Zeno's conscience - The conscience of an epoch

Abstract

The intention of this article is to determine the extent to which the literary work of Italo Svevo is of actual interest in the contemporary historical moment of Italian literature and to what degree it can be integrated into its chronological sequence as a rallyingcall with which the Italian literary tradition of the second half of the 19th century comes to an end and new tendencies which will be characteristic of Italian literature of the first half of the 20th century are announced. After the introduction which places Svevo (alongside Pirandello) within the context of complex echoes of the Italian Risorgimento, the author analyses the literary phenomenon known as the »Svevo case« (similar to the »Silone case« and the »Lampedus case«) that at one time preoccupied the interests of Italian and European literary critics. He points out that Svevo had to receive European and world recognition in order to be acclaimed an Italian writer. Italian criticism passed over his works, from the first novel in 1898 up to 1925, with almost no comment. Pressed between two cultures, the Italian and the German, Svevo developed into a singular literary figure whose works, both as to theme and to language (regardless of some lexical and syntactical inaccuracies which could easily have been corrected on the advise of leading Italian linguists, Devola in particular) could not, without effort, have been incorporated into the Italian literary tradition at the turn of the century, so that critics, partly without intention and partly intentionally, almost completely ignored them. Afterwards, upon the publicatio of his third novel. Zeno's Conscience, with the intercession of B. Crémieux, V. Larbauda and J. Joyce — who spread Svevo’s fame throughout Eupore — Italian criticism could no longer remain deaf and Svevo, almost overnight, became for critics and literary historians, the most interesting theme. Eugenio Montale was the first who in 1925 paved the way for the recognition of Svevo in Italy.