Peppino Mereu

Even in a very short period of his life, Peppino Mereu writes a lot: with realism and crude satire he combs through every type of island environment, every emotional situation and draws from it sharp verses, unique images, shocking for his time.
He was born in Tonara in 1872 to a poor family. Orphaned by his father and mother, the fourth of seven siblings, he became a carabiniere out of necessity. He worked for four years in various areas of Sardinia until, falling ill, he returned to his native country, where he died in 1901.
He breaks both the patterns of Arcadia and those of traditional improvised poetry. A border writer, he rejects the fake purity of archaic Logudorese to mix it with the lexical richness of all Sardinian and Italian. Under the veil of cynicism, however, a background of melancholy shines through. To define his poetry, we refer to the 'bohemian' poets, the scapigliatura, the 'cursed poets'. A complex character (the villagers called him 'Su Misteriosu'), Mereu for the Sardinians is above all the author of 'Nanneddu Meu', which in just over thirty verses summarizes the mood of the Sardinians in the face of social changes. His work would have remained almost unknown if Nanni Sulis, the recipient of the composition, had not transcribed his most beautiful poems against the same will of 'Su Misteriosu'.

Update

10/3/2025 - 12:04