Giuseppe Antonio Borgese
Illustration — G. Borgese a San Vigilio di Marebbe (cropped) • Illustration — Giuseppe Antonio Borgese portraited by Giovanni Costetti (1904) Giuseppe Antonio Borgese (12 November 1882 – 4 December 1952) was an Italian writer, journalist, literary critic, Germanist, poet, playwright, and academic naturalized American.
Also recorded as Giuseppe Borgese
Giuseppe Antonio Borgese

Public domain
- Born
- 1882 · Polizzi Generosa.
- Died
- 1952 · Fiesole.
- Nationality
- United States · Italy · Kingdom of Italy
- Occupation
- writer · journalist · poet · literary critic · university teacher · playwright · translator
- Fields
- literary activity · opinion journalism · journalism · literary criticism
- Education
- University of Palermo · Istituto di Studi Superiori di Firenze
- Teachers
- Giovanni Alfredo Cesareo
- Languages
- Italian · English
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Documentary summary
Illustration — G. Borgese a San Vigilio di Marebbe (cropped) • Illustration — Giuseppe Antonio Borgese portraited by Giovanni Costetti (1904) Giuseppe Antonio Borgese (12 November 1882 – 4 December 1952) was an Italian writer, journalist, literary critic, Germanist, poet, playwright, and academic naturalized American.
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wikidata · Q1528124 · wikipedia · Giuseppe Antonio Borgese
In this article
Biography
Biography
Giuseppe Antonio Borgese studied at University of Palermo and Istituto di Studi Superiori di Firenze. Training under Giovanni Alfredo Cesareo is recorded. The recorded working language is Italian and English. The field of work recorded is literary activity, opinion journalism and journalism. Places of work recorded in the authority are Turin, Milan and Rome. Employment is recorded with Sapienza University of Rome, University of Chicago and University of Turin.
Borgese was born in Polizzi Generosa, Sicily on November 12, 1882 and was raised by relatives in nearby Palermo. During the academic year 1899–1900, under pressure from his father who wanted him to be 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 followed the courses of Girolamo Vitelli, Pio Rajna, Pasquale Villari, Achille Coen, and Guido Mazzoni. He received his doctorate in literature from the University of Florence in 1903. During this period Borgese made several literary contributions, including the naming of the early 20th century Italian poetic movement, crepuscolarismo (the twilight school), characterized by themes of disillusionment, nostalgia, and simplicity of form. From his marriage with the writer Maria Freschi he had two children: 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. 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. There he declared himself a political exile and became an U.S. citizen in 1938. 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 and was a professor at the Universities of Chicago and California until the end of World War II, where he befriended Thomas Mann. In 1939 Borgese married Mann’s youngest daughter, Elisabeth, with whom he had two daughters, Angelica and Dominica. After the war, Giuseppe and Elisabeth worked with the Chicago Committee to Frame a World Constitution, a university group involved in the drafting of and commentary on non-government world constitutions. In 1948 the committee published the Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution, which included the groundbreaking and controversial declaration that “The four elements of life - earth, water, air, energy - are common property of the human race”. In 1952, with McCarthyism on the rise in the US, the couple moved from to Italy where Borgese was later reinstated as faculty at the University of Milan. Borgese died in Fiesole on a December 4, 1952 at the age of 70.
Works
Works
Poetry • La canzone paziente (1910) • Le Poesie (1922) • Poesie 1922-1952 (1952) Novels • Rubè (1921) • I vivi e i morti (1923) Short stories • La città sconosciuta (1925) • La tragedia di Mayerling (1925) • Le belle (1927) • Il sole non è tramontato (1929) • Tempesta nel nulla (1931) • Il pellegrino appassionato (1933) • La Siracusana (1950) • Le novelle (2 volumes, 1950) Theatre • L'Arciduca (1924) • Lazzaro (1925) Literature and aesthetics • Gabriele D'Annunzio (1909) • Mefistofele. Con un discorso sulla personalità di Goethe (1911) • La vita e il libro (3 volumes, 1910–1913) • Studi di letterature moderne (1915) • Resurrezione (1922) • Tempo di edificare (1923) • Ottocento europeo (1927) • Il senso della letteratura italiana (1931) • Poetica dell'unità. Cinque saggi (1934) • Problemi di estetica e storia della critica (1952) Journalism and essays • La nuova Germania (1909) • Italia e Germania (1915) • Guerra di redenzione (1915) • La guerra delle idee (1916) • L'Italia e la nuova alleanza (1937) • L'Alto Adige contro l'Italia (1921) • Goliath, the March of Fascism (1937) • Disegno preliminare di costituzione mondiale (1949) Voyages • Autunno a Costantinopoli (1929) • Giro lungo per la primavera (1930) • Escursioni in terre nuove (1931) • Atlante americano (1936)

Giuseppe Antonio Borgese portraited by Giovanni Costetti in 1904
Giovanni Costetti · Private collection institution QS:P195,somevalue,P3831
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1882
Giuseppe Antonio Borgese born at Polizzi Generosa.
1952
Giuseppe Antonio Borgese died at Fiesole.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Polizzi Generosa.
Birth place
Fiesole.
Death place
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Crepuscolarismo Italian Poetry, Symbolism & Futurism Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica.
- 2.Walter L. Adamson. Modernism and Fascism: The Politics of Culture in Italy, 1903-1922. The American Historical Review. 95. 2. 361. April 1990. 10.1086/ahr/95.2.359.
- 3.Exile Becoming A Citizen; Prof. Borgese at Chicago Says Italy 'Has Given Me Up'. The New York Times. 1938-04-12.
- 4.Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution 1948 - Wikisource, the free online library. en.wikisource.org.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 1
References
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reference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q1528124: Giuseppe Antonio BorgeseWikimedia Foundation
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Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 15 August 2026.
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