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Article: A sideshow of one: Umberto Saba.(Review)
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- December 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Umberto Saba cultivated poetic individuality to such a paradoxical extreme that his poems often read as though written by an anonymous author. Aspiring to be simply "man among men" he yet found himself lapped in continual ripples of singularity. Perhaps this was one reason why, in Stephen Sartarelli's new translation,(1) he could speak of
a sudden yearning to be outside of myself, to live the life of everyone, to
be like every everyday man.
In actuality, Saba was a Jew married to an "Aryan" wife in a Catholic country; menaced by both fascists and Nazis, he remained in Italy, often in hiding, throughout the war years. He was a homosexual who ...