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

no place in the songs of the farmers, of the

street vendors, of the idlers and those who

loiter in the streets, in the slums and in the

harbor, living by their wits.

On the contrary, he was able in my

opinion to restore a distant poetic truth

through “Canzone ‘e copp’ ‘o tamurro,” in

which he “invokes,” silently and gently, the

necessity of bringing back into piazze and

alleyways the “carnascialeschi” of ancient

memory. But this time not only with the

intent to offer spectacle and amusement, but

to share with the people the shivers of the

never-spent fire reflected in everyday

occurrences.

In this sense we could interpret Di

Giacomo as one of those theatrical specimen

(Lope de Vega, Shakespeare, Calderón,

Goldoni, Molière, Pirandello) who in every

instance feel the vibrations of the stage and