
Hard Labor
NYRB Poets (Publisher)
Published on 17. June 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
160 pages
978-1-68137-878-7 (ISBN)
Description
A landmark translation of passionate, fiercely intelligent poetry about coming of age by one of the most influential Italian writers of the twentieth century.
In the spring of 1935, the young Cesare Pavese was sentenced, for "antifascist activities," to three years of detention in a small seaside village in Calabria. Far away from his familiar life in the city of Turin and forced to rely on his own resources, he began to write poems of tremendous power, in terse lines and unsentimental language, giving voice to country people and hard country lives untainted by the propaganda of Fascism. "When I found my friends, I found my real home— / land so worthless a man's got a perfect right / to do absolutely nothing."
Though Pavese is now most famous for his fiction, he was a poet first of all, and Hard Labor was the work for which he hoped to be remembered. It is a book, he once said, "that might have saved a generation." William Arrowsmith's translations—with their strong lines and bold American diction—marvelously convey the spirit and complex vitality of the original.
In the spring of 1935, the young Cesare Pavese was sentenced, for "antifascist activities," to three years of detention in a small seaside village in Calabria. Far away from his familiar life in the city of Turin and forced to rely on his own resources, he began to write poems of tremendous power, in terse lines and unsentimental language, giving voice to country people and hard country lives untainted by the propaganda of Fascism. "When I found my friends, I found my real home— / land so worthless a man's got a perfect right / to do absolutely nothing."
Though Pavese is now most famous for his fiction, he was a poet first of all, and Hard Labor was the work for which he hoped to be remembered. It is a book, he once said, "that might have saved a generation." William Arrowsmith's translations—with their strong lines and bold American diction—marvelously convey the spirit and complex vitality of the original.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
New York Review Books
Dimensions
Height: 145 mm
Width: 209 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
328 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-68137-878-7 (9781681378787)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Persons
Cesare Pavese, translated from the Italian by William Arrowsmith, introduction by Ted Olson