PANZINI, Alfredo. — Writer, born at Senigallia on 31 Dec. 1863, died at Rome on 10 Apr. 1939. A pupil of Carducci and Acri at the University of Bologna, he later taught in secondary schools, with a long residence in Milan. His fundamental spiritual experience was the crisis of humanistic culture: the yearning for an exemplary world of serene and peaceful virtues, in contrast to the practical reality dominated by economic gain and selfish ambition. His feeling yearns for the former, his intelligence resignedly accepts the latter, and seeks to master it with smiling humour. Even towards religion his desire sometimes turns, but without trust in its transcendent value.
This experience finds concrete expression in a constant meditation on the facts of life, in which ease of manner is often restrained from showing too much belief in values beyond immediate experience. This meditation is entrusted to an analytical vocabulary (Dizionario moderno) and more often to narrative prose of slender plot, often rather poetic and suspended digressions than true constructions of short stories or novels. A perfect stylist of this state of smiling and painful contemplation, he expresses it also in his search for an expression that adheres to contemporary usage, yet often takes refuge in echoes of classical words and cadences. This expressive search is in keeping with his attitude as a teacher aiming to make his pupils feel the eternal modernity of the most ancient facts (Santippe; Il bacio di Lesbia): and from the torment of perplexed life he often seeks refuge in the yearning for the passion of love felt both as a trembling of dream and as an instinctive, invincible impulse of the dark roots of life. He also wrote critical and historical essays: the latter less successful. Of his narrative works he began the definitive and revised collection in the volume Sei romanzi fra due secoli, which was followed after his death by the other two volumes not revised: Romanzi d'ambo i sesti; La cicuta, i gigli e le rose. A precious introduction to his fundamental state of mind is the early writings later collected under the title: Per amore di Biancofiore (Florence 1948).