«Na ssciacquata de bbocca». The Romanesco sonnets of Belli in Primo Levi

Abstract

All of Levi’s characters have a real model and a literary one. Caesar, one of the protagonists of La tregua was called Lello Perugia, but in Se questo è un uomo had already been presented as Piero Sonnino. No other character has had an official identity so uncertain. This is perhaps due to the greater weight of the preceding literature. The character is modelled on Caesar’s sonnets in Roman dialect by Giuseppe G. Belli, which Levi had known since his university years and would continue to love into his later years, when he would include four in the anthology La ricerca delle radici. This text examines Levi’s linguistic choices and compares them with the Belli model, in intertextual analysis that broadens the survey with tales (“Il ritorno di Cesare”) and essays (“Del pettegolezzo”). The pity and laughter found in this model is from the too-long neglected poetics of Levi.