A City in Search of an Author : The Literary Identity of Trieste

A CITY IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

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A CITY IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR The Literary Identity of Trieste

Katia Pizzi

SHEFFIELD ACADEMIC PRESS A Continuum imprint LONDON

NEW

YORK

Copyright © 2001 Sheffield Academic Press A Continuum imprint Published by Sheffield Academic Press Ltd The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6550 www.SheffieldAcademicPress.com www. continuumbooks. com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Typeset by Sheffield Academic Press Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall

ISBN 1-84127-284-1

Contents Preface Acknowledgments Maps Chronology (1910-96) Introduction

7 8 9 11 27

Chapter 1 Literary Trieste, Triestine Literature and Triestinitd 1. Triestine Literature: A Definition 2. The Heritage of the Pre-War Generation 3. The 'Myth of Trieste' and Triestinitd 4. Literary Endogamy 5. Imagined Topographies

37 39 44 48 55 60

Chapter 2 Lettemtura di Frontiera-Letteratura di Frontiere 1. The Unbearable Lightness of the Border 2. A Maternal Border 3. The Foiba: Myth and History

74 74 84 91

Chapter 3 The Myth of an Italian Motherland 1. Irredentismo: A Local Brand of Nationalism 2. Cultural Delay Trieste and the Heritage of the Risorgimento Trieste and the Two World Wars Trieste and Romanticism 3. Italianitd 4. Maternal Nationalism and the Italian Motherland

100 101 110 110 112 115 117 128

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Chapter 4 Quale triestinita? Gender, Confession, Ethnicity 1. Women's Writing Jewish Writers Anti-Slav Writers 'Emancipated' Writers 2. The Jewish Community in Trieste The Family The Years of Psychoanalysis 3. Italy Looks East

138 138 141 154 161 167 172 177 180

Concluding Remarks

192

Bibliography Index of Authors

194 215

Preface

The present volume originates from a doctoral dissertation submitted at the University of Cambridge in 1996. It largely, though not exclusively, adopts the toponymy predominant in the literary works examined, namely Italian place-names such as Fiume for Rijeka, Pola for Pula, Capodistria for Koper, etc. Small portions of my work have appeared previously in edited article form or in multi-authored volumes of collected essays: all references are footnoted and listed in the final bibliography.

Acknowledgments

Ai Miei genitori Acknowledgments are due to a number of people who helped and encouraged me throughout my research and writing. While their contribution was extremely valuable, no one but myself should be held responsible for eventual errors and misreadings. I am particularly indebted to Stephen Gundle, John Dickie, Ann Caesar and David Forgacs for their feedback on earlier versions of my chapters Elizabeth Schachter read the doctoral thesis upon which the present volume is founded. More recent readers include Laura Lepschy, Gabriella Ziani and Jennifer Lorch, and I wish to thank them all for their illuminating comments. Additional support of an intellectual, logistic or technical nature was received from Sergio Sokota, Elvio Guagnini, Giulio Lepschy, Brian Moloney, Pietro Covre, Tracy Cummins of Pearson Education, the staff of the Biblioteca Civica, the Narodna In Studijska Knjiznica and the Slovenska Kulturno gospodarska in Trieste, the late Giorgio Voghera, Glen Bowman, Alf Smyth, David Mendel, Agnes and Roger Cardinal, and the Advocaten Kantoor De Clerck-Coppens-Castermans. Finally, a term of study leave granted by the University of Kent at Canterbury enabled me to pursue my research in Trieste in the summer of 1998.

Pre-1915 frontier Italian front 23 October 1917 Italian front 10 November 1917 Post-1919-20 frontier Treaty of London line 1915 (where different from 1919-20 settlement) Free city of Fiume (1920-24, absorbed by Italy 1924)

Map 1. Italy's northern frontiers. Reprinted by permission: Martin Clark, Modern Italy 1871-1982 (London and New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1984), p. 409.

Italo- Austrian border 1866-1915 Italo-Austrian border since 1920 Italo-Yugoslav border 1924-41 Morgan line French line Italo-Yugoslav border since 1954 Boundary of Free Territory of Trieste 1947-54 Zone A of Free Territory of Trieste Zone B of Free Territory of Trieste

Map 2. Trieste and Venezia Giulia. Reprinted by permission: Martin Clark, Modem Italy 1871-1982 (London and New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1984), p. 410.

Chronology (1910-96)

1910 12January: first Futurist soiree at Politeama Rossetti. 1911 19 March: first public lecture in Trieste in favour of women's suffrage (speaker: Virginia Marussi). 1912 12 May: 16 cinemas were now established in Trieste averaging 7-8 shows per day. 6 July: infant mortality was well above average: in some areas of Trieste 1/3 of all children died before reaching 10 years of age. 1913 25 February: Trieste returned the highest percentage of suicides of all the cities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire: between 1906 and 1910 it counted an average of 415.8 cases per year. 8 June: three parties (Liberal-nazionale, Sodalista and Slovene) took part in the municipal elections. 11 October: erection completed of second Liceo femminile. 1914 3 January: opening of Gaffe San Marco. 20 January: first Triestine performance of Richard Wagner's Parsifal. 1 July: the coffins of Franz Ferdinand and the Duchess of Hohenberg, in transit from Sarajevo to Vienna, headed a funeral cortege in Trieste. 28 July::the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia: Trieste was officially at war. 1015 26 April: Secret Treaty of London promised Dalmatia and other terri-

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A CITY IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR tories to Italy as a condition of Italian participation in the First World War within one month on the side of Britain, France and Russia.

1918 14 January: 'sciopero del pane' as a consequence of rationing down of daily bread to 35g per head. Triestine workers went on general strike for six days. 6 April: inauguration of the new Slovanska Citalnica (Slovene Reading Room). 3 November: Italian ships docked at Trieste's Molo San Carlo. They were enthusiastically cheered by the population and the pier re-named Molo Audace, after the first Italian ship to dock there. Italy officially took possession of Trieste after five centuries of formal Austrian rule. 10 November, the Italian King Victor Emmanuel III paid a surprise visit to Trieste. 1919 29 March: foundation of the Fascio giovanile ebraico. 3 April: publication of the first Triestine Fascist Manifesto: Fiamme nere a raccolta by Piero Jacchia in the periodical La Nazione. 14 April: the borderline proposed by President Woodrow Wilson (the Wilson Line') excluded Fiume from Italy. 20 May: official foundation of the first Triestine 'Fascio di combattimento'. 3-4 August: first violent Fascist attacks against Slav and Socialist associations, including the Narodni Dom and the Slovene daily Edinost. 12 September: Gabriele D'Annunzio occupied Fiume. He was triumphantly received in both Fiume and Zara, 'in un attimo tutta Fiume e fuori per le vie, recando fasci di fiori e di alloro al Poeta della Redenzione che arriva, come 1'Arcangelo di cui porta il nome, scortato da un'immensa fiumana di popolo che applaude frenetico'.1 19 September: Treaty of Saint-Germain assigned Istria, Trieste and Gorizia to Italy.

1920 13 July: Fascist black-shirts attacked the Hotel Balkan in Trieste, seat of a number of Slav cultural and recreational organizations, and burned it 1. Anna Bencovich, 'La tragedia dell'italianita in Dalmazia (1798-1920)', in Adriatico infiamme: La tragedia dell'italianitd in Dalmazia (Milan: 'Oltre Mare', 1935), pp. 243-44.

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down with the acquiescence of local government. The Narodni Dom in Pola was also attacked. 8 September: D'Annunzio promulgated a Constitution of the Tree State' of Fiume, the 'Carta del Carnaro'. 14 October: Fascist squads looted the premises of the Socialist daily II Lavoratore. 9-11 November: the 'Rapallo Meeting' (followed, on 12 November, by the 'Rapallo Treaty') declared Fiume a 'Free State' connected with Italy by a narrow strip of land West of the city. It also reshaped the boundaries between Italy and Yugoslavia: though retaining Zara and the islands of Cherso, Lussino, Lagosta, Cazza and Perasto, Italy relinquished Dalmatia and, implicitly, eliminated D'Annunzio, whose popularity was beginning to be resented by Benito Mussolini. And yet, i due decenni che seguono al 1919 sono il periodo d'oro della Trieste culturale, basti pensare alia scoperta, venuta dalla Francia, di Italo Svevo, alFaffermazione di Giotti, di Giani Stuparich e di Quarantotti Gambini, e allo sviluppo costante di Saba. Valore emergente, ma elusive, Roberto Bazlen; personaggio discusso, ma fattivo, Anita Pittoni. [...] il mito di una Trieste culturalmente importante nasce da quel periodo.2 1921

5 January: Zara and the Quarnero islands became officially part of the Kingdom of Italy. 19January: D'Annunzio abandoned Fiume. 22 January: foundation of the Communist Party of the Venezia Giulia following the Conference at Livorno. 26January: the Communists took over // Lavoratore. 9 February: after a number of attacks, the printing office that printed // Lavoratore and the Slovene weekly Delo was burned down by Fascist squads. 15 May: municipal elections in Trieste sent four MPs to the Italian Parliament: three from the 'National-Fascist' party, one from the Republican party. None of the candidates of the Slovene party was elected.

1922 22 January: municipal elections were held in Trieste in a climate of intimidation and violence. The National Front, composed of Fascists, !.

Stelio Mattioni, Storia di Umberto Saba (Milan: Camunia, 1989), p. 81.

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A CITY IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR nationalists and reformist Socialists, won the elections. 18 February: Giorgio Pitacco (1866-1945) was elected mayor of Trieste. 4 March: all Courts of Justice and Tribunals banned the use of the Slovene language. 28-31 October: Mussolini's March on Rome and Fascist seizure of power.

1923 4 March: Mussolini reinstated Italian authority over Fiume, albeit leaving Sussak and the commercial port (Porto Baross) to Yugoslavia. 24 May: celebrations of the eighth anniversary of Italian declaration of war and inauguration of monumental war cemeteries in the Karst. 1 October: a Royal Decree declared Italian as the primary language in all schools, assigning a secondary role to Slovene. 1924 25 January: Italy and Yugoslavia signed the Pact of Rome whereby Fiume became annexed to the Kingdom of Italy. This alliance was however tainted by Mussolini's ambiguous rapport with Croatian nationalism. 6 April: general elections piloted by the Fascists. 10June: assassination of Giacomo Matteotti. 10July: Rino Alessi became director of the local daily // Piccolo. 15 December: official inauguration of the first University in Trieste. 1925 16 October: inauguration of Cinema-Teatro Excelsior. 22 November: a Royal Decree declared Italian as the only official language in schools. Slovene was banned and outlawed. 1926 6 January: Fascist demonstration in protest against Rudolf Valentino's decision to give up his Italian nationality. 9 December: the Jewish community made a donation of 25,000 lire to the Fascist Prestito del Littorio. 1927 7 April: campaign for the 'Italianization' of foreign and foreign-sounding surnames: by the end of 1928 more than 3,000 surnames were altered into their Italian semantic or phonetic equivalents.

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29 June: looting and devastation of Slovene cultural and leisure associations in Trieste: by 1928 approximately four hundred of them were either burned down or suppressed. 24 August: surprise visit of Benito Mussolini to Trieste where he inspected the recently launched transatlantic liner Saturnia.

1928 3 February: widespread workers' redundancies were reported as a result of serious crisis in the shipbuilding industry. 29 March: Trieste was returned as one of the cities with the highest percentage of alcoholics in the whole of Italy. 20 May: inauguration of book fair in Piazza Unita. 4 September: Edinost was suppressed. 1929 7 May. first showing of a sound-picture movie at Teatro Politeama Rossetti. 30 May: funeral cortege in honour of Carlo Stuparich, whose corpse was awaiting burial in Trieste. 10 October: the Bologna publishers Cappelli celebrated the tenth anniversary of inauguration of their popular Triestine branch. 1930 6 February: 33 cinemas were reported as being operative in Trieste. 15 February: brief visit of Thomas Mann to Trieste. 16July: articles in // Piccolo rejected anti-Semitic ideologies. 5 September: a terrorist attack on the Fascist periodical II Popolo di Trieste was punished with four death sentences. 18 September: inauguration of Jewish school in Via del Monte. 25 September: the last surviving Slovene elementary school in the S. Giacomo quarter was closed down. 10 October: Attilio Tamaro published a paperback edition of his bestselling Storia di Trieste (Tiber). Fabio Cusin published Appunti alia storia di Trieste (Cappelli). 3 November: foundation of the celebrated classical music group Trio di Trieste. 1931 6January: delirious audiences greeted the soprano Toti Dal Monte who

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A CITY IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR performed in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor at Teatro Verdi. 13 January: 4,800 motor cars were officially registered in Trieste. 8 April: various articles in // Piccolo accused the Triestine Slav clergy of fomenting Slav Irredentism. 26 April: a bust of Italo Svevo was unveiled in Trieste's Giardino Pubblico. 15 May: Anita Pittoni exhibited her art and crafts at the Casa del Fascio. 28 October: official inauguration of the first radio station in Trieste. 26 December: death of painter Vittorio Bolaffio (b. 1883).

1932 1 April: a Futurist exhibition of photographs was presided over by the Triestine Futurist leader Bruno Sanzin and visited by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. 4 December: the Greek-Orthodox community celebrated the 150th anniversary of its foundation. 1933 28 October: various new and/or newly restored buildings were opened in Trieste. 1934 W May. official approval of a town development plan designed to renovate various prominent sites and arteries in Trieste: Cittavecchia, Via Carducci, Piazza Garibaldi and Foro Ulpiano. 29 October: opening of the renovated municipal water cistern in Monrupino. 1935 9 July: 6,000 Triestine children spent their holidays at Fascist summer camps in Banne, Cologna and Isola. W October, domestic economy training courses in Via Cassa di Risparmio 12 were designed to help Fascist women 'meet the requirements of modern society'. 1936 7 March: the town council voted to have Cittavecchia entirely demolished and replaced with a whole new quarter. 23 April: the Accademia d'ltalia conferred prizes on the Triestine

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novelist Pia Rimini and the scholar Augusto Hermet. 25 April: Marta Abba and Memo Benassi starred in Lafiglia dijorio by Gabriele D'Annunzio at Teatro Politeama Rossetti. 24 July: the Triestine Futurist Vladimiro Miletti gave a lecture on 'Orientamenti della musica sincopata' under the auspices of the Fascist Corporation of Authors and Writers. He focused in particular on Louis Armstrong, unrivalled performer of original 'giazzo' music. 28 October: inauguration of the new seat of Liceo-Ginnasio Dante Alighieri opposite the Casa Balilla in Viale Regina Margherita. 2 December: Greta Garbo visited Trieste incognito but was recognized when she received a ticket for speeding.

1937 18January: inauguration of Aquila, the largest oil refinery in the whole Mediterranean area: the regime is attempting to re-launch the moribund Triestine port. 11 August: despite the current campaign designed to increase Trieste's population, a survey of the Central Institute of Statistics revealed that 9,527 people lived on their own in Trieste alone, out of a total population of 357,142 (city plus hinterland). 1938 25January: Alessi defended the Jewish cause on the pages of II Piccolo. 17 May: Antonio Santin was ordained Bishop of Trieste and Capodistria. 18-19 September: Mussolini made a significant visit to Trieste which represented a 'momenta di apogeo del regime'. His speech was laden with anti-Semitic overtones.3 10-11 November: ratification of anti-Semitic laws, backdated to 1 January 1919. 1939 15 March: approx. 500 Jews, Triestine and non-Triestine, fled to the Holy Land on the steamship Palestina. 7 September: the bust of Svevo was removed overnight from the Giardino Pubblico. An anonymous message sent to II Piccolo read: 'lo scrittore e noto soltanto perche ebreo'.

3.

Elio Apih, Trieste (Bari: Laterza, 1988), p. 137.

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A CITY IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

1941 6 April: Italian and German invasion of Yugoslavia. Their initial success brought about the dismemberment of the Unitarian state of the Southern Slavs and the formation of an Independent State of Croatia (NDH) under the Ustashi Ante Pavelic. Slovenia was also dismembered and the various portions allocated to Italy, Germany and Hungary. Italy regained most of Dalmatia and a protectorate on Croatia. Three new Italian municipalities were created: Lubiana, Spalato and Cattaro. 20 May: Pavelic visited Trieste.. 16 December: a Special Tribunal inflicted the death penalty on five Slav anti-fascists and Irredentists, including the Communist leader Pinko Tomasich (b. 1915). The accused were described as 'groviglio immondo di rettili umani, striscianti nelFombra e nel fango, al di qua e al di la del confine'. An upsurge in anti-Semitic violence ran parallel to these events. 1942 20 February: shooting started of the film Alfa Tau, showing Triestine sights such as Barcola, the railway station and various central streets. 7 April: the renowned local comedian Angelo Cecchelin was accused of ridiculing the regime in his irreverent theatre shows and arrested. 30 April: a Centre for the Study of the Jewish Question was founded in Trieste under the auspices of the Minister of Popular Culture (MINCULPOP). 1943 9 September: Nazi occupation of Trieste and inauguration of the 'Adriatisches Kiistenland', directed by Kommissar Friedrich Rainer and policed by the SS General Odil Globocnik. The Germans incorporated all Italian territories and protectorates. Anti-Semitic laws were also imported into the Trieste-Kiistenland area. According to reliable estimates, the Nazis exterminated 2,000 partisans and 2,500 civilians. They also arrested 1,244 civilians, 422 of whom were sent to other concentration camps. In October, a Polizeihaftlager was designated at the Risiera di San Sabba. A number of Italian partisans joined the Yugoslav resistance. 22 October: tragic discovery of 29 corpses in afoiba near Albona: the total number of victims buried there is estimated at 80. Similar discoveries followed in the next few months.

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8 December: Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli performed in an acclaimed piano concert at Teatro Verdi.

1944 11 January: creation of a new police corps: the Civic Guard, 'nel tentative di esaltare il regionalismo e Pautonomismo locali'.4 4 April: the crematorium at Risiera di San Sabba became operative and continued working until 28 April 1945. 3,000-5,000 prisoners were eliminated here, while 20,000 were temporarily held in transit to other German or Polish camps. 10 June: the Anglo-American Allies bombarded Trieste: 378 died, 800 were injured, 112 buildings collapsed, 300 buildings were damaged, 4,000 civilians remained homeless. Several other bombardments followed. 4 August: all men born between 1914 and 1926 were forcibly conscripted into the German Army. 1945 7 February: Communist and philo-Yugoslav partisans (gappisti) attacked and eliminated the headquarters of the first brigade Osoppo, composed of monarchist and Catholic partisans, at the malga di Porzus. 21 February: meeting between General Alexander and Tito to discuss the Triestine issue. 29 April: German troops in Italy officially surrendered. Before leaving, they destroyed the crematorium at Risiera di San Sabba. 1 May: various units of the Yugoslav Fourth Army entered Trieste and occupied the city for the following month and twelve days. 2 May: New Zealander troops entered Trieste. 3 May: the remaining German troops surrendered to the Allies. C A1 momento della liberazione i soldati neozelandesi delPVIII Armata Britannica, entrati a Trieste, trovano in citta solo 400-500 ebrei ridotti in estrema indigenza. II 7 maggio 1945 una quindicina di ebrei, accompagnati da un sergente palestinese e da un corrispondente di guerra canadese, si recano alia Sinagoga e riaprono le porte del Tempio.'5 9 June: the treaty of Belgrade between Tito and Alexander divided the 4. Silva Bon Gherardi, La persecuzione antiebraica a Trieste (1938-1945) (Udine: Del Bianco, 1972), p. 189. 5. Bon Gherardi, La persecuzione, p. 230.

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A CITY IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR contentious areas in Zone A and Zone B. 11-12 June: the Yugoslavs left Trieste and were replaced by Allied troops. Establishment of the 'Morgan Line' and the AMG (Allied Military Government) in Zone A. 13 August: the local branch of the Italian Communist Party and the Slovene Communist Party merged into the Communist Party of the Julian region (PCRG) 24 September: the PCRG officially declared its support for Trieste's annexation by Yugoslavia. The Italian Communist Party could 'understand but not agree' with its policy.

1946 17 February: official foundation of the Circolo della Cultura e delle Arti devoted to promoting Italian culture in the face of political turmoil and division in Trieste. 17 April: director Giani Stuparich delivered the inaugural speech at the Circolo: 'Funzione della cultura e messaggio dell'arte'. 3 July: a council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs approved the treaty of peace and ratified the statute of the Free Territory of Trieste (TLT= 'Territorio Libero di Trieste'). The new boundaries included Trieste and the Istrian coastal strip between Capodistria and Cittanova within the Territory. Pola and much of Venezia Giulia were allocated to Yugoslavia. The TLT, however, never became operative and Trieste's predicament remained frozen in its newly acquired status as 'Cold War issue'. 15 August: Umberto Saba received the prestigious Premio Viareggio for his poetry collected in // Canzoniere. 1947 10 February: the TLT was formalized in the course of the Paris peace talks (articles 3 and 4). In Pola, Maria Pasquinelli assassinated General R.W.L. De Winton in protest against the Allies' decision to allocate most of Istria to Yugoslavia. 15 September: after a Boundary Commission had drawn new frontiers between Italy, Yugoslavia and the TLT, the latter finally came into being. The British and American occupation of Zone A was terminated. 23 September: social and economic uncertainties provoked a number of general strikes paralyzing the city's activities. This year also marked a

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peak of emigration of Italian residents away from Istrian towns reallocated to Yugoslavia: 28,000 residents left Capodistria, Isola, Pirano, Buie, Umago, Cittanova, Fiume, Pisino, Rovigno, Parenzo, Pola, Zara and the islands just off the Dalmatian coast. Many took refuge in Trieste.

1948 20 March: a 'Dichiarazione tripartita' signed by the USA, the UK and France prospected a transfer of the whole TLT to Italy. This proposal was intended to strengthen the position of anti-Communist parties in the imminent general elections in Italy (18 April) and also to send a signal towards the Soviet Union. However, after the victory of the Christian Democrats and after Yugoslavia's excommunication from the Socialist Bloc in the Cominform meeting of June, Trieste and Zone A alone were to remain Italian. 23 August: the Triestine Communist Party split between two new factions: Titoists and Cominformists. The Cominformist Vittorio Vidali was elected party leader. 1949 12 June: administrative elections in Trieste preceded, on 10 June, by a public speech of Italian Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi in Piazza Unita. The Christian Democrats obtained the majority of votes. 18 July: the Christian Democrat Gianni Bartoli was elected mayor of Trieste. 3 October: the film director Luigi Zampa started shooting La linea bianca, later to be entitled Cuori senzafrontiere, on the Karst around Trieste. Anita Pittoni founded the publishing house Lo Zibaldone with the help of Giani Stuparich. 1950 15 January: marriage between the Triestine boxer Tiberio Mitri and former Miss Italy Fulvia Franco. Mitri will fail to gain the title of world champion in a match with Jack La Motta on 12 July. 19 April: publication of results of local elections in Zone B: the SILF (Italo-Slav Popular Front) obtained the majority. 9 June: the Giornale di Trieste published an indignant response to an article in Le Monde which described Trieste as 'city of mud', 'a hotbed of spies', 'a cross between a Spanish town and an Algerian casbah' and

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A CITY IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR the Triestines as 'Slav by race, Italian by language and Austrian by custom'.

1951 14 March: Major General John Winterton replaced Terence Airey at the head of the AMG in Trieste. 27 September: a bomb was detonated in front of the entrance of the seat of the AMG: no casualties were reported but the fagade of the building was seriously damaged. 30 September: Ketty Burba, Miss Trieste 1951, attended the popular local Festa dell'uva. 1952 20-22 March: violent demonstrations against the 'Dichiarazione tripartita' and for a speedy return of Trieste to Italy resulted in 200 casualties. 25 May: local elections and majority to the Christian Democrats. The Communists lost seven seats as a result of their internal divisions. 22 September: Radio Trieste broadcast Umberto Saba's poems read by the author. 11 December: Senator J.F. Kennedy visited Trieste and gathered information towards a favourable resolution of the TLT question. 1953 6 September: Marshall Tito delivered a speech at Okroglica in which he rejected the 'Dichiarazione tripartita', advocating an international future for Trieste and a Yugoslav future for its hinterland. A rail-strike declared by Italian workers in Trieste forced more than 3,000 Slovenes resident in Trieste to walk to the border in order to hear Tito's speech. 8 October: 'Dichiarazione bipartita': the Allies announced their intention to leave Zone A and hand it over to Italy. 21 October: during a press conference Vidali expressed his concern over the large military gatherings in Zone A and Zone B. Only a few days earlier he had declared his intention of defending Trieste in the eventuality of a Yugoslav invasion. 3-6 November: violent public demonstration against the Anglo-American occupants.

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1954 1 February: inauguration of an office handling Triestine applications to emigrate to Australia. The first contingent of 588 emigres left Trieste on 15 March. 5 October, the UN Security Council conferred jurisdiction over the areas West and East of the TLT on Italy and Yugoslavia respectively. The London 'Memorandum of Understanding' assigned to Yugoslavia the Carniola area, Fiume, Istria, the Karst, and a quarter of the city of Gorizia. It assigned to Italy three quarters of Gorizia, a portion of the Karst around Gorizia, Trieste and its province. Zone A (Trieste, Muggia, San Dorligo della Valle, Duino-Aurisina, Sgonico) was handed over to Italy. Zone B (Capodistria, Isola, Pirano, Buie, Cittanova) remained under Yugoslav administration. Both Yugoslavia and Italy formally agreed to acknowledge and protect the Italian and Slovene minorities left under their jurisdictions. 26 October: official termination of the AMG in Trieste. Arrival of first Italian soldiers. 3-4 November: public acclaim received the bersaglieri in Trieste. Italian President Luigi Einaudi and Prime Minister Mario Scelba visited Trieste too. 1955 7 March: council approved erection of a new quarter destined to host refugees from ex-Italian territories of Dalmatia and Istria. 3 April: final demise of the 'Osvobodilna Fronta'. 2 September: maritime connections between Trieste and Istrian coastal towns now under Yugoslavia, such as Umag, Piran and Koper, were reinstated. 1956 5 January: newly published figures reveal that the total number of refugees from the former Zone B to Trieste amounted to 37,000. 19 November: official inauguration of the Biblioteca del Popolo, intended to emulate the success of the many circulating libraries. 1957 16 January: 13 were held in Carceri del Coroneo under arrest for Yugoslav espionage. 28 June: VI Congress of Triestine Communists resulting in a re-

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A CITY IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR alignment with the official position of the PCI. 2 August: more than 5,000 Triestines were now in possession of a TV licence. 8 October: macabre discovery of thousands of corpses in a cave in the area of S. Elia in Basovizza.

1958 12 March: II Piccolo publicized final approval to the 'Legge dei 45 miliardi' designed to fund various public works in Trieste including a motorway connecting the city with Venice, a new quay at the main harbour and a number of new rail connections. 7 April: substantial increment of motor vehicles in Trieste: 36,000 new vehicles were registered in February alone. 1959 8 January: 889 women resident in Trieste (out of a total of 149,600) completed university degrees. 13-15 June: widespread strikes of manual workers, bank clerks and, in July, steel workers. 1960 16 February: police intervened to re-establish order at the Circolo della Cultura e delle Arti where crowds gathered in order to view Federico Fellini's latest film, La dolce vita. 1962 31 March: death of Marcello Dudovich (b. 1878), the Triestine Toulouse-Lautrec'. 1 April: a bomb was detonated in front of the home of anti-Fascist historian Carlo Schiffrer. 31 May: 176 riders took part in the Lambretta rally leaving Trieste in the direction of Istanbul. 12 August: death of architect Max Fabiani (b. 1865). 1963 30 June: official constitution of the region 'a statute speciale' FriuliVenezia Giulia.

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1965 22-23 July: first Slovene representative, the Socialist Dusan Hrescak, was elected to the town council. 1975 W November: the Osimo Treaty between Italy and Yugoslavia officially converted the temporary line established in 1954 into a permanent international boundary: Italy relinquished historical territorial claims in exchange for a less committed pro-Western position in the context of the opposition of power blocs. 1992 15 January: after the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, the Istrian peninsula fell under the jurisdiction of two separate countries: Slovenia and Croatia. A new border was drawn along the Dragogna river. Italy confirmed its intention to continue recognizing the Osimo Treaty. Slovenia and Croatia obtained international recognition. 1994 The neo-Fascist party AN ('Alleanza Nazionale') agitated the spectre of a revision of Italo-Slovenian and Italo-Croatian borders in the context of the Italian general elections: the Osimo Treaty was considered to have lost juridical validity after the Italian ethnic group had been divided between two separate countries. The inclusion of members of AN within the new government worsened relations between Italy and Slovenia. Power of veto was repeatedly used in order to prevent negotiations between Slovenia and the European Community. W October: the minister of foreign affairs Antonio Martino met his Slovenian counterpart in Aquileia in order to draft a mutually acceptable proposal regarding ethnic minorities and the contention as to their confiscated properties. The final declaration was, however, not ratified by Slovenia. 1996 Slovenia agreed to allow non-Slovenes to purchase property in the country in exchange for Italian lifting of the veto blocking Slovenia's entrance to the European Community. 5 November: a bilateral treaty signed by Italy and Croatia eased relations between the two countries.

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Introduction Ci si chiede se dopo tutto, [...] le citta non siano veramente creature sovrannaturali; e se non abbiano in sorte di dover di continue morire in mille modi, per poter di continue rinascere. (Emilio Cecchi, Tre volti di Firenze)

After the First World War, Trieste's leading economic role subsided with the emergence of more pressing ethnic and border problems. The historical decay of the city mirrored on a minor scale that of the AustroHungarian Empire for which the city had acted as a vital outlet to the sea for the two previous centuries.1 As the unity that was Mitteleuropa disappeared, the links with the Balkan-Danube area that sustained Trieste's economic existence were severed. The ex-imperial territory, fragmented, disorganic and no longer able to serve its function as Trieste's market, was perceived as a negative heritage looming large over the city. The decline of Trieste's cosmopolitanism dates from this period. So does the status of the city as representative of a Kulturnation, as it had traditionally been held in the context of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 1918 also marked in Trieste a peak of nostalgia for Italy as an idealized motherland. The local ruling class, moderate and Liberal-nazionale, became increasingly attracted to the nationalistic rhetoric of Italy as a major European power.2 In the course of the 1920s and 1930s, the Fascist phenomenon not merely filled the gap left open by the downfall of the Empire, but also reduced further any residual Triestine cosmopolitanism by enforced Italianization of the most prominent local commercial enterprises, such as the 'Lloyd triestino' and other insurance companies. After the demise of the Fascist regime and, more specifically, after 194748, the ideological configuration became complicated by many factors, including the Cold War and the role of the main ruling party, the Christian 1. See Elio Apih, // ritomo di Giani Stuparich (Florence: Vallecchi, 1988), p. 103. 2. See in particular Claudio Silvestri, Dalla redenzione alfasdsmo: Trieste 1918-1922 (Udine: Del Bianco, 1966), pp. 12 and 45.

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Democrats. However, there was a continuity of nationalist feeling sustained by anger concerning the peace treaty (which refers to Italy as a belligerent power) and the loss of Italy's North African colonies that lasted at least up until the resolution of the Trieste question. After a period in which the downward economic spiral of the city had become increasingly evident, the year 1954 witnessed Trieste's official incorporation within Italy. If history had severed Trieste from its glorious past, an idealized image of this past continued to be cherished and transmitted from one generation to the next, whether this identified with Italy or with the Austro-Hungarian Empire according to different political and cultural allegiances.3 The present study examines the literary identity of Trieste in the twentieth century. Special attention is given to the period between 1918 and 1954 which is generally overlooked in favour of the pre-First World War period. Less consonant to the normative attempt to emphasize Trieste's role within the literary context of a Mitteleuropa, the inter-war period is more complex and controversial for the history of the area. It is also crucial in that it produced literature that was instrumental in defining the whole idea of triestinita (see Chapter 1) and, more generally, of Triestine literature as it is understood today. Discourses on the formation of a local literary identity became questions Triestine writers started asking of themselves consistently precisely during this time. Though concentrating mainly on fiction written or set in the period 1918-1954, a broader stretch of the twentieth century is also necessarily covered here and several pre-1918 and post-1954 writings are discussed in some depth. Artistic production does not exist in a cultural vacuum and a wide and varied selection of texts, from fiction to historiography, from essay to travel book, is essential material when analyzing and assessing the creation and establishment of a determinate identity. This applies to both products of literary merit and to more transient works, discussed here in order to illustrate some crucial points, as is the case with the novels by Daniele Del Giudice and Fulvio Muiesan (see Chapter 1). Despite its frequent reference to history, this is not a historical study: problematic areas of history, culture and nationality are viewed from an essentially literary viewpoint. Attention to a phenomenology of events and ideas is better suited than a perusal of elusive theoretical implications when pursuing the contradictory and centrifugal phantom of a Triestine literary identity. 3. Angelo Ara and Claudio Magris, Trieste: Un'identitd difrontiem (Turin: Einaudi, 1982, 1987), p. 111.

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The originality of the present study lies in its being a unique survey of a large and complex field, usually considered only in the light of a handful of well-known figures. The focus is therefore shifted away from a canonical reassessment of the champions of a modernity relating to the Mitteleuropa, first and foremost the prominent novelist Italo Svevo (1861-1928), in order to concentrate on the role and function, rather than the nature, of Triestine modernist writing.4 Major literary figures are therefore discussed not in terms of the originality and modernity of their work but, for example, in relation to concepts of domesticity and nationality (as in the case of Umberto Saba, examined in relation to the perspective he adopted vis-a-vis Trieste and the role of motherhood in his works, or of Giani Stuparich). The period under scrutiny here coincides largely with the Fascist experience. Local Fascism was described as 'caso anomalo' and Trieste in the 1920s has been described as 'the most Fascist of Italian cities'.5 Fascism enjoyed a mass popular following in Trieste in the 1920s and even today the neo-Fascist party is an influential political presence in the Triestine political scene. It is a mistake to perceive Triestine Fascism and the Fascist experience in Trieste as the historical and cultural equivalent of Fascism in mainland Italy. Features that are particular to the region include the emphasis on issues which, though not necessarily Fascist in origin, became incorporated in the ideology of Fascism after 1919. Italian nationalism and patriotism, particularly crucial in an area that has borders with Central and Eastern European cultures, together with the bitter disappointment over the 'mutilated victory', magnified here because of Trieste's geographical contiguity with the contentious area, are all part of this complex picture. A culture progressively imbued with discourses of local specificity and enclosure was always likely to be attracted to the reactionary elements that played a significant part in the ideology of Fascism. Modernizing elements, which also contributed to the ideology and culture of Fascism, largely remained the prerogative in Trieste of groups of 4. The case of Svevo poses a further problem, and of a different kind, in that he only published one major novel, La cosdenza di Zeno (1923), in the course of the twentieth century while much of his literary production can be ascribed, chronologically and to some extent also culturally, to the nineteenth. 5. Anna Maria Vinci, 'II fascismo di confine', / viaggi di Erodoto 34 (1998), p. 100, 'il caso della nascita e dello sviluppo del movimento fascista a Trieste e giudicato dalla storiografia un "caso anomalo", sia per la precocita con cui si presenta sulla scena sia per la sua rapida capacita di affermazione'. See also Lino Fertile, 'Fascism and Literature', in David Forgacs (ed.), Rethinking Italian Fasdsm: Capitalism, Populism and Culture (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1986), pp. 162-84 (p. 167).

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writers at the margins of the literary establishment, whose recognition was difficult and slow. These groups, conveniently summarized in Chapter 4 as 'women, Jewish and Slovene writers', are the main repository and heirs in Trieste of that cosmopolitan culture which had enriched and diversified the Triestine cultural scene in the nineteenth century. Paradoxically, it is precisely the marginal categories that produce the most modern and most valuable literature within the confines of this marginal culture. It would however be a mistake to extend their modernist shadow over the entire Triestine literary landscape. In the period under scrutiny, much of Triestine literature displayed a capacity to assimilate nationalistic discourses and regurgitate them every so often. The cultural superiority of Italy over the 'barbarism' of the AustroHungarian Empire was frequently proclaimed. The First World War, with its accompanying rhetoric of militarismo and arditismo, not only became an epitome of all wars, but was also mythicized ad nauseam. This war represented a watershed in the context of Trieste's struggle to attain Italian nationality. It also proved frustrating in the insufficient compensation granted to Italy at the end of the conflict. Laments over a 'mutilated victory' combined with the mythicization of the Great War added to its emotional, irrational potential. In this period the defence of italianitd, of a national purity against external, specifically Slav, influences, became a powerfully pressing issue.6 Its heritage was a latent national diffidence, still extant today. A related aspect is the ideology that developed around the concept of woman and in particular of the mother. The Catholic model of mother/ Madonna was combined with discourses of fertility, patriotism and sacrifice at various times. Triestine literature also took it up and articulated it in ways that are occasionally consonant with the maternal rhetoric emphasized by the Fascist regime.7 This is apparent both in the depiction of female characters who tend to assume traits of this kind and in the artistic and

6. Throughout the text I have either used the original term italianitd or I have occasionally translated it as 'Italianness', following the example of Joseph Gary, A Ghost in Trieste (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). 7. Mothers also fought their wars and gave proof of their 'Italianness' supervising and manipulating the network of family relations. As Alberto Traldi put it in Fascism and Fiction: A Survey of Italian Fiction Under Fascism (Metuchen, NY: Scarecrow, 1987), 'Mussolini himself had tied in the myth of the "warrior father" with that of the "childbearing mother" when he stated that "war is the most important event in a man's life, as maternity is in a woman's"' (pp. 66-67).

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national inspiration of Triestine authors which is frequently attributed to their mothers. What emerges here is a direct connection between the maternal thematic and nationalistic discourse, so virulent in the Trieste of the period. As Wilhelm Reich put it, 'in their subjective emotional core the notions of homeland and nation are notions of mother and family. [...] Nationalistic sentiments are the direct continuation of the family tie and are likewise rooted in the fixated tie to the mother.'8 A reading in tandem of the two dimensions of nation and mother sheds new light on why Triestine nationalism is so closely tied to the maternal and why mothers or mother figures are represented so frequently in Triestine literature.9 For instance, Saba's severe and unloving mother is nothing if not Italy itself, guilty of betraying day after day the loyalty of her loving child (Trieste) and of generating, in Enzo Bettiza's words, a typical Triestine 'nevrosi del tradimento'. In Giani Stuparich's writing, mothers are pro-Italian nationalists and so formidable as to surpass their sons in the exercise of patriotism. In the poetry of Lina Galli, Trieste is first identified with the Good Mother, but in view of the loss of much of the border area of Istria, Galli later views Trieste as a Bad Mother. Gary's definition of a 'motherly Trieste' may well be employed here.10 While treating Triestine literature as ortgebunden, Chapter 1 traces the creation of a myth of triestinitd and examines its development. It would be misguided to engage in a battle against myth, in a vain attempt to unmask it and disclose its 'real' identity. The myth of Trieste needs however to be reassessed and its many facets approached from different angles and perspectives. Myth does not exist in a vacuum, and its symbolic impact, applications and resonance in the realm of the social, political and cultural must to some extent be measured. My aim here is to test some of the effects produced by triestinita on local literary production, leaving the sociopolitical reality at the margins. The aim is also to examine what turned Trieste into a literary topos inherited from the Great War generation and carried over to the next. The 'vociani triestini' will be examined for their 8. W. Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (London: Souvenir, 1972), p. 57. 9. Psychoanalytic tools are used sparingly in the present study, namely in those cases where either the irrational nature of the literary factors at play or a direct interest displayed by the authors discussed justifies their employment. Nor has Reichian psychoanalysis been applied more extensively, since it suits more specifically the German Nazi rather than the Italian Fascist case. 10. Gary, A Ghost in Trieste, p. 3.

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responsibility in spreading the culture of the Florentine periodical La Voce in Trieste where it had a formidable impact. Significantly, in Trieste, Dante, Carducci, D'Annunzio but also much of contemporary Italian literary culture were received and assimilated through the filter of La Voce. Despite the attempts of the group of 'giuliano-fiorentini', Trieste never fully managed to shake off its sense of itself as marginal, as a cultural periphery, the Cinderella of Italian literature. Local authors, that is, tended to suffer the national literary tradition rather than manipulate it. A profound autobiographical strain present in Triestine writing also tends to make of Trieste itself an overwhelming, ineluctable antagonist frequently present in the narration. With its cafes, streets and squares, the city emerges as acquiescent subject to the selective memory of its writers. Trieste becomes a landscape of the mind, scrutinized but also shaped by its own literature, a city in which almost every street, embankment or lamppost has become symbolically significant. The autobiographical mode produced a mutual exchange of events and personalities between real life and fiction, blurring the boundaries between the two. Writers wrote about painters or portrayed Trieste in the style of those painters. Sculptors modelled busts of writers and their children while painters drew their portraits. Triestine authors edited, printed, bought and reviewed one another's books and dedicated them to one another. Writers frequently married or eloped with each other's wives and husbands, family members or friends. These features, not unknown in small communities, were however emphasized by the compressed local cultural environment in Trieste. Scholars are confused here by a hall of mirrors of personalities and works reflecting one another's image. As a result of such a composite, complex picture, and following the model of Franco Moretti's geography of literature, Chapter 1 employs a double register: one strand concerned with Trieste in its literature, analyzing Trieste in its anthropomorphic, personified identity; a second one concerned with Trieste and its literature, that is with Triestine literature and the invention of triestinitd.n The two levels intertwine and bring together historiography and history of literary culture with psychoanalysis and literary analysis of symbols. A local cultural specificity, or triestinita, emerges as an 'invented tradition' perpetuated by a nostalgic attention to its own past and identity. Embalmed in repetition, petrified by the backward-looking gaze of a local Medusa, 11. My double focus is analogous, though necessarily narrower in scope, to the one employed by F. Moretti mAtlante del romanzo europeo 1800-1900 (Turin: Einaudi, 1997), p. 5, 'studio dello spazio nella letteratura; oppure della letteratura nello spazio\

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triestinita cannot but turn Trieste into a locus mentalis', a mental landscape, a papier-mache countryside. Trieste is not Leopardi's Recanati, a 'natio borgo selvaggio' to be shunned in search of more appropriate cultural centres. It recalls neither Baudelaire's Paris nor Joyce's Dublin, yet the spell of Trieste is equally powerful, capturing the writer in its maternal embrace to the point of acquiescence if not adoration. This is a city created artificially and sharing with other major ports the 'function as crucible [s] where identities are formed, transformed, and fixed'.12 It is 'nata per sbaglio', and this motto encapsulates, as if in an accidental and yet divine origin of the city, its desire for self-legitimization. Chapter 1, in this respect, paves the way for the three successive chapters. Chapter 2 discusses the literary tradition of the Triestine hinterland and the adjacent Istrian peninsula: the border of a border. The nationalist archetypes of the frontier and particularly the foiba, and its maternal overtones, are discussed here, while the frontier emerges as both an anthropological reality and a military front. Fiction in dialect finds space here in terms of its regional as well as maternal implications. The momentous linguistic impact of poetry in dialect in the area testifies to its function as an acknowledged statement of a peripheral condition, radiography of the writers' desire to root themselves in a local reality. A contemporary 'letteratura friulana' has been excluded because its linguistic and cultural tradition is different from that of Trieste. Chapter 3 focuses specifically on the inter-war period and on the idea of italianitd, propagated and inflated by the Fascist regime with the paraphernalia of the Fiume enterprise and the staging of an ancient Roman tradition. Some resonance in the post-Second World War era is also recorded here. Triestine literature appears to be consistently engaged in a re-creation of its tradition, of its history. Trieste's epic nostalgia and insularity raise questions of cultural delay. Haifa century on, Trieste's linguistic difficulties and newly acquired national status drew local writers to look at pre-unification Italy as its model. Hence the still fresh example of the classics of the Italian language, old and new, such as Dante and Carducci and the interest in Romantic authors originating from Trieste's cult of the Risorgimento. Trieste paradoxically attributed to itself its own ethnicity while also fiercely asserting an Italian one. The psychoanalytical overtones of this form of arch-patriotism are highlighted here in a discussion focusing on the central 12. See Caren Kaplan, Questions of Travel: Postmodern Discourses of Displacement (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), p. 31.

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role acquired by mothers in handing down their pro-Italian patriotism to their sons (with George Mosse, I establish a link between mother and nationalism).13 Formidable mother figures stand behind the italianitd of their children, to the point of justifying intervention in the First World War (emblematic here is the case of the brothers Carlo and Giani Stuparich). In Chapter 4 Triestine writing is measured against the literary production of two categories of authors at the margins of mainstream literature: women and Jews. Relatively emancipated as compared with women in the rest of Italy, the first group partakes of the same cultural attachments as their male counterparts. Indeed, many women writers tended to choose for themselves a male writer as a model they could mirror themselves in, but who also proved their ultimate prison. Others more originally struggled to escape the coils oftriestinitd. Jewish writers constitute the modernist essence of Triestine literature. The Jewish population was traditionally numerically substantial in Trieste as compared with other Italian cities (6.5 per cent of the city's population at the beginning of the twentieth century). During the Fascist period, Jews were compelled to find a modus vivendi between enthusiastic adhesion to the regime and the rejection that followed the promulgation of the antiSemitic laws. Although anti-Semitism was never as virulent in Trieste as in Nazi Germany, the 1938 provisions represented a watershed for writers whose experience of the Holocaust became one of the most formative moments in their literary careers. Triestine Jews were characterized by a high degree of assimilation that made them susceptible to the rhetoric of triestinitd. However, the Jewish contribution to a more original literature is apparent both in the production of the most renowned authors from Trieste (namely Svevo and Saba) and in the partially realized or stifled potential of a number of authors discussed in Chapter 4, such as Giorgio Voghera and Roberto Bazlen. Although some Slovene poetry and drama were produced in Trieste, the present volume is concerned only with literature written in Italian and modelled culturally and linguistically on that of the Italian motherland. A hostility against Eastern European civilizations has been one of the constants of Italian nationalist and Fascist thought, becoming particularly crucial in this geographical corner where Italy borders on a disquieting Slavia. In Trieste the neighbouring Eastern European world was shunned in favour of an attachment to the Western world. This was accompanied, 13. See G.L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe (New York: Fertig, 1985).

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during the period of the Fascist regime, by a constant and violent repression of every cultural manifestation in any language other than Italian, with the purpose of discouraging Slovene writers from the exercise of literature. The final section outlines a history of the Slovene community in Trieste and records some Italian considerations vis-a-vis the Slavs.

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Chapter 1 Literary Trieste, Triestine Literature and Triestinita

Italia non posso essere; Austria non voglio, Trieste con sue provincie, sono. (Motto of Triestine aristocratic family)

A multi-faceted, legendary triestinita emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century and was promoted subsequently by a series of volumes and articles published mainly in Trieste but also elsewhere in Italy.1 This 1. Many of the representative texts mentioned here will be analyzed in some detail in the course of the present and following chapters: Scipio Slataper's Lettere triestine and numerous articles on Trieste and its culture in the periodicals // Palvese and La Voce, posthumously collected and edited by Giani Stuparich in Scritti letterari e critici (Rome: 'Quaderni della Voce', 1920) and Scrittipolitici (Rome: Stock, 1925). Numerous articles on Triestine culture and its representatives were written by Silvio Benco for the local daily // Piccolo and collected in La corsa del tempo (Trieste: Moderna, 1922); Scritti di critica letteraria e figurativa (ed. Oliviero Honore Bianchi, Bruno Maier and Sauro Pesante; Trieste: Lint, 1977); Trieste tra Ottocento e Novecento: Una cittd tra due secoli (Bologna: Boni, 1989). For a selection of articles by Benco on Triestine literati cf also Ernestina Pellegrini, Trieste dentro Trieste: Sessant'anni di storia letteraria triestina attraverso gli scritti di Silvio Benco (18901949) (Florence: Vallecchi, 1985). A complete bibliography of Benco's prolific journalistic output was compiled by Sauro Pesante: Bibliografia degli scritti di Silvio Benco (Trieste: Moderna, 1950). See also G. Stuparich, Trieste nei miei ricordi (Milan: Garzanti, 1948); Alberto Spaini, Autoritratto triestino (Milan: Giordano, 1963); Libero Mazzi, various articles in // Piccolo, later collected in the volumes Queste mie strade (Trieste: Moderna, 1967); Andare a Lussino (Trieste: Moderna, 1968); L'Ulisse di plastica (Trieste: Moderna, 1971); L'anima in disordine (Trieste: Bolaffio, 1977). Mazzi in particular is a champion of the most vacuous and rhetorical approach to a literary triestinita: see Ara and Magris, Trieste; Giorgio Voghera, Gli anni della psicanalisi (Pordenone: Studio Tesi, 1980) and Anni di Trieste (Gorizia: Goriziana, 1989). The latter volume is similar, both in terms of the themes dealt with and the discursive commemorative tone, to G. Stuparich's Trieste nei

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legend' was first imported into Trieste from the Italian mainland: Trieste, Italy's 'unredeemed bride', held sway over the collective imagination of a whole generation of Italians who fought in the First World War. Influential journalists and fashionable literati of the time, such as Giosue Carducci, Alfredo Oriani and Gabriele D'Annunzio, spared neither words nor actions to promote the cause of regaining Trieste for its historical, as well as spiritual, motherland.2 A group of local intellectuals who, in the first two decades of the twentieth century, began both to advocate and to disseminate, from within Trieste itself or from Florence, the idea of Trieste's fundamental difference and particularity with a view to providing Trieste with a literary status and dignity of its own, combined this externally generated 'legend' with pre-existing local discourses. At the same time, if rather paradoxically, the fragmentation of AustriaHungary, in the wake of its defeat in the war, and with dire economic consequences for the once prosperous port of Trieste, appeared to leave untouched the local connection with the rich and supremely civilized literary tradition of Mitteleuropa.3 In fact, it is no accident that the collapse of the Empire appeared to boost rather than diminish Trieste's mediating role between Italy and Mitteleuropa as a way to redress the city's threatened loss of identity and that discourses of triestinita started circulating precisely within those contexts.4 miei ricordi; Giuliana Morandini, Da te lontano: Cultura triestina tra Settecento e Novecento (Trieste: Dedolibri, 1989) is a fragmentary but invaluably rich anthology of literary, commercial, and historico-political writings. 2. Cf. in particular A. Oriani, 'Verita nazionale' in Benito Mussolini (ed.), Fuochi di bivacco (Bologna: Cappelli, 1923); the poems 'Miramar' by G. Carducci and 'La loggia' by G. D'Annunzio, not to mention the active part played by the latter poet in the Fiume enterprise. Carlo Bo defined Trieste, 'uno dei luoghi santi delta letteratura italiana del Novecento', in O.H. Bianchi et al. (eds.), Scrittori triestini del Novecento (Trieste: Lint, 1968), p. vii. 3. Triestine culture has even relatively recently been extolled for its 'specifica funzione [...] di collegamento e sutura tra PItalia e la Mitteleuropa' (see Giorgio Luti, 'Trieste nella cultura fiorentina del secondo dopoguerra', in Le parole e il tempo: Paragrqfi di storia letteraria del Novecento (Florence: Vallecchi, 1987), pp. 159-73 (168). Without trying to deny altogether the impact of the Mitteleuropa influence on the literature of Trieste, unlike Luti I would argue that the function of Trieste as point of mediation between an Italian and an Austro-German culture has in many respects been boosted and used to advertise a 'myth' of local singularity and separateness commonly known as triestinita. 4. This phenomenon can be considered as an 'invention of tradition', following the definition given in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

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Both this Mitteleuropa flair and the Trieste legend widespread in Italy contributed to defining a Triestine literary tradition. Beginning in the interwar period, a growing literary market was progressively made aware of the eccentric position of the city as well as of the pulling power of a handful of highly original local writers of whom at least one, Italo Svevo, would soon enjoy a European reputation. Triestine literature, relying on a core of triestinitd commodified in often ideologically ambiguous ways, quickly achieved a privileged status and position within the Italian literature of the twentieth century. Triestinitd encapsulates, in fact, a series of different dimensions: a set of stylistic, critical features, but also social, political and indeed economic aspects, which all encourage critical treatment of Triestine literature and triestinitd as contiguous areas. After a historical reassessment of Triestine literature in Sections 1 and 2, triestinitd will be analysed in Section 3 with a view to exploding the concept from within by pointing to its endogamous circularity (Section 4), and its autobiographical and insular implications (Section 5). The aim is to disclose some of the mechanisms whereby triestinitd functions. The latter may well be a cultural artefact, but its enormous impact both in Trieste and in the rest of Italy commands consideration and careful reassessment. Triestinitd will be revealed as a key to understanding the extent to which a city's cultural identity relies on its own past, its own historical memory, but also some of the distortions inherent in such artificial, surgical re-creations. In particular triestinitd will be exposed as a mechanism whereby writing, besides providing an aesthetic escape, more crucially presides over the acquisition of an identity—Trieste's own identity.

1. Triestine Literature: A Definition What is Triestine literature? Why has Triestine literature been critically codified and canonized, unlike other regional literatures in Italy? The first definition of a Triestine literature is generally attributed to Pietro Pancrazi who, in a frequently quoted essay dedicated to Giani Stuparich and dated 1934, declared, Mi pare proprio si possa affermare che esiste oggi una letteratura triestina. Non si pecca di rettorica o di regionalismo dicendo che, negli ultimi trent'anni, si e rivelata a Trieste una famiglia di scrittori, poeti e prosatori, diversi, ma in qualche modo consanguinei, intonati tra di loro. [...] Comune a tutti, piu che la tradizione italiana non porti, e in questi scrittori 1'assillo morale. [...] scrittori sempre in fieri, inventori di 'problemi', e romantici a vita. 5 5.

P. Pancrazi, 'Giani Stuparich triestino', in Scrittori d'oggi (Bari: Laterza, 1946), II,

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This definition, which somewhat mystically groups together a series of writers 'diversi ma uguali', took seriously Slataper's call for a Triestine art expressing a specifically Triestine 'type', and had an immense following.6 As such, it can be considered as the official starting point for a critical awareness of a so-called Triestine literature.7 Though disputing Pancrazi's paternity in formulating this definition,8 three decades later Maier adopted it all the same, introducing the historical boundaries 1890-1945 and a list of characteristics for Triestine literature, including'passione', 'umanita', Vico's 'barbarie creatrice', 'spirito romantico', 'ansia spirituale e morale'.9 Maier identified Trieste as 'centro d'irradiazione della letteratura che defmiamo, appunto, triestina', referring, that is, both to the epicentre of a phenomenon spreading beyond the city's boundaries and to the magnetically absorbing power exercised by Trieste over the cultural life of the whole Julian area.10 Triestine literature is regarded as an entirely twentieth-century phenomenon virtually unrelated to a preceding 'Julian literature', whose main purpose was a diligent and belated imitation of Italian literature. Maier identifies its origins, [come iniziativa individuale], con le prime opere narrative dello Svevo, ossia con Una vita e con Senilita, e magari con L'assassinio di via Belpoggio (1890); e come fatto gregale e come consapevolezza di poetica intorno al 1908—1914, allorche i 'triestini' entrano in contatto con i redattori della 'Voce' e vivono per lo piu in Toscana, e lo Slataper scrive // mio Carso, il Saba compone le raccolte Casa e campagna, Trieste e una donna e numerose liriche della Serena disperazione, pp. 103-17 (pp. 103-104); first published in Scrittori italiani del Novecento (Bari: Laterza, 1934), pp. 204-20. 6. See S. Slataper, 'Lettere triestine: La vita dello spirito', in Scritti politici, pp. 22-31 (p. 28): 'Trieste ha un tipo triestino: deve volere un'arte triestina. Che ricrei con la gioia dell'espressione chiara questa convulsa e affannosa vita nostra.' 7. For an extensive bibliography on the definition of Triestine literature, see Bruno Maier, 'Caratteri, motivi, aspetti della letteratura triestina del Novecento', in La letteratura triestina del Novecento (Trieste: Lint, 1969), pp. 7-31 (n. 5, p. 27). For an investigation of this debate, see the detailed outline provided by B. Maier in 'Letteratura triestina: storia di un concetto critico', in Dimensione Trieste: Nuovi saggi sulla letteratura triestina (Milan: Istituto Propaganda Libraria, 1987), pp. 11-20. 8. Maier, Dimensione Trieste, p. 11: 'gia in precedenza si era parlato [...] di una letteratura e cultura triestina'. 9. Maier, 'Caratteri, motivi', pp. 22, 25, 15. See also B. Maier, Scrittori triestini del Novecento (Trieste: Lint, 1968). 10. B. Maier, 'La "tradizione letteraria triestina" del nostro secolo e 1'anteriore "letteratura giuliana"', in La letteratura triestina, pp. 33-55 (p. 33).

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il Giotti pubblica il Piccolo canzoniere in dialetto triestino e il Michelstaedter attende a La persuasione e la rettorica.11

However, though appropriately referring to the crucial encounter with La Voce, and pointing to a handful of obvious common traits, Maier's argument ultimately gathers together a series of unrelated cultural experiences. Most of the authors he quotes, in fact, worked in isolation. Triestine literature, in short, fails to emerge as a coherent whole in which tout se tient, reinforcing the idea that 'la letteratura triestina non esiste'. 'Non esiste [...] una radice unica dalla quale siano germogliati [...] scrittori, narratori e poeti di marca triestina.'12 The most obvious aspect for marking out a specificity, a common cultural horizon, is ethno-geographical: no other Italian region enjoyed such close cultural proximity to the German and Slav cultures well into the twentieth century; nowhere else in Italy was a local cultural identity so frequently threatened by shifting geo-political boundaries. On the other hand, on close examination, the literature of the area is also revealed as overstating its individual marginality in order to maintain those cultural links periodically severed by history.13 Trieste's geographical eccentricity provided a liberating potential that was captured and successfully exploited by many local authors. However, beginning with the inter-war era, this profile of 'novelty' and 'difference' started acquiring overamplified resonance in the context of the progressive formation of a local literary identity. In this respect, Trieste was not different from any other place in seeking its identity in a (re)construction of its past, which became increasingly ahistorical and artificial. A manipulation of its own past reassuringly based on a call to order and tradition, for instance, ensured that Trieste's Austrian past was turned into a mental and cultural straitjacket. What was peculiar to Trieste, however, was that this past conflated indiscriminately and generically various cultural

11. Maier, 'La "tradizione letteraria triestina"', p. 47. 12. Pietro Spirito, 'Trieste: paesaggi della nuova narrativa', in Trieste: paesaggi delta nuova narrativa (Florence: Stazione di Posta; Trieste: Lint, 1997), pp. 7-24 (p. 7). 13. In the 1960s, for instance, the novelist Pier Antonio Quarantotti Gambini, while denying the existence of a Triestine school of writers, still singled out a peculiarity of tone not to be found elsewhere in Italy and attributed his own success as a writer to his own alleged role as transitional author between Italy and a 'serio, elevato e amabile' literary climate of the Mitteleuropa. See P. A. Quarantotti Gambini, 'Intervista a GA Cibotto, Fiera letteraria, 12 November 1964', cit. in Riccardo Scrivano, Pier Antonio Quarantotti Gambini (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1976), pp. 1-3 (p. 3).

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traditions and, particularly, the ones relating to Italy and the Mitteleuropa, without apparent contradiction. This symbolic return to a reinvented past both created and reproduced a closed cultural circuit in Trieste. Local critics granted the status of icons to the most modernist Triestine authors, framing and crystallizing them in a glorious and irretrievable past. Local writers became increasingly attracted to autobiographical and nostalgic-escapist modes. Epics and autobiography, in their turn, joined forces in maintaining the authorial self within the framework of a restricted local perspective. The city itself began to be perceived in terms of literary output, becoming a frame of mind, an unqualified extension of the ego. Hence the frequent use of personification, usually displaying the traits of family figures, particularly mothers, which characterizes many Triestine authors, including its most renowned Umberto Saba, Biagio Marin and Giani Stuparich. On a different scale, but partaking nonetheless of the same phenomenon, a complacent self-absorbed repetition and a conservative attachment to the pre-modern literature of the madrepatria became the distinctive traits of a less valuable local literature.14 A literary example will help exemplify the contradictory and elusive nature of Triestine literature outlined above: Lo stadio di Wimbledon (1983), a novel by Daniele Del Giudice. In the protagonist's quest for Roberto Bazlen, a Triestine intellectual whose influential cultural role was counterbalanced by an equally stern rejection of a literary production of his own, Del Giudice tackles the issue of a Triestine tautology of writing. The mystery of Bazlen's literary aphasia seems to coincide with the very question inherent in literary production, or, in other words, in the 'resistable inevitability' of any act of writing. Writing is an impossible, unwise or useless exercise, yet its inevitability confirms its validating and selfvalidating function, its unique ability to confer an identity. A city whose historical dignity and cultural identity remained unfixed, undecided between the two artificial poles of an Italian Kulturnation on the one hand, and a German-Slav business culture on the other, recognized in its own literature a robust vehicle for the creation and affirmation of a local identity. Establishment of its own literature went side by side with a

14. A mere 'provincia letteraria' had to be overemphasized and turned, as Vanni Scheiwiller has, possibly unironically, suggested, into 'una novella Atene di una novella eta di Pericle'. See V. Scheiwiller, 'Nota dell'editore: La Trieste di Pericle', in Manlio Malabotta, Fieri de nation (Milan: Scheiwiller, 1971), p. 46.

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desperate quest for identity and recognition. Identity both generated and was generated by a local cultural definition. The loss of Austria-Hungary in 1918 inevitably provoked a loss of identity. The ensuing Italian rule, including its Fascist incarnation after 1922, encouraged both Trieste's conservative attachment to a backward cultural tradition, however anachronistic that might be, and a modernity embodied by the Futurist regurgitations of a still relatively young capitalist order. The post-Second World War period saw Trieste at the centre of public attention while the Triestine question was being debated in the political arena, at least until 1975. In the 1980s, official critical consent canonized Trieste's literature mainly on the basis of its specific literary connections with Mitteleuropa. The circle seemed closed. But the diversity and complexity of literature produced in Trieste remained far from being acknowledged.

Shipping Company D. Tripcovich and C. Trieste

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2. The Heritage of the Pre-War Generation The generation of Triestine and Julian writers who sought both cultural escape and legitimation in Florence in the early years of the twentieth century and the emblematic figure of Scipio Slataper (1888-1915) in particular played an instrumental role in the definition of Triestine literature as it is commonly understood. Since the late nineteenth century the prevailing cultural orientation in Trieste combined conservative Romanticism and Positivism. Its Italian inspiration, more specifically aesthetically and ideologically influenced by Carducci, allowed both a backward-looking search for cultural legitimization and the freedom to experiment far and wide.15 The result was often an unmediated combination of asynchronic cultural trends. Local authors typically combined a self-centred autobiographical style with outmoded repackages into the most hackneyed Italian literary tradition: in the words of Ernestina Pellegrini, a 'spiritual encyclopedism'.16 Pellegrini in fact identifies Triestine modernity and singularity with a combination of historically incompatible cultural elements, brought to the surface by the crisis of identity of Trieste's most representative pre-war intellectuals during their Florentine exile. She persuasively points to the Triestines' 'perpetua ricerca archeologica di una continuita storica e culturale, di un ordine epico che si sbriciola, sfugge di mano', which is a cultural trend inaugurated in the prewar period and perpetuated afterwards.17 Is it then true that Trieste had neither a cultural tradition nor a cultural scene at the beginning of the twentieth century, as Slataper provocatively declared in an often quoted 'lettera triestina'?18 The answer must be in the negative, for the city was at that time by no means a cultural desert: quite apart from its rising new intellectual class promoting the (albeit partially 15. See Elio Apih, 'La societa triestina negli anni di Svevo', in Giuseppe Petronio (ed.), // caso Svevo (Palermo: Palumbo, 1988), pp. 9-36 (pp. 23-24): 'forse il linguaggio carducciano accoglieva il sentimentalismo proiettato da una classe sociale anche un po Biedermaier, ancora sufficientemente lontana da gravi contraddizioni'. 16. E. Pellegrini, 'Aspetti della cultura triestina tra Otto e Novecento', // Ponte 4 (1980), pp. 354-71 (p. 358). Autobiography was also a widely practised genre at this time in the guise of an 'esame di coscienza'. A Triestine cultural ambivalence is also discussed by Pellegrini at pp. 357-58. 17. Pellegrini, 'Aspetti della cultura triestina', p. 358. 18. S. Slataper, 'Trieste non ha tradizioni di cultura' (first published in La Voce, 11 February 1909), in Scrittipolitici, pp. 3-7.

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anachronistic) 'spiritual encyclopedism' mentioned above, Trieste could boast, among other events, the first Italian Futurist soiree in 1910, and the first Italian performance of Richard Wagner's Tetralogy at the beginning of the century. Slataper's statement must be read as an attempt to provoke a reaction in an environment at the cultural margins of Italy which he regarded as too steeped in trade and eager to secure a place for itself in the national sphere. The Triestine intellectuals, with Slataper as their spiritual leader, hoped to achieve this integration by diving into the most canonical and idealized Italian cultural tradition, that of Florence. Having 'descended' on Florence almost as a barbarian gasping for civilization, Slataper began to contribute to La Voce in 1909, taking over its editorship in 1910.19 On Slataper's model, a whole generation of young Triestine intellectuals, persuaded in many cases by the contingency of seeking escape routes from compulsory enlistment in the Austrian army, attended university courses in Florence in the same period. They included Giani and Carlo Stuparich, Virgilio Giotti, Biagio Marin, Gemma Harazim, Guido Devescovi, and Alberto Spaini. All of them contributed to the periodical which was devoted to a modernization and Europeanization of what was regarded as a stagnant and rhetorical Italian culture.20 This generation invented Triestine literature away from Trieste, in Florence, which not only acted as a bridge between Trieste and Italy, but could also be instrumental in bringing the Triestines back to their roots.21 Their main aim was to act as catalysts, putting their fellow Triestines in a condition to discover their 'Triestine soul'. In reality, however, despite La Voce's calls for a modernization and internationalization of literary culture, the force at play here was the pre-eminent toscanita of the vociani that triggered an equally powerful idea of local loyalty and singularity in the Triestines. Paradoxically, the deep influx of an insular 'toscanita vociana' undermined the integration with Italy sought by those Triestine intellectuals. As Giani Stuparich commented, recalling Slataper's late-night Florentine readings of excerpts from // mio carso, 'era proprio la scoperta

19. Slataper's calata ('descent') on Florence is a term widely used in his // mio carso. 20. G. Stuparich, for instance, started to contribute to La Voce in 1913 with two articles, concerned with federalism and the Czech and German nations. Stuparich's first monograph, La nazione czeca (Catania: Battiato, 1915) was also published under the auspices of La Voce and dedicated to its mentor Giuseppe Prezzolini. 21. Spaini, another contributor to La Voce, declared in an interview with Giorgio Baroni, 'La Voce servi come ponte fra Trieste e 1'Italia' (G. Baroni, Trieste e 'La Voce' Milan: Istituto Propaganda Libraria, 1975, p. 91).

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poetica della nostra anima triestina. [...] lo sentii, per merito della sua [Slataper's] creazione, nascere il Carso dalla Toscana.'22 This mystical and revolutionary 'discovery' of one's own regional soul appears then, to some extent, as a poetic disguise whereby a constructed toscanita served as a model of an equally contrived triestinita.2^ This becomes very apparent in Slataper's statements aimed at advocating the crucial role of Trieste as 'centro del mondo', historical seat of a conflict between the spirit of an elusive culture and the matter of an all too tangible trade: Trieste e posto di transizione—geografica, storica, di cultura, di commercio— cioe di lotta. Ogni cosa e duplice o triplice a Trieste, cominciando dalla flora e fmendo con 1'etnicita. Finche Trieste non ha coscienza di se, fmche gli slavi parlano italiano e la cultura si compie e si soddisfa nel commercio, nelFinteresse commerciale, la vita e discretamente pacifica. Appena nasce il bisogno d'una cultura disinteressata, la crosta fredda e rotta e si discoprono i dibattiti ansiosi.24

Despite his nineteenth-century education, which enclosed him in an allItalian post-unification cultural framework, Slataper was the first Triestine intellectual to focus on the extremely modern issue of the relationship between economic and cultural activity, a problem which had seldom previously been tackled in such direct and explicit terms.25 At the same time, however, Slataper's emphasis on a 'Triestine issue' appeared artificial in that, as mentioned above, it was constructed from outside, from

22. G. Stuparich, 'Romanticismo e "II notiziario della III armata"', in Trieste nei miei ricordi, pp. 29-39 (pp. 30-32). For Slataper and Stuparich even the Tuscan landscape appeared to bear empathic traits with the Julian one: local landscapes can also act as powerful markers of identity formation. 23. For the 'toscanita vociana', see Walter L. Adamson, Avant-Garde Florence: From Modernism to Fascism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). On the other hand, Giorgio Voghera disputed the notion that La Voce and Triestine culture had anything in common; see Anni di Trieste, p. 92: 'Non so dawero come si faccia a non accorgersi prima facie che la "civilta" triestina [... ] differisce dalla civilta vociana forse altrettanto che da quella azteca. Di vero c'e soltanto che i vociani hanno aiutato molto i triestini.' On the Triestine idealization of Italian culture see also Chapter 3. 24. S. Slataper, 'L'awenire nazionale e politico di Trieste', in Scritti politici, p. 93. 25. Slataper's culture depends on Mazzini, Garibaldi, Cavour, and, from a literary viewpoint, Carducci. See Anco Marzio Mutterle, Scipio Slataper (Milan: Mursia, 1965), p. 9: 'il mito, comune a tutto 1'ambiente, che domina le prime esperienze culturali dello Slataper liceale, e quello di Garibaldi e della letteratura garibaldina'. For Slataper's cultural background, see also Alberto Abruzzese, Svevo, Slataper e Michelstaedter: Lo stile e il viaggio (Venice: Marsilio, 1979), p. 167.

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Florence, using the lever of a pre-existing but equally constructed toscanita. Slataper's argument is ultimately contradictory in denying a 'particolarismo triestino' while at the same time overestimating Trieste's cultural potential. His claim that Trieste lacked a cultural tradition may have been a provocative statement aimed at reinforcing what it overtly purported to deny.26 The reader encounters the same features in Slataper's fictional works. In II mio carso (1912), for instance, 'la storia e vissuta liricamente, percio non compresa'.27 Slataper's attempt to provide a picture of the cultural situation of Trieste avoiding generalizations or rhetorical statements produces here curious mixtures of belated Sturm und Drang Romanticism, Dannunzian vitalismo and mystical statements on the urban modernity of 'la citta' as juxtaposed to the rural lack of self-awareness of the surrounding Karst.28 It is however also important to remember that Slataper's volume was eventually to assume the role of the prototype of a Triestine literature as such. Its publication gave rise, virtually ex novo, to a literary province in Italy and eventually, albeit through different channels, opened the way for Svevo's and Saba's success. The requirement for a return to an idealized past and the growing appeal of a local tradition were even more intensely perceived after the end of the Great War. History severed Trieste from its Austro-Hungarian past, but an idealized image of this past was increasingly being cherished and propagated from one generation to the next.29 After defecting from the Austrian Army to join the Italian troops under false names, Slataper and many Triestine writers of his generation died in battle, and the survivors took on their heritage almost intact.30 Stuparich and other Triestine 26. Slataper's modernity ought to be carefully reconsidered in a historical light: the simultaneously innovative and conservative roles he played make him an extremely complex, controversial and modern figure. 27. Mutterle, Scipio Slataper, p. 77. 28. See Abruzzese, Svevo, Slataper e Michelstaedter, p. 141: 'Slataper [...] partecipa ideologicamente al mito di una societa in ascesa. La macchina, il denaro, la merce, il commercio sono tutte cose fondamentalmente buone, per lo scrittore triestino: ma contemporaneamente sente il peso schiacciante di questa nuova dimensione umana che ha compreso e della quale e entrato a far parte.' 29. After 1936 the Axis equalized Trieste's imperial past to Nazi Germany under a generic 'Germanic' umbrella. Trieste then became a veritable bulwark that, in defending its own past, upheld Fascism's most fateful political and military alliance. 30. Among the dead were Enrico Elia (1891-1915), Carlo Stuparich (1894-1916) and Ruggero Timeus Fauro (1892-1915). For the production of the Triestine 'war poet' Elia see Chapter 3.

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survivors of the First World War demonstrated inability or unwillingness to detach themselves from Florentine pre-war culture and move forward. In particular Stuparich's survival of a First World War catastrophe which killed his younger brother Carlo and his best friend Slataper was bitterly atoned for through his diligent repetition of themes and styles belonging to a world which had come to an end after the war. By doing this Stuparich was not merely paying tribute to fate as the sole representative of a generation of dead writers: he was also contributing to the perpetuation of a local literary repetition, unwittingly reinforcing triestinitd. Giani Stuparich in fact edited various volumes of writings composed by his brother Carlo (Cose e ombre di uno in 1919) and Scipio Slataper (Scritti letterari e critici in 1920; Scritti politici in 1925; Lettere alle amiche in 1931). Colloqui con miofratello (1925) was inspired by the death of his brother Carlo and, in almost all his predominantly autobiographical works, Giani continued revisiting events belonging to his pre-First World War youth and investing their protagonists with a mythical literary aura. It was Stuparich who invented the myth of Slataper's 'tre amiche' and their literary circle.31 He published works by friends or relatives who had died in the First World War and translated memories of family tragedies into literature. It is due in large measure to Stuparich's efforts that a new but already legendary literary province was carried forward and handed down to the post-war generations.

3. The 'Myth of Trieste' and Triestinita From its original function as provider of a coherent framework able to replace the multifarious national allegiances with a powerfully individual and intensely local system of identification, triestinitd has been defined as a local 'superiority complex' inevitably affecting all Triestines, as well as a contributing factor to the city's tragic history.32 Invented in the early years of the twentieth century as both a myth of social consensus and syncretism of cultural and other variables, the notion of triestinitd consolidated itself in subsequent years, enjoying success to the present day.33 Constructed as a 31. For the endogamous circle of Slataper's 'three friends', see Section 4 below. 32. See Diego De Castro, 'Considerazioni sul future di Trieste', in Tito Favaretto and Ettore Greco (eds.), // confine riscoperto: Beni degli esuli, minomnze e cooperazione economica nei rapporti dell'Italia con Slovenia e Croazia (Milan: Angeli, 1997), pp. 154-55. 33. Hobsbawm's idea of an 'invention of tradition' is entirely appropriate to a definition of triestinitd—see Hobsbawm and Ranger (eds.), Invention of Tradition, p. 4:

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tradition of purported continuity with an imaginary Trieste d'antan, the 'myth of Trieste' recreates the city as a metaphor which 'ceases to be pictured as a social environment and is transposed on to an existential plane'.34 At one and the same time conjurers and victims of this tradition, Triestine authors experience their city as an alluring landscape of the mind, a privileged theatre for the enactment of their own autobiographies. As discussed above, in providing the foundation stone for the formation of a critical discourse on Triestine literature, the 'myth of Trieste' proved to be inescapable for local authors. Its paternity can be attributed to a large extent to Scipio Slataper who, through the pages of La Voce, not merely originally brought to the attention of a national readership the presence of a lively, if impaired, cultural periphery on the North-Eastern edge of the Adriatic but also, and more crucially, connoted triestinitd mainly in terms of a Nietzschean rebellious vitalism and pro-Italian nationalism.35 This latter aspect in particular determined the success of this 'myth' in the 1930s, when a reactionary officialdom that had claimed the monopoly on pre-war patriotic and nationalistic discourses was able to respond quite naturally to a nostalgic search for an all-Italian Trieste d'antan. The currency of the Trieste myth increased after the Second World War, with a growing commercial exploitation of Trieste's imperial past and particularly rich literary culture. The development of commercial publishing during 'inventing traditions [...] is essentially a process of formalization and ritualization, characterized by reference to the past, if only by imposing repetition'. For other facets of triestinita, including the economic-financial aspect, see Anna Millo, 'L'ideologia della triestinita', in L'elite del potere a Trieste: Una biografia collettwa 1891-1938 (Milan: Angeli, 1989), pp. 232-44, passim. 34. Edward Timms and David Kelley (eds.), Unreal City: Urban Experience in Modern European Literature and Art (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), p. 4. For Trieste as a place of the spirit, see Stelio Crise, Epiphanies & Padographs: Joyce a Trieste (Milan: All'Insegna del Pesce d'Oro-Scheiwiller, 1967), pp. 74-75: 'Trieste e sempre nascente. Citta allo stato nascente. La viscosita di questo locus spiritualist See also Giuseppe Bottai, 'Trieste una citta al confmo', abc 13 (1954), p. 14; and C. Magris, 'I luoghi della scrittura: Trieste', in Itaca e oltre (Milan: Garzanti, 1982), pp. 278-84 (pp. 281-82), 'Quando ritorno a Trieste, anche dopo pochi giorni [...] mi sembra di uscire da un tempo rettilineo, che procede diritto lasciandosi il passato alle spalle, per rientrare in un tempo discontinue e contraddittorio, che va avanti e indietro ritornando ogni volta su se stesso, sospendendo la successione delle cose e rendendole tutte simultanee'. 'Tutto e presente, aperto e acerbo, [...] tutto coesiste ed e contiguo'. 35. See C. Magris, Microcosmi (Milan: Garzanti, 1997; trans. Iain Halliday, Microcosms [London: Harvill, 1999]), p. 246: 'La triestinita e anche—forse soprattutto—questa vitalita verde liberata, con asprezza e goffaggine adolescente, dal grigio della civilta.'

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and after the Cold War channelled money that was made available locally by the many banks, building societies and insurance companies in Trieste towards cultural investments and in particular the publishing industry. Publishing houses specializing in Triestine literature began promoting literary prizes and cultural institutions devoted to the construction of a Triestine self-legitimization, with the aim of finding a literary market in which the 'product Trieste' could be sold. The authors involved, in most cases unaware of this industrial strategy, contributed to it nonetheless by continuing to produce self-referential and city-centred volumes. The 'myth' is thriving at the present time, pushed forward by local (such as Italo Svevo) and non-local publishers (such as Garzanti, Rusconi, Mondadori), especially since the 1980s when a handful of successful locally inflected works of fiction were launched nationally and internationally, and, in some cases, achieved undisputed best-seller status.36 The 'myth of Trieste' is, for example, prominent in the blurb printed on the back cover of the novel Giorni e avventure di un'infanzia a Trieste (1992) by Fulvio Muiesan. In line with the marketing strategy of the publishers Italo Svevo (whose name alone demonstrates a sound grasp of marketing techniques), the following paragraph captures a number of motifs aimed at the volume's commercial success: In questo spericolato tentative di raggiungere il limite della memoria, sul filo di una lieve ironia [...], riappare sorridente dalPaltra parte del secolo un'infanzia nella Trieste degli Anni Venti: domestico giardino incantato che solo pochi privilegiati, ormai, sono in grado di riconoscere. Un tempo in cui la vita sembrava un giuoco inventato per noi, e la citta, affascinante suscitatrice di quotidiane emozioni, era il mondo.37

One of the key words selected here is 'memoria'. 'Returning to one's roots' is one of the invariables of the construction of traditions, and Muiesan seems to have reached its limit by a display of implausible acrobatic skills. The reference to the author's 'ironia' is an opportune tribute to Svevo, the first Triestine author to have achieved world-wide fame. 'Infanzia' refers to an age-group which always enjoyed a particularly privileged literary position in Trieste, at least since Stuparich and Quarantotti Gambini, and especially when evoked nostalgically.38 'Domestico giardino incantato' also

36. See for instance the international success of the excellent Danubio by C. Magris (Milan: Garzanti, 1986; trans. P. Creagh: Danube [London: Harvill, 1989]). 37. F. Muiesan, Giorni e avventure di un'infanzia a Trieste (Trieste: Italo Svevo, 1992). 38. Stuparich and Quarantotti Gambini are two of the most prominent writers from

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significantly refers to Trieste as a domesticated Eden with the emphasis on 'domestic'. Finally Trieste as 'citta' coinciding with 'mondo' is vaguely identifying Trieste with a container of numerous, at times contradictory experiences: in this respect Trieste is interchangeable with any other city. The ultimate aim is to promote a highly marketable product in which old Trieste may be an earthly paradise remembered by a few (and perhaps not so few if one bears in mind Trieste's large elderly population) but ready to be enjoyed by many. It is not accidental that if one looks closely at the history of the period, Muiesan's reassuring Trieste of the 'Anni Venti' was in fact a not so reassuring Trieste at the onset of the Fascist rule, torn apart by social tensions (the Fiume enterprise, anti-Slav propaganda, the 1920 arson of the 'Hotel Balkan', etc.).39 Muiesan himself emphasizes throughout his novel a strictly individual dimension, a 'domesticity' designed to promote a private and backward Trieste to the detriment of the demonized categories of the 'new' and the 'modern'. He fantasizes about the Trieste 'Anni Venti' as a golden age, the age of his own childhood, 'quel favoloso periodo che un giorno, forse, gli storici chiameranno "il tempo dell'ultima Trieste": la Trieste degli Anni

the area who focused particularly on children and adolescents as protagonists of their fiction. 39. At different literary levels and yet partaking of the same 'operation best-seller Trieste' are C. Magris' Un altro mare (Milan: Garzanti, 1991; trans. M.S. Spurr: A Different Sea [London: Harvill, 1993]) and F. Muiesan's Dentro de mi Trieste (Gorizia: Istituto Giuliano di Storia, Cultura e Documentazione, 1991), a collection of dialect poems filled with nostalgia for the Empire and for a literary Trieste of old times. Another two interesting earlier titles are Ilfantasma di Trieste (Milan: Mondadori, 1985 [1958]) by Enzo Bettiza, and Serbidiola (Trieste: La Cittadelle, 1964) by Lino Carpinteri and Mariano Faraguna. The former novel reads like a patchwork of Triestine figures and events. One finds here a Giani Solospin whose name is reminiscent of Giani Stuparich, a Stefano Nardenk whose name is taken from Oberdan(k) but who is modelled physically and temperamentally on Slataper, a Rico Pfeffer who recalls Bruno Veneziani, brother-in-law of Svevo, a 'balia morlacca' based on Saba's Slovene and Catholic wet-nurse Peppa Sabatz/Gioseffa Gabrovich, and so on. The collection of dialect poems Serbidiola by Carpinteri and Faraguna (the 'Fruttero & Lucentini' of Triestine literature) is a carefully packaged product. Printed on thick sepia-coloured paper, full of pictures testifying to a happy pre-First World War Trieste, the volume looks nostalgically at Hapsburg times. The strictly local intention and circulation of the book is confirmed by the absence of appended glossaries and dictionaries. See also, by the same authors, the poetic pastiche Le maldobrie (Trieste: La Cittadelle, 1966), as well as Manlio Cecovini, Perfavore chiamatemi Von (Trieste: Lint, 1976).

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Venti'.40 This dubious escapism relies on the rhetoric of Trieste's loss of character and historical dignity as juxtaposed with a Trieste of today that is subtly constructed as a champion of decadence. The author's emphatic use of military imagery ('mutilata', 'batteria') is aimed at conveying a millenarian fear of modernity ('mostruosi veicoli', 'triste cemento', 'degno di maggior rispetto') while indulging in a regressive nostalgia which identifies Trieste with a reassuring hearth, an extended home.41 Trieste, in short, risks becoming a private Disneyland of memory. The mythicization of Risorgimento Italy (see Chapter 3), together with the nostalgic evocation of Hapsburg Trieste, are further foundation stones of triestinitd. The two are only apparently mutually exclusive: Trieste's specificity, in similar fashion to other local identities, is constructed on the basis of a number of heterogeneous, even mutually contradictory, features, and continuity with an indiscriminate past is a sine qua non of all constructions of identity. A genuine, 'old-time' Trieste frequently coincides with Austro-Hungarian Trieste. However, this tradition is as indiscriminate and elusive as it could possibly be. Typically, literature dealing with triestinitd associates Trieste with such diverse intellectual positions that even its Hapsburgian back-up occasionally etiolates in a wider spectrum of cultural references and connotations.42 40. Muiesan, Giorni e avventure, pp. 9-10. 41. Muiesan, Giorni e avventure, pp. 9-10: 'Di questa amabile citta, in cui si camminava su candide lastre di pietra rettangolari, una citta senza asfalto e quasi senza automobili [... ] noi conserviamo il piu gradito e sconsolato ricordo, specialmente se la paragoniamo alia citta in cui ci ritroviamo, con il suo canale mutilate, qualche imitazione di grattacielo qua e la, una batteria di decrepite gru defmitivamente ferme, e un superfluo diluvio di automobili tra cui serpeggiano fulmineamente mostruosi veicoli a due ruote cavalcati da rambi periferici, per non parlare del triste cubo di cemento con panchine piazzato in faccia a un Tergesteo, tuttora degno di maggior rispetto.' The models for Muiesan's volume may be Stuparich's Trieste nei miei ricordi and especially Sequenze per Trieste, as made clear by the type of events recalled, and their direct reference to the family circle, in particular to the mother. See for instance p. 39: 'una madre ventitreenne, onnipotente intermediaria tra noi e 1'universo in cui ci troviamo'. 42. The journalist L. Mazzi, to quote only one example, defined Trieste as 'pianeta', 'citta stregante, furiosa e addormentata, vecchia e fantascientifica, nordica e mediterranea' in Queste mie strade, pp. 11 and 59. In L'anima in disordine, pp. 23-31, Trieste becomes 'spina', 'tradimento', 'trincea', 'culla', 'stregoneria', 'compromesso'. Mazzi is aware of the danger inherent in mingling 'letteratura' with 'piagnistei', but cannot all the same help joining in the chorus of hyperbolic lament. His stereotyping does not aim at a better understanding of what he calls 'planet Trieste', but merely at promoting unconditional love: 'capire Trieste, da lontano e da vicino, e difficile. Forse la si puo solo amare, e basta'

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Is triestinita then corollary to a 'municipal' attitude in Trieste?43 This attitude, possibly inevitable in border cities torn apart by a variety of centrifugal forces, is very distant from the idea of a Trieste 'crogiolo di culture', another historical feature which, in its legendary inflection, has also been called upon as a defining feature of triestinita.^ The border was prone to act as a powerful barrier against external influences as well as an open intersection of cultures.45 Intensified by the Fascist regime, which actively encouraged the city's dependance on state subsidies and financial support from outside (assistenzialismo), Trieste's geo-physical barriers were to contribute further to the city's cultural isolation. The best known local authors have by no means been unaware of this (Queste mie strade, p. 79). Another example is in Gianfranco Scialino's preface to Muiesan's Dentro de mi Trieste, pp. 8-9, where Trieste is defined as 'la vita tutta', 'citta sospesa o citta in scolta, in attesa', 'muta', 'avara', 'gia collocata in un altrove'. Scialino is unable to define triestinita more precisely than as a combination of 'inflessione psicologica' and 'tipicita ambientale', bringing the geographical factor up as a crucial ingredient of Trieste's peculiarity. Other examples include Trieste's typical North-Western wind, the bora, in definitions of triestinita; see for instance Spaini, Autoritratto triestino. 43. In the political sphere Trieste's provincialism has been termed municipalismo. This is a long-standing concept: in 1867 the local lawyer Antonio Madonizza deplored and scourged Tegoismo [...] 1'indifferentismo [...il] municipalismo che hanno tanto e sempre nociuto alle nostre condizioni di civilta, di affetto, di progresso' (A. Madonizza, Di me e de'fatti miei [1806-1870] [ed. Giovanni Quarantotti; Trieste: Lo Zibaldone, 1951], p. 134). In more recent times municipalismo has given way to particolarismo, a notion invented by the local historian Fabio Cusin, who refers to the Triestines' historical tendency to confine themselves within their city walls and to overestimate the city's past, 'in generale nella storia di Trieste (e non sappiamo se cio sia propriamente particolare di essa) troviamo che piu volte e in vari sensi la tradizione posteriore ebbe tendenza a soprawalutare i fatti del passato, e la storiografia stessa risenti di conseguenza gli effetti di tale soprawalutazione' (F. Cusin, Appunti alia storia di Trieste [Udine: Del Bianco, 1983], p. 183). 44. As cogently demonstrated by Apih in // ritorno di Giani Stuparich, p. 75: 'Trieste fu frequentemente crogiolo mancato. Era citta [...] caratterizzata da una forte esigenza di controllo sulla circolazione delle idee, esplicata non solo al livello generale del potere politico, ma ancor piu nelle diverse culture e subculture che compongono [...] il disomogeneo tessuto sociale. La formazione di circuiti di discorso chiusi e spesso articolati su loci comunes favorisce 1'incomprensione del nuovo e delPintelligente.' 45. See Ara and Magris, Trieste, p. Ill: 'Una citta che avrebbe potuto essere una porta, e per altri aspetti lo era stata, diventa [...] un baluardo'. See also Edgardo Bartoli and Nicoletta Brunner, Nonna Trieste (Trieste: Modiano, 1970), p. 208; they argue that Trieste's provincialism conforms to the 'significato vero del provincialismo, come adesione alia propria individuality e implicita rinuncia alle infinite possibilita di mutarsi'.

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enclosure, but their occasional attempts to overcome it tended to promote further isolation, as in the case of Umberto Saba and his programme of imitation of an outmoded literary tradition. While their goal may have been an original, all-Triestine, contribution to national literature, their achievement nonetheless reinforced a reassuring microcosm feeding on its own past. Factual authenticity, a fresh local realism upheld at the level of intention, relied increasingly on second-hand literary models, 'una realta sentita raccontare', at the level of production and outcome, as is particularly the case with less renowned authors.46 Trieste's much proclaimed 'diversita' equally feeds into discourses of triestinita. Superficially striving for the new but in reality clinging to the old, Trieste is often portrayed as an enclave of privilege for the rich local cultural soil plunging its roots into a glorious past and local aura. By way of the 'superiority complex' identified by De Castro, triestinita aims at becoming an ethnicity in its own right, 'Noi triestini (triestini triestini, eh!) siamo nella nazione italiana una collettivita etnica che presenta caratteristiche sue proprie, di schietta impronta locale.'47 However, as Giraldi and others demonstrate, the components of this ethnicity boil down to the Triestine dialect and some generic sense of humour and good manners towards foreigners.48 Such specificity ultimately risks taking on ambiguous ideological overtones: not only does it permit the stretching of the concept to suit the most varied and often imprecise positions; it also encourages and justifies the equivocal manipulation of the city's literary past to serve any purpose, including propaganda, if necessary.49 In conclusion, though often vacuous 46. L. Mazzi, 'Trieste nella bottiglia', in L'UHsse diplastica, p. 87. 47. Fabio Giraldi, 'Quando Trieste cantava', in Quel giorno... (Trieste: Italo Svevo, 1972), p. 205. 48. Even an author of greater repute such as Giani Stuparich could do no better than refer to Trieste's 'peculiar' temperament, which he is unable to qualify: 'Caratterizzare Trieste non e facile. [...] "Citta assurda", "citta inquieta", "citta difficile", "citta contraddittoria": possiamo di volta in volta qualificarla, ma cosi notiamo qualche suo aspetto, non la cogliamo nel suo carattere essenziale'. 'I due poli del suo [Trieste's] carattere inquieto sono quelli dell'allegria e del dramma: un'allegria tutta propria che attinge vitalita da un dramma, e un dramma che si svincola e si libera in allegria'—see G. Stuparich, Trieste, citta allegra e drammatica', Quaderni A.C.I. 8 (1952), pp. 51-75 (pp. 56 and 58). The subtly rhetorical tone of his article, balancing Trieste's 'difficult fate' between the two poles of'vita comoda' and 'tormento e [...] sangue' (p. 72), confirms that recourse is being made to a concept which is difficult to pin down. 49. Ferruccio Foelkel, a contemporary local author, is another advocate of the

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and rhetorical, triestinitd must command attention on account of its selfvalidating and self-assertive function in the context of local and indeed Italian culture. However, its ambiguities are to be read in less rhetorical and less self-glorifying terms than has been attempted so far. In particular, the cross-fertilization triestinitd both entailed and encouraged gave rise to one of the most distinctive literary phenomena in Trieste: an in-feeding, endogamous culture. 4. Literary Endogamy The term 'endogamy' was first employed in relation to Triestine literature by Claudio Magris, who borrowed it from anthropological research. In a literary context, it is applied to a series of extremely close, incestual crosslinks and references shared by a number of writers who knew one another, wrote and published criticism on each other's works, promoted one another, socialized and married almost tribally within their own closed circle.50 Its literary consequence is a high degree of contamination between fiction and reality whereby fictional characters are consistently and overtly modelled on real-life, historical individuals. In other words, literary production is frequently determined, or at least deeply affected, by a tight network of mutual socialization, inspiration, criticism and promotion, as testified by the high number of (auto)biographical works produced locally. Giani Stuparich, one of the most representative authors, filled most of his production in fiction with characters modelled on his friends or members of his family, frequently in explicit or barely, disguised terms. The collection of stories Donne nella vita di Stefano Premuda (1932) features a series of women known by the writer: Tina, protagonist of 'Addio alia Tina', modelled on Pina Marini, wife of the poet and Stuparich's good friend Biagio Marin; Anna, protagonist of'La casa tranquilla', modelled on Stuparich's wife Elody Oblath, whose gypsy-like appearance and attempted suicide are faithfully recorded, and others. In Stuparich's later novel Ritorneranno (1941) each single character has an almost undisguised his-

equation triestinitd = diversita. Foelkel goes as far as claiming that 'tutti i letterati nostri [...] non intesero o fraintesero il significato, il senso, il valore della condizione storica, psicologica e spirituale della triestinita'. See F. Foelkel, 'Di Saba e della triestinita', in Stelio Mattioni, et at., II Punto su Saba: Atti del Convegno Internazionale (Trieste 25-27 marzo 1984) (Trieste: Lint, 1985), pp. 248-71 (p. 263). Foelkel himself does not attempt to explain the phenomenon other than in vague terms. 50. Cf. Ara and Magris, Trieste, p. 98.

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torical equivalent: Carolina and Domenico Vidali are Gisella Gentilli and Marco Stuparich, parents of the author; Angela is Stuparich's sister Bianca; Sandro and Marco Vidali are the author and his brother Carlo respectively; Alberto Vidali is Giuseppe Garrone (one of the brothers Garrone, heroes of the First World War); Cesare Alessandri is Scipio Slataper; Leila is Gigetta Carniel; Albina is Nerina Slataper; Allegra is Elody Oblath, etc., down to the Slovene maid of the house, Berta.51 Through his marriage to Oblath, Stuparich himself became part of Slataper's endogamous circle of three female friends: Anna Pulitzer (Gioietta), Luisa Carniel (Gigetta), and Elody Oblath, all seemingly revolving satellite-like around the much admired Slataper. This close friendship is articulated in the collection of letters Lettere alle amiche: Scipio's Wertherian passion for Anna, who later committed suicide in order to live up to her own romantic myth, his mature affection for the reassuringly maternal Gigetta, later to become his wife, and finally Elody's unrequited stormy passion for him, atoned for after Slataper's death in her marriage to his spiritual and literary heir Giani Stuparich.52 The extent of this endogamous network is evident in Stuparich's scrupulous editorship of works by his late brother Carlo and friend Scipio, a labour of love which compensated him with the title of 'sacerdote della memoria' while affording him a somewhat vicarious existence and literary legitimation constructed upon the posthumous memory of the two fellow fighters.53 The Viennese custom of intellectual gatherings at the coffee house was 51. Another emblematic example is the short story 'Ragazze romantiche', in the collection L'altm riva (Milan: Garzanti, 1944), featuring a Franco who replicates Slataper, a Diloe, whose name is an easy anagram for Elody (Oblath), a Mirella (Anna Pulitzer) and an Anna (Luisa Carniel). 52. See also Chapter 4. Other examples of cross-family links in Triestine literary circles include Giorgio Fano's marriage to a sister of the poet Virgilio Giotti, the relationship entertained by Saba's daughter Linuccia with the elusive intellectual Roberto Bazlen, Anita Pittoni's liaison with Giani Stuparich, Guido Voghera's 'marriage' to Paola Fano, and so on. 53. See Pellegrini, Trieste dentro Trieste, pp. 202-203. Other examples include Giotti's editorship of Saba's Ammonizione e altre poesie in 1932 and, in 1935, Giotti's attempt to publish the collection of war poems by Camber Barni, La Bujfa, banned by the Fascist authorities who prevented the book from being distributed. This editorship was resumed in 1950 by Saba; cf. Anna Modena, Virgilio Giotti (Pordenone: Studio Tesi, 1992), p. 62. See also U. Saba, 'Di questo libro e di un altro mondo', in G. Camber Barni, La Bujfa (Milan: Mondadori, 1950).

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eagerly adopted in Trieste. Manuscripts were composed, read aloud and exchanged at the tables of well-known Triestine coffee houses. The Gaffe" Garibaldi, for example, hosted meetings of Bazlen, Dionisio Romanellis, Giotti, the painters Emerico Schiffrer and Vittorio Bolaffio, and the sculptor Ruggero Rovan, the 'six readers' to whom Saba dedicated the first edition of his Canzoniere (1921). Stuparich was also part of the group and, after his own literary success, Svevo joined them too in 1925.54 After Svevo's death (1928) and Rovan's move to Rome, and out of solidarity towards a waiter who was unfairly sacked by the owner of the Gaffe Garibaldi, the group moved in 1931 to the Gaffe Nazionale just opposite. A further division brought Saba, his daughter Linuccia, Giotti and Quarantotti Gambini to gather daily at 1 pm at Latteria Walter in front of Saba's antiquarian bookshop. Occasionally Stuparich, Giotti and Quarantotti Gambini met at the Gaffe della Stazione, and, during the Second World War, on Thursdays, from 7 to 8 pm, at a little cafe in Via Ginnastica (Stuparich, Giotti, Quarantotti Gambini, Umbro Apollonio, Linuccia Saba, Pittoni). After the war, Pittoni welcomed her literary friends in her house in Via Cassa di Risparmio on Saturday afternoons, organizing exhibitions, poetry readings and concerts. In Pittoni's drawing room a younger generation of Triestine authors enjoyed the opportunity to mingle with the older one, receiving their teaching and encouragement.55 Mutual and at times malicious criticism was also practised by Triestine authors on various occasions. In 1927 Italo Svevo lauded Stuparich's book Colloqui con miofratello (1925) in a letter to the French editor and translator Benjamin Cremieux.56 Stuparich returned Svevo's favour by drawing a portrait of the latter in his Giochi difisionomie (1942) and identifying him completely with his writings.57 Despite his personal dislike of Saba, Svevo 54. Cf. Mattioni, Storia di Umberto Saba, p. 86; Modena, Virgilio Giotti, p. 33; Letizia Svevo Fonda Savio and Bruno Maier (eds.), Iconografia sveviana: Scritti parole e immagini della vitaprivata di Italo Svevo (Pordenone: Studio Tesi, 1981), p. 133. 55. This 'young' generation included Luciano Budigna, Tullio Kezich, S. Mattioni, Sergio Miniussi, Claudio Grisancich, Renzo Rosso and Diego Valeri. Even today much Triestine intelligentsia, and in particular Magris' circle, still meet at the coffee house San Marco. 56. I. Svevo, Carteggio con James Joyce, Valery Larbaud, Benjamin Cremieux, Marie Anne Comnene, Eugenic Montale, Valeric Jahier (ed. B. Maier; Varese: Dall'Oglio, 1978), p. 85: 'conobbi [...] Stuparich, triestino amico di Slataper, che pubblico Colloqui con miofratello, un libro che pare un tempio'. 57. G. Stuparich, Giochi difisionomie (Milan: Garzanti, rev. edn, 1946 [1942]), p. 223.

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recommended him to Eugenio Montale in 1926.58 Svevo's dislike was requited by Saba, who patently underestimated Svevo's value in an illjudged page of his Storia e cronistoria del Canzoniere,59 Endogamy equally meant mutual inspiration, a feature frequently sustaining the whole output of other authors, mainly through borrowing themes, styles and tones, within a circularity of shared interests and feelings, if with results of variable quality. One of the most recent and revealing cases is Claudio Magris' Un altro mare (1991), a novel significantly constructed around the motto, 'le parole possono solo echeggiare altre parole, non la vita'.60 This is not the disillusioned statement of a postmodern cynic, but a key to the essence of the volume, constructed as an echo chamber of 'other words' which have flowed from the pen of Magris' Triestine precursors. In this intriguing construction composed of index cards, the author engages in an endogamous play of strictly local references, cross-quoting and consciously embracing a circular triestinitd. The poet Saba inspired the Triestine Futurist Vladimiro Miletti, who in the 1930s published poems combining Futurism and Ermetismo (Ungaretti in particular). In Orme d'impulsi the poem 'Ricordo del padre' is heavily laden with references to Stuparich's story 'II ritorno del padre' (1935): Miletti autobiographically recalls his father who was a strong and god-like sailor and smelled 'di tabacco e di salso'.61 The dialect poet Giotti had Saba On p. 227 Stuparich promotes the idea of Svevo as a typical nineteenth-century writer. It is interesting that Svevo's modernity passed essentially unnoticed in Trieste, where the merits of 'signer Schmitz' to the community were first and foremost those of a successful businessman. Similarly recalled by Stuparich in Giochi di jisionomie are Camber Barni, Bolaffio, Rovan, Eugenio Mascherini, and others. 58. Svevo, Carteggio, pp. 195-96: 'Non giudichi malamente il Saba. E un candido. Voglio dire che con grande candidezza rivela la sua ambizione e anche la sua vanita. Talvolta m'interessa. Tutte le volte che non m'indigna. Posso indurre Saba d'inviarle le sue ultime cose? lo lo vedo meno che posso perche m'inquieta.' 59. U. Saba, 'Conclusione', in Storia e cronistoria del Canzoniere, in Prose (ed. L. Saba; Milan: Mondadori, 1964), p. 653: 'Saba tocco spesso quella perfezione formale (nel senso piu italiano della parola) alia quale lo Svevo (grande violinista che suonava su un violino che non era il suo: avrebbe dovuto scrivere in tedesco) non giunse mai.' For the relationship between Svevo and Saba see also K. Pizzi, 'Uno nessuno e centomila: Italo Svevo in the Perception of Other Triestine Writers', in Elizabeth Schachter (ed.), The Svevo Papers (Centre for Italian Studies Occasional Papers, 3; London: UCL, 1999), pp. 125-40. 60. Magris, Un altro mare, p. 66. 61. V. Miletti, 'Ricordo del padre', part of Orme neigiorni, in Orme d'impulsi (Trieste: Societa Artistico Letteraria, 1967), p. 84; cf with G. Stuparich, 'II ritorno del padre', in Nuovi racconti (Milan: Garzanti, 1947 [1935]). For Miletti see also Chapter 3.

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and Stuparich in mind while writing his collection of poems in Italian Liriche e idilli (1931). Section II, 'Liriche e idilli' (1920-1924), is filled with airy descriptions of Sabian birds and features the poem 'La capra alFalbero' dealing with a goat, a Sabian animal par excellence.62 The unusual subject choice of a goat, the vivid realism of the poem, the prose-like lyricism are also essentially all Saba-like.63 The novelist Renzo Rosso started his writing career as an imitator of Svevo. Quarantotti Gambini derived his interest in the adolescent world from Stuparich while accepting all along literary suggestions from Saba.64 Ennio Emili was an imitator of Slataper and almost rewrote, as late as 196369, Slataper's // mio carso. His Frammenti are Slataperian in their imagery, emotional devotion to 'Nature', and topography, down to the use of punctuation (an unnatural frequency of exclamation marks and dashes interspersed in the text): Che desiderio di tornare in Carso dal vecchio Dino nella casa buona e a tarda notte con la bora a falce correre urlando sulla strada bianca sotto 1'occhio tremendo della luna—che desiderio di saltare i fossi a braccia alzate e con la bocca aperta

[...]

che desiderio di volare lungo le ghiaie bianche della Val Rosandra a salti •i65 enormi!

62. Cf. V. Giotti, Liriche e idilli (Florence: Solaria, 1931), p. 56: 'stretta al legno, con teso il collo in alto/ a una ciocca, tra il verde, sopra i suoi/ pie biforcuti, con le sue pendenti/ rosee poppe, con gli occhi suoi di bragia', with U. Saba, 'La capra', in Casa e campagna (1909-1910), in // Canzoniere (Turin: Einaudi, 5th edn, 1978 [1921]), p. 68. 63. Saba also inspired Sergio Brossi, whose collection Net buio delle notti cites Saba's 'L'uomo' in its very title. Brossi repeats Saba's unconventional rhyme Togliatti'/ 'matti' with a rhyme of similar tone: 'Vidali'/ 'internazionali': 'Tempi eroici della guerra di Spagna / sei nelle brigate internazionali / con Vittorio Vidali/ ed io dall'altra parte': Cf. with S. Brossi, 'Nel buio delle notti', in Net buio delle notti (Trieste: Societa Artistico Letteraria, 1966), p. 24. U. Saba, 'A un giovane comunista', in 'Died poesie per un canarino', in Quasi un racconto (1951), in // Canzoniere, p. 559: 'Ma tu pensi: I poeti sono matti./ Guardi appena; Io trovi stupidino./ Ti piace piu Togliatti'; cf with Palmiro Togliatti was the leader of the Italian Communist Party. Vittorio Vidali (1900-83) was the leader of the Communist Party in Trieste in the 1950s. 64. See in particular their epistolary exchange collected in U. Saba and P.A. Quarantotti Gambini, // vecchio e il giovane: Carteggio 1930-1957 (ed. L. Saba; Milan: Mondadori, 1965). 65. E. Emili, Misteri (Trieste: Societa Artistico Letteraria, 1972), p. 45. Slataper is the main source of inspiration for Emili, who also occasionally imitates Saba.

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Each of the quoted authors is compulsively promoting, imitating, doing favours for and demanding favours from other Triestine writers, handing down triestinita to the younger generations.66 While feeding all the time on the innumerable versions of Trieste that have been portrayed in its literature in the course of at least one century, triestinita has continued playing a key role in the mapping out of a mental geography of the city. Circumscribed within unsurmountable city walls by way of their endogamous games, local authors have been challenged to take a position, to view themselves as insiders or outsiders, as active viewers of a Trieste / Tu or as passive subjects of a Trieste / Ego. 5. Imagined Topographies Geography is possibly the most obvious coordinate instrumental in the definition of triestinita. The degree and nature of personification and psycho-geographic manipulation to which Trieste is subjected by some of its writers are analyzed here with a view to emphasizing their significance for a definition of the literary identity of the city. Personification, commonly attributed by nationalistic thought to nations, is in Triestine literature applied first and foremost to the city.67 Trieste is often invested with personal status in literary representations while the term citta, when applied to Trieste, appears in many titles, frequently capitalized like a proper name. In its spatial dimension, the city is often depicted as being rigidly geometrical (see for instance the alienating geometricity of the Borgo Teresiano frequently extended to the whole city), framed within strict boundaries acting as a prison for memory, enclosing everything and everyone in a little theatre of memory. Trieste is a landscape of the mind, shaped urbanistically by its literature, a sound-chamber of memory in which streets, corners, squares and banks have all acquired symbolic meanings or have invariably been juxtaposed to their numerous literary equivalents.68 66. Perhaps the most extreme case of endogamy is illustrated by the 'literary incest' underlying the anonymous novel // segreto (Turin: Einaudi, 1961) discussed in Chapter 4. See also K. Pizzi, 'Guido and Giorgio Voghera: A Secret Anxiety of Influence', Italian Studies 50 (1995), pp. 112-22. 67. Mattioni, Storia di Umberto Saba, p. 145: 'L'eterna abitudine dei triestini di contrapporre se stessi alia propria citta, quasi fosse una persona con la quale si sta ma non si vorrebbe.' The term 'nationalistic' is employed here in the sociological sense, i.e. 'belief in the nation'. 68. In this respect Trieste partakes of a literary symbolization in the same way as, say, Prague, Paris or Dublin.

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Trieste's particular position was well represented, for instance, in film form. A few Triestine sights are visible in Lo scalo legnami a Trieste, directed in 1897 by the Triestine entrepreneur Enrico Pegan, and in Lo squartatore della canzonettista Lucienne Fabry (1908) by Salvatore Spina, who, in 1906, founded Salone Excelsior, the first cinema in Trieste. However, it was not until the post-war period and the advent of Neorealism that the city acquired some weight in the moving image industry. One of the very first Neorealist films, Alfa Tau! (1942; directed by Francesco De Robertis), was partially filmed in Trieste. Significantly, Trieste becomes a metonym here for a generic metropolis, a highly modern and crowded urban space. La statua vivente (1942; directed by Camillo Mastroainque), a psychological drama clustered around the theme of the double, inaugurates the cinematic fortune of local themes, such as the quest for identity and the mystery of woman, pursued in the coil of streets and back-alleys in Trieste.69 In the climate of the post-war period, when the Triestine question became a fixture of both national and international news, the city acquired a prominent role in the collective imagination in its capacity as both frontier and (military) front. Trieste was then regarded as a microcosm populated with spies, clandestines, exiles, a varied human landscape surviving in a climate of ambushes, betrayals and unrestrained passions and violence. Between 1948 and 1954 a number of films focused their attention on Trieste, including the British spy-story Sleeping-Car to Trieste (1948; directed by John Paddy Carstairs), Clandestino a Trieste (1951; directed by Guido Salvini), La ragazza di Trieste (1951; directed by Bernard Borderie) and the Hollywood-produced Diplomatic Courier (1952; directed by Henry Hathaway), modelled on the celebrated Casablanca (1943) and The Third Man (1949) in its ambiguous fascination with a contended and cosmopolitan Casablanca-like Trieste. The most renowned Triestine film of the period is Cuori senza frontiere (1949), directed by Luigi Zampa and set entirely in a Karst village. A newly established borderline here not merely splits the village in two, but is also instrumental in dividing the two lovers (Gina Lollobrigida and Raf Vallone) who carry opposite national and ethnic allegiances. Despite the predominance of the romantic theme, the film highlights a series of pressing territorial concerns clustered around a farmer (Cesco Baseggio) who is suddenly deprived of his land and forced to move to Yugoslavia in order to find work. 69. The film featured the Fascist divo Fosco Giachetti and the Triestine actress Laura Solari. It also included a small role for the popular Triestine comedian Angelo Cecchelin (1894-1964).

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There followed a series of patriotic films advocating Trieste's unquestioned italianitd, including Trieste mia! (1952; directed by Mario Costa), shot almost entirely in the streets of Trieste; Ombre su Trieste (1952; directed by Nerino Florio Bianchi), financed by Triestine capital and featuring two local actors: former 'Miss Trieste' Ketty Burba and Elio Ardan (later to achieve some notoriety in Cinecitta under the name Livio Lorenzon); La campana di San Giusto (1954), and Trieste cantico d'amore (1954). While providing some interesting angles, these films are however patriotic in a generic sense and engage very seldom in anti-Slav polemics or otherwise politically committed discourses. Consonant with historical developments, as well as with the place and role already played by the city in the collective imagination of Italians, the vision of Trieste provided by the medium of cinema implicitly confirms Edward Timms' argument that in modern literature, 'there is no longer any position outside the city from which it can be viewed as a coherent whole. The poet, novelist or painter is trapped within the turmoil of the metropolis.'70 Although Trieste can be defined as a metropolis in a limited sense only, Timms seems to suggest that two mutually exclusive attitudes confront cities in literature: a position inside, linked to experiencing the city 'from within'; on the other, a city situated outside, as somewhat detached or even alienated from the writer's ego.71 These two positions represent a viable prima facie classification of all modernist writing from Trieste. The city in its literature has in fact either been conflated with the author's own ego, or viewed as a second party and identified with a tu. In the first category, writers have aimed at erasing any possible screens between themselves and the urban space, superimposing, inscribing their selves into the city. These include authors of the inter-war generation such as Slataper and Giotti, as well as contempory writers such as Giuliana Morandini, Rosso and Mattioni (the latter analysed below). All of them welcome the autobiographical genre as a means of enclosing, almost burying themselves further within their city walls. In reflecting a

70. E. Timms, 'Unreal City—Theme and Variations', in Timms and Kelley (eds.), UHHM/City, pp. 1-12 (p. 3). 71. A metropolis is by definition large, industrial and contains a complex variety of social forces. For a definition, see Raymond Williams, The Metropolis and the Emergence of Modernism', in Timms and Kelley (eds.), Unreal City, pp. 13-24. Trieste hardly fits Williams' definition. Trieste's aspiration to 'modernity' and to the status of a metropolis, perhaps expressed most forcefully by the Futurists, was limited by the city's post-war progressive decline and decay.

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difficulty in severing their umbilical cord with Trieste, their predilection for autobiography articulates clearly their diffidence for alien horizons. A collusion between a disquieting, yet alluring literary geometricity of Trieste and the author's ego provides the underlying narrative structure for the novel II richiamo diAlma by Stelio Mattioni (b. 1921). First published in 1980 and set in Trieste at an unspecified time in the twentieth century, the novel constructs the city on the basis of a detailed topography while at the same time maintaining a series of symbolic escape routes open throughout.72 Rare hints of a plausible chronology allow the characters, whose numbers are kept to an absolute minimum, to interact awkwardly among themselves and within a historical vacuum. Their background is a Trieste reduced to a metaphysical space, populated by a few objects of a highly abstract or symbolic nature, 'come in un'atmosfera rarefatta, fra case e persone ch'erano concrete si, ma rese sfocate da un miraggio'.73 The first-person narrator, whose name is never disclosed but who clearly functions in symbiosis with the author, roams the streets of Trieste in search of a mysterious young woman called Alma who, like a Svevian character, is elusively found and rapidly lost in the streets, squares, corners and back-alleys of this metaphysical Trieste, and displays a predilection for the sordid, semi-abandoned area of Cittavecchia.74 The narrative structure relies on a subtle dialectic of 'open/closed' and 'up/down' which not only maintains the high narrative tension throughout, but also manages to highlight the psycho-geographical verticality of the city, emphasized by the frequent marches up steep roads or down sloping alleys which exhaust the protagonist in his pursuit of the elusive Alma. The novel opens in Aunt Francesca's little flat, 4 un appartamentino al primo piano di una casa in Via del Monte' and more precisely in her large garden, 'un giardino aperto e chiuso nello stesso tempo'. Circumstantial topographic information ('Dalla via del Monte si scende per la Scala dei Giganti, sovrastante all'imbocco della galleria che trafora il colle di San 72. G. Manacorda, 'II richiamo della regione. Un po' di Mitteleuropa', in Letteratura italiana d'oggi: 1965-1985 (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1987), pp. 300-14 (p. 313): 'la narrativa di Stelio Mattioni ha un andamento duplice tra il realistico e il simbolico, tra la topografia triestina e le vie di fuga'. 73. S. Mattioni, // richiamo di Alma (Milan: Adelphi, 1980), p. 76. The ambience is reminiscent of the paintings by Giorgio de Chirico. 74. Mattioni was greatly influenced by the Triestine intellectual Roberto Bazlen, his first literary sponsor, as well as possibly the first propagator of the doctrines of Carl Gustav Jung in Italy. In many respects, Mattioni's Alma is a transparent metaphor for Jung'sAnima. On Bazlen, see also Chapter 4.

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Giusto, luogo della mia storia') indicates that from this garden, 'si udiva la citta, ma come da dietro un muro, cosi che si poteva immaginarla come si voleva, e anche che non esistesse, che fosse il lontano rumore della risacca o il proprio sangue che scorre nelle vene'.75 Complete absorption in or an urge towards identification with Trieste, a desire to experience the city inside himself like his own blood running through his veins, are recurrent states of mind for the protagonist. Exploring the city's labyrinthine topography coincides with being swallowed within the vortex of its back streets, and voluntarily losing himself in a pattern of sinister symbolism compounded with complicated literary references. The resulting estrangement of the protagonist-writer is all-encompassing: he cannot help walking the familiar streets of his home town as if for the first time, 'quasi fosse appunto una citta in cui mi trovassi per la prima volta'. 'Nel mio girovagare [...] facevo sempre le stesse strade. Non staro a dire quali, [...] ma erano tutte intorno ad un punto, il punto in cui dovevo incontrarla. Quasi un labirinto.'76 His very essence, his mother-town, his Anima, are located in the centre of a series of concentric circles, ultimately in his own psyche, whence this whole labyrinthine itinerary springs and where in the end it must return. He pursues a tour of his own mind disguised as a tour of Trieste.77 Not accidentally, Alma's mystery will never be fully revealed. After allusively showing her naked body against a landscape steeped in literary references, Alma is never to be seen again by the protagonist, who attempts to sever his umbilical cord with Trieste by moving away and relinquishing self-knowledge.78 However, a hint to Alma's significance is provided at the end of the novel, and precisely at the stage where the protagonist, minutes 75. Mattioni, // richiamo, pp. 11-12. See also p. 34, 'Invece di scendere completamente la via Montecucco, per poi salire la via San Giusto—come prima—percorrevo la via Segantini, scendendo la scala a fianco della casa in cui abito lo scrittore Joyce e, attraverso la via Bramante, affrontavo 1'erta. [...] Arrivato in cima a via Risorta, senza voltarmi imboccavo la via Tommaso Grossi; e [...] continuando verso la fontana a obelisco, lo spiazzo della chiesa dei frati e la via del Monte, che in quel punto e in discesa, procedevo quasi a ruzzoloni, tutto infervorato, visto che in fondo c'era la Scala dei Giganti, dove 1'avevo vista la prima volta, e... non si sapeva mai.' 76. Mattioni, // richiamo, pp. 25-26. 77. Mattioni, // richiamo, p. 101: 'dalla comparsa di Alma, sentivo un bisogno di muovermi mai provato. [...] Non avevo pace, giravo in continuazione, come intorno a me stesso, senza una meta.' 78. In this episode Alma is modelled very closely on Stuparich's Maddalena, protagonist of the novel Simone (see Chapter 3). References from classical mythology and Dante abound here.

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before leaving the city, discovers on a last walk to Orto Lapidario an ancient tombstone on which the carved name of Alma precedes the motto 'Se ti ami, amami', whose circularity and self-referentiality shed further light on the collusion of AlmaMm'wd with the city. Trieste's Orto Lapidario is located at the top of the hill of San Giusto, one of the highest spots of Trieste. From this height and among the ruins and the intoxicating perfume of grass and soil, Mattioni is able to contemplate Trieste as the custodian of a sterile archaeology of memory: Vedevo la citta dall'alto [...] quasi fosse la continuazione del luogo in cui mi trovavo, disseminato di emblemi e di tavole di pietra, sulle quali in vario modo erano incisi dei messaggi, delle date e dei nomi che [...] invece di comunicare qualcosa, ingeneravano solo monotonia, una scansione anonima e senza fine. 79

At this highly charged juncture for the protagonist/author's psychological history, the city is called upon as provider of self, as well as its wider historical and literary status. Trieste itself becomes a graveyard in which the debris of memory, a useless repetition of dead themes of strictly local interest, prevail like the dusty tombstones that fill the Orto Lapidario, but in which original products are not unknown: 'Eppure, nell'aria c'era un pulsare di vita che mi incitava a muovermi e a respirare profondamente.'80 While the urban geometry in // richiamo di Alma qualifies a stifling perimetric space hampering the ego's wish to open up to the new, yet the city's topography becomes in itself a primary and ineluctable condition of this search for self. Trieste demands complete identification, its grip functions as a binding moral imperative which the protagonist is unable to avert in order to both construct and preserve identity and individuality. The conflation between city and individual has reached its peak in Mattioni: it is not by accident that the protagonist is eventually compelled to leave Trieste once his Anima is, albeit partially, revealed to him: self-awareness must be expiated in the loneliness of an ostracism that knows no return. At the opposite end of the spectrum, in the work of, among others, Saba, Benco, Marin, Quarantotti Gambini and Stuparich, Trieste becomes an open theatre for vagrant moods in which authors prefer to portray themselves along shores and harbours, in streets and cafes. These writers share a sense of out-of-doorness, of mingling and taking part in Triestine street

79. Mattioni, // richiamo, p. 154. 80. Mattioni, // richiamo, p. 154.

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life.81 Here, the dialectic city-author acquires a more historically defined specificity which tends to shun the turmoil of the unconscious mind. Trieste remains at its authors' disposal to be contemplated and easily recreated in the process: the city acquires a collective, architectural spatiality which represents 'the Other'. This second literary attitude is well illustrated by Umberto Saba (18831957). In Saba, Trieste 'ha 1'aria di [...] avere [...] una consistenza sua propria al di la dei sentiment! del poeta, di presentarsi [...] con una condizione esistenziale anzitutto sua prima che dell'autore'.82 Although there cannot be such a thing as a literary city provided with an independent 'existential condition', Russo correctly acknowledges Saba's attempt to invest Trieste with an ontological dimension of its own and to detach himself from it in order to adjust his observation. Trieste becomes here a concrete urban space, densely populated with human collectivities who work, talk, eat: a city full of people, animals and objects.83 Saba's itinerary runs along many of the old Triestine streets, granting them literary dignity: Via del Lazzaretto Vecchio, Via della Pieta, Via del Monte, Via Domenico Rossetti. Every one of these streets has since become part of the literary 81. See G. Stuparich, 'Le mie rive', II Tempo, 4 January 1961, n.p.: 'Da tantissimi anni in ogni stagione io passeggio spesso sulle rive della mia citta.' 'Col senso di non cercarvi nulla, all'infuori di quel benessere intessuto d'amica accoglienza e di mite riposo, che ci danno le cose molto vissute e ormai tranquille nel cuore e nella memoria.' For Saba, see Giordano Castellani, 'Trieste nella poesia di Saba: da Trieste e una donna a Coi miei oahi', in Rosita Tordi (ed.), Umberto Saba, Trieste e la cultura mitteleuropea: Atti del convegno (Roma, 28 e 30 marzo 1984) (Vicenza: Fondazione Mondadori, 1986), pp. 49-61 (p. 54): 'II poeta [Saba] e un osservatore: si direbbe che la sua vita si consumi tutta nelle passeggiate, per lo piu solitarie, che lo portano nei borghi della costa o, seguendo le erte costruite, in cima ai poggi dell'entroterra.' 82. Fabio Russo, 'Saba, le cose, 1'eco, 1'ombra', in Mattioni, et al., II Punto su Saba, pp. 346-59 (p. 347). See also p. 348: Tatteggiamento di Saba verso la sua citta [...] appare quello [...] verso un oggetto a volte personificato, insomma verso un Altro, tramite il procedimento del Riflesso, dello stato d'animo rinviato'. 'Si stabilisce allora quel rapporto particolare di Saba con Trieste come con un alter ego [... ] che somiglia e vuol essere pure diverse, indipendente.' Trieste is the 'Other', the antagonist for the poet-protagonist: she is personified, anthropomorphized. Cf. also Ettore Caccia, Lettura e storia di Saba (Milan: Bietti, 1967), p. 83, Trieste diviene un suo [Saba's] "personaggio"'. And p. 84: Trieste si offre come tramite storico a certo atteggiamento psicologico del poeta, e come oggetto reale al suo sguardo e alia sua commozione' (my emphasis). 83. E. Pellegrini, Le citta interiori in scrittori triestini di ieri e di oggi (Bergamo: Moretti & Vitali, 1995), p. 57: Trieste e per Saba [...] una citta concreta, particolare, piena di persone che lavorano, parlano, mangiano, e piena di animali e di oggetti particolari'.

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imagination of the city and has been evoked numerous times in both poetry and prose.84 The poet found most of his inspiration in his home town and displayed an obsessive interest in it, referring very frequently to Trieste in his letters, poems and prose works, loathing it as a resident but also missing it terribly when staying elsewhere.85 Saba's attempt to analyze his intricate, contradictory relationship with Trieste constitutes the major part of a wellknown speech delivered at Trieste's Circolo della Cultura e delle Arti in 1953: devo premettere che io non sono stato un poeta triestino, ma un poeta e uno scrittore italiano, nato, nel 1883, in quella grande citta italiana che e Trieste. 84. U. Saba, 'Tre vie' and 'Via della Pieta' in Trieste e una donna, in // Canzoniere, pp. 89-91. Via Rossetti is adopted as a sentimental stage for childhood memories by the dialect poet Manlio Malabotta in 'Via Rosseti Numero Vinti', in No ghe xe sol (Milan: All'Insegna del Pesce d'Oro-Scheiwiller, 1977), p. 63: 'In via Rosseti / gavevo le fmestre / che dava sul cortil / de la Ginastica, / vivo come 'na piaza'. Cf. also B. Marin, 'La via Rossetti', in Strade e rive di Trieste (Milan: All'Insegna del Pesce d'Oro-Scheiwiller, 1986), pp. 83-87 (p. 85): 'allora, prima che perdesse, come dice Saba, "il suo colore", quando era ancora aperta al verde da ambo i lati, con le sue poche ville sperse, con i suoi "filari di alberelli", [Via Domenico Rossetti] deve essere stata deliziosa e gioiosa come una fanciulla appena adolescente. E stata la citta che, crescendo, ne ha poi manomessa la grazia.' And 'Via del Monte', pp. 175-79 (p. 179): 'forse nell'aspetto della Via del Monte, anche attuale, c'e un riflesso del suo originario destino di essere stata la via delle forche, la via dei cimiteri, e anche di una sinagoga'. Saba's antiquarian bookshop, 'Libreria Antica e Moderna' in Via San Nicolo, has also been featured in various literary works: see for instance F. Muiesan, 'Le lire del poeta', in Dentro de mi Trieste, featuring the author's adolescence and involving Saba, revered 'Maestro' in his antiquarian bookshop. 85. In 1922 Trieste was for Saba 'la citta piu povera e piu squallida d'ltalia': letter to Aldo Fortuna, in U. Saba, La spada d'amore: Lettere scelte 1902—1957 (ed. Aldo Marcovecchio; Milan: Mondadori, 1983), p. 83. In 1945, 'mia adorata citta', and, in 1946, 'maledetta', 'ultima speranza di un rifugio per gli ultimi anni della mia vita': quoted by Giorgio Baroni in Umberto Saba e dintorni: Appunti per una storia della letteratura giuliana (Milan: Istituto Propaganda Libraria, 1984), pp. 93-94; 'la succursale dell'inferno': letter to his wife Lina from Milan, in U. Saba, Atroce paese che amo: Lettere famigliari (1945-1953) (ed. Gianfranca Lavezzi and Rossana Saccani; Milan: Bompiani, 1987), p. 47; and, finally, 'Trieste poi e lo schifo che sai': letter to Quarantotti Gambini, in U. Saba and PA. Quarantotti Gambini, // vecchio e il giomne, p. 39. In 1947 Trieste is described as, 'citta bastarda': letter to Quarantoti Gambini, in Saba and Quarantotti Gambini, // vecchio e il giovane, p. 106; in 1948, 'citta infernale che ha perduto ogni ragione di esistere', 'campo di concentramento': quoted by G. Baroni, Umberto Saba e dintorni, p. 94; and 'inabitabile': Saba, Atroce paese che amo, p. 107. In 1953 Trieste is 'inquieta' and 'per me piena di spettri': letter to Nora Baldi, in U. Saba, Lettere a un'amica: Settantacinque lettere a Nora Baldi (Turin: Einaudi, 1966), p. 37; and p. 46: Trieste (casa-bottega) e per me 1'inferno'.

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A CITY IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR Non so nemmeno se—dal punto di vista dell'igiene dell'anima—sia stato, per me, un bene nascere, con un temperamento classico, in una citta romantica; e con un carattere (come quello di tutti i deboli) idillico, in una citta drammatica. Fu un bene (credo) per la mia poesia, che si alimento anche di quel contrasto, e un male per la mia—diciamo cosi—felicita di vivere... Comunque, il mondo io 1'ho guardato da Trieste. II suo paesaggio, materiale e spirituale, e presente in molte mie poesie e prose, pure in quelle—e sono la grande maggioranza—che parlano di tutt'altro, e di Trieste non fanno nemmeno il nome. Nella poesia, poco piu che infantile, che s'intitola 'Ammonizione', e colla quale s'apre il Canzoniere si legge, proprio al suo inizio, questa strofetta: Che fai net del sereno / bet nuvoio rosato, / acceso e vagheggiato I dall'aurora del di? Cieli sereni e nuvolette rosate alPalba ce ne sono in altre citta e paesi del mondo; eppure si 'sente' che quel cielo e proprio il cielo particolare a Trieste, ed e il cielo che sta sopra a tutte le mie poesie [...]. Pensiamo un momento Recanati e Leopardi. A parte il fatto che il Leopardi non amava—almeno a parole—Recanati, e che io Trieste 1'ho amata; tutto il paesaggio e, probabilmente, tutto il modo di essere del Leopardi era senza alcun pregiudizio della sua universalita, recanatese. Del resto, io non credo ne alle parole ne alle opere degli uomini che non hanno le radici profondamente radicate nella loro terra: sono sempre opere e parole campate in aria. Q/-

Saba enumerates here a few cogent, if not always entirely consistent, positions. While denying his triestinita in favour of his italianitd in his premises, by the end he reconfirms his unquestioned umbilical link with his home town. His account accepts the stereotype of Trieste as a romantic-dramatic city which is one of the ingredients of the 'myth of Trieste', but Saba eagerly dissociates himself from it on grounds of temperament and personality. While contradictorily denying his status as a Triestine poet, he demonstrates all the while how Trieste and Trieste alone could have shaped the aesthetic and geographical contours of his poetry. A psychological sine qua non of his poetry, the city and its sights are here instrumental in helping the poet strike a balance between his inner and outer landscapes. For Saba Trieste is in fact not the 'ville tentaculaire' of Modernism or the dynamic metropolis of Futurism, but a sort of 'urban georgic'.87 Its key features are its insularity, its domestic air of cosy backwardness which allows him to live and write poetry ignoring contemporary movements and schools and, if necessary, espouse asynchronic cultural traditions. Significantly Saba always writes about a pre-war Trieste, Trieste the way it was 86. U. Saba, 'Trieste come la vide, un tempo, Saba', in Altri ricordi—Altri mcconti 19137957, in Prose, pp. 213-14. 87. Russo, 'Saba, le cose, 1'eco', p. 347.

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before the destruction of its old area, Cittavecchia; a city, that is, not yet fallen prey to the devil of modernity. Saba's Trieste harbours much folklore within it, such as the venderigole on Ponte Rosso or the/nYo/m.88 The interiorization of the landscape, typical of some early poems later omitted from // Canzoniere, progressively disappears and in Trieste e una donna (1910-1912) Trieste takes on the role of a character in its own right: the poet's own antagonist.89 In the poem Trieste' the city is likened to a 'ragazzaccio aspro e vorace'; in 'Citta vecchia' the poet is contemplating, while walking, various human types redolent of Trieste's old area: Qui prostituta e marinaio, il vecchio / che bestemmia, la femmina che bega, / il dragone che siede alia bottega / del friggitore, / la tumultuante giovane QO impazzita / d'amore, / sono tutte creature della vita / e del dolore.

It is, in short, correct to argue that in Saba's poetry, 'la natura esteriore non venga mai assorbita dal soggetto, tanto che non si attua mai la fusione [...] di soggetto e oggetto'.91 Saba's ambivalence towards the city, present since the very early stages of his poetic career, results in many instances in a contiguity of Trieste with female, specifically maternal, figures.92 The experimental poems to Bianca, later excluded from his Canzoniere, clearly testify to this. In Saba the maternal complex is so overwhelming that poetry itself can be viewed as a second, good mother, able to fill the emotional gaps left by the poet's reallife bad mother, Rachele Poli.93 In Pellegrini's words, 'la poesia di Saba [...] 88. The venderigole were farmers, usually Slovene women from the inland Karst, who used to advertise and sell their groceries on Ponte Rosso. Thefritolin is a Triestine 'fishand-chip' shop. 89. The poems in question are: 'Cosi passo i miei giorni', 'La Cappella', 'Addio alia spiaggia', 'A Lina', 'Intermezzo', 'Passeggiando la riviera di Sant'Andrea', in Saba, // Canzoniere. Of the collection Trieste e una donna Saba wrote in Storia e cronistoria del Canzoniere, in Prose, pp. 444-45, 'Se Trieste e una donna fosse dawero un romanzetto, sarebbe un romanzetto a tre personaggi. [...] Il secondo sarebbe allora Trieste. [...] II terzo ed ultimo sarebbe il poeta stesso, benche poco egli ci dica di se.' 90. Saba, Trieste e una donna, in // Canzoniere, pp. 79 and 81. Saba's position is contemplative in Cose leggere e vaganti (1920) (see in particular 'Mezzogiorno d'inverno'), Parole (1933-34) ('Distacco', 'Inverno', 'Sobborgo'), Ultime cose (1935-43) ('Dall'erta', 'Anche un fiato di vento', 'Porto'). In 1944, 'Avevo' features a Trieste contemplated with marked possessiveness: Trieste is for the poet very much his own, 'mia'. 91. Pellegrini, Le citta interiori, p. 55. 92. See Caccia, Lettura e storia, p. 82. 93. Cf. Mario Lavagetto, La gallina di Saba (Turin: Einaudi, 1989), pp. 162-63. In a note found by his daughter, Saba wrote, 'II poeta e ramalgama di un bambino e di un

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narra la lotta del poeta contro il complesso materno', with immediate effects on his representations of his home town. Trieste then becomes for Saba a uterine city constructed in the specular image of a city within a city: the legendary Jewish ghetto of Cittavecchia.94 In the poem 'A mamma', part of the collection Poesie delVadolescenza e giovanili (1900-1907), Saba draws a reverent, if at times naive, portrait of his mother as dominating his wider psychological and poetic horizons.95 In Versi militari (1908), 'II bersaglio' deals with a soldier's target, identifiable with the poet's own mother. Hitting the target means getting rid of mother and any frightening shadow she may cast on her son's life.96 'A mia moglie', in Casa e campagna (1909-1910), is a hymn to Saba's wife Lina, celebrated in her closeness to various animals.97 Lina is regarded as an archetype of allencompassing maternity and, on Saba's own admission, the poem reads like one a child could have written for his own mother if he were allowed to marry her.98 In 'A mia moglie', Lina, like Petrarch's Laura, is ultimately 'la madre', a disquieting figure who looms large as the city tends to disappear, as if Lina and Trieste were antithetical and the one could only survive to the detriment of the other.99 uomo riuniti in una sola persona. [...] E il bambino chiede la madre': quoted in L. Saba, 'Saba, mio padre', Galleria 1.2 (1960), pp. 10-12 (p. 12). Giacomo Debenedetti described Saba's poetics as an attempt to 'distruggere la severita della propria madre personale, la madre dalla marmorea faccia che 1'ha deluso come figlio, e trovare altrove le necessarie dolcezze di un grembo materno'. See G. Debenedetti, 'Saba e il grembo della poesia', Galleria 1-2 (1960), pp. 114-21 (p. 116). 94. Pellegrini, Le cittd interiori, p. 55. See also p. 67. 95. Lavagetto, Lagallina, p. 137: 'lafiguradella madre si staglia [...] come un oroscopo che accompagna la vicenda del protagonista, come un idolo silenzioso ed enigmatico che si innalza sulla prima raccolta: e la poesia votiva che le viene dedicata e, nel Canzoniere, il primo tentativo, il piu goffo, per arrivare a un conciliazione, per liberarsi dal peso di una colpevole ostilita'. 96. Lavagetto, Lagallina, p. 157. 97. U. Saba, 'A mia moglie', in Casa e campagna (1909-1910), in // Canzoniere, pp. 6466, 'Tu sei come una giovane, / una bianca pollastra.' 'Tu sei come una gravida / giovenca; / libera ancora e senza / gravezza, anzi festosa; / che, se la lisci, il collo / volge, ove tinge un rosa / tenero la sua carne. / Se 1'incontri e muggire / 1'odi, tanto e quel suono / lamentoso, che 1'erba / strappi, per farle un dono. / E cosi che il mio dono / t'offro quando sei triste. / Tu sei come una lunga / cagna, che sempre tanta / dolcezza ha negli occhi, / e ferocia nel cuore.' 'Tu sei come la pavida / coniglia. Tu sei come la rondine / che torna in primavera.' 'Tu sei come la prowida / formica.' 'E cosi nella pecchia / ti ritrovo, ed in tutte / le femmine di tutti / i sereni animali / che awicinano a Dio; / e in nessun'altra donna'. 98. Lavagetto, Lagallina, p. 89. 99. Lavagetto, Lagallina, p. 95.

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It is, however, especially in Trieste e una donna that Saba explores various possibilities of the triad woman-mother-Trieste. Trieste', 'Verso casa', 'Citta vecchia', 'Dopo la tristezza', Tre vie', 'Via della Pieta', Tl fanciullo appassionato', Tl molo', 'Piu soli', all deal with Trieste and with a Trieste antagonized as a mother symbol. Trieste portrayed as a mother who needs protection is also a metaphor extensively used by Saba in later poems, such as 'Cinque poesie per il gioco del calcio', in Parole (1933-1934).100 Saba's prose works are also constrained within the triangle poet-motherTrieste: the short story 'La gallina' is possibly its most cogent instance. The unequivocally autobiographical nature of this story is clarified by Saba from the very beginning. Odone's obsessional attachment to a beautiful hen can therefore be interpreted as Saba's own emotional substitute of a female partner.101 But 'la bella gallina, al posto della femmina umana, e la scelta reiterata della madre', and the sacrifice of the sacred hen, enacted by Odone's mother, violates a symbolic taboo and drives Odone to the

100. In Storia e cronistoria del Canzoniere, pp. 590-91, Saba wrote a commentary on his poem 'Squadra paesana' illustrating this point: 'Dice [Saba] ai rosso alabardati: "Giovani siete, per la madre vivi / vi porta il vento a sua difesa. Varna / anche per questo il poeta, dagli altri / diversamente—ugualmente commosso". (La madre sarebbe la citta nativa, della quale i giocatori di "Squadra paesana" portavano remblema sulla maglia, e che simbolicamente difendevano nella rete).' The Trieste defended on the pitch by the players of the Triestina football club is for Saba a mother symbol. A similar thematic is employed by Stuparich (see Chapter 3). 101. Saba, Prose, pp. 96-97: 'Odone Guasti, che doveva piu tardi, e sotto altro nome, acquistarsi una qualche fama nella repubblica delle lettere, era, a non ancora quindici anni, praticante di ufficio e di magazzino presso una piccola ditta di agrumi a Trieste. [...] [Odone] viveva solo con sua madre, povera e infelicissima donna, la quale poco comprendeva della vita fuori della necessita che il suo unico figlio stesse fisicamente bene, e guadagnasse presto e abbastanza per togliere lei e lui all'umiliante dipendenza dai parenti'. Walking by the poultry market in Ponte Rosso Odone is struck by one particularly beautiful hen and decides to purchase it and keep it as a pet (p. 10): 'Se poi qualcuno gli [to Odone] avesse chiesto perche tanto gli piaceva quello stupido volatile, a cui gli altri non associano che idee gastronomiche, il fanciullo non avrebbe forse saputo cosa rispondere. A molti infatti che allora glielo chiesero, egli non rispose che vent'anni dopo, con una lirica, poco, anche quella, capita.' All aspects mentioned above qualify Odone and Saba as one person (the latter reference is a defence of his poem 'A mia moglie', in which the 'voice' of hens is also described as attractively 'querulous' and in which, above all, hens epitomize the universal greatness of Saba's wife Lina). The only detail which differentiates Odone Guasti from Umberto Saba is the poet's apprenticeship in a firm importing Hungarian flour rather than (as in Odone's case) citrus fruits.

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extremes of Oedipal despair.102 Hens and other animals become then instrumental in all of Saba's works to limit the damage provoked by the loss of the mother which marks the beginning of adulthood.103 Finally, the posthumously published novel Ernesto (1975) not merely outlines the autobiographical homosexual initiation of the eponymous protagonist, but is above all 'un \ibrofemminile, materno' pervaded by Ernesto/ Umberto's morbidly intense affection for his mother and his fostermother, 'la baia'.104 In Ernesto, language itself takes on a maternal function: the use of dialect in direct speech has powerful maternal connotations, especially evident in Ernesto's mother's refusal to talk in dialect with her son except in her rarest epiphanies of affection. Dialect is the most spontaneous vehicle for expressing affection and Ernesto's mother is extremely careful lest she should spoil her son with love.105 If language is the vehicle of love, real communication is only to be made in Triestine dialect, while neutral Italian can only convey the cold detachment of a mother 'dalla marmorea faccia'. However, Trieste remains throughout Saba's poetry mainly a background for the poet's Oedipal struggles. Actual anthropomorphization is rare and the dominant note is 'Trieste e una donna' rather than 'Trieste e una donna'. The pervasive dimension is domesticity, and it is precisely

102. Lavagetto, La gallina, pp. 82 and 84: 'il delitto perpetrate dalla signora Rachele significa eliminazione deH'immagine paterna e quindi dell'ostacolo principale che si frappone all'incesto. Di qui 1'orrore sacro, il sentimento dell'impurita e della violenza che nasce nel ragazzo.' 103. This is particularly true of the collection II piccolo Berto (1929-1931) and various other stories, such as 'Ferruccio' (inAltri ricordi—Altri raaonti, in Prose). 104. Baia, in Triestine dialect = balia, wet-nurse. It is debated whether the homosexual episode recounted in Ernesto involved the adolescent Saba himself or rather the son of a friend (cf. Mattioni, Storia di Umberto Saba). This detail, however, is irrelevant to the powerfully autobiographical aura of the novel. 105. Ernesto's Oedipal tension is highlighted also by Walter Pedulla: 'L'amore per la balia, per la prostituta e per la madre stanno al centre del romanzo: Ernesto e tutto impregnate di maternita e Saba se ne sente incinto.' See W. Pedulla, 'II giallo linguistico di Saba narratore', in Lo schiaffo di Svevo: Giochi, fantasie, figure del Novecento italiano (Milan: Camunia, 1990), pp. 287-308 (p. 302). Saba's obsessive love for his foster-mother has a parallel in Enzo Bettiza's novel II fantasma di Trieste (1958). The real mother of the protagonist Daniele Solospin is his beloved 'balia morlacca' who can be identified with the best facet of Trieste. Daniele experiences Trieste through the eyes of his balia and, after her suicide, Trieste replaces her, gradually enclosing Daniele in her womb, breathing the same air and pumping the same blood.

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under the guise of domesticity that Trieste comes to play a powerful role in Saba's poetry. The antithetical versions of Trieste and triestinita illustrated above by the two exemplary cases of Mattioni and Saba testify to a powerful dialectical relationship between Triestine authors and their city. There is a permanent tension, a negotiation, an uninterrupted dialogue between Trieste and its writers, frequently affected by a syndrome Bettiza persuasively, if simplistically, defined as 'nevrosi del tradimento'. This particular type of 'neurosis' will be discussed further in Chapter 3 in connection with local literary representations of the feminine.106

106. See E. Bettiza, Mito e realta di Trieste (Milan: AlFInsegna del Pesce d'OroScheiwiller, 1966), p. 47.

Chapter 2 Letteratura di Frontiem-Letteratura di Frontiere

Attraversai di nuovo i confmi che separavano il nostro Impero dalle quiete citta latine. Ogni volta era come attraversare i confmi della vita e della morte, delPinferno e del purgatorio: non riuscivo ancora a capire dove fosse Poscurita, dove fosse la luce. (Giorgio Pressburger, La cosdenza sensibile)

A significant proportion of texts originating from Trieste, its hinterland and the Istrian peninsula can be gathered together under the umbrella term 'border literature'. Literature from Trieste which can be denominated 'border literature' and specimens of literature from the border area, in particular Istria, the lagoon island of Grado, and the city of Fiume (now Rijeka), will be the object of examination here. As will become apparent, the border takes on various aspects, becoming an ever-shifting, elusive and imaginary, as well as tangible, line, frequently defined by ethnic, social and cultural prejudice, rather than exclusively geophysical factors. A discussion of the controversial status of the border in Section 1 paves the way for an analysis of a variety of sources illustrating the maternal emphasis of much literature at the border (Section 2) and, in particular, of the disquieting yet prominent metaphor of thefoiba, a natural chasm found frequently in the Karst and a favourite local literary theme, at least since the end of the Second World War (Section 3).

1. The Unbearable Lightness of the Border Trieste in literature frequently emerges as a border town, 'a city at the margins of the world', and not merely because of its proximity to a geographical borderline.1 According to Claudio Magris, Triestine literature 1.

Edoardo Guglielmi defined Trieste as 'una citta che soffre il male di frontiera, una

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itself epitomizes modern literature in its articulation of the extremely modern crisis of identity leading to the unredeeming unbelongingness of the individual.2 Literary manifestations of a 'culture of crisis' generated by the proximity of the border acquired prominence in the late nineteenth century, with a widespread sense of shattered cultural certainties and definitions.3 Feelings of powerlessness and rootless isolation became the markers of newly perceived Triestine and Istrian identities as a composite, ideal as well as real, contiguity between the civilizations intensified of the Mediterranean area and the Mitteleuropa the dualism inherent in Trieste's 'border identity'. The shifting nature of a geopolitical line which was renegotiated a great many times in the course of the twentieth century may be regarded as primarily responsible for this isolation. These shifts include the 1919 'Wilson line' excluding Fiume from Italian territory, a move that prompted Gabriele D'Annunzio's enterprise and paved the way for Fascist expansionism towards the Balkans in the course of the 1920s;4 the 'Morgan line'

citta venata di umori sottili, di contraddizioni nascoste', in Da un'altra riva (Trieste: Moderna, 1975), pp. 7-8, while Miroslav Kosuta described it as, 'citta ai margini del mondo', in Ta Trst, cited in Miran Kosuta, Scritture parallele: Dialoghi di frontiera tra letteratum slovena e italiana (Trieste: Lint, 1997), p. 110. 2. In Ara and Magris, Trieste, pp. 192-93: 'dai luoghi di frontiera—non solo nazionale e linguistica, ma anche etnica, sociale, religiosa, culturale—e spesso nata una notevole ed incisiva letteratura, espressione di [...] crisi e di [...] ricerca delFidentita'. According to Magris, this is a trait Triestine literature shares with the 'crisis literature' par excellence, that of fin-de-siecle Austria; see in particular C. Magris, // mito asburgico nella letteratura austriaca moderna (Turin: Einaudi, 1963). 3. See for instance a letter sent by Antonio Madonizza, an Istrian proto-Irredentist, to his friend Prospero Antonini dated 29 August 1844: 'Scrivero forse sull'Istria accio il sig. cav. Ignazio Cantu non ripeta che dessa e piu italiana di lingua che di cultura, piu nota di nome che di fatto. A certuni di la dell'Adda sembra che 1'Istria sia a capo il mondo, vi si mangi radici, e si vada coperti di pelli di rinoceronte' (Madonizza, Di me e de' fatti miei, p. 76). 4. D'Annunzio's enterprise had had two main objectives: to facilitate the reunion of Fiume with Italy and to overthrow the government presided over by Francesco Saverio Nitti, at least until the arrival of Alceste de Ambris. The revolutionary text of the Charter ofQuarnero, drafted by de Ambris and rewritten with poetic, pro-Italian heavy-handedness by D'Annunzio, reads: 'Fiume e 1'estrema custode italica delle Giulie, e 1'estrema rocca della cultura latina, e I'ultima portatrice del segno dantesco. Per lei, di secolo in secolo, di vicenda in vicenda, di lotta in lotta, di passione in passione, si serbo italiano il Carnaro di Dante.' See Renzo De Felice (ed.), La Carta del Carnaro nei testi di Alceste De Ambris e di Gabriele D'Annunzio (Bologna: II Mulino, 1973), p. 35.

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of 1945 and the 'Free Territory of Trieste' (TLT), coming under Italian jurisdiction in 1948; the 1954 line, possibly the most significant border shift of the century, discussed within the framework of the 'London Memorandum of Understanding'; and finally the 'Osimo line' of 1975 which not merely sanctioned the 1954 territorial allocations but is also extant today in almost unmodified form.5 This endemic provisionality, compounded with the conflicting ideological allegiances that accompany it, this multi-faceted, chameleon-like virtue of adaptation to fluctuating historical circumstances, carry along with them the cultural and psychological burden of a redefinition of identity at each move.6 Reality as experienced on the borderline becomes multiplied into a tangle of contradictory, centrifugal forces, depriving historical subjects of direction. The border erases physical identities. It reduces people to numbers, and, in its very transitoriness and incoherence, leads to the development of a border neurosis, an aspect painfully prominent in many authors, from Enrico Morovich to Fulvio Tomizza.7 Complex ethnic and national make-ups, mixed bloods and

5. For further information see Chronology and Map 2. 6. In border areas there is a 'need to devote greater attention to the psychosocial factors of identity formation' (Pamela Ballinger, 'The Politics of Submersion: History, Collective Memory, and Ethnic Group Boundaries in Trieste' [unpublished draft article], n.p.). To provide one relevant example, the border between Yugoslavia and Italy, which in Trieste was always thought of as running well south on the Dalmatian coast, was imagined by the Yugoslavs to be located North-West of the river Isonzo (Soca), in what is nowadays part of the Italian Veneto. The Yugoslav perception was adopted by the AngloAmerican Allies who occupied the area soon after the end of the Second World War. Robin Kay recalls that beyond the Isonzo, 'The New-Zealanders noticed a change of atmosphere. There were partisans everywhere, with red scarves and red-starred caps. They marched in small columns with Yugoslav flags, and with Italian tricolours with the red star in the centre. [... ] The New Zealanders felt like strangers in a strange land, as if at the Isonzo they had passed some unmarked but distinct frontier. They had driven from Italy into what was to become a no-man's land between Eastern and Western Europe. Obviously the people here had hoped to welcome Yugoslav forces and not those of the British Eighth Army.' See R. Kay, Italy: From Cassino to Trieste, in Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939-45 (Wellington, NZ: Historical Publications Branch Department of Internal Affairs, 1967), II, p. 535. 7. E. Morovich's characters consistently shed human traits and assume angelic or demonic qualities: see Un italiano di Fiume (Milan: Rusconi, 1993), p. 25: 'Le fiabe non nascono sulla linea di confine. Esse vogliono germogliare o di qua o di la. [... ] Ecco che perfmo i fantasmi, gli spettri, gli spiriti vaganti, le anime in pena s'abituano a girare per quella campagna e per quei boschi, sia di giorno che di notte, evitando la rete di confine. La odiano. L'indifferenza delle guardie conferma ad essi, che facilmente se ne scordano, la

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divided families, turn the border into a stage for family feuds, a genetic rift that 'attraversa le cucine di certe case, le camere da letto, divide mogli e mariti, attraversa le tombe, "i vivi e i morti"'.8 In the dialectical, confrontational dimension which characterizes borderrelations a range of different cultural archetypes are juxtaposed and relations become typically relations with the Other, the different, the unknown. In this particular geographical area, the Other is identified with the East of Europe, the Slav world which becomes irredeemably antagonistic both in society and on the page. While the West remains throughout a synonym for civilization, expressed by such terms as romanita or italianita, the East is perceived as an alien, disquieting universe resisted by authors who tend to resort to pejorative terms such as balcanicita or slavismo. The Fascist regime, in particular, adopted and articulated in very explicit terms the nationalistic discourse of a Slav threat to italianitd. Under patriotic guises, fear and rejection of an alleged Slav barbarism became official attitudes of the regime, determining discriminating policies based on the idea of'purity of the Italian race'. This carried significant weight in areas of mixed ethnic configuration such as Trieste where, particularly after the end of the Second World War, national divides were often imposed ex novo causing national feelings to escalate on both sides into a spiral of mounting violence. According to Sgorlon, this historical process was aggravated by what he

loro condizione di spettri invisibili, di esseri dell'aldila.' See also an interview by Grazia Livi with F. Tomizza (Epoca, 3 August 1969): 'Mi sentivo diviso fra un rnondo e un altro, fra un'ideologia e un'altra. Per vari anni ero stato in collegio dai preti e ora tutt'a un tratto sentivo il fascino del verbo comunista... Amavo mio padre, che nel suo cuore aveva sernpre optato per PItalia, e soffrivo nel vederlo perseguitato dagli jugoslavi... Andavo a Trieste col lasciapassare e la venivo considerato slavo perche provenivo dall'interno, tornavo a Materada, e qui venivo considerato italiano. Era lo sbandamento, era il dramma della frontiera vissuto fmo in fondo.' Quoted in Marco Neirotti, Invito alia lettura di Fulvio Tomizza (Milan: Mursia, 1979), p. 25. 8. Pellegrini, Le citta interiori, p. 190. See also Carlo Sgorlon, La foiba grande (Milan: Mondadori, 1993 [1992]), p. 58: 'Tutti gli uomini sono disorientati e dispersi. [...] Ma [...] gli istriani [...] erano disorientati molto di piu, perche non avevano nemmeno una nazionalita defmita con cui identificarsi, bensi due, o tre, variamente mescolate tra loro'; p. 212: 'istriano, forse, nel fondo, voleva dire italiano, ma anche tedesco, sloveno, croato, romeno, dalmato, ma senza esserlo del tutto, fmo in fondo, perche appunto istriano'; p. 107: 'gli istriani non erano slavi, o italiani, o tedeschi, ma slavi, italiani e tedeschi insieme, e pure un po romeni, dalmati, morlacchi, e altro ancora. La guerra [...] faceva sparire gli istriani, per svegliare in loro sopiti nazionalismi.'

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perceives as its formidable mythical background. If, as argued by Sgorlon, the source of all national identities is to be found in the archetypes of the collective unconscious, where ancestral national allegiances survive side by side with their rituals and symbolism, borders ought to be seen primarily as psychological boundaries, deeply rooted in the unconscious, onerous presences haunting all border dwellers.9 As an interiorized dimension, the border is also, in fact, frequently described not merely in psycho-geographic, but also in psycho-physical terms. Tomizza, for instance, establishes a parallel between body and border whereby the divisive, scarring and threatening experience of the border becomes translated into a topography of the mutilated body.10 Border and body become mutually exchangeable: the border is then portrayed as a body scarred byfoibe as if by cuts, crevices, wounds. Both Sgorlon and Tomizza rely on a powerful and overstated feeling for locality. The local imagination becomes sharpened and Istrian villages, the Yugoslav occupying army, tiny localities and details are minutely and vividly recalled in the attempt to redress a threatened mental geography. In this respect, the border roots itself in history while at the same time striving to escape it, in order to be experienced at the level of the collective memory and consciousness.11 9. By underlining the archetypal root of nationalism, Sgorlon appears to disagree with Benedict Anderson's emphasis on the constructed, rather than innate, nature of national bonds. See B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1985). Ballinger also refers to the archetypal stance of nationalism when arguing that, 'the production of history in Trieste takes place in a context charged by both personal arid collective remembrances made vivid through their ritualistic representation' ('The Politics of Submersion', n.p.). The border also becomes part of the unconscious, a frequent feature in border writers' dreams even after several decades of residence elsewhere. Tomizza, who lived most of his life in Trieste, and Morovich, who emigrated to Genoa in the early 1950s, are both haunted by recurrent dreams of the border: 'II confine [...] aveva, in passato, disturbato moltissimo la mia fantasia. Al punto che lo ricordavo nei sogni e lo ricordo ancora confusamente' (Morovich, Un italiano di Fiume, p. 209). In one of Tomizza's dreams, 'Due reti metalliche vicinissime dividevano il confine—la terra di nessuno ridotta a un corridoio di due passi. Gia scendevamo la prima, quella italiana o di altro Paese occidentale che per indifferenza congenita, o negligenza delle proprie guardie, mostrava di considerare la frontiera con 1'Est niente piu di un segno sulla carta. La preoccupazione veniva dunque dal vuoto che si spalancava sotto e dall'ardua impresa che ci attendeva poco dopo con la salita e gli altri militi invece in agguato.' See F. Tomizza, 'La rete', in La tone capovolta (Milan: Mondadori, 1971), p. 113. 10. See F. Tomizza, / rapporti colpevoli (Milan: Bompiani, 1992), p. 233. 11. See, however, Ballinger, 'The Politics of Submersion' (n.p.): 'History disguised as

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An Istrian author who finds collocation between a malaise of the border and residual suggestions of nationalism is Pier Antonio Quarantotti Gambini (1910-65), possibly the most renowned and best-selling novelist of the Istrian world. The two dates 1918 and 1954, which coincide with the two most significant border shifts of the century, are also paramount in the private history of Quarantotti Gambini, who singles them out as the two thresholds of his own youth, a period autobiographically revisited in almost all his fiction. Gambini in fact regards children and adolescents as the privileged witnesses of a border weighed down by national confrontation and struggle, a border understood as a rite of passage towards adulthood. While for an author like Tomizza the border is essentially rural, Catholic, and culturally divided between the two Italian and Slav ethnic sides, Gambini has an altogether different Istria, eminently bourgeois and Italian, in mind. His Istria bears the mark of a traditional landowning class whose cultural choice is unquestionably Italian and who can therefore reject the Slav presence as ominous and incomprehensible. 'I tre crocefissi', which is thought to be the first story composed by Quarantotti Gambini, is set in an unidentified town of the Triestine hinterland.12 The border emerges here as a stifling, hampering grey curtain, reducing characters to withered and prematurely aged extras in a melancholy bestiary. The border dimension, extended and deformed in the emptiness of a vast house and of windswept, bleak winter topographies, resonates obsessively in the collection of clocks and watches filling the house with their ominous ticking.13 The Kafkaesque protagonist becomes involved, almost malgre soi, in a relationship, then in bond of marriage, with Maria, a provincial Madonna whose womanhood is continuously put into question by their marital home. An architectural extension of the border, this disquieting house silently rebels against Maria's presence and not merely progressively belittles her, but also becomes an agent in her premature death. Maria in fact dies after giving birth to a dead baby, accompanied by her husband's refrain, 'Via, non far la Madonna!'14 Maria's death is meant to be symbolic of the lethal potential of the border, the threat it collective memory serves as a source of moral authority and justification for various groups in Trieste.' 12. Written between 1929 and 1930, first published in Solaria (1931-32), 'I tre crocefissi' was later incorporated in the collection / nostri simili (1932). 13. This early Quarantotti Gambini seems to have inspired Mattioni (see Chapter 1). 14. P.A. Quarantotti Gambini, 'I tre crocefissi', in / nostri simili (Turin: Einaudi, 1981 [1932]), p. 67.

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imposes on the individual conscience and its ultimate power of annihilation. Another story in the collection / nostri simili, 'La casa del melograno', written in 1932, features a double incest and morbid sexual desires set against a rural border backdrop: Luisa and her lover Guerino are sister and brother, but their blood tie is revealed only at the end of the story. Throughout the narration the reader is confronted with Luisa's ambiguously incestuous relationship with both Guerino and his father, leading up to Guerino's final decision of abandoning the family in order to escape the tangle of incestuous and parental authority which keeps him in thrall. The house itself is depicted, as much as in 'I tre crocefissi', as a void, a dark abyss capable of swallowing space and time, an extension of the border where the exceptional and the sinful become the norm. Guerino is left no alternative but fleeing the Istrian border, mirror of his own divided, indeed chaotic, identity. It is however no accident that, after leaving the border, the land of psychological salvation Guerino is aiming for is nothing but another frontier, the 'New World' of Russia or America: mi calai adagio adagio giu dalla fmestra, come da ragazzo quando uscivo di notte con gli amici all'insaputa del babbo. [...] Dallo stradone mi volsi un'ultima volta verso la casa del melograno. Vidi soltanto una piccola luce rossa: la fmestra di Luisa. [... ] sarei tomato in Russia, o mi sarei imbarcato per le Americhe. [...] con un lieve senso di vertigine guardavo spalancarsi dall'altra [parte], pieno di promesse nelle praterie sconfmate e nelle citta che

sfiorano le nubi, il Nuovo Mondo.

Guerino's repeated choice of the frontier reflects his, and the author's, inability to escape the obsessions and neuroses of the border. An evolution to a less self-absorbed version of the border is however apparent in Quarantotti Gambini's post-Second World War fiction, particularly in the first two of the three novels that make up the so-called 'ciclo di Paolo': // cavallo Tripoli (1956), L'amore di Lupo (1964), Igiochi di Norma (1964). While their editorial history is confusing, all three volumes are clearly set during a specific, confined historical period, between 1914 and the 1920s.16 The protagonist of the three, Paolo, is an adolescent belonging to the landowning class who derives extreme self-confidence from both his 15. P.A. Quarantotti Gambini, 'La casa del melograno', in I nostri simili, p. 228. 16. // cavallo Tripoli was published by Einaudi in 1956. The novel Amor militare, first published by Einaudi in 1955, was later revised and republished as L'amore di Lupo in 1964. Finally, Le trincee was written in 1939 and published for the first time in the periodical Letteratura (1940). It then came out as a volume (Einaudi, 1942). In 1964, however, Einaudi republished a modified version under the new title I giochi di Norma.

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social and national backgrounds, as compared with Tomizza's young protagonists whose insecurity is not merely ethnic and cultural but also social.17 L'amore di Lupo portrays the border as a rite of passage whereby Paolo's nationality acts as a bridge enabling him to reach adulthood. The novel focuses on the killing of a young local girl, Nerina, by Lupo, an Italian soldier stationed in a village in Istria just after the end of the First World War. The episode, crude and gory in its sexual overtones—Lupo runs over Nerina with a military vehicle after attempting to rape her—is meant to symbolize a loss of innocence for Paolo, who had previously childishly idolized Lupo and the Italian, military aura which surrounded him. The military is the precise focus of Paolo's rite of passage. The Italian soldiers stationed near the border encapsulate a core of italianitd and of nationalistic, warlike spirit craved by Paolo, with his border insecurities, and idealized by Quarantotti Gambini in the patriotic direction indicated by Mario Isnenghi in his reflections on the Great War.18 Nerina is the focus of the narration which unfolds in concentric circles around her corpse, cradled in a pool of blood: II sangue aveva fatto una pozza grande come una culla, come un giaciglio: sangue alto, che a entrarvi vi si sarebbe immerso il piede; e denso, che aveva imbevuto rosso e vivo la polvere, e soltanto ai margin! era un po' asciutto e scuro. [...] E in quel rosso, luccicante nel sole ancor alto sul mare, si vedevano sparpagliati e quasi nuotavano i pezzi della bambina [...]. II torso, con ancora indosso, fresca, la vestina bianca e azzurra di tela, era riverso, prono, vicino alle ruote; e anche la faccia era riversa, quasi affondata nella polvere e nel sangue; e un braccio si allungava al disopra del capo, leggermente piegato. 19

The crude realism of the representation underlines the danger inherent in the conflict of customs and cultures prevalent in border areas, detailing its ineluctable violent consequences. Nationalisms, idealized national cultures and cultural insecurities combine to bring violence and change. The

17. See for instance Paolo's dismay at learning he shares his nationality with the Italian day labourers on his grandfather's farmland. 18. As cogently argued by Isnenghi, war, and the First World War in particular, is the natural habitat of the ardito, and the anonymous soldiers surrounding the few who are recognizable by name are grouped together in the mute category of an idealized 'Milite Ignoto'. See Mario Isnenghi, Le guerre degli italiani: Parole, immagini, ricordi 1848-1945 (Milan: Mondadori, 1989), pp. 342-45. 19. PA Quarantotti Gambini, L'amore di Lupo (Turin: Einaudi, 1977 [1964]), p. 96.

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murder of Nerina takes on a double meaning: positive in its embodiment of Paolo's growth but also negative in the lacerating antagonisms it exposes. In // cavallo Tripoli, also published well into the post-Second World War era, Paolo's rite of passage to adulthood underlies symbolically the flight of the beautiful horse with the patriotic name of Tripoli. An ideal connection is established between Italy's loss of its African empire (signified by the loss of Tripoli') and Paolo's loss of youth. An implicit Italo-centrism is upheld throughout, to the point of extolling Italian matriarchal virtues, incarnated by Paolo's mother, in sharp contrast with her German counterpart, Trau Mutter', who, conversely, stands for sterility, cruelty, coldness, with intimations of sexual perversion. 'Frau Mutter' incarnates all the destructive feminine traits rejected by Catholic and Fascist ideologies such as sensuality short of procreation, intentional sterility and unearthiness.2® Borders demonstrate a tendency to spawn orphans, demcines, individuals whose roots are complicated and irretraceable and whose existence is controlled by feelings of marginality, exclusion, rejection. Perpetual estrangement, unrelatedness and isolation from an acknowledged core of civilization (which is commonly perceived as belonging elsewhere) become their existential markers. Autobiographical characters assume the role of champions of bastardaggine, of negritude, individuals who are only partially able to control their displacement by attaching themselves to the most conservative and traditional human experiences: rural, ritualistic and domestic.21 20. See also P.A. Quarantotti Gambini's novel L'onda dell'incrociatore (Turin: Einaudi, 1976 [1947]), in which the mother of protagonist Ario is cold and severe, a Saba-like 'madre dalla marmorea faccia'. Her negative characteristics include her prominent sexuality (she sleeps with various sailors before becoming Eneo's jealous lover), and her precarious, almost outcast existence. See also Norma, pivot of Igiochi di Norma, set in the 1920s. The hinted possibility that Norma may be the illegitimate offspring of Marco, a legendary uncle who committed suicide years previously, makes her an irresistible pole of attraction for Paolo. Norma's final leave-taking to pursue her studies at boarding school is again a rite of loss of innocence for Paolo, a painful and yet necessary stage triggered by a powerful female figure. The suicide of uncle Marco also recalls other notorious Triestine suicides, such as Anna Pulitzer, Carlo Michelstaedter, Carlo Stuparich: a self-inflicted death spilling gratuitous blood, wasting away youth, beauty, talent: 'Lo zio Marco aveva fatto partire un colpo contro di se. Uno sparo, una pallottola che entra nel petto (o nel cervello?), come quando, in guerra Paltro zio, lo zio Manlio, era stato ucciso dagli austriaci. E adesso gli pareva che il sangue dello zio Manlio e quello dello zio Marco si fondessero, formando un'unica pozza.' See P.A. Quarantotti Gambini, I giochi di Norma (Turin: Einaudi, 1980 [1964]), p. 137. 21. Reality as experienced at the border is a no-man's-land, 'un mondo in fondo precario, prowisorio, all'incrocio tra nord e sud, est e ovest. Da una parte la frontiera puo

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It is then no surprise that border authors should find a reassuring escape from these uncertainties in the family, in describing domestic matters, in focusing on parental, most frequently maternal, relations. Their production may, for example, focus on unhappy children who yearn for a united family or on reassuring 'Earth mother' figures. The influence of the border, in short, emerges in many respects in an overwhelming sense of being orphaned, of experiencing in traumatic terms the severing of the umbilical cord with the receding culture of the motherland. A maternal emphasis is then applied in the attempt to dispel the malaise of the border.

Confine con il Territorio Libero di Trieste (reprinted from Trieste 1900-1999: Cent'anni di storia, by kind permission of Publisport srl). essere motivo di arricchimento: si puo disporre di due o piu educazioni, culture, lingue, esperienze, a volte anche religioni. Quindi si dovrebbe essere in una condizione di privilegio, sul displuvio di due o tre mondi. In realta questa situazione si risolve spesso in una perdita di identita. Invece di awicinare i popoli e i governi, di funzionare da cerniera fra razze diverse, queste situazioni di frontiera a volte sono causa di conflitti e, sul piano privato, di uno scontento, di un'estraneazione continui' (interview with Tomizza in Neirotti, Invito alia lettura, pp. 23 and 48). See also Nelida Milani, Una valigia di cartone (Palermo: Sellerio, 1991), p. 103: 'quante mai persone [...] hanno cambiato dalle nostre parti due o tre volte in vita loro di nazionalita, di religione, di partito, di nome [...] si sono fatte della vita un'idea d'instabilita, di transitorieta come unica defmitezza. Dove pescare attori migliori, che possono entrare in ogni parte, che possono mettersi qualsiasi maschera?'

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2. A Maternal Border One of the most prominent features of border literature is the unequivocal maternal symbolism frequently connected with it. This symbolism uses a traditionally Catholic imagery and combines it with a secular, if frequently archetypal, set of symbols, stressing the motifs of fertility and mother earth. Narratives register father figures that are normally absent, engaged as they are in apparently endless warfare, while the domestic horizon is taken over by mothers, who become custodians of italianitd at home as much as fathers actively defend it at the front (see also Chapter 3). This type of imagery is employed extensively by the Grado-born poet Biagio Marin (1891-1985) in Le litdnie de la Madona (1949). Written in memory of his own mother who died in 1896, when Marin was only five years old, the poem idealizes the maternal figure according to a canonical Catholic symbolism, granting her the Madonna halo. Mother-Madonna is assimilated here to water as a symbol of life and death, associated with the Grado lagoon. The feminine is so powerful in Marin that is does not merely, in almost Sabian terms, turn the poet himself into a woman, a femena, but also relates to both form and content: to artistic creation, feminine qua creation, and to the maternal theme which runs through Marin's poetry, conferring on it an aura of Marian sacrality.22 The poet's intense feeling for the feminine clearly affords a spatial extension whereby his native island progressively becomes the ultimate limit, the threshold, an epitome of the whole cosmos. Portrayed as a maternal island, Grado selfishly encloses the poet within herself, reluctant to let him out of the nest.23 22. See Edda Serra, 'II senso del sacro nella poesia di Biagio Marin', in Pietro Zovatto (ed.), Trieste tra umanesimo e religiositd (Trieste: Centro Studi Storico-religiosi FriuliVenezia Giulia, 1986), pp. 50-51. 23. See B. Marin, 'El gno paese', in La girlanda de gno suore (1922), in // non tempo del mare 1912-1962 (Milan: Mondadori, 1964), p. 67. The biavo ('pale blue' in Grado dialect) intensity of Grado's seascape is responsible for the fixed immobility which characterizes Marin's poetry, a trait Pier Paolo Pasolini termed 'il non tempo del mare'; cf. P.P. Pasolini, 'Lettera accompagnatoria a Scheiwiller (e ai lettori)', in B. Marin, Solitde: Poesie scelte (ed. P.P. Pasolini; Milan: All'Insegna del Pesce d'Oro-Scheiwiller, 1961), p. 13. Marin's poetry is visual. His language is simple even though the creation of a personal version of the Grado dialect, made up of medievalisms, neologisms and colloquialisms, achieves sophisticated effects of musical and lyrical suggestiveness, as in 'A ponente de Grao', in B. Marin, Poesie (rev. E. Serra; ed. C. Magris and E. Serra; Milan: Garzanti, 2nd edn, 1991), p. 448. An island as maternal symbol is also present in G. Stuparich's story 'L'isola', in L'isola (1942), in which the journey undertaken by father and son to the native

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A combination of border and body-maternal is also prominent in other authors, such as Fulvio Tomizza (1935-99). Although Tomizza started publishing only after the 1960s, most of his novels are set in Istria during the Second World War or the Cold War, when large communities from Istria and Dalmatia went into exile to Trieste and other Italian and international capitals.24 Tomizza interiorized powerfully this exilic condition and translated it into literature possibly more effectively and more frequently than any other writer of the area.25 In La ragazza di Petrovia (1963), protagonist Giustina acts as a female catalyst of border anxieties. She is a reserved, selfless, animal-like creature who allows men to take her as much as Istria, the novel's setting, allows the Yugoslav troops to invade and ravage. Giustina and her native village of Petrovia are one and her doomed flight to Trieste, in search of the man who made her pregnant, reveals the tragic incompatibility of the Istrian and Triestine worlds. In Trieste Giustina becomes the outlet for the feelings of regret, frustration and guilt experienced by the expatriates, who charge her with their own nostalgia for Petrovia, to the extent of eventually rejecting her. Eventually shot dead by Slav partisans, Giustina epitomizes the fate of all Istrians, torn between reaching for an all-Italian cultural identity, albeit at the price of rootlessness and exile, or staying in Istria, albeit suffering the persecutions and cultural distortions brought about by the Yugoslav occupying force. Giustina's rootlessness mirrors the very rootlessness of the border. Her tragic ending testifies to the author's pessimism with regard to a reconciliation of the two worlds.26 Istrian island of Lussino in order to re-enact the father's birth fails and the ailing father dies in the embrace of his native island, 'la dolce terra', the ultimate agent of creation. 24. The emigration of Istrians abroad is concentrated particularly in Sydney, Australia. 25. See B. Maier, 'II "Piccolo mondo" istriano di Fulvio Tomizza', in La letteratura triestina del Novecento, pp. 339-54 (p. 350): 'Tomizza [...] e poeta dell'esilio'. See also Neirotti, Invito alia lettura, p. 115: 'tutta 1'opera di Tomizza e stata caratterizzata (oltre che "provocata") dall'esperienza dell'esodo in massa dall'Istria'. Guido Miglia is another border writer who muses nostalgically on the exodus. His Bozzetti istriani (Trieste: Associazione Comunita Istriane-Moderna, 1968) are part-fictional picturesque and folkloric recollections of Istria, uncritically nostalgic of the past. Miglia, who abandoned Istria reluctantly during the Yugoslav occupation, feels periodically impelled to visit his native land, 'perche andare in Istria, nelle case dei nostri rimasti, e diventata come una malattia: [...] e sempre la nostra terra che ci viene incontro' (p. 77). Miglia expresses the bittersweet feeling of the exile who revisits his native country as a tourist and envies 'coloro che hanno avuto la fortuna di crescere, vivere e morire dove sono nati' (p. 146). Similar to Bozzetti istriani is Giani Giuricin's Istria: Momenti dell'esodo (Trento: Reverdito, 1985). 26. A similar pessimism colours L'albero dei sogni (1969), set in the 1940s-50s. The

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An equally rootless being is the protagonist of La quinta stagione (1965): Tomizza's alter-ego Stefano Markovich. As compared with Quarantotti Gambini's Paolo, Stefano is exiled and culturally split, as well as proletarian. If Paolo is self-assured in his firm attachment to italianita, Stefano is ridden with guilt and insecurity relating to his original multi-ethnic and multi-cultural make-up. Stefano is unable to commit fully to italianitd because of the Slav blood running in his veins, mixing with his residual Italian blood, and affecting every single aspect of his life, beginning with the dialect spoken at home. Stefano may speak Italian with God, but, unlike Paolo, he speaks a Croatian dialect on a daily basis. The novel is set between 1943 and 1945 and the village of Giurizzani (Materada) features in the novel as being under Italian rule, but at the same time very much Slav linguistically and ethnically, as testified by the numerous Croatian words designating objects of daily use or instruments relating to farmwork. With the collapse of the Fascist regime the village echoes with cries of'smrt fasizmu' ('death to Fascism') and 'zivio Tito' ('up with Tito') and the wordfoiba becomes current use. However, the simple rural life prevailing in the small village remains throughout detached from the historical events of the war, which concern the officialdom of a bureaucratic Trieste rather than its backward hinterland, as shown in the episode featuring Stefano and his mother's visit to Trieste.27 novel features the author's alter-ego Stefano Markovich. Tomizza adopts here the inner monologue, a technique which allows him to experience reality from within and to pin down the schizophrenic experience of the border without having to resort to realistic screens. Stefano's mother is so cold and detached that it is the father who takes the role of catalyst of the son's sense of guilt and border disorientation. The father prevents Stefano from growing fully independent of him: psychological independence and single, clear national commitment are two illusory realities embodied by the betrayal of the father figure, whose heritage is an infamous Slav name at a time when 'purity of the Italian race' is the prevailing value. Stefano 'fmisce per scaricare la colpa [...] sul padre, che non possiede, ne ha saputo dare a lui, un'identita, che gli ha lasciato sulle spalle timori e complessi vecchi di secoli'. See Neirotti, Invito alia lettura, p. 70. 27. Stefano is struck by the seeming identification of Trieste with the current state of war. See F. Tomizza, La quinta stagione (Milan: Mondadori, 1987 [1965]), pp. 42-43: 'Scesero [Stefano and his mother] a Trieste. Le strade erano piene di gente. Lo colpirono i palazzi subito alia riva, alti quanto le corazzate. [...] Si sentiva [Stefano] via via portato a considerare che la citta gia di per se fosse un po' guerra. [...] Passando davanti al grande atrio [the station's], ebbe la sensazione di trovarsi dinanzi alia porta che conduceva direttamente alia guerra.' Cf. with a strikingly similar, even more powerful and circumstantial, passage in 'La madre di Vigi', in F. Tomizza's collection of stories led, un secolofa (Milan: Rizzoli, 1985), p. 125: 'Si giungeva a Trieste, era tempo di guerra, e in

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Moving his setting from rural Istria to urban Trieste and starting with La citta di Miriam (1972), Tomizza continued to privilege feminine-maternal relations.28 Trieste is in this novel portrayed as the birthplace of Miriam, the Jewish woman whom the Catholic author-protagonist marries and betrays numerous times but constantly returns to. In parallel, Trieste is repeatedly betrayed and regained as an illusory national commitment for the exiled Istrian who is unable to keep sexual and national betrayals separate, resorting to a continuous blurring of the threshold between body and border. Every woman becomes an imperfect version of Miriam as much as every city apes the perfection of Trieste, symbol of an uncompromisingly Italian cultural identity which is beyond the reach of the multiethnic and multi-cultural narrator. He must in fact remain perpetually unable to escape them both: however hard he tries, he must always eventually go back to Miriam and Trieste. City and woman clearly emerge here as sites of a paradoxical but reassuringly single cultural identity (urban, Jewish, intellectual) which escapes the fundamental incoherence of the border (rural, patriarchal, Catholic, culturally antagonistic). Even the insecurities generated by the Jewish diaspora pale in comparison with Tomizza's chronically disrupted cultural coordinates.29 Contemplated from the vantage point of his divided Istrian position, Trieste stands for the absolute city, incarnation of 'il fascino di una tradizione culturale che assorbe e insieme smorza le precedenti opposizioni e lacerazioni'.30 quello stesso atrio c'era un viavai di soldati sparuti e malvestiti. [...] La stazione era greve, buia e polverosa: pareva menasse direttamente alia guerra, ai forti e alle trincee cinte da filo spinato.' 28. The relationship with the father, though secondary, did not however altogether disappear. In La citta di Miriam Tomizza's autobiographical protagonist will in fact find a surrogate father figure in his father-in-law, modelled on Tomizza's real-life father-in-law Vito Levi, a Jewish musicologist of some renown and good friend of Umberto Saba. The protagonist's relationship with him repeats in some respects Zeno Cosini's affectionate attachment to Giovanni Malfenti in Svevo's La cosdenza di Zeno (1923). 29. Tomizza shares the Jewish lot of eternal exile. The mass exodus from Istria (no reliable official figures are available but hundreds of thousands of residents, 65,000 of whom moved to Trieste, are estimated to have gone into exile) is conceived by Tomizza first and foremost in terms of guilt, resulting from having abandoned his native land and being unable to settle down elsewhere. As Giuricin put it in Istria, p. 224: 'la fuga improwisa ha lasciato nel subcosciente un solco, una ferita incancellabile. Non e stato un abbandono da vigliacchi, il nostro. In pochi forse avremmo potuto rimanere. Tutti non saremmo stati tollerati.' 30. Lorenzo Mondo, 'Fulvio Tomizza', in G. Tombesi and B. Maier (eds.), Trieste

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Sexual metaphors are employed to evoke Trieste in archetypally feminine terms, as in the description of the train journey taking the protagonist back to the city: II treno, che aveva disseminate i compagni di viaggio nelle tante citta d'ltalia, puntava incerto sulla piu remota, 1'intero convoglio ridotto a una famiglia di passeggeri. S'intrometteva tra le pietraie grigie del Carso, giustamente dormienti, rasentava Barcola leggera sul mare e il retorico faro della Vittoria dalFaltro lato, slittava sul cavalcavia e interrompeva in uno sproporzionato intrico di binari ruggini sotto i magazzini ciechi del Porto vecchio, per finire la

lunga corsa nella citta di Miriam e dormirvi, forse per starci. Given the identification of Miriam with Trieste, the train penetrating the city is an obvious sexual metaphor, emphasized by the ambiguity of the final verb starci ('to be there', but also 'to have sex with'). Trieste emerges as a city of contrasts, sharply juxtaposed to the Balkanized universe of a haunting but powerless Karst which the eminently urban officialdom of Trieste continuously repels to its margins.32 The author's preoccupation and sense of guilt governing his relationship with his mother and the other female members of his family, namely wife and one daughter, continue to grow after La citta di Miriam and reach their climate in I rapporti colpevoli (1992).33 If the relationship with the father is paramount in most of Tomizza's early fiction, his most recent production is characterized by a veritable cult for the mother. Rooted in a mythical, fertile and home-making mother, this cult is susceptible to archetypal, biblical developments. Even the preamble, relating a discovery of personal papers belonging to his dead brother, a barely disguised Flavio Tomazzi, reveals not merely the autobiographical framework of the novel, but also its focus on the theme of woman, apparently threefold (Mother, Wife,

nella cultura italiana del Novecento: Profili e testimonianze (Trieste: Circolo della Cultura e delle Arti, 1985), pp. 236-40 (p. 237). 31. F. Tomizza, La citta di Miriam (Milan: Rizzoli, 1983 [1972]), p. 129. 32. Tomizza, La citta, p. 42: 'Non sapevo se esistessero al mondo altre citta che fossero cosi totalmente citta e niente campagna, che si fossero addirittura sostituite alia natura creando nuove leggi e un suo proprio sistema di vita.' 33. Tomizza, I rapporti colpevoli, p. 243: 'Le donne parenti: madre, moglie, figlia. Owero i rapporti colpevoli: mi devi, sei in obbligo di. II tossico dell'obbedienza. L'incubo della fedelta. La schiavitu volontaria (ma perche volontaria?). Prigionia astratta (e perche no vigilata?) Neanche parlare di liberta. Ce 1'ho tutta. Chi te la toglie? Chi solamente te la limita? (The emphasis is in the original text.) Also notable here is the novel Franziska (Milan: Mondadori, 1997).

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Daughter), but in fact related to the maternal first and foremost.34 The psychological horizon of Tomazzi is in fact dominated by the Oedipal tension determined by the three female figures who keep him in their thrall. All the other women he meets in casual sexual encounters are nothing but intimations, prefigurations, imperfect versions of the original female: his mother, whose icon is to be traced in the Madonna figuration of Catholic tradition. After her death, sanctified as she is by her new angelic status, mother relentlessly holds on to her son, despite his lucid awareness of the improbability of her incarnation: 'Chi era quella donna immortale nella sua positiva assurdita, tutta volume e improbabile come uno spettro? Dov'era fmita 1'aureola che io solo le avevo riconosciuto e perche continuava ad accecarmi pur essendone priva?'35 The section 'II letto della Pizia' is central in qualifying Tomizza's maternal complex. Following the example of La tone capovolta, it is composed of a series of dreams concerned with the author-protagonist's mother. Biblical terminology (esecutrice\ 'grumo di sangue sulla mia coscienza') is frequently employed in order to cast the mother against a biblical background able to set off the mythical power exercised by her ghost.36 One of TomizzaTomazzi's dreams, for instance, features a circumstantial, violent physical struggle between himself and his mother reminiscent of the account in Genesis of the dispute of Cain against Abel. The variant in Tomizza is that Abel is replaced by Eve and the protagonist-Cain is portrayed vividly pushing his mother down to bite the ground. Through this dream of supreme rebellion Tomizza, the 'bad son', gains strength and independence but at the expense of everlasting guilt and shame. The desire to eliminate one's own mother cannot remain unpunished, even though the actual execution of the act is banned even from the realm of dreams.37

34. The autobiographical strain is so intense that it often crosses the fictional boundaries of the narration. Personal comments and recriminations relating to the writing career of Fulvio Tomizza, rather than to the fragile fictional world constructed around Flavio Tomazzi, are interspersed in the narration—see for example pp. 68 and 150. 35. Tomizza, I rapporti colpevoli, p. 175. 36. Tomizza, / rapporti colpevoli, pp. 240 and 244. 37. An obvious precursor here is the slap Zeno receives from his moribund father in Svevo's La coscienza di Zeno, an irreparable act Zeno will attempt to expiate in vain. Tomizza, / rapporti colpevoli, p. 244: 'Ti spingevo per le spalle giu, giu a terra, per non colpirti, ma riversando nella pressione tutta la mia forza e il furore. Pero gia con 1'averti stesa inerme e indenne su polvere e erba, il misfatto era compiuto e io ero trasformato in un altro.' See also Saba's poem 'Bersaglio', discussed in Chapter 1.

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The recipient of Tomizza's writing is a tu which identifies with a generic feminine and represents essentially the Other with respect to the protagonist. The mother stands for the maternal womb, which for Tomizza is also contiguous to the foiba (discussed below). The protagonist is, for instance, taken in one of his dreams on a train journey through the Karst in search of the obscure origins of his being: 'rivisitavo caverne, risbucavo tra la povera macchia non battuta dal sole, mi ricalavo nelPoscurita umida, stillante e percio viva in una dimensione atemporale, appagato insieme agli altri passeggeri'.38 This backward journey has obvious maternal connotations, both in the dreamer's nostalgic return to a long-lost motherland, and in his oneiric immersion into a dark, humid, timeless dimension. The title of the section is eventually clarified when Tomizza contemplates his mother's bed as 'il letto ideale: il letto della Pizia'.39 Caught in the coils of an incurable Oedipus complex, the author drafts here his spiritual testament when declaring his mother's bed to be the ideal bed: the primary, but also ultimate, source of longing for the child and inspiration for the artist. The overwhelming dread occasioned by the womb in an archetypal context hints also at its maternal voracity, its mythical connections with a ravenous mother earth who swallows her offspring like a she-Saturn. Alternatively, women buried alive may be seen as returning to their earthy, natural state.40 In any case, the local dread of and fascination withfoibe relies to a great extent on their symbolism as maternal wombs, mythical holes capable of reversing the process of coming to light into a regressive movement back to the pre-natal state.

38. Tomizza, I rapporti colpevoli, p. 301. 39. Tomizza, I rapporti colpevoli, p. 323. 40. See, for instance, a novel by Gilda di Giovanni, La ragazza sul Carso (Trieste: Societa Artistico Letteraria, 1969). Set in 1954, with flashbacks to 1943, the volume features a bersagliere returning to the Karst where he was sheltered during the Second World War by a young woman, later buried alive in a foiba. The novel is interesting particularly on account of the mythical connections it establishes between earth and women. Cf. esp. pp. 114 and 120: 'In una foiba, lei che amava la luce, il sole, le piante, il mare, tutto cio che era vivo.' ' "lo sono un poco il Carso" aveva detto un giorno. Ora era tutta Carso, nascosta nelle sue viscere misteriose come un genietto prigioniero d'un incantesimo che un giorno sarebbe tomato alia luce che amava, al profumo delle viole e della salvia.'

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3. The Foiba: Myth and History In 1943 and 1945, hundreds, possibly thousands, of Italians, both partisans and civilians, were imprisoned and subsequently thrown alive by Yugoslav partisans into various chasms in the Karst region and the hinterland of Trieste and Gorizia. These chasms are generally known as foibe.41 Typical geological formations in the area, jotfo are cavernous pits characterized by a narrow and often hidden opening on the surface but 'descend [ing] for various hundreds of meters in the bowels of the earth'.42 By way of tortuous corridors, foibe are also frequently connected with other caves of similar or different size. In the course of several decades, foibe have acquired definite historical and ideological functions. Their specificity is now analyzed in the context of the collapse of existing structures of powers, namely the Fascist regime in 1943 and the Nazi-Fascist 'Adriatisches Kiistenland' in 1945. Oppression of the Slovenian and Croat communities, a systematic policy of the Fascist regime, together with a forceful drive towards pursuing a Yugoslav national identity, have also been invoked to account for the upsurge of heinous and often indiscriminate violence connected with foibe. The interest provoked by their discovery has also repeatedly verged on collective obsession. Despite some evidence that Fascist soldiers had also used foibe as open-air cemetries for opponents of the regime, only their equivalent use on the part of Yugoslav partisans appeared to arouse general censure, enriched as it was with the most gruesome details: The lorries of death arrived filled with victims who, often chained to one another and with hands cut up by wire, were pushed in groups from the edge of the chasm. The first ones in line who were machine-gunned fell and dragged the others into the abyss. Whoever survived after a fall of 200 meters lay in agony from the lacerations caused by the spiky rocks which broke the fall.

41. The nzmefoiba comes from the Latin fovea = fossa, empty room, cave, ditch. For an informed historical overview, see Raoul Pupo, '1943-1945. Foibe: la morte oscura', Storia e Dossier 116 (1997), pp. 16-25. See also Fulvio Molinari, Istria contesa: La guerra, le foibe, I'esodo (Milan: Mursia, 1996); Claudia Cernigoj, Operazione foibe a Trieste (Udine: Quaderni del Picchio, 1997); Giampaolo Valdevit (ed.), Foibe: it peso del passato—Venezia Giulia 1943-1945 (Venice: Marsilio, 1997) and K. Pizzi, 'Silentes Loquimur: "Foibe" and Border Anxiety in Post-war Literature from Trieste', Journal of European Studies 28 (1998), pp. 217-29. 42. Ballinger, 'The Politics of Submersion', n.p. 43. Marcello Lorenzini, Le stragi delle foibe: Francesco Cossiga a Basovizza (Trieste:

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Perceptions of this nature helped incorporate Coffee in the historical memory of the political right, generating a series of rhetorical and propagandistic discourses. A term was quickly invented to describe the act of throwing enemies inside (infoibamento) and the revulsion it inspired continued fomenting traditional anti-Slav feelings. This crude and barbaric imagery was reinforced further during the Cold War by the sharp divisions between East and West.44 It is however particularly since the 1990s that the debate on foibe has been reignited, possibly as a result of a combination of factors, including the historical dissolution of the Eastern Bloc and more recent, revisionist approaches to the last years of the war and the Resistance. Foiba has then been adopted as a favourite propaganda theme on the part of an aggressive and vocal neo-Fascist party in Trieste ('Alleanza Nazionale') and manipulated to serve a variety of purposes. The judiciary set out to establish responsibilities as new sources of information emerged, while left-wing historiography, for decades reluctant to engage with a theme closely associated with right-wing propaganda, has also recently reclaimed it as a legitimate part of its own, as well as national, history. This complex ideological configuration, in combination with the mythical resonance of foibe, helps explain the crucial role they progressively acquired in the literary culture of the region. Foibe quite clearly acted, and continue to act, as literary symbols. Their ideal circularity is metaphoric of their status as pitfalls, irons, black holes which have at various stages 'drawn in' many local authors.45 Quite literally foibe stand for silent and empty vessels progressively filled with memories, uncertainties, desires, in short with a set of meanings traditionally connected with the anxieties experienced at the North-Eastern borders of Italy. Foibe have become powerful literary topoi, or chronotopes, specifically in their capacity as metaphors of border anxiety.46 Comitato per le Onoranze ai Caduti delle Foibe, 1991), cited in Ballinger, 'The Politics of Submersion', n.p. Thefoiba rhetoric is still very much alive: the 'Foiba di Basovizza' has, for example, acquired great prominence, becoming one of the most widely publicized tourist attractions of the Triestine hinterland. 44. For a discussion of the foibe controversy in the post-war period, see Glenda A. Sluga, 'The Risiera di San Sabba: Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Italian Nationalism', Journal of Modern Italian Studies 1.3 (1995), pp. 401-12. Sluga suggests a symbolic equation between foibe and the concentration camp 'Risiera di San Sabba', also located in Trieste. 45. One of the largest extant foibe is commonly known, in Friulian dialect, as 'il bus de la lum': 'the hole of light' (my emphasis). 46. Ballinger has persuasively described foibe as 'Bakhtinian chronotopes' ('The Politics of Submersion', n.p.): 'the caves represent powerful sites of potential knowledge.

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The cluster of ethnic, national and cultural insecurities inherent in borders provides a framework able to accommodate the powerful symbolic stance acquired in the post-war period by these unofficial cemeteries indiscriminately equated with Slav barbarism.47 Foibe feature largely in a number of fictional and pseudo-fictional narratives, both in prose and verse. The story 'La grotta' (1935) by Giani Stuparich focuses on a mountain expedition of three boys and the tragic death of two of them in the abyss.48 A uterine metaphor prevails here, as confirmed by the frantic invocations of his mother uttered by Lucio, the survivor, and the intervention of a maternal deus ex machina in the figure of a teacher who reminds Lucio of his own mother. A similar equation offoiba and womb is repeated in La ragazza sul Carso (1969) and in Fulvio Martin's Giulin: Dalle Miserie ml Friul alle Foibe Carsiche (1991), where it becomes conflated with national fatalism.49 Set in 1945, Giulin relates the infoibamento of the eponymous protagonist. Foibe loom large even after Giulin's disappearance, finally inviting his widow Pina to throw herself into the abyss in order to be reunited with the unburied corpse of her husband. Apparently inspired by contemporary events leading to the dissolution of the Yugoslav Republic, the novel La foibagrande (1992) by Carlo Sgorlon (b. 1930) remains anchored in myth and archetype, neglecting^nfce's ideological implications. In alternating between an impersonal third person singular and an individual and collective first person, and particularly in singling out a local dichotomy of romanita versus balcanicita, Sgorlon intensifies the legendary status of foibe. Furthermore, while highlighting the blood-drenched imagery attached to foibe in the name of an illusory national and ethnic purity of Triestine and Istrian culture, Sgorlon here remains silent on the deeply controversial role they [...] In their capacity as Bakhtinian chronotopes—offering a "primary means for materializing time in space" [...]—the foibe reveal the organization and production of various group histories.' She also notes that 'the shifting status of the history of foibe reflects larger political alignments'. 47. The image of the ravine in itself acquired wider significance in this period. See, for instance, the impression created by the execution of Jews and Communist partisans at the Babi Yar ravine in Nazi-occupied USSR in 1941 and at the 'Fosse Ardeatine' in Rome in 1944. Given this formidable alliance of archetype and ideology, the literary fortune of foibe hardly comes as a surprise. Literary criticism, however, has so far largely neglected them. 48. The story belongs to the collection Nuovi racconti (Milan: Treves-TreccaniTumminelli, 1935). 49. F. Martin, Giulin: Dalle Miserie nel Friul alle Foibe Carsiche (Florence: Martin, 1991).

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acquired in the post-war period, implicitly identifying them as symbols of an artificial cultural void.50 Finally, Una croce sulla foiba: II grido delle vittime ritrova la strada delta memoria (1996), a novel by Giuseppe Svalduz (b. 1932), espouses entirely the pro-Italian nationalist cause. Svalduz radicalizes very explicitly the divide between Italian fighters of Christian inspiration and Communist partisans, indiscriminately equated with Nazi criminals. On the basis of these premises, the author is willing to legitimate the former group only and fails to fulfil his even-handed inspiring principle of 'rewriting History on behalf of all its victims'.51 A narrative dealing with foiba indirectly, however, may prove to be more profitable in assessing the subtextual collusion between archetype and ideology. The novel II baratro, written in 1956 by Enrico Morovich (190694) provides an ideal example, first and foremost by virtue of its historical context.52 As mentioned above, 1954 marks what is regarded as the most crucial border shift of the whole century, one whose boundaries were established at the London talks, finalized in the 'Memorandum of Understanding' and sanctioned in almost unchanged form with the 1975 Treaty of Osimo. 1956, more particularly, marks the peak of a movement of mass emigration from the contentious area to various Italian cities, a disruptive, forced exodus in which Morovich was personally involved. By never explicitly mentioning foibe in a narrative playing all the same with the theme of the abyss, Morovich reinforces, by their absence, all the horrors and fears which are inherent in them. In addition, Morovich's familiarity with the genre of the moral fable, the surreal and the fantastic, put his engagement with such a charged theme continuously to the test.53 50. See Sgorlon, La foiba grande, p. 315: 'la foiba faceva sempre pensare al sangue, alPossario, alia macelleria, e nello stesso tempo anche alia favola e alia leggenda, perche nessuno [...] aveva mai potuto vedere il camion della morte, i sequestri, il lancio dei vivi e dei morti nell'abisso'. 51. See Frediano Sessi in G. Svalduz, Una croce sulla foiba: II grido delle vittime ritrova la strada della memoria (Venice: Marsilio, 1996), n.p.: 'riscrivere la Storia dalla parte delle vittime'. Recent poetic inflections offoibe include Fabio Doplicher's 'La persuasione del canto', in F. Doplicher, 'Due Poesie', Forum Italicum 26.1 (1992), pp. 242-43, and 'Trieste, el mar te cuca', in Triestine dialect. 52. E. Morovich, // baratro (Padua: Rebellato, 1964). My quotations are however taken from a paperback reprint of the novel (Turin: Einaudi, 1990). Morovich was born in 1906 in Pecine, a village in the province of Fiume, now Croatian Rijeka. He died in Lavagna in 1994 after moving residence from Pisa to Naples to Genoa. 53. Morovich is traditionally regarded as a desengage. His favourite characters are angels and ghosts. His style is ironical and surreal. His narrative is often associated with

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Morovich began courting the foiba much earlier in his production, reevoking his native Fiume in works imbued with nostalgia for the Mitteleuropa. He laments the stifling provincialism and claustrophobia affecting Fiume after the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the failure of D'Annunzio's enterprise. The cultural and national breadth prevailing under the Kingdom of Hungary was suddenly replaced after 1918 with the cultural impoverishment brought about by Italy, turning Fiume into a selfcontained and ultimately isolated cultural island.54 Morovich's commitment to his border identity emerges clearly in his constant engagement with the Fiume issue, still vibrant even after four decades of residence elsewhere.55 In Un italiano di Fiume (1993) Morovich emphasizes the role played by the figure of Benito Mussolini in the collective imagination of border dwellers. The Duce is reported as having fully penetrated the unconscious of all fiumani, as clarified by a number of dreams where he features as protagonist. The autobiographical narrator's fantasies regarding Mussolini's violent death are nevertheless contiguous with the active part he continues to take in the Fascist Milizia.56 Even in the 1990s Mussolini preserved, to a certain extent, his iconic aura as provider of national and cultural certainties to the disoriented inhabitants of the border. In the same collection Morovich describes the border as the zero-point, the absolute middle between East and West, a no-man's-land whose potential

the fantastic of Italic magique (1946), Gianfranco Contini's anthology of magical and surrealist stories including authors such as Tommaso Landolfi and Dino Buzzati. 54. After 1918 Fiume became progressively more alienated from its hinterland and clashed frequently with the neighbouring town of Sussak, separated from it only by a stream. 55. See Morovich, Un italiano di Fiume, pp. 149-50: 'odio la piccola citta di confine nella quale vivevo come in una prigione e proprio non so partecipare al dolore degli esuli che la rimpiangono e che non sanno trovar pace nel loro esilio'. An almost opposite approach to a nostalgia of Mitteleuropa is displayed by another author from Fiume, Diego Zandel, in Una storia istriana (Milan: Rusconi, 1987) set in Fiume and the rural hinterland during the Fascist regime. Zandel feels nostalgic for a good old Austria, a time when the subjects of the Empire were allowed to speak their own dialect and be educated in their own language. Zandel cannot but resent the climate of ferocious 'Italianness' inaugurated by the Fascists, subscribing to the Slav prejudice of identifying Italy tout court with Fascism. Italy is embodied in the pro-Fascist elementary school teacher from Pordenone, the only true villain of the novel, who demands that Italian be spoken in class and humiliates publicly those pupils who resort to their native Slav dialect. 56. See Morovich, Un italiano di Fiume, p. 151.

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cultural neutrality paves the way for regressive visions, memories, fantasies.57 Fiume, for instance, becomes the ideal backdrop against which to recreate an epic of nation-building which affected Morovich strongly as a child: the novel Cuore (1886) by Edmondo De Amicis. Morovich's mental geography allows him to juxtapose two formidable patriotic emblems: First World War Fiume and King Umberto's Turin, albeit with anachronistic and ultimately escapist results.58 A similar escapist position is repeated in the collection of stories Miracoli quotidiani (1938).59 Without relinquishing his ambiguous fascination with Fascist milieux, Morovich attempts here to recall, in positively antihistorical fashion, a series of events clustered around Fiume and the border. His ironical aplomb and surreal humour exorcize ideology by uprooting events from both their historical and their geographical context. The atmosphere evoked is dream-like and the intent is anti-paternalistic and anti-didactic. Morovich's light touch is designed to evaporate factuality in thin-air constructions. In 'Quattro ragazzi di Fiume', for instance, four middle-class young men from Fiume consider enlisting in the Italian Army in the summer of 1918. Their desires are, however, frustrated by the ending of the war a few months later. In 'Un film di guerra a Fiume', set in the autumn of 1915, a film show of Austrian war success is disturbed by the noisy, mocking dissent of the local population crowding the cinema. Morovich's inclusion of ghosts in his narrative is a clear attempt to remove the border by depicting it as flimsy and inconsistent, a mere human superstructure which is in fact ineffectual for ghosts, who are easily swept along by any touch of wind. While human beings are for Morovich condemned to a fate of barbed-wire geopolitical division, ghosts are privileged entities, quite free to move in a supernatural dimension of their own which shuns the all too historical return of'all flesh' to its centre of gravity. Although generally steeped in border anxiety, Morovich's surrealist novels and stories always aim to provide an escape from the historical and 57. His border is a paper-thin borderline: see Un italiano di Fiume, p. 224: 'la nostra condizione a Fiume, dopo il 1924, era quanto mai precaria e [...] musiche, canzoni, bandiere, adunate e cortei ci servirono a non farci riflettere che quel confine, che ci pareva cosi solido e defmitivo, non era che un confine di carta'. 58. For Morovich's belatedness and reference to Italian culture of the nineteenth century, see also Chapter 3. 59. Written in the late 1930s, the stories are set from 1915 onwards. First published by Parenti in Florence in 1938, the collection was republished by Sellerio in Palermo in 1988 with various additions, including L'osteria sul torrente (1936) and Ritmtti net bosco (1939). My quotations are taken from the 1988 edition throughout.

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psychological constraints of the border. However, this escapist mode starts showing a few cracks in his novel // baratro, written in 1956 and first published in 1964. Here Morovich's recurrent magic and surrealism appear to be insufficient to dispel the surgically brutal factuality employed in the central descriptions. A death-like, frozen stillness pervading many of its pages renders this novel unique in the context of Morovich's literary production: here he signs one of the most sinister and chillingly realistic fictional renderings offoibe. While the title describes a generic chasm or abyss, early on in the narration it acquires the connotations of a veritable foiba. This is, in fact, a common grave in which the evil protagonist Natale (Dalo) Mei has discarded corpses of various relatives, friends and enemies he had previously murdered and cut into pieces. Further ahead in the narration this chasm will regurgitate its victims in the form of ghosts whose restlessness and anguish continue to haunt the living. Cipriano, a friend of one of Dalo Mei's victims, lowers himself into the chasm. The frightening spectacle awaiting him at the bottom is described in the same terms used by speleologists in describing the content offoibe in their official reports. The bureaucratic, factual horror pervading many authoritative records on foibe is repeated almost word for word by Morovich by way of a documentary, cold hyper-realism: Un busto magro con la testa magra di una vecchia giaceva [... ] come uscito da un pacco sfasciato. Una vecchia il cui volto egli [Cipriano] non ricordava di avere mai veduto. E poi il corpo sfracellato di una donna ancora giovane, e infine quello del suo amico Oscar. Ma tutte queste cose vedeva come in uno stato di delirio, mentre gli pareva che una voce lo incitasse a buttare nell'acqua

anche questi spettacoli quanto mai sgradevoli. While in the foiba, Cipriano is seized by a sudden impulse to throw all the torn limbs and remnants of human bones and flesh into the stream which flows at the bottom of the chasm and to re-emerge as quickly as possible to see the light of day. Body fragments belonging to various characters who had vanished inexplicably or died in the course of the narration are all heaped together at the bottom of the foiba, as if in a common grave, or an ossuary.61 The chasm is described as 'quella tomba quasi a contatto con il centro della terra', another recurring hyperbole which clearly contributes to reinforcing the mystique attached to foiba.62

60. Morovich, // baratro, p. 102. 61. Cf. with Sgorlon, La foiba grande, p. 315. 62. Cited in Svalduz, Una croce sulla foiba, p. 16.

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The episode relating Cipriano's plunge is both literally and symbolically central to the novel, which can be said to implode around it. The past and the future of the narration not merely converge at this crucial juncture but are also drawn inside, almost literally swallowed into the foiba to remain trapped in there. At this point foibe act as collectors of the historic memory of the narrative. They resemble black holes malignantly reluctant to regurgitate their precious content. Events, debris of bodies, human voices are also trapped, muffled inside this grave. Cipriano's whole sense of self, his identity, is quite clearly altered by the experience of this descent into hell. This catabasis, which obviously counts numerous literary precursors, typically takes on a dream structure. Its effect is to turn the world upside down: the dead talk to the living, animals are invested with rationality and the gift of speech. Once he has re-emerged, Cipriano is all too eager to erase this oneiric and yet all too real experience, in the same way as is reported as happening to speleologists after exploring the foibe. However, oblivion proves impossible, for Cipriano, while in the chasm, has reached a point of no return. The poignancy of Morovich's evocation combined with the central isolation of this chilling episode demonstrate that the foiba is responsible for a suspension, a crack in the normal order of things. Morovich's interweaving of surrealism and magic is visibly at odds here with controlling the narrative and holding it tightly together, while readers witness his difficulty in reconciling a delusional renouncement of ideology with the archetypal stance of his designated topic. The formidable experience of the descent is repeated at the end of the novel with another expedition to the bottom of the abyss where Cipriano is now also buried. 'I giovani' who lower themselves in the pit experience the horror vacui, the ancestral fear that a descent into hell must imply a loss of rational capabilities, which had similarly affected Cipriano earlier: In fondo al baratro i giovani trovarono 1'acqua che Cipriano aveva descritto, ma anche, contro una parete, il corpo sfracellato d'un giovane che ritenevano di aver visto da qualche parte. Fecero scendere una barella e con molta cura lo mandarono su. Era tutto cio che avevano trovato in fondo alia grotta. Come furono risaliti respirarono e confessarono candidamente di aver avuto laggiu una paura tremenda. E non sapevano neppure perche: vi si respirava un'aria che suggeriva pensieri tetri, paure sconosciute, come se il cervello, disse uno,

andasse da63 63. Morovich, // baratro, p. 142. Cf. Morovich with Tomizza's similarly dramatic rendering offoiba in La tone capovolta (1971). The bizarre upside-down tower prominent

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There is an ideal line connecting 'the tragic events [...] when many civilians and military victims, mostly Italian, were killed and flung into communal graves' and Morovich's articulation of the foiba theme in // baratro, as even a cursory comparison with one of the dozens of official reports onfoibe clearly reveals: Fummo sospinti verso 1'orlo di una foiba, la cui gola si apriva paurosamente nera. [...] La cavita aveva una larghezza di circa 10 metri e una profondita di 15 fmo alia superficie delPacqua che stagnava sul fondo. Cadendo, non toccai fondo, e tornando a galla potei nascondermi sotto una roccia. Subito dopo vidi precipitare altri quattro compagni colpiti da raffiche di mitra [...]. Verso sera riuscii ad arrampicarmi per la parete scoscesa e a guadagnare la campagna, dove rimasi per quattro giorni e quattro notti consecutive, celato in una buca.64

As illustrated above, in its ostensible lack of commitment, II baratro testifies to that inescapable mesh of anxieties which characterizes literature at the North-Eastern borders of Italy. Far from remaining void 'outposts on nothingness', foibe speak by virtue of their silence.65 With his own silence, Morovich is doing exactly the same.

in the autobiographical protagonist's dreams can be read as a disquieting, sinister foiba opening like a chasm under human feet. See Tomizza, La tone capovolta, pp. 84-85: 'Giu a valle, costruita nella roccia scendeva a capofitto, tonda e precisissima, come una torre capovolta, piu in forma di cono che cilindrica. [... ] II fascino, lo smarrimento, derivava proprio da questa estrema compiutezza formale [...] e da un oscuro senso d'infmito e dunque di eterno, non scaturito dalla contemplazione di vette e di cieli ma calato, sprofondato esso stesso nella vecchia e conchiusa terra.' This disquieting image portrays the tower contradictorily as at the same time architecturally grand but also physically earthy, sublime and rooted in, indeed swallowed by, the deepest recesses of a voracious mother earth. 64. Quoted from official documentation in Sluga, The Risiera', p. 408. See also the anonymous quotation in Pupo, '1943-1945. Foibe', p. 23—cf. in particular with Morovich, // baratro, pp. 100-103. 65. A number of large wooden crosses placed at the edge of foibe bear plaques with the engraved motto 'Silentes Loquimur'. One of the committees researching the foibe question also named itself'Silentes Loquimur'.

Chapter 3 The Myth of an Italian Motherland

Una fede sola nei secoli: Italia. (Ugo Sartori, Paolo Veronese, Gino Villasanta, Trieste 1934-XII: La storia, la vita, it domani)

The spectacular and long-lasting success of Fascist associations in Trieste, boasting the largest number of card-carrying members in Italy (14,756 members, equalling 18 per cent of the total national figure), is often linked to a series of cultural and historical reasons specific to this geographical area.1 Quite apart from the large number of veterans and immigrants from Italy (regnicoli) who peopled the city after the First World War, instrumental in conferring the status of a mass organization to the rising Fascist phenomenon, an important aspect was the ability with which the latter managed to fill the significant ideological, aesthetic and emotional gaps left in Trieste after the disappearance of the long-lived Austro-Hungarian Empire. This experience was to affect the identity of the city for many years to come.2 Among other things, in Trieste the Fascist experience encouraged a local conformism that contributed to the definition of that triestinitd discussed in Chapter 1. In an incarnation frequently defined as 'fascismo di confine', this experience acquired significant importance at both local and national level in its specific function as a laboratory in which future national and institutional configurations were being tried out before being

1. See Vinci, 'II fascismo di confine', pp. 100-101. 2. Gabriele D'Annunzio played a crucial role in facilitating the Fascist appropriation of this culture. It is worthy of note that, in the words of Claudio Silvestri, 'i fascisti triestini [...] eranopertendenza piu dannunziani che mussoliniani'. See C. Silvestri, Dalla redenzione al fascismo, p. 76. The Fascist party (later MSI, 'Movimento Sociale Italiano', more recently renamed AN, Alleanza Nazionale') has held a prominent position in the local council since the 1920s.

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applied on a larger scale.3 Triestine Fascism rested on the assumption that 'idea di patria e quella mistico-combattentistica che la guerra aveva esaltato, ed essi [local Fascists] intendono essere non solo eredi, ma potenziatori della funzione italiana della citta, in senso pienamente imperialista e nazionalista'.4 Accompanied by an attachment to combattentismo, an emphasis on a recovered Irredentism and on its mystical, fatalistic nature, official patriotic rhetoric and propaganda firmly advocated Italy as unique and ideal patria in Trieste. The myth of italianitd is therefore examined here largely alongside the rise of the Fascist phenomenon, in relation to, among other things, the disappointed hopes and frustrations of the veterans of the Great War, who were instrumental in building up a substantial corpus of Triestine literature about and around the war. Geographically contiguous to the contested territories and enclosed in its arena tainted with cultural insecurity and inferiority, Trieste yearned for the reassurance provided by a nurturing motherland. In the course of a few decades, however, Italy was to become experienced in the cold rejection of a cruel step-motherland. 1. Irredentismo: A Local Brand of Nationalism Irredentism, a largely political phenomenon covering the last decades of the nineteenth century, was a quasi-religious type of nationalism which in Trieste took the form of an almost mystical attachment to Italy in opposition to the Austro-Hungarian rule.5 Its nationalistic emphasis made Irredentism susceptible to incorporation into the body of Fascist patriotic rhetoric after 1919 and nationalistic reverberations of Irredentism in literature are documented well into the inter-war period.6 The literary 3. See Vinci, 'II fascismo di confine', p. 102. 4. Apih, Trieste, pp. 114-15. 5. In the words of Attilio Tamaro (1884-1956), a renowned historian and virulent promoter of italianitd, Austria represented a contingency for Trieste, while Italy was an 'eternal value' (Trieste: Storia di una citta e di unafede [Milan: Istituto Editoriale Italiano, 1946], p. 129). See also n. 29 below. One prominent feature of Irredentism is the idealization of Italy: see Giulio Gratton, Trieste segreta (Bologna: Cappelli, 1948), p. 107: 'la piccola vita quotidiana del nuovo regno, con le sue miserie e la sua banalita fu volutamente ignorata e dell'Italia fu accettata una immagine ideale, grande sovra ogni grandezza'. 6. Mario Alberti, a historian who worked in the Fascist period, devoted a whole study to the rhetorical treatment of the Irredentist question: L'irredentismo senza romantidsmi (Como: Cavalleri, 1938). Alberti juxtaposed ambiguously cultural-national Irredentism and what he labelled 'irredentismo della disperazione', where disperazione is employed to emphasize the strenuous Irredentist effort to repel the loathed 'marea slava'.

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implications of Irredentism also carried some weight for the culture of Trieste and the whole Julian area. Irredentist themes and characters featured in numerous novels and short stories and were interpreted in fictional contexts, even in relatively recent times (see for instance Jean Anglade's Les convoites [1955] or Enzo Bettiza's Ilfantasma di Trieste [1958]).7 The historical boundaries of Irredentism fall approximately between 1882 (the year the Triestine patriot Guglielmo Oberdanfk] attempted to assassinate the Emperor Franz Joseph) and the end of the First World War. However, Irredentism survived beyond its historical boundaries as a frame of mind and progressively became generalized to include any form of antiAustrian and pro-Italian feeling at almost any time.8 Conflated, at times even confused, with pre-existing discursive practices and ideologies, such as the long-standing local attempts to attain cultural dignity and prestige by seeking shelter under the Italian roof, Irredentism remained ambivalent throughout in that it attempted consistently to impose a national tradition without relinquishing its anchorage to a local sphere of interest. Irredentism paradoxically remained a local phenomenon, while seeking sentimental attachment elsewhere. As a form of nationalism, Irredentism acquired a crucial role in the border-city Trieste. There, the lack of a historically defined borderline confused concepts of nationality, national identity and nationalism, almost reducing them to one.9 This confusion was aggravated by economic factors. 7. J. Anglade's novel Les convoites (Paris: Gallimard, 1955) is set in Trieste in the period around the First World War. Anglade's pretext for highlighting the Irredentism of his protagonist (Fabio Battilana) is emotional jealousy. Battilana attempts, in fact, to murder the Austrian lover of his wife, unpleasant Judge Wassbauer, out of sheer jealousy, and finds himself labelled as Irredentist in order to escape Austrian imprisonment (p. 56): 'Et voila qu'a cause de ces deux-la [Battilana's wife and lover], lui, Battilana, le debardeur d'hier, il se mettait en devoir d'aller delivrer 1'Italie irredenta. II devenait un Redempteur!' 8. See Carlo Schiffrer, La Venezia Giulia nell'etd del Risorgimento: Momenti e problemi (Udine: Del Bianco, 1966), p. 49: Tirredentismo [...] soprawive piu che altro come stato d'animo di disagio sentimentale dalle esigenze contraddittorie ed incapace di azione concreta'. 9. See Stelio Spadaro, 'Uno sguardo al futuro', Rinascita, 23 January 1988, p. 13: 'fra i guasti provocati qui [in Trieste] dal fascismo con la pretesa di identificare italianita e nazionalismo va annoverata anche la difficolta di tenere distinti senso dell'appartenenza nazionale e nazionalismo'. See also Giulio Caprin, Trieste liberata (Florence: Bemporad, 1919), p. 19: 'una clearly recognizable line of nationality, quale anche Wilson propose [...] in omaggio alia piu astratta giustizia, non esisterebbe nemmeno se si tenesse conto delle suddivisioni, approssimativamente storiche, che ramministrazione austriaca aveva nelFultimo secolo fissate'. The lack of a 'clearly recognizable line of nationality' is to be

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While loyalty to the Italian nation was a cultural mainstay, local financial and business allegiances were inevitably directed towards the Austro-Hungarian Empire that initiated and sustained Trieste's business fortunes.10 Even though the Fascist regime made various efforts to shift Triestine business loyalty to Italy (such as attempting to rebuild the moribund port and promoting construction works) it also initiated Trieste's financial reliance on state subsidies, progressively reducing the city's traditional economic independence. The local ambivalence between culture and business identified by Triestine intellectuals before the Great War was not merely protracted but also aggravated by the increased pressure exercised by the strait-jacket of state subsidies. A poet who consistently focused on the industrial efforts to reconstruct Trieste's economic wealth was Carlo Mioni (1871-1946), who composed much dialect poetry under the auspicious pseudonym of Alma Sperante. Mioni celebrated the apogee of the regime which was just then beginning to resort to more vacuous and rhetorical forms of propaganda. In Lanterna magica: Robe che va, robe che resta (1934), the poem 'el varo' celebrates in triumphal tones the financial effort undertaken by Fascism to re-launch the Triestine port:

imputed to purely ethnic reasons: various ethnic groups (Italian, Slav but also other origins) are scattered in the area following the pattern of 'black spots on a leopard's skin' ('distribuzione "a pelle di leopardo"'—see Srda Orbanic and Natasa Musizza Orbanic, 'Regionalismo istriano: fmzione da fine millennio', La Battana 108 [1993], pp. 55-62 [p. 55]). It is therefore virtually impossible to draw a permanent national line. See also Chapter 2. 10. The problem was clearly defined by Angelo Vivante as early as 1912: Tantitesi tra il fattore economico e quello nazionale e [...] il filo conduttore di tutta la storia triestina'. See A. Vivante, Irredentismo adriatico (Florence: Parenti, 1954), p. 221. In more recent times the economic factor has also been a dimension of Triestine pro-Italian nationalism, albeit in different terms. After the collapse of the Empire, Italy was regarded as potential provider of business for the city—see for instance Manlio Cecovini, Del patriottismo di Trieste: Discorso di un triestino agli italiani net cinquantenario della Redenzione (Milan: All'Insegna del Pesce d'Oro-Scheiwiller, 1968), a plea for a policy of restoration and expansion of Triestine economy based on Trieste's Italian loyalty. Cecovini speaks in the first person plural: we Triestines are honest, virtuous, hard-working unlike you indolent Italians. However, since we faithfully opt for the Italian nation you are committed to assisting us in the effort to restore our wealth. Cecovini was not alone in failing, however, to realize the incompatibility of Italian and Triestine business: unlike the Empire, Italy never viewed Trieste as a vital outlet to the sea and predictably excluded and marginalized the Triestine port in favour of the ones it had traditionally relied upon.

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A CITY IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR Su 1'armadura posa / El scafo de la nave / Sta opera grandiosa / (Maestranze proprio brave) / Un vero monumento, / La speta de sbrissar / Co vegnara el momento / Tra 1'onde drento el mar. Ga lavorado mesi / Intorno i carpentieri, / Borazi xe stai spesi / Con cifre a tanti zeri. / In fero e azal, vagoni / Intieri consumai / Ciodazi po a milioni / De soto in su incassai. La fola la inquieta / Ghe fa de paravento, / Bandiere su in toreta / E dapertuto al vento. / Tribune per i siori / E per le autorita / E un altarin con fiori, / In fianco, improvisa. Sona la banda, ariva / El vescovo, el prefeto, / El podesta e i eviva / Vien fora d'ogni peto. / Silenzio: eco el prevosto / Da la benedizion, / Xe pronto za al suo posto / Chi fracara el boton. Un sotosegretario / Fa un discorson coi fiochi, / L'invita el legendario / Gran tasto che ben tochi / La fia del presidente / Dela gran sozieta, / Che tuta soridente / La disi: 'O nave, va!' La fiasca de sampagna / Se rompi adesso a prora / El fianco la ghe bagna, / Su forza! / Un colpo ancora, / Fra eviva e batimani / Fra bande e un gran ronzar / In alto de 'reoplani, / La va tociarse in mar. Gran congratulazioni / Per tuti i bravi artieri / Do o tre decorazioni / Pei capi e pei ingegneri / E po, za se capissi, / Xe un pranzo prepara, / La festa la finissi / Fra brindisi e alala. 11

11. Alma Sperante, Lanterna magica: Robe che va, robe che resta (Trieste: Moderna, 1934), pp. 33-35: 'The ship's hull / Lies on its framework/ A grandiose work/ (Really competent workmen) / A veritable wonder / Waiting here for the moment / When it will glide / Over the waves. For months the shipwrights / Worked it over, / Big money was spent / Figures with many zeros. / Iron and steel / By the wagon-load were employed / Millions of big nails / Hammered in upside down. Animated crowds / Are shielding the ship / Flags are waving in the wind / Up in the turret and everywhere. / Grandstands for lords and ladies / And for authorities / A little flowered altar / Are arranged on one side. The band is playing / The bishop, the prefetto and podesta arrive / Everyone is cheering. / Silence: the priest / is now giving his blessing / and the designated person / is ready to press the button. An under-secretary / gives an impressive speech / inviting the daughter / of the big President / to touch the legendary button. / All smiles, she cries: 'Go, my ship!' A bottle of champagne / is shattered against the prow / Wetting the ship's flank, / Come on! Strike again!, / It glides into the sea / amongst clapping and cheers / band-music and the humming / of many planes high above. Many congratulations / are offered to the hands / Two or three decorations / To engineers and foremen / Afterwards, of course / A lunch is prepared, / The party ends triumphantly / Amongst toasts and alala.' (The translation is mine.)

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Here the regime is advertising itself through a poetic and intensely local celebration of its spirit and achievements. Dialect is used throughout while Italian is resorted to sparingly and in parentheses where a formal tone is required to commend the accomplishments of the regime.12 The poem is realistic, low-brow and composed in a style falling somewhere between the children's periodical Corriere del Piaoli and a propagandistic pamphlet.13 The launching of a new ship, surrounded by a plethora of authorities and accompanied by the barking ofalald, is a pretext for Alma Sperante to create a rhetorical oleograph of Fascist Trieste. The new order is characterized by a rigid hierarchy of presidents, segretari and sottosegretari and full of awe for the large sums of money deployed for the renovation and reconstruction of the city. This is an explicit celebration of the 'magnifiche sorti e progressive' of Fascism and advertises the attempt on the part of the regime to fill the gaps left open by the disappearance of the Empire with an autarchically Italian business culture.14 The high frequency of rhetorical poems such as 'el varo' in inter-war Trieste demonstrates that Italian nationalism is identified as the most effective instrument able to redress Trieste's cultural and national insecurities. Local Fascism, in fact, did not hesitate to count upon a 'pesante retaggio' of nationalism, as Tommaso Fanfani puts it, which in Trieste had been more marked than elsewhere in the 1880s and 1890s.15 In the 1930s the cultural role of a consolidated local nationalism was emphasized as 12. It would, incidentally, be profitable to explore the impact of anti-regionalist policies of the regime on an intensely dialect-based culture such as the Triestine one. 13. See for instance the 'cifre a tanti zeri' resonant of the Milione unfailingly awarded to Sergio Tofano's comic character 'Signer Bonaventura' in the Corriere del Piaoli. 14. Fascism is also celebrated by Alma Sperante in other poems of the same collection, in particular 'lugio 1934'. 15. T. Fanfani, 'Trieste tra il XDC e il XX secolo: Contribute allo studio delle condizioni socio-economiche degli operai', in Amelio Tagliaferri (ed.), Scritti storici in memoria di Paolo Lino Zovatto (Milan: Giuffre, 1972), pp. 295-321 (p. 310): 'Pesante retaggio il nazionalismo proprio in quegli anni [1880s-1890s] si ramifica dal terreno politico su tutti gli aspetti della vita triestina, divenendo giustamente o meno 1'unico elemento ispiratore della stessa arte e cultura di quel periodo.' Italian nationalism in Trieste relied on the idea of the excellence of the Italian language which in turn became the most obvious vehicle to propagate this nationalism locally. However, language alone does not tell the whole story. Benedict Anderson defined a nation as an 'imagined community', one whose bond is not merely that of speaking one language but also of having its language available in print. It is, in other words, the presence of a literary culture that warrants a sense of nationality. In a Foucaldian sense, a nation implies formation of its own discourse.

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independent from and even superior to ethnicity. Nationality was proclaimed attainable through cultural rather than genetic means, for instance via the production of a literature modelled on a 'great tradition' of Italian writing.16 The mixed ethnic background of the Triestines could then be expiated by enthusiastically adopting Italian culture, no matter if indiscriminately and a posteriori. Reference to religion is also not accidental. While mystical loyalties, a national liturgy, are explicitly put into play by Triestine nationalism, their supremely irrational nature nonetheless proves to be elusive and almost impossible for the scholar to pin down. A powerful literary example of this mystical aspect of Irredentism is Giani Stuparich's fictionalized account of the Italian ships' arrival at St. Carlo pier on 3 November 1918.17 The event, related at length in the war novel Ritorneranno (1941), marked the end of the First World War as well as the popularly acclaimed onset of Italian rule in Trieste. The two eye-witnesses of the episode in the novel are Angela and her father Domenico. The degree of emotion involved in waiting for the ships is overwhelming, tainted as it is by the charge of religious anxiety bestowed upon it. On the pier, Angela undergoes a veritable mystical experience. Awe for the divinity, a mystico-sexual approach to the divine in which the senses' experience is complemented by the resonance of the voices in the soul, the 16. See, for example, Aldo Pizzagalli, Per I'italianitd del cognomi nella provinda di Trieste (Trieste: Treves-Zanichelli, 1929), p. 8: 'E opinione concorde ormai [...] che nelle origini delle nazioni ebbero parte infinitamente piu importante, che non gli element! etnici, quelli culturali.' See also Schiffrer, La Venezia Giulia, p. 36: 'la nazionalita e un prodotto storico culturale molto complesso. E italiano chi, indipendentemente dalForigine prossima o remota della propria famiglia, attraverso il possesso pieno e prevalente della lingua italiana, e entrato nell'orbita culturale italiana, se ne e arricchito, ne ha avuto improntato lo spirito e percio si sente italiano e non puo sentirsi che italiano.' Rino Alessi put it in mystical terms in his novel La speranza oltre il fiume (Rocca San Casciano: Cappelli, 1959), p. 163: 'ho ragione di amare 1'Italia come punto d'incontro tra Nazione e Civilta: una scelta in cui la volonta pesa quanto e piu del sangue che portiamo nelle vene'. Alessi was a journalist and a novelist as well as a public figure of Triestine Fascism. In the 1920s and 1930s he edited Bologna's daily II Resto del Carlino. 17. The acclaimed arrival of Italian ships at the main pier of Trieste on 3 November 1918 is an appropriate example in terms of both the frequency of its representation in literature and the unrivalled emotional charge it carries with it. See also, for instance, Aurelia Reina Cesari, Trieste, laguerra, una giovimzza (Bologna: Cappelli, 1938), p. 253: 'La folia nereggiante si agita. Un rombo come di tuono passa sopra di essa. E il delirio il delirio. Un grido solo, un urlo solo, tutta 1'anima in esso:—ITALIA! ITALIA! ITALIA!'. See also Pizzi, 'A City in Search of an Author', p. 106.

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blurring of the threshold between life and death, and a final vision of a purgatorial burning flame are all factors at play leading to Angela's emotional collapse. The episode ends appropriately with the young woman fainting in the arms of her father at the climax of her sexual-mystical experience: Un gelo le sail su per le ginocchia, 1'affanno del cuore le venne alia gola. Le parve che la superficie del mare s'alzasse, potente, irresistibile. Fu presa da paura: 'Non cosi, non cosi, e troppo': udi come una lamentevole voce alzarsi dalla propria anima. Poi tante voci le si incrociarono nelPanima: un tumulto. [...] I morti venivano avanti nella luce con le loro ombre, i vivi tendevano le mani ai vivi. La liberta di sentire e di sentirsi irrompeva da ogni parte con una veemenza da togliere il respiro; la gioia era cosi violenta da far male. Dentro la fiamma del sangue che si rawivava, tutti i ricordi dei sacrifizi e delle sofferenze, dei sussulti e dei terrori, dei pianti e delle speranze, erano belli, bruciavano chiari come materia secca a un fuoco vigoroso. [...] La visione interiore temprava 1'animo a sostenere la realta. [...] sembrava che il suolo della citta si sradicasse per muovere incontro alle navi. Le grida s'erano raccolte in canti, i canti disuguali diventavano un canto solo, le voci una voce 18 sola, un tuono.

This religious charge and dramatic tension are difficult to sustain throughout: the author occasionally risks verging into the grotesque patriotic Bacchanal. While mystical paraphernalia are insufficient to sustain the nationalistic charge of the long episode, Trieste emerges as a city crushed down by the haunting weight of its history: a city of shadows, a city of ghosts.19 18. G. Stuparich, Ritorneranno (Milan: Garzanti, 7th edn, 1944 [1941]), pp. 564-65. The flame is notably one of the favourite symbols of Fascism, inherited from ancient Rome via D'Annunzio. 19. See Pellegrini, Le citta interiori, p. 93: '[Trieste is] un luogo storico ed ideale gravato dal peso del suo passato sottilmente persecutorio, una citta delle ombre' (emphasis in original). It is specifically the external apparatus of religion, the ritual, which prevails in Trieste: for example the widespread habit of substituting images of famous patriots for those of saints in popular iconography. It was not uncommon, for instance, to find portraits of Garibaldi or Mazzini pinned on bedposts in place of religious images, or windows occasionally transformed into altars with candles burning in front of Italian national flags. See, for instance, Gratton, Trieste segreta, p. 107: 'Ricordo ancora il vecchio garibaldino Antonio Zerman che dicendo: "Andiamo a vedere San Giuseppe!" introduceva me fanciulletto nella sua stanza, dove, sopra il letto, al posto riservato alle immagini sacre, pendeva una grande oleografia di Garibaldi, awolto nel poncho, col berrettino ricamato sulla chioma fluente.' See also the patriotic enthusiasm described by Silvio Benco in 'Momenti della guerra del 1914-1918 a Trieste', in Trieste tra Ottocento e

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The religious dimension of nationalism is no novelty. Mazzini himself, who was powerfully if belatedly influential in Trieste thanks to La Voce, resorted to it. This aspect originates from the idea that the nation is not a thing but the 'representation of a thing'; indeed that the nation becomes in itself an existential value. The very name Irredentism suggests religious attachments and loyalties.20 Providing a spiritual outlet in a city excessively dominated by the commercial credo, a stable reference point in the lingering heritage of multi-cultural stimuli characterizing its original cosmopolitanism, in Trieste Irredentism took the form of a secularized form of religion.21 Benedict Anderson persuasively suggests that a rise of nationalism in post-Enlightenment Europe is to be imputed to, among other things, 'the dusk of religious modes of thought'.22 And this idea tailors itself perfectly to the case of Trieste, where Catholicism was traditionally associated with the spurned Austro-Hungarian Empire first, and later with an equally resisted Slav clergy. Even in a secularized form, the loyalties, the mythical impact and the psychological involvement triggered by Irredentism were no less powerful than in the case of religion proper. The choice of the Italian nation was comparable to the choice of a religion, and Trieste displayed the enthusiasm of the convert.23 Novecento, pp. 45-146 (p. 138): 'Ritratti di Vittorio Emanuele II e di Vittorio Emanuele III, di Garibaldi, di Mazzini, busti di Dante, incisioni con allegorie d'ltalia, santificarono molte fmestre ad altari.' 20. See Cusin, Appunti alia storia di Trieste, pp. 331-32: Tideale irredentistico [...] fu aspirazione sentimentale a base prettamente religiosa'. 'Lo stesso nome, sorto in quell'epoca, di "irredentismo" ci ricorda 1'essenza di religiosita.' See also p. 334: Tirredentismo triestino pote trionfare su tutti gli ostacoli, grazie appunto alia profondita con cui il sentimento religiose si abbarbica negli animi e non ne pud essere staccato per nessuna ragione'. Cusin also discusses Trieste's attachment to Italy in terms of counteracting the local business daemon. 21. See Eric Hobsbawm, 'Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914', in Hobsbawm and Ranger (eds.), Invention of Tradition, pp. 263-307 (p. 303): 'nationalism became a substitute for social cohesion through a national church, a royal family or other cohesive traditions, or collective group-presentations, a new secular religion'. See also Pizzi 'A City in Search of an Author', p. 108. 22. Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 19. 23. G. Caprin, Paesaggi e spiriti di confine (Milan: Treves, 1915), pp. 84-85: 'La scelta [...] della nazione italiana piu ancora che alia scelta di un partito dovrebbe paragonarsi a quella di una religione. Chi di sangue straniero si dichiara italiano e come un convertito; percio e, spesso, nella sua fede, piu ardente e sicuro di molti che praticano la stessa fede, soltanto per abitudine.' This over-emotional aspect of Triestine nationalism may be assimilated to a Reichian reading of Fascist ideology in terms of sexual repression: see

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The mysticism inherent in Irredentism also inevitably generated fatalistic myths and rhetorics. Vaguely mystical and ambiguous genetic terms were often invoked to account for the 'inevitable Italianness' of the city.24 Italy became, for Trieste, an inescapable destino, a fatalism well known in border areas.25 This ambiguity was supported by the reiterated idea of Trieste's choosing the Italian nation as an act of supreme will denied to the rest of the country where nationality was geographically and ethnically unquestionable. The marginal Tries tine was portrayed as yearning to become part of a larger community identified with a lofty cultural milieu, a country the Austrian Emperor himself used to refer to as a Kulturnation. Even the role played by the Venetian Republic throughout the Mediterranean and including this particular geographical area, a powerful historical influence legitimately able to account for the italianitd of the region, became occasionally overlooked in favour of an attachment to Italy largely expressed in irrational terms.26

Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, p. 129: The reactionary man who is also a fascist assumes an intimate relation between family, nation and religion'. The anti-clerical tradition inherited from the Risorgimento also played a significant part in Trieste. 24. Caprin, Trieste liberata, p. 33: 'II suolo della Venezia Giulia non puo produrre che vita italiana. Italianita d'istinto, questo e logico, prima che di coscienza.' See also Tamaro, Trieste, p. 91: 'Nella rivendicazione della romanita [...] si svolgeva un processo storico essenziale: la perpetuazione del carattere nazionale della citta. Un processo istintivo, condotto, magari non sapendolo i Triestini, a quell'alto fine da una disposizione di prowidenza divina e operante come un mistero vitale neH'anima del piccolo popolo.' It is interesting to note that Tamaro replaced the term italianitd with romanita, a favourite with the Fascist regime. Trieste is qualified as Italian for spiritual, sentimental and irrational reasons as much as Italy itself is regarded as a spiritual entity born out of an 'eroica follia romantica'; see G. Caprin, Trieste e I'ltalia (Milan: Rava, 1915), p. 13. 25. See Chapter 2, and esp. Tomizza, La quinta stagione, pp. 127-29; Morovich, Un italiano di Fiume, p. 247; Giuricin, Istria, p. 222: 'in Istria manca 1'anima'. The territorial controversy ending with substantial loss of Italian land to Yugoslavia results in a mystical loss of soul. For Sandro Mauri ('Trieste rivisitata', Settimo giorno, October 1959, pp. 24-27 [p. 24]) 'Italianita [e] un destine da cui non si torna indietro'. See also Caprin, Trieste liberata, p. 49; and Stuparich, Trieste nei miei ricordi, p. 33: 'Nei tempi che seguirono immediati all'altra guerra, credo che pochi altri centri in Europa fossero cosi carichi di destino come Trieste.' 26. See D. De Castro, 'Considerazioni sul future di Trieste', in Favaretto and Greco (eds.), // confine riscoperto, pp. 154-62 (p. 156): 'II fatto che Trieste non possa essere che italiana e che abbia dimostrato la sua forza assimilatrice nei confronti di oltre una dozzina di etnie, facendole divenire tutte italofone (sarebbe meglio dire venetofone) in brevissimo tempo, e merito della sua eterna rivale, Venezia, la cui parlata era diffusa in tutto il

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In reality, as Ernest Gellner has suggested, nationality contains neither fatality, nor religion. There are no such things as deeply rooted, eternal or archetypal nationalities when 'nation' is understood as a social and historical construct. If'nation' is built on the basis of a recognized, shared high cultural system, then in Trieste's specific case Italian literary culture can easily act as the privileged vehicle ofitalianita. This nationalistic 'imposition of a high culture on society', as Gellner puts it, is a trait Irredentism shared with the Risorgimento.27

2. Cultural Delay Trieste and the Heritage of the Risorgimento Irredentism is characterized by a keen attention to the movement for national self-determination and unification known as the Risorgimento. One of the favourite social clubs for Triestine Irredentists, the sports association Societa Ginnastica Triestina, for instance, was repeatedly closed down by the Austrian authorities and periodically re-founded on the same patriotic grounds. Societa Ginnastica found its main inspiration in the Risorgimento, and in particular regarded itself as homologous to the secret society La Carboneria. In its literary expression, too, Irredentism turned to the literature of the Risorgimento. Francesco De Sanctis was universally admired by Triestine writers as an unrivalled critic and political maestro and, specifically, for his ambitious programme of gathering together literary and political dimensions in a pro-unification sense. As a militant literary critic De Sanctis taught the Triestines to believe in the combination of 'letteratura e vita', as much as Mazzini taught them the parallel dialectic of 'pensiero e azione'. De Sanctis became a model for the vociani triestini in particular who, by adopting his cultural programme and handing it down, conferred upon it a crucial role for the culture of modern Trieste.28 Mediterraneo centrale ed orientale e, attraverso i suoi commerci, anche nei Balcani e nella Mitteleuropa.' 27. E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), p. 57. See also Abruzzese, Svevo, Slataper e Michelstaedter: Lo stile e il viaggio, passim. 28. Cf. also the influential role of Garibaldi, who was appreciated for the combination of national feeling and socialism he incarnated; see Stuparich, Trieste nei miei ricordi, p. 54: 'Questo senso di partecipare col cuore alle rivendicazioni di un popolo ch spezzava le proprie catene, era in me altrettanto vivo del sentimento nazionale, e mi pareva che questi due sentimenti non si conciliassero mai tanto bene in me come davanti alia figura simbolica di Garibaldi in camicia rossa.'

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Close attention paid to the Risorgimento emerges both from Giani Stuparich's editorship of an Antologia di scrittori garibaldini (1948) and from his sustained enthusiasm for the Italian Ottocento (his main models being Verga, Leopardi, Manzoni, Nievo and Fogazzaro). The heavily patriotic and partisan historiography produced in the first decades of the twentieth century provides a further, persuasive example.29 Turin, first symbolic seat of unification and of the literature of a united Italy, became the favoured city and, with Edmondo De Amicis, was contemplated as an ethical, risorgimentale abode of patriotic 'buoni sentimenti'.30 It is no accident that De Amicis' Cuore (1886) became one of the most influential readings in Trieste and the whole border area and that its influence persisted well into the 1940s.31 Similarly, Umberto Saba identified his authentic Italy in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, melodramatic mirrors of the epic of the Risorgimento.32 29. I am referring in particular to the works of A. Tamaro. The title of his study Trieste: Storia di una citta e di unafede refers to the city's staunch loyalty to Italy. The whole volume is devoted, like all others by Tamaro, to proving Trieste's connection with Risorgimento Italy: Tamaro almost redrafts the history of the Risorgimento, overemphasizing the role played by Trieste in it. Despite the fact that this type of historiography is nowadays largely discredited, Tamaro's work was extremely popular and influential until fairly recently. Stuparich's Trieste nei miei ricordi also provides some evidence that the author not only thought of himself as a nineteenth-century writer but also tended to read most of his local contemporaries in the same light. See Pizzi, 'Uno nessuno e centomila', p. 132. Finally, Trieste itself is reputed to be a city with a 'volto ottocentesco'; see Guglielmi, Da un'altra riva, p. 8. 30. See, for instance, Stuparich, Trieste nei miei ricordi, p. 188: 'E soprattutto quest'aria romantica che mi piace, quest'aria di "Risorgimento" che spira, come in nessun'altra citta, dai suoi [Turin's] monumenti, dalle sue piazze, dalla sua vita.' 31. Morovich, Un italiano di Fiume, p. 240: 'mia madre comincio a leggermi il libro [Cuore], seduta accanto al mio letto di convalescente di tifo. Un'epidemia s'era diffusa in citta durante 1'inverno di guerra del 1916.' The mother sitting by the bed of her sick child and reading Cuore out loud to him is in itself a sentimental episode of Cuore's type. Morovich's mnemonic geography transfers King Umberto's Turin to Fiume, with bizarre effects of cultural and psychological juxtaposition. Another example is Morovich's description of the epidemic of 'febbre spagnola' during the First World War which parallels Alessandro Manzoni's plague episode in his / Promessi sposi; cf. Morovich, Un italiano di Fiume, pp. 241-42: 'Comincio a diffondersi la febbre spagnola e le scuole chiusero. [...] Fu in quei giorni che la mamma mi parlo della peste e del romanzo del Manzoni.' History in Trieste frequently appeared to mould itself on literary accounts of historical events. Cuore also inspired Haydee powerfully; see Chapter 4. 32. In one of Saba's scorciatoie, dated March 1945, he wrote, 'Fu una sera in caserma. Ero solo nella bianca immensa camerata, quando un altro consegnato (Gobbetti si

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In putting prominently into play discourses of a relationship with tradition, this devotion to the Risorgimento is not without its contradictory aspects: on the one hand Irredentism aspired to adhere indiscriminately and anachronistically to an Italian literary canon, accepting, for instance, Petrarch alongside Ariosto and Leopardi. On the other hand, it resented that same tradition in favour of the sentimental ideal of a local superiority (see the discussion of triestinitd in Chapter 1). This unresolved ambivalence undoubtedly reflects Trieste's multi-national composition and the already mentioned contradictory nature of Irredentism, split between a nationalism which was at the same time Unitarian and risorgimentale, and an aggressive separatism.33 It was, however, the first of the two dimensions that was to prevail in Trieste, the desire to compensate for having been deprived of a Risorgimento by recreating it after one or even two world wars. Trieste and the Two World Wars After the end of the First World War and the new Italian administration of Trieste, three previously unforeseen factors contributed to emasculate Trieste's political and economic position: the competition from the port of Venice, exacerbated after the latter received a powerful boost under Count Volpi di Misurata, later minister of finances in Mussolini's goverment; the autarchic policy carried out by the Fascist regime, which reduced drastically the volume of international business; and particularly the Fascists' overall foreign policy, leading to a decreased Italian influence in the Balkans.34 If Triestine business had irretrievably lost its imperial background after 1918, the Second World War accentuated this dire trend with further losses of the city's smaller background: that is, Istria and the borderlands acquired in 1919. After the end of the War, 'chiusa in un cul de sac, circondato da uno Stato retto dal comunismo reale, oscillante tra stalinismo e autogestione,

chiamava; era Lombardo, anzi Milanese) entro improwisamente cantando "Bella figlia delFamore". Tutta 1'Italia, con i suoi mari, i suoi monti, le sue citta, mi entro nel cuore come un fulgore azzurro.' See U. Saba, 'scorciatoia n. 46': VERDI, in Seconde scorciatoie, in Scorciatoie e raccontini, in Prose, p. 280. Verdi is taken by Saba as a symbol of italianita well after the Risorgimento—see also 'scorciatoia n. 113', in Quarte scordatoie e un raccontino, in Scorciatoie, p. 308. 33. This antithesis is clearly identified by Apih in Trieste, p. 89: '[Irredentismo] per un verso esprimeva natura risorgimentale, cioe volonta di Stato nazionale unitario, e per altro verso era fenomeno asburgico, aspra competizione nazionale, con tendenza pure alia sopraffazione.' 34. See De Castro, 'Considerazioni sul futuro', p. 157.

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certo non benevolo verso PItalia', Trieste suffered further blows whose effects are persisting today.35 In the literary sphere, the Risorgimento remained a prominent source of inspiration for the representation of both World Wars. This is apparent, for example, in the works of Giulio Camber Barni (1891-1941) and Manlio Cecovini (b. 1914). Barni's best known collection of war poetry, La Bujfa, was written in the trenches during the First World War, but remained unpublished until 1950.36 Barni's aesthetic and moral premises belong to the pre-Great War period. His nineteenth-century world is pervaded by the Geist of the Risorgimento and by the notion that social classes must meet on equal ground and possibly die in the trenches for the just cause of completing the construction of the nation. The collection, however, progressively illustrates the demise of Barni's idealized 'just war'. Visions of titanic struggles gradually give way to human degradation, resentment and bitterness for the collapse of patriotic ideals. See in particular the poems 'Simone' and 'II cappellano': 'Simone, amico caro, / purtroppo la guerra e fmita. / Che cosa ne faremo / di questa nostra vita?' 'II cappellano militare / disse che Gesu Cristo / amava tanto la guerra. / Concluse: / "Viva PItalia! / Ewiva S. Antonio!"'37 Barni captures very effectively the post-war emptiness, the powerlessness and anti-clericalism which are among the contributing factors to the Fascist phenomenon. A classic war poet in his linguistic and narrative realism (see for instance 'La canzone di Lavezzari' and 'II mio testamento' in the same collection), Barni bans any lyrical and rhetorical embellishment from his prose-like poetry. The episodes he describes are invariably brief and stripped naked of detail, with direct speech inserted spontaneously, frequently in the dialect of the individual soldiers to whom Barni gives voice. The epic tone is a consequence of Barni's risorgimentale inspiration, while the First World War is celebrated as the last war of Risorgimento in 'La canzone di Lavezzari': II 24 maggio, la notte della guerra, Giuseppe Garibaldi usci di sotto terra. E ando da Lavezzari, che si beveva il vino; gli disse: 'Lavezzari, vecchio garibaldino, Lavezzari, vecchio fante, e scoppiata un'altra guerra, ma io non posso andarci: perche sono sotto terra. Camerata di Bezzecca, mio vecchio portabandiera, va te sul Podigora, e porta la mia bandiera!'38

35. De Castro, 'Considerazioni sul future', p. 158. 36. An attempt to publish the collection in 1935 failed when Fascist authorities prevented the volume from being distributed on grounds of its alleged defeatist content. 37. G. Camber Barni, 'Simone' and 'II cappellano', in La Buffa, pp. 197 and 156. 38. G. Camber Barni, 'La canzone di Lavezzari', in La Buffa, p. 170. The down-to-

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Though fragile and not devoid of contradictions, a risorgimentale inspiration acts as a trait d'union between Barni and Manlio Cecovini, a contemporary novelist who described the Second World War in similar terms. Ritorno da Poggio Boschetto (1954) is a war diary which intentionally dialogues with its First World War counterparts, such as the ones by Camber Barni and Stuparich. Cecovini's diary does not reveal until Chapter XI, and by virtue of a single reference to the Duce who is heard booming declarations of war from appropriately located loudspeakers, that the Second World War is the setting of his narration. Significantly, no other detail marks this war as different from the previous one: Cecovini's model continues to be Irredentism and its ideal continuity with Risorgimento. However, the powerful ethical strain that was the heritage of a Romantic, risorgimentale era appears even more strident when applied to the Second World War: Cecovini's prose becomes progressively, bitterly, more aware that this war is far more incomprehensible and inhumane as compared with the vitalism, the closeness to nature, the idealism of the First.39

earth prosiness reveals the extent to which Barni's Interventionism was both genuine and of clear Irredentist origin, even though, as Saba pointed out, it turned out to be irremediably short-lived; see Saba, 'Di questo libro e di un altro rnondo' (preface to La Buffo), in Prose, p. 690: 'L'interventismo italiano, come fu vissuto dalla migliore gioventu del tempo, ebbe qualcosa di irruente e di spontaneo. Scoppio nei cuori come una melodia di Verdi. E, come una melodia di Verdi, non sopporto di essere condotto troppo in lungo.' Similar to Barni is the war poet Enrico Elia (1891-1915). Elia's slim production is collected in the posthumous Schegge d'anima (Pordenone: Studio Tesi, 1981). A Jew from a family originating from Corfu, Elia 'Era stato [... ] sempre molto lontano dal cliche del volontario irredento, che avevano fatto circolare prima i liberal-nazionali, poi i fascisti [...]. Non e dubbia la sua propensione per il socialismo, l'internazionalismo e il pacifismo.' See Giorgio Voghera, Anni di Trieste, p. 184. 39. Cecovini's attempt to superimpose the values and the motivations of the First World War on the Second is little by little revealed as an impossible task, 'E la guerra che infanga ogni cosa. Sono gli uomini che lordano la natura. Dove passano gli scarponi chiodati il verde sparisce e resta soltanto fango.' See M. Cecovini, Ritorno da Poggio Boschetto (Florence: La Voce Narrativa-Vallecchi, 1954), p. 246. The author emphasizes endless marches under the rain, unpalatable meals, widespread diarrhoea and the demise of patriotic exaltation into lack of motivation. War is presented as mechanical, unnatural, ready to distort the best in human nature. Cf. for instance Cecovini's nihilism with the intensely optimistic and patriotic portrait of the First World War drawn by Giuseppe Reina in Noi che tignemmo il mondo di sanguigno: Combattendo sull'Isonzo e sul Carso con la Brigata Perugia (Maggio-Novembre 1915) (Bologna: Cappelli, 1939). Cecovini is also the author of the collection of stories Farina fina (Milan: Nuova Accademia, 1963).

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Trieste and Romanticism The exemplary role acquired by the Risorgimento in Trieste triggered a long-lasting interest in the culture of Italian Romanticism.40 Among other things, a backward-looking gaze that privileged the Angst and excesses of a generically understood Romanticism became incorporated in the local literary debate. The Risorgimento, Mazzini, De Amicis, Turin typified a quintessentially Italian character which Trieste found eminently congenial in its attempt to transfer the oleography of a romantic Italy onto the social and political milieu of the present. Whereas the pre-war generation had emphasized a desire for radical cultural change, or rwoluzionarismo as Pellegrini put it, the inter-war era is decisively dominated by tradizione.^ Romantic authors were a powerful inspiration for Saba, Stuparich, and Quarantotti Gambini, an inspiration which was both anachronistic and escapist. It is true, for example, that Umberto Saba 'nasce dal grembo della poesia romantica', as Ettore Caccia maintains.42 His early poems are modelled on Giacomo Leopardi's Canti. Yet 'Leopardi serviva specialmente in negative, ossia per aiutarlo [Saba] a negare la validita delle strade carducciana e [...] dannunziana'.43 Saba's Romanticism, in other words, was escapist in the same measure as seeking anchorage in a canon, in an established tradition, provided Trieste with a framework able to avert the mandatory concerns of ethnic and cultural confrontation.44 Futurism was also, for instance, warmly welcomed in 40. See Attilio Venezia, preface to Francesco Baroni, Memorie di un internato triestino: Due anni a Mittergmbern (Milan: Dante Alighieri, 1939), pp. vi-vii: 'in tutte le terre [...] dove la minaccia della snazionalizzazione violenta voluta dal governo absburgico incombeva piu sinistra, [... ] gli autori piu cari [... ] erano ancor sempre quei romantici che in pieno Risorgimento erano stati, ad un tempo, campioni di un nuovo orientamento letterario e banditori di una nuova coscienza politica. [... ] e quel romanticismo, e quella rettorica che ci fu tanto cara in pieno Novecento—e non ci vergognamo dell'anacronismo perche essa ci parlava ancor sempre lo stesso linguaggio che aveva parlato agli italiani di due, di tre generazioni prima, politicamente piu fortunati di noi.' In this light, the interest in German Romanticism is also to be imputed to the influence of the Risorgimento rather than to geographical proximity. 41. Pellegrini, 'Aspetti della cultura triestina', p. 358. 42. Caccia, Lettura e storia, p. 16. 43. Silvio Ramat, 'Con Saba e la sua Brama', in Particolari: Undid letture novecentesche (Milan: Mursia, 1992), pp. 73-106 (p. 80). 44. This is why Trieste has been described as a 'Romantic city' until relatively recently—see, for instance, U. Saba, Storia e cronistoria del Canzoniere 1944-1947, in Prose, p. 407: 'Le origini triestine di Saba hanno avuto anchc, come conseguenza, di fame, almeno agli inizi, un arretrato. (Dal punto di vista della cultura, nascere a Trieste nel 1883

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Trieste. However, the city's literary circles appeared to be more attracted by the radically nationalistic discourses embraced by the movement, which were regarded as descending directly from a Sturm und Drang Romanticism, rather than by its modernizing potential.45 Romanticism was experienced in Trieste as a generic call to a past literary tradition able to warrant the 'Italianness' of the city. A canonized Empireum of Italian Romantic authors provided a means to diffuse local cultural insecurities. This created a vicious circle whereby Italian Romantics were imitated so that Trieste could prove its italianita via the literary products that resulted from such imitation.46 The radicalism of the vociani triestini subsided in the post-war period as many of its leading figures died in the Great War. The appeal of a generically understood Romanticism, however, survived and continued to affect both Triestine national and literary culture for decades to come. In a Romantic context the nation is not merely a value, but a value to be lived, a powerful existential condition. This holds especially true for Triestine nationalism since in Trieste, as Elio Apih put it, 'la "coscienza della propria individualita storica" [...] non e tanto fatto politico e civile, quanto era come nascere altrove nel 1850.) Quando il poeta era ancora giovanissimo, e gia, in Italia come in tutto il resto del mondo, si preparavano o erano in atto esperienze stilistiche di ogni genere, la citta di Saba era ancora, per quel poco che aveva di vita culturale, ai tempi del Risorgimento: una citta romantica.' 45. On Futurism in Trieste, see below. 46. This attitude involved other celebrated Italian poets, such as Dante and Petrarch. The case of Dante is particularly interesting in that his influence was mediated through the revival initiated by the poet Ugo Foscolo against the supremacy hitherto granted to Petrarch. Dante was approached in Trieste with the same critical tools used by Foscolo and Mazzini at least one century earlier. See G. Stuparich, 'Dante e noi', in Vittorio Vettori (ed.), Maestro Dante: Lectura Dantis Internazionale (Milan: Marzorati, 1962), pp. 711. The supremacy of Dante upheld by the Risorgimento was handed down intact to Irredentism and to Fascism; see, for instance, Berto Ricci, Lo scrittore italiano (Rome: Ciarrapico, 1984), p. 42: 'Dante, Dante, e Dante: chi non 1'ha familiare balbettera inetto tutta la vita. Lo scrittore italiano si riconosce in questo, che Dante per lui [...] e il principio della sapienza e il metro di ogni bellezza.' The case of Petrarch is similar, although the local interest in him goes further back to the eighteenth century. The Triestine historiographer Domenico Rossetti (1774-1842) extolled Petrarch as champion of pro-Italian patriotism ante litteram. Petrarch became 'maestro delFamor di patria' and 'poeta della nazione italiana [...] in senso meramente culturale e letterario.' See Fabio Cossutta, Ideologia e scelte culturali di Domenico Rossetti: II suo petrarchismo (Udine: Del Bianco, 1989), pp. 10 and 174. Rossetti related to Petrarch on account of their common loathing of French rule (misogallismo).

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struttura dell'esistenza, anche individuale, non alienabile fattore della identita personale. Un vissuto insomma.'47 Though constructed artificially, it is, however, in this capacity of vissuto, of existential experience, that italianitd reveals one of its truest faces. A few specimens of literature produced immediately before and during the Fascist experience and consonant with the regime's promotion of an uncorrupted 'Italianness' demonstrate some routes through which provincial and parasitic, but also powerfully existential, cultural discourses were nurtured in Trieste.

Benito Mussolini in piazza Oberdan on 19 September 1938 (reprinted from Trieste 1990-1999: Cent' anni di storia, IV, p. 232, by kind permission of Publisport srl).

3. Italianita Even though earlier attempts aimed at establishing Trieste's all-Italian cultural vocation had significantly failed, such as the summa of Triestine cultural history composed by Attilio Hortis (1850-1926) which remained unfinished and unpublished for lack of conclusive documentary sources, a Fascist officialdom attempted to institutionalize, here perhaps more vigorously than elsewhere, a profound emphasis on italianitd.48 Trieste's 47. Apih, Trieste, p. 88. 48. See Millo, L'elite delpotere a Trieste, p. 137.

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complex and diverse cultural make-up was largely replaced with an 'invention of tradition' which, for instance, assigned legendary Roman genealogies to various Triestine political elites.49 A straitjacket of autarchic Italian officialdom was imposed on the city's original multi-ethnic and multicultural composition via a combination of factors: first and foremost, an escapist nostalgia for the past, for a literary tradition which was indiscriminately pre-modern (see above). Italianita became a synonym for the unrivalled literary tradition of Italy.50 As pointed out earlier, nationalism fed largely on literary culture. In this respect, Trieste's infatuation with Italy can be attributed to an 'inferiority complex' experienced by Triestine bourgeois business culture in the face of an Italian literary pre-eminence. The result of this attitude was a national ambivalence, frequently expressed in dramatic, mystical terms.51 Secondly, discourses of italianita were conflated with pre-existing local discourses of triestinitd (see Chapter 1), calling for a reading in tandem of the two phenomena. Triestinitd was frequently regarded as a preliminary step to italianita, an 'Italianness' on a minor scale or a lower echelon in a hierarchy of towering italianita. Triestinitd, however, emerged in some other cases as an alternative to italianita, taking the form of a superiority complex.52 In this respect, triestinitd did not hesitate to incorporate the 49. Podesta Valerio, who was purported to descend from the Valeria Gens, provides an emblematic example; see Millo, L'elite del potere a Trieste, p. 137: 'Romanita e medioevo sono i luoghi mitici frequentati dall'elite politica triestina per comprovare la sua sicura italianita. La famiglia del podesta Valerio si dice discendente della "gens Valeria".' 50. See Ara and Magris, Trieste, p. 17: 'Tutti i gruppi che vivevano a Trieste guardavano altrove, ad una patria lontana e identificabile solo con la sua proiezione fantastica. [...] Ognuno viveva non nella natura o nella realta ma nell'idea di se stesso, nella letteratura, che acquistava cosi un valore esistenziale fondante. L'italianita, 1'idea di se medesima e battaglia per questa idea, diveniva una cultura.' 51. Caprin, Paesaggi e spiriti, p. 15: 'chi vive nella Venezia Giulia e costretto a vivere in una situazione assurda: deve essere cio che non puo e non puo essere cio che vuole. In tutti, anche in coloro che non sono italiani per la ragione elementare del sangue e della consuetudine antica, c'e, piu o meno complessa, una duplicita di vita. [...] ognuno ha in se stesso il suo antagonista. Ognuno aspira dolorosamente a qualche cosa di completo e di certo che saldi una buona volta la sua vita scissa.' A contradiction is apparent in the frequent juxtaposition of highly rhetorical declarations of allegiance with harsh lamentations; see, for instance, Cecovini's Del patriottismo di Trieste, pp. 66 and 81: Trieste voleva essere italiana, da sempre'; 'Trieste si dava all'Italia come alia madre'; 'Vi portavamo una schietta moralita, ci insegnaste la furberia. Mai delusione fu piu cocente.' 52. The idea that triestinita and italianita can be graded numerically can be found in Giorgio Pitacco, 'Scoprimento del busto a Italo Svevo nel giardino pubblico: 26 Aprile

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rhetoric of italianitd, while the most commonly used image was that of an anthropomorphized Trieste portrayed as custodian and holder of Italian banners.53 These factors contribute to what Sestan defined as 'ipertrofia del sentimento nazionale', a subtle but powerful national control exercised on the collective imagination of Triestines on the part of the libemli-nazionali and later handed down to the Fascist political establishment.54 The powerful example set by the Fiume enterprise of 1919-20, and particularly by its charismatic leader Gabriele D'Annunzio, equally contributed to rendering italianitd eminently congenial to the efforts of a rising Fascist regime to establish itself locally. A whole set of discourses which were deeply, if ambiguously, enmeshed with italianitd were experimented with on the Triestine stage in the course of the 1910s and 1920s before being successfully adopted in the rest of Italy. These include the pseudo-classical ritual, the theatrical reconstruction of a Roman imperial past, and the rhetoric of the 'discorsi dal balcone', pioneered in Fiume by D'Annunzio and subsequently adopted with great success by Benito Mussolini.55 In similar fashion to triestinita, italianitd typically projected facts and figures against the background of a re-created past. In doing so, it did not hesitate to adopt epic discursive modes and practices. In later years, when 1931-XI', in Avvenimenti di vita triestina: Discorsi podestarili (1923-1933) (Rome: Corvo, 1936), pp. 182-85 (p. 184): 'La nostra [...] non e una italianita di grado inferiore.' See also Arduino Berlam, 'II sapore di Trieste', La Porta Orientate 7.9 (1947), pp. 107-13 (p. 107): 'stranieri, attraverso il triestinismo giungono alia italianita ed alia seconda generazione si hanno gia dei triestini italiani, anche se i genitori erano Greci, Tedeschi, Inglesi, Slavi o che so io'. And Alberto Spaini, 'Cos'era la triestinita', in Autoritratto triestino, in Bianchi et al (eds.), Scrittori triestini del Novecento, pp. 951-57 (p. 956): 'L'italianita a Trieste diventava [... ] una vivacissima triestinita.' 53. See Mario Cortese, 'Trieste senza retorica', Settimogiorno, pp. 8-10 (p. 8): 'Trieste deve essere sempre e soltanto un unico garrire al vento di bandiere tricolori; i triestini— uno dopo I'altro tutti e nessuno escluso—sono stati incaricati di tenere alto il vessillo della Patria.' 54. Ernesto Sestan, Venezia Giulia: Lineamenti di una storia etnica e cultumle (Rome: Edizioni Italiane, 1947), pp. 402ff.—cited in Millo, L'elite delpotere a Trieste, p. 140. 55. This aspect was prominent in D'Annunzio, who appeared to be 'pervaso quasi da un furore selvaggio di romanizzare Pellenico, e oltretutto sempre in nauseante connubio con 1'ideologia irredentista' (Lorenzo Braccesi, L'antichita aggredita: Memoria del passato e poesia del nazionalismo [Rome: L'Erma di Bretschneider, 1989], p. 10). See also the heavily theatrical Roman paraphernalia incorporated by Alfio Morelli in his memoirs Trieste: L'Altra Faccia della Storia 1943-1953 (Trieste: Letteratura e Storia Contemporanea, 1987), p. 62 and passim.

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the regime had been established for at least one decade, these practices were employed more prominently in popular culture, particularly in the hagiography of Benito Mussolini, who played a powerful role in the collective imagination of Triestines as well as of all Italians.56 The Duce is celebrated in 1938, at a moment when his diplomacy is needed to dispel the cloud cast by the Anschluss, by Raimondo Cornet (Corraj) (1887-1945) in the dialect poem 'El Duce', part of the collection Trieste mia! (1938). Corraj's verses offer unconditional praise for the achievements and the forceful personality of the Duce. The simplification of history, the popularization of the figure of Mussolini, depicted both as a warrior and as a saviour of the Italian nation, severe (on account of his truncheons and cod liver oil) but just, esteemed abroad and idolized at home, are all incorporated in this typical product of popular poetry:57 Tonante come un fulmine, / la vose sua fremente, / la ga sveia la gente, / da le montagne al mar / e unidi in un esercito, / fanti e camise nere, / soto le sue bandiere / i xe vegnui marciar. Xe Lu, che '1 meti ordine, / che '1 cambia el Parlamento, / che '1 fa un ordinamento / de giusta liberta. / Torna in funzion le fabriche / torna a regnar la pase / su i campi e ne le case: / nissun fa piu bordel. / Con una cura energica / guarissi el piu birbante: / 1'oio xe un gran purgante / e meo xe '1 manganel. / Pacificado el popolo, / el pensa a le riforme: / novi decreti e norme, / altra legislazion. / Lu pensa a tuti; i poveri / i trova in Lui conforto; / el ghe da torto al torto, / ragion a la ragion. / Xe Lu che '1 ghe da un'anima / fascista ai italiani; / xe Lu che '1 sa, domani, / guardar davanti a se. /Xe sempre drita e abile / la Sua diplomazia: / Salda la Monarchia, / amizi el Papa e '1 Re. / Considerado a 1'Estero, / idolatra a 1'interno, / in pugno el ga '1 Governo, / 1'Italia e '1 suo avenir. Duce d'ltalia, energico, / pur contro el mondo intiero, / ogi el ne da un impero, / una romanita. / Per genio Suo, per 1'opera / che no ga piu confmi, / Benito Mussolini / ga 1'imortalita.

56. This aspect is persuasively illustrated by Luisa Passerini in 'Premessa', in Mussolini immaginario: Storia di una biografia 1915-1939 (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1991), pp. 3-11. 57. Mussolini's idolization as 'Christ-Saviour' was widespread—see, for instance, children's compositions collected in Mario Granbassi, Mastro Remo si confessa (Bologna: Cappelli, 1932), p. 152: 'Awertimi con un tuo scritto caro Duce ed io me lo terro sempre vicino come tengo il buon Gesu, perche lui e il salvatore delle anime e tu sei il salvatore di noi italiani e della nostra patria.' 58. R. Cornet (Corraj), Trieste mia! (Trieste: Borsatti, 1938), pp. 10-13: 'His quivering / thundering voice / shook everyone awake / from mountains to the sea. / Infantry and black-shirts / united in army / came to march / under his banners. It was He, who made order / who changed the Parliament / who issued laws / of just liberty. / Factories

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The Duce, whose authoritative figure is able to gather together all the centrifugal forces threatening the border area of Trieste, is here portrayed as champion of italianitd. The roles he assumes are, above all, those of a builder, a judge and a bureaucrat. His appeal rests on his powerful centralizing role, on his mission as healer of the national uncertainties of Trieste. Corraj's adulation of the regime emerges in other poems belonging to the same collection and dedicated to surrogate Mussolini figures ('El Podesta picon' for instance) or commemorating patriotic events (such as the arrival of the Italian army in the St Giusto basilica in 1918). The tone is intentionally low-key and popular, but when Corraj appropriates an aggressive, military rhetoric, his poetry has a more forceful, disquieting, ring to it. Even the destruction of the old area of Cittavecchia, promoted by the Fascist regime and regarded as a dire event by most Triestines who resented the attempt to modernize Trieste's oldest historical site, is welcomed by Corraj as a necessary renovation in the spirit of building a Fascist 'nuova era' (see 'La fin de zita vecia'). Corraj is a poet of the consensus. Parochial, picturesque, unchallenging, his verses mirror a local reality and choose to ignore the current social tensions. Their revolutionary intent is diverted to a celebration of the folkloric aspect of Fascism and the personality cult of an invincible Duce. A similar official mouthpiece of the regime was Nella Doria Cambon (1872-1948), author of II convito spiritico (1925). The volume, which borrows its title from Dante's Convivio, is a pseudo-fictional exercise dealing with the widespread interest in spiritualist seances in Trieste at the end of the nineteenth century.59 The author's forceful, ego-centred personality, and resumed working/ peace reigned once more / at home and in the fields: / confusion is no more. / His energetic treatments / cure the worst of villains: / cod liver oil is a great purge / and his truncheons work even better. / Once the masses were at peace / he made reforms: / new decrees and laws, / a new legislation. / He has everyone in mind; / in Him the dispossessed find comfort; / he calls right what's right / and wrong what's wrong. / A Fascist soul / He gave to all Italians; / He will, tomorrow, / look ahead of everyone. / His diplomacy / is fair and capable / His Monarchy is strong. / The Pope and the King are His friends. / Esteemed abroad, / idolized at home, / he keeps hold of the Government / of Italy's future. This energetic Duce of Italy, / is giving us our Empire today / our romanitd / be it against the whole world. / His genius, / his achievements know no boundaries, / affording immortality / to Benito Mussolini.' (The translation is mine.) 59. The practice of sitting round a table and indulging in conversation with the spirits of the dead was so fashionable in bourgeois circles in Trieste that even Italo Svevo records and ridicules it in La cosdenza di Zeno (1923) as one of the habitual pastimes of 'casa

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particularly her marriage to the influential politician Costantino Doria (1862-1930), led her to a militant, enthusiastic attachment to the Establishment, as emerges in the conveniently pro-Italian stance invariably taken by all the spirits evoked. The most recurrent spirit, certainly the most warmly welcomed, is Alessandro Manzoni who, as well as occasionally imbibing Cambon's coffee, displays an even keener gusto for lecturing at length on selected pieces of current news and not merely applaudes pro-Italian patriotism, but also unstintingly praises Fascism and its energetic leader.60 Luisa D'Annunzio, mother of the poet and hero of the Fiume enterprise, is another frequent visitor, together with many nineteenth-century Italian writers and patriots (Garibaldi, Sauro, Mazzini, Fogazzaro, Rapisardi) and Napoleon Bonaparte, who also enjoys lecturing on political issues, particularly the Fiume contention. Other partakers in the convito are soldiers who died in the trenches of the First World War. Frequently evoked by parents or relatives, these soldiers describe or re-enact their deaths, using the body of Fornis as a vessel, unfailingly accompanied by an invocation to mamma: di sbalzo in piedi; il braccio destro teso, [...] grida: '204!', con voce vibrata, come segnalando il numero a qualche lontano. Poi 'Alberto' ed 'Acqua, acqual... Come soffocando di sete. In ultimo: 'Mammal, con passione soffocata. Un altro grido e 1'abbandono di tutto 1'essere ci danno 1'evidenza d'un uomo colpito a morte.61

Doria Cambon combines unironically spiritualism and topical events Malfenti'. Cambon's // convito spiritico is composed of short chapters, each concentrating on a single seance, on the individual spirits evoked and the words uttered by them through the possession of the two mediums Enrico Fornis (1893-1933) and his sister Romana. 60. N. Doria Cambon, II convito spiritico (Florence: Vallecchi, 1925), p. 24: 'non temero di asseverare, o Alessandro Manzoni, il tuo mondo spirituale, la tua augusta magnanima forma di ritornante, I'impeccabile tua presenza nella sua superba purezza di raggiunta immaterialita apostolante, nel piu grande mistero del mondo, questo della transustanziazione spiritica'. See also Roberto Curci and Gabriella Ziani, Bianco rosa e verde: Scrittrici a Trieste fra Ottocento e Novecento (Trieste: Lint, 1993), p. 49. Doria Cambon published a total of 13 volumes of prose and verse, including Manzoni mistico (Milan: Bolaffio, 1935) and a large number of periodical articles. 61. Doria Cambon, II convito, pp. 239-40. As reported in various First World War diaries, it was common for soldiers to invoke their mothers when confronted with the most dire predicaments. Most of the soldiers evoked here are young Irredentists, possibly including the author's own son. Other frequently mentioned patriots are Guglielmo Oberdan (K) and Francesco Baracca.

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concerning the immediate future of Trieste. Most spirits, regardless of age, nationality and interests while alive, appear eager to lecture and take to heart an all-Italian solution for Fiume's persisting political uncertainties.62 A prolific author, Doria Cambon composed the collection of poems Canti dello Zodiaco (1930). The volume was first drafted before 1920, but the entire collection was opportunely revised after Mussolini's seizure of power. Including poems allegedly inspired, and in some cases literally dictated, by the spirits of the dead, and therefore pervaded with a sense of the sacred, these verses are again noteworthy for their ideological and documentary rather than artistic value. Cambon gathers together a heap of thematics from disparate sources, from classical antiquity to a vague mysticism, from spiritualism to the usual favourite D'Annunzio, from Carducci to a superficial brushing of Oriental philosophy. Linguistically, also, recourse is made to an ancient classical vocabulary on D'Annunzio's model, in pursuit of a complacent rhetoric ofromanitd.63 Particularly notable is the poem 'Saturno', which juxtaposes two central figures: Dante and Mussolini. The mythological imagination of the author identifies Saturn devouring his children with father Dante, supreme Dux of all poets, but also with Mussolini, father of the new nation and 'magnetico duce di vita'. The mythological paternity attributed to both problematizes the relationship between the author's gender and her approach to artistic creation: while Dante represents artistic castration for Doria Cambon, Mussolini is approached mainly in dominating sexual terms. Echoing the widespread rhetoric of the time, Mussolini is portrayed 62. Quotations from the Divine Comedy are frequent, both in the questions addressed to the spirits and in their replies. Dante's 'souls' are clear models for Cambon's spirits. Archetype of linguistic and cultural nationalism, Dante represents an ideologically correct choice, as well as a convenient back-up for Cambon's mystical and theosophic interests. Her language is full of obscure and allusive terms: see, for instance, // convito, p. 17: 'Nelle nostre sedute, [...] 1'atmosfera di [...] grazia, e cosi intensa, da impedirci di trovar frasi da clinica al ponderoso tema dell'asserire, awicinandoci piuttosto I'intuito del cuore ai roveti ardenti, ad Emmaus, al flusso dinamico delle scritture degli antichi veggenti gia strumenti medianici rapiti nell'ingiunzione divina.' This bizarre combination of symbolism, spiritualism and theosophy derives also from that Triestine milieu which could take spiritualism seriously on a par with psychoanalysis. A passion for the occult and the unknown was in fact a prominent trait of Triestine culture well into the twentieth century, possibly reflecting once again a preoccupation with its border identity. 63. Poems such as 'Inno a Trieste', 'Ad Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia, Duca D'Aosta, nell'Ora della Redenzione' and others display a powerful combination of romanitd and the vocabulary ofarditismo and combattentismo.

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as pride of the nation mainly as a champion of virile masculinity.64 The rhetoric combining Mussolini's part-marital, part-paternal rule over the nation is powerfully assimilated here. Significantly both Corraj and Doria Cambon depict Mussolini as the catalyst able to draw together tradition and modernity without contradiction, an ambiguous combination Fascism probably borrowed largely from Futurism.65 Trieste's wide, clean streets and the almost miraculous reconstruction of its naval industry were extolled during the Fascist era in a triumph of mechanical aesthetics and proto-consumerism carrying more than a hint of Futurism.66 A discussion of italianitd in Trieste would be incomplete without a reference to the role of Triestine Futurism. Not only were the very first Futurist performances staged in Trieste between 1908 and 1909, but also the first proper Futurist soiree took place at Trieste's Politeama Rossetti on 12 January 1910.67 The patriotic italianita inherited from Dannunzianism found its way to Trieste also through Futurism. In 1908 Marinetti took an active part in public demonstrations in Trieste advocating the city's restitution to Italy. The future leader of Futurism 'spoke at the Gymnastic Society, defending the Triestine students shot in Vienna and declaring that one day Trieste would have its own university, even against the will of the Austrian government. The whole episode ended in tumultuous fights, and Marinetti was arrested.'68 However, a properly Futurist group gathered together in Trieste only in 1922. Its self-appointed leader was Bruno G. Sanzin (b. 1906) who collected and printed the pamphlet Marinetti e ilfuturismo (1924) and founded the periodical Energie 64. Mussolini is characterized by his 'fiero cenno', 'fiero su penne d'aquila grido d'amante', 'magnanimi fati'; see N. Doria Cambon, Canti dello Zodiaco (Bologna: Cappelli, 1930), p. 73. 65. Passerini talked of a 'pretesa—immaginaria—d'accordare in modo originale arretratezza e innovazione. Per quanto concerne in particolare rimmagine di Mussolini, e possibile interpretarla anche qui come un riparo dalle minacce della modernita' (Mussolini immaginario, p. 66). 66. See, for example, Ugo Sartori, Paolo Veronese and Gino Villasanta, Trieste 1934XII: La storia, la vita, il domani (Trieste: Comitato per il 'Giugno Triestino', 1934), p. 64: 'la vita economica di Trieste batte con la martellante cadenza d'un motore e somiglia al turbinoso giro d'un'elica. Motori ed eliche: strumenti e simboli della sua potenza.' 67. The soiree was notoriously followed, on 13 January, by the celebrated 'Futurist supper' at the local restaurant Alia Citta di Parenzo where Marinetti inverted the order of all courses. 68. Giinter Berghaus, The Genesis of Futurism: Marinetti's Early Career and Writings 1899-1909 (Leeds: Society for Italian Studies Occasional Papers, 1995), p. 82.

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futuriste in the same year.69 Sanzin acted also as a trait d'union between the pre- and the post-war generations of Triestine Futurists.70 Recognized as official leader of Triestine Futurism, Sanzin incorporated Futurist themes and suggestions in his poems, including dynamism, mechanicism, and patriotic heroism.71 In 'Pensieri in liberta', part of the collection II proprio mondo mi ricordi e nella fantasia, Sanzin imagined flags waving in the wind in Trieste: Garrire di bandiere su gli spalti della storia. Con tanto vento che le animi di ondeggiamenti schiocchianti, perche senza vento le bandiere sembrerebbero mute. Con tanto sole che riverberi il tripudio dei colori, perche senza sole le bandiere sembrerebbero spente. Bandiere di gloria, bandiere di fede, bandiere di tutte le vittorie. Simboli di eterna sfida, poiche la lotta e Tunica costante della vita.72

The nationalistic thematic is here futuristically associated with the dynamism of the struggle, 'la lotta', understood as the essence of life. The graphic impressionism of the scene, windswept and dotted with colours, and the 69. Giorgio Carmelich, whose Epeo (1922-1923) and Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet (1923) are amongst the rarest examples of Futurist primitive drawings and 'parole in liberta' in a wider European perspective, remained somewhat detached from Sanzin's leadership. Other active Futurist groups gathered together in Istria (Sambo, Boccalatte), Udine (Antonio Baldini, Adriano Lami, Edoardo Toffoletti, Vittorio Nonino, Mario Casoli) and Gorizia (Sofronio Pocarini, Emilio Furlani, Emilio Casasola, the painters Spazzapan and Veno Pilon). 70. The post-war generation included Spazzali (alias Grog), Scocciai (alias Masko) and Carlo Luigi Cergoly (1908—1987), alias Sempresu, and author of the 'parolibero' short volume MAA GAA LA (Trieste: Casa d'arte Bruno Rigo, 1928). Another Triestine Futurist of some repute was Giovanni Tummolo who published the collection of lyrical prose Meditazioni diaboliche (1927), the long poem Donora (1929) and the essay Misticateismo (1934). Close friend of Tummolo was Aristide Mattiussi, who published Bandiere suite antenne (1930) and the biography Giovanni Tummolo (1931). Vittorio Osvaldo Tommasini, better known under the pseudonym Farfa, also came originally from Trieste. Equally worthy of mention are the photographers Wanda Wulz and Ferruccio Demanins and the painter Tristano Pantaloni. See Claudia Salaris, Storia del futurismo (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1985), in particular pp. 173-76 and 244-45; see also Alessandro Masi (ed.), Zig Zag: II romanzofuturista (Milan: II Saggiatore, 1995), pp. 27-29. 71. See Giorgio Baroni, 'Bruno G. Sanzin e il "suo" futurismo', in Umberto Saba e dintorni, pp. 243-51 (p. 244): 'Le opere del primo Sanzin (Infinite, Accenti e quote, Ottimismo ad ogni costo, fiori d'ltalia) sono caratterizzate da tematiche ispirate ai miti futuristi: macchina, eroismo, patria, velocita, audacia; con una tinteggiatura di superomismo.' 72. B. Sanzin, 'Pensieri in liberta', in II proprio mondo nei ricordi e nella fantasia (Padua: Rebellato, 1970), pp. 68-69.

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linguistic devices of repetition and onomatopoeia clustered around the icon of the flag are Sanzin's tribute to the spirit of a Futurist italianitd. The at once patriotic and intensely urban bias of Futurism is emphasized here, as well as in the novel Infinite (1933) and the 'aeropoems' Fiori d'ltalia (1942), also displaying a series of Futurist themes, from dynamism to energy to 'trascendenza artistica'.73 Vladimiro Miletti (b. 1913) also embraced unconditionally the aesthetic of Futurism. He was described as the typical elegant and aggressive Futurist, 'giovane poeta elegante, sportivo, aderente all'avanguardia piu strepitosa degli anni trenta'.74 In 'Pioggia veloce' and 'Manicure', the Futurist emphasis on dynamism and speed acquires a surreal, ironic ring: Mi sembra un tuffo / scagliarmi in macchina / nell'acquazzone, / mentre scodinzola il tergicristallo, / lieto che piova. Le forbicine, beccuzzi ghiotti / di passerotti, / sulle ciliegie / delle tue unghie.75

Miletti espoused the linguistic iconoclasm of Futurism with a lighter, airy element reminiscent of Palazzeschi: as typical of Triestine Futurism, Miletti is characterized by a resolutely irreverent and comic approach.76 Patriotism becomes here a secondary preoccupation as the poetics of the insignificant and of the inconsequential prevail. Futurist poets elected Trieste 'Futurist city' par excellence?1 As a city

73. B. Sanzin, Infinite (Rome: Edizioni Futuriste di Poesia, 1933). Sanzin also composed the essay Benedetta Aeropoetessa Aeropittrice Futurista (1939), celebrating Marinetti's wife, and the novel Ottimismo ad ogni costo (1938). 74. See Marcello Fraulini, 'Prefazione', in Miletti, Orme d'impulsi, p. 9. 75. V. Miletti, 'Pioggia veloce' and 'Manicure', in Orme d'impulsi, pp. 68 and 72. Miletti is also the author of the collections Novelle con le giarrettiere (Trieste: Editoriale Libraria, 1933), the poem parolibero Aria dijazz (Trieste: Edizioni dell'Alabarda, 1934), the collection of'poesie sportive' Fughe nei secondi (Trieste: Edizioni dell'Alabarda, 1937) and Portare le armi (Trieste: Moderna, 1940). Another Triestine Futurist poet is Mario Cavedali, who was mentioned by Marinetti in 'Battaglie di Trieste (aprile-giugno 1910)', in Guerra sola igiene del mondo (1915), in Teoria e invenzione futurista (Milan: Mondadori, 1983), pp. 245-53. 76. Salaris records some irreverent nicknames chosen by Triestine Futurists, including Sempresu, Escodame and Chissene (Storia delfuturismo, p. 245). 77. Gary, A Ghost in Trieste, pp. 85-86: 'For Marinetti, Trieste had an appeal far beyond its status of political prisoner. [...] Trieste was virtually a new town, a town without a past worth mentioning, a town equipped and oriented toward the future, a Futurist town in fact.' Trieste was identified as 'third Futurist city' after Milan and Paris; see Curci and Ziani, Bianco rosa e verde, p. 109.

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'without a past', Trieste was ideally projected towards a future of uncompromisingly urban and mechanical modernity. However, Trieste's embrace of all that was modern in combination with the insecurities generated by its 'outsider complex', brought about further contradictions. Ultimately, it prompted Trieste to cling to the most traditional literary expressions of Italy with indiscriminate enthusiasm. Fascist ideologies continued to espouse Trieste's firm italianitd with active promotion of industrial renovation and modernity. This explosive partnership created the conditions for a confusion of Fascism with italianita, a confusion celebrated symbolically, for instance, in the city's granting of honorary citizenship to Benito Mussolini on 20 May 1924.78 The identification of Trieste with Italy was sought after as imaginatively as possible. Ultimately, it relied on the weakness represented by the diversified roots of Triestine nationality, on Trieste's lack of a coherent and 78. Manlio Cecovini speaks for the whole war generation when he declares in Testimone del caos (Gorizia: Istituto Giuliano di Storia, Cultura, Documentazione, 1990), p. 92, 'Ero cresciuto, come si diceva a quei tempi, nelP "era fascista". [...] Appartenevo a una famiglia di sentimenti vagamente liberali, "nazionalisti" come si diceva, lontana dalla politica, che come la generalita della borghesia aveva accettato il fascismo con diffidenza per certe sue espressioni violente (le squadracce, 1'incendio del Balkan, 1'assassinio di Matteotti), ma in sostanza identificandolo con I'ltalia' (my emphasis). See also G. Pitacco, 'Discorso pronunciato in occasione del conferimento della cittadinanza d'onore a Benito Mussolini il 20 maggio 1924', mAvvenimenti di vita triestina: Discorsi podestarili (1923-1933) (Rome: Corvo, 1936); and Morelli, Trieste, p. 179: 'i comizi del MSI sollevavano entusiasmo e consenso di cittadini. Gli awersari awertivano [...] le ragioni di quella solidarieta che si andava instaurando tra il MSI e Trieste: la capacita di interpretare, con semplicita ma senza compromessi, 1'anima nazionale della citta' (my emphasis). Without compromise' refers to Fascism's denial of a Triestine cosmopolitan cultural background. See also, for instance, the campaign for the Italianization of foreign-sounding surnames, extended by Royal Decree dated 10 January 1926 from Trento to Trieste (see Pizzagalli, Per I'italianita dei cognomi, pp. 33 and 44). The admonition to ordinary citizens to Italianize their surname willingly lest they be confused with unpatriotic Others leaves a powerful impression of a penetration of Fascist patriotic values to the roots of private family histories. See Pizzagalli, Per I'italianita dei cognomi, pp. 110-11: 'Non si dica: "Noi non abbiamo bisogno di modificarci il cognome. Se questo e straniero, non conta; i nostri sentimenti sono italiani". Di grazia: questo benedetto decreto e stato create forse per quelli che non sono di sentimenti italiani? No, per certo; costoro resteranno sempre col loro cognome barbaro. E allora, se nemmeno i buoni italiani ritenessero di doverlo mutare, il decreto a chi servirebbe? II ragionamento e cosi semplice e chiaro, che la conclusione e di una evidenza schiacciante. Ed e questa: che un giorno coloro che non si saran dati premura di italianizzarsi il cognome, potranno, per lo meno, apparire di non essere quello che sono o essere addirittura confusi con gli altri.'

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unique national framework. The absence of a historically consolidated single national make-up in Trieste fostered discourses of Italian nationality in both socio-political and literary contexts. A largely abstract, invented, italianitd could then penetrate the literary dimension in Trieste more deeply and more effectively than elsewhere.

4. Maternal Nationalism and the Italian Motherland Claudio Magris persuasively identified an Oedipal relationship between Trieste and its writers. An ambivalence of rejection and desire, he argued, appeared to keep local authors closely tied to Trieste as if by an Oedipal bond, 'un autolesivo rapporto edipico [che] spinge a ferire 1'oggetto del proprio desiderio, impedendo cosi di staccarsene e vivendo il rifiuto come amore e Pamore come rifiuto'.79 The past weighs down on individuals, keeping them enthralled in the spiral of their own family history, perpetuating a closed world whose boundaries become insurmountable.80 The city itself is the primary victim of its own past. The feminine qualities Trieste is purported to carry, such as emotional nature, cult of the past and of the hearth, accentuate its insular traditions. A related aspect is the pervasively maternal inspiration of Irredentism. Trieste is crowded with phantoms of mothers who, in their capacity as national symbols, stand for tradition, order, stability, respectability. Mothers appeared to be the real patriots in Trieste and much evidence demonstrates that it was mainly through maternal influence that various Triestine intellectuals became pro-Italian and volunteered to fight alongside Italy in the Great War. In the inter-war period, women, increasingly denied an active role in politics and society, continued to exercise their influence on their children in a patriotic direction. As George Mosse put it, during the war, woman was not confined to the family, yet the roles assigned to her were conceived of as passive rather than active. She was to be a guardian, protector,

79. C. Magris, 'Una storia si chiude', in Dietro le parole (Milan: Garzanti, 1978), pp. 173-79 (p. 177). The present section, dealing with the national-maternal emphasis in Triestine literature, examines male authors only: women writers displayed a different approach which is necessarily dealt with in a separate chapter. I have also intentionally overlooked some conventional Fascist propaganda directed to maternity, similar to that already encountered in Corraj, Trieste mia! above. 80. See Manacorda, 'II richiamo della regione', p. 300: '[in Trieste] la storia si fa memoria familiare, indagine su un passato che appartiene ancora al mondo di chi scrive e lo sollecita tenendolo sentimentalmente legato a un paesaggio e a un ambiente'.

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and mother. [... ] Woman as a national symbol was the guardian of the con01 tinuity and immutability of the nation, the embodiment of its respectability.

Women relied on their sons to exercise a role in public life on their behalf: their sanctified but secondary status allowed for few other escape routes. For the novelist Giani Stuparich (1891-1961), mother Gisella was an epitome of motherhood and much of his fiction is devoted to idealizing her exemplary role.82 The women in his family (mother Gisella and sister Bianca), family-oriented, patriotic, staunchly Italian, were a constant source of inspiration for him, and he transposed them into endless fictional characters.83 81. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, pp. 17-18. 82. The entry for 5 April 1941 in Piero Calamandrei's diary reports a conversation between Pietro Pancrazi and Stuparich on their mutual preoccupation with the fate of Trieste: 'Mi diceva ieri Pancrazi che Stuparich gli ha detto: "se i tedeschi torneranno a Trieste, mia madre si ammazzera"'; cited in Luti, 'Trieste nella cultura fiorentina', p. 160. Giani's brother Carlo is recalled as thinking constantly about his mother while in the trenches: 'In trincea quando non c'era da far nulla, [Carlo] pensava alia madre, alia morte e a Dio'; G. Stuparich, 'Prefazione alia II edizione (1933)', in Carlo Stuparich, Cose e ombre di uno (ed. G. Stuparich; Caltanissetta and Rome: Sciascia, rev. edn, 1968 [1919]), pp. xiii-xx (p. xix). See also the speech of podestd Pitacco on the conferment of the award for valour on the soldiers Giani and Carlo Stuparich. This speech is almost entirely devoted to celebrating their mother: 'Ricordero Pimmenso amore di Vostra Madre per Voi—valorosi fratelli—Vostra Madre che come la defmi nella sua sincera tenerezza filiale Carlo Stuparich e invero una grande madre'; G. Pitacco, 'Per la consegna della medaglia d'oro a Giani Stuparich—11 Novembre 1922', mAvvenimenti di vita triestina, pp. 29-30 (p. 30). The gold medal is ideally granted to mother Gisella on account of her 'forte cuore' and her Vita santificata' (p. 31). Pitacco's rhetorical emphasis on the risorgimentale values of the First World War combines with a nationalistic maternal cult, while Stuparich's mother willingly takes on 'il ruolo ieratico di madre degli eroi [...], esemplificazione perfetta del matriarcato triestino'; Roberto Damiani, Giani Stuparich (Trieste: Italo Svevo, 1992), pp. 77 and 99. 83. In most of his fiction Stuparich dealt with soldiers taking their leave from their highly maternal girlfriends ('Addio alia Tina', in Donne nella vita di Stefano Premuda [1932]); with volunteers inspired by the patriotic pride of their mothers ('Sera in Versilia', in Pietd del sole [1942]); with mothers whose sons are bidding them good-bye before going to war ('L'addio' in L'altra riva [1944]); with drunken old sailors aspiring to take their daughters with them to their mother-(is)lands ('La fine d'un vecchio capitano', in Ginestre [1946]). See also Trieste nei miei ricordi, p. 185: 'se io voglio pensare realisticamente alia donna triestina, vedo la donna tutta dedicata alia famiglia ch'e mia madre, [...] ricordo mia sorella Bianca e le sue amiche durante 1'altra guerra, eroiche come le donne del Risorgimento'. Curiously enough, Stuparich's wife did not partake of the same patriotic reputation. A writer herself, albeit an inconsistent one, Elody Oblath

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His war-diary Guerra del Quindici (1931), set between June and August 1915, is a fine example of Triestine Irredentist literature that looks at the Great War as a summa of nationalist experience on the basis of a maternally inspired Irredentism. The experience of defending a few inches of Italian soil is accompanied throughout by an acute nostalgia for the mother. Mother is evoked as inspiration to join in the fight and as an unobtainable object of desire, enshrined in a Trieste which is geographically close to the area where the soldiers are stationed but remains frustratingly unconquered.84 'II cannone romba ora con rabbia soffocata. [...] Fra pelle e carne mi serpeggia un brivido improwiso: "mamma": pensiero, sentimento indefinibile, come un'essenza che riempie tutto. Mi perdo e mi tremano le gambe.'85 Defending Trieste and the nation becomes equal to defending one's own mother. Gisella Stuparich is portrayed as a captive of Austrian Trieste, remaining beyond the soldiers' reach. The city acquires the status of a 'Holy Land', enclosing the mother as in a sanctuary. Penetrating Trieste as liberating soldiers is equivalent to penetrating the core of the city, where the mother sits enshrined, waiting for the arrival of the two sons whom she encouraged to enlist and who will eventually set her free.86 belonged to a different typology divided between instinctual elan and Jewish pessimism (see Chapter 4). 84. Damiani, Giani Stuparich, p. 55: 'Tra gli infmiti motivi di sofferenza, al fronte, questo della separazione dalla madre si rivela il piu acuto, oltretutto capace di alimentarne uno altrettanto intenso al pensiero del dolore di lei per Pinnaturale distacco dei suoi figli.' A maternal Irredentism of this kind is also prominent in Argelia Butti (1856-1924), La donna e laguerra (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1920). 85. G. Stuparich, Guerra del Quindici (Turin: Einaudi, 1980 [1931]), p. 8. A maternal nostalgia was experienced by many war writers, not exclusively from Trieste; see Reina, Noi che tignemmo il mondo di sanguigno, p. 24: 'Una nostalgia amara mi stringeva il cuore; mi rivedevo bambino e le mie labbra balbettavano: Mamma!, Mamma!, ed ero solo e nessuno mi sentiva.' This nostalgia applies also to the Second World War; see Livio Rosignano, Feldpost 15843 (Udine: Del Bianco, 1978), esp. p. 18. 86. Trieste stands for the ethical order authorized by the adamantine spirit of the mother; it symbolizes the orderly domesticity and civilization swept away by war and turned into a ravaged desert haunted by a chilling, pre-linguistic silence. Trieste is continuously fantasized about, its topography is carefully and lovingly reconstructed in the mind, omitting no detail; see Stuparich, Guerra del Quindici, pp. 17-18: 'Siamo avanzati nel silenzio sacro, come conquistatori primitivi, misurando a vasti passi la terra incontrastata, intrepidi nella vergine conquista'; and p. 23: 'Mentre cammino, il cuore mi fa sentire la sua commozione; corro con la fantasia a Trieste. Passiamo, noi granatieri, per la via delle Poste, per il Ponte Rosso e ci fermiamo in Piazza Grande, [... ] i tre piani di scale sono fatti in un baleno e nostra madre ci sta singhiozzante tra le braccia, stupita,

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The mother bears the Madonna halo and her face is always 'santo e lucente'. She is a hovering spirit, a Holy Ghost whose breath impregnates the fate of the city, mingles with it and shapes it. The triad 'Mother, Death, God' devised by Carlo Stuparich becomes here 'Trieste, Mother, Home', with 'Mother' as the synthesis in the dialectic between Trieste and Home. The spirit of patriotic maternity is so marked in Guerra del Quindici that Renato Bertacchini referred to the volume as Stuparich's ultimate 'commitment to a feminine thematic'.87 Carolina, protagonist and 'prime mover' of the war novel Ritomemnno (1941), set between 1915 and 1918, plays a similar role to the mother in Guerra del Quindici. Ritorneranno is possibly the most admittedly autobiographical of all Stuparich's novels despite its more overtly fictional approach.88 Significantly set during a nto-risorgimentale First World War, even though written and published within the context of a more heavily politicized Second World War, Ritorneranno portrays Trieste in widow's weeds and reinforces maternal nationalism as incarnated in the pivotal figure of Carolina Vidali.89 Stuparich's powerful ethical drive derives from palpandoci:—Giani, Carlo, soldati italiani, fra i primi entrati a Trieste!' 87. R. Bertacchini, 'Giani Stuparich', in Letteratura italiana: I contemporanei (6 vols.; Milan: Marzorati, 1963), II, pp. 941-57 (p. 947): '[Stuparich] accetta la presenza della donna, come "spirito della terra", come forza centripeta del nostro inquieto e scomposto mondo interiore, che sola forse potrebbe farci vivere in armonia con 1'universo. Che poi 1'investimento in una simile tematica muliebre risulti positive, lo conferma il potenziarsi che ne deriva alle qualita strumentali dello scrittore.' On the suggestion of Alberto Spaini, Bruno Maier defined Carlo Stuparich as ' "eroe bambino", profondamente legato alia madre e al mito materno'; B. Maier, 'L'"Autoritratto triestino" di Alberto Spaini', Rivista di lettemtura italiana 1.3 (1997), pp. 261-75 (p. 273). 88. See Stuparich, Trieste nei miei ricordi, p. 192: 'C'e, si, molta materia autobiografica nel mio Ritorneranno. E c'e all'origine anche un motivo morale. [...] II mio intento era di rivelare quale forza coesiva possieda una famiglia in cui gli spiriti sono uniti, con quale capacita di sofferenza e di sublimazione sia affrontata la vita, quanto sia fertile il dolore.' 89. Pellegrini, Le citta interiori, p. 89: 'una citta dalle tinte lugubri e funerarie'. Carolina is the pivot of the novel by general critical consent; see Bertacchini, 'Giani Stuparich', p. 951: 'Carolina e soltanto la "madre", dal principio alia fine'; Cesare Brumati, 'Giani Stuparich', Pagine Istriane 10-11 (1952), pp. 5-15 (p. 13): 'Nella luce ideale di Carolina si sviluppa tutto il romanzo. Tutte le altre figure vivono di lei ed in lei, potente figura che le anima'; B. Maier, 'L'opera di Giani Stuparich', in Saggi sulla letteratura triestina del Novecento (Milan: Mursia, 1972), pp. 207-59 (p. 228): 'Carolina non e soltanto "Panima e il centre della famiglia": e 1'anima e il centre dello stesso romanzo; e insieme il tessuto connettivo che unisce le vicende dei tre fratelli, la cui vita spirituale e tutta dominata e sorretta dal ricordo della madre lontana'; A. Spaini, 'Moralita di un combattente', in Due triestini:

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a cluster of values upheld by an all-Italian mother whose similarity to the author's real-life mother is almost complete. The topos of the mother's smile, so important in the Italian literary canon, is emphasized in Ritorneranno as much as in Guerra del Quindici. This emerges most clearly in the vividly autobiographical episode portraying Marco Vidali lying in the trenches, covered in mud but sustained by a glowing clarity within him: da quell'interno chiarore filtrava lentamente il sorriso di sua madre. Gli parve che di sua madre s'impregnasse 1'aria dintorno e il cielo basso e il pezzo di terra tormentata ch'egli percorreva con lo sguardo; gli parve che da ogni parte ella gli stendesse le braccia per accoglierlo. Allora, in questa dolce sensazione, sorrise anche lui: si sent! con sua madre, in una grande pace.

War becomes a ritual, presided over by the goddess Mother who invests her sons with the insignia of war and protects them from gunfire.91 Carolina reflects the tragic dualism inflicted on mothers who must weep because of the dangers their children go through and yet continue to encourage them to enlist under Italian rather than Austrian banners.92 A mother who is Giani Stuparich, Willy Reiss Romoli (Turin: ILTE, 1961), n.p.: 'Si alza al centro di questo romanzo la figura della madre, Carolina, come un simbolo'. See also K. Pizzi, 'Family and Gender in the Fiction of Giani Stuparich' (MA thesis, University of Kent, 1991), pp. 4455. 90. Stuparich, Ritorneranno, p. 97; cf. with Stuparich, Guerra del Quindici, p. 46. The topos of the feminine smile, widespread in Italian literature beginning with Dante's Beatrice, is related to the unconscious representation of the female archetype in terms of light; see Charles Franco, La Beatrice di Dante: Un'interpretazione psicanalitica (Poggibonsi: Lalli, 1981), p. 64: 'Lapresentazione della donna awiene molto spesso attraverso immagini cosmiche e luminose. [...] simboli di perfezione spirituale, che agiscono da sorgenti di luce sullo sfondo dell'infmito.' 91. Stuparich, Ritorneranno, p. 122: 'Sua [Marco's] madre, quando gli aveva messo al collo la medaglia del nonno, tremava; egli aveva sentito a un tempo, sul petto, il freddo del metallo e delle dita di sua madre; un'angosciosa comunione era awenuta tra di loro attraverso quel contatto diaccio e tremante. Proprio da quel punto del petto egli awerti, ora, come un trepidar di mani che si levassero sopra il suo capo, per proteggerlo. La sensazione fu cosi viva, che ebbe Pimpulso d'afferrare quelle mani e di baciarle. Si chino, e appunto in quel momento un'altra pallottola lo rasento fischiando e gli sfioro la lana del passamontagne.' Ritual and religious imagery abounds. 92. Stuparich, Ritorneranno, p. 8: 'Temeva [Carolina] ansiosamente per i suoi figlioli; ma sentiva nel medesimo tempo quello che sentivano loro, quello che lei stessa aveva messo nelle loro anime. [... ] Ella non poteva immaginare, per quanto spavento le facesse la guerra, che i suoi figli si tirassero indietro, che potessero ritornare a Trieste non fra i liberatori, ma fra i vili che profittano dei sacrifizi e del sangue degli altri.' In the words of

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'presente a loro, intorno a loro, dentro di loro' relates, albeit partially and implicitly, to a maternal rhetoric specific to the time of the novel's composition, despite the author's lack of commitment to the regime.93 Prolific, innocent, chaste, unfailingly patriotic, ever present in the life of her children, Carolina is a pre-modern, pre-industrial, and, as such, exquisitely national, symbol.94 Finally, the unfinished Sequenze per Trieste (1968) features an autobiographical Toio growing up in a staunchly Irredentist family in Trieste in the early years of the century.95 The essence of Triestine patriotic womanhood is incarnated here in two alternative figures: Toio's mother and his aunt Nani, who are both enticing but in different ways: while the former is intense and socially ambitious, the latter is sensual and proletarian. Toio's mother represents the modest social aspirations typical of an Italietta and will gradually prevail over a more instinctual 'zia Nani'. Toio's mother is

Silvio Benco, 'la madre aspettante e una Niobe che vede lo sterminio dei figli'; see '"Ritorneranno" di Giani Stuparich', IIPiccolo, 2 September 1941, cited in Benco, Scritti di critica lettemria efigurativa, p. 334. 93. Stuparich, Ritorneranno, p. 149. Domestic metaphors such as 'Mani benedette di mamma!', 'L'energia d'amore era tenuta viva, come il fuoco nel focolare', 'un solo cuore di tre palpiti che rispondeva al suo' (pp. 127, 191, 535) capture the provincialism of a Fascist rhetoric relying heavily on Catholic principles of holy motherhood. 94. See Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, p. 98: 'like all symbols, the female embodiments of the nation stood for eternal forces. [...] Woman as a preindustrial symbol suggested innocence and chastity, a kind of moral rigor directed against modernity.' Stuparich's most idealized version of the feminine and the maternal is, however, probably enclosed in Simone (1953), another entirely autobiographical novel despite its Orwellian, science-fiction theme. A fictionalized, covert account of Stuparich's relationship with the Triestine poet Anita Pittoni, Simone is dominated by an obsessive interest in woman in all her possible incarnations, from the Madonna to Lilith, with emphasis on the mystery of female sexuality. Stuparich here moves the theme of woman away from a historical context towards a universal-cosmic sphere with the aid of austere imagery and of biblical, Homeric, and Dantesque overtones. Woman regresses to a pagan primal woman and mother: an archetypal Eve projected against the background of a stormy Paradise Lost. 95. G. Stuparich, Sequenze per Trieste (ed. A. Pittoni; Trieste: Lo Zibaldone, 1968), p. 20, '"29 luglio 1900". In casa di Toio non alligna simpatia per gli austriaci; sulla parete della stanza da letto sfolgora il ritratto di Garibaldi in camicia rossa e tanto il babbo quanto lo zio Renato sono stati in prigione per politica.' See also pp. 29-30: 'un anarchico ha ammazzato re Umberto, il re d'ltalia. Toio lascia libri e amici in cucina con la nonna, si sente dentro improwisa una grande emozione, ha voglia di piangere e va in camera a sdraiarsi sul letto, sotto il ritratto di Garibaldi'; and passim.

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again a rather too obvious portrait of Gisella Stuparich and she is powerfully able to dictate her son's social aspirations and his national allegiance in Italian directions. The emotional aspect of Irredentism, the 'nationalistic infatuation' that extends its sphere of influence from homes, traditional hearths of national feeling, to the collectivity of public squares and the Liceo-Ginnasio Dante Alighieri are also prominent throughout.96 Trieste's Liceo-Ginnasio Dante Alighieri is, in particular, the second significant seat of Toio's rhetorical loyalty to Italy, a military sacrarium described through metaphors that exude a vague religiosity: 'focolare della spiritualita triestina, da cui uscivano i migliori, gli illustri, coloro che [...] si passavano di mano i valori e le aspirazioni della citta, nella gelosa custodia della sua fisionomia e nelPimmutabile fede del suo destino'.97 Stuparich's private approach allows him to reinvent history on the basis of his own maternal italianitd, upholding the maternal as paramount, even decades after the events described.98 If Stuparich represents the most visible case, other Triestine authors agree that women 'fmirono col rimanere le sole vere rappresentanti del nazionalismo', preserving a substantial, albeit passive, role.99 Irredentism 96. For the crucial role of the piazza in Italian social and political life, see two excellent studies by Mario Isnenghi: Le guerre degli italiani and L'ltalia in piazza: I luoghi della vita pubblica dal 1848 aigiorni nostri (Milan: Mondadori, 1994). The main square is the focal area for public demonstrations. Toio is allowed to wear long trousers for the first time on the occasion of a demonstration in support of an Italian university in Trieste. Toio's long trousers are symbolic of a rite of passage to an age of citizenship, of an Italian identity understood as collective experience, of a brotherhood inspired and allowed (via the permission to wear the much desired long trousers) by the mother. 97. Stuparich, Sequenze per Trieste, p. 63. See also the rhetorical passion for the culture of Italy upheld by the institution, from the enthusiastic staging of plays by Carlo Goldoni to the physical and spiritual centrality of the bust of Dante Alighieri in the hall. 98. The mother in Sequenze per Trieste is the decision-maker as much as she is in Ritorneranno; see pp. 20-21: 'La mamma [...] e energica. [...] In famiglia decide tutto lei.' See also p. 37: 'La madre di Toio era una donna fattiva e piena di iniziative e la sua aspirazione era di salire nell'ordine sociale e di far studiare il figlio.' 99. See for instance Luigi Di San Giusto, Schemagn Israel! Storia di una famiglia ebrea durante il prime anno della Guerra Mondiale (Turin: Paravia, c. 1927), pp. 230 and 231: 'Erano dunque le giovani uscite dalle scuole comunali e dal Liceo italiano, quelle che coltivavano ora nei cuori le sacre speranze della patria, quelle che incessantemente aspettavano, e guardavano sospirose le azzurre onde dell'Adriatico, se mai vi apparisse il vagheggiato tricolore!' See also Reina Cesari, Trieste, la guerra, una giovinezza, p. 11: 'Papa ha fatto la guerra... e la mamma? La mamma ha aspettato... Come tutta la mia citta ho aspettato.'

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was, in fact, a maternally inspired phenomenon not only for Stuparich. A large number of Triestine volunteers in the First World War were urged to enlist and later defect to the Italian Army by their mothers and frequently found themselves in Stuparich's position, that is almost literally confronting their own fathers, who had regularly joined the imperial troops, on the battle-field. Triestine families who were affected included the Brunners, the Reiss, the Fondas and others.100 Podestd Pitacco emphasized rhetorically the crucial role of Triestine mothers in a speech dated 1929: Ma voi madri triestine ai vostri figliuoli diletti quando suono la diana, fatale ed attesa, non deste solo il vostro straziante consenso perche si arruolassero nel tremendo conflitto, [...] non solo li incitaste con impavido cuore a battersi per 1'ideale purissimo ch'era il vostro, che era il nostro, che, ripetiamolo, sempre, era quello della citta tutta, pur avete saputo instillare eziandio nei loro giovani petti fin dalla nascita, pur sotto il vigile occhio dell'oppressore, sicche crebbero fervidi di passione e di fede, coraggiosi e generosi, impazienti di 101 accorrere all'appello per redimere il paese natale.

See also p. 68: 'II sentimento patrio della donna e vivissimo e forte ed e totalitario [...] e la sua fede e pura.' Maternal nationalism is also prominent in the poem 'Vergine Madre' by Doria Cambon, in Canti dello Zodiaco, pp. 129-30, combining Catholicism and Fascism. This combination is explored also by Carmela Timeus in Attendiamo le navi: Diario di una giovinetta triestina 1914-1918 (Bologna: Cappelli, 1934). For Timeus women are no less ardent patriots than men. Their patriotism is however frustrated by a socially and culturally enforced inactivity. Women's influence therefore remains indirect, exercised on the male members of the household, typically on their sons, whom they actively encourage to enlist. Timeus also extends women's lack of visibility to their secondary role as readers, consumers of war-fiction rather than active writers. 100. See A. Fonda Savio, 'Noterelle di un volontario', in Giulio Cervani (ed.), // movimento nazionale a Trieste nella prima guerra mondiale: Studi e testimonianze (Udine: Del Bianco, 1968), pp. 51-56. Other examples of national maternalism in Trieste include the mothers of Antonio Borruso, Giuseppe Vidali, Guido Corsi, Gino Streinz-Sereni, Ferruccio and Attilio Grego, Roberto and Lodovico Liebman-Modiano, Aldo Padoa, Renato Mamolo and Ruggero and Corrado Jona. Equally important are the sisters of Aurelio Brovedani, Marcello Cantarutti and Giuseppe Sillani, and the wives Gigetta Slataper Carniel, Lely Dompieri, Ida Nordio, Anita Fieri and many others; see Bianca Maria Favetta, 'L'apporto femminile nella vita di Trieste (dal 1700 al 1918)', Pagine Istriane 39 (1976), pp. 3-18. 101. G. Pitacco, 'Inaugurazione dell'ara agli eroi, al cimitero di Sant'Anna (26 Maggio 1929-VII)', mAvvenimenti di vita triestina, pp. 178-80 (p. 178). See also Renato Ruggier, La ressurezion de Trieste (Trieste: Associazione XXX Ottobre, 1918): 'la fiama, quela pura fiama / che ga impiza nel nostro cor la mama / pena che messi la ne ga in sto mondo ... /

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Pitacco's speech is contemporary with the alliance between the Fascist State and the Catholic Church: the regime had by then appropriated Catholicinspired maternal discourses and conflated them with Irredentism and with the maternal ideology underlying the First World War. In this respect, maternal representations of the nation in Trieste were contiguous to the symbolism described by Mosse as that of 'the bride who awaits her bridegroom [...] or [...] the anxious mother of her people, whose "pure heart" was not unlike that which beat in Cinderella's breast'.102 According to Fascist rhetoric, women were enclosed within what Maria Antonietta Macciocchi calls 'the iron ring of the eternal "mother image"'.103 The mythological implications of the figure of the mother were amplified by the alliance between church and state and had enormous impact in a city whose predominant Irredentism read the figure as a national icon. In Trieste, Irredentism had invested Italy itself with the status of'Great Mother', so that many representations of mother ultimately relate to Mother Italy.104 References to patriotic mothers and to Italy as a motherland are so L'anima nostra xe resta Italiana' ('that pure flame / our mother lit in our hearts / as soon as she gave us life... / Our soul has remained Italian', (The translation is mine.) 102. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, p. 94. 103. M.-A. Macciocchi, 'Female Sexuality in Fascist Ideology', Feminist Review 1 (1979), pp. 67-82 (p. 69). 104. Berlam, 'II sapore di Trieste', p. 113: 'grande e purtroppo incompreso amore di questa figlia lontana per la Gran Madre'. Great Mother Italy was occasionally identified with the big, open sea: 'tutto quello che era mare, che era orizzonte, che era immensita, che era purita, conteneva 1'attesa d'ltalia'; see Silvio Benco, Gli ultimi anni della dominazione austriaca a Trieste (2 vols.; Milan: Risorgimento, 1919), I, p. 238. See also II, p. 13: 'Si voleva vedere 1'Italia, in un'ombra, in un fuoco, di la dal mare o sul mare'. A maternal cult of Italy is ingrained in the linguistic dimension for the poet Mariano Rugo (1895-1977). Another poet who espoused mother and Italy was Vitantonio Matarese. Matarese always portrays Italy as Mother, Trieste as Italy's Daughter, and his imagery relates to a feminine familial universe; see 'Voce dell'anima', in Trieste redenta (S. Maria Capua Vetere: Di Stefano, 1919), p. 10: 'O Trieste, salve! Sventolar tu vedi / Su le tue torri 1'itala bandiera! [...] Or che libera siedi, / chiari ti sono gl'itali orizzonti. / Questa e per noi, per la tua Madre un'Era / Di patriottismo, di grandezza e gloria.' In 'Un' Ombra' Italy is 'la gran Madre'; in 'Una perla' Trieste is rising Venus-like from the waters; 'Due sorelle' relates the sisterhood between Trieste and Venice; in 'Cuor di madre' Italy is a loving mother who celebrates her reunion with her long-lost daughter: 'Gli affanni miei scordai e le catene, / Ma non scordai, o Figlia, le tue pene. [...] Del mio giardino in fior / Sei figlia del mio cor; / Non sei piu preda del Tiranno antico, / Di quel Tiranno mio crudel nemico' (pp. 13 and 19 respectively).

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widespread and overemphasized in Triestine literature, particularly in the inter-war period, that they must represent more than a preferred metaphor. The implications are deeper, indeed psychoanalytical.105 In Trieste, Italy becomes a Heimat. In Contini's definition, it is a Matria rather than a Patria: a mother who is 'the protector of family and state, making the necessary sacrifice, doing her duty'.106 Italy in fact emerges throughout as Mother for Trieste, occasionally as stepmother in the coldness with which it is seen to receive Trieste's warm passion. A motherland which spurns its most devoted daughter must inevitably turn into a step-motherland, while Trieste falls prey to a 'Cinderella complex'. Triestine fiction is full of references to a frustratingly unrequited devotion to an idealized but in fact brutal and alienating mother Italy.107

105. The traditional psychoanalytical symbolism which identifies cities with wombs and, by extension, mothers, is easily applicable to the concept of 'nation' in Trieste; see Carl Gustav Jung, 'Symbols of the Mother and of Rebirth', in Symbols of Transformation: An Analysis of the Prelude to a Case of Schizophrenia (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), pp. 207-73 (p. 209). The collective unconscious has often represented Trieste in symbolical, fairy-tale terms: Trieste is a beautiful princess initially charmed by an ugly witch (Austria) but later appropriately rescued by a seductive Prince Charming (Italy); see Caprin, Trieste liberata. See also the outburst of italianita described by the war veteran Bruno Mirabella, 'Dal Piave a Trieste nei ricordi di un veterano', in Cervani (ed.), // movimento nazionale, pp. 64-71 (p. 68): '"Viva 1'Italia". Un tripudio di voci e sfolgorar di bandiere. "Viva 1'Italia" risposero mille bersaglieri, frementi, impotenti ad osservare 1'ordine del silenzio, "Viva 1'Italia". lo piangevo, i miei compagni piangevano, tanti piangevano. Avevamo trovata la Patria perduta, un grande amore perduto. Ora non c'era piu incertezza. Rivedevamo da presso i colli del Carso, tanto cari perche per un anno vi avevamo sofferto, fra ansie incredibili e severita di ogni sorta. Oh e vero: 1'amore che non tradisce e quello che si acquista nel dolore.' 106. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, p. 94. 107. Two prominent examples are fitting here: Umberto Saba and Enzo Bettiza. Saba considered Italy as a stepmother: 'ben consapevole dell'ambivalenza del suo stretto rapporto con 1'Italia, piu matrigna che madre eppure tenacemente amata'; cited in Gianfranca Lavezzi and Rossana Saccani, 'Introduzione', in Saba, Atroce paese che amo, p. 28. See also Bettiza, II fantasma di Trieste, pp. 202-203: '[Stefano Narden(k)] amava 1'Italia dawero, 1'amava con 1'allucinata disperazione di colui che in fondo sente e capisce di non essere affatto italiano.'

Chapter 4 Quale triestinita? Gender, Confession, Ethnicity

I feel myself back in that day when my life was broken. The bright morning sun was on the quay—it was at Trieste—the garments of men from all nations shone like jewels—the boats were pushing off... (George Eliot, Daniel Deronda)

Writing by women, Jews and Slovenes, as yet unexamined literary areas, will be discussed here in the light of the basic components (triestinita, border identity and anxiety, italianitd) discussed in the previous chapters. These areas are kept separate for the sake of classification, while at the same time a series of channels between them are left open to ensure critical flexibility. The cultural impositions of the Establishment resulted in oscillations between conformity and originality: while the former mirrors a desire to 'fit in', it is however more frequently the latter that characterizes the literary output of the categories in question. These oscillations consistently mark the literary productions under scrutiny here. The chapter's final pages outline the main issues relating to a 'Slav question' in Trieste. Since Triestine Slovenes have consistently regarded themselves as part of a different literary tradition expressed in their own language, the present chapter explores some renderings of the 'Slav question' mainly from an Italian viewpoint. 1. Women's Writing Triestine women were relatively highly educated, particularly after the foundation of a Ginnasio Femminile (1872) and a Civico Liceo Femminile (1881), soon to become centres of pro-Italian nationalism.1 Cultural circles,

1. See Curci and Ziani, Bianco, rosa e verde, pp. 152-54. The popularity of the Liceo femminile was such that more than 1,000 women registered for its courses in 1911,

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such as the ricreatori, witnessed a large and active female participation, while the city as a whole boasted a comparatively high number of women singers, musicians and writers between the nineteenth and twentieth century. La fantasia (1866-68), La cronaca azzurra (1879-80), II corriere delle dame (1879), La rosa italica (I90l)jadranka (1921-22), II mondo femminile (1924-29) and Donne (1946-50), are only a few of the many Triestine periodicals addressing women's issues whose contributions and sales remained buoyant across the two centuries.2 The unrivalled degree of emancipation enjoyed by Triestine women as compared with their counterparts in mainland Italy facilitated the flourishing of a tradition of writing by women in the same period, with some interest paid to the anomalies and particularities of triestinita. Elisa Tagliapietra Cambon (1842-1913), Caterina Croatto Caprin (1840-1922), Emma Conti Luzzatto (1850-1918), Rina Del Prado (18511943), Enrica Barzilai Gentilli (1859-1936), Elda Gianelli (1856-1921), Luigi Di San Giusto (Luisa Macina-Gervasio) (1865-1936), Giuseppina Martinuzzi (1844—1925) and many others were as lucidly aware and as incisively articulate vis-a-vis Trieste's problematic cultural climate as their male counterparts. Although, on the face of it, these women's texts (often published under male pseudonyms) generally aspire to conform to a maledominated literary canon, the deeper levels of the texts often reveal an undercurrent of antagonism against the canon. Mother, wife and daughter were the socially and culturally constructed role models adopted by women in their approach to writing, particularly in the period of the Fascist regime. Despite the relative emancipation mentioned above, which was reflected, amongst other if somewhat paradoxically, in some 48,000 registrations to the local branch of the 'Fascio Femminile', women tended to adopt literary subjects and styles already explored by their male counterparts.3 A familiar genre in Trieste, such as autobiography, prompting the local council to build a second Liceo in 1913. In mainland Italy, women were allowed access to grammar schools from 1883. See also Favetta, 'L'apporto femminile nella vita di Trieste', pp. 3-18. 2. See Silvana Monti Orel, Igiornali triestini dal 1863 al 1902: Societa e cultura di Trieste attraverso 516 quotidiani e periodici analizzati e descritti net loro contenuto storico (Trieste: Lint, 1976), pp. 79-80, 296, 300, 502. See also Aurelia Gruber Benco (ed.), Umana: Le istituzioni di cultura delta Trieste moderna, 7 (1958), p. 201. 3. The transformation of Trieste's 'Fascio Femminile' into a mass organization is attributed to the forceful personality of Carmela Rossi Timeus (1897-1970), sister of the nationalist hero Ruggero Fauro and of the Fiume legionary Renato Fauro. Timeus acted as energetic leader of the 'Fascio Femminile' between 1930 and 1942; see Millo, L'elite del potere a Trieste, pp. 292-93.

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confronted women with a clearly defined canonization that invited them to write 'masquerading as a man'.4 Specific authors were, more or less consciously, singled out and made to act as foes against whom one's own gender specificity was tested and at the same time shaped in the process. Some women modelled their writing on that of better known, usually Triestine, male writers; some on that of better known or more senior women writers (see for instance the role of Haydee for Willy Dias). Some women wrote poetry or prose that engages dialectically with earlier or later texts in a complicated intertextual dialogue (see for instance the role of Lia Maier for Stelio Mattioni). Not uncommonly did Triestine women authors define their writing in a self-aware, at times parasitic, intertextuality, by modelling their writing on established pieces of local literature, or by handing down more or less intentional echoes to later writers, or both. Largely characterized by a latent sense of cultural inferiority, women preferred literary traditions on a minor scale, such as poetry in dialect rather than in Italian. Triestine women poets frequently wrote in dialect, not merely because dialect was for them, as for Saba, the accessible language of love and of motherly affections, but first and foremost because poetry in their first language was experienced as denied to them. Dialect then became an intentional choice, identifying women with traditions on a minor scale.5 The authors examined below, however, demonstrate that there were, and are, more than mere streaks of originality in writing by women in Trieste. The literary canon is not eschewed, but rather approached from different, frequently unusual, angles. In many cases the result of a 4. Probyn maintains that, 'woman is her "life script/cycle"; there can be no distance between her self and her representation as women's existence is written by her historical and biological fate' (Elspeth Probyn, Sexing the Self: Gendered Positions in Cultural Studies [London: Routledge, 1993], p. 95). Indeed, all genres confronted women writers in Trieste with the problem of finding an 'antagonist' in the traditionally male-dominated world of culture as a condition, a passport to writing. As will become clear below, this form of antagonism will be a pressing issue in particular for those writers categorized as 'emancipated'. 5. The long list of women who write poetry in dialect, not otherwise mentioned in the present chapter, includes Maria Ascoli, Gilda Amoroso Steinbach, Liliana Bamboschek, Leonia Bordon, Laura Borghi Mestroni, Lucia Borsatti, Ada Camocino, Adriana Carisi, Alberta Fonda, Gea Nesbeda, Fabia Peschitz Amodio, Elena Roverelli Cargnelli, Graziella Semacchi Gliubich and Edda Vidiz. For further information see Roberto Damiani and Claudio Grisancich (eds.), Lapoesia in dialetto a Trieste (Trieste: Italo Svevo, 1989).

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disenchanted engagement with discourses of triestinitd and italianita, women's writing in Trieste has established a legacy of excellent intellectual standards. My classification comprises three sections: Jewish authors (Haydee, Willy Dias, and Pia Rimini); 'anti-Slav' authors (Lina Galli and Lia Maier); and 'emancipated', if not properly 'feminist', authors (Delia Benco, Anita Pittoni and Nora Poliaghi). This categorization is of course artificial and justified by a critical requirement of coherent classification: many Triestine women writers were Jews and, as such, could easily fit into more than one section. Jewish Writers Haydee (Ida Finzi; 1867-1946) was one of the most successful and influential women journalists at the beginning of the century in Italy. Finzi achieved an early and substantial notoriety not merely as a journalist, but also as a poet, a novelist and a playwright, as well as acting as a sponsor of other women who wrote in her wake (such as Willy Dias). Haydee published her first article in L'Indipendente in 1885 and continued publishing articles 'dalla parte di lei' in prestigious local and national periodicals such as L'lllustrazione italiana, Nuova Antologia, II Piccolo, La Lettura and La Riviera Ligure. A fervent Irredentism kept her vocally attached to the Fascist regime throughout, as is made clear by the virulently patriotic collection of poems Rime di Trieste e d'una vita (1935). In similar fashion to other prominent Triestine Jews, and Jewesses in particular, Haydee played a significant role in furthering the Italian national cause.6 She not merely embraced italianita fully, but also continued to promote it throughout the life-span of the regime, even in the face of the Fascist anti-Semitic provisions that imparted the final blow to her career, which had been waning since the late 1920s. Rejected and isolated, Finzi retired to a Roman exile before dying in Portogruaro in 1946. Her little known, yet extraordinary, novel Allieve di Quarta: II Cuore delle bambine (1922), written between 1914 and 1915, belongs to the most successful period of Finzi's professional life. This novel is the product of an exquisitely Triestine framework, whose patriotism is frequently, if anachronistically, transposed and measured against the Risorgimento. Paternity

6. See also below, Section 2. See also K. Pizzi, 'Verso una pedagogia dell' unificazione: Allieve di Quarta di Haydee e Pitalianita ebraica a Trieste', in Claire Honess and Verina Jones (eds.), Le donne delle minoranze. Le ebree e le protestanti d'ltalia (Turin: Claudiana, 1999), pp. 271-79, passim.

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ofAllieve di Quarta is attributed to Edmondo De Arnicis: his Cuore (1886) is, in fact, explicitly set as its I7r-text.7 Allieve di Quarta is set in pre-Great War Florence, a significant location on account of its symbolic cultural stance, comparable with post-unification Turin in De Amicis' novel.8 The novel aims to re-create a parallel universe to Cuore, with a single but significant inversion: this is a world populated and run by women who not only uphold patriotic values, but also hand them down via the maternal line to their daughters.9 In Cuore, the diary of protagonist Enrico is bulging with letters full of moralizing principles, written at night by his father. In Allieve di Quarta, the same task is undertaken by the mother who appends letters to the same effect to her daughters' diaries. This provides Haydee with the opportunity to pursue a Triestine maternalism, as Ziani put it, and, by so doing, to further the maternal implications of Triestine nationalism.10 This mother, 7. Haydee, Allieve di Quarta: II Cuore delle bambine (Rocca San Casciano: Cappelli, 1951 [1922]), p. 7: '"Perche in CUORE non c'entra nessuna bambina?" Da questo rimpianto di una scolaretta, espresso dopo la lettura del capolavoro del De Amicis, e nato questo libro.' Haydee is also the author of Le quasi artiste (1925), Sorelle (1926), Vita di Doretta Cisano (1933) and Libro delta madre e del bambino (1933), in which she appropriates a Fascist ideology and iconography of womanhood and maternity. 8. The linguistic and literary exemplariness of Florence is frequently stressed, for example in the speeches imparted by the father to his two daughters. 9. The opening chapter, for instance, entitled 'Ottobre: Si ritorna a scuola' deals with the first day at school of sisters Gina and Lidia Fantis, in Quarta and Quinta forms respectively. Setting and ambience are wholly De Amicis-like: the school's hall and courtyard are crowded with parents and relatives on the first day of classes: bourgeois parents in hats and elegant clothes, working women wearing shawls, and teachers who introduce themselves to the girls in their new classes. All girls, strictly known by their surnames, are mirror images of De Amicis' boys: Zevagna, 'figliuola del muratore', small and lively and patently modelled on De Amicis' muratorino', Niccoli, clever, diligent and beautiful like a madonnina, modelled on Derossi; proud and indolent Pugliese, modelled on Votini; shrewd Stracciasacchi based on Garoffi; Fossaro, 'una vera peste' and equivalent of Franti. Haydee's only addition is a Triestine girl called Gembresich, who testifies to the fact that Florence was a favourite colony for Triestine refugees before and after the Great War. Gembresich is described as 'una bimba bruna e vispa, che parla veneto, tanto che facciamo fatica a capirla, e, poiche e di Trieste, la chiamiamo "la Triestina" non sapendo pronunciare il suo cognome, un cognome difficile che fmisce in ich9 (Allieve di Quarta, pp. 16-18). 10. See Haydee, Allieve di Quarta, p. 23: 'Per voi, figliuole mie, che io amo piu di tutto al mondo, io vado spesso sognando il futuro; mi piace sognarvi fatte grandi, sane, belle, intelligenti, felici; ma nessun sogno da un palpito d'orgoglio al cuore di vostra madre quanto quello di vedervi arditamente e saldamente buone, pronte sempre a lottar

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who writes letters at night and watches with loving care over her daughters as they sleep, mentally planning for them a patriotic future, incarnates a familiar figure in Trieste: that of the patriotic mother, supporting italianitd above every other principle.11 Though characterized by touches of spontaneity that are generally lacking in Cuore, these letters conform to the principles of a nineteenth-century bourgeois morality, contemplating contemporary society exclusively through De Amicis' cold pedagogical eye. Goodness of heart and the rhetoric of'buoni sentimenti' are the ultimate goals for the two bourgeois girls, who must learn to regard their education first and foremost as a chance to experience the microcosm of a society that will embrace them in future as middle-class housewives. Gina's class is in fact described as a microcosm of the world outside, rigidly layered in a hierarchy of professions and duties, all lined up in an immutable cosmic order. School fulfils its duty if it provides the middle classes with exempla of toiling duty and sacrifice as experienced by the working classes, allowing the former to assimilate them via the uncommitted channels of a bland sorrow and a patronizing pity.12 In the pedagogy of unification devised by De Amicis and borrowed by Haydee, the country itself is a child and as coraggiosamente e a soffrir coraggiosamente per cio che e giusto. LA MAMMA.' On Allieve di Quarta's maternalism, see Curci and Ziani, Bianco rosa e verde, p. 141. 11. See also Chapter 3. Another powerful mother figure is 'la direttrice': severe but fair, lofty, dark and imposing. She is an almost legendary character described as a 'mamma che nella scuola era venerata ed amata come una buona regina. [...] aveva un'aria tanto autorevole [...]; a primo aspetto pareva assai severa; ma quando sorrideva— non spesso—[...] tutto il viso pareva illuminato di bonta. Dicevano che le maestre facessero a gara per ottenere uno di quei sorrisi, proprio come un premio' (Allieve di Quarta, p. 66). Haydee's maestri and maestre also depend on De Amicis' Amove e ginnastica (1892) and Un dramma nella scuola (1892). 12. See Alberto Asor Rosa, 'Le voci di un'Italia bambina ("Cuore" e "Pinocchio")', in Ruggiero Romano and Corrado Vivanti (eds.), Storia d'ltalia (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), IV, pp. 925-40. Asor Rosa reads Cuore as one of the pillars of social cohesion in the recently unified Italy on account of the skilful use made by its author of sound bourgeois pedagogical principles. Cf. with the father's last entry to Gina's diary in Allieve di Quarta, p. 274: 'Poiche la rammenterai sempre, non e vero, la tua piccola arnica buona? E anche le altre buone creature, che hai conosciuto durante quest'anno; la Zavagna la portinarina operosa, dal cuore precocemente materno; la Ambrosio, intelligente e leale, senza fumo di orgoglio sciocco, la Gembresich vibrante d'amore per il nostro paese, la Stracciasacchi, burlona e senza fiele. Ma di tutte le tue compagne di scuola tu ti devi ricordare, Gina; poiche la tua classe e una miniatura del mondo in cui vivrai piu tardi. Tuo padre.' This rigidly hierarchical, unchanging microcosm, as much as the one depicted in Cuore, will be swept away by the First World War.

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such it must be taught to be united, to think and act as one. In Haydee's case, this pedagogy is cast belatedly against Trieste's desire for cultural unification with the Italian motherland. The Risorgimento is not merely, as is frequently the case with local authors, superimposed on a Trieste at the onset of the First World War and of the Fascist experience: exquisitely Triestine and maternal causes are also added to the fabric of Unitarian concerns woven by both authors. This aspect is also evident in the letters appended by the father to Gina's diary, an attempt to compete with the mother in patronizing moralism. In one revealing example the father extols the military regularity of the ticking of a troop of needles operated by a battery of dutiful mothers at the service of their maternal cause: II ticchiettio leggero di quell'ago attraverso la stoffa par che si sposi collo scricchiolio della mia penna, in una musica sommessa e dolce; e, se tendo 1'orecchio, mi sembra di sentire il ticchettar di tutti gli aghi che in quella stessa ora, nelle citta, nelPItalia, nel mondo intero, lavorano, nelle mani delle 13 mamme, per il benessere dei bambini addormentati [...]. Tuo padre.

A gentle echo of the rattle produced by more virile instruments, such as fountain pens, if not machine guns (the Great War is looming here), these tickings of needles, mothers' swords par excellence, resonate patriotically throughout the city, the country, indeed the whole nation and universe. Mother is however granted the last word and she uses it to confirm, once again, that moral duty is the ultimate goal of good daughters and patriots.14 While declaring herself to adhere entirely to Cuore's ideology, Haydee feminizes it all the same by investing women with the task of both generating and disseminating national allegiances, thus throwing Cuore's rigid patriarchy into disarray. Following Cuore's model, Haydee intersperses the text with tales or edifying stories read out loud by the teacher, not surprisingly a woman herself, to a class full of girls engaged in embroidering towels and sheets as part of their domestic economy training.15 The naive, at times grotesque, expressionism of the stories, their exemplariness, which is elementary in an almost biblical sense, and their intense pedagogical bias are derived entirely from De Amicis and yet accommodated to suit their female protagonists and readership.

13. Haydee, Allieve di Quarta, p. 113. 14. Haydee, Allieve di Quarta, p. 303. 15. Haydee, Allieve di Quarta, p. 39.

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Witness for instance the story of Angiola, a prototype working-class dutiful girl, who witnesses the attempt to derail a train enacted by an anarchist, typical bad boy of De Amicis' type. Unlucky Angiola throws herself in front of the train in a desperate attempt to warn the driver and prevent the massacre of all the passengers. However, while succeeding in her good deed, she breathes her last in the arms of 'uno dei fuochisti, a cui grosse lagrime nere scendevano sulla faccia fumosa'.16 Angiola's story contains a powerful message. The failed murderous attempt of the anarchist, and the tears that wash clean the grubby face of the stoker, act as a social bridge uniting the bourgeois travellers, who would all be dead were it not for Angiola's sacrifice, and this heroic 'figlia di un cantoniere'. Professions are crucial for both De Amicis and Haydee, and they serve the function of harmonizing all social classes, persuading them to align themselves in a social hierarchy able to bring about the unification of the country, or, as is the case here, the full reunion of Trieste with the motherland Italy. Haydee and De Amicis find common ground in transforming emotions into powerful vehicles of social, indeed national, cohesion.17 An analogous exemplarity lurks behind the Christmas collection of money organized by the schoolgirls for the benefit of the Italian soldiers fighting in the Italian colonies in Africa, an episode patently set against the experience of life in the trenches of the First World War: E mentre le scolare si scambiavano 1'augurio e si awiavano alle loro case, per celebrarvi le feste con le loro famiglie, avevano tutte, negli occhi luminosi, nel sorriso un po' tremante di tenerezza, il pensiero d'un altro Natale: quello dei soldati veglianti nelle trincee. A ognuna pareva di veder lontano, oltre il mare, sotto una palma, sulPorlo del deserto sabbioso, un bersagliere un po' malinconico, che ripensava alia sua casa, alia sua patria lontana, piu care ancora in questi giorni nei quali le famiglie son tutte riunite; e le pareva di andargli vicino, di tirargli la giubba, di prender con le sue mani di bambina la rude mano abbronzata dal sole, incallita dal fucile, e di dire alzandosi sulle punte dei piedi e vincendo la soggezione: 'Buon Natale, caro soldato! E una piccola italiana che te lo augura, un po' timorosa, ma proprio con tutta 1'anima. A te, prendi questi frutti, prendi queste cartoline, e una cravatta, e un temperino, e un bicchierino di Marsala; son cose da poco, lo so, ma tanto perche tu veda

16. Haydee, Allieve di Quarta, p. 46. 17. The volume is awash with Italian tricolours, with soldiers greeted with enthusiasm, with military marches and songs, in short with a ritual rhetoric of nationality and youth—see for instance, Allieve di Quarta, p. 213: '[a train taking a troop of soldiers to the front] s'allontano col suo carico di bella giovinezza vibrante di amor patrio, scomparve, fra lo sventolio delle bandiere e al suono degli inni, come in una gloria'.

146

A CITY IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR come ti vogliamo bene, come ti siamo grati per gli stenti e i pericoli che affronti per noi. Che il destino ti sia propizio, che tua madre e la tua sposa possano aver la gioia di riabbracciarti sano e salvo, con la medaglia attaccata alia giubba sdrucita; che i tuoi bimbi crescano sani e buoni, degni di te. Buon Natale, buon Natale, caro bersagliere, amico mio sconosciuto, servo devoto e coraggioso della patria nostra!'18

The African colonies and the Italian Karst become interchangeable settings: the exemplarity of the patriotic message prevails over historical and geographical factuality. A bersagliere is, of course, the most apt protagonist for any piece of patriotic rhetoric since bersaglieri are, together with alpini, the most romanticized and most exemplary corps in the Italian Army.19 Haydee's bersagliere is conveniently pictured melancholically thinking about his faraway country and home, bringing the two together as contiguous symbols of domesticity of deep existential import. 'Tua madre' and 'tua sposa' are the two touchstones of bersaglieri's heroic behaviour at war. It is finally a little girl, prefiguration of a Fascist 'piccola italiana', who takes the big, sun-wrinkled hand of this almanac-like bersagliere, a portrait whose elementary expressionism and jarring bright colours recall many contemporary cover illustrations in Domenica del Corriere and Corriere del Piccoli?® In Allieve di Quarta, then, Haydee not merely makes a powerful case for superimposing Unitarian values onto a Triestine framework that is traditionally sensitive to the rhetoric of the Risorgimento and the Great War, but also replaces De Amicis' patriarchy with a nation-building 18. Haydee, Allieve di Quarta, pp. 86-87. 19. For bersaglieri as epitome of italianitd, cf. with U. Saba's 'La ritirata in piazza Aldrovandi a Bologna', in La serena disperazione, in // Canzoniere, p. 143. Saba can be considered to be Haydee's antagonist as concerns her poetic production. 20. Bersaglieri together with a little girl feature also in the chapter 'Come parti Pultimo treno da Trieste (Dai ricordi di una triestina)', in Haydee's Vita triestina avanti e durante la guerra (Milan: Treves, 1916). Haydee describes here the leave-taking of the last train allowed to expatriate to Italy immediately after the declaration of war. The train crosses with a second train full of bersaglieri travelling in the opposite direction, towards the trenches; see pp. 29-30: '"I bersaglieri! I nostri! Come sono belli! Vanno a Trieste! Buona fortuna! Salute! Ewiva!" Una popolana triestina [...] si piego ad alzare verso il fmestrino una sua bimbetta florida di quattro anni, che aveva ancora in mano dei rami di fiori colti poco prima ai lati del binario.—Getta i fiori ai bersaglieri, tesoro! Di' "buona fortuna" ai bersaglieri! E la bimba rosea che con le sue manine tonde gettava ridendo fiori ai soldati in partenza per la buona guerra, pareva quasi un simbolo della Trieste di domani, quella che non soffrira piu, quella che della lunga via dolorosa percorsa non serbera piu che i fiori, per gettarli agli apportatori di liberta.' The 'rosy child' becomes symbolic of an Italian future for Trieste.

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matriarchy, which becomes in turn heavily connotated with patriotic discourses and ideologies. This aspect has significant implications for Triestine Jews who were largely assimilated into the Gentile middle class, perpetuating a typical Triestine situation whereby nationality was arrived at irrespective of ethnicity or religion.21 Haydee's loyalty to italianitd is, however, especially prominent in her production in verse, whose maternal nationalism the author rated above everything else she had written. The first poem in the collection Rime di Trieste e d'una vita (1935), 'Trieste' (May 1885) portrays Trieste as a woman, Trieste, a chi la guarda a la mattina, / di tra le nebbie appar vivace e gaia / come, in veste di bianca mussolina, / una solerte giovane massaia.

[...]

Come operosa donna, che, fornita / la sua giornata, guada il ciel lontano, / 99 china al suo davanzal, muta, smarrita / in un sogno d'amor tacito e vano.

Trieste becomes a hard-working housewife confined within domestic and sentimental boundaries.23 The city is always represented as a woman: gently appeased by the flattering words of her lover Italy in 'Dialogo notturno' (March 1918); a young girl with pretty little hands; an energetic young bride, a lover, a sister, a beautiful princess waiting to be kissed free of her captivity by an Italian Prince Charming. These poems exude nationalism, from 'L'indirizzo sbagliato', urging that a 'Piazza dell'Indipendenza' be created in Trieste, to 'Primavera', endorsing Italy's entry into war in spring 1914 under the guise of a celebration of a youthful 'new life'. Haydee's poetry is consistently patriotic and awash with domestic themes of home, children, and parenthood.24 In the section 'Italia nova', clearly written under the auspices of an already established alliance between the regime and the Catholic Church, Haydee connects patriotic and domestic themes with the rise of a new Fascist era. Powerfully influenced by the aesthetics of a staged romanitd, 21. See also below, Section 2. 22. Haydee, Rime di Trieste e d'una vita (Trieste: Moscheni, 1935), pp. 13-14. 23. The domestic inflection of Haydee's poetry is confirmed by Maria Luisa Premuda, who traces a 'grazia casalinga' in her verses; see 'Scipio Slataper e Trieste', Annali delta Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 29 (1960), pp. 191-256 (p. 226). 24. See also the importance attributed by Haydee to patriotic names assigned to children. Haydee records the Italian patriotic names of schoolboys and girls in Vita triestina, p. 11: 'quanti "Ricciotti" in mezzo a quelle centinaia e centinaia d'allievi venuti da tutte le classi sociali, quanti "Vittori", quante "Libere", quante "Italie", quante "Margherite"!'

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with emphasis on its ritual and theatrical aspects, Haydee praises the regime as giver of bread (grano), drainer of unhealthy waters (palude), in short as the giver of life in truly Christian fashion.25 In the work of Haydee, the powerful combination of assimilation with italianitd in its Fascist inflection restricts the scope for a gender-conscious literature. If anything, by ultimately conforming to the regime's official view of woman, it acts as a reminder of women's secondary role in society. Other Jewish writers, on the other hand, adopted more incisive and individual approaches, such as Willy Dias and Pia Rimini. Willy Dias (Fortuna Morpurgo; 1872-1956) concealed a high degree of independence and emancipation behind a copious outpouring of sentimental literature.26 She produced mainly romantic novels, which she wrote and published with astonishing speed and regularity, while at the same time pursuing a successful journalistic career. Her role model was Haydee, the Triestine pioneer of women's journalism, and it is possibly as a result of Haydee's influence that Dias chose to write mainly about women. The protagonists and the most morally sound characters of her novels are invariably women and it is on them that the author's sympathy is bestowed. It is however mainly in the unintentional shifts between frivolity and depth, naivete and awareness, in the frequently eccentric solutions applied to her convoluted romantic plots, even in the historical confusion between 25. See for instance the poem 'Roma—Dinanzi al monumento a Gothe' (written 1933) featuring a marble statue of Goethe contemplating the glories of the Fascist new era; see Haydee, Rime di Trieste, pp. 216-17: 'E dunque giunto il giorno?—"Piu luce, piu luce ancora!" / Che roseo lume d'aurora—balena sui cieli di Roma? / Qual divinita la chioma—in vel lucente vi stese? [...] Conosci la via delPImpero?—I Numi di tre immense eta / si dier ritrovo cola—celeste serena coorte, / e un popolo alacre e forte—a trarne gli auspici e venuto, / con il romano saluto—militarmente cortese. / Conosci tu il paese—ove Napoleone / risorto, a giganti opere buone—volge del genio la forza, / e a produr grano gia sforza—1'awelenata palude, / sui monti erti e le vie dischiude—la furia dei torrenti spezza? / L'inno di "Giovinezza" conosci? Orgoglioso s'effonde, / vuol opre concordi e feconde—vuol sano e fecondo 1'amore. / O rinnovato fiore—di grazia e di forza latina!' The imagery gathers together the paraphernalia of the Roman Empire. 26. Dias's impressive bibliography includes some forty-five volumes, such as Ercole al bivio (Milan: Casa Editrice Internazionale, 1913); Romanzo di un cuore (Bologna: Cappelli, 1923); Gli occhi aperti (Milan: Mondadori, 1927); Ilpesco selvatico (Bologna: Cappelli, 1927); L'amore di Mascha (Milan: La Prora, 1931); L'anima svelata (Bologna: Cappelli, 1931); Le anime nuove (Bologna: Cappelli, 1938); La storia di Didl (Milan: Sonzogno, 1940); II sentiero fra le pietre (Bologna: Cappelli, 1940); Incanto di un'estate (Trieste: Cappelli, 1954) and many others. In some respects, Dias can be considered as the Liala, in some others as the Flavia Steno, of the Julian provinces.

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the two World Wars, neither of which contributed to a serious advancement of women's role in society, that one can trace Dias's gender consciousness.27 Despite the sentimental premises her novels move from, awareness of her own otherness, which will later lead Dias to espouse the most radical views within the Italian left, is the basis for the development of original viewpoints and for the exploration of new territories. As is the case with other Jewish writers, difference is being used here successfully as lever. Amove in tre tempi (1952) is an implicitly committed novel, despite its romantic inspiration. Set in Florence, it employs a blurred historical background deliberately making no distinction between one world war and the other. Dias looks at the post-First World War period as the end of the culture, hopes and ambitions of the Risorgimento. In between the romantic sprawl, she attempts seriously to capture the atmosphere of anger and frustration of the reduci, which contributed significantly to the rising fortune of Fascism in Italy.28 Historical concerns often take the lead and one can hear Dias's voice behind Count Arrigo Anzani's bitter disappointment following the official drawing of the Wilson line.29 Although history is romanticized, Dias's serious historical commitment indicates not merely a frustrated desire for active participation in a traditionally masculine domain, but also the search for alternative access routes to that domain. Her engaged and emancipated journalistic production demonstrates the extent of this commitment, which she had no qualms about exercising alongside her lucrative romantic output. As Ziani put it, 'moderna, polemica, disinvolta e indipendente sui giornali, [Dias] addomestico la propria vena nei romanzi, piegandola al gusto corrente e ai correnti principi, con buon senso commerciale'.30 27. This consciousness is at times ironically turned upside down into misogynist views, as m Amove in tre tempi (Bologna: Cappelli, 1952), p. 47: 'Troppo frivole [women], spesso, ma qualche volta anche troppo profonde. Piu vicine alia natura e pure capaci delle piu astute arti per sopraffare una volonta virile senza che uno se ne accorga.' See also p. 179: 'la mentalita femminile e molto mutata dopo la guerra. [...] Vi piace essere libere, e sentimento o non sentimento, sapete fare i conti con la realta.' 28. Dias, Amove in tre tempi, p. 45. 29. Dias, Amove in tre tempi, p. 54: 'quel presidente Wilson piombato dalFAmerica come supremo arbitro, con la Bibbia in una mano e la macchina da scrivere nell'altra, pretendendo lui, che non capiva nulla dell'Europa, imporre alia nostra vecchia civilta le sue convinzioni di quaquero protestante.' Dias's comment may be politically committed, but historically it is short-sighted in that President Woodrow Wilson proved to be both generous and energetic towards a favourable solution of the predicament at the NorthEastern borders of Italy. 30. G. Ziani, Willy Dias, la "compagna" in rosa', Problemi 84 (1989), p. 50.

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History, together with her upper-middle-class Jewish Irredentist background, also plays a large role in Dias's autobiography Viaggio ml tempo (1958).31 The role of history becomes all the more crucial since it is handed down to her by another woman: an eccentric aunt who had great ascendancy over her niece.32 It was again a woman (Haydee) who gave the initial impulse to Dias's career by recommending that she send a short story to the periodical II Mefistofele, which was later accepted for publication, opening the way for the publication of her first novel, Vigilia di nozze (1894). One year earlier, in 1893, Morpurgo had begun using the nom-deplume Willy Dias and contributing to a series of periodicals including Trieste letteraria, II mattino, and La Favilla. After a short-lived marriage, Dias resumed her career and, at the start of the First World War, moved first to Florence, then to Genoa, where she resumed her employment at // Caffaro^33 As is the case with other Triestine women writers, Dias oscillated between a desire for emancipation and Triestine tastes and ambitions, indulging in nationalist poetry on D'Annunzio's model.34 The Great War, for instance, was on the one hand described as a 'feminist war', in terms of the freedom it granted women, but also, more conventionally, as the last war of the Risorgimento: Nella prima guerra uno strano processo, che io studiai attraverso centinaia di casi, si svolse nel campo femminile. Nel 1915 le donne in Italia, meno eccezioni, erano donne e basta. Avrebbero potuto anch'esse riconoscersi nelle tre K tedesche: Kinder, Kirche, Kuche. [...] Dopo essere state sbigottite per

31. W. Dias, Viaggio nel tempo (Bologna: Cappelli, 1958), p. 67: 'ero cresciuta in un ambiente irredentista e liberalissimo'. 32. Dias, Viaggio nel tempo, p. 27: '[my aunt] aveva preso 1'abitudine di parlare con me come se fossi una persona adulta e sempre mi raccontava la storia d'ltalia e cio che 1'aveva colpita nella sua adolescenza e giovinezza'. 33. Once again, Dias's historical emphasis is evidence of her ability to escape the boundaries of the romantic genre and engage on a serious level with the current historical-political situation. She abandons her frivolous tone when describing her flight from Trieste and arrival in Florence on the night the First World War was declared: see Viaggio nel tempo, p. 119: 'Arrivammo a Firenze che era notte alta. In piazza del Duomo, la carrozzella che portava noi e il nostro magro bagaglio, si fermo davanti alia Misericordia. Vedemmo gente acclamare, gridare, buttare in aria i berretti e i cappelli, ed insieme il suono grave e possente di una campana. Era mezzanotte e la campana del Bargello che non suonava da cento anni, annunziava 1'entrata in guerra dell'Italia.' 34. Dias was a fan of D'Annunzio and the first sight she yearned to visit when in Rome for the first time was his balcony—see W. Dias, Viaggio nel tempo, p. 91.

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un periodo di tempo ragionevole, le donne cominciarono ad accorgersi che essere padrone di se stesse, di stare, di andare, di venire, di ritornare a volonta; prendere delle decisioni senza dovere renderne conto a nessuno, maneggiare denaro senza controllo, aveva pure il suo lato buono. [... ] La guerra fece piu per 1'emancipazione della donna in Europa, di quanto avrebbero potuto fare eserciti di suffragette.35

Dias's position is however less ambiguous than Haydee's own, since the former firmly rejected the Fascist experience right from its inception.36 Although Dias was careful throughout not to overemphasize her Jewish roots, she committed herself to the anti-Fascist cause on grounds of antiSemitism and persecution of Jews perpetrated by Fascist Italy.37 Having eventually channelled her unconventional nature in espousing the feminist and Communist causes, Dias wrote many articles in defence of a contended Trieste and was one of the few women elected to the town council in 1946. Her consistent commitment to a counterculture represents a fresh response to the closed circularity oftriestinitd.33 A forceful personality also characterized Pia Rimini (1900-45), 'the Italian Anne Frank', who combined an earthy, sanguine nature with a rational and controlled, if eccentric, intelligence.39 Rimini's production is underpinned by a subtle rancour against all men, reflecting the juxtaposition that dominated her deeply idiosyncratic temperament, 'lacerato tra "essere" e "dover essere", ansioso di [...] venir dominate e addirittura "foggiato" dall'uomo, e ugualmente pronto a [...] dimostrare la propria superiorita e difendere la propria fiera autonomia'.40 The collection of stories La spalla data (1929) is a good example of the

35. W. Dias, Viaggio net tempo, pp. 152-53—cf. with Margherita G. Sarfatti, Acqua passata (Rocca San Casciano: Cappelli, 1955). 36. Dias's modernity is also apparent in her joint foundation and editorship of the feminist review La Chiosa. See W. Dias, Viaggio nel tempo, p. 177: 'Chiedemmo la collaborazione delle piu note scrittrici. Matilde Serao, Ada Negri, Annie Vivanti e aprimmo le pagine a tutte le giovani, che avevano qualcosa d'intelligente da dire. [...] Inoltre, in ogni numero si discuteva, una questione femminile, la donna nelle sue diverse attivita, la donna e il divorzio, la ricerca della paternita, la situazione della ragazza madre.' 37. Dias, Viaggio nel tempo, p. 210: 'le leggi razziali mi mettevano schifo'. 38. Her obituary in the Communist periodical L'Unitd (22 December 1956) likened Dias to Sibilla Aleramo on account of their careers and late Communist militancy (194556). 39. Pietro Zovatto, Pia Rimini (1938-1945): Una vittima del razzismo (Padova: Bertoncello, 1978), p. 43: 'Rimini—la Anna Frank delPItalia'. 40. See Curci and Ziani, Bianco rosa e verde, p. 336.

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type of narrative that brought about her notoriety, a writing constantly courting the erotic only to eventually withdraw from it with disgust. Witness, for instance, the brutal initiation to sexuality undergone by the maid Maria, alias Cicciotta, in the story 'Dare': egli [Francesco] la tiene, la stringe contro di lui che oltre la stoffa, ella sente il calore e la violenza di quel grande corpo che la cerca e la preme; e dentro al ventre premuto, le batte, le pulsa qualche cosa, come un grande cuore affannato. [... ] Dopo, e un male oscuro che la trafigge oltre una furia rabbiosa che la scrolla e la squassa: e in quel male ella si sente portata verso di lui, in un bisogno di dare: di offrire e di soffrire, per dargli col suo dolore oscuro e lacerante, una gioia che non sa... [...] quel dolore bruciante e lacerante che le devasta il grembo.41

In 'II calice che non si svuota', a young greengrocer is lured into a deserted bakery and violated by a rapacious apprentice baker: Ella cedette. Ebbe paura: ne amore, ne languore. Una voragine di paura che divento terrore. [...] (Nell'ansito di lui, che le awampava la bocca e il collo, mugolava e ruggiva una violenza cupa). [...] Si sent! perduta [...], penetrata 42 come da una ventata d'odio.

However, il gesto delPamore le parve sacro: e anche la violenza di lui. Provo una riconoscenza gonfia di lacrime per lui che 1'aveva fatta donna e 1'aveva portata 43 su questa voragine di luce.

In this collection, Rimini is morbidly drawn towards a sanguine, earthy, and yet repulsive eroticism, particularly in 'Terra pregna', which clearly recalls Giovanni Verga's 'La Lupa'.44 A filthy, squalid humanity peoples these stories, and it is specifically men who are portrayed as irredeemably violent and corrupt. Rimini's novel Eva ed il paracadute (1931) focuses on a mother figure, intensely missed by the protagonist, the child Marilu. 'Mamma Teresa', who is about to divorce father Alberto at the beginning of the novel, is the focus of Marilu's longings, the only positive character in a novel populated by villains. Captivated by the Fascist ideology, which Haydee-like she embraced 41. P. Rimini, La spalla data (Milan: Ceschina, 1929), pp. 61-65. 42. Rimini, La spalla data, p. 74. 43. Rimini, La spalla alata, p. 76. 44. See, for example, Rimini, La spalla alata, p. 124: 'Vive tra i fiori, ma la chiamano la Gramigna perche s'attacca agli uomini: awolge, awince, abbarbica, awiticchia, awinghia. Quella, non te la levi di dosso! dicono. Dopo, ella si stacca brusca, e tira via per la sua strada. II primo ce 1'ha ancora nel sangue.' See also 'La puledra' in the same collection.

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unquestioningly, Rimini expressed in increasingly contradictory terms her desire for independence and autonomy and was ultimately unable to dissociate herself from supporting the demographic policies of the regime. In the novel II diluvio (1933), whose original unconventionality becomes progressively diluted into bombastic D'Annunzian and Fascist mannerisms, Rimini gathers together all the contradictions mentioned above. Exaggerated stylistic pyrotechnics and the over-emphatic tone employed here make it impossible to sustain and fulfil the ambitious premises of the novel, constructed as an apologue of the future of the human race. While attempting to introduce and discuss wide social issues, such as the role of women or the Jewish question, and affected by religious doubts which eventually led her to a controversial conversion to Catholicism, Rimini here invariably reduces human relations to a generic, even grotesque, romantic-erotic pantomime underpinned by Fascist ideologies. National integrity, patriotic sacrifice, religious preoccupations, ambivalent attitudes towards maternity, and a cluster of emotional and erotic feelings are prevalent thematics here, prefiguring a palingenesis resonant of Fascist maternal ideologies: 'La donna, fecondata dalFuomo, si sent! sorella di quella citta, che 1'aratro e la fatica delFuomo avrebbero fecondata.'45 Diluvio was the last volume published by Rimini, whose narrative vein was gradually becoming exhausted, leaving the spiritual and intellectual space open for a swift but profoundly felt conversion which she underwent between 1937 and 1938.46 After an acrimonious divorce from her pygmalion Ercole Rivalta, a celebrated columnist for the Giornale d'ltalia, and under the influence of the well-known Bishop of Trieste, Antonio Santin (1895-1981), Rimini recognized in the Catholic confession the outlet for that longing for love and devotion which had pursued her throughout her life. Able to avoid the 1938 anti-Semitic laws thanks to her popularity, Rimini was however arrested by SS squads on 17 June 1944 and, despite Santin's energetic intervention, was imprisoned in the camp at Auschwitz. She died there the following year. Regardless of her political and confessional preferences, Rimini's Jewish roots sentenced her to being exterminated.47 45. P. Rimini, II diluvio (Rome: Campitelli, 1933), p. 332. See also Curci and Ziani, Bianco rosa e verde, pp. 346-48. 46. See Zovatto, Pia Rimini, pp. 16-17. Rimini's was not a conversion strictu senso, in that she was already baptized. 47. Zovatto, Pia Rimini, pp. 352-54. See also Bon Gherardi, La persecuzione antiebraica a Trieste, p. 242.

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Pia Rimini (1900-1945) (Reprinted from Bianco rosa e verde: Scrittrici a Trieste fra Ottocento e Novecento, p. 474; by kind permission of Lint Editoriale Associati srl).

Anti-Slav Writers A number of women writers in Trieste were engaged by the thematic of the Slav occupation of the city between May and June 1945 and the issues of cultural confrontation it dramatically brought to light. With few exceptions, the prevalent attitude was hostile and tainted by a latent if not always explicit aversion.48 Narratives in both verse and prose examined here largely 48. One such exception was Giuseppina Martinuzzi, whose Socialism advocated a

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demonstrate a psychological as well as cultural rejection of Eastern Europe and, as such, carry important implications for definitions of triestinita and italianita. The anti-Slav poetics of Lina Galli (1899-1993) emerge, albeit implicitly, from the collections Tramortito mondo (1953), Notte sull'Istria (1958) and Mia citta di dolore (1968), in which the post-war period of Slav occupation of Istria is portrayed in apocalyptic tints.49 Galli, who was born and lived in Parenzo d'Istria until she moved to Trieste in 1931, visits over and over again the motif of the Slav rule, regarded as plunging an Istria resonant of italianita into a political and psychological darkness. In the collection Tramortito mondo the motherland dimension of Istria is emphasized in relation to this anti-Slav dimension.50 Similarly, in Notte sull'Istria the author muses nostalgically over an old-time Istria prior to the Slav occupation, hinted at in the ominous presenza suffocating the ancestral serenity of its traditional 'lento vivere'.51 The cityscape of Trieste recedes here in the face of a Montale-like, ossified border landscape echoing with Slataperian wild cries and hands plunged in a tangle of Karst grass.52 '10 brotherhood of Italians and Slavs. She is the author of the collection of stories Fra Italiani e Slavi, among other works. 49. Galli's extensive bibliography includes two collections for children, of stories and poems respectively: Lefilastroahe cantate col tempo (1933) and Pianti risate e stelle (1935). The first collection of poetry for adults, Citta, came out in 1938, followed by Giorni di guerra (1950), Tramortito mondo (1953), Giorni d'amore (1956). Galli's production after 1956 includes Notte sull'Istria (1958), Domande a Maria (1959), L'agosto dei monti (1967), Mia citta di dolore (1968). Galli also collaborated with Livia Veneziani Svevo in drafting the latter's biography of Italo Svevo, Vita di mio marito (1950). For Galli's apocalyptic approach, see Bruno Maier, 'La lirica di Lina Galli', in La letteratura triestina del Novecento, pp. 251-64 (p. 255). Notte sull'Istria was first published in 1958 but the poems included were composed beginning from 1945. 50. A similar volume is L. Galli, // volto delVIstria attraverso i secoli (Bologna: Cappelli, 1959), a fictional tourist and historical guide of Istria. Here a nostalgia for an all-Italian Istria prevails: Istria is the ultimate bulwark of the West, upholding art, religion and jurisprudence in the face of an East perceived as chaotic; see p. 145: 'Qui [in Istria] 1'Occidente elevo i suoi monumenti, coltivo la sua fede, espresse il suo diritto e per un millennio gl'Istriani difesero con le virtu civili e col sangue le sue frontiere.' 51. L. Galli, 'La sera', in Notte sull'Istria (Monfalcone: L'Arena di Pola-Movimento Istriano Revisionista, 1958), p. 16: 'La cura s'obliava / in un lento vivere, fuor d'ogni presenza.' 52. L. Galli, 'Dimentichi', in Notte sull'Istria, p. 29: 'Sulle colline odora il rosmarino / e le lucertole assorte / stanno al sole / su pietre calde. / Tante volte ci stendemmo, / le mani affondate nell'erba, / sospesi gli occhi a gonfaloni di nuvole candide. / Dimentichi—/ ci

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febbraio 1947', and particularly the section 'La condanna, 1947', addresses once again the thematic of the Slav occupation and is streaked with Sabalike overtones.53 Galli here suggests that the experience of the Slav rule renders the human condition one of exile, while repeating over and over again the metaphor of a death in life.54 Mia cittd di dolore collects poems written between 1945 and 1965. In Tempo di angoscia (1945), an untitled poem reads, 'Sulle piccole erbe della mia anima / premono grandi dure pietre nemiche. / I vostri passi amici s'allontanano / e le pietre infittiscono. / II mio giardino somiglia / a una landa del Carso.'55 The Slav troops become stones weighing down the poet's heart while the 'friendly steps' of the Anglo-American Allies recede in the mainland. The standard theme of the Yugoslav occupation of Trieste in 1945 is looked at through the eyes of the Italian First World War poets, in particular Giuseppe Ungaretti.56 affidavamo, o terra di frontiera, come a tenero cuore familiare. / Occhi d'immobili serpi a noi fissi / tra la macchia spiavano.' The 'immobili serpi' is an overt reference to the Slavs, whose portrayal in devilish terms is designed to exorcize the poet's 'fear of the Other'. Cf. with Roberto Dedenaro's 'sassi bianchi affioranti, / abitati da lucertole mute, / gente che sa poche vocali', in R. Dedenaro, Gli insopprimibili rumori del talking blues (Trieste: Coopstudio, 1987), p. 17. 53. These overtones are particularly evident in the final distich ('Cupo febbraio / flagellate dal vento. [...] Affranto un uomo cauto scantona. / E un superstite, e trema' (L. Galli, '10 febbraio 1947', in Notte sull'Istria, p. 46), which recaptures and somewhat unravels the frozen yet expressionistic atmosphere of Saba's 'Inverno', in Parole, in // Canzoniere, p. 426: 'un uomo si awentura per un lago / di ghiaccio, sotto una lampada storta'. Cf. also Galli's employment of Sabian citations with Daria Camillucci. In the collection Ortighe... e un fior (1979) Camillucci includes a very Sabian 'Via del Monte': 'Budel / rampiga / ne la memoria / e / strada / de alegria. [... ] Via del Monte / parchegio de ricordi / e / radise / restade la'; quoted in Damiani and Grisancich (eds.), La poesia in dialetto a Trieste, p. 262: 'Narrow alley / Climbing / Up the memory/ And street / Of all cheerfulness. [...] Via del Monte / Parking space of memory / And roots / There remained.' (The translation is mine.) Via del Monte is not merely a horizontal parking space of memory for Camillucci, but a vertical journey down into the poet's womb where the very roots of existence are plunged. The Sabian tone is preserved in the depiction of Via del Monte as an arc comprising the alpha and the omega of human existence: life and death join hands since the street epitomizes human life. 54. See, in particular, the poems 'NelPesilio' (in the section L'amaro esilio, 1948...), 'Nemesi' and 'Tossico'. 55. L. Galli, Untitled, in Mia cittd di dolore (Trieste: Societa Artistico Letteraria, 1968), p. 9. 56. The final distich, assimilating the poet's heart to the rocky, moon-like Karst landscape, replicates Ungaretti's 'San Martino del Carso' in its metrical framework, and

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As one of the protagonists of this collection, Trieste is often anthropomorphized, in combinations of sensual imagery with literary quotation.57 The author's anxiety over the occupation of the city, the positioning of Trieste as last bulwark of the West in the face of the cultural and psychological anarchies perceived as predominant in an aggressive East, are paramount and expressed via a cluster of metaphors. The cultural rejection of the Slav world, for instance, takes on linguistic connotations. The Slavonic languages, with their seeming predilection for knots of consonants and throaty sounds, are regarded as 'voci discordi', an obstacle to communication with the West. The worlds the Slavs speak for remain for Galli 'mondi inespressi': their languages are precluded from meaning and communicative exchange in the tangles (grovigli) of consonants perceived by Western ears.58 Slavs are depicted as ruthless, irrational and incomprehensible and the poet appears to be overwhelmed by fear of contact and contamination. Anima is another recurrent metaphor employed by Galli vis-d-vis Trieste, but short of the Jungian sense. In the poem 'Anima', Galli perceives Trieste as a white, pure, innocent soul grabbed by dirty Slav hands: 'anima, su cui si afferrarono / mani contorte, awerse. / Ognuna cerco di farti vanamente sua.'59 In 'Due anime' Galli resuscitates the Slataperian idea of a double soul of Trieste, with a shift of meaning. Her double soul corresponds to the division of Trieste and its hinterland following the Memorandum of Understanding into Zone A and Zone B and the psychological repercussions for the city: awareness of its own defeat lives together with a sense of unabashed pride: 'Due anime s'incontrano ogni giorno / una conscia di due sconfitte / e Paltra di se paga. [...] Candidamente ignara / o colpevolmente the hermetic aura and layout; see G. Ungaretti, 'San Martino del Carso' (1916), in L'Allegria 1914-19 (Milan: Mondadori, 1942), p. 74. Hermeticism is incorporated by Galli with lyrical and dramatic effect and the metaphysical Great War atmosphere is typically extended here to the Second World War. Like many other Triestine writers, Galli experiences a literary fascination with the First World War. 57. Galli's Trieste' not merely echoes Saba's change of landscape at every corner (cf, for instance, with 'Tre vie', in Trieste e una donna, in // Canzoniere, pp. 89-90) but is also described as a woman craved by Slav sensual appetites: 'Stai come tenera preda / nell'armonia del golfo, / ultima citta dell'Occidente' (Galli, Mia citta di dolore, p. 10). 58. L. Galli, Trieste', in Mia citta di dolore, p. 10: 'Alle tue [Trieste's] spalle, grovigli di mondi inespressi/ voci discordi.' A similar attitude can be found in the work of the fashionable journalist Irene Brin—see in particular her collection of stories Olga a Belgrade* (Florence: Vallecchi, 1943). 59. L. Galli, 'Anima', in Tempo di dedino (1955...), in Mia citta di dolore, p. 25.

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dimentica?'60 The two dimensions singled out by Galli as capable of counteracting the Slav threat are domesticity and religion, even though her conclusions remain pessimistic: in a Trieste warped by foreign rule, even domesticity and religion acquire the characteristics of remoteness and unintelligibility.61 If Galli's anti-Slavism is to be read mainly in terms of italianitd, Lia Maier pursues a related connection between anti-Slavism and triestinitd. Maier's collection Racconti di Trieste (1954) exudes anxiety over the future of the city threatened by the current tensions and divisions.62 The introductory 'Desiderio di un'anima' advocates a genetic triestinitd deriving from flesh and blood and relating first and foremost to the body.63 For Maier triestinitd becomes prerequisite of a visceral anti-Slavism whose vibrations extend far and wide. Trofughe' is an explicit statement of Slavophobia in its uncritical incorporation of the stereotype of the ruthless, bloodthirsty Slav. The author emphasizes the violent behaviour of the soldiers of the Red Army in Pula via a commonplace metaphor portraying Slavs as vampires threatening to suck the last drops of life-blood out of Trieste.64 'La vedetta' is set in 60. L. Galli, 'Due anime', in Mia cittd di dolore, p. 27. In the section Tempo dubbioso (1965) Galli moves forward, acknowledging the current split of Trieste as de facto schizophrenia (see 'Invece', 'Sipario' and 'II viso segreto' in the section Momenti). This schizophrenia contributes to dilating and misshaping received sizes and parameters; see, for instance, 'Citta-Arcipelago', p. 43: 'Sei la mia citta-arcipelago / in cui ogni isolotto in se concluso / dilata le proporzioni umane, / erge figure tese in contorti conflitti.' This sense of isolation, this distortion of space and time typically feature in other Triestine oneiric literature by the early Pier Antonio Quarantotti Gambini, Stelio Mattioni, Renzo Rosso, Enrico Morovich, and, more recently, Claudio Magris. 61. See Sergio Campailla, 'La poesia di Lina Galli', in Scrittori giuliani (Bologna: Patron, 1980), pp. 259-63 (p. 262). A Galli on a minor scale is Ada Camocino, author of La cittd risorta (1968). Camocino's verses also read like pallid imitations of Saba and Ungaretti. 62. An anxiety for the national future of Trieste is also prominent in Olga Visentini, Campane di Trieste (ill. by Sergio Martini; Milan: Cibelli, 1953). 63. L. Maier, 'Desiderio di un'anima', in Racconti di Trieste (Trieste: Opera Figli del Popolo, 1954), p. 6: 'Io son nata a Trieste: ci son nata, vissuta e cresciuta. E come il plasma risente delle vibrazioni che scuoton la cellula, cosi la mia anima risente della vita della mia citta, e non avro pace sino a quando 1'eco di queste vibrazioni non giunga lontano, tanto lontano quanto il paese piu remoto della terra.' For the privileged use of an oneiric imagery rich in psychoanalytical overtones, Stelio Mattioni may be considered to be Maier's counterpart (see Chapter 1). 64. L. Maier, 'Profughe', in Racconti di Trieste, p. 48: 'un mostro orrendo, calato dai

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1948 Trieste. Returning to his home town after many years, Federico is overwhelmed by poignant childhood memories. The biblical tone and imagery, reminiscent of Stuparich's Simone, are juxtaposed with a parallel attempt to absorb a core of personal and urban experiences into the wider circle of human history.65 History is the real protagonist here, a pressing concern in 1940s Trieste. Trieste is portrayed here as a Babel, a lost paradise in which: Inganni, falsi miraggi appetiti o desideri insoddisfatti ma la cupidigia piu che gl'idiomi diversi o la discrepanza d'idee, 1'ammassavan cola in maniera disordinata e confusa che pur tuttavia sembrava ordinarsi, (per tacito accordo e comune oramai,) se non orientarsi nel seguire gl'istinti non controllati dalla ragione.66

Barbaric appetites and terrors belonging to the basest human instincts boil beneath the surface. A rational, causal development of history and a Western conception of logic are continuously threatened by a base anarchy of instincts and the collapse of rationality identified with the Slav presence in Trieste. Maier conveys her own fears in the vivid record of Federico's dreams.67 The nucleus of 'vita intima della citta', the anima of Trieste, is reached through a path strewn with oneiric symbols: octopus (Slavs), mother, insects (Slavs), mother, orphans (motherlessness). In the first dream recorded, Federico pursues a shadowy and slimy octopus, a figuration of the Slav menace hovering above Trieste, which is all the time attempting to suffocate him. This is immediately followed by a second dream featuring Federico's own mother. The contiguity of the two experiences is so unusual that it strikes fear into Federico:

monti, o portato dalle onde, si cela in agguato, pronto a suggere il sangue della mia citta'. 65. The city is re-experienced in maternal terms: L. Maier, 'La vedetta', in Racconti di Trieste, p. 84: 'Come daH'immagine della Madonna, radiante di luce ed amore, cosi dal viso della madre uscivan tanti sorrisi, simili a raggi di sole...' ; see also p. 86: 'Le nostre vicende [... ] son custodite dal tempo e, pari a negative, impresse nella Storia. La storia e il cardine su cui si basa la nostra esistenza. Fuori di essa la vita si svolge come quella di chi stoltamente s'illude di poter soprawivere in una casa priva di tetto senza fondamenta.' 66. Maier, 'La vedetta', p. 89. 67. The atmosphere of the so-called 'Quaranta giorni' (forty days of Slav occupation of Trieste between 1 May and 12 June 1945) is related with terror by various other Triestine writers: Quarantotti Gambini in Primavera a Trieste and Stuparich in Trieste nei miei ricordi, to name only two. Maier joins the chorus with her oneiric version of that terror.

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The slimy shapelessness of this octopus is passed on to the mother, whose physical contours contract and become deformed, as if the two creatures shared some mysterious channel of communication. This sympathy is the result of common instinctuality: both mother and octopus (Slavs) are identified with pre-logical psychic domains that privilege instinctual over rational experience and that remain threatening for the dreamer-protagonist. A quick succession of dreams follows: a well, obvious symbol ofafoiba, is swamped by thousands of swarming buzzing insects (another incarnation of the Slavs) but guards a feminine image, that of Federico's mother, at its bottom: Appoggiandosi all'orlo [the well's], [Federico] vi guardo dentro. Tutt'ingiro, alPinterno, le pareti del pozzo eran cosparse da un numero infinite d'insetti: andavano e venivano; s'incrociavano e si susseguivano, formando una specie di processione disordinata e confusa. Poi, come per incanto, il via vai disgustoso cesso. Giu, giu, nello specchio d'acqua che pareva un abisso, Federico scorse una figura di donna. Non riusci a identificarla. Come se qualcosa si muovesse nel fondo, 1'acqua si increspo, gorgoglio e, spruzzando, formo tante bollicine. La forma in essa riflessa ondeggio, moltiplico e, sbattendo contro le pareti, si deformo scomparendo.69

That it is a mother figure to be cradled in Federico's psyche is apparent from Federico's subsequent dream of being orphaned.70 A condition of deprivation is felt to apply to the Triestines and Julians after the occupation of 1945 and the Memorandum of Understanding of 1954, which left them orphaned of their Italian motherland and prey to swarming Slav troops. And yet mother and the Slav invasion both constitute a threat of triumphant 68. Maier, 'La vedetta', p. 95. 69. Maier, 'La vedetta', pp. 95-96. The Slav occupation of Trieste is often portrayed in local fiction as a chaotic swarming of insects because of the apparent lack of military order of the troops, often without uniforms, and the outbursts of irrational violence that were perceived to be inherent in it. The author writes 'specchio d'acqua': the figure is in fact a reflection, the anima of Federico in the Jungian sense and a pair with Mattioni's Alma in // richiamo diAlma. 70. Maier, 'La vedetta', pp. 97-98: 'Una fila di giovanetti che scendeva il lato opposto del Viale attrasse lo sguardo di Federico [che] si senti stringere il cuore. "Orfani [...] piu di tutti gli orfani! Bocche chiuse, prive di suoni. Visi indefmiti, senza espressioni".' Trieste as Italy's orphan is also a metaphor used extensively in Irredentist fiction.

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chaos and emotivity to the psyche of the protagonist. On the surface of the text Maier perceives an invasion turning the contours of the city inside out: instinct, emotions, violence have broken through the boundaries of the psyche and have overflowed outside, with disastrous consequences for Trieste's daily life. In the sub-text, however, as Federico's dreams demonstrate, Maier becomes aware of the maternal and, as such, both ancestral and inescapable source of that violence. 'II Reduce' also hauntingly portrays Trieste as mother (witness the repetition here of madre), ravished and turned into a harlot as a result of the Slav occupation: immaginate il figlio che dopo anni ed anni di lontananza ritorna alia madre ma non riconosce piu la propria madre? La ritrova la madre, ma essa e mutata, s'e addorna di corone e diademi. Egli non crede ai propri occhi. Chiede ai vicini:—Chi e quella donna?—Alia risposta di tutti che colei e sua madre, rimane interdetto. Incredulo scruta quel volto, scuote la testa e dice: Quella donna non puo essere mia madre. Anche il viso gli sfugge. Questo, che ha dinnanzi, e senza espressione. Ma gli occhi; c'e, in essi, qualche cosa dello sguardo materno. Con uno sforzo supremo scuote la mente stordita e come in un sogno pauroso un grido gli sta per sfuggire ma gli chiude la gola: Quegh occhi son spenti! Mia madre e morta. Chi ha fatto di mia madre cosi? Lo sguardo corre agli astanti.—Che visi estranei!71

The sacred, virginal state of mother Trieste is erased by the violating Slav rule. And yet Maier's position is contradictory in that the loss of soul implied by the Slav occupation is at the same time a gain, entailing, if anything, the preservation of maternal instinctual forces. Maier's initial commitment to a stereotypical Catholic image of woman is superseded by her psychological interest, identifying the Slav occupation of the city with a threat to the psyche. The symbolic poignancy of Maier's stories documents clearly, if contradictorily, the extent to which a Slav question in Trieste, particularly at some climactic times, tended to turn into a burden of psychological and existential import. 'Emancipated' Writers

A number of authors display features of gender-conscious individuality in their writing and/or have, at least partially, been influenced by feminism.72 71. L. Maier, 'II Reduce', in Racconti di Trieste, pp. 101 and 102. (The emphasis is mine.) 72. G. Martinuzzi, an authentically Socialist and feminist author, has been excluded

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Personal and aesthetic reasons, frequently a combination of the two, contribute to the more or less overt antagonism with the traditionally-dominated world of letters experienced by the writers under scrutiny here. This necessarily select group comprises Delia Benco, Anita Pittoni and Nora Poliaghi.73 Despite the common grouping, only Poliaghi displays an overtly feminist approach: her publications are contemporary with the most important historical developments of feminism in Italy. Delia Benco (1882-1949), wife of the better known journalist and critic Silvio Benco (1874-1949), stands powerfully alone in the galaxy of Triestine letters. Her acute, candid intelligence combined with her nervy style led Benco to develop an unusual aesthetics based on the appreciation of the most elementary aspects of human and animal existence, contemplated in occasionally morbid, but always lucidly alert and vivid prose.74 Her autobiographical masterpiece leri (1937) is the cathartic attempt to reconstruct, by means of a severely controlled and anti-nostalgic prose, the powerful symbolic and figural spaces occupied by her brother (later to succumb to consumption) and the author herself during childhood. 'Ci on account of the non-fictional nature of most of her writings. 73. Despite their acute desire for literary recognition, some authors lacked the selfconfidence to regard themselves as writers, as is the case of Elody Oblath Stuparich (1889-1971). Oblath was confusedly aware of her vocation but consistently overshadowed by the literary presence of her friend Slataper and her husband Giani Stuparich, whom she married in 1919. See G. Petrocchi, 'Una pagina di letteratura triestina', in E. Oblath Stuparich, Confessioni e lettere a Scipio (ed. Giusi Criscione; Turin: Fogola, 1979), pp. 8-11 (p. 10). The sparse, strictly autobiographical literary exercises she left behind demonstrate Oblath's freshness and originality, in particular the lyrical prose Notturni di maggio per Carlo, characterized by some extraordinary effects of stylistic and semantic syncopation (E. Oblath, Notturni di maggio per Carlo [1943] in Vittorio Frosini, Lafamiglia Stuparich [Udine: Del Bianco, 1991], pp. 227-43). This originality is, however, occasional because of the lack of sustained work, the echo of a voice rather than a voice. To put it in Ziani's words, Oblath 'imploded within her own [...] personal boundaries [...] using her own self as literary matter'; see G. Ziani, 'Ritratti critici di contemporanei: Elody Oblath Stuparich', Belfagor 44 (1989), pp. 273-89 (p. 273). Even though her originality was to remain unfulfilled as she consistently denied herself the active exercise of writing, in her old age Oblath reconciled herself to the idea that her perpetual dissatisfaction with motherhood derived from a stifled desire of artistic creation. In short, she acknowledged that the biological imperative to give birth was experienced by her as denial of an active social and cultural role. See Oblath, 'Note autobiograflche e confessioni', in Confessioni e lettere, and L'ultima arnica: Lettere a Carmen Bernt Furlani (1965-1969) (ed. G. Ziani; Padua: II Poligrafo, 1991). 74. See Curci and Ziani, Bianco rosa e verde, pp. 317-18.

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dev'essere, c'e, da quando [Tito and Tita] sono al mondo, una muraglia dietro a loro e intorno, di persone intromesse, di fatti awenuti, di cose vedute e sospettate che li ha feriti, dilaniati in silenzio, per troppo doloroso ritegno, troppa vergogna a parlarne.'75 The life of young Tita/Delia is recorded impressionistically here through a rapid succession of episodes drenched in silent horrors and sufferings portrayed as undermining the protagonist's inner life. Predominant in this type of prose, which remains vividly pictorial throughout, are full-blooded, at times scatological impressions designed to emphasize the existential horrors experienced by adolescents. Benco's style is entirely individual, at times becoming convoluted in labyrinthine syntax and metaphoric particularity, occasionally opening new frontiers of expression and meaning. The existential anguish exuded by leri, together with its disturbing incisiveness, attracted the attention of the influential critic Pietro Pancrazi, who not only described the novel as 'tra le migliori opere della nostra narrativa-autobiografica negli ultimi anni', but also lauded it in a long and detailed article in Corriere della Sera.76 Pancrazi laments that Benco's originality remained largely unexpressed and confined to the limits of her scarce, if incisive, production. In the unpublished, undated short story 'Giulietta e Romeo', Benco orchestrates a highly charged love story. By the end, however, she evaporates its tragic and messianic premises into a sharply ironical, curt finale in which only the cynical laughter of protagonist Elsa is heard.77 Despite the inevitable shadow cast upon her by the prominent public role of her husband, Benco's unconventional intellectuality, combined with a profoundly individual authorial voice, enable her to emancipate herself from contemporary modes and typologies of a 'scrittura femminile', both in Trieste and more widely.78 75. D. Benco, leri (Milan: Ceschina, 1937), p. 92. 76. P. Pancrazi, 'Romanzo di Delia Benco', in Scrittori d'oggi (Bari: Laterza, 1942), pp. 154-59 (p. 159). See also a postcard by Pancrazi addressed to Benco dated 10 December 1941: 'ho ripensato al suo romanzo in confronto anche ad altri libri affmi di questi anni. E il suo romanzo sempre piu mi pare uno dei piu belli e singolari; e forse di tutti il piu lirico, veramente nato e mosso da un ricordare poetico. Lei ci dovra dare presto altri frutti di questa poesia' (in Lettere a Delia Benco [Archival Papers 'Delia Benco' at the Biblioteca Civica of Trieste, item n. 129]). 77. Unpublished, undated manuscript 'Giulietta e Romeo' (Archival Papers 'Delia Benco' at the Biblioteca Civica of Trieste). 78. Benco's subtle but consistent influence on contemporary local authors, for instance, remains to be examined: see, for instance, 'Giulietta e Romeo', which Stuparich

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As compared with Benco and other women writers in Trieste, Anita Pittoni (1901-82) can probably be considered as the only 'militant femme de lettres' of the post-war period, as Curci and Ziani put it.79 A descendant of the renowned Socialist leader Valentino Pittoni and gifted with a forceful, vocal personality, Pittoni applied her multifarious talents and boundless energies not merely to literature, but also to publishing enterprises and artistic craftsmanship, with excellent results in all of these fields. For decades she hosted a literary salon in her drawing room in Via Cassa di Risparmio where young and old literati met and discussed their intellectual pursuits. Her publishing house Lo Zibaldone (founded between 1949 and 1950, under Stuparich's encouragement) was soon to become the most prestigious outlet for local writing, publishing literature, history and rare and half-forgotten titles, appealing to both booksellers and readers for the rich artisan ability with which the volumes were crafted.80 Lo Zibaldone also provided Pittoni with the opportunity to publish her own work in prose and poetry, including Lettere al professore: L'anima di Trieste (1968). Under the guise of a series of letters addressed to Professor Michel David, engaged in writing a monumental history of Italian psychoanalysis in which the city was to play a prominent part, Pittoni is drawn to question stereotypical views of Trieste. In the Kafkaesque Passeggiata armata (1971) Pittoni contemplates herself walking down oneiric Triestine back-alleys, with a predilection for Trieste's compelling seascape.81 Pittoni is haunted by topographies of cities, and also of houses and inner spaces, which she interlocks in combinations invariably tending, mutatis mutandis, to draw the same map. In her labyrinthine wanderings, she frequently encounters a melancholic young version of herself and is often tormented by intellectual or existential doubts and imperatives: mi sono trovata sull'orlo dell'abisso. La pazzia della conoscenza! [...] I miei orizzonti si allargano, vivo la mia citta nelle creature che vi approdano da luoghi diversi, spontaneamente attratte da quella certa anima misteriosa anche per me. Ed io, pur ancorata ai miei tavoli veleggio verso le anime dei luoghi 89 che vengono a me. Mi abbandono a questa navigazione.

may have echoed in his novel Simone (1953). 79. Curci and Ziani, Bianco rosa e verde, p. 375: 'nel secondo dopoguerra sara la Pittoni 1'unica^emme de lettres veramente militante'. 80. Curci and Ziani, Bianco rosa e verde, pp. 379-84. 81. Mattioni, one of the most assiduous guests at the famous reunions in Via Cassa di Risparmio, may have borrowed his labyrinthine and oneiric style from Pittoni. 82. A. Pittoni, Passeggiata armata (Trieste: Lo Zibaldone, 1971), pp. 67 and 71.

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Le stagioni, written between 1944 and 1945 and included in the volume Passeggiata, dwells on the author's relationship with Gisella and Giani Stuparich. A profound intellectual and emotional bond, playing a large part in the foundation of the publishing venture Lo Zibaldone, this relationship was also of some consequence for Pittoni's literary production. Despite the affection and esteem, even awe, with which she regarded Stuparich's mother Gisella, the antagonism inherent in this complex relationship is also well illustrated by the relief with which Pittoni welcomed the news of Gisella's death, recounted at some length in Passeggiata. This event is saluted as herald to a stronger, unmediated bond between the two lovers: un giorno egli [Stuparich] venne a me in un modo cosi, come non era mai venuto ed io compresi subito che la mia sofferenza era fmita per sempre. Ricordo che era addolorato, ma mio, terribilmente mio. Egli m'aveva guardata come se veramente io fossi tutto per lui, come se veramente niente altro esistesse per lui all'infuori di me. [...] compresi ch'egli aveva perduta per QO sempre la mamma.

As compared with Benco and Pittoni, Nora Poliaghi (b. 1900), epitome of new feminist writing in Trieste, is more explicitly engaged in a conflictual relationship with the masculine world of letters. Poliaghi, however, tends to shun individual comparisons, aiming at larger perspectives confronting Triestine literature as a whole. In the section Carsica, in Le azalee dell'isola bella (1957), Poliaghi dwells on the rocky, thorny nature of the Karst in Slataper-like fashion. As is made clear by the title, the collection Citta amara (1960) portrays Trieste as custodian of its past memory, reluctant to relinquish it.84 Colore di Trieste (1967) collects articles originally written and published some decades earlier. The lyrical incipit of 'La citta contesa', originally in La Porta Orientate (1949), recalls Stuparich's Sequenze per Trieste: 'Nacqui certamente in un'epoca favolosa. [...] da gente che scopriva la propria pertinenza politica soltanto in occasione di qualche matrimonio e la parentela piu lontana per questioni ereditarie e che poteva passar confmi di stato senza dover esibire document! personali.'85 83. Pittoni, Passeggiata armata, pp. 126-27. Pittoni is also the author of poems in Triestine dialect collected under the title Fermite con mi (1936-1959), first published in 1962. 84. See for instance the poem 'Citta amara', in Bianchi et al. (eds.), Scrittori triestini del Novecento, p. 1033: 'Citta arida e amara / alle tue torri di vento / battono lunghi cartigli, / i lunghi cartigli / con il nome dei morti. / Insonne memorial' 85. N. Poliaghi, Colore di Trieste (Trieste: Societa Artistico Letteraria, 1967), pp. 19 and 22.

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However, this oleographic incipit is soon superseded by a serious awareness of pressing concerns regarding the condition of women, issues of scientific development and cultural divulgation, that are absent in Stuparich's unadulterated sentimental lyricism. Poliaghi is keenly aware of triestinitd, and of the city's perpetuity of itself and of its past. The author in fact looks at Trieste and its literature with the disenchanted gaze of the female iconoclast, a position not shared by her male counterparts.86 Poliaghi's writing is marked throughout by her awareness of a status of otherness pertaining to her gender, together with Trieste's own peripheral marginality: ora so che non la citta mi appartiene ma io appartengo alia citta e che non essa la mia, ma io devo intendere la sua voce. L'amo ma non e un amore felice. Non e un amore elettivo. E stata una soggezione, una interdipendenza, Pimposizione di un clima [...]. E stata lotta continua, [...], uno sforzo di adattamento awertito e patito come 87 di chi sia in esilio e non sappia da quali terre.

Poliaghi feels as intensely aware of her condition of outcast in a masculine literary domain as she experiences triestinitd as a limiting, provincial imposition. Turning triestinitd inside out allows her to explore its alternative readings in terms of difference, marginality and exclusion: 'Non e essa [triestinitd] forse la denuncia delle limitazioni awertite dagli artisti stessi quanto limitazione di pratica linguistica, di tradizione culturale, di contatti geniali, di inserimento nella vita spirituale italiana [...]? Triestinitd dunque come fenomeno di isolamento e di limitazione.'88 In the article 'Divagazioni per un romanzo' Poliaghi examines the pangs and pains of an author on the verge of starting a novel. Once again, awareness of the limitations imposed on her because of her sex leads her to draw pessimistic conclusions.89 Poliaghi is painfully aware that her position in the context of Triestine letters is aggravated by the marginal role to which

86. Of the carnival celebrations in Trieste, a standard theme for the rhetoricians of triestinita, Poliaghi writes in Colore di Trieste, p. 25: 'Una festa che non si sapeva fare gia piu e che rivelava come un mondo plurisecolare non vivesse ormai che nella tradizione dei vecchi e nelle loro nostalgic e tutto questo poteva anche essere un gioco di prospettive retrovisive piuttosto che una realta dawero vissuta.' 87. Poliaghi, Colore di Trieste, p. 33. 88. Poliaghi, 'Colore di Trieste', in Colore di Trieste, pp. 50 and 53. 89. N. Poliaghi, 'Divagazioni per un romanzo', in Colore di Trieste, p. 102: 'La verita, un groviglio di serpi che e in noi e che non possiamo districare. Nemmeno per scrivere un romanzo, autenticamente falso.' Poliaghi is also the author of the monograph Stendhal a Trieste (1984).

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her sex confines her. However, her refreshing approach to triestinita, together with the revolutionary potential enclosed in that approach, testifies to the presence of an undercurrent of city-conscious as well as genderconscious female writing in Trieste. At certain times, historical and sociopolitical circumstances tended to find conformist patriotic writing (such as that of Haydee or Doria Cambon) more congenial than the self-aware writing of Poliaghi's type. It is however the latter that has survived the test of time and continues to inspire local writers.90 2. The Jewish Community in Trieste

A Jewish settlement in Trieste is recorded since AD 949. At the end of the fourteenth century, the group became substantial enough to require the presence of a rabbi.91 However, it was only after Trieste was established as a free port that the Jewish presence increased substantially in number and became subject to imperial jurisdiction, with the official foundation of the Ghetto in 1696.92 Its doors were not binding, though, and, well before they were pulled down, and the Ghetto itself abolished in 1785, Jews had been living outside, mixing with Christians and occupying in particular the new residential area, Borgo Teresiano. A comparatively high degree of social emancipation, as compared with Jews residing in other parts of the Empire, helps explain the high degree of integration—it would be inappropriate at this stage to talk of assimilation—experienced by Triestine Jewry. This aspect was facilitated by their Venetian, and therefore culturally Italian, origin which, in Trieste, predominated over Askenazi, Eastern and Sephardim. 90. Further examples of powerfully individual, if, in some cases, controversial, authorial voices from Trieste include Marisa Madieri (1938-96) and Susanna Tamaro (b. 1957). 91. A. di S. Curiel, Nonni Nostri (Trieste: La Fraternita Israelitica di M.S. 'Maschil El Dal'-Morterra, 1893), p. 13. This booklet has been a useful source of information throughout this section, as well as the article by Riccardo Curiel, 'Le origini del ghetto di Trieste', La rassegna mensile di Israel 6 (1932), pp. 1-29. Prominent Jewish authors discussed in Chapter 1 (e.g. Saba) are not included here because they have been considered as part of a wider literary Establishment; see Donatella Zazzi, 'Ebrei e cristiani', in Trieste citta divisa (Milan: Mazzotta, 1985), pp. 39-57 (p. 53). 92. Other sources indicate 1697 as date of foundation; see Lois C. Dubin, 'The Ending of the Ghetto of Trieste in the Late Eighteenth Century', in Giacomo Todeschini and Pier Cesare loly Zorattini (eds.), // mondo ebraico: Gli ebrei tra Italia nord-orientale e Impero asburgico dal Medioevo all'eta contemporanea (Pordenone: Studio Tesi, 1991), pp. 287310 (p. 289).

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An increase determined by, among other things, full acquisition of citizenship rights and official termination of residential restrictions for all Austrian Jews after 1867, brought numbers up from 103 in 1735, to 1,247 in 1802, to 3,301 in 1857, to over 5,000 towards the end of the century. However, the turn of the century witnessed the start of a decline, resulting in a mere 2.8 per cent of the population of Trieste returned as Jews in 1900.93 The arrival of a contingent of refugees from Corfu in 1891, together with extensive, sustained fluxes in and out of Trieste, did not alter a tendency to demographic decline which was initiated in those years but would emerge clearly only in the course of the twentieth century. A numerical decrease strengthened the religious cohesion of Triestine Jews, who increasingly moved back to the old Ghetto, where many practised small retail trading. An interest in Zionism also became widespread in those years.94 Despite a tendency to marry within their community, Jews slowly but gradually became integrated into the Gentile middle class. This both reflected and perpetuated the Triestine profile whereby nationality was arrived at irrespective of ethnicity or religion and integration, at least for some particular social groups, proved to be as much a viable as a paradoxical means of preserving one's own culture and religion.95 93. See Angelo Ara, 'The Jews in Trieste', in Max Engman (ed.), Ethnic Identity in Urban Europe (Strasbourg: European Science Foundation; New York: New York University Press; Aldershot: Dartmouth, c. 1992), pp. 221-39 (pp. 221 and 223); Carlo Gatti, 'Gli ebrei a Trieste tra Settecento e Ottocento—Note demografiche', in G. Todeschini and P.C. loly Zorattini (eds.), II mondo ebraico, pp. 311-26 (p. 313), and Ellen Ginzburg Migliorino, 'L'antisemitismo e la comunita ebraica a Trieste nei primi anni del Novecento', pp. 433-55 (p. 435) in the same volume. See also Millo, L'elite del potere a Trieste, pp. 57-58. 94. On Triestine Zionism, see Tullia Catalan, 'Societa e Sionismo a Trieste fra XDC e XX secolo', in Todeschini and loly Zorattini (eds.), // mondo ebraico, pp. 457-90. Catalan argues that Zionism was initially kept at bay by the Jewish community since its proItalian inclination tended to regard the movement as the exclusive concern of German and Polish Jews. 95. Ara, The Jews in Trieste', p. 224: 'Most Jews regarded themselves as totally integrated into the Italian group. This self perception was made possible by the concept of nation elaborated by Italian culture in Trieste. Nationality was defined as a matter of choice, as a concept based on cultural and spiritual values and not on ethnicity, origins or family background.' See also Ara and Magris, Trieste, p. 35. As persuasively demonstrated by Millo, assimilation in Trieste is by no means restricted to the Jewish community but applies to other minority groups, such as the Greek or Swiss communities (L'elite del potere a Trieste, p. 60): 'Sono i principi di conservazione sociale e politica, di riconoscimento nelle istituzioni, [...] che facilitano la persistenza di un [...] atteggiamento di fedelta

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The census of 1910 returned two thirds of Triestine Jews as engaged in business. Their presence was marked in insurance companies, banks and, to a lesser degree, in the industrial sphere, with the most notable exception of the Brunner family who, in the course of three generations, accumulated a fortune by combining industrial, financial and commercial enterprises.96 In the words of Anna Millo: 'la componente ebraica ha una parte di assoluto rilievo in tutti gli organismi direttivi delFeconomia giuliana, in molti casi con una partecipazione che, dalla fondazione, attraverso tre generazioni, si estende fmo alle leggi razziali del 1938'.97 Raffaele Luzzatto, president of the Cassa di Risparmio, Fortunato Vivante, managing director of Unionbank and vice-president of the Austrian Lloyd, Enrico Salem, president of both the Riunione Adriatica di Sicurta (RAS) and of the Banca Commerciale Triestina, and the Morpurgo family in its intricate ramifications, all amply illustrate this phenomenon. The liberal professions also witnessed a large representation of Jews, possibly as a result of the widespread knowledge of German that allowed them to pursue or at least complete their studies in the main universities of the Empire. The culture and history of the Jewish community in Trieste appears, however, to be marked by a consistent, if not uncommon, ambivalence. As in other Jewish communities in Italy and Europe, the cosmopolitan outlook that represented the most genuine sign of its difference was accompanied by a widespread urge to assimilate and an equally general tendency to embrace the nationalist aspirations of the local middle class.98 The conservativa nei confront! dei valori di cui il gruppo da generazioni e autonomamente portatore. Quando invece una minoranza si pone in un atteggiamento antagonistico al blocco sociale dominante e ai suoi valori per chiedere maggiori diritti [...], allora anche il patrimonio culturale autonomo del gruppo sotto la pressione dei valori di modernizzazione e di cambiamento e soggetto alia disgregazione.' 96. A. Millo, L'elite delpotere a Trieste, pp. 63-64. 97. A. Millo, 'Elites politiche ed elites economiche ebraiche a Trieste alia fine del XDC secolo', in Todeschini and loly Zorattini (eds.), II mondo ebraico, pp. 381-401 (p. 385). 98. Millo, L'elite del potere a Trieste, p. 331: 'Con 1'ebraismo italiano quello triestino condivideva la profonda assimilazione ed integrazione nelle realta sociale e politica in cui viveva immerso, un processo che [...] aveva investito la comunita triestina ben prima dell'annessione alPItalia.' As persuasively argued by George Mosse, the prevalent drive to further one's social integration may have been dictated by, among other factors, a desire to overcome the Jewish stereotype': see Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, p. 151: 'many victims seemed to accept the stereotype of themselves and sought to transcend it by integrating themselves into the existing order. [...] Jews [...] attempted to emphasize their respectability and patriotism'; and p. 187, 'Jews were to become "respectable" and abandon any signs of their ghetto past'.

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national cause became increasingly a primary concern able, if necessary, to eclipse issues of ethnic and confessional solidarity." Many Jews became staunch Irredentists and pro-Italian patriots, leading to later enthusiasms for Interventionism and support for the Fiume enterprise.100 Jews also played a significant role in the development and promotion of the Fascist movement and of anti-Slav feelings. As recalled by Giorgio Voghera, at the end of the First World War, almost the whole Jewish community in Trieste voted for the parties of Blocco Nazionale that paved the way for the accession to power of Fascism.101 The Jewish middle classes perceived, as much as the Italian ones, a threat in the presence of Slavs in Trieste. In the words of Millo: 'a Trieste il nemico della borghesia [...] e, e sara con sempre maggiore virulenza [...] non 1'ebreo ma lo sloveno'.102 Anti-Semitism ought to be read in the light of the national struggle. If anti-Semitic views had already found their way into periodicals such as L'Avanti (1899-1902, edited by Riccardo Camber), L'Amico (1895-1912) and // Sole (1902-1907), the first reported episode of anti-Semitism took place during a local council meeting on 30 September 1901. In 1903 a committee of about sixty members was founded with anti-Semitic intents.103 On their part, the Slovenes, traditional enemies of the Triestine middle classes, attempted to overthrow the local identification of Judaism with

99. Millo, L'elite del potere a Trieste, p. 65: 'Di questa situazione era sintomo estremo il diffondersi nel decennio di inizio secolo in modo quantitativamente rilevante della richiesta di cancellazione dai registri della comunita. Gli "sconfessionati" [nel 1910] [...] sono circa 1000 in piu del censimento precedente del 1900, in gran parte israeliti che hanno voluto sanzionare in modo anche formale il loro distacco.' 100. See Angelo Scocchi, 'Gli Ebrei di Trieste nel Risorgimento italiano', Rassegna storica del Risorgimento 38 (1951), pp. 1-34 (p. 26). Irredentism became a synonym for Judaism in Trieste, a phenomenon Scocchi reads, in part at least, as a reaction to antiSemitic tendencies endemic in Austro-German culture (p. 18). See also Alberti, L'irredentismo senza romantidsmi, p. 275: 'Gli ebrei nati a Trieste non erano secondi a nessuno per ardore patriottico, per fiamma irredentistica.' 101. G. Voghera, 'Fascismo ed antisemitismo nell'esperienza triestina', in Anni di Trieste, pp. 35-55 (p. 42). Voghera however hastens to add that Mussolini's March on Rome (1922) prompted many Triestine Jews to become sceptical and, in some cases, to commit themselves to anti-Fascism. 102. Millo, L'elite del potere a Trieste, p. 67. See also p. 66: 'Era sensibile a questo richiamo soprattutto quella parte di ebraismo triestino di estrazione sociale medio-alta, che condivideva appieno con la borghesia italiana, di cui era parte integrante, le apprensioni nazionali contro 1'invadenza slava.' 103. See Ginzburg Migliorino, 'L'antisemitismo e la comunita ebraica', pp. 436-41.

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the Italian bourgeoisie, fomenting some anti-Semitism locally.104 These episodes, however, did not provoke a counter-upsurge of Zionism, whose influence was negligible in Trieste due to the widespread drive towards assimilation.105 This assimilation helps explain the explosive nature of the anti-Semitic provisions of 1938 and the utter incredulity with which they were received. The Jewish urban elite, initially thoroughly supportive of the Fascist movement, became gradually aware of having been disavowed once Fascism had established itself as a regime.106 Despite the lack of a sustained history of local anti-Semitism, the city now embraced a series of antiSemitic provisions. These included civil and juridical disappearance via an interdiction to attend and teach courses in Italian schools, to obtain a licence to open shops or attend the stock exchange, to practise the liberal professions or to marry Aryans, together with an obligation to register as Jews. The comunita' was officially suppressed on grounds of alleged administrative malpractice. Italian citizenship was withdrawn retroactively for those Jews who had obtained it in the previous twenty-five years.107 At this juncture, it became apparent that Triestine Jews were divided between those who regarded the regime as an integral part of their identity, such as Teodoro Mayer and Salvatore Segre Sartorio (1865-1949), and were thus able to abjure Judaism without ethical qualm, and those, such as Lionello Stock, whose Zionist sympathies revealed a more deeply rooted allegiance not merely with his original confession but also with the cultural values of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.108 From 1939, in response to anti-Semitic legislation, Triestine Jews pursued various escape routes, from forging documents to bribing officials 104. Millo, 'Elites politiche ed elites economiche ebraiche', p. 397. 105. The attitude vis-a-vis Zionism was generally liberal. Dante Lattes, father of Italian Zionism, belonged to the Triestine community. 106. Bon Gherardi, La persecuzione antiebraica a Trieste, p. 8: 'tanto piu immotivata e pretestuosa doveva apparire 1'esplosione antisemita quanto minore si presentava la possibilita di operare una separazione netta tra la Comunita ebraica e la popolazione locale'. 107. The 'leggi razziali' became official on 17 November 1938 (other sources indicate 10-11 November; see also Chronology). See Bon Gherardi, La persecuzione antiebraica a Trieste, p. 55: 'sono colpiti dalle leggi discriminatorie non meno di 50 insegnanti nelle scuole statali, mentre il numero degli alunni allontanati presso le stesse scuole e rilevante: non inferiore alle 500 unita, forse notevolmente superiore'. For acts of solidarity towards Jews, see pp. 93 and 244. 108. Millo, L'elite delpotere a Trieste, pp. 335-37.

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to going into hiding in or out of Trieste. The peak of anti-Semitism was reached during the administration of the Kiistenland on the part of Nazi Germany (1943-45). Persecution and arrest frequently heralded forced detention and death in the Risiera di San Sabba, the local concentration camp, or in German or Polish camps.109 If a confessional and ethnic identity had already been weakened by the high degree of assimilation, the 'racial laws' imparted a final blow to a lively Jewish presence in Trieste. In the words of Angelo Ara, Racist laws [...] were to cause—through emigration or deportation—the almost complete disappearance from the city of that Jewish presence which throughout many decades had represented, in spite of its increasingly Italian character, the most visible trace of the old and distinguished era of Triestine cosmopolitanism. 110

The Family The experience of the border and, particularly, the Holocaust, left indelible marks on the composition of the Jewish family in history and in literature. Umberto Saba, for instance, whose Judaism was problematic but never abjured and who suffered periods of forced exile from Trieste and from Italy, linked the death of fellow Jews in concentration camps with the death of his 'good mother', his wet-nurse. Quite literally, Saba's Judaism clings to the maternal side of his family, while his absent father is idealized as Catholic and freed from the moral and cultural constrictions of Judaism.111 109. Bon Gherardi, La persecuzione antiebraica a Trieste, p. 220: 'la Risiera funge da campo di concentramento; specie per gli ebrei, e campo di smistamento, da dove partono i convogli per i Lager polacchi e tedeschi, ma anche caserma e prigione, magazzino dei beni saccheggiati agli ebrei, tribunale segreto, teatro di esecuzioni capitali e violenze e torture inaudite'. 110. Ara, 'The Jews in Trieste', p. 236. Numerically, in 1948 the Jewish community in Trieste officially registered 1,550 members. Figures decreased to 1,500 in 1950; see Scocchi, 'Gli Ebrei di Trieste', p. 31. 111. Saba's connection between the racial laws and the death of his beloved balia emerges in Storia e cronistoria del Canzoniere, in Prose, pp. 602-603. A circumstantial report of Saba's experience of the racial laws is in Mattioni, Storia di Umberto Saba, p. 124. For Saba's relation with his Jewish bad mother (Rachele Poli nee Coen) and his Catholic good mother (Gioseffa Gabrovich) see also Mattioni, Storia di Umberto Saba, 1.6.; Zazzi, Trieste citta divisa, p. 54: 'II legame che uni Saba a sua madre fu [...] assai intense. A questo legame viene fatta risalire la "parte ebraica" della sua personalita e della sua ispirazione poetica. [...] Saba rimase in realta fmo all'ultimo fedele a sua madre: scelse coscientemente di morire ebreo, non battezzato. E cio nonostante [...] un suo intimo profondissimo desiderio di trasgressione, di fuga dal mondo ebraico.'

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The Gorizia-born Carlo Michelstaedter (1887-1910), who composed one of the most original philosophical treaties of the twentieth century, La persuasione e la rettorica (1913), is a prototype Jewish middle-class intellectual from the outskirts of Mitteleuropa. Though belonging to the pre-war generation, Michelstaedter is regarded as one of the most intensely modern thinkers from the area. Marginality, rootlessness, exile, a Nietzschean nostalgia for Greek thought, an uncompromising pessimism, aware that 'anche in rapporto con la dissoluzione del vincolo famigliare, [...] il peggior male sia 1'esser nato', all characterize his production.112 Despite his secular detachment from Judaism and the assimilation typical of his background, Michelstaedter partakes of the most modern intellectual Jewish diaspora. His posthumous La persuasione e la rettorica breaks new ground in exposing the fundamental illusion lodged at the core of human experience perpetually lured by a cobweb of rhetoric and 'inadequate persuasion'. Only the genuinely persuaded individual acknowledges that pessimism and sorrow are inherent features of the human condition, striving to live in and for the present. Michelstaedter terminated his own experience by shooting himself immediately after completing the manuscript of La persuasione, which was to serve as his graduate dissertation. The role played by his family, and, in particular, his mother, with whom Carlo had a violent verbal exchange prior to his death, appears crucial to the definition and development of his thought, even though remaining somewhat unclear. At the opposite end of the spectrum, an idealized portrait of Jewish family life is the subject matter of the novel Schemagn Israel! (c. 1927; written 1915) by Luigi Di San Giusto (pseudonym of Luisa Macina Gervasio). In the attempt to introduce Gentile readers to unfamiliar rituals and nomenclatures, as well as producing as sympathetic and as equitable a portrait of Triestine Jewry as possible, Gervasio accumulates anecdotes, exemplary stories, and commonplaces designed to emphasize the staunch italianitd of all Triestine Jews: 'I Colonna erano ebrei, ma quasi nessuno se ne ricordava, nemmeno essi. Appartenevano alia classe degli indifferenti, in fatto di religione, e non conoscevano altra fede, o altro ideale, che quello patriottico.'113 The Christian protagonist Luisa (Gigetta), a transparent autobiographic

112. Alberto Asor Rosa, 'La persuasione e la rettorica di Carlo Michelstaedter', in idem, (ed.), Letteratura Italiana: Le Opere (4 vols.; Turin: Einaudi, 1995), IV, pp. 265-332 (p. 277). 113. Di San Giusto, Schemagn Israel!, p. 51.

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projection of the author, pursues a cultural itinerary through Jewish rituals and habits, which increasingly absorb her, to the extent that she finally marries into the Levi family. The novel, however, finishes before the rite is celebrated, leaving readers unclear as to Luisa's ultimate embrace of Judaism. This may be the result of a subtle authorial ambivalence, traceable also in the conclusion, where a string of hesitant, occasionally contradictory, positions testify to the author's inability to extricate herself from the thorny subject matter: E un errore credere che gli ebrei moderni siano perfettamente uguali ai cristiani in mezzo ai quali vivono. Tuttavia e assai probabile che, dopo tre o quattro generazioni, specialmente grazie ai matrimoni misti [...] non ci saranno piu veri ebrei, almeno nelle grandi citta. Ma per adesso ce ne sono ancora, e non me ne dispiace. Eppure, ciascun ebreo si assimila prestissimo la lingua e la nazionalita dello Stato in cui vive, e ne diventa cittadino convinto e sincere. 114

Finally, the Vogheras are exemplary of the complicated network of Jewish families in Trieste. Guido Voghera (1884-1959), a Socialist Triestine intellectual, set up family with Paola Fano, who belonged to another Jewish intellectual family related to the philosopher Giorgio Fano and the poet Virgilio Giotti.115 Their only son, Giorgio Voghera (1908-1999), became an author of some notoriety in the wake of a lengthy, extraordinary novel, // segreto, based on his own adolescent notebooks and diaries, allegedly left unpublished by Guido. Giorgio's decision to have this novel published anonymously in 1961 affected his own literary production and career in the direction indicated by his overshadowing paternal ghost.116 114. Di San Giusto, Schemagn Israel!, p. 275. 115. See also Chapter 1, Section 4. 116. A. Gruber Benco, 'Presentazione', in Guido Voghera, Pamphlet postumo (ed. Giorgio Voghera; Trieste: Umana, 1967), p. 9: 'II rapporto per se stesso sempre complicate tra padre e figlio, nel caso Guido-Giorgio Voghera e particolarmente complesso e delicato. Ne e chiaro chi dei due in effetti sia il piu vero scrittore: colui che vive la vicenda dalla quale nasce il romanzo // Segreto o quegli che da diarii ed appunti del figlio [...] costruisce un'opera che poi 1'altro, sulla materia viva di se stesso, da se stesso straniata, anzi rinunciata [...] esercitera il puntiglio delle precisazioni?' Part of the complicated composition and editorial history of the manuscript is reconstructed in a letter by Giorgio Voghera to Bobi Bazlen, dated 2 July 1961 and cited in R. Bazlen and G. Voghera, Le tracce del sapiente: Lettere 1949-1965 (ed. Renzo Cigoj; Udine: Campanotto, 1995), p. 41: 'Ricorderai [...] quei fascicoli di "memorie" che ti ho pregato di leggere alcuni anni fa. [... ] la verita e che le aveva scritte papa, "romanzando" la mia biografia (in gran parte) e quella di un mio amico (in parte minore) ed inserendo circostanze della nostra vita,

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// segreto harbours a complex pattern of mutual guilt and morbid sensitivity between father and son, both too well read in psychoanalysis not to be aware of the psychological implications.117 Written before the end of the Second World War, the novel depends on a tight family bond. One of the few Tristine novels that conform undisputedly to the literary canon of the Mitteleuropa, II segreto is the Bildungsroman of Mino Zevi (literary alter ego of Giorgio Voghera), a highly strung Triestine Jew paralyzed by life-denying instincts and caught up in a mesh of contradictory thoughts, resulting in self-denial, occasionally self-hatred.118 An overwhelming pessimism prevails in Mino, an individual leaving insignificant traces on the surface of a reality torn apart by contradictory, centrifugal forces. Guido's neglect of his son's feelings, publicly exposed in a work of fiction destined for publication, and Giorgio's latent resentment, possibly leading to extensive manipulations of the original manuscript, determine a multiplication of authorial presences, as in a hall of mirrors. The younger Giorgio appears to lose this struggle for individuality by becoming, as it were, his father's ghost writer, his authorial voice thinned in the presence of a booming parental echo determined to reduce him to silence. II segreto was the initial point of a literary career continued by Giorgio well beyond his father's death. However, the paternal authority he continued to suffer throughout made of him, in his own words, 'un figlio di papa' of Triestine letters.119 sentiment! ed incubi della sua propria adolescenza. [...] papa [...] non voleva assolutamente che tu sapessi che le aveva scritte lui. [...] papa desiderava che quel racconto lo consegnassi alia Linuccia [Saba] dopo la sua morte, autorizzandola a pubblicarlo—se le fosse riuscito—ma vincolandola alFanonimo. E cosi ho fatto. A Einaudi pare sia piaciuto abbastanza ed ora lo fara uscire. [...] Per desiderio di papa ho detto anche alia Linuccia una bugia [...] cioe che io ignoravo che papa avesse scritto quella specie di romanzo e che lo avevo trovato solo dopo la sua morte.' More recent critical debates, subsequent to Giorgio's death, attribute the authorship to Giorgio rather than Guido; see Bruno Maier, l ll Segreto? Mai stato un segreto', Guido Fano, 'Vi dico, 1'ha scritto lui: parola di Anna CurieF, and Giorgio Voghera, 'II dattiloscritto era fra le carte di mio padre, in tre copie', all in // Piccolo, 30 November 1999, pp. 24-25. 117. Giorgio Voghera wrote, in 'Biografia di Guido Voghera', in Guido Voghera, Pamphlet postumo, p. 76: 'Alle volte egli [Guido] si rimproverava di aver fatto del proprio figlio uno spostato, mettendolo in una situazione difficile nei confronti dell'ambiente in cui aveva dovuto vivere.' 118. See also Pizzi, 'Guido and Giorgio Voghera', passim. 119. Giorgio Voghera, // direttore generate (Trieste: M.G.S., 1992), p. 19: 'quel minuscolo posticino che ho nel campo della cultura, lo ho come "figlio di papa"'. See also Giorgio Voghera, 'Perche ho pubblicato il Quaderno d'Israele\ mAnni di Trieste, pp. 205-19

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Both Guido and Giorgio represent a distillation of Triestine Jewish culture in their awe of Freud's verbum, their pathological reluctance to publish, the inward-looking, mercilessly autobiographical quality of their writing, and their nineteenth-century morbidity mingling provincialism with a cosmopolitan ennui typical of Mitteleuropa™ As is the case with other prominent Jewish authors in Trieste, the rhetoric of triestinita and italianitd leaves no echoes in their writing, which looks instead to the literary tradition of Mitteleuropa as a model.121 It is therefore no accident that the two remained at the margins of Triestine letters and that both distribution and popularity of II segreto arrived late.122 Psychoanalysis, as mentioned above, is an active interest shared by Guido and Giorgio. Dreams constitute Giorgio's favourite fictional matter and the frequent debates regarding Freud and his theories both at home and with friends and family kept this interest alive. Writing is understood by Giorgio Voghera primarily as the vent for a neurotic impulse, as well as a defence against his parents. Psychoanalysis, in fact, remains one of the key

(p. 206): 'proprio // Segreto ha dato 1'awio a quel tanto di attivita letteraria che ho potuto svolgere'. See also a letter to Biagio Marin dated 16 November 1974: 'sento assai spesso il bisogno di ricorrere all "autorita" (in tutti i sensi) di mio padre'; in Biagio Marin and Giorgio Voghera, Un dialogo: Scelta di lettere 1967-1981 (ed. Elvio Guagnini; Trieste: Provincia di Trieste, 1982), p. 75; and p. 76: 'Mi si e fatto [...] da piu parti 1'appunto che cerco quasi di "arrampicarmi sulle spalle" di mio padre, che cerco di dare importanza [...] a quanto dico, appellandomi a lui. E puo essere anche vero.' 120. This reluctance to publish characterizes other Triestine Jewish intellectuals, first and foremost Roberto Bazlen (see below). 121. Italo Svevo is the most prominent precursor for the Vogheras. Many contemporary Jewish and non-Jewish authors continue looking to Svevo, Saba, Voghera and the Mitteleuropa for inspiration in Triestine literature today. 122. Giorgio Voghera's Nostra Signora Morte (Pordenone: Studio Tesi, 1983), a fictional account of the author's own dreams drenched with psychoanalytic awareness, highlights the omnipresent father complex in the terrible and punishing father figure of God the Moloch, 'uno spirito animate da un sadismo senza limiti' (p. 15). The father complex is channelled into a fear of death, emanating from every page. The father ghost also haunts powerfully Carcere a Giaffa (Pordenone: Studio Tesi, 1985), which can be considered to be a Jewish Decameron: a group of Jews are gathered together in a British prison in Palestine at the beginning of the Second World War and each of them recounts moving or extraordinary real-life stories in order to pass the time. Non-fictional works by Voghera include Anni di Trieste, a collection of essays on various topics, from a discussion of the fascination with Fascism in Trieste to articles of Jewish literary and historical interest. Gli anni delta psicanalisi is also a collection of essays dealing with the introduction of psychoanalysis in Italy via Trieste.

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areas associated with Jewish culture in Trieste, with a wide spectrum of positions. The Years of Psychoanalysis

Trieste was one of the first cities demonstrating unconditional interest in psychoanalysis since the early days of the discipline. This was the result of, among other factors, its geographical position and large Jewish population. Of the two main professional-intellectual groups Michel David identifies in pre-1914 Trieste, the most prominent is singled out as unconditionally sympathetic towards the psychoanalytic discourse.123 It was, in fact, mainly the Jewish professional and scientific intelligentsia who not merely displayed a fascination with psychoanalysis, but also determined the success of the discipline in Trieste and, at a later stage, more widely in Italy. This came about essentially in three stages: the immediate interest in Freudian therapy brought to Trieste by Edoardo Weiss; the first Italian Convention of Psychoanalysis held in Trieste in 1925; and, after 1935, the welcome given to the Jungian theories promoted by Roberto Bazlen.124 Edoardo Weiss (1889-1970) was virtually the first Italian psychoanalyst. Weiss pioneered the discipline first in Italy, then in America after the antiSemitic provisions of 1938 prompted him to flee Trieste and take refuge there.125 Not only was Weiss the therapist of Umberto Saba, the spiritual father spawning the second generation of Italian psychoanalysts who spread Freud's doctrine in the rest of Italy, such as Perrotti, Servadio, Musatti, and Bonaventura; he was also himself a vigorous propagator of Freud's theories, 123. M. David, La psicoanalisi nella cultura italiana (Turin: Boringhieri, 1970), p. 374: 'Da una parte, i professionisti, gli scienziati, i medici, erano formati in Austria in un ambiente positivistico e tecnicamente progredito. Dall'altra parte, i letterati, i pensatori, erano attratti da Firenze, dalPidealismo di Croce e de La Voce.' David argues that the second category was alienated from the discipline because it conformed to Benedetto Croce's indictment of psychoanalysis. 124. The interest in psychoanalysis in Trieste is imputed by David (La psicoanalisi, p. 379) to the presence of a large Jewish community. See also Ferruccio Foelkel, 'Un'analisi mancata', in F. Foelkel and Carolus Cergoly, Trieste provincia imperiale: Splendore e tramonto del porto degli Asburgo (Milan: Bompiani, 1983), pp. 99-108 (p. 103): 'mi chiedo: perche la psicoanalisi a Trieste? [...] Forse Trieste era (e) una citta ammalata che assomma dentro di se le principali sintomatologie della psiche... Nevrosi, psicosi, fobie, isterismi, transfert, rimozioni...' 125. Weiss was not a fiction writer, but deserves to be discussed here for his enormous impact on the work of many Triestine writers, in particular Saba, Bazlen and the Vogheras.

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as well as the first analyst who combined them originally with those of Federn.126 A typical product of Triestine Jewry, Weiss strove towards assimilation and recognition, a quest finding its way, albeit indirectly, into his best known psychoanalytical textbook, the first to be published in Italy: Elementi di psicoanalisi (1931). One of the most striking traits of this volume is its assumption of a symbolic equivalence between woman and house. Starting from their linguistic equivalence, traced back to the Assyro-Babylonian alphabetic representation of the letter B, Weiss treats this equivalence as a central problematic of powerful psychological and symbolic force. In symbolic-etymological terms, the two concepts of woman and house or city are identical, as derived from the Assyro-Babylonian ideogram which symbolizes an enclosed space, that is the woman's womb or, by extension, the house or village or town: 'tutti e due i significati, cioe di "casa" e di "donna", risalgono alia forma generica del quadrato, che significa "racchiudere", "circondare".'127 Weiss's identification carries wider symbolic implications, particularly as it is both contemporary to and resonant of Fascist demographic policies, in which mother as symbol can easily become conflated with womb. Perhaps unwittingly, Weiss captures here a maternal discourse emphasized by the regime after 1927, joining the ranks of the integrated, if not entirely assimilated, majority of Triestine Jews. The case of Roberto, familiarly called Bobi, Bazlen (1902-65), is dissimilar. Despite his keen interest in psychoanalysis and Jewish neurosis',

126. Paul Federn (1871-1950) was a paediatrician in Vienna. He met Freud in 1902 and joined his circle. He became a training analyst and teacher at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. He is the author of The Psychology of Revolution: The Fatherless Society (1919), Narcissism in the Structure of the Ego (1927) and The Analysis ofPsychotics (1933). He emigrated to America in 1938 and his last book (Ego Psychology and Psychosis) was published posthumously by his lifelong friend Weiss. 127. E. Weiss, Elementi di psicoanalisi (ed. Anna Maria Accerboni Pavanello; Pordenone: Studio Tesi, 1985), p. 37. Weiss's argument is taken up and expanded by Giorgio Pullini. According to Pullini, Trieste is attempting to escape the claws of a dying father (the Austro-Hungarian Empire) but instead of attaining freedom, she falls prey to a new, rising nation (Italy) which enacts the mother. The drive to get rid of a morbid father is indeed psychologically sound and healthy. However, what is gained from the exchange is an equally morbid bond with mother Italy rather than real autonomy. See G. Pullini, Tra esistenza e coscienza: Narrativa e teatro del Novecento (Milan: Mursia, 1986), p. 192: Treudianamente, Trieste si e distaccata dal Padre nel momento stesso in cui il Padre stava morendo, ed ha contribuito con un colpo finale alia sua morte: 1'ombra del parricidio ha accompagnato per un certo tempo la sua coscienza e la sua cultura.'

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Bazlen was no analyst himself.128 On the other hand, he can be considered to be the purest of Triestine intellectuals for his consistent refusal to choose a profession throughout his life (excluding perhaps his editorial collaborations in his late years) and for his equally consistent refusal to write anything except 'footnotes without a text'. As a self-isolated Jewish intellectual, Bazlen was in an ideal position to explore previously unvisited literary territories.129 It was Bazlen, for example, who first brought Robert Musil and Franz Kafka to the attention of an Italian readership. He discovered and launched Stelio Mattioni. After 1935, somewhat unsatisfied with Freud's theories, Bazlen became an enthusiast for Jungian psychoanalysis, propagating it far and wide via his editorial activity.130 Having educated a whole generation of writers through his editorial choices, Bazlen's influence and authority are now widely acknowledged. His originality is testified to by his utterly disenchanted gaze on the rhetoric of italianitd in Trieste.131 His writings were collected by Roberto Calasso in Scritti (1984). The volume includes II capitano di lungo corso, a fragmentary, uncompleted novel employing stream-of-consciousness technique and resonant of Joyce. The section Note senza testo is made up of short and aphoristic chapters on a variety of cultural topics devised as footnotes in the absence of a main text. Here Bazlen reveals his solipsistic nihilism, anti-religiosity, and preference for chaos. Writing original works is an impossible task in a world where every conceivable volume has already been published, to the extent that the role of the intellectual must be confined to glossing, commenting, collating fragments of interpretation rather than creating ex novo^2 Bazlen's caution epitomizes the dilemma tormenting writers in a city like Trieste, which at 128. R. Cigqj sees Bazlen as heir to a 'Jewish neurosis', as well as to a 'Jewish genius'; see 'Le tracce del sapiente', in Bazlen and Voghera, Le tracce del sapiente, p. 10. 129. Ara and Magris, Trieste, p. 136. See also E. Guagnini, 'La cultura: Una fisionomia difficile', in Apih, Trieste, pp. 271-383 (p. 371). 130. Aldo Carotenuto, Jung e la cultura italiana (Rome: Astrolabio, 1977), p. 128. 131. See Eugenio Montale, 'Ricordo di Roberto Bazlen', in I. Svevo and E. Montale, Carteggio: Con gli scritti di Montale su Svevo (ed. Giorgio Zampa; Milan: Mondadori, 1976), pp. 146 and 147, where Bazlen is described as 'un uomo a cui piaceva vivere negli interstizi della cultura e della storia, esercitando il suo influsso su quanti potevano comprenderlo, ma rifiutando sempre di apparire alia ribalta. [... ] Maestro di una cultura che fu tutta sotterranea.' 132. R. Bazlen, Scritti (ed. R. Calasso; Milan: Adelphi, 1984), p. 203: 'Io credo che non si possa piu scrivere libri. Percio non scrivo libri—Quasi tutti i libri son note a pie di pagina gonfiate in volumi (volumina). Io scrivo solo note a pie di pagina.'

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the same time both nurtured and inhibited their literary egos. Writing amounts to a tautology in Trieste. Writing may entail being caught in the spiral oftriestinita, 'border anxiety', italianitd, yet authors cannot but declare their own defeat by pouring ink on paper.133 Bazlen emerges then as the epitome of a culture all at the margins but definitely not marginal, well aware of the limitations imposed by local literature, impatient to overcome them and anxious to break new ground. Triestine Judaism expressed through Bazlen all its potential for originality. However, his footnotes surviving in the absence of a text reveal the tentative, fragmentary nature of this potential. Ultimately, they speak of their contiguity with literary aphasia. 3. Italy Looks East The Slav, mainly Slovene and partly Croat, community in Trieste moves from cultural, social and political premises antithetical to those of the Jewish community. The culture of the Slovenes tended to be ethnically separatist rather than mainstream Italian, their social profile working class, and their politics typically left of centre.134 Both the Irredentist and, later, the Fascist movement, embraced by the Jewish community, remained characterized throughout by an obdurate prejudice against Slovenes, whose presence and role were regarded as having been inflated artificially by the

133. The tautology of the act of writing for Bazlen is the theme of Del Giudice's Lo stadio di Wimbledon (Turin: Einaudi, 1983)—see Chapter 1. The narrator of this novel is engaged in a pursuit of the few traces left behind by Bazlen in both Trieste and London. The question tormenting him is: why did Bazlen refuse to write? The only answer is provided in London, at Wimbledon Park, by the blind and prophetic Ljuba Blumenthal who explains Bobi's literary silence as follows: 'ci sono troppi libri, e [...] e inutile aggiungerne altri. Se non ci fossero piu libri la gente dovrebbe pensare con la propria testa. [...] Scrivere non e importante, pero non si puo fare altro' (see pp. 100 and 113). 134. Ara, 'The Jews in Trieste', p. 225: 'The relationship between Jews and Slovenes was tense.' See for instance a propagandistic booklet by two Triestine Jews who argue against Italo-Slovene bilingualism in Trieste: Corrado Jona and Nello Morpurgo, Contro il bilinguismo a Trieste (Trieste: P.L.I., 1961), pp. 8-9: 'L'introduzione del bilinguismo a Trieste e un assurdo contro il quale i triestini si opporranno con tutti i mezzi leciti a loro disposizione. La minoranza di lingua slovena ha sempre usato anche la lingua italiana, che tutti conoscono benissimo. Voler pretendere che questa minoranza—che gode delle piu ampie liberta [...]—debba trovare nei pubblici uffici degli impiegati che rispondano loro in lingua slovena, significa mutare radicalmente il volto di questa citta italiana.' See also pp. 20-21.

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Austrian authorities with a view to quashing pro-Italian initiatives locally.135 Estimates as to the number of Slavs residing in the area have been shrouded in controversies, typically generating conflicting accounts. According to Slovene historiography, ethnic Slovenes have resided in 36 towns around the border. 17 out of these 36 towns have had a Slovene ethnic majority.136 However, as pointed out by Carlo Schiffrer, gli italiani formano la massa delle popolazioni cittadine, per cui il territorio da loro occupato e in gran parte uno spazio di abitazione, mentre quello che di solito si considera come territorio slavo e uno spazio agricolo o silvo pastorale, poco 137 popolato.

The Slovene historian Lavo Cermelj suggests that 350,000 Slovenes and 200,000 Croats were resident in the whole region of Venezia Giulia in 1921, while his Italian counterpart Schiffrer indicates a total of 370,000 Slavs (38 per cent of the entire population) against 555,000 Italians (58 per cent). In Istria, further statistics count 493,000 Italians (52 per cent) against 428,000 Slavs (43 per cent), the latter divided between 290,000 Slovenes and 110,000 Croats.138 To understand the origins and workings of Slav communities in a broad geographical area, reference has traditionally been made to the Catholic Church. Slav national consciousness, culture and intellectual life in the Julian area were in fact in many cases both the prerogative and the initiative of clerics. This ensured the elitist, but at the same time popular, inspiration of this culture: the lower classes became the main providers of ministers who then helped maintain very close contact between the rural working classes and the highest echelons of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Closeness to

135. Millo, L'elite delpotere a Trieste, p. 31, and Carlo Schiffrer, Sguardo storico sui rapporti fra italiani e slavi nella Venezia Giulia (Trieste: Istituto di Storia dell'Universita di Trieste, 1946), cit. in / viaggi di Erodoto 34 (1998), p. 138. 136. Taking the whole area including Gorizia and Udine into account, another 24 towns should be added to these calculations according to Ivan Bratina, 'La minoranza slovena in Italia: evoluzione storica e problemi attuali', in Favaretto and Greco (eds.), // confine riscoperto, pp. 126-53 (p. 131). 137. Schiffrer, Sguardo storico, p. 139 (the italicization is in the original). Schiffrer's argument has however been disputed—see for instance Orbanic and Orbanic, 'Regionalismo istriano', p. 226. 138. Marta Verginella, 'La minoranza slovena del Friuli-Venezia Giulia', / viaggi di Erodoto 34 (1998), pp. 123-25 (p. 123). This article also sheds some light on the complex socio-political composition of the Slovene community. See also Schiffrer, Sguardo storico, p. 146.

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the Catholic Church also helps explain the Slav predilection for the AustroHungarian monarchy and, consequently, its loyalist anti-'Italianness'.139 In addition to the Church, cultural and leisure associations gave impulse to Slovene cultural and political life, circulating ideas in support of a unified Yugo-Slav state, organizing debates and founding libraries. After the 1870s impulse was also given to the press: most important among all the periodicals was the nationalist Edinost, founded in 1876 and closed down by the Fascist authorities in 1928, together with the Italian Socialist // Lavomtore, founded in 1895, and sensitive to the Slovene question. The process of assimilation that continued to characterize the Jewish community in Trieste, at least until 1938, was being countered, in the case of the Slovenes, with an opposite desire for cultural, social and political emancipation and autonomy.140 Marginality became a profile Triestine Slavs increasingly sought and acknowledged with pride. 139. Vivante, Irredentismo adriatico, p. 151: 'L'esordio del movimento slavo e [...] di spiccata impronta chiesastica, come quasi esclusivamente religiosa era stata nel passato la vita intellettuale dello slavismo giuliano.' Italian Irredentists have ridiculed the widespread Slav loyalism to the Catholic Church; see, for instance, the grotesque portrayal of a Slav priest in Gustavo Chiesi, Italia Irredenta: Paesi-Storia-Impressioni (Milan: Aliprandi, 1889), p. 323: 'Queste popolazioni slave sono cattoliche ferventi, fanatiche [...]: percio il prete ha una grande influenza sugli slavi, ed e—in questo sollecitato dalle curie vescovili e dal governo—il grande banditore della crociata slava contro Pelemento, la lingua, e la tradizione italiana della penisola. Bisogna vederli questi preti slavi per farsene un'idea! Non meno sudici del gregge affidato alle loro cure spirituali e corporali, hanno qualche cosa di viscido, di untuoso, di lubrico, che inspira di primo acchito una solenne repugnanza. Puzzano di tabacco, di spiriti, e di grasso ad un tempo: e vi ruttano, parlando, sulla faccia la gasosita della birra, di cui sono grandi bevitori al cospetto di Dio.' The Fascist regime not merely espoused this argument, but also attempted to enforce its nationalist agenda upon the local ecclesiastical hierarchy. 140. Apih, Trieste, pp. 60-61: 'Trieste come centre unificatore e come centre di forza del risveglio sloveno, e un pensiero gia presente in alcuni intellettuali a partire dal 1848, e gia il primo programma jugoslavo unitario (di Sloveni, Croati e Serbi entro 1'Austria), formulato a Lubiana nel dicembre 1870, include Trieste. Era in atto, insomma, 1'esautoramento del secolare processo di assimilazione degli Sloveni subalterni nella societa italiana di Trieste.' See also Marina Cattaruzza, 'Slovenes and Italians in Trieste, 1850-1914', in Engman (ed.), Ethnic Identity in Urban Europe, pp. 188-219 (p. 199): The creation of an extensive network of societies and associations was unquestionably the most effective means through which the Slovenes of Trieste asserted their ethnic identity. Several Slovene cooperatives and savings banks also contributed to the strengthening of ethnic awareness. [...] By 1914 there were more than 80 Slovene associations in Trieste.' However, Cattaruzza hastens to add, 'even in its heyday the Slovene movement in Trieste retained the character of a minority "counter culture"' (see p. 201).

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In the Triestine census of 1910, between 20 and 25 per cent of the population was returned as Slav, most of them recently urbanized from the rural district surrounding the city after the agrarian reform. From a linguistic viewpoint, the same census revealed that, out of a total population of 229,510, mother-tongue Slovenes were 56,916, while 2,403 spoke SerboCroat.141 Disappearing feudal relations, combined with a degree of industrialization, also contributed to the formation of a Slav bourgeoisie. Although on the eve of the First World War Slovenes were still mainly employed as day labourers in agriculture, industry or trade, the number of white-collar workers began to increase slowly but steadily. This increment is reflected in, among other things, the foundation of numerous banks, including the Jadranska Banka (1905), the Sporobanka (1905) and the Zinovstenska (1908). These importantly attracted Slav investors by combining national with financial principles.142 The introduction of universal suffrage throughout the Empire in 1907, together with the not to be ignored presence of a well organized Socialist party and the ambiguous attitude of local authorities vis-a-vis the Slovene community, attracted some attention to the Slav question on the part of Triestine intellectuals. These include Scipio Slataper, the humanitarian Socialist and feminist Giuseppina Martinuzzi, who composed a series of lucid studies on the Slav national awakening, and Angelo Vivante (18691915).143 Vivante's study Irredentismo adriatico (1912) is still one of the most

141. Figures cited in Lucio Fabi, Trieste 1914-1918: Una cittd inguerra (Trieste: M.G.S., 1996), p. 15. These figures help explain the anti-Italian tumults of May 1915, when groups of Slovenes looted prominent shops and burned down the seat of the local Italian daily II Piccolo. 142. Cattaruzza, 'Slovenes and Italians in Trieste, 1850-1914', pp. 194 and 196: 'Though Italians and Slovenes were no longer polarised as urban and rural nationalities respectively on the eve of the First World War, there were still important differences in social structure. [...] the Slovene dominance in agriculture remained intact in 1910. Slovenes were relatively overrepresented in the lower echelons of public service. [...] Slovenes also outnumbered Italians among day labourers in industry and were relatively overrepresented among day labourers in commerce and trade.' See also Millo, Uelite del potere a Trieste, pp. 26-27. 143. G. Martinuzzi, La lotta nazionale in Istria considerata quale ostacolo al Socialismo: Discorso tenuto a Pola U 12 agosto 1900 (Pula: II Proletario, c.1900) and Relazione sul movimento femminile nella regione Giulia per U II congresso regionale del socialisti italiani del Litorale tenutosi a Pola U 25-26 dicembre 1899 (Trieste: II Lavoratore-Werk, 1900). According to Martinuzzi, Slavs and Italians must collaborate in the name of Socialist internationalism.

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cogent and impartial overviews on the topic. Here Vivante smoothes away the rough edges between italianitd and slavismo by pointing out the longstanding geographical and linguistic co-habitation of the Italian and Slav communities in the area.144 Education was the main arena in which the battle was fought between an Italian Establishment, clinging to an artificial notion of Italian cultural purity, and a rising Slav intelligentsia, demanding that elementary education be provided for Slovene children in their mother-tongue.145 Vivante's study was unusually anti-paternalistic as compared with previous and contemporary homologues, and his conclusions were both lucid and realistic in the proposal that Trieste become the harbour of a 'futura Slavia', maintaining its function as port as it had for centuries under the Hapsburg Empire.146 Some more explicitly pro-Slav historiography attempted to correct the impression, prevalent among Italians, that Slavs were ethnically attached to a rural dimension.147 In 1945, A.J.P. Taylor, for instance, underlined

144. Vivante, Irredentismo adriatico, p. 154 and pp. 136-38: 'Da molti si crede ancora [...] che italianita e slavismo nella Giulia sieno due termini ben defmiti e rigidamente antitetici. [... ] Questo quadro [... ] e sostanzialmente irreale. [... ] nella Giulia si e andato lungamente svolgendo un fenomeno demografico spiegabile dall'incrocio di due nazioni, 1'una a economia e quindi a civilta superiore, aggruppata nelle citta, Paltra attaccata alia zolla e dispersa nelle campagne; la prima ha tenuto assopita e poi ha in parte assimilato la seconda, finche questa, sotto 1'influsso di molteplici e complessi fattori, ha incominciato a reagire contro I'assimilazione e a scuotersi dalPassopimento.' 145. Vivante, Irredentismo adriatico, pp. 173 and 177. 146. Vivante, Irredentismo adriatico, p. 260. Vivante, heir to an extremely influential industrial dynasty in Trieste, died in mysterious circumstances shortly after publishing this study. The official verdict, classifying it as suicide, is disputed by some, such as Livio Isaak Sirovich, in Cime irredente: un tempestoso caso storico alpinistico (Turin: Vivalda, 1996), pp. 156-63. Slataper was also one of the first Triestine intellectuals who understood the importance of the Slovene issue in Trieste. Slataper foresaw the immense nationalistic potential of the Southern Slavs, which was to explode dramatically with the First World War; see S. Slataper, 'L'awenire nazionale e politico di Trieste' (originally in La Voce, 30 May and 6 June 1912), in Scritti politici, pp. 115-18 (p. 116): la realta politica e che noi siamo soli, poche centinaia di migliaia, tagliati dal resto della nazione, con alle spalle e ai fianchi milioni di slavi. La realta e che domani questi slavi saranno un terzo stato dell'Austria, a cui noi dovremo obbedire come sudditi, ed essi, i padroni, faranno di noi cio che vorranno. Allora, contro i nostri ragionamenti, sara documentata, ma a nostro danno e rovina, la intuitiva verita che due stirpi non possono coesistere nello stesso posto.' 147. See, for example, Orbanic and Orbanic, 'Regionalismo istriano'. Schiffrer had emphasized a dichotomy between Italy as 'nazione cittadina' and Yugoslavia as 'nazione

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Trieste's minor role as a port of Italy. Armed with the benefit of hindsight and eager to establish and maintain the current optimal diplomatic relations between Great Britain and Yugoslavia, Taylor adopts the stereotypical equation of Italy to Fascism, thus emphasizing Italian hostility to the Slavs.148 In 1953, Sedmak and Mejak also espoused the theory of a continuity of Italian Fascism and of its expansionist policy in the Balkans well beyond Fascism's historical boundaries. For them, 'Trieste [...] is but an island right in the middle of the Yugoslav ethnical territory, by which it is surrounded on all sides'.149 Fascist Italy undoubtedly pursued an extremely aggressive anti-Slav policy, culminating in a series of episodes of violence epitomized by the arson attacks on the Narodni Dom of Trieste (Hotel Balkan), seat of various Slav cultural and leisure associations, burned down on 13 July 1920.150 This hostility was feeding on an antipathy that dated much further campagnola'; see Sguardo storico, pp. 138-39. For linguistic differences as resulting in unreliable sources of ethnic information in and around Trieste, see Dusan Mihelic, 'Comment on the Italo-Slovenian Language Boundary', in The Political Element in the Port Geography of Trieste (Chicago: Dept of Geography of the University of Chicago, 1969), p. 95. 148. In historically and politically myopic fashion, Taylor declares: 'The Italian majority in Trieste is artificial. [...] Once the Slovenes are allowed to use their own language in the law courts and public offices, once they can send their children to Slovene schools, once Slovene books and newspapers can circulate freely, thousands who have called themselves Italians will revert to their nationality of origin' (AJ.P. Taylor, Trieste [London: Yugoslav Information Office, 1945], pp. 28-29). Regarding Italy indiscriminately as a Fascist entity, Taylor mirrors the contemporary predilection of British diplomacy for Tito's Yugoslavia and propagandizes the Western powers' intention to assign Trieste to Yugoslavia. 149. V. Sedmak and J. Mejak, Trieste: The Problem which Agitates the World (Belgrade: Jugoslavia, 1953), p. 43. See also p. 27: 'There is an unambiguous continuity between the foreign policy of pro-fascist, fascist and post-war Italy. A huge irredentist propaganda apparatus financed by the Government which operated in Italy during Mussolini's rule still exists today. Its task is to foment disturbance in this part of Europe.' There were some, albeit few, Italians who shared the Slav viewpoint. One of them was Vittorio Vidali, chief of the local Communist party section for many years and a figure of some seniority within the Italian Communist Party (PCI) itself. Vidali was in favour of a Socialist, proYugoslav version of the future of Trieste; see V. Vidali, Ritorno alia citta senza pace: II1948 a Trieste (Milan: Vangelista, 1982), p. 14. Yet Vidali soon fell from Yugoslav graces: Tito accused him of Cominformism and marginalized him, presumably because Vidali did not share the crucial view that the city of Trieste should be incorporated within Yugoslavia. 150. The Triestine Balkan Hotel was a very lively and popular cultural centre, including a professional theatrical association (Dramaticno drustvo), an established, rich

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back and was cognate to an ancestral, irrational aversion to the East of Europe. A staunch anti-Slavism was, in fact, no Fascist novelty. Although Slavs were historically resident in the area, there was a widespread tendency to perceive the Slovene community as foreign and intrusive: in the dialectic insiders versus outsiders, Slav populations were frequently and literally represented as a disease attacking the healthy body of italianita. A Slav expansion was traditionally feared as 'tabe sinistra che, attaccando nel cuore il mondo germano-latino, minaccia di ritardarne lo sviluppo assorgente della civilta'. Rising nationalistic discourses clearly performed anti-Slav functions and did not hesitate to proclaim that Titalianismo e la gran virtu assimilatrice delle razze umane'.151 An invasion of Slavs from the mountains above Trieste was dreaded as a descent of barbarians from the uncivilized North to destroy the refined culture of the South, a terror reinforced with truculent and grotesque imagery.152 Leaving episodes of black-shirt violence aside, legalized discrimination

library (Slaviansko drustvo), a musical circle (Glasbena Matica) and various other prominent organizations including a hotel and a bank (Trzaska hranilnica in posojilnica). For more detailed information, see Lavo Cermelj, Slovenci in Hrvatje pod Italijo (Ljubljana, 1965); cited in Filibert Benedetic et al, Dallo squadrismo fascista die stragi della Risiera: TriesteIstria-Friuli 1919-1945 (Trieste: ANED, 1974), pp. 56-57. The same fate befell the Narodni Dom in Pula. 151. Benedetto De Luca, Fra italiani tedeschi e slavi (Turin: Roux-Frassati, 1899), pp. 63 and 178. 152. Desico (Enrico Schott), Trieste italica nella sua storia, nella suafede, nella sua missione, nel suo avvenire (Rocca San Casciano: Cappelli, 1915), p. 79: '[Slavs] scendono sovrattutto per 1'indefessa propaganda dei loro duci, dei loro preti, dei loro uomini piu esperti che dicono essere Trieste la citta da conquistare, I'Eldorado che diverra la regina di tutta la Slavia dal Mar Nero all'Adriatico.' See also Caprin, Trieste liberata, p. 19: 'Le colate slave che si erano insinuate tra le vertebre italiane della regione non permettevano alcuna confmazione nemmeno soltanto linguistica nel corpo di essa che rimaneva, qual'e per natura, unico.' Even those authors who did not entertain any direct links with Fascism occasionally employed this grotesque characterization; see, for instance, Virgilio Giotti's poem 'Eros' in 'Caprizzi, canzonete e storie' (1921-1928), in Colon (Milan: Longanesi, 1972 [1957]); and Biagio Marin, Trieste 1945', in Elegie istriane (Milan: AlPInsegna del Pesce d'Oro-Scheiwiller, 1963). Giotti grants a sub-human, Caliban-like nature to the protagonist of his poem, a s-ciava (= schiava, but also slam, a common derogatory term in Triestine dialect). Giotti contemplates the girl with affectionate paternalism and draws her with unsubtle colours uncommon in his usually delicate palette. Marin's poem encapsulates the bitterness of the Triestine population for the forty days of Slav occupation of the city. Marin's Slavs are portrayed as irrational, indeed rapacious and homicidal in their envy of the cultural sophistication of italianita prevailing in Trieste.

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was directed at language, education, property and citizenship rights. Gentile's reform of 1923, for example, legitimized Italian as the official and exclusive language of education throughout Italy, a provision followed, in the next few years, by widespread, enforced closure of all Slovene and Croatian schools. In a climate rife with nationalism, italianita started defining itself in terms of anti-Slavism. With the sole exception of those who willingly renounced and erased their ethnic origins, these measures ensured that Slavs were forcibly kept outside the boundaries of official culture. However, despite the exodus of various Slovene intellectuals to the heart of Yugoslavia, this policy of violent de-nationalization of the Slovene and Croatian communities is now reputed to having been ultimately a failure.153 This hostility was counteracted with a Slav Irredentism that eventually exploded in violence of equal magnitude, especially after the Second World War.154 The violent attempt at de-nationalization defined Yugoslav Resistance mainly in oppositional terms to Italian nationalism, despite some Italian participation in the Yugoslav Liberation Movement. The revolutionary agenda of the popular Osvobodilna Fronta (OF), together with its demands of national affirmation and expansion, prevented it from collaborating fully with the Italian Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN), eventually keeping the two movements entirely separate, each generating its own, conflicting historical memories.155 153. See Vinci, 'II fascismo di confine', p. 104: 'Un censimento riservato del 1939. [...] Per le province della Venezia Giulia e Zara, [...] svela una presenza proporzionale di sloveni e croati (il 39,3%) ancora molto alta rispetto al totale della popolazione italiana: secondo 1'elaborazione dei dati del censimento del 1921 [...] il rapporto era allora [...] del 41%. Da questo punto di vista, dunque, si registra un fallimento.' Boris Pahor lists the large number of expatriates, who fled mainly to Ljubljana. These include Alojz Gradnik (1882-1967), Ivan Pregelj (1883-1960), Igo Gruden (1893-1948) and Vladimir Bartol (1903-67). Authors who stayed and suffered persecution include Andrej Budal (18891972) and France Bevk (1890-1970). See B. Pahor, Srecko Kosovel (Pordenone: Studio Tesi, 1993), pp. 104-105. 154. Silvestri, Dalla redenzione alfascismo, p. 121. 155. Raoul Pupo, 'Resistenza e questione nazionale al confine orientale', / viaggi di Erodoto 34 (1998), pp. 112-14 (p. 114): 'nella Venezia Giulia per italiani e sloveni 1'uscita dalla guerra sarebbe awenuta nel segno della divaricazione. Le diverse componenti della societa giuliana attendevano infatti ciascuna i propri liberatori [...] pronte a guardare a quelli dell'altra come a invasori: tra la fine di aprile e quella di giugno percio, le liberazioni si incrociarono, si sovrapposero e si esclusero a vicenda, generando memorie storiche contraddittorie.' Slovene memories are prominent in two epics of Yugoslav resistance to the Nazi-Fascist enemy: the films Na svoji zemlji (1948) and Trst (1950) directed by

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Even though a staunch anti-Slavism was widespread in Trieste, there were a few contrary voices. The sympathy demonstrated by Fulvio Tomizza has already been discussed in Chapter 2. Another sympathetic, if ambivalent, author is Bruno Steffe (b. 1919). In his novel / cavalli di guerra non amano la pace, published in 1964 and set between 1945 and 1957, the protagonist Aldo is an ex-partisan torn between a sentimental loyalty to Slovene partisans, who were his comrades on the mountains, and anti-Slav anxieties prevalent in Trieste. This contradiction lacerates Aldo's return and his first few years of reintegration in Trieste until he progressively becomes detached from politics and crowns the dreams of his mother and fiancee by pursuing a solid bourgeois career. The initial contrast between TAldo dei primi venti anni, buon figlio di papa, o 1'Aldo partigiano, rivoluzionario popolare e antiborghese' which enlivened the initial pages is progressively suffocated within the coils of a somnolent bourgeois life.156 Comments on the political and historical roles of the Slovene ethnic group in Trieste and surrounding area are interspersed in the narration: Steffe is clearly striving to offer an impartial reflection of a broad spectrum of human experience (middle-class professionals, farmers of the Slavoccupied portion of Istria, housewives, widows of partisans, ex-partisans from various walks of life). However, a credo of shying away from active politics to concentrate instead on personal welfare prevails little by little, while Aldo appeases his guilt by following the recommendation 'che non s'impicciasse di politica, ch'era una cosa schifosa che gli slavi avessero accaparrato per primi le posizioni delPantifascismo, e confondendo italianita e fascismo, proclamassero che chi voleva 1'Italia era fascista'.157 Steffe, probably Aldo's autobiographical alter ego, wavers throughout the France Stiglic and produced by Triglav Film. The first, in particular, ends with a powerful scene showing armies of Yugoslav partisans marching down from the Karst highlands in the direction of Trieste. 156. B. Steffe, / cavalli di guerra non amano la pace (Trieste: Steffe, 1964), p. 53. Aldo's initial confusion emerges in a conversation with his former schoolmate Ondina, who endorses common local views (p. 75): '-sti slavi, dacche sono calati in citta il primo maggio, hanno awelenato la vita: con i loro pidocchi e con le loro idee'. See also pp. 76 and 147: 'In quei giorni Aldo aveva gia sentito commenti simili a casa, dai parent! e dagli amici. Possibile che fossero tutti fascist!? Stette per dire a Ondina ch'era stato partigiano di Tito anche lui e che i partigiani erano brava gente, che avevano combattuto per un ideale di giustizia, di liberta. [...] lui [Aldo] era partigiano e non gli piaceva sentir parlar male dei partigiani che dopotutto avevano combattuto i tedeschi e si erano trovati a fianco gli slavi a combattere i tedeschi e nient'altro.' 157. Steffe, / cavalli di guerra, p. 147.

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narration: on the one hand espousing a stereotypical vision of the Slavs, but on the other remaining intensely loyal to the fellow Slav partisans of his youth. His final message favours a reconciliation and good co-habitation of Slavs and Italians in an atmosphere of consent. In the words of Aldo's father-in-law, L'atmosfera nazionalistica si e svelenita. La gente ha ripreso a considerare con realta la situazione e pensa a vivere. Spero che tra poco potremo riprendere anche le gite in zona 'B'. [...]—Sarebbe ora che questa citta fmisse di essere 'estremo baluardo' per divenire piuttosto un punto d'incontro dei due mondi...158

Steffe suggests here that tolerance and mutual understanding are essential in a border area prone to be bogged down by nationalistic conflict and cultural discrimination, two aspects that, especially since the Yugoslav military occupation of the city between May and June 1945, became crucial indeed. This occupation was later to be described as 'il piu grave errore politico commesso da Tito nel corso della guerra', a fatal error that, by reversing the traditionally oppositional roles 'citta-campagna', brought about a further deterioration of relationships between Italians and Slovenes.159 Slovene historians have described the history of the Slovene minority in Italy in the post-war period as uno sforzo comune e generale di ricostruire, da una parte, tutto cio di cui la comunita disponeva prima della prima guerra mondiale nelle due province di Gorizia e Trieste e che il fascismo aveva distrutto, e dalPaltra, di portare allo stesso livello di organizzazione anche la parte meno sviluppata, quella cioe della provincia di Udine. 160

Whether the historical memory of the Triestine Slovene community incorporated or rejected this short-lived and yet critical experience of 158. Steffe, I cavalli di guerra, pp. 401-402. 159. Vladimiro Lisiani, Good-bye Trieste (Milan: Mursia, 1964), pp. 21-22. See also Marta Verginella, 'I vincitori sconfitti. Testimonianze Slovene sul movimento di liberazione a Trieste', in M. Verginella, Alessandro Volk and Katja Colja, Storia e memoria degli sloveni del Litorale: Fascismo, guerra e resistenza (Trieste: Quaderni dell'Istituto Regionale Storia Movimento Liberazione Friuli-Venezia Giulia, 1994), pp. 7-48 (p. 42): 'L'arrivo dei partigiani a Trieste sconvolse il tradizionale rapporto citta-campagna, nel quale la campagna si riconosceva comunque vittima del mondo urbano. Tra il 30 aprile e il 1° maggio furono invece i partigiani, venuti prevalentemente dall'entroterra, a liberare la citta per restituirla a tutti coloro che, per piu di un ventennio, la identiflcarono come un luogo proibito e ostile.' 160. Bratina, 'La minoranza slovena in Italia', p. 133.

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occupation, it remains clear that the gap between Italy and Yugoslavia was destined to widen further.161 After 1948, sharp polemics between the Cominformist PCI (led by the philo-Russian leader Vittorio Vidali), the Titoist PC, the SDZ and other non-Communist Slovene parties tore apart the Triestine political arena.162 Slovenes traditionally voted for the PCI, the PSI and the SSK (Slovenska Skupnost/Slovene Union) with a consistent preference for left-wing parties.163 Since 1958 one representative of the Slovene community has been elected to the Italian Parliament under the banners of the PCI and a small number of Slovenes have taken part in local coalition governments. Assimilation, like that experienced by the Jewish community in Trieste, was out of the question. Italy, and all it stood for, continued to be rejected linguistically and culturally by Slovene authors who were invested with sustaining and promoting their own national identity and culture. The collective and Romantic poetry of slovenita incarnated by Srecko Kosovel (1904-26), the confessional inspiration of the persecuted journalist France Bevk (1890-1970), the powerfully realistic strain of the novels by Boris Pahor (b. 1913), and the eclectic, cultivated humanism of Alojz Rebula (b. 1924), 'one of the greatest living Slovene authors', are only recently, albeit timidly, beginning to be acknowledged and translated into Italian.164 No 161. Verginella, 'I vincitori sconfitti', p. 48. 162. Ales Brecelj, I gruppi politici autonomi sloveni a Trieste 1949-1952 (Trieste: Krozek 'Seek', 1983), p. 166. 163. The SSK is inspired by Catholic and ethnic principles. 164. From Kosovel's notebooks: 'La conoscenza del significato cosmico della vita puo far entrare una vera dimensione nelle vene del nostro essere sloveno [... ] cosi da giungere all'affermazione politica della slovenita e con questa alia liberazione assoluta degli sloveni, cio che e il fine vero e assoluto della loro vita'; cited in Pahor, Srecko Kosovel, p. 100. S. Kosovel, Poesie di velluto e Integrali (Trieste: L'asterisco, 1972; orig. Integral! 1926 [Ljubljana: Cankarjeva zalozba, 1967]); Fra il nulla e I'infinito (Trieste: Editoriale Stampa Triestina, 1989; orig. Izbrano delo ([Ljubljana: Mladinska Knjiga, 1969]); Ves svetje kakor (Ljubljana: [samozal.] IJ. Milic-[samozaL] C. Stepancic, 1994). See also F. Bevk, Crepuscolo (Trieste: Editoriale Stampa Triestina, 1989); B. Pahor, Mesto v zalivu (Koper: [Lipa], 1955) and the trilogy Zatemnitev (Trieste: Zaliv, 1975), Spopad s pomladjo (Trieste: Tipografia Triestina, 1978) and V labirintu (Ljubljana: Slovenska matica, 1984). The definition of Rebula as 'uno dei massimi narratori sloveni contemporanei' is in Kosuta, Scritture parallele, p. 167. A. Rebula's first novel Devinski sholar (Trieste: Literarne vaje, 1954) was followed by Nel vento della Sibilla (trans. Diomira Fabjan Bajc; Trieste: Editoriale Stampa Triestina, 1992; orig. V Sibilinem vetru [Ljubljana: Slovenska matica, 1968]); Zeleno izgnanstvo (Ljubljana: Slovenska matica, 1981) and Maranatha ali Leto 999 (Celovec, Ljubljana and Dunaj: Mohorjeva zalozba, 1996).

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consistent production is however available in Italian: as the director of the Slovene National Library in Trieste proudly declared to me, Gli autori sloveni triestini hanno scritto sempre nella loro lingua materna, 165 anche nel periodo della proibizione dell'uso dello sloveno.

165. Quoted from a private letter by Ksenija Majovski, dated 8 June 1995. According to Majovski there was a sole exception to the rule of Slovene authors writing in their mother-tongue: the playwright Josip Tavcar (1920-89), who wrote a few plays in Italian and Triestine dialect as well as many others in Slovene. Tavcar appears to have been an isolated case. For a synthesis of the main traits of Slovene literature in Trieste in the inter-war period see Guagnini, 'La cultura', p. 283. For a more comprehensive survey, see Kosuta, Scrittureparallele, passim.

Concluding Remarks

Ogni spazio determina, o quanto meno incoraggia, un diverse tipo di storia. (Franco Moretti, Atlante del romanzo europeo)

A wide-ranging selection of literary texts has helped here to shed light on the literary identity of the border city of Trieste. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's ideal Futurist town has not emerged as entirely and uncontroversially 'equipped and oriented towards the future'.1 In short, Trieste's difficult geopolitical situation is mirrored in a variegated literary output laden with complexities and ambiguities and by no means devoid of shadows as well as lights. Particular attention has been paid to the years between 1918 and 1954 when most local writing became aware of the idea of a local specificity and some of its central motifs came prominently to the fore. In the course of the twentieth century much of Triestine literary culture has been characterized by an attempt to compensate for the loss of identity which followed the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. In some respects, the Fascist experience filled some of the gaps left by the Empire and provided a framework in which pre-existing nationalist discourses could be sustained and given an all-Italian inflection. Triestinitd emerged in Chapter 1 as one of the defining features of Triestine literature. Pursuing triestinitd as an ethnicity in its own right, with its by-products of a superiority complex and a resistance to the new, was one of the aims of many Triestine authors. The concept of triestinitd has accompanied Triestine writing since the early decades of the twentieth century. The chapter also examined the intertwining of a 'spazio storico' with a 'spazio immaginario', as understood by Franco Moretti.2 In Chapter 2, I argued that Italian writers from Istria as well as from Trieste have frequently depicted borders as military fronts and/or raised issues of confrontation with Others at the opposite side of the border. The chapter also dwells at some length onfoibe, natural chasms in the Karst area 1. 2.

F.T. Marinetti is quoted by Gary, A Ghost in Trieste, p. 86. See Moretti, Atlante del romanzo europeo, p. 5.

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that function in the literary imaginary as maternal chasms associated with the womb. With Moretti, it is true to say that 'le metafore aumentano nei pressi della frontiera', because 'solo le metafore sono capaci di esprimere Pignoto che ci sta di fronte, e insieme di contemrlo? In Chapter 3 the concept of italianita has lent itself to a psychoanalytic reading linked to the relationship between motherland and strong mother figures prevalent in Triestine literature. Triestine society emerged in many respects as a matriarchy susceptible to Fascist visions of women, even though reluctant to subscribe to them unconditionally.4 Women in Trieste exercised an indirect but nonetheless very powerful role in culture and society, through the traditional domestic outlet, generating a specifically Triestine phenomenon defined here as maternalism. Finally, women, Jews and Slovenes are gathered together in Chapter 4. These three groups, largely marginalized by the literary establishment, are discussed separately. However, ghettoization is avoided by leaving a series of dialectical channels open between them as well as with other groups discussed in previous chapters. This final chapter examines representative works by women and Jewish writers and explores both their conformity to literary stereotype and their ability to elude it, achieving, at least potentially, individual originality. It is mainly thanks to these alternative voices that Triestine literature offers, to this day, for better and for worse, a genuine paradigm of modernity. Pursuing the elusive literary identity of the city of Trieste, made up as it is of a string of interwoven literary images, has often been an arduous task. Persevering in that pursuit is evidence of my unapologetic submission to the enduring siren song of Triestine rhetoric. Literary Trieste may be 'dead and gone', yet the tombstones of this 'paper-made necropolis' give out vibrating resonances which are both enticing and frustrating for the scholar, who is often misled to pursue deceptive trails or at a loss to separate mud from gold.5 As James Joyce reminded Ezra Pound in 1920, 'De mortuis nil nisi bonum'.6

3. Moretti, Atlante del romanzo europeo, p. 50. 4. See for instance Victoria de Grazia, Le donne net regime fascista (Venice: Marsilio, 1993), p. 17: 'II fascismo intendeva riportare le donne al focolare domestico, confmarle al loro destine di madri e restaurare 1'autorita patriarcale.' 5. Trieste was defined as 'necropoli di carta' by Pellegrini, Le citta interiori, p. 37. 6. Cited in Gary, A Ghost in Trieste, p. 24.

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INDEX OF AUTHORS

Abruzzese, A. 46,47,110 Adamson, W.L 46 Alberti,M. 101,170 Alessi, R. 14,17,106 Anderson, B. 78, 105, 108 AngladeJ. 102 Apih, E. 17, 24, 44, 53, 101, 112,116,117, 179,182 Ara, A 28, 37, 53, 55, 75, 118,168,172, 179,180 AsorRosa,A 143,173 Ballinger, P. 76, 78, 91, 92 Barni,G.C. 56,58,113,114 Baroni, F. 115 Baroni, G. 45, 67, 125 Bartoli, E. 53 Bartoli, G. 21 Bazlen, R. 34, 42, 56, 57, 63,174,176-80 Benco, A.G. 139, 174 Benco, D. 141, 162-65 Benco, S. 37, 65, 107, 133, 136, 162 Bencovich, A 12 Benedetic, F. 186 Berghaus, G. 124 Berlam,A 119,136 Bertacchini, R. 131 Bettiza, E. 31, 51, 72, 73, 102, 137 Bevk,F. 187,190 Bianchi, O.H. 37, 165 Bo, C. 38 Bon Gherardi, S. 19, 153, 171, 172 Bottai, G. 49 Braccesi, L. 119 Bratina, I. 181, 189 Brecelj,A 190 Brin,I. 157

Brossi, S. 59 Brumati, C. 131 Brunner, N. 53 Budal,A 187 Budigna, L. 57 Butti,A 130 Caccia,E. 66,69, 115 Cambon, N.D. 121-24, 135, 167 Camocino, A 158 Campailla, S. 158 Caprin, G. 102,108,109,118,137,186 Carducci, G. 38, 44, 46,123 Carmelich, G. 125 Carotenuto, A 179 Carpinteri, L. 51 CaryJ. 30,31,126,192,193 Castellini, G. 66 Catalan, T. 168 Cattaruzza, M. 182, 183 Cavedali,M. 126 Cecchi,E. 27 Cecovim, M. 51, 103, 113, 114, 118, 127 Cergoly,C.L. 125,127 Cernigoj, C. 91 Cervani, G. 135, 137 Cesari, R. 134 Colja,K. 189 Cornet, R. 120,121,124,128 Cortese,M. 119 Cossutta, F. 116 Crise, S. 49 Curci, R 122, 126,138,143,151, 153, 162,164 Curiel,R 167 Cusm,F. 15,53,108

216

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Damiani, R. 129, 130, 140, 156 D'Annunzio, G. 12, 13, 17, 38, 75, 95, 100,107,119,123,150 David, M. 164,177 De Amicis,E. 96, 111, 115,142-46 De Castro, D. 48,54,109,112 De Felice, R. 75 deGrazia,V. 193 DeLuca,B. 186 De Robertis, G. 61 Debenedetti, G. 70 Dedenaro, R. 156 Del Giudice, D. 28, 42,180 Devescovi, G. 45 di Giovanni, G. 90 di S. Curiel, A. 167 Di San Giusto, L. 134,173,174 Dias,W. 140,141,148-51 Doplicher, F. 94 Dubin,L.C. 167 Elia,E. 47,114 Emili,E. 59 Fabi,L. 183 Fanfani, T. 105 Fano, G. 56, 174,175 Faraguna, M. 51 Favaretto, T. 181 Favetta,B.M 135,139 Federn,P. 178 Foelkel, F. 54, 55, 177 Franco, C. 132 Fraulini, M. 126 Frosini, V. 162 Galli,L. 31,141,155-58 Gatti, C. 168 Gellner,E. 110 Giotti, V. 45, 56-59,174,186 Giraldi,F. 54 Giuricin, G. 85, 87,109 Granbassi, M. 120 Gratton, G. 101, 107 Greco, E. 181 Grisancich, C. 57, 140,156 Guagnini, E. 179, 191 Guglielmi, E. 74, 111

Harazim, G. 45 Haydee (I. Finzi) 111, 140-48,150-52, 167 Hobsbawm, E. 38, 48,108 Isnenghi,M. 81,134 Jona,C. 180 Joyce,]. 193 Jung, C.G. 63,137 Kaplan, C. 33 Kay,R 76 Kelley,D. 49,62 Kezich,T. 57 Kosovel,S. 190 Kosuta, M. 75,190,191 Lavagetto, M. 69,70,72 Levi,V. 87 Lisiani,V. 189 Lorenzini, M. 91 Luti, G. 38,129 Macciocchi, M.A. 136 Madieri,M. 167 Madonizza, A. 53, 75 Magris, C. 28, 37, 49-51, 53, 55, 57, 58, 74,75,118,128,158,168,179 Maier, B. 37, 40, 41, 57, 85, 87, 131, 155, 175 Maier, L. 140,141,158-61 Malabotta, M. 67 Manacorda, G. 63,128 Marin, B. 42, 45, 55, 65, 67, 84,176,186 Marinetti, F.T. 16, 124,126,192 Martin, F. 93 Martinuzzi, G. 139,154,161,183 Masi,A. 125 Matarese,V. 136 Mattioni, S. 13, 57, 60, 63-65, 72, 73, 79, 140,158,160,164,172,179 Mattiussi, A. 125 Mauri, S. 109 Mazzi, L. 37, 52, 54 MejakJ. 185 Miglia, G. 85 Migliorino, E.G. 168, 170

INDEX OF AUTHORS Mihelic,D. 185 Milani,N. 83 Millo, A. 49, 117-19,139,168-71, 181, 183 Milotti,V. 17,58,126 Miniussi, S. 57 Mioni, C. 103 Mirabella,B. 137 Modena,A. 56,57 Molinari, F. 91 Mondo, L. 87 Montale, E. 58, 179 Morandini, G. 38 Morelli,A 119,127 Moretti, F. 32, 192, 193 Morovich, E. 76, 78, 94-99, 109, 111, 158 Morpurgo, N. 148, 150,180 Mosse, G.L. 34,128,129,133,136,137, 169 Muiesan, F. 28, 50-53, 67 Mutterle, AM. 46,47 Neirotti, M. 77, 83, 85, 86 Orbanic,N.M. 103,181,184 Orbamc,S. 103, 181,184 Orel, S.M. 139 Oriani,A 38 Pahor,B. 187,190 Pancrazi, P. 39, 40, 129, 163 Pasolini, P.P. 84 Passerini, L. 120, 124 Pedulla,W. 72 Pellegrini, E. 37, 44, 56, 66, 69, 70, 77, 107,115,131,193 Fertile, L. 29 Pesante, S. 37 Pettrocchi, G. 162 Pitacco, G. 14, 118,127, 129,135,136 Pittoni, A 16, 21, 56, 57,133,141, 162, 164, 165 Pizzagalli,A 106,127 Pizzi, K. 58, 60, 91,106,108, 111, 132, 141,175 Poliaghi, N.F. 141, 162, 165-67 Premuda, M.-L. 147 Prezzolini, G. 45 Probyn, E. 140

217

Pullini,G. 178 Pupo,R. 91,99,187 Quarantotti Gambini, PA. 41, 50, 57, 59, 65,67,79-82,86,115,158,159 Ramat, S. 115 Ranger, T. 38,48 Rebula,A 190 Reich, W. 31,109 Reina Cesari, A 106 Rema,G. 114,130 Ricci,B. 116 Rimini, P. 17,141,148,151-54 Rosignano, L. 130 Rosso, R. 57, 59,158 Ruggier, R. 135 Rusconi, E. 50 Russo, F. 66,68 Saba,L. 57,70,71 Saba, U. 20, 22, 29,31, 34, 42, 47, 51, 54, 56-59, 65-73, 87, 89, 111, 112,114, 115,137,140,146,156-58,167,172, 176, 177 Salaris, C. 125, 126 Sanzin,B.G. 16,124-26 Sarfatti, M.G. 151 Sartori,U. 100,124 Savio,AF. 135 Savio,L.S.F. 57 Scelba,M. 23 Scheiwiller, V. 42 Schiffrer, C. 24, 102, 106, 181, 184 Schiffrer,E. 57 Schott,E. 186 Scocchi,A 170, 172 Scrivano, R. 41 Sedmak,V. 185 Serra,E. 84 Sestan,E. 119 Sgorlon, C. 77, 78, 93, 94, 97 Silvestri, C. 27, 100, 187 Sirovich, L.I. 184 Slataper, S. 37, 40, 44-49, 51, 56, 57, 59, 162, 165,183,184 Sluga,G.A 92,99 Spadaro, S. 102

218

A CITY IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

Spaini,A. 37,45,53,119,131 Sperante,A. 103-105 Spirito, P. 41 Steffe,B. 188,189 Stuparich C. 15,34, 45, 47, 48, 56, 82, 129,131 Stuparich, E.G. 55, 56,129,162 Stuparich, G. 20, 21, 29,31,34, 37, 39, 42, 45-48, 50-52, 54-59, 64-66, 71, 84, 93, 106,107,109-111,114-16, 129-35,159 Svalduz,G. 94,97 Svevo, I. 16,17,29, 34, 39, 47, 50, 57-59, 87, 89, 121,155,176 Tamaro,A. 15,101,109,111 Tamaro, S. 167 Taylor, AJ.P. 184,185 Timeus, C. 135,139 Timms,E. 49,62 Todeschini, G. 167-69 Tombesi, G. 87 Tomizza, F. 76-79, 81, 83, 85-90, 98, 99, 109,188 Traldi,A. 30 Tummolo, G. 125

Ungaretti, G. 156-58 Valdevit,G. 91 Valeri, D. 57 Venezia,A. 115 Verginella, M. 181,189,190 Veronese,?. 100,124 Vidali,V. 21,22,59,185,190 Vidiz,E. 140 Villasanta, G. 100,124 Vinci, AM. 29,100,101,187 Visentini, O. 158 Vivante,A. 103,182-84 Voghera, Giorgio 34,37, 46,114,170, 174-77,179 Voghera, Guido 56,174-77 Volk,A 189 Weiss, E. 177,178 Williams, R. 62 Zandel,D. 95 Zazzi,D. 167,172 Ziani, G. 122,126,138,142,143,149, 151,153,162,164 Zorattini, P.C.L 167-69 Zovatto,P. 151,153