Strumenti critici | 2016 | N. 1

In this short essay recent views on modern poetry are discussed and examples of its compositive variation are analyzed, with a special focus on the presence of narrative elements. In the conclusions, an interpretation of poetic writing is put forth, which, being based on apory, resorts to both philosophical suggestions and ancient literary recollections.

This article analyzes the intersection between a recurring motif in Gadda’s masterpiece (the idea of evil and its narrative incarnation in diabolical figures or the devil itself) and the opposition in its plot between the city of Rome and its countryside. This juncture, read in the light of a few philosophical reflections on good and evil contained in the “Meditazione milanese”, ends up disclosing some basic structures of the novel, which contribute to its strong (although not always manifest) inner coherence.

After the publication of “Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge”, the circumstances which mark the birth of the “Duino Elegies” in January 1912 sound as a new start in Rilke’s poetic career. When seen retrospectively, however, the beginning of the first elegy also seems the natural development of a complex poetic evolution which eventually resulted in the Duino Elegies. This itinerary can be traced by following the “leitmotive” of the poetics of wonder in the elegies, focusing on the first, the seventh, and the ninth poems of the collection. The milestones of this poetics are the passage from the ‘work of the eyes’ to the ‘heart-work’, the journey to Egypt, Plotinus’ treatise on beauty and his notion of “delightful terror”, and Kant’s idea of wonder. These are part ofthe wider context of Rilke’s angelo-centric poetics of wonder that involves man and the universe as well as a shift from the metaphysical to the natural viewpoint as Rilke’s interest is focused on this world, at which he looks in an admiring way.

Gianfranco Contini, Giulio Einaudi, Due testi editoriali rari per il «Catalogo Generale Einaudi» (1956)

Andrea Zanzotto defined Meteo as a fragmentary, provisional book. Nevertheless, to the careful reader the collection appears not only remarkably consistent, but also tightly related to one of Zanzotto’s major works, Il Galateo in Bosco. The peculiar feature of Meteo lies in the structural function performed by vegetal beings, which played only a minor role in previous books. Here Zanzotto’s choice falls on common, spontaneous, often invasive species (such as poppies, traveller’s joys, Jerusalem artichokes), which regain territories deeply wounded by history and human misdemeanours. These species are the same botanical essences that Gilles Clément has been studying since the Eighties, hereby restoring the friche and the involuntary art of the ‘vagrant plants’.

In his search for a language able to express the mysterious brotherhood between man and Nature, the Brazilian poet Manoel de Barros reconnects with the great tradition of French “poètes maudits” and, in particular, with Arthur Rimbaud’s work. In the essay I will try to demonstrate, by textual comparison, how a few of De Barros’ most famous poems echo various passages of Rimbaud’s masterpiece “Une Saison en Enfer” in both literal and creative ways. In de Barros’ work, this poetic heritage is enriched by Brazilian Modernism’s language experimentation.

Alice Meynell’s genuine interest in the smallest things – which seems tied up with Simone Weil’s superb doctrine of attention – serves in this article as a link between several aspects of her personality and writing. Despite a long-established feeling of familiarity, nothing is uncritically taken for granted in Meynell’s collections of essays. On the contrary, it is evident that herwillingness to listen profoundly and perseveringly has the power to transform, page after page, something common into something special.

In this essay unprecedented textual connections have been identified between “Tre circostanze”, a poem by Franco Scataglini focused on the idea of death, and a small set of Giorgio Caproni’s poems dedicated to the mourning for his mother.