Antonio Delfini

Antonio Delfini (C.E.1907 – 1963), Italian writer, poet and journalist.

Quotes by Antonio Delfini:

 * Thought is prophecy and memory. life is the future and the past. Life is never present. The present never is. (From Diaries, 1927-1961)
 * We want to change the world, or change its place. (From Notes of a Stranger, Marka, 1990)
 * I was promoted to serf (that's progress). (From Diaries, 1927-1961)

Incipit:
If I had had other friends, or not at all, I would have become a great storyteller, before the fall of fascism; and after that I would remain so. But it is more likely that if I hadn't had the friends I had, I would never have written a story or a quasi-story. Far more handsome, smarter, richer and more aristocratic than the friends I had, I found myself faced with the terrible and armed barrier of their flaws, vices and whims: jealousy, narcissism and unbridled (but deaf) ambition. Neither jealous nor ambitious, much less narcissistic, fortunate in my physical, moral and economic attributes, I discovered (but too late) a flaw (which my closest friends called a virtue, mistaking it for goodness): an excessive meekness born of desire of never suffering or as little as possible, has turned over time into lazy contemplation and a dull unrealistic revenge which has never resulted in a definitive and marked revenge.

Quotes:

 * (In parentheses I declare my hatred for all those who for Rome or from Rome wanted, against me and against many other Italians, to sow the seed of dejection on my - on our - proud feeling of not being born in Rome, not to live in Rome, and on my - our - impression that in Rome, and only in Rome, one finds that given form of life that the demeaners of this century call province and provincialism' '). (From Introduction'', pp. 71-92)
 * Then remembering that the Viennese dancer had told me that after Modena, she would go to Bologna, and then to Ferrara, I resolved one evening to go to this city. I took the road to Finale (a bad road at the time). Near Medolla my car was stoned by a group of young fascists. Those were the times of economic sanctions, and the country fascists had tasked avant-gardists, and perhaps even balilla, with demonstrating against cars that dared to circulate anyway. These cars, according to propaganda, wasted the petrol necessary for the conquest of the Empire. I declare that I too had (for other sentimental reasons) a dislike for cars, so those stones cheered me up, and indeed inspired me with a bit of envy towards those boys: I would have liked to be one of them. Even today I would happily throw stones at cars. (From Introduction, pp. 79-80)
 * I went to Bologna on the trail of Stendhaliane days and I lost myself, with my heart squeezed like a sensitive hazelnut in his shell, in the itineraries of Dino Campana. If I had been a poet instead of a bourgeois on the road to disappointment, that would have been the time to write some poems. I left Florence around midday and an hour later I was in Bologna. I wandered around all the streets and when I couldn't stand it anymore due to tiredness, I went to the station and took the first train to Florence: this also happened at two or three in the morning. The strangeness was this: that being in Florence, I ignored Florence and got to know Bologna. (From Introduction, pp. 93-94)
 * She took a long sigh and slowly stood up. Big and heavy, with a wide and long gray skirt with black stripes, and a dark, all-worked blouse that smelled like a closed cupboard with biscuits forgotten inside. (From The Milliner, p. 123)
 * Meanwhile, a Barbery organ, the sound of which reached me from the courtyard of a house in Via Campanoni, changed the course of my reveries. Looking inside the bookcase I realized that the girl was no longer there. (From One year later, p. 214)
 * For me then, every encounter with a woman is like suddenly finding myself in front of an abyss, and with my eyes blindfolded. (From One year later, p. 215)

Small dense book:

 * It is necessary, in humanity, to use all those means that liberate and console as much as possible the conscious souls, poor or rich.
 * The moon is like freedom: it is in the sky and at the bottom of the well.
 * Why didn't they give us a life different from the one we live?
 * What we must do is not to be ashamed of feelings that are too great.
 * If it weren't for the suffering of others to make us laugh, we would never laugh.
 * A writer is always someone, to me, who has failed at something else in life.

Bibliography:

 * Antonio Delfini, Diari, 1927-1961, edited by Giovanna Delfini and Natalia Ginzburg, Einaudi, 1982.
 * Antonio Delfini, The memory of the Basque, Nistri - Lischi, Pisa, 1956.
 * Antonio Delfini, Piccolo libro dense, in Gino Ruozzi, Italian writers of aphorisms, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore.
 * Antonio Delfini, Poems of the end of the world, Feltrinelli, 1961.