Arolà – författare

Often history is told by the victors, or by those who did not witness it. Trilussa was a witness, and through his art, a victor. He documented Roman and Italian society in poems and fables, from Italy's birth in the late nineteenth century, to its rebirth after the Second World War. In 1950, the nascent Republic acknowledged Trilussa's importance and values by making him Senator for Life. He enjoyed this accolade for only three weeks before he died on 21 December 1950: the same year as another great fabulist, George Orwell. Trilussa's popularity in Italy has not diminished. Fans to this day take to YouTube, where they delight in reciting a large grain of truth wrapped in one of his fables. This bilingual book aims to prove his appeal is universal, and he is worthy to be "crowned" Aesop of Rome. Leaving school at sixteen, without a qualification, he told his mother he was going to be a poet. He would become more than a poet. Under his pen name, Trilussa, he wrote perceptively, amusingly, lovingly, cuttingly, and cunningly in good times and hard. He appealed to all classes, saints and sinners, and even to a dictator who Trilussa would defy through fables, and satires. Within hours of Trilussa's death, Senator Bergamini declared in the Senate, Trilussa "had an aura of popularity that it would have been imprudent to harm or confront." He was right. In his way, the poet and fabulist won; the dictator and fascism lost.

Nearly ninety of Rome’s dialect or Romanesco poets are commemorated in the names of its roads, piazzas, and gardens. No other city in the world celebrates its native poets in such a way and in such numbers. Rome’s first major road was named after a Latin poet, Appius Claudius Caecus, best known for initiating the construction of the Appian Way in 312 BC, the city's first aqueduct, and for his dictum faber est suae quisque fortunae—every man is the architect of his own fortune. By the nineteenth century, inspired by the sonnets of G. G. Belli, the epics of Pascarella, and the fables of Trilussa, thousands of men and women from all walks of life turned to poetry to express their feelings, from the mundane to the philosophical. All proud Romans from Rome. This bilingual edition is a poetic social history of a pre-internet world, reflecting an enduring, seriocomic Roman spirit that led G.G. Belli to write in Romanesco that if he were to be reborn, it would be in Rome:Da cristiano! Si mmoro e ppo’ arinasco, Pregh’Iddio d’arinassce a Rroma mia.