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Cesare Pavese

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Born: September 08 1908

Died: 2626 08 19501950

Cesare Pavese was born in a small town in which his father, an official, owned property. He attended school and later, university, in Turin. Denied an outlet for his creative powers by Fascist control of literature, Pavese translated many 20th-century American writers in the 1930s and '40s: Sherwood Anderson, Gertrude Stein, John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner; a 19th-century writer who influenced him profoundly, Herman Melville ; and the Irish novelist James Joyce. He also published criticism, posthumously collected in La letteratura americana e altri saggi . His work probably did more to foster the reading and appreciation of U.S. writers in Italy than that of any other single man.

A founder and, until his death, an editor of the publishing house of Einaudi, Pavese also edited the anti-Fascist review La Cultura. His work led to his arrest and imprisonment by the government in 1935, an experience later recalled in “Il carcere” and the novella Il compagno . His first volume of lyric poetry, Lavorare stanca , followed his release from prison. An initial novella, Paesi tuoi , recalled, as many of his works do, the sacred places of childhood. Between 1943 and 1945 he lived with partisans of the anti-Fascist Resistance in the hills of Piedmont.

The bulk of Pavese's work, mostly short stories and novellas, appeared between the end of the war and his death. Partly through the influence of Melville, Pavese became preoccupied with myth, symbol, and archetype. One of his most striking books is Dialoghi con Leucò , poetically written conversations about the human condition. The novel considered his best, La luna e i falò , is a bleak, yet compassionate story of a hero who tries to find himself by visiting the place in which he grew up. Several other works are notable, especially La bella estate .

Shortly after receiving the Strega Prize for it, Pavese took his own life in his hotel room by taking an overdose of pills.

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Cesare Pavese

Cesare Pavese

Books from Cesare Pavese

Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno

La casa in collina

The Moon and the Bonfire

La bella estate

Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi

Antologia di Spoon River

Il mestiere di vivere: Diario 1935-1950

Paesi tuoi

Il diavolo sulle colline

Among Women Only

Dialogues with Leucò

Le poesie

The Selected Works

Hard Labor

The Political Prisoner

گزينه شعرها، چزاره پاوزه

La spiaggia

La Teogonia di Esiodo e tre inni omerici

Ağustosta Tatil

Il compagno