Vite malate

Vite malate

La malattia è un tema molto diffuso in letteratura.

Le malattie più diffuse, nella realtà come nell'immaginario letterario, erano la lebbra, il vaiolo, la sifilide.

In epoca moderna il tema della malattia diventa ancora più significativo. Nel XIX secolo e durante i primi decenni del XX secolo, è soprattutto la tubercolosi che si carica di significati metaforici in letteratura. A fianco della tubercolosi si trovano, più tardi, le malattie mentali e il cancro; recentemente anche l'AIDS.

La malattia prende la forma di un rifiuto dell'ordine, dell'autorità; di un'evasione dall'organizzazione perversa dei rapporti socio-economici: diventa sintomo di un malessere, di una mancata integrazione dell'individuo nella società.

Sono molti gli autori legati al tema della malattia:

Un primo esempio è sicuramente l’autrice inglese Virginia Woolf.

On being ill

In the essay, Virginia Woolf observes that though illness is a part of every human being’s experience, it has rarely been the focus of literature.

According to her, literature has preferred to concentrate on mind and ideas, much more than on the body. In fact, though there is a close link between the body and the human soul, writers frequently analyse the psychological mind and not the physical illness.

<<Considering how common illness is, […] it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature. Novels, one would have thought, would have been devoted to influenza; epics poems to typhoid; odes to pneumonia, lyrics to toothache. But no; [...] literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear…>> On being ill)

(Virginia Woolf,

<<Considerato quanto sia comune la malattia, […] appare davvero strano che la malattia non figuri insieme all’amore, alle battaglie e alla gelosia tra i temi principali della letteratura.

Verrebbe da pensare che romanzi interi siano stati dedicati all’influenza; poemi epici alla febbre tifoidea; odi alla polmonite; liriche al mal di denti.

Ma no; salvo poche eccezioni […] la letteratura fa del suo meglio perché il proprio campo di indagine rimanga la mente; perché il corpo rimanga una lastra di vetro liscio attraverso cui l’anima appaia pura e chiara…>> Sulla malattia)

(Virginia Woolf,

In order to explain this lack of interest, the writer identifies two main reasons:

• Man should change his personal attitude, creating a new philosophy of the body, and trying to understand illness’s condition;
• English is a poor language and, like other ones, prevents a careful description of illness in literature. In this passage, Virginia Woolf also gives us an example: in order to explain love, a girl might use Shakespeare or Keats’s words; on the contrary, an ill person wouldn’t be able to explain his personal health condition with very precise words, using the language he knows.

For these reasons, it’s almost impossible to communicate illness’s experience.

According to Virginia Woolf, sympathy doesn’t exist: it only exists thanks to the words.

In her opinion, everybody only takes pity on himself and, sympathy is created by healthy people. Ill people don’t need sympathy.

The ill person is a king, the convalescent is a dethroned king, Charles Lamb said. The ill person is seen as a Philotheus, a sort of hero of himself.

The greatest thing of illness, -Virginia Woolf writes-, is the special condition of the person: his personal hell makes himself different from healthy people, giving him some “mystic” qualities, making him able to take the subtlest shades.

Illness makes the person more sensitive: a healthy person only thinks thanks to the rational and intellectual elements, while illness completely changes the person: he takes the shades and, then, finds the rational meanings.

The ill person is a deserter: he takes care of other things. He’s also indifferent when he observes a sky. He knows that, one day, nature will prevail.

He should read poetry rather than prose because he prefers the sounds to the meanings.

In English literature, in fact, we can consider Virginia Woolf as an example of woman haunted by the terror of losing her mind.

All her life was marked by mental problems: after her mother’s death, when she was only 13, she had her first mental breakdown.

She began to suffer from headaches and to sleep badly and in order to put an end to her pains she attempted suicide by taking drugs, without any success.

The Second World War increased her anxiety and fears: London was ruined by bombs and she felt that the whole world had disappeared, a world of people, friends and values. She was unable to face her fears and she was afraid of becoming completely mad, so she decided to commit suicide again and chose the only possible death for her: the “death by water”, and so she drowned herself in the river Ouse.

Guy de Maupassant

Anche alcuni scrittori francesi hanno sofferto di gravi malattie. (Guy de Maupassant) Guy de Maupassant

(1850-1893)

Même les écrivains français ont souffert de graves maladies.

Guy de Maupassant est l’un des nombreux auteurs français qui ont souffert et écrit de la maladie. Guy et son frère ont hérité de leur père, une maladie vénérienne qui les mènera les deux à la folie et la mort.

Sa folie est l'un des symptômes de la syphilis; sans cette maladie (incurable à l'époque) il ne serait jamais devenu fou.

Guy de Maupassant est l’un des écrivains majeurs du XIXème siècle, au même titre que ses camarades Zola et Flaubert. Auteur de contes, de romans et de nouvelles, son écriture le situe dans le mouvement réaliste et naturaliste. Il est également connu pour avoir su introduire une dimension fantastique à plusieurs de ses récits.

Ses oeuvres les plus importantes sont :

• Boule de suif (1880)
• Mademoiselle Fifi (1881)
• La maison Tellier (recueil, 1881)
• Une vie (roman, 1883)
• Contes de la Bécasse (recueil, 1883)
• Toine (1885)
• Contes du jour et de la nuit (recueil, 1885)
• Bel-Ami (roman, 1885)
• La Petite Roque (1886)
• Le Horla (1887)
• Pierre et Jean (roman, 1888)
• Notre Cœur (roman, 1890)

L’ oeuvre Le Horla est un livre important. Il y en a beaucoup de versions, mais dans la dernière de 1887, le récit est présenté sous la forma d’un journal intime.