Carlo Levi

Graziadio Carlo Levi ( born November 29, 1902 in Turin, † January 4, 1975 in Rome ) was an Italian writer, painter and politician.

• 3.1 Books by Carlo Levi in German
• 3.2 Books about Carlo Levi

Life

Carlo Levi came from an upper middle-class assimilated Jewish family; his parents were Ercole Levi and Annetta Treves. In 1917, he enrolled to study medicine at the University of Turin, which he completed in 1924. Although he worked from 1924 to 1928 as a junior doctor at a hospital in Turin, but never practiced as a regular doctor because he was more interested in politics and painting. He was a member of the group led by Piero Gobetti Rivoluzione liberal ( " Liberal Revolution"), spent some time in Paris and in 1929 at the exhibition Be pittori di Torino ( " Turin Six Painters " ) part.

Because he had founded together with Carlo and Nello Rosselli 1929, the anti-fascist group Giustizia e Libertà ( "Justice and Freedom" ) and she directed along with Leone Ginzburg, Levi was imprisoned by the Fascist government in the spring of 1934 for two months in Rome in May 1935 in the southern Italian region of Lucania ( Lucania, Basilicata today ) banished. There he spent some time in the town Grassano, the time from September 1935 to May 1936 in the village of Aliano, where he practiced for the misery of the inhabitants free of charge and with little means as a doctor, to the provincial government under his said this too and treatments only were still secretly possible. Besides, he painted people and landscape, exploring the customs of the inhabitants, especially magic and superstition.

After he was released early in 1936 by a general amnesty, which had proclaimed celebrating the capture of Addis Ababa, the fascist State, Levi went into exile and took over from Paris, the management of the group Giustizia e Libertà. In 1941 he returned to Italy, was arrested and imprisoned in Florence. After Mussolini's imprisonment, he was released, sought refuge in the Palazzo Pitti and wrote there 1943/1944 his book Cristo si è fermato a Eboli ( published in 1945, see below), in which he recorded his memories of the time in Aliano, where he for Aliano the easily encrypted name Gagliano chose.

After the end of World War II Levi moved to Rome and worked for a time as editor of the magazine Italia libera, the Partito d' Azione belonged to ( "party of action "). He continued painting ( his paintings were exhibited in various countries in Europe and even in the U.S.) and wrote other books ( see below). In 1963 he was elected as a candidate of the Communist Party in the Senate, whose member he remained until 1972.

Carlo Levi died in 1975 in a Roman hospital of pneumonia. According to its express testamentary wish he was buried in the cemetery of Aliano, which there was one of his favorite whereabouts during his exile.

Work

" Christ Stopped at Eboli "

World famous Levi was to be translated into 37 languages ​​book Cristo si è fermato a Eboli ( " Christ stopped at Eboli ", 1945), the film based on Francesco Rosi in 1973 with Gian Maria Volonte in the lead role. Although it is often called a novel because of its literary form, it is his, between December 1943 and July 1944 written down memories of exile to Aliano ( 1935/1936 ), the Levi reasons of discretion in ' Gagliano ' rechristened as it also distracted by deliberate misstatement of the compass on the exact location of the village. Nevertheless, the identity of the place was just as quickly unmasked as the book became famous.

The work's title alludes to a saying of the inhabitants Alianos that is to describe the remote state of Lucania, according to Levi's introduction, for which neither the central government in Rome ever the modern world 've ever interested. Levi puts the phrase literally and symbolically above from beyond and describes Aliano as a place in which the inhabitants live without awareness of politics, history, cause and effect in a resignation lifted out of time; not even Christianity present here is more than a superstition among many others.

Levi reserved, essayistic form from the misery of the peasants to the ridiculous figure of the fascist mayor Accordingly, describes life in Aliano. Its particular strengths are memorable portraits and landscapes, just like Levis painting (see below). In addition, other sections were famous, especially the description of the disastrous living conditions of residents in the provincial capital of Matera.

While the inhabitants Alianos and its region initially not to have been impressed by Levis open description of their misery, the book today. Aliano in school curriculum The place has been proclaimed since the nineties of the Park Letterario Carlo Levi ( " Literary Park Carlo Levi ").

More Books

Significantly less success had Levis more books that therefore mostly not available in German translation.

More travel books are Le parole sono pietre ( " The words are stones ", 1955 ), in which Levi of three trips reported by Sicily, Il futuro ha un cuore antico ( "The future has an ancient heart ", 1956) on a journey through the Soviet Union and La notte dei doppia tigli (1959 ) with the critical balance of a journey through Germany. In Un volto che ci somiglia (1960 ) describes Levi Italy. In 1965 he published his very personal portrait of Sardinia held based on two trips in the German translation Aller honey comes to an end.

Carlo Levi's most important works are also Paura della libertà (1946, " fear of freedom " ) and the novel L' orologio, 1950 (Eng. " The Clock ", 2005) about the Italian party politics immediately after the war, the rights of leftists like was taken negatively. Of great importance are also written in the book blindness Quaderno a cancelli (1979 ) as well as the drawings of blindness: Carlo Levi inedito: con 40 disegni della CECITA, ed. Donato Sperduto ( Spes, Milazzo 2002).

Painting

Carlo Levi sat down deliberately against abstract art; he was looking for a new kind of realism that should be " true", ie neither l' art pour l'art nor purely descriptive. During his exile in Southern Italy Levi discovered (analogous to his breakthrough in literary ) and in painting his own style as a realization of this ideal: in Aliano, he began to paint primarily portraits of peasants and ' unadorned ' landscapes, which henceforth dominated his work. Although Levi can hardly be counted among the senior artists of the 20th century, his particular realism has taken an undeniable originality: He is as stubborn as Carlo Levi was said to be as a person and as his literary work it is. Also of importance are his paintings and drawings of Blindness (1973).