Helle Busacca

Born in a well-to-do family in San Piero Patti, Province of Messina, Sicily, Helle Busacca lived for part of her youth in her birthplace. Then she moved to Bergamo and later to Milan together with her parents. She graduated with a degree in classical letters at the Royal University of Milan. In the following years, she taught letters in various high schools, moving from city to city: Varese, Pavia, Milan, Naples, Siena, and finally Florence, where she died on 15 January 1996. Her papers, which include correspondence, sketches, and rough drafts of published works, as well as many unpublished manuscripts, are kept in a special collection at the State Archives of Florence. In December 2015, at a conference on the centenary of her birth, the Municipal Library of San Piero Patti was named for her.

Helle Busacca, from C'è chi nasce un mattino (There's someone who is born one morning) • Italian — English • E c'è come te e me, chi è nato con la nebbia che nessun sole potrà forare — And there is like you and me, one who is born with the fog that no sun can pierce Busacca's papers, which include correspondence, sketches, and rough drafts of published works, as well as many unpublished manuscripts, are kept in a special collection at the State Archives of Florence. Her poetry and prose have been linked by commentators to events in her personal life, including the suicide of her brother Aldo.. Busacca studied classical literature, and critics have discussed her poetry in relation to modern poetic traditions, including T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.. The suicide of her brother Aldo became a central subject in Busacca's later poetry. Her works connected with this event include I quanti del suicidio (1972), I quanti del karma (1974), and Niente poesia da Babele (1980). In "I quanti suicidio" (1972), the poet invents a language of the spoken word that is simple and immediate, meant for everyone to understand, as an indictment of the Italian system, the cowardice in her country that permitted the suicide of her brother, an unemployed scientist. The language she used, in its fiery directness and immediacy, was completely alienated from the experimental, skeptical, or symbolic language used in the poetry of her contemporaries. Giorgio Linguaglossa writes:

• "I bestioni e gli eroi" and "L'America scoperta e riscoperta", in: Civiltà delle macchine, 1956. • "Il mio strano amico Montale", in: L'Albero, 1986, vol. 39

• Giuoco nella memoria (Modena: Guanda, 1949). • Ritmi (Varese: Magenta, 1965). • I quanti del suicidio (Rome: S.E.T.I., 1972; reprinted: Bologna, Seledizioni, 1973). • I quanti del karma (Bologna: Seledizioni, 1974). • Niente poesia da Babele (Bologna: Seledizioni, 1980). • Il libro del risucchio (Castelmaggiore: Book, 1990). • Il libro delle ombre cinesi (Fondi: Confrontographic, 1990). • Pene di amor perdute (Ragusa: Cultura Duemila, 1994). • Ottovolante, edited by Idolina Landolfi (Florence: Cesati, 1997). • Poesie scelte, edited by Daniela Monreale (Salerno: Ripostes, 2002). • Vento d'estate (Maser: Amadeus, 1987) (prose). • Racconti di un mondo perduto (Genoa: Silverpress, 1992) (prose).

• Contrappunto (autobiographical novel). • Controcorrente (autobiographical novel). • "Una storia senza storia" (short story) • De Rerum Natura (translation from Lucretius).

The Alessandra Contini Bonacossi Archive for Women's Memory and Writing has curated the collecting, organizing, and storing of her papers at the State Archives of Florence.