Natalia Ginzburg: confinement as war and writing experience.

Abstract

In the post-war panorama, a name stands out in the Italian literature scenario: Natalia Ginzburg. Born in Turin, among antifascists, she experienced its opposition from the beginning. When the war broke out in 1939, she had just started her writing career. During three years of confinement in Abruzzo, Natalia wrote and published, under a pseudonym, her first novel.  She wrote several essays about this war and writing experience – Inverno in Abruzzo (1944), Il figlio dell’uomo (1946), Il mio mestiere (1949) – and letters, some of which were directed to a childhood friend (at that time a refugee in Switzerland). In these letters the author expresses her loneliness, yearning, and strange feeling of confinement, besides sharing with her friend doubts and reflections upon her work. The similarities and differences between the essays and these letters are the subject of our analysis.