GRAF, ARTURO

GRAF, ARTURO. — Man of letters and poet, born in Athens on 19 January 1848, died in Turin on 30 May 1913. Of a German father and an Italian mother, he lived until the age of fifteen in Greece and Romania. Coming to Italy, he graduated in law in 1870 at Naples, where he was also a pupil of Francesco De Sanctis. In 1871 he returned to Romania, where he attended to his brother’s commercial business. In 1874, having moved to Rome, he devoted himself to research into the history of medieval customs and culture.

From 1876 he was professor of Italian literature at the University of Turin; in 1883 he was among the founders of the *Giornale storico della letteratura italiana* and its co-director until 1890. His soul, tormented by the problem of suffering and the purpose of life, passed from a bitter positivism to a more confident rationalistic spiritualism: “The religion that suits me must be an open, free, mobile religion, without immutable dogmas; the soul of religion is faith, not the precise content of faith” (*Per una Fede*, 1906). Further documents of his religious thought are the *Lettere confidenziali* to a *young pupil* (in *Nuova Ant.*, 442-44 [1948], pp. 406-18), the article *Non è cosa nostra il Cristianesimo?* (in *Il Rinnovamento*, 2 [1907, 11], p. 453), and the volume *Ecce homo: aforismi parabole* (1906). He had a very keen sense of the moral value of teaching; testimony to this are his university lectures: *La crisi letteraria* (1888); *Per la nostra cultura* (1898); *L’università futura* (1906). Yet his poetic output (*Poesie*, complete ed., Turin 1922) is marked by a tormented inner perplexity that often translates into nightmare images, dismay, and despairing defeat, with decadentist inflections; always vivid was his sense of mystery felt as bitter and horrible, though at times with hints of greater trust.

His critical works are not without anti-Catholic prejudices: *Studi drammatici* (1878); *Roma nella memoria e nell’immaginazione del medioevo* (1882-83); *Attraverso il Cinquecento* (1888); *Il diavolo* (1889); *Miti, leggende e superstizioni nel medioevo* (1892-93); *Foscolo, Manzoni, Leopardi* (1898); *L’angiolomania e l’influsso inglese nel sec. XVIII* (1911). *Miti e leggende e superstizioni del medioevo* was placed on the Index (decree of 16 June 1892).