DI GIACOMO, SALVATORE. - Dialect poet, born in Naples on 12 March 1860, died there on 4 April 1934. Having abandoned his medical studies, he turned at an early age to journalism and poetry, collaborating with Neapolitan newspapers (*Il pungolo, Il mattino, Il corriere di Napoli*) and taking part in the Sagra di Piedigrotta with songs that became famous. He later became librarian of the Lucchesi-Palli collection and an academician of Italy in 1929.
He moved from poetry to narrative, drama, and historical-anecdotal works, remaining essentially a poet. Thus in *La cronaca del teatro S. Carlino*; *Celebrità napoletane*; *Luci ed ombre napoletane*; *Ferdinando IV e il suo ultimo amore*, etc., while the diligence of his research may be praised, the voice of the poet speaks more strongly. His initial realistic tendency persisted even when psychological depth and the development of pictorial sense came to enrich his art. In his poems, dramas (*A S. Francisco, Assunta Spina, L'abbé Pirru, 'O voto*), and stories (*Pipa e boccale, Novelle napoletane, L'ignoto*), he portrays the sorrows, sufferings, dreams, and passionate impulses of creatures torn between good and evil, and at times lingers in the murky depths of the criminal underworld. The drama *O mese mariano* offers, in contrast to the brutality of some of his compositions (cf. *Documenti umani, La taglia, Lo sfregio*), a tableau in which the motif of pity is most prominent.