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

Squarotti: one should read his “Happy

Homage to Walter Galli” that appeared in Il

lettore di provincia, n.79, Dec. 90) who

maintain (in Barberi Squarotti’s words) that

“poetry in dialect has meaning primarily

when it occupies a space specifically its own,

in which it does not compete with the

genetically elevated forms of poetry in

Italian: the place, that is, of life in the village,

town and countryside...” No doubt it would

be difficult to transpose into Italian (and the

Author’s faithful yet inadequate translation

confirms it) these dialect poems in which

Mario Pinna becomes the bard of a peasant,

almost sub-rural culture, which would be

unthinkable in Italian.

The proper place for this poetry is in fact

always the countryside, and indeed

something that stands at the margins of the

countryside itself, and almost constitutes its