Senso (novel)

Last updated April 05, 2023

Senso is an Italian novella by Camillo Boito, an Italian author and architect. He wrote it around 1882. The novella develops a disturbing account of indiscriminate indulgence in selfish sensuality. The word "senso" is Italian for "sense," "feeling," or "lust." The title refers to the delight Livia experiences while reflecting on her affair with a handsome lieutenant. The novella is typical of Scapigliatura literature, which was at its peak at the time.^[1]

Summary

Senso is set in Venetia and Trentino about the time of Third Italian War of Independence in 1866. Its protagonist is Livia, a countess from Trento, who is married unhappily to a stuffy old aristocrat, and who willingly wanders in response to her yearnings.

The story opens a few years after the war, with Livia reminiscing on her 39th birthday about her first truly passionate affair. Her reverie transports us to Venice during the war, where Livia falls in love with Remigio Ruz, a dashing young lieutenant in the Austrian army.

Although he obviously is using her, her money, and her social status, Livia throws herself into an affair of complete sexual abandon with Remigio. She lets him spend her money freely, cares nothing of what society thinks of her, and ignores her new lover's pathetic cowardice when he refuses to rescue a drowning child.

Though the war drives the lovers apart, Livia feels driven to revisit Remigio. When she joins him for a tryst, he asks for more money, to bribe the army doctors for a reprieve from the battlefield. Livia gladly gives him all her jewels and gold. Remigio flees to Verona, without bothering even to kiss her goodbye.

Eventually her yearning for Remigio drives Livia nearly mad, but her spirits soar when a letter from him finally arrives. His letter says that he loves and misses her, and that her money and his bribery had allowed him to evade any combat. He asks Livia not to look for him. Still clutching his letter, she promptly boards a carriage and heads straight to Verona to find her loyal lover.

She finds the city in ruins, with dead and wounded everywhere. Livia's undeterred. She heads to the apartment she had bought for Remigio, where she finds him, a drunken, ungrateful rogue, in the company of a prostitute who openly mocks Livia for accepting his abuse.

Mortification drives Livia out into the night. Shame shapes her lingering lust into vengeance when Livia remembers she still has his letter. Livia finds the Austrian army headquarters, where she indicts Remigio by presenting his proof of desertion to a general. Her vengeance for Remigio's philandering infidelity is obvious to the general, yet her motives lend her lover no exemption. The very next morning, Remigio and the doctors he bribed face a firing squad while Livia attends the execution.

Style

The novella presents Livia's perspective exclusively, in the form of her secret diary. She distinctly describes her selfish lust, her sexual desire, and something akin to joy that she feels on the occasion of her lover's execution.

Unlike the authors of such similar characters as Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary , Camillo Boito presents his protagonist without sympathy. Senso's Livia is conscious of her conduct and may cherish the consequence. She feels either indifferent or oblivious to the damage she might do to others. She's ingenuously remorseless, while single-mindedly seeking what is best for herself alone.

Adaptations

Luchino Visconti very loosely adapted the novella in 1954 using the same title, but with heavy alterations to characters and introducing numerous new subplots, such as Livia's rebellious cousin Roberto, whose fight against the Austrian occupation troops is chronicled in a good deal of battles. The adaptation moves closer to the war, depicting it explicitly, whilst pushing Livia's back story into the background (unlike the novella, which is narrated through Livia's secret diary – and thus, solely focused on her perception – the film forsakes the diary and switches to third-person narration). The film starred Alida Valli as Livia and Farley Granger as her duplicitous lover.

Tinto Brass adapted the story in 2002 as Senso '45 after reading the novella and finding himself unsatisfied with Visconti's liberally adapted version. The film starred Anna Galiena as Livia and Gabriel Garko as her lover. The story of the film is much more faithful to Camillo Boito's work than the earlier adaptation in terms of tone and story, but the action was transported from the Third Italian War of Independence to the end of World War II, with Remigio becoming a Nazi Lieutenant and Livia updated to being the wife of a high ranking Fascist official. Brass later explained that the change in time was made because he did not want to compete with Visconti's vision of Risorgimento-era Italy. Unlike the 1954 version, Senso '45 did not romanticize the affair between Livia and Ruz (Helmut Schultz in the 2002 film), but showed it for what it was: a clinical study in vanity and lust. However, it should be worth noting that both films significantly altered Livia's character, making her much older and sympathetic than she appeared in Boito's original novella.

In 2011, an opera based on the novella premiered in Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Sicily, with music by Marco Tutino. The role of Livia in the premiere was played by Nicola Beller Carbone.

Related Research Articles

Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo was an Italian filmmaker, stage director, and screenwriter. A major figure of Italian art and culture in the mid-20th century, Visconti was one of the fathers of cinematic neorealism, but later moved towards luxurious, sweeping epics dealing with themes of beauty, decadence, death, and European history, especially the decay of the nobility and the bourgeoisie.

Silvana Mangano was an Italian film actress. She was one of a generation of thespians who arose from the neorealist movement, and went on to become a major female star, regarded as a sex symbol for the 1950s and '60s. She won the David di Donatello for Best Actress three times - for The Verona Trial (1963), The Witches (1967), and The Scientific Cardplayer (1973) - and the Nastro d'Argento for Best Actress twice.

Giovanni "Tinto" Brass is an Italian film director and screenwriter. In the 1960s and 1970s, he directed many critically acclaimed avant-garde films of various genres. Today, he is mainly known for his later work in the erotic genre, with films such as Caligula, Così fan tutte, Paprika, Monella and Trasgredire.

Ossessione is a 1943 Italian film based on the 1934 novel The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain. Luchino Visconti’s first feature film, it is considered by many to be the first Italian neorealist film, though there is some debate about whether such a categorization is accurate. It presents some typical elements of the calligrafismo style.

Helmut Berger is an Austrian actor, known for his portrayal of narcissistic and sexually-ambiguous characters. He was one of the stars of the European cinema in the late 1960s and 1970s, and is regarded as a sex symbol and pop icon of the period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Camillo Boito</span> Italian architect and engineer, and a noted art critic, art historian and novelist

Camillo Boito was an Italian architect and engineer, and a noted art critic, art historian and novelist.

Scapigliatura is the name of an artistic movement that developed in Italy after the Risorgimento period (1815–71). The movement included poets, writers, musicians, painters and sculptors. The term Scapigliatura is the Italian equivalent of the French "bohème" (bohemian), and "Scapigliato" literally means "unkempt" or "dishevelled". Most of these authors have never been translated into English, hence in most cases this entry cannot have and has no detailed references to specific sources from English books and publications. However, a list of sources from Italian academic studies of the subject is included, as is a list of the authors' main works in Italian.

<i>Conversation Piece</i> (film) 1974 film by Luchino Visconti

Conversation Piece is a 1974 drama film directed, co-written, and produced by Luchino Visconti. It stars Burt Lancaster, Helmut Berger, Silvana Mangano, and Romolo Valli; with cameo appearances by Claudia Cardinale and Dominique Sanda. The film explores such themes as the collision between old and new, imminence of death, existential crises and the sociopolitical gap between generations. The title refers to an informal group portrait, especially those painted in Britain in the 18th century, beginning in the 1720s.

<i>Senso</i> (film) 1954 film by Luchino Visconti

Senso is a 1954 Italian historical melodrama film directed and co-written by Luchino Visconti, based on Camillo Boito's novella of the same name. Set during the Third Italian War of Independence, the film follows the Italian Contessa Livia Serpieri, who has an affair with the Austrian Lieutenant Franz Mahler. It was Visconti's first color film.

Adriana Asti is an Italian stage, film, and voice actress.

"A Christmas Eve" is a short story by Camillo Boito which appeared in his anthology of decadence and perversity titled Tales of Vanity, which also featured his more famous work, the novella Senso.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clara Calamai</span> Italian actress

Clara Calamai was an Italian actress.

<i>Miranda</i> (1985 film) 1985 Italian film

Miranda is a 1985 Italian erotic drama film directed by Tinto Brass. It is loosely based on the three-act comedy La locandiera by Carlo Goldoni.

The Key is an Italian erotic film directed by Tinto Brass. Set in Venice under the fascist regime in the early months of 1940, it recounts a tale of a voluptuous woman in her forties who is unable to respond to her husband but undergoes a belated sexual awakening with her daughter's fiancé, which enables her to please her husband at last. The film caused scandal in some quarters because it contains several explicit shots of nudity and sex scenes involving the well-known actress Stefania Sandrelli. However, the film ultimately obtained a decent level of commercial success.

Marcella Mariani was an Italian actress and Miss Italy contest winner. Though she appeared in several popular movies and was garnering acclaim as an actress, her career was cut short by her death in a 1955 airliner crash.

The list of the 100 Italian films to be saved was created with the aim to report "100 films that have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978".

Franco "Kim" Arcalli was an Italian film editor and screenwriter best known for his work with Bernardo Bertolucci and Michelangelo Antonioni.

Senso may refer to:

Le braci ("Embers") is a 2015 Italian opera by Marco Tutino after the novel Embers by Sándor Márai.

Senso '45 is an Italian erotic drama film written and directed by Tinto Brass, based on the novella Senso by Camillo Boito, also which inspired Luchino Visconti's 1954 film.

References

↑ Italian Women and the City: Essays -Janet Levarie Smarr, Daria Valentini 0838639658 – 2003 Page 136 Rondolino (Luchino Visconti, 1981, 294) describes Livia's notebook in Boito's novella as "una lunga confessione sentimentale, cinica e sprezzante." .

External links

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] Italian Women and the City: Essays -Janet Levarie Smarr, Daria Valentini 0838639658 – 2003 Page 136 Rondolino (Luchino Visconti, 1981, 294) describes Livia's notebook in Boito's novella as "una lunga confessione sentimentale, cinica e sprezzante." .

[1]