GIUSEPPE GIOACCHINO BELLI *

LI VINI D'UNA VORTA

A ttempi ch'ero regazzotto, allora

Ereno l'anni de ruzzà ccor vino:

Ché sse fasceva er còttimo, ar Grottino,

De bbeve a ssette e a ssei cuadrini l'ora.

E mm'aricorderò ssempr'a Mmarino,

Indove tutti l'anni annàmio fora

D'ottobre a vvilleggià cco la Siggnora,

E cce stàmio inzinent' a Ssammartino.

Llí nnun c'ereno vini misturati

Co cciammelle de sorfo, e cquadrinacci,

E mmunizzione, e ttant'artri peccati.

Bevevio un quartarolo, e ddiscevio : "esci":

E er vino essciva: e vvoi, bbon prò vve facci,

'Na pissciata, e ssinceri com'e ppessci.

TRANSLATION

WINES OF LONG AGO

When I was a young boy, then

it was the time to exceed with wine:

we drunk together, at the Grottino,

even six or seven glasses each hour.

I'll never forget Marino,

where every October we went on vacation

with the Lady,

and we remained until St. Martin's Day.

Over there they had only genuine wines

with doughnuts, and cakes

and a lot of exquisite food.

I drunk a quarter and then said: "go"

and wine did go out: so everybody was satisfied,

after a piss, we were light and happy.

(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.