The representation of the metropolis in Scipio Slataper's Il mio Carso

MLN - Modern Language Notes

Volumn 117, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 153-173

  Coda, Elena ^a  

^a CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149096494     PISSN: 00267910     EISSN: 10806598     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/mln.2002.0003     Document Type: Review

References (34)

1. See Claudio Magris, "Things Near and Far: Nietzsche and the Great Triestine Generation of the Early Twentieth Century," Stanford Italian Review 6, 1-2 (1986): 293-99.
2. Scipio Slapter, Il mio Carso (Milano: Rizzoli, 1989). All quotations come from this edition.
3. Trieste, situated just outside the border of the newly formed Italy in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to which it had belonged since 1382, was also the only access to the sea of the Empire. Thanks to the imperial decree of Maria Teresa of 1749, it acquired all the privileges and exemptions of a free port, transforming a small and economically insignificant border-town into a productive and financially powerful city devoted mainly to commerce. Evidence of Trieste's economical power lies in the powerful institution of the Tergesteo, Trieste's stock market, that was very active prior to WWI. The city's rise to the status of an important economic center allowed an increase of both a strong and rich bourgeoisie, as well as of a large proletarian class, composed mostly by Slovenes who immigrated there as cheap labor. Because of this strong immigration, btween 1864 and 1909 the city population doubled, increasing from 112,000 to 224,000. For specific data on its demographic development, see Pier Paolo Luzzato Fegiz, La popolazione di Trieste (Trieste: Officine Grafiche della Editoriale Libraria, 1929).
4. On the political and economical history of Trieste in this period see Elio Apih, Elvio Guagnini and Giulio Sapelli, Trieste (Bari: La Terza, 1988) especially the chapters by Apih and Sapelli.
5. On its economic power, see Marina Cattaruzza, La formazione del proletariato urbano (Torino, Musolini: 1979)
6. and Anna Millo, L'élite del potere a Trieste 1891-1938 (Milano: F. Angeli, 1989).
7. Bobi Bazlen, "Intervista su Trieste," Scritti (Milano: Adelphi, 1984) 242-55.
8. Claudio Milanini, "Il nido disfatto" Scipio Slataper: L'inquietudine dei moderni 94-106.
9. Georg Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life" The Sociology of Georg Simmel (New York: The Free Press, 1950) 411.
10. Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Society (East Lansing: The Michigan State University Press, 1957);
11. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Charles Scribner, 1958). The most influential study on the modern city is Walter Benjamin's analysis of nineteenth-century Paris.
12. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999)
13. and Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: a Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. (London: NLB, 1973).
14. For an analysis of the use of the modern city as a literary topos see Richard Lehan, The City in Literature: an Intellectual and Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998),
15. Burton Pike, The Image of the City in Modern Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981)
16. and Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (London: Chatto and Windus, 1973).
17. Scipio Slataper, Lettere triestine (Trieste: Dedolibri, 1988). All quotations from the letters come from this edition.
18. For a study on the relationship between Florence and Trieste, see Ernestina Pellegrini, La Trieste di carta (Bergamo: Pierluigi Lubrina Editore, 1987)
19. and Giorgio Baroni, Trieste e "La Voce" (Milano: Istituto Propaganda Libraria, 1975).
20. See also Luca Zorzenon, "Le Lettere Triestine" Scipio Slataper: l'inquietudine dei moderni 174-83
21. and Alberto Abruzzese, Svevo, Slataper e Michelstaedter: lo stile e il viaggio (Venezia: Marsilio, 1979) 111-12.
22. In addition to "The Metropolis and Mental Life," see also Simmel's, The Philosophy of Money (London and New York: Rutledge, 1990).
23. For a detailed and thorough analysis of the way in which the urban environment has been perceived at the turn of the century, see the book by Massimo Cacciari, Metropolis, (Roma: Officina Edizioni, 1973).
24. Anco Marzio Mutterle, Scipio Slataper (Milano: Mursia, 1915) 61.
25. Claudio Milanini, "Il nido disfatto," L'inquietudine dei Moderni 95-106.
26. Walter Benjamin, "The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire," Charles Baudelaire: a Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (London: NLB, 1973) 83. Benjamin, comparing Baudlaire's representation of Paris to the one exposed by Emile Verhaeren in his poem "Le Villes Tentaculaires" points out the lack of a possible redemption in Baudelaire's image of the city.
27. Rita Felski, The Gender of Modernity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995) 19.
28. Francesco Dal Co, Abitare nel moderno 4.
29. Charles Baudelaire, Selected Writings on Art and Literature (New York: Penguin Books, 1992) 400.
30. See also Patrizia Lombardo, Introduction, Architecture and Nihilism, by Massimo Cacciari, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993) lvii-lviii.
31. Massimo Cacciari, Metropolis, 43.
32. Romani Luperini defines Slataper's writing style "una scrittura carsica. Il Carso che non conosce [.] né 'riposo' né 'tregua' e neppure 'meta' è come la scrittura: spigoli, fenditure, schegge aguzze, macigni 'scontorti'. Non un disegno ordinato, ma il diagramma spezzato di un percorso puntuto e disorientato." Romano Luperini, "Simbolo e allegoria nel Mio Carso" in Scipio Slataper: L'inquietudine dei moderni, 77.
33. Hermann Bahr, Die Überwindung des Naturalismus (Dresden und Leipzig: Bierson's Verlag, 1891).
34. The translation is mine. For an analysis of this manifesto see Francesco Dal Co, Abitare nel moderno, 5-7. Bahr's essay is translated into Italian at the end of Dal Co's book, pp. 159-62.