In 1959, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in Naples in 1968. KOHA newspaper brings you below an emotional letter from Quasimodo to his mother.
Salvatore Quasimodo was born in Modica, Sicily, in 1901. Until 1935 he worked as an engineer, then abandoned this profession and devoted himself to lecturing on Italian literature in Milan. As a young poet he worked in the group of young poets united around the magazine ‘Solaria’, to develop and guide the poets of hermetic lyricism. Quasimodo translated works of Greek tragedians (Aeschylus and Sophocles), according to his experience, he developed the stylistic purity and the functionalization of the simplicity of expressions. In 1959, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in Naples in 1968. KOHA newspaper brings you below an emotional letter from Quasimodo to his mother:
Letter to Mother
Strong and sweet mother, now the fogs are drifting, the fleet crashes confusingly on the dams, the trees are heavy from the water, they are burned by the snow; I am not sad in the North: I am not at peace with myself, but I do not expect forgiveness from anyone, many tears are owed to me as a husband to a husband. I know that you are weak, who lives like all mothers of poets, poor and just enough in love for distant sons.
Today I am writing to you. – Finally, you mean, two words from that boy who ran away at night with a short cape and a few verses in his pocket. The poor thing, so spiritually ready that someday they will kill him somewhere. – “Of course, I remember, it was at that dead station of slow trains that brought almonds and oranges, at the mouth of the Imera, the river full of laraska, salt and eucalyptus. But now I want to thank you, for the joy you planted on my lips, laid out like yours.
That smile saved me from the oil and the pain. And it doesn’t matter if I shed a tear for you now, for all those who, like you, are waiting, and don’t know what. Ah, noble death, don’t touch the clock in the kitchen that ticks on the wall, my whole childhood went on the enamel of its field, on those painted flowers: don’t touch the hands, the hearts of the elders. But perhaps someone will answer? Oh death of mercy, death of shame. Farewell, my dear, farewell, my very sweet mother.
