Ignazio Buttitta was a Sicilian

Sicily

Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

 dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

al poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

.

Biography

Born at Bagheria

Bagheria

Bagheria is a town and comune in the Province of Palermo in Sicily, Italy.-Etymology:According to some sources, the name Bagheria originates from the Phoenician term Bayharia meaning "land that descends toward the sea." Other sources claim that it derives from the Arabic Bāb al-Gerib, or "windy...

 into a poor family, after having taken part in World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 Buttitta joined the Italian Socialist Party

Italian Socialist Party

The Italian Socialist Party was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy founded in Genoa in 1892.Once the dominant leftist party in Italy, it was eclipsed in status by the Italian Communist Party following World War II...

 and around this time started to write poetry in Sicilian

Sicilian language

Sicilian is a Romance language. Its dialects make up the Extreme-Southern Italian language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria ; in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento ; and Campania, on the Italian mainland, where it is...

. His first volume of poetry published was Sintimintali (Sentimental), followed in 1928 by Marabedda. Soon after, Buttitta relocated to Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

, where he achieved some success in the commercial world while continuing to pursue his passion for literature. Due to his political leanings, he had to leave Milan during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

; after which he joined the Resistance, was jailed by the fascists, and narrowly avoided the death penalty, before returning to Milan, where he spent time with Sicilian intellectuals such as Elio Vittorini

Elio Vittorini

Elio Vittorini was an Italian writer and novelist. He was a contemporary of Cesare Pavese and an influential voice in the modernist school of novel writing. His best-known work is the anti-fascist novel Conversations in Sicily, for which he was jailed when it was published in 1941. The first U.S...

, Salvatore Quasimodo

Salvatore Quasimodo

Salvatore Quasimodo was an Italian author and poet. In 1959 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own times". Along with Giuseppe Ungaretti and Eugenio Montale, he is one of the foremost Italian poets...

 and Renato Guttuso

Renato Guttuso

Renato Guttuso was an Italian painter.His best-known paintings include Flight from Etna , Crucifixion and La Vucciria . Guttuso also designed for the theatre and did illustrations for books...

. In 1954 he published his new book of poetry, Lu pani si chiama pani (The bread is called bread), financed by the Italian Communist Party

Italian Communist Party

The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...

. In this volume he defined himself as Pueta e latru (Poet and thief), an allusion to the manner in which he would pass among the people like a thief, appropriating their feelings, leaving behind a sentimental thread. This was especially the case in relation to his nostalgia for his homeland, but there are also more socially-oriented themes, in particular, protests against the social situation of Italy and Sicily, such as A stragi di Purtedda (1947, about Salvatore Giuliano

Salvatore Giuliano

Salvatore Giuliano was a Sicilian peasant. It has been suggested that the subjugated social status of his class led him to become a bandit and separatist. He was mythologised during his life and after his death...

 and the Portella della Ginestra massacre

Portella della Ginestra massacre

The Portella della Ginestra massacre was one of the more violent acts of in the history of modern Italian politics, when 11 people were killed and 33 wounded during May Day celebrations in Sicily on May 1, 1947, in the municipality of Piana degli Albanesi...

), and Lamentu d'una matri (1953, about Salvatore Carnevale, a Sicilian trade union

Trade union

A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

ist killed by the mafia

Mafia

The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...

).

Buttitta won the Viareggio prize in 1972, for the volume Io faccio il poeta (I am a poet). His works have been translated into French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

 and Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

.

Buttitta, during his career as a poet, has never hidden his pride in being Sicilian, and his love for the language of the island. In one of his most famous poems, Lingua e dialettu (Language and dialect), he explicitly talks about language as a key issue for his people, and implores his fellows Sicilians to preserve their language:

Un populu diventa poviru e servu quannu ci arrubbanu a lingua addutata di patri: è persu pi sempri.

A people becomes poor and servile when their language is stolen from them inherited from their forefathers: it is lost forever.

A contemporary Berlin-based Sicilian folk singer, Etta Scollo

Etta Scollo

Etta Scollo is an Italian singer and songwriter.Her music combines traditional Sicilian music, pop and jazz.-Biography:Born in Catania, Italy, she moved to Turin to study Architecture...

, celebrates the work of Sicilian folk singer and Buttitta associate, Rosa Balistreri, including rendering a version of Buttitta's The Pirates of Palermo:

Arrivaru li navi Tanti navi a Palermu Li pirati sbarcaru Cu li facci d’infernu N’arrubbaru lu suli, lu suli Arristamu a lu scuru, chi scuru Sicilia chianci! Tuttu l’oru a l’aranci Li pirati arrubbaru Li campagni spugghiati Cu la negghia lassaru N’arrubbaru lu suli, lu suli Arristamu a lu scuru, chi scuru Sicilia chianci! Li culura dû mari N’arrubbaru chi dannu Su ‘mpazzuti li pisci Chi lamentu ca fannu N’arrubbaru lu suli, lu suli Arristamu a lu scuru, chi scuru Sicilia chianci! A li fìmmini nostri Ci scipparu di l’occhi La lustrura e lu focu Ca addumava li specchi N’arrubbaru lu suli, lu suli Arristamu a lu scuru, chi scuru Sicilia chianci!

The ships arrive So many ships at Palermo The pirates come ashore With infernal faces They steal from us the sun, the sun We are left in darkness what a darkness Cry Sicily! All the gold of the oranges The pirates steal away Their rapacious campaigns In the fog they create They steal from us the sun, the sun We are left in darkness what a darkness Cry Sicily! The colours of the sea They steal those from us, an outrage! The fish are so crazed As to lament their existence They steal from us the sun, the sun We are left in darkness what a darkness Cry Sicily! From our women's eyes They tear out The splendour and fire Which lit up mirrors They steal from us the sun, the sun We are left in darkness what a darkness Cry Sicily!

External links

• Selection of poems (in Sicilian, Italian, French and Spanish
• http://www.dieli.net/SicilyPage/Poetry/Buttitta.html Some English translations of some Buttitta poems