Sicilian School

From the Sicilian court of King Frederick II in the early 13^th 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.

Piccolo Poem

Cease your flight Aurora opulent

with fruit, with flower,

sprung from nearby banks,

………………………………………...

   In the enchantment you drew with you

the migrant seasons,

each hour flaunts its boast,

and there are festoons of apricots,

peaches, cherries, twining tendrils,

the orchards’ fragrant pride.     

Lucio Piccolo, “Oratorio for Valverde,” in Collected Poems of Lucio Piccolo, translated by Brian Swann and Ruth Feldman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 83.

Before he ever put pen to paper to write his now classic novel, The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa idled in the literary shadow of his cousin, Lucio Piccolo.  The poetry of Piccolo is unknown in our own era.  It is now The Leopard that casts a long shadow over Sicily and its poets and storytellers.  During our travels in Sicily, we met many Sicilians who quoted familiar passages from The Leopard.  Lampedusa’s words and images fill the big screen in Luchino Visconti’s sweeping film of the novel.  Packed away like precious crystal in the Prince of Salina’s shuttered country villa, Lucio Piccolo’s poetry is exquisitely delicate and ethereal.  His body of work is small.  Many editions of his poems in Italian are now out of print.  A beautiful collection of these poems translated into English (with the Italian alongside) was published by Princeton University Press in 1972.  Each of Piccolo’s “baroque songs” is a polished gem.  Piccolo’s words evoke both the rich history and timeless quality of Sicily.  In the long line of Sicilian storytellers and poets who have brought acclaim to their island home, including Luigi Pirandello and Salvatore Quasimodo, Lucio Piccolo deserves to be remembered.

Sonnet to Sicily

Sonettu a Sicilia

by Frances Di Savino

This isle, age-old and new, so close and far,

its rocks, its soil, its vines, bear fruit and wine;

its light, its heat, its winds, swell sea and star,

to see and smell, to hear and feel them shine;

This we came to touch, to taste - then to show -

the roots, the flavors, and fragrant places,

the coasts, the hills, where native grapevines grow;

to roam orange groves and ancient spaces.

Thus we scribe your story of then and now,

of pilgrims questing for the golden thread,

of farmers tilling earth and pushing plow,

to plant and harvest, of both heart and head.

Marsala, Menfi, Messina, Milo -

Read your long-lost tale of love and vino.

I wrote this sonnet as a gift to our editorial team at the University of California Press in honor of the publication of our book. My inspiration was the first sonnet ever written - a literary invention of Giacomo da Lentini, a notary and poet in the Sicilian court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the 13th century.