Edgar Lee Masters Elegy

De Andrè’s characters are usually prostitutes and rebels, failures and all those who find it impossible to live and survive in the cold and cynical society affected by the outcome of the second world war. We can therefore state that the so called excluded, i.e. people who are forced to live a miserable and disgraceful life, are particularly held dear by this Genoese “storyteller”. But De Andrè’s work has been influenced by French, English, Asian and American composers and poets. One of the most famous ‘thefts’ committed by the singer is from Edgar Lee Masters and his “Spoon River Anthology”. Poet and writer Edgar Lee Masters was born in Kansas, Illinois in 1869 and raised on his family’s farm.

Despite the gleeful environment of his childhood,

The underlying thread of both works is the theme of death. Thomas Hardy handles the matter in a serious and sometimes holy way, describing death as a mysterious, frightening but not grim event. On the other side Lee Masters behaves in an embarrassing and fearful way towards the end of life. His descriptions are full of compassion and thoughts. His way of approaching the phenomenon of death can be considered as more human since he does not have the coldness needed to face it as a natural episode. The American writer describes the immediate reaction to death and through the epitaphs he tries to ensure the survival of his characters with peculiar descriptions making each of them inimitable.

As stated above, Spoon River Anthology is Masters’ masterpiece, the work that made him famous worldwide. But it was also the book setting him against his fellow citizens, who criticized him for publishing private events and truths.

For this reason Lee Masters was excluded by the society he lived in and was forced to live a miserable life until his neglected death in

For the whole book and for the whole album, both authors question some of the most fundamental issues and certainties of the society they live in. In this regard the main difference between Non al Denaro, non all’Amore né al Cielo and Spoon River Anthology is that the Italian composer does not give names to the described characters, except for Fiddler Jones which shall be mentioned later, and this because he wants to underline that the excluded do not limit their actions to their life, but rather they represent the behaviors and misconducts that can be found in every society, in every place and in every historical period.

Here follows the original text in Italian of the song Dormono sulla Collina and its English translation.

This piece introduces, as in Lee Masters’ anthology, the entire work and represents the skills of the Italian composer in rewriting the original texts. De Andrè includes in this song twelve citizens of Spoon River who are now resting in the cemetery.

Fernanda Pivano, Lee Masters’ translator, affirmed during an interview that De Andrè’s reinterpretation of Masters’ literary work far outperformed its