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116<br />
Capitolo terzo<br />
should not expect any comprehensive war novel until five, even<br />
ten years after hostilities cease. The short storyist is in a better<br />
position. First, he shares – or should share – to an extent the<br />
faculties of the poet: he can render the great significance of a<br />
small event. He can register the emotional colour of a moment.<br />
He gains rather than loses by being close up to what is<br />
immediately happening. 18<br />
Anche se la fiction di Elizabeth Bowen prende spunto dal dato autobio-<br />
grafico e dall’effetto della situazione storica sulla coscienza della scrittri-<br />
ce, il suo punto di approdo è sempre la “dissolution of the novel” 19 , la<br />
messa in discussione dei principi del realismo narrativo, con la sua con-<br />
cezione lineare e teleologica del tempo, con la sua costruzione di<br />
un’identità stabile e la pretesa di sciogliere le contraddizioni della vita in<br />
un senso ultimo, definitivo. Nel postscript all’edizione americana della<br />
raccolta The Demon Lover (1945) Bowen distingue fra “war stories” e<br />
“wartime stories”, sottolineando la propria differenza nel <strong>per</strong>cepire la<br />
guerra non in senso cronologico ma spaziale (“Am I not manifestly a<br />
writer for whom places loom larger?” 20 ):<br />
18 Ibid.<br />
These are all wartime, none of them war, stories. There are no<br />
accounts of war action even as I knew it – for instance, air raids.<br />
Only one character – in “Mysterious Kôr” – is a soldier; and he<br />
only appears as a homeless wanderer round a city. These are,<br />
19 Cfr. ANDREW BENNET, NICHOLAS ROYLE, Elizabeth Bowen and the Dissolution of<br />
the Novel: Still Lives, London: Macmillan, 1995.<br />
p. 282.<br />
20 Cfr. ELIZABETH BOWEN, “Pictures and Conversations”, in MT, pp. 265-298;