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Women of Messina (New Directions Book)
Il racconto dei profondi cambiamenti che conducono l'Italia al boom economico degli anni Sessanta, attraverso te fili narrativi. Una critica feroce della nuova realtà consumistica e della civiltà tecnologica.
«Vittorini propone se stesso non tanto come il nostalgico cantore di una condizione innocente e perduta, quanto di una tradizione secondo cui una vita migliore deve trovare nelle traiettorie della storia il punto di convergenza attraverso cui realizzare il bene comune» – Giuseppe Lupo
Considerato tra i romanzi più belli e singolari di Vittorini, «Le donne di Messina» racconta i profondi cambiamenti che conducono l'Italia al boom economico degli anni Sessanta attraverso tre fili narrativi: il viaggio dello zio Agrippa, figura emblematica della nuova società in perenne movimento, che percorre il paese in treno alla ricerca della figlia accodatasi in Sicilia alle truppe alleate; la storia d'amore contrastata tra due giovani, Siracusa e Ventura, dal criminale passato fascista; l'avventura di un gruppo di sfollati, tra cui delle energiche donne provenienti da Messina, che vuole costruire sull'appennino tosco-emiliano un'utopica comunità di uguali dove non esiste proprietà privata e dove tutto è in condivisione. Un romanzo passato attraverso tre riscritture, una critica feroce della nuova realtà consumistica e della civiltà tecnologica.
«Vittorini propone se stesso non tanto come il nostalgico cantore di una condizione innocente e perduta, quanto di una tradizione secondo cui una vita migliore deve trovare nelle traiettorie della storia il punto di convergenza attraverso cui realizzare il bene comune» – Giuseppe Lupo
Considerato tra i romanzi più belli e singolari di Vittorini, «Le donne di Messina» racconta i profondi cambiamenti che conducono l'Italia al boom economico degli anni Sessanta attraverso tre fili narrativi: il viaggio dello zio Agrippa, figura emblematica della nuova società in perenne movimento, che percorre il paese in treno alla ricerca della figlia accodatasi in Sicilia alle truppe alleate; la storia d'amore contrastata tra due giovani, Siracusa e Ventura, dal criminale passato fascista; l'avventura di un gruppo di sfollati, tra cui delle energiche donne provenienti da Messina, che vuole costruire sull'appennino tosco-emiliano un'utopica comunità di uguali dove non esiste proprietà privata e dove tutto è in condivisione. Un romanzo passato attraverso tre riscritture, una critica feroce della nuova realtà consumistica e della civiltà tecnologica.
307 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1949
3 people are currently reading
174 people want to read
About the author
Elio Vittorini
105 books87 followersElio Vittorini (July 23, 1908 - February 12, 1966) was an Italian writer and novelist. He was a contemporary of Cesare Pavese and an influential voice in the modernist school of novel writing. His best-known work is the anti-fascist novel Conversations in Sicily, for which he was jailed when it was published in 1941. The first U.S. edition of the novel, published in 1949, included an introduction from Ernest Hemingway, whose style influenced Vittorini and that novel in particular.
Vittorini was born in Syracuse, Sicily, and throughout his childhood moved around Sicily with his father, a railroad worker. Several times he ran away from home, culminating in his leaving Sicily for good in 1924. For a brief period, he found employment as a construction worker in the Julian March, after which he moved to Florence to work as a type corrector (a line of work he abandoned in 1934 due to lead poisoning). Around 1927 his work began to be published in literary journals. In many cases, separate editions of his novels and short stories from this period, such as The Red Carnation were not published until after World War II, due to fascist censorship. In 1937, he was expelled from the Fascist Party for writing in support of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
In 1939 he moved once again, this time to Milan. An anthology of American literature which he edited was, once more, delayed by censorship. Remaining an outspoken critic of Mussolini's regime, Vittorini was arrested and jailed in 1942. He joined the Italian Communist Party and began taking an active role in the Resistance, which provided the basis for his 1945 novel Men and not Men. Also in 1945, he briefly became the editor of the Italian Communist daily L'Unità.
After the war, Vittorini chiefly concentrated on his work as editor, helping publish work by young Italians such as Calvino and Fenoglio. His last major published work of fiction during his lifetime was 1956's Erica and her Sisters. The news of the events of the Hungarian Uprising deeply shook his convictions in Communism and made him decide to largely abandon writing, leaving unfinished work which was to be published in unedited form posthumously. For the remainder of his life, Vittorini continued in his post as an editor. He also ran a candidate on a PSI list. He died in Milan in 1966.
Vittorini was born in Syracuse, Sicily, and throughout his childhood moved around Sicily with his father, a railroad worker. Several times he ran away from home, culminating in his leaving Sicily for good in 1924. For a brief period, he found employment as a construction worker in the Julian March, after which he moved to Florence to work as a type corrector (a line of work he abandoned in 1934 due to lead poisoning). Around 1927 his work began to be published in literary journals. In many cases, separate editions of his novels and short stories from this period, such as The Red Carnation were not published until after World War II, due to fascist censorship. In 1937, he was expelled from the Fascist Party for writing in support of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
In 1939 he moved once again, this time to Milan. An anthology of American literature which he edited was, once more, delayed by censorship. Remaining an outspoken critic of Mussolini's regime, Vittorini was arrested and jailed in 1942. He joined the Italian Communist Party and began taking an active role in the Resistance, which provided the basis for his 1945 novel Men and not Men. Also in 1945, he briefly became the editor of the Italian Communist daily L'Unità.
After the war, Vittorini chiefly concentrated on his work as editor, helping publish work by young Italians such as Calvino and Fenoglio. His last major published work of fiction during his lifetime was 1956's Erica and her Sisters. The news of the events of the Hungarian Uprising deeply shook his convictions in Communism and made him decide to largely abandon writing, leaving unfinished work which was to be published in unedited form posthumously. For the remainder of his life, Vittorini continued in his post as an editor. He also ran a candidate on a PSI list. He died in Milan in 1966.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 14, 2017
I know how someone who has never traveled the length and breadth of our country might imagine it, someone who has only seen its long profile on the atlas pages: high stretches of dry, red earth between two seas that mark east and west, arid land, treeless, seared by the wind and the breath of the sun, the breath of salt; and so it is, over great stretches of it, as soon as one goes above a thousand feet on the trip from one to another of its towered and cupolaed cities -- it is arid over great stretches, naked over great stretches, high with red earth between Emilia and Tuscany or between Siena and Rome, the way the desert is desert between its oases.
Crossing the desert, men are travelers, and in the same way our people are nomads as they cross our highlands; they go back and forth from the south heading north or from north to south on long trains from whose windows they look out, standing for three or four or even five days, wondering what this land is -- everywhere alike -- that binds together places as different from one another as Bari and Bologna, Catanzaro and Genoa, this land that calls itself Italy.
I am from Apulia and could find no peace until I began this run back and forth from Molfetta to Milan, which, at every station, shakes me from my lethargy as a baggage-rack straphanger and shows me, once more through little windows smudged with weariness, a plateau without a blade of grass, like the one along the Murge, here where we are near the drop down toward the river Po.
Or I am from Milan and did not want to stop on my great plain of a thousand trades; I wanted to see if I too could traffic in lemons, enter into the back-and-forth life of the long train that flaps a greeting with all its curtains to the loneliness of sun and stone of the land through which it runs, both when we are between Parma and La Spezia, along the Apennines, and when, in a dawn that smells of ricotta cheese, we are along the border between Campania and Calabria, or when, on a late afternoon, we hear the crickets, louder than our train whistle, crying for help all the way from Catania to Syracuse.
Of I am a Ligurian from Bracco and could have been satisfied working in the shipyards of Sestri; I am from Emilia, from the Val di Taro region, and could have been satisfied churning cheeses on the outskirts of Parma -- instead, I wanted the back-and-forth life, and I've earned my bread a bit everywhere, in Terni, in Naples, in Messina, perhaps for no other reason than to make my six or seven trips, my chest prickling with sweat, up and down this land which I see by the lights of my own trip stretching in curves as the rock curves in the moonlight; I see it in just such a way as I believed, when I was a boy, that only my Bracco had jack rabbits, or only my Val di Taro had shepherds, and I see that, yes, the land is there just to be traveled, made on purpose for a man to want to climb aboard a train and cross it, climb aboard a train once more and cross it again.
Crossing the desert, men are travelers, and in the same way our people are nomads as they cross our highlands; they go back and forth from the south heading north or from north to south on long trains from whose windows they look out, standing for three or four or even five days, wondering what this land is -- everywhere alike -- that binds together places as different from one another as Bari and Bologna, Catanzaro and Genoa, this land that calls itself Italy.
I am from Apulia and could find no peace until I began this run back and forth from Molfetta to Milan, which, at every station, shakes me from my lethargy as a baggage-rack straphanger and shows me, once more through little windows smudged with weariness, a plateau without a blade of grass, like the one along the Murge, here where we are near the drop down toward the river Po.
Or I am from Milan and did not want to stop on my great plain of a thousand trades; I wanted to see if I too could traffic in lemons, enter into the back-and-forth life of the long train that flaps a greeting with all its curtains to the loneliness of sun and stone of the land through which it runs, both when we are between Parma and La Spezia, along the Apennines, and when, in a dawn that smells of ricotta cheese, we are along the border between Campania and Calabria, or when, on a late afternoon, we hear the crickets, louder than our train whistle, crying for help all the way from Catania to Syracuse.
Of I am a Ligurian from Bracco and could have been satisfied working in the shipyards of Sestri; I am from Emilia, from the Val di Taro region, and could have been satisfied churning cheeses on the outskirts of Parma -- instead, I wanted the back-and-forth life, and I've earned my bread a bit everywhere, in Terni, in Naples, in Messina, perhaps for no other reason than to make my six or seven trips, my chest prickling with sweat, up and down this land which I see by the lights of my own trip stretching in curves as the rock curves in the moonlight; I see it in just such a way as I believed, when I was a boy, that only my Bracco had jack rabbits, or only my Val di Taro had shepherds, and I see that, yes, the land is there just to be traveled, made on purpose for a man to want to climb aboard a train and cross it, climb aboard a train once more and cross it again.
February 17, 2015
I'm not going to pretend I got every nuance of this post-war Italian novel, but I definitely enjoyed it. In a broken but revived Italy, people begin cramming into the trains that haven't run for years to find lost loved ones and visit long-lost homes. In this same terrain, a group of random wanderers find a bombed out and abandoned small village. They begin by removing mines from the land, planting wheat, and fixing up one building after another. They have a rustic and communal existence that seems like it could roll along forever until Carlos the Bald comes in and starts asking questions and raising suspicions. A unique combination of metaphorical and narrative this is a mysterious and enveloping read.
July 10, 2019
Mi sono fermato al capitolo 29. Libro non interessante, non coinvolgente e sinceramente manco troppo ben scritto. Non vorrei sembrare blasfemo con un simile autore, ma davvero non riesco a proseguire
March 9, 2021
Disappointing; derivative of pre-war US writers (Faulkner, Hemingway...).
A big disappointment. First published in 1949, then disowned by the author, and reissued in 1964 after rewriting (in 1973 in English translation). Women of Messina is identified by Harold Bloom as among the Italian works of the C20th potentially worthy of inclusion in the "Western Canon" (I know, both the concept and authority are questionable). Bloom's suggestion may have reflected Vittorini's willingness to draw from major pre-war US authors, whom he had translated for the Italian audience (Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck).
However, even the introduction to my New Directions edition by Webster Schott suggests doubts about its merits. "Whether we have a masterpiece...is open to question." "It is a novel of large ideas. Even its flaws are so big they cannot be quickly forgotten."
For me, the stylistic ambitions get in the way. There is repetitive phrasing, Hemingway-like references to the "good", soaring rhetoric that fails to communicate feeling.
The point at which I gave up (page 124 out of 307) describes the arrival of a truck at the village that the post-war refugees are trying to establish:
"All this was a good thing.
Elvira from Messina seemed to be happy. Ventura and the girl guessed it from her face, just as she might have guessed the same thing from theirs. And all this was a good thing, just as it is a good thing to see the faces of an animated city crowd.
A good thing that just then a truck made its arrival, that its blinding headlights played upon the two rows of houses under the tunnel, on their doors and windows, that Spataro the Trucker made no effort to dim them, so that the broad glare rested on every face, in turn, that came into its path. It was good, while the men were unloading the truck, to have the light, and good that the truck should stop there and remain all night in the nave of the former church, with its body weary but not yet dead, and smelly.
Wasn't it a good thing to sleep with a truck in the passageway? Men have slept with a dog, even a lion, in the passageway. Now they could sleep with a truck, lulled to rest in its smells. Wasn't it a good thing?
Good, too were the noises when Spataro the Trucker was working on the truck..."
(Uuurgh, enough...!)
A big disappointment. First published in 1949, then disowned by the author, and reissued in 1964 after rewriting (in 1973 in English translation). Women of Messina is identified by Harold Bloom as among the Italian works of the C20th potentially worthy of inclusion in the "Western Canon" (I know, both the concept and authority are questionable). Bloom's suggestion may have reflected Vittorini's willingness to draw from major pre-war US authors, whom he had translated for the Italian audience (Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck).
However, even the introduction to my New Directions edition by Webster Schott suggests doubts about its merits. "Whether we have a masterpiece...is open to question." "It is a novel of large ideas. Even its flaws are so big they cannot be quickly forgotten."
For me, the stylistic ambitions get in the way. There is repetitive phrasing, Hemingway-like references to the "good", soaring rhetoric that fails to communicate feeling.
The point at which I gave up (page 124 out of 307) describes the arrival of a truck at the village that the post-war refugees are trying to establish:
"All this was a good thing.
Elvira from Messina seemed to be happy. Ventura and the girl guessed it from her face, just as she might have guessed the same thing from theirs. And all this was a good thing, just as it is a good thing to see the faces of an animated city crowd.
A good thing that just then a truck made its arrival, that its blinding headlights played upon the two rows of houses under the tunnel, on their doors and windows, that Spataro the Trucker made no effort to dim them, so that the broad glare rested on every face, in turn, that came into its path. It was good, while the men were unloading the truck, to have the light, and good that the truck should stop there and remain all night in the nave of the former church, with its body weary but not yet dead, and smelly.
Wasn't it a good thing to sleep with a truck in the passageway? Men have slept with a dog, even a lion, in the passageway. Now they could sleep with a truck, lulled to rest in its smells. Wasn't it a good thing?
Good, too were the noises when Spataro the Trucker was working on the truck..."
(Uuurgh, enough...!)
May 26, 2025
Vittorini’s novel expresses the hope of rebuilding a simple, agrarian socialist community in the ruins of the Second World War, but also the ultimate disillusionment in ever attaining that goal as the same pre-war social divisions reappear in different ways, while the modern glitz of the post-war Economic Miracle – very capitalist and very American – arrives to wipe away any chance of a pastorale commune of peasants.
Each character stands as an allegorical figure: Uncle Agrippa, endlessly riding the trains in search of the daughter he lost during the war; Siracusa, the daughter in question, who seeks a steady and stable new life; Ventura, the former Fascist (by fate of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time more so than ideology), who seeks to flee from his past; and Carlo the Bald, the former Fascist who is now tasked with bringing “law and order” back to the post-war country. ("Meet the new boss, same as the old boss …") Each character is a side of the Italian psyche trying to heal.
The symbolism is a bit too heavy-handed at times, leading to a reading experience that seems forced rather than organic, which is ironic since the novel is brimming with flowery descriptions of the landscape to reflect the main theme of a search for the real/natural/organic life. I felt it was an imitation of Steinbeck, although the introduction by Webster Schott likens the characters to those found in Thornton Wilder, which I think is a better comparison. This might explain why I wasn’t bowled over by this novel: like Wilder, Vittorini has an almost compulsory drive for allegory that drains a sense of vitality from the narrative, even while striving to emphasize just that feeling.
Each character stands as an allegorical figure: Uncle Agrippa, endlessly riding the trains in search of the daughter he lost during the war; Siracusa, the daughter in question, who seeks a steady and stable new life; Ventura, the former Fascist (by fate of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time more so than ideology), who seeks to flee from his past; and Carlo the Bald, the former Fascist who is now tasked with bringing “law and order” back to the post-war country. ("Meet the new boss, same as the old boss …") Each character is a side of the Italian psyche trying to heal.
The symbolism is a bit too heavy-handed at times, leading to a reading experience that seems forced rather than organic, which is ironic since the novel is brimming with flowery descriptions of the landscape to reflect the main theme of a search for the real/natural/organic life. I felt it was an imitation of Steinbeck, although the introduction by Webster Schott likens the characters to those found in Thornton Wilder, which I think is a better comparison. This might explain why I wasn’t bowled over by this novel: like Wilder, Vittorini has an almost compulsory drive for allegory that drains a sense of vitality from the narrative, even while striving to emphasize just that feeling.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews