In Carlo Emilio Gadda’s modernist works, dress never constitutes a merely instrumental element of narrative. Rather, it serves to reflect the social habitus of a character, or its very habits of being. In her Atlas of Emotion, Giuliana Bruno describes fashion as “an interior map in reverse, a trace of the emotional habitus left on the abito,” in reference to the Latin habitus as both costume and custom (Bruno 2002: 324). The origin of Gadda’s interest in the psychological and socio-cultural power of garments can be traced to his well-documented childhood feeling of clothing inadequacy. In 1968, he confessed to Dacia Maraini: “You can write down that, [as a child], my dress was neglected, never elegant. This too was a source of torment for me” (Maraini 1973: 12). Early in his career, Gadda developed a preference for an unembellished, respectable black suit that could function as armour against the threats of narcissism and ornamentation. Photographs of the young author, such as those taken in 1922 upon his departure for Argentina, crystallise his conservative silhouette. Dressed with bourgeois dignity, he dons a Borsalino hat and a solemn double-breasted coat over a straight suit accompanied by shiny black shoes without gaiters (Figure 1).
The most engaging discourse on the social function of garments is found in Gadda’s major work, La cognizione del dolore, first published in serialised form between 1938 and 1941. Set in the imaginary South American country of Maradagàl, an allusive criticism of fascist Italy, the novel establishes an opposition between neurotic individuality, embodied by the intellectual protagonist, Gonzalo, as Gadda’s alter ego, and a boastfully grotesque society. This dichotomy, reinforced through Gonzalo’s vestimentary choices, is reminiscent of the struggle in fashion between “individual difference” and “social homogeneity” theorised by sociologist Georg Simmel in his 1905 treatise, Philosophie der Mode (Simmel 2020: 202). Consumed by a mysterious melancholia, the highly civilised Gonzalo is extremely attentive to his immaculate wardrobe, comprised of a formal suit, custom-made shirts, suspenders to avoid irregularities in the fit of his pants, and a pair of pointed-toe, lace-up shoes made of the blackest goat leather. A master of sartorial subtraction, he expresses a firm repudiation of the pullover sweaters, which are certainly a subtle reference to Mussolini’s late-1920s informal style (Billeri 2019: 92).
In a remarkable passage of the novel, Gonzalo also evokes the social scene with which he feels incompatible, a universe populated by ostentatious parvenues who closely resemble the members of the Lombard rising bourgeoisie. Adorned in lavish evening clothes, they conceitedly exhibit a hyperbolic inventory of ornaments, such as “fripperies, toggles of cornelian or polished bone, assorted haberdashery.” Silk merchants and pompous engineers cannot wait “to put on their heavy furs from beyond the polar circle, of the strangest bears, sables, seals from Pitt Land, kangaroos from Australasia, and opossum” (Gadda 2017: 147-148). In his sarcastic depiction of sartorial kitsch, Gadda focuses purposefully on the phenomenon of men’s furs, which had come into vogue in Italy at the beginning of the 20th century, when fur coats began to be produced for car drivers. Quickly adopted by men of high society to be worn over their dinner jackets (Figure 2), furs were indeed made from the pelts of various exotic animals heavily exploited by Milanese furriers (Municchi 1988: 14-36; Figure 3).
In Gadda’s sociology of fashion, an unusual preoccupation emerges with the modalities and appearance of men’s clothing. In the context of Italian literature, the singularity of Gonzalo’s obsessive minimalism brings Gadda’s reflection on masculine apparel interestingly closer to an influential, although controversial, antecedent, that of Adolf Loos’s essays on the dangers of ornamentation. In writings such as “Men’s Fashion” (1898) and the seminal “Ornament and Crime” (written in 1908 but first published in Italian by the magazine Casabella in January 1934; Figure 4), Loos aims his modernist battle at Art Nouveau decorativism while promoting a unilateral, Eurocentric celebration of sobriety and understatement in fashion, seen as the peak of modern civilisation. Loos equates dressing well with the adoption of a correct dress code exemplified by ascetic British standards in menswear (Loos 1993: 10-12). Gadda’s rejection of exhibitionism and ornamentation, which is paradoxically counterposed by his baroque literary style, should thus be understood within the frame of a wider debate on stylistic purity initiated decades earlier by certain theorists of European modernism.
* This contribution draws upon my doctoral dissertation on “Fashion and Literary Modernism in Italy: Palazzeschi, Marinetti, Gadda,” defended in 2019 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and currently under revision for publication.
Figure 1 Figure 2
Figure 1) Gadda (second from left) upon his departure for Argentina on November 30, 1922. Full page from Fabio Pierangeli, Carlo Emilio Gadda. Turin: Gribaudo, 1995.
Figure 2) A men’s evening fur coat with an astrakhan collar. From the 1907 privately printed catalogue of Sartoria “E. Giorgetti,” Milan.
Figure 3 Figure 4
Figure 3) Advertisement for the Milanese furrier “Brivio Giuseppe,” early 1920s. Courtesy Civica Raccolta Stampe Bertarelli, Milan.
Figure 4) Index page of the January 1934 issue of Casabella, with Adolf Loos’s “Ornamento e delitto.” Courtesy Mondadori Media S.p.a.
Bibliography
Billeri, Matteo. 2019. “Gadda, Mussolini e l’orango. Una fonte per Eros e Priapo,” Paragone, vol. LXX, no. 144-145-146, August-December, pp. 83-95.
Bruno, Giuliana. 2002. Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film. New York: Verso.
Gadda, Carlo Emilio. 2017. The Experience of Pain, translated by Richard Dixon. New York: Penguin.
Loos, Adolf. 1993. Parole nel vuoto, translated by Sonia Gessner. Milan: Adelphi.
Maraini, Dacia. 1973. E tu chi eri? Interviste sull’infanzia. Milan: Bompiani.
Municchi, Anna. 1988. Homo in pelliccia. Modena: Zanfi.
Simmel, Georg. 2020. Stile moderno: saggi di estetica sociale, edited by Barbara Carnevali and Andrea Pinotti. Turin: Einaudi.
