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

1970, his page aims at mirroring the

anguished consciousness of his time, rather

than indulging in autobiographical

effusions. A sorrowful vision of man and his

history persists in the second, more

substantial collection, significantly titled Da

mo ve diche addije, 1980, where one can

perceive nevertheless a subterranean need of

revenge against evil and the certainty of

advancing nothingness, through the urgency

─ at times stated and at times hinted at ─ to

forcefully reclaim the reasons of goodness

and the pleasure of living.

As a consequence, a certain darkness of

tone, already noted by De Mauro, far from

sounding corrosive and depressing, seems

rather, in Leopardi’s wake, a source of

unexpected comfort and, in its own way,

even satisfying. A marvelous achievement of

rare balance between beauty and truth,