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the complete review - fiction

Love and Gymnastics

by
Edmondo De Amicis

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

A- : very well done, and good fun

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "David Chapman's translation, the first into English, is clean and sprightly, and shows De Amicis as a master of the skewering one-liner which fixes a character to the page. (...) It delivers fistfuls of cruelty, but always with a smile." - S.W., The Economist
  
  
• "All this is very funny, as is the bland, light-hearted satire of the infatuation for physical training which was sweeping Italy at the time. (...) (H)e has a real gift for accurate observation of both characters and scenes. (...) Amore e ginnastica (...) still makes for delightful reading, and one would not be surprised if it becomes as popular as Cuore." - Times Literary Supplement

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Love and Gymnastics is set largely in a single house of six apartments, one of the oldest in Turin -- and one which: "suited itself well to intrigues and to the secrets of amorous passions". The time is the late nineteenth century, as a gymnastics-craze is sweeping Italy -- not competitive gymnastics, but rather as a fitness- and wellness-exercise, suitable for all to participate in; as presented here it's perhaps most comparable to the present-day yoga fad, complete with competing schools of what are the best forms of the exercise and devotees who swear by it.
       Several of the tenants of the house are very wrapped up in this gymnastics enthusiasm, with the third floor being: "all scholastic and gymnastics". It is there that Maria Pedani -- a: "tall and strong lass of twenty-seven" -- lives with Miss Zibelli, who is nearly a decade older and "the physical opposite of her friend".
       Miss Pedani is completely devoted to gymnastics -- obsessed with it: "She lived with one thought alone: gymnastics". Her life revolves entirely around it: she practices and she preaches it; she is a teacher as well as an ardent proponent of the activity and she follows all the latest news and trends; she also writes about it, to spread the word and share her expertise, including for professional journals. If not a classic beauty -- her facial expression and gait are a bit too manly, for one --, she is, thanks to her lifestyle, still quite a figure: she "was of statuesque proportions, breathed health and strength from her entire body" (and she has: "the flexibility of a ten-year-old child"). And so she of course attracts some attention, including from one of the sons of a family in the building, as well as from the landlord's nephew, employed by his uncle as secretary after he decided that the path to priesthood he had previously embarked upon wasn't quite for him after all -- though he's not allowed to forget it, as: "all the tenants of the house had for years called him 'Reverend' Celzani in jest".
       It is Celzani's passion for Miss Pedani that dominates the story. As is perhaps to be expected from a priest-manqué, he is not just not a ladies' man -- he really doesn't even know how to approach one, and so his is fumbling actions around Miss Pedani are a source of much of the comedy in the novel. He might only be: "a few years past his thirtieth birthday, but he had the bearing and behaviour of a man of fifty". But it isn't only his bearing and hapless approach -- which includes first making his feelings known by sending her a letter -- that hinder his hopes for romantic happiness: there's that problem that Miss Pedani doesn't even think of romance, her entire being taken up by gymnastics.
       De Amicis' tale is an enjoyable romantic and gymnastic romp. Celzani's first letter quickly makes the rounds, and many of the tenants get pulled into the affair to some extent. It doesn't develop into much of a romantic affair -- Miss Pedani makes her position clear, time and again -- but Celzani is the sort of deluded would-be lover who refuses to give up. De Amicis presents this very well, right down to Celzani's voyeurism, which sees him gaze down longingly into Miss Pedani's rooms from an attic perch, as well as how Celzani goes to pieces when his suit fails, again and again:

When she had first arrived at that house, he was wise, hard-working, calm, good, and liked by all. And everything had fallen apart from there.

- M.A.Orthofer, 17 April 2020

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Links:

• Hesperus publicity page
• Einaudi publicity page
• Manesse Verlag publicity page

• Deutschlandfunk (German)
• Deutschlandfunk Kultur (German)
• Encuentros de lecturas (Spanish)
• Faust (German)
• Focus (German)
• Leggere a Colori (Italian)

• See Index of Italian literature
• See Index of Books Written Before 1900

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About the Author:

       Italian author Edmondo De Amicis lived 1846 to 1908.

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