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Modernism / Postmodernism
Rethinking the Canon through Gadda

Loredana Di Martino

After being either neglected or put in a secondary position with regard to modernist novelists such as Luigi Pirandello and Italo Svevo, Carlo Emilio Gadda has recently come to occupy a place of prime importance in the Italian literary canon. Contemporary criticism has rescued Gadda from isolation, and acknowledged his important contribution to the development of the Italian modernist tradition. Gadda is widely discussed in contemporary anthologies and studies on fiction. An international interest in his work is witnessed by the increasing number of critical works in different languages, (1) as well as by the creation of the online Edinburgh Journal of Gadda Studies, which organised its first International Edinburgh Gadda conference in April 2003.

If literary criticism has recognised the impact of Gadda’s work on the discourse of modernism, it has yet to acknowledge the extent of the author’s unique contribution to the field, as shown by the tendency to reduce his complex poetics to categorisations, by merely associating it to those of his modernist or postmodernist colleagues. In his highly influential book on Gadda, La disarmonia prestabilita (1969, 1995), Giancarlo Roscioni inaugurated a metaphysical interpretation of Gadda’s work, which viewed the writer’s task as the failed attempt to transform chaos into cosmos, driven by the underlying goal of «omnia circumspicere». Shared by numerous critics, (2) this interpretation ascribed Gadda’s work to a modernist tradition with fin-de-siècle, auratic tendencies, and to a structuralist paradigm that, as has been argued by Carla Benedetti, is incompatible and ultimately irreconcilable with Gadda’s philosophy of the impossible closure of systems (Benedetti 2004a: 29-30).

Roscioni’s position has been overturned by Norma Bouchard (Bouchard 2000a: 183-84), who, influenced by Gianfranco Contini, Guido Guglielmi and Marina Fratnik, in her book on Céline, Gadda and Beckett, has defined Gadda and his colleagues of the thirties as pioneers of the postmodernist practices. Bouchard’s work is an attempt to make up for a shortcoming that goes beyond the boundaries of Gadda studies, and is a recurring problem in the critique of Modernism. She attempts to expose the limitations of the old assumption that all modernist authors inherit a symbolist, fin-de-siècle aesthetics «continuing to share a view of language as capable of providing order and finality to the contradictory and open-ended dimensions of life, to the temporal and spatial intricacies constitutive of the twentieth-century experience of the world» (Bouchard 2000a: 1). According to Bouchard, anomalous writers such as Gadda, Céline and Beckett, urge us to broaden our notion of Modernism, as they overcome symbolist notions of art and experiment with views of language, the world and the self that lay the foundation of a postmodernist aesthetics.

Bouchard’s archeological analysis has inherent limitations, as her historical periodisation (the thirties) bounds the critic to leave Pasticciaccio (1957) out of her study on Gadda. Yet, Céline, Gadda and Beckett casts new insights in the field of Gadda’s studies and represents an interesting addition to the ongoing debate on modernist and contemporary writing, as it underlines the need to challenge monadic notions of Modernism that fail to describe works such as Gadda’s. Like some of his modernist colleagues and predecessors, Gadda endorses a view of literature, language and subjectivity that begins to move away from auratic notions of art. Subverting the epistemological optimism of nineteenth-century transparent writing and referential language, as well as the symbolist attempt to master a reality of fragments through a mythical method or a unified subject, Gadda pushes Modernism to its extremes, accepting the notion of absolute indeterminacy which is a key feature of Postmodernism.

As Calvino claims in the last Memo for the Next Millennium, Gadda’s later work is an excellent example of the open encyclopedia that paves the way for postmodernist hypernovels, by rejecting a notion of totality that is not potential, conjectural and manifold. (3) With his «hermeneutics of multiple solutions» («ermeneutica a soluzioni multiple»), like his predecessor Flaubert and his postmodern counterparts – Borges, Queneau, Perec and Calvino himself – Gadda attempts to represent the world «without in the least diminishing the inextricable complexity or, to put it better, the simultaneous presence of the most disparate elements that converge to determine every event» (Calvino 1993: 106). Gadda’s later work is also an excellent and probably the first Italian example of the open works, which, according to Eco, adapt the encyclopedic realism of authors such as Balzac to the process of unlimited semiosis that affects modern times.(4) In Italian literature Gadda plays a role similar to that of the author who is regarded as the writer par excellence of open works, James Joyce. (5) Like Joyce, he subverts the medium in order to achieve a heightened realism and provide «an image of the ontological and existential situation of the contemporary world» (Eco 1989: 10). Moreover like him, Gadda denies art its mythic and unifying power, turning it into the disorienting force that will become in the post-metaphysical era. (6) If he inherits the dissecting method of Pirandello’s humorist writing, unlike his early predecessor Gadda abandons the possibility of a humanist solution to the modern epistemological crisis.

In That Awful Mess on Via Merulana, Gadda provides a disillusioned view of the world’s disconnectedness, using a genre linked to positivist thought, such as the detective novel, in order to ironise its totalising tendency. Quer Pasticciaccio rejects the possibility of a solution, refusing to separate an apparent motive from the multiplicity of causes behind it, as it does not believe the mind to be able to negotiate a solution to make sense of a world and a subject in constant deformation. Instead of following a linear progression, culminating into the final detection, the novel creates a digressive space, which, just like Calvino’s novel made of beginnings, undermines the possibility of a rational construct which would provide solution to the mystery. In That Awful Mess Gadda rejects what is commonly defined as «the resolving urge of Modernism toward closure or at least distance», and maintains the tolerance of a fundamental uncertainty about meanings, which is the point of departure of contemporary writing and its use of pluralism as a strategy for liberation from metaphysical dogmatism. (7)

The cold reception of Bouchard’s work has risked to undermine the effort to rethink the canon and revise our reception of Gadda’s work. Bouchard’s book has been attacked by Italian criticism, mostly due to the militant ethics and general dislike of Postmodernism of Italian critics, whose gloomy view of contemporary thought bears a striking resemblance to Fredric Jameson’s theory on the superficiality of the late-capitalist aesthetics. (8) Giuseppe Stellardi, for instance, has attacked Bouchard on the ground that while Gadda’s work cannot be pinned down or attributed to any particular school, its tragic and lyric essence makes it extremely incompatible with the lightness of postmodernist writing: «C’è, insomma, l’emergere di un fondo tragico incompatibile – a dispetto delle forme superficialmente e magari anche non superficialmente affini – con la leggerezza e con il gioco postmoderni» (Stellardi 2004). Alessio Ceccherelli, for his part, has questioned Gadda’s affiliation with contemporary practices, claiming that the author’s apparently postmodernist style is dictated by a modern ethics and the attempt (although a failed one) to order reality, which separate him from the superficiality and the negation of the world of contemporary fiction: «In Gadda, l’impossibilità del finale ha altre ragioni, assolutamente non metaletterarie come sembrano già essere in parte quelle di Borges e di Calvino (e come sono quelle dei loro epigoni): il legame col reale resta in lui ancora saldo ed è nel reale che la sua arte cerca e trova una giustificazione, sebbene fallisca nell’impresa di ordinare, spiegare, porre la parola fine» (Ceccherelli 2003).

While it is not my intention to define Gadda as a nonmodernist or postmodernist writer, as Bouchard also suggests (Bouchard 2000a: 82), I would nevertheless claim that Gadda’s work urges us to question notions of Modernism and Postmodernism which reduce to categorisations and dichotomies a discourse marked by instability and contradiction. As Donnarumma argues in his recent book Gadda modernista, Gadda’s modernism takes a different turn from Pirandello’s and Svevo’s, as it rejects the possibility of ordering schemes (Donnarumma 2006: 17, 27). His style can be seen as a mature and disillusioned realism that is a prelude to postmodern pluralism, although it is still related to the modernist pathos of truth (albeit an unreachable truth in Gadda’s case). Donnarumma views Gadda’s work as the exponent of an open Modernism and a transition from Modernist to Postmodernist writing, but reinforces the general opinion of Italian critics on the superficiality of Postmodernism, which, in my opinion, can also be questioned through Gadda (Donnarumma 2006: 27).

If it challenges the widely accepted notion of modernist closure, Gadda’s work also encourages us to revise our approach to contemporary writing, and, in particular, the notion of postmodernist openness, which is the target of the Marxist accusation of institutionalisation, or «waning of affect». Compared to those of his followers, Gadda’s views on openness and multiplicity bring to surface the moderate vein of postmodernism, which entails a disillusioned and non-heroic return of romantic humanism. In writers such as Umberto Eco, whose view of postmodernism converges with Gianni Vattimo’s philosophy of weak thought as shown in the essay L’antiporfirio, (9) the acceptance of randomness and contingency is complemented by the belief in the possibility of finding temporary solutions and rules of reasonability, in the absence of an ultimate structure or a strong model of reason. Openness does not rule out entirely the possibility of closure, even though it emphasises the temporary and non-absolute value of the writer’s answer, which is depicted as a reasonable one, albeit one among many. One of the final dialogues between the protagonists of the Name of the Rose, William of Baskerville and Adso of Melk, illustrates Eco’s philosophy. Upon finding the main culprit and motive for the abbey’s crimes – Jorge’s attempt to protect the sacred power of the master-narrative of the medieval world, the divine logos of the Holy Scripts – William claims that he has untangled by mistake a non-existent plot, thus reaching a solution which puts only a temporary stop to the infinite chain of signifiers of reality: «There was no plot», William said, «and I discovered it by mistake… I behaved stubbornly, pursuing a semblance of order, when I should have known well that there is no order in the universe». (10) On the other hand, William also believes that the mind cannot ultimately do away with structuring systems, as he confesses to Adso in answering his question on the existence of God. A negation of the truth would cause incommunicability and relativism: «How could a learned man go on communicating his learning if he answered yes to your question?» (Eco 1984: 493). William comes to the conclusion that his role is to «make truth laugh», without negating it, and to appreciate the usefulness of reason, engaging in a process of rational thinking, which has nevertheless abandoned the possibility of absolute closure: «The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterwards you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless» (Eco 1984: 492).

Whereas Eco’s detective accomplishes his mission, Gadda’s commissario, Don Ciccio Ingravallo, rejects the possibility of constructing a complete rational model and withholds from the reader the identity of the culprit. On the verge of a final revelation on Liliana Balducci’s murder case, Ingravallo regrets that he has come close to a solution, which would let him fall into the traps of rational optimism: «He [Ingravallo] didn’t understand, then and there, what his spirit was on the point of understanding. The black, vertical fold above the two eyebrows of rage, in the pale white face of the girl, paralysed him, prompted him to reflect: to repent, almost» (That Awful Mess, 1984, p. 388). Until the very end of the novel, Gadda’s investigator is consistent with the method illustrated in his famous theory on the multiplicity of causes: «He sustained, among other things, that unforeseen catastrophes are never the consequence or the effect, if you prefer, of a single motive, of a cause singular; but they are rather like a whirlpool, a cyclonic point of depression in the consciousness of the world, towards which a whole multitude of converging causes have contributed. He also used words like knot or tangle, or muddle, or gnommero, which in Roman dialect means skein» (That Awful Mess, 1984, p. 5). Gadda believes that interpretation is bound to produce endless deformations of reality, rather than putting a stop to the world’s heuristic process (I quote from Meditazione milanese: «Conoscere è inserire alcunché nel reale, è quindi, deformare il reale» – SVP 863), and endorses a hermeneutics of multiple solutions. Eco on the other hand ultimately puts limitations on the reader’s hermeneutical drift and the process of endless metonymy of his open works.

Like Vattimo, and contrary to French deconstructionists, Eco believes that ontology should be weakened rather than overcome: he does not attempt to do away with rationality and structuring systems altogether, but only to negate their totalising aim through a process of ironic acceptance and rethinking. (11) This politics has also affected Eco’s theory on interpretation. In The Open Work Eco comments on the infinite interpretability of texts, which, as he suggests, should be read using the Piercian method of unlimited semiosis. He reinforces this thesis in The Role of the Reader, where he emphasises that the reader plays an active role in the hermeneutical process, as «a part of the picture of the generative process of the text». (12) Yet in the Role he also poses limitations on hermeneutic freedom through his notion of the «Model Reader», i.e. by claiming that each text presupposes and foresees a reader able to deal with the expressions in the same ways as the author deals with them, and who interprets the text making reasonable choices rather than coming to a private reading (Eco 1979: 7). Eco comes to the conclusion that an open work «cannot afford whatever interpretation», as it outlines «a “closed” project of its Model Reader as a component of its structural strategy» (Eco 1979: 9), making the reader free to choose only between the different paths of good reading pre-established by the text (Eco 1979: 24). This position is reasserted in The Limits of Interpretation, where Eco attacks the extreme model of reader-oriented theory followed by Rorty’s pragmatism and Derrida’s notion of deferral, (13) or what he sees as misreadings of Peirce’s notion of interpretation. (14) As he claims in his Postscript to The Name of The Rose, Eco’s intention is to disorient readers, writing an open work that is «a machine for generating interpretations», while at the same time constructing an accomplice who will play his game, falling «prey of the text», a model reader (Eco 1984: 505-06, 524). The reader is to be disoriented but not distracted from problems (Eco 1984: 526).

Eco endorses an attitude of suspensiveness toward the world similar to those of modernist precursors like Gadda, which nevertheless does not preclude the creation of tentative meanings albeit in the conscious absence of a final truth. Gadda on the other hand refused to compromise, denying the privilege to create meaning even though reminding readers that they are provided with one of the possible fictionalisations of reality. Gadda’s pathos of truth ultimately leads to the awareness of the inexistence of a final truth. On the other hand, Eco’s acceptance of the inexistence of truth leads to a recovery of minor truths that still hold a structuring power, albeit a moderate one. In its «political unconscious», Eco’s work still offers a Utopia of liberation, and a compensation to the effects of reification, rather than merely accepting the state of things.(15) Seen in this light, Eco seems to borrow more heavily from early modernists such as Pirandello who, despite their awareness of the inexistence of truth, still attempt to recover it, through the creation of a humanist myth. (16) As claimed by Dombroski, the inner goal of Pirandello’s theory on humour – as presented in his last novel, One No One and One Hundred Thousand – is to endow the writer with the power to decompose life in order recompose it into new unities, (17) ultimately reasserting the authority of the writer-god-of-creation (Dombroski 1994: 69-70).

Gadda’s modernism ultimately rejects unifying myths and emphasises the openness of the hermeneutic process in a world devoid of meaning. (18) While he paves the way for pluralism and the suspensive irony of postmodernist novels, Gadda does not endorse what Alan Wilde has defined as the «generative irony» of some contemporary texts, or their search for momentary meanings within the ordinary. (19) Unlike his postmodernist counterpart, Eco, Gadda does not enjoy the modest pleasure of a postmodernist, moderate return to humanism: «neither reductive nor, on the other hand, hopeful of reestablishing in art or in life an aesthetic of total order, endorsing modest pleasures in a world accepted as making no ultimate sense, it [the postmodern] is a vision that lacks the heroism of the modernist enterprise but that, for a later and more disillusioned age, recovers its humanity» (Wilde 1981: 165).