Zeno's Conscience

Zeno's Conscience

Title page of the second edition of La coscienza di Zeno (1925)
Author	Italo Svevo
Original title	La coscienza di Zeno
Published	1923

Zeno's Conscience (Italian: La coscienza di Zeno [la koʃˈʃɛntsa di dˈdzɛːno]) is a novel by Italian writer Italo Svevo. The main character is Zeno Cosini and the book is the fictional character's memoirs that he keeps at the insistence of his psychiatrist. Throughout the novel, we learn about his father, his business, his wife, and his tobacco habit. The novel was self-published in 1923. The original English translation was published under the title Confessions of Zeno.

The novel is presented as a diary written by Zeno (who claims that it is full of lies), published by his doctor. The doctor has left a little note in the beginning, saying he had Zeno write an autobiography to help him in his psychoanalysis. The doctor has published the work as revenge for Zeno discontinuing his visits.

The diary, however, does not follow the chronological order; instead, it is structured in large chapters, each one developing a particular theme (The smoke addiction, My father's death, History of my marriage and so on). Only the last chapter is a real diary, with pages related to single dates in the period of the First World War.

Zeno first writes about his cigarette addiction and cites the first times he smoked. In his first few paragraphs, he remembers his life as a child. One of his friends bought cigarettes for his brother and him. Soon, he steals money from his father to buy tobacco, but finally decides not to do this out of shame. Eventually, he starts to smoke his father's half-smoked cigars instead.

The problem with his "last cigarette" starts when he is twenty. He contracts a fever and his doctor tells him that to heal he must abstain from smoking. He decides smoking is bad for him and smokes his "last cigarette" so he can quit. However, this is not his last and he soon becomes plagued with "last cigarettes." He attempts to quit on days of important events in his life and soon obsessively attempts to quit on the basis of the harmony in the numbers of dates. Each time, the cigarette fails to truly be the last. He goes to doctors and asks friends to help him give up the habit, but to no avail. He even commits himself into a clinic, but escapes. The whole theme, while objectively serious, is often treated in a humorous way.