Happiness? Not of this world. And for the poor nor the other. Here's the depressing picture of life described by Human Belli. "Happiness" is a rare word, which is in the United States Constitution, not by chance after a liberal revolution country founded by Protestants optimistic and progressive, full Enlightenment. But it can not be found in Roman dialect sonnets Belli, steeped in realism, yes, but also a deep pessimism Catholic hopeless. Even as a vague expectation afterlife? This is the point, as we shall see later, that seems to characterize the famous sonnet on "Life Omo."
's lament on the evils of existence is a theme common to many ancient and cultured from the Greek lyric Job. And, indeed, this is one of the most alive and most successful - Vigolo writes - "oestrus and hand that the poet had in similar transcript from the overworld illustrious literary all'infimo popular substrate.
But here the drama of human life sad and negative until death and beyond, Belli puts into the mouth of an ideal Roman citizen. And contrary to his custom, not a dialogue but a monologue, which ends in crescendo with increasingly harsh words, more and more dramatic. Hardness without nuances: there is no a single word in the sonnet on the sad existence of Man, and even a few verbs are known the brilliant Vigolo. Why is represented in a single action in a succession of fatal, that if you join the beginning and the end of the sonnet could be summarized in one brief epigram to Quasimodo, " Nine months to the stench, and co ffinissce hell."
all began, not coincidentally, by the foul womb. Also in Jacopone and St. Bernard, in the bitter satire Belli, there is contempt for a Catholic to be condemned to be born by sex, menstrual blood flow or de semen from the woman and man foetidum ( Vigolo). And
earthy realism softens but does not erase the drama. There is even humor, at least until you find the blasphemous sarcasm of the last two verses: God is absent or away, a bit 'ridiculed popular here in the interlayer acts as atrocious as the contrast ec'entra cabbage, and absolute disbelief in the divine understanding and goodwill in the alleged hereafter. Other than heaven, at least for poor people, seems to be saying the fun part: the much-publicized reward is a posthumous Fregnaccia for simpletons. To us belongs to us, just as in life, just hell.
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LIFE OMO
nine months of the stench: then fassciola
between sbasciucchi, livers and llagrimoni:
then p'er lace partners in horsehair, and vesticciola,
torcolo heart and pe ccarzoni slings. Then he starts
torment er de La Scola, the
abbeccè, whipping them ggeloni,
the rosalia, hunting of the ssediola,
and a little 'de vvormijjonì and scarlet fever. Then ll'arte
streets, er diggiuno, fatigue,
the piggione, the prison, er government
the hospital, they must, pussy, er zol
of a state, the snow in winter ... And
aAs urtimo, SCE God bless
streets death, and hell co ffin.
Rome, January 18, 1833
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Versione . La vita dell'uomo. Nove mesi passati nella puzza [dell'utero materno], poi in fasce, tra sbaciucchiamenti continui, croste lattee e pianti a dirotto: poi tenuto al laccio con una cinghia [era l’uso popolare dell’800], dentro un girello [crino], con una vesticciola, con un cercine [sorta di turbante che proteggeva la testa del bambino dalle cadute] e le mutande al posto dei calzoni. Poi comincia il tormento della scuola, l'abbicci, le frustate [per punizione], il tormento dei geloni [a causa dei locali freddi], la rosolia, la cacca sul vasetto, e un po’ di scarlattina e di vaiolo. Poi viene il lavoro, il digiuno [che la Chiesa pretendeva a partire dai 21 anni], fatigue, rent, prison, bullying of the government, hospital, debt, sex, hot in summer and snow in winter ... And finally, God bless us, death comes, and ends with the Inferno.
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"very great art and the power of Belli - Carducci had written - but in a poem that denies, despise and destroy" ( art and poetry in "Works", Zanichelli 1937).
E '"popular philosopher", not necessarily the Roman man, but man in general, who speaks the words of the beautiful in this famous sonnet, along with Catholic and anti-Catholic, religious and irreligious, cynical and poetic, like many other sonnets Belli. This time there is nothing political, sociological and little, as the ancient theme, although it certainly must be considered that after the collective imagination that lies behind the people thought the philosopher-Belli Rome is still medieval Pope King , the most backward state of Europe. Where even religion, omnipresent in daily life, has failed, if it is true that the Church has forgotten its message of consolation and hope looked forward to the common people who live their daily hell nothing more than the next coming of another hell. Indeed, the Roman era, who believed it or not, might also have to tackle the threats of the parish priest or confessor noting that the afterlife was not so much fear, as his hell was already among the alleys, squares, arches, fountains, gates, ladders, lodges, shops and courtyards of Bridge, Ripa, Rule , Pigna, S. Eustachio, Parione, San Angelo, Colonna, Trevi, Campo Marzio, Campitelli, Monti and Trastevere ("wards of the Beautiful"). So
life and death, heaven and hell, they are together, and death is not the end of suffering, but the beginning of a new, just more mysterious tragedy that is consumed in an afterlife that the popular superstition, being stirred up by the priests , paints a bleak with every shade of red (flames, devils), the shadows, the scenery and the sadomasochistic yearnings the Baroque, the style that best represents the theatrical aesthetic of Catholicism ..
So there is no escape in human life: the unpleasant mother's womb to the aches and pains of life large and small, listed, to be sipped with a certain morbid satisfaction, until the final gift to the torment of hell that we propina the same as "merciful" God Almighty. A cruel counterpoint to the earthy vision ye say the preachers in the churches.
So, paradoxically, its folk and religious belief in the afterlife and hell end up aggravating the pessimism bellano man. While in the Enlightenment rationalists and the pains of life are over, at least, with the death ransoms and rewards (hence the rhetoric of the heroic or romantic in suicide), in the view of Catholicism and desperate Baroque Belli, even death provides the much-hoped-for peace Man. And 'the defeat of Man, but also of the Catholic religion.
A total pessimism, universal, rather than Leopardi, because Leopardi - another subject of the Pope, as it happens - at least there's a reason that somehow save us, but there is not even in the Belli this. A radical nihilism that is perhaps the spring that will push the author of the Sonnets reactionary positions. Leopardi, however, oscillates between two poles in his pessimism. On the one hand, as Note the Vigolo, does so to speak, in dialogue with the philosopher Plotinus, Porphyry: "The human race is an admirable example of unhappiness in this life, do not expect that death is an end to his misery, but had to be, after that, far more unhappy. " But then, in so many other songs Leopardi shows have in some way in the Enlightenment faith in the great force of nature and the eternal spirit of man. And with its "morality of compassion" will continue to hope in the solidarity that comes from common pain in life, as a last resort for the future of mankind.
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IMAGE. Human life and age (the popular press of the nineteenth century)
