Mario Novaro
Mario Novaro was an influential Italian philosopher, socialist, and poet, born on September 25, 1868, in Diano Marina, Italy. He spent his formative years in Oneglia, where he completed his high school education before pursuing studies in philosophy at the University of Berlin, and later in Vienna. Novaro gained recognition for his metaphysical poetry and his work as the managing editor of La Riviera Ligure, a literary magazine that he transformed from a simple advertising bulletin into a prominent platform for Italian poets over a twenty-year period. His only poetry collection, "Murmuri ed echi," was published in 1912, and he dedicated much of the rest of his life to revising these poems, driven by the belief that language struggled to adequately express the complexities of human experience and the cosmos. A member of the Socialist Party, Novaro also contributed to his local community as an aldermanic representative. He passed away on August 9, 1944, leaving a legacy that highlights his commitment to both literature and philosophy in early twentieth-century Italy.
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Mario Novaro
Nonfiction Writer and Poet
- Born: September 25, 1868
- Birthplace: Diano Marina, Italy
- Died: August 9, 1944
Biography
A philosopher and socialist, Mario Novaro is remembered for his poetry and for editing a literary magazine, with both activities making a substantial contribution to the development of Italian literature in the early twentieth century. Novaro was born on September 25, 1868, in Diano Marina, Italy, to Augustino and Paolia Sasso Novaro. He spent his boyhood in Oneglia, where he attended high school. Upon graduating, he enrolled at the University of Berlin, attending classes for one semester during the autumn of 1889. He began writing metaphysical poetry while studying in Vienna, Austria, and then returned to Berlin, where he earned his Ph.D. in philosophy. In 1893, he published a study of the French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche, which he considered to be “the fruits of that philosophical and political system of knowledge” he had learned in Berlin. In 1895 he earned a second degree at the University of Turin.
Novaro returned to Oneglia, where he accepted an appointment as aldermanic representative for the Socialist Party. Around the same time, he took a teaching post at his old high school in 1898. However, he soon left that job and with his three brothers assumed control of his family’s olive oil business.
In 1899 Novaro became managing editor of La Riviera Ligure, a periodical that originally was an advertising bulletin for his family’s business. During the twenty years Novaro ran the periodical, it became a profoundly effective forum for Italian poets. Novaro, who also wrote for the magazine, solicited and invited aspiring and established writers to contribute to the publication. Under his direction, Novaro turned the former advertising bulletin into a commercially lucrative publication and a major venue for literary culture, a periodical which heralded poetry and poets. La Riviera Ligure published its final issue in 1919.
Novaro published only one collection of his poetry, Murmuri ed echi, in 1912. After La Riviera Ligure closed, Novaro spent the remainder of his life revising the poems in that volume. According to Pietro Frassica, the author of an article about Novaro in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Novaro believed he had to continually revise and refine his poems because the nature of language was limited in its “capacity to convey the anxiety experienced by the self as it contemplates the cosmos.” Novaro died on August 9, 1944.