Mario Matucci - French Literature

Italian Professor Mario Matucci has had a profound impact on French Literature studies, often challenging traditional views. He ended one of his studies with the phrase: "And do not say that everything has been said, that everything has been revealed, and that we are not allowed to expect anything new."

Speech given in honour of Professor Mario Matucci on October 3, 1980

Professor MATUCCI has become a familiar figure to the people of Anjou. If the twinings and agreements between universities are to lead to cordial relationsips between students and between professors, your personality, Sir, was predestined to play an important role in the development of mutual knowledge between Pisans and Angevins and in the strengthening of their friendship.

Indeed, I am pleased to see that in your career you have contributed to the mutual understanding of France and Italy. In 1946, you were appointed as a lecturer at the University of Clermont-Ferrand. It was during this period that you initiated a process of intellectual exchange between the university communities of our two countries. I understand that your efforts are still remembered in that region today. Subsequently, in Grenoble, a region with close ties to Italian culture, you assumed teaching responsibilities at the Faculty of Humanities. In addition, you established the first Italian university in France, the Istituto Italiano di Studi, in Grenoble. Subsequently, upon the establishment of your reputation in Italy, you returned to France to resume your academic career, assuming the role of seminar leader at the Faculty of Humanities in Lyon and at the Centre d'Etude des Sensibilites, a research institution directed by Professors Jean Sgard and Michel Gilot in Grenoble.

Your Italian career began in Florence, your native city, where you also pursued your studies. However, in Florence, more than in any other city in Europe, it was particularly challenging to be a twenty-year-old in 1940.
Your experiences were shaped by the war. The Fascist regime pursued you and subjected you to humiliation. It was only after your time in France that you began your Italian university studies, which took you from Naples to Genoa, Bologna and finally Pisa, where, since 1964, you have been director of the Institute of French Language and Literature at the Faculty of Humanities.

Your own work has encouraged us to engage in the process of discovery. The impact of your publications on French studies is clear.
Marivaux was not a popular figure in academia until recently, and he was largely forgotten by the general public. In 1955, Frederic Deloffre's significant thesis, "Marivaux et le marivaudage, une preciosite nouvelle", was primarily focused on the theatre. From that point onwards, your attention shifted to the study of narrative texts, an area of Marivaux's oeuvre that had remained relatively obscure, even after André Gide had expressed his preference for "La Vie de Marianne". The publication of "L'opera narrativa di Marivaux" in 1962 opened up new avenues of research. Those working in this field in France, including Henri Coulet, have acknowledged the significant impact your work has had on their own research.
In your analysis of Marivaux's novels, you demonstrated a keen understanding of the literary and cultural context of the time, resisting the temptation to be swayed by transient trends. You placed significant emphasis on the value of moral reflection and the techniques employed in narrative construction. In particular, you highlighted the modern sensibility of incompleteness in Marivaux's stories, the instability of the ego of the protagonist-narrators, who only become aware of themselves through the reflections of memory and retrospection. In this way, these texts and these characters are accessible to the modern reader.

Furthermore, your work has contributed to the advancement of our understanding of Rimbaud. In this instance, you did not precede the French works, but rather corrected them. Etiemble's book on "Le mythe de Rimbaud" sought to de-sanctify the image of the poet. Not without a kind of iconoclastic will, Etiemble denounced the weaknesses of Paterne Berrichon, whose hagiography of Rimbaud had found a magnificent echo in Claudel. However, Etiemble's assertions were not always substantiated by evidence. In "Le dernier visage de Rimbaud en Afrique" (Rimbaud's last face in Africa), you present a compelling argument based on previously unpublished documents that challenges the historical accuracy of the characterisation of the adventurer and slave trafficker as a 'human flesh' trader. By striving to disassociate ourselves from the bourgeois myth, we risk falling prey to an opposing myth. A comprehensive examination of hitherto unpublished documents leads to the conclusion that the Rimbaud, the slave trader should be relegated to the realm of hypotheses. Furthermore, your editions of "Illuminations" and "Une saison en enfer", your articles on Rimbaud and Baudelaire, and on Rimbaud and Flaubert, represent significant advances in Rimbaldian criticism.

I have selected just a few examples from your research to illustrate the quality of your method and the importance of the results you have obtained. Your contribution to the study of religious consciousness is also of great interest, particularly through your reading of Benjamin Constant and Joseph de Maistre. You present an alternative image of the latter that challenges the traditional view of de Maistre as an advocate of preserving the past. I will remember this phrase you end one of your studies with: "And do not say that everything has been said, that everything has been revealed, and that we are not allowed to expect anything new." You, too, are among those who do not believe that everything has been said. This conviction, this aspiration gives us, as you say, the "will to survive": man has the right to to expect the new.
Furthermore, it provides researchers in the scientific community with the courage to pursue unconventional avenues, maintaining a humanistic approach.

The University of Angers awarded Professor Mario Matucci the Doctor Honoris Causa title on October 2, 1980