Sicilian School

From the Sicilian court of King Frederick II in the early 13^th century there emerged a Romantic poetry written in the vernacular language and in a new poetic form – the sonnet.  Frederick II was himself a learned man of science and poetry.  This group of poets and their work, known as the Sicilian School, gave Sicily a literary identity that would survive for future generations of Sicilian poets, playwrights, and patriots.  Their literary invention also was the foundation for the earliest proto-Italian vernacular poetry of Dante and his Divine Comedy.  In his sonnet “A l’aire claro ò vista ploggia dare“ (I have seen a clear sky give rain) Giacomo da Lentini, the most renowned of the Sicilian Romantic poets, could well be describing the stark contradictions that have marked Sicily’s history -- and its ancient culture of wine.

“I have seen a clear sky give rain

and darkness produce light,

and blazing fire become ice,

and cold snow produce heat,

and a sweet thing become bitter

and bitterness transformed to sweetness,

………………………………………………………………”

Karla Mallette, The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100-1250: A Literary History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 176.