Today we read Interno, by Sandro Penna. Sandro Penna had a gift to turn the commonplace, and sometimes the straight-up vulgar, into sublime.
This poem opens in the run-down scenery of a dilapidated hotel, often described with terms rendered in their pejorative forms (the -accio endings). But then a boy appears, asleep. He is introduced by a verse that describes him with one such pejorative; but the next one, after a compelling enjambment, breathlessly declares him beautiful. And suddenly the whole poem is suffused by the loveliness of a sleepy boy cuddling with a cat. Note also the surface simplicity of the composition, that belies extreme metric control (best noticed by turning on the appropriate option above). The second and last verse have the same stress pattern (and the first one, too, if one adds one more syllable at the beginning).
But the remaining verses are built around very fluid senari, with stresses always on the second and sixth syllables — in two cases prefixed by three syllables. The original: Dal portiere non c’era nessuno.
C’era la luce sui poveri letti
disfatti. E sopra un tavolaccio
dormiva un ragazzaccio
bellissimo.
Uscì dalle sue braccia
annuvolate, esitando, un gattino.\ The music in this episode is Alessandro Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in D minor, S. Z799, recorded by the Orchestre de chambre de la Sarre (in the public domain).
