Silence and Voices in James’s Venice

Henry James’s descriptions, rich in visual details, often seem ‘muted’ from the point of view of sound. However, one particular sound seems to interest him more and more through the years: voices. In his works on Venice, voices seem to acquire a special value against the silence of the city, i.e. the absence of mechanical noises. Voices belong to people, but also to Venetian buildings, forecasting the use of voices regularly attributed to buildings in The American Scene. In Venice, gondoliers’ voices have a special relevance: in spite of their “contempt for consonants and other disagreeables” James does not seem to condemn them, on the contrary he appreciates them. An odd position for a writer who criticized harshly the language of American women and of ethnic groups in America. The reason may be ascribed to the fact that Italian is not the beloved language of Shakespeare and of American democracy, but also to the dreamlike quality of the city, or to the writer’s seeing Venice as a woman with whom he falls in love

L'importanza del programma Fulbright per Ca' Foscari

The paper deals with the Fulbright exchange program, started by Senator James W. Fulbright in 1946, and active in Italy from 1948, when the Italian government signed the agreement. The Fulbright program was essential in the life and career of many Italian scientists, artists, musicians, etc. and it was very important in opening up American studies at Ca' Foscari, one of the very first universities, with Roma La Sapienza, to start a separate course of American studies in Europe

Auf schwankendem Grund. Dekadenz und Tod im Venedig der Moderne

Anlass des Bandes ist das Centenarium von Thomas Manns Novelle "Der Tod in Venedig" (1912), in der Gustav von Aschenbach als ein der historischen Wissenschaft verpflichteter Schriftsteller in unsicheres Terrain jenseits rationaler Begrifflichkeit gerät, ins Sehnsuchtsland der Liebe und des Schönen, und schließlich in einen Grenzbereich, in dem alles Gestaltete ins Gestaltlose und schließlich in den Tod übergeht. Venedig um 1900, die auf Wasser gebaute, einstige Seerepublik in politischer Dekadenz ist nicht zufällig dafür topisch, und Aschenbach mit seinen ethischen, ästhetischen und epistemologischen Erschütterungen in Venedig nicht allein. Venedig prägte seine eigene Moderne aus und wurde als physisch erlebter wie imaginier­ter Ort für Dichter, Maler und Musiker zum Spiegel der Krisenerfahrungen um 1900. Anders gesagt: Die Stadt fungierte als Seismograph, mit dem sich der Verlust metaphysischer Gewissheiten, der Verlust des Vertrauens in die Evidenz des Wissens, in die Einheit der Person und der Zuverlässigkeit der Sprache aufzeichnen ließ. Die Unbestimmtheit, der Kontrollverlust, die der Lagu­nenstadt eigene Bewegung ›auf schwankendem Grund‹ wird bei Thomas Mann und seinen Zeitgenossen zum Motor der Kreativität

Torcello: From John Ruskin and Henry James to Ernest Hemingway

Draws parallels between Hemingway’s descriptions of Torcello found in Across the River and into the Trees and “Torcello Piece” to Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice (1851) and James’s “Venice: An Early Impression” and “Venice,” reflecting on their thematic treatment of beauty and destruction. Zorzi links Hemingway’s aesthetic connection of faith and art to Ruskin

The Lost Generation and World War I

In her study of the impact of World War I on a range of American modernists, Zorzi devotes her greatest attention to Hemingway. Notes that while John Dos Passos and others drew on personal experience in their thematic explorations of the senselessness of war, F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner nourished their imaginations through reading and research. Discusses Hemingway’s reliance on both to capture places and events of which he had no direct knowledge, such as the retreat at Caporetto described in A Farewell to Arms. Also discusses the author’s early poetry, vignettes from In Our Time, Across the River and into the Trees, and short stories set in wartime Italy. Features a dozen black-and-white photographs. In English and Italian

Hemingway: Fifty Years After His Death

Provides a broad literary context in her examination of American modernism, the Hemingway myth, and the influence of Venice and the Veneto on such writings as In Our Time, A Farewell to Arms, and Across the River and into the Trees

9. The Aspern Papers: From Florence to an Intertextual City, Venice

It is a well-known fact that James heard the ’germ’ of the story developed in The Aspern Papers in Florence: Hamilton (V.L.’s brother) told me a curious thing of a Capt. [Edward] Silsbee—the Boston art critic and Shelley-worshipper; that is of a curious adventure if his. Miss Claremont, Byron’s ci-devant mistress (the mother of Allegra) was living, until lately, here in Florence, at a great age, 80 or thereabouts, and with her lived her niece, a younger Miss Claremont—of about 50. Silsbee kne..

Hemingway in Venice

Brief biographical commentary on Hemingway’s Venice experiences accompanied by eight photographs from the original Venice exhibition “Hemingway’s Veneto” (2011)