This is fascinating, Erminia, and thanks,
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Erminia Passannanti" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 11:16 PM
Subject: Re: Saba's female animals
Saba in 'To my wife', (Il Canzoniere) compares his wife (moglie) to
various animals of feminine sex: hen, heifer, bitch, rabbit, swallow, ant,
and finally to a bee .
(final stanza that I am translating for you because I have not found on
the Internet any translation of this poem)
'And therefore in the bee
I recognize you, and in all
the females of the serene animals
that stand next to God; and in
no other woman.... '
Please, so note how in this closing stanza
Saba's tone evokes Saint Francis 'Cantico delle Creature'.
His wife as one of the many females natural creatures - the bee, the
bitch, the hen - does not have a 'salvific' connotation nor function,
unlike in Montale' s poetics, but she is the tender and sure companion to
console and be consoled by from the anguish of living.
Through the similes with the animals Saba exalted the females' vitality' ,
intelligence, and also strength of natural instincts.
On the contraruy, the oneness of one's wife among all the human females
alludes to the oneness of the mother. In the poem 'A mia moglie', Saba
treats also the topics of " lamentation " and " suffering " (in the birth
giving labors, for instance) that joins together the first four animals
as a meaningful continuity between the figure of the wife and that of
one's mother.
One major reflection: I was shocked when I first started teaching in an
English mixed comprehensive, to find out that when a boy wants to offend a
girl, he calls her 'bitch'. In Saba's meaning, it is the most beautiful
comparison one could make between the woman and a really caring and
intelligent and giving a female of all the existing species.
The same, then, is to be read in 'The goat',
"In una capra dal viso semita
sentiva querelarsi ogni altro male,
ogni altra vita." (La capra)
'A goat with a Jewish face,
reciting the toneless torah
of all other ills, all other
lives' laments.'(Translated by Dave)
'In a Semite featured goat
I heard questioned every other pain
every other life.'
(translated by Erminia)
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Erminia
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