Today we read L’orologio da rote, by Ciro di Pers.

Complaining about technology is not something modern. So while today we blame social media for decline in mental health and ai for stealing jobs and possibly killing everybody (and I’m not saying I disagree…), back in the 1600s one would complain about… clocks.

Channeling something of a pre-Marxist sensibility, Ciro da Pers sees in mechanical clocks, and in particular in their relentless regularity, a tool that violently cuts up the days, and a stark reminder of the passage of time.

When he hears its tolling he is urged to act, before his allotted time expires.

The concluding terzina is particularly striking. Ciro states that, in a sense, the clock is the cause of time running on; and that when it strikes its bell, it’s actually knocking on our tomb, so that it opens to receive us.

The original:

Today we read Ed è subito sera, by Salvatore Quasimodo.

How do you put the whole of human existence in three verses? Well, this is one way.

Are you an uncharitable reader who isn’t impressed by Quasimodo’s Nobel Prize and would quip “I could also write three lines without even a rhyme”? You then might also maintain that this poem is a fancy way to put the saying “life sucks and then you die.”

But of course there’s more than meets the eye, even just at the technical level. The verses are a double senario, a novenario and a settenario, of descending length as life ends its course.

The endwords of the lines are “Earth”, “Sun” and “evening,” moving from the everyday, to the possibility of something higher, to death.

The original:

Today we read La Nencia di Barberino, by Lorenzo de Medici.

The attribution of today’s poem to Lorenzo il Magnifico is not certain, but has a long tradition. Despite such a lofty author, the topic is very prosaic: a rustic shepherd sings the beauty and various charms of his beloved, Nencia, who gives the title to the composition.

It is a pretty standard theme. The twist is the dramatic change in the social class of the people involved: whereas we are used to courtly love of learned poets for elegant and refined ladies, here we find an illiterate youngster from the lower classes using the language he normally uses (more or less…), and drawing his similes from what he knows in his everyday life.

Here we present only two of the twenty ottave that make up the complete work, just to give a taste of its irony and playfulness.

We are told that Nencia’s teeth are whiter not than pearls, but than horse’s teeth. And that she has more than twenty teeth per side, imagine that!

Also she dances really well: not like an angel, but rather like a cute little goat, skipping around. And when she spins, she is not like the moon or the sun, but rather like the wheel of a mill.

The original:

Today we read Non ha l’ottimo artista, by Michelangelo Buonarroti.

Besides painting, sculpting and designing buildings, Michelangelo also wrote poetry. He might not be often remembered for his literary efforts, which he himself considered a “silly thing,” but his sonnets are quite accomplished.

Love is as usual a recurring theme, but it is seldom explored in itself, in the fashion of Petrarca: most of the time themes like death, sin and eternal salvation are interwoven or take center stage.

The result is often a more expressive, sometimes difficult style, with a dark and ominous outlook.

Today’s sonnet is dedicated to the poetess Vittoria Colonna. Michelangelo uses the trope according to which the sculptor doesn’t invent anything, but rather uncovers what is already hidden in the original block of marble.

The original:

Today we read Sembran fere d’avorio in bosco d’oro, by Anton Maria Narducci.

You gotta love Baroque poetry.

A more realistic turn. You see, in the 1600s hygiene was not what it is today, so it must not have been a rare occurrence to see people scratching their heads with suspicious frequency and intensity.

The beloved of the poet — real or imagined, it doesn’t really matter — still has a fabulous golden mane, just like Petrarca’s did. The difference, and it is a remarkably substantial one, lies in its cleanliness, or lack thereof.

Such is the Baroque equilibrium between poetic and disgusting, commonplace and exalted, traditional and rebellious.

The original:

le fère erranti onde sí ricca siete;

Today we read D’un alto monte onde si scorge il mare, by Isabella di Morra.

Picture it: you are a young, smart girl who adores her father because, among other things, he gives you a literary education. Which is not at all to be taken as a given when you live in the early 1500s.

You are surrounded by unruly and frankly nasty brothers, who envy your father’s attentions for you.

Then you father runs afoul of the powers that be, and has to flee to Paris. You are left alone with your brothers, who confine you by the early age of ten to live inside your castle, perched atop a steep cliff. Your life is reduced to writing poetry for yourself, hating the place of your imprisonment, and longing for your father’s return.

This is what the sonnet describes: Isabella looking out to the sea from her lonely, hated cliff, searching the horizon for ships that might bring her, if not her father, at least news of him.

But her father never came home, even after his pardon: he preferred to climb the ranks at the court in Paris, and abandoned his family back in the sticks.

This veritable Rapunzel had her one little joy in the literary correspondence she maintained with another poet, Diego Sandoval, a neighbouring noble. Their letters had to be sneaked in by her tutor, to avoid suspicions. But of course their brothers got wind of them, immediately suspected a tryst, and thought nothing of killing her to restore the “family honour.”

Such was the short, unhappy life of Isabella.

The original:

Today we read Voi ch’ascoltate in rime sparse il suono, by Francesco Petrarca.

I am a happy subscriber to the Poem of the Day newsletter from the Poetry Foundation, and a few weeks ago I received in my mailbox this version of the opening sonnet of Petrarch’s Canzoniere.

Though I’m of course glad to see Italian authors showcased, and even setting aside my general misgivings about translating poetry, I must admit I would definitely not call this a “translation” from the Italian: perhaps a rather free reinterpretation?

And so, given a severe delay in providing some Petrarca on these pages, here we go.

As mentioned, this is the first sonnet of the collection that cemented Petrarch’s reputation for the ages: the Canzoniere, which means “collection of songs.” As it was the case for the opening sonnet of Boccaccio’s collection, it is a declaration of poetics. But it can also be seen as the capstone of the collection, because it recapitulates the journey of the poet, from the total absorption in his love for Laura, to the later recognition of it as a shameful error, and the very religious turn of the later poems.

What I can’t help but always find striking is how, in describing this “youthful error” of his, he inject in this very poem, so prominent, an obviously-deliberate syntax error. The first two quatrains are a long sentence building up on that Voi, “you who listen,” that one expects to be the subject. And yet, once verse eight arrives, the sentence breaks down, Petrarca becomes the subject asking for forgiveness, and if he asks it of them, at least one preposition is missing all the way back in verse one.

For the master sonnettier, synonymous of formal perfection, and founder of a tradition lasting more than 600 years, it feels like quite a statement.

The original:

Today we read Presagio, by Ada Negri.

Ana Negri was known for her interest in social reform, and her early poetry reflects that, later morphing into patriotism after the experience of the First World War.

This poem was written at a later stage of her life, when she was sixty, and attests to her shift towards more intimate and lyrical themes, lingering on memory.

Here she describes the end of winter, the first glimpses of spring, and likens this liminal moment to the awakening of adolescence in a young woman’s life. The longing for, and anticipation of, the fullness of love; and the warning that when it does arrive, it might not be all that one expected it to be.

The original:

Today we read Mio padre è stato per me l’“assassino”, by Umberto Saba.

Saba’s mother was abandoned by the poet’s father while still pregnant. Understandably she didn’t harbour good memories of him, but went as far as referring to him as “the assassin” when talking to Umberto all through his childhood.

In this sonnet Saba recounts meeting his father later on, when he was twenty. He is presented not with a killer or a mastermind, but with a child, drifting without cares through his life and the world (and his many lovers).

The poet contrasts his mother, who felt all the heaviness of life, with his father’s attitude, his slipping from her hands like a balloon, light and ethereal: not a bad person, really — simply unable to keep his responsibilities.

The original:

Today we read Trasformazione di Dafne in lauro, by Giambattista Marino.

In the full glory of baroque flourishes, Marino presents here the notorious rape of Daphne by Apollo. And the poem, though offset by the beauty of the language and technique, is brutal.

The first quatrain focuses on Daphne, shown in distress, running away, looking for her father, likened to a hunted-down doe. Still, slowly but surely, as she turns into a tree as the last resort to escape from the god, the poet’s sympathy also seems to recede. As if saying: she’s just an object now.

And so in the last terzina there is almost no trace of her left. There’s only the triumph of the god: he might have not gotten her fruit, but he will forever adorn his head with the branches of the laurel: her branches. Violence and god’s will prevail in the end, of course.

The original: