This odd and engaging volume consists primarily of essays written between 1900 and 1944, in which the Italian poet Umberto Saba writes of himself in the third person, providing a truly fascinating critique of his own work. As work of criticism written pseudonymously, and without irony, about one's own work, and for the primary purpose of celebrating that work, the History and Chronicle of the Songbook remains unique in literary history. This is not a work of self-promotion; it is, like all Saba's writing, in poetry or prose, a work of self-definition, even self-creation (from the Translator's Foreword).

Sheep Meadow Press, 1998.
ISBN: 9781878818393. 249 pp.
Translated by Stephen Sartarelli.
Softcover. Near fine.