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Cesare Pavese

Poet, novelist and translator (1908-1950), born in the Langhe hills and based in Turin, a driving force behind the Einaudi publishing house and author of «The Moon and the Bonfires».

Image from a Torino Oggi publication
From a publication by Torino Oggi, 14 August 2020

Cesare Pavese (Santo Stefano Belbo, 9 September 1908 – Turin, 27 August 1950) was a poet, novelist, translator and editor. Born in the Langhe hills but shaped by and resident in Turin, he was one of the driving forces behind the Einaudi publishing house, brought great American fiction to Italy, and portrayed the city and the hills of Piedmont in books such as Lavorare stanca (Hard Labor), La casa in collina (The House on the Hill) and La luna e i falò (The Moon and the Bonfires).[1]

Between the Langhe and Turin

His father Eugenio, a clerk at the Turin courthouse, owned a small farm at Santo Stefano Belbo, in the province of Cuneo, where the family spent the summer: it was there that the writer was born.[2] His father died on 2 January 1914 and his mother, Consolina Mesturini, raised him alone.[1] His education was entirely Turinese: after the private Trombetta institute on via Garibaldi, from October 1923 he attended the Massimo d'Azeglio classical lyceum, near Porta Nuova station, where his teacher was Augusto Monti, a follower of Croce and an anti-fascist who mentored an entire generation of Turinese intellectuals.[3][1] In those years he drew close to anti-fascism and joined the circle of friends around Leone Ginzburg, Massimo Mila and Giulio Einaudi.[4]

In June 1930 he graduated from the University of Turin with a thesis on Walt Whitman, defended with a mark of 108 out of 110.[1] For many years he lived at via Lamarmora 35 with his sister Maria and her husband; the building was hit by bombing during the Second World War.[3]

America's translator

Between 1930 and 1934 Pavese published in the magazine La Cultura a series of essays on Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, Edgar Lee Masters, Herman Melville and O. Henry.[5] His translation of Moby Dick, published in 1932 by the Turin publisher Frassinelli, remained a landmark and was reissued by Adelphi in 1987.[6] In the 1930s he also translated Melville's Benito Cereno for Frassinelli, Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men for Bompiani (1937) and Dos Passos's The 42nd Parallel for Mondadori.[5] He also tackled English authors such as Defoe, Dickens and Joyce.[7] For a generation that had grown up under the regime, American literature was a window onto freedom, and Pavese was its chief mediator.[5]

Internal exile and «Lavorare stanca»

In July 1934 he joined the National Fascist Party in order to be allowed to teach in state schools.[1] The following year, on 15 May 1935, he was arrested as editor of Cultura and, above all, because he was found in possession of coded letters from the painter Bruno Maffi; he was sent into internal exile at Brancaleone Calabro, where he arrived on 4 August 1935 and remained until March 1936, when he was granted amnesty.[1] In 1936 his poetry collection Lavorare stanca (Hard Labor) was published.[7] In his diary he noted that the episode had led him to open and close the book with poems about Turin.[3] In November 1935, also in his diary, he had described the city as

«a city of passion, of rule, and of irony»

Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living, 17 November 1935

and as «an exemplary city, calm yet rich in turmoil».[3]

The Einaudi years

Pavese had moved in the circle of the publishing house since its founding in 1933, and was hired there in 1938.[2][1] He worked at its offices on via Biancamano and frequented the cafés of the city centre, from the Fiorio to the Platti, and the Le tre galline tavern.[4] With the ethnologist Ernesto De Martino he devised the "purple series", devoted to ethnology, psychology and the history of religions, active between 1945 and 1950.[1] In the autumn of 1945 he joined the Italian Communist Party and contributed to l'Unità.[1] At the publishing house he worked alongside writers such as Elio Vittorini and Italo Calvino.[8]

The postwar years were his most fruitful: Feria d'agosto (1946), Il compagno and Dialoghi con Leucò (1947), Prima che il gallo canti (1949, including Il carcere and La casa in collina), La bella estate (1949) and finally La luna e i falò (1950), set in Santo Stefano Belbo.[7][9] On 24 June 1950 he received the Strega Prize in Rome for La bella estate.[1]

The city in his books and diary

Turin is a constant presence in his work: the long banks of the Po, the Monte dei Cappuccini, Borgo San Paolo, the Lingotto, the café-concerts of the Galleria San Federico, the hill of Superga, tram line 7.[3] On 1 December 1949 he recorded a walk along the Po in front of the Monte dei Cappuccini, at a misty sunset, asking himself: «What is the use of this beauty — what does it mean, at least?».[3] The diary was published posthumously in 1952 under the title Il mestiere di vivere (This Business of Living).[7]

The Hotel Roma

In Rome, at New Year 1950, Pavese met the American actress Constance Dowling; he saw her again in March at Cervinia, and the relationship ended by summer, when she left for New York.[1] Il Foglio described it as a brief affair, consumed between March and April.[10] On Saturday 26 August, in the early afternoon, he went to the Hotel Roma, under the arcades of piazza Carlo Felice; the following evening he was found dead in his room.[1] On the title page of a copy of Dialoghi con Leucò he had left a few lines:

«I forgive everyone and of everyone I ask forgiveness. All right? Don't gossip too much»

Cesare Pavese, Hotel Roma, August 1950

Room 346 of the hotel, run by the same family since 1854, has kept its period furnishings: the single bed, the writing desk with its lilac top, the heavy black telephone on the wall.[11] Unpublished poems appeared the following year in the collection Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi (1951); his letters were published in two volumes in 1966.[7]

Legacy

On 7 July 2001, with the consent of his relatives, Pavese's remains were moved from Turin to the cemetery of Santo Stefano Belbo.[9] His home town is the seat of the Cesare Pavese Foundation, which offers visits to his birthplace and to the settings of The Moon and the Bonfires.[9] In Turin, the house on via Lamarmora and the hotel on piazza Carlo Felice remain the main stops on Pavese-themed walks around the city.[4][3]

Pages linking here

Related articles: Giulio Einaudi editore, Langhe, Monte dei Cappuccini

Sources

  1. Treccani – Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani —
  2. Comune di Santo Stefano Belbo
  3. Torino Oggi — 14 August 2020
  4. Libreriamo
  5. Università di Bologna
  6. Il Sole 24 Ore — 13 February 2016
  7. Treccani – Enciclopedia
  8. Vitamine vaganti — 22 August 2020
  9. Fondazione Cesare Pavese
  10. Il Foglio — 2 January 2017
  11. il Giornale — 22 June 2006

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