Wandern, Beobachten, Erinnern und Schreiben in der Poebene

Raum und Präsenz bei Celati, Mozzi und Trevisan

Abstract

Based on the topoi of the ‘wanderer’ (Spaziergänger) and the flâneur as the best-known literary figurations of presence and locomotion in outdoor space, the specific thematization of wandering in peripheral, suburban areas of the Po Valley, which are neither garden or parkland (as in the Spaziergang) nor urban (as in the flânerie), will be examined on the basis of three selected texts from contemporary Italian literature. Thus the wandering, almost documentary-like first-person narrator of Gianni Celati’s ‘Poe Valley diary’ Verso la foce (1989) can be defined as a Spazierseher, while in the autofictional novels Fantasmi e fughe (1999) by Giulio Mozzi and I quindicimila passi (2002) by Vitaliano Trevisan, where the wandering through the Padanian exterior is intended to evoke or accompany a memory process, we can speak of Erinnerungsflaneure. To these texts, in particular to Celati’s Verso la foce, the concepts of Gumbrecht’s and Mersch’s post-hermeneutics can be applied since Celati’s literary processing of spatial presence is guided by very similar premises to Gumbrecht’s “Selbstentbergung der Welt” and turns preferentially to remote places and things that appear marginal, which can be correlated with the “Unabgegoltene”, according to Mersch the central object of post-hermeneutics.