Zeno saved from madness; Why the Confessions is a great novel

A difficult but still a great book - Italo Svevo's Confessions of Zeno: yes, Zeno is a completely neurotic narrator, full of obsessions and perseverations, and you have to expect that, accept that, and roll along with it to appreciate and enjoy this novel. I mean, 150 pages about the agonizing courtship of his wife - his rejection by the beautiful sister, Ada, and his settling on the plain sister, Augusta, and all the suffering and humiliation that process entailed - that was a lot, and I was tempted to abandon the novel during that section, yes. And his constant egoism - his foolish belief that the young and beautiful and talentless and deeply impoverished Carla was in love with him, when obviously what she was in love with, or more accurately in need of, was the envelope of cash he brought to her each week. That said: the book is at times hilarious, and it is truly one the landmarks in providing readers with access to the "consciousness of another," a hallmark of literature I think. Zeno is also one of the great eccentric figures in literature - as noted in earlier posts, ranking alongside the Underground Man as an obsessive observer and chronicler of his own neuroses. In addition: I noted in earlier posts that another important criteria for great fiction is the maturation, growth, or change of the narrator/protagonist: does he or she learn and evolve over the course of the novel? Is the novel a journey from innocence to experience? And that is definitely the case in Zeno, as we see in the penultimate section, A Business Partnership, when he actually overcomes his jealousy of Guido and becomes a good man, a mensch you might say, sacrificing his own well-being to try to keep Guido's business alive - and failing Guido, perhaps accidentally, kills himself. The end of this section is deeply sorrowful, as Ada leaves Trieste forever, believing that Zeno hated Guido - and Guido unable, through his tears, to convince her that isn't so. She cannot see the good in Zeno; he cannot persuade her otherwise. Then, we go to the last section, Psychoanalysis, in which Z rejects the "cure" that had motivated him to write down these confessions: he has grown beyond the need to tell all to his doctor, in part because of his sorrows - but mostly because the world around him is changing. Europe is now at war - as he describes in a strange and dreamlike passage in which he tries to procure some roses and finds himself cut off from his family by troops and by military action. The book ends with a statement of such vitriol and misanthropy - a strangely prophetic statement in which Z imagines a military weapon so powerful it could blow up the earth (written in 1923) - ending the book on a completely dark and frightening note: again, prophetic, including with its hint of anti-Semitism, only reference in the book to the author's being Jewish. The end makes an interesting counterpoint to the famous ending of Magic Mountain, with Hans going off to be a soldier in the War - having regained his health, but also one among millions, bound to be food for cannons perhaps. Z ends also "cured" but not headed for slaughter - rather, locked in his solitude and misery, having learned at last to be a businessman, in fact, to become a war profiteer.