ABSTRACT
Born in Naples in 1950, Erri De Lúea is increasingly gaining an audience of public and critics1 as an author of 'extremist' translations from the Hebrew Bible (in his own definition), as an essayist, and particularly as a fiction writer, who is deeply committed to the ethics of his vocation, as a 'scrittore per passione e per vocazione e non per professione'.2 The same tension for an absolute that led him to join political activism in the Far Left Wing Party 'Lotta Continua' in the Seventies, continues in his commitment to pacifism and voluntary work and his interest in religious and moral matters from the standpoint of a professed non believer, and informs his literal and linear approach to translation (the Books of Exodus, Jonah, Ecclesiastes, Ruth, and the section of the Leviticus on the Jubilee), his minimalist essay writing (his short reflections collected in the volumes Ora prima', Pianoterra,
1 The main scholarly articles published on De Lúea to-date include: Monica
Baccelli, 'Dieu n'est plus le même', Quinzaine littéraire, 647 (1994), p. 12; Katia Migliori, 'Erri De Lúea, Aceto, arcobaleno, in Serge Vanvolsem, Franco Musarra, Bart van der Bossche (eds), / tempi del Rinnovamento, Atti del Convegno internazionale, Rinnovamento del códice narrativo in Italia dal 1945 al 7992, vol I, (Rome - Leuven: Bulzoni - Leuven University Press, 1995), pp. 641-7; Inge Lanslots, '11 silenzio in Erri De Lúea: spazio e tempo differiti', Narrativa, 10 (September 1996), 229-44; Myriam Swennen Ruthenberg, 'Erri De Lúea: il 'libro e la lingua', // Veltro, 1996, pp. 311-15; Ead., Trom water to dust: a dehydrating essay on Erri De Lúea', Differentia, I , 1-2 (Spring/Autumn 1997), 51-58; Ead., 'Written exam: a silent interview with Erri De Lúea', Gradiva, 7, 1 (1999), 51-62. Consider also the section in Filippo La Porta's chapter in La nuova narrativa italiana (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1995), pp. 77-9; Michèle Trecca, Parola d'autore (Lecce: Argo, 1995), pp. 106-11; and the article by Marco Teodonio, 'La scrittura di Erri De Lúea', Leñera dairItalia, 35 (1994), p. 11, and the many review articles, especially in Corriere délia Sera, La Stampa.
