Humanities Review

Solitude and Capri: The Italian Reception of Gustaw Herling-Grudziński’s Short Story Pietà dell’Isola in Two Guises

2025, 69, No. 1

Magdalena Śniedziewska

0000-0002-7390-5340

University of Wrocław, Institute of Polish Philology

DOI

10.31338/2657-599X.ph.2025-1.7

Publication date

08.06.2025

Publishing model

open access

License type

CC BY 4.0 Int.

Field

Humanities

Discipline

arts studies, philosophy, literary studies, archeology, culture and religion studies, history, linguistics

Language of publication

Polish

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Abstract

In this article, I argue that 'Pietà dell’Isola' is, in a sense, a “variation” of 'Ciemny Staw' ['The Dark Pond'], the main theme of which was loneliness. I examine the Italian reception of 'Pietà dell’Isola' (or 'L’isola'), which was published in Italian three times in two translations – the first by Pierfrancesco Poli (1960), the second by Donatella Tozzetti (1994, 2019). I decided to limit my considerations of its Italian reception to the first two editions. The 1960 edition was accompanied by reviews written by important and respected writers and literary critics: Cristina Campo, Elémire Zolla, Roberto Calasso, and J. Rodolfo Wilcock. Their texts are so insightful and extensive that they can be treated as an important contribution to the research on the poetics of 'L’isola'. We see a significant difference between reviews written in the 1960s and those published in the 1990s due to the completely different context of the history of literature.

Keywords:

Gustaw Herling-Grudziński,Capri,Pietà dell’Isola,Italian reception,solitude

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