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Gender representation
and repressed desire in Pasticciaccio

Elizabeth Rhodes

Since the emergence of gender theory of representation in the 1950s, much re-interpretation of previously existent works has materialised, and new artistic creations have been stylised in the light of it. Although published in its entirety in 1957 Gadda’s Quer pasticciaccio, due to its fragmented publishing history, can be taken as predating such theory. Thus the exploratory path of gender representation must be trodden sensitively. Rodica Diaconescu-Blumenfeld has stressed that gender is the obvious polarity of difference that can be most usefully employed «to reveal the play of unity and difference in Gadda’s text» (Diaconescu-Blumenfeld 1999: 4). With this in mind, I will assume as point of departure the polarity of the sexes and attempt to dissect the narrative of Pasticciaccio in terms of its representation of male and female. The aim is to explore whether Gadda’s portrayal of these two opposites emerges as exemplary of his overall view of human cognition.

Gadda’s work has been cited as containing a «polarity of difference» (Sbragia 1996a: 28), and it is this concept of two opposites, be they good and evil, life and death or male and female, that Gadda attempts, through an «exhaustive globality» (Sbragia 1996a: 36), to establish as inter-connecting entities. Taking as read the obvious inability to claim the male and female body as the same, it is logical to conclude that they are different. Yet there is blurring also: the blurring of opposites which is made manifest in the written word. How in fact can they be represented? How may they be described? With gender specifics being inherent to both author and reader, it is evident that the issue is of primary concern. Gadda, already in 1924, gives voice to such issues. He concludes:

Perhaps, to ourselves, we seem only male, but in reality, in the mysterious depths of nature, we are simply «polarised» beings and «potentially» we can be one and the other. But this potentiality, which precedes our development, we have forgotten. (Racconto italiano, cit. in Diaconescu-Blumenfeld 1999: 30)

Gadda, then, will attempt to trace exactly such thing. The omnipotent author should be able to inhabit in the relative other. Interestingly, in striving to do so Gadda does nothing but employ modes of gendered inter-play. He loads doubles with echoes, he maps symbols onto signifiers and charges conscience with desire. Any difference within the text is not solely identified by its separation from its binary opposite. There is intertwining, over-lapping and merging. To change completely from one sex to another is not possible, and this results in ripe ground for the analysis of all modes of differentiation:

To keep changing, to keep shifting from one sex to the other and back again, is to call into question the idea of sexual identity, and the representation of female subjectivity in the context of constant dislocation, of joker-wild gender marking, finally serves to interrogate all species of difference. (Diaconescu-Blumenfeld 1999: 31)

Prioritising gender, then, will facilitate the analysis of all apparent differences. And in Gadda’s prose, certainly, there are many.

Marina Fratnik’s study of narrative organisation in Gadda’s works is spoken of in Diaconescu-Blumenfeld’s Born Illiterate. Diaconescu-Blumenfeld refers to Fratnik’s way of seeing the space that looms between two polarities as being an essential and positive chasm that is subsequently filled by a shifting complexity of reference; a pastiche by which «reality is honoured by the manifestation of language’s incapacity to reach its referent» (Diaconescu-Blumenfeld 1999: 9). For Fratnik, then, the fact that language is proved to be inadequate, results in a faithful reconstruction of reality. Blumenfeld suggests that this, for Gadda, is problematic because a «total opacity of language would result in total linguistic inactivity» (Diaconescu-Blumenfeld 1999: 9). I would suggest that opacity of language in its quasi-transparency could never be entirely useless but that an accurate recreation of reality may equally never be attained, in accordance with Gadda’s objection to closure. Gadda’s linguistic experimentation is a crucial component of his quest for knowledge and is definitely a trajectory between opposites.

Gadda writes in an attempt to give order to chaos, to untangle the complex web of the world. In one way and due to this philosophical belief, his literary pastiche is doomed to fail. As the detective story falls short of reaching a conclusion, as Ingravallo fails to solve Liliana’s mystery or find her murderer, so too does Gadda succeed only in embedding leads and clues within his novel which holds a «view of the world as a “system of systems”». (1)

From early on in the giallo the narrative highlights aspects of gender consideration. As Ingravallo is introduced at the very beginning of chapter one, we are told:

Una certa praticaccia del mondo […] doveva di certo avercela: una certa conoscenza degli uomini: e anche delle donne. (Pasticciaccio, RR II 15)

The choice to introduce both clauses with a colon suggests an equality of weighting that gives priority to neither, or at least elevates the relevance of the second to as close as it could get to the first. Ingravallo, we are being told, does not have good (utter) knowledge of men and a lesser knowledge of women. He has, rather, a certain (a certain amount of) knowledge of both. His gender does not prevent him from having an understanding of his female counterparts, and a noteworthy one at that. Thus gender for Ingravallo, as for Gadda, is fundamental to his theorising.

If the representation of gender is the primary polar opposite for exploration within Pasticciaccio, and the female is, in this giallo, the mystery, what, then, does the female represent? Ingravallo meditates that there is a quantum of eros in every crime:

E poi soleva dire, ma questo un po’ stancamente, ‘ch’i femmene se retroveno addó n’i vuò truvà. (RR II 17)

Women will be an inextricable part of the enquiry process and in Pasticciaccio Liliana occupies poll position. She is a metaphor for mystery. As anchor in Ingravallo’s sea of roving connectivity, she, conversely, will remain metaphorically adrift, unreachable in her absence. She represents a knowledge that will not be found.

Ingravallo, nevertheless, harbours a desire to penetrate this hidden obscurity, even before Liliana becomes the focus of his formal investigation. At dinner at the Balducci’s, he notices her sighs and looks that suggest sadness, and he speculates on what could be its cause:

Il dottor Ingravallo a quei sospiri, a quel modo di porgere, a quegli sguardi che talora divagavano tristi, e parevano tentare uno spazio o un tempo irreali da lei sola presagiti, si sarebbe detto, a poco a poco aveva preso a farci caso: ne aveva dedotto altrettanti indizi, non forse di una disposizione originaria ma di una condizione attuale dell’animo, di uno scoramento crescente. (RR II 21)

Liliana carries an unspoken melancholy but this renders her out of reach. This distance, her communicative separation from Ingravallo, is what forces him to theorise. He seeks her mystery and yet will fail to uncover it. This is paralleled by the dissatisfaction with and inability of the narrative to recreate reality, and echoes and nuances of unattainable desire are woven into the tangle. In terms of both theoretical insight and physical attraction, Ingravallo will remain frustrated.

On the day that Ingravallo eats at the Balducci’s there are four diners: Liliana, her husband Remo Balducci, Ingravallo and a niece, Virginia. The maid Assunta is also present. In describing the characters at the scene, Gadda depicts them through the eyes of Ingravallo, and it is here that we bear witness to Ingravallo’s hidden desire. He is attracted to Liliana, but also to Assunta:

In quell’attimo sia la serva sia la padrona parvero a don Ciccio estremamente belle. (RR II 19)

This is followed by a consideration of class, where we are told that Liliana’s demeanour is «nobilmente appassionato, così malinconico», and that she is «ricca, ricchissima» (RR II 19). For Ingravallo Liliana clearly holds an elevated position and from there she casts an almost divine attraction. Assunta instead has «due occhi fermi, luminosissimi, quasi due gemme» (RR II 19). As Blumenfeld puts it, «it is through the tension mistress / maid that Ingravallo’s declassment is revealed as erotic» (Diaconescu-Blumenfeld 1999: 13-14). Here Ingravallo may be identified as the embodiment of differentiation because he appears de-classed. His humble social standing is contrasted with Liliana’s middle-class nobility, and he must block out his desire for Assunta by thinking of Liliana:

Gli bisognò reprimere, reprimere. Facilitato nella dura occorrenza dalla nobile malinconia della signora Liliana: il di cui sguardo pareva licenziare misteriosamente ogni fantasma improprio […]. (RR II 20)

Divided between his jealousy of Giuliano Valdarena, Liliana’s cousin, and his disdain for Remo Balducci, Ingravallo finds himself cast aside, neglected, and has no choice but to attempt to suppress his desire.

We must remember that Liliana is a living presence within the narrative only briefly, and that she is «la protagonista assente del Pasticciaccio» (Amigoni 1995a: 68). Despite this, hers is a presence-absence that permeates the text – from death she crosses time and space to fuel both the narrative and the police investigation. In the same way that Ingravallo is working towards solving the mystery of Liliana’s murder, Gadda is working towards solving the mystery of the signifier and signified, male and female, and the connectivity of polarised and gendered opposites.

After her murder Liliana is no longer a subject but a body objectified. In approaching her as the knot at the centre of the crime, Ingravallo reaches a point where his «attempt to master her elusive subjectivity will be rendered both formally possible and irredeemably impossible» (Diaconescu-Blumenfeld 1999: 21). Now that she is no longer alive, he will never understand her melancholy. Her body, brutally murdered and exposed, nevertheless provokes an uncomfortable desire:

La bellezza, l’indumento, la spenta carne di Liliana era là: il dolce corpo, rivestito ancora agli sguardi. Nella turpitudine di quell’atteggiamento involontario – della quale erano motivi, certo, e la gonna rilevata addietro dall’oltraggio e l’ostensione delle gambe, su su, e del rilievo e della solcatura di voluttà che incupidiva i più deboli: […] la morte gli apparve, a don Ciccio, una decombinazione estrema dei possibili, uno sfasarsi di idee interdipendenti, armonizzate già nella persona. (RR II 69)

It is a sexual desire at once grotesque and inappropriate, and it is coupled with Ingravallo’s awareness of the spilling out of possibilities and of potential answers from the violated body. This echoes his previous search to know her sorrow. Ingravallo will now never know Liliana’s melancholy, but he will seek her murderer. Within this context, the woman may be seen as innocent victim of an act of metaphorical rape at the hands of Ingravallo. He imagines her at the moment of the attack at the peak of her vulnerability. In attempting to get inside the scene of the crime to forge ahead with solving it, Ingravallo penetrates the objectified female, from his position of male dominance and power.

Ingravallo is not the only victim of unfulfilled desire. In considering the possible reasons for Liliana’s sadness, he suddenly sees her inability to reproduce as responsible for it. Her desire for children is unrealised within her marriage and so she has to look elsewhere. Liliana harbours a sincere, if not incestuous, attachment to her cousin Valdarena that antagonises Ingravallo, not least because of his objection to the man in terms of his social smugness and success with women. Amigoni, in his reading of Pasticciaccio, has identified Liliana’s character as profoundly Freudian:

Liliana è il prodotto poetico di un lavoro d’incastro di tre tasselli freudiani: l’invidia del pene, il narcisismo e la malinconia. (Amigoni 1995a: 97)

The incestuous nuances of Liliana’s relationship with Valdarena, coupled with her continual ache for motherhood, are further echoes of the far-reaching undertones of repressed desire.

Liliana, then, seems (but obviously is not) virginal yet seeking motherhood. This duality of femininity, the role of the mother alongside that of elevated inspiration, is one of many Gaddian doubles that testifies to his polarity of vision. Like the mother in Cognizione who fails, through fear and grief, to fulfil her role as maternal figure to Gonzalo, Liliana, too, will never achieve her dream of motherhood.

Lucilla Sergiacomo has classified the representation of the female within Gadda’s works as fundamentally misogynistic:

Questo personaggio letterario femminile si muove in genere in luoghi delimitati, utili alla sua funzione di nutrice e dimostra indifferenza verso l’ostile ed immenso mondo esterno, minaccioso. (Sergiacomo 1988: 88) 

Sergiacomo sees the Gaddian female as functioning only within a delineated social sphere, where the outside is threatening and the domestic space is refuge. This may be traced logically when one considers the Signora in Cognizione, who operates largely within the confines of the surrounding wall and isolated villa, and Liliana, who speaks of her fear of opening the door when she is home alone. Sergiacomo identifies them both as «simboli di esperienza negata» (Sergiacomo 1988: 19). The death, and more specifically, the murder, of Gonzalo’s mother and of Liliana would thus be considered appropriate in view of their exhausted roles as females. Rooting this misogyny in sociological terms holds some degree of credibility. However, Sergiacomo does seem unaware of Gadda’s «continuous subversion of his own assumptions» (Diaconescu-Blumenfeld 1999: 6).

Blumenfeld maintains, and I would tend to agree, that Sergiacomo’s theory fails to consider the way in which Gadda challenges and undermines his own presumptions. Nothing for him is clear and discrete; a purely misogynistic vision of women would surely contradict his fundamental philosophical tenets. To prove the point, we may wish to turn towards the lesser characters of Pasticciaccio in search of evidence.

Angeloni, as a single, pensive male who lives alone and arouses (misdirected) distrust, may be read as Gadda’s second voice and hint at his own repressed homosexuality. In terms of his inner melancholy he is paralleled with Liliana, and, like her, he does not have children. Thus he stands out from the social norm and falls victim to suspicion. Similarly, but contrarily, the presentation of Zamira exemplifies the mapping of gender metaphors in seeking a representative subjectivity. In stark contrast to the elevated beauty of Liliana, Zamira is grotesque. Her toothless mouth is painted in terms that liken it to a vagina whilst her role is profoundly masculine: she recruits men to attract women to work for her, most likely as prostitutes. These doubling of references create what Blumenfeld has termed a «gender dynamic», where male and female are not categorised by biological sex, but by a shifting and complex bearing upon «gender placements» (Diaconescu-Blumenfeld 1999: 32).

Gadda’s Pasticciaccio, as we have seen, is a giallo in which the search for the perpetrator of the crime, during the course of the narrative process, becomes ultimately secondary. Gadda is on a quest not for a clear cut outcome but for a representation of a reality he knows he will fail to achieve. Attempting to get as near as possible, however, is, for him, irresistible. In prioritising gender representation, I hope to have highlighted the way Gadda’s belief in the multiplicity of causes may be mapped onto the crucial difference of a mankind sifted into male and female. For Gadda this seeming opposite is as cognitive as it gets. In viewing gender differentiation and repressed desire as the key to unlocking the Gaddian mess, we should be further able to identify where the novel is taking us. Gadda has been cited as Italy’s most untranslatable author. I would suggest that it is possible to argue the contrary. His complexity of prose and ceaseless embedding of foreign language upon foreign language leads the reader into an array of inter-connecting mazes and differing paths. So much so that one can successfully justify ending up almost anywhere.

Note

1. I. Calvino, Introduction to W. Weaver’s translation That Awful Mess on Via Merulana (New York: Quartet Books, 1985), v.