Abstract

The paper presents some unknown facts about Sibilla Aleramo's life, including her friendship with Emilia Szenwic (1889-1972), Polish journalist, writer and translator, owner of the Villa "Stella Romana" in Positano, where Sibilla "stayed regularly" in the late 1920s and 1930s. The author, having analysed many unpublished documents from the Aleramo's archive belonging to the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci in Rome, reconstructs contacts between the two friends which have left some interesting reminiscences in the Italian writer's work of the 1930s. Thanks to the mediation of Emilia Szenwic, Aleramo translated into Italian "Dom kobiet", a play by the important Polish writer Zofia Nałkowska: her translation intitled "La casa delle donne", remained unpublished, has been preserved (as a manuscript and the typescript draft) in the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci. The paper examines also Szenwic's initiatives for the promotion of the Aleramo's books in Poland.