L'industria nella letteratura italiana contemporanea by Michele Leone

Review by: Zolita L. Vella

Italica, Vol. 56, No. 2, '900 (Summer, 1979), pp. 247-248
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Italian
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REVIEWS 247
Michele Leone:
L'industria
nella
letteratura italiana
contempo-
ranea.
Saratoga,
California. Anma
Libri,
1976.
Pp.
156.
The
relationship
between literature and
industry,
much discussed in
Italy during
the late 1950s and
through
the
1960s,
is the central issue of
this second volume in the
Stanford
French and Italian Studies collection.
There are different schools of
thought
as to what industrial literature is or
should be.
However,
as the title of his work
indicates,
Professor Leone avoids
showing partisanship.
He
approaches
the industrial novel from
many angles
-
philosophically through
El6mire
Zolla's
Eclissi
dell'intellettuale (1959):
culturally, structurally,
and
linguistically through
Elio
Vittorini's
article in
Menabb 4
(1961); ideologically
and
sociologically through
Gianni Scalia's
essay
in the same Menab#o
issue: historically through
a discussion of the
effects of industrialization. He continues his examination of the
genre
chrono-
logically through
18mile Zola's Germinal
(1885)
and Carlo Bernari's Tre
operai
(1934); politically through
an
exposition
of the Marxian
interpretation
of
alienation and class
struggle; psychologically through
a
presentation
of char-
qcters'
relationships
and
motivations,
and the
stereotyping
of women;
econom-
ically through
a discourse on the
profit
motive,
the
publishing boom.,
consum-
erism,
and
objectification; thematically through
a treatment of various
aspects
of
technologically
dominated
life; ecologically through
the contrast of
city-
country, polluted-pure;
and
finally
as
reportage
by
intellectuals who
played
an
active
part
in the industrial
processes.
The
spectrum
of the work is immense
-
the five
principal
sections
in-
clude
"
L'industria come contenuto
narrativo,"
"
Esperimenti
di
societh
in tre
romanzi
industriali,"
"
L'alienazione come modus vivendi,"
" Il romanzo in-
dustriale tra documento e
impegno,"
"
L'industria come anti-umanesimo."
Although
Professor Leone has dealt with his numerous
topics exhaustively,
he has failed to unite them
successfully.
In
fact,
in his
conclusion/apologia,
he
begins yet
another discussion
- the
bourgeois origin
of most industrial
novelists and his reasons for
excluding proletarian novelists
from his
study.
He concludes that his choice was based on
finding
those works that best il-
lustrate man's condition in the
working
world rather than
emphasize
his role
as a worker.
Instead of
dealing exclusively
with the
contemporary
Italian industrial
novel,
as the title
suggests,
this is a
comparative study including
references to
works
by Verga, Gorky,
Vittorini, Kafka, Pirandello, Marx,
with asides about
works
by
Dante, Boccaccio, Morante, Sereni, Mumford, Tilgher,
Marcuse.
Baudelaire, Lawrence, Huxley,
and Svevo.
Unfortunately,
the wealth of material
weakens the
unity
and focus of the
study, making
it
appear fragmented
and
tangential.
One
aspect
of Professor Leone's work that is
particularly confusing
is
his
contradictory presentation
of the
factory
as it relates to worker alienation.
In the Introduction, Professor Leone discusses the deleterious effects of the
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248 REVIEWS
factory
on the worker:
"
L'ambiente
industriale, per quanto negli
ultimi anni
fatto
oggetto
di tutto un
ripensamento
in termini
socio-psicologici,
rimane
non di meno un
luogo
dove
all'operaio
viene
quotidianamente
usato violenza.
Violenza che consiste nella brutale riduzione di
quella mobilitai (sia
fisica che
spirituale)
... e nella sua strumentalizzazione in un
processo economico-produt-
tivistico
che,
sotto un
profilo
storico-umanitario
pii ampio,
non
puo
offrire
una soluzione duratura ai
pii
veri
problemi
che sono alla base del
travaglio
umano." In a
subsequent, heavily
footnoted section entitled
"
L'alienazione mar-
xista nella storia e nella letteratura
otto-novecentesca,"
the writer declares that
the
factory
worker does not
necessarily
become more alienated
by working
conditions than other workers if one differentiates between Marxist alienation
and existential alienation " La cosiddetta alienazione
dell'operaio
rimane
essenzialmente una considerazione di carattere
accademico, e
pertanto
esi-
stente assai meno nella vera condizione industriale
quanto
nella mente del-
l'intellettuale che ama
immaginare
alienato
l'operaio...
Nel senso metafisico
e
probabile
che
l'operaio
sia meno alienato di
tutti,
proprio
in
virtih
degli
ostacoli e delle avversita di cui e irto il suo arduo cammino."
After
reading
both
sections,
one is uncertain about Professor Leone's own
ideological
stance on the
subject. Ironically,
his
presentation
and
analysis
suffer from the same
malady
that he ascribes to
contemporary society (" Piui
che di
commissione,
il
peccato piii tipico
dell'uomo moderno rimane
pur
sem-
pre
uno di omissione
")
-
it offers no definite
position
nor does it draw
any
individual conclusions.
Among
the writers of industrial
novels,
Professor Leone devotes
particular
attention to Ottiero
Ottieri,
Carlo
Bernari,
Silvio
Micheli,
Giovanni
Arpino,
Luciano
Bianciardi,
Giancarlo
Buzzi,
Libero
Bigiaretti,
Italo
Calvino,
Lucio
Mastronardi,
Paolo
Volponi,
Goffredo Parise. The novels that he chooses to
summarize and
analyze
and the writers whom he includes
parallel closely
Giuliano Manacorda's selection in the
"
Letteratura e industria
"
chapter
of
his Storia della letteratura italiana
contemporanea (1945-1960) (1967).
Following
Manacorda's
chapter,
Zolla's seminal
Eclissi,
Gian Franco
Veni's article,
"
Per una storia dell'industria come contenuto narrativoe
"
(Le
ragioni narrative,
March
1960),
and his
encyclopedic
historical
work,
Lettera-
tura e
capitalismo
in Italia dal '700 ad
oggi (1963),
and
Claudio
Toscani's
history
of criticism of the industrial
novel,
"
Vie e teorie della 'Narrativa
d'industria'
"
(Forum Italicum,
December
1972),
Professor Leone's new
study
is a considerable addition to the criticism available on the
topic.
The excellent
bibliography
is not
only helpful
to the reader but attests to Professor Leone's
extensive
knowledge
of his field. His careful examination and
exposition
of
writers and works
may
be considered an
historical,
thematic
anthology
of
criticism of the industrial novelists and
novels,
and as such
very
useful to
those who
study
nineteenth- and
twentieth-century
Italian literature.
Fordham
University
at Lincoln Center
ZOLITA L. VELLA
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