THE WAY TO THE MUSE
or, Meeting Peter Russell

The first time I met Peter Russell was in an art gallery in Florence, in late Spring 1990. The owner of the gallery was a friend who, upon learning of my interest in poetry, suggested I should meet a certain English poet who lived somewhere on the hills between Florence and Arezzo. Before the encounter I had tried to get a hold of some books of this poet. I went into all of the Florentine bookshops, but in vain: no one had ever heard of him and there were no Italian translations of his work. When the time came, I was completely unprepared, or so I felt, to meet the man. I remember sitting in the art gallery and waiting for what I expected to be a distinguished English gentleman to walk through the door. All of a sudden, a strange looking man with a worn out briefcase and a plastic bag full of papers and books walked in. His physical appearance struck me immediately: his long white hair and his just as white long beard made him look somewhat like Santa Claus. Not for a moment, as I watched him walk silently across the room, did it cross my mind that that man might be the poet I had been waiting for, that is Peter Russell.

There really isn't much more to say about that first encounter: he was slightly suspicious of me as I was of him. A week later my friend took me to visit him in Pian di Scò. Anyone who has been to Russell's knows that getting there is quite an adventure. The house is completely isolated and removed from the "civilised" world. It is hidden in a small and narrow vale, surrounded by tall trees and next to a noisy waterfall. At that particular time the house was in a disastrous condition: half of the building had been destroyed by a devastating fire two months earlier; on a side of the building there was an enormous pile of burnt papers, the remains of an extremely valuable collection of antique Russian books, of a lifetime of correspondence with the major writers of the century and, last but not least, of copies of all of his publications; inside, the house was full of pots and pans that had been carefully placed under the innumerable holes in the roof. In other words, the situation to my eyes looked desperate and I immediately decided that if there was anything I could do for him I would not hesitate a single moment.

That decision marked a turning point in my life; it was my first step into the mysterious world of poetry. For a couple of months I visited Russell on a regular basis, spending hours upon hours at his kitchen table talking. The subject of our conversations was everything one can imagine, though it always focused on art, literature in general and, of course, poetry. My apprenticeship had begun: Russell was showing me the way to the Muse. In fact, every time I left his home my mind was full of fascinating new concepts and my notebook was crowded with names of authors and titles of books that Russell suggested I should read carefully.

The way to the Muse, of course, is very long and requires time, experience and wisdom: it is a slow progress of the human soul. Few people are able to go as far as becoming a true "servant of the Muse", as Russell can well testify. But there are some special moments in life when one is allowed to see past the veil of reality and catch a glimpse of another world which is otherwise hidden from view. The poem that ends this brief note in honour of Peter Russell's 75th birthday, is the result of what I believe to have been my first encounter with the Muse. I dedicate it to Russell in memory of our own first encounter five and a half years ago.

Gli alberi si inchinano al suo passaggio –

l'agile quercia, il crudele frassino,

il rozzo abete, il cortese pino,

il sereno tiglio, il funesto cipresso.

Per lei sbocciano i fiori,

i frutti maturano solerti,

gli uccelli cantano dai nidi,

la terra muore e rinasce.

Io sono lei e lei è in me

quando davanti al foglio immacolato

ascolto la voce del silenzio.*

Pier-Franco Donovan
Florence, Italy
December 1995