Poetry review– SONGS OF CASTELVECCHIO : Alan Price is pleased to read a new translation of poems by Giovanni Pascoli
Songs Of Castelvecchio
Giovanni Pascoli
(Translated by Elena Borelli & Stephen Campiglio)
Italica Press 2026
ISBN: 978-1599104980
380 pp
The first and most pertinent thing to say about Pascoli’s Songs of Castelvecchio is their astonishing range of expression and subject matter. Very often, within a single poem we can travel along many lines of thought and feeling. This is neo-realism, before cinema invents the term; it is 19th century Romanticism on a pivot with early modernism. We get it all: the minutiae of the present moment; a collective village consciousness; descriptions of the pastoral; the sounds of nature; psychological conflict and grief: a generalised microcosm of a rural culture arched by the macrocosm of the stars, space and infinity.
Pascoli’s long poem “The Log” brilliantly exemplifies all these ingredients. From an uprooted oak tree Pascoli describes a colony of ants and how they struggle to survive the shock of disruption. Gradually the feverish colony begins to resemble the struggles of the village community. Ants and humans become as one as their fate is apocalyptically looked down upon by the universe and the stars.
In 1902 (one year before Castelvecchio is published) Pascoli said this.
‘There is, you will see, a hidden architecture in the Songs, that
you must not reveal: first, emotions, sensations, affections of
wintertime, then of spring, then summer, then autumn, then
another bit of mystical winter, a sad spring season, and that’s it.’
So, now we can also include the cycle of the seasons to what fascinates Pascoli.
The opening poem “Poetry” depicts a lamp burning reassuringly in a cottage. It takes on the power of a metaphorical light to support and guide us throughout the collection. From section V we have this beautiful meditation.
I am the lamp that burns
softly,
in the loneliest and darkest hours,
in the gloomiest or most benevolent
shadow, my brethren.
…Faraway my chaste incandescence
shines on the nocturnal pilgrim
who consumes the path he’s on,
sobbing for his lacklustre lot
in life. He stops, then sees
my ray, gently burning in his soul,
and resumes his dark journey,
singing.
It’s as if the author Pascoli becomes the lamp holder wanting to humbly illuminate the meanings of his poetry. ‘Faraway my chaste incandescence shines on the nocturnal pilgrim.’ But this will be prove to be a melancholic task.
A penetrating sadness is certainly found in the poems about his father and mother. For Mother we have the exquisite poems ”My Mother”, “Home” and “Farewell”. They are moving and affectionate tributes couched within a theme of displacement – for after the murder of Pascoli’s father the family were forced to leave their home for another. The poem “August 10th” is the great poem about the death of his father (Not in this collection but I urge you to seek out Seamus Heany’s wonderful version). However Songs of Castelvecchio does contain the equally great poem, “The Portrait”. Travelling back home by horse and carriage Pascoli’s father was shot by two unknown assassins. The poem, told in flashback, of the event, is one of a great and persistent waiting, in the family mind, for him to return along the road. Father is finished and ironically Pascoli’s older brother was working on a portrait of Father, that’s not quite finished, and now will never be seen by the parent. An evil act has taken him leaving the family heartbroken and the stars in mourning.
…On the empty road,
after that outpouring of tears, all four,
already orphans, stared once more,
and then up at the stars falling in the darkness.
As for Pascoli’s influences then Blake and Wordsworth are mentioned in the book’s introduction. I certainly found the poem “Beggar “reminding me of Wordsworth’s “The Cumberland Beggar”. The same empathy and value for a destitute man comes across: a validation of humanity even when worn down by poverty and wandering.
Of Pascoli’s influence on later poets, the great 20th century poet Salvatore Quasimodo has acknowledged this. There are distinct parallels here, both are poets of tender compassion, displacement and a childlike vulnerability that lives on as they continually assess their lives and achievements. A poem like Quasimodo’s “Lettera alla Madre “(Letter to my Mother) leans on Pascoli’s mother poems. This makes Pascoli anticipate the modern confessional style of Italian poetry. And interestingly Pascoli’s fixation on objects appears to have influenced the imagist poets of the early 20th century and the imagism of Ezra Pound. Even the Irish countryside perspective of Seamus Heaney’s late poetry finds an influential corresponding force in Pascoli’s description of the landscape of Castelvecchio, a hamlet near Barga in the Serchio Valley of Tuscany.
Pascoli is a marvellous poet. A great poet. In 2022 I reviewed Elena Borelli and James Ackhurst’s translations of Pascoli’s Convivial Poems. Now with Songs of Castelvecchio I am doubly impressed. It’s a collection to treasure and constantly revisit.
Sep 6 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – Giovanni Pascoli
Poetry review– SONGS OF CASTELVECCHIO : Alan Price is pleased to read a new translation of poems by Giovanni Pascoli
Songs Of Castelvecchio
Giovanni Pascoli
(Translated by Elena Borelli & Stephen Campiglio)
Italica Press 2026
ISBN: 978-1599104980
380 pp
The first and most pertinent thing to say about Pascoli’s Songs of Castelvecchio is their astonishing range of expression and subject matter. Very often, within a single poem we can travel along many lines of thought and feeling. This is neo-realism, before cinema invents the term; it is 19th century Romanticism on a pivot with early modernism. We get it all: the minutiae of the present moment; a collective village consciousness; descriptions of the pastoral; the sounds of nature; psychological conflict and grief: a generalised microcosm of a rural culture arched by the macrocosm of the stars, space and infinity.
Pascoli’s long poem “The Log” brilliantly exemplifies all these ingredients. From an uprooted oak tree Pascoli describes a colony of ants and how they struggle to survive the shock of disruption. Gradually the feverish colony begins to resemble the struggles of the village community. Ants and humans become as one as their fate is apocalyptically looked down upon by the universe and the stars.
In 1902 (one year before Castelvecchio is published) Pascoli said this.
‘There is, you will see, a hidden architecture in the Songs, that
you must not reveal: first, emotions, sensations, affections of
wintertime, then of spring, then summer, then autumn, then
another bit of mystical winter, a sad spring season, and that’s it.’
So, now we can also include the cycle of the seasons to what fascinates Pascoli.
The opening poem “Poetry” depicts a lamp burning reassuringly in a cottage. It takes on the power of a metaphorical light to support and guide us throughout the collection. From section V we have this beautiful meditation.
I am the lamp that burns
softly,
in the loneliest and darkest hours,
in the gloomiest or most benevolent
shadow, my brethren.
…Faraway my chaste incandescence
shines on the nocturnal pilgrim
who consumes the path he’s on,
sobbing for his lacklustre lot
in life. He stops, then sees
my ray, gently burning in his soul,
and resumes his dark journey,
singing.
It’s as if the author Pascoli becomes the lamp holder wanting to humbly illuminate the meanings of his poetry. ‘Faraway my chaste incandescence shines on the nocturnal pilgrim.’ But this will be prove to be a melancholic task.
A penetrating sadness is certainly found in the poems about his father and mother. For Mother we have the exquisite poems ”My Mother”, “Home” and “Farewell”. They are moving and affectionate tributes couched within a theme of displacement – for after the murder of Pascoli’s father the family were forced to leave their home for another. The poem “August 10th” is the great poem about the death of his father (Not in this collection but I urge you to seek out Seamus Heany’s wonderful version). However Songs of Castelvecchio does contain the equally great poem, “The Portrait”. Travelling back home by horse and carriage Pascoli’s father was shot by two unknown assassins. The poem, told in flashback, of the event, is one of a great and persistent waiting, in the family mind, for him to return along the road. Father is finished and ironically Pascoli’s older brother was working on a portrait of Father, that’s not quite finished, and now will never be seen by the parent. An evil act has taken him leaving the family heartbroken and the stars in mourning.
…On the empty road,
after that outpouring of tears, all four,
already orphans, stared once more,
and then up at the stars falling in the darkness.
As for Pascoli’s influences then Blake and Wordsworth are mentioned in the book’s introduction. I certainly found the poem “Beggar “reminding me of Wordsworth’s “The Cumberland Beggar”. The same empathy and value for a destitute man comes across: a validation of humanity even when worn down by poverty and wandering.
Of Pascoli’s influence on later poets, the great 20th century poet Salvatore Quasimodo has acknowledged this. There are distinct parallels here, both are poets of tender compassion, displacement and a childlike vulnerability that lives on as they continually assess their lives and achievements. A poem like Quasimodo’s “Lettera alla Madre “(Letter to my Mother) leans on Pascoli’s mother poems. This makes Pascoli anticipate the modern confessional style of Italian poetry. And interestingly Pascoli’s fixation on objects appears to have influenced the imagist poets of the early 20th century and the imagism of Ezra Pound. Even the Irish countryside perspective of Seamus Heaney’s late poetry finds an influential corresponding force in Pascoli’s description of the landscape of Castelvecchio, a hamlet near Barga in the Serchio Valley of Tuscany.
Pascoli is a marvellous poet. A great poet. In 2022 I reviewed Elena Borelli and James Ackhurst’s translations of Pascoli’s Convivial Poems. Now with Songs of Castelvecchio I am doubly impressed. It’s a collection to treasure and constantly revisit.