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Natalia Ginzburg (1916-1991) - Original surname Levi |
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Italian novelist, essayist, translator and playwright, who has written of her unconventional family and its opposition in Turin to Fascist oppression. Natalia Ginzburg's novels are a mixture of reminiscence, observation, and invention. Much of her fiction is written in the first person in a plain style, and constructed almost entirely of dialogue. "You told me that you will come and see me in America. But I don't believe it. In all the years I've known you I've never seen you set off on a long journey. The only thing I've seen you do, in all these years, is to jump in your beat-up old Volkswagen that stinks of wet dog to get to the market in Pianura. And so I think the last time I'll see you was yesterday, on the station at Pianura." (The City and the House by Natalia Ginzburg, translated from the Italian by Dick Davis, London: Paladin, 1990, p. 7; original title: La città e la casa, 1984) Natalia
Ginzburg was born Natalia Levi in Palermo into a
middle-class family. She was the fifth and youngest child of Giuseppe
Levi and Lidia Tanzi. From her father's side, who was professor of
anatomy, she was Jewish. Her mother, who came from Milan, was Catholic.
However, Ginzburg was brought up an atheist, and this separated her
from other children. In 1919 her father, Giuseppe Levi, accepted a
professorship at the
University of Turin, where Ginzburg grew up in a cultural milieu. As a
precaution against contagious diseases, she was kept at home until the
age of eleven. The
Levi household became a meeting place for many intellectuals, who
opposed Benito Mussolini. ". . . my father was an old-style Socialist,
but, well, he had no idea how to oppose Fascism," said Ginzburg later
in an interview. Giuseppe
Levi was a "benevolent despot whose angry roars would regularly fill
the house and who was unsparing in his criticism of everything
connected with his younger daughter". (Natalia Ginsburg: Human Relationships in a Changing World by Allan Bullock, New York: Berg, 1991, p. 68) Ginzburg's mother was
a family friend of the prominent socialist politician Filippo Turati. After her brother Mario escaped to Switzerland, her
father was arrested for some weeks. To escape anti-Semitic persecution, Giuseppe Levi went into exile to Belgium. For a period, Ginzburg attended literature courses at the
University
of Turin, but then gave up her studies. In 1938 she married the editor
and political activist Leone Ginzburg; they had three children. Leone, born in Odessa, was a brilliant Slavist and he helped
introduce Russian literature into Italy. In 1933 he refused to swear an
oath of allegiance to Fascism, and could not continue his career as a
teacher. Leone was one of the frequent visitors at Benedetto
Croce's
summer residence in Piedmont. Croce, a philosopher and Senator, was a
well-known anti-fascist, whose houses were under surveillance. On
account of his activities, the Ginzburgs spent three years in
"confinement" in the Abruzzo village of Pizzoli, after which they
went into hiding to Rome and Florence. To help Leone, Croce sent
him books, periodicals and translation work. Leone Ginzburg was
arrested
again in 1944, and he was tortured and killed in the Regina
Coeli prison in Rome. Ginzburg moved with her children from one safe house to another. Ginzburg started her career as a writer publishing short
stories in the distinguished Florentine periodical Solaria. Her
first major work, 'Un'assenza' (An absence) appeared in Solaria when she
was seventeen. It centrered on an unhappy, anguished individual who
suffers from boredom. La strada che va
in città
(1942, The Road to the City), Ginzburg's first novella, was published by Einaurdi. Because of her
husband's well known anti-fascist resistance, it came out under a
pseudonym (Alessandra Tornimparti). È
stato così (1947, The Dry Heart) was about
an unhappy marriage like the author's previous work. At the end the
narrator kills her unfaithful husband. "I shot him between the eyes," says the unnamed narrator already on the first page. After the liberation in 1944 Ginzburg returned to Turin. She worked as an editorial consultant for the new publishing house of Giulio Einaudi. The publishing house had introduced such writers as Cesare Pavese, Elio Vittorini and, a little later, Elsa Morante and Italo Calvino. Ginzberg's translation of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way came out in 1946 and was later printed with some alterations in the Einaurdi Gli struzzi series. Ginzburg herself preferred the earlier version, which was more passionate, and revised the adjustments. In 1950 Ginzburg married Gabriele Baldini, a professor of English literature at the university of Rome. From 1959 to 1961 she lived in London, following there her husband, who had been nominated for three consecutive years as director of the Italian Cultural Institute. She was widowed again in 1969 and left with a seriously handicapped daughter to care for. Ginzburg stayed from the 1950s mostly in Rome, where she worked in publishing. Tutti i nostri ieri (1952. A Light for Fools) a story of two families, one rich, one not, partly drew on her experiences in detention on the country. Through the intertwined histories Ginzburg portrays a generation that lived through Fascism, war, the German invasion, resistance, and the Allied victory. The story ends on a positive note. Le voci della sera (1961, Voices in the Evening) was set in Piedmont around the time of World War II. Ginzburg wrote the novel in London ‒ she disliked the city ‒ while living there with her husband. The memoir-novel Lessico famigliare (1963, Family Lexicon), written in colloquial Italian, belongs among the most important works of Holocaust literature. Ginzburg writes calmly about the murder by torture of her first husband. Family Lexicon gives an account of Ginzburg's childhood, adolescence, and adulthood during the Fascist dictatorship through the "family lexicon", words and phrases of the various members of her family. "In addition to the "nitwits," there were also the "negroes." For my father, a "negro" was someone who was awkward, clumsy, and fainthearted; someone who dressed inappropriately, didn't know how to hike in the mountains, and could't speak foreign languages. (Family Lexicon, translated from the Italian by Jenny McPhee, afterword by Peg Boyers, New York: New York Review of Books, 2017, p. 5) The author herself stays in the background and avoids making any judgement on the intimate language which is often pretty odd to outsiders. Ginzburg was elected to the Italian
Parliament in 1983 as an
independent left-wing deputy. She said in an interview: "Well, when I
was asked to run for office I immediately said 'No, I'm not a political
person. I could never do such a thing because I don't have the
necessary qualities one would need to perform well in office.' But they
persisted, saying that I should try anyway, so I agreed to it with the
understanding that I would be useless." (Natalia Ginsburg: A Voice of the Twentieth Century, edited by Angela M. Jeannet and Giuliana Sanguinetti Katz, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000, p. 20) She was reelected in 1987. The issue of adoption became one of the centres of her concerns. Ginzburg's later, internationally acclaimed works include Caro Michele (1973, Dear Michael), about the family of the writer Alessandro Manzoni, in which she used the epistolary technique, La città e la casa (1984, The City and the House), a chaotic novel, and Serena Cruz, o la vera giustica (1990, Serena Cruz, or True Justice), dealing with the case of Serena Cruz, who had been taken away from her adoptive parents. Natalia Ginzburg died of cancer on October 7, 1991. A few days before her death, she completed the translation of Maupassant's Une vie. Ginzburg published memoirs, several dramas, essays, translations from such authors as Marcel Proust and Flaubert, and a biography of the poet and essayist Alessandro Manzoni, La famiglia Manzoni (1983), which reveals the failure of the great author as a father. Am reviewer said of the style this work: "Everything is stated and nothing is underlined or glossed or implied or invoked as material to argue something different." Ginzburg's play Ti ho sposato per allegria (1965, I Married You for Fun) was written for the actress Adriana Asti. L'inserzione (1968, The Advertisement) was produced in London by Laurence Olivier, and in Italy by Luchino Visconti In her earliest works Ginzburg consciously rejected any autobiographical style or elements, which she saw as characteristic of what she called "feminine" writing. However, she soon discovered that it was through writing her personal experiences in a fictionalized form, that she succeeded best in expressing herself. Many of her works rely on memories of her childhood and youth in Turin. Recurrent characters are frustrated intellectuals and women living static lives. Valentino (1957) was her first novel which portrayed homosexual figures. As an essayist Ginzburg has explored a wide variety of subjects from current movies to books and art, and from pedagogy to morals and individual rights. "At the center of our life is the question of human relations," she said in one essay. In the preface for her translation of Il racconto di Peuw bambina cambogiana (1975-1980), which came out in 1985, she asked why there was a total silence in the West and the media about the Cambodian disaster. Ginzburg's style is sparse, melancholic, but relieved by occasional flashes of humor. "Too many descriptions; I can't bear descriptions in novels," Ginzburg stated in the novel The City and the House. Her major collections of essays were Le piccole virtú (1962), Mai devi domandarmi (1970) and Vita immaginaria (1974). In 'Il mio mestiere' (1949) she wrote: "I prefer to think that no one has ever been like me, however small, however much mosquito or a flea of a winter I might be." For further reading: 'Introduction' by Cynthia Zarin, in Valentino and Sagittarius by Natalia Ginzburg (2020); La corsara: ritratto di Natalia Ginzburg by Sandra Petrignani (2018); 'Foreword' by Belle Boggs, in The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg (2017); It's Hard to Talk about Yourself, edited by Cesare Garboli and Lisa Ginzburg (2003); Maternal Desire: Natalia Ginzburg's Mothers, Daughters, and Sisters by Teresa Picarazzi (2002); Natalia Ginzburg: A Biography by Maja Pflug (2001); Natalia Ginzburg: A Voice of the Twentieth Century, edited by Angela M. Jeannet and Giuliana Sanguinetti Katz (2000); 'Ginzburg, Natalia,' in Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, Vol. 2, edited by Steven R. Serafin (1999); Natalia Ginzburg by Giancarlo Borri (1999); Italian Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook by Rinaldina Russell (1994); Natalia Ginsburg: Human Relationships in a Changing World by Allan Bullock (1991); Invito alla lettura di Natalia Ginzburg by Elena Clementelli (1972); A Guide to Contemporary Italian Literature by Sergio Pacifici (1962) - Note: Natalia Ginzburg's son Carlo (b. 1939) became a professor of modern history at the University of Bologna. He has published books on sixteenth-century religious radicalism and witchcraft. His first major work was The Night Battles (1966). Other works include Il nicodemismo (1970), The Cheese and the Worms (1976), and The Enigma of Piero (1981). Selected works:
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