Il Teatro del Rimorso Intorno a una lettera di Gadda a Bollati sull’etica “tragica” di Alessandro Manzoni

Abstract

The aim of my article is to analyze a letter, hitherto ignored by critics, from Carlo Emilio Gadda to Giulio Bollati, editorial manager at Einaudi. He was an original scholar of nineteenth-century Italian literature and, in particular, the author of a crucial edition of Manzoni’s Tragedie. The letter focuses on Gadda’s reading of the figure of Alessandro Manzoni, developed, previously, both in two essays and in his most famous novel, the Cognizione del dolore, published by Einaudi. It is intended to show how Bollati, in presenting Manzoni’s Tragedie, was very aware of Gadda’s work on Manzoni: the ending of the Cognizione del dolore, still unpublished, is used and concealed by Bollati at the conclusion of his introduction. The essay’s ultimate aim, therefore, will be to shed light on the distance that separates, even in the eyes of a rigorous philologist such as Bollati, the twentieth-century “Manzoni”, mediated by Gadda, and the “real” Manzoni.