Alla sera, by Ugo Foscolo

Today we read Alla sera, by Ugo Foscolo.

I will admit to a snobbish tendency to avoid presenting here the most widely known Italian poems, let alone those learned by heart by most students.

And I do believe it is a good thing to widen the horizon to lesser-studied gems. Still, it won’t do to present a too-biased lay of the land.

So, here is a beautiful classic that I hardly can stand anymore, having been force fed it innumerable times in school and in all sorts of anthologies.

Evening is descending, and the poet welcomes it, because it brings peace and quiet from the turmoils of the day — and Foscolo’s days were pretty hectic. He’s been on the run all life, fighting wars, travelling all around Europe, feeling exiled.

But more than that, the evening is the image of death, the eternal quiet and nothingness that promises peace.

The sonnet is replete with pleasant images (happy winds, light clouds) and soft-sounding words, that contrast with the semantic content (like the insistence on death and darkness). It is only in the very last verse that the sounds themselves manifest the rebellious streak Foscolo is trying to quiet down: six r’s crowd into four aggressive and combative words, as if to say that not even death will be able to take the edge off this soul.

(Since I can’t roll my r’s, here is an alternative reading by Vittorio Gassman, to let you appreciate that grating last verse in all its glory.)

The original:

Forse perchè della fatal quïete
Tu sei l’immago, a me sì cara vieni.
O sera! E quando ti corteggian liete
Le nubi estive e i zeffiri sereni,
E quando del nevoso aere inquïete
Tenebre e lunghe all’universo meni,
Sempre scendi invocata, e le secrete
Vie del mio cor söavemente tieni.
Vagar mi fai co’ miei pensier sull’orme
Che vanno al nulla eterno, e intanto fugge
Questo reo tempo, e van con lui le torme
Delle cure onde meco egli si stnigge;
E mentre io guardo la tua pace, dorme
Quello spirto guerrier ch’entro mi rugge. \ The music in this episode is Vivaldi’s Double Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 3 No. 11, played by the Advent Chamber Orchestra with David Parry and Roxana Pavel Goldstein (under creative commons from the Al Goldstein collection).