AUTOBIOGRAFIA DI ALICE TOKLAS | 1986 | GERTRUDE STEIN | C. PAVESE

Autobiografia di Alice Toklas is a memoir by Gertrude Stein, written in 1933, told in the voice of her partner Alice B. Toklas. The narrator describes life in early-20th-century Paris, especially in the artistic-literary circles, with figures like Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Cocteau, etc. It blends memoir, social history, and literary portraiture, giving a vivid picture of the avant-garde, salon culture, artistic experimentation, and the complex interplay of personality, identity, friendship, and creativity. Stein uses irony, wit, and a somewhat playful style: though she writes “as” Toklas, her voice is unmistakably her own. The translation by Cesare Pavese introduces Stein’s style to a mid-20th-century Italian readership, maintaining much of her humorous understatement, her structural idiosyncrasies, and the blend of the personal with the cultural panorama.