Giorgio Orelli Explained

Giorgio Orelli (25 May 1921  - 10 November 2013) was an Italian-speaking Swiss poet, writer and translator.^[1]

He was born in Airolo in the canton of Ticino and was educated at the University of Fribourg, where he was a student of the Roman philologist Gianfranco Contini. He taught Italian Literature at the Higher School of Commerce in Bellinzona.

Giorgio Orelli was a post-hermetic poet. In the anthology of Piero Chiara and Luciano Erba, he appeared as a poet of the Fourth Generation.^[2] Called the Tuscan from Ticino by Gianfranco Contini, Orelli was often associated with the "Lombard Line" of "sober moral realism".^[3]

He was also known as a translator of Goethe and Andri Peer. He contributed to various literary magazines (Il Verri, Paragone, Letteratura). His cousin Giovanni Orelli was also a writer and poet.

Giorgio Orelli died in Bellinzona in 2013. He was the cousin of the writer Giovanni Orelli and the uncle of the alpine skier Michela Figini.

Poetic works

• Né bianco né viola, Lugano, Collana di Lugano, 1944.
• Prima dell'anno nuovo, Bellinzona, Leins e Vescovi, 1952.
• Poesie, Milan, Edizioni della Meridiana, 1953.
• Nel cerchio familiare, Milan, Scheiwiller, 1960.
• L'ora del tempo, Milan, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1962.
• 6 poesie, Milan, Scheiwiller, 1964.
• 5 poesie, con 5 seriografie di Madja Ruperti, San Nazzaro, Switzerland, Serigrafia San Nazzaro, 1973.
• Sinopie, Milan, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1977.
• Spiracoli, Milan, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1989.
• Il collo dell'anitra, Milan, Garzanti, 2001.

Poems translated in English

• by Jean Garrigue, Translations by American Poets, Ohio University Press, Ohio, 1970
• by Lynne Lawner,^{[4] [5]}
• by Marco Sonzogni http://contrappassomag.wordpress.com,^[6]

Prose

• Un giorno della vita, Milan, Lerici, 1960.
• Pomeriggio bellinzonese in Luci e figure di Bellinzona negli acquerelli di William Turner e nelle pagine di Giorgio Orelli, a cura di Virgilio Gilardoni, Bellinzona, Casagrande, 1978.

Translations

• Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Poesie scelte, Milan, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1974.

Essays

• Accertamenti verbali, Milan, Bompiani, 1978.
• Quel ramo del lago di Como, Bellinzona, Casagrande, 1982 e 1990.
• Accertamenti montaliani, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1984.
• Il suono dei sospiri, Torino, Einaudi, 1990.
• Foscolo e la danzatrice, Parma, Pratiche, 1992.
• La qualità del senso. Dante, Ariosto e Leopardi, Bellinzona, Casagrande, 2012.

Awards

• 1944 Premio Lugano
• 1960 Premio Città di Firenze, Premio Libera Stampa
  • 1979 Honorary Degree, University of Fribourg 1988 Grand Prix Schiller of the Swiss Schiller Foundation
• 1997 UBS Culture Foundation
• 2001 Premio Piero Chiara
• 2002 Bagutta Prize
• 2008 BSI Award (https://www.bsibank.com/en/Gruppo-BSI/Impegno-culturale/Fondazioni-BSI/Fondazione-del-Centenario/Giorgio-Orelli.html)

External links

• • • Official Website (Italian)

Notes

1. Web site: Ticinonline - L'addio a Giorgio Orelli: "Torneremo a incontrarlo con riconoscenza" . Tio.ch . 2013-01-01 . 2013-11-18.
2. Piero Chiara and Luciano Erba, Quarta generazione: la giovane poesia (1945-1954), Magenta, Varese, 1954
3. [Encyclopædia Britannica]
4. Web site: Verse Daily . Giorgio Orelli, translated by Lynne Lawner . Verse Daily . 2013-11-18.
5. Web site: Verse Daily . Carnival at Prato . Verse Daily . 2013-11-18.
6. Web site: da samgha . Earthly Wonders: the Poetry of Giorgio Orelli . Samgharivista.com . 2013-11-18 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20131017225148/http://samgharivista.com/2013/05/11/orelli-tradotto/ . 2013-10-17 .

References

• Andri Peer, Giorgio Orelli: An Italian Poet from Switzerland, Books Abroad, 1971, p. 247-251
• John L. Flood, Modern Swiss Literature: Unity and Diversity, London, 1985
• P.V. Mengaldo, Poeti italiani del Novecento, Mondadori, 2003
• C. Mésoniat, Giorgio Orelli, poeta e critico, Casagrande, 1980
• John Butcher and Mario Moroni (Ed.), From Eugenio Montale to Amelia Rosselli: Italian Poetry in the Sixties and Seventies, Leicester, 2004
• Luciano Anceschi, Linea lombarda, Magenta, Varese, 1952
• Pietro De Marchi, Dove portano le parole. Sulla poesia di Giorgio Orelli e altro Novecento, Manni, Lecce, 2002