The moon and the fire

The moon and fire (Italian original title: La luna ei falò ) is the last novel by Cesare Paveses , which he wrote in the autumn of 1949 in less than two months after spending the summer in Santo Stefano Belbo , the place where he grew up. There he had many conversations with his friend Pinolo Scaglione, about the events in the small town and its history, especially about the resistance in the area, i.e. about the resistance against the German occupation and the Italian fascists and the fate of the residents. All of these themes are taken up in the novel, and Scaglione himself can also be found in the character of Nuto. The novel, which has strong autobiographical traits, was published in April 1950, just a few months before Pavese committed suicide in August 1950. It is dedicated to Paveses' last lover, the American actress Constance Dowling . The novel combines all the important themes and motifs of his entire work and is considered the most perfect and mature work of the poet.

content

The novel is set in the post-war period, around 1949. The nameless first-person narrator (you only get to know his nickname, which he was given in childhood, Anguilla, the eel) returns after 40 years to the place of his childhood in Piedmont . The name of the place is not mentioned, but the reader can easily tell from the geographical conditions that it is Santo Stefano Belbo. The reason for his return is not entirely clear: on the one hand he only wants to spend the summer there, on the other hand he secretly hopes to “put down roots there, acquire land and a village so that his own flesh will gain in value and survive an ordinary season cycle ". During his stay there, which ultimately only lasts 14 days, he visits the places of his childhood and youth and remembers his own life and that of the other people he knew at the time. But all that remains of the past is the landscape and the places of his childhood. The people, on the other hand, are all no longer alive, except for Nuto, his childhood friend, who was the only one who managed to lead a fulfilled and contented life in his home country. After playing as a musician at all village festivals in the area as a youth, he later worked as a carpenter, started a family and got involved in the community. In many ways he represents the opposite of the protagonist: He stayed in his homeland and put down roots there.

At the beginning, the places of childhood play an important role, the hills, the nut trees and the vineyards, the houses, the paths and the river, which for him have an almost sacred meaning, although his childhood was anything but idyllic. "Anguilla" is a foundling who does not know its origins and is raised by a poor family on the small Gaminella farm, where there is hardly enough to eat. When his foster father Padrino loses everything due to a hailstorm and has to give up the farm, he is given to the larger, affluent Mora farm at the age of 13, where he is much better off because he lives in a community of friendly people and is trained as a farmer receives. Through his friend Nuto, who is three years older than him, who is interested in books and already knows a lot more about life, Anguilla is also gaining more knowledge of the world.

The most important events of his youth do not concern himself, but the fate of his master, Sor Matteo, and his two older daughters Irene and Silvia. These two girls, despite their extraordinary beauty and wealth, fail to build a happy life for themselves, because their father's wealth has made them lose their place in society; they are no longer peasant women, but neither are they women of higher society. Their desperate attempt to find a place in the world of the urban bourgeoisie and the nobility fails as they are disregarded and betrayed by the men with whom they are involved.

Since the young Anguilla has long dreamed of what lies beyond the hills and wants to escape the narrowness of rural life, which offers him no perspective, he leaves his home at the age of 20, first goes to Genoa and flees from there for a few years later, since he worked against the fascists, to America. There he establishes himself professionally successfully and becomes rich, but he feels uncomfortable and rootless in the New World. After the war he returns to Genoa and from there visits the village of his childhood. These visits are told in the novel. In the end he finally returns to Genoa and says goodbye to Nuto with the vague words: "Maybe I'll embark ... and come back to the festival next year."

The first-person narrator does not tell the story of his past life chronologically, but rather in different retrospectives, as memories that come to his mind on certain occasions, when looking at a place or when meeting a person. So the past is only gradually put together for the reader and only gives a clear picture at the end.

First, the first-person narrator gets to know the Valinos family, who now live in Gaminella's house. The miserable and inhuman life of this family makes it clear again how right he was to flee from these living conditions as a young man. In Cinto, the limping and always hungry son Valinos, he recognizes his own youth. He takes care of him and tries to teach him something. When Valino exterminates his family out of desperation over his hopeless situation, sets the house on fire and hangs himself, Nuto seizes the opportunity to take the surviving Cinto to himself, and the narrator promises to find him a job in Genoa later.

interpretation

The main theme of the novel is the protagonist and narrator's search for the lost time of his childhood, the return to the past as a search for himself, for his own identity. Because the protagonist hopes to find not only nice memories in his native village, but a place where he is at home in an existential sense, that belongs to him and where he can lead a fulfilled, happy life. He wants to "put down roots" there.

What his dream of the homeland with which he will return looks like becomes clear ex negativo when you look at how he experienced America, the country in which he tried to make himself at home for a long time. In America people are uprooted and without ties: they do not know the earth they live on and do not feel responsible for the people they happen to be with. They each live for themselves, lonely and without connection with their past, their family. In their native Piedmont, on the other hand, it seems to the narrator in America, people - at least in the country - still live in close contact with the earth and are connected to one another in a natural and stable order. But this idea is an illusion, as it gradually turns out. Italy is no better than America: For most of them, the roots are nothing but forced captivity and the misery makes people just as cruel and inhuman against one another as the loneliness in America. The desperate murder, which the narrator initially portrayed as the epitome of American life, can also be found in Italy, albeit for different reasons: while in America people kill others because of their lack of roots and lack of stability, Valino murders the women who give him standing closest, out of desperation at his misery.

Step by step, the idealized image that the protagonist has of his home village is destroyed. One after the other, the life stories of the individual people that the narrator knew in his childhood emerge - and all of them end darkly and tragically (except for Nuto's life). So the narrator does not find the ideal village world he is looking for. But he still finds a kind of happiness in the memory of the intensely and authentically experienced world of his childhood, although this was anything but beautiful, just as Cinto's life is miserable and sad. The narrator even says that he envies Cinto and that he wishes he could relive his childhood with its strong and simple experiences. The narrator tries to escape the present and thus the historical time and to find the truth of his life in nature, experienced as timeless. In the world of the village, he says, it is not historical time that prevails, but the natural rhythm of the ever-recurring seasons. But shortly afterwards it becomes apparent that this nature, apparently untouched by time, is also saturated with historical events. As soon as the narrator takes a closer look, the dead of the Second World War come to light. And in the end it is finally clear to him that his home village, like any other place on earth, can not give him the home and security that he is looking for. The attempt to return has failed, the loneliness and rootlessness cannot be undone.

The title

The title of the novel first becomes clear in the 9th chapter, in which Cinto and Nuto explain to the narrator the meaning of the moon and the bonfires, which according to old popular beliefs belong to them. The moon is the visible sign of natural growth and decay, you have to follow its rhythm if you want to gain good yields from the harvest. The power of nature is embodied in the moon, to which one is at the mercy and to which one has to adapt if one does not want to be harmed. The natural power of the moon, which is thought of as feminine (la luna), is contrasted with the St. John's bonfires (i falò), the systematic power of fire made by man. They embody the male principle as they awaken and fertilize the earth. While the moon means that which is eternally constant and timeless in the change of the seasons, the St. John's fires are temporal and point beyond the sphere of the natural into the realm of history.

In the novel, the great events all have something to do with the bonfires: the falò on the hills are signs for the young Anguilla that point the way into the distance, into the great world. So here you are a symbol of change, of fate. The falò (like everything man-made) have something ambiguous and ambivalent about them: on the one hand they are creative and fertile, on the other hand they can also be dangerous and destructive. Both sides find expression in the two central events of the novel: in the great fire with which Valino burns his court and his wives, and then in the burning of Santa at the end of the novel. Even if the negative aspect predominates in both events, they also have a positive effect: Valino's act of desperation suddenly changes the hopeless situation of Cinto and a new life opens up for him. And the cremation of Santas takes on the meaning of a ritual sacrifice that cleanses the extraordinary young woman, so to speak, of her earthly filth and transports them to another sphere (cf. the meaning of her name: the saint).

The hills

The hills, which are also of great importance in the novel - and in general in Paveses' work - are closely connected with the symbol of the St. John's fire. The hills are the epitome of the beloved landscape of the Langhe in Piedmont, Paveses home. Pavese speaks of them again and again with great tenderness.

The hills are both a cultural landscape and a wilderness: in the lower part are the vineyards, the farms and the fields; further up the impassable macchia begins. As a child, Anguilla never climbed all the way to the top, he found happiness in the vineyards and fields or in the forests to feel at one with nature. At the same time they are connected with the longing for space, for the mysterious, large, seemingly inaccessible world. Even as a child, Anguilla always looks up at them longingly and dreams of what is hidden behind them. They become a sign of his fate, which determined him to move away and get to know the world in its vastness.

In the course of the novel, the wilderness on the heights of the hills becomes more and more important. The partisans had withdrawn here, traces of the battles of that time can be found here again and again. B. the bodies of dead Republicans. This topic comes to an end in the last chapter: The narrator climbs up to the mountains for the first time with Nuto and learns Nuto's deepest secret: his observing participation (presenza) and thus his complicity in the shooting and burning of Santas.

The hills here connect the two levels that are in conflict again and again in the novel. On the one hand, they are soaked in the blood of history, on the other hand, they gain a mythical dimension: the wandering of the two men makes them a sacred place where the truth is revealed.

The female figures

What is striking about the three most important women in the novel - Silvia, Irene and Santa - is their deep ambiguity. Apart from Nuto, they initially appear as the most lovable and beautiful characters in the novel. They really shine in their liveliness and lust for life, so it is not surprising that the young Anguilla is secretly in love with Silvia and Irene, even if the two seem unreachable to him, while Nuto later admires and loves Santa despite her depraved way of life.

Even if a certain disillusionment takes place in the course of the novel, as the weaknesses and mistakes of the three women become more and more apparent, they still retain the sympathy of the author - and thus the reader. The immorality of their way of life does not take away their vitality and beauty. In this context it is significant that in chapter 30 another episode is told in which all the tenderness that the narrator felt for the girls in his youth is concentrated. It is, so to speak, the climax of the beautiful memories, while immediately afterwards the dark story of Santas is told.

The amiability of the female figures contrasts with their miserable fate and their terrible end; the unknown women in the novel are also cruelly killed (like the women of Valino). The performers have written a lot about Paveses' misogyny; they interpret the violent end of his female figures as revenge for the humiliations he experienced from women in his life. This interpretation is undoubtedly plausible, especially when one considers that this structure is repeated throughout Pavese's work, but it seems too one-sided. Because the author's sympathy for his female characters is - at least in the present novel - just as palpable as his hatred.

Political and social engagement

In their conversations, the narrator and Nuto take opposing positions. The protagonist is interested in things as they are, he is happy about their reality, but, despite all emotional sympathy, sees them from a distance, almost as aesthetic objects, detached from the social context. Nuto, on the other hand, is outraged by the inhumane living conditions of the farmers. The narrator and Nuto represent opposing poles: While one has a more amoral view of things, Nuto stands for political and social engagement. He emphasizes again and again that things have to be changed, put right, put right.

The different ways of life of the two men correspond to the different points of view. The narrator has remained untied and has not found a permanent social place in the world while Nuto made his choice. By taking responsibility in his family, at work and in public life, he has connected his life with that of others.

However, on closer inspection, the positions of the two men are not so clearly distributed; both men are differentiated and drawn contradicting themselves. Although Nuto presents himself in conversations with the narrator as the committed man who insists that the world is badly made and that things have to be changed, he is not the staunch, politically active communist. He did not fight with the partisans and he did not work politically after the war. His engagement is more humanistic, it remains on the private level: he hides partisans who were wounded in the war, he admonishes children not to torture animals, and he finally takes the orphaned Cinto into his home.

On the other hand, the narrator does not always persist in his distant, amoral attitude. It is he who is the first to think that one has to get Cinto out of his misery, while Nuto does not initially believe in this possibility. And he was the first to suggest after the disaster on Gaminella that Cintos should be looked after.

Nuto and the protagonist can be seen as two aspects of the same person; In a way, Nuto is the narrator's alter ego, since by talking to the friend about his childhood, he finds his own ideas in him. Both characters also represent two sides of the author. Pavese is more likely to be identified with the protagonist and Nuto is initially the poetic embodiment of his friend Pinolo Scaglione, but Nuto is also an invention of Pavese and one side of his personality.

Pavese was not a staunch communist, as the first generation of his interpreters claimed, but he was also not a person who was not interested in politics, as other critics accused him of being. Pavese was too much of a poet to overlook the negative aspects of the communist attitude. Although he supported the partisans' struggle, he shows their severity and brutality in the figure of the partisan Baracca, who has Santa killed. Pavese chooses an obviously ugly name for him that has a downright brutal sound, and he also gives him a bureaucratic, not exactly likeable job: Baracca is an accountant, like Nicoletto, also an extremely unsympathetic figure.

End and motto

The end of the novel remains ambiguous and open: some interpreters believe that Baracca represents the good who succeeds in destroying the evil (Santa). Others emphasize the author's sympathy for Santa and her mysterious death, and his secret antipathy for Baracca.

The novel in its entirety is also interpreted in opposing ways. Some think that Pavese was a pessimist and that the novel ends in complete despair; even Pavese's former teacher and friend Augusto Monti, a committed anti-fascist, accused him of hating everything and everyone. Others understand the novel very differently. B. Heinrich Böll, who finds "a lot of wisdom, calm and a great tenderness towards life and the living" in the novel. This perspective also opens up another view of the motto "Ripeness is all" (maturity is everything): maturity does not necessarily mean passive submission to fate, but it can also consist in the same wisdom and tenderness towards life, in a successful balance between Resignation and commitment.

expenditure

• Cesare Pavese: La luna ei falò. Giulio Einaudi, Torino 1950.
• Cesare Pavese: Young moon. Translation by Charlotte Birnbaum. Claassen, Hamburg 1954. Later: Library Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt (The translation contains a number of errors.)
• Cesare Pavese: The moon and the fire. Newly translated by Maja Pflug . Rotpunkt, Zurich 2016.
• Cesare Pavese: The moon and the fire . Newly translated by Maja Pflug . With an afterword by Paola Traverso. Diogenes paperback, Zurich 2018.

literature

• Johannes Hösle : Cesare Pavese. 2nd revised and expanded edition. De Gruyter, Berlin 1964.
• Kindler's Literature Lexicon . Edited by Helmut Kindler. 25 volumes. dtv, Munich 1974.
• Verena Lenzen : Cesare Pavese. Lethality in existence and poetry. Piper, Munich and Zurich 1989.
• Gilberto Finzi: Come leggere "La luna ei falò" by Cesare Pavese. Mursia, Milano 1987.
• Michele Tondo: Invito alla lettura di Pavese. Mursia, Milano 1984.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cesare Pavese: The moon and the fire . Diogenes, Zurich 2018, p. 10 .
2. ↑ p. 240
3. ↑ p. 10.
4. ↑ cf. 3rd chapter.
5. ↑ cf. P. 31.
6. ↑ p. 150.
7. ↑ P. 83 middle.
8. ↑ cf. End of Chapter 10, pp. 83–84.
9. ↑ pp. 69-70, 73
10. ↑ Verena Lenzen, Cesare Pavese. P. 53
11. ↑ See the studies by Johannes Hösle and Verena Lenzen.
12. ↑ pp. 20, 56, 61, 79 (in Italian: cambiare, aggiustare)
13. ↑ pp. 70-71
14. ↑ See the representations by Gilberto Finzi and Michele Tondo
15. ↑ Quoted in Kindler's Literature Lexicon 1974, article "La luna ei falò".