Rehumanizing the world: Paolo Milano’s transatlantic cultural politics

ABSTRACT

This article examines the transatlantic cultural politics of Paolo Milano (1904–1988), an Italian-Jewish exile who acted as an editorial disseminator of both Italian literature in the United States and American Literature in Italy during World War II and through the 1950s. Milano’s efforts to revitalize Italian and American cultural politics include his project for an Italian anthology of classic American writers and book reviews for American magazines and newspapers, especially his contributions to The New York Times Review of Books dedicated to Ignazio Silone and Carlo Levi’s novels. The article concludes that, despite presenting sometimes contradictory stances, such as supporting brotherhood and homophilic initiatives while also turning a blind eye to American imperialism, Milano’s transatlantic cultural politics worked to reorient the discussion on the role of culture and intellectuals in the context of an increasingly technocratic and dehumanizing society both in Italy and in the U.S.

RIASSUNTO

Il saggio esamina le politiche culturali transatlantiche di Paolo Milano (1904–1988), esule italiano e di religione ebraica che ha operato come divulgatore editoriale della letteratura italiana negli Stati Uniti e della letteratura americana in Italia durante la seconda guerra mondiale e nel corso degli anni Cinquanta. Tra le iniziative attuatte da Milano per rivitalizzare la politica culturale italiana e americana, il saggio esamina il progetto di un’antologia in lingua italiana di scrittori classici americani e le recensioni di libri di letteratura italiana per riviste e quotidiani americani, con particolare attenzione ai contributi scritti per il New York Times Review of Books e dedicati ai romanzi di Ignazio Silone e Carlo Levi. L’articolo conclude che, pur presentando posizioni talvolta contraddittorie, come il sostenere iniziative di fratellanza e solidarietà pur chiudendo un occhio sull’imperialismo americano, la politica culturale transatlantica di Milano ha contribuito a riorientare la discussione sul ruolo della cultura e degli intellettuali nel contesto di una società sempre più tecnocratica e disumanizzante sia in Italia che negli Stati Uniti.

KEYWORDS:

• Paolo Milano
• The New York Times Review of Books
• Cold War
• New York Intellectuals
• Walt Whitman

PAROLE CHIAVE:

•  Paolo Milano
• The New York Times Review of Books
• Guerra Fredda
• New York Intellectuals
• Walt Whitman

Disclosure statement

No potential conflicts of interest are reported by the authors(s).

Notes

^1. Max Ascoli helped Milano to obtain a chair at the New School for Social Research (Camurri 2009, 43–62).

^2. Americana, according to Milano, ‘is an uneven work. The introductory essays are highly unsatisfactory, but the selections are intelligent, and the translations generally good; so that the volume can be considered valuable … It is easy to conclude that the primary gap I had in mind has been, roughly speaking, already filled’ (P. Milano, Report of Work in Progress, August 22–23, 1945, RAC).

^3. See Kazin’s letter dated March 10, 1944, and Marshall’s letter dated January 16, 1946. RAC.

^4. See the article “P. J. Proudshon: An Uncomfortable Thinker” (politics January 1946, 27–29).

^5. I refer to Macdonald’s definition of radicalism, which aligns with Silone’s socialist stance: ‘“Radical” would apply to the as yet few individuals – mostly anarchists, conscientious objectors, and renegade Marxists like myself that feel that the firmest ground from which to struggle for that human liberation which was the goal of the old Left is the ground not of History but of those non-historical values (truth, justice, love, etc.) which Marx has made unfashionable among socialists’ (Macdonald 1946, 100).

^6. ‘The “revolutionary opportunities” which we socialists expected to occur after this war have indeed materialized; but the masses have not taken advantage of them … Is it not striking, for example, that the entire European resistance movement has ebbed away without producing a single new political tendency, or a single leader of any stature?’ (Macdonald April 1946, 98).

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Notes on contributors

Valerio Angeletti

Valerio Angeletti is a postdoctoral fellow at University College Dublin, working on the project ‘When Nationalism Fails: A Comparative Studies of Holocaust Museums’. His research interests include the history of ideas, memory studies, cultural heritage, and the correlation between exile and utopia. His articles have been featured in international journals, including the International Social Science Journal, Paragone: Letteratura, and Ticontre. In 2022, with Franco Baldasso, he published his first book, titled ‘L’età di Whitman’ e l’esilio: l’America inedita di Paolo Milano.