Ignazio Silone

From 1946 to the 1970s, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature at least 13 times. For many years an anti-fascist exile abroad, Silone participated actively and in various phases of Italian politics, animating the cultural life of the country in the post-war period. He was among the founders of the Italy's Communist party in 1921; he was later expelled for his dissidence with the Stalinist party line, and moved to democratic socialist positions. The break with the Italian Communist Party in the years after World War II led him to be often opposed by Italian critics and rehabilitated belatedly despite a controversy about his relations with the Italian fascist secret police, while for all his career he was particularly appreciated abroad.

The recorded working language is Italian, German and French. The field of work recorded is literature, journalism and politics. Places of work recorded in the authority are Rome. Employment is recorded with Office of Strategic Services. Positions recorded include member of the Constituent Assembly of Italy. Distinctions recorded are Jerusalem Prize, honorary doctor of the University of Toulouse, Prix mondial Cino Del Duca and Gottfried-Keller-Preis.

• Name — Ignazio Silone • Office — Member of the Constituent Assembly • Constituency — L'Aquila • Term Start — 25 June 1946 • Term End — 31 January 1948 • Born — 1 May 1900 • Birthplace — Pescina dei Marsi, Kingdom of Italy • Birth Name — Secondino Tranquilli • Died — 22 August 1978 • Place of death — Geneva, Switzerland • Party — PSI (1917–1921; 1930–1947) PCd'I (1921–1930) UdS (1948–1949) PSU (1949–1951) PSDI (1951–1954) • Occupation — Author, politician

Silone was born on 1 May 1900, in a rural family, in the town of Pescina, near L'Aquila, in the Abruzzo region. His father, Paolo Tranquilli, died in 1911, and he lost many of his family members, including his mother, Marianna Delli Quadri, in the 1915 Avezzano earthquake. He left his hometown and finished high school.

In 1917, Silone joined the Young Socialists group of the Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano, PSI), rising to be their leader. In October 1920, while in Rome, he met Alfonso Leonetti, another socialist Meridionalist, with whom Silone would share, among other things, his opposition to Stalinism. Silone was a founding member of the breakaway Communist Party of Italy (Partito Comunista d'Italia, PCd'I) in 1921 and became one of its covert leaders during the Italian fascist regime. His brother, Romolo Tranquilli, was arrested in 1928 for being a member of the PCd'I and died in prison in 1931 as a result of the severe beatings he received.

• Illustration — Silone in the 1920s Silone left Italy in 1927 on a mission to the Soviet Union and settled in Switzerland in 1930. While there, he declared his opposition to Joseph Stalin and the leadership of Comintern; consequently, he was expelled from the PCd'I, and returned to the PSI. He suffered from tuberculosis and severe clinical depression and spent nearly a year in Swiss clinics; in Switzerland, Aline Valangin helped and played host to him and other migrants. As he recovered, Silone began writing his first novel, Fontamara, published in German translation in 1933. The English edition, first published by Penguin Books in September 1934, went through frequent reprintings during the 1930s, with the events of the Spanish Civil War and the escalation towards the outbreak of World War II increasing attention for its subject material. In the course of World War II, Silone became the leader of a clandestine socialist organization operating from Switzerland to support Italian resistance groups in Nazi Germany-occupied Northern Italy (Italian Social Republic). He also became an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) agent under the pseudonym of Len. The United States Army printed unauthorized versions of Fontamara and Bread and Wine and distributed them to the Italians during the liberation of Italy after 1943. These two books together with The Seed Beneath the Snow form the Abruzzo Trilogy. Silone returned to Italy only in 1944, and two years later he was elected as a PSI deputy. In 1946, he became a contributor to Rosso e Nero, a magazine started and edited by Alberto Giovannini. In 1948, Silone was a founder of the breakaway Union of Socialists (Unione dei Socialisti, UdS), succeeding Ivan Matteo Lombardo as the party's leader in June 1949. In December 1949, the UdS was dissolved, and its members (including Silone) joined the Unitary Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Unitario, PSU). In 1951, the PSU merged with Giuseppe Saragat's Italian Socialist Workers' Party (Partito Socialista dei Lavoratori Italiani, PSLI) to form the Italian Democratic Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Democratico Italiano, PSDI). Saragat encouraged Silone to stand for the Senate on the PSDI list in the 1953 Italian general election. As the experience was a failure, he spurned any active participation in Italian politics from then on.

Silone was married to Darina Laracy (1917–2003), an Irish student of Italian literature and journalist. He died in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1978.

• Fontamara (1930) – Fontamara, translated by Michael Wharf (1934); Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1938); Harvey Fergusson II (1960). • Un viaggio a Parigi (1934) – Mr. Aristotle, translated by Samuel Putnam (1935), short stories. • Pane e vino (1936) – Bread and Wine, translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1936). • Il seme sotto la neve (1941) – The Seed Beneath the Snow, translated by Frances Frenaye (1942). • Una manciata di more (1952) – A Handful of Blackberries, translated by Darina Silone (1953). • Pane e vino (revised version, 1955) – Bread and Wine, translated by Harvey Fergusson II (1962). • Il segreto di Luca (1956) – The Secret of Luca, translated by Darina Silone (1958). • La volpe e le camelie (1960) – The Fox and the Camelias, translated Eric Mosbacher (1961). • Severina (1981), completed after his death by Darina Silone. • The Abruzzo Trilogy: Fontamara, Bread and Wine, The Seed Beneath the Snow, translated by Eric Mosbacher, revised by Darina Silone (2000).

• Il fascismo. Origini e sviluppo (1934). • La scuola dei dittatori (1938) – The School for Dictators, translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (1939). • Memoriale dal carcere svizzero (1942) – Memoi from a Swiss Prison, translated by Stanislao G. Pugliese (2006). • The God that Failed (1949) – contribution. • Uscita di sicurezza (1965) – Emergency Exit, translated by Harvey Fergusson II (1968). • L'Avvenire dei lavoratori (1945). • A Conversation in Paris (1955), The Anchor Review, Number One of a Series, Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books. • Mazzini (1939) – introductory essay, translated by Arthur Livingstone, to The Living Thoughts of Mazzini Presented by Ignazio Silone (1939). Three of Silone's poems were included by Hanns Eisler in his Deutsche Sinfonie, along with poetry by Bertolt Brecht.

• Ed egli si nascose (1944) – And He Hid Himself: A Play in Four Acts, translated by Darina Silone (1946). • L'avventura di un povero cristiano (1968) – The Story of a Humble Christian, translated by William Weaver (1970).

• A version of Fontamara, directed by Carlo Lizzani and starring Michele Placido, was released in 1977.

Ignazio Silone worked in literature, journalism and politics. He was employed by Office of Strategic Services. Recorded position is member of the Constituent Assembly of Italy. He belonged to German Academy for Language and Literature, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Letters. He worked at Rome.

Ignazio Silone is recorded as having received Jerusalem Prize, honorary doctor of the University of Toulouse and Prix mondial Cino Del Duca.