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MLN 120.1 (2005) 137-160



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Beyond Revealed Religions:

Saba, the Creatures, and the Political Animal

Mettere assieme i più strani animali
(intendo strani l'uno all'altro) e scrivere,
solo e con loro, qualche favoletta.
È questo il sogno della mia saggezza
ultima. E, come tutti i sogni, vano.
Umberto Saba, "Sogno," Quasi un racconto1
E, forse, anche la sfera più luminosa delle
relazioni col divino dipende, in qualche
modo, da quella—più oscura—che ci separa
dall'animale.
Giorgio Agamben, L'aperto2

Interpretations of Saba's images of animals have usually concentrated on a few poems in which both the literary and the cultural allusions are rather obvious. In spite of the surfeit of animal motifs unfolding throughout the Canzoniere, poems such as "A mia moglie," the terse laude of Lina's animal metamorphoses reminiscent of a Franciscan view, and "La capra," with the image of the all too discussed "goat with [End Page 137] the Semitic face" (usually interpreted as a symptom of Saba's anxious Jewishness) tend to monopolize the attention of the critics.3 Yet a broader investigation of Saba's animal images allows for a different perspective on the poet's religiosity, which has been a contentious issue in recent criticism. In fact, the publication of Saba's tense correspondence both with the psychoanalyst Joachim Fleischer (1991), which has stirred the discussion on the poet's alleged anti-Semitism, and with the bishop Giovanni Fallani (1980), in which the old and sick Saba kindly yet unequivocally rejects the bishop's suggestion to be baptized, has prompted a closer scrutiny of the poet's most intimate religious feelings.4

Recent critics, instead of yielding to the complicated consciousness of selfhood and the distinctive religiosity emerging from Saba's poetry, seem determined to answer the question about which faith (Catholic or Jewish) Saba ultimately preferred; and different readings of his work have been used to prove one of the two arguments.5 There is a traditional stylization of a Christian Saba, represented, for instance, by his friend Nora Baldi, who states that "his spirit had a fundamentally Christian orientation, . . . he had put his Jewish side in his exterior ways of life and all his Christian side in his thought and work";6 or by critic Pietro Zovatto, who believes that the only thing which kept Saba from fully embracing Catholicism was "not his Jewish religion but the rationalist values of the Triestine bourgeoisie."7 Various studies also explain Saba's singularity within the panorama of [End Page 138] Italian poetry by appealing to his Jewish identity. These studies usually emphasize the numerous themes and motives that can be easily associated with Saba's Jewish upbringing, his studies in a Jewish religious school, and often accentuate his 'Jewish self-hate.'8 These critical attempts offer a troubling view not only of Saba's tormented post-war years but also of the prejudices of his correspondents and critics unease about the condition of being born in-between cultures. They reflect the idea that religious or cultural identities constitute a rigidly codified checklist: if any item is missing then that particular identity dissolves.9 Yet Saba's sense of self, as that of most people, was hardly won. It was shaped by the conflicts within the Triestine Jewish community of his time, by the rich cultural texture of Austrian fin-de-siècle Triest, and by Saba's personal encounters. More importantly, Saba's self was informed by his desire to filter and transfigure such conflicts into the Italian poetic language, the idiom of one of the most homogeneous poetical tradition in Europe.

I do not wish to deflate the tension that actually troubled Saba during his whole life. Yet I would like to shift the attention away from the question about Saba's Jewish or Christian identity10 and return to [End Page 139] his verse, in order to make room for Saba's own poetic vision of creatural life. My analysis starts from a recurring configuration which I call "the view from below." It...

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