THE PEASANT GIRL POET OF ITALY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2369, 27 July 1899, Page 56

THE PEASANT GIRL POET OF ITALY.

(The Late Canon Bell, D.D., in the " Quiver.")

It is only a few years— not more than six, I believe — since a young poetess flashed like a new star on the literary world of Italy. This girl, hardly out of her' teens, unknown, humble, virtuous, the mistress of a school in one of the far northern Italian villages which even the wheels of a tram had not reached, without any editorial flourish of. trumpets, without powerful patronage, without benevolent and interested friends, with only a bundle of leaves sewn together in a white volume, has succeeded in gaining a literary triumph, not in her own country alone, but throughout the greatest part of Europe. In every corner ot Italy, indeed, voices are raised in wonder and praise at the supreme power of the poems — their strength and beauty — that have had their birth in the heart and brain of the schoolmistress of Motta-Vis-conti. Here in this small market town, on the edge of the Ticino, are extensive woods, known to the hunters from 'Milan, to which Ada Negri resorted to hear the message of the wind as it sighed and sang through the branches of the trees. The poems in which she has interpreted Nature in its ever-changing aspects of glory and glopm ; in which she has given a tongue to the woes and sorrows which are the portion of man, to the oppression of the rich, to the hard lot of the poor ; and those in which she has spoken of the beauty and tenderness of true love have called forth the most enthusiastic praises from the most distinguished critics. In England her work may not be widely known, except among literary men, and I am not aware that her poems have ever been translated — either her first volume, "Fatalita," or her more recent, called "Tempeste," one 4000 copies of which were called for before the twelvemonth had expired. Ada Negri is the daughter of a poor labourer, one who worked in the mines, and her mother was a weaver of wool, who, though often weary and almost feeble, worked incessantly in a manufactory, bearing up bravely against circumstances because she was working for her daughter, who wished to study. The poor toiler in the wool factory, guided simply by maternal instinct, and by the judgment of the mistress of the asylum where her little daughter was sent for two years, saw in her child a genius and a courage far above the common. She gave her the opportunity of studying in the Normal School of Lodi, while she wore out her own existence in the wool factory to secure for Ada a happy future. The loving mother remained at her daily toil with this object, alternating her arduous work with enforced rest in the wards of the hospital, where she was at one time laid up i'oi 12 UKisitis, among those who were received within its walls because threatened with consumption. In a few lines in her poem " Madre Operaia," Ada Negri sings of the sublime sacrifice of her unhanrp- mother, who purchased with hunger, with cold, with lifeitself, a noble destiny for her chj'd. Her daughter had the msina of studying, and the poor wool- weaver took heart, though her limbs were weary and she was suffering from ill-health. Her daughter studied, and the mother, Vorn out and exhausted, put into her work, in the immensity of her affection, some drops of blood nnd sweat that nourished her 1 dreams of fortune and glory for her child; careless of everything, content with anything, if only there should be in the future a luminous destiny for Ada, and her brown head yet be crowned with gold and laurel.