"...these Letters (...) can be to us illuminating, guiding, heartening, moving, affecting, and rekindling. They are not directed only to Christians, but to all men, of every conditions, of all nations, and, in particular, to those who ponder and suffer, to all those who long for salvation through a Christian super-humanity".

Foreword to English Readers by Giovanni Papini

The first "spirito eterno" of poetry which came to dwell with me in the days of my youth was Prince Hamlet. The first philosopher who made a profound impression on my mind was Berkeley, and later I translated his works into Italian. The first poet who took possession of my youthful soul was Walt Whitman. The first foreign review to which I contributed was the Monist, published in Chicago. the first thinker of a nation other than my own to whom I was bound by ties of genuine friendship was William James.

There must exist, therefore, a kind of foreordained harmony between the Anglo-Saxon culture and my own mind, and perhaps it id due to this special arrangement of fate that my works have had more readers in Great Britain and North America than in Italy itself.

I am happy that, at the moment when my book on Dante is about to be issued in the language of Shakespeare, an opportunity has been given me to express to this great group of English readers my sincere and fervent gratitude. If these my non-Italian readers may be taken as representing by anticipation the judgement of the future, I take pride in having had an honourable and favourable reception by that immense posterity who live on the shores of all the oceans, and who have always known how to mix in due proportions the venerable traditions of humanism with the bold pursuit of every modernity, to carry side by side a proper conservatism and a necessary radicalism.

No writer can say that he has created and thought for all men until his work has been translated into English, that is, into the language which represent to-day the most universal vehicle of the printed word. What the Greek language was from the time of Alexander the Great to St Paul, what the Latin was during all the Middle Ages and until the final splendours of the Renaissance, that the English language is to-day.

And for me, a Florentine and an Italian, it is a great satisfaction to see – thanks to the labour of Eleanor Hammond Broadus and Anna Benedetti – this book on Dante translated into English. Outside of Italy no other country has so greatly loved and studied the creator of the Divina Commedia as have England and America. Not only have they produced accomplished Dante scholars – like the English Lord Vernon, H. C. Barlow, Edward Moore, Paget Toynbee; and the American Longfellow, C. E. Norton, J. R. Lowell – worthy to stand on an equality with the Italian and the German; but the first-hand knowledge of Dante’s work, even among those of moderate culture, is more widespread than elsewhere. the English-speaking peoples not only know Dante, but they admire him, appreciate him, understand him, love him.

The literature in English about Dante is extraordinarily rich and abundant. Therefore I count it a great honour that this book of mine should be published in Great Britain and in North America. Perhaps it merited this fortune because, as the reader will see, it is a little different form other books on Dante in that it tries to bring out new elements through an untrammelled and dispassionate investigation of the secret soul of the divine Poet. Fanatical adulators and pedants with extravagant imagination have almost buried Dante for a second time under a massive and majestic mausoleum of criticism, erudition, interpretation, and rhetoric.

This book is an attempt to resurrect him. I am confident that its true import will be understood by English and American readers.

Giovanni Papini

Contents:

"The first ten of the essays here translated are from Papini's 24 Cervelli ("Four and Twenty Minds"), the next six from his Stroncature ("Slashings"), and the last eight from his Testimonianze ("Testimonies"). In the Preface to 24 Cervelli, Papini writes: These essays deal with twenty-four men - poets, philosophers, imaginary beings, scientist, mystics, painters - grouped without regard to logical classification or to their relative importance. Some of the essays are tributes of affections, some are slashings; some reveal neglected greatness, others demolish undeserved reputations. Some are long, and represent careful study, others are brief and slight... I have surveyed these four and twenty souls not with the scrupulous exactitude of the pure scholar, nor with the definitive cocksureness of the professional critic, but as a man seeking to penetrate deeply into the lives of other men in order to discern and to reveal their lovableness or their hatefulness. The essays, then, are for the most part impassioned, subjective, partial - lyric, in a sense - and not critical. These essays had been written between 1902 an 1912: 24 Cervelli was published in the latter year. The book proved very successful; and in 1916 Papini brought out a second set of twenty-four similar essays, to which he gave the title Slashings. In this volume, as the title indicates, attack and demolition have a larger place, and the style is at times vituperative in the extreme. Many of the essays, nevertheless, are friendly and constructive. Papini’s caricature of himself (from Testimonies), which appears as the last essay in the present translation, was written soon after the publication of Slashings, and reflects the sensation made by that book. Testimonies, published in 1918, is a third set of twenty-four essays. They are of the same general character as those contained in Slashings, though the part of invective is somewhat less, and the tone of the book as a whole in quieter".