Associate Professor in Italian at the University of Oxford and Fellow, and Tutor in Italian at St Hugh’s, Professor Giuseppe Stellardi recently delivered the opening lecture of an international conference on one of the most interesting Italian writers of the 20th century, Carlo Emilio Gadda. The talk, entitled: “Literature as Translation, Expression, Communication: The Case of C.E. Gadda” addressed a simple question: what is literature for Gadda? The answer required brief detours into literary territories (Primo Levi, Samuel Beckett) that are not normally associated with Gadda’s name and that seem very distant from his unique style.
Carlo Emilio Gadda is well known in Italy, yet the complexity of his writing has hindered somewhat the dissemination of his work outside of the national borders. A fresh translation of his masterpiece, La cognizione del dolore (The Experience of Pain), now provides English readers with the opportunity to discover an exceptional author. At the same time, the re-publication in Italy (with entirely new apparatuses) of all his works is fanning critical analysis and debate.
You can watch the lecture in full below:
