Cristina Campo, the Aristocrat of Modern Literature: OnAutobiographical Instance in Her Literary Work

　　In the present article, the attention is focused on autorepresentational image that can be derived from CristinaCampo’s literary language, while analyzing at the same time its genesis, given finalities and reception. It is whatcan be deduced in filigrain from essayistic-critical writings in The Unforgivable Ones (Gli imperdonabili) andUnder a False Name (Sotto falso nome), as well as from collections of letters and illuminating lyrical motifs, basedon which it will be demonstrated that analogous themes are associated to various literary genres on grounds ofprinciple of inter-genre contamination. By illustrating the founding postulates of autopoetic reflections, theintention is to ulteriorly determine their collocation within the frame of cultural history. To veiled autobiographismcontributes pseudonymical practice, as well as subsequent stylistic devices, through which modernistic aspects arehighlighted. The autobiographical narration in The Golden Walnut (La noce d’oro), short story-fairy tale ofaesthetic timbre frequently infused with figural tropism, comprises a literary mixture of rievocation andmythography, relying on anthropological premises that are speculatively articulated.

　　Keywords: Cristina Campo, modernity, Italian and comparative literature, fairy tale studies, autobiographism

　　Introduction: Premises of Campo’s Autobiographism

　　In the overall constellation of Cristina Campo’s literary writings (nom de plume of anagraphically namedItalian contemporary woman writer Vittoria Guerrini, 1923-1977), her constant and proverbial pseudonymicalcamouflages make elusive biographical traces that are dispersed a little everywhere in her body of work. It iswhat is suggested with the chosen title of Campo’s book-compendium Under a False Name (Sotto falso nome,1998a), cardinal edition aside from prose volume The Unforgivable Ones (Gli imperdonabili, 1987/1999),1

　　andbook of verse The Tiger Absence (La Tigre Assenza, 1991/1997),2

　　whose publication was auspicated by theothers, belonging to the circle of friends and scholars dedicated to the revalorization of Campo’s literary andintellectual oeuvre (Farnetti & Fozzer, 1998； Spina, 1993/2002； Pieracci Harwell, 2005； De Stefano, 2002). Itshould be initially noted that Campo’s work is characterized by a propensity toward aristocratic spirit, asdefined by M. Zambrano,3

　　that does not presuppose however voluntary isolation, nor can it be said that herliterary art gets established aside from the impulses of a society. The author does not close herself in front of CRISTINA CAMPO, THE ARISTOCRAT OF MODERN LITERATURE 679her listeners, but on the contrary engages in storytelling of her own and others’ experiences, and in such a waymanages to capture most dazzling and unexpected aspects of reality.

　　The Golden Walnut: Memorialistic and Mythographical

　　Regarded as among the most precious autobiographical occasions literarized, and narrated in prose form,The Golden Walnut (La noce d’oro) is rather short text, but in many ways of fundamental importance, radiatingits influence in regard to the rest of her production.4

　　An undoubtable centrality associated with this capillary

　　literary essay was perceived by the author herself and reaffirmed on multiple occasions, although its symbolicmeanings are very densely interwoven. In such regard, preliminary observation in relation to its structure is thatthis text comprises essayistic component concerning reality in its multifaceted aspects (examplarily, pertainingto socio-cultural and anthropological domain), and inventive-imaginative component, resulting in anessay-short story, accordingly to an explicit author’s statement. This autodefinition, illuminating for a posteriorinterpretation, contains important reading indication, not deprived of its complexity, suggesting in whichperspective one can situate this text, thus revealing its basic structure and essential compositional premises. It istherefore significant that it suggests a technique of homogenization and mediation between two types oflanguage made affinitive, the one of a cultural essay grounded in the reflections typical of the epoch and theother concerning autobiographical short story.

　　Wanting to pursue traces preannounced by Campo herself, and to add in such a way new substantial piecesto mosaic regarding her autorepresentational image that is being reconstructed in the present article, one canconsult an excerpt from correspondence with Margherita Pieracci Harwell, written in spring 1963, in which isalso exemplified main thematic motif inscribed in the text. It should be stated preliminarily that Campo is stillreferring to this text as having another Latin title (Viaticum peregrinationis), with which it is mentioned in thatepoch. This title gets successively transferred in the first epigraph opening the story, originally attributed toCicero, in rather amplified version: Ave, viaticum meae peregrinationis. According to Campo’s epistolary notein Letters to Mita (Lettere a Mita, 1999): “I have also written Viaticum peregrinationis […] an essay-shortstory about the presence of fairy tale in the life of seven-year-old child”.5

　　Her statement also re-echoes Proust’s

　　structural formulation about his In Search of Lost Time (à la recherche du temps perdu) as a novel-essay, froma compositional standpoint, which was among Campo’s readings. It is parallel to another assertion regardingthis Campo’s prose text, expressed again by the author herself in the correspondence exchanged with PieroPòlito, from the volume titled Infinity in Finity (L‘infinito nel finito), on the 26th of March 1963, from which itcan also be discerned that at the certain point she needed to interrupt the elaboration of this text, which shecontinued at a later time (Campo, 1989/1998, 1998b, 2007； Campo & Spina, 2007).6

　　In the present explorational study of The Golden Walnut, based on the last mentioned epistolary passage,the attention should be given now to the circumstances which have occasioned it. Initial sketches of The GoldenWalnut go back to earlier period, to 1951 (although Campo’s earliest literary works can be further antedated tothe period 1943-1944). She then continues to re-elaborate The Golden Walnut, adding annotations andcorrections until 1969, when she prepares a revised conclusive version which however she does not give to thepress and the original is still missing. The only version authentically published is thus the one in Spanish,appearing on the pages of Argentine journal Sur in 1970.7

　　For the purpose of translation, not done by theauthor herself, she seeked the intervention of writer Héctor Murena, whereas current Italian version is a resultof a retranslation from Spanish, also in this case done by the others, published inside the volume Under a FalseName. This essayistic short story draws upon the creative essay In the Middle of Heaven (In medio coeli) as acontinuation thereof, and is impregnated with favolistic elements in the form of aphorisms. Likewise, it iscomplementary to essayistic writings About Fairy Tale (Della fiaba) and Park of the Deer (Parco dei cervi), inwhich reappear intimate connections between narrative threads belonging to the spheres of folktale andliterature.8

　　Within delineated frame pertaining to this text, whose inspiration is openly autobiographical, althoughauthor’s personal story is presented in already poeticized way, the core image is that of a golden walnut, whichsubsequently gave a new title to it (between parentheses should be said that a motif in partially analogous formcan be traced to Tuscan version of the folktale, known as Three Sided Walnut or in Italian La noce a tre canti,in which once again it serves as a defense, as an efficient shield) (Lapucci, 1984). The motif of a golden walnuthas a role of viaticum in the peregrination of the little girl-protagonist, who is in reality author’s alter ego,toward places of discovery, defining herself, but only in filigrain, “little neophyte, fascinated and terrorized”.9The structure of this text is autodiagetic. According to the classification established by contemporary Frenchliterary theorist and critic Gérard Genette in his three-volume work Figures (published between 1966 and 1972),in which he analyzes the status of the narrator, it is not possible to immediately identify the narrator with thepersonality of the real author, but should be considered as a narrative voice telling the story. In this case, thecreator of this short story (Cristina Campo) represents at the same time the narrative subject. It is to be notedthat there is a coincidence between the main character and the writer, which recognizes herself in folktalefigures, integrated as in the same rang in the presented story, as will be subsequently demonstrated.

　　Favolistic Component as Core Structural Feature

　　The cited excerpt from the first above-mentioned letter, in referring to main theme (that of a fundamentalintuition about the importance of fairy tale, understood as basic pattern which can represent a model of life inminiature, preparing unconsciously in such a way for future experiences, had by the author as a seven-year-oldchild, presumably in the moment of some of the earliest and most incisive conscious memories), provides uswith a hint about structural component of primary importance to be added to the original Campo’s definition.

　　That is to say, the fact that this prose text can be naturally associated with fairy tale, here presented in itselementary grammar. The episodes whose intonation is one moment autobiographical and the next favolistic,flow naturally into each other, overlapping one another spontaneously and without predeterminate logic, and CRISTINA CAMPO, THE ARISTOCRAT OF MODERN LITERATURE 681thereby justifying, in my opinion, another relevant conceptual addition to the autodefinition cited, specificallyshort story-fairy tale, that is to say, a narrative choice consisting of a construction of a tale based on one’s ownlife in which intimate episodes have a sapiential flavor.

　　With this syntagmatic expression (short story-fairy tale), it was my intention to indicate the type of literarynarration that contains as an integrative part or is correlated to a fairy tale, that is to say, a storytelling presentedin the form of legend, depicting protagonist or narrator in the culminant moments as a character in fairy tale,herself participating in this enchanted world, colored with supernatural nuances, evocative of the dimensions ofthe unknown and the inconscious, associated with favolistic patrimony. In the context of women’s literature inthe modern Italian panorama, it is interesting to observe that Anna Maria Ortese has defined analogously, asnovel-fairy tale, her volume The Iguana (Iguana) published approximately in those years, in 1965.

　　In order to specify it on isolated cases, already the incipit of the short story should be observed. The stageof the adventures of author as a little girl refers to Bologna in the 1930’s, at the centre of narration since thebeginning (Campo, 1998a, pp. 183-184), which captures Campo’s imagination, especially as she concentrateson contemplating the elements of the surrounding natural scenery. That is to say, the opening lines of the storybring to the ambiance of family’s summer house in Bologna, in the close proximity to the Rizzoli OrthopaedicInstitute, also evoked because immersed in the monumental 19th century park San Michele in Bosco (Farnetti,2002), so spacious to give the impression of being limitless. It is what has inspired her sensation ofincommensurability and indefiniteness subsequently characteristic of her approach to literary writing. I amreferring in particular to a passage derived from Campo’s authorial essayism in The Unforgivable Ones,belonging to her text In the Middle of Heaven,10 and demonstrating the possibility of convergent reading inregard to this aspect, although in an indirect manner, since this privileged and comfortable microuniverse, as aplace of predilection of family memory, will not be thematized so explicitely by the author anywhere else, withfactual spatio-temporal references.

　　These are already some of the signals for demonstrating ulterior fundamental blending of two narrativelevels, that of a short story and that of a fairy tale, enriched with imagination and somewhat lyricized, whereasit was originally envisaged a prose recount. In other words, the narration is refined and aestheticized, becausethe attention is given to minuscule details and frequently metaphorical discourse, remaining coherent with thetruth in its main intent, that is to say, obtaining a type of literary expression presenting itself as inventive essayand cronichle at the same time, and even history of costumes of the epoch. For this reason, as it will bedemonstrated in the following part of the paper, in other segments of text with apposite structural mechanismsone assists at the effect of construction of a new fairy tale, based on the narration of one’s own life, andcontained within another fairy tale, that is on the contrary already very well known, having a function of framefairy tale or frame story. From a thematic standpoint, it is this sense of roots to orient and direct the interest ofthis writer, as she recollects her memories and describes the things as they were in her childhood, already froma perspective of an adult, without forgetting the climate of fairy tale surrounding them.

　　Among the aspects of this story derived directly from the realm of fairy stories, some already explicatedelsewhere in the constellation of essayistic thoughts, there is, for instance, a reference to Fata Nix (the latterbeing the latin term for snow, that can thus be interpreted as Snow Fairy). It was a pseudonym adopted by achildren book’s writer named Attilia Montaldo Morando, whose books can be dated to the period liberty, between the end of nineteenth and the beginning of the 20th century, which were very appreciated by Campo,for their content as well as for their precious illustrations comparable to an object of craftsmanship (Campo,1998a, p. 187). In the same rang, the mention of the Elf King or fairy tale Belinda and the Monster (Belinda e ilMostro) appear in Campo’s writing (Campo, 1998a, pp. 188-189). The latter fairy tale was connected by theauthor with the omen of youth story of maternal grandmother that could be grasped and guessed from theyellowed photographs portraying her, together with mythical figures of other female ancestors, as a mode oftransmission of genealogical memory, suggesting the idea of tradition preserved by ritual of remembrance.

　　Rievocation in The Golden Walnut also includes excerpts from the fairy tales The Worn-Out DancingShoes (Scarpette da ballo； the allusion is about the episode of careless suspension of moral consciousness,because the accent is placed on the moment of escape, which is not rare to find in fairy stories), ThreePomegranates (Tre melagrane), as well as a folktale with the sorcerer Latemar as protagonist, from the Tale ofKing Laurin (Fiaba di Re Laurino) with his legendary rose garden (Campo, 1998a, pp. 189-191). As for theevocation of the scenes derived from favorite fairy tales, whether popular or artistic, the attention should bedrawn as well to the motif of rally of fairies in the middle of the Breton forest of Brocéliande, alreadythematized essayistically in Park of the Deer and About Fairy Tale, to which also refers the second epigraph atthe opening of this prose text, ascribed to Austrian writer Karl Felix Wolff (or in Italianized version of his name,Carlo Felice Wolff), who collected the legends of South Tyrol and territory of the Dolomites, for instance, inhis volume prepared in Italian (L’anima delle Dolomiti, whose first edition is from 1967, and succesivelyappearing in 1987).

　　Favolistic source of inspiration in The Golden Walnut is also found in narrative plot from The Thousandand One Nights, that is to say, in the fragment centred on King Solomon’s ring, described as reunitingmysterious and magical force making his reign light and aerial, as Piero Citati writes (Citati, 1989； 1992/1997),as Campo compares it to luminous ring worn on the little finger by her uncle, Vittorio Putti (as if he too reignedover the others, keeping them tied to his spell). Very noted surgeon on the international scale, specialized inorthopaedics, Vittorio Putti exercised his profession at the Rizzoli Orthopaedic Institute in Bologna, whileliving in a neighbouring house on the hill overlooking the city (together with the family of his sister, writer’smother Emilia Putti； it is exactly there that she gave birth to her daughter who sojourned there in the summermonths).

　　In essayistic part of this text, a question is posed about the traditional mentality that should be preserved,by taking the example of emblematic and propaedeutic role of toys, preparing for the accumulation ofexperiences in the adulthood, and containing behavioral schemes, as allusive germs.11 It should be observedthat this discovery prepared gradually, in the itinerary traced by memories and favorite fairy tales, is alwaysmade with help of literary symbols, bringing author to consciousness about first revelatory signs of her basicinclination toward creative writing and literature. Moreover, at the expressive level, it persists metaphoricitythrough use of rhetorical figures, presenting itself as poetic truth, as if a succession of metaphors, which give anallegorical meaning to the whole setting, could bring to identifying life with fairy tale. And as if there were nolonger difference between metaforizing term (fairy tale) and metaforized term (life), they were made coincideand rendered identical. Or to put it more plastically: One could imagine a stage on which a distinction betweenscene and backstage was abolished, so that what is invented or allusive could merge itself with reality, and it is, CRISTINA CAMPO, THE ARISTOCRAT OF MODERN LITERATURE 683so to say, what constitutes the miracle of literature. It would then be like living in the dream of fairy tale orliterature: Since the two things are rendered identical to one another, through a mechanism describable asrelation of hyponymy, the term “fairy tale” contains the meaning of broader notion of literature. Since firstnarrative level is constituted of reminiscences of the past, from a grammatical standpoint, prevails the usage ofpast tenses. Likewise, to be noted frequently are two connected epithets, so-called adjectival diptychs, that canbe synonymical or opposite, creating in the latter case an oxymoric effect. Concomitantly, it is to note persistentexamples of synesthesia, created by combining tactile, auditory or visual impressions, while in this case, too,the natural space appears humanized, anthropomorphic.

　　Conclusion

　　From a compositional standpoint, reminiscences about personal destinies (her own but also regardingfamiliar figures and other persons felt close, from her ambience or non) are interwined with favolisticsequences, making perceptible easily commutable with imperceptible, rational with instinctual, concrete withfantastic, habitual with impossible, realistic with surreal, intimate with universal. Analogously, it can be notedthat there are similarities when it comes to adopted narrative perspective, however only in general terms, in thecase of childhood autobiography, exemplificatively that of modern French author Nathalie Sarraute, whodisplayed her memories in the book titled Childhood (originally, Enfance, 1983). In that regard, thepreciousness of the occasion represented by The Golden Walnut does not depend only on relative rarity of casesin which Campo puts the spotlight on autoreflexive dimension (with the exception of poetry in which suchattitude becomes more evident), usually preferring to talk about herself incognito, and for that reason maskingher own narrative-essayistic voice behind apparently neutral style which transcends direct inspirational source(although very present in the background of narration). It is also due to the fact that preciosity of this prose text,infused with accentued aesthetic dimension, depends especially on its formal qualities and inherent cognitivevalue.

　　References

　　Campo, C. (1956). Passo d’addio (Goodbye step). Milano: All’Insegna del Pesce d’Oro, Scheiwiller.

　　Campo, C. (1962). Fiaba e mistero e altre note (Fairy tale and mystery and other notes). Florence: Vallecchi.

　　Campo, C. (1971). Il flauto e il tappeto (The flute and the carpet). Milano: Rusconi.

　　Campo, C. (1987/1999). Gli imperdonabili (The unforgivable ones). Milano: Adelphi.

　　Campo, C. (1989/1998). Lettere a un amico lontano (Letters to far away friend). Milano: Scheiwiller.

　　Campo, C. (1991/1997). La Tigre Assenza (The tiger absence). (M. Pieracci Harwell, Ed.). Milano: Adelphi.

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　　Campo, C. (1998b). L’infinito nel finito. Lettere a Piero Pòlito (Infinity in finity: Letters to Piero Pòlito) (G. Fozzer, Ed.). Pistoia:Via del Vento.

　　Campo, C. (1999). Lettere a Mita (Letters to Mita) (M. Pieracci Harwell, Ed.). Milano: Adelphi.

　　Campo, C. (2007). Caro Bul. Lettere a Leone Traverso (1953-1967) (Dear Bul: Letters to Leone Traverso). (M. Pieracci Harwell,Ed.). Milano: Adelphi.

　　Campo, C. (Ed.). (1963/2007). Storia della città di rame (The story of the city of copper). (A. Spina, Trans.). Brescia: L’Obliquo.Campo, C. (Introd.). (1973). Racconti di un Pellegrino russo (Tales of a Russian pilgrim). (M. Martinelli, Trans.). Milano:Rusconi.

　　Campo, C., & Draghi, P. (1975). Detti e fatti dei Padri del deserto (Sayings and facts of the desert fathers). Milano: Rusconi.Campo, C., & Spina, A. (2007). Carteggio (Correspondence). Brescia: Morcelliana.

　　Citati, P. (1989). La voce di Shahrazad (Shahrazad’s voice). La Repubblica, December 8. CRISTINA CAMPO, THE ARISTOCRAT OF MODERN LITERATURECitati, P. (1992/1997). Il viso di Cristina Campo (Cristina Campo’s face). In Ritratti di donne (Women’s portraits) (pp. 287-291).

　　Milano: Rizzoli.

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　　Pertile, M. (2003). Cara, il viaggio è incominciato. Lettere di Cristina Campo a María Zambrano (Dear, the voyage has started:Cristina Campo’s letters to María Zambrano). Humanitas, 3, 434-474.

　　Pieracci Harwell, M. (2005). Cristina Campo e i suoi amici (Cristina Campo and her friends). Rome: Studium.

　　Sarraute, N. (1983). Enfance (Childhood). Paris: Gallimard.

　　Spina, A. (1993/2002). Conversazione in Piazza Sant’Anselmo e altri scritti. Per un ritratto di Cristina Campo (Conversation inPiazza Sant’Anselmo and other writings: For a portrait of Cristina Campo). Brescia: Morcelliana.

　　Wolff, K. F. (1967/1987). L’anima delle Dolomiti (The soul of the Dolomites). Bologna: Cappelli.

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　　Visnja Bandalo University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

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