Born on 20 August 1901 in Modica, near Siracusa, Sicily, to Gaetano Quasimodo, a station master, and his wife, Clotilde Ragusa, Salvatore Quasimodo, the 1959 Nobel Prize winner for literature, followed irregular studies: elementary school in Gela, in the Messina region; vocational school in Palermo; and finally, in 1919, engineering school at the Politecnico in Rome. Soon he abandoned his studies, due to financial stringencies. In order to support Bice Donetti, with whom he began to live in 1922 and whom he married in 1925, he worked at several jobs: as a technical designer for a builder; a store clerk; a maintenance technician for a large department store in the capital; and with the Italian army engineering corps. As an army worker he was transferred to Reggio Calabria, where in 1928 he decided to compose verses, an activity that increasingly occupied his attention. His first compositions were shared with his friend Salvatore Pugliatti and his...