It was with considerable pleasure that I recently received a sketch connected with John Villalino‘s ongoing Pretty Vacant comics series, a premium for my having recently backed the project on Kickstarter. It’s series protagonist Gigi Gutierrez. She seems to spend most of her time trying to outrun or outwit a cabal of evildoers who are determined to turn her into some sort of a manikin, but I thought it might be nice if she were given an opportunity to relax for a change with a volume of some the greatest poetry written in Italian.

Click for full size; used here by the kind permission of the creators. For you Romance language buffs out there, the originals of the lines Gigi is reading are “Ma tu per certo,/Giovinetta immortal, conosci il tutto…” which are from Giacomo Leopardi’s Canto XXIII: Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell’Asia.. If you’re curious about the whole, you can find the original Italian text here, a recitation by Arnoldo Foà here, and a free English translation by A.S. Kline here.