Politics as Narrative and Narrative as Politics. "The Etruscan Quest"

Ugo Bardi's novel, "The Etruscan Quest," published in 2023 by "Lu::Ce Edizioni". In several ways, it is a homage to D.H. Lawrence's "Etruscan Places." 

In 1932, D.H. Lawrence published his "Etruscan Places." It was not exactly a novel, but much more than just a travel report. As a report, it told of ages that didn't exist anymore. As a novel, it told of how Lawrence interpreted what he saw in terms of the times in which he was living; this book had a profound political significance. It was a scathing criticism of Mussolini and the Fascist Party in Italy. 

Narrative shapes the way we see the world. Entire civilizations were reflected in a single story. For the Greeks it was the Iliad, and for the Romans, the Aeneid. The εὐαγγέλιον, the euangelion, shaped medieval European civilization. And, in modern times, think of Tolstoy's "War and Peace," and how Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front" shapes our views of WWI (in Italy, we have an equivalent in "Un Anno sull'Altipiano" by Emilio Lussu.). 

But narratives take different shapes, slants, and ways of communicating their message. A good narrative never tries to pass a pre-determined message. It is always a personal euangelion of the author. The meaning emerges from the story as rain falls from a cloud. And that was the case of D.H. Lawrence's "Etruscan Places;" deeply felt, deeply political, deeply prophetic: a message that still resonates with us, nearly a century after it was published. A message that arrives to us so modern, so actual, so relevant, even though in ways that Lawrence himself might not have been able to imagine. 

Etruscan Places is a novel with no protagonists except Lawrence himself, not even his wife, the "Queen Bee," who had accompanied him on another Italian escapade in Sea and Sardinia (1921). And, yet, "Etruscan Places" teems of "presences" -- ghostly presences of modern Italians and ancient Etruscans that Lawrence sees as if he were a ghost himself, coming from another world, another country, another language. Ghosts are not easy to see, but a man like Lawrence could. And ghosts could speak to him, and there lies the magic of the whole story. 

Novels may have disappeared from our cultural landscape, but narrative remains a fundamental part of it. So, there may still be space for the novel format even in the modern tiktoked world. My novel, "The Etruscan Quest," is, in many ways, inspired by Lawrence's book (ghosts included), even though I never consciously tried to shape it in that way. It is another outcome of the miracle of narrative that shapes itself to say things that the author may not have understood himself or herself. 

"The Etruscan Quest" tells the story of a quest to resurrect the ancient Etruscan language. The story takes place in the 1930s, a few years after Lawrence's travel to Tuscany. The narrative of my novel is more directly political than that of Lawrence, even though, again, I didn't write it with the idea of creating a political message. The novel story starts in 1935, and the protagonist, an American, finds himself witnessing some of the darkest events of the parable of the Fascist government in Italy: the attack on Ethiopia, the racial laws against the Jews, the mad idea of rebuilding the Roman Empire, and more. All things that the Italians of that time saw as normal, and that took a rather weird character, a non-professor of the non-existent Miskatonic university, to see, to wonder about, and to try, often unsuccessfully, to understand. 

Since I mentioned Miskatonic University, you may also imagine that "The Etruscan Quest" has something to do with H. P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu mythos. It does. A lot. And the creatures of Lovecraft's universe may well have much more to do with our world than we would accept to admit. But that I'll describe in another comment

 

The Bequest: Coincidences never are

 

Out of pure coincidence (or maybe not, who knows?), I met Joanna Margaret in Florence, actually two times in two weeks, when her first novel "The Bequest" came out. And, more or less at the same time, my first novel The Etruscan Quest. They say that coincidences never are; and it seems to be confirmed by these these two novels appearing at the same time. They both explore the same theme: an American academic searching for an ancient mystery in Europe, in both case involving Florence. Both novels involve ancient murders, a treasure (which eventually is not found), and a love story in modern times. And both have the term "quest" in the title!

It may be our times that favor this kind of theme, think of "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown. It may be that it is because our world is going the way it is going that we need to find refuge in some different and not-so-mad world. It is not just because of wars; everything is becoming so uniform everywhere. With Florence having become little more than a sophisticated food court, complete with McDonald's and other fast food joints, it is normal that we search for the exotic and the different in ancient times. 

This said, let me try a critical evaluation of The Bequest. It is a complex story involving several narrative levels: one is modern Europe in Scotland, Italy, and France, and the other is an old mystery that goes back to Renaissance times. In "The Bequest" the author does what all good novelists should do: inject fantastic elements into something they know well. She knows well the life and the habits of international graduate students in Europe, having been one herself. Then, the story is carefully crafted around the search for a mysterious emerald that was owned by a rich Genoese family, the Falcone. It is another subject that Margaret knows well, having a Ph.D. in history. The story moves from one place to another in Europe, again telling of things the author knows and places where she probably traveled in person.

The novel doesn't lack fascination in its weaving of exotic places and ancient history. It is at its best when the modern and the ancient settings overlap, that is, when the protagonist, Isabel, travels to Genoa, in Italy, to meet the descendants of the ancient Falcones who were engaged in a complicated story of love, wars, and treasures during the heyday of the family, in Renaissance times. 

It has a problem, though. It has to do with having been written in the first person. There is nothing wrong with that, and some of the best novels in history were written in the first person: just as an example, think of "The Great Gatsby" by Scott Fitzgerald. Or, if you like an even more high-sounding example, the Comedy by Dante Alighieri. 

Yet, writing a novel in the first person is challenging, and "The Bequest" suffers from the need to report a complex and intricate plot only from the viewpoint of a single person. One consequence is that the Renaissance story, with all its twists and mysteries, can only be told through the letters that the ancient characters exchanged with each other. And that makes it difficult to blend it with the main story, that of the protagonist in contemporary times. Sometimes, the ancient protagonists seem to be appearing out of the blue as if they had just landed with their flying saucers, and then disappearing again, leaving little traces, except maybe some crop circles. 

The result is that the novel is somewhat uneven. It has moments in which it is fast pacing and exciting, with the protagonist going through the intricate plot, sometimes awed, sometimes risking her life, and sometimes falling in love with characters whose true intentions are mysterious. But there are moments where the novel becomes slow, bogged down by a certain lack of motivation of the protagonist, surely a competent professional, but never deeply involved with the ancient story she is investigating. 

I would also say that some elements are over-detailed, including the descriptions of food. Not that there is any problem with telling details in a story. Details are important in novels, and food is one. Do you remember how Melville tells us about what Ishmael and Queequeg ate at the "Try Pots" inn in Nantucket? In my opinion, it is one of the best moments of the novel. But note that we are told very little about food in the rest of it, except when Stubb has his supper of whale steak, another wonderful moment in a wonderful novel. But, in The Bequest" I had the impression that some details about European food were a bit too detailed. But that may be because I am European myself, and I am familiar with the theme. American readers may have the opposite impression.  

Eventually, all novels have a life of their own, they are like sons and daughters of their authors, and they never are exactly what their parents would like them to be. This is the case of "The Bequest," a novel with some problems but with a life of its own that clearly reflects the mind and the ideas of a real human being, Joanna Margaret, who projects herself in her narrative universe as Isabel Henley. As Walt Whitman said, "In this book there is a man" (in this case, a woman):

Now that I wrote this, I realize that the criticism I made to "The Bequest" could also apply to my novel, "The Etruscan Quest" -- it is also written in the first person and in many places it describes food eaten by the protagonist. One thing I can say is that it is shorter: some 200 pages (against the 300 pages of "The Bequest"). But I am sure it also suffers from a similar problem, the difficulty of managing an intricate plot taking place on two different temporal settings. In my case, I tried to enliven the past mystery by having the ancient characters appear as ghosts to the protagonist. I am not sure I succeeded but, as I said, novels have a life of their own. In this case, I am told that the protagonist of "The Etruscan Quest", the "non-professor" Samuel Heppler looks very much like me. In any case, the author is the least qualified person to judge a novel, and I leave that to the readers, if there will be any!