Gli Amori
1898
A late 19th-century Italian novel that begins as an intimate correspondence between an unnamed narrator and a woman he addresses only as 'contessa.' Their letters crackle with intellectual urgency and unspoken longing, laying bare the eternal struggle between what we feel and what we can articulate. The narrative then expands to encompass the story of two lovers whose profound connection could not survive the drift of time and circumstance. Through reflection and memory, the narrator grapples with love's cruel paradox: that we can feel something so completely yet remain strangers to those we cherish most. The novel suggests that understanding between lovers is not a destination but an endless negotiation, forever incomplete, forever worth attempting. Its philosophical honesty about the gaps between hearts makes it feel startlingly contemporary despite its age.
Editions
X-Ray
“You only have to start saying of something : 'Ah, how beautiful ! We must photograph it !' and you are already close to the view of the person who thinks that everything that is not photographed is lost, as if it never existed, and therefore in order to really live you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible, or else consider photographable every moment of your life.””
— Unknown
“Don't you ever get tired of reading?" she asked. "You could hardly be called good company! Don't you know that, with women, you're supposed to make conversation?" she added; her half smile was perhaps meant to be ironic, though to Amedeo, who at that moment would have paid anything rather than give up his novel, it seemed downright threatening.””
— Unknown
“The line between the reality that is photographed because it seems beautiful to us and the reality that seems beautiful because it has been photographed is very narrow."- from "The Adventure of a Photographer””
— Unknown
“Every silence consists of the network of minuscule sounds that enfolds it."- from "The Adventure of a Poet””
— Unknown
“Life, thought the naked man, was a hell, with rare moments recalling some ancient paradise.””
— Unknown
“Amedeo loved thick tomes, and in tackling them he felt the physical pleasure of undertaking a great task. Weighing them in his hand, thick, closely printed, squat, he would consider with some apprehension the number of pages, the length of the chapters, then venture into them, a bit reluctant at the beginning, without any desire to perform the initial chore of remembering the names, catching the drift of the story; then he would entrust himself to it, running along the lines, crossing the grid of the uniform page, and beyond the leaden print the flame and fire of battle appeared, the cannonball that, whistling through the sky, fell at the feet of Prince Andrei, and the shop filled with engravings and statues where Frederic Moreau, his heart in his mouth, was to meet the Arnoux family. Beyond the surface of the page you entered a world where life was more alive than here on this side…””
— Unknown
“Ciò che conta è comunicare l’indispensabile lasciando perdere tutto il superfluo, ridurre noi stessi a comunicazione essenziale, a segnale luminoso che si muove in una data direzione, abolendo la complessità delle nostre persone e situazioni ed espressioni facciali, lasciandole nella scatola d’ombra che i fari si portano dietro e nascondono. La Y che io amo in realtà è quel fascio di raggi luminosi in movimento, e tutto il resto di lei può rimanere implicito; e il me stesso che lei può amare, il me stesso che ha il potere d’entrare in quel circuito d’esaltazione che è la sua vita affettiva, è il lampeggio di questo sorpasso che sto, per amor suo e non senza qualche rischio, tentando.””
— Unknown
“...the world was trying to change its old face and show its underbelly of earth and roots.””
— Unknown
“M'accorgo che correndo verso Y ciò che più desidero non è trovare Y al termine della mia corsa: voglio che sia Y a correre verso di me, è questa la risposta di cui ho bisogno, cioè ho bisogno che lei sappia che io sto correndo verso di lei ma nello stesso tempo ho bisogno di sapere che lei sta correndo verso di me.””
— Unknown
