“Life and Fate” in Italy

Interview to Eugenio Corti on “Studi Cattolici” n. 285, November 1984.

Title:
Zhizn’ i sud’ba [Life and Fate]

Author: Vasilii Grossman

Year of publication: 1984

Description:
Zhizn’ i sud’ba (Life and Fate), Vasilii Grossman’s masterpiece seized by KGB agents in February 1961, was published in 1980 by the Swiss publisher L’Age d’Homme. The publication of the novel, which was unknown in the author’s homeland (it had not even circulated in samizdat) had an immediate impact, particularly in France, the first European country where it appeared in translation, in 1983. In Italy it was published the following year by Jaca Book, edited by Cristina Bongiorno.
The novel became what the editorial of the magazine “Cultura e libri” described as an ‘unusual best-seller’: “We have seen how little effect examples of this kind have had in the West (just think of Solgenitsin); yet we feel obliged to recommend it”. Elena Guicciardi, in “La Repubblica”, described the hitherto unknown Grossman as “a great writer … whom critics have compared to Pasternak and Solgenitsyn”. The Slavists Vittorio Strada wrote: “To use a Chekhovian expression, Grossman is an example of a man who has been able to free himself from the slave within him, acquiring a new dignity that does not annul his past, but redeems and enriches it. His novel … is proof of an inner freedom, rare even outside the USSR” (“Corriere della Sera”). In Strada’s opinion, “Grossman had written the first real anti-fascist novel about the anti-fascist war. In other words, he had discovered that official anti-fascism was nothing more than the ideological mask of another form of totalitarianism, similar to fascism: Soviet communism, especially in its Stalinist variant, but already present, albeit in forms not yet fully explicit, in Lenin’s”.
The Catholic press in particular underlined the value of the work: “An Epic novel, a documentary-novel, a novel of denunciation: however you want to define it, it marks an epoch and restores to literature its prophetic, civil and moral role” (Ferdinando Castelli, “La civiltà cattolica”). Impassioned reviews appeared in “Studi cattolici” (cf. the interview with the novelist Eugenio Corti), “Il Sabato” (by Irina Alberti), and “Studium”, in which Carmine Di Biase recalled that critics had considered the novel the ‘book of the year’ in 1984 and noted the “other forbidden theme dealt with in the novel, that of the tragic fate of the Jews and…the burning issue of anti-Semitism”.
Luigi Giussani implored the public to “Read Grossman’s Life and Fate: it is the most terribly beautiful thing I have read in my life (and about which the newspapers are full of positive reviews). You must read it; it is an impressive thing. The author is an atheist and describes a situation of atheism; but the latent humanity, powerless, crushed by power, that emerges from those pages, is a moving thing” (“Qui e ora”: [1984-1985]).
In the years that followed, despite the publication of Life and Fate in his homeland (1989), it was only “the Catholic press that kept alive an interest in Grossman and his works, which today is largely sold only in religious bookshops” (Giulia Lami 2008). In 1998, the second edition of Jaca Book came out, and in “Nuovi argomenti” Mauro Martini, who had already written about the work in “Tempo presente” in 1984, without expressing great enthusiasm, acknowledged the courage of the publisher and showed an appreciation of the work’s “proud claim to the superiority of the human individual over evil (a superiority that rests on the assumption that the prospect of a judgement legitimises life)”. The third edition of Jaca Book, in 2005, one hundred years after the author’s birth, coincided with an exhibition organised in Turin by a group of readers and young scholars who shortly afterwards founded the Vasilii Grossman Study Centre (grossmanweb.eu), to promote knowledge and study of the novel and Grossman’s other works through a dedicated website, a digital documents centre, conferences and the publication of collections of essays by Italian and foreign scholars (which appeared in 2007, 2011, 2014 and 2018). Grossman has finally found a place within the discipline of Italian Slavic studies.
In 2008, Adelphi published a new translation of Vita e destino, edited by Claudia Zonghetti and based on the ‘definitive’ version published in Moscow in 1989. In the ten years that followed a further 15 editions in two series were printed, with almost 90,000 copies, a success due not only to the improved quality of the new version, but also the historical and political climate that finally favoured a wide reception.

Maurizia Calusio
[30th June 2021]

Translation by Marta Capossela

Bibliography

• Castelli F., Il totalitarismo e l’uomo non possono coesistere, “La civiltà cattolica”, 1st December 1984, 3227, pp. 441-456.
• Cattini G., Vita e destino, il romanzo di Grossman che il Kgb mise all’indice, “Cultura e libri”, 1984, 5, pp. 249-254.
• Colognesi P., Un raggio di luce nel grigiore sovietico, “Tracce”, February 2006: 96-97.
• Di Biase C., Un fondamentale libro di V. Grossman: Vita e destino, “Studium”, March-April 1985: 235-239.
• Guicciardi E., Il caso Grossman, “La Repubblica”, 30th Semptember 1984: 22-23.
• Il romanzo della libertà: Vasilij Grossman tra i classici del XX secolo, G. Maddalena e P. Tosco (eds.), Rubettino Editore, Soveria Mannelli 2007.
• L’umano nell’uomo. Vasilij Grossman tra ideologie e domande eterne, P. Tosco (ed.), Rubettino Editore, Soveria Mannelli 2011.
• Lami G., Riflessioni su V. S. Grossman, in M. Di Salvo, G. Moracci, G. Siedina (eds.), Nel mondo degli Slavi. Incontri e dialoghi tra culture, FUP, Firenze 2008: 341-351.
• Martini M., La definizione di un’eresia, “Nuovi argomenti”, ottobre-dicembre 1998: 48-61.
• Martini M., Vita e destino, “Tempo presente”, September 1984: 92-98.
• Strada V., Come si salvò il libro “arrestato” dal KGB, “Corriere della sera”, 27th April 1984.
• Strada V., Il secolo dei totalitarismi e la metanoia di Vasilij Grossman. Completezza della memoria e coscienza storica, in Id., Autoritratto autocritico: Archeologia della Rivoluzione d’ottobre, Liberal, Roma 2004: 121-130.
• Study Center Vasily Grossman, grossmanweb.eu, online (last accessed: 30/06/2021).
• Tosco P. (ed.), L’umano nell’uomo. Vasilij Grossman tra ideologie e domande eterne, Rubettino Editore, Soveria Mannelli 2011.