Fabrizio Lupo Italian Novel by Carlo Coccioli 1951

FABRIZIO LUPO - ITALIAN NOVEL BY CARLO COCCIOLI (1951)
INTRODUCTION
This Italian novel was first published in French in 1952, because no Italian publisher took
the risk of doing so. This translation takes the very first version of the Italian novel
finished in 1951. The author reworked his original writing in Italian, for a Spanish version
published in Mexico in 1953. After further modifications, the novel was finally published in
Italy (Milan) and in a new Spanish version (Barcelona), in 1978 and finally a last version
in 1991.
As a result, the novel the Italians discovered has little in common with the original
published in French twenty-six years earlier. I was able to read both the 1952 French
version and the 1978 Spanish one, and I can assure you that, from the point of view of
style and literary structure, the 1978 version is less difficult to read.
STORYLINE
Fabrizio Lupo, a young Italian painter, approaches personally a renowned novelist (in this
case, Carlo Coccioli himself, who thus becomes a character in his own novel), to tell him
about his love affair with Laurent, a young French sculptor.
Fabrizio's goal is for Mr. Coccioli to write a novel telling his story, to help him make known
the reality of homosexual love, rejected and banished by the society of his time, when,
according to Fabrizio, “love between men is as pure, as tender, as intense and as
beautiful as any heterosexual one.”
What follows is a story of an ABSOLUTE love, which does not allow any deviation
(neither carnal nor spiritual) and nor any doubt as to its existence. An intense, excessive,
obsessive, dramatic and devastating love in which jealousy, the feeling of belonging and
mysticism play a major role.
Fabrizio fights so that the love between Laurent and him, emerges victorious from life
and belies the predictions of their mutual friends, which augur his end, "because love
between homosexual men is necessarily ephemeral"
The end is difficult to predict, as the story is changing. Notwithstanding, it is worthy of the
most remarkable and beautiful love stories ever written.
CHARACTERS
Fabrizio is the archetype of the honest and upright man, without concessions. Rigid in his
convictions which are, themselves, contradictory. Thus, he is deeply Catholic, but he
thanks God for having created him “as he is”, because it "allowed him to know Laurent
and to discover what love is". So, he denies the church that condemns his love.
Laurent, on the other hand, is strongly influenced by the society that has shaped his
personality. He loves children and would like to have several. But to do that, he has to get
married and start a family. He's terribly torn between his love for Fabrizio, his desire to be
a father and the horror he feels at being labelled as homosexual, when he says to
himself, "I simply love a human being, regardless of gender".
STRUCTURE AND STYLE
The work is divided into three parts:
In the first, Fabrizio personally tells Cocciole how he met Laurent and how their love story
unfolded, up to a certain point in their history.
The second part, the most extensive, complex, heavy and difficult to read, represents a
kind of diary written by Fabrizio as he experiences his love with Laurent. It is a mystical
writing, full of symbolism and allegories. Only a few innovative images save the reading.
The third part, the shortest and most dramatically intense, reveals the end of the love
story between Fabrizio and Laurent.
It must be admitted, the prose of M. Coccile is very heavy. It seems that the author
merges with his character Fabrizio, to highlight a tormented and messy way of thinking.
The author jumps from third to first person when telling the story and weaves in quotes to
reference the words of his characters, one inside the other.
The result is jam-packed pages full of parentheses, semicolons, commas, colons, and
subordinates that require careful reading to follow ideas.
MY REVIEW
We must read this novel as a double testimony: that of an era and that of the literary
development of the author at the time of writing his novel.
The ideas exposed by his character Fabrizio, translate the state of the society of his time
which, nowadays, would be criticized by the own homosexuals.
So, for example, Fabrizio hates effeminate homosexuals and can't stand the idea of
multiple partners. In fact, the great message of his love story is to live an exclusive and
virtuous love between men, far from the characteristics that, according to him, make
"homosexuals recognizable from other men".
That said, the author shows a deep knowledge of the psyche of homosexuals in the
1950s: Their way of conceiving their own existence, their doubts and their struggles to try
to be happy despite a whole society that overwhelms them.
This gives rise to sentences and ideas of enormous depth, where all homosexuals who
lived through this era will recognize themselves.
However, according to the author himself, his novel is mainly dedicated to heterosexuals,
so that they try to understand what male homosexuality is and contribute, as his
character Fabrizio wanted, to change mentalities.
I must say that the bet is not won. Not that the intended demonstration is not done, it is!
But his style is so abstruse that few people will read his novel completely, unless they are
already won over by the subject.
CONCLUSIONS
A novel to be read only by true lovers of homosexual literature. At the very least, the
others can read only the first and third parts. The second part is reserved for literary
masochists.

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