Sergio Corazzini

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Sergio Corazzini

Sergio Corazzini (born February 6, 1886 in Rome , † June 17, 1907 ibid) was an Italian poet of crepuscolarismo .

life and work

Corazzini came from a family that suffered badly from tuberculosis . After a few years of primary school in Rome, he attended the Collegio Nazionale in Spoleto with his brother Gualtiero from 1895 to 1898 . However, due to the financial difficulties of his family, the father, a Roman tobacco dealer, had to take his sons out of boarding school afterwards, and Sergio had to work for an insurance company in addition to his further education at a simple high school . Corazzini describes his dark, dreary job behind a barred hopper window in an old building on Via del Corso in numerous references in the poem Soliloqui di un pazzo ( Monologues of a madman ).

The decline of the family from prosperity to poverty was caused by bad speculation on the stock market and a dissolute lifestyle. He changed Corazzini's mental state from one moment to the next; serious illness and death were also the result: his mother (Carolina Calamani), who came from Cremona , fell ill with consumption ; his brother Gualtiero died of the same disease; the other brother, Erberto, was killed in a car accident in Libya ; and the father also died later in a poor home.

Despite all the hardships, Corazzini, as a great lover of literature, did not refrain from reading his favorite poets, including not only Italian but also foreign contemporaries ( Paul Verlaine , Maurice Maeterlinck , Jules Laforgue ) and dialect poets ( Corrado Govoni ). These inspired him to make his first own lyrical attempts, which appeared in popular newspapers: On May 17, 1902, his first sonnet in Roman dialect ( Na bella idea , Eng. A nice thought ), published by the Pasquino de Roma ; another ( Partenza , dt. Aufbruch ) on September 14, 1902, which appeared as a seven-syllable in Italian in the Rugantino ; and finally, in the verso libero , La tipografia abbandonata (Eng. The abandoned printer ) in the Marforio . He dealt with extremely realistic topics that betrayed the young author's precocious tendency to closely observe things in everyday life . There are also allusions to the disease , which is already creeping in . So expresses z. B. the sonnet Vinto (Eng. Defeated ) from 1906 bitter thoughts about the loss of happiness .

Through his first publications, Corazzini became known in a small literary circle who met regularly in Café Sartoris and soon afterwards, under his aegis, formed the Roman group of an avant-garde later known as Crepuscolari ( Aldo Palazzeschi , Marino Moretti and others). As Fausto Maria Martini documents in his novel Si sbarca a New York , published in 1930, this circle of friends later moved to Café Aragno, where he produced the only three issues of the magazine Cronache latine (December 15, 1905 - January 15, 1906).

Corazzinis poetry collections came in the years 1904-1906 out: Dolcezze ( soft characteristics ; 1904), L'amaro calice ( The bitter cup ; 1905), Le aureole ( aureoles ; 1906), Piccolo libro inutile ( Small, useless book ; 1906), Elegia ( Elegie ; 1906) and Libro per la sera della domenica ( Book for Sunday evening ; 1906). His only play Il traguardo ( The Finish Line ) was performed unsuccessfully on May 26, 1905 in the Teatro Metastasio.

In the spring of 1906 Corazzini's tuberculosis worsened and forced him to take a spa stay in Nocera , where he met his first intense love, the young Danish girl Sonja. To seek financial help from his mother's relatives, he went to Cremona in June of that year and began brief pen pals with a young pastry clerk. When his health deteriorated further, he was taken to a sanatorium run by the Brothers of Mercy of St. John of God in Nettuno . There he began his correspondence with Aldo Palazzeschi and, in collaboration with Guido Milelli, his translation of Joséphin Péladan's tragedy Sémiramis . In May 1907 he returned to his apartment on Via dei Sediari in Rome, where he died on June 17th at the age of 21.

Corazzini's crepuscolarismo

The “poetry of the little things”, which does not reveal any secret values ​​but only emptiness, is typical of the Crepuscolari , to which Corazzini is counted. His poems express, on the one hand, the melancholy longing for a life that his illness denied him, and on the other hand, the nostalgic withdrawal from his present existence - precisely because it did not open up any prospects for the future. Two attitudes can be identified in Corazzini : that of the poor, sentimental poet who articulates his longing in a simple, modest language, or that of the ironic poet, who, on the other hand, adopts a barely transparent, ambiguous, sometimes even symbolic language. In Desolazione del povero poeta sentimentale ( desolation of the poor sentimental poet ) his poetry comes into its own at the moment when a “little boy crying” (“piccolo fanciullo che piange”) declares that he will never be called a “poet” can (“proclama l'impossibilità di essere chiamato« poeta »”). It is precisely through such an autoironic, meaningless attitude that Crepuscolarismo differs from the triumphant gesture of Dannunzianesimo .

Works

  • Dolcezze . Rome: Tipografia operaia romana, 1904
  • L'amaro calice . Rome: Tipografia operaia romana, 1905
  • Le aureole . Rome: Tipografia operaia romana, 1905
  • Piccolo libro inutile . Rome: Tipografia operaia romana, 1906 (also contains poems by Alberto Tarchiani )
  • Elegia. Frammento . Rome: Tipografia operaia romana, 1906
  • Libro per la sera della domenica . Rome: Tipografia operaia romana, 1906
  • Liriche . Naples: Ricciardi, 1909
  • Liriche . (Preface by Fausto Maria Martini ; introduction by Sergio Solmi ) Milan / Naples: Ricciardi, 1959
  • Poetry edite e inedite . (Ed .: Stefano Jacomuzzi) Turin: Einaudi, 1968
  • Poetry . (Introduction and commentary by Isolina Landolfi) Milan: BUR, 1992 ( ISBN 8817168483 )
  • Opera. Poetry e prose . (Ed .: Angela Ida Villa) Pisa: Istituti Edizioni e Poligrafici Internazionali, 1999

literature

  • Guy Allanic: La vie et l'œuvre du poète Sergio Corazzini . Univ., Geneva 1973.
  • Aurelio Benevento: Sergio Corazzini. Saggi e ricerche . Loffredo, Naples 1980.
  • Filippo Donini: Vita e Poesia di Sergio Corazzini . De Silva, Turin 1949.
  • Manfred Lentzen: Italian poetry of the 20th century. From the avant-garde of the first decades to a new inwardness. Analecta Romanica series, issue 53. Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M. 1994, ISBN 3-465-02654-3 , pp. 19-26.
  • Giuseppe Savoca: Concordanza delle poesie di Sergio Corazzini . Olschki, Florence 1987.
  • "Io non sono un poeta". Sergio Corazzini (1886-1907). Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi (Roma, 11-13 March 1987) . (Ed .: F. Livi / A. Zingone) Bulzoni, Rome 1989.
  • Angela Ida Villa: Neoidealismo e rinascenza latina tra Otto e Novecento. La cerchia di Sergio Corazzini. Poeti dimenticati e riviste del Crepuscolarismo romano (1903-1907) . LED, Milan 1999.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Corazzini, Sergio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian poet of crepuscolarismo
DATE OF BIRTH February 6, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Rome
DATE OF DEATH June 17, 1907
Place of death Rome