Italo Svevo was not called Italo Svevo. His real name was Ettore Schmitz. But he went down in history with the pseudonym he chose. Italo Svevo was a fine artist and an innovative writer, in many ways revolutionary. A bank clerk and an industrialist, Ettore Schmitz, a family man, an attentive towards his family and commercial interests. 

His whole story and figure are doubled, reflected in a somewhat opaque mirror that makes the image uncertain, but also vibrant with interest. The same birth name, Ettore, is a non-homologous version of the original Hector found in personal documents, and preannounces the double nature of the pseudonym which indicates both the “Italian” and the “German” (Svevo = Swabian) side of his education and his soul.

But Svevo was also Jewish (by birth and culture, while remaining serenely atheist) and Catholic (by marriage and a strong empathetic feeling towards his wife Livia), in the same way that he was also a socialist (in his youth) and a liberal (later), irredentist and pacifist, ironic and dark, and both optimistic and pessimistic at times (paraphrasing the title of one of his essays).