Natalia Chwaja

A Different Sea by Claudio Magris. On the Border between the Diurnal and the Nocturnal Writing
The aim of the article is to illustrare and to explain the special position of the short novel A Diffrent Sea (1991) among all the works by Claudio Magris. The border motif, typical, in fact, for the whole author’s literary production, turns out to be very helpful in the analysys of the novel. In this particular case, the motifs presence is highly evident and dominant. The novelists attempt to reconstruct the life of Enrico Mreule, a protagonist that seeks to reach the state of Michelstaedter’s persuasion, leads to the creation of a biography of a man living “on the border”: a border between life and death, between defeat and fulfillment, between two famous Magris’ cathegories: utopia and disenchantment. Another important feature of the novel is it’s hybridity, which can be seen best from the perspective of Magris’ whole literary work. The diurnal an the nocturnal trend of writing, highlighted by Magris (and indicated by critics in his single works), are mixed together in A Different Sea, and their skillful counterpoint makes the book romanzo del confine, a novel of the border par excellence.

The aim of this article is to explain the meaning and analyse the role of the journey along the Danube
river in the novel Danube by Claudio Magris. The analisys presents two separate interpretations
of the literary odyssey. The first one emphasizes the importance of the journey understood as georgaphical,
philosophical and sociological research of the novel’s protagonist (the author’s alter-ego:
a scholar, a germanist and a traveller in one). The second one highlights it’s meaning for the development
of the protagonist’s identity, illustrating the ways in which the unique “hapsburg” manner of
travelling affects his life and his personality. In order to underline the existential dimension of the
journey, the article presents and analyses the scenes where the main character in shown as a disciple,
who follows his spiritual guides to learn about himself and about the human nature.

The paper briefly presents the main stages of the development of the Triestine literary tradition, which phenomenon begins to be widely noticed already in the 1930s. At that time, the first generation of a new Triestine literature (with its main pioneers – Italo Svevo, Scipio Slataper, Umberto Saba) became an interesting object of study for those critics and scholars who were able to distinguish some of its essential features. Subsequently, the author focuses on the idea of Triestine identity presented by a contemporary Italian writer Claudio Magris in a book entitled Trieste. Un’identità di frontiera. Then, the author proposes her interpretation of Magris’ novel Microcosms, presenting it as the most significant attempt of expressing both writer’s and city’s Triestine identity; a portrayal of the city of paper re-written in the language and style of an essayistic, autobiographical novel.