Claudio Magris [ Italy ]

Claudio Magris was born in Trieste, Italy, in 1939. He studied Literature and Philosophy in Turin. His dissertation 'Il mito asburgico nella letteratura austriaca moderna' (1963; Engl: The Habsburg Myth in Modern Austrian Literature), was published when he was twenty-four, and formed the themes and theoretical sources for later publications. After an academic residency in Freiburg, he taught at the University of Turin, before becoming Professor for New German Literature at the University of Trieste in 1978.  As a specialist in Middle European Literature, he has published numerous essays and critical studies on writers such as Wilhelm Heinse, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Joseph Roth. Since the late 1970’s he has written regularly for a column in the newspaper 'Corriere della Sera'. A selection of his texts, 'Itaca e oltre' appeared in 1982. That same year a collaboration with the historian Angelo Ara was also published: 'Trieste. Un'identita di frontiera'. On this cultural and literary foray through the city, in which James Joyce, Italo Svevo and other writers once lived, the authors ask questions regarding Trieste’s identity with regard to the heterogenous influences of the empire and of Italian, Slovenian, German, Greek and Jewish culture.  Four years later, in 'Danubio' (1986), Claudio Magris set out to trace the diverse Habsburg realm. Following the course of the Danube, he offered in an essayistic-biographical travelogue consisting of myths, anecdotes, stories about men, cities and landscapes, as well as philosophical and literary meditations a detailed panorama of the cultural and literary area of this "only true European river". Apart from his essays, Magris has written the novella 'Illazioni su una sciabola' (1984), the play 'Stadelmann' (1988) and the novel 'Un altro mare' (1991). Claudio Magris has been honoured with many awards. In 1997 he received the most important literary prize in Italy: the Premio Strega, for 'Microcosmi' (1996), in 2004 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize and in 2005 the Austrian State Prize.  Essays from 1974 to 1998 were collected in 'Utopia e disincanto' (1999). Claudio Magris lives in Trieste.

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