marcin
(Marcin)
#1
idiom of his land: ancient and new, its
virginity constantly reborn, like the houri of
Mohammed’s paradise; he inserts jargon,
current and obsolete expressions, digging
deep to bring back to light linguistic vestiges
of Sicilian history. A language of the
underclass that, taken back to its roots, turns
out to be more cultured than he had
imagined. Rosario Contarino has spoken of
the linguistic stance of Calì’s poetry as “a
memorial residue, almost a language of
childhood, of the archaic, of the mother,” at
the same time definable “as a recovery of the
living dialect (though the patrimony of a
minority) on which can be brought to bear
the shaping action of the cultured
craftsman.”^1
The dialectized insertions, derived more
from foreign languages (brisci, slippinu,
giubbòx, tenchiù, etc.) than from Italian,