10.13125/2039-6597/1398
This article aims to investigate the interplay between censorship, self-censorship and the narrative strategies of magical realism in Il figlio di due madri by Italian author Massimo Bontempelli (1878–1960).Having been head of the National Fascist Writers Union from the mid- to late-1920s, critics have noted that Bontempelli’s detachment from the Fascist credo emerges in his work from the mid- to late-1930s. I intend to problematise this perspective, by recognising the significance of Il figlio di due madri (1929) in the development of Bontempelli’s anti-Fascist sentiment. This work preceded (by several years) Bontempelli’s official break with Fascism in 1936, when he published an article against the political control of the arts and caesarianism in La gazzetta del popolo. An anti-Fascist sentiment had, however, in my view already been expressed in Bontempelli’s works of magical realism Il figlio di due madri (1929) and Vita e morte di Adria e dei suoi figli (1930). These two novels deal with controversial topics that, I would claim, refute some of Fascism’s foremost principles, an appraisal that was disguised through deliberate acts of self-censorship. More precisely, it is through his deconstruction of mimetic writing that Bontempelli’s critique of the regime comes into existence, as the narrative strategies I deem instrumental to his self-censorship (e.g. authorial reticence, metaphor, mythopoiesis) reflect the poetics of magical realism in «its inherent transgressive and subversive qualities» (Bowers 2004: 63). By conveying a rejection of the systematised understanding of literature that Bontempelli associates with literary realisms, at the same time he conveys his ideological refusal of dogmatic views of reality. Thus, in his mystifying realism, magic acts as both a tool for concealing his ideology—a tool for self-censorship, that is—and as the very means by which this ideology can be generated.
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Wissia Fiorucci
Between
self-censorship
Self-censorship in Massimo Bontempelli’s Magical Realism
Text.Serial.Journal
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Regimes of the Sayable
2015-05-20
2015-01-18
2015-05-31
2015-05-31
1
Wissia Fiorucci
2015/05/20
10.13125/2039-6597/1398
University of Kent
2039-6597
9
self-censorship
en
Self-censorship in Massimo Bontempelli’s Magical Realism
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/download/1398/1522
5
         Self-censorship in Massimo
        Bontempelli's Magical Realism

                               Wissia Fiorucci


                              1. Introduction
     This article investigates the interplay between censorship, self-
censorship and the narrative strategies of 'realismo magico' in Il figlio di
due madri (FDM) by Italian author Massimo Bontempelli (1878–1960).
     Critics have noted that Bontempelli – head of the National Fascist
Writers' Union from mid- to late-1920s – voiced his detachment from
the Fascist credo in his work from mid- to late-1930s. I problematise
this perspective, by recognising the significance of FDM (1929) in the
development of Bontempelli's anti-Fascist sentiment. This work
preceded by several years his official break with Fascism in 1936, when
he published an article against the political control of the arts and
caesarianism in La gazzetta del popolo. An anti-Fascist sentiment had,
however, in my view already been expressed in Bontempelli's works of
magical realism FDM (1929) and VM di Adria e dei suoi figli (1930) (VM).
These two novels deal with controversial topics that I believe refute
some of Fascism's foremost principles, an appraisal that was disguised
through deliberate acts of self-censorship. More precisely, it is through
his deconstruction of mimetic writing that Bontempelli's critique of the
regime comes into existence. The narrative strategies I deem
instrumental to his self-censorship (e.g. authorial reticence, metaphor,
mythopoesis) reflect the poetics of magical realism in «its inherent
transgressive and subversive qualities» which, Bowers maintains, «are
hinted at in the term itself» (2004: 63). This is evident, namely, in the
choice to bring together two allegedly incompatible literary modes.



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Wissia Fiorucci, Self-censorship in Massimo Bontempelli’s Magical Realism



      Hegerfeldt (2005: 52) points out that exploring magical realism
inevitably leads to analysing its departure from notions of realism,
hence its challenge of literary tradition. For this reason, it is considered
suited to transgressing ontological, political, or geographical
boundaries (Zamora & Faris 1995: 5).
      In Bontempelli's hands, the challenge to "realism" was put to
further use as a critical response to the avant-garde, standing against
the movement's formal radicalism while conceptualising the role for
the artist in the new era. In his view, and in line with Fascist criteria,
this role amounts to that of the mythographer: as Cesaretti observes
(2009: 387), the fascist inclination towards myth-making was initially
appealing to Bontempelli. Yet late in the 1920s, in his mystifying
realism, magic acts as both a tool for concealing his convictions – a tool
for self-censorship – and as the very means by which this counter-
ideology can be generated.
      In order to expand on these points, I first illustrate Bontempelli's
controversial relationship with the Regime, especially within the
experience of his journal 900. I then provide an overview of Fascist
censorship and identify the role of self-censorship in Bontempelli's
novels. Finally, I analyse FDM and VM to illustrate how, by decoding
the above-mentioned narrative strategies of self-censorship, we can
detect Bontempelli's appraisal of Fascist ideology.

                       2. 900 and Fascist Censorship
     In "Personali ma non troppo" (1929), Bontempelli explained that
his old adhesion to Fascism derived from his consideration of it as «a
forthright political primitivism, after those consumed experiences of
past politics that had preceded it» (1974: 187–188).1 In its early days,
«Fascism appeared to him to be a hybrid movement with a potential
for conservative innovation» (Jewell 2007: 287).



      1All translations from L'avventura novecentista (1974) and of quotes
originally published in Italian are mine.


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      Yet while he initially supported the Fascist enterprise,
Bontempelli's position was never clear-cut. The events involving 900,
its ambivalent orientation, somehow reflects his own.
      For its Italian and simultaneously European character, 900 was
accused of internationalism in Italy, and of Fascism abroad. The
journal's image, and Bontempelli's position as an intellectual, was thus
moved by two contrasting necessities. On the one hand, European
avant-gardes, which were a source of inspiration for 900, looked at
Fascism adversely (Stagniti 2005: 279). Thus, on the international front,
Bontempelli insisted on the "independent" character of the journal in a
letter dated 1926: «900 does not deal with politics» (1974: 117); 2
specifying that some of the Italian contributors belonged to the
opposition (e.g. Corrado Alvaro and Emilio Cecchi). On the other,
Bontempelli needed the Duce's approval. To this end, he appealed to
the Regime's desire for cultural expansion, and for a literary experience
that would counteract foreign influences (Stagniti 2005: 279). Therefore,
keen to avoid accusations of antinationalism, Bontempelli made a
number of declarations. These included the following, in the first issue
of 900: «The moment we strive to be Europeans, we end up feeling
desperately Romans» (1974: 12). Hence in his journal – partly out of
necessity and partly because of his initial beliefs – Bontempelli
celebrated «the march on Rome and the use of the club» (Airoldi-
Namer 1975: 251).
      Yet, despite Bontempelli's appeal to Mussolini's need for a Fascist
cultural distinctiveness, when it came to the relationship between
artistic creation and politics he continued to advocate that no form of


     2 However, political pressure led Bontempelli to change its character
drastically. After the 1927 Autumn volume, featuring the short story "Le Cafe
Florian" by Itja Grigorevic Erenburg (where the Russian was ironical about
the black shirts), the Regime withdrew its approval. On 1st July 1928 the
journal was published monthly in Italian, and the 'Comitato di Redazione
Internazionale' was suppressed. The space dedicated to literature was
reduced and a section on politics was created, managed by journalist Giulio
Santangelo. The last issue of the journal appeared on 21st June 1929.


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Wissia Fiorucci, Self-censorship in Massimo Bontempelli’s Magical Realism



art should be reduced to propaganda. In "Mendicità" (1928), for
instance, he asserted that «literature has to offer collaboration to the
Authority, rather than ask for protection» (Bontempelli 1974: 115).
      Bontempelli's controversial stance in the late-1920s is further
problematised by his fictional works. As Artieri (1978: 41) claims, his
predilection for female heroines in his 'realismo magico' was in stark
contrast to his celebration of «the hero of the myth […] the action man»
of Fascist inspiration in 900 – as part of what Airoldi-Namer terms the
«banal mythology of the Regime» (1975: 267). Where «certain questions
that were […] pertinent to masculinity» were concerned, Mussolini's
aim was to pursue a continuity with the past (Bellassai 2005: 315).
Fascism celebrated traditions that entailed female inferiority. As I will
show, in FDM and VM, Bontempelli considers this precept to be a
symptom of the rigid traditionalism, and ensuing homogenisation,
enforced by the Regime. Thus, as with many early texts of magical
realism, he employs imagination as a metaphor (a tool of self-
censorship) to convey his criticism (see Faris 2004: 169). More
specifically, he addressed the totalizing character of Fascism, which led
to its progressive intervention in all aspects of Italians' private and
public lives – especially its intrusion in the arts. In "Protezione" (1936),
he would in fact claim: «For a few years now, arts are wanted to
become an instrument of declared political propaganda» (Bontempelli
1974: 117). In "Le rane chiedono tanti re" (1938), he also asserts: «I'd
rather have my pen removed from my hand than having somebody at
my back while I'm writing » (Ibid.: 216).
      Bontempelli's increasingly intolerant attitude led to his being
sentenced to death during the R.S.I. – a condemnation that he managed
to avoid. Yet before he openly dissented from Fascism, Bontempelli
had voiced his dissatisfaction with some aspects of it. However, in
order to avoid censorship, he did so vicariously. This position was not
uncommon among writers and artists in general during the 'ventennio
fascista'.




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             2.1 A 'Letteratura del (dis)impegno'?
     As argued by Bonsaver, during the early stages of Fascism,
censorship mostly addressed the press, rather than books. These were
targeted only from 1931, and in 1932 censorship began to be
systematized, with the first collection of national data. So, if «in the
early years of the regime, Fascist censorship was far from being an all-
pervading and systematic process», from the early 1930s more
consideration was paid to what was or was not suitable material for
publication and the first «implicit pre-publication censorship» began to
be operative in 1934 (Bonsaver 2007: 90 and 104).
     Although publishing houses had a certain amount of freedom
before 1934, they were nonetheless asked to self-regulate and books
could be requisitioned even after their publication – with potential
catastrophic consequences for publishers, who were thus very careful
not to accept anything the censors might disapprove, and complied
with censorship officially applied to other fields, such as the press.
Censorship was especially harsh where the figure of the Duce, war,
and the patria were concerned. Celebrations of individualism were also
targeted, in that they opposed the supreme principle of Fascist
ideology: the supremacy of the State. Later, regulatory concerns also
focussed on any negative comment towards motherhood and the
demographic battle. Novels and short-stories were regularly
sequestered, and altered, often to the detriment of authorship itself
(Ben-Ghiat 2000: 84).
     Fascist censorship became all the more powerful with the interior
censorship that supplemented it. Self-censorship was part of the subtle
Fascist strategy of control that had already proven efficient with the
kind of self-regulatory censorship implemented by publishing houses.
This was possibly the most effective method as it relied on the
interiorisation of the censor's official view (see Bonsaver & Gordon
2005). Instead of wasting time on works that would never be published
unless heavily altered, authors either preferred to comply with the
authorities' requirements, or chose to focus on politically neutral
topics: they preferred a 'letteratura del disimpegno'. Or, as was the case


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Wissia Fiorucci, Self-censorship in Massimo Bontempelli’s Magical Realism



with Moravia's Gli indifferenti (1929), others sought narrative strategies
to protect their works. In their case, there was no implicit acceptance
of, or identification with, the censor's views, but they privileged a
narrative style which demanded the creation of complex systems of
reading and writing, practicing for their survival a sort of literary self-
censorship. This is the case, I claim, with Bontempelli's novels FDM
and VM, where self-censorship became a method of maintaining the
ideological scope of his writings whilst avoiding censorship.
      In these works, Bontempelli tackles delicate issues, such as the
notion of motherhood, and individualism as opposed to
homogenisation. Baldacci (1959: 438) goes so far as to assert that, in
FDM Bontempelli is acting as a critic of his society. When he published
it, Fascist censorship had not yet become a systematic machine of
repression, but a proper evaluation of Bontempelli's oeuvre was
prevented by his narrative style. As Bonsaver has claimed (2007: 151),
despite their problematic content, «Bontempelli's surreal settings kept
his narrative work away from controversy». His novels were
overlooked by the Regime because of their «"dream" element, the
apparent representative rarefaction» (Baldacci 1959: 438). They were
deemed far from any political, or intellectually critical, engagement –
even by a number of contemporary critics. Urgnani (1991: 8) claims, for
instance, that Bontempelli's works strive to stay away from politics.
According to Airoldi-Namer (1975: 251) Bontempelli shows a cultural
disengagement in his fictional works. These statements may hold true
to a certain extent, considering that, of his vast output, few works can
possibly be defined as being anti-Fascist. Yet as Cesaretti rightly
observes, such a perspective «facilitates the task of those […] who have
to deal with the […] ambiguities of [Bontempelli's] political position
from the mid twenties to the late thirties» (2009: 387).
      Bontempelli deliberately disguised his ideology within elements
of 'realismo magico'. The narrative elements he employed are indeed
varied and cannot be examined in one article only. However, it is the
elements of authorial reticence, metaphor and mythopoesis, along with
other interconnected strategies, that more cogently contributed to the
dissemination of his convictions within his narratives, as well as their


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simultaneous disguise. In Bontempelli, self-censorship was not simply
repressive and a marker of his nicodenism, but productive, too.

   3. Authorial Reticence and the Irreducible Element
      Cesaretti (2009) individuates Bontempelli's appraisal of Fascism in
his 1937 novel Gente nel Tempo (GT), the third book of his 'realismo
magico' trilogy. In Galateria's opinion, GT, FDM and VM, share many
common features. First of all, an element of self-censorship, that is,
their setting during the first years of the century, a "neutral" period
with respect to Fascism (2005: 175). That is, he privileges an anti-
mimetic temporal choice.
      In the trilogy, Bontempelli draws the reader's attention to the
mystery element, which he maintains throughout by authorial
reticence. This is the «withholding of information and explanations»
(Chanady 1985: 126). Chanady explains that «one of the factors that
distinguishes stories of the fantastic from magico-realist narratives […]
is the absence of essential information about certain occurrences within
the fictitious world» (1985: 135). 3 Through authorial reticence,
Bontempelli could lure his readers to interpret his novels – more
specifically, the meaning of their irreducible element – by leaving
"clues" to be deciphered. This is evidenced by intertextual references,

     3  As claimed by Taravacci (1980: 232), the adventurous spirit that
Bontempelli seeks in his 'realismo magico' novels fundamentally rejects the
indispensable element of building hesitation (between the natural and the
supernatural). This is a characteristic of the fantastic-uncanny, as theorised
by Todorov "for events that are initially perceived […] as manifestations of
the supernatural but which, in the end, have a rational explanation" (Henn
2005: 106–107). Due to space-related constraints, I will not be able to offer an
exegesis of Bontempelli's 'realismo magico' in its connection with the
fantastic, and will thus refer solely – for the sake of coherence – to works of
literary criticism that deal with magical realism. For a study of the
differences between magical realism and other neighbouring narrative styles
see Bowers 2004, Slemon 1995, and Warnes 2005.



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Wissia Fiorucci, Self-censorship in Massimo Bontempelli’s Magical Realism



many of which are borrowed from Christianity, and Greek mythology
and would be comprehensible to a large readership
     As mentioned above, Baldacci (1959: 433) has observed that
Bontempelli's social critique is partly overshadowed by his focussing
on the 'mistero', what in magical realist terms is referred to as the
"irreducible element". Faris has theorised this as «something we cannot
explain according to the laws of the universe […], that is, according to
logic, familiar knowledge, or received belief» (2004: 7). The irreducible
element is a magical event that is to be accepted as such, within
ordinary life. The "irreducible element" is «unexplainable according to
the laws of […] modern, post-enlightenment empiricism» (Faris 2002:
102). In Bontempelli's 'realismo magico' trilogy, the irreducible element
is always connected with a sensitive topic frowned upon by
censorship, namely, motherhood. In FDM the irreducible element
concerns two mothers and a child. Luciana, one of the two mothers,
loses her son Ramiro to a fatal illness when he is seven years old. Seven
years later, on the anniversary of Ramiro's death, another child –
Mario, the son of Arianna and Mariano Parigi – is turning seven.
Suddenly, however, his being 'Mario' simply disappears in his memory
and consciousness, replaced by being 'Ramiro' as if he had just
reincarnated. This creates a paradoxical situation, because, albeit at
different moments, both Luciana and Arianna have given birth to
Mario/Ramiro.
     In VM, all members of the protagonist Adria's family die after she
has left them for good, and is hiding in Paris. It is as though the lack of
the maternal presence, the disappearance of this woman of unnatural
beauty, were fatal to all those who had happened to love her.
     GT similarly features the extinction of a family at the hands of a
powerful maternal character, la 'Gran Vecchia'. Before dying, she
triggers a legacy that condemns the members of her family to die
young: «Nobody else will have to be born, […] people like you who are
good for nothing […], it's best if the family ends here» (Bontempelli
2001: 15–16). 4 And indeed they die, one after the other, at regular

      4   Translation is mine.


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intervals of five years. A plausible explanation for these events is not
given, and their "irreducibility" is maintained.
     The mythopoeic process at work within this novel has been
analysed by Airoldi-Namer and Cesaretti. In their opinions,
Bontempelli's thematisation of time finds its expression in the 'Gran
Vecchia' as the «the maternal female incarnation of Kronos who
devours his children » (Airoldi-Namer 1979: 122), an image that «lies at
the imaginative core of the novel» (Cesaretti 2009: 388). Yet Cesaretti
has also defined the 'Gran Vecchia' character as a female model of
Mussolini; she is a «dictatorial, "Mussolinesque" [matriarch]
characterised by a "mento potente"» (Ibid.: 386). He goes on to observe
how this novel embodies Bontempelli's critique of the Regime, in that it
exposes one of its most apparent paradoxes. On the one hand, Fascist
pro-natalist policies encouraged procreation. On the other, the military
campaigns and, more generally, Mussolini's imperialistic goals,
demanded the lives of many soldiers. Thus, the image of the devouring
'Vecchia/Kronos' encapsulates this paradox: she who gave life is also
the one that brings death to her progeny.
     The irreducible element of the novel invites the reader to dig
further into the text beyond the plot. At the same time, by maintaining
authorial reticence about the impossible double motherhood, Adria's
deadly beauty, and the 'Gran Vecchia''s power, Bontempelli challenges
the assumption that everything is knowable and controllable, thereby
establishing a foremost precept of magical realism. Namely, that

      reality always exceeds our capacities to describe or understand
    or prove and that the function of literature is to engage this
    excessive reality, to honour that which we may grasp intuitively
    but never fully or finally define (Parkinson Zamora 1997: 77).

     What we can "grasp" and "never fully define" amounts to the
impossibility of encapsulating important aspects of human life within
predetermined signifiers. On the one hand, the ensuing transfiguration
of reality becomes a self-censoring process that enabled Bontempelli to
avoid censorship. Primarily focussed on works that represented the


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Wissia Fiorucci, Self-censorship in Massimo Bontempelli’s Magical Realism



Italian situation realistically, this censorship paid little attention to
writers who adopted fantastical, or magical settings (see Zangrandi
2011). On the other, Bontempelli was therefore able to convey his
convictions by applying structures of the imaginary to the real, which
became expressive of a new system of signs (Bianchi 1994: 88). In
accordance with modernist experimentation, this «practice involved a
move beyond the traditional mimetic paradigm» toward a poiesic one,
which «implied a process of undermining of the notion itself of reality,
in that it was perceived as an aesthetic construct» (Storchi 2006: 117).
This is in line with Chanady's argument that magical realism is a
«particularly successful manifestation of poiesis as opposed to
mimesis» (1995: 126), since it employs the form of the real to produce
the imaginative. Then, it should also be remembered that Bontempelli's
ideal of the twentieth-century artist involved the concept of myth-
making. Overall, Bontempelli's narrative attempts to surpass the
dialectic relationship between the paradigms of reality and magic
through mythopoesis: «Mythical narrative is immersed in the
framework of everyday life, so as to give it a realistic reading». At the
same time, «everyday experience was projected into a mythical
temporality» (Storchi 2006: 118).
      These narrative strategies are apparent in the 'realismo magico'
works FDM and VM.

                      4. Metaphor and Mythopoesis
     In a letter dated 5 August 1930, the Press Office communicated to
Bontempelli the Duce's appreciation of VM. 5 This is somewhat
surprising, considering that the novel includes a suicide and a clear
effacement of paternal authority. The novel reflects, in my view, the
mythopoeic process as a tool for self-censorship, as this implies the
author's reliance on the reader's interpretation triggering, as it were, a
web of intertextual decoding. To this end, the interplay between
metaphor and mythopoesis is crucial within Bontempelli's writings.

      5   See Bonsaver 2007: 151.


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Discussing the literary strategies adopted by dissenting writers writing
under regimes of totalitarian powers, Borges famously claimed that
«censorship is the mother of metaphor» (qtd. in Manea, 1992: 30): while
the metaphor acts as the basis for the mythicizing process that partially
hides the meaning of the novel, at the same time it comprises the
author's meta-commentary.
     In FDM, two crucial metaphors can be identified, which in turn
engender a mythopoeic process. An opposition, between the two
mothers and Mariano, Mario's father, underpins the whole novel at the
level of plot. At the level of metaphor, this signifies the clash between
imagination and rationalisation, a conflict that is essential to
Bontempelli's conceptualisation of 'realismo magico': «The sole
instrument of our work will be imagination» (1974: 9 [1927]).
     In FDM, woman's generative power becomes a metaphor for the
imagination, while man represents rationality, the obtuseness of
excessive – institutional – regulation. This in turn engenders a
mythopoeic process whereby motherhood is exalted in what Bosetti
reads as a provocative elaboration of Christianity. At the same time,
male authority is devalued as a result of another recurrent process in
Bontempelli's works, namely, the devitalisation of the human being,
who is reduced to an emotionally and intellectually inert puppet by
conformism.

           4.1 Metaphor and Mythopoesis in FDM
      As mentioned above, authorial reticence is instrumental to the
reader's understanding of the novel's underpinning principles: while it
must simply be accepted that 'magic is real', as it is part of cogent
reality, at the same time this magical event has precise ideological
implications. To this end, Bontempelli disseminates clues in the form of
intertextual references. Bosetti (1997: 134) accordingly claims that, in
this novel, Bontempelli is playing with the «itinéraire christique»,
referring to Ramiro as the «enfant-Dieu». This was provocative on
Bontempelli's part, because «the underlying ideology in most
censorship decisions was that of the Catholic Church» (Thompson



                                                                             11
Wissia Fiorucci, Self-censorship in Massimo Bontempelli’s Magical Realism



1996: 101) – and here he was playing with a Christian dogma, the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The novel also offers a depiction of the
Virgin Mary.
     In Baldacci's words (1959: 433), Bontempelli seems to «take
pleasure in breaking or overturning a social convention», insofar as the
novel is entirely underpinned by the question: «Is it true motherhood
that of the flesh or that of the soul?». In FDM, «motherhood is
monstrously exalted [...] until its doubling» (Airoldi-Namer 1979: 99).
Arianna represents, on the one hand, the mater dolorosa of the Latin
Hymns, the Virgin Mother who cries over the death of her son (Bosetti
2007). When she is in tears, Ramiro cries as well, and their faces, «close
together beneath that storm of tears seemed mirror images of each
other» (Bontempelli 2004a: 155). However, the wondrous child who
«looked like one mother when he was crying», looked like the other,
Luciana, «when he was smiling. And, in each case, with such a perfect
resemblance that it defied imagination» (Ibid.). Therefore, expanding
on Bosetti's decoding, it could be argued that in this novel we have a
dual representation of the Virgin Mary, as is suggested by the reference
to Luciana as the mater speciosa (the Virgin Mary rejoicing for Jesus's
birth). Arianna's and Luciana's characters are brought together – as
separate aspects of a split whole – to symbolise opposing facets of the
Virgin Mary, and acquire a mythopoeic dimension. Their generative
power, hence their imagination, is so powerful that it creates life by
bringing it back from the dead. The foremost and provocative outcome
of this mythicised motherhood is that it excludes paternal agency in
the making of life. This is clearly conveyed at the level of plot by the
fact that, in the days that follow Ramiro's "resurrection", the father
Mariano is excluded from the family paradigm. Unable to come to
terms with his family's predicament, or to have his voice heard by
either of the two mothers, at a certain point in the novel Mariano even
has Luciana hospitalised, in light of her alleged madness (she believes
in the reincarnation of her child). In the asylum, when speaking to her
doctor she asks what they intend to cure her from. The answer is «your
imagination, dear signora» (Bontempelli 2004a: 106).



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      It has been argued that self-censorship can be based on a precise
web of intertextual references directed at a specific readership.
Bontempelli's focus on the notion of the "imagination" in FDM thus
deserves further consideration. No reader of Bontempelli (a prominent
intellectual and public figure at the time) could, in my view, have
misunderstood the meaning of the above scene, remembering his
conceptualisation of magical realism, as exemplified by the sentence
«the sole instrument of our work will be imagination». In Fascist times
and after he had been forced to close his journal, such a sentence could
not but convey his resistance to «the idea that specific political
formulations should dictate any literary themes and styles» (Jewell
2007: 287). Thus whilst the mythopoeic process in FDM exalts
motherhood and creates the magical ambience of the novel, the
metaphor at the basis of this mythicisation – motherhood as
imagination – itself constitutes an authorial comment against the
Fascist control of artistic creation. This is all the more evident because
the above scene is staged in an asylum, another element whose
importance could hardly escape attentive readers of the time. The label
of "madness" was a powerful instrument of control for the Regime (see
Battifora 2008). This might in fact be considered to be the ultimate
censorship (the word madness, or variations of it, is repeated many
times in the novel, always in connection with the double motherhood
and the child's "resurrection") – a definitive way to silence dangerous,
unruly, voices. Luciana's institutionalisation should thus be read in
light of Chanady's claim that: Magical realism «expresses […] points of
view, often related to marginality and subalternity». It «gives free reign
to the imagination while critically reflecting on the ailments of society
and the predicament of the human condition» (2003: 442). By decoding
the complex web of metaphorical references, Bontempelli's
representation of double motherhood comes to symbolise a challenge
to Fascist ideology as he gives voice to "subaltern" subjects – women.
      This is reinforced by a devaluation of paternal authority, which
encapsulates Mariano's metaphorical meaning. More precisely, he may
be said to belong to a specific set of characters, which are recurrent in
Bontempelli's publications even before the trilogy – his automata.


                                                                              13
Wissia Fiorucci, Self-censorship in Massimo Bontempelli’s Magical Realism



Staging the affectation of social conventions and human beings'
enslavement to them, Bontempelli describes in his writings a process of
devitalisation of the human being that engenders the creation of the
marionette/mannequin (Fresu 2008: 23). Having testified in the early
1920s to Bontempelli's interest in and own adherence to a Pirandellian
theory of identity, in the late 1920s, the automaton – through the
figures of both Mariano and Adria (VM) – becomes a narrative device
that reveals his concern with a politically-engendered conformism.

                     5. The Marionette as Metaphor
      Bontempelli's use of the marionette as a metaphor reflects the
magical realist predilection for crossing boundaries: the metaphor joins
together categories of being that cannot in reality be connected, thus
presenting us with ontological riddles. As a device of magical realism,
the marionette can be said to pertain to what Delbaere-Garant calls
"grotesque realism", which she defines as «a hyperbolic distortion that
creates a sense of strangeness through the confusion […] of different
realms like animate/inanimate or human/animal», and precisely
«between puppet and human» (2005: 256).
      In the pre-magical realism plays Nostra Dea (1925) and the 1927
Minnie la candida (the latter possibly being Bontempelli's starkest
critique of the bourgeois, and fascist, society of the time) the image of
the «theatre of mechanical marionettes» is a metaphor for a
mechanised humanity, for an inversion of meaning that transforms
heroes into automata (Mazzacurati 1987: 230). In Minnie, la candida,
Bontempelli's concern with standardisation is overt (Piscopo 2001: 347–
348). Airoldi Namer (1979: 166) argues that this story epitomises the
nightmare of losing one's humanity, the total peril of alienation
incumbent on society of Bontempelli's time. In Fabbri's words, the
immobile Dea – a woman-mannequin, with a grotesque body in-
between two ontological states (inanimate and animated) – is one of
Bontempelli's «objectual characters, lacking both psychological and
kinetic expressivity» (2005: 443), construed through the language of
grotesque realism.


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                                              Between, vol. V, n. 9 (Maggio/May 2015)



      In FDM, Bontempelli represents the marionette Mariano within
the paradigm of reality. Unlike Dea, Mariano is a full-fledged human,
an ordinary man with no exceptional characteristics, and this is
precisely what makes him a marionette. The fact that Mariano, too,
represents a variation of the Bontempellian automaton is also signified
by his name. Fresu (2008: 72) detects a predilection for male names
with the route 'mar-' in FDM, which she interprets in light of a
semantic implication with marionette, deriving from the old French
'maryonete'. This is therefore a direct reference to Bontempelli's
concern with sameness and conformism: Mariano is a human variant
of the automata that Fabbri (2005: 444) has defined as grotesque
characters – humans with no biological pulse.
      While in FDM the magical ambience that allows for self-
censorship is established through the mythicisation of motherhood, it
is «irony [that] informs the implicit inversion in the roles of humans
and marionettes» (Segel 1995: 287). Irony is accompanied by simple,
realistic language, which reproduces the bourgeois setting of early
twentieth-century Rome. The Parigis, an ordinary young middle-class
family (Bontempelli 2004a: 19), live in «one of those modern houses
resembling villas that make up this most elegant quarter of the Empire
City». Mariano «Parigi, the paterfamilias, is forty» (Ibid.). With subtle
irony, Bontempelli depicts an urbanised bourgeois man who provides
well for himself and his family, and who is «the recipient of those
honors by which our society encourages its most industrious
members» (Ibid.). Mariano is «a man little known to history, but one
who plays a somewhat important role in life – assuming it is important
to earn a great deal of money annually dealing in weighty matters»
(Ibid.).
      Irony, on the one hand, brings the situation onto the level of
parody. In 1926 Bontempelli explains that

        it is a way to distance oneself from contingent reality, to set free
     from an excessive adherence to the surface of things. It paves the
     way for a superior form of lucidity, a legitimate transition from




                                                                                  15
Wissia Fiorucci, Self-censorship in Massimo Bontempelli’s Magical Realism



      the conception of the artwork as subject to that of the artwork as
      object. (1974: 15)

      Irony is thus a phase, a moment in the process of representing the
ordinary world as a miracle. As a tool of self-censorship, it both plays
with meanings and obscures them (the reader, as is the case with
metaphor, does not know the level of attainability). Here, it does so by
mocking Mariano's regulated life and also his manners – «but Mariano
Parigi, the man of action, took control of the situation» (Bontempelli
2004a: 28). Mariano, like his attorney, tries to label and reduce things to
a signifier of a knowable nature. The two of them «failed to see the
absurdity of using juridical means to resolve a situation that had
nothing in the least bit juridical about it» (Ibid.: 99). Accordingly,
Mariano is a metaphor for what Bontempelli calls «the bourgeois
spirit» (1974: 85), just as the two mothers represent imagination: «The
bourgeois spirit is when imagination […] surrenders to pure intellect
and abstract rules» (Ibid.: 85).
      The male grown-ups in the story all represent a different
institution, each failing to simply accept the double maternity and
attempting to seek a rational explanation for it: Mariano represents the
Family, Luciana's lawyer Massimiliano the Law, and the physician the
Asylum. According to Faris, magical realist texts «are often written in
the context of cultural crises, almost as if their magic is invoked when
recourse to other, rational, methods failed» (2004: 83). Marguerite
Alexander (qtd. in Bowers 2004: 51) calls the literally enactment of
metaphor in the narrative «the magic realization of metaphor». In
FDM, Bontempelli's conceptualisation of 'realismo magico' appears to
endorse this as the metaphor is literalised: the very process of magic
being evoked against the failure of (institutional) rationalisation
becomes an element of the plot. It is worth remembering here that,
through the many institutions it created, the Fascist State came to
influence every aspect of national life, including all its economic,
political and even spiritual forces. The emergence of magic in FDM
therefore has a similar function to that of the Latin American
'marvellous real', namely, that of signalling the dangers of an


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                                            Between, vol. V, n. 9 (Maggio/May 2015)



institutionalised conformism, which reduces man to a powerless
puppet.

         5.1 The Life and Death of a Wilful Mannequin
      VM presents another re-elaboration of a Greek myth, namely that
of Narcissus. Once more, Bontempelli explores the deadly power of an
authoritative maternal figure, and the effacement of male authority
(which is already implied in the title, in which Adria's husband does
not appear). This novel also contains a suicide; another topic frowned
upon by censorship. These sensitive issues are disguised within a
magical atmosphere through the irreducible element, Adria's quasi-
supernatural beauty, whose metaphorical meaning emerges within the
mythopoeic process.
      As an elaboration of the myth of Narcissus (Micali 2002: 102),
Adria's reflected image conveys her duality, which is also implied in
her name. This derives from Adriana, the female version of Janus, the
two-faced god (as with Mariano, allusions to a mythical world are
made through use of a specific name, Fresu 2008). In line with this
duality, two seemingly incompatible aspects define Adria's character:
beautiful but unreal like «a dark-haired angels among mortals»
(Bontempelli 2004b: 196), she is one of Bontempelli's automata. Yet she
belongs to the 'reality' side of the narrative – like Mariano, but more
ambiguously. She is a New Narcissus, and thus a character described
through a language rich in rhetoric devices, an epistemological magical
realism. 6 But Adria is also a human being. This is evidenced, for
instance, by her obsession with ageing. When at the age of thirty she
spots the first wrinkles on her face, she decides to leave for good, for

     6 Weisgerber (1987: 27 and 28) explains an alleged difference between
two main forms of magical realism: a "scholarly" domain of mainly European
writers (or "epistemological"), which creates a hypothetical universe, and the
folkloric, mythic form, principally established in Latin America (though
geographical distinctions have been broadened since Faris and Zamora's
1995 collection).



                                                                                17
Wissia Fiorucci, Self-censorship in Massimo Bontempelli’s Magical Realism



«nobody must be witness […] to my decline» (Bontempelli 2004b: 228).
For Adria, the prospect of revealing her aged face to the world is
unbearable, for this would show that she is, after all, only human. She
even burns alive to preserve her extraordinariness.
     In this light, it must be remembered that Bontempelli (1974: 189
and 191) introduced the novel in La gazzetta del popolo by explaining
how, while in FDM "magic" still derived from "the Above", with VM he
wanted to achieve, stylistically, that which he considered to be the
main task of 'realismo magico': in his own words, to create «mystery
and miracle [that] come from within». Thus the supernatural character
of Adria's beauty is a linguistic manipulation of reality. This is
achieved narratively through the observer's vision (e.g. all the people
that marvel at her, such as her children and husband), and
linguistically, through a language rich in metaphors and many
hyperbolic descriptions. On the level of meaning, once more, magic
(here, in epistemological form) holds the key to Bontempelli's beliefs.
     Micali compares her character to Dea from Nostra Dea:

        Like Dea, also Adria must be created day by day, […] but […]
      Adria is […] moved by a very strong will, thanks to which […] she
      herself provides to the daily making of her-self. (1996: 61)

     Dea chooses her garments, her Pirandellian mask, according to
her environment (Somigli 1994–1995: 35), whilst Adria's
"devitalisation" derives from her strong will. She chooses how to create
herself on a daily basis, thereby escaping all permanent categorisations
and social dictates, either as a mother or as a wife. Thus the theme of
the double here engenders a sense of possibility, whereby Adria can
imagine and create herself in limitless ways and thereby avoid
complying with any rigid visions of femininity. In this sense, Adria's
beauty – which she pursues to the detriment of social requirements – is
a metaphor for freedom that finds narrative representation in the
making of an indefinable female identity.
     Fascism offered women a sense of belonging to something larger
than their own lives. This was supported by a carefully studied official


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                                          Between, vol. V, n. 9 (Maggio/May 2015)



iconography that exalted the roles of wife and mother, who were said
to have a fundamental place in the life of the Nation. In this sense,
Adria also challenges the self-abnegating 'dark mother' celebrated by
the Regime. She is, paradoxically, self-abnegating but for her
individualism, not for her children, whose lives are «marked
negatively by their mother's existence» (Gubert 2000: 5). Furthermore,
after Adria has left the house, this becomes «an altar without a Cross –
desecrated remains» (Bontempelli 2004b: 241). «The husband,
housekeeper with no more purposes left» (Micali 1996: 3) dies shortly
afterwards. Her suitor Guarniero's obsession soon turns into homicidal
madness, and he ends up in an institution. As Micali (1996: 62)
explains, in these characters' contact with Adria, we are presented with
a clash between normal-traditional and abnormal-modern, where the
latter acts as a catalyst that amplifies the contradictions and
incongruities of the former, leading it to "explode". This is in line with
Živković's definition of the double, as it «traces […] that which has
been silenced, made invisible» (2000: 126). What Adria has exposed, or
made visible, is an extraordinary beauty that, by means of her
exceptional willpower, has enabled her to escape conformism. In so
doing, she has forced others to confront their own ordinariness:
«Bontempelli asserts […] the superiority of a scintillating idealism over
the conventionality and the dull monotony of life, […] understood as a
programmed routine that imprisons humanity» (Fontanella 2007: v).
With this character (and with Mariano), Bontempelli expressed his
growing disaffection with Fascist ideology and, more precisely, with
the «devitalisation of the human being» (Fresu 2008: 23) by that same
doctrine, which would soon invade and drain «all the layers of our
lives» (Bontempelli, qtd. in Baldacci 1978b: 949).
      To conclude, Bontempelli's strategies of self-censorship in his
'realismo magico' serve a dual function, namely, both to convey and to
disguise his critique of Fascism. While each literary choice has precise
implications and outcomes, on a macro-level the preference for anti-
mimetic writing can also be seen to challenge Fascist censorship, which
was mostly restricted to realistic representations. Somewhat ironically,
'realismo magico' was deemed inoffensive.


                                                                              19
Wissia Fiorucci, Self-censorship in Massimo Bontempelli’s Magical Realism



     Bontempelli's detachment from 'reality' occurs through the
mythopoeic power of literature and a number of other techniques
(such as authorial reticence and irony). These invite the reader to
engage in a deeper reading through the dissemination of clues in the
form of allusions to mythology, the recurrence of first names, etc.
Overall, keeping in mind Borges' stance, Bontempelli's self-censorship
was the mother of a narrative style, his 'realismo magico'. Theorised in
1927, with FDM (1929) and VM (1930), this later became a mature form
of writing through which he could express his dissatisfaction with the
Regime's increasingly censoring character.



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                             The author
Wissia Fiorucci

       Wissia Fiorucci is Language Coordinator in Italian at the
University of Kent (Canterbury, UK). Her research interests focus on
forms of anti-hegemonic or engaged literature, and literary practices,
from post-Unification to 21st Century Italy. Her publications include
"Disrupted Identities, Disrupted Realism: The Double in Anna Banti's
'Terrible Trilogy'" (May 2015); "Gender Activism in Contemporary
Italy. Goals, Means, and Perspectives " (Women and the Public Sphere in
Modern and Contemporary Italy, Troubador 2015, forthcoming); Italian
Magical Realism. Deledda, Bontempelli, Banti (Legenda 2016,
forthcoming).

      Email: w.fiorucci@kent.ac.uk



                             The paper
Date sent: 15/01/2015
Date accepted: 01/04/2015
Date published: 15/05/2015




                                                                            23
Wissia Fiorucci, Self-censorship in Massimo Bontempelli’s Magical Realism




                           How to quote this paper
Fiorucci, Wissia, "Self-censorship in Massimo Bontempelli's Magical
Realism", Censura e auto-censura, Eds. A. Bibbò, S. Ercolino, M. Lino,
Between, V.9 (2015), www.betweenjournal.it.




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