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

whose style he admired.

Perhaps it was also these studies on the

Eighteenth Century, these exercises

addressing authors of international repute,

that allowed him to be considered by Renato

Serra already an innovator at the time of La

Voce, as Giacinto Spagnoletti reminds us^14 ;

certainly Di Giacomo cannot be ignored or

liquidated as one of the many minstrels that

have infested Romantic, Verista and

Decadent literature.

The weight of his personality, of his

humanity, of his notoriety bothered quite a

bit Ferdinando Russo who, at the outset, was

not able to touch in the least Di Giacomo’s

presence. Critics remained almost

indifferent to his early work which seemed

to be taking belated populist positions of

early Romanticism. Now the studies on