“He looked at his watch, trying to hurry up, to find the strength to get up. It was no use. Useless.”
Giorgio Bassani returns to dig into the well of memories, in an ideal continuation of his past works, with the themes and places dearest to him: Ferrara and its surroundings, the racial laws, the character of the Italians, his high social position in a changing world with the potential danger of communists ready to ask for a fair redistribution of wealth.
A text on which much has been said and written, but we believe it is necessary to refresh some key points, to underline the modernity and intensity of the writing, with peaks of stylistic elegance, which will very hardly ever be reached again.
The protagonist is the lawyer and landowner Edgardo Limentani (with similar characteristics to the author in fact), who on a winter morning in 1947 decides after many years to undertake a hunting trip in the area on the Po di Volano.
Already from the night awakening to prepare for departure, Edgardo makes explicit his strong state of restlessness towards the world around him, immersed in a state of dissatisfaction with family life, the problems, which he aims to postpone, with the farmers, as well as the lack of trust towards his accountants. A definitive pain from which he cannot escape, or perhaps he just does not want to abandon, for which life becomes an illness.
The stops and the people that Edgardo will meet before arriving at the agreed meeting place where a local farmer is waiting for him, and perhaps the same hunting trip where he will see the heron “good only for being stuffed”, will only exacerbate his discomfort, to fully explore a dark corner of the soul that many glimpse but few fall into.
Perfection is impossible to achieve, but this text by Bassani comes very close. An ability to tell and accompany the reader like few others similar. Winner of the Campiello Prize in 1969, the greatness of the book lies not in the recognition it has received, but in its ability to endure over time.
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Giorgio Bassani, L’airone, Feltrinelli, Milano, 2024 (prima edizione, Mondadori, 1968)