Giorgio Orelli

Giorgio Orelli

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

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. Called the Tuscan from Ticino by Gianfranco Contini, Orelli was often associated with the "Lombard Line" of "sober moral realism".

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,
• by Marco Sonzogni [2],

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 ([3])

External links

• Publications by and about Giorgio Orelli in the catalogue Helveticat of the Swiss National Library
• Giorgio Orelli in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.
• Official Website (Italian)

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