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

dialect has become by now a dead language.

Luigi Bonaffini rightly notes that “for

Rimanelli, the interest in dialect is first and

foremost a search for a poetic language.

“One does not start from dialect (from a

tradition) to find poetry, but one discovers

dialect while searching for poetry (Chiesa

and Tesio, intr. to Parole di legno).” It is not

a local tradition that nourishes and subtends

the use of dialect, but a literary language,

and the determining relationship is between

dialect and poetic languages (Italian poetry,

but also other forms of poetic language (...).

This is true of all major dialect poets (Giotti

called dialect “lingua della poesia”), and

what Pancrazi said of Giotti could equally

well be said of Rimanelli: “His very dialect

seems much more an ‘ecriture d’artiste’ than

a popular language.” (cf. Luigi Bonaffini,

Introduction to Moliseide, New York, Peter