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

in time almost an obsession in both life and

writing. Thus that also explains why the

second great glue of so much output in

verse, which I would not weigh in all

together in a consideration of poetry, has

been that sentiment of civil indignation, of

protest and revolt that at the beginning of

the Nineteenth Century found in the

Arcadian Francesco Ignazio Mannu and in

his hymn The Sardinian Patriot to His

Feudal Lords (whose meaning is clear), what

has been defined as the “Sardinian

Marseillaise.” But all has been said also

explains why the Sardinian language, as I

already stated elsewhere (la Stampa-

Tuttolibri, July 15, 1978), “born in state of

submission, is a tragic language (in the sense

of a Greek tragedy) and has retained and

keeps retaining a dramatic charge not only

in the words of the female mourners and