Dalla «seconda volta» all’«ultima battuta»

Cesare Pavese e la crisi della presenza

Abstract

This contribution analyses the theme of the crisis of presence in Cesare Pavese’s work. The main reference is Ernesto de Martino’s Il mondo magico (1948), the first volume of the Einaudi series “Collana viola” edited by the anthropologist and Pavese himself. By expanding the field of Croce’s historicism, de Martino considers man as a presence in history and analyses cases of discouragement following critical events. Pavese’s reflection moves from these premises and, through Freud's mediation, appears as a clinic of sorrow. The dehistorization of the existence reverberates, as in de Martino, in the recursion of the mythical-symbolic elements but is distinguished by the reference to the «tragic motif», ineluctably linked to the theme of the sacrifice. The result is, by effect of the hendiadys between life and writing that animates Il Mestiere di Vivere, a connection between the sacrifice of the man and the sacrifice of the writer, whose activity is compared to «an always open wound» destined to drain him.