Gianna Manzini

Gianna Manzini (March 24, 1896 – August 31, 1974) was an Italian writer whose Ritratto in piedi won her the Premio Campiello in 1971. It is a semi-autobiographical portrait of her father, an Italian anarchist. After several banishments for his political activities, her anarchist father was exiled to the small hilltop town of Cutigliano in 1921, 25 km northwest of Pistoia, where he would die of a heart attack in 1925 after being chased by fascist hoodlums. Manzini was born in Pistoia. Her mother was Leonilda Mazzoncini, born December 22, 1864, in Pistoia, and her father Giuseppe Manzini, born October 7, 1853, originally from Modena. Her childhood in Pistoia was spent in the anxious company of her mother's family who, disapproving of her anarchist father's beliefs and activities, was instrumental in causing her parents to separate. Gianna and her mother lived with her mother's two sisters, and Gianna's father lived in a rented room in Pistoia and had a clock repair shop on Via Orafo, where she would occasionally see his visiting anarchist friends. The emotional wrench of her parents' separation and her deep love for the father she idolized and later repudiated, only to return full circle as an adult, is recounted in Ritratto in piedi (Full-Length Portrait). Not only did the family drama figure large in her literary creations, but also the Tuscan landscape played a prominent role, beginning with childhood impressions of Pistoia. "[The] beautiful blue mountains encircling it from east to west, breathing that pungent perfumed air, an exhilarating delight". . . "some streets as narrow as corridors, mysterious as whispers (Via Ripa del Sale!) to stir me, open my eyes, bring out a sweet perversity, and protect me at the same time; there had been curves of well-defined activity to persuade me that I lived in a place made for me; those mountains in the background were my cape, my protection…"