Cesare Pavese Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Cesare Pavese

Cesare Pavese's life and works demonstrate a recurrent and finally unresolved contradiction. Although in many ways Pavese was the literary figure most central to the cultural life of his times and was thus the literary spokesman, along with Elio Vittorini, for his generation in Italy, Pavese never felt at ease in his social or cultural environs. He regularly held himself apart from these surroundings, always remaining on the margins of life, whether in forced or voluntary exclusion. This factor is apparent in the events of his life as well as in his novels and poems, in which it is present in the themes of solitude and alienation. The discomfort and deep-seated personal doubt that infuse Pavese's life and works do not, of course, detract from his importance as a writer. Indeed they actively contribute to the fascination that his literary corpus continues to hold for contemporary readers drawn to his works both because of the interest of the subject matter itself (regional life in Italy during the years of Fascism, World War II and the Italian Resistance, and the early postwar period) and because of the vital existential tension at the heart of his poetry and narratives.

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