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

maxim: “describe your village and you will

be universal”; with the master of Russian

narrative he shared a vocation for realism

and a tendency to develop symbiotically the

poles of sociability and religiosity.

Figures such as St. Francis and St. Clara

move in a rural scenery: from the island’s

nature, with its Mediterranean elements

(“air and green”), in a landscape made of

vine runners, of “soft almonds,” of “sky and

valleys”, emerges the figure of the “poor

lover.”^16

The world of the humble is represented

with intimate participation, not with a

middle-class perspective or fanatical

primitivism. Di Giovanni’s work is popular

with regard to themes ─ from Lu fattu di

Bissana [The Bissana Incident], 1900) to A lu

passu di Giurgenti [At Girgenti’s Pass], (1902)