WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.319 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are going 00:00:02.319 --> 00:00:05.820 to talk about a very specific, very human kind 00:00:05.820 --> 00:00:08.560 of madness. You know that feeling when you decide 00:00:08.560 --> 00:00:10.640 to change your life? That rush of adrenaline 00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:12.679 when you say, okay, starting Monday, no more 00:00:12.679 --> 00:00:15.859 junk food? Whoa! Or starting tomorrow, I'm going 00:00:15.859 --> 00:00:18.320 to write that novel. The moment of resolve, it's 00:00:18.320 --> 00:00:22.000 intoxicating, isn't it? Exactly. It feels better 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:25.339 than actually doing the thing. And today, we're 00:00:25.339 --> 00:00:28.320 looking at a man who got so addicted to that 00:00:28.320 --> 00:00:31.609 feeling. the thrill of the last one, that he 00:00:31.609 --> 00:00:34.130 built his entire life and literature around it. 00:00:34.229 --> 00:00:36.149 It's incredible. We're talking about a guy who 00:00:36.149 --> 00:00:38.929 spent decades planning to quit smoking, writing 00:00:38.929 --> 00:00:42.130 dates on the walls, celebrating the last cigarette 00:00:42.130 --> 00:00:44.729 over and over again, just so he could feel the 00:00:44.729 --> 00:00:47.109 pleasure of restarting. And the irony, of course, 00:00:47.170 --> 00:00:50.329 is that this wasn't just a personal quirk. It 00:00:50.329 --> 00:00:52.509 was the engine that drove one of the most important 00:00:52.509 --> 00:00:55.490 and I think accidental literary careers of the 00:00:55.490 --> 00:00:57.969 20th century. We are diving into the life of 00:00:57.969 --> 00:01:00.869 a man born Aaron Hector Schmitz, who the world 00:01:00.869 --> 00:01:03.609 eventually came to know as Italos Fevo. A name 00:01:03.609 --> 00:01:05.569 most people probably haven't heard. Exactly. 00:01:05.569 --> 00:01:06.989 And if you're listening to this and thinking, 00:01:07.090 --> 00:01:09.370 I've never heard of him, that is actually part 00:01:09.370 --> 00:01:12.489 of the story. For most of his life, nobody else 00:01:12.489 --> 00:01:15.170 had either. We're looking at a failed writer 00:01:15.170 --> 00:01:18.890 who spent the prime of his life selling, of all 00:01:18.890 --> 00:01:21.609 things, underwater paint for warships. Which 00:01:21.609 --> 00:01:24.489 is not the typical biography of a literary genius. 00:01:24.650 --> 00:01:26.870 Not at all, yeah. Usually we hear about the starving 00:01:26.870 --> 00:01:29.269 artist in the Garrett or the professor or the 00:01:29.269 --> 00:01:31.650 journalist. We rarely hear about the industrial 00:01:31.650 --> 00:01:34.170 paint salesman. Not at all. But the sources we 00:01:34.170 --> 00:01:37.620 have today. biographies, literary analysis, and 00:01:37.620 --> 00:01:40.500 specifically his masterpiece, Zeno's Conscience, 00:01:40.579 --> 00:01:43.379 tell a story of how this paint salesman ended 00:01:43.379 --> 00:01:46.760 up really inventing the modern psychological 00:01:46.760 --> 00:01:49.620 novel. He absolutely did. And the craziest part, 00:01:49.760 --> 00:01:51.640 he likely would have died completely unknown 00:01:51.640 --> 00:01:54.480 if he hadn't hired a random English tutor in 00:01:54.480 --> 00:01:56.579 Trieste who just happened to be a young, broke 00:01:56.579 --> 00:01:59.219 James Joyce. It's one of those history -altering 00:01:59.219 --> 00:02:01.540 coincidences that you just can't make up. It 00:02:01.540 --> 00:02:04.129 sounds like fiction. It really does. So our mission 00:02:04.129 --> 00:02:07.209 today is to unpack this. We want to understand 00:02:07.209 --> 00:02:10.349 how a man who considered himself a failure a 00:02:10.349 --> 00:02:14.129 totally inept figure as he would say managed 00:02:14.129 --> 00:02:17.310 to pioneer the use of Freudian theory in fiction 00:02:17.310 --> 00:02:20.030 before it was even really accepted in Italy. 00:02:20.210 --> 00:02:21.889 Right. We're going to look at the psychology 00:02:21.889 --> 00:02:24.590 of the unreliable narrator and ultimately we're 00:02:24.590 --> 00:02:26.990 going to see what this man of smoke can teach 00:02:26.990 --> 00:02:30.069 us about our own. you know, our own addictions 00:02:30.069 --> 00:02:32.310 to self -improvement. So let's get into the context. 00:02:32.490 --> 00:02:34.189 Yeah. Because you can't understand Sfavo without 00:02:34.189 --> 00:02:36.030 understanding where he was standing. Trieste. 00:02:36.210 --> 00:02:38.930 Right. So today, if you look at a map, Trieste 00:02:38.930 --> 00:02:40.789 is in Italy. It's right there in the northeast 00:02:40.789 --> 00:02:44.189 corner, kind of tucked away. But in 1861, when 00:02:44.189 --> 00:02:46.469 our subject was born, the map looked very, very 00:02:46.469 --> 00:02:49.129 different. Trieste was the jewel of the Austrian 00:02:49.129 --> 00:02:51.189 Empire. So we're talking about the Habsburgs. 00:02:51.189 --> 00:02:54.150 Exactly. Later Austria -Hungary, it was the empire's 00:02:54.150 --> 00:02:56.990 main outlet to the sea, its biggest, most important 00:02:56.990 --> 00:03:00.360 port. So imagine a city that isn't quite Italian, 00:03:00.520 --> 00:03:03.379 isn't quite German, isn't quite Slavic. It's 00:03:03.379 --> 00:03:07.060 everything at once. It's this massive, bustling 00:03:07.060 --> 00:03:10.740 commercial hub. You have coffee traders, insurance 00:03:10.740 --> 00:03:13.500 magnates, naval officers from all over the world. 00:03:13.580 --> 00:03:15.939 It's a melting pot in the truest sense of the 00:03:15.939 --> 00:03:18.000 word. It sounds like a place where identity would 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:22.099 be. Slippery. Slippery is the perfect word. It 00:03:22.099 --> 00:03:24.699 was a liminal space. You had the rigid bureaucracy 00:03:24.699 --> 00:03:28.400 of Vienna, you know, all in German, trying to 00:03:28.400 --> 00:03:30.719 manage a population that was culturally Mediterranean 00:03:30.719 --> 00:03:35.219 Italian speaking. And Aaron Hector Schmitz, our 00:03:35.219 --> 00:03:38.680 future Idola Svevo, is born right into the middle 00:03:38.680 --> 00:03:41.740 of this identity crisis. He is the crisis personified. 00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:43.360 I mean, let's look at his family. He's born into 00:03:43.360 --> 00:03:45.340 a Jewish family, right? A secular Jewish family, 00:03:45.419 --> 00:03:48.719 yes. And his father is a... German -speaking 00:03:48.719 --> 00:03:50.659 businessman. His mother is Italian. So right 00:03:50.659 --> 00:03:52.479 there at the dinner table, you have this clash 00:03:52.479 --> 00:03:54.759 of cultures. And strictly speaking, it wasn't 00:03:54.759 --> 00:03:57.159 just a clash. It was a hierarchy. In the Austrian 00:03:57.159 --> 00:04:00.039 Empire, German was the language of power. It 00:04:00.039 --> 00:04:02.280 was the language of commerce, of the law, of 00:04:02.280 --> 00:04:04.919 getting ahead. And Italian. Italian was the language 00:04:04.919 --> 00:04:07.199 of the streets in Trieste, but it wasn't even 00:04:07.199 --> 00:04:10.000 standard Italian, the proper literary Italian. 00:04:10.379 --> 00:04:12.580 I read that he didn't even speak proper Italian 00:04:12.580 --> 00:04:16.000 growing up. That seems wild for someone who becomes 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:18.889 a famous Italian writer. That's the crucial point 00:04:18.889 --> 00:04:22.370 that many people miss. His first language, the 00:04:22.370 --> 00:04:25.470 language of his heart and his home, was the Treestein 00:04:25.470 --> 00:04:28.959 dialect. It's a Venetian dialect, very specific 00:04:28.959 --> 00:04:31.980 to that region. It has its own rhythm, its own 00:04:31.980 --> 00:04:35.980 vocabulary, standard literary Italian, the language 00:04:35.980 --> 00:04:38.420 of Dante and Patriarch, the language of the academy 00:04:38.420 --> 00:04:40.860 was actually his second language. He had to learn 00:04:40.860 --> 00:04:43.980 it almost like a foreign tongue. And then on 00:04:43.980 --> 00:04:46.660 top of that, because his father was of German 00:04:46.660 --> 00:04:49.120 heritage and wanted his sons to be successful 00:04:49.120 --> 00:04:51.240 in the Austrian Empire. He sends them away. He 00:04:51.240 --> 00:04:53.279 sent Aaron and his brothers away to boarding 00:04:53.279 --> 00:04:56.089 school. In Germany. So he's completely immersed. 00:04:56.370 --> 00:04:58.970 Completely. Near Würzburg. So from the age of 00:04:58.970 --> 00:05:01.750 12, he is immersed in German. He's reading Goethe, 00:05:01.790 --> 00:05:03.689 Schiller, Schopenhauer in the original German. 00:05:03.730 --> 00:05:05.470 He's reading Shakespeare in German translation. 00:05:05.750 --> 00:05:07.990 He's reading the Russian classics. So by the 00:05:07.990 --> 00:05:10.709 time he comes back to Prieste, he's this total 00:05:10.709 --> 00:05:13.589 cultural hybrid. A lot of layers. He's Jewish, 00:05:13.750 --> 00:05:17.509 but secular. He's Italian by birth, but German 00:05:17.509 --> 00:05:19.790 by education. And he's living in an Austrian 00:05:19.790 --> 00:05:22.389 port city. It sounds like he didn't have a solid 00:05:22.389 --> 00:05:24.550 ground to stand on. Like if someone asked him, 00:05:24.589 --> 00:05:27.089 what are you? Yeah. The answer would take five 00:05:27.089 --> 00:05:29.389 minutes to explain. Which is exactly why he later 00:05:29.389 --> 00:05:32.550 shows the pseudonym Italo Svevo. It wasn't just 00:05:32.550 --> 00:05:35.029 a catchy name. It was a map of his psyche. Break 00:05:35.029 --> 00:05:38.490 that down. Italo obviously means Italian. Svevo 00:05:38.490 --> 00:05:41.589 refers to Swabian, which is a historical region 00:05:41.589 --> 00:05:45.860 of Germany. So literally he called himself. Adelice, 00:05:45.939 --> 00:05:48.120 the Swabian. That feels almost contradictory, 00:05:48.339 --> 00:05:50.240 like calling yourself the French Englishman or 00:05:50.240 --> 00:05:52.220 something. It was a contradiction and it was 00:05:52.220 --> 00:05:54.839 a statement. But in the late 19th century, that 00:05:54.839 --> 00:05:57.819 was a dangerous thing to be. Nationalism was 00:05:57.819 --> 00:06:00.319 on the rise everywhere. People wanted you to 00:06:00.319 --> 00:06:02.600 pick a side. Are you Italian? Are you Austrian? 00:06:03.060 --> 00:06:05.199 And he's saying. And here comes this guy saying, 00:06:05.379 --> 00:06:08.600 I am the hyphen. I am both. He was signaling 00:06:08.600 --> 00:06:10.579 that he was a bridge between these cultures. 00:06:10.660 --> 00:06:12.959 But for a long time, being a bridge just meant 00:06:12.959 --> 00:06:15.420 everyone walked all over you. So he comes back 00:06:15.420 --> 00:06:18.639 to Trieste in 1880. He's young. He's incredibly 00:06:18.639 --> 00:06:20.920 well read. He has this head full of European 00:06:20.920 --> 00:06:23.800 literature. He wants to be a writer. He probably 00:06:23.800 --> 00:06:26.839 envisions a life of, you know, leisure, writing 00:06:26.839 --> 00:06:29.540 plays, living off his father's money. That was 00:06:29.540 --> 00:06:31.959 absolutely the plan. His father had a successful 00:06:31.959 --> 00:06:34.699 glassware business. Aaron probably thought he 00:06:34.699 --> 00:06:36.839 was set for life. He could be a gentleman scholar, 00:06:37.220 --> 00:06:39.259 dabble in the arts, maybe publish a few poems. 00:06:39.379 --> 00:06:43.040 But then... The reality of 19th century capitalism 00:06:43.040 --> 00:06:47.240 hit. Hard. The crash. His father's business collapsed. 00:06:47.240 --> 00:06:50.439 It went bankrupt. And purely from a practical 00:06:50.439 --> 00:06:54.160 standpoint, the man of leisure dream just evaporates 00:06:54.160 --> 00:06:56.839 instantly. All gone. The young intellectual who 00:06:56.839 --> 00:06:59.399 just wants to read Hamlet and write stories now 00:06:59.399 --> 00:07:01.259 has to go out and get a job to support the family. 00:07:01.480 --> 00:07:03.579 And he doesn't get a job in a library or a university 00:07:03.579 --> 00:07:05.720 where he could maybe use his brain in a creative 00:07:05.720 --> 00:07:08.199 way? Oh, no, nothing like that. He gets a job 00:07:08.199 --> 00:07:10.470 at the Union Bank of Vienna. As a correspondence 00:07:10.470 --> 00:07:13.750 clerk. That is a soul -crushing pivot from literature 00:07:13.750 --> 00:07:16.110 to ledgers. And he stayed there for 20 years. 00:07:16.310 --> 00:07:18.810 20 years. I want to pause on that because we 00:07:18.810 --> 00:07:20.670 often hear stories of writers who struggle for 00:07:20.670 --> 00:07:22.870 a year or two. Maybe they wait tables or drive 00:07:22.870 --> 00:07:25.889 a cab. But 20 years of sitting behind a counter, 00:07:25.990 --> 00:07:28.550 processing transactions, writing business letters 00:07:28.550 --> 00:07:31.589 in French and German, that has to do something 00:07:31.589 --> 00:07:34.860 to a person's mind. It did. It created this deep 00:07:34.860 --> 00:07:37.439 sense of alienation. He referred to those hours 00:07:37.439 --> 00:07:40.860 at the bank as time subtracted from life. He 00:07:40.860 --> 00:07:44.019 felt like a cog in a machine. But, and this is 00:07:44.019 --> 00:07:46.399 the key insight for us, that drudgery is what 00:07:46.399 --> 00:07:48.899 gave his writing its unique flavor. How so? He 00:07:48.899 --> 00:07:50.959 wasn't writing about heroic nights or sweeping 00:07:50.959 --> 00:07:53.339 romances. He began to write about the grayness 00:07:53.339 --> 00:07:56.379 of modern life. The bureaucracy. The feeling 00:07:56.379 --> 00:07:58.680 of being trapped in a system you can't control. 00:07:58.939 --> 00:08:02.240 The small, private humiliations of an office. 00:08:02.379 --> 00:08:04.939 job. It reminds me of Franz Kafka working at 00:08:04.939 --> 00:08:07.339 the Insurance Institute. The comparison is very, 00:08:07.439 --> 00:08:09.819 very apt. They were both subjects of the Austro 00:08:09.819 --> 00:08:12.160 -Hungarian Empire, both Jewish, both trapped 00:08:12.160 --> 00:08:14.740 in bureaucratic jobs they hated, and both writing 00:08:14.740 --> 00:08:17.779 about the absurdity of systems. They were contemporaries 00:08:17.779 --> 00:08:20.420 wrestling with the same modern condition. So 00:08:20.420 --> 00:08:22.600 he was writing in secret during this time, hiding 00:08:22.600 --> 00:08:25.040 it from his colleagues. He was. He was leading 00:08:25.040 --> 00:08:29.339 a complete double life. By day, the respectable, 00:08:29.579 --> 00:08:33.090 punctual bank clerk, Aaron Schmitz. By night, 00:08:33.659 --> 00:08:36.220 Or perhaps hiding manuscripts under the ledger 00:08:36.220 --> 00:08:38.100 when the boss wasn't looking. He was writing 00:08:38.100 --> 00:08:40.779 novels. And he was politically active, too. Yes. 00:08:40.899 --> 00:08:42.860 And this is another fascinating contradiction. 00:08:43.080 --> 00:08:45.840 He was contributing articles to a socialist newspaper 00:08:45.840 --> 00:08:49.019 called L 'Indépendant, a banker writing for a 00:08:49.019 --> 00:08:51.320 socialist paper. It just shows how fragmented 00:08:51.320 --> 00:08:53.919 his life was. OK, so let's talk about those early 00:08:53.919 --> 00:08:56.259 attempts, because often when we tell these stories, 00:08:56.379 --> 00:08:59.440 we skip to the success. But the failure here 00:08:59.440 --> 00:09:02.000 is really, really important. He publishes his 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:05.830 first novel. Una vita, which means a life in 00:09:05.830 --> 00:09:08.809 1892. And he paid to have it published. That's 00:09:08.809 --> 00:09:10.509 an important detail. No publisher was breaking 00:09:10.509 --> 00:09:13.090 down his door. He believed in it enough to finance 00:09:13.090 --> 00:09:15.350 it himself, which is a huge financial risk for 00:09:15.350 --> 00:09:18.440 a bank clerk. Ouch. And the reception? What did 00:09:18.440 --> 00:09:21.200 the critics say? Nothing. Absolute crushing silence. 00:09:21.360 --> 00:09:22.980 It was completely ignored. It didn't even get 00:09:22.980 --> 00:09:25.200 bad reviews. It just got no reviews. It was like 00:09:25.200 --> 00:09:27.500 shouting into a void. It just vanished. That 00:09:27.500 --> 00:09:29.480 might be worse than a bad review. It's much worse. 00:09:29.539 --> 00:09:31.919 At least a bad review means someone read it, 00:09:31.960 --> 00:09:35.700 someone engaged with it. Silence is just indifference. 00:09:36.019 --> 00:09:38.279 Okay. But he persists. He doesn't give up yet. 00:09:38.320 --> 00:09:41.519 He writes another one. Sinili Ta, published in 00:09:41.519 --> 00:09:44.659 1898. senility which is usually translated as 00:09:44.659 --> 00:09:47.580 senility or more accurately as a man grows older 00:09:47.580 --> 00:09:50.360 he poured his heart into this one it's a much 00:09:50.360 --> 00:09:53.940 more focused psychologically dense book he thought 00:09:53.940 --> 00:09:56.419 this is it this is the one that proves i'm a 00:09:56.419 --> 00:09:59.000 writer it's a melancholy story right about a 00:09:59.000 --> 00:10:01.970 man who kind of fails in Love and Life. Very 00:10:01.970 --> 00:10:04.450 much so. It's about self -deception. About a 00:10:04.450 --> 00:10:07.009 man who creates these romantic fantasies and 00:10:07.009 --> 00:10:09.450 then is crushed when reality doesn't match up. 00:10:09.590 --> 00:10:11.889 It's a very suave book. What was the verdict 00:10:11.889 --> 00:10:14.750 on this one? It was a disaster. But this time 00:10:14.750 --> 00:10:17.110 it was worse than silence. The critics who did 00:10:17.110 --> 00:10:19.350 bother to read it hated it. And do you know what 00:10:19.350 --> 00:10:22.830 they attacked? Let me guess. The plot. The depressing 00:10:22.830 --> 00:10:25.149 characters. They attacked his language. They 00:10:25.149 --> 00:10:29.000 mocked his Italian. Yes. Remember, Italian was 00:10:29.000 --> 00:10:31.080 his second language, and his professional life 00:10:31.080 --> 00:10:34.399 was in German. The critics said his style was 00:10:34.399 --> 00:10:38.000 commercial, uncultured, barbaric. They said it 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:40.360 was full of business jargon and German -influenced 00:10:40.360 --> 00:10:42.480 sentence structures. So they didn't see it as 00:10:42.480 --> 00:10:45.019 a new style, they saw it as... Incorrect. They 00:10:45.019 --> 00:10:47.600 saw it as incompetence. It wasn't the flowery, 00:10:47.600 --> 00:10:49.639 poetic Italian that was popular at the time. 00:10:49.639 --> 00:10:53.500 The style of a writer like Donizio. Svevo's style 00:10:53.500 --> 00:10:56.820 was dry, analytical, almost clinical. And they 00:10:56.820 --> 00:10:58.799 just savaged him for it. That criticism must 00:10:58.799 --> 00:11:01.600 have stung. It's not just your story is bad. 00:11:01.759 --> 00:11:03.820 It's you don't even know how to speak our language. 00:11:03.980 --> 00:11:06.679 It attacks his very identity. It destroyed him. 00:11:06.740 --> 00:11:09.460 It confirmed his deepest insecurity that he was 00:11:09.460 --> 00:11:12.679 an outsider, an imposter. After Senilatov flopped 00:11:12.679 --> 00:11:15.340 so spectacularly, Svevo made a dramatic decision. 00:11:15.659 --> 00:11:17.659 He gives up. He formally renounced literature. 00:11:18.139 --> 00:11:20.600 He wrote in his diary that writing was a ridiculous 00:11:20.600 --> 00:11:23.220 and harmful thing. He decided that he was not 00:11:23.220 --> 00:11:25.279 a writer, that he had been deluding himself for 00:11:25.279 --> 00:11:28.419 years. He quit. He quit. He entered a period 00:11:28.419 --> 00:11:30.600 of literary silence that lasted for over two 00:11:30.600 --> 00:11:33.799 decades. He buried Italo Svevo and became just 00:11:33.799 --> 00:11:36.379 Aaron Schmitz, the businessman. And his life 00:11:36.379 --> 00:11:38.080 took a massive turnaround this time, right? He 00:11:38.080 --> 00:11:41.899 got married. Yes. In 1896, right before Senelita 00:11:41.899 --> 00:11:45.259 came out, he married his cousin, Livia Veneziani. 00:11:45.460 --> 00:11:48.019 His cousin. It was the 19th century. These things 00:11:48.019 --> 00:11:50.200 happened, especially within tight -knit bourgeois 00:11:50.200 --> 00:11:52.940 communities. But Livia wasn't just his cousin. 00:11:53.039 --> 00:11:55.720 She was his ticket out of the bank. Because her 00:11:55.720 --> 00:11:58.100 family was wealthy. Very wealthy. The Veneziani 00:11:58.100 --> 00:12:00.860 family were industrialists. They were big players 00:12:00.860 --> 00:12:03.610 in Trieste. There is an interesting detail in 00:12:03.610 --> 00:12:06.210 the notes about his religion here. Sveva was 00:12:06.210 --> 00:12:09.149 Jewish. Livia was Catholic. Right. And Livia, 00:12:09.309 --> 00:12:11.909 a devout Catholic, perhaps concerned about social 00:12:11.909 --> 00:12:14.389 standing or maybe due to a difficult pregnancy 00:12:14.389 --> 00:12:16.850 where she wanted spiritual protection, convinced 00:12:16.850 --> 00:12:20.070 him to convert. So purely for pragmatic reasons, 00:12:20.129 --> 00:12:22.629 he converts to Catholicism. But he didn't actually 00:12:22.629 --> 00:12:25.990 believe it. Not for a second. He remained a staunch 00:12:25.990 --> 00:12:28.539 atheist privately. But this is another layer 00:12:28.539 --> 00:12:30.440 of the mask, isn't it? He's acting the part of 00:12:30.440 --> 00:12:32.639 the good Catholic husband. He's acting the part 00:12:32.639 --> 00:12:35.019 of the banker. He's acting the part of the non 00:12:35.019 --> 00:12:38.440 -writer. He is a man composed entirely of performances. 00:12:38.480 --> 00:12:40.980 He's wearing a costume of normal bourgeois gentleman. 00:12:41.320 --> 00:12:43.860 Perfectly put. And then he joins the in -law's 00:12:43.860 --> 00:12:46.460 business. And this isn't just any business. This 00:12:46.460 --> 00:12:49.659 is the detail that I find so fascinatingly specific. 00:12:49.980 --> 00:12:53.399 They made underwater paint. Specifically, anti 00:12:53.399 --> 00:12:56.360 -fouling paint for ships. Right, an anti -fouling 00:12:56.360 --> 00:12:58.759 composition for the hulls of naval warships. 00:12:58.759 --> 00:13:01.490 Anti -fouling. That means keeping barnacles and 00:13:01.490 --> 00:13:03.470 seaweed off. Exactly. You have to understand 00:13:03.470 --> 00:13:06.610 the context. This was the era of the great naval 00:13:06.610 --> 00:13:09.850 arms race before World War I. Every navy in Europe, 00:13:09.929 --> 00:13:12.490 the British Royal Navy, the German Kaiserliche 00:13:12.490 --> 00:13:15.169 Marine, the Italians, the Austrians, they were 00:13:15.169 --> 00:13:18.590 all building massive steel dreadnoughts. Barnacles 00:13:18.590 --> 00:13:21.070 are bad for business. Barnacles are a military 00:13:21.070 --> 00:13:23.629 disaster. If they grow on the hull, it creates 00:13:23.629 --> 00:13:27.230 drag. It slows the ship down and massively increases 00:13:27.230 --> 00:13:30.620 fuel consumption. The Veneziani family had a 00:13:30.620 --> 00:13:34.519 secret formula, a special toxic paint that prevented 00:13:34.519 --> 00:13:38.100 this. It was a very lucrative, very important 00:13:38.100 --> 00:13:41.500 military technology. So the failed poet, the 00:13:41.500 --> 00:13:44.100 socialist writer, becomes a merchant of war paint. 00:13:44.360 --> 00:13:46.019 And he was good at it. That's the funny part. 00:13:46.100 --> 00:13:48.399 He didn't fail at business. He became a very 00:13:48.399 --> 00:13:51.039 successful industrialist. He traveled to France, 00:13:51.039 --> 00:13:53.559 to Germany, negotiating contracts with admirals 00:13:53.559 --> 00:13:56.639 and businessmen. He became the boss. He was wealthy, 00:13:56.820 --> 00:13:59.220 respected, and completely, utterly dead inside 00:13:59.220 --> 00:14:01.399 regarding his art. This job eventually takes 00:14:01.399 --> 00:14:03.720 him to London, doesn't it? Yes. The business 00:14:03.720 --> 00:14:06.200 was expanding. The British Royal Navy was the 00:14:06.200 --> 00:14:08.000 biggest client in the world, so the company set 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:10.539 up a factory in Charlton in southeast London. 00:14:10.840 --> 00:14:13.059 And Svevo lived there for a while to oversee 00:14:13.059 --> 00:14:15.120 operations. There's a blue plaque there now. 00:14:15.360 --> 00:14:18.799 There is, at 67 Charlton Church Lane. It's amazing 00:14:18.799 --> 00:14:21.080 to think of him there. I love the image of this 00:14:21.080 --> 00:14:23.700 neurotic, intellectual, middle -aged Italian 00:14:23.700 --> 00:14:26.399 man wandering around a Doherty in London. He 00:14:26.399 --> 00:14:28.700 hated it. We have letters he wrote back to Livia. 00:14:28.759 --> 00:14:31.299 He complained about everything. The food, the 00:14:31.299 --> 00:14:40.210 weather, the constant... A total fish out of 00:14:40.210 --> 00:14:43.049 water. Completely. He was a man of the Mediterranean 00:14:43.049 --> 00:14:46.009 cafe culture, a man who loved to sit and talk 00:14:46.009 --> 00:14:49.350 for hours, stuck in the smog of industrial London 00:14:49.350 --> 00:14:52.370 where everyone was so proper. But this business 00:14:52.370 --> 00:14:54.610 expansion, this need to deal with the British, 00:14:54.789 --> 00:14:57.649 is what leads to the miracle. He needs to speak 00:14:57.649 --> 00:15:00.860 better English. to sell the paint correct he's 00:15:00.860 --> 00:15:03.460 back in trieste in 1907 he's doing more and more 00:15:03.460 --> 00:15:05.899 business with the british admiralty and he realizes 00:15:05.899 --> 00:15:08.340 his english is clunky it's functional but not 00:15:08.340 --> 00:15:11.059 fluent he needs a private tutor so he goes to 00:15:11.059 --> 00:15:13.240 the burlett school in trieste and asks for one 00:15:13.240 --> 00:15:16.159 and who walks in the door a 25 year old impoverished 00:15:16.159 --> 00:15:18.960 irishman disheveled probably hungover wearing 00:15:18.960 --> 00:15:22.139 these thick glasses a young man named james joyce 00:15:22.139 --> 00:15:24.360 this is the part of the story that feels scripted 00:15:24.759 --> 00:15:26.980 It's unbelievable. You have a middle -aged, paint, 00:15:27.220 --> 00:15:30.580 merchant, wealthy, respectable, wearing a suit, 00:15:30.620 --> 00:15:34.139 and this young, unknown, genius in waiting, sitting 00:15:34.139 --> 00:15:36.990 in a room, conjugating English verbs. And Joyce 00:15:36.990 --> 00:15:40.129 was not a great man yet. That's vital to remember. 00:15:40.389 --> 00:15:43.529 In 1907, he was struggling. He was drinking too 00:15:43.529 --> 00:15:45.549 much. He was constantly broke, borrowing money 00:15:45.549 --> 00:15:48.529 from everyone. He was working on Dubliners and 00:15:48.529 --> 00:15:51.830 a portrait of the artist as a young man. But 00:15:51.830 --> 00:15:53.889 he was essentially a nobody in Trieste. He was 00:15:53.889 --> 00:15:56.509 just the English teacher. But they must have 00:15:56.509 --> 00:15:59.009 clicked. It wasn't just about grammar. They bonded 00:15:59.009 --> 00:16:01.149 immediately. They bonded over being outsiders. 00:16:01.830 --> 00:16:04.509 Joyce was an Irishman in exile who hated the 00:16:04.509 --> 00:16:14.039 Catholic Church and the provincial... So they 00:16:14.039 --> 00:16:16.220 were both rebels in their own way. And they both 00:16:16.220 --> 00:16:18.320 had this dark, ironic sense of humor. They were 00:16:18.320 --> 00:16:20.740 both obsessed with literature. The lessons quickly 00:16:20.740 --> 00:16:22.940 became less about English and more about talking 00:16:22.940 --> 00:16:25.539 about Ibsen and Flaubert and philosophy. And 00:16:25.539 --> 00:16:28.179 eventually the secret comes out. The secret that 00:16:28.179 --> 00:16:31.039 this businessman used to be a writer. Svavo must 00:16:31.039 --> 00:16:34.580 have been terrified. Imagine this. He respects 00:16:34.580 --> 00:16:37.559 Joyce's intellect immensely. He sees this young 00:16:37.559 --> 00:16:41.159 man as a true genius. And finally, one day, he 00:16:41.159 --> 00:16:43.580 works up the courage to say, you know, I used 00:16:43.580 --> 00:16:45.700 to write, I published these two old novels years 00:16:45.700 --> 00:16:48.539 ago. They're gathering dust. Would you? Would 00:16:48.539 --> 00:16:50.879 you mind taking a look? He probably expected 00:16:50.879 --> 00:16:53.340 Joyce to laugh at him or to give him a play. 00:16:53.419 --> 00:16:54.740 Oh, that's nice. And then just throw him in the 00:16:54.740 --> 00:16:57.960 trash. Instead, Joyce took the books, read Una 00:16:57.960 --> 00:17:00.960 Vida en Senolita, and was absolutely blown away. 00:17:01.259 --> 00:17:03.659 He came back to the next lesson and told Svevo, 00:17:03.779 --> 00:17:06.579 Do you know that you are a neglected writer? 00:17:06.880 --> 00:17:09.799 There are passages in Senolita that even Anatole 00:17:09.799 --> 00:17:12.779 France could not have written. Wow. Anatole France 00:17:12.779 --> 00:17:14.680 was a Nobel Prize winner. That's high praise. 00:17:14.940 --> 00:17:17.019 It was the highest praise. And that validation, 00:17:17.299 --> 00:17:19.240 I can't even imagine what that felt like after 00:17:19.240 --> 00:17:22.099 20 years of silence and failure. To have this 00:17:22.099 --> 00:17:24.259 brilliant young man tell you that you were great 00:17:24.259 --> 00:17:26.039 all along. It must have been like a resurrection. 00:17:26.519 --> 00:17:29.319 It was the spark. Joyce didn't just teach him 00:17:29.319 --> 00:17:32.900 English. He resurrected Italo Svevo. He validated 00:17:32.900 --> 00:17:35.339 the very things the Italian critics had hated. 00:17:35.539 --> 00:17:38.259 The critics hated the dryness, the lack of poetry, 00:17:38.519 --> 00:17:42.319 the focus on internal psychology. Joyce saw that 00:17:42.319 --> 00:17:44.619 Svevo wasn't bad at being traditional. He was... 00:17:45.019 --> 00:17:47.220 good at being modern he saw the future in it 00:17:47.220 --> 00:17:49.279 he saw the future of the novel in those failed 00:17:49.279 --> 00:17:52.119 books he recognized a kindred spirit and the 00:17:52.119 --> 00:17:55.049 influence went both ways Right. Joyce got something 00:17:55.049 --> 00:17:56.890 out of this friendship, too. Something huge. 00:17:57.289 --> 00:18:00.009 At this time, Joyce was outlining his great project, 00:18:00.130 --> 00:18:03.549 Ulysses. He needed a protagonist, but not a hero 00:18:03.549 --> 00:18:05.509 in the traditional sense. He needed a middle 00:18:05.509 --> 00:18:08.329 -aged, Jewish, slightly neurotic, kind -hearted, 00:18:08.529 --> 00:18:11.269 intellectually curious everyman. Leopold Bloom. 00:18:11.470 --> 00:18:14.089 Leopold Bloom is largely based on Italo Svevo. 00:18:14.210 --> 00:18:16.190 Really? Absolutely. The way Bloom thinks, his 00:18:16.190 --> 00:18:18.269 curiosity about science, his domestic struggles, 00:18:18.569 --> 00:18:22.170 his specific brand of ironic humor, his outsider 00:18:22.170 --> 00:18:24.759 status. That's the paint merchant from Trieste. 00:18:24.900 --> 00:18:27.420 So even if Sfavo never wrote another word, he 00:18:27.420 --> 00:18:30.180 would be immortalized as the DNA of Leopold Bloom, 00:18:30.339 --> 00:18:32.779 one of the most important characters in all of 00:18:32.779 --> 00:18:35.480 literature. That is wild to think about. One 00:18:35.480 --> 00:18:37.480 of the most famous characters in English literature 00:18:37.480 --> 00:18:40.779 is actually a portrait of this obscure Italian 00:18:40.779 --> 00:18:43.500 businessman who sold ship paint. It creates this 00:18:43.500 --> 00:18:45.359 beautiful symmetry, doesn't it? They helped each 00:18:45.359 --> 00:18:48.079 other become immortal. So Joyce lights the fire, 00:18:48.160 --> 00:18:50.400 but it's not like he immediately runs off to 00:18:50.400 --> 00:18:53.809 write. History intervenes again. World War I 00:18:53.809 --> 00:18:56.170 happens. Right. And for a paint manufacturer 00:18:56.170 --> 00:18:59.549 in a major naval port, war is complicated. The 00:18:59.549 --> 00:19:01.869 city of Trieste is a battleground of loyalties. 00:19:02.109 --> 00:19:04.529 The factory gets shut down by the Austrian authorities. 00:19:04.930 --> 00:19:07.529 The Venezianis are seen as pro -Italian. The 00:19:07.529 --> 00:19:10.450 Italians see them as Austrians. Sfavo finds himself 00:19:10.450 --> 00:19:13.950 in this strange limbo. The business stops. And 00:19:13.950 --> 00:19:17.210 suddenly, after decades of being too busy, He 00:19:17.210 --> 00:19:19.390 has time. He has nothing but time. He's stuck 00:19:19.390 --> 00:19:21.890 at home. He starts translating Freud's work on 00:19:21.890 --> 00:19:24.990 dreams. He gets deeply into psychoanalysis. And 00:19:24.990 --> 00:19:26.890 with Joyce's encouragement still ringing in his 00:19:26.890 --> 00:19:28.990 ears, he starts writing again. And this time 00:19:28.990 --> 00:19:31.970 it's different. It's 1919. He's almost 60 years 00:19:31.970 --> 00:19:35.470 old. And he begins his masterpiece, La coscienza 00:19:35.470 --> 00:19:38.680 di Zeno Zeno's Conscience. This book is the one. 00:19:38.759 --> 00:19:41.619 It is the masterpiece. And it is completely different 00:19:41.619 --> 00:19:43.400 from anything else being written at the time, 00:19:43.440 --> 00:19:45.720 especially in Italy. He abandons the traditional 00:19:45.720 --> 00:19:48.099 third -person storytelling of his early failures. 00:19:48.240 --> 00:19:50.859 He adopts a first -person perspective. But it's 00:19:50.859 --> 00:19:53.839 not just a diary. It's a medical document. Or 00:19:53.839 --> 00:19:56.140 it pretends to be. Right. The framing device 00:19:56.140 --> 00:19:59.099 is just fantastic. The book opens with a preface 00:19:59.099 --> 00:20:02.660 written not by the author, Svevo, but by a psychoanalyst 00:20:02.660 --> 00:20:06.299 who calls himself Dr. S. Dr. S is in Sigmund. 00:20:06.859 --> 00:20:09.019 Or his fable. A little nod to both, probably. 00:20:09.440 --> 00:20:11.980 And the doctor says, I am publishing these memoirs 00:20:11.980 --> 00:20:14.380 of my patient, Zino Cossini, out of revenge because 00:20:14.380 --> 00:20:16.519 he abruptly quit his therapy and stopped paying 00:20:16.519 --> 00:20:18.940 me. That sets the tone perfectly. It's petty. 00:20:19.039 --> 00:20:22.460 It's funny. It's malicious. It immediately frames 00:20:22.460 --> 00:20:25.240 the entire book as an act of hostility and, most 00:20:25.240 --> 00:20:27.740 importantly, unreliability. We are told from 00:20:27.740 --> 00:20:29.660 page one that we cannot trust what we are about 00:20:29.660 --> 00:20:31.400 to read. We are reading the private thoughts 00:20:31.400 --> 00:20:33.440 of a man who is trying to lie to his doctor and 00:20:33.440 --> 00:20:35.900 therefore to himself and to us. And this is where 00:20:35.900 --> 00:20:38.640 the deep dive really needs to focus. Yeah. Because 00:20:38.640 --> 00:20:41.480 Zeno's conscience isn't just a funny story. It's 00:20:41.480 --> 00:20:44.200 a breakdown of the modern human mind. The main 00:20:44.200 --> 00:20:47.480 character, Zeno Cassini, is rich, he's idle, 00:20:47.640 --> 00:20:49.960 and he is obsessed with his own health and his 00:20:49.960 --> 00:20:52.500 own morals. He is the archetype of the Inetto, 00:20:52.680 --> 00:20:55.319 the inept one. This is a concept Svevo developed 00:20:55.319 --> 00:20:57.859 throughout his work. The inept one is incapable 00:20:57.859 --> 00:21:00.460 of living life directly. He can only analyze 00:21:00.460 --> 00:21:03.960 it. He hesitates. He doubts. He overthinks everything. 00:21:04.319 --> 00:21:06.279 He's paralyzed by his own consciousness. Exactly. 00:21:06.400 --> 00:21:08.819 And his biggest struggle, the thread that runs 00:21:08.819 --> 00:21:11.240 through the entire book, is his addiction to 00:21:11.240 --> 00:21:14.880 smoking. The Ultima Cigaretta. The last cigarette. 00:21:15.079 --> 00:21:17.599 Zeno goes to the doctor specifically to cure 00:21:17.599 --> 00:21:19.740 his nicotine addiction. That's the stated goal 00:21:19.740 --> 00:21:22.359 of the therapy. But as he explains his habit, 00:21:22.460 --> 00:21:24.700 we realize that smoking isn't the problem. The 00:21:24.700 --> 00:21:27.119 quitting is the problem. Break down the mechanism 00:21:27.119 --> 00:21:29.700 for us. Because in the source material, there's 00:21:29.700 --> 00:21:32.019 this fascinating paradox about why he smokes 00:21:32.019 --> 00:21:34.980 the last one. Okay, so Zeno explains that the 00:21:34.980 --> 00:21:37.200 most enjoyable cigarette is never the first one 00:21:37.200 --> 00:21:40.200 of the day. It's always the last cigarette. Why? 00:21:40.750 --> 00:21:42.750 Because when you smoke, what you decide is the 00:21:42.750 --> 00:21:45.690 last one. You are making a profound promise to 00:21:45.690 --> 00:21:47.970 yourself. This is it. New me starts now. After 00:21:47.970 --> 00:21:50.049 this, I will be a new man. I will be strong, 00:21:50.190 --> 00:21:53.170 healthy, disciplined. That moment of resolve 00:21:53.170 --> 00:21:56.470 gives him a massive dopamine hit. He feels virtuous. 00:21:56.869 --> 00:21:59.009 He feels powerful. It feels like he's conquered 00:21:59.009 --> 00:22:01.549 himself without actually doing anything. Exactly. 00:22:01.569 --> 00:22:04.410 He gets the reward of being a good person just 00:22:04.410 --> 00:22:07.009 by making the decision. But then... Once you 00:22:07.009 --> 00:22:09.430 finish that cigarette, the drama is over. The 00:22:09.430 --> 00:22:12.549 thrill of becoming is gone. You are just being 00:22:12.549 --> 00:22:16.529 a non -smoker. And Zeno can't stand being. He 00:22:16.529 --> 00:22:18.630 needs to be becoming. So to get that feeling 00:22:18.630 --> 00:22:20.970 of virtuous resolution back. He has to smoke 00:22:20.970 --> 00:22:23.549 again. He has to fail. He lights up the 10 a 00:22:23.549 --> 00:22:25.349 .m. cigarette so that the 11 a .m. cigarette 00:22:25.349 --> 00:22:28.150 can be the glorious last one again. It creates 00:22:28.150 --> 00:22:31.029 a perpetual loop of sin and repentance. It's 00:22:31.029 --> 00:22:33.539 a self -sustaining addiction to virtue. That's 00:22:33.539 --> 00:22:35.779 a brilliant way to put it. He writes dates on 00:22:35.779 --> 00:22:37.900 the walls of his bedroom, in his office. Fourth 00:22:37.900 --> 00:22:41.299 of June, 1905, last cigarette. Fifth of June, 00:22:41.400 --> 00:22:44.420 1905, really the last cigarette. Seventh of June, 00:22:44.559 --> 00:22:47.579 last cigarette important. The book is filled 00:22:47.579 --> 00:22:49.900 with these entries. It's so relatable it hurts. 00:22:50.059 --> 00:22:52.420 It's the diet that starts on Monday. It's the 00:22:52.420 --> 00:22:54.819 gym membership we buy in January and use twice. 00:22:55.119 --> 00:22:58.940 It is. Svavo, writing in 1919, identified that 00:22:58.940 --> 00:23:01.099 modern man is addicted to the potential of the 00:23:01.099 --> 00:23:04.099 future. We sacrifice the present moment because 00:23:04.099 --> 00:23:06.319 we are obsessed with the better version of ourselves 00:23:06.319 --> 00:23:09.079 that is always just around the corner. Zeno smokes 00:23:09.079 --> 00:23:11.880 to keep that better version alive as a fantasy 00:23:11.880 --> 00:23:14.859 rather than doing the hard work of actually changing. 00:23:15.119 --> 00:23:16.880 And throughout the book, he applies this same 00:23:16.880 --> 00:23:19.339 logic, the same ineptitude to everything. His 00:23:19.339 --> 00:23:21.839 marriage, his business, his affairs. Yes. The 00:23:21.839 --> 00:23:24.660 marriage plot is hilarious and so telling. He 00:23:24.660 --> 00:23:26.420 decides he wants to marry into this respectable 00:23:26.420 --> 00:23:28.859 family, Malfentis. He starts courting the most 00:23:28.859 --> 00:23:31.500 beautiful daughter, Ada. She's serious and intelligent. 00:23:31.640 --> 00:23:35.039 She rejects him brutally. Okay, plan B. He immediately 00:23:35.039 --> 00:23:37.680 proposes to her younger sister, Alberta, who 00:23:37.680 --> 00:23:39.700 is an aspiring writer. She just laughs at him. 00:23:40.019 --> 00:23:43.140 So in a single evening, humiliated and desperate, 00:23:43.440 --> 00:23:46.960 he ends up proposing to the third sister, Augusta. 00:23:47.079 --> 00:23:50.539 Augusta is. The one no one else wants. Zeno finds 00:23:50.539 --> 00:23:53.400 her ugly. She's cross -eyed. She's boring. He 00:23:53.400 --> 00:23:56.160 proposes to her out of a kind of pity and self 00:23:56.160 --> 00:23:58.900 -loathing. It's a total disaster. That sounds 00:23:58.900 --> 00:24:01.220 tragic. But here is the brilliance of the book. 00:24:01.579 --> 00:24:04.000 Augusta turns out to be the perfect wife for 00:24:04.000 --> 00:24:07.160 him. She is grounded, healthy, practical, loving. 00:24:07.480 --> 00:24:09.680 And Dino ends up having a surprisingly happy 00:24:09.680 --> 00:24:12.359 life almost by accident. He drifts into happiness 00:24:12.359 --> 00:24:14.640 while trying to sabotage himself. So it's not 00:24:14.640 --> 00:24:17.200 a tragedy of failure, it's a comedy of accidental 00:24:17.200 --> 00:24:19.920 success. That's the core of it. The book seems 00:24:19.920 --> 00:24:22.500 to be arguing that being inept, being a bit of 00:24:22.500 --> 00:24:24.579 a screw -up, might actually be a survival strategy 00:24:24.579 --> 00:24:26.940 in a chaotic world. What do you mean by that? 00:24:27.230 --> 00:24:29.049 Remember, this is written right after World War 00:24:29.049 --> 00:24:32.690 I, where the strong and decisive and healthy 00:24:32.690 --> 00:24:35.509 men of Europe led the continent into a slaughterhouse. 00:24:35.849 --> 00:24:39.549 Zeno is sick, neurotic, indecisive. But the people 00:24:39.549 --> 00:24:41.490 in the book who are rigid, the people who think 00:24:41.490 --> 00:24:43.670 they have it all figured out, they break. Zeno, 00:24:43.789 --> 00:24:47.369 who is flexible, who lies to himself, who drifts, 00:24:47.470 --> 00:24:51.049 he survives. He is like a cork bobbing on the 00:24:51.049 --> 00:24:53.529 ocean of life. He's a survivor because he doesn't 00:24:53.529 --> 00:24:57.180 resist. So the book comes out in 1923. Suevo 00:24:57.180 --> 00:25:00.279 is 61 years old. He has channeled Freud. He has 00:25:00.279 --> 00:25:02.660 channeled his own life. He has written an undeniable 00:25:02.660 --> 00:25:05.200 masterpiece. He put everything into this. Channel 00:25:05.200 --> 00:25:07.700 nothing. Crickets. You have to be kidding me. 00:25:07.720 --> 00:25:10.660 Again. Yeah. After all that. Again. The Italian 00:25:10.660 --> 00:25:13.180 literary establishment completely ignored it. 00:25:13.259 --> 00:25:15.519 They didn't get the joke. They didn't understand 00:25:15.519 --> 00:25:17.660 the psychoanalysis Freud was still looked at 00:25:17.660 --> 00:25:20.619 with deep suspicion in Catholic Italy. They thought 00:25:20.619 --> 00:25:23.579 the book was rambling, unstructured, and once 00:25:23.579 --> 00:25:25.920 again, poorly written. That is heartbreaking. 00:25:26.240 --> 00:25:27.640 He must have thought, well, the universe just 00:25:27.640 --> 00:25:29.200 doesn't want me to be a writer. That's three 00:25:29.200 --> 00:25:32.019 strikes. He was ready to give up again. He was 00:25:32.019 --> 00:25:34.640 resigned to his fate as the paint salesman who 00:25:34.640 --> 00:25:37.599 wrote a weird book. But he had one last card 00:25:37.599 --> 00:25:40.569 to play. He realized he had one connection left 00:25:40.569 --> 00:25:43.390 in the literary world. His old student. He sent 00:25:43.390 --> 00:25:46.369 a copy of the book to Paris to his old English 00:25:46.369 --> 00:25:50.119 tutor. Joyce. By 1923, James Joyce was arguably 00:25:50.119 --> 00:25:53.259 the most famous and infamous writer in the world. 00:25:53.420 --> 00:25:55.500 Ulysses had been published the year before. He 00:25:55.500 --> 00:25:58.319 was the toast of literary Paris. So Joyce receives 00:25:58.319 --> 00:26:01.539 this book from his old friend in Trieste, and 00:26:01.539 --> 00:26:03.619 he goes to work. What did he do? Just tell people 00:26:03.619 --> 00:26:06.000 about it. He became a one -man PR machine. He 00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:08.380 started telling all the influential French critics, 00:26:08.599 --> 00:26:11.160 people like Valérie Larbeau and Benjamin Cremieux, 00:26:11.279 --> 00:26:12.880 you have to read this book. This is a genius. 00:26:13.019 --> 00:26:15.660 He basically forced them to pay attention. He 00:26:15.660 --> 00:26:18.250 championed it. and he helped it translate it 00:26:18.250 --> 00:26:20.369 into French. And the French reaction was different. 00:26:20.650 --> 00:26:24.109 Night and day. The French critics, who were already 00:26:24.109 --> 00:26:26.289 into Proust and psychoanalysis and the stream 00:26:26.289 --> 00:26:29.289 of consciousness, they hailed it as a miracle. 00:26:29.450 --> 00:26:32.630 They got it. They called it the Italian comedic 00:26:32.630 --> 00:26:35.109 masterpiece. They compared him to Charlie Chaplin 00:26:35.109 --> 00:26:37.710 and Marcel Proust. They saw the genius of the 00:26:37.710 --> 00:26:40.750 introspection and the unreliability. And I assume 00:26:40.750 --> 00:26:44.269 once Paris loved it, Italy suddenly changed its 00:26:44.269 --> 00:26:46.579 tune. That is exactly how it works in the art 00:26:46.579 --> 00:26:48.259 world, isn't it? It's called the Svevo case, 00:26:48.500 --> 00:26:51.579 the Casso Svevo. Suddenly, the Italian critics, 00:26:51.839 --> 00:26:54.240 led by the very influential poet Eugenio Montale, 00:26:54.339 --> 00:26:57.500 were like, oh, yes, we knew he was great all 00:26:57.500 --> 00:26:59.920 along, a hidden master. They were shamed into 00:26:59.920 --> 00:27:02.059 recognizing him. Totally. If Paris says it's 00:27:02.059 --> 00:27:04.700 good, it must be good. So suddenly, at the age 00:27:04.700 --> 00:27:07.880 of 65, Svevo was famous. So he finally gets his 00:27:07.880 --> 00:27:10.099 moment. He travels to Paris. He's celebrated 00:27:10.099 --> 00:27:11.839 at dinners. People are calling him a genius. 00:27:12.119 --> 00:27:14.000 He enjoyed a few years of incredible celebrity. 00:27:14.490 --> 00:27:16.690 He finally merged the two halves of his life. 00:27:16.809 --> 00:27:19.289 The businessman and the writer were one person. 00:27:19.470 --> 00:27:21.950 He was affectionately known as the grand old 00:27:21.950 --> 00:27:24.670 man of Italian literature. It's a wonderful late 00:27:24.670 --> 00:27:26.930 -in -life success story. But we have to talk 00:27:26.930 --> 00:27:29.309 about the end, because for a man whose work was 00:27:29.309 --> 00:27:31.789 all about the irony of death and the last cigarette, 00:27:31.970 --> 00:27:35.970 his actual death is almost too perfect, too literary. 00:27:36.230 --> 00:27:38.150 It is the final chapter of the novel, really. 00:27:38.250 --> 00:27:41.309 It's 1928. He's working on a fourth novel, a 00:27:41.309 --> 00:27:43.750 sequel to Zeno. He's driving back to Trieste 00:27:43.750 --> 00:27:46.069 with his wife and grandson. And there's a car 00:27:46.069 --> 00:27:49.339 crash. A bad one. He was injured severely, a 00:27:49.339 --> 00:27:52.400 broken femur. He is taken to a hospital in a 00:27:52.400 --> 00:27:55.200 small town called Malta di Livenza. His health 00:27:55.200 --> 00:27:58.380 deteriorates rapidly. His old man's heart can't 00:27:58.380 --> 00:28:00.640 take the shock. He knows he's dying. He's lying 00:28:00.640 --> 00:28:03.559 there. He's in pain, struggling to breathe. And 00:28:03.559 --> 00:28:06.119 he realizes he's dying. And he makes one last 00:28:06.119 --> 00:28:08.240 request. He asks his nephew for a cigarette. 00:28:08.400 --> 00:28:10.819 Yes. A visitor, his nephew, is by his bedside 00:28:10.819 --> 00:28:12.700 and he whispers, a cigarette. And the nephew. 00:28:12.819 --> 00:28:14.980 The nephew, trying to be responsible, says, no, 00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:17.380 uncle, it will be bad for your heart. The doctor 00:28:17.380 --> 00:28:20.299 says, no. Denied. And Svavo looks at him with 00:28:20.299 --> 00:28:23.380 that typical wry, ironic smile and whispers his 00:28:23.380 --> 00:28:25.599 last words, that would have been my last. And 00:28:25.599 --> 00:28:28.380 then he dies. It gives me chills. He was denied 00:28:28.380 --> 00:28:30.900 the final ritual, the ultimate, ultimate cigarette. 00:28:30.960 --> 00:28:34.599 It is the supreme irony. The man who spent 50 00:28:34.599 --> 00:28:36.920 years celebrating the last cigarette as a concept 00:28:36.920 --> 00:28:39.599 never actually got to smoke the real one. He 00:28:39.599 --> 00:28:42.299 died with the desire still unfulfilled. Which 00:28:42.299 --> 00:28:45.380 is, in a way... The most Zeno way to go. Absolutely. 00:28:45.619 --> 00:28:47.759 It fits his philosophy perfectly. Life is incomplete. 00:28:48.079 --> 00:28:50.579 Life is about desire, not fulfillment. We are 00:28:50.579 --> 00:28:52.940 always interrupted before the final act. I want 00:28:52.940 --> 00:28:55.420 to zoom out a bit and look at his legacy. Because 00:28:55.420 --> 00:28:58.420 today, he's a giant in Italy. There are statues 00:28:58.420 --> 00:29:00.980 of him, schools named after him. But there's 00:29:00.980 --> 00:29:02.559 another aspect of his life we haven't touched 00:29:02.559 --> 00:29:05.819 on much. His politics. We said he was a socialist, 00:29:05.900 --> 00:29:08.240 but he was also a wealthy industrialist. How 00:29:08.240 --> 00:29:10.160 did he reconcile that? It's another one of the 00:29:10.160 --> 00:29:12.839 great Svivo contradictions. While he was managing 00:29:12.839 --> 00:29:14.660 the paint factory and becoming rich, he was still 00:29:14.660 --> 00:29:17.519 a Marxist at heart. But his socialism was less 00:29:17.519 --> 00:29:19.660 about violent revolution and more about a kind 00:29:19.660 --> 00:29:22.420 of humanistic pacifism. He'd seen war up close. 00:29:22.660 --> 00:29:25.160 He saw World War I destroy his city. Trieste 00:29:25.160 --> 00:29:27.460 was shattered by it. He saw the absurdity of 00:29:27.460 --> 00:29:29.859 nationalism, of Italians and Austrians killing 00:29:29.859 --> 00:29:32.000 each other. So his political thinking became 00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:34.400 about how to prevent that from ever happening 00:29:34.400 --> 00:29:37.099 again. The notes mentioned he had a very specific 00:29:37.099 --> 00:29:40.119 idea about Europe's future. Yes, and this is 00:29:40.119 --> 00:29:43.140 incredibly forward -thinking. Long before the 00:29:43.140 --> 00:29:46.039 European Union was even a dream, Svevo argued 00:29:46.039 --> 00:29:48.480 that the only way to stop the fighting was economic 00:29:48.480 --> 00:29:52.539 integration. He advocated for a United States 00:29:52.539 --> 00:29:55.339 of Europe. A common market. He believed that 00:29:55.339 --> 00:29:58.299 if nations traded with each other, shared currencies, 00:29:58.420 --> 00:30:00.859 and became economically interdependent, they 00:30:00.859 --> 00:30:03.440 wouldn't bomb each other. It was a banker's solution 00:30:03.440 --> 00:30:06.799 to a human problem, but it was incredibly prescient 00:30:06.799 --> 00:30:09.440 for the 1920s. It seems like he was always ahead 00:30:09.440 --> 00:30:11.480 of his time. He was doing Freudian fiction before. 00:30:11.500 --> 00:30:13.500 before the Italians knew who Freud was. He was 00:30:13.500 --> 00:30:15.599 talking about a European Union before the EU. 00:30:15.920 --> 00:30:18.960 He was writing about alienation and the fragmented 00:30:18.960 --> 00:30:21.099 self before the existentialists made it cool. 00:30:21.279 --> 00:30:23.500 He was a man out of time, and I think that's 00:30:23.500 --> 00:30:26.240 why he resonates so much today. When you read 00:30:26.240 --> 00:30:28.339 Zeno's Conscience now, it doesn't feel like a 00:30:28.339 --> 00:30:30.920 100 -year -old book at all. Zeno feels like a 00:30:30.920 --> 00:30:33.680 modern neurotic. He feels like us. He feels like 00:30:33.680 --> 00:30:35.960 me at 2 a .m. scrolling through my phone, promising 00:30:35.960 --> 00:30:38.539 myself I'll have a productive day tomorrow. Exactly. 00:30:38.539 --> 00:30:42.099 We are all Zeno. We are all full of good intentions 00:30:42.099 --> 00:30:45.119 and bad follow through. We are all constantly 00:30:45.119 --> 00:30:47.380 constructing these narratives to explain to ourselves 00:30:47.380 --> 00:30:50.400 why we aren't quite who we want to be yet. So 00:30:50.400 --> 00:30:54.140 if we step back, what is the big takeaway here 00:30:54.140 --> 00:30:58.000 from this whole incredible life? Is it just... 00:30:58.319 --> 00:31:00.700 Don't give up. Don't give up is part of it. I 00:31:00.700 --> 00:31:02.859 mean, the man wrote his masterpiece at 60. That's 00:31:02.859 --> 00:31:05.359 hugely inspiring for anyone who feels like they've 00:31:05.359 --> 00:31:08.000 missed their chance. But I think the deeper lesson 00:31:08.000 --> 00:31:10.420 is about what you called the accidental masterpiece. 00:31:11.119 --> 00:31:13.880 What do you mean by that? Sveba thought his life 00:31:13.880 --> 00:31:16.519 was a series of failures. He failed as a writer, 00:31:16.599 --> 00:31:18.720 which forced him to become a banker. The bank 00:31:18.720 --> 00:31:20.920 was a dead end, so he accidentally married into 00:31:20.920 --> 00:31:23.240 the paint business. The paint business was a 00:31:23.240 --> 00:31:25.160 distraction from his art, but it forced him to 00:31:25.160 --> 00:31:27.019 learn English. Which led him to Joyce. Which 00:31:27.019 --> 00:31:29.200 led him to Joyce, who then told him his failures 00:31:29.200 --> 00:31:31.930 were actually successes. Every single one of 00:31:31.930 --> 00:31:34.329 those wrong turns was a necessary step on the 00:31:34.329 --> 00:31:36.349 path. That's like a puzzle. You can't see the 00:31:36.349 --> 00:31:38.549 picture until the last piece fits. Yeah, exactly. 00:31:38.910 --> 00:31:41.450 If he had succeeded at 20, he would have written 00:31:41.450 --> 00:31:44.009 mediocre traditional novels and we would have 00:31:44.009 --> 00:31:46.569 never heard of him. He needed the failure. He 00:31:46.569 --> 00:31:48.970 needed the drudgery of the bank. He needed the 00:31:48.970 --> 00:31:52.210 silence to gestate and become the real Italo 00:31:52.210 --> 00:31:54.690 Svevo. And he needed the last cigarette as his 00:31:54.690 --> 00:31:57.109 lifelong theme. He needed the struggle. The struggle 00:31:57.109 --> 00:32:00.109 was the art. The tension between the man he was. 00:32:00.430 --> 00:32:02.809 and the man he wanted to be, that's where the 00:32:02.809 --> 00:32:05.170 genius came from. That's a beautiful way to think 00:32:05.170 --> 00:32:06.990 about it. Which brings me to a final thought 00:32:06.990 --> 00:32:10.190 for our listeners. Zeno Cassini believed he could 00:32:10.190 --> 00:32:13.329 constantly restart his life by quitting smoking. 00:32:14.369 --> 00:32:17.210 In our modern age of self -optimization, you 00:32:17.210 --> 00:32:19.289 know, New Year's resolutions, life hacks, the 00:32:19.289 --> 00:32:23.069 new year, new me mentality, I wonder if we aren't 00:32:23.069 --> 00:32:26.119 all a bit like Zeno. Are we addicted to the actual 00:32:26.119 --> 00:32:28.619 change or are we just addicted to the exhilarating 00:32:28.619 --> 00:32:31.019 feeling of deciding to start over without ever 00:32:31.019 --> 00:32:33.259 having to do the hard work? A provocative question. 00:32:33.480 --> 00:32:35.119 Are we just smoking one cigarette after another 00:32:35.119 --> 00:32:37.079 just to enjoy the thrill of putting it out? It's 00:32:37.079 --> 00:32:41.279 something to think about. Indeed it is. So, find 00:32:41.279 --> 00:32:43.779 your own Ultima cigarette a moment, but maybe 00:32:43.779 --> 00:32:46.359 actually quit this time. Thank you all for listening 00:32:46.359 --> 00:32:48.200 to this deep dive. It's been a pleasure. We'll 00:32:48.200 --> 00:32:48.900 see you on the next one.