Episoder
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Today we read Natale, by Giuseppe Ungaretti.
Christmas happens every year, even when we are at war. This poem by Ungaretti is introduced by the indication “Napoli il 26 dicembre 1916”: he was on temporary leave from the front of WW1, and visiting his friend’s house in Naples.
If we didn’t know that, we could read these verses as just a statement of laziness: the poet explains he isn’t in the mood to go out to celebrate in the loud, cold, busy streets of the city (and describing Naples’ roads as a ball of yarn is a nice euphemism). He’d rather rest and lie in front of the fire, like a “forgotten thing.”
But we do know he was fighting in the war, and so we attach a whole different meaning to the weariness he complains about. He’s so tired that even punctuation is too much, so that he ends up using none at all. His signature broken verses are even shorter than usual, as if stringing words required too much effort.
The original:
Natale
Non ho voglia
di tuffarmi
in un gomitolo
di strade
Ho tanta
stanchezza
sulle spalle
Lasciatemi così
come una
cosa
posata
in un
angolo
e dimenticata
Qui
non si sente
altro
che il caldo buono
Sto
con le quattro
capriole
di fumo
del focolare\ The music in this episode is Vivaldi’s Double Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 3 No. 11, played by the Advent Chamber Orchestra with David Parry and Roxana Pavel Goldstein (under creative commons from the Al Goldstein collection). -
Today we read Io vidi già seder nell’arme irato, by Leon Battista Alberti.
Leon Battista Alberti was one of the great architects of the Italian Renaissance, but like many humanists of the period he wore several other hats: he was a mathematician and cryptographer, a linguist, an inventor.
And most of his professional writings were in Latin, as traditional at the time.The hat we are interested in now, however, was that of poet, and in particular of poet writing in vulgar, i.e. in Italian. After writing sonnets after the manner of Petrarca, in 1441 he organized the Certame Coronario, a poetry competition for verses written in Italian on the theme of friendship. The judges, being stuck-up big-wigs that looked down on anything in the “new language,” decided that no one had deserved the prize (a silver laurel crown, hence the name), but the staging of the thing was worthy in itself.
In this sonnet, Leon Battista Alberti explores the mismatch between human desire and things as they turn out, and in particular the frustrating effect of wanting something too much, and for that reason, losing it. As he pithily puts it in the last verse, troppo voler mal corrisponde: “too much willing is a bad match.”
To drive the point home, the poem shows us a sequence of examples: an enraged man ready for battle, yet trembling; a lover so sorrowful that he can’t cry; someone so hungry he can’t even eat; a dog so fast that he loses his prey.
The original:
Io vidi già seder nell’arme irato
uomo furioso palido e tremare;
e gli occhi vidi spesso lagrimare
per troppo caldo che al core è nato.
E vidi amante troppo adolorato
poter né lagrimar né sospirare,
né raro vidi chi né pur gustare
puote alcun cibo ov’è troppo affamato.
E vela vidi volar sopra l’onde,
qual troppo vento la summerse e affisse;
e veltra vidi, a cui par l’aura ceda,
per troppo esser veloce perder preda.
Così tal forza in noi natura immisse,
a cui troppo voler mal corrisponde.\ The music in this episode is Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerto Grosso in G minor (Christmas Concerto), Op. 6, No. 8, played by the Advent Chamber Orchestra (licensed under Creative Commons). -
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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). -
Today we read Caro luogo, by Umberto Saba.
Two young lovers are looking for a place where they can “make one life out of two.” All the afternoon they wander around under the sun, surrounded by the noise and the comings and goings of adult, everyday life.
But then the night comes, the moon rises, and they find a quiet spot, where the only noise if that of crickets. And here the poem stops and the poet falls silent, presumably intent in better things than writing poetry.
Saba was an admirer of Tasso, and this poem might remind us of this sonnet of his.
The original:
Vagammo tutto il pomeriggio in cerca
d’un luogo a fare di due vite una.
Rumorosa la vita, adulta, ostile,
minacciava la nostra giovinezza.
Ma qui giunti ove ancor cantano i grilli,
quanto silenzio sotto questa luna.\ 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). -
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:
Mobile ordigno di dentate rote
lacera il giorno e lo divide in ore,
ed ha scritto di fuor con fosche note
a chi legger le sa: Sempre si more.
Mentre il metallo concavo percuote,
voce funesta mi risuona al core;
né del fato spiegar meglio si puote
che con voce di bronzo il rio tenore.
Perch’io non speri mai riposo o pace,
questo, che sembra in un timpano e tromba,
mi sfida ognor contro all’età vorace.
E con que’ colpi onde ’l metal rimbomba,
affretta il corso al secolo fugace,
e perché s’apra, ognor picchia alla tomba.\ The music in this episode is Vivaldi’s Concerto for 2 Oboes in A minor, RV 536 — I. Allegro, by The Modena Chamber Orchestra (under creative commons from musopen). -
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:
Ognuno sta solo sul cuor della terra,
trafitto da un raggio di sole:
ed è subito sera.\ The music in this episode is Vivaldi’s Concerto for 2 Cellos in G minor, RV 531, played by New Trinity Baroque (under Creative Commons). -
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:
4
Le labbra rosse paion de corallo,
e havvi drento duo filar’ de denti
che son più bianchi che que’ del cavallo:
da ogni lato ve n’ha più de venti.
Le gote bianche paion de cristallo,
senz’altro liscio, né scorticamenti,
rosse entro ’l mezzo, quant’è una rosa,
che non se vide mai sì bella cosa.
8
Ell’è dirittamente ballerina,
che la se lancia com’una capretta,
girasi come ruota de mulina,
e dassi della man nella scarpetta;
quand’ella compie el ballo, ella se ’nchina,
po’ se rivolge e duo colpi iscambietta,
e fa le più leggiadre riverenze
che gnuna cittadina da Firenze.\ The music in this episode is Gaetano Donizetti’s overture to the opera Don Pasquale, played by the United States Marine Band for the album Overtures, Volume Two (in the public domain). -
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.
In the same fashion, his beloved contains in herself the possibility of love for him, mixed with indifference and outright disdain.
But he is not artist enough to extract from her what he desires: his art obtains quite the opposite effect. And the fault is entirely on him and his inadequacy.The original:
Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto
c’un marmo solo in sé non circonscriva
col suo superchio, e solo a quello arriva
la man che ubbidisce all’intelletto.
Il mal ch’io fuggo, e ’l ben ch’io mi prometto,
in te, donna leggiadra, altera e diva,
tal si nasconde; e perch’io più non viva,
contraria ho l’arte al disïato effetto.
Amor dunque non ha, né tua beltate
o durezza o fortuna o gran disdegno,
del mio mal colpa, o mio destino o sorte;
se dentro del tuo cor morte e pietate
porti in un tempo, e che ’l mio basso ingegno
non sappia, ardendo, trarne altro che morte.\ The music in this episode is Vivaldi’s Double Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 3 No. 11, played by the Advent Chamber Orchestra with David Parry and Roxana Pavel Goldstein (under creative commons from the Al Goldstein collection). -
Today we read Sembran fere d’avorio in bosco d’oro, by Anton Maria Narducci.
You gotta love Baroque poetry.
The author of this sonnet must have gotten tired of the never-ending repetition of the “angelic woman with golden hair” trope, and decided to give things a different turn.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.
Indeed, her hair is infested with lice. And the poet celebrates these guests, comparing them to gems that adorn it, or even to little Cupids, darting to and fro, and preparing a golden net that the lady uses to capture men and make them love her.Such is the Baroque equilibrium between poetic and disgusting, commonplace and exalted, traditional and rebellious.
The original:
Sembran fère d’avorio in bosco d’oro\le fère erranti onde sí ricca siete;
The music in this episode is Paganini’s Caprice No. 24, recorded by Elias Goldstein (Viola) and Christina Lalog (Piano) (in the public domain).
anzi, gemme son pur che voi scotete
da l’aureo del bel crin natio tesoro;
o pure, intenti a nobile lavoro,
cosí cangiati gli Amoretti avete,
perché tessano al cor la bella rete
con l’auree fila ond’io beato moro.
O fra bei rami d’or volanti Amori,
gemme nate d’un crin fra l’onde aurate,
fère pasciute di nettarei umori;
deh, s’avete desio d’eterni onori,
esser preda talor non isdegnate
di quella preda onde son preda i cori! \ -
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:
D’un alto monte onde si scorge il mare
miro sovente io, tua figlia Isabella,
s’alcun legno spalmato in quello appare,
che di te, padre, a me doni novella.
Ma la mia adversa e dispietata stella
non vuol ch’alcun conforto possa entrare
nel tristo cor, ma, di pietà rubella,
la calda speme in pianto fa mutare.
Ch’io non veggo nel mar remo né vela
(così deserto è lo infelice lito)
che l’onde fenda o che la gonfi il vento.
Contra Fortuna alor spargo querela
ed ho in odio il denigrato sito,
come sola cagion del mio tormento.\ The music in this episode is Vivaldi’s Double Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 3 No. 11, played by the Advent Chamber Orchestra with David Parry and Roxana Pavel Goldstein (under creative commons from the Al Goldstein collection). -
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:
Voi ch’ascoltate in rime sparse il suono
di quei sospiri ond’io nudriva ’l core
in sul mio primo giovenile errore
quand’era in parte altr’uom da quel ch’i’ sono,
del vario stile in ch’io piango et ragiono
fra le vane speranze e ’l van dolore,
ove sia chi per prova intenda amore,
spero trovar pietà, nonché perdono.
Ma ben veggio or sì come al popol tutto
favola fui gran tempo, onde sovente
di me medesmo meco mi vergogno;
et del mio vaneggiar vergogna è ’l frutto,
e ’l pentersi, e ’l conoscer chiaramente
che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno.\ The music in this episode is De Torrente, from Vivaldi’s Dixit Dominus (RV 807), played by Cor i Orquestra de música antiga de l’Esmuc, Inés Alonso (soprano solista), Albert Baena (alto solista), Lluís Vila (director) (in the creative commons thanks to the Catalonia College of Music). -
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:
Quando avanza il febbraio, e ancor non ride
Primavera, ma più non piange Inverno,
ti trasfiguri; e l’ansia hai della zolla
che si risveglia e riconosce il sole.
Timido è il sole di febbraio, e nudo
come un povero: pur nel suo tepore
ramo di pioppo e ramo di betulla
già crede aver le fronde. E tu con essi
credi: già le vedi: in te già senti
gonfiare i bocci che saran domani
roseo di pèschi e bianco di ciliegi:
pungere in te già senti anche le spine
del rosaio, vermiglie come il sangue.
O fortunata, se goderti prima
puoi si gran doni, che nel chiaro aprile
saran di tutti! Gusta in tuo segreto
sapore di latte delle gemmule
non vive ancora: pratoline e mammole
raccogli, fin che non sien nate, e mano
capricciosa le brancichi, e tallone
duro le schiacci!
Cosi tu, nel tempo
della felice adolescenza, ardesti
d’amore in sogno; e quando giunse il vero
non fu sì bello: o donna, e se un ricordo
or ti rivolge indietro, è di quel sogno. \ The music in this episode is Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerto Grosso in G minor (Christmas Concerto), Op. 6, No. 8, played by the Advent Chamber Orchestra (licensed under Creative Commons). -
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:
Mio padre è stato per me l’“assassino”,
fino ai vent’anni che l’ho conosciuto.
Allora ho visto ch’egli era un bambino,
e che il dono ch’io ho da lui l’ho avuto.
Aveva in volto il mio sguardo azzurrino,
un sorriso, in miseria, dolce e astuto,
Andò sempre pel mondo pellegrino;
più d’una donna l’ha amato e pasciuto.
Egli era gaio e leggero; mia madre
tutti sentiva della vita i pesi.
Di mano ei gli sfuggì come un pallone.
“Non somigliare – ammoniva – a tuo padre”.
Ed io più tardi in me stesso lo intesi:
eran due razze in antica tenzone.\ The music in this episode is Alessandro Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in D minor, S. Z799, recorded by the Orchestre de chambre de la Sarre (in the public domain). -
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:
Stanca, anelante a la paterna riva,
qual suol cervetta affaticata in caccia,
correa piangendo e con smarrita faccia
la vergine ritrosa e fuggitiva.
E già l’acceso Dio che la seguiva,
giunta omai del suo corso avea la traccia,
quando fermar le piante, alzar le braccia
ratto la vide, in quel ch’ella fuggiva.
Vede il bel piè radice, e vede (ahi fato!)
che rozza scorza i vaghi membri asconde,
e l’ombra verdeggiar del crine aurato.
Allor l’abbraccia e bacia, e, de le bionde
chiome fregio novel, dal tronco amato
almen, se’l frutto no, coglie le fronde.\ The music in this episode is De Torrente, from Vivaldi’s Dixit Dominus (RV 807), played by Cor i Orquestra de música antiga de l’Esmuc, Inés Alonso (soprano solista), Albert Baena (alto solista), Lluís Vila (director) (in the creative commons thanks to the Catalonia College of Music). -
Today we read Sia pace ai frati, by Vittorio Alfieri.
This short and punchy epigram by Vittorio Alfieri embodies the Enlightenment attitude towards religion and state: peaceful coexistence in separate domains.
Priests should be few and not overly loquacious in the public arena; cardinals should not take away the lights (here Alfieri uses the term “lume”, and “età dei lumi” is an expression for “Enlightenment”).
The pope should concentrate on the problems of faith and salvation, leaving politics to politicians.
Laws should rule, not a king.
And the concluding line exclaims patriotically: there is an Italy!
The original:
Sia pace ai frati,
Purchè sfratati:
E pace ai preti,
Ma pochi e queti:
Cardinalume
Non tolga lume:
Il maggior prete
Torni alla rete:
Leggi, e non re;
L’Italia c’è. \ The music in this episode is Gaetano Donizetti’s overture to the opera Don Pasquale, played by the United States Marine Band for the album Overtures, Volume Two (in the public domain). -
Today we read Il lampo, by Giovanni Pascoli.
In this very short ballad Pascoli paints an impressionistic picture of the moment right before the start of a torrential storm, at night. Everything is black and silent, but suddenly a flash of lightning lights up the landscape, and reveals a sky about to burst into rain, and the ground heaving as if waiting for the outpour.
A house also appears briefly, only to be swallowed up by darkness soon after.
But this is not just a description of a natural phenomenon, and the last lines are a hint to the second meaning of the poem.
The house is compared to an eye that opens, wide and shocked, and closes back into the night. The whole thing is a symbolic reference to the death of Pascoli’s father, who was shot one evening while returning home. The lightning, then, is also the flash from the shotgun the brigands used to kill him.
The original:
E cielo e terra si mostrò qual era:
la terra ansante, livida, in sussulto;
il cielo ingombro, tragico, disfatto:
bianca bianca nel tacito tumulto
una casa apparì sparì d’un tratto;
come un occhio, che, largo, esterrefatto,
s’aprì si chiuse, nella notte nera.
\ The music in this episode is Vivaldi’s Concerto No. 10, RV 580, played by The Modena Chamber Orchestra (under Creative Commons). -
Today we read Bella ch’invecchia, by Anton Giulio Brignole Sale.
This short epigram was composed by a member of the elite of the Republic of Genoa, when it was at the apex of its commercial and banking power in Europe. Part of his surname, Brignole, is well-known to all the travellers that today stop at, or pass by, the second most important station of the city.
But nothing grandiose here. Just a witty play on the usual, trite trope of love poetry: love enters from the eyes.
The poet is consoling a beautiful woman distressed by the passage of time. He explains to her that to love you need to see first. And just as the Sun is too bright to be seen during the day, but easier to behold when it is setting; people will be able to see her more and more, and thus love her the better for it.
The original:
se non si puote amare
senza prima mirare,
bella a che d’invecchiar sì vi dolete?
Invecchiando più amata anco sarete:
a rimirar il sol la vista è pronta
più che nel mezzo dì, quando tramonta.\ The music in this episode is Gaetano Donizetti’s overture to the opera Don Pasquale, played by the United States Marine Band for the album Overtures, Volume Two (in the public domain). -
Today we read Chi sono, by Aldo Palazzeschi.
The modern departure from the themes and connotations of classical poetry can be done in several way: in anger, or with a strong condemnation of the past, or touting the moral superiority of the new way of doing things, for example.
In the case of Palazzeschi, the approach is through irony, levity and a sense of humour that suffuses most of his poems. In what is perhaps his most famous work, after all, he concludes a series of frankly silly verses by saying “oh just let me have some fun!”
In today’s poem Palazzeschi asks “who am I?”, and investigates his work as an artist. He starts by comparing himself to the usual, established figures valued by “high brow” culture: a poet? a painter? a musician? But no: his pen can only write one word: foolishness; his palette has only one color, melancholy.
Turns out he is just a street performer, drawing people’s attention to his own soul. He uses the word saltimbanco: a lowly job aimed at popular entertainment, and that is often used with the connotation of a charlatan.
The original:
Son forse un poeta?
No, certo.
Non scrive che una parola, ben strana,
la penna dell’anima mia:
“follia”.
Son dunque un pittore?
Neanche.
Non ha che un colore
la tavolozza dell’anima mia:
“malinconia”.
Un musico, allora?
Nemmeno.
Non c’è che una nota
nella tastiera dell’anima mia:
“nostalgia”.
Son dunque… che cosa?
Io metto una lente
davanti al mio cuore
per farlo vedere alla gente.
Chi sono?
Il saltimbanco dell’anima mia.\ The music in this episode is Paganini’s Caprice No. 24, recorded by Elias Goldstein (Viola) and Christina Lalog (Piano) (in the public domain). -
Today we read Paolo e Francesca, by Dante Alighieri.
I can’t delay anymore: it’s time for some Dante, and in particular for some Comedy (the adjective divina, or “Divine,” is a later attribution).
This work is very different from anything I have presented so far: it is a long poem, divided in three books (Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso), each consisting of 33 canti (though Inferno has an additional canto as prologue, bringing the total to one hundred), written in a sequence of tercets linked by rhymes, so that the narrative flows in a uninterrupted formal continuum typical of the terza-rima.
It is the masterpiece of early Italian poetry, though it is probably more studied and admired than imitated, given the sheer range of its linguistic registers and themes, and its “cosmic” scope. Still, it shaped the medieval and modern imagination about the afterlife.
During his visit of hell, Dante discovers that it is organized in nine concentric rings, each dedicated to sinners marked by increasingly grave sins, each ring being narrower and deeper inside the Earth. At the bottom/center, Satan himself is bound.
In this extract from canto V, Dante is visiting the first area of hell proper, where the souls are marred by the least grievous sin, lust. These souls are punished according to the usual rule of contrappasso: just like, while alive, they were not able to control themselves and gave in to their carnal desires, now they are continuously buffeted along by a strong wind that never lets them rest.
Among these souls, Dante sees two that are together, and paion sì al vento esser leggieri (they seem light on the winds), decides to talk to them, calls them, and they approach not unlike doves.
Our long extract starts now. First one of the souls, Francesca, speaks, and in three lovely tercets, each starting with the word “love,” briefly summarizes their fate: they fell in love, and because of that they died, or rather were killed.
Dante is struck by this, and remains thoughtful for a while. It is easy to imagine him, a poet in the rich tradition of courtly love who then sang of love as a means to reach god, to have conflicting feelings for this couple whose only sin was to love.
So he asks them, how did you fall in love? Francesca then recounts how she and her beloved Paolo (who always remains silent and whose name is not given in the poem) were reading, together and unsuspecting, a book on the story of Lancelot and his love for Guinevere.
Often, while reading, they would look each other in the eye. But when they arrived at the part in which Lancelot finally kisses Guinevere, Paolo, trembling, kissed Francesca — and, she says, “that day we didn’t read anymore.”
Dante is so distressed by this story that he faints and falls down, “like a dead body falls.”
The original:
Amor, ch’al cor gentil ratto s’apprende,
prese costui de la bella persona
che mi fu tolta; e ’l modo ancor m’offende.
Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona,
mi prese del costui piacer sì forte,
che, come vedi, ancor non m’abbandona.
Amor condusse noi ad una morte.
Caina attende chi a vita ci spense".
Queste parole da lor ci fuor porte.
Quand’io intesi quell’anime offense,
china’ il viso, e tanto il tenni basso,
fin che ’l poeta mi disse: “Che pense?”.
Quando rispuosi, cominciai: “Oh lasso,
quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio
menò costoro al doloroso passo!”.
Poi mi rivolsi a loro e parla’ io,
e cominciai: “Francesca, i tuoi martìri
a lagrimar mi fanno tristo e pio.
Ma dimmi: al tempo d’i dolci sospiri,
a che e come concedette amore
che conosceste i dubbiosi disiri?”.
E quella a me: “Nessun maggior dolore
che ricordarsi del tempo felice
ne la miseria; e ciò sa ’l tuo dottore.
Ma s’a conoscer la prima radice
del nostro amor tu hai cotanto affetto,
dirò come colui che piange e dice.
Noi leggiavamo un giorno per diletto
di Lancialotto come amor lo strinse;
soli eravamo e sanza alcun sospetto.
Per più fïate li occhi ci sospinse
quella lettura, e scolorocci il viso;
ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse.
Quando leggemmo il disïato riso
esser basciato da cotanto amante,
questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,
la bocca mi basciò tutto tremante.
Galeotto fu ’l libro e chi lo scrisse:
quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante”.
Mentre che l’uno spirto questo disse,
l’altro piangëa; sì che di pietade
io venni men così com’io morisse.
E caddi come corpo morto cade.\ The music in this episode is Lamento della Ninfa from Monteverdi’s Madrigali Guerrieri et Amorosi, sung by Daphne Ramakers (under creative commons). -
Today we read Era ’l giorno ch’al sol si scoloraro, by Girolamo Malipiero.
The influence of Petrarch on Italian poetry can only be understated, and yet it still surprising sometimes to see the lengths to which some later poets went in their dialogue with him.
In the early 1500s a Venetian friar, Girolamo Malipiero, decided that his poetic master had been in error to dedicate so much of his art to sing his secular love, and took it upon himself to turn Petrarch’s sonnets into a more proper, religious form. The process entailed taking a sonnet from the Canzoniere, keeping one or a few verses unchanged (typically the first), keeping also all the rhyme words, but then rewrite the rest as a devotional poem.
It is unfortunate that I haven’t prepared yet a page for the original of the sonnet I’m presenting now, but it can be read here.
In the original, Petrarch describes his fateful first encounter with Laura, when he fell in love with her and the story told in his Canzoniere started. He sees her, and his defenses against Love are down, so Love binds him in a net of sorrows to come.
Both sonnets start with the same two lines, describing how the meeting happened “when the sun lost his light because of its pain for his maker” — a roundabout way to refer to the Passion of Christ. It was Good Friday, April 6, 1327.
What for Petrarch was the start of a secular love story, in Malipiero becomes the religious conversion: looking at Jesus on the Cross, he becomes prisoner of the Greatest Love.
The original:
Era ’l giorno ch’al sol si scoloraro
per la pietà del suo fattore i rai,
quando in croce Iesù fisso guardai
sì che suoi dolci lacci mi legaro.
Tempo non mi parea da far riparo
contra colpi del ciel, però m’andai
pregion del sommo Amor, onde i miei guai
allor per vecchi errori incominciaro.
Trovommi Dio del senso disarmato,
e sol la via per gli occhi aperta al core,
ch’eran fatti di lagrime uscio e varco.
Sia dunque a te, Signor, gloria et onore,
che mi hai condotto a sì felice stato,
ch’io gusti il dolce stral del tuo forte arco.\ The music in this episode is Domenico Scarlatti’s Keyboard Sonata in D minor, K.32, recorded by Sylvia Marlowe (in the public domain). - Se mer
