[1] It was largely autobiographical, including details about the title character's friendship and love for a violinist, and his attachment to his native Trieste.

Their roles reflect classical models, with the older man insisting that since he has a beard he must be the active partner in intercourse.

That night Ernesto attends a violin recital and at intermission sees a beautiful boy a bit younger than himself but fails to locate him at the end of the concert.

Mindful of how his treatment of same-sex relations would offend most readers in Italy in the 1950s, Saba did not plan to publish this work.

He planned to continue the story through Ernesto's adolescence to his discovery of poetry, which would be his life's work, and his first experience of love.

When Saba completed four episodes, concluding with Ernesto's confession to his mother, he wrote a one-page explanation for the reader that interrupts the narrative.

He described his inability to continue writing: "Add to those pages, Ernesto's breakthrough to his true calling, and you would in fact, have the complete story of his adolescence.

Carcanet Press published an English translation by Mark Thompson in 1987,[9] with a cover image in saturated colors of a woman walking along the seacoast taken from a painting by a Trieste artist.

[11] A New York Times critic noted that Saba's "forthrightness ... would certainly have raised eyebrows" in the 1950s but that "Anyone reading these scenes today, however, will probably find their sexually explicit content redeemed by the unfailingly affectionate tone.