16 AND 18 OCTOBER 1943 IN ELSA MORANTE’S HISTORY: A NOVEL: AN INFERNAL TRAGIC CRESCENDO OF P/ PASSION

Abstract

Morante’s novel La Storia (1974) is probably not a “true” historical work; however, it is evident that the writer intended to reflect on the tragic lives of innocent people during Europe’s agony in the Second World War. The author arrives at conclusions similar to those of non-official historiography, because, through the memory of the victims and the history of the defeated, she attempts to act upon her present and upon the possible future. In this sense, the study of traumatic devastation in Morante’s third novel highlights the narration of the Jewish massacre and their deportation to the Lager, mainly presented in section seven of the chapter “1943”, one of the most tragic and mournful parts of the work. Consequently, the main aim of this article is the analysis of the tragic and emotional construction of this narrative section, dedicated to the deportation of the Roman Jews on 16 and 18 October 1943. This section consists of only eight pages and is subdivided into ten micro-sequences. The empathetic effect of the text is based on the intensive repetitio of words belonging to the semantic field of vocal acoustics; throughout the ten thematic micro-sequences, a clear tragic and tonal crescendo develops, referring to Jewish suffering. The obsessive repetition of lexemes such as voices, screams, laments, groans, choirs, sustained by the narrative diachrony of the entire section, appears like a lament or an oratorio of passion and death. The crescendo of voices tragically reveals the Jews’ torment and pain on their way to the extermination camps, in clear opposition to the silence of Rome’s Tiburtina railway station and to the indifference of the workers present there. The reflection on the banality of evil is thus introduced in La Storia. Elsa Morante activates the emotions of her readers through a rhetorical strategy that transcends mere textual elaboration. The author creates an overwhelming musical rhythm close to the oratorio form, and more specifically to J. S. Bach’s St Matthew Passion. The music cross La Storia: songs, lullabies, folk themes fill the life of the main characters. In this sense it is important the reference to the bird scherzi along the chapters 1943 and 1947, happy moments for Useppe, when he dialogues with the animals, inside the forest clearing. However in the analised examples the approach to the musical resonances of the text are of diverse caracter. If the Mozart’s traces are present in the wood scenes, in the deportation of the jews in the Tiburtina Railway Station seems to resonate in a indirect way the tragic modulations of Bach oratory.