Hard Labor

A landmark translation of passionate, fiercely intelligent poetry about coming of age by one of the most influential Italian writers of the 20th Century.

Cesare Pavese’s 1936 collection of poems, Lavorare stanca, is increasingly regarded as one of the most astonishing and powerful books of twentieth-century poetry. William Arrowsmith’s translations, accompanied here by the original Italian lyrics, capture the spirit and complex vitality of Pavese’s voice. This edition also contains a thorough introduction to Pavese’s work, notes to individual poems, and two critical essays that Pavese wrote about Lavorare stanca, the book by which he hoped to be remembered. “Lavorare stanca,” Pavese once declared, “is a book that might have saved a generation.”