Today we read A una zanzara, by Gianfrancesco Maia Materdona. This light, little poem was likely intended as a Baroque exercise in extravagance. The author, about whom we know basically nothing, talks for fourteen verses about, of all thing, a mosquito.
And without ever saying the word “mosquito”. It is variously described as a wandering trumpet, a flying murmur, and in general something bent on preventing him from sleeping. And in the sestina, the usual twist: the poet tells the mosquito there’s no point in annoying him, because he is so lovesick that he won’t sleep anyway. And so, he suggests, it should rather go to lady who, by not reciprocating his love, is the cause of his insomnia. By piercing her, who is invulnerable to love’s arrows, the mosquito will gain everlasting renown. The original: Animato rumor, tromba vagante,
che solo per ferir talor ti posi,
turbamento de l’ombre e de’ riposi,
fremito alato e mormorio volante;
per ciel notturno animaletto errante,
pon freno ai tuoi susurri aspri e noiosi;
invan ti sforzi tu ch’io non riposi:
basta a non riposar l’esser amante.
Vattene a chi non ama, a chi mi sprezza
vattene; e incontro a lei quanto più sai
desta il suono, arma gli aghi, usa fierezza.
D’aver punta vantar sì ti potrai
colei, ch’Amor con sua dorata frezza
pungere ed impiagar non poté mai.\ The music in this episode is Vivaldi’s Concerto No. 10, RV 580, played by The Modena Chamber Orchestra (under Creative Commons).
