History of the Poetic Race

Searching for documentary sources on an oral tradition is not the easiest task that can be done. Improvised poetry, in modern-day Sardinia, must have been a habit and a popular habit that certainly interested even the ruling classes. The study of sources is also flawed by a certain terminological confusion created later by the historical criticism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From a certain point on, in fact, for reasons of political-cultural militancy, 'popular' meant above all 'written in Sardinian', while 'cultured' was everything that was written in Italian. But oral, popular and improvised poetry should not be confused with literary, cultured, and often aesthetically valuable lyric, returned by Sardinian authors of the various centuries in “limba”. On the contrary, what was simply - in today's European terms - the literature of a linguistic minority, was obbrobriously defined as “semi-cultured”, precisely because of the difficulty in recognizing literary and courtly dignity to production in the Sardinian language. However, to say this does not mean to say that there were no relationships between the two worlds. On the contrary. For example, the eighth of the Endecasyllables, the most common meter among cantadores, is certainly of cultured origin (probably from the Italian humanistic area).
But the poem “a bolu”, in any case, belongs to another world, that of impromptu versification of a purely ethnological and “popular” nature in the most neutral sense there is. With the exception of a brief mention of popular poetry made by Salvatore Vidal in a 1683 work, Matteo Madao testifies to it in 1787 in the volume “Harmonies of the Sardinians”, in which some scant information can be obtained. Certainly it can be deduced that the custom of versification is of very ancient origin and that there was a differentiation of styles between the North and South of the island. In the monthly magazine “Sardinian Library” in 1939, Vittorio Angius deals with the subject with admiration and expertise. In the same way, Giovanni Spano does not neglect this field of study. The canon of Ploaghe gives a fairly plausible description of contemporary reality, arguing that improvising poets, even then, were considered real heroes by the population of the countries.
The race was not yet regulated and “institutionalized” like today's, but certainly there were plenty of opportunities for challenge. Moreover, even in figures of a certain literary interest such as Melchiorre Murenu (who is a figure on the border between oral and cultured poetry), the importance of versification in public is greatly grasped. According to the sources reported by Paolo Pillonca in “Chent'annos”, the exploits of the cantadores in the eighth rhyme of Endecasyllables did not fail to interest figures from cultured Sardinia, from Sebastiano Satta to Antonio Gramsci.
Alongside the spontaneous versification for private occasions, the most gifted poets often had to perform in public at religious or civil festivals and rites. Until in Ozieri in 1896, at the initiative of Tiu Antoni Cubeddu, the race in the square was regulated almost as we know it today. The most important differences are in the duration and reward of poets. In the beginning, in fact, a prize was established that was collected only by the winner. Subsequently, for practical reasons, it was decided to pay all the artists

Update

23/7/2025 - 13:11