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

Brancati), went back to the romantic roots of

Verismo, in a poetry aiming at inner

analysis, to the consideration of man in the

world, to the mystery of life and death. No

ideology can redeem what Malraux called

“la condition humaine”: “Socialism or not,

our life is a cloth weaved with pain.”^21

Guglielmino remains fundamentally

anchored to Leopardi, with the same cosmic

connotations: in the universe everything is

suffering. It is not just human beings who

are subject to this law; even in the fields,

among stones and bushes, under the tender

grass, are hidden a myriad flowers, that man

tramples unawares or, if he picks them,

throws them immediately away. Meanwhile,

destroyer time corrodes everything: “it holds

a file in its hands \ and never lets go of it.”^22

There are none of Foscolo’s illusions or