<I>«Se tu leggi sempre così». Gli esordi di Gadda come critico letterario</I>

Abstract

The correspondences of Carlo Emilio Gadda with his first Florentine publishers ‒ which have been edited and commented in my PhD thesis ‒ reveal some important contextual and topical elements for the understanding of his early production. In particular, his activity as a literary critic in the years between the two world wars gains a new significance and a new place through these correspondences.

This article presents Gadda’s critical writings and reviews, some of them published in journals or in the collection I viaggi la morte and others unpublished. For classical writers and for his contemporaries Gadda offers very personal and intertextual interpretations which will also characterise famous novels and essays of the 1960s. To this extent, this article focuses on texts and witnesses of his experiences in the frame of the journals «Solaria» and «Letteratura» and suggests some examples of how his way of writing derives from his readings.