by André Aciman
The spotlights, from then on, were also on me, whether writing or not, on all of me. From then on, it was crucial that the author of “Lida Mantovani,” of “The Stroll before Dinner,” of “A Memorial Tablet on Via Mazzini,” of “The Last Years of Clelia Trotti,” of “A Night in ’43,” and even of the first three chapters of The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles, should also try to surface from his lair, if only he could describe himself, could dare finally to call himself “I.”
* “Lida Mantovani” is the title of a short story by Bassani that was formerly entitled “Storia di Debora.” It was published in reworked form in 1956 in Cinque storie ferrarese, which itself would later be published under the title Dentro le mura (1973), Within the Walls. The other stories mentioned in this essay belong to the same collection: “La passeggiata prima di cena ”; “Una lapide in via Mazzini”; “Gli ultimi anni di Clelia Trotti”; and “Una notte del ’43.”
† Marguerite Caetani (1880 – 1963) was a prominent literary figure who founded and directed the trilingual review Commerce as well as Botteghe Oscure.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GIORGIO Bassani was born in Bologna in 1916 to a Jewish family who returned to their home town Ferrara soon after the end of the First World War. He attended school, the renowned liceo Ariosto, in Ferrara and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Bologna where, despite the Racial Laws, he graduated in 1939. Before and after graduating he became involved in anti-Fascist activities which resulted in his imprisonment in 1943. Released after the fall of Mussolini, he married and moved to Florence, with his wife, Valeria, where they lived under assumed names. At this time, during the Salò Republic, a number of his relatives were transported to the Buchenwald death camps. Bassani settled in Rome, where his daughter, Paola, was born in 1945 and his son, Enrico, in 1949. Bassani worked as a teacher, a translator of Hemingway and Voltaire among others, and as a scriptwriter on films by Michelangelo Antonioni and Mario Soldati. He became editor of the international literary magazine Botteghe Oscure and later a fiction editor at Feltrinelli, where he was responsible for “discovering” and publishing Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s The Leopard (1956). Despite this unrivalled success, he was to leave the Feltrinelli in a dispute when in 1963 he refused to publish Alberto Arbasino’s novel Fratelli d’Italia. Concerned throughout his life with civic and political as well as cultural issues, he was vice president of RAI television network and in 1965 became president of Italia Nostra, a national heritage organization.
An extraordinarily versatile author, Bassani won numerous awards as poet, novelist, short-story writer, and essayist, including the Strega, Campiello, Bagutta, and Nelly Sachs prizes. In 1974 his fiction was collected together and published under the title Il romanzo di Ferrara and underwent a final revision in 1980. The four main collections of his poems have been widely acclaimed and were gathered together in 1982 as In rima e senza. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis won the Viareggio Prize and has sold more than a million copies in Italy alone. Three films have been made of his work, most notably Vittorio de Sica’s adaptation of the present novel in 1970. In his last years, Bassani suffered from Alzheimer’s and died in 2000. He is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Ferrara.
First American Edition 2018
Introduction copyright © 2018 by Jamie McKendrick
Foreword copyright © 2018 by André Aciman
IL ROMANZO DI FERRARA
Copyright © Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore Milano
Copyright © 1980 by Giorgio Bassani
First edition in “Le Comete” April 2012
Translations first published by Penguin Books Ltd
WITHIN THE WALLS
First published as Cinque storie Ferraresi 1956
Revised version first published as Dentro le mura 1980
Translation copyright © 2016 by Jamie McKendrick
THE GOLD-RIMMED SPECTACLES
Copyright © 1991 by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A.Milano
Translation copyright © 2012 by Jamie McKendrick
THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS
First published as Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini in Turin, 1962
Copyright © 1962 by Giulio Einaudi S.p.A., Torino
Copyright © 1991 by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, S.p.A., Milano
Translation copyright © 2007 by Jamie McKendrick
BEHIND THE DOOR
First published as Dietro la porta 1964
Text copyright © 1964 by Giorgio Bassani
Translation copyright © 2017 by Jamie McKendrick
THE HERON
First published as L’airone in 1968
Text copyright © 1968 by Giorgio Bassani
Translation copyright © 2018 by Jamie McKendrick
THE SMELL OF HAY
First published as L’odore del fieno 1972
Copyright © 1980 by Giorgio Bassani
Translation copyright © 2014 by Jamie McKendrick
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