At a Meeting of the
Faculty of Vassar College
held
November fourteenth, nineteen hundred
and seventy-nine, the following
Memorial
was unanimously adopted:
Mario Domandi, Professor of Italian on the Dante Antolini Chair, was born
in New York City on February 5, l929, the son of Santo and Filomena Domandi.
Educated in the city's public schools, he took his undergraduate degree at
St. John University College. He spent the l950-5l academic year as a Fulbright
Fellow at the University of Rome and then completed a Master's degree in history
at Columbia University in l952. After two years of military service, he resumed
his studies at Columbia in European intellectual history. His dissertation on
the German youth movement was supervised by Jacques Barzun. For Mario, Barzun
represented the life of the nnndat its best, urbane and elegant, yet humane
and deeply serious.
Mario came to Vassar as an instructor of Italian in 1956. From l958 to
l963 he served as House Fellow in Jewett dormitory and from l96l to l964, as
Dean of Freshmen. His success as teacher and administrator and his productivity
as a scholar were rewarded with early promotion to tenure. In Hay, I964, he
delivered the convocation address at the request of the senior class.
Characteristically, he told his hearers that the result of their education
"should be a refined sensibility and a civilized instinct. Just as the entirety
of our personal experience is embodied in what we call our ‘instinctive’ reaction
to a situation, so too our whole intellectual experience is contained in our
instinctive judgments about art, politics, ethics, and the rest. If a college
has done its job well, the instinct should be healthy, free of myths and
prejudices." In l965 Mario became chairman of the Italian department. In l969
he became the second recipient of the Dante Antolini chair in Italian language
and literature which had been given by Hrs. Julia Coburn Antolini in honor of
her husband. H
Mario maintained a lifelong interest in modern German history and culture,
but at Vassar he soon turned to the field where he was to make his scholarly
reputation: the translation of significant works on and of the Italian
Renaissance from both German and Italian. His first translation was of Ernst
Cassirer's The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy published
by Basil Blackwell in Oxford and by Harper and Row in New York. The book’s
immediate scholarly and commercial success cemented Mario's close relationship
with Harper‘s history editor, Hugh Van Dusen, and over the next decade Hario
translated five books for the Torchbook Series. _In l965 appeared Mario s '
translation of Guicciardini's Ricordi under the title of Maxims and Reflections
of a Renaissance Statesman. It made his reputation as a Renaissance scholar
and remains in print today. In l970 Mario published Guicciardini s History
of Florence with introduction, glossary, and notes. His translation of
-2-
Luigi Salvatorelli’s interpretation of the Risorgimento appeared in 1971 and of Tomas Maldonado’s work on urban planning in 1972. Mario also completed a translation from the German of Ernest Nolte’s massive study of the rise of European fascism which was never published.
Mario’s special knack as a translator was his ability to conve difficult philosophical ideas and a tangled skein of events in clear, readable, and flowing English prose. This talent attracted the interest of Charles Singleton who enlisted Mario’s aid as translator of Latin and Italian sources quoted in the commentary to Singleton’s edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy. This task kindled Mario’s interest in the early Florentine chroniclers and for a time he toyed with the idea of providing in English a documentary volume on Dante’s Florence. But ulitmately he abandoned this plan in favor of two large projects on Medicean Florence that were to lie unfinished at his death. One was a volume of the familial letters of Lorenzo de’ Medici and his circle done in collaboration with the Florentine paleographer Gino Corti. The second was a translation with notes and glossary of Giovanni Cavalcanti’s Florentine Histories, a prime narrative source on the origins of the Medici regime, for which Mario received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
To his students Mario brought the same qualities of sound scholarship, his clear but never simple exposition, and the magic of his manner. Students flocked to his renaissance classes especially because Mario’s recreation of that civilization permitted students to discern some of the most humane aspects of the teacher himself. He would talk of Machiavelli and murder, od Ariosto and the poetic forms, of romance and history, of dotuna and virtù, but ultimately for Mario the Renaissance was best represented by a letter Lorenzo de’ medici wrote to his young daughter whome the family had left alone, do not worry. “if everyone is gone, and the naughty ones left ou alone, do not worry. I will come back purposely to stay with you, and will stay only with you.” Mario used to comment, “He was a good daddy.” This artificier of balance of power and of artistic excellence exemplified for Mario that virtue the Latina called “Humanitas” and the Italian humanists of more than twenty years as teacher and department chairman. It was impossible for anyone to remain indifferent to his warm, almost fatherly, ways and not to love him, immediately.
In 1952 Mario married Agnes Koerner who had come to the United States from Germany after escaping from the Soviet Zone. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1972. Their only child, Mary Charlotte, was born in 1961; his delight in her development was extraordinary. Mario and Agnes quickly became known for their hospitality and for the diversity of their friends. They bridged worlds easily, turning differences of opinion and taste into exhilarating conversation. Mario’s pride in his own cosmopolitanism as a scholar never detracted from his pride in his Sicilian ancestry or in his father’s success as a garment manufacturer. Who will forget the aphorisms he attrivuted to Uncle Luigi, such as “rich or poor, it’s nice to have money.” Who will forget the accordion on which he ranged with such zest from polkas to pop tunes to Protestant hymns?
In recent years his favorite form of party followed from an invitation to drinks at six o’ clock. Unlike many such gatherings, Mario’s parties customarily where occasions where a mixed group of people engaged in lively
-3-
discussion on a wide range of topics, taking the key from their host who treated
the party as an event rather than as a mechanical routine. It was not unusual
for him to ask members of his classes and Italian majors to the parties; he
deferred to them with the same cordiality that he extended to his friends from
the faculty and from the community. It was the rare party that did not end
with Mario in the kitchen making spaghetti al dente or some other preferred
dish. But in between the coming and the going at the party, those invited
to share it knew that they had a host who took seriously the mandate to honor
guests. when a guest comes, Christ comes, Mario said, and he meant it.
Every part of Mario's life contained the other parts. His dying was
part of his living. Learning that he had a large, malignant tumor which
made survival improbable, Mario chose to deal directly with his fate. Defiant,
he discovered that in Houston, Texas, there was a project experimenting with
nuclear radiation therapy. In the face of uncertainty about the outcome,
Hario went to a hospital there as a participant in the experiment. He was
subjected to routines which, as he told his friends over the long distance
phone, stirred in his mind passages from Dante's Inferno.
Mario underwent an operation in the Fall of 1978 which removed the tumor.
He was able to spend the next several months in Poughkeepsie, recuperating
and preparing to reengage in his scholarly activities. On February 4, l979
he was married to Ann Hedlund whom he had known for many years and who gave
him the most loving support in his final months. when the cancer recurred,
he first was hospitalized in New York. In lucid moments, he retained his
geniality and his flair for telling a story. In the midst of pain, he
remained gentle and considerate. He returned to Poughkeepsie and died here
on July 8, 1979. He is buried in Little Compton, Rhode Island, where he
had spent his summers for many years.
Respectfully submitted,
Clyde Griffen, Chariman
Elizabeth Daniels
Benjamin Kohl
Manfredi Piccolomini