Uscir del mondo

Uscir del mondo is the novel’s recurring expression for escape from ordinary life, but it does not have one fixed meaning. In Massimo Alberti’s confession, it is a dream of withdrawing with Lelia Camin to a mountain solitude while continuing to serve others; in Lelia’s imagination, it is a refuge she has entertained since childhood, at times close to self-destruction but never simply identical with a settled intention to die. The phrase gathers their desires for freedom while exposing how difficult it is for either to separate inward escape from love, duty, and the claims of other people.

Meaning and Recurrence

The expression first acquires an explicit personal history through Lelia’s recollection of a thought that came to her at fourteen. She had cherished it as a consoling companion, then lost it in the years of her love for Andrea Trento; afterward it rose and receded again. Its recurrence matters: Uscir del mondo is not presented as a sudden impulse born only of one crisis, but as an old possibility that changes shape as Lelia’s circumstances change.

The phrase also connects Lelia’s private history to Massimo’s hopes. Both imagine departure from the constraints of their present lives, yet their versions of escape are not interchangeable. Massimo pictures a shared future beyond social and religious coercion; Lelia’s recurring thought can offer refuge without becoming a plan. The expression therefore holds open a tension between withdrawal as a dream of freedom and withdrawal as a danger.

Massimo’s Mountain Dream

As Massimo walks with Don Aurelio beyond the dark cottages of Lago, he finally tells his friend the course of his growing passion for Lelia. He describes the impression made by her photograph while Andrea was still alive, his first meeting with her, the changing and puzzling force of her conduct, and the depths he believes he glimpses in her. He also confesses his remorse and the increasing hold of the passion on his days and nights.

Within that confession, Uscir del mondo becomes a concrete imagined life: Massimo would forget the world and live with Lelia in a mountain solitude, working as a doctor, serving people, and practising religion with the quiet liberty of a soul beyond the reach of despotism. His fantasy is not mere isolation. It combines intimacy, useful work, and religious practice, setting freedom of conscience against the coercive authority he fears. The imagined retreat thus offers a positive way of living as well as an escape from what constrains him.

The setting of his confession sharpens the contrast between inward longing and outward religious life. At the church of Sant’Ubaldo, Don Aurelio enters to pray, while Massimo follows but cannot pray: his thoughts return to Lelia and to the morning’s music. Her performance of Schumann’s Aveu and the distant dolomite peak he watched from the gallery have become part of the same remembered moment. The scene gives his dream an aesthetic image of elevation and distance, but it does not resolve the conflict between passion and religious devotion.

Lelia’s Night in the Park

Lelia’s most extended encounter with the thought comes after she leaves the villa and garden, once she believes Marcello Trento and Massimo have retired to their rooms. She judges Massimo as a man who has arrived from Milan with a wealthy marriage scheme, but cannot take refuge with either biological parent: she regards her father’s companion as an impossible household and fears being maintained by her mother with Marcello’s money. With ordinary shelter seeming unavailable, the old thought returns.

The narration carefully distinguishes the thought from a firm intention. Even when Lelia had previously closed the windows of a room filled with lilies and tuberoses, she had not believed she would die; on waking with her body heavy and her mouth and throat saturated with the flowers’ scent, she rushed to open a window. Now, as she makes her way toward the deep pond in Parco di Velo, she still has no definite resolve. The reassurance that she has a refuge ready, and can tell herself that she may use it when she wishes, is enough for the moment—though her hand trembles as she opens the gate.

Once inside the park, the possibility of escape changes register. Lelia passes through the quiet grounds and lies on freshly cut grass beneath the dark sky. The night’s maternal stillness and the warmth and fragrance of the earth soften the resistance her pride has kept against love. She tears up a handful of grass and bites it. Later she follows the sound of a stream among the acacias and begins to undress, stopping when she notices what she is doing; she tests the cold water with her hand and finds the bottom only two palms deep. These actions bring her close to the water without establishing a completed attempt at death. The scene instead makes the impulse bodily and uncertain, suspended between a wish to vanish and a sensuous surrender to the surrounding night.

Escape and Its Limits

The novel later places Lelia in Valsolda, where her hope of remaining with Massimo confronts practical and social limits. Donna Fedele insists that Lelia cannot stay there and proposes taking her away; Lelia fears returning to Velo and asks instead for the possibility of staying with Donna Fedele’s cousin in Santhià. After discussion, they arrange a journey to Turin and onward to Santhià, subject to the doctor’s permission for Donna Fedele to travel. Lelia’s desire to get away has therefore become actual flight and a search for safety, but it still depends on other people’s decisions and on finding a permissible place to stay.

Across these episodes, Uscir del mondo names a pressure rather than a single destination. For Massimo, escape takes the form of a shared, purposeful life beyond despotism; for Lelia, it shifts from childhood consolation to a dangerous possibility in the park, then toward flight from circumstances she cannot bear. The contrast keeps the expression from serving as a simple synonym for suicide: the novel shows its proximity to death while also binding it to love, freedom, refuge, and the unresolved effort to remain in the world on different terms.