Features

Academia, Essays March 10, 2023

The Last Muslims in Italy

During Dante’s lifetime, the only Muslim city on the Italian peninsula ceased to exist.  Dante does not mention Lucera Saracenorum (a Latin placename meaning “Lucera of the Saracens”) in his writings,…

Interviews January 4, 2023

A Double Bow for Primo Levi

The legendary cellist /composer France -Marie Uitti will premiere Luciano Chessa’s Piombo based on a text by Primo Levi at Magazzino Italian Art on January 21. The two-bow technique she…

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Books June 7, 2022

Fragments from Elsa Morante’s La storia

Every so often, at night, the air-raid alarm sirens would resound through the city; but the people of San Lorenzo paid little attention to them, convinced that Rome would never…

Essays, News June 6, 2022

The Jesuit

Nicola Chiaromonte, The Partisan Review, February 1948 We had been at school together, at the Collegio Massimo, the time-honored Jesuit college where the sons of the Roman middle class sit…

News March 18, 2022

The Online Thesaurus of Italian Jewish Music

Centro Primo Levi New York partners with Centro Leo Levi in Florence to invite all to listen and sing at www.jewishitalianmusic.org The Online Thesaurus of Italian Jewish Music is a…

News February 7, 2022

Bashing Micól

In a New York Times interview published in 1972, Bassani boldly stated: “I am Micól.” Indeed, he speaks through all of his characters playing across genders and social roles and allowing the space of mystery in which human beings continuously redefine one another through relationships.

Books January 31, 2022

The Racial Laws

The Racial Laws, a poem by Giorgio Bassani (translated by Jamie McKendrick) The magnolia right in the middle of our Ferrara house’s garden is the very same that reappears in…

Books, Essays January 31, 2022

The Novel of Ferrara

Introduction by Jamie McKendrick to his translation of The Novel of Ferrara (W.W. Norton & Co., 2019) In short stories, novels, poems, and essays, Giorgio Bassani has composed perhaps the…