Italian Literature in Limbo

...Unfortunately, this is where the American "tough" influence has wrought such damage...

...Surely, this sort of atmosphere writing has been overdone, and new forms of literary expression must be found to describe the plight of the Italian masses in the age of the H-bomb and mass culture...

...As a poet and critic, Pavese, who probably would have achieved world fame had he been alive today, must occupy an important place in any survey of the achievements of the postwar writers, though his critically introspective approach had, by the time of his death, led him no farther toward what he was searching for intellectually than his Communism had satisfied his political urges...

...His output includes many short stories, a few of which concern his upbringing in a Jesuit school...

...It sounds, and indeed is, simple, but it is told with Italian maturity and sophistication and flair for humor and wit, and becomes in Soldati's hands a little masterpiece worthy of a place in the most distinguished anthology of short stories...

...In Italy, although books are cheaper than in the United States and England, they still represent something of a luxury for the middle class, the real stronghold of Italian cultural life...

...Why haven't the postwar Italian writers fulfilled the expectations of those who had predicted a new literary renaissance...

...Carlo Levi, whose work is well-known outside of Italy, is or was a fiercely self-conscious exponent of the Action party, the noble but Utopian movement which, so many people thought immediately after the war, would point the way toward the reconstruction of Italian society on the basis of social and economic justice...

...One of his stories, "The Green Jacket," reveals how a famous conductor, in hiding during the war, was concealed by some monks...

...Or should it be Milan because it is the home of many of Italy's leading poets...

...There must be an end somewhere to atmosphere writing about Italian peasants and their problems—a form of writing which began with Silone and Levi almost as a social protest against the conditions they were describing, but which has now become an art form...

...His use of language, the interpolation of Roman dialect in varied, spontaneous dialogue, makes his novel the most exciting experiment in years...

...Here is not one country but four or five...

...Among the other younger writers should be mentioned Georgio Bassani, whose short stories ("Plague on the Via Maz-zini" appeared in Commentary) show considerable talent and an obvious derivation from the style and texture of Henry James...

...Any survey of present-day Italian writing would not be complete if it failed to mention another young writer of promise—Pier Paolo Pasolini...

...One of the few generalizations which can be made with any degree of safety concerns the political outlook of young writers...

...Though it sounds a curious thing to say, about Italy of all countries, the role of the writer is a discouraging one today...

...The slice-of-life technique is only effective if it is restricted to one particular aspect such as the sexual impulse, or—an obsession with postwar Italian writers—the adolescent's problems of adapting himself to society...

...It seems, rather like the ending of one of the novelle which is a traditional Italian literary form, to have petered out without any successor having arrived on the scene...

...The French tradition of literary movements and groups is completely lacking...

...Bassani is one of the editors of Botteghe Oscure, the tri-lingual review published every six months in Rome which, with a great deal of imagination, gives a much needed opportunity to young writers and poets to get their work into print...

...Perhaps out of this quest will come a literature worthy of their country's past achievements in the arts...

...In Italy there are only two categories of writers: good writers and, immediately below them, the mediocre or bad writers...

...His major book, The Tenant Farm, is a remarkable piece of work...

...To add to the difficulties of Italian writers is the shifting political, economic and social environment...

...Perhaps the middle class might be persuaded to read more if they felt the nation growing in its literature, and if they met in the new novels the Italian, rather than the Milanese, the Sicilian or the Roman...

...Their intellectualism seems to breed only in a somewhat rarified atmosphere, instead of being, as in France, an almost continuous growth...

...Perhaps this explains why so many writers supplement their income by working for the mass media or by pursuing another career...

...Unlike England, for example, there is no category of writers in Italy who produce the kind of light literature—popular novels, easy biographies or thrillers— that people enjoy reading for diversion...

...His work shows a wider conception of art and a greater maturity of language than many of his contemporaries...

...Is Florence the present literary capital of Italy because it is there that II Ponte, the most enlightened magazine in the country, is produced...

...After the war, the great conductor returns to his rostrum one night, only to find the face of the musician looking up at him from the orchestra pit...

...Given all the difficulties, of which the lack of a receptive public is the major one, it appears likely that they will continue their quest for some time...

...The postwar literary revival was indeed hopeful...

...The younger literary generation in Italy is—and in many ways they are in this no different from their contemporaries in other countries— still searching for a way out of the present literary impasse and for a form of literary style and expression in which they can fully realize themselves...

...The truth is that literary activity—in the sense of writing, reading, reviewing and discussing—has never been a strong point of Italian culture...

...a living by his writing alone as long as two classes are absent from the reading public—the nouveau riche who could read but do not wish to do so, and the poor peasants and workers who often like to read but cannot afford to do so...

...There is a human concept of the "Italian" which needs to be transfixed in literature and which the Italian writer has never been able to achieve...

...Naturally, it is the first category which absorbs the cream of the reading public—a much smaller section than in the United States—since Italy is a poorer country...

...He, too, is a neo-realist, but in a more sincere and poetic way...

...In his The Life of Boys, the reader lives through a tragic day with Roman boys, tainted with vice and the ill-effects of poverty, set against the background of a 3acred yet corrupt city...

...It is too much for him and he is unable to continue the concert...

...Yet even this is not wholly satisfactory...

...A group of intelligent people gathered together today will more than likely he discussing politics rather than books, though by now the monopoly the Left enjoyed in the world of the intelligentsia has been weakened...

...WRITERS and WRITING Italian Literature in Limbo By Gabriel Gersh ONE SHOULD BE cautious about generalizing on the present state of Italian writing, for generalizations about Italian writing are apt to be as false as generalizations about anything else in Italy...

...Yet there is no reason to despair totally of Italian literature's future prospects...

...The literary market is limited...

...His output included many novels and short stories—some of the latter are very good—while his poems, published after his death, bear a resemblance to those of the French symbolist poets...

...Not only are there few people who read books (one seldom sees anyone with a book in a train or in a park), but the outlets for literary expression are few...

...Cesare Pavese, one of the most outstanding figures on the literary scene until his death, was an intellectual (though far from conforming) Communist...

...Even more notable are his novellas, in which the art of storytelling reaches the highest level of literary merit...

...Moravia, Vittorini, Soldati, Levi, Pavese, to mention six almost at random out of a long list, seemed to be pointing the way to something new and vital...

...At the monastery, where he is silent about his achievements, he meets another musician who is pointed out as a musical genius...

...Less logical and expressive than the French, the Italians prefer newspapers and magazines to books...

...If they have any political feelings they tend to be of the Left...

...Another writer who is refreshingly free from this American influence is Mario Soldati, one of the most widely read authors in Italy...

...Fascism, the ravages of war, the threat of Communism, the instability of postwar governments—all these have had their impact on...

...Another reason for the Italian novelists' small public is the provincialism of Italian writing...

...What has happened to that promise...

...Pavese was quite familiar with English literature—he translated Moll Flanders into Italian—and as with many postwar Italian writers the work of the American writers had a deep and, most Italian literary critics would agree, a harmful effect on him...

...In spite of these reservations, Pavese, while occupying an isolated and not easily definable position in the world of letters, looms as a giant figure on the literary scene where other figures are hard to discern...

...Owing to the regional quality of Italian life, there is no such thing as a school of writers with any common background of habits or aims...

...Rome, indolent and indifferent as always, is hardly a candidate for the tide, but that does not mean that it has nothing to contribute to the sum total of Italian literary achievement...

...Italians are not natural novelists (except, of course, Alberto Moravia) but they are wonderful story-tellers...

...If some of the foregoing strictures seem somewhat critical, this is only because of the disappointment which, after the promise of the first postwar years, then set in for Italian writing...

...Therefore, the Italian writer cannot earn GABRIEL GERSH, who recently attended an Italian writers' conference, has written for Commentary and America...

...Italian writers...

...Perhaps the brightest hope for Italian writing at the moment is Fortunate Seminara...

...It is about the wastelands of Calabria, where incredible poverty is combined with proud hospitality, ancient traditions and beautiful scenery...