Struggling with Beauty: A Reading of Vanni Santoni's Se fossi fuoco, arderei Firenze

Abstract

This essay discusses the representation of the city of Florence in Vanni Santoni's Se fossi fuoco, arderei Firenze. Reflecting on the peculiar dynamics and interactions between this urban space and its citizens, the essay argues that the novel displays an ambiguous attitude toward Florence's problematic and contradictory beauty. In particular, the essay provides a reading of Se fossi fuoco in the light of some of Vincenzo Binetti's observations in his Città nomadi: esodo e autonomia nella metropoli contemporanea. Ultimately, despite its prevalent atmosphere of disillusionment and disenchantment, Santoni's representation of the city of Florence in Se fossi fuoco does not entirely exclude the possibility of different forms of inhabitation and processes of deterritorialization, which are potentially similar to those Binetti analyzes in his work.

Keywords:

• Vincenzo Binetti
• city
• deterritorialization
• Florence
• inhabitation
• Vanni Santoni
• Se fossi fuoco
• arderei Firenze
• urban space

Notes

¹Vanni Santoni was born in 1978 in Montevarchi. His most recent publications are Terra ignota (Mondadori, 2013) and In territorio nemico (Minimum Fax, 2013). He currently writes for Corriere Fiorentino and La Lettura. Since 2012, he has been the publishing director for fiction of Tunué—Editori dell’immaginario.

²Cortellessa emphasizes that such a “ritorno dello spazio” “non è un alibi per mettere fra parentesi l’a priori della temporalità e dunque la natura storica dell’esperienza, individuale e collettiva. Leggere gli spazi, in altri termini, non è che un modo diverso di leggere i tempi” (41). His position regarding the notions of space, place, and time still seeks some compromise among these categories and, in this sense, is “softer” than the position of Roberto Dainotto, who begins his Place in Literature. Regions, Cultures, Communities by “questioning the epistemological validity of ‘place’ as a category of cultural understanding” and by unequivocally stating that “Place […] is fundamentally a negation of history [....] The discourse of place […] attempts to substitute a latently ideological tool of analysis—history—with an allegedly natural one—place” (2, 3). Both scholars seem to agree that a comprehensive and “ecumenical” approach is necessary to explain cultural phenomena objectively.

³Elena Stancanelli's Firenze da piccola (2006) belongs to this same series (and obviously addresses the same city).

⁴This discussion is also indebted to Silvia Ross's work on literary representations of Tuscan spaces and, in particular, her observations that “[t]he subject's perception of the external environment is […] a core issue in considering spatial dynamic” (10), and that “[t]he human experiential element of a given geography is […] as important as the inanimate surroundings” (11).

⁵Building on the theories of the “Situationist movement,” Binetti notes that one does not actually inhabit the city, but rather, because we are mostly forced to follow predetermined paths, “siamo da essa abitati” (30).

⁶Not surprisingly, the epigraph of Santoni's novel is a quotation from Calvino's The Invisible Cities: “Le città, come i sogni, sono costruite di desideri e di paure” (391–392).

⁷Interestingly, as he discusses other examples of “new Italian spaces” in contemporary writers, Cortellessa observes that: “La ricchezza di dettagli topografici (la strada, il ponte, gli svicoli, le rotonde ecc.) non contrasta con la vaghezza, l’effettiva laconicità della rappresentazione—che accede con naturalezza al registro onirico” (44).

⁸There may be an echo of Malaparte here, in particular of his passage in Maledetti toscani where he expresses the hope of being buried on a grave on the top of a hill near his beloved Prato: “E vorrei avere la tomba lassù, in vetta allo Spazzavento” (161).

⁹A recent example of this sort of traditional representation is Andrea Ponsi's book, which, as one of its reviews says, “is sure to please both long-time residents and new visitors to the city” (theflorentine.net).

¹⁰Zana Vathi's article provides a detailed account of the increasing presence and dynamics associated with Albanian immigration in Florence.

¹¹This question is addressed most directly in the following passage in which Ashlar, one of the few characters with a regular job (she is a lawyer), says: “Che poi, artisti o no, ci si può davvero costruire un’esistenza indipendente qui, senza doversi allacciare a un sistema di supporto vitale fatto di parentele, conoscenze, amicizie, relazioni per niente dinamiche? E nelle altre città d’Europa, sarà davvero diverso? O farei la stessa fine, con le stesse scarse opportunità, lo stesso pugno di magre certezze, lo stesso lavoro noioso, l’unica differenza il pranzo—al posto del lampredotto il sushi, o alle brutte un falafel” (70).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Enrico Cesaretti

Enrico Cesaretti is Associate Professor of Italian at the University of Virginia. He is the author of two books, Castelli di carta: retorica della dimora tra Scapigliatura e Surrealismo (2001) and Fictions of Appetite: Alimentary Discourses in Italian Modernist Literature (2013), and several articles on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian literature. He is currently interested in the application of ecocritical approaches to the Italian cultural and literary context.