Il presepio, by Gabriele D’Annunzio

Today we read Il presepio, by Gabriele D’Annunzio.

Gabriele D’Annunzio is not usually the author you’d associate with simple little nursery rhymes about kids reciting religious stuff and getting candy from their grandma for Christmas.

One would instead link him with aestheticism, decadentism, First World War, daring airplane manouvers, Mussolini and, yes, weird sexual legends.

And yet here we are, reading precisely a cute little nursery rhyme.

It is an early composition, and I don’t claim it to be a masterpiece, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s Chrismas, after all, and it’s time to set up the nativity scene, like D’Annunzio loved to do for all his life.

The original:

A Ceppo si faceva un presepino
con la sua brava stella inargentata,
coi Magi, coi pastori, per benino
e la campagna tutta infarinata.

La sera io recitavo un sermoncino
con una voce da messa cantata,
e per quel mio garbetto birichino
buscavo baci e pezzi di schiacciata.

Poi verso tardi tu m’accompagnavi
alla nonna con dir: “Stanotte L’Angelo
ti porterà chi sa che bei regali!”.
E mentre i sogni m’arridean soavi,
tu piano, piano mi venivi a mettere
confetti e soldarelli fra’ i guanciali.\ The music in this episode is Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerto Grosso in G minor (Christmas Concerto), Op. 6, No. 8, played by the Advent Chamber Orchestra (licensed under Creative Commons).