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

“that the Abruzzi vernacular, too humble,

was not suited to poetry.”

Harking back to Finamore ten years later,

Ermindo Campana, in the preface to his

collection Voci d’Abruzzo (Vasto, 1914),

containing selected pages by T. Bruni, F.

Brigiotti, V. Ranalli, L. Anelli, A. Luciani and

some of his own, notes that, with the

exception of Luciani, we still have “the old

prejudice” that dialect “cannot and should

not go beyond certain limits,” and that it is

due precisely to this conviction if the work

of our dialect poets shows a lack of

subjective lyrics and abounds instead in

satire and local color.”

E. Campana is the first, in Abruzzo, to

fight for this “false conviction,” with the

awareness that language and dialect, for the

authentic poet, are “the same thing” and

that, if there are “limits” at the stylistic-