Antioco Casula: Montanaru

One of the most known and important poets in Sardinian language is no doubts Antioco Casula, famous with the pseudonym of Montanaru. Born in November 1878 in Desulo, in the middle of Barbagia, Montanaru began testing himself with poetry since he was adolescent.


His youth life was scanned by two disastrous experiences of study, before in Lanusei and then in Cagliari, that forced him to leave school for enlisting in the Corps of Carabinieres. So, for the aspiring poet, began a phase of transfers into the Island, where he could be in contact with the various Sardinian dialects and testing the very big variety.
It was a crucial phase for the education of the young of Desulo.


It is exactly in this period that arises into him a certainty that will accompany him for the whole life: the importance of the preservation of Sardinian language, an essential media of communication of the community and a value founding the Island identity.


So, he decided to write in Sardinian language, preferring above all the logudorese, a dialectal kind so-called “literary”.


Began the first publications and his first young lines were inserted in a volume with the title Boghes de Barbagia (Voices of Barbagia). A publication that received great reviews.

This small and unhoped-for literary success incited him to leave the Corps.

He came back to Desulo, where he taught in the elementary schools, working simultaneously as a clerk in a post office.

Two mournful events represented a bad symbol for his life.


During two years, died his eldest son and his wife. His poetry became more intense and moving.


However, it was thanks to the volume Cantigos d’Ennargentu (Songs of Gennargentu) that he was inserted in the entourage of the greatest Sardinian poets.
The presence of another family tragedy was the prelude of a phase of very big depression and inside discouragement. Sos cantos de sa solitudine, the third volume of poems, incarnates this intense existential misfortune.


That of Montanaru is a natural and direct poetry, forged by pain that finds in the Sardinian language a musicality and a strong rhythm. A noble, passionate and simple poetry, that puts inevitably the poet of Desulo in the highest step of the whole poetry in Sardinian language.


In Desulo, it is still possible to visit the house where he lived and worked, today become a museum.