Trilussa’s rhyming flashes, the people’s d’Annunzio

He ran after women but was chased by creditors, and he wasn’t Gabriele d’Annunzio, to whom he was linked by a sincere and complicit friendship despite being poles apart in style. He was the tallest Italian poet, because he was almost two meters tall, yet he didn’t even write verses in Italian. Carlo Alberto Salustri anagrammed his surname and with the signature Trilussa he went far beyond the ability recognized by his contemporaries to give a smile with a lightning metaphor, a paradox, a comic underlining, an epigram.

The nonconformist who escaped the regime’s censorship and defined himself as “non-fascist”

Born in Rome on 26 October 1871, Trilussa made irony a sharp weapon for an original way of being “against” or in any case always out of the mainstream. He passed away on December 21, 1950, seventy-five years ago, yet his rhymes have remained proverbial and have always been republished. He did not seek Aesop-like moralism but revealed under the brilliant glaze both the characters of man and his weaknesses and hypocrisies, moving with ease from poverty, nobility and bourgeoisie, of which he knew how to grasp those aspects that escaped most.

Too easy and too popular to be considered snobbish by academia and critics, he was only too able to escape even fascist censorship. He never joined the party but neither did he claim to have been anti-fascist when it was convenient to declare himself as such after the Second World War. Even with himself he was ironic, so much so that he defined himself as “non-fascist”, and this would be enough to make us reflect on the cloying controversies of our contemporaneity.

He said goodbye to school so as not to become an accountant and made his debut as a poet at sixteen

Son of a waiter and a seamstress of Bolognese origins, fatherless at a young age, he demonstrated aversion to the discipline of studies and ultimately decided to do without it despite being recognized as having strong intellectual gifts. He swore that he would never, ever become an accountant and made his debut as a dialect poet at the age of 16, managing to have a Bellian-inspired sonnet published in the magazine “Rugantino”, not without originality, which did not escape the director Giggi Zanazzo. He will never stop, with satirical writings, collections of poems, fables, all by Trilussa, a poet who lived on poetry through ups and downs, popular like few others.

The love for women and the gift of derision without moralism

Bargaining from the point of view of income from this activity, he had no scruples about reciting his biting verses in literary circles, in salons and even in taverns and café chantants, so fashionable at the end of the century, which were in tune with his character and his way of being. He also gave himself an experience in Germany together with the quick-change artist Leopoldo Fregoli, he experienced a disillusionment of love and a series of adventures that did not even bring him to the threshold of the altar.

For over half a century there was nothing that did not attract his attention with the filter of intelligence that emerges from his writings in rhyme and prose, between disenchantment and mockery of society, with the vices, cunning and weaknesses inherent in man. Brilliant and melancholy, enlightening and twilight, satirical and disillusioned, acute and disengaged, he created without setting stylistic or thought boundaries. Telling life in chiaroscuro, like a nocturnal landscape illuminated by unpredictable flashes.

The bee of happiness, the chicken of statistics and “Er nativity scene”

To define happiness, a small bee and just five lines were enough: “There is a bee that lands / on a pink button: / it sucks it and goes away… / All in all, happiness / is a small thing”. He wanted exactly this as an epitaph. Using the image of a dove, he highlighted that even those who know how to fly high in life can lose their way. The wise tortoise who takes a step longer than his paw and rolls down a cliff, remaining upside down, says that at least he can see the stars. Trilussa’s chicken explains better than an economics tome how statistics can be deceptive: if one eats two and the other none, the result is one each. And his shoe shiner is truly a philosopher of everyday life and practice, who oscillates from the art of making do to dreams of a better future that will never arrive.

“Er Presepio” should be learned by heart in schools during the Christmas holidays: it is one thing to set up a sumptuous representation of the birth of the Redeemer, another to apply all the Christian principles of love, solidarity, closeness to others, because the true nativity scene lives in the heart. Trilussa’s masks are more ironic and more sardonic than Pirandello’s, but this does not mean they are less significant and less profound as a tool for reading and interpreting reality and its contradictions.

“I’m not a skeptic. I’m a believer with difficulty”

Using the Roman dialect adapted to his style and the lessons of classical Romanism, he delivered his pills of wisdom to poetry and fables which entered into life as well as into literature, thanks to a vernacular harmonized with Dante’s language. He had something for everyone and spared no one, starting with himself. “One day the Man of destiny / finding himself invited to a party / puffed out his chest better than a turkey / and greeted the Poet among those present: / “To the greatest of all I bow”. / “It’s true” replied the one standing at attention / “it’s not for everyone to measure two metres”: the two-metre man was him, the one of destiny Mussolini.

The Duce confided to Emil Ludwig, who put it in writing: “I allowed Trilussa’s poems because they are witty.” After the Second World War, the parties seized on his verses which hit the mark as slogans. In 1947 here and there they wanted him mayor of Rome, and obviously he didn’t let himself be caged. Politics did not interest him and in his bestiary he had left exhaustive rhymes: “Today the priest is half a liberal / and the liberal is half a Jesuit / if you remain half white and half black / you will see that your career is secured”; and also “No, no: – replied the Heartless Cat – / I don’t share anything with anyone: / I’m a socialist when I’m fasting / but when I’m a big man I’m a conservative!”. As for his relationship with faith, despite being the nephew of a priest, he said: “I’m not a skeptic. I’m just someone who believes with difficulty.”

“They made me a senator… to death”

He was popular because he spoke truthfully and without filters to the people, to the common people, who understood him, loved him, knew and recited his poems. He did not possess the courtly flight of d’Annunzio, with whom he loved to walk around Rome often in sweet company, but that immediacy that critics, with a few exceptions, reproached him for despite the obsessive precision of his verses. The poet was amoral, he was humoral, they both loved women and poetry.

The petit bourgeois dimension belongs to him and he boasts of it, even its defects. He sends telegrams and drawings to the publisher Mondadori in which he is being chased by creditors, which are worth more than a thousand words. When President Luigi Einaudi surprisingly appointed him senator of the Republic for life on 1 December 1950, his first comment was “they made me a senator… to death” and then he rejoiced with his faithful housekeeper Rosa: “We are rich”. Exactly twenty days later Carlo Alberto Camillo Mariano Sallustri died, and Trilussa became legend. In fact, it was already there.