By: Italo Svevo Publisher: Vintage Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Vintage Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 464 Publication Date: February 04, 2003 Release Date: February 04, 2003
Product Description: Long hailed as a seminal work of modernism in the tradition of Joyce and Kafka, and now available in a supple new English translation, Italo Svevo’s charming and splendidly idiosyncratic novel conducts readers deep into one hilariously hyperactive and endlessly self-deluding mind. The mind in question belongs to Zeno Cosini, a neurotic Italian businessman who is writing his confessions at the behest of his psychiatrist. Here are Zeno’s interminable attempts to quit smoking, his courtship of the beautiful yet unresponsive Ada, his unexpected–and unexpectedly happy–marriage to Ada’s homely sister Augusta, and his affair with a shrill-voiced aspiring singer. Relating these misadventures with wry wit and a perspicacity at once unblinking and compassionate, Zeno’s Conscienceis a miracle of psychological realism.
an 'Italian Proust'? Having just finished the novel, I have come to understand why the French lauded Svevo so, and why the Italians remained thoroughly ambivalent towards him until the mid 20th century. He is, in so many senses, a thoroughly French novelist- overly introspective, morally lacerated, solipsistic (in a Sartrean sense), morbidly self-conscious, brimming with weltschmerz, nauseatingly sensitive. This is, for all its supposed 'modernism' and invention, also a bit of an anachronism, a decadent novel of the highest order, one that belongs alongside the likes of Huysmans, Verlaine, Mallarme and other such lachrymose types. Yet, this has none of the rococo refinement of the symbolists and dandies- as many have said before me, the prose is often callous and awkward, a far cry from the mannered elegance of Lampedusa, Pavese, Moravia. Svevo is no cane-flailing aesthete, and his haphazard craftmanship adds to the off-balance strangeness of the book.
It is true that Zeno's Conscience is, on a cosmetic level, a very funny book, but the comedy (which is of an acerbic, bile-encrusted, jet-black sort, think Baudelaire, who is perhaps much closer to Svevo than any other writer I can think of) can hardly obscure the fact that this is one of the most disquieting books in existence. It has all the apocalyptic gravity of Hamsun's best work, all the soul-searing pathos/self-pity of "A Rebours", all the sulphurous savagery of Lautreamont, all the anguished desperation of Sade's finest work. Forget about the Joyce and Kafka comparisons- there is absolutely nothing affirmative about this book whatsoever. French literature is studded with world-weary types, but beneath the feverish execrations of Beckett and Celine (two writers who share Svevo's love for slapstick comedy) is a tortured love for humanity, an insuppressible faith in the value of existence. Be warned, for you will find little of this in "Zeno's Conscience". Its greatest achievement is its profound ambivalence- I am still unsure of whether I should laugh at zeno's imbecility or shudder at his unremitting rancor and resentment.
What, then, is there to recommend about this much-lauded novel? Simply put, this book encapsulates the 'Mal Du Siecle' better than almost any novel I can name. Yes, this book should be shelved next to "Sentimental Education", "The Red and Black", "A Rebours", "Notes From The Underground", "Death In Venice", "Flowers Of Evil" and "A Man Without Qualities" as one of the definitive documents of modernity. If Deleuze is correct in saying that literature is symptomatology, this novel diagnoses and elaborates upon a condition that we are still convalescing from. It is a novel of pure inwardness, gratuitous, effusive and excruciatingly frank. As a confession, it shares many traits with two illustrious forbears, the confessions of Rousseau and Augustine. Like the former, it is pregnant with effusive self-aggrandizement, affected sentiment and perverse rationality, like the latter it juxtaposes this with masochistic self-abasement and thoroughgoing pessimism. I cannot share the view that Zeno is an 'adorable' character- I find him diseased, the harbinger of (post)modern exhaustion and vacuity. It is known that Svevo could recite entire passages of Schopenhauer by heart--I believe that tells you more about what to expect from "Zeno's Conscience" than any review you could read. Svevo is, unwittingly, an oracle, and the book is an augury- it heralds the arrival of Nietzsche's Last Men, those who walk among us.
Beyond this, "Zeno's Conscience" is also an extraordinarily profound book about conversation. Indeed, the entire novel is about speech acts and the realities that they construct- Zeno spends much of the novel lamenting a lie that he cannot retract (and which subsequently engenders more and more lies, until he is deluged by a torrent of dishonesties) or pondering a torturously impenetrable sentence spoken by his beloved. Many of the guffaws in the novel are aroused by the multifarious snares that words create- Zeno's irrepressible mouth generates disaster upon disaster, and his haplessness before his hamartia is uncomfortably funny.
This is something he shares with Proust and Kafka, a fascination with the gesture and the spoken word. Like Proust, Zeno is obsessed with posture/imposture, simulation/dissimulation, social procedures and proprieties, awed by pomp and hauteur. Unlike Proust's narrator, though, he is hilariously inept at producing the appropriate signs for the occasion and utterly incapable of interpreting the signs of others.
For all the commonalities he shares with Proust, though, I can't help but feel as though the comparisons with the writer of the Recherche are absurdly injudicious. It is true that Svevo shares similar concerns with Proust- the instability of the Cogito, time and age, memory, the value of writing as a penitential/salvational exercise, the insatiability of desire, the incongruity of perception and fact, the utter inscrutability of other people, the fallacy of objectivism, etcetera. Yet this novel has little of Proust's tenderness, even less of his lovably mawkish lyricism and none of his bittersweet joy. Beyond this, Zeno cannot lay claim to the two characteristics that are more Proustian than any others- naivete and innocence. Instead, in its dismaying descriptions of fin-de-siecle burgher life and modern decadence, "Zeno's Conscience" is somewhat closer in ambition (though not in structure and scope) to Mann's "Buddenbrooks".
Also, it is quite strange that so many psychoanalysts fail to take Zeno at his word. It is clear that Svevo was thoroughly conversant with the theories of Freud, and this familarity is evident throughout the novel, as he lampoons the practice with abandon. This is one of the clearest messages throughout the novel- we might be sick and tired of ourselves, but psychoanalysis is certainly not the deliverance we're waiting for. Zeno is absolutely unwilling to trade his disease for Oedipus, and that unwavering honesty is one of the few things we can commend him for.
If life is a disease, the cure will kill you... *Zeno's Conscience* is, by some estimation, one of the `unknown' and unheralded classics of the modern novel. In it, the title character, at the behest of his psychoanalyst, records the story of his life as part of his treatment.
Zeno manages this massive task by recalling his life's most defining epochs: his failed courtship of one woman and marriage to another, his adulterous relations, his failed business venture with a brother-in-law, the traumatizing death of his father. And, most humorously and characteristically, his sincere and repeatedly renewed pledge to quit smoking......after `one last cigarette.'
Bookending this catalog of misadventures there is a short preface by Zeno's hostile analyst and an epilog by Zeno himself poking fun of this very same analyst and his failed treatment. The overriding message? Psychoanalysis is pure bunk.
At the time *Zeno's Conscience* was written, psychoanalysis was coming into its own and Svevo's mocking parody of its claims to "cure" the analysand could very well have struck a reactionary chord with the progressive intelligentsia of his day. I wonder if that played a role in condemning *Zeno's Conscience* to relative obscurity? Today, however, Svevo sounds like a prophet. After a century-plus of psychoanalysis, it's become a standard joke: Does anyone *ever* get better? It may have once been intellectually unfashionable to knock psychoanalysis, Freudian theory, and Oedipal complexes--but nowadays it's hard to even find a psychiatrist who believes in the efficacy of `talk-therapy,' without, that is, pharmaceutical accompaniment.
Supposedly championed by no less a literary luminary than James Joyce, Italo Svevo writes with a conventional crystal clarity very different from Joyce himself, unless youre thinking the Joyce of *A Portrait of the Artist* or *Dubliners.* As the voice of Zeno, Svevo's meticulous and incisive psychological portraits of self and other manage to be both devastating and touching. Here we are--warts and all. But Zeno--a sort of neurotic Zorba with a lot less energy--doesn't lose his enthusiasm for life or his affection for mankind. As he memorably argues, to `cure' us of illness would be like trying to stop up the holes of our bodies: it'd surely and quickly kill us. These `holes,' these `imperfections,' this `sickness,' is what keeps us alive--and what makes life enjoyable.
On the surface, *Zeno's Conscience* is a long-winded book narrated by an old guy looking back on a rather ordinary and largely uneventful life. A guy who failed at just about everything he ever put his hand to. A guy who, in spite of his relentless introspection, self-absorption, and self-analysis still deludes--and eludes--himself. A bundle of contradictions and impossible desires, caught on every side by double-binds and unwinnable predicaments largely of his own making, Zeno is a clown of the loftiest variety--one whose pratfalls tell a story as tragically symbolic as the climb to Golgotha, but with a lot more laughs along the way. Because in the end *Zeno's Conscience* is a very funny novel--the way life is very funny, through a veil of tears.
Well worth your time.
One of the best novels I ever read Psychoanalysis usually does not make a good basis for fiction writing. There is, to my knowledge, one unique and very bright exception which is this book. The previous novels of Italo Svevo were showing real litterary talent but nothing like the genius he displayed in this one. At some point in his life, this man who must have considered himself a failed writer was encouraged to try it again by a totally unknown young Irishman who was giving him English lessons, one James Joyce. He created the funniest of the great masterpieces of modern litterature. Thinking about it, Ulysses and A la recherche du temps perdu can also be seen as essentially comical works. My personal preference goes to Zeno's Conscience.
The quintessential sick man Svevo is NOT the Italian Proust; any more than Laurence Durrell and Anthony Powell were English Prousts, or Thomas Mann was a German Proust, pace all claims to the contrary. There was only one Proust, and he was French.
So, having decided what Svevo is NOT, what IS he? What to make of this book, which would have never seen publication had it not been for Joyce? I don't quite buy the bit about it being all about Freud and psychoanalysis, or contra Freud and psychoanalysis. - There is that comic apercu in the last chapter, a jibe at his analyst, which I found exceedingly droll - "I believe, however, that he is the only one in the world who, hearing I wanted to go to bed with two beautiful women, would ask himself: Now let's see why this man wants to go to bed with them."
I think what Zeno thinks of himself and his life is that he is a "sick" man. ---But this is question-begging. - "Sick" in what way? I don't think it has much to do with Freud, but rather with Darwin w/ perhaps a bit of Nietzsche's "last man" thrown in. I'm surprised that not one of these reviews mentions Darwin, whose Survival of the Fittest theory Zeno is constantly meditating upon, including the famously gruesome example of the wasp paralyzing its prey so that its young can have live flesh to feast upon.
Here is what Zeno himself has to say about his "sick" state:
"How much more beautiful my life had been than that of the so-called healthy, those who beat or would like to beat their women every day, except at certain moments. I, on the contrary, had been accompanied always by love. When I hadn't thought of my woman for a while, I then called her to mind again, to win forgiveness for thinking of other women. Other men abandoned their women, disappointed and despairing of life. I had never stripped life of desire, and illusion was immediately, totally reborn after every shipwreck, in the dream of limb, of voices, of more-perfect attitudes." P.419
But his judgment on his type is what other reviewers call "presciently" damning. It is found in the last paragraph of the book in which a sick man like himself invents an "incomparable explosive" and another "sicker man" effects the book's last sentence: There will be an enormous explosion that no one will hear, and the earth, once again a nebula, will wander through the heavens, free of parasites and sickness."-That is, of course, of humans.
An interesting book - but, au fond, none too cheery.
Oblomov all'italiana As André Gide once said: "Toute chose appartient à qui sait en jouir." Alas, those of us who do not possess this happy faculty, still have to somehow come to terms with life. This is the main problem in Svevo's novel, concisely summarized by its hero: "Simply recalling everything we humans expected from life sufficed for us to see how strange it was, and to arrive at the conclusion that perhaps mankind is located in its midst by mistake and doesn't belong there."
Of course, the theme of being out of place in life is not new in literature. "Exotopic" men can be found earlier in Thomas Mann's "Buddenbrooks", Flaubert's "L' Éducation sentimentale", and, ultimately, some sixty years before, in Goncharov's "Oblomov". So, perhaps thematically the only peculiar novelty of "Zeno's Conscience" is in the incorporation of certain Freudian elements in main hero's self-analysis. Nevertheless, the originality of this work is striking in the context of the fact, that even though Svevo is often compared to Joyce or Proust, he hasn't read any of their novels until after the publication of "Zeno's Conscience" (though he knew Joyce personally for many years since 1904, when Joyce was his English tutor in Trieste).
Full of humor, irony, and astute aphorisms, this book is an honest confession of its main hero, who fails to immerse himself in life. If you liked Proust, Joyce, or Musil, this book is for you.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
