GIUSEPPE GIOACCHINO BELLI *

ER VINO

Er vino è ssempre vino, Lutucarda:
Indove vòi trovà ppiù mmejjo cosa?
Ma gguarda cqui ssi cche ccolore!, guarda!
Nun pare un'ambra? senza un fir de posa!

Questo t'aridà fforza, t'ariscarda,
Te fa vvienì la vojja d'èsse sposa:
E vva', si mmaggni 'na quajja-lommarda,
Un goccetto e arifai bbocc'odorosa.

È bbono assciutto, dorce, tonnarello,
Solo e ccor pane in zuppa, e, ssi è ssincero,
Te se confà a lo stommico e ar ciarvello.

È bbono bbianco, è bbono rosso e nnero;
De Ggenzano, d'Orvieto e Vviggnanello:
Ma l'este-este è un paradiso vero!

(Terni, 3 October 1831)

TRANSLATION

WINE

 Remember, Lutucarda, wine is always wine:

where can you find a better thing?

Look at its colour! Look!

Doesn't it seem like amber? with not even dregs!

It gives you back strength and heat,

it makes you want to be a spouse:

and if you eat tasty game,

with a drop, you'll have your mouth fragrant again.

It's good dry, sweet and strong,

alone or with soup and bread, and if it's genuine

it helps your stomach and your brains.

It's good white, it's good red and black,

from Genzano, Orvieto and Vignanello:

but Est Est is real Paradise!

(translation by M.Ramponi)

* Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli (Rome, 1791-1863) grew up during the turbulant years of napolean's ocupation of Rome. Although much of his earlier work was to convention by form and diction, by 1816 he began a series of over 2000 sonnets, using the freely expressive language of the Roman dialect.
His vivid and often ribald verse provides a rich picture of the Rome of his days, from compassionate portraits of lower-class figures to unbridled lampoons of corrupt officials of the church.
Belli wrote: "Our common people have no art: no art of speaking, nor poetical, just as any common people never had. Everything springs spontaneously from their own nature, always alive and strong, because left free to develop non-artificial qualities...".
Because of his outraged reaction to the revolutionary violence of 1848, on his death bed he asked that his anticlerical works all be burned, his confessor, however saw to it they there were all published.
The first major English translations of his work were compiled in 1981.
A monument to Belli now stands in the popular Trastevere district.