Alba de Céspedes

Alba de Céspedes (Rome, 1911 - Paris, November 14th 1997) was a Italian woman of letters .

Biography

Alba de Céspedes was born with Rome in 1911. His/her father was the ambassador of Cuba in Italy, his mother was Italian. His/her paternal grandfather Carlos Manuel of Cèspedes there del Castillo, was the first president de Cuba. The family circle in which it grew, impregnated of policy, bilingual Italian-Spanish, will have a great influence on its work in Italian language.

It publishes a first collection of short stories, animated It degli altri (in French: the heart of the others ) at twenty-four years. In 1938, its first novel Nessuno torna indietro (French version: No one does not reconsider its steps , 1949) is published by Arnoldo Mondadori, with which it will bind of a solid friendship which, on several occasions, will be used to reduce the negative effects of its given and difficult nature, and at least which will often support it in difficult moments, or tended, for example when the fascistic mode censured its first book and required the withdrawal of the shelves of it, which was not carried out thanks to the effective and reasoned opposition of Mondadori.

The female character of the book, described like an intelligent and autonomous woman, contrast certainly with the idealized image of the subjected woman and fertilizes proposed by the fascistic mode. The book is a success in spite of these difficulties because he manages to leave the borders of the Italy to become a international Best-seller.

In 1940, it publishes the novel Fuga (in French: Escape ), and in 1943, it takes an active part in the Résistance in Italy during the Second world war, where it speaks on behalf of radio broadcasts by using the pseudonym Clorinda . In 1944, it founds the literary review Mercurio , which publishes, as of its first numbers, the signatures of Moravia, Hemingway, Massimo Bontempelli and Sibilla Aleramo as well as the illustrations of Mino Maccari, Toti Scialoja and Vespignani. At the beginning of the post-war period, it meets and established durable friendships with Paola Masino, Anna Santi, Maria Bellonci, Elio Vittorini, Vitaliano Brancati, Aldo Palazzeschi and Corrado Alvaro. With the closing of the Mercurio at the end of 1948, it starts to collaborate with the weekly magazine Epoca for which it writes a heading entitled Dalla leaves di lei (in French: Of its share ), like with the daily newspaper Stampa, for then dedicating themselves almost entirely, between 1949 and 1963, with its passion for the books. It will publish: They (original title Dalla leaves di lei , 1949), followed the prohibited book (original title Quaderno proibito , 1952), Before and after (title original: PRIMA E dopo , 1955) and the remorse (original title: It rimorso , 1962) which is a corrosive criticism of the intellectual class.

In 1967, De Céspedes publishes the bambolona in Paris, where she lives since 1960, and she writes in French Without another place that the night (1973), which will be then translated into Italian under the title Nel buio beyond notte in 1976.

Set of themes

By excess of simplification, the cultural historiographers and literary criticism make sometimes the error to relegate this écrivaine in the category Love story, category often considered as pejorative. On the contrary, Alba de Céspedes was intellectual long-lived and creative, an artist of the words and action, transfer modern, equipped with a great literary talent supported by a dynamic intelligence always in contact with reality, expressing its artistic calling by the writing of novels above all, but also by the writing of newspapers, the televisual scenarisation, the design of radiophonic programs and theatrical texts, in addition to the political commitment and creation of cultural reviews.

De Céspedes is an outstanding figure of the 20th literary century European, a tough woman, intellectual engaged, a écrivaine which refuses to be subjected to preestablished and imposed models. Its creative course was based on two pillars: that of the style and that of the inescapable desire of freedom.

It has chooses various forms of expressions and its life is documented as the screen of the one of its novels, through various papers and documents which it itself piled up and preserved throughout its life: letters, translations, notes, manuscripts, tickets and photographs of which it made gift with the Archives joined together of the women (in Italian: Archivi riuniti delle gives ) Milan only eight days before its death, as by a strange presentiment. These papers, classified like notes, tell the events as well human as literary of its life and testify to the major reasons of its long work, tracing the portrait of a woman who, in a dash impassioned and refined writing, told the History all while questioning it.

Works

No one does not reconsider its steps (title original: Nessuno torna indietro ), novel translated by Juliette Bertrand, Albin Michel, 1949, 392 p.
They (original title: Dalla leaves di lei , 1949)
the prohibited book (title original: Quaderno proibito , 1952)
Before and after (original title: PRIMA E dopo , 1955)
Day of August (original title: Invito has pranzo , 1955)
the remorse (title original: It rimorso , 1963)
the bambolona (original title: the bambolona , 1967)
Chanson of the girls of May , poems written in French, (translated into Italian by the author, the ragazze di maggio , 1970, bilingual)
Without another place that the night (original title: Nel buoi beyond note , 1973)

Sources

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