Consuming Texts: Creation and Self-effacement in Kafka and Palazzeschi

Comparative Literature, Fall 2004 by Cesaretti, Enrico

What these stunning and unforgettable images do-besides offering a potent starting point for my observations-is tempt the reader to elaborate further on other analogies that the plots (or anti-plots) of these works may immediately suggest: a shared fascination with the relationship between the one and the many or, from a closer perspective, with the (sadomasochistic) confrontation between a single, somehow "different," creature (the artist/performer as saltimbanque and booth-wonder) and an undistinguishable crowd.7 These lone disappearing characters share a subversive inclination for questioning the rules, challenging authority, and/or testing the limits of the current law(s). Either in the attempt to "burn the world" and establish a kind of enigmatic new "code"-the tasks, respectively, of the "incendiario" ("arsonist") and of Perelà-or in the similarly puzzling desire to break a fasting record, the accepted rules of society, the physical laws that define the cohesion and extension of the body, and, last but not least, the literary norms that, until then, had regulated a "normal" text (and "Boccanera" stands out in this regard) are simultaneously infringed.8

Quite noticeable from a merely topological perspective is the feet that the most semantically crucial space[s] of these texts (the arsonist's and the hunger artist's cages, Perelà's cell and Zarlino's madhouse in Il codice di Perelà, and Boccanera's public stage) all underline the characters' separation from a traditional social and cultural context. That these spaces may not only isolate but also protect these characters from the external world should not call into question the fact that we are already presented here with a first visual sign of the crisis mentioned at the beginning of this essay. We are facing, in other words, a series of contexts in which the subject is no longer able to appear "integrated" and which may subtly announce his future disappearance (which is also a sort of "disintegration") from the fictional world that incorporates him (Pieri 124).9

Against this background, we could finally argue that it may also be rewarding, to a wider discourse concerning the general characteristics of European Modernism, to focus on the nihilistic tendencies that variously characterize the works of these writers. In this sense, comparing Palazzeschi's "seriousness" and "profondità" ("depth"), masked behind his ode to lightheartedness "Lasciatemi divertire!", and Kafka's jouissance and irony, even more artfully hidden behind the disquieting scenarios of many of his stories, could be particularly productive. As perhaps it would be useful, along the same lines, to read the former's philosophy of "controdolore" ("counterpain") and "divertimento" ("enjoyment") vis avis the joie de vivre which, at least according to Deleuze's and Guattari's authoritative reading, represents the latter's true nature.10

Let me begin to address at least some of these complex issues with a few questions that will serve to bring us back into the texts. What, alter all, is the hunger artist doing through his fasting if not becoming more and more "incorporeal" and "light" in order to clear the way for a "higher," more 'joyous" form of artistic attraction in the shape of the panther?