SOURCE: Benedetti, Carla. “The Enigma of Grief: An Expressionism against the Self.” In Carlo Emilio Gadda: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Manuela Bertone and Robert S. Dombroski, pp. 159-176. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Benedetti states that the mourning and grief expressed in La cognizione del dolore has its roots in Freudian “reality-testing,” which explains the macaronic style in which Gadda seeks relief from his negative feelings.

La cognizione del dolore is the story of Gonzalo Pirobutirro d'Eltino's misdeeds. At first, they come out through the ‘bad epos’ of the inhabitants of Lukones, but almost all of them target either Gonzalo's mother or the objects and images she cherishes. One episode in particular seems to have captured the general imagination. It was said that the hidalgo-engineer, in a fury, stamped on an old family watch, and later, still angry, trampled on his dead father's...