Valentino Zeichen, sometimes incorrectly spelled Zaichen, (born c. 1938), is an Italian

Italian literature

Italian literature is literature written in the Italian language, particularly within Italy. It may also refer to literature written by Italians or in Italy in other languages spoken in Italy, often languages that are closely related to modern Italian....

 poet and writer.

Biography

Zeichen's origins are somewhat obscure, and his year of birth is dubious. In German language

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 the word Zeichen means "sign", and has been suggested that his true name would be Giuseppe Mario Moses, an almost certainly Jewish surname. Zeichen, however, denies this theory. http://www.lastampalavoro.org/cmstp/rubriche/girata.asp?ID_blog=54&ID_articolo=113&ID_sezione=81

Born in Rijeka

Rijeka

Rijeka is the principal seaport and the third largest city in Croatia . It is located on Kvarner Bay, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea and has a population of 128,735 inhabitants...

 (then called Fiume), the son of an Italian-speaking Dalmatia

Dalmatia

Dalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....

n gardener, Zeichen moved with all his family to Parma

Parma

Parma is a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its ham, its cheese, its architecture and the fine countryside around it. This is the home of the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world....

 as a refugee. In 1950 they moved to Rome, where Zeichen currently still lives in a self-made house next to Via Flaminia

Via Flaminia

The Via Flaminia was an ancient Roman road leading from Rome over the Apennine Mountains to Ariminum on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, and due to the ruggedness of the mountains was the major option the Romans had for travel between Etruria, Latium and Campania and the Po Valley...

.

He began to write poems at the age of 18, influenced by surrealist

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 authors like Breton

André Breton

André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....

 and Prévert. His first work was published in 1969 on the literary review Nuova Corrente. Zeichen's first novel, Tana per tutti, was released in 1983.

Zeichen's poetry has been praised for his quick catch on the reader, and the subtle sense of humour underlining it. He is considered among the finests poets today in Europe. A literary award entitled to him, the Premio Zeichen, is held every December in Rome: Zeichen himself is the only member of the jury.

External links

• Page about "the poet living in a 1hut next to the river"