Il negro di Saint-Pierre (The Saint-Pierre Negro)

1. Introduction

Giovanni Pascoli’s "Il negro di Saint-Pierre" (The Nigger of Saint-Pierre), first published in the collection Odi e inni in 1906, represents a crucial intersection of the poet’s mature concerns: cosmic evil, death's arbitrariness, and humanity's essential precariousness. The poem exemplifies what Fabrice De Poli identifies as Pascoli's "felt need...for a new religion, founded on science" aimed at promoting "the sense of brotherhood among men, united by a common and fatal destiny" (De Poli 35). This philosophical framework transforms the historical catastrophe of Mount Pelée's 1902 eruption – which killed approximately 29,000 people in few minutes – into a meditation on the paradox of survival (namely, the paradox that surviving a catastrophe can be void of any moral significance, and not having any meaning at all), and on divine indifference to the humans' fates.

Odi e inni belongs to Pascoli's systematic recreation of classical genres, specifically occupying "la casella della terza maniera, quella del canto delle 'imprese attuali epicizzate attraverso riferimenti mitologici'" ('the slot of the third manner, that of singing «current enterprises made epic through mythological references»," Barberi Squarotti 285-286, my trans.). The poem thus participates in what he identifies as the collection's ""comune intento gnomico o pedagogico" ('common gnomic or pedagogical intent') with its "destinazione, per l'appunto collettiva e civile" ('destination, precisely collective and civic', Barberi Squarotti, 286, my trans.). This pedagogical intent transforms the historical disaster into a universal exemplum about human vulnerability.

Within Odi e inni, "Il negro di Saint-Pierre" forms part of what Latini identifies as a significant diptych with "Nel carcere di Ginevra" ("In the Geneva Prison"), both poems exploring the theme of the condemned prisoner confronting mortality (Latini 290). This pairing exemplifies what Ebani describes as Pascoli's "dialectical progression between texts" where contrastive poems generate meaning through their juxtaposition (290). This dialectical structure reflects "the eternal contradiction peculiar to Pascoli's forma mentis" already evident in Myricae and Canti di Castelvecchio (290).

The poem is composed by 120 hendecasyllables, divided in six sections, each of which features a rhyme scheme of interlocking tercets closed by a single line (ABA BCB … XYX Y), which is an explicit hint to Dante’s Commedia, and a common form for narrative poems 

2. Narrative Structure

The poem's six-section structure alternates between past narration and present dialogue, creating an effect of a posthumous conversation. The prisoner's account begins in medias res – "Io stavo qui nella mia tomba, vivo" ‘I was here in my tomb, alive’ (line 1) – establishing the paradox of living entombment that governs the entire composition.

The temporal oscillation between imperfect tenses recounting pre-eruption imprisonment and the dramatic present of the volcano's speech creates a suspended temporality where death and life, past and present, merge indistinguishably.

The exceptional use of the personal first-person pronoun "io" ('I') throughout the poem makes this poem very distant from the rest of contemporary Pascoli's corpus. As Bocchi demonstrates through exhaustive analysis, while Pascoli typically employs "io" only before imperfects in -a, here it appears consistently with both forms: "Io stavo" ‘I was’ (line 1; my trans.), "io sbalzavo" ‘I would start up’ (line 11; my trans.), "Io, sì, vivevo" ‘I, yes, I lived’ (line 89; my trans.). This "absolute extension of the pronoun, absolutely exceptional in all of Pascoli's poetry" serves the poem's "narrative character" and emphasizes "the continuous oppositions of the prisoner now with the man he has stabbed, now with the Bald Mountain" (Bocchi 84). Bocchi further notes that "there are excellent reasons to assign to the Negro di Saint-Pierre a sort of particular narrative status, which also involves the use of the first-person singular pronoun" (84).

3. The Personified Volcano as Metaphysical Agent

The Mountain's self-proclamation – "Io sono, negro, la Montagna Calva, / io sono il caso, io sono il dio più forte" ‘I am, negro, the Bald Mountain, / I am chance, I am the strongest god’ (lines 46-47; my trans.) – establishes the volcano as simultaneously natural phenomenon and metaphysical principle. This personification transcends mere rhetorical device to embody cosmic indifference. The volcano's declaration "che gli altri uccide, ma che te, ti salva" 'that kills the others, but you, saves you' (line 47, my trans.) reveals that salvation is as arbitrary as destruction, undermining any theodicy that would assign moral meaning to survival.

The systematic cataloguing of annihilation – "uccisi il giustizier sul palco", 'I killed the executioner on the scaffold' (line 49, my trans.), "uccisi il carcerier dietro le porte" 'I killed the jailer behind the doors' (line 50, my trans.), "uccisi tutti" 'I killed everyone', (line 58, my trans.) – emphasizes what Latini describes as the complete obliteration of social hierarchy. The repetition of "uccisi" creates an almost liturgical cadence of destruction that encompasses all levels of society. Yet the mountain's indifference extends beyond destruction: "Io do la morte, non ridò la vita" 'I give death, I don't give back life' (line 86, my trans.), refusing even the consolation of reuniting the prisoner with his victim. At the same time there is something ironic in the volcano killing those who had to kill the protagonist, since their killing is a law-ordered one, while the protagonist’s killing is a felony. But the mountain does not care for human justice, it seems, nor for justice at all.

The prisoner's survival inverts conventional notions of fortune. The metaphor with which he defines himself – "l'unico verme d'un sepolcro chiuso" 'the only worm in a closed sepulcher' (line 91, my trans.) – captures the grotesque nature of his preservation amid universal death. The weight of dual guilt – "O peso / di due morti, non una, entro il pensiero!" 'O weight / of two deaths, not one, within thought!' (lines 93-94, my trans.) – reveals survival not as deliverance but as intensified torment. Historical accounts confirm only two survivors from Saint-Pierre: Ludger Sylbaris (like Pascoli's protagonist, a prisoner) and Léon Compère-Léandre (Fisher and Heiken 350). Pascoli transforms this historical anomaly into philosophical paradox. The survival is thus an existential burden.

The survivor's condition embodies what Barberi Squarotti identifies as typical of Pascoli's civil poetry: the confrontation with "the difficult and delicate themes of social justice" where individual fate becomes emblematic of universal condition (288). The negro's survival is neither redemption nor punishment but pure contingency, reflecting the collection's broader meditation on what Latini calls the attempt "to reconcile, or at least to give voice to opposing thoughts" (287).

4. Language 

The poem's linguistic texture reinforces its themes through phonetic and syntactic choices. The alliterative sequence "flutti / di fango, fiati di veleno, fiumi / di fuoco" 'waves / of mud, breaths of poison, rivers / of fire' (lines 60-62, my trans.), reinforced by the use of many bisillabes (flutti, fango, fiati, fiumi, fuoco) and by the triplication of the syntactic module substantive+specificative complement, creates an onomatopoetic effect mimicking pyroclastic flow, and a sequence of eruptions followed by pauses, and then by other eruptions. The predominance of verbs over adjectives, the paratactic structure reinforced by the multiplication of similar modules (as in the former example), and multiple exclamation marks generate urgency, while the ellipses and hyphens, and enjambments, fragment discourse, mirroring the eruption's disruption of continuity.

The syntactic disruption reflects what Barberi Squarotti identifies as a characteristic of Odi e inni: "a collection posed, 'in position' like an equestrian statue" (284-285) that nonetheless reveals itself, as Pascoli himself said, "disarmed, disheveled, and resigned to nothingness and death" (quoted in Barberi Squarotti 285). The poem's formal tension between classical ode structure and modernist fragmentation embodies this contradiction.

5. Philosophical and Religious Implications

"Il negro di Saint-Pierre" ultimately presents catastrophe as revealing existence's fundamental arbitrariness. Unlike theodicies that rationalize suffering, Pascoli's volcano admits no moral logic: it represents "il caso" ("chance") incarnate. The poem's conclusion – "O negro, soffia sopra la mia lava!" 'O negro, blow upon my lava!' (line 120, my trans.) – mockingly invites human participation in cosmic destruction, underlining humanity's powerlessness before indifferent natural forces.

This vision aligns with what Nava identifies as Pascoli's broader project where "Christianity itself is reduced, by virtue of a syncretistic comparativism, to a mystery cult of death and resurrection" (Barberi Squarotti 282). The volcano's divine claims – "io sono il dio più forte" 'I am the strongest god' (line 46, my trans.) – present a deity stripped of Christian consolation, offering neither redemption nor resurrection. This reflects Pascoli's attempt to create "a poetry aimed in effect at current events" through classical forms (Barberi Squarotti 286), transforming contemporary disaster into timeless meditation on human fragility.

The poem thus participates in what Latini identifies as the collection's oscillation "between a Pascoli already 'modern' or anyway precursor of the Twentieth century and a superfluous Pascoli, who rehashes the detritus of the Nineteenth century" (283). Yet here the tension proves productive, generating a text that transforms historical catastrophe into enduring philosophical inquiry about survival, guilt, and cosmic indifference.