Author introduced great American writers to Fascist Italy
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| Cesare Pavese translated the works of many American novelists |
Cesare Pavese, the writer and literary critic who, through
his work as a translator, introduced Italy to the Irish novelist James Joyce
and a host of great American authors of the 20th century, was born
on this day in 1908 in Santo Stefano Belbo, a town in Piedmont about 60km from
Turin.
Pavese would become an acclaimed novelist after the Second
World War but was frustrated for many years by the strict censorship policies
of Italy’s Fascist government.
It is thought he devoted himself to translating progressive
English-language writers into Italian as the best way by which he could promote
the principles of freedom in which he believed.
Pavese’s translations would have given most Italians they
first opportunity to read writers such as Herman Melville, William Faulkner, Charles
Dickens, Gertrude Stein, John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos and Daniel Defoe, as
well as Joyce, who would ultimately spend many years living in Italy.
The son of Eugenio Pavese, an officer of the law courts in
Turin, Cesare had a fractured childhood. His father died when he was only six
and his mother, Consolina, is said to have shown him little
affection, as a result of which he grew up learning how to fend for himself.
He was born in Santo Stefano Belbo, situated in a picturesque
vine-growing area east of Alba in southern Piedmont, because his parents were staying
at their holiday home there when his mother went into Labour. As soon as he was old enough, he moved to
Turin and attended the lyceum – the Licio Classico Massimo d’Azeglio – where he
was taken under the wing of the Italian anti-Fascist intellectual Augusto
Monti.
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| Pavese hid in the hills outside Turin during the Second World War occupation of the city by German soldiers |
Monti was later imprisoned by the regime for his vociferous
opposition, a fate that would befall Pavese not long after he had left the
University of Turin, where he was mentored by Leone Ginzburg, husband of the
author Natalia Ginzburg.
He had begun an affair with Tina Pizzardo, a young Communist
he met at the sparsely-attended anti-Fascist meetings he used to frequent, and
agreed for her to use his address as somewhere to which she could have
correspondence delivered because her own movements were under
surveillance.
However, when the authorities intercepted letters from
Altiero Spinelli, a jailed anti-Fascist dissident, and found they were
addressed to Pavese’s apartment, he was arrested and sent to a prison at
Brancaleone in Calabria, almost 1,400km (870 miles) from Turin.
Pavese later wrote a book about his ordeal, although for
many years his work remained unpublished by his own choice, rather than it be
censored. When a volume of his poetry
was published during his incarceration, a number of poems were deleted by the
Fascist authorities.
On his return to Turin after a little more than a year in
jail, he found that Pizzardo had begun another relationship and countered his
sadness by throwing himself into his work, again mainly in translating. He became a close associate of Giulio Einaudi
– father of the pianist and composer Ludovico Einaudi and son of the politician
Luigi Einaudi – with whom he helped establish the Einaudi publishing house.
Natalia Ginzburg also worked there.
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| The young communist Tina Pizzardo, with whom Pavese had an affair |
Pavese was conscripted to fight in Mussolini’s Fascist army
but avoided front-line action because he suffered from asthma. Instead, he was
confined to a military hospital for six months.
In his absence, German troops occupied Turin and on
returning to civilian life when he was discharged on health grounds Pavese went
into hiding in the hills around Serralunga di Crea, near Casale Monferrato, where
he remained between 1943 and 1945.
Most of Pavese’s work, mainly short stories and novellas, was
published by Einaudi, appearing between the end of the Second World War and his
death. In that time he was a member of the Italian Communist Party and worked
on the party’s newspaper L’Unità.
The main character in many of Pavese’s stories was often a
loner, whose relationships with both men and women tended to be short-lived. The
stories are often bleak yet he was admired for the tautness of his prose, which
was favourably compared to that of Ernest Hemingway.
They tended to draw comparison with his own life. As well as
his affair with Pizzardo, whom he felt deserted him, he had a brief
relationship after the war with Constance Dowling, an American actress, but
that too failed and is seen to have been a contributory factor in his death at
the age of only 41.
It came at a moment when he appeared to be at the height of
his career, hailed as one of Italy’s greatest living writers.
Works such as La casa in collina (The House on the Hill) and
Il carcere (The Prison), which were published as a two-novella volume entitled Prima
che il gallo canti (Before the Cock Crows) and based in his experiences in
prison, were regarded as confirming his genius, as were Il Compagno (The
Comrade), Dialoghi con Leucò (Dialogues with Leucò) - philosophical dialogues
between classical Greek characters – and La luna e i falò (The Moon and the
Bonfires), which he dedicated to Dowling.
In 1950, he won the prestigious Strega Prize but two months
after receiving the honour he was found dead in an hotel room in Turin, having swallowed
an overdose of barbiturates. Entries in
his diary indicated that he had been profoundly depressed following his
break-up with Dowling, which he took as a sign that he would never find
happiness in marriage, or with other people.
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| The village of Santo Stefano Belbo |
Travel tip:
Pavese’s life is commemorated in several ways in Santo
Stefano Belbo, where there is a museum housed in the house his parents owned in
what is now Via Cesare Pavese, while the Cesare Pavese Foundation, which was
established in 1973 and has its headquarters in Piazza Confraternita off Via
Cavour, promotes not only the work of Pavese but encourages and supports other
writers.
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| A plaque marks where Cesare Pavese lived in Turin |
Travel tip:
In Turin, Pavese lived in the same building for 20 years on
the Via Alfonso Lamarmora, one of the elegant residential streets in the grid of
criss-crossing thoroughfares that characterises the centre of the city. Via Lamarmora links Corso Stati Uniti with Via
Sebastiano Caboto, bisecting the busy Corso Luigi Einaudi. There is a wall plaque marking the building that contained his apartment.