The Double Within: Coexistent Minds and the Fantastic in Ugo Tarchetti

ABSTRACT

This article examines four ‘fantastic’ stories by Ugo Tarchetti — ‘Riccardo Waitzen’ (1867), ‘Le leggende del castello nero’ (1867),‘Un osso di morto’ (1869), and ‘Uno spirito in un lampone’ (1869) — and argues for the presence of a double in terms of a coexistence of two minds in the same space, one invasive, the other an unwilling host. Not all instances of coexistent minds are the same, but all overpower and control their hosts to both farcical and deadly ends but also with moral, judicial and instructive consequences. I argue that these are not the external doppelgängers of nineteenth-century fantastic literature that emerge from the host, but internal doubles that are distinguished by their difference rather than their similarity to their hosts, as a result of which Tarchetti stands out for his innovative take on the theme of the double.

KEYWORDS:

• Ugo Tarchetti
• fantastic
• Italy
• coexistence
• doppelgänger

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Roda gives Tarchetti status among early writers, calling him the ‘vero padre del genere fantastico in Italia’ (2009, 11); see also Moretti (1977, 103). There are some antecedents to Tarchetti’s collection ‘Racconti fantastici’ (1869) including Capuana, who published ‘Il dottor Cymbalus’ in 1867, two years after Tarchetti’s ‘Il mortale immortale (dall’inglese)’ was first published in 1865 before being republished as ‘L’elixir dell’immortalità (Imitazione dall’inglese)’ in 1868. For further work on Tarchetti, particularly on his use of anglophone sources that veer into plagiarism, see Venuti (1992), McLoughlin (1993) and Mura (2008). For works of fantastic literature in nineteenth-century Italy, see the two anthologies Ghidetti (1985) and Melani (2009). For criticism on the fantastic that spans both centuries, see Caltagirone and Maxia (2008) and Lazzarin et al. (2016). For work on the fantastic in the twentieth century, see Lazzarin (2004), Amigoni (2004), Hipkins (2007) and Sica (2013).

2. For work on the double more broadly, see also Fusillo (2012), and for work in Italian literature see Dolfi (2001) and Laghezza (2012).

3. Others have likewise studied Fosca by considering the two characters who complement or reflect the other: Bonifazi argues that the text ‘propone subito la duplicità, il doppio aspetto della donna, due donne, di cui l’una è l’opposto dell’altra’; ‘Non c’è dubbio che Clara e Fosca siano le due parti contrapposte di un double’ (1982, 103–105); Roda notes something similar: ‘Ancorché romanzo non fantastico, Fosca si lega per mille fili al genere o modo in questione, a partire dalla situazione di double che vede Clara funzionare da doppio positivo di Fosca, e a sua volta Fosca da doppio negativo e mortifero’ (2009, 21).

4. In her study of the double in twentieth-century Italian literature, Laghezza (2012, 284) provides an interesting — although figurative — example of the intrusion of a dog identity in Elsa Morante’s Araecoli: ‘Tornava l’estate; e intanto, s’era introdotta nella nostra casa una presenza animalesca, invisibile, che di giorno in giorno se ne impadroniva. […] Sembrava addirittura di avvistare la sua pelle maculata, e il suo muso vorace che si affacciava di sotto i mobili. E io, sebbene inetto a percepirla, pure in qualche modo — forse attraverso i pori — ne avvertivo la specie indistinta, quale un’intrusione ferina, innominata, che magicamente (a intervalli sempre meno radi) s’incorporava in Aracoeli’ (Morante 1982, 235).

5. ‘[L]e fantastique est rupture de l’ordre reconnu, irruption de l’inadmissible au sein de l’inaltérable légalité quotidienne, et non substitution totale à l’univers réel d’un univers exclusivement miraculeux’ (Caillois 1965, 161).

6. Mariani references page 77 of Castex’s work, where the original reads very similarly: ‘l’invraisemblable est donné purement et simplement comme vérité’ (1951; my emphasis).

7. All quotations come from Tarchetti (1968a, 1968b), and this article proceeds thematically rather than chronologically.

8. Many note that this story is modelled on Gautier’s Le Pied de Momie (1840). See Roda (1991, 48) and Ruchin (2011, 115). This story by Gautier is reproduced in the appendix of the English translation, entitled Fantastic Tales (Tarchetti 2013, 157–169).

9. Reproduced in English in the appendix of Tarchetti (2013, 139–156).

10. Pieri goes so far as to qualify the baron as ‘il primo “transessuale” della letteratura italiana moderna’ although he does not explore this idea of primacy further (2006, 132).

11. Nor is any further mention made of the portrait. After the baron identifies Clara’s killer, it performs no further function in the story.

12. Bonifazi also labels Clara’s ghost in ‘Uno spirito in un lampone’ as ‘trasmigrato in un lampone’ (1982, 96).

13. See also Ceserani (1996, 81–82).

14. A concurrence which Del Principe (1996, 47) also notes often recurs in Tarchetti.

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Matthew Reza

Matthew Reza is a sessional lecturer and Italian language tutor at the University of Oxford, and the events coordinator for the research network Italian Studies at Oxford.