Mio padre è stato per me l'"assassino", by Umberto Saba

Today we read Mio padre è stato per me l’“assassino”, by Umberto Saba. Saba’s mother was abandoned by the poet’s father while still pregnant. Understandably she didn’t harbour good memories of him, but went as far as referring to him as “the assassin” when talking to Umberto all through his childhood. In this sonnet Saba recounts meeting his father later on, when he was twenty. He is presented not with a killer or a mastermind, but with a child, drifting without cares through his life and the world (and his many lovers). The poet contrasts his mother, who felt all the heaviness of life, with his father’s attitude, his slipping from her hands like a balloon, light and ethereal: not a bad person, really — simply unable to keep his responsibilities. The original: Mio padre è stato per me l’“assassino”,
fino ai vent’anni che l’ho conosciuto.
Allora ho visto ch’egli era un bambino,
e che il dono ch’io ho da lui l’ho avuto.

Aveva in volto il mio sguardo azzurrino,
un sorriso, in miseria, dolce e astuto,
Andò sempre pel mondo pellegrino;
più d’una donna l’ha amato e pasciuto.

Egli era gaio e leggero; mia madre
tutti sentiva della vita i pesi.
Di mano ei gli sfuggì come un pallone.

“Non somigliare – ammoniva – a tuo padre”.
Ed io più tardi in me stesso lo intesi:
eran due razze in antica tenzone.\ The music in this episode is Alessandro Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in D minor, S. Z799, recorded by the Orchestre de chambre de la Sarre (in the public domain).