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

The problem that inescapably arises now,

does not stem from the fact that there exists,

as a counterpoint to poetry in Italian, a

splendid poetry in dialect. The difficulty lies

elsewhere, in the discrepancy between

exceptional flowering and the unstoppable

decline of the various local idioms in every

region of Italy (it is common knowledge that

the few pockets of resistance are the Veneto

region and the area around Naples). This is

the situation that had already worried

Pasolini in the early Seventies, as he was

getting ready to rewrite La mejo gioventù. In

a few memorable essays he underscored the

advance of the mass media, and above all the

triumph of television, that speaks and

imposes a single language in every corner of

the country.

So: what destiny will attend the current

success of poetry in dialect, after the