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

dialect. One of the most surprising facts to

emerge from some of the interviews is the

poets’ selection of Italian as the language of

the family and consequently the inability of

their children to enjoy the poetry in Sicilian

dialect written by their fathers. Clearly, the

rivalry between Sicilian and Italian as

mother tongues does not realize itself at the

level of artistic, ethical, or other types of

psychological need and appreciation. Job

opportunities, better standards of living and

technological and other advancements seem

to be embodied in Italian, and hence this is

chosen as mother tongue for children.^9

Still open is the question of whether the

over-production of poetic texts in Sicilian

dialect, which characterizes the end of this

century, is an expression of a literary

renaissance or whether it is entirely on this

that the survival of dialect depends, in