The journey of Silvestro in Vittorini's Conversazione in Sicilia follows the lineaments of heroic myth. Its sequence of quest, discovery, and rebirth has been associated with the lives of a string of heroes—Ulysses, Parsifal, Aeneas, Theseus—and may be justly considered to have escaped the narrow confines of topical Italian neorealism. Yet an aspect of the myth relates specifically and poignantly to Italian literature as a whole: this is the general lack of one powerful father-figure as a dynamic element in the plot…. [The] persona of the Gran Lombardo in Vittorini's novel … [functions] as a crucial link between Silvestro and a transient series of father-figures; and between Vittorini and Dante. (p. 70)

Silvestro's fatherlessness is paralleled by the plight of a society that must be rebegotten…. Vittorini stretches an arc from Silvestro to his ancestor (the maternal grandfather), thereby recreating the father. The effect is to trace his...