United States or Jersey ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The objectivity of the writer is such that we are in doubt whether the speaker the young peasant Vallera, who declares his love to Nencia awakens his sympathy or ridicule. The deliberate contrast to the conventional eclogue is unmistakable. Lorenzo surrenders himself purposely to the realism of simple, rough country life, and yet his work makes upon us the impression of true poetry.
She was picking salad in the garden; he begged her for a little, and she sent him about his business; las, alas! ever since then his peace has been gone; he cannot sleep, he can only think of her, and follow her about; he has become quite good-for-nothing as to his field work, yet he hears all the people around laughing and saying, "Of course Valléra will get her."
There is a fellow who will keep sneaking about her; if Valléra only catch him near his cottage, won't he give him a taste of his long new knife! nay, rip him up and throw his bowels, like those of a pig, to dry on a roof! He is sorry perhaps he bores her God bless you, Nencia! he had better go and look after his sheep.
For Lorenzo is gone, and, greater than he, the paladins and ladies of Boiardo and Ariosto, have followed the saints and virgins of Dante into the limbo of fair unrealities; and the very Greek and Roman heroes of a hundred years ago, the very knights and covenanters of forty years since, have joined them; but Valléra exists still, and still in the flesh exists his Nenciozza.
All this is not the poetry of the Renaissance peasant; it is the poem made out of his reality; the songs which Valléra sang in the fields about his Nencia we must seek in the volume of Tigri; those rispetti and stornelli of to-day are the rispetti and stornelli of four centuries ago; they are much more beautiful and poetic than any of Lorenzo's work; but Lorenzo has given us not merely a peasant's love-song; he has given us a peasant's thoughts, actions, hopes, fears; he has given us the peasant himself, his house, his fields, and his sweetheart, as they exist even now.
Word Of The Day