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

postulates a direct relationship with

traditional speech subjected to the pressure

of lexical enrichment^1. It is an itinerary of

progressive approximation to a personal

lexicon, which nevertheless still does not

become endophasic (according to

Mengaldo’s definition^2 ), stopping at the

threshold of that purity pursued by the most

careful writers, who aspire at that finality of

personal originality outside any literary

tradition and even outside everyday

exchanges. Because at the bottom of the

operation is an effort to objectify individual

experience, even when it appears to tend

towards the fable.

Curcio almost bets not only on the forms,

but also the lexicon of tradition, although

there is an obvious effort to develop a

broader koinè, which Brevini considers