Zenobia: la città invisibile. Zanotti, Calvino e le eterotopie.

Paolo Zanotti, an appreciated scholar of the romance tradition and a brilliant reader of Calvino, was also (and above all) a storyteller. This contribution focuses on first posthumous novel, Il testamento Disney, to show how he managed to unfold his erudition on the page, and to transfigure it by counting on an his imaginative ability and a refined technique. This paper will state accurate references to his contemporary essays, in order to identify the theoretical coordinates within which the novel should be framed: alongside the aforementioned Calvino, also Celati, Jameson, Auden, as well as his beloved Stevenson could be named. Just like his favourite writer Cortázar, Zanotti narrates the digressions of a gang of funny and unkempt flâneurs who try to enchant a city that pushed them to the fringe. To achieve it, they resort to any means, through continuous apparitions, nostalgia, ecstasy, rituals, coincidences and interference from other dimensions. Thus, this essay aims to emphasize Zanotti's visionary ability, worthy of the best fantastic tradition: like Ariosto invoked by Calvino in the face of the cold Machiavelli, Zanotti knows how to hover above the reality, and to glimpse a lively world in a desolate desert. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]