Childhood and education (1871–1886) Carlo Alberto Camillo Salustri was born in Rome on 26 October 1871. His father, Vincenzo, was a waiter from
Albano Laziale, his mother, Carlotta Poldi, was a
Bolognese seamstress. He was the second-born child of the Salustri family and was baptized on 31 October in the
Church of San Giacomo in Augusta, when the fourth name, Mariano, was added. A year later, in 1872, at the age of three, his sister, Elisabetta, died of
diphtheria. His tormented childhood was affected again two years later, on 1 April 1874, by the death of his father Vincenzo. After the death of her husband, Carlotta Poldi decided to move with her son Carlo to
Via Ripetta, where they stayed for only eleven months, before moving again to the palace in Piazza di Pietra, belonging to the Marquis Ermenegildo del Cinque, Carlo's godfather. It is believed that Carlo owes his acquaintance with Filippo Chiappini, a Romanesco poet and disciple of
Belli, to the Marquis; indeed, Chiappini's sonnet Ar marchese Riminigirdo Der Cinque (To the Marquis Riminigirdo Der Cinque), addressed to Trilussa's godfather, seems to be referring to Carlotta Poldi and her son in the last triplet. (Filippo Chiappini, Ar marchese Riminigirdo Der Cinque An article in the
Corriere della Sera of 7 November 2020, in the sports pages, shows a photo of Trilussa next to that of a young athlete captured wearing the
Lazio Sports Club jersey. The two are almost identical: the photo was in fact taken inside the Casina dell'Uccelliera in Villa Borghese between 1906 and 1913, the site of the former official headquarters of the sports club. Trilussa, a well-known freemason, knew all the directors of the
Lazio Sports Club and was friends with
Giggi Zanazzo and Nino Ilari, well-known poets and playwrights who were regulars at the club. Sandro Ciotti, a well-known Lazio youth footballer, Lazio fan and future sports broadcaster born in Rome, had Trilussa as his
godfather.
Debut and the Stelle de Roma (1887–1890) File:Filippo_Chiappini.jpg|thumb|Portrait of Filippo Chiappini, Trilussa's mentor, who insisted that Trilussa continue his studies. In a letter to his mother Carlotta he wrote: "Send him to take this exam in Rieti, Terni or some other town where he will not have to suffer a humiliation that would be painful for him, and when he comes back here with his licence have him enrol in the Institute and let him study accountancy. With three years at the Institute, he can get his technical license and can get a government job [...] Don't tell me it's late, because it's not true." In 1887, at the age of sixteen, he presented one of his poems to Giggi Zanazzo, the dialectal poet director of Rugantino, asking for it to be published. The sonnet, inspired by
Belli, entitled L'invenzione della stampa (The Invention of Printing), begins with
Johann Gutenberg's invention and ends with a criticism of contemporary printing in the final tercets: (Trilussa, L'invenzione della stampa) Zanazzo agreed to publish the sonnet, which appeared in the edition of 30 October 1887, signed at the bottom with the
pseudonym Trilussa. From this first publication he began an assiduous collaboration with the Roman periodical, thanks also to the support and encouragement of Edoardo Perino, editor of
Rugantino, which would lead the young Trilussa to publish, between 1887 and 1889, fifty poems and forty-one prose works. Among the many poems printed between the pages of
Rugantino, the
Stelle de Roma (Stars of Rome), a series of about thirty
madrigals, that paid homage to some of the most beautiful young women in Rome, were a resounding success. Starting with the first
stella, published on 3 June 1888, the poems dedicated to Roman women gradually gained such popularity that they involved the entire
Rugantino editorial staff. Several authors, hiding behind pseudonyms, would try their hand at writing poems entitled to
stelle along the lines of those of Trilussa. The popularity of his compositions led Trilussa to select twenty of them and, after revising them and making substantial changes, to publish them in his first collection of poems,
Stelle de Roma. Versi romaneschi (Stars of Rome, Roman verses), published in 1889 by Cerroni and Solaro. However, his sudden popularity brought with it criticism from Belli's disciples, who attacked him for the themes he dealt with and accused him of using the Romanesco dialect combined with Italian. Among them was Filippo Chiappini himself, who, under the
pseudonym Mastro Naticchia, mocked his pupil by means of two poems published in
Rugantino. After his first work was published, his collaborations with
Rugantino decreased in frequency; however, Trilussa remained strongly tied to the publisher Perino, with whom, in 1890, he published the almanac ''Er Mago de Bborgo. Lunario pe' 'r 1890'' (The Village Magician. 1980 Almanac). It is a revival of the eponymous almanac conceived in 1859 by the Roman poet Adone Finardi, produced in collaboration with Francesco Sabatini, known as Padron Checco, and the illustrator Adriano Minardi, alias Silhouette. Trilussa wrote for the almanac a sonnet for each month of the year, with the addition of a closing composition and some prose in Roman dialect.
The Don Chisciotte and the Favole Rimodernate (1891–1900) The experience of the almanac was repeated the following year with ''Er Mago de Bborgo. Lunario pe' 'r 1891 (
The Village Magician: 1891 Almanac)'': this time the texts are all by Trilussa, without the collaboration of Francesco Sabatini, but accompanied again by Silhouette's drawings. In the meantime, the Roman poet collaborated with various periodicals, publishing poems and prose in ''Il Ficcanaso. Almanacco popolare con caricature per l'anno 1890
, Il Cicerone
and La Frusta (''The Meddler. Popular Almanac with Caricatures for the year 1890, The Cicerone, and The Whip). However, Trilussa's most important collaboration came in 1891, when he began writing for the
Don Chisciotte della Mancia, a daily newspaper with national circulation, alternating
satirical articles targeting
Crispi's politics with city chronicles. His production for the paper thickened in 1893, when the newspaper changed its name to
Il Don Chisciotte di Roma, and Trilussa, at the age of twenty-two, joined the newspaper's editorial board. It was during this period that Trilussa prepared the publication of his second volume of poems,
Quaranta sonetti romaneschi (
Forty Roman Sonnets), a collection which, despite its name, contains forty-one sonnets, selected mainly from recent publications in Il
Don Chisciotte di Roma and partly from the older poems published in
Rugantino; the collection, published in 1894, marked the beginning of the collaboration between Trilussa and the Roman publisher Voghera, a relationship that would continue for the next twenty-five years. It was on Luigi Arnaldo Vassallo's newspaper that the fable-writer Trilussa was born, between 1885 and 1899: twelve of the poet's fables appeared in
Don Chisciotte; the first among them
was La Cecala e la Formica (The Cicada and the Ant), published on 29 November 1895, which, in addition to being the first fable ever written, and the first by Trilussa, is also the first of the so-called
Favole Rimodernate (
Modernised Tales), which Diego De Miranda, the editor of the column
Tra piume e strascichi, in which the fable was published, thus announced: (Diego De Miranda Trilussa, in financial difficulties, asked Isacco di David Spizzichino, a moneylender, for a loan, guaranteeing to pay him back after the publication of his next book. But the book was late to be published, and Isacco sent a peremptory letter to the poet; Trilussa decided to report the story with the cheerfulness and irony that always distinguished him: he included in the collection a dedication to his usurer and the intimidating letter as a preface to the work. The
President of the Republic Luigi Einaudi appointed Trilussa
senator for life on 1 December 1950, twenty days before he died (in one of the first issues of
Epoca dedicated to the news of his death in 1950, could be read that the poet, long since ill, and prescient of the imminent end, had commented with unchanged irony: "They have appointed me senator to death"; the fact remains that Trilussa, although seventy-nine at the time of his death, insisted, with old-fashioned coquetry, on declaring that he was 73). His last words, pronounced almost in a whisper to his faithful maid Rosa Tomei, seem to have been: "I'm leaving now". The maid, however, told the journalist of "Epoca" who interviewed her: "I was sewing a new scarf, now he won't need it anymore". He died on December 21, 1950, the same day of
Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, another Roman poet, and
Giovanni Boccaccio. He was almost two meters tall, as evidenced by the photos accompanying the news of his death, published by the Mondadori weekly
Epoca in 1950. He was a
freemason. He is buried in the historic
Verano Cemetery in Rome, behind the Pincetto wall on the Caracciolo ramp. Engraved on the marble book on his tomb there is the poem Felicità (Happiness). The collection of
Tutte le poesie (Collected Poems) was published posthumously in 1951, edited by Pietro Pancrazi, and with drawings by the author. , in Rome. == Style and themes ==