Corrado Alvaro

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Corrado Alvaro

Corrado Alvaro (born April 15, 1895 in San Luca , Reggio Calabria province , † June 11, 1956 in Rome ) was an Italian writer and journalist . In his realistically oriented prose, he denounced the social and political burdens of the poor people, especially in his Calabrian homeland. His novel Quasi una vita was awarded the Premio Strega in 1951 .

life and work

Corrado Alvaro was born as the first of six children in 1895 in the small village of San Luca at the foot of the Calabrian mountain range Aspromonte on the Ionian coast. His father Antonio was a primary school teacher, his mother Antonia Giampaolo came from a family of small owners. Even as a high school student he showed a keen interest in local research and in 1912 published the Prospekt Polsi, nell'arte, nella leggenda, e nella storia (The Madonna of Polsi in Art, Legend and History).

From 1915 he took part in the First World War with the rank of lieutenant and was assigned to the 123rd Infantry Regiment in Florence . After a serious hand injury on Monte Sei Busi near Redipuglia on the Isonzo Front in November 1915, for which he was awarded the silver medal of bravery and which troubled him for the rest of his life, he followed in September 1916 after a long stay in military hospitals Rome , where he worked for the newspaper Il Resto del Carlino . Soon afterwards he moved to Bologna as editor of the newspaper and married Laura Babini there on April 8, 1918.

In 1919 he moved to the Corriere della Sera in Milan and completed his philology degree at the University of Milan. From 1921 he worked as a correspondent in Paris for Giovanni Amendola's newspaper Il Mondo and published his first novel L'uomo nel labirinto in sequels in the Spettatore in 1922 . In 1925 he was one of the signatories of the manifesto of anti-fascist intellectuals initiated by Benedetto Croce . He wrote for several daily newspapers and magazines, so v. a. for Turin’s La Stampa , which also contained the first pages of his most important work, the Gente collection of stories in Aspromonte . Gente in Aspromonte (published as a volume in 1930) is considered a pioneering work for an independent southern Italian literature and an early forerunner of Italian neorealism .

Further foreign assignments as a journalist took Alvaro to Berlin from 1928 to 1930, to Turkey in 1931 and to Russia in 1935 , where he a. a. wrote some articles about the October Revolution of 1917 for Leo Longanesi's magazine Omnibus . At the same time he also contributed to the fascist magazine Popolo di Roma without being a member of the Partito Nazionale Fascista .

In January 1941 he returned to San Luca for the last time for the funeral of his father, while he visited his mother several times in Caraffa del Bianco , where his brother Massimo was the village pastor. After the fall of Mussolini , he took over the management of the Popolo di Roma from July to September 1943 - during the 45 days of the Badoglio government - and fled to Chieti from Rome under the code name Guido Giorgi during the German occupation .

Together with Libero Bigiaretti and Francesco Jovine , he founded the Sindacato Nazionale Scrittori writers' union in 1945 , of which he was secretary until his death. In 1947 he took over the management of the Neapolitan magazine Risorgimento for a short time , but as a supporter of the left he soon gave up this task due to political differences with the employees of the market - liberal newspaper.

When his novel Quasi una vita received an award in 1951, Alvaro prevailed against strong competitors: Carlo Levi , Alberto Moravia , Mario Soldati and Domenico Rea . As in Gente in Aspromonte , he repeatedly expressed the hopeless, unchangeable poverty in his Calabrian homeland. B. in the paradigmatic narrative Un fatto di cronaca (1955), which describes the absurd and voyeuristic documentation mania of a group of journalists in a poor district in the form of a report .

Alvaro had been suffering from a tumor since 1954 , which led to his death on June 11, 1956. He left behind some unfinished works, including the novels Belmoro , Mastrangelina and Tutto è accaduto, edited posthumously by Arnaldo Frateili . His handwritten legacy is now kept in his home village of San Luca by the Fondazione Corrado Alvaro , which was set up specifically to look after his literary heritage. Corrado Alvaro is buried in the Vallerano cemetery near Viterbo , where he bought a large house in the country in 1939.

Works

Original editions

  • Polsi, nell'arte, nella leggenda, e nella storia . Gerace: Serafino, 1912 (Reggio Calabria reissue: Iiriti Editore, 2005)
  • Poetry grigioverdi . Rome: Lux, 1917
  • La siepe e l'orto . Florence: Vallecchi, 1920
  • L'uomo nel labirinto . Milan: Alpes, 1926
  • L'amata alla finestra . Turin: Buratti, 1929
  • Vent'anni . Milan: Treves, 1930
  • Gente in Aspromonte . Florence: Le Monnier, 1930; awarded the prize of the daily La Stampa (1931)
  • L'uomo è forte . Milan: Bompiani, 1938; awarded the literary prize of the Accademia d'Italia (1940)
  • Incontri d'amore . Milan: Bompiani, 1940
  • L'età breve . Milan: Bompiani, 1946; first novel in the cycle Memorie del mondo sommerso
  • Quasi una vita. Giornale di uno scrittore . Milan: Bompiani, 1950; awarded the Premio Strega (1951)
  • Il nostro tempo e la speranza. Saggi di vita contemporanea . Milan: Bompiani, 1952
  • Un fatto di cronaca. Settantacinque racconti . Milan: Bompiani, 1955
  • Colore di Berlino . Viaggio in Germania (Ed .: Anne-Christine Faitrop-Porta). Reggio Calabria: Falzea, 2001
  • Il mare . Milano: 1934 (new edition Ilisso Edizioni, 2006)

German translations

  • Gente in Aspromonte and other short stories . Heidelberg: Groos, 1946
  • Italian travel book . Ebenhausen near Munich: Langewiesche-Brandt, 1956
  • Memories of the sunken world . Vol. 1: Time of the lie . Berlin: People and World, 1970
  • Memories of the sunken world . Vol. 2: The smile of women . Berlin: People and World, 1971
  • Memories of the sunken world . Vol. 3: Roman salons . Berlin: People and World, 1972
  • The Shepherds of Aspromonte . Berlin: Henssel, 1985 (3rd edition)

literature

  • Omaggio a Corrado Alvaro (Ed .: Carlo Bernari ). Rome: SA Poligrafica, 1957
  • Ferdinando Virdia:  ALVARO, Corrado. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 2:  Albicante – Ammannati. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1960.
  • Walter Mauro: Invito alla lettura di Corrado Alvaro . Milan: Mursia, 1973
  • Corrado Alvaro (Ed .: Aristide Bava). Chiaravalle Centrale: Effe Emme, 1976
  • Matilde M. Fava: Complessità di uno scrittore . New York: New York Univ., 1981
  • Corrado Alvaro (Ed .: Giuseppe Gigliozzi). Rome: Lucarini, 1981
  • Paola Del Rosso: Come leggere “Gente in Aspromonte” by Corrado Alvaro . Milan: Mursia, 1994
  • Luigi Reina: Corrado Alvaro . Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 1994

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ La Calabria e la Grande Guerra: 1914-1918 Corrado Alvaro. In: movio.beniculturali.it. Retrieved January 1, 2020 (Italian).
  2. ^ Biografia di Corrado Alvaro. In: fondazionecorradoalvaro.it. Retrieved January 1, 2020 (Italian).
personal data
SURNAME Alvaro, Corrado
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH San Luca (Reggio Calabria)
DATE OF DEATH June 11, 1956
Place of death Rome