Antonio D’Alfonso’s new book of essays is an astonishing exploration of what it means to be a writer of Italian descent. D’Alfonso has written over 40 books and won the prestigious Trillium Award and the Bressani Literary Prize. He is the founder of Guernica Editions and has translated and edited numerous works both nationally and internationally. He is also an award winning filmmaker and most recently, edited, and translated for Ekstasis Editions. Take time to read this book of essays to learn more about the history, the present, and the future for the future of Italian Canadian writing.
You state in the introduction that this book is not a literary analysis of Italian Canadian writing but that it is instead something else. What is it?
The comment might seem preposterous. Is this essay about writing and literature? If these pages were on the writing itself, I would have to concede that, yes, it is a literary essay. But, clearly, I do not offer a semantic analysis of poems and prose. My investigation is about the cultural space surrounding the particular kind of literature that is being produced by members of an ethnic community. The inquiry is more about what lies above and below the text than the text itself. I am dissecting something else. It is this something else that I am trying to define.
You open with trying to define what an Italian Canadian writer is. Why do you think, after all this time, it’s still so difficult to answer?
The original title for this essay is Federazione per il futuro (A Federation for the Future). When I decided to write an English-language version of this text, I decided to give it a different title: What Is An Italian Canadian Writer? The question mark became the essential issue. At the very last minute I decided to call it out rightly: The Italian Canadian Writer.
From the titles one can notice a shift in perspective. The original title indicates that the text is for an Italian-reading reader. There is assurance in the point of view. There is knowledge of what is being analysed and using this knowledge to lift the discussion elsewhere. I took for granted that the reader would be generous enough to permit me to promote my concept of an Italic culture. Having published two essays in Italy on the topic, I didn’t feel the need to justify my position. I was only there to explain how I saw the possible future of Italian culture in a global context.
By writing the English version of this essay, my point of view changed. Writing in a foreign language about a reality that is not English made me uncomfortable. I did not want to step on anyone’s toes. The original text is in Italian for an Italian public. Writing in English meant that I had to switch stations. I had to turn the dial up to the place where my ideas could be intercepted correctly. My text, now in English, is about a coterie of authors writing in a variety of languages, who seem to be speaking from a common centre. What is this centre? Where is it located?
With the new title I acknowledge the existence of a special brand of literature rising from non-location. What began as doubt gingerly turned into affirmation. Hence, the dropping of the question mark. The Italian Canadian Writer exists. Such is the immediate meaning of the title. Curiously, some readers snicker at this title; they equate the author of the essay as being THE Italian Canadian writer. As though I am boasting about the fact that I AM THE THING. I had to erase that potential meaning and so decided to start the book with the original question: What is the Italian Canadian writer? By shifting the focus from doubt to affirmation to doubt again, I was able to raise the barometer of the discussion. After close to eighty years of poems, short stories, novels, and essays, readers have the right to ask what is an Italian Canadian writer if there is no legal justification for such an ID.
You can wear bracelets with your name, you can pin a name badge on your lapel, you can even scream from the CN Tower, no one will hear you. Or if they hear you, they will guffaw: What’s the beef all about? No one can use those credentials legally anywhere in this country. There are three possibilities: you own the Italian passport, you own the Canadian passport, or you own both. Only if you have both passports, have you the right to consider yourself an Italian and a Canadian. Otherwise you are either an Italian or a Canadian. Nonetheless, at some point, a few writers of my generation brought together both identities, and in so doing cracked open our conception of personal testimony. I needed to delve into what had been posited by this agglutination.
Which part of this book was the most challenging to write?
Each one of the fifteen chapters came with its specific wager. From the etymological onset I had to burrow my way to subsequent times. I chose to inspect the three main currents followed by Italian Canadians, and these were the Italian, the English, and the French language writers who do not necessarily congregate in the same space. Add to this discussion the disheartening stance taken by many who ridicule this discussion and you end up in a dismal affair. Struggling against this dark attitude often stifled my will to continue. As long as there was a mountain, I didn’t mind grinding my way uphill. What depressed me most was listening to people say there is a mountain out there, but my not finding anything to climb. Every sentence demanded convincing myself that this impossible mountain did in fact exist.
You use several excerpts from many writers in a very interesting way. Why did you choose to do this?
The reasons for including lines by writers to press a point came naturally. Most of the writers I quoted were edited and published by me. Sadly, there is no location anywhere with a list of books by Italian Canadians. I turned to the Association of Italian Canadian Writers (which I co-founded with Dino Minni, Joseph Pivato, Pasquale Verdicchio, and Pier Giorgio Di Cicco), but surprisingly they prevented its membership from sending out their bibliography to me. I, therefore, had to rely on my own library, which is extensive but not complete. I could not, therefore, quote more writers. After fifty years of reading, editing, and publishing Italian Canadian writers, I knew hundreds of works in depth. When a claim called for proof, I pulled out the book and turned to the page with the appropriate text. Writing is editing. Like film. Like photography. The craft relies on editing whatever inspiration passes on to you. The art consists in gluing fragments together in order to convey the image you want to lift for all to see. Acting such indicates that this could not be a literary essay. I’m not studying the verses or prose extracted. Fragments are being used to validate my theoretical prerogatives. I’m cheating a little, you could say, by directing authors to help me justify my petition. I chose as many authors as I could find. I’m an editor and was a publisher for close to half a century. There is no money to be made by selling poetry books. All along my motivation has been generosity to authors, even if so many continue to scold me for reasons unknown (as the boycotting demonstrated). I wanted to be as all encompassing as possible. It was the first time I was able to write about this group of writers without having to first defend the authors I represented for being their publisher. In this essay I represent no one, I speak for no one, I’m an independent writer. It was a liberating experience.
You spend a lot of time trying to identify the many historical stages of the development of Italian Canadian writing. Which stage do you think is the most important?
This is equivalent to asking me which years of my daughters’ lives are the most important. They all are. Each moment is a coming-out, an inventiveness, a witnessing. Intensities might vary, yet the utterance is presence. There is testimony to the singular and the plural. There is rarely a writer writing in the singular. Be it in Italian, English, French, dialect or joual. Indeed, each Italian Canadian who chooses to write and publish or paint their words is first and foremost a writer. Yes, there is an awareness of ‘collectivity’ in this literary corpus that is quite unique in literature. Italian Canadian writers share a sense of historical community with Jewish writers, who also use a variety of languages to claim their presence.
Each stage comes with the possibility of deletion, disappearance. Each moment announces its own death. Not so much as a suicide, though suicide (even metaphorically) is often present in the text, as much as premonition that it will all vanish. Sliding the funnel of sameness is a profitable way to go, however as painful as consumption by another group. Each moment faces the challenges of being pulled by opposing forces. Each Italian Canadian writer is a two-headed person. The tug of war is continuous: choice of camp and language is a never-ending gamble.
The new generation has it worse: by generation, I don’t mean age of author, but according to publishing-date – one can be from the new generation at the age of sixty when publishing a first work. Writers who published in the 1970s do not belong to the same generation as those who published in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s. Each subsequent generation is indebted to the previous generation for its existence. The new generation has major decisions to make, which I discuss in the essay. The new generation has inherited the task of making sure that what was done before and what they produce will continue to exist.
You have published, edited, and collaborated with many Italian-Canadian writers. Is there one theme or element that you think connects them all?
There are only a handful of books of essays by Italian Canadian writers. There is a serious lack of scholarship on this literature without an identity. Few take the literature seriously. Even though I have reviewed hundreds and hundreds of books for magazines, I do not recall reviewing myself a book by an Italian Canadian writer. I couldn’t. I was the editor and publisher of the books, so it would have been viewed as a conflict of interest. I would have to scrutinise a work semantically to come up with an earnest appraisal. The title of my collected poems is The Two-Headed Man. This is my metaphor for Janus, the Roman god with two faces. The god of January (death) and June (birth). The gods are beginnings, transitions, duality, passages, doors, and endings. Unawares, I was trying to encapsulate what I think the Italian Canadian writer is. I might be wrong, yet this contest of strength between shadow and apparition is at the heart of writing. This is true of many writers of Italian origins publishing outside of Italy. The phenomenon is global. No longer a mirage or a trickery, identity in the hands of Italic writers (this is what I call them) has been turned inside out, and upside down.
Does your Italian background still influence what you write?
Writing is a job. I do not recall the last time I was inspired to write a line. Yes, occasionally images come to mind, lines pop up, and I will scribble them down. I have many notebooks to certify this comment. My dreams are nightmares so I can’t follow that path for very long. Maybe I should have, but I would not be the person I am. I would have developed the Italic sleuth or serial killer.
But, in all honesty, most of my writing is commission work. I write when I am asked to. Of course, I write every day, ten hours a day. I’m always writing. Or taking photographs, shooting scenes for a film, or playing music in front of an audience. I read a lot, I watch four or five films a day, and I listen to music. I’m a poor man, so I cannot allow myself fanciful extravaganza. I surround myself with the art I love. Everywhere, all the time. I had to follow my own path in this field bombarded by hatred and greed and intolerance. I analyse all of what I see ahead of me, and cautiously push aside things art I don’t care for. This is never an easy task, and it puts me on the spot when someone asks me what I think of this book or that film. I have had to explain my reasons for liking or disliking an author, a filmmaker, or a composer, or worse liking works and artists considered second or third rate. When someone boasts about the tasty fillet de mignon they just cooked, I smile, and say, I’m a vegetarian.
Being Italian outside of Italy has taught me to see the world as a mosaic. What the Italic artists are producing is part of what I call the Neo-Baroque. My entire approach to life and art is fragmented, impure, multileveled, plurilingualist, and pluricultural. This is what I learned from being an Italic person. Many is I.
What has the reaction to this book been so far?
The few readers who have read this English version published by Ekstasis Editions seem to have enjoyed the journey. In a week I have given two interviews (yours and a zoom interview with Bob Sorrentino in New Jersey). An Italian-language talk was conducted with Prof. Alessandra Ferraro in Udine after she read the Italian version of the essay published in La diaspora italiana in Canada, edited by Anthony J. Tamburri and Silvana Mangione. Unfortunately, book reviews are rare. My own works have not received many reviews in the past three decades. I have published more than 70 books, and if I’ve gotten ten reviews I would be lying. Nevertheless, I feel that this book had to be written. It fills the space that I opened. These two versions took two years to produce; I’m satisfied with the result. I’m honoured to have been commissioned to write it. I have to thank Pasquale Verdicchio for this, because it was he who was first approached to write the essay, but he thought I would be more qualified to write it. I’m honoured that he thought I could be up to meeting expectations.
What advice do you have for writers who are still compelled to write about being Italian?
Interesting that you use ‘still compelled.’ In your question lies the answer. The first term ‘still’ brings us to the adverb whose meaning is ‘always, continually, progressively.’ That is pretty much the core of the issue. How does one prolong what exists? The writers of the 1980s exist thanks to the writers of the 1970s and earlier. The writers of the 1990s owe much to writers of the previous decades. The writers of today exist thanks to the writers who came before them. The paths to take are clearly cut out for the newer generations:
1. They can embrace the British or USA traditions.
2. They can embrace the French or Quebec traditions.
3. They can embrace the Italian tradition.
4. They can take up the Italic cause.
The first three roads lead to reducing themselves to content. The last path leads to an unexplored space. One road leads to switching of codes, and the other leads us to the unknown. If I were to begin writing, I would choose the fourth road, since it is the one that will bring about the greatest satisfaction. The horizon is open and uncontaminated. If I were a new writer, I would explore the works by Italics writers across the borders and come up with thematic and cultural references. The faster the next generation devises with codes, the easier it will be to proffer original ideas to society. A writer is valuable as long as the writer proposes something useful to society. A writer never works alone. Another task is to make sure that they establish a publishing house that will keep the works of the past alive. If no one does anything to keep the works of writers alive, the works vanish, and so do the writers. The Picas Series that I created decades ago served that purpose. The Italic writer of tomorrow can exist if the Italic writers of the past are recognized and kept alive.
If you choose the initial three paths, the sense of obligation, what you called ‘compelled,’ will dwindle away and be replaced by craftsmanship. And that is fine, too, but it is not the same path as the one that leads to a higher degree of engagement.
What are you working on now?
After a decade of depression, I decided to spend the years left to me in organising my works and publishing my diaries and memoirs. I spent about fifteen years translating Quebec and some Italian poets of my generation. Equivalent to about 600 pages a year. I consider these translations an intrinsic part of my work. Translating poetry is not like translating prose. A poem is a poem, and a translation is a poem which uses another poem as its inspiration. Not a word has been mentioned about my Collected Poems or these translations. I’ve become an invisible writer. I have chosen to concentrate on my invisibility. My generation is coming to an end, and I have had the good fortune of meeting remarkable persons. Let me write about it all before we forget.
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