Dario Bellezza

Dario Bellezza
Dario Bellezza in 1971, reading from his Invettive e licenze
Born	(1944-09-05)September 5, 1944 Rome, Italy
Died	March 31, 1996(1996-03-31) (aged 51) Rome, Italy
Occupation	Author, poet, playwright
Nationality	Italian
Notable works	Invettive e licenze, L'avversario, Morte segreta, Ordalia della croce
Notable awards	Viareggio, Gatto Prize, Montale Prize, Fondi la Postora

Dario Bellezza (September 5, 1944 – March 31, 1996) was an Italian poet, author and playwright. He won the Viareggio, Gatto, and Montale prizes.

Dario Bellezza was born in Rome on September 5, 1944. After his studies at a liceo classico in his native city, from which he graduated in 1962, he worked for several Italian literary and poetry magazines: Paragone, Carte segrete, Bimestre, Periferia, and Il Policordo.

Bellezza entered the Roman intellectual world in the mid-1960s when, thanks to literary critic and writer Enzo Siciliano, he became increasingly close to Sandro Penna, Aldo Palazzeschi, Attilio Bertolucci, Alberto Moravia, and Elsa Morante, who eventually became a confidant.

The decade from 1950-1960 was a period in which the working class, the Italian Communist Party, the trade unions, and all their hopes for radical cultural change were dramatically defeated. The political and economic growth of the Christian Democrat middle class and the new, changed Freemasonries prevailed.

Bellezza, thus, lived in a political-cultural era convulsed by the ideological confrontations of the 1960s and the subversive ideological line of the aggressive neoavant-garde that struggled against conventional linguistic codes.

From the early 1960s on, Bellezza collaborated with the magazine Nuovi argomenti, becoming associate director shortly before his death.

When Invettive e licenze (Invectives and Licenses) appeared in 1971, it was hailed by Pier Paolo Pasolini in his introduction: "Here is the best poet of the new generation". Invettive e licenze, notable for its technical rigor, depicts people overwhelmed by bitterness, shame, feelings of guilt, alienation, scandal, and sexual perversions. The poems also express a constant, thinly veiled desire for death.