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

Michele Dilillo (Irsina, 1929), didactic

director, published U p’zzcantò (Mt,

Liantonio, 1987), Le belle cose quaselle (Mt,

Liantonio, 1986), U’ capasidd d’u ret p’a paggh’

(Mt, Liantonio, 1989). Giovanni Caserta has

written that “he freely adapts folktales from

his town, immersing himself in a primitive

culture, laden with sexual appetites, as they

were being lived in a society without ideals,

made brutish by poverty and ignorance. In

Irsina’s world, which for Dilillo becomes the

symbol of human life itself, there is no love

as sentimental abandon, but only

bewilderment in the senses and in sex. This,

in fact, is a fondness for transgression and it

is transgression, that is, sin and fondness for

sin, which in old age can become contrition

and anguish” (Caserta, in Bollettino, 1991).

Raffaele Nigro (Melfi, 1947), presently