Veneziani Tomb (Italo Svevo)
In the short fragment entitled Death, the elderly lead character of the autobiography confesses to his wife that he always thought about the end, even when in the most perfect health: “Perhaps I even drew my smile from it”.
For Svevo, death represents a horizon of meaning, the only one in an existence that would otherwise be so devoid of it that, like the Buon Vecchio – “Good Old Man” in another of his novellas, 'one would be tempted to use the brief present to pull out the few hairs that remained on one's deformed head'.
Riccardo Cepach
Artist: unknown
Date: 1895 post
Location: Section II, wall, Class III, no. 1517
Bibliography: I cimiteri di Trieste 2006, pp. 24-25; BELLOCCHI 2023, pp. 24, 49.
