Lucio Piccolo

Piccolo endowed himself with a vast library and mastered the major languages of the European literary tradition (as well as Persian), while living a life of relative solitude.

Montale, impressed by the high quality of the poetry of this unfamiliar writer, invited Lucio Piccolo to participate in the San Pellegrino Literary Meeting.

Upon meeting Piccolo face-to-face, Montale was taken almost completely by surprise: he had expected that this previously unknown author would be a young man, not a baron in his fifties.

A letter accompanying the volume sent to is Montale, stated Piccolo's intention to capture the world and atmosphere of Palermo's churches and convents, and the case of mind of people associated with them, before the memory of them, fast fading, died completely.

[4] Giorgio Bassani, in his preface to the first edition of The Leopard wrote that Piccolo's poems ranked as the best forms of pure lyric produced in Italy at that time.