La narrazione dell’Oriente e la svolta letteraria di Cristina Trivulzio Belgiojoso: il testo-laboratorio dei "Souvenirs dans l’exil"

This article analyzes Cristina Trivulzio Belgiojoso’s literary turning-point by considering "Souvenirs dans l’exil" (1850) as the transitional book representing a fundamental shift in the author’s writing process. Actually, this book, which is culled from a collection of letters that the writer sent while in exile to her French friend, Caroline Jaubert, reveals a hybrid writing characterized by a contamination of genres within the formal frame of private letters. In light of this internal architecture, "Souvenirs dans l’exil" can be read as the laboratory-book that manifestly shows to the reader her work-in-progress towards narrative writing. As a result of the analysis of the structure of the book, it becomes evident that, for the writer, the act of narrating itself is subjected to the colloquy with an absent reader who, before being identified with an impersonal readership, should be recognized in the addressees of her private letters. In essence, it is through her epistolary writing that the author becomes accustomed to narrating to someone who, finally, becomes the public readership. This passage from the private dimension of the letter to the public one of the narrative book, which begins with the Oriental exile, is simultaneous to the Eastern re-location of the writer and her narration of the Orient, which plays a relevant part in the literary writing of Cristina Trivulzio. Even though the financial constraints of the exile and the forced distance from political activism likely facilitated the process of the literary writing tout court, it is her encounter with the 'monde nouveau' of the Orient, here analyzed through her first impressions in "Souvenirs dans l’exil", that is most influential. Finally, the newness of this Oriental world, which the writer investigates autonomously and partially beyond the Orientalist canon, brings her to adopt a new expressive register, together with a fresh awareness of her own identity as author.