Nineteenth-Century Jewish Italian Writers and the Dreyfus Affair

• In Event: Jewish Italian Literary Continuities and Contiguities

Abstract

Primo Levi and Giorgio Bassani are recognized nationally and internationally as two of the most eloquent Jewish voices of the Italian modern literary tradition, and their literary portrayals of Jewish life and of the tragic experience of the Shoah have undoubtedly marked the beginning of a new era in the representation of Jewish Italians. If we look, however, at Jewish Italian writers before WWII, we know very little. And yet, the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century saw the presence of several prominent Italian Jews who contributed to the burgeoning cultural life and industry of post-unification Italy. These men and women published with Italy’s main journals, newspapers, and publishing houses, and were engaged in national debates over Italy’s cultural, educational, and political transformation. They tended to be secularized and to identify primarily as Italians, and like many Jews of their time, they kept their Jewishness a private matter. The Dreyfus affair (1894-1906) suddenly changed what in hindsight, with the Racial Laws, proved to be a false sense of security Jewish Italians felt within the Italian society. In the aftermath of a case that had shaken the Jewish communities all over Europe, Jewish Italian authors for the first time introduced Jewish topics and characters in their fiction. Alberto Cantoni’s ISRAELE ITALIANO (1904) and Enrico Castelnuovo’s I MONCALVO (1908), for instance, present questions such as Jewish integration, mixed marriages and secularization, thematically discussed within the context of a pluralist Italian society. With my paper, I seek to discuss the role these two writers played in providing a literary narrative that may be considered an antecedent to Levi’s and Bassani’s later narration of an Italian Jewish experience.

Author

• Gabriella Romani, Seton Hall University