The Night Fountain: Selected Early Poems

This book reproduces for the first time the contents of a manuscript given to a school-friend by the nineteen-year-old Quasimodo, a manuscript which only came to light in 1970 as a result of extensive investigations by the poet's grandson Alessandro. Frayed and faded, but with an orderly table of contents and sealed by the young poet's signature, the manuscript contains poems written between 1917 and 1920. Here there are landscapes brimming with memories and vibrating with emotions, sounds that are intense and unmistakeable, images of Arcadia and autobiographical references. While the writing is not yet mature, it does contain hints of the poetic spirituality that was soon to emerge.