Antonio Barolini

Antonio Barolini was born in Vicenza on May 29th, 1910. He published his first collection of poems, Cinque Canti, in 1930 at his own expense; in 1938 another volume of Barolini’s poetry, La Gaia Gioventù, was published by Edizioni dell’Asino Volante.

In 1950 Barolini married American writer Helen Mollica, at the time a college student in Italy, and that same year the pair moved to Syracuse (NY), where Barolini was employed as honorary consul. In 1953 the Barolinis moved back to Italy — they settled in Strambino, where Barolini worked together with Adriano Olivetti, managing the cultural services of Movimento Comunità. In 1956 the couple returned to the United States, this time settling in Croton-on-Hudson (NY), where Antonio Barolini worked as a consultant for Olivetti. During that time, Barolini also contributed to the Italian newspaper «La Stampa» and the weekly «Epoca» as a political and cultural observer, and contributed to a few American newspapers and magazines, such as «Reporter», «Saturday Review», and «The Critic». While in the US, Barolini wrote a number of short stories autobiographical in character, first published on the magazine «The New Yorker» in the translation of Helen Barolini, and then collected in the volume Our Last Family Countess, and other stories, published in New York by Harper & Brothers in 1960. The Barolinis definitely moved back to Italy in 1965 — the collection Our Last Family Countess, and related stories would be published in Italian in 1968 by Feltrinelli under the title L’ultima contessa di famiglia. During his stay in America, Barolini also wrote the collection of poems Elegie di Croton and the novel Una lunga pazzia. Elegie di Croton was published in Italy in 1959 by Feltrinelli, and then published in Toronto in 1991 by Guernica under the title Croton Elegies, in the translation of Helen Barolini; Una lunga pazzia was published in Italy in 1962 by Feltrinelli, and in New York in 1964 by Pantheon Books — a Random House division — under the title A Long Madness, translated into English by Helen Barolini. A chapter of the first draft of Una lunga pazzia appeared in volume XII (1953) of «Botteghe Oscure».

Antonio Barolini died unexpectedly on January 2nd, 1971 in Rome. In 2010 two conferences were organized to celebrate the centenary of Barolini’s birth — the first conference was held in New York on April 30th with the title “Un poeta sparso tra gli uomini. Antonio Barolini tra Italia e America”, and organized by the «Italian Poetry Review» and the Department of Italian Studies of Columbia University. The second conference was held in Vicenza on May 28th and 29th with the title “Antonio Barolini a cento anni dalla nascita”, and organized by Accademia Olimpica and Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana of Vicenza. The book Antonio Barolini. Cronistoria di un’anima. Atti dei convegni di New York e Vicenza, edited by Teodolinda Barolini, gathers the proceedings of the New York and Vicenza conferences.

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