DOPLICHER, Fabio 1938-2003

PERSONAL: Born September 11, 1938, in Trieste, Italy; died 2003.

CAREER: Poet, performance artist and literary critic. Founder of journal Stilb: Spettacolo, Scrittura-Spazio.

AWARDS, HONORS: Premio Montale, 1985, for La rappresentazione; Premio Pellegrino, 2001, for Compleanno del millennio.

WRITINGS:

Il girochiuso (poems; title means "The Enclosed Circle"), Trevi (Rome, Italy), 1970.

La stanza del ghiaccio (title mean "The Room of Ice"), De Luca (Rome, Italy), 1971.

I giorni dell'esilio (poems; title means "The Day of Exile"), Lacaita (Manduria, Italy), 1975.

La notte degli attori (title means "The Actor's Night"), Carte Segrete (Rome, Italy), 1980.

Poesia diffusa (poems), Shakespeare (Brescia, Italy), 1982.

La rappresentazione (poems; title means "The Performance"), Stilb (Rome, Italy), 1984.

(Editor, with Umberto Piersanti and Dino Zacchilli) Poesia della metamorfosi (poetry anthology), Stilb (Rome, Italy), 1984.

Curvano echi dentro l'universo, Vinelli (Foggia, Italy), 1985.

(Editor, with Umberto Piersanti) Il pensiero, il corpo: antologia posia italiana contemporanea (poetry anthology), Stilb (Rome, Italy), 1986.

(Editor) Il teatro dei poeti: antologia catalogo (poetry anthology), CTM (Rome, Italy), 1987.

(Editor) Antologia europea: le prospettive attuali della poesia in Europa (poetry anthology), Stilb (Avezzano, Italy), 1991.

Selected Poems, translated by Gaetano A. Iannace, revised by Ruth Feldman, Garland (New York, NY), 1992.

(Author of introduction) Maria Victoria Atencia, La parola precisa/La palabra precisa, translated from the Spanish, edited by Emilio Coco, Levante (Bari, Italy), 1993.

Esercizi con la mia ombra: poesie 1969–1994, Caramanica (Marina di Minturno, Italy), 1995.

Compleanno del millennio (title means "Birthday of the Millennium"), N. Aragno (Turin, Italy), 2001.

Contributor of poems to periodicals.

Author's works have been translated into German and Spanish.

SIDELIGHTS: Italian poet and performance artist Fabio Doplicher was born in Trieste in 1938, but moved to Rome at age sixteen following the death of his father. According to Mario B. Mignone in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Doplicher's years in Trieste were formative not only because he spent his childhood and adolescence there, but also because the city "contributed to a certain idiosyncratic development of his poetry." In Mignone's view, Doplicher's verse is "peripheral to Italy but on the main cultural pathways to and from central Europe"; thus his work is free of influences of "the cultural mainstream."

Doplicher's father, a wealthy businessman, built a large library of literary works. A learned man, he was the first Italian to translate works by August Strindberg into Italian. Another influence on Doplicher was the social circle of one of his uncles, which included many important Trieste artists and poets. This background gave Doplicher a grounding in classical literature and middle-European culture that placed him at odds with Italy's prevailing avant-garde artistic movement in Italy.

Doplicher's mother was Jewish, and this dual heritage—incorporating both Jewish and Christian traditions—resulting in his questioning where his true identity lay. This theme can be seen in such poetry collections as La stanza del ghiaccio, La rappresentazione, and Curvano echi dentro l'universo. According to Mignone, Doplicher's "writing becomes dark and prophetic when he describes mankind's woes and outrages, but he allows some hope for ultimate survival. He sees life as fascinating in its phenomenal richness."

The poet received two awards for his poetry, including the 1985 Premio Motale for La rappresentazione, considered by most critics to be Doplicher's greatest achievement as a writer. As Mignone commented, "the poems develop a personal dialogue that achieves, at times, great lyrical intensity." The critic summed up Doplicher's works by writing that his poetry is "cultured but always at the edge of the abyss." It is "a search for humankind's place in existence with the purpose of discovering … the best possible road toward survival and the creation of valid goals"

In addition to publishing his own work, Doplicher was active in promoting the works of other Italian poets through his editorship of several verse anthologies and the arts journal Stilb: Spettacolo, Scrittura-Spazio, which he founded. He made his home in Rome for many years and died in 2003.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 128: Twentieth-Century Italian Poets, Second Series, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1992, pp. 132-138.

Mancinelli, Franco, Poeti di frontiera, Stilb (Rome, Italy), 1983.

PERIODICALS

Italian Quarterly, winter, 1984, Franco Zangrilli, interview with Doplicher, pp. 57-72.

Limoni (annual), 1996, interview with Doplicher, pp. 71-84.

Ponte, January, 1983, Umberto Piersanti, "L'inquieto universo di Fabio Doplicher," pp. 86-94; February, 1990, Ernestina Pellegrini, "Parole e terra. La poesia di Fabio Doplicher," pp. 103-122.

Quaderni d'Italianstica, spring, 1987, pp. 102-123.