Broken Time, Fragmented Space: A Cultural Map of Postwar Italy

262 Pages·2002·13.239 MB·English

by  Anna Maria Torriglia

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A Cultural Map for Postwar Italy
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BROKEN TIME,
FRAGMENTED SPACE
A Cultural Map for
Postwar Italy
Anna Maria Tomglia
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2002
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN O-8O2O-36O4-X
Printed on acid-free paper
Toronto Italian Studies
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Torriglia, Anna Maria
Broken time, fragmented space : a cultural map for postwar Italy
(Toronto Italian studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN O-8O2O-36O4-X
1. Italy - Social life and customs - 1945- 2. Italy - Intellectual
life - 2Oth century. I. Title. II. Series.
DG451.T67 2OO2 945-O92 02001-903102-5
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to
its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and
the Ontario Arts Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for
its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through
the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
For the women of my family:
Maria Luisa, Giampaola, Cinzia, and Surur Eloisa
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CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xxi
1 Time Has Changed 3
The Uneasy Relationship with the Past in the Postwar Period 3
A Fatherless Generation: Pietro Germi's Gioventu perduta 15
A Hero Astray: Vasco Pratolini's Un eroe del nostro tempo 22
The Suicide of the Future: Rossellini's Germania anno zero 30
2 From Mother to Daughter 39
The Emergence of a Female Genealogy 39
The War as Emotional Setting: Anna Band's Artemisia 42
Female Solidarity: Alba de Cespedes's Dalla parte di lei 49
Cinema Rediscovers Women 58
'La' Magnani, or about Motherhood and Visconti's Bellissima 66
3 The Myth of America 79
The Antecedent 79
Revisionism at Work: Cesare Pavese and Giuseppe De Santis 86
The Rossellini-Bergman Affair: Stromboli terra di Dio 96
The Lost Train of Cultural Blending: De Sica's Stazione Termini 101
The Myth Is Over: Pavese's La luna e ifalo 109
viii Contents
4 The Country at Hand 117
The Journey 117
The South: Ernesto De Martino and Rocco Scotellaro 121
Naples: Ortese's // mare non bagna Napoli and Rossellini's
Viaggio in Italia 127
Toward a Postmodernist Paradigm: Antonioni's Le amiche 141
Conclusions 149
Notes 157
Bibliography 215
Index 231
PREFACE
For the critic must attempt to fully realize, and take responsibility for, the
unspoken, unrepresented pasts that haunt the historical present.
HOMIBHABHA
In May 2OOO the historian Angelo d'Orsi, who teaches History of Politi-
cal Thought at the University of Turin, published a book entitled La
cultura a Torino tra le due guerre.1 The volume represents the final
achievement of twenty years of study, and its findings are well docu-
mented and quite exhaustive. In a few instances they had been antici-
pated and discussed in previous articles by the same author. As the title
suggests, the book - based on archival research and on oral interviews
alike - analyses the cultural climate prevailing in Turin between the two
world wars, and it does so by being quite specific and detailed, and by
falling, at times, into a perhaps much too accurate microhistory. It con-
siders the public school system, and in particular the famous Liceo
Monti attended by a generation of anti-Fascists-to-be, the Publishing
House Einaudi, and some of the most influential intellectuals of the
times, including Monti, Gobetti, Ginzburg, and Bobbio. It also examines
Catholic groups, or the early Fascist ones, and the artistic life of the
city - theatres, exhibits, newspapers, and the like.
There is nothing strange up to here. It is the job of academics - as it
is painfully known - to publish books. The problem begins with the
debate that d'Orsi's book elicited among other scholars, politicians, and
journalists.2 Most of them wrote controversial, polemic reviews of the
volume, often labelling it as revisionista, a derogatory adjective used in