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7. V. V. Belinskij, Textes Philosophique Choisis (Moscow, 1951), pp. 394ff. |
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8. K. Marx and F. Engels, Die Heilige Familie oder Kritik der Kritischen Kritik: Gegen Bruno Bauer und Consorten (Frankfurt, 1945). |
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9. "These good people enjoyed such profound happiness and were so entirely satisfied with their log, that the Grand Duke, in his enlightened solicitude, had no trouble preserving them from the craze for constitutional innovations" (part 2, chapter 12). |
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10. "In any case, it seems possible to assert that the prototype and pattern for many Nietzschean 'supermen' is not Zarathustra, but the Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas," notes Gramsci. He does not take into account here that Rodolphe as a prototype precedes Monte Cristo (as in the Three Musketeers, in which the second superman in Gramsci's theory, Athos, appears, whereas the third, Giuseppe Balsamo, dates from 1849), though he is certainly thinking of Sue's work and makes several analyses of it: "Perhaps the popular superman of the Dumas type is properly to be understood as a democratic reaction to the concept of racialism, which is of feudal origin, and to be linked with the glorification of 'Gallicism' to be found in the novels of Eugène Sue (while in Nietzsche one should also see those influences which later culminate in Gobineau and the Pangermanism of Treitschke)"; see Letteratura e Vita Nazionale. III: Letteratura popolare (Turin: Einaudi, 1953). "The serial story replaces and, at the same time, encourages the day dreams of the man in the street; it is really a dream dreamt with one's eyes open. . . . In this case it can be said that, among the people, fancy is the result of a (social) inferiority complex that gives birth to lengthy fantasies built around the idea of revenge, or the punishment of those guilty of inflicting the evils suffered, etc."; ibid., p. 108. |
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11. Eugène Sue, preface to Atar-Gull. See Bory, Eugène Sue. . ., p. 102. |
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12. See E. Faral, Les arts poetiques du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1958). It is not by chance that the writings of these theorists are being dug up by the structuralists. |
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13. See Chapter 4 of this book. |
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14. On the structural definition of Kitsch, see Umberto Eco, "La struttura del cattivo gusto," in Apocalittici e Integrati (Milan: Bompiani, 1964). |
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15. Marx and Engels, chapter 8, p. 2. |
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16. "The expressions that Rodolphe uses in his conversation with Clémence, 'to make attractive,' 'use one's natural taste,' 'direct the intrigue,' 'make use of one's penchants towards cunning and dissimulation,' 'sublimate imperious and inexorable instincts to generous impulses,' etc.; these expressions, like the instincts that are by preference attributed to women, betray the secret source of Rodolfe's wisdom: Fourier's doctrine"; ibid., p. 5. |
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17. It should be mentioned that it is difficult to make Sue's strange theories on prison reform and penal reform in general fit into this scheme of things. Here we fire witnessing a free improvisation by the author on the theme of 'reform' and an elaboration of his own political and humanitarian ideals outside the context of the novel itself; the flights of fancy that break up the action of the 'melodrama' develop quite independent themes. Yet even here the mechanism of arousing tension coupled with immediate reassurance is still |
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