“Dissipatio H.G.”, by Guido Morselli: the last desperate cry of a man killed by the mediocrity of others
Review by Patrick Bateman
Published for the first time in 1973, shortly after the suicide of its author, "Dissipatio HG" (title borrowed from the philosopher Iamblichus, which stands for " dissipatio humani generis ", literally "evaporation of mankind") is the extreme, desperate nihil on existence posed by Guido Morselli.
The latter was as unfortunate in life as he was lucky post-mortem (as far as it is worth): ruthlessly ignored by most of the intelligentsia of post-war Italy, he collected more rejections than appreciation, accusing him of incorrectness and lack of ethics a large number of publishing houses. Famous have been the rejection of his "The Communist" by Italo Calvino, accused of lack of authenticity and of "Counter-recent" by Carlo Fruttero, banally dismissed as unconvincing. Fortunately, thanks to Adelphi , it was possible to rediscover this chameleonic and cultured writer, capable of ranging between tasty historical uchrony ( "Rome without a pope" and the aforementioned "Counter-recent" ) and ambitious reconstructions of bitter bourgeois satire capable of to rival and win even against the most inspired Moravia ( “A bourgeois drama” ).
"Dissipatio HG", however, is neither one nor the other, and I chose it precisely because it represents the catabasis of a man, rather than an author, tired of the continuous frustration caused him by a world in which he tried to to be known and recognized, without ever obtaining (due) consideration. Readable at different levels, this novel-non-novel full of controlled but vivid self-destructive tendencies, can be as much an allegory of a hell on Earth to which the protagonist – already dead – is condemned, as a sort of dark existential work of post-science fiction. -atomic reminiscent of the most pessimistic Matheson ( "I am legend" ) or the most radical Robert Heinlein ( "Stranger in a strange land" ).
More precisely, however, “Dissipatio HG” , beyond its suggestive frame and interpretative dynamics, is a lucid examination of the mind of a man who has left all ambition and desire in a valley of resentment and loneliness. The days of the protagonist run gray, only occasionally bothered by questions about the total absence of other forms of life (?) Except for him. This suffocating routine, interspersed with profound reflections ranging from literature to music, is not seen as a privation but as a resigned awareness of what man really is, that is to say a living being among other living beings. The strictly "biological" reading of human life on earth is in fact nothing more than this: you are born, you live for a certain period (whether it is ten or a hundred years, certainly a negligible time compared to the march of Life on the planet) and then you die, giving way to your fellow men.
Here, perhaps it is this continuity that our protagonist would like to avoid. He would like to disappear, evaporate with all his fellow men, descend – or ascend, who can say! – towards an afterlife that contemplates neither paradises, nor hells, neither Elysian Fields nor Hades, but only a milky and opal obsolescence, sublimating and reducing to zero every emotion and every feeling.
The post “Dissipatio HG”, by Guido Morselli: the last desperate cry of a man killed by the mediocrity of others appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/recensioni/dissipatio-h-g-di-guido-morselli-lultimo-disperato-grido-di-un-uomo-ucciso-dalla-mediocrita-altrui/ on Sat, 12 Sep 2020 04:28:00 +0000.