“Self” and the Modernist City: Stelio Mattioni and Trieste

Authors

  • Katia Pizzi

Keywords:

Italian literature, urban space, literary topographies, chronotope, Trieste, Svelo, Italo, Mattioni, Stelio

Abstract

Trieste has traditionally suffered the status of a border city. This border has been experienced as a source of permanent anxiety and displacement, acquiring the status of a chronotope in the Bakhtinian sense. The city’s eccentric position has frequently resulted in Trieste being personified or emerging as an overwhelming presence in its literature. Local authors have experienced the city “from within”, as superimposed, “merged” with their “Selves”. My discussion includes the canonic author Italo Svevo and focuses in particular on the contemporary Stelio Mattioni and his novel Il richiamo di Alma (1980).

References

Alfa Tau! (Francesco De Robertis; 1942)

BETTIZA, Enzo: Il fantasma di Trieste. Milan: Longanesi, 1958.

Clandestino a Trieste (Guido Salvini; 1951)

Cuori senza frontiere (Luigi Zampa; 1949)

La ragazza di Trieste (Bernard Borderie; 1951)

MAGRIS, Claudio: Dietro le parole. Milan: Garzanti, 1978.

MAIER, Bruno: Il gioco dell’alfabeto: Altri saggi triestini. Gorica: Istituto Giuliano di Storia Cultura Documentazione, 1990.

MATTIONI, Stelio: La città perduta. Milan: Idos, 1956.

---: Il re ne comanda una. Milan: Adelphi, 1968.

---: Il richiamo di Alma. Milan: Adelphi, 1980.

---: Il sosia. Turin: Einaudi, 1962.

RUSSELL, Charles C.: Italo Svevo: The Writer from Trieste: Reflections on His Background and His Work. Ravenna: Longo, 1978.

Sleeping-car to Trieste (John Paddy Carstairs; 1948)

SVEVO, Italo: La coscienza di Zeno, in I. Svevo, Romanzi, ed. by Pietro Sarzana. Milan: Mondadori, 1985, pp. 639–1117.

---: Senilità, in I.Svevo, Romanzi, ed. by P. Sarzana. Milan: Mondadori, 1985, pp. 405–637.

---: Una vita, in I.Svevo, Romanzi, ed. by P. Sarzana. Milan: Mondadori, 1985, pp. 1–403.

TIMMS, Edward and David Kelley (eds.): Unreal City: Urban Experience in Modern European Literature and Art. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985.

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Published

2017-04-15