Poet. Born to a poor family of emigrants in the Bab Souika area, the sixth son of a Sicilian tramway worker and a Genoese of Maltese origins who worked as a street sweeper, Mario Scalesi appeared to be in frail health since his early days. Falling down the stairs of the 'fondouk' where his family resided, he broke his spine and never recovered from injuries sustained, which left him hunchbacked and deformed. Tuberculosis and meningitis attacks kept undermining his life, finally shaking his sanity. Although rejected by the other kids at school, he frequented the local primary where he learnt French, but following the death of his father had to abandon his studies, selling newspapers on the streets. This however did not stop his passion for French poetry. One evening in 1915, Arthur Pellegrin who led the Society of Writers of North Africa, saw a young hunchbacked boy entering his office, who upon leaving a few papers on his desk left in a hurry without saying a word. The papers, full of impeccable poems, moved Pellegrin deeply and soon assigned young Mario to become a literary critic of the "Soleil" magazine. Writing under the pseudonyms of Claude Chardon and Rocca Staiti, Scalesi soon earned his column on "La Tunisine Illustrée". With few friendships, neglected by his family, teased by peers and humiliated by women, sickness led him slowly to dementia. Interned at the Garibaldi Hospital in Tunis, having an Italian passport, he was sent to Palermo, Sicily, and confined to a lunatic asylum. He died there of meningitis and his body was thrown into a common grave. In 1923 with the help of the Society of Writers of North Africa, his poems were collected and published under the name "Les Poèmes d'un Maudit". Despite Yves Châtelain saying that "A day will come which will finally give Scalesi a rightful place in our literature, and where the Italo-Maltese stranger, is universally recognized as a great French poet", he fell into an unjust oblivion across the years.