Chapter Claudio Magris e il mondo nordico. Uno scambio fecondo

The current article is aimed to outline a first review of the solid relationship of Claudio Magris with the Nordic world, both from the perspective of his reception in Denmark, Norway and Sweden and from the study of his fecund encounter with the works of authors like Henrik Ibsen, Knut Hamsun, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Jens Peter Jacobsen, Herman Bang and others. These authors, whose works were partially translated by Magris, eventually played a meaningful role in his own writing. Besides affirming himself as a relevant voice in the Scandinavian context, his work as a mediator for Nordic literature has made him a reference point for Scandinavian studies in our country

The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas and The Heron by Giorgio Bassani: the Identification with the Ornithological Other.

A comparative reading of the novels The Birds (Fuglane, 1957) by the Norwegian author Tarjei Vesaas and The Heron (L’airone, 1968) by the Italian Giorgio Bassani rises a question: why do the two main characters – so different from each other, created by two writers so distant from each other in space and with two completelydifferent cultural backgrounds – face the same fate, at the end of a path running through the same stages? The characters of Mattis “the Idiot” and Edgardo Limentaniboth find themselves in a dramatic condition of exclusion from society and existential collapse. They get to recognize themselves respectively in the images of a woodcockand of a heron. Then a hunter fires and the death of the birds anticipates, en abyme,the death of both characters. They both commit suicide.The question is generated by the relevance of ornithological symbolism in the two novels, made explicit by their titles and the main characters’ relation to the two birds,which turns into identification. The analysis of ornithological symbols is deferred for the moment only to briefly introduce the two main characters

Seguire l’animale. Desiderio di metamorfosi ne Gli uccelli di Tarjei Vesaas e ne I ghepardi di Finn Carling

The aim of this study is to analyze the relation between man and animal as an objectual relation and a desire of the former for the latter, highlighting the exceptional and transgressive dynamics that come into play when the object of desire is an animal. The thesis is that, in contemporary literature, the theme of desire towards the animal other, often tightly connected to the topos of metamorphosis, plays a key role in the dissolution of the unitary subject and leads to the multiplicity of being or, to cite Delueze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus, the multiplicity of becoming.The analysis is focused on two norwegian novels from the twentieth century: Fuglane (The Birds) by Tarjei Vesaas (1957) and Gepardene (The Cheetahs) by Finn Carling.After a short introduction to the novels, we will move on to explain how desire is the basis of the objectual relation between man and animal, in order to then show how it also represents a dynamic principle and a narrative model in the analyzed literary texts.Il presente studio intende affrontare la questione della relazione tra uomo e animale in termini di relazione oggettuale e di desiderio del primo verso il secondo, provando a mettere in luce le dinamiche di eccezionalità e di trasgressione che entrano in gioco quando l’oggetto desiderato è un animale.La tesi è che il motivo del desiderio verso l’altro animale, spesso strettamente connesso a quello della metamorfosi, venga ad assumere nella letteratura contemporanea un ruolo-chiave nella rappresentazione della dissoluzione di un soggetto unitario in favore di un principio di molteplicità dell’essere o, per citare i Mille Piani di Deleuze e Guattari, di divenire.La riflessione si incentra su due romanzi norvegesi del Novecento: Fuglane (Gli uccelli) di Tarjei Vesaas (1957) e Gepardene (I ghepardi) di Finn Carling (1998).Dopo una breve presentazione dei romanzi, si intende descrivere in che modo il desiderio si trovi alla base della relazione oggettuale tra uomo e animale per poi mostrare come esso rappresenti anche un principio dinamico e un modello narrativo nei testi letterari presi in esame