Italian Poetry

Today we read Funere mersit acerbo, by Giosuè Carducci.

Carducci’s brother, Dante, committed suicide in 1857 — although some say he was actually killed by their father during a particularly violent fight.

When his son was born, some twenty years later, the poet called him Dante, certainly in memory of his uncle, but likely also as an homage to the divin poeta, Dante Alighieri.

This sonnet was written in 1970, a few months after the death of his son at the age of three. Carducci asks his brother, who is sleeping on a hill beside their father, if he heard a cry. It was his son, he says, who is now knocking on his uncle’s door, joining him in the cold world of the dead.

His request is to welcome him and guide him. He is, after all, only a boy, who was just now playing in the garden, and must surely be looking around for the light of the sun, and for his mother.

The title of the poem is not Italian, but Latin. It’s a chilling quote from Virgil, when he describes Aeneas’s descent to the Underworld, and his meeting with the souls of dead young children stolen from their mothers’ breasts.

A more dramatic reading of this poem by noted actor Arnoldo Foà is available on YouTube.

The original:

O tu che dormi là su la fiorita
collina tosca, e ti sta il padre a canto;
non hai tra l’erbe del sepolcro udita
pur ora una gentil voce di pianto?

È il fanciulletto mio, che a la romita
tua porta batte: ei che nel grande e santo
nome te rinnovava, anch’ei la vita
fugge, o fratel, che a te fu amara tanto.

Ahi no! giocava per le pinte aiole,
e arriso pur di vision leggiadre
l’ombra l’avvolse, ed a le fredde e sole

vostre rive lo spinse. Oh, giù ne l’adre
sedi accoglilo tu, chè al dolce sole
ei volge il capo ed a chiamar la madre.\ The music in this episode is Alessandro Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in D minor, S. Z799, recorded by the Orchestre de chambre de la Sarre (in the public domain).