Best Italo Svevo Books
Ranked #2,980 in Books, Poetry & Writing, #118,162 overall
Italo Svevo... or Sigmund Freud of the 20th Century Italian Literature
If Sigmund Freud had any literary talent.... who knows... But Italo Svevo introduced psycho-analysis to literature and aren't we glad he did?
Born Aron Ettore Schmitz (December 19, 1861 - September 13, 1928), Italo Svevo is one of the pioneers of the 20th century Italian Literature. He was highly influenced by Sigmund Freud's psycho-analysis theory when he wrote and self published his book titled "Zeno's Conscience". Meeting James Joyce in 1907 saved this book from disappearing forever. James Joyce back then, was not known as a literary figure, he was a young Irish man who was teaching English in Trieste at The Berlitz School. And then Svevo became his student. The two developed a long term relationship not just as teacher and student but two literary friends. Joyce helped Svevo publish his first book in English: "Una Burla Riuscita". In September 1928 Svevo was involved in a car accident. He only survived a few days following this accident and finally died on September 13, 1928.
Born Aron Ettore Schmitz (December 19, 1861 - September 13, 1928), Italo Svevo is one of the pioneers of the 20th century Italian Literature. He was highly influenced by Sigmund Freud's psycho-analysis theory when he wrote and self published his book titled "Zeno's Conscience". Meeting James Joyce in 1907 saved this book from disappearing forever. James Joyce back then, was not known as a literary figure, he was a young Irish man who was teaching English in Trieste at The Berlitz School. And then Svevo became his student. The two developed a long term relationship not just as teacher and student but two literary friends. Joyce helped Svevo publish his first book in English: "Una Burla Riuscita". In September 1928 Svevo was involved in a car accident. He only survived a few days following this accident and finally died on September 13, 1928.
Table of Contents
Most Important Italian Authors of the 20th Century
Zeno's Conscience
This is Svevo's best work, and also most known.
Zeno's Conscience: A Novel
Amazon Price: $7.95 (as of 05/29/2012)
Long hailed as a seminal work of modernism in the tradition of Joyce and Kafka, and now available in a supple new English translation, Italo Svevo's charming and splendidly idiosyncratic novel conducts readers deep into one hilariously hyperactive and endlessly self-deluding mind. The mind in question belongs to Zeno Cosini, a neurotic Italian businessman who is writing his confessions at the behest of his psychiatrist. Here are Zeno's interminable attempts to quit smoking, his courtship of the beautiful yet unresponsive Ada, his unexpected-and unexpectedly happy-marriage to Ada's homely sister Augusta, and his affair with a shrill-voiced aspiring singer. Relating these misadventures with wry wit and a perspicacity at once unblinking and compassionate, Zeno's Conscience is a miracle of psychological realism.
Why is Italo Svevo an important figure of the Italian Literature?
and some Svevo quotes
We would not be exaggerating if we said, Italo Svevo is the father of the modern Italian novel. Wha makes him so important is that it was with him the Freudian theory had entered the literature. The way he created internal monologues, the way he analyzed his characters psychologies, actions and thoughts made him a mile stone in the literary world of the 20th century. He not only wrote novels, but wrote plays and short stories as well."There are three things I always forget. Names, faces and... the third I can't remember" Italo Svevo
"God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December." Italo Svevo
"Misunderstanding women is a clear sign of scant virility. " Italo Svevo
Confessions of Zeno
As a form of therapy, Zeno's doctor advises him to write his memoirs. The patient reconstructs the events in his life into a palatable reality founded upon compromise and rationalization.
Confessions of Zeno
Amazon Price: $37.97 (as of 05/29/2012)
More Italo Svevo Quotes
"Who knows whether, if I had given up smoking, I should really have become the strong perfect man I imagined? Perhaps it was this very doubt that bound me to my vice, because life is so much pleasanter if one is able to believe in one's own latent greatness""True religion, indeed, is that which does not have to be avowed in order to provide the solace that at times...if only rarely...you cannot do without.
Zeno's Conscience"
"Under the law established by the possessor of the greatest number of devices, sickness and the sick will flourish. "
"It is comfortable to live in the belief that you are great, though your greatness is latent. "
"I search carefully the past with my old eyes, but I see nothing."
A Life
A Life tells the story of a bank clerk with a poetic spirit. The youthful Alfonso persists in maintaining his artistic and intellectual sensibilities, undaunted by either the stifling conditions of his employment or the increasing entanglements of his domestic circumstances. Yet he seems to be falling in love with Annetta, the vain and arrogant daughter of the bank boss. When, miraculously, she begins to encourage his advances, it exposes the vanity of his infatuation and threatens the precarious balance of the life he has struggled to create for himself.
A Life
Amazon Price: $11.33 (as of 05/30/2012)
Emilio's Carnival
Italo Svevo's early novel Senilita (1898) remained unknown for many years until James Joyce encountered the novelist in Trieste and came to admire Senilita as a preeminent modern Italian novel. Joyce helped launch Svevo's career, and years later Svevo achieved great fame with his masterpiece, Confessions of Zeno. In Senilita, 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 recognise the dissonance between himself and his world.
Emilio's Carnival
Amazon Price: $3.98 (as of 05/29/2012)
The Nice Old Man and the Pretty Girl
The fable-like story of an old man's sexual obsession with a young woman is a distillation of Italo Svevo's concerns--attraction of an older man to a younger woman, individual conscience versus social convention, and the cost of sexual desire. This novella is a marvel of psychological insight, following the man's vacillations and tortuous self-justifications to their tragic-comic end.
The Nice Old Man and the Pretty Girl (The Art of the Novella)
Amazon Price: $5.10 (as of 05/30/2012)
Italo Svevo
Which one is your most favorite Svevo book?
Zeno's Conscience: A Novel by Italo Svevo
Long hailed as a seminal work of modernism in the more...1 point
Emilio's Carnival by Italo Svevo
Italo Svevo's early novel Senilita (1898) remained more...0 points
Italo Svevo on the Internet
- Italo Svevo's Zeno's Conscience
- There is only one small difference of opinion between Augusta and me: what is the proper way of treating troublesome children. I always feel that a baby's sufferings are less important than ours, and that it is worthwhile making it suffer if by that means a grown-up person can be saved a great deal of annoyance; she, however, takes the view that having brought children into the world we have got to put up with them.
Zeno - Watch Italo Svevo Videos
- A link to some Italo Svevo related videos.
- Articles On Italo Svevo
- Two links on LA Times
- This England Is So Different
- Italo Svevo's writings about England.
Do you like Italian Literature?
Have you read any Italo Svevo books?
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akumar46
May 22, 2011 @ 9:31 pm | delete
- Italo Svevo's books are great but i didn't get a chance to read them..nice lens,thanks.
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