Dialect Poetry of Southern Italy (Italian Poetry in Translation Book 2)

TRILUSSA

It’s the pseudonym of Carlo Alberto

Salustri, born in Rome in 1871. His mother

was from Bologna and his father, a waiter,

from Albano Laziale. His childhood was

filled with mourning and sadness, but he

was perhaps too small to feel the full brunt

of it. He lost his younger sister Elisabetta at

the age of two and his father at the age of

three. His mother was a seamstress and

somewhat stern with the child, who was a

poor and listless student. At sixteen he

dropped out of school, but had already

written his first verses.

In 1887 one of his poems came out in Il

Rugantino, edited by Gigi Zanazzo, along

with a prose piece signed with the

pseudonym Marco Pepe. He became soon

popular for a series of portraits of Roman