Ernesto loses his job when his sexual behavior is discovered and reveals to his mother his same-sex relationship, which he continues to view as shameful. They become infatuated with each other and have an intense sexual relationship, which develops against a realistic depiction of the social setting. He discovers his homosexuality when he meets a stableboy ( Michele Placido), who is not identified by name.
He espouses socialist views largely to cause his uncle distress.
Saba said of it, “It’s as if a dam gave way, and everything poured out spontaneously.In Trieste, Austria-Hungary ( Italy after the end of World War I) in 1911, Ernesto ( Martin Halm) is a 17-year-old boy who lives with his widowed mother in the home of his violin-loving Jewish uncle and works in an office at a routine job. Even in an incomplete state, “Ernesto” has the limpid style and emotional power of a major literary work. Saba wrote five chapters and planned to write more, but after returning home to Trieste, found himself unable to continue. The added burden of concealed passions meant that, as de Ceccatty writes, Saba’s “complete works are based on frustration.” “Ernesto” was written during a Roman hospital stay in 1953. Saba was known to suffer from mental illness, and the necessity to live in hiding during the Fascist era did not improve his psychiatric condition. Saba was psychoanalyzed by an Italian Jewish disciple of Freud, Edoardo Weiss, who also treated Italo Svevo (the Triestine Jewish author born Aron Ettore Schmitz). In a cogent preface, de Ceccatty observes that modern Italian Jewish authors frequently wrote novels about gay characters, citing as examples Elsa Morante’s 1957 Arturo’s Island: A Novel Alberto Moravia’s 1944 Agostino Giorgio Bassani’s 1958 The Gold-rimmed Spectacles and Natalia Ginzburg’s 1973 Caro Michele.ĭe Ceccatty intriguingly implies that Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical theories impressed these Italian Jewish literati, as an alternative to all-powerful Roman Catholic doctrine. “Ernesto” recounts a sixteen-year-old’s sexual encounters with two males, one an older work colleague and the second a contemporary, as well as a female prostitute. Aside from textual matters, “Ernesto” baffled many of Saba’s admirers, who were unaware that he was a gay man, since his poetry does not make this aspect of his life evident, whereas “Ernesto,” published posthumously, is explicitly homoerotic.
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