by Umberto Saba
Much of the dialogue in the early chapters of Ernesto is in Triestino, the local speech of Trieste and the adjacent Friuli section of Italy—a dialect so remote in sound and orthography from the standard language that it is in essence a foreign language to other Italians.
After opening the novel with such a dialogue, Saba characteristically and parenthetically pauses to tell his Italian readers that he has modified that dialogue and all that follows it in the hope that potential readers will be able to translate them on their own.
The Triestine dialect, like all Italian regional dialects in the late nineteenth century, was not a matter of a peculiar accent, a lengthened vowel, or a dropped consonant, which perhaps could be imitated in a target language. It was not jargon or street slang. It was the language of all of the city’s residents. Italo Svevo, Trieste’s other great writer, was heavily criticized and, in fact, not taken seriously by the Italian literary establishment because of the Triestine influences they discerned in his Italian. And no wonder, he spoke it every day. While unschooled Triestinos spoke only dialect, our fictional Ernesto and his friends and family, like Saba’s and Svevo’s friends and family, and even Svevo’s English teacher, James Joyce, and his family, used Triestino—at least to buy food.
Most of the conversations in dialect in Ernesto take place between Ernesto and the characters who move the sexual elements of the story forward. These dialogues tend to be lengthy, tension-laden, and emotional for both the characters and the reader. But even as they are taking place, the seventy-year-old narrator, Umberto Saba, is filling his readers’ heads with analysis and commentary in Italian. Italian readers experience an extraordinary flow in and out of dialect—in and out of Ernesto’s and Saba’s minds. Sadly, there is no English-language dialect—at least none that I could find (or invent)—that could function as the Triestine does in Ernesto. Absent the availability of such a dialect, I have tried to reproduce this essential interplay of voices in English in a compelling and coherent way.
—ESTELLE GILSON
ERNESTO’S LETTER TO TULLIO MOGNO
Trieste, September 22, 1899
Dear Sir Professor!
Forgive me for taking the liberty of writing to you without the honor of your acquaintance. But Signor Saba read me your wonderful essay on the poetry you say I’ll write when I’m grown up. Of course, I was amazed and delighted to know that I’ll create such beautiful works and find so many rhymes, which seems completely impossible to me today. Yet at the same time your words saddened me so profoundly that I began crying as if I were ten years old, not sixteen, going on seventeen.
If you want to know what made me cry—it’s because your essay convinced me that I’ll never become either the head clerk of a colonial trading company, or a concert violinist, but that it’s my fate to become a poet. You can’t have any idea of how miserable that made me, especially because of my violin, which I decided to give up immediately after Signor Saba read me your essay. I kissed it goodbye, feeling extremely sad, and thought of myself as the dying Faust. “Farewell, great dreams of glory!” Because, you see, even if a poet achieves glory, it has no personal effect on him, as it does with concert violinists (such as Kubelík) who when they perform in public evoke such cheers and applause that they have to bow an infinite number of times to acknowledge their admirers. I also learned from your essay that only a few people will appreciate my poems, and even that would happen late, when I’d be as old as my uncle Giovanni—who is also my guardian—is now.
Unfortunately, even with Signor Saba’s explanations, I didn’t understand everything that you say about me and about the poetry I’ll write someday. As to the poets who, if I understood you correctly, you say will be my teachers, so far I’ve only read Leopardi. And to tell the truth, just one of his poems, “Saturday Evening in the Village,” which was in the reader we used when I was going to high school (right now I am—or rather I was—a clerk in a business firm that has nothing to do with colonial trade). I had to learn it by memory and recited it in class, hesitating only twice, so I think I did very well. But all the boys laughed at me and at the way I spoke the lines. However, although the teacher didn’t like me very much, he not only admired my reading but punished a boy who’d been laughing in a really nasty way, and who—the idiot!—tried to get even by announcing that he’d be waiting for me after school. There were two tragedies in that reader too. Aristodemo by Vincenzo Monti and Adelchi by Alessandro Manzoni, and I read them both, partly because I had to and partly for pleasure. I don’t know anything about Alfieri yet, except some lines my uncle Giovanni recites after having dinner. If you only knew what Uncle Giovanni’s like! Not really a bad person (he gives me a fiorino every week) but crazy—crazy enough to be locked up somewhere. Which is why I have to tell you, dear sir professor, that I’m a Socialist. And Uncle Giovanni can’t stand Socialists. Luckily he’s married and only has dinner with us once a week. It’s after dinner that these discussions usually come up and my uncle gets mad enough to threaten to hit me. (Once he actually did it, and of course, the issue was Socialism, but my mother fainted, so he never tried it again.) He accused me of being a person without a nationality, which isn’t true, because I love Italy and one of my biggest dreams is to die in a war against Austria, just so Trieste would become an Italian city. But my uncle, who since his youth was a supporter of Garibaldi, can’t stand hearing talk about Socialism. You, sir professor, what do you think of Socialism? I’d very much like to know your view on the subject. I can tell you that I tried to read Karl Marx’s Capital but got pretty bored, probably because I was still too young to understand a work of such depth. But I read a Socialist newspaper, The Worker, every day and like it very much. The Worker maintains that if Garibaldi were alive today, he would be a Socialist. As for me, I’ll just say again that I don’t know what to think, and that I don’t have anyone to advise me. There’s Signor Saba, but he’s very old and doesn’t like talking about politics, at least with me.
To get back to poetry, I’ll tell you that though I never dreamed of becoming a poet, I’ve already written a few poems. The last one was a year ago, and although I remember the whole thing (it was very long—more than two pages), I’d be afraid of boring you. It begins like this:
Oh, little room, my little room
my companion in misery.
And ended with these two verses:
But the setting sun rose again
and everything was renewed by love
the tiny butterfly spread its wings
with startling power and ardor.
And I felt I was a child again
frolicking amid flowers and grass
everything was a toy for me
in the golden April of life. [1]
I’ve never read the poem to anyone, except to one of my cousins, whom my mother dislikes intensely. First he said that it couldn’t be mine. Then he admitted that maybe it was mine (I had to swear, for him to believe me) and that it was good, but only because it had difficult rhymes in it. He said that a poem is all the better for the more difficult rhymes it contains. I don’t know if you think so too. This is another issue on which I’d very much like to have your opinion, which is certainly more authoritative than that of my cousin, who’s still in school and is only three months older than me.
I told you above that I was or had been employed (as a salaried clerk in a Triestine firm) but that ended two days ago. I didn’t get along very well with my employer and suddenly, without my knowledge and without any real need, he hired another clerk. Worse, he told him to use half my desk. You have no idea how awful that kid was! So I dug up an excuse—that the boss was begrudging me the fare for the tram to Portofranco, which I traveled several times a day—wrote him a very insulting letter, and put in on his desk, after which he had no recourse but to fire me (it’s what I wanted). Even so, I could see that he was almost unhappy to let me go. He made a big scene of it, waving the letter in my face, saying I was crazy and rude, at the same time he was near
ly crying. Maybe he was waiting for me to apologize. Signor Saba, to whom I’d told the whole story because he’s writing a book about me, had great fun with it and immediately put it in the book. He’s telling everything about me in that book, even things one shouldn’t tell, but he swore that he’d never publish it, and that even when he finishes it, he’d only show it to two or three of his closest friends. Let’s hope: (1) that he never finishes the book; (2) that, if he does, he’ll keep his promise.
So now I’m free of the nuisance of going to work every day. And on top of that good luck, I found a friend (at least, I hope I have). He’s younger than I am (fifteen and a half), still has long hair, and wears short pants. I noticed him a few evenings ago at a concert by Ondříček, the violinist, and immediately figured that he was also studying the violin, was much better than I was, and was destined to become a really great concert artist. I would have liked to talk to him right there at the Philharmonic but couldn’t find him when the concert was over. Now see if this doesn’t say something about fate: I met him again the very next morning on the staircase to our violin teacher’s studio, who neither of us knew was the same for us both. We began talking immediately, and we’re going to meet this Sunday. Can you imagine, sir professor, that just like me, he prefers walking along Sant’Andrea, where no one ever goes, to the Barcola, which is always overcrowded? I feel as if I like him a lot already and hope he’ll like me. Meanwhile this morning, as soon as I woke, I told my mother (who’s been bringing me coffee in bed since the time I became sick with bad abdominal cramps) that I’d found a friend. My mother said I would have done better to find myself a job; you can imagine how unhappy that left me feeling.
My mother loves me but doesn’t understand me, and that’s another reason I liked the part of your essay where you talk about adolescents whom no one pays attention to, and who withdraw into a world of secret dreams. It’s a perfect portrait of me. Here, I’d wakened feeling great! Completely happy. Just before dawn I dreamed I was flying. I flew around my little room (the one in my poem) until I could almost touch the ceiling: It was so marvelously easy that I couldn’t understand why everyone wasn’t flying. And I said to Ilio (that’s my new friend’s name) that he should try flying too. In fact, a little later, he got up from his bed, which in my dream was next to mine, and suddenly we were both flying, right next to each other. I told my mother the dream, and all she did was shrug her shoulders. Just the same, I was happy, so happy that I jumped up on my bed as I was—that is, wearing only my nightshirt—and turned three somersaults for joy. My mother was furious—she said I was carrying on indecently for my age, and threatened that if I didn’t get back under the covers immediately, she’d get the carpet beater. “Oh Mama,” I said, “you never ever laid a hand on me, even when I was a baby, and you’re going to do it now, when I’m practically seventeen?”
A little later Signor Saba came to visit me, and I told him about my happy dream. He took hurried notes, so that he could put it in his book. He also told me that flying in a dream had a very precise meaning (he wouldn’t say what), but then I don’t believe that dreams have any meaning. And you, sir professor, do you believe in dreams?
Please excuse my chattering on like this, which probably didn’t do anything much except waste your precious time. (Even my mother tells me that I always talk too much.) Signor Saba is the only person who tells me I don’t talk enough. But I don’t know if he’s serious or teasing me.
Thank you again for your essay. I take it as a good omen and I forgive the fact that with it, you’ve deprived me of my illusion of becoming a great violinist. (In fact, I’d already figured that out myself.) I hope that Ilio (my new friend) becomes one instead. He and I will be going for a walk together the day after tomorrow, if he doesn’t forget. (I’m counting the minutes.) His achievements will compensate for my failure.
Very truly yours,
Ernesto
P.S. I don’t like to tell lies, or to hide anything from Signor Saba, but it may be best that you don’t tell him, at least for now, that I’ve written to you. But if you do tell him, please let me know. I would very much appreciate hearing back from you.
Second P.S. My friend’s name is really Emilio, but everyone at home calls him Ilio and we agreed that I can also call him that. I told you that I’m a little worried that he might not keep our date because, although he’s so young and still wears short pants (Signor Saba says his parents make him do it because of the cost of fabric), he already has a girlfriend whom he sees secretly. But he showed me her photo in confidence and promised to introduce me to her. He also promised to invite me to his house as soon as he memorizes a Chopin nocturne, transcribed for violin, which he’s studying on his own—our teacher doesn’t know. I figure he must be very good, since like me, he started studying fairly late (when he was thirteen) and he’s already playing the seventh position. Not like me! However, Signor Saba tells me that Ilio isn’t the kind of kid I think he is (he suspects that he’s a bit of a scoundrel). But he hasn’t stopped me from seeing him, because he knows it would be futile and he also thinks that the young people have to take their own chances as they go through life. Once again please excuse me.
It’s like with the poems you say I’ll write someday. Only it’s I who will have to write them, Signor Mogno, not you.
THE HISTORY OF SABA’S ERNESTO
THE NOVEL Ernesto was born in Villa Electra, the Roman clinic where Saba was living during the spring and summer of 1953. As though relieved by the lifting of a heavy burden, Saba confessed to his wife, Lina, in a letter dated May 30: “It was as if a dike had broken in me, and everything poured out all at once.” The metaphor of birth appeared again some weeks later (on June 20, though the letter was undated) when he wrote to his friend Bruno Pincherle: “The novel is heavy with maternity. I . . . had the distinct feeling of being pregnant while I was writing it.” While in the clinic, the poet-novelist read sections of it to his physician, Dr. Giovanni Bollea, and to his visitors, among them Carlo Levi (designated as one word, Carlolevi, in Saba’s vocabulary). From the letter to Lina, it appears that the first episode was complete and that its provisional title was Intimacy.
Dear Lina,
I wanted to write to you all week long, but I was absorbed in a work, which I’ll tell you about when I see you. I’ve finished the first part, which might even stand by itself. Everyone to whom I’ve read it, Linuccia, Carlolevi, Bollea, and a young man who is being treated here, say that it is the best thing I’ve ever written. [. . .] I tell about things that took place a very long time ago. (It’s the story of a boy who was sixteen years old in Trieste in 1898.) If I could go on with it (but to go on and complete the book, I would need two years of absolute peace, preferably here in the clinic), the book would be called Intimacy. Rêves! [. . .] My dream would be to stay here another year or year and a half—enough to finish the book in peace. [. . .] Today I should have begun the second episode but I didn’t do anything though I have the whole thing in my head, including some unusual and beguiling details. If I go on with the book, I would have to finish it, and where can I do that? It’s impossible in Trieste. I cannot go there, etc., etc.
However, while awaiting the University of Rome’s bestowal of his honoris causa degree on June 27, Saba was proceeding under full sail. To Lina, datable as June 22:
As you see, Linuccia lent me her typewriter so that I could work on my story. It could end at the first episode (which I finished), but it could also go on. In the first case, I would call it A Month. In the second, A Year. The whole thing is in my head but where to write it? I think that poor Ernesto (Ernesto is the protagonist of the story, he was a boy of sixteen in Trieste in 1898) will have to be limited to only one month of literary life. What I’ve written so far is so good, so enchantingly good, that two women (Bettina and Anita Corsini, to whom I’ve read only the third episode) were moved to tears—particularly Anita. Even here in the clinic, people know him and come by from time to time to ask me about him (whether h
e’s had his first shave, whether he’s been with women, etc., etc.).
How much Saba was taken to projecting his own adolescence onto the character of young Ernesto (like himself between fifteen and sixteen years old, child of a single mother, and one who has left school to work in a commercial firm) is revealed in the short thank-you speech he gave for the honoris causa degree—in which he evokes the voice of that uninhibited scoundrel by alluding to himself, Saba, as an enfant terrible and to a scholastic injustice he had suffered (a high-school teacher’s too severe judgment of his writings, belatedly described in the fourth episode of Ernesto). Saba’s report of this speech appears the following day (June 28) in a letter to Nora Baldi.
I’m sending you the draft (handwritten) copy of the little speech I wrote addressed to the rector and to Professor Sapegno. I can’t tell you why, but the little talk had an absolutely electrifying effect. Perhaps they were expecting something academic and somewhat boring. Instead, as you will see, Ernesto related an adolescent memory. [. . .] Ernesto, who is a good boy but who likes to tease, insisted that I insert a somewhat irreverent remark in the little talk, which would have—I have no doubt—pleased the students in the auditorium. He insisted so vehemently that I (who love him too much) was ready to do it. However, Linuccia disapproved in the strongest possible terms. [. . .] The remark would have been completely unjustified and even Ernesto, if he had known these people, would never have suggested it.