SOURCE: Catani, R. D. “Structure and Style as Fundamental Expression: The Works of Carlo Levi and Their Poetic Ideology.” Italica 56, no. 2 (summer 1979): 213-29.

[In the following essay, Catani provides a stylistic analysis of Levi's prose works.]

The resurgence over the last decade in critical studies on Levi has largely been based on a recognition that convictions first expressed theoretically in Paura della libertà (1939) offer a key to a deeper comprehension of his work. As a result, a daunting task of interpretation has been set and undertaken.¹ This article will attempt to define and analyze certain processes in the author's prose writings as illustrating the interrelated concepts of differenziazione and contemporaneità which are central to his fundamental convictions. The first part of the article will deal with the conscious application of these concepts to literature in structural processes directed towards the intentional breaking down of conventional narrative sequence: especially in Levi's own peculiar methods of character presentation, best illustrated by a close analysis of L'orologio (1950), but also in his various memorial devices and cumbersome factual insertions. The second part of the article will try to show how certain stylistic processes, in particular well known recurring symbols and the prominent use of color, carry the same significance as the structural ones by being functions of the same fundamental poetic beliefs.

In the solemnly enigmatic language of Paura della libertà, Levi postulates the ideological premises of his poetic world:

Esiste un indistinto originario, comune agli uomini tutti, fluente nell'eternità, natura di ogni aspetto del mondo, memoria di ogni tempo del mondo. Da questo indistinto partono gli individui, mossi da una oscura libertà a staccarsene per prender forma, per individuarsi—e continuamente riportati da una oscura necessità a riattaccarsi e fondersi in lui.

The moment of poetic creation comes when man can simultaneously avoid the two poles of oblivion (the egoistic abstraction of total separation from the indistinct mass, and the mute servility of total immersion in that mass): when

i due opposti processi di differenziazione e di indifferenziazione trovano un punto di mediazione, e coesistono nell'atto creatore.

(p. 23)

In the civilized world of reason and history, however, this poetic moment is, he asserts, elsewhere, like the memory of a previous existence, like an underground river that surfaces unexpectedly because

la sicurezza della ragione, la sicurezza del tempo, copre questo fiume sotterraneo sotto il ritmo matematico dell'orologio.²

Levi's Jungian vision in fact asserts the existence of a boundless temporal dimension, “la compresenza dei tempi” or contemporaneità, which constitutes the strongest single bond linking his volumes together. The origins of modern civilization, in ancient myth and before that in an initial, chaotic darkness, are present in any single moment and can reappear suddenly:

quello che è stato può tornare, quello che è celato raffiorare alla coscienza, come riappaiono le spiagge al ritirarsi della marea.

(Paura, p. 28)

A sense of contemporaneity, of course, permeates Levi's Lucania where, as he tells us in the opening of Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (1945), “nessuno degli arditi uomini di occidente ha portato … il suo senso del tempo che si muove,” but he felt it intuitively within him long before he conceived or wrote the work,³ and it is unswervingly maintained throughout his writings. Contemporaneity is one of the twin themes of L'orologio (1950) and predominates in his subsequent books.⁴ In all of them, Levi emerges as “il testimone della presenza di un altro tempo all'interno del nostro tempo,” to use Italo Calvino's phrase,⁵ and in the last of them, Tutto il miele è finito (1964), he still communicates this conviction as forcefully as ever:

Come la realtà è molteplice; come, in ogni cosa, coesistono tempi diversi e lontanissimi! E quanto più viva, reale e complessa è una persona, quando in lei questa contemporaneità di condizioni e di situazioni diverse, come strati geologici, questa eternità della storia e della preistoria, è presente: e quando gli elementi arcaici non sono relegati o totalmente nascosti in un oscuro subcosciente dove possono parere dimenticati e del tutto inoperanti, ma affiorano alla superficie, e diventano contenuti di poesia, energia vitale, capacità di comprensione universale, fuori della meccanica limitazione degli schemi sociali e psicologici della vita quotidiana.

(p. 75)

Levi admires those writers who share his conception of time and the individual: Tolstoy because he gives expression to “momenti fuori del tempo, fuori di ogni romanzo e di ogni storia, fermi ed eterni”; Chekhov because in his works “non vi è mai un taglio, un isolamento, né principio o fine, astratto tempo”; and the Stendhal of Rome, Naples et Florence because “ha capito, forse per primo, il valore poetico del casuale, del particolare, dell'interrotto e parziale e istantaneo, nella contemporanea totalità di una immagine.”⁶ He is fascinated by narrative technique in certain works which are difficult to define, such as Paustovski's: which consists, he tells us in Il futuro ha un cuore antico (1964, pp. 162-3), of “un racconto sul modo di fare un racconto” where disparate elements are united, not by form, but by the personality of the author (“il modo più legittimo di scrivere”). But the strongest fascination is exerted by Tristram Shandy. He names it explicitly as the model for L'orologio and indicates clearly how the concept of contemporaneity can be reflected in narrative and structural manipulations:

L'invenzione dell'Io come motivo essenziale e forma della realtà crea una nuova dimensione. Per questo Sterne è un grande maestro di stile, e un precursore del futuro. Si creano nuove forme, e nuovi contenuti: si introducono nelle cose i sentimenti e l'ironia, e il senso della infinita mutevolezza della realtà, del suo essere fatta di rapporti inesauribili, della contemporaneità dei tempi … È l'invenzione della durata, che si sostituisce al tempo, e costringe a una vaga corsa dietro alla sfuggente realtà, e scioglie e distrugge la struttura e il tempo del romanzo, i limiti dei personaggi e la loro psicologia, con quasi due secoli di anticipo.⁷

Levi extols and adopts the processes whereby Sterne, through the rejection of a pre-established scale of values, restores significance to the seemingly insignificant and, through his narrative disgressions, attains the eternal reality of contemporaneity by transforming the transiency of conventional time into the eternal time of the imagination.

Certain methods of narration and character presentation which have come to be regarded as established hall marks of Levi's works are no more or less than practical demonstrations of the views on literature which he shares with Sterne. The most strikingly recurrent device is his bozzettismo, his repeated indulgence in elaborately executed portraits and more frequent vignettes. Its functions are clear in Cristo si è fermato a Eboli: to serve an expository plan, to lead naturally into pertinent stories and episodes, or to give tangible expression to a magical existence. In other works, especially Il futuro ha un cuore antico (1956) and La doppia notte dei tigli (1959), it is often emblematic, or instrumental in the presentation and investigation of a society. It is more significantly to the fore in L'orologio where it has received sharp criticism which, however, fails to grasp its essential function.⁸ Here, character sketches, in the way in which figures abruptly emerge from and are re-immersed into the mass of humanity, reflect a primary concept by balancing the work on the all-important point of differentiation or individuation, and by maintaining the focus on the ambiguous moment of creation. By refusing to round off characters, following Sterne's guidelines, Levi expresses the limitlessness of individuals and, by expressly truncating and interrupting character development, rejects the over-schematic abstraction of the traditional narrative.

He does this with particular insistence in two carefully arranged and constructed sections. The first, towards the end of chapter IV, describes a meal in a Roman restaurant (pp. 90-111). Thumbnail sketches fall fast and furious on the page. We are presented with Elena the one-legged prostitute with her “sorriso interrogativo,” then with intertwining glimpses, which alternate with bewildering abruptness, into the lives of Giacinto the effeminate, talkative waiter and the sullen, bearded Marco. Bracco the painter suddenly interrupts only to be cut short in his turn by the arrival of Ferrari and his sister. He acts as a mouthpiece for a long digression on government ministries. It gives way unexpectedly to the songs of the guitarist Fortunato which finally precipitate a frenetic dance by a group of Polish soldiers. Likewise in chapter IX half-way between this episode and the end of the novel (pp. 214-26), he describes an interlude in a bar with some of his newspaper workers during a power-cut. A similar succession of bozzetti (of the printers, the hypocritically obsequious beggar-woman, “la nonnina,” a blind musician and woman singer, the landlord, a drunken Sardinian peasant, a tattooed man, a beautiful mother) ends in the ever quickening rhythm of singing and dancing broken off when the lights come on again. Particularly enlightening are the identical techniques used in both passages. In each he pauses to dwell on the enigmatic, unfathomable aspect of a particular figure: in the first, it is Ferrari's younger sister Elda (“nessuno avrebbe mai conosciuto i suoi semplici segreti”), in the second, the mysteriously regal young mother (“Di dove veniva quella donna, qual era la sua storia?”). This is a recurring device in Levi's works, intended to protect the boundless possibilities of the individual from schematic treatment. Each episode also builds up to an almost frenzied final crescendo which is abruptly halted to focus our attention on a contrasting symbolic image: in the first, it is the silent gaze of Elena, “sorridendo, come una bambola”; in the second, it is the blind man, alone and sadly out of tune, prolonging his accompaniment, “come la coda di un disco che continui a girare sul grammofono, a vuoto.” Both images are designed to emphasize the futility of attempting to encompass and entirely individuate the persons that have been fleetingly paraded before us, of trying to stem an irrepressible flow in the “vaga corsa dietro alla sfuggente realtà.” The reader who expects the continuity of traditional narrative or neatly rounded character sketches is purposely frustrated and disorientated.

This is also the author's intention in dealing with recurring characters who are considered in greater depth, such as the pretentious maid signora Jolanda and her eccentric cousin Giovanni. Their presentation in chapter VI, when Levi first visits his new lodgings (pp. 142-5), seems to be intended, not simply to satisfy the whim of a self-conscious ritrattista, but to prepare for a fully rounded treatment to follow. When in chapter X he describes his first meal with them (pp. 241-52), he starts off by showing something of a captivating narrative flair and relaxed handling in depth of character study, only to lapse into a long exposé of his own views on popular literature and abandon Jolanda and Giovanni with a detached ironic aside. Once again, the reader who applies a false yardstick is dismayed to see them recede from view, their “story” and “characterization” incomplete, their lives unbounded by a beginning and an end. In fact, they are representatives of the infinite possibilities of the individual and of the existence of duration rather than time.

Our analysis of these passages is amply corroborated by Levi's explicit assertions in the novel that the differentiated individual cannot be restricted within the limits of abstraction and arbitrary time. These assertions occur in the section (pp. 50-74) where he expertly portrays and individualizes his young comrades in the Partito d'Azione. Having described at some length the contrasting characteristics of Casorin and Moneta, he is at pains to point out that he has shown only one tiny facet of their existence, and laments the fact that “tagliamo una piccola fetta di questa infinita realtà, … la facciamo entrare a forza nella nostra vicenda, nel nostro tempo, nelle nostre misure,” so that, “senza volere, facciamo dell'onda sconfinata del reale, di una persona che, come noi stessi, e identica a noi, non ha limiti, un soggetto di novella, una tessera colorata di un mosaico disegnato prima, un elemento di un astratto giuoco” (p. 56). This and similar statements (see for example pp. 64-5) indicate a potentially fruitful grid of interpretation for the structure of the novel.

While the passages so far examined would amply suffice as practical rebuttals of abstraction, the author makes it clear that they are more than marginal exercises by providing us with a complete and detailed structural model. The entire penultimate chapter constitutes no less than Levi's “anti-novel” in parvo, an exemplar in which he uses not only the devices peculiar to L'orologio but others which we will shortly see repeated. It is in fact evident that chapter XI (pp. 264-309), where he narrates his car journey from Rome to Naples, a chapter which is thematically coherent in conception and eventful in itself, might easily have enjoyed the traditional unity of the successful novella. But it is equally evident that it has been intentionally transformed by the process of fragmentation and the concomitant interfusion of the narrative ego. The first few pages include digressions in which dead bodies seen by the author in wartime and preparations for journeys made in his youth are recalled. When the car is eventually moving, the sound of a tire bursting reminds him of an adventure from his days as an anti-Fascist activist. While the tire is being repaired, he indulges in a typical series of sketches of his fellow travellers: the two women, the country priest, with his mysterious suitcase whose contents are never revealed, the tattooed sailor, the Neapolitan student, and the Calabrese farmer. Cars abandoned by the roadside spark off an extremely long succession of flashbacks to journeys and escapes made in France and Italy (pp. 278-82), ending in a series of disconnected, lightning images which he calls “le infinite apparenze delle sorti infinite, fuori di noi e in noi, senza termini conoscibili, fuor di una immagine che fugge, fragile, nel vento della corsa” (p. 282). Later, the ruins at Itri provoke a memory of his imprisonment in the Carcere delle Mantellate. Then, the narrative highlight is reached with the quick moving account of the hold-up, its ensuing dangers and the lively reactions of the frightened passengers, which afford a tantalizing insight into their make-up. But the flow is quickly and definitively stemmed by three desultory sections which the author paratactically juxtaposes as a final renunciation of abstract literary notions of character and time. In the first, he clumsily imparts information on southern folklore through a lengthy, unconvincing monologue in which the Calabrese peasant recounts the legendary stories of Sant'Antuono. In the second, he imagines the brigand hiding in the undergrowth, existing in an animalistic, arboreal world “dove il bene e il male si annullano e si confondono, alternandosi in una vicenda di giorni e di notti, e di stagioni senza fine” (p. 303). This thought draws Levi's memory back to the contemporaneous world of Lucania and the principle of “doppia natura.” The third and closing section deals at length with the popular, picaresque legends of the Neapolitan poor, which monopolizes the reader's attention and obliterates any trace that might remain of concern with narrative incident or characterization.

Such passages are painstakingly orchestrated. Although Dominique Fernandez is one of the first critics to point out that Levi's manner of story-telling “gli permette di negare … ciò che costituisce, da sempre, la letteratura,” he is wrong to assert that the book is no more consciously constructed than his other works, and is not entirely accurate in comparing his narrative technique, “più o meno deliberata,” to that of a child, in its wanderings and disconnected juxtapositions.⁹ Nor is it sufficient to call it simply, as Gigliola De Donato does, a technique “ad incastro” which is essentially dependent on the memorial factor and an interplay between temporal levels.¹⁰ Italo Calvino is right to insist that L'orologio “è il suo libro più costruito, più scritto.”¹¹ Although it is true to say that it is mainly concerned with the fundamental concepts of individuation and contemporaneity, they are not solely communicated through direct statement, intricate symbolism or intuitive expression. Almost a third of the work is devoted to their planned illustration in structural terms.

While, at its simplest, the memorial device of interposing autobiographical reminiscences sets up correspondences between separate temporal spheres, it is also both ancillary to the technique of structural fragmentation, and its converse in so far as it establishes the author's persona rather than formal unity as a cohesive factor. Moreover, it often permits more direct expression of the ideology under consideration by forming its correspondences with specific moments that are in themselves representative of that ideology. This explains the predominance of his childhood and Lucania in Levi's recollections. His memory poetically regresses, not to the chaos of “l'indistinto originario” which is as abhorrent to him as the conventional present, but to the exceptional moments of initial differentiation. His childhood is clearly one of those moments,¹² and Lucania is important as “una realtà nel suo farsi originale” which contains “un momento essenziale e necessario per la poesia.”¹³ In Il futuro ha un cuore antico both are recalled with particular frequency because they represent honest virtues which he recognizes in Russia, whereas L'orologio is characterized by souvenirs volontaires of the Resistance which expertly link the twin themes of the novel. In Tutto il miele è finito he chooses to adopt a subtler memorial device: by superimposing the differing images of places visited more than once, he creates “una diversa, quasi stereoscopica, qualità intrinseca della visione” which becomes an escape from the changes of time, the establishment of an “identità che … prevale sul tempo” (pp. 7 and 57-8).

Another constant feature which leads to morphological irregularity is the undisguised, obtrusive insertion of factual information on customs, folklore and politics into the narrative, which constitutes the contribution of the saggista. We have already noted the Calabrese's monologue in L'orologio. Similarly, in Tutto il miele è finito, when describing a convivial evening in Orune, the author is preoccupied with recording the traditional songs and magic formulae of Sardinia (pp. 50-54). On other occasions, just as in Cristo si è fermato a Eboli he explores the significance of il brigantaggio (pp. 21-4) and other phenomena, he candidly assumes the mantle of the essayist. Such is his treatment in Le parole sono pietre (1955) of the secrets of the Mafia (pp. 141-4), and in Tutto il miele è finito of the laws of vendetta (pp. 76-7). Often, the documentation is almost reluctantly presented in the guise of a direct or reported conversation, as when he deals with the age-old Sardinian conflict between farmers and shepherds in Tutto il miele è finito (pp. 105-8), or in the seemingly interminable monologue by Valenti in L'orologio (pp. 175-87) which defines the essential political opposition between “Luigini” and “Contadini” but which is totally lacking in verisimilitude.¹⁴ Typical of Levi's handling of such material is his long consideration in L'orologio of Rome's position as a symbol of unity and authority in the state: he opens with some measure of concession to the narrative by presenting it through the mouths of four emblematic settentrionali (pp. 202-4), but soon abandons this clearly unsatisfactory device and continues by directly expressing his own comments and experiences on the question (pp. 205-9). For many readers, such passages are understandably the most discordant since they create an irreconcilable duality of expression. Levi in fact always strives to highlight the much discussed ambivalence of his writings. Such informative digressions, however important they might in themselves be to the author, remain firmly on a cerebral, analytical level: they are essentially centrifugal in so far as they divert attention from the all-important “Io come motivo essenziale e forma della realtà,” unlike the centripetal, memorial digressions, and constitute the weightiest of all impediments to conventional narrative sequence.

Since for Levi artistic creation lies, as we have seen, in an equilibrium between the undifferentiated and the differentiated, his works share a timeless, static quality that is alien to the narrative and to categorization. They are subject, in other terms, to the “inerzia del mondo” and the unchanging continuity of things (see L'orologio, pp. 212-3), to the crushing weight of an omnipresent “oscurità illimitata,” of the “zona nera di eterna passività” that is in the hearts of everyone (see Paura, p. 105). At the same time, the focal point is the writer's ego in the act of individuation and self-assertion, which is not, as has mistakenly been supposed, egotism, but a humanistic individualism which concentrates on the spheres of nascent differentiation and contemporaneity that are common to all men.¹⁵

Carlo Levi is also renowned for certain techniques which are more properly stylistic than concerned with narrative structure or characterization. They are usually superficially associated with his role as an accomplished painter: his detailed descriptions of sunsets or moonlit scenes, for example, or the intense and meticulous attention which he pays to color in general. But these techniques, in a subtler way, are also an expression of the author's basic convictions. Painting, for Carlo Levi, operates in the same creative province as literature, and derives ideally from “il senso dell'esistenza come creazione, dell'identità dell'uomo col mondo, di ogni relazione come atto d'amore” (Paura, p. 129). Just as he admires authors like Sterne, he is drawn to painters who share his temporal vision.¹⁶ But his much mentioned bilinguismo does not lie in the balanced co-existence of two equally effectual expressive channels. Falaschi has drawn attention to Levi's belief in the superiority of painting which for him possesses the particular technical potential of direct communication with the archaic and arcane.¹⁷ This is why he draws on the prominent chromatic component of his stylistic armory when it comes to a direct perception of basic truths. Color is much more than an accidental embellishment of his prose: it constitutes his most significant instrument of stylistic expression, and has, in specific associations, a deep-rooted symbolic importance.

These associations are with the sunsets and moonlit scenes that figure conspicuously in his work. The poem “Passano i giorni in fretta” (August 1942) already hints at their temporal significance (“o interminabili tramonti d'infanzia rossi … !”).¹⁸ This is confirmed in a key passage in the opening section of L'orologio where he recalls the “senso terribile nel rapporto, col tempo, delle cose nascenti” (p. 16) of his infancy:

Come'erano lunghi, senza fine, i giorni dell'infanzia! Un ora era un universo, un'epoca intera, che un semplice gioco riempiva, come dieci dinastie. La storia era ferma, stagnava in quel gioco eterno. … I tramonti duravano ore e ore, come se la giornata si rifiutasse di terminare, e quel sole infantile, già mezzo nascosto tra le montagne azzurre, stesse troppo bene in cielo. Erano tramonti lentissimi, pieni di tutti i colori più meravigliosi; dove il rosso del fuoco passava all'arancione, ed al giallo, e a uno strano verde marino pieno d'incanto, e al viola dei fiori, chiaro come le prime violette di primavera, e poi sempre più cupo e notturno.

(pp. 18-19)

These lines establish both the emblematic function of the sunset and the pattern of its ever-darkening chromatic gradations. It often coincides with the numerous departures and returns described in the opening and closing pages of his books or their sub-sections, which are intended to mark the transition to or from a new temporal world. The few examples appearing in Cristo si è fermato a Eboli are stylistically embryonic because here Levi found himself involuntarily immersed in a different time-sphere (see pp. 10, 18, 52). Subsequent volumes strive to recreate, nostalgically and arbitrarily, his exceptional Lucanian discovery. This explains the carefully tinted sunsets that mark a temporal transition on the first page of Il futuro ha un cuore antico and the last page of La doppia notte dei tigli.

Their most intense and significant use, however, occurs in certain contemplative, lyrical pauses centered on an intimate communication with unfathomable forces of the universe. One such pause falls midway through L'orologio when Levi wanders aimlessly in the district surrounding his new lodgings. Bathed in the dying sun's light, buildings speak to him in “un linguaggio sensibile della contemporaneità dei tempi,” and assume a human aspect:

L'ultimo sole batteva sulla cima delle facciate, e le tingeva di un color di rosa, umano come quello delle nuvole, contro il verde e il violetto del cielo.

(p. 155)

This merging of houses and people in a luminous, vital force fills him with sudden joy as he is immersed in the happy crowd watching a puppet show. All things, persons and objects, reveal themselves openly and unashamedly:

ma sentiamo che ce ne sono altre infinite che non si dicono, che stanno nascoste, sentimenti vaghi, e forse sono esse che dànno al cielo questo incanto rosato, al cuore questa pienezza solitaria.

(p. 155)

The color of the setting sun is a clear symbol of communion with a boundless, eternal reality, as it is in the meditative section of La doppia notte dei tigli which describes his visit to Tübingen with its ancient streets “piene di tempo e di memoria” (p. 90). He ends his visit at sunset by going down alone to the banks of the Neckar to enjoy “un momento assoluto di meraviglia” created by the subtle coloring of the houses in the rays of the dying sun (pp. 92-3).

A similarly intimate description of the Georgian countryside in Il futuro ha un cuore antico introduces the symbolism of the second luminary:

e, subitaneo, arriva il tramonto, sfavillante di luce rossa, purpurea, gialla tra quelle montagne solitarie, e già in cielo, bianca e rotonda, naviga la luna piena. Scende improvvisa la notte violetta; la luna si accende, a mano a mano, e splende, e si fa più grande sulla spettrale distesa dei monti; … mi pare che potrei parlare con la luna, che siamo soli, io e lei, in quel grande mondo silenzioso.

(p. 175)

In the closing sentence of the same book, the moon is explicitly associated with the passage from internal to external time:

Soli con la luna, gialla all'orizzonte, navighiamo sul nero del mare, verso Roma, il ritorno, la casa, i cuori fedeli, e la semplice grazia delle ore di ogni giorno.

(p. 306)

The temporal connection is made unmistakably clear in the ending to Levi's unpublished Viaggio in India (1958):

La luna coricata è alta in cielo, perduta la sua cupola, a poco a poco sfrangiandosi in alto, e calando. Non mi pare di tornare da un altro mondo, ma da un mondo interno, arcanamente esistente fuori di noi. Il mondo da cui parte il tempo e a cui ritorna, fermate in infinita molteplice contemporaneità le sue onde, su cui naviga la luna.¹⁹

As with the sunsets, the moon's role as an emblem of unchanging time is directly conveyed in lyrical moments of intense intimacy through pallid landscapes. The emotionally climactic moment of Cristo si è fermato a Eboli is during Levi's visit to Il Pantano in a vain attempt to save a dying peasant, when he is overcome by “il senso fluente di una infinita pienezza” (p. 199). The experience is prepared for by the enchantment of his journey there:

La luna riempiva il cielo e pareva si versasse sulla terra. Su una terra remota come la luna, bianca in quella luce silenziosa. … Su quel paesaggio spettrale mi pareva di volare, senza peso, come un uccello.

(p. 197)

In Tutto il miele è finito his description of nightfall at Orgosolo, after he has attended the bricklayer's funeral, conveys a similarly contemplative moment of involvement with a timeless force, expressed in a landscape where “le rocce biancheggiano di quel chiarore notturno che è come l'ombra trasparente della luna” (p. 85). In the closing pages of the same work, the abrupt transition from the eternal world of the shepherds to a contrasting time-sphere is again represented by a darkening sky, the appearance of a countryside with a distinctive coloring, “quello delle cose sempre esistite, dello stingersi del sole sulla terra” (p. 118), and finally the timeless spell cast by moonlight:

In quell'aria ormai bruna sempre più eravamo penetrati dall'incanto lunare e pastorale della presenza dolente di una vita che ripete le sue domande e il suo lamento fuori della storia.

(pp. 118-9)

Levi in fact ends his last book by reiterating the contrast between temporal rhythms: “quello ondulante del gregge e della luna, quello matematico dell'orologio” (p. 120).

Less evident than the symbolic importance of sunsets and moonlight, is the significance of the detailed attention which he pays to color in certain consciously studied descriptions. Sometimes the proximity of such descriptions to intimate lyrical moments shows them to be a foretaste or afterglow of these moments on a secondary expressive level. In L'orologio when he is left on his own in his new room for the first time, a switch of pace and quality of perception is created by the subtle chromatic harmony of a view from the window:

Tutta la città si apriva davanti a me, in una successione infinita di tetti, di terrazze, di finestre, di cupole, in una distesa chiara di grigi aerei, di gialli leggeri, di rosa dorati, di intonaci trasparenti di vecchiaia, appena un po viola nelle ombre. Ogni cosa era nitida e lontana, immersa in un'aria visibile e colorata, dove pareva circolassero miriadi di impalpabili corpuscoli d'oro.

(p. 147)

The view is exhaustively depicted, gradually assuming the first pink hues of the same sunset that a few pages further on is to produce the ineffable feeling that overwhelms him when watching the puppet show. Likewise, his trip to Tübingen in La doppia notte dei tigli, which is to become a voyage on “il mare del tempo” and culminate, as we have seen, in “un divino respiro,” begins with the preparatory representation in a minor chromatic key of an ancient monastery and its surrounding village (p. 89). The temporally symbolic colors seen at daybreak from the train approaching the Straits of Messina at the start of his second Sicilian visit, are in similar fashion immediately echoed in a polychromatic depiction of his fellow passengers on the ferry (Le parole, pp. 95-6). On other occasions, such descriptions are ancillary to the expression of intimate experiences that are not themselves represented by chromatic techniques. In La doppia notte dei tigli his momentary view of the old streets of Augsburg which impart “il senso fisico della stratificazione di sentimenti non modificati profondamente dal tempo” (p. 70) is followed by a rapid burst of color in his description of the market. Shortly afterwards, as he is nearing Ulm, we are presented with the greens, greys and blacks of the landscape and the green of the river, just before a silent meditative pause as he and Mina contemplate the waters of the Danube (p. 73). In Il futuro ha un cuore antico, the splash of color in the bustling scene from the window of his Moscow hotel comes immediately after the feeling of utter contentment, unqualified by time and place, experienced the previous night (pp. 30-31). What is more, color on one or two rare occasions seems to form an integral part of his poetic perception, as in the sudden appearance of a Doric temple during his journey to Calatafimi:

ecco, nel centro di una grande conca di monti gialli, chiusa da ogni parte dell'orizzonte sotto un mantello dorato di stoppie … rizzarsi il tempio di Segesta, dello stesso colore d'oro e di grano e di solitudine arcana di quella terra, e insieme rosato come un corpo umano o divino, come la traduzione armonica, eternamente serena, di quella tragica natura, semplice in modo da trasformare una storia infinita e la stessa presenza degli Dèi in un modulo.

(Le parole, p. 147)

This expressive mode is even more striking in a sub-section towards the end of L'orologio (pp. 317-22) which depicts the flow of the Neapolitan masses and the ever-changing flux of objective reality. The climax is reached in a description of the market at Porta Capuana and in particular of the array of fish which clearly symbolizes the creative act of differentiation of individual entities from an eternal, indistinct mass. Far from being a superficial adornment, the chromatic component emerges as a stylistic instrument essential to the expression of a poetic ideology:

polipi bianchi e violetti si intrecciavano in viluppi: ceste di cozze nere e di vongole grige splendevano a contrasto del giallo dei limoni e del lucente verde delle alghe; le triglie rosseggiavano come fiori … più in là, in un altro cesto, un mucchio di pesci dorati, o un groviglio serpentino di murene gialle e nere attirava il mio sguardo e più lontano, verdure e frutte e erbe splendidissime rilucevano al sole.

(p. 319)

At times, however, whether he is describing the spectacular dress of Kurdish women or a studied landscape near Cagliari, like a picture by Bosch, or the leitmotif of yellow and black in his journey from Stuttgart to Berlin,²⁰ colors reveal no more than Levi's technical expertise and have no extraordinary expressive function. Moreover, it is often difficult to forget that sunsets and moonlight are hackneyed literary symbols of harmony and fulfilment, and indeed a slight tendency towards pseudo-lyricism and strained tours de force can be detected in his writings. These factors have combined to obfuscate Levi's otherwise clear use of color as meaning which, far from being a stylistic vener, is an intrinsic, poetic translation of the same basic persuasions on time and the individual that dictate his structural patterns.

Carlo Levi's creative writings suffered too long from being designated, whether in derision or admiration, in terms such as bozzettismo and pagine d'antologia. On a very shallow level, of course, much of his prose answers to both of these descriptions. Herein lies the danger. For, on a deeper level, the same prose serves as the expressive vehicle of his poetic ideology.

Notes

1. Following the intense critical activity surrounding Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (1945) and L'orologio (1950), with enthusiastic approbation to the former and generally a negative judgement on the latter, interest in Levi declined till the revival marked by the studies in Galleria, XVII, 3-6 (May-December 1967). Important steps in subsequent advances are the volumes by G. Falaschi (Carlo Levi, Florence, 1971) and G. De Donato (Saggio su Carlo Levi, Bari, 1974), as well as the posthumous publication of anthologies of Levi's less accessible writings in Coraggio dei miti: Scritti contemporanei 1922-1974, edited by G. De Donato, Bari, 1975 and Contadini e Luigini: Testi e disegni di Carlo Levi, edited by L. Sacco, Rome-Matera, 1975. For an assessment of these more recent contributions, see E. Catemario, “La nuova stagione di Carlo Levi,” Annali dell'Istituto universitario orientale di Napoli (sezione romanza), XIX, 1 (January 1977), 109-25. References to Levi's works in this article are to the following editions, all published in Turin: Cristo si è fermato a Eboli, 1963, L'orologio, 1963, Paura della libertà, 1964, Le parole sono pietre, 1956, Il futuro ha un cuore antico, 1964, La doppia notte dei tigli, 1962, Un volto che ci somiglia, 1960, Tutto il miele è finito, 1964. Abbreviated titles will be used in the notes.

2. Coraggio dei miti, p. 58 (from a lecture delivered in Turin, March 1950).

3. A. Marcovecchio has shown that it is paradigmatically present in Levi's unpublished Quaderno di prigione (1935) in “Il periplo del mondo,” Galleria, pp. 99-109 (pp. 103-5). See also the poem “Strega con filtri veri” (1941), Galleria, pp. 118-9.

4. It is explicitly reiterated in the prefaces to La doppia notte (pp. 16-17) and Tutto il miele (p. 7), and throughout Un volto where he defines it as “il processo stesso del progredire di un mondo differenziato” (p. ix).

5. “La compresenza dei tempi,” Galleria, pp. 237-40 (p. 238).

6. See respectively L'orologio, p. 63, “Anton Checov,” Literaturnaia gazeta, XII (January 1960) now in Coraggio dei miti, pp. 273-4 and the preface to Roma, Napoli e Firenze (Rome 1960) now in Coraggio dei miti, pp. 275-86 (p. 275).

7. Preface to an Italian translation (Turin 1958) now in Coraggio dei miti, pp. 264-72 (pp. 267-8).

8. See especially L. Russo, I narratori (1850-1957), third edition (Milan-Messina 1958), pp. 356-60.

9. “Uomini-dei o uomini-piante,” Galleria pp. 161-2 and 172. His article is still significant in that it broke new ground on several fronts.

10. See De Donato, pp. 122-3. Her analysis of the novel's structure nevertheless remains the most complete and perceptive to date: especially p. 127.

11. Article cit., p. 238.

12. See L'orologio, pp. 15-20 and Coraggio dei miti, p. 69 and p. 122.

13. Coraggio dei miti, p. 306 (from a speech delivered in July 1969).

14. It is significant that Levi admitted that Valenti is a mere mouthpiece in a lecture given in April 1951: see Coraggio dei miti, p. 66.

15. For a defense of Levi against the charge of egotism in Cristo, see R. D. Catani, “Detachment and Compassion in Carlo Levi's Cristo,” Journal of the Association of Teachers of Italian, XVII, (Autumn/Winter 1975-6, pp. 3-7.

16. Such as Rembrandt (see Il futuro, pp. 122-3) and Casorati (see Coraggio dei miti, p. 344).

17. See Falaschi, pp. 97-100.

18. See Galleria, p. 121.

19. Galleria, p. 158. See also the opening to the second part of Le parole (p. 95).

20. See, respectively, Il futuro, p. 182, Tutto il miele, p. 27 and La doppia notte, pp. 102-3.