Returning to the same word, the same phrase, or the same construction, at the start of verses or of consecutive sentences (anaphora) or throughout the text, to give rhythm, emphasis, or insistence.
In One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand
Five imbeciles. One in each. Five imbeciles standing before you, as you see them from outside, in me, who am one and five like the house.
"Five imbeciles" returns at the start and in the middle of the sentence, and "One in each" insists on the count. The insistence puts the number at the center of the passage and makes the reader see the five, one at a time.
Or rather, this horror: the consciousness of madness, fresh and clear, gentlemen, fresh and clear as an April morning, and lucid and precise as a mirror.
Book IV: The first experiment, Vitangelo Moscarda, on what the first experiment would give him
You, not I, do you understand? In front of your wife, do you understand? You should be like that! And I, and he, and all of us, before the so-called madmen, like that!
I lost, lost forever, in the eyes of others, my reality and that of all things, Bibi! The moment I touch myself, I find I am missing.
Book V: The vital point, Vitangelo Moscarda, speaking to the dog Bibi in an empty lot
Stop it with your Gengè, which is not me, not me, not me! Enough of that puppet! I want what I want; and it will be done as I want it!
Book V: The vital point, Vitangelo Moscarda to Dida, after grabbing her by the wrists
I was becoming “one.” I. I, who now wanted myself this way. I, who now felt myself this way. At last. No longer a usurer (enough of that bank!): and no longer Gengè (enough of that puppet!).
That vital point that had felt itself wounded in me, when my wife laughed on hearing me say that I no longer wanted to be counted as a usurer in Richieri, was God, beyond any doubt: God, who had felt himself wounded in me, God, who in me could no longer bear that others, in Richieri, should count me as a usurer.
Ah, the one about the great current, Your Honor! You channeled it well into your affections, into the duties you imposed on yourself, into the habits you laid down; but then come the moments of flood, Your Honor, and the current overflows, overflows, and sweeps everything away. I know. Everything submerged, for me, Your Honor! I threw myself into it, and now I swim, I swim. And I am, if you only knew, already so far away! I can barely see you anymore.
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