Enrico Annibale Butti

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Enrico Butti. Portrait by Mario Nunes Vais

Enrico Annibale Butti (19 February 1868 – 25 November 1912) was an Italian writer and playwright.

Biography

Enrico Annibale Butti was born in Milan. He studied physics and matemathics in the University of Pavia and law in Modena,[1] but from the beginning preferred to devote himself to literature and theater. He was ill with consumption, which accompanied him throughout his life until his death in 1912.

Enrico Butti, by Mario Nunes Vais

From 1892 to 1897, he wrote psychological novels, characterized by dualism dream / reality and the difference in views between the ideals of the fathers and those of the new generation. These themes were taken up in his dramas, thanks to which he became famous and well known in the Italian cultural sphere, so as to be called the "Italian Ibsen", thanks to the enormous influence of the Norwegian playwright that was found in his works. On the other hand, he was the only Italian playwright to deal with religious and moral themes in the bourgeois theater at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

His theatrical masterpieces are considered L'utopia, Lucifero and Fiamme nell'ombra. In 1910, he wrote Il castello del sogno, tragic poem in four songs in loose endecasyllables, his only drama in verse, represented posthumously on December 16, 1914 at the Teatro Carignano in Turin. He touched with good results also the fantastic genre, in particular with the novel L'anima and with the story Il diavolo alla festa.

Works

Theater

  • Il signore dall'abito bianco (1888)
  • Il frutto amaro (1892)
  • Il vortice (1892)
  • L'utopia (1894)
  • Le seduzioni (1895)
  • La furia domata (1895; libretto for opera based on The Taming of the Shrew; music by Spiro Samara)
  • La fine di un ideale (1900)
  • Gli atei: La corsa al piacere (1900)
  • Gli atei: Lucifero (1901)
  • Gli atei: Una tempesta (1903)
  • Il gigante e i pigmei (1903)
  • Fiamme nell'ombra (1904)
  • Intermezzo poetico (1905)
  • Tutto per nulla (1906)
  • Il cuculo (1907)
  • Nel paese della fortuna (1910)
  • Il castello del sogno (1910)
  • Il crepuscolo degli amanti (1910)
  • Le acque (1910)
  • Le rivali (1911)
  • Sempre così (1911)
  • Il sole invisibile (1912)
  • Le vie della salute (1913)

Novels and stories

  • L'automa (1892)
  • L'anima (1893; 2013, edited by Gianandrea de Antonellis)
  • L'immorale (1894)
  • L'incantesimo (1897; 2017, edited by Gianandrea de Antonellis)
  • Il diavolo alla festa (1905)
  • L'ombra della Croce (1905; novel left incomplete)

Essay

  • Né odii né amori (1893)

Notes

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References

  • Gianandrea de Antonellis, Enrico Annibale Butti. L'Ibsen Italiano. Napoli: Esi, 2012.
  • Susan Briziarelli, Enrico Annibale Butti: The Case of the Minor Writer. Potomoc, Md.: Scripta Humanistica, 1994.
  • Benedetto Croce, La letteratura della Nuova Italia. Volume VI. Bari: Laterza, 1914.
  • Pietro Ferrari, Enrico Annibale Butti nel Teatro del Secondo Ottocento. Padova: Rebellato, 1971.
  • Mario Gastaldi, L'Amore di E.A. Butti per le Scrittrici. Pistoia: G. Grazzini, 1930.
  • Leonardo Lattarulo (ed.), Il vero e la Sua Ombra. Roma: Quiritta, 2000.
  • Domenico Vittorini, The Modern Italian Novel. New York: Russell & Russell, 1967.

External links