SOURCE: Wienstein, Jen. “The Eloquence of Understatement: Natalia Ginzburg's Public Image and Literary Style.” In Natalia Ginzburg: A Voice of the Twentieth Century, edited by Angela M. Jeannet and Giuliana Sanguinetti Katz, pp. 179-96. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.

[In the following essay, Wienstein investigates Ginzburg's public image as evinced through her essays.]

In her essay ‘Moravia,’ which appears in the 1974 collection of essays and articles Vita immaginaria, Natalia Ginzburg discusses her famous friend Alberto Moravia and bitterly complains about the untruthful nature of his public image. According to Ginzburg, Moravia's public image, which portrays him as cool, detached, and condescending, distorts and denies his true self:

Lo conosco da molti anni … Però è molto famoso, e allora uno che non lo conosce di persona, oppure uno che sta a lungo senza vederlo, ha davanti la sua immagine pubblica. Questa immagine pubblica spesso mi infastidisce e non mi piace … In particolare, per quanto riguarda Moravia, mi sembra che la sua immagine pubblica risulti esattamente il contrario di quella che è la sua persona reale. La sua immagine pubblica appare altezzosa, autoritaria, sprezzante e compiaciuta di sé. Nell'avvicinarlo, uno si trova davanti di colpo la sua grande innocenza, la sua profonda e candida serietà.

I've known him for many years … but he is very famous, and so someone who doesn't know him personally, or someone who sees him infrequently, is faced with his public image. This public image often annoys me and I don't like it … Particularly in Moravia's case, it seems to me that his public image is the exact opposite of the real person. His public image is arrogant, authoritarian, scornful, and self-righteous. When you get close to him, you unexpectedly discover his great innocence, his profoundly honest seriousness.¹

Curiously, however, Ginzburg's own numerous autobiographical essays, and magazine and newspaper articles and interviews convey a public image of her which is just as puzzling and controversial as that of her famous friend. The self-effacing, overly modest Ginzburg openly belittles, berates, and underestimates herself. She downplays her literary triumphs;² she ruthlessly focuses on her personal weaknesses, hesitations, and insecurities. She is the object of constant and severe self-scrutiny.

The first hint of this curious display of humility, so precious to Ginzburg, is detected in the essay ‘He and I,’³ an amusing portrayal of the author and her second husband, Gabriele Baldini. He, of course, is all-knowing and all-powerful, while she, on the other hand, is totally incompetent. According to ‘He and I,’ Natalia Ginzburg has no sense of direction: she is easily confused; she's shy, uncertain, lazy; she doesn't understand a thing about music; she doesn't know any one language really well; she doesn't manage her time efficiently; she can't sing, dance, type, or drive a car. She is inept and insecure. Her imperfections are endless!

In Le piccole virtù and Mai devi domandarmi, our author repeatedly pleads ignorance when it comes to art, music, and film;⁴ in Mai devi domandarmi and Vita immaginaria, she warns us no less than four times in three different essays that she knows absolutely nothing about politics.⁵ And as if this weren't enough, in her hurry to belittle herself, she shamelessly adds further inadequacies to the already exaggerated list of her ‘infinite’ shortcomings:

Oltre alla politica, vi sono infinite altre cose che io non so e non capisco per nulla, come l'economia, o la chimica, o le scienze naturali, o le scienze esatte.

(Vita immaginaria, 169)

Besides politics, there are an infinite number of things that I don't know and I don't understand at all, like economics and chemistry and the natural sciences and the exact sciences.

Now, if we as obedient readers were to take her at her word, we would have to conclude (as her mother and teacher had done many years before) that our ‘somewhat slow’ author is, after all, nothing but ‘a nuisance,’ ‘an ignorant donkey’ (Mai devi domandarmi, 161, 191, 75). Her essay ‘Pigrizia’ (‘Laziness’) dwells on her ‘great ignorance,’ her ‘great sloth,’ her absolute ‘lack of ideas’; it is overwhelmingly self-condemning.⁶

Avrei voluto che qualcuno mi desse un posto senza conoscermi e per mie competenze. Il male era che io competenze non ne avevo … L'ostacolo principale ai miei propositi di lavoro, consisteva nel fatto che non sapevo far niente … Nella mia vita, salvo allevare i miei propri bambini, fare le faccende domestiche con estrema lentezza e inettitudine e scrivere dei romanzi, non avevo mai fatto niente.

(Mai devi domandarmi, 37)

I would have liked someone to give me a job not because he or she knew me but for my qualifications. The problem was I didn't have any qualifications … The main obstacle in my getting a job was the fact that I didn't know how to do anything … Besides bringing up my children and doing housework slowly and inefficiently and writing novels, I had never done anything in my life.

When it comes to her ‘novels’ (last on the list of her ‘few’ accomplishments), Ginzburg softens slightly and is somewhat forgiving. But not for long. She starts off by thinking that her writing is very important and that she is a great writer, but her initial optimism fades quickly, as does her self-esteem. She readily accepts a defeatist attitude and defines herself as a ‘little, little writer,’ an insignificant writer, a ‘flea’ or a ‘mosquito’ on the literary scene:

Quando scrivo qualcosa, di solito penso che è molto importante e che io sono un grandissimo scrittore. Credo succeda a tutti. Ma c'è un angolo della mia anima dove so molto bene e sempre quello che sono, cioè un piccolo, piccolo scrittore. Giuro che lo so. Ma non me ne importa molto. Soltanto, non voglio pensare dei nomi: ho visto che se mi chiedo: ‘un piccolo scrittore come chi?’ mi rattrista pensare dei nomi di altri piccoli scrittori. Preferisco credere che nessuna è mai stato come me, per quanto piccolo, per quanto pulce o zanzara di scrittore io sia.

(Le piccole virtù, 89)

When I write something I usually think that it is very important and that I am a fine writer. I think this happens to everyone. But there is one corner of my mind in which I know very well what I am, which is a small, a very small writer. I swear I know it. But that doesn't matter much to me. Only I don't want to think about names: I can see that if I ask myself ‘a small writer like who?,’ it would sadden me to think of the names of other small writers. I prefer to think that no one has ever been like me, however small, however much a mosquito or a flea of a writer I may be.

(The Little Virtues, 67-8)

An unimportant, insignificant writer therefore—but unique, special!

The hesitant, insecure, and apologetic tone in Natalia Ginzburg's voice is not unfamiliar; it is, in fact, reminiscent of other literary voices heard in different places and at different times—and almost exclusively women's voices.⁷ Our author's self-deprecating attitude is in no way exceptional but rather traditional in women's literature; she fits in. Her need to apologize, to belittle, to downplay, on one hand, and her urgency to make herself heard, on the other, are two sides of a typically feminine literary approach—a recurring theme in women's literature.

The examples of female writers faithful to the tradition of self-deprecation are numerous. Famous members of this sisterhood include Sylvia Plath, Betty MacDonald, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, Erma Bombeck, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Emily Dickinson, and Annie Vivanti.

As P. M. Spacks illustrates, the American writer Sylvia Plath, in her autobiography The Bell Jar (1966), lists one by one (as does Ginzburg in ‘He and I’) all her defects: ‘I was a terrible dancer. I couldn't carry a tune … I couldn't speak German or read Hebrew or write Chinese.’⁸ And Betty MacDonald, in her 1940s bestselling autobiography The Egg and I, describes herself as a failure in her role as the wife of a Washington egg farmer. Like Ginzburg in ‘He and I,’ MacDonald is forever incompetent while her husband is always efficient. We recognize Natalia Ginzburg in Spacks's comments on MacDonald: ‘Her husband does everything right, she does everything wrong.’⁹ Similarly, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, when comparing her literary talents with those of her husband, belittles herself. When he writes, he ‘creates himself’ with his pen; she merely ‘scribbles.’¹⁰ The American journalist Erma Bombeck also fits neatly into this category of self-deprecating female authors. According to Spacks, the successful Bombeck portrays herself as ‘fat, unattractive, no longer an object of sexual interest, incompetent at all activity, butt of her children and her friends for her stupidity and her middle age.’¹¹

The literary critic Clotilde Soave Bowe includes Ivy Compton-Burnett and Emily Dickinson among those who deny their artistic and personal talents; she groups these three together and explains that Ginzburg, ‘a self-confessed and self-condemned minore,’ like Ivy Compton-Burnett and Emily Dickinson, ‘would have us believe that the little she had to say was said in the slightest possible way.’¹²

And Luigi M. Personé compares Ginzburg's at times coy attitude to that of Annie Vivanti, who flaunts her ignorance in order to capture the attention of and entertain Giosuè Carducci. Personé explains: ‘Ginzburg reminds me of Vivanti, who, when asked by Carducci what most interested her in the Divine Comedy, answered: “Doré's illustrations.”’¹³

Sylvia Plath, the Duchess of Newcastle, Betty MacDonald, Erma Bombeck, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Emily Dickinson, Annie Vivanti—the similarities are numerous and the examples do not end here. These authors, chosen from different eras and literatures, share the same outlook; they follow a common agenda. These women writers suffer from feelings of inadequacy; they feel like second-class citizens in a male-dominated society, in the world of the ‘others.’ Ginzburg, Plath, Cavendish, MacDonald, and Bombeck compare themselves with their husbands; Vivanti measures herself against her mentor; and they don't reach the mark. They deem themselves inferior, insignificant, and irrelevant in their daily dealings with their husbands, families, and the outside world. And finally, this typically female feeling of inadequacy is inevitably present in their writings. The works of Natalia Ginzburg, who willingly joins the ranks of the inadequate, are no exception.

However, when it comes to Ginzburg, other problems enter into play; other questions arise. At first, defining Ginzburg's public image as characteristic of a female literary tradition seems questionable, almost suspicious. It is Ginzburg herself who tries to mislead us by minimizing and by focusing away from the relationship between her positions as woman and as writer. Although she admits in her essay ‘The Female Condition’¹⁴ that everything she thinks and does is influenced by the fact that she is a woman, she tries to minimize the importance of her feminine temperament. She longs for a space which does not admit differences between male and female writers; she aims at a higher level; she yearns for a Utopia, ‘un momento migliore,’ in which one's thoughts are neither male nor female. Her ultimate desire, her ‘fine ultimo,’ is to transcend the personal, to rise above the female condition.

In the Preface to her 1964 collection of five short novels Cinque romanzi brevi¹⁵ she describes her early feelings of ‘horror’ and ‘terror’ when confronting her feminine side. She abhors, but is tempted by, her autobiographical tendencies; she fears and rejects the definition of herself as a sentimental, ‘sticky,’ or ‘sickeningly sweet’ female writer; she wants to ‘write like a man.’

In her early writings, in the short story “Un'assenza” (1933), written in the third person, she chooses a male protagonist, and later, in the short story “Casa al mare” (1937), the first of her stories written in the first person, she makes use of a male narrator. In the Preface of Cinque romanzi brevi she explains how in Casa al mare she actually ‘pretended to be a man.’ Gradually, however, she takes on a female first-person narrator in La strada che va in città (1945), È stato così (1947), Tutti i nostri ieri (1952), Valentino, and Sagittario (1957), and finally, after initially rejecting her autobiographical tendencies, she comes to accept them. Memory seeps into her writing; she overcomes her feelings of horror and terror; she gives in completely to the temptation of autobiography and writes her autobiographical novel Lessico famigliare (1963). Her collected writings Mai devi domandarmi (1970) and Vita immaginaria (1974) continue in this vein.

Natalia Ginzburg's tendency to belittle, to reduce, to minimize is not strictly confined to her autobiographical works and to her public image; it is, in fact, prevalent throughout her narrative and theatrical works. The author's need to downplay, her tendency to focus on the flaw, translates into and ultimately defines her literary style. In the Preface to Cinque romanzi brevi, she explains: ‘You must write with your heart and your body and not with your head.’ She refuses the intellectual and the cerebral; she shuns the literary, the scholarly, the academic; she rejects all sophistication. Her literary style is neither flowery nor frilly. Her language is clear, concise, colloquial. She is never wordy or pretentious. Her sentences are brief, to the point. Her style is undeniably plain, simple, and eloquent in its understatement¹⁶

The relationship between our author's self-deprecating public image and her literary style is best revealed in Ginzburg the portrait artist. The author's keen attention to detail, her sensitive awareness of glances and gestures, and her tendency to minimize beget a whole range of fictional characters. Portraits abound in Ginzburg's narrative. They are often proof of her sense of humour; they always bear witness to her love of the concrete, the real, the down-to-earth. Ginzburg's portraits are not flattering. Her discerning eye zeros in on and exposes the embarrassing flaw, the sore spot, the peculiarity, the idiosyncrasy in physical appearance or behaviour. She focuses away from the grandiose and seeks out the trivial; a minor detail becomes major. Even the most heroic of figures seems human in his or her vulnerability.

Several unforgettable portraits in Valentino are proof of Ginzburg's expertise. The sad yet humorous short novel recounts the failed marriage of Valentino and Maddalena, and the aborted engagement of Valentino's sister Caterina (the narrator) to Kit, Valentino's lover. The following is a detailed portrait of Valentino's mother as she appears at her son's wedding; notice the particular of the ‘old fox with one eye missing’:

Mia madre si fece fare un cappello, dopo tanti anni: un cappello alto e complicato, con un nodo di nastro e una veletta. E tirò fuori la sua vecchia volpe con un occhio in meno: se puntava la coda contro il muso non si vedeva che mancava l'occhio: mia madre aveva già speso tanto nel cappello, che non voleva più sborsare neanche una lira per quel matrimonio.¹⁷

For the first time in many years, my mother had a hat made for her: a tall, complicated creation with a bow and a little veiling. And she unearthed her old fox fur that had one eye missing; by arranging the tail carefully over the head she could hide this defect, and the hat had been so expensive that my mother was determined not to spend any more on this wedding.¹⁸

And just as funny and compassionate is the eloquent description of Valentino's wife-to-be Maddalena when she first meets her future inlaws:

Allora quando lui arrivò con la nuova fidanzata eravamo così sbalorditi che nessuno aveva fiato di parlare. Perchè questa nuova fidanzata era qualcosa che non avevamo potuto immaginare. Portava una lunga pelliccia di martora e delle scarpe piatte con la suola di gomma ed era piccola e grassa. Aveva degli occhiali cerchiati di tartaruga e dietro gli occhiali ci fissava con degli occhi severi e rotondi. Aveva un naso un po' sudato e dei baffi. In testa aveva un cappello nero tutto schiacciato da una parte: dove non c'era il cappello si vedevano dei capelli neri striati di grigio, ondulati al ferro e spettinati. Doveva avere almeno dieci anni più di Valentino.

(Valentino, 160)

She was quite unlike anything we had ever imagined. She was wearing a longish sable coat and flat rubber-soled shoes and was short and fat. From behind tortoise-shell glasses she regarded us with hard, round eyes. Her nose was shiny and she had a moustache. On her head she wore a black hat squashed down on one side and the hair not covered by the hat was black streaked with grey, crimped and untidy. She was at least ten years older than Valentino.

(Valentino, 10)

And here is Clara, Valentino's jealous and cranky older sister:

Mia sorella abitava all'ultimo piano d'una casa in periferia. Tutto il giorno batteva a macchina degli indirizzi per una ditta che le dava un tanto ogni busta. Aveva sempre male ai denti e stava con una sciarpa intorno alla bocca.

(Valentino, 161-2)

My sister lived in a top-floor flat on the outskirts of town. All day long she typed addresses for a firm that paid her so much for each addressed envelope. She had constant toothache [sic] and kept a scarf wrapped round her face.

(Valentino, 12)

And finally Valentino himself upon return from his honeymoon:

Eravamo felici di vederlo: eravamo così felici che quasi ci pareva che non fosse più niente importante la moglie che aveva preso. Era di nuovo seduto in cucina con la sua testa riccia e i denti bianchi e la profonda fossetta nel mento e le grosse mani. Carezzava il gatto e diceva che voleva portarselo con sé: c'erano dei topi nella cantina della villa e così avrebbe imparato a mangiare i topi che adesso invece aveva paura.

(Valentino, 168)

We were so happy to see him that it no longer seemed important whom he had married. There he was, sitting in the kitchen once more with his curly head and white teeth and deeply-cleft chin and big hands. He stroked the cat and said that he would like to take it away with him: there were mice in the cellar of the house and the cat would learn to kill and eat them instead of being afraid of them as he was at present.

(Valentino, 19)

We are amused at the beginning of Valentino by Ginzburg's portrayal of the protagonist's mother, with her complicated hat and her one-eyed fox; we smile when we first read the description of the ‘short and fat’ Maddalena, who has a shiny nose and a moustache; we may even laugh at the grumpy Clara, who always has a toothache. But Ginzburg's attention to detail makes the final abandonment and frustration of these lonely women all the more pathetic. The contrast between the minor details and the major life events is heart-rending in its eloquence. At the end of the novel, the desperately humiliating sorrow of the now aged and worn-out Maddalena is reflected in the suffering of the younger (yet similarly defeated) Caterina; the mirror image of sorrow which results is therefore twice as moving for the reader.

And Ginzburg's real-life characters do in no way receive preferential treatment. Prominent figures in the political and cultural life of Italy, such as Filippo Turati, Adriano Olivetti, Felice Balbo, Leone Ginzburg, and Cesare Pavese, are all cut down to size in Ginzburg's 1963 autobiographical novel Lessico famigliare (Family Sayings). They seem to shrink in stature under our author's diminishing gaze, as do Alessandro Manzoni, Cesare Beccaria, Giulia Beccaria, Teresa De Blasco, and Claude Fauriel in the 1983 novel La famiglia Manzoni. The following is a portrait of Adriano Olivetti in Lessico famigliare. Notice how Ginzburg draws attention to the ‘awkward,’ the ‘goofy,’ the ‘unkempt’ in his less-than-‘soldierly’ appearance:

Fra questi amici ce n'era uno, che si chiamava Adriano Olivetti; e io ricordo la prima volta che entrò in casa nostra, vestito da soldato, perché faceva, a quel tempo, il servizio militare; anche Gino faceva il servizio militare, ed erano, lui e Adriano, nella stessa camerata. Adriano aveva allora la barba, una barba incolta e ricciuta, di un colore fulvo; aveva lunghi capelli biondo-fulvi, che s'arricciolavano sulla nuca, ed era grasso e pallido. La divisa militare gli cadeva male sulle spalle, che erano grasse e tonde; e non ho mai visto una persona, in panni grigio-verdi e con pistola alla cintola, più goffa e meno marziale di lui.¹⁹

Among these friends was one called Adriano Olivetti. I remember the first time he came to the house in uniform, since he was doing his military service. So was Gino just then, and he and Adriano were in the same dormitory. Adriano at the time had a reddish beard which was unkempt and curly, and he had long, fair reddish hair which curled down his neck. He was pale and fat. His uniform fitted badly on his fat round shoulders and I have never seen anyone in grey-green uniform with a pistol at his belt who looked more goofy and less soldierly than he did.²⁰

And it seems particularly fitting and funny that the ‘very dry’ Franco Rasetti, who is described as obsessed with bugs and minerals, should have a ‘sharp nose,’ ‘a pointed chin,’ a greenish lizard-like complexion, and a bristling porcupine-like moustache;²¹ and notice how he plays with the crumbs on the tablecloth as he talks:

Il nipote di Galeotti si chiamava Franco Rasetti. Studiava fisica: aveva però anche lui la mania di raccogliere insetti e minerali; e questa mania l'aveva attaccata a Gino. Tornavano dalle gite con zolle di muschio nel fazzoletto, scarabei morti e cristalli dentro al sacco da montagna. Franco Rasetti, a tavola, parlava incessantemente, ma sempre di fisica, o di geologia, o di coleotteri: e parlando tirava su col dito tutte le briciole sulla tovaglia. Aveva il naso puntuto e il mento aguzzo, un colorito sempre un po' verdognolo da lucertola, e baffetti spinosi.

(Lessico famigliare, 54)

Galeotti's nephew was called Franco Rasetti. He was a physics student and he too was mad on collecting insects and minerals. Gino caught this mania too. They returned from expeditions with clumps of moss in their handkerchiefs, dead beetles and crystals in their rucksacks. Franco talked incessantly at meals, and always about physics, geology, and beetles, and as he talked he gathered all the crumbs on the table-cloth with his finger. He had a sharp nose and a pointed chin and a rather lizard-like greenish complexion²² and a bristling moustache.

(Family Sayings, 45-6)

And the count Felice Balbo, who is later to become Ginzburg's best friend, is ‘a little man’ with ‘a red nose’:

Fu così che io sentii parlare di Balbo per la prima volta. Era un conte, mi disse sul corso Umberto, piccolo, col naso rosso. Balbo doveva diventare tanti anni dopo, il mio migliore amico: ma io allora certo, non lo sapevo: e lo guardai senza nessun interesse, quel piccolo conte, che imprestava a Lisetta i libri di Croce.

(Lessico famigliare, 134-5)

That was how I first heard of Balbo. [Lisetta] told me that he was a count. She pointed him out to me one day on the Corso Re Umberto—a little man with a red nose. Balbo was to become my best friend years later. But of course I did not know that then and I did not look with any interest at the little count who lent Lisetta Croce's books.

(Family Sayings, 110)

And Filippo Turati, alias Paolo Ferrari, the founder of Italian socialism, who takes refuge in the Levi household before fleeing Italy, is a big old bear of a man with little white hands:

Ferrari [Turati] era vecchio, grande come un orso, e con la barba grigia, tagliata in tondo. Aveva il collo della camicia molto largo, e la cravatta legata come una corda. Aveva mani piccole e bianche; e sfogliava una raccolta delle poesie di Carducci, rilegata in rosso.

(Lessico famigliare, 82)

Ferrari was old, as huge as a bear, with a grey goatee beard. He had a very big collar size and a tie like a piece of string. He had small white hands, and he was leafing through a volume of Carducci's poems, bound in red.

(Family Sayings, 68)

And finally there are no exceptions to the rule in Ginzburg's gallery of portraits. No one is spared—not even the anti-Fascist Leone Ginzburg, Natalia's first husband, who in 1943 dies tragically at the hands of the Germans in the Regina Coeli prison in Rome. Leone, described by the author's mother as a ‘very cultivated, intelligent man, who does very fine translations from Russian,’ is in the end reduced to being the ‘ugly’ Jew:

‘Cos'ha da fare Mario con quel Ginzburg?’ disse a mia madre …

‘È uno,’ disse mia madre, ‘coltissimo, intelligentissimo, che traduce dal russo e fa delle bellissime traduzioni.’

‘Però,’ disse mio padre, ‘è molto brutto. Si sa, gli ebrei son tutti brutti.’

‘E tu?’ disse mia madre, ‘tu non sei ebreo?’

‘Difatti anch'io son brutto,’ disse mio padre.

(Lessico famigliare, 96)

‘What has Mario got to do with Ginzburg?’ he asked my mother …

‘He is a very cultivated, intelligent man, who does very fine translations from Russian.’

‘But he is very ugly,’ said my father. ‘We know Jews are all ugly.’

‘And what about you?’ said my mother. ‘Aren't you a Jew?’

‘Well, yes, I am ugly too,’ said my father.

(Family Sayings, 79)

We may snicker at Professor Levi's definition of all Jews as ugly, but when we read later on of Leone's tragic death, we are overpowered by emotion. The contrast between the trivial, light-hearted description of Ginzburg's physical appearance and the profound tragedy of his death is devastating in its eloquence.

And so, all fall victim to Ginzburg's understated style; their greatness is taken for granted; their idiosyncrasies make them human, vulnerable; as a result, the pathos in Family Sayings is overwhelming.

The 1983 novel The Manzoni Family bears further witness to our author's style. The literary critic Giulio Nascimbeni is curious about Ginzburg's ‘metodo riduttivo,’ her use of understatement in this particular novel. In a newspaper interview with her, he asks why she chooses to underestimate, to minimize the great moments in Alessandro Manzoni's life. The interview appears with a heading that reads ‘My Manzoni is knocked off his pedestal.’

A pagina 29 del suo libro c'è un momento decisivo per la storia del Manzoni: la conversione avvenuta nella chiesa di San Rocco a Parigi il 2 aprile 1810. Il Manzoni aveva perso la moglie Enrichetta tra la folla, aveva provato un senso di vertigine, si era rifugiato in chiesa ‘pregando con vera preghiera.’ Eppure lei sembra propendere per la tesi di una crisi di nervi … Anche altri grandi momenti come la composizione del ‘5 maggio’ come l'inizio e la stesura dei Promessi sposi, passano nel suo libro inavvertiti. Che cosa l'ha indotta a questa scelta di metodo?

On page 29 of your book there is a very important moment in Manzoni's life: his conversion which took place in San Rocco Church in Paris on April 2, 1810. Manzoni had lost his wife Enrichetta in the crowd, had felt dizzy, and had gone into the church and had ‘prayed fervently.’ And according to your theory, this was all due simply to an anxiety attack … And other great moments (such as the composition of ‘The Fifth of May,’ and the beginning and the writing of The Betrothed) also pass unnoticed in your book. What led you to this choice of method?²³

Ginzburg's straightforward answer to Nascimbeni's question explains her motivation; her purpose is clear:

L'ho fatto intenzionalmente. Volevo raccontare la famiglia Manzoni, non lui. Dei Promessi sposi si parla molto ma mai nel cerchio della vita famigliare. Volevo vedere questo evento del grande romanzo proiettato sugli altri più che vissuto da lui … Volevo che da questo libro [Manzoni] venisse fuori senza cipria, più vero. In genere lo si è sempre visto su un piedistallo: ho cercato di farlo scendere.

I did it intentionally. I wanted to write about the Manzoni family, not about Manzoni. Much is said about The Betrothed, but never in the context of Manzoni's family life. I wanted to see the event of this great novel projected onto others rather than lived by him … I wanted a Manzoni free of face powder, I wanted a truer Manzoni. Usually Manzoni is perched up on a pedestal. I tried to knock him off his pedestal.

And according to Ginzburg, Manzoni unmasked, off his pedestal, examined from up close, is never natural or genuine; he is a ‘bad father’ and, above all, ‘a tremendous egoist.’

Another telling example of Ginzburg's style of portraiture is the depiction of Cesare Beccaria, author of Of Crimes and Punishments and Manzoni's maternal grandfather. The image of Cesare Beccaria as the ‘enormously fat’ grandfather who fetches a ‘cioccolatino,’ a little chocolate, hidden away in his drawer, is comical, almost embarrassing in its effect; the character's great girth and his great literary fame are given equal weight by a somewhat amused Ginzburg:

Prima di partire per Merate, Giulia lo portò a salutare il nonno, Cesare Beccaria; egli era diventato, con gli anni, enormemente grasso; Alessandro, che lo vedeva per la prima volta e non l'avrebbe riveduto mai, lo ricordò più tardi mentre si alzava dalla poltrona pesantemente per prendergli da un cassetto un cioccolatino. Non sembrava troppo contento di quella visita. Alessandro aveva allora sette anni.²⁴

Before setting off for Merate, she [Manzoni's mother] took him to see his grandfather, Cesare Beccaria, who with the years had become enormously fat; Alessandro, who was seeing him for the first time and would never see him again, later recalled him rising heavily from an armchair to get him a chocolate from a drawer. He did not seem too pleased at their visit. Alessandro was then seven.²⁵

The first paragraph of The Manzoni Family is particularly eloquent and most indicative of Ginzburg's understated style. The passage which presents Manzoni's mother, Giulia Beccaria, and his grandparents, Cesare Beccaria and Teresa De Blasco, deftly weaves significant and insignificant details.²⁶ Equal emphasis is given to the great and the small:

Giulia Beccaria aveva i capelli rossi e gli occhi verdi. Nacque a Milano nel 1762. Suo padre era Cesare Beccaria e sua madre Teresa De Blasco. Suo padre era di famiglia nobile, sua madre era figlia d'un colonnello. Il matrimonio era stato aspramente contrastato. I due avevano difficoltà di denaro, ma sempre vissero in maniera dispendiosa. Cesare Beccaria scrisse in età giovanissima un libro che gli diede gloria, Dei delitti e delle pene. Teresa era nera di capelli e gracile. Divenne amante d'un ricco, certo Calderara.

(La famiglia Manzoni, 7)

Giulia Beccaria had red hair and green eyes. She was born in Milan in 1702. Her father was Cesare Beccaria and her mother Teresa De Blasco: he belonged to the nobility, she was the daughter of a colonel. The marriage had met with bitter opposition. The couple had financial difficulties, but they always lived extravagantly. When he was very young, Cesare Beccaria wrote a book which brought him a certain fame, Of Crimes and Punishments. Teresa was a delicate woman with black hair. She became the mistress of a rich man called Calderara.

(The Manzoni Family, 11)

In the same breath, Ginzburg describes Giulia Beccaria's red hair and green eyes, Teresa De Blasco's black hair and thinness, and Cesare Beccaria's great literary fame as author of Of Crimes and Punishments. She places historical data and petty gossip side by side, the public and the private on the same level; she gives equal attention to major events and minor details.

The secret of Natalia Ginzburg's art rests in her attention to detail, to the trivial and the minute—to that which may, at first glance, seem petty, negligible—and in her passionate love of the concrete. The literary critic Donald Heiney rightfully draws our attention to the deeply ‘tragic’ and complicated sense of life hidden beneath what appears to be a simple narrative style:

The narrating consciousness takes refuge in a world of trivia, but the trivia are in some way elevated to the archetypal. Furniture, family quarrels, broken engagements, bicycles, the way of washing windows: the tiny details, massed together and linking one by one, begin finally to form vague metaphysical shapes. The dominant shape that emerges, subsuming and strengthening the others, is a recognition of the tragic sense of life, a pessimism relieved by good humour … Things are simple on the surface and complicated underneath, and all the difficulty of art lies in this illusion.²⁷

And, similarly, Italo Calvino states that the secret of Ginzburg's style lies in her use of ‘a very limited number of tools to express that which is extremely complex.’ Calvino compares poetry in general (and Natalia Ginzburg's art in particular) to ‘the sea passing through a funnel.’

Il segreto della semplicità di Natalia è qui: questa voce che dice ‘io’ ha sempre di fronte personaggi che stima superiori per le sue forze, e i mezzi linguistici e concettuali che essa usa per rappresentarli sono sempre un po' al di sotto delle esigenze. Ed è da questa sproporzione che nasce la tensione poetica. La poesia è sempre stata questa; far passare il mare in un imbuto; fissarsi uno strettissimo numero di mezzi espressivi e cercare di esprimere con quello qualcosa di estremamente complesso.

This is the secret of Natalia's simplicity: the first-person narrator is always confronted with people whom she deems superior to her, and the tools which she possesses and which she uses to describe these people are always slightly below the mark, always inadequate. Poetic energy is born of this inequality, of this imbalance. Poetry has always been just that: having the sea pass through a funnel—allowing oneself a very limited number of tools and trying, with those meagre tools, to express something which is extremely complex.²⁸

And so, Natalia Ginzburg's art is a struggle between great and small, significant and insignificant, useful and useless, in which the small, the insignificant, the useless win out. Our author's public image presents her as a less than perfect human being and a ‘small, small writer.’ Her writing produces no larger-than-life characters; no one and nothing is oversized in her eyes; the dimensions remain small. Her work promotes the ‘little virtues’ and neglects the great. In an essay entitled ‘Collective Life’ she chooses the useless over the useful:

E' totalmente impossibile all'uomo stabilire cosa gli sia utile e cosa gli sia inutile … Utile viene oggi decretata la scienza, la tecnica, la sociologia, la psicanalisi, la liberazione dai tabù del sesso … Il resto è disprezzato come inutile. Nel resto però c'è un mondo di cose … Fra esse c'è il giudizio morale individuale, la responsabilità individuale, il comportamento morale individuale. Tutto quello che costituisce la vita dell'individuo.

(Mai devi domandarmi, 141-2)

It is totally impossible for men to establish what is useful or useless to them … Today what is considered useful is science, technology, sociology, psychoanalysis, freedom from sexual taboos … Everything else is despised and considered useless. In what is deemed useless, however, there is a world of things … Among these things are the moral judgment, responsibility, and behaviour of the individual. Among these things is the inevitability of death. Everything which makes up the life of an individual.

Natalia Ginzburg consequently turns the tide; she defies public opinion; she deliberately focuses away from what men today consider ‘useful’ and zeros in on the ‘useless,’ on the detail in her life and work. In conclusion, it is precisely her compassion for all that is considered ‘useless,’ her different focus, her modest and understated point of view, that sets her apart and defines Natalia Ginzburg's person and her art.

Notes

1. Natalia Ginzburg, Vita immaginaria (Milano: Mondadori, 1974), 23-4. All further page references will appear in the text. The translation is mine.

2. Natalia Ginzburg won the Tempo Award for È stato così in 1947; the Veillon Award for Tutti i nostri ieri in 1952; the Viareggio Award for Valentino in 1957; the Strega Award for Lessico famigliare in 1963; and the Marzotto award for theatre for L'inserzione, which appears in Ti ho sposato per allegria, in 1969.

3. Natalia Ginzburg, Le piccole virtù (The Little Virtues). All further page references to Le piccole virtù and its translation will appear in the text.

4. See The Little Virtues, 69; Mai devi domandarmi (Milano: Garzanti, 1970), 91, 96. All further page references to Mai devi domandarmi will appear in the text. The translations are mine.

5. Ironically enough, Natalia Ginzburg participated in Italian political life in her later years. See Mai devi domandarmi, 151, and Vita immaginaria, 140, 144, 168.

6. Italian literary critics assume a tongue-in-cheek attitude toward Natalia Ginzburg's humble-pie stance. See Piero Dallamano, ‘Mai devi domandarmi,’ Paese sera; M. C. Ottaviani, ‘Le piccole virtù,’ Paragone; Piero De Tommaso, ‘Elegia e ironia in Natalia Ginzburg,’ Belfagor; Claudio Marabini, ‘Riflessioni quotidiane,’ Resto del Carlino; Pietro Citati, ‘Il mondo di Natalia Ginzburg,’ Punto; and Raffaello Baldini, ‘Questo mondo non mi piace,’ Panorama.

7. Natalia Ginzburg's self-deprecating attitude is typical of female writers. See Chapter VI in Patricia Meyer Spacks, The Female Imagination; Clotilde Soave Bowe, ‘The Narrative Strategy of Natalia Ginzburg,’ Modern Language Review; Luigi M. Personé, ‘Natalia Ginzburg,’ Nuova antologia.

8. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, 84.

9. Spacks, The Female Imagination, 218.

10. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, to which is added The True Relation of My Birth, Breeding and Life (London, 1886), in Spacks, The Female Imagination, 193.

11. Spacks, The Female Imagination, 218.

12. Soave Bowe, ‘The Narrative Strategy of Natalia Ginzburg,’ 795.

13. Personé, ‘Natalia Ginzburg,’ 40.

14. Vita immaginaria, 190.

15. Natalia Ginzburg, Cinque romanzi brevi.

16. The following critics discuss Ginzburg's plain and simple literary style: Piero De Tommaso in Altri scrittori e critici contemporanei, 40; Lilia Crocenzi in Narratrici d'oggi, 93; Antonio Russi in Gli anni della anti-alienazione, 135, Giorgio Pullini, ‘Valentino,’ Comunità, 192; and Renzo Frattarolo, Ritratti letterari ed altri studi, 250.

17. Natalia Ginzburg, Valentino, 165-6. All further page references will appear in the text.

18. Natalia Ginzburg, Valentino, in Valentino and Sagittarius, translated by Avril Bardoni, 16-17. All further page references will appear in the text.

19. Natalia Ginzburg, Lessico famigliare, 72. All further page references will appear in the text.

20. Natalia Ginzburg, Family Sayings, translated by D. M. Low, 60. All further page references will appear in the text.

21. In Italian, the word D. M. Low translates as ‘bristling’ is spinosi or ‘prickly,’ which leads the reader to think perhaps of the ‘spini,’ or spines, of a porcupine.

22. See my article ‘La simbologia animale nelle opere di Natalia Ginzburg,’ Quaderni d'italianistica, which discusses the abundant use of animal imagery in our author's works.

23. Giulio Nascimbeni, ‘Ginzburg: “Il mio Manzoni giù dal piedistallo?”’ Corriere della sera. The translation is mine.

24. Natalia Ginzburg, La famiglia Manzoni, 10. All further page references will appear in the text.

25. Natalia Ginzburg, The Manzoni Family, translated by Marie Evans, 15. All further page references will appear in the text.

26. About the juxtaposition of significant and insignificant facts, see Crocenzi, Narratrici d'oggi, 95; Soave Bowe, ‘The Narrative Strategy of Natalia Ginzburg,’ 793; Luigi Pozzoli, ‘Una società senza padre nella recente narrativa italiana,’ 39; Pullini, ‘Valentino,’ 92; Eurialo De Michelis, ‘La strada che va in città,’ Mercurio, 134-5.

27. Donald Heiney, ‘Natalia Ginzburg: The Fabric of Voices,’ Iowa Review, 92.

28. Italo Calvino, ‘Natalia Ginzburg o le possibilità del romanzo borghese,’ Europa letteraria. The translation is mine.

Works Cited

Baldini, Raffaello. ‘Questo mondo non mi piace.’ Panorama, 3 May 1973.

Calvino, Italo. ‘Natalia Ginzburg o le possibilità del romanzo borghese.’ Europa letteraria 2 (1961): 132-8.

Citati, Piero. ‘Il mondo di Natalia Ginzburg.’ Punto, 24 August 1957.

Crocenzi, Lilia. Narratrici d'oggi. Cremona: Mangiarotti, 1964.

Dallamano, Piero. ‘Mai devi domandarmi.’ Paese sera (8 January 1971).

De Michelis, Eurialo, ‘La strada che va in città.’ Mercurio 2 (1945): 134-5.

De Tommaso, Piero. ‘Elegia e ironia in Natalia Ginzburg.’ Belfagor 17 (1962): 101-4.

———. Altri scrittori e critici contemporanei. Lanciano: Itinerari, 1970.

Frattarolo, Renzo. Ritratti letterari ed altri studi. Pisa: Casa Editrice Giardini, 1966.

Ginzburg, Natalia. È stato così. Torino: Einaudi, 1947.

———. Tutti i nostri ieri. Torino: Einaudi, 1952.

———. Valentino. Torino: Einaudi, 1957. Translated by Avril Bardoni under the title Valentino and Sagittarius (Manchester: Carcanet, 1987).

———. Le piccole virtù. Torino: Einaudi, 1962. Translated by Dick Davis under the title The Little Virtues (New York: Carcanet, 1985).

———. Lessico famigliare. Torino: Einaudi, 1963. Translated by D. M. Low under the title Family Sayings (Manchester: Carcanet, 1984).

———. Cinque romanzi brevi. Torino: Einaudi, 1964.

———. Ti ho sposato per allegria. Torino: Einaudi, 1968.

———. Mai devi domandarmi. Milano: Garzanti, 1970.

———. Vita immaginaria. Milano: Mondadori, 1974.

———. La famiglia Manzoni. Torino: Einaudi, 1983. Translated by Marie Evans under the title The Manzoni Family (Manchester: Carcanet, 1987).

Heiney, Donald. ‘Natalia Ginzburg: The Fabric of Voices.’ Iowa Review 1 (1970): 92.

Marabini, Claudio. ‘Riflessioni quotidiane.’ Resto del carlino, 22 December 1970.

Meyer Spacks, Patricia. The Female Imagination. New York: Knopf, 1975.

Nascimbeni, Giulio. ‘Ginzburg: “Il mio Manzoni giù dal piedistallo.’” Corriere della sera, 5 February 1983.

Ottaviani, M. C. ‘Le piccole virtù.’ Paragone 13 (1965): 106-8.

Personé, Luigi M. ‘Natalia Ginzburg.’ Nuova Antologia 516 (1972): 539-61.

Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

Pozzoli, Luigi. ‘Una società senza padre nella recente narrativa italiana.’ Famiglia 9 (1971): 39.

Pullini, Giorgio. ‘Valentino.’ Comunità 11 (1957): 192.

Russi, Antonio. Gli anni della antialienazione. Milano: Mursia, 1967.

Soave Bowe, Clotilde. ‘The Narrative Strategy of Natalia Ginzburg.’ Modern Language Review 68 (1973): 788-95.

Wienstein, Jen. ‘La simbologia animale nelle opere di Natalia Ginzburg.’ Quaderni d'italianistica 8, no. 2 (1987): 263-76.