Lo sguardo sulla festa.Valenza antropologica dell’esperienza festiva nella rappresentazione letteraria: Leopardi, D’Annunzio, Pavese

The present study arises from the necessity to shed light upon the image of the festival between the XIX and the XX century, through the gaze of those writers who enphasize it as an event of revelation of human condition. Therefore, it investigates in which way the socio-cultural phenomenon of the festival appears in literary representation by means of its transposition in fiction horizon. The emerging visions and interpretations are then compared to those of the contemporary philosophical and anthropological literature, in their possible connections – direct and indirect -, in order to show some ways undertaken by humankind in the search of what “celebrating” means. Three big authors of Italian Literature, Leopardi, D’Annunzio, and Pavese, have been choosen, because in their works the festival acquires a pivotal role, not only as a constant image in literary representations but also as objet of theoretical and epistemological reflection. Therefore, this study is articulated in three distinct historical periods, also in relation to the emerging of different literary, philosophical and anthropological movements. The aforesaid authors have been singled out as emblematic figures of these periods, since they are at the heart of conflicts of cosmologies and struggles of ideologies for taking position in the literary field, also by means of their conceptions of the festival. In the first part of XIX century Leopardi introduced in his Zibaldone the most complete examination of the socio-cultural phenomenon of the festival of his age. His reflection overlooks an ethnographic inquiry about the festive issue - though the exactness of some folkloric data transpires from his rhymes -, while it wonders about the philosophical, or, better, abstractly anthropological meaning of playing out the festival and celebrating. That of Leopardi appears also in the literary field as the Italian skeptical reply to Rousseau’s desires, i.e., the ideas of festival spontaneity and naivety, and of its egualitarian demands - in the post-revolutionary present even more than in the past. Therefore, according to Leopardi the festival is mainly identified with a mechanism for producing illusions, with its corollaries of wait, disillusion, and disappointment. At fin de siècle D’Annunzio’s work shows a whole perspective shift in the vision of festival phenomena. D’Annunzio, quite entirely regardless of the Leopardi’s reflection, turns to the newborn folkloristics, introducing in the literary field a detailed ethnographic look, in order to give back the image of a folk festival such as it has never appeared before in Italian and European literary landscape. However, D’Annunzio establishes a game of appropriation, processing, and exacerbation of the folkloric referents, which exceeds the sterile resubmission of folkcloric literature, thereby embarking on ethno-fiction. In such way he delineates his ideological position, by means of stressing the status of otherness of subaltern classes from hegemonic ones. Conversely, in the thirties and forties of the XX century, Pavese’s inquiry turns to ethnology and history of religions. By means of recovering the “myth”, influenced in this also by D’Annunzio, he seems trying to disprove the conclusions about the myth inaccessibility and festival illusion of the matured Leopardi. Throughout the elaboration of his “theory of myth” and “poetics of myth”, the festival is postulated by Pavese as the collective enjoyment of the myth. A myth which assumes fierce shapes resulting from Frazer’s and D’Annunzio’s readings, and a festival which emerges in contemporary imaginary for its hidden sacrificial dimension. Finally, in La luna e i falò also the “eternal return of the identical” paradigm, borrowed from Mann, Nietzsche, and Eliade, is translated into the fiction horizon and into his representation of the festival. From a methodological point of view, this analysis of the festival image in Leopardi, D’Annunzio, and Pavese is a re-reading and an interpretation in an anthropological key of their literary works. Such methodology has been pursued in order to detect the complexity of intertextual, transdisciplinary, and intercultural dialogue, implemented by these authors in their free game – even if always culturally mediated – of negotiation of festival significances. Thus, by the anthropological reading of literary texts, it has been possible to disclose the articulated re-elaboration of festival experience within each author mindset and the relevance which it occupies, in fact, in their whole work.