Poetry
St. Ambrose
Sant'Ambrogio
Giuseppe Giusti · 1846
Opening lines
Vostra Eccellenza che mi sta in cagnesco
Per que’ pochi scherzucci di dozzina,
E mi gabella per anti-tedesco
Perchè metto le birbe alla berlina,
Your Excellency, who looks askance at me
For those few cheap little jokes,
And passes me off as anti-German
Because I put the rogues in the pillory,
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from it.wikisource.org
Synopsis
Addressing a senior official in the service of Austria, who reproaches him for mocking the Germans, the poet recounts a visit to the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan. He finds it occupied by soldiers of the occupying army, Bohemians and Croats, stiff as stakes, and keeps to one side, full of disgust. Then music rises: it is the chorus “O Signore, dal tetto natio”, from an opera by Verdi, and the poet is deeply moved.
Context
Written in 1846, the poem appeared in 1852, in the posthumous collection of the author's verse. It is composed in stanzas of eight hendecasyllabic lines, the metre of chivalric epic, put here at the service of an ironic, conversational tone. The chorus heard in the basilica is that of Verdi's “Lombards à la première croisade”. In English, the American writer William Dean Howells translated it under the title “St. Ambrose” in his “Modern Italian Poets”, in 1887, and regarded it as the author's best poem.
Who it is for
A short poem in eight-line stanzas, whose tone moves from irony to emotion: it can be read in one sitting.
Prizes and reception
According to the Treccani, its conclusion, at once pensive and playful, was admired by Luigi Pirandello.
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