Visita alle ombre
Rapporti tra Il ragazzo morto e le comete di Goffredo Parise e Risveglio di primavera di Frank Wedekind
abstract
The present comparative essay suggests that Parise recalled Wedekind’s Frülings Erwachen (1891) in his novel Il ragazzo morto e le comete (1951). They both tell the story of a friendship, which ends when one of the main characters dies. The most interesting feature that the two works share is the irruption of dead people in the lived experience of the protagonists, which interact with them as if they were alive characters. Parise’s post-war scenario – the Venetian countryside in the late 1940s – is just a background for the oneiric tale of a fifteen-year-old boy, while Wedekind’s play is born of a need to ruthlessly criticize the hypocrisy of Wilhelmine Germany. However, in his novel Parise evoked a series of images that can also be found in Frülings Erwachen and the finale of Il ragazzo morto e le comete is almost perfectly overlapping with the one of Wedekind’s play.
Keywords: Contemporary literature • Recall of literary images • Goffredo Parise • Frank Wedekind