«Scrivo with a deep distrust and a deeper faith». Sul bilinguismo di Beppe Fenoglio

The idea that Europe might fall into a new atrocious conflict was still far away when Beppe Fenoglio enrolled in high school in Alba, his hometown. In the heart of a fascist Italy, ever closer to the autarkic chimera and far from the English enemy, Fenoglio cultivated – in his own small way – a singular passion for the myth of the British Empire, which – in his imagination – «had to be so Nordic, so Protestant…». From assiduous reading to assiduous writing, the step is short. In fact, the use of the English language is not only a stylistic feature: the writer of Il partigiano Johnny uses it to approximate his Anglo-Saxon models in a process of narrative and lexical mimesis.