The gloomy atmosphere of the fascist dictatorship was heavily reflected in the Italian literature of the period under review. The influence of fascism manifested itself not only among its direct troubadours and apologists, but also among some writers who were opposed to fascism.
Gabriel D'Annunzio, one of the most significant Italian writers and poets, who became widely known as early as the end of the 19th century, acted as a champion of fascist ideas and an exponent of fascist literary policy.
After he became a fascist, his creativity was impoverished. Every year he wrote less and less. The last works of D'Annunzio are mostly pompous speeches and crackling publicistic speeches.
The evolution of another major Italian writer, the novelist and playwright Luigi Pirandello, was different. Having joined the so-called verismo (an Italian variety of naturalism) at an early stage of his work, from the beginning of the 20s he completely broke with this trend and began to develop a new style he created, called "humorism".
Pirandello recognizes insufficient naturalistic reproduction of reality, believes that it cannot be known by direct, "ordinary" means. The world is not the same and the person is not the same as they appear to us; we are present at a tragicomic spectacle, the true meaning of which can be understood only by tearing off their habitual masks from its participants.
Therefore, Pirandello endows his heroes with a kind of double life: they live in the world of everyday life, gray and everyday, and in the world of imagination, ghostly and beautiful. The boundaries between the real and the irrational are blurred, everyday reality appears as something illogical and incomprehensible, and the world of dreams and fiction takes on quite real outlines.
This theme of “face and mask”, the real world and the imaginary world was developed by the writer in a number of his works of various genres - in stories from recent volumes an extensive cycle of "Novels in a Year", in the novel "One, None, One Hundred Thousand" and especially in dramaturgy.
The paradoxical form served in them to reveal the true face of the character, and sometimes a very sharp social content, to expose bourgeois morality.
In the future, in the oppressive atmosphere of the fascist dictatorship, Pirandello's work acquires the features of reconciliation with surrounding reality. In his later plays (The New Colony, The Legend of the Changeling Son), social issues almost completely disappear, and the characters turn into abstract symbols.
The anti-fascist camp in Italy was not as wide and monolithic as in the German literary environment. The most significant anti-fascist writer, Giovanni Germanetto, who emigrated from the country after the seizure of power by Mussolini, created a number of significant works.
The best of them (above all, his story The Barber's Notes) are dedicated to the Italian working class and its liberation struggle. Important in the work of Germanetto was the image of the ideological formation and growth of a revolutionary fighter.
The latent protest against fascism was reflected in the works of Alberto Moravia, Francesco Iovine, Cesare Pavese and some other young writers. They were united by an interest in the fate of the intelligentsia in capitalist society, in its ideological quest.
The impoverishment and squalor of the privileged class are depicted in Moravia's novel The Indifferent; the baseness of the interests of the bourgeois environment - in Jovine's book "The Fickle Man"; the dissatisfaction of the intelligentsia is in Pavese's book Hard Work.
All these works were written with great mastery of psychoanalysis and were met with very hostile official criticism, for they tore the mask off the imaginary prosperity that allegedly reigned in the fascist "generation of new Romans."
However, in addition to the spirit of opposition in the work of these writers, there were also moods of pessimism and skepticism, uncertainty about the possibility of fighting evil.
Italy's participation in the First World War on the side of the Entente intensified the already sharp contradictions in a country with a backward socio-economic structure, age-old unresolved problems and poverty, which was Italy at the end of the 19th century. This stimulates the revolutionary movement, the prestige of the socialist party. In 1921, the Communist Party was formed in Italy. However, a year later Mussolini came to power and established a fascist dictatorial regime in the country, which entered the history of Italy under the name "Black Twenty". Culture was subordinated to politics and totalitarianism, which led to the polarization of the intelligentsia, most of which did not accept fascism. During years captivity created "Prison Notebooks" Antonio Gramsci(1891-1937), which developed the foundations of people's democratic culture and Marxist aesthetics.
Many writers who did not want to sing of fascism hid behind concepts " pure art", the so-called "artistic prose" and the current "hermetism" (Italian poesia ermetica), which developed in the late twenties. "Hermetics" focused on chamber and subjective experiences, encrypted poetics. Their works are simple in form. the turn to express feelings, not thoughts, to convey the hidden world mental states. Adjoined to the "sealants" Eugenio MONTALE(1896-1981) - Nobel laureate in 1975, Giuseppe UNGARETTI(1888-1970), Umberto SABA(1883-1957).
Encrypted associative images are typical for "Fun of the Shipwrecked" (1932) and "Sense of Time" (1933) Ungaretti, "Accidents" (1939) Montale. Ungaretti own lines that convey the "hermetic feeling of the world":
But my cries hurt like lightning The hoarse bell of heaven And collapse in horror. (Translated by E. Solonovich)
The poetry of Umberto Saba, the only one of the great artists who escaped avant-garde searches, belongs to the classical national tradition. He is faithful to reality, to the happy dimensions of what he experienced in childhood. The bright, cloudless verse of the poet is a kind of protection of a person, joy and beauty from the "abyss" of despair:
The words in which human heart once reflected - naked and surprised. I would like to find a corner in the world for me, a fertile oasis, where I could cleanse you from all-blinding lies with tears. And there and then would melt, like snow in the sun, the sadness that is forever alive in memory. (Translated by E. Solonovich)
At the origins of mature Italian lyrics - "Orphic Songs" published in 1914 Dino CAMPANS(1885-1932), the only collection of the poet, called "Italian Rimbaud" for his vagrancy and chaotic life.
Poet Salvatore QUASIMODO(1901-1968), Nobel Prize winner in 1959, entered poetry in the thirties, following both Hermeticism and Hellenistic poetry, which he translated (collections "Water and Earth", "Erato and Apollo"). A sharp turning point was recorded by his poems from the period of the Resistance, which reflected the new pathos of the partisan struggle ("And suddenly the evening came", 1942; "Life is not a dream", 1949). Quasimodo's poems are concise and expressive:
The night is over, and the moon dissolves into azure, sailing away beyond the canals. September is tenacious here on the flat land, and its autumn meadows are green, like southern spring valleys. I left my comrades and buried my heart in the old wall to remember you alone. Oh, how farther are you than the moon, now that, in anticipation of dawn, hooves clattered along the pavement! (Translated by L. Martynov)
The culture of the beginning of the century overcomes the crisis of moral, spiritual and aesthetic values. on the wreckage romantic ideals Risorgimento and the collapse of positivist foundations, idealistic philosophy, intuitionism, and agnosticism are gaining popularity. The assimilation of Nietzsche's ideas on Italian soil has its own specifics. Nationalist ideology penetrates the culture, colors the Italian avant-garde, especially Futurism. Of great importance in the reorientation of the entire Italian culture was the aesthetic concept of Benedetto CROCE (1866-1952). Based on the postulate "art is pure intuition", it was located between intuitionism and positivism.
Italian decadence, replaced by avant-garde, is developing quite intensively, as if trying to catch up with other European countries. Contradictory tendencies are intertwined in it: "the poetry of blood and iron" as a reaction to the 20th century and the desire to hide from the chaos of the century and the thunder of guns in a quiet provincial life. The main myths and masks of decadence in Italy were created by Gabriele D "ANNUZIO (1863-1938), a poet, prose writer, playwright. His short stories, which appeared at the end of the century and were published later under the general title "Pescari Novels" (1902), are characterized by eclecticism; they one can recognize the experience of verism and the naturalism of Zola, the psychological analysis of Maupassant and the moral-psychological collisions of Dostoevsky; there is a lot of cruel fanaticism in them and a strong craving for refined feelings.
In D'Annunzio's novels "The Triumph of Death" (1894) and "The Flame" (1900), the myth of the superman and the conqueror, which had previously found a place in his poetry collections ("Roman Elegies", 1892), is accentuated. Fine examples of lyrics contain the best poetic creation of the writer - the cycle "Songs of Praise to Heaven, Sea, Earth, Heroes" (1903-1912), consisting of five books. In D'Annunzio's last novel, written before the war, "Maybe yes, maybe no" (1910), rather weak artistically, but significant for understanding the evolution of the writer, expressed admiration for technique and speed. From a "superman" reveling in a torpedo attack, not far to the official poet of fascism, to whom the Mussolini government granted the title of prince in 1924, and to the idol of nationalist youth.
Italian literature occupies an important place in the culture of Europe. This happened despite the fact that the Italian language itself acquired literary outlines quite late, around the 1250s. This was due to the strong influence of Latin in Italy, where it was most widely used. Schools, which were predominantly secular in nature, taught Latin everywhere. Only when it was possible to get rid of this influence did authentic literature begin to take shape.
Renaissance
The first famous works of Italian literature date back to the Renaissance. When the arts flourish all over Italy, literature struggles to keep up. Several world famous names belong to this period at once - Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio, Dante Alighieri. At that time, Italian and French literature of the Renaissance set the tone for all of Europe. And this is not surprising.
Dante is rightfully considered the founder of the Italian literary language. He lived and worked at the turn of the XIII-XIV centuries. His most famous work was The Divine Comedy, which gave a full analysis of late medieval culture.
In Italian literature, Dante remained a poet and thinker who was constantly looking for something fundamentally new and different from everyday life. He had a muse that he worshiped named Beatrice. This love, in the end, received a mysterious and even some kind of mystical meaning. After all, he filled each of his works with it. The idealized image of this woman is one of the key in the works of Dante.
Fame came to him after the release of the story "New Life", which told about love, which renewed the main character, forcing him to take a different look at everything around. It was composed of canzones, sonnets and prose stories.
Dante also devoted much time to political treatises. But his main work is still The Divine Comedy. This is a vision of the afterlife, a very popular genre in Italian literature at that time. The poem is an allegorical building in which the dense forest, where the main character is lost, represents human sins and delusions, and the strongest passions are pride, voluptuousness and greed.
The character of the "Divine Comedy" together with the guide goes on a journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.
The most complete picture of the writers and works of this country can be compiled from the Mokulsky encyclopedia. Italian literature on the basis of this study appears in all its glory.
One of the most famous lyric poets in Italy is Francesco Petrarch. He lived in the XIV century, was a prominent representative of the generation of humanists. Interestingly, he wrote not only in Italian, but also in Latin. And world fame he acquired precisely thanks to Italian poetry, which he treated with a certain amount of disdain during his lifetime.
In these works, he regularly refers to his beloved named Laura. The reader from Petrarch's sonnets will learn that they first met in the church in 1327, and exactly 21 years later she was gone. Even after that, Petrarch continued to sing it for ten years.
In addition to poems dedicated to love for Laura, these Italian cycles contain works of a religious and political nature. Italian literature of the Renaissance is perceived by many through the prism of Petrarch's poetry.
Another bright representative of the period Italian Renaissance in literature - Giovanni Boccaccio. He had a significant impact on the development of all European culture with his works. Boccaccio wrote a large number of poems based on subjects from ancient mythology, actively used the genre of psychological story in his work.
His main work was the collection of short stories "The Decameron", one of the most striking works of Italian literature of the Renaissance. The short stories in this book, as critics note, are imbued with humanistic ideas, the spirit of free thought, humor and cheerfulness, reflect the full palette of Italian society, contemporary to the author.
The Decameron is a collection of 100 stories told to each other by seven ladies and 13 men. During the plague that has swept the country, they flee to a remote estate in the countryside, where they expect to wait out the epidemic.
All stories are presented in an easy and elegant language, the narrative breathes diversity and life's truth. Boccaccio uses in these short stories a large number of artistic techniques, depicting people of all kinds of characters, ages and conditions.
The love that Boccaccio paints is fundamentally different from the ideas of romantic relationships in Petrarch and Dante. Giovanni has a burning passion that borders on the erotic, rejecting established family values. The literature of the Italian Renaissance is largely based on the Decameron.
The writers of other states also played a great influence. Italian and French literature of the Renaissance developed very quickly and dynamically, also represented by such names as Pierre de Ronsard and many others.
17th century
The next important stage is the development of Italian literature of the 17th century. At that time, there were two schools in the country - pindarists and seascapes. The Marinists are led by Giambattista Marino. His most famous work is the poem "Adonis".
The second school of literature in Italian was founded by Gabriello Chiabrera. He was a very prolific author, from whose pen came a large number of pastoral plays, epic poems and odes. In the same row, it is necessary to mention the poet Vincenzo Filicaia.
Interestingly, the fundamental difference between these schools lies in the technical tricks and issues related to the form of the work.
Around the same time, a circle appears in Naples, from which the Arcadian Academy emerges, to which many famous poets and satirists of the period belong.
In the 18th century, after a period of a certain stagnation, a bright representative of Italian classical literature was born. He is a playwright and librettist. He has more than 250 plays to his credit.
World fame Goldoni brings comedy "Servant of two masters", which is still included in the repertoire of many theaters around the world. The events of this work unfold in Venice. The protagonist is Truffaldino, a rogue and deceiver who managed to escape from the poor town of Bergamo to rich and successful Venice. There he is hired as a servant to Signor Rasponi, who is in fact a girl in disguise Beatrice. In the guise of her dead brother, she seeks to find her lover, who by mistake and because of injustice is accused of murder and forced to flee Venice.
Truffaldino, who wants to earn as much as possible, serves two masters at the same time, and at first he successfully succeeds.
Giacomo Leopardi
In the 19th century, Italian fiction continues to develop, but there are no big names like Dante or Goldoni. We can note the romantic poet Giacomo Leopardi.
His poems were very lyrical, although he left very little behind him - several dozen poems. For the first time they saw the light in 1831 under the single title "Songs". These poems were completely imbued with pessimism, which colored the whole life of the author himself.
Leopardi has not only poetic, but also prose works. For example, "Moral Essays". This is the name of his philosophical essay, and he also formulates his worldview in the "Diary of Reflections".
All his life he was in search and invariably experienced disappointment. He claimed that he needed love, desire, fire and life, but on all positions he was wrecked. Most In his life, the poet was disabled, so he could not fully cooperate with foreign universities, although they regularly offered it. He was also oppressed by the idea that Christianity is just an illusion. And since Leopardi was by nature a mystical nature, he often found himself in front of a painful void.
In poetry, he portrayed a sense of true and natural beauty, being an adherent of the ideas of Rousseau.
Leopardi was often called the incarnate poet of world sorrow.
Raffaello Giovagnoli
The classics of Italian literature began to take shape towards the end of the 19th century. The Italian historian and novelist writes a tribute to the gladiator of the same name, who leads the slave uprising that took place in Ancient Rome. It is noteworthy that this character is very real.
In addition, Giovagnoli's narrative itself, in addition to historical truth and facts, is woven with lyrical plots that did not really exist. For example, in an Italian writer, Spartak falls in love with the patrician Valeria, who treats him favorably.
At the same time, a courtesan from Greece, Eutibida, is in love with Spartacus himself, whose love the protagonist categorically rejects. As a result, it is the offended Eutibida who plays one of the decisive roles in the defeat of the army of Spartacus and in his further death.
The ending is very believable. The uprising of the slaves was indeed brutally suppressed, and Spartacus was killed.
Writers from the south of the country have made a great contribution to the development of Italian children's literature. For example, journalist Carlo Collodi writes the famous fairy tale "The Adventures of Pinocchio. The Story of a Wooden Doll". In Russia, of course, it is better known in the interpretation of Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy, who wrote The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Pinocchio.
Collodi himself, originally from Florence, when the war of independence was waged in Italy (1848 and 1860), volunteered to fight in the army of Tuscany.
In Italian literature of the 20th century, it stands out clearly from the rest. This is an Italian playwright and writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934. Modern Italian literature in the person of Pirandello is a fascinating and inventive narrative, with the help of which the author simultaneously revives stage and drama.
The absurd has a great influence on the author. This statement demonstrates the contradictions that arise between everyday life and art, this example demonstrates the social tragedy of people who are powerless to resist the masks imposed on them by society. They themselves only demand from the author that he write a play for them.
The play is divided into real and fantastic plan. In the first, the characters of a play that has not yet been written act, and already in the second, the viewer learns about the tragedy that befalls them.
Pirandello entered his literary activity as the author of the collection Joyful Pain, which was popular in 1889. In many of his early poems, the desire to demonstrate to others his inner world is combined, as well as a spiritual rebellion that opposes the hopelessness of the surrounding life. In 1894, the writer released a collection of short stories "Love without Love", and then a collection of "Novels for a Year", in which he sought to combine a demonstration of the inner world of a small person with his spiritual inner rebellion against a hopeless life. Some of the works as a result became the basis for several plays by Pirandello.
The writer entered the literature as an author who tells about the life of small towns and villages in Sicily, depicting the social strata of the people living there. For example, in the famous short stories "Blessing" and "Happy" he ridicules the representatives of the clergy, who hide their greed behind ostentatious mercy.
In some of his works, he deliberately departs from Italian traditionalism. So, in the short story "The Black Shawl" focuses on the psychological portrait and actions of the main character, who is an old maid who decided to arrange her life, regardless of the condemnation of others. At the same time, the author, at times, harshly criticizes the social order, when people are ready to do anything for the sake of profit. Public institutions are subjected to such criticism in the short story "Tight tailcoat", in which the professor is invited to the wedding of his student. He becomes a witness of how the girl's future personal life is almost destroyed due to social prejudices.
A similar rebellion is described in the work "Train Whistle". At the center of the story is an accountant who feels dissatisfaction with his life under the influence of a momentary impulse. Dreaming of travels and wanderings, he understands how unimportant the life around him is, he is carried away to illusory world in which he finally loses his mind.
Appear in the work of Pirandello and political motives. Thus, in the short stories "The Fool" and "His Majesty" subtle political intrigues are demonstrated, while showing how petty they often are.
Social contradictions often become the object of criticism. In the short story "Fan" the main character is a poor peasant woman who was abandoned by a loved one, and the mistress simply robbed. She reflects that suicide is the only way to solve all her problems.
At the same time, Pirandello remains a humanist, giving the main place in his work to the reality of human feelings. The short story "Everything is like with decent people" tells how the hero conquers his beloved with his selfless love, forgiving even the betrayal she committed.
Pirandello himself often prefers to delve into the psychology of his characters, criticizing social reality and using such a technique as the grotesque. The characters are portrayed with social masks, which they must throw off in the course of the action. For example, in the short story "Some Commitments", the main character is cheated on by his wife. Her lover is an official from the municipality, to whom he comes to complain about his wife's infidelity. And when he finds out the whole truth, he not only forgives his wife, but also helps her lover. In fact, as the reader understands, he was never jealous of his wife, only putting on the social mask of an offended and deceived husband. The lover also wore a mask, but already a respectable official.
Pirandello uses the grotesque very unobtrusively in his works. For example, in the short story "In Silence" reveals the tragedy of a young man who knows all the cruelty of the world, which leads him to a sad and even tragic ending. He is forced to commit suicide and kill his younger brother.
In total, Pirandello wrote six novels during his literary career. In Les Misérables, he criticizes social prejudice and society, depicting a woman who herself is trying to become an object of criticism from others.
And in his own famous novel"Late Mattia Pascal"He demonstrates the emerging contradiction between the true face of a person living in modern society and his social mask. His hero decides to start life from scratch, arranging everything so that others consider him dead. But as a result, he only takes on a new shell, understanding that life outside of society is impossible.He begins to simply be torn between himself real and fictional, which symbolizes the gap between reality and human perception.
Italian literature of the 21st century is represented by the famous writer, our contemporary Niccolò Ammaniti. He was born in Rome, studied at the Faculty of Biology, but never graduated. They say that his graduate work formed the basis of his first novel, which was called "Gills". The novel was published in 1994. It tells about a boy from Rome who is diagnosed with a tumor. Almost against his will, he finds himself in India, where he constantly finds himself in all sorts of, often unpleasant situations. In 1999, the novel was filmed, but the film was not very successful.
In 1996, a collection of short stories of the writer under the general title "Dirt" was published, among which were such well-known works as "The Last Year of Mankind", "To Live and Die in Prenestine". Based on the story "There will be no holiday", a film was also made, in which the main role was played by Monica Bellucci. In general, many of Ammaniti's works have been repeatedly filmed.
In 1999, a modern Italian writer released another of his novels, "I'll pick you up and take you away." Its actions take place in a fictional city located in central Italy. But the real glory comes to him in 2001. Thundered his novel "I'm not afraid." Two years later, director Gabriele Salvatores filmed it.
The events of this work unfold in the 70s of the XX century. In a remote Italian province lives 10-year-old Michele, who spends all summer playing games with friends.
One day they find themselves near an abandoned house, where there is a mysterious pit, covered with a lid on top. Without telling anyone about her, the next day, Michele returns to his find, finding a boy sitting on a chain there. He supplies the mysterious prisoner with bread and water. The children get to know each other. It turns out that the boy's name is Filippo, he was kidnapped for a ransom. Michele finds out that the crime was organized by a group of adults, including his own father.
Repeatedly, Ammaniti captivates readers with such exciting stories, illustrating what modern Italian literature can be like. He writes not only books, but also scripts. So, in 2004, the film "Vanity Serum" was released, based on his story. In 2006, critics reacted inconsistently to his new novel As God Commands. But at the same time, the work receives the approval of the reader community and even the Strega Award. In 2008, the film of the same name is released, which is again directed by Salvatores.
In 2010, Ammaniti wrote the novel "Me and You", which Bernardo Bertolucci is already bringing to life on the screen. Moreover, the maestro returns to filming a movie after a 7-year break, becoming interested in the plot of Ammaniti.
Among his latest works, it is necessary to highlight the popular collection of short stories "A Delicate Moment" and the novel "Anna", which became the seventh in his creative biography.
The content of the article
ITALIAN LITERATURE developed rather late, because the strong influence of the Latin language prevented the manifestations in literature of the gradually developed new vernacular language. At the same time, political and commercial relations with France facilitated the penetration of Western literary models into Italy, as a result of which, naturally, the first period of Italian literature began with imitation.
From the end of the 12th century, and perhaps even earlier, mainly after the Albigensian wars, troubadours appeared in the small princely courts of Upper Italy, where the Provencal language was understandable, and soon independent poets in Provencal began to write in Italy. In Central Italy at the beginning of the 13th century. there were no brilliant courtyards, and in the South the Provencal language was incomprehensible. Therefore, here, first of all, they turned to the vernacular, and therefore Italian poetry began in Sicily, at the court of Emperor Frederick II.
For the most part, these poetic works are only pale reflections of Provencal examples, without individual character, and only a few of them were original. With the fall of the Hohenstaufen, Tuscany becomes a new center of poetry, where Gittone d'Arezzo (Guittone D "arezzo, c. 1215–1294), one of the largest Italian poets of the 13th century, who was still under strong Provencal influence in his education, became the head of the poetic school , which represented a transitional stage in Italian literature.At the same time, a more recent realist current was born, especially in the person of Chiaro Davanzati (Chiaro Davanzati, d. in 1304), one of the most prolific Italian authors before Dante: at least 122 of his are known sonnet and 61 ballads.
Finally, the Sicilian school from Tuscany passes to Bologna, and here, in contrast to it, a school arises that did not adjoin the popular realist trend, but was under scientific influence and acquired a symbolic-allegorical character. Its head was Guido Gvinitselli (Guido Guinizzelli, d. 1276). Soon this direction reached its highest development in Florence, where among his followers were Guido Cavalcanti (Guido Cavalcanti, 1259-1300) and Dante.
Along with this, comic and satirical poetry developed. Provençal poetry continued to exist in Upper Italy, and the French language gained considerable influence. Many Italians wrote their works in French: Brunetto Latini (c. 1220–1294) his encyclopedic work big treasure (Le Tresor), Marco Polo about his travels, etc.
In Upper Italy, under the influence of wandering French singers, a rather extensive Franco-Italian literature arose. Prose literature finally also begins in this century. Several samples of letters in the Bolognese dialect have survived, many translations of French "adventure novels" and translations from Latin.
In the 14th century Florence became the political center of Tuscany, and the Tuscan dialect took a dominant place in Italian literature. At the turn of this century, one of the greatest personalities of this time, Dante, appears in Italian literature. Following Dante, other writers of the early Renaissance appeared - Francesco Petrarch, author of lyric poems and sonnets. The story (short story), always a strong point of Italian literature, found at that time an outstanding representative, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), who earned world fame with a collection of short stories Decameron.
See section ITALIAN LITERATURE in the article REVIVAL LITERATURE
Other literature of the 14th century, partly adjacent to the works of the 13th century, partly imitative, is rather insignificant compared with the works of these three writers.
In fact, the tradition of classical culture has never been interrupted in Italy. In the era of Dante, a particularly zealous desire is manifested to resurrect the artistry of the Latin classics. In the 15th century Italian nobility and scholars are actively searching for ancient Greek and Latin manuscripts. Thus, it is understandable that educated people who left Greece after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks meet with a warm welcome in Italy. The invention of printing and the desire of a large number of petty princes to advance one another in their patronage of the sciences unusually contributed to the dissemination of newly acquired classical knowledge.
Folk literature in the 15th century was at first almost completely suppressed by this scientific movement. However, in Venice, folk erotic poetry was imitated in excellent canzonettes and strambotto, which he himself set to music, the Venetian patrician and humanist Leonardo Giustiniani (Leonardo Giustiniani, ca. 1388-1446).
In addition, religious poetry appears in Umbria in the form of dramatic plays Devozione, in Florence under the name Sacra Rappresentazione– spiritual dramas similar to mysteries based on plots from the Old and New Testaments, apocrypha and lives of saints. The plays were didactic, with obligatory punishment of vice and a reward for virtue in the finale.
From the second half of the century, national poetry again penetrates and finds distribution in noble and court society. Three literary centers are formed: Naples, Ferrara and Florence. In Florence, Lorenzo de' Medici (1448–1492) patronized literature and wrote poems himself in imitation of Dante and Petrarch. Among his associates and friends were Luigi Pulci (1432-1484) from Florence and Agnolo Ambroghini, nicknamed Poliziano (1454-1494) who form a kind of triumvirate of Florentine poets Quattrocento.
Almost at the same time as Pulci, Matteo Boiardo Count Scandiano (Matteo Maria Boiardo, 1434-1494), wrote the first real Italian epic poem in Ferrera Orlando in love (Oriando innamorato).
Among the lyric poets of this period are the Neapolitan Cariteo (d. c. 1515), Serafino d'Aquila (1466-1500), Bernardo Accolti of Arezzo, the famous improviser called "L'unico" (d. c. 1534), and others
Of the comic and satirical poets, it should be noted especially Antonio Camelli from Pistoia (Antonio Cammelli, 1440-1502). Drama was dominated by imitation of the ancients. Among the most significant prose writers is Leon Battista Alberti (Leon Battista Alberti, 1404-1472), the universal genius of the Early Renaissance, who left his mark in almost all areas of science and art of his time - philology, mathematics, cryptography, cartography, pedagogy, art theory, literature , music, architecture, sculpture, painting - and Matteo Palmieri (Matteo Palmieri, 1406-1478). The famous Girolamo Savonarola from Ferrara, who denounced the licentiousness of the Medici court, wrote treatises, sermons and lauds.
By the end of the 15th century a prose writer appears in Naples, who created a new literary direction; Jacopo Sannazzaro (1458–1530), in addition to a large number of poems in vernacular Italian, wrote a fantastic bucolic novel Arcadia(Arkadia), which aroused the admiration of contemporaries and had a significant impact on European literature.
In the 16th century both directions - Italian folk literature and humanism - merge into one harmonious whole, giving rise to a surge of Italian literature. It begins with the heroic romantic epic of Lodovico Ariosto (1474–1533) Furious Roland (Oriando furioso), which caused a whole stream of heroic poems. However, a reaction is soon noticed that opposes the description romantic world unvarnished sharp comedy. The head of this school is the Mantuan Teofilo Folengo (1492–1544). Girolamo, Amelunghi, Grazzini belong to the same direction.
At the same time, another group of writers gives Italian literature a new direction, requiring it to completely imitate the ancients, and represented by long heroic epics based on the Aristotelian legacy. The head of this trend was Giangiorgio Trissino of Vicenza (1478–1550), who wrote a poem in blank verse Italia liberta dei Goti based Iliad Homer and tragedy Sofonisba(1515). This also includes Luigi Alamani from Florence (1495-1556), Bernardo Tasso (1493-1569), father of Torquato Tasso, who wrote in 1575 one of the last brilliant works of the late Renaissance, an epic poem Liberated Jerusalem (Gerusalemme liberalata).
In this century, the didactic poetry of the ancients was also often imitated. For the most part, the model was Georgica Virgil. Lyricism again approaches Petrarch, leaving aside his mannered imitators of the 15th century. This direction was headed by Cardinal Pietro Bembo (1470-1547). Bembo, in addition, proved the advantages of the Tuscan dialect, in which he saw the basis of the literary Italian(Reasoning in prose about the folk language).
Michelangelo Buonaroti (1475-1564), more original than the other Petrarchists, Luigi Alamanni, the Venetian Bernardo Cappello, Torquato Tasso, Bernardo Baldi and many others constituted some kind of opposition to the poets who wrote in classical meters.
Literature after the Renaissance.
The brightly shining Renaissance sun, although sometimes a bit chilly, dimmed in the 16th century. The reasons for this were, and quite historical. The Renaissance not only withered, it suffocated. Italy lost its independence, Spanish rule was established in the country. In Spain itself, absolutism was characterized as extremely reactionary, the economy was exhausted by constant conquests. Spain began to influence Italy, imposing its model of existence on it, which naturally led to disastrous consequences in the political and social sphere and could not but affect intellectual life. Along with the Counter-Reformation, orthodoxy, stubbornness in philosophical thought and rigid moral standards returned, which was almost fatal for the Italian genius, which, by its nature, needed freedom and even skepticism to flourish.
In the period between Ariosto and Tasso, the Council of Trent took place, which is very symbolic; There is no better illustration of the impact of the Counter-Reformation than the contrast between Furious Orlando and Jerusalem liberated. At Tasso, the knights are under spiritual oppression, Crusades committed very seriously - they are more religious than epic. And this is with the generation that already knew what the institution of the papacy and the Ottoman Empire, united against the Christian countries; Ariosto's carefree fantasies are no more, and the story moves forward with difficulty, and only occasionally relief comes in literary digressions, but they are carefully planned to fit within what is permitted. And only due to the fact that Torquato Tasso was a man of genius and sincerity, in the Liberated Jerusalem there is a melancholy, sad beauty, and there are passages interspersed with sensual and luxurious scenes, but with the prescribed subsequent condemnation of them. In the atmosphere of the late 16th century, and even more so in the 17th century, it was impossible for an Italian writer to be sincere even with himself if, as in the case of Tasso, he was vaguely aware of the duality of his position.
As for the genre of pastoral drama of shepherd masks, which originally belonged to escapist literature, there was no problem there, and therefore Tasso could create harmonic beauty. Aminty- a graceful, technically perfect and winning drama. Pastor Fido (faithful shepherd, 1590) Giovanni Battista Guarini is another creation in the same genre and at about the same level of literary skill.
The main exponent of the classical school was Count Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837). Giacomo Leopardi, an important figure in the literature of this period, was above all an excellent exponent of lyrical pessimism. He was characterized by intellectual power, depth and sharpness of feelings and erudition, which can be fairly compared only with Dante. Leopardi, a poet with a special personal emotionality, was the spokesman of his time, therefore much more understandable and exciting for his contemporary reader than Dante. Cycle of poems Songs(Canti) is the most clearly articulated expression of man's protest against his fate that existed in the literature of this period. Leopardi reflects in some of his Songs true longing for the period of the Risorgimento, when there was a struggle for national liberation and unity. In his canzones, he achieved an unsurpassed perfection of form and depth of thought, both in comparison with his contemporaries and with the latest Italian poetry. Leopardi also expounded his philosophy in sharp and energetic prose.
Many poets grouped around him: Giovanni Torti (1774–1858), lyricist Giovanni Berchete (1783–1851), Tomaso Grossi (1791–1853), who wrote in addition to short stories in verse Ildegonda, Ulrico e Lida and poems Lombards on the First Crusade (I Lombardi alla prima crociata) novel Marco Visconti; Silvio Pellico (1789–1859), who wrote many tragedies and poems but is particularly famous for describing his imprisonment ( Le mie prigioni); Giuseppe Nicolini (1788–1855); Luigi Carrere (1801–1850); the brilliant political satirist Giuseppe Giusti (1809-1850), who gave a number of magnificent satirical portraits of aristocrats, bankers, the bourgeois, and even the pope; Gabriele Rossetti (1783–1854); Massimo d'Azeglio (1798–1886) from Turin, who also wrote two novels: Ettore Fieramosca and Niccoló de'Lapi; Francesco Domenico Guerazzi (1804–1873); Cesare Cantý (born 1805) wrote a novel Marherita Pusteria; Genoese Giuseppe Mazzini (1808–1872), critic of the romantic school, etc.
Historical novel by Alessandro Manzoni Betrothed (I promise sposi) is one of the finest examples of all romantic literature. However, this intonation outstanding work- patriotic, the same theme is repeated in his plays, which are clearly influenced by W. Shakespeare, as well as in his lyrics, in which the theme of deep and all-encompassing Christianity is felt. The Betrothed is still considered one of the best Italian novels; it shows the influence of Walter Scott, but Manzoni adds his own deep and calm realism to Scott's formula. The genre of the historical novel was cultivated by a number of talented writers such as Francesco Domenico Guerazzi (1804–1873), Tomaso Grossi (1791–1853) and Massimo d'Azzeglio (1798–1866), author of the historical novel, which was very readable in its time. Memories (I Miei Ricordi).
After the exploits of Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882) and the ingenious maneuvers of Cavour (1810–1861), the cause of the struggle for independence passed into a triumphal phase, and the capture of Rome in 1870 completed the unification of Italy, which the patriots of the country had long dreamed of.
After the unification of Italy, there was a flourishing of all genres of Italian literature.
Paolo Giacometti (1817–1882) wrote a number of successful tragedies and comedies, such as Poet and dancer (Il poeta e la ballerina); Leopoldo Marenko wrote tragedies, dramas, chivalric plays and comedies of manners, which for some time dominated the stage and had many imitators. The leading place in tragedy rightfully belongs to Pietro Kosa (1830–1881): Nerone, I Borgia and others. The tragedy of Cavalotti was well received by the audience and readers Alcibiades (Alcibiade).
In comedy, two directions were presented: comic and social. The most significant representative of the former is the lawyer Tomaso Gherardi del Testa (1815–1881). Paolo Ferrari (1822-1889), who dominated the stage all his life, belonged to the direction of social comedy. Of the lyricists of this era, the following are best known: Giovanni Prato (1815–1884), lyric-epic poet Luigi Mercantini (1821–1872), patriotic poet who wrote the well-known and popular song Inno di Garidaldi; Giacomo Zanello (d. 1888); Carducci, Giosue (1835-1907) was the greatest literary figure of the new Italy built as a result of the triumph of the Risorgimento. At heart, Carducci is a historian, although it cannot be said that there is no feeling in his poems, but they were clearly created under the influence of the epic, and not lyrical inspiration. His work is worth noting not only for its poignant themes, but also for the fact that he adapted into modern Italian many of the verse forms of the classical ancient period. He was not the first experimenter of this style, but he perfected it, made it his own, and filled it with content worthy of this form. From his lyrical and satirical works, Luvenilia, Levia gravia, Poesie, Nuove odi barbare, Terze odi barbare.
Novels and short stories were written by Antonio Bresciani (1798-1862), Nicolo Tomasseo (1802-1874); the author of the novel of characters is Ippolito Nievo.
In the last decades of the 19th century a number of remarkable literary talents came to the fore in Italy. Much attention was paid to the novel, short story and lyric poetry, but the drama also showed a desire for independence and liberation from the omnipotent influence of the French theater.
The realistic direction of the novel and short story, which was at one time a favorite, was more and more supplanted by psychological analysis. AT chronological order first mention must be made of the beautifully written psychological novel L'anima E. A. Butty (1893). The novels of women writers Matilda Serao are interesting ( Castigo, 1893) and Emma Perodi ( Suor Ludovica, 1894).
A novel by Gabriel d'Annunzio Triumph of death (Il trionfo della morte) (1894) describes psychological condition hero, the poet Giorgio Aurispa during the last months of his life, with whom he ends due to hereditary suicidal impulse. Next novel d'Annunzio Le Vergini delle Rocce(1895), first of a cycle Romanzi del Giglio, built on the misunderstood ideas of Nietzsche.
Worth a mention Sulla breccia(1894) by Antoinette Giacomelli, not a novel in the proper sense of the word. This book, which attracted the attention of contemporaries, was written by a zealous Catholic woman with a sincere and deep intention to turn mankind to morality and religion. Jerolama Rovetta wrote a beautiful novel of manners La Baraonda(1894), which mercilessly exposes dark sides the world of businessmen, financiers and speculators; Rovetta remained true to his direction in the novel L'idolo(1898). His last work is a simply and vitally written novel. La Signorina, telling about the life of high Milan society. A realistic description of morals was given by Frederico de Roberto in the novel I Vicere (1894). Il figlio(1894) Arthur Coluati gives a description of the underside of the ministerial and banking circles of Rome and the scandals that flare up there. On the contrary, unresolved problems and injustice reigning in the lower strata of Italian society become the theme of the novel by the writer Bruno Sperani La fabbrica (1895).
The novels of Neera (Neera, pseudonym of Anna Zuccari-Radius) have a completely different character: a wonderful work Anima sola(1895), where, in the form of a written confession, the deep inner life of a painfully sensitive famous artist appears, in which many have tried to recognize Eleonora Duse; about the suffering of a woman's heart and her last novel La vecchia casa(1900). Antonio Fogazzaro in 1895 published the novel Piccolo mondo antico from the time of the formation of the kingdom. Also, the novel did not go unnoticed by contemporaries. Ave(1896) Alfonso Albertazzi, imbued with the ideas of socialism. These years gave the literature of Italy a number of names that also deserve mention. These are Amalcare Lauria, Olivieri Sangiacomo, Sofia Bisi Albini, Jane dela Quercia, Matilda Serao. In 1900, d'Annunzio's much-acclaimed novel Flame (Il Fuoco), which caused both boundless admiration and sharp criticism.
From those that appeared in the 90s of the 19th century. collections of short stories and short stories, thirteen wonderful little essays written with love by the already mentioned Matilda Serao should be noted: Gli amori(1894), her three stories Donna Paola(1897) and sad Storia di una monaca the same year.
Luigi Capuana wrote Le Appasionate(1893), collection Il braccioletto(1897) and seven short, artistically strong stories Anime a nudo(1900). Among other authors of novels and short stories of this period, the stories of Giovanni Verga deserve mention. Don Candeloro e compagni(1893), Antonio Fogazzaro with story Racconti Brevi(1894), Farina with written plain language entertaining stories Il numero tredici(1895) and Che dira il mondo?(1896). Marco Prague painting with profound knowledge and fidelity to the life of Italian actors in Story of palcoscenico(1896). The works of Edmond de Amichise are interesting: essays on impressions after visiting the Italian colonies in Argentina, In America ending tragic story, and psychological studies, the plots of which are played out in a carriage of a horse-drawn railway La carozza di tutti(1898). Eduardo Scarfoglio wrote great description travel to Abyssinia, reads like a novel Il cristiano errane (1897).
From the boundless mass of lyrical poems of this period, the collection of poems by d'Annunzio under the title Poema paradisiaco(1893). Here his mastery of the musicality of verse, dominance over language, rhythm and form is manifested.
The works of another poet, Arthur Graf, Doro il tramonto(1893) and medusa filled with hopeless pessimism. Grafe, who subtly understands the psychology of Leopardi, belongs to the most powerful poets in Italy of that period.
Good and poems by Giovanni Morradi, collected under the heading Ricordi lirici(1893) - beautiful pictures of nature, love songs, elegies full of sorrow. They were followed by ballate moderne (1895).
Mario Rapisardi performed with satirical poem Atlantide(1894), written in octaves and recognized as a failure of the author, but giving a picture of contemporary science, literature and morality to the author. More successful is the work of Alfredo Baccelli - a social poem Vittime e ribelli(1894) and Iride umana(1898) - a history of the human soul and a look into the future. Poet Giuseppe Carducci, inclined towards moderate verismo, published several odes in 1896-1897, in particular Per il monumento di Dante and La Chiesa di Polenta. Giovanni Pascoli published in 1897 Poemetti, where it predominantly sings of Tuscan nature. In 1898 inspired-idealistic Poesie scelte Antonio Fogazzaro and almost simultaneously Vecchie e nujve odi tiberine Domenico Gnoli. Other poets of this time: Vittorio Aganoore, Severino Ferrari, D.M. Vitteleski. They wrote in various local dialects: Sarfatti - in Venetian, A. Sindichi, Trilussa, A. Sbrishia - in Roman, in Perugina - R. Torelli, in Neapolitan - Saltore di Giacomo, etc.
In the area of dramatic literature the work of Italian writers of this period is poorer and more limited. It suffices to name the four main playwrights around whom less significant authors were grouped. These are representatives realistic direction in literature: Gerolamo Rovetta, Giuseppe Giacosa, Marco Prague and Giovanni Verga.
Rovetta in 1893 wrote the comedy in two acts La cameriera nova and the drama in three acts I disonesti (published in 1894). The comedy La realtà (1895) was a great success, and in Principio di secolo Rovetta returns to a historical drama forgotten in Italy. Comedy written in 1897 Il poeta; subtle psychological study - comedy Il ramo d'ulivo and finally in 1900 comedy Le due coscienze.
Giuseppe Giacosa published in 1900 a collection of his dramatic works. Best - One Act Drama I diritti dell'anima, and comedy Come le foglie- a well-aimed picture of social mores, which was a great success with the public.
M. Prague wrote a lot, but none of his works survived the test of time.
Extremely interesting were the dramatic experiments of d'Annunzio, in particular, his five-act tragedy La citta morta(published in 1898), which first appeared with E. Duse in Paris in 1897 in a French translation. However, critics noted that, despite the perfection of form, the characters in the tragedy are lifeless and schematic. In the same year, a one-act drama was published Il sogno d'un tramonto d'autunno, the second in a series I sogni delle stagioni, rather a monologue, a lyrical epilogue of a drama with excellent psychological development and shiny shape.
Among other writers of the late 19th century. the romantic poet Giovanni Prati (1815–1884), the gentle Silvio Pellico (1789–1854), who is the author of lofty works in which heroic-patriotic motifs sounded, stand out as My dungeons (Le mie prigioni) and Francesca da Rimini - all of them are not the most famous writers and poets of the 19th century. Giuseppe Niccolini (1782–1861) went down in history as the playwright of the Risorgimento, an exponent of the views of the advanced part of the emerging bourgeoisie in the first decades of the 19th century. Niccolini's work is imbued with hatred for political and religious despotism and the dream of creating a united independent Italy.
Italian literature of the early 20th century.
reflected common problems for Europe. As time passes, you can make a retrospective critical appraisal both currents and individual authors for the period starting from the end of the 19th century. until the start of the First World War.
In the field of poetry, Carducci's direct successor was Giovanni Pascoli (1853-1912), because a number of his poems were written under the influence of the muse of history, which also inspired his famous contemporary. But at the bottom of Pascoli's inspiration lies a melancholy reminiscent of Leopardi and even Petrarch. More impressive and comprehensive was the contribution of Gabriele D "Annunzio (although perhaps his influence was not too long), which by that time had become the main voice of Italian literature. The personality and creative life of D" Annunzio gave magic and a mysterious flair to his fame, he produced impressed both as a poet, playwright, and writer. To subsequent generations, D'Annunzio seems artificial, false, and yet, thanks to how many writers drew their inspiration from his work and even from criticism of his works, he must be regarded as a source of life-giving force in Italian literature even today.
The Futurist movement of 1909-1914, represented by poets such as Corrado Govoni, expressed an anti-rhetorical position, and had many features in common with D'Annunzio.
Crepuscolari, i.e. the twilight poets, Guido Gozzano (1883-1916) and Sergio Corazzini (1886-1907) can be seen as a reaction against the phenomenon of d'Annunzianism; while Dino Campana (1885–1932) is now considered the forerunner modern school, and he also felt the influence of D "Annunzio.
This period can be characterized as the time of maturity of the Italian novel. Sicilian Giovanni Verga (1840-1922), whose work reflects a social and literary position that has much in common with French naturalism, but at the same time is not a copy of it. Verga's literature differed both in technique and in inspiration, which felt fresh and powerful. The work of the writer Italo Svevo (1861-1928) from Trieste stands apart. His highly intellectual works were far ahead of their time. Other leading novelists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries - this is Matilda Serao (1856-1927) from Naples, the Tuscan Federico Tozzi (1883-1920), Grazia Deledda (1878-1936) from Sardinia - all of them are classified as writers of the provincial direction; the somewhat sentimental Antonio Fogazzaro (1842–1911), Alfredo Panzini (1863–1939), who wrote in a light ironic style; Massimo Bontempelli (1878–1960) and Aldo Palazzeschi (1885–1974), both endowed with an unusual sense of fantasy, are both associated with Futurism; G. A. Borghese (1882–1952), subtle critic of literature and politics; Bruno Cicognani (1879–1971); and Ricardo Bacchelli (1891–1985), author of the famous great historical trilogy The Mill on the Po.
The most prominent theatrical playwrights of this period are the bourgeois moralist Giuseppe Giacosa (1847–1906), the disillusioned but sober-eyed Marco Praha (1862–1929), the shallow but very popular Dario Nicodemi (1874–1934), and the charming Sabatino Lopez ( 1867-1951). All of them, in general, were representatives of the social drama, and the spiritual upliftment with which their works were written made them very French. Other talented playwright was the Neapolitan Roberto Bracco (1862-1943), who began by imitating the superficial, cheerful and elegant French comedy, and later, under the influence of Ibsen, wrote plays full of realism and melancholy, as well as Sam Benelli (1877-1949), whose plays in poems were romantic.
A huge actually Italian contribution to the development of the theater were the works of the so-called. playwrights of the grotesque, created in the second decade of the 20th century. in an ironic and paradoxical way, developing various topics, from personal, everyday to social. Luigi Chiarelli (1884–1947) explored the eccentric and strange behavior heroes. His play The Mask and the Face (1916) was a pioneer in this genre, Rosso di San Secondo (1887-1957) dealt with the same issues, his theater combined symbolism and social criticism. The most important figure in the grotesque, however, was Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936). His dramatic works masterfully built and marked by a clear and precise presentation, non-standard situations and many new techniques, which attracted the attention of the whole world to his work. The main difference between his works is that they all raised very important and significant philosophical problems and brought them to the stage, such as the ambiguity of personality, the problem of truth versus illusion, the contrast between convention and sincerity, the definition of identity and the nature of hallucinations. Psychological high intellectual theater Pirandello, with the sometimes shocking content of his plays, not only attracts, but draws the viewer into the theatrical action. The originality of Pirandello's plots, his discoveries in the field of staging performances, and his caustic and pessimistic attitude have left their mark on the world theater; something of Pirandello can be seen in such different writers as Sartre, Giraudoux, Beckett, Wilder and Ionesco.
For more than half a century, the famous Benedetto Croce (1866–1952), an outstanding historian, philosopher and literary critic, worked in all areas of literary activity. Croce's literary criticism, partly reflecting the influence of Francesco De Sanctis (1817–1883), author of the Classical History of Italian Literature, and partly Croce following his own strict philosophical standards, and in this way he performed a disciplining and purifying function that runs like a red thread through the following one after another literary schools and fashion trends that appeared in the first decades of the 20th century. In this connection, special mention should be made of the group formed around two periodicals: La Voce, founded in 1910 by Giuseppe Prezzolini (1882–1982) and Giovanni Papini (1881–1956); and "Ronda" ("La Ronda"), founded in 1922 by Vincenzo Cardarelli. The general style of Voche was experimental and did not reject the influence of foreign literature, mainly French; and the Ronda magazine was conservative. In reality, however, both groups did a great deal by stimulating the creative impulse of writers who found the ideas of these two periodicals important and inspiring. Such well-known writers as Ricardo Bacchelli, Antonio Baldini, Piero Jagier, novelist and poet Aldo Palazzeschi collaborated with Voche; poets such as Corrado Govoni and Giuseppe Ungaretti; literary critics Giuseppe De Roberti (1888–1963), Emilio Cecchi (1884–966), Pietro Pancrazi (1893–1952) and Renato Serra (1884–1915), who were of great influence in the 1910s–1930s; as well as philosophers such as Croce himself, Giovanni Gentile, who became famous in particular through his participation in the reform of school education during the fascist regime, and Guido de Ruggiero (1888–1948).
Vincenzo Cardarelli (1887–1959) laid the theoretical foundations for the journal La ronda. E. Cecchi, R. Bakchelli, A. Baldini, B. Barilli were the key figures of this new literary review, they considered their main goal rediscover the true Italian tradition, but the main focus is on style. Another Italian thinker, after Croce, who greatly influenced European political and social sciences was Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), who is considered one of the most important Marxist theorists in the West.
Modern literature.
In the modern period (strictly speaking, the modern period from the Second World War to the present) one can note the power of the Italian novel, the emergence of significant figures in poetry, the predominance of social themes and problems over purely academic ones, and a significant American influence, especially on prose. Some of the writers who have made significant contributions to contemporary literature, appeared in the post-war period; others began to write during the war, although there was a fascist censorship. Ignazio Silone (1900–1978) published his anti-fascist novel Fontamara (typical work directions of provincialism with political overtones), being in exile. In the pre-war period, such writers as D. Borgese worked, who published the novel Filippo Roubaix (Filippo Rube); Corrado Alvaro (1895–1956), who had a significant influence on the younger generation of Italian writers, wrote an anti-fascist novel Man is strong (L "uomo e forte); Alberto Moravia (1907–1990) - Indifferent(Gli Indifferenti); Elio Vittorini (1908-1966) - Sicilian conversations(Conversation in Sicily).
They had to work in the atmosphere of either a nascent or already established fascist regime. Alberto Moravia is the most famous and most prolific Italian writer of his time. He explored new territory and portrayed middle-class life in rather bleak and bleak terms. He, Vittorini, Vasco Pratolini (1913–1991), who began his career under a fascist dictatorship, and Cesare Pavese (1908–1950), whose work was simply imbued with American influences, can all be considered the avant-garde of modern Italian literature.
Other well-known writers who gained fame outside the country are Dino Buzzati (1906–1972); Giuseppe Marotta (b. 1957), - his theme is the revival of interest in the problems of southern Italy; Viitaliano Brancati (1907–1954), ironic Sicilian; P. A. Quarantotti Gambini (1910–1965) from Trieste, whose works continue standing apart traditions of Italo Svevo, expressed in Zeno's novel Svevo Self-knowledge. The original work of Guido Piovene (1907-1974), Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893-1973) and Elsa Morante (1918-1985), whose most significant works, full of unique inspiration, appear in the post-war period.
A special line of psychological interest, somewhat Proustian, was cultivated by Giorgio Bassani (1916–2000), and in complex stories Mario Soldati (1906-1999) shows a kind of decadent cosmopolitanism. The most famous writers of that period are Alba De Chespedes (1911-1997), her early work fell on the period of fascism; Natalia Ginzburg (1916–1991) and Gina Manzini (1896–1974).
The next generation of this period is the prose writers Italo Calvino (1923-1985), in particular his novel If one day winter night traveler (Se una notte d "inverno un viaggiatore); Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) and Carlo Cassola (1917–1987). Their works reflected fiction and fantasies, social and political motives, as well as a new naturalism of the provincial genre.
Southern Italy received special attention from writers. Naples alone has produced a solid school of talented prose writers like Michele Prisco (1920–2003), Domenico Rea (1921–1994), Mario Pomilio (1921–1990), and Rafaele La Capria (b. 1922). Sicily is represented by the densely written prose of the writer Leonardo Scias (1921–1989), as well as in the works of Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa (1896–1957), whose novel Leopard(Il Gattopardo) is known abroad much better than any other Italian novel of recent years. Writers such as Fortunato Seminara (1903–1984) and Saverio Strati (1924–2014) represent Calabria, while Giuseppe Dessi (1909–1977) from Sardinia was so reverent and depicted his island that it was to him that the mantle of Grazia Deledda passed, only his creative method was designed for a more demanding and sophisticated reader.
In the post-war period, a number of Italian writers sought to reconstruct the style of the traditional novel (introduce revolutionary notes into it). Writers such as Oreste Del Buono (1925–2003), Goffredo Parise (1929–1986), Tommaso Landolfi (1908–1979), and Alberto Arbazino (b. 1930) tried new and sometimes stunning techniques. Yet, paradoxically, the most capable prose writer in this very young group was probably Fulvio Tomizza (1935–1999), whose writings combine historical and personal themes and have a hint of Pavese and Svevo, structure and interpretation are within the concept of the traditional novel.
The novelists of this period include other prose writers who are engaged in literary creativity in a different vein; rather, they speak out on social and political issues: the superficial and cynical commentator Curzio Malaparte (1898–1957); Carlo Levi (1902–1975), author of the insightful and innovative novel Christ Stopped at Eboli; Danilo Dolci (1924–1997), who devoted his life to the crusade against social injustice and the plight of the common people of Sicily and Primo Levi (1909–1987), who vividly described his life in a German concentration camp and produced one of the finest examples of literature on the subject. The book Italians by Luigi Barzini (1908–1984), a very popular "dissection" of the national character of compatriots, and, on the other hand, the works of the political martyr Antonio Gramsci also belong to this group.
The post-war period saw the entry of Italian poetry into the European mainstream (European mainstream). "Hermetic" trio, i.e. adherents of the direction of Hermeticism, which included Eugenio Montale (1896-1981), Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970), and Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968), originates in the pre-war period. "Hermeticism" emphasizes the formal perfection of the poem - the poem as an independent object. But representatives of this group received wide recognition after the war (for example, Quasimodo was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1959). Perhaps, Umberto Saba (1883–1957) can be attributed to the same trend. The second generation of sealers is represented by Alfonso Gatto (1909–1976) and Mario Luzi (1914–2005); more independent tendencies are represented in the work of P.P. Pasolini and Cesare Pavese.
The most idiosyncratic, unique and powerful playwright of the modern period is Eduardo de Filippo (1900-1984), whose works are more Neapolitan than Italian.
The same period saw a revival of interest in the intellectual symbolic theater of the playwrights Hugo Betti (1892–1953) and Diego Fabbri (1911–1980); the latter wrote several promising plays. Although a figure equivalent to Croce's personality did not appear in criticism, nevertheless, some revival in this area was observed. Francesco Flora (1883–1962), Emilio Cecchi (1884–1966), Luigi Russo (1892–1961), and Attilio Momigliano (1883–1952).
Italian literature inXX century
Italian literature plays a prominent role in the pan-European literary process of the 20th century. The contribution of advanced Italian literature and art over the past quarter of a century is especially significant: the Italian artistic genius is represented in modern world culture by such names as writers Alberto Moravia and Vasco Pratolini, playwright Eduardo de Filippo, artist Renato Guttuso, sculptor Giacomo Manzu, film directors Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini and others.
However, during the 20th century the place of Italian literature in the general panorama of Western European literatures changed significantly more than once. The ups and downs of the Italian literary process were closely connected with those social historical events that determined the general fate of Italy.
There is reason to establish the following periodization of Italian literature of the 20th century: from the beginning of the 900s to the Great October Revolution and the end of the First World War; 1918-1922; the period of the "black twenty years" of fascism (1922-1943); the era of the Resistance and the first post-war fifteen years; 60s of XX century.
Ways of advanced Italian literature in the first half of the 20th century. were difficult. Long before the First World War, Italian prose and poetry began to experience the symptoms of a crisis. Since the beginning of the century, the tradition of the social novel has been gradually dying out; the influence of Western European decadence is growing; the literature of imperialist reaction is born in the person of Gabriele D'Annunzio and his imitators. The Italian avant-gardists, who noisily declared themselves in the late 900s as the renewers of dilapidated literary canons, turned out to be heralds of the cult of the machine, brute force, militaristic ideas, and heralds of fascism.
War 1914-1918 led to the collapse of many humanistic illusions, to rampant chauvinist tendencies in Italian culture. The Italian creative intelligentsia emerged from this era confused, having lost faith in the old moral and cultural values, but without gaining new perspectives. The search for spiritual truths for bourgeois Italian writers was limited in those years to a narrow psychological and aesthetic sphere. Thus, the novel of the writer Italo Zvevo (1861-1928), Zeno's Consciousness (1924), which was a success, is entirely built on introspection, there is a break in it with the image of the real external world.
In the most acute socio-political situation of the early 1920s in Italy, when the forces of the revolutionary labor movement fought against the growing threat of fascisation of the country, the leading Italian writers, united around the influential magazine Ronda, called for moving away from "topicality", returning to the subject and forms of classical designs literature XIX in. Therefore, fascism, having come to power in the autumn of 1922, found Italian literature ideologically defenseless. Mussolini and his clique were not slow in launching the persecution of the left-wing democratic intelligentsia. The Fascist "emergency laws" of 1926 banned the young Communist Party of Italy, all opposition associations and press organs, placed anti-fascist thought and culture in the position of criminal "subversive elements".
Twenty years of the domination of fascism had a detrimental effect on Italian literature, isolated it from the great public problems, which led to shredding and stagnation. The official fascist ideology, with its reactionary demagogy, could not attract any talented creative forces. The intelligentsia of Italy did not want to go to the service of fascism, but, being cut off from the life of the people, experienced a severe ideological and creative crisis. Not wanting to sing of fascism, many writers go into "art for art's sake". For the so-called "artistic prose" of those years, only formal skill is characteristic. In poetry at the end of the 1920s, the so-called current of "hermetism" appeared. The name speaks for itself: "Hermetic" poetry is closed in a circle of subjective-lyrical experiences, encrypted in associative images. Among the "hermetic" poets were great talents: Eugenio Montale (born in 1896), Giuseppe Ungaretti (1883-1970), Umberto Saba (1883-1967). They created poems full of deep lyricism, a tragic sense of life, but inaccessible to the perception of a wide reader due to the complexity means of expression. The very names of some poetry collections are characteristic: Ungaretti's The Joy of Shipwrecks, Montale's Cuttlefish Shells.
An illusory way of transforming "anti-poetic" reality was the direction of "magic realism" headed by Massimo Bontemnelli (1878-1960). "Magical realism" sought to bridge the line between the real and the fantastic by combining fantasy with realistic detail.
The veto imposed by fascism on the truthful depiction of folk life led to a break in the Italian literature of the "Black Twenty" from one of the most fruitful prose traditions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. - with the so-called school of "verism" (vero - truthful, true). "Verism" in his face the best representatives- Giuseppe Verga, Matilda Serao, Grazia Deledd, Luigi Capuana and others - realistically portrayed the hard life of the working people of Italy. The most important follower of the "veristic" tradition in Italian literature of the 900s was Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936). However, in his work even before 1914 (the collection of short stories "Novels for the Year", published since 1901, the novel "The Late Mattia Pascal", 1904), gloomy, pessimistic moods, a feeling of hopeless loneliness were growing.
The meaninglessness of life, of all human existence, sounds like a leitmotif in Pirandello's novel Spinning* (1916). In the painful atmosphere of fascism, the tragedy of Pirandello's attitude intensifies: the writer comes
to the concept of the unknowability of life, the elusiveness of any truth. A person cannot even comprehend himself, because his inner world is a receptacle for conflicting passions and impulses. This agnosticism, combined with the writer's hatred for the musty, sanctimonious bourgeois way of life, is revealed with great intensity in Pirandello's original plays, created in the period 1917-1929. The fame of Pirandello the playwright overshadowed the fame of Pirandello the prose writer.
Already in Pirandello's first play of the new period (he turned to the theater during the First World War), the writer's pessimistic credo was fully reflected. The title of this drama - "It's so - if it seems so to you" (1917, revised in 1925) - can be put as an epigraph to almost all of his subsequent dramas. Through the mouth of one of the characters, who plays the role of the author's mouthpiece, Pirandello shows that the relationships that have been created between the official Ponza, his wife and his mother-in-law cannot be clarified by real logic. Ponza and his mother-in-law think each other is crazy: the mother-in-law considers his wife to be her daughter, who, according to Ponza, died long ago. And the young woman, as it were, does not have a true self of her own, calling herself "the one that each of them considers me to be."
In Pirandello's drama Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), which brought him worldwide fame, the theme of the unknowability of the inner world of a person is combined with the theme of art. In a family of six people, the spiritual life of each of them is alien and incomprehensible to the rest. Everyone wears a kind of "mask of feelings", corresponding to the external forms of life. “Each of us in vain imagines himself invariably one, whole, while we have a thousand and more appearances,” says the father of the family. The family comes to the theater with a request to embody their drama on stage: perhaps then truth and plausibility will coincide, saving them from a tragic misunderstanding. Before and art turns out to be powerless to show all the versatility of a person and prevent the gloomy denouement of a family drama.
The theme of separation, alienation of people from themselves and from others is inextricably linked in the best plays of Pirandello with the depiction of cruel social reality. The illusions that the hero Pirandello creates for himself turn out to be a futile attempt to hide from the falsity of bourgeois morality, from real poverty and injustice. So, in the play “The Naked Dress” (1922), the poor lonely girl Ersilia, deceived by people, confused and committed an ugly act, in which she repents heavily, wants to die, leaving behind a legend of purity. However, the clothes of a beautiful lie are torn from her by the curious, seeking to get to the bottom of the "truth". At the same time, her accusers are involuntarily exposed, also disguising themselves in rags of noble feelings. But these more fortunate people keep peace of mind because each of them has already managed to adapt to life. And Ersilia, thrown to the sidelines, outcast, dies, "not having been able to get dressed."
In the tragedy "Henry IV" (1922), the hero, who has experienced a deep moral shock, pretends to be a madman who imagines himself to be the German Emperor Henry IV. He tries to hide under the mask of a medieval king, to live with his already non-existent worries and feelings. But even this illusory way out is taken away from him by his former enemies, who see in his "madness" a reflection of real facts. In the play “The Life I Give You” (1923), a mother who has lost her Son is powerless, by the power of her own spirit, to preserve for herself the image of the deceased.
Thus, the hero of Pirandello is still a suffering, rushing about person, deeply woven into the everyday life of social existence. But for the idealist writer, this historically determined reality turns into an eternal philosophical category.
In search of overcoming human alienation, Pirandello again and again returns to the theme of art, to the theater. He was deeply disturbed by the very principles of acting, designed to reveal the internal inconsistency of a person. Pirandello created a kind of trilogy of "theater within the theater", the first part of which was the play "Six Characters in Search of an Author". In the following two plays about the theatre, the playwright nevertheless finds in the theatrical action that means of human communication that is capable of affirming moral truths. So, in the play “To Each in His Own Way” (1924), the theatrical characters helped two genuine heroes of the life drama to realize their feelings, to accept for themselves the conclusion that was proposed by the actors on the stage. “They did what art anticipated,” says one of the “spectators” in the play.
In one of his most acute and innovative dramas, Today We Improvise (1929), Pirandello returns from closed psychological problems to living reality - the life of his native Sicily with its cruel morals and prejudices, the dilapidated "code of honor". The heroine, a young woman, Mommin, languishes in the locked house of her husband, who torments her with jealousy, reproaches for the immoral behavior of her sisters, who have become singers. He forbids Mommina herself from singing; but the power of art conquers this stale world—wins at the cost of Mom-mina's life. The plot of the play is intertwined with the general ideas of Pirandello about the goals and forms of art, set forth by one of the characters -: an imaginary director. Actors who allegedly improvise, breaking away from the author's text, introduce the viewer into the acting system.
Pirandello radically updated the Italian theater, introduced deep universal problems there. The best dramas of Pirandello are not philosophical abstract schemes, but deep tragedies of suffering people.
Fascism tried in every possible way to claim "property rights" to Pirandello, who was the only Italian writer of the 1920s and 1930s who won world fame. However, the inner pathos of Pirandello's work, his longing for humanistic values trampled down by a cruel life, his belief in the purifying power of art - all this, of course, belonged not to fascist demagogy, but to the genuine high national culture of Italy.
Only a very few Italian writers during the period of the fascist dictatorship broke through to the social theme, which in these cases invariably entailed the denunciation of fascism. It was during these years that the main problems of the work of one of the most prominent modern writers in Italy, Alberto Moravia (born in 1907), were determined. He began his literary career with the novel The Indifferent (1929), which immediately brought fame to its author.
In this novel, the mastery of psychological analysis inherent in Moravia's talent has already acquired a social, anti-fascist coloring. "Indifferent" are representatives of the privileged strata of Italian society, immoral, cynical, indifferent to good and evil. The protagonist of the novel, Gino, watches with complete apathy the fall of his sister, corrupted by his mother's lover. Gino feels no resentment, no shame (he lives off the man's means), no urge for revenge or rebellion. Having shown this loss of moral criteria among the bourgeois youth of the 1920s, whom the fascist hacks praised at that time as the "generation of new Romans", Moravia acted objectively as an exposer of the spiritual corruption that fascism brought with it.
In the 1930s, Moravia, however, did not touch on specific socio-political topics in his work, delving more and more into the psychology of the "indifferent" - the bourgeoisie, intellectuals, officials, stigmatizing their opportunism, spiritual coldness. During these years, in the cycle of allegorical stories by Moravia (the collection Epidemic, 1944) one can hear skepticism, disbelief in social progress, the motive of the absurdity of the world. The writer is unable to escape from the surrounding stuffy atmosphere.
Anti-fascist sentiments were more clearly expressed in Italian literature in the late 1930s under the influence of the struggle of the Spanish people against fascism and as a protest against Italy's imperialist action in Abyssinia. Moravia creates at this time a sharply satirical novel "Masquerade", in which a certain Latin American dictator is rather transparently ridiculed. The novel was printed in France, where Moravia lived in the early 40s.
The highest achievement of Italian prose on the eve of the Second World War was the book of the writer Elio Vittorini (1908-1966) Sicilian Conversations, written in 1938-1941. This novel, original in its genre, combines an anti-fascist orientation with a turn towards folk theme, although in many respects it is still conditional. Sicilian Conversations is a story about the half-real, half-allegorical journey of the author-narrator to his homeland, to Sicily, where he goes, vaguely hoping to free himself from the feeling of "abstract fury" that everyday life causes him.
Ordinary people met on the way become symbolic images that accompany the writer in his thoughts. Abandoned, starving Sicilian village turns into the personification of the motherland, desecrated, insulted, concealing latent anger. With impressive power, the image of the Mother is written out in the book, which also contains a symbolic generalization: a suffering peasant woman is a living protest against fascism, which sends peasant sons to perish in an unjust war of conquest in Abyssinia.
The book is written in "Aesopian language"; the writer resorts to hints, omissions, leaves much in the subtext, using Hemingway's stylistic experience. Nevertheless, for the Italian reading public, the protest contained in the Sicilian Conversations against the fascist dictatorship, which equally suppresses the life of the people and the spiritual life of the intelligentsia, was clear. The deep task of the book was, first of all, the solution of the problem of the intellectual, an attempt to find a way out for it. And although the answer is given in the "Sicilian Conversations" in a conditional, symbolic form, however, its meaning is in gaining spiritual contact with the people.
In 1937, the founder and leader of the Italian Communist Party, Antonio Gramsci, died in a fascist dungeon after 11 years of hardest imprisonment. Only after the end of the Second World War did the Italian people and the whole world become aware of Gramsci's "Prison Notebooks" - historical-philosophical, literary-aesthetic studies he created in prison. Gramsci's literary works, collected in the volume "Literature and National Life", develop the problems of Marxist aesthetics that are important for Italian culture in their national-historical interpretation.
Gramsci introduces into his aesthetic theory the concept of "national-folk" (nazionale-popolare), understanding it as a culture closely connected with the most important problems of folk life. “A work of art is popular when its moral, cultural, psychological content is close to the morality, culture and feelings of the nation, understood not as something static, but as being in continuous development,” he wrote. Gramsci emphasized that Italy still had the task of creating such a truly folk-national literature and art, for "the Italian intelligentsia is far from the people and is connected with the caste tradition."
From these positions, Gramsci criticized the Italian bourgeois culture of the period of fascism, scourging its skepticism, detachment from people's life, exposed the demagogy of the fascist hacks with their immoralism and the cult of strength as a "new value". He connected the creation of an advanced Italian culture with the coming powerful popular movement, on the basis of which the gap between the intelligentsia and the masses would be eliminated.
The significance of Gramsci's ideas for the development of modern Italian culture is enormous; their growing influence is reflected in the entire intellectual life of the country in the post-war period.
The truth of Gramsci's ideas was confirmed by history itself. The anti-fascist resistance that unfolded in 1943-1945 ended on April 25, 1945 with a nationwide uprising against the fascists and the Nazi occupiers. The collapse of the Mussolini regime, the creation of a broad popular "front of Resistance" helped the best forces of Italian culture to emerge from the spiritual tunic, to find a source of inspiration in the people and their struggle. In the anti-fascist struggle, barriers were destroyed between the people and the intelligentsia, which overwhelmingly took part in the Resistance.
In the harsh everyday life of the people, illuminated by the flames of the anti-fascist struggle, the writers of Italy saw the true historical content. The depiction of reality, the people's environment, a return to social themes, liberation from the formalistic canons of "hermeticism" - these are the major aesthetic shifts that the epic of the Resistance brought to Italian literature. This twist has found its way artistic expression in those works that appeared in Italy in the very first years after the end of the war, and then it deepened and consolidated during the 59s, mainly in the rich and varied Italian prose.
In the first post-war decade, a stream of new, young forces entered the literature of Italy. This generation felt the need to tell, first of all, about the experience of the Resistance, about the inhumanity of the Nazis, about the life of the partisans. These themes have taken a leading place in post-war novels and short stories, in memoir prose and film scripts. Such are Wittorsch's "People and Inhumans" (1945), which tells about the high sacrifice of anti-fascists opposing "non-humans", evil and stupid Nazis. Such are the novels “Agnese Goes to Death” (1949) by Renata Vigano, “Fausto and Anna” (1952) by Carlo Caesola, the story “The Path of Spider Nests” (1949) by Italo Calvino, short stories by Marcello Venturi and many others. The writers also turned to the image of the recent, past - the period of fascism, trying to show the hard lot of the people during the years of the "Black Twenty" and the incessant Resistance ("Christ Stopped at Eboli" by Carlo Levi, 1945, "Old Comrades" by Carlo Caesola, 1953, "Speranza" Silvia-Maggi Bonfanti, 1954, Lands of Sacramento by Francesco Iovine, 1950, novels by Vasco Pratolini).
Since the beginning of the 1950s, the theme of the present day, the problems of the life and work of the Italian common people, the “questions of conscience” that concern the Italian intelligentsia in the post-war world, have increasingly dominated Italian literature since the beginning of the 1950s. The lives of the poor people of Naples are dedicated to the novels and stories of Dome-daco Rea (“What Cummeo Saw”, 1956), plays by Eduardo de Filippo (“Naples the Millionaire”, 1945, “Filumena Marturano”, 1947, “Lies on Long Legs”, 1948, and etc.). K. Kassola writes about the fate of young people in Post-War Marriage (1957); the causes of the disasters of the peasantry and urban unemployed in Sicily are revealed by Danilo Dolci in the documentary reports "Bandits in Partiniko" (1955), "Investigation in Palermo" (1956). K. Levy's essays "Words-Stones" (1955) show the growth of consciousness of ordinary people who rise to fight for their rights, overcoming frozen customs and prejudices. Acute moral and ethical problems facing the intelligentsia in the context of the stabilization of Italian capitalism are raised by I. Calvino in the stories Construction Speculation (1957) and Smog Cloud (1958).
Despite the difference in political views and artistic manner, all these writers are brought together by a common aesthetic and civic position; the desire to realistically show the Italian reality, to evaluate the present and past of his country based on the fate of a common man, the creator of history. So it was born in Italian literature and art at the turn of the Resistance and the first. post-war years, the direction of neorealism. Neorealism was at the same time a return to the realistic tradition from the modernist movements of the 1920s and 1930s, which were unable to bear the “load” of the Resistance; at the same time, he was the realism of modern times, striving to show modern man and the reality that shapes him. Neorealist literature, cinema, and visual arts in Italy were an important stage in the development of the national realistic tradition, a great achievement of Italian culture, which put it in the vanguard place in Western European culture of the postwar years.
Although Italian neorealism in literature was by no means homogeneous either in artistic manner or in theoretical settings, nevertheless, the “common origin” gave this literary polyphony a certain general tone.
Italian neorealism of the 1940s and 1950s can be characterized as an anti-fascist, democratic direction, posing social problems in their national, Italian guise, imbued with a humanistic mood, faith in the power of popular solidarity, in the high spiritual qualities of the common man. Neo-realist writers sought to free Italian literature from clerical obscurantism, from provincialism and imitation, from the obscurity of poetic language.
Neorealism is autobiographical. Documentary authentic episodes of the war, Nazi occupation, partisan struggle were colored by the lyrical intonation of the narrative. The story of the central character in the stories of Calvino and Cassola, Pratolini and Bonfanti largely embodied the life path and evolution of the authors themselves during the years of the Resistance. Such a “lyrical document” was a distinct methodological device of neorealism: the hero, and with him the author, “realizes himself”, chooses his path in the midst of real terrible events, socio-historical clashes, and not in a narrow circle of psychological experiences. The "Lyrical Document" is a kind of time stamp in Italian neo-realism, which sought to re-feel, to pass through itself those events of people's life that remained outside the literature of the "Black Twenty".
Neorealism is characterized by an appeal to a new circle of heroes. These are simple people who are depicted not with sad pity, but with a sense of pride in their strengths and capabilities. At first, these images were given only in the external drawing, and then they began to acquire depth and versatility. Thus, the heroine of the novel by Renata Viganò, the old peasant woman Agnese, who came to the partisan detachment on a sudden impulse, gradually realizes the high goals of the liberation struggle and without hesitation gives her life to her. Such are the "old comrades" from the story of K. Kassol - underground communists who have not lost faith in the coming victory in the most bleak years of fascism. The heroes of Levi's essays "Words-Stones", the courageous Speranza from Bonfanti's story are experiencing a difficult formation of characters in the course of dramatic events in which they are participants. True, the hero of a neorealist narrative does not always grow to the scale of a typical character.
Closely connected with the emergence of a new hero is another characteristic feature of neorealism - its humanism and optimism, the desire to show great power popular solidarity is a theme that runs through many books about guerrilla warfare and the struggle for a better future in post-war Italy. This motive sounds with great force in many Italian neo-realist films of the 50s (Road of Hope, Girls from the Spanish Square, Bitter Rice, Two Pennies of Hope).
Neorealism infused new life into all genres of literature. The novel was resurrected as an epic narration about the events and deeds of people, and not as a "stream of consciousness". Eduardo de Filippo (born in 1900) in his comedies sought to combine the traditions of the Italian dialectal theater with the psychological dramaturgy of Pirandello.
Poetry gradually freed itself from "hermetic" complexity. The poet Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1970), who began as a "hermetist", turned to reality during the period of the Resistance (the collection Day by Day, 1947, which collected his anti-fascist poems from the period of the liberation struggle). Quasimodo sings of the feat of the partisans, a civic theme sounds in his poems, he affirms faith in genuine living values (collections “Life is not a dream”, 1949, “Incomparable Earth”, 1958). The poet Pier-Paolo Pasolini (born in 1922) draws hope from the life of the Roman workers on the outskirts of the coming liberation of working people, of all mankind (poem "The Ashes of Gramsci", 1957).
The poet and storyteller Gianni Rodari (born in 1920) creates a new children's literature, imbued with the spirit of life's truth, free from clerical morality and petty-bourgeois sentimentality. In the poetry of Rodari ("The Book of Jolly Poems", 1951, "Poems in Heaven and on Earth", 1960, etc.), there is a closeness to Italian children's folklore. His fairy tales The Adventures of Cipollino (1951), The Voyage of the Blue Arrow (1957) and many others combine perky humor, social satire and belief in a better future for all the children of the world.
The great conquest of neorealism was the simplicity and clarity of the language, the widespread use of folk speech both in prose and in poetry. It was neorealist works, with all their advantages and disadvantages, that determined the face of Italian literature in the second half of the 1940s and in the 1950s.
One of the most prominent representatives of neorealist prose is the writer Vasco Pratolini (born in 1913).
Pratolini was born in Florence, in a poor family, he began his working life early, studied in fits and starts. Pratolini began writing in the late 1930s, but almost never published under fascism. The talent of the writer, an active participant in the Resistance, was revealed after the end of the Second World War.
Pratolini's work was based on autobiographical material: the life of the poor in his native quarter, his native city. During the period of the Resistance, the writer's horizons expanded: the theme of the anti-fascist struggle flows into the "family chronicle", fanned with lyricism and poetry, the song of friendship and solidarity acquires social pathos.
Pratolini seeks to see the fate of his generation in a historical perspective. In the novel The Quarter (1945), he depicts the life and difficult paths of the young men and women of the working-class quarter of Florence in the 1930s, in the poisoned atmosphere of fascism. The book is imbued with a deep faith in the vitality of this youth, in their future, which, as the heroes of the book gradually begin to understand, they will have to “conquer on the barricades”, like air and the sun.
Pratolini's best novel, The Tale of Poor Lovers (1947), which brought him European fame, tells the fate of his native Florence during the dark period of open fascist terror in 1925-1926. The author draws the everyday life of the inhabitants of a small street in Via del Corno, inhabited by working people. In their sorrows and joys, feelings and actions, a lively and beautiful image of the people arises, a rich and multifaceted national character that combines human dignity, courage and kindness, optimism and steadfastness. Via del Corno becomes, as it were, a collective hero, in which, of course, there are also shadow sides generated by poverty and ignorance, but a high sense of justice and humanity prevails. It is this that does not allow Via del Corno to accept fascism with its ideology of violence and corrupt morality.
But there are heroes of a higher level in Pratolini's novel, in whose personal fate the historical fate of the people is condensed. First of all, this is the blacksmith Corrado, nicknamed Maciste (“strongman”), in whom the features of a folk, national character are combined with a high social ideal and the will to fight. Maciste is a communist, and his devotion to a great cause makes him capable of a heroic deed. The "Terrible Night" invades the daily life of Via del Corno: armed fascists roam the city, cracking down on progressive figures. Machiste races his motorcycle from street to street, warning of danger. Blackshirts kill a courageous anti-fascist. The life and death of Corrado is an example for others, for young people from Via del Corno - Hugo and Gesuina, Mario and Milena, who, after the "Terrible Night", realized which side the truth is on. In the conviction of the final victory of the people, despite the temporary triumph dark forces, is the ideological pathos of the novel. The epic of the Resistance helped the writer gain a correct perspective on the tragic events of the past and reach the artistic heights of realistic generalization.
After several works devoted to the folk life of post-war Italy, Pratolini in the novel Metello (1955) returns to the image of the past, trying to show in Italian history the bearers of genuine progress. The hero of the novel is a young worker, Metello, who led a general builders' strike in Florence at the beginning of the 20th century. Both the theme of the work and its central character were completely new material for Italian literature; the very concept of what was depicted was also innovative - to represent the course of history through the struggle of the working class and the formation of its self-consciousness. This idea found a convincing artistic embodiment in the novel as a whole. The image of the young working boy Metello, who goes through the school of life and labor solidarity on scaffolding, is charming. The strike he organizes shapes the character of himself, his wife Ersidia and many others. In this sense, Pratolini's novel is a "sensory education" novel. The public in it is inextricably linked with personal experiences, which brings richness and completeness into the inner world of the characters. All these artistic successes on life material, unusual for the Italian tradition, made "Metello" a certain milestone in the literary development of the 50s. Readers' and critical discussions flared up around the novel.
But at the same time, Pratolini's book revealed some significant "innate flaws" of neo-realism: its inability to enlarge events, move away from chronicle. Metello himself is more of an "average type" than a generalized typical character. His image is less significant than the image of Maciste, although, according to the author's intention, he had to bear a large burden.
"Metello" Pratolini, as it were, embodied the "ceiling" of neorealism as a method, which in the second half of the 50s showed clear symptoms of a crisis. The changed socio-historical situation in Italy, the establishment of the dominance of monopoly capital in it, demanded clearer ideological positions from progressive writers. The general democratic mood, faith in the people's solidarity and the strength of the people's moral foundations turned out to be insufficient for understanding the new social processes. The vagueness of socio-political views led many neorealist writers to confusion, inability to master the new reality artistically; notes of disappointment sounded in their work; some began to "enrich" their palette with modernist techniques; some fell silent for a while.
Progressive Italian criticism rightly pointed out that the realistic vision of the world no longer fit into the framework of neorealism, that literature approached the search for new means of reflecting the more complex reality.
Sixties of the XX century. showed that neorealism, which undoubtedly played a huge role in the literary development of Italy, no longer determines the main stream of literature.
The problem of the relationship between the so-called "neo-capitalist" society and man has become most acute in the Italian literature of the last decade. This dilemma is revealed in literature primarily from the inside, in showing the inner world of the individual. This trend in literature is manifested in the transfer of interest to the moral and psychological complex of modern man. However, with this consideration of spiritual human values, Italian realism at the present stage remains emphatically social. This certainly affects the "leaven" of the Resistance and neo-realistic experience.
Just as important for Italian literature of the 1960s was the problem of a person's moral responsibility to society, to his era. This ethical load can be felt in all genres of modern Italian literature - whether it be a reportage, a philosophical-allegorical novel or publicistic poetry. There is a process of intellectualization of Italian realism, seeking new artistic means for. the embodiment of this complex moral and social problem.
Can be in in general terms outline several thematic and problem nodes of Italian prose of the last decade.
The anti-fascist, anti-war novel deepens, calling not to forget about inhumanity, to make it impossible to return the past. The most interesting in this respect is the novel by the writer Marcello Venturi (b. 1925) The White Flag over Kefallinia (1963). It tells about the brutal massacre of the Nazi troops with the Italian division, which refused to surrender in 1943, on a small island of the Ionian archipelago. Resurrecting a real event of the past, the writer emphasizes the inseparable connection between the past and the present. That terrible psychology of the “superman”, supposedly having the right to violence and murder, which was brought up by the ideology of fascism and Nazism, should not be revived.
A whole group of writers, with great power of satirical exposure, shows another - more "modern" - form of distortion of the human psyche in the grip of "neo-capitalism" with its fetishization of technology and depersonalizing forms of human management. Libero Bijaretti's psychological novel "Congress" (1964) sounds poignant, showing opportunism, the spiritual renegade of a former progressive journalist who has gone to work in a large monopoly, losing his convictions in exchange for a secure existence.
Goffredo Parise's grotesque novel The Boss (1964) shows how a large firm turns a young employee into a "robot with production ideas" who bows to the glamor of a flourishing monopoly enterprise.
The moral and ethical problems of our time arose with particular sharpness in the post-war work of Alberto Moravia.
The events of the liberation struggle had a profound impact on the writer, in many ways changed the range of his interests and topics in the 50s. In the collection of short stories "Roman Tales" (1953), he refers to the everyday life of ordinary people, drawing their feelings and experiences, misadventures and simple luck, revealing in a laconic psychological novella the spiritual world of folk characters - working guys and saleswomen, small shopkeepers, employees and the unemployed " the eternal city. However, the heroes of Moravia, as a rule, are alone, no one will lend a helping hand to them. The motif of popular solidarity, so characteristic of neorealist literature, is absent from the Roman Tales. "
A tribute to the Resistance, according to the author himself, was the novel Chocharka (1957). In the center of the book is a simple woman who survived the horrors of the war and Nazi occupation. Moravia showed strength folk character, condemned the war, distorting the very nature of man. A new hero for Moravia also appeared in the novel - an anti-fascist intellectual who is dying at the hands of the invaders. Nevertheless, this image showed the author's obvious ignorance of such people in life: his Michele is again a loner.
However, since the mid-1950s, Moravia has returned to the old themes again, with great sensitivity to psychological analysis, revealing new shades of moral decay in the Italian bourgeois of the post-war model. In the novel Contempt (1954), an almost pamphlet-like exposure of modern bourgeois pseudo-art “for the masses” is combined with the theme of people's alienation as a result of the growing power of monetary relations. This theme is even more disturbing in Moravia's Boredom (1960). With the word "boredom", the artist Dino defines his painfully felt isolation from real life, which deprives him of the opportunity to create, to perceive the world artistically. His rich mother perceives such aloofness as the norm: fetishized secular relationships replace natural human feelings, money becomes flesh and blood. However, the hero is looking for a way out of the situation exclusively in the field of Erotica. By linking sex and alienation into one knot, overloading the novel with a description of erotic ones. scenes, Moravia significantly weakened the social and artistic sound of his book.
Here it is appropriate to say that in modern Italian literature it has become more difficult to meet a positive hero. Gone were the images of courageous and steadfast people of neorealism, to whom so many hands reached out, who won by their very death. The new social reality has apparently not yet been sufficiently "mastered" by Italian literature of the 1960s, which, by its sharply critical attitude towards the bourgeois order, cannot make up for this loss.
One of the few exceptions in this respect is Vasco Pratolini's The Persistence of Reason (1963), written by the author after a long silence and several creative failures. In The Persistence of Mind, Pratolini seeks to combine several lines of his work: an interest in young hero, a look at reality from a historical perspective and showing the inner world of a person from the people.
This novel is an undoubted success of the author, who managed to artistically convincingly show "the spiritual formation of a working guy, going from a kind of anarchic" communism of feeling "to the realization of a severe duty to life, to the constancy of the mind. By shifting the sequence of time in the narrative, Pratolini intersperses the story in the first person with memories. This technique recreates the picture of the life of Italy in the post-war twenty years in the soul of a teenager.Social conflicts enter his spiritual experience along with youthful passions and disappointments.Pratolini shows how the best part of the Italian working youth, by the very logic of life, by the very conditions of their existence, comes to the ideas of struggle, to ideals Communism Along with the young Bruno, rushing about and inconsistent, the author brings out the communist of the "old guard" Milloski, who, without loud phrases, with his life and actions, gradually convinces the young man of the rightness of his cause.
Irreconcilability to "neo-capitalism", hostile to the life of the people and the free development of the individual, leads the progressive literature of Italy to the creation of truthful, socially saturated works.
