Daughters of Zeus and Leda: Four Twins in Contemporary Italian Narrative

It would seem impossible, Carl Gustav Jung, Károly Kerényi and Mircea Eliade harbour no doubts about it, to do without myth: archetypical images seem necessary to give human thought shape. In this essay, having acknowledged a seemingly incredible proliferation of twins in the Italian literary and cinema production of the last few decades, we dwell on two recent novels: Giorgio Falco’s La gemella H and Laura Pugno’s La ragazza selvaggia. Two utterly different works, yet united by the same central image, that of the Dioscuri, albeit in their female version. Between a supreme and hyper-narcissistic attraction for an Identical-Other and attempts to retrieve one’s own subjectivation, breaking the twin egg, Falco and Pugno narrate, in their peculiar and different ways, stories which are capable of throwing light on darkened areas in our minds. The world of wakefulness and of dreams, both vividly real, mingle in a couple of novels which will long endure.