Customer Reviews

As A Man Grows Older (Sun and Moon Classics)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

I understand the concern with finding a correct translation of Senilità, but I do not share the opinion that it is a huge problem that the Beryl de Zoete version is translated a bit more "freely." I am writing this after having studied Svevo in the United States and in Italy and having read it in Italian at least three times and in the de Zoete translation twice. This may not make me more of an authority but hopefully will temper the following comments:

Essentially, the problem with translating Italo Svevo's work (if it is a problem) is that it was already been translated once from Austrian German thoughts (Svevo was born Hector Schmitz in Trieste, an Austro-Hungarian port city) into Italian. When you read Senilità (or its forerunner, Una vita - which is painful to read) you get an idea of how hypercorrect Svevo's writing was. This was not by accident, but rather through his desire to write perfectly in Italian. While this makes it an exceptionally easy read in Italian, if you translated it too closely, it would read more like Hemingway than anything else. In translations, I like the de Zoete translation (Bantam Modern Classics) because it is a little more fluid.

On to the merits of the book, whatever the translation or title, it is a masterpiece of Italian decadentism. The protagonist, Emilio Brentani is the last member of a dying family who must find a way to keep it going. He is getting on in years (which I guess early in the 20th century was mid-30s) and this is his last opportunity to do it. The book traces his battle with Angiolina, who is more element of nature than human, and the story takes him through a vortice vitale (the vortex of his life) into old age.

He carries out this battle against the background of caring for his sick sister Amalia and taking lessons from his libertine friend and sculptor Stefano Balli as they walk along behind the dog catcher. The time frame is Carnevale, the period before la Quaresima (Lent). The basic story is of his farewell to meat (so to speak) before the long fast that concludes his life.

I think this book makes a great introduction to Svevo and the svevian concept of "inept" man, and it is more focused than La coscienza di Zeno. I give it the thumbs-up.

I don't think Svevo is an artist that can be ruined or even significantly damaged by a translation, any more than Tolstoy can be messed up by Constance Garnett - it may not be as true to the quality of their prose, but for the most part I think their rare value is communicated as long as the translation is accurate: and this one is. The comparison to Tolstoy is apt, because I think Svevo is sort of a bridge between that tradition and Proust, where the writing starts drawing a great deal more attention to itself - and the internal workings of consciousness come to the forefront.

Svevo strikes the perfect balance between the 19th century's skill at construction complete characters (well, at least the Russians and George Eliot) and the 20th century's desire to focus intensely on processes of thinking, to lay bare the way they function. What Joyce did by actually splitting up and writing Bloom's individual thoughts, Svevo accomplishes with sentences that have the precision and wit of a French aphorist, while retaining a level of compassion that can coexist with his irony.

I remember a passage in The Confessions of Zeno (I read the Zoete translation on that one too) where, after a hilarious sequence when Zeno ends up marrying a woman that he has no interest in marrying, he comes to realize - many years later - just how much he's come to love her. Svevo is, I think, the most warm-hearted of great 20th century writers, even though all of his books are supposed to be merciless unmaskings of ineffectual men.

As much as I loved The Confessions (or Conscience) of Zeno, this is the more complete work of art. The five linked stories in Zeno didn't really cohere (especially the last chapter), but this book is beautifully paced and constructed, the work of a young man who is already a master - funny and sad and wonderful. A book to treasure.

(Incidentally: I like Joyce's title, As a Man Grows Older, but it would have been nice to have Svevo's original title back - which was only abandoned because they didn't think anyone would buy a book called Senility - certainly very few people bought Senilita when it was in Italian. And people were, understandably, confused, since there's no one in this book who is old, or any discussion in it of aging or senility.

But the whole book is filled with an atmosphere of last things: it is also about virility, and the lack of it, and the desire to both have and get away from the mental clarity that comes with intelligence. Senility: a great writer knows how to come up with a great title. But this is still a lovely book in a beautiful edition: another wonderful reissue from NYRB.)

Readers should be aware that this translation, by Beryl de Zoete, is much older, freer, and less accurate than the newer one, published by Yale Nota Bene, translated by Beth Archer Brombert as "Emilio's Carnival." Don't be fooled by the classy NYRB edition; the usually impeccable editors of that series have passed this "vintage" translation into print with nary a warning. Of course, older translations may be your thing (they're certainly mine much of the time) but you should know that this edition isn't all it seems. For more information on de Zoete as a translator, see William Weaver's excellent introduction to his wonderful translation of "Zeno's Conscience," which nicely dispatches de Zoete's "The Confessions of Zeno" to the dustheap of translation history.

But by about a quarter of the way through this novel, I realized that I was mesmerized by it. Emilio's obsession with Angiolina is less long-winded than Proust's obsession with Albertine, but the two stories have much in common. They both are about men involved with women from a slightly lower rung of the social caste system. Both women are inveterate liars and both men are adept at fooling themselves. Both stories employ a mixture of emotion and irony. I thought Beryl deZoerte's translation was serviceable and unobtrusive, which is what a good translation should be. I'm sure that it's missing a lot of the subtleties of Italian, but that's something one has to deal with in any translation. The flow of the words seemed natural and I didn't detect any Britishisms.

Svevo is quite adept had economically drawing fully realized characters who have the power to engage the emotions. Emilio (the man in younger middle-age who naively thinks he'll have a painless romantic fling), his spinster sister Amalia (whose silent suffering is almost unbearable), his artist friend Balli who does not see his own foolishness and Angiolina, the object of his obsession are all riveting characters. I quote my favorite passage in the book:

"She [Angiolina] lied obstinately, though she had not really mastered the art of lying. It was easy to make her contradict herself. But when the contradiction had been proved she would return with unruffled brow to her previous assertion, for in her heart of heats she did not really believe in logic. And it was perhaps this simplicity of hers which redeemed her in Emilio's sight."

AS A MAN GROWS OLDER is ultimately unexpectedly powerful. This is another outstanding novel I'd especially recommend to older readers. I think younger people can enjoy the book but it will mean more to the over-40 reader.

This is the book whose relative failure made Svevo abandon his literary career for a decade or two until a young Irishman named James Joyce happened upon it while tutoring the then old man in English and realized its greatness. It's a wonderful story, the one of the future luminary resuscitating the old, broken spirit and it gave me the impetus to even pick up a Svevo book (that one being The Confessions of Zeno). But what is here? It is a very engaging, very biting, very vivid story, and one that is told with wit, grace and style. But (and there is usually a but) it clearly pales against his later masterpiece. If given a choice, I would definitely recommend Zeno over this one, but this is still a truly excellent read. The story of liasons gone awry, psychological musings and other problems of that then new creature, the Modern Neurotic, are the spine of this story, and they provide sturdy support... even if they get a better treatment in his next book.

"It coursed powerful as ever through his veins and annulled whatever resolution his senile mind had made."

I don't profess to fully understand the title "Senility," except to say that Svevo reserves a specific meaning for the word beyond normal, everyday usage. The NYRB Zoete translation only uses the word once, and for Emilio Brentani, it refers to a state of mind in which he has just attempted to fool both his best friend and himself into thinking he is no longer infatuated with Angiolina. This "senility" is then opposed to "youth" or Brentani's reckless abandonment to his passions. I can only surmise that the title refers to Brentani's fluctuations between love, indifference, and disgust. For those who enjoy this about Svevo's characters, there is enough to go around in "As a Man Grows Older."

While I have noticed other reviewers claiming this to be Svevo's master achievement, and somehow a more perfect work of art than "Zeno's Conscience," I disagree. The first-person narration of Zeno (simultaneously one of the saddest and funniest characters in literature) provides an immediacy and consequence that the other novel lacks; AaMGO mostly depicts character interaction through description, narrated by a rather unremarkable narrator. The prose is not "flat," as another reviewer claims, but often quite workmanlike. There are moments when the prose attempts to reach a higher register, such as Amalia's scene in the opera house, and Emilio's closing thoughts of Angiolina, and these are quite lovely, even in translation. However, I felt this novel was missing the unforgiving verisimilitude of ZC, which I sorely missed.

Similarly, while the novel does develop its characters, it takes quite a bit of time. I would much rather have spent this time engrossed in their lives, not waiting for them take shape--especially since the novel is so short. ZC doesn't need this buffer, and for the simple reason that Zeno is such an engaging and sympathetic narrator. I believe in both his loving and venomous descriptions of characters (Ada, Guido) in a way that I cannot fully believe the descriptions in AaMGO; while at times one feels they are truly living in Zeno's memories, I can at best only watch Emilio from a short distance, and often then quite disinterestedly.

In my opinion, Svevo's greatest strength is his ability to seamlessly interweave humor and tragedy, which is one of the defining characteristics of ZC; while there is plenty of tragedy in AaMGO, I found little of it to be actually funny. There was one excellent comic scene near the end of the novel, which I will not spoil, that made me laugh out loud. I reread it a couple of times just to prolong the effect. Unfortunately, these moments were very few. While this novel is indeed more "focused" than ZC, my question is, "Who cares?" It has no excuse not to be. ZC is written in the form of a memoir by a very eccentric individual who makes no attempt to write a focused narrative; AaMGO lacks this fictive lens, and therefore cannot really claim tight structure as one of its recommendations--insofar as this quality supposedly elevates it above Svevo's later work. One could easily argue that Gaskell's "North and South" is more focused than "Moby Dick" or "The Brothers Karamazov," but who would actually argue that its a better book?

Criticisms aside, this is an engaging novel, and worth the read. I think it misses its chance to drive its tragedy home through less-than-optimal characterization, but that there are enough good qualities here to recommend to fans of Svevo. He's a brilliant artist, and one whom more American readers should experience. Four stars.

As A Man Grows Older (English title given by James Joyce; the Italian is Senilita) was the second of only four novels written by the Hector Schmitz, the Italian businessman known to the world now as the Italian writer Italo Svevo. He wrote this and his first book, A Life, in his thirties to little acclaim. But when Schmitz began taking English lessons from Joyce in 1907, he dared give the 25 year-old budding author the novels to read. Joyce loved them and became a life-long admirer. And in 1923, Joyce was instrumental in getting Svevo best known work, Zeno's Conscience, published. It is because of this that we can now read Svevo's great work.

As A Man Grows Older is the story of Emilio Brentani, a thirtyish business man who is obsessed with a young woman named Angiolina. We follow Emilio's unstable thoughts and feelings as he tries to understand and control his love for her. Anyone's who's been in love, especially of the unrequited variety, will recognize most of what goes on in his mind. Emilio is happy when he is with Angiolina, but when he is not, he is often pre-occupied with seeing her again, or jealous from rumors he's heard about her with other men. And over time, we begin to understand that Angiolina is in fact a liar and unworthy of Emilio's trust. But, even when it should also be clear to Emilio, he still finds new ways of rationalizing her behavior. He fluctuates between wanting to free himself of this painful love, but then tries to manipulate her into bed or devise some stratagem to see her again. He even pulls the old trick of leaving her in hopes of making her see how much she loves him, only to find himself going back with her. She sleeps with him now, so perhaps his tactics have worked. But the reader will know from very early on in this book that their relationship is an accident waiting to happen.

We also hear and see from Stefano Balli, Emilio's sculptor friend who is successful with women. As such, he counsels Emilio about how to handle Angiolina. But when they go on a double date, Angiolina flirts with Balli, adding to Emilio's anxiety in a way that never truly heals, and almost comes between the friends. The other main character is Amalia, Emilio's sister and roomate. She is unbearably lonely and in love with Balli. Emilio's neglect of Amalia for his obsession of Angiolina leads to the critical event of the book, and will leave most readers heartbroken.

Svevo interest in psychoanalysis pervades all his work. Here he is almost clinical in his rendering of Emilio's thoughts. Yet we care about him, despite his foolishness. There is no plot, yet we are pulled forward with desire to see where events and Emilio will turn next. As such, Svevo's work fits in a nice spot between the realists and the modernists in its ability to teach and entertain.

As A Man Grows Older is considered by some to be a better and more complete work of art than his episodic masterpiece. I agree with that assessment. I felt more satisfied when I put this book down than when I finished Zeno. This novel is wonderful work of art, filled with every emotion imaginable. When we read this, we will remember what it's like to love, to be anxious about love, and to lose love.

This review complements a review I posted on the other available translation of this work, published by Yale University Press:

Italo Svevo's novel Senilita is one of the great achievements in the bourgeoning era of early Modernism. It has rightly been credited as a forerunner and influence on James Joyce, and any fan of Flaubert, Chekhov, Proust, or Fontane (as well as less celebrated figures such as the Yiddish writer Dovid Bergelson or the Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis) will find much that is familiar, edifying, and entertaining in this intimate and masterfully observed novel. It is a book full of irony and empathy, artful paradox and plain-spoken truth; it stands half-way between romantic decadence and modernist realism, poised on the cusp of the 19th and the 20th centuries.

It is also representative of the most interesting trends in High Modernism precisely because of the self-consciousness of its atttiude toward narrative and language. Svevo, as is well-known from any synopsis of his career, was an Italian Jew brought up primarily in a German-speaking milieu. He is therefore demonstrably and purposefully uncomfortable in his use of Italian (just as Kafka in Czech-speaking Prague is deliberately not quite at home with German, or many post-colonial authors from Africa or India are fluent writers of English but nonetheless not native speakers of the language--this disparity is by definition and design a feature of their writing). And although there is no explicit reference to Jews or Judaism anywhere in this novel, it is not difficult to extrapolate his anamolous presence as a Jew in Catholic Italy as a motivation for his estranged, alienated, detatched mode of storytelling and social observation.

All of these factors account both for what's interesting about this novel, and what's difficult about trying to translate it--starting with the title, which nobody seems to understand or care for. There are two available translations in English: this one, and the one published by Yale University Press as Emilio's Carnival. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE buy and read this version!!!!!

This is a reprint of the original English translation first published in 1932. It is well produced and idiomatic; it captures the strange and indelible spirit of the original, without compromising its fidelity to the letter of the text. It also benefits from an unusually helpful and insightful introduction (in conspicuous contrast again to the Yale UP version) that is so well-observed and persuasive that I would recommend readers to do as I did and save it until after completing the novel itself.

Best of all, this is the less expensive of the two versions! Case closed--who could ask for anything more?! Only that more people read, think, and talk about Italo Svevo, and that more people purchase and read this version of his first great novel.

Emilio, a retiring, cautious insurance clerk with some literary pretensions, decides he needs to broaden the scope of his life. He figures he knows all about love and affairs because he's read a lot. He decides his "amour" shall be the blonde, luscious Angiolina, full of life. He launches on his affair, ignoring the disapproval of his friend, Stefano. Emilio lives alone with his mousy sister, Amalia. A man may grow older, but he doesn't often grow wiser. Svevo's novel, written in 1898, definitely bears out this observation. Emilio's love connection goes from bad to worse, fouled up not only by the unfaithful, sluttish behavior of his paramour, but by his own immaturity, lack of worldly experience, and psychological hangups. His casual love affair balloons into an obsession. Meanwhile, sister Amalia falls hopelessly in love with Stefano, who hardly even notices her. Things do not end well.



AS A MAN GROWS OLDER, a novel I first read in Southeast Asia 26 years ago and recently read again, may not have a thrilling plot line. It is overwhelmingly a psychological study of lovers and as that, a brilliant piece of writing which has held its power for over a hundred years. The evocations of Trieste, of the society that surrounded the love story is equally excellent. Emilio's plan to be more or less a casual playboy comes to grief as he is consumed by love and jealousy. It takes him a long time to get Angiolina into bed, which in turn opens up a new page for doubts, regrets, unfulfilled vows, and momentary steadfastness, always undermined by both desire and hatred. The double nature of love affairs---bringing out both passion and anger, love combined with hesitation, desire for approval, wild swings of emotion and inability to leave---has never been better described. At the same time, the purely imaginary love of Amalia for Stefano adds a further dimension to this veritable catalogue of realistic romance. Italo Svevo, who died in a car crash back in 1928, certainly left behind a classic with this novel. It does not seem to be widely read, which is a shame. A gem for anyone interested in a novel of the kind I've described.

Of course I agree with other reviewers that the content of the book is very interesting. I read it completely, despite the painfully boring flatness of the prose itself. It might be useful for a psychologist trying to understand a patient in an unpleasant love affair: ah yes, now you're at Stage 2, subdivision 3, section 1a. Imagine a mechanical drawing, say, an exploded diagram of a pencil sharpener.. why not call it a work of art? Glorious detail, exact descriptions, complete and entire... But it's not a work of art creatively. To say that Svevo is a bridge between George Eliot and James Joyce misses totally the art of the language itself created by those two.