Cesare Pavese: The Laboratory of Loneliness - A study of Among Women Only.

Abstract

The Italian poet, novelist, translator, editor and diarist Cesare Pavese (1908-1950) famously committed suicide after winning the coveted Strega prize for his 1949 trilogy of novels La bella estate (The Beautiful Summer). This article discusses one of the novels in that trilogy, Among Women Only (Tra donne sole), presenting it as a psychological "laboratory" in which the intensely private Pavese explores the rationale for suicide on the very public stage of the novel. The author argues that the writing of Tra donne sole was one of the self-willed steps that made it not just possible for Pavese to commit suicide, but impossible not to.