This week a famous Italian poem by Giovanni Pascolo (1855-1912), written in memory of his father Ruggero who was killed by an assassin on August 10^th, 1867 while on the way home from market with gifts for his children. August 10^th is San Lorenzo’s saint’s day. Giovanni was eleven at the time. The incident, together with later bereavements, was to haunt Giovanni all his life and infuse his work with a deep recurrent sadness: in one poem he likes his father to a fallen oak tree but here he compares him to a swallow returning to the nest.

San Lorenzo: the night of San Lorenzo was traditionally associated with falling stars, which Pascoli likens to tears falling from heaven as it weeps for the evil below.

I can’t quite make up my mind about this poem. I think the idea of falling stars being the tears of heaven is not an image that works well in this secular age, and the extended symbolism of the swallow may strike the English reader as a bit heavy-handed. On the other hand there is still enough restraint and pathos here to make it one of Pascoli’s most moving and memorable poems.

The translation that follows is my own.

X Agosto

San Lorenzo, io lo so perché tanto
di stelle per l’aria tranquilla
arde e cade, perché sì gran pianto
nel concavo cielo sfavilla.

Ritornava una rondine al tetto:
l’uccisero: cadde tra i spini;
ella aveva nel becco un insetto:
la cena dei suoi rondinini.

Ora è là, come in croce, che tende
quel verme a quel cielo lontano;
e il suo nido è nell’ombra, che attende,
che pigola sempre più piano.

Anche un uomo tornava al suo nido:
l’uccisero: disse: Perdono;
e restò negli aperti occhi un grido:
portava due bambole in dono.

Ora là, nella casa romita,
lo aspettano, aspettano in vano:
egli immobile, attonito, addita
le bambole al cielo lontano.

E tu, Cielo, dall’alto dei mondi
sereni, infinito, immortale,
oh! d’un pianto di stelle lo inondi
quest’atomo opaco del Male!

Giovanni Pascolo

August 10

San Lorenzo, I know why so many stars
Fall blazing through the calm air
To leave their traces like sparkling tears
In the hollow dome of the sky.

A swallow was returning to her nest:
And they killed her: she fell among thorns;
In her beak she was bearing an insect:
The meal for her little ones.

And now she is there, lying as if crucified,
Proffering that grub to the far off sky;
While her nest waits in the shadows, and the sound
Of its cheeping grows fainter and fainter.

Just so a man was returning to his home
And they killed him: he said: Forgive me;
And in the open eyes remained a lament:
He was bringing two dolls as a gift.

Now in the lonely house
They wait, and wait in vain
While he, astonished, lying still, points out
The dolls to the far off sky. 

You, Heaven, from the height
Of infinite, serene, immortal worlds,
Oh, send down starry tears to drown
This impenetrable atom of Evil!