L’ALLEGORIA TANATOLOGICA DI HILAROTRAGOEDIA

Abstract

The Afterlife represents the privileged dimension of interest in Giorgio Manganelli's writing. In their evident and deliberate formal complexity, his pseudo-essayistic and pseudo-narrative works present themselves as “emblems”1 or “crests”2 composed of materials drawn from an infernal imaginary. With these, Manganelli constructs sophisticated rhetorical exercises that challenge literary genres in the name of verbal proliferation and linguistic invention, expressing a use of textuality that tends towards graphomania rather than a genuine need for communication.
This contribution aims to explore the infernal dimension that underlies Manganelli's writing through the case of Hilarotragoedia, focusing on its relationship with the psychoanalytic universe3 and its allegorical value. Although the 'psychic' notion of infernal imagery reflects the influence of Jung’s work and of the therapeutic experience with Ernest Bernhard4 on Manganelli’s writing, this article attempts to connect Hilarotragoedia to the texts of James Hillman. The goal is to demonstrate that the ideas of depth psychology permeate Manganelli’s inspiration to the point of anticipating some aspects of Hillman’s psychoanalysis, and thus to read Hilarotragoedia as a manifestation of a profoundly acute "infernal sensitivity" (Hillman 2003, p. 13).