Sister Souls

This book focuses on the autobiographical poetry of early 20th-century author Antonia Pozzi and her lifelong friend and fellow poet, Vittorio Sereni, most particularly on the autobiographical format of their writing and its role as a mode of passive resistance to Fascist control, a mode of resistance familiar to women's writing even before the onset of Fascist totalitarianism. While Sereni is by far the better-known author, his response to the war experience and, particularly, to imprisonment recalls Pozzi's work on a number of levels. In the diaries of both authors, autobiography functions as a means of constantly reasserting the self as a unique and separate individual against the totalizing forces of Fascist propaganda.