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

make one think of a type of poetry harking

back to Belli; instead Spagnoletti explains

very well its remote roots: “in the sentiments

expressed by Trilussa everything appears

clear and explicit, according to the tradition

of Eighteenth Century poetry: love of

honesty is almost always absent, a certain

dose of programmatic cynicism, the refusal

of all ‘exaggerations,’ including demagogy

and dictatorship, and the reduction of

human values to a bourgeois scale.” We have

come down a step, we are outside a strictly

plebeian reality, but also far removed from

Pascarella’s commoner. In Trilussa

everything takes on the appearance of

discoloration, of a remnant; it’s as if we were

at the Porta Portese market and rummaged

through new and old or imitation old knick-

knacks, as if objects and animals, people and

things, sentiments and virtues underwent a