Biagio Marin

"I wanted to be the voice of my island, nothing else"

"The sea was for me the word of otherness, the most pure and most immediate incarnation of Divinity"

Biagio Marin (1891–1985) was an Italian poet, best known from his poems in the Venetian language, which had no literary tradition until then. In his writings he has never obeyed rhetoric or poetics. He only uses a few hundred words for his poems.

He was born on 29 June 1891 in the coastal town of Grado, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian county of Gorizia and Gradisca. His family was a middle-class family of modest origins, his father, Antonio Raugna, was an innkeeper. His mother Maria Raugna died early in his life, and he was then raised by his paternal grandmother.

In his youth he was an irredentist. He was sent to the gymnasium in Görz, where is education was in German, there he started to write literary texts in German. After Görz he went to study in Venice, and Florence. In Florence he met the writesrs Scipio Slataper, Giani Stuparich, Carlo Stuparich, Umberto Saba and Virgilio Giotti. He started to write for the magazine Voce (Voice),which was then the most famous magazine of its time. There he began to write his first poems in the Venetian-Friulian dialect. In 1912 he starts to study in Vienna. There he reads Russian and Scandinavian authors and meets the Austrian educator Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster, who will have great influence in its subsequent choices of study and work. He published the Book "Fiuri de tapo", which is the first serious poetry book in the Venetian-Friulian dialect. During his studies in Vienna, there was an Italian student demonstration in favor of the Italian University in Triest, where he was sent as the spokesman for the demonstrators to the dean. In the conversation with the dean he declared that he wishes for Austria's defeat in the war. After two years in Vienna he returned to Florence. He participated in debates with his friends Umberto Saba and Scipio Slataper in the Cafe Aragno about the war, and if artists should go to war.

In 1914 he is sent to Maribor as a soldier for the 47th Infantry Regiment. He deserts to Italia, is already infected with tuberculosis, but fights as a soldier in the Italian army against the Austrian troops.

He graduates in philosophy under Bernardino Varisco, the fascistic philosopher Giovanni Gentile whose idealistic doctrine had already exerted a profound influence on him, was the chairman of the committee. Varisco has offered to his pupil a place at the University. But Marin was eager to run to the front. Arriving in Stra nel Veneto he suffers from a relapse. When an Italian captain treated him boorishly, he protests with the words "Wir Österreicher sind an einen anderen Stil gewöhnt" "Captain, you are a villain; we Austrians are accustomed to different manners"

In the 1940s he writes in his diaries that he believes that only the Nazis could bring order to Europe. Hearing about the Concentration Camp Risiera di San Sabba shocked and depressed him.

In 1945 he becomes involved in the Liberal part of the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale On 27 April 1945 he was asked if he could preside on the Committee for the Liberation of Trieste, and becomes its president.

He gets a job as Professor at the Scuola Magistrale in Görz, but has to leave when he gets into a dispute about his teaching method with the clerus at the school. He used the Gospel a teaching text. Then he works as a school inspector in the mandate of Gradisca d'Isonzo. From 1923 until 1937 he worked as the director of the tourismageny in Grado and as a librarian. After that he works as a Teacher for History, Philosophy and Literature in Triest until 1941. His next vocation was to be the librarian of the Assicurazioni Generali in Triest.

In 1968 he moved back to Grado, where he resided in a House at the beach. His Eyesight deteriorated, and for the rest of his live he was nearly blind and deaf

His private library was moved after his death to the Biblioteca Civica in Grado.

In 1914 he marries Pina Marini with whom he had four children, Gioiella, Falco He knew the family of Art-deco artist and designer Josef Maria Auchentaller, so well that he wrote about an affair Emma Auchentaller had when the couple visited Grado. His son Falco Marin was a poet and essayist, who died during the World War Two in a fight against the Yugoslav partisans in the Province of Ljubljana, Slovenia on 25 July 1943. Shortly before he had joined an anti-fascistic group. In 1977 his nephew Guy commits suicide, and a year later his wife Pina Marini dies.

The writer Claudio Magris considered himself as one of his best friends. He also said that Marin was both brother and father to him. Immediately after the death of his friend, Pier Paolo Pasolini he wrote a Cycle of poems called "El critoleo del corpo fracasao" about him.

His poems, written in the Venetian language, are about the daily life and simple landscapes of his native land. He used the "lingua franca" that the merchants of the city used for his writings. He was influenced by Hölderlin and Heine. Religious thematics occur somethimes in his work. Andrea Zanzotto and Pier Paolo Pasolini had some difficulties with the existence of religious thematics in Marins work. In 1970, the poet decided to publish all the poems written at that time in one volume, which, significantly for his sentimental attachment to his land, was titled "Songs from the Island." His output in the 1970s gained him the attention of Italian audiences. He was now obligated to write in Italian, so that everybody in Italian could understand him. Despite this he only wrote one book in Italian called "Acquamarina" in 1973.

In 1985 he said that publishers where reluctant to publish even a selection of his poetry.

His book "Nel silenzio più teso" is in the Unesco Collection of representative works. He is one of the Founders of the Circolo della Cultura e delle Arti. He was active for many years as president of the "Circolo di cultura italo-austriaco" in Trieste, and he was among the first leaders of the "Incontri Culturali Mitteleuropei" in Gorizia. For Pier Paolo Pasolini, Marin's poems where the greatest Italian verses written in a contemporary dialect. Luigi Dallapiccola´s first work was named after the first book by Marin, Fiuri de tapo. It used Poems by Marin. Peter Handke cites a poem of Marin in his book "Gestern unterwegs"

In 1983 a research center was created, which has its headquarters in the Public Library "Falco Marin". A National Prize called "POESIA IN DIALETTO" is awarded each year to a writer of dialect poetry from the center, the prize taking its name from Marin. The center also awards thesis works regarding Marin.

• 1964 - Bagutta Prize

Footnotes