More than ‘two solitudes’, or Cree (Canadian) and (Italian) Canadian fiction*

What adventures can a protagonist, self-identifying as a Cree, experience in the territory belonging to the Dakehl nation in Northern British Columbia as a school principal in the 2000s? Darrel J. McLeod’s character in A Season in Chezgh’un (Douglas&McIntyre 2013, pp. 320) undergoes a gamut of feelings, and a variety of expected and also unforeseen events. Although a fictional character, James not only gives the reader a really interesting and engaging look at the life stories of one of the First Nations people, but also provides numerous examples of emotions and events that closely resemble those of the characters in immigrant/Italian Canadian fiction.

James’s life story gives us examples of the atrocious history of abuse, maltreatment, neglect, discrimination of all First Nations peoples. Having experienced some of these, having lived without his father and with his alcoholic mother, having been caught in the web of sibling suicides and addiction, and suffering from sexual abuse by his white brother-in-law, James is, however, able to leave his Cree birthplace, study at the university, travel, enjoy varied cuisine, fashion, and music, live with his lover in a Vancouver apartment. All these experiences, however, not only make him insecure, but also extremely unhappy and he never feels that he belongs. He is aware of these negative pressures that his environment as well as himself put on him. And yet he does not give up: he compares himself to the sockeye salmon who leave fresh water to migrate great distances in the sea and then come back to their spawning grounds and die there. (p. 18) As an educator, he applies for, and receives, the position of a principal at a Dakehl school. His expectations (also muffled by his welcoming committee) soon make him realize that if he wants a real school, he has to build it himself. He is not undaunted as he joggles his ideas between the local/provincial school administrators and the elders of the community. He is truly happy when he sits at the shore of the lake and observes the wild life there or when he shares food with the Dakehl community, or when he participates in a ceremony with the tribe in a Mayan village. He is able to hire new, young staff, he promotes the cooperation with and experiential learning for the children and adults in his community. He observes the internal squabbles and the disagreements between and among the different tribes and is able to walk this tightrope with success, without making too strong enemies. His most successful projects are having the youth like the school, attend it and participate in all the activities, as well as having the elders take literacy classes that lead to participation in their political struggles. His feelings of being different in any and all circumstances are heightened because of his belonging to the gay community, with the concomitant fear of an HIV infection. He finds release from stress in sex. When he is offered to come and play the piano at the white neighbours, his answer illustrates not only his complex of inferiority but also his desperate need to be approved by others (p. 69):

“That’s generous, Louise. thank you.” James answered earnestly, although he knew he could never take her up on her offer. In addition to his shyness, his pride wouldn’t allow him to accept what felt like charity – the benevolence of someone in a position of privilege and wealth bestowed upon a lesser being. And then there was the optics of it all, if he were to be seen as being too cozy with the local gentrified white folks, what would the Native people he was working with think of him?

The novel concludes with James accepting another job and going to another post in Salmon Arm. On his way he swerves his car to avoid a beaver who nevertheless is injured; while James muses on the importance of this animal for his people, the animal jumps up and claws his thigh. The fact that beaver is also a national emblem of Canada, and this emblem injures him, is a clear metaphor for the impossibility for James to live in peace with his environment.

There is a metafictional element in A season in Chezgh’un when James reads Une saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel by Marie-Claire Blais (the use of the word “season” in Mcleod’s title is interesting). James notices that the novel “recounts a story of poverty and oppression in rural Quebec, and it comes as close as any mainstream piece of literature has to capturing the reality that James, his siblings and cousins grew up in.” (p. 31) Besides mixing reality and fiction, this metafictional detail in McLeod’s writing gives away one of the most troublesome perspectives that Canadian fiction can have for an author that does not deem himself to be a Canadian. The desire to become an author of “mainstream” fiction is great. In Native authors’ case, though, this is a struggle which they wrestle with more than any other “ethnic” Canadian author, since they do not identify with Canadian culture, whereas the “immigrant” authors have to.

Although a comparison between Native-Canadian and ethnic-Canadian writing requires a full treatment, I will concentrate here only on points of convergence between themes and tropes common to the Cree-Canadian and Italian-Canadian prose (the Cree-Canadian is represented by only one novel, though). Therefore there is no discussion of differences in topics such as sexual abuse of young children (in the Natives’ cases but not mentioned in the Italian Canadian case, although rape is present), or the abuse lived through in residential schools suffered by the Natives (Italians in Canadian schools, just like any other “ethic” pupils received other types of discrimination in schools). The following common themes in stand out:

1. grappling with history: protagonists both Cree and Italian struggle to come to terms with the fact that they “lost” or are in fact losing the cultural certainties (language, beliefs, ancestors’ way of life, naming practices, etc.) which their ancestors had held for millennia.
2. impossibility to belong to any group, “mainstream” or indeed to one’s own: blatant and covert discrimination makes this even more profound.
3. intense desire to belong to the mainstream group, to be accepted and included, even though this desire clashes with the innermost feelings of the individual.
4. ancient belief systems shattered, i.e. in the case of the First Nations the perpetrators are the Catholic nuns and priests, in the case of Italians, it is also the Catholic priests who do not allow or do not understand certain pre-Christian beliefs to be practiced.
5. comparison with nature: James compares himself with the sockeye salmon, the trope in the Italian Canadian culture of the immigrant generations was the fig tree: it can survive in Canada, but it has to be bent out of shape and protected, covered in the winter.

In conclusion, A season in Chezgh’un underscores the necessity to go beyond the received truths about an individual’s life and their history. This is the lesson also from (Italian) Canadian fiction. And as we are now (2024) at the cusp of an unprecedented general cultural upheaval – the use of AI becoming so much more than simple aid to human life – what can the slash between pre-history and modernity teach us about the division between modernity (humanity, anthropocene) and bio-techno-world? If these processes can indeed be compared, humanity does not have much to rely on for support from the past. The two solitudes, representing Canadians and Natives/immigrants are truly becoming many solitudes.

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*To be consistent, I should have written Molisan Canadian or Calabrian Canadian fiction to make it clear that the authors of Italian origin (or their ancestors) come from different parts of Italy, just like First Nations peoples come form different regions, and therefore have different cultures and languages. The Italian Canadian prose fiction which I base my comments on include Frank Paci’s Black Madonna, Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints, In a Glass House, Where she has gone. Poetry requires another post, but one can start here: https://www.tlnoriginals.com/title-item/invisible-voices/.

Cuore: segno, sentimento, organo

Il quarantesimo volumetto della collana Superfluo indispensabile della casa editrice Fefe’, intitolato Cuore storia, metafore, immagini e palpiti di Claudia Pancino (2020, pp. 209), offre un viaggio sorprendente e significativo attraverso la storia e i vari ambiti temporali, psicologici, fisiologici, metaforici, simbolici in cui si trova la parola “cuore”.

Il libro, corredato di numerose illustrazioni di cuore, è diviso in 3 capitoli e chiude con “Testimonianze e documenti” (cioè, con degli esempi concreti di descrizioni tratte da pubblicazioni che includono gli ambiti presi in esame nel libro).

Nella Premessa, l’autrice si sofferma sul fatto che il significato del “cuore” è stato prima quello ideale legato all'amore, anche se si sapeva già nell’antichità che il cuore è il fonte della vita. Dunque, l’espressione “essere senza cuore” non significa essere morto, ma non poter amare. La premessa introduce le 3 domande a cui il libro vuole dare delle riposte concrete:

1. Cosa unisce le diverse rappresentazioni contemporanee del cuore?
2. Qual è la loro storia?
3. Cosa le unisce all’organo pompante?

Capitolo I, intitolato “Cuore: parola, organo, simbolo”, presenta la visione del cuore sia come l’immagine (un simbolo) che come l’organo stesso. Le rappresentazioni visive di tutt’e due questi significati hanno una storia complessa. Per esempio, le testimonianze grafiche antiche sono ambigue o non esistenti fino al XIII secolo, ma abbiamo una data precisa da cui parte il significato del simbolo “cuoricino” (oggi universale) come “I love”, cioè il 1977. Per quanto riguarda la rappresentazione visiva dell’organo, si parte dal mondo vegetale (Giovan Battista della Porta che trova strette relazioni tra la pianta somigliante al cuore e le proprietà terapeutiche di questa pianta). Poi, le testimonianze visive accettate come possibilmente cuoriformi passano dall’elefante di Pindal, agli arazzi, alle illuminazioni nei manoscritti, alla Cappella degli Scrovegni di Giotto (dove la Carità offre a Dio un cuore con la punta rivolta all’insù che riprende la descrizione del cuore fatta da Galeno), ecc. Tutte queste rappresentazioni hanno un legame con l’organo pulsante che però indica sentimenti, anche se non è chiaro quali sono i sentimenti che si trovano in questa sede, anche perché la simbologia non sembra essere universale. Per i Sumeri, il cuore significa compassione anche vulnerabile (il fegato è la sede dei sentimenti), per gli antichi Egizi il cuore è il centro delle attività intellettuali, per gli antichi Greci il fegato e i polmoni sono dotati di spiritualità superiore. Nella Bibbia, il cuore abbraccia sia le forme della vita intellettiva che quella delle emozioni, e nel Nuovo testamento il cuore diventa la radice dell’atteggiamento religioso e morale, cioè la natura interiore dell’uomo. Gli Aztechi offrivano il cuore del nemico agli dei (cannibalismo cardiaco azteco). I cuori mangiati sono presenti in letteratura (per es., nelle fiabe e nei racconti folclorici, Boccaccio, Calvino).

La storia ideologica del cuore sottolinea l’incessante ricerca di paragoni tra il cuore (nel duplice significato di sentimenti e di organo) e oggetti materiali o meccanismi, specificamente,  il cuore come un orologio, o il fatto che  i musicisti legano la velocità/la lentezza delle pulsazioni alle cadenze musicali. Solo con l’invenzione dello stetoscopio (19mo secolo) si riesce a sentire il vero rumore del cuore, sebbene il ticchettio cardiaco di tipo meccanico continui a sentirsi nelle canzoni. Il cuore umano nel pensiero medico presenta 3 fasi di conoscenze: 1. Dalle origini remote al Rinascimento, 2. Dal Rinascimento al 1967 (il primo trapianto del cuore), 3. Dal 1967 ad oggi.

Nel Capitolo II (“Cuori trafitti e cuori scambiati”) viene illustrata la storia del ruolo del cuore nelle estasi cardiache, nel misticismo cattolico, nelle devozioni al Sacro Cuore di Gesù, negli ex-voto, e nel desiderio/nella necessità di seppellire il cuore dopo la more in un luogo diverso da quello del resto del corpo. Il cuore, come oggetto di intensa devozione cattolica al Sacro Cuore di Gesù, ottiene anche una funzione politica, unendo la pietà religiosa a uffici militari, politici, sociali sia in Francia che in Italia, in Germania, in Austria.

Il Capitolo III (“Storia del cuore nelle immagini”) ripercorre l’immagine del cuore sia come simbolo di sentimenti che come l’organo nelle rappresentazioni visive. Ci sono i cuori cortesi, i cuori anatomici non medici, i cuori amorosi e i cuoricini. Ci sono anche i cuori infranti e cardiopatie. La più antica immagine del cuore amoroso è del 1275 (nel manoscritto del Roman de la Poire, in cui la dama dona il suo cuore a Dolcesguardo, ma il cuore qui è ancora capovolto). L’autrice si sofferma sul fatto che il cuore non è rappresentato prima del XIII secolo; le ipotesi di questa nascita tardiva puntano sulla sacralità o sulla bruttezza dell’oggetto. Nel medioevo la rappresentazione simbolica include foglie (lilla`, edera, da cui il cuoricino) pigne (a volte rovesciate). Le illustrazioni “sentimentali” sono diverse da quelle mediche, ma spesso tra di loro esiste il corto circuito. In particolare, negli anni 2000 il cuore anatomico esce dal contesto medico/religioso per diventare un simbolo (su T-shirt, nelle sculture, ecc.). In altre parole, c’è una tensione tra il cuoricino e il cuore anatomico per quanto riguarda l’espressione visiva che da metaforica (vaga) vuol diventare realistica (essenza delle cose). La rivoluzione “emotica” riguarda l’uso del cuoricino in rete che fa parte del mutamento della comunicazione che privilegia i pittogrammi in moltissime funzioni comunicative mediate dalla rete. L’autrice nota che non è possibile sapere come saranno comunicati gli affetti: “in quali modi la generazione digitale sarà capace di comunicare senza l’ausilio della rete?” (p. 117).   Inoltre, il cuore come sentimento e come organo si stanno avvicinando nel pensiero medico: sono venute a gala le corrispondenze tra il cuore metaforico/emotivo e il cuore pompante perché il cuore biologico è sensibile al sistema emotivo. In questo capitolo vengono menzionati anche i cuori letterari, soprattutto di Conrad e di Bulgakov.

Nella sezione “Testimonianze e documenti” vengono pubblicati brevi brani dei seguenti autori: Giovan Battista della Porta, Andrea Vesalio, Renato G. Mazzolini, William Harvey, Johann Jacob Scheuchzer, Noel Chomel, Denis Diderot, Michael Bulgakov, Mathias Malzieu, Vittorio Zucconi, Christian Barnard, Katy Couprie, Marco Politi, Gianfranco Ravasi, Savvas Savvopoulos, Sandeep Jauhar, e un articolo senza autore del National Geographic.

Cosa si può dire di un trattato sul cuore che presenta questo argomento con sapiente emozione? L’autrice ha risposto a tutt’e tre i quesiti che si era posta in un modo esaustivo, intelligente e soprattutto pieno di spunti per una riflessione che spesso manca quando si parla del cuore. Da un lato, il libro sottolinea la dicotomia cuore-mente (ricordare e rammentare), da cui partono i concetti che separano, invece di unire, questi due aspetti dell’essere umano. La tensione tra la scienza e l’immaginario è partita lasciandoli divisi, ma sembra che la scienza cominci ad avvicinarsi al cuore nel suo valore sentimentale perché gli affetti hanno un effetto sul corpo fisico e vice versa. E` istruttivo sapere che se San Valentino viene festeggiato ormai ovunque, la giornata dedicata al cuore (World Heart Day) non ha questa risonanza; ma forse il futuro avvicinerà questi due significati del cuore anche nell’immaginario popolare. Dall’altro lato, prendere in esame il cuore come uno dei simboli più ovvi del nuovo modo di comunicare per immagini faciliterà la risposta a molte incognite per quanto riguarda l’evolversi dei modi di comunicazione in rete. La questione della superiorità dell’arte figurativa su quella verbale (sostenuta anche da Leonardo da Vinci) deve ancora essere approfondita.

In conclusione, come sempre, è molto difficile in una recensione dare un’idea soddisfacente di tutti gli aspetti di un libro, soprattutto quando questo è pieno di informazioni fertili per allargare l’orizzonte dei lettori.    

Superficial wounds that run deep

CUL, Mac Pro, OS X, 10.6.8, Phase One P40, Capture One 7.1, Profoto Strobes, Schneider 80mm LS /f2.8, ColorChecker

Andrew Davidson’s The Gargoyle (Random House, 2008) is a fast-moving, smooth-reading, deceptively happy-ending narration. Taking cues from Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, medieval Italian, Japanese, and Icelandic  tales of love, Davidson spins a post-modern tale set in unspecified contemporary North American city, interweaving episodes of gothic and romance literature with present-day scientific knowledge about the effects of burns, schizophrenia, as well as background histories of the major characters.

The novel offers numerous thematic elements whose prominence clearly emerges from the narration: everlasting true love even beyond the unexpected and bitter end, search for encyclopedic knowledge, life with cocaine and morphine dependency (the “snake”), artistic raptures, questions about actions and their earthly and after-life consequences, metempsychosis, need for continuity of human affairs through talismans and special objects. All of these add something particular to the plot.  Having grown up with drug-addicted foster parents, taking advantage of the library to quench his thirst for knowledge, and, later, on account of his good looks and lack of other skills, becoming a porn actor and director: all of these suddenly turn inconsequential thanks to one fateful Good Friday when he is about thirty years old (obvious echoes of Dante). He has a near-fatal car accident in which he is horribly burned (the gory details are spelled out in full) and deprived of his work tool, so to speak. Ending up in a hospital, he contemplates committing suicide as soon as he is released: his disfigurement, his lack of sexual organ, the loss of his livelihood and his film company mean that there is nothing left for him to do but end it all. The narration follows him in his hospital bed; he is taken care of conscientious doctors and nurses, and one uninvited character, Marianne Engel, the anchor which steadies the path of the narration.  She claims to have met the protagonist before (about 700 years before) and to have loved him then. At that time she worked in the Engelthal monastery as a scribe; he was a condottiero brought to the sisters since he was horribly burned. Marianne cures him now as she did then, and she keeps being in love with him through the centuries and now. At the hospital, Marianne’s tales of medieval romantic love, her artistic energy, kind disposition, nutritious food, make him abandon his desire to die. Once he is discharged, she takes him into her gothic-looking house, keeps taking care of him, and secures his future. She sculpts for a living: her grotesque stone sculptures resemble the strange medieval decorations on churches: gargoyles. She also starts to sculpt the protagonist.  Her artistic pursuit is spurred on by three special characters from her medieval life who assure her that she only has 27 more “hearts” to sculpt and then her last heart is to be given to her true love and let free. Having finished these “hearts”, she walks off into the sea never to be found again. Our protagonist passes his life writing his story.

The word “inferno” conjures images of raging fire burning the damned who deserve to be punished, because, in the Catholic tradition, they transgressed specific interdictions and rules.  Our nameless protagonist is not a believer and therefore he does not explain his predicament as a just retribution for his previous drug-filled debauched life.  In the novel, the role of Dante’s voyage through hell is only superficial: the protagonist has entered a hellish type of life, and he tries to understand it.  He too has a Virgil: it is Marianne who leads him – through narration of love stories –  to forget about his disfigured existence. There is no Beatrice, though, to lead him to God. Our protagonist lives his new post-burned life simply as a spectator:  unlike Dante who cries and is moved by the fate of the damned, he is not stirred by what happens around him, he does not seem to feel any gratitude to Marianne, or in fact even love. He is simply with her.              His pre-accident life was full of sex but devoid of love, full of drugs and alcohol but no moral signposts, no ethical concerns, no real friends, no real parents. He did not have healthy feelings of self-love or self-worth, but he demonstrated lots of vanity. The novel is a loud yearning cry for something to hold on to, something that would explain the consequences of one’s actions much like the deserved punishments of the damned in Dante’s Inferno. Alighieri’s epic poem, for a non-believer like the protagonist, is simply an imaginative tale, full of gory details; the connection between the literary work and the society that created it and the human stories underpinned by biblical teachings, philosophical works, scientific observations is totally lost. This is perhaps the significance of The Gargoyle: the protagonist’s cynical attitude of detached observer allows him the only activity that has a semblance of pleasure, that of reading anything and everything. However, this does not make him a wise man.

Every author inevitably toys with his/her readers. It is disconcerting, however, when the protagonist/author is cynically flippant about his readers, as is the case in The Gargoyle. This talking down to the reader happens also at special moments in the story, and it completely destroys the rich imagery that the reader was about to construct. Here are two examples:

“I have no idea whether beginning with my accident was the best decision, as I’ve never written a book before. Truth be told, I started with the crash because I wanted to catch your interest and drag you into the story.  You’re still reading, so it seems to have worked”. (p. 5)

In the middle of a long list of food items, he says “…guglielmo marconi (just checking to see if you’re still reading)” (p. 167.)

This meta-narrative ploy is not new, moreover, it too accentuates the novel’s postmodern construction.

In conclusion, the muddle created by juxtaposing  the past and the present, religious and secular images, imaginative tales and scientific descriptions of medical conditions perfectly illustrates the post-modern emptiness which underlies the result of the attitude “anything goes”. However, the nihilistic condition seems to drain out the protagonist  completely, and he stands out as a disfigured empty shell whose only real companion is a dog and whose only activity is writing. The sole effigies with a “heart” remain the heavy stone gargoyles, creations of an exalted artist.

*The top-right illustration comes from the 1487 edition of the  Commedia; printer: Boninus de Boninis (https://www.frizzifrizzi.it/2017/11/10/tesori-darchivio-alcune-le-prime-edizioni-illustrate-della-divina-commedia-state-digitalizzate/).