Salvatore Quasimodo

Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968), Italian poet and critic, born in Modica, Sicily. He began to write

while working as a civil engineer. By 1938 he had published five books of poems. From 1940 he was

drama critic of the journal Tempo. He founded the hermetic school of Italian poets, who, unable to

speak out openly against fascism, had to write in veiled terms.

A collection of his writings on the theater appeared in 1961. Quasimodo also translated much classical

Greek and Latin literature as well as works of Shakespeare and modern British and American poets.

He was awarded the 1959 Nobel Prize in literature for expressing “the tragic experience of our

time.”The Selected Writings of Salvatore Quasimodo (1960) was the first major collection of his work

to appear in English. Other works include The Poet and the Politician and Other Essays (1964) and a

posthumously published volume, To Give and to Have and Other Poems (1969).