Abstract
After recounting his chance encounter with Carlo Emilio Gadda'sLa Connaissance de la douleur, Philippe Bordas returns to the work of a great author, little known in France and belatedly known in Italy. For Pasolini, however, Gadda was Dante's successor. Like Dante, Gadda invented a language, hybridizing high and low languages.
Philippe Bordas discovered the writer through fieldwork, not just by reading Gadda's translations: by following in his footsteps in Italy, meeting both his illiterate neighbor and renowned Italian critics. The picture painted by Philippe Bordas during the seminar shows the richness of a strange author, whose life as well as his work (a work as erotic as it is funny, as the guest points out), like the Caravaggio he appreciated, is made up of unprecedented contrasts.
