Bulletin

Issue: September 2004

Research in Action

FOUND: The Real Leopold Bloom

The hero of James Joyce's book, Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, is perhaps one of English literature's most intriguing characters. Hundreds of thousands of Joyce fans celebrate his 'feast day', Bloomsday, each June 16 - and this year was the centenary of that event.

So for many decades Bloom's fame has given rise to the question: on whom did Joyce base the Bloom character?

According to La Trobe University Professor of Italian and European Studies, John Gatt-Rutter, the enigmatic and lovable character is the Italian author, Italo Svevo (1861-1928) whose work was not recognised until late in his life.

Italo Svevo was the nom-de-plume of Ettore Schmitz, an Italian Jew from Austrian Trieste who published his first two long-neglected novels at his own expense and worked in a Trieste bank for 20 years and for another 20 years as factory manager manufacturing ships' paint, with frequent spells at the firm's London factory. He called himself Italo Svevo (that's Italian for Italian Swabian) to signify his mixed Jewish-Italian-German heritage.

Professor Gatt-Rutter, who occupies the Vaccari Chair in Italian Studies within the School of Historical and European Studies, recently co-produced the London writings of Svevo in both an English translation and the original Italian.

The English language volume was compiled, translated, edited and introduced by Brian Moloney, formerly professor of Italian at the universities of Hull and Wollongong, and Professor Gatt-Rutter and published by Troubadour Press.

Professor Gatt-Rutter edited Svevo's letters from London, mainly to his wife, which show a 40-year-old Italian-Austrian ex-Jew coming
to terms with life in a London industrial suburb from 1901 to 1926. The book also contains Svevo's shrewd sociological essays on London and newspaper reports on post-war London, including the 1920 and 1921 miners' strikes.

Both the English volume and the Italian, published in Svevo's home town of Trieste, came out in 2003 to mark the 75th anniversary of his death.

Professor Gatt-Rutter is author of a widely regarded biography of Svevo, also published in English and Italian. It was his study of Svevo's writings and life that led him to the conclusion that Joyce based the Bloom character on Svevo.

Svevo and the much younger Joyce developed a quizzical friendship when Joyce lived in Trieste and Svevo was pretending to have given up writing while making a fortune out of ships' paint. The two as yet obscure writers greatly encouraged each other's literary efforts. Joyce saw in Svevo a great writer and helped him achieve celebrity for what is now considered one of modernism's finest novels, The Confessions of Zeno.

Svevo had gone to London in 1901 on behalf of his firm to establish a factory beside the Thames to supply paint for ships of the Royal Navy. The paint inhibited encrustations on a ship's hull, making a great difference to its speed and the frequency of overhauls.

This gave British ships an advantage over those of the German navy as the rival nations built up their fleets. Svevo had been to school in Germany and loved that country, and was also a pacifist. He was deeply distressed when the Great War saw his paint play a not insignificant part in the carnage which also involved Italy. His guilt feelings seem to have found their way into his masterpiece.

Professor Gatt-Rutter told a recent conference in Sydney that Joyce was seeking a model of human goodness and greatness. 'He saw something of what he was looking for in Svevo,' Professor Gatt-Rutter said.

'So Svevo, unknowingly on his part, became the model for Leopold Bloom.' •

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