The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

“In our history book the Etruscans are at the beginning, next to the Egyptians and the Jews. Tell me, Papà: who do you think were more ancient, the Etruscans or the Jews?”

By placing this question in the past tense, Giannina reveals a misconception that the Jews, like the Etruscans, belong to the ancient world and do not exist anymore. The tension from this misunderstanding is fueled by setting the prologue after the Holocaust. By introducing this question without ever fully correcting her, Bassani establishes the book’s tense and suspicious tone.

“Another, longer pause. At the end of it (we were already near the open space in front of the entrance to the necropolis, full of automobiles and buses), it was Giannina’s turn to impart the lesson.

‘But now, if you say that,’ she ventured softly, ‘you remind me that the Etruscans were also alive once, and so I’m fond of them, like everyone else.’

Our visit then to the necropolis, I recall, was completely affected by the extraordinary tenderness of this sentence. Giannina had prepared us to understand. It was she, the youngest, who somehow guided us.”

The kindness that Giannina offers to the group is one of tender acceptance of all people, which contrasts with the oppression and intolerance that Bassani represents in the text. The irony of the youngest person offering the greatest wisdom leaves the narrator pleasantly surprised and suggests that innocence is the antidote to the harm that has plagued Europe.

“We entered the most important tomb, the one that had belonged to the noble Matuta family: a low underground room that contains about twenty funeral beds set inside as many niches in the tufa walls, and heavily decorated with polychrome stucco figures of the dead, trusted objects of everyday life: hoes, ropes, hatchets, scissors, spades, knives, bows, arrows, even hunting dogs and marsh fowl.”

The use of physical objects to signify importance foreshadows the emphasis on Taste Versus Class that the narrator struggles with while growing up. The use of a long list of details reveals his keen perception of wealth.

“The world changed, of course—they must have said to themselves—it was no longer what it had once been, when Etruria, with its confederation of free, aristocratic city-states, had dominated almost the whole Italian peninsula. New civilizations, more crude and popular, but also stronger and more inured, now reigned. But what did it matter?”

Equating crudeness with popularity, the narrator can give his perspective on the new civilization that came to dominate Italy in the 20th century without directly mentioning it. The pessimism for what is popular shows how hurt he has been by the events within the novel, as he now relates to the long-dead Etruscans.

“Having entered the cemetery, where each of them possessed a second home, and within its resting place, all prepared, where soon he would lie beside his fathers, he must have considered eternity no longer an illusion, a fable, a promise of the priests. The future might cause all the upheavals it liked in the world. But still, there, in the brief enclosure sacred to the familiar dead, in the heart of those tombs where, along with the dead, they arranged to carry down everything that made life beautiful and desirable, in that defended, sheltered corner of the world: there at least (and their thought, their madness still hovered, after twenty-five centuries, around the conical mounds, covered in wild grasses), there at least nothing would ever change.”

This passage on the dead’s acceptance of death in their consistent resting place highlights the deep unfairness of the Finzi-Continis’ tomb lying empty and the tragic deaths of the family leaving no place for those who loved them to mourn them properly. However, the ending line points to a kind of optimism; even after all this time, the people still linger in this place, allowing the narrator to hope that the tomb removes some responsibility from the living to mourn forever.

“I saw again the great lawns dotted with trees, the tombstones and the pillars, more dense along the outside walls and the dividing walls inside, and, as if I actually had it before my eyes, the monumental tomb of the Finzi-Continis: an ugly tomb, of course- at home I had always heard them say so, since my childhood- but still imposing, signifying, if only for this reason, the family’s importance.”

Throughout the narrator’s life, both size and taste are used to signify importance. The irony of an ugly tomb having such a hold on a person obsessed with wealth and beauty shows how the family’s wealth and power imbue even ugly objects with meaning.

“And with such quantities of fine marble available, snow-white Carrara, flesh-pink Verona, gray speckled with black, yellow marble, blue marble, green marble, he had in turn, definitely lost all self-control.”

The long list of marbles shows the chaotic look of the monument and reveals the dedication and obsession the narrator displays. He has memorized not only the image in his mind of what it looks like but also where certain marbles come from. This builds on the themes of Taste Versus Class; the Finzi-Continis possess class and standing, but it is the narrator and the rest of the public who pass judgment on their taste.

“What a typical nouveau riche idea, what an outlandish idea!—my father used to repeat, with a kind of impassioned bitterness, every time he happened to mention the subject.”

The father’s unbreakable habit of condemning the Finzi-Continis is mocked by the narrator, highlighting how it is “he” who brings them up in the first place. This irony gives a fuller sense of how the father perceives Taste Versus Class; he believes that money and class cannot buy taste.

“Aristocracy, indeed! Instead of giving themselves so many airs, they would have done much better, they at least, to remember who they were, where they came from, for it’s a fact that Jews—Sephardic and Ashkenazic, western and Levantine, Tunisian, Berber, Yemenite, and even Ethiopian—in whatever part of the earth, under whatever sky History scattered them, are and always will be Jews, that is to say, close relatives.”

The contrast within the list of these different places and cultures is turned into a joke by describing them as “close” relatives. This irony highlights the ways that these different people all experience the same grouping together; they are categorized and then oppressed. By making a joke about this misunderstanding and placing blame on the Finzi-Continis for isolating themselves, the characters embody the theme of Protection Against Rejection by twisting a public oversimplification into a private joke.

“Mourn

GUIDO FINZI-CONTINI

(1908-1914)

of exceptional form and spirit

your parents thought

to love you always more

not to mourn you.”

The epigraph on the tomb contains a tragic contradiction by beginning with the command to “mourn” and ending with the parents’ wish not to mourn. The honest, poetic lines contrast with the cold and informative way the text begins.

“Always more. A subdued sob, and that was all. A weight upon the heart to be shared with no other person in the world.”

These short sentence fragments emphasize the inability of language to describe the grief felt by a parent who lost their child. It is a contrast to the rest of the novel which employs long, lavish sentences, highlighting the narrator’s vanity.

“She was hardly more than a child, in 1929, a thirteen-year-old, thin and blond, with great, pale, magnetic eyes. I, a little boy in short pants, very bourgeois and very vain, whom a minor scholastic mishap was enough to plunge into the most childish desperation.”

Despite the narrator’s description of himself as vain, he does little to describe or illustrate himself to the reader, despite how detailed his descriptions typically are. It is thus his intelligence and reputation about which he is vain, rather than his looks.

“Still, if I would allow him to say so: in his opinion, I took too black a view of things, I was too catastrophic.”

This demonstrates dramatic irony as the reader knows the dire reality of what happened to the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust. The father’s optimism only accentuates how much danger they are really in.

“It was a Tuesday. I couldn’t say why, a few days later, the Saturday of the same week, I resolved to do exactly the opposite of what my father wished.”

The humor of the narrator when being contrary to his parent’s wishes demonstrates a youthful fun at rebellion. It is also ironic that the narrator says he couldn’t understand why he made this change when it is clear he is doing it to go against his father’s wishes.

“And for that matter, when had we ever given them a thought, Micòl, and I during our long excursions through the park: so long that sometimes, on our return, we no longer found a living soul, either on the court or in the Hütte?”

These moments of isolation demonstrate the themes of Protection Against Rejection as the two separate from their everyday lives to escape into the estate on their own. This isolation is being used to circumvent both the political and social rejection they are experiencing. The narrator emphasizes how little Micòl and he think about the others when they are gone. However, it is clear from the absence of the group that no one is checking up on them, either. Instead of being glad that they are experiencing this freedom, he chooses to push back against any imagined concern by rejecting the group that he fears rejects him.

“She was too intelligent, too sensitive, not to have guessed what I was hiding behind my indifference: namely, the suddenly acute—and symptomatic—desire to see her again.”

By using language about illnesses, the text implies that the narrator’s feelings for Micòl have manifested as unhealthy. This diction shows that the narrator is aware of this condition, which adds to his paranoia about what Micòl suspects about him.

“[Alberto] continued listing names and titles, polite and even-tempered as usual, but with indifference: exactly as if he were inviting me to choose from a list of foods which he, for his part, would certainly not touch. He became animated only, moderately, in illustrating to me the merits of his Philips.”

Alberto’s indifference to the musicians he lists emphasizes the connection that the narrator feels with Micòl, whom he is missing. Despite Alberto’s experience with music, he fails to share their artistic tastes and is instead interested in the mechanics of the machine. This highlights the themes of Taste Versus Class.

“All things considered, by letter we were far more awkward and lifeless than by telephone, so after a while we stopped writing.”

There is a situational irony to two students of literature being unable to communicate via writing. The helplessness of the two of them highlights their strategy to not be fully vulnerable with the other. Showing where their relationship breaks apart and the fact that they do not address it demonstrates their attempts at Protection Against Rejection.

“But Alberto fended him off, blushing; and on the subject of Gladys, cards were never put on the table: not on that occasion, or on others.”

While the narrator has been invited into the most intimate parts of the Finzi-Contini home, he is kept away from the details of both Alberto and Micòl’s lives. All of these secrets are never mentioned again, building up a feeling of unresolved tension. The characters choose avoidance over confrontation in both their personal and political lives, emphasizing the theme of Protection Against Rejection. This isolation doesn’t just undermine how close they feel to each other but also keeps the reader from fully understanding them.

“Ninety-nine times out of hundred, the embers continue burning under the ash: with the fine result that later, when the two see each other again, it has become very difficult, almost impossible for them to talk calmly, like good friends.”

The imagery of embers still burning even when buried demonstrates the dangerous, destructive qualities of love. By equating their feelings to fire, Bassani shows that Micòl understands the stakes of the narrator’s feelings and wants to proceed with caution. The change about which she is most concerned is how good friends talk to each other, implicitly revealing that she does not reciprocate the narrator’s feelings.

I chanced to read in one of Stendhal’s notebooks, these English words: all lost, nothing lost, and suddenly, as if by miracle, I felt myself free, healed.”

These English words evoke Micòl and remind the narrator of her. As a student of English literature, Micòl is prepared to realize how this short phrase would apply to her and the narrator’s relationship. Despite feeling healed and free, the narrator chooses not to sign or acknowledge Micòl on the postcard he sends using these words. When the narrator feels most whole, he is inputting himself into Micòl’s life the least.

“Perhaps I was hoping for a miracle, in an abrupt change in the situation, or perhaps, yes, I was actually seeking out humiliation and bitterness.”

As the narrator struggles to reconcile his behavior toward Micòl with rational thought, he reveals his self-destructive tendencies. While the narrator does not undergo significant character development, the “yes” after the “perhaps” demonstrates some new certainty, toward the end, that his romantic pursuits are fruitless.

“‘You really are an idiot,’ he reproached me, after we had in great haste, recovered our bicycles, left in the parking lot. ‘And now, let’s clear out: praying to your God that the pig in there was just guessing.’”

As Malnate chastises the narrator, he makes an important distinction to align himself with the narrator. Malnate groups himself in with his friend by saying that they will both “[pray] to your God” rather than telling the narrator that he alone should start praying. This shows the different statuses between a Jew and a non-Jew in fascist Italy, but it also reveals Malnate’s loyalty to the narrator.