Enrico Pea
Enrico Pea was an Italian writer born in 1881 in Lucca, Tuscany. His early life was marked by tragedy, including the loss of his family home and the death of his father, which forced him and his siblings to live apart under difficult circumstances. In 1896, due to a visual impairment that hindered his path to the priesthood, Pea immigrated to Egypt, where he initially took on various menial jobs before becoming a successful importer. He began his literary career in 1910 with the modernist work *Fole*, which explored themes of disconnection and violence. His play *Giuda* (Judas), depicting Judas Iscariot as a figure of social justice, faced backlash from the Catholic Church, leading Pea to renounce it and embrace Catholicism. His subsequent works, including plays and a trilogy of autobiographical novels, reflect his evolving focus on the dynamics of community, family, and faith against the backdrop of modern fragmentation. Pea's literature examines the tension between individualism and communal ties, and he passed away in 1953. Despite his contributions, he remains underrecognized in the canon of Italian literature.
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Subject Terms
Enrico Pea
Writer and playwright
- Born: 1881
- Birthplace: Lucca, Italy
- Died: 1953
Biography
Enrico Pea was born in 1881 in a rural town in the Tuscan province of Lucca, Italy. Pea’s childhood was punctuated by such tragic events as the loss of his home in a flood in 1885, shortly followed by the death of his father in a mill accident. As his mother was forced to take a job as a domestic worker, Pea and his siblings lived with different relatives, Pea living with an abusive uncle until he moved in with his maternal grandfather, who taught the boy how to read and write and the joy of storytelling.
Being nearly blind in one eye prevented Pea from joining the priesthood, which prompted him and his older brother to immigrate to Egypt in 1896, where he worked numerous menial jobs before becoming a relatively prosperous importer of wine and marble to Egypt from Italy. He married Aida Cacciagli in 1902, with whom he had three children. Discovering a tension that would remain throughout Pea’s life, he began to read anarchist and socialist literature, as well as rediscovering the Bible. In 1910, Pea published his first literary work, Fole, a modernist juxtaposition of short verse and prose portraying individuals disconnected from their communities through sexual and physical violence.
Pea’s interest in avant-garde subject matter led him to write the playGiuda (Judas) in 1918, interpreting Judas Iscariot as a heroic figure fighting political and social injustice. Although the secular public applauded the play, the Catholic Church fiercely attacked it, leading to Pea’s change of heart, as he later renounced the play and embraced Catholicism. Subsequently, he wrote the plays Rosa di Sion and Prime piogge d’ottobre in 1919, which reflect religious faith as an important way of reconnecting the individual to one’s communal and cultural traditions.
Pea began another major artistic period in his life in 1922 with the publication of Moscardino, the first of a trilogy, with the novels Il Volto Santo and Il servitore del Diavolo following. The novels are clearly autobiographical, both in their plots and themes. Following the upbringing of a young boy being raised by his grandfather and progressing to a young man living in Egypt, the novels reflect the influence of modernism through their lack of a linear plot, their episodic nature, and in their dealing with the alienated individual in modern society. Although showing the romantic allure of reveling in autonomous, individualistic, urban existence in the modern world, the trilogy ultimately upholds the significance of finding transcendent meaning within one’s family, community, and religious faith.
The themes of Pea’s life—community vs. the individual, transcendent meaning vs. modern fragmentation—continued through his later novels, although with less autobiographical tendencies. These latter novels often focus on the importance the family as a connection the past, community, and faith. He died in 1953, three months after the death of his wife, Aida. Pea has yet to find a secure place in the canon of Italian literature.