Who was Italo Svevo? Summary about Italo Svevo (Brief)

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  1. “Italo Svevo” is the pseudonym with which Aron Hector Schmitz (Ettore Samigli) made himself known; he was born in Trieste on 19 December 1861 and he died at Motta di Livenza on 13 September 1928;
  2. Italian writer and playwright.
  3. He was born in Trieste, which in those days was still part of the Austrian empire;
  4. His family was bourgeois, of the Jewish religion;
  5. Italo Svevo was Italophone from birth but he was trained in a German environment, at the Segnitz boarding school in Bavaria, together with the brothers;
  6. For eighteen years he worked in the bank;
  7. He continued his training independently at the civic library of Trieste;

  8. He was interested in French naturalist literature, Italian classics, the philosophy of Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer;
  9. He had an interest in scientific readings, in particular for Charles Darwin’s theories;
  10. He wrote for “L’Indipendente”, a socialist newspaper, various reviews, and essays;
  11. In 1888 and 1890 he published “A fight” (“Una lotta”) and “The Assassin of Via Belpoggio” (in Italian
  12. “L’assassino di via Belpoggio”); With both of these two stories, he had signed himself as “Ettore Samigli”;
  13. In 1892 his father died;
  14. In the same year he published “Una vita“, signing himself as “Italo Svevo” (name from which we can see the double Italian root, therefore “Italo” and Austrian, therefore “Svevo”);
  15. He collaborates with the newspaper “Il Piccolo” (Trieste newspaper);
  16. He received a professorship at the “Revoltella” institute;
  17. Italo Svevo’s mother died in 1895; In 1896 he married with a civil ceremony (and the following year with a Catholic ceremony, abjuring his religion of origin) his cousin Livia Veneziani;
  18. The sons died during the war by work as missing in Russia or because of the Nazis, during the insurrection of May 1, 1945, in Trieste;
  19. In 1898 he published the novel “Senilità“, which, however, as the first book, would not have happened;
  20. In 1899 he resigned and stopped working in the bank and began working at the father-in-law’s company;
  21. His literary activity in this period, despite the writing of some fables and scripts, was rather limited;
  22. During this period he will also try to practice, without actually having the time, with the violin;
  23. In 1907, attending an English course in Trieste, he met <a ” href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joyce” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>James Joyce, at the time a teacher;
  24. In 1910 Italo Svevo went to Vienna, where he was treated by Sigmund Freud and the world of psychoanalysis;
  25. When the First World War broke out, Italo Svevo’s father-in-law company was closed;
  26. During the First World War Svevo remains in neutral positions;
  27. During the conflict he became interested in English literature and psychoanalysis, going so far as to translate “The interpretation of dreams” by Sigmund Freud;
  28. Sympathized with the Italian occupation of Trieste and its entry into the Kingdom of Italy;
  29. He collaborated with Giulio Cesari and his Italian newspaper “La Nazione”, written in Trieste;
  30. He became an Italian citizen and change his name to Ettore Schmitz;
  31. Italo Svevo wrote “Zeno’s Conscience” between 1923 and 1925, but once again unsuccessfully with the public;
  32. Joyce invited the French critics to consider his book and in the meantime, Eugenio Montale discovered the talent of Italo Svevo;
  33. In a short time his name began to be known;
  34. Italo Svevo refused to join fascism, but also avoided opposing it;
  35. He died following heart failure, together with a respiratory crisis, preceded by a fracture in the femur;
  36. “The old man or the confessions of the old man”, his fourth novel and continuation of the previous novel
  37. “Zeno’s Conscience” “(La coscienza di Zeno”) will remain unfinished;
  38. Italo Svevo preferred the psychological novel;
  39. Within “La coscienza di Zeno” (Zeno’s Conscience) the world of the unconscious will be explored in a particular way;
  40. In “Zeno’s Conscience” narration through internal monologue and the superimposition of present and past prevails;

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