'Silentes loquimur': 'Foibe' and border anxiety in post-war literature from Trieste

Journal of European Studies

Volumn 28, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 217-229

  Pizzi, Katia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF KENT   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0032162279     PISSN: 00472441     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/004724419802800301     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. The name 'foiba' comes from the Latin 'fovea' = 'fossa', empty room, cave, ditch. For an informed and updated historical overview of 'foiba', see Raoul Pupo, '1943-1945. Foibe: La morte oscura', Storia e Dossier, n.116 (1997), 16-25. See also Fulvio Molinari, Istria contesa: La guerra, le foibe, l'esodo (Milan: Mursia, 1996); Claudia Cernigoi, Operazione foibe a Trieste (Udine: Quaderni del Picchio, 1997); Foibe: Il peso del passato-Venezia Giulia 1943-1945, ed. by Giampaolo Valdevit (Venice: Marsilio, 1997). If not otherwise stated, all translations are mine.
2. The name 'foiba' comes from the Latin 'fovea' = 'fossa', empty room, cave, ditch. For an informed and updated historical overview of 'foiba', see Raoul Pupo, '1943-1945. Foibe: La morte oscura', Storia e Dossier, n.116 (1997), 16-25. See also Fulvio Molinari, Istria contesa: La guerra, le foibe, l'esodo (Milan: Mursia, 1996); Claudia Cernigoi, Operazione foibe a Trieste (Udine: Quaderni del Picchio, 1997); Foibe: Il peso del passato-Venezia Giulia 1943-1945, ed. by Giampaolo Valdevit (Venice: Marsilio, 1997). If not otherwise stated, all translations are mine.
3. The name 'foiba' comes from the Latin 'fovea' = 'fossa', empty room, cave, ditch. For an informed and updated historical overview of 'foiba', see Raoul Pupo, '1943-1945. Foibe: La morte oscura', Storia e Dossier, n.116 (1997), 16-25. See also Fulvio Molinari, Istria contesa: La guerra, le foibe, l'esodo (Milan: Mursia, 1996); Claudia Cernigoi, Operazione foibe a Trieste (Udine: Quaderni del Picchio, 1997); Foibe: Il peso del passato-Venezia Giulia 1943-1945, ed. by Giampaolo Valdevit (Venice: Marsilio, 1997). If not otherwise stated, all translations are mine.
4. The name 'foiba' comes from the Latin 'fovea' = 'fossa', empty room, cave, ditch. For an informed and updated historical overview of 'foiba', see Raoul Pupo, '1943-1945. Foibe: La morte oscura', Storia e Dossier, n.116 (1997), 16-25. See also Fulvio Molinari, Istria contesa: La guerra, le foibe, l'esodo (Milan: Mursia, 1996); Claudia Cernigoi, Operazione foibe a Trieste (Udine: Quaderni del Picchio, 1997); Foibe: Il peso del passato-Venezia Giulia 1943-1945, ed. by Giampaolo Valdevit (Venice: Marsilio, 1997). If not otherwise stated, all translations are mine.
5. Pamela Ballinger, 'The politics of submersion: history, collective memory, and ethnic group boundaries in Trieste', unpublished draft article, [n.p.].
6. Marcello Lorenzini, Le stragi delle foibe: Francesco Cossiga a Basovizza (Trieste: 'Comitato per le Onoranze ai Caduti delle Foibe', 1991) quoted in P. Ballinger, 'The politics of submersion', op. cit., [n.p.]
7. For another example of this rhetoric, see the wide publicity given to the 'Foiba di Basovizza', one of the most renowned tourist and pilgrim destinations in the area.
8. For a discussion of the controversy relating to 'foibe' in the post-war period, see Glenda A. Sluga, 'The Risiera di San Sabba: Fascism, anti-Fascism and Italian nationalism', Journal of Modern Italian Studies, i(3), 401-12. Sluga suggests a symbolic equation between 'foibe' and the Italian concentration camp 'Risiera di San Sabba', the latter also located in the Triestine area.
9. One of the largest 'foibe' is commonly known, in Friulian dialect, as 'il bus de la lum' = 'il buco della luce' ('the hole of light'). (The italicization is mine).
10. P. Ballinger has described very aptly 'foibe' as 'Bachtinian chronotopes', op.cit. [n.p.]: 'the caves represent powerful sites of potential knowledge. [...] in their capacity as Bachtinian chronotopes - offering a "primary means for materializing time in space" ([...]) - the foibe reveal the organization and production of various group histories.' And below: 'the shifting status of the history of foibe reflects larger political alignments.'
11. The contiguity of Mitteleuropean and Triestine writing ought to be questioned, or at least reassessed in a number of cases (cf. Katia Pizzi, A City in Search of an Author, in preparation for publication, Chapter I). The present paper therefore avoids references to Mitteleuropean authors, even in cases when the connection appears to be justified by the context, e.g. the influence of Franz Kafka's chillingly 'bureaucratic' horror on Enrico Morovich's writing.
12. For further information see Map 2.
13. Like Ballinger, I am convinced that in border areas there is a 'need to devote greater attention to the psychosocial factors of identity formation.' (P. Ballinger, op.cit., [n.p.])
14. This idea of a border neurosis is particularly interesting in that it also relates to the psycho-physical dimension of the border. Various authors from the area have concentrated their attention on the mutual exchangeability of body and border. They have described quite literally the border as a body scarred by a large number of 'foibe', an Inferno-like landscape punctuated with cuts, crevices, wounds. (See in particular Fulvio Tomizza, Carlo Sgorlon, Manlio Cecovini, Enzo Bettiza).
15. Morovich's characters consistently tend to shed human traits and assume angelic or demonic qualities. Cf. E. Morovich, Un italiano di Fiume (Milan: Rusconi, 1993), 25: 'Le fiabe non nascono sulla linea di confine. Esse vogliono germogliare o di qua o di là. [...] Ecco che perfino i fantasmi, gli spettri, gli spiriti vaganti, le anime in pena s'abituano a girare per quella campagna e per quei boschi, sia di giorno che di notte, evitando la rete di confine. La odiano. L'indifferenza delle guardie conferma ad essi, che facilmente se ne scordano, la loro condizione di spettri invisibili, di esseri dell'aldilà.' ('You cannot write stories on a borderline. They demand to blossom either on this or the other side. [...] Even ghosts, vagrant spirits and tormented souls become used to roaming these woods and this country, day and night, eschewing the wire fencing around the borderline. They loathe it. The indifference of border guards is a constant remainder of what they easily forget, namely that they are invisible and belong to the other world.')
16. See, for instance, an interview with Fulvio Tomizza (Epoca, 3 August 1969): 'Mi sentivo diviso fra un mondo e un altro, fra un'ideologia e un'altra. Per vari anni ero stato in collegio dai preti e ora tutt'a un tratto sentivo il fascino del verbo comunista ... Amavo mio padre, che nel suo cuore aveva sempre optato per l'Italia, e soffrivo nel vederlo perseguitato dagli jugoslavi ... Andavo a Trieste col lasciapassare e là venivo considerate slavo perché provenivo dall'interno, tornavo a Materada, e qui venivo considerate italiano. Era lo sbandamento, era il dramma della frontiera vissuto fino in fondo.' - cited in Marco Neirotti, Invito alla lettura di Fulvio Tomizza (Milan: Mursia, 1979), 25. ('I was split between one world and another, one ideology and another. I went to a Catholic boarding school and now, all of a sudden, I felt attracted by the Communist verbum ... I loved my father, who had always been on the side of Italy, and I suffered seeing him persecuted by the Yugoslavs. ... I went to Trieste with a frontier pass and was treated as Slav because I came from inland. I returned to Materada and here I was treated as Italian. I was confused. I was experiencing the anguish of the border to the full.')
17. The image of the ravine in itself acquired significance more widely in this period. See for instance the impression created by the executions of Jews and Communist partisans at the Babi Yar ravine in Nazi-occupied USSR in 1941 and at the 'Fosse Ardeatine' in Rome in 1944.
18. The story is part of the collection Nuovi racconti (Milan: Treves-Treccani-Tumminelli, 1935).
19. G. di Giovanni, La ragazza sul Carso (Trieste: Società Artistico Letteraria, 1969); F. Martin, Giulin: Dalle Miserie nel Friul alle Foibe Carsiche (Florence: 'L'Autore', 1991).
20. G. di Giovanni, La ragazza sul Carso (Trieste: Società Artistico Letteraria, 1969); F. Martin, Giulin: Dalle Miserie nel Friul alle Foibe Carsiche (Florence: 'L'Autore', 1991).
21. Sgorlon intensifies the blood-drenched, mythical imagery attached to 'foiba', see C. Sgorlon, La foiba grande (Milan: Mondadori, 1993), 315: 'la foiba faceva sempre pensare al sangue, all'ossario, alla macelleria, e nello stesso tempo anche alla favola e alla leggenda, perché nessuno, [...], aveva mai potuto vedere il camion della morte, i sequestri, il lancio dei vivi e dei morti nell'abisso.' ('foibe invariably brought to mind blood, ossuaries, slaughtering, and at the same time legend and fairy-tale since nobody had ever seen the death vans, the abductions, the hurling of living and dead into the abyss.')
22. G. Svalduz, Una croce sulla foiba: Il grido delle vittime ritrova la strada della memoria (Venice: Marsilio, 1996).
23. See Frediano Sessi in ibid. [n.p.] : 'riscrivere la Storia dalla parte delle vittime.' Recent poetic inflections of 'foibe' include Fabio Doplicher's 'La persuasione del canto', written in Italian, in F. Doplicher, 'Due Poesie', Forum Italicum, xvi (1), 242-3 and 'Trieste, el mar te cuca', in Triestine dialect.
24. See Frediano Sessi in ibid. [n.p.] : 'riscrivere la Storia dalla parte delle vittime.' Recent poetic inflections of 'foibe' include Fabio Doplicher's 'La persuasione del canto', written in Italian, in F. Doplicher, 'Due Poesie', Forum Italicum, xvi (1), 242-3 and 'Trieste, el mar te cuca', in Triestine dialect.
25. E. Morovich, Il baratro (Padua: Rebellato, 1964). I shall however quote throughout from a later paperback edition of the novel (Turin: Einaudi, 1990). Morovich was born in 1906 in Pecine, a village in the province of Fiume, now Rjieka in Croatia. He died in Lavagna in 1994 after living for various years in Pisa, Naples and Genova.
26. Morovich is traditionally regarded as a 'desengagé'. His favourite characters are angels and ghosts and his style is ironical and surreal. His narrative is associated with the fantastic of Italie magique (1946), Gianfranco Contini's anthology of magic and surreal stories including authors such as Tommaso Landolfi and Dino Buzzati.
27. See, for instance, E. Morovich, Un italiano, op.cit., 149-50: 'odio la piccola città di confine nella quale vivevo come una prigione e proprio non so partecipare al dolore degli esuli che la rimpiangono e che non sanno trovar pace nel loro esilio.' ('I loathe the border town where I lived like a prison and cannot sympathize at all with the nostalgia of the exiles who cannot find any solace away from it.')
28. See ibid., 151.
29. Written in the late 1930s, the stories are set from 1915 onwards. First published by Parenti in Florence in 1938, the collection was republished with additions by Sellerio in Palermo in 1988 including L'osteria sul torrente (1936) and Ritratti nel bosco (1939) as well as the original collection Miracoli quotidiani. I have used the 1988 edition throughout.
30. E. Morovich, Il baratro, op.cit., 102. 'The skinny bust and head of an old woman were lying [...] as if protruding from a wrecked parcel. He [Cipriano] had no recollection of her face. Then he saw the shattered body of a young woman, then the body of his friend Oscar. He contemplated everything as if he was delirious, while he thought he heard a voice encouraging him to toss these thoroughly disagreeable sights into the water.'
31. The juxtaposition between 'foiba' and 'ossuary' recurs both in official documents and in fictional accounts, such as, for instance, Sgorlon's La foiba grande, op.cit., passim.
32. G. Svalduz, op.cit., 16: 'a grave adjacent to the centre of the earth.'
33. I am not going to dwell on the conspicuous literature dealing with descents into Hell. I would however mention at least one volume which, for the similar use it makes of the dream structure in connection with the myth of the descent, may have been familiar to Morovich: Charles Nodier, Smarra - ou les Démons de la Nuit (1821), see in particular the second preface to the volume.
34. E. Morovich, Il baratro, op.cit., 142: 'The youths found the water described by Cipriano at the bottom of the chasm. They also found, shattered against a wall, the body of a young man whom they thought they had seen before. They lowered a stretcher into the pit and lifted the body with extreme care. This was all they found in the cave. Once they re-emerged, they sighed with relief and confessed candidly that they had been terribly frightened down there. They did not know why: the air down there suggested dismal thoughts, unknown fears, as if one's brain, said one of them, was out of control.'
35. From official documentation, quoted by G. A. Sluga in 'The Risiera di San Sabba', op.cit., 408.
36. Anon., quoted by R. Pupo in '1943-1945, Foibe: La morte oscura', op.cit., 23. 'We were being pushed towards the edge of the frightening, dark throat of a "foiba", [...] The cave was approximately 10 metres wide and 15 metres deep to the level of some stagnant water at its bottom. I fell into the water and, without touching the bottom, re-emerged and found shelter behind a rock. Immediately after me, I saw four of my friends fall into the abyss after being machine-gunned [...]. [...] Towards evening I managed to climb up the steep wall and reach the countryside. There I found a crevice where I was able to hide four days and four nights.' Cf. with E. Morovich, Il baratro, op.cit., in particular pp. 100-3.
37. Anon., quoted by R. Pupo in '1943-1945, Foibe: La morte oscura', op.cit., 23. 'We were being pushed towards the edge of the frightening, dark throat of a "foiba", [...] The cave was approximately 10 metres wide and 15 metres deep to the level of some stagnant water at its bottom. I fell into the water and, without touching the bottom, re-emerged and found shelter behind a rock. Immediately after me, I saw four of my friends fall into the abyss after being machine-gunned [...]. [...] Towards evening I managed to climb up the steep wall and reach the countryside. There I found a crevice where I was able to hide four days and four nights.' Cf. with E. Morovich, Il baratro, op.cit., in particular pp. 100-3.
38. Some large wooden crosses placed at the edge of 'foibe' bear plaques with the engraved motto 'silentes loquimur'. One of the committees currently researching on 'foibe' also names itself 'Silentes Loquimur'.