Cesare Pavese
La Spiaggia

THE REVIEW

You have to love Pavese, because it means loving one of the greatest literary expressions of 20th-century Europe. It means delving into his anguished yet simple prose, proletarian in tone and landscapes, rooted in places, lively, energetic, nostalgic. A myriad of adjectives could be used, but none would fully capture all the stylistic nuances of Pavese's works.

Few have been able to describe fragments of daily life with the same suffering, nostalgic, and realistic naturalness as Pavese has, who drew all the necessary strength from his birthplace, the Piedmontese Langhe, to develop his novels, which are true representations of Italian life between the '40s and '50s. Pavese describes a peripheral Italy: his pen does not focus on the industrial owners who would soon become famous with the "economic boom," but rather concentrates on ordinary people, those who work every day under the sun, on the hills, sheltered from the business turbulence, alone with themselves and their families. In the short novel La spiaggia, published in 1942, Pavese's typical scenario shifts to the coastal recesses of Genoa in the early '40s, although the melancholy and at the same time joyful episode of Doro and the book's protagonist, an unnamed professor, visiting the Piedmontese hills is not missing.

The novel, which initially seems like the joyful reunion of two friends, discussing past times together and lost youth, quickly transforms into a broader work, encompassing the sea breeze, which becomes meditation on the subtle psychological shifts between two lovers. The beach becomes a place of reflection, where one stays alone to think and remember the past, where nostalgia advances, and one seriously considers life's difficulties, love, solitude, and even the awareness of truly having "grown up". This is Pavese: combining all these elements through a simple, almost broken language that interlaces like the olive trees and coastlines described. The story of past men, of times gone by. The desire for tranquility...

Guido laughed. "There are women of flesh," he said, "and women of air. A puff after lunch does good. But you must eat first."