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Flirting with genre / surpassing genre

Matt Conrad

When the panic, disruption and chaos of crime are resolved in a cathartic restoration of order, then and only then can a detective story terminate.

This generalisation is bound to receive derisory smirks – objective truth does ultimately exist? Is it indeed so readily available once the plot is disentangled? Yet this expectation of truth is coveted by Gadda; truth could and should be reached empirically, scientifically. No wonder the giallo is then, for some, and certainly for Gadda, an epistemological paradigma indiziario – despite the banalities to which it reduces the primary structuring device of the novel form, the quest.

This essay will focus on how Gadda behaves within the conventions and confines of the genre, the characteristics of his rebellion against (objective) truth, and will show how in subverting the last bastion of narrative conclusiveness Gadda actually pacifies and appeases an obsession, thus achieving ironic meta-textual closure through a «disperata protesta contro la disumanità, la crudeltà d’ogni inquisizione organizzata» (RR II 44) – almost.

Straightforward research did not satisfy Gadda. His abandoned dissertation on Leibniz is proof of that. «Qualcosa rimane sempre di inspiegato: qualcosa di cui ci si chiede perché, sia esso l’Io di Fichte; o il Dio di Spinoza; o la forma aristotelica o il noumeno della critica, o la monade bruniana o leibniziana» (Meditazione, SVP 741). But perhaps the giallo was always going to be the most appropriate medium for Gadda. Detective fiction reflects the tension between chaos and order that subtends the Gaddian text and at the same time objectifies the author’s penchant for investigation. His previous works exude an obsession with being able to compete with «l’impossibilità di accedere ad una “certezza totalitaria”» (Porro 2004b), and it seems only natural that he should experiment with the genre which by definition targets the unravelling of an enigma thus aiming for the solution of a problem. Cognizione, Eros e Priapo or Anastomòsi are not detective stories per se, but do demonstrate a need to determine la causale del delitto, a pained and tormented «voler risalire il deflusso delle significazioni e delle cause» (Cognizione, RR I 607) – up and back to the one causal source.

Pasticciaccio is associated with a general post-modern exploitation of detective fiction, in the name of deviation from sets of strictly formulated rules. The giallo stimulates, within the reader, certain expectations, and although it is clear that Gadda thwarts those expectations, it is interesting to see just how far he strays from convention. Admittedly, before any crime has even been committed, Gadda shatters the founding principle of the genre, ratiocination, and endows the detective, our embodiment of justice, with some rather ominous satanic qualities (his much quoted omnipresence on the scenes of crime… his two «bernoccoli metafisici», RR II 15). In spite of this, Pasticciaccio exhibits some startlingly conformist elements with particular regard to a memorandum, published in the American Magazine in 1928, written by S.S. Van Dine entitled Twenty rules for writing detective stories. The very first rule demands:

The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described.

Ingravallo does not fully solve the mystery. Nevertheless the clues and hunches that lead him to Tina in the denouement are indeed plainly stated and described if perhaps concealed behind a mask of banality.

Rule number 7 states that:

There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better. No lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three hundred pages is far too much pother for a crime other than murder. After all, the reader’s trouble and expenditure of energy must be rewarded.

The infamous and macabre portrayal of Liliana’s body meets Van Dine’s requirement – yet the reader is not rewarded with the discovery or arrest of the culprit. The explicit and graphic description of this corpse serves, then, not only to keep the reading going, but to emphatically underscore the profundity of the relationship between humanity and mortality, that is between us and the chaos ensuing from death: «la morte gli apparve, a don Ciccio, una decombinazione estrema dei possibili, uno sfasarsi di idee interdipendenti, armonizzate già nella persona» (RR II 70). This macro-cosmic interpretation of Liliana’s death ignites melodramatically in the grief stricken detective – «A don Ciccio pareva che ogni forma del mondo si ottenebrasse» (RR II 68). The bloody disarray of the crime scene is upsetting to such an extent it is dislocated cosmologically: the local anguish (of chaos) becomes relative by becoming part, by rejoining the larger dissolution (the cosmos). Gadda, that is, follows the rules of the genre, adds emotional gravitas to his giallo, but in doing so infringes upon Van Dine’s third rule: «There must be no love interest».

Crime fiction has survived because it reflects social anguish and criticises society in a familiar yet exciting fashion. The allure and the voyeuristic satisfaction that the reader derives from participating in the criminal milieu makes the social commentary more palatable. A sociological comment amounting to satire is certainly available in Pasticciaccio; even at the most superficial level the rich tapestry of abusive nicknames reserved for Mussolini (the puppet of Palazzo Chigi… the syphilitic swaggerer, RR II 147) calls attention to a political subtext; even in the morbid contemplation of the prerequisite corpse of a once beautiful woman Gadda evokes «il fascismo, nel quale in principio aveva creduto», and which is now seen as the «fonte di ogni stravolgimento del vero e in un preciso contesto storico», the incarnation of all that is negative and threatens human existence (Cacòpardo 2006: 35).

The truth of this grisly murder is obscured by Gadda’s signature macaronic, a phenomenal piece of linguistic and cultural machinery. Empirical evidence and scientific deduction simply are not sufficient to clean up this Mess. Logical deduction and the reliance on objective truth are usually taken as given in the detective novel. In this case, however, within the first few pages this image of reason is lost in a cyclonic depression that blows away the doctrines of classical detective fiction – the power of the intellect is no longer triumphant. In spite of this, Ingravallo, whilst a guest at dinner, goes on deducing from a series of clues that Liliana is unhappy. As she sighs, his interior monologue recites the proverb: «Chi dice ma, cuore contento non ha» (RR II 21). Powerless to ignore Liliana’s conspicuously high adoption rate, Don Ciccio concludes that she is tormented by her inability to have children. This parody of deductive reasoning acts as an ironic fulfilment of the reader’s expectations; the facile solution is not followed by a similar solution of the mystery of Liliana’s death.

Gadda’s style is too hyperactive, too pluralistic and expansive and furthermore truncated with a dialect-ridden, neologistic and archaic lexis for such rational and cognitive indulgences to operate. Stylistic transparency would only reduce reading to an act of «rispecchiamento, di adaequatio, o peggio, come scriveva Barthes»: a parasitical gesture «secondo cui chi legge può limitarsi a ricevere o rispingere ciò che sta leggendo» (Savettieri 2003). Gadda was not prepared to do this even if it meant he would never emulate Conan Doyle whom he so admired. For many, though, the style of the Mess (difficile anche in italiano…) irrevocably weighs down the narrative and stops just short of annihilating it altogether. But certain critics, the dogmatic Savettieri for instance, vigorously dismiss this defeatism: «Non può, per Gadda, sussistere patto con il lettore che non passi per forme complesse: il rischio è quello di ridurre la narrazione a “residuo fecale” (SGF I 630)» (Savettieri 2003). Narration and style should not be polarised as irreconcilable enemies. Narration is neither overshadowed by nor happens in spite of style, but symbiotically and symbolically is the style. This is how Gadda feels he can most mimetically achieve a representation of truth:

nella mia vita di «umiliato e offeso» la narrazione mi è apparsa, talvolta, lo strumento che mi avrebbe consentito di ristabilire la mia verità, il mio modo di vedere, cioè: lo strumento della rivendicazione contro gli oltraggi del destino e di suoi umani proietti. (Intervista al microfono, SGF I 503)

There is even an element of suspense in the speed and acceleration of Gadda’s unpredictable digressions before they return to the main intreccio – his style parodies the genre that traditionally relies on the narrative to create suspense like the net closing around the criminal.

In the face of progressive rationalisation and specialisation of knowledge and its various procedural branches, each establishing its own cognitive methods, mechanisms of production and communication, Gadda wanted literature to assert more, be more than a cult of l’art pour l’art, defending its precarious position in what are called the human sciences (de Lucca 1996: 58). He felt that the act of literary creation must be informed by an epistemological and subordinately ethical vision, which is for him its condition for existence. And yet, in seeking to overcome the subjective constitution of language, articulated later by Lacan, and the tension of trying to translate an organic and exhaustive vision of the complexity of reality born of philosophical and scientific studies into a narrative structure, detective fiction and its incumbent methodology eventually proved simply irresistible.

The flow of the narrative, and indeed the investigation, is constantly hampered by farcical scenes such as the beginning of chapter VI when sergeant Di Pietrantonio’s telephone call with the carabinieri headquarters in Marino is subject to a crossed line which fails to yield even something as tangible and elementary as the suspect’s name. Confusion and misinformation even emanate from the narrator, who when announcing the arrival of the brigadier at the Police Station Santo Stefano del Cacco (a name far from eliminating faecal connotations), prevaricates «Pestalozzi, o Pestalossi che fosse» (RR II 140). This kind of game threatens the third rule of Van Dine: «No wilful tricks or deceptions must be played on the reader other than those played legitimately by the criminal on the detective», but probably does just enough to avoid infringement.

The failure of the justice system to restore order is a standard detective theme and device. For Sciascia, most notably in Il giorno della civetta and A ciascuno il suo, any justice is a fleeting and consolatory gesture in an irreversibly corrupt (Sicilian) society. The justice system in Pasticciaccio is not only incapable of revealing the truth but will actively disregard it when inter-departmental pride and the public success of the investigation are at stake. The narrator condemns the practice by saying:

La questura si ciba appunto di storie: in concorrenza coi carabinieri. Ognuna delle due organizzazioni vorrebbe monopolizzare le storie, anzi addirittura la Storia. Ma la Storia è una sola! (RR II 146)

The ninth rule of Van Dine declares:

There must be but one detective – that is, but one protagonist of deduction, one deus ex machina. To bring the minds of three of four, or sometimes a gang of detectives to bear on a problem, is not only to disperse the interest and break the direct thread of the logic, but to take an unfair advantage of the reader. If there is more than one detective the reader doesn’t know who the coeducator is. It’s like making the reader run a race with a relay team.

When the rule is broken, as happens in Pasticciaccio, the runners of this relay team:

sono capaci di spaccarla [the truth] in due: un pezzo per uno: con un processo di degeminazione, di sdoppiamento amebico: metà me, metà te. L’unicità della storia si deroga in una doppia storiografia, si devolve in salmo e in antifona, s’invasa in due contrastanti certezze: il rapporto della questura, il rapporto dei carabinieri. L’uno dice sì, l’altro dice no. L’uno dice bianco, l’atro dice nero. Cani e gatti van più d’accordo. (RR II 146)

Don Lorenzo Corpi, the priest in whom Liliana confides, is privy to the most authentic notion of truth that we, as humans, are capable of. The integrity of the word of a deeply spiritual woman in the presence of a representative of God almighty should be prized; it should be invaluable as information to help solve the mystery of her murder. But the investigation is short-changed as Corpi chooses to subscribe to «quanto era emerso dalla incertezza amnesica del poi, confortata dalla questura a farsi certa e veridica» (RR II 129). Retrospective reconstruction of events, the device which allows the typical giallo to function, is dismissed as a fallacy. We should see this as an opportunity missed in the search, and a metatextual nod to the resignation to the impossibility of complete knowledge.

The intreccio of the Mess is frequently driven by uncertainties and implausabilities contravening a number of Van Dine’s rules, sometimes more than one at a time. Rule no. 5 precludes «accident… coincidence… or unmotivated confession» – this would undermine the arbitrary apprehension and ambiguous interrogation of Ines between chapters 6 and 7. Rule no. 8 states that: «pseudo-science and purely imaginative and speculative devices are not to be tolerated in the roman policier». Under this heading we may have to reconsider devices such as the psyche or soul («anzi un’animaccia porca»…), which Ingravallo attributes «a quel sistema di forze di probabilità che circonda ogni creatura umana, e che si suol chiamare destino» (RR II 31-32). The eminence of the role of chance and probability in the investigation once again serves to mock the traditional empirical and cognitive means of unearthing truth.

Although chance is appropriately recognised as unpredictable, in Pasticciaccio it can have a miraculous and dramatic relationship with truth and stand toe to toe with reason in the face of illness and crime. The combined duodenum-liver cancer affecting uncle Peppe is one «degli ambi che più raramente si estraggono in cancherologia, dalla moderna cabala cancherologica: tanto in Europa che fuori» (RR II 109-10). Nevertheless, this is what kills uncle Peppe, from whom Liliana inherits the accursed opal. As we evaluate the role of hubris in Liliana’s attempt to shape the future by replacing the opal (the melancholy-frigidity it symbolises) with the vivacious jasper (symbol of fertility) we start to become aware of the ongoing thematic rationalisation of the murder (and the erratic interplay between causes). We begin, that is, to rethink, even to reform our understanding of the category of cause (RR II 16).

According to quantum theory, which Gadda knew, we cannot simultaneously find the exact position and velocity of any particle. All we can do is calculate the probability that small particles will behave in a certain fashion. Appropriately, reading Gadda «si trasforma in micro-lettura; i singoli frammenti si fanno sempre più piccoli» (Rinaldi 2003). These fragments «della più varia provenienza (soprattutto letterarie e figurative, ma anche operistiche e filosofiche) sono citazioni che formano a loro volta una rete di enigmi, un enigmatico catalogo di frammenti a cui si riduce il sapere universale» (Rinaldi 2003). This notion of an aggregate truth from a systemisation of systems still seems too deterministic for Gadda, and would probably have meant that he had to conclude the novel rationally and solve both crimes.

Gadda believed that all systems are both infinite and incalculable in time, regardless of their random or determined state. From as early as 1924 Gadda worked on his own «teoria del carattere indefinito delle conoscenze fisiche, sotto un aspetto catalogico o di progressus» (Gadda notes, cit. in Lucchini 1994: 236), emphasising the inevitable introduction of temporality in the reconstruction and representation of infinite systems. He based his ideas in part on Leibniz, who considered all our empirical knowledge as a series of provisory steps (de Lucca 1996: 59). And yet all this knowledge in Pasticciaccio does not even lead to an arrest. Gadda’s inconclusiveness is the practical effect of a theoretical rejection of closed systems; a triumph of unreason and disorder which descend from and confirm the title of the novel (Rushing 2001: 143).

Pasticciaccio represents the antithesis of this kind of closure; the reader is confronted with a proliferation of extraneous information (which even falls outside the all-encompassing catena delle cause) that has no apparent connection to the crime, and the narrator is easily side-tracked and derailed. He would want to isolate human effects (human behaviour, human action), in the same way a physicist does, or attempts to do. However he is unsure: what should be isolated? what is really pertinent to what we call a historical event? Where would total and utter truth (a truth free from our conjectures) come from if not from divine revelation or, alternatively, from utter (utterly deterministic) calculation, such as the calculation calculating the entire universe? The great French mathematician Poincaré was aware of this problem in science. If the scientist had at his disposal infinite time, it would only be necessary to say to him: «Look and notice well». All reality would be disclosed. But as there isn’t time (to see everything), one must make a choice, that is, artificially limit a system (de Lucca 1996: 62).

Plato says at the end of the Republic that there has always been hostility between philosophy, a medium that aims only at the truth, and the aesthetic aspirations of poetry. Yet Plato is considered the most literary philosopher, the philosopher most accessible to non-specialists because of the readability and charm of (at least some) of his writings. (1) Plato is a poetic philosopher in the same way that Gadda is a philosophical poet. Gadda’s poetics are founded on his scientific and philosophical views especially on the concept of deformazione. Every element of reality and the language used to represent it are constantly changing. This is contrary to the more common metatemporal poetic notion which confers on literature a power of eternity distinguishing it from or holding it superior to a process of becoming (de Lucca 1996: 58). Change is real and stability illusory, and this is explicitly articulated is Gadda’s rejection of the Eleatics and the cult of Parmenides in favour of the Heraclitian flux, which is «pieno di urgenze, di curiosità, di brame, di attese, di dubbi, di angosce, di speranze dialettiche» (RR II 104).

Such evocation of the philosopher of harmonious dialectal opposition (it was Heraclitus who maintained that the «harmonious structure of the world depends upon opposite tension like that of the bow and the lyre») (2) surely seems to be an endorsement more of subjective truth, in opposition to the aspirations to objectivity of the giallo – almost a submission to the arbitrariness of subjectivism. This moment of «riflessione sulla propria soggettività e il tentativo di rappresentazione-analisi coesistono nella produzione precedente al Pasticciaccio, in corrispondenza dell’impossibilità gaddiana di rinvenire dei punti di riferimento al di fuori della propria soggettività, al di fuori della propria esperienza dolorosa» (Benedetti 1980: 22). Ingravallo’s own experiences and feelings impede his investigation. His love for Liliana makes him act irrationally. He is distracted by his jealousy and hatred for Valdarena, i.e., he is jealous of the love Liliana feels for his rival and for his understanding of women, a subject that perplexes and torments our inspector. The investigation into the stolen jewels is solved, at least partly, because Pestalozzi, despite being distressed by the «spirito, o il demonio della “ricostruzione dei fatti”» («gli martellava nelle tempie», RR II 248), is not tormented to the same extent by something as irrational as the enigma of women («la personalità femminile – brontolò mentalmente Ingravallo», RR II 106).

Gadda flirts with the conventions of the detective novel enough for Pasticciaccio to be considered a pseudo-giallo, and thus it is fitting that there is a «una pseudo-giustizia, una pseudo-severità, o la pseudo-abilitazione a’ dittaggi» (RR II 93). However, and somewhat paradoxically, it is his desire to mimetically represent the indeterminability of truth that causes him to undermine his giallo and with it the entire detective genre. Between the original serialisation, in 1946, and the publication of the book, in 1957, Gadda cut out a chapter strongly implicating Virginia as the murderess. Dombroski concludes from it that in abandoning the original structure of the novel «Gadda reveals his reluctance to accept the existence of events governed by a single cause», for since «the universe is without a reasoned plan, the novel would falsify reality by offering an illusion of finality». This may be true. Yet in actively refusing to resolve the murder of a woman in a universe he creates, Gadda has usurped the monopoly reality has over the attainability of truth – almost. The fictional nature of the book characterises this hollow and ironic victory.

Notes

1. J. Annas, Plato. A very short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 26.

2. Heraclitus, The Complete Philosophical Fragments – ed .by W. Harris.