N. 16 Italia : Imaginations Passions Parcours - ViceVersaMag

phasize ihe mise au point of the various relations present
in the production of literary texts in Canada. Joseph Pivato
in his excellent essays "Ethnic Writing and Comparative
Canadian Literature" and "A literature of exile: Italian
Language Writing in Canada" takes the comparatist approach
as the point of departure for the analyses of minority
literatures. In its well informed and explicative fashion
Joseph Pivato's research into this problem explicates the
pitfalls of the restrictive and latently ethnocentric critiques
Of Canadian writing at large and possible working
hypotheses for a more comprehensive attitude towards this
body of works are given:
"The language of a work is important but it should be
used as only one factor in determining the nature of a
piece of writing in the unofficial languages of Canada
is to look at the area too narrowly and in a distorted manner.
We must consider subject matter, major themes, images,
influences the voice in the work, the role of transit!
Hon, the author's perspective and possible affiliation.
Each individual work must be read and evaluated in
terms of these elements. Only then can we determine the
sphere of consciousness of work and the sensibility of the
author." $
And further on:
"In order to study the literary works produced in Canada.
we must read more than one language and be open to
more than one culture. Exposure to ethnic writing is one
way to approach a new reality of Multiculturalism..." 4
Obviously what is being asked for is not the creation
of a new dominance by minority literatures but, rather, the
recognition of the value of these particular artistic texts
and the coexistence, in terms of aesthetic making processes,
of the official and unofficial literary languages: in other
words, the capitulation of the dominant streak in literary
circles for the emergence of a "new" methodology of
analysis.
3
Soon after the first anthology of Italo-Canadian poets,
as if taking the skeleton out of the closet, Canada witnessed
the publication of several other anthologies of Italo-
Canadian literature (not to mention individual collections
of poetry, novels and plays) both in French and English:
La poesia italiana nel Quebec (1983) edited by Tonino
Caticchio, Quêtes: Textes d'auteurs italo-québécois (1983)
edited by Fulvio Caccia and Antonio DAlfonso, and Italian
Canadian Voices: An Anthology of Poetry and Prose
(1946-1983) edited by Caroline Di Giovanni in 1984.
The interesting factor in this production of ltalo-
Canadian writings is that its point of departure is poetry.
The lyrical precedes the narrative (with the exception
of Mario Duliani's novel); the individual foreshadows the
community. It is interesting to note that Pier Giorgio Di
Cicco presupposes this in his introduction to the anthology
when he says:
"In searching for contributors, I found isolated gestures
by isolated ports, isolated mainly by the condition of nationalism
prevalent in Canada in the last ten years.
However pluralistic the landscape seemed to be to
sociologists, the sheer force of Canadianism had been
enough to intimidate all the other older 'unofficial
language' writers." 1 '
However, an alternative and concomitant reason for
the initial emergence of an Italo-Canadian "genre" in
literature could be that lyrical poetry (the ludicrous lean
of Ricou's fame) is the first sign of retracing one's roots.
The voyage back is an individual task for it presupposes
not only a quest for identity but also the delineation of
a possible community that could strengthen or forge one's
ambivalent identity. It has been implied that the result of
this voyage back, in order to surge forward, could possibly
end in a new cosmopolitan identity, a transcultural and
thus, transnational mode of being. This process which
derives its force from the mythical implication present in
it is, first and foremost, the focalization of the anthropological
displacement which, as a rite of passage, is
endemic in the immigrant experience. Thus, lyrical poetry
serves as a work in progress for the settling of immigrant
experiences. The acquisition of new languages as they
deposit on the original stratus gives rise to new aesthetic
interpretative models of the new world. If, on the one
hand, refusal of the new could develop (thus, contributing
to the self-affirmation of ethnic ghettos); on the other hand,
this varied stratus of experiences could lead to the
emergence of claims of new, unbroken spaces for the
development of what is, essentially, a continuous experiment.
Of course, as it has already been stated, the notion
that language is also an aesthetic appreciation of the world
(and as Wittgenstein points out in the Tractatus the
aesthetic is also the ethic), the affirmation of aesthetic principles
based on the immigrant experience is bound to surface/or
the good and bad of it. Thus, what can be best
exemplified by the use of the following quotations is the
surfacing of a lyrical identity in Italo-Canadian literature
and how the aesthetic principle is interpreted by the
various writers insofar as the explosion or implosion of
a transcultural mode of being is concerned.
The risk contained in the "putting forth" of one's
return voyage is that the retracing of the roots could end
up as the fossilization of the stereotypes ever present in
Canadian culture at large (the implosion), thus, Filippo
Salvatore can embark upon his mythicization of the immigrant
as a hero:
"I am a hero,
the hero of defeat,
and pure tongue
that enlightens me
glimmers like thunder." 6
And:
"And late at night, as I lay
on the mattress full of corn-leaves,
I dreamt of falling enfeebled,
wounded at the shoulder, while
attacking and crying "Viva I Italia"
with a charged rifle, like my grandfather
on a rocky hill of the Trentino.
I was a hero when I shut my eyes." '
And:
"Dear hero of the defeat.
remain the surviving soul
nourished by sorrow
green is the grass
of every new spring." 8
Examples like these could be cited ad infinitum. Too
apparent, the populism is a continuous source of feeding
ground for this poet who cannot escape his wounded self
in his mythical journey. The idea of a community is shaded
by his personal stereotypes for him to envision a
transcultural expression of his experience. The theme of
the wounded self is one of the innate traps in the
acknowledgment of the immigrant experience. It befalls
as well Antonio DAlfonso. the editor of Guernica Editions,
which has greatly contributed to the development and the
distribution of Italo-Canadian literary texts throughout
Canada. It is the pitfall of the individual in whom these
experiences recoil so as to furnish a diminished identity
which cannot contribute to the formation of an idealized
community. It is perhaps, the venting of an underlying immaturity
which, in due time, could be resolved by the affirmation
of a self in a society rather than a self isolated.
Each piece of writing, in its good and bad aesthetics, contributes
precisely to the formation of a greater realm
whereby the new generations can learn from their
predecessors' entrapments and surmount the difficulties
inherent in the process of coming to grips with an identity
which is forever a paradox, the culminating point of
varied and self-sustaining transcultural experiences.
Sometimes, the writer is able to surmount, from the
start, the self-indulging traps of the self bringing to a transitional
resolution the various experiences which mark
him/her as "a prophet not without honour, save in his own
country, and in his own house." Thus, poets such as Fulvio
Caccia, Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, Antonino Mazza, Mary Di
Michèle, Mary Melfi can explore their own polyphonous
identity and produce works which confirm them as poets,
independent of nationalities and provincialities, in their
own right.
For lines, like the forthcoming quotations, have a priori
right to existence beyond any semiotic skermishes between
dominant and minority literatures; they are the produce
of the Italian immigrant experience extending themselves
to the Canadian community at large. Fulvio Caccia can very
well state: "Je n'ai que faire de ton rêve ossifié/il gît éclaté
dans la fosse commune." 9 in "Eloge de la fuite". And Pier
Giorgio Di Cicco can surmize this experience with:
"...May the god-in-hiding burst
from the skull in midstream and shock.
May the words come in new habits, in
the language of earthlings. " '"
The answers to the motivating experience are as varied
as the poems of one author differ from each other and from
those of other authors. But, the conscious and phantasmagorical
re-construction of a new cosmopolitan identity
can also be a direct invitation to this voyage, to this
particular but. yet, shared humus of Canadian societv:
"If the dream doesn't stop, if the word,
if the house
is in the word and we, by chance, should meet,
my house is your house, take it." "
Is this experience, this voyage of a thousand returns
and one departure more than a shared work-in-progress
identity at home in three languages? Other nuances are
filtered by the works of Mary Di Michèle and Mary Melfi.
No one could empirically substantiate a parity of sexes here,
in North America, and less so for immigrant women. Yet,
the sum of all of these experiences open themselves up
to the reader in an ongoing exchange, offering. And in this
Mary Di Michèle can affirm that:
"Being in love with someone who doesn't love you
is like being nominated for and Oscar and losing.
a truly great performance gone to waste.
Still you balanced your espresso expertly
throughout a heated speech.
and then left without drinking it.
For you Italians, after all, he shouted after you,
life is theatre."' 2
Or in Mary Melfi's words :
"Inside a lobster trap
with a fishnet for a gown
and angelfish for slippers;
the living room is a sea of hooks
and this is my husband, the fisherman,
who'd like to sell me off as a mermaid
but who'd break his neck to enter me." 1 *
The aim behind these quotations is not to so succintly
impress the reader, but because of the purpose of this
analyses, it should be viewed as a re-construction, limited
and partial of powerful, moving works which, needless to
say, should be read in their entirety.
4
The poets pave the way for the community. Each individual
road calls to itself homes, a parking lot: the
dynamics of a social group, their mundanity. their failures
and their successes. The metaphor is there to simply state
that, after the basic groundwork, the discovery of possible
identities, other modes of literature may develop. This
is not to say that the process is an organic one, but that,
in terms of production and interest, poetry precedes the
novel and the play in the Italo-Canadian literary experience.
Marco Micone's Gens du Silence and Addolorata (both
originally in French) are the working examples of successful
plays which can be seen to act as a cerniera, a bringing
together, of poetry and prose, works in this unofficial
literature. Micone's works have as a point of departure and
a "richer" return the ethnic people themselves in their trials
and tribulations (contoured by sometimes comical situations)
—the result of the reader-spectator's call for involvement.
EG. Pad's and Lamberto Tassinari's novels. CD. Minni's
short stories can be seen as the continuation of the
aforementioned theoretical process. Thus, we could quote
Parodi's words, (a character in Tassinari's L'ordre établi) by
saying that this literary formative process is as if:
"On sort du rêve par le réveil ou alors par un saut dans
un autre rêve, hop là, grâce à ces enclenchements fantastiques
qui ne se produisent que la nuit l ne petite
chose, un détail d'un premier rêve grossit de façon imprévue,
se clive, ou se troue et à ce moment précis, devient.
ou bien entre dans une autre chose qui se présente
immédiatement comme un nouveau thème, déclenchant
ainsi un autre rêve.
• i-i
D
Footnotes
1 Fulvii) Caccia, The Italian Writer jnd Language m Contrasts. Guernica Edition*.
Montreal, 1985
2 Laurie RlCOU, Words S Wtee", in Canadian literature no S6, Aulumn 1980
pp 12K-129
J, Joseph Pivaro, "Ethnic Writing and Comparator Canadian Literature . in Contrasts,
Guernica Editions Montreal. 1985, p JO
4 Ibid, p M
•> Picr Giotgio Di Cicco. Roman Candies". Hounslo» Press, Totnntu. 1978, p9
6. Filippo Salvatore, Suns of Darkness'. Cooperative d'Imprimerie Véhicule. Montreal.
1971
- Ibid, p J7
8. Ibid. p6l
9 Fulvio i .mu. Irpinu Edition- Triptyque, Montreal, p 12.
Ill l'ict Giorgio Di Cicco post Sixties No-turne". Fiddtehead Editions, Frcdcricton.
I98S. p JJ
11 Antonino Mua, m Italian i 'anadian Voice.- Mosaic Press. Oakville. I98-», p S5.
12 Mat) Di Michèle. 'Immune toOraviri Mcl Iclland and Stevari Limited. 1986. p-T.
13 Mar) Melfi. A Queen is Holding j Mummified Cat", Guernica Editions. Montréal,
1982, p 'l
Il Umberto Tassinan. in Quêtes . Guernica Editions, 1965, p 276
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