Editing Carlo Emilio Gadda (section)

== Biography ==
Gadda was a practising engineer from [[Milan]], and he both loved and hated his job. Critics have compared him to other writers with a scientific background, such as [[Primo Levi]], [[Robert Musil]] and [[Thomas Pynchon]]—a similar spirit of exactitude pervades some of Gadda's books. Among Gadda's styles and genres are [[baroque]], [[expressionism]] and [[grotesque]].<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=6DldAAAAMAAJ ''Romanzi di Carlo Emilio Gadda''] p.550</ref><ref name="ArbasinoGeniusLoci">[[Alberto Arbasino]], ''Genius Loci'' in ''The Edinburgh Journal of Gadda Studies'' (EJGS) 1977 {{ISSN|1476-9859}}, già in ''Certi romanzi'', [[Giulio Einaudi editore|Einaudi]], Torino, 1977, pp. 339–71 [http://www.arts.ed.ac.uk/italian/gadda/Pages/resources/archive/classics/arbasinogeniuslocii.html cfr.] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120415100015/http://www.gadda.ed.ac.uk/Pages/resources/archive/classics/arbasinogeniuslocii.php |date=April 15, 2012 }}, poi in ''L'ingegnere in blu''(2008).</ref><ref>Francisco Protonotari [https://books.google.com/books?id=7xZaBTDw4Q8C&pg=PA135 Il Comico], edited by Carlo Sini, p.135</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=0bsbAQAAIAAJ ''Nuova antologia'', Volume 560]</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=_Rg4PzfmZsIC&pg=PA127 ''Narrativa e Romanzo nel Novecento Italiano''] quotation: {{quotation|E il tragicomico lamento gaddiano, ora grottesco e ora infrenabilmente figurato o espressionistico}}</ref>

Carlo Emilio Gadda was born in Milan in 1893, and he was always intensely Milanese, although late in his life [[Florence]] and Rome also became an influence. Gadda's nickname is ''Il gran Lombardo'', The Great [[Lombardy|Lombard]]: a reference to the famous lines 70-3 of [[The Divine Comedy|Paradiso]] XVII, which predict the protection [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]] would receive from [[Bartolomeo II della Scala]] of [[Verona]] during his exile from Florence: "Lo primo tuo refugio e 'l primo ostello / sarà la cortesia del gran Lombardo/ che 'n su la scala porta il santo uccello" ("Your first refuge and inn shall be the courtesy of the great Lombard, who bears on the ladder the sacred bird").<ref>Giulio Cattaneo, Il gran lombardo, Garzanti, 1973; Einaudi, 1991.</ref>

Gadda's father died in 1909, leaving the family in reduced economic conditions; Gadda's mother, however, never tried to adopt a more modest style of life. The paternal business ineptitude and the maternal obsession for keeping "face" and appearances turn up strongly in [[The Experience of Pain|''La cognizione del dolore'']].

He studied in Milan, and while studying at the [[Politecnico di Milano]] (a university specialized in engineering and architecture), he volunteered for [[World War I]]. During the war, he was a lieutenant of the Alpini corps and led a machine-gun team. He was taken prisoner with his squad during the battle of [[Caporetto]] in October 1917; his brother was killed in a plane—and this death features prominently in ''La cognizione del dolore''. Gadda, who was a fervent nationalist at the time, was deeply humiliated by the months he had to spend in a German POW camp.

After the war, in 1920, Gadda finally graduated. He practised as an engineer until 1935, spending three of those years in Argentina. Among Gadda's less well-known achievements is the construction, as an engineer, of the Vatican Power Station for Pius XI.<ref>Footnote to ''That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana''</ref>  The country at that time was experiencing a booming economy, and Gadda used the experience for the fictional South American-cum-[[Brianza]] setting of ''La Cognizione del Dolore''. After that, in the 1940s, he dedicated himself to literature. These were the years of fascism, which found him a grumbling and embittered pessimist. With age, his bitterness and [[misanthropy]] somewhat intensified.

In ''[[Eros e Priapo]]'' (1945) Gadda analyzes the collective phenomena that favoured the rise of Italian Fascism, the Italian fascination with [[Benito Mussolini]].<ref>Attilio Brilli (1985) [https://books.google.com/books?id=l_wHgvwYUF8C&pg=PA30 ''Dalla satira alla caricatura. Storia, tecniche e ideologie della rappresentazione''] p.30</ref> It explains Fascism as an essentially [[bourgeois]] movement.{{citation needed|date=July 2012}} ''Eros e Priapo'' was refused in 1945 by a magazine for its allegedly obscene content, and would only be published for the first time in 1967, by Garzanti. The 1967 edition, however, was expurgated of some of what Gadda considered the most heavy satiric strokes. The unexpurgated original 1945 edition will be published in 2013.<ref>Nicola Di Turi [http://www.linkiesta.it/mussolini-il-gran-somaro-il-gadda-autocensurato-che-ora-possiamo-leggere?page=full ''Lettura “Mussolini, il Gran Somaro”: il Gadda autocensurato che ora possiamo leggere''], December 11, 2011</ref><ref>Anna Mangiarotti [http://www.filologiadautore.it/wiki/images/d/d8/Il_Giorno_MI_28.03.2012_Gadda.pdf ''A Milano con Gadda''], Il Giorno edizione Milano, p.14 28 March 2012 quotation: {{quotation|A breve uscirà "Eros e Priapo", a cura di Giorgio Pinotti che annuncia: «Si potrà leggere il trattato antimussoliniano nella sua forma originaria (1944–1946), ancora più oltraggiosa e vituperante: l'edizione Garzanti del 1967 è infatti frutto di una radicale censura, voluta da un Gadda ormai stanco e sempre più timoroso di rappresaglie».}}</ref><ref>Paola Italia [http://www.griseldaonline.it/temi/estremi/mali-e-rimedi-estremi-italia.html Mali e rimedi estremi. «Eros e Priapo» 1944–45]</ref>

In 1946, the magazine ''Letteratura'' published, in five episodes, the [[crime novel]] ''Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana'', which was translated into English as ''[[That Awful Mess on Via Merulana]]''. It experiments heavily with language, borrowing a great deal from several Italian dialects. It is also notable for not telling [[whodunnit]] at the end.

There is some debate amongst scholars as regards Gadda's sexual orientation.  In his book on the homosexual painter [[Filippo De Pisis]], writer [[Giovanni Comisso]] (also gay) described an evening in which he and De Pisis went for a beer with Gadda and philologist [[Gianfranco Contini]], during the course of which Gadda asked De Pisis to summarize the various types of "irregular" love.<ref>Giovanni Comisso, Il mio sodalizio con De Pisis, Vicenza, Neri Pozza, 1993, 88.</ref> According to Italo Calvino (Introduction to ''That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana'', 1984) Gadda was "a bachelor oppressed by a paralyzing shyness in any female presence."  Certainly, his work demonstrates a strongly subversive attitude towards bourgeois values, expressed above all by a discordant use of language interspersed with dialect, academic and technical jargon and dirty talk.<ref>Giulio Cattaneo, ''Il gran lombardo'', Turin 1991</ref> This is particularly interesting as the criticism of the bourgeois life comes, as it were, from the inside, with the former engineer cutting a respectable figure in genteel poverty.<ref>William Weaver, "That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana", New York 1984</ref>

Gadda kept writing until his death, in 1973. The most important [[literary critic|critic]] of Gadda was [[Gianfranco Contini]].

In 2017, the [[Swedish Academy]] published after 50 years the secret list of nominations for the 1966 [[Nobel Prize for Literature]]. Gadda was nominated for the first time by the Italo-American linguist and polyglot [[Mario Andrew Pei]].<ref>{{cite web | url = https://www.adnkronos.com/cultura/2017/01/15/nobel-rivelata-lista-segreta-del-gara-gadda-levi-moravia-montale_5YdEDAxifO1Q0JCCaQar5J.html | title = Nobel, revealed the 1966 secret list: Gadda, Levi, Moravia e Montale were on competition | date = Jan 15, 2017 | publisher = [[Adnkronos]] | language = it | archive-url = https://archive.today/20170116160542/https://www.adnkronos.com/cultura/2017/01/15/nobel-rivelata-lista-segreta-del-gara-gadda-levi-moravia-montale_5YdEDAxifO1Q0JCCaQar5J.html | archive-date = January 16, 2017 | url-status = live | access-date = March 13, 2019 }}</ref>