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

CALABRIA

Before achieving truly original results,

for a long time poetry in the Calabrian

dialect followed the two lines inherited from

the Nineteenth Century: the vernacular,

even comical, aimed at giving a voice to

uncultured speakers, which never posed the

question of joining semantic instruments

and grammatical systems, and has always

remained anchored to the mimetic use of

language; and the argumentative, bent on

building ideologically a sort of artificial

alternative to reality, not infrequently alert

to the possibilities of a critical conjugation

with the protest.

Quantitatively prevalent have always

appeared to be the mimetic stances, leaning

heavily on the side of the popular, with less

frequent stylistic and thematic tensions in