SOURCE: "The Smile of the Gods," in The Smile of the Gods: A Thematic Study of Cesare Pavese's Works, translated by Yvonne Freccero, Cornell, 1968, pp. 189-214.

In the following excerpt, Italian educator and author Biasin examines Dialogues with Leucò as an extension of Pavese himself suggesting that the theories of knowledge of self coinciding with destiny and death and the transforming of myth into destiny are the merging of Pavese' s own sufferings and anxieties with mankind's. The critic also compares Pavese's literary theories and themes in his writings to the work of other scholars.

The unresolved question of human destiny, with which both Among Women Only and The House on the Hill end, is the point of departure of Dialogues with Leucò, in which Pavese contemplates human destiny and imagines it in its mysterious origins and mythic manifestations. But it must be emphasized from the beginning that...