Giovanni Papini

Muchos consideran que Un hombre acabado es la obra maestra de Giovanni Papini (1881-1956), esencial para conocer la trayectoria de este autor italiano. Borges consideraba que era la «melancólica auto

Il piu importante romanzo di Papini, scritto nel 1912, prima della conversione al cristianesimo. Si tratta di un romanzo autobiografico, riguardante soprattutto i successivi entusiasmi e delusioni che il giovane intellettuale fiorentino provava per le mode filosofiche del suo tempo. L'edizione presente aggiunge al testo originale alcune pagine inedite, scritte da Papini in quegli stessi anni e sui medesimi argomenti. Una ricca documentazione filologica e una introduzione critica dell'italianista della Sorbona, François Livi, arricchiscono l'edizione.

For five hundred years those who call themselves free spirits because they prefer prison life to army service have been trying desperately to kill Jesus a second timeto kill Him in the hearts of men.The army of His enemies assembled to bury Him as soon as they thought they heard the death-rattle of Christs second death. Presumptuous donkeys mistaking libraries for their stables, top-heavy brains pretending to explore the highest heavens in philosophys drifting balloon, professors poisoned by the fatal strong drink of philology and metaphysics, armed themselves. Paraphrasing the rallying-cry of Peter the Hermit to the crusaders, they shouted Man wills it! as they set out on their crusade against the Cross. Certain of them drew on their boundless imaginations to evolve what they considered proof positive of a fantastic theory that the story of the Gospel is no more than a legend from which we can reconstruct the natural life of Jesus as a man, one-third prophet, one-third necromancer, one-third demagogue, a man who wrought no miracles except the hypnotic cure of some obsessed devotees, who did not die on the cross, but came to Himself in the chill of the sepulcher and reappeared with mysterious airs to delude men into believing that He had risen from the dead.

Una década antes del estallido de la II Guerra Mundial, Giovanni Papini publicó su obra más polémica y universal, Gog, con la que consiguió su primer best seller internacional. Traducida rápidamente a los principales idiomas del planeta, en esta novela extraña y original narra las peripecias de un excentrico millonario de origen norteamericano, Goggins, que ha abreviado su nombre a tres letras para hacerlo coincidir con el de uno de los personajes del Apocalipsis, Gog, rey de Magog. A lo largo de setenta capitulos, este demonio del capitalismo, un ser primitivo, cinico y cruel, tan egoista que solo vive para obtener su propia felicidad, indaga sobre las causas que han hecho del mundo un lugar cada vez mas espantoso y peligroso. A golpe de talonario, Gog logra entrevistarse con los personajes mas relevante de su epoca (Gandhi, Lenin, H. G. Wells, Edison, Freud, Einstein, Ramon Gomez de la Serna.) en busca de respuestas a los males de una sociedad enferma y enloquecida, empeñada en su autodestruccion. El resultado ofrece un Universo donde la imaginacion, el sentido del humor y la satira denuncian una realidad antipatica con espiritu provocador. Esta nueva traduccion de Paloma Alonso Alberti recupera y actualiza en español uno de los grandes clasicos del siglo XX.

Escritos entre 1907 y 1910, los catorce cuentos trágicos que componen Palabras y sangre son aún más desagarrados e hirientes que los de El piloto ciego, como si pretendiesen despertar al mundo para evitar la primera gran guerra que sacudiria Europa solo cuatro años despues. Con su peculiar estilo para mezclar lo fantastico con lo real, y obsesionado por la perversa o enferma psicologia humana, el gran autor italiano utiliza la palabra para gritar contra la angustiosa realidad a la que se siente condenado. Maestro de Dino Buzzati, ensalzado y admirado por Borges, Palabras y sangre es una de las grandes obras de un Papini que, sin miedo ni esperanza, entiende la vida como el esfuerzo y el dolor que, a traves del misterio, conducen hacia la nada. Sarcastico y brutal, lo que proporciona a la obra una extraña belleza poetica, por estas narraciones desfilan personajes que se intercambian las almas, un asesino que harto de burlar a la Justicia decide condenarse a si mismo, un suicida que se tira al Rodano sin ninguna razon o un pintor capaz de reflejar en el lienzo el rostro que tendran en el futuro los modelos que retrata. Historias simbolicas y filosoficas que crean un nuevo genero literario en el que la palabra se convierte en un angustioso desasosiego, en una sangre de tinta que traspasa las fronteras de lo literario.

La obra de Papini fue una de las más ruidosas manifestaciones de la vida literaria italiana desde comienzos del siglo XX. Obra llena de sinceridad y de violencia, refleja las posturas ideológicas y la profunda inquietud espiritual del autor. El Diablo, a decir de su creador, es el primer libro escrito sobre el Diablo por un cristiano, conforme al mas profundo sentido del Cristianismo. El proposito de este escritor, guiado por un sentimiento de caridad y de misericordia, es estudiar, liberado de prejuicios y prevenciones, entre otros, los problemas siguientes: las causas reales de la rebelion de Lucifer, las verdaderas relaciones entre Dios y el Diablo, y la posibilidad del intento por parte de los hombres de hacer volver a Satanas a su primer estado.

Giovanni Papini, journalist, essayist, novelist, writer, poet, literary critic and philosopher, was a controversial literary figure of the early and mid-twentieth century and the earliest and most enthusiastic representative and promoter of Italian pragmatism.Due to his ideological choices, Papinis work was almost forgotten after his death, although it was later re-evaluated and appreciated again: in 1975, Jorge Luis Borges called him an undeservedly forgotten author.In 1913 he published his essay Ventiquattro cervelli (Twenty four brains), in which he reviewed, with a critical slant and with great philosophical scrutiny, the life and works of great personalities such as Dante Alighieri, Leonardo Da Vinci, George Berkeley, Herbert Spencer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and, finally, himself!The two great merits of Hegel, according to his latest champion, are these: that he demonstrated the existence of a method peculiar to philosophy and different from the methods of art or the physical and mathematical sciences; and that he formulated that dialectic (the co-existence of contraries or the identity of opposites) which was already implicit in certain earlier philosophers, and was indeed foretokened in a general way by the whole course of philosophy. Philosophy, then, differs from all other products of the human mind in that it concerns itself with concepts which are universal and concrete, unlike the intuitions of art, the ecstasies of mysticism, or the representative generalities of science.

Giovanni Papini, journalist, essayist, novelist, writer, poet, literary critic and philosopher, was a controversial literary figure of the early and mid-twentieth century and the earliest and most enthusiastic representative and promoter of Italian pragmatism.Due to his ideological choices, Papinis work was almost forgotten after his death, although it was later re-evaluated and appreciated again: in 1975, Jorge Luis Borges called him an undeservedly forgotten author.In 1913 he published his essay Ventiquattro cervelli (Twenty four brains), in which he reviewed, with a critical slant and with great philosophical scrutiny, the life and works of great personalities such as Dante Alighieri, Leonardo Da Vinci, George Berkeley, Herbert Spencer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jonathan Swift and, finally, himself!In Spencer, monist and positivist, the individualists cannot find a sure defense. If they still share the common desire to win a metaphysical fortress for themselves, with the unconfessed purpose of justifying their instinct for personal life, they must turn not to Spencer, but to some pluralistic doctrine. And if they do not find the right doctrine, they will have to invent it.

Giovanni Papini, journalist, essayist, novelist, writer, poet, literary critic and philosopher, was a controversial literary figure of the early and mid-twentieth century and the earliest and most enthusiastic representative and promoter of Italian pragmatism.Due to his ideological choices, Papinis work was almost forgotten after his death, although it was later re-evaluated and appreciated again: in 1975, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges called him an undeservedly forgotten author.In 1913 he published his essay Ventiquattro cervelli (Twenty four brains), in which he reviewed, with a critical slant and with great philosophical scrutiny, the life and works of great personalities such as Dante Alighieri, Leonardo Da Vinci, George Berkeley, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jonathan Swift, Benedetto Croce and, finally, himself!The Divine Comedy is not yet complete. When the disdainful poet wrote that last fair starry line, he had merely finished the fundamental theme on which other men were to execute complicated variations. For a great book is only an initial motif, a starting point from which later generations proceed to develop all the possible themes of a perennial symphony.

Asombrosos y mordaces son los relatos de este libro publicado en 1931, aunque el titulo alude a un personaje bíblico, en estas paginas Gog se presenta como un millonario excéntrico, misántropo y filósofo que vive episodios infrecuentes, levanta proyectos absurdos y conoce a seres singulares que le prometen nuevos misterios; todo en un enjambre de sorprendentes historias registradas en una suerte de diario. Este diario nos revela propuestas descabelladas, una de las cuales consiste en condenar, no a los responsables de algun crimen, sino a los que no han cometido ninguno; otro habla de la posibilidad de recetar medicinas que en vez de combatir las enfermedades, las estimulen y desarrollen. Pero aun mas absurdos son los proyectos que el mismo Gog planea o ejecuta: coleccionar esqueletos, magos y gigantes, o comprar una Republica. Cada relato es una cucharada de ironia y escepticismo, pero, sobre todo, de profunda reflexion acerca de la civilizacion y su destino.

Jorge Luis Borges aseguraba que de Giovanni Papini, uno de sus escritores predilectos, pervivirían algunos aforismos, algunas páginas, algunos cuentos… Y entre ellos figuran sin duda varios de los qu