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.

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.