Per l’edizione de «I due fratelli nimici» di Carlo Gozzi

Resumo

The present work aims at analysing the three-act tragicomedy I due fratelli nimici by Carlo Gozzi (1720-1806), performed in Venice in January 1773, and published in the same year. In the first part it deals with a bilingual comparative reading of the comedia famosa. Hasta el fin nadie es dichoso (1654) by Don Agustín Moreto y Cabaña, concerning cultural exchanges and influences between Spain and Italy during the 17th and 18th centuries, in which French mediation also plays a part. Gozzi reimagines the Spanish plot model and adjusts it to the needs of Sacchi’s comedy company and the audience’s taste of the time, and to historical and ideological junctures. It introduces the Commedia dell’arte’s masks and intervenes in psychological undertones, in the series of analogies and metaphors, and in the synonymic variations occurring in noble characters’ dialogues and the descriptions of royal circles where dramatic action takes place. Generally, it transcends the high Baroque sensitivity of Moreto’s theatre, mitigating the most literary features of speech and the composition of language, as shown in the transposition of the chivalrous world’s characters’ relaciones. He also makes substantial cuts in trivial villain scenes to insert three soliloquies. The theme of the ‘collaboration’ between the Venetian author and the «court servant» Brighella is very original: leaving behind the role of a simple character, the Bergamo mask is introduced as an ironic observer who throughout the work comments on the events that take place in the Aragon court. The mask criticizes their fictional tones, whose references to Moreto’s comedia plot mark its entry into the tragicomedy to become a subject itself of Gozzi’s theatre. Finally, he masterfully plays the role of an intellectual who takes note of his observations for the draft of a novel, which itself becomes a feeble drama in the third act – with a clear reference to Gozzi’s controversy on both genres – effectively replacing the dramaturg. In this regard, the use of the figure of speech called “matalepsis” and the models of referential literary tradition, in primis Ariosto and Cervantes, are defined inside the ‘rewrite’ – and offering himself up as writer of the final dénouement of the tragicomedy. The second part of the work presents the edition of I due fratelli nimici, according to the Colombani print – the Zanardi is also taken into consideration, i.e. the copia descripta of the first – and as established by the «Edizione Nazionale delle opere di Carlo Gozzi» [National Edition of Carlo Gozzi’s works] standards. A detailed ‘Text note’ and an ‘Apparatus’ containing the substantial variations found in the manuscript witness of the Fondo Gozzi 5.2, preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, accompany the text. In addition, there are those identified in the Colombani’s antigraph of the Fondo Gozzi 5.4. The edition closes with various ‘Appendices’ including the transcription of the Spanish work’s summary («Spoglio»), which is the basis of the versification and draft of the dialogues, a brief ‘Introduction’; ‘Text notes’; and ‘Apparatus’, and to close, the transcription of two scenes (Fondo Gozzi 5.2) that vary considerably when compared to the corresponding scenes present in the actual text.