The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Bontempelli, Massimo

Born May 12, 1878, in Como; died July 23, 1960, in Rome. Italian writer.

Between 1926 and 1929, Bontempelli supervised the journal Novecento in Rome and was the theoretician of the literary tendency called Novecentism, which proclaimed the emancipation of the creative power of fantasy from reality (for example, in the book Literary Novecentism, 1931). He advanced the formulation of magical realism, which combined realistic concreteness and grotesque fantasy and confused the regularities of the real world, in the novels A Son of Two Mothers (1929), People in Time (1937), and others.

WORKS

Tutto narratore, vols. 1–7. [Milan], 1938.
In Russian translation:
“Ostrov Iren.” In Ital’ianskaia novella XX veka. Moscow, 1969.

REFERENCES

Russo, L. Inarratori (1850–1950). Milan-Messina, [1951].
Gargiulo, A. Letteratura italiana del novecento. Florence, 1958.
Baldacci, L. M. Bontempelli. Turin, [1967].

Z. M. POTAPOVA

References in periodicals archive

Ortese's typical intermingling of reality and dreams led many critics to label her work "magic realism," a mode of writing made famous in Italy by Massimo Bontempelli, with whom Ortese had a prolific correspondence.

Anna Maria Ortese, Celestial Geographies

and Massimo Bontempelli's La scacchiera davanti alio specchio.

National fantasies

The musicians and musicologists were Raffaele De Rensis, Adriano Lualdi, Giuseppe Mule, Alberto Magni Dufflocq, Alceo Toni, Federico Mompellio (who wrote an article on Italian and French publishers), Guglielmo Barblan (The quartet and chamber music), Massimo Bontempelli, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, Federico Ghisi, Guido Pannain, Ulderico Rolandi, Luigi Ronga, Giovanni Tebaldini, and Ottavio Tiby.

Verdi studies in Rilm-Italia

Due lettere inedite scritte a mano indirizzate allo scrittore Massimo Bontempelli (5) e con l'intestazione della rivista testimoniano, attraverso il loro tono vivace, che Amalia riesca a gestire con grazia e disinvoltura il lavoro arduo e complesso che comporta il portare avanti una pubblicazione letteraria.

Le seduzioni di Amalia: due lettere inedite all'amico Massimo Bontempelli

Although Massimo Bontempelli (1878-1960), the fourth member sitting on this jury, could not be present during this event, Ferro introduces him to his guests as the representative of the New Italy, the embodiment of Italian dynamism.

T. S. Eliot and the Premio Camoes: a brief honeymoon and anointment of Portuguese fascist politics

Magical realism tends to be associated most closely with Latin American fiction, but according to translator Estelle Gilson, the term had its origins in 1920s Italy and the work of Massimo Bontempelli (1878-1960), who declared that "the real norm of the art of narration is to describe the dream as if it were reality, and the reality as if it were a dream." Bontempelli's early novels aren't what we'd today describe as magical realist--at their strangest they're subtle, well-mannered Twilight Zones--and even his last and perhaps most acclaimed fictive work, 1953's The Faithful Lover, could be described as sitting closer to realism than to very old men with enormous wings.

Massimo Bontempelli. The Faithful Lover

I recall enjoying Massimo Bontempelli and another Italian, whose name, regrettably, escapes me, in one of whose stories the young hero tremblingly rings the enchanting heroine's doorbell.

Learning to read