That Was How I Gave Up Micol

As I wrote last time, we’ve been looking at largely content and meaning issues in The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, and last time, we examined some of the structural or process issues of how the story is told. Let’s continue with this today, focusing on the penultimate chapter, occurring before the Epilogue.

In the previous chapter, the narrator’s father has asked him not to go to the Finzi-Continis house again and, by implication, not to pursue Micol Finzi-Contini anymore. The narrator agrees. Chapter X begins with a reference to this, “That was how I gave up Micol.”

What’s going on here? It’s a simple statement and a simple maneuver in writing, so basic, we probably take it for granted, i.e. our eyes absorb it rapidly and do not dally. In speech, it would be called a summary comment, wrapping up what came before, and, at first blush, that’s what it accomplishes here. The narrator is saying, “okay, the previous chapter shows how I gave the lady up.” It’s a done deal—in his mind, he’s ended things.

Well, sort of.

Continuing in a narrative summary mode, describing what he did, as opposed to showing it in dialogue, the narrator relates that ten days went by during which he “strictly maintained the promise I had made to my father.” Then, he receives a call from Malnate, the friend with whom he’s been spending time with, the friend whom he met playing tennis at the Finzi-Continis. The narrator has been dining with Malnate in order to get news of Micol. Now we have a scene of dialogue with quoted speech.

I believe that first sentence, “That was how I gave up Micol,” relates more to the new chapter than to the old one. It could be seen as simple narrative summary, but it also can be taken literally: The narrator writes, “This is how I gave up Micol,” and then goes on to show how he did it—very ambivalently. How did I give up Micol? By avoiding her for a difficult ten days and then agreeing to see her friend in order to get news of her.

So Chapter X begins with narrative summary that marks time and place —the narrator’s residence—shows something of his internal state—he’s made a promise to his father but is ambivalent about it in that he avoids Micol but says, “Luckily nobody sought me during all this time…otherwise I probably wouldn’t have held out.” Then it goes into a scene. Malnate calls the narrator, accuses him of avoiding him (Malnate) and proposes they get together. The narrator agrees, and the scene ends with, “And he hung up.”

“The following evening,” the narrator goes to the restaurant where he’s agreed to meet Malnate, but instead of joining him, he hangs back in the shadows and observes Malnate (who’s sitting outside) having dinner. The narrator never makes contact.

He spends the next several evenings listlessly riding his bicycle around the city and then goes to an arcade where a woman works who was attracted to Malnate. A scene of dialogue ensues when the woman notices the narrator. She exhorts him to, “Go on home, run along, or your Dad will give you a licking. It’s way past your bedtime!”

These two scenes seem to further establish the narrator’s ambivalence—he approaches the man who could give him information on Micol but hangs back. He is ridiculed by a woman for being young and under the domination of his father.

Then in a long scene occurring on the next night, “near midnight,” the narrator goes to the house of the Finzi-Continis. On the way, he passes many amorously entwined couples: “I felt, and was, a kind of strange, passing phantom: full of life and death at once; of passion, and of detached pity.” This speaks to his mood; he is detached from love; he only observes.

When he reaches the house, it is dark. He decides to scale the wall, just as he had many years before. On the other side, he walks in the garden around the silent house and goes to the tennis courts where there is a small changing room. Here, he stops and has the (apparently false) impression that all this time, Malnate has been having an affair with Micol.

“Yes, yes—I went on calmly reasoning, in a kind of rapid, inner whisper—of course. How could I have been so blind? He (Malnate) roamed around with me only in order to kill time until it was late enough, and them after having tucked me in, so to speak, off he rode, full tilt, to her, who, naturally, was waiting for him in the garden.”

“But then, as if in replay, a faint sound, heartsick, almost human suddenly arrived…I recognized it at once: it was the old, beloved voice of the clock in the square, striking the hours…It was saying that, once again, it had grown very late, that it was foolish and wicked, on my part, to continue torturing my father in this way…finally it was time for me to resign myself. Truly. Forever.

“’What a fine novel,’ I sneered, shaking my head.” (an ironic comment).

What we might say straight off about this passage is that it has everything to do with the novel’s theme of unsuccessful love and less to do with the Holocaust. This kind of tragic realization that a love is over could happen in any historical period. Indeed, we have time—the narrator experiences it as a human sound—resuming, breaking the narrator’s melancholic reverie and (apparently) helping him to accept what already seems clear to the reader (the reader knows more than the narrator).

However, this kind of loss could happen at any time, but in this case, it doesn’t. The next page opens onto the Epilogue and this first line: “My story with Micol Finzi-Contini ends here.” (please note the shift in verb tense). Then the narrator repeats the information he wrote at the book’s beginning. He never saw Micol again; she died with her family in Germany four years later. The War and the Holocaust put a decisive end to “a fine novel.”

Next time, best beloved, we’re going to look at several short stories by Frederick Busch. Till then.

#TheGardenOfTheFinzi-Continis #GiorgioBassani #AlanBray