Mario Benzing was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 novelist and translator of German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 origins, often forced to sign as Mario Benzi because of the period's fascist Italian laws. Born in Como

Como

Como is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy.It is the administrative capital of the Province of Como....

, Italy, he settled in Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

.

During the First World War, he enlisted in the Italian Army

Italian Army

The Italian Army is the ground defence force of the Italian Armed Forces. It is all-volunteer force of active-duty personnel, numbering 108,355 in 2010. Its best-known combat vehicles are the Dardo infantry fighting vehicle, the Centauro tank destroyer and the Ariete tank, and among its aircraft...

 Medical Corps and in Milan he made the acquaintance of Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

.

Between the two World Wars he wrote several novels and biographies of historical figures in Italian. These figures included Messalina

Messalina

Valeria Messalina, sometimes spelled Messallina, was a Roman empress as the third wife of the Emperor Claudius. She was also a paternal cousin of the Emperor Nero, second cousin of the Emperor Caligula, and great-grandniece of the Emperor Augustus...

, Cleopatra and the Queen Christina of Sweden

Christina of Sweden

Christina , later adopted the name Christina Alexandra, was Queen regnant of Swedes, Goths and Vandals, Grand Princess of Finland, and Duchess of Ingria, Estonia, Livonia and Karelia, from 1633 to 1654. She was the only surviving legitimate child of King Gustav II Adolph and his wife Maria Eleonora...

. As a literary translator from English, German and French, he specially devoted his work, often as first Italian translator, to Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

, Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...

 (first Italian translation of The Shadow Line

The Shadow Line

The Shadow-Line is a short novel based at sea by Joseph Conrad; it is one of his later works, being written from February to December 1915. It was first published in 1916 as a serial in New York's Metropolitan Magazine in the English Review and published in book form in 1917 in the UK and America...

 in 1929), Jack London

Jack London

John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...

 (first Italian translation of The Mutiny of the "Elsinore" in 1928), Arthur Schnitzler

Arthur Schnitzler

Dr. Arthur Schnitzler was an Austrian author and dramatist.- Biography :Arthur Schnitzler, son of a prominent Hungarian-Jewish laryngologist Johann Schnitzler and Luise Markbreiter , was born in Praterstraße 16, Leopoldstadt, Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian...

, Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...

, D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...

 (first Italian translation of The Rainbow

The Rainbow

The Rainbow is a 1915 novel by British author D. H. Lawrence. It follows three generations of the Brangwen family living in Nottinghamshire, particularly focusing on the sexual dynamics of, and relations between, the characters....

 in 1937), P. G. Wodehouse

P. G. Wodehouse

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...

, Edgar Wallace

Edgar Wallace

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was an English crime writer, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and playwright, who wrote 175 novels, 24 plays, and numerous articles in newspapers and journals....

, Hugh Walpole

Hugh Walpole

Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE was an English novelist. A prolific writer, he published thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two plays and three volumes of memoirs. His skill at scene-setting, his vivid plots, his high profile as a lecturer and his driving ambition brought him a large...

, Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

, Vicki Baum

Vicki Baum

Hedwig Baum was an Austrian writer. She is known for Menschen im Hotel , one of her first international successes....

, H. G. Wells

H. G. Wells

Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...

 (first Italian translation of The World of William Clissold in 1931), Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, Ehm Welk

Ehm Welk

Emil Welk, known by his nickname Ehm Welk , was a German journalist, writer, professor and founder of Volkshochschulen...

, Eduard von Keyserling

Eduard von Keyserling

Eduard Graf von Keyserling was a Baltic German fiction writer and dramatist and an exponent of literary Impressionism.-Biography:...

, Jakob Wassermann

Jakob Wassermann

Jakob Wassermann was a Jewish-German writer and novelist.- Life :Born in Fürth, Wassermann was the son of a shopkeeper and lost his mother at an early age. He showed literary interest early and published various pieces in small newspapers...

, Joseph Hergesheimer

Joseph Hergesheimer

Joseph Hergesheimer was a prominent American writer of the early 20th century known for his naturalistic novels of decadent life amongst the very wealthy.-Biography:...

, Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

, Helen Hunt Jackson

Helen Hunt Jackson

Helen Maria Hunt Jackson, born Helen Fiske , was a United States writer who became an activist on behalf of improved treatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government. She detailed the adverse effects of government actions in her history A Century of Dishonor...

, Sigrid Undset

Sigrid Undset

Sigrid Undset was a Norwegian novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928.-Biography:Undset was born in Kalundborg, Denmark, but her family moved to Norway when she was two years old. In 1924, she converted to Catholicism and became a lay Dominican...

, Edgar Rice Burroughs

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, although he produced works in many genres.-Biography:...

, Guy Boothby

Guy Boothby

Guy Newell Boothby was an Australian novelist and writer.-Biography:Boothby was born in Adelaide, son of Thomas Wilde Boothby, who for a time was a member of the South Australian Legislative Assembly. Guy Boothby's grandfather was Benjamin Boothby , judge of the supreme court of South Australia...

, William Le Queux

William Le Queux

William Tufnell Le Queux was an Anglo-French journalist and writer. He was also a diplomat , a traveller , a flying buff who officiated at the first British air meeting at Doncaster in 1909, and a wireless pioneer who broadcast music from his own station long...

, Sax Rohmer

Sax Rohmer

Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward , better known as Sax Rohmer, was a prolific English novelist. He is best remembered for his series of novels featuring the master criminal Dr...

, Rose Macaulay

Rose Macaulay

Dame Emilie Rose Macaulay, DBE was an English writer. She published thirty-five books, mostly novels but also biographies and travel writing....

, Richard Marsh

Richard Marsh (author)

Richard Marsh was the pseudonym of the British author born Richard Bernard Heldmann. He is best known for his supernatural thriller The Beetle: A Mystery, which was published in the same year as Bram Stoker's Dracula and was initially even more popular...

, Alice Muriel Williamson

Alice Muriel Williamson

Alice Muriel Williamson was a British novelist.Born Alice Muriel Livingston, she married Charles Norris Williamson in 1894 and many of her books were jointly written with her husband. After her marriage she introduced herself as Mrs. C.N.Williamson...

and many others, showing a special sensitiveness in translating original poems in Italian verses.

External links

• The biography and his translations