by Umberto Saba
Notwithstanding Saba’s triumph of prudence, a certain regret for not having been able to express himself in the essence of Ernesto’s voice in the midst of a university ceremony turns up in a June 30 letter to Pincherle:
Oh Lord, if instead of that speech, I had been able to read Ernesto (to all the authorities in the great hall, and to the others who were there, having been compelled to attend by the forces of law and order), I think they would all have been mad with joy, including the Magnificent Rector and Funaioli, he must be nearly eighty. Dear Bruno, people really need, urgently need, “to set themselves free,” that is, to liberate themselves from their inhibitions.
Some observations on the novel’s title: Intimacy was first considered after completion of the first episode (May 30). However, by late June, Saba had two time-related titles in mind: A Month (the time in which the first three episodes, including both the homosexual and heterosexual initiations, take place, and which concludes with the sentence: “And only one month had gone by”) and A Year, projecting ahead to Ernesto’s meeting with young Ilio, with whom he would form a “decisive friendship.” As Saba noted in letters to Lina and Pincherle on June 22 and 20, respectively: “The story could go on and become a novel. Instead of calling it A Month I could call it A Year. I have the whole thing in my head. But where to write it?”[1] But as the next letter to Pincherle makes clear, from that time on, the novel was referred to by its eponymous hero’s name, Ernesto.
Reluctantly back in Trieste, Saba suffers a myriad of psychological and situational problems. Linuccia, who remains in Rome, becomes the exclusive recipient of the work in progress, which he sends for her approval and which she must, if necessary, edit. On July 20, she receives the first “chapter” of the fourth episode (the arrival of Signor Wilder’s new apprentice) and the outline of the following part (Ernesto’s discovery of Trieste’s many beauties, just before his last meeting with the laborer).[2]
Trieste, July 20, 1953
My darling Linuccia,
I sent you a letter by express today. [. . .] It contains your copy of The Jews and the first chapter of the part of the fourth episode of Ernesto and a small check. So let me know the minute you get it. Forgive me. Please also make a small change in the typescript on the second page, I think. In place of: He dreamed (although he didn’t want to make a career of being a clerk, it was absolutely alien to him) etc.—write this: Although a clerking career had no appeal to him, in fact, he thoroughly disliked the idea of one, he also dreamed (the human heart has its mysteries) of becoming etc., etc. The reason for the change is between the parentheses (the human heart has, etc.).
I think that only you can appreciate this nuance. I’ve tried other variations, but they were too long or boring. [. . .] But will I finish Ernesto? It’s very unlikely considering that the least little thing could get me into such a state that I’m distracted from thinking of him. [. . .] I tremble at the thought.
Now, Ernesto, seated on the sacks in the cart on the way back from Portofranco, must discover that Trieste is a beautiful city, etc., etc.
From the material in our possession, the typescript of Ernesto’s discovery was already included with this letter. The letter therefore refers to a probably edited version preceding this one and lost to us.
Five days later, on July 25, the second section of the fourth episode appears. Saba, although filled with the premonition that he will never finish the book, nevertheless tries to presage the brief moment that we will find halfway through the future fifth episode: the encounter between the two boys, Ernesto and Ilio, and the woman with the pyramid hair.
Trieste, July 25, 1953
My darling Linuccia,
I’m tired. Undone, I can barely walk on my own two feet. [. . .] And worse, I have Ernesto, my Ernesto, who wants to come to life. I suffered fatigue and spasms (working from 4:30 until 9 in the morning) until I finished the second part of the fourth episode. I want to send it to you: but I must be CERTAIN of three things:
1) That neither you nor Carlo pass it around, or keep it in an unlocked container, and that the key remain in your hands.
2) That you do not let anyone read it except Carlo, and possibly Bettina: but not in her house. If she wants to read the first and second part, she has to do it at your house or Carlo’s.
3) That once it’s been read, you send it back to me.
If that’s all right with you, I’ll take on the work of recopying it and send it to you. That last “remark” “You’ve already forgotten what we used to do together and liked so much?” is the most difficult thing I’ve written. It tells of the sadness of things (particularly in this case), those that end at an age. If you don’t understand that last line, no one will.
And afterward? Will I ever finish it? There’s a sort of competition between my exhaustion and discomforts, etc. (I can’t work in the store because of the terrible stink of the drain; it’s certainly not an ideal retreat), and my terrible desire to have the completed book in your hands. (Still, at least another six months of work—and hard work.) No, I’ll never do it. There will be something (fatigue apart) that will cause Ernesto to remain unfinished. If you knew the episode I’m thinking of. . . . One day Ernesto and his young friend Ilio are walking downhill to go swimming in the sea. They encounter a young woman on the way. She wasn’t “beautiful”; her straw-colored hair was combed up (like a pyramid), her eyes were an indefinable color and slightly crossed. She wasn’t beautiful, she was something else. The two boys looked at her.
“You like her?” Ilio asked Ernesto in dialect.
“It’s the Trojan War,” Ernesto answered partly in dialect, partly in Italian. He was then reading Virgil for the first time and was enchanted by him. But his answer was a bit too loud.
The young woman, who heard only part of what he said and didn’t understand the praise, turned away indignantly.
Goodbye dear Linuccia, your poor
Papà
Ilio, who is about to enter the story, was not the boy Ernesto would have wanted to have but the boy he would have wanted to BE, and not the way he was in reality but as he saw him, believed he saw him that first time at Ondříček’s Philharmonic concert—still in short pants (to save money on fabric). Unhappy with his own family life, Ernesto imagines that the boy must be held extremely dear by his parents (cherished as a rose), but in reality, they only want to be free of him with all his pretenses. Poor little Ilio. Here lies the entire “tragedy,” which makes it difficult to go on without revealing the “psychology” within and behind the characters and departing from the little novel’s mischievous air (in no case serious). Ernesto’s identification with Ilio turns on the love both boys have for a girl, whose name I dare not say, a name and surname that would illuminate everything. Save this letter so that if I don’t get to finish the book, at least there will be a trace of it. (Ernesto loves that girl, but somewhat in the way Petrarch loved Madonna Laura; he feels that she can never be his wife [in fact, she marries Ilio]; that his wife would be someone else, whom he’ll vaguely refer to toward the end.)
In the second part of the fourth episode, there’s a kind of presentiment of Ilio (so that Ernesto could then love Ilio through identification): You’ll find it in connection with the boy who accepts an icy drink in The Thousand and One Nights.
Once again, your
Papà
I enjoyed creating the style of the episode I describe in this letter and I’m including it here. This could begin either the fifth or sixth episodes.
Ernesto and Ilio were going down the delightful Scorcola path. Although it was late, they wanted to swim in the sea.
A young tall woman with superb posture was coming up toward them. She wasn’t “beautiful”; she had straw-colored hair combed up on her head (like a pyramid), which made her seem even taller. Her eyes were an indefinable color and somewhat crossed. She wasn’t beautiful: she was “something else.” The boys looked at her and then at each other.
“You like her?” Ilio asked i
n dialect.
“She’s the Trojan war,” Ernesto answered, part in Italian, part in dialect. He was reading Virgil for the first time and was enchanted with it. But he spoke a little too loudly.
The woman with the regal posture heard something, but didn’t understand the praise and turned away indignantly. . . . “Rotten kids,” she murmured, rightly, to herself.
This is a very important letter: for one thing, it fully demonstrates Saba’s contradictory feelings and anxieties in connection with Ernesto. For another, it shows us how Saba worked, thoughtfully and hesitantly in regard to the deepest meanings of the book (not necessarily the most visible) and with projections and anticipatory passages. . . . In his letter, then, Saba is clearly warning of the danger of destroying the novel’s lightness with too explicit a psychological analysis of its characters, an inevitable risk if one strays too far from Ernesto’s adventures. Furthermore, even in his provisional plans there are already stylistic characteristics that will remain: in the section anticipating the future fifth episode, one can already see that his first attempts at stylization extend to the text of the manuscript and are incorporated in the continuum of the novel.
Trusting in the discretion of his daughter and Levi, on July 29 the writer sends the second chapter of the fourth episode with “conditions,” however neurotic, denoting his constant and vivid concerns about Ernesto, whose fate seems to Saba to be at continual risk, both in a material sense (he fears the manuscripts will get lost) or—and worse—in the sense of his continuing with the work (the adolescent autobiography can only be revived in Rome). Unhappy in Trieste, where he also fears prosecution, this letter also confirms Saba’s way of working: by sending partial copies to Linuccia, still in Rome, which are returned to him with changes, the entirety (recalling the letter of July 20) now marked directly on the copy that stays in Trieste.
Dear Linuccia,
I am sending you the second part of the fourth episode. Confirming our previous conditions, I ask you, I urgently plead with you, to send me a telegram as soon as you receive this. It’s enough to say, “I’ve got it,” and please forgive all these conditions—the last one of which is even expensive. Then send the manuscript back to me sealed tightly with tape.
Right now I don’t know if and when I will go on with Ernesto. The atmosphere here is death to my soul; no one wants to hear talk of it (not even Mama). If I try to bring it up, my listener (for example, Pincherle) changes the subject immediately. The truth is Ernesto was conceived in Trieste, but he cannot be resuscitated there. He can only be revived in Rome and in that room, in that clinic. If Carlo is in Rome, have him read that part. Bettina can read it too (along with the first, although here and there it’s been corrected to match your copy; in the end little things are EVERYTHING)—but as I told you, only at your house or at Carlo’s. Do not leave the manuscript in her hands.
The next letter of August 1 repeats his fears for Ernesto:
But will I ever finish it? A mere nothing could kill him, that is, a change in me, in the state of mind necessary for his development. And such a mere nothing could easily occur. It could come from the mail, from so many other things. I worked a little yesterday, but it’s becoming more and more difficult for me.
On August 5, a sheet of paper arrives in Rome. It contains changes “to be made immediately in the typescript” of the fourth part of the fourth episode (Signor Wilder’s rant when he receives Ernesto’s letter of resignation). The changes are a matter of two brief cuts and a comment in parenthesis—corrections completely recognizable in pencil or pen on the original in our possession. His daughter evidently had in her possession in Rome a copy of the manuscript on which she made the corrections, which she then brought back to Trieste toward the end of August, where Saba entered them into the other copy. (Unfortunately, Linuccia only kept a record of the parenthetical changes, not of the two cuts, when she transcribed her fair copy many years after her father’s death.[3])
The following days were a period of intense creativity for Saba, who on August 12 finished the fourth episode and asked his daughter to correct the mother’s last words (those about the solitude she endured when Ernesto, then an infant, was living in the country with his beloved nursemaid): he told her to make the changes on page 101 of the “second part,” which he had just sent her, one in pencil, one in ink, which coincide with page 101 of the typewritten copies in our possession.
Father’s and daughter’s handwriting can’t be differentiated. What’s important here is that Saba is now working with continuous numeration.[4]
This same letter contains a postscript filled with interesting information: we read of a more ambitious project that conflicts entirely with the original intention—that the brief novel would not venture into Saba’s “prehistory” (the years that precede the Poems of Adolescence and Youth in his Canzoniere [Songbook]). This way Ondříček’s concert, which eventually became the first part of the fifth episode, is now considered the last one of the fourth episode, anticipating a “second part” that would describe Ernesto’s discovery of his vocation as a poet, his friendship with Ilio, and both boys’ love for the same young woman. Caught up in the idea of a bildungsroman for a while Saba even imagined calling the book The Betrothed.
I don’t feel like beginning the last part of the fourth episode, Ondříček’s concert, etc. Because then how to face the second part (the birth of poetry, etc.). Things that are extremely difficult to do, all the more because Ernesto has to remain a youth. I’d need to be consoled, comforted, and loved through Ernesto, SERVED, but instead. . . .
Even if I succeeded (and it doesn’t depend on me) in winning the competition between Ernesto and disaster (from just the merest “nuisance”) or between Ernesto and death, I would need another six months of peace and absolute quiet to organize it, polish it, etc.; to turn it into something like Manzoni’s The Betrothed. You know there was a time I even considered calling the book The Betrothed instead of Ernesto, in which case, it would concentrate on the love affair between Ilio and that woman for whom I still don’t have a name. (I can’t use her real, precious name.) But . . . it would seem irreverent. Of course, this idea was a kind of joke to me. Ernesto must remain a short book, if not that rascal will kill the Songbook.
The momentum to go on with the work, with this continuing conflict in the background, lasted about two weeks. Linuccia, once more in Trieste with the latest manuscripts in her possession, tells Carlo Levi in advance about the material he will be receiving (August 24): “Papà will send you what he has written; it’s very good, but if you follow the direction he’s taking, you’ll see that it will be a very long novel with only two scabrous points: at the beginning and toward the end of the book.” And there’s an added comment on the paternal mood: “aggressive, overwhelming, and nasty, but working.”
On the same day, writing to his friend Nora Baldi, Saba even speaks of an ending with the death of Ilio. (“I can hardly wait to write about his death. [. . .] I want to create a monument to him.”) Ondříček’s concert is still part of the fourth episode, while the plan of the second and third sections of the fifth episode (the boys’ encounter with the woman with the pyramid hair, and their meeting on the staircase of the violin teacher’s studio, which would then be deferred) seems to fit in a thematic and chronological continuum, of which this is the only epistolary evidence:
Yesterday I worked all day to write three and a half pages which I’m including. They are the beginning of the fifth episode (they come right after Ondříček’s concert, with which I am still not satisfied). You have to keep in mind that a year passes between the first and second parts. This is something I have to make clear at the beginning of the second: one of the most difficult sections of the story. Then I’ll take up the evening swim at Sant’Andrea again and (now explain the importance of the woman with the pyramid hair) . . . the burning of Troy, that is, of a storehouse of timber with which the fifth episode ends. . . .
How can you ask me if I’ve gott
en to the death of Ilio? Don’t you understand that it will take at least a year? . . . Everything will be explained and accounted for with the death of Ilio and the revelation of Ernesto’s vocation. But meanwhile! Meanwhile I go around talking to myself the way Ernesto will talk to his shadow in the next-to-last section of the last episode . . .
Saba, however, is now physically and psychologically stressed: accessing autobiography ever-more deeply, which would now be required in order to write about Ernesto’s early life, disturbed him on two levels. He felt it was somehow an indiscretion to write about someone no longer alive, his friend the concert violinist Ugo Chiesa (Ilio in the book—his fiancée, Lucia Pitteri, would have been called Eugenia), who died at just twenty-eight years of age in 1913, and also because “it will kill” the themes of the Songbook. Thus on August 25 Linuccia writes to Levi: “Papà is working very hard and isn’t very mellow now. Maybe because he’s tired.” And on the same day Saba tells Pier Antonio Quarantotti Gambini that he doesn’t have “the strength to go on” and that he regrets not having ended the book “after the third episode (it would already have been complete).”
In this state of persistent despondency Saba managed, as usual, to solicit the concern of everyone in his small circle of friends and relatives. On August 28, Linuccia writes to Levi that “l’impasse is serious. Papà doesn’t work anymore and I’m afraid that he won’t begin again. It would be a disaster. He says that there’s a great difference in style between the first part (written in Rome) and the second.” Three days later she can give one of the reasons for the blockage. “Papà doesn’t want to go on with the book; he says that he can’t do it, that he can’t speak about Ilio and wants to cut it short. And that would be a double disaster: First, because an incomplete book would be awful; second, because he will have a worse breakdown than ever.” On the same day, August 28, Saba presents his reasons more clearly in a letter to Nora Baldi: the first three episodes of the book are too compact. Too many foreign elements (taken from his own biography, that have and don’t have anything to do with Ernesto) have been inserted in the plot and already been removed; in the episode about the concert, too many authorial comments weigh down Ilio’s appearance, which “should be described only, or almost only as Ernesto sees him that evening, without all those parentheses that describe the contrast between Ernesto’s illusions about Ilio, and the boy’s reality. Ilio, himself, should appear after and not before this.” (This he didn’t do: the passage describing the concert was filled with authorial information in parentheses, among other reasons, because Saba had interrupted the work, unable to develop the depth of Ilio’s character.)