----- Original Message -----
From: Douglas Clark <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2000 12:33 PM
Subject: Re: Artists In Extremis--Ya gotta suffer?
> WAsnt Belli Neapolitan? Robert Garioch did brilliant translations
> of his sonnets into Scots.
>
Hello, Douglas, (sorry for the delay in answering your query about Belli),
Now, Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli was born in Rome and
wrote in the Roman dialect (which is quite different from
the Neapolitan, in a way; since Roman dialect is closer to the official
language,
while Neapolitan seems to be a peculiar language on its own with its own
grammar ,
language status and literary production (in the Sixties and Seventies
made world wide known, in translation, by the work of
the great playwriter Edoardo De Filippo (1900-1984).
In the Neapolitan dialect there are, in fact, the influences
of both French (the Norman domination, around the year 1000 in Salerno,
and Spanish (the Bourbons enervated completely southern Italy
during Carlo's and his son, Ferdinando's Reign of Naples + Reign of the two
Sicilies).
I have just received a huge book from a colleague of mine from Italy, who is
visiting London
who is the author of two wonderful massive studies on English 17th and 18th
Century
travel-writers to Naples. I shall translate some occasional sparks from it,
and post it
to BritishPoets, sometimes.
Erminia
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