Abstract

The essay provides new insights into Carlo Emilio Gadda's various experiments with short story writing through an examination of his manuscripts held at the Biblioteca Trivulziana in Milan. A number of handwritten notes reveal the author's continuous attempts at producing short fiction from the late 20s onwards and include a series of still largely unknown projects and lists of themes for future development, such as that of a satirical dialogue on misogyny. The main focus of the essay then shifts to an unpublished incomplete short story dating to the late 40s, whose protagonist Amedeo meets his demise in the Battle of Cape Matapan during the Second Wold War (1941) after falling in love with a mysterious girl seen in a park accompanied by another woman. The relationships between these tentative and unfinished drafts, "Prima divisione nella notte", and other published texts are highlighted as well as the theme of lesbian love underpinned by Gadda's reading of Radclyffe Hall's novel "The Well of Loneliness" (1928).