Trieste as Frontier: From Slataper to Bazlen and Del Giudice

Abstract

Scipio Slataper described himself as Slav, and wished to be Slav and a bar-barian.¹ In 1912, when he was only 24 years old, he published Il mio carso, a novel which, despite being subtitled ‘lyrical autobiography’, begins with a dramatic movement in three parts, in which ‘I’ is opposed to ‘you’, ‘savagery’ to ‘Italianità’, and the ‘fatherland’ to ‘here’:

I would like to tell you: I was born in the Carso, in a hut with a thatched roof, blackened by rain and smoke … I would like to tell you: I was born in Croatia, in the great oak forest …

I would like to tell you: I was born on the Moravian plain and I used to run like the hare … Then I came here, I tried to tame myself, I learned Italian, I chose my friends from among the most educated youth; but soon I must return to my fatherland, for here I don’t feel too good.²

People think it is a matter of eternal truths when it is merely a matter of adjectives.

Roberto Bazlen