Giorgio Orelli

Giorgio Orelli (25 May 1921 – 10 November 2013) was an Italian-speaking Swiss poet, writer and translator.

He was born in Airolo in the canton of Ticino and was educated at the University of Fribourg, where he was a student of the Roman philologist Gianfranco Contini. He taught Italian Literature at the Higher School of Commerce in Bellinzona.

Giorgio Orelli was a post-hermetic poet. In the anthology of Piero Chiara and Luciano Erba, he appeared as a poet of the Fourth Generation. Called the Tuscan from Ticino by Gianfranco Contini, Orelli was often associated with the "Lombard Line" of "sober moral realism".

He was also known as a translator of Goethe and Andri Peer. He contributed to various literary magazines (Il Verri, Paragone, Letteratura). His cousin Giovanni Orelli was also a writer and poet.

Giorgio Orelli died in Bellinzona in 2013. He was the cousin of the writer Giovanni Orelli and the uncle of the alpine skier Michela Figini.

Poetic works

Né bianco né viola, Lugano, Collana di Lugano, 1944. Prima dell'anno nuovo, Bellinzona, Leins e Vescovi, 1952. Poesie, Milan, Edizioni della Meridiana, 1953. Nel cerchio familiare, Milan, Scheiwiller, 1960. L'ora del tempo, Milan, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1962. 6 poesie, Milan, Scheiwiller, 1964. 5 poesie, con 5 seriografie di Madja Ruperti, San Nazzaro, Switzerland, Serigrafia San Nazzaro, 1973. Sinopie, Milan, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1977. Spiracoli, Milan, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1989. Il collo dell'anitra, Milan, Garzanti, 2001.

Poems translated in English

by Lynne Lawner in Verse Daily, and Jean Garrigue, ed. Translations by American Poets, Ohio University Press, Ohio, 1970 by Marco Sonzogni ,

Prose

Un giorno della vita, Milan, Lerici, 1960. Pomeriggio bellinzonese in Luci e figure di Bellinzona negli acquerelli di William Turner e nelle pagine di Giorgio Orelli, a cura di Virgilio Gilardoni, Bellinzona, Casagrande, 1978.

Translations

Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Poesie scelte, Milan, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1974.

Essays Accertamenti verbali, Milan, Bompiani, 1978. Quel ramo del lago di Como, Bellinzona, Casagrande, 1982 e 1990. Accertamenti montaliani, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1984. Il suono dei sospiri, Turin, Einaudi, 1990. Foscolo e la danzatrice, Parma, Pratiche, 1992. La qualità del senso. Dante, Ariosto e Leopardi, Bellinzona, Casagrande, 2012.

Awards

1944 Premio Lugano 1960 Premio Città di Firenze, Premio Libera Stampa 1979 Honorary Degree, University of Fribourg 1988 Grand Prix Schiller of the Swiss Schiller Foundation 1997 UBS Culture Foundation 2001 Premio Piero Chiara 2002 Bagutta Prize 2008 BSI Award