Russell in Italian [review of Bruno Maiorca, "Quattrocento schede italiane su Bertrand Russell, 1911-78", <i>Rivista di filosofia</i>, June 1979

Abstract

BERTRAND RUSSELL OFTEN travelled to Italy: on an extended honeymoon in 1895 visiting Alys's sister, Mary, and Bernard Berenson; on walking tours with Charles Sanger during which he practised the language; at various conferences, as late as 1955 for example, when coincidentally he stayed at the same hotel in Rome where he had lodged on his first trip in 1894. Although Russell's command of Italian was not as extensive as his fluency in German and French, the references to Italy in his writings reveal a love for that country, its cities and towns, its culture and people. The recent appearance of this checklist of translations and secondary literature tends to confirm that the admiration was mutual. To my knowledge, this is only the second time in which a comprehensive checklist in terms of language or national origin has been compiled and published. The first was A. Tokarczyk's Russell's Works in Poland, Polish Weekly, 24 (20 June 1962),11-14. Readers who havefacility in Italian will welcome Maiorca's Four Hundred Italian Listings on Bertrand Russell, 1911-78. It is divided into eight sections: I, translations of Russell's books; II, translations of Russell's other writings (not necessarily published elsewhere)-anthologies, articles, introductions, prefaces, etc.; III, major studies on Russell by Italians; IV, foreign works on Russell translated into Italian; V, notes, profiles, short articles from journals and newspapers, entries in dictionaries and encyclopedias, and interviews; VI, reviews and notices; VII, publishers and the series in which translations of Russell have occurred; VIII, periodicals cited. Maiorca has handled this division of material intelligently without distortion or unnecessary compartmentalization. With the exceptions of VII and VIII, which are in alphabetical order, items in each section are chronologically arranged. Maiorca has provided each item with a number. What is especially useful in locating related material is the presence of a see-reference structure operating by item number. At times, see-references only go one way and the reader must take several steps to find related material, but this is hardly a complaint against such a labour-saving device. How complete and accurate is Maiorca's checklist? In order to answer