Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968) was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1959. The citation declares, 'his lyrical poetry with
classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our time.'
Jack Bevan's authoritative translation of Quasimodo's life work fills a
great gap in our knowledge of twentieth-century European poetry. 'The
poetry is textured like shot silk, yet the elegance and syntactical
lucidity with which Jack Bevan has worked to bring these poems to
English readers enables them to stand as poems in their own right, '
wrote Peter Scupham of Bevan's translation of Quasimodo's last poems,
Debit and Credit. Quasimodo's strong and passionate writing continues
to testify to the human--and inhuman--realities which have created our
modern world. The Italian critic Giuliano Dego wrote, 'To bear witness
to man's history in all the urgency of a particular time and place, and
to teach the lesson of courage, this has been Quasimodo's poetic task.'