Ernesto

An NYRB Classics Original

Ernesto is a classic of gay literature, a tender, complex, and poignant tale of sexual awakening by one of Italy's most famous and beloved poets. Ernesto is a sixteen-year-old boy from an educated family who lives alone with his mother in Trieste. His mother is eager for him to get ahead in the world and has asked a local businessman to give him some workplace experience by employing him in his warehouse. One day a workingman makes advances to Ernesto, who responds with willing curiosity. A month of trysts ensues before the boy begins to tire of the relationship. He starts to avoid the unhappy man and finally escapes him altogether by engineering his own dismissal from the firm. And yet his experience has changed him, and as Umberto Saba's unfinished, autobiographical story breaks off, Ernesto has struck up a new, increasingly romantic attachment to a boy his own age.
Ernesto combines remarkable honesty with delicate and exact psychological insight. Saba not only describes Ernesto's feelings, restlessness, and passion but also, in witty, sardonic, and emotion-laden asides, comments and reflects on them from the more knowing but also rueful point of view of the older man he became.

Umberto Saba (1883–1957) was a poet known for his autobiographical verse. He was raised in Trieste and established his reputation as a poet with the publication of Il canzoniere (The Songbook) in 1921. He also wrote nonfiction, including Storia e cronistoria del canzoniere (History and Chronicle of the Songbook).