marcin
(Marcin)
#1
dialect. One of the most surprising facts to
emerge from some of the interviews is the
poets’ selection of Italian as the language of
the family and consequently the inability of
their children to enjoy the poetry in Sicilian
dialect written by their fathers. Clearly, the
rivalry between Sicilian and Italian as
mother tongues does not realize itself at the
level of artistic, ethical, or other types of
psychological need and appreciation. Job
opportunities, better standards of living and
technological and other advancements seem
to be embodied in Italian, and hence this is
chosen as mother tongue for children.^9
Still open is the question of whether the
over-production of poetic texts in Sicilian
dialect, which characterizes the end of this
century, is an expression of a literary
renaissance or whether it is entirely on this
that the survival of dialect depends, in