«Un'umanità alle soglie della coscienza»

La duplice natura del mito pavesiano, contro e con Ernesto de Martino

Abstract

Abstract: The importance of the editorial activity of Cesare Pavese is already well known, as is his engagement for Einaudi's “collana viola”, in collaboration with Ernesto de Martino. In both the correspondence between the two and in de Martino's following public statements, the ethnologist accusingly designates as irrationals the sources of ethnology and history of religions that nourished pavesian myth. However, I would like to present how a comparison with de Martino's theoretical work can reveal the constructive nature of the dialogue between the two intellectuals. While the ethnologist argues against the unavoidable individualism of his “most singular childhood on the hills”, still, we can recognize in the most irrational works of Pavese, like in August Holiday or Dialogues with Leucò, a second nature of pavesian myth, which is heavily influenced by demartinians concepts of crisis and reintegration of presence. Thus, childhood symbols, that bind us to ourselves, are counteracted by the collective symbols of “a humankind on the verge of consciousness”, according to the befitting definition that Italo Calvino left us about the characters of Pavese's Dialogues.