Vittorio Sereni

Italian poet, author, editor and translator

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Vittorio Sereni (born July 27, 1913, Luino, Italy—died Feb. 10, 1983, Milan) was an Italian poet, author, editor, and translator who was known for his lyric verse and for his translations into Italian of works by Pierre Corneille, Guillaume Apollinaire, Paul Valéry, René Char, Albert Camus, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams.

A graduate of the University of Milan in 1936, Sereni was active in Milan’s avant-garde literary circles and published his first poems in 1937 in the periodical Il frontespizio. He served as an infantry officer in the Italian army during World War II, was captured by the Allies, and was held in a prisoner-of-war camp from 1943 to 1945. He wrote of these wartime experiences in Diario d’Algeria (1947; Algerian Diary). After the war he returned to Milan and, briefly, to his teaching career. He worked as literary editor at the Mondadori publishing house, editor of the newspaper La rassegna d’Italia, and literary critic for Milano-sera.

In the 1930s Sereni’s poetry placed him among the Hermetic school. Influenced by the poets Guido Gozzano and Eugenio Montale, his work evolved, particularly after World War II, from a private, interior orientation to a more concrete exploration of life. Sereni’s early work is influenced by Crepuscolarismo; an important theme is the concept of death as total and final and the verge of nothingness. His later work deals with the themes of alienation, involvement, loss, and the poet’s use of the past in his work. His poetry collections include Frontiera (1941; “The Border”); Gli strumenti umani (1965; “The Human Instruments”), and Stella variabile (1981; “Variable Star”).