Author | Beppe Fenoglio |
---|---|
Original title | Una questione privata |
Translator |
|
Language | Italian |
Genre | Novel |
Published | 1963 |
Publisher | Peter Lang (1988), Hesperus (2006) |
Published in English | 1988 |
Pages | ix + 165pp (first English edition) |
A Private Matter (Italian : Una questione privata; also translated as A Private Affair) is an Italian novel by Beppe Fenoglio, first published posthumously in April 1963, two months after the author's death. The book deals with themes common to Fenoglio's work: the lives of partisans and the final period of the Second World War in Italy. Italo Calvino called A Private Matter, "the crowning of a whole generation's efforts to portray the resistance," and, "the novel that our generation wished we created." [1] [2]
The story takes place in the Langhe. Milton is a young 20 year old university student who has joined the resistance movement, in a "blue" unit (those aligned with the monarchists), following the armistice of September 1943. He is in love with Fulvia, a beautiful girl from a well-to-do Torinese family, who he met in Alba where she had been displaced. After several months as a partisan, Milton, driven by desire and nostalgia, returns to the villa where he and Fulvia used to spend their evenings. Here he meets the housekeeper, who knew him before, and Milton asks to visit the places fond to him. During the visit, the elderly housekeeper mentions a relationship between Fulvia and Giorgio, Milton's friend and a fellow partisan, although in a "red" unit (that is, aligned with the communists). Milton, in shock, chooses to find Giorgio and discover the truth about the relationship.
He sets off to locate Giorgio's unit, but cannot find him. Shortly afterwards news arrives that Giorgio has been captured by the fascists. Milton decides to seek an enemy prisoner to be exchanged with Giorgio before he is executed. He receives information that near the city where Giorgio is being kept an enemy non-commissioned officer is in a relationship with a woman who lives nearby, and learns the location of their meetings. Milton manages to capture him, but he tries to escape and Milton is forced to shoot him. With all hope of freeing his friend now lost and with it the chance to find the truth about Fulvia's love, Milton returns to the villa. The fascists are there when he arrives, he is surprised and flees. Milton, is chased and shot at, probably injured and utterly spent, he collapses on the ground in a nearby wood.
A Private Matter is credited with marking the first turn towards the personal in the novels of Resistance writers. [3] As David Ward notes: "Fenoglio makes the suggestion that the Resistance struggle itself acts as a pretext for another struggle, this one located at a deeper more personal and irrational level. Before focussing on the ideological underpinnings of an individual's decision to join the military struggle, attention needs to be paid to the personal demons that animate the consciousness and bear on the minds of the likes of Milton." [4] Maria Grazia Di Paolo, who completed the first English translation, regards the novel as the major piece of Fenoglio's mature works. [5]
{{cite book}}
: Unknown parameter |agency=
ignored (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}
: Unknown parameter |agency=
ignored (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}
: |work=
ignored (help); Unknown parameter |agency=
ignored (help){{cite book}}
: Unknown parameter |agency=
ignored (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)Consorzio Suonatori Indipendenti is an Italian band that evolved from the former punk/art band CCCP Fedeli alla linea.
Giuseppe "Beppe" Fenoglio was an Italian writer, partisan and translator from English. The works of Fenoglio have two main themes: the rural world of the Langhe, where he was born and raised, and the Italian resistance movement, both largely inspired by his own personal experiences in them; equally, the writer has two styles: the chronicle and the epos.
The Republic of Alba was a short-lived state that existed from 10 October to 2 November 1944 in Alba, northern Italy, as a local resistance against Italian fascism during World War II, and which was part of the so-called Italian Partisan Republics, the first of which was the Republic of Corniolo. It was named after the Napoleonic Republic of Alba that existed in 1796 in Piedmont.
Alma Franca Maria Norsa, known professionally as Franca Valeri, was an Italian actress, playwright, screenwriter, author, and theatre director.
Su e giù is a 1965 Italian anthology comedy film directed by Mino Guerrini.
Beppe Costa is an Italian poet, novelist and publisher.
Specializing in the field of drama, with particular attention to the drama of its national heritage, the Accademia Nazionale di Arte Drammatica Silvio D'Amico has played a key role in the Italian film and theater scene and is currently headed by Professor Luigi Maria Musati. It has prepared artists such as Margherita Buy, Vittorio Gassman, Luigi Lo Cascio, Anna Magnani, Nino Manfredi, and Monica Vitti. Other former alumni include Antoniano, Manuela Arcuri, Mino Bellei, Carmelo Bene, Dirk van den Berg, Giuliana Berlinguer, Alessio Boni, Alberto Bonucci, Giulio Bosetti, Renato De Carmine, Ennio Fantastichini, Gabriele Ferzetti (expelled), Scilla Gabel, Domiziana Giordano, Michele Placido, Luca Ronconi, Gian Maria Volonté and Lina Wertmüller.
Howard Curtis is a British translator of French, Italian and Spanish fiction.
Tommaso Maria Neri is an Italian actor, mostly known for his roles as Mattia as children in the movie in the movie The Solitude of Prime Numbers candidate at the 67th Venice International Film Festival and as Milo in the popular Italian soap opera Centovetrine.
Ugo Carrega was an Italian artist and poet. Carrega was one of the main exponents of visual poetry, although he preferred the term "New Writing", an experimental form of writing that combines signs of different extraction. Carrega was active mainly in Milan, where he founded the cultural centers Centro Suolo (1969), Centro Tool (1971), Mercato del Sale (1974) and Euforia Costante (1993). He also founded and directed the art magazines Tool (1965), Bollettino Tool (1968), aaa (1969) and Bollettino da dentro (1972).
Maria Corti was an Italian philologist, literary critic, and novelist. Considered one of the leading literary scholars of post-World War II Italy, she was awarded numerous prizes including the Premio Campiello for the entire body of her work. Her works of fiction were informed by her literary scholarship but also had a distinctly autobiographical vein, particularly her Voci del nord-est (1986) and II canto delle sirene (1989). For most of her career she was based at the University of Pavia where she established the Fondo Manoscritti di Autori Moderni e Contemporanei, an extensive curated archive of material on modern Italian writers.
The Archivio di Nuova Scrittura is a cultural association founded in 1988 in Milan, Italy by art collector Paolo Della Grazia. The archive preserves a large artistic and documentary heritage about any form of artistic expression featuring the use of both the word and the sign. Born from the encounter between Della Grazia and artist Ugo Carrega, in the 1990s the ANS became the main Italian research center on visual poetry, organizing exhibitions, meetings and other cultural events. In 1998 the Archivio di Nuova Scrittura was deposited in part at the Mart in Rovereto and in part at the Museion in Bozen. The artwork section of the ANS includes about 1,600 works by international artists at Mart and about 2,000 at Museion. The ANS archives preserve, apart from the internal archive of the association, the Fraccaro-Carrega fonds, containing the papers of collector Marco Fraccaro and visual poet Ugo Carrega. The library section, preserved at Mart, contains more than 18,000 volumes, among them 600 artist's books and hundreds of futurist first editions, and 600 art magazines including about 300 international artist's magazines.
Inferno Below is a 2003 Italian television miniseries directed by Antonio and Andrea Frazzi and starring Claudio Amendola and Maria Grazia Cucinotta.
Private Affair, Private Affairs or variants thereof may refer to:
Una questione privata is a 1993 Italian film directed by Alberto Negrin with a screenplay based on the WWII partisan novel of the same name by Beppe Fenoglio (1963) adapted by Raffaele La Capria. The film stars the young British actor Rupert Graves as Milton, Céline Beauvallet, and Claudio Mazzenga.
Rainbow: A Private Affair is an Italian drama film directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, based on the novel A Private Matter by Beppe Fenoglio. It is the last film directed by both brothers before Vittorio Taviani's death in 2018.
Events during the year 1929 in Italy.
Una questione privata may refer to:
Piero Balbo was an Italian Resistance leader during World War II.