Alberto Denti di Pirajno
Alberto Denti, Duke of Pirajno[1] (7 March 1886 – 15 January 1968) was an Italian writer, medical doctor, and gastronome. He spent almost twenty years (1924–1942) as the personal physician of the Duke of Aosta.[2] Denti di Pirajno is now best known for his 1955 book, A Cure for Serpents.
Contents
Biography
Alberto Denti di Pirajno was born in La Spezia, to a Sicilian father, head of the local military port, and an English mother. Alberto Denti di Pirajno studied medicine in Florence and Rome.
He served during the First World War and was decorated with a bronze medal. After the war he moved to Macedonia and then, in 1924, to Tripolitania as a doctor in a unit commanded by Duke Amedeo d'Aosta.
He became a colonial official and held administrative posts in Eritrea and Somalia. After the Abyssinian War of 1936, with the appointment of the Duke of Aosta as Viceroy, he became Head of Cabinet. He was appointed prefect of Tripoli (1941–1943). After the Italian defeat, he surrendered the city to British forces under General Montgomery.[lower-alpha 1] Denti di Pirajno was interned in a concentration camp in Kenya where he remained for three years.
A shy and reserved personality, but also a bizarre one (the historian of Italian colonialism Angelo Del Boca defines him as a "very fine and extravagant writer"),[3] the author of several books on his African experiences, including A Cure for Serpents, a text translated into several languages and particularly admired by writers Harold Nicolson and Karen Blixen.[4]
Denti di Pirajno lived for many years in the former Italian East African colonies as administrator and physician. A keen student of human nature, he spent much time not only treating native patients but learning their language and listening to their stories, the travellers’ tales of Arab merchants, and the legends concerning medicine-men and sorcerers. He recounts these stories in A Grave For A Dolphin. The lyrics of the David Bowie song "Heroes" (1977) were partly inspired by his book A Grave For A Dolphin,[lower-alpha 2] one of Bowie's favorite books.[lower-alpha 3]
In 1960, at the age of seventy-four, he published his first novel Ippolita, which was favourably received by critics. "Parallel in many respects with Lampedusa’s The Leopard [...] but by no means an imitation. Both books are by Italian writers and evoke nineteenth-century Italy in transition; the difference is in the individuals who compose the cast, in each case the creation of masters of the craft."[7] Ippolita describes the lifelong metamorphosis of a woman obsessed by avarice.[8] The story of the novel, which takes place before and after the Italian Risorgimento, is narrated in a sober and detached manner, in a style that departs from both the realism typical of early 20th century literature and the fantastic digressions of later authors. Ippolita was awarded the Corriere della Sera's 'Orio Vergani' literary prize in 1961.[lower-alpha 4]
A second novel, The Love Song of Mara Lumera, was written in English — its American publication preceded the author’s own Italian translation[9] — and inspired by real events. John Haycraft clalled "one of the most extraordinary novels about the Mafia."[10]
In addition to memoirs and narrative texts, Denti di Pirajno also wrote a few volumes on gastronomy: The Educated Gastronome (1950) and Sicilians at the Table (published posthumously in 1970), texts that are not simply recipe books but rather books on the culture of eating enriched by his international experience. Under the pseudonym Hasân-El-Tarâs, he also wrote the poetry collection The Enchanted Minaret, pretending to have translated the rediscovered manuscript of a non-existent Turkish poet.
Alberto Denti died in Rome in 1968.
Works
- Storie del mio bazar (1929).
- Il gastronomo educato (1950).
- Un medico in Africa (1952; 1997).
- Incantesimi neri (1959).
- Ippolita (1960; 1994).
- La mafiosa (1965; 2008).
- Siciliani a tavola. Itinerario gastronomico da Messina a Porto Empedocle (1970).
- La mia seconda educazione inglese (1971).
- Il minareto incantato (1972; under the pen name Hasân-El-Tarâs; with preface by Francesco Gabrieli)
Translated into English
- A Cure for Serpents (1955).
- A Grave for a Dolphin (1956).
- Ippolita (1961).
- The Love Song of Mara Lumera (1964).
Notes
Footnotes
- ↑ Denti di Pirajno presents an account of the surrender of Tripoli in A Cure for Serpents.
- ↑ According to the musician himself in the preface to the 2001 autobiography of his second wife, the model Iman Abdulmajid.[5]
- ↑ A Grave for a Dolphin was listed as one of David Bowie's top 100 must-read books.[6]
- ↑ On the jury sat Riccardo Bacchelli, Luigi Barzini, Dino Buzzati, Indro Montanelli and Alberto Moravia.
Citations
- ↑ Timmis, Christopher (2008). "A Cure for Serpents," BMJ, Vol. 336, p. 161.
- ↑ Healey, Robin (1998). Twentieth-century Italian Literature in English Translation: An Annotated Bibliography 1929–1997. University of Toronto Press, p. 76.
- ↑ Del Boca, Angelo (2003). La nostra Africa nel racconto di cinquanta italiani che l'hanno percorsa, esplorata e amata. Vicenza: Neri Pozza.
- ↑ Malatesta, Stefano (21 luglio 2013). "Il medico poeta fra i capitribù," La Repubblica. Retrieved 12 February 2017.
- ↑ Also see Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Gibson, Megan (2013). "David Bowie: His 100 Favorite Reads," Time Magazine. Retrieved 30 June 2017.
- ↑ The Booklist and Subscription Books Bulletin, Vol. LVIII, No. 7 (1961), p. 226.
- ↑ Bergin, Thomas G. (1961). "The Second Sin," Saturday Review, Vol. XLIV, No. 35, p. 18.
- ↑ Slonim, Marc (1964). "Sicily on the Sordid Side," Saturday Review, Vol. XLVII, No. 33, p. 36.
- ↑ Haycraft, John (1987). Italian Labyrinth. London: Penguin Books, p. 186.
External links
- Works by Alberto Denti di Pirajno at Internet Archive
- Works by Alberto Denti di Pirajno at Open Library
- Alberto Denti di Pirajno: Medico, Funzionario, Scrittore, by Marianna Scarfone
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