• Il lampo, by Giovanni Pascoli

  • May 25 2024
  • Length: 2 mins
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Il lampo, by Giovanni Pascoli

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  • Today we read Il lampo, by Giovanni Pascoli.

    In this very short ballad Pascoli paints an impressionistic picture of the moment right before the start of a torrential storm, at night. Everything is black and silent, but suddenly a flash of lightning lights up the landscape, and reveals a sky about to burst into rain, and the ground heaving as if waiting for the outpour.

    A house also appears briefly, only to be swallowed up by darkness soon after.

    But this is not just a description of a natural phenomenon, and the last lines are a hint to the second meaning of the poem.

    The house is compared to an eye that opens, wide and shocked, and closes back into the night. The whole thing is a symbolic reference to the death of Pascoli’s father, who was shot one evening while returning home. The lightning, then, is also the flash from the shotgun the brigands used to kill him.

    The original:

    E cielo e terra si mostrò qual era:

    la terra ansante, livida, in sussulto;
    il cielo ingombro, tragico, disfatto:

    bianca bianca nel tacito tumulto
    una casa apparì sparì d’un tratto;

    come un occhio, che, largo, esterrefatto,

    s’aprì si chiuse, nella notte nera.
    \ The music in this episode is Vivaldi’s Concerto No. 10, RV 580, played by The Modena Chamber Orchestra (under Creative Commons).
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