XV
ARDENGO SOFFICI[1]
I
Ardengo Soffici, born in 1879 at Rignano on the Arno, now a second lieutenant in an infantry-battalion, is one of the most singular, most novel, and most perfect writers of the present day. In 1905, when he came back from France to become again an Italian and a writer, I was alone in recognizing his excellence. There are many to-day who share in that recognition, and the number will steadily increase.
Soffici did not find himself till he was nearly thirty, but he will endure the longer—as is the case with all those who have not wasted their energies in the disordered precocities of youth. He has already won a place, and a high place, in painting and in poetry.
He is extraordinarily versatile. I have seen him cover walls with frescoes, paint earthenware vases, carve wood, emboss leather, help a printer to set up difficult passages in his “lyric com-
- ↑ Written à propos of Soffici’s Bïf§zf + 18, Florence, 1915.
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