Cesare Pavese: Man

“There is no finer revenge than that which others inflict on your enemy. Moreover, it has the advantage of leaving you the role of a generous man.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Revenge

“But I have seen the unknown dead, those little men of the Republic. It was they who woke me up. If a stranger, an enemy, becomes a thing like that when he dies, if one stops short and is afraid to walk over him, it means that even beaten our enemy is someone, that after having shed his blood, one must placate it, give this blood a voice, justify the man who shed it. Looking at certain dead is humiliating. One has the impression that the same fate that threw these bodies to the ground holds us nailed to the spot to see them, to fill our eyes with the sight. It's not fear, not our usual cowardice. One feels humiliated because one understands–touching it with one's eyes–that we might be in their place ourselves: there would be no difference, and if we live we owe it to this dirtied corpse. That is why every war is a civil war; every fallen man resembles one who remains and calls him to account.”

Cesare Pavese

Source: The house on the hill (1949), Chapter 23, p. 176

Men , Fate , War , Fear

“You cannot insult a man more atrociously than by refusing to believe he is suffering.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Suffering

“Men who have a tempestuous inner life and do not seek to give vent to it by talking or writing are simply men who have no tempestuous inner life.
Give company to a lonely man and he will talk more than anyone.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Life , Men

“Are you or aren't you convinced that weakness is a man's condition? How can you raise yourself if you haven't fallen first?”

Cesare Pavese

Source: The devil in the hills (1949), Chapter 5, p. 306

“A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

“When a woman marries she belongs to another man; and when she belongs to another man there is nothing more you can say to her.”

Cesare Pavese

The winter of '41-'42
This Business of Living (1935-1950)

“The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Fools

“Why does a man who is truly in love insist that this relationship must continue and be "lifelong"? Because life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic. Who would want to wake up halfway through an operation?”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Love , Life , Pain

“It wasn't a country where a man could settle down and rest his head and say to the others, "Here I am for good or ill. For good or ill let me leave in peace."”

Cesare Pavese

This was what was frightening.
Source: The moon and the bonfire (1950), Chapter III, p. 22

Peace , Country

“In general, the man who is readily disposed to sacrifice himself is one who does not know how else to give meaning to his life.
The profession of enthusiasm is the most sickening of all insincerities.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Life

“No matter how much a young man likes to think for himself, he is always trying to model himself on some abstract pattern largely derived from the example of the world around him. And a man, no matter how conservative, shows his own worth by his personal deviation from that pattern.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

World , Thinking , Personality

“Misfortunes cannot suffice to make a fool into an intelligent man.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Fools , Intelligence

“In fact a man in love or one consumed with hatred creates symbols for himself, as a superstitious man does, from a passion of conferring uniqueness on things or persons. A man who knows nothing of symbols is one of Dante's sluggards. This is why art mirrors itself in primitive rites or strong passions, seeking for symbols, revolving round the primitive taste for savagery, for what is irrational”

Cesare Pavese

blood and sex
This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Love , Art , Sex , Strong

“This much is certain: you can have anything in life except a wife to call you "her man." And till now all your life was based on that hope.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Life , Hope

“When a man mourns for someone who has played him false, it is not for love of her, but for his own humiliation at not having deserved her trust.”

Cesare Pavese

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Love , Falseness