Today we read Lavandare, by Giovanni Pascoli. When Virgil, at the beginning of the fourth Eclogue, announces that he is going to sing of “bigger things,” he justifies this by saying that not everybody likes “humiles myricae”: humble tamarisks. Pascoli, on the other hand, chose the Latin name of this humble shrub for the title of his most celebrated collection of poems, thus declaring his intention of focusing on small things: the countryside, everyday objects and activities, farmers, workers.
And he tells about them using a simple language, not infrequently with regional terms. In this particular case he even borrowed from popular local chants for two of the verses. We start with the image of a plough forgotten in the middle of a field, and we hear in the distance the work and song of the washer-women. In this atmosphere, where everything seems observed from afar and in solitude, a woman, abandoned by her husband, compares herself to the discarded tool.
And the poem closes on the very subtle sexual undertone of a field that has been tilled but not sown. The original: Nel campo mezzo grigio e mezzo nero
resta un aratro senza buoi che pare
dimenticato, tra il vapor leggero.
E cadenzato dalla gora viene
lo sciabordare delle lavandare
con tonfi spessi e lunghe cantilene:
Il vento soffia e nevica la frasca,
e tu non torni ancora al tuo paese!
quando partisti, come son rimasta!
come l’aratro in mezzo alla maggese.\ The music in this episode is Lamento della Ninfa from Monteverdi’s Madrigali Guerrieri et Amorosi, sung by Daphne Ramakers (under creative commons).
