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‘Dialoghi mancati': Uses of Silence, Reticence and Ellipsis in the Fiction of Antonio Tabucchi

1998; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 19; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.33137/q.i..v19i2.9458

2293-7382

Marina Spunta,

Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

Missed conversations, unuttered words, and internal monologues are an intrinsic part of Tabucchi's fictional writing, creating a prose that, in Nathalie Roelens' words, ha la reputazione di essere ellittica, rarefatta, concisa e reticente, di eludere un indicibile'.i Such coexisting dialogism and elusiveness stem from the author's striving for linguistic precision and 'vagueness' (in the Leopardian sense) at the same time, for 'una parola flu- ida, un pò" indistinta e fluttuante', ^which suggestively reflects the hybrid nature of neo-standard Italian and the multiplicity and impermanence of contemporary' thought.Moving from the microtextual analysis of the fig- ures of silence, reticence and ellipsis in some of the author's most indica- tive texts, the present work intends to fill a gap in Tabucchi criticism in this specific area, which has mainly focused on macrotextual spatial and tem- poral gaps.Tabucchi's use of silence, reticence and ellipsis can best be understood when inscribed within the notion of dialogism.-^Followingthe collapse of grand narratives, contemporary thought and literature increase their dia- logic nature in a process of Verwindung and unending search (despite the awareness of the aim being unattainable), which makes the reader centre- stage by drawing them into the text.Tabucchi conveys this sense of flexi- bility and change through an original narrative voice and an extensive conversational mode, in direct speech and mostly free indirect speech.-*Dialogism and heteroglossia (Bakhtin) in his fiction result from the hybridi- sation of spoken' modes and literary language -as well as from the influ- ence of non-literary media, especially theatre and cinema -creating, in Testa's words, uno dei risultati più sapienti (soprattutto sotto il profilo sin- tattico) di trattamento colto e letterario dell'oralità dell'ultimo ventennio' (341).From cinema, in particular, Tabucchi claims to have drawn the montage technique, and therefore the elliptic mode, that permeate his fiction both in diegesis and in mimesis, that is in the plot structure, and in the characters' speech: