Three Circles of Light: Fiction, Memoir, or Both?
Three Circles of Light, di Donato’s third and final novel with Paul
di Alba as the main character, focuses on the years before Geremio’s
death. Published in 1960, it was
virtually unknown to literary scholars, garnering many fewer reviews than Christ
in Concrete. Di Donato’s
disappearance from the literary world for nearly 20 years—the time between Christ
in Concrete in 1939 and This Woman in 1958—hurt his reputation as a
highly regarded author of fiction.
Also, the “flood of negative reviews” (Gardaphe, Italian 73) that
were written about This Woman caused his reputation to sink even lower
and di Donato to disappear from the literary scene quickly, before Three
Circles of Light was even published.
Yet in more recent critical reviews of Three Circles of Light, the
book has been deemed much more valuable than initially thought. Matthew Diomede, a di Donato scholar, states that Three Circles of Light is
“vital in the corpus of DiDonato’s literature” (96). Louise Napolitano commended di Donato’s vivid descriptions of
“the dynamics of tenement life in little Italy; the daily lives of the
immigrants and their children; their folklore and mores concerning men, women,
children, virginity, marriage, marital infidelity, god, sin, religion, fate,
and job; and their response to such historic events as World War I and
Prohibition” (8). Finally, Michael
Esposito writes that “a closer look at Three Circles of Light [. . .]
demonstrates the cultural and historical accuracy and significance of di
Donato’s autobiographical works” (184).
All of these reviews of Three Circles of Light, although
complimentary, do not detail the book’s narrative style. A thorough discussion of Three Circles of
Light is necessary for an understanding of how the novel was been deemed a
failure while Christ in Concrete was largely thought of as a success.
In his introduction to Christ in Concrete, Fred Gardaphe describes
the writing style of Three Circles of Light by saying that it is told in
“episodic fashion” (xvii). Michael
Esposito explains that Three Circles of Light is a “loose collection of
incidents rather than a sustained narrative” (184). Both of these claims are true.
Three Circles of Light seems to go from start to finish without
much connecting thread. Although there
are a few major themes that di Donato is successful in conveying to the reader,
the novel does not have a strong plot which holds these themes together, like
most novels of fiction do. In this
respect, it is not as strong as Christ in Concrete as a work of
narrative art. However, because of its
many historical truths about Italian Americans living in New York City and the
suburb of Hoboken, NJ, Three Circles of Light reads much like a
memoir. This novel could be considered
somewhere in between Jerre Mangione’s Mount Allegro and di Donato’s own
novel Christ in Concrete. Mount
Allegro is an intriguing memoir of Italian American life in Rochester, NY,
and was published by Mangione in 1942.
It is widely regarded as the leading memoir in the Italian American
literary canon for its accurate depiction of growing up as an Italian American.
The title, Three Circles of Light, makes reference to the three
issues surrounding Paul’s life and the ways by which he makes decisions. All three of these systems—family, religion,
and work—are written about just as profusely in Christ in Concrete as
they are in Three Circles of Light.
What we will also see is that these ways are discussed quite abundantly
in Mangione’s Mount Allegro as well, further signifying their importance
in the Italian American experience.
Family, religion, and work will be the means of comparing and
contrasting of these three books.
All three works deal with the connection of the protagonist—Paul in Three
Circles of Light and Christ in Concrete, and Jerre in Mount
Allegro—to his family, and the responsibilities of these relations. In Christ in Concrete, di Donato
describes the burden placed upon Paul’s shoulders when Geremio, his father,
dies in a horrible bricklaying accident:
And earth to Paul became flesh
of dirt, and burial deep was cold rank to his heart. He carried his father’s life, and every granule of earth that
planted his father tighter beneath the footsteps of the living, he felt upon
himself…earth on his body—earth suffocating his mouth and earth crushing his
soul. Earth was a terrible thing, a
solid dead-live sea of clay and stems, a brown foundation vastness hysterically
firm. And now a still man, dignified by
death, was oppressed into its womb of soil.
The damp rose from the mud and up Paul’s straight thin limbs (Christ
30).
The prose in this passage is poetic, containing long, flowing
passages. It has the strong imagery of
Geremio’s body rising through the earth and into Paul, transferring the
responsibility to Paul of supporting the family. Di Donato does not just say, “Geremio is dead and so Paul has to
support the family.” He instead decides
to convey that message through strong imagery and poetic prose, as exemplified
in this passage.
This poetic passage can be contrasted with the more journalistic—although
it is a more involved, narrative journalism—prose of Mount Allegro, as
Mangione describes his family’s reaction to him going off to college:
When I broke the news that I
was going to an out-of-town university – Syracuse – my relatives were plainly
horrified. Could it be that I was
becoming a calloused American? The idea
that I could bear to leave them behind offended some of them. They began to regard me as a heretic. A good Sicilian son stuck near his family;
the only time he left it was to marry, and even then he lived close by so that
he could see his relatives often. Life,
after all, was being with each other.
You never left your flesh and blood of your own free will. You left only when it was impossible to earn
a living near them, or when you died (227).
Now, where does Three Circles of Light fit into all of this? In the following passage, which is part of
the climax of the novel and near its conclusion, Paul speaks of his connection
to his father and the responsibilities that face him in the future:
As I stared into the night, I
saw a trowel in my hand, and wall after wall to lay up. Before me was Father, silent in his coffin,
and Grazia La Cafone trampling my BB rifle, radio and Father’s guitar [. . .].
I was no child (di Donato, Three
188-189).
Clearly there are elements of the journalistic style of Mount Allegro
in this passage from Three Circles of Light. The sentences are short, distinct, and grammatically acceptable,
unlike much of the long, flowing passages from Christ in Concrete. His descriptions of the trowel, his Father,
and Grazia are clear, but not particularly imaginative or creative. However, there is some strong imagery in
this passage which can be connected to Christ in Concrete. Although the images in the passage from Three
Circles of Light—that of the trowel, his Father, and the trampled gun,
radio and guitar—are not expanded in any further poetic detail, they still
suggest a sense of Paul’s responsibility to become a man and support his
family. This imagery from Three
Circles of Light is similar to that described in the passage from Christ
in Concrete, where Geremio’s dead body is carried into Paul through the
earth. The two styles in these
passages, however, are much different.
While the imagery in Three Circles of Light is realistic and
journalistic, the imagery in Christ in Concrete is surrealistic and
poetic.
Passages on religion in these three books also display a range of prose
styles. In Christ in Concrete,
di Donato shows the reader Annunziata’s desperate attempt to reconcile Paul
with his faith:
Silent he returned. Silent he remained. And a trembling came to Annunziata. If only he would speak. But he just looked and listened. For a few Sundays she had waited for him to
go to mass. He would turn his head and
stay reading the newspapers [. . .].
That you are not to
mass—Dio—understands—for I know he wants for you to rest on the Sabbath
morn—Son son, seek eternally His divine love…and sustenance…seek Him…” (Christ
227-228).
Notice how di Donato slips from the third-person omniscient narrator to the
first-person narration from Annunziata’s point-of-view, strengthening the
emotional effect this passage has on the reader, and to identify more easily
with Annunziata. Di Donato writes this
passage in a style which would normally be deemed grammatically
unacceptable. He begins sentences with
the words “and” and “but,” and uses sentence fragments. He is free to do this because he is writing
such poetic prose, which can free him from the restraints of grammar. Now, contrast this with a religious passage
from Mount Allegro, where Mangione describes his parents’ religion and
the ritual of Sunday school:
My mother and father were on
such intimate terms with God that they never felt compelled to attend church,
except when a relative was baptized, married, or died with enough money to have
a Mass sung over him. But every Sunday
morning punctually and with unshakable resolution my mother packed us off to
church, admonishing us, when she made her last-minute inspection of ears and
necks, to remember everything that the priest said so that we could repeat it
to her on our return (67).
Mangione explains his family’s religion in a humorous and endearing way,
but one which is journalistic. It
contains correct grammar and perfectly constructed sentences; they are of the
perfect journalistic length. In the
following passage from Three Circles of Light, di Donato describes how
one of the town churches was built.
Notice how the prose is closer to that in Mount Allegro than it
is to that in Christ in Concrete:
We dismantled the frame church
and started building anew in the spring of 1915. Padre Onorio celebrated Mass under a tree on the site where
Father had staked out lines and grades for the digging of the foundation. After Holy Communion, Padre Onorio blessed a
pick—that Father had pilfered from his job—and struck ground. The foundation presented a problem: the area
of the church-to-rise was layered with solid rock (Three 31-32).
We can see how close this passage is to the one in Mount Allegro. The sentence structure is similar, and the
grammar is acceptable. The tone of the
passage is clear-cut and basic; di Donato tells us what happened without any
particularly poetic imagery or word choice.
The result is nonetheless powerful.
We get a good picture of the church being built by Geremio and Padre
Onorio giving his blessing, and understand the community involved in such a
project. Yet, as a piece of fiction, it
lacks the poetry that the passage in Christ in Concrete displays so
beautifully.
Finally, the idea of work is present in all three books and sheds light on
the subject in varying ways. The
passage in Christ in Concrete describes the death of Geremio during his
bricklaying accident, as he is being buried alive in concrete:
He paused exhausted. His genitals convulsed. The cold steel rod upon which they were
impaled froze his spine. He shouted
louder and louder. “Save me! I am hurt badly! I can be saved I can—save me before it’s too late!” But the cries went no farther than his own
ears. The icy wet concrete reached his
chin. His heart appalled. “In a few seconds I will be entombed. If I can only breathe, they will reach
me. Surely, they will!” His face was quickly covered, its flesh
yielding to the solid sharp-cut stones.
“Air! Air!” screamed his lungs
as he was completely sealed. Savagely
he bit into the wooden form pressed upon his mouth. An eighth of an inch of its surface splintered off. Oh, if he could only hold out long enough to
bite even the smallest hole through to air!
He must! There can be no other
way! He must! There can be no other way!
He is responsible! He cannot
leave them like this! He didn’t want to
die! This could not be the answer to
life! He had bitten halfway through
when his teeth snapped off to the gums in the uneven conflict. The pressure of the concrete was such, and
its effectiveness so thorough, that the wooden splinters, stumps of teeth, and
blood never left the choking mouth (Christ 16-17)
Di Donato uses a number of literary techniques through this passage, making
it much more significant in terms of fictive art. We hear Geremio talking, as well as his thought processes, all
within his stream-of-consciousness, as he slips slowly towards death. Di Donato’s descriptions of Geremio’s
physical torture—his genitals “convulsing,” his teeth snapping “off to the
gums”—are written in such a way to make the reader cringe. In essence, this passage informs and engages
the reader emotionally. Not only can
the reader see the concrete pouring in on Geremio, burying him alive, but the
reader can also identify with Geremio’s pain.
The way di Donato writes this passage, we feel as though we are the ones
being buried alive. So when Geremio’s
teeth snap off, and he chokes on his own blood, we tighten our jaws in recoil
and imagine this happening to us.
Compare Christ in Concrete’s death scene to the one in Three
Circles of Light, which has a much more standard style of prose:
The edifice upon which Father
was laying brick collapsed. The
building hated Father, hated Annunziata and her children. The many floors and walls threw themselves
vengefully upon Father and crushed him.
That Good Friday, Father, against his wishes and our wishes, became my
very own Christ in concrete. The
huntress Death stalks the living, and springs victoriously (Three 176).
Although there is definitely some feeling coming through in the passage
from Three Circles of Light—the mention of Paul’s “own Christ in
concrete” and the “huntress Death” are good examples—it does not reach the
poetic and emotional heights that the previous passage from Christ in
Concrete takes us to. In Christ
in Concrete, di Donato gives us a second-by-second description of Geremio
being buried alive in concrete, as well as his thoughts during the whole
process. In Three Circles of Light,
di Donato merely explains what happened: “The edifice upon which Father was
laying brick collapsed.” The style of
this sentence is very journalistic, and the reader can imagine a reporter
describing the accident and saying, “The edifice upon which the workers were
laying brick collapsed.” Without the
long, flowing sentences, the stream-of-consciousness prose, and the identification
with Geremio that Christ in Concrete uses throughout its passage about
Geremio’s death, the passage from Three Circles of Light reads more
like a memoir, without as much emotion
involved. Obviously, di Donato could
not have published the same scene about Geremio’s death in Three Circles of
Light that he did in Christ in Concrete. However, he could have made the prose elegiac and lyrical, thus
making the reader more emotionally involved in the scene.
Compare this passage from Three Circles of Light with the following
from Mount Allegro, and notice how similar Mangione’s style is when
talking about his career expectations in a Sicilian family:
It was different with
sons. They had the world before
them. Not the kitchen. In a country like l’America, which
had la Democrazia, they could go to high school and then to college with
a little sacrifice on the part of the parents – and emerge a lawyer or a
doctor. Dottore, Avvocato –
magic words to any Sicilian. All other
professions seemed insignificant to them.
The dottori and the avvocati were the men most respected
in their homelands – and they were the ones who made the most money (219).
Notice how Mangione tells the facts as they are, much like di Donato does
in Three Circles of Light. In
fact, Mangione is even more experimental with his prose than di Donato is in Three
Circles of Light. Mangione mixes
Italian words into the standard English prose, thus signaling the audience the
importance of these Italian words in his Sicilian family.
Three Circles of Light is a valuable piece of literature to read for
its accurate historical descriptions of life in Hoboken, NJ, at the early part
of the 20th century. It
displays a good sense of being Italian American at this place and time. In this respect, Three Circles of Light is similar to Mangione’s Mount
Allegro, which did the same for Rochester, NY, what di Donato did for
Hoboken, NJ. As a piece of artistic
fiction, Three Circles of Light
does not attain the quality in narrative, dialogue, and experimentation that Christ in Concrete does.
However, the novel powerfully uses its journalistic qualities which bear
truth to a particular place and time, making it an important work for any
student of di Donato or American literature.