I’ve tried using Francesco Cherubini’s brilliant Vocabolario milanese-italiano (check the collection of euphemisms for shitting (“grease your aubergines”) under the entry for cagaratt, but bits of Carlo Porta are beyond me:
It would be nice some time to leave behind the tourist office clichés, endlessly recycled by underpaid & Braudel-free guidebook writers, that Cataloonia constitutes the galaxy of arse.
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Seventy years after Braudel placed ordure bearing quill to hoarded bumwad in his Magrehbi pen, he continues to be trumped by notions of national identity and their accompanying primordial events.
So there!
So you finally have come to the end of your Latin, as the German saying goes? A literary lowrider like me cannot help, and my Italian sucks. My Milanese is but based on guesses.
Maybe of interest is that there is a whole e-book of Porta’s poetry
http://www.domanunch.org/download/edraghbooks/ebook1.pdf
There Peppa can be found in several poems and the one you quote is written slightly differently.
What I would do is ask directly the good people at domanuch.org (“On dialett che fa pagura”). They might be happy about your interest.
After reading a little bit more, the whole issue of Insubres, today’s Insubria movement and Domà Nunch looks pretty fascinating.
[The connections with Catalonia not only go through the arse. But(t) then: what’s not connected?]
Eco-nationalism! What an idea.
All you’ve got to do is add an extra “o” to “Po” and you’ve got a magnificent River of Poo to throw at the world.
Well, ecologism (national, neo, rural or whaddaheck) is based on that precious stuff (think local)! So there’s an intrinsic bond that unites this wonderfully scatological poetry and present-day avant-garde like Domà Nunch etc.
(One last doubt: Was it, in the end, that precise extra “o” that made you come up with “Cataloonia”?)
Just happen to have a native Bergamasque speaker next to me, what bits are causing the problem?
I’ve got a (self-described) native Milanese next to me (bij wijze van spreken) and we’re both struggling, with only a couple of bottles and God left to help or obstruct us. Please please tell us what it means, and we’ll dance a bergamasque.
May I watch?
I think you want Café Bollywood on Robadors.
Nope, I’m definitely intrigued and want a translation on wheels.
Bollywood is better, but watch out for the Moroccan beauty.
Oh, you bunch just go ahead and I’ll hope for some of the wisdom to spill over to my side of the table.
Forwarded to an Italian friend. Caveats: she’s not a literary expert, and she’s from Turin.
I wish I knew someone from Turin who wasn’t a literary expert.
My Turinese friend suggests:
Ah, Peppa, Peppa, great flower of shit,
Yes, I know of your great feats, of your miracles;
Uhh, march, go and hide, you ugly show,
You are a rotten cow, a big mouth.
For thirty genoan coins? – Oh! You are a wicked tongue
Yet it is still so, you have exchanged the cock
Of the Genoan, and without much chatter
You told him: Go, give me the money and get going.
You broken pan? Now what have you acquired?
What use is it to you to be beautiful with no honour?
Nothing: you are a left over good enough for the friars.
It is of no use a deflowered to your successor;
I will tell you what you can do:
You can go away with your Motherfucker.
I should say she adds the perhaps fatal qualification that “I added a bit of my interpretation where I really could not find the original meaning of a word.”
Hey that sounds kinda nice. May I make some observations?
rotten pig, not cow
l’è – she is?
racol- noise, ado
broken pan looks great, but has to bear no ? but an ! (sure just a typo)
nol serv pù might have to be “of no use *anymore*”
saratt looks a lot like the Croatian srati – to shit and fits in well with cagador. saratt sù – shit (up)on. But that might be a very long shot.
There are still parts (“damm i danee…”) which leave me clueless, i.e. have to trust the word of others. And is fraa really a reference to friars, or does it mean some kind of rawly crowd, the bros of the hood?
[On the poem itself: I do wonder why the author didn’t write “senz’ onor”. Seems to be better for rhythm.]
cilappa: http://www.bruttastoria.it/dictionary/Cilappa.html
so: foul mouth?
Facking brilliant!!!!
Although I was hoping for a different reading of “cagador”.