Il Politecnico
EditorElio Vittorini
Categories
Frequency
  • Weekly (September 1945-May 1946)
  • Monthly (May 1946-December 1947)
FounderElio Vittorini
Founded1945
First issue29 September 1945
Final issue
Number		December 1947
39
CountryItaly
Based inMilan
LanguageItalian
OCLC654801459

Il Politecnico (Italian: The Polytechnic) was a Communist cultural and literary magazine published in Milan, Italy, between 1945 and 1947. In the debut editorial it was stated that the magazine was inspired by the homonymous journal which had been founded by Carlo Cattaneo in 1839 and published until 1845.[1]

History and profile

Il Politecnico was first published in Milan as a weekly on 29 September 1945.[2][3] Giulio Einaudi was the publisher, and Elio Vittorini was the editor of the magazine.[2][4][5] Franco Fortini, an Italian poet and Marxist theorist, was one of the editorial board members of Il Politecnico.[6] From 1 May 1946 the magazine came out monthly.[5]

The idea behind the establishment of Il Politecnico was to rebuild Italian culture after the experience of Fascism.[2] This idea was originally developed by a communist Catholic philosopher Felice Balbo in 1945.[2] Il Politecnico also aimed at providing a democratic forum for literary discussions.[7] It considered culture as a guide to policy.[8] This approach was similar to that advocated by French thinker Jean-Paul Sartre and was totally opposite of Palmiro Togliatti's understanding of culture as something less important than party instructions.[8]

The magazine rejected not to cover the work by non-Communist artists and featured translations of famous authors such as Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot, Franz Kafka and James Joyce.[4] The magazine also published photo-stories of Luigi Crocenzi.[9][10] Italo Calvino was among the contributors and in fact, he started his career as a journalist in the magazine.[11]

Due to the conflict between the Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti and Elio Vittorini[12] and its editorial policy Il Politecnico lost the support of the Communist Party.[4] The magazine eventually ceased publication in December 1947.[4] The 39th issue was the last one which did not announce the closing of the magazine.[6]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Alberto Cadioli; Silvia Cadioli (2018). Vittorini nella città politecnica (in Italian). Pisa: ETS. ISBN 9788846750839.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Claudio Pogliano (2011). "At the periphery of the rising empire: The case of Italy (1945–1968)". In Stefano Franchi; Francesco Bianchini (eds.). The Search for a Theory of Cognition: Early Mechanisms and New Ideas. Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi. p. 117. ISBN 978-94-012-0715-7.
  3. ↑ Andrew Stevens (October 2003). "Il Politecnico". 3am Review.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Herbert Lottman (1998). The Left Bank: Writers, Artists, and Politics from the Popular Front to the Cold War. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. p. 252. ISBN 978-0-226-49368-8.
  5. 1 2 David Forgacs; Stephen Gundle (2007). Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. pp. 105, 107. ISBN 978-0-253-21948-0.
  6. 1 2 Anna Baldini (2016). "Working with images and texts: Elio Vittorini's Il Politecnico". Journal of Modern Italian Studies. 21 (1): 50–51. doi:10.1080/1354571X.2016.1112064. S2CID 146888676.
  7. ↑ Gaetana Marrone, ed. (2006). "Literary journals". Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies. New York; London: Routledge. p. 985. ISBN 978-1-135-45530-9.
  8. 1 2 Fabio Guidali (2020). "Culture and political commitment in the nonorthodox Marxist Left: the case of Quaderni piacentini in pre-1968 Italy". History of European Ideas. 46 (6): 863. doi:10.1080/01916599.2020.1756892.
  9. ↑ "Photography and Neorealism in Italy, 1945-19655". Rosphoto. Retrieved 28 December 2014.
  10. ↑ Marco Andreani (2015). "Photo-poems: Visual impact strategies and photo-story in the work of Mario Giacomelli and Luigi Crocenzi". In Giorgia Alù; Nancy Pedri (eds.). Enlightening Encounters: Photography in Italian Literature. Toronto; Buffalo, NY; London: University of Toronto Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-1-4426-4807-4.
  11. ↑ Tracy Chevalier, ed. (1997). Encyclopedia of the Essay. London: Fitzroy Dearborn. ISBN 9781884964305.
  12. ↑ David Forgacs (1990). "The Italian Communist Party and Culture". In Zygmunt G. Barański; Robert Lumley (eds.). Culture and Conflict in Postwar Italy Essays on Mass and Popular Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 98. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-20841-8_6. ISBN 978-1-349-20841-8.
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