Between the inkwell and the scalpel: Italian literary transfigurations in medicine and anatomy from the 19th to the 21st century

Abstract

Arrigo Boito, author of Lezione di anatomia (Anatomy Lesson), was able to sum up the deepest cultural theme of the 19th century in Italy using one single verse (‘Son luce e ombra’). Notably, the development of the dialogue between natural sciences, literature, anatomy and art illuminates the mixture of sincere admiration and fear felt by writers and poets like Igino Ugo Tarchetti, Emilio Praga and Carlo Dossi. The mood of Positivism, which could be found even in Fine Arts Academies, was the perfect backdrop and the very root of many ‘clinical details’ in the first examples of Italian mass literature. Dossi portrayed in Note azzurre his friend Paolo Gorini, a scientist and anatomical preparator. Thus, Gorini becomes a literary character, presumably being also the inspiration for the identification of peculiar death aesthetics and for other similar characters. Efisio Marini, another Italian scientist, almost coeval with Gorini, shared with him similar interests and practices. Marini, who died in Naples in 1900, used to petrify corpses for anatomical museums; he is the main character of a series of five historical and noir novels written through the first decade of the 21st century by the Sardinian author Giorgio Todde, establishing a link between the 19th and 21st centuries.