XVIII
ALFREDO ORIANI[1]
I
Seven years ago there died, after fifty-seven years of restless and imprisoned life, a man whom his fellow men had neither loved nor understood. He died alone as he had lived; he died in this season of death which had inspired his most poetic pages.
One cannot say that he died forgotten, because he had never won fame. The novels written in his youth had aroused a curiosity which failed to develop into glory. His other, stronger books, his books of synthesis, had been received in silence by a generation incapable of understanding them. In recent years a little youthful appreciation had brought the rare smile to that face of his, graven by the acids of melancholy, but had not canceled the look of proud sadness impressed upon it by the neglect of his contem-
- ↑ Written in October, 1916, for the seventh anniversary of the death of Oriani.
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