Famous Italian Poetry Quotes

Martoglio also discovered those actors who were to become stars not only in the Sicilian but in the Italian context. The legendary Angelo Musco, Giovanni Grasso and Rosina Anselmi, to name but three of the most widely known, owe much of their fame to Martoglio. They in turn found in Martoglio’s characters the vehicles to best express themselves. It was Nino Martoglio who convinced Luigi Pirandello to begin writing for the theatre. Martoglio and Pirandello developed a very close friendship which eventually led to actual collaboration in the writing of some Sicilian language plays such as A vilanza (Cowardice) (performed on Sept. 8, 1917) and Cappiddazzu paga tuttu, (Capiddazzu Pays for Everything). But at the beginning of their relationship, while Pirandello experienced much critical resistance to his innovative and revolutionary work, Martoglio was a well-established and famous playwright and literary entrepreneur.

In fact as the reputation of the newspaper grew and attracted the most famous and talented dialect poets and writers of his time, such as Pascarella, Trilussa, Di Giacomo, Fucini and others, Martoglio’s reputation as a poet also crossed the straits of Messina into the mainland, and grew to the point that Giosuè Carducci, the first Italian Nobel Prize winner for literature wrote: “Nessuno ha il diritto a dirsi letterato, che non conosca il linguaggio del Meli ed in esso linguaggio i sonetti del Martoglio.”8 (Nobody has the right consider himself a literary person if he does not know the language of Meli and in that language the sonnets of Martoglio.)