Giovanni Papini Biography and List of Works

Journalist, critic, poet, novelist, and self-taught intellectual, one of the most controversial Italian literary figures of the early and mid-20th century. In his works Papini depicts the collapse of tradition and the appearance of a new generation. He was first an anti-nationalist, then a staunch nationalist; first an agnostic, then a practising Christian. He wrote both a life of Christ and a history of the Devil. Papini published over eighty books on philosophy, theory and literary criticism, as well as novels and short stories.

"I did not accept reality. No words can express my disgust at the physical, human, rational world, which suppressed me and did not leave room and air enough for my restless wings."
(from Un uomo finito, 1912)

Giovanni Papini was born in Florence of lower middle class parents. From an early age he devoted himself to literature. He read widely from his grandfather's library and started to write an encyclopaedia at the age of 15. Although Papini adopted militant views, he was exempted from military service on grounds of health. In an essay from 1906 (Il Leonardo, August), he urged the establishment in Rome of a new world power, and the abandonment of the 'politics of meditation'.

At the age of 22 Papini's writing aspirations led him to contact other young writers and artists. He founded and managed with Giuseppe Prezzolini the influental Florentine magazine Leonardo (1903-07) and La Voce. It attempted to modernize Italian culture, introduced significant French, British, and American ideas, and attacked such traditionalist writers as D'Annunzio. In Leonardo Papini boldly argued that one must write badly, meaning that the artistic form comes secondary to the idea. Papini also collaborated in writing La Cultura Italiana (1906) and Vecchio e Nuovo Nazionalismo (1914). In the 1910s he joined the Futurist artistic movement, which admired the dynamic energy of modern machines, and founded the periodical Lacerba (1913) to further its aims. "... a new beauty... a roaring motorcar, which runs like a machine-gun, is more beautiful than the Winged Victory of Samothrace... We wish to glorify war... " (Marinetti in an article in Le Figaro). Later however Papini turned against the movement.

In his youth Papini was a severe critic of Christianity, but converted to Roman Catholism in 1920. Papini gained international fame with his religious novel STORIA DI CRISTO (1921). Its English translation, The Life of Christ, was a huge bestseller in 1923; along side such works as H.G. Well's The Outline of History and Sinclair Lewis's novel Babbitt. Among his other popular works is the autobiographical novel UN UOMO FINOTO (1912). In many of his short stories Papini himself is the main character. In one story the author meets himself as a young man whom he only vaguely remembers; in another he continues to live after his suicide in order to pay a minor debt.

"I am not a real man. I am not a man like others, a man of flesh and blood, a man born of woman. I did not come into this world like your fellow men. No one rocked me in my cradle, or watched over my growing years. I have not known the restlessness of adolescence, or the comfort of family ties. I am - and I will say this out loud though perhaps you may not want to believe me - I am but a figure in a dream. In me, Shakespeare's image has become literally and tragically exact: I am such stuff as dreams are made on! I exist because someone is dreaming of me, someone who is now asleep and dreaming and sees me act and live and move, and in this very moment is dreaming that I am saying these words."
(from 'The Sick Gentleman's Last Visit')

In the 1930s Papini supported Mussolini and became a member of the Italian Academy. His STORIA DELLA LETTERATURA ITALIANA (1933) was dedicated 'To the Duce, friend of poetry and poets'. When the Jews lost any potentially positive traits in Italy's popular literature of the 1930s, Papini developed a vision of a world Jewish conspiracy. In 1935 he was appointed as a professor at the University of Bologna. From 1938 he published the magazine La Rinascita. After WW II Papini founded Catholic review L'Ultima, with Silvano Gianelli and Adolfo Oxilia. Papini's reputation as an image breaker faded during his last years. He died in 1956 without much notice.

FUTURISM: An artistic movement, which began in Italy about 1909 and was founded by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944). Futurism rejected tradition and admired the energy, urbanism, militarism, and the speed of modern machines. Russian Futurism added to its Italian model social and political ideas. In rebellion against tradition, poets discarded grammar and syntax and used strings of words stripped of their original meaning. The influence of the movement ended by the time of Mayakovsky's death in 1930. - Note: Papini is mentioned in Henry Miller's book Tropic of Cancer and Carolyn Burke's biography of the radical English poet-painter Mina Loy, with whom Papini also had an illicit affair - See other Futurist writers: French poet Guillaume Apollinaire and Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.

IL CREPUSCOLO DEI FILOSOFI, (1906)