Enrico Pea: The Writer Discovered by Ungaretti and Translated by Pound

Enrico Pea (1881-1958), an Italian writer from Seravezza, was discovered by poet Giuseppe Ungaretti and later translated into English by Ezra Pound. After a traumatic childhood marked by a flood and the deaths of his father and brother, Pea worked various jobs before becoming a sailor. He moved to Alexandria, Egypt, where he worked for the Egyptian State Railways and met Ungaretti. Together they founded the "Baracca rossa," a popular university for anarchists and idealists. Ungaretti taught Pea to read and write, leading to his first publication, "Fole" (1910), a collection of dialect verses. Pea returned to Italy in 1914, settling in Viareggio and managing the Politeama theater from 1921 to 1944. His masterpiece is the "Moscardino" trilogy (1922-1931), an autobiographical work. The first novel was translated into English by Pound in 1955. Pea had a complex relationship with fascism: initially supportive, he later fell out of favor and left Viareggio in 1943 accused of antifascism. After the war, he moved to Lucca and wrote "Vita in Egitto" (1949). In 1952, he co-founded the Lerici Pea poetry prize. He died of tuberculosis in Forte dei Marmi in 1958.