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Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968) |
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Italian poet, critic, and translator, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1959. Salvatore Quasimodo's works fall roughly into two periods, divided by World War II. His early poems were difficult with their metaphysical and complex imagery. In later works in his humanistic period he was more concerned with the contemporary history, social conditions, horrors of war, and the problems of human suffering. Many of his poems depict the landscape of Sicily. Quasimodo's Nobel Prize before Eugenio Montale's (1896-1981) stirred much debate in Italy. "Here the earth is finished: Salvatore Quasimodo was born in Modica, a small town near Syracuse, Sicily, the son of Gaetano Quasimodo, a railway officer, and Clotilde Quasimodo (née Ragusa). His father's work took the family to Messina, where they arrived two days after the great earthquake of 1908. Quasimodo started to read and write at an exceptionally early age and show interest in Greek lyric poetry. When his parents felt that technical training would lead to a more practical career, Quasimodo was sent to technical schools in Palermo and Messina and then he moved in his teens to Rome, where he studied engineering at the Polytechnical Institute. He was fired from the department store La Rinascente for organizing a strike. Because of financial problems, he left the school without completing an engineering degree, but was qualified as a surveyor. For a period he worked for a construction firm. In 1926 Quasimodo was appointed to the government Civil Engineering Department. The new job took him to many differents parts of Italy. Eventually he returned to the south in Reggio Calabria, where he wrote his first poems. Quasimodo's brother-in-law, Elio Vittorini, who became a novelist, introduced him to the literary circles. Among his friends were Eugenio Montale, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1975, Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970), and Alessandro Bonsati (1904-1984). After meeting Monsignor Rampolla del Tindaro, a Sicilian
priest,
Quasimodo began to learn Greek. His earliest poems appeared in
magazines. His first collection, Acque e terre (Water and
Land), came out in 1930, but it included poems written when
he was eighteen. Two of the most famous works in the collection are
'Vento a Tindari' and the three-line 'Ed č subito sera': "Everyone
stands alone on the heart of the earth / transfixed by a ray of sun: /
and suddenly it's evening." (translated by Patrick Barron)
Water and Land contained nostalgic poems about Sicily, and reveal moods of loneliness and melancholy. It was followed by Oboe sommerso (1932), which won the Antico Fattore poetry prize, Erato e Apollion (1936), and Poesie (1938), in which Quasimodo expression showed influence of symbolism. During this period hee divided his time between his governmental job and his poetry. After a short period in Sardinia, Quasimodo's work brought him to Milan. Eventually, in 1938, he resigned from the Corps of Engineers. Quasimodo worked as an assistant to Cesare Zavattini (1902-1989), who was editor of several periodicals. In 1941, Quasimodo was named professor of Italian literature at Milan's Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory. Most likely fascist authorities did not understand his poems. Thus Ed č subito sera (1942), Quasimodo's widely read book, appeared while Mussolini was still in power. During WW II, Quasimodo joined an anti-Fascist group, but he did not take an active role in the resistance movement. By mistake, Quasimodo failed to respond to his draft call and was declared a draft dodger. In 1943 he was briefly imprisoned at Bergamo. Quasimodo's silent outrage surfaced in 'Dalla Rocca di Bergamo Alta' (From the Fortress of Upper Bergamo), published in Giorno dopo giorno (1947): "For yourself, you spoke no words: / you were in the narrow circle: / and the antelope and heron stilled, / lost in a gust of malignant smoke, / talismans of a world scarce born." (The Selected Writings of Salvatore Quasimodo, edited and translated by Allen Mandelbaum, 1960) The antelope and the heron in the poem are precious memories of childhood in Sicily. They are wiped out by the bitter smoke of war. ('Salvatore Quasimodo: Dalla rocca di Bergamo alta' by Wallace Fowlie, in The Poem Itself, edited, and with an introduction, by Stanley Burnshaw, 1995) After the war in
1945 Quasimodo became a member of the Italian Communist party. When
the party insisted that he should write political poems, he
resigned in protest. Giorno dopo giorno reflected
his country's hardships and his horror at Italy's role in the war. It
has been characterized perhaps the best volume of poetry to come out of
World War II in any country. With the following collection, La
vita non č sogno (1949), Quasimodo placed himself in the role
of "rifare l'uomo" (remake man), a poet of engagement - at moments his poesie sociale bitterly
attacked failures of Christians in front of the hopes given by
Communists. Quasimodo's first wife Bice Donetti died in 1948, and he married in 1948 Maria Cumani, a dancer. They separated permanently in 1960. Cumani later acted in Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's I sovversivi (1967), Liliana Cavani's Galileo (1968), Franco Rubartelli's Veruschka (1971), Franco Rossi's Porgi l'altra guancia (1974), and other films. Quasimodo's daughter Orietta was born out of wedlock in 1935 to Amelia Spezialetti, whom he had first met in 1931. Quasimodo's love letters to the feminist writer Sibilla Aleramo (Rina Pierangeli Faccio, 1876-1960), who was engaged in affairs with many male writers, were published in 1983. Quasimodo
died suddenly. While presidenting over a poetry competition in Amalfi,
he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died in Naples, on June 14, 1968.
His last four volumes of verse show a continuing concern for social
justice, but there are also fond memories of past friends and past
loves. His final collection of verse was Dare e
avere (1966,
To Give and to Have). Besides the Nobel Prize, Quasimodo reveived
several other literary prizes, including the Premio Viareggio in 1958
and the Taormina Prize, which he shared with Dylan Thomas in 1953. Until the 1960s, Quasimodo was relatively unknown outside
Italy. His name along with Ungaretti and Montale was omitted from the
1952 Oxford Book of Italian Verse. In
his review of Allen Mandelbaum's The Selected Writings of Salvatore Quasimodo (1960), I.A. Portner wrote in the Christian Science Monitor: "It
may leave the English-speaking reader still wondering whether the Nobel
award was dictated by caprice or a just recognition of greatness." Recurrent themes in Quasimodo's works are memories of
childhood and
the life and culture Sicily. He connects his impressions of the
landscape to literary associations, and the cultural heritage from
Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and other invaders. In the 1930s he became a
leader of the "hermetic" poet with Montale and Ungaretti, abandoning realism. Hermetic poets were
accused of obscurity. They were guided by listening to their own inner
voice, and they often used difficult private symbolism. "Poetry, even
lyrical poetry, is always 'speech,'" Quasimodo said in his Nobel lecture. "The listener
may be the physical or metaphysical interior of the poet, or a man, or
a thousand men." (Literature: 1901-1967, edited by Horst Frenz, 1999) After WW II Quasimodo's poetry dealt largely with social issues, reflecting deep concern of the fate of Italy. Some younger writers rejected his work as a fossilization of "Ermetismo". In 'Discourse on Poetry' he wrote: "... a poet is a poet when he does not renounce his existence in a given country, at a particular time, defined politically. And poetry is the liberty and truth of that time, and not abstract modulations of sentiment." (Complete Poems, translated by Jack Bevan, 1984) A modernist but acutely conscious of the tension between tradition and innovation, he wrote many essays on literature and translated classical writers and drama, among them such writers as William Shakespeare, Moličre (Tartuffe), Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Virgil, Catullus. Quasimodo's light-hearted prose translation of Romeo and Juliet from 1949 was performed in Verona. His translations from European and American contemporaries include e.e. cummings and Pablo Neruda. For further reading: 'Quasimodo' by G.Cambon, in Chelsea 6, pp. 60-67 (1960); Quasimodo by N. Tedesco (1959); The Poem Itself, ed. by S. Burnshaw (1960); Dialogue With and Audience by J. Ciardi (1963); Poetry of This Age by J.M. Cohen (1966); 'Salvatore Quasimodo' by D. Dutschke, in Italian Quaterly 12, 91-103 (1969); Quasimodo e la critica, ed. by G. Finzi (1969); L'isola impareggiabile by C.M. Bowra (1977); Concordanza delle poesie di Salvatore Quasimodo by Giuseppe Savoca (1994); Quasimodo: Biografia per immagini by Rosalma Salina Borello (1995); Italian Environmental Literature An Anthology, edited by Patrick Barron and Anna Re (2003); 'Quasimodo, Salvatore' by Chris Picicci, in The Facts on File Companion to World Poetry: 1900 to the Present, ed. by R. Victoria Arana (2008); La classicità e il mito nella poesia di Salvatore Quasimodo by Carmelo Luca (2019); Moderne parole antiche: Cardarelli, Ungaretti, Quasimodo, Saba e i classici by Enrico Tatasciore (2020) - Huom!: Quasimodolta on julkaistu suomeksi valikoima Ja äkkiä on ilta (1962), suomennoksia on myös mm. antologioissa Tuhat laulujen vuotta, toim. Aale Tynni (1973), Runon suku, toim. Jarkko Laine (1991) sekä Maailman runosydän, toim. Hannu Tarmio, Janne Tarmio (1998). Selected works:
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