Carlo Alberto Camillo Mariano SalustriSome biographers as Claudio Rendina report Marianum as his fourth name (Rendina, p.19) (26 October 1871 – 21 December 1950), known by the pseudonym Trilussa (an anagram of his last name), was an Italian poet, writer and journalist, particularly known for his works in Romanesco dialect.
Biography
Childhood and education (1871–1886) Carlo Alberto Camillo Salustri was born in Rome on 26 October 1871. His father, Vincenzo, was a waiter from Albano Laziale, his mother, Carlotta Poldi, was a Bolognese seamstress. He was the second-born child of the Salustri family and was baptized on 31 October in the Church of San Giacomo in Augusta, when the fourth name, Mariano, was added. A year later, in 1872, at the age of three, his sister, Elisabetta, died of diphtheria. His tormented childhood was affected again two years later, on 1 April 1874, by the death of his father Vincenzo. After the death of her husband, Carlotta Poldi decided to move with her son Carlo to Via Ripetta, where they stayed for only eleven months, before moving again to the palace in Piazza di Pietra, belonging to the Marquis Ermenegildo del Cinque, Carlo's godfather. It is believed that Carlo owes his acquaintance with Filippo Chiappini, a Romanesco poet and disciple of Belli, to the Marquis; indeed, Chiappini's sonnet Ar marchese Riminigirdo Der Cinque (To the Marquis Riminigirdo Der Cinque), addressed to Trilussa's godfather, seems to be referring to Carlotta Poldi and her son in the last triplet. (Romanesco)
«S'aricordi de me: non facci sciupo
de la salute sua, ch'adesso è bbona,
un zaluto a Ccarlotta e un bacio ar pupo.»(IT)
«Si ricordi di me: non rovini
la sua salute, che adesso è buona,
un saluto a Carlotta e un bacio al bambino.»(EN)
"Remember me: do not ruin
your health, that now is good,
a greeting to Carlotta and a kiss to her son." (Filippo Chiappini, Ar marchese Riminigirdo Der Cinque)
In 1877 Carlotta enrolled her son in the San Nicola municipal schools, where Carlo attended first and second grade. Then, in October 1880, he took the examination for admission to the Collegio Poli of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, but having made a simple mistake in subtraction, he was forced to repeat the second year. Because of his negligence and lack of commitment, he had to repeat the third grade and then, in 1886, he abandoned formal studies for good, despite the pressure of his mother, his uncle Marco Salustri and Professor Chiappini, who insisted that Carlo continue to study.
An article in the Corriere della Sera of 7 November 2020, in the sports pages, shows a photo of Trilussa next to that of a young athlete captured wearing the Lazio Sports Club jersey. The two are almost identical: the photo was in fact taken inside the Casina dell'Uccelliera in Villa Borghese between 1906 and 1913, the site of the former official headquarters of the sports club. Trilussa, a well-known freemason, knew all the directors of the Lazio Sports Club and was friends with Giggi Zanazzo and Nino Ilari, well-known poets and playwrights who were regulars at the club. Sandro Ciotti, a well-known Lazio youth footballer, Lazio fan and future sports broadcaster born in Rome, had Trilussa as his godfather.
Debut and the Stelle de Roma (1887–1890)
In 1887, at the age of sixteen, he presented one of his poems to Giggi Zanazzo, the dialectal poet director of Rugantino, asking for it to be published. The sonnet, inspired by Belli, entitled L'invenzione della stampa (The Invention of Printing), begins with Johann Gutenberg's invention and ends with a criticism of contemporary printing in the final tercets: (Romanesco)
«Cusì successe, caro patron Rocco,
Che quanno annavi ne le libbrerie
Te portavi via n' libbro c'un baijocco.
Mentre mo ce so' tante porcherie
De libri e de giornali che pe n' sordo
Dicono un frego de minchionerie.»(IT)
«Così succedeva, caro patron Rocco,
che quando andavi nelle librerie
acquistavi un libro con cinque centesimi.
Mentre adesso ci sono tanti libri e giornali
fatti male che per cinque centesimi
dicono moltissime sciocchezze.»(EN)
"So it used to be, dear patron Rocco,
when you went to bookshops
you could buy a book for five cents.
Whereas now there are many bad books and newspapers
that for five cents
say a lot of nonsense." (Trilussa, L'invenzione della stampa)
Zanazzo agreed to publish the sonnet, which appeared in the edition of 30 October 1887, signed at the bottom with the pseudonym Trilussa. From this first publication he began an assiduous collaboration with the Roman periodical, thanks also to the support and encouragement of Edoardo Perino, editor of Rugantino, which would lead the young Trilussa to publish, between 1887 and 1889, fifty poems and forty-one prose works.
Among the many poems printed between the pages of Rugantino, the Stelle de Roma (Stars of Rome), a series of about thirty madrigals, that paid homage to some of the most beautiful young women in Rome, were a resounding success. Starting with the first stella, published on 3 June 1888, the poems dedicated to Roman women gradually gained such popularity that they involved the entire Rugantino editorial staff. Several authors, hiding behind pseudonyms, would try their hand at writing poems entitled to stelle along the lines of those of Trilussa. The popularity of his compositions led Trilussa to select twenty of them and, after revising them and making substantial changes, to publish them in his first collection of poems, Stelle de Roma. Versi romaneschi (Stars of Rome, Roman verses), published in 1889 by Cerroni and Solaro. However, his sudden popularity brought with it criticism from Belli's disciples, who attacked him for the themes he dealt with and accused him of using the Romanesco dialect combined with Italian. Among them was Filippo Chiappini himself, who, under the pseudonym Mastro Naticchia, mocked his pupil by means of two poems published in Rugantino.
After his first work was published, his collaborations with Rugantino decreased in frequency; however, Trilussa remained strongly tied to the publisher Perino, with whom, in 1890, he published the almanac Er Mago de Bborgo. Lunario pe' 'r 1890 (The Village Magician. 1980 Almanac). It is a revival of the eponymous almanac conceived in 1859 by the Roman poet Adone Finardi, produced in collaboration with Francesco Sabatini, known as Padron Checco, and the illustrator Adriano Minardi, alias Silhouette. Trilussa wrote for the almanac a sonnet for each month of the year, with the addition of a closing composition and some prose in Roman dialect.
The Don Chisciotte and the Favole Rimodernate (1891–1900) The experience of the almanac was repeated the following year with Er Mago de Bborgo. Lunario pe' 'r 1891 (The Village Magician: 1891 Almanac): this time the texts are all by Trilussa, without the collaboration of Francesco Sabatini, but accompanied again by Silhouette's drawings. In the meantime, the Roman poet collaborated with various periodicals, publishing poems and prose in Il Ficcanaso. Almanacco popolare con caricature per l'anno 1890, Il Cicerone and La Frusta (The Meddler. Popular Almanac with Caricatures for the year 1890, The Cicerone, and The Whip). However, Trilussa's most important collaboration came in 1891, when he began writing for the Don Chisciotte della Mancia, a daily newspaper with national circulation, alternating satirical articles targeting Crispi's politics with city chronicles. His production for the paper thickened in 1893, when the newspaper changed its name to Il Don Chisciotte di Roma, and Trilussa, at the age of twenty-two, joined the newspaper's editorial board.
It was during this period that Trilussa prepared the publication of his second volume of poems, Quaranta sonetti romaneschi (Forty Roman Sonnets), a collection which, despite its name, contains forty-one sonnets, selected mainly from recent publications in Il Don Chisciotte di Roma and partly from the older poems published in Rugantino; the collection, published in 1894, marked the beginning of the collaboration between Trilussa and the Roman publisher Voghera, a relationship that would continue for the next twenty-five years.
It was on Luigi Arnaldo Vassallo's newspaper that the fable-writer Trilussa was born, between 1885 and 1899: twelve of the poet's fables appeared in Don Chisciotte; the first among them was La Cecala e la Formica (The Cicada and the Ant), published on 29 November 1895, which, in addition to being the first fable ever written, and the first by Trilussa, is also the first of the so-called Favole Rimodernate (Modernised Tales), which Diego De Miranda, the editor of the column Tra piume e strascichi, in which the fable was published, thus announced: «Favole antiche colla morale nuova. Trilussa, da qualche tempo, non pubblica sonetti: non li pubblica perché li studia. Si direbbe che, acquistando la coscienza della sua maturità intellettuale, il giovane scrittore romanesco senta il dovere di dare la giusta misura di sé, di ciò che può, della originalità del suo concepimento. E osserva e tenta di fare diversamente da quanto ha fatto finora. E ha avuto un'idea, fra l'altro, arguta e geniale: quella di rifare le favole antiche di Esopo per metterci la morale corrente.»"Ancient fables with new morals. Trilussa has not published sonnets for some time: he does not publish them because he studies them. One would say that, acquiring the consciousness of his intellectual maturity, the young Roman writer feels the duty to give the right measure of himself, of what he can, of the originality of his conception. And he observes and attempts to do differently from what he has done so far. And he has had an idea, among other things, witty and ingenious: that of remaking Aesop's ancient fables to put in current morals." (Diego De Miranda)
When De Miranda said that the Roman poet was no longer publishing sonnets because he was studying them, he was probably referring to the collection that Trilussa was preparing, and of which he was aware, which would see daylight only in 1898, printed by Tipografia Folchetto under the title Altri sonetti. Preceduti da una lettera di Isacco di David Spizzichino, strozzino (Other Sonnets. Preceded by a Letter of Isacco di David Spizzichino, Usurer). The curious title of the work originated from an episode that biographers consider real: Trilussa, in financial difficulties, asked Isacco di David Spizzichino, a moneylender, for a loan, guaranteeing to pay him back after the publication of his next book. But the book was late to be published, and Isacco sent a peremptory letter to the poet; Trilussa decided to report the story with the cheerfulness and irony that always distinguished him: he included in the collection a dedication to his usurer and the intimidating letter as a preface to the work.
In the meantime, the Roman poet began to become declaimer of his own verses, which he recited in cultural circles, theatres, aristocratic salons, and cafè-concerts, Trilussa's favourite places, symbols of the Belle Époque. Without knowing German, in 1898 Trilussa ventured on his first foreign experience to Berlin, accompanied by the transformist Leopoldo Fregoli.
Elocutionist Trilussa (1901–1914)
In the wake of his success, he began to frequent 'salons' as a poet-commentator on the day's events. During the Fascist period, he avoided joining the Fascist Party, but preferred to define himself as a non-fascist rather than an anti-fascist. Although he made political satire, his relations with the regime were always calm and marked by mutual respect. In 1922, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore began publishing all his collections. Also in 1922, the writer joined Arcadia under the pseudonym of Tibrindo Plateo, which was also that of Belli.