The senilità in question refers neither to the pathology of aging nor to precocious decrepitude. Rather, it suggests a special sensibility (some people are indeed born old), or, better still, a special kind of inertia, the inertia of the dreamer, a modern version of acedia, or ironic ennui — devoid, however, of the metaphysical dimension Baudelaire gave to the term. Senilità, in Svevo’s perspective, accompanies the tragic sense of existence; it represents a permanent premonition of life as disaster, a deep skepticism concerning one’s own potential, a ceaseless meditation on vulnerability and death, a wisdom that can be put to no use, an awareness of the unavoidable loss of that which one never possessed, a suffering sharpened while consciousness views itself as both object and subject.
- Victor Brombert Introduction to Italo Svevo’s novel, EMILIO’S CARNIVAL (aka SENILITÀ)