Cocaina
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Cocaina (1921) is a novel by Italian author Pitigrilli which tells the story of Tito Arnaudi who finds himself in a love triangle, having to choose between Kalantan Ter-Gregorianz and the cocotte Maud Fabrège.
While it's not a name-dropping novel, it squeezes in Sully Prudhomme, d'Annunzio and six or seven more novelists. There is no CAPs analysis online. Because of its elements of absurdism, it has been considered a surrealist novel.
Fassbinder was working on a script for the novel just before he died.
It was published by Edoardo Sonzogno.
Contents |
Plot
The protagonist is Tito Arnaudi, a young Dostoevskian nihilist who travels from his home town Turin to Paris after a failed love story. There he discovers the joys of cocaine, takes a job as a journalist and meets two women: the exotic and orgiastic Kalantan Ter-Gregorianz and the tawdry cocotte Maud Fabrège. Maud, who later in the story is renamed to Cocaina (she is the personification of the effects of cocaine, at first lively and spirited, later jaded and blunt) is his femme fatale. Tito falls in love with her despite her apparent infidelity and despite of her sterilization which he knows is bound to make her ugly and less feminine.
The orgy
- "It was held at the villa of Madam Kalantan Ter-Gregorianz, located near the Champs Elysees in that mundane quarter where the cocaine aristocrats dwell in "
Maud's sterilization
The sterilization (a removal of the ovaries) makes here ugly and less feminine.
The execution report
The part where he writes about the 4:AM execution which did not take place was hilarious.
The "Russian roulette" suicide
Our hero dies of a self-administered dose of typhus. Two doctors mis-diagnose and he survives, one diagnoses correctly and he dies. See Russian roulette.
Reception
The novel was banned when it was published due to its liberal use of explicit sex and drugs.
Translations
Dutch
There is a1982 Dutch translation by Frédérique Van Der Velde for the Dutch-language imprint Goossens. Frédérique Van Der Velde also translated Svevo's De moord in de via Belpoggio en andere verhalen (Eng: The Belpoggio Street Murder)
See also
