Latest Articles

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…

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…

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.

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…

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…

My betrayed garden

my work, in a way that would have been inappropriate even if they were marionettes. Although fine folk, the Finzi-Continis were not Rothschilds, carrying out correspondence with wealthy international relatives by mail! “Isac” and “Rachel,” mentioned on p. 278 onwards of the Pirro revision, distorted the Finzi-Continis, rendering a false and unflattering image of the family.