Life of Umberto Saba

Uno scorcio di via di Riborgo negli anni Venti del Novecento.

1883
1906

Little Berto

Saba was born on 9th March 1883 to Felicita Cohen, Jewish, and Ugo Poli, a Christian, and thus a son of “two races in ancient conflict”. His father abandoned the family before he was even born and until he was three years old he was raised by a wet nurse, Gioseffa (Peppa) Gabrovich Schobar, a Slovenian Catholic. He then lived with his mother, who he describes as perpetually resentful and depressed, and his aunt Regina, to whom he owed his relative economic comfort which, years later, after leaving school, would also permit him to publish his first poems and purchase the bookshop. His first poems are influenced by his admiration for Gabriele D’Annunzio, whom he met in person in 1906.

Above: A view of Via di Riborgo in the 1920s. He wrote of himself in Storia e cronistoria del Canzoniere: “Saba is a concrete artist: his poetry willingly ties itself to places and dates” and includes the ghetto, a place of childhood to which, however, Saba – who, moreover, does not know Hebrew – feels he does not entirely belong.

1903
1911

What remains for the poet to do

In 1903 in Pisa, where he had moved, he suffered his first serious attack of “neurasthenia” which no longer allowed him to “sleep, think or love”. After a trip to Montenegro, he stopped off for two years in Florence and on one of his periodic returns to Trieste he met (Caro)Lina Wölfler, whom he married in 1909.

In 1910 their daughter Linuccia was born and his first collection of poems (“Poesie”) was published, with an introduction by Silvio Benco and signed with a new pseudonym: Umberto Saba. This was followed by Coi mie occhi (“With My Own Eyes”) published for a fee by the “Voce”, a newspaper which, however, on the opinion of Scipio Slataper, rejected the essay-manifesto Quello che resta da fare ai poeti (“What remains for the poets to do”) which was published posthumously, in 1959, by Anita Pittoni’s Zibaldone publishing house.

Journalist, poet, painter, Giuseppe Amedeo Tedeschi (1881-1957) was one of the young Saba’s close friends. Saba confided in him, for the first time, his own ‘dark illness’, the neurasthenia. He also entrusted him with his first poems: among them, Il borgo (The Village), published by Tedeschi on 15th April 1905 in the Trieste newspaper of which he was editor, the “Lavoratore”.

Saba met his future wife Lina in 1904 through his friend Giorgio Fano, who was engaged to Lina’s sister. The two only met again between 1907 and 1908, when Lina lived at 28 (today 24) Via Domenico Rossetti. Saba, who knew the street but not the number, walked there in the hope of meeting her and she appeared at her window, intent on watering her geraniums. “[…] the street of joy and love | is always Via Domenico Rossetti”, Tre vie (1910-1912)

Bottom: Linuccia Saba. The only daughter of Umberto and Lina, Linuccia had a complex relationship with her father – of whose work she was to be the faithful guardian and careful exegete – always poised between complicity and contrasts

Linuccia Saba. > coll. MSa – Archivio fotografico

The dark cave of the canzoniere

1912
1921

The dramatic marital crisis recounted in the Nuovi versi alla Lina (“New Verses For Lina”) took Saba to Bologna and then to Milan where the war overtook them. Saba was recalled by the Italian army and assigned to duties in the rear. At the end of the conflict he purchased Giuseppe Mayländer’s bookshop, the Libreria Antica e Moderna which at first appeared to him as a “black, fatal cave” and subsequently, having become the Libreria Antiquaria Umberto Saba with its logo designed by Virgilio Giotti, became his pride and refuge, his artist’s workshop and the publishing house for his poetry, starting from the first edition of the Canzoniere which came out in 1921.

Handwritten postcard with old antiquarian bookshop stamp to Aldo Fortuna

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Handwritten postcard with old antiquarian bookshop stamp[Trieste, 19th July 1921].Dear Aldo. – In Sept.[ember] you will (...)

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Saba (the second from the right) visiting Virgilio Giotti’s house in San Felice in Val d’Erma, 1915 > coll. Centro Studi Virgilio Giotti

1922
1930

The years of psychoanalysis

The years that followed were a productive period for Saba, dominated by his passion for music: Preludio e canzonette (“Prelude and Ditties”), Autobiografia (“Autobiography”), Figure e canti (“Figures and Songs”) and Preludio e fughe (“Prelude and Fugues”). In 1928 the magazine “Solaria” dedicated an issue to him as it did, only a year later, for the late Italo Svevo whom Saba spent time with and admired, describing him as “a born storyteller”. At that time he also established links with Debenedetti, Montale, Comisso and other writers, both established authors and ones just setting out on their careers (Penna, Quarantotti Gambini). His discovery of psychoanalysis and therapy with Edoardo Weiss also took place at this time, which led him to write the verses of the collection “Il piccolo Berto” (“The Little (Um)Berto”).

Umberto Saba and Italo Svevo

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Umberto Saba, Epigrafe di Italo Svevo (“Epigraph of Italo Svevo”)typescript with handwritten signature, [undated]The text was (...)

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La copertina dell’edizione Einaudi del 1945 del Canzoniere su cui campeggia un violino, ultima traccia del sogno giovanile di Saba diventare concertista. «Nemmeno questa volta però il violino gli portò fortuna; la copertina aveva tendenza a staccarsi […] tanto che quanto rimaneva dell’edizione fu dovuto mandare in legatoria e il Canzoniere essere venduto rilegato» (Storia e cronistoria del Canzoniere). > coll. BC Hortis — Saba's musical passion is also reaffirmed by the cover with a vignette reproducing a violin from the 1945 Einaudi edition of the Canzoniere, the last trace of his youthful dream of becoming a concert performer. “This time, however, the violin did not bring him luck either; the cover had a tendency to come off... so much so that what remained of the edition had to be sent back to the binders and the Canzoniere had to be sold bound” (Storia e cronistoria del Canzoniere). > coll. BC Hortis

Carlo Cerne in the Libreria Antiquaria, Trieste 22nd August 1958 > coll. Fondazione CRTrieste c/o Fototeca CMSA – ph. Ugo Borsatti

1931
1948

Living from prose

The 1930s were linked to the growing concern, which became fear and anguish, for the rising tide of antisemitism that led to the racial laws, proclaimed by Mussolini while in Trieste in 1938. Saba was forced to fictitiously hand over the bookshop to his clerk, “Carletto” and, after the 8^th September 1943, when Trieste became part of the territory directly under Nazi control, with the help of Carlo Levi and Montale he took refuge in Florence and then in Rome. There he received the first copy of the new edition of Canzoniere published by Einaudi in October 1945 amidst a thousand difficulties. The poet, however, was dissatisfied and immediately began correcting some verses.

Nel 1924 Saba assume Carlo Cerne nella Libreria Antiquaria. Alla morte del poeta, la figlia Linuccia cede la quota ereditaria a “Carletto” che dal 1958 diventa proprietario dell’attività, continuata, sempre nel nome di Saba, dal figlio Mario Cerne (1942-2024). Nel 2012 la Libreria è stata dichiarata “Studio d’artista”.

This Aneddoti were supposed to be part of a book of autobiographical short stories Le schegge del “mondo meraviglioso” (“Splinters of the wonderful world”, never released) together with other ‘food’ articles sent by Saba to newspapers to earn some money. They are often snapshots in which the poet fixes Trieste in the ‘colour of time’, which turns from blue to black and red, the poles of political and nationalistic opposition

“A pair of well-made gloves”

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Anita Pittoni, paper model, 1946In the winter of 1946, Anita Pittoni designed and knitted a pair (...)

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1948
1957

Epigraph

From Milan, his new refuge, Saba looked with desperation towards Trieste: “it will become – like the Palestine in ruins – one of the hells of the world”, he wrote to his daughter – and in the columns of “Corriere della Sera” he half-seriously applied for Governorship of the Free Territory of Trieste. Public recognition – which culminated in the awarding of an honorary degree from the La Sapienza University – was not enough to alleviate the growing mental anguish of the poet who resorted to opium and was admitted ever more frequently to a clinic . He left the one in Gorizia where he died on 25th August 1957 for the last time nine months earlier, to attend the funeral of his beloved wife, Lina.

Epigrafe is Saba’s bitter poetic farewell, summarised in the lapidary final lines of the collection:
“I spoke alive to a people of the dead. Dead to them I refuse and ask for oblivion”.