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INVENTORY OF THE MASSIMO BONTEMPELLI PAPERS,
1865-1991
910147
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Title: Massimo Bontempelli papers
Date (inclusive): 1865-1991
Collection number: 910147
Creator:
Bontempelli, Massimo, 1878-1960
Extent:
ca. 65 linear feet
(90 boxes)
Repository:
Getty Research Institute
Research Library
Special Collections and Visual Resources
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles, CA 90049-1688
Abstract: This collection details the creative output
and life story of Italian writer and composer Massimo Bontempelli (1878-1960)
through extensive correspondence and photographs (bulk 1920-1960), manuscripts,
typescripts, drafts, clippings, and other media, a fair representation of his
novels, plays, short stories, essays, lectures, reviews, and musical
compositions, as well as documents about his personal relationships. It also
contains papers of Giosuè Borsi, and Paola Masino.
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Language: Collection material in
Italian
Open for use by qualified researchers.
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Library Rights and Reproductions
Massimo Bontempelli papers, 1865-1991, Getty Research Institute,
Research Library, Accession no. 910147.
Acquired 1991.
Annette Leddy processed and described the Massimo Bontempelli papers
in 1995-1996.
Massimo Bontempelli was born in 1878, the son of a railroad engineer
whose work obliged the family to move frequently. He attended secondary school
in Milan and university in Turin, where he graduated in both philosophy and
letters. After teaching elementary school for a number of years and failing to
win a position teaching Italian in secondary school, he turned to magazine
editing in 1910. During WWI he was a war correspondent, reporting from the
front, and then an artillery official (1917-1918).
While teaching elementary school, Bontempelli wrote poetry, stories
and plays, producing a new volume every year or two, as he would continue to do
for most of his career. After the war he returned to Milan, where he came into
contact with the avant-garde and consequently reinvented himself, refuting his
previous work and the late 19th century style that had characterized it. At
forty years of age, he began editing futurist magazines and writing plays and
stories that portrayed bizarre psychological conditions and uncanny situations.
Along with the futurists, Pirandello, with whom Bontempelli was close friends,
influenced work such as
La vita intensa,
La scacchiera davanti allo specchio, and
Eva ultima.
In 1926, Bontempelli and Malaparte started the journal
'900, Cahiers d'Italie et d'Europe, which was edited by an
international group and which served as a venue for such writers as James
Joyce, Virigina Woolf, and Blaise Cendrars. In
'900 Bontempelli found a forum for his cultural theory,
Novecentismo, which posited three stages in human civilization: the first, the
classical period, ended with the coming of Christ; the second, the romantic,
began with the Sermon on the Mount and ended with WWI; the third, both
anti-classical and anti-romantic, was just beginning and would demand the
complete political and cultural renewal that Fascism proposed. Bontempelli
believed that the role of the writer within the new order should be that of
mythographer, the producer of myths and fables for mass society. But while
writers should employ "magic realism" to inspire readers to acceptance of the
new order, they should not submit to control or censorship of their
imaginations.
Bontempelli was the national secretary of the fascist writers' union
from 1927-1928; in 1930 he became a member of the Academy of Italy. Until the
late 1930s he served, along with his companion Paola Masino, as a cultural
liason and propagandist for the fascist regime abroad, lecturing frequently on
Italian cultural figures. During this period he also produced his "mature"
novels and plays (
Il figlio di due madri;
Vita e morte di Adria e i suoi figli;
La fame;
Nembo) written according to his theories, and became one
of the best-selling authors in Italy. In 1938 he came into conflict with the
regime over his refusal of a university chair vacated due to application of
racial laws. He was expelled from the party and suspended from literary
activity for one year. Reinstated, he began writing a popular column for
Tempo, entitled "Colloqui," which ran until 1943.
After WWII, Bontempelli aligned himself with the political left and
ran for senator. He won, but the Senate nullified his election because of his
fascist past. During the 1950s his health declined along with his literary
reputation, despite the publication of a collection of essays on music and one
of previously published stories,
L'amante fedele, which won the 1953 Strega prize. He died
in 1960.
Scope and Content of Collection
The bulk of the Massimo Bontempelli Papers are from 1920-1960, the
four decades of Bontempelli's greatest prominence and productivity. There are,
however, selected manuscripts from before his conversion to the avant-garde,
including several plays, a WWI novel, and his university thesis on the problem
of free will. There is also a substantial amount of familial correspondence and
a small amount of correspondence with Pirandello (5 letters) from the years
when they were both school teachers. Photographs and clippings help to fill in
the collection's otherwise sketchy portrait of the first half of Bontempelli's
life.
The collection also contains a small archive of Giosuè Borsi papers,
and another of Paola Masino papers.
The collection extensively documents, through correspondence and
photographs, Bontempelli's most important personal experiences after 1920,
including his love affair with the French painter Mariette Lydis and his
relationship with the writer Paola Masino, who remained his companion for the
rest of his life. The writers and editors with whom he was closely associated
are also represented in the correspondence series.
There are handwritten or corrected typewritten drafts of four of
Bontempelli's mature novels and selections from four short story collections;
novels from the early 1920s are not in the collection, and there is no poetry.
There are handwritten and/or corrected typewritten drafts of all plays except
Guardia all luna, many of the essays or lectures
eventually collected in
Introduzioni e discorsi and
Passione incompiuta, his major translations, and numerous
musical scores. A number of Bontempelli's stories, plays or reviews are
featured in the collection's serials, while the clippings offer comprehensive
coverage of his life and times.
Media in the collection include manuscripts, photographs, sculpture,
an audio tape, an LP recording, serials, and clippings. Books and theses on
Bontempelli were separated from the collection and are now housed in the Getty
Research Institute Library.
Arrangement
The collection is organized into 9 series:
Series I: Correspondence, ca. 1871-1990, undated;
Series II: Manuscripts, 1904-1959, undated;
Series III: Personal, ca. 1860s-1959, undated;
Series IV: Manuscripts by others, 1940s-1986, undated;
Series V: Giosuè Borsi papers, 1915-1920, undated;
Series VI: Paola Masino papers, 1956-1982, undated;
Series VII: Photographs, drawings and sculpture,
1800s-1980
;
Series VIII: Serials, 1904-1986, undated;
Series IX: Newspaper clippings, 1889-1991.
Borsi, Giosuè,
1888-1915
Carducci, Giosuè,
1835-1907
Corriere
della sera (Milan, Italy)
Gazzetta
del popolo
900
(Rome, Italy)
Tempo
Composers,
Italian
Dramatists,
Italian
Essayists,
Italian
Fascism—Italy
Futurism (Literary
movement)
Magic realism
(Literature)
Novelists,
Italian
Poets, Italian
Socialism—Italy—History
Photographic
prints
Photographs,
Original
Sound
recordings
Plaster casts
Bronzes
Scores
Abba, Marta
Bontempelli,
Alfonso
Borgese, Giuseppe
Antonio, 1882-1952
Cecchi, Emilio,
1884-1966
Cislaghi,
Maria
Falqui, Enrico,
1901-
Frank, Nino
Gallian, Marcello,
1902-1968
Govoni, Corrado,
1884-1965
Graf, A.
Jacob, Max,
1876-1944
Lydis, Mariette,
1894-1970
Malaparte, Curzio,
1898-1957
Malipiero, Gian
Francesco, 1882-1973
Malipiero, Riccardo,
1914-
Marinetti, Filippo
Tommaso, 1876-1944
Masino, Paola,
1908-1989
Moravia, Alberto,
1907-
Negri, Ada,
1870-1945
Ojetti, Ugo,
1871-1946
Ortese, Anna
Maria
Panzini, Alfredo,
1863-1939
Petrone,
Icilio
Pirandello, Luigi,
1867-1936
Quasimodo, Salvatore,
1901-1968
Rea, Domenico
Ungaretti, Giuseppe,
1888-1970
Vittorini, Elio,
1908-1966
Arnoldo Mondadori
editore
Bompiani
Aptrutium (Loreto Aprutino, Italy) Battana Cavallo di Troia Comoedia (Milan, Italy) Cornhill magazine Corriere della sera (Milan, Italy) Lettura Rivista italiana di drammaturgia Tempo presente (Rome, Italy) Valori primordiali Volandum
28 theses or dissertations on Bontempelli, stored in the Research Library's general collection under PQ 4807 .065 Z__. Three
additional books.