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The Ethical Muse
of Franco Fortini
by Thomas E. Peterson
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Thomas Peterson’s study of the Italian poet Franco Fortini
(1917-1994) is the only critical analysis in English of one of
Italy’s most prominent 20th-century writers and thinkers. An
outspoken anti-fascist in the 1940s and a prominent political
writer of the Italian left until his death in 1994, he was
nevertheless undogmatic in his principles. The son of a Jewish
father and a Catholic mother, and an unorthodox Marxist (he never
joined the Italian Communist Party), Fortini is dialogic in his
thinking and art and always in search of the ethical. His poetry,
prophetic and allegorical, moves against the grain of the Italian
modernist (surrealist, irrationalist) avant-garde to identify a
history of oppression and terror.
Peterson’s approach is chronological. By a careful and
erudite analysis of each of the poet’s major works, he
traces Fortini’s development as a journalist, translator,
literary critic, and essayist--but always through the lens of
Fortini’s evolution as a poet. His close readings and
detailed comparisons of Fortini’s work with that of his
contemporaries (including Noventa, Pavese, Luzi, Zanzotto, Vittorini, Pasolini,
Montale, and Ungaretti) provide an excellent
overview of Italian poetry in the modern period, of interest to
the general reader of poetry, to the student and scholar of
Italian literature, and to anyone interested in the literary and
ideological vicissitudes of Italy in this last half-century.
Thomas E. Peterson is associate professor of
Italian at the University of Georgia and author of The
Paraphrase of an Imaginary Dialogue (1990 NEMLA Foreign
Language Award), and Alberto Moravia.
1997. 229 pp. 6 X 9.
Notes,
bibliography, index.
ISBN 0-8130-1479-4
Cloth, $59.95
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"His translations and insightful analysis open the door to further study of a recognized intellectual but somewhat neglected poet." --
South Atlantic Review
"Among the best works on Fortini’s poetry that I
have read in Italian or in English . . . a timely [and] . . .
much too long awaited study on one of Italy’s major
intellectuals and literary figures."--Rocco Capozzi,
University of Toronto
"This is--quite simply--the best study of Fortini that we
have."--Allen Mandelbaum, Wake Forest University
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