Il dono di Humboldt

by Saul Bellow, Pier Francesco Paolini (Translator)

Overview

Pubblicato nel 1975, un anno prima che Bellow ricevesse il Nobel per la Letteratura, Il dono di Humboldt venne premiato con il Pulitzer ed è rimasto uno dei suoi libri più amati: una parabola umoristica scandita con leggerezza voltairiana, che l'autore stesso definiva "un romanzo comico sulla morte". In queste pagine Bellow traccia un duplice ritratto di artista nordamericano, il maledetto e l'integrato. Il protagonista e narratore è Charlie Citrine, commediografo di successo ossessionato dal ricordo di von Humboldt Fleisher (ispirato alla figura di Delmore Schwartz), un poeta depresso che lo aveva aiutato quando non era ancora famoso, e si mette sulle tracce della sua preziosa eredità, il soggetto per una nuova commedia. Ridotto infine in miseria e abbandonato da tutti, accetterà di sfruttare economicamente l'idea solo per pagare una nuova sepoltura al poeta matto, come ultimo gesto di una vera e propria devozione capace di riscattare l'inerzia e il fallimento esistenziale di una vita.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788852049705
Publisher:	MONDADORI
Publication date:	05/17/2014
Sold by:	ARNOLDO MONDADORI - EBKS
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB
Language:	Italian

About the Author

Praised for his vision, his ear for detail, his humor, and the masterful artistry of his prose, Saul Bellow was born of Russian Jewish parents in Lachine, Quebec in 1915, and was raised in Chicago. He received his Bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1937, with honors in sociology and anthropology, and did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin. During the Second World War he served in the Merchant Marines.

His first two novels, Dangling Man (1944) and The Victim (1947) are penetrating, Kafka-like psychological studies. In 1948 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and spent two years in Paris and traveling in Europe, where he began his picaresque novel The Adventures of Augie March, which went on to win the National Book Award for fiction in 1954. His later books of fiction include Seize the Day (1956); Henderson the Rain King (1959); Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories (1968); Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970); Humboldt's Gift (1975), which won the Pulitzer Prize; The Dean's December (1982); More Die of Heartbreak (1987);Theft (1988); The Bellarosa Connection (1989); The Actual (1996); and, most recently, Ravelstein (2000). Bellow has also produced a prolific amount of non-fiction, collected in To Jerusalem and Back, a personal and literary record of his sojourn in Israel during several months in 1975, and It All Adds Up, a collection of memoirs and essays.

Bellow's many awards included the International Literary Prize for Herzog, for which he became the first American to receive the prize; the Croix de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, the highest literary distinction awarded by France to non-citizens; the B'nai B'rith Jewish Heritage Award for "excellence in Jewish Literature"; and America's Democratic Legacy Award of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the first time this award has been made to a literary personage. In 1976 Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work."

Bellow passed away on April 5, 2005 at the age of 89.

Author biography courtesy of Penguin Group (USA).

Date of Birth:

June 10, 1915

Date of Death:

April 5, 2005

Place of Birth:

Lachine, Quebec, Canada

Place of Death:

Brookline, Massachusetts

Education:

University of Chicago, 1933-35; B.S., Northwestern University, 1937