1. Umberto Saba was an Italian poet and novelist, born Umberto Poli in the cosmopolitan Mediterranean port of Trieste when it was the fourth largest city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
13 Facts About Umberto Saba
1. 2.
Umberto Saba suffered from depression for all of his adult life.
3.
Ugo abandoned his new wife and faith before Umberto Saba was born and the child was raised first by a Slovene Catholic wet-nurse, Gioseffa Gabrovich Schobar, and her husband, who had just lost a child, and from 1887 onwards by his mother, in her sister Regina's home, though Umberto Saba maintained a close lifelong attachment to Peppa.
4.
Umberto Saba was a keen reader who kept pet birds and studied the violin.
5.
Umberto Saba married Lina in a Jewish ceremony in 1909, and they had a daughter, Linuccia, the following year.
6.
The couple separated, but were together again by May 1912 when the family moved to Bologna, where public readings of his poetry were poorly received and Umberto Saba was beset by depressed lows and creative highs.
7.
Destitute, in 1914 the family moved to Milan, where Umberto Saba found work first as a secretary, then as a nightclub manager.
8.
The business produced enough income to support the family, and Umberto Saba soon became enthusiastic about buying and selling rare old books and enjoyed the extensive travel involved.
9.
Umberto Saba self-published the first edition of his Songbook in 1921.
10.
In 1939 Umberto Saba sought exemption from the newly proclaimed anti-Jewish laws, but was unwilling to be baptised into the Catholic faith, so the following year he sold the bookshop to his long-time assistant and friend, Carlo Cerne.
11.
In 1946 Umberto Saba was awarded the Viareggio Prize and returned to Trieste where, in the following year, he sparked a vitriolic debate over the future of the city with his article If I were named governor of Trieste.
12.
Umberto Saba died at the age of 74 in Gorizia, nine months after a heart attack, and a year after the death of his wife.
13.
Umberto Saba's works indicate his knowledge of both Hebrew and the Trieste Jewish dialect.