Gadda, la guerra e la «prassi dell’impossibile»

In his war writing, Carlo Emilio Gadda applies the analytical method of rational description to his own experience as a soldier. His aim is to investigate, from the inside, the disrupted and contradictory condition of the self reduced to a remnant of objective processes and to reproduce the deadly impact of battles as shattered and unrepresentable moments of outrage, ruin and pain. From the first story he tries to publish, the “Manovre di artiglieria da campagna”, Gadda thus mixes features of solemn funeral eloquence with the acidic and grotesque portrait of a frivolous present, which is out of control and incapable of rememberance.