In the shadow of the mammoth: narratives of symbiosis in 'La Coscienza di Zeno.' (Italian Issue)

In complesso abbiamo bisogno di tutelare o di essere tutelati. Altrimenti la nostra mente non vede uno scopo della vita.(1)

Freed from the stifling "tutela" of the psychoanalyst in the last pages of the novel, Zeno becomes more and more solitary, wandering along the metaphysical banks of the Isonzo river until the war separates him permanently from all the ties, obligations and social expectations that had wrapped him in their dense web. The book, which began with Zeno's solitary exercise of remembrance, returns in the end to the intimacy of "raccoglimento." In between, the narrator unravels the arrhythmic story of consciousness, which, as the chapter headings suggest ("La morte di mio padre," "La storia del mio matrimonio," "La moglie e l'amante," "Storia di un'associazione commerciale"), unfolds as the story of Zeno's various associations with his others.(2) This essay will attempt to penetrate this tight web of associations, the symbiotic in-between where Zeno's subjectivity narrates itself.

To understand the intersubjective relation of Zeno with his others it is helpful to reexamine a text that preceded the composition of the novel and directly inspired the philosophical pessimism of its ending, namely "L'uomo e la teoria darwiniana." In this essayistic fable, Svevo rewrites Darwin's evolutionary theory by staging the birth of humanity and the "signing" of the first social contract. "Man," for Svevo, was born as the uomo dell'abbozzo, unfinished in his evolution, separated from the other life forms because of the restlessness of his desire, his "malcontento." Unlike the other animals which, in the aftermath of the creation, dived into the water or flew into the sky, declaring themselves satisfied, "finished," the human animal kept wandering defenseless on the earth, unwilling to develop those specific organs--wings, paws, fins, etc.--that would have allowed him to be at home in the world. Furthermore, Svevo's man also defines himself against a humanity that strives for "success," for adaptation to a given social environment in the same way the animals adapted themselves to the natural one. The modern uomo dell'abbozzo "nella mancanza assoluta di uno sviluppo marcato"(3) lives in a state of perpetual potency, his strength lying in the endless possibilities he offers future societies.

The critics who have dealt with "L'uomo e la teoria darwiniana" have concentrated their attention on the "uomo dell'abbozzo" as an alter ego of Zeno, but little attention has been paid to the second part of Svevo's allegory of origin.(4) In this section, entitled "Evolution," the central event in man's phylogeny finds its figuration. According to this fable, man would have been soon extinguished, killed by other animals, if he wandered around erect, proud and obsessed by his desire. Human beings survived by making themselves slave to an other: "L'uomo fatto cosi non pote salvarsi che quando visse all'ombra di un animale piu forte di lui" (638). Man came to light in the shadow of the mammoth. Having renounced desire, the mammoth lived satisfied and "finished" in its body and granted to the weak man the "intervallo di pace" in which to pursue his desire undisturbed. "A quell'ombra egli si mise a costruire i suoi ordigni" (639), and thus man furthered his evolution, now a purely technological one, outside his body. The restlessness of his desire eventually made him think of himself as the master, a change which led to the breaking of the social contract and to the death of the other: the benign mammoth. It is in this shadow of the finished mammoth that the story of Zeno, "l'uomo dall'anima inquieta," unfolds. The Coscienza di Zeno not only illustrates but corrects the fable of origins. The fable's playful dialectic of master and slave becomes increasingly ambiguous and dynamic in the novel's narratives of symbiosis.

1. In the Shadow of the Doctor