Sergio Corazzini was born in Rome on 6 February 1886. He attended school in the city and also at a boarding school in Spoleto (in the Umbria region), but his family's ill health and financial misfortunes forced him to quit the ginnasio (secondary school) and to start working for an insurance company. Shortly after, he started developing the first symptoms of tuberculosis, which eventually forced him to take hopeless trips to the healthier climate of Nocera (Umbria) and to a sanatorium in Nettuno, just outside Rome. In the spring of 1907 Corazzini returned to Rome, where he died on 17 June, at the age of twenty-one.

The apparent convergence of Corazzini's life and poetry has often led to hagiographic considerations, ranging from the myth of the young dying poet to the celebration of the purity of his sufferings. One fact, though, has to be taken into consideration: soon after his death Corazzini's...