Mario Benzing and his daughter Anna in 1933

Mario Benzing with his sons Anna and Enrico in 1937

Mario Benzing at the Ponte delle Gabelle in Milan

Mario Benzing

Mario Benzing and his wife Giovanna in 1942

Mario Benzing and his wife Giovanna by the Roman Arches of Piazza Cavour in Milan, 1952

Titta, the Author's cat

Mario Benzing by the Stock Exchange in Milan, 1955

riter of german origins, Mario Benzing was born on December 7, 1896,
in Como, where his family momentarily lived, before going back to Stuttgart. After finishing his studies in Lausanne and in London, he settled in Milan. During the First World War, he enlisted in the Army Medical Corps, then as a volunteer in

the "Arditi" Corps and in the Alpine Corps in the Italian Army. Wounded by
a stab, he was taken to the military hospital and made the acquaintance
of Ernest Hemingway, who in the same period was a patient in Milan. In 1928 he married Giovanna Raschi (with him in the left photos). Between the two Wars, he wrote in italian several novels and biographies of historical figures,
as Messalina, Cleopatra and the Queen Christina of Sweden. As a literary translator from English, German and French, he worked for many publishing houses, often signing as Mario Benzi, because of the period laws, which imposed italian names. The authors
to whom he specially devoted his work, often as first Italian translator, were
Jack London, Joseph Conrad,

Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Schnitzler, Lewis Carroll, Pelham G. Wodehouse, Edgar Wallace, Hugh Walpole, Edgar Allan Poe, Herbert G. Wells. He translated more than 80 volumes of 55 authors. Fond of ancient languages of the Near East and of Caldaic Oracles, he was friend of many milanese scholars and artists, as composer Umberto Giordano. He played for his pleasure the piano and a special six-chords banjo. He died in Milano on November 29, 1958.


News


 

La sede finale delle "Ugo Mursia Lectures" a Pisa: l'Istituzione dei Cavalieri di Santo Stefano

The Ugo Mursia Memorial Lectures in Pisa

In Pisa on September, 16th-18th 2004 a cycle of lectures about Joseph Conrad took place, organized by Pisa University and "Joseph Conrad Society", under the direction of Professor Mario Curreli, with scholars from all over the world. Among other lectures, there was also a memory about Mario Benzing

The text of the memory                The program of the meeting

 

Professor Mario Curreli

A brave point of view

An illustrious scholar, who devoted most of his studies to Conrad, professor Mario Curreli (University of Pisa), stigmatizes in a critical essay the new italian edition of "The Shadow-line": he defines "ignoble" the behaviour of the publisher Rusconi, who published the novel in the traslation by Mario Benzing ust after the copyright had expired, without indicating his name as translator.

The critical essay

 

 

 


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