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- Published: 30 May 2010
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- Author: JPRadd
Name | Giovanni Papini |
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Birthdate | January 09, 1881 |
Birthplace | Florence |
Deathdate | July 08, 1956 |
Deathplace | Florence |
Occupation | essayist, journalist, literary critic, poet, novelist |
Nationality | Italian |
Period | 1903–1956 |
Genre | prose poetry, fantasy, autobiography, travel literature, satire |
Subject | political philosophy, history of religion |
Movement | FuturismModernism |
Influences | Enrico Corradini |
Influenced | Mircea Eliade, Mina Loy, Scipio Slataper |
Trained as a schoolteacher, he taught for a few years after 1899, then became a librarian. The literary life attracted Papini, who founded the magazine Il Leonardo, together with Giuseppe Prezzolini, in 1903, then joined Enrico Corradini's group as co-editor of Il Regno. He started publishing short-stories and essays: in 1903, Il tragico quotidiano ("The Tragic Everyday"), in 1907 Il pilota cieco ("The Blind Pilot") and Il crepuscolo dei filosofi ("The Twilight of the Philosophers"). The latter constituted a polemic with established and diverse intellectual figures, such as Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche - Papini proclaimed to the death of philosophers and the demolition of thinking itself. He briefly flirted with Futurism and other violent and liberating forms of Modernism (Papini is the character in several poems of the period written by Mina Loy).
Furthermore, Papini sought to create scandal by speculating that Jesus and John the Apostle had a homosexual relationship.
He broke off with Prezzolini, co-editor of Anima, and the paper ceased to appear. Papini founded Lacerba, published between 1913 and 1915 (right before Italy's entry into World War I). In 1912, he published his best-known work, the autobiography Un uomo finito (tr.: "The Failure").
His 1915 collection of prose poetry Cento pagine di poesia, followed by Buffonate and Maschilità, and the 1916 Stroncature - Papini faced Giovanni Boccaccio, William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but also contemporaries such as Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile, and less prominent disciples of Gabriele D'Annunzio. He published verse in 1917, grouped under the title Opera prima. In 1921, Papini announced his newly-found Roman Catholicism, publishing the international bestseller essay Storia di Cristo ("Life of Christ").
He moved towards Fascism, and his beliefs earned him a teaching position at the University of Bologna in 1935 (although his studies only qualified him for primary school teaching); the Fascist authorities confirmed Papini's "impeccable reputation" through the appointment. In 1937, Papini published the only volume of his History of Italian Literature, which he dedicated to Benito Mussolini: "to Il Duce, friend of poetry and of the poets", being awarded top positions in academia, especially in the study of Italian Renaissance. An Antisemite, he believed in an international plot of Jews, applauding the racial discrimination laws enforced by Mussolini in 1938. When the Fascist regime crumbled (1943), Papini entered the Franciscan convent in La Verna.
Largely discredited at the end of World War II, he was defended by the Catholic political right. His work concentrated on different subjects, including a biography of Michelangelo, while he continued to publish dark and tragic essays. He collaborated with Corriere della Sera, contributing articles that were published as a volume after his death.
According to The Spectator, NATO allegedly encouraged Papini, in 1951, to publish a fake interview with Pablo Picasso, to dramatically undercut his pro-Communist image. In 1962, the artist asked his biographer Pierre Daix, to expose the fake interview, which he did in Les Lettres Françaises.
Category:1881 births Category:1956 deaths Category:People from Florence Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism from atheism or agnosticism Category:Italian biographers Category:Italian essayists Category:Italian fascists Category:Italian Futurism Category:Italian journalists Category:Italian literary critics Category:Italian magazine founders Category:Italian memoirists Category:Italian poets Category:Italian Roman Catholics Category:Franciscans Category:Futurist writers Category:Italian Nationalist Association Category:Roman Catholic writers
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