Pitigrilli

thumb|Pitigrilli in 1950 Pitigrilli was the pseudonym of Dino Segre (9 May 1893 – 8 May 1975), an Italian writer who made his living as a journalist and novelist. His most noted novel was Cocaina (1921), published under his pseudonym and placed on the list of prohibited books by the Catholic Church because of his treatment of drug use (cocaina being cocaine) and sex. It has been translated into several languages and re-issued in several editions. Pitigrilli published novels up until 1974, the year before his death. He spent his later decades of life as a Catholic himself.

Person · Open Library

Born: 1893
Died: 1975
Works: 36

Top works

להט האהבה
Moise et Monsieur Levy (Mosè e il cavalier Levi)
Lo specchio e l'enimma
Diccionario de la sinceridad
חגורת הצניעות

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Recent publications · Crossref

1 total works indexed

La decadenza del paradosso
· 1943

via Crossref · CC0

Quotes

“Nel collegio dei Barnabiti aveva imparato il latino, a servir messa ed a giurare il falso. Tre cose di cui si può aver bisogno da un momento all'altro. Ma uscendo dal collegio le dimenticò tutte e tre. Studiò medicina per alcuni anni; ma all'esame di patologia chirurgica gli dissero: «Non posso permetterle di dare l'esame con la caramella all'occhio. O si toglie la caramella o non dà l'esame» «Ebbene, io non dò l'esame» rispose Tito alzandosi. E rinunziò alla laurea.”
“Not having a moustache, he was in the habit of twirling his eyebrows. “Why do you keep twirling your eyebrows?” a young lady asked him one day. “We all twirl the hairs we have, depending on our age and sex,” Tito replied. The young lady thought him very witty and fell in love with him.”
“Egli sapeva che le fanciulle cominciano con un ritardo di cinque minuti e finisco con i ritardi di quindici giorni e anche più. Tutta la morale sessuale non tende, in fondo, che a scongiurare, nelle fanciulle, il pericolo dei 'ritardi'.”
“Women are like posters. One is stuck on top of another and covers it completely. Perhaps just for a moment, when the paste is still soft and the paper still wet and slightly transparent, you may still catch a vague impression of the splashes of color of the first, but soon there's no more trace of it. Then, when the second one is removed, both come away together, leaving your memory and your heart as blank as a wall.”
“No, I don't want to commit suicide, but I should like to fade away and die gently. To depart from life as one gets out of a bath.”
“The mob loves those who amuse and serve it. But to amuse it you have to love it. I love no one, least of all the mob, because the mob, the multitude, are like women: they betray those who love them.”

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Wikidata facts

Image: Pitigrilli.jpg

Show 5 more facts

Commons category: Pitigrilli
date of death: 1975-05-08
name in native language: Dino Segre
pseudonym: Pitigrilli
date of birth: 1893-05-09

Sources (3)

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~10 min read

Article

10 sections

Contents

Biography
Early life and family
Career
Fascism and World War II
Postwar years
Collaboration with the Fascist regime
Works
English translations
References
External links

Pitigrilli founded the literary magazine Grandi Firme, which was published in Turin from 1924 to 1938, when it was banned under the antisemitic Italian racial laws of the Fascist government. Although baptized a Catholic, Segre was classified as Jewish at that time. His father was Jewish, and Pitigrilli had married a Jewish woman, although they had long lived apart. He had worked in the 1930s as an informant for the Italian fascist secret service OVRA but was dismissed in 1939 after being exposed in Paris.