Biography

Mario Luzi was born in Castello, near Sesto Fiorentino

Sesto Fiorentino

Sesto Fiorentino is a municipality in the province of Florence, Tuscany, central Italy. It has c. 46,700 inhabitants.- History :The oldest known human settlement in the area dates from the Mesolithic...

; his parents, Ciro Luzi and Margherita Papini hailed from Samprugnano (later Semproniano

Semproniano

Semproniano is a comune in the Province of Grosseto in the Italian region Tuscany, located about 120 km south of Florence and about 35 km east of Grosseto...

) and he spent his youth in Castello, where he started his primary school. In Florence he studied at the liceo classico Galileo, and also in Florence he got his degree in French literature with a final dissertation about François Mauriac

François Mauriac

François Mauriac was a French author; member of the Académie française ; laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature . He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur .-Biography:...

. This was an important period for Luzi; he met poets such as Piero Bigongiari, Alessandro Parronchi, Carlo Bo

Carlo Bo

Carlo Bo was a poet, literary critic, a professor and Life senator of Italy .Before World War II, in the year , he published an essay on the literary magazine Frontespizio, by the title "Letteratura come vita ", containing the theoretical-methodological fundamentals of hermetic poetry...

, Leone Traverso, and the critic Oreste Macrì.

His first book, La barca, was published in 1935 and in 1938 he started to teach in high schools in the cities of Parma

Parma

Parma is a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its ham, its cheese, its architecture and the fine countryside around it. This is the home of the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world....

, San Miniato

San Miniato

San Miniato is a town and comune in the province of Pisa, in the region of Tuscany, Italy.San Miniato sits at an historically strategic location atop three small hills where it dominates the lower Arno valley between the valleys of Egola and Elsa...

 and Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

.

In 1940 he published Avvento notturno; in 1945 he went back to Florence and there he taught at the liceo scientifico.
In 1946 he published Un brindisi e Quaderno gotico, in issue 1 of Inventario, in 1952 Onore del vero, Principe del deserto e Studio su Mallarmé. In 1955 he began teaching French literature at Florence University in the facoltà di scienze politiche (political studies institute).

Between 1963 and 1983, he published many books such as Nel magma (1963); Dal fondo delle campagne (1965); Semiserie (1979), Reportage (1985). In 1978, with the book Al fuoco della controversia, he won the Viareggio Prize (Premio Viareggio). He won the Aristeion Prize

Aristeion Prize

The Aristeion Prize is a European prize, awarded for significant contributions to contemporary literature, and exceptional translations of contemporary literature. The prize is awarded in a different Capital of Culture each year...

 in 1991 for his work Frasi e Incisi di un Canto Salutare; in the same year he was proposed for the first time by the Accademia dei Lincei

Accademia dei Lincei

The Accademia dei Lincei, , is an Italian science academy, located at the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara in Rome, Italy....

 for the Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 for Literature. His last book, L'avventura della dualità, was published in 2003.

In October 2004, he was appointed to the Italian Senate as a senator-for-life

Senator for life

A senator for life is a member of the senate or equivalent upper chamber of a legislature who has life tenure. , 7 Italian Senators out of 322, 4 out of the 47 Burundian Senators and all members of the British House of Lords have lifetime tenure...

 by President of the Republic Ciampi

Carlo Azeglio Ciampi

dr. Carlo Azeglio Ciampi is an Italian politician and banker. He was the 73rd Prime Minister of Italy from 1993 to 1994 and was the tenth President of the Italian Republic from 1999 to 2006...

. He died in Florence just some months later, on 28 February 2005.

Works

• La barca (1935)
• Avvento notturno (1940)
• Biografia a Ebe (1942)
• Un brindisi (1946)
• Quaderno gotico (1947)
• Primizie del deserto (1952)
• Onore del vero (1957)
• Il giusto della vita (1960)
• Nel magma (1963; new edition, 1966)
• Dal fondo delle campagne (1965)
• Su fondamenti invisibili (1971)
• Al fuoco della controversia (1978)
• Semiserie (1979)
• Reportage, un poemetto seguito dal Taccuino di viaggio in Cina (1980)
• Per il battesimo dei nostri frammenti (1985)
• La cordigliera delle Ande e altri versi tradotti (1983)
• Frasi e incisi di un canto salutare (1990)
• Viaggio terrestre e celeste di Simone Martini (1994)
• Il fiore del dolore (2003)
• L'avventura della dualità (2003)

External links

• Mario Luzi's webpage
• Obituary on Corriere della Sera
  Corriere della Sera
  The Corriere della Sera is an Italian daily newspaper, published in Milan.It is among the oldest and most reputable Italian newspapers. Its main rivals are Rome's La Repubblica and Turin's La Stampa.- History :...