Senso and Other Stories

by Camillo Boito, Christine Donougher (Translator)

Boito's stories combined decadence, the macabre, the demonic and depraved female heroines. They were an immediate and popular success in fin de siecle Italy. Visconti's film of Senso brought Boito's work international recognition. This selection includes his most celebrated novelle, including A Corpse, the bizarre tale of rivalry between an artist and a student of anatomy for the beautiful body of Carlotta, the
artist's dead mistress

Genres: Fiction, Italy, Short Stories, Horror, Italian Literature, Literary Fiction

207 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1882

About the author

He was an Italian architect and engineer, and a noted art critic, art historian and novelist.
As a novelist Boito wrote several collections of short stories, including a psychological horror short story titled "A Christmas Eve", a tale of incestuous obsession and necrophilia, which bears a striking similarity to Edgar Allan Poe's "Berenice." A short film adaptation is due for release in 2011.
Around 1882 he wrote his most famous novella, Senso, a disturbing tale of sexual decadence. In 1954, Senso was memorably adapted for the screen by Italian director Luchino Visconti and then, later, in 2002 into a more sexually disturbing adaptation by Tinto Brass.
Another story, "Un Corpo" (also dealing with themes of sexual decadence and necrophilia), has recently been adapted into an opera by the Greek composer Kharálampos Goyós.

Reviews

[Eadweard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent stories in the same vein as the french decadents.

Senso deserves a 4/5. In it, a woman recounts an affair she had with an officer during wartime. When the man cheats on her, she takes revenge in a particularly satisfying way.

Luchino Visconti's movie adaptation is worth watching.

[Dfordoom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is yet another in the fabulous Decadence from Dedalus series. Boito wrote these tales over a fairly lengthy period, from the 1860 to the 1890s. They’re not decadent in the gloriously overheated Huysmans style, but there are some nest little stories of sexual and aesthetic obsession. A Body, Buddha’s Collar and The Grey Blotch all in their various ways fall into this category. There’s a definite hint of the gothic as well, and he had a gift for elegantly twisted and cynical endings. The title story was the subject of a celebrated movie adaptation by Visconti. It’s a tale of a woman exploited by her lover, and of her revenge. A Body involves a beautiful woman, and two men who lust after her perfect body in very different ways. It’s both a supremely decadent tale of sensual and aesthetic desire and an effective little horror story. Vade Retro, Satana sees a priest tormented by his hunger for a fallen woman, or at least a woman he regards as fallen, since he seems to consider any woman who isn’t a pious virgin to be a fallen woman. Christmas Eve is another tale of obsession, while Buddha’s Collar exploits Boito’s considerable talent for rather black humour. The Grey Blotch is a fine story of lust, self-disgust and guilt. Boito is another superb writer rescued from obscurity by Dedalus. Highly recommended.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Senso ⭐⭐⭐
A Body ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Christmas Eve ⭐⭐⭐
Vade Retro, Santana ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Grey Blotch ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Buddha's Collar ⭐⭐⭐

[Guido Mura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Le nuove storielle vane sono uno dei prodotti più interessanti della scapigliatura milanese, collocandosi quasi a metà strada tra romanticicmo e verismo.
La prima storiella, Vade retro, Satana, racconta il dramma di un parroco di un paesino di montagna, alle prese con una truffa che minaccia i suoi parrocchiani e con le tentazioni della carne.
Il secondo racconto, Macchia grigia, è incentrato sul tema del rimorso. Il processo psicologico si sviluppa in modo interessante, anche se un eccessivo ricorso alla descrizione di luoghi e persone spezza la trama, che si segue a fatica.
La collana di Budda è un racconto quasi umoristico, ricco di colore.
Nel successivo racconto, Santuario, prevalgono invece i toni drammatici ed elegiaci, per narrare la storia di una giovane impazzita per il dolore dell’abbandono e per la perdita del figlio.
Quattr’ore al Lido è uno schizzo, in cui la raffigurazione diviene protagonista e fa pensare ad alcuni brevi scritti di Poe.
Meno di un giorno è la narrazione di un incontro tra amanti: una storia dolceamara, tra gelosie e giuramenti di amore eterno.
Il demonio muto è la storia di un santo predicatore e di una chitarra. La vicenda è raccontata da un vecchio che vorrebbe lasciare per testamento lo strumento al nipote.
Senso, infine, è uno dei migliori racconti dell’Ottocento italiano, da cui è stato tratto l’omonimo film di Luchino Visconti, interpretato da una splendida Alida Valli
Il punto di vista è quello di una contessa filoasburgica, sullo sfondo della lotta tra Italia e Austria. Il personaggio, perfettamente delineato e coerente, si fa narratore di una storia d’amore e vendetta. La trama, più scheletrica e lineare di quella sviluppata dal film di Visconti, manifesta un equilibrio tra le componenti che rendono esemplare la breve narrazione, decisamente la più significativa tra le novelle della raccolta.

[Missberet]

Contessa Livia's secret journal reveals the past to herself once again after sixteen years ago having wrote it. At the age of Thirty-seven she looks back at her beauty and her narcissistic youth having undone many a man she didn't love and sought revenge to one she did love with much success. A Body is about a woman, Carlotta, that is childish and has the body of a goddess.She fears death. one day Carlotta and her lover are out and she fears Dr Gulz for reasons not comprehendible. Dr Gulz lives around corpses in his work around aesthetic anatomy and is introduced to Carlotta's lover who shares an interest in anatomy with him. Obsession is the enemy of love though..... Christmas Eve is a sort of Bruge La Morte story about a love that is taken then hoped for in a doppelganger. Vade Retro Satana is the story of Menico who guides the priest Don Giuseppe up a mountain to help Amilcare's wife Signora Carolina who has seemingly lost the will to live because her husband has taken an interest in the Baroness who is their neighbor and now is ashamed of her, this is three months after the wedding. She is now bitter towards him. Many men, including the Mayor as well are under the baroness's spell as well. The Grey Blotch keeps the eyes wandering in the town of Idro where he meets Terese. They spend some days together until he leaves saying he'll be back. What about the grey Blotch though.. Buddha's Collar is about Gioacchino who finds a solid silver dog collar then finds Irene who has taken bites out of him and his pay. Then he found out Irene has a dog with a missing collar..

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Dedalus' never-ending quest to publish more writers of the decadent literary movement into English, we get this slim volume of work by Camillo Boito. Included is "Senso", a novella that served as the source material for two films (Luchino Visconti expanded it considerably for his lush adaptation in 1954, and erotic filmmaker Tinto Brass' setting of the events in the Nazi-era for 2002's SENSO '45, which kept closer to the original story) and a handful of other stories that cemented Boito's reputation as a member of Italy's Scapigliatura movement, a clutch of Italian writers who predated the decadents and presaged their concerns.

This work isn't as overwrought or embroidered as the Decadents. There's a clear, bright aspect to the text, and descriptions tend towards the terse. The subject matter is what ties this into the decadents, and Boito serves as yet another bridge between Edgar Allan Poe and those latter writers. Obsession, corruption, lust, vengeance are the driving themes, although there's never the lurid wallowing you get in, say, Joris-Karl Huysmans.

In "Senso" we get a a deft character study of a beautiful and pragmatic woman, a driven sensualist and egoist unable to deny her desires in any way. She marries an old duffer and spends his money, carrying on an affair with a dashing young soldier who's a cad and a rake and spends her money as quickly as hubby gives it. She pays a huge amount of bribes so he can sit-out the current fighting - all this, simply, because she wants him and wants to keep him. When she discovers his philandering ways after a lust-driven trip to the front, she takes her revenge, which results in the death of four tangentially related people, about whom she cares nothing. It's a brisk, enjoyable read and I must admit there may be historical aspects that could inform symbolism vis-a-vis Italy's relationship with Vienna at the time that I am not well-educated enough to tease out (in fact, it seems likely).

"A Body" is the first Poe-like tale - a clash between a brilliant young artist and a genius level anatomist over concepts of beauty and science that eventually involve the artist's beautiful betrothed, who has a morbid fear of death. There's an extended, breathless search of a hospital from top-to-bottom (ending you'll guess where) that felt very much like Poe's "The Man In The Crowd" in a way (different subjects, obviously). The beautiful can only be truly beautiful forever through death, preservation, and science, it seems.

"Christmas Eve" features a young student far from home and alone on the holiday. He has an unhealthy fixation on his sister and, so, on a shop-girl that looks like her- but isn't like her at all, it seems. It brushes lightly on themes of incest and fetish (reminded me of Georges Rodenbach's Bruges-la-morte in a way, and, in the specifics of teeth as a fetish object, ties to Poe's "Berenice").

"Vada Retro, Satana" is about a good man (or is he?) in a thoroughly corrupt world. A priest looks over his flock in a rural valley and sees the spreading greed and dissolution brought by capitalist investors from the city running a scam involving a mine, designed to bankrupt the farmers and buy up their land (things don't ever change, do they?). The company's shill, a dissolute nobleman, has a pretty wife who hits on the priest and later warns him that his preaching against the scheme have turned the mayor and the Church itself against him (who will both profit from it - thing's don't ever...). This builds a quite palpable feeling of moral and ethical decay, not to mention a frantic hopelessness as every avenue the priest seeks is blocked (I have no doubt this is the kind of story that got the Scapigliatura considered scandalous at the time, even though nothing overtly untoward happens). There's a real feeling of sympathy for the priest and some of the simpler souls in the story and the end result is surprisingly moving. Also not to be missed, some absolutely splendid countryside descriptions that really set the scene, including a storm raging through the valley below as seen from the presbytery on the mountainside.

"The Grey Blotch" seems informed by another great, Guy de Maupassant, as a young cad who seduces and abandons a country girl (an action that later leads to death), cannot understand what the titular object is that appears in his vision with alarming and increasing frequency. The last lines may be a little too on-the-money but, hey, that's forgivable in a 19th century author as far as I'm concerned.

Finally, "Buddha's Collar" sketches an amusing, if somewhat morbid, tale of a young student who falls in with a femme fatale and, as the story opens, is desperate to discover the whereabouts of a missing dog whose collar he has. The reasons for this do a nice job combining symbols of moral corruption and venereal disease (and the comical scientists, experts on a particular subject, are of no help whatsoever) while touching lightly on masochistic actions. Enjoyable, I found myself reading some of the scientist's dialogue aloud.

[Aaron Meyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would say that all the stories were very well done though the final one I didn't really care for so much. I think the best of the stories might of been "A Body" and "Vade Retro, Satana" with "The Grey Blotch" and cool third place. This was the first of the Italian Decadents that I have read so it will be interesting to see what the others are like. Boito's writing is not as in depth as I would like it to be, almost like he skirts the edge of decadence with his ideas and stories never fully immersing himself into the dark waters. Either way the stories are still good nonetheless.

[Rob Same · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title story, Senso, was the basis for a film by Luchino Visconti. The entire collection was excellent and it is a pity that Boito's literary output was so small. For me the standout story is A Body, wherein a painter loves his model and muse whose perfect body is also desired in a very different way by a morbid and obsessive anatomist.

[Jade Remund · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paesaggi italiani con quella punta di folklore misterioso che non arriva nel soprannaturale come in Maupassant, ma poco ci manca. La novelletta Senso che da il nome al libro si scosta un po' da questo andamento ma è una perla di pura passione. Le descrizioni dei più piccoli spazi naturali è minuziosa e riflette il cuore del personaggio arrivando a quasi dei massimi sistemi filosofici.

[Jodie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really makes you think

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The whole reason for me to pick up this book is Senso. I saw the movie based on novella and decided to read it. Senso is good, exciting and steamy. The whole idea of killing somebody because of love turned to hate and out of being insulted amazes me. Nobody goes so far as to actually commit a person to death - a person you once loved more than your own life. As for the rest of collection in this book, I cannot say it was very memorable. Also somewhat predictable outcome of the stories. Camillo Boito has a bit of a strange take on a woman's beauty... A one time book, I would say.

[Laginestra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conoscete il film di Visconti? Il (melo)dramma psicologico della protagonista? Rimarrete sicuramente delusi dal libro. Scapigliato, importante, ma debole per profondità e per prosa.

[Cristi · Rating 3 out of 5]

racconto migliore: "un corpo"