Italian Environmental Literature
An Anthology

Edited by Patrick Barron
and Anna Re

Foreword by John Elder
Preface by Rebecca West

Map

x

John Elder

Foreword

xiii

Rebecca West

Preface

xvi

Acknowledgements

xxi

Patrick Barron
& Anna Re

Introduction

xxiii

Poetry

Giovanni Pascoli

3

Pioggia - Rain

4

Vespro - Vespers

4

La domenica dell'ulivo -
The Sunday of the Olive Tree

6

Una sera d'Ottobre -
October Evening

6

Arano - They Are Plowing

8

Novembre - November

8

Gabriele D’Annunzio

 

11

La Pioggia nel pineto -
The Rain in the Pinewood

12

Ditirambo III - Dithyramb III

18

Corrado Govoni

27

Paesaggio - Landscape

28

Crepuscolo Ferrarese -
Ferrarese Twilight

28

La primavera del mare -
The Springtime of the Sea

30

Dino Campana

34

La Verna

34

Images from the Journey
and the Mountain

46

Giuseppe Ungaretti

49

I fiumi - The Rivers

50

Con fuoco - With Fire

54

Quiete - Quiet

54

Tu ti spezzasti -
You Shattered

56

Terra - Earth

58

Eugenio Montale

63

Meriggiare pallido e assorto -

Sit out the Noon,
Pale and Engrossed

64

Portami il girasole ch'io lo trapianti -

Bring Me the Sunflower
So that I May Plant It

64

Riviere – Seacoasts

66

Egloga – Eclogue

70

L'anguilla - The Eel

72

Salvatore Quasimodo

77

Alla mia terra -
To My Earth

78

Cavalli di luna e di vulcani -
Horses of Moon and of Volcanoes

78

Ride la gazza, Nera sugli aranci

The Magpie Laughs, Black upon the Orange Trees

80

Preghiera alla Pioggia -
Prayer to the Rain

82

Ed e subito sera -
And Suddenly it's Evening

82

Daria Menicanti

85

Camaleonte - Chameleon

86

Epigramma per un verme -
Epigram for a Worm

88

Se - If

88

Felini - Felines

90

Gabbiani - Seagulls

90

Tonino Guerra

93

E' mi fiómm - My River

94

E' paradéis l'è brótt -
Heaven is Ugly

94

I bu – Oxen

96

La mórta - Death

96

E' mónd l'è bèl -
The World is Beautiful

96

Andrea Zanzotto

99

Un libro di Ecloghe -
A Book of Eclogues

100

Per la finestra nuova -
Through the New Window

100

Ormai - By Now

112

Pier Paolo
Pasolini

115

Il pianto della scavatrice -
The Tears of the Excavator

116

Jolanda Insana

123

Excerpts from Il Radicamento
The Rooting

124

Mariella Bettarini

127

Il leccio - The Holm Oak

128

Biografia - Biography

130

Se la natura parla a tutta gola
If Nature Bellows

130

Dico che il grillo lo scorpione la cavalletta -

I Say that the Cricket the Scorpion the Grasshopper

132

Luciana Notari

135

Il corpo e l'anima -
Body and Soul

136

Scarto - Distance

136

Aspra stagione Metropolitana -
Harsh Metropolitan Season

138

Paesaggio invernale -
Winter Landscape

138

Prose

Corrado Alvaro

143

From: People In Aspromonte

144

Gianna Manzini

The Fable of the Olive Tree

147

A Cypress

150

Ignazio Silone

From: Fontamara

154

154

Carlo Levi

From: Christ Stopped at Eboli

165

165

Giuseppe Dessì

From: The Forests of Norbio

173

 

Anna Maria Ortese

The Tree

184

Carlo Cassola

Sea, Sky and Land

191

Nuto Revelli

196

Polenta Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Times a Year

196

It Didn't Seem Like It, But the Women Were in Charge

200

Mario Rigoni Stern

203

The Crows

203

The Shepherd

206

Italo Calvino

210

Spring:
Mushrooms in the City

210

The Good Air

213

Where the River is More Blue?

218

Giuseppe Bonaviri

221

From: Dolcissmo

222

Carlo Sgorlon

231

The Enchanted Voyager
from The Wooden Throne

232

Gianni Celati

237

How A Photographer Disembarked

In the New World

228

The Return of the Traveler

242

Monica Sarsini

249

Pink

249

Lavender

250

Silver

251

Green

252

White

253

Environmental Writing

Anna Re

Introduction

257

Laura Conti

263

A Hare with The Face of a Child

264

Alfredo Todisco

274

From: The Natural History of a Passion

274

Antonio Cederna

279

From: The Vandals at Home

279

From: The Destruction of Nature

281

Danilo Dolci

283

An Expropriated Farmer

283

Giorgio Nebbia

290

The Crisis in the Relationship between Man and the Environment

290

The Lesson of Ecology

292

Fulco Pratesi

294

From: The Knights of the Great Lagoon

294

Gianni Mattioli and Massimo Scalia

298

Prometheus Fell at Chernobyl

298

Global Climate Change

300

Virginino Bettini

304

Blowin' in the Wind

304

Nicola Licciardello

310

Give Us Our Daily Wild

310

Loredana Lucarini

315

Alfa Romeo

315

Giuseppe Moretti

321

Wild and Cultivated

321

Studio Azzurro

327

The Earth that Generates the Air

328

Perfumes Carried by the Wind

329

Notes

332



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