Utopia and disenchantment in Claudio Magris’s Alla cieca

Abstract

This essay analyses Claudio Magris’s novel Alla cieca (2005; Blindly, 2010) vis-à-vis the crisis of the postmodern novel in the new millennium. It begins by emphasizing the sense of discontent with postmodern narrative practices as articulated by Franco Rella, Claudio Magris and Romano Luperini in various texts. The rest of the essay is a discussion of Magris’s complex novel in which, through the shattered voice of the protagonist, the author unveils the ideals, the compromises and the tragedies that have informed the last two hundred years of European history. Although the novel depicts the crisis and collapse of political ideals and strong ideologies, it does not yield to a weak nihilism, nor does it argue in favour of a levelling of every belief.