Ten Thomas Bernhard, Italo Calvino, Elena Ferrante, and Claudio Magris: from Postmodernism to Anti-Semitism
Ten Thomas Bernhard, Italo Calvino, Elena Ferrante, and Claudio Magris: From Postmodernism to Anti-Semitism Saskia Elizabeth Ziolkowski La penna è una vanga, scopre fosse, scava e stana scheletri e segreti oppure li copre con palate di parole più pesanti della terra. Affonda nel letame e, a seconda, sistema le spoglie a buio o in piena luce, fra gli applausi generali. The pen is a spade, it exposes graves, digs and reveals skeletons and secrets, or it covers them up with shovelfuls of words heavier than earth. It bores into the dirt and, depending, lays out the remains in darkness or in broad daylight, to general applause. —Claudio Magris, Non luogo a procedere (Blameless) In 1967, Italo Calvino wrote a letter about the “molto interessante e strano” (very interesting and strange) writings of Thomas Bernhard, recommending that the important publishing house Einaudi translate his works (Frost, Verstörung, Amras, and Prosa).1 In 1977, Claudio Magris held one of the !rst international conferences for the Austrian writer in Trieste.2 In 2014, the conference “Il più grande scrittore europeo? Omag- gio a Thomas Bernhard” (The Greatest European Author? Homage to 1 Italo Calvino, Lettere: 1940–1985 (Milan: Mondadori, 2001), 1051. 2 See Luigi Quattrocchi, “Thomas Bernhard in Italia,” Cultura e scuola 26, no. 103 (1987): 48; and Eugenio Bernardi, “Bernhard in Italien,” in Literarisches Kollo- quium Linz 1984: Thomas Bernhard, ed. Alfred Pittertschatscher and Johann Lachinger (Linz: Adalbert Stifter-Institut, 1985), 175–80. Both Quattrocchi and Bernardi
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