Zeno 2.0: A Psychoanalytic Dialogue between <em>Zeno's Conscience</em> and <em>Portnoy's Complaint</em>

Abstract

Any reader of Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint (1969) who is familiar with Italo Svevo's most famous novel, Zeno's Conscience (1928), will instantly notice an uncanny resemblance between them. Yet Roth never talks about Svevo- neither in his writings, nor in interviews. In fact, the only mention of the Triestine writer is in Roth's interview with Primo Levi, where the latter comments on Svevo's mercantile background.1 A connection between and Portnoy's stories undoubtedly exists, however. David Brauner noted Roth's debt to in his essay Getting in Your Retaliation First: Narrative Strategies in Portnoy's Complaint, in which he suggests that Portnoy's neuroses are inherited from the protagonists of Italo and Gogol (45) and more recently Bernard Avishai observed that Perhaps the closest thing to Portnoy's Complaint in world literature to that time was Confessions of Zeno (42).The aim of this essay is to show the surprising relationship between these novels by comparing the narrative incorporation of psychoanalysis in Portnoy and Zeno, and indicating similarities in their plots. In so doing, I will also reflect on the presumptive dialogue that Roth might have undertaken- might one permit enough irony to suggest: subconsciously-with Svevo. Comparing psychoanalytic readings of the will demonstrate why Avishai is right when he highlights the resemblance between Portnoy's Complaint and Confessions of Zeno.However, in this essay I will also demonstrate their inevitable differences- mainly the fundamental one, i.e., the form of the confession itself: one written, the other oral. Moreover, even though the two authors assume rather comic approach to psychoanalysis, the purpose of such an approach is significantly different. The reason for that might be found in the fact that Zeno's Conscience was published nearly fifty years before Roth's novel, in different historical and cultural circumstances. Svevo's novel, although witty and ironic, is more serious than is usually acknowledged, as it transmits rather gloomy message, likely because was written right after World War One, which was arguably even more traumatic than World War Two, mainly because of the unprecedented number of civilian victims, the scale of destruction and the use of new weapons. Hence, here psychoanalysis serves to expose the condition of humanity in world on the verge of collapse. That is probably why does not believe in the possibility of understanding human actions, so, priori, he considers psychoanalysis to be fraudulent. Nonetheless, relationship between these two novels (and between the two protagonists) undoubtedly exists, even though it is of complex nature: I dare claim that Portnoy is an updated Zeno.In order to understand the uniqueness of Zeno's Conscience, it is necessary to briefly introduce its background. Italo published his third novel, and the only one that gained recognition in his lifetime, La coscienza di Zeno, in 1923. (In English it was translated as Confessions of in 1930 by Beryl De Zoete, and in 2000 by William Weaver as Zeno's Conscience.2) James Joyce, Svevo's former English teacher, praised its thematic and formal treatment of time. The groundbreaking novelty of the book lies in its use of psychoanalysis.In 1931, after its publication in the United States, Burrill Freedman wrote in The Psychoanalytic Review: Among the increasing number of literary figures to make marked use of psychoanalytical implications, one of the most important is Italo Svevo (434).As Zeno's Conscience is fictional autobiography written by the eponymous patient in order to enhance his psychoanalytic therapy, it is first-person narration. Similarly to Roth, had to dismiss suggestions that was projection of the writer himself: It is an autobiography but not mine, protested (Opera I 779; translations from Opera Omnia are mine). This statement is echoed in Avishai's opinion about Portnoy: a in the form of confession is for God's sake not confession in the form of novel (10). …