Born in 1939, is an essayist, novelist, poet and translator. Renowned expert of Leopardi and Baudelaire, he has taught Comparative Literature at the University of Siena and at the Scuola Supe- riore Galileiana in Padua and has held courses and seminars at foreign institutions and universities such as Harvard University, the Collège de France and the University of Salamanca.
His publications include: Il demone dell’analogia (The Demon of Analogy, Feltrinelli, 1986), Nostalgia. Storia di un sentimento (Nos- talgia. The History of a Feeling, Cortina 1992), I fiori di Baudelaire (Baudelaire’s Flowers, Donzelli, 2007), Trattato della lontananza (Treaty of the Distance, Bollati Boringhieri, 2008), All’ombra dell’altra lingua. Per una poetica della traduzione (In the shadow of another language. For a poetics of translation, Bollati Boringhieri 2011), Compassione. Storia di un sentimento (Compassion. The History of a Feeling, Bollati Boringhieri 2013), Il cielo nascosto. Grammatica dell’interiorità (The Hidden Sky. A Grammar of Inner Nature, Bollati Boringhieri 2016).
He has translated in Italian Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Rilke, Valéry, Celan, Jabès, Machado and Bonnefoy.
