Are politics and writing inseparable? Not necessarily

Politics and writing are inseparable, argued Antonio Scurati at the Festivaletteratura, since a writer cannot isolate themselves from society and therefore from politics. I am not so sure. The history of literature includes authors uninterested in current affairs and activism, capable of separating politics from writing (even in the darkest corners of the twentieth century: Mann and Proust, to name but a few); and the canon has enshrined authors whose legacy transcends their political commitment, such as Dante, who is still read today even though the dispute between the White Guelphs and the Black Guelphs ceased to fascinate us some time ago. In "Leggere libri non serve" (Bompiani), Enrico Terrinoni suggests a sound compromise. In a series of short essays, he profiles seven authors (Bruno, Shakespeare, Blake, Wilde, Woolf, Joyce, Svevo) who have made literature an instrument of their own "non-service", in the dual sense of being useless and of echoing the "non serviam" of the rebellious Lucifer.

A pupil of Declan Kiberd, Terrinoni has the great advantage of having been educated abroad, thus remaining free from both the pedantic philology and the partisan exegesis that characterise much of academia and criticism in Italy; this allows him to champion the apparent contradiction between rebellion and futility. We are accustomed to setting them against one another: rebellion is organic, whilst stylistic affectations are futile. The seven authors in question, however, were glorious failures whose style proved to be genuinely revolutionary precisely because it overshadowed their direct commitment. In "Literature as a Dark Matter" (Treccani), Terrinoni had asserted the paradoxical primacy of ‘quantum’ literature – an entanglement of simultaneity, concealment, silence and indeterminacy that is the opposite of militancy, manifestos and appeals. Of course, figures like Blake and Wilde remain in the minority, in a context where literature based on slogans and preconceptions sells best. Frankly, though, I don’t know what to make of deterministic literature; if I really wanted to take an interest in politics and society, I wouldn’t need writers. I’d watch the news and then go out.