Carlo Emilio Gadda
Adelphi Publisher, 2023
pp. 626
War and prison journal opens in 1915, with the title given by the author of Country Newspaper: particularly in the Note of the day August 24, 1915 we read “The bulletin of the Ministry of War of 5 August 1915 appointed me, at my request of 27 March last, second lieutenant in the territorial militia, infantry branch, with assignment to the 5th Alpini” (pp13-14).
From these first words begin the more than six hundred pages of carefully drawn notes, sketches, photographs and maps; pages full of reports that are sometimes specific and sometimes very extensive, interspersed with an equally numerous and dense apparatus (so to speak) of personal considerations and reflections on the whole IT world; which can be imagined to revolve around the idea – and practice – of war.
War and captivity, to be exact.
From the first edition of this work, published in 1955, to this latest one (subtitled New enlarged edition) edited by Paola Italia and with a note by Eleonora Cardinale, six unpublished notebooks emerge, and one appreciates the great care both in the presentation of the texts (including the Attachments), both in the two writings that conclude the volume and which are, in fact, signed by Paola Italia (Notes to the text) and by Eleonora Cardinale (The unpublished notebooks of the National Central Library of Rome).
The First World War hit Gadda with a myriad of sensations, emotions, thoughts and often very harsh experiences, which ultimately left an indelible mark on his literary journey and his way of relating to the world: a world shocked by the devastating realities and disfiguring consequences of war, but in which introspective reflections, social and psychological analyses, existential anxieties and everything that can revolve around the human being engaged in actions in which life and death are decided emerge. And it is precisely the experience of those who live the war and, at the same time, suffer all its consequences, in body and soul, which emerges from these pages, together with acute observations on human weaknesses and shortcomings, as in the following passage: “in reality the causes of defeats, of malaise, of impotence, are not deep and indecipherable causes as some would have us believe; these causes lie in carelessness, in rashness, in the trust that everything succeeds by luck what must succeed by calculation, in intellectual laziness… we do not believe that evils are archaic, no: evils mostly come from stupidity” (p.31).
The sense of uselessness emerges in relation to the great brutality of the fighting and, above all, the disillusionment that takes over the spirit of the narrator involved in the conflict first as an army officer and then – after September 1943, XNUMX – as a prisoner of the British forces. Together with these, the daily notations range over numerous themes starting from the character of the Italian soldier: “the Italian soldier is lazy, especially the southern one; he is dirty out of necessity, like the enemy, but also out of carelessness; he provides for the needs of the body near the trench, filling all the ground with shit… he holds his rifle poorly, which is dirty and sometimes all rusty; he scatters the ammunition and the sapper's tools (what hard work I have to endure to gather my pickaxes and shovels); he sleeps during the day, when he could be reinforcing the line; on the other hand, however, he is patient, sober, generous, good, helpful, courageous, and impetuous in the attack” (p.136).
In his psychological analyses, Gadda is acute and in a certain sense ruthless, highlighting the disintegration of the individual both as a fighter and as a prisoner, the modification of personal identity that is lost in the anonymity of the immense machinery of the army, leading the human being to a sort of progressive diminution of humanity. Dehumanization but also solidarity; anguish and loneliness, but also hope and the will to move forward which, in some cases, lead the person to highlight their best qualities.
One aspect that disheartens Gadda is the unsatisfactory quality of officers and non-commissioned officers: “my men are not very diligent in night service… The two sergeants, then, do almost nothing: they are a dead weight. This is a real defect of many of our departments, I think of a large part of our army: the poor functioning of the non-commissioned officers and the graduates: I do not have two sergeants and 20 men of the ranks; I have 22 men of the ranks. Two of whom have the dirty sleeves of a sergeant's chevron and therefore do nothing” (p. 221). But Gadda does not refrain from self-criticism in his command style: “my fault, already confessed on other occasions in this diary, consists in being too good, too weak, too kind: with soldiers you need severity and roughness, combined, of course, with kindness and common sense… I lack the energy, the severity, the self-confidence, typical of a man who does not think too much… My actions are subjected to the awkward control of my moral and civil, national and ethnic, social and human sensitivity” (p.221).
Despite the monumental work, apparently tiring to read, Gadda's style allows the possibility of totally immersing oneself in the painted or sketched situations, coming into contact with that kind of inner experience that many of the soldiers must have lived in the extreme conditions of trench life and, later, of captivity. In the words of Paola Italia: “returned in its entirety, the Giornale reveals itself to be a profound and powerful work: although different from the more famous and literary diaries of Soffici, Stuparich and Comisso, it fully belongs to the great literature of war, and would be enough by itself to ensure Gadda a place in our twentieth century” (p.556).
Finally, it should be remembered that the works of Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893 – 1973) have been published for some time by the Adelphi publishing house; to date, twenty-one works have been published, including The war and prison newspaper (2023): among these we remember Gadda's War. Letters and Images (1915-1919) (released in 2021), and The Tantrums of the Captain on Leave and Other Stories (released in 1981).
Andrea Castiello d'Antonio
