Dalla «Madonna dei filosofi» al «Castello di Udine». Due raccolte gaddiane a confronto

Abstract

This essay analyses Gadda’s first two collections of writings, La Madonna dei filosofi (1931) and Il castello di Udine (1934), both composed of texts previously edited in newspapers and magazines. Comparing two volumes published a few years apart, from the same publisher, and intended for the same, elitist, circle of readers it is possible to study the different modalities adopted by the author to approach a macro-textual structure. Whereas in Madonna dei filosofi the creation of an overall system is almost exclusively entrusted to the texts’ disposition, in Castello di Udine, numerous paratextual elements contribute to it. In particular, the rich apparatus of annotations here employed appears really interesting in the author’s approach to the genre of collection. Studi imperfetti, a sections of Madonna dei filosofi, were already equipped with a series of notes, then eliminated and still unpublished, whose aim was to clarify their structure. This effort to connect the single pieces in a homogeneous whole reaches though its climax in the notes of the second collection, attributed to the fictitious editor Feo Averrois.