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

one be conscious of its cultural content and

its human expressive power. In my

childhood and early youth... I have spoken, I

have collected songs, I have been happy, I

have wept, thought in dialect.

I am not about to maintain the greater

expressive effective¬ness of dialect over the

literary language ─ a commonplace without

merit, because every language has fullness

and effectiveness of forms ─: I am only

saying that the possession of dialect

facilitates the search for forms in effective

attitudes and proper imagery: in sum, it

increases the possibility of giving ─ and this

is for me the vital need of dialect poetry ─

something new to itself and, why not?, to

the literary language (1953).

Cirese will make the poetic significance

o f Lucecabelle (1951) explicit: no longer the

use of dialect in the sense of memory and