Poetry in the fascist period underwent a process of involution, partly influenced by French Symbolism, with its faith in the mystical power of words, and partly under the stress of changed political conditions after World War I, during which literature had declined. Many poets of the wartime generation, weary of tradition and rhetoric, had been seeking new expression: some, like the Futuristi, had tried to work rhetoric out of their system by letting it run amok; others, such as Camillo Sbarbaro (Pianissimo [1914], Trucioli [1920; “Shavings”]), cultivated a style purified of unessential elements. Out of those efforts grew a poetry combining the acoustic potentialities of words with emotional restraint and consisting mainly of fragmentary utterances in which words were enhanced by contextual isolation and disruption of syntactic and semantic links. The resultant obscurity compensated poets for loss of influence in a society subservient to dictatorship by turning them into an elite and allowed some, notably Eugenio Montale (who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1975), to express their pessimism covertly. The name of this movement, Ermetismo (“Hermeticism”), hinted at both its aristocratic ambitions and its esoteric theory and practice. The model for these poets was Giuseppe Ungaretti. Born, like the Futurist Marinetti, of Italian parents in the cosmopolitan Egyptian seaport of Alexandria, Ungaretti studied in Paris, where among his friends were the avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire and the painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. He came of age in the trenches of World War I, and in his first book of poems, L’Allegria (1914–19; “Joie de Vivre”), he confronted that harrowing experience in verse that is stripped of all its traditional amenities. In these poems each word is pronounced in isolation, as if a petrified, shell-shocked language had to be invented from scratch. In Sentimento del tempo (1933; “Sentiment of Time”) Ungaretti exhibited what is considered his second Symbolist manner; it is, in contrast with his earlier work, luxuriant, rich, and strange. This allusive and hieratic poetry recovers many elements of the tradition and couches them in a splendid but opaque diction. Thus, what in the 1920s had appeared revolutionary proved later to be only another facet of the formalistic Petrarchan tradition. Against this background of refinement, obscurity, and unreality, only the simple and moving poems of the Triestine poet Umberto Saba preserved an immediate appeal.

Social commitment and the new realism

During World War II the walls of the Hermetic ivory tower began to crumble. Ungaretti’s style became so intricate as to be almost unrecognizable as his own. Salvatore Quasimodo adopted a new engagé, or committed, style, which won critical admiration, including the 1959 Nobel Prize for Literature, and others followed suit in a drift toward social realism.

This development had been foreshadowed by some writers under fascism. In 1929 Alberto Moravia had written a scathing indictment of middle-class moral indifference, Gli indifferenti (1929; Time of Indifference). Carlo Bernari wrote a novel about the working classes, Tre operai (1934; “Three Workmen”); Cesare Pavese produced Paesi tuoi (1941; “Your Lands”; Eng. trans. The Harvesters); and Elio Vittorini wrote Conversazione in Sicilia (1941; Conversation in Sicily); all definitely promised a new literary development. From these and from the discovery of American literature (William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos, and Ernest Hemingway, translated mainly by Elio Vittorini and Pavese), postwar writing took its cue. Certain English authors, the homegrown veristi, and the ideas of Marxism were also an influence on postwar authors, to whom in varying degrees the rather imprecise label of Neorealism (applied also to postwar Italian cinema) was attached. It was a stimulating time in which to write, with a wealth of unused material at hand. There were the social and economic problems of the south, described by Carlo Levi in his poetic portrait of Lucania, Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (1945; Christ Stopped at Eboli), and by Rocco Scotellaro (Contadini del sud [1954; “Peasants of the South”]) and Francesco Jovine (Le terre del Sacramento [1950; “The Lands of the Sacrament”; Eng. trans. The Estate in Abruzzi]). Vivid pictures of the Florentine working classes were painted by Vasco Pratolini (Il quartiere [1945; “The District”; Eng. trans. The Naked Streets] and Metello [1955; Eng. trans. Metello]) and of the Roman subproletariat by Pier Paolo Pasolini (Ragazzi di vita [1955; The Ragazzi] and Una vita violenta [1959; A Violent Life]). There were memories of the north’s struggle against fascist and Nazi domination from Vittorini and from Beppe Fenoglio (I ventitrè giorni della città di Alba [1952; The Twenty-three Days of the City of Alba]). There were sad tales of lost war by Giuseppe Berto (Il cielo è rosso [1947; The Sky Is Red] and Guerra in camicia nera [1955; “A Blackshirt’s War”]) and by Mario Rigoni Stern (Il sergente nella neve [1952; The Sergeant in the Snow]). By contrast, there were humorous recollections of provincial life under fascism—for example, Mario Tobino’s Bandiera nera (1950; “Black Flag”) and Goffredo Parise’s Prete bello (1954; “The Handsome Priest”; Eng. trans. The Priest Among the Pigeons). In contrast to the more topical appeal of these writings, the great virtue of Pavese’s narrative was the universality of its characters and themes. Among his finest works may be numbered La casa in collina (1949; The House on the Hill) and La luna e i falò (1950; The Moon and the Bonfires). Also of lasting relevance is Primo Levi’s moving account of how human dignity survived the degradations of Auschwitz (Se questo è un uomo [1947; If This Is a Man]).

Other writings

Literary tastes gradually became less homogeneous. On the one hand, there was the rediscovery of the experimentalism of Carlo Emilio Gadda, whose best works had been written between 1938 and 1947. On the other, there was the runaway success of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s Il gattopardo (1958; The Leopard), an old-fashioned historical novel that presents a soft-focused, flattering view of a family similar to the one described so pitilessly by Federico De Roberto in I vicerè. For this reason, it is easier to see Italian writing in terms of individual territory rather than general trends.

Carlo Cassola’s most memorable novels use the stillness of rural Tuscany as a background to the interior reality of its inhabitants, and in this his lineage can be traced to other Tuscan writers such as Romano Bilenchi (La siccità [1941; “The Drought”]) and Nicola Lisi (Diario di un parroco di campagna [1942; “Diary of a Country Priest”]) or in some respects back to Federigo Tozzi. Especially typical of Cassola’s works are Il taglio del bosco (1953; The Felling of the Forest), Un cuore arido (1961; An Arid Heart), and Un uomo solo (1978; “A Man by Himself”).

Giorgio Bassani’s domain is the sadly nostalgic world of Ferrara in days gone by, with particular emphasis on its Jewish community (Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini [1962; The Garden of the Finzi-Continis]). Italo Calvino concentrated on fantastic tales (Il visconte dimezzato [1952; The Cloven Viscount], Il barone rampante [1957; The Baron in the Trees], and Il cavaliere inesistente [1959; The Nonexistent Knight]) and, later, on moralizing science fiction (Le cosmicomiche [1965; Cosmicomics] and Ti con zero [1968; t zero]). Paolo Volponi’s province is the human consequences of Italy’s rapid postwar industrialization (Memoriale [1962], La macchina mondiale [1965; The Worldwide Machine], and Corporale [1974]). Leonardo Sciascia’s sphere is his native Sicily, whose present and past he displays with concerned and scholarly insight, with two of his better-known books—in the format of thrillers—covering the sinister operations of the local Mafia (Il giorno della civetta [1963; The Day of the Owl] and A ciascuno il suo [1966; “To Each His Own”; Eng. trans. A Man’s Blessing]). After a Neorealistic phase, Giuseppe Berto plunged into the world of psychological introspection (Il male oscuro [1964; “The Dark Sickness”] and La cosa buffa [1966; “The Funny Thing”; Eng. trans. Antonio in Love]). Natalia Ginzburg’s territory is the family, whether she reminisces about her own (Lessico famigliare [1963; Family Sayings]), handles fictional characters (Famiglia [1977; Family]), or ventures into historical biography (La famiglia Manzoni [1983; The Manzoni Family]). Giovanni Arpino excelled at personal sympathies that cross cultural boundaries (La suora giovane [1959; The Novice] and Il fratello italiano [1980; “The Italian Brother”]). Fulvio Tomizza also tackled this theme in L’amicizia (1980; “The Friendship”).

Meanwhile, Alberto Moravia and Mario Soldati defended their corners as never less than conspicuously competent writers. Moravia generally plowed a lone furrow. Of his mature writings, Agostino (1944; Eng. trans. Agostino), Il conformista (1951; The Conformist), and La noia (1960; “The Tedium”; Eng. trans. Empty Canvas) stand out as particular achievements. Soldati, in works such as Le lettere da Capri (1953; The Capri Letters) and Le due città (1964; “The Two Cities”)—and in a later novel, L’incendio (1981; “The Fire”), which takes a quizzical look at the modern art business—showed himself to be a consistently skilled and entertaining narrator. There are many other accomplished authors who could be classified in this way, including Elsa Morante, who with L’isola de Arturo (1957; Arturo’s Island) and La storia (1974; History) carved a unique niche for herself. Set in Rome during the years 1941–47, the combination of fact and allegory is a tour de force and one of the most remarkable narrative works that came out of Italy after World War II.

Calvino’s fascinating later works, Le città invisibili (1972; Invisible Cities), Il castello dei destini incrociati (1973; The Castle of Crossed Destinies), Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore (1979; If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler), and Palomar (1983; Eng. trans. Mr. Palomar), continue to explore the possibilities and limitations of literature and its attempt to represent our world. An ironic, detached, but deeply responsible rationalist, analyzing and recombining the elements of fiction in a rigorously precise “classical” prose style (which lends itself to translation into other languages), Calvino is without a doubt the most important Italian writer of the second half of the 20th century.