Antonia Pozzi | |
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| Born | 13 February 1912 Milan, Kingdom of Italy |
| Died | 3 December 1938 (aged 26) Milan, Kingdom of Italy |
Resting place | Pasturo, Province of Lecco, Italy |
| Writing career | |
Movements | Crepuscularism, Hermeticism |
| Signature | |
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Antonia Pozzi (13 February 1912 – 3 December 1938) was an Italian poet.
Antonia Pozzi was born on 13 February 1912, in Milan. She was the daughter of the lawyer Roberto Pozzi and Countess Lina Cavagna Sangiuliani di Gualdana.
She entered the Manzoni High School in 1922. She became romantically involved with her Classics teacher at the Manzoni school, Antonio Maria Cervi; the relationship ended in 1933, possibly due to her parents' intervention. In 1930, she enrolled in the Faculty of Philology of the University of Milan, where she became friends with the poet Vittorio Sereni and other writers of her own generation. In 1935, she received a degree in literature, based on a thesis about Gustave Flaubert.
She had begun writing poetry as a teenager. She kept a diary, wrote letters, and took photographs, recording her studies and travels as well as her feelings. Her home and personal library were in the family villa in Pasturo, at the foot of the Grigna mountains in Lombardy. At one point she planned to write a historical novel set in Lombardy.
In 1938, she worked at the magazine Corrente.
On 2 December 1938, following a barbiturate suicide attempt, she was found unconscious in a ditch in front of Chiaravalle Abbey, a suburb of Milan. She died the next day and was buried in the small cemetery of Pasturo. The family refused to admit it was a suicide, attributing her death to pneumonia. Antonia's will was destroyed by her father. Her poems, written in notebooks and unpublished before her death, were also heavily edited by him for publication.
Pozzi is considered to be one of the most original voices in modern Italian literature. In her lifetime she wrote 300 poems, all published after her death on 3 December 1938, aged 26. Although Pozzi did not gain recognition for her work in her own lifetime, her poems have later been published many times in Italy, and she has been translated into several languages.
Biography: Alessandra Cenni, In riva alla vita, Storia di Antonia Pozzi poetessa, Milano, Rizzoli, 2001
