On Cesare Pavese and his Dialoghi con Leucò

Abstract

Dialoghi con Leucò, considered by Pavese himself as his «letter of introduction to posterity» and misunderstood and scorned by the critics of his time, will be the object here of a study that underscores its significance and validity today. First of all, the article gives us an interesting analysis of Pavese’s conception of myth as a symbolic and autonomous expressive element, clearly linking the writer to tendencies in 18th-century German idealism. The intimate relationship between myth and literature offers us a point of departure for approaching the work from formal, as well as content-related and ideological, perspectives. The choice of a dialogic structure allows the writer both to enter a specific literary tradition that carries an inevitable echo of Leopardi’s melancholic irony and to approach myth from a subjective and immensely original perspective. Finally, an analysis of the work’s enigmatic title and a description of the myth of Leucothea are fundamental for interpreting a work that views myth as a vehicle for expressing the longings and emotions of both humanity in general and Pavese himself.