Background
Salvatore Quasimodo was born on August 20, 1901, in Modica, Sicily, Italy, where his father was a stationmaster with the Italian railroads.
(Salvatore Quasimodo, the Sicilian poet who won the Nobel ...)
Salvatore Quasimodo, the Sicilian poet who won the Nobel Prize in 1959 "for his poetry which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our time", died in 1968. 'Debit and Credit' contains the twenty-two new poems from his last book, 'Dare e avere' (1965), together with eleven complementary poems selected by Jack Bevan from his earlier books. These poems show Quasimodo at his best as he explores the complex emotions associated with memories of particular events and places, in lyric verse of grave and passionate eloquence. None of the poems have previously appeared in book form in England.
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(A cura di Giovanna Musolino. Prefazione di G. Finzi . 16m...)
A cura di Giovanna Musolino. Prefazione di G. Finzi . 16mo pp. 158 Brossura (wrappers) Ottimo (Fine)
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Salvatore Quasimodo was born on August 20, 1901, in Modica, Sicily, Italy, where his father was a stationmaster with the Italian railroads.
After several moves throughout Sicily, the family in 1908 settled in Messina, where Quasimodo finished his education and remained until 1919.
Subsequently he moved to Rome to study engineering at the Politechnical Institute but did not complete his studies.
Through Elio Vittorini, his brother-in-law, Quasimodo was introduced to literary circles during a visit to Florence in 1929.
His first verse, published in Solaria in 1930, led to his association with such literary figures as Eugenio Montale, Carlo Bo, and Oreste Macrí.
Quasimodo's poetics is characterized by a belief in the "magic of the word. "
Such an avowal eventually leads to the concept of an "absolute word" whose alliterative properties are stressed over its logical aspects.
He refused to be associated with French symbolism, declaring that his work might better be seen in the tradition of "stilnovistic" poetry.
The goals of Quasimodo's poetics are already visible in his first collection of verse, Acque e terre (1930), in which the word no longer appears in a subordinate syntactic function but asserts its own immediate value.
Òboe sommerso (1932), Odore di Eucalyptus ed altri versi (1933), and Erato e Apòllion (1936) are verse collections which are most characteristic of Quasimodo's hermetic approach, and it is here that his poetics of the absolute word is most clearly delineated and evident ("I divest myself by syllables, " Parola).
The themes are autobiographical, those of an odyssey and the search for a lost paradise.
The almost realistic aspects of Acque e terre have disappeared; the technique of the analogies has become more daring; and the metaphors have become more tightened.
The equilibrium between realistic and hermetic elements characteristic of the first collection is no longer existent.
Nuove poesie (1938) reiterates the old nostalgic feeling of Acque e terre for Sicily.
With the publication of Con il piede straniero sopra il cuore (1946), he became the poet of social consciousness.
La terra impareggiabile (1958) is still oriented toward the social and dialogical approach, but it is somewhat weaker than the earlier collections.
Perhaps the best of his translations are those of the Lirici greci ("Greek Lyrics").
He also translated four plays of Shakespeare, various classical authors, and, among the moderns, E. E. Cummings and Pablo Neruda.
In June 1968, when he was in Amalfi for a discourse, Quasimodo was struck by a cerebral hemorrhage. He died a few days later in the hospital in Naples. He was interred in the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan.
(Salvatore Quasimodo, the Sicilian poet who won the Nobel ...)
(Poetry by the Nobel Prize-winning Italian author explores...)
(A cura di Giovanna Musolino. Prefazione di G. Finzi . 16m...)
In 1946 Quasimodo joined the Communist Party, but did not long retain his membership.
In 1945 he became a member of the Italian Communist Party.