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Svevo's heroes all seem to be tormented by an intense lust for self-improvement, spiritual or social, for education, wisdom or learning to better them or their positions; however old, they still think themselves unprepared for the serious business of living. [...]

Here he rises from his meditations and goes to his window; his high room is too close to him, he would like to see stars, if that is possible. He has no delusions about himself. He knows that this emotion fills him because among the young girls of his neighborhood there is one who matters to him. H…

As he thinks this, the recluse in his night, thinks it and understands, he notices a plate with fruit on the window-seat. Involuntarily he takes an apple from it and lays it before him on the table. How my life stands round about this fruit, he thinks. Around all that is finished that which has sti…

[...] You felt how your heart intensified unceasingly toward an immense reality and, frightened, you tried once more to take people's gaze off you like long gossamer threads --: but now, in their fear of the worst, they were already breaking into applause: as though at the last moment to ward off s…

Nothing whatever had been agreed upon between us, but when the carriage turned into the park I could not refrain from getting out, perhaps simply because I did not want to drive up to the house like any stranger. Summer was already at its height. I headed into one of the side paths and toward a lab…