Carlo Levi

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Carlo Levi (1947)

Graziadio Carlo Levi or Carlo Lèvi (born November 29, 1902 in Turin , † January 4, 1975 in Rome ) was an Italian writer, painter, doctor and politician.

Life

Carlo Levi in ​​1955. Photo by Paolo Monti (Fondo Paolo Monti, BEIC).

Carlo Levi came from an upper-class assimilated Jewish family; his parents were Ercole Levi and Annetta Treves . In 1917 or 1918 he enrolled in medicine at the University of Turin , which he graduated in 1924. Although he worked as an assistant doctor at a clinic in Turin from 1924 to 1928, he never practiced as a regular doctor because he was more interested in politics and painting, to which he devoted himself intensively from 1923. He became a member of the group Rivoluzione liberale ("Liberal Revolution") led by Piero Gobetti , spent some time in Paris and in 1929 took part in the exhibition Sei pittori di Torino ("Six Turin Painters").

Because he had founded the anti-fascist group Giustizia e Libertà (“Justice and Freedom”) together with Carlo and Nello Roselli in 1929 and led it together with Leone Ginzburg , Levi was imprisoned by the fascist government in Rome for two months in spring 1934 and in May 1935 exiled to the southern Italian region of Lucania (Lucania, today Basilicata ) . There, after some time in the town of Grassano , he spent the period from September 1935 to May 1936 in the village of Aliano , where he practiced as a doctor free of charge and with limited resources due to the misery of the inhabitants, until the provincial administration forbade him to do so and only treatments were still secretly possible. In addition, he painted people and landscapes and explored the customs of the inhabitants, especially magic and superstition.

After he was released prematurely in 1936 through a general amnesty , which the fascist state had proclaimed to celebrate the annexation of Abyssinia in the Abyssinian War, Levi went into exile and took over the management of the Giustizia e Libertà group from Paris . In 1941 he returned to Italy, was arrested and imprisoned in Florence . After the fall of Mussolini he was released, sought refuge in the Palazzo Pitti and wrote his book Cristo si è fermato a Eboli there in 1943/1944 (published 1945, see below), in which he recorded his memories of the time in Aliano, where he was for Aliano chose the slightly encrypted name Gagliano .

After the end of the Second World War Levi moved to Rome, lived and since then in the Villa Strohl-Fern and worked for some time as editor of the magazine Italia libera , which belonged to the Partito d'Azione ("Party of Action"). He continued painting (his paintings were in different countries of Europe and the United States issued) and wrote other books (see below). In 1963 he was elected to the Senate as an independent on the Communist Party list, a member of which he remained until 1972.

Carlo Levi died in 1975 in a Roman hospital of pneumonia . In accordance with his express testamentary wish, he was buried in the cemetery of Aliano, which was one of his favorite places to stay there during his exile.

plant

"Christ only came to Eboli"

Levi became world famous for his book Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (“ Christ only came to Eboli ”, 1945), which was translated into 37 languages ​​and filmed by Francesco Rosi in 1979 with Gian Maria Volonté in the lead role . Although it is often referred to as a novel because of its literary form , it is about his memoirs, written down between December 1943 and July 1944, of his exile in Aliano (1935/1936), which Levi renamed 'Gagliano' for reasons of discretion, as he did distracted from the exact location of the village by deliberately misrepresenting the cardinal points. Even so, the identity of the place was revealed as quickly as the book became famous.

The title of the work alludes to a saying by the residents of Aliano, which, according to Levi's introduction, is intended to describe the remote state of this part of Lucania, in which neither the central government in Rome nor the modern world at all has ever been interested. There were also inadequate hygienic conditions and a lack of medical care combined with folk medicine and magical ideas. Levi also interprets the phrase literally and symbolically and describes Aliano as a place in which the inhabitants live in a resignation that has been removed from time, without awareness of politics, history, cause and effect; not even Christianity is more here than one superstition among many others.

Accordingly, Levi describes life in Aliano in a cautious, essayistic form, from the misery of the peasants to the ridiculous figure of the fascist mayor. His particular strengths are memorable portraits and landscapes, just like Levi's painting (see below). In addition, other sections became famous, especially the description of the catastrophic living conditions of the inhabitants in the provincial capital Matera .

While the residents of Aliano and its region are said not to have been enthusiastic about Levi's open description of their misery at first, the book is now in Aliano's school reading. The place has been proclaimed Parco Letterario Carlo Levi ("Carlo Levi Literature Park") since the 1990s .

more books

Levi's other books had significantly less success, which is why most of them are not available in German translation.

Other travel books are Le parole sono pietre (“The words are stones”, 1955), in which Levi reports on three journeys through Sicily , and Il futuro ha un cuore antico (“The future has an old heart”, 1956) about a journey through the Soviet Union and La doppia notte dei tigli (1959) with the critical balance of a trip through Germany. In Un volto che ci somiglia (1960) Levi describes Italy. In 1965 his very personal portrait of Sardinia appeared on the basis of two trips in the German translation Aller Honig geht zu Ende .

Carlo Levi's most important works are also Paura della libertà (1946, “Fear of Freedom”) and the novel L'orologio , 1950 (German “Die Uhr”, 2005) about Italian party politics immediately after the end of the war, rejecting that of the left and the right has been recorded. Also of great importance are the book Quaderno a cancelli (1979), written in blindness, and the drawings of blindness: Carlo Levi inedito: con 40 disegni della cecità , ed. by Donato Sperduto (Spes, Milazzo 2002).

painting

Carlo Levi consciously set himself apart from abstract art; he was looking for a new kind of realism that should be “true”, that is, neither l'art pour l'art nor purely descriptive. During his exile to southern Italy, Levi discovered (analogous to his breakthrough in writing) his own style in painting as a realization of this ideal: In Aliano he began to paint mainly portraits of the peasants and 'unadorned' landscapes, which from then on dominated his work. Although Levi can hardly be counted among the top artists of the 20th century, his special realism has won an undeniable originality: he is just as idiosyncratic as Carlo Levi is supposed to have been as a person and like his literary work. His paintings and drawings of blindness (1973) are also important.

literature

Books by Carlo Levi in ​​German

  • Christ only came to Eboli. Translated by Helly Hohenemser-Steglich. dtv, Munich 2003. ISBN 3-423-13039-3 .
  • The clock. Translated by Verena von Koskull , Aufbau Verlag 2005. ISBN 3-351-03045-2 .
  • I came with little fear. Travel pictures from Germany. Translated by Elisabeth Schweiger. Zambon Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1984. ISBN 3-88975-009-5 .
  • All honey is running out. Translated by Helly Hohenemser. Publishing house DuMont, Cologne 1965.
  • Words are stones. Three journeys to Sicily , translated by Caesar Rymarowicz , Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-423-10112-1 .

Books about Carlo Levi

  • Sabine Zangenfeind: The shell of time. Temporal experience between consciousness and appropriation of the world in Carlo Levi's literary travel pictures. Stauffenburg Publishing House. ISBN 3-86057-004-8 .
  • Jewish Museum of the City of Frankfurt am Main: Carlo Levi. Selected works by the painter, writer and resistance fighter 1926–1974 (catalog for the exhibition from January 30 to April 6, 2003) , Jewish Museum, Frankfurt am Main 2003, (without ISBN).
  • (Different authors :) Carlo Levi e la Lucania. De Luca editore, Rome 1990.
  • Donato Sperduto: L'imitazione dell'eterno , Schena editore, Fasano di Brindisi 1998. ISBN 88-8229-053-0 .
  • Donato Sperduto: Maestri futili? Gabriele D'Annunzio, Carlo Levi, Cesare Pavese, Emanuele Severino , Aracne, Roma, 2009.
  • Carlo Levi inedito: con 40 disegni della cecità , a cura di Donato Sperduto, Edizioni Spes, Milazzo, 2002.
  • Giovanni Russo: Carlo Levi segreto , Dalai editore, Milano, 2011.
  • Dalia Abdullah, "Pittura e letteratura: Il bilinguismo di Carlo Levi", in "Riscontri. Rivista trimestrale di cultura e di attualità", XXXIV (2012), 3–4, pp. 9-54.

Web links

Commons : Carlo Levi  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sergio d'Amaro: Basic Chronology of Carl Levi's Life , in: Carlo Levi: Fear of freedom : with the essay, "Fear of painting", ed. and over. Stanislao G. Pugliese, Columbia University Press, New York 2008, ISBN 0-231-13997-7 , p. Lvii.
  2. ↑ Enciclopedie on line: [Laureato in medicina, fin dal 1923 si dedicò alla pittura frequentando lo studio Lèvi, Carlo].
  3. ↑ Photo: In the studio of the painter Carlo Levi, Villa Strohl-Fern / Nello studio del pittore Carlo Levi a Villa Strohl-Fern, June 20, 1955
  4. ↑ Michael Quick: 'Le parole sono pietre'. Medical aspects of 20th century Italian literature. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 7, 1989, pp. 5-34, here: pp. 16-18.
personal data
SURNAME Levi, Carlo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Levi, Graziadio Carlo (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian writer, painter and politician
DATE OF BIRTH November 29, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Turin
DATE OF DEATH 4th January 1975
Place of death Rome