Sunday's Mini-Challenge: Salvatore Quasimodo

Hi toads and friends of the garden !   I am enjoying this series of sharing with you the work of other poets.  For today, it is the poems by Salvatore Quasimodo who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1959.

Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968) was born of Sicilian parents in Syracuse. Desiring to become an engineer, he attended technical schools in Palermo and later enrolled at the Politecnico in Rome. In addition, he studied Latin and Greek at the University there. However, for economic reasons he was unable to complete his studies. He obtained a position with the Italian government's civil engineering corps and was sent to various parts of Italy. In 1930 he had three poems published in the avant-garde review, Solaria, and later that same year appeared his first book of verse, Acque e terre (Waters and Lands). Two years later he published Òboe sommerso (Sunken Oboe), in which he proves a more mature poet. The "poetica della parole", the poetics of the word, which is, for Quasimodo, the fundamental and virtually limitless connotative unit, pervades his first book. While this concept still serves as the basis for Òboe sommerso, the main interest of this collection lies in the rhythmical arrangement of words around a lyrical nucleus. In both these and his later works Sicily is the constant, ever-present factor.

During the 1930's Quasimodo was a leader of the "Hermetic" school of poetry; however, with the appearance of his translations Lirici Greci (Greek Lyrics), 1940, it was obvious that his direction was no longer entirely along the lines of that group. In Nuove Poesie (New Poems), 1942, Quasimodo reveals both the influence of classical stylistics and a greater understanding of life in general. His subsequent translations, which range from the Greek and Latin poets (Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, Ovid, Vergil, etc.) to Shakespeare and Molière and twentieth-century writers (Neruda, e.e. cummings, Aiken, etc.), reflect his full appreciation of the original works as well as his modern taste and sensibility.

During the Second World War Quasimodo experienced the need of the poet to feel one with the people and to declare himself as such in his poems. To him the role of the poet in society is a necessarily active one; he should commit himself and his talents to contemporary struggles. Such views were first expressed in Giorno dopogiorno (Day after Day), 1946, and La vita non è sogno (Life Is Not a Dream), 1949.

Quasimodo's later works show this change from individualism toward sociality, and moreover affirm the positive characteristics of life even in a world where death is an omnipresent fear. In La terra impareggiabile (The Incomparable Earth), 1958, Quasimodo has eloquently attempted to fuse life and literature; he has developed a new language which coincides with man's new activities and ever-expanding investigations. Some of his poetry and two of his critical essays have appeared in English translation in The Selected Writings of Salvatore Quasimodo (1960); his Selected Poems were published in 1965.

Mirror

(Ed ecco sul tronco)

And see, buds break

out of the tree:

a newer green in the grass

eases the heart:

the tree seemed already dead,

bowed on the slope

And all I know of miracle;

and I am this watery cloud

that reflected today in the ditches,

the more blue, its fragment of heaven,

this green that splits the bark

that only last night was not there.

Metamorphoses in the Urn of the Saint

(I morti maturano)

The dead mature;

my heart with them.

Mercy on the self

is earth’s final humour.

A light of lacustrine trees

stirs in the glass of the urn.

a dark mutation ravages me,

unknown saint; in the scattered seed

green maggots moan:

my visage forms their springtime.

A memory of darkness is born

in the depths of walled wells,

an echo in buried eardrums:

I am your pale relic.

Grant Me My Day

(Dammi il mio giorno)

Grant me my day;
so I might yet search myself

for some dormant face of the years

that a hollow of water

returns in its transparency

and weep for love of myself.

You are a path in the heart

and a finding of stars

in sleepless archipelagos,

night, kindly to me

a fossil thrown from a weary wave;

a curve of secret orbit,

where we are close

to rocks and grasses.

You can read more of his translated work here.

Our challenge is to write a new poem or prose poem in response to Salvatore Quasimodo's words.   Some examples of responses include affirming what the speaker said or using his title or line of verse as a jumping board for your own writing.   The prompt is wide open so feel free to explore where your muse takes you.   I look forward to reading your work ~ Happy weekend to all ~ Grace (aka Heaven)