Elio Vittorini

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Elio Vittorini
Born(1908-07-23)23 July 1908
Syracuse, Sicily, Italy
Died12 February 1966(1966-02-12) (aged 57)
Milan, Italy
OccupationWriter, novelist, editor, politician
LanguageItalian

Elio Vittorini (Italian:

anti-fascist novel Conversations in Sicily, for which he was jailed when it was published in 1941. The first U.S. edition of the novel, published in 1949, included an introduction from Ernest Hemingway
, whose style influenced Vittorini and that novel in particular.

Vittorini was one of the most prominent writers of Italian Neorealism in literature. His own works of fiction, along with his translations of such American and English writers as

D.H. Lawrence, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway, had a considerable impact on the movement and on Italian post-war literature.[1][2][3]

Life

Vittorini was born in Syracuse, Sicily, and throughout his childhood moved around Sicily with his father, a railroad worker. Several times he ran away from home, culminating in his leaving Sicily for good in 1924. For a brief period, he found employment as a construction worker in the Julian March, after which he moved to Florence to work as a type corrector (a line of work he abandoned in 1934 due to lead poisoning). Around 1927 his work began to be published in literary journals. In many cases, separate editions of his novels and short stories from this period, such as The Red Carnation were not published until after World War II, due to fascist censorship. In 1937, he was expelled from the National Fascist Party for writing in support of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.

In 1939 he moved, this time to

L'Unita and weekly Il Politecnico .[4]

After the war, Vittorini chiefly concentrated on his work as editor, helping publish work by young Italians such as

Hungarian Uprising deeply shook his convictions in Communism and made him decide to largely abandon writing,[citation needed] leaving unfinished work which was to be published in unedited form posthumously. For the remainder of his life, Vittorini continued in his post as an editor. In 1959, he co-founded with Calvino Il Menabò, a cultural journal devoted to literature in the modern industrial age. He also ran as a candidate on an Italian Socialist Party list. He died in Milan in 1966. He was an atheist.[5]

Partial bibliography

He also translated the works of

and others into Italian.

References

  1. ^ https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elio-Vittorini
  2. ^ "Italian literature - Hermetic, Renaissance, Poetry | Britannica".
  3. ^ "Neorealism | Post-WWII Aesthetic & Social Realism | Britannica".
  4. .
  5. ^ Berti Arnoaldi, Francesco, L'amico cattolico, Edizioni Pendragon, 2005, p. 11

Sources

Biographies

  • Un padre e un figlio. Biografia famigliare di Elio Vittorini by Demetrio Vittorini. Bellinzona [Switzerland]: Salvioni, 2000. (Demetrio Vittorini is Elio Vittorini's son.)