Selected Poems of Giovanni Pascoli

by Giovanni Pascol

  Collected as a chapbook for Ferrari’s 1886 wedding and then published in the first edition of Myricae, there were initially eight poems in this sequence; reordered as it grew, the full sequence includes sixteen poems. Each follows the madrigal form of hendecasyllabic tercets and a closing quatrain (although the madrigal can close with a couplet, or single verse). Madrigals are often set to music and sung by different voices. This multiplicity of voice appears in many of these poems, and it is further suggested by shifting perspectives on a single scene.

  Lavandare / Laundresses (Myr 1894)

  The last stanza adapts a popular song (or strambotto) from the Marchigiano dialect of the Marche region below Romagna. The original song was collected in an anthology of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century regional strambotti entitled Cantilene, edited by Carducci:

  Retorna, Amore miè, se ci hai speranza,

  per te la vita mia fa penitenza!

  Tira lu viente, nevega li frunna,

  de qua ha da rvenì fideli amante.

  Quando ch’io mi partii dal mio paese,

  povera bella mia, come rimase!

  come l’aratro in mezzo alla maggese.

  [Return, my love, if you have hope for us,

  for you, my life does penance!

  The wind throws, the branch snows,

  here, a faithful lover must come back.

  When I left my town,

  my poor beauty, how she stayed!

  like the plow in the fallow field.]

  Pascoli changes the subject of the verb in line 5, writing Quando partisti [When you left] instead of Quando ch’io mi partii [When I left], and the protagonist of Pascoli’s version becomes the woman left behind.

  La via ferrata / Track (Myr 1891)

  An early unpublished draft of this poem bears the title “Il telegrafo” [“The Telegraph”], for the telegraph wires above the train tracks. Italy’s first telegraph lines were installed in Tuscany in 1847, in Romagna in 1851, and then throughout the peninsula along the rapidly expanding railway lines, radically changing the nature of communication.

  Già dalla mattina / Since Morning (Myr 1892)

  Technical terms for parts of the mill—cassetta, coperchio, bronzina, tramoggia, bocchetta—attest to Pascoli’s combination of precise terminology with high poetic diction and local rural language. The systematic description of the mill also rhythmically suggests the slow passing of time.

  Carrettiere / Wagoner (Myr 1894)

  l. 10 cennamella—“bagpipes”: the term cennamella (an older, poetic form of ceramella) is used in the South for a folk instrument consisting of a bag and two reeds, and in the North for a reed instrument not unlike the clarinet. It is commonly associated with Christmas.

  In capannello / Huddle (Myr 1891)

  l. 4 scrivo scrivo [another’s twin]: The expression is Tuscan dialect and means “exactly like that”; it contextualizes the poem geographically and socially. Cf. “Winter Wren.”

  l. 6 mal cattivo [this foul disease]: the term generally referred to syphilis, a public health issue that the newly unified government tackled by regulating prostitution throughout the country. Mandated health checks resulted in the obligatory quarantine of infected prostitutes. In 1875, while Pascoli was studying at the University of Bologna, prostitutes staged a major protest against their abuse at a local hospital, which was one of the country’s main centers for syphilis treatment. Pascoli visited brothels regularly in his younger years, as we know from a letter to his brother Raffaele documenting “2 liras for the brothels (necessity)” in his monthly budget while living in the Southern town of Matera for his first teaching job.

  Il cane / The Dog (Myr 1894)

  Originally published with “Fides” on August 10, 1890, in Vita nuova, the poem was included in the first edition of Myricae as a separate poem, and then moved to “The Last Walk” in the third edition.

  0 reginella / Little Queen (Myr 1892)

  Giovanni and Maria Pascoli nicknamed their sister Ida la reginella during the ten years in which she managed the home that the three siblings shared. The more distant model for this protagonist is “Nausicaa of the white arms” from Book 6 of Homer’s Odyssey. The theme of the young woman as queen of the house interested Pascoli throughout his career, from his invocation o mia Nausicaa bella /. . . ti vidi reginella in the poem “Epistola” (begun in 1882 and published posthumously in 1914) to an unrealized collection he planned to title Reginella, not for Ida but for Maria.

  Ti chiama / She’s Calling You (Myr 1892)

  The opening declarative statement is cut short by a parenthetical question that disrupts the original statement permanently. Pascoli’s syntax here mimics not just thought pattern but the suddenness of death.

  Finestra illuminata / Lit Window (Myr 1897)

  The nine madrigals in Lit Window were first published in 1895 as a wedding chapbook for Ada Bemporad, the sister of a prominent Florentine publisher with whom Pascoli published several books.

  Mezzanotte / Midnight and Un gatto nero / Black Cat

  l. 10 and l. 1 pupilla / aperta: “eye, / opened wide”: the last word of “Midnight” belongs with the first word of “Black Cat,” effectively joining the two madrigals into a longer poem. The fragmentation here is strikingly modern, though it suggests a technique used by medieval Provençal troubadours, who strengthened the link between stanzas by repeating the last word of one stanza as the first word of the next.

  Un gatto nero / Black Cat

  l. 5 un mare immenso: nell’immenso mare [an immense sea / in the sea’s immensity]: This line echoes the last two in Giacomo Leopardi’s 1819 poem “L’infinito” [“The Infinite”]: Così tra questa / Immensità s’annega il pensier mio: / E il naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare. [So in this / immensity my thought drowns / And shipwreck feels sweet to me in this sea.] Pascoli’s line is also echoed in Giuseppe Ungaretti’s 1917 poem “Mattina” [“Morning”] with its single line, M’illumino d’immenso [I’m illuminated with immensity]. Ungaretti’s original title for his poem was “Cielo and mare” [“Sky and Sea”].

  Il bove / The Ox (Myr 1892)

  First published in Vita nuova (1890), this sonnet echoes another with the same title by Carducci, published in 1872. While both poems describe the animal’s eyes and relationship with its surroundings, the classicism of Carducci’s language is more pronounced. In Carducci’s poem, the ox is framed by the perspective of narrator; it begins with T’amo, o pio bove; e mite un sentimento / di vigore e di pace al cor m’infondi [“I love you, oh pious ox; and a feeling / of vigor and peace gently fills my heart . . .”], whereas Pascoli’s poem observes the landscape through the animal’s eyes.

  Canzone d’aprile / April Song (Myr 1897)

  l. 1 Fantasma [a ghost]: the suggestion of the cuckoo as being evanescent as a ghost comes from Wordsworth’s poem “To the Cuckoo.” Wordsworth calls the cuckoo “No bird, but an invisible thing, / A voice, a mystery.”

  l. 24—Cu . . . cu: the distinctive song of the cuckoo, common in summer throughout Italy. Unlike the other birds in the poem, Pascoli does not name it but uses its call to signal the bird’s presence in the last line. Pascoli later wrote about the cuckoo bird’s call in his glossary for Canti of Castelvecchio: “I don’t believe one should invent . . . or could. Certainly, everyone knows that I didn’t invent the lark’s song, la lodola loda Dio [the lark praises God], or how the blackbird (and blackcap) whistles, Io ti vedo [I see you]. But not everyone knows the cuckoo bird calls: Cuculo di là dal mare, Quanti anni ho da campare? [Cuckoo across the sea’s stretch, how many years do I have yet?]”

  Alba / Dawn (Myr 1894)

  The quatrains alternate decasyllabic and enneasyllabic lines.

  l. 9—virb . . . disse una rondine; e fu / giorno [Eep, a swallow chirped, and the day / followed]: Virb belongs to a pregrammatical language that critic Gianfranco Contini claims was first used by Pascoli; the swallow’s virb ushers in the day like God’s verbum. The phono-symbolic power of this line is heig
htened by the echo of Genesis 1:3—“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

  Stoppia / Stubble (Myr 1894)

  The Tuscan rispetto (cf. “Fides”) is doubled here.

  ll. 5–8, 14–16: The use of chiasmus to repeat descriptions of morning and evening points to Pascoli’s circular and seasonal relationship with time.

  l. 11 trilla trilla il grillo [Crickets chirp and chirp]: The Italian combines alliteration with an onomatopoeic verb to manifest the cricket through its language.

  L’assiuolo / Owl (Myr 1897)

  l. 8 chiù: the call of the European scops owl, a small migratory owl present in central and northern Italy in the summer.

  l. 20 sistri d’argento [silver strings]: the sistrum is an ancient Egyptian string instrument connected to the goddess Isis.

  Novembre / November (Myr 1891)

  First published in 1891 in Vita nuova, this poem uses the Sapphic stanza (three hendecasyllables followed by a quinario, or five-syllable line), created by the classical Greek poet Sappho of Lesbos.

  ll. 11–12 l’estate / fredda dei morti [the cold / summer of the dead]: Saint Martin’s Day, November 11, is often associated with those unusually warm days in autumn. Saint Martin was a soldier of the Roman Empire who cut his military cloak in half to share with a freezing beggar; he then dreamed of Christ wearing the cloak, and he decided to convert. The poem was called “San Martino” in early drafts.

  Mare / Sea (Myr 1891)

  l. 1—M’affaccio alla finestra, e vedo il mare [Eyes to the window, I watch the sea]: This line recalls a number of folk songs in the Umbrian dialect.

  Sogno / Dream (Myr 1891)

  “Sogno,” the title of the poem, is both verb and noun. Cf. “Birthplace.”

  Il lampo / Lightning (Myr 1894)

  Composed in 1892 and 1893, this poem was inspired by a thunderstorm Pascoli witnessed while traveling from a nearby town to Siena, which he described in a letter to his sisters on August 21, 1892: “From Poggibonsi to Siena, a great storm, black with thunder and lightning and terrible downpours. I thought of you: hoping you had no such weather in Livorno! What a fright, otherwise. And you didn’t have my sheltering arms there to hide your sweet faces.”

  “Lightning” was originally placed before “Storm” as the first poem in the section entitled Tristezze [Sadnesses]. It was moved next to the newer poem “Thunder” in the book’s 1900 edition, and “Storm” was moved to a section entitled In campagna [In the Countryside], after “Owl.” The rhythm of the hendecasyllable is quickened in all three poems by the consecutive listing of nouns without conjunctions.

  Notte di neve / Night Snow (Myr 1894)

  This poem follows an opening couplet with a sestet of octosyllabic lines.

  l. 7 Pace! pace! pace! pace! [Peace! . . .]: the repeated word becomes the voice of the bell, an example of language used as sound and sound as language. Cf. “The Night Hour.” In earlier versions, Pascoli used commas instead of exclamation marks to separate each “pace.”

  I gigli / Lilies (Myr 1900)

  l. 1 Nel mio villaggio, dietro la Madonna / dell’acqua [In my town, behind the Madonna of the Waters]: The town is San Mauro in Romagna, renamed San Mauro Pascoli in 1932 to honor the poet. The Madonna of the Waters was a chapel adjacent to his mother’s house, where Pascoli was born and where the family returned after his father’s death, and where his mother and eldest sister died a year later.

  The last line plays with direct speech to become intentionally ambiguous, implying that the woman herself asks to be brought “home, to die beside my loved ones,” but also implying that she asks for the narrator to be brought home. The moment conflates Pascoli’s mother’s grief with his own and collapses the past when his mother mourned for his father into the present, when the poet instead mourns for her.

  (Primi poemetti / FIRST LITTLE POEMS)

  Called Poemetti [Little Poems] in the 1897 edition, with twenty poems, and the 1900 edition, with forty-five poems, the book was retitled Primi poemetti [First Little Poems] in the third edition (1904) to better distinguish it from the Nuovi poemetti [New Little Poems] to come. The fourth and final edition of First Little Poems was published in 1907. All the poems are in terza rima.

  Pascoli was living with his sister Maria in their Castelvecchio home when the first edition of Little Poems was published, and he dedicated the book to her. In the first line of his preface, the poet asks his sister, “Was there ever a time when we weren’t here?” Then he shifts to address the general reader: “I would like you to think with me that the mystery of life is huge, and the most we can do is stay as near as possible to others . . . And I would like to invite you to the countryside.”

  L’aquilone / The Kite (FP 1900)

  Published with the dedication “To my boarding school classmates of Urbino,” Pascoli referred to this poem as his favorite, telling his former schoolmate Giovanni Marchigiani in 1906 that it was his “most beautiful (well, let’s not be arrogant), my least ugly (but let’s not be hypocritical), my only beautiful poem.”

  ll. 2–3 io vivo altrove, e sento / che sono intorno nate le viole [“I’ve moved / away, but sense the violets blooming]: In a note accompanying the poem for a 1922 anthology of her brother’s work entitled Limpido rivo. Prose e poesie di Giovanni Pascoli presentate da Maria ai figli giovinetti d’Italia, [Clear Stream: Prose and Poetry by Giovanni Pascoli Presented by Maria to the Young Children of Italy] Maria Pascoli writes, “The poet was in Messina when he smelled violets breathing spring throughout . . . the city’s mild winter. And there he was, back in his youth, the games and schoolmates . . . that young friend who died . . . and he envies him! And most of all he envies his luck in being held, with his hair so gently brushed by his mother.”

  ll. 5–6 convento / dei cappuccini [the Capuchins’ walled convent]: The Capuchins owned a large tract of land in Urbino where Pascoli and his boarding school classmates flew their kites. The land became city property after the unification of Italy. The convent was used as a retirement home until 1996, and it is now in disrepair.

  l. 55 O morto giovinetto [Dead child, friend]: Pascoli addresses Pirro Viviani, who died on November 18, 1869, at the age of seventeen. Pascoli published his first work, “Il pianto dei compagni” [“The Tears of Classmates”] in a commemorative pamphlet a month after Viviani’s death.

  Il libro / The Book (FP 1897)

  l. 1 altana [the terrace]: the third floor of the Castelvecchio house contains an arch-windowed, open brick terrace that overlooks the landscape of the Garfagnana, with the hilltop town of Barga above and the Serchio River below.

  Il transito / The Stopover (FP 1897)

  Written initially in quatrains and then revised into terza rima, this poem was first published in July 1896 in a pamphlet, “A beneficio degli Ascari mutilati” [“For the benefit of the mutilated Ascaris”]. The Ascaris were Eritrean troops in the colonial Italian army who helped fight for the conquest of Abyssinia. At the Battle of Adua on March 1, 1896, eight hundred Ascaris were taken prisoner by the Ethiopians, and mutilated before being freed. The pamphlet that included “The Stopover” was meant as a fund-raiser for their medical expenses. The poem is reminiscent of “The Dying Swan,” a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Pascoli was translating Tennyson’s “Ulysses” when he wrote this poem, and he published the translation in 1900 for his school anthology Sul limitare.

  On October 24 and 25, 1870, Pascoli witnessed the aurora borealis (visible throughout Italy) when he was at boarding school in Urbino. He recalls the event in a note to another later poem, “L’aurora boreale,” and in that note he links it to his colonialist desires for Italy.

  l. 1 Il cigno canta [A swan sings]”: The whooper swan breeds in the Arctic and can migrate thousands of miles, even as far as Italy. The poem’s title refers to this migration, though it also suggests the transition of death. Large and with an immense wing span, the whooper swan makes a sound before it dies that may be the provenance of “swan song.”
>
  (Canti di Castelvecchio / CANTI OF CASTELVECCHIO)

  First published in 1903 and with its the sixth and final edition in 1912, Canti of Castelvecchio was dedicated to the poet’s mother. In Pascoli’s typical mix of registers, the title echoes Leopardi’s Canti while focusing on the farming village where the poet settled.

  In 1902, Pascoli wrote to his friend Alfredo Caselli about the upcoming publication: “You will see a latent order in the Canti . . . first the emotions and affections of winter, then those of summer, then autumn, and then again a bit from mystical winter, and then a bit from sad spring, then finis.” The book’s second section, “Return to San Mauro,” was inspired by Pascoli’s return to Romagna in 1897, and includes “Frogs,” “Home,” “The Meteor,” and eight others.