Giorgio Orelli (May 25, 1921 – November 10, 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 ,
Proses
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 ()
External links
Official Website (Italian)
Notes
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