Fluminensia: Journal for Philological Research (Jan 2013)
REVIEW OF RIJEKA’S WRITER GINO ANTONY’S (CAVALIERE DI GARBO) WORKS THROUGH A PRESS SECTION OF ITALIAN PERIODICALS
Abstract
Gino Antony (Trieste, 1877 – Casalecchio sul Reno, 1948) was a poet, prose writer and playwright. Although he was born in Trieste, he was considered an adoptive of Rijeka as he had lived there almost all his life. As a student in Siena he published a collection of poems Fiori di campo (1899). In Rijeka he started publishing texts in ‘La Voce del Popolo’ in which he described urban conditions and he was a successful writer of ‘elzevirs’ dealing with different topics of urban life. His main interest was related to the theatre and music. He was an animator of the arts club Società Filarmonico-drammatica, the centre from which Rijeka cultural irredentism radiated. He wrote five comedies in Italian: Eroi senza gloria (1904), Poveri illusi (1905), La prima e l’ultima (1905), Aria nuova (1905) and Anime schiave (1906). He also wrote two dialectal comedies (El ritorno and El zogo) that, unfortunately, were never published. However, Antony was better known as a dialectal poet. So he took the pseudonym ‘Cavaliere di Garbo’, and the editor Battara (1907) published his dialectal collection Sonetti fiumani which represents his most significant contribution to the history of Rijeka literature. His sonnets were often published in the Rijeka press of that time, and a great many of them were inspired by the daily politics. In them, the author masterfully uses different registers: descriptive, sentimental, nostalgic, and critical, in a kind of distorted or purified dialect. Since not all of Gino Antony’s works are available today, the aim of this paper is to provide an insight into his works through a press section of Italian periodicals from this period.
