Italian Poetry

Today we read Assoluzione, by Emilio Praga.

I remember watching a late night talk show decades ago, likely when I was in high school and wasn’t really supposed to. The host, Maurizio Costanzo, introduced a lady who was apparently known for having had sexual dalliances with many well known personages. To keep the thing classy, he put it this way: è una donna che ha molto amato (“a woman who loved much”).

That’s basically how this poem by Emilio Praga ends. He is visited by his lover, who is distressed because during confession the priest scolded her for (we assume) her libertine approach to romantic partners.

So he invites her to dinner, and promises to absolve her of her sins himself, if she shows she loves him.

The original:

Today we read Fine del ‘68, by Eugenio Montale.

I was hoping to find something a little more cheerful to welcome the New Year, but I’m afraid it was either another nursery rhyme or Montale.

Sometimes one hears the advice to look at worldly matters and problems “from the perspective of an alien,” so that we can take a point of view that is not enmeshed in the presuppositions and conventions that we grew up into by default.

This is more or less what Montale does in this poem: he looks down on Earth, where festivities for the New Year are about to explode, from the Moon. He distantly sees all that philosophy and literature, all those concerns we are so bent on, all the partying, and finds them strange.

Nothing of that seem to make sense from the Moon, cold and distant, where he is alone. And, he says, when someone dies alone unknown and far away, nobody cares.

The original:

Today we read Nella notte di Natale, by Umberto Saba.

Umberto Saba struggled for most of his life with depression. He fought it by working at his poetry, which was initially not well received; with psychoanalysis, being treated by a student of Freud himself; and later on with opium, to which he became addicted.

His wife’s infidelities, and being on the run to avoid Nazi deportation, certainly didn’t help.

It is said he often oscillated between bouts of depression and periods of creative enthusiasm. This poem seems to describe one of the latter.

It is Christmas night, and he is trying to write, when he suddenly feels overwhelmed by a “force of love”, that soothes his feverish heartbeats.

The sestina opens with him addressing the Christmas night, asking it what the source of this power is. And the answer is, of course, Jesus.

The original:

Today we read Il pellerossa nel Presepe, by Gianni Rodari.

Gianni Rodari is a celebrated author of children stories and poetry. In this poem he tackles themes of diversity and inclusion in a way that might appear questionable to contemporary sensitivities, but was very much intended in the most ecumenic and liberal way possible.

He imagines a statuette of a native american ending up inside a nativity scene, and engages in a discussion with his little readers. At first he says “that’s not your place, go away,” but slowly and surely the doubt is sown.

Does he really bother the angels? He came a long way, maybe because he heard the message of acceptance and universal love. (And do keep in mind Rodari was a lifelong proponent of secular education.)

What do you say, kids, shall we let him stay here?

I’m sure they were happy to have him, in the end.

The original:

Today we read Cerchi chi vuol le pompe e gli alti onori, by Lorenzo de Medici.

Florence in the second half of the 1400s is one of those places where people would be tempted go, should time travel become available.

And at the center of it all, Lorenzo de Medici: de-facto ruler of Florence, a great magnate of the arts, and an artist himself. He is known as Lorenzo il Magnifico (the Magnificent) for a reason.

His most notorious poem is certainly the Canzona di Bacco (“The song of Bacchus”), a hymn to youth famously stating that di doman non c’è certezza (“there’s no certainty of tomorrow”). But here we reproduce a more sober sonnet.

Lorenzo laments all the headaches and worries that come with power and money. Whoever wants palaces and fame, have at it! I relax only in a nice little glade, with birds singing; or in a dark forest; where my duties don’t distract me from the contemplation of beauty and of my beloved.

Needless to say, these thoughts remained, shall we say, “on paper”, and he didn’t give up his power — quite the opposite…

The original:

Today we read Interno, by Sandro Penna.

Sandro Penna had a gift to turn the commonplace, and sometimes the straight-up vulgar, into sublime.

But then a boy appears, asleep. He is introduced by a verse that describes him with one such pejorative; but the next one, after a compelling enjambment, breathlessly declares him beautiful.

And suddenly the whole poem is suffused by the loveliness of a sleepy boy cuddling with a cat.

Note also the surface simplicity of the composition, that belies extreme metric control (best noticed by turning on the appropriate option above). The second and last verse have the same stress pattern (and the first one, too, if one adds one more syllable at the beginning).

The original:

Today we read A una zanzara, by Gianfrancesco Maia Materdona.

This light, little poem was likely intended as a Baroque exercise in extravagance. The author, about whom we know basically nothing, talks for fourteen verses about, of all thing, a mosquito.

It is variously described as a wandering trumpet, a flying murmur, and in general something bent on preventing him from sleeping.

And in the sestina, the usual twist: the poet tells the mosquito there’s no point in annoying him, because he is so lovesick that he won’t sleep anyway. And so, he suggests, it should rather go to lady who, by not reciprocating his love, is the cause of his insomnia. By piercing her, who is invulnerable to love’s arrows, the mosquito will gain everlasting renown.

The original:

Today we read Lavandare, by Giovanni Pascoli.

When Virgil, at the beginning of the fourth Eclogue, announces that he is going to sing of “bigger things,” he justifies this by saying that not everybody likes “humiles myricae”: humble tamarisks.

Pascoli, on the other hand, chose the Latin name of this humble shrub for the title of his most celebrated collection of poems, thus declaring his intention of focusing on small things: the countryside, everyday objects and activities, farmers, workers.

We start with the image of a plough forgotten in the middle of a field, and we hear in the distance the work and song of the washer-women. In this atmosphere, where everything seems observed from afar and in solitude, a woman, abandoned by her husband, compares herself to the discarded tool.

The original:

Today we read S’i’ fosse foco, by Cecco Angiolieri.

Francesco Angiolieri (and to this day Francescos are sometimes nicknamed Cecco) is an early example of the archetype of the rich, spoiled young man about town, generally up to no good. Or at least that’s the character he created in his poetry.

He is always complaining that his father is stingy with money; he glorifies wine and women; he apparently spends most of his time gambling.

Although we know that his life was… adventurous, he was probably exaggerating. He is writing, after all, in the tradition of comic poetry.

In this particular, and extremely famous, poem he imagines what he would do if he had carte blanche: destroy the world, play tricks on everybody, killing his parents (for inheritance I guess).

And here is a contemporary musical rendition, by the famous singer-songwriter Fabrizio De André:

The original:

Today we read Deh non insuperbir per tuo belleza, by Poliziano.

In this very short poem, Poliziano reminds a beautiful lady that her beauty is transitory. She should not, then, grow haughty or vain.

Rather, she should enjoy it while it lasts — or, as he puts it, … pluck the flower.

The original: