The revolution in Manganelli’s “talking nonsense” about art

There are premature authors who in the years to come reveal themselves as prophets and posthumous seers. Celebrated, revered, they become the object of new cults and finally countless lineages are traced back to them who believed themselves to have no fathers or mothers. On the other hand, there are authors out of time, who never find full redemption: debated with circumspect caution, feared and often pointed out, albeit in a low voice, as inconvenient examples, because they are inimitable and therefore incapable of initiating genius. And it is certain that he should be included in this second row Giorgio Manganelli, the least imitable among the writers of the twentieth century. Even less imitable than Carlo Emilio Gadda, if it is true as it is true that he reproached his younger colleague for having imitated his style and timbre. As legend has it, a few days after the publication of Hilarotragoedia (1964), Manganelli’s literary debut, Gadda visited him to get explanations on a book that he interpreted as an impertinent parody of La cognizione del dolore. The accusation was of plagiarism, with added hoax, by a newcomer who copied the language and mocked the themes of a writer who shortly thereafter (certainly after his death, but in full and recognized right) would be canonized author prematurely. For Manganelli, on the other hand, no rewriting of the canon: now as then he remains an author out of time, which he sold very little at the time and which today certainly does not move the booksellers’ computational reasoning.