Taulero Zulberti and the Reception of Czech Culture in 1920s Italy

This essay traces the work of Taulero Zulberti as a translator and pro-moter of Czech literature. The story of Czech-Italian cultural exchange during the 1920s and 1930s, which was carried out in a variety of magazines and periodicals, is undoubtedly a relevant, even if secondary, topic. Yet it has received little attention in the context of Italian Slavistics. Zulberti, subsequently known for his work as a jour-nalist, remains a practically unknown figure as mediator of Czech culture in Italy. This represents the first thorough survey of his extensive output, based on analysis of such magazines as Il Brennero, Il Secolo XX, and Le opere e i giorni. Zulberti’s career is particularly significant as regards Josef and Karel Čapek, and it is through his translations that their stories first appeared to the Italian public. He would atten-tively follow their careers at least throughout the 1920s. The obscurity surrounding Zulberti’s work is due in part to the kind of texts he published, preferring short pieces that rarely reached the size of a full-length article, with the unique exception of Karel Čapek’s The Makropulos Affair, the author’s first published volume in Italian.