Generalidades de Puntonet S.A

Whereas Masino‘s interpretation of domestic victimisation concerns ordinary children, Ortese deals with the same theme focusing mainly, even though not always, on extraordinary ones. Furthermore, while in Periferia Masino represents different forms of victimisation (physical and psychological), all the examples of domestic victimisation in Ortese concern a particular type of psychological victimisation, which consists in a form of rejection or lack of love from a parental figure. Many are the child characters who suffer because of the distancing, the indifference or complete rejection on the part of a parental figure. This is the theme, as the title suggests, of the short story ‗Indifferenza della madre‘,151

where ordinary child Mario suffers deeply from the progressive weakening of his tie to his mother as he grows older, interpreting it as a sort of betrayal. Desperately trying to attract her attention and love, he pretends to be dead. It is particularly interesting to see how Ortese describes the loosening of the mother-child bond:

Ma a poco a poco, e cioè quando il bambino, trascorsi i primissimi

anni, comincia a perdere certa aureola di animalità che lo circondava

dai capelli leggeri come piuma ai piedi morbidi come fiori; e i suoi

150 _{See Masino, Periferia, p. 92: ‗Mamma urlava sempre, diceva: ―Io le ammazzo queste creature}

piuttosto che vederle soffrire così‖. Io ho provato a dire che non soffrivo per non farla piangere ma il sangue mi veniva in bocca e lei continuava a gridare: ―Sì, le ammazzo, questa e quella che porto. Abbiamo fame! Ho fame! Ho fame! Assassino!‖ E si è messa a battere con la pancia contro lo spigolo del letto‘.

55 sguardi, fino allora ridenti e incerti, acquistano una interiorità,

manifestano un pensiero e annunciano quasi la capacità di un distacco

da coloro che lo hanno generato; e, in altre parole, uno sconosciuto

―io‖ compare in quella carne con l‘intento preciso di mutarla, e correggerne via via il disegno, e finalmente (cosa che avverrà nel

tempo) distruggerla: allora quella prima trionfante e come inesauribile

tenerezza dei genitori si arresta, disorientata, e, senza che essi neppure

se ne avvedano, comincia a perdere rapidamente tutta la sua forza.

(L‟Infanta sepolta, pp. 13-14)

Three relevant aspects should be pinpointed in this quotation. Firstly, the association between children and animals which, as I will explain in more detail below, is almost constant in Ortese‘s production. At times the association between children and animals is explicit, as in the case of metamorphic children and animals. At others, it is more implicitly suggested by similes or words, which, despite being normally used for animals, are used to describe children or vice versa. In the passage quoted above, the association between Mario as a baby and an animal is created by the expressions ‗certa aureola di animalità‘ and by similes such as, ‗capelli leggeri come piuma‘. Secondly, it is important to note that the parents‘ detachment from the child occurs precisely when the child, after losing his animal, pure, innocent nature, slowly becomes a man with the emergence of an ego of his own, ‗uno sconosciuto ―io‖‘. It is this transition from simple animality (for Ortese the purest, noblest of conditions) to becoming a member of mankind (for Ortese a species of assassins, thieves and violent dictators) that causes the distancing of the parents. They still look after the child, but with the care and attention they give to the many other administrative problems of their daily lives. This way Ortese apparently criticises human relations which, instead of being ruled by true feelings, seem to be controlled by business and

56 economics to the detriment of younger, more sensitive creatures like Mario. Thirdly, it is important to mention that Mario is called by his name only once and he is usually referred to as bambino or figlio, which goes to represent the universality of his experience.

‗Che?...Che cosa?‘152

is another short story where Ortese depicts indifferent parents. These are Tommaso and Elisabetta Gomez, two immature, childish parents, wrapped up in their own, separate and distant world. The Gomez children do not suffer for their parents‘ lack of attention, but rather feel:

Non severità, ma un‘indulgenza pensosa, un‘umanità quasi conscia

delle supreme bizzarrie e debolezze della vita e dei suoi personaggi,

era il sentimento più schietto che essi provavano per quelle due

innocenti creature, che Dio aveva loro destinato come maestri e guide.

(L‟infanta sepolta, p. 103)

In this case, as I will show for other characters, children are older than their years while the parents are affected by a sort of Peter Pan syndrome which does not enable them to fulfill their parental role and assume their responsibilities. Children‘s ‗indulgenza‘ towards their parents is the reversal of what normally happens in life, where parents show this feeling towards their children. They also possess ‗un‘umanità quasi conscia delle supreme bizzarrie e debolezze della vita‘ just like experienced grown-ups.

The short story ‗Folletto a Genova‘153

also presents a case of rejection from a parental figure and this time the victim is an extraordinary child, Stellino or Folletto, a goblin. Folletto, a creature of a hundred and twelve, ‗di razza bambina‘,154 lives with Ruperta and her mentally impaired brother Lalio. After a failed marriage,

152 _{Ortese, L‟infanta sepolta, pp. 98-106.}

153 _{Ortese, In sonno e in veglia, pp. 57-72.}

57 Ruperta has turned into a cold-hearted, bad-tempered woman, who has completely closed her heart to her once beloved Folletto. Instead, despite the abuse and humiliations he is subjected to, he still adores her as a mother. Ruperta has, in fact, lost the ‗puerilità della bambina (che dentro di sé era sempre stata)‘155 and this makes it impossible for her to accept and cherish the otherness of the Folletto. Stellino, who is critically ill, implores her love, like Mario, but nothing brings Ruperta back to him and eventually he dies.

A similar sense of rejection is that experienced by other Ortesian extraordinary children and animals: Estrellita in L‟Iguana and the puma Alonso in Alonso e i visionari.156 Up to two years before Daddo‘s arrival at Ocaña, the Iguana used to be happy, loved, cherished and spoilt by Ilario, her ‗babbo dei babbi‘,157

who had raised her from her animal condition almost to that of a girl. However, one day, her relationship with her father changed when the marquis suddenly rejected her animal nature, seeing it as vile and identifying it with the emblem of Evil. The Iguana, like Mario and the Folletto, tries unsuccessfully to regain the father‘s love to the point of faking or exaggerating injuries and illnesses.

Finally, another victim of rejection on the part of his master, is the puma Alonso. Just like Mario, the Folletto and Estrellita, Alonso is at first loved by his second master Julio, an arrogant, violent, selfish, and strong-minded boy, the emblem of the modern superuomo. Afterwards, however, Julio starts behaving

155 _{Ortese, In sonno e in veglia, p. 65.}

156 _{In Il cardillo addolorato different cases of domestic victimisation see two extraordinary children as}

victims. The former, Sasà, experiences her mother‘s lack of care and affection, which does not originate, however, from a sudden rejection. Elmina, in fact, is more of a mother to the extraordinary metamorphic child Hieronymus than to her own daughter. In a way, Elmina seems to devote her love to the weaker of the two, to the one rejected from society, and it is not clear whether Sasà really suffers from it, since her image constantly shifts from that of an innocent girl to that of a violent, scheming social climber. The second case regards Hieronymus bullied both by Geronte and Sasà, who makes him her favourite target. Hieronymus is targeted by another child, Gerontino Watteau a spoilt, insensitive, upper-class boy who abuses metamorphical Hieronymus verbally.

58 ambiguously, alternating gestures of affection with evil tricks up to the ultimate unjustified rejection. The animal who acts as a father figure to Julio, is rejected on the basis of his animal Otherness:

―Chi sei? Cosa vuoi? Vattene!‖ egli grida guardando me, ma il piede ancora levato contro l‘esile corpicino di Alonso che, a quanto capisco, si era alzato, per così dire, per andargli incontro, ripetendo subito

dopo: ―Vattene! Tu puzzi!‖.

Il misero piccino (ciò che posso vedere e capire, in un sentimento

atterrito e finalmente sincero) è rotolato a terra nello stesso attimo,

davanti a noi. Respira sì orribilmente, ma è silenzioso ora, e un minuto

dopo distende la testina sul pavimento, guardando non più Julio, certo,

ma il suo vecchio cielo, e muore. (Alonso e i visionari,p. 135)

The scene above is particularly harsh as the animal‘s loyalty to his master is returned by Julio with a kick and with disgust for his animal nature ‗Tu puzzi!‘. The rejection of Alonso coincides with his death and it is quite symbolic that the animal should eventually give up his unrequited love for Julio and look at the sky as if hoping to find peace and rest in death.

The reason why all of these characters undergo a sudden rejection rests in the author‘s views on the relationship mankind has with the natural world and the extraordinary. As I mentioned above, Ortese has a negative conception of man as a violent, aggressive, and dominant being convinced he is entitled to rule all creatures despotically by right of superiority. According to Ortese, this presumed superiority is grounded, on the one hand, in intelligence and, on the other hand, from a religious perspective, in the belief of having a soul. It is important to understand what Ortese means by ‗intelligence‘ and how she differentiates it from ‗reason‘. The two concepts are different and opposed, the latter being the knowledge and observance of the

59 ‗leggi – non visibili ma riconoscibili – che rendono possible la vita‘,158 which is common to all living beings. Intelligence, instead, is a human prerogative the aim of which is to assault and break the laws of life followed by nature in order to conquer and dominate everything.159 Men have been shown to be driven by intelligence and not by reason from the time that Adam and Eve chose to disobey God in the Garden of Eden, to deprive the tree of its fruit and to reject obedience to the natural laws of life in favour of evil.160 The triumph of intelligence is identified by Ortese with the French Revolution and the Enlightenment,161 when intelligence, wrongly named reason, began its fatal dictatorship. Since the Enlightenment, in the name of rationality, society has followed the rules of intelligence to pursue objectives at odds with the laws of life, abusing the natural world and closing the doors to the existence of a reality beyond the one perceived with the senses. The second motif for the presumed superiority of mankind finds its roots in religious faiths that consecrate man as the only being endowed with an immortal soul in contrast to the natural world. The ‗popoli detti Senza Anima‘162 are regarded, in fact, as symbols of Evil ‗E di che simbolo, se non del Male, detestato, sembra, da quel buon cristiano, o pagano, o di altre fedi, che è – non si può tacerlo – l‘Erede della Creazione, il Primogenito, il figlio di Adamo?‘.163

Estrellita, for example, from the perspective of the Church, is seen as the Devil; a bishop is called to exorcise the house where she lives to allow

158 _{Ortese, Corpo celeste, p. 138.}

159

See Ortese, Corpo celeste, pp. 138-139: ‗Scopo della intelligenza, oggi, è l‘assalto – non più solo

discussione, non più critica e dialettica –, ma vero e proprio assalto alla Legge. Nella mira sono proprio l‘accerchiamento e il rovesciamento della Legge. È l‘assedio di una capitale, che determinerà, con la caduta di un regime odiato, la destituzione del Principe. L‘intelligenza si pone ormai

chiaramente, in questo tempo di abbaglianti trionfi, non più come rivale della ragione, ma come suo

successore e erede. È l‘erede‘.

160 _{See Ortese, Corpo celeste, p. 139: ‗L‘albero del bene e del male, e l‘albero della vita sono stati le}

prime mire della intelligenza. Al diavolo l‘Eden, sembra aver detto la celebre Coppia: sapere e dominare è tutto‘.

161 _{See Chapter 4.}

162 _{Ortese, In sonno e in veglia, p. 158.}

60 the Hopins to move in. Rejection by a parental figure thus becomes a metaphor of mankind‘s rejection of nature and, more widely, of the Other, once loved and cherished and then abused in the name of a rational, anthropocentric culture based on the principle of the superiority of man. As I have already pointed out when talking about the horse, and as other scholars have also highlighted,164 Ortese‘s writings are literature of denunciation and a call for change in the hope of winning support from other intellectuals. Ortese advocates a denial of the hubris of rationality165 to restore a peaceful order in which men, nature, women and the extraordinary Other coexist.