This Business of Living, by Cesare Pavese

God! So much life in these lines! Yet… it is pitiful. A remarkable spirit struggling, eroding and crumbling amidst fifth-rate yearnings. Clouded by passions that divert his focus and sap his energy, Cesare Pavese exposes, in this diary entitled This Business of Living, an atrocious inner conflict that arouses, at the same time, empathy and pity. Terrible, terrible torments; and the motives unjustifiable, unworthy of the poet’s lineage. On one note, the prudence: “maturità è l’isolation che basta a se stesso”, shortly after, the relapse: “la massima sventura è la solitudine”—manifestations of a spirit that has succumbed to the weaknesses of the race. Too bad, too bad…