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

Lu pavone [The Peacock], and in his most

recent work of narrative ─ (La sdrenga [The

Scraper] and of translation into dialect of

Martial, Horace and Montale (Chi sa se passe

‘u Patraterne) [Who Knows If the Almighty

Will Go By] ─ is indicative not only of a

precise literary stand within the context of

both regional and national literature, but is

grounded in a substratum which is not only

emotional, but clearly ideological as well, in

a profound awareness [...] of the complex

symbiotic relationship between dialect, as

expression of a ‘subordinate’, but not

inferior, culture and Italian language and

society. As in Cirese, but perhaps with

greater ideological clarity, dialect, with its

deep-rooted and wonderfully rich world of

experiences, represents, as Jovine himself

acknowledges, the inalienable, fundamental

core of all of his writings, including those in