Beckford's Vathek in Italy: The Reception by Mario Praz, Alberto Moravia, and Giaime Pintor

Abstract The focus of this article is on three relevant, and very different, intellectual Italian figures, whose interest in William Beckford in the first half of the twentieth century lit an important spark of originality among three literary luminaries: Mario Praz, Alberto Moravia, and Giaime Pintor. Praz introduced Beckford to the Italian literary scene and Moravia wrote the introduction to the first Italian translation of Beckford's most significant work, Vathek, which Pintor had finished but could not see into print due to his premature death. Beckford was an inspiring example in the 1930s and 1940s for intellectual outsiders such as Praz, Moravia, and Pintor, a model defiant not only of the homophobic muscularity of Fascistic aesthetics, but also of the hegemony of Italian neo-idealism, which predated Fascism and remained long after. Praz the critic and Pintor the translator enjoy a larger share of this essay because Beckford was their discovery and appealed to them in very different ways. It is in this very difference in their fascination with Beckford, I argue, that their diverse marginality can be more fully appreciated.