A Sonnet “The Election of the Pope” in Roman dialect by G.G. Belli

We are privileged again to have another sonnet from the 19th c. poet Giuseppe Gioachino Belli… Er Belli. He wrote seriously funny sonnets in the Roman dialect about life in Rome and aimed deadly satire at Rome’s clerics, religious, prelates and popes.   The characters in the poems are often rough ready street people and shop keepers and artisans making observations about the dealing of the high and mighty they see about town.   And this was back in the day when Popes got around in town, walking or with a carriage, etc.

Belli can be biting and funny and sometimes off-color.

La sscerta der Papa

Sò ffornasciaro, sí, ssò ffornasciaro,
Sò un cazzaccio, sò un tufo, sò un cojjone:
Ma la raggione la capisco a pparo
De chiunque sa intenne la raggione.

Sscejjenno un Papa, sor dottor mio caro,
Drent’a ’na settantina de perzone,
E mmanco sempre tante, è ccaso raro
Che ss’azzecchino in lui qualità bbone.

Perché ss’ha da creà ssempre un de loro?
Perché oggni tanto nun ze fa ffilisce
Un brav’omo che attenne ar zu’ lavoro?

Mettémo caso: io sto abbottanno er vetro?
Entra un Eminentissimo e mme disce:
Sor Titta, è Ppapa lei: vienghi a Ssan Pietro.

22 dicembre 1834

The election of the Pope

I’m a glassblower, okay, I’m a glassblower,
I’m a bum, a dummy, a jerk:
but I understand the reason as well as anyone
who knows how to understand the reason.

They chose a Pope, my dear doctor,
among about seventy people,
and not always so many, it is rare
that they find good qualities in him.

Why do they always have to create one of their own?
Why is it that now and then they don’t find
a good guy who will do his job?

Imagine: So I’m wrapping up some glass?
A fancy Eminence enters and says to me:
“Mr Giambattista, you’re Pope: Come to Saint Peter’s”.