Tag Archives: Giuseppe Cafiero

This Week’s Must Read: Vincent Van Gogh, The Ambiguity Of Insanity

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Vincent Van Gogh’s turbulent and tragic life story is told with compassion and wisdom in Giuseppe Cafiero’s exceptional work of bio-fiction, writes Lucy Bryson.

By Lucy Bryson

This fascinating audiobook from prolific writer Giuseppe Cafiero provides a nuanced account of the life and times of one of the greatest painters of the 20th-Century. It sheds fresh light on the ways in which the artist’s life and works were shaped by people, places – and by a dangerously obsessive personality.

Loosely based around the correspondence between Van Gogh and his brother Theo – here portrayed as one of very few constantly supportive figures in the troubled artist’s all-too-short life – Van Gogh, The Ambiguity of Insanity presents Van Gogh’s life as a fictional series of chapters, each shaped by a particularly meaningful woman and by the place where the Dutchman was living at the time. Cafiero creates a portrait of a man both proud and vulnerable, reclusive yet deeply desirous of emotional, artistic and physical companionship.

Beginning with his early life on the Dutch-Belgian border, born to a pious pastor father and staunchly religious mother in a “sterile, oppressive land, burdened with gossip, ill-feeling and sickness“, Cafiero goes on to present Van Gogh’s life in 10 chapters, each of which takes as a focus a specific woman – be she an unrequited love, a lover, family member, model or muse – who was instrumental in shaping the troubled artist’s life.

Cafiero’s audiobook paints a stark yet vivid picture of an obsessive, psychologically vulnerable man, prone to extremes of emotion that led him to dark and troubled places. He was, we learn, driven by obsessions, which were often seemingly at odds with each other: an obsession with religious piety; with erotic love; with redemption; with artistic perfection; with family ties and with friendship (Vincent is seen to be hugely emotionally affected by the collapse of his friendship with fellow artist Gaugin). Suffering the pain of rejection on numerous occasions (and often as a result of inappropriate fixations), Van Gogh was perhaps overly dependent on his more stable brother Theo, who supported him both financially and emotionally throughout Vincent’s turbulent life and until his premature death at the age of just 37.

But we discover that Van Gogh’s emotional and artistic life was shaped not only by the women he encountered, but also by the places he lived, studied and painted – from the glamour of Paris to the decay of London’s insalubrious back streets. Van Gogh travelled extensively in his 37 years, and was apparently deeply susceptible to external influences.

The book follows Van Gogh’s long and painful mental unravelling and his sad journey towards apparent suicide (it has never quite been an open and shut case, and some people still maintain Van Gogh was murdered…). As its title suggests, this book shows that ‘insanity’ is not a constant, easily identifiable condition, but rather a spectrum, and something that may be more or less apparent at different life stages. Cafiero’s passion for his subject matter is evident (as is his painstaking research) and he has taken care avoid sensationalism. 

Vincent Van Gogh, The Ambiguity Of Insanity is a powerful, thoughtful account of a fascinating figure in art history. 

Vincent Van Gogh, The Ambiguity Of Insanity by Giuseppe Cafiero (Rowanvale Books), is out now as an audiobook on Amazon UK, Audible or iTunes.

Q&A with Italian author Giuseppe Cafiero

Giuseppe Cafiero is pioneering the ‘bio-fiction’ genre with meticulous research and masterful storytelling. Frost Magazine finds out more about what drives and inspires him, and his plans for the future.

Frost Magazine (FM): You have become known for your bio-fictional accounts of the lives of authors. What made you turn your attention to the life of an artist? 

Giuseppe Cafiero (GC): My main interest in the life of Vincent Van Gogh is in his humanity. In attempting to understand the man and his art, I have focused on the women and the places which played an essential part in his development. In my opinion, no previous biography has concentrated so specifically on these two factors, which I have used to provide the framework for my account.

FM: Van Gogh is more typically portrayed as the stereotypical ‘tortured genius’ – do you think that is an oversimplification? 

GC: Certainly. The vital factor in Van Gogh’s life was his obsessive determination to become a painter. It is impossible to understand man without investigating the nature of this obsession.

FM: How did researching the book alter your understanding of Van Gogh and his work (if at all) and did anything about his relationships or personality surprise you?

GC: I was surprised by the obsession as a subtle and tragic illness that inexorably consumed man. He was driven by a passionate determination to express himself through colour: above all with yellow as a symbol of life and spirituality.

FM: Who is the book likely to appeal to, and what do you hope readers will take away from reading it?

GC: The book is for lovers of Van Gogh and those who try to understand how madness can be a creative means. The long and painful progress towards suicide, the desire for extinction once madness turned out to be a painful companion and certainly not the source of hope.

FM: Why did you choose to base each of the chapters around a woman and a place in Van Gogh’s life? Was it a clear choice as to which females and locations to include?

GC: The book really focusses on Van Gogh’s obsessions: the obsession with redemption (his mission among the miners of Borinage and his relationship with Sien); the obsession with friendship (the failure of his relationship with Rachel in Arles); the obsession with a selfishly tormented spirituality (the relationship with the Kee Vos in Etten); the obsession with the sun of southern France (Madame Ginoux in Auvers); and the obsession with family love (her relationship with her sister-in-low Johanna in Paris).

FM: This title seems to have a more straightforward narrative than other titles in the Ambiguities series. Was this a conscious decision?

GC: Yes, of course. I had to tell the life of Van Gogh, the women he met, the places he frequented, the paintings he painted year after year.

FM: Van Gogh produced some of his finest works while his mental health was at a low (for example Starry Night). Do you think his mental health issues were integral to his genius as an artist?

GC: Van Gogh’s life was a moving struggle to find his way as an artist. He managed to express at the end of his life and through a tender and overwhelming madness, a pictorial proposition in which the colours are an unimaginable beauty.

FM: Are there any other titles planned in the Ambiguities series? And how would you summarise the series for readers who are not yet familiar with the books?

GC: Certainly. I have written books on the ambiguity of Gustave Flaubert, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf and Mario di Sa Carneiro. Ambiguity is just a way of seeing some writers from a particular perspective: in their imagination and their desire for imagination.

 

 

Stranger than fiction: Q&A with ‘bio-fiction’ creator, Giuseppe Cafiero

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The acclaimed Italian author Giuseppe Cafiero has created a new literary genre that weaves traditional fiction with real-life biography. In this exclusive interview, he tells Frost Magazine what inspired his unique style of ‘bio-fiction’.

Frost Magazine (FM): Your novel, Gustave Flaubert: The Ambiguity of Imagination, describes in detail the life and writing of the famous 19th century author. What is the importance and lasting fascination of Flaubert?

Giuseppe Cafiero (GC): Flaubert’s attention to writing. He was very careful in choosing words. He was very scrupulous in the composition of the sentences. He was very much looking forward to the balance of dialogues.

FM: You are clearly a fan of Flaubert’s writing. Which of your novels or stories would you recommend as the best to read first, and why?

GC: An incomplete book: Bouvard and Pecuchet. This is the book that inspired me to write Gustave Flaubert: The Ambiguity Of Imagination.

FM: Your work is part of the surreal genres and metafictions. Why do you find these genres as satisfying as an author? What can the reader take from these genres that are not offered by other types of writing?

GC: Because it’s suggestive to talk about ambiguity. Because it is very suggestive to speak in a surreal way about the ambiguity of a writer. It’s necessary to engage the reader in different readings by looking at an author under another aspect that intrigues with the surreal

FM: You are the inventor of a literary genre that you have dubbed ‘bio-fiction’. What do you mean by this term and how does it differ from biography or fiction?

GC: My literary genre is neither fiction nor biography. I try to tell a story about the life of a writer in which a surreal element intervenes that modifies reality. This is only an interpretative ambiguity of events that changes what was considered an absolute truth

FM: In your novel, Flaubert presents himself as a rather flawed individual. Do you think that his sexual and mental obsessions were an essential factor in allowing him to write the great works of literature for which he is famous?

GC: Undoubtedly. It is precisely these obsessions that have made Flaubert a particular writer. Without these pathological obsessions Flaubert would have been perhaps an insignificant writer

FM: Which authors have had more influence on your writing and why?

GC: My writing was influenced very much by Jorge Luis Borges, because if Borges has viewed the world and influenced his writings through the use of duplicity, I have believed that ambiguity would be deciphering in the world in a different but also very suggestive way

FM: How do you decide which historical figures to give biofocus treatment? Are there any character traits you are looking for that make an ideal subject?

GC: There are some characters (writers, painters, musicians) that interest me a lot. Certainly these characters have had adventures or have had friends or loves that lend themselves very well to the game of ambiguity

FM: What other authors do you think to give to the “bio-fiction” treatment in the future and why?

GC: The Portuguese poet Mario de Sa Carneiro for the ambiguity of his suicide. Virginia Woolf for the ambiguity of her lesbian love. James Joyce for the ambiguity of the epiphanies. Edgar Allan Poe for the ambiguity of his death for alcoholism.

FM: Your novels address the main theme of “ambiguity”. Why does this concept fascinate you and how does this idea link to what we can hope to understand as “truth” from literature and history?

GC: The theme of ambiguity fascinates me because it’s possible to look at the life and works of an artist in a different way through a keyhole that deforms things just because this keyhole is ambiguity. It is an ambiguity that can show another truth.

Gustave Flaubert: The Ambiguity Of Imagination and Mário De Sá-Carneiro: The Ambiguity Of A Suicide, both by Giuseppe Cafiero, are out now.

 

Mário de Sá-Carneiro – The Ambiguity of a Suicide, by Giuseppe Cafiero

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By Staff Writer

Part biography, part historical travelogue and part detective story, this fictionalised investigation into the suicide of the Portuguese writer Mário de Sá-Carneiro is admirable on many levels. 

Part of the acclaimed ‘Ambiguities…’ series by Italian author and playwright Giuseppe Cafiero, Ambiguity of a Suicide is an artful, intriguing meander through the mind of a gifted yet troubled soul.

Cafiero’s works are described by the author himself as works of ‘bio-fiction’, a type of metaliterature that plays with the blending of fact and fiction. This literary form is particularly effective in telling the story of de Sá-Carneiro, an acclaimed avant-garde writer of the early 20th century whose mind was muddied by his taste for strong alcohol and a desire to numb his sense of ‘saudade’ (a uniquely Portuguese word best translated as ‘melancholy’).

The word is key to the novel’s depiction of a man apparently tormented by feelings of inappropriate desires, of  something ‘missing’ and of a general mournful malaise that could not be shifted by boozy nights in Lisbon and Paris, or dreams of making a new life in the Portuguese territory of Brazil.

The Ambiguity of Suicide follows the journey of de Sá-Carneiro’s close friend, fellow poet Fernando Pessoa; Mondine, a private detective; and Doctor Abilio Fernandes Quaresma, a ‘solver of enigmas’, as they retrace the tragic author’s footsteps in light of his recent death.

Together, they drink in his watering holes, eat in his favourite restaurants and talk to the characters that he came across before he took his own life in a desperate bid to shed light on the circumstances that led to his demise.

Cafiero effortlessly evokes the period and settings that shaped de Sá-Carneiro during his time in Lisbon and Paris, and there is a fitting sense of beautiful melancholy throughout the book, such as the following description: “Sea and salt air. Duino was then in his heart. A manor house corroded by time. White, skeletal, dried by the sun. Progenitor of imperial deaths. The ocean is another thing. Gusts of an Atlantic wind. Gazing at conquered lands. Lisbon”.

Following a trail that leads them into seedily sensual territories, the three characters come to understand a little more of Sá-Carneiro and his troubled mind,

but ultimately (and as the ‘ambiguity’ title suggests) they find there is never any simple answer to the ‘why?’ of a suicide. 

The translation from the original Italian is extremely well done, but so too are the translations from the original Portuguese – the text is dotted with direct quotes from the writer and poet’s works, as well as from his friend Pessoa (best known for The Book of Disquiet).

It is perhaps fair to say that the works of Mário de Sá-Carneiro are little known outside of Portuguese-speaking countries. It’s also fair to say, however, that readers willing to engage with the unfamiliar will glean a lot of enjoyment from this novel and will probably find themselves eager to familiarise themselves with de Sá-Carneiro’s back catalogue after reading it.

Mário de Sá-Carneiro – The Ambiguity of a Suicide by Giuseppe Cafiero (Clink Street Publishing) is available from Amazon UK, priced £1.13 in paperback and £1.07 in Kindle edition. Visit www.giuseppecafiero.com.