BORSI, GIOSUÈ. - Born in Livorno on June 10, 1888. From his father Averardo, a writer and journalist, he derived his inclination toward letters.
His father's renown won him an easy welcome in the literary circles of his time. His life consists of two periods, both in the spiritual and in the literary field. The first is characterized by the restless and almost breathless search for a way in life and for means of expression in art: he feels all the urgency of defining his own personality. The second period is characterized by the possession of the new way, which in his eyes appears to have been found by a miracle, but which is very laborious to travel, accompanied by the more or less spontaneous application of the new style. The passage from one period to the other is caused, at least apparently, by the worsening upon the Borsi household of a series of family misfortunes and economic reverses. Having returned to the truth and the discipline of the faith, he expressed in his writings the anxieties, the joys, and also the depressions, of the new condition; his moral and artistic masterpiece remains the Ultima lettera alla madre written from the front a few days before his death.
He was a poet, journalist, writer, as well as an exquisite reciter and a valiant actor. To the first period belong the poems, among which notable for inspiration and form is the Inno alla madre; the short stories (characteristic is Piorrancino, in which the linguistic research is evident, and for the incisive elegance of the narration the Vita di s. Cristoforo); some dramatic compositions (the Dindestè). At the dawn of the second period stand Le confessioni a Giulia, and then the Colloqui, which obtained the greatest approval.
He died in the assault on the low houses of Zagora on Nov. 10, 1915; his blood stained his Dantino: a pocket edition of the Divina Commedia that Borsi always carried with him, now preserved in the Florentine house, on via Faenza.
The body, laid to rest at Plava, in a cemetery along the Isonzo, was lost after the retreat of Caporetto.