Diacronia di un romanzo: “Uomini e no” di Elio Vittorini (1944-1966)

The relationship of Elio Vittorini with his own novel Uomini e no (Bompiani, 1945) was undoubtedly problematic and characterized by continuous second thoughts and revisions. This volume explains the reasons for the complex relationship between author and text, starting from the first moments of the genesis of the novel, documented by unpublished autograph papers, preserved in the Elio Vittorini Fund of the Apice Center of the University of Milan and studied here for the first time, together with the editorial materials of the first edition. The reconstruction of the further transformations of the text is testified then by the successive prints and by other unpublished archival documents that explain the literary and editorial project. The path traced therefore covers a chronological span from 1944 to 1966 – the year of the author’s death and the last edition due to his will – and tells what were the poetic, ethical and political reasons that initiated the writing of the novel and that have motivated the successive continuous re-elaborations. The close analysis of textual materials allows us to enter the author’s writing workshop, to explain the radical changes for the second edition of 1949, and then conclude on the revisions made for the last Mondadori editions of 1965 (Oscar) and 1966 (I Storytellers). The diachrony of a novel, to tell a crucial stage of the literary work of Elio Vittorini and to re-read the critical judgments on Men and no starting from the historical and philological authenticity of the text.