Se Parigi è «spasmodia di contorni [in] configurazione polipoidale». Alberto Savinio e l’apprendistato francigeno

This text analyses the literary production of the Italian writer Alberto Savinio (1891-1952) in the light of his relations with French culture. In particular, after highlighting the time span in which the author of Hermaphroditus stayed in the French capital, the essay focuses on the nature of the influences that the Italian writer derived from authors such as Jean Cocteau, Jules Verne and many others. Savinio’s relationship with Breton is also taken into consideration in order to examine in detail the similarities and differences that characterised the Italian author’s writing with regard to the positions of the founder of Surrealism. Lastly, the article focuses on the way Savinio describes Paris in the 1930s, offering in the collection of essays entitled Souvenirs a picture of the French capital that appears very different to the one that other authors had proposed of the Ville Lumière in more or less the same years.