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

Comparative Literature, Fall 2004 by Cesaretti, Enrico

Another poem by Palazzeschi, "L'ospite" (1910, also in L'incendiario), also connects the notion of self-preservation to the imagery of starving and burning. The poem asks the "Esseri umani alia terra aggrappati" ("Human beings clinging to the ground") what to do if the person they hate becomes a "guest" in their house, "come dentro una gabbia/dalla quale non potrà scappare" ("as if inside a cage/from which he will not be able to escape"), and the answer should now be eerily familiar: "Dargli fuoco!/Farlo morir di famel/Guardarlo ridendo poco a poco/languire, struggere, consumare" ("Burn himl/Starve him! Smile and look at him as he slowly/languishes, wastes away, consumes"). However, this solution is immediately set aside ("Ma ehe!" ["Forget it!"]) in order to privilege a situation that cultivates a "personified" hate which is said to "vive[re] di sé" ("live out of himself"): "Il tuo odio t'allungherà la mano,/gli porgerà il boccone./E all' ospite, il suo spirito di conservazione,/glie Io farà mangiare./E 1'ospite rimane./Scrive alla sua famiglia:/'Sto bene, sono felice'./E voi l'odiate" ("Your hate will make your hand stretch out,/it will hand him the morsel./And [as far as for] the guest, his spirit of preservation,/will make him eat it./And the guest remains./He writes to his family:/'I am fine, I am happy'./And you hate him").

Thus, the acts that are associated with maintaining this uncomfortable status quo-feeding the guest and, on his part, eating the food-these instinctive acts, which stem naturally out of everybody's "spirito di conservazione," are also acts that "feed the hate" and keep each party involved in this peculiar binary dynamic (the host and the guest) in an emotionally stalling and involutionary stage. From this perspective, then, the previously suggested and then discarded solution-the irrational, "contronatura" gesture of burning or starving the guest until he consumes himself-despite its sadistic cruelness, is a step necessary to "stir things up," to create a different and less static situation. Only by means of this kind of drastic Utopian scenario, marked once again by a "physical" vanishing, can one create favorable conditions for a radical existential transformation. In such an a-topos, in fact, not only would hate no longer rule (or, perhaps, it would just become a "productive" factor), but one would also be able to overcome the stifling emotional spiral generated by the instinct of self-preservation and, with a Nietzschian twist, ultimately manage to lighten whatever load keeps men heavily "aggrappati alia terra" ("clinging to the ground"), and thus achieve a "higher" and less material goal.

Perelà's situation in the novel named for him is strongly reminiscent of the one described in this often overlooked poem. The "man of smoke" himself is no more than a very particular kind of "guest" ("Il re à ordinato che Perelà sia ospitato con ogni onore . . . ," (Il codice 28; "The king ordered that Perelà be lodged with all the honors"), and one whose continuing presence eventually breeds a growing hate: "Tutti lo odiavano, e bisognava farlo odiare anche dal popolo . . . fu odiato, cosi odiato come nessuno fu mai" (157-58; "Everybody hated him, and it was necessary to make him hated also by the people . . . he was hated, hated more than anybody ever was"). Such a hate inspires the now familiar reaction of the crowd, which has decided to try and judge him: "il taglio della testa ... lo risotterrerei. . . gli preparerei il rogo ... Io spoglierei sulla pubblica piazza e lo frusterei... Io metterei in un gabbione e Io farei vedere per curiosità" (175-81; "cut his head ... I would bury him again ... I would prepare the stake ... I would strip him in the public square and whip him ... I would put him in a big cage and I would show him for curiosity"). Perelà's reflections following the sacrifices of Alloro and the Marchesa Oliva di Bellonda are even more revealing: "Ma allora essi ànno ragione di odiarmi, gli altri, se amarmi vuol dire soccombere, ànno ragione, obbediscono al loro istinto di conservazione" (167; "But then they are right in hating me, the others, if loving me means to succumb, they are right, they obey their instinct of preservation"). In a typical, paradoxical reversal of perspective ("to love means to die, so to hate is the only way to live"), they reaffirm the connection between hate and self-preservation that is established in the poem "L'ospite."