Trieste and the others

Florence

For Italian.speaking writers from Trieste, Florence was the home of literature, the place of a first “redemption”, the linguistic one promised by the waters of the Arno in which, like Manzoni, to rinse the literary saundry soiled by foreignisms and dialectisms. It was to have been followed by the policy that was to bring Trieste, the “unredeemed” city, back to unite with the mother country, Italy.

But Florence between the 19th and 20th centuries was also a lively and combative cultural, literary and artistic laboratory that became a battleground in various magazines, including “Il Marzocco”, “La Voce” and “Lacerba”, the triestini – Slataper, Stuparich, Saba, Giotti, Marin, Däubler and others – were often protagonists on their pages.

Ljubljana

The Slovenian-speaking people of Trieste turned their gaze to Ljubljana, today the capital of Slovenia. The link between the two centres is evident in the biography of major Slovenian intellectuals, including Primož Trubar, the father of Slovenian literature, who was educated in Trieste and became a Protestant preacher in Ljubljana. Žiga Zois was born in Trieste in 1747 and promoted the Slovenian Enlightenment in Ljubljana.

It is mainly writers of later generations who address Ljubljana as the cultural capital of the Slovenian world. Srečko Kosovel and Vladimir Bartol complete their studies there. Fulvio Tomizza, on his side, after studying in Koper and Belgrade, collaborated with director František Čáp in the making of the film Moments of Decision, which was presented at the Venice Film Festival in 1955. Since 2015, Ljubljana has been a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities for Literature network.

Prague

The capital at the end of the 16th century, Prague remained one of the centres of the Austro-Hungarian Empire together with Vienna, Budapes and Trieste. Employees and managers of state enterprisers and large commercial companies often traveled between the Bohemian city and the Adriatic port. The Assicurazioni Generali of Trieste opened an important branch in Prague where, in the very early years of the 20th century, Franz Kafka and his fellow citizen Leo Perutz, who worked in Trieste for a year, found employment.

In addiction to Perutz and Kafka – who in truth never arrived at the Generali in Trieste – Raine Maria Rilke also came from Prague. In his youthful stories Rilke addressed the problem of a city divided into two ethnic and linguistic groups, Germans and Czechs. This is a question linking Prague to Trieste and one which Giani Stuparich also deals with in his essay La Nazione Ceca. Prague has been a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities for Literature since 2014.

Dublin

Dublin was perceived by irredentists as a city similar to Trieste, oppressed by foreign domination. For this reason, between 1907 and 1912 “Il Piccolo della Sera” hosted nine articles by James Joyce dedicated to Ireland’s struggle for independence from the United Kingdom. But Joyce was not the only writer from Dublin to live in Trieste for a long time. Before him, his fellow Irishman, the consul Charles Lever, spent many years there.

A writer of some success and a competitor of Charles Dickens, Lever also described his hometown with irony and affection and included some memories of Trieste in That Boy of Norcott’s. Finally, Joyce isn’t even the only “J. Joyce” to have lived here! In 1850 a mysterious traveler of that name published his Recollection of the Salzkammergut, Ischl, Salzburg, Bad Gastein with a Sketch of Trieste in Trieste. Seventy years later Italo Svevo asks James Joyce himself, who knew nothing about it. In 2010 Dublin was declared UNESCO Creative City for Literature.