Pavese and Machado de Assis (#NovNov)

Cesare Pavese's The Moon and the Bonfires

The 'Eel'--we never learn his actual name--left Italy's Piedmont early in the Fascist era for America. He was an orphan, raised by a poor family for few lire the state handed over and the free labor he could provide. He didn't have much to hope for at home. He lives rough in the US, working as a milkman, in a diner, but eventually makes good running some sort of agricultural supply company in California. Twenty years later, 1950 or so, he returns to his native ground. Has he come to stay?

The locals certainly hope so: he could marry! He could buy a farm! But really he just wants to look at the old places and see some old acquaintances. Maybe the person he most wants to see is Nuto, and he does; Nuto came from a better set-up family, and is now, by the standards of rural post-war Italy, well-off. The 'Eel' looked up to the older Nuto before he left. Nuto worked with the Communist resistance during the war, and retains his Communist sympathies; that doesn't earn him any friends in rural Piedmont in 1950. 

The novella is rather slow-burning--surprising in a novella?--and it takes a while before we get to the dramatic plot elements, which happened during the war and are reported by Nuto. But it's mostly an atmospheric work, I thought. I was most touched by the Eel's relationship to young Cinto, a near orphan, whom the Eel sees in himself at that age.

The moon and the bonfires are representative of local superstition:

"What is this valley for a family that comes from the sea, who nothing about the moon and the bonfires?"

I was amused that the Eel lived near El Cerrito in the East Bay ("the Cerrito road") when he was in California, where I also lived in the first half of the 90s.

Pavese never went to America, and instead was in internal exile during the Fascist era, but was known for his translations from American literature (Moby-Dick, Gertrude Stein). He committed suicide shortly after this novella came out in 1950.

152p, plus an introduction by Mark Rudman, translated by R. W. Flint

Machado de Assis' The Alienist

"Dr. Simão Bacamarte, a son of the gentry, and the greatest doctor in Brazil, Portugal, and the Spains," has returned to Brazil. "'Science,' he said to His Majesty, 'is my sole employment; Itaguaí is my universe.'" There's no keeping him in Lisbon.

The story is serialized in a Rio de Janeiro newspaper from October of 1881 to March of 1882. But the events, we're told, took place 'long ago.'  

Bacamarte is interested in a scientific study of insanity. (Alienist is a nineteenth century term what we would call a psychologist.) He convinces the town to allow him to set up an insane asylum. Well-to-do patients will be paid for by their families; the indigent will be treated at a low cost borne by the city. Bacamarte can make discoveries. Such a great and dignified scientist! The city is thrilled at first.

But Bacamarte starts finding a lot of insanity. A lot. He is accused of doing it for the money; he repudiates the payments and does his work pro bono. A rebellion is started by a barber, which gets a groundswell of support, but not quite enough, and rebellion is a form of insanity, isn't it?

But Bacamarte is sincere in his studies, and he eventually realizes that if everybody's insane, then nobody is. What to do? He veers in different directions, finally coming to what might have been the only sensible solution all along. (Think Chekhov's 'Ward No. 6'). But while Chekhov can be funny, there's a real zaniness in Machado de Assis not present in Chekhov. (And anyway this story is a decade earlier than Chekhov's.) 

Is this a political allegory? I dunno. Probably. One chapter in my translation is called 'The Terror'. Funny and thought-provoking.

90p. in my Pushkin Press edition, with other stories. Translated in 2022 by Daniel Hahn. Marcie at Buried in Print also read it this month but in a different translation. 

I finished both of these a week or two ago, but I suddenly realized I'd better get going if I was going to squeeze them in for Novellas in November this year. Thanks to our hosts!