Aldo Palazzeschi (1885-1974) is arguably the major twentieth-century Italian writer who has been most neglected by the English-speaking world. Born in Florence and trained as an actor, Palazzeschi ranks high as a poet and fiction writer in his homeland. His work, which attempts to recreate the experience of a spectator watching and listening to a character on stage, won him the praise of F.T. Marinetti, the founder of Italian futurism, who enrolled the young poet in his avant-garde coterie despite the fact that, stylistically, Palazzeschi's work had little in common with futurism.A Tournament of Misfits brings together a selection of Palazzeschi's short fiction for the first time in English. Through clear and fluid translations, Nicolas J. Perella demonstrates Palazzeschi's use of laughter to debunk social and literary myths. As a social being, Palazzeschi felt himself a deviant, but he was saved from a self-destructive bitterness by his capacity for irony, which he often directed at himself as well as at others. Yet, it would be a mistake not to see the desperate yearning for liberation from society’s rigid code behind the irony and the fun in Palazzeschi's work. With this translation, Perella brings Palazzeschi to life for a new audience to appreciate.

A Tournament of Misfits: Tall Tales and Short (Lorenzo Da Ponte Italian Library)

Literature & Fiction

Palazzeschi, Aldo

History & Criticism

University of Toronto Press

Aldo Palazzeschi (1885-1974) is arguably the major twentieth-century Italian writer who has been most neglected by the English-speaking world. Born in Florence and trained as an actor, Palazzeschi ranks high as a poet and fiction writer in his homeland. His work, which attempts to recreate the experience of a spectator watching and listening to a character on stage, won him the praise of F.T. Marinetti, the founder of Italian futurism, who enrolled the young poet in his avant-garde coterie despite the fact that, stylistically, Palazzeschi's work had little in common with futurism.
A Tournament of Misfits brings together a selection of Palazzeschi's short fiction for the first time in English. Through clear and fluid translations, Nicolas J. Perella demonstrates Palazzeschi's use of laughter to debunk social and literary myths. As a social being, Palazzeschi felt himself a deviant, but he was saved from a self-destructive bitterness by his capacity for irony, which he often directed at himself as well as at others. Yet, it would be a mistake not to see the desperate yearning for liberation from society’s rigid code behind the irony and the fun in Palazzeschi's work. With this translation, Perella brings Palazzeschi to life for a new audience to appreciate.

Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Italian by Nicholas Benson. Palazzeschi's radical, detached individualism, at its height in the Arsonist, produces poems that retain the paradoxically affectionate, satirical quality of burlesque. The volume is comprised of twenty-two dramatic, parodic narrative allegories of contemporary bourgeois life, which the poet depicts as timid, shallow, selfish, and squalid. This vision is rendered in colloquial free verse that places the reader, hypocrite lecteur, alongside the bourgeois poet become exemplary gadabout, boulevardier, and armchair provocateur—master of ceremonies at a carnival show.

The Arsonist

Poetry

Otis Books | Seismicity Editions

Palazzeschi is indeed a rare personality; in him a cool detachment does not stop sympathy; he scrutinizes, questions, even challenges convention without ever rejecting it. His outlook on life seems to combine that of a small boy at a circus (and probably one who has sneaked under the canvas) with that of a sage who knows that wisdom begins but does not necessarily stop at melancholy.
--Thomas G. Bergin
Aldo Palazzeschi is surely Italy's most neglected major twentieth century author . . . he ranks high as a poet and writer of fiction.
--Nicolas J. Perella
I found these translations of a major literary voice of the twentieth century, who has yet to enjoy much fame outside of Italy, to be faithful to the spirit of the originals and most capable in effectively rendering difficult texts. These most welcome translations are accompanied by critical essays by leading Palazzeschi scholars that help orient readers through the Futurist manifestos that lie at the foundation of Palazzeschi's career as a "tragicomic writer" and capture "the essence of his spiritual outlook" as well as his ambivalent relationship with Futurism throughout his literary career.
--Mark Pietralunga

The Manifestos of Aldo Palazzeschi (VIA Folios)

Arts & Photography

Bordighera Press

Il codice di Perela (Italian Edition)

Classics

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Les Soeurs Materassi

Literary

Фоліо

Sorelle Materassi

Mondadori Italian

Due imperi... mancati

Mondadori

Arnoldo Mondadori Editore

Il Codice DI Perela'

Imprint unknown

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