Abstract

[“The Conscience of Zeno”, memory and law as a mimetic interpretation of reality] This paper analyses the book “La coscienza di Zeno” (1923), by Italo Svevo, comparing the autobiographical narrative of the protagonist with the interpretative characteristic of Law. The plot is led by the protagonist himself, Zeno Cosini, who, diagnosed as neurotic, transcribes his memories in a diary. The writing, however, goes beyond an objective transcription of the facts and becomes an attempt by Zeno to behave as an innocent in the face of his feelings of guilt, revealing, through self-deception, a distortion of his memory. Through mimesis, the protagonist connects isolated or disconnected events using his or her own perspective. The story, therefore, becomes subjective and leads the reader to know rather his interpretation of the facts than the description of facts themselves. The narrative process presented in the work is similar to the process carried out in the legal sphere, characterized by the interpretation of the facts of reality. Law uses the imaginative connectives of those who analyze it to reconstruct stories, making a purely neutral and objective analysis impossible, and building a narrative that transports the real facts back to discourse through mimesis. Svevo’s literary work therefore allows a critical reflection on the law in the comparison to various discourses.