Andrea Zanzotto [1] was an
Italian poet.
(10 October 1921 – 18 October 2011)
Biography
Andrea Zanzotto was born in
Pieve di Soligo (
province of Treviso,
Veneto),
Italy to Giovanni and Carmela Bernardi.
His father, Giovanni (born 18 November 1888), had received degrees from the
École supèrieure de peinture at
Brussels (1911, specializing in
trompe-l'oeil in wood and marble) and the Academy of Fine Arts at
Bologna (1913, diploma di professore di disegno). Having been hired by a large painting business in
Trieste, he was inducted into the army in 1915 and took part in combat on the
Piave River.
Giovanni had been involved with Carmela for some time, but postponed
marriage until his work abroad (Trieste at that time belonged to the
Austro-Hungarian Empire) earned him enough to support a family.
Education
For the first two years of his life, Zanzotto lived with his parents
near via Sirtori. In 1922, they moved into a house that the father
acquired in the Cal Santa district. This would be the setting and house
most often described by the poet. As he wrote in his "Self-portrait" (
Autoritratto, 1977), this was from the very beginning, the center of his world.
In 1923, his sisters Angela and Marina were born. In 1924 he attended a
Montessori kindergarten run by nuns. In 1925, his sister Maria was born.
In the meantime, his father, who had openly espoused support for
Giacomo Matteotti,
was accused of anti-fascism. In the course of time his opposition to
the fascist regime made it difficult for him to find any kind of work,
to the point of deciding in 1925 to take refuge in
Paris and then at
Annoeullin (near
Lille), where he worked for some friends of his. He returned to his home country for a brief period, but in 1926 was forced back to
France, remaining in
Royan until December of that year.
Elementary school
Thanks to his teacher, Marcellina Dalto, Zanzotto already knew how to
write when he started the elementary school in 1927. He passed
immediately to the second grade. As the poet recounts in his
"Self-portrait", he already took pleasure in the music of words: "I felt
something infinitely sweet listening to chants, nursery rhymes and
little verses, even those of the children's magazine
Il Corriere dei Piccoli
-- not so much in singing, but insofar as they were pronounced or
simply spoken, according to harmony linked to the very function of
language, to its inner song."
In 1928 his father Giovanni took a job as a teacher in a school in
Cadore and decided to move with the family to
Santo Stefano
where Zanzotto completed his second grade. By the end of summer,
however, Giovanni realized that the distance between his wife and her
mother was causing his wife to suffer. He decided to move the family
back to Pieve.
The death of Zanzotto's sister Marina in 1929 made a lasting impression on the mind of the young poet.
In that year, his father Giovanni came to public attention for his campaigning again the fascist
plebiscite, and was condemned to remain in exile. Nevertheless, he managed to work on the restoration of the church at
Costalissoio. Zanzotto, attending third grade at the time, joined him during summer vacation, but suffered homesickness.
In 1930, Zanzotto's brother Ettore was born. At the same time,
Giovanni was forced to go into debt due to the embezzlement and flight
of a clerk at the company (a labor
cooperative
for injured veterans) which was providing him with the means to support
the family. This imposed financial constraints on the entire family.
During this period, he became close to his maternal grandmother and to his aunt Maria, who as he wrote in
Uno squardo dalla periferia ("A view from the edge"), made him listen to "fragments of
Latino maccheronico (mock Latin)" and involved him in the activity of the little theater where she worked as a draumaturge,
capocomico, director and actress.
At school, he proved a lively but not always disciplined student,
often receiving the scoldings of his father. The young man showed no
talent for drawing, the very subject which the father had mastered. The
father insisted then that Zanzotto take music lessons, since music was
the passion of the town thanks to the fame of local
soprano Toti Dal Monte (whom Zanzotto would recall at the being of his opera,
Idioma).
Middle school
Having completed elementary school in 1931 as an off-campus student at the
Collegio Balbi-Valier and taken his examinations in
Vittorio Veneto,
Zanzotto began middle school, gradually arriving at the decision to
study to pursue a teaching diploma, a decision driven above all by his
family's precarious financial position.
His father worked in the meantime in Santo Stefano, but was forced,
in 1932, due to poorer wages, to return to Annoeullin where he remained
until November. He returned to Pieve in 1933 and although he remained
under a ban that prevented him from teaching, he was able to contribute
to the upkeep of his family thanks to a part-time position at
Collegio Balbi-Valier
and to various odd jobs. Taking account of his responsibilities to the
family, he avoided any direct conflict with his political enemies.
Teaching school
With the transition to teaching school, which Zanzotto commuted to
Treviso
to attend, commenced his first strong literary interests, which he
nourished at the moment by consulting the encyclopedia compiled by
Giacomo Prampolini.
In 1936, his first love re-emerged alongside the inspiration for the
first verses he succeeded in publishing, with the cooperation of his
grandmother and aunt, in an anthology for which he paid a small fee.
The verses didn't yet have a personal style, and felt the influence of
Giovanni Pascoli,
given that a nephew of Pascoli worked in the local bank, and knowing
his passion for poetry, presented him with a gift of some of the poet's
work in first edition.
High school
In 1937 his sister Angela died of
typhus.
To the pain of grief, which had stricken him profoundly, was added the
fatigue of the commute to Treviso and the intensification of his
studies. Wanting to graduate in the shortest time possible, he had
undergone an examination in October of the previous year, comprising all
of the junior year subjects. He passed it and started to study
Greek in order to pass the entrance examination for
liceo classico (a high school focused on
Classics).
Allergies and
asthma,
from which he had already suffered, began to present themselves in more
forceful episodes. In addition to the symptoms, these brought on a
feeling of exclusion and peril: "I think it may have had a negative
influence on my childhood and adolescence, this particular aberrant idea
which gradually took root in me: the impossibility of actively
participating in the game of life, insofar as I would soon be excluded. I
suffered from various types of allergies, and at that time, the
diagnosis could be rather confused and doubtful. Asthma and
hay fever,
which had tormented me since I was a boy, were sometimes interpreted as
a condition that could seriously worsen, even in the short term" (from
the "Self-Portrait").
Having received his teaching credentials, he was entrusted with several pupils for private lessons by the director of
Collegio Balbi-Valler and obtained 2,000
lire as a debt of honor from the parish priest, Monsignor Martin, for continuing his studies.
Zanzotto passed the admission examination, finally achieving his
classical diploma by examination without formal preparation at the
Liceo Canova in Treviso.
University
In 1939, he enrolled in the College of Letters at the
University of Padua where he studied under Diego Valeri and the Latinist, Concetto Marchesi.
With Valeri's encouragement, he immersed himself in the writings of
Baudelaire and discovered
Rimbaud as well as (thanks to Luigi Stefanini) the poetry of
Hölderlin, which he read for the first time in Vincenzo Errante's translation.
Meanwhile, he began to study
German so that he might read Hölderlin,
Goethe and
Heine in the original.
In 1940, he worked for the first time as a substitute teacher in
Valdobbiadene.
He discovered at that time that within the regime and above all in the
student clubs, there were many who nevertheless acted with practical
autonomy, or in contrast to himself, as he came to be informed by his
friend, Ettore Luccini, history and philosophy teacher at the
liceo classico.
In this period, they put out the magazine
Il Bo in Padua, marked by a notably non-conformist stance, as well as the University of Treviso periodical,
Signum (along with Giorgio Strehler,
Mario Luzi and Mario Tobino, among others), which exhibited a superficial adherence to the positions of the regime.
The news of the outbreak of
war
was met in the town with great consternation, the economic crisis came
to the fore, and Zanzotto's family had to sell half of the house at Col
Santa.
In 1941 the substitute teaching position in Valdobbiadene was not renewed, but Zanzotto managed to find one in
Treviso with a middle school.
At the Young Fascists University of Treviso (Gioventù Universitaria
Fascista), within which there were also people practicing anti-fascism,
he made, in 1942, a "presentation" on
Eugenio Montale, where he interpreted the pessimism of the author in a political and ethical light.
He received his diploma in
Italian literature on 30 October 1942, with a thesis on the work of
Grazia Deledda. Professor Natale Busetto was his advisor (
relatore).
The war
Called to military service, he received a deferment for his weak
upper body and his severe allergy-related asthma, and thus was exempted
from conscription into the army of '21, protagonist of the military
campaign in
Russia and
Greece. He then refused to respond to the recruitment of volunteers organized by the
Fascist Party.
He published a prose poem entitled
Adagio in issue 10 of
Signum, and the first drafts of fiction, lyrical and prose, that would make up the older core of
Sull'Altopiano ("On the Plateau", published in 1964) date back to that year.
An opportunity to publish presented itself in the collection of poetry assembled by the florentine magazine
Rivoluzione, founded by
Mario Tobino, but due to the war, the periodical was forced to shut down.
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