Giorgio Bassani

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Giorgio Bassani (in the middle, 1974) with Luigi Silori, Walter Mauro, Roberto Bettega , Giuseppe Brunamontini

Giorgio Bassani (born March 4, 1916 in Bologna , † April 13, 2000 in Rome ) was an Italian writer and poet .

Life

Bassani's house on Via Cisterna del Follo in Ferrara

Giorgio Bassani grew up in an initially liberal Jewish family of doctors. His parents were Enrico and Dora Bassani. He had two siblings, Paolo and Jenny. Like many Jews in Ferrara , his father tended towards early fascism and in 1920, as one of 11 Jews, was one of the 222 first signatories of a founding declaration of the local Fascio (see also Italian Judaism during Fascism ). He spent his childhood and youth in Ferrara, where he took the Italian equivalent of the Abitur in 1934 at the Liceo classico Ludovico Ariosto . Despite an initial inclination towards music, he soon devoted himself entirely to literature .

In 1935 he began to study literature at the University of Bologna , which he completed as a commuter and four years later - despite the Italian racial laws passed in 1938 - was able to finish with a dissertation on Niccolò Tommaseo . In 1940 his first work, Una città di pianura , appeared under the pseudonym "Giacomo Marchi" in order to circumvent Mussolini's racial laws. After Jewish students and teachers were denied access to public schools, Bassani began teaching Italian and literature at a private Jewish emergency school in Ferrara. This was in operation until the beginning of the deportation of the Jewish population.

From then on, the young man of letters turned into a political activist in the anti-fascist underground. This engagement earned him a short prison sentence in 1943. In the same year he married and left Ferrara for Florence and soon after Rome , where he spent the rest of his life as a writer and publicist.

In 1945 he published the volume of poetry Storie dei poveri amanti e altri versi , and in 1947 a second Te lucis ante . In 1948 he found a job as an editor at the literary magazine Botteghe Oscure . In 1953 the band Passeggiata prima di cena appeared , in 1954 Gli ultimi anni di Clelia Trotti . In the same year he became editor of the magazine Paragone , where he met Pier Paolo Pasolini, among others . In 1956 Bassani published the Cinque storie Ferraresi , with which he won the Premio Strega of the same year.

In 1957 he became vice-president of the radio company Radiotelevisione Italiana and president of the cultural and environmental protection association Italia Nostra as well as lecturer in theater history at the Accademia nazionale di Arte Drammatica in Rome. The following year he published the novel Gli occhiali d'oro ("The glasses with the gold rim"), in which he described homosexuality as a cause of social ostracism. The book was made into a film in 1987 with Philippe Noiret and Rupert Everett . The subject of homosexuality, which is significant for Bassani in terms of life history, appears again in the short novel Behind the Door (1964).

In 1958, now an editor at the Feltrinelli publishing house , he succeeded in bringing out the novel The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa . A year later he published Le storie ferraresi , an expanded edition of his stories from Ferrara.

Bassani reached the peak of his literary fame in 1962 with the publication of the novel Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini ("The Gardens of the Finzi-Contini"), for which he received the Premio Viareggio in the same year . Formally and stylistically a masterpiece that bundles the moral, intellectual and political experiences of the author, the novel portrays the life of the rich Jewish bourgeoisie in Ferrara during the late fascism since the racial laws. Vittorio De Sica made the movie The Garden of the Finzi-Contini out of it , but Bassani always kept his distance.

It was followed in 1968 the publication of L'Airone ("The Heron") and 1972 L'odore del fieno ("The smell of hay"). In 1984 Bassani's collected poems appeared under the title In rima e senza and his collected essays and critical writings in the volume Di là del cuore .

In April 2000 Giorgio Bassani died in Rome after a long and serious illness. He is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Ferrara . The grave site was designed by Arnaldo Pomodoro .

Works

1st cycle of the "Novel of Ferrara"

  • Cinque storie ferraresi , 1956 (German Ferrareser stories , translated by Herbert Schlüter, Piper , Munich 1964; new edition 1985; new edition Wagenbach , Berlin 2007)
  • Gli occhiali d'oro , 1958 (German A doctor from Ferrara , translated by Herbert Schlüter, Piper, Munich 1960; new edition udT Die Brille mit dem Goldrand , Piper, Munich 1984; new edition Wagenbach, Berlin 2007)
  • Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini , 1962 (German: The gardens of the Finzi-Contini , translated by Herbert Schlüter, Piper, Munich 1963; new editions 1984, 1995, 2004; new edition Wagenbach, Berlin 2007)
  • Dietro la porta , 1964 (German behind the door , translated by Herbert Schlueter, Piper, Munich 1967, new edition 1986)
  • L'airone , 1968 (German The Heron , translated by Herbert Schlüter, Piper, Munich 1970; new edition Wagenbach 2007)
  • L'odore del fieno , 1972 ( Ger . The smell of hay , translated by Herbert Schlüter, Piper, Munich 1974)

2. Other works

  • Storie dei poveri amanti e altri versi , 1945 (poems)
  • La passeggiata prima di cena , 1953
  • Gli ultimi anni di Clelia Trotti , 1956
  • In gran segreto , 1978
  • In rima e senza , 1982 (collected poems, German selection: In an old Italian garden , selected and translated by Michael Marschall von Bieberstein , Piper, Munich 1991)
  • Di là del cuore , 1984 (collected essayistic works)
  • Memories of the Heart , ed. v. Eberhard Schmidt, 1991 (autobiographical texts and contributions by the editor)
Illustrated book

Honors

Filmography

Scripts

  • 1953: Tempi nostri - script for the 3rd episode
  • 1954: Longing ( Senso )
  • 1953: Dangerous Beauty ( La provinciale )
  • 1954: The woman from the river ( La donna del fiume )
  • 1955: Escape to the Dolomites ( Prigioniero della montagna )

Literary templates

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Matteo Provasi: Ferrara ebraica - una città nella città . No. 4 . G2 Editrice, Ferrara 2010, ISBN 978-88-89248-20-1 , pp. 94-121 .
  2. ↑ Anna Maria Quarzi: Una scuola nella guerra 1940-1945. La scuola media israelitica di via Vignatagliata, 79 . Ed .: AM Quarzi. Corbo Editore, Ferrara 1996, p. 257-309 .
  3. ↑ Honorary Members: Giorgio Bassani. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 5, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Bassani, Giorgio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian writer and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH March 4, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Bologna
DATE OF DEATH April 13, 2000
Place of death Rome