Depressed

Impressed by his accomplishments, Columbia University in December invited Giovanni Papini (famed Italian author: Life of Christ, etc.) to deliver Italian lectures this summer. Papini, "delighted as a child," accepted.

A month later, he met with a motor accident, broke a bone in his heel. His eyes, always troublesome, became worse. Depressed, he retired to a tiny farm near Assisi, taking with him his children and his illiterate, once-beautiful peasant wife, Giacinta, whom he married for "her chestnut mane and savage, beautiful teeth."

Anxiety at Columbia was aggravated by Dr. Charles Fama, President of the New York Board of Pension Surgeons. Dr. Fama asked Congress to deny Papini admission to the U. S. because he had written a book, The Dictionary of the Savage Man,* wherein were thrusts at America. Fama styled Papini "an adherent of the law and murder party" (meaning the Fascisti). Papini learned of this attack, was further depressed, lost all interest in his American visit. For two months Columbia sought to placate offended genius, Dr. N. M. Butler writing at length on "academic freedom" in answer to Dr. Fama. To no avail. When the Italian lectures began last week, it was Dr. Arthur Livingston of Manhattan who stepped to the platform.

*Written in collaboration with Domenico Giuliotti. Papini calls himself "The Savage."

/- Specimen thrusts: "America is the home of trusts, skyscrapers, phonographs, lynch laws, of the insupportable Washington, the boring Emerson, the immoral Walt Whitman, the disgusting Longfellow, the angelic Wilson and other great men of similar stripe."

"In compensation, America produces poisonous tobacco, sticky chocolate, indigestible potatoes."

"The discovery of America, although accomplished by a sane Italian, was willed by God in 1492 as . . . punishment for all the other grand discoveries of the Renaissance: gunpowder, humanism and Protestantism."