Mario Luzi biography

Synopsis

Born in Tuscany in 1914, Italian writer Mario Luzi is famous for his poetry. He taught at the University of Florence and published a number of literary works throughout the 20th century. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991.

Profile

Poet and essayist, born in Castello, near Florence, Tuscany, NC Italy. He studied French literature at the University of Florence and later taught at the Institute of Political Science there. During the 1930s he was involved with the literary journal Frontespizio, and after World War 2 co-founded La chimera. His first works, La barca (1935) and the influential Avvento notturno (1940), are influenced by hermetism, but his later style became closer to prose in collections such as Onore del vero (1957), Su fondamenti invisibili (1971), and Frasi e incisi di un canto salutare (1990). He also wrote dramatic poems (Rosales, 1983) and translated the work of English and French poets, notably Shakespeare and Racine.