Umberto Saba (9 March 1883 – 25 August 1957) 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. Poli assumed the pen name "Saba" in 1910, and his name was officially changed to Umberto Saba in 1928. From 1919 he was the proprietor of an antiquarian bookshop in Trieste. He suffered from depression for all of his adult life.

Life and career

Saba's Christian father, 29-year-old Ugo Edoardo Poli, converted to Judaism in order to marry 37-year-old Felicita Rachele Cohen in July 1882. Felicita was one month pregnant with Umberto at the time of the wedding. Ugo abandoned his new wife and faith before Umberto was born and the child was raised first by a Slovene Catholic wet-nurse, Gioseffa Gabrovich Schobar ("Peppa"), and her husband, who had just lost a child, and from 1887 onwards by his mother, in her sister Regina's home, though Umberto maintained a close lifelong attachment to Peppa. <sup>(p.&nbsp;528)</sup>

thumb|right|Saba as a child

Saba was a keen reader who kept pet birds and studied the violin.

In 1900 he began composing poetry, signing his work "Umberto Chopin Poli." In January 1903 Saba travelled to Pisa to study archaeology, German and Latin, but began to complain of a nervous disorder and, in June, returned to Trieste. After a holiday in Slovenia, he spent some time later that year in Switzerland, writing a play. In July 1904, the socialist newspaper, Il Lavoratore, edited by his friend Amadeo Tedeschi, published Saba's account of a visit to Montenegro earlier in the year, and in May 1905, Il Lavoratore printed his first published poem. In 1905 he travelled to Florence with friends and – upon meeting his father for the first time – changed his pen name to "Umberto da Montereale," after the town of his father's birth. That summer he met Carolina (Lina) Wölfler, and began corresponding with her the following December. Between 1907 and 1908 he completed an obligatory year of Italian military service in an infantry unit based in Salerno. He married Lina in a Jewish ceremony in 1909, and they had a daughter, Linuccia, the following year. while others point to the similarity with his wet nurse's surname, Schobar.

In the spring of 1911, while Saba was away in Florence meeting people associated with the influential magazine the influential magazine La Voce, and initiating a collaboration with Mario Novaro, Lina had an affair with a painter. 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 Saba was beset by depressed lows and creative highs. Destitute, in 1914 the family moved to Milan, where Saba found work first as a secretary, then as a nightclub manager. In early 1915 he began writing for Benito Mussolini's Il Popolo d'Italia newspaper, but in June was drafted into the army, where he saw no active service and was hospitalised due to depression.

Works

  • Poems (1911)
  • With My Eyes (1912)
  • What Remains for Poets To Do (1912)
  • Songbook (1921)
  • Prelude and Songs (1923)
  • Autobiography (1924)
  • The Prisoners 1924
  • Figures and Songs (1926)
  • Prelude and Flight (1928)
  • Words (1934)
  • A Small Town Team (1939)
  • Last Things (1944)
  • Mediterranean (1947)
  • Scorciatoie e raccontini (1946)
  • Birds – Nearly a Story (1951)
  • Ernesto (written 1953, published 1975)

Bibliography

Italian editions:

  • Tutte le poesie, ed. A Stara, Milano, Mondadori, 1988
  • Tutte le prose, ed. A. Stara, Milano, Mondadori, 2001
  • Prose, ed. L. Saba, Milano, Mondadori, 1964

English translations:

  • Umberto Saba: the Collection of Poems. Umberto Saba's Poetry Translated in English, translated by A. Baruffi, Philadelphia, PA, LiteraryJoint Press, 2020, IBAN 978-1-67818-520-6.
  • The Poems of Trieste and Five Poems for the Game of Soccer: A Selection of the Best Poetry by Italian Master Umberto Saba, Translated in English, translated by A. Baruffi, Philadelphia, PA, LiteraryJoint Press, 2016, IBAN 978-1-365-35818-0
  • Thirty-one Poems, trans. F. Stefanile, New York, The Elizabeth Press, 1978/ Manchester, Carcanet, 1980
  • Ernesto, trans. M. Thompson, New York, Carcanet, 1987
  • The Stories and Recollections, trans. E. Gilson, New York, Sheep Meadow Press, 1993
  • History and Chronicle of the Songbook, trans. S. Sartarelli, New York, The Sheep Meadow Press, 1998
  • Song-book: Selected Poems from the Canzoniere of U. S., New York, The Sheep Meadow Press, 1998
  • Poetry and Prose, trans. with commentary, V. Moleta, Bridgetown, Aeolian Press, 2004
  • ′′ Songbook, The Selected Poems of Umberto Saba ′′ translated by George Hochfield and Leonard Nathan, Yale University Press, 2008. Paperback edition, 2011.

Studies:

  • La gallina di Saba, M. Lavagetto, Torino, Einaudi, 1989
  • Gli umani amori. La tematica omoerotica nell'opera di Umberto Saba, M. Jattoni Dall'Asén, Reading, The Italianist, n.1, 2004

References

  • English translation of two poems at Guernica
  • English translation of Saba's Ulysses

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