A Brief Introduction to Vasta and Rorty

The Years of Lead were a period of Italian history that began on the cusp of the 1970’s and lasted until the late 1980’s. The years were marked by rampant terrorism and turmoil that came from both the left and the right. Although it is difficult to say exactly what caused the Years of Lead, they can be seen as a violent explosion of the tensions that could already be seen in 1968 in the student protests and the ‘hot autumn.’

Violence on the left was primarily organized by a large group of left-wing radicals known as the Brigate Rosse, or Red Brigades, and targeted representatives and fixtures of the Italian status quo. Violence on the right, however, was more sporadically organized and less cohesive.

Merriam Webster defines contingent: “Dependent on or conditioned by something else.” We can also think of this as conditionality, or every output being the product of some number of inputs. Rorty applies this concept to language in a rather poetic way, saying: “The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak" (Rorty 6).

“We are doomed to spend our conscious lives trying to escape from contingency rather than, like the strong poet, acknowledging and appropriating contingency” (Rorty 28).

In the beginning of the text, before the formation of his radical trio, Nimbus appears to be firmly situated in the seat of the philosopher. He demonstrates a strong attachment to an essentialist view of reality, at one point stating: "I was godless and knew everything. I had dominion: life was the fruit and I was its core.” (Vasta 41) Nimbus acts as if there is some intrinsic nature to reality that exists for him to understand. But this believe is exactly the kind that Rorty wants us to rid ourselves of.

Still in the earlier phases of the novel, Nimbus continues to embrace the position of the philospher by declaring himself as an enemy of irony. Nimbus tells us: “I didn’t like irony. In fact, I hated it… It was waging a daily war against ideology, devouring its head. In a few years time there'd be no ideology left at all. Irony would be our sole resource, our defeat, and our straightjacket.” (Vasta 22). This war between irony and ideology is in fact just conflict betweeen the philospher and the poet. The poet who embraces contingency is forced to embrace irony as well, and learns to use it as a tool of their own.

Although Nimbus seems at this point to be merely an embodiment of the philosopher—there is some poet within him, yet. Rorty describes the ability of the poet, saying: "If one could find distinctive words or forms for one's own distinctiveness - then one would have demonstrated that one was not a copy or a replica. One would have been as strong as any poet has ever been, which means having been as strong as any human being could possibly be." (Rorty 24) One day, upon finding a snail on the ground, Nimbus decides that the distinctive way for him to reach out to his romantic interest is by writing letters on the shells of snails, and forming them into words on the sidewalk for here to read. The response to one such communication is described by Nimbus who says:

She stepped aside, bent down, and looked at the one surviving word who, which was gradually breaking up and drifting resignedly away. The word didn’t ask and didn’t answer; it just was. She picked up the three shells and put them on her palm. Then she crouched down again and looked around. There must be a sender, she seemed to say to herself. An explanation, a meaning (Vasta 51).

In this moment, Nimbus has demonstrated at least a partial likeness to the poet—a likeness that only becomes more clear as the narrative continues.

As the three young protagonists begin to develop their non-verbal language, the alphamute, they improve upon their ability to embrace the contingency of language. Nimbus describes the use of the language, saying: "It’s a question of turning our bodies into ideograms. Choosing certain poses and assigning a meaning to them. By doing that we can create an alphabet and a grammar" (Vasta 122). I interpreted this in my paper, stating: "Again we see Nimbus and his friends creating their own meaning and telling their own story. Repositioning themselves within a greater narrative as the shapers and not the shaped" (Mager 6).

Having demonstrated that clear connections can be made between both Nimbus and the philosopher, and Nimbus and the poet, the logical next question is which one is he? The answer to this question may be rather unsatifying to some, but it remains the only appropriate conclusion to be drawn. Both the philospher and the poet can only be viewed as ideal types, and Nimbus is able to have characteristics from both, while being neither. This reality creates a conflict within Nimbus that may exist within all of us. "the tension between an effort to achieve self-creation by the recognition of contingency and an effort to achieve universality by the transcendence of contingency" (Rorty 25).