Angelo Maria Ripellino

Angelo Maria Ripellino (4 December 1923 - 21 April 1978) was an Italian translator, poet, linguist and academic.

Angelo Maria Ripellino
Born4 December 1923
Palermo, Italy
Died21 April 1978 (1978-04-22) (aged 54)
Rome, Italy
OccupationWriter

Life and career

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Born in Palermo, the son of a high school professor, in 1945 Ripellino graduated in Slavistics at the University of Palermo.[1] In 1947 he enrolled the filmmaking courses at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia; the same year he married Ela Hlochova, a Czech student of Italian literature he had known during a 1946 study travel in Prague, who would who would become his closer collaborator.[1]

Active as a theatre critic and a poet since 1940, after his university degree he focused his works on translations, critical essays and literary history books about Russian, Polish and Czech-Slovak literature.[1] Among Ripellino's major works are Poesia russa del Novecento ("Russian Poetry of the 20th Century", 1954), Majakovskij e il teatro russo d’avanguardia ("Majakovsky and Russian avant-garde theatre", 1959), Magic Prague (Italian:Praga magica, 1973).[1] He had a key role in popularizing several Russian authors to the Italian public, notably Boris Pasternak and Alexander Blok.[1]

In 1965 he won the Viareggio Prize with Il trucco e l’anima. I maestri della regia nel teatro russo del Novecento ("The Trick and the Soul. The masters of stage direction in 20th-century Russian theatre").[1] He authored the Slavic theatre section of the Encyclopedia of Performing Arts.[1] He collaborated with several important publications, including Corriere della Sera and L'Espresso, and was consultant for Russian literature for Einaudi publisher.[1][2] Ripellino also had an important academic career, first as a lecturer of Slavic philology and Czech language at the University of Bologna, and later as professor of Russian language and literature and Czech-Slovak literature at the Sapienza University of Rome.[1]

Ripellino suffered from tuberculosis from early age and underwent a pneumectomy. He died because of the consequences of a cardiovascular crisis in 1978.[1]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Cesare G. De Michelis (2016). "Ripellino, Angelo Maria". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 87. Treccani.
  2. ^ Gabriele Mazzitelli. "A.M. Ripellino, Lettere e schede editoriali (1954-1977)". Studi Slavistici, vol. 17, no. 2, July-Dec. 2020, pp. 307+. Firenze University Press. Accessed 9 February 2022 via Gale Academic OneFile.
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