Gogol's Wife and Other Stories

by Tommaso Landolfi, Raymond Rosenthal (Translator), Wayland Young (Translator)

Much admired in Europe, Landolfi has been called "the Italian Kafka"; he is often linked with the Surrealists, and in the intellectual quality of his fantasy there are certain affinities with Borges; but beyond these superficial comparisons, his is a truly unique—and fascinating—art. It is based in a prodigious imagination, a very curious sense of humor and a rare command of irony.

The short stories included are:

- Gogol's Wife
- Pastoral
- Dialogue on the Greater Harmonies
- The Two Old Maids
- Wedding Night
- The Death of the King of France
- Giovanni and His Wife
- Sunstroke
- A Romantic's Letter on Gambling

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Italian Literature, Italy, Literature, 20th Century, Classics

183 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Tommaso Landolfi was an Italian author, translator and literary critic. His numerous grotesque tales and novels, sometimes on the border of speculative fiction, science fiction and realism, place him in a unique and unorthodox position among Italian writers. He won a number of awards, including the prestigious Strega Prize.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tommaso Landolfi knows many secrets of the world… And all those secrets are quite strange…

At this point, confronted with the whole complicated affair of Nikolai Vassilevitch’s wife, I am overcome by hesitation. Have I any right to disclose something which is unknown to the whole world, which my unforgettable friend himself kept hidden from the world (and he had his reasons), and which I am sure will give rise to all sorts of malicious and stupid misunderstandings? Something, moreover, which will very probably offend the sensibilities of all sorts of base, hypocritical people, and possibly of some honest people too, if there are any left?

Gogol’s Wife, as it is easy to conjecture, is about Gogol’s wife; Pastoral – a tendency of the rural populace to hibernate in wintertime; Dialogue on the Greater Harmonies – aesthetic values of some obscure poems written in the unknown language; The Two Old Maids is about the moral responsibility of the monkey named Tombo for its blasphemous misdeeds…

Some people claimed that they had heard violent nocturnal uproars in the convent – presumably because the sisters had at first mistaken Tombo for a devil with a tail who’d come up from hell to punish them for their sins.

Wedding Night is a symbolic conjunction of nuptials with chimney sweeping; Giovanni and His Wife – a harmonious cacophony of a spousal duet; Sunstroke – an owl blinded by the light of dawn; A Romantic’s Letter on Gambling – the only possible escape from gambling passion is to lose everything.
The Death of the King of France is a tale about secret fears of the foster father and secret dreams of his foster daughter…

The beast, however, is taking its time. There is plenty of time to look into the hard, hornlike eyes, the eyes which do not move; yes, they can be looked at, Rosalba can look at them at her ease. No more terror now – a peaceful, pursuing stare. So this is the beast which can wander all over the house and enter everywhere, nestle under a sleeper’s pillow, in the hollow of one’s armpits, between one’s… yes, between one’s warm thighs.

The daring imagination is always capable of defeating any banality.

[Mariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yet these two unfailingly agreed on each and every note, or whatever you might call them, and they sang entire pieces with each moving accord in their out-of-tuneness that I, amazed, consternated, dejected, let my shapely ears be lacerated almost willingly, meanwhile abandoning myself to philosophical reflections, half bitter, half comforting.

It might (finally! I have waited for this day for so long) be my turn to write one of those reviews about book soul mates. Maybe. If that soul is a horcrux ripped into millions of pieces to exist in the bodies of another and living without me after I have killed myself worrying about a bunch of shit that'll never get me anywhere. You know, like in that famous book series I would sell my congenital soul for another one. I have a lot of these soul parts and it's never exactly serrated fit. There's that bit of an ache of that necessary longing (the reason for reading. Are you a free spirit or a "Fuck it" spirit? Tommaso Landolfi is a kindred "Fuck it. What else is there?" spirit. He worries about all of the never gonna get you anywhere shit the same as me. See, right now I'm worrying that a reader of this may be thinking "I MIGHT care about this Landolfi but I sure as shit don't care about you." (It's one of the reasons why I'm such a great failure as a book reviewer. I worry too much!) Landolfi would worry about Billie Holiday stage dreams of eyes burning out because the brightness from all of the eyes watching did some science refracting shit on the tears for all to see in one's own eyes. Too much bright and too fast. Fuck it. If you can hear the right tune to dance when your mental song goes you suck, you suck, you suck. Maybe one set of eyes will care and maybe and maybe. Gogol's Wife & Other Stories is a lot of great things (it's a pretty freaking amazing book. Why would they believe your generic hyperbole, Mar?). To me? In the I'm afraid only-for-Mariel-book-read thing that I do? It's poised to make the leap. Freeze frame. It hurts to hold for so long and is it a smile for too long or is it a smirk or some kind of upside down frown thing. It's the feeling I had. I could see the writer(s) of the story worrying what you or me or someone would be thinking, or hiding behind the worry to not just let go. The blood letting comes from the beating up.

Oh yeah, so I read a lot of books in translation. One of my favorite people, Manny Rayner, won't read a book if it is not in original language. I don't want to think about what my life would be like without my Kawabata or Cortazar. It's not them and yet I get those feelings like when you might cut the crap and really hear someone despite the unrelenting noise. I'm hopeless for my English, my Spanish is worse than the most intelligible doctor's handwriting. (My secret twin language is long a dead one.) I can't finish that sentence. I can understand the reasoning behind it, though. Do you trust the translator? I had a feeling that this is something that Landolfi worries about a lot. 'Gogol' had three translators, actually. It's funny because I didn't get too much difference between the three. They had a collective fuck it embrace in a complicated still at arms length holding of oneself. All the voices of the stories are like this. I really had the feeling that Landolfi was moving around a lot in a straight jacket of second guessing. It's instructive tell-it-like-it-is second guessing like a writer who wants to trust that you'll be the one who gets it and still they are not going to dislodge their tongue from their write cheek just in case you aren't because they need that protective biting the inside of your other cheek. The writer talks to you through whatever is between you and it and it winks at those things, I had the feeling.

"The Death of the King of France" was renamed so because of that saying about long and wearisome musical pieces. Landolfi, I know how you feel. Of course you named your story that. Mysteries the writer doesn't know despite himself. So-and-So raises blooming Robalsa, a girl of twelve or thirteen, as his daughter with the intention of plucking her from the vine like a tomato. She grows juicier in the bath tub. Tomato or tomatoe you say but it is most definitely a fruit and not a vegetable to be unaware of the goings on in the wet spot. If they say they want to kill you what else could they mean? Bloody intentions, the English might say. Intentions bloody. Beasts say fee fi fo fum. I don't know what they say. I saw the widening eyes and the waiting. Landolfi says he doesn't know what So-and-So wanted. I think you would know if he were going to take a bite out of you. I think... The language paints the whirl pool eyes and the widening pupils and.... Yeah, I think so.

"Dialogue on the Greater Harmonies" is about that too. So this guy named Y is taught a language that doesn't exist. If no one else speaks it is it a real language? Would it be art if no one could understand what the person speaking it wanted to say? If a poem is translated does it lose all meaning? Is the spirit of the thing more important than if anyone else is able to "get" it? (And if you're a shitty writer who bumbles around all of the time can you ever hope to be understood? That one is mine.) The critic tells Y yes, they would have meaning if it meant something to the author.... And they reject his poems and he gets kicked out of the building! Maybe he took them to the wrong person?

Gogol's Wife has a collapsible spine and deflated sense of importance to her husband, the famous author. For his biographer he may be hiding his hearts stirrings for what the plastic and hair and if she could be tweaked to meet the heart's desire perfect form to be loved for as long as the heart's desire can last before it isn't enough. The biographer sees the "wife" named Caracas with her own personalities. Why do the heart's desire maker and willing (or is it allowed?) witness sense a hostility from the space she takes up? I know I would pretend and then almost believe that she did talk, was in fact a she, and the imagination would take a surprising life of its own. I never forgot how to play as children do. Kids want company, right? Imaginary friends and that scene. I became less interested in why this Gogol would instill in her all his own feelings of betrayal and mistrust and more interested in how I was sympathetic with Caracas as if she was lying in a heap on the floor. The biographer wanted to preserve image of his subject and the story vibrates behind him the invented yet more real presence of the blow-up doll wife. I thought that was great. How do you get more stuck inside yourself then making up your own friends out of shit?

I wonder if my rating system on goodreads is indecipherable even to myself. I've rated some pretty shitty books high ratings (I consider some of my past reading trends to be akin to not being able to remember why you had ever had a crush on some guy who once seemed irresistible. Yuck!) and then will knock off stars on the most wonderful books because they didn't hold with some standard that I have that I have never been able to put very well. There's a young priest character in The Two Old Maids who speaks out against the cruelty of the other people in the story. The nun who apparently keeps her sister from ever doing the nasty (I could tell childhood stories about how painful it is to be accused of being an influence on my twin sister. If she wasn't who my mom wanted her to be- as in boy slutty- it had to be my fault. Over identify much!) he must tell off. The older priest who huffs and puffs and blows his doors exactly where they already were must not ever again call him young boy! If I were him I'd just say "That would be an ecumenical matter" like in the best tv show of all time Father Ted. That's the correct answer to any religious question! I know, philosophical questions about if God really cares, if people are innocent and if animals are innocent. Those sick fucks are going to kill the monkey they've been psychologically torturing for some time because he emulated a sign to god. He pissed on the altar! The young priest doesn't really have a stake in it, though. He reminded me of the too cool to be here character in some show that is still somehow above all the really bad shit going down. I guess he's relateable for the above-it-allness, in those shows? (If the show is great, like the original The Office, he's not above it. Just thinks he is.) He can move away and have a story to tell about some assholes he once knew. My heart was with the monkey! So the grey dust settles on all who walk in the town, right? Bad shit went down. The two old maids never did the nasty and God just doesn't really give a damn. I wouldn't choose to look at things from the perspective of the more or less safe young priest. The monkey! It's easy for the kids on those Anne of Green Gables spin offs to blame one spinster for the other spinster never got down. If you're really too safe then it isn't as interesting why you're wondering about the two sisters in the first place. Why would you think that one person had that kind of mental power? I want to know the you behind the questioner. The monkey was great, though. Their eyes on his restless cage pacing said more than any great debate ever could.

Or maybe I was imagining the anxiety about the accuracy of the interpretation of art as life and life as art and translations and if you ever managed to get anything right no matter how much you gave a damn about it. I feel like that. Maybe I'm wrong. The humor may not be living next door to hiding in the back bedroom regret. It's my reading, though. Pull on the adjustable plastic surface and the air that comes out could be the pathos of your dreams, as long as it lasts that that is what you want. Maybe you don't want to think about it anymore.

That evening, as I was going home, I brooded over the obscure designs of nature's cruelty which instills in one person a vivid passion for the things which he cannot do, while it fills another with dislike for those things he can do very well, and so on.
Yes. I related to this. I relate to so much and I relate to this too.

And I regret not writing about the stories as stories. Writing about connecting ideas I had is leaving out what is important to me. I mean, I read translated works pretty frequently. It gets old to keep talking about it. But it is important when you hear their voices. Are you getting them? I guess I do that thing where I try to hope and read into shit like with Gogol's fictional wife... Maybe a lot of it is me too and some of it is the translator and maybe I'm too dumb to get what the author is saying and they are just hoping that someone else will really get them... I worry about ever getting anything right. Fuck it. I wrote a long review anyway and I swore I was gonna leave off reviewing after I butchered my favorite book yesterday (again!). Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it. I always say that, anyway. The anxiety is worth it anyway, I hope, at least for making me think about what I felt, even if I say the same damned thing every damned time. I wish I had three translators! Because I really want to reach myself, I think. Too many horcruxes. Last time I ever listen to Lord Voldemort.


(What is it like to be a free spirit? Not Gogol's Wife. Not the monkey. Not the beast.)


(But I bet they don't think nonstop either. Must be nice.)

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tommaso Landolfi, gambler and translator of Russian literature, weirdo, and forgotten master of 20th century literature. This, I believe his most famous collection (he was praised by Calvino, Barthelme, and Sontag) is terrific collection of stories. The title story is relentlessly unnerving story of Gogol and his “wife”, a doll that can change sizes and maybe alive (“real doll” anyone), then there is the epistolary horror story “Pastoral”(about an estate where people are hibernating in dirt sacks), a tale of man who wrote poems in a made-up language and can’t articulate their greatness in any existing one, a Dineson parody/tribute novella ‘Two Old Maids”(it features a monkey) which also a brilliant discussion of theology and the nature of good and evil, a weird Sterne/Beckett meets “Walter Mitty” styled story “The Death of the King of France” (about a man afraid of spiders and obsessed with watching his adopted daughter bathe), a man and wife who sing out of tune in perfect harmony, and a couple poetic fragments. Unlike a lot of people who get compared to, say Beckett, Kafka, Borges, Dineson, Gogol, or Sterne, Landolfi is as good a writer as any of them and should not be left to molder on shelves.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've ever thought that Nikolai Gogol might have had a blow-up doll for a wife and that the brilliant author inflated it through the anus and had a severe love-hate relationship with it; or conceived of a rural French village where the townsfolk hibernate throughout the winter in sacks hanging from the ceiling; or perhaps you've never read an depth description of a monkey saying Mass and the subsequent debate of whether or not he should be executed for blasphemy- if these scenarios sound strange than you've never read Tommaso Landolfi.

Landolfi is an unabashedly obscure writer, belonging to that small coterie of unread geniuses, such as Robert Walser an de Assis, although to his credit, Landolfi is much more imaginative than either one, and probably a bit more obscure. He's been compared to Poe (although L's horror is much more elusive and witty), Kafka (anyone pursuing the vague is immediately compared to Franz, so don't take it personally), and Borges (the comparison is unflattering to both men).

But Landolfi is definitely his own man. There is much hilarity and speculation in these stories, all told in a style that seems almost overburdened with fusing the purely fantastical with the real. Not all of them are great, and at least two seem to have no point at all, but the great ones definitely are. He's like E.T.A. Hoffman with more humanity, Poe with a less tiresome vocabulary, maybe even a bit of Kleist. A weird and very funny guy whose severe use of scatalogical images are hopefully not unconscious. He makes the bizarre look like something that was there all along.

[Andrew]

Poor Landolfi, overshadowed by his companero European weirdos. Although, to be honest, he’s no Kafka. These stories were not bad, but on the whole, they don’t have the desired effect on me, of the creepy subtleties at the edge of the everyday that characterizes, for instance, Kafka’s Cares of a Family Man. Perhaps this was the translator’s fault, but most of these stories just didn’t do it for me, even if I appreciated a great many moments along the way.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

sometimes a little too far into the "clever literature" genre, sometimes a little too silly even for me. great fun though. best one was "dialogue on the greater harmonies", in which an aspiring writer learns Persian from a tourist over the course of a few months only to learn, after the visitor has left, that not only was the language not Persian, but it was no language at all, and even the visitor, once tracked down, has forgotten it. The question becomes what to do with the poems our man has written in this language, how to judge them, how to interpret them, etc. Abandoned into an idioglossia--reminded me of when you build up a style of conversation with someone and then, for whatever reason, they are gone from your life and you are left with a dialect that no one else really speaks for a while, until you eventually forget it too.
Cixous says: here is a language: "I". And here is another: "I". When we join them at the hip, through writing, we get the ladder: "H". (In the french, homophone with haché, the axe, now where's that frozen sea gone?) I am a language, and so are you, and when we spend time together we write a step between the two. It's true that, like Landolfi's unlucky polyglot, what we say to each other is only ever for us...but that's sort of a nice indulgence. Plus, this way we are the most famous writers to ever write in such a language as ours. xo

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

My brain hurts. Maybe it's my new glasses - I can now see everything in hallucinatory detail: the mould spots on leaves on trees, the blemishes on faces approaching twenty yards away, the numbers of buses down the road (quite useful) - or maybe it's this book. Great inventive stories full of wry humour, Kafka-esque, Borges-esque. Gogol's wife is a blow up doll that can change shape and catch diseases; in another story a man writes poems in a language that only he knows and argues that they are great art because he thinks they are; in 'Two Old Maids' a monkey escapes and is seen giving mass in a nearby convent; in 'Pastoral' a girl finds that people in the countryside hibernate for the winter in strange fleshy bags that hang from the ceiling: inevitably she ends up doing so too. Others are more straightforward, a chimney sweep at a wedding, a description of an owl.

My brain hurt from the intellectual debate that takes over many of the pieces - in Two Old Maids a good ten pages are spent on theological deabte on the nature of good and evil. Similarly in the unknown language one (I haven't got the book with me - will come back and put in title: Dialogue on the Greater Harmonies and some quotes to illustrate what I mean - see below) the debate is about what constitutes art. All very interesting and quite thrilling at times but it lacked for me the emotional involvement that I crave from stories. Very mean score really though - I think many will enjoy this book...

here's a quote to help you make up your mind:

'Of course,' the great critic declaimed, 'on what takes place in the most secret penetralia of an artist's soul, our profane eyes must not intrude. Of course an artist is free to put together his words even before atrributing meaning to them, free even to expect from those words, or from a single word, the whole significance and meaning of his composition. Provided that this composition is.. art.'

as i say interesting but not my particular blend of tea.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know how it took me so long to discover this guy. He's right up my alley. If you like Gogol and Kafka and Borges as I do, then Landolfi is probably for you, though he is weird and wonderful in his own original way. Every story here is great, though my least favorite was "Gogol's Wife." Nikolai Gogol was enough of a freak in real life to be married to a blow up sex doll endowed with almost life by his prodigious imagination, so the central idea of the story rang true, though it made me a little queasy. Still I was horribly fascinated. I loved "Pastoral" where the metaphor of hibernation in the winter in the dull rural backwaters of France becomes reality. And in "Two Old Maids" there is a monkey who performs a sacrilegious mass whose blasphemy is mirrored by a young priest's perceptive rant on the nature of God and sin, which in turn becomes a commentary on the two old maids. A common feature of the stories is a sudden about face in the plot, a change of scene that is unexpected and seems to have little to do with the preceding part of the story until you think a bit and can see how it fits in perfectly. There are many little bits of descriptive prose that are totally original and that set the tone of the stories, such as the description of the dark hornbeam in "Death of the King of France," a story that also includes one of the best descriptions of the joys of sitting on the toilet that I have ever read. But the absolute top bit is the description of the dawn in "Sunstroke" as seen from the perspective of an owl who would prefer that the night did not end - "The sun was pressing through the crests of the mountains and, set in the sky, it looked like a luminous boil - which soon, in a moment, would burst." I'll take this any day of the week over some dullard who yet again describes the dawn as rosy fingered Eos.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

If Cortazar learned how to write his formal-play-by-numbers short stories from Borges, who learned from Kafka, Landolfi came straight, again, from Kafka into something singular and strange.

Of course, it's not that literature's a sullen mathematics of division and remainders, some miserly portioning from civilization's distant fount, but whereas Cortazar's shorts (unlike his brilliantly loose-tethered novels) feel like second-degree imitations, Landolfi's feel anarchic and impossible and sometimes strangely Victorian in their comedy.

Nikolai Gogol's wife, in case one's wondering, is a balloon, whose expressions and manner Gogol can change to his liking through ingenious inflation and slackening, and who fattens in the heat and communicates only subtly (and silently) her displeasures at being left alone for so long upstairs...

[عماد العتيلي · Rating 5 out of 5]

‎‫‏‬

ربّما يكون الكاتب الإيطالي توماسو لاندولفي هو الاكتشاف السعيد الأوّل لي هذا العام.
طريقته في الكتابة أخّاذة! وحسّه الفكاهي (أظن!) الغريب جداً أدهشني!



هذه القصّة، التي وصَفها الناقد البريطاني هارولد بلوم بأنها "أكثر القصص إضحاكاً وإثارة للأعصاب" هي بالفعل قصّة غاية في الغرابة. هي مصنوعة كي تُدهِش القارىء.

ربّما لم أحبّ القصة كثيراً، ولكنني استمتعت بقراءتها ولم أقوَ على تركِها حتى أنهيتها.
أذهلتني!

[Rayan Brantdt · Rating 5 out of 5]

a very refreshing culmination of an author who clearly has the talent to fill a billion pages with adjective-laced crevices and detour-syntax, yet shows enough restraint and self awareness to really keep things concise and interesting. ~the sharpest scalpel yields the cleanest scar~~~~~ full of wit and irony and tongues piercing through cheeks, this is the best book i've ever stolen from goodwill, and i look forward to the frustrations that await in regards to obtaining more of his work.

[Jackdaw ☄ Bronteroc · Rating 2 out of 5]

the Italian Kafka, my ass.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Landolfi is considered the "Italian Kafka" and a Surrealist, so you'd think he'd be more prominent in 20th century avant-garde literature circles, but apparently not. I find him more of an Italian Flann O'Brien. The stories: a French society matron moves to the provinces where locals hibernate for the winter in giant furry meat-sacs; an owl's final moments at the hands of a hunter coincide with its first glimpse of the sun; a hardy pirate/adventurer sits on the toilet; a monkey desecrates a local church; and so on. Priceless.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got bogged down for a long while in the second story, which is in that porny episodic weirdness that I never ever like. But in fact the others are all quite good. There is a sense of edge case or hypothesis made concrete and specific, which can move quickly from something extremely funny to something serious and even (for me, the in the case of the blasphemer monkey) quite tragic. Certainly under-read when compared to some other story collections.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little purple at times, but imaginatively excellent and various.

[Jacob Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

if i were a monkey, i'd say mass too

[Ebenmaessiger · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Gogol’s Wife”: 4 stars
- Sorry, Borges will come up here frequently in these discussions. It’s not right, of course; but it’s right, of course. Here we have a story as Play Thing, meaning a thing of play. Landolfi takes a Borges-Ian premise -- Gogol's biographer has discovered something monstrous about the life of his subject -- and extrapolates beyond any degree to which Borges would have been comfortable. In essence, Gogol's wife was an inflatable sex doll. And thus Landolfi approaches realms of sardonic speculation more familiar with the New Wave than the Golden Age -- the doll has acquired a bit of Animation, sometimes speaking, albeit sardonically and scatalogically. All the same, Landolfi flirts with allegory a bit too much for the Pulps Crowd -- there is a reading that allows for both 1) a vision of an unhappy, misogynistic marriage, of a totalitarian man, at turns, berating, commanding, and directing his enmeekened wife; and 2) the gradual insanity of Gogol himself, with the final scene culminating (quite literally here) with Gogol throwing his baby into the fire / destroying Part Two of Dead Souls -- albeit all delivered in a mock formality of some type of faux Edwardian, Kingsley-Amis-ian stateliness. Intriguing, in other words.

“Pastoral”: 5 stars
- A chilling little play on the cosmopolitan’s fear of rural philistinism, in which that allegory, nonetheless, retreats, and the story’s considerable effect comes instead from the more straightforwardly presented horror-ish elements. STORY: noble woman, Anne, newly come into her countryside inheritance, writes letters to a friend in Paris, during which she describes the gradual “hibernation” of the local peasants, sleeping through the winter in “foetid” goatskin bags hanging from the ceiling, until Anne is the only one left, deathly afeared that she will die because she has no idea how to take care of herself on her own (the funniest part of the story, presented with the sincerity of a terrified Lucy Westerna, but just detailing her inability to feed herself). The best touch is Anne’s few mentions that Solange, her correspondent, is not returning letters, leading us to believe that she has likewise hibernated herself (and that the disease has reached Paris, as well). Make of it what you will.

“Dialogue on the Greater Harmonies:” 4 stars
- As mentioned, it’s not generous to read one and think in terms of another, but the Borgesian comps are so commonplace with Landolfi that it’s worth thinking through them. Here, they’re warranted, at least for the first half, which posits a pitch perfect Borges premise, that of the man who’s unknowingly learned a language that doesn’t exist. What follows, however — in its extended discussion of aesthetic values and what makes art art — is not. Why any of this matters, who knows. Otherwise solid.

[Nemanja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Колекција апсурдних, надреалних, комичних и језивих прича Томаза Ландолфија од којих се посебно истичу Гогољева жена, где аутор представљајући се као његов биограф износи невероватну чињеницу да Гогољ одржава романтичну везу с гуменом лутком чији се изглед константно мења зависно од његовог тренутног расположења (мењајући јој боју перике и дозирајући кубикажу ваздуха уносом кроз вентил у сфинктеру његове лутке Каракас) износећи тако сијасет комичних детаља из њихове везе, повлачећи уједно паралелу с Гогољевим стварним опскурним љубавним животом и односом с женама, и осликавајући психичко стање из касног раздобља његовог живота испуњеног опседнутошћу мистицизмом;
Пасторала исприповедана кроз писма извесне племкиње Ане која повукавши се из живописног и живахног Париза на село, бива затечена необичним ритуалом хибернације његовог становништва, алидирајући на монотони и суморни живот у касну јесен и зиму на селу;
Дијалог о највишим системима, где експеримент који извесни песник, у коме је суштина да је аутор лимитиран својим матерњим језиком према коме временом постанемо индиферентни те да треба писати на другим језицима, покуша да потврди учећи персијски од непоузданог енглеског морнара који га учи непостојећем језику на коме ће стварати своју поезију, прераста у филолошко-лингвистичку расправу о нашем разумевању језика, везивању слика за речи и веровању у њихово значење, језичкој суптилности, немогућности размишљања на наученом језику попут матерњих говорника, што потом прераста и о саму расправу о уметности и нужности поседовања значења дајући приде критику савремених критичара и њиховог поимања уметности;
Две уседелице, која прати мајмуна грешника у његовим походима скрнављења оближње цркве, што се развија у шаролику религиозну дебату о греху и праштању, да ли се несвесно вршење греха може стратрати грехом, да ли грешнике треба кажњавати или је грех небеског порекла те су тумачења извитоперена, и мајмуновог мучеништва и моралности смртне казне, две уседелице могу представљати различите цркве хришћанства застарелих веровања, пуне гнева, мржње и хладнокрвности које је на њих пренела њихова зла “стара мајка”, према чему је критика уперена, не познају милост, нежност, љубав и слободу;
Брачна ноћ, испуњена мистериозном, напетом и мрачна атмосфером доласком локалног оџачара, чије чишћење оџака неискусна млада поистовећује с искуством прве брачне ноћи, Ландолфи овде третира исконски људски проблем о томе како наше замишљено oчекивање одвијања будућих догађаја утиче на наше емоционално прилагођавање тим догађајима;
Ђовани и његова жена, о пару с даром гласа за певање, али уједно и немогућношћу доследне репродукције једне музичке композиције, разматра присуство пасије код људи за нешто чему нису вични, и насупрот ње одсуство интереса за делање онога за шта су подобни;
Сунчаница, описује ужас и изнуреност једне сове у свитање, која је обузима с првим зрацима сунца;
Ђовани и његова жена, о пару с даром гласа за певање, али уједно и немогућношћу доследне репродукције једне музичке композиције, разматра присуство пасије код људи за нешто чему нису вични, и насупрот ње одсуство интереса за делање онога за шта су подобни;
Романтично писмо коцкара у част његовој страсти која му у целости испуњава живот, попут сведене верзије Две уседелице, разматра да ли је грех небеског порекла и да ли блаженство, попут његовог романтичног искуства у Венецији, можемо у потпуности уживати само ако прођемо кроз комплетно супротно искуство, могу ли врлина и грех постојати одвојено или су две антиподе једне целине.

A collection of absurd, surreal, comic and eerie stories by Tommaso Landolfi, among which especially stand out: Gogol's wife, in which the author, posing as his biographer, states the incredible fact that Gogol maintains a romantic relationship with a rubber doll whose appearance he is constantly altering depending on his current mood (replacing wigs and dosing the capacity of the air inhaled through the valve in the sphincter of his doll Caracas), brings out a multitude of comic details from their relationship, while drawing a parallel with Gogol's real rather obscure love life and relationship with women, and depicting the mental state from the later period of his life, filled with an obsession with mysticism;
Pastoral, a confession in the epistolary form of a noblewoman Anna who, retreating from vivid and lively Paris life to the countryside, is surprised by the unusual hibernation ritual of its population, possibly alluding to the monotonous and gloomy life in late autumn and winter in the countryside;
Dialogue on the greater harmonies, in which a poet tries to prove an experiment, in which the general idea is that the author is limited by his mother tongue to which one becomes indifferent over time and that one should write in other languages, by learning Persian from an unreliable English sailor who teaches him a non-existent language in which he will consequently write his poetry, as it develops into a philological-linguistic discussion of our understanding of language, linking images to words and believing in their meaning, linguistic subtlety, inability to think in second language like native speakers, and a discussion about art and whether it should carry meaning and gives a critique of contemporary critics and their understanding of art;
The Old Maids, that follows a sinful monkey in his conquest of the nearby convent desecration, which turns into a flamboyant religious debate on sin and forgiveness, whether unconscious sin can be considered as a sin, whether sinners should be punished or is the sin of a heavenly origin, and whether our interpretations have become twisted, leading to his martyrdom and the morality of the death penalty, two old maids could represent different churches of Christianity with outdated beliefs, full of bitterness, hatred and cold-bloodedness transmitted to them by their evil "old mother", core church towards which the the criticism is directed, as they do not know mercy, tenderness, love and freedom;
Wedding night, filled with mystical, tense and dark atmosphere with the arrival of a local chimney sweep, whose cleaning of the chimney young and inexperienced bride associates with the experience of the first wedding night, Landolfi here treats the perennial human problem of how our imagined anticipation of future events affects our emotional adjustments to those events;
Giovanni and his wife, about a couple with the vocal gift for singing, however unable to consistently reproduce a musical composition, discusses presence of passion in humans for something they are not very versed in, and the lack of interest in devoting oneself to what one is well versed in;
Sunstroke, describes the utter horror and debilitation that overcomes her with the first strokes of sun;
The Gambler's Romantic Letter in honor of his all-consuming obsession, that like the reduced version of Two Old Maids, discusses in part whether sin is of heavenly origin and whether a bliss, like his romantic experience in Venice, can be fully enjoyed only if we go through a completely opposite experience, do virtue and sin exist separately or are they two antipodes of a whole.

[Kitty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked some of these stories at what I’d give a 4-star level, but due to others being closer to 1 or 2 I’m giving the collection a 3. 2.5 if I could. Idk if it’s partly due to the translations, but some of them dragged a little… I understand the genre and philosophical comparison to Kafka but it’s a little far-fetched.

[Peter Allum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inventive and intellectually provocative, akin to Borges. A great discovery.

Nine wonderful short stories by an author who should be better known. He writes with a poetic style that is unique and strange. For example, the last story, Sunstroke, considers how an owl perceives the transition from night into dawn:

“The owl’s nausea and melancholy grew in response to the unrolling of that arc of sky, which carried with it the shadow of light. Now the east was already whitening and the feral pallor was spreading by imperceptible tremors. The dead turn white, and so does the night that dies. And now a benumbing sound, not yet fully uttered, dully swarmed at the valley’s borders: the voice of the light getting ready to scream its clangorous tumult.”

This style is not, perhaps, for everyone, and translation must have been a challenge. But, for me, Landolfi’s uniquely poetic perspective on the world and its events is enchanting.

This is combined with a highly creative approach to storytelling. The Two Old Maids is a case in point. It starts with a rich description of the maids, then shifts to a marvelous account of the troubles of their bedridden mother. In her dying days, she loses the power of speech and yet continues to dominate the household:

“Gnarled just like an old stump and equally as inert, her eyes half dead and staring, she nevertheless clung to her customary and most personal mode of expression: beating herself. Her forearms were untouched by the paralysis, and she could still beat her chest at the level of the shoulder blades; this beating produced a hollow, lugubrious sound--tock, tock--more like that of an African kettledrum than the notorious, gay big bass drum. This tock, tock (two raps were the general rule) eventually assumed the significance of a simple negation, immediately robbing the questioner of any foolish desire to go on asking. For instance: “Donna Marietta, or Mama, would you like some consommé?”—Answer: Tock, tock. “All right, then, I’ll bring you your milk.”—“Tock, tock.”

If this story were not sufficiently entrancing, Landolfi suddenly introduces a monkey into the tale; a monkey! Too wonderful for words.

A last remark is that the stories, self-contained and rich as they, are often devices for tackling intellectual puzzles. For example, it is commonly asserted that poetry cannot be judged except in its original language. (Hence the ironic “traduttore, traditore”.) In Dialogue on the Greater Harmonies, Landolfi considers this problem. For instance, what if poems are written in a language with very few extant speakers? Who is to judge their worth? Or, to stretch a point, what if the only remaining person conversant in the given language is the poet himself? It is this aspect of Landolfi which reminds me of Borges.

A great discovery, and I look forward to reading the other translations of his work in English. (The Italian would be a challenge.)

My short story reviews, ranked

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

"La mujer de Gogol" es un cuento mediocre, pésimo, hace gala de pretensiones que el autor no puede demostrar, el autor, un inútil, hace una exhibición de ego completamente ridícula, el autor "cree" que es "muy gracioso y muy irónico", y, además, "cree" que los lectores le hacemos el juego, pero no, Landolfi NO puede demostrar que lo sea, y, por el contrario, lo que logra es hacer el ridículo, con un cuento lleno de estupideces, seco, árido, falto por completo de sentido del humor y de todo, Landolfi da lástima, recurre a escatologías realmente vomitivas y fuera de lugar (para tratar de hacerse "el muy chistoso", lo que es un recurso realmente repudiable, y que no consigue sus propósitos, obviamente, porque quien no tiene gracia y sentido del humor NO puede reemplazar estos dones y menos con un recurso tan asqueroso), es, en suma, una basura.
Mientras el mediocre Landolfi cree que está asombrando a todos con su "humor" asqueroso, los lectores tenemos cualquier otra sensación, incluyendo las ganas de vomitar, pero humor, eso nunca.
Es un cuento y un autor muy sobrevalorado, y eso es muy lamentable porque hay grandes autores que no tienen esa fama y que han escrito mejores cuentos.
Luego de su muerte el genial autor ruso Nicolai Gogol fue ridiculizado por este imbécil de Landolfi de esta manera tan soez y asquerosa que da ganas de vomitar, y que no tenía ningún asidero en la realidad, pues Gogol fue siempre soltero; y no olvidemos, además, que Landolfi supuestamente era su "amigo" y fue su biógrafo, pero, por la basura que le lanzó a Gogol, nos hace sospechar que Landolfi era un envidioso amargado que desquitaba su feroz rencor contra Gogol después de que éste murió.
¡Pobre, pobre, pobre Gogol! ¡qué terrible suerte la suya! ¡con esos "amigos"! ¿Quién necesita enemigos?
Por supuesto: debo decir que, una vez leído este primer cuento, yo no le concedí una segunda oportunidad a las estupideces de Landolfi, con un cuento tan asqueroso, tan mediocre, tan tonto, tan rencoroso, que lo único que nos revela es a un tipo que quiere burlarse de Gogol y aprovecharse de la fama del gran autor ruso para hacer dinero, y, además, tomando en cuenta que hay tantos escritores mejores -el mismo Gogol, que tiene tantas obras preciosas- no conviene perder más tiempo con imbéciles como este mediocre Landolfi nunca más.

[Željko Obrenović · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nakon susreta sa Bucatijem i beskrajnog oduševljenja ovim autorom, poželeo sam da se još malo upoznam s italijanskim piscima kratkih priča. I tako sam dobio preporuku ua Landolfija. Ovaj autor, za razliku od Bucatija, nije tako lako prohodan, ali je količina uvrnutosti i bizarnosti u njegovim pričama još i veća. Moram da priznam da u nekim pričama do kraja nisam bio najsigurniji o čemu su, ali mi to svejedno nije pokvarilo utisak.

Gogoljeva žena
Gogoljeva žena je u stvari bila lutka na naduvavanje, koja s vremenom postaje sve življa i sve više utiče na ponašanje i razum ovog slavnog pisca.

Pastorala
Kroz epistolarnu formu ova pripovetka govori o krajevima u kojima ljudi zimu provode u hibernaciji. Došljak oseti da će se to i njemu desiti i počinje da se pribojava da l' će se ikada probuditi.

Dialogue on the Greater Harmonies
Čovek na brodu od kapetana nauči persijski jezik. Savladavši materiju dovoljno, on napiše i tri pesme. Po okončanom putu shvati da ga kapetan nije učio persijski i da nijedan lingvista ne zna koji je jezik u pitanju i da li zaista postoji. Ali kako onda proceniti vrednost pesama? Ova priča čitaoca odvede do ozbiljnih dijaloga o samom pisanju, smislu pisanja i procenjivanja književnog dela.

The Two Old Maids
Ovde je reč o podužoj noveleti, veoma raspričanoj i pomalo konfuznoj, koja govori o dve starice i njihovom majmunu koji noću beži iz kaveza i u obližnjem manastiru krade i pije vino za pričest. Ova duhovita postavka, kao i gorepomenutoj priči, takođe odvede do ozbiljnih teoloških rasprava o Bogu i tumačenju njegove reči.

The Death of the King of France
U ovoj noveleti već sam naziv upućuje na muzički komad koji je naročito dug i monoton, i mada priča nije monotona, teška je za praćenje. Ali, recimo, da se bavi strahom od pauka, sa poprilično širokim shvatanjem tog pojma.

A Romantic's Letter on Gambling
Ovo je tek kratka crtica o kockanju kao smislu života i novootkrivenom svetu kad se sve izgubi.

Giovanni and His Wife
Takođe izrazito kratka priča, s neopisivo sjajnom idejom o bračnom paru koji unisono peva u falšu, što je gotovo ili apsolutno nemoguće. Osim, izgleda, u slučaju prave ljubavi.

[Christopher Walborn · Rating 4 out of 5]

1. Gogol’s WifeTommaso Landolfi’s story is written as a chapter of a biography on the famous Russian writer, Nikolai Gogol. In this chapter, the author explores the delicate matter of Gogol’s “wife.” It turns out that she is not a woman, but a balloon. A titilling conceit for horny teen-age boys of all ages, Landolfi develops the story into a humorous, but ultimately sad and disturbing fictionalization of Gogol’s self-destruction. The humorous satire is vibrant from beginning to end, while the sense of tragedy subtly builds beneath the surface. The ultimate effect is a potent sense of the pointlessness of Golgol’s demise.“Gogol’s Wife” is reminiscent of Gogol stories such as “The Overcoat” and, far more, “The Nose.” The story is humorously absurd, tragic, and strangely touching. It is both a tribute to Gogol the writer and a scathing satire of Gogol the man.2. Pastoral3. Dialogue on the Greater Harmonies4. The Two Old Maids5. Wedding Night6. The Death of the King of France7. Giovanni and His Wife8. Sunstroke9. A Romantic’s Letter on Gambling

[Harrison G · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably the most unreferenced classic I've ever read. It is undoubtably a pioneer in the psychedelic surrealism genre, and also in the meta-realm. Landolfi has a way with words unlike anyone else, and his inspirations are seen clearly in authors today such as Palahniuk. I have to claim this novel as another masterpiece, and am disappointed to find Landolfi hasn't published much else, if anything. Yes certain stories themselves felt unfulfilled, but each tale has its place in the grand script. Most interesting to me was the overarching theme and involvement of "animal". Whether it's a story from the viewpoint of an owl, recently shot, a Catholic-worshipping monkey, or a metaphorical spider causing a girls first period, this collection of stories is unabashedly HIM, as in Landolfi, and therefore holy gold in the form of literature. 5/5

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Don't believe the descriptions that call him Italy's Kafka. He is nothing like Italy's Kafka. More Borges. But even that is far from the mark. His tone is far more playful and surreal. And, to some degree, tongue in cheek and self-aware. Which blunts its edge a bit ... not quite the timeless elegance of Borges. Nevertheless, worth investigating in greater depth.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories from author of the grotesque, Tommaso Landolfi. By far my favorite entry was the title story, but I also really liked the second story, "Pastoral" and "the Two Old Maids" about a monkey imitating certain Catholic rites.

[Amitava Das · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve only read the title story and it’s bizarre , surreal , fantastic.

[Perry Ruhland · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first two stories are particularly good, strange and unsettling while making a sort of surface level sense. The rest are well written, but a bit too cute.

[TheBoxMan]

Stories from the edge, where the everyday slips into madness.

Landolfi’s writing intertwines the fiercely unremarkable with the lavishly fantastical. It is this duality —almost a kind of literary call and response— that permeates and connects, if not thematically then at least stylistically, the short stories in this collection. The royal is brought down and sullied; the vulgar, elevated and celebrated. The serious is mocked for its silliness while the silly is analyzed and studied with the utmost gravitas:

The great Russian novelist Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol is thrown into irremediable despair by his wife, a balloon.

The townspeople of a disheartening, forgotten village spend the winter in hibernation, cozying up in sacks made of hide and leather.

An aspiring poet learns what he takes to be Persian, pouring every ounce of himself into crafting three exquisite poems; he soon discovers the language he learnt is entirely made up, and worse still, the scoundrel who taught him has forgotten it.

A tipsy monkey pisses on an altar while saying Mass, leading to a lengthy Spinozan meditation on the nature of good, evil, and God.

Etc.

The prose itself echoes the aforementioned ‘call and response’. At times unapologetically baroque, bordering on whimsical, and at others very direct. A constant balancing act — one moment, we find ourselves soaring in the clouds of ornate formalism, the next we’re treated to a feast of patois. The two are always circling and toying with one another.

Occasionally, the pompous language oversteps its bounds, showing itself for what it is: much ado about nothing. A chicken in a red dress is still a chicken. Landolfi also has a penchant for breaking the fourth wall, of inserting the narrator into the narration. And though sometimes effective as a comedic element, it mostly comes off as tiresome and slightly trite.

Regardless, a collection of delightfully surreal stories that deserve to be read at least once (probably twice).

[Joe Olipo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Religion in such a one is being certain that the last end of a bad thing will not come to such a one. — Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans

"Everyone's Tattoo'd!"

Gogol has a written a very humorous story (The Overcoat) in which a meek clerk, because something very bad is done to him, has been granted reprieve from oblivion. He is later seen in ghostly form tugging the sleeve of a well-dressed pedestrian, uttering with characteristic circumspection: "I've come to you, Petrovitch, sort of . . ." It's a movement of great Bathos in which we recognize our clerk still pursuing his stolen overcoat from beyond the grave. Gogol is perhaps superior to other writers because he allows such moments to ferment back into Pathos. If death is not the end of experience (in the eschatological sense), why not grant this reprieve also to our little clerk, who is doing a labor of Orpheus for a Eurydice in the form of fine fabric. Every ghost story is a catasterism. (i.e. "The process by which a hero is turned into a constellation or celestial object; a placing among the stars," see the constellation Lyra.)

Landolfi has written a light satire (Gogol's Wife) in a style almost a precursor of the salacious mid-century form that would reach its apogee in Joseph Heller and Philip Roth (both already very tiresome). Though such work reads as quite tame in the modern age in which, beneath every fine overcoat, one already expects to meet a rubber spouse with a big tattoo. Though Gogol is perhaps suggesting a piece of eternity for the poorly clothed civil servant, Landolfi is working to redeem a class even meeker. His farce of the literary critic confronted with three poems written in a Borgesian "unknown language" presents an impasse that suggests an eternity of stagnation. This is a way of praising, indirectly, those contemporary literary critics ("old white haired [men] / insensate beyond belief") who have made it to the top of the small heap of the world of Criticism (no matter if filled with hot air to the point of bursting). For them, the impassible problem is a kind of divine providence that ensures their work, on things about which nothing more can be said, might endure a small eternity. We are beginning to understand why this collection comes so highly recommended by Harold Bloom.