Dialect Poetry of Southern Italy (Italian Poetry in Translation Book 2)

intonations or lexemes, he might be asked

not to speak tischi toschi: “talk as your

mother made you.” In the island, the Italian

language was sermo curialis, it circulated in

the courtrooms, in parliament, in the

schools; it was the idiom of books and

newspapers: a linguistic reality of other

milieux, with which it did not always like to

interact. The middle class used dialect in the

home and in the clubs; the aristocrats

preferred to express themselves in a mélange

of Sicilian, Italian, English and above all

French; some spoke either in dialect or in

French, skipping Italian altogether. A rapid

(and flavorful) example of this kind of

composite speech is offered by Fulco della

Cerda, Duke of Verdura, who recounted his

childhood in the Villa Niscemi of Palermo at

the beginning of the century, in a work with

the dialect title “Happy summers.” His