Salvatore Di Marco,L’arancia amaru e autri puisii / The Bitter Orange and Other Poems

Abstract

Salvatore Di Marco, L’arancia amaru e autri puisii / The Bitter Orange and Other Poems, edited and translated by Gaetano Cipolla, introduction by Florence Russo, Legas: Ottawa, 2012; 209 pp.: 9781881901884, $16.00

Reviewed by: Maria Enrico, Borough of Manhattan Community College/City University of New York, USA

This collection of poems offers the English-only reader entry into the world of Salvatore Di Marco, one of Sicily’s major living poets. The Bitter Orange and Other Poems is volume XI of the series Pueti d’Arba Sicula/Poets of Arba Sicula for which Gaetano Cipolla has translated the poetry of Nino Martoglio, Giovanni Meli, Antonino Provenzano, Antonio Veneziano, and Senzio Mazza.

Gaetano Cipolla’s choice of The Bitter Orange for the title of this collection is most appropriate as the words encompass all of Sicily’s conflicts: the bitterness of the island’s history and the sufferings of its people enclosed within the skin of a sweet blood orange. In Elio Vittorini’s Conversazione in Sicilia (1937) a starving Sicilian farmer on the ferry to mainland Italy, forced to feed his family oranges no one wants to buy, laments: ‘maledette arance – nessuno ne vuole – come se avessero il tossico’ [damn oranges – no one wants them – as if they were toxic]. Di Marco’s poems, while suffused with the shared pain of all who inhabit this troubled island, also speak of his personal inner longings.

Florence Russo’s in-depth introduction guides us through the collection’s circular journey. The collection begins with a lament for a long-ago Palermo in the three poems grouped under the title The Bird Vendor’s Uphill Street. The last lines of the third poem read:

And then, the constant chirping/ of wary sparrows/ and finches and nightingales/ and black birds/ will return/ so that, if you close your eyes/ and listen carefully, you might dream a Palermo/ full of love/ with tassels on the carts/ and little bells on the headgears of horses/ with ivy and jasmine by the fountains,/ and golden gardens and church bells/ beautiful as God invented it/ when he thought up the world/ and this queenly city!/ Oh Lord,/ what divine enchantment/ this bird vendors’ uphill street! (p. 31)

This is not modern day Palermo with its chaotic traffic, crumbling palaces and dysfunctional government. It is a dream world Palermo graced with luscious gardens and storytellers with their carreti siciliani decorated with scenes of the mythic battles between Saracens and Christians.

The journey continues in the longings of the Forty Poems where Russo writes, ‘the gaze is turned inwards, not outwardly’ (p. 13). Yet even here, among the love poems, Di Marco’s Palermo is ever present – although now tainted with poverty: ‘I am talking to you/ old sparkling city/ with domes and bells/ city of love/ of ancient courtyards/ and smiling neighborhoods/ with children and hunger/ and you should reply/ with the hundred bells/ of the Ave Maria’ (p. 53).

The next group offers Haiku-inspired flashes of imagery in the 46 Sicilian Epigraphs that can be seen as a sort of intermezzo. Russo writes that they ‘represent a new and original way of writing in Sicily’ (p. 17). Then follows the resigned dismay of the seven-part The Dance of Death with its many allusions to the assassination of the anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the introspective analysis of With a Retiring Mind, and the closing Other Poems which includes the collection’s title poem.

Leaving aside the debate as to whether Sicilian is a language or a dialect, Gaetano Cipolla wisely chose to present Di Marco’s poems in Sicilian, Italian, and English. One should read the poems aloud in all three to truly appreciate the musicality of Cipolla’s translation as in this excerpt from The Bitter Orange:

Ammatula cantau lu pueta:/ nascivu sicilianu, o Signorui,/ e p’amuri mi chiamu sicilianu/ ma c’un duluri anticu can nun possa, cu st’aranciu amaru dintra lu pettu. Invano cantò il poeta:/ sono nato siciliano, o Signore/ e per amore siciliano mi chiamo/ ma con un dolore antico che non passa/ con quest’arancia amara dentro il petto.

[The poet sang in vain alas:/ I was born a Sicilian, o Lord,/ and I call myself Sicilian out of love,/ but with an ancient pain that will not fade:/ this bitter orange deep inside my chest.] (pp. 194–195)

The importance of the ‘sound’ of the poems is confirmed in Russo’s introduction where she quotes from an unpublished paper by Gaetano Cipolla, ‘Di Marco relishes the recital [of his poetry in public] and his words in his baritone voice are pronounced with such clarity and conviction that each word becomes a magic talisman, as if it were the key to opening the secrets of the universe’ (p. 21).

While this collection may not conform to the standard notion of an epic poem, in this reader’s mind it contains all of the required elements in its lyric portrayal of the pain, suffering, longings, and redemption of the Sicilians and the Sicily it celebrates. For Sicily is, in the words of the poet Ignazio Buttitta, who also wrote in Sicilian and fiercely defended the preservation of the island’s culture, in his poem The Émigrés are Leaving:

… Oh, terra mia d'aranci,/ d'aranci e di canzuni;/ u latti mi lu dasti/ ma pani un mi nni duni’. …

[My land of oranges,/ of oranges and of song;/ you gave me of your milk/ but it’s for your bread that I long.] (translation by AV Dieli)

Oranges and songs, bitterness and sweetness: this is the poetry of Sicily and of its poets. We owe a debt of gratitude to Gaetano Cipolla and Arba Sicula for giving us the key to this world.