Giuseppe Antonio Borgese (12 November 1882 – 4 December 1952) was an Italian writer, journalist, literary critic, Germanist, poet, playwright and academic naturalized American.

Biography

Borgese was born in Polizzi Generosa, near Palermo (Sicily). During the academic year 1899-1900, under pressure from his father who wanted him a lawyer, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law of the University of Palermo. In 1900 he moved to Florence where, at the Institute of Higher Studies, he follows the courses of Girolamo Vitelli, Pio Rajna, Pasquale Villari, Achille Coen and Guido Mazzoni. He graduated in literature at the University of Florence in 1903. From his marriage with the writer Maria Freschi two children were born Leonardo (1904) and Giovanna (1911).

In his early years he founded several literary reviews, including the Dannunzian Hermes (1904), and worked for newspapers such as Corriere della Sera, La Stampa and Il Mattino. He also contributed to the Leonardo magazine.^[1]

He taught German literature and aesthetics at the universities of Turin, Rome and Milan until 1931 when, due to his opposition of the Fascist regime, he was forced to move to the United States. Here he declared himself a political exile and became an American citizen in 1938.^[2] When the Italian-American antifascist Mazzini Society was founded in 1939, Borgese joined it. He was the William Allan Neilson Professor at Smith College from 1932 to 1935. He was professor in the Universities of Chicago and California until the end of World War II, making friends with Thomas Mann and marrying his youngest daughter Elisabeth with whom he had two daughters, Angelica and Dominica.

He returned to Milan in 1945.

After the war, Giuseppe and his wife were involved with the writing of a draft constitution for a federal world government.^[3]

Borgese died in Fiesole in 1952.

Works