Dissipatio H.G.

Morselli's prose stands out for its great stylistic care and incisiveness that manages to capture the reader's attention, with a narrative structure that is not always conventional. Despite his death in 1973, his works have influenced subsequent authors and continue to be the subject of critical studies. His writing, which challenges conventions and plays with genres, has found resonance in contemporary literature, making him a figure of particular interest to scholars of twentieth-century Italian literature.

One of his best-known novels is certainly Dissipatio H.G., the last one written by Morselli, a few months before his death by suicide, which is the theme of the novel. The novel follows the reflections of a narrator who finds himself in a sort of existential void. The work begins with the description of a world in which human beings seem to have disappeared, leaving the protagonist to deal with a desolate and lonely reality.

The protagonist of Dissipatio H.G. decides to drown himself in a strange lake at the bottom of a cave, in the mountains. But at the last moment he changes his mind and goes back. Humanity, in that brief interval, has disappeared, evaporated. Everything else has remained intact. 

Thus, paradoxically, humanity is now represented by a single person who was on the verge of abandoning it and who, in any case, does not feel suited to representing anything; not even, at times, himself. Then a passionate monologue begins, against the backdrop of absolute solitude and a silence broken only by the occasional animal voice or the hum of machines that continue to function. This monologue soon turns into a dialogue with all the dead, held by a single living person who at times thinks he too is dead.