The article examines how the “native city” is constructed and remembered in the works of the Italian refugee and later emigrant, Gianni Angelo Grohovaz. Born in Fiume (Italy) in 1926, Grohovaz was forced to abandon his city when it was ceded, as spoils of war, to Yugoslavia. After eventually emigrating to Canada, Grohovaz became not only an eloquent voice on behalf of Italian-Canadians, but also a passionate poet for a world and a civilization destroyed, in his view, first by the aftermath of the war and then by Italy’s own perfidy towards Fiume and Istria. Though never able to overcome the pain, Grohovaz does eventually reconcile himself with this irreparable loss of a home, a hometown, and a way of life by suggesting that Canada is, in some ways, very much like Fiume and Fiume is, in some ways, very much like Christ.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Eisenbichler, K., (2025), "'Before the World Collapsed Because of the War': The City of Fiume in the Poetry of Gianni Angelo Grohovaz", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Quaderni d'italianistica

Original publication: Eisenbichler, Konrad. "'Before the World Collapsed Because of the War': The City of Fiume in the Poetry of Gianni Angelo Grohovaz." Quaderni d'italianistica 28 (1): 2009. 115-134. DOI: 10.33137/q.i..v28i1.8552. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Quaderni d'italianistica. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Quaderni d'italianistica under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.