Italian Poetry

Today we read Tacito orror di solitaria selva, by Vittorio Alfieri.

This poem has two main historical referents.

Raro un silenzio, un solitario orrore

(A rare silence, a solitary horror of a shadowy forest never have I liked so.)

On the other hand, the noun selva will forever be associated in Italian poetry with Dante , and specifically the first verses of the Divina Commedia:

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

(In the middle of the walk of our life, I found myself in a dark forest, since I had lost the right path.)

Not so in Alfieri, who experiences the forest both as a terrible and invigorating escape from the mediocrity and spinelessness of his times, and who says he is at home there more than the beasts that inhabit it.

It is a refuge for the tragic hero, whose titanic will is at odds with the restrictions imposed by unworthy rulers, limiting his freedom.

The original:

Today we read La sabbia del tempo, by Gabriele D'Annunzio.

The whole collection of poems in which La sabbia del tempo appears, entitled Alcyone, is a celebration of Summer. It is articulated in five sections, each dedicated to part of the progression of the season, from June to September.

This poem belongs to the second-to-last section, where the peak of Summer is at last bound to start declining into Autumn.

More specifically, this section contains a subgroup of poems, the madrigali dell’estate (“summer’s madrigals”), whose first poem’s first verse reads:

Estate, estate mia, non declinare!

(“Summer, my summer, don’t decline!”)

La sabbia del tempo comes right after: Nature’s response to the poet’s pleadings is time slipping away in his fingers, and growing anxiety at the coming shadows.

The original:

Today we read La sera del dì di festa, by Giacomo Leopardi.

In his short and unhappy life, Leopardi left a staggering amount of prose. A large chunk of it is in the Zibaldone, a sort of daily diary that ranges from Philosophy to Literature to Science — I remember being dumbstruck when I stumbled upon a passage on, I think, Electromagnetism!

Yet his undying fame in Italian literature is mostly due to his very short poetry collection, I Canti, composed of 36 poems, most of which are masterpieces.

He was a materialist, a rationalist and an atheist; he loudly proclaimed not being a Romanticist, and yet he is still generally regarded as one.

This is not my favourite poem of Leopardi’s, but all the others I liked better were longer, sometimes substantially so. This is already an exception to our usual size guidelines, but I really couldn’t make a website about Italian poetry with nothing from my favorite author.

In this poem, after painting perhaps the most beautiful and famous nocturnal scene in Italian literature, Leopardi is alone in his room, on a feast day, and cannot sleep. He has listened to people having fun during the festivities, and now thinks of his love interest.

The original:

Today we read Tacciono i boschi e i fiumi, by Torquato Tasso.

We have mentioned elsewhere the tight relationship between poetry and music. Madrigals are a great example, being often written to be set to music.

This poem by Torquato Tasso was apparently commissioned by musician Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa1. He might not be a household name today, but he has been an inspiration for musicians from Stravinsky to Frank Zappa to Franco Battiato, due certainly to his extremely modern use of dissonance, but also to having quite a reputation (he caught his wife and her lover… in the act, and killed them on the spot).

No such dissonance nor violence appears in this poem. On the contrary, everything is silent and still in the nocturnal landscape. A profound quietness, perfect for the consummation of a night of love — but the lovers, too, have to keep it quiet!

Tasso evokes a sonnet by Petrarca, that starts with the verse

Or che ‘l ciel e la terra e ‘l vento tace

but enjoys much more freedom in the composition. First of all in metrical terms: the masterful alternation of endecasillabi and settenari allows for a more fluid and “rippling” sound.

And the content, too, takes more liberties. Petrarca’s sonnet ended with the sorrows of unrequited love. Even the sonnet by Boccaccio that we previously read only hinted at what the women would do, should their lovers arrive.

Here the poet, like Gesualdo’s wife, is caught in flagrante.

The original:

Today we read La prigionia di Don Ciccio, by Giovanni Francesco Lazzarelli.

Satirical poetry doesn’t get much screen time nowadays, even though in classical times it was a major subgenre.

As a retaliation, Lazzarelli started writing sonnet after sonnet ridiculing his adversary, whom he calls “Ciccio”, by finding 420 creative ways to liken him to the male gonads — one per each poem.

The name of the overall collection, which starts with the birth of Ciccio and follows along his “illustrious” life, is Cicceide. That sounds like Eneide, the famous epic poem by Virgil…

In this particular sonnet, the poor Ciccio is arrested after being found with a prostitute. To get the clever joke in the last terzina, let me explain that in Italian uccello is a slang term for “penis” (close to “cock”, I guess).

The original:

Today we read Amato figlio, or che la dolce vista, by Faustina Maratti Zappi.

Faustina Maratti was said to be quite the beauty — so much so that a noble suitor, after her repeated refusals, tried to kidnap her. Out of that adventure he got a harsh sentence, while she got both a prominent scar and a heroic reputation.

She was an established poet, being a member of the famous Accademia dell’Arcadia — one of whose founders would eventually become her husband.

Their life together was apparently very happy, their house a literary hub of those years. One great sorrow was, however, the death of their first child, at the tender age of two. In this sonnet she tries to reconcile her faith with her natural, motherly pain at his loss.

She is supposed to be happy because her son is now blissfully in the presence of God, but she is worried that her grief is excessive, impious, and will lead her son to think less of her and love her less.

The original:

Today we read La tigre assenza, by Cristina Campo.

Cristina Campo was a sickly child, homeschooled, and grew to be very shy and reserved. She always had a very close relationship with her parents, both successful artists.

The subtitle of this excruciating poem is “pro patre et matre,” which in Latin means “for father and mother.” In it, the pain of their death and their absence from her life is likened to a tiger that devoured every part of her, except her mouth, so the only thing she can now do is to pray.

The original:

Today we read Intorno ad una fonte, in un pratello, by Giovanni Boccaccio.

Boccaccio’s fame is tightly linked to his collection of novels, il Decamerone — especially so in English speaking countries, where he is recognized as a fundamental model for Chaucer’s The Canterbury’s Tales.

But Boccaccio was also a poet. He loved Dante, he admired his friend Petrarca. He certainly appreciated the Dolce stil novo poetry, paradigmatic at the time, which extolled love for a woman as a means to get closer to God.

And yet his poetry can be much less… pious. This is the first poem in his collection Rime, and as such it sets the tone for the entire work. It starts with an almost stock description of a locus amoenus: a pleasant natural setting; beautiful, refined ladies discoursing about love; a liberal use of diminutives (all those nouns ending in -ello or -etto).

But the sestina turns the rarefied setting on its head with a light touch of irony and a naughty smile. One of the ladies asks if they would run away, should one of their lovers arrive — presumably to behave like “proper ladies.” But the other two answer saying, basically, “are you crazy? Of course we wouldn’t!”

The original: