[Here, Bergin laments that Svevo was not able to complete Further Confessions of Zeno, asserting that "on the evidence of these fragments it might have been Svevo 's finest work. "]

Posterity has been kind to Ettore Schmitz, the disillusioned bourgeois of Trieste who chose to call himself "Swabian Italian"; it has more than atoned for the stony indifference of his contemporaries. With the sole exception of Giovanni Verga there is no other Italian prose writer of the turn of the century who can speak with familiarity and authority to readers of today. If the sponsorship of Joyce was crucial in bringing Svevo to the attention of the literary world, his survival is nevertheless due to his own merits, well exemplified in the book before us.

Of the six items that make up Further Confessions of Zeno—an omnibus title to suit the nature of the harvest—five are bits of narrative prose in which Zeno speaks for himself. The sixth is a play—the only one Svevo has left us—first published some ten years ago, three decades after the author's death. To students of Svevo it may well be the most fascinating item in this interesting anthology. The plot hinges on the "rejuvenating operation" which a seventy-year-old man is persuaded to undergo and its effect on him and his immediate circle. It is a persuasive comedy with surprisingly good dialogue (surprising because the normal Svevo opus runs to monologue and is not particularly noted for its handling of conversation), first-rate character delineation and, above all, a more out-right humor than is apparent in most of Svevo's work. The sober, bourgeois background makes one think of Ibsen, but there is more than a touch of Chekhov and even a hint of the melancholy mischief of Pirandello. (This is said not to suggest "sources" but merely to indicate the tonal ingredients of the play.) "Regeneration" reads very well and might, I suspect, even act well.

But the play is not necessarily the best of the items in the book. The others are, as the editorial note tells us, "surviving fragments and drafts of the sequel to The Confessions of Zeno on which Svevo was working during the last years of his life," and they are excellent indeed. It is a pity that Further Confessions was not finished; on the evidence of these fragments it might have been Svevo's finest work.

The central figure is the same old Zeno, indolent, rather cowardly, not particularly admirable, but acute in his perception of his own nature and the circumstances of his life. "What a vast importance distant things take on when compared to those of a few weeks ago," the old man muses, thus summarizing the problems and pathos of age—and something of its poetry too. In "An Old Man's Confessions" he describes his well-intentioned efforts to establish a happy relationship with his son (a parable for 1970 no less than 1920); in "Umbertino" he makes us understand why no such efforts are needed to enjoy the company of his grandson. As for the Indian summer liaison described in "A Contract," one can only admire the sophistication of the writer who can portray at one and the same time the sordid and the downright funny aspects of a senile affaire.

But perhaps best of all for its poetic insight is the little ten-page opener of the book, "The Old Old Man," in which the brief sight of a girl on the street—recognized or merely evocative?—leads to the observation: "Time is an element in which I am not able to move with absolute sureness . . . [It] wreaks its havoc with a firm and ruthless hand, and then marches off in an orderly procession of days, months and years, but when it is far away and out of sight, it breaks ranks. The hours start looking for their place in the wrong day and the days in the wrong year." Proust could hardly have put it better. Zeno will write no more confessions for us, but Ettore Schmitz has a long life ahead of him.