Nóstos, álgos. "Nostalgia" di Ermanno Rea.

Abstract Nostalgia is the last book – published posthumously – by Ermanno Rea. It should be read as the ultimate ‘chapter’ of the literary trilogy of «returns and farewells», dedicated to Naples and composed of three books: Mistero napoletano, La dismissione and Napoli ferrovia. Naples is, unquestionably, the most recurrent geographical and literary topos in the narrative prose of Rea from which the writer – as with all the novels of the so called Neapolitan trilogy – cannot disregard the typification of ‘Nature’ in the narrative space and, at the same time, of the characters that populate it. It is ‘nostalgia’ – referring to the first Greek etymology of the word, synthesis of nóstos, ‘return’ to a geographical place and álgos, ‘pain’ due to the distance from that place – the sentiment that leads the protagonist Felice Lasco back to his birth-city, even in the most derelict part of its urban areas, the Rione Sanità. Therefore, the definition of Nostalgia characters cannot escape the nefarious influence of the ‘spatial’ context drawn down among the narrow spaces of the neighborhood: it is a vertical geographic layout, a natural tension between sea and hills, made up of narrow streets, ancient buildings and crumbling; the subsoil of steep stairs, of «hypogea, altars, carved sepulchres». It is probably only a name, a flatus vocis, an imaginary place – one of the many «unknown and wonderful» Neapolitan sites – wrapped in a cloud of mystery. La Sanità is the «tragic and violent» scenario in the history of two different «natures», inseparably linked in their tragic destiny