Tommaso Landolfi (9 August 1908 – 8 July 1979) was an Italian writer, translator and literary critic. His numerous

grotesque Since at least the 18th century (in French and German, as well as English), grotesque has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, mysterious, magnificent, fantastic, hideous, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, and thus ...

tales and novels, sometimes on the border of

speculative fiction Speculative fiction is an umbrella term, umbrella genre of fiction that encompasses all the subgenres that depart from Realism (arts), realism, or strictly imitating everyday reality, instead presenting fantastical, supernatural, futuristic, or ...

, science fiction and realism, place him in a unique and unorthodox position among Italian writers. He won a number of awards, including the prestigious

Strega Prize The Strega Prize ( ) is the most important Italian literary award. It has been awarded annually since 1947 for the best work of prose fiction written in the Italian language by an author of any nationality and first published between 1 March of t ...

Life

He was born in

Pico Pico may refer to: Places The Moon * Mons Pico, a lunar mountain in the northern part of the Mare Imbrium basin Portugal * Pico, a civil parish in the municipality of Vila Verde * Pico da Pedra, a civil parish in the municipality of Ribe ...

, now in the

province of Frosinone The province of Frosinone () is a province in the Lazio region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Frosinone. It has an area of and a total population of 493,605 (2016). The province contains 91 ''comuni'' (: ''comune''), listed in the ...

(then in province of Terra di Lavoro, the roughly modern-day

province of Caserta The province of Caserta () is a province in the Campania region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Caserta, situated about by road north of Naples. The province has an area of , and a population of 907,442. The Palace of Caserta is located nea ...

), to a noble family. In 1932, he graduated in Russian language and literature at the

University of Florence The University of Florence ( Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Firenze'') (in acronym UNIFI) is an Italian public research university located in Florence, Italy. It comprises 12 schools and has around 50,000 students enrolled. History The f ...

. During his time in Florence, he worked on various magazines including ''Letteratura'' and ''Campo di Marte''. He later worked on other magazines and newspapers including ''Oggi'', ''Il Mondo'' and ''

Corriere della Sera (; ) is an Italian daily newspaper published in Milan with an average circulation of 246,278 copies in May 2023. First published on 5 March 1876, is one of Italy's oldest newspapers and is Italy's most read newspaper. Its masthead has remain ...

''. He focused his translation efforts on Russian and German authors such as

Fyodor Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature, and many of his works are considered highly influent ...

Aleksandr Pushkin Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin () was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era.Basker, Michael. Pushkin and Romanticism. In Ferber, Michael, ed., ''A Companion to European Romanticism''. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. He is consid ...

Nikolai Gogol Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; ; (; () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright of Ukrainian origin. Gogol used the Grotesque#In literature, grotesque in his writings, for example, in his works "The Nose (Gogol short story), ...

and

Hugo von Hofmannsthal Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal (; 1 February 1874 – 15 July 1929) was an Austrian novelist, libretto, librettist, Poetry, poet, Playwdramatist, narrator, and essayist. Early life Hofmannsthal was born in Landstraße, Vienna, th ...

. He spent much of his life in Rome and at the family home at Pico, as well as the gaming houses of

Sanremo Sanremo, also spelled San Remo in English and formerly in Italian, is a (municipality) on the Mediterranean coast of Liguria, in northwestern Italy. Founded in Roman times, it has a population of 55,000, and is known as a tourist destination ...

and

Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...

, where he was an avid gambler. He died in Rome. He was an atheist.

Writings

Landolfi is a writer of rare stylistic power. His originality lies principally in his ability to incorporate his wide knowledge of European literature into his Italian inheritance, with a poet's (and translator's) close concern with language. His work reveals the clear influence of writers such as

Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe (; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales involving mystery and the macabre. He is widely re ...

and

Gogol Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; ; (; () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright of Ukrainian origin. Gogol used the grotesque in his writings, for example, in his works " The Nose", " Viy", "The Overcoat", and " Nevsky Prosp ...

Susan Sontag Susan Lee Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, critic, and public intellectual. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on "Camp", Notes on 'Ca ...

saw him as something of a cross between

Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo ( ; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known w ...

and

Isak Dinesen Baroness Karen Christentze von Blixen-Finecke (born Dinesen; 17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962) was a Danish author who wrote in Danish and English. She is also known under her pen names Isak Dinesen, used in English-speaking countries; Ta ...

, but thought him probably better than either. Landolfi constantly strives to enrich his own style, drawing on obscure or even archaic formulations and at times creating his own languages. In an almost Pirandellian fashion, Landolfi is constantly haunted by the unresolved conflict between art and life.''Cassell Dictionary of Italian Literature'', 1996, p.309 He wrote a number of short stories and novels, poetry and theatrical pieces, the early work being in general the most significant, particularly the works of his so-called 'youthful maturity', the collection of short stories ''Dialogo dei massimi sistemi'' (1937). '' La pietra lunare'' (1939), his first novel, opens on a grotesque and almost hallucinatory scene of 'provincial life' from which the main character, Giovancarlo, is possessed by Gurù, the goat-girl, who allures him through a realm of phantasmagorical horror into the bowels of the earth and an erotic initiation. The world seems divided between two opposing realities, between the misery of everyday life and another strange and marvellous world. '' Racconto d'autunno'' (1947) is his best-known work outside Italy. Its story is, in more ways than one, a metaphor for an end to the old and the beginning of the new. While ghosts, terror and war dominate the landscape, and a gothic horror story is the main plot, there is nonetheless a sense that this book is a lamentation on an epoch that came to a violent end during World War II. ''Cancroregina'' (1950) is a strange science-fiction story, in the form of a diary written by a man who is stuck in orbit in outer space and cannot return to Earth. ''A caso'', a collection of short stories, won him the

in 1975. In 1996 his daughter Idolina founded the ''Centro Studi Landolfiani''.

Selected works

* ''Dialogo dei massimi sistemi'' (1937) * '' La pietra lunare'' (1939) * ''II mar delle blatte e altre storie'' (1939) * '' Racconto d'autunno'', trans. Joachim Neugroschel (''An Autumn Story'', Eridanos Press, 1989) * ''Cancroregina'', trans. Raymond Rosenthal (''Cancerqueen'' The Dial Press, 1971) * ''Le due zittelle'' (1952) * ''La bière du pêcheur'' (1953) * ''Ombre'' (1954) * ''Rien va'' (1963) * '' Mano rubata'' (1964) * ''Des mois'' (1967) * ''A caso'' (1975) There have been three collections of his short stories in English translation: ''Gogol’s Wife and Other Stories'', trans. Raymond Rosenthal et al. (New Directions, 1963); ''Cancerqueen and Other Stories'', trans. Raymond Rosenthal (Dial Press, 1971); and ''Words in Commotion and Other Stories'', Intro.

Italo Calvino Italo Calvino (, ; ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian novelist and short story writer. His best-known works include the ''Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the '' Cosm ...

, trans. Kathrine Jason (Viking, 1986). The majority of his work is in print, published by Adelphi under the editorship of Landolfi's daughter.

Life

Writings

Selected works

References

Further reading