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Cesare Pavese

Cesare Pavese Books

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La bella estate

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Selected poems

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“Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: "You can't deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching your reactions, and steal your secret by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow." The other defense against things in general is silence as we muster strength for a fresh leap forward. But we must impose that silence on ourselves, not have it imposed on us, not even by death. To choose hardship for ourselves is our only defense against that hardship. This is what is meant by accepting suffering. Not being resigned to it, but using it as a springboard. Controlling the effect of the blow. Those who, by their very nature, can suffer completely, utterly, have an advantage. That is how we can disarm the power of suffering, make it our own creation, our own choice; submit to it. A justification for suicide. Charity has no place in all this. Unless, perhaps, this act of violence is in itself the truest form of charity?”

SufferingLiteratureSuicide
Author:Cesare Pavese
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“Beggar: There was a time when we didn't exist, Oedipus. That means that even the deepest desires of our heart, our blood, our moments of awakening have sprung from nothing. Even your desire to escape destiny is perhaps destiny. It isn't we who made our own blood. It's enough to feel it and live like free man, as the oracle bids us. Oedipus: Yes, so long as a man is still searching. You had the luck never to reach your goal. But the day comes when you go back to Cithaeron, you forget everything and the mountain seems to bring back your childhood. You look at it day after day and maybe you climb it. Then someone tells you that you were born up there. And everything crumbles.”

DestinyFailure
Book:Dialogues with Leucò
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“In anything, it is a mistake to think one can perform an action or behave certain way once and no more. (The mistake of those who say: "Let's slave away and save every penny until we are thirty, then we'll enjoy ourselves." At thirty they have a bent for avarice and hard work, and will never enjoy themselves any more..) What one does, one will do again, indeed has probably already done it in the distant past. The agonising thing about life is that it is our own decisions that throw us into this rut, under the wheels that crush us. (The truth is even before making those decisions, we were going in that direction:) A decision, an action, are infallible omens that we shall do another time, not for any vague, mystic, astrological reason but because they result from an automatic reaction that will repeat itself.”

LifeActionDecisions
Author:Cesare Pavese
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“Life was a perpetual holiday in those days. We had only to leave the house and step across the street and we became quite mad. Everything was so wonderful, especially at night when on our way back, dead tired, we still longed for a something to happen, for a fire to break out, for a baby to be born in the house or at least for a sudden coming of dawn that would bring all the people out into the streets, and we might walk on and on as far as the meadows and beyond the hills.”

NightSummerDawnHolidays
Book:La bella estate
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“Entrai qualche volta da solo in cappella. Nel freddo buio mi raccolsi e cercai di pregare. L’odore antico dell’incenso e della pietra mi ricordò che non la vita importa a Dio, ma la morte. Per commuovere Dio, per averlo con sé - ragionavo come fossi credente - bisogna aver già rinunciato, bisogna esser pronti a sparger sangue. Pensavo a quei martiri di cui si studia al catechismo. La loro pace era una pace oltre la tomba, tutti avevano sparso del sangue, com’io non volevo. In sostanza chiedevo un letargo, un anestetico, una certezza di essere ben nascosto. Non chiedevo la pace del mondo, chiedevo la mia. Volevo esser buono per essere salvo.”

GuerraFascismoReligioneSpiritualitàPavese
Book:La casa in collina
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“C'è invece una ragione perché sono tornato in questo paese, qui e non invece a Canelli, a Barbaresco o in Alba. Qui non ci sono nato, è quasi certo; dove son nato non lo so; non c'è da queste parti una casa né un pezzo di terra né delle ossa ch'io possa dire «Ecco cos'ero prima di nascere». Non so se vengo dalla collina o dalla valle, dai boschi o da una casa di balconi. La ragazza che mi ha lasciato sugli scalini del duomo di Alba, magari non veniva neanche dalla campagna, magari era la figlia dei padroni di un palazzo, oppure mi ci hanno portato in un cavagno da vendemmia due povere donne da Monticello, da Neive o perché no da Cravanzana. Chi può dire di che carne sono fatto? Ho girato abbastanza il mondo da sapere che tutte le carni sono buone e si equivalgono, ma è per questo che uno si stanca e cerca di mettere radici, di farsi terra e paese, perché la sua carne valga e duri qualcosa di più che un comune giro di stagione.”

Incipit
Book:The Moon and the Bonfire
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“Kendi yaşamına hakim olamadın, bir de başkalarının hayatını yönlendirmek, anlatmak mı istiyorsun? Sen ruha ilişkin şeyleri (sanat, ahlaklılık, saygınlık, bilgi) ağzında tatları kalana kadar çiğnedin, sonra gene ekmeğinle patatesine döndün. Köle doğduğunu unutuyorsun hep. hep haksızlığa uğruyormuşsun gibi geliyor sana. İyi ama bir kölenin haksızlığa uğraması mümkün mü? Acı çekmenin verdiği bıkkınlıktan doğan iyilik, acı çekmekten daha kötü, daha korkunç bir duygudur.”

Ruh
Author:Cesare Pavese
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“Indifference This hate has blossomed like a living love, grieving, watching its own exhaustion. It seeks a face, it seeks flesh, as though it were love. The worldly flesh and the voices that spoke are dead, all has shuddered away, all life hangs on a voice. Days pass in bitter ecstasy to the sad caress of the voice that returns and drains the blood from our faces. Not without sweetness that voice returns to the mind exhausted and trembling: once it trembled for me. But the flesh does not tremble. Only love could set it alight, this hate seeks it out. All the possessions, all the flesh and all the voices in the world cannot equal the burning caress of that body and those eyes. In the bitter ecstasy that kills itself, this hate still finds each day a glance, a broken word, and grasps them, hungrily, like love.”

Indifference
Book:Selected poems
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