From the Sicilian
court of King Frederick II in the early 13th century there emerged a
Romantic poetry written in the vernacular language and in a new poetic form –
the sonnet. Frederick II was himself a
learned man of science and poetry. This
group of poets and their work, known as the Sicilian
School, gave Sicily a literary identity that would survive for future
generations of Sicilian poets, playwrights, and patriots. Their literary invention also was the
foundation for the earliest proto-Italian vernacular poetry of Dante and his Divine Comedy. In his sonnet “A l’aire claro ò vista ploggia dare“ (I have seen a clear sky give
rain) Giacomo da Lentini, the most renowned of the Sicilian Romantic poets,
could well be describing the stark contradictions that have marked Sicily’s history -- and its ancient culture of wine.
“I have seen a clear sky give rain
and darkness produce light,
and blazing fire become ice,
and cold snow produce heat,
and a sweet thing become bitter
and bitterness transformed to sweetness,
………………………………………………………………”
Karla Mallette,
The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100-1250: A Literary History (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 176.
