![]() |
Gadda’s Centre
Sam Parsons
In Creative Entanglements (1999) Dombroski states that in Gadda «there are no plots, no centre from which the narrator can stray». I would have to disagree with him and say the opposite – that there is most definitely a centre (or even centres) from which Gadda does stray, in all directions.
Liliana Balducci is for me one centre, her brutal murder being the pivotal point of the novel. From it a number of strands (and literal “vein-strands”) explode. It just so happens that the murder of Liliana is one of the crimes which detective Ingravallo must solve (the other being that of the closely linked Menegazzi burglary – in itself another “centre” from which the narrator can stray). Our “non-existent” protagonist looks to Liliana as his “ideal woman”. She is all he would like in a woman (and, narcissistically, in himself). For him she is the epitome of beauty, nobility, and angelic goodness. However he is not floating in the clouds as he is pulled steadily to earth by his carnal, bodily desire for her maid, Assunta (chapter I).
When, alas, Liliana is revealed, in death, to be something other than she appeared («quelle due cosce un po’ aperte […] come ad un invito orribile […] La solcatura del sesso […] Un profondo, un terribile taglio rosso» – chapter II), the level-headed detective with his memoria infallibile is completely thrown off balance, and plummets into chaos. Still clinging on to the fantasy, he calls his rival Giuliano in for questioning (chapter IV). As the latter spills the beans on his “quasi” incestuous affair with his cousin Liliana, how she, the poor woman, obsessed with having a child, had chosen him as the father, Ingravallo slowly but surely thuds down to earth, where a mess awaits. He thought he had found his perfect “other” in Liliana, he had not – she had had other ideas. He thought he had found his murderer – but no, the sainted Giuliano in a halo of light (the effect of the «lampadina “speciale”» used in the interrogation) was as pure and as innocent as Gabriel. When all this has happened (here the novel could have ended), the straying begins.
Certainly in a giallo there must and there will be digressions, misleading clues, a surplus of interrogations, reconstructions and flashbacks retracing both the victim’s and the criminal’s footsteps – but is it really necessary to give our investigators’ vital statistics, such as the maiden names of everyone’s mother? – «[Pompeo] sapeva a memoria tutte le coppie, co tutte le parantele e tutte le ramificazzione che je sbottaveno fora a primavera, o in testa o giĆ¹ de la testa: le coppie doppie, li tris, le sequenze reale, co tutti l’incastri possibili» (chapter III). The mess begins with the mess of Liliana’s body in chapter II («un pasticcio!»), and never ends.
If we agree with Sbragia when he says «Liliana Balducci is the novel’s eternal feminine and Ingravallo looks to her to lift him from the sins of passion», then we can see another plot weaving its way into the mess. Nel mezzo del cammin di sua vita Ingravallo finds himself in the selva oscura of Rome. Unfortunately, the “diritta via era smarrita” – and the donna angelicata, his guide, has failed him.
Was Gadda writing a Divino pasticcio? Ingravallo looks to Liliana, the untouchable, beautiful, Beatrice-equivalent, to lead him on to the right path, so that he may find Truth, Reality, and Divino Amore (literally never reached in the novel). Sadly, Ingravallo gets stuck in Hell when Liliana is murdered – she was not the saviour he expected; Rome and Latium have become the point at which all gravity converges. As Dante saw projections of the souls in the planets in Paradiso, Ingravallo is seeing projections of reality down below. As the novel progresses, the investigators (Ingravallo included) resemble Dante’s devils more and more. If only our inspector could get to the Colli Albani to purge himself! Everywhere he looks he sees Lucifer, Brutus, Cassius.
Liliana has indeed fallen like Lucifer. The colours of the inverted Trinity are shown in the black blood, Ingravallo’s black face and hair (ignorance), red blood, red typewriter ribbons (anger), yellow/white jewels (topaz), bedclothes and faeces (impotence). Devils crowd the narrative: Zamira’s girls (all prostitutes?) are compared with chickens, and hens with devils, their pointed tongues darting in and out of their mouths. When at Casal Bruciato Pestalozzi’s aide at long last retrieves the jewels from the bedside-side table (chapter IX), he acts very much like a dantesque devil (i.e., you expect and get «del cul fatto trombetta»! – Inf. XXI, 139). And the death oozing from Liliana’s throat wound is reminiscent of the blood plus saliva oozing from the mouth of Lucifer.
Dante was led out from Hell, through Purgatory and eventually reached “Divino Amore”. Ingravallo tried but could not find his way out alone. It is almost, at the end, as if he is about to prepare himself for revelation (perhaps for Ingravallo/Gadda revelation would be the knowledge of reality). The last chapter echoes the opening canti of Paradiso. Dawn is breaking; it is the 23rd of March (Easter time). Gadda calls on the Muses and Apollo, as it were; he tries to raise his eyes to the clouds.
Dante raised his eyes to proceed to the Sun – to God. Detective Ingravallo will never get there. Maybe it is because Gadda does not believe in Divine Providence and the workings of the universe but in fate. Fate controls our destiny (so are we controlled by a bunch of seamstresses, prostitutes weaving together the threads of our lives?). What we fear most is what will happen to us (Liliana wished to die if she could never become pregnant). We live a precarious existence in which the only certain reality is death: Liliana found reality, stared it in the face – her eyes in death «Guardaveno, guardaveno» (chapter II). Ingravallo is searching for his – but it is all still shadows on the wall of the Platonic cave. Try to stare it in the face and the result is madness: “un pasticcio”.
How many plots are there in Quer pasticciaccio? How many little (or big) centres, and how much straying? Perhaps Gadda’s strayings – the many plots, and centres – act like Dante’s ineffability topos and portray the exact opposite (infinitely big? or infinitely small), and it does “appear” as if there are no plot or centre.
I have, however, a picture in my mind of Liliana, Madonna «stesa a terra in un lago de sangue», with her insides all mixed and tangled together, coming out, pouring out in all directions. This is for me a metaphor of Quer pasticciaccio: the plot is the murder, the centre is Liliana, and the strayings are Liliana’s insides and Ingravallo’s futile attempts to find a cause for the cause for the cause… (ad infinitum!)
Published by The Edinburgh Journal of Gadda Studies (EJGS)
ISSN 1476-9859
© 2000-2025 by Samantha Parsons & EJGS. First published in EJGS 0/2000. Best timed essay of Class 2000, IT0032 Cleaning up the «Mess», MA Honours programme, School of Literatures Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh.
Artwork © 2000-2025 by G. & F. Pedriali.
Framed image (with distortion): Gadda with his colleagues and students at the Liceo «Parini» in 1925.
All EJGS hyperlinks are the responsibility of the Chair of the Board of Editors.
EJGS may not be printed, forwarded, or otherwise distributed for any reasons other than personal use.
EJGS is a member of CELJ, The Council of Editors of Learned Journals.
Dynamically-generated word count for this file is 1331 words, the equivalent of 4 pages in print.