“Pozzoromolo”, la tragica armonia della dissonanza

Abstract

Pozzoromolo is the second novel by the promising young writer Luigi Romolo Carrino. The novel, which has been shortlisted for the Premio Strega, is analyzed in this essay by applying linguistic-symbolical parameters. It is shown that these, already in the ambivalence of the protagonist, underline how language, characters, style, and narrative underlie the novel’s structure. Starting with the title and the name of the first-person narrator, the novel’s most important themes are analyzed. From the function of parental figures and a series of obvious intertextual echoes, one cannot but conclude that the main character’s split personality, distorted by the nature of the writing, also finds expression in the novel’s idiolectal solutions. It is in these that one can perceive the writer’s stylistic acrobatics, the consistent fragmentation of the diaristic narrative, and the interesting linguistic blend, which is made up of irregular sentences, intertextual echoes of literary and popular sources, original formal results and lyrical representations.