Paolo Volponi, «Memoriale» e la liturgia del romanzo

The article proposes an interpretation of Memoriale focusing on two aspects: the question of literary genre (novel or memorial) and the recurring presence of biblical imagery. From this perspective, the convergence between the lexical choices and the meaning of the title (memoriale as anamnesis in Catholic liturgy) may be traced back to a conception of industry characterized, as Volponi reveals to Ferdinando Camon in Il mestiere di scrittore, by an «ethnocentric ‘Catholicity’ (a disease of all organisms that perceive themselves as superior), which seeks to draw all other cultures into its orbit and subsequently colonize them».