Cesare Pavese was an Italian
novelist, poet, short story writer, translator, and literary critic. Just
before the start of World War Two, Pavese took an antifascist stance, dangerous
in the time of Mussolini and Hitler. Predictably, he was arrested and convicted
for having letters from a political prisoner. He was tossed into a cell for several
months and then sent into internal exile in Southern Italy. He returned to Turin
about a year later and worked for the left-wing publisher Giulio Einaudi as
editor and translator. When the Nazi’s arrived, he took to the hills with partisans,
although he didn’t fight due to severe asthma.
After the war, Pavese joined the Italian
Communist Party and worked on the party's newspaper, L'Unità and at the same
time turned to writing. In 1950 he won the Strega Prize for La Bella Estate,
comprising three novellas: 'La tenda', written in 1940, 'Il diavolo sulle
colline' (1948) and 'Tra donne sole' (1949). His last book was 'La Luna e i
Falò', published in Italy in 1950 and translated into English as The Moon and
the Bonfires by Louise Sinclair in 1952. Struck by chronic depression and a
failed love affair with the actress Constance Dowling, he committed suicide by
an overdose of barbiturates
Creation
I’m alive and at daybreak I’ve
startled the stars.
My companion continues to sleep
unaware.
All companions are sleeping. The
day is a clear one
and stands sharper before me than
faces in water.
In the distance an old man is
walking to work
or enjoying the morning. We
aren’t so different,
we both breathe the same faint
glimmer of light
as we casually smoke, beguiling
our hunger.
The old man, too, must have a
body that’s pure
and vital—he ought to stand naked
facing the morning.
Life this morning flows out over
water
and in sunlight: around us the
innocent splendor
of water, and all the bodies will
soon be uncovered.
There’ll be a bright sun and the
sharpness of sea air
and the harsh exhaustion that
beats down in sunlight
and stillness. And my companion
will be here—
a shared secret of bodies, each
with its own voice.
There’s no voice to break the
silence of water
at dawn. And neither is anything
moving
beneath this sky. There’s only a
star-melting warmth.
One shudders to feel the morning
trembling
so virginally, as if none of us
here were awake.