La costruzione di una «specie di romanzo»: testimonianza e racconto nell’antologia ‘Il ritorno del padre’ di Giani Stuparich, curata da Pier Antonio Quarantotti Gambini

Abstract

The reading of Il ritorno del padre, anthology of tales by Giani Stuparich edited by Pier Antonio Quarantotti Gambini, shows the centrality of the experience of the Great War, in which Stuparich takes part as a volunteer in the 1st Grenadier Regiment, and that he narrates above all in the diary Guerra del ’15. This work occupies the central part of Il ritorno del padre, a considerable position in the narrative structure created by Quarantotti Gambini who, in the preface to the volume and in the correspondence with the editor, stresses the chance of reading the collection as a «narrazione unitaria e compiuta», «una specie di romanzo». Following his instructions, namely reading Il ritorno del padre from beginning to end, it has seemed evident to me that the experience of war is the crux on which the whole collection rests, as well as its unifying theme, since the tales of the first and third part converge exactly towards the war experience. In the organization of the collection, Quarantotti Gambini, in my opinion, tried to harmonize the two poles that enclose Stuparich’s per sonality: the civil consciousness and the literary tension, recognizing in his participation to the war the most significant moment of a man’s life, narrative subject of Il ritorno del padre.