Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Elio Vittorini
Author(s): Sergio J. Pacifici
Source: Books Abroad, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Autumn, 1955), pp. 401-403
Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40094750
Accessed: 06-02-2017 16:57 UTC
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Elio Vittorini
By SERGIO J. PACIFICI
tt n the already heavily studded literary fir- or years, the editor of a weekly Communist
mament of today's Italy, hardly a critic or sheet, II Politecnico, which ceased publi-
JL a reader would seriously deny that Elio cation about two years after its inception)
Vittorini* (b. 1908) is one of the brightest have obfuscated and confused the issues
and most promising stars, in the company posed by his fiction, splitting the ranks of
of such distinguished artists as Alberto Mo- the critics into irreconcilable partisan fac-
ravia, Vasco Pratolini, and Riccardo tions. The result has been that it has be-
Bacchelli. The story of the important con- come all the more arduous for the reading
tribution Vittorini has brought to Italian public to reach a fair and impartial esti-
culture through his many and diversified mate of a novelist whose nonconformity
activities is now, if not as widely known and disrespect of all traditional literary con-
as it deserves to be, a matter of established ventions and forms present immediate ob-
record. His sensitive translations of modern stacles for the less sophisticated reader.
American classics (Faulkner, Hemingway, However this may be, some cogent observa-
Saroyan, Steinbeck, et al.); his editorship tions can be made at this point. A quick
of the fine series of contemporary Italian glance at the books Vittorini has written to
narrative christened / gettoni (published by date, for instance, ought to convince us that
Einaudi) ; his perceptive criticism of mod- whatever their merits may be (and here
ern literature - have placed him in the lime- there is considerable room for honest dis-
light of intellectual activity in Europe. Like- agreement) they ought to be considered as
wise, his work as a writer of fiction par- fragments of a large attempt to dramatize
ticularly gifted with imagination and sen-
sibility has made him one of the most con-
troversial, and in many ways crucial, fig-
ures of Italian literature.
Yet, for all the attention his work has
received over the past twenty-odd years, it
must be acknowledged that it has so far
eluded any clear critical definition - how-
ever tentative. There are good reasons for
this state of affairs. For one thing, much of
Vittorini's recent production has been quite
frankly experimental and, in many respects,
it has added little that is substantially new
to the great and articulate "confession" of
Conversazione in Sicilia. Moreover, the
many extra-literary activities in which Vit-
torini has taken an active part in the imme-
diate postwar period (he was, for a number
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402 BOOKS ABROAD
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ELIO VITTORINI 403
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