Lmst

Reviewing my past mistakes.

I do not understand the rule around 'gli'. Duo explains nothing.

Also, what a weird sentence.
And why is receipt = scontrino? (Random question, I know.)

Tonight's aha moment: I like saying 'Buona sera.'

Animated Duolingo graphic of a cheerful white person in a red jogging suit and headband asking 'Good evening, where are the boots?' The Italian translation says Buona sera, dove sono gli stivali?

(Check this poem on https://italianpoetry.it/poems/alla-sera/ for help with the translation, listening to the reading out loud, and some more notes to the most difficult words.)

Here is a beautiful classic that I hardly can stand anymore, having been force fed it innumerable times in school and in all sorts of anthologies.

Evening is the image of death, the eternal quiet and nothingness that promises peace.

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Grrr.
When do you use Scusate vs Scusa?

Is this a formal/informal situation?

#LearningItalian

Not sure what the very best way to start a year might be, but one can’t go wrong starting with a smile.

https://italianpoetry.it/poems/rinovazione-del-buon-capo-danno-a-d.-ciccio-per-lingresso-del-1683/

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!

Well... all verses, except the last one :)

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Haha! Take that, Sixto. I was knocked out of the top 3, but I'm back!! #2!!

You're mine. Tomorrow.

#LearningItalian
#duolingo

Christmas happens every year, even when we are at war. This poem by Ungaretti is introduced by the indication "Napoli il 26 dicembre 1916": he was on temporary leave from the front of WW1, and visiting his friend's house in Naples.

Check out https://italianpoetry.it/poems/natale/ for help with the translation, listening to the reading out loud, and some more notes to the most difficult words.

#poetry #literature #poem #todayspoem #poetrylovers #poetrycafe #italian #LearningItalian #war #Xmas

> Natale
> Non ho voglia
> di tuffarmi
> in un gomitolo
> di strade
>
> Ho tanta
> stanchezza
> sulle spalle
>
> Lasciatemi così
> come una
> cosa
> posata
> in un
> angolo
> e dimenticata
>
> Qui
> non si sente
> altro
> che il caldo buono
>
> Sto
> con le quattro
> capriole
> di fumo
> del focolare

and my too-literal translation:

> I do not have desire
> to dive
> into a tangle
> of streets
>
> I have so much
> tiredness
> on [my] shoulders
>
> Leave me thus
> like a
> thing
> placed
> in a
> corner
> and forgotten
>
> Here
> one does not feel
> other
> than the good warmth
>
> I stay
> with the four
> somersaults
> of smoke
> of the hearth

In this sonnet, Leon Battista Alberti explores the mismatch between human desire and things as they turn out, and in particular the frustrating effect of wanting something *too much*, and for that reason, losing it. As he pithily puts it in the last verse, *troppo voler mal corrisponde*: "too much willing is a bad match."

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> Io vidi già seder nell’arme irato
> uomo furioso palido e tremare;
> e gli occhi vidi spesso lagrimare
> per troppo caldo che al core è nato.
> E vidi amante troppo adolorato
> poter né lagrimar né sospirare,
> né raro vidi chi né pur gustare
> puote alcun cibo ov’è troppo affamato.
> E vela vidi volar sopra l’onde,
> qual troppo vento la summerse e affisse;
> e veltra vidi, a cui par l’aura ceda,
> per troppo esser veloce perder preda.
> Così tal forza in noi natura immisse,
> a cui troppo voler mal corrisponde.

and my too-literal translation:

> I have seen before [an] angered furious pale man
> bearing arms, and tremble;
> and I often saw eyes weeping
> for too much heat that to the heart is born.
>
> And I saw [a] lover too aggrieved
> [being] able neither to weep nor to sigh,
> nor rarely did I see he who can not even taste
> any food when he is too famished.
>
> And I saw [a] sail fly over the waves,
> which too much wind submerged it and affixed;
> and I saw [a] hound, to whom it seems [even] the air yields,
>
> lose [its] prey for being too swift.
> Thus nature instilled in us such force,
> to which too much wanting matches badly.

Two young lovers are looking for a place where they can "make one life out of two." All the afternoon they wander around under the sun, surrounded by the noise and the comings and goings of adult, everyday life.

(Please check out this poem on https://italianpoetry.it/poems/caro-luogo/ for the full experience: help with the translation, listening to the reading out loud, and some more notes to the most difficult words.)

#poetry #literature #poem #todayspoem #poetrylovers #poetrycafe #italian #LearningItalian

And here are the full text:

Vagammo tutto il pomeriggio in cerca
d'un luogo a fare di due vite una.

Rumorosa la vita, adulta, ostile,
minacciava la nostra giovinezza.

Ma qui giunti ove ancor cantano i grilli,
quanto silenzio sotto questa luna.

and my too-literal translation:

We wandered all the afternoon looking for
a place [where] to make of two lives, one.

The noisy, adult, hostile life
was menacing our youth.

But [once we] arrived here, where still the crickets sing,
so much silence under this moon.

Complaining about technology is not something exclusively modern.

(Please check out this poem on https://italianpoetry.it/poems/lorologio-da-rote/ for the full experience: help with the translation, listening to the reading out loud, and some more notes to the most difficult words.)

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And here are the full text:

Mobile ordigno di dentate rote
lacera il giorno e lo divide in ore,
ed ha scritto di fuor con fosche note
a chi legger le sa: Sempre si more.
Mentre il metallo concavo percuote,
voce funesta mi risuona al core;
né del fato spiegar meglio si puote
che con voce di bronzo il rio tenore.
Perch’io non speri mai riposo o pace,
questo, che sembra in un timpano e tromba,
mi sfida ognor contro all’età vorace.
E con que’ colpi onde ’l metal rimbomba,
affretta il corso al secolo fugace,
e perché s’apra, ognor picchia alla tomba.

and my too-literal translation:

[A] mobile device of toothed wheels
lacerates the day and divides it into hours,
and on [its] outside [it] has written with dark notes
for those who know [how] to read them: one dies always.

While it strikes the concave metal,
[a] funereal voice resounds to me in [the] heart;
nor can one explain better the dire tenor of fate
than with [the] voice of bronze.

So that I [can] never hope [for] rest or peace,
this, that seems at once [a] timpani and trumpet,
challenges me [to] always [fight] against the voracious time.

And with those blows with which the metal reverberates,
it hastens the course of the fleeting world,
and always it knocks on the tomb, so that it opens itself.

A satirically-rustic take on a love poem. Probably written by Lorenzo il Magnifico (?).

Please check out this poem on https://italianpoetry.it/poems/la-nencia-di-barberino/ for the full experience: help with the translation, listening to the reading out loud, and some more notes to the most difficult words.

#poetry #literature #poem #todayspoem #poetrylovers #poetrycafe #italian #LearningItalian

Michelangelo is known mostly for art you can see with your eyes, but he also catered to ears. This is a love sonnet to Vittoria Colonna, from his Canzoniere.

(Please check out this poem on https://italianpoetry.it/poems/non-ha-lottimo-artista/ for the full experience: help with the translation, listening to the reading out loud, and some more notes to the most difficult words.)

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A very refined baroque sonnet that plays a joke on the poetic tradition of Petrarch with a... disgusting take on a trope :)

(Please check out this poem on https://italianpoetry.it/poems/sembran-fere-davorio-in-bosco-doro/ for the full experience: help with the translation, listening to the reading out loud, and some more notes to the most difficult words.)

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A young, smart girl in the early 1500's is abandoned by her previously doting father, left to suffer under her brothers' iron grip, with only poetry to console her.

Here she waits for a ship bringing her father back.

(Please check out this poem on https://italianpoetry.it/poems/dun-alto-monte-onde-si-scorge-il-mare/ for the full experience: help with the translation, listening to the reading out loud, and some more notes to the most difficult words.)

#poetry #literature #poem #todayspoem #poetrylovers #italian #LearningItalian

On https://italianpoetry.it/poems/voi-chascoltate-in-rime-sparse-il-suono/ : help with the translation, listening to the reading out loud, notes to the most difficult words.

A (the?) foundational poem of much of Italian lyric tradition, opening Petrarch's Canzoniere.

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An ode to the awakening of desire. And a warning that it might not end up being what you were hoping for.

(Please check out this poem on https://italianpoetry.it/poems/presagio/ for the full experience: help with the translation, listening to the reading out loud, and some more notes to the most difficult words.)

#poetry #literature #poem #todayspoem #poetrylovers #poetrycafe #italian #LearningItalian

(Please check out this poem on https://italianpoetry.it/poems/trasformazione-di-dafne-in-lauro/ for the full experience: help with the translation, listening to the reading out loud, and some more notes to the most difficult words.)

A short, beautiful and at the same time brutal Baroque poem on the rape of Daphne.

#poetry #literature #poem #todayspoem #poetrylovers #poetrycafe #italian #LearningItalian #rape

(Please check out this poem on https://italianpoetry.it/poems/sia-pace-ai-frati/ for the full experience: help with the translation, listening to the reading out loud, and some more notes to the most difficult words.)

A small anticlerical epigram: priests, stay in your place!

#poetry #literature #poem #todayspoem #poetrylovers #poetrycafe #italian #LearningItalian #religion #secularism

Sia pace ai frati,
Purchè sfratati:
E pace ai preti,
Ma pochi e queti:
Cardinalume
Non tolga lume:
Il maggior prete
Torni alla rete:
Leggi, e non re;
L’Italia c’è.

and my too-literal translation:

Peace be [given] to friars,
As long as they are defriarized:
And peace to the priests,
But few and quiet:
[Those] cardinal guys
[should] not take away light:
the major priest
[should] return to the net:
Laws, and not king;
There is Italy!

In this very short ballad Pascoli paints an impressionistic picture of the moment right before the start of a torrential storm, at night.

(Please check out this poem at https://italianpoetry.it/poems/il-lampo for the full experience: help with the translation, listening to the reading out loud, and some more notes to the most difficult words.)

#poetry #literature #poem #todayspoem #poetrylovers #poetrycafe #italian #LearningItalian

The poem "Il lampo," by Giovanni Pascoli

> 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.
>

and my too-literal translation:

> And sky and earth showed itself as it was:
>
> the earth panting, livid, shaking;
> the sky cluttered, tragic, unmade:
>
> white white in the silent tumult
> a house appeared disappeared [all] of a sudden;
>
> like an eye, that, wide, astounded,
>
> opened itself closed itself, in the black night

More at https://italianpoetry.it/poems/il-lampo/

I prepared this ("Aging Beauty") before remembering what day tomorrow is... But maybe moms of the age of my own might appreciate this simple, funny epigram from the 1600s :)

(Check out this poem on the Italian Poetry website https://italianpoetry.it/poems/bella-chinvecchia/ for the full experience: help with the translation, listening to the reading out loud, and some more notes to the most difficult words.)

#poetry #literature #poem #todayspoem #poetrylovers #poetrycafe #italian #LearningItalian #mothers #mothersday

The poem "Bella ch'invecchia" (aging beauty)

A divertissement, albeit a bit of a sad one: Chi sono? by Aldo Palazzeschi.

Please check out Italian Poetry website (https://italianpoetry.it/poems/chi-sono) for the full experience: help with the translation, listening to the reading out loud, and some more notes to the most difficult words.

#poetry #literature #poem #todayspoem #poetrylovers #poetrycafe #italian #LearningItalian

#LearningItalian

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