"You are eternal for as long as you are in the world," remarked Alberto Asor Rosa, a leading Italian literary critic who died on December 21 aged 89. Our culture's most well-known palindrome, Asor Rosa, will be remembered fondly long after its brief but passionate life on Earth has ended. He was born on September 23, 1933, in Rome, and his mentor was the late Natalino Sapegno, another "holy monster" of literary studies who passed away in the spring of 1990. Asor Rosa, Full Professor of Italian Literature at La Sapienza University in Rome, has devoted several articles to Italian writing, beginning with the publication of his degree thesis on Pratolini (1958) and continuing with "Scrittori e popolo" (1965), a critical investigation of the populist vein in Italian literature from the Risorgimento to Pasolini, via Gramsci's theory of national-popular literature. Asor Rosa worked with publications including "Mondo operaio," "Mondo nuovo," and "Classe operaia" and directed "Contropiano," "Laboratorio politico," and "Rinascita" in the early nineties. He was a deputy of the Italian Communist Party from 1979 to 1980. His non-fiction work has always been influenced by his civic enthusiasm, such as the History of Italy Einaudi book on Italian culture from Unification to the present. "Powerful voice. One of his comments is that power grows habituated to its own voice; when the addiction is complete, it misidentifies it as the voice of God ".
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