Zeno's Conscience

by Italo Svevo

a lover soon unfaithful,

Schmitz’s life seemed dully divided between home and office,

I can’t even find a way to warn you, now living in your own infancy, how important it is to remember it, for the benefit of your intelligence and your health.

When will you discover that it would be a good idea to memorize your life, even the large part of it that will revolt you?

Too many probabilities of illness surround you, for not all your minutes can be pure. And besides – poor baby! – you are the blood relation of people I know.

for it is comfortable to live in the belief that you are great, though your greatness is latent.

Disease is a conviction, and I was born with that conviction.

I told him of my unhappiness with women. One wasn’t enough for me, nor were many.

I desired them all!

In the street my agitation was immense; as women went by, they were all mine. I looked them up and down, insolently, out of a need to feel myself brutal. In my mind I undressed them, leaving only their boots on, I took them into my arms, and I let them g...

I am fifty-seven, and I’m sure that if I don’t stop smoking or if psychoanalysis doesn’t cure me, my last glance from my deathbed will express my desire for my nurse, provided she is not my wife and provided my wife has allowed the nurse to be beautiful!

only Julius Caesar was able to do several things at the same moment.

True, I am not asked to work, not while my accountant Olivi is alive, but why is a person like me unable to do anything in this world except dream or scratch at the violin, for which he possesses no talent?

For a couple of hours he didn’t smoke, and for a single meal, he gave up wine.

when I looked into his eyes, he avoided meeting my gaze. They say this is a sign of insincerity, but now I know it’s a sign of illness. The sick animal will not allow himself to be observed at any orifice through which disease or weakness can be perceived.

I believe my spirit then lacked the affection that renders so many things comprehensible.

True religion, indeed, is that which does not have to be avowed in order to provide the solace that at times – if only rarely – you cannot do without.

IN THE MIND of a young man from a middle-class family, the concept of human life is associated with that of a career, and in early youth the career is that of Napoleon I.

The most intense life is narrated, in synthesis, by the most rudimentary sound, that of the sea-wave, which, once formed, changes at every instant until it dies!

and I believe that I, too, since arriving at the age of reason, have not much changed the notion I formed of myself.

The idea of marrying may therefore have come to me from the weariness of emitting and hearing always that one note.

Those who have not yet experienced marriage believe it is more important than it is. The chosen companion will renew, improving or worsening, our breed by bearing children: Mother Nature wants this but cannot direct us openly, because at that time of life we haven’t the slightest thought of children, so she induces us to believe that our wife will also bring about a renewal of ourselves: a curious illusion not confirmed by any text. In fact, we live then, one beside t...

the three commandments he considered sufficient to make any firm prosper: 1. There’s no need for a man to know how to work, but if he doesn’t know how to make others work, he is doomed. 2. There is only one great regret: not having acted in one’s own best interest. 3. In business, theory is useful, but it can be utilized only after the deal has been made.

From the fool they could hope for nothing, except perhaps to persuade him to sacrifice his own interest, but his goods always cost more than the clever man’s, because he has already been swindled at the moment of purchase.

At his grave, as at all the others where I have wept, I grieved also for the part of myself that was buried there.

It was perhaps accidental that before presenting myself at the Malfentis’, I had severed a fairly long-standing tie with a woman who might perhaps have deserved better treatment. But this accident provokes some thought. My decision to make this break was inspired by quite a frivolous motive. The poor girl had thought that a good way to bind me more tightly to herself was to make me jealous. On the contrary, the mere suspicion was enough to make me abandon her definitively. She couldn’t have known at the time how possessed I was by the idea of marriage, and that I believed it impossible to enter that state with her simply because then the novelty would not have seemed great enough to me. The suspicion she deliberately inspired in me demonstrated the superiority of marriage, in which state such suspicions must not arise. When that suspicion, whose lack of substance I soon perceived, then vanished, I recalled that she spent money too freely.

I don’t know if it was because of her shrewdness or my own stupidity that of her four daughters, I married the one I didn’t want.

She loved her big, heavy man, and he must have won and retained her devotion with his successful transactions. Not self-interest but genuine admiration bound her to him,

He felt a need for this mute support, and at times he rushed home to deliver a monologue, convinced he was going there to seek his wife’s advice.

We all love in our own way, and in my opinion, theirs was by no means the most stupid.

I felt a prompt conviction that this woman was the one I needed, the one who would lead me actually to moral and physical health through holy monogamy.

It is a known fact that we men do not seek in a wife the characteristics we adore and despise in a mistress.

and I actually thought that even in ancient Roman times the women spoke Italian.

because it’s surely easier to change oneself than to reshape others.

she was to become not only my companion but also my second mother, who would adopt me for a whole lifetime of manly struggle and victory.

In reality, I pursued many women in my life, and many of them also allowed themselves to be overtaken. In my dreams I captured them all.

I, who had already undergone every kind of adventure, always conducted with an enterprising spirit bordering on insolence, now had become again the timid youth who strives to graze his beloved’s hand, perhaps without her noticing, then adores the part of his own body honored by such contact. This adventure, which was the purest of my life, I remember even today, when I am an old man, as the most despicable.

Toward the ugly girl who loved me I felt the very disdain I could not believe was addressed to me by her beautiful sister, whom I loved.

Giovanni used to say you must never be in a hurry to close a transaction when you can’t expect any gain: every transaction sooner or later arrives at its conclusion on its own, as is proved by the fact that the history of the world is so long and that so few transactions remain unsettled.

The absent man is always wrong, and they could have taken advantage of my absence to band together against me.

over

I, who work so little, retained always a great respect for the holiday, which divides life into brief periods, making it more tolerable.

meeting.

Every threat of disaster at first terrifies me, but then is immediately forgotten in the greater certitude of being able to elude it.

I learned that he always hesitated before doing even the simplest things he was urged to do. He did only what he enjoyed, and before granting a request, he proceeded to search the depths of his soul, to discover there what he really desired.

That's Me

“I’m a good sort, and I believe a person could easily live with me, even without any great love.”

Even when it came to absentmindedness he wanted to be superior to me, and I had to stop listening to him in order to get out of the house.

I was a bit irked, because that yes of mine certainly shouldn’t have sufficed to reassure her of my love.

because a marriage is far simpler than an engagement. Once married, you don’t talk anymore about love, and when you feel the need to speak of it, animal instincts quickly intervene and restore silence.

This is why, if I were to be born again (Mother Nature is capable of anything!), I would agree to marry Augusta; but never to be engaged to her.