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

as of a school or party,’ but the cicada

capable of facing a ‘chameleon / blacker

than coal.”

Steering dialect towarsds “an

arrangement of dialect” Trilussa breaks that

flow of tradition that, if with contradictions

and rejections, was advancing with poetic

intent.; he does not renew and does not

betray, but has the idea of having animals

speak in his apologues and in his fables, so

that it became a veritable fashion after him,

with dozens of versifiers imitating him,

lacking nonetheless his composed and

engaging inventiveness. He however falls

back on “a type of satire that does not help

us very much in understanding the man, but

only a small slice of society.”

After Pascarella, Zanazzo and Trilussa,

Roman dialect poets are numberless, but

almost always moving within worn-out