Word: benkovitz
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...life as self-styled genius and unrepentant poseur continues to tantalize. In the 1930s, two decades after Rolfe's death, A.J.A. Symons made him the subject of a celebrated literary whodunit. The Quest for Corvo. In 1971, Donald Weeks wrote a more conventional biography, Corvo. Miriam Benkovitz, an English professor at Skidmore College, offers a new and exhaustive study. Her style is academic and sometimes awkward, but the Baron radiates through it with a satanic intensity...
Biographer Benkovitz suggests that he would have been a soiled priest in any event. As Rolfe said throughout his life, he found "the Faith comfortable and the Faithful intolerable." That he survived at all seems due to his unearthly genius as a con man. Writing from Italy, he styled himself the Rev. Rolfe; in England, he was Baron Corvo, grandson of an Italian countess. He continually sold his talent to benefactors, pledging pictures and books that rarely materialized...
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