DOI chapter:
Chapter IV: The Neapolitan Character - The Lottery - Camorra, etc.
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.59000#0150
The Neapolitan Character, Etc.
a language which, if the voice be soft, is so musical and
passionate, as one may perhaps venture to say that all
Italian dialects are. It has, too, its own literature, its
many dictionaries, even its grammars. It is the chosen
language for the modern poetry and for the drama of
Naples ; but, alas, few others than the natives them-
selves can understand it, and it is as Sanscrit to the
Roman and the Tuscan. Compare the styles of those
Neapolitan writers who use both dialect and Italian, and
one is more than ever impressed with the natural fitness
of the former for expressing their peculiar types of mind.
Of the dialect poetry much could be written.
Comparing it with the work of Pascarelli, whose
exquisite sonnets in Roman dialect are well known,
Mathilde Serao claims that both the Neapolitan poets
of to-day, Russo and di Giacomo, touch depths of
passion that the Roman writer knows not. But I should
be rather inclined to say that their passionate feelings
were of a different order, verging on a quickly exhausted
violence, and therefore easier to express than the far
more reserved feelings of the North.
A distinct vein of melancholy may be traced in the
Neapolitan literature of to-day. Some trace it back
to the Revolution; but in the prose works of di
Giacomo at least the influence of the French school
can be detected. It is in his poetry that he touches
a purely original vein, showing a profound knowledge
of the complex human nature around him. This
poet, still a young man, writes his prose in Italian
and his poetry in dialect. The one, therefore, has been
7i
a language which, if the voice be soft, is so musical and
passionate, as one may perhaps venture to say that all
Italian dialects are. It has, too, its own literature, its
many dictionaries, even its grammars. It is the chosen
language for the modern poetry and for the drama of
Naples ; but, alas, few others than the natives them-
selves can understand it, and it is as Sanscrit to the
Roman and the Tuscan. Compare the styles of those
Neapolitan writers who use both dialect and Italian, and
one is more than ever impressed with the natural fitness
of the former for expressing their peculiar types of mind.
Of the dialect poetry much could be written.
Comparing it with the work of Pascarelli, whose
exquisite sonnets in Roman dialect are well known,
Mathilde Serao claims that both the Neapolitan poets
of to-day, Russo and di Giacomo, touch depths of
passion that the Roman writer knows not. But I should
be rather inclined to say that their passionate feelings
were of a different order, verging on a quickly exhausted
violence, and therefore easier to express than the far
more reserved feelings of the North.
A distinct vein of melancholy may be traced in the
Neapolitan literature of to-day. Some trace it back
to the Revolution; but in the prose works of di
Giacomo at least the influence of the French school
can be detected. It is in his poetry that he touches
a purely original vein, showing a profound knowledge
of the complex human nature around him. This
poet, still a young man, writes his prose in Italian
and his poetry in dialect. The one, therefore, has been
7i