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Loading... A Life (1892)by Italo Svevo
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I read this in the English translation of Archibald Calquhoun, which is very readable and seems accurate from what I can judge. The novel was first published in 1892 when Svevo was 31, and had been working in a bank in Trieste for 12 years. He would stay in this employment for another 7 years. It was published under the pseudonym Italo Svevo, and describes the life of somebody working in a bank in Trieste. He wanted to call it un inetto – an inept – but was persuaded to change it to una vita. It conveys better than any other novel I have read the utter tedium of the world of banking seen from the perspective of a junior employee, the hero, Alfonso. This is combined with an interest in intellectual fads of the time, notably Darwinism and Nietzscheanism. The tension between Alfonso’s own goals and his actual achievements e.g. as a writer and philosopher or as a suitor for the daughter of his boss is comic rather than tragic. If the novel is a tragedy in the classical sense I would suggest that Alfonso’s tragic flaw is his extreme self-consciousness which leads him to disaster. The other characters are well delineated, notably the charming but superficial Annetta. Ineptitude, of the Alfonso variety, consists in always doing the wrong thing but for perfectly good reasons. In a world of bewildering complexity this seems to be a peculiarly modern trope. I liked the book a lot and will definitely tackle it in Italian. ( ) no reviews | add a review
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A Life is the gruelling tale of the frustrated existence of a bank clerk with a poetic soul. The artistic aspirations of the protagonist and the emptiness of his daily life become tragic in the great divide between what he wants and what he actually has and gets. Alfonso the bank clerk wants to be a poet and seems to be falling in love with Annetta, the vain and arrogant daughter of his boss. But the emptiness of both his attempts at writing and at love lead to an ironic and painful conclusion. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)853.8Literature Italian and related languages Italian fiction Later 19th century 1859–1900LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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