Paper short abstract:

My paper analyses how the poet and intellectual Angiolo Orvieto (1869-1967) narrated his Italian Jewish identity. Orvieto’s Italian sense of belonging is thus confronted with the poetry of exile, which he developed as a Jew. Orvieto’s narrative is explored in its linguistic and cultural aspects.

Paper long abstract:

My paper explores how the Italian Jew Angiolo Orvieto perceived and narrated his identity during the twenties and the thirties of the Twentieth century. As a poet and intellectual, Angiolo Orvieto (1869-1967) took a crucial position in the Italian intellectual debate of his time, by founding, in Florence, two literary journals "La Vita Nuova" (1889-1891) and "Il Marzocco" (1896-1932). In these two journals he testified his Italian sense of belonging and the process of the inclusion of the Jews in the Italian nation, since the Unity (1861). During the early years of the Twentieth century, however, the poet also began to describe and "rethink" his Jewish origins as a sentimental struggle between Italy and Palestine, both in his literary writing and in his intellectual activity in the political debate. He did not become a Zionist, but he established many relations with some Jewish organizations, becoming an active member of the Jewish diaspora. His national sense of belonging became difficult during the fascist regime, when Orvieto did not renounce to his Italian identity and did not officially opposed the regime. The sense of exile thus transpired in his poetry as an impossible and irreconcilable condition. In this paper I will pay specific attention to Orvieto's private archive and to the ways in which he testified, linguistically and culturally, his identity. These documents will be thus linked to Orvieto's poetry, giving importance to the poet's expression and narration of sentiments.