Response to Ortese

The Iguana features multiple levels of duality.  This concept is much too complex to be reduced to an examination of imagination or memory, dream or reality.  Instead these elements should be examined as relationships within the novel.  In The Iguana, the relationship between imagination and memory is stimulated by Ortese’s distortion of time and space.  Holding firmly to the belief that “imagination cannot be separated wholly from observation and experience,” The Iguana, even at its points of highest fantastical significance, contains components drawn from the previous experiences of its characters.  Though introduced as an imaginative absurdity, the prospect of “the confessions of a madman…the story of a madman in love with an iguana” resurfaces, perhaps coincidentally, but more likely from Daddo’s memory (Ortese 3).  The young publisher, Adelchi, relies on the imagination of Daddo to create “something really new, something extraordinary,” (Ortese 3).  The novel generates meaning through its recombination of recognizable elements just as “imagination is a matter of syntax rather than lexis,” (Wood 358).  Ortese reduces the divide between imagination and memory as a way to distort the novel’s concepts of time and space.  Daddo observes the Iguana’s fascination with stones by assuming her ignorant of the concept of wealth, which he himself is obsessed with.

Metamorphasis in The Iguana

Don Carlo Ludovico Aleardo di Grees begins his adventure in Anna Maria Ortese’s novel The Iguana on the mission to seek out new land for purchase for his mother, the countess, as well as to look for manuscripts for his publisher friend Boro Adelchi. Don Aleardo, nicknamed Daddo, does not have to search to far before stumbling upon the island of Ocaña an island not recorded on any recent maps and home to four bizzare inhabitants: an iguana named Estrellita, a poet named Don Ilario, and Don Ilario’s two half brothers: Felipe and Hipolito. On Ocaña fantastical happenings occur and the lines between the real and the unreal become blurry even to the narrator. The uncertainty allows for a transformation of each character. Daddo, originally entering Ocaña a sane man, spirals into madness and Don Illario, a man acursed with a maddening sickness transforms his persona to that of a peaceful family man. The two Avaredo-Guzman bothers, illiterate at the begging, become poets at the end. And lastly an iguana, percieved by daddo as young and innocent, is not only transformed in attitude but phisical being as well.

The Iguana and The Siren

In both Ortese's The Iguana and Lampedusa's The Professor and The Siren, a main character encounters a supernatural creature that is fantastic. Both Daddo and La Ciura face challenges in coping with this creature because it is difficult to figure out if the creature is even real or not. In addition, both the Count, Daddo, and La Ciura come from upper-class, wealthy families and once they encounter the iguana and the Siren, they are awe-struck and confused. When Daddo, a confident count in search of real estate, discovers that the figure he had thought was an old woman was actually an iguana, Ortese describes, “Daddo’s surprise was tremendous. He had taken her for a shrunken old woman, but he was looking at an animal!” (Ortese 17). La Ciura experiences the same sort of surprise when he is relaxing on his boat and a Siren appeared, described as mystical and enchanting, her smile “was the first of the spells cast upon (him)” (Lampedusa 78).

Time is distorted for both Daddo and La Ciura and they face difficulty in differentiating eternality and time. In the end, Daddo ends up dying and sacrificing himself for the iguana, seeing her beauty despite her green, animal-like body. La Ciura’s fate brings him to a similar death, as he apparently falls into the ocean, most likely going to be with the Siren and sacrificing himself for love, and his body is never found. The similarities between the fantastic stories of the iguana and the Siren are evident when comparing how these creatures affect the male characters in each story.

The Iguana

Anna Maria Ortese’s novel, The Iguana, reality and imagination are intertwined with each other, making it more difficult for the reader to distinguish between reality and fantasy. In this story, a rich count who “had not yet married, and had no marital intentions, even in spite of the pressures of his mother the Countess, who had already paid visits to several prominent Swiss families” (3), Count Carlo Ludovico Aleardo di Grees, more commonly known as Daddo, frequently goes on expeditions to search for and purchase islands for his mothers to invest in. “He felt marriage would have limited him, yet one couldn’t say how. He led the simplest life conceivably, the almost monotonous life of a monk.” (3) He also had a greedy friend, Adelchi, who was a publisher. He jokingly suggested to his money centred friend to publish “the story of a madman in love with an iguana.” The count thereafter offers to help his friend find the manuscripts of the story.

In the counts search for his mothers’ island and the poems for his friend, he chanced upon a dismal community of lost noblemen on a hidden and unknown island called Ocana. On arrival, he encounters a bunch of decadently poor aristocrats and their magical maid - the iguana representing the title of the book. He immediately is sympathetic toward that their ill-treated magical servant Estrellita, the Iguana. He subsequently falls in love with her but his feelings are never returned for the iguana’s thoughts are already preoccupied with thoughts of her master Don Ilario. In the end of the book, Daddo neither gets the island nor the iguana and rather goes mad and dies. By the end of the book we see the irony that Daddo went on a quest to look for the story of himself.

The Siren

The novel, The Professor and the Siren by Lampedusa, tells the story about two Sicilians whose friendship was built upon the pride they felt for their hometown. Both men possess large inner egos stemming from their statuses and positions in life that make them look down upon others: Paolo Corbera’s from the fact that he comes from a prominent family, and Rosario La Ciura, from his achievements, his intelligence and his relationship with an immortal – a siren.

These two men try to maintain their statuses above each other during their friendship but tried to keep their informal conflict inconspicuous. Senator R. L. Ciura always tries to prove his intelligence “I detest talking to people who think themselves knowledgeable when they are ignorant, like my colleagues at the university” (63) and he still carries on his condescending behaviour when he meets Paolo. Even when he realises that Paolo may be from a prominent family, he still tried to taint the power of the name of Paolo’s lineage and ancestors by asking “Corbera… am I mistaken in thinking that to be one of the great Sicilian names?… or merely a descendant of some peasant who took his masters name” (64). Paolo also tried to overlook the senators highly praised intelligence so as not to feel downtrodden by his pride and ego and said to himself “I was feeling more disappointed; he seemed to be just an ordinary academic priest-baiter with a dash of Nietzschean Fascism added.” (64). The friendship was competitive with each party trying to prove themselves but the Senator always felt superior because of his relationship with the siren.

The Professor and the Siren

Being unaware of my assignments as I decided to begin my Thanksgiving Break early, I failed to write a blog on the thought-inducing short story, The Professor and The Siren. Well now I will make up for my failure.

The Professor and The Siren contains a quite interesting question of society. It challenges the existence of unique experiences and how they label a person relative to the rest of humanity. The senator, known as Senator Rosario La Ciura had experienced the Greek language personally after hearing it spoken by “the Siren”. His knowledge and recognition of the language places the senator in a unique setting as few amongst him have had a shared experience. “’Poor wretches, anyway; how can they sense that spirit if they have never had occasion to hear real Greek?’” (64). Many may view this as arrogance coming from the senator, when in fact he feels sympathy for those who think they grasp the depth that the Greek language withholds, hence describing them as ‘poor wretches’. The senator views most of society around him as unfulfilled, lacking exclusivity in their lives. This is shown in the senator’s “high regard” (64), of Corbera di Salina (the narrator), for being the “only surviving specimen” (64), of his old family. The senator respects Corbera because he himself has uniqueness in his life, being alone in carrying on his family’s name. There is little evidence that the senator views himself as more prominent than those around him. His pride is rather based around his insusceptibility to implausible self-confidence.  

Iguana Response

Annalysse Mason

Introduction to the fantastic in the Iguana

First Year Seminar

12/2/2013

                In Anna Maria Ortese’s novel, The Iguana, the reader is transferred to a state of mind that makes distinguishing real and unreal things difficult. The fantastic is experienced by the reader through words, phrases, and ideas that make the story appear dreamlike or surreal. The reader is first introduced to the fantastic when The Count and Adelchi venture to the island where they later find an iguana-woman. When Adelchi and The Count first approach the island, the house on the island is first seen as “swimming dimly into view as through a pane of yellow or smokey glass” pg (12). This makes the island appear as an out-of-the-blue, possibly even an imagined destination.  The Count also describes the house as “less as a house than as a stage prop” (pg 15). This simile, linking the house to a prop, tells the reader that this house, and largely this island and its people, may in fact not be real. The unresponsiveness and absurdity of the people on the island make the island appear unrealistic, the narrator states that “Daddo felt vaguely apprehensive for a moment, sensing their silence, accidental as it was, to be a curious rhyme to their sad and bizarre appearance—bizarre at the very least—and to the strangeness of their occupation” (pg 13). The uneasiness felt by The Count by these people give an unsure, apprehensive feeling to the reader, much like one felt in a dream. Another indicator that this island might not be real is that The Count’s first encounters with such absurdities are seen as normal. When he first sees the iguana-woman, he “[feels] instantly reassured that there [is] nothing to marvel about in this ‘little old woman’. Or if there [was], it was simply a part of the world’s normality” (pg 18). The narrator also states that “there was no such thing as order here, something even that made order possible” (pg 22). The willingness of the Count to accept such absurd things as “normal” or “simple” contributes to the idea that this place is not real, because in reality such things would not be considered normal. 

The Iguana by Anna Maria Ortese

In The Iguana, the author combats realism by creating a story in which the reader has difficulty in deciphering between actual and imagined events. It is unclear if the Count witnessed visitors coming to the island and into the basement of don Ilario's home, or if this was a dream. The Count went into the basement because he found a trap door in the closet, and he wanted to see the Iguana's inhabitance. While he was down there, don Ilario, his two brothers, the Archbishop, and the Hopins came downstairs to bless the area because of fear that there were bad spirits. The Count witnessed this, but "he did not wake back up to himself until the cellar was once again in darkness" (105). The author wants the reader to not know if this event actually existed or not, and Ortese does this throughout the book. Ortese shows that realism does not exist, and does this through a fantastic circumstance. As well, Ortese changes characters to alter the readers' perceptions and confuse reality on the island. While the Count is gone at sea in a rowboat, the Marquis talks to the Iguana about leaving the island with him and the Marquis is referred to as "daddy." Later on when the Count returns, he has an impulse to approach the Iguana and for her to "think of him as her servant and her daddy and she'd bear his name and have all of his money" (150). They are two separate characters, but are both referred to as "daddy" as if they are a single person. This also leads the reader to believe that these events are imagined. Ortese tries to confuse readers so they are unable to interpret reality versus imaginary, and does this using fantastical circumstances.

 

The Iguana Response

Kendall Weinert

FYS: Iguana Blog Post

12/1/13

Finding Love In a Hopeless Place

The novel, The Iguana, by Anna Maria Ortese is set to make the reader believe they are in a fantasy world. The novel takes place on an island in which the main character, The Count, finds and helps an Iguana. Ortese demonstrates the intense feelings that have grown between the Count and this Iguana. Once the Count finds the Iguana on the Island, he cares for her and thinks that he can provide her with what she cannot, freedom. The Iguana becomes almost a basket case for the Count. The Count comes from a rather wealthy family, giving him the perspective that he can do anything in life. With the Count having this outlook on his life, he believes that he can offer the Iguana a new and better life with him. This eventually turns into more than just the Count helping the Iguana through life; it turns into a relationship that is irreplaceable. The Count would not know what to do without the Iguana in his life anymore. When the Iguana passes at the end of the novel, it leaves the Count depressed and not knowing what to do. He has nobody to help through life anymore. The Count believes as if the Iguana only relied on him to live, which is only partially true. The Count states, “all creatures everywhere were eternally dependent upon [my] strengths.” (Ortese, 117). The Count does not realize that he too was relying on the Iguana to stay sane and alive. Without the Iguana in his life, the Count no longer has a point to living; he does not know what to do. The Iguana was everything to the Count. She was a friend and a love of his. At the end of the novel, the Count too ends up passing away. He had no point left to live without the Iguana. She was more than just a charity case for the Count; she was his love.

Response to Ortese

Anna Maria Ortese takes you through her novel, The Iguana, traveling between reality and fantasy. The Count, otherwise known as Daddo defines realism as,

The art of illuminating the real. But people, unfortunately, don’t always affirm the awareness that reality exists on many levels, and that the whole of creation, once you analyze the deepest level of reality, isn’t real at all, and simpily the purist and profoundest imagination. (52)

Looking at the novel through Daddo’s definition of reality, the fantasy or dream he moves in and out of, is not really a dream or fantasy but “the deepest level of reality”. Daddo’s definition contradicts itself as well as brings up the question of whether reality can be defined and what is considered reality. When speaking of nature, reality’s new definition, allows nature to merge, and hold humanlike characteristics. The image of Estrellita illustrates the blurred lines between man and nature. Estrellita is portrayed as a mix between a young girl and a reptile. At first Daddo believes that she is an old woman due to her wrinkled appearance, however through her actions as well as personality he decided that she must be a young girl. The concept of man vs. nature is portrayed through the compassion and sympathy that Daddo feels for Estrellita. The count is on a quest to purchase land, however also wishes to purchase Estrellita when he learns that she has been bought. Because Estrellita has been purchased, she is forced into a separation between man and nature. Daddo breaks the separation in man vs. nature when he sacrifices himself to save Estrellita.