Abstract
After Gruppo 63 disbanded and Quindici ceased publication, the Italian neo-avant-garde experienced a period of crisis. While a few poets continued undeterred on their path of experimentation, many of its protagonists turned to a plainer, more traditional style. In the 1980s a new generation of authors attempted to form a third wave of avant-garde: they called themselves Gruppo 93. Although their organizational efforts were mostly unsuccessful, they led to the creation of a large amount of poetry, prose, and essays on aesthetics and poetics. This literary and theoretical output is almost completely neglected by contemporary criticism. The present article begins to remedy these circumstances, by reconstructing the forces at play during those years, describing some of the protagonists active in the field, reconstructing their ideas, and providing an account of their differences and commonalities. Additionally, it situates Mariano Bàino and one of his most interesting collections of verse, Fax giallo (Yellow Fax, 1993), within the context of this complex history.
Ceci n’est pas un poème sur le groupe quatre-vingt-treize! (Bàino, 1993b: 93)
1
Mariano Bàino’s is among the most interesting poetry to be published at the end of the 20th century; it is constantly straddling the border between different linguistic codes and is capable of reaching the reader without compromising the complexity of its experimentation, continuing a tradition whose immediate predecessors are the neo-avant-garde of Novissimi and Gruppo 63. This article will situate Bàino, as well as his fellow members of Gruppo 93, within the recent history of Italian literature and offer a few remarks on one of his most interesting books of verse: Fax giallo (1993).
We will begin with the aftermath of the disbandment of Gruppo 63, a crucial moment for the Italian poetry of the second half of the 20th century. Here is a brief quotation, from the “Preface” to the volume Terza Ondata: Il nuovo movimento della scrittura in Italia (edited by Bettini and Di Marco), that describes the origins of the name “Gruppo 93,” its ties to Gruppo 63, and the atmosphere that surrounded the birth of the former: Since critics spend most of their time managing “on behalf of the audience” the second-rate literature produced by the existing literary system, few of them have noticed the new movement (to be fair, it’s not the critics’ fault: it is the pseudo-erudite journalists’; the critics, as we all know, can only notice those things that are sent to them by the press offices of the big publishing houses). When, for instance, at the “Milano-poesia” festival, in 1989, the “Gruppo 93” was born, given the reference to the defunct “Gruppo 63” (which, to tell the truth, is half playful, half parodic, and not surprisingly chosen at the suggestion of the late Corrado Costa, may he rest in peace, during a lunch break at the festival), the reporters concocted (and fed to the audience) the easiest explanation possible: in Italy an avant-garde with two “neos” had just been born. (Bettini and Di Marco, 1993: 8)
2
The polemic, almost vitriolic tone of these remarks is an integral part of the rhetorical stance adopted by most members of Gruppo 93, as they sought to distance themselves from those writers and critics they considered complicit in a system that encouraged conformity and marginalized all forms of linguistic experimentation.
Corrado Costa, an intellectual and poet who belonged to the neo-avant-garde, a member of the editorial board of the journal Malebolge, and thus an important part of Gruppo 63, suggested the new name. The 6 in 63 would be turned upside down, and become a 9. Additionally, and here lies the ironic and parodic dimension of this name, rather than signifying the inauguration of the movement, the year 1993 would mark its expiration date: at that time everyone would move on to something else (and, in fact, everyone did).
This new attempt to form a poetic avant-garde movement would be the third of the century: the Novecento had already seen Futurism, the neo-avant-garde of Gruppo 63, and now the neo-neo-avant-garde, the third wave mentioned in the title of Bettini and Di Marco’s book. Calling it an “avant-garde with two ‘neos’” is clearly a way of belittling it, especially if one remembers that “neo” in Italian means “mole:” the face of this new movement was already marked, from birth, by two blemishes, as the Italian saying implies.
The “second-rate literature” that Di Marco finds so intolerable is the product of an increasingly more consolidated publishing industry 3 that pushes for what Gruppo 93 considered an innocuous and mainstream version of postmodernism, while marginalizing any attempt to build a more thoughtful, experimental alternative; only a few of the older poets resisted, following their personal path of research, surrounded by an almost complete indifference.
Below is a long quote from the insightful monograph by Federica Santini, who does an excellent job of summarizing the cultural landscape between the end of the neo-avant-garde (in 1969, with the closing of the journal Quindici), and the late 1970s and early 1980s: During the years of “contestazione” [the civil unrest spreading in the US and Europe around 1968], literature, the product of the bourgeois world, was seen as inessential, perhaps even a tool for class oppression. The journal Quindici, which ceased publication in July 1969, had marked a switch away from writing and toward political action, leaving in all of its participants a sense of shame for being writers, for working on a product of the bourgeois world, rather than being active participants in the political struggle. At the end of the decade, however, this polemic tension began to relax: at the beginning of the 1970s, politics lost its central role within the cultural life of the nation, and thus the stigma connected to writing poetry was lifted, leading to an unexpected explosion of creativity in this field. Therefore, this moment works as a perfect starting point for our analysis, for at this time, as never before in the Novecento, many authors were forced to reconsider their work and choose an intellectual path that would lead them in a new direction, completely different from the one they had been following prior to “contestazione.” (Santini, 2013: 30)
4
The great period of experimentation that spanned over a decade, from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s, had come to an end when the editorial board of Quindici finally splintered beyond any possible reconciliation over the issue of what role literature should play in facilitating the beginning of a social and political revolution. For many intellectuals, writing was not enough anymore: the times called for a direct intervention in the political struggle. Furthermore, the very act of writing had become suspicious and morally questionable: removing oneself from the tumultuous events that were shaking Italy and Europe in order to put pen to paper was seen as a refusal to face the “enemy” directly, an act of intellectual timidity if not outright cowardice. Thus the sense of shame mentioned by Santini.
It is important to make a distinction, here, between an active participation in the political life of the country through protests, marches, strikes, and rallies on the one hand, and a pursuit of political objectives in the public sphere through the manipulation of the linguistic means deployed in one’s poetry on the other hand. While the first kind of political activism was alive and well throughout the 1970s, the second showed the first signs of fatigue and crisis much earlier, halfway through the decade. In this sense, Santini is correct in stating that “at the beginning of the 1970s, politics lost its central role within the cultural life of the nation.”
If we look to the contemporary sources, we will find confirmation that, from at least the middle of the decade, the most attentive and receptive among the writers and intellectuals had begun to recognize the first unequivocal signs of what would later be called the “riflusso,” which is generally associated with the late 1970s and the 1980s. We find proof of Santini’s intuition in an interview with Sanguineti published by Bettini: — However, later on, in the 1970s, came a gloomy phase of involution, of cultural restoration, that impacted also literature: a return to tradition, to a poetic intimism, a culture of the ephemeral … — Yes, we have seen, over the past few years, an attempt to Return to Order, which seems to be, at least for now, unsuccessful. I believe that the project for an alternative “cultural organization” for an alternative “cultural institution” is still fundamentally valid today. In fact, even more so today than yesterday: it is more urgent, stronger. (Bettini and Sanguineti, 1983: 267)
5
Bettini and Sanguineti—who, in 1983, were reflecting on the legacy of Gruppo 63, 20 years after its foundation—seem to agree on dating back to the 1970s the beginning of the crisis that had marked the return to a more traditional, conservative, and less politicized approach to poetry. Mastropasqua also looks at the first half of that same decade as the point of origin for the long-term historical and cultural processes that would lead to a shift toward the private life and a disengagement from active politics and the public sphere (at least in poetry): These are writers, critics, and intellectuals who were working against the tide in a time, the second half of the 1970s, when a phase of restoration and reaction was starting. This new phase was aimed at watering down and squandering all the innovative and traumatic elements introduced into culture and the literary practice by the ethical and political tensions that had culminated in the events of 1968, while bringing back anachronistic values and ideologies, centered around individualism, private life, lyrical effusions, and the exceptional role of poetry. The cultural recession of the 1970s has actually found a fertile ground in the disaggregation of large numbers of leftist intellectuals who were faced with the structural crisis of the first half of the decade. (Mastropasqua, 1993: 74–75)
6
With the resurgence of neo-capitalism and the unchecked expansion of a global market ideology, the ephemeral and neo-romanticism are absorbed and amplified by the cultural industry, which enhances their intrinsic potential for becoming spectacles and turns them into objects for ready and easy consumption. Good examples of this phenomenon are, on the one hand, the two anthologies Il pubblico della poesia [The Public of Poetry] and La parola innamorata [The Enamored Word]; on the other hand, the contemporaneous festival-like gatherings of Castelporziano and Piazza Siena. (Matropasqua, 1993: 75)
8
The targets are the generational trends apparent in the anthologies Il pubblico della poesia (Lerici, 1975) and La parola innamorata (Feltrinelli, 1978): these trends would be the first ones to be defined, with a term that would later become very popular, as “neo-romantic poetry.” Against their poetics—based on fake inspiration, facile confessions, sudden and intermittent illuminations—Quaderni proposes a conflictual hypothesis based, as the formula “materialistic writing” suggests, on clear-cut choices, the material substance of the text, a sense of politics “mediated” by linguistic, pragmatic, and cognitive functions. (Bettini and Muzzioli, 1990: 15)
9
Obviously, there are many exceptions to the grim picture painted by Muzzioli, and some of the poetry contained in these volumes would appeal even to the members of Gruppo 93. One example over all others: Maurizio Cucchi. His poetic debut with Il disperso (The Missing, 1976) was favorably received by the vast majority of writers and addetti ai lavori, including the members of Gruppo 93. 10 At the same time, the authors of the previous generation were still quite active, publishing books of consistently high quality (one could mention, for instance, Elio Pagliarani, Edoardo Cacciatore, and Emilio Villa, and the list could go on).
Before moving any further, it is important to provide some examples of the theoretical texts and poems produced by the writers who have been so harshly criticized, in order to judge for ourselves whether their depiction is in any way reflective of the truth. We can start with the definition of poetry given by Pontiggia and Di Mauro in the preface to their anthology, entitled “La statua vuota” (“The empty statue”): Thus, the poetic word is: — enamored, hence impertinent and sardonic, indifferent to the solemn declarations and conclaves of justice; — colorful, for it does not trace drawings or connections, nor is it the line that goes from truth to error as the recognition of a truth, but rather it creates the burning (and blinding) disorientation of a separation from meaning that is the appearance of that separation, its dissimulation; — enrapturing, hence it involves a movement of seduction and removal during which the thing is not approached or taken away from sight, but leads to a landscape in which, suddenly, one is caught by that space and the thing turns into something else, into the other, that is the language of the origins. (Pontiggia and Di Mauro, 1978: 11)
11
The difference in tone, language, and ideological framework between the editors of La parola innamorata and Gruppo 93 is immediately clear. The kind of poetry prefigured by Pontiggia and Di Mauro is the polar opposite of the engaged, self-aware, experimental practice which some of the intellectuals of the group dubbed “scrittura materialistica,” that is “materialistic writing.” In fact, the enamored word is “indifferent to the solemn declarations of justice,” and thus, one can extrapolate, it rejects a direct participation in the political life of the country.
The objective of “parola innamorata” is not to reach a sense of truth (not even in the diminished sense of an historically-determined truth), whose existence is strongly doubted, but is rather to prolong the moment of confusion and indecisiveness, the surprise and delight of discovery, the very precious feelings that are so rare and ephemeral in the everyday life of language, but that can be carefully planned in poetry and then enshrined to stand the test of time, like fragile insects trapped in amber.
In order to achieve this effect, the relationship with the reader must be predicated on artifice: the tools of the craft cannot be exhibited and critiqued (as is routinely the case in “scrittura materialista”), but rather hidden from view, in order to amplify the final impact of the composition. Such a relationship, inevitably, implies an asymmetry between author and audience, as well as a good measure of deception. In fact, right after the passage quoted above, Pontiggia and Di Mauro write “la poesia usa i lettori, non è usata,” that is to say “poetry uses readers, it is not used by them;” once again, a stand that is diametrically opposed to the one expressed in many occasions by Muzzioli, Bettini, and the other critics of Gruppo 93. 12
If this is the relationship with the general audience, how do Pontiggia and Di Mauro envision the one with the specialists of literature? Here is another excerpt from “La statua vuota:” Thus we say no to the historicist criticism and its sociologizing ramifications that follow, the national line of De Sanctis-Gramsci (with contaminations from Croce and Luckacs) and that mandates poetry’s tactical approach to history and the social sphere as well as the entirely ethical and political mission entrusted to art (positive values, exemplarity, ideological content, reflection, etc.) that finds an archaic and grotesque key stone in the pinnacles of Quaderni [del carcere] such as “the logical and historical-actual coherence of masses of sentiments, historically represented.” (Pontiggia and Di Mauro, 1978: 9–10)
13
Poetry, according to the two editors, is not something that can be explained, taught, or approached from a sociological or historical perspective, but rather it is something that must be witnessed and experienced intuitively, at a deep, emotional level. In fact, those who try to explain it kill it, breaking the spell and spoiling all the fun: Hence, those who believe in the opposition between contents, in lived experiences, in “something to be said” and “something to be done,” in a subject that is organic to a given time and place, […] there they are, organizing conferences, poetic “practices,” seminars, they want to “understand,” “clarify,” neutralize the bristly, branchy (and yet always airy) page with the aseptic, mortuary snowflakes of sociology, audiences, churches and homologations, indignations and reassuring verifications […] while they don’t listen to the dance steps, to the fingers of love through which those who launched the thread simultaneously made the Palace disappear, inviting their lovers to the joy of a verse that cannot be described. (Pontiggia and Di Mauro, 1978: 16)
14
In regard to the intimistic and escapist poetics that have been the contingent and circumscribed object of our criticism, and which we intend to leave behind, the contraposition between allegory and symbol is of crucial importance and the source of a cultural divide that determines all other, more specific and apparent distinctions in ideological, linguistic, and behavioral matters. The characteristics attacked and stigmatized belong to the evocative area of poetic language. And thus the celebration of the private sphere, the search for what is ineffable, the escape into the myth, the exaltation of poetry as an absolute and privileged value are all dependent on the sphere of symbol and its synchronic updating in an autobiographical and pseudo-mystical version. (Bettini and Di Marco, 1993: 277)
16
Now that we have a better idea of the theory, we can turn to some textual examples taken from the poetry of Bàino (chosen here as a representative of Gruppo 93), and Giuseppe Conte and Enrico Casaccia (whose work was included in the anthology La parola innamorata). Here is the first section, “Il sogno del giorno dei trent’anni” (“The dream of the day of the 30 years”), of a longer poem entitled “La conquista del Messico” (“The conquest of Mexico”), by Giuseppe Conte: Il sole distrugge e dona, il sole sa perdersi, ama tutto, e senza amore, senza pietà, senza sentire nient’altro che il proprio spargersi: il sole sa tornare, alza i primi fischi tra gli alberi del parco, giungerà sulle finestre chiuse con mani di rampicante. È incurante e silenzioso, brutale, ma è prodigo anche, […] è celibe come il mare, individuale, sterile. Io che ho trent’anni, che non posso più crescere, che non so tornare, scelgo parole per essere il dio del sole— io fiore, io pietra, io luce, per donare
il dono leggero e immenso del
poema. (Pontiggia and Di Mauro, 1978: 45)
17
The greatest difference between the approach to poetry displayed in this text and the style of Gruppo 93 is, perhaps, the treatment of the “lyrical I.” While the latter followed in the steps of Gruppo 63 and advocated for a “reduction of the I,” as Giuliani outlined in his famous introduction to the Novissimi anthology, 18 Conte shows a much more traditional understanding of the relationship between poet and landscape, using the latter as a manifestation of his emotions and inner life, reaching almost a communion with the environment that surrounds him, which reminds one of certain poems in D’Annunzio’s Alcyone. 19 Additionally, the frequent use of contradicting terms as a way of structuring the rhythm of the verse (“destroys and donates,” “loves … without love,” “brutal, but it is also prodigious”) contributes to that atmosphere of vagueness and rarefaction, the “evocative area of poetic language” lamented above.
Enrico Casaccia’s “Kullervo e le rane” (“Kullervo and the frogs”) provides additional insights, for example in the opening stanza: Distesa estate, nebbia del bimbo oro esteso, io lembo di nanna, ancora io, nel mucchio estivo e nei sudori del gergo inciso. Piccolo tratto nel bosco in quella falda ridotta, gettato là, steso dolce calamità in forza di foglie e rotto di margine e- state: piccola notte. (Pontiggia and Di Mauro, 1978: 36)
20
In this text Casaccia resorts to the myth of Kullervo, a character of Finnish traditional epic, whose misfortunes include being raised as an orphan, being sold as a slave, being reunited with his birth family only to see them massacred, and unknowingly committing incest with his sister. This last tragedy, which leads the young woman to take her own life out of shame, drives the protagonist insane; he returns to the tribe that had raised him, slaughters all of them, and, in a final excess of rage, throws himself on his own sword.
Casaccia hints to the legend, in a most indirect way, throughout the poem: some of the main protagonists are mentioned in passing, and the focus is on a short series of pastoral scenes suffused with a magical, fable-like atmosphere, described in the first person, from the point of view of Kullervo himself. In many respects, this is a perfect exemplification of that “escape into the myth, […] dependent on the sphere of symbol and its synchronic updating in an autobiographical and pseudo-mystical version” which Bettini and Di Marco disparaged in their article. 21
Further confirmation of this general trend comes from another poem by Casaccia included in La parola innamorta, entitled “La grammatica in rosa. Prima sezione (Due poesie. Qualche implicazione mitologica)” (“Grammar in pink. First section (Two poems. Some mythological implications”): Tra cielo e mare (nel giorno del tuo onomastico, il ghiro rientra nella tana per fermare col suo grido la lettera che ha sbirciato fra i tuoi passi. Io sono qui, nella tana, sono il ghiro, se ricordi) parlano. Dicono schiuma, dì: biscotto sono il giro eloquente sono il discorso: l’LSD che ti ama sono la tua mamma anche la tua bua sono la tua pipì nella tana. (Pontiggia and Di Mauro, 1978: 34)
22
In place of the Finnish tale, Casaccia here harkens back to the long tradition of animal fables: in the passage quoted the protagonist is a dormouse; further down in this same text we will encounter a snake, a weasel, a bear, and a seal. The language is plain, colloquial, as if taken from the pages of a children’s book, and baby-talk terms are scattered throughout: “boo-boo,” pee-pee,” as well as “beddy-bye” in the poem quoted earlier. Simple wordplay is also employed: “ghiro” (“dormouse”) is paired with “giro” (“lap”), while in the rest of the poem, not quoted here, we read “donna” (“woman”), “donnola” (“weasel”), and “dondola” (“it swings”); “foro” (“hole”) and “forro” (a Spanish word for “cover” or “lining”); “foca” (“seal”), “foga” (“eagerness”), and “affoga” (“it drowns”). All these elements contribute to creating a sense of child-like fascination for the world and the language that describes it, as if the poet were composing a nursery rhyme. The mention of LSD, as well as several oblique references to the realm of sexuality, however, modify this general impression, bringing to mind the re-appropriation of traditional fairy tales and children’s literature (the Grimm Brothers’ stories, or Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland) by the counterculture of the 1960s.
Before we move on to analyzing a sample of Bàino’s poems, there are a few more distinctions that need to be made; as mentioned above, it would be wrong to imply that Gruppo 93 held a united front in matters of aesthetics and politics: its members entertained different opinions regarding the way in which the experimentation in poetry should proceed, and whether or not a frontal opposition to the much despised neo-romantic and postmodern poets was even possible.
For the sake of brevity and clarity, I will simplify the positions involved by saying that there were two main currents within Gruppo 93: a first, which we will call “frontalisti,” advocated a direct opposition to the cultural status quo, believing that it was still possible to organize an avant-garde movement capable of articulating a contradiction to the amorphous postmodern system they were facing. Among the intellectuals in this camp we can include the editors of Quaderni di ricerca, and in particular Francesco Muzzioli, Mario Lunetta, Filippo Bettini, and Roberto Di Marco. Here is a quote from an article by Bettini, now collected in the already mentioned volume Terza Ondata, that summarizes this group’s opinion regarding the possibility of forming an avant-garde movement: There are three essential conditions within which the genesis of each cycle of avant-garde movement can be inscribed: the existence of a widespread state of conformism; the unfolding of an “epochal” phase of transition and radical change; the objective need for a different connection between literature, politics, and society. Nowadays all three conditions can be verified in the phenomenology of the juncture in which we find ourselves. (Bettini and Di Marco, 1993: 54)
23
Bettini and the editors of Quaderni di ricerca believed that the formation of avant-garde movements was a cyclical phenomenon that happened whenever certain conditions were fulfilled; in their estimation that was the third time such conditions presented themselves in the Novecento. Therefore, the birth of a new avant-garde was just a matter of coordinating the will of the intellectuals involved: the very discussion they were having was proof that it was still possible to formulate an opposition to postmodernism and the mainstream cultural system.
Many criticized Bettini’s position by pointing out that his understanding of how an avant-garde movement was formed and operated was flawed: he was considering the problem from a perspective that was too abstract, and did not account for the more pragmatic aspects that allowed such movements to exist and operate within society. Petrella does an excellent job at summarizing this point: In other terms, no answer is provided to the question: “how can we conquer the spaces suitable for divulging and imposing the contradiction, the shock, or, at any rate, the products of the avant-garde?”. The editors of Quaderni di ricerca, as well as many other members of Gruppo 93 have not addressed this issue. Although they provided a detailed theoretical approach, they failed to elaborate the additional step that would have enabled them to capture the public’s imagination and impose their views. […] the conquest of cultural space cannot be achieved solely through one’s message, but must be pursued through constant and sustained extra-textual action. In fact, the objective of every avant-garde is to reach as vast an audience as possible, no matter how problematic this can be in a social and cultural environment such as the postmodern one. (Petrella, 2010: 19)
24
In order for the opposition to the establishment expressed by an avant-garde movement to have any meaning, it has to be present in the public sphere; for its breach with tradition and cultural institutions to carry any political meaning, the actions and writings of its members must be known to as many people as possible. The neo-avant-garde had been successful because it was able to occupy, although briefly, the center of the intellectual life of the country. In the aftermath of its disbandment, the cultural and political system had grown immune to the provocations and the theatrical gestures of the avant-garde. In fact, the cultural industry might even have welcomed a third wave of avant-garde, if only its protagonists had accepted being “managed,” to use Di Marco’s expression.
And here is the paradoxical situation in which Gruppo 93 found itself: if its members wanted their message to have an audience, they had to accept a set of conditions (both practical and ideological) that would have diluted it beyond recognition; conversely, if they decided to hold on to their independence, and keep the integrity of their message, the chance of reaching a large enough audience was negligible.
The “frontalisti” were convinced it was still possible to achieve both goals without compromising; a second current, which we will call “lateralisti,” did not share their conviction, and advocated for a more oblique strategy to oppose and contradict the status quo. Pietro Cataldi, another important voice in the debate within Gruppo 93, expressed this position very clearly, although he posited it as a commonly shared belief within the group: […] the authors of Gruppo 93 find no longer feasible the very notion of creating an avant-garde movement. In fact, the modus operandi of the avant-garde is historically defined as the aspiration to occupy the center of the cultural space, and the formal rupture it creates is seen as carrying an intrinsic political meaning. Conversely, the various members of Gruppo 93 acknowledge the irreparable corruption of the cultural mechanisms and their relation with the “system” of power; and thus a leaning toward the margins of the cultural system seems a more suitable approach. […] The experimentation on language and, most of all, through language, is charged with the responsibility, of an ethical rather than political nature, to resist and mount a counterattack. (Cataldi, 1994: 183)
25
As a response to the cultural and social situation, and to the impasse that threatened to strangle any form of resistance and contradiction, Cataldi suggests a move toward the margins, a lateral shift that would allow intellectuals to exploit the contradictions within the postmodern system and make them work for their neo-avant-garde agenda. Unfortunately, this would lead to the abandonment of any explicit participation in politics: literature, according to Cataldi, was no longer capable of influencing in any meaningful way the political life of the country. Yet, it could still perform a public function by working on an ethical plane, denouncing the moral corruption of the establishment through an experimental use of language; thus, he indicates a direction forward, a way of making literature relevant once more.
Giving up on a direct involvement with politics is not something these writers do lightly: they are fully aware of all the ramifications such a loss entails. The group around the journal Altri Luoghi (Marco Berisso, Piero Cademartori, Guido Caserza, and Paolo Gentiluomo) speak of a “letteratura minore” as the result of such a diminished set of aspirations: […] proposing a literature that is devoid of a large-scale plan, a “resistance” kind of literature, that hasn’t chosen as its objective the remaking of the world, or the remaking of the world’s structures, is inevitably the same as proposing a lesser literature. But it seems to us that “lesser literature” is a label that can be used to describe not only our own work, but perhaps also the entirety of the literary output of the last 20 years […]. We would also like to state in a similarly unequivocal manner that if literature is not capable of changing the world, neither is it its job to console it. (Berisso et al., 1993: 34)
26
In addition to all the bitterness for the sacrifice they are asked to make in order to preserve their independence, we can also see the strong resolution of these intellectuals to never act as mere providers of escapist entertainment: if the role of planning a new and better world cannot be performed by literature any longer, they will reluctantly (but effectively) take on a lesser role: cultivating a sense of beauty and engagement with humanity and nature that is alternative and in contradiction to the hedonistic, narcissistic, and consumeristic attitude prominent everywhere else in culture.
Besides the “frontalisti” and “lateralisti,” the two currents already described, there is a third group, made up mostly of those authors who did not express a strong preference, and who often tried to mediate between the two distinct tendencies within Gruppo 93. As mentioned above, this is an extremely simplistic way of summarizing the positions at play: much more could be said about the debates, the articles, the conferences, and the brilliant exchanges that have grown around these issues. In fact, we could learn a great deal from the resolve shown by some of these authors, and the ingenious devices they have conceived to overcome the impossible situation in which they found themselves. Following this path any further, however, is beyond the scope of this article.
Before closing this section, it is important to place Bàino within this larger discussion. Bàino and the other editors of Baldus (Biagio Cepollaro and Lello Voce) belonged to the “lateralisti” faction, but often expressed on the pages of the journal a slightly different position, adopting the label of “postmodernisti critici,” that is “critical postmodernists.” It was their opinion that the solution to the double bind in which Gruppo 93 found itself was to be found in a strategic use of the tools that postmodernism made available to them: through a careful manipulation of traditional and canonical texts, combined with audacious and unscrupulous linguistic experimentations, it was possible to articulate an opposition to what they considered the bland, reactionary status quo and to reach, at the same time, a vast audience. Their approach was focused on practice, on the application of allegorical tools to their verse, and, especially in Bàino’s case, there was an instinctual mistrust of the excesses of theory which seemed to have monopolized the discussion. What follows is a brief passage from an article by Luperini who, in the first issue of Baldus, summarizes the essential traits of its editors’ position: speaking of critical postmodernism means to restore a communicative rationality – that is a sense of purpose, syntax, allegorism – to a situation that postmodernity has seen in terms of juxtaposition, parataxis, symbolism. It means to make a critical use of contamination. (Luperini, 1991: 30)
27
The importance assigned to contamination is clearly highlighted, as well as the preference given to allegorism over symbolism. 28 With the term “syntax,” Luperini seems to imply a varied and nuanced organization of the text at all levels: prosodic, rhetorical, but also in the treatment of the source materials, taken from the literary tradition as well as popular culture. The first dichotomy, between “juxtaposition” and “sense of purpose,” is rather more opaque: he probably had in mind, on the one hand, the way in which the various linguistic elements were put together by these authors (merely juxtaposed, in the case of postmodernism; melded, mixed, and staggered, with the intention of creating a specific effect or meaning, in the case of critical postmodernism). On the other hand, he might have been thinking of the greater political issues we have been discussing: while the “lateralisti” were attempting a maneuver intended to beat the mainstream culture at its own game, the “frontalisti” were looking to achieve their goal through a direct confrontation, “juxtaposing” their system of values with that of the establishment.
As mentioned by Luperini, the three poets of Baldus share an allegorical approach to literature. At the textual level, such an approach takes the form of two complementary strategies: citazionismo (“citationism”) and multilinguism. Petrella defines these terms thusly: Contamination is essentially achieved when one joins (in a dialogic and non-mimetic way) two distinct units forming a third entity that is not a synthesis but rather a hybrid. This new text will not conflate the two linguistic codes, but will embrace intertextuality as an expression of the complexity of reality. Therefore, contamination becomes one of the main expressions of allegorism, and can draw upon numerous literary techniques. First among them is citation, as theorized by Benjamin: a way of ripping a fragment from the indistinct historical continuum in order to invest it with new meaning, or to save it from the oblivion in which the official tradition has exiled it. Thus, citazionismo can be practiced as the sematic plagiarism of a canonical author or as the rediscovery of a literary canon that exists beyond any form of conformism. (Petrella, 2010: 22)
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Often Bàino and the other poets of Baldus appropriate the least solemn passages from lesser known texts by canonical authors, weaving together a subtle and complex network of allusions and echoes that lends a sense of obscurity and impenetrability to their poetic creations while, at the very same time, lowering and almost ridiculing the sources from where they derive their materials. They build an endless chain of signification that strings together several signs, all internal to literature, in an ever-shifting fugue of references. Yet—and here lies the allegorical dimension of this textual strategy—this entire edifice of quotations is a way of pointing to the real world that exists outside of literature, it is a last-ditch effort to somehow implicate reality through the elusive rhetorical means that are still available to the author.
An excellent example of this allegorical, ironic use of a canonical text can be seen in the following passage, taken from the second half of Bàino’s (1993a) Fax giallo: (umbrella di mendicante, giostra fosforescente di cavalluzzi marini), come t’intana la primavera metallizzata dei coralli, il mucchio d’ostriche (cofano di sputi e perle), quanto si latita tra l’oloturie (di cenciaiuolo verminosi sacchi), dietro l’attinia (insanguinato ceppo ove lasciarono capelli serpini sirene decapitate), in mezzo ai verdi vermi delle alghe, dietro quel cassettone o nella stanza di là, sotto il letto dichiscrissedimare la balfigola diosalvi dalpalombaroboiasottomarinoacrobataprofondoburattino nelteatromutodeipescispauracchiobecchinomascheratuomopneumatico che aiuta con l’arpione l’infinito ad essere … il cruento cugino mare … dal fax affiora fievole la nota di una diaspora. (Bàino, 1993a: n.p.)
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The whole passage is based on a series of quotations from the text included in the famous visual poem by Corrado Govoni (1915), entitled “Il palombaro” (“The deep-sea diver”). All the elements of this rather unusual underwater scene (jellyfish, seahorses, oysters, corals, sea cucumbers, anemones, seaweed) as well as all the terms of comparison used to describe them (beggar’s umbrella, merry-go-round, chest, sack, bloody trunk, serpent hair) are taken from that source, but they appear shuffled, re-glued together, and are rendered almost unrecognizable. The sense of eerie stillness already present in the original is thus strangely amplified. A similar reorganization is performed on another classic, only this time it is one of those poems so famous, so universally known, that it can withstand a much more violent intervention: la pampa fondocupa dell’udito): c’è chi s’allamana d’ammansa s’ellemene d’emmense d’imminsi s’illimini s’ollomono d’ommonso d’ummunsu s’ullumunu col core in rogo di chi crede. (Bàino, 1993a)
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His allusion to Rimbaud’s poem “Vowels,” included at the very end of Fax giallo, confirms the importance of what, at first sight, might appear as merely a light-hearted game. Here is the passage: vostraloro pazzeria (del tipo inventa il vocalico dei colori : nero Aico, bianco Eico, rosso Iico, blu Oico, verde Uico). (Bàino, 1993a)
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The relationship that Rimbaud had established between vowels and colors is inverted. According to the French poet, the vowel “a” is black, while “e” is white, “I” red, and so on. Bàino, instead, decides to upend the hierarchy between language and the world: the color black is “aicous,” that is, it has a quality that reminds one of the vowel “a;” the color white is “eicous,” and so on.
As is clear even from just the verses quoted so far, another important trait of this poetry is multilinguism. To the different varieties of Italian, ranging from the archaic and literary to the contemporary and demotic, one must add French, Spanish, a great many neologisms, and a significant injection of dialect. As mentioned by Petrella, this wide variety of codes is not simply mixed or juxtaposed; it is melded together and made into a hybrid, a completely new linguistic creation that, while bearing some of the characteristics of the different parts that compose it, behaves in radically different ways. Here is a quote from an article by Antonio Paghi, published in Baldus: The lexicon unites Italian and dialect, foreign languages and terms taken from literary idiolects, bits of jargon and specialized codes, low-brow words (sometimes openly trivial ones) and high-brow ones (often hyper-educated). Equally important is the formation of “strong” neologisms, the result of two separate writing techniques that frequently end up overlapping. The first exploits the torsion (the spastic spasm, as Gadda would put it) that Bàino imposes upon the linguistic objects […]. The second involves the peculiar creation of “hybrid and creolingual children” based on the disassembly and reassembly (in a critical and contaminated way) of the different elements of the same linguistic corpus, charged with an ironic and expressive energy […]. But it is on the axis of syntagmatic combination that this idiolect reaches its full potential, utilizing a wide lexical array within a systematic juxtaposition of terms taken from very distant, sometimes opposite areas. (Paghi, 1994: 67)
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Paghi does an excellent job of listing the different components that make up Bàino’s experimental code; particularly interesting is his idea that there are two main techniques through which neologisms are built. The first one, he argues, recalls Gadda’s expressionism: a force that reshapes language from the inside out, twisting and deforming it in an attempt to make it fit the ever-shifting reality that exists outside of it. Here is a small example: capitoli indici d’argomenti … el siglo siécolo che schiuppa millenario (millénaire qui meurt …) scaca suoi semi sue sfa ccimme da fior festaiolo: patullano parole papareggiano (da pa perepapesse): in broda universale agguazzano aggallan musiche mappe immagini dati&archivi virtualmente e senza fine l’i pertesto … (dal fax tafàni diafani scribillano scrivòlano: alla Volvo di Uddevalla lo vogliono devoto dell’azienda l’operaio) …
The second technique described by Paghi is more macaronic in nature, and aims at modifying the linguistic code by positioning the speaker on the outside, in the interstitial space that divides two different languages: the gaps between Italian and French, Italian and Spanish, Italian and different dialects become the fertile spaces from which “hybrid and creolingual children”
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may spring forth. Words are disassembled, reduced to their smallest components, often re-invented according to fantastical etymologies, and then reassembled in a completely different context, adopting the morphology of a new idiom. Here are two of the most representative instances in Fax giallo; the first mocks the language of technology, hybridizing English and Italian to form a series of new words: ha interfacce del dopo del dopo Silicon Valley in gommaresina di facce ha interfacce di organo nuovo del dopo le schede ed i mouse videare calzante si adatta in procelle di pelle […] da attila la vecchia tecnica dotta? … outputta il fax, gra ffia prefetti offrendo i fatti di una nera pantera d’una jatta. (Bàino, 1993a)
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The second example uses French as the basis for a different kind of macaronic idiom: nontiscordardimé, di gialla luce con sua ombra viola (en fransé mozzarellà: magàr non è toute une boutanade il dir que il gran problem è plus la relation col mond que le mystère du mond), lector, e st’alkimia del dire è storia di una miatuasuanostra. (Bàino, 1993a)
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Going back to Paghi’s article, his last observation is equally insightful, for it points out how the same techniques of hybridization are practiced also at the syntagmatic level, in the way the different elements of the poem are put together: the interaction between different words; the radical re-arranging of quotations, broken up and rebuilt in ways that do not take into account the original context; and, finally, the parsing of different lines, which often relies on strong enjambments that cut through individual words, splitting them in two halves (and examples of these techniques can be seen in the verses quoted so far). All the empty space that is thus cleared (between words, quotations, and lines) is rendered available to the reader, who is invited to participate in the creation of the work by activating its process of signification. The poem opens up onto the world just when its textual strategies seem to push it further away from the plain speech of everyday people.
However, the most interesting aspect of this book is, perhaps, its reflection on technology and its effects on identity, self, and authorship. This issue resonates with many writers of Gruppo 93, and is a common preoccupation of Italian culture at the end of last century. Here is a brief quote from Petrella that summarizes these concerns: The dominance of mass media transforms Western society into a mediatic universe, whose life is ruled by images and instantaneous communication: the new technologies and the acceleration of our life styles, as philosopher Paul Virilio argues in his Aesthetics of Disappearence, imply not only a distortion of perception but also a loss of historical memory. […] History and its epochs disappear, leaving behind a space that is undivided, instantaneous, immediate and freely accessible. (Petrella, 2010: 89)
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The disappearance of history allows Bàino’s contaminations to bring together materials from the most disparate historical and geographical origins, creating striking poetic hybrids. A wonderful emblem of this media environment and its effects on language, something of a real-life mythological beast, is the wholphin, which Bàino translates as “balfino” including it among the many underwater creatures that populate his Fax giallo: […] informa il fax d’un bel balfino nato in vascacquatile di Kioto o To kio: avrà più dei 2 metri e 9 di papà delfino, ché maman balena è lunga cinque (e scorcia pinne e zinne ad usum, come dir?, Balphini): e che tu vada a spigole, se vuoi, in tirrene mucillagini: la balfigola prole in lunghi corridoi di sottomare si districhi e diporti, illesa fra i silenti monnezzai profondi, il cellulòideo occhio ponderante quanto scherma la medusa. (Bàino, 1993a)
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Not only is reality transmuted into a perennial flux of accelerated and potentially interchangeable particles, identity itself becomes a field of possibilities rather than a concrete and coherent entity. Here is another, rather long, quote from an article by Gian Paolo Renello: In Fax giallo […] the catalyst for the composition is a medium of communication, by now widely used, that presents a new characteristic when compared to previous mass media (and to the telephone): it does not communicate orally, and it does so anonymously. The text seems to be mimicking this new tool’s mode of operation. The various communicative fluxes can, theoretically, be arriving from any given part of a space that is essentially undetermined, perhaps even without anyone on the receiving end […]. The metaphor of the fax allows Bàino a great freedom to choose his materials, by using the fiction of the medium’s anonymity and its independence from the sources. In reality, this operation leads to two different modes of action: he can reproduce and rearrange, sometimes in a fragmentary fashion, shards of conversations that have not necessarily been transmitted via fax, and mix them together; alternatively, and this is the most interesting aspect, he can interface a personal, multilevel reality with a new communicative system. Memory and thought can pour through the connection of words and onto the page in an almost torrential, unstoppable way, to the point that the connection itself is obstructed, rendered almost impassable. Thus we see fluxes of words that are almost uninterrupted, completely indistinguishable at first sight, since they are not graphically separated; their reading and their pronunciation requires a visual exercise and a true breathing performance that is almost impossible. In this phase, where words are compressed one on top of the other, bound and separated to form new terms, the poem becomes an explosion of a technological and archaic psyche. (Renello, 1993: 32)
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Bàino does not usually write explicitly about his poems and his poetics. Below is a rare exception: a letter he sent to Francesco Muzzioli regarding his Fax giallo, dated October 2000, that he was kind enough to share with me. It contains some invaluable insights regarding his verses: Fax giallo, for me, is a way of reflecting on the radical changes, the disconnections of the world (symbolized, at a certain point of the text, by the storm, but more on this later). […] “The idea of the fax that is constantly interrupting the stream of consciousness […] reflects the need to point at the violent pressure exercised on the contemporary subject by the technologies and the mass of imagery that interfere with the I, upset it, thwart its attempts to establish itself as a center”. In connection to these issues, [I] tried to accept the challenge that the post-modern condition poses to all writers, forcing them to choose the communicative modes of the pastiche. In my text […], the theme of rain, the déluge (the storm I mentioned above), is expressed through a pastiche that uses both a “primary text” (Rain in the Pine Grove, by D’Annunzio), and a “secondary text,” which is its parody (It’s Raining, by Montale). It was an attempt to bring within the pastiche, the appropriate expressive form for the postmodern era (provided that is the case; but that is Jameson’s hypothesis, which I have embraced, along with the other members of Gruppo ’93), some critical and unpredictable elements.
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It is remarkable how parody, a tool so commonly used by Bàino in his poems, is here elevated to the second power, in an effort to problematize its deployment within the poetic text: a testament to the critical self-awareness of these verses. Here is the passage in question: tout un univers de villes auriculaires … odi? la pioggia cade su la solitaria verdura con un crepitìo che dura e varia nell’aria secondo le fronde più rade, men rade … piove … sul nulla che si fa in queste ore di sciopero generale … piove sulla cartella esattoriale … ascolta, ascolta … l’accordo delle aeree cicale a poco a poco più sordo si fa sotto il pianto che cresce … piove … sulla greppia nazionale … un canto vi si mesce più roco che di laggiù sale … ascolta … piove … sulla Gazzetta Ufficiale, piove su via Solferino, e il pino ha un suono, e il Parlamento altro suono: dal ciel cinerino piove sull’assenza universale che il pianto australe rinfresca: chi sa dove, chi sa dove! Qui piove di nuovo su Ermione, ma ora da Erminia si bagna (col suo vero nome) … (Bàino, 1993a)
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Finally, it is particularly interesting that the poet chose the fax as the means of communication to symbolize all the themes just listed. His booklet came out in 1993. That same year, NCSA Mosaic, the first internet browser, was released and the world wide web was finally available for commercial and private use. There is a lesson, here, about the obsolescence of technologies that we think immanent, and the endurance of ideas that we think fleeting.
I believe that the indications provided above clearly show how the poetry of Bàino and his fellow Gruppo 93 members deserves many more readers than those it can currently count on. I hope that this article encourages students and critics to seek out their books and rescue them from the dusty loneliness of library stacks: much work needs to be done on them, and a lot can be learned from their study.