Giovanni Papini, journalist, essayist, novelist, writer, poet, literary critic and philosopher, was a controversial literary figure of the early and mid-twentieth century and the earliest and most enthusiastic representative and promoter of Italian pragmatism.
Due to his ideological choices, Papini’s work was almost forgotten after his death, although it was later re-evaluated and appreciated again: in 1975, Jorge Luis Borges called him an “undeservedly forgotten” author.
In 1913 he published his essay Ventiquattro cervelli (“Twenty four brains”), in which he reviewed, with a critical slant and with great philosophical scrutiny, the life and works of great personalities such as Dante Alighieri, Leonardo Da Vinci, George Berkeley, Herbert Spencer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jonathan Swift and, finally, himself!
«We owe a debt of love, all of us, to Friedrich Nietzsche, and it is time to pay it. His brain stopped thinking in January, 1889; his heart stopped beating in August, 1900. We may smile again with the wise, sad smile of a poor Zarathustra who fainted on the mountain-tops for holy envy of heaven, a loving spirit eternally repulsed by fellow men unworthy of his love».
