The use of dialect and petl in Andrea Zanzottos linguistic

research in La Belt
Giulia Antiga
Word count: 3463

Andrea Zanzotto and his collection of poems La Belt stands out in the
Italian literary landscape of the 1960s as one of the solitary poetic voices of its
time, working independently from contemporary experimental poetic groups and
currents such as the Neoavanguardia. Both Zanzotto and the Neoavanguardia
work pushed by the necessity to solve the problem of Italian language, felt now
as emptied by capitalism, mass media and current historical events and thus
incapable of meaningful communication. However, they do so in drastically
different ways. While the Neoavanguardia intervened immediatamente e
direttamente sul mezzo linguistico in quanto tale, contestandone luso
automatizzato, alienato e semanticamente svuotato1, as their critique of
modern, capitalistic language is brought forward via the parodic use of the same
language they reject, Zanzottos approach is drastically different. He refuses the
provocative work of the Neoavanguardia, and favours instead an attempt at
linguistic rescue, looking at further linguistic possibilities beyond the
Neoavanguardias communicative emptiness. In order to find a way to save what
is left to be expressed through poetry, and avoiding, in the process, both falling
into the Neoavanguardias use of alienated, empty language of modernity, and
giving into complete silence, Zanzotto attempts, through his research of

1 P. V. Mengaldo, Aspetti e tendenze della lingua poetica italiana del Novecento,

in La tradizione del Novecento Prima serie, (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1996) p.
157.
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alternative languages, to rehabilitate the communicative value of poetry and to

reconnect with la madre-norma2, or traditional lyrical poetry.
La Belt, first published in 1968, can be considered the summit of the
poets linguistic research. Composed mainly in Italian but including extremely
relevant dialectal fragments which will be examined further on in this essay, it is
divided into three sections, preceded by the opening poem Oltranza Oltraggio,
which introduces the overall theme of the collection, quello della ricerca di una
verit poetica che riesca a superare la soglia del silenzio 3. This research
attempts to find a language capable of going beyond (oltre) the communicative
impossibility that modern language creates: it is, in fact, the language of the
economic boom, of capitalism and of current historical events, whose noises,
whose acufeni, as the poet calls them in one of his poems 4, disturb real human
communication. It is, moreover, a language whose structure cannot offer an
exploration of meaning, but only self-reference 5, which hence leads Zanzotto to a
linguistic research directed towards the expression of a more truthful meaning,
through a number of linguistic devices, including the use of dialect and petl
(baby-talk) . This essay aims to illustrate Zanzottos approach to language and its
subversion in La Belt, by taking into account his linguistic and psychoanalytical
influences and their relevance within the poetic collection and in regard of
Zanzottos choice of including in his poetic work alternative languages. In
particular, I intend to focus on the poets decision to include the use of dialect
and of petl in his poems as alternative, primordial languages closer to the
2 Cfr. E la madre-norma, in La Belt, 1999.
3 E. Cecchi, N. Sapegno, Storia della letteratura italiana. Il Novecento, 2, p. 874
4 Adorazioni, richieste, acufeni, in La Belt, 1999.
5 V. Hand, Undermining Logocentric Thought in Andrea Zanzottos La Belt
(1961-1967), Italian Studies, 46:1 (1991), pp. 84.
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human unconscious, supposedly helping him in reaching more authentic

expression unmediated by traditional poetic language.
Zanzottos knowledge of psychoanalysis and linguistics, and his belief in
them as opportunity for a genuine engagement with the intimate realms of the
psyche and not simply a mode of literary criticism 6, plays a relevant part in his
poetics. Zanzotto was especially drawn to Lacanian psychoanalysis and to his
mirror stage theory, a phenomenon which sees, in the moment when the infant
recognises his own image in the mirror, the beginning of the childs
understanding of his/her own identity. This recognition and the contrast felt
between his/her own uncoordinated body and the wholeness of his/her imago,
create a split between the subjects self-identity and its specular image, adopted
as the unreachable Ideal-I. This places his ego outside the self, making it
unreachable and ideal. The fascination the poet feels in regards to this theory
can be found mirrored in his linguistic research within the dimension of infancy:
the mirror stage forces the childs understanding of his own identity as
separate, not dependent on nursling and his/her mother to survive. This forces
the infant to move past a stage of pre-identity towards an identity determined by
others and language, inaccessible by his/her own self.
Zanzotto is torn by the spark of crisis Lacan ignites in the field of
psychoanalysis: he deeply feels the gap provoked by the displacement of the
ego, which translates into the impossibility to find authenticity in the self and the
world. The ego cannot be reached or expressed truthfully, especially through
language, and this obstacle in the true expression of the self profoundly
unsettles Zanzotto. As Stefano Agosti suggests, the author costretto a
sopportare sino in fondo, e al grado pi intenso della lacerazione privata, il
6 J. Johnson, The Problem of Theory in the Poetics of Andrea Zanzotto, The
Modern Language Review, 95:1 (2000), p. 95.
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carattere irriducibile dellantinomia: da un lato il mondo verbalizzato, e, appunto

per questo, inautentico, dallaltro limpossibilit del mondo di offrirsi altrimenti
che come verbalizzazione7. Zanzotto is forced to find another way of
communication, and his research lingers close to the line of contact between
experience and language, unconscious and conscious, ove le cose non vengono
parlate ma parlano8, where language strives the most for truth. This research
results in a use of language whose aim is often not the making of meaning:
Zanzotto seems to exasperate the Derridean and Lacanian ideas of the
supremacy of the signifier, the one true protagonist of language and hence the
one shaping human experience, over the signified. This refusal of logocentric
conventions leads the author to the usage of different techniques in order to
attraverso il significante [] cogliere gli affioramenti dellinconscio 9
repetitions, stuttering, chains of signifiers forming a self-generating language 10,
and to the use of sometimes unintelligible languages, such as dialect and babytalk.
In La Belt, dialect can be found in two identifiable variations: the dialect
used by Zanzotto in his Pieve di Soligo, the town he was born in and which he
remained emotionally and geographically attached to for all his life, and the
petl, a language used between mother and infant, also found in the Veneto
dialect. Both languages are part of Zanzottos research because of their

7 S. Agosti, Il Testo Poetico. Teoria e pratiche danalisi (Milan: Rizzoli, 1972)

p.213.
8 Ibid.
9 S. Dal Bianco, Profili dei libri e note alle poesie: La Belt, in Zanzotto, Andrea,
Le poesie e prose scelte, (Milan: Mondadori, 1999) p.1483.
10 V. Hand, p. 94.
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primordial value: he identifies in his dialect the Lacanian concept of lalangue11,

a form of pre-language linked to pure linguistic pleasure and the dimension of
infancy. He describes it as il fluttuare in quelloceano di tipo tanto omerico
quanto amniotico12, which charges the concept with maternal and primordial
meaning, linking it to the dimensions of the origin of the self (amniotico) and of
human identity (omerico), respectively expressed in the dialetto of Pieve di
Soligo and petl. It is the first true language, which never really leaves who has
absorbed it in their childhood and their unconscious. In particular, its value
becomes visible in those people who have spoken dialect in their childhood to
then proceed to the acquisition of formal Italian:
Il dialetto, comunque, per chi si sia trovato
nella sorte di parlarlo accanto alla lingua, in una specie
di diglossia quasi rimossa, si pone veramente come
primo mistero che sfugge ad ogni possibile
contemplazione oltre che ad ogni distacco
obiettivante13

Zanzottos sporadic use of dialect in La Belt is felt by the author as an

autentico mezzo di contrasto rispetto ai luminosi e iperconsci fenomeni che si
verificano nel parlare in lingua14: Italian is identified as the language of
conscious expression and communication, whereas dialect allows poetry to delve
in the unconscious dimension of the ego, otherwise unreachable by the self. In
fact, dialect is always used in La Belt when dealing with the attempt to touch
the original, unreachable and unconscious dimension of experience prior to
verbalisation: according to Zanzotto himself, thtough dialect si tocca [] il
11 Zanzotto in Johnson, p.96.
12 Ibid.
13 A. Zanzotto, Fil, in Le poesie e prose scelte. Collana I Meridiani. (Milan:
Mondadori, 1999) p.541.
14 Ibid., p. 542.
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nostro non sapere di dove la lingua venga 15. In S, ancora la neve we read:
Eppure negli alti livelli / sopra il coma e il semicoma e il limine / si brusisce e si
ronza e si cicala/cicola / ancora per una minima o semiminima / biscroma
semicroma nanobiscroma / cose e cosine / scienze lingue e profezie: these lines
identify the threshold between word and experience that Zanzotto plays with in
his research. Gli alti livelli localised sopra il coma e il semicoma e il limine
identify a dimension that is beyond, above the limine mentioned before, and
above a state of coma, which makes true, meaningful communication
impossible. What happens in these alti livelli is an alternative type of
communication, more authentic but not necessarily intelligible: in this description
of the dimension close to the limine, Zanzotto in fact uses languages close to
the dimension of the unconscious. Firstly, he uses dialect, found in the
expression si cicola, Veneto dialect for si chiacchiera (someone unspecified
chats); secondly, music, identifiable in biscroma semibiscroma nanobiscroma,
reminding of musical notation, and thirdly, word chains linked by phonetical
association (coma semicoma, cicala- cicola, minima o semiminima /
biscroma semibiscroma nanobiscroma), suggesting a pre-logical dimension of
language as pure sound.
The poem Adorazioni, richieste, acufeni seems to reinforce the idea
explored in S, ancora la neve. The last three lines of the poem, which read:
Intravisto / attraverso il verso pi impervio della situazione: / e ve paid
tut16, suggest the presence of something hidden, existing beyond and partially
covered by the verso pi impervio, the one written in dialect. However, it is
suggested that the presence of the dialect allows, at the same time, the beyond
15 Ibid, p. 541.
16 Translated by Zanzotto as avevo assimilato digerito ed espulso tutto, in Note
a La Belt, in Le poesie e prose scelte. Collana I Meridiani. (Milano: Mondadori,
1999) p. 351.
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to be in fact seen: dialect allows the reader to peek through and get a glimpse of
what lies beyond the line of contact between the structure of language and pure
experience. The line in dialect represents, as dal Bianco explains, il massimo di
coraggio dellenunciato, nel massimo del contatto con linconscio, nel minimo di
validit comunicativa universale17: dialect is both an obstacle for the universal
understanding of the meaning, of the signified, and, at the same time,
paradoxically, one way to achieve the maximum communicative authenticity
possible. Zanzottos courage lies in the fact that he is willing to be unintelligible
for most of his readers by choosing dialect as his poetic language in order to
reach the most authentic expressivity possible. The author is wholly conscious of
this unintelligibility, which he also uses in other instances, also when writing in
Italian. In Profezie o memorie o giornali murali XVII, Zanzotto explains, in his
own notes to the text, that the expression la loi de Gresham which he explains
as being a frase riportata da un articolo riguardante teorie economiche qui
vale solo come suono18. Dialect, and language in general, is hence, in some
cases, to be read and enjoyed purely as sound and signifier, in an attempt to go
back to a primordial eternal orality19, precedent to language, and in order to
deflate the logocentric tradition of poetry 20.
Le cose e cosine Zanzotto places closer to the limine and, hence, to
dialect, in S, ancora la neve, are those parts of history, those daily experiences
usually deemed not worthy of being memorable or included in conventional
17 Dal Bianco, p. 1500.
18 A. Zanzotto, La Belt, in Le poesie e prose scelte. Collana I Meridiani. (Milano:
Mondadori, 1999) p.356.
19 A. Carrera, Zanzotto tra i Filosofi: Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, QUADERNI
dItalianistica, XIX:2 (1998), p. 85.
20 Hand, p.90.
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history. The poet includes them in his poetry in contrast to the acufeni of
modern history, to il rumore del mondo, il cicaleccio televisivo [che] ha ormai
occupato gli spazi di silenzio necessari a una vera comunicazione umana 21,
exemplified in the cloffete clocchete ch ch / pi che incomunicante scomunicato
tutti scomunicati found in S, ancora la neve. As Agosti suggests, il senso come
depositario della compattezza storica del mondo si disintegra sia a livello
dellunit lessicale sia a livello del discorso 22: the historical events just preceding
the publication of La Belt the protest movement of the late 60s in Italy and
Europe, but also [la] guerra del Vietnam [], [le] sanguinose lotte di liberazione
in Africa e America latina, [l]inasprirsi di molti regimi dittatoriali e
all'omologazione sociale e culturale prodotta dai nuovi media e dal boom
economico23 in fact paint un quadro di violenza ampia e generalizzata, che
non permette pi al soggetto di attribuire alcun valore positivo alla Storia e che
lo getta in uno stato di crisi, di perdita di significato, in una emorragia di senso e
di s24.
The use of dialect can then be seen as a necessity, as an aid
strengthening the link between poetry and the dimension of simplicity a
dimension hence related to childhood, to the place of birth and the maternal and
nourishing feminine archetype. In La Belt, the semantic fields dialect is used for
are those of the folk tradition and popular vocabulary: it is the language of
simplicity, of folk songs, popular sayings and childrens nursery rhymes. La dote
del Fril, mentioned in Ampolla (cisti) e fuori, according to Zanzottos notes is
21 Dal Bianco, p. 1483.
22 Agosti, p.215.
23 G. M. Annovi, 1968 / Belt: Corpo, violenza e linguaggio in Andrea Zanzotto,
Carte Italiane 2:4 (2008), p 4.
24 Ibid.
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secondo un vecchio detto Veneto e friulano panza, tete, cul 25; in Profezie o
memorie o giornali murali XVII, e mi cantavi sopra la voragine, la culla la
storia del sior Bontempo / che la dura tanto tempo / e che mai no la se destriga /
vustu che te la conta o vustu che te la diga?, again according to the poets own
annotations is a cantilena per bambini piccoli, in uso, con varianti, nel Veneto e
in altre regioni. Il bambino chiede allinfinito contamela e dimmela, alternati,
fino a dormire26, whose cyclical nature again implies the loss of meaning of
language and shows Zanzottos linguistic research within a pre-logical linguistic
dimension.
Zanzottos dialect is a lingua/non-lingua [] impastata e reinventata fra
memoria, sogno, emozione e delirio27 a language which, in its most
emotionally charged form, is identified by the poet himself in the petl. The petl
is the imaginary, purely oral language, exchanged between mother and infant
spoken in the alto Veneto28, and charged with implication of intimacy and infancy.
Most importantly, it is saturated with the idea of a return to the origin, both
linguistically and in terms of human identity and psyche a return to the kind of
identity (or pre-identity) anterior to the mirror stage, completely whole, unified,
one with the world and the mother.
Zanzottos baby-talk is curiously contradictory as it holds no real sense
but at the same time, by contrast, highlights and is highlighted by the
abundance of hidden but authentic communication it holds: as Bandini explains,
in Zanzotto il predominio del significante, lasemanticit, e un episodio che []
25 Zanzotto, p. 351.
26 Ibid. p. 356.
27 A. Baldacci, Andrea Zanzotto. La Passione della Poesia (Naples: Liguori, 2010)
p. 73.
28 M. Forti, Le proposte della poesia e nuove proposte (Milan: Ugo Mursia, 1971).
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si rende visibile proprio per il suo contrastato porsi in prossimita di parti

poetiche dominate dal significato, e comunque di unincessante, anche se
latente, ricerca del significato29. Both petl and dialect are deemed by the poet
as primordial non-logos: they are the sperimentazione di una oralita [],
oracolarita, oratoria minima eppure forte di tutto il viscoso che la permea
riconnettendola direttamente a tutti i contesti ambientali, biologici, cosmici,
and are veniente di la dove non ce scrittura [] ne grammatica: luogo, allora,
di un logos che resta sempre erchmenos, che mai si raggela in un taglio di
evento, che rimane quasi infante pur nel suo dirsi 30.
The most relevant example of petl is found in the poem
LElegia in petl:

Mama e nona te d ate e cuco e pepi e memela.

Bono ti, ca, co nona. Bi bumba bona. fet foa e upi.
[]
Ta bon ciatu? Ada cil e na e te e mana papa.
Te bata cheto, te bata: e po mama e nana.

This pre-language is untranslatable, as it is a lingua privata 31, reserved for the

intimacy between mother and infant, and, according to the author himself,
something that non vale la pena di tradur[re] 32. For its similarity to the Veneto
dialect, the sense of some words can be guessed: Mamma e nonna ti danno
latte e zucchero [] e mela. / Buono tu, [] con la nonna./[] Mangia la pappa /
Tu basta, stai quieto, tu basta: e poi mamma e nanna. It is a translation whose
value, as Zanzotto suggests, is relative it however reinforces how petl, via its
29 Bandini in Baldacci, p.47.
30 Zanzotto, p. 542.
31 Zanzotto, p. 353.
32 Ibid.
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vocabulary, belongs to a domestic, private, womb-like dimension, via words

such as mamma e nonna, latte e zucchero, pappa, nanna. The main value
to be found in the use of petl lies then not in its meaning, but in the fact that
this proto-language manages to almost concretely give us a glimpse into the
dimension of eternal orality33, as petl is interspersed with words that are
vicine ai primi suoni emessi da tutti i bambini, al di qua delle lingue, [che]
indicano qualcosa di diametricalmente opposto, e perduto 34. This illogical
language expresses an identity that is not born yet and whose ego is not
determined by language and social relations, which manages to bypass the
communicative issues of traditional language by ignoring it.
Andrea Zanzottos poetry can indeed be destabilising and confusing to
the reader used to language as logocentric and communicative instrument
which is, probably, the vast majority of us, as the language we use daily is
indeed the logocentric and communicative one that Zanzotto refuses in his
poetry. However, through his subversion of language, Zanzotto manages to
create poetry which manages to suggest, with all the power that its illogical,
primordial and universal language conveys, a different dimension of language
and of human consciousness, which the reader, despite the difficulty that this
alternative type of communication entails, might be able to reach closer to.

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33 Carrera, p. 85.
34 Zanzotto, p. 353.
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