IDLING IN ITALY

IDLING IN ITALY

STUDIES OF
LITERATURE AND OF LIFE

BY
JOSEPH COLLINS

AUTHOR OF "MY ITALIAN YEAR"

I loaf and invite my soul

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1920

Copyright, 1920, by

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published September, 1920

TO M. K. C.

... Io vengo di lontana parte,
Dov'era lo tuo cuor.

PREFACE

Nothing obstacled my pleasure so much when I first went to Italy as unfamiliarity with its literature. Every one who would add to his spiritual stature and his emotional equanimity by tarry in Italy should have some intimacy with the Bible, with mythology, and with Italian writers, especially the poets. I sought books about books but was not very successful in finding them. Interpretative articles on men and books which are so common in British and American literature are exceptional in Italy. One who is ambitious to get even a bowing acquaintance with them must make the introduction himself. In 1918 an enterprising Italian, Signor A. T. Formiggini, attempted to supply such introduction by the publication of a literary review called L'Italia Che Scrive, a monthly supplement to all the periodicals. He has had gratifying success.

My purpose in publishing the essays on fictional literature in this volume is in the hope of awakening a larger interest in America in Italian letters and to aid in creating a demand for their translation into English. I shall be glad if they serve to orient any one who is bewildered by his first glance into the maze of Italian modern, improvisional literature.

Americans go to Italy by the thousands, but very few of them take the trouble to acquaint themselves with her history or with her ideals and accomplishments. This is to be regretted, for proportionately as they did that their pleasure would be enhanced and their profit increased. Moreover, it would contribute to better mutual understanding of Americans and Italians.

The remaining chapters are the outgrowth of experiences and emotions in Italy during and after the war.

Some of these essays originally appeared in The Bookman, Scribner's Magazine, and The North American Review, and I thank the editors of those journals for permission to make use of them.

CONTENTS

• chapter  page
• 1. Literary Italy  1
  2. Literary Italy (continued)  25
  3. Gabriele D'Annunzio—Poet, Pilot, and Pirate  44
  4. The Futurist School of Italian Writers  70
  5. Giovanni Papini and the Futuristic Literary Movement in Italy  88
  6. Two Noisy Italian Schoolmasters  107
  7. Improvisional Italian Literature of To-Day and Yesterday  121
  8. Fictional Biography and Autobiography  148
  9. The Literary Mausoleum of Samuel Butler  159
  10. Saints and Sinners  173
  11. Woman's Cause Is Man's: They Rise or Sink Together  185
  12. Postbellum Vagaries  198
  13. World Convalescence  214
  14. Banquets and Personalities  236
  15. Sentimentality and the Male  251
  16. The Play Instinct in Children  263
  17. "If a Man Walketh in the Night, He Stumbleth; but if He Walketh in the Day He Seeth the Light of This World"  277
  18. The American Eagle Changes His Perch  293

IDLING IN ITALY

CHAPTER I
LITERARY ITALY

There is something about the word Italy that causes an emotional glow in the hearts of most Americans. For them Italy is the cradle of modern civilization and of the Christian religion; the land where modern literature and science took their faltering first steps; the garden where the flowers of art first bloomed, then reached a magnificence that has never been equalled; the land that after having so long agonized under the