Test of Powers Writings on Criticism and Literary Institutions
Produktdetaljer
Om bidragsyterne
Franco Fortini (1917–94) was a poet, essayist, literary critic, Marxist intellectual, and translator of Brecht, Goethe, and Kafka, among others. He is the author of The Dogs of Sinai, also published by Seagull Books. Alberto Toscano teaches at the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. He is the author of Fanaticism and Late Fascism and coeditor of The SAGE Handbook of Marxism.“An elegant and provocative project—the first book of Fortini’s prose to appear in English translation—that challenges one’s political assumptions about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, not only at the time of the Six-Day War but also today . . . Toscano has done a masterful job of rendering Fortini’s often difficult prose into a fluid and concise English.”
- Praise for “The Dogs of the Sinai”, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Forensic and devastating.”
- Praise for “The Dogs of the Sinai”, Times Literary Supplement
“Fortini’s poetic production, literary criticism, political writings, translations, and journalism have assured him a position of the first rank among intellectuals of the Italian postwar period.”
- Praise for “The Dogs of the Sinai”, Italica
Originally published in Italian in 1965, A Test of Powers was immediately seen as one of the central texts of Italian intellectual life. By the time of the 1968 student revolts, it was clear that Franco Fortini had anticipated many of the themes and concerns of the New Left, which was no surprise, given that Fortini had spent more than two decades immersed in fierce ideological debates over anti-Fascism, organizing the alliance between progressivism and literature and other topics that found their way into A Test of Powers. In addition to politically focused essays, the book also features writings on a range of authors who influenced Fortini, including Franz Kafka, Boris Pasternak, Eric Auerbach, Marcel Proust, and Bertolt Brecht.
Translator’s Acknowledgements
Preface to the First Edition (1965)
Preface to the Second Edition (1969)
PART I: The Literary Institution
I. Eroticism and Literature
II. A Test of Powers
III. Clarifications
IV. Cunning as Doves
V. Literary Institutions and the Progress of the Regime
VI. Two Avant-gardes
VII. Avant-garde and Mediation
VIII. Written and Spoken
PART II: The Condition of the Guest
I. Radek’s Hands
II. The Writers’ Mandate and the End of Anti-Fascism
III. In Defence of the Idiot
PART III: Of Some Critics
I. Reading Spitzer
II. Mimesis
III. Deus Absconditus
IV. Lukács in Italy
V. The Young Lukács
VI. The Passage of Joy
PART IV: For Some Books
I. For Herzen
II. Rereading Pasternak
III. Notes on Proust
IV. Tolstoy, the Master and the Man
V. Kafka’s Men and the Criticism of Things
VI. Two Returns
VII. Brecht or the Talking Horse
VIII. The Chinese Spectre