LUIGI PIRADELO- SALVATORE QUASIMODO.

LUIGI PIRADELLO. Inteview: «Sono Greco». SALVATORE QUASIMODO. «The Greek feeling within him awakens when he thinks of Greek poetry… "I AM GREEK": "… I do carry Hellas in my mind. Her spirit is consolation and lighthouse for my soul. I am from Sicily, in other words from Magna Greece and there still exists a lot of Hellas in Sicily. The measure, the harmony and the rhythm live on her. I am of the same Hellenic origin. Yes, yes, don't be surprised. My family name is Piragellos. Piradello is the phonetic alteration of it, Piragello-Piradello…” — Luigi Pirandello. Interview to Costas Ouranis. Magazinο “Nea Estia”, No 191, December 1934. Institut Costas Ouranis, Plaka, Athina. And National Library, Niarhos foundation, Kallithea Athens QUASIMODO He was born in Modica, Sicilia. He knew Ancient Greek fluently and also spoke modern Greek. Experience and “sense of Greekness” in Quasimodo Critics and scholars who studied Quasimodo point out that he felt Greek culture deeply as part of his poetic identity — not merely as an external object of study, but as an “embodied” source of voice for himself. He never declared that he was Greek, as Pirandello did, but he felt personally and deeply connected to Greece (not Greece as a state entity, that is, the modern Greek state, but its timeless spirit). In a letter, he describe himself, how the “Greek feeling within him awakens when he thinks of Greek poetry.” His entire body of work reflects this, and for this Greek dimension of his work he received the Nobel Prize in 1959. For this reason, he wrote the famous collection of poems titled Dalla Grecia, with themes drawn from Greek places — places from present-day Greece but not from Greek Sicily, his own particular homeland. DOWNLOAD THE FULL TEXT ( FREE)