Trieste celebrates Svevo Day: a reading marathon of “Zeno’s Conscience” on the centenary of the novel

It came out a hundred years ago Zeno’s conscience Of Italo Svevowhich has become a cornerstone of modernism: since then there have been countless translations, rewritings and rereadings published in around thirty languages: from Arab countries to China, from Japan to Lithuania, from Ukraine to Turkey, as well as critical comments, among his contemporaries he talked about it Paul Auster, inserting a cameo into the novel Brooklyn Folliesand then Nathaniel Rich, Kazuo Ishiguro, J. M. Coetzee.

The celebrations for the hundredth anniversary of Zeno’s consciencewhich sees the Municipality of Trieste as the leader, continue with the Svevo Day on Tuesday 21 November: on the occasion of the Reading Day aloud the cities of Gorizia and Trieste will pay homage to the pages of the Swabian masterpiece with a Reading Marathon promoted by the University of Trieste and the Association of Italianists (ADI).
The initiative, which will last over 15 hours, will see the active participation of school and university students, and teachers, actors and many citizens who are passionate about literature. In all there will be around 300 voices that will take turns in the public reading of the pages of Zeno’s Conscience, and there is still the possibility of taking last minute action to be among the protagonists who will give voice to Zeno’s psychoanalytic memoir. Zeno Cosini, returning it stream of consciousness perhaps the most famous of Italian literature, and the dreamlike digressions of the protagonist.

If part Tuesday 21 November in Gorizia from 9 am, to continue until 3.00 pm, in the renovated Conference Center of the University of Trieste (via Alviano 18). Kicking off the Reading Marathon will be the students of the ISISS Polo Liceale Gorizia and the city’s ISISS “Gabriele D’Annunzio”, engaged in reading the first five chapters of the novel. The participation of the students marks the training project carried out in collaboration with the Association of Italianists, for the learning of interpretive reading techniques, in the awareness that reading aloud is a prerequisite for sociality and integration.

From 3pm the baton of the reading marathon will pass to Trieste: the venue of the initiative will be the Tomizza Newspaper Library, in the heart of the city in Piazza Hortis, where – in front of the entrance – stands the famous bronze statue of Aron Hector Schmitz – Italo Svevo, in fact – created in life-size by the Trieste artist Nino Spagnoli in 2004. Hat in hand and book arm in arm, Italo Svevo seems to welcome the public who will listen to the oral reading of his novel in the spaces of the Trieste Library that were dear to him: «he discovered the civic library and those centuries of culture placed at his disposal allowed him to save his meager purse. With its fixed hours, the library bound him, brought the regularity he desired to his studies”, Svevo wrote in the novel “Una vita”.

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The Reading Marathon in Trieste Zeno’s conscience will start from the sixth chapter, “The wife and the lover”, with a reflection of the protagonist regarding his marriage to Augusta. To join the event – which will continue until two in the morning – it is still possible to contact the organizational secretariat at the Teatro Stabile del Friuli Venezia Giulia infoline: 040-3593534. The marathon can be followed on the University of Trieste’s YouTube channel.