Tag: Cesare Pavese

Author, Book review, Cesare Pavese, Fiction, Italy, literary fiction, Penguin, Publisher, Setting, translated fiction

‘The Beautiful Summer’ by Cesare Pavese (translated by W.J. Strachan)

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Fiction – paperback; Penguin; 112 pages; 2018. Translated from the Italian by W.J. Strachan.

The Beautiful Summer by Cesare Pavese (1908-1950) won Italy’s most prestigious literary award, the Strega Prize for fiction, in 1950. (The author sadly died by suicide a couple of months later.)

It’s the story of a teenage girl whose friendship with an older woman draws her into a bohemian artistic community in 1930s Turin, showing her an alternative way of life.

It has been reissued as part of Penguin’s European Writers series.

A girl’s life

Sixteen-year-old Ginia works at a dressmakers and lives with her brother, Severino, a nightshift worker, for whom she cooks and cleans.

To alleviate the mundane nature of her work and home life, she’s keen to go “gadding about”, as she describes it, so when she develops a friendship with 20-year-old Amelia who works as an artists’ model, her social life opens up. They go to dance halls, visit cafes and see films at the local movie house. But there’s always tension between them, because Ginia is cautious, whereas Amelia throws that all to the wind.

In public, Amelia dares to go bare-legged (because she can’t afford to buy stockings), making Ginia anxious and worried about what people might say. Yet this also holds an allure for her, because she’s fascinated by Amelia’s way of being in the world, her freedom and her carefree attitude.

‘Being free in the world in the way I am, makes me mad,’ said Amelia. Ginia would have gladly paid money to hear her hold forth so eagerly on many things which she liked, because real confidence consists in knowing what the other person wants and when someone else is pleased by the same things, you no longer feel in awe of her. (page 14)

Loss of innocence

In her short introduction to the novella, Elizabeth Strout explains that Pavese described it as “the story of a virginity that defends itself”. For most of the book, Ginia acts chastely but she’s fascinated by the adults around her and wages an internal battle to overcome her disgust and shame associated with what she sees and what she wants to experience for herself. She knows she has power over men but is fearful of wielding it.

When Amelia gets a new job posing naked for an artist, Ginia asks to watch, not for any voyeuristic tendencies but to observe the artist at work.

They discussed the question for a short part of the walk and Amelia laughed because, dressed or undressed, a model can only be of interest to men and hardly to another girl. The model merely stands there: what is there to see? Ginia said she wanted to see the artist paint her; she had never seen anyone handling colours and it must be nice to watch. (page 12)

When she gets to watch the proceedings, she finds she’s disgusted by the whole sexual objectification of her friend and her friend’s inability to understand that this is what is happening.

Once more she saw Amelia’s swarthy belly in that semi-darkness, that very ordinary face and those drooping breasts. Surely a woman offered a better subject dressed? If painters wanted to do them in the nude, they must have ulterior motives. Why did they not draw from male models? Even Amelia when disgracing herself in that way became a different person; Gina was almost in tears. (page 23)

Later, Amelia introduces her to two artists, Guido and Rodrigues, who share a studio. Ginia is intrigued by the enigmatic Guido, a soldier who is an artist in his spare time, and a love affair develops — ushering her into a more complex adult world.

Compelling novella

The Beautiful Summer has a simple set-up and follows a predictable outcome. But it’s written in such a rich, lyrical language, with an undercurrent of suspense and danger, it makes for a compelling read.

Strout suggests there are hints of Elena Ferrante in the narrative style, to which I concur. Its depiction of female friendship, including its petty rivalries, quarrels and sharing of confidences, is pitch-perfect, and I loved the melancholia at its heart.

It not only explores themes of youth, desire and loss of innocence, but it also poses questions about the male gaze, sexual objectification and women’s position in Italian society at the time. It demands a reread to properly unpick it, but has certainly made me keen to explore more of Pavase’s work — I read, and loved, The House on the Hill last year.

Author, Book review, Cesare Pavese, Fiction, Italy, literary fiction, Penguin Classic, Publisher, Setting, translated fiction, war

‘The House on the Hill’ by Cesare Pavese (translated by Tim Parks)

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Fiction – paperback; Penguin Classics; 176 pages; 2021. Translated from the Italian by Tim Parks.

First published in 1948, Cesare Pavese’s novella The House on the Hill, which is set in Italy during the Second World War, makes a perfect companion read to Dominic Smith’s Return to Valetto.

Said to be based on the author’s own wartime experiences, it recounts the tale of a school teacher who falls in with a group of anti-fascists but can’t quite commit to their cause because he’d rather lead a quiet life.

The book explores notions of self-preservation versus altruism and examines the concept of collective moral responsibility in the face of war.

Safe on the hill

Set in and around Turin, in 1943, during a time of immense political upheaval, it shows how the Italian people, living under a Fascist regime aligned with Nazi Germany, tried to continue their normal day-to-day activities while their evenings were beset by the terror of bombs and fires.

It is against this backdrop that Corrado, a young unmarried man, lives his life, teaching in a school by day and escaping to a house on the hill at night. He rents a room in the house, occupied by two live-in landladies and their dog, and occasionally feels guilty for “escaping the sirens every evening, hiding away in a cool room, stretched out on my bed in safety”.

When he returns to the unscathed school every morning, he is never sure which children will have died in the night-time air raids, but seems immune to their plight, dismissing it as just another symptom of war:

We’d all become inured to terrible events, found them banal, ordinary, disagreeable. Those who took them seriously and said, ‘That’s war,’ were even worse, dreamers, morons.

Meeting the partisans

It is from the vantage point on the hill that he can often hear laughter and frivolity rising up from the valley, and when he traces those sounds he comes across a group of local partisans, who gather to drink and sing in a house-turned-tavern every night.

He joins them socially when he realises an old flame, Cate, is part of the group but stops short of signing up to their movement.

She [Cate] walked a few steps with me, then stopped.
‘You’re not a Fascist, I hope?’
She was serious and laughed. I took her hand and protested. ‘We’re all Fascists, Cate dear,’ I said softly. ‘If we weren’t, we’d be rebelling, chucking grenades, risking our necks. Anyone who lets be and puts up with it is a Fascist.’
‘Not true,’ she said. ‘We’re waiting for the right moment. When the war is over.’

Later, when Fascist leader Benito Mussolini is disposed and imprisoned and the Germans begin occupying Italian territory, a new era of violence is ushered in. Corrado must make an important decision: should he take up arms and join the partisans, or keep his head below the parapet and continue living his relatively stable and uninterrupted life where he has a roof over his head and food on the table every day?

The book charts what happens next, and it’s not quite as straightforward as Corrado might have imagined.

Countryside charm

Alongside this exploration of human weakness and raw doubt, all beautifully translated by Tim Parks, Pavese uses the Italian countryside as a metaphor for life continuing on regardless of human history. His descriptions of the timeless landscape, its plants and the changing seasons are vivid and cinematic.

I walked in the sunshine, on the wooded slopes. Behind le Fontaine there were vineyards and fields with crops, and I were there often, to gather herbs and mosses in sheltered little glades, an old hobby from when I’d studied natural sciences. I always preferred ploughed fields to houses and gardens, and the edges of the fields where the wild takes over.

Told in a self-reflective, self-aware and often resigned voice, The House on the Hill gives us a glimpse of one man’s moral uncertainty and indecision at a time of great violence and political uncertainty.

The way Corrado rationalises his choices and tries to remain uninvolved is honest and insightful. Until we are put in those same situations, how does anyone know how they will react?

This is a real literary gem, and one I am pleased to have discovered.

Finally, the beautiful cover image of this Penguin Classic edition of the book is by Italian artist Mario Borgoni (1869-1936) from a 1927 travel and advertising poster of Merano.