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

ridiculing it, doing a parody and caricature

of it, to make one feel the erosion caused by

time and everyday linguistic usage; like ziu

Gesaru (Cesarino Mastino), and those who,

like Benvenuto Lobina, have felt this

vernacular language of his as being an

alternative to the Italian language, as the

most suitable, most effective and natural

instrument with which to shout his rage, his

desperation, for this land of ours lost and

abandoned, transforming the Salvator Ruju’s

song, between idyllic and elegiac, into an

almost epic song of rebellion and protest.

But there is in all the Sardinian dialect

poetry a sort of concordant (and at times

monotonous, as in Masala) song of protest

which is not only a call to arms against all

that is responsible ─ be it men or accidents

of life and history ─ for the loss of the small

linguistic fatherland (or motherland), of this