La teoria della letteratura di Nicolas Calas. Surrealismo, marxismo e psicanalisi in Foyers d’incendie

This contribution – probably the first specifically concerning Nicolas Calas to be published in Italian – intends to examine some particular topics of Foyers d’incendie [Hearths of Arson] (1938), a work that hardly can be found, by now. So this study will try to partially fill the absence at an international level of a detailed analysis of this book which is usually considered to be ‘difficult’ and therefore often hastily put under the label of ‘Freudo-Marxism’. Not only does this label appear confusing when we look more care-fully at the historical context of the Thirties, but it also does not allow to understand in what both Marxism and Freudism are criticized indeed, this aspect defining more clearly the surrealist character – eluded or taken for granted by critics – of Foyers d’incendie. In the first half of this paper, we will underline the role of Surrealism in Calas’ critical evolution in relation to orthodox Communism, whose language he still used before becoming indubitably a Surrealist. Then we will show the enthusiastic reception of Foyers d’incendie among the Surrealists and also the reasons of their appreciation. In the second half, we will go deep inside some pages of this book which concern more spe-cifically the theory of literature and the critique of ideology we can draw from Foyers d’incendie. This is why – for the first time – we will summarize Calas’ understanding of the literary and philosophical history, and show the role that Dialectical Materialism (chiefly that of Engels’ Origin of the Family,