Songs of Castelvecchio

Giovanni Pascoli's Songs of Castelvecchio is an epic - not only of the countryside but of humanity's place among the cycle of seasons. While evoking a circular notion of time, Pascoli envisions the end of human life in a spectacular conflagration of stars in the galaxy amid the indifference of a universe deprived of God.Pascoli weaves into the Songs his own autobiographical experience of loss, trauma, and closure. Castelvecchio becomes a symbolic space where past and present coexist, where the poet revisits and relives moments tied to grief. Pascoli resists the progression of historical time. Instead, he favors a subjective, affective temporality, emphasizing regression and emotional suspension rather than progress or resolution.Despite the powerful influence of Canti di Castelvecchio on Anglophone poetry, fewer than a third of the poems in this collection have appeared previously in English. Here for the first time, we present a new translation of the complete work. "One of the greatest poets of all times." - Seamus Heaney