Archaic Rituality and the Modern Novel: The Relic of the Chorus in Horcynus Orca

Abstract

This essay employs Ernesto de Martino’s concept of the “relic” to analyze Stefano D’Arrigo’s novel Horcynus Orca (1975), arguing that by revitalizing archaic narrative forms the novel challenges modern cultural structures and creates new meaning in the face of a perceived “end of the world.” After examining the intellectual context in which D’Arrigo’s novel takes shape—particularly the circle around the magazine Vie Nuove—the analysis focuses on a tragicomic funeral chant performed in the novel by the Femminotas. It shows how this archaic chorus, ineffective in postwar Italy, is “translated” into the modern novel by a narrator who is both participant and outsider. Thus, Horcynus Orca explores how art can actively replace defunct magical-ritual systems with new symbolic formations that respond to the altered needs of the present.