Choroba ciała, choroba społeczeństwa w Pamiętniku Albina Paola Volponiego
Illness of the body, illness of the society in Memoriale di Paolo Volponi

Author(s): Joanna Janusz
Subject(s): Studies of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Summary/Abstract: The theme of illness, as one of the most frequently used literary topoi, occurs very often also in Italian literature, becoming, especially at the beginning of the 20th century, the metaphor of the situation of the individual in the modern world. By the turn of the 20th century, the theme of illness indicates not only the condition of the individual, the physical disease, the state of poor health, but means as well the chronic inability to adapt himself to the social life.The debut novel of Paolo Volponi entitled Memoriale (first English translation by Grossman 1962 as My Trouble Began, Calder & Boyars 1967 as The Memorandum) also uses the topos of the social alienation of the character who is ill. The illness in the novel has two different faces: the classic one is that of the infectious disease ― the tuberculosis, and the other one is the 20thcentury theme of madness, seen as the particular condition of the industrialized society. Volponi analyzes the individual dimension of technological progress and accelerated industrialization as distinctive for the novels of letteratura industriale‑industrial literature, that is literary aesthetics created in Italy at the end of the sixties, focused on the analysis of the relationship between the society and the industry.The main character of the novel is 30 years old factory worker Albin Saluggia. The novel tells of the progression of the disease he suffers from and the mental illness, which becomes the way of defending himself against the dehumanized, annihilating factory work. The first‑person narrator of the novel though lacks credibility, and his picture of reality is partial, fragmentary, and distorted. Saluggia is a modern version of Don Quixote, subject to the madness motivated by the utopian vision of the happy postindustrial society and the technology that can alleviate the pain. It turns out that in the modern social organization animated by the futuristic ideal of machines the human anxiety cannot be cured. The escaping into illness character becomes the first of the series in Volponi’s writing, his state of mind is the way of defending himself and the expression of the protest against the illness that is not a simple disease that can be cured, but the much more dangerous illness of the system in which he is forced to live. Albin represents the features of the character of the 20th century vanguard literature. His alienation, constant state of conflict, rebellion and disagreement on the existing reality, active fighting attitude and the desire to change, but also absurdity of the situation in which he finds himself and mental illness make him similar to the expressionist characters.

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