Avvertimento a un giovane scrittore, by Giuseppe Giusti

Today we read Avvertimento a un giovane scrittore, by Giuseppe Giusti.

Many of Giusti’s most famous poems are political and satirical in nature, and thus require some knowledge of Italy’s and Europe’s complicated and depressing history in order to be fully enjoyed.

Which is why I chose instead this short epigram, in the form of an ottava. Giusti has a warning for young writers, which in contemporary terms we could translate into the kiss principle: “Keep it simple, stupid!”

First, don’t take difficult concepts and distort them and make them even more difficult by inventing strange conceptual contraptions of mismatched ideas (like sphinxes and chimeras). Reading this, it’s hard for me not to think that Giusti was born only two years after the publication of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit…

Secondly, avoid clunky language and a style that needs to be continually kicked in the ass to feel like it actually goes anywhere.

Just write things as they are, thoughtfully but naturally.

The original:

Di concetti difficili e stravolti
Non fabbricare a te sfingi e chimere:
Cerca modi spediti e disinvolti,
E non far, come i dotti di mestiere,
rime col tiro a secco, o versi sciolti,
Che vanno avanti a calci nel sedere.
Ma pensa e di’ le cose tali e quali,
pensatamente schiette e naturali. \ The music in this episode is Gaetano Donizetti’s overture to the opera Don Pasquale, played by the United States Marine Band for the album Overtures, Volume Two (in the public domain).