One Hundred Years of Cesare Pavese: The Italian Poet, Writer and Translator Marks a Century
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Posted by Meg Nola Sep 9, 2008 |
Cesare Pavese was born in a village outside of Turin, Italy on September 9, 1908. He made Turin his home base for most of his life, but also found inspiration in the more rustic culture of the Piedmont countryside where he’d been raised. Pavese was an excellent poet, a fine author of novels, and a great translator who took his craft seriously and first brought Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and William Faulkner (not exactly easy writers to translate) to the Italian people. Unfortunately, he also had a tendency towards melancholy and a mind that was perhaps too brilliant for its own good, and he suffered from frequent periods of anxiety and depression. Suicide was one of his long-standing obsessions, and he eventually met his own dark challenge by taking an overdose of pills in August of 1950. Before that point, however, Pavese kept journals to organize his thoughts or write out issues, and while many entries are poignant, bitter or even morbid, they’re also sadly funny or just funny, particularly when noting his unfortunate luck in love:
Love is the cheapest of religions.
No woman marries for money: they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him.
Give company to a lonely man and he will talk more than anyone.
Why is it inadvisable to lose your self-control? Because then you are sincere.
There was a movie made in the 1980s called A Man in Love, which involved a story within a story and an affair between actors making a film in Italy. The film within the film is about Cesare Pavese, and Pavese himself was played by Peter Coyote -- who looked surprisingly like him! The movie got mixed reviews but has ended up on a list of “The Best and Most Memorable Film Kisses of All Time in Cinematic History,” an honor which might have made the real Pavese perversely proud -- though he probably would have noted how he wasn‘t the one actually enjoying the kiss.
Only a man in love knows how to employ love’s strategy…. (Cesare Pavese, 1908-1950)
