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Antonio Tabucchi (1943-) | |
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Italian writer, a master of the short story and novella, professor of Portuguese language and literature. As a scholar and translator Tabuccho is especially known for his work on the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. Tabucchi has been mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. "He blew his nose again and went on: Besides, the one hundred escudo notes are cool, they've got a picture of Fernando Pessoa on them, and now let me ask you a question, do you like Pessoa? Very much, I replied, I could even tell you a good story about him, but it's not worth it"... (from Requiem: A Hallucination, 1992) Antonio Tabucchi was born in Pisa, in Tuscany, but he grew up in his maternal grandparents' home in Vecchiano, a village not far from Pisa. He was educated at the University of Pisa and graduated in 1969 with the thesis Surrealism in Portugal. Tabucchi then furthered his education at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. As a novelist Tabucchi made his debut in 1975 with Piazza d'Italia, which sought to chart "a short history of the last hundred years of Italy, in tragicomic style", as the author himself said. Tabucchi's first collection of short stories, Il gioco del rovescio, appeared in 1981. From 1978 to 1987 Tabucchi worked as a lecturer in literature at the University of Genoa. In 1991 he became Professor of Portuguese at the University of Sienna. His time Tabucchi divided between Lisbon, and Italy. He was also a staff member of the Italian Institute of Culture in Lisbon until 1991. Tabucchi's columns have been published in Corriere della Sera, the leading Italian newspaper, and El País, the most influential Spanish newspaper. In the 1990s Tabucchi was one of the founders of the International Parliament of Writers, which among other activities maintains a network of refuge cities for writers and their families. After reading 'Tabacaria', a poem by Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) on a trip to France, Tabucci became fascinated by the Portuguese poet, who masqueraded behind literary alter egos. During his life time, Pesoa was relatively unknown and he died in obscurity. Tabucchi has edited in Italian Pessoa's poems and published critical studies on him, some of which have been collected in Un baule pieno di gente (1990) and Gli ultimi tre giorni di Fernando Pessoa (1994), in which Tabucchi examined the last three days in the life of Pessoa. In Sogni di sogni, a collection of short stories of dreams of famous writers and artists, one of the dreamers is Pessoa, who meets his heteronym Alberto Caeiro in South-Africa on March 7, 1914. You must listen to my voice, Caeiro tells his visitor. (Next day, the 8th of March, 1914, Pessoa began to write poetry.) The question of identity has been a central theme in Tabucchi's fiction. In Il filo dell'orizzonte (1986), written in the form of the detective novel, the protagonist is a former medical student, Spino. His name refers to the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), who argued that if reality is both thought and thing, anything whatever can be appropriately interpreted in two ways. Spino tries to solve the mystery around the death of Carlo Noboldi, whose identity is elusive. Thus, the body of Noboldi is a thing, but it also unlocks the philosophical dimensions of life and death. In Notturno indiano (1984) the narrator travels to India to search his friend, Xavier, who starts to resemble the narrator's alter ego. Eveltually Xavier becomes the narrator. Requiem; un'allucinazione (1992), originally written in Portuguese and later translated into Italian, was Tabucchi's homage to Lisbon and the Portuguese language.In Sostiene Pereira. Una testimonianza (1994), set in Lisbon in 1938, a cultural editor takes stand against Salazar's regime. The narrator relates Pereira's testimony of an era, when freedom of expression was under attack. The book became a bestseller, and in Italy the figure of Peraira was adopted by the left-wing opposition in their parliamentary election campaign. The target was the media magnate Silvio Berlusconi and his right-wing coalition. Although Tabucchi's stories have surrealistic elements, they do not belong to the realm of fantasy, from which his countryman Italo Calvino drew a good deal of his ideas. Often Tabucchi deals with painful periods of European history, the Spanish Civil War, Fascism, the Red Brigades era. His writing is clear, but much is left unsaid, and the mood is often melancholic and dreamlike. "Literature for me isn’t a workaday job," Tabucchi has said, "but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy." Tabucchi's awards include Inedito Prize in 1975, Pozzale Luigi Russo Prize in 1981, the French "Medicis Etranger" in 1987, Viareggio and Campiello Prizes in 1994, and the Nossack Prize from the Leibniz Academy in 1999. In 1989 Tabucchi was conferred the title of "Comendador da Ordem do Infante Dom Enrique", by the President of the Portuguese Republic, Mario Soares. In 1996 he was made "Officier des Arts et Lettres" in France. Tabucchi is married to María José Lancastre, a native of Lisbon; they have two children. With her Tabucchi has also translated much of Pessoa’s work into Italian. NOTE: THIS PAGE IS UNDER WORK! For further reading: The New Italian Novel, ed. by Z. Baránski and L. Pertile (1993); Contemporary World Writers, ed. by Tracy Chevalier (1993); 'Antonio Tabucchi: Postmodern Catholic Writer' by Charles D. Klopp, in World Literature Today, March 22, 1997; Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20the Century, vol. 4, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999); 'Rethinking Modernity in Antonio Tabucchi's Narrative Work' by Assumpta Camps, in Italian Culture, December 22, 2002; L'uomo Inquieto: Identita E Alterita Nell'opera Di Antonio Tabucchi by Pia Lausten (2005); The Novel as Investigation: Leonardo Sciascia, Dacia Maraini, and Antonio Tabucchi by Jo-Ann Cannon (2006); World Authors 2000-2005, ed. by Jennifer Curry et al. (2007) - For further information: Antonio Tabucchi Selected works:
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