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Reading: Popular Literature Literature Antonio Gramsci Selections from Cultural Writings (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985) IX POPULAR LITERATURE Introduction Gramsci had borrowed many commercially successful novels from the prison library during his thirteen-month period of incarceration in Milan in 1927-28, and in a letter to Tania of 22 April 1929 he explained that they became interesting 'if one looked at them from the following angle: why are these books always the most read and the most frequently published? What needs do they satisfy and what aspirations do they ful fill? What emotions and attitudes emerge in this squalid literature, to have such wide appeal? (LP, p. 145). In the prison at Turi he wrote nearly fifty notes with the generic heading 'Popular literature', some of which he then rewrote and grouped in a special notebook of 1934-35 (number 21) which he called 'Problems of Italian national culture 1: Popular literature'. Although these notes deal more or less consistently with popular literary taste, they also clearly overlap with and presuppose a number of other subjects in the Notebooks. They overlap, firstly, with the theme of the non-national-popular character of Italian literature. Gramsci starts from asimple observation: a reading public for popular fiction exists in Italy, but Italian authors do not, with rare exceptions, write the books this public ca ' Is for. Most avowedly 'populist' authors appealed to a middle-class readership and were essentially anti popular in both their style and their politics. Book publishers who issued cheap format novels and newspaper publishers who serialized fiction to increase their circulation therefore tended to satisfy a taste for genres such as crime fiction, romance or adventure by publishing non-Italian writers - French writers in particular. Gramsci's explanation of the continuing appeal in twentieth- century Italy of the French novelists of the '1848 era' is linked to his argument about the failure of a bourgeois revolution to be carried through in Italy and thus the non emergence of a hegemonic, national-popular' stratum of bourgeois intellectuals (see Introduction to Section VI). The reading public in Italy turned instead to the French novelists of seventy or eighty years earlier who had exercised such a hegemonic function. Yet the retard by which these French novelists were still popular in Italy was, to Gramsci, symptomatic precisely of the stagnation and pathological involution of Italy's own political and economic development. It had led after the First World War to a violent twisting of petty-bourgeois demands into the adventuristic forms of early fascism. Gramsci can thus suggest a cultural connection between the popularity in Italy of Dumas' musketeers or Sue's avenging Prince Rodolphe and the fascist squads of 1919-22. Popular literature is also related in Gramsci's notes to his discussions of language and folklore (see Section V). The still limited diffusion of a unitary Italian language and of literacy in the 1930s makes the concept of popular literature itself a problematic one for Italy at this time. Gramsci recognizes this when he observes the 'absence of a widespread popular literature whether in books or magazines' (X 18). Because many novelists and playwrights were still dialect speakers working with a semi alien written medium, and because this medium had been used so often to cultivate a high literary style, it was very difficult to write an Italian that did not sound stiff and artificial. Moreover, the 'Brescianist' taste which Gramsci saw as so diffuse among writers in the fascist period served to bolster and preserve a mannered literary language. And then who were the readers of fiction in this period? Official literacy figures for 1931 gave an average of 20 per cent illiteracy for the country as a whole among the population over the age of six , with strong regional variations the rate for the south was nearly 40 per cent. If one adds semi literate people, able to read a notice or a form but not a book, then the figures are certainly higher. Rates of illiteracy were greater in rural and peripheral areas than in urban centres, among older people and among the lower social classes, particularly the peasantry. Figures for total book sales were very low in comparison with France, Germany or Britain and a newspaper's daily circulation was reckoned to be high if it exceeded 200,000 in a population of 41 million. In 1930s Italy, therefore , no literature could properly be classed as 'popular' in the sense of being diffused to any great extent among masses of working-class people. The people who read the narrative fiction serialized in the press or printed in cheap novels would have been in the great majority an urban proletariat and petty bourgeoisie who had passed through the higher grades of elementary school and passed probably secondary school of a technical (white-collar) or 'vocational' (skilled manual) type as well. There may also have been a secondary diffusion of popular literature from this reading public to illiterate or semi-literate listeners by reading aloud. In rural areas, where the diffusion of the printed word in any form was much less extensive, 'popular literature' was both different in kind and embodied more in oral transmission. While people in cities read crime fiction, peasants relayed stories or songs in which oral traditions and contemporary realities intersected. Thus a map of popular taste in Italy as a whole in the 1930s, such as Gramsci, writing in prison, could only tentatively sketch out in these notes, revealed different strata reflecting the intervention of different and discontinuous histories in different regional areas. Gramsci's purpose in mapping popular taste in this way was not to produce a static descriptive picture but rather to explore the relations between dominant and subaltern cultural forms in dynamic terms, as they act upon each other historically.just as folklore contains the sediments of earlier dominant cultures that have seeped down into subaltern cultures, so Gramsci sees in the popular literature of rural areas residues of earlier dominant literary forms (like romances of chivalry) and scientific conceptions of the world. By a converse process, he sees popular cultural forms being 'raised' into the dominant 'artistic' literature. For instance Dostoyevsky 'passes through' popular serial fiction in order to draw materials for writing artistic fiction. This latter process interests Gramsci because of its bearing on the question of how a dominated class can become hegemonic. As he writes in the note on Paul Nizan (115), die essential task is to create a body of writers who can be to the serial novel what Dostoyevsky was to the popular fiction on which he drew. These writers would have to be linguistically accessible - in other words they would have to reject that elaborate Italian that currently passed for good style - and they would have to draw their audience from the existing popular reading public for serial fiction. Gramsci clearly has in mind, in some cases at least, writers of 'left books': he cites as models Giovagnoli's nineteenth - century novel about Spartacus and collections of social poetry. The fact that Gramsci devotes considerably more space to narrative fiction than to other popular cultural forms - some of which, like music and cinema, he barely touches on in the Notebooks - might seem odd in view of the relatively restricted diffusion of literature in Italian society. It may to an extent be attributable to inertia on his part and to a very powerful persistence of a 'literary' conception of culture in Italy at the time. More particularly, though, it would seem to be bound up with his emphasis on building hegemony. He tends explicitly to privilege written over spoken or visual cultural forms like radio and film both of which were rapidly expanding their audiences when he wrote - because the former act 'in depth' (see IX 25). For Gramsci, the mastery of the standard form of the language and the capacity for logical thinking were closely related to one another (see Section V). Moving from a local to a national language, from oral to written culture and from 'simple common sense' to 'coherent and systematic thought' (X 13) were all moments of a process of acculturation which was at the same time a process of self-mastery and political liberation. 1 Influence of French Romantic Serials I have frequently referred to this 'cultural source' (remember the man of the English privies and mechanical lavatory covers)' to explain certain subaltern intellectual phenomena. The argument could be developed more fully and with a broader field of reference. The socio-economic 'propositions' of Eugene Sue are related to certain tendencies of Saint-Simonism, to which the theories of the organic state and philosophical positivism are also connected. Saint-Simonism was also popularly diffused in Italy, both directly (there are publications on the subject that will have to be consulted) and indirectly, through popular novels (such as Sue's) which picked up opinions more or less linked to Saint-Simonism via Louis Blanc, etc. 2 This also serves to show how the political and intellectual situation in this country was so backward that the same problems were being raised as in the France of 1848 and the people raising them were socially very similar to their French counterparts of that time: bohemians, petty intellectuals of provincial origin, etc. (See the chapters 'Revelation of the Mysteries of Political Economy' in The Holy Family.) Once again Prince Rodolphe is appointed the regulator of society, but he is a Prince Rodolphe who comes from the people and is thus even more romantic (besides we do not know whether back in the annals of time there may not be blue blood in his pedigree.) 2 'Interest' Popular national literature. One will have to establish properly what is to be understood by the term 'interesting' in art in general and in narrative literature and the theatre in particular. The nature of what is 'interesting' changes according to individuals or social groups or the crowd in general: it is therefore an element of culture, not of art, etc. But is it therefore completely extraneous to art, completely separate from it? In any case art itself is interesting, and interesting for its own sake, in that it satisfies a requirement of life. Besides this more intimate characteristic of art, that of being interesting for its own sake, what other elements of 'interest' can a work of art present, for example a novel or a poem or a play? In theory an infinite number. But the ones that are 'interesting' are not infinite: they are, precisely, only those elements that are thought to contribute most directly to the immediate or mediated (of the first degree) success of the novel, poem or play. A linguist can be interested in a play by Pirandello because he wants to find out how many lexical, morphological and syntactic elements of Sicilian dialect Pirandello has introduced or can introduce into the Italian literary language. This is an 'interesting' element that will not greatly contribute to the diffusion of the play in question. Carducci's 'barbarous metres' were an 'interesting' element for a larger circle the corporation of professional literary men and those who aimed to join it. They were thus a considerable element of immediate 'success' in themselves since they helped to sell a few thousand copies of poems written in barbarous metres. These 'interesting' elements vary according to the times, the cultural climate and personal idiosyncrasies. The most stable element of 'interest' is undoubtedly the (moral' one, both positive and negative, for and against. What is 'stable' here is the 'moral category', not a concrete moral content. Intimately linked to this is the 'technical' element, in the Q particular sense of a means of conveying the moral content, the moral conflict of the novel, poem or play in the most immediate and dramatic way. Thus, in drama we have the coup de theatre, in the novel the dominant 'intrigue', etc. Not all of these elements are necessarily 'artistic', yet neither are they necessarily non artistic. From the artistic point of view they are in a sense 'indifferent', that is, extra-artistic. They are facts of the history of culture and must be evaluated in this light. That this happens, that this is the case is proved by so called commercial literature, which is a section of national-popular literature. The 'commercial' aspect comes from the fact that the 'interesting' element is not 'naive', 'spontaneous', intimately fused with the artistic conception, but is sought from without, mechanically, and is doled out industrially, as a sure element. of immediate 'success'. Yet this means that even commercial literature must not be disregarded in the history of culture. Indeed it has enormous value precisely in this respect because the success of a work of commercial literature indicates (and it is often the only indication available) the 'philosophy of the age', that is, the mass of feelings and conceptions of the world predominant among the 'silent' majority. This literature is a popular 'narcotic', an 'opium'. Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte-Cristo, which is perhaps the biggest 'opiate' of the popular novels, 4 could be analysed in this light. What man of the people does not believe he has been treated unjustly by the powerful and does not dream about the 'punishment' to inflict upon them? Edmond Dantes offers him the model, 'intoxicates' him with exaltation and replaces the belief in a transcendental justice in which he no longer 'systematically' believes. 3 [Carlo Linati on 'lnterest'] See Carlo Linati's article 'Dell' interesse' in the February 1929 issue of Libri del Giorno. Linati asks what the essential quality is which makes books interesting and ends up without an answer. Clearly no precise answer can be found, at least not in the sense intended by Linati, who would like to find the 'essence' in order to be able, or enable others, to write interesting books. Linati says that this has lately become a 'burning' issue. It is true and it is natural that it should be so. There has been a clear re-awakening of nationalistic feelings: it is understandable that one should pose the problem of why Italian books are not read, the problem of why they are considered 'boring' and foreign ones 'interesting'. The nationalist revival makes one realize that Italian literature is not (national', in the sense that it is not popular, and that as a people we are subject to a foreign hegemony. The result of which is a series of programmes, controversies and attempts, none of which, however, achieves anything. What would be needed is a ruthless criticism of tradition and a cultural-moral renewal from which a new literature should be born. But that is precisely what does not happen, because of the contradiction, etc.: the re-awakening of nationalism has come to mean the exaltation of the past. Marinetti has become an Academician and is fighting against the tradition of spaghetti. 4 Serial Novels Compare what I have written about The Count of Monte-Cristo as an exemplary model of the serial novel. The serial novel takes the place of (and at the same time favours) the fantasizing of the common people; it is a real way of day-dreaming. One can refer to what Freud and the psychoanalysts say about day-dreams. In this case, one could say that the day-dreams of the people are dependent on a (social) 'inferiority complex'. This is why they day-dream at length about revenge and about punishing those responsible for the evils they have endured. In The Count of Monte-Cristo there are all the ingredients for encouraging these reveries and thus for administering a narcotic that will deaden the sense of evil. 5 [The Heroes of Popular Literature] One of the most characteristic attitudes of the popular public towards its literature is this: the writer's name and personality do not matter, but the personality of the protagonist does. When they have entered into the intellectual life of the people, the heroes of popular literature are separated from their 'literary' origin and acquire the validity of historical figures. Their entire lives, from birth to death, are sources of interest and this explains the success of 'sequels' even if they are spurious. It may happen, in other words, that the original creator of the type makes his hero die and the 'sequel-writer' has him brought back to life, to the great satisfaction of the public, whose enthusiasm is revived and who recreate the hero's image, extending it with the new material offered to them. The term 'historical figure' should be taken not in a literal sense although it does also happen that popular readers can no longer distinguish between the actual world of past history and the fantasy world and that they discuss fictional characters as they would those who have really lived - but figuratively in the sense that the fantasy world acquires a particular fabulous concreteness in popular intellectual life. Thus one finds that, for example, the contents of various novels are mixed up because the characters resemble each other. The popular storyteller brings together in one hero the adventures of many and is convinced that this is the 'intelligent' thing to do. 6 Guerin Meschino In the Corriere della Sera of 7 January 1932, there is an article by Radius with the headings: 'The Classics of the People, Guerino known as "il Meschino". The heading The Classics of the People' is vague and indeterminate. Guerino along with a whole series of similar books (I Reali di Francia Bertoldo stories of brigands and knights, etc.), represents a specific kind of popular literature, the most elementary and primitive, which circulates among the most backward and 'isolated' strata of the people: especially those in the South, in the mountains, etc. Those who read Guerino do not read Dumas or Les Miserables, let alone Sherlock Holmes. There is a determinate folklore and a determinate 'common sense' which corresponds to these strata. Radius has only skimmed through the book and has little familiarity with philology. He gives a fanciful meaning to Meschino; 'the nickname was pinned on the hero because of his humble ancestry'. This is a colossal error which alters the whole popular psychology of the book as well as the psychological and emotional attitude the popular readers have toward it. It is immediately evident that Guerino is of royal blood but that, through misfortune, he is forced to become a 'servant, in other words 'meschino' in the sense the word had in the Middle Ages and as one finds in Dante (in the Vita nuova 1 recall perfectly well). Therefore, Guerino is tile son of a king, reduced to bondage, but who regains his natural rank through his own willpower and means. There is in the most primitive stratum of the 'people' this traditional esteem of birth which becomes affectionate' when misfortune strikes the hero and then becomes enthusiasm when the hero regains his social position in the face of his misfortune. Guerino as an 'Italian' popular poem: from this point of view, it should be noted that the book is very coarse and unembellished, that it has not been worked upon or perfected, given the cultural isolation of the people, left to themselves. Perhaps this is why there are no love affairs or the least bit of eroticism in Guerino. Guerino as a 'popular encyclopaedia': observe how low the culture must be of those strata who read Guerino and how little interest they take, for example, in 'geography' for them to be content with Guerino and to take it seriously. One could analyse Guerino as an 'encyclopaedia' to obtain information about the mental primitiveness and cultural indifference of the vast stratum of people who still feed on it. ...that ultimately it was only their different style which distinguished them from their more academic brothers. They wrote the way people speak, while the others wrote the way people do not speak!' (Nevertheless, even the 'illustrious unknowns' in France belong to literary clubs, as much as Montepin. Remember also Balzac's grudge against Sue because of the latter's social and financial success.) Sorani continues: 'A not unimportant aspect of the persistence of this popular literature ... lies in the enthusiasm of the public. The great French public, that public which some people consider the most shrewd, critical and blase in die world, has remained especially faithful to the adventure story and the serial. High class and high-circulation French newspapers have not been able, or known how, to give up the serial story. The proletariat and the bourgeoisie are still in great masses so naive (!) as to need an endless number of sentimental and moving, horrifying or tearjerking stories for the daily nutriment of their curiosity and sentimentality; they still need to take sides between criminal heroes and the heroes of justice and revenge. Unlike the French public, the English or American public have turned to the historical adventure novel (haven't the French?!) Ôor to the detective novel, etc.' (clichŽs about national character) 'As for Italy, I believe one could ask why popular literature is not popular in Italy.' (This is not phrased accurately; there are no such writers in Italy but there is a multitude of readers.) 'After Mastriani and Invernizio 12 there seem to have been no more of those writers who know how to win over the crowd by horrifying and reducing to tears a public of naive, faithful and insatiable readers. Why has this type of novelist not continued (?) to thrive among us? Has our literature been too academic of literary even in its lower depths? Have our publishers been incapable of cultivating a plant considered too contemptible? Do our writers not have enough imagination to breathe life into the foot of the page and the supplement? Or is it that we, in this field too, have been and still are satisfied just to import what the other markets produce? We are certainly not teeming like France with" illustrious unknown authors"; there must be some reason for this deficiency and perhaps it would be worth looking for it.' 9 Popular Origin of the 'Superman' Every time one comes upon some admirer of Nietzsche, it is worth asking oneself and trying to find out if his 'superman' ideas, opposed to conventional morality, are of genuine Nietzschean origin. In other words, are they the result of a mental elaboration located in the sphere of 'high culture' or do they have much more modest origins? Are they, for example, connected to serial literature? (And was Nietzsche himself entirely uninfluenced by French serial novels? It should be remembered that this literature, now relegated to the porter's lodge and below stairs was once very popular among intellectuals, at least until 1870, as the so-called 'thriller' is today.) In any case it seems that one can claim that much of the would-be Nietzschean 'supermanism' has its source and doctrinal model not in Zarathustra but merely in Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte-Cristo. The type represented most, perfectly by Dumas in Monte-Cristo is frequently repeated in his other novels. It can for example be identified in Athos of The Three Musketeers, in Joseph Balsamo and perhaps in other characters. Therefore, when one reads that a person admires BaIzac, one must be on guard. In BaIzac, too, there is much of the serial novel. Even Vautrin is a superman in his way and what lie says to Rastignac in Pere Goriot is very ... Nietzschean in the folk sense. 13 The same must be said of Rastignac and Rubempre. (Vincenzo Morello became 'Rastignac' by this kind of... popular lineal descent and defended 'Corrado Brando'.) Nietzsche's success has been very mixed. His complete works were published by Monanni and we all know the cultural and ideological origins of Monanni and his most devoted clientele. Vautrin and 'Vautrin's friend' have left a large mark on the literature of Paolo Valera and his review La Folla (remember 'Vautrin's friend' from Turin in La Folla). 15 The ideology of the 'musketeer', taken from the novel by. Dumas also had a large popular following. It is entirely understandable that people are somewhat ashamed of mentally justifying their notions with the novels of Dumas and Balzac So they justify them with Nietzsche and admire Balzac as an artistic writer rather than as a creator of serial-novel type figures. But culturally the real nexus seems incontrovertible. The type of the 'superman' is Monte-Cristo freed of that particular halo of 'fatalism' peculiar to late Romanticism, and which is even more emphatic in Athos and Joseph Balsamo. Brought into the realm of politics, Monte-Cristo is without a doubt extremely picturesque (the struggle against the 'personal enemies' of Monte-Cristo, etc.) It can be observed how certain countries, in comparison to others, have remained provincial and backward in this sphere too. While Sherlock Holmes has already become anachronistic for much of Europe, people in some countries are still on MonteCristo and the works of Fenimore Cooper (cf. the 'savages', 'iron beard', etc.). See Mario Praz's book La carne la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica (Edizione della Cultura). Alongside of Praz's investigation one should conduct another: into the (superman' in popular literature and his influence on real life and modes of behaviour. (The petty bourgeoisie and the petty intellectuals are particularly influenced by such novelistic images, which are their 'opium', their 'artificial paradise', in contrast with the narrowness and pinched circumstances of their real and immediate life.) From this comes the popularity of certain sayings like 'It is better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep', particularly successful among those who are really and irremediably sheep. How many of these 'sheep' say: Oh! If only I had power even just for one day, etc.; the desire to be an implacable 'executioner' is the aspiration of someone who feels the influence of Monte-Cristo. Adolfo Omodeo has observed that there exists a kind of cultural 'mortmain', constituted by religious literature, which nobody seems to want to deal with, as if it had no importance and function in national popular life. Apart from the jibe about 'mortmain' and the clergy's satisfaction with the fact that its special literature is not subjected to a critical examination, there is another section of national and popular cultural life that no one deals with or is concerned about critically: serial literature, both in the strict sense and also in a broader sense (in which one can include Victor Hugo and also BaIzac). In Monte- Cristo there are two chapters in which the 'superman' of serial literature is explicitly discussed: the one entitled 'Ideology', when Monte-Cristo meets the attorney Villefort; and the one which describes breakfast at the Viscount de Morcerf's during Monte-Cristo's first trip to Paris One should see if there are similar 'ideological' inserts in Dumas's other novels. In The Three Musketeers Athos is more like the generic 'fatal' man of late Romanticism: in this novel the popular taste for eindividualism is stimulated rather by the adventurous and extra legal activity of the musketeers as such. In Joseph Balsamo the power of the individual is related to obscure magical forces and to the support of the European free masons, so the example is less productive for the popular reader. In BaIzac the figures are more concretely artistic but are still part of the atmosphere of popular Romanticism. Rastignac and Vautrin can certainly not be confused with the characters of Dumas, which is precisely why their influence can more easily be 'confessed' to, not only by men like Paolo Valera and the collaborators of La Folla but also by mediocre intellectuals like Vincenzo Morello who, however, consider themselves (or are considered by many) as belonging to 'high culture'. The writer to put alongside Balzac is Stendhal with the figure of Julien Sorel and others from his repertoire. For Nietzsche's superman, as well as the influence of French Romanticism (and in general the cult of Napoleon) one should look at the racist tendencies that culminated in Gobineau and then in Chamberlain and pan-Germanism (Treitschke, the theory of power, etc.) But perhaps the popular 'superman' of Dumas should really be considered as a 'democratic' reaction to the concept of racism with its feudal origin and should be put alongside the glorification of 'Gallicism' in the novels of Eugene Sue. Dostoyevsky can be called to mind as a reaction to this tendency of the French popular novel. Raskolnikov is MonteCristo 'criticized' by a Christian pan-Slavist. For the influence of the French serial novel on Dostoyevsky, see the special number of La Cultura dedicated to Dostoyevsky. There are many theatrical, outward elements in the popular character of the 'superman', with more of the 'prima donna' than the superman about them; a great deal of 'subjective and objective' formalism and childish ambitions to be the 'top of the class', but especially the ambition to be considered and proclaimed as such. For the relation between late Romanticism and some aspects of modern life (the Count of Monte-Cristo atmosphere) one should read Louis Gillet's article in Revue des Deux Mondes of 15 December 1932. This type of 'superman' is expressed in the theatre (especially French theatre, which in many respects is a continuation of the serial literature of 1848): see the 'classical' repertoire of Ruggero Ruggeri, like Il Marchese di Priola, L'artiglio etc. and many of the works of Henry Bernstein. 10 Various Types of Popular Novel A certain variety of types of popular novel exists and it should be noted that, although all of them simultaneously enjoy some degree of success and popularity, one of them nevertheless predominates by far. From this predominance one can identify a change in fundamental tastes, just as from the simultaneous success of the various types one can prove that there exist among the people various cultural levels, different 'masses of feelings' prevalent in one or the other level, various popular 'hero models'. It is thus important for the present essay to draw up a catalogue of these types and to establish historically their greater or lesser degree of success: 1) The Victor Hugo - Eugene Sue (Les Miserables The Mysteries of Paris) type : overtly ideologico-political in character and witli democratic tendencies linked to the ideologies of 1848; 2) The sentimental type, not strictly political, but which expresses what could be defined as a sentimental democracy' (Richebourg - Decourcelle, C tc.); 3) The type presented as pure intrigue, but which has a conservative -reactionary ideological content (Montepin); 4) The historical novel of A. Dumas and Ponson du Terrail which, besides its historical aspect, has a politico -id eolo gical character, but less marked: Ponson du Terrail, is, however, a conservative reactionary and his exaltation of the aristocrats and their faithful servants is quite different from the historical representations of Alexandre Dumas, even though Dumas has no overt democratic-political tendency but is pervaded by 'passive' and generic democratic feelings and often comes close to the 'sentimental' type; 5) The detective novel in its double aspect (Lecoq, Rocambole, Sherlock Holmes, Arsene Lupin) 6) The gothic novel (ghosts, mysterious castles, etc.: Ann Radcliffe, etc.) 6) The geographical, scientific adventure novel which can be tendentious or consist simply of intrigue (Jules Verne Boussenard). Each of these types also has different national characteristics (in America the adventure novel is the epic of the pioneers). One can observe how in the overall production of each country there is an implicit nationalism, not rhetorically expressed, but skilfully insinuated into the story. In Verne and the French there is a very deep anti-English feeling, related to the loss of the colonies and the humiliating naval defeats. In the geographical adventure novel the French do not clash with the Germans but with the English. But there is also an anti-English feeling in the historical novel and even in the sentimental novel (e.g. George Sand). (Reaction due to the Hundred Years War and the killing of Joan of Arc, and to the defeat of Napoleon.) In Italy none of these types has had many writers of stature (not literary stature, but 'commercial' value, in the sense of inventiveness and ingeniously constructed plots which, although complicated, are worked out with a certain rationality). Not even the detective novel, which has been so successful internationally (and, for authors and publishers, financially), has found writers in Italy. Yet many novels, especially historical ones, have chosen for their subject Italy and the historical events of its cities, regions, institutions and men. Thus Venetian history, with its political, judicial and police organizations, has provided and continues to provide subject matter for popular novelists of every country, except Italy. Popular literature on the life of brigands has had a certain success in Italy but its quality is extremely poor. The latest type of popular book is the novelized biography, which at any rate represents an unconscious attempt to satisfy the cultural needs of some of the popular strata who are more smart culturally and are not satisfied witli the Dumas type of story. This literature, too, has few representatives in Italy (Mazzucchelli, Cesare Giardini, etc.). Not only do Italian writers not compare with the French, the Germans and the English in terms of numbers, fecundity and the gift of giving literary pleasure but, more significantly, they choose their subjects outside Italy (Mazzucchelli and Giardini in France, Eucardio Momigliano in England) in order to adapt to the Italian popular taste formed on historical novels, especially French ones. The Italian man of letters would not write a novelized biography of Masaniello, Michele di Lando or Cola di Rienzo 28 without feeling obliged to cram it witli tiresome, rhetorical 'padding', for fear people might think ... might wonder ... etc. It is true that die success of novelized biographies has induced many publishers to start running series of biographies, but these books are to the novelized biography what The Nun of Monza is to The Count of Monte-Cristo. They consist of the familiar, often philologically correct, biographical scheme which can at most find a few thousand readers but cannot become popular. One should note that some of the types of popular novel listed above have parallels in the theatre and now in cinema. In the theatre the considerable success of Dario Niccodemi is doubtless due to his ability to dramatize ideas and motifs eminently related to popular ideology. This is true of Scampolo, L Aigrette and La Volata etc 0 There is also something similar in G. Forzano's work but on the model of Ponson du Terrail witli conservative tendencies. The theatrical work - of an Italian character - that has had the 35 greatest popular success in Italy is Giacometti's La ntorte civile but it has not had imitators of any merit (still speaking in a non-literary sense). In this section on the theatre, we might note how a whole series of playwrights of great literary value can be enormously liked by the people as well. The people in the cities greatly enjoy Ibsen's A Doll's House because the feelings depicted and the author's moral tendency find a profound resonance in the popular psyche. And what should the so-called theatre of ideas be if not this, the representation of passions related to social behaviour, with dramatic solutions which can depict a 'progressive' catharsis, 33 which can depict the drama of the most intellectually and morally advanced part of a society, that which expresses the historical growth immanent in present social behaviour itself ? This drama and these passions, though, must be represented and not expounded like a thesis or a propaganda speech. In other words, the author must live in the real world with all its contradictory needs and not express feelings absorbed merely from books. 11 Popularity of Italian Literature From Nuova Antologia 1 October 1930: Ercole Reggio 'Perche la letteratura italiana non e popolare in Europa': 'The slight success of even eminent Italian books among us, compared to that of so many foreign books, should convince us that the reasons for the unpopularity of our literature in Europe are probably the same that make it unpopular in our country; hence, all in all, there is not much point asking of others what we do not expect at home. Even foreigners who are sympathetic towards Italian culture say that our literature on the whole lacks certain modest and necessary qualifies, those which appeal to average man, man of the economists (?!); and it is because of its prerogatives, of that which makes for its originality as well as its merit, that it does not, and cannot, match the popularity of the other great European literatures.' Reggio mentions the fact that the Italian figurative arts (he forgets music) are, however, popular in Europe and speculates: either there is an abyss between literature and the other arts in Italy which would be impossible to explain, or the fact must be explained by secondary, extra-artistic causes. In other words, while the figurative arts (including music) speak a universal and European language, literature is limited within the confines of the national language. I do not think this objection holds: 1) Because there has been a historical period (the Renaissance) in which Italian literature was popular in Europe; in addition to and even together with the figurative arts: i.e. the whole of Italian culture was popular. 2) Because in Italy, besides literature, the figurative arts are not popular either (whereas Verdi Puccini and Mascagni are). 3) Because the popularity of the Italian figurative arts in Europe is relative: it is limited to the intellectuals and to a few other sections of the European population; it is popular not as art but because it is tied to classical or romantic memories. 4) Italian music is however as popular in Europe as in Italy. Reggio's article continues along the tracks of the usual rhetoric, although here and there it contains thoughtful observations. Foot notes: 1 This alludes to Mario Gioda (1883-1924), a former anarchist who supported Italian intervention in the war, wrote for Mussolini's Popolo d'Italia and became secretary of the Turin Fascio in 1920. In 1912-13 Gioda had written a series of 'exposes'on the Turin underworld for the review La Folla under the Balzacian pseudonym 'Vauturin's friend'. Gramsci caricatured Gioda in two articles of 1916 (see CT pp. 108-9 and 121-22) as displaying character traits of the romantic serial novel tradition. In a 1924 article in L'Unita (now in CPC pp. 367-69) he linked Gioda's name to others with respect to a more widespread 'influence' of Romantic serial literature on anarchism and fascism: 'Mario Gioda ... must still have in a drawer a thick novel on the Turin slums, a novel like Eugene Sue's Mysteries of Paris, a novel in which, with the extensive method of Carolina Invernizio, a peaceful provincial city of honest working people, of peaceful petty bourgeois on state pensions, becomes a den of every vice, an aquarium of sea-snakes, a beggars' haven for every social monster. This is what romanticism is, this is the romantic setting in which the fascist mentality was formed. Why was the serial novel, such as that published by Sonzogno, so popular in Italy before the war? Why was It Secolo the newspaper with the highest circulation? Why was Carolina Invernizio the most widely read novelist? Why are Dario Niccodemi's plays still so successful? . . . Mario Gioda Massimo Rocca became anarchists reading about jean Valjean's struggles against Javert . . . French romanticism of 1848 also left some of the petty bourgeoisie on the barricades, alongside the working class; but the working class was still weak, it did not manage to seize power; power was seized by Louis Bonaparte, the romantic petty bourgeoisie turned Caesarist. This is the romantic side of the fascist movement, of fascists like Mario Gioda Massimo Rocca Curzio Suckert [Malaparte] Roberto Farinacci etc., etc.; an unbalanced imagination, a quivering of heroic fury, a psychological restlessness which have no other content than the sentiments present in die serial novel of French romanticism around 1848: the anarchists thought of the revolution like a chapter of Les Miserables with its Grantaires, Aigle de Meaux & Co., plus a dash of Gavroche and Jean Valjean; the fascists want to be the "Prince Rodolphes" of the good Italian people. The historical conjuncture has allowed these romantics to become a "ruling class" and all of Italy to become a hack serial novel . . .' 2 Eugene Sue (1804-75) was converted to a Christian philanthropic socialism just prior to undertaking The Mysteries of Paris (1842~43), a novel presenting a panorama of crime and social injustice in working-class Paris. The hero, Prince Rodolphe, roams the Paris underworld in disguise, punishing evil and rewarding virtue. Marx, dealing polemically in The Holy Farnily with Sue's approving Young Hegelian critic Szeliga, noted the way Sue expressed his fear of the class struggle by having Rodolphe 'lame' and 'paralyse' protest by cutting it off at root and substituting it with social reform. Henri de SaintSimon (1760-1825) was a direct influence on both the positivist Auguste Comte and on Louis Blanc's programme of state workshops for die unemployed. The leading Saint-Simonian, Enfantin, called Sue a true apostle of Saint-Simon. 4 On opiates, see footnote 48 below. In The Count of Monte-Cristo (1844-45) a young sailor, Edmond Dantes is framed as a Bonapartist conspirator and imprisoned in the Chiteau d'If. He escapes after fourteen years, conies into possession of a vast treasure hidden on the island of Montecristo and, using this wealth and assuming various personae, systematically carries out his revenge on the three men responsible for his arrest and conviction. 5 Marinetti was among the first nominees to the Accademia d'Italia, officially inaugurated in October 1929 with the aim of promoting and coordinating the Italian intellectual movement in the sciences, literature and the arts, to maintain die purity of its national character according to the genius and tradition of the race', etc. (Inaugural statute). In November 1930, Marinetti launched a campaign against spaghetti declaring that it was an obsolete food ... heavy, brutalizing and gross ... it induces scepticism, sloth, and pessimism' (quoted in E. David Italian Food, Harmondsworth 1963, p. 93). 6 For Freud, daydreams were, like dreams, fulfilments of wishes (see Ch. 6 ¤ 1 of the Interpretation of Dreams) There are two notes on Freud in the Prison Notebooks (Q 1 ¤ 33 and Q 15 ¤ 74) and a number of scattered references elsewhere. Gramsci's general opinion, based by his own admission mainly on second hand information, was that Freudianism was an attempt to deal with the effects of modern social 'conformism', particularly among the middle classes, and that ideologically it involved a return to eighteenth-century concepts of 'natural man'. On die other liand, he took a sympathetic interest in the psychoanalytical treatment undergone by his wife Julia in die Soviet Union in 1931 (see L, pp. 428 and 477). Freud's Introduction A la psychoanalyse recommended to Gramsci by Piero Sraffa in 1931, was not found among his prison library and is not mentioned in the Notebooks. 7 The Guerin Meschino (known also simply as Guerino) is a prose romance by Andrea da Barberino (c. 1370 - c. 1431), who also wrote the Reali di Francia. Gramsci mentions having read it in prison in Milan in 1927 (L, p. 89). The modern meaning of meschino is 'wretched' or 'mean'. It had an older meaning of 'lowly', 'servant'. 11 Balzac envied Sue's success both as a dandy and as a feuilleton isle and attacked him from 1840 in his paper La Revue Pa risienne. 12 On Mastriani and Invernizio see footnote 21 on p. 211. 13 Vautrin is the criminal who in Le Pere Goriot advises the ambitious young Rastignac to abandon scruples and marry for self-advancement: In a million of this herd of human cattle there are ten sharp fellows to lie found who climb above everything, even above laws; I am one of them. You, if you're above the common herd, go straight forward with your head high.' (Old Goriot, 1 larmondsworth 195 1, p. 130). 14 On Morello who used the Balzacian pseudonym 'Rastignac', see footnote 12 on p. 156. Corrado Brando is the superman character in D'Annunzio's play Piu che l'amore (1905). D'Annunzio subsequently dedicated the play to Morello in recognition of his defence of it. See also SG p. 179. 15 On 'Vautrin's friend' (Mario Gioda see footnote 1 above. La Folla (The Crowd) was a Milan periodical, issued in two series (1901- 4; 1913-15) and edited by the anarchist publicist Paolo Valera (1850-1926). It was also the title of a novel by Valera (1901). 1 6 '1 selvaggi' ('the savages' was the name both of an early fascist group based round Roberto Farinacci and the newspaper Cremona Nuova and of the fascists of the Val d'Elsa: see footnote 61 on p. 329. 'Pizzo di ferro' ('iron beard') was the nickname of the fascist quadrumvir and aviator Italo Balbo 17 Translated as The Romantic Agony, London 1933: a study of the mutations from writer to writer of themes and motifs with an erotic basis in Romantic literature (sadism, vampirism, femme fatale, etc.) 18 Omodeo's views on religious literature were quoted in an article by Croce (Gramsci's source here): 'La storiografia della filosofia c della religione', La Critica XXVII (1929) IV p. 173. 19 See The Count of Monte-Cristo (London 1909) Volume 1, Chapters 48 and 40 respectively. Monte-Cristo explains to Villefort that he is an 'exceptional being' with a mission to fulfil: he has made a pact witli the devil to become an agent of Providence and to dispense rewards and punishments as lie chooses. At Morcerf`s lie is applauded asbeing 'sufficiently courageous to preach egotism pure and simple'. 20 Arthur Gobineau (1816-82) treated race, racial inequality and the 'degeneration of the blood' through miscegenation as the key to historical explanation (Essai stir I'Inegalite des Races Humaines, 1853-55). llis ideas were developed in a pro-Teutonic and antisemitic direction by Wagner's son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927) whose Die Grundlagen des XIX Jahrisunderis (1899) influenced Alfred Rosenberg and Ilitler. Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-96), historian and theorist of nationalism, envisaged a struggle between strong and weak nations, German expansion and the selfdetermination of German national minorities outside the fatherland. See IX 19. 22 Ruggero Ruggeri (1871-1953), stage (and later also film) actor. 1 Henry Bernstein (1876-1953), French dramatist. Ruggeri was a leading performer of Bernstein's work in Italy. 23 Emile-Jules Richebourg (1833-98) wrote sentimental popular, novels serialized in La Revue Francaise and Le Petit journal. Ilierre Decourcelle (1856-1926) developed the technique of the sequel or series of sequels. 24 Characters invented respectively hy Emile Gaboriau (1832-73), Ponson du Terrail, Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) and Maurice Leblanc (1864-1941). 25 Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), 'gothic' novelist, wrote The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The ltalian (1797). On Verne, see IX 16. Louis-Henri Boussenard (1847-1910) wrote numerous adventure novels. 27 Mario Mazzucclielli wrote about Robespierre and Murat, Eucardio Momigliano about Cromwell and Ann Boleyn. 28 Leaders of early popular protests (Masaniello with the lazzaroni against the Spanish in Naples in 1647, Michele di Lando with the ciompi in Florence in 1378 and Cola di Rienzo in Rorne in 1347). 29 See footnote 14 on p. 15 9. 30 Gramsci had reviewed two of* Niccodemi's plays in his Avanti! theatre colunill. (See UN pp. 229-30; 355-56). On Niccodemi's relationship witli popular serial fiction see also L, p. 270 and the quotation in footnote 1 above. 31 Gioacchino Forzano was the author of sundry historical dranins and of the libretti of Puccini's two one-act operas, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi 32 Paolo Giacometti (18 16-82); La morte civile was first staged in 1861. 33 'Catharsis' here almost certainly has Gramsci's specialized meaning of 'the passage from the purely economic (or egoistic-passional) to the ethico-political moment, that is the superior elaboration of the structure into the superstructure in the minds of men' ('The term "catharsis"', SPN pp. 366-67; compare the same use of the term on p. 104 above). The more conventional Aristotelian sense of catharsis with reference to tragedy is probably not relevant despite the fact that Gramsci is talking about theatre. The 1930 draft of this note (Q3 ¤ 78) reads 'solutions which represent the historical development etc.' Last updated: 1 July 2003 |
