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Lo Stadio di Wimbledon by Daniele Del Giudice

Why would a man firmly rooted in the literary world of his time never write a word of his own? This is the question Daniele Del Giudiceā€™s debut novel Lo stadio di Wimbledon sets out to answer. A spare, quiet, meditative book, it is an inquiry into another individualā€™s life choices that ultimately becomes an inquiry into the writing life itself, and an apologia on writing.

The novelā€™s narrator is a young man who, considering his own life choices, questions why a certain literary figure, now deceased, never wrote. The name of the individual is mentioned several times, and it is clear that he played a unique role in the cultural life of the city of Trieste. From other indications in the book, the reader knows that the man at the center of the inquiry is Roberto ā€œBobiā€ Bazlen, who served as an advisor to leading publishing houses of his day. The book echoes, with a few references, what was in fact an unfinished novel by Bazlen involving a captain who preferred to remain at sea, and a shipwreck, published posthumously in Italian as Il capitano di lungo Corso (Adelphi, 1973) and in English as The Sea Captain in Notes Without a Text and Other Writings (Dalkey Archive, 2019). ā€œIt is,ā€ wrote publisher Roberto Calasso in introducing these writings, ā€œa part ā€“ and a decisive part ā€“ of Bazlenā€™s work not to have produced any work.ā€ Both Bazlen and Del Giudice deliver an explosive silence: Bazlen with the implications of his refusal to write, and Del Giudice in his way of creating ā€œLiterature that does what it’s supposed to do, explode and be silent at the same timeā€ (Gianni Montieri, ā€œIl dolore e i libri. Lo stadio di Wimbledon di Daniele Del Giudiceā€).

One of the most persistent themes in the book and throughout Del Giudiceā€™s work is the nature of memory. The narrator of Lo stadio di Wimbledon comes to realize that memory, though essential to our understanding of ourselves and the reality around us, is a fragile and imperfect instrument,Ģżconstantly evolving, mutable and subjective. To find out why Bazlen never published anything in life, the young man seeks out individuals who knew the man, all of them now quite old. But how accurate are the memories? The result is a range of perspectives, which offer different angles of the same person. Viewed and recalled by other people, an individualā€™s character or personality becomes kaleidoscopic, ever-faceted and therefore uncertain, never fixed or determined. The volatility and unreliability of memory turns on the passage of time, impermanence, and change, and challenges the idea that the object of the inquiry in Lo stadio di Wimbledon might have a cohesive identity.Ģż

Rappresentanza, representation, another key element in Del Giudiceā€™s work, is considered by Del Giudice himself to be the signature of Lo stadio di Wimbledon. In ā€œLa zona del narrareā€ he writes: ā€œI emphasize the term representation (forms, including the novel, are born and die, and such deaths are essential); representation was what I cared about, and that is the theme of Lo stadio di Wimbledon.ā€ He goes on to say that he was sending the book ā€œto the publisher with the title Mercator’s Map. It is well known that the second name of that sixteenth-century map, the basis of modern cartography, is precisely Representation.ā€

Italo Calvino had in fact presented the text to Einaudi with the title Carta di Mercatore, describing it as a ā€œvery simple book, straightforward to read, but at the same time possessing great depth and extraordinary quality.ā€ The publisher opted for Lo stadio di Wimbledon, however, a reference to a final scene where the narrator stops at the museum at Wimbledon Stadium and while there reflects on how objects are removed from emotions, indeterminate, like photos. Nonetheless, in Lo stadio di Wimbledon as Calvino observes in his Note to the volume, the young man, whom some consider to be an alter-ego for the author, ultimately chooses rappresentanza, deciding to portray people and things on the page and devote his entire attention to representing the object.

The visual image is an essential element of rappresentanza. As such, it is central to Lo stadio di Wimbledon and Del Giudiceā€™s other work. In A Movable Horizon, for example, the author tells us that he is not sure he has much to write about his journeysā€”fictional and actualā€”to Antarctica because ā€œit was mainly a story about landscape.ā€ The photographs he took, he says, were like ā€œvisual notes.ā€ ĢżElsewhere, in an article significantly entitled ā€œThe eye that writesā€ (ā€œLā€™occhio che scriveā€), Del Giudice, referring to Calvinoā€™s novel Palomar, emphasizes visuality as the distinctive feature of narrative: ā€œIt is precisely this experience of ±¹¾±²õ¾±±¹¾±³ŁĆ , pushed to its limit, that determines the form of the book.ā€ Indeed, at the time a film version of Lo stadio di Wimbledon was being produced, and Del Giudice shared several polaroid pictures with director Mathieu Amalric: photos of Ljuba Blumenthalā€™s house and the stadium, taken during a visit to London. Underscoring the importance of the image as a departure point for his narrative, he said in an interview: ā€œItā€™s curious, a notebook, a few photos that become a film, that become a book.ā€

There is a scene in Lo stadio di Wimbledon where Gerti Frankl Tolazzi shows the narrator a series of photographs. Here the power of the image is so strong that the fear of seeing the man he does not want to see (perhaps fearing that the manā€™s silence might be contagious, as with the sweater Ljuba Blumenthal later gives him ā€œfrom Bobiā€) requires the narrator to squeeze his eyes shut:

This time Iā€™ve had a while to prepare myself; in fact, Iā€™ve devised a technique of my own. Itā€™s impossible not to look at the photographs, but each time she turns a page I blur the image, crossing my eyes and focusing on the tip of my nose. I stay like that until she says something. She always says something about the photos in front of usā€¦ She turns the page; I wait as before. She says, ā€˜Montale, next to Faramondiā€™s gramophone.ā€™ … A new page, the usual routine. Only this time itā€™s a little longer ā€¦ I wait, not looking. Occasionally I worry that she might notice. Then I decide thatā€™s impossible, we are completely in profile. Then, ā€˜Here he is!ā€™ she says. Itā€™s unmistakable, and I blur it as hard as I can.

Like Del Giudiceā€™s other books, Lo stadio di Wimbledon is marked by introspection, reflection, isolation, and meditation. In his quest for answers, the narratorā€™s visits to Trieste and Wimbledon Park are solitary sojourns. The tenor of the novel is thoughtful, the pace leisurely. Throughout the text the dialogues are punctuated with pauses and what at times seem like omissions; the elliptical quality creates an air of ambiguity that leaves you wondering if you missed something. These are not awkward silences, no one seems uncomfortable with them, nor are they pregnant silences, intended to make the situation more dramatic or impactful. The silence itself is a presence, sometimes piercing, sometimes waiting, listening, but always full of meaning. At times it is an uncertain silence, to buy time to think, to decide. The pauses allow a breath, and are an occasion to consider or reflect, to weigh, to take note of oneā€™s thoughts, to watch for the otherā€™s reaction and measure their words, sifting them through a sieve of possibilities. The result is a quieting effect that tones things down, defuses the drama and contributes to the unhurried tempo, while exploding with what is left unsaid.

Here, talking with Gerti Tolazzi, the silence introduces a shifting, whiplash effect, a turnaround. Referring to Bazlen, ā€œā€¦ he was no longer spontaneous,ā€ she says first, ā€œhe was already very set in his ways and therefore less intelligent.ā€ ā€œMaybe heā€™d just changed,ā€ the narrator suggests. ā€œOr had something happened?ā€ he asks. The woman ā€œdoesnā€™t answer right away; she thinks a moment, then says, ā€˜It may be that he realized that he had failed.ā€™ And after a brief pause, she adds, ā€˜He was a failure all along, though.ā€™ā€ The narrator is taken aback by the reversal: ā€œI would need a lateral, parallel time to be able to continue the conversation while simultaneously musing about each of the things Iā€™m hearing, which she says with chilling precision and softness.ā€

In another dialog, this time with a friend of Bazlen, a man who appears addicted to long pauses and whose conversation has its own pace: ā€œHe rests his crossed arms on the table; he accentuates everything by bursting through the silence, then sinking back into silence.ā€ The narrator tries to adapt, and uses the pauses as a time to think of a reply: ā€œDuring the long pauses he looks at me as if he were talking, and itā€™s not always easy to think of a response.ā€ The manā€™s words ā€œpop out like a cuckooā€¦ā€ Adjusting to the rhythm, the narrator lets ā€œa fair amount of time go byā€ before responding. Then ā€œthe usual silence, the usual staring at each other, smiling.ā€

The silence evidenced in Lo stadio di Wimbledon is a very different kind of silence than that represented by Bazlenā€™s rejection of rappresentanza and his refusal to write. Much has been written to suggest that Lo stadio di Wimbledon expresses a viewpoint that stands in opposition to Bazlenā€™s silence and renunciation. Enrique Vila-Matas considers such ā€œartists of refusalā€ in his novel Bartleby & Co., which is written as a series of footnotesā€”a kind of non-work itself. He observes that Del Giudiceā€™s ā€œnarrator proclaims a moral directly opposed to Bazlenā€™s,ā€ and quotes Patrizia Lombardoā€”who elsewhere coined the term the ā€œterrorism of negativityā€ā€”as saying ā€œAlmost timidly, Del Giudice’s novel contradicts … all those who revere Bazlen for his silence.ā€ The title of an article by Paolo Marcolin in Il Piccolo ā€“ Trieste (Sept. 2, 2021) following the authorā€™s death is telling in this regard, as it bids farewell to the writer who was not among those who adhered to the Bazlen mystique: ā€œAddio a Del Giudice, lo scrittore assente allā€™inseguimento del mito Bobi Bazlen.ā€

There is a video entitled ā€œRoberto Bazlen ā€“ With a backpack full of booksā€[i] in which Del Giudice states that ā€œBazlen is the only figure of the Italian Novecento who officially declared that writing books is no longer possible.ā€ I cannot help wondering what he might have thought or said to accompany those words spoken so equably about Bazlenā€™s belief that ā€œAlmost all books are footnotes ā€¦ I write only footnotes.ā€ By contrast, Del Giudiceā€™s conception of the writerā€™s role and that of literature itself is said to be inspired by Joseph Conradā€™s essay ā€œOutside Literatureā€ (1922), in which Conrad reflects upon the nature of Notices to Mariners; unlike literature, these Notices are motivated solely by the ethic of ā€œResponsibility.ā€

In the end, the focus of the bookā€™s inquiry and of the book itself centers on the dialectic between literature and life, which plays out below the surface of the text: the question of whether it is better to portray peopleā€™s lives on the page or to act on them as Bazlen didā€”to write about life or to live it. A writerā€™s life is his work, and vice versa, the narrator recalls the deceased poetā€™s mother saying in the film Suddenly Last Summer, although Sebastian Venable had not written a single poem. ā€œWriting isnā€™t important,ā€ the young narrator thinks, ā€œhowever, one cannot do anything else.ā€ By choosing to write, the narratorā€™s inquiry becomes a vindication of writing and what it means to be a writer. Or as one essayist in Luce e ombra: leggere Daniele Del Giudice put it: ā€œDaniele Del Giudice sets out to write the shipwreck of writing; saving it, by the very act of writing about itā€ (Massimo DonĆ ). Del Giudice himself, in the collection In questa luce, described writing as navigating in a sea studded with shipwrecks of many other authors and finding ā€œa new space in which to fulfil a small, personal shipwreck.ā€

 

 

Anne Milano Appel has translated works by a number of leading Italian authors for a variety of US and UK publishers. Her work on Daniele Del Giudice has appeared in Translation Review and Massachusetts Review. Her translation of his final novel Orizzonte mobile is currently seeking a publisher, and Lo stadio di Wimbledon will soon appear in English from New Vessel Press as A Fictional Inquiry.

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Lo stadio di Wimbledon will soon appear in English from New Vessel Press as A Fictional Inquiry.

 


By Daniele Del Giudice
Publisher: Einaudi
Paperback / 151 pages / 2021
ISBN: 9788806252397

 

[i] https://vimeo.com/506207913

 

Published on August 15, 2024.

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