Quasimodo returns to San Simpliciano

 

A clipping of “Corriere Milanese” about Salvatore Quasimodo’s funeral service, celebrated in St. Simpliciano’s Basilica on 17th June 1968. From the private archives of the poet’s son, Alessandro Quasimodo

Distorto il battito

della campana di San Simpliciano

si raccoglie sui vetri della mia finestra.

Il suono non ha eco, prende un cerchio

trasparente, mi ricorda il mio nome.

Alessandro Quasimodo, actor and director, son of the Nobel Literature laureate Salvatore Quasimodo, will read these verses from the poem Il silenzio non m’inganna, on November 15^th at 7 p.m. at St. Simpliciano’s Basilica, like two steps away from the studio in corso Garibaldi where the poet lived his later years. The same church where the poet’s funeral was celebrated before his burial in the Memorial Chapel at Cimitero Monumentale.

 As Carlo Bo wrote in the Corriere della sera, the sicilian poet «moved to northern Italy and finally found in Lombardy, and more exactly in Milan, his second life condition». Quasimodo has dedicated to the town, to the wounds caused by the WWII bombings, to the foggy Naviglio, some of his most celebrated poems which, together with other poetic works with religious subject, Alessandro, his son, will read during the homage event, created and promoted by journalist Paola Ciccioli in collaboration with the Association “Quarto Paesaggio”, chaired by Giorgio Tacconi, writer.

Readings will alternate with music works performed by organist Isaia Ravelli.

The antique Basilica will welcome all participants by means of vicar Monsignor Giuseppe Angelini, former dean of the Theological Faculty of Northern Italy, who opened San Simpliciano’s gates for this “laical worship” on the 50^th anniversary of Salvatore Quasimodo’s passing.

(Traduzione di Luca Bartolommei)