"They wished me to be a poet; here, therefore, is a little poetry," is the opening line of his book called "Cento Pagine di Poesia," and this, though not in verse, is characterized by such imaginative beauty, more in language, however, than in thought, that it is worthy to be called a poem. More than any other of his books it reveals the real Papini. Here he is less truculent, less Nietzschian, less self-conscious of understudying and attempting to act the parts of Jove. He is more like the Papini that he is by nature, and therefore more human, more kind and gentle--would I could add modest--more potent and convincing, than in any of his other books. It is especially in the third part, under the general title of "Precipitations," that the author gives the freest rein to his fantasy and is not always endeavoring to explain or tell the reason why, but abandons himself to the production of words which will present rhythmically the emotions that are springing up within him. It is difficult to believe that the same hand penned these poems and the open letter to Anatole France beginning: "In these days Anatole France is in Rome, and perhaps returning he will stop in Florence, but I beg him fervently not to seek me out. I could not receive him." That quality of delusion of grandeur I have seen heretofore only in victims of a terrible disease. Signor Papini is never so transparent as he is in his "Stroncatura" and in his excursions into the realm of philosophy. His attack on Nietzsche is most illuminating. In fact, Giovanni Papini is Frederick Nietzsche viewed through an inverted telescope. "Nietzsche's volubility (indication of easy fatigue) makes him prefer the fragmentary and aphoristic style of expression; his incapacity to select from all that which he has thought and written leads him to publish a quantity of useless and repeated thought; his reluctance to synthetize, to construct, to organize, which gives to his books an air of oriental stuff, a mixture of old rags and of precious drapery, jumbled up without order, are the best arguments for imputing to him a deficiency of imperial mentality, a reflex of the general weakness of philosophy. But the most unexpected proof of this weakness consists in his incapacity to be truly and authentically original. The highest and most difficult forms of originality are certainly these two: to find new interpretation and solution of old problems, to pose new problems and to open streets absolutely unknown."