Faced with the remorse of not feeling cherished, the poet Cesare Pavese had written in his diary: “All this is disgusting. Enough words. A gesture. I will not write more.” A couple of days earlier than committing suicide, he confessed to his good friend Pierina that he had by no means woken up with a girl at his facet, that he had by no means skilled the look {that a} lady in love directs at her lover. He had not even gotten from his mom the maternal love that each youngster deserves. Nor did his introverted, bitter, pessimistic character and ashen face assist him win over a girl. Pavese’s final pissed off love affair was with the American actress Constance Dowling, well-known for her hazel eyes, through the filming of a movie in Rome. The poet in love supplied her marriage, however she married another person. To this helplessness we owe one among his most determined verses: “Death will come and have your eyes.”
I think about Cesare Pavese that Saturday, August 26, 1950 in Turin with a briefcase in his hand through which he carried his ebook Dialogues with Leucó and no garments, crossing Carlo Felice Square, in entrance of the Porta Nova railway station, a central place within the metropolis, in the direction of the Roma hostel, situated underneath the arcades. There he requested for a room. He lay down on the mattress wearing his darkish swimsuit and white shirt; he loosened the knot of his tie; the naked, furious toes, gentle as two wings able to fly. He had simply gotten one final love snub, he had made three cellphone calls with no reply.
It was a hazy summer season afternoon, the abandoned metropolis at that hour was permeated by the drowsiness that rose from the Po River. The sound of a bike crossing the sq. typically reached that room on the second ground with the open balcony and the curtains floating. Maybe there was a cheerful lady within the provider, in love, who was returning along with her boyfriend from a day within the countryside. Perhaps the poet imagined what he had written. After a roll within the grass, “the girl, sitting, grooms her hair / and does not look at her companion, who is lying down, with his eyes open.”
There are issues that one can’t forgive oneself. I cannot forgive myself for not having visited that room on the Roma hostel after I handed by way of Turin on one among my journeys. I knew what she was like from the way in which the author Natalia Ginzburg described her when she visited her seven years after Cesare Pavese had dedicated suicide. They had been very mates, they labored on the Einaudi publishing home, each have been retaliated and exiled by fascism. Upon coming into the hostel, Natalia discovered the daughter of the household behind the counter. Everything was the identical within the corridor. The two radiators, the purple carpet, the 2 threadbare armchairs, the blurred mirror. The receptionist instructed him: “I know what you’re looking for. It’s room 346 on the second floor.” They went up and she or he opened it with the important thing she had in her apron pocket.
In the room, time had stopped with the air stagnant simply as demise had left it. The identical slender mattress with an iron headboard, the coat rack, the chair, the picket desk, the plastic lamp on the nightstand the place the poet, earlier than taking the seven tubes of barbiturates, left writing within the area of a web page of his ebook Dialogues with Leucó: “I forgive everyone and I ask everyone’s forgiveness. Don’t gossip too much.” Nobody had touched these belongings. In entrance of the mattress, Natalia thought that her good friend by no means had a spouse, kids, or dwelling of his personal. She knew about all her love failures, first with herself, then with Battistina Pizzardo, an activist of the Communist Party, then with Bianca Garufi, one other author. I remembered him as cussed and lonely, an inconceivable lover, at all times in love, writing in smoky cafes. The author started to cry.
I open your ebook of Pavese poems this present day when the solar of a radiant spring invitations you to do every part, besides suicide. Leo: “Oh, how long has it been since I played Malay pirates!” Other days, different video games, different outbursts of blood towards extra elusive rivals: ideas and goals.”
That Saturday night in 1950, whereas the physique of Cesare Pavese remained within the room on the Rome resort, a pageant with lanterns had been established not removed from the sq. underneath the August moon; The orchestra of saxophones, trumpets and accordions sounded with the voice of a vocalist who sang candy boleros of affection, and women with flowered skirts and boys with plenty of glitter of their hair danced with their our bodies very shut collectively, oblivious to the truth that Italy’s best poet remained useless for all of the inconceivable loves behind the curtains of that open balcony. The music stopped virtually at daybreak. On Sunday morning, the resort waiter, having obtained no solutions to his calls, entered the room and found the physique. At that second maybe the bells of the cathedral of Saint John the Baptist have been ringing fortunately calling for top mass.
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