Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.15291/sponde.5001
“Un’altra volta lo sognai”: Dream, Exile and Identity in Enrico Morovich
Nicolò Dal Bello
orcid.org/0009-0002-1232-3213
; Università per Stranieri di Perugia
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
The figure of Enrico Morovich (Pecine, 1906 – Lav-agna, 1994) occupies an isolated place in Italian liter-ature of the late twentieth century, moving between memorial realism and a dreamlike writing style root-ed in surrealism. Born in a border city and marked by the experience of the Julian-Dalmatian exodus, in two emblematic works – Racconti di Fiume e altre cose (1985) and Un italiano a Fiume (1993) – Mor-ovich develops a reflection on the complexity of a multi-layered identity through an interplay of fa-ble, dream, and autobiography. In the first volume, memory is translated into a symbolic and dreamlike psychic landscape, constructed through a language of metamorphosis and visions that anticipate the lat-er autobiographical internalization. In Un italiano a Fiume, on the other hand, the autobiographical com-ponent intensifies, and recollection becomes a prac-tice of self-analysis: Fiume is not only a lost place, but a sentimental interlocutor, an inner projection in which the subject seeks to heal the fracture of exile. Read in dialogue, the two volumes trace a unified path of reflection on the relationship between mem-ory, identity, and writing. Morovich works through the wound of his diasporic condition by transform-ing it into a creative act, constructing a “geography of the soul” in which the real and the imaginary overlap. From this perspective, Morovich’s narrative asserts itself as both testimony and an exercise in po-etic resistance against oblivion: an act of regeneration of memory through language.
Keywords
surrealism, exile, memory, border identity, fable
Hrčak ID:
342494
URI
Publication date:
22.12.2025.
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