Giorgio Vigolo was above all a poet and novelist, but he was also a capable philologist, critic, and musicologist. In the context of a tradition that is as much European as it is Italian, his work represents a rich fusion of the values of the Italian North and those of the South: his work collates the dramatic, spellbinding, existential restlessness, derived from romantic notions, proper to the writers of the North, and the ecstasy of meditation proper to the writers of the South--in effect a classical tone.

Vigolo was born on 3 December 1894 in Rome, where he lived his entire life--a life marked by few exceptional events, other than the two periods that brought him considerable pain: the times of his involvement in World Wars I and II. Vigolo's artistic temperament was inherited from his parents, both musicians. His mother, Bettina Venturi Vigolo, was also a singer, the niece...