Paola Masino
Paola Masino was an influential Italian writer born on May 20, 1908, in Pisa, Italy. Raised in Rome, she was encouraged by her father, a minister of agriculture and a writer himself, to pursue her literary ambitions. After moving to Paris in the late 1920s, she became intertwined with the city's intellectual scene and published her first novel, "Monte Ignosa," in 1931, which explores themes of motherhood and individuality through a complex female protagonist. Masino's writing often blended genres, incorporating surrealism and magical realism, and her works were both acclaimed and criticized, particularly by the Fascist regime for their unconventional portrayal of family dynamics. Her later novels, including "Nascita e morte della massaia," delve into the lives of women, addressing issues of identity, alienation, and the struggles against societal expectations. Although her literary contributions were overshadowed by her partner, writer Massimo Bontempelli, Masino's works gained renewed recognition in the 1980s through feminist presses, highlighting her significant role in challenging patriarchal norms. She passed away in 1989, leaving behind a legacy of rich, thought-provoking literature that resonates with themes of female experience and existential inquiry.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Paola Masino
Writer
- Born: May 20, 1908
- Birthplace: Pisa, Italy
- Died: July 27, 1989
Biography
Paola Masino was born May 20, 1908, in Pisa, Italy, to Enrico Alfredo Masino, a minister of agriculture who in his leisure wrote drama and prose, and Luisa Sforza of Montignosa. Paola was raised in Rome, where her father encouraged her writing. In 1924 he introduced her to Luigi Pirandello, who agreed to read her play Le tre Marie. She left home in the late 1920’s to live in Paris, where she worked for the political journal L’Europe nouvelle.
Masino eventually fell in love with married writer Massimo Bontempelli, founder of the journal Novecento. The pair moved to Rome in 1931, then to Venice in 1938 after Bontempelli was exiled by the Fascists. They remained together until Bontempelli’s death in 1960.
In Paris, the vibrant and unconventional Masino made friends with Paris intellectuals, and soon published a collection of surrealist stories, Decadenza della morte (1931; decadence of death). In her 1931 debut novel, Monte Ignosa, Masino creates a female protagonist, Emma, for whom motherhood means the supreme sacrifice of individuality, both hers and the child’s. An acclaimed book, detractors nevertheless complained of abstractions, wild symbolic representations, and confusing tense shifts. In this novel, as in many of her writings, Masino blends genres, following certain concepts of realism while creating fantastical characters in surreal settings. In her 1933 novel Periferia, Masino writes from a childhood perspective about family. Though not condemned outright, the book was criticized by the Fascist government for its unorthodox characterization of the Italian family.
Drawing again on her own life in her last novel, Nascita e morte della massaia (1945; birth and death of a housewife), Masino describes a girl—the housewife as a child—living contentedly in a spidery trunk with her books and food crumbs until her mother convinces her to crawl out and find her life. The centerpiece of the story is the housewife’s hallucinatory diary; in the end, the massaia perfects the art of housewifery but dies as a result. After publishing a poetry collection, Poesie, in 1947, Masino stopped writing and began organizing Bontempelli’s works. She spent the rest of her life overseeing his materials and publications. She died in 1989.
Masino was given the 1931 Viareggio Book Prize for Monte Ignosa, named for her mother’s family home of Montignosa. Masino’s career was eclipsed by the more- prominent Bontempelli’s, but her books were read widely and her stories published in prominent literary journals. Not long after the publication of her last novel, though it received high praise, she fell into relative obscurity. In the 1980’s, however, Masino was resurrected to wide acclaim by the feminist press La Tartaruga, which reprinted Nascita e morte della massaia. A collection of her short stories was republished as a single volume, Colloquio di notte, in 1994. The stories in this collection, most written during the 1940’s, are marked by an intricate interweaving of surrealism, myth, hallucination, magic realism, and images of the grotesque and the absurd. The collection also touches upon Masino’s favorite themes of alienation, despair over the human condition, women’s destiny, conflicts over female identity and motherhood, the changing family, and life and death.
Masino’s writings challenged the ideal of the “angel of the house” promoted by the Fascists and the patriarchal system that oppressed women. In her experimental impulse to blend genres, she consistently interwove the surreal with the real, creating a style uniquely her own.