Giorgio Bassani

Giorgio Bassani (4 March 1916 – 13 April 2000) was an Italian novelist, poet, essayist, editor, and intellectual.

Biography Bassani was born in Bologna into a prosperous Jewish family of Ferrara, where he spent his childhood with his mother Dora, father Enrico (a doctor), brother Paolo, and sister Jenny. In 1934, he completed his studies at his secondary school, the liceo classico L. Ariosto in Ferrara. The high school's historical archive contains many documents and photos concerning his young life, which are displayed in the atrium that they dedicated to him. Music had been his first great passion, and he considered a career as a pianist; however, literature soon became the focus of his artistic interests.

In 1935, he enrolled in the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bologna. Commuting to lectures by train (third class) from Ferrara, he studied under the art historian Roberto Longhi. His ideal of the "free intellectual" was the liberal historian and philosopher Benedetto Croce. Despite the anti-Semitic race laws which were introduced in 1938, he was able to graduate in 1939, writing a thesis on the nineteenth-century writer, journalist, radical and lexicographer Niccolò Tommaseo. As a Jew in 1939, however, work opportunities were now limited, and he became a schoolteacher in the Jewish School of Ferrara in via Vignatagliata.

In 1953, La passeggiata prima di cena appeared and in 1954, Gli ultimi anni di Clelia Trotti. In the same year, he became editor of Paragone, a journal founded by Longhi and his wife, Anna Banti. Bassani's writings reached a wider audience in 1956 with the publication of the Premio Strega-winning book of short stories, Cinque storie ferraresi (the five stories are Lida Mantovani, La passeggiata prima di cena, Una lapide in via Mazzini, Gli ultimi anni di Clelia Trotti, and Una notte del '43).

As an editorial director of Feltrinelli, Bassani was responsible for the posthumous publication in 1958 of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo, a novel which had been rejected by Elio Vittorini at Mondadori, and Einaudi. It became one of the great successes of post-war Italian literature. Bassani's enthusiastic editing of the text, following instructions from (daughter of Benedetto), who had offered him the manuscript, later became controversial; however, recent editions have been published which follow the manuscript more closely .

Also in 1958, Bassani's novel Gli occhiali d'oro (made into a film in 1987) was published, an examination, in part, of the marginalisation of Jews and homosexuals. Together with stories from Cinque storie ferraresi (reworked and under the new title Dentro le mura (1973)), it was to form part of a series of works known collectively as Il romanzo di Ferrara, which explored the city, with its Christian and Jewish elements, its perspectives and its landscapes. The series includes: Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, 1962, Premio Viareggio prizewinner); Dietro la porta (1964); L'airone (1968) and L'odore del fieno (1972). These works realistically document the Italian Jewish community under Fascism in a style that manifests the difficulties of searching for truth in the meanderings of memory and moral conscience. In 1960, one of his short stories (Una notte del '43, from Cinque storie ferraresi) was adapted as the film Long Night in 1943. A stage adaptation of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by opera composer Ricky Ian Gordon is set to premiere in January 2022. It is a co-production of National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene and the New York City Opera.

From 1965 to 1980, Giorgio Bassani was the president of the organization Italia Nostra.

Bassani died in 2000 and was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Ferrara, the same place where he located the graves of the family Finzi-Contini. He was survived by his estranged wife, Valeria and their two children, Paola (born 1 September 1945) and Enrico (born 29 June 1949). He had been with his companion, Portia Prebys, since shortly after they met in 1977. The city of Ferrara decided to commemorate his life by giving his name to the Communal Library and the Urban Park in the Northern part of the city.

Bassani received the , the Strega, the Campiello, the Viareggio and the Nelly Sachs prizes. He collaborated on several screenplays.

Awards

1956 - Strega Prize for "Cinque storie ferraresi" 1962 - Viareggio Prize 1969 - Nelly Sachs Prize 1969 - Campiello Prize for "L'airone" 1983 - Bagutta Prize for "In rima e senza" 1987 - Pirandello Prize 1992 - Feltrinelli Prize for Prose

Publications Within the Walls (Dentro le mura) – 1956 The Gold-rimmed Spectacles (Gli occhiali d'oro) – 1958 A Prospect of Ferrara (Cinque storie ferraresi) – 1962 The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini) – 1962 The Heron (L'airone) – 1970 Five Stories of Ferrara (Cinque storie ferraresi) – 1971 The Smell of Hay (L'odore del fieno) – 1972 Behind the Door (Dietro la porta) – 1972 Il romanzo di Ferrara (1974; revised 1980). The Novel of Ferrara, trans. Jamie McKendrick (2018) Rolls Royce and Other Poems (extracts from Epitaffio and In gran segreto) – 1982

Film adaptations Long Night in 1943 The Garden of the Finzi-Continis The Gold Rimmed Glasses