Mario Praz  

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Mario Praz (1896 - 1982) was an Italian critic of art and literature, and a scholar of English literature. His best-known book, The Romantic Agony (1930), was a comprehensive survey of the erotic and morbid themes that characterized European authors of the late 18th and 19th centuries.

He was admired by such authors as Georges Bataille, Frank Kermode and Philippe Jullian.

Background

Praz was the son of Luciano Praz (died 1900), a bank clerk, and his wife, the former Giulia Testa di Marsciano (died 1931), daughter of Count Alcibiade Testa di Marsciano. His stepfather was Carlo Targioni (died 1954), a doctor, whom his mother married in 1912.

He studied at the University of Bologna (1914-15), received a law degree from the University of Rome (1918), and received a doctorate in literature from the University of Florence (1920).

Praz married, on 17 March 1934 (separated 1942, divorced 1947), Vivyan Leonora Eyles (1909-1984), an English-literature lecturer at the University of Liverpool whom Praz met during his time there as a special lecturer in Italian studies. She was a daughter of British novelist M. Leonora Eyles and married in 1948, as her second husband, art historian Wolfgang Fritz Volbach. The couple had one child, a daughter, Lucia Praz (born 1938).

Praz's only other known romantic attachment was to an Anglo-Italian beauty named Perla Cacciguerra, whom he met in 1953 and called Diamante in the book The House of Life.

Life and writings

He was Professor of Italian Studies at the Victoria University of Manchester, 1932-1934. He taught English literature at the University of Rome from 1934 to his retirement in 1966. In 1962, Queen Elizabeth II made him a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE).

The House of Life, a memoir of Praz's life constructed as a room-by-room tour of his apartment in Rome, was praised by Edmund Wilson as a masterpiece, though Cyril Connolly has written: "One of the dullest books I have ever read; it has a bravura of boredom, an audacity of ennui that makes one hardly believe one's eyes."

His works of art criticism include an Illustrated History of Interior Decoration, a study on Italian sculptor Antonio Canova, and numerous essays. His last residence, an apartment, has become a museum, and is open for visits in Rome. It is in Palazzo Primoli, just above the Museo Napoleonico.

As Muriel Spark and others have noted, Praz was widely believed to have the Evil Eye, and thus was known as Malocchio.

Critical views

In the Life and Letters of Sir Edmund Gosse, one reads, from a letter written on the 17th November 1923: "Mario Praz is an interesting young professor, a great Swinburnian." In the "Italian Pageant", Derek Patmore says at page 8: "Dr. Mario Praz, so long a staunch friend of England." Charles Du Bos writes in his diary in 1923: "I dined with Abraham and Mario Praz. He is a great friend of Vernon Lee." Marie-Anne Comnène, the widow of Benjamin Crémieux, writes in Hommes et Mondes of December 1949: "There were authoritative critics: Marco Pron, Franci, Rossi, count Morra and Mademoiselle Bellonci, great animators of the Pen Club." Marco Pron is actually Mario Praz, misspelled. Charles Jackson says in The Outer Edges: "Mario Praz and Bertold Brecht make the best reading in the world for a sexual criminal." Around 1950, Kadar Jennö translated Neoclassic Taste into Hungarian; he asserts that comrade Praz is a harsh enemy of capitalism.

Bibliography

Selected

• Praz, Mario. La carne, la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica, 1930;
• Praz, Mario. The Romantic Agony (1933). Translated from the Italian by Angus Davidson ISBN 0-19-281061-8
• Praz, Mario. Mnemosyne: the Parallel between literature and the visual arts (1975)
• Praz, Mario, ed. English Miscellany: a symposium of literature, history and arts. Reprint of the Complete Collection of Articles in English and Selected Writings by Mario Praz, in 10 vols., Kyoto: Eureka Press ISBN 978-4-902454-19-2 www.aplink.co.jp/ep/4-902454-20-3.html
• Book review of The Romantic Agony: V. de Sola Pinto: The Romantic Agony by Mario Praz; Angus Davidson The Review of English Studies, Vol. 11, No. 41 (Jan., 1935), pp. 109-111 Published by: Oxford University Press. The author of the review points out that the last chapter was omitted in the English translation as well as the "numerous and excelent illustrations of the Italian original."
• Il patto col serpente. Paralipomeni di La carne, la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica

Fuller

Saggi

• La Francesca da Rimini di Gabriele D'Annunzio: il dramma d'ambiente, Roma : L. S. Olschki, 1922
• Secentismo e Marinismo in Inghilterra, Firenze : La voce, 1925
• Poeti inglesi dell'Ottocento, Firenze : R. Bemporad, 1925
• La fortuna di Byron in Inghilterra, Firenze : La voce, 1925
• Penisola Pentagonale, Milano : Alpes, 1928; Firenze : Sansoni, 1955; Torino : E.D.T., 1992
• Machiavelli e gl'Inglesi dell'epoca Elisabettiana, Firenze : Vallecchi, 1928, 1930
• La carne, la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica, Milano-Roma, Soc. editrice la cultura, 1930; Torino : G. Einaudi, 1942; Firenze: Sansoni, 1948 e succ. ediz.; Milano : BUR, 2008.
• Studi sul concettismo, Milano : La cultura, 1934; Firenze : G. C. Sansoni, 1946; Milano : Abscondita, 2014
• Antologia della letteratura inglese e scelta di scrittori americani, Messina : G. Principato, 1936 e succ. ediz;
• Studi e svaghi inglesi, Firenze : G. C. Sansoni, 1937; Milano : Garzanti, 1983
• Viaggio in Grecia. Diario del 1931, Roma : Edizioni di Lettere d'oggi, 1942; (a cura di Marcello Staglieno), Skakespeare and Kafka, 1991.
• Gusto neoclassico, Firenze : Sansoni, 1940; Napoli : ESI, 1959; Milano : Rizzoli, 1974 e succ. ediz.
• Machiavelli in Inghilterra ed altri saggi, Roma: Tumminelli, 1942, 1943; Firenze : G. C. Sansoni, 1962
• Fiori freschi, Firenze : Sansoni, 1943, 1944; Milano : Garzanti, 1982
• La filosofia dell'arredamento, Roma : Documento, 1945; Milano : Longanesi, 1964, e succ. ediz; Milano : TEA, 1993; Parma : Guanda, 2012
• Motivi e figure, Torino : Einaudi, 1945
• La poesia metafisica inglese del seicento : John Donne, Roma : Edizioni Italiane, 1945
• Richard Crashaw, Brescia : Morcelliana, 1945
• Il dramma elisabettiano : Webster-Ford, Roma : Ed. Italiane, 1946
• La crisi dell'eroe nel romanzo vittoriano, Firenze : G. C. Sansoni, 1952, e succ. ediz.
• Lettrice notturna, Roma : Casini, 1952; Milano : Henry Beyle, 2013
• Viaggi in Occidente, Firenze : Sansoni, 1955
• Panopticon romano, Napoli : R. Ricciardi, 1967
• Mnemosine : parallelo tra la letteratura e le arti visive, Milano : A. Mondadori, 1971; Milano : Abscondita, 2012
• Il patto col serpente. Paralipomeni di La carne, la morte e il diavolo nella letteratura romantica, Milano : Mondadori, 1972; Milano : Leonardo, 1995; Milano : Adelphi, 2013
• Il giardino dei sensi : studi sul manierismo e il barocco, Milano : Mondadori, 1975
• Panopticon romano secondo, Roma : Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1977, e succ. ediz
• Perseo e la Medusa: dal romanticismo all'avanguardia, Milano : A. Mondadori, 1979
• Voce dietro la scena : un'antologia personale, Milano : Adelphi, 1980, 1993
• Il mondo che ho visto, Milano : Adelphi, 1982, e succ. ediz.
• Lettere sull'antiquariato di Mario Praz a Luigi Magnani (1952-1981), Torino : U. Allemandi, 1996
• Bellezza e bizzarria : saggi scelti, Milano : A. Mondadori, 2002
• Geometrie anamorfiche : saggi di arte, letteratura e bizzarrie varie, Roma : Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2002.
• Il demone dell'analogia : memorie e divagazioni narrative, Roma : Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2002
• Misteri d'Italia, Torino : Nino Aragno Editore, 2022

Romanzi e racconti

• La casa della vita, Milano : A. Mondadori, 1958; Milano : Adelphi, 1979, e succ. ediz.

Traduzioni

• T.S. Eliot, La terra desolata. Frammento di un agone. Marcia trionfale, Firenze : Fussi, 1949; Torino, Einaudi, 1963 e succ. ediz.
• Edgar Allan Poe, Il corvo, Milano : Rizzoli, 1974 e succ. ediz.; Milano : SE, 2004, 2012
• Ben Jonson, Volpone, Firenze : Sansoni, 1943 e succ. ediz.; Torino : Fogola, 1970; Milano : Biblioteca universale Rizzoli, 1996; Milano : Fabbri, 2003
• Charles Lamb, Saggi di Elia, Lanciano : R. Carabba, 1924, 2011; Milano : Biblioteca universale Rizzoli, 1981, 1996
• Jane Austen, Emma, Milano : Garzanti, 1951 e succ. ediz.