Giovanni Papini

Giovanni Papini
Papini in 1921
Born	(1881-01-09)9 January 1881 Florence, Italy
Died	8 July 1956(1956-07-08) (aged 75) Florence
Resting place	Cimitero delle Porte Sante
Pen name	Gian Falco
Occupation	Essayist journalist literary critic poet novelist
Period	1903–1956
Genre	Prose poetry, autobiography, travel literature, satire
Subject	Political philosophy, history of religion
Literary movement	Futurism Modernism
Notable works	A Man — Finished, Gog, The Story of Christ
Notable awards	Valdagno Prize (1951), Golden Quill Prize (1957)
Spouse	Giacinta Giovagnoli (1887–1958)
Children	2
Signature

Giovanni Papini (9 January 1881 – 8 July 1956) was an Italian journalist, essayist, novelist, short story writer, poet, literary critic, and philosopher. A controversial literary figure of the early and mid-twentieth century, he was the earliest and most enthusiastic representative and promoter of Italian pragmatism.^[1] Papini was admired for his writing style and engaged in heated polemics. Involved with avant-garde movements such as futurism and post-decadentism, he moved from one political and philosophical position to another, always dissatisfied and uneasy: he converted from anti-clericalism and atheism to Catholicism, and went from convinced interventionism – before 1915 – to an aversion to war. In the 1930s, after moving from individualism to conservatism, he finally became a fascist, while maintaining an aversion to Nazism.

As one of the founders of the journals Leonardo (1903) and Lacerba (1913), he conceived literature as "action" and gave his writings an oratory and irreverent tone. Though self-educated, he was an influential iconoclastic editor and writer, with a leading role in Italian futurism and the early literary movements of youth. Working in Florence, he actively participated in foreign literary philosophical and political movements such as the French intuitionism of Bergson and the Anglo-American pragmatism of Peirce and James. Promoting the development of Italian culture and life with an individualistic and dreamy conception of life and art, he acted as a spokesman for Roman Catholic religious beliefs.

Papini's literary success began with Il crepuscolo dei filosofi ("The Twilight of the Philosophers"), published in 1906, and his 1913 publication of his autobiographical novel Un uomo finito ("A finished man").

Due to his ideological choices, Papini's work was almost forgotten after his death,^[2] although it was later re-evaluated and appreciated again: in 1975, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges called him an "undeservedly forgotten" author.