Tutti i nostri ieri

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Tutti i nostri ieri (German: All our yesterday ) - Natalia Ginzburg's third novel - was published by Einaudi in 1952 and was awarded the Premio Villon in the same year. The novel was republished in 1964, along with other early works by the author, in the Cinque romanzi brevi collection . It was first published in German in 1969 by Rütten & Loening ; In 1998, under the title All our Yesterday, an edition reviewed by Maja Pflug was published by Wagenbach .

content

Tutti i nostri ieri tells the story of two middle-class families in the 1930s. The contemporary history presented ranges from the time of the Italian campaigns in Africa to the heyday of fascism and into the post-war period. Anna, the protagonist of the novel, lives in northern Italy, near Turin . She becomes pregnant from the neighbor boy Giuma. Different family members (including their brothers) are involved in the resistance to fascism to different degrees . As an observer, she witnesses such important moments in Italian history. During her unwanted pregnancy, she marries Cenzo Rena, a family friend.

In the second part of the novel, the narrative perspective expands: In addition to Anna's family history in Borgo San Costanzo in southern Italy, Cenzo Rena's commitment to better living conditions in the village, the Holocaust and the German occupation are also discussed.

The title of the novel is taken from Shakespeare's Macbeth : "All our yesterdays have lighted fools / The way to dusty death."

style

Tutti i nostri ieri is a family chronicle in which Ginzburg also incorporates the story of her own family. Her brothers and her husband Leone Ginzburg were active in the resistance. The story is told from the perspective of Anna, an inconspicuous girl who describes the involvement of her family and friends in the resistance struggle.

Ginzburg's typical style is evident in the novel: the characters have no surnames, all biographical and topographical information is reduced to the bare essentials. Despite the war theme, all stereotyping and partisanship is avoided. The novel is also characterized by the absence of any direct speech. The character speech is consistently reproduced in indirect speech by the heterodiegetic narrator .

criticism

Roland H. Wiegenstein wrote for the program " Long Night " of Deutschlandfunk on October 13, 2001 about this novel:

But she still had to work through something: the time of exile, persecution by the Germans and the fascists. She could only write about it after she married the English language professor Gabriele Baldini in 1950. The book, which was written shortly after the start of their second marriage, is a novel in which their own experiences are transferred to fictional people.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "The Long Night of the Three Strong Women: Ginzburg - Morante - Ortese" , "Long Night" on Deutschlandfunk on October 13, 2001