17 Facts About Virgilio Giotti

Virgil Schonbeck, known by his pen name Virgilio Giotti, was an Italian poet writing both in Italian and in the Triestine dialect.

Virgilio Giotti has been credited as one of the great Italian poets of the 20th century, and is regarded as the greatest Triestine dialect poet.

Virgilio Giotti was born in Trieste, at the time still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on 15 January 1885, the son of Riccardo Schonbeck, a native of Kolin, Bohemia, of German descent, and Emilia Ghiotto, a Venetian, from whose surname he derived his pseudonym.

Virgilio Giotti published prose and above all poetry for many magazines, including Solaria, Riviera Ligure, Circoli, L'Italia letteraria, Lirica, and Letteratura.

Virgilio Giotti later had a job at the Lega nazionale, as an inspector of kindergartens in Istria and the Karst.

Virgilio Giotti was a skillful painter, and during this period produced many drawings.

Virgilio Giotti produced his Caprizzi canzonete e storie and was reported by his friend Roberto Bazlen to Eugenio Montale, who reviewed his book, emphasizing his qualities of "elegiac landscapist" and observer, and comparing him to Salvatore Di Giacomo.

Virgilio Giotti's other son Paolo started military service in 1937 but was accused of antifascism and sent to the Tremiti Islands for a year of internment, which was a hard blow for Giotti, although his son was released in 1938 for good behavior.

Virgilio Giotti's son did depart in February 1942, and his brother Franco followed him in December.

Virgilio Giotti kept hoping until January 1946, when the news of Paolo's death finally reached him.

Virgilio Giotti was a longtime friend of Umberto Saba, for whom he designed the logo of the Libreria Antica e Moderna and cured and illustrated the plaquette of Cose leggere e vaganti, and helped in the formation of philosopher Giorgio Fano, who married his sister Maria.

Virgilio Giotti was the author of delicate poems in the Italian language, such as Lyrics and Idylls published in the 1931 edition of Solaria, of the aforementioned private diary Appunti inutili, and of some short stories; in 1946 he translated the poet Esenin's A Letter to Mother from Russian into Italian.

Virgilio Giotti was consecrated as such by Pier Paolo Pasolini, first in the anthology Poesia dialettale del Novecento, and then in a memorable conference in 1956, later published in Paragone.

The first verses of Virgilio Giotti were influenced by Pascoli, Gozzano and the Crepuscolari, both in the style and in the themes; starting from Caprizzi, Canzonete and Storie the melodic motifs dominate in his verses, which will bring him closer to Di Giacomo and to some production of Saba.

Virgilio Giotti's dialect is a dialect which, while remaining natural, is not vernacular but intellectualistic and seems to contrast with the character of its themes linked to the daily life of a quite internalized Trieste.

Unlike Svevo and Saba, Virgilio Giotti's Trieste is not the Habsburg port of Central Europe but rather a simple picture of affections and people: its "Triestinity", alien to the search for the picturesque and folkloric, lies in the use of the dialect and in the setting, background for poetry of high lyrical tension.

Typical of Virgilio Giotti is the use of enjambement, especially in the second collection, which divides not only the syntactic groups between strophe and strophe or between verse and verse, but the same word into two parts.