Abstract

Modernist poetics in "La coscienza di Zeno" is the gradual result of Svevo's reflections in the course of his existential experience during the silent twenty years between "Senilità" and the First World War. In the process of such a mental trial, Jewish cultural identity plays a significant role. Conflict between modernity and Law of the Fathers makes Jewish culture particularly sensitive to the elaboration of trauma required to everybody by «modern times», technology, progress itself. Svevo refers to some cryptical traits of Jewish thought in order to find an answer to uneasiness and dangers of the new century, and, in doing so, he places himself entirely within the stream of the literature produced by secularised Jewish writers.