Background
Federigo Tozzi was born on January 1, 1883, in Siena, Toscana, Italy. He was a son of Federico Tozzi, a restauranteur and farmer, and Annunziata Tozzi.
journalist novelist playwright writer poet
Federigo Tozzi was born on January 1, 1883, in Siena, Toscana, Italy. He was a son of Federico Tozzi, a restauranteur and farmer, and Annunziata Tozzi.
Federigo Tozzi experienced an often-unhappy childhood that can be traced clearly in his later work as a moodily realistic novelist and short-story writer. Federigo was the first child in the family to survive from his eight siblings who died in infancy.
He lost his mother at the age of twelve, and his father, a self-made restauranteur of peasant origins, regularly beat and verbally abused the boy who proved unsuccessful at school. However, expelled from several institutions, Tozzi received a diploma in a technical academy.
Federigo Tozzi started his career as a railroad clerk. The death of his father in 1909 brought him back to the family estate as manager where he experienced frustrations, like in his childhood, that later echoed in his novel ‘IIpodere’ (The Farm).
The ten years that followed his return was the period in which Tozzi produced virtually all his memorable work and also experienced a great deal of artistic growth. In addition to prose, he also wrote poetry and drama which is not generally considered one of the more important parts of his output. His first poetry collection was published in 1911.
Two years later, the writer began his autobiographical novel ‘Con gli occi chiusi’ where he closely described the dramatic love affair of his youth. He also joined the founders of a nationalist journal Torre and served as a journalist in Rome.
Another novel that Tozzi worked on during the time was ‘Ricordi di un impiegato’ (Journal of a Clerk). It was the story about alienation that has been called “Kafkaesque” although Tozzi had no knowledge of Franz Kafka’s writings.
A turning point came for Tozzi in the year 1914 through 1915 with the writing of a book of linked stories or sketches, ‘Bestie’, dealing largely with the relationship of animals to human beings.
Indeed, even as a writer, Federigo Tozzi remained obscure until after his death. The year 1917 marked something of a breakthrough, for it was then that the prominent Italian critic Giuseppe Borghese helped Tozzi achieve publication of Bestie. Positive reviews followed, as did a three-year stretch of tremendous productivity. However, Tozzi still wasn’t extensively appreciated. He was also supported by a writer Luigi Pirandello.
Tozzi died at age thirty-seven just before the time when his major novels would be published, some of them in full versions.
(The debut short-story collection in English of one of Ita...)
2001Federigo Tozzi has been compared by critics to the Italian naturalist Giovanni Verga, however, according to a Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism contributor, while the Naturalists saw life as scientifically explicable, Tozzi saw it as fundamentally random.
The writer approached his subject matter not as material to be analyzed, but as a mystery to be expressed.
Federigo Tozzi was married to Emma Palagi. They had a son named Glauco who became an editor.
In the opinion of some critics, Emma inspired the writer for many of his memorable works.