PARTISAN REVIEW
a group of Italian adolescents whom the bombardment of a northern
Italian town has deprived of their parents and homes. Tullio, Carla,
Giulia, and a half-witted little girl live in the ruins of a devastated
area; they are joined by Daniele, who has come out of a priests' col–
lege to find his home destroyed and himself alone in the world. Tullio
is the chief of a gang of boys who live by stealing and blackmail: part
of their profit
is
destined to the relief of the poor and to the funds of
their party (they're Communists) : in a word, he reincarnates the type
of the generous outlaw which is a well-known figure of early romanti–
cism. Carla
is
also a type one comes across in romantic literature,
the kind-hearted prostitute: though only fifteen, with the connivance
of her lover Tullio, she earns her living as a whore. To this depraved,
though not repulsive, couple, is contrasted the pair, Daniele and Giulia,
who are essentially honest and good, and find it very hard to adapt
themselves to the new circumstances: they pathetically succumb,
Giulia by dying of consumption, Daniele by committing suicide. And
then Tullio is killed in the course of an unlucky gangsters' expedition.
The whole novel
is
steeped in a profoundly melancholy atmosphere,
from the description of the lazy, marshy riverland and the provincial
Venetian town at the beginning to the shooting-party in the marshes,
which forms the only idyllic episode of the whole book, and on to
Daniele's suicide under a train in the end.
Il cielo e rosso
is
certainly
one of the saddest novels ever written, and, for all its American influ–
ence,
is
tinged with a typical Latin sentimentalism. Italian readers
have been reminded of De
Ami
cis'
Cuore;
if
one wants to sum up
one's impressions, one could say that
Il cielo e rosso
is Murger's
Vie
de boheme
translated into terms of a modem American novel. (Amer–
ican influence on Berto, incidentally,
is
not merely bookish; he was
made a prisoner in the Tunis campaign and spent two years in the
United States.) Yet whatever strictures one may make, the novel
remains one of the most remarkable books written in Europe in the
post-war period.
One of the most obvious signs of American influence on Berto
is again the abundance and character of the dialogues. It would
naturally be preposterous to ascribe every example of dialogue to
Hemingway's example. But whenever you come across what purports
to be a faithful reproduction of conversation, with all its repetitions
and apparently meaningless expletives, with its short sentences falling
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