Ignazio Rando had been a model employee at the Land Registry Office of Ferrara for 37 years, 5 months and 4 days \u2013 a few months short of his pensionable age \u2013 when one day he climbs onto the table and walks out, leaving his colleagues and the public staring in open-mouthed amazement. <\/p>\n
The theme of Dario Franceschini\u2019s second novel is the nature of madness, an exploration of that subtle line that divides normality from what we regard as mental aberration. Like the skin that separates our pulsing body fluids from the air around us, or the transparent surface of the water in a flooded church \u2013 the only straight line in a building filled with collapsing columns and refracted arches. Or again, the straight line of the tables that Ignazio walked across in mid morning on an otherwise normal day. Until that morning, Ignazio\u2019s madness \u2013 possibly a genetic trait since his brother had died in a lunatic asylum \u2013 was confined to his dreams, which were filled with colour, sensuality and violence, in contrast with a lifetime\u2019s drudgery spent filling the yellowing files with his beautiful copperplate handwriting.<\/p>\n
Franceschini\u2019s novel maintains an extraordinarily creative dichotomy between the tragic lyricism of events seen through Ignazio\u2019s eyes during the rest of that day, and the reaction of his colleagues, Ragioniere Garbioni and the Registrar himself, Conservatore Ansaldi. These are two stereotypes of Italian officialdom, consumed by petty concerns and squalid ambitions. Garbioni is the self-appointed representative who undertakes to report Ignazio\u2019s behaviour to the Registrar, and is then asked to investigate the matter further. His main concern, apart from missing lunch at home and his afternoon nap, is how to report the incident to his wife and colleagues and how best to turn it to his own advantage. The Registrar is a thoroughly odious individual, enjoying power without lifting a finger to earn it. He knows how to press flesh at the appropriate moments and can work the \u201csystem\u201d to his advantage. Later that afternoon, while waiting to interview Garbioni, Ansaldi flaunts the regulations by lighting a cigarette in his office, with disastrous consequences. However, using threats and influence, he succeeds in shifting the blame for the ensuing catastrophe onto the innocent shoulders of his ex-employee. The black humour that results from the behaviour of both these men highlights the magical qualities of Ignazio\u2019s last hours.<\/p>\n
Dreams are a rich vein for literary exploration and Franceschini deserves credit for mining it in all its technicolour and fantastic detail. His style and imagery have a poetic quality that is truly captivating. Two of the most memorable images conjured up in Ignazio\u2019s dreams are the iridescent clouds of imagination escaping from the dissected brain of a corpse undergoing autopsy; and the brilliant green lawn surrounded by fiery terracotta walls where Ignazio realises that just by \u201cstanding upright, one\u2019s head is already in the sky\u201d. <\/p>\n
Like a tightrope walker for whom a moment\u2019s loss of concentration can be fatal, Ignazio has held his schizophrenia in check for years, dividing his existence between the monotony and sepia tones of his everyday life and the technicoloured brilliance of his dreams. When Ragioniere Garbioni\u2019s bluffs his way into Ignazio\u2019s flat, the shutters in the ordered part are tightly closed, shrouding it in gloomy secrecy. Only when he discovers the hidden door leading into the \u201cdream room\u201d is he overwhelmed by sunlight and chaos, suggesting that Ignazio\u2019s schizophrenia is a sense more real than the half-light of the normal world. However, the book offers no neat conclusions. Readers are left wondering about Ignazio\u2019s love for Lisa\/Laura, the muse whom he abandoned but who continues to travel with him in dreams. It is to her that he turns in his last moments, having already lived this moment again and again in his dreams. Ignazio\u2019s passage from the nightmarish turn of the afternoon\u2019s events to the paradise that awaits him is as innocent and unblemished as his madness.<\/p>\n
Franceschini is a lawyer and member of parliament, deputy-secretary for the Partito Democratico, a key ally in Walter Veltroni\u2019s Margherita coalition at the last general election. It is tempting to read his latest book as an allegory of Italian society and politics, but this may be too simplistic. However, in questioning our definition of madness, Franceschini makes a valiant attempt to redefine the straight line between creativity and bureaucracy, dream and reality, normality and madness, decency and corruption, and in doing so creates some memorable images and characters.<\/p>\n
La Follia Improvvisa di Ignazio Rando<\/a> Dario Franceschini\u2019s first novel, Nelle vene quell\u2019acqua d\u2019argento (2006), was awarded the Premier Roman 2007 in Chamb\u00e9ry, France, and in Italy the Premio Opera Prima Citt\u00e0 di Penne and Premio Bacchelli. The novel has just been published in France by Gallimard under the title Dans les veines ce fleuve d’argent (May 2008). For Italian reviews of both novels, see the Bompiani website<\/a>. <\/i><\/p>\n Lucinda Byatt translates from Italian into English and reviews books for Scotland on Sunday and other publications. Ignazio Rando had been a model employee at the Land Registry Office of Ferrara for 37 years, 5 months and 4 days \u2013 a few months short of his pensionable age \u2013 when one day he climbs onto the table and walks out, leaving his colleagues and the public staring in open-mouthed amazement. The theme […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[12796,12816,12806,6,1646,1336],"class_list":["post-262746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-dario-franceschini","tag-italy","tag-lucinda-byatt","tag-novel","tag-review","tag-untranslated"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326226,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262746\/revisions\/326226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nby Dario Franceschini
\nBompiani, Italy
\n154 pgs., €13.00<\/p>\n
\nContact: mail@lucindabyatt.com<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"