Pascal, Leopardi, and Fuller
I spoke with Thomas Fuller yesterday, whose new book, The Classical World; a Novel of Ideas, is now in final stages of design and is expected to have a winter 2018 release. I'd read the book in one of its earlier drafts--Fuller typically makes 4 or 5 different versions of a novel, over a period of 4 to 5 years--and was struck by how once again in Fuller's fiction a major literary character plays a vital role in the narrative: in the case of Fuller's Monsieur Ambivalence (2013) it was the 17th century French philosopher Blaise Pascal; in The Classical World, the 19th century poet/philosopher Giacomo Leopardi is frequently invoked.
Intrigued, I emailed Mr. Fuller some questions about the matter (Full disclosure: I am Mr. Fuller's publisher).
Q: In Monsieur Ambivalence, Pascal is more or less the engine that drives what narrative there is. In The Classical World there are far more references to writers, poets, philosophers, but they're fleeting and have almost nothing to do with the story...was this a conscious decision?
A: Monsieur Ambivalence spun centrifically from Pascal's notion that 'all mankind's troubles stem from a man's inability to sit in a room quietly for one hour'...you could make the case that Pascal was a major character in the book, and people have! The Classical World is a different kettle of fish. It's true there are references to philosophers and poets all through the book, and there's a visit to Leopardi's incredible tomb in Naples, spurred incidentally from my reading of Leopardi's Zibaldone, but there's absolutely no major imposition by an outside thinker as there is in Monsieur Ambivalence. All the philosophical onus is on the narrator in The Classical World, for better or worse.
Q: Were you aware of the similarities between Pascal and Leopardi?
A: Only after I finished writing The Classical World. And now that I see them I see they're almost eerie.
Q: So there was no conscious coupling on your part? Of picking up, say, where Pascal left off and using Leopardi as the next European springboard to tell the story told in The Classical World?
A: Heavens no! Such a question makes me think you haven't read the book, even when I know you have, having seen your red pencil marks on the manuscript. Leopardi plays an almost invisible role in The Classical World. The narrator does visit his tomb in Naples, but I don't think he's quoted or otherwise referenced.
Q: Pascal's most well-known work is Pensees; Leopardi's is Zibaldone. However, Leopardi also composed a much shorter book of aphorisms and reflections, many of them excavated from Zibaldone, that he titled, Pensieri.
A: Aha!
Q: Yeah. I found this intriguing to say the least, having not known Leopardi's Pensieri and then finding it about halfway through composing The Classical World, reading it and letting some of the things I was reading there get into the thinking that was guiding my writing.
A: Anything specifically?
Q: There was a passage in my edition of Pensieri, which was translated, by the way, by W.S. DI Piero, a poet and classicist who lives in San Francisco, in the introduction where DI Piero quotes Walter Benjamin on Leopardi: "The ancients, Leopardi reminds us again and again, insisted that a man be good, whereas moderns demand that a man only seem good." It was one of those cases of coming across something you're ready to hear at exactly the time you're ready to to hear it. From then on the story in The Classical World shifted, and the character's search changed significantly, from asking questions like what is truth, what is justice, what is love--those questions the classical world posed--to finding the one question by which to guide his own life. Those key words on the difference between the ancient and modern ages--be good (or) only seem good--were a trigger, and I had to investigate that difference.
A: So Leopardi was more a spirit in The Classical World, and Pascal a much more fleshed out being in Monsieur Ambivalence?
Q: I guess that's one way of looking at it. I spoke earlier about the similarities--Pensees and Pensieri, for instance. Perhaps even more remarkable was how young each man was when they were writing; and more remarkable, that each died in their 39th year, Pascal in 1662 and Leopardi in 1798. When I did the math I was astonished, not knowing what to make of it other than it's a grand coincidence, as is writing a book.