Historical Library

Parenti Marino: epistolario

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The correspondence of the bibliographer, publisher and essayist Marino Parenti was found in the cellars of the Province of Turin in 1998, where it was confined since the arrival of the impressive bibliographical and archival collection belonged to Parenti, in 1964. Probable reasons for political prudence were at the origin of this removal, at the time of the discovery now completely anti-historical. The emergence of the copious material has revealed the network of interests, relationships and exchanges of relatives, wide and branched, developed in a temporal extension ranging from the 20s to the 60s of the 20th century. A quick read of the list reveals the names of the personalities, some of great importance (to give a few examples, Riccardo Bacchelli, Dino Buzzati, Emilio Cecchi, Luigi Einaudi, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Giovanni Gentile, Corrado Govoni, Enrico Falqui, Curzio Malaparte, Thomas Mann, Mario Praz etc.) who were in contact with Parenti, but the analysis of the correspondence fully clarifies the great interweaving of relationships, both with the old friends and companions of the times of Bagutta, is, as it goes, with the subjects intervened in the meantime throughout the working life of Parenti. The correspondence reveals in fact the full role of an organic intellectual, well rooted in the complex of initiatives piloted from above, here in particular by the mentor Giovanni Gentile, and active until the end in the publishing house Sansoni, managed by the son of Giovanni, Federico Gentile, after the great difficulties occurred during the war and immediately post-war. The panorama is wide, and was at the time analyzed in a volume published in 2001 (A man of letters. Marino Parenti and his epistolary, edited by Angelo d'Orsi, Turin, Province of Turin, 2001).