Centre for Romanian Studies

Giuseppe Joacchino BELLI (1791-1863) (Poet Italian de expresie Trasteverină)

CREATURA
Giuseppe Joacchino BELLI (1791-1863)
(Poet Italian de expresie Trasteverină)

Ascultă-i muma-i debitând prostii:
De-abea că l-a născut in bătătură
Şi zice că-i deştept, şi chiar se jură,
De-ai contrazice-o palmă vei primi.

El ştie tot şi toate dela sine.
E limpede ca ploaia din senin;
E-o capodoperă, aşa cum nu mai ştim
Şi plin de haruri: este o minune!

De fapt, nu e decât un maimuţoi,
Un prostânac şi-o creatură seacă
Ce toata ziua plânge şi se cacă.

Dar măsii, i se pare-acest puţoi
Ca fiind cel mai isteţ invăţăcel
Căci mamele, ori unde, sunt la fel.

Versiune in limba Romană de Constantin ROMAN,
Londra, 19 Iunie 2012
© Copyright 2012, Constantin ROMAN

BIOGRAPHY NOTE:
ROME, known as “the city of the six Ps – popes, priests, princes, prostitutes, parasites and the poor” is revisited in Giuseppe Belli’s sonnets depicting the Eternal City’s life of love, death, sex, food, money, family, religion and politics. In Belli’s imagery is encapsulated in his over two thousand sonnets, written in the Trasteverin Roman dialect. Here, a whole gamut of colourful personages come back to life: housewives, mothers, beggars, lovers, businessmen, popes, whores, doctors, thieves, lawyers, priests, pen-pushers, actresses, gossips.
It is a miracle that Belli’s clandestine sonnets (written by a poet who outwardly led a conformist life of letters and bureaucracy), had survived at all, as they were partially burnt by the author himself, who wished them completely destroyed after his death, but this was not to be, only to form today a lasting poetical monument to the people of nineteenth-century Rome.