Background

Vasco Pratolini was born on October 19, 1913, in Florence, Italy. Pratolini was born into a poor working-class family tormented by war, in which the harsh realities of survival left no time for intellectual or aesthetic luxuries. Raised from early childhood by his maternal grandmother after his mother's death, Pratolini left home at the age of thirteen, supporting himself through various jobs.

Education

Vasco Pratolini first studied at Florentine religious schools, from which he was expelled for lack of discipline, and then he attended the state primary school.

Career

Vasco Pratolini started to work at the age of thirteen. Encouraged by friends such as painter Ottone Rosai and writer Elio Vittorini, he studied works by Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio, Franco Sacchetti, Aldo Palazzeschi, and Mario Pratesi. He also studied foreign writers such as Charles Dickens, Theodore Dreiser, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Pratolini's political, social, and moral consciousness influenced all his works. He was invited by the editor of Il Bargello, the official publication of the Florentine fascist movement, to contribute articles to the paper. He began doing so in 1932 at the age of nineteen. Thus began his literary career.

In 1935 Pratolini developed tuberculosis. He spent two years in sanitariums, where he became deeply introspective, and then he back to work at Il Bargello. During a brief visit to Florence in 1936, Pratolini met Vittorini, the first intellectual in Florence, to break with fascism. This relationship led to a shift in his social and political perspective, a shear that would lay the foundation for the rest of his literary career.

After founding the literary review Campo di Marte with poet Alfonso Gatto in 1938, however, Vasco Pratolini's writing became more refined and focused. Both the tone and content suggested a marked advance in his emotional and intellectual development, while his most entertaining entries in the review concerned literary themes.

Vasco Pratolini moved to Rome in 1939, where he worked briefly for the Ministry of Public Education, and then began writing a regular column for the literary review La Ruota, which encouraged greater realism in literature. His contribution to this and other magazines clarified his intense concern with social issues.

By the beginning of World War II, Vasco Pratolini joined the Resistance in 1943. After this experience, and with the newfound political freedom in Italy during the post-war reconstruction, he advanced beyond the restricted dimensions of the autobiographical short story and delicate prose poem, giving a predominantly social character to his works. The author was able to convey strong confidence in man's capacity to change and to shape his own destiny. His Resistance activities were also highly influential in the composition of his book Il mio cuore a Ponte Milvio.

Vasco Pratolini decided to stay in Rome after the war, and lived there for the rest of his life, devoting himself to his writing. Cronaca familiare, written in one week of almost continuous effort following his brother's grave illness and subsequent death, is virtually a conversation with his dead brother that delves into the complicated relationship between the siblings, who barely knew each other. In writing Il quartiere and Cronache di poveri amanti, Vasco Pratolini wove social and personal relationships with major historical events, thereby carrying the reader into the working-class world of Florence and exposing life under Mussolini's dictatorship as full of suffering and evil.

The success of Cronache di poveri amanti encouraged Vasco Pratolini to begin a trilogy, "Una Storia Italiana," in 1950. An ambitious work comprised of Metello, Lo Scialo, and Allegoria e derisione, the trilogy paints a lengthy portrait of Italian society from 1875 to 1945. Pratolini combined social realism and historical facts to portray the slow progress toward economic prosperity of the lower classes, the loss of freedom during Fascism, and the failure to realize the yearnings for social justice nurtured by Italians since the unification of the country in 1864. His substantive works portray the struggle against exploitation and a desire for solidarity and independence. It is, indeed, primarily his moral and political commitment and the psychological insight with which he portrays his characters that distinguish his work.

Vasco Pratolini remained relatively silent from 1966 to his death in 1991, publishing several books of poems and letters exchanged with Roman Bilenchi. He did not rewrite the same book but evolved from early lyricism to his neorealistic chronicles to his own version of realism. For the most part, critics have been unwilling to recognize his process of constant renewal. Since the 1980s, a new generation of critics, less tied to partisan ideology, has attempted to reassess Pratolini's work, and his integrity as an artist has begun to be appreciated. Also, Vasco Pratolini was a collaborator on several film productions, including La viacca, Les mauvais chemins, and Rocco and His Brothers.

Achievements

• Vasco Pratolini was widely known as a writer. He is heralded as one of the most important Italian fiction writers of the twentieth century. This self-taught author left a valuable legacy to the literature and culture of his generation. Pratolini's works have translated into many languages, including French, German, and Chinese. Besides, he was a co-founder of the literary review magazine Campi di Marte. Also, Vasco Pratolini received several awards as a Libera Stampa prize in 1947, Viareggio prize in 1955, Premio Nazionale Feltrinelli (equivalent to the Italian Nobel Prize) from an Accademia dei Lincei in 1957, and a Charles Veillon International prize in 1960.

Works

More photos

• book

  • La carriera di Ninı́

    (The book was published after Vasco Pratolini's death in 1...)

    1997
  • Il tappeto verde 1941
  • Cronache dal Giro d'Italia 1947
  • Il Quartiere 1944
  • Cronaca familiare 1947
  • Cronache di Poveri Amanti 1947
  • Mestiere da vagabondo 1947
  • Un eroe del nostro tempo 1947
  • Le ragazze di San Frediano 1949
  • Metello 1955
  • Diario sentimentale 1956
  • Lo scialo 1960
  • La costanza della ragione 1963
  • Allegoria e derisione 1966
  • Il portolano 1983

Politics

The disillusionment that deeply affected Italian society following World War I affected Vasco Pratolini as well. He embraced fascism as a movement that would vindicate the rights of the poor and the oppressed through a program of national regeneration. Mussolini's regime represented to him at once the triumph of order and social discipline over capitalist exploitation, the enfranchisement of Italian youth, and the possibility of a great rebirth of artistic and literary endeavor. By the beginning of World War II, Pratolini was vehemently anti-fascist. Joining the Resistance in 1943, he quickly emerged as a leader.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Anthony Costantini: "Few writers in the twentieth century have provoked such intense and conflicting reactions as has Pratolini. His narratives always deal with social and historical reality even when, as in his early works, he gives lyrical expression to his personal life. Pratolini remained faithful to his vision of the novel as an enduring quest for truth marked by social and moral concerns."

Connections

Vasco Pratolini married Cecilia Punzo in 1941. They had a daughter, Aurelia.

Friend:

Ottone Rosai

Ottone Rosai was an Italian artist.

Wife:

Cecilia Punzo

Cecilia Punzo was an Italian actress.

Daughter:

Aurelia Pratolini

Friend:

Elio Vittorini

Elio Vittorini was an Italian writer and critic. He was an influential voice in the modernist school of novel writing.

colleague:

Alfonso Gatto

Alfonso Gatto was an Italian writer. He was a co-founder of the literary review magazine Campi di Marte.