Art and culture

Pavese & the Langhe: the language issue – part I

May 3, 2016

One of the pivotal points around which Pavese’s relationship rotates with the Langhe is, most certainly, the use of language, both in its entire production in ‘Feria d’agosto’ (August Holiday) and ‘La luna e i falò’ (The Moon and the Bonfire).

The use of the Piedmont dialect

At a first glance, the incision of the dialect in these two works does not appear to be too different from the influence of the Piedmont language which some of the writer’s novels are affected by: an example, perhaps the most noteworthy, is found in ‘Paesi tuoi’ (Your villages).

In addition to this novel, even in the poem ’I mari del sud’ (South seas), which Pavese often refers to in ‘Il mestiere di vivere’ (This Business of Living) as a solid point of his production, there is a strong propensity to mix the Piedmont dialect with the literary language; a project that provides evidence of Pavese’s objective.

In this respect, therefore, The Moon and the Bonfires, Pavese’s last novel, does nothing more than close a circle that had already begun earlier on; before this novel, however, August holiday reveals in advance the ways in which the linguistic operation will be completed, clearly drawing from various moments of earlier works.

August Holiday and the Moon and the Bonfires

In La Langa, a tale from August Holiday, perhaps one of the most felt by Pavese and certainly one of the closest to the Moon and the Bonfires, there is an interesting fact from which one can start in order to outline the action plan (at a language level) of the works in question.

In this story a first person narrator talks about the return to his town of origin:

Io sono un uomo molto ambizioso e lasciai da giovane il mio paese, con l’idea fissa di diventare qualcuno. Il mio paese sono quattro baracche e un gran fango, ma lo attraversa lo stradone provinciale dove giocavo da bambino. Siccome – ripeto – sono ambizioso, volevo girar tutto il mondo e, giunto nei siti più lontani, voltarmi e dire in presenza di tutti: «Non avete mai sentito nominare quei quattro tetti? Ebbene, io vengo di là!» Certi giorni, studiavo con più attenzione del solito il profilo della collina, poi chiudevo gli occhi e mi fingevo di essere già per il mondo a ripensare per filo e per segno al noto paesaggio.

In this point the proximity to Anguilla, the protagonist of the Moon and the Bonfires, is decidedly remarkable: in fact, in the novel’s opening chapter, the first thing which the protagonist speaks about is precisely the Langa where he spent his childhood and youth, in Santo Stefano Belbo, and the places where he used to live as a boy.

After leaving in search of fortune throughout the world, he returns, without knowing whether he was actually born there, and finds himself thinking in retrospect of the time that had gone by between his departure and his return:

Così questo paese, dove non sono nato, ho creduto per molto tempo che fosse tutto il mondo. Adesso che il mondo l’ho visto davvero e so che è fatto di tanti piccoli paesi, non so se da ragazzo mi sbagliavo poi di molto. Uno gira per mare e per terra, come i giovanotti dei miei tempi andavano sulle feste dei paesi intorno, e ballavano, e bevevano, si picchiavano, portavano a casa la bandiera e i pugni rotti.
Cesare Pavese, La luna e i falò, capitolo I.

Images in literature

The “local” propensity of the novel, of which La Langa represents a plausible draft, is also found in some of the thoughts in The Business of living, comparable to ‘October of 1935’. During this period Pavese reflects in depth on the “great power of images” of literature, particularly on the landscape and the presence of nature in literature, and analyzes the relationship (but also the contribution) of the perception of the environment (and” towards”) the literary production, arriving at exquisitely critical considerations.

What emerges from this is how the landscape component in his poetry, as far as Piedmont is concerned, is important:

Certamente dev’essere possibile, anche per me, far poesia su materia non piemontese di sfondo. Dev’essere, ma
sinora non è stato quasi mai. Ciò significa che non sono ancora uscito dalla semplice rielaborazione dell’immagine materialmente rappresentata dai miei legami d’origine con l’ambiente: che, in altre parole, c’è nel mio lavorío poetico, un punto morto, gratuito, un sottinteso materiale, di cui non mi riesce di far senza. Ma è poi davvero un residuo oggettivo o sangue indispensabile?
Cesare Pavese, Il mestiere di vivere, 10 ottobre 1935.

The importance of “outbursts/naturist distractions” in Pavese’s poetry is thus more than remarkable, pushing the writer to the point where he questions the lifelong relationship in an almost compulsory form: “what… like town, like me?”.

Pavese & the Langhe: the other articles

Below is a list, in order of publication, of articles dedicated to Pavese’s relationship with the territory, language and literature: