Le Lettere D’amore Di Quasimodo by Quasimodo, Salvatore - 1969

E-134: Edizioni Apollinaire. Very Good. 1969. Hardcover. Hardcover. Folio. Edizioni Apollinaire. 1969. Unpaginated. Unumbered example of 1000 copies. Facsimile reprint of the letters of Quasimodo. Bound in red cloth with gilt titles. No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks, binding tight and solid, boards clean with no wear present. With 75 photographs and reproductions of 40 love letters written to the dancer Maria Cumani in the 1930's. 'Traditional literary critique divides Quasimodo's work into two major periods: the hermetic period until World War II and the post-hermetic era until his death. Although these periods are distinct, they are to be seen as a single poetical quest. This quest or exploration for a unique language took him through various stages and various modalities of expression. As an intelligent and clever poet, Quasimodo used a hermetical, "closed" language to sketch recurring motifs like Sicily, religion and death. Subsequently, the translation of authors from Roman and Greek Antiquity enabled him to extend his linguistic toolkit. The disgust and sense of absurdity of World War II also had its impact on the poet's language. This bitterness, however, faded in his late writings, and was replaced by the mature voice of an old poet reflecting upon his world. In the 1950s Quasimodo won the following awards: Premio San Babila (1950) , Premio Etna-Taormina (1953) , Premio Viareggio (1958) and, finally, the Nobel Prize for Literature (1959). In 1960 and 1967 he received honoris causa degrees from the Universities of Messina and Oxford, respectively. In his last years the poet made numerous voyages to Europe and America, giving public speeches and public lectures of his poems, which had been translated in several foreign languages. E-134; Folio 13" - 23" tall .