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

significance on the esthetic level, because the

results of the poet are to be found in his

work in dialect. Revealing, in this regard,

can be his experience at the front during

W.W.I, with which he dealt in two works,

one of poetry, Voluntas tua, in dialect, the

other in prose, Il fante alto da terra (1932), in

Italian. If in the former Vann’Antò speaks as

a man of the people and in the latter he

appears as an officer and college graduate,

he remains a soldiers among the soldiers in

the trenches: “High from the ground, this

way, towards a little breathing, freedom, I

won’t hide, infantryman, I won’t leave you, I

remain an infantryman too.”^1

This infantryman, measurable from

below, has the same connotations as the

farmer. In Sicily, once, the farmer was

disparagingly called pedi ‘ncritati: man with