The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

“The area, really, is nothing but an immense, almost uninterrupted cemetery.”

While visiting the area, the narrator highlights a postwar irony: No matter where they travel, they are constantly reminded of the loss of life. This passage also evokes the quiet of the area and the fact that the cemetery is “uninterrupted” both visually and audibly, leaving the characters to ponder the cemetery in relative silence.

“In our history book the Etruscans are at the beginning, next to the Egyptians and the Jews. Tell me, Papà: who do you think were more ancient, the Etruscans or the Jews?”

By placing this question in the past tense, Giannina reveals a misconception that the Jews, like the Etruscans, belong to the ancient world and do not exist anymore. The tension from this misunderstanding is fueled by setting the prologue after the Holocaust. By introducing this question without ever fully correcting her, Bassani establishes the book’s tense and suspicious tone.

“Another, longer pause. At the end of it (we were already near the open space in front of the entrance to the necropolis, full of automobiles and buses), it was Giannina’s turn to impart the lesson.

‘But now, if you say that,’ she ventured softly, ‘you remind me that the Etruscans were also alive once, and so I’m fond of them, like everyone else.’

Our visit then to the necropolis, I recall, was completely affected by the extraordinary tenderness of this sentence. Giannina had prepared us to understand. It was she, the youngest, who somehow guided us.”

The kindness that Giannina offers to the group is one of tender acceptance of all people, which contrasts with the oppression and intolerance that Bassani represents in the text. The irony of the youngest person offering the greatest wisdom leaves the narrator pleasantly surprised and suggests that innocence is the antidote to the harm that has plagued Europe.