Franco Fortini

Franco Fortini was the pseudonym of Franco Lattes (10 September 1917 – 28 November 1994), an Italian poet, writer, translator, essayist, literary critic and Marxist intellectual. Franco Fortini was born in Florence, the son of a Jewish lawyer, Dino Lattes, and a Catholic mother, Emma Fortini Del Giglio. He studied law and humanities at the University. In 1939 he joined the Protestant church, but in his late years he described himself as an atheist. In 1940 he adopted his mother's last name to avoid racial persecution. In 1941 he joined the Italian army as an officer. After September 8, 1943, he sought refuge in Switzerland (where he met European intellectuals, politicians and critics), then in 1944 he returned to fight with the partisans in Valdossola. When the war was over he settled in Milan, working as journalist, copywriter and translator. He was one of the editorial board members of the magazine Il Politecnico. Soon after the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956, Fortini left the Italian Socialist Party which he had joined in 1944. From 1964 to 1972 he taught in secondary schools, and from 1976 occupied the Chair of Literary Criticism at the University of Siena. During this period he had considerable influence on younger generations in search of social and intellectual change. He was considered one of the most important intellectuals of the Italian New Left. He died in Milan. He was associated with some of the most important European writers and intellectuals, such as Sartre, Brecht, Barthes and Lukács. Fortini translated works by Goethe, Brecht, Simone Weil, Milton, Proust, Kafka, Éluard, Frénaud, Flaubert, Gide and many others. Poems (parallel text, in Italian & English. Translated by Michael Hamburger) Arc Publications, Todmorden 1978. . Summer is not all. Selected poems (in Italian and English. Translated by Paul Lawton), Carcanet, Manchester 1992. . The Dogs of the Sinai (Translated by Alberto Toscana), Seagull Books, London 2013. . A Test of Powers: Writings on Criticism and Literary Institutions (Translated by Alberto Toscano), Seagull Books, London 2016.