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Non, Vita, perché tu sei nella notte, by Camillo Sbarbaro
Today we read Non, Vita, perché tu sei nella notte, by Camillo Sbarbaro.
We recently read how Quasimodo, in his Ed è subito sera, referred to life as a “ray of light,” soon disappearing. Sbarbaro starts this poem with a similar, but much more fiery, simile: a quick burst of flame.
It is surprising how much intensity is hidden in this apparently quiet composition, written in plain language and slow, deliberate rhythm.
The glorious aspect of living, the flame, and its tolerable sides, like when Nature calms the poet’s suffering, occupy only the first four verses. The insistent repetition of per and perché (not for this, not for this…) moves the enumeration of the facts of life along, highlighting the lacking and the inadequacy and the ephemerality.
Only at the very and, when we have lived though all the (mostly painful) experiences of a human life, we have the declaration of love for it. We love life not because of rare moments of bliss, or for the long stretches in which nothing much is felt, and not in spite of the pain. We love it because of the desire, though unsatisfiable; because of love, though destined to be never enough; because of the limitless darkness that we can ever only very partially explore.
The original:
Non, Vita, perché tu sei nella notte
la rapida fiammata, e non per questi
aspetti della terra e il cielo in cui
la mia tristezza orribile si placa:
ma, Vita, per le tue rose le quali
o non sono sbocciate ancora o già
disfannosi, pel tuo Desiderio
che lascia come al bimbo della favola
nella man ratta solo delle mosche,
per l’odio che portiamo ognuno al noi
del giorno prima, per l’indifferenza
di tutto ai nostri sogni più divini,
per non potere vivere che l’attimo
al modo della pecora che bruca
pel mondo questo o quello cespo d’erba
e ad esso s’interessa unicamente,
pel rimorso che sta in fondo ad ogni
vita, d’averla inutilmente spesa,
come la feccia in fondo del bicchiere,
per la felicità grande di piangere,
per la tristezza eterna dell’Amore,
per non sapere e l’infinito buio…
per tutto questo amaro t’amo, Vita.\
The music in this episode is Tomaso Antonio Vitali’s Chaconne in G Minor for Violin and Piano played by Angelo Xiang Yu and Dina Vainshtein (in the creative commons music collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum).
View all episodes
By Italian PoetryToday we read Non, Vita, perché tu sei nella notte, by Camillo Sbarbaro.
We recently read how Quasimodo, in his Ed è subito sera, referred to life as a “ray of light,” soon disappearing. Sbarbaro starts this poem with a similar, but much more fiery, simile: a quick burst of flame.
It is surprising how much intensity is hidden in this apparently quiet composition, written in plain language and slow, deliberate rhythm.
The glorious aspect of living, the flame, and its tolerable sides, like when Nature calms the poet’s suffering, occupy only the first four verses. The insistent repetition of per and perché (not for this, not for this…) moves the enumeration of the facts of life along, highlighting the lacking and the inadequacy and the ephemerality.
Only at the very and, when we have lived though all the (mostly painful) experiences of a human life, we have the declaration of love for it. We love life not because of rare moments of bliss, or for the long stretches in which nothing much is felt, and not in spite of the pain. We love it because of the desire, though unsatisfiable; because of love, though destined to be never enough; because of the limitless darkness that we can ever only very partially explore.
The original:
Non, Vita, perché tu sei nella notte
la rapida fiammata, e non per questi
aspetti della terra e il cielo in cui
la mia tristezza orribile si placa:
ma, Vita, per le tue rose le quali
o non sono sbocciate ancora o già
disfannosi, pel tuo Desiderio
che lascia come al bimbo della favola
nella man ratta solo delle mosche,
per l’odio che portiamo ognuno al noi
del giorno prima, per l’indifferenza
di tutto ai nostri sogni più divini,
per non potere vivere che l’attimo
al modo della pecora che bruca
pel mondo questo o quello cespo d’erba
e ad esso s’interessa unicamente,
pel rimorso che sta in fondo ad ogni
vita, d’averla inutilmente spesa,
come la feccia in fondo del bicchiere,
per la felicità grande di piangere,
per la tristezza eterna dell’Amore,
per non sapere e l’infinito buio…
per tutto questo amaro t’amo, Vita.\
The music in this episode is Tomaso Antonio Vitali’s Chaconne in G Minor for Violin and Piano played by Angelo Xiang Yu and Dina Vainshtein (in the creative commons music collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum).