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Full Description
A foundational work of Italian intellectual life that blends political essays and literary criticism, anticipating key debates of the New Left and exploring the intersection of ideology and literature.
Originally published in Italian in 1965, A Test of Powers was immediately seen as one of the central texts of Italian intellectual life. By the time of the 1968 student revolts, it was clear that Franco Fortini had anticipated many of the themes and concerns of the New Left, which was no surprise, given that Fortini had spent more than two decades immersed in fierce ideological debates over anti-Fascism, organizing the alliance between progressivism and literature and other topics that found their way into A Test of Powers. In addition to politically focused essays, the book also features writings on a range of authors who influenced Fortini, including Franz Kafka, Boris Pasternak, Eric Auerbach, Marcel Proust, and Bertolt Brecht.
Contents
Translator's Introduction: The Labour of Division
Translator's Acknowledgements
Preface to the First Edition (1965)
Preface to the Second Edition (1969)
PART I: The Literary Institution
I. Eroticism and Literature
II. A Test of Powers
III. Clarifications
IV. Cunning as Doves
V. Literary Institutions and the Progress of the Regime
VI. Two Avant-gardes
VII. Avant-garde and Mediation
VIII. Written and Spoken
PART II: The Condition of the Guest
I. Radek's Hands
II. The Writers' Mandate and the End of Anti-Fascism
III. In Defence of the Idiot
PART III: Of Some Critics
I. Reading Spitzer
II. Mimesis
III. Deus Absconditus
IV. Lukács in Italy
V. The Young Lukács
VI. The Passage of Joy
PART IV: For Some Books
I. For Herzen
II. Rereading Pasternak
III. Notes on Proust
IV. Tolstoy, the Master and the Man
V. Kafka's Men and the Criticism of Things
VI. Two Returns
VII. Brecht or the Talking Horse
VIII. The Chinese Spectre
