The Plague Sower (1981)

Um conto de amor, fuga, morte e vida anunciados, marcado pela Itália pós guerra e pela atmosfera de um sanatório – a sensação de ser um disseminador da peste, o Untore, essa palavra antiquada, dos tempos de Manzoni.
Diz Bufalino que o homem inventou o pecado pra justificar o castigo de viver. Ninguém quer ser punido sem motivo. ( )

I bought this because it is in the Eridanos Library and all of the books selected for this series are at least experimental, unique and carefully written. Again and again, the quality of their books has surprised me and introduced me to overlooked authors in the playful periphery of literature. "The Plague Sower" is by no means the best of their collection; but it is a memorable work, worth reading against other plague/sanatorium literature such as Mann's "The Magic Mountain" or Camus' "The Plague." In its episodic theatricality and the mad ranting of its characters, it also bears comparison to Djuna Barnes' outstanding "Nightwood."

But there is something immature or hasty about the novel, something too convenient about introducing characters only to kill them off at the end of each new stage in the book's progression. The narrator informs us early on that he is a sort of failed Orpheus, someone who "betrayed the silent agreement not to survive" that he shared with the doomed cast of his post World War II sanatorium and it is hard to warm to him as a guide through the death-soaked place of his narration. However, when I shuffle through my criticisms of the narrative voice, I have to wonder how many of the parts that seem overblown, too self-centered or callous are actually true; Bufalino spent the three years following WWII in a sanatorium with other deactivated soldiers. While the characters sometimes seem a bit maudlin or overdone, the location, its rules and its diversions always feel authentic--a time capsule worth entering.

It did not come as a surprise to me to learn that Gesualdo Bufalino spent more than a decade fine tuning the language of his freshman novel. While many of his characters are allowed to bluster and lie in the fear of dying until they have made themselves magnificent and untrustworthy, Bufalino has a knack for cutting them down to size beautifully. His love interest, for instance, after being draped in classical references and after being described as involving herself in "a perpetual game of hide-and-seek among lies and omissions and incomplete admissions, which sufficed to give her confidences an intermittent, malignant glow, like a lighthouse in a shallow, operated by a traitor" is later reduced to, "perhaps just a wretched woman beyond the pale, a starving loneliness coughing at my side." Finally, for those who enjoy the reflections about God and religion that seem to multiply around the dying, several wonderful blasphemers roam through the sanatorium ("No, no, we're blains on God's assface, droppings from some humongous mole . . .").

These embittered men hold forth with toxic but amusing invective and serve as a useful counterpoint to some of the younger patients who spend all their time sneaking into the women's side of the sanatorium and trying to get laid. I have given it two and a half stars because I will not read it again, nor will I read anything else by Bufalino. Although I am not unhappy to have completed the book, it would be inaccurate to say that "I liked it." ( )