A conscious fiction in the impossibility of being surrealist: «Malebolge» and parasurrealism

Abstract

The essay summarizes the history of parasurrealism, theorized in the periodical «Malebolge» in the mid-Sixties as a critical and cold recovery of Surrealism absorbed by mass culture. The theoretical writings, especially those of Spatola and Celli, are analyzed in order to identify the fundamental traits, such as the fiction of automatic writing, the humour noir and the grotesque use of cultural materials. Eventually, some texts by the authors related to «Malebolge» are examined with the aim to understand how they respond to theoretical reflection and to prove, beyond the undoubted heterogeneity of individual manifestations, the presence of some constants that allow us to identify a collective textual parasurrealism.