Poems of Giosuè Carducci, Translated with two introductory essays: / I. Giosuè Carducci and the Hellenic reaction in Italy. II. Carducci and the classic realism

Chapter 48: XXXIX OLD FIGURINES

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About This Book

The volume opens with two essays that analyze the poet's Hellenic revival and his classic-realist aesthetic, situating his work amid tensions between ecclesiastical influence, chivalric import, and native national feeling. It then presents translations of numerous poems—hymns, sonnets, dedicatory pieces, patriotic and religious lyrics, and descriptive sketches—covering classical subjects, Dantean and Virgilian allusions, personal reflection, and social observation. Together the critical essays and translated poems emphasize classical forms, historical memory, and a restrained realism that seeks to renew Italian literary identity.

XXXIX OLD FIGURINES

Like as an infant, beaten by its mother

or but half conquered in a wayward quarrel,

tired, falls asleep, with its little fists

tight clenched and with tear-wet eyelids,—

So does my passion, O fair Lalage,

sleep in my bosom; nor thinking, nor caring,

whether in rosy May-time wander playing

the other happy infants in the sun.

O wake 't not, Lalage! or thou shalt hear

my passion, like a very God of battles,

putting an end to sports so innocent,

to flay the very heavens with its raging!

Odi Barbare.