38 Facts About Carlo Muscetta

Carlo Muscetta was a poet who became better known as a literary critic and, later, as an editor of literary magazines.

Carlo Muscetta had a parallel career in teaching, employed as a university professor of Literature successively at Catania, Paris and Rome.

Carlo Muscetta was born and grew up at Avellino, a midsized town with a rich history, located approximately 50 kilometres inland to the east of Naples.

Carlo Muscetta then switched to the "Liceo classico Pietro Colletta" which held out the likelihood of a more academically oriented set of qualifications.

Carlo Muscetta had already, as a teenager, established a "respectful" relationship with Benedetto Croce, to whom he frequently submitted written questions and from whom he received written answers.

Carlo Muscetta graduated in 1934, successfully concluding his student career with a dissertation, supervised by Luigi Foscolo Benedetto, concerning the nineteenth century literature scholar Francesco de Sanctis, a subject to which he returned in his subsequent writings.

Carlo Muscetta was dismissed from his teaching post after he was overheard criticising the colonial war in Abyssinia, but found a new position at the "Istituto Di Cagno Abbrescia", a secondary school in nearby Bari through the intervention of Fiore.

In 1937 the couple relocated to Pescara where Carlo Muscetta had been offered a more secure job at a "scuola magistrale".

In 1939 Carlo Muscetta succeeded in obtaining a transfer to Rome, on the far side of the mountains.

Carlo Muscetta secured first place in the "Education Policy" competition category.

Carlo Muscetta secured fourth place in the "culture and arts" category.

Carlo Muscetta had decided to participate in "the games" because he was "tired of provincial life, and wanted to live in Florence or Rome".

Carlo Muscetta had "very publicly" abandoned his open hostility to the government in 1937, but would nevertheless, according to his own subsequent attestations, remained active as an "underground antifascist".

In Rome Carlo Muscetta quickly became part of a network of young literati.

Carlo Muscetta teamed up with one of these, Mario Alicata, to compile and publish "Avventure e scoperte: nuove letture per i ragazzi italiani della scuola media", an anthology of "adventure and discovery stories", aimed at younger teenagers.

In 1940, together with the antifascist journalist Giaime Pintor, Carlo Muscetta became a member of the judging commission for the "Prelittoriali", a sub-section of the annual "Littoriali" in which he had competed with such success in 1939.

However, Carlo Muscetta took the idea of going along with fascism one step further, contributing during the early 1940s to the fortnightly literary magazine "Primato" which was launched in March 1940, and thereafter directed by Giuseppe Bottai, the Fascist Education Minister in Mussolini's government between 1936 and 1943.

Carlo Muscetta turned increasingly towards an intellectualised form of Marxism, though it is impossible to pin down quite when and to what extent his political opinions changed and crystallised.

Carlo Muscetta became an "Azionista", part of a broadly based political association, with some of the features of a political party, and a shared focus on antifascist resistance.

Natalia Ginzburg and Lucia Carlo Muscetta submitted their own appeals to Strazzera-Perniciani, who undertook to look after their husbands; and he was able to take steps that prevented the two men from being picked up in a truck for transported to Germany.

Carlo Muscetta was sent to work at the barracks of the so-called "citta militare" at Rome-Cecchignola.

Carlo Muscetta "disappeared" into hiding, and resumed his activities as a contributing editor to L'Italia Libera.

Directly after the war ended Carlo Muscetta worked with increasing intensity for the Einaudi Publishing business.

Carlo Muscetta himself had reason to doubt the wisdom of his move just one week after he made it.

In 1953 Carlo Muscetta was entrusted by Party Secretary Togliatti with the directorship of "Societa", the party's review magazine on politics, arts and culture, published in Florence four times a year.

In 1955 Carlo Muscetta published an essay of his own entitled "Metello e la crisi del neorealismo" which turned out to be problematic for him.

Carlo Muscetta failed, in his 30-page essay, to acknowledge Pratolini's novel as a manifesto for the new realism.

Carlo Muscetta formally resigned from the party in July 1957, though the caustic spirit that had led him to join it ten years earlier remained undimmed.

Carlo Muscetta's contributions were, as before, predominantly of a political-cultural character.

Carlo Muscetta took on responsibility for the publication's "scientific-literary supplement".

Carlo Muscetta was entirely in favour of modernisation in terms of university life as a basis for rejuvenating teaching methods.

Carlo Muscetta sustained a steady stream of contributions to various daily newspapers and periodical magazines.

Carlo Muscetta freely acknowledged Croce, De Sanctis and Gramsci as his underlying references points.

Carlo Muscetta was still a young man when he produced an Italian version of "Le rivoluzioni d'Italia" by Edgar Quinet, published by Laterza in Bari in 1935.

In October 1974 Carlo Muscetta accepted an appointment as a visiting professor at the Sorbonne University in Paris where he taught two one year courses, one on Petrarch and the other on Boccaccio.

Carlo Muscetta left Paris in 1976 and made his home in Capalbio, a "medieval hill village" an hour or so north of Rome, which again became the focus of his professional life.

Carlo Muscetta retained his professorship at Rome till 1983, the year during which, having reached 70, he definitively retired from teaching.

Carlo Muscetta died at Aci Trezza {Catania} on 22 March 2004.