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A Literary Tour of Italy
An acclaimed author of novels and short stories, Tim Parks--who was described in a recent review as “one of the best living writers of English”--has delighted audiences around the world with his finely observed writings on all aspects of Italian life and customs. This volume contains a selection of his best essays on the literature of his adopted country.
From Boccaccio and Machiavelli through to Moravia and Tabucchi, from the Stil Novo to Divisionism, across centuries of history and intellectual movements, these essays will give English readers, and lovers of the Bel Paese and its culture, the lay of the literary land of Italy.
From Boccaccio and Machiavelli through to Moravia and Tabucchi, from the Stil Novo to Divisionism, across centuries of history and intellectual movements, these essays will give English readers, and lovers of the Bel Paese and its culture, the lay of the literary land of Italy.
288 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 12, 2015
57 people are currently reading
817 people want to read
About the author
Tim Parks
121 books583 followersBorn in Manchester in 1954, Tim Parks grew up in London and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. In 1981 he moved to Italy where he has lived ever since, raising a family of three children. He has written fourteen novels including Europa (shortlisted for the Booker prize), Destiny, Cleaver, and most recently In Extremis.
During the nineties he wrote two, personal and highly popular accounts of his life in northern Italy, Italian Neighbours and An Italian Education. These were complemented in 2002 by A Season with Verona, a grand overview of Italian life as seen through the passion of football. Other non-fiction works include a history of the Medici bank in 15th century Florence, Medici Money and a memoir on health, illness and meditation, Teach Us to Sit Still. In 2013 Tim published his most recent non-fiction work on Italy, Italian Ways, on and off the rails from Milan to Palermo.
Aside from his own writing, Tim has translated works by Moravia, Calvino, Calasso, Machiavelli and Leopardi; his critical book, Translating Style is considered a classic in its field. He is presently working on a translation of Cesare Pavese's masterpiece, The Moon and the Bonfires.
A regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books, his many essays are collected in Hell and Back, The Fighter, A Literary Tour of Italy, and Life and Work.
Over the last five years he has been publishing a series of blogs on writing, reading, translation and the like in the New York Review online. These have recently been collected in Where I am Reading From and Pen in Hand.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
January 16, 2016
This outstanding collection of essays is one of the best books I’ve read in 2015. Tim Parks brilliantly analyses the works, worlds and thinking of Italian writers and political figures from the thirteenth century to the twentieth, in beautifully wrought prose that kept making me stop to appreciate what I had just read.
Parks has spent his adult life living in Italy. Arriving in 1981 ‘with barely a word of Italian’, he set himself to learn the language by reading novels in Verona’s public library, then checking every word or grammatical structure he didn't know and practicing on his wife. He started with contemporary writers who used a fairly simple style, and worked backwards as he felt more comfortable reading and working with Italian. It was at least ten years, he says, before he ‘finally read Boccaccio and Dante in the original, at which point one felt one had arrived at the bedrock, the support that underpinned, or at least conditioned, all the rest’. (Introduction, p vii).
Through his slow discovery of Italy and its literature, Parks ‘came to realise … how profoundly a people’s character and destiny are bound up with and reflected by its literature’. A body of literature can only be fully understood and appreciated, he argues, in the context of language, and the world that produced them. He gathers biographical information which he weaves into his discussion of the social, cultural and political worlds inhabited by each of his subjects, identifying significant influences on their thought and actions. This gives a particularly satisfying flavour to his discussion and sets it apart from any other works of this sort I have read.
An experienced and respected translator of Italian literature into English, Parks also writes for the New York Review of Books and other literary magazines. Nearly all the pieces in this collection were first published in the NYRB.
They successfully meet the challenge Parks set himself in writing them: to give the reader ‘a sense of the Italian world the writer moved in and how he or she positioned him or herself in relation to the main issues of the day, and indeed those issues which go far beyond the day and seem inseparable from Italianness itself, a particular way of framing problems of illusion and reality, a powerful tension between the imperatives of political action and the desire to be spared involvement of any kind.’ (Intro p. ix).
This focus led Parks to include pieces on the significant political figures of Mazzini and Garibaldi (Risorgimento and Independence) and Mussolini, all of whom are still actively in Italy’s national consciousness. It comes through strongly in many of the individual essays and is expressed succinctly in the second- last essay, Giorgio Bassani's masterpiece The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. In it, Parks remarks: 'Three of the finest Italian novels that, in one way or another, have to do with the Second World War - Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe; Pavese's the House on the Hill and Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis - seem obsessed by the choice between action and inaction, which in turn becomes a question of how far and in what way one should or should not become involved in society, since action inevitably means involvement'. And so inability to initiate personal/sexual relationships, for instance, comes to be on a continuum with political inaction.
This collection starts with the three great early Italian classics: Dante, Boccaccio and Machiavelli.
Then there is a great time leap to the nineteenth century, led off by the poet Giacomo Leopardi, the first of many of the selected authors I have not read. Parks’ Introduction discusses the difficulty of translating from one language to another. Leopardi is one whose poetry he describes as ‘untranslatable’, and discusses some of its difficulties, not least of which is Leopardi's overwhelming negativity: 'there are three things humankind will never accept: that they are nothing, that they achieve nothing, that there is nothing after death'.
Mazzini follows, in a chapter headed ‘Bloody Glamour’. Here Parks shows a sharp eye for irony. ‘Mazzini was a delicate child who walked late and read early. Initially intending to follow his [doctor] father’s profession, he couldn't bear seeing bodies dissected and switched to law. From age twenty-five he would spend his whole life promoting armed insurrections in which thousands were butchered. As a rule he was not present’.
Then through the nineteenth and the catastrophic twentieth century, where the horrors of war and ideas underlying Fascism are explored, in novels with complex characters who are often uncertain whether or when they should act.
This book is full of insights into the progress of Italian national identity and mores, from the political to the sexual. Parks is an interesting thinker and he writes wonderfully.
I’m surprised this outstanding collection of essays hasn't been more widely reviewed. The only one I could find online was one from The Independent, which I thought was misleading, indeed unfortunate, in its emphasis on cruelty. The link is here if you want to follow it.
Parks has spent his adult life living in Italy. Arriving in 1981 ‘with barely a word of Italian’, he set himself to learn the language by reading novels in Verona’s public library, then checking every word or grammatical structure he didn't know and practicing on his wife. He started with contemporary writers who used a fairly simple style, and worked backwards as he felt more comfortable reading and working with Italian. It was at least ten years, he says, before he ‘finally read Boccaccio and Dante in the original, at which point one felt one had arrived at the bedrock, the support that underpinned, or at least conditioned, all the rest’. (Introduction, p vii).
Through his slow discovery of Italy and its literature, Parks ‘came to realise … how profoundly a people’s character and destiny are bound up with and reflected by its literature’. A body of literature can only be fully understood and appreciated, he argues, in the context of language, and the world that produced them. He gathers biographical information which he weaves into his discussion of the social, cultural and political worlds inhabited by each of his subjects, identifying significant influences on their thought and actions. This gives a particularly satisfying flavour to his discussion and sets it apart from any other works of this sort I have read.
An experienced and respected translator of Italian literature into English, Parks also writes for the New York Review of Books and other literary magazines. Nearly all the pieces in this collection were first published in the NYRB.
They successfully meet the challenge Parks set himself in writing them: to give the reader ‘a sense of the Italian world the writer moved in and how he or she positioned him or herself in relation to the main issues of the day, and indeed those issues which go far beyond the day and seem inseparable from Italianness itself, a particular way of framing problems of illusion and reality, a powerful tension between the imperatives of political action and the desire to be spared involvement of any kind.’ (Intro p. ix).
This focus led Parks to include pieces on the significant political figures of Mazzini and Garibaldi (Risorgimento and Independence) and Mussolini, all of whom are still actively in Italy’s national consciousness. It comes through strongly in many of the individual essays and is expressed succinctly in the second- last essay, Giorgio Bassani's masterpiece The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. In it, Parks remarks: 'Three of the finest Italian novels that, in one way or another, have to do with the Second World War - Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe; Pavese's the House on the Hill and Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis - seem obsessed by the choice between action and inaction, which in turn becomes a question of how far and in what way one should or should not become involved in society, since action inevitably means involvement'. And so inability to initiate personal/sexual relationships, for instance, comes to be on a continuum with political inaction.
This collection starts with the three great early Italian classics: Dante, Boccaccio and Machiavelli.
Then there is a great time leap to the nineteenth century, led off by the poet Giacomo Leopardi, the first of many of the selected authors I have not read. Parks’ Introduction discusses the difficulty of translating from one language to another. Leopardi is one whose poetry he describes as ‘untranslatable’, and discusses some of its difficulties, not least of which is Leopardi's overwhelming negativity: 'there are three things humankind will never accept: that they are nothing, that they achieve nothing, that there is nothing after death'.
Mazzini follows, in a chapter headed ‘Bloody Glamour’. Here Parks shows a sharp eye for irony. ‘Mazzini was a delicate child who walked late and read early. Initially intending to follow his [doctor] father’s profession, he couldn't bear seeing bodies dissected and switched to law. From age twenty-five he would spend his whole life promoting armed insurrections in which thousands were butchered. As a rule he was not present’.
Then through the nineteenth and the catastrophic twentieth century, where the horrors of war and ideas underlying Fascism are explored, in novels with complex characters who are often uncertain whether or when they should act.
This book is full of insights into the progress of Italian national identity and mores, from the political to the sexual. Parks is an interesting thinker and he writes wonderfully.
I’m surprised this outstanding collection of essays hasn't been more widely reviewed. The only one I could find online was one from The Independent, which I thought was misleading, indeed unfortunate, in its emphasis on cruelty. The link is here if you want to follow it.
August 11, 2021
A stimulating introduction to some of the greatest writers in the fluid Italian language, many of whom I know only the names! I now have another dozen or so novels to add to my ever-growing list...not a little list either! Tim Parks is an expert translator...& reiterates his contention that many Italian writers have not had the change from their native dialects/colloquialisms/argots into English they deserve. But a real eye-opener, page-turner for me...though I needed my background knowledge of Italy to make the most of Parks's erudition & historical scope. I must read for a degree in Italian Studies now...si o no?!
July 3, 2016
Having recently finished reading and reflecting on these twenty three essays by Tim Parks, a collection of pieces written originally for newspapers and magazines, I have struggled to decide how to write this review. Without writing either an extended essay or my reflections on each of the chapters, it feels almost impossible to do justice to the author’s impressive body of work and eloquent writing style. So, all I can do is to urge anyone interested in the literature of a wide and eclectic selection of Italian authors to rush out and buy this wonderful book – a glorious paean to Italy!
Through selected literature from the 12th to the 21st centuries – from Dante, Machiavelli and Garibaldi, through to Mussolini, Bassani, Ginzburg and Tabucchi – the author reflected on “….. how profoundly a people’s character and destiny are bound up with and reflected by its literature.” I found it fascinating, as well as thought-provoking, to follow his explorations and reflections of how the Italian national identity was gradually forged. I really enjoyed the way in which he looked at the work of such a wide selection of authors within the social, historical, cultural and political context of each era, and the way in which he demonstrated that, as well their thoughts and actions being influenced by the prevailing times, they also contributed to influencing, in quite profound ways, contemporary social and political mores.
Although Tim Parks’ writing feels both entertaining and very accessible, these are erudite, scholarly essays which should not be rushed; they really do deserve to be savoured and reflected upon. Their quality is such that, not only am I keen to re-read some of them, but I find that my “to read list” has just grown considerably because I feel inspired to seek out some of the many books he referred to throughout this collection!
Through selected literature from the 12th to the 21st centuries – from Dante, Machiavelli and Garibaldi, through to Mussolini, Bassani, Ginzburg and Tabucchi – the author reflected on “….. how profoundly a people’s character and destiny are bound up with and reflected by its literature.” I found it fascinating, as well as thought-provoking, to follow his explorations and reflections of how the Italian national identity was gradually forged. I really enjoyed the way in which he looked at the work of such a wide selection of authors within the social, historical, cultural and political context of each era, and the way in which he demonstrated that, as well their thoughts and actions being influenced by the prevailing times, they also contributed to influencing, in quite profound ways, contemporary social and political mores.
Although Tim Parks’ writing feels both entertaining and very accessible, these are erudite, scholarly essays which should not be rushed; they really do deserve to be savoured and reflected upon. Their quality is such that, not only am I keen to re-read some of them, but I find that my “to read list” has just grown considerably because I feel inspired to seek out some of the many books he referred to throughout this collection!
October 16, 2019
My year long reading of essays on the great (dead) authors of Italian literature is at an end.
It has certainly added to my reading list and backed up a lot of what I already knew. An enjoyable read.
It has certainly added to my reading list and backed up a lot of what I already knew. An enjoyable read.
June 14, 2019
I always enjoy Tim Parks' writing, and this collection of essays taking us through the centuries from the 13th to the 20th was no exception. The book's title is 'A Literary Tour of Italy' but other areas of Italy's cultural heritage make an appearance with essays on art and artists - and Mussolini manages to muscle in there too!
Each of the literature essays introduces us to an author, their main works, a brief bio (skilfully linked in to their literary style or content) and some thoughts about their impact, importance etc. Having studied both Italian and translation, the most fascinating parts for me were those where Parks analyses and compares different translations to English of certain passages, and explains why and how these differ from the original Italian. This really highlights the depth and complexity of language, and how it is inextricably linked to a culture.
This book made me want to try some new authors (Ippolito Nievo, Ignazio Silone), avoid others (Curzio Malaparte) and revisit some old favourites (Dante, Pavese, Moravia). It was challenging, interesting, and entertaining, and it added more books to my already long TBR list. Excellent!
Each of the literature essays introduces us to an author, their main works, a brief bio (skilfully linked in to their literary style or content) and some thoughts about their impact, importance etc. Having studied both Italian and translation, the most fascinating parts for me were those where Parks analyses and compares different translations to English of certain passages, and explains why and how these differ from the original Italian. This really highlights the depth and complexity of language, and how it is inextricably linked to a culture.
This book made me want to try some new authors (Ippolito Nievo, Ignazio Silone), avoid others (Curzio Malaparte) and revisit some old favourites (Dante, Pavese, Moravia). It was challenging, interesting, and entertaining, and it added more books to my already long TBR list. Excellent!
December 13, 2017
Engrossing and highly informative, Park’s compilation of essays offers a brilliant, multi-faceted and multi-layered painting of Italy through its literature. Parks may be British, but his knowledge and appreciation of Italian culture, history, language, and literature is quite phenomenal. What makes him an exceptional guide is his ability to write about complicated matters that are very specific to the Italian nation in a clear, concise, luminous, sometimes humorous, and always graceful way. He creates bridges between different eras, different personalities, different episodes of historical significance, and the result is a vivid gallery of portraits that opens doors on the Italian psyche and the convoluted history of the country. Most essays are about writers, and most of them were written when books from (or about) those writers were being published in the English language. A few essays are about historical figures such as Garibaldi or Mussolini, about artists (the painter Sironi), or about defining events, such as fascism: all are the subjects of books that Parks is reviewing (for, if I’m correct, The New York Times Books Review). The legacy, negative or positive, of all the people Parks writes about remains palpable to this day, and is part of the fabric that makes Italy what it is. In that sense, Parks’ sensitive views are quite illuminating and help us understand Italy like no other book. His erudition is truly amazing and the way he generously (but without showing off) shares it is exciting. I was especially taken by how he shows, again and again, how Italian literature is - sometimes not deliberately at all - a mirror of both the Italian mind and the complex history of the peninsula. Reading those essays is to bounce from one specific moment in the life of the country (starting centuries before it was united) to another, yet all are somehow linked. Among Parks’ most fascinating vignettes, I especially appreciated the ones on Leopardi, Collodi, Malaparte, Pavese, Moravia, Morante, Buzzati, and Brancati: it’s hard not to want to read or reread the works of those titans of Italian letters after Parks has given us new keys to understand them. I have always considered The Garden of the Finzi-Continis an absolute masterpiece and Parks' chapter on that novel and its author made me value and comprehend its importance even more. I felt that one thing was missing, though: Parks never talks about cinema, which was so extremely important (especially after WWII) in the artistic life of Italy, and so intrinsicelly interwoven with the local literary life. All the personalities Parks writes about were either the subjects of Italian movies, or had their works adapted for the screen, and there is a fascinating essay to be written about the relationship between literature, movies, and politics in Italy. Italian directors were as intellectually complicated and politically engaged as the great national writers, and their films based on books that Parks write about (I’m thinking of Il bel Antonio or Le amiche, among others) are as worthy of analysis as the books themselves. Something else that is worth noting: Parks writes about a myriad of men… and only two women (Elsa Morante and Natalia Ginzburg). I’m not sure if that is a reflection of Parks’ personal choices, or simply of the fact that Italy, a traditionally “macho” country, may have rarely let women shine through its history. This being said, Parks' infinitely subtle, clever, and rich vision of the tapestry that the great Italian artistic and political names have weaved is a feast for the reader. It should be required reading for anyone interested in finding out about Italy's various faces through the ages and behind the glittering surface we know.
March 5, 2020
As Park's points out Modern writers like Roberto Savianno have the need to write for the English speaking world and to be mindful of how their work will translated and understood in other parts of the world. This makes it more difficult to get right into the Italian soul. Some of the Italian accounts of Mussollini for example were able to recognise subtle aspects of the Italian character that contributed to creating him which were not evident in their counterparts written in English. So it is important that we go back and look at some of the writers who have helped define what it is to be Italian. Parks takes us back to the Middle Ages as the starting point.
The Divine Commedy by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is an allegory and a poem meditating on the meaning of morality and it is possible to pour over the meaning of what each character represents. Vigil, for example, is thought to represent reason and conscience but also human limitations while Beatrice is thought to represent heavenly truth. The poet is to descend the 9 circles of hell to a hole at the core of the earth which perhaps represents the eye of the needle to which Jesus speaks of to his disciplines. The next part of voyage should be to scale Mount Purgatory and achieve Paradise. Also in the Middle Ages we have Boccaccio who wrote the Decameron of which Parks writes " The hundred tales of the book seethe with apparently amoral comedy, where the astutness of a hard-headed bourgeoisie seems to have brushed aside the tedious codes of feudal practice and medieval clericalism."
On to the Renaissance we encounter a time in the 15th century when after the Florentines had got rid of the families who used to run the town they introduced a system where a prime minister would be elected by drawing lots from a list of their society's elite. The system didn't work and in fact was severity manipulated by the Medici's. In this kind of environment the gulf between how things were supposed to be run and how thing were actually run was huge and out of it came Machiavelli's The Prince.
Later in 1881 Carlo Collodi began writing Pinocchio. To put things in context Italy was finally unified in 1871. Collodi was a Florentine and a revolutionary who fought in two wars in 1845 and 1859 both with the purpose of replacing foreign powers and installing a self-governing state. Italy was united in 1860 under a Piedmontese monarchy but many including Collodi was dissatisfied with the set up. Collodi though helped contribute to the newly introduced compulsory education system by doing translations, writing children's literature and writing textbooks.
There is extensive literature on the fascist period and Mussolini in particular and i was pleased to see Park's mention Alberto Moravia and Carlo Emillio Gada. Like much of Morvalia's work Park's tells us that the Conformist is about a melancholy individual who is searching for his source of unhappiness. Moravia combines melodrama with a deep seriousness. The Conformist is about the mass insanirty that is Fascism. From a similar time Carlo Emilio Gadda was writing his best known novel 'That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana' an unfinished murder story that is also anti-Facist and anti-Mussolini.
I found Park's book useful to understand and put Italian literature in cultural and historical context. I have read and will re-read some of the works he considers with a new prospective.
The Divine Commedy by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is an allegory and a poem meditating on the meaning of morality and it is possible to pour over the meaning of what each character represents. Vigil, for example, is thought to represent reason and conscience but also human limitations while Beatrice is thought to represent heavenly truth. The poet is to descend the 9 circles of hell to a hole at the core of the earth which perhaps represents the eye of the needle to which Jesus speaks of to his disciplines. The next part of voyage should be to scale Mount Purgatory and achieve Paradise. Also in the Middle Ages we have Boccaccio who wrote the Decameron of which Parks writes " The hundred tales of the book seethe with apparently amoral comedy, where the astutness of a hard-headed bourgeoisie seems to have brushed aside the tedious codes of feudal practice and medieval clericalism."
On to the Renaissance we encounter a time in the 15th century when after the Florentines had got rid of the families who used to run the town they introduced a system where a prime minister would be elected by drawing lots from a list of their society's elite. The system didn't work and in fact was severity manipulated by the Medici's. In this kind of environment the gulf between how things were supposed to be run and how thing were actually run was huge and out of it came Machiavelli's The Prince.
Later in 1881 Carlo Collodi began writing Pinocchio. To put things in context Italy was finally unified in 1871. Collodi was a Florentine and a revolutionary who fought in two wars in 1845 and 1859 both with the purpose of replacing foreign powers and installing a self-governing state. Italy was united in 1860 under a Piedmontese monarchy but many including Collodi was dissatisfied with the set up. Collodi though helped contribute to the newly introduced compulsory education system by doing translations, writing children's literature and writing textbooks.
There is extensive literature on the fascist period and Mussolini in particular and i was pleased to see Park's mention Alberto Moravia and Carlo Emillio Gada. Like much of Morvalia's work Park's tells us that the Conformist is about a melancholy individual who is searching for his source of unhappiness. Moravia combines melodrama with a deep seriousness. The Conformist is about the mass insanirty that is Fascism. From a similar time Carlo Emilio Gadda was writing his best known novel 'That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana' an unfinished murder story that is also anti-Facist and anti-Mussolini.
I found Park's book useful to understand and put Italian literature in cultural and historical context. I have read and will re-read some of the works he considers with a new prospective.
August 5, 2023
Tim Parks é um inglês casado com uma italiana (com filhos dessa união) e residente desde há vários anos em Itália. Daí boa parte dos seus livros versarem sobre a história e cultura italiana, de uma forma algo original.
Sendo este o primeiro livro que leio dele, devo dizer que não será o último. Embora, "A Literary Tour of Italy" tenha ficado um pouco aquém das minhas expectativas... Porquê?
Boa parte do livro parece escrito com a convicção de que o leitor conhece todos os autores e obras aqui referidos... o que pode não corresponder à verdade!
Conheço muitos deles, mas não todos. Sobre os que conheço adorei o que li, sobre os que não conheço admito que me senti algo perdida e tive alguma dificuldade em me manter interessada. Portanto, a meu ver, é aqui que Parks poderia ter conseguido ir mais longe e não foi... pelo menos para mim!
Tirando isso, gostei do que li e os meus capítulos preferidos foram: os de Niccolò Machiavelli, Cesare Pavese e Antonio Tabucchi.
Sendo este o primeiro livro que leio dele, devo dizer que não será o último. Embora, "A Literary Tour of Italy" tenha ficado um pouco aquém das minhas expectativas... Porquê?
Boa parte do livro parece escrito com a convicção de que o leitor conhece todos os autores e obras aqui referidos... o que pode não corresponder à verdade!
Conheço muitos deles, mas não todos. Sobre os que conheço adorei o que li, sobre os que não conheço admito que me senti algo perdida e tive alguma dificuldade em me manter interessada. Portanto, a meu ver, é aqui que Parks poderia ter conseguido ir mais longe e não foi... pelo menos para mim!
Tirando isso, gostei do que li e os meus capítulos preferidos foram: os de Niccolò Machiavelli, Cesare Pavese e Antonio Tabucchi.
May 13, 2019
Parks is a British literary translator and author who's been living in Italy since the 1970s. Reading books about my country written by non-Italians is something I really like, and I've greatly enjoyed the autobiographical books Parks wrote about his life in Italy. This book is a bit more slow-going as it's a collection of literary essays on different Italian authors. Some of them I'm quite familiar with, as you can't have studied in an Italian liceo without encountering them, others I didn't know much about. The most interesting bits, though, are his analysis of how different Anglo translators handled translating these authors. I could read a book on that alone.
May 28, 2018
A collection of essays for various literary magizines, primarily the New York Review of Books, about important Italian books including the very famous ones (The Divine Comedy, etc) and more obscure ones (including titles from the Fascist era). Quality and approach varies from chapter to chapter and some discussions are much more engaging than others. But it did introduce me to a few unknown authors that I intend to pursue.
July 14, 2022
Here resides a collection of essays on the works and the lives of Italy. From Dante's Inferno,to Pinocchio and Mussolini; this collection has works for everyone. While there are some focuses that are more interesting than others, this feeling relies more on the reader than the work as itself. I enjoyed this book very much and if you are interested in the lives or works from Italy, you will surely like this book.
July 9, 2024
Tim Parks, engleski pisac sa boravištem u Italiji, kao što je pominjano na ovim stranicama (NYRB esejistika Where I am Reading From: The Changing World of Books), poznatiji je – na žalost ili na sreću? – zbog esejistike nego proze. Ovo izdanje objedinjuje dvadeset tri njegova teksta o italijanskim piscima, njihovom jeziku i umjetnosti (divizionizam; Musolini). U njima se autor svako malo vraća svojoj korisnoj i antimodernističkoj literarnoj filozofiji da je kontekst nekog djela presudan za njegov nastanak – i da se djelo ne može posmatrati kao jedinstvena, nezavisna cjelina. Na osnovu toga, Parks je prošle godine objavio i vrlo zanimljivu studiju, Roman: vještina preživljavanja.
Boravak u zemlji gdje uopšte nije ni namjeravao da se nastani, a pogotovo druženje s njenom osobitom literaturom, Parksa je navelo da uvidi nešto što na neki način nikada nije uspio da shvati na književnim studijama u Engleskoj i Americi. A to je koliko su duboko karakter i sudbina naroda ukorijenjeni u italijanskoj literaturi.
U uvodu Književne ture Parks objašnjava kakvi problemi obično očekuju autora sa engleskog govornog područja koji se preseli u Italiju. Stigao je 1981. godine s vrlo jednostavnom strategijom za učenje jezika. Svakog popodneva, između časova koje je držao izjutra i uveče na lokalnom univerzitetu, provodio bi po tri-četiri sata u veronskoj biblioteci čitajući romane i zapisujući svaku nepoznatu riječ i sintaksičku strukturu, da bi zatim ono što je naučio isprobavao na jadnoj supruzi, Italijanki.
Isprva je čitao moderne pisce prostijeg stila – Moraviju, Nataliju Ginzburg i Karla Kazolu – dok zatim nije prešao na nešto kompleksnije moderne autore poput Elze Morante, Itala Kalvina i mladog Alda Buzija, neke od njih prevevši i na engleski jezik, uključujući Makijavelija i nobelovca Montalea. Kako mu se, vremenom, naučeni jezik poboljšavao, češće se vraćao klasicima: ratnim godinama – Pavezeu, Fenolju, Brankatiju; potom ranom XX vijeku – Zvevu, D’Anunciju, Pirandelu; bogatom XIX vijeku – Vergi, Manconiju, Nievu, Foskolu i, po prvi put, pjesniku Đakomu Leopardiju.
Tu je napravio pauzu, jer, što je više odmicao u epohama, italijanski je postajao drugačiji od jezika kojim se on sporazumijevao. Sigurno je proteklo desetak godina prije nego što je napokon pročitao Dantea i Bokača na izvornom italijanskom, smatrajući da je u tom trenutku čovjek mogao reći sebi da sada već stoji na stjenovitom tlu, „na podlozi koja podupire, ili u najmanju ruku uslovljava,
sve ono što će doći poslije.“
Injacio Silone (Pregršt kupina; Hleba i vina), objavljivan i u Jugoslaviji, i u generalnom pogledu pisac s vrlo malo kreativne autonomije, poznat je po prelasku iz komunizma u hrišćanstvo i po tome što je više bio cijenjen izvan svoje zemlje. Njegov brat je ubijen u zatvoru, u ranoj fazi Musolinijeve vladavine. Silone je takođe uhapšen, a onda je pobjegao iz zatvora. U Švajcarskoj je živio do 1944.
Za Parksa je Silone ovaploćenje tvrdnje da je nemoguće odijeliti literaturu od piščevog života. Međutim, 1996. godine objelodanjeni su dokumenti koji dokazuju da je Silone bio fašistički kolaborator, dok jedan od njegova dva moderna biografa, Stanislao Puljeze, ne isključuje da se radi i o neo-fašističkoj kampanji blaćenja. Drugi biograf, Dario Bjoka, apsolutno negira navedene jake dokaze. Parks iščitava pojedine Siloneove romane i, izuzev toga što se saglašava da prozu kvari piščeva nezaobilazna podređenost politici i ideologiji, a pogotovo da je trivijalno porediti ga sa Vergom, on na mahove nazire različite kolebljive svjetonazore u tim djelima.
Kada već pominjem italijanske političke autore, ne znam koliko po pitanju svekolike vojne nemani i transgresivne politike bilo koji roman može da oformi višeslojniju kritiku fašizma od Tatarske pustinje Dina Bucatija. Napisan je 1938, a publikovan dvije godine docnije, na vrhuncu Musolinijeve diktature. Iako ga je moja malenkost prvi put čitala na engleskom jeziku (Verba Mundi, Boston, 1995), preko njega je čitalac bio u mogućnosti da se upozna i sa opusom Dž. M. Kucija, dobitnika Nobelove nagrade za književnost. Kuci je 1980. godine, ne kloneći se uzora, objavio svoju verziju Bucatijevog romana, naslovivši to maleno antiimperijalističko remek-djelo Iščekujući varvare (Paideia, Beograd).
Ovako Parks sagledava Bucatijev roman: „Tatarska pustinja je jedan od onih dragocjenih romana koja ispoljava ogroman rizik tako što provocira racionalni um. Kao da govori, objasni me ako možeš, ili ako se usuđuješ. Iako provokativna i zastrašujuća knjiga, mi osjećamo da moramo da se prihvatimo tog izazova, ne bi li uznemirujuću priču napokon ostavili iza sebe. Ko je taj čovjek koji čitav svoj život stavlja po strani zbog jedne himere, i zbog čega je tako lako prepoznatljiv?“
Na sreću, nesvakidašnja narativna jasnoća, njena elegantna struktura i direktan stil, ubijediće nas da je upravo taj način stvari za koji ćemo objašnjenje sigurno imati na raspolaganju, zagonetka koju sami možemo da riješimo. Ali, na kraju, kroz uvijanje, posprdno i beskrajno ironično, Bucatijeva priča će nam nekako onemogućiti ono što smo otpočetka mislili da nam stoji nadohvat ruke.
Kada konačno odložimo knjigu, nećemo iskreno moći da priznamo da znamo šta je autor mislio da kaže. Sasvim suprotno. „Na taj način on postiže da u čitaocu evocira ključno iskustvo protagoniste: u svakom smislu život – ne samo njegov, već sveobuhvatni život – dovijeka će izmicati njegovom poimanju.“
Ništa periferno nećete naći u Parksovim esejima, a takođe ništa što je Bucati napisao, čak i njegovi radovi za mlađe, nije bez intelekta i interesovanja. U ovom Parksovom tekstu, inače reprintovanom uvodu Pingvinovog izdanja (2000) Bucatijeve knjige, ne pominje se detalj s Kucijem.
Ništa manje nostalgične su recenzije za djela kao što je Basanijev Vrt Finci-Kontijevih (1962), kojeg je beogradska Paidea reprintovala prije desetak godina, roman o patetičnoj istoriji bogate jevrejske porodice dok juri za životom unutar zidina sopstvene bašte dok, van njih, uoči rata, raste nečovječnost, kao i za Kuću na brdu (1949) Ćezarea Pavezea (Lom, Beograd).
Za namjerno brutalan „dugačak, kompleksan i neujednačen“ roman Kaputt (1944) nekadašnjeg vrludavog fašiste i kontraša, Kurcija Malapartea, Parks pravilno zaključuje da „postoji neočekivana količina preciznih detalja za svaku scenu, ali da priča ne sadrži smjer“. Genij Brankatijevog Lijepog Antonija (1949) Parks karakteriše kao konstrukciju dubokoumne dileme: postoji li veza između impotencije koja opterećuje Antonija i svijeta u kojem živi?
Na žalost, u Književnoj turi po Italiji nećemo čitati o jednom od najimpresivnijih evropskih istorijskih romana, Lampeduzinom stendalovskom Leopardu (Il Gattopardo, 1958) kao ni o Manconijevim Vjerenicima (I Promesi sposi, 1827), remek-djelu evropske klasične književnosti.
Parksova kolekcija tekstova o italijanskim autorima drži se podalje od savremene italijanske književnosti. Parks takvu odluku obrazlaže činjenicom da je rapidna globalizacija stvorila situaciju gdje je 70% knjiga u italijanskim knjižarama u prevodu, i to pretežno sa engleskog jezika. Iz čega pak proističe da današnji italijanski autor, dok piše, prirodno na umu ima međunarodnu javnost. Današnji pisac, zaključuje Parks, „kao da posreduje između različitih svijetova, (trudeći se da) udovolji čitalaštvu koje nije u potpunosti upoznato sa Italijom“.
2016
[Apendiks 2021: od 2019. do 2021, Laguna je objavila tri Bucatijeva naslova, dva prozna i jedan nebeletristički: Prodavnicu tajni i Tatarsku pustinju (prevod: Cvijeta Jakšić), i Điro D’Italija (prevod: Dejan Ilić). Par godina ranije, isti beogradski izdavač objavio je još italijanske klasike (ali i modernijih italijanskih autora), od koje izdvajam Malapartina dva najpoznatija romana, Kapputt (prevod: Jugana Stojanović) i Kožu (prevod: Jelena M. Ristić). Biografiju Kurcija Malapartea, Malaparte: životi i legende, iz pera Mauricija Sere objavio je Službeni glasnik 2019, u prevodu Olgice Stefanović.]
March 3, 2022
From the back cover reviews, Financial Times stated: "Erudite and well-written." The Independent stated: "Tim Park's new volume of essays goes where it is inaccessible to the casual tourist, deep into the literature." The Sunday Herald stated: "The best interpreter of Italian ways in English." I concur with those assessments.
I could not possibly give fewer than the full five star rating based not only on the author's extraordinary subject matter expertise but also on his engaging and stimulating writing ability. I found some of the literary analysis beyond my own "casual tourist" interest. Yet the brilliance of this book is not only the author's ability to make each featured writer's oeuvre accessible; one might find, as did I, personal insights and ideas about one's own writing.
A Literary Tour of Italy, by Tim Parks is a brilliant literary exploration and quite an enjoyable read. Here are a few quotes:
Parks wrote:
[In Dante's Hell]...There is no change, no rest, no night nor day, no meal breaks. And even more disturbing, when the damned are not being whipped or clawed by demons, they are punishing each other, shoving each other about, gnawing at each other's necks, insulting each other... The real punishment of Dante's damned is not this or that torture - many in purgatory will face similar sufferings - but the fact that the torture can know no solution. Neither release nor oblivion are available. And while the body - and so far that the damned have a body - is forever in pain, the mind revolves unceasingly around a particular image or experience.
In the Zibaldone, Leopardi remarked that the mind takes pleasure from situations where it comes up against sensory limitations, intellectual enigmas, or merely sensory vagueness, because it is then free to fill in what is empty or inexplicable.
Irretrievably insomniac, he enjoyed a long acquaintance with the moon. Beneath the cold silver light it spread over so many of his verses, Giacomo is the wakeful shepherd, while the rest of humanity wallows in the stupor of unconsciousness. Servants were infuriated when he demanded breakfast in the afternoon, lunch at midnight.
[Of Mussolini]:
It is the nature of a totalitarian dictatorship that the psychology of a single, usually charismatic, individual is superimposed over the destiny of a nation for an extended period of time.
Context is all.
"Nothing is so fearful," [D. H.] Lawrence wrote with disturbing prescience, "in a mass civilization like ours, as a mass insanity." Such is the subject matter of The Conformist: mass civilization, mass insanity. In a word, fascism.
Paverse's last novel The Moon and the Bonfires [also translated by Flint], looks at the war from a different perspective...Only the landscape, eroticized as ever under a scorching sun, offers consolation, almost a substitute for the life of relationships and conflict.
I could not possibly give fewer than the full five star rating based not only on the author's extraordinary subject matter expertise but also on his engaging and stimulating writing ability. I found some of the literary analysis beyond my own "casual tourist" interest. Yet the brilliance of this book is not only the author's ability to make each featured writer's oeuvre accessible; one might find, as did I, personal insights and ideas about one's own writing.
A Literary Tour of Italy, by Tim Parks is a brilliant literary exploration and quite an enjoyable read. Here are a few quotes:
Parks wrote:
[In Dante's Hell]...There is no change, no rest, no night nor day, no meal breaks. And even more disturbing, when the damned are not being whipped or clawed by demons, they are punishing each other, shoving each other about, gnawing at each other's necks, insulting each other... The real punishment of Dante's damned is not this or that torture - many in purgatory will face similar sufferings - but the fact that the torture can know no solution. Neither release nor oblivion are available. And while the body - and so far that the damned have a body - is forever in pain, the mind revolves unceasingly around a particular image or experience.
In the Zibaldone, Leopardi remarked that the mind takes pleasure from situations where it comes up against sensory limitations, intellectual enigmas, or merely sensory vagueness, because it is then free to fill in what is empty or inexplicable.
Irretrievably insomniac, he enjoyed a long acquaintance with the moon. Beneath the cold silver light it spread over so many of his verses, Giacomo is the wakeful shepherd, while the rest of humanity wallows in the stupor of unconsciousness. Servants were infuriated when he demanded breakfast in the afternoon, lunch at midnight.
[Of Mussolini]:
It is the nature of a totalitarian dictatorship that the psychology of a single, usually charismatic, individual is superimposed over the destiny of a nation for an extended period of time.
Context is all.
"Nothing is so fearful," [D. H.] Lawrence wrote with disturbing prescience, "in a mass civilization like ours, as a mass insanity." Such is the subject matter of The Conformist: mass civilization, mass insanity. In a word, fascism.
Paverse's last novel The Moon and the Bonfires [also translated by Flint], looks at the war from a different perspective...Only the landscape, eroticized as ever under a scorching sun, offers consolation, almost a substitute for the life of relationships and conflict.
July 21, 2025
Author's personal choice of 24 italian writers, mostly from 19th and 20th century. Dante, Boccaccio and Machiavelli are included as outliers in this group. Each writer gets one chapter. Chapters dedicated to an individual writer are not portraits or synthetic reviews about an artist and his work. On the contrary, Parks' writings pick up one theme or work of the artist, and then dedicate an inquiry to it.
Tim Parks is exceptionally studious and erudite scholar (besides, he is a novelist and gifted essayist) and his studies of italian storytellers, novelists and poets are highly recommendable.
My observation is that they require certain pre-knowledge about italian culture, history and literature. His studies are not for beginners. These essays also presuppose serious interest in italian literature and particular writers. In the same time they could be the starting point and impetus for reading a book we haven't had enough time before, for deciding to immerse oneself deeper, actually very deep into italian literature. Which definitely deserves the effort.
Tim Parks is exceptionally studious and erudite scholar (besides, he is a novelist and gifted essayist) and his studies of italian storytellers, novelists and poets are highly recommendable.
My observation is that they require certain pre-knowledge about italian culture, history and literature. His studies are not for beginners. These essays also presuppose serious interest in italian literature and particular writers. In the same time they could be the starting point and impetus for reading a book we haven't had enough time before, for deciding to immerse oneself deeper, actually very deep into italian literature. Which definitely deserves the effort.
May 29, 2019
I have read a lot of Tim Parks' non-fiction (and one of his novels) and really enjoyed the way he writes. So I expected to enjoy this book too. And I did, once I had got through the first two pieces on Dante and Boccaccio. For some reason I struggled with these pieces, maybe the subjects they wrote about don't appeal to me? Maybe the authors themselves don't appeal? But for whatever reason I struggled to get through these two. The rest of the pieces I loved, Tim's enthusiasm jumps out of the page. If you haven't read any Tim Parks before maybe you should start with his books about living in Italy first, but this is one to come to after those, this deserves to be read by more people.
February 3, 2021
Well the book has 100 pages more than listed and I have the right edition here. An error then. 383 pages of text, the rest notes.
Read Tim Parks when I moved to Italy at end of 1989. It was good to put experiences of moving there (I left in the mid 90s) into a wider context.
This book put me off trying to read some of the authors covered... especially in translation and I'm not sure by Italian is still, if ever, up to the original. However, it's an interesting, enjoyable collection of essays for the most part.
Read Tim Parks when I moved to Italy at end of 1989. It was good to put experiences of moving there (I left in the mid 90s) into a wider context.
This book put me off trying to read some of the authors covered... especially in translation and I'm not sure by Italian is still, if ever, up to the original. However, it's an interesting, enjoyable collection of essays for the most part.
Read
June 7, 2025Critiques - a lot of run-on sentences, fragments, and missing words. It seems like there might be instances of excessive speculation; superimposing his preconceptions in elucidating the Italian character, authors and their works - which make me wonder whether or not that extends to instances that I did not question.
On the whole, though, I found the delving or extracting brilliant, and it just seems to make sense.
On the whole, though, I found the delving or extracting brilliant, and it just seems to make sense.
January 22, 2022
5 stars so I clearly enjoyed this. I had read some of the books covered but learning more about both the individual authors and the Italy they lived in (and referenced) defined increased my appreciation of them. I’ll go back and re-read with these new insights. Useful to refer to when I next reading some of these authors.
March 19, 2023
This book looks at famous Italian writers. It was written by a British author, who has lived in Italy for many decades. It was interesting, but I didn't think he did a very good job of explaining how these authors exemplify the Italian spirit. The book talked about some fascist and anti-fascist writers, but mostly focused on works of literature that seemed unconnected to life in the country.
August 22, 2018
A mixture of essays and reviews, varying in literary relevance. Not quite the literary roundup it is presented as.
July 24, 2019
Het Engels vond ik moeilijk, terwijl ik regelmatig Engels lees. Het boek zelf vond ik heel interessant en zeker leuk als je eens op een andere manier naar de geschiedenis van een land wil kijken.
October 20, 2023
Rediscovered much loved authors from a different perspective (translator's) as well as the political and personal backdrop from which work was written.
November 28, 2025
Fascinating, insightful, and well written. If I had time, I would have read it again from the start as soon as I finished it to catch what I had missed the first time.
May 10, 2017
I cannot give you a review. I asked Good Reads twice where my book was, as it was never sent. They checked with author and they said they ran out of them, so I never got it. My daughter has had this problem as well. Oh well!!!!
I am sorry but I can't get into this book. Although, English was my forte, I am not highly educated in literature. I do understand what the author is saying; however, it doesn't spark my interest enough to continue reading it. I can see the book was written very eloquently and the author is genius really, but I think I will give this book to my niece, as she is a journalist and would probably appreciate it more.
I am sorry but I can't get into this book. Although, English was my forte, I am not highly educated in literature. I do understand what the author is saying; however, it doesn't spark my interest enough to continue reading it. I can see the book was written very eloquently and the author is genius really, but I think I will give this book to my niece, as she is a journalist and would probably appreciate it more.
February 27, 2017
Great introduction to Italian literature.
March 13, 2016
I loved how this book allowed me to rediscover my Country's history and literature... Now I need more! I need Calvino, D'Annunzio, Maraini, Carducci, Pascoli, Ferrante, Baricco, Manzoni.....
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