California Italian Studies

This article considers the figure of the tangle (be it a garbuglio, gomitolo, gnommero, or guazzabuglio), emblematic of Carlo Emilio Gadda’s narrative architecture and philosophy. The garbuglio and its variations, like the “vibrant matter” recently theorized by Jane Bennett, enmesh human and nonhuman matter in a fabric of relations so dense that no element can be subtracted from the global whole. Understanding uselessness not as a quality intrinsic to matter, but as a relationship of exteriority, this article examines iterations of uselessness—and accordingly, forms of subtraction—in Gadda: of human and nonhuman matter from larger tangles (whether linguistic, narrative, economic, or social). The stakes of these forms of subtraction, I argue, come into focus in La cognizione del dolore in a tension between “ethics” and “charity” that demonstrates Gadda’s disillusionment with fascism—and particularly with fascist mothers who, like Volumnia of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, would sacrifice their sons to the “ethical” imperatives of the state.