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

de Barbagia: Voices of Barbagia)

immediately places a boundary to his poetry

that is even physical, territorial. Not to

mention the fact that the strength of almost

all these poets rests precisely on their

untranslatability, on their making

themselves into very particular, even

esoteric, linguistic islands (as happens with

Lobina, but also with Casula and others).

They themselves are perfectly aware that

they are writing among the initiated and for

the initiated, I would dare say among the

faithful of the same religion of language,

custom and life. In my opinion, this is the

dialect poetry destined to endure, that is, the

one that finds its strength in its natural,

untranslatable, contrastive matrix, what the

Germans call Müttersprache. Then dialect

also becomes a kind of banner, a way of

being oneself in the diversity of languages,