Italo Svevo (19 December, 1861-13 September, 1928) was the pseudonym of an Italian novelist and businessman. Mr. Svevo is a pioneer of the Italian psychological novel.
Fun Facts about Italo Svevo:
1. Aron Hector Schmitz was born under the flag of the Austrian Empire in Trieste, as one of seven children to a Jewish German father and an Italian mother. As a young man, he always enjoyed works of literature from Goethe to Shakespeare and everything in between.
2. At the end of World War I, the residents of Trieste found themselves to be residents of Italy, luckily he spoke Italian as well.
3. The future author and his brothers were sent to a boarding school near Salzburg due to their German heritage. They learned fluent German and were back to Trieste in 1880. He continued his studies but was forced to get a job when his father’s once successful glassware business failed.
4 For the next 20 years, he worked as a bank clerk in Unionbank of Vienna. While working there he contributed to socialist publications, began writing unfinished plays and worked in his first novel A Life (Una vita, published in 1887). This is when he took on his nom de plum -Italo Svevo (Italus the Swabian).
5. He was ahead of his time by advocating for the creation of a Euro-centric economic union after World War I ended.
6. In 1896, Italo Svevo married Livia Veneziani, his cousin, in a civil ceremony. Soon after, his wife convinced him to convert to Catholicism and get married in a religious ceremony. Nevertheless, Italo Svevo considered himself an atheist.
7. His father-in-law, took him in as a partner in his paint business, making industrial paint used on warships. He grew the business and even set up a branch in England.
8. His 1923 book, Zeno’s Conscience (La coscienza di Zeno) is a fictional memoir of Zeno who wrote it on behalf of his doctor to help analyze him. Zeno is an unreliable narrator and the diary, published by his doctor is supposedly full of lies (as the doctor claims in the introduction). The book is Italo Svevo’s most known work.
9. Ital Svevo’s health declined rapidly after a serious car crash. He knew he was dying and asked for a cigarette from a visitor, but was refused.
10. Italo Svevo was recognized as a rare writing talent later in his life. Today he is recognized I as one of the most important and influential figures in 20th Italian literature. His hometown of Trieste has a put up a statue in his honor.
Zohar — Man of la Book
*Amazon links point to an affiliate account
Sources:
Italo Svevo | Wikipedia
Italo Svevo | Italian Novelist, Poet & Playwright | Britannica
