Pavese: The Business of Living

"The thing most feared in secret always happens.

I write: oh Thou, have mercy. And then?

All it takes is a little courage.
The more the pain grows clear and definite, the more the instinct for life asserts itself and the thought of suicide recedes.

It seemed easy when I thought of it. Weak women have done it. It takes humility, not pride.

All this is sickening.
Not words. An act. I won't write any more."

Cesare Pavese - The Business of Living (August 17, 1950)

In a previous post we spoke about first lines. How about last lines?

These last lines of Pavese's diaries The Business of Living ("business" in the sense of a job or task for which skill and learning is needed) are among the most shocking of all literature. Mainly if we consider what came immediately afterwards, if we consider that this is literature and also unbearable reality. These desperate lines impregnate the full text (all the pages of the diary) with a sense of honesty. The book is and appears before us the way it does because of the combination between the painful ending (Not words. An act. I won't write any more) and this final act that followed it.

In other words, The Business of living is made of a number of pages written throughout 1935-1950 and the final act that rubricated it, without which the book would be another. Less poignant or devastating.

Pavese failed in the"business of living". But his diary is the deepest and most potent dissection of that failure. And of course, many will find in it teachings most valuable for life and its trades.

The Business of Living: Diaries 1935-50 (Amazon)