Delio Tessa

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Delio Tessa (1886 - 1939) was an Italian poet from Milan. He is the most renowned writer in Milanese dialect after Carlo Porta. The originality of his poetry stands mostly in his obsessional expressionism and his allucinated and satirical way to depict Death. His masterpiece is L'è el dì di Mort, alegher! ("It's the day of the Dead, be happy!", a collection of his lyrics, 1932). Stylistically, he uses massively "enjambements" and parentheticals; he mixes Milanese dialect (a dialect of Western Lombard language spoken in the city and in the Hinterland) with Italian and foreign languages such as French and English, making them rhyme, too. Antifascist, he remained aloof from official culture, devoting himself to local sphere. Except the collection of poems L'è el dì di mort, alegher!, all his works have been published posthumous. The topics of his poetics are the drama of the World War I and of the daily life of neglects, revised in personal way and caring very much the sonority of the lines. Often the topic of the dead women is present, with a pessimism and one distrust of personal and cultural origin (scapigliatura, decadentism, Russian novel, espressionismo). The restlessness is reflected in the tension of the language, used like strongly fragmented popular language. He died in 1939 of abscess, was buried for his will in a common field of Musocco, but in the '50 the Milanese Municipality transferred him to the Famedio, where most preeminent Milanese Persons shall lie: Alessandro Manzoni is in the middle.