508
years of very solid prestige in Ita–
lian literary circles; the new
aesthetes fall on their knees before
her unreadable pages. We cannot
deny that at the base of Manzini's
writings there is a fresh and deep–
felt sensibility, but since one is
forced to judge by the results, we
have to say that it would have been
much wiser to point her out as
example number one of how
not
to
write. The content of her novels
and short stories is always exas–
peratingly the same. It consists of
her lucubrations, her dreams, her
remembrances, her oblivion-all
in the affected pose of the eternal
child who has, however, been con–
veniently initiated into the mys–
teries of love. No one can deny that
potentially she has good lyrical
qualities, but her lyricism never
goes beyond potentiality.
As for her style-aside from the
fact that many of her pages seem
to have been written with pen dip–
ped in honey-it is obscure, al–
lusive, hermetic. For the sake of
the record, the title of her book is
Lettere all'editore, variazioni e no–
velle
(Letters to the Editor; Varia–
tions and Short Stories).
Carlo Levi of Turin, also award–
ed a 50,000 lire prize, lived for
many years in France, where he
earned a reputation as painter. He
is forty-three years old and until a
few months ago was unknown as a
writer. Recently he published his
first novel,
Cristo si
e
fermata a
Eboli
(Christ Stopped at Eboli),
which he wrote in Florence while
hiding from the Germans, and
which is now being prepared for
American publication. This book
PARTISAN REVIEW
is earning Levi wide fame in Italy.
Persecuted for political reasons by
Fascism even before he was per–
secuted for racial reasons, Levi
was sent to the
confino
and de–
tained from the middle of 1935 to
the middle of 1936 in a small vil–
lage in Lucania, at the southern tip
of the Italian peninsula.
Cristo si
e
fermata a Eboli
is the story of
that year. It is a book so rich in
fantasy, with scenes so pia tic and
full of life, and is such an acute
attempt to interpret, in the light
of legends, the primitive life of
the people of Lucania, that one is
prompted to ask if Carlo Levi has
not perhaps written the first real
book of Italy's contemporary liter–
ature. Certainly a first reading of
this book makes a very great im-
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