​1. Trilinguism: a poetic need

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At the beginning of the Eighties, the poet Michele Sovente felt the need to communicate in a new way, experimenting with other languages ​​and not just Italian, which seemed to him linked to situations that were always the same and conditioned by mass spectacle.

The poet argues:

"I felt in my bones that the word, words had to be rediscovered, revisited, relived"[1].

 

For this aim, he gradually inserts the combination of Italian, Latin and the Cappellese dialect into his poetic collections, making each of the three languages ​​vital. Sovente’s technique renews the linguistic panorama, also contrasting the main commonplaces about Latin and the dialect: Latin, considered a dead language, regains its vitality, because it comes into contact with the dialect, which is in turn considered a real language of everyday use; moreover, the dialect does not exclude Italian, as one might think in current usage, but makes it necessary instead[2].

 

2. Per Specula Enigmatis: the introduction of Latin

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Sovente begins his linguistic research going back to the past, starting with rhythmic musical suggestions that belong , in particular, to his cultural formation: after nine years of seminary, Latin does bring to his mind that world, made of litanies, nursery rhymes and ancient formula. However the Latin used by the poet is not connected to the ecclesiastical language, but to the ancient, almost mythological era, whose archaeological and volcanic remains cover his land: the Phlegraean Fields. This becomes evident in his collection Per Specula aenigmatis, where the word becomes a sound that refers to primordial sensations. Here the poetic texts are presented in two languages, Latin and Italian, like the more famous classical pieces with facing-page translations. De Blasi[3] makes us notice that this work “was proposed as an elaboration of the double score of Italian and the Latin, in a bilingualism that in that volume opposed, in the two facing pages, a Latin text and its Italian correspondent.”

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3.Cumae and Carbones . The “triune” language
 

After experimenting Latin writing, the dialect of his hometown, Cappella, enters his verses: it’s a dialect similar to the Neapolitan one, but with its own phonetic and lexical characteristics. What the poet appreciates the most about his dialect is its archaism:

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• the words ending in “à” in the Neapolitan dialect, in the poet’s dialect end in “ò”;

• the definite masculine article is “ù” instead of “ò”;

• the simple preposition “de” is replaced by “re”.

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The use of the dialect arises from the need to bring to light the sounds and sensations of his childhood, of a fairy-tale and nostalgic past. After using his dialect on magazines and anthologies, it is in the collection Cumae that dialect becomes firmly part of Sovente’s poetic production, alongside Italian and Latin.  In this book the poems in dialect are only present in the last section, while in the others lyric poems in Italian and Latin alternate, always one facing the other. The language becomes “triune”, as the poet himself affirmed: the three languages are neither in contrast nor divided sectorially, that’s why Italian is used as a national language, Latin as the language of high culture, and the dialect as a private language; they represent, instead, a single linguistic reality with sounds, words and expressions always in contact with each other. This connection is even more evident in the poems, where, Sovente wrote[4]: “the inventive tension mobilises, excites, multiplies the connections and the timbric relations, alliterative sounds in Latin words and dialect, in Latin and Italian constructs and so on"

 

In the Carbones collection, even more, the three languages coexist, but, independently as can be seen from the layout itself: the texts are in different languages, but they are not juxtaposed  as if presenting a parallel translation, but are positioned at a distance, as if the poet wanted to demonstrate that all the three versions  were fruit of an original inspiration and not a translation one of the other. Here, moreover, there are cases in which the three languages are used simultaneously in the same poem, as in Mi muovo? Resto fermo?[5], unlike in Cumae in which the combination is limited to the insertion of Latin verses in Italian texts, such as in Donna flegrea madre[6].

 

4. Neque nobis prodest | Né ci giova | Nun ce abbasta

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The sixth section of Cumae, which was designed to officially include the Cappellese dialect in the collection, is opened by this poem, composed in Latin, Italian and dialect, Neque nobis prodest | Né ci giova | Nun ce abbasta. It is a single stanza of 16 lines, in which the lyrical self is completely surrounded by darkness and can find no way of salvation, not even through love; referring metaphorically to the darkness of the infernal world, citing its mythological entrance – the Averno Lake, which is in Cumae –, the poet states that only the stars could bring him out of the darkness, following the teaching of Dante’s Paradise about the stars that lead Dante out of the otherworldly realm[7].

The compositions, which are reported below, have enjoyed particular fame and great interest from scholars of the language, especially for the extraordinary expressiveness of Latin and dialect in particular. Here the Cappellese dialect used by Sovente is brutally concrete and is able to drag the reader into the situation of extreme discomfort experienced by the lyrical self, with strong expressions that are not completely perceivable in the Italian and Latin versions.

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Neque nobis prodest                                                         Né ci giova                                                                      Nun ce abbasta

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Me tenebrae tenent tenaciter,                                      Tenaci m’inghiottono tenebre,                                 Me fótte ’a notte, me gnótte,

sitis est mihi taberna                                                         la sete è la mia taverna                                              ’a sete me guverna, ’a famma

famesque unum meum caelum,                                 e la fame è la mia lucerna,                                         me tène comme a na mamma,

fremunt folia, stridet                                                          fremono foglie, sibila                                                    sbàtteno ’i ffoglie attuorno, quanno

sub lucem cupido-telum,               5                              la freccia del desiderio al crepuscolo,   5            stò p’ascì ’u sole sghìzzano ’i vvoglie, 5       

per tabulas pulvis decurrit                                             sulle tavole scorre la polvere                                    ’ncopp’ ’i ttàvule ’i ponte se scapìzza

hiemalis - hoc est ludibrium                                          d’inverno -, è questo lo scherno                              vierno c’ ’a póvere attizza - stò ccò

vitae nec potest vitari-,                                                    della vita né si può vincere -,                                    ’u scuorno r’ ’a vita ma niente ce può fò -,

vertebrae meae limum                                                    le mie vertebre mordono                                            ll’ossa meje se ’mpórpano r’ ’a lutàmma

Averni mordent, tui non est         10                              la melma dell’Averno, l’ultima           10                 ’i ll’imberno, tu nun sì pe’ me                 10

mihi amor ultima salus,                                                    salvezza mia non è il tuo amore,                            ll’ùrdemo scuoglio, ammagare putesse

utinam nomina nostra pondus                                    oh, se il mare i nostri ignudi                                      ’u mare squagliò ’i nomme nuoste

nuda destrueret - hoc est                                              nomi sbriciolasse! - è questo                                    annure - è chisto ’u meglio cadó

fastigium mortis neque                                                   il culmine della morte né                                            ca ce fò ’a morte ma nun ce abbasta -,

nobis prodest -, num nova           15                             ci giova -, forse le novelle                  15                  ’i stelle mò mò accumparute forze     15

sidera omnes dolos delent                                            stelle estingueranno ogni dolo?                              ponno stutò sti ’mbruoglie?

 

 

[1] Michele Sovente, Perchè scrivo in dialetto anche, in Enne n°89 on 15/12/1991.

[2] Nicola De Blasi, Le tre lingue poetiche di Michele Sovente, from Poesia n. 170 March 2003.

[3] Nicola De Blasi, Le tre lingue poetiche di Michele Sovente, from Poesia n. 170 March 2003.

[4] Michele Sovente, Perché scrivo in dialetto, anche in Enne, n°89- 9/15 December 1991 p.23.

[5] Nicola De Blasi: “…the uncertainty reiterated at the end of the stanzas echoes three times as in three different tones of the same unease: «e ora sto fermo / e ora mi muovo (...) e mó stóngo fermo / e mó me mòvo (...) et alternatim / me moveo firmusque sum».”

[6] Giuseppe Andrea Liberti, Michele Sovente. Cumae. Edizione critica, Quodlibet, 2019: “«Mea/sunt mea suspiria tui et vulnera: miei / sono miei i tuoi sospiri e ferite». Donna flegrea madre is one of the few texts in which Latin overlaps Italian. Since the subject always speaks in a language that is not their own'.

[7] Giuseppe Andrea Liberti, Michele Sovente. Cumae. Edizione critica, Quodlibet, 2019.

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