Novel
Zeno's Conscience
La coscienza di Zeno
Italo Svevo · 1923
Opening lines
Il dottore al quale ne parlai mi disse d’iniziare il mio lavoro con un’analisi storica della mia propensione al fumo: - Scriva! Scriva! Vedrà come arriverà a vedersi intero.
The doctor I spoke to about it told me to begin my work with a historical analysis of my propensity for smoking: “Write! Write! You will see how you will come to see yourself whole.”
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from it.wikisource.org
Synopsis
At the request of his psychoanalyst, Zeno Cosini, a Trieste businessman, writes down his memories. He does not arrange them in chronological order but by theme: his countless attempts to give up smoking, his father's death, his unrequited love for Ada, which leads him to marry her sister Augusta, an affair with an apprentice singer, then his business affairs. The narrative, full of humour, shows a lucid mind that nonetheless never stops deceiving itself.
Context
The novel appeared in 1923 in Bologna, from Cappelli, at the author's own expense, after a long period of literary silence. James Joyce brought it to the attention of the French critics Valery Larbaud and Benjamin Crémieux, and Eugenio Montale defended it in Italy. Only the last part takes the form of a dated diary, kept during the First World War. In French, the translation by Paul-Henri Michel, revised by Mario Fusco, is published by Gallimard; in English, William Weaver translated it in 2001 under the title “Zeno's Conscience”.
Who it is for
A novel presented as the writings of a patient for his psychoanalyst: the narrator is unreliable, and deliberately so.
Prizes and reception
According to Penguin Random House, it is one of the great comic novels of the twentieth century.
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