Dissipatio H. G. (1977)

Dissipatio H. G. is a post-apocalyptic novel by Italian writer Guido Morselli, written in 1973 but published in 1977, four years after his suicide, by Adelphi. It was first translated into English by Frederika Randall for NYRB Classics in 2020.

It follows an unnamed narrator in a fictional European country roughly resembling Switzerland, who attempts suicide by drowning in a lake in a mountain cave on the evening of his 40th birthday. When the attempt fails, he leaves the cave and slowly discovers that the entire population of the Earth has disappeared, leaving behind no trace of themselves, but nature and their creations remain.

As Morselli's final work before his suicide, it has frequently been interpreted as an autobiographical work, though the exact extent to which this is true is debated. The title is an allusion to an alleged work by the philosopher Iamblichus, though its existence is also uncertain; Randall believed that the reference was invented by Morselli.

Plot

Dissipatio H. G. begins in medias res, with the unnamed narrator walking in the empty streets of Chrysopolis, a fictional city-state and banking center located somewhere in a mountainous region of Europe. He had just visited the office of his previous employer, a newspaper, where the machinery and electronics were still active, but none of the people were present.

As he returns home, he explains what caused the disappearance, which he calls "the Event". Roughly two weeks earlier, on the night between June 1 and 2 he attempted to commit suicide. He chose the specific date so that he would die before he turned 40 on the 2nd. He gets the idea to drown himself in a nearby cave from a conversation with his neighbor, so that he would initially be reported missing, not dead. While contemplating the quality of the Spanish brandy he brought with him he finds himself unable to commit to the act and exits the cave. On his way out, he hits his head on a rock, which stuns him, as a roar of thunder goes by. He continues home, briefly stopping at a payphone to call a hotline; although he is unable to connect to a human, the phone line is still connected. When he arrives at home, he puts a gun to his mouth and pulls the trigger twice, which fails to fire, before falling asleep.

Later, he heads into the local village to look for a few friends who had said they would arrive for his birthday. He explores but finds nobody, although there are still running cars in the street. He takes one and heads to Chrysopolis, where the story began. He calls international numbers from the phone book to see if the phenomenon was local. When this fails, he heads to the airport, but no planes arrive. He heads home, but stops at his ex-girlfriend's house, believing that she may be there.

When he returns home, his sanity begins to decay, and he recalls his former psychiatrist, Doctor Karpinsky, who he considered to be his only friend. Karpinsky had died two years after the narrator left his custody, killed in a fight between asylum inmates. The narrator continues the tasks necessary for staying alive while musing philosophically about his situation, observing how nature is reclaiming the land from humanity. He builds a cenotaph of mannequins in a mall and wonders why he is the only one to have survived. Later in a hotel room he finds a letter written by a man seemingly realizing the extinction of humanity was upcoming on the night of June 1.

When passing a church, he is horrified to realize that all of the skulls and bodies have disappeared from the display that he had seen on his way to the cave, realizing that truly all remnants of humanity have disappeared. After multiple days catatonic from fear, he resolves to visit a mountainous mining town, to see if those in caves survived, but nobody is there. While calling international numbers, he hallucinates a call with Karpinsky, who says he can help him if he meets him. The narrator was not informed of where, so he resolves to visit synagogues, believing he was Jewish. He later leaves his village for the city to continue his search. He begins living in a Chrysopolis restaurant, wandering the city while waiting for Karpinsky to arrive, with a pack of Gauloises in his pocket for him.

Background

Dissipatio H. G. was written by Guido Morselli in 1973; the manuscript was soon rejected, and he killed himself that same year. He had previously had two non-fiction books published, but none of his novels. The Communist had been set to be published by Rizzoli Libri, but was cancelled late in the process due to problems within the company unrelated to his book. At his death, he left rejection letters from failed manuscript submissions on his desk, along with a note saying "I bear no grudges".

Dissipatio H. G. was first published in Italy in 1977 by Adelphi Edizioni, four years after Morselli's death. Frederika Randall, who had previously translated his novel The Communist, also made the first English translation of Dissipatio H. G.; she died in May 2020, several months after finishing it, and it was released in December 2020 by NYRB Classics.

Analysis

Dissipatio H. G. takes place in an "allegorical terrain" roughly equivalent to Switzerland, with Chrysopolis standing in for Zurich. Morselli himself spent much of the last 20 years of his life in relative isolation on a plot of land in Lombardy, near the border with Switzerland. Although the original text was written in Italian, it was distanced from taking place in Italy by referring to characters as Italian, as well as acknowledging that Karpinsky could not speak it.