Giovanna Faleschini Lerner. Carlo Levi's Visual Poetics: The Painter as Writer.

Farrell, Joseph

Giovanna Faleschini Lerner. Carlo Levi's Visual Poetics: The Painter as Writer. New York: Paigrave Macmillan, 2012

The title appears to give priority to Carlo Levi as artist, implying that he was essentially a painter who applied an artistic vision and technique to writing, while in fact the bulk of the book is dedicated to Levi's achievements as author. The multi-talented always cause problems for critics. While he undoubtedly brought a painter's eye to some splendid descriptive passages, he also used his paintings, especially of Cristo si e fermato ad Eboli, as a kind of aide-memoire for his writing. Was he really painter more than writer?

Title aside, this is a highly perceptive work which provides an in-depth analysis of Levi's writing and thinking and makes it clear that his work was founded on a series of binary oppositions, not just painting--narrative. Other contrasts which inform his outlook include those between Uligini--contadini, North--South, peasant--intellectual, magic--science, history--myth, development--timelessness, Turin--Rome, novelist observer, Fascist--Communist, civilisation--primitivism and representational--abstract art. Critics have struggled in vain to find some coherence between these competing forces, and the best have settled for the recognition that Levi belonged to the now extinct category of the man of letters, meaning that as a professional writer he responded to opportunities or to forces which were often beyond his control, most obviously when the Fascist regime dispatched him to Basilicata but also, after the war, when the demands of survival and the blandishments of the media, specifically La Stampa, made him take up the profession of the (highly sophisticated) travel writer.

The author, presumably because of her own interests, makes comparisons with contemporary thinkers and creative writers, like Emmanuel Levinas or Pasolini, but she also, more helpfully, establishes Levi's relationship with, and debts to, Gramsci and Gobetti. The richly detailed, lengthy notes which take up 17 pages, are a remarkable feature of this work and are much more than the standard bibliographical references. They provide a wealth of invaluable information on a range of matters of interest to readers of Levi, from the Novecento art movement to the nature of meridionalismo and the limits of post-war agrarian reform.

The book is structured with admirable clarity of method and critical thought, opening with an introductory section which treats the crucial element of Levi's "new humanism," including his highly debatable efforts to understand the roots of the appeal of Fascism and his more lasting attempt to establish the groundwork for rebuilding civilisation in the aftermath of the catastrophe of WWII. The following chapter deals with the shock which contact with the immobility of the peasant civilisation of Southern Italy offered to an intellectual grounded in the most advanced thinking of his age. Faleschini Lerner is plainly troubled by the violence Levi used towards his housekeeper, Giulia, who originally declined to have her portrait painted since she believed that allowing an image to be made was equivalent to ceding power over her very being. Giulia's instinctive beliefs compelled Levi to grapple with the persistence of magic and superstition and the challenge its survival represented to modern philosophical and scientific rationalism. This question was made more acute as Levi became increasingly tenacious in his defence of "the necessity of preserving difference in the face of authoritarian models of modernity" (49).

The encounter with the Mezzogiorno was decisive in the development of Levi's heterodox thought, both in politics and in aesthetics. In art, he developed a style he called realismo contadino (30) which was hostile to all prevailing schools, including those he had previously accepted, and to abstract art, meaning that, intriguingly but coherently, Picasso became his "archenemy" (169). Faleschini Lerner moves on to L'orologio, but in a style which is more descriptive and less analytic than the preceding sections. I cannot help thinking that in focussing on the symbolism of the watch and what it means for concepts of fluid, experiential time in society, the author underestimates the impact of the failure of the Partito d'Azione, and Levi's realisation that the high hopes that the Resistance would produce the new politics and the new state had been misplaced.

The author then examines two travel books, those dealing with Sicily and Sardinia. Especially in Le parole sono pietre, Levi was motivated by a hope that the peasant rebellions represented an escape from immobility, but these works are also best seen as fragmented, and as the work of the man of letters. The book on Sicily brought together experiences gathered on three visits and Tutto il miele e finito is the fruit of two visits to Sardinia ten years apart. I do not understand how after subjecting these works to critical examination, it could be asserted that "Lucania is for Levi a symbol of the entire South" (123). There were of course other works of this type on the USSR, Germany and India, and while there is a logic to the decision to omit these to focus on Levi and the South, it would have been of interest to discuss, even briefly, their place in his oeuvre. His reports on the USSR, however embarrassing they may appear today, illustrate one side of his political convictions, even if he also hoped for the emergence of a new kind of state which surpassed Fascism, Communism and Capitalism.

The closing chapter is dedicated to Quaderni a cancelli which, with what seems to me an unnecessary forzatura, she chooses to regard as a travel document of a different sort, this time of inner, psychological reality, rather than an occasional book whose nature was determined by his blindness. This work has left other commentators bemused, but the view advanced here is that its "value emerges from the constant dialogue between the imagistic and verbal dimensions of Levi's art" (126).

There are some odd linguistic flaws which should have been eliminated at the editing stage: "Levi augured" (50) is hardly English, "ansia gioisa" (56) is not "joyous anticipation" and whatever Paola Olivetti was to Levi, she was certainly not his "ancient lover" (169). These are blemishes in a work which is a valuable contribution to the study of a writer who risks falling from favour but whose thought is fresh and stimulating and whose historical importance is beyond dispute.

JOSEPH FARRELL

University of Strathclyde