My Karst and My City and Other Essays

by Scipio Slataper, Elena Coda (Editor), Nicholas Benson (Translator)

Overview

Scipio Slataper is one of the most prominent writers from the Italian town of Trieste. Before the onslaught of World War One, Trieste was a unique urban environment and the largest port in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was a financially powerful city and a cosmopolitan centre where Slavic, Germanic, and Italian cultures intersected. Much of Slataper’s oeuvre is highly influenced by Trieste’s cultural complexity and its multi-ethnic environment.

Slataper’s major literary achievement, My Karst and My City – a fictionalized, lyrical autobiography, translated here in its entirety – offers a unique example of an Italian modernist narrative, one that is influenced both by Slataper’s collaboration with the Florentine journal La Voce, and by the Germanic and Scandinavian literature that he absorbed while living in Trieste. My Karst and My City, together with the excerpts from his reflections on Ibsen and other critical essays included here, adds a new voice and a different dimension to our understanding of European modernism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487508227
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	11/19/2020
Series:	Lorenzo Da Ponte Italian Library
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.25(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Scipio Slataper (1888–1915) was an Italian writer, most famous for his lyrical essay My Karst. He is considered, alongside Italo Svevo, as the initiator of the prolific tradition of Italian literature in Trieste.
Elena Coda is an associate professor in the School of Languages and Cultures at Purdue University.
Nicholas Benson is the translator of volumes by Attilio Bertolucci and Aldo Palazzeschi and the recipient of an NEA Translation Fellowship.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction
"This Little Corner of Europe": Slataper's Reflections on and around Trieste's Cultural and National Identity
Elena Coda

A Note on the Texts and Their Translations
Nicholas Benson and Elena Coda

1. My Karst and My City

2. From Political Writings: Letters on Trieste

Trieste Has No Cultural Traditions
The Life of the Spirit

3. From Literary and Critical Writings

To Young Italian Intellectuals
Futurism
Crepuscular Confusion

4. From Ibsen

5. From Political Writings

Irredentism Today
The National and Political Future of Trieste
National Rights Are Affirmed with War

6. From Letters to Three Women Friends

To Elody (Firenze, 6 June 1912)
To Gigetta (Firenze, 8 February 1912)
To Gigetta (23 November 1915)

Index

What People are Saying About This

Nicoletta Pireddu

"This collection of Scipio Slataper's autobiographical, political, and critical writings is a groundbreaking contribution to the study of Italian and European modernism. It showcases the multifaceted aspects of Slataper's pioneering vision on individual and collective identity, nationness, and multiculturalism, highlighting the complex history of Trieste and the tensions and contradictions within the still young Italian nation. Elena Coda's superb introductory essay and detailed notes contextualize Slataper's thought within a broad cultural, historical, and philosophical framework. My Karst and My City and Other Essays provides unique insights into the competing ideologies that were tearing a continent apart on the verge of World War I."

Sandra Parmegiani

"A welcome addition to translations of Triestine literature and culture made available to English-speaking readers, this book is an important contribution to the body of study on Scipio Slataper. In her substantial and well-researched introduction, Elena Coda contextualizes Slataper the man and the writer within modernist and futurist debates and accompanies the translation of My Karst and My City with a selection of writings that allow the reader to follow the philosophical, political, and literary trajectory of Slataper's life to the very eve of his death in 1915. This book, whose importance cannot be overstated, will become a seminal text in the scholarship on Slataper and Triestine literature within the pre-World War I historical and philosophical context."

Editorial Reviews

"This volume is an important milestone in the literary criticism of Trieste, a valuable companion in future explorations of the Adriatic city that makes Slataper’s rich and multifaceted work finally available in English."

—Salvatore Pappalardo, Towson University, Annali d’italianistica

"A welcome addition to translations of Triestine literature and culture made available to English-speaking readers, this book is an important contribution to the body of study on Scipio Slataper. In her substantial and well-researched introduction, Elena Coda contextualizes Slataper the man and the writer within modernist and futurist debates and accompanies the translation of My Karst and My City with a selection of writings that allow the reader to follow the philosophical, political, and literary trajectory of Slataper’s life to the very eve of his death in 1915. This book, whose importance cannot be overstated, will become a seminal text in the scholarship on Slataper and Triestine literature within the pre-World War I historical and philosophical context."

—Sandra Parmegiani, Associate Professor of European Studies and Italian, University of Guelph

"This collection of Scipio Slataper’s autobiographical, political, and critical writings is a groundbreaking contribution to the study of Italian and European modernism. It showcases the multifaceted aspects of Slataper’s pioneering vision on individual and collective identity, nationness, and multiculturalism, highlighting the complex history of Trieste and the tensions and contradictions within the still young Italian nation. Elena Coda's superb introductory essay and detailed notes contextualize Slataper’s thought within a broad cultural, historical, and philosophical framework. My Karst and My City and Other Essays provides unique insights into the competing ideologies that were tearing a continent apart on the verge of World War I."

—Nicoletta Pireddu, Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature and Inaugural Director of the Georgetown Humanities Initiative, Georgetown University

From the Publisher

"This volume is an important milestone in the literary criticism of Trieste, a valuable companion in future explorations of the Adriatic city that makes Slataper's rich and multifaceted work finally available in English."

Annali d'italianistica - Salvatore Pappalardo