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 Jean Garrigue, Translations by American Poets, Ohio University Press, Ohio, 1970
 * by Lynne Lawner,
 * 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, Torino, 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