In nomine Matris. Documento e «compromissorietà» nel carteggio bellico di Carlo Emilio Gadda con la madre (1915-1919)

The aim of this essay is to outline Carlo Emilio Gadda’s experience of war, as it appears in the unpublished correspondence with his mother, Adele Lehr. Using mutual reticence and the son’s self-censorship as the main keys of interpretation, we consider a selection of 530 letters from June 1915 to February-March 1919, on the 1457 letters which constitute the whole correspondence. This paper retraces year by year the stages of his military corsum honorum, from the training as a voluntary cadet through the inaction in the rear, then the front, to the capture in Caporetto and the internment in German prison camps of Rastatt and Celle The detailed lists of equipment and food packages, as well as the contacts beyond the Alps (Lyons, Switzerlan) to bypass Italian restrictions, bring into focus the effects of the conflict on economic, social and relational dynamics of a Milanese matriarchal middle-high class family, where the mother is a teacher with a strong morality and great fervour for Risorgimento and her Austro-Hungarian origins.