On September 9, 1908, Cesare Pavese was born in the Piedmontese village of Santo Stefano Belbo, in the vine-covered hills of the Langhe. He died forty-one years later — by his own hand, in a Turin hotel room, two months after winning Italy’s most prestigious literary prize. In between, he wrote some of the most honest and quietly devastating prose and poetry produced in twentieth-century Italy. To mark the anniversary of his birth, we revisit the life, work, and enduring legacy of one of Italian literature’s most essential figures: translator of Melville, Faulkner, and Steinbeck; editor and architect of the Einaudi publishing house; poet of solitude and landscape; and the author of The Moon and the Bonfires, the novel Susan Sontag called the work of “one of the few essential novelists of the mid-twentieth century.” From the spare narratives of Hard Labor and The House on the Hill to the mythic dialogues of Dialogues with Leucò and the posthumous poems of Death Will Come and Will Have Your Eyes, this post covers his major achievements, his most celebrated short fiction, his literary legacy — and six of his most enduring verified quotes. Continue reading Cesare Pavese 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿