Rafael Alberti Merello is regarded as a remembered voice of poetry from a life that spanned 1902 to 1999. Through a determined and dynamic aesthetic, his work moved through many currents, including neo-popularism, Gongorist baroque, surrealism, civic verse, and revolutionary political poetry. Readers who know Garcilaso, Góngora, Lope, Bécquer, Baudelaire, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Machado, and Alberti sense nostalgia echoing through the branches of a grove, the distant returns of life, a sailor on land, and a poet born of the sea. Alberti is described as a figure who moves with the folds and curves of groves as a writer. He settled in Rome from Argentina on May 28, 1963, and stayed there until April 27, 1977, before returning to Spain. In his book Rome, Danger for Hikers, he reflects on life in the Italian capital and daily experiences. He and his wife, María Teresa León, initially lived at Via Monserrato 20 and later at Via Garibaldi 88 after receiving the Lenin Peace Prize, absorbing the colorful, popular, street reality that Alberti sang. Far from nature poetry and the spiritual distress of the Argentine period, there is a deep link between history, city life, and poetry. The Alberti-León household in Rome supported themselves through the sale of the poet’s graphic works, as publishing his first Rome book, an anthology of poems, in Italy proved impossible until May 1964. Poems were sent in February 1968. The collection, originally titled peligro para caminantes, appeared in Mexico on July 18, 1968 with editor Joaquín Mortiz under Max Aub. In 1972 Mondadori published a bilingual edition, though not all poems from the volume were included. Alberti chose Rome over other locations because a Milan-based publisher, Mondadori, arranged by Vittorio Bodini and Eugenio Luraghi, aimed to reach a Latin American readership. The project did not fully recover, and the chill of Milan sent him back to Rome, a city he had known since the 1930s.
A book of danger, renewed vigor and a certain nostalgia for walkers, Rome is a tribute to the poet Giuseppe Giocchino Belli, born in 1791 and died in 1863, contrasting happy chaos with dirty bustle and monumental beauty, lively street life. The cheerful and humorous Alberti is filtered through the local neighborhood and the city’s artistic wealth. Lyricism and humor blend with tenderness and sarcasm. Written between 1964 and 1967, the work is arranged in four unnumbered chapters of uneven length, with a poem serving as a preface.
The first part comprises “X Sonnets,” each beginning with an excerpt from Belli that continues a dialogue started in the prologue. It is a concise journey through ten stages from exile in America to the outlines of a fascinating Rome, weaving Quevedo-like resonances with a sense of materiality and corporeality. The prose and verse mingle in playful rhymes and varied textures.
The second part is “Loose Verses, Scenes, and Songs,” featuring a variety of distorted explanations, daily life steeped in humor and depth, and eight sequences of loose verse with tones ranging from anti-church critique to explosion, exile, and nostalgia. Five landscape poems echo the dialogue songs of the Cádiz-born author’s early works, where marginal voices reign amid misery. In “La puttana andaluza” the scene of La lozana andaluza by Francisco Delicado is evoked, and a neighbor’s quiet mischief appears in “Dialogue mute with the neighbor.” The understated humor, the simple refrain in “Boredom,” the emotional pull of “The Son” where an old woman sacrifices food for a nameless cat, and “Two friends” initiating a dialogue between a ragtag and a nag—all contribute to a sense of marginalization and a sharp, ironic voice that echoes past Spanish exiles.
The third section contains “XI Sonnets,” including the comic “Gatos, gatos y gatos,” inspired by a Quevedo-inspired tale, and “Oyes correr en Roma,” referencing sources of augmentation and reverence for water. The final chapter, “Named Poems,” includes nine ekphrastic pieces honoring painters and sculptors: Ugo Attardi, Bruno Caruso, Algi Sassu, Guido Strazza, Carlo Quattrucci, Giuseppe Mazzullo, Corrado, and Umberto Mastroianni, celebrating vitality, color, and form.
This edition features a critical apparatus and an appendix with four texts added by Alberti from the work’s second edition in Litoral nº 43-44. Transposition errors have been corrected, enhancing the edition as a key reference for readers who seek a richer understanding of Alberti’s time. The work is a vivid mirror of the eternal city, where artistic and historical intuition reveals a deeply personal portrait of Rome.