Prize giving evening Italics has Philippe Bordas pour
The Absolute Single. For Carlo Emilio Gadda (Gallimard, 2022)
December 9 at 7 p.m. at the House of Latin America (auditorium), 217 boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris 75007.
In the presence of Jean-Paul Manganarowriter and translator.
The Prize jury Italics 2024, intended this year to reward the French author of a work dedicated to Italy, elected the work of Philippe Bordas, The Absolute Bachelor (Gallimard, 2022). This volume revisits, with a fresh perspective, the personality and production of the great Italian writer Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893-1973), author among others of La cognizione del dolore (1957) and Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana (1963).
“It is the book of a writer about another writer. It is less a biography in the classic sense of the term than an invitation to follow the author on his journey of discovery of Gadda and his work, of deciphering a character who is in many ways enigmatic, far removed from any self-exhibition, and who has metamorphosed his existential pain into a work that is flamboyant through his telluric writing and disturbing through its irreducibly non-conformist content.
To carry out his investigation, Philippe Bordas went to familiar places in Gadda. He set out to meet those who knew him, whether great critics like Gianfranco Contini or Pietro Citati, writers like Arbasino, translators like Manganaro or anonymous people like his former next-door neighbor. at Monte Mario.
It is therefore a “sentimental journey”, carried out over four decades, for which the author claims the subjectivity of his method.
Jean Musitelli,
President of the Prize jury Italics
