The Modern Novel

Biography

Carlo Emilio Gadda was born in 1893 in Milan. He was the eldest of three children, and was particularly close to his young brother, who was killed in World War I. He went to university, initially studying literature but then, after his father’s death, switching to engineering. When Italy entered World War I, Gadda signed up. He was later captured by the Germans and was a prisoner of war. The journal he kept of his wartime experiences, not published till 1955, was one of his earliest literary works. After returning to Italy, he completed his engineering studies, graduating from the University of Milan in 1920. He started work as engineer and joined the Fascist Party. He also joined the Fascist Party in Argentina when he worked there in 1923. On returning to Italy, he worked on a novel which was only published in 1983 in fragmented form. He returned to the University of Milan to study philosophy but never completed his thesis.

While continuing to work as an engineer, he started to publish short stories, including in one of the leading Italian literary magazines, Solaria. He also wrote essays and worked on novels, though did not publish a novel till 1938, after the death of his mother. In 1940, he abandoned his career as an engineer and became a full-time writer, living in Florence. In 1950 he moved to Rome, where he worked for Italian radio. During the 1940s, he was working on his great novel, Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana (That Awful Mess on Via Merulana), which was published in serial form in 1946 and then rewritten for book publication in 1957. This was his last major narrative work, though he did later publish Eros e Priapo, a savage attack on Mussolini. He died in 1973. Though not particularly well-known outside Italy, Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana (That Awful Mess on Via Merulana) is considered by many Italians to be the great Italian modernist work, with language games, confusion and a detective story which has an open-ended conclusion.

Links

Carlo Emilio Gadda
The Edinburgh Journal of Gadda Studies
Carlo Emilio Gadda (in Italian)
Carlo Emilio Gadda (in Italian)
Carlo Emilio Gadda (in Italian)
Carlo Emilio Gadda 1893-1973 (in Italian)
Archivio Elettronico delle Opere di Carlo Emilio Gadda (in Italian)