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

narrower operational field than the one

accorded to italian, etc.) frankly seems to me

not to be taking into account the fact that the

problem, in the final analysis, concerns only

the method of a linguistic search that may

lead to the heart of truth, increase man’s

knowledge and above all find, in today’s

levelling ─ even linguistic ─ in the rampant

and pervasive conformism, in the more and

more mortifying massification, the most

suitable instrument for such achievements,

which are both human and poetic.

The enemy to be defeated is conformism,

linguistic as well, and linguistic

consumerism, no less alarming and serious

than consumerism tout court, and perhaps at

least in part an effect of the latter. It is in the

face of this verbal flooding of a language

more and more mixed, of this mixtum

compositum, of this mishmash of different