Resumen de Saba, Giotti, Bazlen, Svevo: novità dall’Archivio del «Centro di Studi Triestini Giani Stuparich» di Anita Pittoni
Between the years 1957 and 1961 Umberto Saba, Virgilio Giotti and Giani Stuparich passed away in Trieste; these three figures were all closely tied to Anita Pittoni, who founded the Lo Zibaldone publishing house in 1949. To honour them, she began to set up the Giani Stuparich Centre of Trieste Studies [Centro di Studi Triestini Giani Stuparich]. It was the very first attempt to create a literary archive (this was some years before Maria Corti’s efforts), one that would collect and house autographs (e.g. the ten books of Saba’s Canzoniere and his poem “A mia Moglie [To My Wife]”), writers’ personal notebooks, print proofs of the works of Svevo, Saba and Giotti, and correspondence (including letters written by Bazlen to Saba and to Pittoni herself). It was to include a hodgepodge of documents penned by the foremost 20th-century writers from Trieste, and its ideological aim was to convey Trieste’s ‘Italianness’. This article combines an archival and bibliographical approach so as to clarify the origins and structure of the Centre, which Pittoni had planned to eventually donate to the City of Trieste in exchange for ten million lire. The City’s unexpected refusal led her to sell all the material piece by piece up until 1982, when she passed away. Thanks to this article, a clear light is finally shed on this lost memory.
