Pasticciaccio and Ulysses

Chris Ferguson

Joyce and Gadda are great modernist writers, the greatest in their respective languages, and close contemporaries. It is for these reasons, amongst others, that critics have sought links between these two greats. Although we must concede that there is no real evidence for cross-fertilization of ideas (yet Gadda’s library contained some Joyce), we can no doubt be instructed in what we call Modernism and perhaps illuminate the work of one in the light of the other’s. For there are similarities in choice of theme, use of imagery and technique on the conscious level. On the subconscious level, there is evidence of similar neuroses and patterns of thought. Almost as instructive are the differences between the two, for example, their views on psychology and uses of myth.

I propose to look at Quer pasticciaccio and Ulysses, being the crowning achievements of each writer, further writings notwithstanding. These books share a number of features that instantly spring out at the reader. There is the place/protagonist aspect of the city, the polyvocality inherent in the city-crucible, (1) the strong narrative voice through which everything is experienced and the narrator in both cases is a semi-outsider. (2) There is the same philosophical meandering, the same jaded Catholicism, the same preoccupation with mythology.

And yet there are as many glaring differences. Dublin, even if a metropolis by Irish standards, is not Caput Mundi, and there is even a suggestion that Rome is too big and ugly for Joyce in real life. (3) Ingravallo is no Bloom, and Pestalozzi would make a very poor Stephen; there is not the same time invested in the characters, and we are never going to see Ingravallo as weak and as pathetic as the Bloomsday cuckold, or quite as likable and admirable. If we allow ourselves the classical link, we must remember that, while speaking of myth, we must point out that Gadda is (naturally) a big fan of the Roman, Latin tradition, while Joyce favours Stephen’s idea that Circe’s island should be re-hellenised in the Homeric fashion. And from the point of view of the Modernist microcosm, they treat the world differently: Gadda makes the world revolve around and evolve from Liliana’s corpse; Joyce arranges that we should find the whole world in Dublin. That said, we must attempt to find a common ground between the two writers that will help us to understand their shared intention. Perhaps an analysis of themes will help us in this task.

I have touched upon the first theme, that of the city, already. It is essential to Modernism that the city is the space of the novel and that the periphery, whether the Colli Albani or Howth Hill, only has value as a contrast to the city. Interestingly, both writers allow the city to play a quasi-protagonistic role in the text and Dublin and Rome make their presence very strongly felt on the other characters. (4) Perhaps it is indicative of little more than that petit bourgoise attitude to civilisation some Modernist writers are so guilty of, although it seems a bit much to accuse an Italian and an exiled Irishman of this. It is much closer to the truth, and kinder, to attribute the cityscape to the world that Gadda and Joyce knew and attempted to come to terms with, leading us to the most outstanding qualities of their work: the polyvocality and the treatment of the human mind both inside the box of privacy and outside in city-society.

It is certainly not overstating the case to suppose that Gadda was aware of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Joyce was also aware of this development in thought and it intrigued him (Gross 1971: 8). Both writers can be seen as post positivist scientific writers, breaking down the continuum of space-time into events and places. This implies a scientific objectivity that is betrayed by the author’s artistic subjectivity. Events that take equal time do not have the same qualitative value. Hence Bloom’s tiniest reflection (on shaving at night, for example) may take more pages than whole conversations, and one day of Ingravallo’s life may disappear faster than a seemingly pointless description of a driver whipping a horse. The relative time is applied after the fact by the significance the author attaches to the use of the time.

There is much to convince one of some superstition in Gadda, perhaps not to the degree that Joyce indulges in, but both writers share a spiritually lapsed but psychologically active Catholicism. They come from very different branches of the Church to end up in the same place. Joyce has a very Jesuited and Irish vision of Catholicism – intellectual and ascetic, personified in the tale of St. Kevin whose story crops up, I believe, in Finnegan’s Wake. (5) Gadda’s Italian Catholicism would have been very different. Unthreatened and politically safe, the spirituality of the Church in Italy was much more based on salvation and community of faith – the attendance of mass is the primary determining factor, not the expression of faith. Both men, however, were deeply impressed by the imagery of sacrifice and by the human suffering exemplified by the life of the Godhead Incarnate and the promise of Hell for non-believers. We have noted in class the devilish aspects of Ingravallo and his terrible team of lawkeepers. There are constant reminders along the same lines in the works of both writers, but the Hell Sermon in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man stands out particularly.

For a self-imposed exile, Joyce loved aspects of his Sireland in a way that is as revealing as Gadda’s desire to prove himself a man at war for his Patria. For both men, the fatherland takes on a certain status. It is bound up for both in their conception of father, and I would hold that this is a conscious decision for Joyce at least. The father haunts all of Joyce’s work, often in a way that is accepted and cultivated as artistic by the author. Here we may also detect the Christianity mentioned above. Gadda on the other hand seems more concerned with the ultimate absence of the father, perhaps doubting of his very existence. We have seen this previously in class, the importance of Remo’s absence and its implications for the reading of the murder. In the lack of father the mother assumes an importance that cuts like a two-edged sword for Gadda, in ways that are discussed elsewhere at length. (6) In any case the father in Quer pasticciaccio, whether Remo or Fumi must always be somehow ineffectual, absent in order that the mother can terrify to her full potential.

These two great writers are linked in ways that suggest a type of kindred spirit relationship, perhaps a coincidence born of European Modernism, and we must not pretend to have found anything deeper. In the final analysis, we can even say that their similarities are created by the critic who looks for the common strands in the works of these two great artists, great minds concerned by the same world.

Note

1. Indeed, both authors make use of several narrative voices, accents, even changes in language and neologisms.

2. A Jew in Dublin and a Molisano in Rome.

3. Joyce lived on via delle Vite near piazza di Spagna for a few months, which were apparently unhappy for him.

4. Here I am thinking of Lamppost and perhaps of the curious circuitous route that Roman public transport takes, of the self-division of Dublin at night and of the guilty building at 219 via Merulana, to give a couple of examples.

5. St Kevin was said to have stood for seven years in the crosfigill, so motionless that the birds made nests in his hands. I have been unable to find the exact spot in the Wake where he is mentioned but remain convinced by my memory that it is there!

6. See, for example, Dombroski 1999.

Bibliography

R.S. Dombroski, Creative Entanglements, Gadda and the Baroque (Toronto: TUP 1999).

C.E. Gadda, Quer Pasticcaccio Brutto de via Merulana (Milan: Garzanti Scuola, 1997).

J. Gross, Joyce (London: Fontana, 1971).

D. Halliday, R. Rensick & J. Walker, Fundamentals of Physics (New York: Wiley & sons, 1993).

J. Joyce, Ulysses (London: Bodley Head, 1954); Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

A. Sbragia, Gadda and the Modern Macaronic (Gainesville, FLA: University Press of Florida, 1996).

Published by The Edinburgh Journal of Gadda Studies (EJGS)

ISSN 1476-9859

© 2003-2025 by Chris Ferguson & EJGS. First published in EJGS 3/2003. Best essay of Class 2003, IT0032 Cleaning up the «Mess», MA Honours programme, School of Literatures Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh.

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Framed image (with distortion): Gadda with his colleagues and students at the Liceo «Parini» in 1925.

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