Today we read Trasformazione di Dafne in lauro, by Giambattista Marino.

In the full glory of baroque flourishes, Marino presents here the notorious rape of Daphne by Apollo. And the poem, though offset by the beauty of the language and technique, is brutal.

The first quatrain focuses on Daphne, shown in distress, running away, looking for her father, likened to a hunted-down doe. Still, slowly but surely, as she turns into a tree as the last resort to escape from the god, the poet’s sympathy also seems to recede. As if saying: she’s just an object now.

And so in the last terzina there is almost no trace of her left. There’s only the triumph of the god: he might have not gotten her fruit, but he will forever adorn his head with the branches of the laurel: her branches. Violence and god’s will prevail in the end, of course.

The original:

Today we read Sia pace ai frati, by Vittorio Alfieri.

This short and punchy epigram by Vittorio Alfieri embodies the Enlightenment attitude towards religion and state: peaceful coexistence in separate domains.

Priests should be few and not overly loquacious in the public arena; cardinals should not take away the lights (here Alfieri uses the term “lume”, and “età dei lumi” is an expression for “Enlightenment”).

The pope should concentrate on the problems of faith and salvation, leaving politics to politicians.

Laws should rule, not a king.

And the concluding line exclaims patriotically: there is an Italy!

The original:

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: