Vincenzo Consolo’s Mediterranean Journeys: From Sicily to the Global South(s)

Abstract

The revisiting of the ancient epic tradition of Homer’s The Odyssey and The Iliad and Virgil’s The Aeneid is at the core of Vincenzo Consolo’s vision of Sicily and the Mediterranean. In Il viaggio di Odisseo and the autobiographical prose-poem L’olivo e l’olivastro, Consolo appropriates the long and torturous journey of return, or nóstos (homecoming) to Ithaca undertaken by Homer’s Ulysses, transforming it into an endless condition of wandering across his native island of Sicily. Since this wandering bears witness to the devastating effects of a rapid and uncontrolled capitalist modernity on Sicilian cities such as Milazzo, Melilli, Priolo, Augusta, Gela, and Syracuse, among others, Consolo’s “Ithaca” fades into Troy, the city whose destruction is narrated in Homer’s The Iliad. Yet, Consolo’s tragic vision extends beyond Sicily to villages and cities of the Balkans, North Africa, and the Middle East, or the so-called Global South(s) of the world, where the ills of modernity, compounded by wars and conflicts, are forcing the exodus of exiles and migrants, the contemporary “Aeneas,” who cross the Mediterranean in makeshift vessels to escape violence and destitution.