Italo Alighiero Chiusano
Encyclopedia
Italo Alighiero Chiusano (10 June 1926 - 15 February 1995) was an Italian independent writer, literary critic, Germanist, literary historian, essayist, author of dramas, and journalist.
Chiusano authored several television screenplays.
, a German
territory that became part of Poland
after the Second World War. However, his origin was Italian
: Chiusano's father was a diplomat from Pinerolo
and his mother was from Turin
.
Chiusano's intellectual formation was heavily influenced by the German language
; he studied and wrote literary criticism of German literature
.
He wrote articles for the Italian newspapers La Stampa
and L'Osservatore Romano
. In the newspaper La Repubblica
he published a series of articles on famous authors of the German school. These articles discussed the work of Thomas Bernhard
, Heinrich Böll
(whose religiosity and anti-militarism was a common feature, and on whom he wrote a biography in 1974), Goethe, Schiller, Kleist
, Theodor Fontane
, Musil
, Schnitzler
, Mann
, Dürrenmatt
, and many others.
Chiusano had a Catholic
education (he was defined by Vittorio Messori
"open minded Christian"), and was fluent in German
, French
, English
, Spanish
and Portoguese
. He spent his childhood and youth traveling throughout Europe
and Brazil
(Ajaccio
, Stuttgart
, Rotterdam
, São Paulo
were some of the cities where he lived).
He attended high school in Brazil
and in 1948 he graduated in law in Rome
. In the early 1950s he worked as a journalist, translator, and author of dramas for radio.
In 1964 he married Leyla Givonetti, with whom he had a son, Mattia, and a daughter, Agata.
As a writer he possessed a dry and incisive style. His historical novel L'ordalia
, set in Medieval times, was a finalist for the 1979 Campiello prize
. Among his other major works of fiction are: La prova dei sentimenti (1966), Inchiesta sul mio amore (1972), L'ordalia
(1979), set in Italy during the lives of Arduin
and Otto III
, La derrota (1982), Il vizio del gambero (1986), Konradin (1990, a portrait of Conradin
) and Eroi di vetro (1989).
As essayist and literary critic he was the author in 1976 of a history of modern German theater and, in 1981, a Life of Goethe. For the theater he wrote Le notti di Verna (1981) and Il Sacrilegio (1982).
Furthermore, he was the author of Literatur, published in 1984 and containing almost two hundred articles devoted to his beloved German literature
, and Altre lune (1987), a collection of articles on German, British, Russian, Spanish, and Latin American writers
in addition to specific pages on two Italian poets, Mario Luzi
and Giorgio Caproni
.
In the 1970s and 1980s he was co-writer of some fictions broadcast by RAI
(Italian state television), inspired from famous authors and dedicated to great literary characters or themes:
Chiusano died at Frascati in 1995.
Chiusano authored several television screenplays.
Biography and works
Chiusano was born at Wrocław, in the SilesiaSilesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
, a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
territory that became part of Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
after the Second World War. However, his origin was Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
: Chiusano's father was a diplomat from Pinerolo
Pinerolo
Pinerolo is a town and comune in north-western Italy, 40 kilometres southwest of Turin on the river Chisone.-History:In the Middle Ages, the town of Pinerolo was one of the main crossroads in Italy, and was therefore one of the principal fortresses of the dukes of Savoy. Its military importance...
and his mother was from Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
.
Chiusano's intellectual formation was heavily influenced by the German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
; he studied and wrote literary criticism of German literature
German literature
German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German part of Switzerland, and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there...
.
He wrote articles for the Italian newspapers La Stampa
La Stampa
La Stampa is one of the best-known, most influential and most widely sold Italian daily newspapers. Published in Turin, it is distributed in Italy and other European nations. The current owner is the Fiat Group.-History:...
and L'Osservatore Romano
L'Osservatore Romano
L'Osservatore Romano is the "semi-official" newspaper of the Holy See. It covers all the Pope's public activities, publishes editorials by important churchmen, and runs official documents after being released...
. In the newspaper La Repubblica
La Repubblica
la Repubblica is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper. Founded in 1976 in Rome by the journalist Eugenio Scalfari, as of 2008 is the second largest circulation newspaper, behind the Corriere della Sera.-Foundation:...
he published a series of articles on famous authors of the German school. These articles discussed the work of Thomas Bernhard
Thomas Bernhard
Thomas Bernhard was an Austrian novelist, playwright and poet. Bernhard, whose body of work has been called "the most significant literary achievement since World War II," is widely considered to be one of the most important German-speaking authors of the postwar era.- Life :Thomas Bernhard was...
, Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Theodor Böll was one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers. Böll was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1967 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.- Biography :...
(whose religiosity and anti-militarism was a common feature, and on whom he wrote a biography in 1974), Goethe, Schiller, Kleist
Heinrich von Kleist
Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist was a poet, dramatist, novelist and short story writer. The Kleist Prize, a prestigious prize for German literature, is named after him.- Life :...
, Theodor Fontane
Theodor Fontane
Theodor Fontane was a German novelist and poet, regarded by many as the most important 19th-century German-language realist writer.-Youth:Fontane was born in Neuruppin into a Huguenot family. At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to an apothecary, his father's profession. He became an...
, Musil
Robert Musil
Robert Musil was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels...
, Schnitzler
Arthur Schnitzler
Dr. Arthur Schnitzler was an Austrian author and dramatist.- Biography :Arthur Schnitzler, son of a prominent Hungarian-Jewish laryngologist Johann Schnitzler and Luise Markbreiter , was born in Praterstraße 16, Leopoldstadt, Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian...
, Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
, Dürrenmatt
Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Friedrich Dürrenmatt was a Swiss author and dramatist. He was a proponent of epic theatre whose plays reflected the recent experiences of World War II. The politically active author's work included avant-garde dramas, philosophically deep crime novels, and often macabre satire...
, and many others.
Chiusano had a Catholic
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
education (he was defined by Vittorio Messori
Vittorio Messori
Vittorio Messori is an Italian journalist and writer. According to Sandro Magister, a Vaticanist, he is the "most translated Catholic writer in the world."-Life:...
"open minded Christian"), and was fluent in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
and Portoguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
. He spent his childhood and youth traveling throughout Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
(Ajaccio
Ajaccio
Ajaccio , is a commune on the island of Corsica in France. It is the capital and largest city of the region of Corsica and the prefecture of the department of Corse-du-Sud....
, Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
, Rotterdam
Rotterdam
Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...
, São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
were some of the cities where he lived).
He attended high school in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
and in 1948 he graduated in law in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. In the early 1950s he worked as a journalist, translator, and author of dramas for radio.
In 1964 he married Leyla Givonetti, with whom he had a son, Mattia, and a daughter, Agata.
As a writer he possessed a dry and incisive style. His historical novel L'ordalia
L'ordalia
L′ordalia, is the third novel by Italo Alighiero Chiusano, published in 1979 . The title recalls the ordeal, a judicial practice by which, during Middle Ages, the guilt or innocence of the accused was determined by subjecting them to a unpleasant, usually dangerous experience.-Theme:Runo, a young...
, set in Medieval times, was a finalist for the 1979 Campiello prize
Premio Campiello
The Premio Campiello is an annual Italian literary prize.A Jury of Literary Experts identifies books published during the year and, in a public hearing, selects five of those as finalists. These books are called il Premio Selezione Campiello...
. Among his other major works of fiction are: La prova dei sentimenti (1966), Inchiesta sul mio amore (1972), L'ordalia
L'ordalia
L′ordalia, is the third novel by Italo Alighiero Chiusano, published in 1979 . The title recalls the ordeal, a judicial practice by which, during Middle Ages, the guilt or innocence of the accused was determined by subjecting them to a unpleasant, usually dangerous experience.-Theme:Runo, a young...
(1979), set in Italy during the lives of Arduin
Arduin of Italy
Arduin of Ivrea was Margrave of Ivrea and King of Italy. He was the son of Dado, Count of Pombia. Arduin succeeded to the northern Italian Margraviate of Ivrea in 990 on dubious grounds. He was excommunicated for the murder of the Bishop of Vercelli in 997.He was made King of Italy after the death...
and Otto III
Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor
Otto III , a King of Germany, was the fourth ruler of the Saxon or Ottonian dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire. He was elected King in 983 on the death of his father Otto II and was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 996.-Early reign:...
, La derrota (1982), Il vizio del gambero (1986), Konradin (1990, a portrait of Conradin
Conradin
Conrad , called the Younger or the Boy, but usually known by the diminutive Conradin , was the Duke of Swabia , King of Jerusalem , and King of Sicily .-Early childhood:Conradin was born in Wolfstein, Bavaria, to Conrad...
) and Eroi di vetro (1989).
As essayist and literary critic he was the author in 1976 of a history of modern German theater and, in 1981, a Life of Goethe. For the theater he wrote Le notti di Verna (1981) and Il Sacrilegio (1982).
Furthermore, he was the author of Literatur, published in 1984 and containing almost two hundred articles devoted to his beloved German literature
German literature
German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German part of Switzerland, and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there...
, and Altre lune (1987), a collection of articles on German, British, Russian, Spanish, and Latin American writers
Latin American writers
Some of the most important writers from Latin America and the Caribbean, organized by cultural region and nationality. The focus is on Latin American literature.-Bolivia:* Alcides Arguedas , historian* Matilde Casazola...
in addition to specific pages on two Italian poets, Mario Luzi
Mario Luzi
- Biography:Mario Luzi was born in Castello, near Sesto Fiorentino; his parents, Ciro Luzi and Margherita Papini hailed from Samprugnano and he spent his youth in Castello, where he started his primary school...
and Giorgio Caproni
Giorgio Caproni
Giorgio Caproni was an Italian poet, literary critic and translator, especially from the French.Caproni left Livorno at the age of ten to complete his primary studies in Genoa, where he studied first music, then literature, and where he wrote his first poems...
.
In the 1970s and 1980s he was co-writer of some fictions broadcast by RAI
RAI
RAI — Radiotelevisione italiana S.p.A. known until 1954 as Radio Audizioni Italiane, is the Italian state owned public service broadcaster controlled by the Ministry of Economic Development. Rai is the biggest television company in Italy...
(Italian state television), inspired from famous authors and dedicated to great literary characters or themes:
- I BuddenbroockBuddenbrooksBuddenbrooks was Thomas Mann's first novel, published in 1901 when he was twenty-six years old. The publication of the 2nd edition in 1903 confirmed that Buddenbrooks was a major literary success in Germany....
(1971) - OrfeoOrpheusOrpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who...
in paradiso (1971) - Il giudice e il suo boiaDer Richter und sein HenkerDer Richter und sein Henker is a novella by the Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt written in 1950 and first published in English in 1954, in a translation by Cyrus Brooks and later in a translation by Therese Pol. A new translation by Joel Agee appeared in 2006, published together with Suspicion ...
(1972) - Le affinità elettiveElective AffinitiesElective Affinities , also translated under the title Kindred by Choice, is the third novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, published in 1809. The title is taken from a scientific term once used to describe the tendency of chemical species to combine with certain substances or species in preference...
(1979) - Don Luigi Sturzo (1981)
Chiusano died at Frascati in 1995.