Roberto Tiberio "Berto" Barbarani (born and died

Verona Verona ( , ; vec, Verona or ) is a city on the Adige River in Veneto, Northern Italy, Italy, with 258,031 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region. It is the largest city Comune, municipality in the region and the ...

, Italy; 3 December 1872 – 27 January 1945) was an

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

. He wrote many

poem Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...

s in the Veronese

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...

Northern Italy Northern Italy ( it, Italia settentrionale, it, Nord Italia, label=none, it, Alta Italia, label=none or just it, Nord, label=none) is a geographical and cultural region in the northern part of Italy. It consists of eight administrative regions ...

Biography

He was born in the historic center of

, near the New Bridge on the

Adige river The Adige (; german: Etsch ; vec, Àdexe ; rm, Adisch ; lld, Adesc; la, Athesis; grc, Ἄθεσις, Áthesis, or , ''Átagis'') is the second-longest river in Italy, after the Po. It rises near the Reschen Pass in the Vinschgau in the prov ...

, from non-wealthy parents who ran a hardware store. He was started studying with his brother Vittorio, who earned his medical degree. Berto instead, following the death of his father (1887), he had to leave the boarding school to help his mother manage the shop. This did not prevent him from continuing his studies until he enrolled in the faculty of law at the

University of Padua The University of Padua ( it, Università degli Studi di Padova, UNIPD) is an Italian university located in the city of Padua, region of Veneto, northern Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from B ...

. He abandoned it after the first exams, while continuing to collaborate on a student newspaper with his first poems (1892), which were then the basis of the first collection El rosario del cor (1895). Just in that year he embarked on a journalistic career, collaborating with the newspaper

L'Adige ''l'Adige'' is an Italian local daily newspaper, based in Trento. It is sold in Trentino and is the most read newspaper in the region, along with its main rivals Corriere del Trentino and Trentino. History and profile ''l'Adige'' was founded in ...

and later with the Gazzettino. He joined fellow dialect poets

Alfredo Testoni Alfredo Testoni (1856–1931) was an Italian playwright and poet known for his work in the Bolognese dialect. In 1888 he established his own company at the Teatro Contavalli in Bologna. Amongst his best known plays is ''Cardinal Lambertini'', a 1 ...

(Bolognese) and

Carlo Alberto Salustri Trilussa, anagrammatic pseudonym of Carlo Alberto Camillo Mariano SalustriSome biographers as Claudio Rendina report ''Marianum'' as his fourth name (Rendina, p.19) (Rome, 26 October 1871 – 21 December 1950), was an Italian poet, writer and jo ...

(known as Trilussa, Roman) to make strong friendship. Together they took part in the Duse Theater of Bologna in a cycle of evenings promoted for charity in 1901 by the "Dante Alighieri" Society.

References

19th-century Italian poets Italian male poets 1945 deaths 1872 births 20th-century Italian poets 19th-century Italian male writers 20th-century Italian male writers Writers from Verona {{Italy-poet-stub