Abstract

Quotations have been one of the basic elements of Giovanni Orelli's poetics since his first novels. In Una sirena in parlamento (Bellinzona, 1999), they are the starting point from which the narration generates. Indeed, the tale apparentely begins with a parliamentary question made in Ticino - the original document is recalled several times in the text - which triggers a long chain of events, either reworked or invented by Orelli in order to give voice to a varied and multi-ethnic agorà. The chorus of auctoritates having a discussion in the imaginary public square is actually keeping pace with the dialogue of the main narrative voices: that of the author and that of the model that inspired him to write this brief piece of prose, Carlo Emilio Gadda.