Senso e altre novelle - Camillo Boito

Senso e altre novelle - Camillo Boito

Guerra Edizioni, Classici Italiani Otto-Novecento, Italian Annotated Readers

Senso è la novella che chiude la seconda raccolta di Storielle vane di Camillo Boito, ed è senza dubbio quella che ha avuto maggior fortuna, grazie anche alla splendida trasposizione cinematografica che ne fece Visconti. La vicenda ci viene narrata attraverso il .diario. della protagonista, la contessa veneziana Livia, la quale, a distanza di quasi vent.anni, decide di raccontare a se stessa, in una sorta di autoanalisi, la sua relazione con il bellissimo tenente austriaco Remigio Ruz. Livia, all.età di ventidue anni, all.apice della sua bellezza, incontra il giovane ufficiale e se ne innamora perdutamente. La passione la spinge prima all.adulterio, poi alla disperazione, infine all.umiliazione, quando si rende conto che Remigio mirava soltanto a ottenere da lei il denaro per poter disertare. Tradita e oltraggiata, Livia denuncia il tenente alle autorità militari austriache, che lo condannano a morte. Le altre novelle presenti in questo volume sono: Un corpo, Il maestro setticlavio, Meno di un giorno.

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Senso is set in Italy about the time of a war with Austria in 1866. Its protagonist is Livia, an Italian countess who is married unhappily to a stuffy old aristocrat, and who willingly wanders in response to her yearnings. The story opens a few years after the war, with Livia reminiscing on her 39th birthday about her first truly passionate affair. Her reverie transports us to Venice during the war, where Livia falls in love with Remigio Ruz, a dashing young lieutenant in the Austrian army. Although he is obviously using her, her money, and her social status, Livia throws herself into an affair of complete sexual abandon with Remigio. She lets him spend her money freely, cares nothing of what society thinks of her, and ignores her new lover's pathetic cowardice when he refuses to rescue a drowning child. Though the war drives the lovers apart, Livia feels driven to revisit Remigio. When she joins him for a tryst, he asks for more money, to bribe the army doctors for a reprieve from the battlefield. Livia gladly gives him all her jewels and gold. Remigio flees to Verona, without bothering even to kiss her goodbye.

Eventually her yearning for Remigio drives Livia nearly mad, but her spirits soar when a letter from him finally arrives. His letter says that he loves and misses her, and that her money and his bribery had allowed him to evade any combat. He asks Livia not to look for him. Still clutching his letter, she promptly boards a carriage and heads straight to Verona to find her loyal lover. She finds the city in ruins, with dead and wounded everywhere. Livia's undeterred. She heads to the apartment she had bought for Remigio, where she finds him, a drunken, ungrateful rogue, in the company of a prostitute who openly mocks Livia for accepting his abuse.