INSIDE BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY

Alumnus donates Italian book to Special Collections

Alumnus William M. Voelkle, curator of medieval and renaissance manuscripts and department head at the Morgan Library in New York City, recently donated an autographed copy of Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Laus Vitae to the University Libraries’ Special Collections.

Critics consider the book, better known as Laudi del Cielo, del Mare, della Terra e degli E

roi, one of the most original poetic expressions of modern Italy, said Professor Sandro Sticca, who is working on a book on one of D’Annunzio’s French plays. D’Annunzio was a novelist, poet, dramatist and hero of World War I.

Sticca, director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, compared the donation to an autographed copy of Arthu

r Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

The book, published in Milan in 1917, bears a dedication in D’Annunzio’s distinctive handwriting. Sticca translated it this way: “To the Admiral Luigi Cito Filomarino � to the defender of Venice � I offer this naval poem where there is ‘the amoebean chant of war.’ Venice: the last day of 1917.”

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