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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. 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. "A un certo punto della vita, tutto quello su cui posiamo gli occhi per la prima volta ei è estraneo. Lo guardiamo da turisti con intresse ma freddamente. Appartiene agli altri." (from La città e la casa, 1984) Natalia Ginzburg was born Natalia Levi in Palermo into a middle-class family. From her father's side, who was professor of anatomy, she was Jewish, and from her mother's side she was Catholic. However, Ginzburg was brought up an atheist, and this separated her from other children. In 1919 her father accepted a professorship at the University of Turin, where Ginzburg grew up in a cultural milieu. 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. After her brother Mario escaped to Switzerland, her father was arrested for some weeks. Ginzburg studied at the University of Turin (1935). In 1938 she married the editor and political activist Leone Ginzburg; they had two children. Leone Ginzburg, 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 some years in "confinement" in a village in the Abruzzi, but went then into hiding to Rome and Florence. Leone Ginzburg was arrested again, and he died after torture in the Regina Coeli prison in 1944. After Allied Liberation Ginzburg returned to Rome. Ginzburg started her career as a writer publishing short stories in the distinguished Florentine periodical Solaria. Her first major work, 'Un'assenza', appeared in Solaria when she was seventeen and centrered on an unhappy, anguished individual who suffers from boredom. Ginzburg's first novella, LA STRADA CHE VA IN CITTÁ (1942), was published under the pseudonym Alessandra Tornimparti. It was followed in 1947 by È STATO COSÌ, which depicted as in her previous work an unhappy marriage. TUTTI I NOSTRI IERI (1952) was a story of two families, one rich, one not. Through their intertwined histories Ginzberg portrays a generation that lived through Fascism, war, the German invasion, resistance, and the Allied victory. LE VOCI DELLA SERA (1961) was set in Piedmont around the time of World War II. The humorous, autobiographical LESSICO FAMIGLIARE (1963) was an account of Ginzburg's childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood through the "family lexicon", words and phrases of the various members of her family. After the liberation in 1944 Ginzburg returned to Turin with her chilren. 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. In 1950 she married Gabriele Baldini, a professor of English literature at the university of Rome; he died in 1969. She lived from the 1950s mostly in Rome, where she worked in publishing. 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. Ginzburg was elected to the Italian Parliament in 1983 as an independent left-wing deputy. "Sometimes when I'm there in Parliament, on that sofa in the corridor, I'm thinking deeply about things I want to write," Ginzburg once confessed. (It's Hard to Talk about Yourself, ed. by Cesare Garboli and Lisa Ginzburg, 2003) Her later, internationally acclaimed works include LA CITTÀ E LA CASA (1984, The City and the House) and SERENA CRUZ, O LA VERA GIUSTICA (1990, Serena Cruz, or True Justice). Ginzburg died of cancer on October 7, 1991. Ginzburg wrote memoirs, several dramas, essays, translations from such authors as Marcel Proust and Flaubert, and a biography of the poet and essayist Alessandro Manzoni, which reveals the failure of the great author as a father. 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. 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. 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 IMMAGIRIA (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: It's Hard to Talk about Yourself, ed. 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, ed. by Angela M. Jeannet (2000); Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 2, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999); Natalia Ginzburg by Giancarlo Borri (1999); Natalia Ginsburg: Human Relationships in a Changing World by Allan Bullock (1991); Invito alla lettura di Natalia Ginzburg by E. Clementelli (1972); Le voci della sera by S. Pacifici (1971); A Guide to Contemporary Italian Literature by S. Pacifici (1962) - Note: Natalia Ginzburg's son Carlo (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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