PREFACE
Beryl De Zoete translation
I am the doctor who is sometimes spoken of in rather unflattering terms in this novel. Anyone familiar with psycho-analysis will know to what he should attribute my patient’s hostility.
About psycho-analysis I shall here say nothing, for there is quite enough about it elsewhere in this book. I must apologise for having persuaded my patient to write his autobiography. Students of psycho-analysis will turn up their noses at such an unorthodox proceeding. But he was old and I hoped that in the effort of recalling his past he would bring it to life again, and that the writing of his autobiography would be a good preparation for the treatment. And I still think my idea was a good one, for it gave me some quite unexpected results, which would have been better still if the patient had not suddenly thrown up his cure just at the most interesting point, thus cheating me of the fruits of my long and patient analysis of these memoirs.
I take my revenge by publishing them, and I hope he will be duly annoyed. I am quite ready, however, to share the financial spoils with him on condition that he resumes his treatment. He seemed to feel intense curiosity about himself. But he little knows what surprises lie in wait for him, if someone were to set about analysing the mass of truths and falsehoods which he has collected here.
Dr. S.
ITALO SVEVO CONFESSIONS OF ZENO TRANSLATED BY BERYL DE ZOETE With an Essay on Svevo by Renato Poggioli THE MODERN READERS SERIES A NEW DIRECTIONS BOOK
Copyright 1930 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. New Directions Books Are Published by James Laughlin NEW YORK OFFICE—500 FIFTH AVENUE