Editing Italo Svevo

{{Short description|Italian and Austro-Hungarian businessman, playwright, and writer (1861–1928)}}
{{Infobox person
| image=Svevo.jpg
| caption=Portrait of Italo Svevo
| birth_name=Aron Hector Schmitz
| birth_date={{birth date|1861|12|19|df=y}}
| birth_place=[[Trieste]], [[Austrian Empire]]
(present-day [[Italy]])
| death_date={{death date and age|1928|9|13|1861|12|19|df=y}}
| death_place=[[Motta di Livenza]], [[Kingdom of Italy|Italy]]
| nationality=[[Italians|Italian]], [[Austria-Hungary|Austro-Hungarian]]
| occupation=Novelist, short story writer, playwright, businessman
| notable_works=''[[La coscienza di Zeno]]''
| spouse=Livia Veneziani
}}

'''Aron Hector Schmitz'''<ref name="Treccani">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Costa |first=Simona |encyclopedia=[[Enciclopedia Treccani]] |title=SCHMITZ, Aron Hector
|url=http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/aron-hector-schmitz_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/ |language=it |year=2018 |location=[[Rome]] |publisher=Treccani |series=Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani |volume=91 |access-date=2019-11-30}}</ref> (19 December 1861{{spaced ndash}}13 September 1928), better known by the pseudonym '''Italo Svevo''' ({{IPA|it|ˈiːtalo ˈzvɛːvo|lang}}), was an [[Italians|Italian]] and [[Austria-Hungary|Austro-Hungarian]] writer, businessman, [[novelist]], [[playwright]], and [[short story writer]].<ref name="Treccani"/>

A close friend of Irish novelist and poet [[James Joyce]],<ref name="Spectator">{{cite magazine |last=Hensher |first=Philip |date=13 August 2016 |title=The fairy-tale friendship of James Joyce and Italo Svevo |url=https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/the-fairy-tale-friendship-of-james-joyce-and-italo-svevo/ |magazine=[[The Spectator]] |access-date=2019-11-30}}</ref> Svevo was considered a pioneer of the [[psychological novel]] in Italy and is best known for his [[Literary modernism|modernist]] novel ''[[Zeno's Conscience|La coscienza di Zeno]]'' (1923), which became a widely appreciated classic of [[Italian literature]].<ref name="Treccani"/> He was also the cousin of the Italian academic [[Steno Tedeschi]].<ref>Raspa, Venanzio (2010). The Aesthetics of the Graz School. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag. p. 40. {{ISBN|978-3-86838-076-7}}</ref>

== Early life ==
Born in [[Trieste]] (at the time in the [[Austrian Empire]], then in [[Austria-Hungary]] since 1867) as Aron Ettore Schmitz<ref>At his birth, Svevo was named "Aron, called Ettore, Schmitz, as recorded in the register of births of the Jewish Community in Trieste. His friend James Joyce was to address letters and postcards to him as Mr Hector Schmitz. His wife Livia Veneziani ... also addressed him as Hector." Gatt-Rutter, J & Mulroney, B. ''"This England is so different" – Italo Svevo's London Writings'', p. 4.</ref> to a [[Jewish Germans|Jewish German]] father and an [[Italians|Italian]] mother, Svevo was one of seven children, and grew up enjoying a passion for [[literature]] from a young age, reading works of [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]], [[Friedrich Schiller|Schiller]], [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]], and the classics of [[French literature|French]] and [[Russian literature]].<ref name="Treccani"/><ref name="famousauthors">{{Cite web|url=http://www.famousauthors.org/italo-svevo|title=Italo Svevo {{!}} Biography, Books and Facts|website=www.famousauthors.org|access-date=2016-05-24}}</ref>

Svevo was a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of the [[First World War]]. He spoke [[Italian language|Italian]] as a second language, as he usually spoke the [[Triestine dialect]]. Due to his Germanophone ancestry by his father, he and his brothers were sent to a boarding school near [[Würzburg]], in the [[German Empire]], where he learnt and became fluent in [[German language|German]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.br.de/radio/bayern2/sendungen/land-und-leute/italo-svevo-in-segnitz-ursula-naumann108.html|title = "Die Zukunft der Erinnerungen": Italo Svevos Schulzeit in Segnitz|date = 16 December 2011}}</ref>

After returning to Trieste in 1880, Svevo continued his studies for a further two years at Istituto Revoltella, before being forced to take financial responsibility when his father filed for [[bankruptcy]], after his once successful glassware business failed. This 20-year period as a [[bank clerk]] at the [[Unionbank (Austria)|Unionbank]] of [[Vienna]] served as inspiration for his first novel, ''[[Una Vita]]'' (1892).<ref name="famousauthors"/>

During his time at the bank, Svevo contributed to Italian-language socialist publication ''[[L'Indipendente]]'' ([[:it:L'Indipendente (Trieste)|it]]), and began writing plays (which he rarely finished) before beginning work on ''Una vita'' in 1887. Svevo adhered to a [[Humanism|humanistic]] and [[democratic socialism]], which predisposed him to [[pacifism]], and to [[Europeanism|advocate for the creation of a European economic union]] after the war.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Pappalardo |first1=Salvatore |title=One Last Austrian Cigarette: Italo Svevo and Habsburg Trieste |journal=Prospero: Rivista di Letterature Straniere, Comparatistica e Studi Culturali |date=2011 |volume=16 |pages=82–83}}</ref>

Following the death of his parents, Svevo married his cousin Livia Veneziani in a civil ceremony in 1896.<ref name="Treccani"/><ref>Livia Veneziani was a quarter Jewish: her father, Gioachino Veneziani, was the son of a [[Ferrara|Ferrarese]] Jew and a Catholic mother; Livia's mother, Olga Moravia, was a first cousin of Svevo on his mother's side. See Elizabeth Schächter (2000), ''Origin And Identity: Essays on Svevo and Trieste'', p. 49.</ref> Soon after, Livia convinced him to convert to Catholicism and take part in a religious wedding (probably after a troublesome pregnancy).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.museosveviano.it/ar/svevo-virtual-tour/in-museo/7-il-diario-per-la-fidanzata/lalbum-di-famiglia-svevo-veneziani/ |title=Album della famiglia Svevo-Veneziani {{!}} Museo Sveviano di Trieste – Realtà Aumentata |website=www.museosveviano.it |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180405024234/http://www.museosveviano.it/ar/svevo-virtual-tour/in-museo/7-il-diario-per-la-fidanzata/lalbum-di-famiglia-svevo-veneziani/ |archive-date=2018-04-05}} </ref> Personally, however, Svevo was an atheist.<ref>Casoli, Giovanni: ''Vangelo e letteratura''. Città Nuova, 2008, p. 90.</ref> He became a partner in his wealthy father-in-law's paint business - that specialized in manufacturing industrial paint, that was used on naval warships. He became successful in growing the business, and after trips to France and Germany set up a branch of the company in England.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.mantex.co.uk/2016/02/24/italo-svevo-biography/|title=Italo Svevo biography|date=2016-02-24|website=Mantex|access-date=2016-05-24|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160429094816/http://www.mantex.co.uk/2016/02/24/italo-svevo-biography/|archive-date=2016-04-29|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Svevo lived for part of his life in [[Charlton, London|Charlton]], south-east London, while working for a family firm. He documented this period in his letters<ref>''"This England is so different" – Italo Svevo's London Writings''. John Gatt Rutter & Brian Mulroney. Troubador. {{ISBN|1-899293-59-0}}</ref> to his wife, which highlighted the cultural differences he encountered in Edwardian England. His old home at 67 Charlton Church Lane now carries a [[blue plaque]].

== Writing career ==
Svevo first started writing short stories in 1880. He took on the pseudonym "Italo Svevo" (literally "Italus the Swabian") for the publication of his first novel, ''[[Una Vita]]'', in 1892.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Furbank|first=Philip Nicholas|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z53AKdXjtVwC|title=Italo Svevo the man and the Writer|date=1986|publisher=University of California Press|language=en}}</ref> The novel was not a success.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Moloney|first=Brian|url=http://archive.org/details/writersofitaly3i0000unse|title=Italo Svevo : a critical introd|date=1974|publisher=Edinburgh : Univ. Press|others=Internet Archive}}</ref>

His second novel, ''Senilità'' (1898), was also received poorly. In 1919 he began work on ''La Coscienza di Zeno'' (known in English as ''Zeno's Conscience'' or ''Confessions of Zeno'').

== ''Zeno's Conscience'' ==
In 1923 Italo Svevo published the psychological novel ''[[Zeno's Conscience|La Coscienza di Zeno]]''. The work, showing the author's interest in the theories of [[Sigmund Freud]], is written in the form of the memoirs of Zeno Cosini, who writes them at the insistence of his [[psychoanalyst]].<ref name="Treccani"/> Svevo's novel received almost no attention from Italian readers and critics at the time.<ref name="Treccani"/>
[[File:ItaloSvevo statue 10.jpg|thumb|Italo Svevo statue in front of the Public Library in Trieste]]
The work might have disappeared altogether if it were not for the efforts of [[James Joyce]]. Joyce had met Svevo in 1907, when Joyce tutored him in English, while working for [[Berlitz Corporation|Berlitz]] in [[Trieste]].<ref name="Spectator"/> Joyce read Svevo's earlier novels, ''[[Una Vita]]'' and ''[[Senilità]]''.<ref name="Spectator"/>

Joyce championed ''Zeno's Conscience'', helping to have it translated into French and then published in [[Paris]], where critics praised it extravagantly.<ref name="Spectator"/> That led Italian critics, including [[Eugenio Montale]], to discover it.<ref name="Treccani"/> Zeno Cosini, the book's hero and [[unreliable narrator]], mirrored Svevo himself, being a businessman fascinated by Freudian theory.<ref name="Treccani"/> Svevo was also a model for [[Leopold Bloom]], the protagonist of Joyce's seminal novel ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]''.<ref name=Ellman>{{cite book |last=Ellmann |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Ellmann |title=James Joyce |url=https://archive.org/details/jamesjoyce00rich |url-access=registration |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1982 |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/jamesjoyce00rich/page/502 502–04] |isbn=0-19-503103-2}}</ref>

''Zeno's Conscience'' never looks outside the narrow confines of Trieste, much like Joyce's work, which rarely left Dublin in the last years of Ireland's time as part of the United Kingdom. Svevo employed often sardonic wit in his observations of Trieste and, in particular, of his hero, an indifferent man, who cheats on his wife, lies to his psychoanalyst, and is trying to explain himself to his [[psychoanalyst]], by revisiting his memories.<ref name="Treccani"/>
[[File:Ettore Schmitz alias Italo Svevo 1861-1928 Writer lived here 1903-1913.jpg|thumb|Blue plaque at 67 Charlton Church Lane, Charlton, London SE7 7AB, London Borough of Greenwich]]
There is a final connection between Svevo and the character Cosini. Cosini sought [[psychoanalysis]], he said, in order to discover why he was addicted to [[nicotine]]. As Svevo reveals in his memoirs, each time he had given up smoking, with the iron resolve that this would be the "''ultima sigaretta!!''", he experienced the exhilarating feeling that he was now beginning life over without the burden of his old habits and mistakes. That feeling was, however, so strong that he found smoking irresistible, if only so that he could stop smoking again, in order to experience that thrill once more.

== Death ==
After being involved in a serious car crash, he was brought into hospital in [[Motta di Livenza]], where his health rapidly failed. As death approached, he asked one of his visitors for a cigarette. It was refused. Svevo replied: "That would have been my last".<ref name="Spectator" /> He died that afternoon.<ref>William Weaver, Translator's Introduction page xxii, "Zeno's Conscience" Vintage 2003.</ref>

== Legacy ==
[[File:La Trieste de Magris al CCCB (33) - Italo Svevo- Senilità.jpg|thumb|right|First edition of ''Senilità'']]
[[File:Italo Svevo by Ruggero Rovan.jpg|thumb|''Italo Svevo'', 1927 sculpture by [[Ruggero Rovan]], the only extant bust of Svevo from when the artist was still alive]]
Svevo, along with [[Luigi Pirandello]], is considered a prominent figure of early 20th-century [[Italian literature]], and has had an important influence on later generations of the country's writers.

Though only recognised for his literary achievements towards the end of his life, Svevo is celebrated as one of Italy's finest writers, particularly in his home city of [[Trieste]], and has a statue in front of the Museum of Natural History erected in his honour.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.turismoletterario.com/tl/92-autori/180-italo-svevo-autori.html|title=Italo Svevo|website=www.turismoletterario.com|access-date=2016-05-24|archive-date=2016-06-07|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160607185416/http://www.turismoletterario.com/tl/92-autori/180-italo-svevo-autori.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>

The following are named after him:
* [[Istituto Comprensivo Italo Svevo]] in Trieste, Italy
* [[Liceo Italo Svevo]] in Cologne, Germany

== Selected works ==
'''Novels'''
*''[[Una Vita]]'' (1892). ''A Life'', trans. [[Archibald Colquhoun (translator)|Archibald Colquhoun]] (1963).
* ''[[Senilità]]'' (1898). ''As a Man Grows Older'', trans. [[Beryl de Zoete]] (1932); later as ''Emilio's Carnival'', trans. Beth Archer Brombert (2001).
* ''[[La Coscienza di Zeno]]'' (1923). ''Confessions of Zeno'', trans. Beryl de Zoete (1930); later as ''Zeno's Conscience'', trans. [[William Weaver]] (2003).
'''Novellas'''
*''La novella del buon vecchio e della bella fanciulla'' (1926). ''The Nice Old Man and the Pretty Girl.''
*''Una burla riuscita'' (1926). ''A Perfect Hoax'', trans. J. G. Nichols (2003).
'''Short story collections'''
* ''La novella del buon vecchio e della bella fanciulla, e altre prose inedite e postume'' (1929, posthumous). ''The Nice Old Man and the Pretty Girl and Other Stories'', trans. L. Collison-Morley (1930).
*''Corto viaggio sentimentale e altri racconti inediti'' (1949, posthumous). ''Short Sentimental Journey and Other Stories'', trans. Beryl de Zoete, L. Collison-Morley and Ben Johnson (1967).
'''Other'''

* ''Saggi e pagine sparse'' (1954, posthumous). ''Essays and Scattered Pages''.
* ''Commedie'' (1960, posthumous). Dramatic works.
* ''Lettere'' (1966, posthumous). Correspondence with [[Eugenio Montale]].
*''Further Confessions of Zeno'' (1969, posthumous). Trans. Ben Johnson and P. N. Furbank. Fragments of a sequel to ''La coscienza di Zeno''. Includes: "The Old Old Man", "An Old Man's Confessions", "Umbertino", "A Contract", "This Indolence of Mine", and ''Regeneration: A Comedy in Three Acts''.
*''A Very Old Man: Stories'' (2022, posthumous). Trans. Frederika Randall. Includes: "The Contract", "The Confessions of a Very Old Man", "Umbertino", "My Leisure", and "Foreword".

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

== Sources ==
* Italo Svevo, ''[[La coscienza di Zeno|Zeno's Conscience]]''. Trans. William Weaver. New York: Vintage International, 2001.
* [[Fabio Vittorini]], ''Italo Svevo'', Milano, Mondadori, 2011
*Piero Garofalo, "Time-Consciousness in Italo Svevo's ''La coscienza di Zeno,''" in ''Quaderni d'italianistica'', XVIII.2 (Fall 1997): pp.&nbsp;221–233.
* Livia Veneziani Svevo, ''Memoir of Italo Svevo'', Preface by P. N. Furbank, Trans. by [[Isabel Quigly]].  London: Libris, 1991. {{ISBN|1-870352-53-X}}
* Gatt-Rutter, J., ''Italo Svevo: A Double Life'' (1988)
* Moloney, Brian, ''Italo Svevo: A Critical Introduction'' (1974)
* [[P. N. Furbank|Furbank, Philip N.]], ''Italo Svevo: The Man and the Writer'' (1966)
* Gatt-Rutter, J & Mulroney, B, '''This England is so different' – Italo Svevo's London Writings.'' Troubador

== External links ==
{{Wikiquote}}
{{Commons}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Italo Svevo}}
* {{Books and Writers |id=svevo |name=Italo Svevo}}
* [http://www.intratext.com/Catalogo/Autori/Aut359.HTM Works by Svevo]: text with concordances and frequency list
* {{Librivox author|id=18840}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110927180854/http://www.immaginidistoria.it/trova_sempl_s.php?keywords=svevo&search=search&search.x=0&search.y=0%2F Images referred to Italo Svevo on Immaginidistoria.it]
* [https://archive.today/20130112232450/http://www.ilnarratore.org/show.php?type=author&language=en&aid=68&tpl=/eng/autore.tpl.html Listen to some chapters of ''La Coscienza di Zeno''] on audio mp3 free download

{{Modernism}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Svevo, Italo}}
[[Category:1861 births]]
[[Category:1928 deaths]]
[[Category:Dramatists and playwrights from Austria-Hungary]]
[[Category:Novelists from Austria-Hungary]]
[[Category:Poets from Austria-Hungary]]
[[Category:Austrian people of German-Jewish descent]]
[[Category:Businesspeople from Austria-Hungary]]
[[Category:Italian Austro-Hungarians]]
[[Category:Italian dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:Italian male dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:Italian male novelists]]
[[Category:Italian male short story writers]]
[[Category:Italian psychological writers]]
[[Category:Jewish Italian writers]]
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[[Category:Pedestrian road incident deaths]]
[[Category:Road incident deaths in Italy]]
[[Category:Writers from Trieste]]
[[Category:Short story writers from Austria-Hungary]]