I Miracoli di Buzzati tra scrittura e pittura

The analysis of the double work The Miracles of Valmorel by Dino Buzzati, intended as the best outcome of his literary and artistic production, allowed a reflection on the expressive and combinative chances of visual and verbal texts and on the negotiation of the boundaries between the two media. The narrative frame reconstructs the background of artistic creation: the imaginary discovery of some votive tablets, in a sanctuary devoted to Saint Rita in Val Morel, provides the opportunity to show the 39 paintings that in the iconotextual edition are accompanied by as many micro-stories by the author himself. The combination that Buzzati produces, by juxtaposition (iconotext) and symbiosis (iconicity), offers an exemplary variety of the possible relationships between literature and painting. The institutional border of the page, which divides the word from the image, moves toward the inside of the tablet (as for inscriptions, cartouches, or captions) or completely dissolves, giving rise to a real iconicity. The examples showed in this work illustrate how the presence or the absence of border negotiated by the two languages is the result of a complex veridiction strategy that involves narrator’s voice, referent and meaning in both texts. The analysis also helped to start a reflection on the metanarrative and metapictorial potential of iconotexts.