Today we read Ed è subito sera, by Salvatore Quasimodo. How do you put the whole of human existence in three verses? Well, this is one way. Are you an uncharitable reader who isn’t impressed by Quasimodo’s Nobel Prize and would quip “I could also write three lines without even a rhyme”? You then might also maintain that this poem is a fancy way to put the saying “life sucks and then you die.” But of course there’s more than meets the eye, even just at the technical level. The verses are a double senario, a novenario and a settenario, of descending length as life ends its course. The endwords of the lines are “Earth”, “Sun” and “evening,” moving from the everyday, to the possibility of something higher, to death. The original: Ognuno sta solo sul cuor della terra,
trafitto da un raggio di sole:
ed è subito sera.\ The music in this episode is Vivaldi’s Concerto for 2 Cellos in G minor, RV 531, played by New Trinity Baroque (under Creative Commons).
