Luigi Musolino
Un buio diverso

The new anthology by Luigi Musolino Un buio diverso confirms the constant growth of this writer who has long been considered one of the most prominent names in the Italian weird scene. His Nere colline del supplizio, winner of the Premio Hypnos, still haunts my nightmares. Over time Musolino has refined his style so much that he considers part of his past production, like the volumes of Oscure regioni, to be immature. In Un buio diverso he has probably achieved full stylistic maturity with the use of a sophisticated vocabulary that alternates with very direct and colloquial expressions. The risk could have been a loss of immediacy, but I must say that this does not happen. Some of the stories here are genuinely frightening and, in my opinion, should be considered small classics worthy of the best Clive Barker.

There is a sense, during the reading, that the “different darkness” evoked by the title comes from within our mind and its repressed nightmares, ready to resurface in a disturbing manner (and in this, I find the lesson of Poe). As Nicola Lombardi aptly writes in the introduction, “These pages, infested by every sort of darkness, teem with the wildest nightmares, and the reader cannot help but be captivated, ecstatic and chilled, sliding from one plane of reality to another, fragmented.”

The first story Come cani (which has undergone several revisions over time) is a true punch to the stomach that certainly leaves no reader indifferent. The story of Danilo Marosso is told, a boy (considered different and retarded by his community) tormented by a controlling father who forces him to work in the fields, burning the books he keeps hidden under the bed, his only means to escape his horrible reality. Danilo will find redemption from his miserable existence in poetry. But when his father hides and tears the letter in which he is declared the winner of a poetry contest, tragedy finally unfolds. It is a rural drama (a dimension in which the author is comfortable) that should be read in schools.

In other cases, evil nests in the work environment, as in La copia, an interesting variation on the Doppelgänger theme. Here shines a certain discontent (which I share) for certain dynamics existing in office work environments characterized by ongoing daily pettiness. The protagonist’s desire for revenge will materialize in the emergence, from his unconscious, of his darkest and most destructive impulses. Lago senza domani (written in collaboration with Gian Marco Mollar) is instead a visionary and psychedelic story where two friends find themselves in a remote mountain location to fish in a lake from where (with the help of LSD) a trilobite even reemerges (fruit of a distorted “Jungian” collective unconscious?).

La foresta, i bivi (along with Come cani) is undoubtedly another small masterpiece of this collection. It all begins with a trip to Romania by a struggling couple. The destination is chosen by the wife who wants to take advantage of the advantageous prices of Eastern European clinics to fix her teeth. But the trip into a forest where “Evil stagnates and proliferates” will make the experience a true nightmare for the two unfortunate ones. A story describing how zones of reality exist, a sort of cartography of Hell, that we do not know and reflect upon our disturbed psyche. The ending is something truly disturbing and chilling.

The story that gives the volume its title, Un buio diverso, is truly disturbing. Here a couple faces the drama of their young daughter’s disappearance. After the initial shock and ensuing crisis, the mother (a painter who meanwhile covers her studio with paintings depicting delirious nightmares) accidentally discovers a possible trace of the girl in a sort of bottomless black hole beneath a manhole in the basement. The rest of the story is a continuous scrutinization by the two into “Nietzschean” abysses. From the darkness below emerges the existence of a supernatural reality and an absolute evil, although it could all be a symbol of their shattered unconscious.

Among the other stories (all nonetheless of a good level), I highlight La rocca è casa loro, a tale that makes one want to stay away from certain abandoned mountain villages (and where Musolino proves to be a master in evoking ancient “folk” legends), and Il corpo. The latter deviates from his canon as it is, in every aspect, science fiction. However, the story has an apocalyptic and quasi-religious meaning, even if it seems perhaps a “one-off” in his work.

Thanks to Luigi Musolino for peering into the abyss, revealing the dark outlines of the infernal reality that lurks within ourselves. A mention also goes to the stunning illustrations by David Fragale.