This poem was first published in the collection of poems Acque e terre (Waters and Lands) in June 1930. Vento a Tindari is composed in unrhymed verse, with each line containing a varying number of syllables. In Italian, the rhythm has a strong sense of musicality, and its content is representative of the obscurity and mystery associated with the hermetic style. Quasimodo wrote the poem early in his literary career while working in Reggio di Calabria as a surveyor in the Ministry of Public Works.

The setting is the seaside resort of Tìndari near Messina, Sicily. Here, as in much of Quasimodo’s oeuvre, the theme of exile is strongly pronounced (l. 23). His use of enjambment (run-on line) allows one line to sweep into the next, creating a mellifluous continuity of sounds.

The poem begins with an evocation of Tìndari. The first stanza describes the geographical attributes of Tìndari’s landscape, and the poet (the poem’s speaker) mentions the Aeolian Islands and the god of the winds, Eolo.

The second stanza recounts an excursion that the poet takes with friends, describing Tìndari’s surrounding areas. The poet uses informal Italian to address Tìndari, and for the rest of the second and the following two stanzas (l. 11–30), he articulates how the seaside resort mentally assails him. He further laments that his residency on the Italian peninsula remains unknown to the Sicilian town.

The poet feels like a fugitive, estranged not only from Tìndari but from Sicily itself. The reference to “bitter bread” (l. 30) demonstrates that this staple always tastes different when consumed away from one’s homeland.

In the last stanza, after the poet’s melancholic reflection, Tìndari becomes tranquil, and the poet is suddenly awakened by one of his friends who jokingly pretends to push him from a cliff—a hermetic allusion to a Tìndari legend about the salvation of a child who fell from a great height there and was saved by the Black Madonna, who caused the waters to create a soft bed of sand on which the child safely landed despite her own mother’s lack of faith in the miraculous Madonna.

Though the poet pretends to be afraid of the cliff, he is actually more concerned about the internal dilemma he has just experienced. After the internal struggle and conflict that the poetic persona has undergone, he concludes by once again evoking the place’s name.

Bibliography
Quasimodo, Salvatore. Salvatore Quasimodo Complete Poems. Translated and introduced by Jack Bevan. London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1983, 30–31.

Categories: Italian Literature, Literature, World Literature

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