BOOKS
FICTION CHRONICLE
AS A MAN GROWS OLDER. By \tolo Svevo. New Directions. $3.00.
IN SICILY. By Elio Vittorini. New Directions. $2.50.
THE SHELTERING SKY. By Poul Bowles. New Directions. $2.75.
A LONG DAY'S DYING. By Frederick Buechner. Knopf. $3.00.
Emilio Brentani, the hero of
As
a Man
Grows Older,
an early
novel by !talo Svevo, is, of course, literary-intelligence and imagina–
tion are necessary to practice self-deception and illusion in Emilio's
grand manner, as if these things were a business in which he was de–
termined to advance himself. Emilio is thirty-five, a poor clerk in Trieste,
the author of one novel, unable to write more, much preoccupied with
the fear that life is passing him by. To renew his dying vitality (the
Italian title is
Senilita)
he falls in love with a dishonest trollop, Angio–
lina. A weary introvert, Emilio is nevertheless a desperate opponent of
evidence-he is bent upon imagining Angiolina virtuous and upon deny–
ing everything his reason indicates to be undeniable. Suffocatingly ideal–
istic, he hesitates at the seduction, wishing to believe himself alone re–
sponsible for Angiolina's downfall so that the love affair will add to
his remorse and leave the girl blamelessly pure. Sensitive, humbled in
his life and work, Emilio knows jealousy-the most suspect of the passions
-better than any other emotion; only it can move him to his most
natural activity in life-feverish suffering.
Angiolina, a prodigious but transparent liar, is much closer to the
truth, at least of her own existence, than Emilio; her lies are an ignor–
ant and ineffectual attempt to cope with the reality of her mean life.
She is dishonest in self-defense. Self-defense has become unknown to
Emilio because of rus paralyzing self-consciousness. Shabby, lonely, ego–
tistical, the burden of his useless sensibilities has degraded him; he
is
capable only of experiencing pain and escaping into illusions. Art, like
facing the truth about an impossible love, is an assertive act which he
no longer finds possible. He comes closest to life- and art by a kind of
dreaming, typical of the aged, which allows him, after Angiolina has
run off with a bank robber, to remember her as the great love of
his
life and to transform her character. Angiolina, stupid and desperate in
reality, becomes in Emilio's imagination the image of life at its high–
est-beautiful and strong, yet touched with the sadness and thoughtful–
ness of his dead sister, a poor, decent spinster.
Svevo's tone in
As
a Man
Grows Older
is almost impossible to de-
