By Elio Vittorini A Vittorini Omnibus: In Sicily, the Twilight of the Elephant, La Garibaldina: In Sicily and Other No (First Edition) [Paperback]

by Elio Vittorini

This representative collection of works by the late Elio Vittorini (1908-1966) brings under a single cover three short novels.  The Twilight of the Elephant  ( II Sempione strizza l’occhio al Fréjus , 1946) is a haunting, mythlike tale bearing strong affinities with music and abstract art. It is the story of a poverty-stricken family and its extraordinary grandfather––a veritable “elephant” of a man. One of the recognized classics of modern literature,  In Sicily  ( Conversazione in Sicilia , 1937) recounts a city man’s rediscovery of himself and the basic values of life when he returns for a visit to the primitive Sicilian village where he was born. Included in this edition is an introduction written in 1949 by Ernest Hemingway, who greatly admired Vittorini. The third novella,  La Garibaldina  (1950), is a vivid portrait of an eccentric old woman, a former camp follower of Garibaldi’s army, and her encounter with a young soldier on a night-train journey across Sicily.

Genres: Classics

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1949

About the author

Elio Vittorini (July 23, 1908 - February 12, 1966) was an Italian writer and novelist. He was a contemporary of Cesare Pavese and an influential voice in the modernist school of novel writing. His best-known work is the anti-fascist novel Conversations in Sicily, for which he was jailed when it was published in 1941. The first U.S. edition of the novel, published in 1949, included an introduction from Ernest Hemingway, whose style influenced Vittorini and that novel in particular.

Vittorini was born in Syracuse, Sicily, and throughout his childhood moved around Sicily with his father, a railroad worker. Several times he ran away from home, culminating in his leaving Sicily for good in 1924. For a brief period, he found employment as a construction worker in the Julian March, after which he moved to Florence to work as a type corrector (a line of work he abandoned in 1934 due to lead poisoning). Around 1927 his work began to be published in literary journals. In many cases, separate editions of his novels and short stories from this period, such as The Red Carnation were not published until after World War II, due to fascist censorship. In 1937, he was expelled from the Fascist Party for writing in support of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.

In 1939 he moved once again, this time to Milan. An anthology of American literature which he edited was, once more, delayed by censorship. Remaining an outspoken critic of Mussolini's regime, Vittorini was arrested and jailed in 1942. He joined the Italian Communist Party and began taking an active role in the Resistance, which provided the basis for his 1945 novel Men and not Men. Also in 1945, he briefly became the editor of the Italian Communist daily L'Unità.

After the war, Vittorini chiefly concentrated on his work as editor, helping publish work by young Italians such as Calvino and Fenoglio. His last major published work of fiction during his lifetime was 1956's Erica and her Sisters. The news of the events of the Hungarian Uprising deeply shook his convictions in Communism and made him decide to largely abandon writing, leaving unfinished work which was to be published in unedited form posthumously. For the remainder of his life, Vittorini continued in his post as an editor. He also ran a candidate on a PSI list. He died in Milan in 1966.

Reviews

[Arousiak Turabian · Rating 4 out of 5]

twilight of the elephants, a strange sliver of a green book my best friend in high school found somewhere, maybe on the street, and ever so strange a book--i still think about it from time to time...

[Jonathan yates · Rating 5 out of 5]

Particularly liked these stories and all for different reasons...definitely a unique voice, part surrealism, part very straight real people narratives-awesome

[Troy · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was young, I loved Mad Magazine, but I also knew that I was missing half of the references. I knew that despite the great drawings, a lot of what I was reading referenced contemporary adult-stuff, especially politics. But I still loved it.

A similar thing happens when I read Vittorini, who was writing pointed political allegory against and under the Fascists. As I read, I realize I'm reading some allegory about dark politics, and I catch that I'm not fully comprehending the satire. (Actually, I get that feeling whenever I read any rebellious author who is writing under an oppressive regime.) But I read on because the writing is good and the story is good, even if lots of things don't make much sense, even though the story veers off in odd satirical territories.

This book is composed of three of Vittorini's stories. At first, I thought he was a Hemingway-esque social realist, but he soon took me by surprise. These three stories softly shifted from neo-realism to exaggerated parody to outright Beckett and Lynch kissing in a tree. And as I read Vittorini (or Bulgakov, or Marquez, or Zamyatin, or even Mad Magazine when I was younger) I always think that I should read about the culture, about the history, so I could know the secret story being whispered behind what I read, and if I knew that secret story, I could laugh louder, or enjoy it more. But instead, I do the equivalent of stare at the pictures and enjoy what I can.

On In Sicily
I just finished In Sicily and vacillated between boredom and love. Vittorini's writing is stripped down, and the fingerprints of Hemingway are apparent, but Beckett and Kafka's are also apparent. What starts off as travelogue to visit the author's mother (whose husband has left her for a younger woman) quickly skirts into farce with caricatures of Sicilians shouting "Eh!" at each other and responding to constant exclamations of "Ah!" with more shouts of "Hm? Eh!" and then with absurdities and non-sequitors.

But before veering into farce, Vittorini captures the circular confusion of senility and then grounds his mother's senility to Italy in general. The dark buffoonishness of the story grows until the story is an outlandish parody that would have been illustrated by Mort Drucker in Mad magazine. At this point, I started to lose interest. I loved the dialog with the senile mother about infidelity, and the way the mother can't keep stories about her husband and her father separate or straight. "The Great Lombard men," says the author. "Eh?" says the mother. But the endless wandering through town while running into "zany" characters started to grate on my nerves. It was like reading a transcript for Spinal Tap but replace metal with Italy, so not so funny, "Eh?"

And then suddenly the story went insane. Like ghost story level insane. Like Beckett level insane. And suddenly time and story all collapsed and I was suddenly reading something completely different. There's a soldier/boy/ghost? who experiences past present and future all at once and is both there and not there, and then the author and the mother shoot at crows, and the author wanders through town, crying, as people gather around him, and, and, and

And it slowly unravels from poignant Hemingway slice-of-life to wild parable. And although I'm not Italian and I'm not Sicilian and I'm not surrounded by Fascists, I get the sadness, the anger, the despair; and the writing, the writing? She is good. Even through tears shed by bronze statues, she is good. Eh?

On The Twilight of the Elephant
Another strange story. Really, nothing happens. The whole story follows a poor, starving family. But the whole country is starving, so they're no worse off then their peers. The Elephant of the story is the grandfather of the family, a huge and ancient man who is sits quietly at his chair and is both adored and resented by his daughter, the matriarch of the family. A stranger shows up, covered in soot from working on the railroad, and he, and the family, start to talk about the grandfather/elephant. That's about it. But it's remarkably tense, and again, obviously a political allegory that flew right over my head. Still, as a story, it's damn great. Somewhere between Bruno Schulz and Hemingway.

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books that have been sitting on my shelves, overlooked and unread for far too long. I can't say what led me to select it now, only that it was serendipitous. My sister, daughter, and I will be traveling to Italy in May and this book, in its three stories, refreshed for me the historical context of our visit, but painted, too, landscapes so richly that you could smell the oranges.
I'll say, too, that I am awed of translators who are able to capture the intent of the original language. I hope to, one day soon, revisit this book and experience it again in Italian.