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

more allusive. His vision of life has not

changed, but he senses the possibility of

different viewpoints in observing it and

interpreting it; whether or not consciously,

Buttitta’s poetry contains both Zeno’s

paradox and the relativism of Gorgias and

Pirandello.

In Io faccio il poeta [I Am a Poet] (1972),

one notes a particular attention to the drama

of the Sicilian people, deprived of its

potential for self-realization, oppressed by

ancient and new dominations, frustrated in

its ideals by a rigged Risorgimento (a tragic

example of which is the occurrence at

Bronte) and by corrupt politicians, who have

surrendered it to the oppression of the

Mafia. A history of robberies, the last of

which, the most serious, is that of dialect: a

people is not enslaved as long as it has a

language, it becomes “poor and enslaved”