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The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg (1962)

by Natalia Ginzberg (Author)

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5471643,895 (3.9)10
"As far as the education of children is concerned," states Natalia Ginzburg in this collection of her finest and best-known short essays, "I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but a love of one's neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know." Whether she writes of the loss of a friend, Cesare Pavese; or what is inexpugnable of World War II; or the Abruzzi, where she and her first husband lived in forced residence under Fascist ru≤ or the importance of silence in our society; or her vocation as a writer; or even a pair of worn-out shoes, Ginzburg brings to her reflections the wisdom of a survivor and the spare, wry, and poetically resonant style her readers have come to recognize.  "A glowing light of modern Italian literature . . . Ginzburg's magic is the utter simplicity of her prose, suddenly illuminated by one word that makes a lightning streak of a plain phrase. . . . As direct and clean as if it were carved in stone, it yet speaks thoughts of the heart." --The New York Times Book Review… (more)
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The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg (1962)

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» See also 10 mentions

English (9)  Spanish (4)  Italian (3)  All languages (16)
Showing 1-5 of 9 (next | show all)
There is so much to say about this little collection of essays that I'm going to have to read it again. I loved it. Natalia Ginsburg is a powerful writer and what I'm left with after this first reading is a sense of self-confidence. This is a woman who knows who she is. But it's her exploration of doubts and insecurities that create this impression. I think it was half through the piece ''He and I' when I realised what a powerful writer she was and how writing about opposites can be so self-affirming. I laughed out loud at her examination of London and the English, a piece that was really about longing for home. I found the lack of certainly and permanence in a post-war world strangely poignant having been burnt out by bush fire and expecting another. I'm still thinking about the signature piece, 'The Little Virtues' which somehow embodies what I'm trying to say about her work in that it is about the 'big' virtues and what is really important. Thanks for sending me this Jim. ( )
  simonpockley | Feb 25, 2024 |
O exílio, os sapatos rotos de quem sabe o que não é necessário, o retrato do amigo que às vezes ficava muito triste, a Inglaterra melancólica e as conversas sem perigo, o vulto da casa caída, os silêncios, a diferença entre escrevermos felizes ou infelizes, as relações humanas, as pequenas virtudes mas sobretudo as grandes, o amor à vida que gera amor à vida. Neste pequeno livro, com textos tão bem escritos, cabe tanto. ( )
  inesaparicio | Jan 25, 2024 |
in love with her voice, reaching me across time ( )
  boredgames | Apr 29, 2022 |
I read this to see if I should ask for the library to buy all her New Directions reissues and YES she is a very good writer BUT even she admits her novels are better than her essays, SO i'm reserving judgment! ( )
  uncleflannery | May 16, 2020 |
Imagine a mid-20th-century Italian intellectual who admits without embarrassment to wearing worn-out shoes, claims that she isn't interested in cooking and always buys the wrong things from the market, can't drive (in Torino!), can't sing (and starts an essay on the topic of "Silence" by discussing an opera), never uses two words where one will do, and has never been known to drop names of any description.

No, I can't, either. But that is the image that Natalia Ginzburg likes to project. In the land of bella figura her provocative self-mockery and her brusque, no-nonsense style seem to have caused quite a few cases of spontaneous combustion amongst literary critics, but they clearly won her a lot of respect as well.

The short essays in Le piccole virtù, written between 1945 and 1962, form something between a memoir and a manifesto for literature in a post-war world, but without the egotism either of those forms usually implies.

"Inverno in Abruzzo" describes the experience of being banished by the fascists to a remote village near Aquila — she writes about the privations of daily life for the family, and how much she and her husband miss the city (the children are too young to imagine what a city might be like). And then in the last paragraph she turns everything upside-down by telling us that her husband was murdered in a Roman jail, a few months after they left Abruzzo. She couldn't imagine it at the time, but now she sees that the months they spent together in the back of beyond were the best time of her life. "Le scarpe rotte", written shortly after the war when she was working in Rome, the kids parked with her parents in Torino, is about the unexpected pleasures of poverty, and a classic attack on one of the most sacred things in Italian culture.

Then there's a lovely — but unsentimental — portrait of her friend, the poet Cesare Pavese, who killed himself in August 1950, and two pieces about London in 1960. The second of these, "La Maison Volpé", is a glorious denunciation of the English food-culture of the time, possibly the most unapologetically Italian piece in the whole book, but spot-on in its dry mockery. No-one who remembers the dusty curtains and rotating plastic oranges of those days could possibly take offence. "Lui e io" is a funny, self-deprecatory description of her relationship with her second husband, Gabriele Baldini, which could be about any middle-aged couple ("he's always too hot, I'm always too cold...").

In the second part, she discusses how the experience of the war has changed things for her generation and the things they can write about, she talks about developing as a writer ("Il mio mestiere") and as a human being ("I rapporti humani"), and in the piece that gives the collection its title, about the responsibilities of parenting, which for her seems to be more about non-intervention than anything else, in a very sixties spirit.

All the pieces in this collection are clever, subtle, amazing bits of writing, but the ones that really stood out for me were "Il mio mestiere" and "I rapporti humani", two pieces that seem to sum up everything that needs to be said about the puzzling business of growing up. I really wish I'd read them as a teenager! ( )
  thorold | May 1, 2020 |
Showing 1-5 of 9 (next | show all)
So light is the touch of the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg in these 11 essays, written between 1944 and 1960 and translated by Dick Davis, that they might float through the reader’s mind unimpeded, if it weren’t for the ballast hidden within.
added by Nevov | editThe Guardian, John Self (Apr 25, 2018)
 

» Add other authors (2 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Natalia Ginzburgprimary authorall editionscalculated
Cusk, RachelIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Davis, DickTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Giovanna MezzogiornoLettoresecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Salem, AdrianaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Deus nobis haec otia fecit
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There are only two seasons in the Abruzzi: summer and winter.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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"As far as the education of children is concerned," states Natalia Ginzburg in this collection of her finest and best-known short essays, "I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but a love of one's neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know." Whether she writes of the loss of a friend, Cesare Pavese; or what is inexpugnable of World War II; or the Abruzzi, where she and her first husband lived in forced residence under Fascist ru≤ or the importance of silence in our society; or her vocation as a writer; or even a pair of worn-out shoes, Ginzburg brings to her reflections the wisdom of a survivor and the spare, wry, and poetically resonant style her readers have come to recognize.  "A glowing light of modern Italian literature . . . Ginzburg's magic is the utter simplicity of her prose, suddenly illuminated by one word that makes a lightning streak of a plain phrase. . . . As direct and clean as if it were carved in stone, it yet speaks thoughts of the heart." --The New York Times Book Review

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