Silentes Loquimur: “Foibe” and Border Anxiety in Post-War Literature from Trieste

Abstract

The present article takes into account geological formations typical of the northeastern border area of Italy commonly known as “foibe”. The latter have acquired, in the course of the past six decades, specific historical and ideological functions, particularly when paired with debates around the collapse of historical structures of power (the Fascist regime in 1943 or the Adriatisches Küstenland in 1945) and revisionism of the last years of the Second World War and the Resistance. Their mythical and archetypal stance also found its way specifically in the literary culture of the region. In many cases literature at the northeastern borders of Italy incorporated “foibe” as literary symbols, specifically in their capacity as metaphors of border anxiety and of a confrontational dimension with the “Slav world” usually described in pejorative terms (balcanicità, slavismo). After focusing on a number of narratives in prose, to include Giani Stuparich’s story “La grotta” (1935), Carlo Sgorlon’s novel La foiba grande (1992) and Giuseppe Svalduz’s recent novel Una croce sulla foiba: Il grido delle vittime ritrova la strada della memoria (1996), Pizzi’s article dwells at some length on the literary production of Enrico Morovich and in particular his novel Il baratro (1964). By dealing with “foibe” indirectly, Morovich reinforces, by their absence, all the horrors and fears which are inherent to them. He also signs one of the most chillingly realistic fictional renderings of “foibe” of all times. Far from remaining void “outposts on nothingness”, “foibe” speak by virtue of their silence. With his own ostensible silence, Pizzi argues, Morovich is doing exactly the same.