Bassani

Giorgio Bassani (1916-2000) - pronounced JOR-jyo ba-SAH-ni, IPA: /'dʒɔrdʒo ba'sɑːni/ - was an Italian writer, best known for his novel Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, 1962), which was made into a film of the same title in 1971 by the Italian director Vittorio de Sica.

Life

Bassani came from a well-to-do Jewish family - his father was a doctor - and spent his childhood and teenage years with his family in the north Italian city of Ferrara. In 1935 he became a student at the University of Bologna, though continuing to live at home in Ferrara and commuting to Bologna by train. By the time he graduated in 1939 his opportunities for employment were limited - the anti-semitic legislation introduced by Mussolini in 1938 prohibited Jews from working in many areas - and Bassani took up a teaching post in the Jewish School in Ferrara. At the same time he became active in the anti-fascist resistance movement. In 1943 he was arrested and spent two months in prison, only being released after the Allied invasion of Italy in the summer of that year led to Mussolini's fall from power. On his release he lived briefly in Florence and then moved to Rome, where he remained for the rest of his life.

In addition to his novels Bassani published several volumes of poetry and also worked as an editorial director at the distinguished Italian publishing firm of Feltrinelli. In this capacity he was instrumental in securing the publication of another famous Italian novel, Il gattopardo (The Leopard, 1958) by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.

On his death Bassani was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Ferrara, the city in which he grew up and in which all his novels are set.

Il romanzo di Ferrara

Between 1958 and 1972 Bassani published six novels which collectively form Il romanzo di Ferrara (The Ferrara Novel). They were Gli occhiali d'oro (The Gold Spectacles, 1958), Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, 1962), Dietro la porta (Behind the door, 1964), L'airone (The Heron, 1968), L'odore del fieno (The Smell of Hay, 1972), and Dentro le mura (Within the Walls, 1973). Of these novels, all of which are set in the Jewish community in Ferrara during the period of fascist rule, the longest and most complex, as well as the best known, is Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini.

Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini

Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini opens with a visit which the narrator, Giorgio, makes in 1957 to the ancient Etruscan tombs at Cerveteri. The imagined timeless security of those who would have been buried there leads Giorgio to reflect on the imposing family tomb of the Finzi-Continis in the Jewish Cemetery at Ferrara and to recollect his childhood in Ferrara and the vicissitudes of his relationship with the Finzi-Continis. These recollections, which form the body of the novel, focus on two periods in his life.

As a child, Giorgio regards the Finzi-Continis as a remote, rather mysterious family. The two children, Alberto and Micòl, Giorgio's contemporaries, are educated privately and do not attend the Jewish School along with the other Jewish children. Giorgio does, however, have one significant meeting with Micòl when, after failing an end-of-year maths exam and fearful of his father's anger, he goes for a long bicycle ride through Ferrara and ends up outside the walls of the Finzi-Continis' vast garden. Micòl, who happens to be looking over the wall, invites him in, but Giorgio is anxious about leaving his bicycle outside and in the end does not accept the invitation.

The latter, and longer, part of the novel is concerned with events in the summer of 1939, when Giorgio and Alberto, now friends, are students in Bologna and Micòl is a student in Venice. The anti-semitic legislation introduced by Mussolini the previous year has restricted their social life and, in particular, has prevented them from continuing to play tennis at the club in Ferrara where they were formerly members. Giorgio, along with other young people in the Jewish community, is invited to come and play tennis during the summer on the court in the Finzi-Contini's garden. Giorgio is increasingly attracted to Micòl, but her attitude to him is ambiguous and their relationship ends unsatisfactorily. After this Giorgio has no further contact with the family.

In the final pages of the novel Giorgio recalls the subsequent history of the Finzi-Continis. Alberto died of cancer in 1942 after a long and painful illness and is buried in the family tomb in Ferrara, but where the other members of the family, including Micòl, are buried is not known: at the end of 1943 they were deported to Germany and died in a German concentration camp.