Biography of Gesualdo Bufalino

At night the sun comes up

November 15, 1920
June 14, 1996
Born on November 15, 1920 in Comiso (Ragusa), Gesualdo Bufalino turned belatedly to the literary world--thanks mainly to "launch" made by his friend Leonardo Sciascia-with short novel Diceria dell'untore "(1981), in which a hospital stay in a sanatorium in the immediate post-war period is evoked with an extensive use of stylistic means, that you can touch Baroque outcomes between and Expressionists. On the other hand, this atypical manner with the best start in the world of letters, the literary success only at the end of life, or even after death, it is not an isolated event in the literature of the twentieth century but has also involved characters like Tomasi di Lampedusa, Italo Svevo, or Bell.
Gesualdo Bufalino, the dark years of his anonymity, he always lived along the lines of an extraordinary intellectual tension. Fascinated since I was kid from the written word and books, spent hours in the library of his father, blacksmith with the hobby of reading. Stumbled luckily into an old vocabulary, he reinvented the function as a great game and learning tool.
In high school, he attended initially in Ragusa and then from 1936 in Comiso, Italian teacher Paul valiant dantista and beloved pupil between Nicosia of caesarean. In 1939 Bufalino Latin prose Prize winning Sicilian Bandit by the Istituto nazionale di studi romani, with reception at the Palace Venice by Benito Mussolini. He undertook graduate studies in Catania, in 1942 he was forced to stop because drafted. In 1943, a second lieutenant in Friuli, was captured by the Germans after the Armistice. However managed to escape and hide for a while in the countryside of Sacile, then join friends in Emilia, where convulsive months of the end of the regime by giving private lessons. At the end of 1944 falls ill with tuberculosis and was admitted to a hospital in Scandiano; here a doctor quite grasped the provides an impressive library.
After liberation he went to Palermo, in a sanatorium of the Conca d'Oro, from which emerges finally healed in 1946. Meanwhile resumed his studies and graduated in arts at the University of that city. Between 1946 and 1948 thanks to contemporary Roman publishes a group of lyric and prose on two periodicals lombardi, "man" and "democracy"; later, in 1956, will work with some poems in a section of the third Program of the RAI. But while promising literary career he gave up almost immediately, opting for a simple life and retreat, dedicated to soul searching. From 1947 until his retirement he devoted himself to teaching in an institution's degree of Victory, without ever straying from your native country if not for short getaways. Around 1950 he began working on a novel, what will be the dizzying "Diceria dell'untore" but not beyond the sketch; the resumes to term in 1971, subjecting it to a ten-year review. The publication of this masterpiece, as recalled in 1981 (Bufalino had now sixty-one years), preceded by a stunning introduction to a book of old photographs (Comiso yesterday, 1978) and some fine translations from French, immediately turns into a genuine literary event, culminating in the awarding of the Campiello.
The next decade is characterized by a frenzied production ranging from poetry ("bitter honey", 1982) to the prose of art and memory ("Museo d'ombre", 1982), from fiction ("Argo il cieco", 1984; "Man invaded", 1986; "Le menzogne della notte", 1988, premio Strega) to Elzevir and nonfiction ("Lost Wax", 1985; "Light and mourning", 1988; "Autumn", 1990), Sales by aphorisms ("The malpensante", 1987) at anthologies ("dictionary of characters of fiction", 1982; "The wedding", 1989, in collaboration with his wife). Gesualdo Bufalino died on June 14, 1996, in its Comiso, due to a tragic accident.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.