Margherita Guidacci

Margherita Guidacci (April 25, 1921– June 19, 1992), was an Italian poet born in Florence,^[2] Italy. She graduated from the University of Florence in 1943 and traveled to England and Ireland in 1947.

Guidacci married the sociologist Lucca Pinna in 1949, and they moved to Rome in 1957. The poet taught English language and literature at the Liceo Scientifico Cavour for ten years, from 1965 to 1975.^[3]

Among her published translations are John Donne's sermons and Emily Dickinson's poetry.^[4] T. S. Eliot^[5] and Elizabeth Bishop are among other poets Guidacci translated into her native language.^[6]

Guidacci obtained the libera docenza in the English language and literature in 1972. From 1975 to 1981, she taught English and American Literature at the University of Macerata and the College of Maria Assunta attached to the Vatican in Rome, where she lived until her death in 1992.^[7]

The year following her husband's death in 1977, Guidacci was awarded the Biela Poesia literary prize for her collection Il vuoto e le forme. Guidacci traveled to the United States in 1986, and was the recipient of the 1987 Premio Caserta for her complete works. Among literary prizes Guidacci was awarded are: Carducci Prize, 1957; Ceppo Prize, 1971; Lerici Prize, 1972; Gabbici Prize, 1974; Seanno Prize, 1976.^[8]

The English usage of the word paparazzi is credited to Margherita Guidacci’s translation of Victorian writer George Gissing’s travel book By the Ionian Sea (1901). A character in Margherita Guidacci's Sulle Rive dello Ionio (1957) is a restaurant-owner named Coriolano Paparazzo. The name was in turn chosen by Ennio Flaiano, the screenwriter of the Federico Fellini film, La Dolce Vita, who got it from Guidacci's book. By the late 1960s, the word, usually in the Italian plural form paparazzi, had entered English as a generic term for intrusive photographers.^[9]

Published works

• Guidacci, Margherita (1980) (in Italian language). Brevi e lunghe: Poesie (Collana letteraria ; 5). Libreria Editrice Vaticana. ISBN 978-8820913281. 
• Guidacci, Margherita (1989) (in Italian language). Il buio e lo splendore (I Garzanti poesia). Garzanti. ISBN 978-8811639053. 
• Guidacci, Margherita (1999) (in Italian language). Prose e interviste (Egeria). Editrice C.R.T. ISBN 978-8887296624. 

Translations

• Guidacci, Margherita (1989). A Book of Sibyls: Poems. Translated by Ruth Feldman. Rowan Tree Press. ISBN 978-0937672266. 
• Guidacci, Margherita (April 1992). Landscape With Ruins: Selected Poetry of Margherita Guidacci. Translated by Ruth Feldman. Wayne State Univ Pr. ISBN 978-0814323526. 
• Guidacci, Margherita (1993). In the eastern sky: Selected poems of Margherita Guidacci. Dedalus. ISBN 978-1873790229. 
• Guidacci, Margherita (1975). Poems from Neurosuite. Translated by Marina La Palma. Kelsey St. Press. 
• Guidacci, Margherita. Le Retable d'Issenheim. ARFUYEN. 
• Guidacci, Margherita (Firenze 1921, Roma 1992). L'altare di Isenheim. Rusconi, Milano, 1980, Gambetti, 1997. 
• Guidacci, Margherita. Isenheimski oltar. Translated from the Italian by Gérard Pfister. Jezik/Language: Croatian. 

References

External links

• Contemporary Italian Women Poets, introduces the work of Margherita Guidacci to English-reading audiences presenting her work in the context of the diversity of women's poetry in Italy during the decades since World War II.