unconscious will which is autonomous from our understanding, a concept which had recently been formulated more extensively in Arthur Schopenhauer’s idea of pure will. In a passage from ‘Animal Magnetism and Magic’, a chapter of On the Will in Nature (1836) dedicated to the practice of magnetization, Schopenhauer goes beyond Puységur’s precept ‘believe and want’, as in his conceptualization the magnetizer’s will operates by its own means, without the support of rational belief: magnetisers at time magnetise without any conscious effort of volition and almost without thinking, and yet produce the desired effect. On the whole, it is not the consciousness of volition, reflection upon it, that acts magnetically, but pure volition itself, as detached as possible from all representation.64 Will operates according to its original and pure essence, as a thing in itself which does not necessarily need to be led, although sometimes

Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious  131 external channels, such as words and physical gestures, can elicit its actualization. It is clear that within the ambiguous field of tensions between magnetic and religious imagery, unconscious volition could produce unexpected results, with the body and mind of the subject that launched it reduced to something merely acted upon.

Mesmeric Light In the thought of Enrico Morselli, the idea of bodily and psychological processes which are not directed by or registered in our conscious rationality is developed more extensively in his conceptualization of a biological unconscious residing underneath our normal volitional and rational acts. Morselli was a psychiatrist who, in a time dominated by the rigid generalizing cause-effect methodology of positivist scientism, welcomed the mingling between mesmerism and medical science and insisted on the importance of individual psychological substrates to be taken into account alongside universal neurological processes. He conceived of our personality as deriving from a physiological solidarity between organs working as a fully interconnected system, centralized in the brain, and from which our sense of unity derives.65 However, what we perceive as a cohered entity is only the specific set of relationships emerging as an instantaneous photogram of the superior physiological states, which are registered in our consciousness. They are nothing more than a ‘ricamo accessorio, sul canevaccio fondamentale di un cumulo immenso e inestricabile di stati fisiologici inferiori e incoscienti. L’incosciente biologico è insomma la base della coscienza psichica del propro io’ [an accessory embroidery on the fundamental canvas of an immense and inextricable ensemble of physiological states which are inferior and unconscious. The biological unconscious is in sum the basis of the psychic consciousness of one’s own self].66 The Italian (mesmeric) theorization on the unconscious therefore moved from an idea of an unconscious subjectivity linked to the irrational, or, in other words, to the loss of reason brought about by the dominion of imagination, to a conception of a perfectly rational being whose faculty of will escapes control; and then, to an idea of a physiological unconscious as the constitutive state of our psychology. In Morselli, indeed, although we owe our cerebral and physical existence to the activity of the brain that rationalizes, in fact we are mostly the product of unperceived and unregistered stimuli, which often vary in different individuals. The role of suggestion is central in his thought, as this is considered as the key of all moral therapeutics.67 Morselli was the first Italian psychiatrist to fully theorize the importance of looking at moral and emotional components such as hope, expectation, religion, and blind faith in healing in order to inform medical and penal judgement.68 Although Morselli’s treatise was the first on the topic of magnetism ever written in Italy by a

132  Paola Cori professional medical scientist,69 and although in Morselli’s formulation religion is considered as an influence to be analysed scientifically – and in doing so he adopts a typically modern medical prose (i.e. less directly affected by the religious constraints and fears that we have analysed in previous theorists) – it is still possible to detect a trace of the overlap discussed in this article between the religious and the magnetic. When he mentions that public opinion is often prone either to fear or shower praise on scientific advances, such as for instance with the invention of the telephone, he does so with a metaphor that reiterates the Adamic issue of human pride and striving towards hyper-illumination: ‘quando Graham Bell scoperse il telefono, non si dissero cangiate […] nelle fondamenta le relazioni sociali degli uomini fra loro, e per poco non si annunciò la prossima scalata dell’umanità sitibonda di luce sulla strada celeste che mena alla luna e al sole?’ [did they not say that when ­Graham Bell discovered the telephone the social inter-personal relationships between men changed fundamentally; and did they not announce the final ascent of a humanity thirsty for light on the celestial path to the moon and the sun?].70 Neil Postman effectively synthesizes the cultural revolution alluded to by Morselli: the electric telegraph was the first communication medium to allow the speed of a message to exceed the speed of the human body. […]  The telegraph eliminated in one stroke both time and space as dimensions of human communication […]. The telegraph also moved history into the background and amplified the instant and simultaneous present.71 The example chosen by Morselli triggers a complex set of meanings associated with the mesmeric age, given that spiritualists often made use of the image of the ‘human telegraph’ to describe the clairvoyant.72 The medium, like the electric device, was able to connect with the spirits and abolish any temporal or spatial distance. It could lend them a voice, thus re-establishing uniformity and homogeneity where there had been absolute alienation and denaturalization. However, more than just being a subliminal reference to the occult and the sphere of Spiritualism, Morselli’s parallel reflects a more general interest of his time towards theories of radiation which emphasized a sense of interconnectedness and mutual transmission of properties between created things. For example, John Bovee Dods constructed his system of ‘electric psychology’ on the notion of electricity as the medium used by God in the Creation and for his transmission of will. This theory linked human psychology to both the science of electricity and more recent theories of radiation, and, at the same time, to the atavistic symbolism of light.73 In Cogevina’s and Orioli’s view, each human being behaves as a centre of emanation, projecting or radiating living actions outwards, so much so that

Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious  133 everything is present everywhere with its own actions, some of which are known to us, while others are unknown. Despite the uncertainty in determining the precise nature of this radiation, it cannot be ruled out that objects produce ‘irraggiamenti reciproci […] e trasmettimenti d’azioni […] insensibili all’uomo nello stato ordinario, e pur tali che se potessero esser sentite, sarebber capaci di far conoscere in distanza, da un momento all’altro, analogamente a ciò che colla luce si fa’ [mutual irradiations […] and transmissions of actions, which remain unperceived by man in his ordinary state; and yet they are such that if they could be perceived, they would bring knowledge from a distance, suddenly, and in an analogous way to light].74 The mesmeric experience of irradiation, although occurring without conscious will, re-iterated the risks of crossing the boundaries between the human and the super-human which had once characterized original sin, providing that the first requirement of the truly miraculous was the instantaneity of the phenomenon and the leap from one state to the next. The force of analogy between the two realms (religious and mesmeric) was too vivid and dangerous, especially since magnetic theory and practice had appropriated for the intellectual sphere the symbol and essence of spiritual life, light, now not only used as a safe (distancing) metaphor for describing an enlightened approach to knowledge, but as a concrete, physical effect of magnetic performances, challenging the monopoly of a beatitude that had once been produced only by divine ecstasy. Cogevina and Orioli did not limit themselves to abstract speculation concerning irradiation but verified its effect in practice. Indeed, ‘un fuoco. Una luce che mi inonda’ [a fire, a light that inundates me] was the reply from one of their most interesting patients, Elisabetta Berretta, to the question whether she could see anything leaving the body or mind of the magnetizers and invading her. She explains that in uno de’ due magnetizzatori la luce è un po’ più forte; ch’essa è in tutti e due salutifera; che la vede escire ed entrare dalla parte dello stomaco; […] che nel presente suo stato la memoria è grandissima, soprattutto del passato; che potrebbe ricordare ogni cosa dall’età di tre anni in poi. [in one of the two magnetizers the light is slightly stronger; that in both of them it is beneficial; that she sees the light leaving them and entering her through the stomachs; […] and that in her present state she could remember everything from the age of three onwards] Elisabetta sees her entire life from an integral, frozen present. Like a kind of nineteenth-century Funes, the Borgesian character whose entire existence is constantly visible in all its infinite fragmentation of details, all the memories that had once been smoothed by distance are accessible and immediately displayed in a state of extreme clarity of vision.

134  Paola Cori This  potentiated form of memory, which in normal conditions is impeded by our physiological limits, assimilated the subject to a spirit ‘divested of the body’.75 In the chapter entitled ‘Apparizione di “luci” attorno alla persona della medium’ of his book on Spiritualism devoted to the séances of the then famous medium Eusapia Paladino, Morselli includes a very poetic image amid his scientific description of the manifestations of light in this very sensitive subject. There is a powerful poetic and religious palimpsest which betrays how the mesmeric and spiritic imagery cannot detach itself from a conceptualization linked to sin, guilt, and death. Morselli describes the light emerging from the body of Eusapia by comparing it to a ‘fiammella linguiforme’ [a small tongue-shaped flame].76 This reference immediately evokes the poetic archetype of the speaking flame, that of Dante’s Ulysses, who is punished in canto 26 of the Inferno among the fraudulent sinners. Morselli continues by insisting on the ‘reality’ of the phenomenon: ‘La percezione era reale, come se io guardassi fissamente una fiamma di candela; non era un’illusione, nè un falso’ [perception was real, as if I were looking fixedly at a candle flame. It was neither an illusion nor a fake manifestation].77 He then connects this experience with other precedents in the broader context of Spiritualism, by drawing on two further examples, that of Welsh medium Maria Jones and that of M. Taylor. Morselli does not appreciate the way Jones takes advantage of her particular properties. The way she displays her light to the public amounts to affectation: ‘essa si sa circondare di un’aureola alla testa: ma la insistenza con cui se ne fa bella e la mette in mostra per trascinare alla fede i proseliti, mi pone in sospetto’ [she can produce a halo around her head. But the insistence with which she shows off and displays it to drag her proselytes into faith, makes me suspicious]. Like Ulysses, Jones exercises an enchanting power of persuasion on her crew which is not morally genuine. The case of Taylor appears more authentic, as the lights gli appaiono sulle mani e hanno potuto essere fotografate […]. Del resto il Santini, nel suo libro recente, dimostra la realtà degli effluvi umani. E la storia e l’agiografia ce ne tramandarono casi celebri […]. Guardando la ‘fiamma’ misteriosa sul bregma d’Eusapia, mi sono sovvenuto delle lingue di fuoco inviate dallo Spirito Santo agli Apo­ stoli il dì di Pentecoste […] e anche delle aureole attorno al capo dei Santi, rese classiche dall’iconografia cristiana.78 [appears to him on his hands and they could be photographed […]. Besides, Santini in his recent book demonstrates the reality of human effluvia. And history and hagiography have stored famous cases […]. By looking at the mysterious flame on Eusapia’s bregma, I was reminiscent of the flames of fire sent by the Holy Spirit to the Apostles the day of the Pentecost and also of the halos around the heads of the Saints which were made classic by Christian iconography]

Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious  135 From an indirect allusion to Dante’s Ulysses and the sin of fraud, we have therefore moved to a broader immersion into Christian legends, employed in this second example to re-direct curiosity towards manifestations of light within the framework of a less ambiguous moral behaviour. At this point, after a brief scientific and descriptive insertion, Morselli produces, somehow unexpectedly and as a kind of poetic surplus, a very evocative image of a post-apocalyptic scenery, which brings to full flourishing and externalization the Dantesque senses which were introduced only in the form of an imperceptible seed at the beginning of his description: Il ‘fuoco’ spiritico è apparso due volte, aveva colore azzurro-­ verdognolo, non molto splendente, a contorni abbastanza netti, ed era come trasparente. […I]stintivamente ho pensato ad una umanità futura in cui si svolgesse […] questa facoltà supernormale fotogenica, così da far rassomigliare i nostri lontani discendenti a fantastiche e gigantesche lucciole erranti nel gelido buio della superficie terrestre non più illuminata nè riscaldata dal sole morente’. [the spiritic ‘fire’ appeared twice, it was light blue or greenish in color, not very bright, with quite clear contours and almost if transparent. Instinctively I thought of a future humanity in which this supernormal photogenic faculty would be at play, so as to make our remote descendants look like fantastic giant fire-flies erring in the freezing darkness of the earthly surface, which would be no longer illuminated or heated by the dying sun] Georges Didi-Huberman has interpreted the metaphorical and existential meaning of fireflies in the Italian literary and cultural tradition as a space of imaginative intermittence and resistance. In Dante, who first introduced a parallel between the speaking flames among which Ulysses is found and a swarm of fireflies, the feeble light which these insects emanate contrasts, as the symbol for a painful condition of guilt, to the bright and all-permeating luminosity of the sin-free status of the blessed souls in Paradise.79 Moreover, already since Pliny the Elder, continues Didi-­ Huberman, the imagery of the firefly has merged with that of the ghost. In fact, the substance of the luminous creatures appears as if it were made from the surviving matter – luminescent but pale, weak, often greenish – of ghosts. Faint flames or lost souls. No surprise that one may suspect, in the uncertain flight of fireflies in the night, something like a meeting of miniature phantoms, strange beings whose intentions may or may not be good.80 In other literary experiences, such as in Pasolini, fireflies have also signified a tension between contrasting impulses such as ‘law and desire, guilt and transgression, accepted anguish and controlled pleasure’.81

136  Paola Cori Therefore, in light of this multifaceted meaning, Morselli’s sudden poetic expression, which is constructed on significant similar representational elements (the reference to speaking flames appearing as fireflies, to fraud and to the greenish colour of the ‘spiritic lights’), should not be understood as a mere ornament to dry medical prose interested in Spiritualism and the fraudulent abuse of the spiritist fashion. Instead, it gives voice to a very profound concern with the cultural and moral implications that this investigation inevitably raises while directly challenging a long-lasting religious domain, and which he expresses through recourse to an archetypical symbolism that is stratified in Italian culture. Elisabetta’s experience and Morselli’s only apparently innocuous metaphor describing the invention of the telephone and the human thirst for light, as well as his account of Eusapia’s ‘lights’, are all founded on the image of the launching and reception of light, which had for centuries been likened to the divine gift of life. The problem, in addition to the traditional equation between hyper-clarity and the demonic, was also the minimizing of God’s creation and the usurpation of his creative power. The somnambulist’s sleep (whether ‘natural’ or ‘artificial’) turned upside down the biological essence of the subject in his relationship with daylight. Muratori describes a natural somnambulist who ‘benchè […] operasse nelle tenebre, pure vedea così chiaramente, come se fosse di giorno’ [although he was operating in darkness, he could see as clearly as if it were daylight].82 Natural light, the primordial divine gift, is not required anymore to have sight. The subject does not need to comply with the natural limits imposed on his constitution, or adapt to constraints which have ruled our biological existence since the origin of the species and have shown themselves to be so favourable to its continuation. At the same time, the somnambulist subject acquires an almost divine faculty of creation. As Morselli explains: [Nell’] ipnotismo, la parola torna a perdere qualche cosa del suo valore puramente simbolico od astratto […e] la rappresentazione è così energica […] che l’imagine viene […] percepita come reale. […]. [L]e idee richiamate spontaneamente dal cervello pensante […] tendono a identificarsi con gli stati sensoriali primitivi da cui derivarono, cioè con le impressioni degli oggetti esteriori, così il loro ritorno riconduce anche spesso, sebbene più debole, la sensazione che loro corrisponde. In certe condizioni del cervello, […] la r­ appresentazione mentale assume la stessa precisione, evidenza e vivezza di una sensazione attuale, cioè di quella che si prova quando l’oggetto percepito è presente.83 [In hypnotic states, the word loses something of its purely symbolic or abstract value […and] the representation is so powerful that the image is perceived as real. […] The ideas which are spontaneously recalled by the thinking brain […] tend to identify themselves with

Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious  137 the other sensorial primitive states from which they were derived, that is, the impressions of exterior objects. Thus their return brings back also the sensation that corresponds to these impressions, although in a weaker form. In certain conditions of the brain, […] the mental representation assumes exactly the same precision, evidence and livelihood as an actual sensation, or in other words, as a sensation that one experiences when the perceived object is real] The myth of the ‘in principio erat Verbum’ [In the beginning was the Word] is minimized if a simple word by a magnetizer can re-create real sensations from nothing. This power of reification as well as the potency of the magnetizer’s pure will represented the coming to life of the most terrifying fears tormenting those who, like Giovanni Giuseppe Franco, dreaded magnetism, as it threatened to overturn the natural order and reduce the angelic faculty of communicating ideas without words to an intellectual skill and an art that could potentially be practised on an everyday basis by any sensitive subject.84 Thus the Italian theory and philosophy of animal magnetism advance the exploration of our psychological and neurological system, and at the same time continues to propose, often in a subtle way, the atavistic problems connected to a self that, while becoming more and more detached from theological logics, is still haunted by its constraints.

Notes 1 Enrico Morselli, Il magnetismo animale. La fascinazione e gli stati ipnotici (Turin: Roux & Favale, 1886), p. 12. 2 Ibid., p. 13. 3 Frank Podmore, Mesmerism and Christian Science. A Short History of Mental Healing (Philadelphia, PA: George W. Jacobs & Company, 1909), p. 26. 4 Ibid. 5 See Renzo De Felice, Note e ricerche sugli ‘illuminati’ e il misticismo rivoluzionario (1700–1900) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1960), pp. 17–70. 6 Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 12. 7 De Felice, p. 26. For the meaning of ‘illuminati’ see note 1, p. 17. 8 Clara Gallini, La sonnambula meravigliosa: magnetismo e ipnotismo nell’Ottocento italiano (Rome: L’Asino d’oro, 2012), Kindle edition, 3382. 9 See De Felice, Note e ricerche sugli ‘illuminati’ e il misticismo rivoluzionario (1700–1900), p. 26. 10 On animal magnetism in North America see Ann Taves, Fits, Trances, & Visions. Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). 11 See Patrizia Guarnieri, ‘Theatre and Laboratory. Medical Attitudes to ­A nimal Magnetism in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy’, in Studies in the History of Alternative Medicine, ed. by Roger Cooter (London: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 118–139.

138  Paola Cori 12 The term hypnotism was introduced by James Braid in his later development of his new theory of Mesmerism, which he first discussed in his article Satanic Agency and Mesmerism Reviewed, In a Letter To The Reverend H. Me. Neile of Liverpool (1842), available in Maurice M. Tinterow, Foundations of Hypnosis: From Mesmer to Freud (Springfield, IL: C. C. Thomas, 1970, pp. 318–330). 13 See, for instance, Enrico Morselli’s Psicologia e ‘spiritismo’. Impressioni e note critiche sui fenomeni medianici di Eusapia Paladino, 2 vols (Turin: Bocca, 1908), vol. 2, pp. 311–312. 14 On the development of ‘fluidism’ from physics to the psychology of the ‘supernormal’ (‘psicologia supernormale’) in the nineteenth century see ibid. pp. 536–538. 15 Morselli, Il magnetismo animale, pp. 23–24. 16 See David Armando, ‘Scienza, demonolatria o “impostura ereticale”? Il Sant’Uffizio romano e la questione del magnetismo animale’, Giornale di storia, 2009, available at www.giornaledistoria.net [accessed 29 October 2018]. 17 To the ‘perils of imagination’ in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century France, Jan Goldstein devotes one chapter of her The Post-Revolutionary Self. Politics and Psyche in France, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), pp. 21–59. 18 See David Armando, ‘Ignaro, ignoto, inconoscibile…Metamorfosi di una parola’, in L’Africa interiore. L’inconscio nella cultura tedesca dell’Ottocento, ed. by Ludger Lütkehaus, transl. by Antonio Marinelli (Rome: L’asino d’oro, 2015), pp.  271–316 (p. 284). By the same author, see also ‘Il magnetismo animale tra scienza, politica e religione. Nuove fonti e ipotesi di ricerca’, Laboratorio dell’ISPF, II, 2 (2005), 10–30. 19 See Lisimaco Verati, Sulla storia teoria e pratica del magnetismo animale e sopra vari altri temi relativi al medesimo, 4 vols. (Florence: Bellagambi, 1845), vol. 1, pp. 12–15. As for the theme of the analogies between the religious and the magnetic imagery, Verati is particularly critical of the book by David Friedrich Strauss, Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet (Tübingen: C.F. Osiander, 1935) (Italian transl. La vita di Gesù o esame critico della sua storia, (Milan: Sanvito, 1963)). See the passage translated from the 1840 French edition of this text (Paris: Littré) in Verati, Sulla storia teoria e pratica del magnetismo animale, p. 15. 20 Tess Cosslett, ‘Introductory essay’ to Science and Religion in the Nineteenth Century, ed. by Tess Cosslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 1–24 (p. 2). 21 In France, the journal of Catholic-magnetism, Le Magnétisateur spiritua­ liste was banned by the Inquisition in 1851. See Gallini, La sonnambula meravigliosa, 3363. 22 Verati, Sulla storia teoria e pratica del magnetismo animale, vol. 1, pp. 10–12. 23 See Roberto Esposito, Living Thought. The Origins and Actuality of Italian Philosophy, trans. by Zakiya Hanafi (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), pp. 235–236. 24 In 1856, under the pontifex of Pius IX and following an anti-magnetic campaign also supported by the journal Civiltà cattolica, Guidi’s treatise Trattato teorico-pratico di magnetismo animale considerato sotto il punto di vista fisiologico e psicologico (Milan, Turati: 1854), is marked as a prohibited text. See Gallini, La sonnambula meravigliosa, 3251–3263. 25 Francesco Guidi, Trattato teorico-pratico di magnetismo animale (p. 101). 26 See Guidi, Trattato, p. 84.

Mesmerism, Religion, and the Unconscious  139 27 See Giulio Belfiore, L’ipnotismo e gli stati affini (1887), 2nd edition (Naples: Pierro, 1888), Ebook edited by David De Angelis, p. 32. 28 Giacomo D. Nani, Trattato teorico-pratico sul magnetismo animale (Turin: Ferrero & Franco, 1850), p. 295. 29 Ibid. 30 See Belfiore, L’ipnotismo e gli stati affini, p. 208. 31 See Ibid., p. 163. 32 Ludovico Antonio Muratori, Della forza della fantasia umana (Venice: Pasquali, 1745), p. 53. 33 Ibid., p. 51. 34 Ibid., p. 54. 35 Carlo Matteo Litta, Riflessioni sul magnetismo animale (Italia: a spese della signora Costante Cordialità Imperturbabile all’insegna dell’innocenza perseguitata, 1792), p. 82. 36 Ibid., p. 83. 37 Ibid. 38 Litta, Riflessioni sul magnetismo animale, pp. 196–197. 39 Ibid. 40 See Guidi, Trattato, pp. 5–6. 41 See Francesco Guidi, Il magnetismo animale considerato secondo le leggi della natura e principalmente diretto alla cura delle malattie (Milan: Sanvito, 1863), p. 72. 42 See Gallini, 3394. 43 Vincenzo Tizzani, Sul magnetismo animale. Discorso istorico-critico letto all’Accademia di religione cattolica il dì 21 luglio 1842 (Rome: Salviucci, 1842), pp. 121–160. 4 4 Giovanni Giuseppe Franco, ‘L’ipnotismo tornato di moda. L’ipnotismo è profondamente immorale’, La civiltà cattolica, IV, 13 (1886), 41–54 (p. 41). 45 Ibid., p. 42. 46 Angelo Cogevina and Francesco Orioli, Fatti relativi a mesmerismo e cure mesmeriche (Corfù: Tipografia del Governo, 1842), p. 142. 47 Ibid., p. 161. 48 Ibid., p. 162. 49 Guidi, Trattato, pp. 310–311. 50 Cogevina and Orioli, Fatti relativi a mesmerismo e cure mesmeriche, p. 162. 51 Belfiore, L’ipnotismo e gli stati affini, p. 16. 52 Alfonso Asturaro, Santa Caterina da Siena. Osservazioni psico-patologiche (Naples: Morano, 1881). 53 Gallini, La sonnambula meravigliosa, 3336. 54 See Angelo Cogevina and Francesco Orioli, Fatti relativi a mesmerismo e cure mesmeriche, p. 144. 55 Belfiore, L’ipnotismo e gli stati affini, p.  164. Italics in the text. Belfiore refers to Henri Mabille’s ‘Notes sur les hémorrhagies cutanées par autosuggestion dans le somnambulisme provoqué’, Progrés Medical, 2 (29 August 1885), 155–156. 56 Emilia Musumeci, Emozioni, crimine, giustizia. Un’indagine storico-­ giuridica tra Otto e Novecento (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2015), Kindle edition, 76–138. 57 See Alberto Oliverio, ‘Neurologia delle emozioni. L’ emozione tra biologia e fenomenologia’, Enciclopedia Treccani XXI secolo, 2010, available at www. treccani.it/enciclopedia/neurologia-delle-emozioni_(XXI-Secolo)/ [accessed 9 May 2018]. 58 Paolo Marchetti, L’inconscio in tribunale. Azioni incoscienti e diritto penale. Da Charcot alle neuroscienze (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2014), p. 20. See

140  Paola Cori

59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84

also Andrea Scartabellati, L’umanità inutile. La ‘questione follia’ in Italia fra fine Ottocento e inizio Novecento e il caso del Manicomio Provinciale di Cremona (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2001), pp.  17–64; Angela Santangelo Cordani, Le retoriche dei penalisti a cavallo dell’unità nazionale. Letture dell’istituto lombardo dell’Accademia di Scienze e lettere (Milan: Giuffré, 2011). Michel Foucault, Abnormal. Lectures at the Collège de France 1974–1975, transl. by Graham Burchell (London and New York: Verso, 2003), p. 32. See Marchetti, L’inconscio in tribunale, p. 21. See Belfiore, p. 217. See Belfiore, p. 219. Italics in the text. Angelo Cogevina and Francesco Orioli, Fatti relativi a mesmerismo e cure mesmeriche, pp. 142–143. Arthur Schopenhauer, ‘Animal Magnetism and Magic’, in Two Essays By Arthur Schopenhauer. On the Will in Nature (London: Bell & Sons, 1889), pp. 326–358 (328). See Morselli, Il magnetismo animale, p. 208. Ibid., p. 209. Italics in the text. See Ibid., p. 370. See Ibid. See Guarnieri, ‘Theatre and Laboratory’, p. 125. Morselli, Il magnetismo animale, pp. 408–409. Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (New York: Random House, 1982), pp. 70–71. See Taves, Fits, Trances, & Visions, pp. 175–177. See John Bovee Dods, The Philosophy of Mesmerism and Electrical ­Psychology, ed. by James Burns (London: Burns, 1876). Ibid. George Bush, Mesmer and Swedenborg, or the Relation of the Developments of Mesmerism to the Doctrines and Disclosures of Swedenborg (New York: John Allen, 1847), p. 150. Morselli, Psicologia e ‘spiritismo’, vol. 2, p. 330. Ibid. Ibid. See Georges Didi-Huberman, Survival of the Fireflies (Minneapolis: ­University of Minnesota Press, 2018). Ebook. Ibid. Ibid. Muratori, Della forza della fantasia umana, p. 58. Morselli, Il magnetismo animale, pp. 164–166. See Giovanni Giuseppe Franco, ‘L’ipnotismo tornato di moda. Alcune pratiche ipnotiche sono certamente empie’, La civiltà cattolica, IV, 13 (1886), 277–294 (p. 287).

7 Magnetic Culture and the Self in Post-Unification Italy Morena Corradi

[Verdinois] come di politica, dichiarava di non capir nulla di filosofia, accettando senza affliggersene ma senza vantarsene, questo limite della sua mente; nondimeno, era di continuo sollecito e vigile ai problemi dell’anima e della vita morale: e dallo stimolo del dolore e del mistero fu portato alle pratiche e alle credenze spiritiche, alle quali rimase ­fedele, ma che non fece oggetto di apostolato e di dispute, come cose che coltivava solamente perché rispondevano a un suo bisogno personale.1 [[Verdinois] declared that, just as in the case of politics, he understood nothing about philosophy, accepting this limit of his mind without any sense of affliction, but also without boasting about it. This notwithstanding, he constantly paid attention to the problems of the soul and of a moral life. The stimuli derived from pain and mystery led him to spiritist beliefs and practices, to which he remained faithful, but which he avoided arguing about or proselytizing for, as things he cultivated only because they responded to his personal needs]

With these considerations Benedetto Croce highlights what seems to be an issue at stake for many an intellectual, and indeed many individuals from different backgrounds, in unified Italy: the desire as well as the need to delve into those ‘troubles of the soul’ that magnetism exposes and which Spiritualism will monopolize later in the century. The numerous variants of magnetism and Spiritualism, which become popular in nineteenth-­century Italy, speak to the tension between science and popular practices, natural and supernatural, even between the secular state and religious sensibility which surfaces in different realms of post-­unification society. These phenomena arrive in Italy later than in Northern Europe or America, partly due to the scepticism towards the supernatural that famously characterized Italian ­Romanticism – the spread of fantastic literature and that of phenomena such as magnetism and Spiritualism are interestingly concomitant during the post-­ unification period. What can be defined as ‘magnetic culture’, despite of its increasingly popular and often fraudulent manifestations registered in Italy, as had happened in other countries, seems to question the idea of the self. Investigating magnetism, including its more popular

142  Morena Corradi expressions, which deeply inform the mindset of society at the time, and hypnotism, strictly related to magnetism itself, proves useful in ­addressing the relation between experience and subjectivity (and the experience of subjectivity) in the cultural discourse of unified Italy. By analysing magnetic culture in public debates, practical manuals, and scientific reports, as well as fiction from mid- and late nineteenth-­ century Italy, I aim to address the peculiar dynamics between the dominant cultural discourse and the underlying counter-discourse, of which magnetism is an important component, dynamics that directly relate to the liminal space between the conscious and the unconscious, as well as between science and the marvellous. I will focus here on the relation between magnetic culture and the self that unfolds in the cultural discourse from the early post-unification phase to the last decades of the century. This period witnesses the proliferation of magnetic medicine as well as performances – particularly relevant are Donato’s exhibitions in which the hypnotizer practices his ‘fascinazione donatica’ in front of crowded audiences. What could appear as a mere tension between the rational and the irrational develops into something quite different. H ­ ypnotism, in particular, proves key to exploring the unconscious. Hence, not surprisingly, several scholars and intellectuals devote special attention to it, mainly towards the end of the century. It is in fictional texts, however, that magnetic practices come to represent a privileged vehicle for investigating the mind and its mysteries. 2

Magnetism in the Early Post-Unification Phase When magnetism spreads throughout Italy, starting from the 1840s, considerably later than in other European countries (Mesmer develops his theory on animal magnetism in 1775, while his disciple Puységur discovers somnambulic sleep a few years later), its principle application, like elsewhere, is to cure various diseases, particularly those of the nervous system, illnesses that official medicine has not yet identified or addressed by this time. Women become the favourite subjects as well as the assistants of magnetizers. The central figure of somnambulic medicine, the somnambulist, is in fact often the woman. By mesmerizing her, the magnetizer enables her to cure the patient who has turned to their practice for help. In her seminal work La Sonnambula meravigliosa, the anthropologist Clara Gallini maintains that her very role of somnambulist is key to connote the woman as the weak, influenceable individual she will be considered to be in the realm of magnetic culture.3 ‘Studi magnetici’ [Magnetic offices], consulting rooms where magnetizers see their clients, enjoy great popularity in post-unification Italy, with practitioners claiming to cure an increasingly wider range of conditions. The couple Pietro and Anna D’Amico, respectively, magnetizer and somnambulist, become particularly famous in Italy and are active in the field for over three decades.

Magnetic Culture and the Self  143 Yet, as Gallini herself points out, magnetism is certainly not limited to its therapeutic component,4 although magnetizers might often be inclined to emphasize that aspect in order to be taken seriously.5 This urgent need is made evident by the famous magnetizer Francesco Guidi, the initiator of magnetic performances in Italy, who clearly aims to assert the legitimacy as well as the wide and ambitious scope of the doctrine, when not in the hands of charlatans and dilettantes: La […] missione [del magnetismo] è cercare il vero e fare il bene […] Nella lunga nostra pratica del magnetismo vedemmo cose mirabilissime, fatti che ci confermarono nella fede in Dio e nell’amore pei nostri fratelli, vedemmo fenomeni, che ci diedero manifeste prove della esistenza e immortalità dell’anima, e che, abbattendo la scuola dello scoraggiante materialismo, in noi ravvivarono la speranza di una felice vita futura […].6 [The mission [of magnetism] is to search for the truth and do good […] In our extensive practice of magnetism we have seen astonishing things, facts that confirmed our faith in God and our love for our brethren, we saw phenomena that provided us with manifest proof of the existence and immortality of the soul, and which, by demolishing the demoralizing school of materialism, revived the hope for a happy future life in us […]] If ‘doing good’ is the declared intent of magnetizers who use their powers to cure (and not to make money), it is clear from Guidi’s words that magnetism is presented as the answer to metaphysical questions that the ever more dominant positivistic culture cannot address, and that even religion is not able to keep at bay.7 In the passage here quoted, Guidi highlights magnetism’s potential to bridge, if not erase, the divide between body and soul.8 While this clearly exposes the metaphysical characteristic of magnetism, there is another, more interesting dimension to the phenomenon. Even in the case of practitioners of somnambulic medicine such as Pietro D’Amico, the act of ‘alleviating humanity from its sufferings’ (‘sollevare dalle sofferenze fisiche l’umanità’9) does not have a merely physiological (nor metaphysical) aim. In his lessons on magnetism, D’Amico maintains that ‘le manifestazioni del magnetismo [sono] una malattia individuale, che si palesa a seconda del carattere e della condizione dello stato fisico della persona’ [the manifestations of magnetism [are] an individual ailment, which present themselves according to the characteristics and conditions of that individual’s physical state]10: the specific nature of the illness remains quite vague, yet it is described in psychological as much as physiological terms. The very theory of the fluid, which is at the basis of Mesmer’s doctrine, considers the patient as a whole: a person becomes ill when this fluid in their body goes out

144  Morena Corradi of balance. ‘Gl’infermi, per quella reciproca comunanza che esiste tra spirito e corpo, sono più atti a ricevere il fluido magnetico, dappoiché quando il corpo è infermo, lo spirito trovasi in circostanze di abbattimento […]’ [The sick, because of the reciprocal bond that exists between body and soul, are better disposed to receive this magnetic fluid since, when the body is sick, the spirit is dejected].11 Thus Pelosi, D’Amico’s son-in-law and a magnetizer himself, explains how magnetism views the relationship between body and soul. As Gallini points out, magnetism virtually introduces psychotherapy, which official medicine does not practice at this time. Hence the inevitable clash between the magnetic doctrine and the dominant culture.12 In several manuals written by magnetizers, for a performance to be successful, the magnetized has often to be either a sick person or a woman, someone considered a weak individual (certainly weaker than the magnetizer). The individuals subjected to the power of the magnetizer do not appear to have a will of their own (although an accepting attitude towards the magnetizer is essential, as Pelosi points out in his manual). They are no longer their own self, and their sleeping, unconscious state lends itself to a wide spectrum of interpretations, including moral ones. Pelosi’s manual depicts the delicate, as well as ambiguous relationship between the body and the soul, and states how it is not always controllable.13 Magnetism, with all its shortcomings, definitely introduces a new approach to healing while ‘uncovering the patient’s unconscious dynamics’.14 Through magnetic sleep, discovered by Puységur, individuals undergoing the treatment can diagnose their diseases and even foresee their future development. ‘Bisogna supporre in un sonnambulo la dipartita dello spirito’ [One needs to presume that the spirit has departed in those afflicted by somnambulism], Pelosi writes.15 And it is with the spirit that the magnetized ‘sees’, both within and without. The great potential of this doctrine is evident in these premises, including that of turning the somnambulist into the clairvoyant (even though Puységur only meant his technique to be used for healing purposes).

The Diffusion and Popularization of Magnetic Culture in Post-Unification Italy MESMERISMO Avviso interessante. ‘La celebre chiaroveggente sonnambula di natura, signora Anna D’Amico, siciliana, abitante in Bologna, ha guarito molti morbi come malattie di petto, tosse con tendenza a tisi, epilessia, piaghe, canori reumatismi, idropisie, podagre, febbri intermittenti, asma, occhi ammalati, cecità, malattie di fegato, di milza, erpete, scrofale e malattie croniche, ecc. ecc. La suddetta, essendo una delle più rinomate e conosciute in Italia e all’estero, per le tante guarigioni operate insieme a suo marito, si fa un dovere d’avvisare l’umanità sofferente, che inviando una lettera

Magnetic Culture and the Self  145 franca, col nome dell’ammalato, due suoi capelli, i sintomi della malattia, e un vaglia di lire 3.15 nel riscontro avrà il consulto con l’indicazione della malattia e la cura da eseguirsi. Le lettere devono dirigersi al Professore Pietro D’Amico magnetizzatore in Bologna. Lo stesso raccomanda a tutti i medici i quali ignorano la scienza magnetica che la studiassero, onde occorrendo se ne servono pel bene dell’umanità sofferente’. Dopo una réclame di questo genere, con uno stile sì puro, gli imbecilli piovono come la manna agli ebrei […].16 [MESMERISM. Important Announcement. Mrs. Anna d’Amico, the celebrated clairvoyant and somnambulist by nature, Sicilian, resident of Bologna, has cured many diseases, like illnesses of the chest, coughs with a tendency to phthisis, epilepsy, sores, rheumatism, dropsy, gout, intermittent fevers, asthma, eye illnesses, blindness, diseases of the liver, spleen, scrofula and chronic ailments, etc. etc. Being one of the most renowned in Italy and abroad, thanks to the many successful cures she has provided with her husband, Mrs. d’Amico makes it her duty to advise suffering humanity. By sending a postage paid letter with the name of the sick person, two hairs, the symptoms of the disease and a money order in the amount of 3.15 lire, she will respond with the results of the consultation, an indication of the illness and the cures to be undertaken. Letters should be addressed to Prof. Pietro d’Amico, magnetizer, Bologna. He also recommends that all doctors who still ignore the science of magnetism should study it, so when the need arises, they can use it for the sake of suffering humanity. After an advertisement of this sort, in such a pure style, the imbeciles pour from the sky like manna for the Jews] The last, sarcastic line that comments on the advertisement on mesmerism, published in the satirical Sonzogno paper Lo Spirito Folletto, epitomizes the widespread attitude of the print media towards magnetism in the first years after the unification. A series of articles, published under the column ‘Conversazione’ by the journalist and writer Antonio Ghislanzoni in L’Emporio Pittoresco and L’Illustrazione Universale are also quite telling in this respect – ‘Dove si parla di magnetismo e d’altre scienze occulte’ [Where we discuss magnetism and other occult sciences] is significantly titled one of the articles. The magnetism discussed here does not grant any healing power nor any insight to its practitioners, and the only real aspect of the psyche that it discloses seems to be its gullibility: ‘human imbecilities’ (‘le imbecillità umane’) as Ghislanzoni calls them. According to him, magnetism is like religion, ‘pronta sempre ad impossessarsi delle umane debolezze’ [always ready to take advantage of human weaknesses].17 Magnetic culture is not presented as an alternative to institutionalized religion but rather as a bad copy of it. Magnetism is then dismissed together with superstitions and premonitions.

146  Morena Corradi Some popular variants of magnetic culture, such as theatrical performances, are stigmatized even by several magnetizers, in their attempt to defend the dignity of their own knowledge and techniques.18 Pelosi for one repeatedly rejects the spectacularization of magnetic culture (‘il voler ridurre sui teatri o sulle piazza il magnetismo quale oggetto di trastullo è somma vergogna per chi ciò fa’ [wanting to reduce magnetism to an object of entertainment in theatres or public squares should be a reason of shame for those proposing it]19) claiming that ‘il magnetismo animale […] siccome scienza non deve salire sulle pubbliche scene’ [animal magnetism […] as a science should not be made the object of public displays]. 20 Those who profess magnetism as a healing practice insist on the undisputable existence of animal magnetism and of magnetic fluid. Even many sceptical commentators acknowledge this point. Again, Ghislanzoni: ‘non nego che il fluido magnetico o fluido animale esista nell’uomo’ [I am not denying that magnetic fluid, or animal fluid, exists in human beings]. 21 A then well-known popularizer of science, Dottor Chiossone, also seems willing to give credit to magnetism in this respect: ‘credo al magnetismo animale e a molti dei suoi inesplicabili fenomeni’ [I believe in animal magnetism and many of its inexplicable phenomena] as he vehemently attacks ‘chi ne fa mercimonio confondendo il vero col falso’ [those who use them for lucre, confusing truth and falsehood]. 22 Neither Ghislanzoni nor Chiossone can ultimately accept Mesmer’s doctrine. Magnetizers assert that the effects of the fluid can be detected and studied but scientism is problematic when addressing the essence of magnetic culture. The claim to a scientific foundation of magnetism on the part of its practitioners cannot ultimately succeed. Gallini very aptly explains how the ‘dominant code’ of rationalism necessarily affects magnetism: as an expression of a counter-culture, 23 the latter cannot fit positivistic criteria. Magnetism and the scientific methodology prove in fact to be incommensurable. As a ‘science’, magnetism ‘devesi credere e studiare’ [should be believed and studied], as Pietro D’Amico puts it, in itself a problematic statement. 24 In fact, it moves well beyond the medical sphere, as mentioned in the previous section. In spite of the scientific community’s rejection of Mesmer and his doctrine, however, magnetism proved crucial for modern psychiatry: according to Ellenberger, ‘there is no doubt […] that the development of modern dynamic psychiatry can be traced to Mesmer’s animal magnetism’. 25 Indeed many Italian intellectuals of the time concern themselves with magnetic culture, with fascinating results, even on the account of their attempt to engage the dominant positivistic culture. Two phenomena will stir major debates both within the public discourse and then in scientific circles at the end of the century: hypnotism and Spiritualism. The scientific community shows an interest in hypnotism and its effects, inspired by Charcot’s studies and experiments. Spiritualism, on the other hand,

Magnetic Culture and the Self  147 greatly inform Magnetism in late nineteenth-century Italy  –Pietro D’Amico is the editor of the Gazzetta magnetica, scientifica, medianico-­ spiritistica, whose name reveals the syncretic nature of magnetic culture in this time period.26 Somnambulists, mediums, and ghosts will now crowd the pages of journals, books, and even scientific manuals.

Magnetic Culture in Late Nineteenth-Century Italian Public Discourse Let us consider the lively debate on magnetic phenomena in the Fanfulla della domenica, the weekly supplement to the important Roman newspaper Fanfulla, which is arguably the most prominent cultural publication in the 1880s and, to a lesser extent, in Sonzogno’s refined journal Illustrazione Universale. We are now in the last decades of the century and there seems to be a more lenient attitude towards magnetic culture on the part of many commentators when compared to the hostility that dominated the early post-unification phase which coincided with the vulgarization of the practice. Hypnotism is critical to this change in attitude, with Charcot’s studies giving it ‘a new dignity’, as Ellenberger maintains. 27 In Italy, prominent figures such as Verdinois, Sarfatti, Lombroso, Capuana, Torelli Viollier, at times even in dialogue with one another, address the significance of experiences like hypnotic sessions and séances. A positive disposition towards the phenomena seems to prevail, supported by the idea of a potential scientific explanation lying ahead. Luigi Capuana, who was the editor of the Fanfulla della Domenica from 1882 to 1883, famously sparks a debate around Spiritualism by publishing a letter which challenges the scientific bias against the phenomenon. Capuana himself writes Spiritismo? in 1884, a work addressing his life-long interest in magnetism, somnambulism, and ultimately the existence of spirits. The debate around the nature of magnetism and Spiritualism vis-à-vis scientific investigation will continue for many years. Pieces such as ‘Lo Spiritismo e la Scienza’ [Spiritualism and Science], by Gerolamo Boccardo and ‘Convegni spiritici’ [Spiritist Convenings] by Attilio Sarfatti foster the curiosity for the potentials of what will be labelled ‘pseudosciences’. Boccardo takes suggestions from electricity and magnetism to convey the idea that science could shed light on occurrences that could appear supernatural when in fact they are not: ‘certe persone, il cui sistema nervoso è malato […] ed eziandio alcune rare persone sane, ma di delicatissima costituzione, sentono vivissimi gli effetti […] del magnetismo terrestre’ [certain people affected by a nervous disease […] and also few sane people with a very delicate build, are particularly sensitive to […] earth’s magnetism].28 The frail and nervous constitution of the ideal subject for magnetism is understood here as conducive to forces that are external to the individual.

148  Morena Corradi Sarfatti, in his turn, invites sceptics and scientists to delve into the practice of Spiritualism instead of dismissing it with contempt. While describing a séance organized by Ercole Chiaia in which the spirit of John King was summoned by the medium, Sarfatti proves to be not entirely convinced of the truth of the phenomenon. And yet, he invites scientists to study it. Interestingly, the piece opens as follows: le fiabe che occuparono la mia puerizia, le fiabe che, per acquetarmi nel sonno, soleva raccontare presso al mio capezzale la fantesca mal cauta, e ch’io seguiva curiosamente e ricordava, a pena chiusi gli occhi, ne’ sogni della mente confusa e spaurita, le fiabe di fantasmi, di spettri, di spiriti errabondi, buoni co’ buoni, malevoli e castigatori coi tristi, mi tornarono al pensiero insieme con la dolce fanciullezza assistendo a tre adunanze spiritiche. 29 [the fairy-tales that occupied my childhood, those fairy-tales the incautious maid used to tell me at my bedside, in order to induce sleep, and which I followed with curiosity and remembered, as soon as I closed my eyes, in the dreams of a mind both confused and fearful, fairy-tales of ghosts, specters, wandering spirits, good ones for the good, maleficent and punishing for the miserable, returned to my mind together with the sweetness of childhood, when I took part in three spiritist meetings] If the article is inspired by Sarfatti’s witnessing of alleged spirit manifestations, the author associates these visions with the lasting, unsettling effect of childhood stories and experiences as an element which should make the uncanny component of the séance more relatable and relevant to his readers. One is almost tempted to read this as suggesting that the ghost is a figment of the imagination, therefore evocative of undetected activities of our mind. Remarkably, one of the most noteworthy and lively exchanges hosted by the Fanfulla, the one between Federigo Verdinois, author of fantastic stories and deeply interested in Spiritualism, and Eugenio Checchi, journalist and later editor of the Fanfulla della domenica (1888–1890), revolves around a ‘ghost’. If the position of the writer in favour of Spiritualism does not come as a surprise – he was considered an ‘apostolo dello spiritismo’ [apostle of Spiritualism] – it is interesting to read that Checchi’s piece, ‘Il grande fantasma, a F. Verdinois’ [The great ghost (to F. Verdinois)] is meant to comfort Verdinois in believing that a change of mindset has occurred in society: ‘non vi [è] più atteggiamento derisorio di un tempo verso certi fenomeni’ [there [is] no longer the previous contemptuous attitude towards certain phenomena].30 Checchi claims a scientific dignity for magnetism. He criticizes science and even novelists for eliminating ‘dal [loro] vocabolario la parola magnetismo’ [the word magnetism from [their] vocabulary], which will be replaced by

Magnetic Culture and the Self  149 ‘hypnotism’. While recognizing that, in many instances, it is not easy to distinguish truth from fakery, he still calls for a more open attitude towards the phenomenon. His overall argument proves more complex and potentially ambiguous. Checchi addresses the liminal territory between the physical and the spiritual dimension, ‘dove finisc[e] il mondo fisico e il mondo spirituale incominci, quali invisibili legami li uniscano, e di che lume si accenda l’umana coscienza nel crudele ultimo strappo che pare annullamento e non lo è’ [where the physical world ends and the spiritual begins, what invisible bonds bind them, and what light might illuminate human consciousness in the last cruel tear which seems to be annihilation and is not].31 The reference is clearly to death, and yet the ‘grande fantasma’ of the title does not seem to be an actual ghost, but rather a force of the mind, of human intelligence, something also defined as ‘fantasia misteriosa’ [mysterious fantasy]. Discussing the mediums’ activity, Checchi writes, ‘[I medium] non sanno sempre se obbediscono ad un’intelligenza […] fuori di loro o se, inconsapevoli, esprimono i pensieri propri ed agiscono per volontà’ [[mediums] do not always know if they are obeying an intelligence […] outside of themselves or if, unwittingly, they are expressing thoughts of their own and acting of their own volition].32 The ‘medianità’ is described as ‘una forza che in certe date condizioni s’impadronisce dell’individuo, e gl’ispira azioni a cui non avrebbe mai pensato di suo, gli suggerisce idee, sentimenti, concetti, che escono intieramente dalla sua mente circoscritta’ [a force that in certain specific circumstances takes hold of the individual, and inspires actions which s/he would never have thought of on his/her own, and suggests ideas, feelings and concepts that lie completely beyond his/her finite mind]. 33 The ‘great ghost’ could be interpreted then as a psychological potential of the individual of unknown origins. While Verdinois’s reply openly asserts the existence of spirits, although expressing a deep yearning for definite answers that might never come, 34 other contributions appear to see magnetic and spiritistic phenomena as suggestive of the existence of an unknown psychic force. It is the case of a piece titled ‘Nel mondo ignoto’ [In the unknown world], which voices the ideas of the editorial staff (it is in fact signed Fanfulla della domenica). Science is once again criticized for its shortcomings: ‘Singolare scienza davvero! Parla di alterazioni del centro nervoso nell’organismo umano, e crede anche di averne colte e ben definite le leggi: poi degli inattesi fenomeni che ne derivano, dice essere ignote per la maggior parte le cause’ [A unique science indeed! It speaks of alterations in the nervous centre of the human organism, and believes it has grasped its laws and defined them well: but then of the unexpected phenomena that derive from them, in most cases it declares their causes unknown]. 35 While criticizing a sceptical attitude towards magnetism and Spiritualism, the piece highlights the mysterious faculty that some

150  Morena Corradi individuals have: ‘Lo scienziato Crookes ammette nell’uomo una ignota forza psichica della quale s’ignorano le leggi’ [A scientist named Crookes admits an unknown psychic force whose laws we ignore in humans]. 36 Even though the journal does not take a clear stand on the matter, what seems to be at work in the pages of the Fanfulla is an attempt to normalize magnetic and spiritistic culture – an attempt also confirmed by a series of articles that historicize the figure of Cagliostro with biographical reports. 37 Men of science who are interested in or called upon to pronounce on phenomena linked to magnetic culture are exponents of Positivism, or deeply influenced by it, and therefore tend to read the forces in question in organicistic terms. While describing the characteristics of magnetism, the anthropologist and hygienist Paolo Mantegazza agrees that ‘le donne [e] i fanciulli […] sono più passibili che gli uomini all’influenza del sonnambulismo artificiale’ [women [and] children are more easily subjected to the influence of artificial somnambulism than men] and that ‘il miglior temperamento è il nervoso […] spesso […] il magnetismo calma l’agitazione nervosa e può guarire e migliorare l’insonnia. Trattato con prudenza da medici dotti, non produce alcun effetto dannoso’ [the best temperament is the nervous one […]. Often […] magnetism calms nervous agitation and can cure or improve sleeplessness. If treated prudently by knowledgeable doctors, it does not produce any harmful effects].38 He also adds: Oggi nessuno crede che […] noi sprigioniamo un fluido il quale dalle nostre dita passi nella pelle e nel corpo del magnetizzando, ma si pensa che forse le manovre magnetiche esercitano sul sistema nervoso un’eccitazione debole e prolungata, che agisce colle sue ripetizioni e la sua monotonia. [No one today believes that […] we release a magnetic fluid which passes from our fingers to the skin and the body of the person to be magnetized, but one instead believes that perhaps these magnetic gestures may exercise a weak and prolonged excitation on the nervous system, and they may be effective thanks to repetition and monotony]39 Mantegazza is ostensibly focussing on the interactions between magnetism and the nervous system, showing an increasing interests in the effects produced by magnetic practices. By the 1880s it is mostly hypnotism that attracts the interest of Italian scientists. Unlike magnetism, hypnotism moves from theatres to medical practice: alienists use it to cure the condition which will become known as hysteria.40 The scientific approach, in Italy in particular, will remain utterly organicistic. Cesare Lombroso’s famous studies on hypnotism, which also find their way into popular publications, will

Magnetic Culture and the Self  151 not focus merely on the psyche. This is the case of the article ‘Le nuove scoperte sull’ipnotismo’ [New discoveries on hypnotism], published in the Fanfulla della domenica (17 October 1886), in which Lombroso addresses his own recent findings and those of others such as Richet and Charcot. In the article, the author laments scientific scepticism towards hypnotism as much as the dangers posed by the belief in the supernatural. Phenomena such as suggestion (a command imparted to a person in a hypnotic state, even from a distance) can be explained, according to Lombroso, with laws of motion: La trasmissione della volontà […] e poi della volontà a distanza è inconcepibile, certo, con le attuali cognizioni fisiologiche, ma una volta che ammettiamo essere il pensiero un fenomeno di movimento, non si vede più una grande difficoltà a concepirne la trasmissione a distanza, così come avviene d’altre forze. [The transmission of the will […] and then of the will at a distance is certainly inconceivable on the basis of our current physiological knowledge, but once we admit that thought belongs to the phenomena of movement, one no longer perceives a great difficulty in conceiving of its transmission at a distance, just as occurs with other forces]41 The explanation finds corroboration, Lombroso continues, in the possibility to invert the effect of suggestion with a magnet. The phenomenon of the ‘polarizzazione psichica’ [psychic polarization] has been studied by the psychiatrist Bianchi, among others, as Lombroso reports. In his volume Studi sull’ipnotismo, the Veronese scientist writes that, in the mind of a subject in a somnambulic state, non si possono che destare immagini o dal di fuori, come per le suggestioni, o spontaneamente nell’ebollizione del materiale mnemonico sostenuta dalle impressioni organiche o esteriori; immagini che sono evanescenti, e che possono scomparire, mercè altre impressioni che mettono in moto le immagini finora sepolte nell’incosciente. [one can only provoke images either from the outside, as in the case of suggestions, or spontaneously by means of the ‘boiling’ of mnemonic material supported by either organic or exterior impressions; images which are evanescent and can disappear, due to other impressions which stir images that up to that point had been buried in the unconscious] 42 If psychoanalysis ‘can be primarily understood as being a modification of the previously extant techniques of hypnotism’, as Ellenberger points out, the previous quote exemplifies that Lombroso’s interpretation of psychic activities remains strictly physiological and mechanistic.43

152  Morena Corradi Interestingly, suggestion, which can influence the subject’s behaviour, is described by Lombroso as a ‘stratification of personalities’, in itself a very evocative image (just as that of the different personae interpreted by an actor, also used by the author). This perspective, however, will not lead the scientist to delve into the psychic sphere. Lombroso dismisses the unconscious along with the supernatural, as his positivistic tools cannot conceive of it. Moreover, the scientific community cannot help being suspicious and fearful of the dangers posed by hypnotism in particular – Lombroso’s concern with public exhibitions of magnetizers is quite telling in this respect. He is strongly opposed to Donato’s famous and well-attended performances, not only for the harm they could cause to the hypnotized subjects but also for moral reasons.44 Ultimately science partakes in fostering control over cultural expressions perceived as potentially destabilizing of the social order.45 Lombroso’s interest for hypnotism and similar practices (years later he will convert to Spiritualism) will nevertheless encourage him to engage in a dialogue, often a fiercely lively one, with some of the most prominent writers of his time, the most famous probably being Capuana, one of the numerous writers whose fiction is influenced by magnetic culture. If in many cases these works linger on the existence of supernatural phenomena, there are also many examples of fiction where magnetism and hypnotism provide insights into what we could call, if loosely, the unconscious.

Magnetism and the Psyche: Fictional Liaisons A significant presence of magnetic culture in nineteenth-century Italian fiction can be traced from the 1860s in the Scapigliati’s literary production. Iginio Tarchetti’s ‘Riccardo Weitzen’ epitomizes literature’s fascination with this phenomenon: the opening to the story celebrates ‘il magnetismo […] come interprete, come intermedio tra [l’umanità] e il mondo spirituale, perocché come avrebbe potuto uno spirito rivelarsi senza l’aiuto di un oggetto sensibile?’ [magnetism […] as an interpreter, as an intermediary between [humanity] and the spiritual world, for how else could a spirit reveal itself without the aid of an object of the senses?].46 We have here a clear sign of the syncretism that characterizes post-unification Italy, with magnetism and Spiritualism deeply intertwined. In Tarchetti’s story magnetism is presented as a vehicle to access the world of the spirits, which does not necessarily have to coincide with the supernatural: the narrator maintains that any phenomenon which is perceived as extant (including dreams) is somewhat real. Magnetism and hypnotism are often connected to the apparition of spirits (both of dead and living people) in fictional stories of this time. These are literary texts that venture beyond the experiential terrain and indulge in the realm of the inexplicable, when not utterly supernatural,

Magnetic Culture and the Self  153 the terrain where the ‘pseudosciences’ dwell. In some cases, however, magnetic culture seems to delve into the psyche and give voice to premonitions, dreams, at times to what might even appear (or is feared to be) an impelling feeling or urge that escapes the subject’s control. The stories in question thus emphasize the psychological experience of the protagonist and its mysterious nuances rather than the supernatural event per se. This is undoubtedly the case with Arrigo Boito’s ‘L’Alfier nero’. Elsewhere I have analysed the presence of magnetic culture in the author’s narrative production.47 I will limit myself here to highlighting the characters’ process of alienation as described through an explicit reference to hypnotism: V’è una specie di allucinazione magnetica che la nuova ipnologia classificò col nome di ipnotismo, ed è un’estasi catalettica, la quale viene dalla intensa e lunga fissazione d’un oggetto qualunque. Se si potesse affermare evidentemente questo fenomeno le scienze della psicologia avrebbero un trionfo in più, ci sarebbe il magnetismo che prova la trasmissione del pensiero, il così detto spiritismo che prova la trasmissione della semplice volontà sugli oggetti inanimati, l’ipnotismo che proverebbe l’influenza magnetica delle cose inanimate sull’uomo.48 [There exists a sort of magnetic hallucination that the new hypnology classified under the name of hypnotism, and this is a cataleptic ecstasy, which derives from an intense and prolonged fixation on any object. If this phenomenon could establish itself, clearly the sciences of psychology could add yet another triumph to their list, magnetism would prove the transmission of thought, and so-called Spiritualism would prove the transmission of the mere will on inanimate objects, and hypnotism would prove the magnetic influence of inanimate things on human beings] Tom, the black player, is the first to be hypnotized by the black ensign which gives the title to the story, soon enough proves to be not merely a pawn, but ‘a man’, ‘a black man’, then an ‘idea’, a ‘superstition’, and finally ‘fanaticism’.49 Tom’s white adversary, Giorgio Anderssen, succumbs to the same fascination with possibly far worse consequences. The self-­assurance and arrogance, which characterize the wealthy and celebrated chess champion at the beginning of the story, fade away together with his control of himself and his surroundings. Although the definition of hypnotism and of magnetism in the story are not conducive to a definition of a psychological mechanism, the passage which evokes the origin of superstition and fanaticism could be read as suggestive of the mental process that leads to Anderssen’s derangement and finally to Tom’s murder and Giorgio’s alienation.

154  Morena Corradi The relation between body and psyche becomes a recurrent theme in works published later in the century, when practices such as hypnotism become the subject of scientific studies. Narratives by Verdinois, Zena, and Capuana are not only indicative of the pervasiveness of magnetic practices in the culture of the time, but often suggestive of their underestimated or under-investigated potentials in relation to the human psyche. Remigio Zena’s short story ‘L’invitata’ (1900) is one case in point. Even if its two main characters, Zamit and Alma, clearly embody the magnetizer-somnambulist couple that constitutes one of the most popular and controversial attractions at the time, nevertheless the story seems to delve into psychological mechanisms by staging an unlikely mesmeric experiment. The pair from Malta are holding their performances in Chieti, where they attract the sceptical and often irreverent attention of the locals as well as of a detachment of soldiers residing in the town. The latter are really more interested in Alma’s beauty than in the couple’s practices. One evening the soldiers invite Zamit and the lady to their quarters, pretending to be interested in the professor’s experiments. The young men are bitterly disappointed when Zamit arrives alone and reluctantly listen to the magnetizer’s speech about his doctrine. However, gradually if unexpectedly, their hostility and distrust vanish. Interestingly, it is the sceptical lieutenant Regesta who recognizes the inescapable fascination of magnetic practices: quello stesso incubo di curiosità, d’ansia e di paura che ci teneva immobili nelle serate d’inverno sulle nostre scranne ad ascoltare trepidanti la fiaba del Mago Merlino e di Belinda abbandonata nel bosco, anche adesso ci opprime e ci affascina, noi spiriti forti, se c’è chi si sogna di pagarci con altrettante panzane lo scotto della cena che abbiamo avuto la dabbenaggine d’offrirgli.50 [that same nightmare of curiosity, anxiety and fear that kept us immobile in our seats on winter evenings listening with trepidation to the tales of Merlin the Magician and Belinda abandoned in the forest, oppresses and yet fascinates us even now, we, the valiant souls, if there are those who dream of paying with so many tall tales for the dinner we were so foolish to buy them] Once again, we find a reference to the charm that fairy tales and fantastic stories exercise on children’s imagination, a charm that persists into adulthood – these lines seem to represent a meta-reflection of sort on what affects our psyche. At the end of a long speech about phenomena that science cannot fully explain, before what is by now a captivated audience, Zamit announces that Alma is with them, although they might not see her, and asserts: ‘l’anima obbedisce ad altre leggi sconosciute’ [the soul obeys unknown laws].51 To the baffled reactions of the soldiers,

Magnetic Culture and the Self  155 Zamit ironically points out that Alma has been invited by them (hence the story’s title), an invitation that can be probably read, in the context of the story, as the expression of an urge of their own psyche. Regesta, the most receptive to Zamit’s words, is at last mesmerized and acts like an automaton: all of a sudden, the lieutenant physically attacks the professor. It is not explicitly mentioned but the reader understands that Regesta must have seen Zamit assaulting Alma, who the magnetizer sees betraying him with another man at that very moment. Interestingly, Zamit questions whether an external force pushed Regesta to assail him: noi crediamo che la sola nostra volontà operi sul paziente, invece egli ci sarebbe disputato da un’altra volontà che lo suggestiona […] E di quest’altra volontà che aspira a sopraffare la nostra e ad annientarla, chi sarebbe l’autore? La psiche dello stesso paziente, o il demonio […] oppure lo spirito d’un disincarnato? Ecco il dubbio. [we believe that it is only our will that operates on the patient, instead it might be in contention with another will that exercises its suggestions on the same patient […] And who would be the author of this other will which aspires to overpower and annihilate ours? The patient’s own psyche, the devil or […] the spirit of some disembodied soul? These are our doubts]52 Zamit’s words closely recall the mechanics of the hypnotic experiments Lombroso describes in the pages of the Fanfulla. Both Regesta and Alma, as anticipated by Zamit, will not recall anything of what they experienced. The only character that is completely traumatized at the end of the story is the soldier who did not participate in the experiment because he was with Alma in his apartment. He witnessed the apparent death of the woman, only he does not find her body in his bed where he left it when he goes back after having looked for help: Alma will be introduced to him by Zamit (he had never officially met her) the following day, upon the pair’s departure from Chieti. The ‘divinazione magnetica’ [magnetic divination]53 allegedly performed by Zamit seems to provoke and evoke a psychological experience that goes far beyond that of a crowd-pleasing trick. Another interesting example of a literary text that addresses the mystery of the psyche through ‘magnetic’ tales is Luigi Capuana’s ‘Fatale influsso’ (1906) [Fatal influence]. Together with another story, ‘Un vampiro’ [A vampire], ‘Fatale influsso’ is dedicated to Lombroso whose research on ‘fenomeni psichici’ [psychic phenomena] Capuana holds in high esteem. The short story recounts the unsettling outcome of a mesmeric experiment performed by a possessive man, an artist named Raimondo, on his wife Delia. He admits to his friend Blesio (the short story is written as a confession of the artist to him), that his original intention

156  Morena Corradi was not to ‘studiare […] le misteriose forze della nostra psiche’ [study […] the mysterious forces of our psyche], 54 but rather to find out whether Delia really loved him. Raimondo believed that by transmitting his fluid to the woman, he could find out the truth: ‘mentr’ella dormiva, […] io m’ingegnavo di impregnarla del mio fluido’ [while she slept, […] I was devising plans about ways to impregnate her with my fluid]. 55 This practice, however, unexpectedly turns Delia into a clairvoyant, which proves to be a curse for the couple since she can now read her husband’s mind and comes to realize he does not love her anymore. This appears as an ironic reversal that discloses the uncanny power of the magnetic fluid as much as the undetected (to a certain extent even for Raimondo himself) feelings of the magnetizer. The husband is convinced ‘di aver contribuito a svolgere [nell’organismo di Delia] facoltà che, senza dubbio, vi sarebbero rimaste latenti o non sarebbero mai arrivate al punto di riuscire nocive’ [he has developed faculties [in Delia’s body] which, without a doubt, would have remained latent or would never have reached the point of becoming noxious].56 The fluid, however, has uncovered, unleashed unknown potentials of the mind. The woman overpowers her husband, completely evading his control: Delia in fact destroys La Giovinezza, a statue she herself had inspired and which would have replaced her in Raimondo’s life, once become a living entity. Latent feelings and unconfessed desires intertwine with the mysteries of artistic inspiration which, to Capuana, notably comes to represent a form of mediumistic experience. Like Capuana, Verdinois has a significant personal investment in studies on spiritistic phenomena. His production includes stories where magnetic and spiritistic culture is a mere pretext for divertissement, such as ‘Lo Spirito di Angelo Inganga’ [The Spirit of Angelo Inganga], and texts such as ‘Il Ritratto di X’ [The Portrait of X], a report of phenomena that the author deems worthy of being investigated, namely Spiritualism. On the other hand, Verdinois also writes fictional stories where magnetic practices are evocative of the existence of what could be defined a ‘deeper consciousness’. The most suggestive story in this regard is possibly ‘Le due mogli’ [The two wives], in which the diagnosis and treatment of a disease underscore the crucial relation between body and mind. Emma, who has called for the doctor57 on account of a slight indisposition, asks the physician’s opinion about the existence of the soul, something the woman strongly believes in. This conviction, counterposed from the start to her husband’s materialistic approach, is characterized as a prejudice women are inclined to foster. The doctor sits down, at the invitation of Emma’s husband, and starts telling a story, as if in a hypnotic state: ‘gli occhi di lui, perduto un momento la limpidezza dello sguardo, si fisavano nel vuoto e nelle tenebre. Obbedì senza saperlo. Si pose a sedere. Parlò dopo un momento, come a se stesso’ [his eyes, having lost their limpid gaze for a moment, were fixated

Magnetic Culture and the Self  157 on the void and the darkness. He obeyed without knowing it. He sat down. After a while he spoke, as if to himself’. 58 Of the event he is about to recount, the doctor declares: ‘la scienza non […] [lo] ammetterà mai’ [science will […] never admit [it]]. 59 What follows, a story within the story, is a ghost tale in its own right in which a premonition, defined by the doctor as ‘a hallucination’, conflates with a supernatural event, a ghost apparition.60 Both the frame and the main story linger on the psychological state of the characters, particularly of the female ones (namely Emma and Emilia, the doctor’s sister, protagonist of the ghost story). Significantly, the first-degree narrator (Emma’s husband) evokes a state of the mind in which ‘lo spirito soggiace a una specie di sdoppiamento’ [the spirit undergoes a sort of duplication],61which presents itself as a possible explanation for premonitions, or even for a supernatural apparition. If ghostly apparitions constitute the core of the fantastic tale, the carefully crafted narrative structure of Verdinois’s story, together with the two (male) narrative voices, coincide to highlight the psychological dimension of the characters. Reflecting on how the events unfolded, the doctor declares: ‘si crede di volere, quando è la passione che fa impeto’ [one believes in his/her own will, when in fact it is passion which impetuously drives us],62 a statement which undermines the capacity of the will while acknowledging the inner forces guiding our actions. The relation between body and mind in female subjects seems to be particularly fertile. Women are presented as frail and sensitive creatures (they are typically the ones falling ill), in line with that magnetic culture that favours them as subjects, and yet there seems to be more to it. Both Emma’s and Emilia’s sensibility and premonitions suggest that. As Caterina De Caprio writes, female characters in Verdinois’s stories bring to light ‘legami con i meccanismi dell’inconscio indivi­ duale e collettivo’ [bonds with the mechanisms of the individual and collective unconscious]63: it is not so much the essence of the ghost to be central to the story, rather the sense of anguish and yearning which runs through it. Premonitions, that Ghislanzoni and other commentators were openly mocking some years before, play an important role in many a narrative, unveiling the existence of a sixth sense that surfaces in crucial moments in the character’s existence. Let us consider Remigio Zena’s ‘Confessione postuma’ (1897) [Posthumous confession], a short story whose protagonist (and first-person narrator), a priest, is informed by his brother, a doctor, that a young woman has just died at his hospital. The priest is deeply afflicted by the thought of someone dying without the relief of a confession and cannot get his mind off this event while going to sleep. The actual story unfolds from this moment, leaving the reader wondering whether it is all just a dream. As in the most classic fantastic stories, the narrator tries to assert his reliability when anxiously addressing the

158  Morena Corradi monsignor (to whom he writes a letter-confession, which constitutes the story itself) and assuring him that his account is accurate. The priest claims to have answered the door that evening and found his brother in the street, the brother who was supposed to be sleeping in his own room. Without ever uttering a word, the doctor commands the astonished priest to follow him: ‘mi fissava immobilmente e le sue pupille, fatte d’acciaio, mi penetravano nel midollo delle ossa […] C’era una volontà nei suoi occhi […] E da quella volontà mi sentivo soggiogato inesorabilmente, trascinato, ossesso, nella plenitudine della mia coscienza’ [immobile he fixated me and his pupils, made of steel, penetrated to the marrow of my bones, […] There was a will in his eyes […] And I felt myself inexorably overpowered, dragged, obsessed by that will in the plenitude of my consciousness].64 From this moment on, the priest behaves as if under a spell: he feels the urge to follow his brother through the narrow, almost deserted city streets. Together they reach the hospital morgue where the girl’s body is lying. The priest approaches her and is able to receive her last confession (‘raccolsi la confessione d’oltre tomba’ [I gathered a confession from beyond the grave]).65 Only at this point is the protagonist able to resume control of his actions: ‘Subitamente ebbi l’impressione che il collare di ferro onde sentivami stretta la gola, si fosse spezzato; mi sentii sciolto dal guinzaglio, libero dei miei atti e della mia volontà’ [I suddenly had the impression that the iron collar that was constricting my neck had been broken; I felt freed from my leash, free in my acts and my will].66 Once back home, the priest finds his brother sleeping in his bedroom. The events of the previous night could be just a dream were it not for an ‘oggetto mediatore’ [mediating object], a crucifix that belonged to the priest and that he sees on the girl’s chest the following day, during a visit to the hospital with his brother. Interestingly enough, the religious context that could potentially undermine the eerie effect of the story by shifting the focus to a spiritual sphere67 here seems to be in perfect harmony with the fantastic dimension and, for that matter, with the psychological one. The narrator’s religious faith and his very confession do not lessen the uncanny effect of the story, nor the complexity of its psychological dimension. The confessional component in itself (the story actually recounts two confessions: one by the dead girl to the narrator and one by the narrator himself to the monsignor) is suggestive of an attempt to delve into one’s psyche to reveal its most obscure corners. The priest is writing to the monsignor in the attempt to make sense of a traumatic incident that he cannot come to terms with. He needs guidance as much as psychological comfort: his mind’s anguishes are the actual focus of the story. I would like to close this brief excursus with a text that does not belong to the fantastic genre to validate the pervasiveness of magnetic culture in literary texts that attempt to delve into the psychological dimension

Magnetic Culture and the Self  159 of their characters. Achille Bizzoni’s parliamentary novel L’Onorevole (‘The Member of Parliament’, 1896) focusses on the misfortunes of a young, newly elected, member of the Italian Parliament, Giuliano Sicuri, who soon enough becomes acquainted with the pettiness and corruption that is depicted by the radical Bizzoni as inherent to the post-unification political scene. A naïve and quite weak individual, Giuliano is nonetheless an idealist by nature and as a result finds himself incapable of navigating the rough waters of the Roman political scene. He proves to be nothing more than a puppet in the hands of shrewd and unscrupulous bureaucrats. Sicuri’s journey from his native Miralto to Rome is significantly described as a descent to hell of sorts: the galleries crossed by his train are ‘tenebrose caverne’ [tenebrous caves],68 and the word ‘tenebre’ [darkness] recurs more than once. Giuliano soon falls into a ‘letargo, che non era sonno [ma] una specie di sonnambulismo’ [lethargy, which [was] not sleep [but] a kind of somnambulism]69 that triggers a series of nightmares about his political ineptitude and his wife’s sufferance. What the narrator defines as ‘malessere morale’ [moral malaise] is unconvincingly ascribed by Giuliano to the coffee he drank earlier; yet he cannot help dwelling on ‘tristi presentimenti’ [sad premonitions].70 The first person that Giuliano meets in Rome is Ettore Ruggeri. A former member of Parliament himself and Giuliano’s godfather, Ettore embodies the alter-ego of the author, as Giuseppe Zaccaria has remarked, full of his adamant democratic ideals and frustrated with the widespread political corruption. Ettore belongs to the group of patriots who consider themselves ‘figli di un secolo cominciato nel 1859, finito nel 1870’ [the offspring of a century which began in 1859 and ended in 1870].71 Giuliano is quite surprised by the state of aloofness and deep turmoil in which he finds his friend, who is described as having ‘l’occhio smarrito, che fissava senza discernere’ [a lost gaze, which was fixated without perceiving].72 Interestingly enough, not only does the younger politician follow Ettore’s political footsteps, but he also develops the same disillusion and discomfort as Ruggeri for the institutions and the very role of parliamentarian. The influence of magnetic culture, which surfaces also in numerous explicit references to Spiritualism and hypnotism (see the chapter ‘Un racconto di Poe’ [A Tale by Poe]), is particularly suggestive when expressing the sense of alienation and anxiety of the two main characters. When Giuliano has been completely swallowed by the corrupting Roman environment, he appears to be affected by the ‘incoscienza del sonnambulismo’ [unconsciousness of the somnambulist].73 And in this condition, ‘(‘quasi sonnambulo’ [almost of a somnambulist],74 Giuliano awaits for Ettore’s arrival at the station, the scene mirroring the one at the beginning of the novel with the characters in reversed roles: now the young parliamentarian is financially ruined and desperately needs help.

160  Morena Corradi Still prey to the same nightmares that haunted him on his first journey towards the capital, Giuliano is ultimately described as someone who needs to be ‘spinto […] dalla volontà di Ruggeri, alla quale non sapeva resistere’ [pushed […] by Ruggeri’s will, which he did not know how to resist].75 Finally, in one of the last pages of the novel, the protagonist’s existential crisis is put in the following terms: Senza volontà nel vigore della salute, nello stato di debolezza in cui si trovava, Giuliano non sarebbe stato capace di opposizione alcuna. La sua volontà era quella degli altri; soggetto prezioso per uno studioso dei fenomeni ipnotici, ogni atto di lui era effetto di una suggestione estranea. [Without will in the vigour of his youth, in the state of weakness in which he found himself, Giuliano would not have been capable of any form of opposition. His will was that of others; a precious subject for an expert in hypnotic phenomena, all his acts were the effect of external suggestions]76 This character, presented as the ideal subject for hypnotism, without a will of his own, interestingly enough seems to anticipate, in many respects, the inept figures who will populate Italian and European literature in early twentieth century.

Conclusion The variety of texts addressed here testifies to the crucial role of magnetism as well as its diverse manifestations in post-unification Italy. If the syncretic nature of the phenomenon in Italy’s cultural and social setting gives way to forms of popularization which often translate into lucid fraud and deception, it is also clear, reading through a variety of publications of the time, that phenomena such as hypnotism, or even spurious forms of Spiritualism, delve into the psyche in an unprecedented fashion. Magnetic culture seems to be able to challenge the spread of Positivism by offering pathways to expressing an emerging sensitivity towards the mechanisms of the psyche. If prominent Italian writers appreciate and celebrate the potential of magnetic culture for psychological investigation from the beginning, scientists, even when they finally take an interest in hypnotism, are somewhat constrained by their research methods, focussed on measurements,77 and by a widespread cultural mindset aimed at social control –hypnotic techniques are even used on witnesses as ‘truth serum’ during trials.78 By dwelling on the dangers more than on the potentials of the new practices, Italian scientists will effectively investigate the unconscious only many years later. Public morals and conduct are indeed a concern not only in relation to hypnotism: Umbertine Italy’s moralism will weigh in on the Lombrosian resistance to psychoanalysis.79

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Notes 1 Benedetto Croce, La letteratura della nuova Italia (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1974), p. 164. All English translations are mine. 2 In my past research I delved into the relation between magnetism and the marvellous, between magnetic culture and fantastic literature (See Spettri d’Italia. Scenari del fantastico nella pubblicistica postunitaria milanese (Ravenna: Longo, 2016), ch. 2). In this essay, I will focus on the role of magnetism and hypnotism in unveiling, to a certain degree, different dimensions of the self. 3 Clara Gallini, La Sonnambula meravigliosa. Magnetismo e ipnotismo nell’Italia dell’Ottocento (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1983), p. 266. 4 Ibid., p. 48. 5 Luigi Pelosi, Pietro D’Amico’s son in law and a magnetizer himself, maintains that only if medical doctors started practicing magnetism, would the doctrine be taken seriously. Pelosi in fact writes: ‘miro principalmente all’applicazione del magnetismo animale alla medicina ed a non farlo servire come passatempo e ricreazione di spirito’, Manuale teorico pratico di magnetismo animale, in Pietro D’Amico and Luigi Pelosi, Magnetismo fisico-­umano (Bologna: Stabilimenti Poligrafici Riuniti, 1922), p. 37 [my main goal is the application of animal magnetism to medicine and not to use it or favor its use as a pastime or recreation]. 6 Francesco Guidi, I misteri del moderno spiritismo e l’antidoto contro le superstizioni del secolo XIX (Milan: Bettoni, 1867), p. 236. 7 See Gallini, La Sonnambula meravigliosa, p. 48. The secular culture of the Risorgimento itself favoured the flourishing of various forms of spirituality in counterposition to the Catholic Church. 8 Ibid. 9 D’Amico, ‘Lezioni di magnetismo fisico umano’, in Magnetismo fisico-­ umano, ed. by D’Amico and Pelosi, p. 11. 10 Ibid., p. 14. 11 Pelosi, ‘Manuale teorico pratico di magnetismo animale’, in Magnetismo fisico-umano, ed. by D’Amico and Pelosi, pp. 64–65. 12 Gallini, La Sonnambula meravigliosa, 23. 13 Pelosi, ‘Manuale teorico pratico di magnetismo animale’, in Magnetismo fisico-umano, ed. by D’Amico and Pelosi, 96. 14 Gallini, La sonnambula meravigliosa, 17. 15 Pelosi, ‘Manuale teorico pratico di magnetismo animale’, in Magnetismo fisico-umano, ed. by D’Amico and Pelosi, 97. 16 Lo Spirito folletto, 30 April 1863. 17 L’Emporio Pittoresco, IV, 156. 18 I have addressed the richness and contradictions of magnetic culture as portrayed in post-unification print media in my work Spettri d’Italia, chapter 2. 19 Pelosi, ‘Manuale teorico pratico di magnetismo animale’, in Magnetismo fisico-pratico, 100. 20 Ibid., 99. 21 L’Emporio Pittoresco, IV, 163. 22 L’Emporio Pittoresco, III, 118. 23 Gallini, La Sonnambula meravigliosa, pp. 58–59. 24 D’Amico, ‘Lezioni di magnetismo fisico umano’, in Magnetismo fisico-­ umano, ed. by D’Amico and Pelosi, p. 24. 25 Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious: the History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (New York: Basic Books, 1970), p. 69. 26 Annetta Boneschi Ceccoli defines Pietro D’Amico ‘un Cagliostro benevolo […] un Mesmer quasi superiore al maestro’ [a benevolent Cagliostro […]

162  Morena Corradi

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 4 4 45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

a Mesmer who is almost superior to his master] and praises him for being ‘nel contempo sonnambulo illuminato e stupefacente divinatore’ [both an enlightened somnambulist, and an amazing diviner]: D’Amico and Pelosi, ‘Manuale teorico pratico di magnetismo animale’, pp. 5–6. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious, p. 90. Gerolamo Boccardo, Illustrazione Universale, 41 (23 August 1874). Attilio Sarfatti, Fanfulla della Domenica, 16 December 1888. Eugenio Checchi, Fanfulla della domenica, 2 October 1886. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. See Federigo Verdinois, Fanfulla della domenica, 10 October 1886. Fanfulla della domenica, 17 January 1886. Ibid. Fanfulla della domenica, 13 June 1880 and 29 November 1885. Paolo Mantegazza, Il Fanfulla della domenica, 30 January 1881. Ibid. Gallini, La Sonnambula meravigliosa, pp. 219–222. Cesare Lombroso, Fanfulla della domenica, 17 October 1886. Cesare Lombroso, Studi sull’ipnotismo (Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1887), p. 48. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious, p.  512. Ellenberger also points out that Freud himself ‘was interested in mesmerism and magnetized about 80 people’ (p. 524). Delia Frigessi (in her volume on Lombroso’s life and works) emphasizes how much he opposed Donato’s exhibitions (Cesare Lombroso (Turin: Einaudi, 2003), pp. 399–401). See the chapter ‘La suggestion del potere’ in Gallini, La Sonnambula meravigliosa, pp. 209–224. Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, Tutte le opere (Bologna: Cappelli, 1967), p. 601. See Morena Corradi, ‘Arrigo Boito’s Incubi: A paradigm of the nineteenth-­ century Fantastic Novella’, in The Italian Short Story through the Centuries: The Met(A)morphoses of the Novella, ed. by Roberto Nicosia (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), pp. 81–96. Arrigo Boito, Le Novelle (Florence: Loggia de’ Lanzi, 1998), pp. 43–44. Ibid., p. 44. Remigio Zena, Confessione postuma. Quattro storie dell’altro mondo (­Turin: Einaudi, 1977), p. 81. Ibid., p. 83. Ibid., pp. 88–89. Ibid., p. 84. Capuana, ‘Fatale influsso’, in Un Vampiro (Rome: Voghera Editore, 1907), p. 90. Ibid., p. 100. Ibid., p. 89. The doctor in question is Antonio Cardarelli, a famous physician as well as Member of Parliament, an element that somewhat suspends the fictionality of the story. Federigo Verdinois, Racconti inverisimili (Naples: Colonnese, 1990), p. 32. Ibid. In writing about an experience which rationality and science cannot explain, Verdinois once polemically reported a comment by Lombroso: ‘Caro lei, io non credo all’anima delle poltrone’ [Dear Sir, I don’t believe in the soul of sofas], words that blatantly and jokingly convey the dominating materialistic culture which Verdinois fiercely rejects (Federigo Verdinois, ‘Il Ritratto di X’, Fanfulla della Domenica, 17 April 1887).

Magnetic Culture and the Self  163 60 The doctor narrates of a letter he had received from his estranged sister begging him to reconcile with her (she had married against her family’s will). Her brother invites her to visit him and his family near Isernia, where they have a country house, and Emily joins them with her little daughter. One day, while having a picnic in the countryside, Emily sees her husband coming from afar (he was supposed to join them only the following day), allegedly from 15 kilometres away. Nobody else sees him and the doctor reassures her sister telling her she just had a hallucination. 61 Ibid., 33. 62 Ibid., 35. 63 Ibid., 23. 64 Zena, Confessione postuma, p. 8. 65 Ibid., p. 15. 66 Ibid., p. 11. 67 The positive Catholic view of the threshold between life and death, of the limits inherent to human existence has been seen as one of the obstacles the fantastic traditionally encountered in our culture (see Leonardo Lattarulo, ‘“Antica storia narra così”: Considerazioni sul Fantastico Italiano Ottocentesco’, in Geografia, storia e poetiche del fantastico, ed. by Monica Farnetti (Florence: Olschki, 1995), pp. 121–133 (p. 124)). 68 Achille Bizzoni, L’Onorevole (Milan: Sonzogno, 1896), p. 31. 69 Ibid., p. 32. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid., p. 43. 72 Ibid., p. 41. 73 Ibid., p. 238. 74 Ibid., p. 264. 75 Ibid., p. 292. 76 Ibid., p. 306. 77 Gallini, La Sonnambula meravigliosa, p. 218. 78 Ibid., p. 172. 79 See Michel David, La Psicoanalisi nella cultura italiana (Turin: Boringhieri, 1966), p. 20.

8 Drawing-Room Shivers Spiritualism and Uneasy Presences on the Pages of La Domenica del Corriere1 Fabrizio Foni and Irene Incarico Spiritual Connections, Retroactive (or, Better Still, Backdated) Teleologies In this article we shall focus on the first years of the most famous and representative of Italian popular periodicals, La Domenica del Corriere, as a sometimes accurate, sometimes distorted reflection of the turbulent triangle between science, entertainment, and irrationalism. As to spiritualism, mesmerism, and, more generally, to all that is conjured up by the term metapsychics (from the French métapsychique) – or, to use the more widespread Anglo-Saxon words, psychic research or parapsychology – it is hard to precisely distinguish between spiritual aspects (which are inseparable from aprioristic assumptions), empiricism, and the experimental method. This is partly because we are dealing with a composite and variegated constellation of socio-cultural, scientific, and para-­scientific phenomena, which are in themselves, in turn, composited, stratified, and in constant temporal flux. And yet, heterogeneous and variable though such phenomena may appear, it is all in all p ­ ossible – possibly even ­necessary  – to trace them back to the same broader cultural discourse: being, as they are, texts and tesserae pertaining to con-texts and mosaics which encompass such texts and tesserae under definite and explicit macro-­categories – including precisely spiritualism, mesmerism (or animal magnetism, if preferred), reincarnation, and, more broadly speaking, the supernatural. It is primarily mesmerism that has been subject to a substantially ‘figural interpretation’, 2 with the magnetic séance viewed as a ‘figure’ of the subsequent psychoanalytic session, and especially of hypnotherapy. By taking this approach, as Alison Winter observes, ‘[m]esmerists sometimes appear […] as sleepwalkers, roaming, almost unawares, over terrain later to be mapped by more self-conscious investigators’. 3 In any case, as Molly McGarry notes, [l]ate nineteenth-century hysteria and mediumship do bear certain resemblances. The various states of mediumistic performance— trance, rigidity, catalepsy, and ecstasy—mirrored the stages of hysteria as it was being diagnosed and codified at the time in asylums

Drawing-Room Shivers  165 and symposiums throughout the United States and Europe. By the late 1860s and early 1870s, specialists in diseases of the mind began to associate mediumship with a range of pathological symptoms.4 Even if we limit the discussion of controversial psychic phenomena only to their mediatic nature – and, in this case, to the press and book trade  – it is difficult (if not impossible) to separate occasionally scientific, occasionally almost philological attempts at objectivity – typical of a world that professes to be ‘disenchanted’ – from the tautological faith in the assumptions of truthfulness of such phenomena, as professed by the proponents of the doctrines themselves (a veritable philosophy of ‘re-enchantment’).5 Speaking of the homeland of the Enlightenment, for instance, John Warne Monroe significantly affirms that ‘[f]or many […], religion has not disappeared with the twentieth-century decline of organized churches; it has instead become a matter of independent ­bricolage—a personal quest for meaning to be pursued by autonomous individuals in their private lives’.6 To Marcel Gauchet and Gladys Swain, the practice of mesmerism (which, it bears mentioning, in many cases would end up coinciding with the invocation of spirits) substantively entails the epitome of a modern transition that leads to the normalization of altered states: a compromise against the backdrop of the visible and invisible, the internal and external (socially, privately, psychically), and of restraint and manifestation: the Mesmerian moment must be considered a crucial turning point in the history of the other interior: specifically, the moment at which the force of the outside comes back into the human orbit. It would be important, moreover, to examine carefully the correlation between this discovery of a duality of subjective experience with the imputation of madness to the subject during the same time period. On the one hand, then, there is the disjunction and the succession of a presence and an absence to self (an artificially provoked absence that creates, in the suspension of the reflective property, the conditions of an extrasubjective lucidity or veracity). On the other hand, there is the wrenching gap of an active presence to self preserved even at the core of the absence experienced.7 In such a contradictory paradigm, the diffusion of phenomena and ideas/ideologies intrinsic to the occult – in the broadest sense of the term – ­becomes by turns liberal, spontaneous, curious, eccentric, anti-­ conformist, socialist, even anarchist, as well as, specularly, dogmatic, religious, conservative, bourgeois and conformist, if not even pedantic. An immediate glance (in the literal sense: i.e. unmediated by studies that seek to define this cultural sphere in univocal and unequivocal terms) at this extreme variability should suffice to confirm how ‘partial’

166  Fabrizio Foni and Irene Incarico and even factious it is to reconstruct psychoanalysis or hypnotherapy as a linear, direct, and teleological evolution of spiritualism, mesmerism, telepathy, clairvoyance; as well as their frequent fusion with ­Christianity, Hinduism, Theosophy, and even entertainment, together with their various (and more or less rigorous) fields of study.8 The relationship such phenomena suggest with scientific knowledge – at times seeking to integrate with the latter, or even substitute, or invoke science to affirm their own presumed veracity – is indeed very ambiguous.9 The situation in Italy is no exception in this regard, and occult phenomena find broad scope for discussion in every possible socio-­ cultural sphere. In the early twentieth century, when modernism and avant-­gardism borrowed the paraphernalia of esotericism and spiritualism as their own (already appropriated by the scapigliati’s late romanticism, as well as by verismo, in an attempt to investigate the most ­uncomfortable  – and later most enigmatic – aspects of ‘the truth’),10 a truly popular narrative fiction would flourish – especially in large-­ circulation ­periodicals  – that would absorb and reflect the dilemmas, and the more sensational aspects of metapsychics, in a way that was both fragmentary and pervasive. In a sort of vicious – or ‘virtuous’, depending on one’s point of view – c­ ircle, the presence of news and feature articles in such magazines dealing with the same topics would nourish a fascination for this popular narrative (almost always definable as ‘lowbrow’, sometimes ‘middle-brow’, but very rarely ‘high-brow’), but simultaneously affirms its adherence to contemporary social realities. To fully comprehend innovative and ground-breaking literary works by Italian authors of the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth which contain echoes of, references to or, at times, even substantial passages devoted to mediumistic phenomena, it will be necessary to investigate their counterparts in popular or, better still, trivial literature. Thus, one finds that the latter constitute a dialectic context for the ‘great’ works; and it matters little that they often parody the former – albeit rather ambivalently. In Luigi Pirandello’s Il fu Mattia Pascal, for instance, Signor Anselmo Paleari confronts the titular character by quoting the: stupide pretensioni di certi scienziati di cuor meschino e di più me­ schino intelletto, i quali vogliono credere per loro comodità che con questi esperimenti si faccia oltraggio alla scienza o alla natura. Ma nossignore! Noi vogliamo scoprire altre leggi, altre forze, altra vita nella natura, sempre nella natura, perbacco! oltre la scarsissima esperienza normale; noi vogliamo sforzare l’angusta comprensione, che i nostri sensi limitati ce ne dànno abitualmente.11 [the silly opinions of certain scientists with narrow minds and even narrower hearts, who want to persuade people that experiments like ours in some way outrage science or nature. No, no! We want to

Drawing-Room Shivers  167 discover other laws, other forces, other life in nature, but always in nature, outside our restricted normal experience. We want to break out beyond the narrow scope of our habitually limited senses] Other laws, other forces, another life: analogous to the other laws, the other forces, and the other ‘lives’ inherent in the unconscious. The same Paleari will go on to naively allow himself to be duped by tricks of the most ridiculous kind, enacted during the séances. In this specific contingency, Pirandello seems to empirically suggest – wearing the ambiguous, double-visaged mask of Mattia Pascal/Adriano Meis – that the paranormal is a farce. There remains, nonetheless, a controversial challenge to the ontological limits of what is commonly, if not by default, acknowledged as the ‘real’ and the ‘true’. This very context is the impulse that simultaneously drives a significant number of scientists and ­researchers – orthodox and non-conformist alike – in their study of nature, of the mind, or of the human body.

In Anselmo Paleari’s House, into Italian People’s Houses ‘They’re tiptological’ (Tittologichi), claims Signora Candida, with that air of presumptuousness that only a neophyte would dare show off.12 We are at the home of Signor Anselmo Paleari, and everything is set for a spirit séance. Adriano Meis, alias Mattia Pascal (the allegedly late Mattia Pascal), observes and participates, torn between scepticism and curiosity. The so-called tiptological language is little more than a variation of Morse Code, through which the spirits from the netherworld are presumed to communicate with the living in attendance. It all boils down to being able to decipher the raps. In modern spiritualism there was actually as much sensational hype as there was, for so long, belief in its inherent matter-of-fact rationality: so much emotiveness arbitrarily conflated with positivist research; a mostly secular yearning for belief, speciously entrusted to scientific exactitude (allegedly scientific as much as, often, no more than presumed). Examining the original text, Signora Candida – hardly a cultured ­individual – mispronounces the unusual expression she would have heard elsewhere, and here mimics somewhat parrot-like. In fact she says ‘Tittologichi’, instead of the orthographically correct tiptologici; and the alteration itself (though lost in translation, even if Pirandello emphasises it through the use of italics) is by no means a minor detail. It is a blunder that not only elicits laughter, but in its own way – ­historically and socio-culturally – is also symptomatic of how the so-called mediumistic phenomena percolated into the mainstream Italian consciousness: often crudely, acting as targets or catalysts, no less, of the collective imagination; sometimes meeting with disapproval, sometimes attracting various shades of consensus, or even just curiosity. That such mediumistic

168  Fabrizio Foni and Irene Incarico phenomena, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were undeniably also mediatic is demonstrated by the surprising amount of space conceded by the press to séances (a zone for experimentation by great scientists but also a society meeting-place and, occasionally, for ­amorous – or even erotic – rendezvous), to celebrity mediums, or to the most glowing of ghostly apparitions. Sanctioning their modernity was the emergence of inventions such as telegraphy and photography: astonishing new scientific realities – mediatic, in fact – whose origins and developments coincided with the diffusion of spiritualism, telepathy, and hypnotism; while, not uncommonly, also presenting themselves as frames of comparative reference, or even as affirmations, either indirectly, by way of functional analogy (one example would be the telegraph, held up as analogous to telepathy), or directly (daguerreotypes and film were quickly ‘exposed’ to an army of ghosts: sometimes fully corporeal, sometimes limited to the apparition of only a face, or a hand).13 In conjunction with the electric telegraph invented by Samuel F. B. Morse, whose first official transmission dates to 1844 (between Washington and Baltimore),14 modern spiritualism originated in the United States, in 1848 to be precise, when sisters Margaret and Kate Fox, fourteen and twelve years of age, respectively, claimed to have entered into contact with an unknown entity which haunted their home in Hydesville, New York. As Allen S. Weiss elaborates, [t]his is the epoch in which new metaphors of transmission and reception, as well as novel modes of the imagination, were conceived. The “animal magnetism” of mesmerism was replaced in the nineteenth century by the spiritualist manipulation of electric waves in the ether, destined to merge with the psychic waves of the departed, such that electricity would permit contact with the afterworld.15 Mesmerism, in reality, did not disappear with the coming of spiritualism, and cannot be disentangled from the same cultural sphere, as it was promptly incorporated into the template of the spirit session while exerting its fascination over live theatre audiences – ensconced within magic shows – and even on the silver screen (one need only mention the cinematic success of the Svengali character).16 In Italy, famous personalities such as Queen Margherita of Savoy, Marquis Massimo d’Azeglio,17 or Theosophy sympathisers such as Giuseppe Mazzini or Giuseppe Garibaldi cannot evade the fascination of spiritualism, seen as a telegraph to the afterlife (it is therefore revealing the fact that, on 8 May 1852, a periodical named Spiritual Telegraph, ‘devoted’ – as its subtitle specified – ‘to the illustration of spiritual intercourse’, would make its first apparition, in New York).18 In France, from 1857 onwards, spiritualism mutated into a veritable religion at the hands of Allan Kardec (whose real name was Hippolyte

Drawing-Room Shivers  169 Léon Denizard Rivail): a creed that was both mystical and experimental, and even dogmatic in some ways, eventually extending to contemplate reincarnation and extra-terrestrial life, propelling astronomer Camille Flammarion not only towards psychic research but also to speculate about the ‘plurality of inhabited worlds’. To many noteworthy men of science, from William Crookes to Cesare Lombroso and Enrico Morselli, the occult would come to represent a challenge from which they could hardly back down: an area in which ‘nature’ – once the ‘reality’ of such phenomena seemed to be ascertained before their eyes – remains devoid of clear definition, and of its own allocated space within the paradigm of the physical (and not just psychic, or psychopathological) universe. As Richard Noakes affirms, [i]t is tempting to reduce these controversies to simple matters of ‘science versus Spiritualism’, ‘science versus pseudoscience’, ‘natural versus supernatural’, ‘law versus caprice’, not least because many participants in these controversies used these kinds of binary oppositions. Closer analysis of several Spiritualistic controversies, however, suggests that matters were not so straightforward. What was at stake were rival notions of the scientific, the natural and the lawful, with participants agreeing implicitly that spirits were natural and lawful, and that their own approaches were the most scientific, but fiercely disagreeing over what exactly counted as natural and lawful, and who counted as scientific.19 The same Noakes evidences the importance of ‘non-specialist publications forms, […] to gain a better understanding of why so many Victorian physicists thought they could take the lead into psychical research’.20 It is an affirmation that can be extended beyond the Edwardian era, at least until the First World War. Italy is no exception in this regard, either; and from this perspective, a weekly publication like La Domenica del Corriere proves rather fertile ground for such study. Those who were (for the most diverse of reasons) hostile towards mediumistic ­phenomena – or to the men of science who embedded themselves therein, or in other fields unknown to science that appeared to be contiguous – did not hesitate to write in and to the newspapers and periodicals. Naturally, those from the opposite camp, or who otherwise thought differently, did not hold back from publishing articles or responding by post, either. Other than within a relatively short range – some 300 km – wireless telegraphy was considered impossible over short distances: a sort of utopia, comparable to the communication channels that the defenders of spiritualism claimed to hold to the other world. It is therefore not surprising that the respectable and acquainted engineer Giuseppe Erede would write from Genoa a spirited rebuttal, published in La Domenica del Corriere, of the announcement that on 12 December 1901 Guglielmo Marconi

170  Fabrizio Foni and Irene Incarico had successfully received the first transatlantic transmission, over a distance of 3,000 km. 21 What is striking, however – and turns out to be highly significant – is the fact that, in the eyes of Marconi’s detractor, the most immediate and appropriate term of comparison would reside in none other than the advocates of spiritualism: auto-suggestion, according to Erede, in both cases. Undoubtedly, few assertions uttered with such conviction have proven more infelicitous or embarrassing: the poor Erede certainly did not suspect that Marconi had, in fact, accomplished that achievement. Inevitably, two issues later a somewhat awkward retraction appeared, attempting to make repairs by means of an anonymous interview with Marconi, complete with eulogies as clumsy as rhetorically jingoistic: ‘È questa forse la più audace scoperta scientifica de’ nostri giorni, e il glorioso inventore è questa volta un italiano. Dio sia lodato: proprio un italiano! Gloria a lui’ [This is probably the most audacious present-day scientific discovery, and the glorious inventor this time is an Italian. God be praised: an Italian indeed! Glory be to him]. 22 Predictably, without the need for clairvoyance – and unlike other ­contributors – the name of Giuseppe Erede would be tacitly excised from the pages of the weekly magazine, and the imprudent engineer would surely have changed his mind about Marconi. Partly because hurried comparisons, destined to end in humiliating censure, also tend to yield diametrically opposed results. One can imagine how, in defiance of our denigrator’s intentions, the glaring refutation of Erede’s assumptions would be cause for jubilation among not a few apostles of the spiritualist creed. In spite of all this (or, as it might be maliciously rephrased, precisely because of it) Giuseppe Erede, turning his attention away from Marconi, continued unperturbed his crusade against phantoms, publishing some years later a voluminous tome entitled Spiritismo e buon senso [Spiritualism and Common Sense]. 23 But what was La Domenica del Corriere? Nothing less than a veritable revelation, unprecedented within the publishing industry in Italy. The weekly, which appeared regularly from 8 January 1899 onwards, was a Sunday supplement issued with Milan’s Corriere della Sera (but also buyable separately), the brainchild of Luigi Albertini, edited by ­Attilio Centelli, and directed at the widest readership possible – b ­ earing in mind, naturally, the (il)literacy levels of the era. Initially, 50,000 copies were printed, rising to 70,000 within a year, and progressively growing ever since; by overstepping the threshold of half of year 1900, its reach extended to 140,000 copies. 24 In the bat of an eyelid, La Domenica del Corriere imposed itself as the recreational reading material of the Italian bourgeois drawing-rooms but also in all public spaces: eventually conquering the entire nation with its garish and colour covers and back covers, skilfully illustrated by Achille Beltrame. It could hardly fail, therefore, to feature articles, news and consequently works of literary fiction that were somehow connected with

Drawing-Room Shivers  171 spiritualist phenomena, with the most futuristic and uncanny aspects of science (or rather, proto-science fiction), with sects and secret societies, with esotericism and the supernatural in general. 25 As one can easily surmise from certain replies – albeit telegraphic – given to readers in the inside regular column Piccola Posta [Reader’s letters], it was most often the general public that wanted to be informed about such matters. La Domenica del Corriere would prove a veritable repository for ghost stories, and above all for short stories, serialised novels and articles hinging on the phenomenon of spiritualism (and, by way of affinity, clairvoyance, mesmerism, and reincarnation). As early as edition ­number 8 in its first year, one finds a (para)scientific article about telepathy, under the evocative title ‘Fra le ombre’ [Among the Shadows], of which the following passage merits quotation: L’invisibile! Il fascino che nello svolgere dei secoli esso ha esercitato sullo spirito dell’uomo e continua ad esercitare è assolutamente irresistibile. Sino a ieri relegato fra l’oscurantismo della magia; oggi guadagnando l’attenzione degli scienziati, conserva sempre l’incanto del mistero, dell’inaspettato, dell’inesplicabile. Sinora senza negare i fatti se ne ignoravano le origini; adesso dei fatti stessi si ricerca il movente e se ne ricostruisce la genesi. Ed ecco ciò che gli studiosi delle scienze psichiche credono di poter affermare: L’uomo ha un sesto senso, il telesenso, che è l’organo trasmissore del pensiero a traverso le distanze. Sembra ch’esso agisca come il telegrafo senza fili; slancia cioè per lo spazio il pensiero verso l’organo raccoglitore (l’altro telesenso) che lo riceve. Gli è certo che la telepatia – così han chiamato la trasmissione del pensiero a traverso le distanze – fa oggi miracoli tanto nel campo spontaneo che in quello sperimentale. I 702 casi di telepatia raccolti dalla Società per le ricerche psichiche di Londra espongono tutte le infinite meraviglie dell’ipnotismo, delle chiaroveggenze, degli sdoppiamenti che generano le allucinazioni visive ed auditive […].26 [The Invisible! The fascination it has exerted over the centuries, and continues to exert, on the spirit of mankind is absolutely irresistible. Relegated until yesterday to the obscurantism of magic; today, attracting the attention of scientists, it still retains the enchantment of mystery, of the unexpected, of the inexplicable. Hitherto, though its existence was not denied, its origins were unknown; now, from the facts it is possible to research its cause and reconstruct its genesis. And here is what scholars of psychic sciences believe they can affirm: Man has a sixth sense, telesthesia, an organ that transmits thoughts over distance – which is working miracles both spontaneously and through experimental results. The 702 cases of telepathy gathered by the London Society for Psychical Research expose all the infinite wonders of hypnotism, of clairvoyance, of bilocation that generate auditory and visual hallucinations]

172  Fabrizio Foni and Irene Incarico Further on, it reads: Il Prof. Jung dell’Università di Ginevra propone questo metodo per esperimentare la telepatia: – due individui si comunicano fra loro un pensiero e si prefiggono che una terza persona ad una determinata ora percepisca il pensiero stesso. Giunto il momento s’interroga la persona designata domandandole: ‘a che pensate?’. Il Jung afferma che tale esperimento non sbaglia mai. Provatevi. 27 [Professor Jung of the University of Geneva proposes this method to experiment with telepathy: – two individuals communicate a thought between them, and set themselves the goal that a third person, at a predetermined time, perceives that same thought. At the chosen moment, the designated person will be asked; ‘what were you thinking?’. Jung affirms this experiment never fails. Try it for yourselves] The article then informs that ‘[f]ra i casi di telepatia annoverati dalla Società delle ricerche psichiche ve ne ha di quelli che dimostrano come l’azione telepatica continui anche dopo la morte’ [among the cases of telepathy enumerated by the Society for Psychical Research are some which demonstrate that telepathic action continues even after death]; followed by a brief catalogue of examples, that also call into play the presumed faculties of a powerful medium. 28 We are therefore at a liminal phase, in which psychoanalysis – with Jung (but not only) several years before the rupture with Freud – avails itself of psychic research as much as psychic research avails itself of psychoanalysis. To Jung’s mind, in fact, it was not a case of ‘a relapse into the darkness of superstition but an intense scientific interest, a need to direct the searchlight of truth on to the chaos of dubious facts’. 29 In the wake of Marconi’s previous discoveries, another Italian – the very young Emilio Guarini – invented the automatic repeater device for the wireless telegraph. Transmitting words over distances was by now an undeniable reality, prompting even eminent scientists to ponder whether the transmission of thoughts – telepathy – might likewise have a basis in effective (but as yet undiscovered) possibility. Not by accident, La ­Domenica del Corriere in 1900 apprises that il Guarini – in attesa di condurre a termine qualche altra sua invenzione che non stupirà meno del ripetitore – si occupa alacremente…. di telepatia! A suo avviso ‘fra non molto si conoscerà la legge, il principio che regola e spiega i fenomeni telepatici’. Neppure più i segreti del pensiero!30 [Guarini – while in the process of completing some other invention of his that will surely be as astonishing as his repeater – has promptly turned his attention to… telepathy! In his view, ‘very soon we shall know the laws and principles that regulate and explain telepathic phenomena’. Not a chance anymore to keep one’s thoughts secret!]

Drawing-Room Shivers  173 If, to the wider public – to which Pirandello’s Signora Candida virtually pertains – telepathy and spiritualism ended up mingled as one enigmatic ensemble, various men of science fought back against this confusion. Guarini himself can be credited with a brief intervention in 1904, once again in La Domenica del Corriere and signed with his initials, in which, with stinging irony, he deplores the incurable gullibility of the participants of a spirit séance in the Belgian capital.31 But the step from (para)scientific popularization to fantasy, to narrative creativity,32 turned out to be very brief: Raffaele Pirro, for example, was one of the periodical’s assiduous columnists. After having discoursed on mirages and telepathy, as well as on ‘how’ the latter would one day be explained, he published the short story ‘Le scoperte del… dimani: L’antropotelegrafia’ [Tomorrow’s… Discoveries: Anthropotelegraphy],33 half-way between metapsychics and proto-science fiction. The extraordinary invention, already intimated in the title, consists in the transmission of thought, not just without the use of wires, but without even telegraphy or any other instrumentation: exploiting instead the unknown but at the same time immensely powerful resources inherent in the human being itself.34 It is a pity that, at the conclusion of Pirro’s narrative, everything resolves, in decidedly stereotypical fashion, as a simple dream: the narrator informs us that he fell asleep ‘mentre fantasticav[a] su di un opuscolo, di cui la trasmissione del pensiero formava l’argomento principale’ [while fantasising over a pamphlet, of which the transmission of thought was the main subject].35 But certainly, the author did not stop fantasising if, in 1913 – as part of the series Biblioteca del Popolo, issued by Sonzogno – he published an informative pamphlet of his own entitled I fenomeni dell’ipnotismo e della suggestione [The Phenomena of Hypnotism and Suggestion].36 However, works of popularization on such topics really and truly abounded. It says much that, among the immensely successful Manuali [Handbooks] published by Hoepli, including titles such as Agronomia e agricoltura moderna [Agronomy and Modern Agriculture], Le arti grafiche fotomeccaniche [Photomechanical Graphic Arts] or Scherma italiana [Fencing in Italy], there would also appear Magnetismo ed ipnotismo, Spiritismo, La telepatia, and Teosofia.37 Just as the atmosphere reveals itself to be charged with electricity, the spirit of the time was infused with spiritualism; and it matters little that this, in turn, gave rise to overzealous fideism or, conversely, the most clinical of positivist analyses, geared towards the naturalization of the paranormal. Going back further still, the roots may be traced to the Siècle des Lumières, when the Austrian doctor Franz Anton Mesmer posited the existence of an invisible fluid, to which all organic matter would be subject, and elaborated a curative therapy as bizarre as it was, apparently, miraculous. Mesmer’s theory was met with numerous obstacles but also with broad consensus; with the proliferation of a wide range of followers and experimenters (the ‘magnetisers’ or ‘mesmerists’), the act of extending

174  Fabrizio Foni and Irene Incarico hands over the patient, to influence the flow of vital energies, would concretise in the popular imagination, as would the induction into a state of somnambulism. The theories of magnetism would eventually also be linked to hypnotism, spiritualism, and consequently to the renewal of the practice of divination: it was believed, in fact, that the sleepwalker – more often, the female sleepwalker – was able to enter into contact with ethereal presences, predict the future, or at least manifest a perceptual sensitivity that was completely out of the ordinary.38

A Broader Spectrum for Spectres As early as 1853 in Italy, Giuseppe Terzaghi – a doctor who edited the Milanese magazine Cronaca del Magnetismo Animale – recounted that he had got to know il tema delle tavole giranti per averne letto qualche informazione su un giornale tedesco, ai primi di aprile. Subito aveva deciso di verificare in proprio la fondatezza della questione ed era riuscito a coinvolgere, in questa sua indagine, alcuni amici che a Milano godevano di notevole rispetto […]. Con loro s’erano messi a sperimentare anche volenterosi non titolati, un negoziante, un frate, alcuni medici, costituendo un gruppo eterogeneo tenuto assieme solo dall’impegno di Terzaghi e da una comune curiosità.39 [the subject of table-turning by reading some notes in a German periodical, towards the beginning of April. Immediately he had decided to verify the truth of the phenomenon, and had managed to involve in his research some friends who were held in high public esteem in Milan […]. While they were experimenting, they were joined also by eager volunteers of lower social rank: a tradesman, a friar, a few doctors, constituting a heterogeneous group held together only by Terzaghi’s determination, and a common curiosity] In the popular fiction of the early twentieth century, the ‘talking’ or ‘dancing’ table had as yet much to talk and dance about, as can be attested by eloquent tales such as ‘Le strane vicende del capitano Josè [sic] Cabral’ [The Strange Vicissitudes of Captain José Cabral], by Trevisan author Virginio Appiani (an accomplished pilot in the Great War); or ‘Gli amori degli angeli’ [The Loves of the Angels], by the mysterious Chamaeleon, both published in La Domenica del Corriere.40 Finding himself in London, the protagonist of Appiani’s story, ‘capitano del veliero spagnuolo “Andalusia”’ [captain of the Spanish vessel ‘Andalusia’], pays a visit to ‘dottor Piter [sic] Orbson Esq. [che] dà, nelle ore serali, delle sedute di spiritismo, con evocazioni a richiesta’ [Doctor

Drawing-Room Shivers  175 Piter Orbson, Esq. [who] holds spirit sessions in the evening, with evocations on demand].41 Initially spurred by mere curiosity, the sea-dog encounters a good deal more than he bargained for, even entering into contact with none other than the ghost of his own deceased wife. In so far as the theory of reincarnation is concerned, this was not just espoused by the Kardecist faction of spiritualism, but even played a frontstage role among the main doctrinal tenets of the Theosophical Society, founded in 1875 in New York by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and colonel Henry Steel Olcott.42 In 1900, when he briefly sojourned in Milan, La Domenica del Corriere provided its readers with an interview with the latter.43 But even in its first year, the magazine had carried, over two issues, a tale significantly entitled ‘Metempsicosi?: Come e perché divenni erede’ [Metempsychosis?: How and Why I Was Appointed Heir], authored by the unidentified Pietro Crespi,44 whose story amalgamates dramatic and supernatural elements to reach a humorous finale. In order to inherit the fortune left to him by an octogenarian Bohemian baron, the twenty-five-year-old Italian protagonist must prove to be the true reincarnation of the nobleman’s father, in between legal quibbles and grotesque plot-turns. Within the narration itself, however, the transmigration of souls appears to be a certified fact, manifested in frightening or moving experiences of déjà-vu. The Theosophical Society’s main objective was the comparative study of religion, philosophy, and science. Through an openly syncretistic vision, theosophical studies plumbed the dogmas and credos of Hinduism and Christianity – but also of less known or established sects and cults of the past – in the conviction that a new and superior truth could be distilled from their essences. Spiritualism, telepathy, magnetism, Theosophy are all, in the end, melded in the popular imagination into one nebulous context, opaque yet inviting; very visible, yet also ‘occult’, unfolding transversally through narrative, through current affairs reportage in general, and even through advertising.45 Through this prism, the stories of La Domenica del Corriere – which, at the turn of the century, had in common not just the broader theme of the fantastic but also a profound influence by the general ‘spiritualist’ climate of the age – could be said to comprise an entire corpus of research unto itself. It goes without saying that to exclude the rest of the magazine’s fantastical, proto-science fiction or even just macabre content would constitute an arbitrary (if not senseless) restriction; and the same goes for the articles, snippets, illustrations, and photographs, and the aforementioned correspondence column and its exchanges with ever-more numerous readers. In all this documentation, one often discerns the signature of that positivism which, in the main, sought to offer ‘logical’ explanations after the fashion of the ubiquitous principle of heredity. Several champions of mesmerism, spiritualism, and of psychic research in general both endorsed and appropriated the main principles of evolutionism and heredity, often

176  Fabrizio Foni and Irene Incarico combining the latter with the conception of a superior and celestial plan. Such is the case of naturalist and anthropologist Alfred Russell Wallace.46 As is widely known, Luigi Capuana, the theoretical progenitor of verismo (a peculiar Italian version of the French naturalisme) was from a very early age attracted to magnetism and other occult phenomena. In an open letter in Turin’s Gazzetta del Popolo (2 January 1906), ostensibly arguing with his friend Pirandello, Capuana sustains: 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, per eredità, per svolgimento organico, come accade agli Anfiossi dei laghi sotterranei, che hanno gli occhi in embrione vivendo nell’oscurità, e che li aprono a poco a poco dopo di esser trasportati a vivere in acque illuminate dal sole.47 [I am convinced that, sooner or later, in a few or in many ­centuries – time does not make a difference; nature is extremely slow in its evolution – those mediumistic faculties which are today a privilege reserved for the few, will become common to many: by heredity, by organic development, like the amphioxi of underground lakes, which have embryonic eyes while living in darkness, but open them by slow degrees after being relocated to waters illuminated by sunlight] Confronted with the disconcerting idea, linked with metempsychosis, that numerous existences could stratify – or, worse still, conjoin – into a single person, endowed with a perturbing constellation of visions and memories of one’s own past, it was certainly more reassuring to contemplate the hypothesis that such memories were, in fact, nothing but a hereditary ‘package’ handed down through the centuries. This view formed the basis for articles such as ‘La memoria ereditata’ [Inherited Memory] by Guglielmo Bilancioni, and ‘I sogni aviti’ [Ancestral Dreams] by Teodoro Rovito: published respectively in La Domenica del Corriere in 1902 and 1906.48 The ‘effects’ remained substantively unchanged; but as for the ‘causes’, one could somehow remain firmly in the realm of the ‘natural’. It is in the light of this concept that one should read ‘Chiaroveggenza?’ [Clairvoyance?], by the Turinese Carlo Dadone (who had an excellent rapport with Pirandello), while another short story by the same author, L’invincibile [The Invincible],49 elevates to paroxysm a veritable phobia that had gripped Italy – and not only – regarding the phenomenon of hypnotism.50 In this latter text, a character by the name of Peter Makulay, hypnotised by the diabolic Gastone O’Connel and presumed to have murdered his wife, testifies in court to possessing a disposition ‘non […] abbastanza forte’ [not […] altogether strong], and therefore being easily ‘soggiogato’ [subjugated] to the ‘volontà’ [will] of the other, if not preyed upon by an ‘abituale ignavia’ [habitual unfitness].51 Makulay maintains that he has become a convinced

Drawing-Room Shivers  177 spiritualist, by observing the wonders that O’Connel – a medium, mesmerist, and formidable scientist – proved capable of performing. The judge professes him to be a ‘disgraziato che [si] lasci[ò] suggestionare al delitto’ [a wretched soul that allowed [itself] to be conditioned into crime],52 and the hypnotist himself, called up to testify, does not hesitate to label him ‘un essere inferiore, miserevole’ [an inferior, miserable being].53 Contrastingly, his deceased wife Kate Merival seems to correspond to another typology, distinguished by a ‘volontà perfetta, ferrea’ [perfect, iron will].54 This work of fiction offers a rather well-defined illustration of what no small number of psychiatrists, psychologists, and jurists of the age had concluded: namely – as efficiently emphasised by Clara Gallini – that Due forme di intervento criminale possono essere proprie dell’ipnotizzatore: quelle esercitate direttamente sull’ipnotizzato (come lo stupro e lo scatenamento della pazzia) o indirettamente su terze persone, mediante l’impiego di un uomo – automa, che agisce in stato di suggestione ipnotica o postipnotica. […] Prevalse la tesi  – che anche Lombroso avrebbe verificato sperimentalmente – che rifiuti e resistenze erano possibili: ma si aggiunse anche che le suggestioni criminali potevano essere più o meno efficaci a seconda che il soggetto-­automa fosse più o meno predisposto – per nascita o per eredità – al crimine.55 [Two forms of criminal behaviour can be attributed to the hypnotist: that which is perpetrated directly upon the hypnotised (such as rape or the inducement of madness); or indirectly upon third parties, through the agency of a human automaton which acts in a state of hypnotic or post-hypnotic suggestion. […] The thesis once ­prevailed – and was said to have been verified through experimentation by Lombroso – that refusal and resistance were possible: but it was added even then that these criminal suggestions could be more or less effective, depending on whether the automaton-like subject was more or less predisposed – by birth or heredity – to crime] Elsewhere, a controversy between supporters and detractors of spiritualism would be precipitated from 1874 onwards by the wide circulation of real, tangible photographs: the many taken by Sir William Crookes, purporting to capture the figure of Katie King, a spirit that was supposed to have materialised during various sessions conducted by the young medium Florence Cook. Shortly before dematerializing forever, this ghost apparently consented to leave behind a memento in the form of a lock of hair.56 And just like the photographs themselves, the lock seems to have performed the function of an ‘intermediary object’ – to translate a term coined by Lucio Lugnani57 – between the realms of the living and the dead, between the possible and the impossible, in the aforementioned ‘Gli amori degli angeli’, published in La Domenica del Corriere. To give another example, an

178  Fabrizio Foni and Irene Incarico analogous role is attributed to a lock of Queen Marie-­Antoinette’s hair, bequeathed during the Reign of Terror by the spirit of Lucia de Champdelys, the queen’s lady-in-waiting, to an unsuspecting portrait-­painter, while her physical body in reality languishes first in prison, and later at the scaffold. Such is the plot, in outline, of ‘Il Natale di Hans Boller’ [Hans Boller’s Christmas], by the Neapolitan Daniele Oberto Marrama, also published in the Corriere della Sera’s Sunday supplement.58 Another illustrious photographic ‘subject’ – also immortalised by a distinguished scientist, Charles Richet – was the spectre of a certain Bien-­Boa, which made its alleged appearances through the agency of medium Marthe Béraud (known also as Eva C. or Eva Carrière). It is unlikely, though not to be excluded, that Bien-Boa’s impressive photographic performances may have served as inspiration for ‘La pergamena misteriosa’ [The Mysterious Parchment], by the Turinese Edoardo Augusto Berta, published under the pseudonym Omega in La Domenica del Corriere, at the same time as the photos in question were taken.59 The same cannot be said for the Katie King ones – by then in wide ­circulation – as well as other pictures of spirits of lesser or greater renown: ‘relatives’, perhaps – if not actually the ‘parents’ – of the snapshot taken at the home of Dr Kramer, in Berta’s text, as testimonial to the ‘esistenza dell’anima’ [existence of the soul].60 In a 1905 tale by Pirandello, La casa del Granella, it is precisely the ‘rivelazione dell’anima immortale’ [revelation of the immortal soul] (and not, therefore, merely its existence) that excites the lawyer Zummo, who, contemplating the legal case of a presumably haunted house, winds up by embracing the spiritualist doctrine body and soul, vainly attempting to catechise his audience with his address in court: sbalordì i giudici, i colleghi, il pubblico che stipava l’aula del tribunale, con una inaspettata, estrosa, fervida professione di fede. […] definì lo spiritismo la religione nuova dell’umanità […]; disse che […] il mistero cominciava a schiudere le sue porte tenebrose: le avrebbe spalancate domani! Intanto, da questo primo spiraglio all’umanità […] venivano ombre ancora incerte e paurose a rivelare il mondo di là: strane luci, strani segni… E qui […], con drammaticissima eloquenza, entrò a parlare delle più meravigliose manifestazioni spiri­ tiche, attestate, controllate, accettate dai più grandi luminari della scienza: fisici, chimici, […] fisiologi, antropologi, psichiatri […].61 [he amazed the public, the judges and lawyers, with an intense and unexpected profession of faith in spiritualism. He called it the new religion of humanity, he declared that the Great Mystery had unlocked its doors, which to-morrow would be opened wide. Shadows, dim, uncertain, and frightening, were creeping through that halfopened door, to reveal the world beyond the grave—strange lights, strange shadows… And here, with high drama and eloquence, he proceeded to speak of the marvels of spiritualism, the extraordinary

Drawing-Room Shivers  179 manifestations, controlled, attested and accepted by all the finest intellects of the world of science—by physicists, chemists, physiologists, anthropologists, neurologists] Let us return, then, to the Paleari abode, right at the moment where we had earlier left it. Thirsting for the occult, Signor Anselmo Paleari is himself ‘ascritto alla scuola teosofica’ [a member of the theosophical school]; but as this doctrine ‘non doveva soddisfarlo interamente’ [apparently did not completely satisfy him], he does not hold back from ‘esperimenti spiritici’ [spiritualistic experiments].62 It falls to the unpleasant Terenzio Papiano to plan to perfection the preparations for the séance: introdusse un tavolino rettangolare, d’abete, senza cassetto, senza vernice, dozzinale; sgombrò un angolo della stanza; vi appese a una funicella un lenzuolo; poi recò una chitarra, un collaretto da cane con molti sonaglioli, e altri oggetti. Questi preparativi furono fatti al lume del famoso lanternino dal vetro rosso.63 [He brought in a rectangular pine table, without drawers, unpainted, commonplace. He cleared a corner of the room and hung a sheet from a length of string. Then he brought in a guitar, a dog collar with rattles on it, and some other objects. These preparations were carried on by the light of the famous lantern with red glass] Presumably, Papiano uses the sheet to erect a ‘spirit cabinet’ – usually made of curtains, or even a tent – into which the medium would retire to concentrate, and to enter the trance necessary to permit manifestations and materializations of invisible forces and presences. Guitars, dog collars with rattles, sheets, lanterns with red glass: in Gli amori degli angeli, according to the narration of the character Signora Giulia, her husband’s spiritualist paraphernalia – with which he is so absorbed that he risks losing his job at the bank – consist precisely of ‘tende’ [curtains], ‘tamburelli’ [small drums, or maybe tambourines], ‘­giuocattoli’ [playthings], and ‘lanterne’ [lanterns]: specifically, as revealed towards the end, ‘una lanterna rossa’ [a red lantern].64 These mutual echoes between Pirandello and the obscure ­Chamaeleon – beyond stylistic and existential-philosophical divergences, beyond ­Nobel prizes and weekly publications destined for the scrap heap – invite us to reconsider what is considered to have been exhaustively investigated already, from other perspectives, and along triangulations that, step by step, can evoke a broader spectrum of culture.

Notes 1 This article partly draws on, partly resumes, and partly condenses a paper presented in Italian at the international conference Bramosia dell’ignoto – Esoterismo, occultismo e fantastico nella letteratura italiana tra fin de siècle e avanguardia (Prague, Italian Cultural Institute, 13–15 April 2016).

180  Fabrizio Foni and Irene Incarico 2 Although loosely, we refer to the notion of ‘figural interpretation’ as expressed by Eric Auerbach, ‘Figura’, in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature, transl. by Ralph Manheim, Catherine Garvin, and Erich Auerbach (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp. 11–76 (p. 53). 3 Alison Winter, Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 10. Apropos of such a tendency, it is worth referring to two eloquent monographs: Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (New York: Basic Books, 1970), and Vincent Buranelli, The Wizard from Vienna (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1975). 4 Molly McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), p. 126. 5 See the distinctive, ambiguous, and seminal explanation of ‘disenchantment’ provided by Max Weber, in ‘Science as a Vocation’, in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, transl., ed. and intro. by Hans H. Gerth and Charles Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), pp.  129–156, but also Anne Harrington, Reenchanted Science: Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981); Simon During, Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of Secular Magic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), in particular pp.  43–73 (in which the author discusses the process of psychologization of magic and the supernatural, as well as the complex relationship between ‘credulity’ and ‘scepticism’, together with the illusionists’ stage tricks as a sort of compromise formation, owing to their evocative mimesis of what is otherwise rationally rejected); Alex Owen, The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2004); and The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age, ed. by Joshua Landy and Michael Sale (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009). 6 John Warne Monroe, Laboratories of Faith: Mesmerism, Spiritism, and Occultism in Modern France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), p. 9. 7 Marcel Gauchet and Gladys Swain, Madness and Democracy: The Modern Psychiatric Universe, transl. by Catherine Porter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 273. 8 A study which, although narrowing down its scope to Britain, presents an effective survey of the fragmented range and variety of such phenomena, as well as of their diverse issues at stake, is the monograph by Janet Oppenheim, The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 9 See, for instance, Jennifer E. Porter, ‘The Spirit(s) of Science: Paradoxical Positivism as Religious Discourse among Spiritualists’, Science as Culture, 14 (2005), 1–21; Richard Noakes, ‘The Sciences of Spiritualism in Victorian Britain: Possibilities and Problems’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult, ed. by Tatiana Kontou and Sarah Willburn (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 25–54; together with the monograph by Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2017). 10 See, for example, the recent book: The Occult in Modernist Art, Literature, and Cinema, ed. by Tessel M. Bauduin and Henrik Johnsson (­London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). As to the Italian cultural landscape, the monograph

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by Simona Cigliana, Futurismo esoterico: Contributi per una storia dell’irrazionalismo italiano tra Otto e Novecento, 2nd  edn (Naples: Liguori, 2002), proves unavoidable. Luigi Pirandello, Il fu Mattia Pascal (Milan: Mondadori, 1988), p.  142; The Late Mattia Pascal, transl. by William Weaver (New York: New York ­Review Books, 2005), p. 159. Ibid., pp. 149 and 167. On the association of photography with the spirit world, it is worth mentioning here: Clément Chéroux and others, The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005); Martyn Jolly, Faces of the Living Dead: The Belief in Spirit Photography (London: British Library; West New York: Mark Batty, 2006); John Harvey, Photography and Spirit (London: Reaktion Books, 2007). As to the Italian cultural panorama, we refer to Alessandra Violi, ‘Storie di fantasmi per adulti: ­Lombroso e le tecnologie dello spettrale’, Locus Solus, 2 (2005), 43–69. On the alleged similarities between telegraphy and mediumistic powers, see Werner Sollors, ‘Dr. Benjamin Franklin’s Celestial Telegraph, or ­I ndian Blessings to Gas-Lit American Drawing Rooms’, American Quarterly, 35 (1983), 459–480; Richard Noakes, ‘Thoughts and Spirits by Wireless: Imagining and Building Psychic Telegraphs in America and Britain, circa ­1900–1930’, History and Technology, 32 (2016), 137–158. Allen S. Weiss, Phantasmic Radio (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), p. 3. As to this fundamental fictional character – and its cultural, social and political derivations – we refer to Daniel Pick, Svengali’s Web: The Alien ­Enchanter in Modern Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). By way of an example, see the article by Nino d’Althan, ‘A proposito di spiritismo: Una lettera inedita di Massimo D’Azeglio’, La Domenica del Corriere, 10 March 1907, p. 10, republished in appendix to Il gran ballo dei tavolini: Sette racconti fantastici da “La Domenica del Corriere”, ed. by Fabrizio Foni (Cuneo: Nerosubianco, 2008), pp. 116–117. Such a magazine was, for instance, eloquently paralleled in the Old Continent by The British Spiritual Telegraph, launched on 27 June 1857 with the subtitle ‘Being a Weekly Record of Spiritual Phenomena’. Richard Noakes, ‘Spiritualism, Science and the Supernatural in Mid-­ Victorian Britain’, in The Victorian Supernatural, ed. by Nicola Bown, Carolyn Burdett, and Pamela Thurschwell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 23–43 (p. 39). Richard Noakes, ‘The “Bridge Which Is Between Physical and Psychical Research”: William Fletcher Barrett, Sensitive Flames, and Spiritualism’, History of Science, 42 (2004), 419–464 (p. 456). Giuseppe Erede, ‘L’illusione Marconi: Un grande avvenimento che non è altro che un’illusione – Un bel caso per i frenologi – Una lezione per gli spiri­ tisti’, La Domenica del Corriere, 2 February 1902, pp. 3–4. Republished in appendix to Il gran ballo dei tavolini, pp. 98–103. [Anon.], ‘Il telegrafo senza fili Marconi e la Domenica del Corriere’, La Domenica del Corriere, 16 February 1902, p. 3. Translation is ours. From now onwards, unless reported otherwise, translations are to be credited to the authors of this chapter. Giuseppe Erede, Spiritismo e buon senso (Milan: L. F. Cogliati, 1908). See, for instance, the anonymous and untitled short article in the edition of 2 September 1900, top left of p. 2. On the instant popularity gained by this periodical, and on its predilection, from the very first issue, for anything sensational, refer to Fabrizio Foni,

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39

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Piccoli mostri crescono: Nero, fantastico e bizzarrie varie nella prima annata de ‘La Domenica del Corriere’ (1899) (Ozzano dell’Emilia: Perdisa Pop, 2010). VEA, ‘Fra le ombre’, La Domenica del Corriere, 26 February 1899, p. 8. Republished in appendix to Il gran ballo dei tavolini, pp. 91–93. As to the Society for Psychical Research, see Oppenheim, The Other World, pp. 111–158. VEA, ‘Fra le ombre’, p. 8. On such a topic see the elaborate study by Nathalie Pilard, Jung and Intuition: On the Centrality and Variety of Forms of Intuition in Jung and Post-Jungians (London: Karnac Books, 2015). VEA, ‘Fra le ombre’, p. 8. C. G. Jung, ‘The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits’, in Psychology and the Occult, transl. and ed. by R. F. C. Hull (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), pp. 128–149 (p. 129). [Anon.], ‘Le conquiste della scienza: Il ripetitore Guarini pel telegrafo senza fili’, La Domenica del Corriere, 1 July 1900, p. 2. E. G. [Emilio Guarini], ‘Contro lo spiritismo’, La Domenica del Corriere, 9 October 1904, p. 8 (also this one republished in appendix to Il gran ballo dei tavolini, p. 105). In this regard a wide exploration, well-grounded on the whole, is offered by Patrizia D’Andrea, Le Spiritisme dans la littérature de 1865 à 1913: Perspectives européennes sur un imaginaire fin-de-siècle (Paris: Honoré ­Champion, 2014). Raffaele Pirro, ‘Miraggio e telepatia’, La Domenica del Corriere, 18 November 1900, p. 2; Raffaele Pirro, ‘Come si spiegherà la telepatia’, La Domenica del Corriere, 14 April 1901, p. 10; Raffaele Pirro, ‘Le scoperte del… dimani: L’antropotelegrafia’, La Domenica del Corriere, 28 July 1901, pp. 10–11. Pirro, ‘L’antropotelegrafia’, p. 11. Ibid., p. 11. Raffaele Pirro, I fenomeni dell’ipnotismo e della suggestione (Fatti e ipotesi) (Milan: Sonzogno, 1913). Giulio Belfiore, Magnetismo ed ipnotismo (Milan: Hoepli, 1898); Armando Pappalardo, Spiritismo (Milan: Hoepli, 1898); Armando Pappalardo, La telepatia (Trasmissione del pensiero) (Milan: Hoepli, 1899); Giuseppe ­Giordano, Teosofia (Milan: Hoepli, 1907). The bibliography of studies related to magnetism, as much as that on spiritualism, is actually boundless. With regard to the Italian socio-cultural landscape, the consultation of Clara Gallini, La sonnambula meravigliosa: Magnetismo e ipnotismo nell’Ottocento italiano (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1983) is essential. In 2013, the Roman publishing house L’Asino d’oro reissued the book, with both a foreword and an updating of its bibliography by Adelina Talamonti. It is quite disappointing though to notice that such an edition, otherwise praiseworthy, lacks the strongly persuasive selection of illustrations which are found in the original one. Massimo Biondi, Tavoli e medium: Storia dello spiritismo in Italia (Rome: Gremese, 1988), p. 15. On the investigation and the repercussions of psychic phenomena in Italy, see also the more recent article by Simona Cigliana, ‘Spiritismo e parapsicologia nell’età positivistica’, in Esoterismo, ed. by Gian Mario Cazzaniga, Annali della Storia d’Italia, XXV (Turin: Einaudi, 2010), pp. 521–546. Virginio Appiani, ‘Le strane vicende del capitano Josè Cabral’, La Dome­ nica del Corriere, 10 February 1901, pp. 10–12 (republished in Il gran ballo dei tavolini, pp.  23–30). Enchanted by spiritualism, Appiani published in La Domenica del Corriere another short story on the topic: ‘Il segreto della morta: Racconto’ (20 October 1901, pp.  10–12). Chamaeleon, ‘Gli amori

Drawing-Room Shivers  183

41 42

43 4 4

45

46

47 48

49

50

degli angeli: Racconto straordinario’, La Domenica del Corriere, 28 January 1906, pp. 10–12 (republished in Il gran ballo dei tavolini, pp. 71–80). Appiani, ‘Le strane vicende’, p. 10. On Theosophy see Oppenheim, The Other World, pp.  159–197, but also Bruce F. Campbell, Ancient Wisdom Revived: A History of the Theosophical Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). As to the spread in the so-called Belpaese of the movement founded by Blavatsky and Olcott, one has to refer to the unavoidable article by Marco Pasi, ‘Theosophy and Anthroposophy in Italy during the First Half of the Twentieth Century’, transl. by Joscelyn Godwin, rev. by Marco Pasi, in Theosophical History, 16 (2012), 81–119. See G. Cavalieri, ‘Le curiosità del giorno: Un [sic] intervista col colonnello Olcott’, La Domenica del Corriere, 8 April 1900, p. 3 (available in appendix to Il gran ballo dei tavolini, pp. 94–96). Pietro Crespi, ‘Metempsicosi?: Come e perché divenni erede’, La Domenica del Corriere, 29 October and 5 November 1899, pp. 12, 14 and 10–11 (now in Il gran ballo dei tavolini, pp. 7–22). Speaking of mediumistic phenomena, the question mark calls to mind the one in the title of the much debated pamphlet by Luigi Capuana, Spiritismo? (Catania: Niccolò Giannotta, 1884), of which it is worth considering the reissue ed. by Mario Tropea (Caltanissetta: Lussografica, 1994), and that by Simona Cigliana (within Luigi Capuana, Mondo occulto (Catania: Edizioni del Prisma, 1995), pp. 55–146). See two revealing anonymous advertisements of the then famous Tot digestive tablets, one in form of short story, the other as a collection of anecdotes, respectively: [Anon.], ‘Una seduta spiritica’, La Domenica del Corriere, 19 July 1903, p. 5 (bearing an epigraph from William Crookes), and [Anon.], ‘Trasmissione del pensiero. Allucinazioni. Spiritismo’, La Domenica del Corriere, 7 May 1905, p. 2. See, in this regard, Ross A. Slotten, The Heretic in Darwin’s Court: The Life of Alfred Russell Wallace (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), especially pp. 1–9 and 225–351. For a broader overview of this phenomenon, refer to Oppenheim, The Other World, pp. 267–325. Luigi Capuana, ‘Lettera aperta a Luigi Pirandello: a proposito di un fantasma. Credenti e miscredenti dello spiritismo’, in Mondo occulto, pp. ­239–242 (pp. 239–240). G. [Gugliemo] Bilancioni, ‘La memoria ereditata’, La Domenica del Corriere, 20 April 1902, pp. 3–4; THEO [Teodoro Rovito], ‘I sogni aviti’, La Domenica del Corriere, 1 July 1906, p. 4 (republished in appendix to Il gran ballo dei tavolini, pp.  113–115). A case of ‘rationalised’ and ‘naturalised’ metempsychosis, whose effects are nonetheless uncanny and disquieting, is at the core of a gothic tale by Italo Toscani, ‘La mano di sangue: Da “I racconti straordinari”’, La Domenica del Corriere, 24 June and 1 July 1906, pp.  11–12 and 11–12, republished in Ottocento nero italiano: Narrativa fantastica e crudele, ed. by Claudio Gallo and Fabrizio Foni (Savigliano: Nino Aragno, 2009), pp.  449–463. For a close reading of the latter, vide Fabrizio Foni, Alla fiera dei mostri: Racconti pulp, orrori e arcane fanta­ sticherie nelle riviste italiane 1899–1932 (Latina: Tunué, 2007), pp. 62–75. Carlo Dadone, ‘Chiaroveggenza?: Novella’, La Domenica del Corriere, 5 and 12 October 1902, pp. 10–12 and 11–12; Carlo Dadone, ‘L’invincibile: Racconti incredibili’, La Domenica del Corriere, 17 and 24 August 1902, pp. 10–12 and 10–11. Both texts have been republished in Il gran ballo dei tavolini (respectively pp. 31–46 and 47–58). See, for instance, the already mentioned study by Gallini, La sonnambula meravigliosa.

184  Fabrizio Foni and Irene Incarico 51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58

59

60 61

62 63 64

Dadone, ‘L’invincibile’, 24 August 1902, p. 10. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid., p. 11. Ibid., p. 10. Gallini, La sonnambula meravigliosa, pp. 230–231 of the 1983 edition, or p. 264 of the 2013 one. Monographs, chapters, and articles abound on William Crookes, Florence Cook and Katie King. Here reference is particularly made to Trevor H. Hall, The Spiritualists: The Story of Florence Cook and William Crookes (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1962), whose most recent edition appears to be The Medium and the Scientist: The Story of Florence Cook and William Crookes (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1984); but also see Oppenheim, The Other World, pp. 16–21 and 338–351; Alex Owen, The Darkened Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England, 3rd edn (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 42–74 and 227–233; William H. Brock, William Crookes (1832–1919) and the Commercialization of Science (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 179–194. See Lucio Lugnani, ‘Verità e disordine: il dispositivo dell’oggetto mediatore’, in Remo Ceserani and others, La narrazione fantastica (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1983), pp. 177–288, in particular p. 225. Daniele Oberto Marrama, ‘Il Natale di Hans Boller (Dalle memorie di un pittore)’, La Domenica del Corriere, 25 December 1904, pp.  10–12, recently republished in Daniele Oberto Marrama, Il ritratto del morto: Racconti bizzarri, ed. by Antonella De Nicola (Viterbo: Stampa Alternativa, 2015), pp.  149–163, in which unfortunately there is not even a fleeting mention of the fact that this and other short stories within the collection (originally issued in 1907) had appeared for the first time on the Milanese weekly magazine. Omega [Edoardo Augusto Berta], ‘La pergamena misteriosa: Racconto’, La Domenica del Corriere, 6 December 1903, pp. 10–12 (now available in Il gran ballo dei tavolini, pp. 59–70). Three years later, La Domenica del Corriere would offer its readers one of the many snapshots by Richet of the alleged Brahman, accompanying the anonymous article ‘Nel mondo degli spiriti: La fotografia del fantasma di Bien-Boa’ (11 February 1906, p.  10, also republished in appendix to Il gran ballo dei tavolini, pp. 106–107). Omega, ‘La pergamena misteriosa’, p. 10. Luigi Pirandello, ‘La casa del Granella’, in Novelle per un anno, ed. by Italo Borzi and Maria Argenziano (Rome: Newton & Compton, 1994); ‘Granella’s House’, transl. by Joan Redfern, Lovat Dickson’s Magazine, May 1934, pp. 620–640 (pp. 633 and 634). Although abridged in some passages, it is nonetheless a rather effective translation. On the massive influence exerted by mediumistic phenomena and by theosophical observations on Pirandello’s works and poetics, it is worth mentioning here: Giovanni Macchia, Pirandello o la stanza della tortura (Milan: Mondadori, 1981); Antonio Illiano, Metapsichica e letteratura in Pirandello (Florence: Vallecchi, 1982); Angelo R. Pupino, Pirandello: Maschere e fantasmi (Rome: Salerno, 2000); Federica Adriano, La narrativa tra psicopatologia e paranormale: Da Tarchetti a Pirandello (Pisa: ETS, 2014), pp. 228–315. Pirandello, Il fu Mattia Pascal, pp. 98–99; The Late Mattia Pascal, p. 109. Ibid. Chamaeleon, ‘Gli amori degli angeli’.

9 Subconscious and Oneiric Consciousness in the Late Nineteenth Century (and Beyond) A Focus on Sante De Sanctis’s Studies on Dreams Sara Boezio In 1899, while Freud was completing the Interpretation of Dreams, the Italian psychologist and psychiatrist Sante De Sanctis (1862–1935), the first President of the Italian Society of Psychology and one of the ‘pillars’1 of Italian psychology, published I Sogni. Studi psicologici e clinici di un alienista.2 While positively reviewed internationally in top journals such as the French Revue philosophique,3 and accredited as the best study on dreams in the American and English Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology,4 De Sanctis’s work (translated into German in 1901)5 was judged by Freud a ‘painstaking volume […] totally deficient in ideas’6 and far from his own psychoanalytic intuitions, a criticism which eventually caused a marginalization of De Sanctis’s work on dreams. In the present chapter, I will conduct a reassessment of De Sanctis’s dreams studies, by following upon Pigman’s7 recognition that De Sanctis was the only scholar, before Ellenberger,8 to have challenged Freud’s self-­proclamation of being the first to identify the meaning of dreams and their high potential for psychological research. Through an analysis of De Sanctis’s publications, from the early ones of the 1890s to the ones of the late 1920s, I will explore De Sanctis’s stance in relation to Freud’s self-­positioning as the unique pioneer of dream studies. I will also investigate the relationship of De Sanctis’s work with the research of other psychologists, namely of Janet who played an important role in the scrutiny of the unchartered regions of the subconscious. I will illustrate the distinction that De Sanctis drew of the different levels of consciousness, particularly of the ‘coscienza della veglia’ [waking consciousness] and the ‘coscienza onirica’ [oneiric consciousness], and pinpoint the elements which make his definition of the ‘subscosciente’ [subconscious] differ from Freud’s notion of subconscious and unconscious.9 Finally, by building upon Lombardo and Foschi’s reflection,10 I will show how De Sanctis can be considered as having managed to flee the ‘dark forest’, in which Freud had grouped all his predecessors in the field of dream studies, and as having provided an original and innovative contribution to dream psychology.

186  Sara Boezio

Introduction: Dreams as ‘The Most Faithful Mirror of Ourselves’ One of the founding fathers of Italian psychology, De Sanctis was known well beyond the national borders. He was the Italian psychologist who obtained the most credit on an international platform, also if compared to other well-established Italian primary figures in the field.11 His works, published in international journals,12 were endorsed abroad by eminent philosophers, physicians, and psychologists, such as Ebbinghaus, Janet, James, Külpe, Wundt, Kraepelin – who praised the wide range of domains covered by De Sanctis’s research – and Claparède – who described De Sanctis’s I Sogni as ‘a classic’. Even almost a decade after its publication, I Sogni was cited by major scholars, like Carl Gustav Jung.13 I Sogni. Studi psicologici e clinici di un alienista had started to draw attention to De Sanctis’s research as soon as it came out in 1899. In France, the volume was promptly reviewed in the Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, a journal that was as a reference point in the field, by the editor-in-chief in person, the psychologist Théodule Ribot, who judged the book to be ‘certainement le plus complet qui existe’ [certainly the most complete] on the subject.14 In 1901, the volume was regarded as ‘possibly the best general work’ about dreams15 by the influential voices of American philosopher and psychologist James Mark Baldwin and English philosopher and psychologist George Frederick Stout, who assessed the state of the art of dream studies in the entry ‘Dream’ of the Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. In the same year, I Sogni appeared in German in a translation introduced by the leading neurologist and psychiatrist Paul J. Möbius who applauded the Italian author for having studied dreams ‘mit edlem Eifer und staunenswerther Ausdauer’ [with noble zeal and astonishing endurance]16 and trusted that these qualities would earn De Sanctis’s volume ‘die freundliche Theilnahme’ [the welcoming consideration]17 which Möbius deemed that it rightly deserved. According to Möbius, De Sanctis was among the first to have realized the disruptive impact that dream studies could have on clinical research and to have prompted the awareness that dream life could serve as a diagnostic tool for researching mental states. Ribot’s endorsement, Baldwin and Stout’s enthusiastic remarks, and Möbius’s appreciative comments show that at the beginning of the twentieth century I Sogni circulated widely and gained De Sanctis the status of a forerunner of dream studies, and of a pioneer in the field of the ‘onirologia scientifica’ [scientific oneirology].18 When embarking on this venture, De Sanctis merged his two-fold experience in the domains of psychology and psychopathology, as he had already previously done in his 1896 dissertation I sogni e il sonno nell’iste­rismo e nell’epilessia.19 This volume proved to be decisive for the development of Italian psychopathology and represented the very first

Sante De Sanctis’s Dream Studies  187 Italian experimental monograph on the subject. 20 Similarly to what will happen for I Sogni three years later, I sogni e il sonno received international praise. French scholars, who were considered the champions in the field of psychopathology, estimated that the volume would mark ‘un bon et solide jalon, dont il sera, par la suite, malaisé de se passer’ [a good and solid landmark that would be difficult to forgo in the future]. 21 Even Freud commented positively on De Sanctis’s psychopathological research: namely in the section of the literature review of his Die Traumdeutung devoted to ‘The relations between dreams and mental diseases’. 22 De Sanctis placed great confidence in the therapeutical potentiality of dreams and strongly advocated for a dream-based psychotherapy. In 1897, during the International Congress of Neurology and Psychiatry held in Brussels, he stated: ‘je crois que la psychothérapie par le rêve est appellée, dans un avenir rapproché, à de brillants succès’ [I believe that dream psychotherapy is going to achieve brilliant success in the near future]. 23 Together with his long-standing scrutiny of dreams in pathological cases, he also cultivated an interest for the dreams of healthy subjects as he deemed that dreams could be considered the expression not only of ‘eccezionali’ psychological states (whereby ‘exceptional’ he meant connected to pathological conditions), but also of ‘stati psichici comuni’ [common psychic states]. 24 In his 1898 article ‘I sogni dei neuropatici e dei pazzi’, he argued that although it was undeniable that a great amount of research, including his own, had shown that believing in dreams was a typical feature of paranoid behaviour, this did not imply that whoever somehow trusted the emotions deriving from one’s dreams should be considered paranoid. He indeed found enough evidence to claim that dreams play a crucial role in the life of normal subjects as well. He also ascertained that ‘i sogni sono rivelatori degli stati psichici più intimi e più impenetrabili di un individuo’ [dreams can reveal the innermost and most impenetrable psychological states of an individual] and that they are ‘veri fattori di stati psichici’ [true agents of psychic states], 25 thus elements conditioning and influencing the mood, the emotions and the development of the individual-self. De Sanctis had disclosed his stance with regard to the influence of dream processes on the individual-self already a few years earlier, in 1896, when he had expressed his agreement with Fichte who had argued that while the objective world was the creation of the Absolute I, the dream world was the creation of the Individual I. 26 In 1899, De Sanctis reinforced this position, thus by placing himself in the wake of Kant and Henry Maudsley, when arguing that ‘la vita del sogno è una storia individuale’27 [the dream life is an individual story] since everyone enters his own individual world while dreaming, as he had highlighted three years earlier. 28 He also followed the line of thought prompted by Maury, according to whom during the oneiric activity ‘l’homme se révèle

188  Sara Boezio tout entier à lui-même dans sa nudité et sa misère natives’ [man is faced with their whole selves laid bare in their native nudity and misery]. 29 De Sanctis was persuaded that ‘la vita del sogno […] è rivelatrice’ [dream life […] is revealing]30 and that dreams are ‘lo specchio più fedele di noi stessi’ [the most faithful mirror of ourselves].31 Thus, the dream activity could be considered a valid investigative tool for individual psychology, although it had never been considered as such before.32 He considered dreams not a haphazard association of images or an incoherent and unsystematic ensemble, while lamenting that a number of scientists considered them as such, but a psychophysiological by-product determined by a combination of factors producing, as a ‘resultante necessaria’, 33 dreams that are specific to each individual and that find different expressions depending on the different layers of consciousness.

Subconscious States and ‘Oneiric Consciousness’ De Sanctis admitted the existence of ‘une infinité de degrés de conscience’ [an infinity of consciousness degrees],34 differing from each other depending on the high or low level of self-awareness with which individuals perceive them. He encouraged psychologists to investigate not only the states of consciousness ‘complets et clairs’ [complete and distinct] but also the ‘partiels et crépusculaires, c’est-à-dire des états subcoscients’ [partial and crepuscular, that is to say some subconscious states].35 De Sanctis was one of the heralds of experimental psychology, but regarding this specific idea he differed from Wilhelm Wundt, the father of the discipline. According to Wundt, only the phenomena completely accessible to one’s introspection had to be scrutinized. On the contrary, De Sanctis was persuaded that also the phenomena ‘que nous pouvons supposer […] être accompagnés d’un degré quelconque de conscience’ [that we can suppose […] to be accompanied by some degree of consciousness]36 were deserving of scientific analysis; he, indeed, considered that both aspects (the most and the apparently less intelligible ones) of the self were worth inspecting and called for a thorough examination of the conscience which would not leave any aspect of the individual-self uncharted. De Sanctis had started to closely study subconscious states since his 1899 volume on dreams. There, he examined the visual and auditory sensations which, he pointed out, occur in everyone’s pre-hypnic phase, but of which most people are unaware. He noticed that many of the physical sensations and feelings that usually, when one is awake, lie beneath the level of consciousness, manifest themselves vividly in dreams. This is because when we are awake, he explained, most sensations stay almost unperceived and only the strongest ones stand out and get noticed, namely, the most painful and the most pleasant ones. During the oneiric phase, on the contrary, all the other inner sensations manifest themselves with a similar vigour, thus ceasing to be sub the level of consciousness.37

Sante De Sanctis’s Dream Studies  189 When commenting on subconsciousness, De Sanctis refers to a ‘nota dottrina del sub-cosciente’38 [well-known doctrine of the subconscious] and stresses the difference between the subconscious and the ‘physiological unconscious’ as described by modern psychologists, on the one hand, and ‘l’Incosciente di Hartmann e di molti psichicisti dei nostri giorni’ [the Unconscious by Hartman and many other psychicists of nowadays], 39 on the other hand. Although in this passage he does not openly mention any modern psychologist in particular, there is a series of hints that let us infer that the ‘well-known theory’ he had in mind, was Pierre Janet’s theory of the ‘subconscient’ [subconscious]. A parallel can, indeed, be drawn between the above-quoted De Sanctis’s words and a passage of Janet’s essay L’automatisme psychologique (1st edn 1889, 2nd edn 1894). In the first chapter ‘Les actes subconscients’ of the second part of L’automatisme psychologique,40 Janet explores the work on unconscious/subconscious states carried out by previous scholars: he refers to Hartmann’s treatise, which he considered ‘grand’ [remarkable] insofar as it provided insightful reflections, and mentions Maine de Biran’s work, whose ideas were very close to Janet’s ones.41 Janet, however, identified a limit of these studies in them being exclusively speculative and not being based on any kind of experiment, an observation that is in line with the difference outlined by De Sanctis between studies like Hartmann’s and the ones by modern psychologists focussing on the ‘physiological unconscious’. Janet also stresses how figures like exorcists had often had the opportunity to observe unconscious manifestations in the people whom they examined, but he also remarks that they had always proved unable to understand the origin of those manifestations, an assertion that appears echoed by De Sanctis’s denigration of the so-called ‘psichicisti dei nostri giorni’ [psychicists of nowadays], a group of which exorcists might be considered part. On the top of these crypto-tangencies with L’automatisme psychologique, De Sanctis’s 1899 volume on dreams is also strewn with multiple open references to Janet’s findings, especially with regard to the ‘idee fisse subcoscienti’ [subconscious fixed ideas] of hysterical patients. This strand of research was of great interest for De Sanctis because Janet had pinpointed in dreams a possible origin of those subconscious fixed ideas, a stance which tallied with De Sanctis’s statements about the importance of oneirology for hysterical studies.42 Janet defined an ‘acte inconscient’ [unconscious act] as ‘une action ayant tous les caractères d’un fait psychologique sauf un, c’est qu’elle est toujours ignorée par la personne même qui l’exécute au moment même où elle l’exécute’ [an action having all the features of a psychological event but one, which is that it is always ignored by the person performing it in the very moment when they perform it].43 Janet’s reflections on the subconscious gained visibility with the publication of his doctoral thesis on psychological automatisms in 1889 – which was saluted

190  Sara Boezio since its first appearance as a ‘classic’ of psychology – 44 although he had previously, namely between 1886 and 1888, already expounded some of the outcomes of his research in several articles appeared in the Revue philosophique.45 Janet asserted to have been the first deviser of the word subconscious. Many historians of psychology have supported this claim against the opinion of some other scholars who, instead, did not want to credit Janet with the creation of this neologism. Ellenberger supported Janet’s claim and affirmed of not having found any use of the word prior to him and explains that Janet coined the term ‘apparently in order to show that he used a psychological approach quite distinct from the metaphysical concept of the unconscious of Von Hartmann, which was so fashionable at that time’.46 Janet’s intent became more intelligible in 1909 during the Sixth International Congress of Psychology, focussed on the subconscious. Here Janet gave one of the opening keynote speeches in which he articulated a clear distinction between the subconscious, that he intended in clinical terms, and the unconscious, that he saw as falling within the philosophical domain, instead.47 Janet had already introduced his theory of the different layers of consciousness in the paper that he presented at the Fifth Congress of Psychology, held in Rome, where De Sanctis could certainly hear it and read it, being the Congress secretary and having later edited himself the conference proceedings. Janet contrasted the idea according to which one’s consciousness stays always the same during short time spans and significant modifications could be registered on a long term only. On the contrary, he believed that continuous changes could take place in one’s consciousness also during short periods of time, for instance within the same day: he describes a process of ‘changement continuel de l’esprit qui se modifie à chaque instant dans sa force, dans son étendue, dans sa perfection, qui monte et qui descend sous mille influences et suivant mille lois que nous soupçonnons à peine’ [continuous change of the spirit that modifies itself at every single moment as for its force, extent, and its perfection, which rises and falls under a thousand influences and by following a thousand laws which we can barely grasp].48 Signs of those ‘lois que nous soupçonnons à peine’ often appear in patients with mental disorders, whereas in normal subjects there are less occasions in which they manifest themselves overtly. These laws do actually operate, however, also in the latter group with the same frequency, and possibly even on a more regular basis. The situations in which they become visible in normal subjects are mainly two: times of mental as well as physical fatigue and when dreaming. Janet does not openly classify dreams as manifestations of the subconscious/unconscious but the description that he provides of the sleep activity leaves no doubt that he saw a strong connection between dreams and subconscious/unconscious states. He noticed that when dreaming an ‘affaiblissement’ [weakening], a sort of ‘rétrécissement du champ de la conscience’ [a shrinkage of the field of

Sante De Sanctis’s Dream Studies  191 consciousness] occurs.49 He considered this phenomenon as the consequence of will and attention giving up their control, and of rational thinking losing its usually predominant decision-power. He observed that in the oneiric activity, there is no resistance or control and dreams respond to subconscious phenomena, such as memory alterations and forms of short retrograde amnesia. When exploring the relationship between memory and dreams, Janet refers to De Sanctis who had studied how the memory of striking events and of the intense emotions connected to them seldom condition the dreams occurring on the same day. De Sanctis had, indeed, found out that before resurfacing in dreams, these memories needed first to undergo a re-elaboration process. Janet agreed with De Sanctis that the more those emotions were relevant to the subject the more they conditioned the oneiric activity and manifested themselves in dreams. Janet stated with emphasis the importance of the study of dreams for psychological research and, similarly to De Sanctis, encouraged the scientific community not to consider sleep and dreams as ‘curiosités bizarres’ [strange oddities]50 but as phenomena helpful in the study of one’s (un) consciousness. In the following years, De Sanctis continued to be in tune with Janet’s research, indeed still a decade later and after the diffusion of psychoanalytic studies, he wrote ‘accettiamo il “subcosciente” […] nel senso di P. Janet’ [we accept the ‘subconscious’ […] in P. Janet’s sense]. 51 De Sanctis’s and Janet’s reflections were brought together by Paul Sollier in the paper that Sollier presented, right after Janet, at the 1905 Psychology Congress in Rome. In his presentation ‘La conscience et ses degrés’, Sollier recalls De Sanctis’s observations on the nature of consciousness52 and acknowledges that ‘tout processus psychologique est en partie au moins inconscient’ [every psychological process is at least partially unconscious].53 He maintains that ‘la subconscience et l’inconscience ne sont pas des termes absolus mais relatifs’ [subconsciousness and unconsciousness are not absolute but relative terms] and sees no barrier between conscious and unconscious54 while supporting the idea that the transition from one to the other is gradual and passes through an infinite number of stages.55 This same notion of a continuous transition from conscious to unconscious states was upheld by De Sanctis. This connection becomes apparent when looking at the distinction that De Sanctis traced between the waking and what he called ‘oneiric’ consciousness, which he firstly introduced in his 1896 article ‘Emozioni e sogni’.56 De Sanctis classified the ‘coscienza della veglia’ [waking consciousness] and the ‘coscienza onirica’ [oneiric consciousness] as two distinct and yet interconnected ‘modalità di funzionamento della coscienza’ [modes of operation of the consciousness]57 and worked hard for discovering the ways in which this interconnection worked. As Pareti has rightfully highlighted, ‘a De Sanctis stava soprattutto a cuore indagare la “fragile passerella” che

192  Sara Boezio riuniva le due coscienze, quella della veglia e quella onirica, le quali pur “così diverse”, sono legate attraverso la memoria’ [De Sanctis cared especially about the investigation of the ‘fragile footbridge’ joining the two consciousnesses, the waking and the oneiric one, which despite being ‘so different’, are linked by means of memory].58 In his 1899 volume, De Sanctis maintained that when talking of an ‘oneiric consciousness’ he did not mean the complete formation of a new personality during sleep. He just aimed to point out that il contenuto cosciente della veglia è diverso dal contenuto cosciente del sogno […] e siccome […] contenuto di coscienza equivale a coscienza (quantunque non sia esatto […]), così non esito punto a parlare […] di una coscienza onirica in opposizione alla coscienza della veglia. [the conscious content of the wake is different from the conscious content of dreams […] and since […] the content of consciousness is equivalent to consciousness itself (despite this not being entirely accurate […]), hence I do not hesitate at all to speak […] of an oneiric consciousness in opposition to a waking consciousness]59 By supporting this thesis, De Sanctis opposed other scholars, such as Giovanni Dandolo who voiced his position on the subject in his volume La coscienza nel sonno (1889). Dandolo contrasted the idea that any form of consciousness could be active when sleeping and in Chapter 5 of his book, focussing specifically on ‘La coscienza e il sogno’, he suggested that consciousness stays inalterable, also during the oneiric activity. He encouraged his readers to try and debunk the content of a dream by forcing it within the limits of ordinary thinking. As a consequence, Dandolo told his readers, ‘vedrete quei fantasmi, quelle larve, quelle immagini tutte sparire o correggersi […] mentre la vostra coscienza, tolto via quel contenuto che l’aveva dinanzi occupata, rimane la stessa’ [you will see all those phantoms, those ghosts, those images disappear or adjust themselves […] while your consciousness, when the content that had previously occupied it is removed, stays the same].60 De Sanctis does not contradict Dandolo by denying the unity of consciousness. His criticism is subtler. In his view, it is precisely that group of manifestations that Dandolo considers like ‘fantasmi’ [phantoms] and ‘larve’ [ghosts] not deserving attention, which constitute a different environment, unique in its own terms and yet connected to the daily consciousness. The ­individual-self adapts to this environment without even realizing it: ‘un ambiente nuovo speciale, al quale la personalità del dormiente si adatta, senza accorgersi, […] nè [sic] della novità dell’ambiente, nè del suo adattamento’ [a new special environment, to which the personality of the sleeper adapts itself, without noticing […] neither the novelty of the environment nor its adjustment].61

Sante De Sanctis’s Dream Studies  193 A few years later, De Sanctis articulated his definition of oneiric and waking consciousness in greater detail, in light of the findings of his further research and of the psychoanalytic studies that had meanwhile developed and spread throughout Europe. In 1928, he devoted an entire paper to the exploration of the oneiric consciousness. ‘La “scena” del sogno’ [the dream ‘scene’], De Sanctis wrote by speaking in Fechner’s words, or ‘il “luogo psichico”’ [the ‘psychic locus’], better said in Freudian terms, is different from that of the waking life because ‘nei sogni si affacciano ricordi pei quali la coscienza della veglia è impervia’ [in dreams memories occur for which the waking consciousness is unattainable].62 By outlining this distinction, De Sanctis did not imply, though, that he deemed the two consciousness as disjointed, as we have already had the chance to see. He did recognize that there are times when the oneiric consciousness crosses over to the waking one and manifests itself in ecstatic experiences, heroic acts, and aesthetic moments.63 He maintained that between the dreaming and the waking matters there is a ‘flusso e riflusso’ [flux and reflux], a ‘vicenda continua, la quale dimostra il mutuo compenetrarsi delle due coscienze’ [a continuous correlation, which testifies the mutual permeation of the two consciousnesses] and he also claimed that everyday life is full of dreams ‘come il sogno è pieno di realtà’ [as well as dream is full of reality].64 He also found out that the oneiric consciousness could condition the ‘diurnal stimuli’ within a certain ‘latency time’.65 Moreover, he argued that the dream activity elaborates on feelings and sensations that are not always intelligible to the waking consciousness and that the emotional states that we undergo when awake are often experienced in an ‘allotropic’ way when dreaming, meaning that they might acquire a different value.66 He concluded that the oneiric consciousness is an allotropic state of the waking consciousness.67 De Sanctis borrowed the concept of allotropism from Janet (although in this essay he does not acknowledge it), as he had previously done in 1916, when he had defined the ‘coscienza del sogno’ [dreaming consciousness] as a ‘stato allotropico della coscienza vigile’ [allotropic state of the waking consciousness]68 determined by the absence in dreams of the constraints conditioning the waking life. According to De Sanctis, the trait d’union between the waking and the oneiric self was to be found in emotions, which had been on the top of his research agenda since the beginning of his career in the late 1890s. The results of this investigation appeared in the above-mentioned 1896 article ‘Emozioni e sogni’ focussing on the relationship between the emotional content of the waking life and that of the oneiric life, which he saw as reciprocally influencing each other. His answer to the question of whether emotions produced in dreams have repercussions on the waking life was definitely positive. He set forth two hypotheses of interaction by suggesting that the connection between the two was determined via the ‘emozione onirica protratta’ [protracted oneiric emotion] and the

194  Sara Boezio ‘emozione postonirica o di ricordo’ [post-oneiric or remembrance emotion].69 To study the opposite phenomenon, that is the influence of the emotions experienced when awake on the emotions guiding the dream activity, De Sanctis relied not only on the memory of the individual under observation, whom he enquired by means of questionnaires, but also on a direct observation of the subjects when asleep, a method that he considered particularly productive as he realized that the emotions ruling the oneiric life are often accompanied by physical changes that come into view more evidently during sleep, when the ‘corrective’ action of the senses does not operate.70 Three years later, he expanded on this article about emotions and dreams which he included in his 1899 volume I Sogni, where he also explored the method of the ‘eccitazioni emozionali’ [emotional stimulations] consisting in monitoring the sleep activity of an individual in whom unpleasant emotions had been induced just before or during sleep. As a result, he discovered that those emotions widely reverberated in dreams in many different forms.71 These outcomes confirmed De Sanctis into the idea of a continuity between the waking and the oneiric life, a finding in line with the theories of his colleagues, in particular of American psychologist Mary Whiton Calkins, who had found out that in more than eighty percent of cases the content of dreams could be reconnected to elements deriving from the waking experience. In 1916, De Sanctis built precisely on Calkins’s work when researching the structure and the dynamics of the oneiric activity. He ascertained that Calkins’s statistic could rise to ninety percent when considering the experiences had by a subject not only on the day of the dream but also in the prior twenty or thirty days, a discovery which made De Sanctis conclude that dreams are the waking experience with ‘trasformazioni e spostamenti’ [transformations and displacements].72 This concept of ‘spostamento’ [displacement] appears to be linked to another process involving emotions: the ‘transfert’. In his 1899 volume, De Sanctis explained that he borrowed this term from James Sully, who coined it to designate the phenomenon occurring when the feelings targeted to a subject/object are transferred to a different subject/object while keeping the same distinctive features and intensity. De Sanctis wrote: ‘il fatto del transfert che per me è indubbio, dimostra che nel sogno può verificarsi una dissociazione tra la rappresentazione e la emozione che nella veglia è ad essa legata’ [The occurrence of the transfert, which for me is beyond any doubt, shows that in dreams a dissociation between the representation and the corresponding emotion linked to it during the wake can take place].73 According to De Sanctis, this ‘potere dissociante del sogno’ [dissociating power of dreams] was deserving of the greatest interest.74 He considered this shift from the oneiric to the waking consciousness fairly frequent, namely during ‘stati emozionali od allucinatori onirici protratti’ [protracted emotional or hallucinatory oneiric states] or ‘post-onirici’ [post-oneiric], as well as in ‘stati transitori di

Sante De Sanctis’s Dream Studies  195 credenza onirica’ [transitional states of oneiric belief].75 De Sanctis provided several examples of ‘transfert’ occurring in dreams. He mentioned the case of a man who, the night after having being chased by a bull, dreamt of being chased and attacked by a group of bandits. De Sanctis observed that the same feeling of fear experienced by the subject in real life had also manifested itself in the dream, although via an alternative image. He also described the dream had by one of his friends who, at the end of a day of big financial trouble, dreamt of being infested by lice of which he tried to get rid. When making remarks on these dreams, De Sanctis pointed out that the lice were substitutes, or better said a ‘transfert’, for the creditors from whom his friend wanted to escape.76 Appicciafuoco has claimed that these examples present ‘accenni di schietto sapore freudiano, tali da poter dichiarare il De Sanctis precursore della psicanalisi’ [hints of distinctly Freudian style, that allow one to consider De Sanctis a precursor of psychoanalysis],77 an idea which he emphasized further by adding references to other dreams recounted in I Sogni in commenting whose formation De Sanctis placed a particular emphasis on the role played by childhood experiences, not differently from what Freud will later do.78 In 1914, De Sanctis reconnected the concept of ‘spostamento’ [displacement] to that of ‘cambiamento dei valori’ [change of values], by speaking in psychoanalytic terms.79 He verified that the ‘transfert’ was a shift that could occur in different forms. For instance, he discovered some cases of physical pain being perceived in a dream as moral discomfort. The same happened reversely with joy: when he was interacting with subjects in their oneiric phase, he remarked that a physical sensation of pleasure felt by the subject (when, for example, the researcher brought close to the sleeper’s nostrils an agreeable fragrance) was leading to a pleasant dream. In this case, the positive feeling transmigrated from the physical to the moral level. De Sanctis ascribed this displacement to a form of dissociation between the emotion experienced when awake and its oneiric representation. He made the claim that similarly to how we consider the waking life impinging upon the dream life, we can deem the opposite influence as equally strong and thus, we should consider ‘il contenuto rappresentativo abituale dei sogni’ [the habitual representative content of dreams] as ‘rivelatore delle tendenze e delle idee dominanti del sognatore’ [revealing of the tendencies and of the dominant ideas of the dreamer].80 He contrasted the psychologists who considered self-awareness ceasing to be active in sleepers. On the contrary, he believed that the oneiric consciousness could have ‘determinazioni volontarie e perfino logica […] percezioni esatte e chiare, riconoscimenti, distinzioni’ [a voluntary determination and even a logic […] a precise and clear perception, recognition, and distinction].81 In this respect, he recalled several cases mentioned in the literature and situations that he had himself studied showing that the same ‘attività sintetica’ [synthetical

196  Sara Boezio activity],82 which develops while awake, takes place also during sleep. The difference lies in the fact that the cerebral conditions of sleeping prevent and limit the intervention of the sensorial processes typical of the conscious activity. As a consequence, ‘i contenuti subcoscienti acquistano tale vivezza da trasformare e magari assorbire la debole realtà attuale’ [the subconscious contents acquire such a vividness that they transform and even absorb the weak current reality] and ‘i sentimenti, le tendenze, le abitudini, gli istinti repressi risorgono ed operano nel sogno’ [the feelings, the tendencies, the habits, the repressed instincts re-emerge and operate in dreams].83 De Sanctis concluded that dreams do not create new states, but, by partially altering the usual working of psychical operations, allow for subconscious states to emerge and for ‘lo svolgersi di associazioni automatiche, l’affermarsi […] delle tendenze e dei complessi, il cambiamento delle valutazioni, la credenza nell’assurdo’ [the development of automatic associations, the establishment of tendencies and complexes, the change of values, the belief in the absurd].84 This 1916 study, with its emphasis on the ‘contenuti subcoscienti’ [subconscious contents] and on the ‘istinti repressi’ [repressed instincts], shows clear traces of psychoanalytic readings, on which De Sanctis had started to comment two years earlier, as we will now see.

De Sanctis’s Assessment of the Psychoanalytic Influence on Scientific Oneirology De Sanctis openly voiced his opinion on Freud in two articles published in 1914.85 In the former, ‘L’interpretazione dei sogni’, he admitted the boost given by the Viennese School to oneirology studies but he also referred to his own volume I Sogni and emphasized its year of publication. He, indeed, aimed to foreground the precedence of his book over Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams.86 The stress on this point was an indirect response to the postscript of the 1909 edition of Die Traumdeutung, where Freud had written: The extensive monograph on dreams by Sante de Sanctis (1899), of which a German translation appeared soon after its issue, was published almost simultaneously with my Interpretation of Dreams, so that neither I nor the Italian author was able to comment upon each other’s work.87 De Sanctis expressed disappointment towards this statement and Freud’s self-fashioning as the only pioneer of dream studies. He stated, ‘Freud ritiene di essere stato lui il paladino che ha rivendicato la “logicità” del sogno di fronte alla credenza […] degli scienziati che ritenevano […] il sogno fenomeno inesplicabile, perché fatto di urti casuali di “rappresentazioni”’ [Freud has set himself up as the only champion who has

Sante De Sanctis’s Dream Studies  197 asserted the ‘logicality’ of dreams vis-à-vis the belief […] of scientists who deemed […] dreams to be inexplicable phenomena, being made of random clashes of ‘representations’].88 De Sanctis did not consider this self-positioning as accurate because many scientists before Freud (‘fra cui io stesso prima di lui’ [among whom myself before him] – he emphasized) had acknowledged ‘la “serietà” dei fenomeni onirici, la loro possibile spiegazione in rapporto alle condizioni del sognatore’ [the ‘seriousness’ of oneiric phenomena, their possible explanation in relation to the dreamer’s conditions].89 De Sanctis thought that scholars such as Wilhelm Stekel, one of earliest supporters of psychoanalysis, had overrated Freud’s role when describing Freud as the first to have attempted dream interpretation.90 He also disagreed with the centrality attached to sexuality, as he trusted that other physiological factors were influencing dreams. He mentioned Freud’s analysis of Leonardo da Vinci’s dream of flying which, according to the psychoanalytic interpretation, concealed an unconfessed sexual desire. To oppose this exegesis, De Sanctis recounted three of his own dreams in which he dreamt to be flying and that he commented by stating: ‘posso dire (beninteso, con quel grado di sicurezza che può avere l’autopsicoanalisi) che essi [sogni] si riferivano a condizioni organiche con esclusione della sfera genitale’ [I can say (of course, with that degree of certainty that auto-psychoanalysis can allow for) that they [the dreams] referred to organic conditions with the exclusion of the genital domain].91 He concluded that psychoanalysts often ran the risk of interpreting dreams assuming a perfect correspondence between a certain dream scenario and a specific meaning. He esteemed this correspondence as not scientifically provable and upheld that the meaning of a dream was not determined by a situation or a symbol per se, but by a number of circumstances concerning mainly three aspects: the ‘fundamental state’ of the dreamer (past experiences, habits, level of intelligence, aspirations, passions); the ‘momentaneous state’ (state of health, the most recent thoughts had and the most recent actions performed before going to sleep), and the ‘immediate experience’ (organs’ conditions and the extrinsic stimuli affecting the dreamer when sleeping).92 He maintained that understanding a dream could be possible only within a research framework accounting for all these factors. The careful scientific assessment of both physical and psychological elements represents a strength of De Sanctis’s research method informed by a holistic phenomenological approach which appears to be lacking in some psychoanalytic applications. It is precisely with this methodological concern in mind that De Sanctis wrote his second essay devoted to psychoanalysis, ‘La psico-analisi e il suo valore come metodo dell’onirologia scientifica’. He recounted to have tried out psychoanalysis both on normal subjects and on psychasthenics for therapeutic purposes and found that it was a productive practice but he also conceded that it was comparable to other methods. Moreover, he

198  Sara Boezio questioned the shift psychoanalysis undertook from method to doctrine. The most doctrinal aspect of Freudism that De Sanctis criticized was teleologism, as he found that most psychoanalytic theories were nurtured by the assumption that ‘tutto accade nel sogno […] secondo un fine prestabilito e ben noto al medico (filosofo, beninteso)’ [in dreams […] everything happens according to a pre-established goal well-known to the physician (a philosopher, of course)].93 According to De Sanctis, teleologism surfaced on several occasions. First, during a typical psychoanalytic session, especially in cases of meetings taking place long after the dream that was going to be analysed had occurred. In this circumstance, chances were that the dreaming subject could not recall all dreams in detail but ended up by creating elements just to respond to the psychoanalyst’s questions. As a consequence, psychoanalysts might find themselves in the situation of not uncovering but, through their questions, co-creating the answers of a patient. A second manifestation of teleologism could be traced in some psychoanalysts’ questions stemming from the assumption that in dreams the influence of an emotion related to a childhood memory was to be found. Finally, a third finalist perspective could be identified in catharsis and censorship, two fundamental concepts of Freudism, which, despite being considered by many at that time as new acquisitions of psychoanalysis, had in fact a long-lived philosophical pedigree. Moreover, De Sanctis underlined that even the founding theory of psychoanalytic studies (known as ‘Wunscherfüllung’ [wish fulfilment]), which many saluted as a ground-breaking discovery, had in fact been known long before Freud and appeared in previous studies, such as Cardano’s sixteenth century Somniorum synesiorum omnis generis insomnia explicantes libri IV. Another idea that De Sanctis considered to have been elaborated prior to Freud concerned the notion of dreams being oriented towards an aim. He had indeed discovered that a dreaming subject is guided towards a ‘mèta’ [goal]94 by a ‘forza motrice’ [driving force], also defined as ‘forza dirigente’ [directing force].95 According to De Sanctis, the expression of this driving force was to be found in the oneiric consciousness, which he described as operating through a process of ‘revivescenza di ricordi’ [reviviscence of memories] and of ‘irruzione di contenuti subcoscienti’ [irruption of subconscious contents].96 While Freud believed that this was the case for all dreams, De Sanctis realized that there were many exceptions. After a series of tests, he had indeed reached the conclusion that dreams can also been self-induced. This realization strengthened his persuasion that the relationship between the waking and the oneiric consciousness could be framed in constructivist terms, a perspective which marked a profound difference with psychoanalytic theories, as highlighted by Foschi and Lombardo.97 Other differences between De Sanctis’s and Freud’s viewpoints emerge when looking at their respective reflections on the unconscious. De

Sante De Sanctis’s Dream Studies  199 Sanctis delved in depth into this subject in 1929, in the first book of his two-volume psychology treatise Psicologia sperimentale. He devoted the fourth chapter specifically to the psychophysiology of consciousness and to unconscious- and subconscious-related issues.98 In the section ‘Subcoscienza e Incosciente’, he recalls Leibniz’s theory about the unconscious perceptions, Wundt’s work on the ‘unconscious reasoning’, James’s concept of ‘psychic fringe’, Ribot’s ‘unconscious feeling’, and Stout’s ‘implicit apprehensions’, and concludes that it is undeniable that ‘al di fuori delle situazioni di coscienza esistono […] situazioni oscure o latenti; come: istinti, tendenze, tracce di esperienze ereditarie e personali, di cose sommerse e rimosse automaticamente, o per decisa volontà già represse’ [beyond situations of consciousness, there are […] obscure and latent situations; such as: instincts, tendencies, traces of inherited and personal experiences, of things submerged and repressed automatically, or already suppressed by express wish].99 Despite talking in psychoanalytic-sounding terms of ‘latent’ and ‘repressed’ experiences, De Sanctis’s employment of the terms ‘unconscious’ and ‘subconscious’ differed from Freud’s use. By ‘incosciente (Unbewusst, Unconscious)’, De Sanctis referred to ‘quei fatti o fenomeni che […] non potranno mai cadere sotto il raggio luminoso della coscienza’ [those facts or phenomena that […] will never fall within the bright light of consciousness]100 because, according to him, ‘l’incosciente propriamente detto è l’insieme dei fenomeni biologici che non hanno attitudine a divenir parte delle situazioni coscienti’ [the unconscious, properly speaking, is the set of biological phenomena that are not apt to become part of conscious si­ tuations],101 despite these biological phenomena being the organic base for conscious feelings. Cimino has pointed out that in the unconscious as described by De Sanctis ‘semmai, è possible trovare l’eco dell’idea freudiana di una parte istintuale […] della psiche, un’assonanza con la nozione di Es’ [maybe it is possible to find an echo of the Freudian idea of an instinctual […] part of the psyche, an assonance with the notion of Es],102 and a hint of what will be later defined by Jung as ‘collective unconscious’. To the term ‘inconscio’, De Sanctis preferred the word ‘subcosciente’ [subconscious], which he defined as a ‘massa disposizionale attiva’ [active dispositional matter]103 made of multiple layers or dispositions that could be ‘actualized’, that is, become conscious. He traced a parallel between this idea of subconscious and the psychoanalytic concept of ‘Vorbewusste’ [‘preconscious’] (which Freud used to identify precisely the unconscious representations that can become conscious). De Sanctis affirmed that, framed within this context and broadly intended, the term ‘unconscious’ could refer to the ‘incosciente ereditario e fetale preformato’ [the unconscious that is inherited and preformed [at birth]], to the ‘inconscio della prima e seconda infanzia, della puerizia, dell’adolescenza’ [the unconscious of the first and second infancy, childhood,

200  Sara Boezio and adolescence], and to the unconscious ‘di formazione recente o attuale’ [of recent or current formation].104 He deemed that the transition of cognitive and affective experiences from the non-conscious to the conscious level occurred via attention, which he considered as a ‘potente strumento della coscienza’ [powerful instrument of the consciousness].105 He pinpointed a distinction between ‘fields of attention’ and ‘fields of conscience’, based on ‘interests’ working as a ‘forza motrice per la formazione incessante dei campi di coscienza’ [driving force for the unceasing formation of the fields of consciousness].106 He identified two kinds of attention: a passive attention and an active attention; the former occurring in case interests emerging in an automatic way; the latter, when one manifested a certain awareness of one’s interests. Active as well passive attention could generate fields of consciousness.107 According to De Sanctis, the subconscious content could be ‘systematized’ and come to the light of consciousness in cases of mental disorders as well as when dreaming; in this respect, he specified, ‘il sistematizzarsi del subcosciente vuol dire il suo realizzarsi durevolmente in campi di coscienza ridotta tanto da formarsi un io empirico abbastanza coerente che in paragone dell’Io ordinario, cioè della coscienza vigile, può essere detto io-empirico secondario’ [the systematization of the subconscious entails its durable actualization in fields of reduced consciousness so much as to determine the formation of an empirical-self coherent enough that, if compared to the ordinary Self, that is to say to the waking consciousness, it can be called secondary empirical-self].108 De Sanctis drew these conclusions about the subconscious from his own studies on dreams and on clinical cases. This makes clear how much he was working on topics falling within a domain that was considered as an area of almost exclusive expertise of psychoanalysis, which was, however, regarded with suspect in Italy at that time.109 In this respect, it must be pointed out that De Sanctis was a sympathizer of psychoanalysis despite the negative judgement about his work expressed in the postscript of the 1909 edition of the Die Traumdeutung, where Freud wrote: I have unfortunately been unable to escape the conclusion that his [De Sanctis’s] painstaking volume is totally deficient in ideas – so much so, in fact, that it would not even lead one to suspect the existence of the problems with which I have dealt.110 This harsh criticism certainly weighed negatively on De Sanctis’s research on dreams. Later scholars have analysed Freud’s comments by emphasizing that, technically, they can also be seen as somehow conveying an appraisal of De Sanctis’s work or rather, I would say, Freud’s observations emphasize elements of De Sanctis’s research approach which were actually methodological strengths and not weaknesses.

Sante De Sanctis’s Dream Studies  201 Indeed, ‘painstaking’ can mean ‘punctilious’ with a negative nuance but also stand for ‘scrupulous’ and ‘diligent’, a meaning which, as Cimino has stressed,111 would reflect De Sanctis’s working style. Actually, Freud himself in 1900 had recommended reading De Sanctis’s work to those who had a particular interest in the literature about dreams, precisely because of De Sanctis’s renowned meticulousness in providing detailed accounts.112 In addition, if one interprets ‘totally deficient in ideas’ as meaning ‘lacking in audacious hypotheses’, then, even such a comment can be seen as describing one of De Sanctis’s methodological strengths as he was indeed extremely careful in putting forth theses and suppositions, unless they were supported by abundant experimental evidence. Freud’s criticism of De Sanctis’s work never led De Sanctis to condemn psychoanalysis as a whole nor prevented him from trying out psychoanalytical techniques, whose application he described in the article I metodi onirologici.113 In this essay, he praised psychoanalysis for accomplishing a valuable undertaking: connecting incomplete and scattered ‘representational groups’ and forming a ‘synthesis’ of a dreamer’s consciousness. He praised psychoanalysts for taking on the difficult task of attempting to identify the components, hidden in a dreamer’s subconscious, that could represent the key decoding ‘intermediaries’ to interpret dreams. For his interest in psychoanalytic studies, De Sanctis has been considered ‘il più sereno dei cattedratici italiani nei confronti della psicoanalisi’ [the serenest of the Italian professors engaging in psychoanalysis].114 In 1906, he personally met Freud, with whom he had been corresponding, as Marhaba has recalled.115 He was also one of the first Italian psychologists to actually practise psychoanalysis and he has been included by Michel David among the four ‘pioneers’ of Italian Freudism, together with Luigi Baroncini, Gustavo Modena, and Roberto Greco Assagioli.116 Those scholars were the first ones to divulge psychoanalytic theories in Italy and they led the first phase of Italian Freudism running from 1908 (the year of publication of the first two articles written in Italy about Freud, authored by Baroncini and Modena, respectively) to the outburst of the First World War.117 In the 1910s, when De Sanctis resumed his studies on dreams after a pause of almost a decade, he could not help acknowledging that psychoanalysis had changed dream psychology ‘by overshadowing any other possible alternative approach’.118 Later on, he re-emphasized the same idea by stressing that all modern psychopathological studies were imbued with Freudism, even those by scholars contrasting Freud.119 De Sanctis was also one of the first in Italy to acknowledge the disruptive power of the psychoanalytic investigation and to favour a connection between psychoanalysis and experimental psychology.120 He aimed to link the psychoanalytic approach with the psychiatric and psychophysiological research on sleep and dreams, thus

202  Sara Boezio setting up a ‘dialectical relationship’ between the two121 and, in a recent reassessment, he has even been recognized as a precursor of some modern currents in neuropsychoanalysis122 geared to recontextualize Die Traumdeutung in the contemporary psychophysiological research. De Sanctis was also involved in the publication of Psiche. Rivista di Studi psicologici of which he became co-director together with Enrico Morselli and Guido Villa. The journal showed a notable interest for the development of the psychoanalytic movement to which was entirely devoted the second issue, featuring a Morselli’s piece on the ‘free associations’ method, the translation of a Freud’s essay, and an Assagioli’s article on the subconscious.123 The latter reconnects with the booklet Il subcosciente (1911),124 published a year earlier, where Assagioli had illustrated the various existing standpoints on the matter which are particularly noteworthy for reconstructing an archaeology of the unconscious before Freud. The interest for the non-conscious was, indeed, considerable in the Italian philosophical and psychological circles, as the works by Ardigò, Marchesini, De Sarlo, Fanciulli, Sergi, Renda, Ferrari, Patini, Ghillini, Aliotta, and Del Torto show.125 Aliotta and Del Torto, in particular, presented their research in 1905 at the Fifth Congress of Psychology where De Sanctis could have most probably heard them.126 By that time, De Sanctis had already been experimenting different research methodologies for some years and he was known for having integrated different methods in an eclectic way. Thanks to this integration, he broadened – and was the only Italian scholar to do so127 – the Wundtian paradigm of experimental psychology. In I Sogni, he motivated his pluralistic choice by explaining that combining different research methods was crucial for obtaining more rigorous conclusions. He had offered a methodological reflection already in his 1896 dissertation,128 where he had commented on the subjective – also defined ‘introspective direct’ – method first applied by Hervey de Saint-Denys (Les rêves et les moyens de les diriger, 1867) and Maury (Le sommeil et les rêves, 1861, 1878 revised edition). As Ellenberger noticed, De Sanctis detected a remarkable risk attached to such a method: he had realized that the high expectation on the part of the experimenter applying it ‘to have certain dreams sufficed to create in the dreamer dreams fit to confirm the theory of the dreamer-experimenter’.129 The concept of ‘dreamer-­ experimenter’ has been developed further by Carroy who has divided the dream specialists of the late nineteenth century into two groups: the ‘dreaming scientists’ and the ‘scientific dreamers’.130 In the first group, Carroy has included Maury, Maine de Biran, Théodore Jouffroy, and Freud. De Sanctis was interested in Maine de Biran’s and Jouffroy’s works, especially with regard to whether the faculties of attention and will would cease to be active during sleep. De Sanctis was interested by such a question, in particular he was intrigued by how attention worked, a subject which he had been studying for years.131 The idea that attention

Sante De Sanctis’s Dream Studies  203 and will would resume only during the awakening phase and that they would be suspended during sleep was a widespread belief (‘il sonno è la sospensione dell’attenzione’ [sleep is the suspension of attention],132 De Sanctis stated by quoting Jouffroy).133 But there were also scholars who were persuaded of the contrary. Among those, there was Hervey de Saint-Denys who had been conducting an imposing dream self-analysis by taking notes about his dreams for more than twenty years. He admitted that if it would be unrealistic to think that one can constantly exercise attention and will while dreaming, it would be, however, inaccurate to esteem that these two faculties are completely inactive during sleep, as his experience of dream self-analysis showed.134 De Sanctis believed in the potentialities of the subjective method; nevertheless, he was also aware that it was subject to a high margin of error. Thus, he employed it together with other methods, namely with the ‘introspective indirect’ method – whose first scientific application he found in Calkins’s work (1893) –135 and with the questionnaire enquiry method used by Francis Galton (1883), Friedrich Heerwagen (1888), Joseph Jastrow (1888), and Charles Child (1892).136 The fruitfulness of the combination of these methods was acknowledged by De Sanctis’s contemporaries, namely by Nicolas Vaschide who in 1911 carried out an assessment of dream studying. He described De Sanctis as ‘le plus digne représentant’ [the most praiseworthy representative] of the eclectic method, ‘autant par le bon emploi qu’il en fait, que par la persévérance de ses recherches’ [both for the proficuous use that he makes of it and for the perseverance of his investigations].137 In the 1920s, however, De Sanctis felt the need to amend the definition that he had provided in 1899 by substituting ‘eclectic’ with ‘integral’138 and by further developing what he had already pointed out in the 1910s, when he had called for a ‘reciproca integrazione dei metodi’ [mutual integration of methods],139 a demand which he will then finally re-emphasize again in 1929.140 Through the integration of the above-mentioned methods, De Sanctis was able to collect an impressive number of facts and figures about dream activity. His perseverance, coupled with his scrupulousness, was endorsed by the psychoanalyst-to-be Sándor Ferenczi, who praised De Sanctis for having gathered countless data about the physiological, psychological, and pathological aspects of dream processes, and for having strongly contributed to inform oneiric studies, which had for long been considered of exclusive literary and philosophical interest, with a properly organized scientific structure.141 De Sanctis included also psychometric tests and psychoanalysis in his methodology. He considered psychoanalysis as a method ‘eterointrospettivo’ [extrospective] carried out by putting the subject in the condition to recount dream features for which, without ‘un interrogatorio disciplinato da certe norme’ [an interrogation disciplined by certain

204  Sara Boezio norms],142 a subject would have not been able to account. Nevertheless, he warned about the risk of resorting excessively to symbolic and analogic interpretations while conducting psychoanalytic dream interpretations. From a psychoanalytic perspective, however, there was a limitation equally embedded in De Sanctis’s reflection, that consisted in the lack of a global theory. This limitation was actually the direct consequence of De Sanctis’s reluctance to reach all-encompassing conclusions, an approach that led him to a very gradual release of his results and that did not encourage the elaboration of a comprehensive theory – a strategy that, although successful in its own respect, was not of a kind with which Freud, more inclined towards all-embracing explanations, could sympathize.

Conclusions: Away from the ‘Dark Forest’ De Sanctis was the only non-psychoanalyst Italian psychologist who devoted a substantial part of his research to dreams, as Ferreri has stressed.143 Indeed, as we have illustrated, De Sanctis showed interest in psychoanalysis, despite having being criticized by Freud and despite having identified some pitfalls in the psychoanalytic theory. In the late 1920s, after having researched for the previous twenty years the ‘oneiric consciousness’ by elaborating on Morton Prince’s idea of the ‘coconscious’,144 he stated that ‘la “coscienza onirica”’ non è infatti che l’insieme delle realizzazioni delle disposizioni individuali latenti che si verificano nel sogno e che la coscienza primaria in parte fa sue ricordandole dopo il risveglio’ the “oneiric consciousness” [is but the totality of actualizations of the latent individual dispositions that occur in dreams and that the primary consciousness partially reappropriates by remembering them after the awakening].145 Such Freudian-echoing terms prove that some of the ideas on which De Sanctis had been working autonomously were convergent with notions which had emerged as essential in the psychoanalytic dream theory. According to the official psychoanalytic historiographic reconstruction, however, authors with an interest in dreams had been groping in the dark in a ‘shadowy forest’ before the arrival of Freud, who was regarded as the only one to have opened the way to the ‘high ground’ and the ‘view’146 or, better said, to the ‘royal road’147 leading up to the interpretation of dreams. The autopoietic myth of Freud as the discoverer of the meaningfulness of dreams has been challenged and, similarly, Ernest Jones’s claims about Freud not having had any forerunners148 has been contrasted. Sulloway has remarked that Freud’s theory of dreams had been prepared ‘piecemeal in almost every major constituent by prior specialists of the problem’.149 Sand has found evidence of several scientists who had reflected on the idea of the meaningfulness of dreams, namely, Charcot, Janet, and Krafft-Ebing.150 Carroy has shown that self-analysis was not

Sante De Sanctis’s Dream Studies  205 a ‘brand new heroic undertaking’ initiated by Freud, but that it was an original reworking of a ‘scientific experimenting with the self that already existed with certain dreaming scientists of the nineteenth century’.151 Ellenberger tracked down, prior to all other scholars, many of the key constituents of Freud’s and Jung’s theories in prior works by other dream specialists of the nineteenth century.152 Ellenberger’s stance has been upheld by Pigman, who has made an important claim in this respect in connection with De Sanctis’s: Pigman has stated that before Ellenberger ‘the only challenge to Freud’s originality in attributing meaning to the dream’ came precisely from De Sanctis.153 Pigman’s statement finds confirmation in the many occasion in which De Sanctis contrasted the Freudian myth. For example, in the above-mentioned 1914 article on psychoanalysis, De Sanctis analysed some of the supposed Freudian ‘originalities’ and stressed that many of those were already known to the scientific community. In particular, he emphasized that concepts such as ‘complex’ or ‘constellation’, which were central in Freud’s reflection, had actually been already suggested by Janet and Ziehen, respectively. The same could be said of other ideas that were instead presented as brand new by some of Freud’s followers, like Jung and Stekel. For instance, the method of associations which – De Sanctis admits – Jung had the merit of having spread on a large scale in the field of individual psychology, had in fact been already observed in the past (namely in the work by Kraepelin, Aschaffenburg, Sommer, Taalman Kip); the concept of bipolarity, which Stekel showed off, was actually very close to that of ‘psychical contrast’ with which psychologists were already familiar and on which De Sanctis himself had worked back in 1895.154 The same was true for the concept of ‘transfert’ on which De Sanctis commented in his 1899 volume, by explaining to have borrowed the term from James Sully and having worked further on it, as we have shown early on. The pioneering research of all these scholars mentioned by De Sanctis grants them the status of ‘scienziati del sogno’ [scientists of dreams] rather than that of ‘scienziati sognatori’ [dreaming scientists] – to say it in Carroy’s terms – and the same consideration applies to De Sanctis himself, as stressed by Foschi and Lombardo.155 De Sanctis can, indeed, be rightly considered as a member of the learned community of dream scientists who managed to flee away from the ‘dark forest of authors’ into which Freud thrusted all his predecessors, by claiming his leadership in three main domains. First, he claimed that all his predecessors had adopted a solely medical approach and had in most cases considered dreams as symptomatic epiphenomena to be reconducted to mental diseases. He believed that this approach was liable for the exclusion from psychology of many elements ruling dream processes which were in fact crucial to fully understand one’s innermost thoughts and feelings. Such a stand on Freud’s part shows that he was overlooking many of the theories and methodologies elaborated by other

206  Sara Boezio dream specialists before him, including the ones designed by De Sanctis who regarded dreams as a psychological phenomenon that could be elucidated from a psychophysiological point of view, especially in the third phase of De Sanctis’s dream studies156 but also from an ‘interpretative’ perspective, as Lombardo and Foschi have highlighted.157 Two other elements on which Freud claimed his primacy were the logicity of dreams and their revealing potential. With regard to the first aspect, De Sanctis acknowledged that Freud had the merit of having drawn the attention to the fact that dreams were not a ‘giuoco caotico e fortuito’ [chaotic and accidental play],158 but that oneiric representations were determined by psychological conditions and forces that could be studied. On the other hand, he however also stressed that the existence of a logic regulating oneiric phenomena had been discovered by other scientists before Freud, him included. He proudly affirmed: ‘La verità era stata detta più o meno apertamente, prima di Freud, da parecchi psicologi – me compreso; poiché anch’io avevo esplicitamente scritto che il sogno è in concatenazione con tutto il contenuto psichico del dormiente’ [The truth had been said more or less openly, before Freud, by many p ­ sychologists – myself included; since I, too, had openly written that dreams are in concatenation with the whole psychic content of the sleeper].159 De Sanctis had been working independently also on the second of the above-mentioned notions, that of the revealing potential of dreams, as we have previously shown.160 He expounded the idea of ‘sogno rivelatore’ [revelatory dream] already in his 1896 dissertation,161 which Freud appreciated. Moreover, in another essay dating 1896, De Sanctis emphasized the same concept: ‘la vita del sogno […] è rivelatrice’ [the dream life […] is revelatory]162 and, thus – he claimed – it can provide psychologists with a precious investigation tool. It must be recalled that in his 1898 essay ‘I sogni dei neuropatici e dei pazzi’163 as well, De Sanctis stressed that dreams can unveil the profoundest psychological states and it is noteworthy stressing that Freud openly refers to this essay in his The Interpretation of Dreams. After the emergence of psychoanalysis, De Sanctis emphasized this potential even more. Indeed, in his article on The Interpretation of Dreams, he reasserted that dreams can reveal the ‘situazione psicologica ignota alla coscienza della veglia del sognatore’ [the psychological situation unknown to the sleeper’s waking consciousness].164 On this point, he agreed with Adler who in 1908 had commented on the ‘prophetical’ function of dreams,165 and whom De Sanctis considered a talented Freudian who had been able to preserve an independent spirit. This consonance with Adler, nevertheless, did not imply De Sanctis’s involvement with any kind of metaphysics insofar as De Sanctis thought that ‘il sogno non prevede le azioni, ma riflette come uno specchio gli avvenimenti e le attitudini del corpo che sono in rapporto intimo con le nostre azioni’ [Dreams do not forecast actions, but they reflect like a mirror the events and the attitudes of the body

Sante De Sanctis’s Dream Studies  207 which are in an intimate relationship with our actions].166 Then De Sanctis also specified that the psychoanalytic interpretative intent, consisting in ‘formare nella coscienza una sintesi’ [forming a synthesis in the consciousness]167 could been seen as a revelatory aim because ‘[la sintesi] può rivelare il significato del sogno’ [[the synthesis] can reveal the meaning of dreams].168 Finally, since identifying the meaning of dreams could help to shed light on the inner self, then one could conclude that dream interpretation could sharpen psychological investigation tools. In I Sogni, De Sanctis placed a renewed emphasis on the idea that dreams are able to provide the most faithful image of one’s inner world, accounting for both the conscious and less conscious aspects of the self: ‘il sogno è il racconto più genuino di ciò che l’individuo è, di ciò ch’esso abitualmente pensa o desidera, di ciò a cui più o meno coscientemente esso tende’ [dreams are the most authentic accounts of what an individual is, of what they habitually think or desire, of what more or less consciously they strive for].169 In the late 1920s, he revisited this point and emphasized that the domain of consciousness is narrow compared to that of the subconsciousness. He pointed out that this limitation depends on the conscious thought being ‘troppa piccola cosa in confronto del […] vasto campo subcosciente’ [much too little a thing compared to the […] wide subconscious field].170 He saw this constraint as an integral part of our selves and affirmed that denying this aspect would mean refusing to acknowledge the human nature itself, since an individual who is conscious of everything would be omniscient, ‘insomma divino’ [thus, divine].171 He concluded that dreams are pivotal to explore the subconscious and he insisted that ‘nessun fenomeno meglio del sogno è capace di dar chiara ragione della sistemazione subcosciente’ [no phenomenon better than a dream is able to clearly account for the systematization of the subconscious],172 a statement which epitomizes the tenacious belief in the power of dreams that has firmly and relentlessly driven the research of De Sanctis throughout his career as a scientist of dreams and as a pioneer of scientific oneirology.

Notes 1 This definition has been given by Sadi Marhaba, Lineamenti della psicologia italiana (1870–1945) (Florence: Giunti, 2003), p. 33. 2 Sante De Sanctis, I Sogni. Studi psicologici e clinici di un alienista (Turin: Bocca, 1899). 3 Théodule Ribot, ‘Compte rendu de Sante de Sanctis. I Sogni. Studi psicologici e clinici’, Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, 48 (1899), 537–540. 4 James Mark Baldwin and George Frederick Stout, s. v. ‘Dream’, in Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, ed. by James Mark Baldwin, vol. I (New York-London: Macmillan, 1901), p. 297. 5 Sante De Sanctis, Die Träume. Medizinisch-psychologische Untersuchungen, trans. by O. Schmidt, preface by Paul J. Möbius (Halle: Marhold, 1901).

208  Sara Boezio 6 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, ed. & trans. by James Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 2010 [1st edn 1955, reprint of vols. IV and V of The Standard Edition]), p. 119. 7 George W. Pigman, ‘The Dark Forest of Authors: Freud and Nineteenth-­ Century Dream Theory’, Psychoanalysis and History, 4, 2 (2002), 141–165. 8 Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious. The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry (London: Fontana Press, 1994), p. 311 and passim. 9 All translations from Italian, French, and German are my own. 10 Giovanni Pietro Lombardo and Renato Foschi, ‘Escape from the dark forest: the experimentalist standpoint of Sante De Sanctis’ psychology of dreams’, History of the Human Sciences, 21, 3 (2008), 45–69. 11 See Riccardo Luccio, ‘De Sanctis: il sogno’, Storia e critica della psicologia, 2, 2 (1981), 317–319. 12 Some of De Sanctis’s articles have been published in American, English, French, German, Scandinavian, and Swiss journals, and some of his volumes and extracts from his books have been translated into English and German. 13 See Carl Gustav Jung, Über die Psychologie der Dementia praecox: ein Versuch (Halle: Marhold, 1907), p.  106; Marhold is the same publisher who issued De Sanctis’s German translation of I Sogni. 14 Ribot, ‘Compte rendu de Sante de Sanctis. I Sogni: studi psicologici e clinici’, p. 537. This evaluation was significant not only for the positive consideration expressed but also for the importance of the author and the prestige of the venue in which it was pronounced. The Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, founded by Ribot in 1876, in the 1890s was indeed an international cultural point of reference and the most up-to-date journal with regard to the developments of the European thought (Mara Meletti Bertolini, Il pensiero e la memoria. Filosofia e Psicologia nella “Revue philosophique” di Théodule Ribot (1876–1916) (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1991), p.  21). As the title attests, this periodical reached out far beyond the national borders by presenting, reviewing, and commenting upon a high number of foreign publications, with a section specifically devoted to ­Italian publications (ibid., p. 16). 15 Baldwin and Stout, ‘Dream’, p. 297. 16 Paul J. Möbius, ‘Einführung’ [foreword], in De Sanctis, Die Träume, pp. v–vii (p. vii). 17 Ibid., p. v. 18 De Sanctis, I Sogni, p. 5. 19 Sante De Sanctis, I sogni e il sonno nell’isterismo e nell’epilessia (Rome: Società Dante Alighieri, 1896). 20 Cf. Antonio Marino Ferreri, ‘Gli studi sui sogni nella psicologia di Sante de Sanctis’, introduction of I sogni nella psicologia di Sante de Sanctis, ed. by Antonio Marino Ferreri, preface by Guido Cimino (Rome: Edizioni Magi, 2008), pp. 37–79 (p. 37). 21 Dr Laupts [sic], ‘IV. Psychologie pathologique’, Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, 42 (1896), 548–549 (p. 548). 22 Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 114. 23 Sante De Sanctis, ‘Psychoses et rêves’, in Congrès International de Neuro­ logie, de Psychiatrie, d’Électricité médicale et d’Hypnologie. Première Session tenue à Bruxelles du 14 au 21 septembre 1897. Rapports. Fascicule I publié par le Docteur Crocq Fils (Paris: Ancienne Librairie G ­ ermer, Baillière et Cie-Félix Alcan éditeur, 1898), pp. 137–160 (p. 157). 24 Sante De Sanctis, ‘I sogni dei neuropatici e dei pazzi. Ricerche cliniche di Sante De Sanctis’, Archivio di Psichiatria, Scienze Penali ed Antropologia criminale, 19 (1898), 382–408 (p. 406).

Sante De Sanctis’s Dream Studies  209 25 Ibid., p. 406 [original emphasis]. 26 De Sanctis, I sogni e il sonno, p. 23. 27 De Sanctis, I Sogni, p. 6 [my emphasis]. 28 Sante De Sanctis, ‘I sogni nei delinquenti’, Archivio di Psichiatria, Scienze penali ed Antropologia criminale, 17, 5 (1896), 488–498 (p. 488). 29 De Sanctis, I Sogni, p. 21. 30 Ibid., p. 287. 31 De Sanctis, ‘I sogni dei neuropatici e dei pazzi’, p. 406. 32 ‘Mancavano nella letteratura delle ricerche tendenti a studiare i sogni dal punto di vista della psicologia individuale; io ho particolarmente inteso a colmare questa lacuna’ [The literature was lacking in research geared to study dreams from the point of view of individual psychology; I have aimed to fill this gap in particular] (De Sanctis, I Sogni, p. 6). 33 De Sanctis, ‘I sogni dei neuropatici e dei pazzi’, p. 406. 34 Sante De Sanctis, ‘Le problème de la conscience dans la psychologie mo­ derne’, Archives de Psychologie, 3 (1904), 379–388 (p. 385). See also Sante De Sanctis, ‘Il problema della coscienza nella Psicologia scientifica’, Annali dell’Istituto Psichiatrico della R. Università di Roma, 3, 1 (1904), 35–45. 35 De Sanctis, ‘Le problème de la conscience dans la psychologie moderne’, p. 386 [my emphasis]. 36 Ibid., p. 386 [original emphasis]. 37 De Sanctis, I Sogni, pp. 339 and 347. 38 Ibid., p. 367. 39 Ibid., p. 370 [original emphasis]. 40 Pierre Janet, L’automatisme psychologique. Essai de psychologie expérimentale sur les formes inférieures de l’activité humaine (Paris: Alcan, 1889), pp. 223–269. 41 Janet, L’automatisme psychologique, p. 226. 42 See De Sanctis, I Sogni, pp. 148, 152–153. 43 Janet, L’automatisme psychologique, p. 225. 44 Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious, p. 361. 45 Pierre Janet, ‘Les actes inconscients et le dédoublement de la personnalité’, Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, 22 (1886), 577–592; ‘L’anesthésie systématisée et la dissociation des phénomènes psychologiques’, ibid., 23 (1887), 449–472; ‘Les actes inconscients et la mémoire pendant le somnambulisme’, ibid., 25 (1888), 238–279. In L’automatisme psychologique, Janet recalls some of the results exposed in those articles, by further elaborating on them and framing them within a wider theory. 46 Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious, p. 413, n. 82. 47 Pierre Janet, Rapport au VIme [sic] Congrès International de Psychologie. Genève, 3–7 Août 1909. Les problèmes du subconscient par M. le Dr Pierre Janet – Extrait des Comptes Rendus du Congrès (Genève: Secrétariat du Congrès, 22 July 1909), p.  3. Janet’s paper was also included in the conference proceedings (Pierre Janet, ‘Les problèmes du subconscient’, VIme [sic] Congrès International de Psychologie. Tenu à Genève du 2 au 7 Août 1909 sous la Présidence de Th. Flournoy. Rapports et comptes rendus publiés par les soins de Ed. Claparède, Secrétaire général du Congrès (Genève: Librairie Künding, 1910), pp. 57–70). There were no psychoanalysts taking part in the congress, and perhaps their absence lies at the origin of a misunderstanding between them and Janet; indeed, as Ellenberger has highlighted, psychoanalysts ‘misinterpreted Janet as having rejected his previous views and denied the existence of the unconscious’ (Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious, p. 800).

210  Sara Boezio 48 Pierre Janet, ‘Les oscillations du niveau mental’, in Atti del V Congresso internazionale di psicologia, tenuto in Roma dal 26 al 30 aprile 1905 sotto la presidenza del prof. Giuseppe Sergi, ed. by Sante De Sanctis (Rome, Forzani e C. Tipografi del Senato editori, 1906), pp. 110–126 (p. 110). 49 Ibid., p. 111. 50 Ibid., p. 126. 51 Sante De Sanctis, ‘Il sogno. Struttura e dinamica’, Rivista di Antropologia (jubilee volume in honour of Giuseppe Sergi), 20 (1916), 1–53, later reprinted, with an introduction by Riccardo Luccio, Storia e critica della psicologia, 2, 2 (1981), 317–368, from where I am quoting (p. 363). De Sanctis partially re-elaborated this article in ‘Struktur und Dynamik des Traumes’ in his ‘Psychologie des Traumes’, appeared in the Handbuch der vergleichenden Psychologie, ed. by Gustav Kafka, vol. III (München: Reinhardt, 1922), pp. 233–329 (pp. 266–294) (Italian translation available: Sante De Sanctis, ‘Struttura e dinamica del sogno’, in idem, La psicologia del sogno, ed. by Renato Foschi and Giovanni Pietro Lombardo, trans. by Maria Nigro (Turin: Antigone Edizioni, 2006), pp. 86–122). 52 Paul Sollier, ‘La conscience et ses degrés’, in Atti del V Congresso internazionale di psicologia, pp. 126–143 (p. 127). 53 Ibid., p. 130. 54 Ibid., p. 138. 55 Ibid., p. 133. 56 Sante De Sanctis, ‘Emozioni e sogni’, Rivista sperimentale di Freniatria, 22, 3 (1896), 566–590 (p. 568); the article has recently been reprinted in the Rivista sperimentale di Freniatria. The Italian Journal of Mental Health, 141, 2 (2017), 11–35. 57 Giovanni Pietro Lombardo and Renato Foschi, ‘La psicofisiologia dei sogni di Sante De Sanctis’, Medicina nei secoli, 21, 2 (2009), 591–609 (p. 598). 58 Germana Pareti, ‘Livelli di coscienza. Tra filosofia e psicologia: quale via per l’indagine sulla mente?’, in Filosofia e Psicologia in Italia tra Otto e Novecento, ed. by Piero Di Giovanni (Milan, FrancoAngeli: 2015), pp. 83– 65 (p. 79). 59 De Sanctis, I Sogni, p. 250 [my emphasis]. 60 Giovanni Dandolo, La coscienza nel sonno. Studio di Psicologia (Padova: Draghi, 1889), p. 123; the year before this book, Dandolo had published an article with almost the same title in which he focussed closely on the relationship sleeping consciousness-unconscious (Giovanni Dandolo, ‘La coscienza nel sonno. L’inconscio fisiologico e la psicologia del sonno’, Rivista di Filosofia Scientifica, 7 (1888), 722–741). 61 De Sanctis, ‘Emozioni e sogni’, p. 568 [my emphasis]. 62 Sante De Sanctis, ‘La coscienza onirica’, Scientia (1928), 17–24 reprinted in I sogni nella psicologia di Sante de Sanctis, pp. 319–326, from where I am quoting (p. 321). 63 In 1916, De Sanctis had already expressed himself along the same lines: ‘L’esteta, l’ispirato, l’estatico, l’appassionato, l’eroe nei loro momenti creativi sono quasi sognatori’ [The aesthete, the inspired, the ecstatic, the passionate, the hero are almost dreamers in their creative moments] (De Sanctis, ‘Il sogno. Struttura e dinamica’, p. 367). 64 De Sanctis, ‘La coscienza onirica’, pp. 322–323. 65 Lombardo and Foschi, ‘Escape from the dark forest’, p. 56. 66 De Sanctis, ‘La coscienza onirica’, p. 323. 67 Ibid., pp. 324, 326. 68 De Sanctis, ‘Sogno. Struttura e dinamica’, p. 362. 69 De Sanctis, ‘Emozioni e sogni’, p. 584.

Sante De Sanctis’s Dream Studies  211 70 Ibid., p. 574. 71 De Sanctis, I Sogni, pp. 351–352. 72 De Sanctis, ‘Il sogno. Struttura e dinamica’, p. 364. 73 De Sanctis, I Sogni, p. 257 [original emphasis]. 74 Ibid., p. 257. 75 Ibid., p. 316. 76 Ibid., p. 254. The same examples are provided already in the 1896 article ‘Emozioni e sogni’, p. 571. 77 Romolo Appicciafuoco, La psicologia sperimentale di Sante De Sanctis (Rome: Orsa Maggiore, 1946), p. 140. 78 Ibid., p. 141. 79 Sante De Sanctis, ‘La psico-analisi e il suo valore come metodo dell’onirologia scientifica’, Quaderni di Psichiatria, 1, 7 (1914), 289–297 reprinted in I sogni nella psicologia di Sante de Sanctis, pp. 207–219, from where I am quoting (p. 211). For some of the pre-psychoanalytic theories about the ‘transfert’, see Renato Foschi, ‘La “prima” psicologia di Alfred Binet: la “doppia coscienza” e la “personalità”’, Teorie & Modelli, 8 (2003), 31–48. 80 De Sanctis, I Sogni, p. 257 [original emphasis]. 81 De Sanctis, ‘Il sogno. Struttura e dinamica’, p. 364. 82 Ibid., p. 365. 83 Ibid., p. 367 [my emphasis]. 84 Ibid., p. 367 [my emphasis]. 85 Sante De Sanctis, ‘L’interpretazione dei sogni’, Rivista di Psicologia, 10, 5–6 (1914), 358–375 reprinted in I sogni nella psicologia di Sante de San­ ctis, pp. 221–237 (from where I am quoting) and ‘La psico-analisi e il suo valore come metodo dell’onirologia scientifica’. 86 Although released in 1899, Die Traumdeutung was dated 1900 on purpose. On the publication history of the volume, see Lydia Marinelli and Andreas Mayer, Dreaming by the Book: Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams and the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement (New York: Other Press, 2003). 87 Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 119. 88 De Sanctis, ‘L’interpretazione dei sogni’, p. 227. 89 Ibid., p. 227. 90 In his 1916 essay about the dynamics of dreams, De Sanctis will pick again on Stekel because in Die Sprache des Traumes he had analysed some of the personal dreams that De Sanctis had described in I Sogni (which Stekel had read in the German translation) by explaining them in light of a sexual symbology and by providing a supposedly psychoanalytic interpretation that De Sanctis considered faulty and tendentious (Wilhelm Stekel, Die Sprache des Traumes (Wiesbaden: Verlag von J. F. Bergmann, 1911), pp. 489–490 quoted in De Sanctis, ‘Il sogno. Struttura e dinamica’, p. 334). 91 De Sanctis, ‘L’interpretazione dei sogni’, p. 233. 92 Ibid., p. 236. 93 De Sanctis, ‘La psico-analisi e il suo valore come metodo dell’onirologia scientifica’, p. 210. 94 De Sanctis, ‘La coscienza onirica’, p. 321. 95 De Sanctis, ‘Il sogno. Struttura e dinamica’, p. 361. 96 Ibid., p. 362. 97 Lombardo and Foschi, ‘Escape from the dark forest’, p. 56. 98 Sante De Sanctis, Psicologia sperimentale, vol. I: Psicologia generale (Rome: Stock, 1929), pp. 97–122. 99 Ibid., p. 108 [my emphasis].

212  Sara Boezio 00 Ibid., p. 112. 1 101 Ibid., pp. 112–113. 102 Guido Cimino, ‘L’impostazione epistemologica e la teoria psicologica di De Sanctis’, in Sante De Sanctis tra psicologia generale e psicologia applicata, ed. by Guido Cimino and Giovanni Pietro Lombardo (Milan: ­FrancoAngeli, 2004), pp. 19–59 (p. 32). 103 De Sanctis, Psicologia sperimentale, vol. I, p. 118. 104 Ibid., p. 116. 105 Ibid., p. 104. 106 Ibid., p. 104. The relationship conscience-attention is further explored in three sections of chapter 6: ‘L’Attenzione, come strumento di conoscenza’; ‘Forza motrice e apparecchio dell’Attenzione’; ‘Campo di attenzione e Campo di coscienza. Le oscillazioni attentive’ (ibid., pp. 194–206). 107 De Sanctis, Psicologia sperimentale, vol. I, p.  105. De Sanctis had commented on the different ways of classifying attention when he had reviewed the study ‘Mécanisme anatomique de l’attention’ (1898) by Joanny Roux, who had identified three kinds of attention: ‘attenzione organica incosciente’ [unconscious organic attention], ‘attenzione cosciente e involontaria’ [conscious and involuntary attention], and ‘attenzione cosciente volontaria’ [voluntary conscious attention]; De Sanctis had remarked that, interestingly enough, according to Roux also the conscious and voluntary attention was in the end a reflex, thus an automatism; see Sante De Sanctis’s review of Joanny Roux’s ‘Mécanisme anatomique de l’attention’ published in Rivista quindicinale di Psicologia, Pschiatria, Neuropatologia (May 1898–April 1899), 310–311. 108 De Sanctis, Psicologia sperimentale, vol. I, p. 109 [original emphasis]. 109 See Federico Bianchi di Castelbianco, Magda Di Renzo, Rossella Prestinenzi Parisi, and Bruno Tagliacozzi, Sante de Sanctis. Conoscenza ed esperienza in una prospettiva psicologica (Rome, Edizioni Scientifiche Ma.Gi, 1998), p. 24. 110 Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 119. 111 Cimino, Guido, ‘Prefazione. Sante de Sanctis e la fondazione della “onirologia scientifica”’, in I sogni nella psicologia di Sante de Sanctis, pp. 9–35 (p. 32). 112 Sigmund Freud, ‘Il sogno’, in Opere. 1900-05. Tre saggi sulla teoria sessuale e altri scritti, by Sigmund Freud (Turin: Boringhieri, 1982) pp. 5–49 (p. 48). 113 Sante De Sanctis, ‘I metodi onirologici’, Rivista di Psicologia, 1 (March 1920), 1–30; this essay presents a section entirely devoted to the assessment of psychoanalytic methods, including De Sanctis’s experience in applying them (ibid., pp. 13–20). 114 Michel David, La psicoanalisi nella cultura italiana, preface by Cesare Musatti (Turin: Boringhieri, 1966), p. 151; David relies on Ettore Rieti who wrote ‘tra i cattedratici italiani, il Maestro di Roma è certamente il più sereno’ [among Italian professors, the Professor from Rome is certainly the most serene] who kept ‘una posizione imparziale, ma simpatizzante, di osservatore estraneo’ [an impartial, and yet sympathizing, position of an external observer] towards psychoanalysis (Ettore Rieti, ‘La psicoanalisi in Italia. Rassegna critica’, Neuropsichiatria. Annali dell’Ospedale psichiatrico della provincia di Genova, 4, 11 (1933), ­183–203, p. 192). 115 Marhaba (Lineamenti della psicologia italiana, p. 34) writes the De San­ ctis had been corresponding with Freud since 1900, but actually there had been prior contacts between the two. This is proved by a postcard dated 27

Sante De Sanctis’s Dream Studies  213 July 1895, in which Freud thanks De Sanctis for the interest that the latter had shown towards his studies: Illustre Professore, sono di molto contento dell’interesse che i miei [studi] hanno suscitato in Lei / Secondo me l’idea in questione riguardante l’ori­ gine dei ticks non è stata mai discussa da nessuno in Germania / Con osservanza, il Suo devotissimo Dr. Freud [Dearest Professor, I am very pleased about the interest that mine [my studies] have provoked in You / According to me, the idea in question concerning the origin of tics has never been discussed by anybody in Germany / Regards, Yours sincerely Dr. Freud] (the letter has been published and translated from German into Italian in the appendix of Sante De Sanctis tra psicologia generale e psicologia applicata, p. 301). 116 David, La psicoanalisi nella cultura italiana, pp. 151, 154. 117 Luigi Baroncini, ‘Il fondamento e il meccanismo della psico-analisi’, Ri­ vista di Psicologia Applicata, 4 (1908), 211–231; Gustavo Modena, ‘Psicopatologia ed etiologia dei fenomeni psiconeurotici. Contributo alla dottrina di S. Freud’, Rivista sperimentale di Freniatria e Medicina legale delle alienazioni mentali, 45, 34 (1908), 657–670 and 46, 35 (1909), ­204–218. See also David, La psicoanalisi nella cultura italiana, p. 247. 118 Lombardo and Foschi, ‘Escape from the dark forest’, p. 62. 119 Sante De Sanctis, ‘Istinto e incosciente. Discussione critica’, Archivio ita­ liano di Psicologia, 5 (1927), 71–93 (p. 73). 120 Appicciafuoco, La psicologia sperimentale di Sante De Sanctis, p.  135; Appicciafuoco also emphasized that De Sanctis included psychoanalysis among the methods of experimental psychology (ibid., p. 157). 121 Lombardo, Foschi, ‘Escape from the dark forest’, p. 62. 122 Here we are speaking in Mark Solms’s terms: well-known for his work on the forebrain mechanisms of dreaming, Solms is considered the deviser of the word ‘neuropsychoanalysis’, which accounts for the combination of psychoanalysis and neuroscience; see Mark Solms, The Feeling Brain: ­Selected Papers on Neuropsychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 2015). 123 Enrico Morselli, ‘Alcune osservazioni sul “metodo delle associazioni” applicato alla psicoanalisi’, Psiche. Rivista di Studi psicologici, 1, 2 (March– April 1912), 77–105; Roberto Assagioli, ‘La psicologia del subcosciente’, Ibid., 106–128; Sigmund Freud, ‘Il metodo psicoanalitico (traduzione autorizzata di R. Assagioli)’, ibid., 129–135. 124 Roberto Assagioli, Il subcosciente (Florence: Biblioteca filosofica, 1911); the text corresponds almost entirely to the article with the same title published by Assagioli in the Rivista di filosofia, 3 (1911), 197–206. 125 Roberto Ardigò, ‘L’inconscio’, Rivista di Filosofia e Scienze Affini, 18, 5–6 (May–June 1908), 297–332; idem, ‘L’equivoco dell’inconscio di alcuni moderni’, Rivista di Filosofia Scientifica, 7, 7 (1888), 1–14; Giovanni Marchesini, ‘Conscio ed inconscio’, Rivista di Filosofia Scientifica, 8 (November 1889), 641–650; Francesco De Sarlo, ‘Sull’incosciente’, Rivista sperimentale di Freniatria e Medicina legale, 16 (1890), 352–359; idem, ‘L’attività psichica incosciente in patologia mentale’, Rivista sperimentale di Freniatria e Medicina legale, 17 (1891), 97–124, 201–230; idem, ‘Coscienza e subcoscienza’, La Cultura filosofica, 2, 7 (July 1908), 328–335; idem, Vincenzo Berrettoni, ‘I movimenti incoscienti nelle varie forme di attività psichica’, Ricerche di Psicologia (1905), 70–91; Giuseppe Fanciulli, ‘L’Incosciente e l’Arte’, La Cultura filosofica, 2, 3 (March 1908), 138–144; Giuseppe Sergi, ‘Pensare senza coscienza’, Rivista Moderna, 2, 1 (January

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127

128 129 130 131

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1899), 1–18; Antonio Renda, La dissociazione psicologica (Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1905); Giulio Cesare Ferrari, ‘L’educazione dell’incosciente’, Ri­ vista di Psicologia applicata, 2, 2 (March–April 1906), 73–76; idem, ‘Le emozioni e la vita del subcosciente’, Rivista di Psicologia (1912), 93–118; Ettore Patini, ‘Coscienza, subcoscienza, incoscienza ed apsichia’, Rivista di Psicologia applicata, 6, 1 (January–February 1910), 24–45; A. Ghillini, ‘Considerazioni intorno al problema del sub-cosciente’, Rivista di Psicologia, 12, 1–2 (January–February 1916), 141–151. Antonio Aliotta, ‘Il pensiero e la personalità nei sogni. Contributo allo studio scientifico dei sogni’, Ricerche di Psicologia (1905), 208–227; idem, ‘Ufficio dell’incosciente nella spiegazione dei fenomeni e dei nessi tra fenomeni psichici’, in Atti del V Congresso internazionale di psicologia, pp.  394–396; Olindo Del Torto, ‘I ricorsi mnemonici incoscienti’, ibid., pp. 554–557. See Chiara Bartolucci, Giovanni Pietro Lombardo, and Giorgia Morgese, ‘Sante De Sanctis’ contribution to the study of dreams between ‘800 and ‘900 century: The originality of the integrated method’, International Journal of Dream Research, 9, 1 (2016), 22–33 (pp. 22, 30). De Sanctis, I sogni e il sonno, pp. 15–23. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious, p. 306 [my emphasis]. Jacqueline Carroy, ‘Dreaming Scientists and Scientific Dreamers: Freud as a Reader o French Dream Literature’, Science in Context, 19, 1 (2006), 15–35. The first studies about attention published by De Sanctis date 1894: ‘Il metodo grafico dello studio dell’attenzione’, Riforma medica, 2, 115 (1894), 470–472; ‘Lo studio sperimentale dell’Attenzione’, Bullettino della Società Lancisiana degli Ospedali di Roma, 14, 1 (1894), 22–41. Subsequently he also published: ‘Sopra un disturbo dell’attenzione in un degenerato’, Bullettino della Società Lancisiana degli Ospedali di Roma, 16, 2 (1896), 113–122; ‘L’attenzione e i suoi disturbi. Saggio di Psicopatologia clinica’, Atti della Società Romana di Antropologia, 4, 1 (1896–1897), 37–78; ‘Lo studio dell’attenzione conativa. Ricerche sperimentali’, Atti della Società Romana di Antropologia, 4, 2 (1896–1897), 281–199; ‘Ricerche psicofisiologiche sull’Attenzione dei normali e dei [sic] psicopatici’, Bullettino della Società Lancisiana degli Ospedali di Roma, 17, 2 (1897), 1–15. De San­ ctis’s interest for attention continued in the following years, as testified by him reading and commenting studies on the subject as in the following collective review: ‘Rivista critica: F. E. Moyer, “A study of certain methods of distracting the Attention. Addition and cognate exercises: discrimination of odors”, The American Journal of Psychology, 8, 3 (April 1897); L.  G.  Birch, “Distractions by odors”, The American Journal of Psychology, 9, 1 (October 1897)’ published in Rivista quindicinale di Psicologia, Pschia­tria, Neuropatologia, 1 (May 1897 – April 1898), 281–286. De Sanctis continued to develop his own reflection on attention till 1929–1930, when he tackled extensively in his psychology treatise the above-mentioned notion of passive and active attention (see notes 106 and 107 of the present chapter). De Sanctis, I Sogni, p. 333. See De Sanctis, I sogni e il sonno, p. 168. On this point, it must be recalled that in his review of Dugas’s research on the unconscious cerebration, De Sanctis remarked that according to Dugas sleep and wake would be ‘correnti diverse di attenzione’ [different currents of attention] (De San­ ctis, review of Dugas’s ‘Le sommeil et la cérébration inconscient durant le sommeil’, Rivista quindicinale di Psicologia, Pschiatria, Neuropatologia,

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145 146

147 148

1 (May 1897 – April 1898), 26–27, p. 26 [my emphasis]). On the complex relationship between wake and sleep, see also De Sanctis’s comments on Dugas’s work in I Sogni, p. 317. [Hervey de Saint-Denys] Les rêves et les moyens de les diriger (Paris: Amyot, 1867), p. 291. Mary Whiton Calkins, ‘Statistics of dreams’, The American Journal of Psychology, 5, 3 (April 1893), 311–343. De Sanctis, I sogni e il sonno, pp. 20–21 and De Sanctis, I Sogni, pp. ­30–32. See Francis Galton, Inquiry into Human Faculty, and its Development (London: Macmillan, 1883); Friedrich Heerwagen, ‘Statistische Untersuchungen über Träume und Schlaf’, Philosophische Studien, 5 (1889), 301–320; Joseph Jastrow, ‘The Dreams of the Blind’, The New Princeton Review, 5, 1 (1888), 18–34; Charles M. Child, ‘Statistics of “Unconscious Cerebration”’, The American Journal of Psychology, 5, 2 (1892), 249–259. Nicolas Vaschide, Le Sommeil et les Rêves (Paris: Flammarion, 1918), p. 101. De Sanctis, ‘I metodi onirologici’, pp. 1–2 [original emphasis]. Sante De Sanctis, ‘I metodi della psicologia moderna’, Rivista di Psicologia, 8 (1912), 10–26 (p. 24). See De Sanctis, Psicologia sperimentale, vol. I, p. 58; see also p. 51. Foschi and Lombardo clarify that by ‘integralismo metodologico’ [methodological integration], De Sanctis meant ‘l’uso concertato di più metodi adattati e selezionati in base ai gruppi di soggetti da esaminare’ [the concerted use of a number of methods adapted and selected depending on the groups of subjects to be examined] (Foschi and Lombardo, introduction of De San­ ctis, La psicologia del sogno, p. 18, n. 3). Sándor Ferenczi, La mia amicizia con Miksa Schächter. Scritti preanalitici 1899–1908, ed. by Judit Mészáros and Marco Casonato (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1992), p. 86. De Sanctis, ‘I metodi onirologici’, p. 13. Ferreri, ‘Sante De Sanctis’, p. 257. ‘Nel sogno la subcoscienza si svolge con determinati contenuti i quali, a volte, son del tutto coordinati fra loro come a costituire un insieme strutturale che fu detto coscienza subliminale o “cocoscienza” (Morton Prince), che noi appunto perciò dicemmo coscienza onirica’ [In dreams, subconsciousness develops with certain contents that sometimes are entirely attuned, so much so that they form a structural group that has been called subliminal consciousness or “coconsciousness” (Morton Prince), [and] which we – precisely because of this – have called oneiric consciousness] (De Sanctis, Psicologia sperimentale, vol. I, p. 119 [original emphasis]). Ibid., p. 109. ‘The whole thing is planned on the model of an imaginary walk. At the beginning, the dark forest of authors (who do not see the trees), hopelessly lost on wrong tracks. Then a concealed pass through which I lead the reader – my specimen dream with its peculiarities, details, indiscretions, bad jokes – and then suddenly the high ground and the view and the question: which way do you wish to go now?’ (Sigmund Freud, The complete letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess [1887–1904], trans. and ed. by Jeffrey M. Masson (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 365. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 604. Ernest Jones, The life and work of Sigmund Freud, 3 vols (London: Hogart Press, 1953–1957).

216  Sara Boezio 149 Frank J. Sulloway, Freud, Biologist of the Mind: beyond the psychoanalytic legend (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 322–327 (p. 322). 150 Rosemarie Sand, ‘Pre-Freudian Discovery of Dream Meaning. The achievements of Charcot, Janet, and Krafft-Ebing’, in Freud and the History of Psychoanalysis, ed. by Toby Gelfand and John Kerr (Hillsdale, New Jersey-­ London: Analytic Press, 1992), pp.  215–229; see also Rosemarie Sand, ‘The interpretation of dreams: Freud and the Western Dream Tradition’, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 9, 6 (1999), 725–747. 151 Carroy, ‘Dreaming Scientists and Scientific Dreamers’, p. 32. 152 Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious, p. 311. 153 Pigman, ‘The Dark Forest of Authors’, p. 160. 154 See Sante De Sanctis, ‘I fenomeni di contrasto in Psicologia’, Atti della Società Romana di Antropologia, vol. II (1894–1895), 199–280. In this article, De Sanctis, however, gives Freud the credit of having been the first, in 1892–1893, to define as ‘Gegenwillen’ the will alterations occurring in neurotic subjects affected by abulias and to explain them as psychological contrast phenomena due to contrast representations, i.e. ‘Contrastvorstellung’ (ibid., pp. 230–231). 155 Renato Foschi and Giovanni Pietro Lombardo, ‘Sante De Sanctis e lo studio sperimentale del sogno’, in Le origini della psicologia italiana, ed. by Nino Dazzi and Giovanni Pietro Lombardo (Bologna: il Mulino, 2011), pp. 99–125 (p. 124). 156 De Sanctis’s dream studies can be divided into three phases: the first inspired by the psychopathological approach adopted by the French school by which De Sanctis was profoundly influenced; the second phase informed by the combination of clinical research and psychometric experimental measures; and the third phase based on the integration of psychophysiology and psychodynamics of dreams (see Elisabetta Cicciola and Giovanni Pietro Lombardo, ‘Sante De Sanctis, Vittorio Benussi e l’istituzione della “quarta cattedra” di Psicologia sperimentale nell’Università di Padova’, in Le origini della psicologia italiana, pp. 169–186 (p. 184)). 157 Lombardo and Foschi, ‘Escape from the dark forest’, p. 62. 158 De Sanctis, ‘L’interpretazione dei sogni’, p. 236. 159 See above and see ibid., p. 237. 160 See De Sanctis, I Sogni, pp. 21, 257, 287. 161 See De Sanctis, I sogni e il sonno, p. 16; see also ibid., pp. 14–15. 162 De Sanctis, ‘Emozioni e sogni’, p. 587, which will be incorporated in De Sanctis, I Sogni, p. 287 [my emphasis]. 163 De Sanctis, ‘I sogni dei neuropatici e dei pazzi’, p. 406 [original emphasis]. 164 De Sanctis, ‘L’interpretazione dei sogni’, p. 227. 165 See Alfred Adler, ‘Die Individualpsychologie, ihre Voraussetzungen und Ergebnisse’, Scientia, 16 (1914), 74–87. 166 De Sanctis, ‘L’interpretazione dei sogni’, p. 227 [my emphasis]. 167 De Sanctis, ‘La psico-analisi e il suo valore come metodo dell’onirologia scientifica’, p. 217. 168 Ibid., p. 217 [original emphasis]. 169 De Sanctis, I Sogni, p. 6 [my emphasis]. 170 De Sanctis, Psicologia sperimentale, vol. I, p. 106. 171 Ibid., p. 106. 172 Ibid., p. 109.

10 Metamorphosis and Nightmare in Leopardi and Svevo Olmo Calzolari

L’Ucello. FAVOLA. Entro dipinta gabbia Fra l’ozio ed il diletto, Educavasi un tenero, Amabile augelletto. A lui dentro i tersissimi Bicchieri s’infondea, Fresc’acqua, e il biondo miglio Pronto a sue voglie avea. Pur de la gabbia l’uscio Avendo un giorno aperto, Spiegò fuor d’essa un languido Volo non bene esperto. Ma quando a lui s’offersero Gli arbori verdeggianti, E i prati erbosi, e i limpidi Ruscelli, tremolanti; De l’abbondanza immemore, E de l’usato albergo, L’ali scuotendo volsegli Lieto, e giocondo il tergo. Di libertà l’amore Regna in un giovin cuore.1 [The Bird. Fable. Within an ornate cage / between leisure and pleasure, / was educated a tender, / lovely young bird. / To him in clearest / glasses was poured, / fresh water, and gold barley / he had ready for his appetite. / Yet with the cage’s door / being one day unlocked / he unfolded his wings in / a sweet and inexperienced flight. / But when to him appeared / green trees / and grassy lawns, and crystal /

218  Olmo Calzolari quivering springs; / forgetful of the abundance / and of his used abode / shaking his wings he turned his back / happy, and joyful to those. / Such love of freedom / reigns in a young heart] Thus does Giacomo Leopardi, but a twelve-year-old educando in 1810, celebrate a bird flying away from its cage. Burdened by the rigour of his aristocratic education, young Leopardi wished to find shelter in a dimension of lightness and nature. Providentially, he was soon to discover Greek poetry, whose tantalizing music would profoundly come to shake his imagination, making him conclude ‘d’esser poeta’ [of being a poet] himself. 2 Roughly fourteen years later, however, we encounter a different Leopardi. Single-mindedly dedicated to the composition of the Operette morali, his philosophical writings would be haunted by a nostalgia for a state of poetry now considered lost. By portraying the philosopher Amelio in his dream of morphing into a bird, the ‘Elogio degli uccelli’ (1824) specifically revolves around this theme. Yet let us now move forward in time. In a handwritten note dated 18th October 1911, the Triestine employee Ettore Schmitz, abandoning his literary identity as Italo Svevo, reveals his concerns regarding his daughter’s artistic dispositions.3 La porticina della gabbia era rimasta aperta. L’uccellino con lieve balzo fu sull’uscio e da li guardò il vasto mondo […]. Passò per il suo corpicino il fremito del desiderio dei vasti spazii […]. Ma poi pensò: Se esco potrebbero chiudere la gabbia ed io resterei fuori, prigioniero. La bestiola rientrò e poco dopo, con soddisfazione, vide rinchiudersi la porticina che suggellava la sua libertà.4 [The cage’s tiny door had remained open. With a light jump, the little bird was on its threshold, and looked at the open world. […] His small body was shaken by a thrill of desire for the wide spaces […]. And yet he thought: If I leave, someone could lock the cage and I would be left outside, a prisoner. The birdie got back into the cage and, after a little while, with satisfaction, saw the door that sealed his freedom closing] With his distinctive humour, Svevo attempts to dissuade Letizia from relying too much upon her literary enthusiasm – a disgraceful inclination that she may have assumed from her father. This subject is voiced in the numerous favole in which, behind the image of birds, Svevo conceals a hilarious catalogue of human flaws. ‘Rapporti difficili’, a short story that sees a man falling in love with a family of swallows, effectively exemplifies this tension.5 Like Leopardi, Svevo returns to consider birds, and how humans hopelessly wish to enjoy bird-like lightness, throughout his entire

Metamorphosis and Nightmare  219 oeuvre. Respectively witnessing the beginning and end of the long nineteenth century, Leopardi and Svevo problematized the spirit and form of their own art, questioning the survival of a ‘spontaneous literature’ in a rationalistic age. By portraying humans and their desire to metamorphose into birds, both writers engage with this poetic deadlock, developing a wide-ranging discourse upon modernity and upon its associated nightmares. The connection between Leopardi and Svevo has rarely been considered through a comprehensive study. The first reference to the subject can be found in Lavagetto’s 1975 work, which discusses the similarities between Leopardi’s and Svevo’s respective ‘histories of the human race’.6 The work that inaugurated a proper ‘Leopardi-Svevo investigation’ is an essay of 2000 by Palmieri, which engages in the dialogue between the two authors on an aesthetic and existential level.7 As for the ‘ornithological connection’ of this study, Vacante’s 2009 work identifies parallels between Leopardi’s, Svevo’s, and Hebbel’s narratives of birds.8 Spignoli’s 2014 study significantly formulates the hypothesis of Svevo’s and Volponi’s ‘apocalyptic narratives’ as combining Leopardi and Freud.9 Although it does not engage extensively with Leopardi’s philosophy, this work detects the important connection between Svevo’s narratives of illness and Leopardi’s meditation on the deterioration of the human race, opening a – still unmapped – field that could allow for a wider reconsideration of Leopardi as a pre-Freudian investigator of the diseases of modern life. The results offered by these scholars mostly consist of an enumeration of parallels, with the consequence of suggesting that Svevo is in fact influenced by Leopardi. With the wider aim of exploring how Leopardi’s and Svevo’s discourses on the modern nexus between art and nature may be seen as productively dialoguing with each other, this essay will focus on Leopardi’s ‘Elogio degli uccelli’ and Svevo’s ‘Rapporti difficili’. By looking at the themes of ‘canto’ [song], ‘riso’ [laughter], and dreams, I will claim that ‘Rapporti difficili’ can be read as a negative – and psychologically magnified – rewriting of the ‘Elogio’. Through the light of the operetta, the Leopardian motifs of ‘canto’ and ‘riso’ will come to the surface of Svevo’s favola, revealing two intertwined yet independent manifestations of the same metamorphic dream. Indeed, the conclusive section of this essay will briefly explore the theme of dreams, arguing that Amelio’s desire of ‘canto’ and ‘riso’ becomes, in the Svevian text, the very matter nightmares are made of. I will particularly claim that the Operette’s rejection of poetry connects with the desire of ‘natural language’ of ‘Rapporti difficili’, suggesting the fertility of such a Leopardian topos amongst the dilettanti of the early twentieth century.10 Furthermore, the operetta’s ‘history of laughter’ will be paralleled with Freud’s 1905 study on the subject,

220  Olmo Calzolari suggesting that Svevo’s favola magnifies the negativity of the ‘Elogio’ through the lens of psychoanalysis. I will then reread Amelio’s dream through the nightmarish conclusion of ‘Rapporti difficili’, exploring the ways in which Svevo exploits the spavento (terror) of Leopardi’s philosophy. Amelio, the solitary philosopher, is absorbed in his books, when a flock of birds distracts his study: ‘scosso dal cantare degli uccelli per la campagna, a poco a poco datosi as ascoltare e a pensare, e lasciato il leggere’ [struck by the singing of birds all around, he gradually began to listen and think, and he stopped reading].11 According to Galimberti, the name Amelio is rooted in the Greek ameleia [freedom from worries], which seems to relate to the philosopher’s pensive mood.12 However, as D’Intino suggests, the reasons for Amelio’s pleasure should be detected in the amusement caused by the birds, rather than in his initial pose.13 We can then read the ‘Elogio’ as the narrative of Amelio’s spiritual uplift. Diverted from his reading, the philosopher engages in a positive interaction with nature that leads him to celebrate birds, ‘le più liete creature del mondo’ [the most joyous creatures in the world].14 These few elements are in themselves sufficient to draw some initial parallels with ‘Rapporti difficili’. The protagonist of Svevo’s story is a Man sporting grey temples and a tearful look.15 Although he is left nameless, the word ‘man’ is followed, across the whole text, by a series of melancholy adjectives: ‘sad’, ‘tired’, and ‘impatient’. Furthermore, the Man has a philosophical book in his hand, which he reads on the terrace of a depressing urban construction. As in Amelio’s case, the mood of Svevo’s reader is brightened when he sees a family of birds nesting on his roof: ‘non piange più. […] Le rondini portarono nella triste corte un po’ di vita e nella faccia dell’uomo un po’ di letizia’ [he stopped crying […] The swallows brought a bit of joy into the sad courtyards, and a bit of happiness into the Man’s face].16 Up to this point, the narratives of both texts evolve from a state of solitary reading to one of distracted imagination. In his reading of the ‘Elogio’, Svevo arguably detected in Amelio an element that connects intellectual activity with melancholy – a connection that the birds will disrupt. Starting from these premises, we will attempt to uncover the trail pointing to the ‘Elogio’. Specifically, we will look at the way in which the operetta read by Svevo, with its re-elaboration of the themes of ‘canto’ and ‘riso’ and dreams, progressively reveals the nightmare behind Amelio’s meditation.

Canto One of the themes that connect the two texts is that of ‘canto’, which condenses ideas of language, poetry, and literature. Unlike other

Metamorphosis and Nightmare  221 animals, birds celebrate life with their melodies, which spring from their ‘rich, varied, light, unstable, and childlike’ imagination.17 Locked into his erudite immobility, Amelio observes the way in which birds are provided with effortless poetic vivacity. As D’Intino argues, the ‘Elogio’ challenges the idea of modern and bookish literature as opposed to ancient poetry, rooted in oral performativity. In the shadow of the birds, we see the uncorrupted relationship with Nature held by ancient poets, as well as the nostalgia felt by the modern, and therefore philosopher, man of letter.18 Indeed, the ‘Elogio’ culminates with Amelio’s dream of metamorphosis into a bird; a transformation compared to that of the ancient Anacreon: ‘siccome Anacreonte desiderava potersi trasformare in ispecchio […] similmente io vorrei, per un poco di tempo, essere convertito in uccello, per provare quella contentezza e letizia della loro vita’ [as Anacreon wished he could be changed into a mirror […] similarly, I would like to be changed for a while into a bird so that I could experience the contentment and joy of their life].19 The meta-literary nature of the operetta can be better appreciated if read in parallel to a passage of the Zibaldone in which Leopardi, by praising Anacreon, celebrates the power of the lyric. Io per esprimere l’effetto indefinibile che fanno in noi le odi di Anacreonte non so trovare […] esempio più adattato di un alito passeggero di venticello fresco […] quella sensazione indefinibile è quasi istantanea, e se volete analizzarla vi sfugge, non la sentite più, tornate a leggere, vi restano in mano le parole sole e secche. 20 [In order to express the indefinable effect that the odes of Anacreon have upon us, I can find no better […] example than a passing breath of fresh breeze […] that indefinable sensation is almost instantaneous, and if you want to study its quality it eludes you, you no longer feel it, you return to reading, only the dry words remain in your hands] Before abandoning poetry for the Operette, Leopardi defends ancient poetry as a form of art rooted in natura, whose illusions can still bring pleasure to modernity. Of course, the precondition of such enchantment is that ragione will not interfere, and dispel it. In the ‘Elogio’, Amelio makes clear that birds hold the secret that connects art to nature, a secret having at its core their imagination. However, Amelio’s contemplation is haunted by his nostalgia for a poetic Eden that has been lost, but is still bitterly mourned. Opposing it to the birds’ imagination, Amelio posits that modern poetry possesses a cerebral and labyrinth-like kind of creativity: ‘profonda, fervida e tempestosa, come ebbero Dante, il Tasso; la quale è funestissima dote, e principio di sollecitudini e angosce gravissime e perpetue’ [profound, fervid, and tempestuous imagination as Dante and Tasso possessed – which is a most fatal gift and the origin of

222  Olmo Calzolari most grievous and perpetual anxiety and aguish]. 21 We can observe that Amelio is gradually revealing the negativity of his meditation. As we will see, this mournful aspect of the ‘Elogio’ must be what fascinated Svevo about the operetta. However, before getting to how ‘Rapporti difficili’ deals with birdsong vis-à-vis language and poetry, it is useful to read a passage from the Zibaldone that Svevo would have much appreciated. Objecting to the idea of modern Romantic art advocated by Ludovico di Breme, Leopardi here attacks [q]uest’arte insomma psicologica [che] distrugge l’illusione senza cui non ci sarà poesia in sempiterno, […] l’uomo […] anche se anche palpita […] questa benedetta mente gli va a ricercare tutti i secreti di questo palpito, e svanisce ogn’ispirazione, svanisce ogni poesia; e non si avvedono che s’è perduto il linguaggio della natura. [this psychological art – destroys the illusion without which poetry will never exist, […] [the] man […] if his heart still aches […], this blessed mind hunts out of the secrets of its aching, and all inspiration vanishes, all poetry vanishes; and they do not see that the language of nature is lost] Whether Svevo read it or not, this passage echoes his own position on language and art too. Both Leopardi and Svevo, in their respective rewritings of the history of the human race – ‘Storia del genere umano’, and La corruzione dell’anima – describe modernity as the result of an abandonment by Nature. The similarities between Leopardi and Svevo are in this respect strong. As Bertoni argues, the adjectives that Svevo’s essay adopts for humanity are unquestionably Leopardian: ‘malcontento, torvo, occhialuto, inerme, imperfettissimo, disgraziatissimo’ [discontent; gloomy; spectacled; inert, utterly imperfect; massively disgraceful]. Furthermore, both writers’ ‘evolutionary narratives’ run along analogously anti-progressive lines. Humankind is corrupted by the ghosts of Knowledge and Truth in Leopardi, and by ‘ordigni’ [devices], and ‘some of these […] were ideas’, in Svevo. 22 Relating these elements to the passage of the Zibaldone above, we can argue that, once humanity develops an awareness of its own ‘mind’, the process of Svevian ‘corruption of the soul’ begins. As for writers, this arguably implies an estrangement from the very object that should satisfy their desire for reconciliation with themselves: language. Through Svevo, we can appreciate that Leopardi’s meditation on modernity and linguistic frustrations displays a profound affinity with phenomena that, less than a century later, would have been scrutinized through the nascent category of the unconscious. Indeed, as we will see in the next sections, Svevo’s favola adopts Leopardi’s philosophy, and particularly the repertoire of the Elogio, as ‘unexploded psychological bombs’ whose haunting implications are ready to be released.

Metamorphosis and Nightmare  223 It is in this linguistic light that the relationship between the Man and the birds of ‘Rapporti difficili’ can be better appreciated. Fascinated by their life, the Man tries to attract the birds by imitating their melodies: ‘sufolava le arie più dolci e più pensate: Beethoven e Wagner’ [he whistled the sweetest and most sophisticated arias: Beethoven and Wagner]. 23 Obviously, they almost completely ignore him. However, the desire for ‘natural language’ continues to haunt the favola. Almost replicating Amelio’s final dream, the end of ‘Rapporti difficili’ sees the Man actually falling asleep and dreaming.24 [L]’uomo impaziente sognò il compimento del suo desiderio. […] S’intendeva con le rondinelle in un linguaggio di cui poi non ricordò più nulla. Era quel linguaggio tanto musicale che sonava come un canto. [the impatient Man dreamt the fulfilment of his desire. […] He could comprehend the little swallows in a language of which he had no memory afterwards. That language was so musical that it sounded like a song] The Man sublimates Leopardi’s dream of metamorphosis into a dream, in which human and animal share a secret poetic language. Thus, one of the ideas around which both Leopardi’s and Svevo’s texts revolve is that of ‘natural language’ and ‘canto’. These are specifically described as objects of human desire, which are however attainable only by the very act of desiring or, as we will see, of dreaming. The relationship between the two texts reveals itself as more complex if we consider the role of the Operette within Leopardi’s reflection, next to the context surrounding Svevo’s favole. Leopardi composed the Operette at a particular moment in his career. They allowed him to elaborate upon a crisis in his relationship with poetry, wherein the very idea of composing verse did not come naturally within the context of modernity. However, this moment of lost inspiration (1824–1828) can be seen as having powerfully driven his meditation. With the exception of the 1826 ‘Epistola al Conte Carlo Pepoli’, Leopardi would return to poetry with the so-called Canti pisano-recanatesi (1828–1830), introducing an even more complex lyrical voice. A similar ‘itinerary’ could describe Svevo’s career. After the fiasco of Senilità, Svevo would abandon ‘that ridiculous and dangerous thing that is called literature’ and wear the mask of the employee Schmitz. However, this theatrical conversion conceals a nostalgia for a productive relationship between life and art, which the dilettante Schmitz would convey in his fables. Such ‘literary rejection’ (1898–1919) motivates the employee to ponder the real possibilities of the novelist Svevo. Similarly to Leopardi, Svevo’s reflection would culminate in an original return to literature, with La coscienza di Zeno. In analysing two meta-literary texts such as the

224  Olmo Calzolari ‘Elogio’ and ‘Rapporti difficili’ we must therefore consider of how they were respectively composed over two very specific moments – namely, during Leopardi’s ‘abandonment of poetry’ and, in the uncertain case of ‘Rapporti difficili’, either during or after Svevo’s own ‘literary exile’. There can be little doubt that Svevo’s post-1898 writings suggest Leopardi’s presence. In Soggiorno londinese (1926), Svevo considers the relationship between art and philosophy by recalling ‘l’incanto che lo Schopenhauer provò al conoscere l’opera del Leopardi’ [the enchantment that Schopenhauer experienced in discovering Leopardi’s works].25 Furthermore, Svevo’s identification with Leopardi emerges in the epistolario. As Palmieri shows, Svevo’s letter to Valery Larbaud suggests an implicit connection between him and Leopardi: ‘qui troverà certamente cose degne della Sua penna ma non Recanati. Anzi anche Recanati ma vuota di Leopardi’ [here you will certainly find things worthy of Your pen, but not Recanati. Well, Recanati too, but without Leopardi].26 Furthermore, Svevo reiterates this affinity in his private correspondence. As he writes to his wife in 1899, ‘[i]ncomincio subito lo zibaldone che ogni giorno t’invio’ [I’ll start immediately the zibaldone that I send you every day]. 27 Bacchereti particularly underlines how Svevo’s epistolary acted as a ‘journal intime’ in which the dilettante would elaborate on the inability of the written word to convey the volatile essence of the subject – a tension which, as we saw, lies at the core of the ‘Elogio’, as well as that of several pages of the Zibaldone. 28 Indeed, it can be helpful to remember that the first edition of the Zibaldone was published in 1898–1900, a date corresponding to the beginning of Svevo’s ‘abandonment of literature’. 29 These elements can suggest that Svevo’s interest in Leopardi, and specifically in his 1824–1828 meditation, reached a peak during Svevo’s own rejection of literature. Furthermore, both writers’ claimed ‘anti-­ artistic tension’ generated two extremely ‘contaminated’ forms of literature between poetic indulgence and philosophical censorship: Leopardi’s Operette and Svevo’s favole. Leopardi’s early nineteenth-century meditation on the impossibility of poetry can thus be seen as a valuable lesson for the Italian dilettanti of the early twentieth century, whose dream of art clashed with the ‘loss of a halo’ of art in modernity. The next section will highlight this theme by exploring, through ‘Rapporti difficili’, a further manifestation of Amelio’s dream – a manifestation that intersects and exceeds the birdsong’s dimension of utterance and pleasure: ‘il riso’.

Riso Amelio observes that the birds’ song resembles the uncontrollable outburst of laughter: ‘un riso, che l’uccello fa quando egli si sente star bene e piacevolmente’ [a sort of laughter, uttered by the birds when they feel well and comfortable].30 As such, he gladly concludes that birds share with men the privilege of laughter. However, as for the theme of ‘canto’,

Metamorphosis and Nightmare  225 the mirror showing the affinities between the two natures abruptly reveals its fractures. The text proceeds with a series of reflections upon laughter that can be read as a succinct essay on human unhappiness. [S]i veggono molti in qualche fierissimo accidente, altri in grande tristezza d’animo […] nondimeno ridere. Anzi, quanto conoscono meglio […] l’infelicità della vita; […] tanto maggiormente sogliono i particolari uomini essere inclinati al riso.31 [we see many in extremely severe accidents, others in the depth of sadness […] and yet we see them laugh. As a matter of fact, the more they know […] the unhappiness of life […] the more men are inclined to laughter] Amelio’s voice assumes a more lugubrious tone, which echoes that of the Zibaldone. The image of the hysterically giggling man is arguably a reference to the ‘riso dell’uomo sensitivo e oppresso da fiera calamità […] segno di disperazione già matura’ of Zibaldone 107 [the laugh of a sensitive man oppressed by a grave calamity is a sign of already mature despair].32 Furthermore, Amelio’s discourse on the origin of laughter has heart-breaking conclusions: ‘il riso, non solo apparisse al mondo dopo il pianto […]; ma che penasse un buono spazio di tempo a essere sperimentato’ [not only did laughter appear in the world after tears […] but that it took a good space of time before it was first experimented with and seen].33 Indeed, in a note of the Zibaldone dated ‘12. Maggio 1825’, Leopardi describes laughter as a human response to the despair brought about by reason: ‘[q]uanto più l’uomo cresce […] massime di esperienza e di senno […], e […] si fa più incapace di felicità, tanto egli si fa più proclive e domestico al riso’ [the more man grows […] especially in experience and judgement […], and […] becomes more incapable of happiness, the more he becomes prone to and feels at home with laughter].34 The bird’s correspondence between happiness and laughter becomes unnaturally twisted when it comes to humanity: the more their reason makes them suffer, the more desperately they laugh. Amelio concludes that it is impossible to explain human laughter ‘se non se forse dicendo che il riso è specie di pazzia non durabile, o pure di vaneggiamento e delirio’ [except by saying that laughter is a form or temporary madness, raving, and delirium].35 Superficially, the parallel between human and animal laughter should have constituted one of the poetic climaxes of the Elogio. Yet indeed, Amelio’s transition from absent-mindedness to philosophical bluntness violently strikes the reader with a rationale of the difference between the two races. [I]o sono di opinione che […] nel qual [antico] tempo, né la madre sorridesse al bambino, né questo riconoscesse lei col sorriso, come dice Virgilio. Che se oggi, almeno dove la gente è ridotta a vita

226  Olmo Calzolari civile, incominciano gli uomini a ridere poco dopo nati; fannolo principalmente in virtù dell’esempio […]. E crederei che la prima occasione e la prima causa di ridere, fosse stata agli uomini la ubbriachezza. 36 [I am of the opinion that […] [d]uring that [ancient] time neither did the mother smile at her child, nor did the child recognize her with a smile – as Virgil says. For if nowadays, and at least where people have become civilized, men begin to laugh shortly after they are born, they do so mainly as a result of example […]. I would think that the first occasion and the first cause for men to laugh was drunkenness] According to Amelio, the initiation to laughter coincides with the development of artificial forms of inebriation, which allowed humans, he explains, to alleviate the painful perception of living.37 The ‘Elogio’ arguably descends into a philosophical truth, which is not only arid but also disturbing. The image of the mother and the child coldly staring at each other is arguably an unnerving one. Camilletti specifically considers this image in psychoanalytical terms, adopting the idea of ‘negation of the negation’: Leopardi mentions the original bond between mother and child, characterised by laughter [riso] and enjoyment […] Still, the ‘negation of the negation’ to speak in Kristeva’s terms is so strong that the mother-child link, for Leopardi, is connected to weeping rather than joy and the happiness of children is the mere result of civilization and the imitation of others.38 This process of negation, whose origin lies in a mournful speculation over the dead body of poetry, can be seen as revealing a peculiarly destructive drive within Leopardi’s philosophy. Beginning from the observation of one’s experience, it expands to consider the universal and its causes, thus frighteningly interpreting the cosmic through what we could call both a destructive and mutual empowerment between melancholy and rationality. Such a vision of the world arguably connects Leopardi to Svevo’s modernist oeuvre: namely after 1898, when Svevo’s poetics explore the conflict between reality and its psychologically amplified representation. ‘Rapporti difficili’, indeed, constitutes an exemplar case of Svevo’s modernist re-elaboration of Leopardi’s philosophy. Namely, the psychological process of ‘double negation’ of the ‘Elogio’ can be seen as finding new life in the favola’s portrayal of laughter, which allows Svevo to exploit the Leopardian spavento [terror] in all of its nightmarish potentiality. 39 In ‘Rapporti difficili’, the Man considers the intellectual pain that burdens humanity: ‘il pensiero umano con sforzo faticoso aveva

Metamorphosis and Nightmare  227 scoperto che l’amore non era altro che la volontà di riprodursi. Ma da questi animali […] non occorreva fatica per scoprire quella legge’ [the human mind had discovered with a paining effort that love was nothing but the will to reproduce. But for these animals […] there was no need of pain to discover this law].40 Svevo adopts the life of birds as a mirror to reverse the Man’s profile, narrating human laughter in a way that arguably echoes the ‘Elogio’. Unable to understand the birds, the Man, ‘con l’ironia ch’era la sua eredità, pensava che per distrarre la sua femminuccia il maschietto le raccontava le ciarle delle rondinelle’ [with the irony that was his legacy, he thought that the male bird […] would amuse the female one with bird gossip]. This bittersweet passage possesses in itself the premises of the process of negations that we detected in the ‘Elogio’. Realizing the mortifying limits of his imagination, the Man considers that there is no room for detriment in a bird’s life. As a result, the wit used to rationalize his object of desire turns into a chuckle of distress: ‘finì col ridere di se stesso’ [he ended up laughing about himself].41 As we observed, the narrative continues with the protagonist luring the birds by whistling lugubrious symphonies. In this case too, his failure leads him to smile in a way that conceals impulses of aggression: ‘sorrideva della tattica di quelle piccole menti. Egli offriva della bontà e loro non l’intendevano e lo ritenevano uno stolido malvagio’ [He smiled of these little minds’ plan. He was offering his generosity and they did not understand him, and thought he was an evil stolid].42 The narrative depicts laughter as a means to vehicle human dissatisfaction through a disguised form. The Man’s quest for pleasure gradually reveals a poisonous attitude towards what is perceived as unattainably pure: as for the ‘Elogio’, the genesis of laughter seems to be connected to despair. Leopardi’s discourse on laughter appears to be in a dynamic dialogue with Svevo’s portrayal of irony. We should remember that between 1898 and 1919 Svevo engaged in a ‘hodgepodge’ of scientific-philosophical readings, which, if arguably inclusive of Leopardi, were unquestionably characterized by Freud. We can hypothesize that Svevo might have found in the new methods of psychoanalysis the instruments to amplify the emotional disturbance of Leopardi’s philosophy. Crucially, the concept of laughter as a signification of discontent that Freud discusses in Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905) specifically explores the points raised by the ‘Elogio’. Defining humans, as both Leopardi and Svevo might have done, as ‘tireless pleasure-seeker[s]’, Freud advances that jokes have the role of rescuing adults’ ‘pleasure in freedom of thinking, of which’ they have been ‘deprived by […] the burden of intellectual upbringing’.43 However, the pleasure of laughter exists only insofar as it liberates the ‘psychic expenditure’ otherwise engaged in supporting an adult, civilized, and unconsciously repressed, humanity. Freud’s analysis can thus be seen as productively conversing with

228  Olmo Calzolari the ‘Elogio’s’ genesis of laughter. The last part of Amelio’s digression particularly attributes the birth of hilarity to the discovery of alcohol, which would have given humans the illusion of feeling, once again, as mindless as birds. [N]on si ritrova popolo così rozzo, che non abbia provveduto di qualche bevanda o di qualche altro modo da inebbriarsi […] donde […] scemandosi loro il senso e il conoscimento dei propri mali, rice­ vono non piccolo benefizio.44 [there can scarcely be found any people so primitive who have not provided themselves with some beverage or some other means to inebriate themselves […] [a]nd so, by […] decreasing, the sense and knowledge of their own ills, they receive no small benefit] The idea of drunkenness as a major stimulus to lower one’s rational awareness also constitutes one of Freud’s interpretations of the ways in which we try to reconnect with childhood: a change in mood is the most precious thing that alcohol achieves for mankind […] the grown man once more becomes a child, who finds pleasure in having the course of his thoughts freely at his disposal without paying regard to the compulsion of logic. Inebriation liberates humans from logical consequentiality, blessing their language with a pleasure in spontaneous ‘nonsense’.45 Similarly to Amelio’s fascination with birds, whose utterance is both ‘canto’ and ‘riso’, Freud explores the pleasure derived from games, language, and an imagination that the ‘Elogio’ declares lost. During the period in which a child is learning […] his mother-tongue […] he puts words together without regard to the condition that they should make sense, in order to obtain the pleasurable effect of rhythm or rhyme. Little by little he is forbidden this enjoyment […] and for this reason the rebellion against the compulsion of logic is deep-going and long-lasting. Even the phenomena of imaginative activity must be included in this [rebellious] category.46 What Freud discusses here is the tension towards what, in Leopardi’s terms, can be described as the undeveloped ragione of children, or animals. Amelio’s metamorphosis into a bird follows what Tandello described as Leopardi’s dream of ‘reversal of evolutionary transformation’.47 This is the same mechanism that Freud, in relation to laughter, describes as a ‘regression in the dream-work […] which is in the reverse direction to that taken by the course of development of mental complication’.48 We can hence argue that Freud’s 1905 study constituted a

Metamorphosis and Nightmare  229 modern lens that allowed Svevo to reveal, and psychologically amplify, the malevolence behind Amelio’s rêverie. Indeed, the last occurrence of Leopardian ‘riso’ emerges, in the favola, in the Man’s very own ‘regression in the dream-work’, which allows Svevo to model his protagonist’s tormented unconscious on the archetype of the ‘Elogio’. In a dark rewriting of the operetta’s finale, the Man’s dream turns into its spaventoso opposite: nightmare.

Dreams Childishly excited for his success with the bird (‘si arrivò ad un’intesa relativa con la femminuccia. […] Chissà a che punto si sarebbe potuto arrivare con lunga pazienza!’ [He came to a relative understanding with the female bird […] Who knows where he could have gotten to, with long patience!]), the protagonist of ‘Rapporti difficili’ conclusively falls asleep, continuing to elaborate upon his desire through the language of dreams: ‘[m]a una notte l’uomo impaziente sognò il compimento del suo desiderio’ [but one night the impatient Man dreamt the fulfilment of his desire].49 In Freudian terms, the man passes from the ‘optative’ to the ‘indicative’ – or ‘pictorial’ – mood that allows him to represent, in an illusory but ‘magnificent phantasy’, his return to nature. 50 Ed egli raccontava alle rondinelle l’ammirazione e l’affetto che loro portava. Le rondinelle adulte erano sorprese della sua bontà, ma le giovani non si sorprendevano di nulla perché imparavano da lui a conoscere la vita.51 [And he told the little swallows the admiration and affection that he had for them. The older swallows were surprised by his kindness, but the young ones were not at all because they were learning from him to know life] The Man’s diurnal frustration vanishes, with his newly acquired ‘canto’ finally enabling his benevolence to be vocalized. No more an evil creature belonging to the ‘razza’ that ‘perseguitava […] gli uccellini […] e ne distruggeva i nidi’ [the race’ that ‘haunted little birds […] and destroyed their nests], the Man now portrays himself as the protector of everything natural and innocent. 52 The whole process of ‘corruption of the soul’ that Svevo and Leopardi described as having paralysed humankind in its deadly ‘discontent’ appears here to be reversed, if not ultimately forgotten [la vecchia rondinella diceva: – Com’è che un uomo possa essere tanto buono? –. Ma le giovani bisbigliavano: – È un uomo e perciò è buono’). [the old swallow said: – How is it possible that a man can be that good? – But the young ones whispered: – He is a man, therefore he is good]. 53 Yet, as for the themes of ‘canto’

230  Olmo Calzolari and ‘riso’, this sublimation into the tunes of poetry only foreshadows but a symphony of broken dreams. Svevo’s rewriting of the operetta amplifies the negativity of Leopardi’s philosophy – namely, through the description of the Man’s passage from dream to nightmare, and from nightmare to wake. Poi il sogno volse all’incubo: Le giovani rondinelle andavano a poggiarsi nel grembo di altri uomini i quali subito torcevano loro il collo ridendo orrendamente lieti […] – No! Diffidate! Non sono come me! Sono bestie malvagie –. Ma le rondinelle non avevano spazio nel cervello per contenere due concezioni della vita e correvano alla rovina.54 [Then the dream turned into nightmare: the young swallows went to rest on other men’s laps, and those suddenly strangled them laughing with an awful joy. […] – No! Don’t trust them! They are not like me! They are evil beasts –. But in the little swallow’s brains there was no room for two opposite notions of life, so they ran towards their ruin] Adopting himself a technique of ‘negation of the negation’, Svevo brutally condemns the Man’s necessity to find shelter in dreams. We can particularly observe that the nightmare reaches its horrific extremes when the Man’s desire for purity is publicly derided by a parliament of human ‘bestie malvagie’ [evil beasts] – a quintessentially sadistic irony, if we look at it from the perspective of Svevo’ dilettantistica reflection on art in modern society. Crucially, the lexicon adopted to describe the Man’s humiliation reveals Svevo’s malignant use of Leopardi. The sequence ‘ridendo orrendamente lieti’ [laughing with an awful joy] echoes Amelio’s portrait of human laughter as opposed to that of birds, ‘le più liete creature del mondo’ [the most joyous creatures in the world].55 In representing the Man’s dream, Svevo arguably empowered and unleashed the ‘psychological potential’ of the operetta, remodelling its melancholy portrayal of modern imagination [a most fatal gift and the origin of most grievous and perpetual anxiety and aguish] into the very stuff of nightmare.56 In casa si urlava: – Al fuoco, al fuoco! –. Si picchiava anche alla stes­sa porta della sua stanza. L’uomo subito desto ebbe la gola offesa dall’acre odore della combustione. Gli mancava il fiato, ma tuttavia corse alla porta che conduceva al terrazzino e la spalancò. Spuntava il mattino. Dal cortile saliva un denso fumo che doveva aver già soffocati i piccoli nel nido.57 [In the house someone yelled – Fire! Fire! –. Someone was even banging at his door. Suddenly awake, the Man’s throat hurt for the acrid smell of combustion. He was out of breath, yet he ran to the

Metamorphosis and Nightmare  231 door that lead to the small terrace and opened it. Morning was coming. A dense smoke was rising from the courtyard, which must have suffocated the little birds in their nest] Banished from a realm of pleasure, the Man returns to reality through a brusque awakening, which should interrupt the horrors of his sleep. However, this brings him back to the bitterness of his daily existence. We can observe that Svevo’s Man experiences the same trauma of awakening from dreams described with terror by Leopardi, but magnified. Svevo underlines the frightening vanity of the Man’s dream through the description of a terrible fire that spread through the courtyard – the Man instinctively rushes towards the terrace, where a dense smoke had already killed the baby birds. In this sense, the section that closes ‘Rapporti difficili’ arguably condenses the themes of the whole favola, reconnecting it to Amelio’s impossible desire for poetry and joy. Through the birds’ perspective, humanity is conclusively condemned to have contaminated, with its obsessive quest for pleasure, the gratuitous delight of nature: ‘[q]uando videro comparire sul terrazzino l’animale la cui vicinanza aveva inquietato il loro amore e il loro lavoro, perdettero ogni speranza’ [when they saw the animal, whose presence had polluted their love and their work, appearing in the small terrace, they lost all hopes].58 In both Leopardi’s and Svevo’s ‘dreams’, humanity is ultimately left alone in its depressing civilization, from which to observe, and never truly be, the birds whose voices sound like poetry and laughter: ‘[c]on un ultimo grido di terrore, svanirono nello spazio verso l’aere puro. Quel grido, certo, significava: – Ecco l’assassino!’ [with a last cry of terror, they disappeared into the space towards the pure air. That cry certainly meant: – Here is the murderer!].59 For the philosopher of the ‘Elogio’, as well as for the humourist of the favole, we can thus conclusively describe humanity with the words that another ‘dilettante di gran classe’ [highclass dilettante], Montale, used to refer to himself and to his immobility-­ stricken, ‘senile’ generation: ‘la razza di chi rimane a terra’ [the race of those who are earthbound].60

Notes 1 Giacomo Leopardi, ‘L’Ucello’ [sic], in Poesie e prose, ed. by Mario Andrea Rigoni and R. Damiani, 2 vols. (Milan: Mondadori, 1987), vol. I, p. 740 (my translation). The following editions have been used here: Leopardi, Operette morali, ed. by Antonio Prete (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2015); for the Zibaldone (Zib. in the footnotes, followed by the number of the pensiero, and the page number of the edition in use), I used Leopardi, Zibaldone, ed. by Lucio Felici (Rome: Newton & Compton, 2001). For the English translations: Leopardi, ‘In Praise of Birds’, in Operette Morali: Essays and Dialogues, transl. by Giovanni Cecchetti (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 353–369; Leopardi, Zibaldone: The Notebooks of Leopardi, ed. by Franco D’Intino and Michael Caesar (London: Penguin Classics, 2013).

232  Olmo Calzolari 2 On Leopardi’s encounter with Greek poetry, see Franco D’Intino, ‘Introduzione’, in Giacomo Leopardi, Poeti greci e latini, ed. by Franco D’Intino (Rome: Salerno, 1999), pp. vi–xxvi (pp. xiii–xiv). 3 Italo Svevo is Ettore Schmitz’s most famous penname. After the critical failure of his first two novels, Una vita (1892) and Senilità (1898), Svevo publicly claimed the end of his literary career. However, he kept writing clandestinely, eventually coming back to the public with La coscienza di Zeno (1923). 4 Italo Svevo, ‘Favola per Letizia’, in Racconti e scritti autobiografici, ed. by Clotilde Bertoni and Mario Lavagetto (Milan: Mondadori, 2004), p. 656. For Svevo’s texts, I will refer to this edition. The English translations are mine. 5 The year of composition of ‘Rapporti difficili’ is unclear. One of the pages of the manuscript was used to draft a business letter, and bears a handwritten note dated 1927. While it is possible that Svevo wrote this favola in that date, we will consider the text as participating in the spirit of the writer’s production of fables (1891–1927) that dominates his works before his official ‘return to literature’. See Clotilde Bertoni, ‘Apparato genetico e commento’, in Svevo, Racconti, pp. 815–1467 (p. 1334). 6 Mario Lavagetto, L’impiegato Schmitz e altri saggi su Svevo (Turin: Einaudi, 1975). 7 Giovanni Palmieri, ‘Leopardi in Svevo. Risonanze e Fonti’, in ‘Quel libro senza uguali’. Le ‘Operette morali’ e il Novecento italiano, ed. by Andrea Cortellessa and Novella Bellucci (Rome: Bulzoni, 2000), pp. 43–51. 8 Natàlia Vacante, ‘Favole, Apologhi, Aforismi. Svevo sulla Linea da Leopardi a Hebbel’, in Italo Svevo: il sogno e la vita vera, ed. by Mario Sechi (Rome: Donzelli, 2009), pp. 113–138. 9 Teresa Spignoli, ‘Tra Freud e Leopardi: Modelli intertestuali nell’Opera di Italo Svevo e Paolo Volponi’, in Italo Svevo and His Legacy for the Third Millennium (Vol. II), ed. by Emanuela Tandello Cooper and Giuseppe Stellardi, 2 vols. (Leicestershire: Troubador, 2014), vol. II, pp. 135–142. 10 With the term dilettanti, I am referring to heterogeneous group of self-­ declared amateur writers who, at the beginning of the twentieth century, divided their life between a daily, spiritually frustrating, profession, and the dream of art. Their works often reacted to the fading role of art in society with a mixture of embarrassment, irony, and nostalgia. Svevo expressed his views on dilettantismo in an 1884 article on ‘L’Indipendente’. See Italo Svevo, ‘Il Dilettantismo’, in Teatro e Saggi, ed. by Federico Bertoni and Mario Lavagetto (Milan: Mondadori, 2004), pp. 1015–1019. 11 Leopardi, ‘Elogio degli Uccelli’, in Operette, p. 179. 12 Leopardi, Operette morali, ed. by Cesare Galimberti (Naples: Guida Editori, 1977), p. 300. 13 Franco D’Intino, L’Immagine della voce. Leopardi, Platone e il libro morale (Venice: Marsilio, 2009), p. 26. 14 Leopardi, ‘Elogio’, p. 179. 15 I will refer to this character with a capital letter from now on. 16 Svevo, ‘Rapporti difficili’, in Racconti, p. 662. 17 Leopardi, ‘Elogio’, p. 184. 18 D’Intino argues that Amelio is reading Plato’s Phaedrus, which discusses the limits of the written form and celebrates the power of orality. See D’Intino, L’immagine, p. 28. 19 Leopardi, ‘Elogio’, pp. 185–186. 20 Zib. 30–31, p. 25.

Metamorphosis and Nightmare  233 21 Leopardi, ‘Elogio’, pp. 184–185. Leopardi has however a different opinion on Ariosto. See Martina Piperno, ‘“Eccetto l’Ariosto’. Leopardi legge l’Orlando Furioso”, I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, 20, 2 (2017), pp. ­295–315 (p. 299). 22 Bertoni, ‘Apparato’, pp. 886; 1670. See also Lavagetto, L’impiegato Schmitz, pp. 167–207. 23 Svevo, ‘Rapporti’, p. 666. 24 Ibid. 25 Svevo, Teatro e Saggi, p. 897. 26 Palmieri, ‘Leopardi in Svevo’, p. 43. 27 Italo Svevo, Opera omnia: Epistolario, ed. by Bruno Maier (Milan: dall’Oglio, 1969), p. 141. 28 Elisabetta Bacchereti, La formica e le rane: strategie della scrittura sveviana (Florence: Le Lettere, 1995), p. 18. 29 Palmieri argues that Svevo probably had the following editions of Leopardi: ‘Prose, scelte e annotate a uso delle scuole dal professor R. Fornaciari (Florence: Barbera, 1882); I Canti, commentati da A. Straccali, Biblioteca scolastica di classici italiani diretta da Giosuè Carducci (Florence: Sansoni, 1895, 2nda edizione riveduta e corretta)’. See Palmieri, ‘Leopardi in Svevo’, p. 46. 30 Leopardi, ‘Elogio’, p. 181. 31 Ibid., p. 182. 32 Zib. 107, p. 53. 33 Leopardi, ‘Elogio’, p. 182. 34 Zib. 4138, p. 842. 35 Leopardi, ‘Elogio’, p. 182. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., p. 183. 38 Fabio Camilletti, Leopardi’s Nymphs. Grace, Melancholy, and the Uncanny (London: Legenda, 2013), p. 195. 39 The Leopardian spavento is also portrayed in the Zibaldone, where Leopa­ rdi describes the terrors of his childhood: ‘strepiti notturni, immagini reali, spaventose […], quel timore spirituale, soprannaturale, sacro, e di un altro mondo, che ci agitava frequentemente in quell’età […] che non può esser paragonato con verun altro sentimento dispiacevole dell’uomo’ [noises in the night and real images […] that spiritual, supernatural, sacred, otherworldly fear, which frequently gripped us at that age […] that it cannot be compared to any other unpleasurable feeling felt by human beings]. See Zib. pp. 531–532, 147. 40 Svevo, ‘Rapporti’, pp. 662–663. 41 Ibid., pp. 663–664. 42 Ibid., p. 664. 43 Sigmund Freud, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, ed. by Anna Freud and James Strachey (London: Vintage, 2001), pp. 126–127. 4 4 Leopardi, ‘Elogio’, p. 182. 45 Freud, Jokes, p. 127. 46 Ibid., p. 126. 47 Emanuela Tandello Cooper, ‘Calvino’s Il Barone rampante and Leopardi’s Elogio degli uccelli’, in Cultural Reception, Translation and Transformation from Medieval to Modern Italy, ed. by Brian Richardson, Giuseppe Stellardi, and Guido ­Bonsaver (Cambridge: Legenda, 2017), pp. 299–315 (p. 303). 48 Freud, Jokes, p. 162. 49 Svevo, ‘Rapporti’, p. 666. 50 Freud, Jokes, p. 165.

234  Olmo Calzolari 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Svevo, ‘Rapporti’, p. 666. Ibid., p. 665. Ibid., p. 666. Ibid., p. 667. Leopardi, ‘Elogio’, p. 179. Ibid., pp. 184–185. Svevo, ‘Rapporti’, p. 667. Ibid. Ibid. Eugenio Montale, Collected Poems 1920–1954, ed. and transl. by Jonathan Galassi (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998), pp. 17–18.

11 Is There an Unconscious in This Text? On Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno Alessandra Diazzi

Introduction Close to the Triestine psychoanalytic circles and, at the same time, sceptical towards the effectiveness of the talking cure, Italo Svevo published in 1923 Italy’s first psychoanalytic novel, La coscienza di Zeno.1 In La coscienza, psychoanalysis constitutes one of the principal themes of the novel, while it acts at the same time as a fundamental narrative device.2 Undoubtedly, the text stems from a reflection on psychoanalysis and Freud’s theories shape the book as a whole. Affirming the same for the dimension of the unconscious is, though, far more problematic. Although Svevo disseminates ubiquitous references to Freudian thought throughout the book, the literary elaboration – and portrayal – of the unconscious is less straightforward, if at all present. To the extent that, I believe, the reader is left wondering: is the unconscious actually present in La coscienza di Zeno? Or Svevo’s attempt to polemicize against the talking cure results, at the same time, in an almost complete erasure of Freud’s most perturbing discovery? My contribution moves from the hypothesis that the irony Svevo shows towards psychoanalysis and, more broadly, the resistance against the discipline the book consciously exhibits, result in a mode of narrative in which the unconscious finds no place whatsoever. Zeno’s story systematically contradicts the unsettling discovery the Ego is no longer the master in its own house, in being the text narrated by a character that is, to say it with Briosi and Genco, ‘condannato alla coscienza’ [condemned to consciousness].3 The narrator presents to the reader a plot entirely mastered by his conscious ‘I’, even – and I would say above all  – in those passages where the unconscious seemingly takes control over the narrator’s conscious voice. What follows intends therefore to demonstrate that, although Svevo’s novel is a text wherein psychoanalysis is ubiquitous, yet the unconscious is almost totally absent. By so doing, my analysis situates itself in the path treaded by Genco’s reading of La coscienza as a narrative that lies its roots ‘nella coscienza (onnipresente) e non nell’inconscio’ [in the (ubiquitous) consciousness and not in the unconscious] to the extent that, every time ‘le irrompenti pulsioni della psiche’ [the bursting urges of psyche] seem to affect Zeno’s account,

236  Alessandra Diazzi ‘queste sortite […] entrano anch’essere nel cosciente sistema formale del testo. Zeno insomma racconta delle finzioni coscienti’ [these outbreaks […] also enter the conscious formal structure of the text. In sum, Zeno consciously tells fiction].4 By arguing, with Genco, that a programmatic erasure of the unconscious dimension takes place in La coscienza di Zeno, my analysis intends in no way to diminish the crucial influence the knowledge of Freudian theories had on Svevo’s book. La coscienza di Zeno owes a fundamental and undeniable debt towards Freud, whose theories shape the plot and act as the fundamental trigger for the narrative. Svevo’s book is, I believe, inextricably interwoven with Freud’s thought. I therefore share with scholarship the conviction that it can be, by all means, considered the first Italian psychoanalytic novel. As such, it will be hereby analysed as a paradigmatic example of the way Italian culture has confronted with – and resisted against – psychoanalysis’ challenge to the primacy of the Ego. Before proceeding with the analysis, though, a methodological premise is necessary. Every time I will refer to the notion of unconscious in La coscienza di Zeno I will be not implying in any way the possibility to read the text as the mirror of the author’s most inaccessible realm of psyche. Not even I intend to attribute to Zeno any kind of unconscious, whatever this may mean for a literary character. On this score, I share Baldi’s idea that ‘Zeno è pur sempre un personaggio di carta e le sue libere associazioni non nascondono alcun inconscio da decodificare, solo strategie narrative da interpretare’ [Zeno is, after all, a literary character, and his free associations do not conceal any unconscious to be deciphered, only narrative strategies to be interpreted].5 When speaking of the unconscious in the book I therefore refer to a purely fictional portrayal of this dimension of psyche. Accordingly, the analysis that follows is aimed to detect the author’s attempt – or rather the lack thereof – to reproduce the unconscious’ functioning and its interferences in the narrator’s discourse, on a purely literary level.6

Conscience The first clue signalling the lack of the unconscious dimension in Svevo’s story is, to say it with Proust, one of ‘those objects that can escape the most minute search and are actually staring everybody in the face where nobody notices them, on the mantelpiece’.7 The analysis of the unconscious in La coscienza di Zeno – Zeno’s consciousness – sounds in fact, literally, a paradox and, even, an oxymoron. An autobiographical collection of memories that, according to the preface, has been written by the character in order to facilitate his treatment – ‘un buon preludio alla psico-analisi’ [a good prelude to psychoanalysis]8 – does not present itself as the privileged access to the Zeno’s unconscious. Surprisingly, a book that is explicitly inspired by

Is There an Unconscious in This Text?  237 psychoanalysis and inextricably interwoven with this theme, does not put in the spotlight the unconscious, the psychoanalytic ‘buzzword’ par excellence and, by then, a word in fashion. Rather, it lays stress on the rational and controlled subjectivity, on the dimension of psyche that embodies the Cartesian counter-part of the unconscious sphere. Interestingly, the emphasis on the domain of consciousness, explicit already on a paratextual level, is even more evident when one looks at the first English translation of the book. Beryl De Zoete, the English translator of La coscienza di Zeno, transformed in fact Svevo’s title into Confessions of Zeno.9 Far from being a neutral choice, this change clearly orients the reader towards a pre-determined reception of Zeno’s monologue, as a narrative controlled by the dimension of reason and rationality. Through the term ‘confession’, the translator makes in fact explicit reference to a well-defined genre of memoirs, an autobiographical and intimate – but ego-oriented – investigation of the speaking subject’s life and psyche. In his second translation of the book offered to the Anglophone world, William Weaver meant to restore a title that might be closer to the original. Nevertheless, he opted for Zeno’s Conscience, instead of choosing the more literal version ‘consciousness’. By so doing, Weaver as well seems to see in Zeno a moral – rather than a ­psychological  – ­conflict.10 The erasure of any reference to ‘consciousness’ in the title, in fact, results in the suppression of the dichotomy ‘conscious’/‘unconscious’ as the crucial interpretative framework to understand the protagonist’s narration.11 These choices should not be exclusively interpreted as editorial decisions, aimed to make the book more easily assimilated by the foreign book market. The two English titles stem from an ambiguity intrinsic to Svevo’s text, which is worth to further investigate. The book’s preface, allegedly written by Zeno’s psychoanalyst, presents the narrative that follows as a novella [story], an autobiografia [autobiography], and a collection of memorie [memoirs] (5). It is therefore Svevo himself, through Doctor S.’s voice, to provide an explicit interpretative framework to the audience, which is invited to read what follows as a conscious elaboration of the character’s memories. Svevo defines Zeno’s narrative through I-led modes of storytelling, which De Zoete has limited herself to subsume under the umbrella-term ‘confession’. Accordingly, the character’s first-person diary takes the shape of an elegantly orchestrated story of the speaking ‘I’ and his social posture, rather than of the eclipse of a conscious subject. Giuliana Minghelli is right when she observes that, far from representing the subject’s relapse into an attitude of introjection, La coscienza’s story grounds on an inter-relational and extroverted understanding of the subject: ‘The narrator unravels the arrhythmic story of consciousness, which, as the chapter headings suggest […] unfolds as the story of Zeno’s various associations with his others’.12 Pierpaolo Antonello goes in the same direction proposing an analysis of the novel ‘non basata su una dimensione

238  Alessandra Diazzi del rimosso, ma dell’apparente, di quello che l’autore stesso ha da dirci in fatto di desiderio e di autonomia individuale’ [that is not grounded on the sphere of what has been repressed, but of what is patent, of what the author is telling us about desire and individual autonomy]: the idea that, in La coscienza, Zeno’s desire is not shaped by unconscious forces but instead ‘eterodiretto’ [other-directed] and led by the mechanism of imitation or, in Girardian terms, mimesis.13 The supremacy of an extroverted model of subjectivity is inextricably interwoven with the hegemony of the conscious I over the unconscious sphere that pervades Zeno’s narrative. The dominion the Ego imposes on the narrative plot is suggested in Doctor S.’s prefatory note. Although he explains to the reader the importance the diary holds for analytical purposes, Doctor S. adds that Zeno has combined in his story ‘tante verità e bugie’ [much truth and lies] (5). A statement that, in itself, disallows the possibility that the unconscious may have shaped the narrative. It is therefore the implied reader himself – Zeno’s psychoanalyst – to suggest that the narrative Zeno has provided resists the possibility to interpret it analytically. To the extent that he publishes the patient’s writing in order to take revenge of his conscious manipulation of psychological material. Within the fictional universe of the book, the analyst turns the notes Zeno wrote in preparation for his analysis into a piece of literature. By so doing, he declares the fictional nature – and therefore the analytical uselessness – of his patient’s narrative. Zeno’s unreliability is therefore not attributable to a lack of control over his narrative, nor he is trapped in a psychological dimension wherein imagination and reality are not discernible. If we exclude, as I believe we should, that Zeno’s act of writing takes place in a condition of semi-conscience wherein the boundaries between real and imagined facts blur,14 we cannot but attribute to the protagonist a conscious control over his narrative. By making Zeno claim ‘inventare è una creazione, non già una menzogna’ [to invent means to create, not to tell lies] (496), Svevo explicitly frames the act of lying within the domain of creativity and free will. He therefore reiterates the fictional and rational nature of the material Zeno offers to his reader, presenting the character’s lies, lapsus, and mistakes as a conscious strategy adopted by the narrator, in no way attributable to the interferences of the unconscious. As Pouillon observes, and Albertocchi also believes, ‘Zeno mente per essere capito: i dubbi sulla sua presunta malafede, sono varianti elargite consapevolmente’ [Zeno tells lies in order to be understood: doubts about his alleged bad faith are willingly given possibilities].15

Dreams In La coscienza, dreams and lies are inextricably interwoven. Critics categorize Zeno’s dreams into two broad categories: those that have been

Is There an Unconscious in This Text?  239 invented by the analysand, which in no way mean to actually reflect the narrator’s oneiric experience; and those that, instead, are presented as they were actually dreamt by the protagonist. All dreams that are entirely made-up by the protagonist are included in La coscienza’s last chapter, ‘Psico-analisi’ [Psycho-analysis]. Here, Zeno ‘sferra l’attacco finale con una sequenza di cinque sogni inventati a bella posta per farsi beffe dell’analista’ [launches his final attack through a sequence of five dreams he willingly invents from scratch in order to mock his analyst].16 This sequence is aimed not only to deceive the analyst but also to demonstrate that whoever holds basic psychoanalytic knowledge can easily imitate a Freudian dream-like imagination. The series of dreams belongs to those voluntary lies that the protagonist consciously embedded in his story and must be therefore treated as the product of the narrator’s conscious mind. Zeno reduces Freud’s language of dreams to a parodical juxtaposition of trivial symbols, a compendium of psychoanalysis that ironically mimics its hermeneutic process. In other words, these dreams lucidly and strategically ‘fakes’ unconscious mechanisms. By so doing, Svevo discredits the notion of unconscious itself, at the same time showing the shortcomings of the psychoanalytic method. He shows in fact psychoanalysis is grounded on the analysis of irrational processes of psyche that the rational mind is able to falsify. As a result, although in psychoanalysis the telling of the dream holds, likewise the dream itself, a crucial relevance in hermeneutic terms, this mechanism cannot be applied to Zeno’s reports of oneiric activity, which, for dreams of the first category, is totally fictional. Dreams of the second group, allegedly dreamt by the protagonist, are, though, a different matter. The series of the three dreams that Zeno recounts in detail – the dream of the dying father; Zeno’s eating Carla’s neck; the so-called ‘Basedow dream’ – cannot be considered purely invented sub-plots. Scholarship has in fact analysed these dreams extensively, treating them as the privileged route to understand Zeno’s unconscious and his neurosis. They have been read, in sum, as a fundamental channel to bring to light concealed meanings in La coscienza.17 Although affirming that these dreams should also be read as inventions of the character I would push the interpretation too further, a thorough analysis of this sequence of ‘real dreams’ reveals that reading them as the expression of Zeno’s alleged unconscious is highly problematic. The most attentive reader should in fact not miss a series of clues that Svevo disseminates in Zeno’s account of the oneiric episodes in question. If read together, they signal, I argue, that the relationship between these dreams and the character’s unconscious – as well as the existence of a supposed ‘hidden content’ – should be suspiciously regarded. A year before the publication of the novel, Svevo had started translating Freud’s Die Traumdeutung from German into Italian. We have therefore to assume that, both before and during the elaboration of

240  Alessandra Diazzi the novel, Svevo has developed and in-depth knowledge of this work and that, when claiming Freud was a source of inspiration18 for La coscienza, his studies on dreams were in particular an essential point of reference. It is therefore surprising that the three ‘real’ dreams are almost completely impermeable to Freud’s most spectacular finding concerning dreams. The techniques of distortion and concealment that, for Freud, characterizes the oneiric activity, seem in fact not to affect Zeno’s dreams. As a result, in La coscienza dreams do not distort manifest content – dominating the unconscious but unacceptable by the conscious mind – transforming them into latent, unrecognizable, content. The way the protagonist tells his oneiric memories does not differ in any relevant manner to the narrative mode he adopts for any other event he accounts for, nor the mechanism of distortions that, for Freud, take place in dreams perturb the narrative.19 One could certainly object, with Almansi, that this lack of ‘dreamwork’ is obvious since there is no such thing as a ‘pacifica omologia tra il sogno sognato e il sogno raccontato’ [straightforward homology between the dream that is dreamt and the dream that is told]: Tutti i sogni sognati sono veri e tutti i sogni raccontati sono falsi. Non esiste il sogno: esiste una traduzione verbale nel linguaggio della veglia di quella esperienza multisensoriale simulata […] detta sogno, che è avvenuta nel mondo del sonno. […] Il sogno è irrecuperabile perché si estende nei parametri dell’esistenza onirica che ci sono familiari solo quando sogniamo, ma che non possiamo conoscere da svegli. 20 [All dreamt dreams are true and all told dreams are false. Dreams do not exist: there exists a verbal translation, in the diurnal language, of that multi-sensorial, virtual experience […] that we call ‘dream’, and which took place in the domain of sleep. […] Dreams are irrecoverable because they span within the parameters of oneiric existence that are familiar to us only when we sleep, without being able to know them while awaken] Yet, La coscienza exhibits no attempt to reproduce an ‘oneiric style’ nor a dream-like language, not even in the form the alterations of logic can take after the retrospective process of sensemaking carried out by the dreamer. Despite, in fact, the elaboration of dreams always entails a degree of rationalization and a coherent organization, Svevo seems to completely suppress the hallucinatory dimension and the state of cognitive deficiency that accompany the recollection of a dream and the attempt to recount it. In Zeno’s dreams, characters are all recognizable, spaces are faithful to reality, prohibited desires are barely disguised. Moreover, there is no sign of the impressions of displacement, disorientation, and uncertainty to which the dreamer is exposed when translating the oneiric experience into language.

Is There an Unconscious in This Text?  241 The dream of the dying father is ‘vivissimo’ [most vivid] and it only implies a temporary – and lucid – time slip. This resembles a conscious recollection of memories and has little to do with the ephemeral apparition of oneiric images in which temporality is disjointed. The alteration of actual reality the dream brings along seems to function more as a flashback than as an oneiric phenomenon: mi riportò con un salto enorme, attraverso il tempo, a quei giorni. Mi rivedevo col dottore nella stessa stanza ove avevamo discusso di mignatte e camicie di forza, in quella stanza che ora ha tutt’altro aspetto perché è la stanza da letto mia e di mia moglie (65) [brought me back to those days with a tremendous jump. I saw myself back again, with the doctor, in the same room where we had been discussing of leeches and straitjackets, that room that now looks completely different because it’s my and my wife’s bedroom] Similarly, the dream in which Zeno eats Carla’s neck is defined by the dreamer ‘bizzarro’ [odd] in its content but, in no way, the logic congruence of the episode is loose or confused, and not even inconsistent. On the contrary, Zeno describes a surreal scene with a remarkable realism and precision, without reproducing an atmosphere of oneiric absurdity, although the dream is centred around an episode of antropophagy: ‘Era però un collo fatto in modo che le ferite ch’io le infliggevo con rabbiosa voluttà non sanguinavano, e il collo sembrava perciò sempre coperto dalla sua bianca pelle e inalterato nella sua forma lievemente arcuata’ (235) [it was, nonetheless, a neck made so that the wounds I inflicted on her with furious voluptuousness did not bleed, and the neck, therefore, always looked covered by its white skin and unaltered in its slightly arched shape]. This mixture of realism and exactness is also evident in the dream of Basedow, where spaces are the faithful transposition of domestic, well-known, places. These are immediately recognizable even in those cases in which their location does not correspond to reality. Although rearranged, spaces are by any mean metamorphosed into an uncanny dimension by the dream-work. Quite to the contrary, they maintain a geographical exactness and recognizability: Ecco il sogno: eravamo in tre: Augusta, Ada, ed io che ci eravamo affacciati ad una finestra e precisamente alla più piccola che ci fosse stata nelle nostre tre abitazioni, cioè la mia, quella di mia suocera, e quella di Ada. Eravamo cioè alla finestra della cucina della casa di mia suocera che veramente si apre sopra un piccolo cortile mentre nel sogno dava proprio sul Corso. (392)

242  Alessandra Diazzi [Here’s the dream: we were three, Augusta, Ada, and I, and leaned out of a window, to be precise the smallest one we had in our three houses  – mine, my mother-in-law’s, and Ada’s. So we were at the kitchen’s window in my mother-in-law’s house that actually looks on a small courtyard, whereas in the dream it directly looked on the main street] In terms of content, the mechanism of wish fulfilment is patent in Zeno’s dreams and always clear to the dreamer himself. The two dreams in which the wife Augusta is involved express the protagonist’s will to find a compromise between his sexual drives, directed towards Carla and Ada, and the love for her. At the same time, the coexistence of the two women in the dream represents Zeno’s attempt to clear his conscience, making Augusta the witness of his forbidden desire and silent accomplice of his betrayals. The dream of the dying father holds a similar function. It also fulfils Zeno’s desire to have made any possible effort to cure the father, alleviating his feeling of guilt for aggressing the doctor because of that last, desperate, attempt to slow down the disease: Poteva esserci un’azione più malvagia di quella di richiamare in sé un ammalato, senz’avere la minima speranza di salvarlo e solo per esporlo alla disperazione, o al rischio di dover sopportare — con quell’affanno! — la camicia di forza? Con tutta violenza, ma sempre accompagnando le mie parole di quel pianto che domandava indulgenza, dichiarai che mi pareva una crudeltà inaudita di non lasciar morire in pace chi era definitivamente condannato. (61) [Could there be more wicked an action than having a sick one to regain consciousness, without having the least hope of saving him, only to expose him to despair or to the risk of bearing (and, the more, with that trouble!) the straitjacket? Most vehemently, although always coupling my word with those tears that begged for pardon, I declared that I thought it cruel not to let die in peace someone who was absolutely condemned to death] This mechanism is overt in the account of the dream, in which Zeno himself stresses the inversion of roles with the doctor, clearly aimed to free him from ‘un vero delitto, che mi pesava orrendamente’ (64) [a true crime, excessively bearing over me]: Io insegnavo al dottore il modo di curare e guarire mio padre, mentre lui (non vecchio e cadente com’è ora, ma vigoroso e nervoso com’era allora) con ira, gli occhiali in mano e gli occhi disorientati, urlava che non valeva la pena di fare tante cose. Diceva proprio così: ‘Le

Is There an Unconscious in This Text?  243 mignatte lo richiamerebbero alla vita e al dolore e non bisogna applicargliele!’. Io invece battevo il pugno su un libro di medicina ed urlavo: ‘Le mignatte! Voglio le mignatte! Ed anche la camicia di forza!’ (65) [I taught the doctor how to heal my father, while he (who, not old and doddering as he was, and still vigorous and nervous as he used to be then), in anger, with his glasses in his hand and with confused eyes, cried that it was useless to take so many troubles. He actually said so: ‘Leeches would bring him back to life and pain, so we must not put them on him!’ And I, hitting a medicine book with my fist, I cried: ‘Leeches! I want leeches! And the straitjacket too!’] Significantly, even when Zeno’s oneiric imagination alters events, this falsification takes place – as Albertocchi observes – ‘con una perfetta simmetria […] con la precisione di un fenomeno scientifico’ [in perfect symmetry […] with the rigour of a scientific phenomenon], 21 rather than reproducing dream’s typical ‘anarchia analogica dei significati’ [analogical anarchy of meaning]. 22 On the contrary, Svevo subverts the Freudian mechanism of dreams, making clearly emerge ‘what is clearly the essence of the dream thoughts’ that, for the founder father of psychoanalysis, ‘need not be represented in the dreams at all’. 23 Oneiric sequences that help Zeno compromise with his guilt also hold a crucial function within the fictional universe of the novel. The absence of a definite difference – in stylistic, rhetorical, and logical terms – ­between the narrative of oneiric and non-oneiric episodes make the dividing line between what has been dreamt by Zeno and what has actually taken place in his reality blur. As such, despite the surreal aspects these dreams display, their presence in the text is, ultimately, an instrument in Zeno’s hand, which serves a well-defined objective. That is to say, representing a character who is able to construct, piece by piece, an image of himself as the inept neurotic with whom, though, the reader should sympathize and whom, in the end, should forgive. Dreams are, in sum, cleverly crafted by the narrator to mitigate his guilt and diminish his sins in the eyes of his audience, becoming the essential means in the conscious process of innocentizzazione Zeno carries out along the novel. In the dream of the dying father, Zeno absolves his conscience by montage and – hybridizing the dimension of memory with that of dreams – ‘convin[ce]’ [persuades] both himself and the readers that ‘quello schiaffo che mi era stato inflitto da lui moribondo, non era stato da lui voluto. […] eravamo ormai perfettamente d’accordo, io divenuto il più debole, e lui il più forte’ (73) [the slap inflicted on me by the moribund one, had not been inflicted willingly. […] we perfectly agreed now, I had become the weaker, and he the stronger]. Similarly, the dream in which Zeno eats Carla’s neck is used by Zeno to emphasize, by contrast, his diurnal ‘migliori propositi’

244  Alessandra Diazzi [better resolutions] towards Augusta: ‘La parola nella notte è come un raggio di luce. Illumina di un tratto di realtà in confronto al quale sbiadiscono le costruzioni della fantasia. Perché avevo tanto da temere della povera Carla di cui non ero l’amante?’ (237–238) [speech is like a ray of light. It illuminates a trait of reality against which all constructs of fancy do fade. Why should I worry so much about poor Carla, of whose I was not the lover?]. Also this oneiric episode – Zeno himself suggests – must be therefore pigeonholed as one of those ‘maniere’ [ways] through which he manages to ‘attenuare il futuro rimorso’ (221) [mitigate the future remorse] and, with it, mitigate his reader’s judgement. This dream provides the crucial interpretative key to read the story of ‘La moglie e l’amante’ [The wife and the lover], inserting it within a framework of inevitability and excusatio. In what follows, Zeno stresses in fact that even the firmest will is doomed to fail if not supported by passionate love. Preventing any negative judgement through a contrite reflection upon his fault (‘ora so di aver tradito con quelle parole tutt’e due le donne e tutto l’amore, il mio e il loro’ 248 [I know, now, of having betrayed with those words both women and all the love, mine and theirs]), Zeno asks Carla – and implicitly the reader – to understand and justify his immoral behaviour: Carla mi vedeva in una luce falsa! Carla poteva disprezzarmi vedendomi tanto desideroso dei suoi baci quando amavo Augusta! […] [L]e raccontai per filo e per segno la storia del mio matrimonio, come mi fossi innamorato della sorella maggiore di Augusta che non aveva voluto saperne di me perché innamorata di un altro, come poi avessi tentato di sposare un’altra delle sue sorelle che pure mi respinse e come infine mi adattassi di sposare lei. (247–248) [Carla saw me in a false light! Carla could despise me in seeing me so yearning for her kisses, while I loved Augusta! […] I told her the story of my marriage in detail, how I fell in love with Augusta’s older sister, who refused me because she loved someone else, and how I later tried to marry another of her sisters, who also refused me, and how I finally adjusted myself to marrying her] The dream through which Zeno confesses to Augusta his attraction towards Ada holds a comparable function within the plot: the husband can feel his consciousness is unburdened, since ‘nella mezza coscienza io [ho] seguito ciecamente l’antico desiderio di confessare i miei trascorsi […] Quando si viene colti nel sogno, è difficile di difendersi’ (394) [in half consciousness, I blindly followed the old desire of confessing my past […]. When one is got there in a dream, it is difficult to defend one’s self]. Interestingly, though, this semi-conscious outburst – seemingly due

Is There an Unconscious in This Text?  245 to the intromission of the unconscious – is contradicted a few lines later, when Zeno claims that his confession did not coincide with an irrational need to free himself from the guilt. Quite the opposite, it is the character himself to acknowledge, the admission has been guided by the rational certainty that per tali gelosie di Augusta, io non avevo nulla da perdere perché essa amava tanto Ada che da quel lato la sua gelosia non gettava alcun’ombra e, in quanto a me, essa mi trattava con un riguardo anche più affettuoso e m’era anche più grata di ogni mia più lieve manifestazione di affetto. (394–395) [because of this jealousy of Augusta, I had nothing to lose, for she loved Ada so much that, as far as that aspect was concerned, her jealously did not cast any shadow, and, as far as I was, she treated me with even greater attention and was even more grateful for every least manifestation of affection on my part]. In this occasion too, both the oneiric episode itself and the way Zeno retrospectively accounts for it seem to ultimately respond to the constraints of consciousness, with the narrator in total control of his defences and, even, of what his dreams can, or cannot, reveal. It is worth to also note that, in reassuring his wife about the content of the dream, Zeno lays stress on the presence of Basedow, claiming that – he is sure – the core of the oneiric episode he has just recounted is this figure, rather than Ada as Augusta fears. 24 This claim follows ­Zeno’s statement, occurred just a few pages before, of the crucial influence Basedow had on the protagonist’s cultural Bildung: Grande, importante malattia quella di Basedow! Per me fu importantissimo di averla conosciuta. La studiai in varie monografie e credetti di scoprire appena allora il segreto essenziale del nostro organismo. […] di Basedow vissi sol io! Mi parve ch’egli avesse portate alla luce le radici della vita la quale è fatta così: tutti gli organismi si distribuiscono su una linea, ad un capo della quale sta la malattia di Basedow che implica il generosissimo, folle consumo della forza vitale ad un ritmo precipitoso, il battito di un cuore sfrenato, e all’altro stanno gli organismi immiseriti per avarizia organica, destinati a perire di una malattia che sembrerebbe di esaurimento ed è invece di poltronaggine. Il giusto medio fra le due malattie si trova al centro e viene designato impropriamente come la salute che non è che una sosta. E fra il centro ed un’estremità — quella di Basedow — stanno tutti coloro ch’esasperano e consumano la vita in grandi desiderii, ambizioni, godimenti e anche lavoro, dall’altra quelli che non

246  Alessandra Diazzi gettano sul piatto della vita che delle briciole e risparmiano preparando quegli abietti longevi che appariscono quale un peso per la società. Pare che questo peso sia anch’esso necessario. La società procede perché i Basedowiani la sospingono, e non precipita perché gli altri la trattengono. (388) [What a great, important disease, that of Basedow! Knowing it was most important to me. I studied several monographs about it, and I thought of having just discovered the basic secret of our organism. […] But only I lived on Basedow! It seemed to me that he had unveiled the roots of life, which is made as follows: all organisms are on a line, on the one end of which there stands Basedow’s disease – ­implying the most generous and fool waste of vital energy at a most hasty rhythm and the uncontrolled beating of the heart – and on the other those organisms that organic meanness has impoverished, and are condemned to die of a disease that looks like exhaustion and is actually laziness. The happy medium between the two diseases is in the middle, and is improperly called health, but is actually but a stop. Between the middle and one of the extremities – Basedow’s one – are all those who exacerbate and spend their lives in big desires, ambitions, joys, and also work, and on the other all those who throw nothing but crumbs on life’s plate and who save, preparing those long-lived abjections that society sees as burdens. It seems that such burden is also necessary. Society proceeds because Basedowians push it, and does not collapse because the others hold it] Such a fervent ‘profession of faith’ in Basedow is, I believe, not irrelevant to understand the significance the dream holds within La coscienza. Zeno’s interpretation of this oneiric episode as a dream about Basedow cannot be uniquely considered as a – quite pathetic, indeed – attempt to tranquillize Ada who, he was well aware, in the end was not really jealous of the sister. What if, instead, the emphasis on Basedow has to do with the dream itself and the hermeneutic process it carries along? What if, in other words, Zeno’s emphasis on the German doctor as the focus of his dream is directed to the consignee of his diary, Doctor S.? Whereas Zeno’s interpretation of this oneiric episode remains largely obscure if read exclusively in the light of his relationship with Augusta, interpreting it within the framework of the oblique polemics against psychoanalysis Svevo – and Zeno – are carrying on through irony gives this episode a further significance. The importance Basedow holds for the narrator is due, Zeno affirms, to the essential discovery about ‘le radici della vita’ [the roots of life] he did after reflecting upon the disease named after the German doctor. That is to say, a worldview based on a purely organicist explanation

Is There an Unconscious in This Text?  247 of existence, to the extent that human desires depend uniquely on the body’s (mal)functioning. Clearly, a challenge to the Freudian view of existence. Basedow’s theory can be seen in this context as the antithesis of a psychoanalytic – or more broadly psychologist – understanding of human beings. As a result, affirming that the centre of the dream is Basedow means affirming a purely biological understanding of desires and a corporeal interpretation of symptoms. Within a text whose implied reader is – we do not have to forget – the hated psychoanalyst, Basedow ironically plays therefore the role of the untore [plague-spreader]: Con uno sforzo ci sporgemmo anche noi e scorgemmo una grande folla che s’avanzava minacciosa urlando. ‘Ma dov’è Basedow?’ domandai ancora una volta. Poi lo vidi. Era lui che s’avanzava inseguito da quella folla: un vecchio pezzente coperto di un grande mantello stracciato, ma di broccato rigido, la grande testa coperta di una chioma bianca disordinata, svolazzante all’aria, gli occhi sporgenti dall’orbita che guardavano ansiosi con uno sguardo ch’io avevo notato in bestie inseguite, di paura e di minaccia. E la folla urlava: ‘Ammazzate l’untore!’ (393) [We also leaned with an effort and saw a great crown that came forth with threatening roars. ‘But where’s Basedow?’, I asked again. And then I saw him. It was him, the one who came forth, chased by the crowd: an old tramp covered by a large, ragged mantle, still made of stiff brocade, the big head covered by messy white hair that floated in the air, the eyes protruding out of their orbits and looked with the anguishing gaze I had noticed in chased animals, a gaze of fear and of menace. And the crowd roared: ‘Kill the plague-spreader!’] Dealing with a book that is on – and above all against – psychoanalysis, it does not seem to push the interpretation too further claiming that Svevo seems here to play with the Freudian metaphor of the plague, 25 inverting its meaning. In a society where psychoanalysis was becoming more and more in fashion, it is the return to an organicist understanding of human being and a medical approach to disease to be prosecuted as a dangerous, old-fashioned, idea. On the one hand, thus, the centrality of Basedow in the dream is certainly due to Ada’s change of status – traumatic for Zeno – from a condition of health to one of disease. On the other hand, making the physician the protagonist of this oneiric episode can be read as one of Zeno’s many attacks against a psychosomatic, rather than physical, understanding of malady. This interpretation is strengthened by the fact Basedow disease is central in Ferenczi’s analysis with Freud. The founder father of psychoanalysis was inclined to explain his patient’s symptoms as the signs of his hypochondria, whereas Ferenczi

248  Alessandra Diazzi rather believed to be actually affected by the morbus. The auto-­diagnosis ended up to be true and the Hungarian analyst had to be treated in a sanatorium. 26 Although we cannot assume that Svevo could know these circumstances, the hypothesis that ‘Freud’s mistake’, which occurred just a few years before La coscienza was published (1916–1917), was known in psychoanalytic circles those days is not improbable. Still more probable, if this is the case, is that Svevo might have used the reference to Basedow disease as a polemical cutting remark. An allusion, for sure, in disguise, but certainly very clear to the ‘insiders’. At this stage, it becomes evident that the lucidity that guides Zeno not only in the construction of the storytelling as a whole but also in the strategic montage of these oneiric accounts make him a narcissistic manipulator rather than a neurotic hypochondriac at the mercy of a suffering psyche. Dreams confirm in fact the firm control Zeno’s ‘I’ hold over the process of storytelling. Rather than embodying the ‘royal road’ to the protagonist’s unconscious, these oneiric memories should be therefore interpreted as one of the many strategies Zeno employs to deceive and satirize the analyst’s profession. As Genco observes, ‘Zeno rovescia i freudiani sintomi dell’inconscio in manifestazioni di una consapevole visione del mondo’ [Zeno inverts Freud’s symptoms of the unconscious in manifestations of a conscious vision of the world], and dreams fully confirm this tendency. 27 Zeno’s dreams cannot in fact be assimilated to those ‘literary dreams [that] mimic real life dreams, which means that they incorporate the process of the dream work as Freud had defined it’. 28 Quite to the contrary, the narrator’s non-invented dreams are part of the book’s fictional universe, which is – as Briosi has acutely observed – ‘l’esatto contrario di un mondo onirico: in esso tutto ha, di volta in volta, un significato chiaro – fin troppo chiaro; tutto si svolge secondo una “logica” fin troppo “prevedibile”’ [the exact contrary of an oneiric world: everything in it has, each time, a clear, too clear a sense: everything runs with too far ‘predictable’ a ‘logic’]. The sense this cluster of dreams expresses is, in sum, ‘del tutto cosciente’ [overall conscious], likewise the overall ‘senso che La coscienza di Zeno trasmette’ [sense conveyed by La coscienza di Zeno]. 29 The objection that such a rational control over the material offered to the analyst may conceal Zeno’s resistances against therapy and that, as such, should be object of analytical investigation itself is for sure legit. However, the text itself does not provide any specific clue that suggests the presence of an ‘unconscious layer’ to be searched behind Zeno’s cleverly orchestrated narrative, as the presentation of dream-like material confirms. As such, reading the character’s conscious discourse as a mode of repression means, I argue, to assume Zeno’s pages should be interpreted through psychoanalytic lenses – an approach that can certainly reveal further meanings in such a dense text but that, at the same time, falls outside my methodology and the scope of this analysis.

Is There an Unconscious in This Text?  249 In no way mimicking the unconscious logic nor expressing the symptoms of a split subject, dreams in La coscienza do not imply a higher degree of readers’ cooperation since – we have seen – the meaning the oneiric episodes hold is not disguised, nor the sequences in question present the features of an open text.30 Also in this respect, these narrative segments contradict the peculiar characteristic of those literary dreams that, instead, attempt to reproduce the unconscious work: their being a ‘luogo privilegiato del dialogo autore-lettore, momento in cui più incalzante si fa la richiesta di cooperazione al lettore perché la narrazione possa procedere’ [privileged site for dialogue between author and reader, a moment when the request to the reader for cooperation is the more urgent in order for narration to proceed].31 Quite the opposite, if a form of reader cooperation is activated by these dreams, it is not directed towards the deciphering of underlying meanings but, rather, to detecting the clues of an intertextual dialogue each of the non-invented dream establishes with both literary and non-literary sources.

La coscienza’s Intertextual Unconscious Freud’s theory of dreams as expression of wish fulfilment is elaborated through the self-analysis of one of his dreams, the so-called dream of Irma’s injection. In this dream, Freud is attending a reception where he meets Irma, a patient he was worried about. Treated with no success, Freud feared she could suffer from an organic disease he had overlooked. In the oneiric encounter, Irma is – as she was in reality – still unwell and is therefore examined by Freud and some colleagues. After the visit, the doctors confirm Irma’s problems with her throat are attributable to an infection. In particular, in the dream, the disease is due to an injection administered to the patient using a dirty syringe. Similarities between this episode and Zeno’s dream of the father are significant. First, the wish the dream fulfils is associated with the sense of guilt, a burden oppressing the dreamer’s conscience. This guilt concerns in both the cases a lack in the duty of care the dreamers are responsible for. Second, the dreams revolve around an organic disease that has been, in good faith, neglected, leading the patient’s condition to worsen. Third, for both Freud and Zeno, the mechanism defusing the sense of guilt consists in an inversion of roles. Through this strategy, the dreamer’s negligence is attributed to a third, external figure, whereas the dreamer exhibits instead the firm will to medically approach the matter. As a result, Zeno’s dream follows closely Irma’s episode in terms of both content and architecture. Freud’s dream acts as the implicit reference that shapes the plot of Svevo’s oneiric narrative about his father’s death. This oblique intertextual game is not limited to this dream. Also, the other two ‘real’ dreams, seem, in fact, to re-elaborate and disguise

250  Alessandra Diazzi suggestions from the past literary tradition rather than repressed material emerging from the character’s unconscious. Zeno’s dream about Carla conceals a dense intertextual subtext that testifies a Dantean influence. The protagonist’s affair with Carla is triggered by the gift of a book – defined by Zeno ‘il nostro Galeotto’ (230) [our Go-Between] – he uses as an excuse to return to the woman’s house. From this moment onwards, the account of his relationship with Carla is dominated by the tension between sin and salvation. The narrator describes in fact his attempts to fight against the temptation of betrayal as a ‘resistenza alla tentazione’ (223) [resistance against temptation] and a ‘lotta col peccato’ (221) [fight against sin]. Interestingly, it is the only occurrence in which the word peccato holds the meaning of ‘sin’, otherwise absent in the book in its entirety. As a result, in the chapter ‘La moglie e l’amante’, the term salute, a ubiquitous presence along La coscienza as a whole, suddenly loses its psychosomatic meaning to acquire a moral – almost religious – significance. Within this theological narrative framework, several other expressions evoke a Dantean imaginary which includes, among the most significant: the gradual journey to the object of love, which cannot be approached directly, but step by step only (‘io arrivai a Carla non con uno slancio, ma solo a tappe’ 221 [I did not come to Carla in a rush, but by steps]); the obsession with the object of love that, as a ‘potenza’ (228) [power], dominates the narrator’s soul; the topos of the lover whose senses fail as soon as the beloved woman gets closer (‘L’emozione mi oscurò la vista e ritengo sia stata provocata non tanto dal dolce contatto di quella mano, ma da quella familiarità’ 226 [emotion blinded my sight, and I believe it was not much caused by the sweet touch of that hand, but by that familiarity]); the stress on Carla’s hesitancy, further emphasized by her frequent blushing (‘Carla stessa, quando mi riconobbe, arrossì e accennò a fuggire vergognandosi’ 226 [also Carla, when she recognized me, blushed and made as if to run away in shame]; ‘La faccia di Carla era veramente bella così arrossata’ 227 [Carla’s face, so blushed, was very beautiful]). The account of Zeno’s dream representing himself eating Carla’s neck is therefore inserted within a framework which is markedly connotated in a Dantean sense. In the light of the ubiquitous references to Dante the episode exhibits, the anthropophagy of the object of love in Zeno’s oneiric vision can be interpreted, I believe, as one of those ‘Dantean remakes’ Svevo encapsulates into the novel. The ‘episodio sveviano del tavolino’ [Svevo’s episode of the table], Palmieri argues, ‘è costruito sulla falsariga parodistica e deformata del celebre incontro di Dante con lo spirito del suo antenato Cacciaguida’ [is constructed through the parodical distortion of the model of Dante’s encounter with the spirit of his ancestor Cacciaguida].32 Likewise, Zeno’s dream might conceal a distortion of the dream of the eaten heart in the Vita Nova. The ironic subversion Svevo puts in place in the scene of the seance can also be found here,

Is There an Unconscious in This Text?  251 where all the symbolic meanings of the original are overturned and, to a certain extent, ridiculed. The topos of anthropophagy and, in particular, the image of the eaten heart, recurrent in medieval literature, is contaminated with a vampirical imaginary, which Italian readers have just become familiar with. 33 At the same time, references to Dante’s Vita Nova relate to the feminine figure with whom Zeno establishes a sexual and extramarital relationship, which in no way can be assimilated to courtly love. Also the detail of Carla’s hairstyle – braids – seems to be reiterated in the text to emphasize the parodical element: rather than Beatrice, the lover’s hairs recalls the woman whose ‘belle trecce’ [beautiful hair] Dante would like to play with in his rime petrose. The oneiric episode as a whole, and not uniquely the reference to the book galeotto as Palmieri states, holds therefore, I argue, ‘una funzione veramente parodistica, tendendo ad accomunare l’amore sublime [….] con quello nevrotico e bovaristico di Zeno’ [a truly parodic function, aiming to combining sublime love […] with Zeno’s neurotic, Bovary-like one].34 The dream of Ada and Augusta as well draws fully from the literary tradition. As anticipated, this oneiric episode has been extensively discussed by scholarship which, considering it the most obscure among Zeno’s dreams, has variously attempted to interpret its hidden meaning. However, with the exception of Palmieri’s comment to La coscienza, these readings have mostly overlooked the overt Manzonian subtext this dream exhibits. This is immediately evident in the use of two explicit signposts: the terms folla and untore. As Palmieri observes, the more direct reference is the only dream Manzoni inserts in The Betrothed35: Don Rodrigo’s nightmare, an oneiric imagination about plague, crowd, and contagion. Svevo’s description of Basedow36 recalls closely Manzoni’s ‘vecchio più che ottuagenario’ [old man, eighty or more years old], beat up by people who identify him as the ‘untore’: dopo aver pregato alquanto inginocchioni, volle mettersi a sedere; e prima, con la cappa, spolverò la panca. – Quel vecchio unge le panche! – gridarono a una voce alcune donne che vider l’atto. La gente che si trovava in chiesa (in chiesa!), fu addosso al vecchio; lo prendon per i capelli, bianchi com’erano. [after having prayed for a while on his knees, he wished to sit: before that, with his cloak, he dusted the bench. – That old man greases the benches!, cried all together a few women who saw that gesture. The people gathered in the church (in the church!) assaulted the old man: the took him by his hair, so white]37 La coscienza di Zeno – Palmieri explains – relies on two libraries: quella dell’autore reale, purtroppo andata distrutta, che è il magazzino delle fonti della Coscienza, e quella di Zeno che è presente

252  Alessandra Diazzi nel testo e che alimenta la sua ipertrofica cultura da autodidatta. I libri contenuti in quest’ultima biblioteca sono tutti, direttamente o indirettamente, ricavabili da un’attenta lettura dell’ autobiografia’; è infatti lo stesso Zeno a rivelarci i suoi autori. In altri casi, invece, i volumi si possono dedurre indirettamente come fonti di un sapere che il testo manifesta. Appare evidente che tutti i libri di Zeno coincidono con quelli letti, posseduti, o anche solo conosciuti dal suo creatore; al contrario, non tutti i libri di Svevo appartengono alla biblioteca del personaggio.38 [That of the author, unfortunately destroyed, where the sources of the Coscienza are stored, and that of Zeno that is present within the text and which feeds his overdeveloped knowledge as a self-taught person. The books that are present in the latter library can all be directly or indirectly known from the ‘autobiography’: Zeno himself actually reveals his authors. In other cases, instead, books can be indirectly deduced as the sources of a knowledge that is manifest in the text. It seems evidet that all Zeno’s books coincide with those read, possessed, or merely known by his creator: on the contrary, not all Svevo’s books belong to his character’s library] Whereas Freud, Manzoni, and Dante certainly belong to Svevo’s library, their influence on Zeno’s writing is – with the exception of the father founder of psychoanalysis – unascertainable. Although, in fact, the influence of these authors surface in the narrative, it is difficult to understand whether, in Svevo’s intention, the assimilation of these materials should be attributed to Zeno, as internal narrator, or instead to the empirical author. What is however clear is that the texture of La coscienza’s dreams reveal to the most attentive – I should say ‘model’ – reader their own character of artificiality. It seems in fact that Zeno’s dreams dip into the repertoire of past literary tradition and take the shape of the privileged site in which intertextual references, rather than unconscious material, are transformed and distorted. In other words, in La coscienza dreams are a space of negotiation with the cultural heritage Svevo confronts and assimilates, rather than a tool through which the author mimics the character’s unconscious. Also in dreams, in sum, ‘è altrettanto evidente che non è la semiologia dell’inconscio che gli interessa quanto la costruzione di un’invenzione letteraria’ [it is equally manifest how he is not much interested in the semiology of the unconscious, but rather in literary invention]39

Conclusion: The Virus of the Unconscious In the second chapter of his ‘Portuguese adventure’, Requiem (1991), Antonio Tabucchi describes the encounter of the protagonist with one of the many surreal characters inhabiting the novel’s fictional universe,

Is There an Unconscious in This Text?  253 Lo zoppo della lotteria [The lame of the lottery]. Shortly after the two men meet, they engage in a conversation on a book of French philosophy about the notion of ‘soul’. Asked whether he believes in the soul, the protagonist instinctually gives an affirmative answer that, though, he immediately amends. Rather than in the old-fashioned notion of soul, he believes in the ‘Unconscious’, which has triggered his oneiric and hallucinatory journey. At this point, the zoppo is surprised and responds to the foreigner with an objection: Alto là, disse lo Zoppo della Lotteria, l’Inconscio, cosa vuol dire con questo?, l’Inconscio è roba della borghesia viennese d’inizio secolo, qui siamo in Portogallo ed il signore è italiano, noi siamo roba del Sud, la civiltà greco-romana, non abbiamo niente a che fare con la Mitteleuropa, scusi sa, noi abbiamo l’anima.40 [Stop, said the Lame of the Lottery, the Unconscious, what does it mean?, the Unconscious is for the Vienna middle class of the beginning of the century, here we are in Portugal and the gentleman there is Italian, we are Southern, the Greco-Roman civilization, we have nothing to do with Central Europe, pardon me, we do have a soul] The protagonist shares his new friend’s perplexity and concern. However, he seems at the same time resigned to accept the inevitability of getting hold of an unconscious sphere. Through quite an explicit reference to the metaphor of the plague, he claims that ‘l’Inconscio uno se lo prende, è come una malattia, mi sono preso il virus dell’Inconscio, càpita’ [the Unconscious, one gets it, like a disease, I got the Unconscious virus, that’s life].41 The two protagonists of Requiem are right in this respect. Since psychoanalysis made its appearance in Italy, the Freudian discipline had been perceived as an exotic matter, a bourgeois cure for introverted Northern European souls. Not by chance, the principal channel through which psychoanalysis could first ‘seep into’ the terrain of Italian culture was the Triestine Italo Svevo, a figure that paradigmatically embodies the difficult compromise between Italy and foreign influences perturbing the country’s Mediterranean soul. Or, in other word, the hybridization between the neurotic mitteleuropa and the Italian national character.42 The social and fictional construction of ‘Italianness’, as David notes, is in fact grounded on a number of stereotypes – ‘[l’]estroversione’ [extroversion], ‘il carattere teatrale dell’italiano’ [Italians’ theatrical attitude], ‘il rifiuto della pazzia’ [the refusal of folly], ‘il mito della sana latinità’ [the myth of healthy Latinity]43 – that overly clash with an ‘analytical attitude’. As a result, I argue, La coscienza can be read as the very first symptom of the rooted resistance Italian culture would exhibit against the most uncanny discoveries of psychoanalysis: the ‘virus’ of the unconscious.

254  Alessandra Diazzi As Antonello observes, ‘La Coscienza intende essere, fra le molte altre cose, una sorta di confutazione romanzesca del freudianesimo’ [La coscienza aims to be, among many other things, a sort of confutation of Freudianism by the means of a novel],44 an intention in itself symptomatic of the controversial reception of the Freudian discipline in the context of national culture. As soon as psychoanalysis made its appearance in the country, La coscienza challenged it by the mean of parody, inaugurating a long-lasting tradition of, more or less explicit, ‘pagine e pagine di mani avanti’ [pages and pages of excusations]45: ironic and polemical portrayals of the analytical treatment and ideological stances against the discipline. However, La coscienza does not exclusively embody one of the earliest signs of a generic aversion Italy showed towards psychoanalysis but also of the specific attitude national culture exhibited towards the very notion of unconscious. To put it in Sergio Benvenuto’s terms, Italian culture has suspiciously regarded the descent into the irrational recesses of psyche, perceived as an ‘exquisitely “gothic” activity, fit to introverted and twisted Anglo-Germanic and Frankish souls, which contrasts sharply with the Renaissance brightness and sunny Mediterranean extroversion of Italian culture’.46 Through La coscienza, thus, Svevo not only turns psyche into a literary object but also italianizza it. In other words, he transforms the ‘inward twist’ of the Freudian discipline into a well-orchestrated manipulation of the dimension of consciousness: a tension between truth and deceit, rather than a struggle between reason and the irrational. By so doing, Svevo’s novel inaugurates a specific ‘Italian way’ to the unconscious, marking the resistance that would characterize the country’s attitude towards the radical attack psychoanalysis moved to a consciously led model of subjectivity. Decades of ideological struggle against the relapse into the abyss of psyche will have to pass before the sunny and Mediterranean Italian soul will catch the morbid virus coming from the Northern, decadent, Europe.47 Within an ideal archaeology of the unconscious, La coscienza epitomizes therefore the earliest manifestation of an explicit, post-Freudian, reflection on the notion of the unconscious in Italy. At the same time, it marks the point of departure of its long-lasting, problematic, reception in the country. The unconscious as the missing protagonist of La coscienza reflects, and even foresees, a broader lack – and an engrained resistance – in the context of national culture.

Notes 1 Italo Svevo, La coscienza di Zeno (Bologna-Rocca San Casciano: Licinio Cappelli Editore, 1923). All translations throughout, of both primary and secondary sources, are mine. 2 Scholarship has extensively analysed the role of psychoanalysis in the novel. See, among the others, Brian Moloney, ‘Psychoanalysis and Irony in La coscienza di Zeno’, The Modern Language Review, 67, 2 (April 1972),

Is There an Unconscious in This Text?  255 pp.  309–318; Eduardo Saccone, Commento a Zeno. Saggio sul testo di Svevo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1973); Mario Lavagetto, L’impiegato Schmitz e altri saggi su Svevo (Turin: Einaudi, 1975). 3 Sandro Briosi, ‘Il sogno raccontato da Zeno’, in Allegoria, 14 (1993), p. 140; Giuseppe Genco, Italo Svevo. Tra psicanalisi e letteratura (Naples: Alfredo Guida Editore, 1998), p. 167. 4 Genco, p. 167. 5 Valentino Baldi, ‘Zeno dopo Freud’, Studi Novecenteschi, 39, 84 (July–­ December 2012), 345–370 (p. 350). 6 I refer here to the interference of the unconscious in the subject’s expression, rather than its influence on the subject’s everyday life, since La coscienza di Zeno is a written report of the character’s past and any of the events narrated is mediated by the filter of writing. 7 Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Past Things (Vol. 2) (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 2006), p. 331. 8 Italo Svevo, La coscienza di Zeno (Milan: Giuseppe Morreale Editore, 1930), p. 5. All the further references from La coscienza will be given in the body of text. 9 Italo Svevo, Confessions of Zeno (London: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1930). 10 ‘What is the difference between consciousness and conscience? The first, we say, is a matter of perception or awareness. In philosophy, for example, I am a subject of consciousness before an object of knowledge. The second is a matter of moral authority, the degree to which I am constrained or governed by a voice which speaks to me of what I should or should not do. In Freudian language (as opposed to Kantian language), the first would correspond to the scheme conscious, pre-conscious, unconscious, the second to the scheme id, ego, and superego, where conscience would translate superego’, Sandor Goodhart, Möbian Nights: Reading Literature and Darkness (New York: Bloomsbury Academics, 2017), p. 112. 11 On La coscienza’s title see also Philip Nicholas Furbank, Italo Svevo: The Man and the Writer (London: Sacker & Warburg, 1966). 12 Giuliana Minghelli, ‘In the Shadow of the Mammoth: Narratives of Symbiosis in La coscienza di Zeno’, MLN, 1, 109 (January 1994), 49–72, 49. 13 Pierpaolo Antonello, ‘Rivalità, risentimento, apocalisse: Svevo e i suoi doppi’, in Identità e desiderio: la teoria mimetica e la letteratura italiana, ed. by Pierpaolo Antonello and Franco Giuseppe Fornari (Massa: Transeuropa, 2009), pp. 143–163 (pp. 144–145, 151). 14 This is Carlo Fonda’s hypothesis: ‘Zeno rievoca la sua vita passata in uno stato di dormiveglia o di transe […] quindi, in questo senso, la sua rievocazione è falsa’. Svevo e Freud. Proposta di interpretazione della Coscienza di Zeno (Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1978), p. 8. 15 Giovanni Albertocchi, ‘I sogni di Zeno’, Quaderns d’Italià, 13 (2008), pp. 71–80, 72. Italics mine. 16 Albertocchi, p. 72. 17 See the aforementioned contributions by Albertocchi, Baldi, Saccone, and Lavagetto (1975). 18 See Italo Svevo, ‘Soggiorno londinese’, in Letteratura italiana, ed. by Mario Pazzaglia, 4 vols (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1992), IV (1992), pp. 250–251. 19 I am referring here to the processes through which the dream thoughts are transformed into the manifest dream content: the work of condensation, displacement, overdetermination, and the mechanism of figurability. See Sigmund Freud, ‘The Dream-work’, in The Standard Edition, vol. IV, pp. 277–338. 20 Guido Almansi, ‘Introduzione’ to Roger Callois, L’incertezza dei sogni (­M ilan: Feltrinelli, 1989), pp. 12–13.

256  Alessandra Diazzi 21 Albertocchi, p. 75. In this context, the term symmetry is not employed with the sense Ignacio Matte Blanco attributes to it. 22 Mario Lavagetto, Freud, la letteratura e altro (Turin: Einaudi, 2001), p. 135. 23 Freud, ‘The Dream-work’, p. 305. 24 ‘Non Ada era importante per me, ma Basedow, e le raccontai dei miei studi e anche delle applicazioni che avevo fatte’ (394) [It was not Ada who was important for me but Basedow, and I told her of my studies and also of the experiments I had made]. 25 Freud reportedly told Jung, sailing towards America, ‘We are bringing them the plague and they do not even know it’. 26 See The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi: Vol. 2, 1914–1919, ed. by Ernst Falzeder and Eva Brabant, with the collaboration of Patrizia Giampieri-Deutsch (Cambridge, MA and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996). 27 Genco, p. 164. 28 Tom Conner, ‘Introduction’, Dreams in French Literature, ed. by Tom ­­Conner, pp. 9–23 (p. 23). 29 Sandro Briosi, ‘Il sogno raccontato da Svevo’, in Italo Svevo. Il sogno e la vita vera, ed. by Mario Sechi (Rome: Donzelli, 2009), pp. 217–222 (p. 221). 30 See Umberto Eco, The Open Work (Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). 31 Sogni di carta. Dieci studi sul sogno raccontato in letteratura, ed. by Anita Piemonti and Marina Polacco (Turin: Le Monnier Università, 2001), p. 12. 32 Italo Svevo, La coscienza di Zeno, ed. by Giovanni Palmieri (Florence: Giunti, 1994), p. 118. I will henceforth refer to this critical edition as ‘Palmieri’. 33 The first edition of Dracula in Italy had been published one year before La coscienza di Zeno, in 1922: Brahm (sic.) Stoker, Dracula. L’uomo della notte (Milan: Sonzogno, 1922). 34 Palmieri, p. 182. 35 Ibid., p. 305. 36 See above, p. 247. 37 Alessandro Manzoni, I promessi sposi (Milan: Tipografia Guglielmini e ­Redaelli, 1840), p. 606. 38 Palmieri, p. XIX. 39 Genco, p. 165. 40 Antonio Tabucchi, Requiem. Un’allucinazione (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1992), p. 18. 41 Tabucchi, p. 18. 42 For a discussion of the notion of carattere nazionale, see Silvana Patriarca’s Italian Vices: Nation and Character from the Risorgimento to the Republic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 43 Michel David, La psicoanalisi nella cultura italiana (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1972), pp. 14–15. 4 4 Antonello, p. 151. 45 See the exchange of letters between Cesare Pavese and Ernesto De Martino, La collana viola. Lettere, 1945–1950, ed. by Pietro Angelini (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1991). 46 Sergio Benvenuto, ‘Italy and Psychoanalysis’, Journal of European Psychoanalysis, 5 (Spring–Fall 1997) available at http://www.psychomedia.it/jep/ number5/benvenuto.htm [accessed October 2017] (para. 1 of 8). 47 The controversial reception of psychoanalysis in Italy is discussed in Michel David, La psicoanalisi nella cultura italiana.

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Index

Addison, Joseph 74–5, 84 Albertini, Luigi 170 Albertocchi, Giovanni 238, 243, 255, 256 Alcibiades 56 Alighieri, Dante 8, 86–112, 134, 135, 221, 250–2; Commedia 88, 111; Vita Nuova 8, 86–91, 94–111, 251 Aliotta, Antonio 202, 214 Almansi, Guido 240, 255 D’Amico, Pietro 142, 145–7, 161, 162; and Anna 142, 143, 145 Andry, Nicolas 73, 84; Orthopédie, L’ 73, 84 Anglani, Bartolo 25, 26, 31, 32 animal magnetism see mesmerism Antonello, Pierpaolo 237, 254, 255, 256 Apel, Johann August and Friedrich Schulze 78; Gespensterbuch 78 Appiani, Virginio 174, 182, 183, 258; ‘Le strane vicende del capitano Josè Cabral’ 182 Apuleius 70 Arcadia, Academy of 4 Ardigò, Roberto 202, 213 Aristotle 110 Armando, David 118, 138, 182 Aschaffenburg, Gustav 205 Asturaro, Alfredo 126, 139 Augustine of Hippo 51; Confessions 51 Avianus 72, 83 d’Azeglio, Massimo 168, 181

Basedow, Karl Adolph von 241, 245–8, 251 Belfiore, Giulio 121, 126, 127, 129, 139, 140, 182 Beltrame, Achille 170 Benvenuto, Sergio 254, 256 Berretta, Elisabetta 133 Berta, Edoardo Augusto 178, 184; ‘La pergamena misteriosa’ 178 Bertoni, Clotilde 222, 232, 233 Bianchi, Leonardo 151 Bilancioni, Guglielmo 176, 183 Binet, Alfred 6, 211 Bizzoni, Achille 163, 159; L’Onorevole 159, 163 Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna 175, 183 Bloom, Harold 86, 106, 259 Boccardo, Gerolamo 147, 162 Boito, Arrigo 153, 162, 259; ‘L’Alfier nero’ 153 Bonnet, Charles 34 Book of Job 90 Bordelon, Laurent 78; Histoire des imaginations extravagantes de monsieur Oufle, L’ 78 Bovee Dods, John 132, 140 Braid, James 115, 116, 138 Braudel, Fernand 84 Breme, Ludovico di 222 Breuer, Joseph 1, 10 Briosi, Sandro 235, 248, 255, 256 Bronzini, Giovanni Battista 78, 81, 85 Brown, Thomas 78; Pseudodoxia Epidemica 78

Bacchereti, Elisabetta 224, 233 Bacon, Francis 113 Baldi, Valentino 236, 255, 259 Baldwin, James Mark 186, 207, 208 Baroncini, Luigi 201, 213

Cabanis, Pierre 37, 47 Cagliostro 121, 150, 161 Calkins, Mary Whiton 194, 230, 215 Calmet, Augustin 78 Calvino, Italo 5, 12, 260

282 Index Calvo, Edoardo 62 De Caprio, Caterina 157, 253 Capuana, Luigi 147, 152, 154–6, 162, 176, 183; ‘Fatale influsso’ 155, 162; ‘Un vampiro’ 261 Carrière, Eva 178 Cartesianism see Descartes, René Cavalcanti, Guido 88, 99, 101, 106, 111, 112 Centelli, Attilio 170 Chamaeleon 174, 179, 182, 184; ‘Gli amori degli angeli’ 184 Charcot, Jean-Martin 2, 3, 6, 146, 147, 151, 204, 216 Checchi, Eugenio 148, 149, 162 Chiaia, Ercole 148 Child, Charles 203, 215 Chiossone, Dottor 146 Cicero 70; Dream of Scipio 70 Cicogna, Strozzi 78; Palagio de gli incanti 78 Clery, Emma 75, 84, 262 Cogevina, Angelo and Francesco Orioli 125, 126, 129, 130, 132, 133, 139, 140; Fatti relativi a mesmerismo e cure mesmeriche 125 Collin de Plancy, Jacques 78; Contes noirs, ou les frayeurs populaires, Les 78; Dictionnaire infernal 78, 79; Diable peint par lui-même, Le 78 Condillac, Étienne de 22, 23, 34, 37–40, 46–8 Contarini, Silvia 17, 20, 28–31 Cook, Florence 177, 184 Corbelli d’Adda, Barbara 18, 30 Coste, Pierre 34, 46 Cousin, Victor 33, 45 Crespi, Pietro 175, 183; ‘Metempsicosi? Come e perché divenni erede’ 175, 183 Croce, Benedetto 141, 161 Crookes, William 169, 177, 183, 184 Cuisin, J.P.R. 78, 177; Ombres sanglantes, Les 78; Spectriana 78 distraction 3, 6, 16, 33–9, 44 Dadone, Carlo 176, 183, 184; ‘Chiaroveggenza?’ 176, 183 Damasio, Antonio 128 Dandolo, Giovanni 192, 210 Dante see Alighieri, Dante Dante da Maiano 98, 99, 106, 109, 111; ‘Provedi, saggio, ad esta visïone’ 98

Darnton, Robert 114, 137 Darwin, Charles 127, 128 David, Michel 3, 11, 163, 201, 212, 213, 253, 256 Del Torto, Olindo 202, 214 Deleuze, Joseph Philippe François 119 Descartes, René 14, 15, 29, 35 Diderot, Denis 19, 31, 45; Religieuse, La 3 Diderot, Denis and Jean-Baptiste Le Rond D'Alembert 45; Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers 45 Didi-Huberman, Georges 10, 135, 140 Dostoevsky, Fëdor 59 dream 3, 6, 33–7, 39, 41, 43, 45, 46, 86–99, 102–10, 123, 152, 153, 157, 158, 173, 176, 185–207, 209, 211, 213, 214, 216, 218–21, 223, 224, 228–31, 238–52, 255 Ebbinghaus, Hermann 186 Ellenberger, Henri F. 10, 12, 46, 146, 147, 151, 161, 162, 180, 185, 190, 202, 205, 208, 209, 214, 216 Encyclopédie. see Diderot, Denis; Jean-Baptiste Rond D’Alembert Erede, Giuseppe 169, 170, 175, 181 Esposito, Roberto 7, 12, 120, 138 Eyriès, Jean-Baptiste Benoît 79, 80, 85; Fantasmagoriana 78, 79, 85 Fabre d’Olivet, Antoine 120 Fanciulli, Giuseppe 202, 213 De Felice, Renzo 113, 137 Ferenczi, Sándor 203, 215, 247, 256 Ferrari, Giulio Cesare 202, 214 Ferrari, Stefano 27, 28, 32 Ferreri, Antonio Maria 204, 208, 215 Ferrucci, Franco 65, 105, 109, 111 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 187 Ficino, Marsilio 113 Figuer, Louis 121 Flammarion, Camille 169 Foschi, Renato 185, 198, 205, 206, 210, 211, 213, 215, 216 Foscolo, Ugo 8, 46, 49, 51–66; Ajace 52; Notizia intorno a Didimo Chierico 52, 54, 60; Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis, Le 52, 65 Foucault, Michel 3, 6, 11, 12, 47, 49, 72, 84, 128, 140 Fox, Kate 168 Fox, Margaret 168

Index  283 Franklin, Benjamin 37 Freud, Sigmund 107, 109, 111, 162, 172, 185, 187, 195–206, 208, 211– 13, 215, 216, 219, 227, 228, 233, 235–6, 239–40, 243, 247–9, 252–6; ‘From the History of an Infantile Neurosis’ 81, 109; Interpretation of Dreams, The 9, 13, 14, 93, 106, 107, 109, 111, 185, 196, 206, 208, 211, 212, 215; Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious 227, 233; Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality 64; ‘Uncanny, The’ 2, 8, 69, 81 Gallini, Clara 48, 137–9, 142–4, 146, 161–3, 177, 182–4 Galton, Francis 203, 215 Gargani, Aldo Giorgio 5, 12 Garibaldi, Giuseppe 168 Garzoni, Tommaso 78; Serraglio degli stupori del mondo, Il 78 Gauchet, Marcel 165, 180 Genco, Giuseppe 235, 236, 248, 255, 256 Ghillini, Andrea 202, 214 Ghislanzoni, Antonio 145, 146, 157 Ginzburg, Carlo 5, 12, 81 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 2, 57, 65; Faust 57; Sorrows of Young Werther, The 65 Goldstein, Jan 12, 34, 44, 46, 48–50, 64, 138 Gravina, Giovanni Vincenzo 4; Della ragion poetica 4 Grimm, Jacob Ludwig and Wilhelm Karl 74 Guarini, Emilio 172, 173, 182 Guidi, Francesco 120, 124, 126, 138, 139, 143, 161 Guinizzelli, Guido 99, 106 Handley, Sasha 73, 83, 84 Heerwagen, Friedrich 203, 215 Helvétius, Claude 13, 23 Hervey de Saint-Denys, Léon d’ 202, 203, 215; Histoire des Revenans, ou prétendus tels 78; Rêves et les moyens de les diriger, Les 202, 215 D’Hont, Alfredo 126 hypnotism 115–18, 122, 127, 138, 142, 146, 147, 149–54, 159–61, 168, 171, 173, 174, 176 hysteria 3, 10, 126, 150

Hoffmann, E.T.A. 2, 68, 70, 80, 81, 87; Nachtstücke 68, 81; ‘Sandman, The’ 67–9, 80 Hume, David 13 imagination 68, 71, 74, 78, 79, 90, 100–3, 105, 107, 110, 112, 117, 123, 129, 130, 131, 148, 154, 167, 168, 174, 175, 218, 220, 221, 227, 228, 230, 238, 239, 243, 251 D’Intino, Franco 8, 48, 49, 83, 84, 220, 221, 231, 232 James, William 127, 128, 186 Janet, Pierre 6, 33, 38, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47–9, 185, 187, 189–91, 193, 204, 205, 209, 210, 216; L’automatisme psychologique 33, 45, 47–9, 189, 209 Jastrow, Joseph 203, 215 Jones, Ernest 1, 10, 13, 204, 215 Jones, Maria 134 Jouffroy, Théodore 202, 203 Jung, Carl Gustav 81, 172, 182, 186, 199, 205, 208, 256 Kant, Immanuel 2, 13, 29, 187, 255 Kardec, Allan 168; Rivail, Hippolyte Léon Denizard 169 Keats, John 71; Lamia 71 King, John 148 Kraepelin, Emil 186, 205 Krafft-Ebing, Richard von 204, 216 Külpe, Oswald 186 Larbaud, Valery 224 Lavagetto, Mario 51, 53, 65, 219, 232, 233, 255, 256 Lavater, Ludwig 76, 84, 85; Spectris, De 76, 84 Le Loyer, Pierre 76, 85 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von 6, 21–3, 31, 32, 34, 199 Lenglet Du Fresnoy, Nicolas 78 Leopardi, Giacomo 8, 9, 11, 43, 46, 48, 68–85, 218–34; ‘A Silvia’ 75; ‘Elogio degli uccelli’ 218, 219, 232, 233; ‘Epistola al Conte Carlo Pepoli’ 223; Operette morali 218, 231, 232; Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi 68, 81; ‘Ucello, L’’ 217, 231; Zibaldone 49, 83, 221, 222, 224, 225, 231, 233 Litta, Carlo Matteo 124, 139

284 Index Livre des prodiges, Le 78 Lloyd, Henry 20, 31; Introduction à l’histoire de la guerre en Allemagne 20, 31 Locke, John 4, 6, 8, 13–15, 17, 18, 21–3, 29–32, 34–6, 43, 44, 46, 47, 49, 70, 72–3, 75, 76, 84; Essay Concerning Human Understanding 14, 29, 34, 47, 72, 84 Lombardo, Giovanni Pietro 185, 198, 205, 206, 208, 210–16 Lombroso, Cesare 129, 147, 150–2, 155, 162, 169, 181 Löwy, Michael 2, 10 Lukács, György 5; The Destruction of Reason 5 Mabille, Henri 127, 139 McGarry, Molly 164, 180 Macrobius 70–1 madness 1, 25, 34–5, 41, 43, 128 Maine de Biran 6, 39, 42, 45, 47–9, 189, 202 De Maistre, Xavier 38, 48 Mantegazza, Paolo 150, 162 Manzoni, Alessandro 4, 8, 46, 91–3, 108, 109, 251–2, 256; Promessi sposi, I 8, 91 Marchesini, Giovanni 8, 91, 108, 109, 256 Marchetti, Paolo 128, 239, 140 Marconi, Guglielmo 169–70, 172, 181 Margherita of Savoy 168 Marhaba, Sadi 201, 207, 212 Marie Antoinette 178 Marrama, Daniele Oberto 178, 184; ‘Natale di Hans Boller, Il’ 178, 184 Maudsley, Henry 187 Maupertuis, Pierre-Louis de 15–16, 29, 30; Essai de Philosophie Morale 15, 30 Maury, Louis Ferdinand Alfred 46, 187, 202; Le sommeil et les rêves 202 Mazzini, Giuseppe 168 Melville, Hermann 108; Moby Dick 108 memory 6, 14, 16–19, 28, 30, 33, 40–1, 43–4, 74, 85, 88, 91, 93, 95, 99, 103, 106, 134, 176, 191, 194, 198, 223, 243 Mesmer, Franz Anton 113–15, 119, 125, 142, 143, 146, 173

mesmerism 2, 6, 8, 9, 113–15, 117–21, 123–5, 130, 131, 137, 138, 141–50, 152, 153, 160, 161, 164–6, 168, 171, 174–6, 182 Möbius, Paul J. 186, 207, 208 Modena, Gustavo 20, 213 Montale, Eugenio 231, 234 Morse, Samuel F.B. 167, 168 Morselli, Enrico 113, 116, 131, 132, 134–8, 140, 169, 202, 213 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus von 64; Così fan tutte 64 Muratori, Ludovico Antonio 48, 123, 129, 136, 139, 140; Della forza della fantasia umana 123, 139, 140 Musäus, Johann Karl August 74 Musumeci, Emilia 127, 139 Nani, Giacomo 121, 129, 139; Trattato teorico-pratico sul magnetismo animale 121, 139 Napoleon 4, 5, 8, 129 Nashe, Thomas 77, 85; Terrors of the Night 68, 77, 79, 85 Nietzsche, Friedrich 5 Noakes, Richard 169, 180, 181 Nodier, Charles 78; Infernaliana 78 Noferi, Adelia 89, 107, 108 Novalis 2 Olcott, Henry Steel 175, 183 Omega see Berta, Edoardo Augusto Ovid 79 Paban, Gabrielle de 78; Démoniana 78; Histoire des fantômes et des démons 78 Paladino, Eusapia 134, 138, 196 Palmieri, Giovanni 219, 224, 232, 233, 250, 251, 256 Pareti, Germana 191, 210 Parini, Giuseppe 62 Pascal, Blaise 166 Patera, Maria 71, 72, 83, 84 Patini, Ettore 202, 214 Pelosi, Luigi 144, 146, 161, 162 Petronius 70 Pigman, G.W. 185, 205, 208, 216 Pino, Domenico 40; Discorso sopra un meraviglioso sonnambulo 40 Pirandello, Luigi 166–7, 173, 176, 178–9, 181, 183, 184; Casa del

Index  285 Granella, La 178, 184; Fu Mattia Pascal, Il 166, 181, 184 Pirro, Raffaele 173, 182; ‘Antropotelegrafia, L’’ 173, 182; Fenomeni dell’ipnotismo e della suggestione, I 182; ‘Scoperte del… dimani, Le’ 173, 182 Placucci, Michele 78; Usi e pregiudizi de’ contadini della Romagna 78 Plato 47, 23, 71, 83; Republic 71 Pliny the Elder 135 Plutarch 56, 79 Podmore, Frank 113, 137 Postman, Neil 132, 140 Pouillon, Jean 238 Prince, Morton 204, 215 Proust, Marcel 12, 43–4, 49, 236, 255 Psalms 77 Punter, David 79, 85 Puységur, Amand-Marie-JacquesChastenet de 119, 130, 142, 144 Pyrrhonism 25 Regulus, Atilius 27, 28 Renan, Ernest 35, 47 Renda, Antonio 202, 214 Ribot, Théodule 6, 47, 186, 199, 207, 208 Richerand, Anthelme 78; Erreurs populaires relatives à la medicine 78 Richet, Charles 151, 178, 184 Ricoeur, Paul 53 Rivail, Hippolyte Léon Denizard see Kardec, Allan De Robertis, Domenico 95 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 3, 8, 20, 29, 31, 49–51, 53–5, 57, 59, 65, 66, 69, 81; Confessions 51, 55, 59, 66, 81; Nouvelle Héloïse, La 3, 8, 57, 60, 65 Rovito, Teodoro 176, 183 Russell Wallace, Alfred 176, 183 Sacchi, Carlo 124 Saint-Albin, J.S.C. de. see Collin de Plancy, Jacques Salgues, Jacques-Barthélemy gés répandus dans la société 78; Erreurs et des préjugés répandus dans la dans la société, Des 78 Salverte, Eusèbe 78; Essai sur la magie, les prodiges et les miracles chez les anciens 78

De Sanctis, Sante 9, 185–216; Psicologia sperimentale 199, 211–13, 215, 216; Sogni, I 9, 185–7, 193–6, 202, 207–11, 214–16; ‘Sogni dei neuropatici e dei pazzi’ 187, 206, 208, 209, 216; Sogni e il sonno nell’isterismo e nell’epilessia, I 186, 208 Sarfatti, Attilio 147–8, 162 De Sarlo, Francesco 202, 213 Schelling, Friedrich 2, 69, 81, 87 Schiller, Friedrich 87 Schlegel, Friedrich 2 Schmitz, Ettore see Svevo, Italo Schopenhauer, Arthur 130, 140, 224; On the Will in Nature 130, 140 Schubert, Gotthilf Heinrich von 2 Scobie, Alex 70, 82, 83 sensationism 6, 8, 13, 36, 44, 46 Sergi, Giuseppe 202, 210, 213, 254, 256 Shakespeare, William 2, 86 Soave, Francesco 4, 8, 34–49, 72, 73; Riflessioni intorno ai Sogni, ai fenomeni de’ Sonniloqui e dei Sonnamboli, e al Delirio, e alla Pazzia 34 Socrates 55–6 Sommer, Robert 205 somnambulism 3, 6, 8, 33–7, 39–49, 117, 129, 147, 150, 159, 174 Spignoli, Teresa 219, 232 Spinazzola, Vittorio 91, 108 spiritualism 115, 126, 132, 134, 136, 141, 146–9, 152, 156, 159, 160, 164, 166–71, 173–5, 177–8, 182 Spon, Jacob 78; Recherches curieuses d’antiquité 78 Starobinski, Jean 50, 51, 55, 65 Stekel, Wilhelm 197, 205, 211 Stout, George Frederick 186, 199, 207, 208 Strabo 71; Geographia 71 Strachey, James 2, 10, 81, 107, 208, 233 Sulloway, Frank J. 204, 216 Svevo, Italo 218–20, 222–4, 226–7, 229–40, 243, 246–56; Coscienza di Zeno, La 5, 8, 9, 223, 232, 235–7, 248, 251, 254–6; ‘Rapporti difficili’ 9, 218–20, 224, 226, 229, 231, 232; Senilità 223, 232; Soggiorno londinese 224, 225

286 Index Swain, Gladys 165, 180 Swift, Jonathan 53 Taalman Kip, A.M. Van Erp 205 Tabucchi, Antonio 252, 256; Requiem 252, 253, 256 Tacitus 71; Dialogus de oratoribus 71 Tarchetti, Iginio Ugo 152, 162, 184; 'Riccardo Weitzen’ 152 Tasso, Torquato 90, 108, 221; Gerusalemme liberata, La 90, 108 Tatar, Maria 74, 84 Taylor, M. 134 Tertullian 71, 83, 125; Adversus Valentinianos 71 Terzaghi, Giuseppe 174 Thyraeus, Pierre 77, 85; Daemoniaci cum locis infestis et terriculamentis nocturnis 77, 85 Tizzani, Vincenzo 125, 139 Torelli Viollier, Eugenio 147 Uncanny 24, 52, 69, 80–2, 85, 87, 96, 118, 148, 156, 158, 171, 183, 241, 254 Utterson, Sarah Elizabeth 78; Tales of the Dead 78 Vacante, Natàlia 219, 232 Vaschide, Nicolas 203, 215 VEA 182; ‘Fra le ombre’ 171, 182

Verati, Lisimaco 119–20, 138 Verdinois, Federigo 147–9, 154, 156, 157, 162; ‘Due mogli, Le’ 156; ‘Ritratto di X, Il’ 156; ‘Spirito di Angelo Inganga, Lo’ 156 Verri, Pietro 8, 13–32; Discorso sull’indole del piacere e del dolore 13, 29, 30; Idee sull’indole del piacere e del dolore 13; Memorie sincere 19, 24, 30, 31, 32 Villa, Guido 202 da Vinci, Leonardo 197 Volponi, Paolo 219 Warne Monroe, John 165, 180 Weber, Max 69, 81, 180 Weiss, Allen S. 168, 181 Winter, Alison 164, 163, 180 Wundt, Wilhelm 186, 188, 199, 202 Wynne, John 34, 46 Xivrey, Jules Berger de 79; Traditions tératologiques 79 Zambrano, María 105, 111 Zena, Remigio 154, 157, 162; ‘Confessione postuma’ 157, 162, 163; ‘L’invitata’ 154 Ziehen, Theodor 205 De Zoete, Beryl 237