Maria Luisa Spaziani (21 June 1923 – 30 June 2014) was an Italian poet.

Biography

Spaziani was born in

Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The ...

. At nineteen, she founded the review ''Il dado'', working with collaborators such as

Vasco Pratolini Vasco Pratolini (19 October 1913 – 12 January 1991) was an Italian writer of the 20th century. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times. Biography Born in Florence, Pratolini worked at various jobs before entering the l ...

, Sandro Penna and Vincenzo Ciaffi.

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

sent her a chapter of her novel ''The Waves'', autographed to ''Alla piccola direttrice'' (To the young editor). Spaziani did not contribute her own poems, however, feeling that they were not of sufficient quality. In the 1950s Spaziani became involved with the poet

Eugenio Montale Eugenio Montale (; 12 October 1896 – 12 September 1981) was an Italian poet, prose writer, editor and translator, and recipient of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Literature. Life and works Early years Montale was born in Genoa. His family were che ...

(1896–1981). Montale encouraged Spaziani to write poetry, and was a significant influence in her early style. Maria Luisa Spaziani's first book of poetry, ''Le acque del sabato'', appeared in 1954. Montale drew upon his affair with her in creating the character of ''la Volpe'' ("the Fox") in his work ''La bufera e altro'' (1956). Montale's poem "Da un lago svizzero" is an acrostic forming her name, Maria Luisa Spaziani. (Spaziani eventually published her correspondence with Montale, some eight hundred letters, in 1995.) After travelling extensively in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in countries including the

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Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

, and the

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, Spaziani chose to settle in Rome. Starting from 1964 she has taught French language and literature at the

University of Messina The University of Messina ( it, Università degli Studi di Messina; Latin: ''Studiorum Universitas Messanae''), known colloquially as UniME, is a state university located in Messina, Sicily, Italy. Founded in 1548 by Pope Paul III, it was the wor ...

. She published extensively, as a poet, translator, and scholar. Spaziani was nominated thrice for the

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; 1990, 1992 and 1997. Her poetry combines a vivid and immediate sense of the natural world with a rich appreciation of literary culture and tradition. Though echoes of past poets appear in her work, Spaziani's voice is clearly her own, sensitive and controlled. Spaziani was the president of the ''Centro internazionale Eugenio Montale'', which confers the ''Premio Montale'', a literary prize for translations and publications of Italian verse. Spaziani died on 30 June 2014 at the age of 91.E' morta la poetessa Maria Luisa Spaziani
(in Italian)

List of works

Each year links to its corresponding "

ear An ear is the organ that enables hearing and, in mammals, body balance using the vestibular system. In mammals, the ear is usually described as having three parts—the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear. The outer ear consists of ...

in poetry" article: * 1954: ''Le acque del sabato'' *

1959 Events January * January 1 - Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance. * January 2 - Lunar probe Luna 1 was the first man-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reached the vicinity of E ...

: ''Luna lombarda'' *

1962 Events January * January 1 – Western Samoa becomes independent from New Zealand. * January 3 – Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro for preaching communism. * January 8 – Harmelen train disaster: 93 die in the wor ...

: ''Il gong'' * 1966: ''Utilità della memoria'' *

1970 Events January * January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC. * January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). Between 10,000 and ...

: ''L’occhio del ciclone'' *

1976 Events January * January 3 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force. * January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea. * January 11 – The 1976 ...

: ''Ultrasuoni'' *

1977 Events January * January 8 – Three bombs explode in Moscow within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group. * January 10 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in eastern Zaire (now the Democrat ...

: ''Transito con catene'' *

1981 Events January * January 1 ** Greece enters the European Economic Community, predecessor of the European Union. ** Palau becomes a self-governing territory. * January 10 – Salvadoran Civil War: The FMLN launches its first major offensiv ...

: ''Geometria del disordine'' *

1986 The year 1986 was designated as the International Year of Peace by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 **Aruba gains increased autonomy from the Netherlands by separating from the Netherlands Antilles. **Spain and Portugal enter ...

: ''La stella del libero arbitrio'' *

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of humanity on Earth, astrophysicist ...

: ''Giovanna d'Arco'' * 1992: ''Torri di vedata'' * 1996: ''I fasti dell’ortica'' *

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...

: ''La traversata dell'oasi'' *

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shoot ...

: ''La radice del mare'' *

: ''Un fresco castagneto'' *

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...

: ''La freccia'' * 2002: ''Poesie dalla mano sinistra''

References

Sources

Star of Free Will, Maria Luisa Spaziani 1986Italian women writers: a bio-bibliographical sourcebook By Rinaldina Russell, page 395
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spaziani, Maria Luisa 1923 births 2014 deaths Italian women poets 20th-century Italian poets 20th-century Italian women writers Academic staff of the University of Messina Writers from Turin