XXIV
GIOVANNI PAPINI[1]
I
Giovanni Papini does not need to be introduced to our readers. Every one knows, his friends with even more certainty than his enemies, that he is the ugliest man in Italy (if indeed he deserves the name of man at all), so repulsive that Mirabeau would seem in comparison an academy model, a Discobolus, an Apollo Belvedere. And since the face is the mirror of the soul, as the infinite wisdom of the race informs us in one of its proverbial condensations of experience, no one will be surprised to learn that this Papini is the scoundrel of literature, the blackguard of journalism, the Barabbas of art, the thug of philosophy, the bully of politics, the Apaché of culture, and that he is inextricably involved in all the enterprises of the intellectual underworld. It is also well known that he lives sumptuously and gorgeously, and of course like
- ↑ Written soon after the publication of Stroncature (“Slashings”), Florence, 1916.
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