Chiaromonte, Nicola

Nicola Chiaromonte (1905-1972), journalist and author who participated in the antifascist Giustizia e Libertá movement during the 1930s while living in exile in Paris. He contributed to Politics and Partisan Review in the 1940s, and edited, with Ignazio Silone, Tempo presente from 1956 until 1968. His pieces on theater and film are collected in La situazione drammatica (1959); Credere e non credere, his best-known work, appeared in 1971.

Nicola Chiaromonte, journalist and political thinker, was born in 1905 and educated in Rome. In the late 1920s and early 1930s he worked as a critic and essayist for reviews like Solaria and was considered perhaps the premier film critic in Italy. In 1934, while in Paris for a brief sojourn, he learned that his arrest had been ordered in Italy and did not return there. In Paris, with Andrea Caffi, he furthered his involvement with the antifascist Giustizia e Libertà movement, writing articles for their newspaper. When the Civil War broke out in Spain, Chiaromonte enrolled in the air squadron organized by André Malraux, and saw service during the battle for Madrid.

Chiaromonte's first wife, Annie Pohl, died early in 1940 of lung disease, and Chiaromonte himself fled Paris during the German invasion of France. After a dangerous journey to Marseilles, where he was briefly imprisoned, he crossed to North Africa and eventually traveled to the United States. There he settled in New York, where he met and married his second wife, Miriam. Chiaromonte associated with such writers as Lionel Abel, Mary McCarthy, Dwight MacDonald and Philip Rahv, and was a contributor to Politics and Partisan Review .

In 1950 he returned to Paris, moving to Italy in 1953. Three years later, Chiaromonte and Ignazio Silone founded Tempo presente, which they edited until 1968. Chiaromonte was drama critic for the Mondo of Pannunzio from 1953 to 1966, and then for L'Espresso from 1968 until his death. During his lifetime, in addition to his many articles and essays, he published two books: La situazione drammatica in 1959 and Credere e non credere in 1971. Nicola Chiaromonte died in 1972. Several posthumous collections of his work have been published.