Zeno's Conscience - Svevo E-Book

Italo Svevo

• Herausgeber: Lebooks Editora
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 783

Beschreibung

Zeno's Conscienceis a novel presented as the fictional autobiography of Zeno Cosini, an unreliable narrator who recounts his life story to his psychoanalyst. The novel is structured around Zeno's attempts to quit smoking, his relationships with his father and wife, his business ventures, and his extramarital affairs. Svevo employs a stream-of-consciousness technique to delve into Zeno's psyche, revealing his self-deceptions, rationalizations, and contradictions. Zeno's reflections on his life are marked by irony and humor, and his unreliable narration adds layers of complexity to the story. One of the central themes of Zeno's Conscience is the exploration of human irrationality and self-delusion. Zeno's repeated failures to quit smoking serve as a metaphor for his broader inability to control his impulses and understand his true motivations. Svevo's portrayal of Zeno's inner life anticipates many of the themes and techniques later associated with psychoanalysis and modernist literature. The novel also reflects Svevo's interest in the emerging field of psychoanalysis, influenced by his reading of Sigmund Freud's works. Svevo's depiction of Zeno's sessions with his psychoanalyst serves as a vehicle for exploring the complexities of human consciousness and the limitations of self-knowledge.

Leseprobe

Italo Svevo

ZENO’S CONSCIENCE

Original Title:

“La coscienza di Zeno”

Contents

INTRODUCTION

ZENO’S CONSCIENCE

PREFACE

PREAMBLE

SMOKE

MY FATHER’S DEATH

THE STORY OF MY MARRIAGE

WIFE AND MISTRESS

THE STORY OF A BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP

PSYCHOANALYSIS

INTRODUCTION

Italo Svevo

1861-1928

Italo Svevo  was the pen name of Ettore Schmitz, an Italian writer and businessman best known for his modernist novel Zeno’s Conscience. Born in Trieste, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Svevo was raised in a multicultural environment that influenced his literary work. Although he wrote in Italian, Svevo’s Jewish heritage and the multilingual nature of Trieste contributed to his unique narrative style.

Svevo’s literary career was initially met with little success, and he worked in his family's business for many years. It was not until later in life, with the encouragement of his friend and mentor James Joyce, that Svevo's work gained recognition. Zeno’s Conscience, originally published as La Coscienza di Zeno in 1923, is now considered a cornerstone of modernist literature and a profound exploration of human psychology and self-deception.

Life of Italo Svevo

Ettore Schmitz was born into a middle-class Jewish family. He received his education in a German-language school in Trieste and later studied commerce in Germany. Returning to Trieste, Schmitz worked for a bank and eventually took a position in his father-in-law’s paint business, a job that provided him with financial stability but limited his time for writing.

Despite the challenges, Schmitz pursued his literary ambitions. He published his first two novels, Una Vita (1892) and Senilità (1898), under the pseudonym Italo Svevo, which translates to "Italian Swabian," reflecting his mixed heritage. Both novels received little attention, leading Svevo to focus more on his business career.

Svevo’s fortunes changed when he met James Joyce, who was living in Trieste at the time. Joyce recognized Svevo’s talent and encouraged him to continue writing. This encouragement played a significant role in Svevo’s decision to write Zeno’s Conscience.

Zeno’s Conscience

Zeno’s Conscience is a novel presented as the fictional autobiography of Zeno Cosini, an unreliable narrator who recounts his life story to his psychoanalyst. The novel is structured around Zeno’s attempts to quit smoking, his relationships with his father and wife, his business ventures, and his extramarital affairs.

Svevo employs a stream-of-consciousness technique to delve into Zeno’s psyche, revealing his self-deceptions, rationalizations, and contradictions. Zeno’s reflections on his life are marked by irony and humor, and his unreliable narration adds layers of complexity to the story.

One of the central themes of Zeno’s Conscience is the exploration of human irrationality and self-delusion. Zeno’s repeated failures to quit smoking serve as a metaphor for his broader inability to control his impulses and understand his true motivations. Svevo’s portrayal of Zeno’s inner life anticipates many of the themes and techniques later associated with psychoanalysis and modernist literature.

The novel also reflects Svevo’s interest in the emerging field of psychoanalysis, influenced by his reading of Sigmund Freud’s works. Svevo’s depiction of Zeno’s sessions with his psychoanalyst serves as a vehicle for exploring the complexities of human consciousness and the limitations of self-knowledge.

Impact and Legacy

Zeno’s Conscience was initially published in 1923 with little fanfare, but it gradually gained recognition, particularly in France and later in Italy. The novel’s innovative narrative style and deep psychological insights have earned it a lasting place in the canon of modernist literature.

Italo Svevo’s work was instrumental in bridging the gap between 19th-century literary realism and 20th-century modernism. His exploration of the human mind and the ambiguities of self-perception influenced later writers and helped pave the way for the psychological novel.

Svevo’s legacy is marked by his ability to capture the complexities of human experience with wit and empathy. He passed away in 1928 after being injured in a car accident, but his works, especially Zeno’s Conscience, continue to be celebrated for their enduring relevance and literary innovation.

ZENO’SCONSCIENCE

PREFACE

I am the doctor occasionally mentioned in this story, in unflattering terms. Anyone familiar with psychoanalysis knows how to assess the patient’s obvious hostility toward me.

I will not discuss psychoanalysis here, because in the following pages it is discussed more than enough. I must apologize for having suggested my patient write his autobiography; students of psychoanalysis will frown on this new departure. But he was an old man, and I hoped that recalling his past would rejuvenate him, and that the autobiography would serve as a useful prelude to his analysis. Even today my idea still seems a good one to me, for it achieved results far beyond my hopes. The results would have been even greater if the patient had not suspended treatment just when things were going well, denying me the fruit of my long and painstaking analysis of these memories.

I am publishing them in revenge, and I hope he is displeased. I want him to know, however, that I am prepared to share with him the lavish profits I expect to make from this publication, on condition that he resume his treatment. He seemed so curious about himself! If he only knew the countless surprises he might enjoy from discussing the many truths and the many lies he has assembled here!...

Doctor S.

PREAMBLE

Review my childhood? More than a half-century stretches between that time and me, but my farsighted eyes could perhaps perceive it if the light still glowing there were not blocked by obstacles of every sort, outright mountain peaks: all my years and some of my hours.

The doctor has urged me not to insist stubbornly on trying to see all that far back. Recent things can also be valuable, and especially fantasies and last night’s dreams. But there should be at least some kind of order, and to help me begin ab ovo, the moment I left the doctor, who is going out of town shortly and will be absent from Trieste for some time, I bought and read a treatise on psychoanalysis, just to make his task easier. It’s not hard to understand, but it’s very boring.

Now, having dined, comfortably lying in my overstuffed lounge chair, I am holding a pencil and a piece of paper. My brow is unfurrowed because I have dismissed all concern from my mind. My thinking seems something separate from me. I can see it. It rises and falls, but that is its only activity. To remind it that it is my thinking and that its duty is to make itself evident, I grasp the pencil. Now my brow does wrinkle, because each word is made up of so many letters and the imperious present looms up and blots out the past.

Yesterday I tried to achieve maximum relaxation. The experiment ended in deepest sleep, and its only effect on me was a great repose and the curious sensation of having seen, during that sleep, something important. But it was forgotten by then, lost forever.

Today, thanks to the pencil I’m holding in my hand, I remain awake. I can see, or glimpse, some odd images that surely have nothing to do with my past: a puffing locomotive dragging countless coaches up a steep grade. Who knows where it’s coming from or where it’s going or why it has now turned up here?

As I doze, I remember how my textbook claims that this method will allow you to recall your earliest infancy, your cradle days. I see immediately a baby in a cradle, but why should that baby be me? He doesn’t look anything like me; on the contrary, I believe he was born a few weeks ago to my sister-in-law, who displayed him as a miracle because he has such tiny hands and such big eyes. Recall my infancy? Hardly. Poor baby! I can’t even find a way to warn you, now living in your own infancy, how important it is to remember it, for the benefit of your intelligence and your health. When will you discover that it would be a good idea to memorize your life, even the large part of it that will revolt you? Meanwhile, unconscious, you are investigating your tiny organism in search of pleasure, and your delightful discoveries will pave the way toward the grief and sickness to which you will be driven even by those who would not wish them on you. What is to be done? It is impossible to keep constant watch over your crib. In your breast — you poor little thing! — a mysterious combination is forming. Every passing minute provides a reagent. Too many probabilities of illness surround you, for not all your minutes can be pure. And besides — poor baby! —  you are the blood relation of people I know. The minutes now passing may actually be pure, but all the centuries that prepared for your coming were certainly not.

Here I am, quite far from the images that precede sleep. I will make another attempt tomorrow.

SMOKE

The doctor with whom I discussed the question told me to begin my work with a historical analysis of my smoking habit.

“Write it down! And you’ll see yourself whole! Try it!”

I believe I can write about smoking here at my desk, without having to sit and dream in that chair. I can’t seem to begin, so I must seek help from my cigarettes, all very like the one I am now holding.

Today I discover immediately something I had forgotten. The cigarettes I first smoked are no longer on the market. Around 1870 in Austria there was a brand that came in cardboard boxes stamped with the two-headed eagle. Now, around one of those boxes I see a few people gathering, each with some characteristic, so distinct that I can recall their names, but not distinct enough to prompt any emotion at this unforeseen encounter. I want to delve deeper, so I go to the armchair: the people fade and are replaced by some clowns, who mock me. Dejected, I return to the desk.

One of those figures, with a somewhat hoarse voice, was Giuseppe, a youth my own age, and with him was my brother, a year younger than I, who died many years ago. It seems Giuseppe received a generous allowance from his father, and used to give us some of those cigarettes. But I am certain he offered more of them to my brother than to me. Hence, I was faced with the necessity of procuring some for myself. So I stole. In summer my father hung his waistcoat over a chair in the breakfast room, and in its pocket there was always change. I procured the ten pennies necessary to purchase the precious little packet, and I smoked its ten cigarettes one after the other, rather than hold on to the compromising fruit of my theft.

All this lay in my consciousness, within reach. It resurfaces only now because previously I didn’t know that it could be of any importance. So I have recorded the origin of the filthy habit and (who knows?) I may already be cured of it. Therefore, I light a last cigarette, as a test; perhaps I will throw it away at once, revolted.

Then, I remember, one day my father caught me with his waistcoat in my hands. With a shamelessness I could not muster today, which still disgusts me (perhaps — who knows? — that disgust is highly significant in my life), I told him I had felt a sudden impulse to count the buttons. My father laughed at my mathematical or sartorial leanings, failing to notice that I had my fingers in the watch pocket. It should be said, to my credit, that this laughter, inspired by my innocence when it no longer existed, sufficed to keep me from ever stealing again. Or rather... I stole again, but unawares. My father left some half-smoked Virginia cigars around the house, perched on table edges and armoires. I believed this was how he threw them away, and I believe our old maidservant, Carina, did then fling them out. I carried them off and smoked them in secret. At the very moment I grabbed them I was overcome by a shudder of revulsion, knowing how sick they would make me. Then I smoked them until my brow was drenched in cold sweat and my stomach was in knots. It cannot be said that in my childhood I lacked energy.

I know perfectly well also how my father cured me of this habit. One summer day I returned home from a school outing, tired and soaked in sweat. My mother helped me undress, and wrapping me in a big towel, she made me lie down to sleep on a sofa where she was also seated, busy with some sewing. I was almost asleep, but the sun was still in my eyes, and it was taking me a while to lose consciousness. The sweetness that, in those tender years, accompanied repose after great weariness is clear to me, like an image on its own, as clear as if I were there now, beside that beloved body that no longer exists.

I remember the big, cool room where we children used to play; now, in these times when space has become so precious, it is subdivided into two parts. In this scene my brother doesn’t appear, and I am surprised because I think he must also have participated in that excursion and should have shared in the rest afterwards. Was he also sleeping, at the other end of the sofa? I look at that place, but it seems empty to me. I see only myself, in the sweetness of that repose, my mother, then my father, whose words I hear re-echoing. He had come in and hadn’t immediately seen me, because he called aloud: “Maria!”

Mamma, with a gesture accompanied by a faint sound of the lips, nodded toward me, whom she believed immersed in sleep, though I was only afloat on the surface, fully conscious. I was so pleased that, for my sake, Papa had to control himself that I kept absolutely still.

In a low voice my father complained, “I think I’m going mad. I could swear that, not thirty minutes ago, I left half a cigar on that cupboard, and now I can’t find it. I’m getting worse. I’m losing track of things.”

Also in a low voice, yet betraying an amusement restrained only by her fear of waking me, my mother replied, “But no one’s been in that room since dinner.” My father murmured, “I know that, too, and that’s why I feel I’m going mad!”

He turned and went out.

I half opened my eyes and looked at my mother. She had resumed her work, but was still smiling. Surely, she didn’t think my father was about to go mad, if she could smile at his fears like that. Her smile was so imprinted on my mind that I recalled it immediately one day when I saw it on the lips of my wife.

Later, it wasn’t lack of money that made it difficult for me to satisfy my craving, but prohibitions that helped stimulate it.

I remember I smoked a great deal, hiding in every possible corner. Because of the strong physical disgust that ensued, I recall once staying a full half hour in a dark cellar, together with two other boys of whom I remember nothing but their childish clothing. Two pairs of short socks that stand erect because there were then bodies inside them, which time has erased. They had many cigarettes, and we wanted to see who could consume the most in the shortest time. I won, and heroically I concealed the sickness produced by this strange exploit. Then we came out into the sun and air. Dazed, I had to close my eyes to keep from falling. I recovered, and boasted of my victory. One of the two little men said to me: “I don’t care about losing: I smoke only when I need to.”

I remember the healthy words but not the little face, also surely healthy, which he must have turned toward me at that moment.

At that time I didn’t know whether I loved or hated cigarettes, their taste, the condition nicotine created in me. But when I came to realize that I hated all of those, it was worse. And I had this realization at the age of about twenty. Then for some weeks I suffered from a violent sore throat accompanied by fever. The doctor prescribed bed rest and absolute abstention from smoking. I remember that word, absolute! It wounded me, and my fever colored it. A great void, and nothing to help me resist the enormous pressure immediately produced around a void.

When the doctor left me, my father (my mother had been dead for many years), his cigar clenched firmly between his teeth, remained a little longer to keep me company. As he went out, after gently running his hand over my blazing brow, he said: “No smoking, eh!”

A huge uneasiness came over me. I thought: “It’s bad for me, so I will never smoke again. But first I want to have one last smoke.” I lit a cigarette and felt immediately released from the uneasiness, though my fever was perhaps increasing, and at every puff I felt my tonsils burning as if they had been touched by a red-hot coal. I finished the whole cigarette dutifully, as if fulfilling a vow. And, still suffering horribly, I smoked many others during my illness. My father came and went with his cigar in his mouth, saying: “Bravo! A few more days without smoking and you’ll be cured!”

These words alone made me yearn for him to leave, to go out at once, allowing me to rush to my cigarettes. I even pretended to fall asleep, to induce him to leave more quickly.

That illness provoked the second of my troubles: the effort to rid myself of the first. In the end, my days were full of cigarettes and of resolutions to smoke no more; and to make a long story short, from time to time my days are the same now. The whirl of last cigarettes, begun at twenty, continues still. My resolutions are less extreme, and my weakness finds greater indulgence in my elderly soul. When we are old, we smile at life and at everything it contains. I can say also that for some time I have been smoking many cigarettes... and they are not the last.

On the flyleaf of a dictionary I find this note of mine, recorded in an elegant, even ornate, hand:

“Today, 2 February 1886, I am transferring from the school of law to the faculty of chemistry. Last cigarette!!”

That was a very important last cigarette. I remember all the hopes that accompanied it. I had become infuriated with canon law, which seemed to me so remote from life, and I was rushing to science, which is life itself, perhaps condensed in a beaker. That last cigarette actually signified my desire for activity (even manual) and for serene thought, sober and solid.

To escape the chain of carbon compounds in which I had no faith, I returned to the law. An error — alas! — also marked by a last cigarette, which I find recorded in a book. This one was also important, and I became resigned yet again to those complications of the mine, the thine, and the theirs, always with the best intentions, finally throwing off the carbon chains. I had demonstrated scant inclination for chemistry, thanks in part to my lack of manual dexterity. How could I possibly have been dexterous, when I continued smoking like a Turk?

Now that I am here, analyzing myself, I am seized by a suspicion: Did I perhaps love cigarettes so much because they enabled me to blame them for my clumsiness? Who knows? If I had stopped smoking, would I have become the strong, ideal man I expected to be? Perhaps it was this suspicion that bound me to my habit, for it is comfortable to live in the belief that you are great, though your greatness is latent. I venture this hypothesis to explain my youthful weakness, but without any firm conviction. Now that I am old and no one demands anything of me, I still pass from cigarette to resolve, and from resolve to cigarette. What do those resolutions mean today? Like that old doctor described by Goldoni{1}, can I expect to die healthy, having lived with illness all my life?

Once, as a student, when I changed lodgings, I had to have my old room repapered at my own expense, because I had covered the walls with dates. Probably I left that room precisely because it had become the graveyard of my good intentions and I believed it no longer possible to conceive any further such intentions in that tomb of so many old ones.

I believe the taste of a cigarette is more intense when it’s your last. The others, too, have a special taste of their own, but less intense. The last one gains flavor from the feeling of victory over oneself and the hope of an imminent future of strength and health. The others have their importance because, in lighting them, you are proclaiming your freedom, while the future of strength and health remains, only moving off a bit.

The dates on the walls of my room were written in the most varied colors, even painted in oil. The resolution, reaffirmed with the most ingenuous good faith, found suitable expression in the strength of the color, which was to make the previous vow look pale. Certain dates were favorites of mine because of the harmony of the numbers. From the last century I remember one date that I felt should seal forever the coffin in which I wanted to bury my habit: “Ninth day of the ninth month of 1899.” Significant, isn’t it? The new century brought me dates of quite a different musicality: “First day of the first month of 1901.” Today I still believe that if that date could be repeated, I would be able to begin a new life.

But the calendar is never lacking for dates, and with a little imagination any one of them can be found suitable for a good resolution. I remember the following, because it seemed to contain a supreme categorical imperative for me: “Third day of the sixth month of 1912, 2400 hours.” It sounds as if each number were doubling the stakes.

The year 1913 gave me a moment’s pause. There was no thirteenth month, to harmonize with the year. But you must not think so many harmonies are required for a date to lend significance to a last cigarette. Many dates that I find written down in volumes or in favorite notebooks stand out became of their dissonance. For example, the third day of the second month of 1905, at six o’clock! It has a rhythm of its own, when you think about it, because each number contradicts its predecessor. Many events, indeed all, from the death of Pius IX to the birth of my son, seemed to me worthy of being celebrated by the usual ironclad vow. All of my family are amazed at my memory for our anniversaries, sad and happy, and they believe me so considerate!

To reduce its outlandish appearance, I even tried to give a philosophical content to the last-cigarette disease. Striking a beautiful attitude, one says: “Never again.” But what becomes of that attitude if the promise is then kept? It’s possible to strike the attitude only when you are obliged to renew the vow. And besides, for me, time is not that inconceivable thing that never stops. For me, and only for me, it retraces its steps.

Disease is a conviction, and I was born with that conviction. Of the disease I had at twenty, I would remember very little if I hadn’t had it described for me at that time by the doctor. It’s odd how you remember spoken words better than emotions, which cannot stir the air.

I went to that doctor because I had been told he cured nervous disorders with electricity. I thought that electricity could endow me with the strength necessary to give up smoking.

The doctor had a big belly, and his asthmatic breathing accompanied the clicking of the electric mechanism he employed immediately, at the first session: a disappointment, because I had expected that the doctor would study me and discover the poison polluting my blood. On the contrary, he pronounced my constitution healthy, and when I complained of difficulty in digesting and sleeping, he opined that my stomach lacked acids and that my peristaltic action (he used that adjective so many times that I have never forgotten it) was rather sluggish. He administered also a certain acid that ruined me; ever since then, I have suffered from excess acidity.

When I realized that on his own, he would never arrive at discovering the nicotine in my blood, I decided to help him, expressing the suspicion that my illness could be attributed to this cause. With some effort he shrugged his heavy shoulders: “Peristaltic action ... acid. Nicotine has nothing to do with it!”

Seventy applications of electricity followed, and they would continue to this day if I hadn’t decided seventy were enough. Expecting no miracles, I still hurried to those sessions in the hope of persuading the doctor to forbid me to smoke.

I wonder how things would have turned out if my resolve had been strengthened then by such a prohibition.

And here is the description of my illness that I gave the doctor: “I’m unable to study, and even on the rare occasions when I go to bed early, I remain awake until the small hours strike. So I vacillate between law and chemistry because both these disciplines involve work that begins at a set time, whereas I never know at what hour I may get up.”

“Electricity cures any form of insomnia,” my Aesculapius averred, his eyes always on the dial rather than on the patient.

I went so far as to talk with him as if he were equipped to understand psychoanalysis, into which, timidly and precociously, I had ventured. I told him of my unhappiness with women. One wasn’t enough for me, nor were many. I desired them all! In the street my agitation was immense; as women went by, they were all mine. I looked them up and down, insolently, out of a need to feel myself brutal. In my mind I undressed them, leaving only their boots on, I took them into my arms, and I let them go only when I was quite certain that I had known every part of them.

Sincerity and breath wasted! The doctor — was gasping: “I certainly hope the electrical treatments will not cure you of that illness. The very idea! I would never touch a Ruhmkorff{2} again if I had reason to fear such an effect.”

He told me an anecdote that he considered delightful. A man suffering from my same illness went to a famous doctor, begging to be cured, and the doctor, after succeeding perfectly, had to leave the country because otherwise his former patient would have had his scalp.

“My agitation isn’t the good kind!” I cried. “It comes from the poison that surges through my veins.”

With a heartbroken expression, the doctor murmured: “Nobody is ever content with his lot.”

And to convince him, I did what he was unwilling to do, and I examined my disease, reviewing all its symptoms. “My distraction! It also prevents my studying. I was in Graz preparing for the first state examinations, and I made a careful list of all the texts I would require until the last examination was over. Then, as it turned out, a few days before the examination I realized I had studied subjects I would need only several years later. So I had to postpone the exam. True, I had studied even those other things only scantily, thanks to a young woman in the neighborhood who, for that matter, conceded me little beyond some brazen flirtation. When she was at her window, I could no longer keep my eyes on the textbook. Isn’t a man who behaves like that an imbecile? I remember the little, white face of the girl at the window: oval, framed by fluffy, tawny curls. I looked at her and dreamed of pressing that whiteness and that russet gold against my pillow.”

Aesculapius murmured, “Flirtation always has something good about it. When you’re my age, you won’t flirt anymore.”

Today I am certain that he knew absolutely nothing about flirtation. I am fifty-seven, and I’m sure that if I don’t stop smoking or if psychoanalysis doesn’t cure me, my last glance from my deathbed will express my desire for my nurse, provided she is not my wife and provided my wife has allowed the nurse to be beautiful!

I spoke sincerely, as in Confession: a woman never appeals to me as a whole, but rather... in pieces! In all women I loved feet, if well shod: in many others, a slender neck but also a thick one, and the bosom, if not too heavy. I went on listing female anatomical parts, but the doctor interrupted me.

“These parts add up to a whole woman.”

I then uttered an important statement: “Healthy love is the love that embraces a single, whole woman, including her character and her intelligence.”

At that time I surely hadn’t yet known such a love; and when I did encounter it, it was unable to give me health; but it’s important for me to remember that I identified disease where a man of science found health, and that later my diagnosis proved true.

In a friend who was not a physician I then found the person who best understood me and my disease. I derived no great advantage from this association, but in my life it struck a new note that still echoes.

This friend was a gentleman of means who enriched his leisure with study and literary projects. He talked much better than he wrote, and therefore the world was never to know what a fine man of letters he was. He was big and heavyset, and when I met him he was undergoing a strenuous cure to lose weight. In a few days he had achieved a considerable result, so that in the street everyone came up to him, hoping to enhance their own feeling of health, in contrast to his obvious illness. I envied him because he was capable of doing what he wanted, and I remained close to him for the duration of his cure. He allowed me to touch his belly, which shrank every day, and, in my malevolent envy, wanting to sap his determination, I would say to him: “When your cure’s over, what’s going to happen to all this skin?”

With great calm, which made his emaciated face comical, he replied: “In two days’ time, massage therapy begins.”

His cure had been planned in every detail, and he would certainly respect every date.

I developed a great faith in his wisdom, and I described my disease to him. I remember this description, too. I explained to him that I thought it would be easier to renounce eating three times a day than to give up smoking my countless cigarettes, which would require repeating the same wearisome decision every moment. Having such a decision on your mind leaves no time for anything else; only Julius Caesar was able to do several things at the same moment. True, I am not asked to work, not while my accountant Olivi is alive, but why is a person like me unable to do anything in this world except dream or scratch at the violin, for which he possesses no talent?

The thinned fat man did not reply at once. He was methodical, and he first pondered for a long time. Then, with a learned mien that was rightfully his, given his great superiority in the field, he explained to me that my real disease lay not in the cigarette but in the decision-making. I should try giving up the habit without any resolutions or decisions. In me — he felt — over the course of the years two persons had come into being, one of whom commanded, while the other was merely a slave who, the moment surveillance weakened, flouted his master’s will out of a love of freedom. This slave was therefore to be granted absolute freedom, and at the same time I should look my habit squarely in the face, as if it were new and I had never seen it before. It should not be fought, but neglected and forgotten in a certain way; abandoning it, I should turn my back on it nonchalantly, as on a companion now recognized as unworthy of me. Quite simple, really.

In fact, it did seem simple to me. It’s true, moreover, that having then succeeded with great effort in dispelling all decisiveness from my spirit, I succeeded in not smoking for several hours, but when my mouth was cleansed and I felt an innocent taste such as a newborn infant must know, and a desire for a cigarette came over me, and when I smoked it I felt a remorse for which I renewed the decision I had tried to abolish. It was a longer way round, but it arrived at the same place.

One day that scoundrel Olivi gave me an idea: I would strengthen my resolve by making a bet.

I believe Olivi has always looked the way I see him today. I have always seen him a bit stooped but solid, and to me he has always appeared old, as I see him now, at eighty. He has worked for me and still works for me, but I don’t love him, because in my view he has prevented me from doing the work that he does.

We made a bet! The first one of us who smoked would pay, and then each would regain his own freedom. So the accountant, who had been imposed on me to keep me from squandering my father’s legacy, tried to diminish my mother’s, which I controlled freely on my own!

The bet proved extremely pernicious. I was no longer occasionally the master, but only a slave, the slave of that Olivi, whom I didn’t love! I smoked immediately. Then I thought to defraud him by continuing to smoke in secret. But, in that case, why should I have made the bet? To smoke a last cigarette, I hastily sought a date that might have some attractive tie with the date of the bet, which I could somehow imagine had also been recorded by Olivi himself. But the rebellion continued and I smoked so much I became short of breath. To free myself of this burden, I went to Olivi and confessed.

The old man, smiling, collected the money and immediately took from his pocket a thick cigar, which he lighted and smoked with great gusto. I had no doubt that he had observed the conditions of the bet. Obviously, other men are made differently from me.

Just after my son’s third birthday, my wife had a fine idea. She suggested I have myself confined for a while in a clinic, to rid myself of the habit. I agreed at once, first of all because when my son reached an age at which he would be able to judge me, I wanted him to find me stable and tranquil, and also for the more urgent reason that Olivi was ill and threatening to abandon me, hence I might be forced to take his place at any moment, and I considered myself ill-suited for such great activity with all that nicotine inside me.

At first, we thought of going to Switzerland, the traditional land of clinics, but then we learned that in Trieste a certain Dr. Muli had opened an establishment. I sent my wife to see him, and he offered to reserve for me a locked apartment where I would be guarded by a nurse, assisted also by other staff. As my wife told me about it, she smiled and even laughed out loud, amused at the idea of having me locked up, and I laughed heartily along with her. This was the first time she had participated in my attempts at treatment. Until now she had never taken my disease seriously, and she used to say that smoking was only a somewhat odd and not entirely boring way of life. I believe that after marrying me, she had been pleasantly surprised at never hearing me express any nostalgia for my freedom; I was too busy missing other things.

We went to the clinic on the same day Olivi told me that nothing could persuade him to stay on with me beyond the following month. At home, we prepared some fresh linen in a trunk, and that same evening we went to Dr. Muli’s.

He welcomed us at the door, in person. At that time Dr. Muli was a handsome young man. It was midsummer; small, nervy, his lively, shining black eyes even more prominent in his sun-burnished face, he was the picture of elegance in his white suit, trim from his collar to his shoes. He roused my wonder, but obviously I was also the object of his.

A bit embarrassed, understanding the reason for his wonder, I said: “Of course. You don’t believe in the necessity of the treatment, or in my seriousness in undertaking it.”

With a slight smile, which somehow hurt me, the doctor replied: “Why not? It may be true that cigarettes are more harmful to you than we doctors admit. Only I don’t understand why, instead of giving up smoking ex abrupto, you haven’t decided simply to reduce the number of cigarettes you smoke. Smoking is all right, provided you don’t overdo it.”

To tell the truth, in my desire to stop smoking altogether, I had never even considered the possibility of smoking less. But this advice, arriving now, could only weaken my resolve. I spoke firmly: “Since it’s been decided, let me give this cure a try.”

“Try?” The doctor laughed with a superior manner. “Once you undertake it, the cure must succeed. Unless you employ brute force to overpower poor Giovanna, you will be unable to leave here. The formalities to release you would take so long that in the meantime you would forget your addiction.”

“We were in the apartment reserved for me, which we had reached by returning to the ground floor, after having climbed up to the third.

“You see? That barred door prevents any communication with the other part of the ground floor, where the exit is located. Not even Giovanna has the keys. To go outside, she also has to climb to the third floor, and only she has the keys to the door that was opened for us on that landing. In any case, there are always guards on the third floor. Not bad, eh? In a clinic originally designed for babies and expectant mothers?”

And he started laughing, perhaps at the thought of having shut me up among the babies.

He called Giovanna and introduced me. She was a tiny little woman of indeterminate age: anywhere between forty and sixty. She had small eyes, intensely aglow, and a cap of very gray hair.

The doctor said to her: “With this gentleman you must be ready to use your fists.”

She looked at me, studying me, turned bright red, and shouted in a shrill voice, “I will do my duty, but I certainly can’t fight with you. If you threaten me, I’ll call the orderly, a strong man, and if he doesn’t come at once, I’ll let you go where you like, because I certainly don’t want to risk my neck.”

I learned later that the doctor had given her this assignment with the promise of a fairly generous bonus, which had only increased her fright. At that moment her words irked me — fine position I had put myself in, and of my own free will!

“Neck, indeed!” I cried. “Who’s going to touch your neck?”

I turned to the doctor: “I would like you to instruct this woman not to disturb me. I have brought some books along, and I want to be left in peace.”

The doctor uttered a few words of warning to Giovanna. Her only apology was to continue her attack: “I have children, two little daughters, and I have to live.”

“I wouldn’t condescend to murder you,” I replied in a tone surely not calculated to reassure the poor creature.

The doctor got rid of her, sending her to fetch something or other from the floor above, and to soothe me, he offered to replace her with someone else, adding: “She’s not a bad sort, and when I’ve instructed her to be a little more tactful, she will give you no cause for complaint.”

Wishing to show what scant importance I attached to the person charged with watching over me, I declared my willingness to put up with her. I felt the need to calm down, I took from my pocket my next-to-last cigarette and smoked it greedily; I explained to the doctor that I had brought with me only two, and that I wanted to stop smoking at midnight on the dot.

My wife took her leave of me along with the doctor. Smiling, she said: “This is your decision, so be strong.”

Her smile, which I so loved, seemed a mockery; and at that very moment a new feeling germinated in my spirit, with the result that an enterprise undertaken with such seriousness was doomed perforce to fail at once. I felt ill immediately, but I did not realize what was making me suffer until I was left alone. A mad, bitter jealousy of the young doctor. Handsome he was, and free! He was called the Venus of doctors. Why wouldn’t my wife love him? Following her, as they left, he had looked at her elegantly shod feet! This was the first time since my marriage that I had felt jealous. What misery! It was no doubt a part of my condition as a wretched prisoner. I fought back! My wife’s smile was her usual smile, not mockery after having eliminated me from the house. It was she, indeed, who had caused me to be locked up, though she attached no importance to my habit; but she had surely arranged this to please me. And, furthermore, I should recall that it wasn’t so easy to fall in love with my wife. The doctor may have looked at her feet, but certainly he had done so to see what sort of boots to buy for his mistress. Still, I promptly smoked the last cigarette; and it wasn’t yet midnight, only eleven o’clock, an impossible hour for a last cigarette.

I opened a book. I read without comprehending, and I actually had visions. The page on which I had fixed my gaze was occupied by a photograph of Dr. Muli in all his glory, beauty, elegance. I couldn’t bear it! I summoned Giovanna. Perhaps if I could converse, I would calm down.

She came, and at once gave me a suspicious look. She cried with her shrill voice: “You needn’t think you can persuade me to neglect my duty.”

Meanwhile, to soothe her, I lied, assuring her I wasn’t thinking any such thing, but I no longer felt like reading and would rather have a little chat with her. I made her sit down opposite me. Actually, she repelled me, with her old crone demeanor and her youthful eyes, shifty like the eyes of all weak animals. I felt sorry for myself, having to put up with such company! It’s true that even when I’m free, I can never choose the company most suitable for me; as a rule it’s the others who choose me, as my wife did.

I begged Giovanna to entertain me, and when she insisted, she could say nothing worthy of my attention, I asked her to tell me about her family, adding that nearly everybody in this world has at least one.

She then obeyed and started telling me that she had had to put her two little girls in the Institute for the Poor.

I was beginning to enjoy her story because her brisk way of dealing with those eighteen months of pregnancy made me laugh. But her temperament was too argumentative and I simply couldn’t so on listening to her when, first, she tried to convince me that she had no other course, what with her scant wages, and then that the doctor had been wrong, a few days before, to assert that two crowns daily were enough for her, since the Institute supported her entire family.

She was shouting. “And what about the rest? Even after they’ve been fed and clothed, they still don’t have all they need!” And out she came with a whole stream of things she had to provide for her daughters, all of which I have now forgotten, since to protect my hearing from her shrill voice, I deliberately directed my thoughts elsewhere. But I was distressed all the same, and I felt entitled to a reward: “Wouldn’t it be possible to have a cigarette? Just one? I’d pay you ten crowns. Tomorrow, that is. Because I don’t have a penny with me.”

Giovanna was hugely frightened by my proposal. Then, speaking purely at random, just to be talking and to maintain my composure, I asked: “In this prison there must at least be something to drink, isn’t there?”

Giovanna responded promptly and, to my astonishment, in a genuinely conversational tone, without yelling. “Yes, indeed! Before leaving, the doctor gave me this bottle of cognac. Here it is, still unopened. You see? The seal hasn’t been broken.”

In my present position, the only avenue of escape I could then envision was drunkenness. To such straits had my confidence in my wife reduced me!

At that moment my smoking habit didn’t seem worth all the effort to which I had subjected myself. Already I hadn’t smoked for half an hour and I wasn’t even thinking about it, concerned as I was with the idea of my wife with Doctor Muli. So I was entirely cured, but irreparably ridiculous!

I opened the bottle and poured myself a little glass of the yellow liquid. Giovanna watched me, her mouth agape, but I hesitated before offering her any.

“When I’ve finished this bottle, will I be able to have another?”

Still in her pleasant conversational tone, Giovanna reassured me, “As much as you want! To comply with your slightest wish, the housekeeper must get up, even at midnight!”

I have never suffered from miserliness, and Giovanna immediately had her glass filled, to the brim. Before she could finish saying thanks, she had drained it, and she immediately cast her bright eyes on the bottle. So it was she herself who gave me the idea of getting her drunk. But that was no easy undertaking!

I couldn’t repeat exactly everything she said to me, in her pure Triestine dialect, after she had drained all those glasses, but I had the profound impression of being with a person to whom, if I hadn’t been distracted by my own concerns, I could have listened with pleasure.

First of all, she confided to me that this was precisely the way she liked to work. Everybody in this world should be entitled to spend a couple of hours every day in just such a comfortable chair, facing a bottle of good brandy, the kind that doesn’t cause any ill effects.

I also tried to converse. I asked her if, when her husband was alive, her work had been organized in this same way.

She burst out laughing. When her husband was alive, he had given her more beatings than kisses and, compared with the way she had had to work for him, any job had seemed a rest, long before I arrived at this place for my cure.

Then Giovanna became pensive and asked me if I believed that the dead could see what the living are up to. I nodded briefly. But she wanted to know if the dead, when they reach the other side, learned of everything that had happened back here during their lifetime.

For a moment the question actually did distract me. It had been asked, moreover, in a much softer tone because, to avoid being overheard, Giovanna had lowered her voice.

“So,” I said, “you were unfaithful to your husband.”

She begged me not to shout, then confessed that she had been unfaithful to him, but only during the first months of their marriage. Then she had grown accustomed to his blows and had loved her man.

To keep up the conversation, I asked: “So your older daughter owes her life to this other man?”

Again in a low voice, she admitted to believing as much, also because of a certain resemblance. She was very sorry she had betrayed her husband. She said this, but was still laughing because these are things you laugh about even when they hurt. But that was only after his death, because, before, since he didn’t know about it, the matter couldn’t have any importance.

Impelled by a certain fraternal friendliness, I tried to allay her sorrow; I told her I believed the dead do know everything, but certain things they don’t give a damn about.

“Only the living suffer over them!” I cried, banging my fist on the table.

I bruised my hand, and there is nothing better than physical pain to provoke new ideas. It occurred to me that while I was here tormenting myself with the thought of my wife’s taking advantage of my confinement in order to betray me, perhaps the doctor was still in the clinic, in which case I could recover my peace of mind. I asked Giovanna to go and see, saying that I felt a need to tell the doctor something, and promising her the whole bottle as a reward. Protesting that she wasn’t all that fond of drinking, she still complied at once and I heard her climb unsteadily up the wooden steps to the upper floor, to emerge from our cloister. Then she came down again, but she slipped, making a great racket and screaming.

“The devil take you,” I murmured fervently. Had she broken her neck, my position would have been greatly simplified.

Instead, she joined me, smiling, because she was in that state where pains aren’t so painful. She told me she had spoken with the attendant, who was just going to bed; though, even there, he remained at her disposal, in the event that I turned nasty. She raised her hand, index finger pointed, but she tempered those words and that threatening gesture with a smile. Then, more sharply, she added that the doctor had not returned after seeing my wife out. Not a sign! Indeed, for some hours, the attendant had hoped the doctor would return, because a patient needed to be looked at. Now the attendant had given up hope.

I looked at her, studying the smile that contorted her face, to see if it was habitual or if it was totally new, inspired by the fact that the doctor was with my wife rather than with me, his patient. I was seized by a fury that made my head spin. I must confess that, as always, in my spirit two persons were combating, one of whom, the more reasonable, was saying to me: “Idiot! What makes you think your wife is unfaithful? She wouldn’t have to get you locked up to create the opportunity.” The other, and this was surely the one who wanted to smoke, also called me an idiot, but shouted: “Don’t you recall how easy things are when the husband is away? And with the doctor you are paying money to!”

Giovanna, taking another drink, said: “I forgot to lock the door upstairs. But I don’t want to climb those steps again. Anyway, there are always people up there, and you’d look really foolish if you tried to run away.”

“Yes,” I said, with that modicum of hypocrisy now necessary to deceive the poor creature. Then I, too, gulped down some cognac, and declared that with all this liquor now at my disposal, I didn’t give a damn about cigarettes. She

believed me at once, and then I told her I actually wasn’t the one who wanted me to break the smoking habit. It was my wife. Because when I smoked as many as ten cigarettes a day, I became something terrible. Any woman who came within reach of me then was in danger.

Giovanna began to laugh loudly, sinking back in the chair: “So it’s your wife who prevents you from smoking the ten cigarettes you need?”

“That’s exactly how it was! At least she used to keep me from smoking.”

Giovanna was no fool once she had all that cognac inside her. She was seized by a fit of laughter that almost made her fall out of the chair, but when she had recovered enough breath to gasp out a few words, she painted a magnificent scene suggested to her by my illness. “Ten cigarettes... half an hour... you set the alarm. then ...”

I corrected her. “For ten cigarettes I’d need an hour, more or less. Then, for the full effect, about another hour, give or take ten minutes.”

Suddenly Giovanna became serious and rose almost effortlessly from her chair. She said she would go and lie down because she was feeling a slight headache. I invited her to take the bottle with her, because I had had enough of that strong liquor. Hypocritically, I said that the next day I wanted to be provided with some good wine.

But she wasn’t thinking about wine. Before leaving, as she held the bottle under her arm, she looked me up and down, with a leer that frightened me.

She left the door open, and a moment or two later a package landed in the center of the room. I picked it up immediately: it contained exactly eleven cigarettes. To make sure, poor Giovanna had chosen to be generous. Ordinary cigarettes, Hungarian. But the first one I lighted was very good. I felt enormously relieved. At once I thought, with smug pleasure, how I had outsmarted this place, fine for shutting up children, but not me. Then I realized I had outsmarted my wife too, and it seemed to me I had repaid her in her own coin. Why, otherwise, would my jealousy have been transformed into such acceptable curiosity? I remained in that room, calmly smoking those nauseating cigarettes.

After about half an hour, I remembered I had to escape from that clinic, where Giovanna was awaiting her reward. I took off my shoes and went out into the corridor. The door of Giovanna’s room was ajar and, judging by her regular, noisy breathing, I imagined she was asleep. Cautiously I climbed up to the third story where, behind that door — Doctor Muli’s pride — I slipped on my shoes. I stepped out onto a landing and started down the other stairs, descending slowly so as not to arouse suspicion.

I had reached the landing of the second floor when a young lady in a rather elegant nurse’s uniform came after me, to ask politely: “Are you looking for someone?”

She was pretty, and I wouldn’t have minded smoking the ten cigarettes in her company. A bit aggressively, I smiled at her: “Dr. Muli isn’t in?”

She opened her eyes wide. “He’s never here at this hour.”

“Could you tell me where I might find him now? At my house there’s someone ill who needs him.”

Kindly, she told me the doctor’s address, and I repeated it several times, to make her believe I wanted to memorize it. I wouldn’t have been in any hurry to leave, but, irritated, she turned her back on me. I was actually being thrown out of my prison.

Downstairs, a woman was quick to open the door for me. I hadn’t a penny on me, and I murmured: “I’ll have to tip you some other time.”

There’s no knowing the future. With me, things are often repeated: it was conceivable that I might turn up there again.

The night was clear and warm. I took off my hat, the better to feel the breeze of freedom. I looked at the stars with wonder, as if I had only just conquered them. The next day, far from the clinic, I would give up smoking. Meanwhile, passing a cafe that was still open, I bought some good cigarettes, because it wouldn’t be possible to conclude my smoker’s career with one of poor Giovanna’s cigarettes. The man who waited on me knew who I was and gave me the pack on credit.

Reaching my villa, I rang the bell furiously. First the maid came to the window, and then, after not such a short time, my wife. I waited for her, thinking, perfectly cool: Apparently Dr. Muli is here. But, recognizing me, my wife laughed, and her laughter, echoing in the deserted street, was so sincere that it would have sufficed to dispel all suspicion.

Once inside, I postponed any inquisitorial action. When I had promised my wife to tell my adventures, which she thought she knew already, the next day, she asked me: “Why don’t you go to bed?”

As an excuse, I said: “I believe you’ve taken advantage of my absence to move that armoire.”

It’s true that, at home, I always believe things have been moved, and it’s also true that my wife very often does move them; but at that moment I was peering into every corner to see if the small, trim body of Dr. Muli was concealed somewhere.

My wife gave me some good news. Returning from the clinic, she had run into Olivi’s son, who had told her the old man was much better, having taken a medicine prescribed by a new doctor.

Falling asleep, I thought I had done the right thing in leaving the clinic, because I had plenty of time to cure myself slowly. And my son, sleeping in the next room, also was surely not preparing to judge me yet, or to imitate me. There was absolutely no hurry.

MY FATHER’S DEATH

The doctor has left town, and I really don’t know if a biography of my father is necessary. If I describe my father in over-scrupulous detail, it might turn out that, to achieve my own cure, it would have been necessary to analyze him first. I am going bravely ahead, because I know that if my father had needed such treatment, it would have been for an illness quite different from mine. In any case, to waste no time, I will tell only as much about him as is necessary to stimulate my memory of myself.

“15.4.1890. My father dies. L.C.” For those who do not know, those last two letters do not stand for Lower Case, but for Last Cigarette. This is an annotation I find in a volume by Ostwald on positivistic philosophy, with which, full of hope, I have spent many hours and never understood. No one would believe this, but, despite its brevity, that annotation records the most important event of my life.