Soon after, Livia convinced him to convert to Catholicism, and take part in a religious wedding (probably after a troublesome pregnancy).

įollowing the death of his parents, Svevo married his cousin Livia Veneziani in a civil ceremony in 1896. Svevo adhered to a humanistic and democratic socialism, which predisposed him to pacifism, and to advocate for the creation of a European economic union after the war. ĭuring his time at the bank, Svevo contributed to Italian-language socialist publication L'Indipendente ( it), and began writing plays (which he rarely finished) before beginning work on Una vita in 1887. This 20-year period as a bank clerk at the Unionbank of Vienna served as inspiration for his first novel, Una Vita (1892). Īfter returning to Trieste in 1880, Svevo continued his studies for a further two years at Istituto Revoltella, before being forced to take financial responsibility when his father filed for bankruptcy, after his once successful glassware business failed. Due to his germanophone ancestry by his father, he and his brothers were sent to a boarding school near Würzburg, in the German Empire, where he learnt and became fluent in German. He spoke Italian as a second language, as he usually spoke the Triestine dialect.

Svevo was a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of the First World War. Early life īorn in Trieste (at the time in the Austrian Empire, then in Austria-Hungary since 1867) as Aron Ettore Schmitz to a Jewish German father and an Italian mother, Svevo was one of seven children, and grew up enjoying a passion for literature from a young age, reading works of Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare, and the classics of French and Russian literature.

He was also the cousin of the Italian academic Steno Tedeschi. Ī close friend of Irish novelist and poet James Joyce, Svevo was considered a pioneer of the psychological novel in Italy and is best known for his modernist novel La coscienza di Zeno (1923), which became a widely appreciated classic of Italian literature.

Novelist, short story writer, playwright, businessmanĪron Hector Schmitz (19 December 1861 – 13 September 1928), better known by the pseudonym Italo Svevo ( Italian: ), was an Italian and Austro-Hungarian writer, businessman, novelist, playwright, and short story writer.

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