Background
Carlo Levi was born on November 29, 1902, in Turin, Italy.
( With his typically perceptive insights, Levi writes evo...)
With his typically perceptive insights, Levi writes evocatively on his experiences in India, including his interview with Pandit Nehru, his tour of a tent city at a political convention, and his meeting with a Hindu nationalist party. This only available edition of a fascinating account of his impressions of the subcontinent is a valuable addition to the tradition of Western writing on India, made all the more fascinating by the influence that Levis famous memoir of exile Christ Stopped at Eboli has had on many Indian intellectuals. Published in 1945, that account of his time spent in exile in Italy after being arrested in connection with his political activism introduced the trend toward social realism in post-war Italian literature.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1843914409/?tag=2022091-20
(. 8vo pp. 356 Brossura, sovracoperta (wrappers, dust jack...)
. 8vo pp. 356 Brossura, sovracoperta (wrappers, dust jacket) Finito di stampare il 15 settembre 1950 Sovracoperta sciupata ai margini con strappetti e mancanze. Firma di appartenenza alla prima pagina bianca (Some chipping and nicks around top and bottom of dust jacket. Owner's name on the first blank page) Molto Buono (Very Good)
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( Winner of the prestigious Italian literary prize, Premi...)
Winner of the prestigious Italian literary prize, Premio Vareggio, Words Are Stones offers an insightful and authentic portrait of Sicily and its people. Over a number of years, Italian writer Carlo Levi made three journeys to Sicily. He went on to chronicle his travels, penning a series of short essays that capture in miniature the essence of Sicilian life: its traditions, culture, and breathtaking landscape. Here, gathered in one comprehensive volume, these writings offer a rare and observant portrayal of an island whose peoplethough burdened by poverty, political upheaval, backwardness, and murderretained a true generosity and graciousness of spirit. Italian writer and painter Carlo Levi is best known for his remarkable work, Christ Stopped at Eboli.
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(Carlo Levi's Visual Poetics explores the relation of word...)
Carlo Levi's Visual Poetics explores the relation of word and image in Carlo Levi's literary works. Lerner investigates the ways in which the dialogue between verbal and iconic systems of representations becomes an instrument of literary and political subversion, and contributes to the definition of Levi's humanistic cultural program.
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(The Watch, first published in 1950, is a portrait of Rome...)
The Watch, first published in 1950, is a portrait of Rome and Italy in the dopoguerra - the period after the war - when the heroism and sacrifice of the partisan war against the Germans ran head-on into a rockwall of conservative reaction. The year is 1948, the main character works for a newspaper in Rome, his friends and family and partisan comrades are all trying to get by and make do. The watch of the title was given to the hero by his father; it's broken, he thinks of fixing it, then wonders if it would be cheaper to buy a new, modern watch. Around him people are forever talking, looking for jobs, wasting time in cafes, grumbling about big business, the church, conservative politicians. The hero is summoned to Naples to visit the sickbed of a favorite uncle. The trip south is dangerous and difficult, along ruined roads through country infested by bandits. The passengers are crowded, they complain and tell stories, all have suffered, none has given up hope. The Watch is a brilliant and unusual tale of life and its torments, and it ends on a note as sweet as it is bitter.
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(Only a renaissance man could have described this glorious...)
Only a renaissance man could have described this glorious city in its heyday. And only Carlo Levi, writer, painter, politician and one of the last century's most celebrated talents, could depict Rome at the height of its optimism and vitality after World War II. In Fleeting Rome, the era of post war 'La Dolce Vita' is brought magnificently to life in the daily bustle of Rome's street traders, housewives and students at work and play, the colourful festivities of Ferragosto and San Giovanni, the little theatre of Pulcinella al Pincio; all vibrant sights and sounds of this ancient, yet vital city.
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( It was to Lucania, a desolate land in southern Italy, t...)
It was to Lucania, a desolate land in southern Italy, that Carlo Levi?a doctor, painter, philosopher, and man of letters?was confined as a political prisoner because of his opposition to Italy's Fascist government at the start of the Ethiopian war in 1935. While there, Levi reflected on the harsh landscape and its inhabitants, peasants who lived the same lives their ancestors had, constantly fearing black magic and the near presence of death. In so doing, Levi offered a starkly beautiful and moving account of a place and a people living outside the boundaries of progress and time.
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Carlo Levi was born on November 29, 1902, in Turin, Italy.
Although he received a degree in medicine from Turin University, he never practiced medicine. Instead, he took up painting and followed literary pursuits.
In 1944 and 1945 he lived in Florence and was coeditor of La nazione del popolo. In 1945 and 1946 he directed L'Italia libera in Rome. Levi's exile in the remote province of Lucania in surroundings hardly touched by modern civilization created a deep impression upon him. Out of this experience of a world almost outside of time grew his first book, Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (1945; Christ Stopped at Eboli). A combination of reportage, diary, and journalist chronicle, the work was written with an astute insight into the southern Italian dilemma. Upon its publication in the United States in 1947, the work was described in the New York Times Book Review by Paolo Milano as "a diary, an album of sketches, a novelette, a sociological study and a political essay. " Other Writings Varied Ideologically, Levi denounced the rift between the classes and protested the exploitation of the lower classes. Thus, he saw in Italian history a continual struggle between contadini (peasants) and luigini (after Don Luigi, the local schoolteacher and party functionary of Cristo si è fermato a Eboli). Such ideas were at the root of his volume of essays Paura della libertà (1946). Levi's next book, L'orologio (1950), showed his disillusion with the course Italian life took after the Liberation. The Rome of the immediate postwar era was the subject of this book, in which narration and critical observation alternate and in which facts are mixed with fancy. In Levi's later writings his tendency to mix fact with fancy was resolved in favor of the factual and critical approach. Le parole sono pietre: Tre giornate in Sicilia (1955) was an account of a trip to Sicily and a further denunciation of the situation in the Italian south. Il futuro ha un cuore antico (1956) was a critical report on a trip to the Soviet Union, whose great traditions Levi viewed as being absorbed by the revolution. La doppia notte dei tigli (1959) was a critical, if not too accurate, travelog on a few days Levi spent in Germany. With Tutto il miele è finito (1964) Levi returned to a critical investigation of underprivileged Italian provinces. This book, which took its title from a Sardinian wake tune, was a description of a trip to Sardinia. Levi was elected to the Italian Senate in 1963 and served on the Communist ticket for two terms. He was not re-elected in 1972. Throughout his life, Levi was a prominent figure on the Roman artistic scene. Levi died of pneumonia at the age of 72 in Rome on January 5, 1975.
(. 8vo pp. 356 Brossura, sovracoperta (wrappers, dust jack...)
( It was to Lucania, a desolate land in southern Italy, t...)
(The Watch, first published in 1950, is a portrait of Rome...)
( With his typically perceptive insights, Levi writes evo...)
(Carlo Levi was a painter, writer, and antifascist Italian...)
( Winner of the prestigious Italian literary prize, Premi...)
(Carlo Levi's Visual Poetics explores the relation of word...)
(Only a renaissance man could have described this glorious...)
Levi directed the clandestine anti-Fascist publication Lotta politica and with a group of colleagues founded the Giustizia e Libertà movement. His first arrest for anti-Fascist activities was in 1934. In 1935-1936 Levi lived in political exile under police surveillance in the southern province of Lucania because of his opposition to the Fascist government. Following his release, he joined the Resistance in Paris.
Quotations:
"The future has an ancient heart. "
"To this shadowy land, that knows neither sin nor redemption from sin, where evil is not moral but is only the pain residing forever in earthly things, Christ did not come. Christ stopped at Eboli. "
"The greatest travelers have not gone beyond the limits of their own world; they have trodden the paths of their own souls, of good and evil, of morality and redemption. "
Many of Levi's paintings focus on the human figure and demonstrate his belief in man as the center of the universe: "Any art that doesn't address itself to the whole of man is destined to failure. "