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Talor, mentre cammino per le strade
Camillo Sbarbaro
Talor, mentre cammino per le strade della città tumultuosa solo, mi dimentico il mio destino d’essere uomo tra gli altri, e, come smemorato, anzi tratto fuor di me stesso, guardo la gente con aperti estranei occhi.
M’occupa allora un puerile, un vago senso di sofferenza e d’ansietà come per mano che mi opprima il cuore. Fronti calve di vecchi, inconsapevoli occhi di bimbi, facce consuete di nati a faticare e a riprodursi, facce volpine stupide beate, facce ambigue di preti, pitturate facce di meretrici, entro il cervello mi s’imprimono dolorosamente. E conosco l’inganno pel qual vivono, il dolore che mise quella piega sul loro labbro, le speranze sempre deluse e l’inutilità della loro vita amara e il lor destino ultimo, il buio.
Ché ciascuno di loro porta seco la condanna d’esistere: ma vanno dimentichi di ciò e di tutto, ognuno occupato dall’attimo che passa, distratto dal suo vizio prediletto.
Provo un disagio simile a chi veda inseguire farfalle lungo l’orlo d’un precipizio, od una compagnia di strani condannati sorridenti. E se poco ciò dura, io veramente in quell’attimo dentro m’impauro a vedere che gli uomini son tanti. |
At times, as I walk along the streets
Camillo Sbarbaro
At times, as I walk along the tumultuous streets of the city alone, I forget I was destined to be a man among other men, and, absently, or rather, heedless of who I am, I watch passersby with open extraneous eyes.
I am overcome then by a puerile, vague sense of pain and anxiety as if a hand were pressing on my heart. Balding heads of elders, unsuspecting eyes of children, the usual faces of those born to toil and reproduce, faces cunning stupid blithe, faces ambiguous of priests, painted faces of whores, are impressed on my brain painfully. And I know the deceit for which they live, the pain that set the crease above their lips, the hope always betrayed and the uselessness of their bitter lives and their ultimate fate, the darkness.
Because each carries with him the sentence of existing: but chooses to forget that and all the rest, each occupied with the fleeting moment, distracted by a favourite vice.
I feel the same distress as those who view butterfly hunters on the edge of a cliff, or a strange company of condemned prisoners smiling. And little though it lasts, I am in that moment truly filled with fear to see just how many men there are.
Translation ©Matilda Colarossi
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Estrangement and isolation come together to describe the poet in this work from the collection Pianissimo, by Camillo Sbarbaro. The epiphany, that is to say, the apparition, of small details that reveal the true nature of existence, becomes a sign of an existential understanding that is at the root of Sbarbaro’s poetry. The poet is alone, anonymous, in the crowded streets, and his sense of anguish and oppression is expressed here.
Condemned to live a frenetic life, man no longer searches for truth., while the poet, who is able to estrange himself from banal reality, the usual faces, ambiguous faces and to observe them from afar ”absently, or rather, heedless”, understands the futility of life. The lies the fear of a common fate, the interior desolateness which looms over everything and everyone.
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