Fantastic Tales
by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti
(translated by Lawrence Venuti)
A review
Iginio
(or Igino) Ugo Tarchetti (1839 – 1869) was a journalist and author, a leading
figure within the Scapigliatura movement. The Scapigliatura consisted of a
like-minded group of Italian authors, musicians, painters and sculptors who, in
the wake of the Risorgimento, sought to revitalise their country’s predominantly
conservative culture. The literal
meaning of “Scapigliato” is “dishevelled”, whereas “Scapigliatura” is equivalent
to the French term “bohème” (bohemian).
It was derived from the title of the novel La Scapigliatura e il 6 Febbraio
by Cletto Arrighi, the pen-name of Carlo Righetti (1830-1906), one of the
forerunners of the movement. The Scapigliati
often sought to shock the Catholic establishment (whose authority had already
been questioned, on the political front, by the ongoing upheavals in the newly-formed
Italian state). To achieve their aims, they sought models outside the Italian
tradition. While the musicians within
the group (such as Arrigo Boito and Franco Faccio) looked towards Wagner,
authors such as Tarchetti were influenced by the German Romantics (such as
Heine and E.T.A. Hoffmann), the French Bohemians (such as Gautier) and the
poetry of Charles Baudelaire. Another source
of inspiration was Edgar Allan Poe.
The
literature of the fantastic has illustrious antecedents in Italian literature.
Indeed, Dante’s Divine Comedy, with its tour of Heaven, Purgatory and
Hell, can be read as a work of supernatural – and in some aspects Gothic –
fiction, and Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, with its sorcerers and fantastic
creatures in an imagined East, is a worthy forerunner of Oriental Gothic. Yet, the resurgence of the literature of the
weird and the fantastic in Italy owes much to the Scapigliati and their
interest in works of figures such as Hoffmann and Poe.
In
this regard, Tarchetti’s Racconti Fantastici, first published by Treves
in 1869, is an important, not to say seminal, collection. Lawrence Venuti’s translation
was first published by Mercury House in 1992, and is now being issued on
Archipelago Books. Reading this
collection, one detects two distinct currents in Tarchetti’s style. Some stories harken back to an earlier form
of Gothic. This is the case, for instance, with The Legends of the Black
Castle with its well-worn tropes of ruined castles and old clerics with mysterious histories. A Spirit in a Raspberry and A Dead
Man’s Bone are, essentially, ghost stories where, once again, the Anglo-Saxon
tradition of supernatural fiction is evident.
The Lake of the Three Lampreys, “A Popular Tradition”, reminded
me of the folklore-infused stories of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, but its "nature writing" and inevitably sinful monks are also close to Radcliffe. Nowhere is the influence of English Gothic more evident than in The Elixir of Immortality. Tarchetti subtitles it "In Imitation of the English". It is, in effect, a plagiarized version of Mary Shelley's "The Mortal Immortal".
The theme of “Fate” recurs in Tarchetti’s stories. Often,
the protagonists battle against the vicissitudes of Fortune, with scant
results. Fate can set some individuals
on the course of tragedy (as in The Fated) but, in other cases, has a decidedly benevolent influence
(Captain Gubart’s Fortune).
Ebbrezza (1888) by Luigi Conconi, one of the artists associated with Scapigliatura |
In other works, Tarchetti is particularly reminiscent of
Poe. In Bouvard, the eponymous protagonist is haunted by his deformities,
which keep him from winning the love of his life. The conclusion of the story brims with morbid
horror. Then there is what is possibly
the most original story in the collection – The
Letter U (A Madman’s Manuscript). When I started reading
this tale about a man obsessed with the “evil” letter U, I smiled at this
absurd, quasi-comic premise. By the end of it, I definitely felt uneasy.
Lawrence Venuti’s translation is excellent. The authenticity
of the language he uses does not stem only from its faithfulness to the original
but also from the fact that Venuti bases his style on that of the (English-speaking)
Gothic authors of the nineteenth century. As a result, his prose, albeit flowing,
has a slightly archaic feel to it which fits the subject perfectly.
Fantastic
Tales is an enjoyable read, but it is also a
window onto an as yet underappreciated era of Italian fiction.
Paperback, 260 pages
Expected publication: September 29th 2020 by Archipelago Books (first published 1869)
Sacrifice of the Virgin to the Nile, by Federico Faruffini, one of the painters associated with the Scapigliatura movement |
The Scapigliatura
was as influential on Italian music (opera in particular) as on the country’s
literary and artistic fields. In this area, the primary figures were composer
and librettist Arrigo Boito, and composer and conductor Franco Faccio
(1840-1891). Indeed, traditional musical
scholarship tends to focus on these two figures as representing a transitional
phase in Italian opera, between the masterpieces of Verdi and the rise of verismo
as represented by Mascagni, Leoncavallo and others.
Three
operas are specifically associated with the Scapigliatura movement. Franco Faccio’s I Profughi Fiamminghi (1863)
was a failure, with only five performances at the Teatro alla Scala. Nonetheless, it was at a party celebrating
the opera’s performance that Boito, notoriously, read his poem Ode Saffica
col bicchere alla mano, a send-up of the musical establishment which
Verdi, rightly or wrongly, interpreted as a personal attack from a young
upstart.
Faccio
was far more successful with his second opera, the Shakespearean Amleto. While hardly part of the mainstream, the
opera is occasionally still performed. This is a scene from Act IV including what
is possibly the opera’s best-known part, the “Funeral March”:
But
perhaps the most representative of the Scapigliatura operas is Arrigo Boito’s
Mefistofele. This is typical of
the movement in that it looks to German literature and music as inspiration –
Boito borrows his subject from Goethe’s Faust and his approach (that of
writing both music and libretto) from Wagner’s ideas of Gesamtkunstwerk (“total
work of art”). And of course, there are
the Gothic undertones of the subject, which come to the fore in the Chorus of
Witches and Warlocks in Act II (Rampiamo, Rampiamo che il tempo ci gabba).
It
would be wrong, however, to dismiss the Scapigliatura musical movement as
a three-hit (or near-hit) wonder. Despite
the original rivalry between Verdi and the younger artist, it was Arrigo Boito
(together with publisher Ricordi) who coaxed Verdi out of retirement leading to
his two late masterpieces – Otello and Falstaff – both to a
libretto by Boito and, in the case of the former opera, first conducted by none
other than Faccio. The old master was
not too proud to learn from the scapigliati and from their German models!
Boito
was also a promoter of a younger generation of artists. In 1884, he partly
funded the premiere of the first stage-work of a then yet unknown composer. The opera-ballet in question was called Le
Villi. Its composer was none other Giacomo
Puccini. Le Villi is inspired by
European fairy legends and, in this regard, is part of a long tradition of Gothic
themes in opera. Here is “La Tregenda” (Witches’
Dance), one of the opera’s intermezzi.
Years
later, Puccini would (perhaps unconsciously, perhaps not) write an opera which could
be seen as a tribute to the Scapigliatura movement. La Bohème, featuring a group of poor bohemian
artists in Paris, is based on Scènes de la vie de bohème, a collection of
inter-related stories by Scapigliatura favourite Henri Murger. Listening to O Mimì tu più non torni, it
does not take much imagination to think of Puccini sounding his elegy to the bohemians
of Milan.
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