Since I can't roll my *r*'s, here is an alternative reading by Vittorio Gassman: youtube.com/watch?v=uMTc..., to let you appreciate that grating last verse in all its glory.

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.

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 words that contrast with the semantic content (like the insistence on death and darkness)

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.

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 it is a good thing to widen the horizon to lesser-studied gems, but it won't do to present a too-biased lay of the land

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.

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…

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).

Well... all verses, except the last one, where he wished Don Ciccio to always remain an ass, for our eternal enjoyment.

Also see italianpoetry.it/poems/la-pri... for more background on *la Cicceide*.

So let me wish everyone an excellent 2025 using the same verses that our friend Lazzarelli employed to wish a great 1683 to his nemesis, Don Ciccio: may all the planets bring you joy, bless you and conserve you!

That's a great Xmas present for me 😊
Maybe sort the poems by composition date and start from the newest, so the language is easier. And if you have feedback, also on the language description part, do let me know!

He's so tired that even punctuation is too much, so that he ends up using none at all. His signature broken verses are even shorter than usual, as if stringing words required too much effort.

(Describing Naples' roads as a ball of yarn is a nice euphemism).
He'd rather rest and lie in front of the fire, like a "forgotten thing."
But we *do* know he was fighting in the war, and so we attach a whole different meaning to the weariness he complains about.

If we didn't know that, we could read these verses as just a statement of laziness: the poet explains he isn't in the mood to go out to celebrate in the loud, cold, busy streets of the city.

She is supposed to be happy because her son is now blissfully in the presence of God, but she is worried that her grief is excessive, impious, and will lead her son to think less of her and love her less.

Their life together was apparently very happy, their house a literary hub of those years. One great sorrow was, however, the death of their first child, at the tender age of two. In this sonnet she tries to reconcile her faith with her natural, motherly pain at his loss.

She was an established poet, being a member of the famous Accademia dell’Arcadia — one of whose founders would eventually become her husband.

Faustina Maratti was said to be quite the beauty — so much so that a noble suitor, after her repeated refusals, tried to kidnap her. Out of that adventure he got a harsh sentence, while she got both a prominent scar and a heroic reputation.