‘Intoxicated geographies’: sites of refraction and fragmentation in Scipio Slataper’s Il mio Carso and Hermann Hesse’s Der Steppenwolf

Abstract

Il mio Carso and Der Steppenwolf both portray drinking scenes that make their protagonists reconsider their standing in relation to an increasingly fragmented modern world. Using Hubbard‘s ‘intoxicated geographies’ as an interpretative hinge, this article charts the effects of this embodied experience on the two texts. In both, the drinking lens functions as a revelatory device which highlights the transcendent liminality of modernist consciousness in various ways. By blurring the boundaries of social interaction, muddling awareness of time, and complicating notions of consciousness, the two drinking scenes allow a widening of perception that demands an analogous narrative re-positioning in response.