The terrible mess in the Via Merulana
The horrible mess in Via Merulana (Quer pasticciaccio brutto de Via Merulana) is the title of a novel by the Italian writer Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893–1973) published in a magazine series in 1946 and in an expanded form in 1957 .
Action overview
The chronological plot can be precisely determined historically and geographically, with location and street information: It takes place from March 13 to 24, 1927, in the time of Mussolini's fascism , in Rome and the Castelli Romani region . The first part of the novel (Kp. 1, 2, 4) is mainly located in the house Via Merulana No. 219 (between the churches of Santa Maria Maggiore and San Giovanni in Laterano ), called the "Gold Palace": Here eats on February 20th 35-year-old Doctor Francesco Ingravallo, known as Don Ciccio, who was assigned to the riot police, had lunch with the friends and family Balduccis (Liliana, who later became the murder victim, is his father's cousin).
The crimes in Via Merulana
- Sunday, March 13th (Kp. 1):
Three weeks after the inspector's visit (on March 13), he is investigating a robbery in the same building: under the pretext of checking the radiators, a tall young man in a mechanic's suit and a brown-green wool scarf came into the apartment of Countess Teresina Menegazzi and fled with the old woman's gold, money, and jewelry. A shopboy hurried out of the house behind him. Ingravallo discovers a tram ticket for the Castelli Romani line (Torraccio stop) at the scene of the crime , and consequently the first investigations concentrate on this trace, especially since the description of the perpetrator applies to a passenger.
- Thursday, March 17th (Kp. 2):
During this investigation, On March 17th, Ingravallo's hostess, the “incredibly rich” Liliana Balducci, was found with her throat cut by her nephew Giuliano Valdarena on the same floor as he entered the apartment with the door ajar, in order to be able to move to Genoa to say goodbye to the aunt. Her jewelry, like that of the Countess before, has been stolen. Despite lengthy interrogations of Valdarenas, the couple's niece Gina, who was at school at the time of the crime, and the clerk Cristoforo, who was posted to protect his wife at night during Balducci's business trip, “the thick veil of mystery lies over the crime”. Gravallo sees no connection between the two attacks, but suspects personal motives, he suspects the nephew, on whose clothes one found traces of blood, does not believe his explanations and has him arrested.
Research and interrogation in Rome
- Friday, March 18 (Kp. 3, 4):
The return of Remo Balducci from his business trip on March 18 and his information about the stolen jewelry as well as further interrogations in the police headquarters of Santo Stefano at the Collegio Romano , near the Pantheon , by the High Commissioner Fumi and Ingravallo (Giuliano Valdarena and Balducci) do not encourage any new ones Findings. The will of the murdered, handed over by Don Lorenzo Corpi from Santi Quattro Coronati , Liliana's confessor, on January 12, reinforces Don Ciccio's suspicions: the chief heiress is the niece Lugia (Gina) Zanchetti, Balducci only receives the compulsory portion, Giuliano Valdarena, on the other hand, some valuable family jewelry Servants, u. a. Assunta, textiles for trousseau. Donations are given to female institutes, foundations and the priest Don Corpi. A search of Valdarena's apartment reveals the inherited items and also cash in new bills. He tries to explain everything without convincing the inspector: Liliana, for whom, despite her love for Remo, a life without children has become pointless and a torture, had the heirlooms revised and, out of sisterly love, gave them to him before his marriage for his To support family formation.
- Saturday, March 19th: (Kp. 5):
The goldsmith Ceccherelli, who changed the ring and chain on behalf of Liliane, as well as Del Bo, chief cashier of the Banco di Santo Spirito, who issued the new banknotes, confirm Giuliano's representation and thus exonerate him.
- Sunday, March 20th: (Kp. 5):
Balducci complements his statements about Liliane's desperate desire to have children.
- Monday, March 21 (cp. 5):
After the burial of the murdered in the San Lorenzo cemetery , Don Lorenzo Corpi is interrogated about the psychological background of the case and reports on Liliana's four "provisional adoptions" (Milena, Ines, Virginia, Gina)
- Tuesday, March 22nd (Kp. 6, 7):
In the second part of the novel, the plot spreads to the area of origin of the potential perpetrators: the rural Castelli Romani region around Marino south of Rome. The green scarf trail led to nineteen-year-old Enea Retalli, called Iginio, from Torraccio, who has since gone into hiding. He brought the evidence Zamira Pácori in Due Santi to dye. The Carabinieri Vice Brigadiers Pestalozzi and Maresciallo Santarella had success with their informant system and their unorthodox interrogation methods: The criminal scene apparently met in the pub and in the brothel and gaming room Zamiras, disguised as a hosiery and tailor's workshop ("A meeting place for the life forces living next to each other"), where also Carabinieris , e.g. B. the Maresciallo Fabrizio Santarella, in business-private unclear demarcation, stopped.
Typical of the female occupation of the establishment is the 20-year-old unemployed trouser seamstress Ines Cionini from Torraccio, who was arrested in Rome as a stick girl, and whose galan encouraged her to steal. She is described as a mixture of beauty, precociousness, insolence and neglect and worked for about a year at Zamira, together with Camilla Mattonari, who told her about a friend who was employed in a Roman household and was given trousseau (the inspector suspects apparently, as his last action shows, this could mean Assunta because she has her residence like Camilla at Pavona). Ines' versatile friend is called Diomede Lanciani. He often talked to Zamira, maybe he was a decoy to recruit new female supplies for her company. In Rome, he excluded foreign tourists when he was not doing repairs as an electrician in apartments, for example at a countess in a house near the main train station, where his brother Ascania also went in and out as a shop boy. This information applies to the first case in Via Merulana.
Manhunt in the Castelli Romani region
With the 8th chapter the main plot shifts to the Castelli Romani landscape south of Rome
- Wednesday, March 23rd (Kp. 8, 9, 10):
Pestalozzi and Santarella interrogate Zamira about two of their employees, Clelia Farcioni from Pozzofondo and Camilla Mattonari from Pavona, and there they run into Lavinia Mattonari who is trying to hide her topaz ring, which she claims Camilla has lent her. Like her colleagues, she pretends to be ignorant of the questioning until she is presented with facts or threatens to be arrested. In Camilla's bedroom in her uncle's station-keeper's house, the carabinieri track down a sack of jewelry (“NUN-IS-ERREICHT”), which the author lists and describes for three pages. The treasures seem not only to come from Menegazzi's apartment, but to be a reservoir for many burglaries (“at that time the newspapers were writing a lot about that“ dark ”crime in Via Valadier, then about that other, even“ darker ”crime in Via Montebello ”). On the drive to the police station, the two cousins Camilla and Lavinia accuse each other of treason and argue about who is the real bride of the fugitive Iginio, who gave them jewelry for her services. Lavinia ponders the deeds of the woman friend and remembers that he wanted to scare the countess with a pistol, and also admits that Iginio had committed a crime with a knife against “a young married woman ... in his village”.
- Thursday, March 24th (Kp. 10):
Gaudenzio arrested in the Piazza Vittorio Diomedes brother Ascanio and Don Ciccio travels with a large police presence to the house of Assunta Crocchiapani's terminally ill father in the Alban Hills near Pavona to search it. He tries "to pull the strings on the limp puppet of the probable" and has the "obsession in his terribly wounded mind" because she did not come to Liliana's funeral for having given the perpetrator information. But she throws herself "boldly against the insult [...]", thus "halting the fury of the possessed" and "seduces [] him to reflect: almost to repentance."
Literary classification and analysis
Crime story
Gadda's novel begins similarly to a classic crime story , e.g. B. Edgar Allan Poes The double murder in rue Morgue (1841), in which Madame l'Espanaye, a wealthy elderly lady, is found with her neck cut (newspaper headline: “The tragedy in rue Morgue”, at Gadda: “Horrible crime in Via Merulana, "the newspaper vendors hooted."). Although the traces at the scene of the crime do not reveal any motive for murder, jewelry, including a topaz (topaz motif also in Gadda), is scattered on the floor and the neighbors' testimonies are only meager acoustic Containing clues to the perpetrator, the private detective August Dupin uses clever combinations to solve the case.
The two crimes in Via Merulana are also being investigated by a sniffing original, v. a. in the first case, a quick clarification seems possible (ticket, motive, perpetrator descriptions). Despite his somewhat sleepy appearance and his clumsy movements, the detective is known as "omnipresent, omniscient in the dark affairs and dark cases". With his worldview of a multi-causal “cuddle” he approaches his cases and tries to unravel the “multitude of converging causes”.
But Gadda's novel already moves away from the characteristics of the traditional detective novel in the introductory phase: Ingravallo's invitation to the family of the later murder victim unfolds on February 20, from the astute point of view of the guest and mixed with his reflections and feelings for the attractiveness of the hostess and her housemaid, for a nuanced portrayal of a family portrait of the childless Balduccis, their nieces who were taken in and then exchanged, their favorite nephew Giuliano Valdarena and the maid Assunta Crocchiapani. The policeman is fascinated by the erotic atmosphere around Signora Liliana and this emotional “bias” through his secret love (supreme beauty, warmth of heart, refinement of features, noble fire and melancholy, wonderful skin) and the jealous antipathy towards his virtual rival (the beautiful, young Valderana) influence his hypotheses and strategies. Although the commissioner repeatedly thinks through the family relationships between the victim and the potential perpetrator, sometimes in the form of an internal monologue or dialogue with himself (Chapter 3), and he also cites arguments in his reflections that exonerate Giuliano, he sticks to his Line firmly. He himself becomes part of the tangle and is fixated on the transfer of Valdarenas, and later Assunta, because he obviously misjudges their motives.
Ingravallo also functions only at the beginning with pioneering observations as a type of the all-dominating commissioner, increasingly the author uses the large investigative apparatus activated in reality in such cases: v. a. Doctor Fumi, head of the investigation department, the security police Gaudenzio (the "big blonde" from Terracina) and Pompeo (the "grabber") as well as the Carabinieri NCOs from Marino (Maresciallo Di Pietrantonio, Fabrizio Santarella, Brigadier Pestalozzi), all have their little ones and great performances.
Portrait of society
Gadda structured his novel like a crime story: with precise dates of the extensive police actions. The crime scene inspections and interrogations as well as the routes of the police in Rome or the overland journeys of the Carabinieri serve the author as a vehicle for the representation of the people and their living space, the urban and natural landscape. B. to detailed descriptions of the residents of the "Gold Palace" with the staircases A and B, and thus to the characterization of a mixed social group from the porter Manuela Pettacchioni to the official Commendator Filippo Angeloni, who has delicacies delivered to his apartment by shop boys to the rich bourgeoisie (Balducci, Menecacci). The author relates the observations of the house residents in detail and orientates himself on their way of speaking such as dialect or jargon. The interrogation protocols, for example of Ines Cionini or Valdarenas, have also been expanded into biographical stories and portraits characterized by the language and vocabulary: Giuliano Valdarena, Liliane's protégé and confidante, Liliana Balducci, née. Valdarena, the relationship of the Valdarenas, Remos and Liliane's childless marriage story from Remos and Giuliano's perspective, their affection for Giuliano and the projection of their wishes onto Giuliano's imminent marriage to Renata in Genoa, Liliana's four “provisional adoptions” (Milena, Ines, Virginia, Gina ). The tragic life of the murdered and their family environment is made up of the various representations. These portraits are connected with impressions from the Roman old town with its characteristic streets and squares, such as the colorful hustle and bustle of the Viktualienmarkt in Piazza Vittorio , where Ascanio praises potatoes to the housewives at his grandmother's stand shortly before his arrest.
In polarity to the affluent bourgeois standard of living stand the service staff from the lower social class and, in connection with them, the occasionally unemployed young casual workers who are attracted to criminals by the shine of the facade of the “Gold Palace” and draw their friends into it. Their area of origin is mostly the rural region of the "Castelli Romani" south of Rome.
Expressionist language
Gadda describes the discrepancy between the poor dwellings of these people and the magnificent, early morning twilight natural landscape of the Sabine Mountains and the Campagna Romana from the perspective of the Carabinieri stationed in Marino. Onomatopoeia and like a stream of consciousness , their rapid motorcycling over the hills and valleys are staged: “Blublublublu, there with verve, awakened again, the engine roars between his knees. Or the new morning bubbling under him in a restrained seething, where the little road falls into the paved area: or there on the mountain slope ”. Inserted into these impressions are z. B. Pestalozzi's surreal bacchanalian dream of the “Countess Circe” in search of “Topatz”, reflecting his search for the stolen jewelry, art-historical explanations of the Peter and Paul painting Manieroni in the Due Santi church , as well as detailed ironic descriptions “Stalking squinting hens”, the “paroxic” rage when the policemen approach Camilla's apartment, or the hens with a “deliberate suicidal attitude that is their own” just before the buffers of a train fluttering the tracks. Here the images of arduous human existence connect and break with nature: In the March air, smoke rises from a chimney, “as if it wanted to symbolize the poverty of its origins through its ascending attempt to be nothing: or in the formless loneliness, the bite of the daily The need to dissolve, which those who feel it tend to call hunger ... In anticipation of the new leaves [the woe of the cuckoo's iambus] seemed to recall the eternal and lost tides, the pains of spring ”.
Narrative form
As usual for a detective story, the author predominantly uses the personal narrative form , i. This means: The reader accompanies the commissioners and carabinieri in their activities, follows the statements of the interrogated, mostly verbatim, as well as their perceptible reactions and learns the evaluations, reflections and strategies of the investigators, but not those of the witnesses and accused. This narrative perspective relates primarily to Ingravallo and Pestalozzi, the two protagonists of the police, but also applies to Santarella, for example. In individual sections, Gadda dissolves the principle of information identity between detective and reader, which makes him an "independent" assessor in the fictional puzzle game, and grants him comprehensive insights, e.g. B. in the psychological state of the interrogated Ines: “She felt naked, unprotected against the power of the inquisitors over nudity and shame, by which she was […] judged […] as it is, the daughters, the sons without Protection, without a shield, in the bestial arena of this earth ”. You not only follow the cousins, who are exposed in their quarrel, on their way to Marino together with the coachman and Pestalozzi, but also gain access to Lavinia's thoughts on Iginio's crimes. Assunta's thoughts are also communicated. In this way, the author extends the view, which was previously limited to the police, to a multi- perspective structure.
However, Gadda repeatedly breaks through the personal narrative form and fades in authorial , sometimes ironic, comments: about the field of operation and the qualities of the “grabber”, Pestalozzis (“he was not an Italian finance minister. And neither was the Menegazzi.”), Santarellas (“Ein Connoisseur: that was logical. At the right moment he could turn a blind eye. Or open both. He looked splendid [...] Your heart opened when you saw him like that. "), The course of the examination (" of all things, the twisted coincidence seemed to come to the aid of the perplexed that night ”), the change of nature in March, the Italian painting of the big toes or the fading out of Zamira's reactions (“ history, the master of life, did not try to record that ”). In many passages, such comments are combined with the thinking and feeling of a figure (e.g. in Ines) in the form of the experienced speech : “Poor girl, she had to wait for the dawn there, at the table in the detention cell, wrapped in one Ash-gray blanket from the "Hotel Flea Sting" in the company of other nereids that the patrol had fished out of the ocean ”. The flowing transitions, for example, from Ines' interrogation statements about Zamira, are typical of Gadda's style. Her statements are continually expanded to include a representation of the mixed bar and tailoring business of the landlady at the Due Santi and her Carabinieri customer Santarella as well as his family situation and lead to an ironic apotheosis of the motorcyclist roaring through the landscape, from whom the girls “in dream certain full moon nights ".
Political background
The novel is pervaded by critical assessments of Mussolini's fascist regime: “The new strength of the chin-ladder”, “Photo of the big shit”, “stinking braggart”. Nevertheless, it only contains a few passages inserted into the plot that deal fundamentally with the system of fascism: "This profound renewal, which acted as an ancient epoch or at least took on the strict features of the lictors , but already gave a guess at their talent for thugs ... paved the well-known way to hell with the most eloquent good intentions ... destroyer of that necessary separation of powers and destroyer of that living being that is commonly called the fatherland ”. Rather, Gadda accentuates some proclamations (“Concept of the upscale, civil moral rigor” “the new law of rods in the bundle of lictors . Even to think that there could be thieves in Rome today?” “By pretending everything to best stand ") as illusionary, draws a disharmonious picture of society and warns, using the example of the Pirroficone case, of the" collective madness "of prejudice, triggered by targeted political actions that exploit the prejudices of the crowd. This skeptical attitude (“Oh, dirty mystery of this world!”) Can also be seen in the course of the plot.
Dissolution of the criminal act
While the traditional criminal narrative creates fictional justice through the investigation of the case and the arrest and punishment of the perpetrator, Gadda's novel breaks the plot realistically or existentially and leaves it at the clarification of the robbery, at least for the reader who is familiar with Lavinia’s thoughts knows the perpetrator Iginio, who, as the girl hinted at, could also be expected to commit a crime with a knife. Diomede appears to have been involved as a thief, decoy, and informant. A chain of circumstantial evidence leads the police to Zamira's bar as a switching station: this is where the young women and potential criminals met and stretched their nets to Rome. However, the two main suspects are on the run when the novel closes, the origin of the jewelry has not been clarified and the inspector Ingravallo got lost in the thicket of statements and his feelings. As far as the criminal case is concerned, the novel is a fragment and leaves open the evaluation of the evidence and further investigations. The reconstruction of the murder as well as the punishment of the murderer by the judiciary is obviously less important to the author, perhaps it does not seem appropriate to him. It focuses on the presentation of a heterogeneous society with sad personal situations and fateful as well as social dependencies and networks, in which officers of the police apparatus are also involved.
Text history and reception
Gadda wrote his novel in Florence in 1945 after the end of World War II under the impression of liberation from fascism, which he initially supported himself. The magazine Letteratura printed a first version from 1946–1947 in five parts. During this time, the author worked on a draft for a film adaptation for the Lux film company, but the project was never realized. In 1983 the script appeared under the title The Palace of Gold .
After Gadda moved to Rome, he reworked the first version: he expanded the plot and built v. a. in chapters 6–10 tension-increasing elements. This successful book edition, published in 1957, made the author, who had previously only been noticed by a small group, known to a broad public. In 1961 the first German translation by Toni Kienlechner appeared , which was awarded the Helmut M. Braem Translator Prize in 1984; In 1998 a new edition was published by Wagenbach.
After the great response of the book, the director Pietro Germi filmed the novel under the title Un maledetto imbroglio (The Facts of Murder) in 1959 and the TV miniseries Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana was broadcast in 1983 (director: Piero Schivazappa, script: Franco Ferrini , with Flavio Bucci and Scilla Gabel).
literature
- Cesare Garbali: Due furti uguali e distinti: Carlo Emilio Gadda, "Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana" (1957). In: Franco Moretti (ed.): Il romanzo. Volume 5: Lezioni. Einaudi, Torino 2003, pp. 539-570.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gadda, Carlo Emilio: The terrible mess in the Via Merulana. Translated from the Italian by Toni Kienlechner. Wagenbach, Berlin, 1998. ISBN 978-3-8031-2329-9
- ^ Gadda, Carlo Emilio: Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana, Garzanti 2007. ISBN 978-88-11-68339-1 .
- ↑ Gadda, Carlo Emilio: The terrible mess in the Via Merulana. Translated from the Italian by Toni Kienlechner. Piper, Munich, 1988, pp. 95, 305. ISBN 3-492-03304-0 . The following references refer to this edition.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 11.
- ^ Gadda, p. 82.
- ^ Gadda, p. 91.
- ↑ Gadda, pp. 125, 135.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 130 ff.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 218 ff.
- ^ Gadda, p. 223.
- ↑ Gadda, pp. 64, 208.
- ^ Gadda, p. 208.
- ^ Gadda, p. 211.
- ^ Gadda, pp. 208, 232.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 335 ff.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 39.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 356 ff.
- ^ Gadda, p. 402.
- ^ Gadda, p. 408.
- ^ Gadda, p. 94.
- ^ Gadda, p. 5.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 11.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 104 ff.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 28.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 45 ff.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 209 ff.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 155 ff.
- ↑ Gadda, pp. 76 ff., 98 ff.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 99 ff.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 121 ff.
- ↑ Gadda, pp. 130 ff., 149 ff., 176 ff.
- ↑ Gadda, pp. 185 ff.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 372 ff.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 275 ff.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 228.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 278 ff.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 286 ff.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 298 ff.
- ^ Gadda, p. 322.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 321.
- ^ Gadda, p. 317.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 361.
- ^ Gadda, p. 315.
- ^ Gadda, p. 243.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 356 ff.
- ^ Gadda, p. 400.
- ↑ Gadda, pp. 370, 378.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 338.
- ^ Gadda, p. 225.
- ^ Gadda, p. 268.
- ^ Gadda, p. 369.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 286 ff.
- ^ Gadda, p. 313.
- ^ Gadda, p. 229.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 212 ff.
- ↑ Gadda, p. 223 ff.
- ^ Gadda, p. 95.
- ^ Gadda, p. 211.
- ↑ Gadda, pp. 107-110.
- ^ Gadda, p. 107.
- ^ Gadda, p. 94.
- ^ Gadda, p. 95.
- ^ Gadda, p. 108.
- ↑ Gadda. P. 127 ff.
- ^ Gadda, p. 256.