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

Italian, Pascarella attempted the long poem

with Storia nostra [Our History], which was

intended to trace events beginning with the

foundation of Rome. “If Belli had used that

dialect solely to introduce the Roman people

‘to speak of themselves in his naked, coarse

and even bawdy tongue,’ Pascarella needed

it to sing the glory of a nation: anthithetical

attitudes that place the two poets on

different paths, even if historically both are

Romantic positions. But Pascarella’s attempt

is to be underscored even more if one

considers that at the time in other regions

the epic poem was only something to be

translated, so they looked to the Comedy,

the Jerusalem, the Orlando, the Aeneid, a

chapter still to be studied both as a

phenomenon and as the dialect’s attitude

with respect to the classics.

Totally ignoring history, Trilussa would