Il Politecnico

Last updated

Il Politecnico
Editor Elio Vittorini
Categories
Frequency
  • Weekly (September 1945-May 1946)
  • Monthly (May 1946-December 1947)
FounderElio Vittorini
Founded1945
First issue29 September 1945
Final issue
Number		December 1947
39
CountryItaly
Based in Milan
LanguageItalian
OCLC 654801459

Il Politecnico (Italian : The Polytechnic) was a Communist cultural and literary magazine published in Milan, Italy, between 1945 and 1947. In the debut editorial it was stated that the magazine was inspired by the homonymous journal which had been founded by Carlo Cattaneo in 1839 and published until 1845. [1] Although it was a short-lived publication, Il Politecnico was the most prominent magazine in Italy during its run. [2]

Contents

History and profile

Il Politecnico was first published in Milan as a weekly on 29 September 1945. [3] [4] The magazine was openly affiliated with the Communist Party. [2] Giulio Einaudi was the publisher, and Elio Vittorini was the editor of the magazine. [3] [5] [6] Franco Fortini, an Italian poet and Marxist theorist, was one of the editorial board members of Il Politecnico. [7] From 1 May 1946 the magazine came out monthly. [2] [6]

The idea behind the establishment of Il Politecnico was to rebuild Italian culture after the experience of Fascism. [3] This idea was originally developed by a communist Catholic philosopher Felice Balbo in 1945. [3] Il Politecnico also aimed at providing a democratic forum for literary discussions. [8] It considered culture as a guide to policy. [9] This approach was similar to that advocated by French thinker Jean-Paul Sartre and was totally opposite of Palmiro Togliatti's understanding of culture as something less important than party instructions. [9]

Il Politecnico rejected not to cover the work by non-Communist artists and featured translations of famous authors such as Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot, Franz Kafka and James Joyce. [5] Translated literary work by these and other international authors was one of the defining characteristics of the magazine. [2] It also published photo-stories of Luigi Crocenzi. [10] [11] Italo Calvino was among the contributors and in fact, he started his career as a journalist in the magazine. [12]

Due to the conflict between the Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti and Elio Vittorini [13] and its editorial policy Il Politecnico lost the support of the Communist Party. [5] The magazine eventually ceased publication in December 1947. [5] The 39th issue was the last one which did not announce the closing of the magazine. [7]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Italo Calvino</span> Italian writer and journalist (1923–1985)

Italo Calvino was an Italian writer and journalist. His best-known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952–1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antonio Gramsci</span> Italian Marxist philosopher, writer, and politician (1891–1937)

Antonio Francesco Gramsci was an Italian Marxist philosopher, linguist, journalist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, political theory, sociology, history, and linguistics. He was a founding member and one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party. A vocal critic of Benito Mussolini and fascism, he was imprisoned in 1926 where he remained until his death in 1937.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Italian Communist Party</span> Communist political party in Italy (1921–1991)

The Italian Communist Party was a communist and democratic socialist political party in Italy. It was founded in Livorno as the Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921, when it seceded from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), under the leadership of Amadeo Bordiga, Antonio Gramsci, and Nicola Bombacci. Outlawed during the Italian fascist regime, the party continued to operate underground and played a major role in the Italian resistance movement. The party's peaceful and national road to socialism, or the "Italian Road to Socialism", the realisation of the communist project through democracy, repudiating the use of violence and applying the Constitution of Italy in all its parts, a strategy inaugurated under Palmiro Togliatti but that some date back to Gramsci, would become the leitmotiv of the party's history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palmiro Togliatti</span> Former leader of the Italian Communist Party (1893–1964)

Palmiro Michele Nicola Togliatti was an Italian politician and leader of Italy's Communist party for nearly forty years, from 1927 until his death. Born into a middle-class family, Togliatti received an education in law at the University of Turin, later served as an officer and was wounded in World War I, and became a tutor. Described as "severe in approach but extremely popular among the Communist base" and "a hero of his time, capable of courageous personal feats", his supporters gave him the nickname il Migliore. In 1930, Togliatti renounced Italian citizenship, and he became a citizen of the Soviet Union. Upon his death, Togliatti had a Soviet city named after him. Considered one of the founding fathers of the Italian Republic, he led Italy's Communist party from a few thousand members in 1943 to two million members in 1946.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luigi Longo</span> Former leader of the Italian Communist Party (1900–1980)

Luigi Longo, also known as Gallo, was an Italian communist politician and general secretary of the Italian Communist Party from 1964 to 1972. He was also the first foreigner to be awarded an Order of Lenin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elio Vittorini</span> Italian writer and novelist

Elio Vittorini was an Italian writer and novelist. He was a contemporary of Cesare Pavese and an influential voice in the modernist school of novel writing. His best-known work, in English speaking countries, is the anti-fascist novel Conversations in Sicily, for which he was jailed when it was published in 1941. The first U.S. edition of the novel, published in 1949, included an introduction from Ernest Hemingway, whose style influenced Vittorini and that novel in particular.

The Action Party was a liberal-socialist political party in Italy. The party was anti-fascist and republican. Its prominent leaders were Carlo Rosselli, Ferruccio Parri, Emilio Lussu and Ugo La Malfa. Other prominent members included Leone Ginzburg, Ernesto de Martino, Norberto Bobbio, Riccardo Lombardi, Vittorio Foa and the Nobel-winning poet Eugenio Montale.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Franco Fortini</span> Italian writer, poet and literary critic

Franco Fortini was the pseudonym of Franco Lattes, an Italian poet, writer, translator, essayist, literary critic and Marxist intellectual.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mario Alicata</span> Italian politician

Mario Alicata was an Italian Partisan, literary critic and politician.

Candido was a satirical magazine published in Milan, Italy, between 1945 and 1961. It was cofounded and edited by Giovannino Guareschi.

Il Menabò di letteratura was an Italian cultural and literary magazine published between 1959 and 1967. It was based in Turin, Italy.

Solaria was a modernist literary magazine published in Florence, Italy, between 1926 and 1936. The title is a reference to the city of sun. The magazine is known for its significant influence on young Italian writers. It was one of the publications which contributed to the development of the concept of Europeanism.

Rinascita was a political and cultural magazine published in Rome, Italy, between 1944 and March 1991. It was one of the media outlets of Italian Communist Party (PCI).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mauro Scoccimarro</span> Italian economist and communist politician (1895–1972)

Mauro Scoccimarro was an Italian economist and communist politician. He was one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party and served as the minister of finance between 1945 and 1947.

Omnibus was a weekly illustrated general cultural magazine published in Milan, Italy, between 1937 and 1939. Its subtitle was settimanale di attualità politica e letteraria. It is described as the "father of Italian magazines", especially in regard to the use of photographs and images. The magazine was closed by the fascist authorities.

<i>La Difesa della Razza</i> Political magazine in Italy (1938–1943)

La Difesa della Razza was a Fascist magazine which was published in Rome between 1938 and 1943 during the Fascist rule in Italy. Its subtitle was Scienza, Documentazione, Polemica. It played a significant role in the implementation of the racial ideology following the invasion of Ethiopia and the introduction of the racial laws in 1938.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radio Milano-Libertà</span> Italian-language communist radio station

Radio Milano-Libertà, also referred to as Radio Milano Libertà or simply Radio Milano, was an Italian-language communist radio station, established in Moscow in 1937, which, during the Second World War, broadcast propaganda to Italy in support of the Italian resistance movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugenio Reale</span>

Eugenio Reale was an Italian politician.

Quaderni piacentini was a leftist political and cultural magazine which was published in Piacenza, Italy, between 1962 and 1984 with some interruptions. The magazine was one of the theoretical-political media outlets of the New Left.

References

  1. ↑ Alberto Cadioli; Silvia Cadioli (2018). Vittorini nella città politecnica (in Italian). Pisa: ETS. ISBN   9788846750839.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Mila Milani (2016). "From Risorgimento to Il Politecnico: impegno and intellectual networks in the Einaudi publishing house, 1945". Journal of Modern Italian Studies. 21 (1): 35–36, 38, 42. doi:10.1080/1354571X.2016.1112063.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Claudio Pogliano (2011). "At the periphery of the rising empire: The case of Italy (1945–1968)". In Stefano Franchi; Francesco Bianchini (eds.). The Search for a Theory of Cognition: Early Mechanisms and New Ideas. Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi. p. 117. ISBN   978-94-012-0715-7.
  4. ↑ Andrew Stevens (October 2003). "Il Politecnico". 3am Review.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Herbert Lottman (1998). The Left Bank: Writers, Artists, and Politics from the Popular Front to the Cold War. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. p. 252. ISBN   978-0-226-49368-8.
  6. 1 2 David Forgacs; Stephen Gundle (2007). Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. pp. 105, 107. ISBN   978-0-253-21948-0.
  7. 1 2 Anna Baldini (2016). "Working with images and texts: Elio Vittorini's Il Politecnico". Journal of Modern Italian Studies. 21 (1): 50–51. doi:10.1080/1354571X.2016.1112064. S2CID   146888676.
  8. ↑ Gaetana Marrone, ed. (2006). "Literary journals". Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies. New York; London: Routledge. p. 985. ISBN   978-1-135-45530-9.
  9. 1 2 Fabio Guidali (2020). "Culture and political commitment in the nonorthodox Marxist Left: the case of Quaderni piacentini in pre-1968 Italy". History of European Ideas . 46 (6): 863. doi:10.1080/01916599.2020.1756892.
  10. ↑ "Photography and Neorealism in Italy, 1945-19655". Rosphoto. Retrieved 28 December 2014.
  11. ↑ Marco Andreani (2015). "Photo-poems: Visual impact strategies and photo-story in the work of Mario Giacomelli and Luigi Crocenzi". In Giorgia Alù; Nancy Pedri (eds.). Enlightening Encounters: Photography in Italian Literature. Toronto; Buffalo, NY; London: University of Toronto Press. p. 143. ISBN   978-1-4426-4807-4.
  12. ↑ Tracy Chevalier, ed. (1997). Encyclopedia of the Essay. London: Fitzroy Dearborn. ISBN   9781884964305.
  13. ↑ David Forgacs (1990). "The Italian Communist Party and Culture". In Zygmunt G. Barański; Robert Lumley (eds.). Culture and Conflict in Postwar Italy Essays on Mass and Popular Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 98. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-20841-8_6. ISBN   978-1-349-20841-8.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.