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

making acquaintances that gave him the

possibility, at only twenty-two, to publish

his first sonnets in Roman dialect in Cronaca

Bizantina and Capitan Fracassa.

His collaboration with the two reviews

allowed him to strike up a friendship with

Gabriele D’Annunzio and Edoardo

Scarfoglio. The three made a trip to Sardinia

with a spirit of adventure and with the

intention to discover a civilization that they

considered different from that of other

Italian regions, and for this reason

interesting both from a social and a more

strictly anthropological point of view.

In 1883 he began to write for Fanfulla

della Domenica, which allowed him to

publish the long poem La serenata [The

Serenade] and aroused the critics’ welcome,

if somewhat belated, interest, even for the

recent work published the year before, in