"A Famous City Occupier": a rewriting between monument and tale

Abstract

In Narratori delle pianure, “Un celebre occupatore di città” is the only story that recounts real-life historical events. Set in Emilia in 1922, the story narrates the fascist takeover of a few of the region’s cities and focuses on the Oltretorrente Uprising in Parma. The story’s unnamed hero, Italo Balbo, is pitted against his similarly unidentified antagonist, Guido Picelli. Celati chooses to chronicle the historical events of the 1920s by rewriting Balbo’s Diario 1922. “Un celebre occupatore di città,” is radically different from the other stories in the collection, in which Celati simply appears to transcribe the stories of everyday citizens. With “Un celebre occupatore di città,” however, Celati transforms the original text, the diary, into a new work, the short story. Though the two share some narrative similarities, they are decisively different in form. My analysis will utilize both narratological categories as well as historical research to take advantage of the rare opportunity to conduct a close reading of Celati through the lens of history. It will become possible to explore an issue that has remained mostly ignored by scholars: Celati’s judgement of the social and political movements of the first half of the twentieth century. In this respect, a careful discussion of the confrontation between Balbo and Picelli, which represents the climax of the story, will be crucial.