Luciano Bianciardi
La vita agra

Luciano Bianciardi was, among the Italian writers and journalists of the last century, an atypical and an irregular figure; his being atypical and irregular brings him close, also in the misfortune of an early death followed by a rapid oblivion, to authors like Morselli and, above all, Mastronardi, whom we could associate with his ability to foresee the limits and distortions of the economic boom, predicting the downward and self-destructive trajectory of a country where progress and wealth were defined by GDP, rather than by the overall quality of life or by the level of spiritual and cultural growth of individuals compared to previous generations.

Bianciardi knew, in short, how to diagnose the ills of our country with the "frightening clairvoyance" that Gozzano attributed to Totò Merumeni, perhaps a little before Pasolini: and certainly without the humanistic faith of the Catholic Pasolini; who, after all, was killed for excess of trust in others, while Bianciardi, Mastronardi, and Morselli, each in different ways, committed suicide, either directly, or, like our subject, yielding to self-destruction, "autonti-meroùmenos", to close the circle opened with the reference to the decadent Piedmontese poet.

The reading of the phenomenon by Bianciardi was not allegorical, and, although ours was undoubtedly on the side of the weak (understood as workers, or in any case the exploited-low-paid, to Rino Gaetano), what seems to prevail in his writing is a nihilistic and hopeless diagnosis, as well as lacking literary embellishments: in this, Bianciardi's writing stands at a different level from that of a Calvino, who, in the contemporary "Marcovaldo", describes more or less the same events, capturing the issues of the same historical period, but with a different tone, in which a certain late Enlightenment residue (today we would say: radical chic) always leaves open to hope a small crack.

In his being positive, optimistic, albeit melancholic, Calvino remains a writer for everyone, as he leaves everyone the illusion of hope, and not by chance in the bookcases of Auchan in Monza I find him on display every Saturday, while I cannot say the same for Bianciardi.

Within these coordinates, the sense of "La vita agra" can therefore be understood, the main work of Bianciardi and his - irony of fate - greatest professional success; a work that launched the writer from Grosseto into the fleeting and transitory empyrean of great Italian writers in an era of striking transformations, such as the 1960s of the last century.

The book - I certainly wouldn't call it a novel, perhaps a semi-autobiographical reportage - lacks a linear plot, and thus requires the reader to make the effort to empathize with the narrating-I, a young literate who essentially works as a journalist and translator, always coming into collision with colleagues and superiors, due to his indomitable free spirit.

We thus follow the protagonist in his various attempts to make ends meet with different jobs, in his sentimental failures and his desire for women, which seems to be somewhat satisfied when a love is born, followed by cohabitation, with a young friend. All this in the urban context of the Milan outskirts of the late 1950s, already described - and here lies the author's great modernity - as a kind of "non-place" where the very distribution of spaces distances people, shatters the solidarity of rural families of the past and the enclosed space of the courtyard and the village, to the point that crossing an intersection to get cigarettes or the newspaper from across the street seems like crossing a river, a mountain pass, a border.

Also interesting are the descriptions of the varied, hurried, solitary humanity that Bianciardi encounters while moving by bus around the city, or the ironic reading of the life of the "secretaries" of the various offices or companies in central Milan, caught from their walk like little queens without a throne, capable of influencing their superiors with their moods, in some ways small champions of the dissimulation of a power that, however small, however seemingly secondary, can be enormous: almost as if the last cog could stop the entire engine of economic development by refusing to send a registered letter, or by typing the wrong address.

A savory rereading of Chaplin's "modern times", then, in which in the subtext you can also detect a subtle distrust towards the emancipation of women, at least where it cannot occur "inside" a predefined economic scheme, like that of the nascent Italian capitalism: if every liberation and equalization between sexes necessarily passes through the economic independence of women from men, it is precisely the path of emancipation - made up of work, sacrifices, and various efforts - that transforms the woman herself, bringing her closer, in the needs and mental schemes induced by the capitalist system, to the man from whom she tries, at this point in vain, to differentiate herself.

Bianciardi does not even spare the family, in its embryonic cell, given by the simple and for the time "scandalous" cohabitation more uxorio between him and his companion: the pages of the book describing the narrow little room they divide, the poverty and squalor they are inserted into always remain anguishing even for an "irresistible romantic" like me. And, speaking of Vasco, as I pointed out some time ago to the students in the reading course, the parallelism between Bianciardi's poetic vein and that of the Modenese songwriter is interesting: "La nostra relazione" seems taken verbatim from "La vita agra", where it sings: "we only live inside the same bed/a bit out of habit and perhaps a bit also out of spite".

This book seems to me, therefore, a highly recommended read for everyone, being careful not to confuse reading levels. Bianciardi is a phenomenal analyst, an excellent writer and, I would say, almost a perfect sociologist, but like all observers, the risk is to mistake one's own perspective as an objective and universal perspective; and at the same time to draw from what is observed a rule of behavior, relativistic and nihilistic In short, the risk is that of a transition from the "powerlessness of the ought to be" (understood as the impossibility of value choices) to the "ought to be of powerlessness" (no value choice should be made). As you know, this is not my point of view; but I believe it cannot be the point of view desirable to other men and women either, as following the trajectory of a bitter life leaves nothing but a sour taste in the mouth.

In this, reading Bianciardi can be seen primarily in its being a precise and unassailable diagnosis of a disease of our age, the seeds of which were planted in the post-war period and have reached full maturity in the last twenty years: once the disease is identified, it is then necessary to think of the cure, if one does not want to succumb to nothingness, trying to rediscover authentic values and models of human development different from those that have evidently failed, but also from those purely playful and intellectualistic of a Calvino, or from the reactionary ones of a Pasolini.

It is a difficult, costly path, certainly more arduous than those who spoon around as cursed intellectuals, borderliners, contesters, and time-wasters in general: but it seems to me the only viable path.

A serene hug to everyone and happy reading!