Michele Mari
Leggenda privata

Michele Mari's latest book is somewhat akin to his own The Confessions of Zeno. With the necessary adjustments, not insignificant, but in the end, Leggenda privata is a session of psychoanalysis, a deep internal and past excavation to reach the origins of Michele Mari's neuroses. The internal and familial exploration is so profound that, reflecting on the author's other books, it almost seems like we've never known anything about him and his life. And this is paradoxical since his life has always been a prominent feature of his books.

Here, Mari draws from a reservoir of biographical-literary material that is almost always painful, and in this, there is not much difference from his previous works; what changes is the level of invasiveness and pervasiveness of his narration. Perhaps the death of his mother freed him from a constraint and reticence that, in light of these pages, appear clear in his previous books. Here, by contrast, many aspects of the writer's childhood and youth are defined, tracing back to the social and geographical origins of his ancestors. There is an almost systematic reconstruction of the family tree, of the entire range of relationships that characterized his family's history. Of course, the relationships were never easy: for instance, his maternal and paternal grandparents never met.

But this openness was inevitable: with Roderick Duddle, Mari had achieved novelistic perfection, writing a pure novel, almost excluding himself as a character. His meta-literary vein found its perfect harbor in a novel that condensed all his favorite literary themes. To propose a new work of the highest profile, Mari then had to return to the biographical side, the other great theme. And he does so this time with extreme generosity, opening up dramatically. It becomes clear how little he had said until now about his father, his mother, his concrete life, especially as a child.

I did not mention Svevo's work by chance. This novel shares many traits with The Confessions of Zeno, but they are well camouflaged. Dr. S is transformed into the Academics, but the idea of someone compelling the author-character to write about themselves, showing their weaknesses, remains unchanged. The classic themes of psychoanalysis are present: eros, friend/enemy, relationship with the father, neuroses, tics, splits of the self, the double. However, Mari limits his story to the period from childhood to adolescence (because afterward, he managed to build his armor), moving ambiguously, by themes and oppositions, alternately accentuating the different subjects he struggles with. The structure of short chapters gives way, but only to a certain extent: it doesn't return to the free flow of thought of Rondini sul filo. The thematic pieces almost never last less than a page and are spaced apart by the insertion of ellipses or particular punctuation marks.

The narrated facts are particularly sensitive, delicate precisely because they lay bare Michele as a child and adolescent. In this sense, the book marks a fundamental turning point: in the others, Mari always portrayed himself as different from his peers, fully absorbed in literature and therefore not well-versed in real life, a stranger to society. But his literarily overwhelming ego had always been a strong protagonist, almost like a ruthless dictator shaping and dictating his life and its literary projection, always positioning himself from a position of strength. The further maturity achieved here is evident as Mari the author exposes Mari the character, delving into his most intimate weaknesses, sexual and genital. He is unafraid to show himself as a fragile child, targeted by his peers, full of tics, forced into many miseries, many renunciations. The armor of literature, used to redeem himself in life, is here almost entirely shed.

Almost thirty years after his literary debut, come the most intimate confessions yet made by the author. It's also clear that the ogre figure of the father is so only up to a point, that his mother Iela, much less harsh, was also weak and caused him unhappiness, especially as she aged. The dynamics of the Mari family are understood precisely, almost geometrically. The style alternates horror whims in the sections set in the present with a delicate accuracy in the passages narrating the past: the lexical richness almost never becomes obscurity, the syntax never convoluted. There is a desire for clear communication with the reader, to the extent that all historical, biographical, and cultural references are explained with footnotes.

The result is an increasingly documentary, precise, and indisputable literary style. A session of psychoanalysis in front of Academia, who are critics, literati, but also the public, the assessment of posterity: since the real Mari is the subject of the investigation, and not a fictional Zeno Cosini, the narrating Mari intends to bring elements in support of his arguments. Hence the surprising choice of notes, but also the presence of photographs within the book. As if to say: look here, it's not all literary invention.

The matter is particularly tied to some present meta-literary cues: the Academics do not want fiction, do not want literary storytelling drawn from life. They want real life, "bio-life". It would be naïve to believe that the narrative material is one hundred percent true, as Mari himself acknowledges choosing a period of his life particularly suited to literary reformulation and having a very selective memory. And so? Well, probably the facts are all true, but the musings the author constructs around them are deeply literary. Not false, but literary, amplified, hypertrophic compared to the real cues. And this is not new: think of the collection of poems, think of Rondini sul filo. The difference in this case lies in the quantity of objective, historically documentable elements present in Leggenda privata compared to Mari's other works. Let's not forget that almost all the people mentioned are now dead and so he has no fear of contrary reactions: his father is one of the few still alive, but Mari is not afraid of hurting him, indeed, as he recently said, it seems disrespectful to treat him with excessive care and benevolence. And it's no accident that Mari has always spoken of him in terms of an ogre because he knew he couldn't even scratch him.

Among the best moments are the parts where the parents are depicted through their language preferences; names have crucial, ontological importance, both in defining Michele's identity and in explaining the traits of the parents. Thus, his father Enzo hates diminutives, while his mother mistakenly distorts words as her condition worsens. In this work, the obsession with words is genuine, reminiscent of Rondini sul filo, but with greater clarity: some resurface as warnings, scarecrows, immediate calls, objective correlatives of certain feelings and fears: just read "culattina," the exemplary scareword here, to return each time in thought to all of Michelino's worries about sex and especially his father Enzo's expectations of it.

Alternatively, the parental profiles emerge through the analysis of drawings made by Michele at age 14 as a Christmas gift. The overall image of the mother is particularly pitiful, faded, deformed: the author's previous reticence on the subject is now more understandable. In the end, Mari is particularly proud of his father: although he was often an ogre, with his harshness, he made him the person and the writer he is.

Judging this book is difficult: Mari's writing does not need to be praised, but as for the content, the discourse is more complex. Perhaps it is not a novel to read if one doesn't know the others. It is a book for devoted readers who have already enjoyed everything else. Starting here would reveal the objective matter of Mari's life before savoring the infinite literary embroideries. In this sense, it is an extremely mature novel: it marks a new phase for the author, a different approach that can be understood and appreciated especially if one has read the previous works.