This is the text of a talk by Magris at the Almost Island Dialogues:Two, New Delhi, March, 2008
Translated from the Italian by Nick Carter
It is not easy to talk of oneself, of the self that writes. Every time I find myself in this position I feel like Scipio Slataper, a Triestine writer who at the beginning of this century, in 1912, in some way invented, created, the literary landscape of Trieste. Trieste, a city at the eastern border of Italy, now bordering on Slovenia. An Italian city which belonged for a long time to the Hapsburg Empire, a multinational Empire that included Germans, Italians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenians, Hungarians, Croats, and Rumanians. Trieste also has a Slovenian minority, resident for centuries, other communities like the Greek and the Serbians, and during its commercial boom in the eighteenth and nineteenth century assimilated many people from different countries of Central Europe. In most cases they became Italians and often passionate Italian patriots with German, Slavic, Greek, Armenian family names. Before the First World War the Italian “irridentisti” in Trieste wanted Trieste to be part of Italy. In 1912 Trieste still belonged to the Austrian Empire.