Thanks to his teacher, Marcellina Dalto, Zanzotto already knew how to write when he started the elementary school in 1927. He passed immediately to the second grade. As the poet recounts in his "Self-portrait", he already took pleasure in the music of words: "I felt something infinitely sweet listening to chants, nursery rhymes and little verses, even those of the children's magazine "Il Corriere dei Piccoli" -- not so much in singing, but insofar as they were pronounced or simply spoken, according to harmony linked to the very function of language, to its inner song."