SOURCE: Bouchard, Norma. “Meandering with Gadda's ‘Heuristic’ Words.” In Céline, Gadda, Beckett: Experimental Writings of the 1930s, pp. 82-96. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000.

In the following excerpt, Bouchard notes the ways in which some of Gadda's early writings exhibited his growing sense of an open-ended, ambiguous reality.

MORALUZZA:

E' bene rimettere alle parole e alle favole un mandato provvisorio e, direi, una limitata procura … incastonar le parole nella necessità del momento, sì con un certo senso del limite loro. … 

Carlo Emilio Gadda, I viaggi la morte¹

A SMALL Advice:

[It is best to return to words and fables their provisional mandate and, if I am allowed to say so, their limited proxy … it is best to set words in the necessity of the moment, yes, and with a certain sense of their limits.] 

Italian critics traditionally have interpreted the writings of Carlo Emilio Gadda as the...