«Il commissario Catullo»: il "Carme 56" in "Eccetera" di Emilio Tadini

Abstract

This paper deals with Enrico Tadini’s last novel, Eccetera, and its relationship with Catullus LVI. Tadini was a well-known painter and writer of the second half of XXth century, author of novels, poems, dramas, critical essays. In a scene of Eccetera the narrator reports the story of a curious experience by one of the characters. Working as carrier, he delivers a book to a couple: the book is an old edition of Catullus’ poems and the male of the couple propose to him to an erotic performance that reproduces the situation of Catullus’ LVI. A close reading of the re-use of the Latin poem shows that Tadini built the scene – and all his novel – on an elaborate system of dichotomies and oppositions: old and new, colors and white, otherness and familiarity, classical culture and contemporary absence of culture, past and present. Such a complexity simply tries to reflect the complexity of the real life, as the analysis of Tadini’s style confirms. The author establishes a dialogue with the reader, that is also a way of reflecting – through the powerful lens of humorism – on the status of the contemporary novel and on our relationships with the past.