Poetry
La Ninetta del Verzee
Not translated into English
Carlo Porta · 1814
Opening lines
Bravo el mè Baldissar! bravo el mè nan!
l'eva poeù vora de vegnì a trovamm...
Well done, my Baldissar! well done, my little one!
It was high time you came to see me...
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from it.wikisource.org
Synopsis
Ninetta, a prostitute of the Verzee, Milan's vegetable market, tells her story to a regular client. She says how Pepp, the man she loved, seduced her, then exploited her, until he pushed her into the trade she now practises. From the first line to the last, she speaks alone, in the Milanese of the street, with no narrator framing her account.
Context
The poem was written in 1814: forty-three octaves in Milanese dialect. When the author published his poems in 1817, he left out, given the political climate of the moment, his boldest pieces, and the censors had this one excluded; it appeared only after his death, in the collection printed at Lugano in 1826. Its circulation remained limited for a long time by the dialect, by the crudeness of its subject matter and by censorship. In French, the Larousse refers to it as “La Ninetta du Verger”.
Who it is for
A short poem in Milanese dialect, spoken in a single voice, for those interested in Italian popular poetry.
Prizes and reception
The poem is generally regarded as its author's masterpiece.
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