[In the following essay, Clark discusses Ginzburg's use of narrative voice in her stories “La madre,” Valentino, and Sagittario.]

Negative insight may well appear to be an uninstructive paradox. The term represents an attempt to encompass the contradictory impressions I receive from the works of Natalia Ginzburg, a writer I greatly admire. With reference to three stories, “La madre” (1948), Valentino (1951), Sagittario (1957), from the collection Cinque romanzi brevi,¹ I shall try to account for the way—within the relatively narrow range of the known (‘quello che si conosce dal di dentro’), the often sterile modes of urban Italian middle class life—Ginzburg is able to convey so strong a sense of compassionate humourous intelligence.

Her stories are about ordinary people incapable of living successfully or articulately, their metaphorical or actual poverty in part predicated (implicitly) by their cultural values and environment. But the real theme of my essay turns out to be the presentation of these stories, the narrative angle, for it is here that the insights and perplexities—what I believe to be the real subject of the stories—lie.

In “La madre” there is no actual narrator, though the story is told from the point of view of the mother's young sons. A childish awareness is conveyed, but in such a way that we perceive it to be limited. For example, we are told twice in the first paragraph, ‘non sapevano’, which clearly implies that a view more adequate than their own is required to fully comprehend their story.

The story of ‘la madre’ is, from her sons' point of view, the story of an incompetent, and in almost every way, negligible person.

La madre era piccola e magra, con le spalle un po' curve …²

La madre non era importante.³

… lei sempre sbagliava le strade …⁴

La madre teneva i cassetti in disordine e lasciava tutte le cose in giro …⁵

Yet the very transparence of their bias against her, evident from the accumulating simplistically negative observations, points us in the reverse direction to query the adequacy of their information. Moreover, the children's view of their mother as a misfit in the family and society to which they belong is manifestly a view received from that society.⁶ If the children cannot question it, the reader cannot help but question it.

The distance which the author thus interposes between us and the children's view of things should enable us to understand their story at a level they could not perceive. Even the title seems ironical with all it stands for—especially in Italian life, revealing imperfect intimacy with a woman who is otherwise nameless. It is an implicit indictment of her lack of tenderness, but worse, it seems, of authority: her failure to match other adults, ‘gente forte nel permettere e nel proibire’.⁷ The fact that she is ‘madre’ is the underlying measure for everything we learn about her; the term represents the norm—those other mothers ‘grasse e vecchie’, and her own—which she offends against almost in spite of herself.

In fact, the title-motif operates as a shaping metaphor in her story, as her atypical appearance and behaviour can be seen to be appropriate to her failure in the world of things where mothers should reign. Her physical insubstantiality is thus symbolic of her elusive spirit. It is as if she literally does not have too firm a foothold (as she wheels away on her bike) in the narrow world where grandmother, with her big comfortable bosom, can be trusted not to move too far or fast,⁸ and where ex-teacher grandfather recycles old corrected exercises as lavatory squares.⁹ After the failure of her affair with Max, her life actually begins to dematerialize until, by the end of the story, even the memory of her has faded.¹⁰

To tell the story of ‘la madre’ from the children's angle is therefore only superficially to present a limited view. Ginzburg, with her trick of perspective, invites the reader to penetrate the negative presentation of the story, to identify the poverty of spirit behind it and perceive the pathetic irony of ‘la madre’, the unmotherly. But at the same time, the child-like angle of observation—on the gay grotesque details of the mother's appearance—holds pathos in check.

La madre era piccola e magra, con le spalle un po' curve; portava sempre una sottana blu e una blusa di lana rossa. Aveva i capelli neri crespi e corti, li ungeva sempre con dell'olio perchè non stessero tanto gonfi; ogni giorno si strappava le sopracciglia, ne faceva due pesciolini neri che guizzavano verso le tempie; s'incipriava il viso di una cipria gialla.¹¹

Her small size, plucked eyebrows (‘due pesciolini’), her primary blue skirt, red blouse, yellow face-powder are recalled in the account of her disintegration and death:

Il suo viso si faceva sempre piú piccolo, giallo …¹²

l'aveva vestita col vestito di seta rossa di quando s'era sposata: era piccola, una piccola bambola morta.¹³

si trovavano a mettere insieme sempre piú faticosamente i capelli corti e ricciuti e i pesciolini neri sulla sua fronte e le labbra: metteva molta cipria gialla, questo lo ricordavano bene; a poco a poco ci fu un punto giallo, impossibile riavere la forma delle gote e del viso. … Gli anni passavano e i ragazzi crescevano e succedevano tante cose e quel viso che non avevano molto amato svaniva per sempre.¹⁴

To continue to describe her decline in terms of her quaint physical characteristics has a detaching, almost a reassuring, effect: as if the mother had not really been a woman who suffered and caused suffering, but just a strange little puppet, or even a vivid fiction, in her family's past.

Valentino—by an even more indirect route—likewise invites the reader to an insight greater than appears from the nature of the events of the story. At the end Caterina explains that she has had to speak out in order to relieve the unbearable pressure of isolation caused by her family's unwillingness to acknowledge the truth and the consequences of their actions:

Cosí non ho nessuno con cui dire le vere parole: le vere parole, di tutta la nostra storia cosí com'è stata: e me le tengo dentro, e certe volte mi pare che mi strozzino il fiato.¹⁵

This is the fictional starting-point for Caterina to do something otherwise so uncharacteristic of her as to tell her life story. But it becomes evident in the course of Caterina's narrative that the search for ‘le vere parole’ has led her to more than just a true account of events.

In the process of the literal undertaking is revealed the creative mythopoeic function of memory that transforms Caterina's bleak ‘record’ into the more enduring truth of art. This process, without Caterina's appearing fully to comprehend it, ultimately illuminates her dreary existence with a ray of ideal love.

Her brother emerges as the pivotal figure of Caterina's story, for deprivation and despair have transformed him into the hopes of his family. Valentino (Rudolph Valentino? St Valentine?) is a glittering projection of his father's frustrated ambitions and the women's hunger for beauty.

Caterina's account of their situation is matter-of-fact, lightly ironical, as these two passages from the beginning of the story show:

Mio padre credeva che sarebbe diventato un grand'uomo: non c'era forse una ragione per crederlo ma lo credeva: aveva cominciato a pensare cosí fin da quando Valentino era piccolo e adesso forse gli riusciva difficile smettere.¹⁶

Molte volte si era fidanzato e poi sfidanzato e mia madre s'era data da fare a pulire la saletta da pranzo e a vestirsi per bene. Era successo già molte volte e cosí quando ci disse che si sposava entro il mese non credemmo e mia madre si mise stancamente a pulire la saletta da pranzo e indossò il suo vestito di seta grigia che era quello per gli esami al Conservatorio delle sue allieve e per le fidanzate.¹⁷

Beyond the wry ‘forse’ and the comical simplifications of Valentino's marrying habit, however, an extraordinary system of correspondences develops in the course of the story. The father's belief that Valentino ‘sarebbe diventato un grand'uomo’ recurs like a refrain—almost incantational—always in the hypothetical (‘unreal’), conditional or subjunctive.¹⁸ The many ‘fidanzate’ are said to resemble the mother's piano students¹⁹ (and by implication are more like sisters than lovers to Valentino). Maddalena, the new betrothed seems more like a father: she is at least ten years older, smokes, speaks ‘con la voce di chi è abituato a dare dei comandi’, expresses her faith in Valentino's future as his father does, and has a moustache.

But she is also presented as a mother figure. When they are loving Valentino sits at her feet, ‘e il suo viso (Maddalena's) diventava luminoso, materno mite’.²⁰ The phrase links Valentino with his child, for two paragraphs earlier, Maddalena is described briefly holding their new baby, ‘e un attimo il suo viso diventava giovane, mite e materno’. The parallel recalls Valentino at the beginning of the story making toys for the portiera's children (instead of studying to become a great man), as he does at the end for his own.²¹ In addition, between Maddalena's two appearances as mother, her cousin Kit is described as being ‘lungo e magro, un po’ calvo, con pochi capelli umidi e lunghi sulla nuca che parevano i capelli d'un bambino appena nato’. Kit is later shown to have been Valentino's lover; he becomes engaged to Caterina,²² but at the end Caterina and Valentino are linked in circumstances very similar to those of their parents at the beginning of the story.²³

These repetitions and correspondences—representing only a fraction of the entire web—could possibly be seen to reflect the narrator's limited resources of words and images. It seems to me, however, that a striking effect is to blur the physical outlines of character, place and time, and that the narrator thus (unconsciously) reorders her dreary life in memory to reveal a poetry, a form, in it for her own consolation. Her ingenuous myth-making strongly suggests to me a parallel to the story of Valentino in the myth of Narcissus. (Even Valentino's pressing economic circumstances could be considered a fitting inflection of the decline from the Golden Age that he recalls.) Fixed before the mirror in his new ski and riding outfits,²⁴ Valentino has only his image to give, and so it is appropriate that he comes closest to loving this in another man. It is in the nature of the Narcissus myth that love cannot be consummated and, in fact, the ambiguous Kit (‘col suo viso di neonato vecchio’) makes a disastrous mistake with his attempt to marry Caterina (a faithful Echo, the reflection of Valentino's reflection). Caterina leaves; Valentino's marriage breaks up; Kit suicides.

Caterina does not pass over the unquestionably negative aspect of those events, yet in the end she declares that Valentino's beauty and promise have had an absolute sustaining value for those who love him, however illusory events may have shown this to be. In her loneliness she seeks ‘le vere parole’, and stumbles upon something like the Absolute of religion or art. It is left to the reader to try to comprehend how it happens that Caterina can ultimately be happy with her fading Valentino because of what he stands for—the timeless perfection of the beauty that inspires love, as revealed in myth and art.

Certe volte mi viene una gran rabbia contro Valentino. Me lo vedo lí, a ciondolare per casa nella sua vestaglia lacera, a fumare e a fare le parole crociate, lui che mio padre credeva che diventasse un grand'uomo. Lui che si è preso sempre tutto quello che la gente gli ha dato, senza sognarsi di dare mai niente, senza trascurare un sol giorno di carezzarsi i ricci davanti allo specchio e di farsi un sorriso. Lui che certo non ha mancato di farsi quel suo sorriso allo specchio, neppure il giorno della morte di Kit.

Ma non dura a lungo la mia rabbia contro di lui. Perché lui è la sola cosa che rimanga nella mia vita; e io sono la sola cosa che rimanga nella sua. Cosí, sento che da quella rabbia io mi devo difendere; devo restar fedele a Valentino, e restare ferma al suo fianco, che mi trovi se si volta dalla mia parte. Lo seguo con gli occhi quando esce per strada, lo accompagno con gli occhi fino all'angolo: e mi rallegro che sia sempre cosí bello, con la piccola testa ricciuta sulle spalle forti. Mi rallegro del suo passo ancora cosí felice, trionfante e libero: mi rallegro del suo passo, dovunque lui vada.²⁵

The parallel between Caterina's myth of Valentino and the myth of Narcissus helps, I think, to account for the breath-taking juxtaposition of the two final paragraphs, with their simultaneous acknowledgement of practical worthlessness and sustaining beauty.

The narrator in Sagittario is a much more aware person than her mother, whose story she tells, with the effect—since even the mother's thoughts are incorporated into the first person narrative²⁶—that limited perspective in this story acquires a comic twist. Crude satire is avoided, though, in a delicate balancing of the mother's and the narrator's personality, so that the mother's blithe garrulity is a felt presence in spite of the narrator's organizing intelligence which imposes formal limits on it.

Io ci dormivo infatti qualche volta, la sera del sabato. Al mattino, mia madre mi veniva a svegliare portandomi su un vassoio un uovo al tegame e una tazza di caffè. Mentre mangiavo l'uovo, mi osservava soddisfatta. Aveva sempre paura che io non mi nutrissi abbastanza. Seduta sul mio letto, con una vestaglia nuova di seta fiammante, con i capelli stretti in una reticella e la faccia spalmata d'una crema densa che sembrava burro, mia madre mi parlava dei suoi progetti. Di progetti lei ne aveva tanti. Ne aveva anche per i poveri della parrocchia. Questa era un'espressione che usava spesso. Prima di tutto dunque lei voleva convincere le sue sorelle a darle una cointeressenza sul negozio. Perché in fondo non era giusto che si strapazzasse ad aiutarle senza beccare una lira. Mi faceva vedere come a star sempre in piedi lí al negozio le si erano gonfiate le caviglie. Poi voleva mettere su una piccola galleria d'arte. La differenza fra questa sua galleria d'arte e le altre già esistenti in città, era che ogni pomeriggio alle cinque lei avrebbe offerto ai visitatori una tazza di tè. Era incerta se offrire o no col tè anche dei dolcetti. Si potevano fare certi dolcetti rustici che costavano poco ed eran buoni, con la farina gialla e l'uva passa. Di farina gialla ne aveva tanta a Dronero, in cantina dalla cugino Teresa. Ne aveva anche per i poveri della parrocchia. E avrebbe chiesto in prestito alle sue sorelle qualche bella guantiera. C'erano al negozio certe belle guantiere di tipo francese, che nessuno comprava e facevano pena tutte polverose, e mia madre era convinta che le sue sorelle non facevano grandi affari perché la roba che avevano non la sapevano valorizzare, e se lei realizzava quel progetto della galleria d'arte, avrebbe anche potuto valorizzare certi oggettini che giacevano dimenticati da tempo immemorabile in fondo al retrobottega; qua avrebbe messo un vaso di cristallo pieno di crisantemi, là un orso di porcellana che reggeva una lampada, e con tutti i visitatori avrebbe portato il discorso su quel negozio delle sue sorelle, e gli avrebbe procurato clienti, e loro non si sarebbero potute piú rifiutare a darle quella cointeressenza. Non appena ottenuta la cointeressenza, avrebbe preso lezioni di guida e si sarebbe comprata una piccola utilitaria, perché era stufa d'aspettare il tram.²⁷

This passage from a typical long paragraph near the beginning of the story illustrates the fluidity of the angle of observation. At times it is clearly the daughter's, ‘Io ci dormivo infatti …’; sometimes it is clearly the mother's, ‘Di progetti lei ne aveva tanti. Ne aveva anche per i poveri della parrocchia.’ But who is to say whether mother or daughter is really more conscious of the mother feeling satisfaction, ‘Mentre mangiavo l'uovo, mi osservava soddisfatta’, and fear, ‘Aveva sempre paura che io non mi nutrissi abbastanza.’? And is the tone, then, simple and maternal, or wryly observant of the role each automatically adopts in relation to the other? Often we cannot be entirely sure whose angle is being presented (we deduce from our observation of character, accumulating in this oblique way, that the interest in business projects, for example, is not shared by the narrator). The unobtrusive shifting of focus produces the effect of a mild umorismo.²⁸ We see the mother as she sees herself, sincerely pleased that there is still something she can do for her daughter. At the same time (or alternatively), we see her as we suspect her daughter does, pleased above all with the image of herself ministering capably to a dependent.

In the areas, within the narrative continuum, in which the mother's consciousness surfaces, things multiply in lists so that the long paragraph itself appears to be an expression of the habit of mind in which objects and projects proliferate. The indiscriminate proliferation reflects the obsessive materialism of the mother's endless schemes for making money. In spite of the caricature element, by which it appears certain that her concern with irrelevant detail (should she serve biscuits with the five o'clock teas that will distinguish her art gallery?) will ensure that her projects are never realized, a taint persists. The undifferentiated clutter of projects, people, things, suggests a displacement of values, even though the impression is mitigated by the endearing randomness (‘qua avrebbe messo un vaso di cristallo pieno di crisantemi, là un orso di porcellana che reggeva una lampada’).

However, as the Theatre of the Absurd once showed, irrational proliferation can be at least as much a source of comedy as cause for despair, and I think some such equilibrium is attained in Sagittario.

In addition, in the passage quoted, phrases such as ‘una cointeressenza sul negozio’, ‘senza beccare una lira’, ‘mettere su una piccola galleria’, ‘non facevano grandi affari’, ‘non la sapevano valorizzare’, ‘se lei realizzava quel progetto’, reveal the mother's image of herself as a business woman. She relishes the jargon that she attributes to that role and, therefore—as much as she betrays her vanity and greed—she expresses her exuberant love of words and her aptitude for playing a part. At times the narrator draws our attention to this quest for The Great Lead Role, as when Giulia, the pretty daughter, seems finally to be about to make a good marriage:

A tratti, una commozione gioiosa le strozzava la voce in un breve singhiozzo; recitava finalmente la parte che da anni sognava di recitare, la parte della madre che si prepara ad affidare la figlia, con trepida sollecitudine, alle mani d'un giovane serio, laborioso e probo. Era cosí compresa nella sua parte, che quasi trascurava d'osservare quel giovane …²⁹

For the narrator, too, seems to relish these performances. Indulgent references to her mother's mannerisms (‘che io sapevo a memoria) and pet phrases (‘Ne aveva anche per i poveri della parrocchia’) are more than a satirical snicker at silly role playing. The sense of delight—of the narrator watching her mother watching herself—manages to survive the traumatic blows by which the mother is finally stripped of her delusions, even to suggest that the delusions possess a vitality more appealing than the shrivelling severity of self-knowledge.

In the three stories, “La madre,” Valentino, and Sagittario, narrative is something other than the facts of the story. It is itself a fiction wherein the narrator's personality projected onto the story modulates it. The additional perspective within the story provides some leavening of the dismal facts of the story, not as a sentimental triumph-in-spite-of-all, but as the embodiment of intelligence in an art which makes accessible to the reader its techniques for presenting the irreducible complexity of even the most limited experience.

Notes

1. Natalia Ginzburg, Cinque romanzi brevi (Torino, 1964).

2. Ginzburg, La madre, op. cit., p. 397.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., p. 398.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., p. 399. One among many instances that reveal the family's sense of separateness from the mother: ‘… la nonna quando il nonno o Diomira si arrabbiavano contro la madre diceva che bisognava aver pietà di lei perché era stata molto disgraziata. …’

7. Ibid., p. 398.

8. Ibid., p. 404: ‘… la nonna non poteva scappar via, era troppo vecchia e troppo grassa, era bello avere qualcuno che stava in casa e non poteva mai scappar via.’

9. Ibid., p. 400: ‘… c'erano al cesso fogli di quaderno con versioni dal latino e dal greco, con le sue correzioni in rosso e blu.’

10. Ibid., p. 407.

11. Ibid., p. 397.

12. Ibid., p. 404.

13. Ibid., p. 405.

14. Ibid., p. 407.

15. Valentino, op. cit., p. 193.

16. Ibid., p. 159.

17. Ibid., p. 160.

18. Ibid., p. 159, paras. 1 and 2; p. 165, para. 2; p. 171, para. 1; p. 176, para. 2; p. 182, para. 2; p. 193, para. 3. And compare the reaction of Valentino's other sister Clara with the chronic toothache, physical correlative of the ‘faccia cattiva’ she makes whenever she hears his name: ‘Mia sorella non aveva mai creduto che Valentino sarebbe diventato un grand'uomo.’ (p. 162)

19. Ibid., p. 160: ‘… somigliavano tanto alle allieve di piano di mia madre.’

20. Ibid., p. 174.

21. Ibid., p. 159: ‘… faceva dei giocattoli per i bambini della portinaia, con un po' di segatura e qualche vecchio scampolo di stoffa: faceva dei cani e dei gatti e anche dei diavoli con delle grosse teste e dei lunghi corpi a bitorzoli.’

    Cf. p. 193: ‘E Valentino fabbrica di nuovo per i suoi bambini quei giocattoli con la stoffa e la segatura, che faceva una volta per i figli della portinaia: gatti e cani e diavoli tutti bitorzoluti.’

22. There is possibly a linking of Caterina and Kit through their name. Conversely, Kit identifies a resemblance between Caterina and Valentino: ‘“Hai le dita come Valentino,” disse.’ (p. 182)

23. Ibid., p. 192: ‘Adesso io e Valentino viviamo insieme. Abbiamo due piccole stanze con la cucina e un ballatoio davanti. Il ballatoio guarda su un cortile che somiglia molto al cortile della casa dove stavamo col papà e la mamma.’

24. Ibid., p. 159, para. 2; p. 176, para. 2.

25. Ibid., p. 193.

26. Ginzburg is critical of this aspect of Sagittario in the introduction to Cinque romanzi brevi. See p. 16: ‘Sagittario ha due difetti. Il primo è che anche qui il tessuto è troppo stretto e fitto. …’

27. Sagittario, op. cit., pp. 199-200.

28. See Luigi Pirandello's definition of umorismo in L'Umorismo (Lanciano, 1908), especially p. 145.

29. Ibid., p. 207 and cf. p. 258, para. 2: ‘Se ne andò, e mentre la guardavo dalla finestra allontanarsi sulla piazzetta, con la borsa dondolante sul fianco e col suo passo baldanzoso, io sapevo che s'immaginava sdraiata sul ponte di una nave, con gli occhiali neri e con un tailleur di tela bianca spugnosa, a sfogliare riviste e a conversare col capitano.’