Secrets and Puzzles

Silence and the Unsaid in Contemporary Italian Writing

Nicoletta Simborowski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351197571
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

"Four major Italian writers raised in the shadow of fascism - Cesare Pavese, Primo Levi, Natalia Ginzburg and Francesca Sanvitale - are the focus of this examination of the 'unsaid' in modern Italian narrative. Post-war and free of official censorship, these writers nonetheless show signs of constraint and omission in their work. Are the gaps a form of concealment? In this lucid and wide-ranging study, which embraces key areas of modern literary investigation - Holocaust writing, political guilt, autobiography, feminism and film theory - the author addresses the question of self-censorship and traces its course in contemporary Italian writing."

Chapter 1
Theoretical Approaches to the Unsaid and Cultural Background

‘Silence’ as both Thematics and Style

Throughout the discussions in this book I use the terms 'the unsaid' and 'silence' as interchangeable. The question whether there is any difference between the two terms is, however, interesting and encourages the reader to consider what exactly is happening when ellipsis is perceived in a text. Perhaps one could define 'the unsaid' as referring specifically to everything that is not articulated. 'Silence' instead can be a condition, and therefore can be the theme of a text, related to 'ineffability', or else it can be the muteness of a character, central to the plot (such as Dacia Maraini's silent duchess)¹ or, for instance, the inability of the victim to voice his or her pain, particularly relevant to any discussion of Holocaust literature. Perhaps one term suggests a gap that is more deliberate, more willed than the other, but it would be arbitrary and somewhat artificial to say which. Therefore, although I will be considering many different kinds of silence in literature, these two words will remain interchangeable for me.

The notion of the unsaid is central to traditional discussions of literature. One of the definitions of poetry might be the use of as few words as possible to convey as vivid a meaning as possible. Clearly, the best prose too suggests more than it specifically says. The techniques of suggestion are familiar to all those interested in the study of literature: imagery, ellipsis, symbols, semantic associations. Effective writing is at least as evocative as it is specific; perhaps this is the distinction between the clarity of a 'functional' text, a legal document for example, and the almost infinite interpretative possibilities offered by a verse of poetry. In between, there is a gamut of combinations of these two styles, and to some extent we expect certain kinds of narrative to veer towards one or the other. It is felt that 'facts' or 'truth', both concepts that have always been at the heart of philosophical enquiry but nevertheless still resist definitive pigeonholing, should be expressed in the plainest, clearest, most unadorned language, whereas fiction can have free rein stylistically. This perceived appropriateness can in itself be a creative tool, as when fiction uses the tone of a factual account for specific effect; however, when a factual account uses figurative language the writer risks exciting a sense of disbelief in his reader, the suspicion that somehow the 'truth' is not being told. Autobiography can combine adventurous style with perceived 'truth' without necessarily alienating the reader, but when history collides with personal experience, as in accounts of historical events, then suspicion may be engendered by a literary style that the account is not 'true'. These issues will be important when discussing individual writers.

However, my study is not specifically about silence as part of the subtlety of style, although this aspect naturally informs some of my discussion. I am concerned with those moments in a text when the silence conveys something other or more than economy of style. In other words, where ellipsis is used as a conventional stylistic technique, the author suggests, through other means rather than explicit words, concepts he intends to convey to his reader. The author's 'intentions' are of course infinitely debatable, as many critics and commentators have pointed out. Nevertheless, there are occasions when a writer omits elements that emerge none the less. Often there is an overlap between these two situations: a writer offers a hint of something he or she preferred not to articulate fully, but more meaning is conveyed than perhaps was intended. There may be deliberate concealment, intending nothing to come through, or partial concealment intended to deceive readers looking for the obvious but allowing for different interpretations. It can sometimes be useful for a writer to deny that certain meanings were intended: in times of censorship this is clearly the case.

In all nuances of this tapestry of omission/articulation, an element of self-deception is possible and indeed inevitable. It is well known that the text can move beyond what the writer consciously intended. Here I can cite no less an authority than Umberto Eco, who, in his response to Stefan Collini, assures us that he did not 'intend' many of the meanings and connections perceived by readers in Il nome della rosa.² However, he is obliged to admit, however humorously, that these readings are pertinent and intelligent: 'Text plus standard encyclopedia knowledge entitle any cultivated reader to find that connection.'³

Modern literary theory is not a major part of this book; nevertheless it is extremely helpful when examining the unsaid, in so far as it encourages us to view language as far less under our control than we might once have thought. Language is shifting, unreliable and ideologically bound. Traditional 'style', as literary critics have understood it, might be thought of as the conscious application by the author of structures perceived by writer and reader alike as absolute and whose function is clear and predictable. Structuralism and poststructuralism have thoroughly undermined this notion, separating author and text irrevocably and extending the interpretative scope of the reader. Once it has been established that language is not totally reliable and transparent, it has been a natural progression to give at least as much importance to the unsaid as the stated, and the unsaid has been debated by many eminent theorists.⁴ As Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser have it:

What allows the unsayable to speak is the undoing of the spoken through negativity. Since the spoken is doubled by what remains silent, undoing the spoken gives voice to the inherent silence which itself helps stabilize what the spoken is meant to mean. This voicing of the unsayable is necessarily multilingual, for there is no one language by which sayings of things can be undone.⁵

The Theorists

Oswald Ducrot's Dire et ne pas dire provides an interesting discussion of the linguistic devices available for concealment, that is, the basic tools of the language of concealment, to be used consciously or unconsciously. He points out that there are often circumstances when one needs to be able to say things but to be able to act as if one hasn't said them. Departing from the linguistic reality that everything that is stated can be contradicted, he points out that it is sometimes useful not to be explicit, so that an idea can be expressed covertly without attracting comment or contradiction. We can go further and suggest that in these cases the idea passes into the reader's or listeners subconscious and is more likely to be accepted as 'true', which is the basis of the notion of the subliminal message. In this way the unsaid can be extremely powerful, influential and indeed dangerous. In this connection Ducrot describes the function of unarticulated messages in advertising. The relatively harmless ones encourage us to buy one product rather than another, but others may attempt to forge our attitudes by reinforcing prejudices. Advertising, by its nature, must prefer one element over another and must seek out persuasive and preferably unconscious means to convince the consumer. Syllogism is often a significant part of this process. Ducrot gives a simple example, where a minor premiss is stated, followed by a conclusion that suggests a major premiss: for example, she knows best, she buys X, therefore X is best.⁶

In a complex and extended narrative this very basic technique can acquire great subtlety. In Primo Levi's work, for example, discussed fully in a later chapter of this book, there are many examples. For instance, the episode concerning Henri in Se questo è un uomo, where the narrative, when analysed in terms of a simple syllogism, states: Henri was a civilized person whose company was a pleasure; one always felt uncomfortable after an encounter with him and I (Levi) prefer never to see him again; therefore (not stated) he was guilty of something terrible. Another example is contained within the chapter describing the hanging of a rebel: we witnessed a hanging; we were ashamed and angry; therefore what we saw (not described in detail) was particularly horrible.

Jacques Derrida has offered some stimulating ideas about the nature of the unsaid. His isolation of the notion of 'undecidability' offers a category for the unsaid or at least a framework within which to consider the status of the unsaid.⁷ The unsaid is discernible, we can locate it, the fact that it is implied means that it cannot be defined as total silence; and yet it is not words either. It is undecided, in Derrida's terminology. His discussions of writing as 'pharmakon' are also thought-provoking in this context: writing is the pharmakon, both cure and poison, inasmuch as writing replaces memory inadequately and imperfectly. This has wide-ranging implications in any discussion on autobiography or the relationship between a narrated account and the 'truth'.

Here we are reminded of Frank Kermode's reflections when discussing history and fiction in the context of readings of the Bible in The Genesis of Secrecy, where he reflects that all narrative is subject to 'shaping' of some kind. He says, 'historians as well as novelists (traditionally) place [...] value on "followability"'; we remember a plotted narrative and believe it. This imposed structure he refers to as 'occult figurations'. He adds that 'too strict a distinction between meaning and truth would leave few historical narratives capable of interesting us'.⁸ This separation of event from its narration, and the implication for 'truth' and 'meaning', is highly significant when we consider what is left out in a narrative and why the writer has made particular omissions. Kermode's comments continue to elucidate this link with modern theorists when he says that presuppositions are part of our linguistic apparatus, but they militate against the meaning of the text (what is actually written) as opposed to the truth of the text (what it is written about). He goes on to mention the 'occult sense' of a text and how this can be interpreted in Freudian, biblical or literary terms. The slippage between meaning and truth is arguably the most fertile area of a text, and the writerly skill involved in creating this gap, whilst at the same time suggesting what it must be filled with, is one of the most subtle and complex at the writer's disposal.

Derrida, in his provocative discussion of phonocentrism and logocentrism, also suggests that speech and thought are more closely linked to one another than thought and writing, arriving at his conclusions by way of Aristotle and Rousseau, He refers to a history of silence, the repression of writing while speech is favoured.⁹ It is interesting to consider what happens to the suppressed thought or the unexpressed thought in this process and where such thoughts can be placed in this hierarchy. It could be argued that the technique of the unsaid finds a place for these anomalous constructs of the mind, codifying them in writing, whilst not actually writing them down. In this way, the fleeting thought in our minds, which we do not always bring to the fore and make whole either in our heads or in speech, can be trapped permanently on the page, in writing, in the form of the unsaid. This occurs often via the 'trace', as Derrida defines it: if language is a system of signs that depends on a word selected not being the word that is not selected (a notion derived from Saussure's assertion that language is purely differential), then every word suggests the others that are not there. Clearly this could generate a meaningless cacophony of unspoken words, but by a process of association, the words selected tend to suggest only a small proportion of other possible expressions. When we consider the meaning of what is not said, this shifting terrain offers enticing open-endedness, but the text that is there provides guidance and some limits, avoiding loss of meaning.

Mikhail Bakhtin's literary and phenomenological discussions also offer useful insights into how to approach the unsaid.¹⁰ He has stressed that language is not fixed in meaning, but meaning changes according to the cultural context of the reader or listener, and in this sense the reader becomes the author. This is particularly productive in the context of the unsaid, because the reader in a profound sense becomes the author of what must be supplied to fill the silence, without creating confusion by distorting the language that is supplied. In the context of the unsaid, Bakhtin's reader-author is an extreme case. A great deal more of what Bakhtin has to say helps with our understanding of specific areas of literature: the author—hero relationship in autobiographical accounts, the concept of Carnival and the emphasis on the body and the grotesque has been revealing when examining women's writing, where the body often features as a cumbersome, bleeding, leaking entity in its own right. In these cases, the literary tools provided by Bakhtin give an insight into why narrative focus shifts in certain kinds of writing. His discussions in Esthétique et théorie du roman regarding how the author's voice becomes the narrator's are also relevant in any examination of autobiography and autobiographical fiction.¹¹

Roland Barthes offers further observations which pertain to the definition and use of silence. In Essais critiques: Le Bruissement de la langue, he says that the voice is the substance of life, and so we might infer that silence is a negation of life.¹² This, however, needs to be considered in conjunction with his observations on tense, whereby the past tenses are fixed but the future is fluid, alarming and silent. Silence is often the space left by a gap in the text, and I suggest that any shifting of tense leaves space for gaps: if we say or write, 'I feel this now, but I felt that ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• 1 Theoretical Approaches to the Unsaid and Cultural Background
• 2 'II ritegno': Writing and Restraint in Primo Levi
• 3 Cesare Pavese and the Need to Confess: Politics in Pavese's Key Works
• 4 Natalia Ginzburgs Lessico famigliare
• 5 Silence and Women's Writing
• 6 The Einaudi Publishing House, Public Attitudes and the Perception of Truth
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index