PANZINI, ALFREDO. — Writer, born at Senigallia on 31 December 1863, died in Rome on 10 April 1939. A pupil of Carducci and Acri at the University of Bologna, he subsequently taught in secondary schools, residing for many years in Milan. His fundamental spiritual experience was the crisis of humanistic culture: the idealization of an exemplary world of serene and peaceful virtues, in contrast with practical reality, dominated by economic self-interest and selfish ambition. His sentiments yearn toward the former, while his intellect resignedly accepts the latter and seeks to master it through smiling humor. His desire sometimes turns toward religion as well, but without any trust in its transcendent value.
This experience takes concrete form in an assiduous, light-hearted meditation on the facts of life, in which nonchalance is often reluctant to appear too believing in values higher than immediate experience. This meditation is entrusted to an analytical vocabulary (Dizionario moderno) and, more often, to narrative prose with slight plots, often rather poetic and suspended digressions than genuine constructions of short stories or novels. A perfect stylist of this state of smiling and painful contemplation, he also expresses it in the search for an expression faithful to contemporary usage, which nevertheless often takes refuge in echoes of classical literary words and cadences. This expressive search forms one whole with his posture as a teacher intent on making his pupils feel the eternal modernity of the most ancient events (Santippe; Il bacio di Lesbia). And from the torment of perplexed life he often seeks refuge in the idealization of the passion of love, experienced both as the trembling of a dream and as an instinctive, irresistible impulse arising from the obscure roots of life. He also wrote critical and historical essays, the latter being less successful. Of his narrative works, he began the definitive, revised collection in the volume Sei romanzi fra due secoli, which after his death was followed by the other two unrevised volumes: Romanzi d'ambo i sessi; La cicuta, i gigli e le rose. A valuable introduction to his fundamental state of mind is provided by the youthful writings later collected under the title Per amore di Biancofiore (Florence 1948).