Lionello Fiumi, a young poet and critic, has published contributions that are noteworthy, but he has given no real capacity to analyze evidence, to sum it up, or to interpret it judiciously. His last effort to prove that Corrado Giovi is the poetic sun of Italy to-day was anæmic and feeble. The antithesis of him is Gherardo Marone, who thinks that Futurism and anarchism are synonymous, but the agnostic in religion sees no choice between Catholicism and Presbyterianism. He also maintains the extraordinary position that a great poet must needs be a great thinker. He is a very young man and his "Difesa di Dulcinea" ("Defense of Dulcinea") gives promise that when he gets in his stride he will go near the winning post.
Vincenzo Cardarelli is a literary critic whose writings are characterized by erudition, sympathy, understanding, and a sense of responsibility. He has published a volume of poems entitled "Prologhi" in line with the symbolist school of France, and especially Stephane Mallarmé.
Another critic who senses the trend of Italian literature and puts correct interpretation upon it is G. A. Borghese.
Two of the popular writers of fiction of to-day, Alfredo Panzini and Luigi Pirandello, I have discussed in a separate chapter.
Luciano Zuccoli is the most conspicuous and successful exponent in Italy of the type of fiction which was thrown upon the world for the first time now nearly two hundred years ago by Samuel Richardson, father of the novel of sentimental analysis. Though Zuccoli has a score of novels and romances to his credit, he would seem to be now at the height of his fecundity. The literary school in Italy which is the outgrowth of the Futuristic movement points the contemptuous finger at him and scoffs at his productions, but he has, nevertheless, a large following and is a writer of much skill. His success depends largely upon taking characters of the Borghesia and exposing them to the ordinary incidents of life, such as love, matrimony, war, politics, and then depicting what comes "naturally" to some of the victims: disillusionment tugging at the leash until it snaps the illicit splicing of it to another snapped leash (for there is no divorce in Italy); conflict between patriotism and pacifism, and between sentiment and idealism from a political, social, and personal point of view. He has got far away from the simpler delineations of his earlier books, such as "La Freccia nel Fianco" ("The Arrow in the Flank"), in which the love of a sentimental girl of eighteen for a boy of eight, the son of a most dissolute noble who tends to follow in his father's footsteps, is featured, and the meticulous discussion of the daily life of male and female sybarites, who have chosen the smooth and easy road to destruction as it travels through Italy's wickedest city, Milan, as in "Fortunato in Amore" and have come to keep what might be called better company, the company of those whose infraction of convention is conditioned more by environment than by determination.
"L'Amore non c'è più" ("There Is No More Love") and "Il Maleficio occulto" ("Witchcraft") are other popular romances.
Virgilio Brocchi is a similar writer, though his writings have never had similar popularity. His most meritorious books have been "Mite" and "Le Aquile." His later books, such as "Isola Sonante," show the author's progress in literary craftsmanship. His last book, "Secondo il Cuor mio" ("According to My Heart"), shows that he has had his ear to the ground and has noticed that the chariot labelled "Public Taste in Letters" is being driven on a new road. There is a note of idealism in the conduct of Gigi Leoni, the artist passionately devoted to his art, in love with Merine Dialli, proud and rich; he refuses to accept her suggestion that he relinquish his art and do something that will lead to material success. After she has made a failure in matrimony with an army officer and returns to the artist, Zuccoli succeeds in drawing with masterly strokes the portrait of a real hero, who, when he perishes later on the field of battle, excites unreservedly the admiration of his readers. In reality it is a book in which passion, of life or of the senses, as it sways an attractive man full of nobility and of dreams, is depicted in the traditional idealistic manner.
The Harold Bell Wright of Italian fiction is Guido Da Verona, and this does Mr. Wright an injustice, for he has never written pornographically and Signor Da Verona has rarely written otherwise. But he is Italy's best-seller. It is depressing to think that really great romances, like the "I Malavoglia" of Verga, stories such as Capuana's "Passa L'Amore," or Renato Fucini's, or even Panzini's "La Madonna di Mamà," should have a sale of only a few thousand copies, while books of the character of "Mimi Bluette," the flower of Signor Da Verona's garden, should go up toward the hundred-thousand mark. It is an index of the salaciousness of the average person, whoever he may be. Any review of Italy's recent literature must mention "The Woman Who Invented Love," "Life Begins To-morrow," if for no other purpose than to show that there is a kind of literature in every country which has a great popularity. In Belgium its clientele is found in the prurient of other countries; in France the "best people" do not read it or say they do not; in England the public censor prohibits it; and we have Mr. Comstock and his successors. "Madeline," which has recently cost its guiltless publisher a fine, is "soft stuff" compared with "Mimi Bluette," and I doubt if Mr. George Moore could revoke any memories of his dead life that could hold a candle to some of Signor Da Verona's actual life.
There is little to be said in favor of his books that could not be said for narcotic-taking, gambling-hells, and underworld tango palaces. They have a glamour about them and an aroma that appeals to the feeble-minded, the inherently decadent, and the ennuyed idle. It is a realism whose reality exists only in a mind made lubricitous by cupidity.
Marino Moretti is one of the young writers whose short stories and romances have found much favor. There is an atmosphere of triviality, of lightness, of inconsequentiality about his writings which is an important part of his art. In reality he is a finished technician and an artist with a wonderful mastery of perspective and of color, and a commendable capacity for expression. His particular charm is that he creates an atmosphere or a situation, but does not insist upon giving a chemical analysis or physical description of either. When he takes you to a drawing-room or to the bathing-beach at the fashionable hour he does not insist on presenting you to every one or giving you a detailed history of their lives and particularly of their amatory tidal waves. Although he seems to give his clientele soft food, he does not insist on spoon-feeding them. In the guise of pap he gives them often thought-making pabulum.