Italo Svevo`s Trieste Author(s): Charles Coulter Russell Source

Italo Svevo's Trieste
Author(s): Charles Coulter Russell
Source: Italica, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Spring, 1975), pp. 3-36
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Italian
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/478405
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ITALO SVEVO'S TRIESTE
Italo Svevo always believed that he had been born to
be a writer. It was a natural instinct which had to be satisfied.1
As a youth he also believed that success and fame were an
integral part of being a writer.2 His problem was how to
find the success he wanted. He knew that Trieste, his native
city, offered very little to a man of his temperament. He would
have liked to leave it, but his father would not hear of such
an idea, and later he was not financially able to. Svevo was
trapped in his own city. It was there that he would have to
find the success he desired, a bleak prospect, for the heart
and soul of the city belonged to anything but literature.
A broad historical outline of Trieste is deceptively simple.
It was originally a Roman colony and then a free commune.
Later it became a part of Austria and only in 1918 did it
finally become Italian. Although the city still contains a few
Roman ruins, at first sight a visitor is most struck by massive
buildings constructed in some Neoclassic style which are
suggestive of no other Italian city ever seen before. So it is
rather surprising to learn that Triestines have always been
inordinately proud of their Roman heritage. A brief look at
Triestine history soon makes it clear why. When the city was
struggling to get free of Austria, this heritage was a basic
source of inspiration. The city's Italian patriots had a kind
of syllogism. Trieste was founded by the Romans; therefore,
they said, it is Latin and therefore Italian. The life-blood of
irredentism flowed back nearly two thousand years.
To a certain extent Trieste followed the same historical
course as many other cities of the Italian peninsula. It, too,
after the collapse of the Roman empire was the victim of
barbarian invasions. During the late Middle Ages it became
a free commune and then tried to develop its commerce like
its sister cities. But Venice was a powerful and dangerous rival.
Trieste had to muster all the forces of its populace to keep
the rival city outside its gates. The city soon discovered that
it was not strong enough to resist alone. It preferred to be
3
4
CHARLES C. RUSSELL
under the protection of some powerful leader rather than fall
into the hands of Venice of whose growing mercantile strength
Trieste was intensely jealous. For that reason in 1382 Trieste
did something that no other city of the peninsula had ever
done: in the hope of protecting and increasing its commerce,
it willingly gave up its freedom in exchange for the protection
offered by Austria. Of its own volition it gave itself to Austria
and remained a part of that empire, save for brief intervals, for
more than 530 years.
Once under the protection of Austria the Triestines expected a kind of economic miracle. But this did not happen.
Austria was not particularly interested in its new acquisition.
Not until the early eighteenth century did the empire show
any serious concern for this little city of five thousand. Then
Charles VI declared that the city's port was free, and in an
edict of 1749 Maria Theresia extended this franchigia to the
entire city. She improved and modernized port facilities and
favored the immigration of new blood with special laws.
Austria had become tired of Venice's vigor and was beginning
to fight back. Trieste suddenly found itself becoming the great
emporium of the Austrian empire. At the beginning of the
nineteenth century the population had grown to 33,000. A
hundred
years later it stood at 220,000.3
Around the time of
Svevo's youth the port swarmed with activity. Bales and
boxes and bundles of cargo were piled high on the wharves.
Warehouses were crammed with merchandise. The odor of
cinnamon and coffee hung in the air. Sailing ships which
rocked gently in the Grande Canale before Saint Anthony's
Church brought goods and wares from all parts of the world
while figures in exotic costumes walked the city streets. The
Lloyd Company, founded in 1833, soon had sixty ships sailing
to all parts of the Orient. Trieste was becoming rich and
prosperous.
After the edict of Maria Theresia, people flocked to the city:
Greeks, Germans, Albanians, Jews, Slavs, Dutchmen, Hungarians and Italians. In the second half of the eighteenth
century one of the city's most distinguished citizens and an
SVEVO'S TRIESTE
5
important economist, Antonio de' Giuliani, wrote that Trieste
had become " una popolazione composta di varie Nazioni, ed
in parte di fuggitivi, di banditi, di micidiarii e bisognosi stranieri." 4 Nobody cared much who you were or what you had
done before you came to Trieste. It was easy enough to become
a citizen. Nobody asked embarrassing questions. As long as
you were a clever entrepreneur you were welcome. For
example, at the end of the eighteenth century a Syrian,
Antonio Faraone Cassis, after having grown wealthy through
the shady administration of Egyptian finances, fled to Trieste.
He was received by the practical imperial government with
all the respect due unlimited wealth and awarded the title
of count. On the other hand Pasquale Revoltella came to
Trieste with nothing, the son of a Venetian butcher. Somehow,
and none of his contemporaries ever wanted to say just how,
he made an enormous amount of money in connection with the
construction of the Suez Canal. Therefore he was loved and
admired and respected by all Trieste and made a baron.
These new :men felt at home in Trieste. No matter what
country they calne from they soon learned to speak Triestine,
the lingua franca of the city's international commercial activity.
No one bothered the new arrivals. They could keep their old
ways or take up new ones if they wanted. What religion they
professed was a matter of indifference. If they believed nothing,
so much the better. G. G. Sartorio, one of the founding citizens
of the up-coming Trieste, enraged that a priest would not
marry his daughter to a non-Catholic, simply sent the priest
packing and performed the ceremony himself.5 Svevo's own
writings reflect this heritage. Though his characters are worried
about everything else under the sun, they are never bothered
by questions of faith. It is not that Trieste was atheistic, it
is just that rel:igion and money were always two different
things. Triestines were always businessmen first, then patriots,
heads of families and what have you. In Trieste it is still
easier to find a bank than a church. The first Stock Exchange
was built in 1806 in the form of a temple. The effect, however,
is decidedly more Roman than Christian. When this building
CHARLES C. RUSSELL
6
soon proved insufficient to handle vast volumes of business, the
exchange was moved in 1840 to the nearby Tergesteo where
Svevo worked when employed by the Union Bank. This
building, too, was constructed so as to offer at least a slight
concession to things spiritual. " Una simbolica galleria a vetri,
formando crociera all'interno," writes Silvio Benco, one of the
city's principal historians, " rammenta ai negozianti la fragilita della fortuna." 6 Undoubtedly the gallery light also made
counting money easier; for this was a city of practical men
where ideals were counted in cold cash. Emilio Brentani in
Senilita can remember a certain young Triestine businessman
who was not praised but criticized by his peers for trying to
be an idealist in commerce. This young idealist ends up having
to liquidate his business and sell off at a loss.7 Nothing, however,
captures the venal quality of the city quite so well as a comment
by Dr. Coprosich to Zeno as the latter's father lies dying:
Si mise allora gli occhiali e, col suo aspetto d'impiegato pedantesco,
aggiunse ancora delle spiegazioni che non finivano pii, sull'importanza che poteva avere l'intervento del medico nel destino di una
famiglia. Mezz'ora in pii di respiro poteva decidere il destino di un
patrimonio.8
The new men of Trieste
understood
Dr. Coprosich's
advice.
They knew the value of money. They had worked hard to get it.
Many of them
had been
poor when
they
came to the city,
but to the new Triestines social standing was of little importance. That would come with the money they made. They
knew that money would very easily turn them into aristocrats,
and they were right. In Trieste there were very few aristocrats
by birth.
Svevo
never
bothered
about
them
in his writing.
Yet it is curious to note that in Una vita he uses the word
" aristocratic " to describe both Federico and Macario.9 Neither
is noble by birth, but they both have lots of money.
This new breed of men brought with them strong business
acumen but often little interest in cultural affairs, and this
was the heritage, the tradition which they passed on to their
children. So that Scipio Slataper, who deeply loved his Trieste
SVEVO'S TRIESTE
7
and who later in II mio Carso was to exalt the vigor and enterprise of his fellow citizens, was quite right when in 1910 he
lashed out against the obtuseness of his city. "Trieste," he
roared, and all Trieste rose against him in indignation,
non ha tradizione di coltura... Sovrasta... e incombe come grigio
piombo sulla nostra storia il carattere essenzialmente trafficante di
Trieste... [Ha] l'anima troppo bassa, direnata dal senso economico
in modo da non scorgere piu alte aspirazioni, e tanto ottusa da non
intuire che lo sviluppo materiale a un dato punto non procede piui
senza il concorso di forza intellettuale. Per cio la storia di Trieste e
ghiaccia: senza uno slancio di idealita, senza bisogno d'arte, senza
affetto allo spirito. Incatenata dalla smania di guadagno, non seppe
guardar mai lontano con un po' di fantasia e di ardimento.'0
Allowing for a certain youthful exaggeration, he has gone
right to the heart of the matter. This is not to say that Triestines
were altogether indifferent to culture. It's just that money
came first. In La coscienza di Zeno Giovanni Malfenti derides
Zeno, his son-in-law, for knowing the classics by heart but
not bothering to read the financial notices in the newspapers.1
Once you made your money then you turned to the finer
things. The arts were simply something to indulge in.
Trieste has always been rather unkind to its artists. They
found it difficult to make a living there, and artistic enterprises
were always risky. When in 1835 Antonio Madonizza was
thinking about founding a newspaper, the Favilla, which had
the potential of bringing to that provincial city a refreshing
breath of European culture, he was well aware that he was
facing a situation which would have to be handled with kid
gloves. He wrote his friends to ask for help because he felt
he could not single-handedly confront " la faccia burbera,
grinzosa, l'umore bisbetico, indocile, matto del pubblico." 12
It would take a whole dedicated group of men to raise the
cultural level of the Triestine public. Subsequent events proved
that the faith which Madonizza had in himself as an educator
of public taste was not entirely rewarded. The Favilla had a
relatively brief existence and most of the writers who enthudegli Ughi, Francesco dalsiastically supported it-Besenghi
l'Ongaro, Giuseppe Rovere, Giovanni Orlandini and Pacifico
CHARLES C. RUSSELL
8
left Trieste for greener
Valussi among others-eventually
pastures. So, too, did Emilio Treves, the publisher. He was
forced to leave Trieste for Milan where he founded the
Illustrazione italiana. Some who had artistic aspirations left
Trieste forever. This prompted Scipio Slataper to exclaim that
there was an " esodo ... dei nostri spiriti migliori." 13 Others
tried to get away at least for short periods of study. Painters
went to Munich, Vienna, Paris, Venice, Florence and Rome.
Writers tried to go to Florence. Scipio Slataper, Giani Stuparich and even Umberto Saba all went there hoping to find
a vitality and modernity which was lacking at home. Svevo
would have liked to go, but he could not afford it. Artists who
did stay in Trieste often did not have the success they deserved.
Umberto Veruda, Svevo's close painter friend and model for
Balli in Senilita, was never adequately appreciated at home.
Only after his death were his paintings acquired by Trieste's
museum of art, although some of them were already hanging
in galleries in Venice and Rome. Towards Arturo Fittke, a shy,
gentle, tormented painter who committed suicide, the city was
cruel. In a letter to Ruggero Rovan, another Triestine painter,
Fittke wrote:
Non posso comprendere con che scopo tu voglia esporre qui a Trieste,
mentre a Monaco avresti un'occasione migliore. Forse ti sei dimenticato i tratti caratteristici dei nostri cari concittadini? Pochissimi sono
quelli che possono sentire un lavoro d'arte e gli altri, dai quali dipende qualche volta la sorte dell'artista, lo riconoscono appena quando
ha avuto un qualche successo in un'esposizione internazionale. Ma
gia e inutile che ti racconti queste cose. Tu le sai.14
had to support himself and his mother with a lowly
position at the post office. Others did likewise, for no one
with his art. Saba ran a small
could support himself
book
store,
antique
Stuparich taught in a local high school,
while Virgilio Giotti had nothing more than an insecure position
Fittke
at a maternity hospital. Others turned to journalism as a partial
of support: Cesare Rossi,
Giuseppe Caprin, though Caprin
ful typography shop.
means
Riccardo Pitteri and even
also ran a rather success-
SVEVO'S TRIESTE
9
The miracle is that some artists did stay in Trieste at all.
One reason they did is that some were deeply and sincerely involved in Trieste's struggle for independence. They knew
the struggle had to come from within the city itself, and
they felt it was their job to keep the spirit of Italy alive in
their city. They also stayed because they loved the city in
which they had been born. And they stayed because the setting
around Trieste is extraordinarily beautiful. This is the way
the painter Ruggero Rovan explained it:
Per l'amore che io porto alla mia citta, alla bella regione adriatica
che racchiude tra le sue verdi colline e il suo cielo limpido e il suo
mare azzurro tanta parte della mia anima che fiori tra quell'aria sotto
il bel sole, io desidero ardentemente e voglio esserle utile con la mia
arte, quando avro imparato ad esplicare me stesso e la mia mente, e
sollevare col fatto e con l'esempio le sue depresse condizioni artistiche.15
Both Slataper and Stuparich wanted to help the city they
loved, and Slataper's anger in his five critical articles for
La Voce entitled " Lettere triestine " is the anger of disappointment and frustration, not of hate. Svevo stayed primarily
because he had to, first because staying was a financial
necessity and then because he was tied down by business
and family. Although he was always fond of the natural
beauty around Trieste, when he thought about the city
from a cultural point of view, it irked him. Trieste, he wrote
with pique towards the end of his life, is like Recanati
without Leopardi. " Cioe ... i genitori di Leopardi ci sono in
quantita ma pare riproducano sempre se stessi con grande
pedanteria." 6l He knew that books had little place in the
business world of the city, and once when asked if he were
really the author of two novels, he replied that it was not he
but his brother Adolfo. Adolfo, good patriot and businessman that he was, was highly annoyed.'7
When Svevo set about becoming a writer he must have
been well aware that the literary traditions of Trieste could
offer him little encouragement and less hope. The city could
boast of no literary figure of truly national or international
10
CHARLES C. RUSSELL
importance. On a local level the first person to leave any
lasting impression on the city was Domenico Rossetti (17741842). It is to him that Triestines nowadays trace the first
awakenings of their municipal culture. Rossetti was a scholar
who was greatly interested in Petrarch and Piccolomini, and
on both men he amassed a fine scholarly collection of manuscripts, autographs, codices, rare editions, medals, prints and
portraits. Rossetti was also a patriot and the first to realize
that the growing Trieste was in danger of losing its Italian
identity and of gradually becoming absorbed and Germanized
by the Austrian empire. To guard and defend the city against
such a change, he gave the city his entire collection of Petrarch
and Piccolomini as well as numerous other volumes dealing
with commercial law and local history, thereby almost single.
handedly forming the nucleus of the present day Biblioteca
Civica which has always been one of the bastions of Italianism
in Trieste. Rossetti also established the Archeografo Triestino
in 1829, a journal of historical studies on Trieste. Most important of all he founded the Societa di Minerva in 1810, a
literary club which is still in existence today. The purpose
of the Minerva was to breathe a little culture, Italian culture,
and a sense of Trieste's historical tradition into the otherwise
arid life of the city. The club began as a series of evenings
devoted to pleasant conversation, and its members were almost
entirely made up of professional people, not professors or
scholars. Later it became more serious, with regular conferences
on literary or scientific matters and many on storia patria. But
on the whole the city was not interested in cultural centers, and
the Minerva often had to fight for its very existence. From an
original membership of seventy-eight, it once dropped to as
low as twenty-five. Yet the society struggled on and during the
second half of the nineteenth century it became one of the
meeting places for the irredentist spirits.l8 The trouble with
the Minerva was that it tended to be reserved for the elite of
Trieste whose cultural interests were restricted and somewhat
municipal. The young men who gathered in Trieste around the
newspaper, the Favilla, brought with them a far greater range
of interests and enthusiasm, a freshness and vigor which Trieste
SVEVO'S TRIESTE
11
had never known before and was not to know again until the
time of Scipio Slataper. These young men tried to open up
Trieste to all the spiritual ferment of the European scene in
the years prior to 1848. Giovanni Orlandini, who actually
brought the paper to light, was a friend of many of the most
important writers in Italy: Manzoni, d'Azeglio, Balbo, Romagnosi, Ferrara, Porta and Berchet. Indeed the paper, in the
ten years of its existence from 1836 to 1846, was quite a success.
It soon became one of the most respected journals of the
period and carried on an intellectual correspondence with the
major literary figures of Italy. It dealt with a wide variety
of topics-economics,
politics, literature-and helped to keep
alive the ideas of the Risorgimento and to stimulate in Trieste
a desire for unity with Italy. Through it Trieste seemed to be
taking its place on a national scale. But no matter how
brilliant, the Favilla did not find the necessary support
within Trieste and most of its staff drifted away from the
city to follow the revolutions of 1848. The Favilla disappeared
without a trace.
For a man of Svevo's temperament the contemporary
literary situation was hardly much more encouraging. Before
explaining why, it is necessary to say a word about what was
going on in Trieste roughly between 1850 and 1900. Trieste
was becoming more and more stirred by Italy's struggle for
independence. A more urgent sense of patriotism, of being
Italian, began to make itself felt, especially among the
younger generations. Many young volunteers left the city to
join the ranks of Garibaldi. Then, fired with enthusiasm, they
returned to agitate at home. Many people would walk along
the shores of the Adriatic looking for signs that Italy was
coming to liberate the dominated city. That Italy did not come
was a harsh and bitter reality. The irredentist leaders realized
that their best policy, in a long range sense, was simply to
keep alive the city's Italian conscience and let it be known
that no matter what, no matter when, Trieste was destined to
become a part of Italy. The irredentists did their best to
promote municipal traditions. They constantly agitated for
Trieste as a citta libera, exalted what was Italian, damned
12
CHARLES C. RUSSELL
what was Austrian, did anything that would help to isolate
the city from the empire. It cannot be said that Svevo's writings reflect this Italian consciousness, yet there is a brief scene
in La coscienza di Zeno which lays open certain prevalent
feelings. Zeno has taken a dislike to Guido Speier and, on
being introduced to him, casts about in his mind for something
unpleasant to say. Finally he asks: Are you German? 19 Giani
Stuparich has described how, as a child, he was infused with
a kind of mystic and almost irrational patriotic fervor:
Per la tradizionedella mia famiglia... io fin da ragazzonon potevo
soffrire gli austriacantie tutto il mio animo si rivoltava contro il
loro modo di pensare. Un vecchio zio di mia madre, musicistadi
talento, aveva avuto un'alta onorificenzada FrancescoGiuseppe; era
impettitoe portavai favoritibianchi come l'imperatore:"Benedetto,
benedettolui," ripetevacon voce tremuladall'emozione,"che uomo
saggio, che grand'uomo!" e minacciavacol dito mio padre che gli
rideva e, facendolo inorridire, lanciava i pii irriverenti epiteti all'in-
dirizzo del suo imperatore.Io quel vecchio lo odiavo, mi sottraevo
alle sue carezze e, quando lo vedevo da lontano avvanzareper la
stradacon quella sua aria da livrea di corte, infilavo una traversale;
ed era una degnissimapersona. Fin da ragazzoogni manifestazione
politica d'italianiti mi elettrizzavae, a nove anni, quando in citta
si sparsefulmineamentela notizia dell'uccisionedi Re Umberto,era
un caldo pomeriggio di luglio, io mi buttai sul letto e piansi convulsamente.20
The battle was waged on more than just a sentimental
level. It required active organization and participation. In
1861 local nationalist forces were for the first time able to
get a majority in the communal council, a majority which they
almost always held on to till 1914. This meant that Triestines
had a voice in running Trieste and that the Austrian government had a painful but legitimate thorn in its side. In 1897
Attilio Hortis was elected deputy to the Parliament of Vienna,
a loyal irredentist in the heart of the Austrian government.
The city's irredentist leaders did not forbear other more illicit
means of agitation. Every Triestine had his own personal ad.
venture to tell, and these are the stories which add so much
color to the history of Trieste: the spontaneous outbursts of
SVEVO'S TRIESTE
13
applause and cheering in a theater following a Verdi aria
which reflected some patriotic longing; green, white and red
streamers which mysteriously appeared from a window in the
Corso, the principal street of Trieste; shouts of Viva l'Italia
which echoed in the night, and other more serious things:
street demonstrations, agitations, protest marches and bombs.
The bombs obviously annoyed Lady Isabel Burton whose
husband, Richard, was British Consul in Trieste from 1872
to 1892:
If an Austriangave a ball, the Italians threw a bomb into it; and
the Imperialfamily were alwaysreceived with a chorus of bombsbombs on the railway,bombs in the gardens,bombs in the sausages;
in fact it was not at such times pleasant.21
For some even this was not enough. They feared that the
return of Trieste to Italy had become a nice thing to dream
about, but not a vital question of life and death. They feared
a kind of token patriotism; something to talk about in the
cafes, but not something to act on with energy and decision.
For those Triestines without deep faith, it probably did seem
useless to get overly excited. In 1864 Italy's Prime Minister
himself, Alfonso La Marmora, had declared in the Italian
Senate that Trieste was not Italian but belonged to Austria.
And Italy had signed the Triple Alliance in 1882 linking in
friendship its destiny with the destiny of Germany and Austria. In that same year, 1882, Austria wished to celebrate
publicly the 500th anniversary of Trieste's voluntary entrance
into the empire. The intent of the celebration was to reinforce
officially the fact that Trieste did indeed legally belong to
Austria in spite of what the irredentists were saying. The
government organized a large-scale international exhibition
in the city which the emperor and his family and hosts of
other nobles planned to visit. For Guglielmo Oberdan, a
messianic twenty-four year old Triestine, this was the perfect
moment loudly to reaffirm Trieste's demand for independence
with an act which he considered at once ennobling and
irrevocable. On the second day of the exhibition, 2 August
14
CHARLES C. RUSSELL
1882, he threw a bomb into the middle of an official procession,
killing one person and wounding several others. Oberdan fled
while the police reacted with arrests and persecution of the
principal irredentists. In December he returned for another
try, but he was betrayed by a friend, arrested and thrown into
prison.
In the meanwhile the government had already begun to
deal harshly with the rebellious irredentists. The empire had
no intention of losing Trieste, its principal outlet on the sea.
Therefore, if the municipal council refused to be docile and
follow an Austrian line, it was dissolved; theatrical performances were interrupted and theaters closed if they gave rise
to patriotic manifestations; newspapers were censored and
sequestered; irredentist leaders were fined and imprisoned;
gangs of Austrian sympathizers were allowed to attack and
damage various irredentist centers and fist fights were not
unusual between opposing groups. The government lost no
time in hanging Oberdan. He was perfectly happy to die
because he wanted to show his fellow citizens that Trieste
was worth dying for. He felt that his death would serve to
reinforce the weaker irredentist spirits and give new energy
of purpose to those already active in the struggle. In other
words, he knew Trieste needed a martyr, and he was willing
to play the role. He got what he wanted. His demise was a
fresh and invigorating breath of life for the irredentist cause
and brought new seriousness of purpose to the city. He is
said to have died without apologies, without regret and without
fear, and immediately his name and martyrdom became synonymous with the most exalted and almost hysterical local
determination to conserve Trieste for Italy.
Much of the energy of the irredentist leaders went, in
this fifty year period, into the formation of clubs and organizations which would effectively unite Italian sympathizers
and promote the spirit of Italianism. The Societa di Minerva
reawoke with new energy and a popular drama club was
founded. In 1869 the Societa Operaia Triestina was established,
the scope of which was to educate the workers and create a
SVEVO'S TRIESTE
15
sense of solidarity among them in regard to the city's past
and its future hopes. The most famous club of the city was
the Societa Triestina di Ginnastica organized in 1863. All the
members of the Schmitz family were part of it, and Svevo
became one of its directors for several years.22 This club was
open to anyone at all, regardless of social standing. It was a
physical and spiritual training ground for Triestine youth,
boys and girls alike. There were programs of gymnastics,
boating, fencing and bicycling as well as dances, an active
theatrical group, a band and a chorus. Everyone knew that
it was a hotbed of irredentist activity, and many forms of
agitation against the government were thought up here. The
society was dissolved a number of times by the police, but it
always re-formed, though under slightly different names. More
than once it was attacked by angry pro-Austrian mobs and
was finally burned to the ground in 1915. While the Ginnastica was organized for the Triestine in his free time, the
purpose of the Lega Nazionale, founded in 1891, was to deal
with the problem of schooling. Svevo was a member of this
organization too.23 Education had long been a sore point in
Trieste. Ever since 1861 the irredentists had worked to keep
the control of local public schools in the hands of the loyal
municipal council, and in the main they had been successful.
Control of the schools was another way of blocking Austrian
influence. The irredentists also wanted an Italian university
in the city since Trieste had none at all. Before 1866 students
could go to the University of Padua, and Vienna would
recognize the validity of the degree. But afterwards, if a
student wished a degree recognized by the Austro-Hungarian
government and valid in the empire for professional activity,
he was forced to attend the Austrian schools of Graz, Innsbruck
or Vienna. Austria, in spite of endless agitation, never did
grant Trieste an Italian university, for to do so would have
been a tacit admission that the city was Italian. In the first
ten years of its existence, the League built fifteen scuole popolari, one professional school and eleven kindergartens, and
its growth continued in the next decade as well. It educated
16
CHARLES C. RUSSELL
illiterate adults, paid the expenses for boys who wished to
become teachers, offered students the possibility of further
study at Florence for lack of a Triestine university, and even
donated scholarships to young men who wished to become
priests, for much of the clergy had long been considered an
anti-Italian and pro-Austrian element of the city. It is perhaps
worth noting that the Societa Operaia Triestina also declared
itself fully against religious teaching in the high schools for
fear of the anti-liberal, anti-Italian influence of the clergy.24
Such attitudes certainly helped to contribute to the predominantly secular tone of the city.
This period of nationalistic fears and aspirations, during
which Svevo began his first attempts at writing, had various
effects on the position of literature in the city. One of the
principal consequences of the city's political turmoil was an
increased interest in the documentation of its past. The latter
years of the nineteenth century and the years before the
outbreak of the First World War witnessed a veritable explosion of historical studies. Nor did the mass of studies abate
even after Italy's victory. It steadily continued right through
the following years. It was as if by getting everything down
on paper Trieste could be tied closer and closer to Italy.
Undoubtedly many minds which under more normal circumstances might have been attracted to other diversified kinds of
writing were drawn to the historical by a sincere devotion to
the city's cause which they felt was of primary importance.
Some men, drawing inspiration from Domenico Rossetti, wrote
learned and scholarly books and articles: Attilio Hortis' innumerable articles on the city's origin; Attilio Tamaro's two
volume history Trieste; Silvio Benco's moving and masterful
Gli ultimi
anni della dominazione
austriaca
a Trieste.
Others
wrote in a more popular vein seeking wider diffusion: Giuseppe Caprin's I nostri nonni or Lorenzutti's Granellini di
sabbia, a potpourri of recollections covering the period 1850
to 1900. For a small city, Trieste has always been rich in
historical journals: first the Archeografo Triestino founded
by Rossetti, then La Porta Orientale begun early in the
SVEVO'S TRIESTE
17
century and finally Pagine Istriane brought out in 1949. All
three are still being published. It was never necessary to be
a professional writer in order to get into print. If you knew
something which would be of help to the greater glory of
Trieste, if you or your father or even your grandfather had
done something patriotic, dashing or daring for Trieste, you
published. The Biblioteca Civica still has an entire section
devoted to la raccolta patria: pamphlets, articles, books,
clippings, diaries, mementos, manuscripts, letters and memoirs.
Anything was grist for the irredentist mill, from " Carlo Goldoni nella Regione Giulia " to, at a later date, " La prima
visita di Benito Mussolini a Trieste." Every organization and
every club had its own historian, and histories have been
churned out at the drop of a patriotic word: La Lega Nazionale nel suo primo decennio di vita, Cinquant'anni di vita
ginnastica a Trieste, II primo secolo della Societa Minerva,
Sessant'anni di vita italiana: memorie della Societa Operaia
Triestina. Nothing was passed over, nothing was lost or forgotten. Everything had to be written down, " historized," to
prove and affirm that the past was on the side of the irredentists
and to spur on present and future generations with the noble
example of their predecessors. As a piece of cloth is sanforized
to keep it from diminishing in size, so past events were
" historized " to prevent their diminishing in importance in
the city's memory. For " historization " also meant ennobling,
idealizing and purifying the city's past, thereby rendering it
fit and worthy to become part of Italy. Scipio Slataper complained that this led the city into continually committing a
"
major sin: idolatry of its famous men. Devono essere perfetti," he wrote, " nessuno puo toccarli. Se [la citta] ne tocca
i difetti, parla sottovoce." 25 It is surely this tendency to
ennoble which renders so much Triestine history unreadable
today. Yet the fault is perhaps excusable due as it is to genuine amor patrio. Besides, not all Triestines were so defective.
Silvio Benco's Trieste is a brief, charming history of the city
mostly from an artistic point of view. He leads his reader
quietly by the hand through the city streets, and only when
one looks at the publication date, 1910, does one realize that
2
18
CHARLES C. RUSSELL
the streets still belong to Austria and not to Italy. Yet Benco
has hardly said a patriotic word.
Still, whoever was able to integrate a vivid patriotic theme
into his writings was almost guaranteed success. The most
representative Triestine writer of the latter half of the nineteenth century, and a figure close to the period of Svevo's
youth, is Giuseppe Caprin. He combined all the characteristics
as a man and a writer that were most admired in Trieste.
Born in Trieste in 1843, the son of a wine dealer and merchant
and child of the popolo, Caprin worked as a youth first in
the local warehouses and then for the Lloyd typography. Selftaught and self-educated, in 1864 he founded a little newspaper,
II Pulcinello, which earned him the wrath of the Austrians and
a few months in prison. In 1866 he joined the ranks of Garibaldi and was wounded at Bezzecca. After returning to Trieste he set up his own typography shop which gave him a
certain financial ease. For ten years he was a director of the
irredentist newspaper, L'Indipendente, and all his life he was
one of the guiding spirits of the irredentist movement. It was
Caprin who in 1880 accepted and published Italo Svevo's first
newspaper article. An imposing, broad-shouldered figure of
a man with a leonine head, he was intensely loved and admired
by all of Trieste. And from the city's point of view he indubitably had all the right qualities: an imposing presence,
limitless energy, affluence, an impeccable background both
irredentist and Garibaldian, idealism, great faith in the future
and a writer's talent. What he wrote held enormous appeal for
the Triestines, because he wrote about things dear to them,
local people and places, in an easy, popular, entertaining and
readable manner: Marine istriane (1889), Lagune di Grado
(1890), Pianure friulane (1892), Alpi Giulie (1895), II Trecento a Trieste (1897), Istria nobilissima (1905-07). Of all his
books it was I nostri nonni (1888) and its sequel Tempi andati (1891) which had the most resounding success. In I nostri nonni Caprin sought to reconstruct Triestine life from
the years 1800 to 1830, and in the book's sequel he did the
same thing covering the years 1830 to 1848. His intention was
to illuminate all sorts of appealing aspects of those not so
SVEVO'S TRIESTE
19
long ago and not altogether forgotten times: the theater, the
carnival season, popular songs, the popolo, cafes, the Citta
Vecchia, the wealthy, fashions in dress, the arts and so on.
His purpose, as he stated in the first volume, was to show that
"
things had not changed so much after all and that il fuoco
sacro dell'arte e del pensiero acceso in quei trenta anni dura
ancora." 28 There was, he felt, a continuity in Triestine life,
and though the Italian patrician families of the long-gone free
commune had disappeared, though the walls of the old city
had been destroyed and though new blood had mixed with
the old, the national character of Trieste had not been lost.
The past should be an inspiration to the present:
Svegli e vivi restano con noi quelli che hanno lavorato e lottato, per
trasmetterci da nonni amorosi 1'eredita sacra, inviolabile, di una
patria! 27
This was the sort of thing which produced instant best-sellers
in Trieste.
Caprin was popular because as an historian he chose the
correct subject matter, the city itself and its surrounding
regions. Of course not everyone wanted to write about historical
matters. Nevertheless, those who preferred other kinds of
literature were also bound, if they wanted to be successful,
by certain restricting laws. It has been rightly pointed out 28
that the literature of a border city containing more than one
strong cultural influence due to its geographical position is
often subject to a basic antagonism present in the city itself,
an antagonism between national and international elements and
attitudes. Accordingly, with several nationalities living in
close proximity, two opposing currents may develop. One
current emphasizes each culture as an entity in its own right
and stresses historical, cultural and ethnic differences which
tend to divide the city;
the other current accents similarities
between the cultures, what they have in common and what
unites them. The first leads to nationalism, the second to a
kind of socialism. Though both currents are usually always
present, one or the other is bound to predominate according
20
CHARLES C. RUSSELL
to the political, economic and historical situation of the moment. For a writer the immediate danger is in not following
the popular current, for if he does not, he is almost automatically excluded from the active life of his city. Independence, initiative and originality were welcome in the Triestine
business community, but not in literature. The city's mood
was predominantly nationalistic, and not till the advent of
Slataper and Stuparich did anyone really openly dare to be
otherwise. Any writer who did not follow the " rules " was
destined to suffer from a sense of isolation and find that he
was regarded with a certain disinterest. Svevo, whose instincts
as a writer were far from nationalistic, was a number one
example. As a writer he was hardly touched by the fervent
nationalistic struggle of his native city. He strongly objected
to being forced into a warping and suffocating collectivism
which denied any sort of free and spontaneous expression of
his nature.29 He rightly sensed that the individualist had no
place within the framework of his city. Indeed the city was
not looking for individualists and did not admire them. What
it did admire were those Triestines who adhered to the cult
of the city by following the popular currents of Italy and
who thereby once again " proved" that Trieste was just as
Italian as any other city of the mainland. If you were a poet
you wanted to write like Carducci or Pascoli, if a novelist
like Manzoni or d'Annunzio. Some comments of Haydee,
herself a prolific Triestine novelist, are revealing. Writing in
1916 about the Triestine novelist and journalist Silvio Benco,
she says that she considers him
capo degli scrittori triestini della giovane guardia, di quegli scrittori che, seguendole tracce nobilissime dei predecessorihanno voluto e saputo far dell'arte un'armaa pro dell'italianiti combattuta
ed offesa.30
It is no wonder that Svevo felt out of place. His writing can
hardly be considered a weapon in favor of Italianism, especially with his rough and unharmonious style overburdened
with dialect words and phrases. Giuseppe Caprin's though, or
SVEVO'S TRIESTE
21
Alberto Boccardi's was another matter. Theirs was admirable.
And Silvio Benco's was superb. He brought Dannunzianism to
regional literature, says another critic,
sburgiardando le prevenzioni di tutti color che, per essere noi alla periferia della nazione, ritenevano impossibile che fra noi fiorisse un'arte
come la d'annunziana, fondata sopra il possesso di una lingua copiosissima e sopra la bravura di uno stile scaltrito in tutte le piui secrete
raffinatezze.31
Benco's style was a real weapon, and even though the enthusiastic Haydee couldn't really understand his first novel-she
found it " un po' strano "-and even though she found his
" involuto ed
oscuro," she felt such defects
style a trifle
weren't due to the author's lack of mastery, but wrote the whole
thing off as a sign of his " sdegnosa aristocrazia artistica." 32
The most successful novelist living in Trieste at the time
of Italo Svevo was Alberto Boccardi, whose life and works
seem to epitomize what the city most enjoyed and expected
from its literary sons. Like his fellow-citizen, the historian
Giuseppe Caprin, Alberto Boccardi did all the right things,
knew all the right people, wrote all the right words. He was
born into a patriotic family in 1854, the son of a local merchant. Educated in law, through most of his life he held
various minor positions in the municipal government which
brought him the friendship of the city's principal irredentist
figures. He was very active in city life. He served on the
board of directors of the Teatro Verdi, and under Hortis he
was also secretary of the Societa di Minerva which he sometimes
addressed as guest speaker. He frequently contributed articles
to the Indipendente. He was a prolific writer both of novels
and of verse, verse which he evidently turned out at the drop
of a suggestion: for inaugurations, society jubilees, club
anniversaries, gymnastic hymns as well as doggerel for children.
In 1880, just 26 years old, he published his first novel, Ebbrezza morale, and in Trieste quickly earned a position as,
according to a rapt local biographer, "un giovane letterato
alla moda." His biographer, Miss Paolucci, confesses that she
is hoping for a kind of Boccardian renaissance. Though she
22
CHARLES C. RUSSELL
wrote her brief biography ten years or so after Boccardi's
death in 1921, her comments are, I think, an accurate reflection
of what the average middle-class Triestine preferred at that
time in his literature. Ebbrezza morale ran through five
editions in the following ten years. It caught the eye of the
principal critics of Italy, says Miss Paolucci, because of the
"impetuosa passionalita della trama e l'elegante snellezza
dello stile." Notice once again the preoccupation with style.
Boccardi wrote a number of other novels, plus historical
studies and works for the theater, as well as books for children and for the popolo. For he believed in the " concetto
dell'arte come educazione del popolo " and that, patriotically,
" con popolo colto, patria sicura." He really didn't approve
of the " romanzo naturale francese " with its immoral " eroe
d'alcova " for, as he is reported to have said, " io scrivo per
i buoni." 33 The Triestines admired the grace of his literary
style, his clarity and severity, his solid culture and his
aristocratic taste, and they even considered him handsome to
boot. Boccardi himself, who claimed that he drew inspiration
from Manzoni, was friends with many of the leading literary
figures of Italy-Gerolamo Rovetta, Edmondo de Amicis, Giacinto Gallina-so that all in all he could be considered a great
credit to his native city. It is interesting to note that although
Boccardi and Svevo were contemporaries, and although Svevo
appears to have been acquainted with all the leading figures
of Trieste, at no time whatsoever, in none of his published
writings or letters, did he ever mention Boccardi whose novels
he certainly must have found most unattractive.
No other Triestine novelist in this period was able to
reach such a distinguished position in modern literature, yet
it may be worthwhile looking briefly at a couple of them
who were youthful friends of Svevo to see what sort of writing
they aspired to. Giulio Ventura, a life-long friend, wrote only
one novel before giving up that form for dialect poetry. He
published his single book, Dora Tyrr, in 1889, at the same
time Svevo was finishing Una vita. Though both writers set
their novels in Trieste, Ventura, unlike Svevo, neither desired
nor was capable of coming to grips with the reality of the
SVEVO'S TRIESTE
23
city which he shrugs off as a place " dove il commercio assorbe
completamente gli uomini, [dove] la vita di societa e tutt'altro che sviluppata." 34 As a result he sets his novel in some
nebulous epoch and writes about an equally nebulous aristode
cracy-beautiful
people with beautiful names-Jehane
Armando
di
and
Castelbraquemart,
Pontormeuil-doing
saying
beautiful things. Nothing much happens as the reader follows
the tribulations of handsome Damaso Tyrr who is trying his
level best to keep his wife, the lovely Dora Tyrr, at home and
in a virtuous condition. He is terribly successful. The novel
is really nothing more than an expression of the covert dreams
and aspirations of an obscure bourgeois Triestine who is tired
of the petty middle-class society of his city and who plays
his fantasy out on paper: Ah, he muses,
le donne di cola [in France], di qualunque condizione sieno, sono
di pura razza, ma il prodotto complicato degli incrociamenti nostrani,
allevato borghesissimamente... e fermentato di romanticismo morboso
in collegio, e tutt'altra cosa.35
As a work of art the novel is utterly conventional and completely without value. Another very close childhood friend of
Svevo's, Giulio Cesare, also published a single novel in his
youth and then gave up that art form for innumerable local
newspaper articles and regional historical studies. The novel
under question is entitled Vigliaccherie femminili, and it takes
place in part in the newspaper offices of the Indipendente
where both Svevo and Cesare worked. It was published in
1892, again just at the same time as Una vita. This novel is
a torrid story of love, " questa eterna malattia dello spirito."
Its actors are young men who suffer from " la febbre d'arte."
This is especially true of Giorgio Venturini who engages in
an epistolary romance with a certain Serafina, whom he has
never met, in the hope of finding a rewarding, ideal, spiritual
love. Disaster seems to strike when in one letter she reveals:
" La tua Serafina e zoppa." But Giorgio is man enough to
take it. The real heartache sets in when she writes a best
seller, Senza speranza, gives up Giorgio, goes on the stage,
becomes a success and marries someone else. Now he is truly
24
CHARLES C. RUSSELL
upset. She later confesses that she has really loved only him,
whereupon, horrified by her " vigliaccherie," he decides to
die. His, however, will not be an ordinary suicide. He explains:
Io voglio sentirmi morire con la disperata dolcezza del lento mancare d'ogni sensibilita! Non suicidio fisico, ma suicidio morale, ma
suicidio dell'anima, ma suicidio dell'intelletto...36
And so on and so on. This novel, too, is unimportant except
as a key to the city's tastes.
While Trieste in this period was not without its poets,
none of them was of any particular importance. The two best
known writers of poetry, Cesare Rossi and Riccardo Pitteri,
were first of all active patriots and only secondly poets, for,
as Silvio Benco puts it quaintly but slyly, " l'anima patria e ...
il distintivo di tutta la moderna letteratura triestina: non havvi
lira di poeta senza la corda civile." 37 For years Riccardo Pitteri was one of the city's leading irredentist figures and an
active and aggressive president of the Lega Nazionale up until
the time of his death. Cesare Rossi, a close friend of Svevo's,
was also a personal friend of Guglielmo Oberdan, the young
man who offered himself as a Triestine martyr. In addition
Rossi was a journalist for the Indipendente and its editor for
a number of years, a position he gave up in 1889 only for
reasons of failing health following upon his arrest and imprisonment by the Austrian government. By nature both poets
tended to be rather sentimental and pastoral in inspiration.
They were often linked with Carducci, for as the latter celebrated Italy's past, so the two Triestines celebrated their own
region's history. Nostalgia and melancholy are the dominating
tonalities of their poetry. Yet first and foremost their instincts
were patriotic, and it is for this reason that they were greatly
admired by their fellow citizens. This is true especially of
Pitteri who declared that his heart and verse would forever
cry out only one single purifying and consoling word: Italy.88
Even non-creative writers, the erudite scholars, the seekersout of forgotten manuscripts and the library book worms cried
out for Italy in their own quiet manner. Alberto Boccardi in
L'irredenta draws on this fact in his almost mythlike descrip-
SVEVO'STRIESTE
25
tion of Giusto Bonomo. Bonomo is an old man who spends
most of his waking hours rummaging through the dusty papers
and documents of the city archives in order to uncover even
the smallest bits of forgotten history which might illuminate
the city's past. A true " adoratore del suo paese," he brought
to his research
l'amor reverente della sua terra, la pazienza intensa dellarcheologo,
avido di ritrovare nelle vecchie carte dimenticate una data, un nome,
un fatto, da cui venisse luce ed onore a qualche pagina anche meno
importante della vita del Comune.39
There were many scholars who, drawing on the tradition of
Domenico Rossetti, worked to bring " luce ed onore " to the
city and its surrounding territory by means of their historical
research: Francesco Salata who wrote about Oberdan, Attilio
Tamaro who wrote the first comprehensive history of the city
and Bernardo Benussi who delved into the history of Istria,
to name just a few. The most important scholar of the years
preceding the First World War was Attilio Hortis (1850-1926).
In him there was an energetic mixture of erudition and patriotism, for not only did he publish highly respected and
scholarly papers, and thereby help to corroborate the boast
that whatever scholarship could be done in Italy could be
done just as well in Trieste, but he was also very active in the
leadership of the irredentist political movement. It was Hortis,
as mentioned before, who in 1897 was the first irredentist to
be elected deputy to the Vienna Parliament. It was also Hortis
who was chosen to pronounce a solemn discourse at Certaldo
on the 500th anniversary of Giovanni Boccaccio's death, and
it was he who was selected to deliver the official discourse
when, amidst wild enthusiasm, Trieste bore an ampule of oil
to Ravenna to light a lamp before the tomb of Dante. His
erudition honored the city, and he in turn was highly honored
by it and widely acclaimed.
To be truthful, it should be pointed out that Trieste's
own literary critics were not entirely enchanted with the music
played on such patriotic lyres. Giuseppe Picciola, an archpatriot and exile, could hardly be expected to criticize the
26
CHARLES C. RUSSELL
outpourings of his countrymen with any vigor; yet in 1904
he does go so far as to suggest that Trieste's writers tend to
be somewhat over-productive.40 Seven years later Silvio Benco
writes without enthusiasm about the various novelists and
poets of his city.41 It is Baccio Ziliotto, however, who bares
the question to the bone in his 1924 Storia letteraria di Trieste e dell'Istria. He writes:
La letteratura di questa terra al confine aspreggiata nei secoli dall'urto di genti straniere e dalle arti subdole e violente di governi, fu
essenzialmente di affermazione nazionale; e con cio, non dimentichiamolo, essa ha assolto un nobilissimo compito. Che se poi la si vuole
considerare dal punto di vista estetico, e forza confessare che essa
non ha creato valori artistici imperituri, non ha impresso alcun moto
decisivo alla letteratura italiana.42
In all fairness it should be noted that Ziliotto had not read
Svevo.
In general what the city lacked was a free flow of ideas,
a stimulating give and take with artists outside the city, the
excitement of fresh blood, fresh enthusiasm, open and heated
discussions, encouragement of free expression and experimentation, a chance to explore new and private pathways regardless of the city's political turmoil, and a receptiveness on the
part of the public. Instead, the city tended to funnel its
talents into accepted, conservative directions only, and to suffocate or isolate everything else. This is not to say that there
was no exchange with the mainland. On the contrary organizations vied with one another in bringing famous writers
to the city such as Carducci, d'Annunzio, Pascarella and de
Amicis, but these writers were less acclaimed for their writings
than for their sympathy with the irredentist movement, and
what Triestines looked to them for was an affirmation of their
solidarity with the city's struggle. They loved it when Carducci was so moved at the moment of departure from the
city that he could not say " addio " but only " arrivederci presto." Even the death of Manzoni was used for political propaganda. The Societa Operaia Triestina immediately telegraphed
its condolences to the mayor of Milan, lamenting the death
SVEVO'S TRIESTE
27
of their " grande connazionale." The accent naturally fell on
the prefix. The society followed its telegram with a funeral
wreath inscribed as follows: " Ad Alessandro Manzoni. Trieste che aspetta." 43
There were several artistic circles in the city which were
available to people of a literary bent. There were the literary
salons of the poetesses Elisa Tagliapietra Cambon and Emma
Conti-Luzzatto, but they seem to have been mostly society
affairs. Another salon, run by two elderly spinster sisters, has
been amusingly described by Willy Dias, she herself a Triestine novelist. What struck Miss Dias most about this salon
was its dustiness, its poverty and its relentless smell of stray
cats.44 These literary salons smack somewhat of Annetta Maller's Tuesday Club as described by Svevo in Una vita. Svevo
makes merry fun of these literary gatherings and of Annetta
who is now " doing" literature, at least for a few months, and
whose only critical guideline for the novel she and Alfonso
are writing together is that it be a popular success. More vigorous than these sorts of clubs was the Circolo Artistico which
attracted most of the city's leading intellectual and artistic
figures, among them Svevo and his intimate friend Umberto
Veruda. While the circle did hold concerts, art shows and
artistic and literary conferences, it also organized parties,
dances, masquerades and dinners at which the participants,
all men, considerably let their hair down and at which the
discussions were anything but serious. In 1888 the circle
published a small volume of articles, plays, poetry and sketches
by some of Trieste's younger artists, so that in this sense the
club acted as a limited outlet for local talent. However the
most important club was always the Societa di Minerva to
which Svevo belonged 45 and which counted among its members the most important irredentist figures of the day. At the
meetings of the Minerva no one let his hair down. Instead
everyone listened attentively to very serious and very erudite
conferences which in their own way also helped to remind
the Triestine public who they were and where they wanted
to go, for a majority of the speakers chose as their topics
the traditional figures of Italian literature or else they delved
28
CHARLES C. RUSSELL
into obscure corners of local and regional history. By no means
can the club be looked upon as a stimulus to pure literary
activity or as a focal point for the exchange of ideas and
opinions as the offices of La Voce were to be later for Slataper
and Stuparich.
It is against this background, then, that Italo Svevo began
his career as a writer, and it is within this city that he first
began to look for success. The question for him was where
and how to find it. One avenue of success, he hoped, would
be through the local newspapers. He turned to the Indipendente, and this was logical, since at that time the Indipendente
was the most serious and vigorous Italian newspaper in Trieste. Every Triestine newspaper had its own particular political
bias. The Indipendente, founded in 1877, was the official
paper of the irredentists. It was published and read by those
Triestines who longed for Trieste to be free, independent and
Italian. Its principal function was to keep alive a fierce spirit
of nationalism and to affirm and promote the glory of Italy.
When Trieste finally returned to Italy, the paper quietly closed
its doors. But until then it spoke in a loud, clear, no.holdsbarred tone of voice. That the paper was openly hostile to
Austria and deeply loyal to Italy was obvious to everyone.
It was enough to observe the way the editors presented the
news. What pertained to Austria was either not printed or
relegated to a few lines in a secondary corner of the paper,
while news of Italy was a front-page affair. The story of Guglielmo Oberdan, the young Triestine who willingly sacrificed
his life to nourish the flame of patriotism, was reported in
words of one who is deeply offended, profoundly moved, sad
and heartsick. Not so the tragedy of Mayerling. The words
are venemous and the intent malicious: " La folla che riempiva il Corso era soltanto apparsa per motivo che s'era sparsa
la voce che la banda militare farebbe un giro per la citta." 46
The royal house of Austria was an object of scorn. When the
father of Emperor Franz Joseph passed away, he was finished
off by the following sarcastic item: " Decesso - Leggiamo nella
Bilancia di Fiume: ' L'Arciduca Francesco Carlo, padre dell'Imperatore
e morto di diarrea '." 4 On the other hand the
SVEVO'S TRIESTE
29
paper was utterly devoted to the royal house of Italy. When
King Humbert was assassinated, even the offices and the balconies of the Indipendente were draped in black; for whatever
happened in Italy found immediate and spontaneous echo in
the hearts of the Indipendente patriots. This tenacious, pugnacious flaunting of Italianism was a thorn in the side of
Austria, and the government did not hesitate to react. The
Indipendente boasted that it was the most sequestered newspaper in Trieste: 1016 times in the 37 years of its existence.
The editorial staff was not concerned. It felt that such hostile
action made the newspaper all the more attractive. Innumerable times the paper was brought to trial and just as
many times it was censored or fined. To be its editor or its
director was a serious business. It meant earning very little
and the likelihood of suffering considerable hardship: some
had their homes searched, others were brought to trial, some
spent months in prison, while still others were sent into exile,
exile which meant leaving Trieste forever.
Svevo certainly shared in the sentiments of his Indipendente friends, at least in deed if not in word. One of the
paper's editors, Enrico Jurettig, was imprisoned for an article
he wrote on Guglielmo Oberdan. When he left prison thirty
months later he was a sick man, and shortly thereafter, in
1887, he died. An article in the Indipendente noted that at
the funeral procession " molti egregi giovani della citta, rappresentanti la gioventu triestina, facevano spalliera." 48 Among
them, added the article, was E. Schmitz. Two years later the
same E. Schmitz helped to get the paper going again after
it had been suspended for seven days. The entire staff had
been thrown into jail, including Svevo's good friend Cesare
this is
Rossi. The paper would certainly have folded-and
it had not been
what the government would have liked-if
for Schmitz and others like him.
The Indipendente was not exclusively a political arena.
It also dealt with the finer things, Italian of course. There
were book reviews, articles on the theater, resumes of conferences, local pieces by local writers and articles by writers
of national importance such as Matilde Serao and Gabriele
30
CHARLES C. RUSSELL
d'Annunzio. Every day an episode from the latest popular
novel, often one from France, was printed in serialized form.
At the end of the year the newspaper sometimes published a
little literary supplement, as a New Year's gift, in which Triestine writers could participate. Therefore, if someone had literary
ambitions, it was natural for him to gravitate toward the
Indipendente. It was in this paper that Svevo published all
his articles as well as " L'assassinio di via Belpoggio," "Prima del ballo " and the first edition of Senilita. There was,
however, one problem with the Indipendente which may
indirectly have contributed to Svevo's eventual lack of success.
It was not widely read. It was run and read by a kind of
elite in-group of patriotic bourgeois Triestines; persons, says
Silvio Benco, who were " molto serie, molto colte, di molto
elevato animo." It was directed towards minds which were
" ornate e colte " 49 and did not appeal to the average citizen.
In addition the price was much too high. So the paper never
had much of a circulation. Occasionally it reached two
thousand; mostly it hovered around a thousand or more, and
such seems to have been its circulation in 1898 when it
published Svevo's Senilita.
The other paper for which Svevo occasionally worked,
the Piccolo, but in which he never published, had much greater success. By the beginning of the First World War it had
become the most important newspaper in Trieste with a circulation of a hundred thousand throughout all the Italian
provinces of Austria and in Italy itself. Its editor, Teodoro
Meyer, considered to have been in part James Joyce's model
for Leopold Bloom, had a national, that is Italian, reputation.
This paper, too, was loyal green, white and red Italian,
patriotic one hundred percent, but it was less fanatical and
less exhuberant, somewhat more subtle and more elegant. It
spoke firmly but softly whereas the older paper spoke firmly
and very, very loudly. Though the Indipendente was happy
enough to be sequestered, the Piccolo was not. This paper
was also an undisguisedly commercial enterprise, a happy
combination of those two fundamentals of Triestine life: patriotism and commerce. Meyer lowered the paper's price,
SVEVO'S TRIESTE
31
brought it out in the morning (the Indipendente was an
afternoon paper) and thereby won the sympathy and readership
of the general public which the Indipendente had not been
able to do. The Piccolo, so called because its first issue
measured only 50 x 30 centimeters, quickly became everybody's
paper. Perhaps Svevo should have thrown his lot in with it.
But the Piccolo was not founded until the very end of 1881
and did not become an active political voice until 1887. Svevo
had already chosen the Indipendente in 1880, and he remained
loyal to it.
If Svevo's connections with journalism did not bring him
much success, the other avenue he chose brought him even
less. Long before he began his novels he tried his hand at
the theater. This is not surprising since the theater in all its
forms had always been very popular in Trieste. At the end
of the eighteenth century, just as soon as Trieste began to
grow in wealth, the city's businessmen decided they ought to
dedicate part of their new riches to the muses. After all, they
reasoned, Trieste should be able to offer what every other
Italian city had to offer. They built the charming Teatro Nuovo, now called the Teatro Verdi, which opened its doors in
1801 and has been active ever since. A number of other
theaters followed and flourished. Musically the tastes of the
city have always been rather sophisticated, and even Scipio
Slataper, who at least on the surface rarely appeared to find
anything praiseworthy in his city, could not help noting the
city's refined musical sensibility.50 In this crossroads city,
Wagner, whom Svevo was very fond of, found early acceptance.
In 1876 Lohengrin was presented for the first time and two
years later Tannhduser. A complete edition of the ring cycle
was offered at the Politeama Rossetti in 1883 and was rather
favorably received. Still, Wagner was never a run-away favorite. After a performance of Die Walkiire Svevo has one
of his characters comment that " una meta del pubblico era
occupata a dare ad intendere all'altra di divertirsi." 5" Of all
composers, however, Giuseppe Verdi was the public favorite,
which is quite natural since besides being a superb operatic
composer, he was also an Italian with the patriotic sentiments
CHARLES C. RUSSELL
32
of a good Italian. Triestines always loved to demonstrate their
patriotism, and music stimulated them to do so. Once, for
example, the chorus from Ernani, " Si ridesti il leon di Castiglia " with its phrase " siamo tutti una sola famiglia " had
to be repeated seven times while a fluttering of tricolored
slips of paper with Viva l'Italia printed on them filled the
theater. The concertmaster was borne in triumph onto the
stage. The Austrian police broke up the performance.52
Music was popular in the home as well. Many families had
someone who sang or played an instrument. Svevo himself
tinkered with the violin all his life and was part of a Sunday
quartet. One of his sisters was quite an accomplished soprano
and his brother-in-law, Bruno Veneziani, was a very talented
pianist. Isabel Burton, wife of the British consul, recounts how
she spent many a happy evening singing away at the home
of some of the better Triestine families, participating in
" glees,"
to
use
her
own
inimitable
expression.53
Private
clubs also produced operas and plays on their own. The operas
of the Circolo Artistico were famous, though primarily because
all the parts were taken by men and the results, as intended,
were nothing short of hilarious. More serious were the productions of the Societa Ginnastica, amateur productions which
were part of the club's program of promoting Italy and Italianism in all its forms.
Though assiduous, the play-going public appears to have
been less sophisticated in its theatrical than in its operatic
tastes. While it was not unusual for the younger Triestines to
unhitch the horses of a famous singer so that they might have
the honor of pulling her carriage themselves, and while famous actors were proclaimed divi,54 audiences at the theater,
according to Svevo, preferred to talk during the performances
and disliked the German custom of turning down the houselights.55 For the most part the plays themselves were a run
of the mill lot, what today would be typical Broadway fare:
Sardou, Giacosa, Ferrari and Praga, with the barest smattering
of the classics. One play which returned season after season
bears the title Adamo ed Eva ai bagni di Montecatini. It must
have been this sort of thing which
prompted
Scipio
Slataper
SVEVO'S TRIESTE
33
to refer sarcastically to the Triestine theater as " il divertimento senza fatica." 56 Svevo, too, speaks slightingly of the
public's theatrical tastes.57 If Annetta Mailer of Una vita is
any example, theater-going must not have been very rewarding.
She declares quite frankly that she is more interested in the
spectacle in the boxes than the spectacle on the stage. With
a " smorfia di disprezzo " she adds: "L'arte ci perde, lo riconosco, ma l'arte a teatro e poi un'arte? " She goes on to note
that plays which have the most success these days all follow
the same formula:
" L'orso
domato....
Fa poco che l'orso
sia uomo o donna, bisogna che venga domato per forza d'amore." 58 Be that as it may, Isabel Burton found the drama quite
stimulating, or so it would appear from the following:
A very amusing practice, which lasted some time in the good society
of Trieste, was meeting to recite plays, French, German and Italian,
everybody taking a part, sitting around a table and each reading our
part as if we were acting it. It was a very intellectual way of passing
the evening, and it ended by supper.59
"Intellectual
" though
it may have been,
the art of drama-
turgy seems to have been less popular among the erudite, for
between 1860 and 1910 at the Societa di Minerva, the cultural
club of Trieste, only a handful of conferences were given on
the theater: a few on Shakespeare, one or two on Italian plays
of the sixteenth century, something on Ibsen, a talk on Alfieri, a paper on Goldoni and not much more.
Svevo's own work with the theater came to nothing, nor
did his work with the newspaper amount to anything much.
He was not a success for he was out of tune with the patriotic
and commercial rhythms of the city. Trieste did not want
him. Yet it is undeniable that this city, so bland, so unimagso utterly bourgeois in its literary
inative, so conformist,
tastes and aspirations, both by imprisoning Ettore Schmitz in
its economic tyranny and by utterly rejecting the serious writings of Italo Svevo, forced him to retreat into his own mind
and in his isolation to develop what was to be peculiarly
his. The new, brilliant and bizarre figure of Zeno could not
34
CHARLES C. RUSSELL
have existed without Trieste. Zeno is everything the city did
not admire, yet he is more successful than them all. He is
Svevo's answer to the city which had rejected him.
CHARLES COULTER RUSSELL
University
of Maryland
1 Italo Svevo, " I1 dilettantismo, " Saggi e pagine sparse, ed. Umbro
" Se tali uomini [MaApollonio (Milan, 1954), pp. 59-60. Svevo notes:
era occupata in
la
mente
cui
di
Alberti],
Cellini,
chiavelli, Buonarroti,
cose di tanta importanza, provarono il bisogno di coltivare altre materie,
non e scusabile se un nostro agente di commercio o di banca soddisfa
in quanto puo quel desiderio di ridare idee o forme estetiche che madre
natura, irragionevolmente, gli mise nel sangue? " And looking back on
his life, Svevo, " Profilo autobiografico, " in Livia Veneziani Svevo,
Vita di mio marito, ed. Anita Pittoni, nuova edizione (Trieste, 1958),
p. 219, declared that he ought to be included among those for whom
writing novels was an " attivita per cui si era nati."
2 In 1880 Svevo's brother Elio noted: " A
poco a poco gli venne
l'idea di divenire uno scrittore. Oh! Poter diventare un uomo famoso
per lui era la maggiore speranza. A poco a poco si abituo pure a questa
idea in tal modo che essa lo domino e lo domina totalmente ancor oggi."
See Gian-Paolo Biasin, "Documenti
per Svevo: dal diario di Elio
Schmitz," Modern Language Notes, 38 January 1968), 110-11.
3 Scipio Slataper, " Trieste non ha tradizioni di coltura," Scritti politici, ed. Giani Stuparich (Milan, 1954), p. 12.
4 Antonio de' Giuliani, Riflessioni sul porto di Trieste (Trieste,
1950), p. 61.
5 G. G. Sartorio, Memorie (Trieste, 1951), p. 54.
6 Silvio Benco, Trieste ([Trieste],
[1910]), p. 82.
7
Italo Svevo, Senilita, 11th ed. (Milan, 1963), pp. 17-18.
8 Italo Svevo, La coscienza di Zeno, 14th ed. (Milan, 1966), p. 71.
9 Italo Svevo, Una vita (Milan, 1964), pp. 92, 185.
"
10
Trieste," Scritti politici, pp. 11, 13, 14.
Slataper,
11 Svevo, Zeno, p. 86.
12 Antonio
Madonizza, Di me e de' fatti miei (Trieste, 1951), pp.
51-52.
13 Slataper, " Trieste," Scritti politici, p. 17.
14 Emerico Schiffrer, Arturo Fittke, con le lettere giovanili di Fittke
a Rovan (Trieste, 1951), p. 93. Letter dated 19 December 1901.
15 Ibid., p. 95. Letter dated 28 January 1902.
16 Italo Svevo, Epistolario, ed. Bruno Maier (Milan, 1966), pp.
764-65.
17 Svevo, " Soggiorno londinese," Saggi, pp. 182-83.
18 See Attilio Gentille, II primo secolo della Societa di Minerva,
1810-1909 (Trieste, 1910), for further details.
19 Svevo, Zeno, p. 131.
SVEVO'S TRIESTE
35
20 Giani Stuparich, Trieste nei miei ricordi ([Milan], 1948), p. 52.
21 Isabel
Burton, The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (London,
1893), II, 18.
22
Mario Presel, Cinquant'anni di vita ginnastica a Trieste (Trieste,
1913), p. 300.
23
Svevo, "Profilo," in Veneziani Svevo, Vita, p. 209.
24
Giulio Cesari, Sessant'anni di vita italiana: memorie della Societa
Operaia Triestina 1869-1929 (Trieste, 1929), p. 60.
"
25
Slataper, Mezzi di coltura," Scritti politici, pp. 25-26.
26
Giuseppe Caprin, I nostri nonni, pagine della vita triestina (Trie-
ste, 1888), p. 178.
27
Ibid.,
28
p. 179.
See Ferdinando Pasini, Italo Svevo (Trieste, 1929), p. 6, for this
and other ideas freely used in the first part of this paragraph.
29 Svevo, " Un individualista," Saggi, p. 73. He writes: " Infine a
noi di quest'ultimo trentennio parve di fare soltanto il nostro dovere
lasciandoci monturare e disciplinare nella piiu feroce delle collettivita.
Ed e ben vero: Ad una data eta nessuno di noi e piu quello a cui madre
natura lo destinava; ci si ritrova con un carattere curvo come pianta che
avrebbe voluto seguire la direzione che segnalava la radice, ma che
devio per farsi strada attraverso a pietre che le chiudevano il passaggio."
30 Haydee,
Vita triestina avanti e durante la guerra 1915-18 (Trieste,
1961), p. 63.
31 Ferdinando Pasini, " Mondo letterario triestino d'anteguerra," Le
Tre Venezie,
8 (May 1930), 22.
Haydae, Vita triestina, p. 65.
33 Rina Paolucci, " Alberto Boccardi nella vita e nelle opere," La
Porta Orientale, 3 (March-April 1933), 278, 279, 280, 294.
34Giulio Ventura, Dora Tyrr (Rome, 1889), p. 9.
35 Ibid., p. 123.
38 Giulio Cesare, Vigliaccherie femminili (Udine, 1892), pp. 11, 10,
103, 216.
37 Benco, Trieste, p. 187.
38 Attilio Gentille, " Riccardo Pitteri," Pagine Istriane, 5 (MarchJune 1954), 21.
39 Alberto Boccardi, L'irredenta (Milan, 1903), pp. 102, 100.
40 Giuseppe Picciola, "Letteratura contrabbandiera," La Biblioteca
32
delle Scuole Italiane, 1 February 1904, pp. 3-4.
41 Benco, Trieste,
pp. 186-90.
42 Baccio Ziliotto, Storia letteraria di Trieste
(Trieste,
1924), pp.
93-94.
Cesari, Sessant'anni, pp. 55, 56.
44 Willy Dias, Viaggio nel tempo (Bologna, 1958), p. 49.
45 He is listed as a member of the Minerva in 1909. See Gentille,
II prime secolo, p. 109. Still, he must have attended its meetings many
years earlier. In a newspaper article dated 1890 Svevo, " Echi mondani,"
Saggi, p. 92, refers to a lecture on tobacco by Dr. Lorenzutti, perhaps
one held two years earlier at the Societa. Gentille, p. 152.
46
Quoted by Leone Veronese, L'Indipendente, storia di un giornale
(Trieste, 1932), p. 106.
43
36
CHARLES C. RUSSELL
47 Quoted by Cesare Pagnini, I giornali di Trieste, dalle
al 1959 (Milan, 1959), pp. 242-243.
48
L'lndipendente, 8 October 1887. The date of this funeral
neously reported as 1895 in Livia Veneziani Svevo, Vita, p. 89.
49 Silvio Benco, " II Piccolo " di Trieste, mezzo secolo di
lismo (Milan, 1931), pp. 2, 5.
50 Slataper, " La vita dello spirito," Scritti politici, p. 43.
51 Svevo, Senilita, p. 162.
52 Anon., Salvare il Politeama Rossetti, ed. Lions Club di
(n.p., n.d.), pp. 7-8.
53 Burton, The Life, pp. 176-77.
54 Veneziani Svevo, Vita, p. 20.
55 Svevo, Una vita,
p. 103.
56 Slataper, " La vita dello spirito," Scritti politici,
p. 43.
57 Svevo, " I1 pubblico," Saggi, p. 26.
58 Svevo, Una vita, pp. 103, 128.
59 Burton, The Life, p. 237.
origini
is errogiorna.
Trieste