Livro Impostura

La fotografia de un anonimo enfermo mental al que encontraron robando vasos funerarios en un cementerio de Barcelona y dice no recordar nada de su pasado, llega en 1952 hasta las paginas de La Vanguardia para que el sujeto pueda ser identificado.

Al punto la senora Bruch reconoce en la fotografia del desmemoriado a su marido, el ilustre escritor falangista Ramon Bruch, desaparecido en plena campana de la Division Azul en Rusia.

Pero no tarda en entrar en escena otra mujer, aduciendo que ese hombre es, de hecho, el tipografo Claudio Nart, antiguo anarquista y extorsionador y ladron de tres al cuarto.

A partir de ese equivoco, el astuto desmemoriado va a establecer un juego de intereses y sospechas que, implicando al lector y con la complicidad del narrador, conformaran un relato inquietante en torno al tema de la identidad imposible, tema que es habilmente articulado con el motivo mismo de la literatura y el lugar impostado del escritor en el seno del discurso literario.

Libro escrito y publicado por Vila-Matas en 1984, Impostura esta basado en un celebre hecho real, el caso Canella-Bruneri, que sacudio la Italia de los anos veinte y dividio al pais en partidarios de una u otra de las dos identidades de un desmemoriado recluido en el manicomio de Collegno y al que dos mujeres de diferente extraccion social reconocieron apasionadamente como su marido.

Un hecho real que inspiro una obra de teatro de Pirandello, Come tu mi vuoi (Greta Garbo y posteriormente Claudia Cardinale la llevaron a escena), una pelicula de Sergio Corbucci interpretada por Toto, y grandes libros de Leonardo Sciascia y Susan Sontag.

/ The photograph of an anonymous mentally ill patient who was found robbing funeral urns from a cemetery in Barcelona and says he remembers nothing of his past appears in 1952 on the pages of La Vanguardia in an attempt to identify the subject.

Immediately, Mrs Bruch recognises in the photograph her husband, the illustrious falange writer Ramón Bruch, who disappeared in the middle of the Blue Division campaign in Russia. Soon after, another woman appears on the scene, claiming that this man, in fact, is the typographer Caludio Nart, an old anarchist, blackmailer and common thief.

As a result of this confusion, this clever man without memory begins to establish a game of vying interests and suspicions which, implicating the reader and with the complicity of the narrator, make up an unsettling story on the subject of impossible identity.

This subject is skilfully articulated with the motive of literature and the false role of the writer at the heart of literary discourse. A book written and published by Vila-Matas in 1984, Impostura is based on real events, the Canella-Bruneri case, which shook Italy in the twenties and divided the country into supporters of either one of the mans claimed identities or the other.

This man with no memory had retreated into a mental hospital in Collegno, as he was passionately claimed as husband by two different women from different social backgrounds. This real event inspired a play by Pirandello, Come tu mi vuoi (played by Greta Garbo and later Claudia Cardinale), a film by Sergio Corbucci performed by Totó, and great books by Leonardo Sciascia and Susan Sontag.