Paolo Milano

Paolo Milano began his cultural activity in 1923 in the world of theater by directing Villa Ferrari, whose success allowed him to make the acquaintance of Silvio D'Amico, in the 1930s co-director with him of the magazine Scenario. Meanwhile, Milano also writes literary reviews for Italia letteraria and Pan. Further, during this period he was active as a translator from German and English. Of note are his translations of Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man by Thomas Mann, Dorothea Angerman by Gerhart Hauptmann and Philotas by G.E. Lessing. In 1931 he wrote a study on Gotthold Ephraim Lessing for the publisher Angelo Fortunato Formiggini. In 1935 he participated in the founding of the journal Caratteri, for which he wrote the seminal essay "Lettera a Renato Poggioli tra razzismo e cultura." In 1939 he landed in Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Andrea Caffi. However, due to the turmoil of the war, his Parisian stay ends up being shorter than he imagined: New York awaits him. 

In the US, where he will remain until 1955, Milano is professor of History of Dramatic Art at the New School of Social Research. Later he will also teach Romance and Comparative Literatures at Queens College of the City University of New York. In 1947 he published The Portable Dante for Viking Press and the following year Henry James o il proscritto volontario for Mondadori, which was to be the final part of a larger critical project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. 

The Portable Dante was reviewed by W. H. Auden in the New York Times Book Review. Milano owes much of his fame in the United States to the publication of this volume. In addition to a lengthy introduction by the Italian critic, the volume features the Commedia translated by Laurence Binyon and annotated by C. H. Grandgent, the Vita Nuova in translation by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and, finally, a selection of Dante's poetic compositions and treatises. The project had been suggested by Alfred Kazin, author of On Native Grounds, with whom Milano had established a fruitful intellectual relationship.

During his years in the United States, he also worked as an editorial consultant for Einaudi and as a journalist for Theatre Arts, The Nation, The New Republic, and the New York Times Review of Books; in 1953 he contributed an introduction to the American edition of Cesare Pavese's Luna e i falò (Farrar, Straus, and Young). He also wrote Note in margine a una vita assente and Racconto newyorchese. Both works will be published posthumously, the former for Adelphi in 1991 and the latter for Sestante in 1993. The notes published in Note in margine begin in 1947, the year in which Milano finally managed, for the first time in nine years, to return to Italy. Racconto Newyorchese was to be the first part of a narrative couplet entitled Poco amore and dedicated to the newly established world bipolarism. The narrative cue for the Racconto was a gift from his friend Saul Bellow, who told him the story of a student doctor of him who specialized in artificial insemination. 

In 1955 the critic began working as a reviewer for L'Espresso—the activity for which he is most famous in Italy—which he continued until 1986. After his death in 1988, thanks to a bequest from family members, the Biblioteca degli Intronati in Siena established a fund in his name with more than 3,000 volumes.

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