He studied at the Liceo classico Massimo d'Azeglio in Turin, where he was a pupil of Augusto Monti and where he had Cesare Pavese, Leone Ginzburg, Norberto Bobbio and Guido Seborga as fellow students.
He joined the Turin group of "Justice and Freedom" (Giustizia e Libertà) and, on 15 May 1935, following a report by the writer Dino Segre -alias Pitigrilli- he was arrested for the second time together with Einaudi, Foa, Ginzburg, Antonicelli, Bobbio, Pavese, Carlo Levi and Luigi Salvatorelli.
He was sentenced by the Tribunale Speciale to seven years imprisonment[2] with inter alia Riccardo Bauer and Ernesto Rossi, which he spent in the prison of Regina Coeli in Rome.
After serving his sentence, in 1940 he collaborated with Giulio Einaudi and his publishing house, where he had as friends and workmates Giaime Pintor, Felice Balbo, Pavese and Ginzburg.
An academic of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia since 1956, he also carried out literary activities, translating among other things works by Goethe, Schiller, Gotthelf, Hesse, Wiechert, and the autobiography of Richard Wagner.