Although having written plays, short stories, essays and articles, Italo Svevo (1861-1928) is usually known for his novels and, primarily, for La Coscienza di Zeno, from 1923. Una Vita, from 1892, and Senilità, 1898, remained fairly unknown or underestimated until the second half of the 1920’s and, from then on, have kept their second-rate status notwithstanding Eugenio Montale and James Joyce, notably, having lavishly praised them, especially Senilità. Montale thought these last two of Svevo’s novels formed a harmonious set, considering the type of concerns they represented and how they did so. And, as a matter of fact, Svevo said that their two characters were a kind of brothers by affinity; both neurotic, unstable and unprepared for life, in a way which Zeno particularly exceeds. According to Svevo, Zeno Cosini is a collector of failed projects, a specialist in hoarding stories of defeat and attempts at change; and “the novel is the story of their lives and healings.”[1]
It is true that La Coscienza represents and problematizes a set of subjects already touched upon in the first novels. The main difference, and source of its originality, is the way in which it takes these matters philosophically, giving expression to the speech of a patient in psychoanalytic therapy. Most critics understood this, but, in time, they went on to give more relevance to psychoanalysis than to philosophy; they wobbled between diagnosing the main character and defending that Svevo created a parody of psychoanalysis without realizing, in either case, the kind of problem the novel poses. Following Montale’s idea, and considering that Svevo continuously described certain types of moral difficulties, one should question if the novel is making such an elementary and simple use of Freud’s theory. Moreover, Svevo was well familiar with the theory, whether by study or by contact with psychoanalysts and patients, and his view was always complex. On the one hand, he nourished a profound admiration for Freud, on the other, he suspected therapy was almost always prolonged, expensive and fallible. He said psychoanalysis was a discovery for him, but he also said Freud was better for writers than for patients, in a way that illustrates and makes clear his last protagonist’s behavior.
Zeno struggles with his inability to recognize himself in his actions. His actions always seem the result of a movement that surpasses and ignores him, in the sense that it frustrates his best intentions. In one of his many attempts to understand this systematic disparity, he starts his therapy and, on the psychoanalyst’s advice, writes his autobiography. The novel has the shape of that autobiography, with the chapters Zeno gave to it and with a foreword by the psychoanalyst. In this way, Doctor S. signs a page in which he assumes publishing the memoirs of his patient as a revenge for him having abandoned therapy:
I am publishing them in revenge, and I hope he is displeased. I want him to know, however, that I am prepared to share with him the lavish profits I expect to make from this publication, on condition that he resume his treatment. He seemed so curious about himself! Ifhe only knew the countless surprises he might enjoy from discussing the many truths and the many lies he has assembled here! …[2]
From a narrative point of view, the reader has access to two contradictory manuscripts, both presented in the first person, without the mediation of an external figure who watches over and assesses each one’s degree of reliability. Doctor S. proudly gets his revenge after prescribing an unsuited therapeutic exercise, having in mind that Freud considers homework, regardless of its kind, diminishes the ability for free association of thoughts. And Zeno performs a self-analysis in the light of certain psychoanalytic categories whose range he cannot fully understand or apply, since he gives up therapy and his good relationship with the psychoanalyst. He starts by telling the story of his addiction to smoking, then goes on to tell of his father’s death and finally moves on to his engagement and marriage, always stressing his life was defined by the inability to fulfill goals. This movement follows the conviction that his struggle to stop smoking exemplifies the main symptom of an illness which got worse with the disappearance of the paternal figure and of the rivalry which stemmed from it. In his marriage and in the relationship with his wife, Zeno sees several instances of such illness, such as marrying the sister of the woman he loved or never becoming the kind of working man able to provide for his family. Each chapter describes a specific defeat in relation to a strong purpose, in the context of a perspective which sways between blaming destiny, the apology of self-blindness, and the description of character flaws. In any case, the speech is always marked by a positiveness which becomes comical, since Zeno gathers moral theories to explain his defeats and justify the setting of new goals. The goals rapidly follow one another, unfulfilled, but his point of view keeps seeing a stronger and healthier future. On the one hand, he tackles the past ironically, on the other, he repeats it, and the comedy comes precisely from this constant movement of recognition and repetition which seems to account for a deficiency in his reasoning.
The humor underlines the apparent irrationality in the need of setting goals, but it also accounts for the existence of a certain measure of self-knowledge, since, strictly speaking, Zeno is not fooling himself as a liar who believes the lies he tells. What he has is an extraordinary talent to tell stories and to exonerate himself in a creative manner, as shown by the fact that other characters seldom take what he says seriously. Zeno cannot logically explain his struggles and, as so, he acts as if they could be solved by way of a stronger personal effort or by a twist of fate. He speaks of himself with irony, but cannot conceive a way of acting and thinking which excludes a certain strength of will and hope for chance to go his way. His clumsiness for a set of activities recommends it; the problem is that it rarely works. And his behavior becomes predictable in a way which ridicules and complexifies him at the same time for, if we do not take him as a charlatan or as someone fooling himself, we get the caricature image of what Aristotle called akrasia and Freud called resistance. We get the image of someone who cannot make use of the knowledge he has or of someone who resists the idea that such knowledge is helping him in any way.
In Book VII of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle describes akrasia as a problem consisting of compulsively contradicting one’s own actions or convictions on the best way to act. The case is always the one in which someone yields to the strength of certain desires, forgetting his best intentions, as a drunk or a sleepwalker entering a temporary state of ignorance. In several essays, mainly in “Paradoxes of Irrationality,” Donald Davidson revaluates that image underlying the internal conflict which arises from doing something knowing one should be doing something else. This argument implies the person feels the action of an irresistible urge and struggles trying to oppose and understand it; it implies that the agent does not lose the conscience of what he should be doing. Generally speaking, Aristotle and Davidson convene in defending that the phenomenon is due to the existence of uncontrollable desires. The virtue of the Aristotelian description is its accounting for the point of view of someone like Zeno and explaining that the undesirable repetition of certain actions is connected to the repetition of certain thoughts. Zeno continually picks failed strategies, makes arrangements similar to those he already disregarded, because he sees himself as a victim of a random chance which he thinks he should be able to foresee and prevent. His conviction that he is struggling with an external enemy makes him apply a sturdy willpower, even if his story comes to a collection of defeats and his solutions seem worn-out. In his worst moments, he satisfies himself with the opportunity of asking for truces and for alleviated symptoms. That being so, he tries to submit himself to the goals of other people or to circumscribed middle-ground plans; he marries a prudent and patient woman; he complies with the schedules and desires she imposes on him, follows the prescriptions of many doctors from different specialties, and accumulates drawers filled with medicine. Up until the moment he becomes an adulterous and ends up in a veterinarian’s hands, he puts his hopes in what he calls, speaking specifically of diabetes, life programs in all their stages:
Real sickness was so simple: you just let it have its way. In fact, when I read in a medical volume the description of my sweet sickness, I discovered a kind of program of life (not death!) in its various stages. Farewell, resolutions: at last I was free. Everything would take its course without any intervention on my part.
I also discovered that my sickness was always, or almost always, very sweet. The sick person eats and drinks a great deal, and there are no great sufferings if you are careful to avoid ulcers. Then you die in a very sweet coma. (p. 416)
The notion that the disease can be vanquished by enforcing a program of life is touched upon more or less seriously along the novel, according to the need of defending psychoanalysis has no effectiveness. This need becomes central in the last chapter, when Zeno takes on his last years to assert he has healed by himself, after abandoning therapy, and that he has benefited from the arrival of First World War to Trieste. He says the war gave him a chance to become the ideal business man, the one who buys everything without hesitation (“Like all strong people, I had in my head a sole idea, and by that I lived and it made my fortune”[3]). This attitude repeats former episodes in a way which predicts a future disappointment. Zeno experiences the war the same way he experienced his engagement or the time he suspected he had diabetes, nourishing the idea that such circumstances freed him from having to make decisions and instituted an order in a liberating way. The war ends the cycle of failed goals because it reduces life to a set of limited actions, in the same way the engagement is centered on the fiancée and the father-in-law’s decisions or the diabetes offers a program of life. By contrast, psychoanalysis is a form of spiritualism, an expensive long road through uncertain stops. This is Zeno’s perspective (for better or worse according to the psychoanalyst who would like to get back to therapy, but certainly would not mind sharing on the book’s profits):
Paoli analyzed my urine in my presence. The mixture turned black, and Paoli became thoughtful. Here, finally, was a real analysis and not a psychoanalysis. I remembered with affection and emotion my remote past as a chemist and some real analyses: me, a test tube, and a reagent! The other, the analyzed, sleeps until the reagent imperiously wakens him. Resistance in the test tube doesn’t exist or else it succumbs to the slightest increase of temperature, and simulation is also completely absent. In that test tube, nothing happens that could recall my behavior when, to please Dr. S., I invented new details of my childhood, which then confirmed the diagnosis of Sophocles. Here, on the contrary, all was truth. The thing to be analyzed was imprisoned in the tube and, remaining always itself, it awaited the reagent. When it arrived, the thing always said the same word. In psychoanalysis there is never repetition, neither of the same images nor of the same words. It should be called something else. Let’s call it psychic adventure. That’s right: when you begin such an analysis, it's as if you were going into a wood, not knowing whether you will encounter an outlaw or a friend. And even when the adventure is over, you still don't know. In this, psychoanalysis recalls spiritualism. (p. 415-6)
According to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, such as seen in works as “Resistance to Psychoanalysis” (1925) or “Analysis Terminable and Interminable” (1937, the success of the therapy depends on emotional transference based on trust. The patient ought to speak openly about what happens to him, without censuring the expressing of emotions and, by doing so, he relives and reflects on what seemed forgotten or at least unimportant. This exercise always implies a certain degree of difficulty, unpleasantness, or rejection which the psychoanalyst must identify as a form of unconscious resistance. Such resistance is activated when the conversation and life circumstances conjure up the themes and memories related with trauma and which obviously entail negative emotions. The evolution of therapy, the change of behavior in real life, and, on the long run, the healing follow from the quality of the transference and from the patient’s ability to manage and overcome the resistances; therapy’s time is resistances’ time and such time is mostly defined by a relationship of trust and admiration with the psychoanalyst. Once this dynamic is broken, psychoanalysis might fail and the patient might give up. Freud would say that that is Zeno’s case but what is most relevant is that La Coscienza shows the connection between Aristotle and Freud and, specifically, between akrasia and resistance. Freud describes the disease and the healing as forms of akrasia, and he advocates that the difficulty in healing stems from the patient assuming a movement of repetition towards therapy and psychoanalyst. His argument about the existence of the unconscious allows for the notion that the agent has a position of blindness and victimization towards what he thinks and does, above all when it is related to therapy. Freud explains why Zeno can only be Aristotelian and why, in that condition, he can only be Freudian in a very precise way which combines theoretical interest, misinterpretation and rebellion.
In an unfinished work with five chapters, Svevo continued Zeno’s story, focusing on the later years when he took up the place of father and grandfather. The comical approach is the same, fed by the fact that all remains as it was. The victory over therapy is refuted and the sudden talent for business is debunked and condensed to the condition of failed healing. Zeno comes up with the same problems and the same expectations, with the difference that he is now more resigned and more aware of those who surround him, mostly his son, in whom he finds a copy of himself. The perception that the son replicates his own behaviors puts him in a position where he recognizes that he himself replicates his father’s behaviors, that he is more like his father than he would like to admit and that he has no longer the time to change that, although he keeps trying. To him, life seems organized according to a movement of repetition determined by genetics and the old goals of being a different kind of father seem impossible to fulfill. He sees his decisions reflected in other people’s existence, he is surprised with how he determined his children’s characters and, in the end, following some attempts to fix that, he puts forward a theory on the power of genes. Zeno appears as he always was. Svevo followed him for many years and found him true to himself: a figure to whom time and experience taught nothing new; a monument to akrasia and to resistance for self-improving. From youth to old age, Zeno was patronized by those who surround him and particularly despised by children. These took him too seriously and came out disappointed. They blamed him and were left in the same place. And Zeno kept living, among theories and goals, hoping he could come across a more effective method of living and of healing than psychoanalysis.
