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Some novels are not only unique but also inimitable and I’m glad to say that Zeno's Conscience belongs to this extraordinary class of books.

I felt a shudder run through me at the vision of all that acid, but immediately afterwards I had a somewhat happier vision of life: I didn’t like lemons, but if they were to give me the liberty to do what I should do or wanted to do without suffering harm, freeing me from every other restraint, I would consume those countless lemons myself. Complete freedom

A Dead Honest Liar

Now Sunday arrived. I, who work so little, retained always a great respect for the holiday, which divides life into brief periods, making it more tolerable.

On his psychiatrist’s request, Zeno Cosini, a businessman from Trieste, describes six episodes in his life, self-analysing his actions, feelings and motives ostensibly dead honest. Zeno is a champion of good intentions and crooked reasoning. All his plans fail miserably: he doesn’t manage to stop smoking, when choosing amon

A Dead Honest Liar

Now Sunday arrived. I, who work so little, retained always a great respect for the holiday, which divides life into brief periods, making it more tolerable.

On his psychiatrist’s request, Zeno Cosini, a businessman from Trieste, describes six episodes in his life, self-analysing his actions, feelings and motives ostensibly dead honest. Zeno is a champion of good intentions and crooked reasoning. All his plans fail miserably: he doesn’t manage to stop smoking, when choosing among four sisters he marries just the one he doesn't want to marry, he loses his mistress by complicated lies, drives his business partner to despair, turns out to follow the wrong funeral procession... Zeno is an antihero, a schlemiel, an eccentric hypochondriac, but with his sublime self-mockery he condones his mistakes and weaknesses so disarmingly that I caught myself on almost every page on a lenient smile.

Egon Schiele, Harbor of Trieste, 1907

However it took me some time to attune to the rather slow pace of the novel, in the end I came to mostly enjoy Zeno’s tragicomic interior monologue which includes some satirical nods to Freud – and looking back on it, I still dream of visiting Trieste sometime.

Egon Schiele, Harbor of Trieste, 1908

Ofschoon ik bitter weinig werk heb ik toch altijd een grote eerbied behouden voor de rustdag, die het leven in kleine periodes onderverdeelt en het zodoende dragelijker maakt.

In opdracht van zijn psychiater beschrijft Zeno Cosini, zakenman uit Triëst, zes episoden uit zijn leven. Hij analyseert “goudeerlijk” zijn handelingen, gevoelens en motieven. Zeno is kampioen in goede voornemens en kromme redeneringen. Al zijn plannen mislukken jammerlijk: hij slaagt er niet in te stoppen met roken, kiest onder vier zussen net diegene tot vrouw die hij niet wil, verliest door gecompliceerde leugens zijn minnares, drijft zijn zakenpartner tot wanhoop, volgt de verkeerde begrafenisstoet… Zeno is een antiheld, een schlemiel met sublieme zelfspot, een excentrieke hypochonder, maar hij vergoelijkt zijn fouten en zwakheden zó ontwapenend, dat je jezelf bij zowat elke pagina op een toegeeflijke glimlach betrapt.

Een tragikomische monologue intérieur met een satirische knipoog naar Freud.

La coscienza di Zeno = Zeno's Conscience = Confessions of Zeno = Zeno's Conscience, Italo Svevo

Zeno's Conscience, is a novel by Italian writer: Italo Svevo. The main character is Zeno Cosini, and the book is the fictional character's memoirs that he keeps at the insistence of his psychiatrist. Throughout the novel, we learn about his father, his business, his wife, and his tobacco habit. The novel was self-published in 1923.

The original English translation was published under the title Confessi

Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo

Zeno is a good-hearted comic anti-hero. Everything works against him and just about everything he does to improve himself makes things worse. “I have, and have always had, a strong impulse to become better; this is perhaps my greatest misfortune.”

We start off with a full chapter about him trying to quit smoking cigarettes. He keeps track of his “last cigarette” which must now number in the hundreds. “I explained to him [his doctor] that giving up three meals a

Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo

Zeno is a good-hearted comic anti-hero. Everything works against him and just about everything he does to improve himself makes things worse. “I have, and have always had, a strong impulse to become better; this is perhaps my greatest misfortune.”

We start off with a full chapter about him trying to quit smoking cigarettes. He keeps track of his “last cigarette” which must now number in the hundreds. “I explained to him [his doctor] that giving up three meals a day seemed to me nothing compared with the task of making a fresh resolution every moment not to smoke another cigarette…I was really suffering from my resolutions much more than from the cigarettes.”

The novel is structured as a diary published by his doctor who was psychoanalyzing him. Zeno kept the account as part of his therapy. Much of the novel takes place in Trieste in northern Italy around the time of WW I.

Now take his marriage. Zeno has an older friend, a businessman who takes him under his wing. The older man has three daughters of marriageable age. Zeno courts the two good-looking daughters and ignores the third one whom he considers ugly. Guess which daughter he marries? That’s how Zeno’s life goes.

Zeno goes into business with his brother-in-law, the man who married Zeno’s wife’s beautiful sister. Their business is wholesaling goods. Neither man has any aptitude for business and they mainly chase the secretary around. Luckily Zeno has a stream of inherited wealth coming in.

Zeno has an affair and he manages to develop a relationship where when he is with his wife, he wishes he were with his mistress, and vice-versa.

I’m sure his shrink considered him a challenging case. LOL

Now this is fascinating. The book was set about the time of WWI and it was published in Italy in 1923. Here’s a prescient passage from the very last paragraph in the book: “When all the poison gases are exhausted, a man, made like all other men of flesh and blood, will in the quiet of his room invent an explosive of such potency that all the explosives in existence will seem like harmless toys beside it.” Wow.

I thought it was a good read and I enjoyed it, as I did another one of the author’s novels, Emilio’s Carnival. My rating of 4 is a 4.5 for quality writing rounded down for being a bit overly lengthy and dragged out a bit in places. This book, Confessions of Zeno, is also translated into English as Zeno’s Conscience.

The author (1861-1928) was a relatively unknown writer even in Italy until James Joyce, who lived in Trieste for more than ten years, spoke highly of his work. [And, according to my GR friend Nick Grammos, Svevo helped out Joyce financially.] In fact, as we are told in the introduction to Emilio’s Carnival, Svevo himself was an important model for Leopold Bloom in Ulysses and Svevo’s red-blonde-haired wife inspired the character Anna Livia Plurabelle in Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake. After praise from Joyce, Svevo, who had given up writing, went on to write what some consider his masterpiece, Confessions of Zeno. (Others think Emilio’s Carnival is his best work.) Svevo was a pioneer of the psychological novel in Italy.

Photos of Trieste in the early 1900’s; top from gettyimages.com; second from alamy.com
The author on an Italian stamp from findyourstampsvalue.com

Zeno Zeno Zeno where do I begin!, life in Trieste was not going good was it, and you really did have some problems didn't you my dear old fellow, not only were attempts to cure your smoking sickness an utter disaster!, after being introduced to his daughters by Giovanni Malfenti you would end up with both a lovely wife in Augusta but also a desirable mistress in Carla, and not have true feelings for either one of them. And the reason?, you were in love with Augusta's sister Ada but she didn't fe Zeno Zeno Zeno where do I begin!, life in Trieste was not going good was it, and you really did have some problems didn't you my dear old fellow, not only were attempts to cure your smoking sickness an utter disaster!, after being introduced to his daughters by Giovanni Malfenti you would end up with both a lovely wife in Augusta but also a desirable mistress in Carla, and not have true feelings for either one of them. And the reason?, you were in love with Augusta's sister Ada but she didn't feel the same way about you, and would end up being charmed by Guido while he played the violin and they would go on and tie the knot. Another issue was Guido who you secretly despised for winning over Ada, would become your business partner where things did not exactly go according to plan, after financial difficulties Guido would take drastic measures that would leave you in limbo. Your psychoanalyst thinks your memoirs are a good source of therapy and would help with your neuroses, what would he know!. Looking back on the events concerning the death of your father, marriage, career and the feeble way in which you tried to give up smoking because you just could not resist that so called last cigarette it was a complete joy reading about your history, and Italo Svevo has done a wonderful job in telling your tale, with exquisite writing and some memorable moments that were most charming and often humorous. Ok I have to admit it felt like trying to tame a wild horse at first, but with time and patience things were soon pacified and I had a great reading experience. Sadly What I had hoped would be an inspiration for me in my own desperate attempts to ditch the coffin nails things could be better, but at least having my head buried in the pages of a book is one way to at least cut down!. Now where did I leave that ashtray?. ...more

The Zeno Consciousness is the last of the three novels written by Italo Svevo. It was published in 1923 and finally brought fame to its author thanks to the support of writers like Valery Larbaud and James Joyce. The latter knew Italo Svevo in 1907 during a stay in Trieste, where Svevo (whose real name was Ettore Schmitz) was his pupil and friend. Joyce made, a few years later, one of the models of the character Leopold Bloom in his novel Ulysses.
Zeno's consciousness is one of the first novels The Zeno Consciousness is the last of the three novels written by Italo Svevo. It was published in 1923 and finally brought fame to its author thanks to the support of writers like Valery Larbaud and James Joyce. The latter knew Italo Svevo in 1907 during a stay in Trieste, where Svevo (whose real name was Ettore Schmitz) was his pupil and friend. Joyce made, a few years later, one of the models of the character Leopold Bloom in his novel Ulysses.
Zeno's consciousness is one of the first novels to talk about psychoanalysis. Svevo even makes the spring of the book since it is under the command of his psychoanalyst that Zeno, the narrator, undertakes to write down (hum) a few years of his life. So even if it is not strictly speaking the story of psychoanalysis, we can consider it close. But this is not the only interest of the book: full of finesse and naivety at the same time, this character of Zeno is a formidable storyteller of his own life. His entourage and the society in which he evolves in this city, Trieste, are a crossroads of European commerce of the time and a town whose decline is near. ...more

Many books are famous for one thing – what’s the first thing anyone thinks of when remembering Proust’s 3000 page masterpiece? Oh yes, that’s the one where the guy dunks a madeleine in his tea. What about the 1000 page Don Quixote? Yeah, old crazy guy fights with a windmill. And Shakespeare’s masterpiece Hamlet? Oh, wait, I got this – to be or not to be. This goes for music too – what do people think of when they think of Beethoven? Da da da DAAH.

So sometimes Zeno’s Conscience is remembered as

I love this novel so much!

The main character is not particularly likeable, and the plot is as dull as a regular neurotic life confession can be, so what is there to love, really?

It is the perfect mix of self-delusion and honesty that is the curse of most people who try to think and reflect on their actions and habits, only to be tricked by their thoughts and habits over and over again. Do we own our thoughts, or do they own us? Hard to tell, I think (and my thoughts immediately pick up on that a

Triest in Trieste

An amazing tour de force of sustained irony, sending up everything from male feelings of superiority to psychoanalysis.

It is, I suppose, never easy being a successful businessman; or for that matter even an unsuccessful one. Dealing with the vagaries of commercial life on top of the usual quanta of personal tensions is bound to produce certain idiosyncrasies and, well, 'tics' in a person of taste and discernment. Just look at Donald Trump.

What better way to expiate these little

Best book ever about quitting smoking! Absolutely brilliant prose and excellent characters!

i never read something boring like this before doesn't have any subject or story on it just wasting your time i never read something boring like this before doesn't have any subject or story on it just wasting your time ...more

Zeno’s Conscience is fantastic. It’s also very strange. The first and third chapters are ferociously funny, some of the funniest prose I’ve ever read—if nothing else, the casual reader could fly through the first chapter, which hilariously dissects the protagonists addiction to cigarettes and his countless attempts to quit. Yet there’s an intense sadness and despair in other places. (It’s been said that Zeno is almost a prototype for Woody Allen’s cinematic schlemiel persona. I would add that th Zeno’s Conscience is fantastic. It’s also very strange. The first and third chapters are ferociously funny, some of the funniest prose I’ve ever read—if nothing else, the casual reader could fly through the first chapter, which hilariously dissects the protagonists addiction to cigarettes and his countless attempts to quit. Yet there’s an intense sadness and despair in other places. (It’s been said that Zeno is almost a prototype for Woody Allen’s cinematic schlemiel persona. I would add that there’s a healthy dose of “Interiors” amongst the “Sleeper” slapstick and “Manhattan” angst.) The pacing is also uneven. There is no plot to speak of and therefore no thrust—after the first three chapters, the book seems to slow down almost to a crawl. However, what keeps you going in spite of this aimlessness is both the humor and the psychological insight into the characters.

What makes this book so psychologically profound is that rather than just revealing the minutiae of how we behave, with precision that reminds one of the accomplishments of authors like Tolstoy or Chekhov, Svevo goes further and shows how these behaviors are concealed and interpreted by people. The book is told in first-person narration but by taking the form of confessions to a psycho-analyst, the accuracy of the biography falters and the text becomes riddled with lies.

These aren’t just your ordinary, bold-faced lies. These are the subtle, familiar lies, the lies we tell ourselves to feel better about who we are, to justify our actions, to give us the confidence to go through things for which we wouldn’t ordinarily have the strength, to convince ourselves we feel the opposite of how we really feel. And while Zeno admits to lying quite often, he also does not realize that he’s lying more than he thinks he is. He can’t help it. He is a weak, weak character constantly thwarted by his lack of will and curious inclination to self-sabotage—in everything he attempts to do, he almost always achieves the opposite result, not because of outside influences but because of his very own actions. Yet despite Zeno’s farcical extremes, he appears simultaneously as a very real person. Who hasn’t visualized goals to the point where they seem somehow already accomplished yet fails miserably to achieve them in the face of reality? And who wouldn’t try to protect his ego from a constant assault of failures and unrequited desires by fudging the truth slightly? Zeno is a petty, neurotic bourgeois idiot but his foibles are familiar.

I would say that this book should be more popular—but actually it is. In Italy, this book is required reading in some schools. Yet the unorthodox genre, lack of plot, and length are legitimate obstacles to a more widespread audience. If Svevo had trimmed about a hundred pages from the latter half of the book, his masterpiece now might be as popular and well-known in America as Ulysses, whose main character, Leopold Bloom, was perhaps inspired by a certain Italian Jew whom Joyce tutored while visiting the Austrian town of Trieste.

Those last two conjectures can be left to the Svevo scholars. For the readers, there are the comic pleasures and unsettling truths of Zeno’s Conscience.

Difficult to assign points to a book which I wanted to throw away most of the time I was reading it and ended up greatly admiring. It is the narrative of the life of a man living in Trieste at the end of the 19th century and the tumultuous beginning of the 20th. He presents us with all of the details of his foibles, bad decisions and excuses for himself. We meet his father, his wife and her family, and his friends and acquaintances. Often the story moves slowly as we watch the protagonist agoniz Difficult to assign points to a book which I wanted to throw away most of the time I was reading it and ended up greatly admiring. It is the narrative of the life of a man living in Trieste at the end of the 19th century and the tumultuous beginning of the 20th. He presents us with all of the details of his foibles, bad decisions and excuses for himself. We meet his father, his wife and her family, and his friends and acquaintances. Often the story moves slowly as we watch the protagonist agonize over simple decisions and, almost inevitably, make a hurried, rash decision. Often these decisions are quickly discarded. Other times, the action moves on quickly, out of the protagonist's control. He, along with the reader, must suffer the consequences,

I did not find it easy to read this book. Italo Svevo has given us a character in his protagonist, Zeno, who is often erratic, detestable and self centred. It would be nice to be able to say that Zeno is, despite his faults, still loveable. I greatly disliked this character. His first person narrative was that of a person whom I would not like to know. I often put the book aside… but I always came back to it. Despite all of my frustrations, I needed to discover what the outcome of Zeno’s dishonesty, muddled thinking, self centredness, selfishness, manipulating, rationalizing and irresponsibility would be. The ending is at once surprising and consistent with the character. Zeno manages to redeem himself.

I enjoyed the pastiche of psychoanalysis which was extremely popular at the time this book was published in 1923. There is also a great deal of social commentary and a wonderful sense of Trieste before the Great War. The writing is wonderful and I am really impressed with the translation.

“Life is neither ugly nor beautiful, but it’s original.” p. 330

Original. That could be the best word to describe this book. Odd. Oddly daring. Frustrating. Frustratingly candid. Funny and poignantly sad also come to mind.

Published in Italy in 1923 when Svevo was 62 years old. It tells the perspective of aging Zeno who has numerous issues at hand. He tries to give up smoking, tries to deal with his father’s death, talks most unflattering about his marriage and his mistress and the sad business ve

A Great Novel Of Trieste

The philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah's recent book "The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity" led me to Italo Svevo's modernist novel of 1923, "Zeno's Conscience". Appiah's book examines various concepts of personal identity that shape individuals' views of themselves and others, including religion, country, color, class, and culture. Appiah argues that individuals tend to take a too narrow, rigid view of their identities and urges the rethinking and broadening of identity

This book took me an obscene amount of time to finish. I am tempted to rattle off excuses, my various ineptitudes and the inumerable distractions that kept the book on the floor so many days. But I won't. They are unworthy of the time it would take to type them.

I read the first three sections of this book quickly (compared to the hobbling-with-cane rate I read the rest). Zeno Cosini's neuroticisms about cigarettes, love, and women were highly amusing. The chapter about his father's death was to

I knew zeta about this author or his book until very recently when I saw its’ title on a site involved with world literature.

Generally, when I finish a book I look for a quick online biography of its’ author. It was written by a businessman who, with his own money, self-published it in Italy in the early part of the twentieth century.

It was received scanty but the demand for the work increased when his friend, a Mr. James Joyce, affixed it with his imprimatur.

‘Zeno’s’ is a well written fiction a

It required more concentration than I'm used to giving a book--the wit was densely packed into each sentence and took some un-packing to appreciate. I enjoyed making the effort. It struck me as some maniacal blend of David Sedaris and Dostoevsky. It required more concentration than I'm used to giving a book--the wit was densely packed into each sentence and took some un-packing to appreciate. I enjoyed making the effort. It struck me as some maniacal blend of David Sedaris and Dostoevsky. ...more

Zeno's Conscience became an immediate favorite of mine. Zeno is witty, self-deprecating, sly, ironically ignorant of himself, but at glimpses he is a man of self-reflecting genius. Zeno and Leopold Bloom share their origins in Svevo himself, and the classical "everyman" is well-crafted in both of them, in Zeno in particular is the "lovable fool" which seems to have a tradition in Italian modern literature (notably Calvino's Marcovaldo and Palomar). The novel's premise is the self-narrated story Zeno's Conscience became an immediate favorite of mine. Zeno is witty, self-deprecating, sly, ironically ignorant of himself, but at glimpses he is a man of self-reflecting genius. Zeno and Leopold Bloom share their origins in Svevo himself, and the classical "everyman" is well-crafted in both of them, in Zeno in particular is the "lovable fool" which seems to have a tradition in Italian modern literature (notably Calvino's Marcovaldo and Palomar). The novel's premise is the self-narrated story of a man who has submitted himself to Freudian psychoanalysis in hopes to snapping his addiction to cigarettes. Each chapter, which are laid out in a vaguely linear way through Zeno's life, navigates a particular facet of his life: his addiction to cigarettes, his relationship with his father, his romantic pursuit of his wife (following the cumulative failed pursuits of her two sisters), his difficulties in business, and his experience with his hack-psychologist. The narrative is tirelessly funny in an ironical and quirky way: the character of Zeno is shamelessly himself, falling only under the reign of his own misguided systems of logic and reason, and doggedly defending them throughout. He is a peculiar man, fixated with strange notions of the importance of dates, the significance of signs and letters/names, in fact he is strangely and uniquely superstitious in the Western canon of protagonists. Furthermore, he is almost too human in his contradictions and short-comings. He is at once ironically ignorant of himself, and at turns lambently insightful:

Now that I am here, analyzing myself, I am seized by a suspicion: Did I perhaps love cigarettes so much because they enabled me to blame them for my clumsiness? Who knows? If I had stopped smoking would I have become the strong, ideal man I expected to be? Perhaps it was this suspicion that bound me to my habit, for it is comfortable to live in the belief that you are great, though your greatness is latent.

The name Zeno itself is likely the heir of Zeno of Elea, whose paradoxes are famous for their reduction of motion to absurdity. What are the Confessions of Zeno if not a lesson in absurdity? A lesson in the futility and illusion of motion and progress? We see Zeno as a young man, as a suitor, as a businessman, as a father, as a son, and always he is the same, he is immutable in his consistence of absurdity. Consider Zeno's paradox of the arrow: it must always reach the halfway between A and B before it can reach its destination, but there will always be a midpoint that must be reach ad infinitum: therefore it will never reach point B. Of course this is absurd: observing the real world, we know that an arrow shot from point A will reach a point B in a fraction of a second. However, this absurd and paradoxical logic is the premise of the character of Zeno:

If I didn’t go ahead, it was because of some doubts about myself. I was waiting to become nobler, stronger, worthier of my divine maiden. That could happen any day. Why not wait?

Despite the drama and difficulties of Zeno's story, he acknowledges in part his own fault, his tireless search, not for the traditional "meaning" in life, but rather the frivolous adventure:

Nothing new had happened to me. I sincerely believe that I have always needed adventure, or some complication resembling it.

Because the novel is written in the present, looking back on the past, the dimension of time is especially significant to Zeno, and it colors all of his recollections. He acknowledges, in a glimmer of truth, the play of time on fact and creation, how time mediates reality into episodes which are as true as they are fiction: the difference between which time makes insignificant. If you convince yourself that something happened in the past, if you are thorough and consistent in your belief of this illusion of the past: is it any different to you than if it actually happened? Following Hamlet's adage of "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" this is precisely the case. Zeno admits, or lies, at the end of the novel that many of the events of his personal account have been fabricated, embellished, omitted, or otherwise altered, but asserts that they have the same colors, scents, sense of reality as living things, as real memories; that he knows they are fabulous is irrelevant because the reality he has assigned them makes them as close to reality as the blurry shades and shapes of his own kaleidoscopic memories.

For months and months that hope supported me and animated me. Didn't it mean producing, through vital memory, in full winter the roses of May? The doctor himself guaranteed that the memory would be vivid and complete, such that it would amount to an extra day in my life. The roses would have all their scent and perhaps also their thorns.
Thus, after pursuing those images, I overtook them. Now I know that I invented them. But inventing is a creation, not a lie. Mine were inventions like those of a fever, which walk around the room so that you can see them from every side, and then they touch you. They had the solidity, the color, the insolence of living things. Thanks to my desire, I projected the images, which were only in my brain, into the space where I was looking, a space whose air I could sense, and its light, and even the blunt corners that were never lacking in any space through which I passed.

It is a poignant and funny novel. Zeno is self-centred and neurotic narrator. He is not extremely successful in any of his endeavours, but he does not lose his heart. His sense of humour is self-deprecating. It reminded me Woody Allen or Gary Shteyngart. The novel is overall feels remarkably fresh for a book written 100 years ago. But it also recreates the epoch and the sense of place quite well. There were episodes when it made me laugh loud. Some younger modern and sensitive readers might find It is a poignant and funny novel. Zeno is self-centred and neurotic narrator. He is not extremely successful in any of his endeavours, but he does not lose his heart. His sense of humour is self-deprecating. It reminded me Woody Allen or Gary Shteyngart. The novel is overall feels remarkably fresh for a book written 100 years ago. But it also recreates the epoch and the sense of place quite well. There were episodes when it made me laugh loud. Some younger modern and sensitive readers might find some comments misogynistic. But, imho, they are lighthearted and do not mean to harm.

I enjoyed being in the company of Zeno.

One side of me sees this autobiographical novel as a vivid, dense and well written slice of life, but the other side sees it as a rambling and convoluted novel centered around a self-important narcissist...

Just now the latter seems to clarify my current feelings towards this novel, but I get the feeling I will come back to this when I'm older, simply because it is a novel about one man's recollections of his life. Again, however, Italo Svevo writes some fine sentences.

http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/1448697...

Of course there was much less to read back in the time of James Joyce when he claimed this novel a masterpiece. I suppose its thoughtful cleverness and neuroticism sufficiently entertained this literary icon. But its subject was to provide only a guarded level of interest enough to sustain my own reading for nearly half of it. The opening psychoanalytical concept presented as a doctor’s orders for Zeno to write his memoirs as a form of therapy, and the ope

Neurotic Nineteenth Century Nerd Tells All !

While doubting Freudian psychology and its techniques, Svevo creates a psychological tour de force in which his main character, Zeno Cossini, reveals his thoughts and life over many years, from the 1870s up to the middle of WW I. Set in Trieste, then a prosperous Austro-Hungarian port, the novel traces Zeno through his "own" writing, from childhood to late middle age. We learn of his childhood behavior and his weaknesses (especially his inability to st

Italo Svevo (1861-1928) was Jewish businessman and part-time writer who lived virtually his entire life in Trieste. At one point, he engaged James Joyce as an English tutor. Joyce was impressed with the Conscience of Zeno which he rescued from obscurity by using his contacts in Paris to have the book published in a France. The success in France led to an English translation being released and a successful relaunch of the book in Italy.

La Conscience de Zeno is a charming and witty biography of Sv

This is a fascinating book which has a lot working against it (old views, old contexts lending themselves to some unfortunate views like sexism, light racism, etc) but, like an able dialectic, these only serve to augment this book's positives.

The story of Zeno and his battle with, essentially, himself and his litany of neurotic obsessions (and how this is reflected by and caused by and a cause of his external circumstances) is one that is uniquely, and enjoyably maddening. Though not always funn

I was completely taken aback by how funny this was. Recommendations from Jameses - Joyce and Woods - coupled with its lengthiness, led me to believe this book would be a heavy, somber, read. It's a joy, an encomium to the Everyman, a Walserian celebration of dorky, awkward neurotics who marry plain women when rebuffed by others, flail in business, and, leaning over their fathers' deathbeds, are slapped in the face. Occasionally, Svevo can tend to verbosity, dragging out a series of guilty recrim I was completely taken aback by how funny this was. Recommendations from Jameses - Joyce and Woods - coupled with its lengthiness, led me to believe this book would be a heavy, somber, read. It's a joy, an encomium to the Everyman, a Walserian celebration of dorky, awkward neurotics who marry plain women when rebuffed by others, flail in business, and, leaning over their fathers' deathbeds, are slapped in the face. Occasionally, Svevo can tend to verbosity, dragging out a series of guilty recriminations or comedy of errors well past the reader's attention span. But in these sketches - written for his despised psychoanalyst - a complicated, fulfilling portrait emerges, of a life lived in full, with infidelity, jealousy and angst; but also with simple love, a marriage that swells to fill its great possibilities, the achievements of an ordinary man, without airs but not without pride, taking pleasure in Trieste life before the shadow of the Great War (the book ends in 1915; a short closing chapter touches on the hostilities).

In some ways, the book this reminded me of most was Stoner, in its muted, careful speech, meticulously conveying the reader into the mind of its protagonist, whose veritude and comfortable presence is tangible in the book's prose.

I read Zeno's Conscience because I saw it on a 2002 list of the 100 greatest works of literature compiled by the Norwegian Book Clubs with the help of 100 authors from around the world and wanted to take a look at it. After a few pages, I was hooked. It purports to be a diary that was written for a psychiatrist, and which the psychiatrist has published for his own benefit rather than for the hero/narrator, Zeno Cosini, a well-to-do businessman of moderate talent in the city of Trieste, then unde I read Zeno's Conscience because I saw it on a 2002 list of the 100 greatest works of literature compiled by the Norwegian Book Clubs with the help of 100 authors from around the world and wanted to take a look at it. After a few pages, I was hooked. It purports to be a diary that was written for a psychiatrist, and which the psychiatrist has published for his own benefit rather than for the hero/narrator, Zeno Cosini, a well-to-do businessman of moderate talent in the city of Trieste, then under Austro-Hungarian control.

What is it that I immediately loved about this novel? One could look in vain for something to quote, so it is obviously not its style that appeals to me. Perhaps it is Zeno himself, and Italo Svevo's attitude toward him. In a word, Zeno is something of a nebbish. He is ineffective in business (but fortunately, the company he inherited from his father is under the competent management of a talented businessman named Olivi, who brooks no interference from the son and heir). He is a balding chain smoker. He falls in love with two daughters of a local businessman named Malfenti who reject his proposals -- and he winds up marrying the ugly one with a squint, Augusta, with whom he nonetheless falls increasingly in love.

In the meantime, the daughter he loved most, Ada, falls for one Guido Speier, who plays the violin better than Zeno, who speaks better Italian than Zeno, who looks better than Zeno. And, like a true nebbish, Zeno enters into a business partnership with him -- only to find out that his new brother-in-law is an incompetent dreamer. He conducts an affair with a trophy secretary he hires (Zeno, too, has strayed from his Augusta). Eventually, he commits suicide.

One interesting thing about Zeno is that he has some problem going to funerals. He misses the funeral of his father, of his best friend, and of his brother-in-law Guido. During the course of her marriage with Guido, Ada has lost much of her looks due to illness; and Zeno marvels at it all.

I ask again: What is it that I love about this novel? I don't seem to be any closer to giving an answer. Perhaps I see in it an emotional nakedness -- a personification of Shakespeare's speech by King Richard II

Nor I nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing.

Much is made of the friendship between Svevo and James Joyce, and there is little doubt that Svevo's career was made by that friendship. (And it is said that, furthermore, Svevo was the original for Leopold Bloom in Ulysses.) But until Italo Svevo and his Zeno Cosini came along, there wasn't anyone in fiction that I really recognized as being a person who could walk off the page and actually exist. Zeno is not merely a literary construct, shored up with a sense of style. I feel as if I could run into him tomorrow and be somewhat annoyed by his endlessly puffing a cigarette, only to fall under his spell, as I fell under Svevo's spell.

Someone needs to do a gigantic public service announcement and then create a computer virus that will delete all the sentences grouping this together with Ulysses and Proust and Woolf, all of whom are chiefly known for their formalism and prose.

This is Sterne in the late nineteenth century, no more, except with workmanlike prose, rather than Sterne's endlessly propulsive rush of words. The chapters go on for far too long, and although they're quite funny, that's really about all there is to it.

Is death the cure for life or is it merely an incurable disease?

May 31, 2020 Uhtred rated it really liked it

Zeno's Conscience is certainly the most known novel by Italo Svevo from Trieste, whose real name was Aron Hector Schmitz. He was not a very prolific author, since he wrote three or four novels in addition to many short stories, but if one reads it, one does not forget it.
Zeno's Conscience is the story of this trader from Trieste, who begins to write his autobiography pushed by his psychoanalyst, the mysterious doctor S, to whom Zeno has turned to quit smoking. Doctor S says verbatim to Zeno: "Wr Zeno's Conscience is certainly the most known novel by Italo Svevo from Trieste, whose real name was Aron Hector Schmitz. He was not a very prolific author, since he wrote three or four novels in addition to many short stories, but if one reads it, one does not forget it.
Zeno's Conscience is the story of this trader from Trieste, who begins to write his autobiography pushed by his psychoanalyst, the mysterious doctor S, to whom Zeno has turned to quit smoking. Doctor S says verbatim to Zeno: "Write, write, and you will see that you will come to see yourself as a whole" as if writing is the most effective tool for digging yourself in. Page after page, mixing truths and lies, Zeno relives the most important moments of his life: he tells us about the smoke of the countless "last cigarettes" of which he had even kept a record, which was followed by many other "last" cigarettes, in a vicious circle that real smokers know very well. In his life, Zeno has set many other good intentions, but has always been unable to maintain them: he comes from a rich family and does not have a good relationship with his father: he knows it and this causes him discomfort, but he does nothing to change; halfway through the book Zeno plans to marry a beautiful woman but the project is not successful and Zeno falls back on the woman's sister; Zeno has a lover, who has more than anything else the purpose of not making him feel old, but this project also fails; in the workplace Zeno is mediocre, both in results and in behavior ... In short, the story of a loser, an anti-hero, today we would say an average-man, victim of his vices, a little envious, somewhat listless in the workplace. A man who in the end is likeable to us, because in the end he is a bit like us, each one with his vice. And the vice is one of the central points of this book, with the countless times that Zeno (and in the end we too) tried to get rid of it without success: how can we not recognize ourselves in him, with his vices and defects? How can we not ask ourselves questions about how much we look like Zeno? A little? A lot? Very very much? To each his own answer ……
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Aron Hector Schmitz, better known by the pseudonym Italo Svevo was an Italian writer, businessman, novelist, playwright, and short story writer.

A close friend of Irish novelist and poet James Joyce, Svevo was considered a pioneer of the psychological novel in Italy and is best known for his classic modernist novel La coscienza di Zeno (1923), a work that had a profound effect on the movement.

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