Nobel Prize Recipient. Salvatore Quasimodo, one of Italy's leading poets of the 20th Century, received world-wide professional recognition after being awarded the 1959 Nobel Prize in Literature. According to the Nobel Prize committee, he received the covet award "for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own times." Since 1958, he received four nominations for the Nobel candidacy with two being submitted by Carlo Bo, a professor of French literature at the University of Urbino. His work falls roughly into two periods, divided by World War II. In the 1930's he was a leader of the "Hermetic" movement of Italian poetry, which made use of metaphysical themes and complex imagery often derived from the Ancient Greeks; some critics accused him of being needlessly obscure. After the war, he turned to socially conscious subjects and more direct language, while retaining the classical impulses of his earlier style. Born of Sicilian parents, his father was a railroad employee. After graduating from a technical school in 1919, he went to the Politecnico in Rome studying engineering, mathematics, Greek and Latin. With a lack in funding, he was unable to finish his degree. He spent the next 10 years as an engineer in an Italian governmental position, writing poetry in his spare time. After his debut in 1930 of three poems in an avant-garde review, he published the collection of poetry include "Water and Land" the same year. By 1935 he abandoned engineering to teach Italian literature at Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan, becoming the department chair in three years. After World War II, his poems had the themes of the horror of war, including injustices of the fascist regime and Italian guilt. Publishing over 30 collections, other publications include "The Sunken Oboe" in 1932, "And Suddenly It's Evening" in 1942, "Day After Day" in 1947, "The Incomparable Earth" in 1958, and "Debit and Credit" in 1966. He was also a highly regarded translator, rendering works by Moliere, William Shakespeare, and E. E. Cummings into Italian. His "Complete Poems" were published in 1984, which was translated to English along with six other collections. Besides the Nobel Prize, he was the co-recipient of the 1953 Etna-Taormina International Prize in Poetry. He married twice. After his first wife's death, he remarried and the couple had a son, who became an actor. While on a trip for a lecture, he suddenly had a cerebral hemorrhage, dying a few days later.