2 Books by Italo Svevo
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Overview: Aron Ettore Schmitz (19 December 1861 – 13 September 1928), better known by the pseudonym Italo Svevo, was an Italian writer, businessman, novelist, playwright, and short story writer. A close friend of Irish novelist and poet James Joyce, Svevo was considered a pioneer of the psychological novel in Italy and is best known for his classic Modernist novel La Coscienza di Zeno (1923), a work that had a profound effect on the movement. Born in Trieste (then in Austrian Empire, after 1867 Austria-Hungary) as Aron Ettore Schmitz to a Jewish German father and an Italian mother, Svevo was one of seven children and grew up enjoying a passion for literature from a young age, reading Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare and the classics of Russia. Svevo was a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of the First World War. He spoke Italian as a second language (as he usually spoke the Triestine dialect). Due to his germanophone ancestry by his father, he and his brothers were sent to a boarding school near Würzburg, Germany, where he learnt fluent German. After returning to Trieste in 1880, Svevo continued his studies for a further two years at Istituto Revoltella before being forced to take financial responsibility when his father filed for bankruptcy after his once successful glassware business failed. This 20-year period as a bank clerk at Unionbank of Vienna served as inspiration for his first novel Una Vita. During his time at the bank, Svevo contributed to Italian-language publication L’Indipendente (it),and began writing plays (which he rarely finished) before beginning work on Una Vita in 1887. Following the death of his parents, Svevo married his cousin Livia Veneziani in 1896 and became a partner in his wealthy father-in-law’s paint business that specialised in manufacturing industrial paint that was used on naval warships. He became successful in growing the business and after trips to France and Germany, set up a branch of the company in England.
Genre: General Fiction, Classics
Emilio’s Carnival (Translated by Beth Archer Brombert): Italo Svevo’s early novel Senilità (1898) remained unknown for many years until James Joyce encountered the novelist in Trieste and came to admire Senilità as a preeminent modern Italian novel. Joyce helped to launch Svevo’s career, and years later Svevo achieved great fame with his masterpiece, Confessions of Zeno.
In Senilità, Svevo tells the story of the amorous entanglement of Emilio, a failed writer already old at thirty-five, and Angiolina, a seductively beautiful but promiscuous young woman. A study in jealousy and self-torment, the novel traces the intoxicating effect of a narcissistic and amoral woman on an indecisive daydreamer who vacillates between guilt and moral smugness. The novel is suffused with a tragic sense of existence, and the unbreachable distance between one consciousness and another. Svevo’s unmistakably modern voice subtly captures rapid shifts in mood and intention, exploiting irony, indirection, and multiple points of view to reveal Emilio’s increasing anguish as he comes to recognize the dissonance between himself and his world.
As a Man Grows Older (Translated by Beryl de Zoete): Not so long ago Emilio Brentani was a promising young author. Now he is an insurance agent on the fast track to forty. He gains a new lease on life, though, when he falls for the young and gorgeous Angiolina—except that his angel just happens to be an unapologetic cheat. But what begins as a comedy of infatuated misunderstanding ends in tragedy, as Emilio’s jealous persistence in his folly—against his friends’ and devoted sister’s advice, and even his own best knowledge—leads to the loss of the one person who, too late, he realizes he truly loves.
Marked by deep humanity and earthy humor, by psychological insight and an elegant simplicity of style, As a Man Grows Older (Senilità, in Italian; the English title was the suggestion of Svevo’s great friend and admirer, James Joyce) is a brilliant study of hopeless love and hapless indecision. It is a masterwork of Italian literature, here beautifully rendered into English in Beryl de Zoete’s classic translation.
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