Sandro Penna
Sandro Penna (12 June 1906 – 21 January 1977) was an Italian poet.
Biography
Born in Perugia, Penna lived in Rome for most of his life.
He never had a regular job, contributing to several newspapers and writing almost only poetry. His first poems were published in 1932, through the intervention of Umberto Saba. Openly gay,[1] his works were largely marked by his melancholic view of homosexuality as imagination. Penna's economic conditions were often poor, and in his late years a group of intellectuals signed a manifesto in the newspaper Paese Sera to help him.
His affection for young boys was reflected by the constant presence of young boys in his verses, as well as in his taking a 14-year-old street boy from Rome, Raffaele, to the home he shared with his mother in 1956 and living with him, on and off, for fourteen years.[2]
According to Pier Paolo Pasolini, Penna's poetry was made of "an extremely delicate material of city places, with asphalt and grass, whitewashed walls of poor houses, white marbles of the bridges, and everywhere the sea's breath, the murmur of the river in which the trembling night lights reflect".
His controversial erotic love poems can be found in English translations in This Strange Joy (Ohio State University Press, 1982) and Remember me, God of Love (Carcanet, 1993).
An epigram of Penna's about the dark-skinned, dark-eyed, dark-haired Raffaele, scribbled on the back of his portrait by Tano Festa, reads:
Ho visto il mio moretto
seduto giù in platea
fumava un sigaretto
e gli occhi lustri avea.
Sandro Penna died in Rome in 1977.
Works
- Una strana gioia di vivere (1956)
- Croce e delizia (1958)
- Tutte le poesie (1970)
- Stranezze (1976)
- Confuso sogno (1980, posthumous)
- Confused Dream (1988, New York & Madras: Hanuman Books, a translation by George Scrivani. ISBN 0-937815-15-2)
References
- ^ Aldrich, Robert; Wotherspoon, Garry (2002). Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History. Routledge. pp. 320–2. ISBN 0-415-29161-5.
- ^ Aldrich, Robert; Wotherspoon, Garry (2001). Who's who in contemporary gay and lesbian history: from World War II to the present day. Psychology Press. p. 322. ISBN 978-0-415-22974-6. Retrieved 27 August 2010.
- v
- t
- e
- Giovan Battista Angioletti (1927)
- Giovanni Comisso (1928)
- Vincenzo Cardarelli (1929)
- Gino Rocca (1930)
- Giovanni Titta Rosa (1931)
- Leonida Rèpaci (1932)
- Raul Radice (1933)
- Carlo Emilio Gadda (1934)
- Enrico Sacchetti (1935)
- Silvio Negro (1936)
- Dario Ortolani (1947)
- Pier Antonio Quarantotti Gambini (1948)
- Giulio Confalonieri (1949)
- Vitaliano Brancati (1950)
- Indro Montanelli (1951)
- Francesco Serantini (1952)
- Leonardo Borghese (1953)
- Giuseppe Marotta (1954)
- Alfonso Gatto (1955)
- Giuseppe Lanza (1956)
- Pier Angelo Soldini (1957)
- Lorenzo Montano (1958)
- Italo Calvino (1959)
- Enrico Emanuelli (1960)
- Giorgio Vigolo (1961)
- Giuseppe Dessì (1962)
- Ottiero Ottieri (1963)
- Tommaso Landolfi (1964)
- Biagio Marin (1965)
- Manlio Cancogni (1966)
- Primo Levi (1967)
- Piero Chiara (1968)
- Niccolò Tucci (1969)
- Alberto Vigevani (1970)
- Piero Gadda Conti (1971)
- Anna Banti (1972)
- Sergio Solmi (1973)
- Gianni Celati (1974)
- Enzo Forcella (1975)
- Mario Soldati (1976)
- Sandro Penna (1977)
- Carlo Cassola (1978)
- Mario Rigoni Stern (1979)
- Giovanni Macchia (1980)
- Pietro Citati (1981)
- Vittorio Sereni (1982)
- Giorgio Bassani (1983)
- Natalia Ginzburg (1984)
- Francesca Duranti (1985)
- Leonardo Sciascia (1986)
- Claudio Magris (1987)
- Luciano Erba (1988)
- Luigi Meneghello (1989)
- Fleur Jaeggy (1990)
- Livio Garzanti (1991)
- Giorgio Bocca (1992)
- Giovanni Giudici (1993)
- Alberto Arbasino (1994)
- Daniele Del Giudice (1995)
- Raffaello Baldini (1996)
- Sergio Ferrero (1997)
- Giovanni Raboni (1998)
- Fabio Carpi (1999)
- Andrea Zanzotto
- Mariano Bargellini (2000)
- Serena Vitale (2001)
- Roberto Calasso
- Giorgio Orelli (2002)
- Michele Mari
- Edoardo Sanguineti
- Eva Cantarella (2003)
- Franco Cordero (2004)
- Rosetta Loy (2005)
- Filippo Tuena
- Eugenio Borgna (2006)
- Alessandro Spina (2007)
- Andrej Longo (2008)
- Melania Gaia Mazzucco (2009)
- Corrado Stajano (2010)
- Andrea Bajani (2011)
- Gianfranco Calligarich and Giovanni Mariotti (2012)
- Antonella Tarpino (2013)
- Maurizio Cucchi and Valerio Magrelli (2014)
- Sandro Veronesi (2015)
- Paolo Di Stefano and Paolo Maurensig (2016)
- Vivian Lamarque (2017)
- Helena Janeczek (2018)
- Marco Balzano (2019)
- Enrico Deaglio (2020)
- Giorgio Fontana (2021)
- Benedetta Craveri (2022)