The Evolution of Silone's Central Theme

Ignazio Silone's latest book, L'avventura di un povero cristiano (Mondadori, 1968), shows him to have taken a further step in the development of his personal view of life which constitutes the central theme of his novels. There are two obvious aspects to this—the spiritual and the practical. Certain elements of the spiritual aspect—his basic philosophy of life—can be seen as constant throughout all his literary work, whereas the elements of what we are referring to as the practical aspect—the working out in concrete terms of the implications of his theories—can be described as variable in a progressive sense from book to book. In some of his earlier books a lack of harmony could be discerned by the reader between the constant and the variable elements; this might perhaps be explained in part by the serious moral purpose of the writer, which led him to emphasize the 'message' without devoting enough attention to the expression of it in a logical and aesthetically pleasing way. In L'avventura di un povero cristiano he retraces the steps taken in his earlier books in working out the implications of his theories, and then with a twist of the variable elements brings them into line with the constant elements, so that in this book we are given a complete exposition of his itinerarium cordis. The maturity he has gained through experience is evident in the coherence and clarity, not to say simplicity, with which here he expresses his point of view

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