Simonetta Sanna: la letteratura tra tensione etica e impegno civile

This essay portrays a major contemporary germanist, Simonetta Sanna, whose criticism treats literature as an ethical practice and a form of civic engagement rather than as aesthetic self-enclosure. Maletta argues that Sanna’s criticism models literature as an ethical exercise—grounded in dialogue and self-responsibility—that resists conformism and transforms how we relate to others, even and especially through the figure of the adversary. Drawing on the idea of culture as self-awareness, Maletta asserts that Sanna extends this legacy through an interdisciplinary hermeneutics that joins close philological reading to psychoanalysis, depth psychology, sociology, anthropology, legal reflection, and political philosophy. Sanna’s work resists reductive labels and academic conformism by reopening canonical texts from within: her reading of Döblin reframes “Berlin Alexanderplatz” by foregrounding the ninth book as a decisive turning point that retroactively illuminates the whole, while “Wallenstein” is interpreted as an initiatory process of transformation rather than a mere historical novel. Central is Sanna’s notion of Übung: a disciplined exercise of consciousness that updates “know thyself” into “know yourself through the adversary,” exemplified by her work on Hans Keilsons novel “Der Tod des Widersachers”, where hatred is understood as projection and the enemy as an internalised “foreign land.” Studies on Nazi female perpetrators, on Heiner Müller’s Medea-Trilogy and Büchner’s “Dantons Tod” show how literature exposes ambivalence, power and violence while opening possibilities for personal and collective change in today’s fractured public sphere.