Garden of the Finzi-Continis

I (and Rhys, as I know from a comment on Harriet's recent post on translation) have been reading Giorgio Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.  Bassani is famous for this novel, and also for discovering and publishing Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo - which I've named in Italian, rather than calling it The Leopard, because I like the word so much!  I don't know why it should be, but I enjoy a number of Italian writers - Primo Levi, Italo Calvino among them - rather more than I do, say, French.  No doubt this is my loss! The book came up in Rhys' comment because the translation was 'clunky', a criticism I certainly wouldn't make about mine.  Own up, Rhys, are we reading the same one!? 

I'm reading it in the new Penguin Classics edition, very smart in their silver livery, translated by Jamie McKendrick: this elegant book is complemented by a cover photograph of a girl in summer, drink and racquet in hand, oozing the restrained and demure eroticism which pervades the early chapters.

It's a beautifully written novel about Jews in Ferrara during the Mussolini years, the young boy growing up concious of the Finzi-Continis as slightly apart due to their wealth, but also to an ironic detachment of the soul.  But he grows close to Micol, the young girl, at tennis parties in the garden when the racial laws were beginning to make it difficult for Jews to participate fully elsewhere in society.  But before he declares his burgeoning love, Micol goes away.

She returns, but in his passion, he is uncertain, clumsy, and makes all the mistakes of adolescence - and enjoys the tortures of rejection and betrayal - under the lengthening shadows of political chaos.  He is banished by Micol, who is banished eternally by being transported to Germany with her family, and "no one knows if they have any grave at all".  We learned this right at the beginning, so the sunshine and the laughter is always guilty, always dark and nervous.  Beautifully written, but too wistfully gloomy for me, though I loved the early chapters.

Comments

[Lindsay]

As you'll have gathered I wasn't quite as swept away as Rhys, but there's no doubt that the first parts in particular are very fine. But Rhys, do tell us which translation you read?

[Rhys]

I am presently trying to get myself into a comfortable position about the sentence "if God is good why is there evil in the world".I want to accept the first proposition and so I am struggling with the second bit.Since I am unsure what I mean by "evil" I found this book useful as these characters live their lives in the presence of an "evil". So I loved it. I think it is possibly a GREAT novel and I'm going to make my whole family read it.