Ermanno Cavazzoni - his books push the novel to its very limits — “like outpourings of the maniacal”. Here we have the dream as paranoia and the vain struggle to understand the rules that govern life. Here we have the dream as a bizarre library in which the fragility of human knowledge is emphasised again and again

Ermanno Cavazzoni, The Nocturnal Library, Trans. by Allan Cameron, Vagabond Voices, 2013.


Ermanno Cavazzoni admits that his books push the novel to its very limits — “like outpourings of the maniacal”, he says. “That’s how they come to me, you must understand.”
Here in The Nocturnal Library, we have the maniacal that we all know from our own dreams: a dreamer’s lack of control and a dreamer’s dogged acceptance of the absurd. Here we have the dream as paranoia and the vain struggle to understand the rules that govern life. Here we have the dream as a bizarre library in which the fragility of human knowledge is emphasised again and again.
Jerome, who perhaps represents the archetypal man of learning, is bound up in his world of books and suffers from crippling insomnia. He has to study for an exam, and his troubles are compounded by bad toothache, or at least these are the dominating themes of his dream. The reality of wakefulness only appears in the last paragraph of the last chapter.
But this is not primarily a book about dreams. Amongst other things, it is a book about the arrogance and illogicality of power and bureaucracy, and the relationship between the world of intellectual order and the chaos of nature, dominated as it is by mutual disregard and the latter’s inevitable victory in the long term.
And above all, this is a book in which fantasy reigns for its own sake and goes wherever the author’s creative impulse takes it. That is how his novels come to him, and you have to understand that! If you do, you will enjoy this exotic book.


A fantastic evocation of life and learning in a dream sequence: Jerome, who has to sit an exam and suffers from toothache, enters a nighmarish library in which everything conspires to frustrate his desperate attempts to revise. Cavazzoni creates an entire world in this dream, whose absurd perhaps comments on the more muted absurdity of reality. The library contains geological and natural realities that plague the organic matter of which the books are made, demonstrating or at least suggesting the futility of human learning. In some parts of the building the books have turned into peat. Cavazzoni admits that his books pushe the novel to its very limits - "like outpourings of the maniacal," he says. "That's how they come to me, you must understand." 



Ermanno Cavazzoni, Voice Of The Moon, Trans. by Ed Emery, Serpent's Tail, 1990.          




The madness particular to all those who come under the influence of the city of Padua is celebrated in this novel by Italian writer Ermanno Cavazzoni. Savini, the central character, finds himself the victim of even more alarming circumstances at the time of the full moon.


Savini is exploring the countryside to gather information about a strange phenomenon: people have been finding messages in bottles at the bottoms of wells and hearing voices coming up from these wells. What follows is a belabored account of Savini's discovery that people are really actors and their houses made of cardboard, that they will come out, put on a show and then laugh about what a fool they have made of the audience. Savini meets up with a prefect, and together they set out to expose these actors as well as the hidden creatures they believe are residing at the brink of reality, latching on to human thoughts and bodies. As the novel unfolds in a surreal succession of episodes, we encounter a man who has intimate relationships with his kitchen appliances and a woman who is able to transform herself into a cockerel as part of a mating ritual. Although the Italian author's writing is amusing, the action is repetitious and the appeal of the characters is severely limited by their unrelenting paranoia about the bizarre and ultimately meaningless happenings around them. This novel was recently made into a movie by Federico Fellini. - Publishers Weely


Fellini the Lunatic and His Last Film 'Voice of the Moon'





Ermanno Cavazzoni, Brief Lives of Idiots, Trans by Jamie Richards, Wakefield Press, 2019.








Non-Italian readers probably don't know Ermanno Cavazzoni at all. Even many italian readers probably don't know him (Italians are not great book readers). Here is a brief description of Cavazzoni in English. And here is a Cavazzoni's short story - a funny, absurd, fairytale writing - translated to English.
Cavazzoni writes not so popular books. He gained some popularity when Federico Fellini in 1990 made a film out of his book "Il poema dei lunatici" (English translation "Voice of the moon"). A few more of Cavazzoni's books are translated to English.
I read all of his books and so when I knew a new Cavazzoni's novel was out I bought it as soon as I could. The new book is "La galassia dei dementi" (The Galaxy of Madmen) and, unexpectedly, it is a very long novel that looks like a sci-fiction one. I have not read yet the 660 pages of this novel but I know it is not what we can identify as "sci-fiction", even if it is set in the year 6ooo A.W. (After the Invention of the Wheel - but the date of the invention of the wheel is not exactly known, and it's placed around the 4th-5th millenniun BC, so...).
Anyway, I just want to introduce to you this important italian writer. What kind of reader can appreciate Cavazzoni's books? As I said, his novel are not the very popular kind. He writes absurd, weird and somehow funny stories using a very simple language. People who like writers like Cortazar, Borges, Perec, Queneau - or the american Nicholson Baker - could appreciate Cavazzoni too, probably.
A list of titles of Cavazzoni's books can help you to understand what I mean:

• The Poem of Lunatics
• Short Lives of Idiots
• The Useless Writers
• Eulogy of Beginners
• Natural History of Giants
• The Limbo of Fantastications
• A Guide to Fantastic Animals
• The Valley of Thieves
• The Lonely Thinker

I dedicated a painting in my graphic novel "Giants" to Cavazzoni. This one:

- paolobeneforti
https://steemit.com/books/@paolobeneforti/a-new-novel-of-a-great-italian-writer-ermanno-cavazzoni