Italo Svevo

Life is neither ugly nor beautiful, but it's original!

Aron Hector Schmitz (or Ettore Schmitz; December 19, 1861 – September 13, 1928), better known by his pseudonym Italo Svevo, was a Triestine businessman and writer, best known for his novel La coscienzia di Zeno. He was of Austro-Hungarian citizenship for the greater part of his life, but his works were written in Italian.

Sourced

La coscienza di Zeno (1923)

Italian quotations are cited from Cristina Benussi (ed.) La coscienzia di Zeno (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2004); English quotations from William Weaver (trans.) Zeno's Conscience (London: Penguin, 2002). The book has also been translated under the title Confessions of Zeno.

• È un modo comodo di vivere quello di credersi grande di una grandezza latente.
  • It is comfortable to live in the belief that you are great, though your greatness is latent.
  • P. 10; p. 12.

• La malattia è una convinzione ed io nacqui con quella convinzione.
  • Disease is a conviction, and I was born with that conviction.
  • P. 11; p. 14.

• L'amore sano è quello che abbraccia una donna sola e intera, compreso il suo carattere e la sua intelligenza.
  • Healthy love is the love that embraces a single, whole woman, including her character and her intelligence.
  • P. 14; p. 16.

• Un'immoralità predicata è più punibile di un'azione immorale. Si arriva all'assassinio per amore o per odio; alla propaganda dell'assassinio solo per malvagità.
  • A preached immorality is more to be punished than an immoral action. You arrive at murder through love or through hate; you propogandize murder only through wickedness.
  • P. 28; p. 34.

• Quando si muore si ha ben altro da fare che di pensare alla morte.
  • When a man dies, he has too many other worries to allow any thinking about death.
  • P. 45; p. 55.

• Nella mente di un giovine di famiglia borghese il concetto di vita umana s'associa a quello della carriera e nella prima gioventù la carriera è quella di Napoleone I.
  • In the mind of a young man from a middle-class family, the concept of human life is associated with that of a career, and in early youth the career is that of Napoleon I.
  • P. 51; p. 61.

• Era dispostissimo ad istruirmi, ed anzi annotò di propria mano nel mio libretto tre comandamenti ch'egli riteneva bastassero per far prosperare qualunque ditta: 1. Non occorre saper lavorare, ma chi non sa far lavorare gli altri perisce. 2. Non c'è che un solo grande rimorso, quello di non aver saputo fare il proprio interesse. 3. In affari la teoria è utilissima, ma è adoperabile solo quando l'affare è stato liquidato.
  • He was more than willing to instruct me, and in my notebook he actually wrote in his own hand the three commandments he considered sufficient to make any firm prosper: 1. There’s no need for a man to know how to work, but if he doesn't know how to make others work, he is doomed. (2) There is only one great regret: not having acted in one's own best interest. (3) In business, theory is useful, but it can be utilized only after the deal has been made.
  • P. 52; p. 63.

• Il vino è un grande pericolo specie perché non porta a galla la verità. Tutt'altro che la verità anzi: rivela dell'individuo specialmente la storia passata e dimenticata e non la sua attuale volontà; getta capricciosamente alla luce anche tutte le ideucce con le quali in epoca più o meno recente ci si baloccò e che si è dimenticate.
  • Wine is a great danger, especially because it doesn't bring truth to the surface. Anything but the truth, indeed: it reveals especially the past and forgotten history of the individual rather than his present wish; it capriciously flings into the light also all the half-baked ideas with which in a more or less recent period one has toyed and then forgotten.
  • P. 194; p. 232.

• La vita non è né brutta né bella, ma è originale!
  • Life is neither ugly nor beautiful, but it's original!
  • P. 275; p. 330.

• È così che a forza di correr dietro a quelle immagini, io le raggiunsi. Ora so di averle inventate. Ma inventare è una creazione, non già una menzogna.
  • Thus, after pursuing those images, I overtook them. Now I know that I invented them. But inventing is a creation, not a lie.
  • P. 337; p. 404.

• La vita attuale è inquinata alle radici. L'uomo s'è messo al posto degli alberi e delle bestie ed ha inquinata l'aria, ha impedito il libero spazio. Può avvenire di peggio. Il triste e attivo animale potrebbe scoprire e mettere al proprio servizio delle altre forze. V'è una minaccia di questo genere in aria. Ne seguirà una grande chiarezza... nel numero degli uomini. Ogni metro quadrato sarà occupato da un uomo. Chi ci guarirà dalla mancanza di aria e di spazio?
  • Present-day life is polluted at the roots. Man has put himself in the place of trees and animals and has polluted the air, has blocked free space. Worse can happen. The sad and active animal could discover other forces and press them into his service. There is a threat of this kind in the air. It will be followed by a great gain…in the number of humans. Every square meter will be occupied by a man. Who will cure us of the lack of air and of space?
  • P. 364; p. 436.

Criticism

• You might with advantage take out your map of modern literature and mark on it the name of Italo Svevo…for Svevo and his novel, Confessions of Zeno…will henceforth be on other people's maps, and it is well that the atlases of the enlightened should agree.
  • Arnold Bennett (ed. Andrew Mylett) The Evening Standard Years (London: Chatto & Windus, 1974) pp. 357-8.

• Zeno is one of the comic masterpieces of the century; as Svevo had previously used Flaubert more intelligently than any Italian before him, here he uses Freud in a way that no Italian has done since.
  • Martin Seymour-Smith Guide to Modern World Literature (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975) vol. 3, p. 23.

• A novelist who ranks with Proust, Kafka, Musil and his friend James Joyce as one of the enduring pillars of Modernism.
  • Paul Bailey, The Independent, September 24, 1999. [1].

• The great modern novel of the comic-pathetic illusion of freedom is Confessions of Zeno.
  • James Wood in London Review of Books, January 3, 2002. [2].

• Svevo’s Zeno, with his complicated relationship with psychoanalysis, is an unforgettable embodiment of the situation of the 20th century humans who have been persuaded by ideologies that they should not listen to [the moral compass of] conscience.
  They may believe they are very modern and sophisticated, but in the end they are not able to impose order on the chaos of consciousness and their lives end up in moral bankruptcy.
  …
  Zeno lives in an era of turmoil, and ultimately does not succeed in recovering his conscience. However, he has his opportunities to understand that, notwithstanding what the psychoanalyst tells him, only [the moral compass of] conscience can impose the needed order to what is otherwise a chaotic flow of disconnected pieces of consciousness. These opportunities come when he is confronted with suffering and the world’s injustice, although neither he nor the other main characters in the novel profit of them.
  • Massimo Introvigne, “Zeno’s Conscience” and the Conscience of Tai Ji Men, Bitter Winter, April 4, 2022

External links

• Italo Svevo at Italian Wikisource