Federigo Tozzi
Federigo Tozzi was an Italian writer born on January 19, 1883, in Siena, Italy. He was the sole survivor of nine children, and his challenging upbringing was marked by health issues and a tumultuous family dynamic, particularly following the death of his mother when he was twelve. Despite his struggles with formal education, Tozzi developed a deep intellectual curiosity, engaging with a wide range of philosophical and literary works. His early life was characterized by a brief flirtation with socialism, which later transformed into a profound exploration of Catholicism.
Tozzi moved to Rome in 1907, where he faced difficulties in establishing a career in various fields, eventually selling his father’s restaurant to pursue writing. His initial works included poetry with Catholic themes, but he gained recognition for his short stories after World War I. Notable works include "Bestie," "Il podere," "Tre croci," and "Con gli occhi chiusi," the latter being regarded as his masterwork, focusing on themes of failure, disillusionment, and the human condition. Tragically, Tozzi died from pneumonia at the young age of thirty-seven. His work faded into obscurity for many years but has experienced a revival, allowing modern readers to appreciate his minimalist style and the complex emotional landscapes he portrayed.
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Federigo Tozzi
Fiction Writer and Poet
- Born: January 1, 1883
- Birthplace: Siena, Italy
- Died: March 21, 1920
- Place of death: Rome, Italy
Biography
Federigo Tozzi was born in the medieval town of Siena, Italy, on January 19, 1883, the son of a successful restaurateur and farmer. Tozzi was the only one of nine children to survive past infancy and he struggled with poor health. His mother, an epileptic, died when he was twelve; his father was dictatorial and abusive. Tozzi struggled through a number of schools, his conduct unruly, his grades low, until he finally graduated from a local technical school in 1900. Indifferent to institutional education, he was a voracious reader, probing with intellectual vigor and restless energy a wide variety of texts from Saint Augustine to Charles Darwin. That same intellectual energy compelled Tozzi to espouse the incendiary manifestos of socialism until 1904, when he underwent a profoundly moving rediscovery of Catholicism and studied numerous mystical writers from the Middle Ages.
By 1907, Tozzi moved to Rome and struggled to find steady work, failing at teaching, journalism, and government work with the railway system. When his father died in March, 1908, he sold his father’s restaurant, determined to use the money to become a writer. He initially wrote poetry that was heavy with Catholic mysticism and attracted little critical interest. By 1914, Tozzi returned to Rome, certain its cosmopolitan atmosphere would help his career. He found immediate success with short stories, but his burgeoning career was halted by the outbreak of World War I and his four years of service in the Italian Red Cross.
In 1917, Tozzi gathered an assortment of linked experimental fable-like pieces he had written before the war into a collection called Bestie, stories that used animals symbolically to explore a universe without clear moral absolutes and haunted by compelling loneliness. The critical interest in the book encouraged Tozzi to complete in rapid succession not only a number of short stories but manuscripts of three novels: Il podere (1921), about a son who tries unsuccessfully to run the family farm after his father’s death; Tre croci (1920; Three Crosses, 1921), about three brothers whose greed and stupidity destroy their family’s bookstore; and Tozzi’s masterwork Con gli occhi chiusi (1919; Eyes Shut, 1990), about the difficult relationship between a son and an autocratic father. Collectively, they offer a provocative vision in which characters, all failures, struggle against their shortcomings and the weight of their disillusionment amid the random intrusion of harsh misfortune. Any happiness, Tozzi argues, comes from regarding life with eyes closed.
At the height of his creative powers (he had completed more than one hundred stories and had branched into theater), Tozzi contracted pneumonia and died on March 21, 1920, at the age of thirty-seven. For a generation, his somber realistic works lapsed into obscurity as Italian fiction favored strident political messages and avant-garde experimentation. A revival of interest, including a selection of his stories translated into English for the first time in 2001, has given contemporary audiences an appreciation of Tozzi’s groundbreaking minimalist style and a look into his unsettling universe, where ordinary characters struggle to find meaning amid the confusion of their passions.