Ritratto d'artista: Ebe Cagli Seidenberg
Michael Lettieri, Rocco Mario Morano
Ebe Cagli Seidenberg (1915-2002), a.k.a. Bettina Postani, was a talented novelist who undeservedly ended up in the so-called “Great Library of Oblivion.” Forced to flee the poisonous atmosphere of the Fascist Regime due to her Jewish roots, she took refuge in the United States, where, in 1957, under the pseudonym Bettina Postani, she published her first novel, Before the Cock Crows, a self-translation from the original Italian. In 1984, and, subsequently, in 1999, the book was published in Italy under the new title L’Incantatore di serpenti and the author’s real name. The self-translation strategies and, above all, the theme of the “forced exile,” which is recurring in all of the author’s main novels, including Il Tempo dei Dioscuri, are examined in this work. The result is an extensive analysis of the personality, the psychology, the style, the depth found in the literary production of an author deserving greater critical attention.