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Tamarisks (Myricae) is Giovanni Pascoli's first major collection of verse. Many of its poems center on manifestations of the rural. Nature is at once an interpretation and interpolation of humanity. These compositions explore the countryside, experience the seasons and their alternation, relate the rhythms of agrarian labor, seek the blooming flower, spy the secluded nest. The collection draws on everyday objects, the changing landscape, the Anthropocene, the disenfranchised, and the natural world to explore humanity's relationship to nature and to the modern world.
The first edition of Tamarisks appeared in 1891 and consisted of twenty-two poems. Pascoli revisited and reviewed the collection over the course of twenty years. The fifth edition, published in 1900, included 156 poems and established the collection's definitive structure. The ninth and final edition appeared in 1911, the year before Pascoli's death.
Tamarisks is a liminal text, rooted in the classical lyrical tradition. It heralded the innovations and experimentation of the avant-garde of the early twentieth century. In breaking with the past and articulating a new poetic language, it is a foundational statement for modern Italian poetry.
Tamarisks' poems and sections develop an internal dialogue that reflects the mediation between the poetic voice and external reality. Pascoli's poetry is a single vast meditation that explores possibilities by engaging in diverse poetic strategies contemporaneously. The lowly tamarisk, at once humble and noble, is always poetry.
"One of the greatest poets of all times." - Seamus Heaney
About the author
Giovanni Pascoli was born in San Mauro Pascoli on 31 December 1855. He was an Italian poet, classical scholar and an emblematic figure of Italian literature in the late nineteenth century. He was, together with Gabriele D'Annunzio, the greatest Italian decadent poet. From 1897 to 1903 he taught Latin at the University of Messina, and then in Pisa. He became professor of Italian literature at the University of Bologna, taking the position of Giosuè Carducci when he retired. In 1912, Pascoli died of liver cancer at the age of 56 in Bologna.
