Bruno Lavagnini

Born from a working class family in Siena, the second of the five children of Lorenzo and Assunta (née Vinci).^[1] His father was a telegraph clerk and his mother a retired schoolteacher.^[2][1][3] After attending elementary school in Viareggio, he entered the liceo classico in Lucca (1911–1916), where his teachers encouraged his interests and talent for classical antiquity. In 1916 he was accepted at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa where, despite the crisis caused by World War I (1915–1918) and some familiar crisis, he could study "peacefully ... fruitfully and intensely for four years in then-peaceful Tuscany".^[4][5] He graduated in 1920, tutored by Francesco Zambaldi, defending a dissertation on Le origini del romanzo greco ['The origins of Greek novel'], published the next year.^[5] At Pisa, he could attend classes by Giovanni Gentile on philosophers of the Italian Renaissance.^[6]

In 1921, Lavagnini won a scholarship at the Italian School of Archaeology at Athens, which he would consider instrumental in his academic formation.^[7] Upon his return in Italy, he won a limited scholarship at the Istituto di Studi Superiori at Florence, and was accepted for a "perfezionamento" at the Scuola Normale. He obtained both degrees in the summer of 1922, defending a dissertation on Le origini del romanzo di Apuleio ['The origins of Apuleius' novel'] in Pisa, and an "improvvisato lavoro di archeologia" in Florence, since Giorgio Pasquali would not approve of his Teubner edition of the papyrus fragments of ancient Greek novels.^[8]

The death of Lorenzo Lavagnini and the lack of assistant positions in Universities forced Bruno to accept some positions as high school teacher, and to apply for the habilitation in 1923.^[9] Whilst he had the credentials to apply for an assistant professor position in Greek and Latin at the Scuola Normale, he lost it to "a pupil of his^[10] who would become Professor in Naples ... an alumnus of the University of Padua".^[11] In 1924, Lavagnini was habilitated to university teaching in Greek literature and taught Ancient Greek literature in Padua (1924/1925), Pisa (from 1925 to 1927) and Catania (1927/1928).^[12]

In 1928, Lavagnini "unexpectedly" won a tenured position at the University of Palermo where, after teaching for two years (1928–1930) in Catania, he became Professor in Greek literature.^[13] In Palermo, Lavagnini was titular chair of Ancient Greek literature and introduced classes in Modern Greek literature, which he taught from 1930/1931 to 1966/1967, as one of the only two Italian universities — with the Sapienza University — to teach the subject.^[12]

Lavagnini spent research periods in Athens (1936) and Crete (1939), and unlike many colleagues, he supported Greece in the Italian invasion of 1940.^[12] He remained connected to Greece despite the (failed) Italian invasion, and from 1952 to 1959 he chaired the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Athens, contributing to re-establish the diplomatic relationships between the two nations. In 1964 he was elected Fellow of the Academy of Sciences at Athens and nominated Honorary Consul of Greece — but would resign from the former position after the coup d'état of 1967.^[14]

After World War II, Lavagnini also intensified his interest for Byzantine literature as "the natural antecedent of modern Greek culture":^[15] he chaired the eighth International Congress of Byzantine Studies (Palermo, 3–10 April 1951) and founded the Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici [ISSN] (in 1952). In 1963 he was elected President of the Associazione Italiana di Studi Bizantini [AISB] and made correspondent of the Accademia dei Lincei (elevated to Fellow in 1972).^[16]

Lavagnini retired from teaching in 1968 and from all academic positions in 1975, and was nominated Emeritus Professor at the University of Palermo. He remained scholarly productive since his very last days and died in Palermo in 1992.^[1]

Lavagnini developed and published almost five hundred works over the course of nearly seventy years of scholarly activity.^[1][17]

At the beginning of his career, Lavagnini was chiefly a classical philologist, publishing his first scholarly works whilst still an undergraduate at Pisa.^[18] In 1922 he published both an extensive study of Greek novel, derived from his dissertation, and the Teubner edition of all extant fragments of Greek novels.^[19] Through the 1920s he would also publish works in Greek and Latin epigraphy and archaeology.^[20] In his first years of teaching in Palermo, Lavagnini published monographs based on the lecture notes of his classes, which show a predominant interest for Greek poetry of the archaic, classical, and Hellenistic ages.^[21]

Whilst predominantly a scholar of Greek literature, Lavagnini also gave scholarly contributions to Latin literature, both of the classical age and of the Renaissance. Most notable are his 1922 dissertation on the Metamorphoses by Apuleius;^[22] critical essays on various poets (Plautus, Ovid, Horace, Vergil, Lucretius, Juvenal, and others); the critical edition of the satura sotadea attributed to Luisa Sigea de Velasco.^[23]

Several of his studies in Greek literature, from classical antiquity to Byzantium, were collected in a volume published in 1978, which included an "Autobiography".^[24]

• Lavagnini, B. (1917–1918). "Un codicetto lucchese delle χρυσᾶ ἔπη". Bollettino di Filologia Classica. 24: 169–172.
• Lavagnini, B. (1922). "Le origini del romanzo greco". ASNP. 28: 1–104. JSTOR 45452006.
• Lavagnini, B., ed. (1922). Eroticorum Graecorum fragmenta papyracea. Leipzig: Teubner.
• Lavagnini, B. (1927). "Il significato e il valore del romanzo di Apuleio". ASNP. 29: 1–40. JSTOR 45451692.
• Lavagnini, B. (1932a). "Prolegomeni a una nuova edizione di Aloisia Sigea". ASNP. N. S. 1 (4): 325–334. JSTOR 24298272.
• Lavagnini, B. (1932b). Pindaro. Lezioni di letteratura greca, anno accademico 1931-32. Vol. I–III. Palermo: Edizioni del GUF.
• Lavagnini, B. (1933). Euripide, «Eracle» . Lezioni di letteratura greca, anno accademico 1932-33. Palermo: Edizioni del GUF.
• Lavagnini, B. (1934). Euripide, «Eracle» (continuazione). Lezioni di letteratura greca, anno accademico 1933-34. Palermo: Edizioni del GUF.
• Lavagnini, B. (1935). Teocrito, Eronda. Lezioni di letteratura greca, anno accademico 1934-35. Palermo: Edizioni del GUF.
• Lavagnini, B., ed. (1935). Aloisiae Sigeae Toletanae Satyra sotadica de arcanis Amoris et Veneris. Catania: Prampolini.
• Lavagnini, B. (1936). Bacchilide. Lezioni di letteratura greca, anno accademico 1935-36. Palermo: Edizioni del GUF.
• Lavagnini, B. (1939). Lo «Ione» di Euripide. Lezioni di letteratura greca, anno accademico 1938-39. Palermo: Edizioni del GUF.
• Lavagnini, B. (1978). Ἄτακτα. Scritti minori di letteratura greca, bizantina, neogreca. Palermo: Palumbo.
• Lavagnini, B. (1981). Alle origini del verso politico. Quaderni, 11. Palermo: Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici.
• Tsatsos, I. (1980). Poesie scelte. Quaderni di poesia neogreca, 5. Translated by Lavagnini, B. Palermo: Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici.
• Sikelianos, A. (1987). Vita Lirica. Poesie scelte e scene della tragedia «Digenis». Quaderni di poesia neogreca, 6. Translated by Lavagnini, B. Palermo: Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici.