(All Our Yesterdays is a classic novel of society in the m...)
All Our Yesterdays is a classic novel of society in the midst of a war. This powerful novel is set against the background of Italy from 1939 to 1944, from the anxious months before the country entered the war, through the war years, to the allied victory with its trailing wake of anxiety, disappointment, and grief. In the foreground are the members of two families. One is rich, the other is not. In All Our Yesterdays, as in all of Ms. Ginzburg’s novels, terrible things happen suicide, murder, air raids, and bombings. But seemingly less overwhelming events, like a family quarrel, adultery, or deception, are given equal space, as if to say that, to a victim, adultery and air raids can be equally maiming. All Our Yesterdays gives a sharp portrait of a society hungry for change but betrayed by war.
The book was translated into English in 1985 by Angus Davidson.
(In this collection of her finest and best-known short ess...)
In this collection of her finest and best-known short essays, Natalia Ginzburg explores both the mundane details and inescapable catastrophes of personal life with the grace and wit that have assured her rightful place in the pantheon of classic mid-century authors. Whether she writes of the loss of a friend, Cesare Pavese; or what is inexpugnable of World War II; or the Abruzzi, where she and her first husband lived in forced residence under Fascist rule; or the importance of silence in our society; or her vocation as a writer; or even a pair of worn-out shoes, Ginzburg brings to her reflections the wisdom of a survivor and the spare, wry, and poetically resonant style her readers have come to recognize.
The book was translated into English in 1985 by Dick Davis.
(A masterpiece of European literature that blends family m...)
A masterpiece of European literature that blends family memoir and fiction. An Italian family, sizable, with its routines and rituals, crazes, pet phrases, and stories, doubtful, comical, indispensable, comes to life in the pages of Natalia Ginzburg’s Family Lexicon. Family Lexicon is about a family and language, about storytelling not only as a form of survival but also as an instrument of deception and domination.
The book was translated into English in 1963 by D.M. Low.
(The Wrong Door is the first English-language translation ...)
The Wrong Door is the first English-language translation of the complete plays of Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg. Bringing together the eleven plays Ginzburg wrote between 1965 and the months before her death, this volume directs attention to Ginzburg's unique talent as a dramatist. The plays showcase Ginzburg's fearless social commentary, her stark and darkly comic observations of Italian life, and her prescient analyses of the socio-economic changes that have transformed modern Italy. Along the way, Ginzburg creates memorable female characters in a series of fascinating roles. In this fluent and faithful translation of 2008, Wendell Ricketts highlights Ginzburg's scalpel-sharp dialogue and lays bare the existential absurdities that lie at the heart of her plays.
(The play The Advertisement looks at the relationship betw...)
The play The Advertisement looks at the relationship between Teresa and Elena, and Teresa's former lover Lorenzo. Responding to an advertisement in a local paper, Elena, a young student, comes to inspect a room that Teresa has put up for rent in her house. The two develop a bond, and Teresa explains her history with Lorenzo, a lover who has left her. But the three-way relationship takes a turn when Lorenzo turns up at the house and subsequently begins an affair with Elena.
The book was translated into English in 1968 by Henry Reed.
(Natalia Ginzburg has created a compelling and powerful po...)
Natalia Ginzburg has created a compelling and powerful portrait of a family of modern Romans. Breaking with its influence ar Michael, a revolutionary in exile, and Mara, who may or may not have borne his child and who drifts from place to place and bed to bed because there's no reason not to. Meanwhile, struggling to hold her family together, is Adriana, Michael's mother, 43, divorced, abandoned by her lover- and despairing of Michael's and Mara's values while paying the price of her own. Ginzburg creates a marvelous and saddening world and a whole society of irretrievably lost dreams.
The book was translated into English in 1974 by Sheila Cudahy.
A Place to Live: and other selected essays of Natalia Ginzburg
(This 2002 collection of personal essays chosen by the emi...)
This 2002 collection of personal essays chosen by the eminent American writer Lynne Sharon Schwartz from four of Ginzburg’s books written over the course of Ginzburg’s lifetime was a many-years-long project for Schwartz. These essays are deeply felt, but also disarmingly accessible. Full of self-doubt and searing insight, Ginzburg is merciless in her attempts to describe herself and her world and yet paradoxically, her self-deprecating remarks reveal her deeper confidence in her own eye and writing ability, as well as the weight and nuance of her exploration of the conflict between humane values and bureaucratic rigidity.
(The Manzoni Family set in ducal Italy and post-revolution...)
The Manzoni Family set in ducal Italy and post-revolutionary France, captures the story of Alessandro Manzoni, celebrated Milanese nobleman, a man of letters, and author of the masterpiece of nineteenth-century Italian literature, I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) and the women of his life. Against the background of Napoleonic occupation, the reestablishment of Austrian hegemony, and the stirrings of the revolutionary urge for unification and independence, Ginzburg gracefully weaves the story of the Manzoni dynasty, a family that seems to grow autonomously around the life of the writer, effortlessly incorporating the epic tumult and emotion of the age. Ginzburg explores this fascinating true story and celebrated author with the elegance that has assured her rightful place among history’s acclaimed literary titans.
The book was translated into English in 1987 by Marie Evans.
(The city is Rome, the hub of Italian life and culture. Th...)
The city is Rome, the hub of Italian life and culture. The house is Le Margherite, a home where the sprawling cast of The City and the House is welcome. At the center of this lush epistolary novel is Lucrezia, mother of five and lover of many. Among her lovers and perhaps the father of one of her children is Giuseppe. After the sale of Le Margherite, the characters wander aimlessly as if in search of a lost paradise.
The book was translated into English in 1986 by Dick Davis.
(Natalia Ginzburg openly discussed her life and her work i...)
Natalia Ginzburg openly discussed her life and her work in an extraordinary series of interviews for Italian radio in 1990. The book It's Hard to Talk about Yourself presents a vivid portrait of Ginzburg in her own words on the forces that shaped her remarkable life-politics, publishing, literature, and family.
The book was translated into English in 2003 by Louise Quirke.
(At the heart of Happiness, as Such is an absence - an aby...)
At the heart of Happiness, as Such is an absence - an abyss that draws everyone nearer to its edge, created by the departure of a family’s wayward only son, Michele, who has fled from Italy to England to escape the dangers and threats of his radical political ties. This novel is part epistolary: his mother writes letters to him, nagging him, his sister Angelica writes to him too, so does Mara, his former lover, who gave birth to a child who could be his own. Left to clean up Michele’s mess, his family and friends complain and commiserate, making mistakes and missteps, attempting to cope in the only ways that they know how.
(The Dry Heart begins and ends with the matter-of-fact pro...)
The Dry Heart begins and ends with the matter-of-fact pronouncement, “I shot him between the eyes.” Everything in between is a plunge into the chilly waters of loneliness, desperation, and bitterness, and as the tale proceeds, the narrator’s murder of her flighty husband takes on a certain logical inevitability.
In this powerful novella, Natalia Ginzburg’s writing is white-hot, fueled by rage, stripped of any preciousness or sentimentality; she transforms an ordinary dull marriage into a rich psychological thriller that might pose the question: why don’t more wives kill their husbands?
Natalia Ginzburg, née Levi, was an Italian author whose work explored family relationships, politics during and after the Fascist years and World War II, and philosophy. She was famous for her portraits of family life and for her spare style.
Background
Natalia Ginzburg was born on July 14, 1916, in Palermo, Italy. She is the daughter of Guiseppe Levi and Lidia Tanzi.
In 1919 family moved to Turin. Natalia grew up in a cultural, anti-fascist milieu, her parental home becoming a meeting place for intellectuals.
The fact that the family was anti-fascist, anti-monarchist and atheist led to their being excluded from the mainstream. During the early years of World War II, the family lived in forced residence in the mountainous Abruzzi region. Her father and two brothers were arrested by the Fascists, one brother escaped.
Education
Rather than attend primary school, Natalia studied at home with her mother. She was kept at home and almost never allowed to go outside to prevent herself from childhood infectious diseases.
In 1927 she joined Liceo Classico Vittorio Alfieri. In 1935 she began studies in literature at the University of Turin, specializing in classics, but never completed her degree.
At the age of seventeen, Natalia published her first novella, I Bandini, in the distinguished Florentine periodical Solaria, following it with works in Il Lavoro and Letteratura. She was the first to translate Marcel Proust’s Du côté de chez Swann into Italian. Completed in 1937, it was published by Einaudi only in 1946, but its autobiographical nature particularly influenced Ginzburg’s own writings.
In 1942 Einaudi published Natalia Ginzburg’s first novel, La strada che va in città (The Road to the City), under the pseudonym of Alessandra Tornimparte. Ginzburg spent much of the 1940s working for the publisher Einaudi in Turin in addition to her creative writing. They published some of the leading figures of postwar Italy, including Carlo Levi, Primo Levi, Cesare Pavese, and Italo Calvino. Ginzburg's second novel was published in 1947.
In 1952 she moved to Rome and published her novel Tutti i nostri ieri (All Our Yesterdays). There followed her most fruitful years, during which she wrote three major works: Valentino (1957), Le voci della sera (1961) and Le piccole virtù (1962). In 1959 she moved to London. The novels and essays she wrote in the 1960s and later, which nostalgically recall the events of her life in various locations, include Mai devi domandarmi (You Must Never Ask Me, 1970), Vita Immaginaria (Imaginary Life, 1974) and Famiglia (Family, 1977).
A few days before her death, she completed the translation of the novel Une vie by Guy de Maupassant. In 1999 Einaudi posthumously published her last work, È difficile parlare di sè (It’s Hard to Talk about Yourself), a text based on a series of radio talks in which Natalia Ginzburg spoke about her life and her literary work.
(The city is Rome, the hub of Italian life and culture. Th...)
1984
Religion
Ginzburg's parents were atheists, and Natalia with brothers and sisters was brought up an atheist.
Politics
In the 1980s Natalia Ginzburg became politically active, joined the Communist Party and was elected to parliament as an independent left-wing deputy in 1983 and 1987. Animated by a profound sense of justice, she engaged with passion in various humanitarian issues, such as the lowering of the price of bread, support for Palestinian children, legal assistance for rape victims and reform of adoption laws. However, she did not feel at ease in party politics and soon resigned from the Communist Party. She then served in the Italian parliament as an Independent.
Views
Natalia Ginzburg's aim was concreteness and, above all, truth and integrity. Her style reflects these concerns. Her sentences, her words are so few and so carefully chosen that we feel she would not release a single one unless she was convinced of its artistic and moral truth. Yet, unlike some of the American minimalists, there is nothing fragmented or indeterminate about her fiction. She was an old fashioned storyteller who believed in clearly defined plots.
Ginzburg's work also teaches us the little virtues that she describes in her essays. The great themes, the great truths, she tells us, can be found at home, in family lives, in the familiar day to day, in a world that all know.
Ginzburg's style is sparse, melancholic, but relieved by occasional flashes of humor.
Quotations:
"Sometimes when I'm there in Parliament, on that sofa in the corridor, I'm thinking deeply about things I want to write."
"At the center of our life is the question of human relations."
"My father was an old-style Socialist, but, well, he had no idea how to oppose Fascism."
"For my father, a 'negro' was someone who was awkward, clumsy, and fainthearted; someone who dressed inappropriately didn't know how to hike in the mountains, and couldn't speak foreign languages. Any act or gesture of ours he deemed inappropriate was defined as a negroism."
"We were good friends with Alberto Moravia. And of course, I remember how I responded to his early writing. When I was very young Gli Indifferenti was of crucial importance as I formed my first views about writing. I’d have to say that for me Moravia’s earlier work was also his strongest. I love the work up to and including Roman Stories."
"I confess I’m very bad at reading in English so I don’t really do it much anymore. The truth is I’m lazy and reading in English is work for me. The English and American writers I love I read mostly in translation."
"In my adolescence, the Russians were tremendously important to me. More than anyone, Chekhov. Of the Italians, Svevo, the Moravia of Gli Indifferenti. When I started writing these were the writers I kept before me."
"My Jewish identity became extremely important to me from the moment the Jews began to be persecuted. At that point, I became aware of myself as a Jew."
"My criticism extends to the terrorists and fanatics on both sides. It’s a terrible world we live in."
"I think that suicide, in general, comes as a result of so many tiny matters and so many large matters which together make life intolerable. I don’t think it can be called an act of courage or an act of humility or cowardice. It’s really beyond the realm of judgment."
Membership
In 1991 Natalia Ginzburg became a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Personality
Natalia Ginzburg was modest and intensely reserved, true to her concern for families and children. Her strengths were simplicity, integrity, and passion for truth.
Natalia Ginzburg, who constantly wrote about strong women, was herself strong. The children of her second marriage were born handicapped. A son, born in 1959, died at the age of one, but Ginzburg also cared for her ill daughter Susanne.
Quotes from others about the person
"A cat lover who perpetually chose practical shoes and blue suits is a quick snapshot: she had the emotional depth and strength of ego to live beyond fixed moral schemes." - Wallis Wilde-Menozzi
"Ginzburg never raises her voice, never strains for effect, never judges her creations. Though blessed with the rhythms and tensile strength of verse, her language is economical and spare, subordinate to the demands of the story. Like Chekhov, she knows how to stand back and let her characters expose their own lives, their frailties and strengths, their illusions and private griefs. The result is nearly translucent writing - writing so clear, so direct, so seemingly simple that it gives the reader the magical sense of apprehending the world for the first time." - Michiko Kakutani
"I’m utterly entranced by Ginzburg’s style - her mysterious directness, her salutary ability to lay things bare that never feels contrived or cold, only necessary, honest, clear." - Maggie Nelson
Interests
Writers
Shakespeare, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, Fitzgerald and Hemingway
Connections
In 1938, Natalia Ginzburg married Leone Ginzburg, and they had three children together, Carlo, Andrea, and Alessandra. Leone died in 1944, and Ginzburg married again in 1950, to Gabriele Baldini. They lived in Rome and had two children. Baldini died in 1969.
Father:
Guiseppe Levi
Giuseppe Levi was born on October 14, 1872. He was an Italian anatomist and histologist, professor of human anatomy at the universities of Sassari, Palermo, and Turin. Levi was a pioneer of in vitro studies of cultured cells. He tutored three students who later won the Nobel prize.
He died on February 3, 1965.
Mother:
Lidia Tanzi
Daughter:
Alessandra Ginzburg
Alessandra Ginzburg was born in 1943. She is a psychoanalytic teacher of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society and a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association. She studied French literature with Francesco Orlando and Arnaldo Pizorusso and studied and distributed the work of Chilean psychoanalyst Ignacio Matte Blanco.
Son:
Andrea Ginzburg
Andrea Ginzburg was born in Turin, Italy. He was an economist and educator. He was among the founders of the Faculty of Economics and Commerce of UniMoRe, the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, where he was a professor of the economic policy until 2000. In that year he promoted another faculty, also at UniMoRe, Communication Sciences. He died in 2018 in Bologna.
Son:
Carlo Ginzburg
Carlo Ginzburg was born on April 15, 1939, in Turin, Italy. He is a noted Italian historian and proponent of the field of microhistory. He is best known for Il formaggio e i vermi (The Cheese and the Worms), which examined the beliefs of an Italian heretic, Menocchio, from Montereale Valcellina.
Late Husband:
Leone Ginzburg
Leone Ginzburg was born on April 4, 1909, in Odessa, Russian Empire (now Ukraine). He was an Italian editor, writer, journalist, and teacher, as well as an important anti-fascist political activist and a hero of the resistance movement.
He died on February 5, 1944.
Late Husband:
Gabriele Baldini
Gabriele Baldini was born on 29 August 1919, in Rome, Italy. He was an Italian literary critic, writer, and translator.
He has published studies on English literature from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century and has translated works by Oliver Goldsmith, Theodore Dreiser, Edgar Allan Poe, 1984 by George Orwell and others.
He has also worked as a film critic and television critic, as well as a screenwriter, has also written works of fiction and a biographical essay on the work of Giuseppe Verdi, published posthumously.
