I misteriosi anni Venti. Lalla Romano e la Torino post-gobettiana (*)

This essay proposes a reinterpretation of Lalla Romano’s novel, Una giovinezza inventata [An Invented Youth], published by Einaudi in 1979, depicting the author’s university experience in Turin in the second half of the 1920s. Weaving together literary studies along with historical accounts and surveys in art history, the essay reconstructs a unique period in time, one first spawned by Gramsci and to an even greater extent by Gobetti, which witnessed figures born and raised in Turin go on to play a decisive role in the political and cultural future of the country. Drawing from the historiographical debate on Turinese culture between the two World Wars by such scholars as Norberto Bobbio and Angelo d’Orsi, this essay incorporates textual analysis and examines historical and philological findings at work within the novel in order to reconstruct the unique context within which the pages of Una giovinezza inventata unfold - that mysterious antifascist Turinese setting of the 1920s, surprisingly unique owing to its lack of linearity. There emerges a portrait of various women (e.g. the young women of Casorati’s circle) and men (among whom Venturi, Soldati and Antonicelli) whom the narrative voice evokes in her recollections.