In March 19901 decided I would become first end foremost a poet. I had
just come back from a short vacation on the Italian Alps, the Dolomites, where I had been
deeply moved by an incredible sunset: the peaks around me had all turned to a vivid
red-blood colour. Back home in Florence I wanted to record that wonderful experience and I
tried to do so by writing a mere description of the event as it happened. The results
however did not satisfy me, there was something missing. I then tried to write a
short-story in which I attempted to convey, through the feelings and the emotion felt by
the main character as he witnessed the same phenomenon, my own feelings. Again I was not
satisfied with the results because I thought I was sounding artificial. The problem was
that I was trying to describe that emotion instead of evoking it.
I decided to try other means. I had a professional photographic studio
print enlargements of the pictures I had taken of the event, but that only gave me a
visual image and not much else. Eventually I turned to what I believed to be poetic
language (I don't dare use the word "poetry" at this early stage). On 7th March
I wrote what I now call a "pensierino" (that is, a "little thought",
certainly not a poem), and this time I felt that I had finally got some kind of positive
result. It still did not fully evoke the emotion I had been looking for, but it was in my
view a step in the right direction. That was the beginning of my poetic career and I
haven't stopped trying to write poetry since.
In retrospect I must admit that at the time I did not know what it
meant to be a poet, nor did I really have any idea at all of what poetry is. Certainly
what I had been taught as a student, I was soon to find out, was of little or no use at
all: the Italian school system had taught me how to memorise poems and to hate poetry; the
College years in U.S.A. as a Comparative Literature major had just taught me how to
dissect a poem according to Jakobson or Barthes, and then to write a paper no less than
6000 words long. It wasn't till I met Peter Russell on 3rd May 1990, exactly two months
after that first "pensierino" of mine, that I began to really understand what
poetry is. I will not tell the story of how we first met and how we got along since. Peter
tells it much better than I ever could in his Introduction to this volume.
Three years later I can safely say that the decision I took in 1990 was
the right one for me. Both Peter and I have come a long way since then: he has become more
widely known in Italy and more people now show an interest in his poetry, though it is
difficult for a foreign author living in Italy to get more concrete results (in a sense
Italians are very provincial and seem to intend to stay so); on the other hand I have
learned more and more about poetry, English and Italian, by simply typing for him his
poems and essays and also through our long conversations in his kitchen about everything
concerning poetry.
My intention when I first planned this Postface was to write about my
beginnings as a poet, my relationship with Peter Russell, our accomplishments over the
past three years, and finally to write about my own views on poetry using Russell's
Introduction as a starting point. But now that I have taken care of the first subject of
my planned outline and that Russell has already written at length about the next two, I
find that I don't really have much to say about the last subject. The fact is that I agree
100% with what Mr. Russell says in the Introduction about poetry in general and about my
poetry in particular and that the only real differences between us are that he writes
mainly in English and I in Italian, that he is two generations older than me, and that he
is certainly a true poet while I still have a long way to go.
Our views coincide not so much because I am under his influence (which
has to be partly true anyway) but because we both feel the same way about what we
consider the important things in life. And that was true long before we met.
What I can say about Mr. Russell's Introduction is that it is an
extremely important document for me and that there were some pleasant surprises in it. I
was taken completely off-guard when he draws a parallel between my poem "Aspirations" and Guido Gozzano's
"Parabola" where my image of the snake and the egg is equivalent to that of
Gozzano's child holding an apple. I find it remarkable how the first seven lines of
Gozzano's poem are similar in their emotional content to "Aspirations", and even more so if you consider that
the first time I have read that particular poem was only a few hours ago while typing
Russell's Introduction.
What this means I don't know yet. It's something I will have to think
about and study very carefully. But what I'd like to emphasise here is that in this case
we have a perfect example of how Peter Russell has been a guide for me in my three years
of apprenticeship: he has never given me lessons in the Art of Poetry; he has always just
given me clues of where I should be looking for certain answers. It was then up to me to
find them. And now he has just given me my next clue: Gozzano.
I'd like to say a few words about the cover of the book. I have chosen
for it a drawing of a labyrinth which describes the myth of Hainuwele. The story is told
by Károly Kerényi in Nel labirinto (Turin 1983, p. 37): Hainuwele is the Moon
Goddess of the Island of Seram (Indonesia) and she is also known as Rabie or
Rabie-Hainuwele where
"Rabie is the mythic name of the moon; the girl Rabie is
kidnapped by the Sun God. As a bride she is represented by a pig that has been slain; as a
woman she takes on the image of a sow with her offspring. The name Hainuwele indicates the
richness within the earth and when she's murdered tubers come out of her body. This murder
has another consequence: the assassins, the first of men, become normal human beings and
from that moment onwards will have to die. When death first came on earth because of that
first murder, life begins. Life, an idea that holds within itself the idea of death, finds
its origins in the fate of the moon, of plants and animals that all disappear before
coming back again".
But in order to "come to life" man had to go through the
labyrinth and get past Satene, Queen of the Underworld. Those who failed were turned into
animals or spirits.
The myth of Hainuwele thus represents the more universal myths of the
creation of the world and of the journey to the underworld which is necessary for anyone
who wants to come to a new life.
What I find interesting is that Satene strikes those souls who are
passing by with the dead Hainuwele's severed arms which she holds in her hands. It's at
that moment that man comes to life, awakened as it were, by the blow he receives. As in
the case of Greek myths, Satene is therefore an ambiguous figure: she is the ruler of the
dead and at the same time the giver of life.
I chose this drawing of the myth of Hainuwele for three specific
reasons: in the first place, it represents a recurring theme in the poetry of all ages,
that of life and death and the renewal of life; secondly, it presents us with the
labyrinth, a universal symbol that is to be found in all cultures we know of; and finally
I found the shape of the figure very attractive as I see it also as a combination of the
image of a bird and of a woman, that is the ability to fly joined with feminine beauty and
sensibility. In short I felt that that particular drawing was a "condensation"
of the essence of poetry.
I'd like to end this Postface by mentioning two people who have been of
great help to me when I first faced the problem of the selection the poems for this book.
They are the Florentine poets Paola Lucarini Poggi and Marcello Fabbri. Without their
precious comments and their sound practical advice this would have probably been a very
poor first book of my poems.
Florence,
27th August 1993 |
