WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.419 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are opening 00:00:02.419 --> 00:00:05.839 a file that, on the surface, looks like a standard 00:00:05.839 --> 00:00:08.480 biography of a writer. But the moment you peel 00:00:08.480 --> 00:00:10.960 back that first layer, you realize we're actually 00:00:10.960 --> 00:00:12.859 looking at the psychological blueprint of the 00:00:12.859 --> 00:00:16.019 entire 20th century. We're talking about a man 00:00:16.019 --> 00:00:19.239 who essentially invented himself, piece by piece, 00:00:19.399 --> 00:00:22.260 from his name to his profession, all against 00:00:22.260 --> 00:00:24.640 the backdrop of a crumbling empire, two world 00:00:24.640 --> 00:00:28.899 wars, and the dawn of psychoanalysis. We are 00:00:28.899 --> 00:00:31.739 talking about Umberto Saba. Exactly. Umberto 00:00:31.739 --> 00:00:34.119 Saba. And it's a case study that, you know, it 00:00:34.119 --> 00:00:36.399 resists almost every easy classification we try 00:00:36.399 --> 00:00:39.219 to put on it. Right. Saba is a giant of Italian 00:00:39.219 --> 00:00:41.079 literature. He's right up there with Montali 00:00:41.079 --> 00:00:43.179 and Ungaretti, but he's also the perennial outsider. 00:00:43.320 --> 00:00:45.880 He's the poet of the everyday, but his internal 00:00:45.880 --> 00:00:48.219 life was anything but ordinary. It's just a series 00:00:48.219 --> 00:00:49.960 of contradictions. Total contradictions. He's 00:00:49.960 --> 00:00:52.219 Jewish and Catholic, Italian and Austrian, a 00:00:52.219 --> 00:00:54.880 bourgeois merchant and a radical poet. And a 00:00:54.880 --> 00:00:57.420 man of the borderlands. I think we have to start 00:00:57.420 --> 00:01:00.659 there with the geography because with Saba, the 00:01:00.659 --> 00:01:03.179 map isn't just a setting. It's a character in 00:01:03.179 --> 00:01:06.319 the story. It absolutely is. He was born in 1883 00:01:06.319 --> 00:01:09.680 in Trieste. Now, for a modern listener, you hear 00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:12.299 Trieste, you think Northern Italy, nice coffee. 00:01:12.379 --> 00:01:15.659 James Joyce lived there for a bit. But in 1883, 00:01:15.840 --> 00:01:19.200 calling Trieste Italian was a political statement, 00:01:19.359 --> 00:01:21.859 not really a geographic fact. Exactly. You have 00:01:21.859 --> 00:01:25.280 to strip away the modern map. In 1883, Trieste 00:01:25.280 --> 00:01:28.180 was the jewel of the Austro -Hungarian Empire. 00:01:29.290 --> 00:01:31.370 It was Vienna's port, the fourth largest city 00:01:31.370 --> 00:01:34.049 in the empire, a massive commercial hub where 00:01:34.049 --> 00:01:36.849 the Teutonic world met the Mediterranean. You 00:01:36.849 --> 00:01:39.430 had this incredible friction, Austrian burocracy, 00:01:39.629 --> 00:01:42.969 Slavic hinterlands, Italian culture, and a thriving, 00:01:43.049 --> 00:01:45.950 very distinct Jewish community. It's the ultimate 00:01:45.950 --> 00:01:48.849 limbo state. It wasn't legally Italy, but for 00:01:48.849 --> 00:01:51.290 someone like Saba and, you know, the Irba dentists 00:01:51.290 --> 00:01:53.590 of the time, it was culturally the most Italian 00:01:53.590 --> 00:01:55.829 place because it was longing to be part of the 00:01:55.829 --> 00:01:58.390 motherland. That longing defines him. It completely. 00:01:58.569 --> 00:02:00.450 defiance. He was born into a city that was having 00:02:00.450 --> 00:02:03.090 an identity crisis, which seems almost too perfect 00:02:03.090 --> 00:02:05.670 a metaphor for a man whose entire life was an 00:02:05.670 --> 00:02:08.879 identity crisis. And that is the central tension 00:02:08.879 --> 00:02:12.000 of this deep dive today. We've got a massive 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:14.919 stack of sources, his canzonier or songbook, 00:02:15.120 --> 00:02:18.400 his letters, the psychoanalytic notes. And our 00:02:18.400 --> 00:02:21.520 mission is to figure out how this tumultuous 00:02:21.520 --> 00:02:24.939 personal history generated such a singular body 00:02:24.939 --> 00:02:27.560 of work. Right. We're going to unpack the songbook, 00:02:27.680 --> 00:02:29.840 which isn't just a collection of poems, but a 00:02:29.840 --> 00:02:32.620 50 year autobiography in verse. And we're going 00:02:32.620 --> 00:02:35.300 to try and solve or at least debate the mystery 00:02:35.300 --> 00:02:38.930 of his name. Because Umberto Saba is a fiction. 00:02:39.169 --> 00:02:41.629 A total fiction. He constructed that name to 00:02:41.629 --> 00:02:44.189 survive his own reality. So let's get into that 00:02:44.189 --> 00:02:46.770 reality. The origin section of our outline is 00:02:46.770 --> 00:02:49.389 titled The Broken Family Tree, which honestly 00:02:49.389 --> 00:02:51.310 feels like a bit of an understatement. It really 00:02:51.310 --> 00:02:53.389 is. Usually when we talk about a broken home 00:02:53.389 --> 00:02:56.009 in literary biographies, we mean, you know, the 00:02:56.009 --> 00:02:58.229 parents divorced when the kid was seven or maybe 00:02:58.229 --> 00:03:01.080 one died young. But Saba's family was broken 00:03:01.080 --> 00:03:03.259 before he even took his first breath. This is 00:03:03.259 --> 00:03:05.620 high drama right out of the gate. The circumstances 00:03:05.620 --> 00:03:07.819 of his birth are the primal wound that drives 00:03:07.819 --> 00:03:10.919 everything he ever wrote. So who are the players? 00:03:11.319 --> 00:03:14.180 Okay, so he was born Umberto Poli. His father 00:03:14.180 --> 00:03:18.060 was Ugo Adorto Poli, a young, somewhat flighty 00:03:18.060 --> 00:03:20.270 Christian aristocrat. or at least he pretended 00:03:20.270 --> 00:03:23.090 to be one. Okay. And his mother was Felicity 00:03:23.090 --> 00:03:25.750 Rochelle Cohen, a Jewish woman from a fairly 00:03:25.750 --> 00:03:29.389 strict traditional background. She was 37. Ugo 00:03:29.389 --> 00:03:33.330 was 29. Wow. The age gap alone raises eyebrows 00:03:33.330 --> 00:03:36.050 for 1882, but the religious divide must have 00:03:36.050 --> 00:03:39.360 been the real scandal. Oh, it was a massive logistical 00:03:39.360 --> 00:03:43.080 and social nightmare. But Ugo, in this fit of 00:03:43.080 --> 00:03:45.219 what we might call performative romance, actually 00:03:45.219 --> 00:03:48.919 converted to Judaism specifically to marry Felicita. 00:03:48.979 --> 00:03:51.379 He converted. He did. It was this grand theatrical 00:03:51.379 --> 00:03:54.680 gesture. But as we see so often with grand theatrical 00:03:54.680 --> 00:03:56.539 gestures, there wasn't a lot of substance behind 00:03:56.539 --> 00:03:58.560 it. No, and the timeline here is just brutal. 00:03:58.919 --> 00:04:01.379 Felicita is pregnant with Umberto. They are newlyweds. 00:04:01.759 --> 00:04:04.159 And Ugo, the man who just converted faiths to 00:04:04.159 --> 00:04:06.500 be with her, realizes he's made a mistake. And 00:04:06.500 --> 00:04:08.919 he doesn't just leave. He evaporates. He abandons 00:04:08.919 --> 00:04:11.580 Felicita and the unborn baby before Umberto was 00:04:11.580 --> 00:04:14.400 even born. So Umberto enters the world in March 00:04:14.400 --> 00:04:17.540 1883 as a fatherless child in the most literal 00:04:17.540 --> 00:04:20.139 sense. He's the son of a ghost. And this creates 00:04:20.139 --> 00:04:22.519 that absent father trope that we see haunting 00:04:22.519 --> 00:04:26.379 his work. But unlike a lot of writers who mythologize 00:04:26.379 --> 00:04:29.360 The Missing Parent, Saba had to deal with the 00:04:29.360 --> 00:04:34.009 very real. very bitter presence of the parent 00:04:34.009 --> 00:04:36.870 who stayed. Exactly. Felicita was left holding 00:04:36.870 --> 00:04:39.970 the bag. She was humiliated, abandoned, and now 00:04:39.970 --> 00:04:42.009 she's raising a child who probably looked a lot 00:04:42.009 --> 00:04:44.269 like the man who ruined her life. That dynamic 00:04:44.269 --> 00:04:47.350 is so heavy. The mother who stays, but who is 00:04:47.350 --> 00:04:50.750 just consumed by bitterness. Yeah. Sources describe 00:04:50.750 --> 00:04:54.689 her as stern and unhappy. But the fascinating 00:04:54.689 --> 00:04:57.230 twist in his early childhood is that he did have 00:04:57.230 --> 00:04:59.850 a warm maternal figure. He just didn't find her 00:04:59.850 --> 00:05:01.740 in his mother's house. No, he didn't. We have 00:05:01.740 --> 00:05:04.839 to talk about Pepa. Pepa. Josefa Guprovich Shobar, 00:05:04.860 --> 00:05:07.079 known as Pepa. This is the woman who saved him, 00:05:07.180 --> 00:05:08.959 emotionally speaking. She was a Slovene Catholic 00:05:08.959 --> 00:05:12.259 wet nurse. Okay. And the context of her arrival 00:05:12.259 --> 00:05:14.459 is just heartbreaking in its own right. She had 00:05:14.459 --> 00:05:16.420 just lost her own baby. Oh, wow. So you have 00:05:16.420 --> 00:05:18.660 a collision of traumas. You have a baby whose 00:05:18.660 --> 00:05:21.939 father fled and a mother whose baby died. They 00:05:21.939 --> 00:05:25.240 filled the void for each other. Precisely. Pepa 00:05:25.240 --> 00:05:28.500 took infant Umberto into her home. For the first 00:05:28.500 --> 00:05:30.879 three years of his life, he lived with her and 00:05:30.879 --> 00:05:33.319 her husband in what he later remembered as a 00:05:33.319 --> 00:05:36.120 paradise. A paradise. It was a Slovene environment, 00:05:36.519 --> 00:05:40.500 Catholic, filled with affection, singing, and 00:05:40.500 --> 00:05:43.000 a simple, unburdened love that he just wasn't 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:45.439 getting from Felicita. I can only imagine the 00:05:45.439 --> 00:05:48.000 psychological whiplash when that ended. Because 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:51.180 it did end. It did. In 1887, when he's roughly 00:05:51.180 --> 00:05:53.740 four years old, he's moved back to his biological 00:05:53.740 --> 00:05:56.720 mother's care, into the home of her sister, Regina. 00:05:57.240 --> 00:05:59.680 That transition is the first great tragedy of 00:05:59.680 --> 00:06:02.360 his life. He goes from Peppa's world, which he 00:06:02.360 --> 00:06:05.660 associates with joy, milk, and warmth, to Felicita's 00:06:05.660 --> 00:06:08.959 world, which he later describes as shy and solitary. 00:06:09.339 --> 00:06:11.519 He called his mother's house the ghetto of his 00:06:11.519 --> 00:06:13.399 soul. Yeah, the ghetto of his soul, even though 00:06:13.399 --> 00:06:15.079 they weren't living in the actual ghetto. It 00:06:15.079 --> 00:06:17.259 was a house of silence and judgment. And he was 00:06:17.259 --> 00:06:19.839 a lonely kid, right? The notes mention he kept 00:06:19.839 --> 00:06:22.160 pet birds and studied the violin. Very much an 00:06:22.160 --> 00:06:24.319 internalized existence. He wasn't out playing 00:06:24.319 --> 00:06:27.339 soccer in the piazza. He was in a room. absorbing 00:06:27.339 --> 00:06:30.779 his mother's grief and probably hearing constant 00:06:30.779 --> 00:06:33.279 diatribes about his good -for -nothing father. 00:06:33.500 --> 00:06:35.959 The assassin. The assassin. That's what his mother 00:06:35.959 --> 00:06:39.040 called Ugo, the assassin. Can you imagine growing 00:06:39.040 --> 00:06:42.339 up hearing that your father is a murderer? Not 00:06:42.339 --> 00:06:44.540 because he killed someone, but because he killed 00:06:44.540 --> 00:06:47.439 her happiness. That is a heavy burden for a six 00:06:47.439 --> 00:06:49.720 -year -old. It sets up this incredible duality 00:06:49.720 --> 00:06:51.959 in his psyche. You have the good mother, who 00:06:51.959 --> 00:06:55.250 isn't his mother, Peppa, the Catholic. slavic 00:06:55.250 --> 00:06:59.069 one and the bad mother who is his blood felicita 00:06:59.069 --> 00:07:01.589 the jewish bitter one and then the assassin father 00:07:01.589 --> 00:07:03.490 somewhere out there it's no wonder he ended up 00:07:03.490 --> 00:07:06.110 on a psychoanalyst's couch later absolutely but 00:07:06.110 --> 00:07:07.689 let's look at his education because this surprised 00:07:07.689 --> 00:07:10.050 me he didn't do the classic intellectual route 00:07:10.050 --> 00:07:12.509 he wasn't trained in greek and latin at lucio 00:07:12.509 --> 00:07:14.889 classico no and this is crucial for understanding 00:07:14.889 --> 00:07:17.550 his poetic voice he started at the gymnasium 00:07:17.550 --> 00:07:20.470 the academic track but he wasn't a good student 00:07:20.990 --> 00:07:24.310 He failed Latin. He failed Latin. So in 1897, 00:07:24.470 --> 00:07:26.910 his mother pulled him out and enrolled him in 00:07:26.910 --> 00:07:29.430 the Imperial Academy of Commerce and Navigation. 00:07:29.670 --> 00:07:31.850 The Imperial Academy of Commerce and Navigation. 00:07:32.110 --> 00:07:34.649 It sounds like he's training to be a sea captain 00:07:34.649 --> 00:07:37.149 or a shipping logistics manager. Basically, he 00:07:37.149 --> 00:07:39.589 was. He was training to be a merchant. This is 00:07:39.589 --> 00:07:42.110 Crieste, remember? The city runs on ledgers, 00:07:42.209 --> 00:07:45.170 shipping manifests, and insurance rates. So after 00:07:45.170 --> 00:07:47.410 the academy? After the academy, he went to work 00:07:47.410 --> 00:07:50.009 as a clerk for a customs agent. I think this 00:07:50.009 --> 00:07:52.889 is a superpower for him, though. When you read 00:07:52.889 --> 00:07:55.509 Saba, he doesn't sound like he's trying to impress 00:07:55.509 --> 00:07:58.649 you with obscure mythological references like 00:07:58.649 --> 00:08:01.610 Denunzio or some of the heavy academics. No, 00:08:01.689 --> 00:08:04.430 not at all. He sounds concrete. He lists things. 00:08:04.550 --> 00:08:08.019 He values the object. Absolutely. He wasn't living 00:08:08.019 --> 00:08:10.759 in an ivory tower. He was grounded in the commercial 00:08:10.759 --> 00:08:13.379 reality of the port. He understood the value 00:08:13.379 --> 00:08:16.259 of things. He understood exchange. And interestingly, 00:08:16.439 --> 00:08:19.259 this merchant identity gave him a way to interact 00:08:19.259 --> 00:08:21.540 with the world that wasn't purely intellectual. 00:08:21.699 --> 00:08:24.360 It kept him tethered to reality, which, given 00:08:24.360 --> 00:08:27.079 his mental health struggles, was probably a lifesaver. 00:08:27.160 --> 00:08:29.660 But the urge to write was there. It was always 00:08:29.660 --> 00:08:32.399 there. And with the writing came the need for 00:08:32.399 --> 00:08:35.590 a name. Because Umberto Poli was his father's 00:08:35.590 --> 00:08:38.269 name, and his father was the assassin. He couldn't 00:08:38.269 --> 00:08:41.269 be a Poli. No. And his early attempts at renaming 00:08:41.269 --> 00:08:44.649 himself are, well, they're revealing of a young 00:08:44.649 --> 00:08:46.769 man trying to find a costume that fits. Oh, I 00:08:46.769 --> 00:08:49.970 love the early drafts. Yeah. In 1900, he's signing 00:08:49.970 --> 00:08:53.649 poems as Umberto Chopin Poli. Chopin. It's so 00:08:53.649 --> 00:08:55.990 teenage, isn't it? It's like a kid today calling 00:08:55.990 --> 00:08:58.529 himself Humberto Cobain. It just screams, I am 00:08:58.529 --> 00:09:00.649 sensitive, I am suffering. It's the tortured 00:09:00.649 --> 00:09:03.730 artist archetype. He's signaling to the world 00:09:03.730 --> 00:09:06.149 that he aligns with the romantics, with the delicate 00:09:06.149 --> 00:09:09.230 geniuses who die young. But it's a mask. It's 00:09:09.230 --> 00:09:12.429 not an identity. Then he pivots in 1905. And 00:09:12.429 --> 00:09:15.049 the context here is huge. He meets his father. 00:09:15.230 --> 00:09:17.470 Ghost materializes. He travels to Florence and 00:09:17.470 --> 00:09:19.590 finally stands face to face with Ugo. And this 00:09:19.590 --> 00:09:21.970 meeting shatters the myth his mother had built. 00:09:22.029 --> 00:09:24.870 He expects a monster, an assassin. Instead, he 00:09:24.870 --> 00:09:28.570 finds a man who is charming. Yeah, Hugo is a 00:09:28.570 --> 00:09:31.169 bit of a libertine, a wanderer, arguably a bit 00:09:31.169 --> 00:09:33.169 shallow, but he's not a villain. He's just a 00:09:33.169 --> 00:09:35.950 man who wasn't cut out for domestic life. And 00:09:35.950 --> 00:09:38.490 Saba realizes that he actually shares a lot of 00:09:38.490 --> 00:09:41.289 traits with his father. The restlessness, the 00:09:41.289 --> 00:09:43.970 love of poetry. There's that famous poem, Mio 00:09:43.970 --> 00:09:46.809 padre ha estado per me el asesino, my father 00:09:46.809 --> 00:09:49.350 was the murderer to me, where he pivots and says 00:09:49.350 --> 00:09:52.570 he realized his father was just a child, a balloon 00:09:52.570 --> 00:09:55.049 that shouldn't be held down. Exactly, a child 00:09:55.049 --> 00:09:58.320 with a blue gaze. He humanizes him. And briefly, 00:09:58.620 --> 00:10:01.960 he adopts the name Umberto da Monteriale using 00:10:01.960 --> 00:10:04.139 his father's birthplace. So he tries to connect 00:10:04.139 --> 00:10:05.740 with that side of the family. It's an attempt 00:10:05.740 --> 00:10:08.059 to connect with that petrolineal line, but it 00:10:08.059 --> 00:10:10.340 doesn't stick. He can't fully embrace the father 00:10:10.340 --> 00:10:13.320 who left. So we land on Saba. He publishes his 00:10:13.320 --> 00:10:16.600 first collection in 1910 as simply Saba. And 00:10:16.600 --> 00:10:18.519 scholars have been fighting over this for a century. 00:10:19.120 --> 00:10:20.679 What is your take on the name? I know there are 00:10:20.679 --> 00:10:22.620 three main theories. The theories are fascinating 00:10:22.620 --> 00:10:24.860 because they represent the three pillars of his 00:10:24.860 --> 00:10:27.440 identity. Theory one is the Hebrew connection, 00:10:27.840 --> 00:10:32.840 Sova or Saba. Sova means satiated or full, which 00:10:32.840 --> 00:10:34.960 might be a kind of wish fulfillment for a man 00:10:34.960 --> 00:10:38.539 who always felt empty. Or Saba, meaning grandfather 00:10:38.539 --> 00:10:41.100 in Hebrew. Which would be a nod to his mother's 00:10:41.100 --> 00:10:43.889 Jewish lineage. The Coens, the Lozados. Yeah. 00:10:44.590 --> 00:10:46.610 Reclaiming the heritage his father rejected. 00:10:46.909 --> 00:10:49.870 Right. It validates his mother's side. Yay. But 00:10:49.870 --> 00:10:51.590 then there's the theory that I find the most 00:10:51.590 --> 00:10:54.169 psychologically compelling. Okay. The connection 00:10:54.169 --> 00:10:56.649 to the wet nurse. Her name was Peppa Shobar. 00:10:56.789 --> 00:10:58.870 It's right there phonetically. Shobar. Saba. 00:10:59.009 --> 00:11:02.190 If you shorten Shobar or Italianize it, you get 00:11:02.190 --> 00:11:05.230 Saba. If this theory holds, and many biographers 00:11:05.230 --> 00:11:08.049 believe it does, he literally named himself after 00:11:08.049 --> 00:11:10.389 the only person who gave him unconditional love. 00:11:10.860 --> 00:11:13.299 So he rejected the poly from the father. And 00:11:13.299 --> 00:11:14.960 the coming from the mother. And chose the third 00:11:14.960 --> 00:11:17.379 option, the caretaker. Exactly. But there's a 00:11:17.379 --> 00:11:19.919 subversive layer to that, too. By taking a name 00:11:19.919 --> 00:11:22.779 that sounds Hebrew, Saba, grandfather, but means 00:11:22.779 --> 00:11:25.840 the Catholic wet nurse, Shobar, he's secretly 00:11:25.840 --> 00:11:28.240 merging the two warring halves of his childhood 00:11:28.240 --> 00:11:31.220 into one word. It's the ultimate synthesis. He 00:11:31.220 --> 00:11:33.100 becomes the bridge. That is the brilliance of 00:11:33.100 --> 00:11:35.679 it. It's a name that allows him to be everything 00:11:35.679 --> 00:11:38.460 at once. And he committed to it. He legally changed 00:11:38.460 --> 00:11:42.039 it in 1928. He became Saba. But a new name doesn't 00:11:42.039 --> 00:11:44.659 cure an old sickness. We have to talk about his 00:11:44.659 --> 00:11:47.019 mind. Because even as he's finding his voice 00:11:47.019 --> 00:11:51.330 in the early 1900s, he's falling apart. The cracks 00:11:51.330 --> 00:11:54.210 were there early. In 1903, he went to Pisa to 00:11:54.210 --> 00:11:56.029 study, trying to get that classical education 00:11:56.029 --> 00:11:58.370 he missed. But he had a breakdown. A breakdown. 00:11:58.669 --> 00:12:01.090 A nervous disorder forced him back to Trieste. 00:12:01.330 --> 00:12:04.110 This wasn't just sadness. This was clinical depression, 00:12:04.470 --> 00:12:06.690 likely neurasthenia, a condition that would plague 00:12:06.690 --> 00:12:09.169 him for the rest of his life. He operated in 00:12:09.169 --> 00:12:12.169 cycles periods of intense manic creativity, followed 00:12:12.169 --> 00:12:14.590 by crushing paralyzed darkness. And it's in this 00:12:14.590 --> 00:12:17.269 volatile state that he enters the world of relationships. 00:12:17.669 --> 00:12:20.889 He meets Carolina Wolf Lerlina in 1905. And honestly, 00:12:21.090 --> 00:12:24.129 Lena deserves a medal. Lena is the anchor. She's 00:12:24.129 --> 00:12:26.570 the queen of the hive in his poetry. They married 00:12:26.570 --> 00:12:29.129 in 1909 in a Jewish ceremony, and they had a 00:12:29.129 --> 00:12:32.049 daughter, Lenuchia. For a moment, it looks like 00:12:32.049 --> 00:12:34.289 Saba has achieved the bourgeois stability he 00:12:34.289 --> 00:12:37.549 was trained for. Wife, child, home. The whole 00:12:37.549 --> 00:12:40.809 package. But then comes 1911, the crisis. And 00:12:40.809 --> 00:12:42.750 I want to challenge the way this is usually told. 00:12:42.830 --> 00:12:45.769 Usually it's the wife cheated. But looking at 00:12:45.769 --> 00:12:48.850 the sources, Saba left her alone in Trieste with 00:12:48.850 --> 00:12:51.200 a baby. while he went off to Florence to play 00:12:51.200 --> 00:12:53.860 the literary socialite with the magazine Lavos. 00:12:54.000 --> 00:12:56.539 That's a very fair point. He was chasing fame, 00:12:56.720 --> 00:12:59.120 leaving her behind. He was prioritizing his artistic 00:12:59.120 --> 00:13:02.419 ego, for sure. He wanted to be part of the Florentine 00:13:02.419 --> 00:13:05.500 avant -garde. And while he was gone, Lina, feeling 00:13:05.500 --> 00:13:07.799 abandoned herself, and remember, abandonment 00:13:07.799 --> 00:13:10.240 is the theme here, had an affair with a painter. 00:13:10.500 --> 00:13:13.159 And when Saba finds out... The reaction is what 00:13:13.159 --> 00:13:16.240 makes in Saba. A typical man of 1911 Italy might 00:13:16.240 --> 00:13:18.299 have killed her, or at least cast her out and 00:13:18.299 --> 00:13:20.519 shamed her forever. Right, social exile was the 00:13:20.519 --> 00:13:23.600 norm. But Saba doesn't do that. He is devastated, 00:13:23.799 --> 00:13:26.659 yes. The family unit is shattered. But after 00:13:26.659 --> 00:13:28.940 a period of separation, he takes her back. They 00:13:28.940 --> 00:13:31.740 reconcile in 1912. And more importantly, he writes 00:13:31.740 --> 00:13:34.139 about it. He writes these incredible poems where 00:13:34.139 --> 00:13:36.720 he processes the jealousy, the pain, but also 00:13:36.720 --> 00:13:39.360 his own culpability. He compares Lena to a heifer, 00:13:39.480 --> 00:13:43.179 to a bitch. The female dog to a hen. Which sounds 00:13:43.179 --> 00:13:46.039 incredibly insulting to a modern ear. Yeah, calling 00:13:46.039 --> 00:13:48.399 your wife a cow and a chicken. It sounds terrible 00:13:48.399 --> 00:13:51.399 today, but in the context of the poem Amiya Mowgli 00:13:51.399 --> 00:13:54.220 to my wife, it's actually an act of worship. 00:13:54.539 --> 00:13:57.460 He's comparing her to the animals of creation 00:13:57.460 --> 00:14:00.419 creatures that are close to God and nature. Unlike 00:14:00.419 --> 00:14:03.320 him, the neurotic intellectual. So he's elevating 00:14:03.320 --> 00:14:05.480 her. He's elevating her to an earth mother figure. 00:14:05.700 --> 00:14:08.659 He forgives her because he sees her as a force 00:14:08.659 --> 00:14:11.419 of nature that cannot be judged by petty human 00:14:11.419 --> 00:14:14.299 morals. They stay together, but the road gets 00:14:14.299 --> 00:14:17.600 rocky. They move to Bologna. They have no money. 00:14:17.639 --> 00:14:20.340 He's reading poems to empty rooms. They end up 00:14:20.340 --> 00:14:24.120 in Milan in 1914, managing a nightclub. It shows 00:14:24.120 --> 00:14:26.240 his desperation. He was working as a secretary 00:14:26.240 --> 00:14:28.419 and then, yes, managing a nightclub. Imagine 00:14:28.419 --> 00:14:31.389 this shy. depressive poet dealing with the nightlife 00:14:31.389 --> 00:14:34.429 of Milan on the eve of war. It's surreal. But 00:14:34.429 --> 00:14:36.549 it shows his resilience. He would do anything 00:14:36.549 --> 00:14:39.570 to keep the family afloat. And then the world 00:14:39.570 --> 00:14:44.590 breaks. 1915, Italy enters World War I. Saba 00:14:44.590 --> 00:14:47.669 is drafted. Now, when I think of WWI poets, I 00:14:47.669 --> 00:14:49.710 think of Wilford Owen describing gas attacks 00:14:49.710 --> 00:14:53.070 or Ungaretti writing fragmented lines in a trench 00:14:53.070 --> 00:14:57.039 on the Carso. Was Saba in the trenches? No. And 00:14:57.039 --> 00:14:59.000 this distinguishes him from the war poet canon. 00:14:59.279 --> 00:15:01.960 He was drafted, but he never saw combat. Not 00:15:01.960 --> 00:15:04.340 at all. No, he was hospitalized almost immediately 00:15:04.340 --> 00:15:06.399 for his psychological condition. He spent the 00:15:06.399 --> 00:15:08.639 war in the rear, in administrative roles, or 00:15:08.639 --> 00:15:10.820 in hospitals. So while D 'Annunzio is flying 00:15:10.820 --> 00:15:13.120 planes over Vienna and Ungaretti is staring death 00:15:13.120 --> 00:15:16.500 in the face, Saba is fighting his own mind. And 00:15:16.500 --> 00:15:19.240 he creates a sort of civilian war poetry. He 00:15:19.240 --> 00:15:21.379 writes about the soldiers he sees, the camp life, 00:15:21.480 --> 00:15:24.379 but he's an observer, not a warrior. He de -heroicizes 00:15:24.379 --> 00:15:26.519 the war. Right. He isn't interested in the glory 00:15:26.519 --> 00:15:28.480 or the carnage. He's interested in the humanity 00:15:28.480 --> 00:15:30.720 of the boys in uniform. It's consistent with 00:15:30.720 --> 00:15:33.460 his everyday focus. The war ends. Tristi becomes 00:15:33.460 --> 00:15:36.480 Italian, finally, and Saba returns home in 1919. 00:15:36.740 --> 00:15:38.659 And this is where he builds his fortress. His 00:15:38.659 --> 00:15:41.019 sanctuary. He buys the Maylender bookshop and 00:15:41.019 --> 00:15:43.539 rechristens it. La Libreria Antica e Moderna. 00:15:43.879 --> 00:15:45.700 The ancient and modern bookstore. This isn't 00:15:45.700 --> 00:15:47.840 just a job. This is him building a sanctuary. 00:15:48.299 --> 00:15:51.399 The dark cave, as he sometimes called it. I love 00:15:51.399 --> 00:15:54.519 the image of Saba in the bookstore, and it validates 00:15:54.519 --> 00:15:56.360 his Commerce Academy education. He was a good 00:15:56.360 --> 00:15:59.019 businessman. He knew how to haggle for rare and 00:15:59.019 --> 00:16:01.139 cannabula. He knew how to spot a first edition. 00:16:01.399 --> 00:16:03.340 It gave him financial independence, so he didn't 00:16:03.340 --> 00:16:05.320 have to prostitute his art. Exactly. He didn't 00:16:05.320 --> 00:16:07.960 have to write propaganda or popular novels to 00:16:07.960 --> 00:16:11.139 eat. The bookstore paid for the poetry. And it 00:16:11.139 --> 00:16:14.259 also became a cultural hub. Writers like Svavo 00:16:14.259 --> 00:16:17.419 and Joyce passed through Trieste's literary orbit. 00:16:17.659 --> 00:16:21.080 And it's here, surrounded by these ancient and 00:16:21.080 --> 00:16:24.200 modern books, that he solidifies his own masterpiece, 00:16:24.679 --> 00:16:27.629 the Canzoniere. Let's open the Canziniere, because 00:16:27.629 --> 00:16:29.809 this isn't just a book he wrote in 1921 and moved 00:16:29.809 --> 00:16:32.190 on from. It's a living organism. It's unique 00:16:32.190 --> 00:16:34.509 in Italian literature. It's a songbook in the 00:16:34.509 --> 00:16:36.730 Petrarchan tradition, but he treated it like 00:16:36.730 --> 00:16:39.809 a novel. He published the first edition in 1921, 00:16:39.990 --> 00:16:43.049 but he kept adding to it, rearranging it, and 00:16:43.049 --> 00:16:45.990 editing it for the next 35 years. Wow. By the 00:16:45.990 --> 00:16:49.210 end, it had over 400 poems. It's the diary of 00:16:49.210 --> 00:16:52.490 a life. And the content. We touched on it to 00:16:52.490 --> 00:16:56.200 my wife, but I want to talk about The Goat. It's 00:16:56.200 --> 00:16:58.620 one of his most famous. He sees a goat tied up 00:16:58.620 --> 00:17:00.860 in a field, bleeding in the rain. And he answers 00:17:00.860 --> 00:17:21.539 the goat. He says, That's powerful. That is Saba's 00:17:21.539 --> 00:17:24.079 genius. He finds the infinite in the mundane. 00:17:24.339 --> 00:17:26.769 Right. And he's doing this with a level of psychological 00:17:26.769 --> 00:17:29.250 insight that was way ahead of its time. We have 00:17:29.250 --> 00:17:31.509 to talk about 1929. Right. The year of the crash 00:17:31.509 --> 00:17:33.269 for the world, but the year of the breakthrough 00:17:33.269 --> 00:17:36.289 for Saba. He starts psychoanalysis. With Dr. 00:17:36.390 --> 00:17:39.230 Adordo Weiss. This is a massive deal. Weiss was 00:17:39.230 --> 00:17:41.730 a direct student of Sigmund Freud. He brought 00:17:41.730 --> 00:17:43.980 Freud's papers to Italy. And you have to remember 00:17:43.980 --> 00:17:47.039 at this time in fascist Italy, psychoanalysis 00:17:47.039 --> 00:17:50.000 was viewed with extreme suspicion. It was seen 00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:53.039 as Jewish science. It was seen as undermining 00:17:53.039 --> 00:17:56.359 the heroic, masculine ideal of the regime. So 00:17:56.359 --> 00:17:58.440 Saba going to therapy wasn't just a medical decision. 00:17:58.519 --> 00:18:00.660 It was almost a political act. It was brave. 00:18:01.119 --> 00:18:03.480 And he didn't keep it a secret. He integrated 00:18:03.480 --> 00:18:06.559 it into the work. He used the therapy to unlock 00:18:06.559 --> 00:18:09.180 his childhood trauma. The wet nurse, the assassin 00:18:09.180 --> 00:18:12.200 father. He realized that his poetry was a way 00:18:12.200 --> 00:18:14.900 to heal the split in his personality. There's 00:18:14.900 --> 00:18:17.619 a poem, Amai, I loved, where he lays out his 00:18:17.619 --> 00:18:20.500 manifesto. He says, I love the trite words that 00:18:20.500 --> 00:18:23.839 no one dared. I love the rime flower love, the 00:18:23.839 --> 00:18:26.279 oldest, most difficult in the world. He's saying, 00:18:26.380 --> 00:18:29.829 I'm not afraid to be simple. While other poets 00:18:29.829 --> 00:18:32.069 were using hermetic, difficult, obscure language 00:18:32.069 --> 00:18:35.009 to hide from the regime or to sound smart, Saba 00:18:35.009 --> 00:18:38.509 said, no, I will rhyme fiore, flower, with amor, 00:18:38.589 --> 00:18:41.390 love, I will be honest. And psychoanalysis gave 00:18:41.390 --> 00:18:43.630 him the confidence to be nakedly honest. It did, 00:18:43.789 --> 00:18:46.250 but honesty comes with a price. He wasn't an 00:18:46.250 --> 00:18:48.390 easy friend. The sources mention his relationship 00:18:48.390 --> 00:18:50.369 with Virgilio Giotti, the poet who helped him 00:18:50.369 --> 00:18:52.369 in the bookstore. They were inseparable, and 00:18:52.369 --> 00:18:56.759 then silence. It's tragic. Giotti lost his sister 00:18:56.759 --> 00:19:00.180 in 1929, and Saba, who was so consumed by his 00:19:00.180 --> 00:19:02.539 own neuroses, perhaps couldn't provide the support 00:19:02.539 --> 00:19:05.279 Giotti needed. Or perhaps the intensity of their 00:19:05.279 --> 00:19:07.180 friendship just burned out. So they just stopped 00:19:07.180 --> 00:19:09.819 talking. By the 1930s, they were crossing the 00:19:09.819 --> 00:19:12.579 street to avoid each other in Trieste. Saba was 00:19:12.579 --> 00:19:15.140 demanding. He needed constant reassurance. He 00:19:15.140 --> 00:19:17.869 was, you know, a narcissist in pain. And the 00:19:17.869 --> 00:19:20.269 pain was about to get externalized on a national 00:19:20.269 --> 00:19:23.470 scale. The late 30s, the walls are closing in. 00:19:24.089 --> 00:19:27.450 Mussolini aligns with Hitler. And in 1938, Italy 00:19:27.450 --> 00:19:30.009 passes the racial laws. This is the nightmare 00:19:30.009 --> 00:19:33.769 scenario. Saba is Catholic by baptism. He was 00:19:33.769 --> 00:19:37.019 baptized as an adult. Under the racial laws, 00:19:37.180 --> 00:19:39.839 he is defined by his mother's blood. He is considered 00:19:39.839 --> 00:19:41.940 Jewish. Which means he is stripped of his civil 00:19:41.940 --> 00:19:43.980 rights. He can't publish. He can't be in the 00:19:43.980 --> 00:19:46.259 phone book. And crucially, he can't own a business. 00:19:46.539 --> 00:19:49.059 The Libreria Antica e Moderna, his fortress, 00:19:49.319 --> 00:19:51.319 is illegal for him to own. So he has to sell 00:19:51.319 --> 00:19:53.759 it. He has to sell it. In 1940, he creates a 00:19:53.759 --> 00:19:56.579 fake sale, or a forced sale, to his trusted assistant, 00:19:56.900 --> 00:19:59.480 Carlos Cern. Cern becomes the legal owner to 00:19:59.480 --> 00:20:01.920 save the shop from confiscation. Can you imagine 00:20:01.920 --> 00:20:04.390 the humiliation? Walking into your own store, 00:20:04.529 --> 00:20:06.750 the place you built, and legally being a stranger 00:20:06.750 --> 00:20:09.930 there. It's devastating. And it gets worse. 1943. 00:20:10.369 --> 00:20:13.609 1943. The armistice. Italy surrenders to the 00:20:13.609 --> 00:20:15.930 Allies, but the Germans invade the north to prop 00:20:15.930 --> 00:20:19.029 up Mussolini. Trieste becomes part of the Adriatic 00:20:19.029 --> 00:20:21.730 Littoral Zone, directly administered by the Nazis. 00:20:21.970 --> 00:20:24.029 And the death camps are running. The Risiello 00:20:24.029 --> 00:20:26.990 di San Saba in Trieste is the only extermination 00:20:26.990 --> 00:20:30.230 camp with a crematorium on Italian soil. Saba 00:20:30.230 --> 00:20:33.250 is in mortal danger. He has to run. He leaves 00:20:33.250 --> 00:20:35.869 Trieste with Lina and Lanuccia. They flee to 00:20:35.869 --> 00:20:38.109 Florence. And we need to pause on this year, 00:20:38.250 --> 00:20:41.789 1943 to 1944. This isn't just hiding. This is 00:20:41.789 --> 00:20:43.750 a game of cat and mouse. The sources say they 00:20:43.750 --> 00:20:45.930 moved to 11 different hiding places in one year. 00:20:46.029 --> 00:20:48.150 Eleven. Eleven. Think about the logistics of 00:20:48.150 --> 00:20:50.549 that. He's 60 years old. He's depressive. He 00:20:50.549 --> 00:20:52.809 needs medication. And every few weeks, they have 00:20:52.809 --> 00:20:55.109 to pack up their suitcases and move because a 00:20:55.109 --> 00:20:57.329 neighbor is asking questions or a patrol is getting 00:20:57.329 --> 00:20:59.849 too close. They were helped by friends. Montal 00:20:59.849 --> 00:21:02.029 helped. Other writers helped. but the terror 00:21:02.029 --> 00:21:04.329 must have been constant. There were close calls. 00:21:04.450 --> 00:21:06.829 At one point, he was hiding in a house just yards 00:21:06.829 --> 00:21:08.950 away from a German command post. He could hear 00:21:08.950 --> 00:21:11.289 their boots. He wrote later that he felt like 00:21:11.289 --> 00:21:14.309 a hunted animal. And yet, even in hiding, he 00:21:14.309 --> 00:21:17.309 was writing. Always writing. Yeah. Processing 00:21:17.309 --> 00:21:20.609 the trauma in real time. The war finally ends. 00:21:21.390 --> 00:21:24.349 Florence is liberated, then the North. Saba survives. 00:21:24.769 --> 00:21:27.390 He comes back to the surface. And you'd think, 00:21:27.470 --> 00:21:29.650 okay, the man has suffered enough. Give him a 00:21:29.650 --> 00:21:32.079 medal and let him retire. He got the medal, the 00:21:32.079 --> 00:21:36.220 Viareggio Prize, in 1946. He was suddenly celebrated 00:21:36.220 --> 00:21:39.880 as a moral authority, a survivor. But Saba couldn't 00:21:39.880 --> 00:21:41.799 just sit still. No, he had to throw a grenade 00:21:41.799 --> 00:21:44.079 into the piece. He did. The article. If I were 00:21:44.079 --> 00:21:46.359 named governor of Trieste. Of this article. 1947. 00:21:46.799 --> 00:21:49.480 Trieste is a mess. Yugoslav partisans want it. 00:21:49.500 --> 00:21:51.519 Italy wants it. The Americans are occupying it. 00:21:51.599 --> 00:21:54.680 It's a powder keg. And Saba publishes this piece 00:21:54.680 --> 00:21:57.099 where he basically says, Italy is a land of parasites. 00:21:57.259 --> 00:21:59.940 We are all guilty. He critiques the nationalism. 00:22:00.269 --> 00:22:03.329 both sides. He calls Italians fratricides and 00:22:03.329 --> 00:22:06.329 parasites, referencing his psychoanalytic theories, 00:22:06.569 --> 00:22:09.690 killing the father, killing the brother. He suggests 00:22:09.690 --> 00:22:12.410 that Trieste shouldn't just blindly be Italian, 00:22:12.609 --> 00:22:14.910 but should perhaps acknowledge its complexity. 00:22:15.109 --> 00:22:17.440 And he was savage for it. The nationalists called 00:22:17.440 --> 00:22:19.559 him a traitor. The communists didn't like him 00:22:19.559 --> 00:22:22.440 because he was too bourgeois. He managed to alienate 00:22:22.440 --> 00:22:24.579 everyone by telling the uncomfortable truth. 00:22:24.799 --> 00:22:27.000 The merchant of truth, again, refusing to sell 00:22:27.000 --> 00:22:29.680 a comfortable lie. Exactly. But while he's fighting 00:22:29.680 --> 00:22:32.059 these public battles, he's losing the private 00:22:32.059 --> 00:22:34.619 one. The depression is back, worse than ever. 00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:38.119 And the doctors. Well, the medicine was worse 00:22:38.119 --> 00:22:40.480 than the disease. Injectable opium. It was a 00:22:40.480 --> 00:22:42.460 common treatment for melancholia at the time, 00:22:42.460 --> 00:22:44.059 but for a man with an addictive personality, 00:22:44.480 --> 00:22:47.559 it was a death sentence. So from 1950 on, we 00:22:47.559 --> 00:22:50.819 have this tragic image. The great poet, living 00:22:50.819 --> 00:22:53.940 in a clinic in Rome, addicted to opium, drifting 00:22:53.940 --> 00:22:56.559 in and out of lucid states. He became a sort 00:22:56.559 --> 00:22:59.019 of oracle in the clinic. Young poets would come 00:22:59.019 --> 00:23:01.099 to visit him like pilgrims visiting a shrine. 00:23:01.339 --> 00:23:03.980 He would hold court in his pajamas, half high, 00:23:04.160 --> 00:23:08.220 dispensing wisdom. It's pathetic, but also deeply 00:23:08.220 --> 00:23:11.200 moving. He was trapped in his own body. Completely 00:23:11.200 --> 00:23:14.220 trapped. And then the final anchor snaps. 1956, 00:23:14.779 --> 00:23:18.019 Lena dies. The queen of the hive is gone. The 00:23:18.019 --> 00:23:19.759 woman who stayed when he went to Florence, who 00:23:19.759 --> 00:23:21.900 forgave him, who hid with him in 11 different 00:23:21.900 --> 00:23:25.460 houses. When she died, Saba essentially turned 00:23:25.460 --> 00:23:28.059 off the lights. He died nine months later in 00:23:28.059 --> 00:23:32.009 August 1957. It's a heart attack, technically, 00:23:32.190 --> 00:23:33.829 but we know what it really was. It was the end 00:23:33.829 --> 00:23:35.569 of the song. But not quite the end of the work. 00:23:36.029 --> 00:23:38.390 Because after he died, we found things in the 00:23:38.390 --> 00:23:42.390 drawer. Hmm. Specifically, Ernesto. Tell us about 00:23:42.390 --> 00:23:45.750 Ernesto. Ernesto is a revelation. It was written 00:23:45.750 --> 00:23:48.069 in 1953, near the end, but he never published 00:23:48.069 --> 00:23:50.569 it. It's an unfinished novel, and it explores 00:23:50.569 --> 00:23:52.849 a homosexual relationship he had as a teenager 00:23:52.849 --> 00:23:55.109 at the commercial academy with a man. This is 00:23:55.109 --> 00:23:58.170 explosive stuff for the 1950s. It is. But what's 00:23:58.170 --> 00:24:01.630 amazing about Ernesto is the tone. It's not shameful. 00:24:01.789 --> 00:24:05.390 It's not sinful. It's tender, direct, and explicit. 00:24:05.730 --> 00:24:08.630 It completely recontextualizes his early life. 00:24:08.789 --> 00:24:11.609 It adds another layer to his outsider status. 00:24:12.009 --> 00:24:14.799 He wasn't just Jewish in a Catholic world. He 00:24:14.799 --> 00:24:17.259 was queer in a straight world, exploring desire 00:24:17.259 --> 00:24:20.039 before he suppressed it into the heteronormative 00:24:20.039 --> 00:24:22.180 marriage with Lina. It makes you wonder how much 00:24:22.180 --> 00:24:24.319 energy he spent suppressing that part of himself 00:24:24.319 --> 00:24:27.039 or sublimating it into his poetry. It confirms 00:24:27.039 --> 00:24:30.200 that his entire life's work was an act of integration. 00:24:30.940 --> 00:24:33.819 Trying to take all these fragments, the boy Ernesto, 00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:37.039 the husband Umberto, the merchant Poli, the poet 00:24:37.039 --> 00:24:40.160 Saba, and glue them together into one person. 00:24:40.299 --> 00:24:42.500 So as we wrap this up, why does Umberto Saba 00:24:42.500 --> 00:24:45.619 matter today? Why should a listener in 2026 care 00:24:45.619 --> 00:24:48.980 about a bookseller from Trieste? I think he matters 00:24:48.980 --> 00:24:51.059 because we are living in a time of fragmented 00:24:51.059 --> 00:24:53.680 identities. We all feel like we are playing roles. 00:24:53.859 --> 00:24:56.140 The online self, the work self, the private self. 00:24:56.440 --> 00:24:58.759 Saba was the first modern writer to say, I am 00:24:58.759 --> 00:25:00.960 broken and that is okay. I will make art out 00:25:00.960 --> 00:25:02.980 of the glue. He didn't try to be a marble statue. 00:25:03.220 --> 00:25:05.740 He was happy to be a clay pot that had been smashed 00:25:05.740 --> 00:25:08.250 and put back together. Kintsugi. The Japanese 00:25:08.250 --> 00:25:11.150 art of repairing pottery with gold. His poetry 00:25:11.150 --> 00:25:13.690 is the gold that fills the cracks. That is a 00:25:13.690 --> 00:25:16.130 beautiful image. And I want to leave the listener 00:25:16.130 --> 00:25:18.109 with one final provocation. We talked about his 00:25:18.109 --> 00:25:24.549 name. Saba. The grandfather. The wet nurse. The 00:25:24.549 --> 00:25:27.150 bread. The ultimate riddle. Think about the power 00:25:27.150 --> 00:25:29.829 of that choice. He was born into a history he 00:25:29.829 --> 00:25:32.089 didn't choose, with a father he didn't know, 00:25:32.269 --> 00:25:34.569 and a religion that put a target on his back. 00:25:35.049 --> 00:25:37.410 But when he picked up the pen, He didn't write 00:25:37.410 --> 00:25:41.130 as the victim. He wrote as Saba. He essentially 00:25:41.130 --> 00:25:43.910 said, I reject the name you gave me. I will be 00:25:43.910 --> 00:25:46.509 the father of myself. And in doing so, he fathered 00:25:46.509 --> 00:25:48.950 a whole new way of being honest in literature. 00:25:49.109 --> 00:25:51.170 Exactly. We were all, in a way, writing our own 00:25:51.170 --> 00:25:53.210 names over the ones we were given. Saba just 00:25:53.210 --> 00:25:56.450 did it in bold ink. Thank you for listening to 00:25:56.450 --> 00:25:58.710 this deep dive. Go read the Canzonier. It might 00:25:58.710 --> 00:25:59.329 just read you back.